Nervous System

List three parts of the brain and their function

Discuss the role of the nervous system
Discuss the interaction between hormones and behavior.
Summarize the nature vs nurture debate

Explain epigenetics

Here below is the PDF of the EBook.

This information can be found on Page 137-141 (Nervous System), Pg. 150 (Interaction Between Hormones and Behavior), Pg.163 (The 3 parts of the Brain (frontal, parietal, temporal lobes), Pgs.179-182 (Nature and Nurture), Pgs. 189-190 (Epigenetics)

It is not a long assignment, it is just little information on each.

Here is an Example of what I need:

”
List three parts of the brain and their function

– The frontal lobes are important for voluntary movement, expressive language and for managing higher level executive functions. Executive functions refer to a collection of cognitive skills including the capacity plan, organize, initiate, self-monitor and control one’s responses in order to achieve a goal.

– The parietal lobe is vital for sensory perception and integration, including the management of taste, hearing, sight, touch, and smell. It is home to the brain’s primary somatic sensory cortex, a region where the brain interprets input from other areas of the body.

– The temporal lobes sit behind the ears and are the second largest lobe. They are most commonly associated with processing auditory information and with the ding encouragement.

Discuss the role of the nervous system

– The nervous system is the major controlling, regulatory, and communicating system in the body. It is the center of all mental activity including thought, learning and memory. Together with the endocrine system, the nervous system is responsible for regulating and maintaining homeostasis.

Interaction Between Hormones and the Behavior:

– They are very interesting to me because ever since a baby is born the genders are defined by colors just like gender reveals and how since the baby is a boy they dress him up in blueish colors and girls otherwise with pink. but like with the lecture of the monkeys where they don’t have that influence on them and yet due to the hormones in males or females the male monkeys chose male toys such as balls and trucks meanwhile female monkeys chose female toys such as dolls.

Summarize the nature vs nurture debate

From what I gathered from the reading on Lumen. There is a stronger correlation between genetics, suggesting a stronger leaning towards the “nature” stance in the debate. However, it is also important to keep in mind that nurture (and/or environment/social expectations) can also have some impact on a person’s decisions making skills and actions.

Explain epigenetics

-Epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. Unlike genetics changes, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change your DNA sequence, but they can change how your body read a DNA sequence.”

Introduction to Psychology
Introduction to Psychology
Lumen Learning
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Except where expressly noted otherwise, the contents of this course are based on materials originally published by OpenStax
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CONTENTS
Course ContentsCourse Contents …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 77
• About This Course …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 7
• Course Contents at a Glance ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 8
• Learning Outcomes ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 11
Module 1: Psychological FoundationsModule 1: Psychological Foundations ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 1616
• Why It Matters: Psychological Foundations……………………………………………………………………………………….. 16
• The History of Psychology ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 20
• The History of Psychology Continued……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 31
• Domains in Psychology ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 39
• Careers in Psychology……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 54
• Putting It Together: Psychological Foundations …………………………………………………………………………………. 60
• Discussion: Foundations of Psychology ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 64
Module 2: Psychological ResearchModule 2: Psychological Research ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 6666
• Why It Matters: Psychological Research …………………………………………………………………………………………… 66
• The Scientific Method …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 69
• Descriptive Research……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 79
• Correlational Research …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 89
• Experiments………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 95
• Statistical Thinking……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 102
• How to Read Research…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 116
• Psych in Real Life: Brain Imaging and Messy Science………………………………………………………………………. 125
• Putting It Together: Psychological Research……………………………………………………………………………………. 133
• Discussion: Research in Psychology………………………………………………………………………………………………. 134
Module 3: BiopsychologyModule 3: Biopsychology ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 135135
• Why It Matters: Biopsychology ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 135
• Neural Communication …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 137
• The Nervous System and Endocrine System …………………………………………………………………………………… 142
• Parts of the Brain …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 152
• The Limbic System and Other Brain Areas ……………………………………………………………………………………… 166
• Brain Imaging………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 174
• Lateralization and Neuroplasticity…………………………………………………………………………………………………… 178
• Nature and Nurture ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 179
• Gene-Environment Interactions ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 189
• Putting It Together: Biopsychology …………………………………………………………………………………………………. 193
• Discussion: Biopsychology ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 195
Module 4: Sensation and PerceptionModule 4: Sensation and Perception ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 196196
• Why It Matters: Sensation and Perception ………………………………………………………………………………………. 196
• Sensation and Perception……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 200
• Vision …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 212
• Hearing ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 227
• Taste and Smell…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 237
• Touch and Pain……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 240
• The Vestibular Sense …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 248
• Perception…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 251
• Illusions………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 263
• Putting It Together: Sensation and Perception …………………………………………………………………………………. 274
• Discussion: Sensation and Perception ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 276
Module 5: State of ConsciousnessModule 5: State of Consciousness ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 277277

• Why It Matters: States of Consciousness ………………………………………………………………………………………… 277
• Consciousness and Biological Rhythms………………………………………………………………………………………….. 285
• Psych in Real Life: Consciousness and Blindsight ……………………………………………………………………………. 299
• Sleep and Sleep Stages ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 305
• Dreams and Dreaming………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 318
• Sleep Problems and Disorders ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 321
• Drugs and Consciousness…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 327
• Hypnosis and Meditation ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 339
• Putting It Together: States of Consciousness…………………………………………………………………………………… 342
• Discussion: States of Consciousness……………………………………………………………………………………………… 344
Module 6: LearningModule 6: Learning………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 345345
• Why It Matters: Learning……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 345
• What Is Learning?………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 348
• Classical Conditioning ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 351
• Operant Conditioning……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 364
• Reinforcement Schedules……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 373
• Latent Learning……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 379
• Observational Learning…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 387
• Putting It Together: Learning …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 395
• Discussion: Learning ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 396
Module 7: MemoryModule 7: Memory………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 397397
• Why It Matters: Memory………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 397
• Memory Encoding………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 401
• Storage ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 406
• Retrieval……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 413
• Parts of the Brain Involved with Memory …………………………………………………………………………………………. 417
• Amnesia and Forgetting………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 423
• Flashbulb Memories …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 432
• Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Construction…………………………………………………………………………….. 432
• Ways to Enhance Memory…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 439
• Putting It Together: Memory ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 446
• Discussion: Memory …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 447
Module 8: Thinking, Language, and IntelligenceModule 8: Thinking, Language, and Intelligence ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 449449
• Why It Matters: Thinking and Intelligence………………………………………………………………………………………… 449
• What Is Cognition? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 454
• Solving Problems…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 461
• Psych in Real Life: Choice Blindness ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 477
• Language and Language Use ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 485
• Language Development………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 491
• Intelligence and Creativity……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 497
• Measures of Intelligence……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 506
• The Source of Intelligence …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 514
• Putting It Together: Thinking and Intelligence ………………………………………………………………………………….. 520
• Discussion: Thinking and Intelligence……………………………………………………………………………………………… 521
Module 9: Emotion and MotivationModule 9: Emotion and Motivation ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 522522
• Why It Matters: Emotion and Motivation ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 522
• Motivation …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 530
• Psych in Real Life: Growth Mindsets ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 553
• Hunger and Eating……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 567
• Sexual Behavior…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 577
• Emotion………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 588
• Expressing and Recognizing Emotion …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 594

• Putting It Together: Motivation and Emotion…………………………………………………………………………………….. 601
• Discussion: Motivation and Emotion……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 602
Module 10: Lifespan DevelopmentModule 10: Lifespan Development ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 603603
• Why It Matters: Introduction to Lifespan Development ………………………………………………………………………. 603
• What Is Lifespan Development?…………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 611
• Psychosexual and Psychosocial Theories of Development ……………………………………………………………….. 618
• Cognitive Development…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 622
• Moral Development………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 627
• Prenatal Development ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 639
• Childhood……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 645
• Adolescence ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 655
• Adulthood……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 661
• Death and Dying ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 665
• Putting It Together: Lifespan Development ……………………………………………………………………………………… 667
• Discussion: Lifespan Development…………………………………………………………………………………………………. 668
Module 11: PersonalityModule 11: Personality ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 670670
• Why It Matters: Personality……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 670
• Personality and the Psychodynamic Perspective ……………………………………………………………………………… 676
• Neo-Freudians: Adler, Erikson, Jung, and Horney ……………………………………………………………………………. 689
• Explaining Personality: Learning and Humanistic Approaches …………………………………………………………… 695
• Explaining Personality: Biological Approaches and Trait Theories………………………………………………………. 703
• Personality Assessment ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 716
• Psych in Real Life: Blirtatiousness, Questionnaires, and Validity ………………………………………………………… 731
• Resource: Personality Tests………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 741
• Putting It Together: Personality ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 742
• Discussion: Personality…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 743
Module 12: Social PsychologyModule 12: Social Psychology ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 745745
• Why It Matters: Social Psychology …………………………………………………………………………………………………. 745
• Social Psychology and Influences on Behavior ………………………………………………………………………………… 753
• Social Norms and Scripts ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 760
• Attitudes and Persuasion………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 765
• Group Behavior……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 775
• The Bystander Effect and Altruism …………………………………………………………………………………………………. 786
• Attraction and Love………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 792
• Psych in Real Life: Love and Pain ………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 807
• Prejudice and Discrimination …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 816
• Aggression………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 824
• Putting It Together: Social Psychology ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 827
• Discussion: Social Psychology ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 830
Module 13: Stress, Lifestyle, and HealthModule 13: Stress, Lifestyle, and Health ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 831831
• Why It Matters: Stress, Lifestyle, and Health ……………………………………………………………………………………. 831
• Stress…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 844
• Stressors…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 857
• Stress and Illness ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 865
• Regulating Stress ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 877
• Positive Psychology……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 886
• Psych in Real Life: Habits……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 898
• Putting It Together: Stress, Lifestyle, and Health ……………………………………………………………………………… 908
• Discussion: Stress, Lifestyle, and Health…………………………………………………………………………………………. 910
Module 14: Psychological DisordersModule 14: Psychological Disorders ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 911911
• Why It Matters: Psychological Disorders …………………………………………………………………………………………. 911

• Introduction to Psychological Disorders…………………………………………………………………………………………… 925
• Anxiety Disorders…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 937
• OCD and PTSD …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 946
• Mood Disorders …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 954
• Schizophrenia and Dissociative Disorders ………………………………………………………………………………………. 966
• Personality Disorders……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 976
• Childhood Disorders …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 985
• Review: Classifying Psychological Disorders …………………………………………………………………………………… 992
• Putting It Together: Psychological Disorders……………………………………………………………………………………. 994
• Discussion: Psychological Disorders ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 995
Module 15: Therapy and TreatmentModule 15: Therapy and Treatment ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 996996
• Why It Matters: Therapy and Treatment ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 996
• Mental Health Treatment: Then and Now………………………………………………………………………………………. 1003
• Types of Treatment and Psychoanalysis……………………………………………………………………………………….. 1012
• Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 1016
• Humanistic Therapy and Other Treatments……………………………………………………………………………………. 1023
• Psych in Real Life: Reconsolidation ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 1040
• Treatment Modalities ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 1049
• Putting It Together: Treatment and Therapy…………………………………………………………………………………… 1058
• Discussion: Therapy and Treatment……………………………………………………………………………………………… 1059
Module 16: Industrial-Organizational PsychologyModule 16: Industrial-Organizational Psychology ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….10611061
• Why It Matters: Industrial-Organizational Psychology ……………………………………………………………………… 1061
• Industrial-Organizational Psychology ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 1067
• Selecting Employees ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 1074
• Job Satisfaction …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 1086
• Leadership and Organization……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 1091
• Human Factors Psychology and Workplace Design………………………………………………………………………… 1097
• Putting It Together: Industrial-Organizational Psychology ………………………………………………………………… 1101
• Discussion: Industrial-Organizational Psychology …………………………………………………………………………… 1103

COURSE CONTENTS
ABOUT THIS COURSE
This comprehensive, ready-to-adopt Introduction to Psychology course provides thorough coverage of all topics
covered in a typical introductory course, including biological psychology, cognitive psychology, developmental
psychology, social and personality psychology, and mental and physical health.
The course is organized around the recently recommended model from the American Psychological Association,
which encompasses the five psychological domains, or pillars: biological psychology, cognitive psychology,
developmental psychology, social and personality psychology, and mental and physical health psychology (see
“Strengthening Introductory Psychology: A New Model for Teaching the Introductory Course”).
With the OpenStax Psychology textbook as a foundation, this contains other material curated by Lumen Learning
and created by Patrick Carroll of the University of Texas at Austin. The course enriches learning with frequent
application, curated videos, selected NOBA content, and interactive learning activities to foster practical skills.
Engaging “Psychology in Real Life” features use recent research to help students think critically about
experimental design.
What’s New?
We believe in making continual improvements to the course in order to enhance and facilitate student learning.
This newest version of the course includes additional Psych in Real Life pages, which provide learners with the
opportunity to think deeply about relevant psychological research. These 2019 additions include:
• Psych in Real Life: Brain Imaging and Messy Science
◦ Dive into a psychological research article (McCabe and Castel) and learn more about the
replication crisis
• Psych in Real Life: Consciousness and Blindsight
◦ Describe unconscious perception as it relates to blindsight
• Psych in Real Life: Choice Blindness
◦ Understand decision-making processes and choice blindness, based on research done by
Johannson and Hall
• Psych in Real Life: Love and Pain
◦ Look at two studies (Sarah Master and Jarred Younger) related to romantic love and the
experience of pain
• Psych in Real Life: Blirtatiousness, Questionnaires, and Validity
◦ Understand how personality tests are created, then examine how validity is measured
• Psych in Real Life: Growth Mindsets
◦ Dive into Dweck’s research on growth mindsets
• Psych in Real Life: Reconsolidation
◦ Understand how memory reconsolidation can be used as a therapy technique
• Psych in Real Life: Habits
◦ Look at research on habitual behavior and popcorn eating by Wendy Wood and David Neal
In additional to these new pages, there are also several new assignments options. We have also used data to find
areas in the course in need of further clarification or interactives, such as this one about reliability and validity.

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About Lumen
Lumen Learning’s mission is to enable unprecedented learning for all students.
We do this by using open educational resources (OER) to create well-designed and low-cost course materials
that replace expensive textbooks. Because learning is about more than affordability and access, we also apply
learning science insights and efficacy research to develop learning activities that are engineered to improve
subject mastery, course completion and retention.
If you’d like to connect with us to learn more about adopting this course, please Contact Us.
You can also make an appointment for OER Office Hours to connect virtually with a live Lumen expert about any
question you may have.
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COURSE CONTENTS AT A GLANCE
The following list shows the module-level topics for the course. To see all of the course pages, visit the Table of
Contents.
Module 1: Psychological Foundations
• The History of Psychology
• Domains in Psychology
• Careers in Psychology
Module 2: Psychological Research
• The Scientific Method
• Descriptive Research
• Correlational Research
• Experiments
• Statistical Thinking
• How to Read Research
• Biological Psychology Domain

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Office Hours

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Module 3: Biopsychology
• Neural Communication
• The Nervous System and Endocrine System
• Parts of the Brain
• The Limbic System and Other Brain Areas
• Brain Imaging
• Nature and Nurture
• Gene-Environment Interactions
Module 4: State of Consciousness
• Consciousness and Biological Rhythms
• Sleep and Sleep Stages
• Dreams and Dreaming
• Sleep Problems and Disorders
• Drugs and Consciousness
• Hypnosis and Meditation
• Cognitive Psychology Domain
Module 5: Sensation and Perception
• Sensation and Perception
• Vision
• Hearing
• Taste and Smell
• Touch and Pain
• The Vestibular Sense
• Perception
• Illusions
Module 6: Thinking and Intelligence
• What Is Cognition?
• Solving Problems
• Language and Language Use
• Language Development
• Intelligence and Creativity
• Measures of Intelligence
• The Source of Intelligence
Module 7: Memory
• Memory Encoding
• Storage
• Retrieval
• Parts of the Brain Involved with Memory
• Amnesia and Forgetting
• Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Construction
• Ways to Enhance Memory
• Developmental Psychology Domain

Module 8: Learning
• What Is Learning?
• Classical Conditioning
• Operant Conditioning
• Reinforcement Schedules
• Latent Learning
• Observational Learning
Module 9: Lifespan Development
• What Is Lifespan Development?
• Psychosexual and Psychosocial Theories of Development
• Cognitive Development
• Moral Development
• Prenatal Development
• Childhood
• Adolescence
• Adulthood
• Death and Dying
• Social and Personality Psychology Domain
Module 10: Social Psychology
• Social Psychology and Influences on Behavior
• Social Norms and Scripts
• Attitudes and Persuasion
• Group Behavior
• The Bystander Effect and Altruism
• Attraction and Love
• Prejudice and Discrimination
• Aggression
Module 11: Personality
• Personality and the Psychodynamic Perspective
• Neo-Freudians: Adler, Erikson, Jung, and Horney
• Explaining Personality: Learning and Humanistic Approaches
• Explaining Personality: Biological Approaches and Trait Theories
• Personality Assessment
Module 12: Emotion and Motivation
• Motivation
• Hunger and Eating
• Sexual Behavior
• Emotion
• Expressing and Recognizing Emotion
Module 13: Industrial-Organizational Psychology
• Industrial-Organizational Psychology
• Selecting Employees

• Job Satisfaction
• Leadership and Organization
• Human Factors Psychology and Workplace Design
• Mental and Physical Health Domain
Module 14: Psychological Disorders
• Introduction to Psychological Disorders
• Anxiety Disorders
• OCD and PTSD
• Mood Disorders
• Schizophrenia and Dissociative Disorders
• Personality Disorders
• Childhood Disorders
Module 15: Therapy and Treatment
• Mental Health Treatment: Then and Now
• Types of Treatment and Psychoanalysis
• Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
• Humanistic Therapy and Other Treatments
• Treatment Modalities
Module 16: Stress, Lifestyle, and Health
• Stress
• Stressors
• Stress and Illness
• Regulating Stress
• Positive Psychology
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LEARNING OUTCOMES

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The content, assignments, and assessments for this course are aligned to the following learning outcomes. A full
list of course learning outcomes can be viewed here: Complete Learning Outcomes.
This course provides coverage for the broad range of learning outcomes that may be taught in introductory
psychology courses. With the goal of supporting faculty in the selection of content for their courses, we have
organized this course around the 5 pillars, or domains, of psychology as recently recommended by the APA:
biological pillar, cognitive pillar, developmental pillar, social and personality pillar, mental and physical health
pillar.
While we hope that organizing the modules in this fashion proves helpful to faculty, faculty have
complete freedom to select and organize modules for their course as they choose, as modules may easily be
reorganized.
• Module 1: Psychological Foundations
◦ Describe the evolution of psychology and the major pioneers in the field
◦ Identify the various approaches, fields, and subfields of psychology along with their major
concepts and important figures
◦ Describe the value of psychology and possible careers paths for those who study psychology
• Module 2: Psychological Research
◦ Define and apply the scientific method to psychology
◦ Describe the strengths and weaknesses of descriptive, experimental, and correlational research
◦ Define basic elements of a statistical investigation
Biological Psychology Domain
• Module 3: Biopsychology
◦ Identify the basic structures of a neuron, the function of each structure, and how messages
travel through the neuron
◦ Describe the role of the nervous system and endocrine systems
◦ Identify and describe the parts of the brain

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1462ht4T8P-IG7FgwM5v0HxasQayZAzrOTAX-baBeots/edit#gid=1071993608

◦ Explain how nature, nurture, and epigenetics influence personality and behavior
• Module 4: State of Consciousness
◦ Describe consciousness and biological rhythms
◦ Describe what happens to the brain and body during sleep
◦ Explain how drugs affect consciousness
Cognitive Psychology Domain
• Module 5: Sensation and Perception
◦ Differentiate between sensation and perception
◦ Explain the process of vision and how people see color and depth
◦ Explain the basics of hearing
◦ Describe the basic anatomy and functions of taste, smell, touch, pain, and the vestibular sense
◦ Define perception and give examples of gestalt principles and multimodal perception
• Module 6: Thinking and Intelligence
◦ Describe cognition and problem-solving strategies
◦ Describe language acquisition and the role language plays in communication and thought
◦ Describe intelligence theories and intelligence testing
• Module 7: Memory
◦ Explain the process of memory
◦ Explain and give examples of forgetting and memory failure
◦ Recognize and apply memory-enhancing strategies
Developmental Psychology Domain
• Module 8: Learning
◦ Explain learning and the process of classical conditioning
◦ Explain operant conditioning, reinforcement, and punishment
◦ Describe latent learning and observational learning
• Module 9: Lifespan Development
◦ Compare and contrast theories lifespan development theories
◦ Explain the physical, cognitive, and emotional development that occurs from infancy through
childhood
◦ Describe physical, cognitive, and emotional development in adolescence and adulthood

Social and Personality Psychology Domain
• Module 10: Social Psychology
◦ Recognize aspects of social psychology, including the fundamental attribution error, biases,
social roles, and social norms, in your daily life
◦ Describe how attitudes can be changed through cognitive dissonance and persuasion
◦ Explain how conformity, obedience, groupthink, social facilitation, social loafing, and altruism
relate to group behavior
◦ Explain prejudice, discrimination, and aggression
• Module 11: Personality
◦ Define personality and the contributions of Freud and neo-Freudians to personality theory
◦ Describe and differentiate between personality theories
◦ Explain the use and purpose of common personality tests
• Module 12: Emotion and Motivation
◦ Explain motivation, how it is influenced, and major theories about motivation
◦ Describe hunger and eating in relation to motivation, obesity, anorexia, and bulimia
◦ Describe sexual behavior and research about sexuality
◦ Explain theories of emotion and how we express and recognize emotion
• Module 13: Industrial-Organizational Psychology
◦ Describe the purpose of industrial-organizational psychology and examine its application to the
workforce
◦ Explain how industrial-organizational psychologists assess leadership and organization
Mental and Physical Health Domain
• Module 14: Psychological Disorders
◦ Define psychological disorders and explain how they are classified
◦ Describe the features and characteristic symptoms of anxiety disorders (generalized anxiety
disorder, panic disorder, phobias), obsessive-compulsive disorder and posttraumatic stress
disorder; differentiate these anxiety disorders from each other
◦ Describe the characteristic symptoms and risk factors of mood disorders, including major
depressive disorder and bipolar disorder
◦ Explain symptoms and potential causes of schizophrenic and dissociative disorders
◦ Define personality disorders and distinguish between the three clusters of personality disorders
◦ Explain common childhood disorders, including attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and
autism spectrum disorder
• Module 15: Therapy and Treatment
◦ Describe the treatment of mental health disorders over time
◦ Identify and explain the basic characteristics of various types of therapy
◦ Explain and compare treatment modalities

• Module 16: Stress, Lifestyle, and Health
◦ Describe stress, its impact on the body, and identify common stressors
◦ Explain the negative physiological responses to stress
◦ Describe methods to cope with stress and explain ways to increase happiness
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Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. (credit “background”: modification of work by Nattachai Noogure; credit
“top left”: modification of work by U.S. Navy; credit “top middle-left”: modification of work by Peter Shanks; credit “top middle-right”:
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right”: modification of work by Staffan Scherz; credit “bottom right”: modification of work by Czech Provincial Reconstruction
Team)
MODULE 1: PSYCHOLOGICAL
FOUNDATIONS
WHY IT MATTERS: PSYCHOLOGICAL
FOUNDATIONS
Clive Wearing is an accomplished musician who lost his ability to form new memories when he became sick at
the age of 46. While he can remember how to play the piano perfectly, he cannot remember what he ate for
breakfast just an hour ago (Sacks, 2007). James Wannerton experiences a taste sensation that is associated with
the sound of words. His former girlfriend’s name tastes like rhubarb (Mundasad, 2013). John Nash is a brilliant
mathematician and Nobel Prize winner. However, while he was a professor at MIT, he would tell people that the
New York Times contained coded messages from extraterrestrial beings that were intended for him. He also
began to hear voices and became suspicious of the people around him. Soon thereafter, Nash was diagnosed

with schizophrenia and admitted to a state-run mental institution (O’Connor & Robertson, 2002). Nash was the
subject of the 2001 movie A Beautiful Mind. Why did these people have these experiences? How does the human
brain work? And what is the connection between the brain’s internal processes and people’s external behaviors?
This course will introduce you to various ways that the field of psychology has explored these questions.
This module will introduce you to what psychology is and what psychologists do. You’ll learn the basic history of
the discipline and about the major domains and subdivisions that exist within modern psychology. Lastly, you’ll
consider what it means to study psychology and what career options are available for those who do.
AnswerAnswer
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Humanistic Psychologist, 36, 113–126.
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marulic.htm
Greengrass, M. (2004). 100 years of B.F. Skinner. Monitor on Psychology, 35, 80.
Halonen, J. S. (2011). White paper: Are there too many psychology majors? Prepared for the Staff of the State
University System of Florida Board of Governors. Retrieved from http://www.cogdop.org/page_attachments/0000/
0200/FLA_White_Paper_for_cogop_posting
Hock, R. R. (2009). Social psychology. Forty studies that changed psychology: Explorations into the history of
psychological research (pp. 308–317). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Hoffman, C. (2012). Careers in clinical, counseling, or school psychology; mental health counseling; clinical social
work; marriage & family therapy and related professions. Retrieved from http://www.indiana.edu/~psyugrad/
advising/docs/Careers%20in%20Mental%20Health%20Counseling
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Vol. 1 Personality theories and models. London: Sage.
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THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY

What you’ll learn to do: describe the evolution of psychology and
the major pioneers in the field

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Antonio Canova’s sculpture depicts Eros and Psyche.
Plato, Aristotle, and other ancient Greek philosophers examined a wide range of topics relating to what we now consider
psychology.
Many cultures throughout history have speculated on the nature of the mind, heart, soul, spirit, and brain.
Philosophical interest in behavior and the mind dates back to the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, China,
and India, but psychology as a discipline didn’t develop until the mid-1800s, when it evolved from the study of
philosophy and began in German and American labs. This section will teach you more about the major founding
psychologists and their contributions to the development of psychology.
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Define Psychology
• Define structuralism and functionalism and the contributions of Wundt and James in the development
of psychology
• Describe Freud’s influence on psychology and his major theoretical contributions
• Describe the basic tenets of Gestalt psychology
What is Psychology?
In Greek mythology, Psyche was a mortal woman whose beauty was so great that it rivaled that of the goddess
Aphrodite. Aphrodite became so jealous of Psyche that she sent her son, Eros, to make Psyche fall in love with
the ugliest man in the world. However, Eros accidentally pricked himself with the tip of his arrow and fell madly in
love with Psyche himself. He took Psyche to his palace and showered her with gifts, yet she could never see his
face. While visiting Psyche, her sisters roused suspicion in Psyche about her mysterious lover, and eventually,
Psyche betrayed Eros’ wishes to remain unseen to her. Because of this betrayal, Eros abandoned Psyche. When
Psyche appealed to Aphrodite to reunite her with Eros, Aphrodite gave her a series of impossible tasks to
complete. Psyche managed to complete all of these trials; ultimately, her perseverance paid off as she was
reunited with Eros and was ultimately transformed into a goddess herself (Ashliman, 2001; Greek Myths & Greek
Mythology, 2014).
Psyche comes to represent the human soul’s triumph over
the misfortunes of life in the pursuit of true happiness
(Bulfinch, 1855); in fact, the Greek word psychepsyche means
soul, and it is often represented as a butterfly. The word
psychology was coined at a time when the concepts of
soul and mind were not as clearly distinguished (Green,
2001). The root –ologyology denotes scientific study of, and
psychology refers to the scientific study of the mind. Since
science studies only observable phenomena and the mind
is not directly observable, we expand this definition to the
scientific study of mind and behavior.
The scientific study of any aspect of the world uses the
scientific method to acquire knowledge. To apply the
scientific method, a researcher with a question about how
or why something happens will propose a tentative
explanation, called a hypothesis, to explain the
phenomenon. A hypothesis is not just any explanation; it
should fit into the context of a scientific theory. A scientific
theory is a broad explanation or group of explanations for
some aspect of the natural world that is consistently supported by evidence over time. A theory is the best
understanding that we have of that part of the natural world. Armed with the hypothesis, the researcher then
makes observations or, better still, carries out an experiment to test the validity of the hypothesis. That test and its
results are then published so that others can check the results or build on them. It is necessary that any
explanation in science be testable, which means that the phenomenon must be perceivable and measurable. For
example, that a bird sings because it is happy is not a testable hypothesis, since we have no way to measure the

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happiness of a bird. We must ask a different question, perhaps about the brain state of the bird, since this can be
measured. In general, science deals only with matter and energy, that is, those things that can be measured, and
it cannot arrive at knowledge about values and morality. This is one reason why our scientific understanding of
the mind is so limited, since thoughts, at least as we experience them, are neither matter nor energy. The
scientific method is also a form of empiricism. An empirical methodempirical method for acquiring knowledge is one based on
observation, including experimentation, rather than a method based only on forms of logical argument or previous
authorities.
It was not until the late 1800s that psychology became accepted as its own academic discipline. Before this time,
the workings of the mind were considered under the auspices of philosophy. Given that any behavior is, at its
roots, biological, some areas of psychology take on aspects of a natural science like biology. No biological
organism exists in isolation, and our behavior is influenced by our interactions with others. Therefore, psychology
is also a social science.
Psychology is a relatively young science with its experimental roots in the 19th century, compared, for example, to
human physiology, which dates much earlier. As mentioned, anyone interested in exploring issues related to the
mind generally did so in a philosophical context prior to the 19th century. Two men, working in the 19th century,
are generally credited as being the founders of psychology as a science and academic discipline that was distinct
from philosophy. Their names were Wilhelm Wundt and William James.
Wundt and Structuralism
Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) was a German scientist who was the first person to be referred to as a psychologist.
His famous book entitled Principles of Physiological Psychology was published in 1873. Wundt viewed
psychology as a scientific study of conscious experience, and he believed that the goal of psychology was to
identify components of consciousness and how those components combined to result in our conscious
experience. Wundt used introspection (he called it “internal perception”), a process by which someone examines
their own conscious experience as objectively as possible, making the human mind like any other aspect of
nature that a scientist observed. Wundt’s version of introspection used only very specific experimental conditions
in which an external stimulus was designed to produce a scientifically observable (repeatable) experience of the
mind (Danziger, 1980). The first stringent requirement was the use of “trained” or practiced observers, who could
immediately observe and report a reaction. The second requirement was the use of repeatable stimuli that always
produced the same experience in the subject and allowed the subject to expect and thus be fully attentive to the
inner reaction. These experimental requirements were put in place to eliminate “interpretation” in the reporting of
internal experiences and to counter the argument that there is no way to know that an individual is observing their
mind or consciousness accurately, since it cannot be seen by any other person. This attempt to understand the
structure or characteristics of the mind was known as structuralismstructuralism. Wundt established his psychology laboratory
at the University at Leipzig in 1879. In this laboratory, Wundt and his students conducted experiments on, for
example, reaction times. A subject, sometimes in a room isolated from the scientist, would receive a stimulus
such as a light, image, or sound. The subject’s reaction to the stimulus would be to push a button, and an

structuralism. Like Wundt, James believed that introspection could serve as one means by which someone might
study mental activities, but James also relied on more objective measures, including the use of various recording
devices, and examinations of concrete products of mental activities and of anatomy and physiology (Gordon,
1995).

Figure 1. (a) Sigmund Freud was a highly influential figure
in the history of psychology. (b) One of his many books, A
General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, shared his ideas
about psychoanalytical therapy; it was published in 1922
Image of a clip-art iceberg, with large portions of
its superego and ego under the surface of the
water, with the id at the bottom of the iceberg. The
exposed portion is conscious experience.
Figure 2. Freud’s theory of the unconscious Freud
believed that we are only aware of a small amount of our
mind’s activity, and that most of it remains hidden from us
in our unconscious. The information in our unconscious
affects our behavior, although we are unaware of it.
Psychoanalytic Theory
Perhaps one of the most influential and well-known figures
in psychology’s history was Sigmund Freud. Freud
(1856–1939) was an Austrian neurologist who was
fascinated by patients suffering from “hysteria” and
neurosis. Hysteria was an ancient diagnosis for disorders,
primarily of women with a wide variety of symptoms,
including physical symptoms and emotional disturbances,
none of which had an apparent physical cause. Freud
theorized that many of his patients’ problems arose from
the unconscious mind. In Freud’s view, the unconscious
mind was a repository of feelings and urges of which we
have no awareness. Gaining access to the unconscious,
then, was crucial to the successful resolution of the
patient’s problems. According to Freud, the unconscious
mind could be accessed through dream analysis, by
examinations of the first words that came to people’s minds,
and through seemingly innocent slips of the tongue.
Psychoanalytic theoryPsychoanalytic theory focuses on the role of a person’s
unconscious, as well as early childhood experiences, and
this particular perspective dominated clinical psychology for several decades (Thorne & Henley, 2005).
The Id, Ego, and Superego
Freud’s structural model of personality divides the personality into three parts—the id, the ego, and the superego.
The id is the unconscious part that is the cauldron of raw drives, such as for sex or aggression. The ego, which
has conscious and unconscious elements, is the rational and reasonable part of personality. Its role is to maintain
contact with the outside world to keep the individual in touch with society, and to do this it mediates between the
conflicting tendencies of the id and the superego. The superego is a person’s conscience, which develops early in
life and is learned from parents, teachers, and others. Like the ego, the superego has conscious and unconscious
elements. When all three parts of the personality are in dynamic equilibrium, the individual is thought to be
mentally healthy. However, if the ego is unable to mediate between the id and the superego, an imbalance is
believed to occur in the form of psychological distress.
Psychosexual Theory of Development
Freud’s theories also placed a great deal of emphasis on
sexual development. Freud believed that each of us must
pass through a series of stages during childhood, and that if
we lack proper nurturing during a particular stage, we may
become stuck or fixated in that stage. Freud’s psychosexual
model of development includes five stages: oral, anal,
phallic, latency, and genital. According to Freud, children’s
pleasure-seeking urges are focused on a different area of the body, called an erogenous zone, at each of these
five stages. Psychologists today dispute that Freud’s psychosexual stages provide a legitimate explanation for
how personality develops, but what we can take away from Freud’s theory is that personality is shaped, in some
part, by experiences we have in childhood.
Freud’s ideas were influential, and you will learn more about them when you study lifespan development,
personality, and therapy. For instance, many therapists believe strongly in the unconscious and the impact of
early childhood experiences on the rest of a person’s life. The method of psychoanalysis, which involves the
patient talking about their experiences and selves, while not invented by Freud, was certainly popularized by him
and is still used today. Many of Freud’s other ideas, however, are controversial.

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Figure 3. When you look at this image, you may see a
duck or a rabbit. The sensory information remains the
same, but your perception can vary dramatically.
Figure 4. The “invisible” triangle you see here is an
example of gestalt perception.
TRY ITTRY IT
Gestalt Psychology (Wertheimer, Koffka, and Köhler)
Max Wertheimer (1880–1943), Kurt Koffka (1886–1941),
and Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967) were three German
psychologists who immigrated to the United States in the
early 20th century to escape Nazi Germany. These men are
credited with introducing psychologists in the United States
to various Gestalt principles. The word Gestalt roughly
translates to “whole;” a major emphasis of Gestalt
psychology deals with the fact that although a sensory
experience can be broken down into individual parts, how
those parts relate to each other as a whole is often what the
individual responds to in perception. For example, a song
may be made up of individual notes played by different
instruments, but the real nature of the song is perceived in
the combinations of these notes as they form the melody,
rhythm, and harmony. In many ways, this particular
perspective would have directly contradicted Wundt’s ideas
of structuralism (Thorne & Henley, 2005).
Unfortunately, in moving to the United States, these men
were forced to abandon much of their work and were
unable to continue to conduct research on a large scale.
These factors along with the rise of behaviorism (described
next) in the United States prevented principles of Gestalt
psychology from being as influential in the United States as
they had been in their native Germany (Thorne & Henley,
2005). Despite these issues, several Gestalt principles are
still very influential today. Considering the human individual
as a whole rather than as a sum of individually measured
parts became an important foundation in humanistic theory
late in the century. The ideas of Gestalt have continued to
influence research on sensation and perception.
Structuralism, Freud, and the Gestalt psychologists were all
concerned in one way or another with describing and
understanding inner experience. But other researchers had
concerns that inner experience could be a legitimate
subject of scientific inquiry and chose instead to exclusively
study behavior, the objectively observable outcome of mental processes.

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
empirical method:empirical method: method for acquiring knowledge based on observation, including experimentation, rather
than a method based only on forms of logical argument or previous authorities
functionalism:functionalism: focused on how mental activities helped an organism adapt to its environment
-ology:-ology: suffix that denotes “scientific study of”
psyche:psyche: Greek word for soul
psychoanalytic theory:psychoanalytic theory: focus on the role of the unconscious in affecting conscious behavior
psychology:psychology: scientific study of the mind and behavior
structuralism:structuralism: understanding the conscious experience through introspection
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
Freud is probably one of the most well-known historical figures in psychology. Where have you encountered
references to Freud or his ideas about the role that the unconscious mind plays in determining conscious
behavior?
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THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY CONTINUED
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Define behaviorism and the contributions of Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner to psychology
• Explain the basic tenets of humanism and Maslow’s contribution to psychology
• Describe the basics of cognitive psychology and how the cognitive revolution shifted psychology’s
focus back to the mind
• Summarize the history of psychology, focusing on the major schools of thought

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Figure 1. John B. Watson is known as the father of
behaviorism within psychology.
Behavioral Psychology
Early work in the field of behavior was conducted by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936). Pavlov
studied a form of learning behavior called a conditioned reflex, in which an animal or human produced a reflex
(unconscious) response to a stimulus and, over time, was conditioned to produce the response to a different
stimulus that the experimenter associated with the original stimulus. The reflex Pavlov worked with was salivation
in response to the presence of food. The salivation reflex could be elicited using a second stimulus, such as a
specific sound, that was presented in association with the initial food stimulus several times. Once the response
to the second stimulus was “learned,” the food stimulus could be omitted. Pavlov’s “classical conditioning” is only
one form of learning behavior studied by behaviorists.
John B. Watson (1878–1958) was an influential American
psychologist whose most famous work occurred during the
early 20th century at Johns Hopkins University. While
Wundt and James were concerned with understanding
conscious experience, Watson thought that the study of
consciousness was flawed. Because he believed that
objective analysis of the mind was impossible, Watson
preferred to focus directly on observable behavior and try to
bring that behavior under control. Watson was a major
proponent of shifting the focus of psychology from the mind
to behavior, and this approach of observing and controlling
behavior came to be known as behaviorismbehaviorism. A major object
of study by behaviorists was learned behavior and its
interaction with inborn qualities of the organism.
Behaviorism commonly used animals in experiments under
the assumption that what was learned using animal models
could, to some degree, be applied to human behavior.
Indeed, Tolman (1938) stated, “I believe that everything
important in psychology (except … such matters as involve society and words) can be investigated in essence
through the continued experimental and theoretical analysis of the determiners of rat behavior at a choice-point in
a maze.”
Behaviorism dominated experimental psychology for several decades, and its influence can still be felt today
(Thorne & Henley, 2005). Behaviorism is largely responsible for establishing psychology as a scientific discipline
through its objective methods and especially experimentation. In addition, it is used in behavioral and cognitive-
behavioral therapy. Behavior modification is commonly used in classroom settings. Behaviorism has also led to
research on environmental influences on human behavior.
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) was an American psychologist. Like Watson, Skinner was a behaviorist, and he
concentrated on how behavior was affected by its consequences. Therefore, Skinner spoke of reinforcement and
punishment as major factors in driving behavior. As a part of his research, Skinner developed a chamber that
allowed the careful study of the principles of modifying behavior through reinforcement and punishment. This
device, known as an operant conditioning chamber (or more familiarly, a Skinner box), has remained a crucial
resource for researchers studying behavior (Thorne & Henley, 2005).

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Figure 2. (a) B. F. Skinner is famous for his research on operant conditioning. (b) Modified versions of the operant conditioning
chamber, or Skinner box, are still widely used in research settings today. (credit a: modification of work by “Silly rabbit”/Wikimedia
Commons)
The Skinner box is a chamber that isolates the subject from the external environment and has a behavior
indicator such as a lever or a button. When the animal pushes the button or lever, the box is able to deliver a
positive reinforcement of the behavior (such as food) or a punishment (such as a noise) or a token conditioner
(such as a light) that is correlated with either the positive reinforcement or punishment.
Skinner’s focus on positive and negative reinforcement of learned behaviors had a lasting influence in psychology
that has waned somewhat since the growth of research in cognitive psychology. Despite this, conditioned learning
is still used in human behavioral modification. Skinner’s two widely read and controversial popular science books
about the value of operant conditioning for creating happier lives remain as thought-provoking arguments for his
approach (Greengrass, 2004).
During the early 20th century, American psychology was dominated by behaviorism and psychoanalysis.
However, some psychologists were uncomfortable with what they viewed as limited perspectives being so
influential to the field. They objected to the pessimism and determinism (all actions driven by the unconscious) of
Freud. They also disliked the reductionism, or simplifying nature, of behaviorism. Behaviorism is also deterministic
at its core, because it sees human behavior as entirely determined by a combination of genetics and environment.
Some psychologists began to form their own ideas that emphasized personal control, intentionality, and a true
predisposition for “good” as important for our self-concept and our behavior. Thus, humanism emerged.

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Figure 3.
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Maslow, Rogers, and Humanism
HumanismHumanism is a perspective within psychology that emphasizes the potential for good that is innate to all humans.
Two of the most well-known proponents of humanistic psychology are Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers
(O’Hara, n.d.). Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) was an American psychologist who is best known for proposing a
hierarchy of human needs in motivating behavior. Although this concept will be discussed in more detail in a later
section, a brief overview will be provided here.
Maslow asserted that so long as basic needs necessary for survival were met (e.g., food, water, shelter), higher-
level needs (e.g., social needs) would begin to motivate behavior. According to Maslow, the highest-level needs
relate to self-actualization, a process by which we achieve our full potential. Obviously, the focus on the positive
aspects of human nature that are characteristic of the humanistic perspective is evident (Thorne & Henley, 2005).
Humanistic psychologists rejected, on principle, the research approach based on reductionist experimentation in
the tradition of the physical and biological sciences, because it missed the “whole” human being. Beginning with
Maslow and Rogers, there was an insistence on a humanistic research program. This program has been largely
qualitative (not measurement-based), but there exist a number of quantitative research strains within humanistic
psychology, including research on happiness, self-concept, meditation, and the outcomes of humanistic
psychotherapy (Friedman, 2008).
Carl Rogers (1902–1987) was also an American
psychologist who, like Maslow, emphasized the potential for
good that exists within all people. Rogers used a
therapeutic technique known as client-centered therapy in
helping his clients deal with problematic issues that resulted
in their seeking psychotherapy. Unlike a psychoanalytic
approach in which the therapist plays an important role in
interpreting what conscious behavior reveals about the
unconscious mind, client-centered therapy involves the
patient taking a lead role in the therapy session. Rogers
believed that a therapist needed to display three features to
maximize the effectiveness of this particular approach:
unconditional positive regard, genuineness, and empathy.
Unconditional positive regard refers to the fact that the
therapist accepts their client for who they are, no matter
what he or she might say. Provided these factors, Rogers
believed that people were more than capable of dealing
with and working through their own issues (Thorne &
Henley, 2005).
Humanism has been influential to psychology as a whole.
Both Maslow and Rogers are well-known names among
students of psychology (you will read more about both men
later in this text), and their ideas have influenced many
scholars. Furthermore, Rogers’ client-centered approach to
therapy is still commonly used in psychotherapeutic settings today (O’hara, n.d.).

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The Cognitive Revolution
Behaviorism’s emphasis on objectivity and focus on external behavior had pulled psychologists’ attention away
from the mind for a prolonged period of time. The early work of the humanistic psychologists redirected attention
to the individual human as a whole, and as a conscious and self-aware being. By the 1950s, new disciplinary
perspectives in linguistics, neuroscience, and computer science were emerging, and these areas revived interest
in the mind as a focus of scientific inquiry. This particular perspective has come to be known as the cognitive
revolution (Miller, 2003). By 1967, Ulric Neisser published the first textbook entitled Cognitive Psychology, which
served as a core text in cognitive psychology courses around the country (Thorne & Henley, 2005).Although no
one person is entirely responsible for starting the cognitive revolution, Noam Chomsky was very influential in the
early days of this movement. Chomsky (1928–), an American linguist, was dissatisfied with the influence that
behaviorism had had on psychology. He believed that psychology’s focus on behavior was short-sighted and that
the field had to re-incorporate mental functioning into its purview if it were to offer any meaningful contributions to
understanding behavior (Miller, 2003).

Noam Chomsky was very influential in beginning the
cognitive revolution. In 2010, this mural honoring him was
put up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (credit: Robert
Moran)
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European psychology had never really been as influenced
by behaviorism as had American psychology; and thus, the
cognitive revolution helped reestablish lines of
communication between European psychologists and their
American counterparts. Furthermore, psychologists began
to cooperate with scientists in other fields, like
anthropology, linguistics, computer science, and
neuroscience, among others. This interdisciplinary
approach often was referred to as the cognitive sciences,
and the influence and prominence of this particular
perspective resonates in modern-day psychology (Miller,
2003).
Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychology is radically different from previous
psychological approaches in that it is characterized by both
of the following:
1. It accepts the use of the scientific method and
generally rejects introspection as a valid method of
investigation, unlike phenomenological methods such as Freudian psychoanalysis.
2. It explicitly acknowledges the existence of internal mental states (such as belief, desire, and motivation),
unlike behaviorist psychology.
Cognitive theory contends that solutions to problems take the form of algorithms, heuristics, or insights. Major
areas of research in cognitive psychology include perception, memory, categorization, knowledge representation,
numerical cognition, language, and thinking.
Multicultural Psychology
Culture has important impacts on individuals and social psychology, yet the effects of culture on psychology are
under-studied. There is a risk that psychological theories and data derived from white, American settings could be
assumed to apply to individuals and social groups from other cultures and this is unlikely to be true (Betancourt &
López, 1993). One weakness in the field of cross-cultural psychology is that in looking for differences in
psychological attributes across cultures, there remains a need to go beyond simple descriptive statistics
(Betancourt & López, 1993). In this sense, it has remained a descriptive science, rather than one seeking to
determine cause and effect. For example, a study of characteristics of individuals seeking treatment for a binge
eating disorder in Hispanic American, African American, and Caucasian American individuals found significant
differences between groups (Franko et al., 2012). The study concluded that results from studying any one of the
groups could not be extended to the other groups, and yet potential causes of the differences were not measured.
This history of multicultural psychology in the United States is a long one. The role of African American
psychologists in researching the cultural differences between African American individual and social psychology is
but one example. In 1920, Cecil Sumner was the first African American to receive a PhD in psychology in the
United States. Sumner established a psychology degree program at Howard University, leading to the education
of a new generation of African American psychologists (Black, Spence, and Omari, 2004). Much of the work of
early African American psychologists (and a general focus of much work in first half of the 20th century in
psychology in the United States) was dedicated to testing and intelligence testing in particular (Black et al., 2004).

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Learn more about the history of psychology through the following PsychSim Tutorial. The tutorial is only
intended for practice. Please disregard the final screen that requests you submit answers to your instructor.
• Psychology’s Timeline
That emphasis has continued, particularly because of the importance of testing in determining opportunities for
children, but other areas of exploration in African-American psychology research include learning style, sense of
community and belonging, and spiritualism (Black et al., 2004).
The American Psychological Association has several ethnically based organizations for professional
psychologists that facilitate interactions among members. Since psychologists belonging to specific ethnic groups
or cultures have the most interest in studying the psychology of their communities, these organizations provide an
opportunity for the growth of research on the impact of culture on individual and social psychology.
Summary of the History of Psychology
Before the time of Wundt and James, questions about the mind were considered by philosophers. However, both
Wundt and James helped create psychology as a distinct scientific discipline. Wundt was a structuralist, which
meant he believed that our cognitive experience was best understood by breaking that experience into its
component parts. He thought this was best accomplished by introspection.
William James was the first American psychologist, and he was a proponent of functionalism. This particular
perspective focused on how mental activities served as adaptive responses to an organism’s environment. Like
Wundt, James also relied on introspection; however, his research approach also incorporated more objective
measures as well.
Sigmund Freud believed that understanding the unconscious mind was absolutely critical to understand
conscious behavior. This was especially true for individuals that he saw who suffered from various hysterias and
neuroses. Freud relied on dream analysis, slips of the tongue, and free association as means to access the
unconscious. Psychoanalytic theory remained a dominant force in clinical psychology for several decades.
Gestalt psychology was very influential in Europe. Gestalt psychology takes a holistic view of an individual and his
experiences. As the Nazis came to power in Germany, Wertheimer, Koffka, and Köhler immigrated to the United
States. Although they left their laboratories and their research behind, they did introduce America to Gestalt ideas.
Some of the principles of Gestalt psychology are still very influential in the study of sensation and perception.
One of the most influential schools of thought within psychology’s history was behaviorism. Behaviorism focused
on making psychology an objective science by studying overt behavior and deemphasizing the importance of
unobservable mental processes. John Watson is often considered the father of behaviorism, and B. F. Skinner’s
contributions to our understanding of principles of operant conditioning cannot be underestimated.
As behaviorism and psychoanalytic theory took hold of so many aspects of psychology, some began to become
dissatisfied with psychology’s picture of human nature. Thus, a humanistic movement within psychology began to
take hold. Humanism focuses on the potential of all people for good. Both Maslow and Rogers were influential in
shaping humanistic psychology.
During the 1950s, the landscape of psychology began to change. A science of behavior began to shift back to its
roots of focus on mental processes. The emergence of neuroscience and computer science aided this transition.
Ultimately, the cognitive revolution took hold, and people came to realize that cognition was crucial to a true
appreciation and understanding of behavior.

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
behaviorism:behaviorism: focus on observing and controlling behavior
humanism:humanism: perspective within psychology that emphasizes the potential for good that is innate to all humans
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Early Schools of Psychology: Still Active and Advanced Beyond Early Ideas
School ofSchool of
PsychologyPsychology
DescriptionDescription
EarliestEarliest
PeriodPeriod
HistoricallyHistorically
Important PeopleImportant People
Psychodynamic
Psychology
Focuses on the role of the unconscious and
childhood experiences in affecting conscious
behavior.
Very late
19th to
Early 20th
Century
Sigmund Freud,
Erik Erikson
Behaviorism
Focuses on observing and controlling behavior
through what is observable. Puts an
emphasis on learning and conditioning.
Early 20th
Century
Ivan Pavlov, John
B. Watson, B. F.
Skinner
Cognitive Psychology
Focuses not just on behavior, but on on mental
processes and internal mental states.
1920s
Ulric Neisser,Noam
Chomsky, Jean
Piaget, Lev
Vygotsky
Humanistic
Psychology
Emphasizes the potential for good that is innate
to all humans and rejects that psychology
should focus on problems and disorders.
1950s
Abraham Maslow,
Carl Rogers

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DOMAINS IN PSYCHOLOGY
What you’ll learn to do: identify the various approaches, fields, and
subfields of psychology along with their major concepts and
important figures
This section will provide an overview of the major domains of psychology today, as well as some additional sub-
fields and content areas. This is not meant to be an exhaustive listing, but it will provide insight into the major
areas of research and practice of modern-day psychologists. You’ll come to see that while psychology is defined
as the study of the mind and behavior, there are many different types of psychologists who emphasize and apply
psychological principles in various ways.
For example, imagine that a woman is diagnosed with depression. What is the cause of the depression? Is it her
biology or chemical imbalances in her brain? Evolutionary predispositions? Perhaps it is caused by experiences in
her past, or something else that triggered a downward spiral of emotions? Or maybe it is caused by social factors,
or cultural expectations? All of these things could, in fact, play a role in her depression. In this section, you’ll see

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Please visit this website to learn about the divisions within the APA. Student resources are also provided by the
APA.
how psychologists analyze behavior from a variety of perspectives and better understand the breadth of
psychology.
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• List and define the five major domains, or pillars, of contemporary psychology
• Describe the basic interests and applications of biopsychology and evolutionary psychology
• Describe the basic interests and applications of cognitive psychology
• Describe the basic interests and applications of developmental psychology
• Describe the basic interests and applications of social psychology and personality psychology
• Describe the basic interests and applications of abnormal, clinical, and health psychology
• Define industrial-organizational psychology, sport and exercise psychology, and forensic psychology
Introduction to Contemporary Psychology
Contemporary psychology is a diverse field that is influenced by all of the historical perspectives described in the
previous section of reading. Reflective of the discipline’s diversity is the diversity seen within the AmericanAmerican
Psychological AssociationPsychological Association (APA). The APA is a professional organization representing psychologists in the United
States. The APA is the largest organization of psychologists in the world, and its mission is to advance and
disseminate psychological knowledge for the betterment of people. There are 56 divisions within the APA,
representing a wide variety of specialties that range from Societies for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
to Exercise and Sport Psychology to Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology. Reflecting the
diversity of the field of psychology itself, members, affiliate members, and associate members span the spectrum
from students to doctoral-level psychologists, and come from a variety of places including educational settings,
criminal justice, hospitals, the armed forces, and industry (American Psychological Association, 2014).
Psychologists agree that there is no one right way to study the way people think or behave. There are, however,
various schools of thought that evolved throughout the development of psychology that continue to shape the way
we investigate human behavior. For example, some psychologists might attribute a certain behavior to biological
factors such as genetics while another psychologist might consider early childhood experiences to be a more
likely explanation for the behavior. Many expert psychologists focus their entire careers on just one facet of
psychology, such as developmental psychology or cognitive psychology, or even more specifically, newborn
intelligence or language processing.
While the field of study is large and vast, this text aims to introduce you to the main topics with psychology. You’ll
get exposure to the various branches and sub-fields within the discipline and come to understand how they are all
interconnected and essential in understanding behavior and mental processes. The five main psychological
pillars, or domains, as we will refer to them, are:
1. Domain 1: Biological (includes neuroscience, consciousness, and sensation)
2. Domain 2: Cognitive (includes the study of perception, cognition, memory, and intelligence)
3. Domain 3: Development (includes learning and conditioning, lifespan development, and language)
4. Domain 4: Social and Personality (includes the study of personality, emotion, motivation, gender, and
culture)
5. Domain 5: Mental and Physical Health (includes abnormal psychology, therapy, and health psychology)

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HELPFUL HINTSHELPFUL HINTS
A neat way to remember the major perspectives in psychology is to think about your hand and associate each
finger with a psychological approach:
• ThumbThumb: your thumb can move around in PSYCHO ways—it’s so versatile! This is the psychodynamicpsychodynamic
perspective.
• Index FingerIndex Finger: Tap your finger to the temple of your head as if you were THINKING about something.
This is the cognitivecognitive perspective.
• Middle Finger:Middle Finger: If you stuck up your middle finger to flip someone off, that would be bad BEHAVIOR in
many cultures. This is the behavioralbehavioral perspective.
• Ring Finger:Ring Finger: This is where you would wear a wedding band. A humanistichumanistic psychologist would
emphasize everyone’s potential for marriage, or more likely, for self-actualization.
• Pinky Finger:Pinky Finger: This little finger was born this way—short. Thank your BIOLOGY for that. BiologicalBiological
perspective.
• Palm of hand:Palm of hand: Socio-culturalSocio-cultural. In many cultures, giving a high-five is an acceptable greeting.
Figure 1. The five pillars, or domains, of psychology. Image adapted from Gurung, R. A., Hackathorn, J., Enns, C., Frantz, S.,
Cacioppo, J. T., Loop, T., & Freeman, J. E. (2016) article “Strengthening introductory psychology: A new model for teaching the
introductory course” from American Psychologist.
These five domains cover the main viewpoints, or perspectives, of psychology. These perspectives emphasize
certain assumptions about behavior and provide a framework for psychologists in conducting research and
analyzing behavior. They include some you have already read about, including Freud’s psychodynamic
perspective, behaviorism, humanism, and the cognitive approach. Other perspectives include the biological
perspective, evolutionary, and socio-cultural perspectives.

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The Biological Domain
Biopsychology—also known as biological psychology or psychobiology—is the application of the principles of
biology to the study of mental processes and behavior. As the name suggests, biopsychologybiopsychology explores how our
biology influences our behavior. While biological psychology is a broad field, many biological psychologists want
to understand how the structure and function of the nervous system is related to behavior. The fields of behavioral
neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and neuropsychology are all subfields of biological psychology.
Figure 2. Different brain-imaging techniques provide scientists with insight into different aspects of how the human brain functions.

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The research interests of biological psychologists span a number of domains, including but not limited to, sensory
and motor systems, sleep, drug use and abuse, ingestive behavior, reproductive behavior, neurodevelopment,
plasticity of the nervous system, and biological correlates of psychological disorders. Given the broad areas of
interest falling under the purview of biological psychology, it will probably come as no surprise that individuals
from all sorts of backgrounds are involved in this research, including biologists, medical professionals,
physiologists, and chemists. This interdisciplinary approach is often referred to as neuroscience, of which
biological psychology is a component (Carlson, 2013).
Evolutionary Psychology
While biopsychology typically focuses on the immediate causes of behavior based in the physiology of a human
or other animal, evolutionary psychology seeks to study the ultimate biological causes of behavior. To the extent
that a behavior is impacted by genetics, a behavior, like any anatomical characteristic of a human or animal, will
demonstrate adaption to its surroundings. These surroundings include the physical environment and, since
interactions between organisms can be important to survival and reproduction, the social environment. The study
of behavior in the context of evolution has its origins with Charles Darwin, the co-discoverer of the theory of
evolution by natural selection. Darwin was well aware that behaviors should be adaptive and wrote books titled,
The Descent of Man (1871) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), to explore this field.
Evolutionary psychology, and specifically, the evolutionary psychology of humans, has enjoyed a resurgence in
recent decades. To be subject to evolution by natural selection, a behavior must have a significant genetic cause.
In general, we expect all human cultures to express a behavior if it is caused genetically, since the genetic
differences among human groups are small. The approach taken by most evolutionary psychologists is to predict
the outcome of a behavior in a particular situation based on evolutionary theory and then to make observations, or
conduct experiments, to determine whether the results match the theory. It is important to recognize that these
types of studies are not strong evidence that a behavior is adaptive, since they lack information that the behavior
is in some part genetic and not entirely cultural (Endler, 1986). Demonstrating that a trait, especially in humans, is
naturally selected is extraordinarily difficult; perhaps for this reason, some evolutionary psychologists are content
to assume the behaviors they study have genetic determinants (Confer et al., 2010).
One other drawback of evolutionary psychology is that the traits that we possess now evolved under
environmental and social conditions far back in human history, and we have a poor understanding of what these
conditions were. This makes predictions about what is adaptive for a behavior difficult. Behavioral traits need not
be adaptive under current conditions, only under the conditions of the past when they evolved, about which we
can only hypothesize.
There are many areas of human behavior for which evolution can make predictions. Examples include memory,
mate choice, relationships between kin, friendship and cooperation, parenting, social organization, and status
(Confer et al., 2010).
Evolutionary psychologists have had success in finding experimental correspondence between observations and
expectations. In one example, in a study of mate preference differences between men and women that spanned
37 cultures, Buss (1989) found that women valued earning potential factors greater than men, and men valued
potential reproductive factors (youth and attractiveness) greater than women in their prospective mates. In
general, the predictions were in line with the predictions of evolution, although there were deviations in some
cultures.
Sensation and Perception
Scientists interested in both physiological aspects of sensory systems as well as in the psychological experience
of sensory information work within the area of sensation and perception. As such, sensation and perception
research is also quite interdisciplinary. Imagine walking between buildings as you move from one class to
another. You are inundated with sights, sounds, touch sensations, and smells. You also experience the
temperature of the air around you and maintain your balance as you make your way. These are all factors of
interest to someone working in the domain of sensation and perception.

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The Cognitive Domain
As mentioned earlier, the cognitive revolution created an impetus for psychologists to focus their attention on
better understanding the mind and mental processes that underlie behavior. Thus, cognitive psychologycognitive psychology is the
area of psychology that focuses on studying cognitions, or thoughts, and their relationship to our experiences and
our actions. Like biological psychology, cognitive psychology is broad in its scope and often involves
collaborations among people from a diverse range of disciplinary backgrounds. This has led some to coin the
term cognitive science to describe the interdisciplinary nature of this area of research (Miller, 2003).
Cognitive psychologists have research interests that span a spectrum of topics, ranging from attention to problem
solving to language to memory. The approaches used in studying these topics are equally diverse. The bulk of
content coverage on cognitive psychology will be covered in the modules in this text on thinking, intelligence, and
memory. But given its diversity, various concepts related to cognitive psychology will be covered in other sections
such as lifespan development, social psychology, and therapy.
The Developmental Domain
Developmental psychologyDevelopmental psychology is the scientific study of development across a lifespan. Developmental psychologists
are interested in processes related to physical maturation. However, their focus is not limited to the physical
changes associated with aging, as they also focus on changes in cognitive skills, moral reasoning, social
behavior, and other psychological attributes. Early developmental psychologists focused primarily on changes
that occurred through reaching adulthood, providing enormous insight into the differences in physical, cognitive,
and social capacities that exist between very young children and adults. For instance, research by Jean
Piaget demonstrated that very young children do not demonstrate object permanence. Object permanence refers
to the understanding that physical things continue to exist, even if they are hidden from us. If you were to show an
adult a toy, and then hide it behind a curtain, the adult knows that the toy still exists. However, very young infants
act as if a hidden object no longer exists. The age at which object permanence is achieved is somewhat
controversial (Munakata, McClelland, Johnson, and Siegler, 1997).

Figure 3. Piaget is best known for his stage theory of
cognitive development.
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While Piaget was focused on cognitive changes during
infancy and childhood as we move to adulthood, there is an
increasing interest in extending research into the changes
that occur much later in life. This may be reflective of
changing population demographics of developed nations as
a whole. As more and more people live longer lives, the
number of people of advanced age will continue to
increase. Indeed, it is estimated that there were just over 40
million people aged 65 or older living in the United States in
2010. However, by 2020, this number is expected to
increase to about 55 million. By the year 2050, it is
estimated that nearly 90 million people in this country will
be 65 or older (Department of Health and Human Services,
n.d.).
Behavioral Psychology
Another critical field of study under the development
domain is that of learning and behaviorism, which you
read about already. The primary developments in learning
and conditioning came from the work of Ivan Pavlov, John
B. Watson, Edward Lee Thorndike, and B. F. Skinner.
Contemporary behaviorists apply learning techniques in the
form of behavior modification for a variety of mental
problems. Learning is seen as behavior change molded by
experience; it is accomplished largely through either
classical or operant conditioning.
The Social and Personality
Psychology Domain
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the
actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. This domain of psychology is concerned with the way such
feelings, thoughts, beliefs, intentions, and goals are constructed, and how these psychological factors, in turn,
influence our interactions with others.
Social psychology typically explains human behavior as a result of the interaction of mental states and immediate
social situations. Social psychologists, therefore, examine the factors that lead us to behave in a given way in the

Figure 4. Stanley Milgram’s research demonstrated just
how far people will go in obeying orders from an authority
figure. This advertisement was used to recruit subjects for
his research.
presence of others, as well as the conditions under which certain behaviors, actions, and feelings occur. They
focus on how people construe or interpret situations and how these interpretations influence their thoughts,
feelings, and behaviors (Ross & Nisbett, 1991). Thus, social psychology studies individuals in a social context and
how situational variables interact to influence behavior.
Some social psychologists study large-scale sociocultural forces within cultures and societies that affect the
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals. These include forces such as attitudes, child-rearing practices,
discrimination and prejudice, ethnic and racial identity, gender roles and norms, family and kinship structures,
power dynamics, regional differences, religious beliefs and practices, rituals, and taboos. Several subfields within
psychology seek to examine these sociocultural factors that influence human mental states and behavior; among
these are social psychology, cultural psychology, cultural-historical psychology, and cross-cultural psychology.
There are many interesting examples of social
psychological research, and you will read about many of
these in a later in this textbook. Until then, you will be
introduced to one of the most controversial psychological
studies ever conducted. Stanley Milgram was an American
social psychologist who is most famous for research that he
conducted on obedience. After the Holocaust, in 1961, a
Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, who was accused of
committing mass atrocities, was put on trial. Many people
wondered how German soldiers were capable of torturing
prisoners in concentration camps, and they were
unsatisfied with the excuses given by soldiers that they
were simply following orders. At the time, most
psychologists agreed that few people would be willing to
inflict such extraordinary pain and suffering, simply because
they were obeying orders. Milgram decided to conduct
research to determine whether or not this was true.
As you will read later in the text, Milgram found that nearly
two-thirds of his participants were willing to deliver what
they believed to be lethal shocks to another person, simply
because they were instructed to do so by an authority figure
(in this case, a man dressed in a lab coat). This was in spite
of the fact that participants received payment for simply
showing up for the research study and could have chosen
not to inflict pain or more serious consequences on another
person by withdrawing from the study. No one was actually
hurt or harmed in any way, Milgram’s experiment was a
clever ruse that took advantage of research confederates,
those who pretend to be participants in a research study
who are actually working for the researcher and have clear,
specific directions on how to behave during the research
study (Hock, 2009). Milgram’s and others’ studies that
involved deception and potential emotional harm to study
participants catalyzed the development of ethical guidelines
for conducting psychological research that discourage the
use of deception of research subjects, unless it can be
argued not to cause harm and, in general, requiring informed consent of participants.
Personality Psychology
Another major field of study within the social and personality domain is, of course, personality psychologypersonality psychology.
Personality refers to the long-standing traits and patterns that propel individuals to consistently think, feel, and
behave in specific ways. Our personality is what makes us unique individuals. Each person has an idiosyncratic
pattern of enduring, long-term characteristics, and a manner in which they interact with other individuals and the
world around them. Our personalities are thought to be long-term, stable, and not easily changed. Personality
psychology focuses on

Each of the dimensions of the Five Factor model is shown in this figure. The provided description would describe
someone who scored highly on that given dimension. Someone with a lower score on a given dimension could be
described in opposite terms.
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• construction of a coherent picture of the individual and their major psychological processes.
• investigation of individual psychological differences.
• investigation of human nature and psychological similarities between individuals.
Several individuals (e.g., Freud and Maslow) that we have already discussed in our historical overview of
psychology, and the American psychologist Gordon Allport, contributed to early theories of personality. These
early theorists attempted to explain how an individual’s personality develops from his or her given perspective.
For example, Freud proposed that personality arose as conflicts between the conscious and unconscious parts of
the mind were carried out over the lifespan. Specifically, Freud theorized that an individual went through various
psychosexual stages of development. According to Freud, adult personality would result from the resolution of
various conflicts that centered on the migration of erogenous (or sexual pleasure-producing) zones from the oral
(mouth) to the anus to the phallus to the genitals. Like many of Freud’s theories, this particular idea was
controversial and did not lend itself to experimental tests (Person, 1980).
More recently, the study of personality has taken on a more quantitative approach. Rather than explaining how
personality arises, research is focused on identifying personality traitspersonality traits, measuring these traits, and determining
how these traits interact in a particular context to determine how a person will behave in any given situation.
Personality traits are relatively consistent patterns of thought and behavior, and many have proposed that five trait
dimensions are sufficient to capture the variations in personality seen across individuals. These five dimensions
are known as the “Big Five” or the Five Factor model, and include dimensions of conscientiousness,
agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and extraversion (shown below). Each of these traits has been
demonstrated to be relatively stable over the lifespan (e.g., Rantanen, Metsäpelto, Feldt, Pulkinnen, and Kokko,
2007; Soldz & Vaillant, 1999; McCrae & Costa, 2008) and is influenced by genetics (e.g., Jang, Livesly, and
Vernon, 1996).

Figure 5. Each of the dimensions of the Five Factor model is shown in this figure. The provided description would describe
someone who scored highly on that given dimension. Someone with a lower score on a given dimension could be described in
opposite terms.
The Mental and Physical Health Domain
This domain of psychology is what many people think of when they think about psychology—mental disorders and
counseling. This includes the study of abnormal psychology, with its focus on abnormal thoughts and behaviors,
as well as counseling and treatment methods, and recommendations for coping with stress and living a healthy
life.

The names and classifications of mental disorders are listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM). The DSM is currently in its 5th edition (DSM-V) and has been designed for use in a wide variety
of contexts and across clinical settings (including inpatient, outpatient, partial hospital, clinic, private practice, and
primary care). The diagnostic manual includes a total of 237 specific diagnosable disorders, each described in
detail, including its symptoms, prevalence, risk factors, and comorbidity. Over time, the number of diagnosable
conditions listed in the DSM has grown steadily, prompting criticism from some. Nevertheless, the diagnostic
criteria in the DSM are more explicit than those of any other system, which makes the DSM system highly
desirable for both clinical diagnosis and research.
Figure 6. Lifetime prevalence rates for major psychological disorders.
Clinical Psychology
Clinical psychologyClinical psychology is the area of psychology that focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of psychological
disorders and other problematic patterns of behavior. As such, it is generally considered to be a more applied
area within psychology; however, some clinicians are also actively engaged in scientific research. Counseling
psychology is a similar discipline that focuses on emotional, social, vocational, and health-related outcomes in
individuals who are considered psychologically healthy. As mentioned earlier, both Freud and Rogers provided
perspectives that have been influential in shaping how clinicians interact with people seeking psychotherapy.
While aspects of the psychoanalytic theory are still found among some of today’s therapists who are trained from
a psychodynamic perspective, Roger’s ideas about client-centered therapy have been especially influential in
shaping how many clinicians operate. Furthermore, both behaviorism and the cognitive revolution have shaped
clinical practice in the forms of behavioral therapy, cognitive therapy, and cognitive-behavioral therapy. Issues
related to the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and problematic patterns of behavior will be
discussed in detail later in this textbook.

Figure 7. Cognitive-behavioral therapists take cognitive
processes and behaviors into account when providing
psychotherapy. This is one of several strategies that may
be used by practicing clinical psychologists.
By far, this is the area of psychology that receives the most
attention in popular media, and many people mistakenly
assume that all psychology is clinical psychology.
Health Psychology
Health psychology focuses on how health is affected by the
interaction of biological, psychological, and sociocultural
factors. This particular approach is known as the
biopsychosocial modelbiopsychosocial model. Health psychologists are interested
in helping individuals achieve better health through public
policy, education, intervention, and research. Health
psychologists might conduct research that explores the
relationship between one’s genetic makeup, patterns of
behavior, relationships, psychological stress, and health.
They may research effective ways to motivate people to
address patterns of behavior that contribute to poorer
health (MacDonald, 2013).

Figure 8. The biopsychosocial model suggests that health/illness is determined by an interaction of these three factors.
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Other Psychological
Subfields
Industrial-Organizational Psychology
Industrial-Organizational psychology (I-O psychology) is a subfield of psychology that applies psychological
theories, principles, and research findings in industrial and organizational settings. I-O psychologists are often
involved in issues related to personnel management, organizational structure, and workplace environment.
Businesses often seek the aid of I-O psychologists to make the best hiring decisions as well as to create an
environment that results in high levels of employee productivity and efficiency. In addition to its applied nature, I-O
psychology also involves conducting scientific research on behavior within I-O settings (Riggio, 2013).
Sport and Exercise Psychology
Researchers in sport and exercise psychologysport and exercise psychology study the psychological aspects of sport performance, including
motivation and performance anxiety, and the effects of sport on mental and emotional wellbeing. Research is also
conducted on similar topics as they relate to physical exercise in general. The discipline also includes topics that
are broader than sport and exercise but that are related to interactions between mental and physical performance
under demanding conditions, such as fire fighting, military operations, artistic performance, and surgery.
Forensic Psychology
Forensic psychologyForensic psychology is a branch of psychology that deals questions of psychology as they arise in the context of
the justice system. For example, forensic psychologists (and forensic psychiatrists) will assess a person’s
competency to stand trial, assess the state of mind of a defendant, act as consultants on child custody cases,
consult on sentencing and treatment recommendations, and advise on issues such as eyewitness testimony and
children’s testimony (American Board of Forensic Psychology, 2014). In these capacities, they will typically act as
expert witnesses, called by either side in a court case to provide their research- or experience-based opinions. As
expert witnesses, forensic psychologists must have a good understanding of the law and provide information in
the context of the legal system rather than just within the realm of psychology. Forensic psychologists are also
used in the jury selection process and witness preparation. They may also be involved in providing psychological
treatment within the criminal justice system. Criminal profilers are a relatively small proportion of psychologists
that act as consultants to law enforcement.

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Check out the APA website for more information on psychological subfields and possible career paths here.
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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
American Psychological Association:American Psychological Association: professional organization representing psychologists in the United States
biopsychology:biopsychology: study of how biology influences behavior
biopsychosocial model:biopsychosocial model: perspective that asserts that biology, psychology, and social factors interact to
determine an individual’s health
clinical psychology:clinical psychology: area of psychology that focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders
and other problematic patterns of behavior
cognitive psychologycognitive psychology: area of psychology that focuses on studying thoughts and their relationship to our
experiences and actions
developmental psychology:developmental psychology: scientific study of development across a lifespan
forensic psychology:forensic psychology: area of psychology that applies the science and practice of psychology to issues within
and related to the justice system
personality psychology:personality psychology: study of patterns of thoughts and behaviors that make each individual unique
personality trait:personality trait: consistent pattern of thought and behavior
sport and exercise psychology:sport and exercise psychology: area of psychology that focuses on the interactions between mental and
emotional factors and physical performance in sports, exercise, and other activities
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Figure 1. Doctoral degrees are generally conferred in
formal ceremonies involving special attire and rites.
(credit: Public Affairs Office Fort Wainwright)
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch this brief video that describes some of the questions a student should consider before deciding to major
in psychology.
undergraduate education in psychology are useful in a variety of work contexts and are applicable to a wide
variety of careers. Basically, studying psychology is never a bad choice!
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Explain why an education in psychology is valuable
• Describe educational requirements and career options for the study of psychology
Merits of an Education in
Psychology
Often, students take their first psychology course because
they are interested in helping others and want to learn more
about themselves and why they act the way they do.
Sometimes, students take a psychology course because it
either satisfies a general education requirement or is
required for a program of study such as nursing or pre-med.
Many of these students develop such an interest in the area
that they go on to declare psychology as their major. As a
result, psychology is one of the most popular majors on
college campuses across the United States (Johnson &
Lubin, 2011). A number of well-known individuals were
psychology majors. Just a few famous names on this list
are Facebook’s creator Mark Zuckerberg, television
personality and political satirist Jon Stewart, actress Natalie Portman, and filmmaker Wes Craven (Halonen,
2011). About 6 percent of all bachelor degrees granted in the United States are in the discipline of psychology
(U.S. Department of Education, 2013).
An education in psychology is valuable for a number of reasons. Psychology students hone critical thinking skills
and are trained in the use of the scientific method. Critical thinking is the active application of a set of skills to
information for the understanding and evaluation of that information. The evaluation of information—assessing its
reliability and usefulness— is an important skill in a world full of competing “facts,” many of which are designed to
be misleading. For example, critical thinking involves maintaining an attitude of skepticism, recognizing internal
biases, making use of logical thinking, asking appropriate questions, and making observations. Psychology
students also can develop better communication skills during the course of their undergraduate coursework
(American Psychological Association, 2011). Together, these factors increase students’ scientific literacy and
prepare students to critically evaluate the various sources of information they encounter.
In addition to these broad-based skills, psychology students come to understand the complex factors that shape
one’s behavior. They appreciate the interaction of our biology, our environment, and our experiences in
determining who we are and how we will behave. They learn about basic principles that guide how we think and
behave, and they come to recognize the tremendous diversity that exists across individuals and across cultural
boundaries (American Psychological Association, 2011).

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THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
Why are you taking this course? What do you hope to learn about during this course?
Careers in Psychology
Psychologists can work in many different places doing many different things. In general, anyone wishing to
continue a career in psychology at a 4-year institution of higher education will have to earn a doctoral degree in
psychology for some specialties and at least a master’s degree for others. In most areas of psychology, this
means earning a PhD in a relevant area of psychology. Literally, PhD refers to a doctor of philosophy degree, but
here, philosophy does not refer to the field of philosophy per se. Rather, philosophy in this context refers to many
different disciplinary perspectives that would be housed in a traditional college of liberal arts and sciences.

The requirements to earn a PhD vary from country to country and even from school to school, but usually,
individuals earning this degree must complete a dissertation. A dissertation is essentially a long research paper or
bundled published articles describing research that was conducted as a part of the candidate’s doctoral training.
In the United States, a dissertation generally has to be defended before a committee of expert reviewers before
the degree is conferred. Once someone earns her PhD, she may seek a faculty appointment at a college or
university. Being on the faculty of a college or university often involves dividing time between teaching, research,
and service to the institution and profession. The amount of time spent on each of these primary responsibilities
varies dramatically from school to school, and it is not uncommon for faculty to move from place to place in
search of the best personal fit among various academic environments. The previous section detailed some of the
major areas that are commonly represented in psychology departments around the country; thus, depending on
the training received, an individual could be anything from a biological psychologist to a clinical psychologist in an
academic setting.
Figure 2. Individuals earning a PhD in psychology have a range of employment options.
Other Careers in Academic Settings
Often times, schools offer more courses in psychology than their full-time faculty can teach. In these cases, it is
not uncommon to bring in an adjunct faculty member or instructor. Adjunct faculty members and instructors
usually have an advanced degree in psychology, but they often have primary careers outside of academia and
serve in this role as a secondary job. Alternatively, they may not hold the doctoral degree required by most 4-year
institutions and use these opportunities to gain experience in teaching. Furthermore, many 2-year colleges and
schools need faculty to teach their courses in psychology. In general, many of the people who pursue careers at
these institutions have master’s degrees in psychology, although some PhDs make careers at these institutions
as well.
Some people earning PhDs may enjoy research in an academic setting. However, they may not be interested in
teaching. These individuals might take on faculty positions that are exclusively devoted to conducting research.
This type of position would be more likely an option at large, research-focused universities.

In some areas in psychology, it is common for individuals who have recently earned their PhD to seek out
positions in postdoctoral training programs that are available before going on to serve as faculty. In most cases,
young scientists will complete one or two postdoctoral programs before applying for a full-time faculty position.
Postdoctoral training programs allow young scientists to further develop their research programs and broaden
their research skills under the supervision of other professionals in the field.
Career Options Outside of Academics
Individuals who wish to become practicing clinical psychologists have another option for earning a doctoral
degree, which is known as a PsyD. A PsyD is a doctor of psychology degree that is increasingly popular among
individuals interested in pursuing careers in clinical psychology. PsyD programs generally place less emphasis on
research-oriented skills and focus more on application of psychological principles in the clinical context (Norcorss
& Castle, 2002).
Regardless of whether earning a PhD or PsyD, in most states, an individual wishing to practice as a licensed
clinical or counseling psychologist may complete postdoctoral work under the supervision of a licensed
psychologist. Within the last few years, however, several states have begun to remove this requirement, which
would allow someone to get an earlier start in his career (Munsey, 2009). After an individual has met the state
requirements, his credentials are evaluated to determine whether he can sit for the licensure exam. Only
individuals that pass this exam can call themselves licensed clinical or counseling psychologists (Norcross, n.d.).
Licensed clinical or counseling psychologists can then work in a number of settings, ranging from private clinical
practice to hospital settings. It should be noted that clinical psychologists and psychiatrists do different things and
receive different types of education. While both can conduct therapy and counseling, clinical psychologists have a
PhD or a PsyD, whereas psychiatrists have a doctor of medicine degree (MD). As such, licensed clinical
psychologists can administer and interpret psychological tests, while psychiatrists can prescribe medications.
Individuals earning a PhD can work in a variety of settings, depending on their areas of specialization. For
example, someone trained as a biopsychologist might work in a pharmaceutical company to help test the efficacy
of a new drug. Someone with a clinical background might become a forensic psychologist and work within the
legal system to make recommendations during criminal trials and parole hearings, or serve as an expert in a court
case.
While earning a doctoral degree in psychology is a lengthy process, usually taking between 5–6 years of graduate
study (DeAngelis, 2010), there are a number of careers that can be attained with a master’s degree in
psychology. People who wish to provide psychotherapy can become licensed to serve as various types of
professional counselors (Hoffman, 2012). Relevant master’s degrees are also sufficient for individuals seeking
careers as school psychologists (National Association of School Psychologists, n.d.), in some capacities related
to sport psychology (American Psychological Association, 2014), or as consultants in various industrial settings
(Landers, 2011, June 14). Undergraduate coursework in psychology may be applicable to other careers such as
psychiatric social work or psychiatric nursing, where assessments and therapy may be a part of the job.
As mentioned in the opening section of this chapter, an undergraduate education in psychology is associated with
a knowledge base and skill set that many employers find quite attractive. It should come as no surprise, then, that
individuals earning bachelor’s degrees in psychology find themselves in a number of different careers, as shown
in the table. Examples of a few such careers can involve serving as case managers, working in sales, working in
human resource departments, and teaching in high schools. The rapidly growing realm of healthcare professions
is another field in which an education in psychology is helpful and sometimes required. For example, the Medical
College Admission Test (MCAT) exam that people must take to be admitted to medical school now includes a
section on the psychological foundations of behavior.

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Watch a brief video describing some of the career options available to people earning bachelor’s degrees in
psychology.
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Table 1. Top Occupations Employing Graduates with a BA in Psychology (Fogg, Harrington, Harrington, &
Shatkin, 2012)
RankingRanking OccupationOccupation
1 Mid- and top-level management (executive, administrator)
2 Sales
3 Social work
4 Other management positions
5 Human resources (personnel, training)
6 Other administrative positions
7 Insurance, real estate, business
8 Marketing and sales
9 Healthcare (nurse, pharmacist, therapist)
10 Finance (accountant, auditor)

http://careerplanning.about.com/video/Careers-for-Psychology-Majors.htm

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
dissertation:dissertation: long research paper about research that was conducted as a part of the candidate’s doctoral
training
PhD:PhD: (doctor of philosophy) doctoral degree conferred in many disciplinary perspectives housed in a traditional
college of liberal arts and sciences
postdoctoral training program:postdoctoral training program: allows young scientists to further develop their research programs and broaden
their research skills under the supervision of other professionals in the field
PsyD:PsyD: (doctor of psychology) doctoral degree that places less emphasis on research-oriented skills and focuses
more on application of psychological principles in the clinical context
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THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
Which of the career options described in this section is most appealing to you?
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PUTTING IT TOGETHER: PSYCHOLOGICAL
FOUNDATIONS
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
In this module, you learned to

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WORD AVERSIONWORD AVERSION
People Magazine—psycholinguistics’ most trusted lexicon—defines “moist” as “the most cringeworthy word” in
American English. When they asked some of the sexiest men alivesexiest men alive to try and make the word sound sexy, it was
pretty clear they could not. One viewer respondedOne viewer responded that the video was “pure sadism” and that the only way to
recover would be to “go Oedipal and gouge your eyes out.”
There is something interesting going on with this word. Several people have documented the weirdnessweirdness of
“moist”, speculatedspeculated on why it is aversive, or used the phenomenon for comedic effect.
In a recent series of studiesseries of studies published in PLOS ONE, several members of my lab and I sought to answer some
initial questions about word aversion. Specifically:
1.1. How prevalent is an aversion to “moist” and who’s averse?
2.2. What does it mean to be averse to a word?
3.3. And, what makes a word aversive?
Five experiments, conducted over about four years, with almost 2,500 participants from the general population
of American English speakers provide some answers.
How prevalent is an aversion to “moist” and who’s averse?
On average, about 18 percent of our participants identified as categorically averse to the word. Women,
younger people, and those with more education, who tended to score higher on measures of disgust toward
bodily function and neuroticism (a personality trait characterized by increased feelings of anxiety, worry, anger
and guilt), were particularly likely to find the word unpleasant.
• describe the evolution of psychology and the major pioneers in the field
• identify the various approaches, fields, and subfields of psychology along with their major concepts
and important figures
• describe the value of psychology and possible careers paths for those who study psychology
Psychology is a rapidly growing and ever-evolving field of study. In this module, you learned about its roots in
early philosophy and the development of psychology as a distinct field of study in the late 1800s. Since that time,
various schools of psychology have dominated the scene at different points in time, from structuralism and
functionalism, to Freud’s psychodynamic theory, behaviorism, humanism, and the cognitive revolution. In modern
psychology, researchers and practitioners consider some of these historical approaches but also approach the
study of mind and behavior through a variety of lenses, including biological, cognitive, developmental, social, and
health perspectives. Watch the following Crash Course Psychology video for a good recap of the topics covered
in this module:
Consider a fascinating example of psychological research conducted by is an Assistant Professor of Cognitive
Psychology at Oberlin College, Paul Thibodeau. His focus is on language, specifically how people utilize
metaphors and analogies, but he did one study on word aversion that he explains in his own words in the
following example. As you read it, consider the breadth of coverage that psychologists cover as well as the
importance of the scientific method and research to the investigative process. We’ll learn more about experiments
and psychological research in the next module, but if you could design a psychological study based on the topics
that piqued your interested in this text so far, what would it be? Where do your interests lie? Remember, there are
nearly endless possibilities for research within the vast field of psychology, and studying the subject will serve to
your advantage, no matter your chosen field or career path.

http://www.refinery29.com/2013/11/57779/people-sexiest-men-moist-video

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/words-came-in-marked-for-death

Literary moist aversion

http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0153686

Controlling for these factors, we found no differences in a person’s likelihood of finding “moist” aversive based
on their political ideology, religiosity, disgust toward sex, or any other personality variables.
What makes a word aversive?
We considered three possible reasons for moist-aversion:
1. Sound.1. Sound. The sound of the word itself may be the cause of peoples’ aversion to “moist.” Some work in
psychology has found that certain sounds are inherently unpleasant—like fingernails scratching a chalkboard.
Other work has found evidence of a “facial feedback hypothesis:” “moist” may be aversive because saying the
word engages the same facial muscles that contract when we see (or smell or hear) something disgusting. This
may, in fact, cause people to feel disgusted by saying the word “moist:” patterns of facial muscle constriction
not only signal our emotional states to other people, we also learn about ourselves from our unconscious
physiological responses to stimuli in the world.
2. Connotation.2. Connotation. An alternative possibility is that the word is associated in people’s minds with other words or
things things that they already find disgusting, like vomit, phlegm, or aspects of sex. Of course, “moist” also has
some positive connotations—who doesn’t love a moist piece of chocolate cake? So a related possibility might
be that the word is aversive because it simultaneously calls to mind positive and negative associations. Maybe
when someone encounters the word they are hit with images of cake and sweaty armpits—not an ideal
combination.
3. Social transmission.3. Social transmission. A final possibility is that the word may have become aversive because of the attention it
has received in popular and social media. Word aversion may result from a conscious process of thinking about
how certain words are gross. This would suggest that there is a “good” psychological reason for the
aversion—that it is grounded in the sound or connotation of the word—but that it is triggered by deliberation and
may spread like a virus. Anecdotal evidence for this possibility comes from the growing number of people who
seem to find the word unpalatable: as the word gains attention, more and more people seem to find the word
aversive. Alternatively, moist-aversion may just be a fad. If so, the “good” psychological reason for the
phenomenon might simply be to identify oneself as part of a group—a group of people who find “moist”
cringeworthy.
The experiments provided the most support for a combination of the second and third possibilities: that aversion
to “moist” may spread socially but it is also grounded in feelings of disgust toward bodily functions.
Here’s the evidence for why moist-aversion seems to be tied to disgust toward bodily function. First, recall that
people who scored higher on a measure of disgust toward bodily function were more likely to find “moist”
aversive. Second, people who identified as categorically averse to “moist” also found words like “phlegm” and
“vomit” more aversive than people who didn’t have a strong unpleasant reaction to “moist.” In contrast, moist-
averse participants were not more sensitive to words that had similar phonological properties to “moist” like
“foist,” “hoist,” or “rejoiced” or to words related to sex like “vagina” and “penis” (or a variety of other words
related to sex that you can find in the paper).

Third, when we used a common statistical technique (latent semantic analysis) to figure out how similar in
meaning the words in our set were to “moist,” the result was a good predictor of peoples’ perceptions of word-
averseness. That is, moist-averse participants showed a stronger aversion to words that were related in
meaning to “moist,” like “wet” and “damp.” There was no difference in ratings of aversiveness of words like
“hoist” and “love” that are less similar in meaning to “moist.”
Interestingly, participants’ speculation on the cause of moist-aversion was inconsistent with the behavioral data.
Often, moist-averse participants pointed to the sound of the word as the source of their aversion. “The ‘oy’

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sound juxtaposed to ‘ss’ and ‘tt.’ It’s not a word that sounds pleasant. Neither does hoist or foist,” wrote one
participant. Non-averse participants pointed to the word’s association with sex: “It reminds people of sex and
vaginas.” This kind of data from introspection can be misleading. There is a long history in psychology showing
that people regularly don’t know why they think and behave the way that they do. In this case, both groups were
wrong: people who identified as averse to “moist” may think the sound of the word itself is the cause of their
aversion because their reaction is fast and visceral—so it must have something to do with the sound of the
word. Similarly, although “moist” may have associations to sex, these associations don’t seem to be the primary
cause of moist-aversion.
The strongest evidence that moist-aversion is transmitted socially and may be triggered by a process of
conscious deliberation came from one of our studies that was designed to induce an aversion to the word. One
group of people watched the video that was made by People Magazine, while another watched a “control” video
that showed actors using the word “moist” to describe the taste of cake. After watching the cringe-inducing
video, people considered “moist” not only more aversive, but said that it was a word they used relatively
infrequently and that the word had a more negative connotation. In other words, watching the video that made
“moist” seem aversive shifted the entire profile of the word to be more consistent with the perceptions of people
who were already averse to the word.
What do we learn from these studies?
There are a few important lessons to be learned from these studies. Two are fairly obvious: we now have a
better sense of what makes the word “moist” aversive and another demonstration that we’re not particularly
good at reflecting accurately on why we think what we think.
More relevant to broader theories in psychology, the work has implications for theories of language processing
and the psychology of disgust. Emotional language is processed differently than “neutral” language: it grabs our
attention, engages different parts of the brain, and is more likely to be remembered. This can be good or bad:
cake mixes that advertise themselves as “moist” may make some people more likely to buy them because they
catch our eye, but they may make us less likely to buy them because of the word’s association with disgusting
bodily function (an open question).
Disgust is adaptive. If we didn’t have an instinct to run away from vomit and diarrhea, disease would spread
more easily. But is this instinct biological or do we learn it? Does our culture shape what we find disgusting?
This is a complex and nuanced question. Significant work is needed to answer it definitively. But the present
studies suggest that, when it comes to the disgust that is elicited by words like “moist,” there is an important
cultural component—the symbols we use to communicate with one another can become contaminated and
elicit disgust by virtue of their association with bodily functions.
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DISCUSSION: FOUNDATIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY
Perspectives in Psychology
In this discussion, you will post a minimum THREE times. First, in a primary post of between 200 and 300 words,
then at least twice on other posts in the class (of at least 75 words each).

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Step 1Step 1: In this module, you learned about the five main psychological domains and also covered some of the main
perspectives in psychology. Think about some of the various perspectives you learned about (including
psychoanalysis, behaviorism, cognitive psychology, humanism, and the biological approach), and explain how an
alien psychologist from another planet might explain the following human behaviors:
1. Why do people cut or shave hair from their bodies (and why does it vary by sex, age, groups, etc.)?
2. Why do children in an elementary school walk in a line when going to class?
3. Why are people physically aggressive towards each other (and why might males might be observed
doing so more than females)?
Explain each of the three behaviors with a DIFFERENT perspective. Give a well-founded explanation of how a
psychologist would explain that behavior from that particular perspective.
Next, write a summary paragraph about which psychological perspective most resonates with you, and why. If
you were to practice psychology someday, either as a therapist, counselor, teacher, researcher, or in some other
capacity, which perspective do you think you might emphasize?
Step 2Step 2: Comment, in posts of at least 75-100 words, on TWO other posts in the discussion. These responses
should add to the conversation and contribute to a deeper understanding of the psychological perspective.
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MODULE 2: PSYCHOLOGICAL
RESEARCH
WHY IT MATTERS: PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH
How does television content impact children’s behavior? (credit: modification of work by “antisocialtory”/Flickr)
Have you ever wondered whether the violence you see on television affects your behavior? Are you more likely to
behave aggressively in real life after watching people behave violently in dramatic situations on the screen? Or,
could seeing fictional violence actually get aggression out of your system, causing you to be more peaceful? How
are children influenced by the media they are exposed to? A psychologist interested in the relationship between
behavior and exposure to violent images might ask these very questions.
The topic of violence in the media today is contentious. Since ancient times, humans have been concerned about
the effects of new technologies on our behaviors and thinking processes. The Greek philosopher Socrates, for
example, worried that writing—a new technology at that time—would diminish people’s ability to remember
because they could rely on written records rather than committing information to memory. In our world of quickly
changing technologies, questions about the effects of media continue to emerge. Is it okay to talk on a cell phone
while driving? Are headphones good to use in a car? What impact does text messaging have on reaction time
while driving? These are types of questions that psychologist David Strayer asks in his lab. Watch this short video
to see how he utilizes the scientific method to reach important conclusions regarding technology and driving
safety.

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How can we go about finding answers that are supported not by mere opinion, but by evidence that we can all
agree on? The findings of psychological research can help us navigate issues like this.
AnswerAnswer
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Association, American Medical Association, American Academy of Family Physicians, American Psychiatric
Association. (2000). Joint statement on the impact of entertainment violence on children. Retrieved from
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American Cancer Society. (n.d.). History of the cancer prevention studies. Retrieved from http://www.cancer.org/
research/researchtopreventcancer/history-cancer-prevention-study
American Psychological Association. (2009). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th
ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Research with animals in psychology. Retrieved from
https://www.apa.org/research/responsible/research-animals
Arnett, J. (2008). The neglected 95%: Why American psychology needs to become less American. American
Psychologist, 63(7), 602–614.
Barton, B. A., Eldridge, A. L., Thompson, D., Affenito, S. G., Striegel-Moore, R. H., Franko, D. L., . . . Crockett, S.
J. (2005). The relationship of breakfast and cereal consumption to nutrient intake and body mass index: The
national heart, lung, and blood institute growth and health study. Journal of the American Dietetic Association,
105(9), 1383–1389. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jada.2005.06.003
Chwalisz, K., Diener, E., & Gallagher, D. (1988). Autonomic arousal feedback and emotional experience:
Evidence from the spinal cord injured. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 820–828.
Clayton, R. R., Cattarello, A. M., & Johnstone, B. M. (1996). The effectiveness of Drug Abuse Resistance
Education (Project DARE): 5-year follow-up results. Preventive Medicine: An International Journal Devoted to
Practice and Theory, 25(3), 307–318. doi:10.1006/pmed.1996.0061
D.A.R.E. (n.d.). D.A.R.E. is substance abuse prevention education and much more! [About page] Retrieved from
http://www.dare.org/about-d-a-r-e/
Dominus, S. (2011, May 25). Could conjoined twins share a mind? New York Times Sunday Magazine. Retrieved
from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/magazine/could-conjoined-twins-share-a-mind.html?_r=5&hp&
Ennett, S. T., Tobler, N. S., Ringwalt, C. L., & Flewelling, R. L. (1994). How effective is drug abuse resistance
education? A meta-analysis of Project DARE outcome evaluations. American Journal of Public Health, 84(9),
1394–1401. doi:10.2105/AJPH.84.9.1394
Fanger, S. M., Frankel, L. A., & Hazen, N. (2012). Peer exclusion in preschool children’s play: Naturalistic
observations in a playground setting. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 58, 224–254.
Fiedler, K. (2004). Illusory correlation. In R. F. Pohl (Ed.), Cognitive illusions: A handbook on fallacies and biases
in thinking, judgment and memory (pp. 97–114). New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Frantzen, L. B., Treviño, R. P., Echon, R. M., Garcia-Dominic, O., & DiMarco, N. (2013). Association between
frequency of ready-to-eat cereal consumption, nutrient intakes, and body mass index in fourth- to sixth-grade low-
income minority children. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 113(4), 511–519.
Harper, J. (2013, July 5). Ice cream and crime: Where cold cuisine and hot disputes intersect. The Times-
Picaune. Retrieved from http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/07/ice_cream_and_crime_where_hot.html

Jenkins, W. J., Ruppel, S. E., Kizer, J. B., Yehl, J. L., & Griffin, J. L. (2012). An examination of post 9-11 attitudes
towards Arab Americans. North American Journal of Psychology, 14, 77–84.
Jones, J. M. (2013, May 13). Same-sex marriage support solidifies above 50% in U.S. Gallup Politics. Retrieved
from http://www.gallup.com/poll/162398/sex-marriage-support-solidifies-above.aspx
Kobrin, J. L., Patterson, B. F., Shaw, E. J., Mattern, K. D., & Barbuti, S. M. (2008). Validity of the SAT for
predicting first-year college grade point average (Research Report No. 2008-5). Retrieved from
https://research.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/publications/2012/7/researchreport-2008-5-validity-sat-
predicting-first-year-college-grade-point-average
Lewin, T. (2014, March 5). A new SAT aims to realign with schoolwork. New York Times. Retreived from
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/education/major-changes-in-sat-announced-by-college-board.html.
Lowcock, E. C., Cotterchio, M., Anderson, L. N., Boucher, B. A., & El-Sohemy, A. (2013). High coffee intake, but
not caffeine, is associated with reduced estrogen receptor negative and postmenopausal breast cancer risk with
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01635581.2013.768348
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college student. Sentience: The University of Minnesota Undergraduate Journal of Psychology, 3(Spring), 16–19.
Retrieved from http://www.psych.umn.edu/sentience/files/SENTIENCE_Vol3
Lynam, D. R., Milich, R., Zimmerman, R., Novak, S. P., Logan, T. K., Martin, C., . . . Clayton, R. (1999). Project
DARE: No effects at 10-year follow-up. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 67(4), 590–593.
doi:10.1037/0022-006X.67.4.590
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Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/jun/27/jane-goodall-chimps-africa-interview
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Columbia University Press.
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nationwide study of exposure to prevention information, perceived norms and student alcohol misuse. J. Stud.
Alcohol, 66(4), 470–478.
Rimer, S. (2008, September 21). College panel calls for less focus on SATs. The New York Times. Retrieved
from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/education/22admissions.html?_r=0
Ringwalt, C., Ennett, S. T., & Holt, K. D. (1991). An outcome evaluation of Project DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance
Education). Health Education Research, 6(3), 327–337. doi:10.1093/her/6.3.327
Rothstein, J. M. (2004). College performance predictions and the SAT. Journal of Econometrics, 121, 297–317.
Rotton, J., & Kelly, I. W. (1985). Much ado about the full moon: A meta-analysis of lunar-lunacy research.
Psychological Bulletin, 97(2), 286–306. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.97.2.286
Santelices, M. V., & Wilson, M. (2010). Unfair treatment? The case of Freedle, the SAT, and the standardization
approach to differential item functioning. Harvard Education Review, 80, 106–134.
Sears, D. O. (1986). College sophomores in the laboratory: Influences of a narrow data base on social
psychology’s view of human nature. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 515–530.
Tuskegee University. (n.d.). About the USPHS Syphilis Study. Retrieved from http://www.tuskegee.edu/about_us/
centers_of_excellence/bioethics_center/about_the_usphs_syphilis_study.aspx.

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Figure 1. Some of our ancestors, across the world and
over the centuries, believed that trephination—the
practice of making a hole in the skull, as shown
here—allowed evil spirits to leave the body, thus curing
mental illness and other disorders. (credit:
“taiproject”/Flickr)
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TRY ITTRY IT
• Explain how research involving humans or animals is regulated
Scientific research is a critical tool for successfully navigating our complex world. Without it, we would be forced to
rely solely on intuition, other people’s authority, and blind luck. While many of us feel confident in our abilities to
decipher and interact with the world around us, history is filled with examples of how very wrong we can be when
we fail to recognize the need for evidence in supporting claims. At various times in history, we would have been
certain that the sun revolved around a flat earth, that the earth’s continents did not move, and that mental illness
was caused by possession (Figure 1). It is through systematic scientific research that we divest ourselves of our
preconceived notions and superstitions and gain an objective understanding of ourselves and our world.
The goal of all scientists is to better understand the world
around them. Psychologists focus their attention on
understanding behavior, as well as the cognitive (mental)
and physiological (body) processes that underlie behavior.
In contrast to other methods that people use to understand
the behavior of others, such as intuition and personal
experience, the hallmark of scientific research is that there
is evidence to support a claim. Scientific knowledge is
empirical: It is grounded in objective, tangible evidence that
can be observed time and time again, regardless of who is
observing.
While behavior is observable, the mind is not. If someone is
crying, we can see behavior. However, the reason for the
behavior is more difficult to determine. Is the person crying
due to being sad, in pain, or happy? Sometimes we can
learn the reason for someone’s behavior by simply asking a
question, like “Why are you crying?” However, there are
situations in which an individual is either uncomfortable or
unwilling to answer the question honestly, or is incapable of
answering. For example, infants would not be able to
explain why they are crying. In such circumstances, the
psychologist must be creative in finding ways to better
understand behavior. This module explores how scientific knowledge is generated, and how important that
knowledge is in forming decisions in our personal lives and in the public domain.

Figure 2. The scientific method is a process for gathering
data and processing information. It provides well-defined
steps to standardize how scientific knowledge is gathered
through a logical, rational problem-solving method.
TRY ITTRY IT
The Process of Scientific Research
Scientific knowledge is advanced through a process known
as the scientific method. Basically, ideas (in the form of
theories and hypotheses) are tested against the real world
(in the form of empiricalempirical observations), and those empirical
observations lead to more ideas that are tested against the
real world, and so on.
The basic steps in the scientific method are:
• Observe a natural phenomenon and define a
question about it
• Make a hypothesis, or potential solution to the
question
• Test the hypothesis
• If the hypothesis is true, find more evidence or find
counter-evidence
• If the hypothesis is false, create a new hypothesis
or try again
• Draw conclusions and repeat–the scientific
method is never-ending, and no result is ever
considered perfect
In order to ask an important question that may improve our
understanding of the world, a researcher must first observe
natural phenomena. By making observations, a researcher
can define a useful question. After finding a question to
answer, the researcher can then make a prediction (a
hypothesis) about what he or she thinks the answer will be.
This prediction is usually a statement about the relationship
between two or more variables. After making a hypothesis,
the researcher will then design an experiment to test his or
her hypothesis and evaluate the data gathered. These data
will either support or refute the hypothesis. Based on the
conclusions drawn from the data, the researcher will then
find more evidence to support the hypothesis, look for
counter-evidence to further strengthen the hypothesis,
revise the hypothesis and create a new experiment, or
continue to incorporate the information gathered to answer
the research question.
The Basic Principles of the Scientific
Method
Two key concepts in the scientific approach are theory and hypothesis. A theorytheory is a well-developed set of ideas
that propose an explanation for observed phenomena that can be used to make predictions about future
observations. A hypothesishypothesis is a testable prediction that is arrived at logically from a theory. It is often worded as
an if-then statement (e.g., if I study all night, I will get a passing grade on the test). The hypothesis is extremely
important because it bridges the gap between the realm of ideas and the real world. As specific hypotheses are
tested, theories are modified and refined to reflect and incorporate the result of these tests (Figure 2).

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Figure 3. The scientific method of research includes
proposing hypotheses, conducting research, and creating
or modifying theories based on results.
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Other key components in following the scientific method
include verifiability, predictability, falsifiability, and fairness.
VerifiabilityVerifiability means that an experiment must be replicable by
another researcher. To achieve verifiability, researchers
must make sure to document their methods and clearly
explain how their experiment is structured and why it
produces certain results.
PredictabilityPredictability in a scientific theory implies that the theory
should enable us to make predictions about future events.
The precision of these predictions is a measure of the
strength of the theory.
FalsifiabilityFalsifiability refers to whether a hypothesis can disproved.
For a hypothesis to be falsifiable, it must be logically
possible to make an observation or do a physical
experiment that would show that there is no support for the
hypothesis. Even when a hypothesis cannot be shown to be
false, that does not necessarily mean it is not valid. Future
testing may disprove the hypothesis. This does not mean
that a hypothesis has to be shown to be false, just that it
can be tested.
To determine whether a hypothesis is supported or not supported, psychological researchers must conduct
hypothesis testing using statistics. Hypothesis testing is a type of statistics that determines the probability of a
hypothesis being true or false. If hypothesis testing reveals that results were “statistically significant,” this
means that there was support for the hypothesis and that the researchers can be reasonably confident that their
result was not due to random chance. If the results are not statistically significant, this means that the
researchers’ hypothesis was not supported.
FairnessFairness implies that all data must be considered when evaluating a hypothesis. A researcher cannot pick and
choose what data to keep and what to discard or focus specifically on data that support or do not support a
particular hypothesis. All data must be accounted for, even if they invalidate the hypothesis.

Applying the Scientific Method
To see how this process works, let’s consider a specific theory and a hypothesis that might be generated from
that theory. As you’ll learn in a later module, the James-Lange theory of emotion asserts that emotional
experience relies on the physiological arousal associated with the emotional state. If you walked out of your home
and discovered a very aggressive snake waiting on your doorstep, your heart would begin to race and your
stomach churn. According to the James-Lange theory, these physiological changes would result in your feeling of
fear. A hypothesis that could be derived from this theory might be that a person who is unaware of the
physiological arousal that the sight of the snake elicits will not feel fear.
Remember that a good scientific hypothesis is falsifiable, or capable of being shown to be incorrect. Recall from
the introductory module that Sigmund Freud had lots of interesting ideas to explain various human behaviors
(Figure 3). However, a major criticism of Freud’s theories is that many of his ideas are not falsifiable; for example,
it is impossible to imagine empirical observations that would disprove the existence of the id, the ego, and the
superego—the three elements of personality described in Freud’s theories. Despite this, Freud’s theories are
widely taught in introductory psychology texts because of their historical significance for personality psychology
and psychotherapy, and these remain the root of all modern forms of therapy.
Figure 4. Many of the specifics of (a) Freud’s theories, such as (b) his division of the mind into id, ego, and superego, have fallen
out of favor in recent decades because they are not falsifiable. In broader strokes, his views set the stage for much of
psychological thinking today, such as the unconscious nature of the majority of psychological processes.
In contrast, the James-Lange theory does generate falsifiable hypotheses, such as the one described above.
Some individuals who suffer significant injuries to their spinal columns are unable to feel the bodily changes that
often accompany emotional experiences. Therefore, we could test the hypothesis by determining how emotional
experiences differ between individuals who have the ability to detect these changes in their physiological arousal
and those who do not. In fact, this research has been conducted and while the emotional experiences of people
deprived of an awareness of their physiological arousal may be less intense, they still experience emotion
(Chwalisz, Diener, & Gallagher, 1988).

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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Want to participate in a study? Visit this website and click on a link that sounds interesting to you in order to
participate in online research.
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Visit this website to apply the scientific method and practice its steps by using them to solve a murder mystery,
determine why a student is in trouble, and design an experiment to test house paint.
Why the Scientific Method Is Important for Psychology
The use of the scientific method is one of the main features that separates modern psychology from earlier
philosophical inquiries about the mind. Compared to chemistry, physics, and other “natural sciences,” psychology
has long been considered one of the “social sciences” because of the subjective nature of the things it seeks to
study. Many of the concepts that psychologists are interested in—such as aspects of the human mind, behavior,
and emotions—are subjective and cannot be directly measured. Psychologists often rely instead on behavioral
observations and self-reported data, which are considered by some to be illegitimate or lacking in methodological
rigor. Applying the scientific method to psychology, therefore, helps to standardize the approach to understanding
its very different types of information.
The scientific method allows psychological data to be replicated and confirmed in many instances, under different
circumstances, and by a variety of researchers. Through replication of experiments, new generations of
psychologists can reduce errors and broaden the applicability of theories. It also allows theories to be tested and
validated instead of simply being conjectures that could never be verified or falsified. All of this allows
psychologists to gain a stronger understanding of how the human mind works.
Scientific articles published in journals and psychology papers written in the style of the American Psychological
Association (i.e., in “APA style”) are structured around the scientific method. These papers include an
Introduction, which introduces the background information and outlines the hypotheses; a Methods section, which
outlines the specifics of how the experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis; a Results section, which
includes the statistics that tested the hypothesis and state whether it was supported or not supported, and a
Discussion and Conclusion, which state the implications of finding support for, or no support for, the hypothesis.
Writing articles and papers that adhere to the scientific method makes it easy for future researchers to repeat the
study and attempt to replicate the results.
Today, scientists agree that good research is ethical in nature and is guided by a basic respect for human dignity
and safety. However, as you will read in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, this has not always been the case. Modern

http://psych.hanover.edu/Research/exponnet.html#Relationships

http://aspire.cosmic-ray.org/Labs/ScientificMethod/sci_method_selector.swf

Figure 1. An institution’s IRB meets regularly to review
experimental proposals that involve human participants.
(credit: modification of work by Lowndes Area Knowledge
Exchange (LAKE)/Flickr)
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researchers must demonstrate that the research they perform is ethically sound. This section presents how
ethical considerations affect the design and implementation of research conducted today.
Research Involving Human Participants
Any experiment involving the participation of human subjects is governed by extensive, strict guidelines designed
to ensure that the experiment does not result in harm. Any research institution that receives federal support for
research involving human participants must have access to an institutional review board (IRB)institutional review board (IRB). The IRB is a
committee of individuals often made up of members of the institution’s administration, scientists, and community
members (Figure 1). The purpose of the IRB is to review proposals for research that involves human participants.
The IRB reviews these proposals with the principles mentioned above in mind, and generally, approval from the
IRB is required in order for the experiment to proceed.
An institution’s IRB requires several components in any
experiment it approves. For one, each participant must sign
an informed consent form before they can participate in the
experiment. An informed consentinformed consent form provides a written
description of what participants can expect during the
experiment, including potential risks and implications of the
research. It also lets participants know that their
involvement is completely voluntary and can be
discontinued without penalty at any time. Furthermore, the
informed consent guarantees that any data collected in the
experiment will remain completely confidential. In cases
where research participants are under the age of 18, the
parents or legal guardians are required to sign the informed
consent form.
While the informed consent form should be as honest as
possible in describing exactly what participants will be
doing, sometimes deception is necessary to prevent
participants’ knowledge of the exact research question from
affecting the results of the study. DeceptionDeception involves
purposely misleading experiment participants in order to
maintain the integrity of the experiment, but not to the point
where the deception could be considered harmful. For example, if we are interested in how our opinion of
someone is affected by their attire, we might use deception in describing the experiment to prevent that
knowledge from affecting participants’ responses. In cases where deception is involved, participants must receive
a full debriefingdebriefing upon conclusion of the study—complete, honest information about the purpose of the experiment,
how the data collected will be used, the reasons why deception was necessary, and information about how to
obtain additional information about the study.

Figure 2. A participant in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study receives an injection.
DIG DEEPER: ETHICS AND THE TUSKEGEE SYPHILIS STUDYDIG DEEPER: ETHICS AND THE TUSKEGEE SYPHILIS STUDY
Unfortunately, the ethical guidelines that exist for research today were not always applied in the past. In 1932,
poor, rural, black, male sharecroppers from Tuskegee, Alabama, were recruited to participate in an experiment
conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service, with the aim of studying syphilis in black men (Figure 2). In
exchange for free medical care, meals, and burial insurance, 600 men agreed to participate in the study. A little
more than half of the men tested positive for syphilis, and they served as the experimental group (given that the
researchers could not randomly assign participants to groups, this represents a quasi-experiment). The
remaining syphilis-free individuals served as the control group. However, those individuals that tested positive
for syphilis were never informed that they had the disease.
While there was no treatment for syphilis when the study began, by 1947 penicillin was recognized as an
effective treatment for the disease. Despite this, no penicillin was administered to the participants in this study,
and the participants were not allowed to seek treatment at any other facilities if they continued in the study.
Over the course of 40 years, many of the participants unknowingly spread syphilis to their wives (and
subsequently their children born from their wives) and eventually died because they never received treatment
for the disease. This study was discontinued in 1972 when the experiment was discovered by the national
press (Tuskegee University, n.d.). The resulting outrage over the experiment led directly to the National
Research Act of 1974 and the strict ethical guidelines for research on humans described in this chapter. Why is
this study unethical? How were the men who participated and their families harmed as a function of this
research?
Visit this website to learn more about the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.

http://www.tuskegee.edu/about_us/centers_of_excellence/bioethics_center/about_the_usphs_syphilis_study.aspx

Figure 3. Rats, like the one shown here, often serve as
the subjects of animal research.
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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
debriefing:debriefing: when an experiment involved deception, participants are told complete and truthful information
about the experiment at its conclusion
Research Involving Animal Subjects
Many psychologists conduct research involving animal subjects. Often, these researchers use rodents (Figure 3)
or birds as the subjects of their experiments—the APA estimates that 90% of all animal research in psychology
uses these species (American Psychological Association, n.d.). Because many basic processes in animals are
sufficiently similar to those in humans, these animals are acceptable substitutes for research that would be
considered unethical in human participants.
This does not mean that animal researchers are immune to
ethical concerns. Indeed, the humane and ethical treatment
of animal research subjects is a critical aspect of this type
of research. Researchers must design their experiments to
minimize any pain or distress experienced by animals
serving as research subjects.
Whereas IRBs review research proposals that involve
human participants, animal experimental proposals are
reviewed by an Institutional Animal Care and UseInstitutional Animal Care and Use
Committee (IACUC)Committee (IACUC). An IACUC consists of institutional
administrators, scientists, veterinarians, and community
members. This committee is charged with ensuring that all
experimental proposals require the humane treatment of
animal research subjects. It also conducts semi-annual
inspections of all animal facilities to ensure that the
research protocols are being followed. No animal research
project can proceed without the committee’s approval.

deception:deception: purposely misleading experiment participants in order to maintain the integrity of the experiment
empirical:empirical: grounded in objective, tangible evidence that can be observed time and time again, regardless of
who is observing
fairness:fairness: implies that all data must be considered when evaluating a hypothesis
falsifiable:falsifiable: able to be disproven by experimental results
hypothesis:hypothesis: (plural: hypotheses) tentative and testable statement about the relationship between two or more
variables
informed consent:informed consent: process of informing a research participant about what to expect during an experiment, any
risks involved, and the implications of the research, and then obtaining the person’s consent to participate
Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC):Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC): committee of administrators, scientists, and community
members that reviews proposals for research involving animal participants
Institutional Review Board (IRB):Institutional Review Board (IRB): committee of administrators, scientists, veterinarians, and community
members that reviews proposals for research involving human participants
predictability:predictability: implies that a theory should enable us to make predictions about future events
theory:theory: well-developed set of ideas that propose an explanation for observed phenomena
verifiability:verifiability: an experiment must be replicable by another researcher
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DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH
What you’ll learn to do: describe the strengths and weaknesses of
descriptive, experimental, and correlational research
If you think about the vast array of fields and topics covered in psychology, you understand that in order to do
psychological research, there must be a diverse set of ways to gather data and perform experiments. For
example, a biological psychologist might work predominately in a lab setting or alongside a neurologist. A social
scientist may set up situational experiments, a health psychologist may administer surveys, and a developmental
psychologist may make observations in a classroom. In this section, you’ll learn about the various types of
research methods that psychologists employ to learn about human behavior.
Psychologists use descriptive, experimental, and correlational methods to conduct research. Descriptive, or
qualitative, methods include the case study, naturalistic observation, surveys, archival research, longitudinal
research, and cross-sectional research.
Experiments are conducted in order to determine cause-and-effect relationships. In ideal experimental design, the
only difference between the experimental and control groups is whether participants are exposed to the
experimental manipulation. Each group goes through all phases of the experiment, but each group will experience
a different level of the independent variable: the experimental group is exposed to the experimental manipulation,
and the control group is not exposed to the experimental manipulation. The researcher then measures the
changes that are produced in the dependent variable in each group. Once data is collected from both groups, it is
analyzed statistically to determine if there are meaningful differences between the groups.
When scientists passively observe and measure phenomena it is called correlational research. Here,
psychologists do not intervene and change behavior, as they do in experiments. In correlational research, they
identify patterns of relationships, but usually cannot infer what causes what. Importantly, with correlational
research, you can examine only two variables at a time, no more and no less.

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MORE ON RESEARCHMORE ON RESEARCH
If you enjoy learning through lectures and want an interesting and comprehensive summary of this section,
then click on the link HERE (or on the link below) to watch a lecture given by MIT Professor John Gabrieli. StartStart
at the 30:45 minute markat the 30:45 minute mark and watch through the end to hear examples of actual psychological studies and how
they were analyzed. Listen for references to independent and dependent variables, experimenter bias, and
double-blind studies. In the lecture, you’ll learn about breaking social norms, “WEIRD” research, why
expectations matter, how a warm cup of coffee might make you nicer, why you should change your answer on
a multiple choice test, and why praise for intelligence won’t make you any smarter.
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Differentiate between descriptive, experimental, and correlational research
• Explain the strengths and weaknesses of case studies, naturalistic observation, and surveys
• Describe the strength and weaknesses of archival research
• Compare longitudinal and cross-sectional approaches to research
Descriptive Research
There are many research methods available to psychologists in their efforts to understand, describe, and explain
behavior and the cognitive and biological processes that underlie it. Some methods rely on observational
techniques. Other approaches involve interactions between the researcher and the individuals who are being

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studied—ranging from a series of simple questions to extensive, in-depth interviews—to well-controlled
experiments.
The three main categories of psychological research are descriptive, correlational, and experimental
research. Research studies that do not test specific relationships between variables are called descriptive, ordescriptive, or
qualitative, studiesqualitative, studies. These studies are used to describe general or specific behaviors and attributes that are
observed and measured. In the early stages of research it might be difficult to form a hypothesis, especially when
there is not any existing literature in the area. In these situations designing an experiment would be premature, as
the question of interest is not yet clearly defined as a hypothesis. Often a researcher will begin with a non-
experimental approach, such as a descriptive study, to gather more information about the topic before designing
an experiment or correlational study to address a specific hypothesis. Descriptive research is distinct from
correlational researchcorrelational research, in which psychologists formally test whether a relationship exists between two or more
variables. Experimental researchExperimental research goes a step further beyond descriptive and correlational research and randomly
assigns people to different conditions, using hypothesis testing to make inferences about how these conditions
affect behavior. It aims to determine if one variable directly impacts and causes another. Correlational and
experimental research both typically use hypothesis testing, whereas descriptive research does not.
Each of these research methods has unique strengths and weaknesses, and each method may only be
appropriate for certain types of research questions. For example, studies that rely primarily on observation
produce incredible amounts of information, but the ability to apply this information to the larger population is
somewhat limited because of small sample sizes. Survey research, on the other hand, allows researchers to
easily collect data from relatively large samples. While this allows for results to be generalized to the larger
population more easily, the information that can be collected on any given survey is somewhat limited and subject
to problems associated with any type of self-reported data. Some researchers conduct archival research by using
existing records. While this can be a fairly inexpensive way to collect data that can provide insight into a number
of research questions, researchers using this approach have no control on how or what kind of data was
collected.
Correlational research can find a relationship between two variables, but the only way a researcher can claim that
the relationship between the variables is cause and effect is to perform an experiment. In experimental research,
which will be discussed later in the text, there is a tremendous amount of control over variables of interest. While
this is a powerful approach, experiments are often conducted in very artificial settings. This calls into question the
validity of experimental findings with regard to how they would apply in real-world settings. In addition, many of
the questions that psychologists would like to answer cannot be pursued through experimental research because
of ethical concerns.
The three main types of descriptive studies are case studies, naturalistic observation, and surveys.

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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
To learn more about Krista and Tatiana, watch this New York Times video about their lives.
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Case Studies
In 2011, the New York Times published a feature story on Krista and Tatiana Hogan, Canadian twin girls. These
particular twins are unique because Krista and Tatiana are conjoined twins, connected at the head. There is
evidence that the two girls are connected in a part of the brain called the thalamus, which is a major sensory relay
center. Most incoming sensory information is sent through the thalamus before reaching higher regions of the
cerebral cortex for processing.
The implications of this potential connection mean that it might be possible for one twin to experience the
sensations of the other twin. For instance, if Krista is watching a particularly funny television program, Tatiana
might smile or laugh even if she is not watching the program. This particular possibility has piqued the interest of
many neuroscientists who seek to understand how the brain uses sensory information.
These twins represent an enormous resource in the study of the brain, and since their condition is very rare, it is
likely that as long as their family agrees, scientists will follow these girls very closely throughout their lives to gain
as much information as possible (Dominus, 2011).
In observational research, scientists are conducting a clinical or case studycase study when they focus on one person or just
a few individuals. Indeed, some scientists spend their entire careers studying just 10–20 individuals. Why would
they do this? Obviously, when they focus their attention on a very small number of people, they can gain a
tremendous amount of insight into those cases. The richness of information that is collected in clinical or case
studies is unmatched by any other single research method. This allows the researcher to have a very deep
understanding of the individuals and the particular phenomenon being studied.
If clinical or case studies provide so much information, why are they not more frequent among researchers? As it
turns out, the major benefit of this particular approach is also a weakness. As mentioned earlier, this approach is
often used when studying individuals who are interesting to researchers because they have a rare characteristic.
Therefore, the individuals who serve as the focus of case studies are not like most other people. If scientists
ultimately want to explain all behavior, focusing attention on such a special group of people can make it difficult to
generalize any observations to the larger population as a whole. Generalizing refers to the ability to apply the
findings of a particular research project to larger segments of society. Again, case studies provide enormous
amounts of information, but since the cases are so specific, the potential to apply what’s learned to the average
person may be very limited.

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Figure 1. Seeing a police car behind you would probably
affect your driving behavior. (credit: Michael Gil)
Naturalistic Observation
If you want to understand how behavior occurs, one of the best ways to gain information is to simply observe the
behavior in its natural context. However, people might change their behavior in unexpected ways if they know
they are being observed. How do researchers obtain accurate information when people tend to hide their natural
behavior? As an example, imagine that your professor asks everyone in your class to raise their hand if they
always wash their hands after using the restroom. Chances are that almost everyone in the classroom will raise
their hand, but do you think hand washing after every trip to the restroom is really that universal?
This is very similar to the phenomenon mentioned earlier in this chapter: many individuals do not feel comfortable
answering a question honestly. But if we are committed to finding out the facts about hand washing, we have
other options available to us.
Suppose we send a classmate into the restroom to actually watch whether everyone washes their hands after
using the restroom. Will our observer blend into the restroom environment by wearing a white lab coat, sitting with
a clipboard, and staring at the sinks? We want our researcher to be inconspicuous—perhaps standing at one of
the sinks pretending to put in contact lenses while secretly recording the relevant information. This type of
observational study is called naturalistic observationnaturalistic observation: observing behavior in its natural setting. To better
understand peer exclusion, Suzanne Fanger collaborated with colleagues at the University of Texas to observe
the behavior of preschool children on a playground. How did the observers remain inconspicuous over the
duration of the study? They equipped a few of the children with wireless microphones (which the children quickly
forgot about) and observed while taking notes from a distance. Also, the children in that particular preschool (a
“laboratory preschool”) were accustomed to having observers on the playground (Fanger, Frankel, & Hazen,
2012).
It is critical that the observer be as unobtrusive and as
inconspicuous as possible: when people know they are
being watched, they are less likely to behave naturally. If
you have any doubt about this, ask yourself how your
driving behavior might differ in two situations: In the first
situation, you are driving down a deserted highway during
the middle of the day; in the second situation, you are being
followed by a police car down the same deserted highway
(Figure 1).
It should be pointed out that naturalistic observation is not
limited to research involving humans. Indeed, some of the
best-known examples of naturalistic observation involve
researchers going into the field to observe various kinds of
animals in their own environments. As with human studies,
the researchers maintain their distance and avoid
interfering with the animal subjects so as not to influence
their natural behaviors. Scientists have used this technique
to study social hierarchies and interactions among animals
ranging from ground squirrels to gorillas. The information provided by these studies is invaluable in understanding
how those animals organize socially and communicate with one another. The anthropologist Jane Goodall, for
example, spent nearly five decades observing the behavior of chimpanzees in Africa (Figure 2). As an illustration
of the types of concerns that a researcher might encounter in naturalistic observation, some scientists criticized
Goodall for giving the chimps names instead of referring to them by numbers—using names was thought to
undermine the emotional detachment required for the objectivity of the study (McKie, 2010).

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Figure 2. (a) Jane Goodall made a career of conducting naturalistic observations of (b) chimpanzee behavior. (credit “Jane
Goodall”: modification of work by Erik Hersman; “chimpanzee”: modification of work by “Afrika Force”/Flickr.com)
The greatest benefit of naturalistic observation is the validity, or accuracy, of information collected unobtrusively in
a natural setting. Having individuals behave as they normally would in a given situation means that we have a
higher degree of ecological validity, or realism, than we might achieve with other research approaches. Therefore,
our ability to generalizegeneralize the findings of the research to real-world situations is enhanced. If done correctly, we
need not worry about people or animals modifying their behavior simply because they are being observed.
Sometimes, people may assume that reality programs give us a glimpse into authentic human behavior. However,
the principle of inconspicuous observation is violated as reality stars are followed by camera crews and are
interviewed on camera for personal confessionals. Given that environment, we must doubt how natural and
realistic their behaviors are.
The major downside of naturalistic observation is that they are often difficult to set up and control. In our restroom
study, what if you stood in the restroom all day prepared to record people’s hand washing behavior and no one
came in? Or, what if you have been closely observing a troop of gorillas for weeks only to find that they migrated
to a new place while you were sleeping in your tent? The benefit of realistic data comes at a cost. As a researcher
you have no control of when (or if) you have behavior to observe. In addition, this type of observational research
often requires significant investments of time, money, and a good dose of luck.
Sometimes studies involve structured observation. In these cases, people are observed while engaging in set,
specific tasks. An excellent example of structured observation comes from Strange Situation by Mary Ainsworth
(you will read more about this in the chapter on lifespan development). The Strange Situation is a procedure used
to evaluate attachment styles that exist between an infant and caregiver. In this scenario, caregivers bring their
infants into a room filled with toys. The Strange Situation involves a number of phases, including a stranger
coming into the room, the caregiver leaving the room, and the caregiver’s return to the room. The infant’s
behavior is closely monitored at each phase, but it is the behavior of the infant upon being reunited with the
caregiver that is most telling in terms of characterizing the infant’s attachment style with the caregiver.
Another potential problem in observational research is observer biasobserver bias. Generally, people who act as observers are
closely involved in the research project and may unconsciously skew their observations to fit their research goals
or expectations. To protect against this type of bias, researchers should have clear criteria established for the
types of behaviors recorded and how those behaviors should be classified. In addition, researchers often
compare observations of the same event by multiple observers, in order to test inter-rater reliabilityinter-rater reliability: a measure of
reliability that assesses the consistency of observations by different observers.

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Figure 3. Surveys can be administered in a number of
ways, including electronically administered research, like
the survey shown here. (credit: Robert Nyman)
Surveys
Often, psychologists develop surveys as a means of gathering data. SurveysSurveys are lists of questions to be
answered by research participants, and can be delivered as paper-and-pencil questionnaires, administered
electronically, or conducted verbally (Figure 3). Generally, the survey itself can be completed in a short time, and
the ease of administering a survey makes it easy to collect data from a large number of people.
Surveys allow researchers to gather data from larger samples than may be afforded by other research methods..
A samplesample is a subset of individuals selected from a populationpopulation, which is the overall group of individuals that the
researchers are interested in. Researchers study the sample and seek to generalize their findings to the
population.
There is both strength and weakness of the survey in
comparison to case studies. By using surveys, we can
collect information from a larger sample of people. A larger
sample is better able to reflect the actual diversity of the
population, thus allowing better generalizability. Therefore,
if our sample is sufficiently large and diverse, we can
assume that the data we collect from the survey can be
generalized to the larger population with more certainty
than the information collected through a case study.
However, given the greater number of people involved, we
are not able to collect the same depth of information on
each person that would be collected in a case study.
Another potential weakness of surveys is something we
touched on earlier in this chapter: People don’t always give
accurate responses. They may lie, misremember, or
answer questions in a way that they think makes them look
good. For example, people may report drinking less alcohol
than is actually the case.
Any number of research questions can be answered through the use of surveys. One real-world example is the
research conducted by Jenkins, Ruppel, Kizer, Yehl, and Griffin (2012) about the backlash against the US Arab-
American community following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Jenkins and colleagues wanted to
determine to what extent these negative attitudes toward Arab-Americans still existed nearly a decade after the
attacks occurred. In one study, 140 research participants filled out a survey with 10 questions, including questions
asking directly about the participant’s overt prejudicial attitudes toward people of various ethnicities. The survey
also asked indirect questions about how likely the participant would be to interact with a person of a given
ethnicity in a variety of settings (such as, “How likely do you think it is that you would introduce yourself to a
person of Arab-American descent?”). The results of the research suggested that participants were unwilling to
report prejudicial attitudes toward any ethnic group. However, there were significant differences between their
pattern of responses to questions about social interaction with Arab-Americans compared to other ethnic groups:
they indicated less willingness for social interaction with Arab-Americans compared to the other ethnic groups.
This suggested that the participants harbored subtle forms of prejudice against Arab-Americans, despite their
assertions that this was not the case (Jenkins et al., 2012).

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THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
A friend of yours is working part-time in a local pet store. Your friend has become increasingly interested in how
dogs normally communicate and interact with each other, and is thinking of visiting a local veterinary clinic to
see how dogs interact in the waiting room. After reading this section, do you think this is the best way to better
understand such interactions? Do you have any suggestions that might result in more valid data?
Archival Research
Some researchers gain access to large amounts of data without interacting with a single research participant.
Instead, they use existing records to answer various research questions. This type of research approach is known
as archival research. Archival researchArchival research relies on looking at past records or data sets to look for interesting
patterns or relationships.
For example, a researcher might access the academic records of all individuals who enrolled in college within the
past ten years and calculate how long it took them to complete their degrees, as well as course loads, grades,
and extracurricular involvement. Archival research could provide important information about who is most likely to
complete their education, and it could help identify important risk factors for struggling students (Figure 1).

Figure 1. A researcher doing archival research examines records, whether archived as a (a) hardcopy or (b) electronically. (credit
“paper files”: modification of work by “Newtown graffiti”/Flickr; “computer”: modification of work by INPIVIC Family/Flickr)
In comparing archival research to other research methods, there are several important distinctions. For one, the
researcher employing archival research never directly interacts with research participants. Therefore, the
investment of time and money to collect data is considerably less with archival research. Additionally, researchers
have no control over what information was originally collected. Therefore, research questions have to be tailored
so they can be answered within the structure of the existing data sets. There is also no guarantee of consistency
between the records from one source to another, which might make comparing and contrasting different data sets
problematic.
Longitudinal and Cross-Sectional Research
Sometimes we want to see how people change over time, as in studies of human development and lifespan.
When we test the same group of individuals repeatedly over an extended period of time, we are conducting
longitudinal research. LongitudinalLongitudinal research is a research design in which data-gathering is administered
repeatedly over an extended period of time. For example, we may survey a group of individuals about their dietary
habits at age 20, retest them a decade later at age 30, and then again at age 40.
Another approach is cross-sectionalcross-sectional research. In cross-sectional research, a researcher compares multiple
segments of the population at the same time. Using the dietary habits example above, the researcher might
directly compare different groups of people by age. Instead a group of people for 20 years to see how their dietary
habits changed from decade to decade, the researcher would study a group of 20-year-old individuals and
compare them to a group of 30-year-old individuals and a group of 40-year-old individuals. While cross-sectional
research requires a shorter-term investment, it is also limited by differences that exist between the different
generations (or cohorts) that have nothing to do with age per se, but rather reflect the social and cultural
experiences of different generations of individuals make them different from one another.
To illustrate this concept, consider the following survey findings. In recent years there has been significant growth
in the popular support of same-sex marriage. Many studies on this topic break down survey participants into
different age groups. In general, younger people are more supportive of same-sex marriage than are those who
are older (Jones, 2013). Does this mean that as we age we become less open to the idea of same-sex marriage,
or does this mean that older individuals have different perspectives because of the social climates in which they
grew up? Longitudinal research is a powerful approach because the same individuals are involved in the research
project over time, which means that the researchers need to be less concerned with differences among cohorts
affecting the results of their study.
Often longitudinal studies are employed when researching various diseases in an effort to understand particular
risk factors. Such studies often involve tens of thousands of individuals who are followed for several decades.
Given the enormous number of people involved in these studies, researchers can feel confident that their findings
can be generalized to the larger population. The Cancer Prevention Study-3 (CPS-3) is one of a series of

Figure 2. Longitudinal research like the CPS-3 help us to
better understand how smoking is associated with cancer
and other diseases. (credit: CDC/Debora Cartagena)
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longitudinal studies sponsored by the American Cancer Society aimed at determining predictive risk factors
associated with cancer. When participants enter the study, they complete a survey about their lives and family
histories, providing information on factors that might cause or prevent the development of cancer. Then every few
years the participants receive additional surveys to complete. In the end, hundreds of thousands of participants
will be tracked over 20 years to determine which of them develop cancer and which do not.
Clearly, this type of research is important and potentially very informative. For instance, earlier longitudinal studies
sponsored by the American Cancer Society provided some of the first scientific demonstrations of the now well-
established links between increased rates of cancer and smoking (American Cancer Society, n.d.) (Figure 2).
As with any research strategy, longitudinal research is not
without limitations. For one, these studies require an
incredible time investment by the researcher and research
participants. Given that some longitudinal studies take
years, if not decades, to complete, the results will not be
known for a considerable period of time. In addition to the
time demands, these studies also require a substantial
financial investment. Many researchers are unable to
commit the resources necessary to see a longitudinal
project through to the end.
Research participants must also be willing to continue their
participation for an extended period of time, and this can be
problematic. People move, get married and take new
names, get ill, and eventually die. Even without significant
life changes, some people may simply choose to
discontinue their participation in the project. As a result, the
attritionattrition rates, or reduction in the number of research
participants due to dropouts, in longitudinal studies are quite high and increases over the course of a project. For
this reason, researchers using this approach typically recruit many participants fully expecting that a substantial
number will drop out before the end. As the study progresses, they continually check whether the sample still
represents the larger population, and make adjustments as necessary.

GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
archival research:archival research: method of research using past records or data sets to answer various research questions, or
to search for interesting patterns or relationships
attrition:attrition: reduction in number of research participants as some drop out of the study over time
clinical or case study:clinical or case study: observational research study focusing on one or a few people
correlational research:correlational research: tests whether a relationship exists between two or more variables
cross-sectional research:cross-sectional research: compares multiple segments of a population at a single time
descriptive research:descriptive research: research studies that do not test specific relationships between variables; they are used to
describe general or specific behaviors and attributes that are observed and measured
experimental research:experimental research: tests a hypothesis to determine cause and effect relationships
generalizegeneralize inferring that the results for a sample apply to the larger population
inter-rater reliability:inter-rater reliability: measure of agreement among observers on how they record and classify a particular event
longitudinal research:longitudinal research: studies in which the same group of individuals is surveyed or measured repeatedly over
an extended period of time
naturalistic observation:naturalistic observation: observation of behavior in its natural setting
observer bias:observer bias: when observations may be skewed to align with observer expectations
population:population: overall group of individuals that the researchers are interested in
sample:sample: subset of individuals selected from the larger population
survey:survey: list of questions to be answered by research participants—given as paper-and-pencil questionnaires,
administered electronically, or conducted verbally—allowing researchers to collect data from a large number of
people
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CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Explain what a correlation coefficient tells us about the relationship between variables
• Describe why correlation does not mean causation
Did you know that as sales in ice cream increase, so does the overall rate of crime? Is it possible that indulging in
your favorite flavor of ice cream could send you on a crime spree? Or, after committing crime do you think you
might decide to treat yourself to a cone? There is no question that a relationship exists between ice cream and

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crime (e.g., Harper, 2013), but it would be pretty foolish to decide that one thing actually caused the other to
occur.
It is much more likely that both ice cream sales and crime rates are related to the temperature outside. When the
temperature is warm, there are lots of people out of their houses, interacting with each other, getting annoyed with
one another, and sometimes committing crimes. Also, when it is warm outside, we are more likely to seek a cool
treat like ice cream. How do we determine if there is indeed a relationship between two things? And when there is
a relationship, how can we discern whether it is attributable to coincidence or causation?
Correlational Research
CorrelationCorrelation means that there is a relationship between two or more variables (such as ice cream consumption and
crime), but this relationship does not necessarily imply cause and effect. When two variables are correlated, it
simply means that as one variable changes, so does the other. We can measure correlation by calculating a
statistic known as a correlation coefficient. A correlation coefficientcorrelation coefficient is a number from -1 to +1 that indicates the
strength and direction of the relationship between variables. The correlation coefficient is usually represented by
the letter r.
The number portion of the correlation coefficient indicates the strength of the relationship. The closer the number
is to 1 (be it negative or positive), the more strongly related the variables are, and the more predictable changes
in one variable will be as the other variable changes. The closer the number is to zero, the weaker the
relationship, and the less predictable the relationships between the variables becomes. For instance, a correlation
coefficient of 0.9 indicates a far stronger relationship than a correlation coefficient of 0.3. If the variables are not
related to one another at all, the correlation coefficient is 0. The example above about ice cream and crime is an
example of two variables that we might expect to have no relationship to each other.
The sign—positive or negative—of the correlation coefficient indicates the direction of the relationship (Figure 1).
A positive correlationpositive correlation means that the variables move in the same direction. Put another way, it means that as one
variable increases so does the other, and conversely, when one variable decreases so does the other. A negativenegative
correlationcorrelation means that the variables move in opposite directions. If two variables are negatively correlated, a
decrease in one variable is associated with an increase in the other and vice versa.
The example of ice cream and crime rates is a positive correlation because both variables increase when
temperatures are warmer. Other examples of positive correlations are the relationship between an individual’s
height and weight or the relationship between a person’s age and number of wrinkles. One might expect a
negative correlation to exist between someone’s tiredness during the day and the number of hours they slept the
previous night: the amount of sleep decreases as the feelings of tiredness increase. In a real-world example of
negative correlation, student researchers at the University of Minnesota found a weak negative correlation (r =
-0.29) between the average number of days per week that students got fewer than 5 hours of sleep and their GPA
(Lowry, Dean, & Manders, 2010). Keep in mind that a negative correlation is not the same as no correlation. For
example, we would probably find no correlation between hours of sleep and shoe size.
As mentioned earlier, correlations have predictive value. Imagine that you are on the admissions committee of a
major university. You are faced with a huge number of applications, but you are able to accommodate only a
small percentage of the applicant pool. How might you decide who should be admitted? You might try to correlate
your current students’ college GPA with their scores on standardized tests like the SAT or ACT. By observing
which correlations were strongest for your current students, you could use this information to predict relative
success of those students who have applied for admission into the university.

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Manipulate this interactive scatterplot to practice your understanding of positive and negative correlation.
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Figure 1. Scatterplots are a graphical view of the strength and direction of correlations. The stronger the correlation, the closer the
data points are to a straight line. In these examples, we see that there is (a) a positive correlation between weight and height, (b) a
negative correlation between tiredness and hours of sleep, and (c) no correlation between shoe size and hours of sleep.

http://www.bc.edu/research/intasc/library/correlation.shtml

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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch this clip from Freakonomics for an example of how correlation does not indicate causation.
Correlation Does Not Indicate Causation
Correlational research is useful because it allows us to discover the strength and direction of relationships that
exist between two variables. However, correlation is limited because establishing the existence of a relationship
tells us little about cause and effectcause and effect. While variables are sometimes correlated because one does cause the other,
it could also be that some other factor, a confounding variableconfounding variable, is actually causing the systematic movement in our
variables of interest. In the ice cream/crime rate example mentioned earlier, temperature is a confounding
variable that could account for the relationship between the two variables.
Even when we cannot point to clear confounding variables, we should not assume that a correlation between two
variables implies that one variable causes changes in another. This can be frustrating when a cause-and-effect
relationship seems clear and intuitive. Think back to our discussion of the research done by the American Cancer
Society and how their research projects were some of the first demonstrations of the link between smoking and
cancer. It seems reasonable to assume that smoking causes cancer, but if we were limited to correlationalcorrelational
researchresearch, we would be overstepping our bounds by making this assumption.
Unfortunately, people mistakenly make claims of causation as a function of correlations all the time. Such claims
are especially common in advertisements and news stories. For example, recent research found that people who
eat cereal on a regular basis achieve healthier weights than those who rarely eat cereal (Frantzen, Treviño,
Echon, Garcia-Dominic, & DiMarco, 2013; Barton et al., 2005). Guess how the cereal companies report this
finding. Does eating cereal really cause an individual to maintain a healthy weight, or are there other possible
explanations, such as, someone at a healthy weight is more likely to regularly eat a healthy breakfast than
someone who is obese or someone who avoids meals in an attempt to diet (Figure 2)? While correlational
research is invaluable in identifying relationships among variables, a major limitation is the inability to establish
causality. Psychologists want to make statements about cause and effect, but the only way to do that is to
conduct an experiment to answer a research question. The next section describes how scientific experiments
incorporate methods that eliminate, or control for, alternative explanations, which allow researchers to explore
how changes in one variable cause changes in another variable.

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Figure 2. Does eating cereal really cause someone to be
a healthy weight? (credit: Tim Skillern)
Illusory Correlations
The temptation to make erroneous cause-and-effect
statements based on correlational research is not the only
way we tend to misinterpret data. We also tend to make the
mistake of illusory correlations, especially with unsystematic
observations. Illusory correlationsIllusory correlations, or false correlations,
occur when people believe that relationships exist between
two things when no such relationship exists. One well-
known illusory correlation is the supposed effect that the
moon’s phases have on human behavior. Many people
passionately assert that human behavior is affected by the
phase of the moon, and specifically, that people act
strangely when the moon is full (Figure 3).

Many people believe that a full moon makes people
behave oddly. (credit: Cory Zanker)
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There is no denying that the moon exerts a powerful
influence on our planet. The ebb and flow of the ocean’s
tides are tightly tied to the gravitational forces of the moon.
Many people believe, therefore, that it is logical that we are
affected by the moon as well. After all, our bodies are
largely made up of water. A meta-analysis of nearly 40
studies consistently demonstrated, however, that the
relationship between the moon and our behavior does not
exist (Rotton & Kelly, 1985). While we may pay more
attention to odd behavior during the full phase of the moon,
the rates of odd behavior remain constant throughout the
lunar cycle.
Why are we so apt to believe in illusory correlations like
this? Often we read or hear about them and simply accept
the information as valid. Or, we have a hunch about how
something works and then look for evidence to support that
hunch, ignoring evidence that would tell us our hunch is
false; this is known as confirmation biasconfirmation bias. Other times, we find illusory correlations based on the information that
comes most easily to mind, even if that information is severely limited. And while we may feel confident that we
can use these relationships to better understand and predict the world around us, illusory correlations can have
significant drawbacks. For example, research suggests that illusory correlations—in which certain behaviors are
inaccurately attributed to certain groups—are involved in the formation of prejudicial attitudes that can ultimately
lead to discriminatory behavior (Fiedler, 2004).
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
We all have a tendency to make illusory correlations from time to time. Try to think of an illusory correlation that
is held by you, a family member, or a close friend. How do you think this illusory correlation came about and
what can be done in the future to combat them?

GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
cause-and-effect relationship:cause-and-effect relationship: changes in one variable cause the changes in the other variable; can be
determined only through an experimental research design
confirmation bias:confirmation bias: tendency to ignore evidence that disproves ideas or beliefs
confounding variable:confounding variable: unanticipated outside factor that affects both variables of interest, often giving the false
impression that changes in one variable causes changes in the other variable, when, in actuality, the outside
factor causes changes in both variables
correlation:correlation: relationship between two or more variables; when two variables are correlated, one variable
changes as the other does
correlation coefficient:correlation coefficient: number from -1 to +1, indicating the strength and direction of the relationship between
variables, and usually represented by r
illusory correlation:illusory correlation: seeing relationships between two things when in reality no such relationship exists
negative correlation:negative correlation: two variables change in different directions, with one becoming larger as the other
becomes smaller; a negative correlation is not the same thing as no correlation
positive correlationpositive correlation two variables change in the same direction, both becoming either larger or smaller
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EXPERIMENTS
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe the experimental process, including ways to control for bias
• Identify and differentiate between independent and dependent variables
Causality: Conducting Experiments and Using the Data
As you’ve learned, the only way to establish that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between two variables is
to conduct a scientific experiment. ExperimentExperiment has a different meaning in the scientific context than in everyday
life. In everyday conversation, we often use it to describe trying something for the first time, such as
experimenting with a new hair style or a new food. However, in the scientific context, an experiment has precise
requirements for design and implementation.
The Experimental Hypothesis
In order to conduct an experiment, a researcher must have a specific hypothesishypothesis to be tested. As you’ve learned,
hypotheses can be formulated either through direct observation of the real world or after careful review of
previous research. For example, if you think that children should not be allowed to watch violent programming on
television because doing so would cause them to behave more violently, then you have basically formulated a

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Figure 1. Seeing behavior like this right after a child
watches violent television programming might lead you to
hypothesize that viewing violent television programming
leads to an increase in the display of violent behaviors.
(credit: Emran Kassim)
hypothesis—namely, that watching violent television programs causes children to behave more violently. How
might you have arrived at this particular hypothesis? You may have younger relatives who watch cartoons
featuring characters using martial arts to save the world from evildoers, with an impressive array of punching,
kicking, and defensive postures. You notice that after watching these programs for a while, your young relatives
mimic the fighting behavior of the characters portrayed in the cartoon (Figure 1).
These sorts of personal observations are what often lead us
to formulate a specific hypothesis, but we cannot use
limited personal observations and anecdotal evidence to
rigorously test our hypothesis. Instead, to find out if real-
world data supports our hypothesis, we have to conduct an
experiment.
Designing an Experiment
The most basic experimental design involves two groups:
the experimental group and the control group. The two
groups are designed to be the same except for one
difference— experimental manipulation. The experimentalexperimental
groupgroup gets the experimental manipulation—that is, the
treatment or variable being tested (in this case, violent TV
images)—and the control groupcontrol group does not. Since
experimental manipulation is the only difference between
the experimental and control groups, we can be sure that
any differences between the two are due to experimental
manipulation rather than chance.
In our example of how violent television programming might
affect violent behavior in children, we have the experimental
group view violent television programming for a specified
time and then measure their violent behavior. We measure
the violent behavior in our control group after they watch
nonviolent television programming for the same amount of
time. It is important for the control group to be treated
similarly to the experimental group, with the exception that
the control group does not receive the experimental
manipulation. Therefore, we have the control group watch non-violent television programming for the same
amount of time as the experimental group.
We also need to precisely define, or operationalize, what is considered violent and nonviolent. An operationaloperational
definitiondefinition is a description of how we will measure our variables, and it is important in allowing others understand
exactly how and what a researcher measures in a particular experiment. In operationalizing violent behavior, we
might choose to count only physical acts like kicking or punching as instances of this behavior, or we also may
choose to include angry verbal exchanges. Whatever we determine, it is important that we operationalize violent
behavior in such a way that anyone who hears about our study for the first time knows exactly what we mean by
violence. This aids peoples’ ability to interpret our data as well as their capacity to repeat our experiment should
they choose to do so.
Once we have operationalized what is considered violent television programming and what is considered violent
behavior from our experiment participants, we need to establish how we will run our experiment. In this case, we
might have participants watch a 30-minute television program (either violent or nonviolent, depending on their
group membership) before sending them out to a playground for an hour where their behavior is observed and the
number and type of violent acts is recorded.
Ideally, the people who observe and record the children’s behavior are unaware of who was assigned to the
experimental or control group, in order to control for experimenter bias. Experimenter biasExperimenter bias refers to the possibility
that a researcher’s expectations might skew the results of the study. Remember, conducting an experiment
requires a lot of planning, and the people involved in the research project have a vested interest in supporting
their hypotheses. If the observers knew which child was in which group, it might influence how much attention

Figure 2. Providing the control group with a placebo
treatment protects against bias caused by expectancy.
(credit: Elaine and Arthur Shapiro)
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they paid to each child’s behavior as well as how they interpreted that behavior. By being blind to which child is in
which group, we protect against those biases. This situation is a single-blind studysingle-blind study, meaning that one of the
groups (participants) are unaware as to which group they are in (experiment or control group) while the
researcher who developed the experiment knows which participants are in each group.
In a double-blind studydouble-blind study, both the researchers and the
participants are blind to group assignments. Why would a
researcher want to run a study where no one knows who is
in which group? Because by doing so, we can control for
both experimenter and participant expectations. If you are
familiar with the phrase placebo effect, you already have
some idea as to why this is an important consideration. The
placebo effectplacebo effect occurs when people’s expectations or beliefs
influence or determine their experience in a given situation.
In other words, simply expecting something to happen can
actually make it happen.
The placebo effect is commonly described in terms of
testing the effectiveness of a new medication. Imagine that
you work in a pharmaceutical company, and you think you
have a new drug that is effective in treating depression. To
demonstrate that your medication is effective, you run an
experiment with two groups: The experimental group
receives the medication, and the control group does not.
But you don’t want participants to know whether they
received the drug or not.
Why is that? Imagine that you are a participant in this study, and you have just taken a pill that you think will
improve your mood. Because you expect the pill to have an effect, you might feel better simply because you took
the pill and not because of any drug actually contained in the pill—this is the placebo effect.
To make sure that any effects on mood are due to the drug and not due to expectations, the control group
receives a placebo (in this case a sugar pill). Now everyone gets a pill, and once again neither the researcher nor
the experimental participants know who got the drug and who got the sugar pill. Any differences in mood between
the experimental and control groups can now be attributed to the drug itself rather than to experimenter bias or
participant expectations (Figure 2).
Independent and Dependent Variables
In a research experiment, we strive to study whether changes in one thing cause changes in another. To achieve
this, we must pay attention to two important variables, or things that can be changed, in any experimental study:
the independent variable and the dependent variable. An independent variableindependent variable is manipulated or controlled by the
experimenter. In a well-designed experimental study, the independent variable is the only important difference
between the experimental and control groups. In our example of how violent television programs affect children’s
display of violent behavior, the independent variable is the type of program—violent or nonviolent—viewed by

Figure 3. In an experiment, manipulations of the independent variable are expected to result in changes in the dependent variable.
(credit “automatic weapon”: modification of work by Daniel Oines; credit “toy gun”: modification of work by Emran Kassim)
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participants in the study (Figure 3). A dependent variabledependent variable is what the researcher measures to see how much
effect the independent variable had. In our example, the dependent variable is the number of violent acts
displayed by the experimental participants.
We expect that the dependent variable will change as a function of the independent variable. In other words, the
dependent variable depends on the independent variable. A good way to think about the relationship between the
independent and dependent variables is with this question: What effect does the independent variable have on
the dependent variable? Returning to our example, what effect does watching a half hour of violent television
programming or nonviolent television programming have on the number of incidents of physical aggression
displayed on the playground?
Selecting and Assigning Experimental Participants
Now that our study is designed, we need to obtain a sample of individuals to include in our experiment. Our study
involves human participants so we need to determine who to include. ParticipantsParticipants are the subjects of
psychological research, and as the name implies, individuals who are involved in psychological research actively
participate in the process. Often, psychological research projects rely on college students to serve as participants.
In fact, the vast majority of research in psychology subfields has historically involved students as research
participants (Sears, 1986; Arnett, 2008). But are college students truly representative of the general population?
College students tend to be younger, more educated, more liberal, and less diverse than the general population.

Figure 4. Researchers may work with (a) a large population or (b) a sample group that is a subset of the larger population. (credit
“crowd”: modification of work by James Cridland; credit “students”: modification of work by Laurie Sullivan)
Although using students as test subjects is an accepted practice, relying on such a limited pool of research
participants can be problematic because it is difficult to generalize findings to the larger population.
Our hypothetical experiment involves children, and we must first generate a sample of child participants. Samples
are used because populations are usually too large to reasonably involve every member in our particular
experiment (Figure 4). If possible, we should use a random samplerandom sample (there are other types of samples, but for the
purposes of this section, we will focus on random samples). A random sample is a subset of a larger population in
which every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected. Random samples are preferred
because if the sample is large enough we can be reasonably sure that the participating individuals are
representative of the larger population. This means that the percentages of characteristics in the sample—sex,
ethnicity, socioeconomic level, and any other characteristics that might affect the results—are close to those
percentages in the larger population.
In our example, let’s say we decide our population of interest is fourth graders. But all fourth graders is a very
large population, so we need to be more specific; instead we might say our population of interest is all fourth
graders in a particular city. We should include students from various income brackets, family situations, races,
ethnicities, religions, and geographic areas of town. With this more manageable population, we can work with the
local schools in selecting a random sample of around 200 fourth graders who we want to participate in our
experiment.
In summary, because we cannot test all of the fourth graders in a city, we want to find a group of about 200 that
reflects the composition of that city. With a representative group, we can generalize our findings to the larger
population without fear of our sample being biased in some way.
Now that we have a sample, the next step of the experimental process is to split the participants into experimental
and control groups through random assignment. With random assignmentrandom assignment, all participants have an equal chance
of being assigned to either group. There is statistical software that will randomly assign each of the fourth graders
in the sample to either the experimental or the control group.
Random assignment is critical for sound experimental designexperimental design. With sufficiently large samples, random assignment
makes it unlikely that there are systematic differences between the groups. So, for instance, it would be very
unlikely that we would get one group composed entirely of males, a given ethnic identity, or a given religious
ideology. This is important because if the groups were systematically different before the experiment began, we
would not know the origin of any differences we find between the groups: Were the differences preexisting, or
were they caused by manipulation of the independent variable? Random assignment allows us to assume that
any differences observed between experimental and control groups result from the manipulation of the
independent variable.

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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Learn more about descriptive, correlational, and experimental approaches to psychological research
through the following PsychSim Tutorial. The tutorial is only intended for practice. Please disregard the final
screen that requests you submit answers to your instructor.
◦ What’s Wrong With This Study
Issues to Consider
While experiments allow scientists to make cause-and-effect claims, they are not without problems. True
experiments require the experimenter to manipulate an independent variable, and that can complicate many
questions that psychologists might want to address. For instance, imagine that you want to know what effect sex
(the independent variable) has on spatial memory (the dependent variable). Although you can certainly look for
differences between males and females on a task that taps into spatial memory, you cannot directly control a
person’s sex. We categorize this type of research approach as quasi-experimental and recognize that we cannot
make cause-and-effect claims in these circumstances.
Experimenters are also limited by ethical constraints. For instance, you would not be able to conduct an
experiment designed to determine if experiencing abuse as a child leads to lower levels of self-esteem among
adults. To conduct such an experiment, you would need to randomly assign some experimental participants to a
group that receives abuse, and that experiment would be unethical.

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
cause-and-effect relationship:cause-and-effect relationship: changes in one variable cause the changes in the other variable; can be
determined only through an experimental research design
confirmation bias:confirmation bias: tendency to ignore evidence that disproves ideas or beliefs
control group:control group: serves as a basis for comparison and controls for chance factors that might influence the results
of the study—by holding such factors constant across groups so that the experimental manipulation is the only
difference between groups
correlation:correlation: relationship between two or more variables; when two variables are correlated, one variable
changes as the other does
dependent variable:dependent variable: variable that the researcher measures to see how much effect the independent variable
had
double-blind study:double-blind study: experiment in which both the researchers and the participants are blind to group
assignments
experimental group:experimental group: group designed to answer the research question; experimental manipulation is the only
difference between the experimental and control groups, so any differences between the two are due to
experimental manipulation rather than chance
experimenter bias:experimenter bias: researcher expectations skew the results of the study
independent variable:independent variable: variable that is influenced or controlled by the experimenter; in a sound experimental
study, the independent variable is the only important difference between the experimental and control group
operational definition:operational definition: description of what actions and operations will be used to measure the dependent
variables and manipulate the independent variables
participants:participants: subjects of psychological research
placebo effect:placebo effect: people’s expectations or beliefs influencing or determining their experience in a given situation
random assignment:random assignment: method of experimental group assignment in which all participants have an equal chance
of being assigned to either group
random sample:random sample: subset of a larger population in which every member of the population has an equal chance of
being selected
replicate:replicate: repeating an experiment using different samples to determine the research’s reliability
single-blind study:single-blind study: experiment in which the researcher knows which participants are in the experimental group
and which are in the control group
statistical analysis:statistical analysis: determines how likely any difference between experimental groups is due to chance
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Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions
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STATISTICAL THINKING
What you’ll learn to do: define basic elements of a statistical
investigation
Once a psychologist has performed an experiment or study and gathered her results, she needs to organize the
information in a way so that she can draw conclusions from the results. What does the information mean? Does it
support or reject the hypothesis? Is the data valid and reliable, and is the study replicable?
Psychologists use statistics to assist them in analyzing data, and also to give more precise measurements to
describe whether something is statistically significant. Analyzing data using statistics enables researchers to find
patterns, make claims, and share their results with others. In this section, you’ll learn about some of the tools that
psychologists use in statistical analysis.
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Define reliability and validity
• Describe the importance of distributional thinking and the role of p-values in statistical inference
• Describe the role of random sampling and random assignment in drawing cause-and-effect
conclusions
Interpreting Experimental Findings
Once data is collected from both the experimental and the control groups, a statistical analysis is conducted to
find out if there are meaningful differences between the two groups. A statistical analysis determines how likely

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The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University can walk you through the APA writing guidelines.
DIG DEEPER: THE VACCINE-AUTISM MYTH AND THE RETRACTION OFDIG DEEPER: THE VACCINE-AUTISM MYTH AND THE RETRACTION OF
PUBLISHED STUDIESPUBLISHED STUDIES
Some scientists have claimed that routine childhood vaccines cause some children to develop autism, and, in
fact, several peer-reviewed publications published research making these claims. Since the initial reports,
large-scale epidemiological research has suggested that vaccinations are not responsible for causing autism
any difference found is due to chance (and thus not meaningful). In psychology, group differences are considered
meaningful, or significant, if the odds that these differences occurred by chance alone are 5 percent or less.
Stated another way, if we repeated this experiment 100 times, we would expect to find the same results at least
95 times out of 100.
The greatest strength of experiments is the ability to assert that any significant differences in the findings are
caused by the independent variable. This occurs because random selection, random assignment, and a design
that limits the effects of both experimenter bias and participant expectancy should create groups that are similar in
composition and treatment. Therefore, any difference between the groups is attributable to the independent
variable, and now we can finally make a causal statement. If we find that watching a violent television program
results in more violent behavior than watching a nonviolent program, we can safely say that watching violent
television programs causes an increase in the display of violent behavior.
Reporting Research
When psychologists complete a research project, they generally want to share their findings with other scientists.
The American Psychological Association (APA) publishes a manual detailing how to write a paper for submission
to scientific journals. Unlike an article that might be published in a magazine like Psychology Today, which targets
a general audience with an interest in psychology, scientific journals generally publish peer-reviewed journal
articles aimed at an audience of professionals and scholars who are actively involved in research themselves.
A peer-reviewed journal article is read by several other scientists (generally anonymously) with expertise in the
subject matter. These peer reviewers provide feedback—to both the author and the journal editor—regarding the
quality of the draft. Peer reviewers look for a strong rationale for the research being described, a clear description
of how the research was conducted, and evidence that the research was conducted in an ethical manner. They
also look for flaws in the study’s design, methods, and statistical analyses. They check that the conclusions drawn
by the authors seem reasonable given the observations made during the research. Peer reviewers also comment
on how valuable the research is in advancing the discipline’s knowledge. This helps prevent unnecessary
duplication of research findings in the scientific literature and, to some extent, ensures that each research article
provides new information. Ultimately, the journal editor will compile all of the peer reviewer feedback and
determine whether the article will be published in its current state (a rare occurrence), published with revisions, or
not accepted for publication.
Peer review provides some degree of quality control for psychological research. Poorly conceived or executed
studies can be weeded out, and even well-designed research can be improved by the revisions suggested. Peer
review also ensures that the research is described clearly enough to allow other scientists to replicate it, meaning
they can repeat the experiment using different samples to determine reliability. Sometimes replications involve
additional measures that expand on the original finding. In any case, each replication serves to provide more
evidence to support the original research findings. Successful replications of published research make scientists
more apt to adopt those findings, while repeated failures tend to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the original article
and lead scientists to look elsewhere. For example, it would be a major advancement in the medical field if a
published study indicated that taking a new drug helped individuals achieve a healthy weight without changing
their diet. But if other scientists could not replicate the results, the original study’s claims would be questioned.

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and that it is much safer to have your child vaccinated than not. Furthermore, several of the original studies
making this claim have since been retracted.
A published piece of work can be rescinded when data is called into question because of falsification,
fabrication, or serious research design problems. Once rescinded, the scientific community is informed that
there are serious problems with the original publication. Retractions can be initiated by the researcher who led
the study, by research collaborators, by the institution that employed the researcher, or by the editorial board of
the journal in which the article was originally published. In the vaccine-autism case, the retraction was made
because of a significant conflict of interest in which the leading researcher had a financial interest in
establishing a link between childhood vaccines and autism (Offit, 2008). Unfortunately, the initial studies
received so much media attention that many parents around the world became hesitant to have their children
vaccinated (Figure 1). For more information about how the vaccine/autism story unfolded, as well as the
repercussions of this story, take a look at Paul Offit’s book, Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky
Medicine, and the Search for a Cure.

Figure 1. Some people still think vaccinations cause autism. (credit: modification of work by UNICEF Sverige)
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EVERYDAY CONNECTION: HOW VALID IS THE SAT?EVERYDAY CONNECTION: HOW VALID IS THE SAT?
Standardized tests like the SAT are supposed to measure an individual’s aptitude for a college education, but
how reliable and valid are such tests? Research conducted by the College Board suggests that scores on the
SAT have high predictive validity for first-year college students’ GPA (Kobrin, Patterson, Shaw, Mattern, &
Barbuti, 2008). In this context, predictive validity refers to the test’s ability to effectively predict the GPA of
college freshmen. Given that many institutions of higher education require the SAT for admission, this high
degree of predictive validity might be comforting.
However, the emphasis placed on SAT scores in college admissions has generated some controversy on a
number of fronts. For one, some researchers assert that the SAT is a biased test that places minority students
at a disadvantage and unfairly reduces the likelihood of being admitted into a college (Santelices & Wilson,
2010). Additionally, some research has suggested that the predictive validity of the SAT is grossly exaggerated
in how well it is able to predict the GPA of first-year college students. In fact, it has been suggested that the
SAT’s predictive validity may be overestimated by as much as 150% (Rothstein, 2004). Many institutions of
higher education are beginning to consider de-emphasizing the significance of SAT scores in making admission
decisions (Rimer, 2008).
In 2014, College Board president David Coleman expressed his awareness of these problems, recognizing that
college success is more accurately predicted by high school grades than by SAT scores. To address these
concerns, he has called for significant changes to the SAT exam (Lewin, 2014).
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Reliability and Validity
ReliabilityReliability and validityvalidity are two important considerations that must be made with any type of data collection.
Reliability refers to the ability to consistently produce a given result. In the context of psychological research, this
would mean that any instruments or tools used to collect data do so in consistent, reproducible ways.
Unfortunately, being consistent in measurement does not necessarily mean that you have measured something
correctly. To illustrate this concept, consider a kitchen scale that would be used to measure the weight of cereal
that you eat in the morning. If the scale is not properly calibrated, it may consistently under- or overestimate the
amount of cereal that’s being measured. While the scale is highly reliable in producing consistent results (e.g., the
same amount of cereal poured onto the scale produces the same reading each time), those results are incorrect.
This is where validity comes into play. Validity refers to the extent to which a given instrument or tool accurately
measures what it’s supposed to measure. While any valid measure is by necessity reliable, the reverse is not
necessarily true. Researchers strive to use instruments that are both highly reliable and valid.

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Figure 1. People around the world differ in their
preferences for drinking coffee versus drinking tea. Would
the results of the coffee study be the same in Canada as
in China? [Image: Duncan, https://goo.gl/vbMyTm, CC
BY-NC 2.0, https://goo.gl/l8UUGY]
Introduction to Statistical Thinking
Does drinking coffee actually increase your life expectancy?
A recent study (Freedman, Park, Abnet, Hollenbeck, &
Sinha, 2012) found that men who drank at least six cups of
coffee a day had a 10% lower chance of dying (women
15% lower) than those who drank none. Does this mean
you should pick up or increase your own coffee habit?
Modern society has become awash in studies such as this;
you can read about several such studies in the news every
day.Conducting such a study well, and interpreting the
results of such studies requires understanding basic ideas
of statisticsstatistics, the science of gaining insight from data. Key
components to a statistical investigation are:
• Planning the study: Start by asking a testable
research question and deciding how to collect
data. For example, how long was the study period
of the coffee study? How many people were
recruited for the study, how were they recruited,
and from where? How old were they? What other
variables were recorded about the individuals?
Were changes made to the participants’ coffee
habits during the course of the study?
• Examining the data: What are appropriate ways to
examine the data? What graphs are relevant, and what do they reveal? What descriptive statistics can
be calculated to summarize relevant aspects of the data, and what do they reveal? What patterns do you
see in the data? Are there any individual observations that deviate from the overall pattern, and what do
they reveal? For example, in the coffee study, did the proportions differ when we compared the smokers
to the non-smokers?
• Inferring from the data: What are valid statistical methods for drawing inferences “beyond” the data you
collected? In the coffee study, is the 10%–15% reduction in risk of death something that could have
happened just by chance?
• Drawing conclusions: Based on what you learned from your data, what conclusions can you draw? Who
do you think these conclusions apply to? (Were the people in the coffee study older? Healthy? Living in
cities?) Can you draw a cause-and-effectcause-and-effect conclusion about your treatments? (Are scientists now saying
that the coffee drinking is the cause of the decreased risk of death?)
Notice that the numerical analysis (“crunching numbers” on the computer) comprises only a small part of overall
statistical investigation. In this section, you will see how we can answer some of these questions and what
questions you should be asking about any statistical investigation you read about.
Distributional Thinking
When data are collected to address a particular question, an important first step is to think of meaningful ways to
organize and examine the data. Let’s take a look at an example.
Example 1Example 1: Researchers investigated whether cancer pamphlets are written at an appropriate level to be read
and understood by cancer patients (Short, Moriarty, & Cooley, 1995). Tests of reading ability were given to 63
patients. In addition, readability level was determined for a samplesample of 30 pamphlets, based on characteristics such

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Testing these two variables reveal two fundamental aspects of statistical thinking:
Figure 2: Comparison of patient reading levels and pamphlet readability levels.
as the lengths of words and sentences in the pamphlet. The results, reported in terms of grade levels, are
displayed in Table 1.
Table 1. Frequency tables of patient reading levels and pamphlet readability levels.
• Data vary. More
specifically, values of a variable (such as reading level of a cancer patient or readability level of a cancer
pamphlet) vary.
• Analyzing the pattern of variation, called the distributiondistribution of the variable, often reveals insights.
Addressing the research question of whether the cancer pamphlets are written at appropriate levels for the cancer
patients requires comparing the two distributions. A naïve comparison might focus only on the centers of the
distributions. Both medians turn out to be ninth grade, but considering only medians ignores the variability and the
overall distributions of these data. A more illuminating approach is to compare the entire distributions, for example
with a graph, as in Figure 2.

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TRY ITTRY IT
Figure 2 makes clear that the two distributions are not well aligned at all. The most glaring discrepancy is that
many patients (17/63, or 27%, to be precise) have a reading level below that of the most readable pamphlet.
These patients will need help to understand the information provided in the cancer pamphlets. Notice that this
conclusion follows from considering the distributions as a whole, not simply measures of center or variability, and
that the graph contrasts those distributions more immediately than the frequency tables.
Statistical Significance
Even when we find patterns in data, often there is still uncertainty in various aspects of the data. For example,
there may be potential for measurement errors (even your own body temperature can fluctuate by almost 1°F
over the course of the day). Or we may only have a “snapshot” of observations from a more long-term process or
only a small subset of individuals from the populationpopulation of interest. In such cases, how can we determine whether
patterns we see in our small set of data is convincing evidence of a systematic phenomenon in the larger process
or population? Let’s take a look at another example.
Example 2Example 2: In a study reported in the November 2007 issue of Nature, researchers investigated whether pre-
verbal infants take into account an individual’s actions toward others in evaluating that individual as appealing or
aversive (Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom, 2007). In one component of the study, 10-month-old infants were shown a
“climber” character (a piece of wood with “googly” eyes glued onto it) that could not make it up a hill in two tries.
Then the infants were shown two scenarios for the climber’s next try, one where the climber was pushed to the
top of the hill by another character (“helper”), and one where the climber was pushed back down the hill by
another character (“hinderer”). The infant was alternately shown these two scenarios several times. Then the
infant was presented with two pieces of wood (representing the helper and the hinderer characters) and asked to
pick one to play with.
The researchers found that of the 16 infants who made a clear choice, 14 chose to play with the helper toy. One
possible explanation for this clear majority result is that the helping behavior of the one toy increases the infants’
likelihood of choosing that toy. But are there other possible explanations? What about the color of the toy? Well,
prior to collecting the data, the researchers arranged so that each color and shape (red square and blue circle)
would be seen by the same number of infants. Or maybe the infants had right-handed tendencies and so picked
whichever toy was closer to their right hand?
Well, prior to collecting the data, the researchers arranged it so half the infants saw the helper toy on the right and
half on the left. Or, maybe the shapes of these wooden characters (square, triangle, circle) had an effect?
Perhaps, but again, the researchers controlled for this by rotating which shape was the helper toy, the hinderer
toy, and the climber. When designing experiments, it is important to control for as many variables as might affect
the responses as possible. It is beginning to appear that the researchers accounted for all the other plausible
explanations. But there is one more important consideration that cannot be controlled—if we did the study again
with these 16 infants, they might not make the same choices. In other words, there is some randomness inherent
in their selection process.
P-value
Maybe each infant had no genuine preference at all, and it was simply “random luck” that led to 14 infants picking
the helper toy. Although this random component cannot be controlled, we can apply a probability model to
investigate the pattern of results that would occur in the long run if random chance were the only factor.
If the infants were equally likely to pick between the two toys, then each infant had a 50% chance of picking the
helper toy. It’s like each infant tossed a coin, and if it landed heads, the infant picked the helper toy. So if we

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TRY ITTRY IT
tossed a coin 16 times, could it land heads 14 times? Sure, it’s possible, but it turns out to be very unlikely.
Getting 14 (or more) heads in 16 tosses is about as likely as tossing a coin and getting 9 heads in a row. This
probability is referred to as a p-valuep-value. The p-value represents the likelihood that experimental results happened by
chance. Within psychology, the most common standard for p-values is “p < .05”. What this means is that there is less than a 5% probability that the results happened just by random chance, and therefore a 95% probability that the results reflect a meaningful pattern in human psychology. We call this statistical significancestatistical significance. So, in the study above, if we assume that each infant was choosing equally, then the probability that 14 or more out of 16 infants would choose the helper toy is found to be 0.0021. We have only two logical possibilities: either the infants have a genuine preference for the helper toy, or the infants have no preference (50/50) and an outcome that would occur only 2 times in 1,000 iterations happened in this study. Because this p-value of 0.0021 is quite small, we conclude that the study provides very strong evidence that these infants have a genuine preference for the helper toy. If we compare the p-value to some cut-off value, like 0.05, we see that the p=value is smaller. Because the p- value is smaller than that cut-off value, then we reject the hypothesis that only random chance was at play here. In this case, these researchers would conclude that significantly more than half of the infants in the study chose the helper toy, giving strong evidence of a genuine preference for the toy with the helping behavior. Figure 3. Generalizability is an important research consideration: The results of studies with widely representative samples are more likely to generalize to the population. [Image: Barnacles Budget Accommodation] An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1892 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1892 TRY ITTRY IT Generalizability One limitation to the study mentioned previously about the babies choosing the “helper” toy is that the conclusion only applies to the 16 infants in the study. We don’t know much about how those 16 infants were selected. Suppose we want to select a subset of individuals (a samplesample) from a much larger group of individuals (the populationpopulation) in such a way that conclusions from the sample can be generalizedgeneralized to the larger population. This is the question faced by pollsters every day. Example 3Example 3: The General Social Survey (GSS) is a survey on societal trends conducted every other year in the United States. Based on a sample of about 2,000 adult Americans, researchers make claims about what percentage of the U.S. population consider themselves to be “liberal,” what percentage consider themselves “happy,” what percentage feel “rushed” in their daily lives, and many other issues. The key to making these claims about the larger population of all American adults lies in how the sample is selected. The goal is to select a sample that is representative of the population, and a common way to achieve this goal is to select a random samplerandom sample that gives every member of the population an equal chance of being selected for the sample. In its simplest form, random sampling involves numbering every member of the population and then using a computer to randomly select the subset to be surveyed. Most polls don’t operate exactly like this, but they do use probability-based sampling methods to select individuals from nationally representative panels. In 2004, the GSS reported that 817 of 977 respondents (or 83.6%) indicated that they always or sometimes feel rushed. This is a clear majority, but we again need to consider variation due to random sampling. Fortunately, we can use the same probability model we did in the previous example to investigate the probable size of this error. (Note, we can use the coin-tossing model when the actual population size is much, much larger than the sample size, as then we can still consider the probability to be the same for every individual in the sample.) This probability model predicts that the sample result will be within 3 percentage points of the population value (roughly 1 over the square root of the sample size, the margin of errormargin of error). A statistician would conclude, with 95% confidence, that between 80.6% and 86.6% of all adult Americans in 2004 would have responded that they sometimes or always feel rushed. The key to the margin of error is that when we use a probability sampling method, we can make claims about how often (in the long run, with repeated random sampling) the sample result would fall within a certain distance from the unknown population value by chance (meaning by random sampling variation) alone. Conversely, non- random samples are often suspect to bias, meaning the sampling method systematically over-represents some segments of the population and under-represents others. We also still need to consider other sources of bias, such as individuals not responding honestly. These sources of error are not measured by the margin of error. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/17150423/generalizability https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/17150423/generalizability Figure 4. Creativity scores separated by type of motivation. Cause and Effect Conclusions In many research studies, the primary question of interest concerns differences between groups. Then the question becomes how were the groups formed (e.g., selecting people who already drink coffee vs. those who don’t). In some studies, the researchers actively form the groups themselves. But then we have a similar question—could any differences we observe in the groups be an artifact of that group-formation process? Or maybe the difference we observe in the groups is so large that we can discount a “fluke” in the group-formation process as a reasonable explanation for what we find? Example 4Example 4: A psychology study investigated whether people tend to display more creativity when they are thinking about intrinsic (internal) or extrinsic (external) motivations (Ramsey & Schafer, 2002, based on a study by Amabile, 1985). The subjects were 47 people with extensive experience with creative writing. Subjects began by answering survey questions about either intrinsic motivations for writing (such as the pleasure of self-expression) or extrinsic motivations (such as public recognition). Then all subjects were instructed to write a haiku, and those poems were evaluated for creativity by a panel of judges. The researchers conjectured beforehand that subjects who were thinking about intrinsic motivations would display more creativity than subjects who were thinking about extrinsic motivations. The creativity scores from the 47 subjects in this study are displayed in Figure 4, where higher scores indicate more creativity. In this example, the key question is whether the type of motivation affects creativity scores. In particular, do subjects who were asked about intrinsic motivations tend to have higher creativity scores than subjects who were asked about extrinsic motivations? Figure 4 reveals that both motivation groups saw considerable variability in creativity scores, and these scores have considerable overlap between the groups. In other words, it’s certainly not always the case that those with extrinsic motivations have higher creativity than those with intrinsic motivations, but there may still be a statistical tendency in this direction. (Psychologist Keith Stanovich (2013) refers to people’s difficulties with thinking about such probabilistic tendencies as “the Achilles heel of human cognition.”) The mean creativity score is 19.88 for the intrinsic group, compared to 15.74 for the extrinsic group, which supports the researchers’ conjecture. Yet comparing only the means of the two groups fails to consider the variability of creativity scores in the groups. We can measure variability with statistics using, for instance, the standard deviation: 5.25 for the extrinsic group and 4.40 for the intrinsic group. The standard deviations tell us that most of the creativity scores are within about 5 points of the mean score in each group. We see that the mean score for the intrinsic group lies within one standard deviation of the mean score for extrinsic group. So, although there is a tendency for the creativity scores to be higher in the intrinsic group, on average, the difference is not extremely large. We again want to consider possible explanations for this difference. The study only involved individuals with extensive creative writing experience. Although this limits the population to which we can generalize, it does not explain why the mean creativity score was a bit larger for the intrinsic group than for the extrinsic group. Maybe women tend to receive higher creativity scores? Here is where we need to focus on how the individuals were assigned to the motivation groups. If only women were in the intrinsic motivation group and only men in the extrinsic group, then this would present a problem because we wouldn’t know if the intrinsic group did better because of the different type of motivation or because they were women. However, the researchers guarded against such a problem by randomly assigning the individuals to the motivation groups. Like flipping a coin, each individual was just as likely to be assigned to either type of motivation. Why is this helpful? Because this randomrandom Figure 5. Differences in group means under random assignment alone. THE REPLICATION CRISISTHE REPLICATION CRISIS In recent years, there has been increased effort in the sciences (psychology, medicine, economics, etc.) to redo previous experiments to test their reliability. The findings have been disappointing at times. The Reproducibility Project has attempted to replicate 100 studies within the field of psychology that were published with statistically significant results; they found that many of these results did not replicate well (only 39% produced the same results as the original study). Some did not reach statistical significance when replicated. Others reached statistical significance, but with much weaker effects than in the original study. How could this happen? assignmentassignment tends to balance out all the variables related to creativity we can think of, and even those we don’t think of in advance, between the two groups. So we should have a similar male/female split between the two groups; we should have a similar age distribution between the two groups; we should have a similar distribution of educational background between the two groups; and so on. Random assignment should produce groups that are as similar as possible except for the type of motivation, which presumably eliminates all those other variables as possible explanations for the observed tendency for higher scores in the intrinsic group. But does this always work? No, so by “luck of the draw” the groups may be a little different prior to answering the motivation survey. So then the question is, is it possible that an unlucky random assignment is responsible for the observed difference in creativity scores between the groups? In other words, suppose each individual’s poem was going to get the same creativity score no matter which group they were assigned to, that the type of motivation in no way impacted their score. Then how often would the random-assignment process alone lead to a difference in mean creativity scores as large (or larger) than 19.88 – 15.74 = 4.14 points? We again want to apply to a probability model to approximate a p-valuep-value, but this time the model will be a bit different. Think of writing everyone’s creativity scores on an index card, shuffling up the index cards, and then dealing out 23 to the extrinsic motivation group and 24 to the intrinsic motivation group, and finding the difference in the group means. We (better yet, the computer) can repeat this process over and over to see how often, when the scores don’t change, random assignment leads to a difference in means at least as large as 4.41. Figure 5 shows the results from 1,000 such hypothetical random assignments for these scores. Only 2 of the 1,000 simulated random assignments produced a difference in group means of 4.41 or larger. In other words, the approximate p-value is 2/1000 = 0.002. This small p-value indicates that it would be very surprising for the random assignment process alone to produce such a large difference in group means. Therefore, as with Example 4, we have strong evidence that focusing on intrinsic motivations tends to increase creativity scores, as compared to thinking about extrinsic motivations. Notice that the previous statement implies a cause- and-effect relationship between motivation and creativity score; is such a strong conclusion justified? Yes, because of the random assignment used in the study. That should have balanced out any other variables between the two groups, so now that the small p-value convinces us that the higher mean in the intrinsic group wasn’t just a coincidence, the only reasonable explanation left is the difference in the type of motivation. Can we generalize this conclusion to everyone? Not necessarily—we could cautiously generalize this conclusion to individuals with extensive experience in creative writing similar the individuals in this study, but we would still want to know more about how these individuals were selected to participate. https://osf.io/ezcuj/ • ChanceChance. Psychologist use statistics to confirm that their results did not occur simply because of chance (Within psychology, the most common standard for p-values is “p < .05”. What this means is that there is less than a 5% probability that the results happened just by random chance, and therefore a 95% probability that a results reflects a meaningful pattern in human psychology. We call this statistical significance.) Even though a published study may reveal statistically significant results, there is still a possibility that those results were random. • Publication bias.Publication bias. Psychology research journals are far more likely to publish studies that find statistically significant results than they are studies that fail to find statistically significant results. What this means is that studies that yield results that are not statistically significant are very unlikely to get published. Let’s say that twenty researchers are all studying the same phenomenon. Out of the twenty, one gets statistically significant results, while the other nineteen all get non-significant results. The statistically significant result was likely just a result of randomness, but because of publication bias, that one study’s results are far more likely to be published than are the results of the other nineteen. Note that this “replication crisis” itself does not mean that the original studies were bad, fraudulent, or even wrong. What it means, at its core, is that replication found results that were different from the results of the original studies. These results were sufficiently different that we might no longer be secure in our knowledge of what those results mean. Further replication and testing in other directions might give us a better understanding of why the results were different, but that too will require time and resources. Figure 6. Researchers employ the scientific method that involves a great deal of statistical thinking: generate a hypothesis –> design a study to test that hypothesis –>
conduct the study –> analyze the data –> report the
results. [Image: widdowquinn]
Conclusion
Statistical thinking involves the careful design of a study to
collect meaningful data to answer a focused research
question, detailed analysis of patterns in the data, and
drawing conclusions that go beyond the observed data.
Random sampling is paramount to generalizing results from
our sample to a larger population, and random assignment
is key to drawing cause-and-effect conclusions. With both
kinds of randomness, probability models help us assess
how much random variation we can expect in our results, in
order to determine whether our results could happen by
chance alone and to estimate a margin of error.
So where does this leave us with regard to the coffee study
mentioned previously (the Freedman, Park, Abnet,
Hollenbeck, & Sinha, 2012 found that men who drank at
least six cups of coffee a day had a 10% lower chance of
dying (women 15% lower) than those who drank none)? We
can answer many of the questions:
• This was a 14-year study conducted by
researchers at the National Cancer Institute.
• The results were published in the June issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, a respected, peer-
reviewed journal.
• The study reviewed coffee habits of more than 402,000 people ages 50 to 71 from six states and two
metropolitan areas. Those with cancer, heart disease, and stroke were excluded at the start of the study.
Coffee consumption was assessed once at the start of the study.
• About 52,000 people died during the course of the study.
• People who drank between two and five cups of coffee daily showed a lower risk as well, but the amount
of reduction increased for those drinking six or more cups.
• The sample sizes were fairly large and so the p-values are quite small, even though percent reduction in
risk was not extremely large (dropping from a 12% chance to about 10%–11%).
• Whether coffee was caffeinated or decaffeinated did not appear to affect the results.
• This was an observational study, so no cause-and-effect conclusions can be drawn between coffee
drinking and increased longevity, contrary to the impression conveyed by many news headlines about
this study. In particular, it’s possible that those with chronic diseases don’t tend to drink coffee.

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LEARN MORELEARN MORE
Explore these outside resources to learn more about applied statistics:
• Video about p-values: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVMVGHkt2cg
• Interactive web applets for teaching and learning statistics include the collection
at http://www.rossmanchance.com/applets/
• Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/index.html
• The Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics https://www.causeweb.org/
GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
cause-and-effect:cause-and-effect: related to whether we say one variable is causing changes in the other variable, versus other
variables that may be related to these two variables.
distributiondistribution: the pattern of variation in data
generalizabilitygeneralizability: related to whether the results from the sample can be generalized to a larger population.
populationpopulation: a larger collection of individuals that we would like to generalize our results to
p-valuep-value: the probability of observing a particular outcome in a sample, or more extreme, under a conjecture
about the larger population or process
random assignmentrandom assignment: using a probability-based method to divide a sample into treatment groups.
random samplingrandom sampling: using a probability-based method to select a subset of individuals for the sample from the
population.
reliability:reliability: consistency and reproducibility of a given result
samplesample: the collection of individuals on which we collect data
statisticstatistic: a numerical result computed from a sample (e.g., mean, proportion)
statistical significancestatistical significance: a result is statistically significant if it is unlikely to arise by chance alone
validity:validity: accuracy of a given result in measuring what it is designed to measure
margin of errormargin of error: the expected amount of random variation in a statistic; often defined for 95% confidence level.
This study needs to be reviewed in the larger context of similar studies and consistency of results across studies,
with the constant caution that this was not a randomized experiment. Whereas a statistical analysis can still
“adjust” for other potential confounding variables, we are not yet convinced that researchers have identified them
all or completely isolated why this decrease in death risk is evident. Researchers can now take the findings of this
study and develop more focused studies that address new questions.
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Find a recent research article in your field and answer the following: What was the primary research
question? How were individuals selected to participate in the study? Were summary results provided?
How strong is the evidence presented in favor or against the research question? Was random
assignment used? Summarize the main conclusions from the study, addressing the issues of
statistical significance, statistical confidence, generalizability, and cause and effect. Do you agree with
the conclusions drawn from this study, based on the study design and the results presented?
• Is it reasonable to use a random sample of 1,000 individuals to draw conclusions about all U.S.
adults? Explain why or why not.

http://www.rossmanchance.com/applets/

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/index.html

https://www.causeweb.org/

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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch this video for an explanation on how to read scholarly articles. Look closely at the example article shared
just before the two minute mark.
Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions
CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original
• Outcome introduction. Authored byAuthored by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution
• The Replication Crisis in Psychology. Authored byAuthored by: Colin Thomas William. Provided byProvided by: Ivy Tech Community College. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution
• Modification to The Replication Crisis. Authored byAuthored by: Pat Carroll and Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution
CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously
• histogram. Authored byAuthored by: Fisher’s Iris flower data set. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/DC/Statistics_Edit-a-thon#/media/File:Fisher_iris_versicolor_sepalwidth.svg.
LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Analyzing Findings. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.48:mfArybye@7/Analyzing-Findings. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution
• Statistical Thinking. Authored byAuthored by: Beth Chance and Allan Rossman . Provided byProvided by: California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/modules/statistical-thinking. ProjectProject: The
Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. License TermsLicense Terms: http://nobaproject.com/license-agreement
HOW TO READ RESEARCH
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe the basic structure of a psychological research article
In this course and throughout your academic career, you’ll be reading journal articles (meaning they were
published by experts in a peer-reviewed journal) and reports that explain psychological research. It’s important to
understand the format of these articles so that you can read them strategically and understand the information
presented. Scientific articles vary in content or structure, depending on the type of journal to which they will be
submitted. Psychological articles and many papers in the social sciences follow the writing guidelines and format
dictated by the American Psychological Association (APA). In general, the structure follows: abstract, introduction,
methods, results, discussion, and references.
• AbstractAbstract: the abstract is the concise summary of the article. It summarizes the most important features of
the manuscript, providing the reader with a global first impression on the article. It is generally just one
paragraph that explains the experiment as well as a short synopsis of the results.
• IntroductionIntroduction: this section provides background information about the origin and purpose of performing
the experiment or study. It reviews previous research and presents existing theories on the topic.
• MethodMethod: this section covers the methodologies used to investigate the research question, including the
identification of participants, procedures, and materials as well as a description of the actual procedure.
It should be sufficiently detailed to allow for replication.
• ResultsResults: the results section presents key findings of the research, including reference to indicators of
statistical significance.
• DiscussionDiscussion: this section provides an interpretation of the findings, states their significance for current
research, and derives implications for theory and practice. Alternative interpretations for findings are also
provided, particularly when it is not possible to conclude for the directionality of the effects. In the
discussion, authors also acknowledge the strengths and limitations/weaknesses of the study and offer
concrete directions about for future research.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/DC/Statistics_Edit-a-thon#/media/File:Fisher_iris_versicolor_sepalwidth.svg

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.48:mfArybye@7/Analyzing-Findings

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

http://nobaproject.com/modules/statistical-thinking

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/10/

Practice identifying these key components in the following experiment: Food-Induced Emotional Resonance
Improves Emotion Recognition.
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WATCHING TV IS RELATED TO MATH ABILITYWATCHING TV IS RELATED TO MATH ABILITY
Television is often criticized for having a negative impact on our youth. Everything from aggressive behavior
to obesity in children seems to be blamed on their television viewing habits. On the other hand, TV also
provides us with much of our news and entertainment, and has become a major source of education for
children, with shows like Sesame Street teaching children to count and say the alphabet.
Recently, researchers Ian McAtee and Leo Geraci at Harvard University did some research to examine if TV
watching might have beneficial effects on cognition. The approach was fairly simple. Children between the
ages of 12-14 were either asked to watch a television sitcom or do arithmetic problems, and while they were
doing these activities, images of their brains were recorded using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance
imaging). This technique measures the flow of blood to specific parts of the brain during performance,
allowing scientists to create images of the areas that are activated during cognition.
TRY ITTRY IT
Please rate whether you agree or disagree with the following statements about the article. There are no
correct answers.
TRY ITTRY IT
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe replication and its importance to psychology
This is a little difficult for a psychologist to ask, but here goes: when you think of a “science” which one of these
is more likely to come to mind: physics or psychology?
We suspect you chose “physics” (though we don’t have the data, so maybe not!).
Despite the higher “status” of physics and chemistry in the world of science over psychology, good scientific
reasoning is just as important in psychology. Valid logic, careful methodology, strong results, and empirically
supported conclusions should be sought after regardless of the topic area.
We would like to you to exercise your scientific reasoning using the example below. Read the passage
“Watching TV is Related to Math Ability” and answer a few questions afterwards.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0167462

Results revealed that similar areas of the parietal lobes were
active during TV watching (the red area of the brain image on the
top) and during arithmetic solving (the red area of the brain image
on the bottom). This area of the brain has been implicated in other
research as being important for abstract thought, suggesting that
both TV watching and arithmetic processing may have beneficial
effects on cognition. “We were somewhat surprised that TV
watching would activate brain areas involved in higher-order
thought processes because TV watching is typically considered a
passive activity,” said McAtee. Added Geraci, “The next step is to
see what specific content on the TV show led to the pattern of
activation that mimicked math performance, so we need to better
understand that aspect of the data. We also need to compare TV
watching to other types of cognitive skills, like reading
comprehension and writing.” Although this is only the beginning to
this type of research, these findings certainly question the
accepted wisdom that the “idiot box” is harmful to children’s
cognitive functioning.
The article was well written.
strongly agree
disagree
agree
strongly agree
The title, “Watching TV is Related to Math Ability” was a good description of the results.
strongly agree
disagree
agree
strongly agree
The scientific argument in the article made sense.
strongly agree
disagree
agree
strongly agree
It is pretty surprising to learn that watching television can improve your math ability, and the fact that we can
identify the area in the brain that produces this relationship shows how far psychology has progressed as a
science.
Or maybe not.
The article you just read and rated was not an account of real research. Ian McAtee and Leo Geraci are not real
people and the study discussed was never conducted (as far as we know). The article was written by
psychologists David McCabe and Alan Castel for a study they published in 2008. (Note: David P. McCabe &
Alan D. Castel (2008). Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning.

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TRY ITTRY IT
Cognition, 107, 343-352.) They asked people to do exactly what you just did: read this article and two others
and rate them.
McCabe and Castel wondered if people’s biases about science influence the way they judge the information
they read. In other words, if what you are reading looks more scientific, do you assume it is better science?
In recent years, neuroscience has impressed a lot of people as “real science,” when compared to the “soft
science” of psychology. Did you notice the pictures of the brain next to the article that you just read? Do you
think that picture had any influence on your evaluation of the scientific quality of the article? The brain pictures
actually added no new information that was not already in the article itself other than showing you exactly
where in the brain the relevant part of the parietal lobe is located. The red marks are in the same locations in
both brain pictures, but we already knew that “Results revealed that similar areas in the parietal lobes were
active during TV watching…and during arithmetic solving.”
The McCabe & Castel Experiment
McCabe and Castel wrote three brief (fake) scientific articles that appeared to be typical reports like those you
might find in a textbook or news source, all with brain activity as part of the story. In addition to the one you
read (“Watching TV is related to math ability “) others had these titles: “Meditation enhances creative thought”
and “Playing video games benefits attention.”
All of the articles had flawed scientific reasoning. In the “Watching TV is Related to Math Ability” article that you
read, the only “result” that is reported is that a particular brain area (a part of the parietal lobe) is active when a
person is watching TV and when he or she is working on math. The highlighted part of the next sentence is
where the article goes too far: “This area of the brain has been implicated in other research as being important
for abstract thought, suggesting that both tv watching and arithmetic processing may have beneficial effects onsuggesting that both tv watching and arithmetic processing may have beneficial effects on
cognitioncognition.”
The fact that the same area of the brain is active for two different activities does not “suggest” that either one is
beneficial or that there is any interesting similarity in mental or brain activity between the processes. The final
part of the article goes on and on about how this supposedly surprising finding is intriguing and deserves
extensive exploration.
The researchers asked 156 college students to read the three articles and rate them for how much they made
sense scientifically, as well as rating the quality of the writing and the accuracy of the title.
Everybody read exactly the same articles, but the picture that accompanied the article differed according to
create three experimental conditions. For the article in the brain image condition, subjects saw one of the
following brain images to the side of the article:
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Figure 1. Subjects in the experimental condition were shown ONE of the applicable brain images with each article they read.
Graphs are a common and effective way to display results in science and other areas, but most people are so
used to seeing graphs that (according to McCabe and Castel) people should be less impressed by them than
by brain images. The figures below show the graphs that accompanied the three articles for the bar graph
condition. The results shown in the graphs were made up by the experimenters, but what they show is
consistent with the information in the article.
Figure 2. Participants in the bar graph condition were shown ONE of the bar graphs with each article they read.
Finally, in the control condition, the article was presented without any accompanying figure or picture. The
control condition tells us how the subjects rate the articles without any extraneous, but potentially biasing,
illustrations.
The Procedure
Each participant read all three articles: one with a brain image, one with a bar graph, and one without any
illustration (the control condition). Across all the participants, each article was presented approximately the
same number of times in each condition, and the order in which the articles were presented was randomized.

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The Ratings
Immediately after reading each article, the participants rated their agreement with three statements: (a) The
article was well written, (b) The title was a good description of the results, and (c) The scientific reasoning in the
article made sense. Each rating was on a 4-point scale: (score=1) strongly disagree, (score=2) disagree,
(score=3) agree, and (score=4) strongly agree. Remember that the written part of the articles was exactly the
same in all three conditions, so the ratings should have been the same if people were not using the illustrations
to influence their conclusions.
Before going on, let’s make sure you know the basic design of this experiment. In other words, can you identify
the critical variables used in the study according to their function?
Results
RESULTS FOR (A) ACCURACY OF THE TITLE AND (B) QUALITY OF THERESULTS FOR (A) ACCURACY OF THE TITLE AND (B) QUALITY OF THE
WRITINGWRITING
The first two questions for the participants were about (a) the accuracy of the title and (b) the quality of the
writing. These questions were included to assure that the participants had read the articles closely. The
experimenters expected that there would be no differences in the ratings for the three conditions for these
questions. For the question about the title, their prediction was correct. Subjects gave about the same rating to
the titles in all three conditions, agreeing that it was accurate.
For question (b) about the quality of the writing, the experimenters found that the two conditions with
illustrations (the brain images and the bar graphs) were rated higher than the control condition. Apparently just
the presence of an illustration made the writing seem better. This result was not predicted.
RESULTS FOR (C) SCIENTIFIC REASONING ASSESSMENTRESULTS FOR (C) SCIENTIFIC REASONING ASSESSMENT
The main hypothesis behind this study was that subjects would rate the quality of the scientific reasoning in the
article higher when it was accompanied by a brain image than when there was a bar graph or there was no
illustration at all. If the ratings differed among conditions, then the illustrations—which added nothing substantial
that was not in the writing—had to be the cause.

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Use the graph below to show your predicted results of the experiment. Move the bars to the point where you
think people generally agreed or disagreed with the statement that “the scientific reasoning in the article
made sense.” Higher bars mean that the person believes the reasoning in the article is better, and a lower
bar means that they judge the reasoning as worse. Click on “Show Results” when you are done to compare
your prediction with the actual results.
AnswerAnswer
RESULTS: The results supported the experimenters’ prediction. The scientific reasoning for the Brain Image
condition was rated as significantly higher than for either other condition. There was no significant difference
between the Bar Graph condition and the Control condition. Here is a graph of the results:
Conclusions
McCabe and Castel conducted two more experiments, changing the stories, the images, and the wording of the
questions in each. Across the three experiments, they tested almost 400 college students and their results were
consistent: participants rated the quality of scientific reasoning higher when the writing was accompanied by a
brain image than in other conditions.
The implications of this study go beyond brain images. The deeper idea is that any information that symbolizes
something we believe is important can influence our thinking, sometimes making us less thoughtful than we
might otherwise be. This other information could be a brain image or some statistical jargon that sounds
impressive or a mathematical formula that we don’t understand or a statement that the author teaches at
Harvard University rather than Littletown State College.
In a study also published in 2008, Deena Weisberg and her colleagues at Yale University conducted a study
similar to the one you just read. (Note: Deena Skolnick Weisberg, Frank C. Keil, Joshua Goodstein, Elizabeth
Rawson, & Jeremy R. Gray (2008). The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Journal of Cognitive
Neuroscience, 20(3), 470-477) Weisberg had people read brief descriptions of psychological phenomena
(involving memory, attention, reasoning, emotion, and other similar topics). They rated the scientific quality of
the explanations. Instead of images, Weisberg had some explanations that included entirely superfluous and
useless brain information (e.g., “people feel strong emotion because the amygdala processes emotion”) or no
such brain information. Weisberg found that a good explanation was rated as even better when it included a
brain reference (which was completely irrelevant). When the explanation was flawed, students were fairly good

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at catching the reasoning problems UNLESS the explanation contained the irrelevant brain reference. In that
case, the students rated the flawed explanations as being good. Weinstein and her colleague call the problem
“the seductive allure of neuroscience explanations.”
Does it Replicate? The Messy World of Real ScienceDoes it Replicate? The Messy World of Real Science
A few years after the McCabe and Castel study was published, some psychologists (Note: Robert B. Michael,
Eryn J. Newman, Matti Vuorre, Geoff Cumming, and Maryanne Garry (2013). On the (non)persuasive power of
a brain image. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20(4), 720-725.) at the University of Victoria in New Zealand,
led by Robert Michael, were intrigued by the results and they were impressed by how frequently the paper had
been cited by other researchers (about 40 citations per year between 2008 and 2012—a reasonably strong
citation record). They wanted to explore the brain image effect, so they started by simply replicating the original
study. (Note: They actually tried to replicate Experiment 3 in the McCabe and Castel study. You read
Experiment 1. These two experiments were similar and supported the same conclusions, but Dr. Michael and
his colleagues preferred Experiment 3 for some technical reasons.)
In their first attempt at replication, the researchers recruited and tested people using an online site called
Mechanical Turk. With 197 participants, they found no hint of an effect of the brain image on people’s
judgments about the validity of the conclusions of the article they read. In a second replication study, they
tested students from their university and again found no statistically significant effect. In this second attempt,
the results were in the predicted direction (the presence of a brain image was associated with higher ratings),
but the differences were not strong enough to be persuasive. They tried slight variations on instructions and
people recruited, but across 10 different replication studies, only one produced a statistically significant effect.
So, did Dr. Michael and his colleagues accuse McCabe and Castel of doing something wrong? Did they tear
apart the experiments we described earlier and show that they were poorly planned, incorrectly analyzed, or
interpreted in a deceptive way?
Not at all.
It is instructive to see how professional scientists approached the problem of failing to replicate a study. Here is
a quick review of the approach taken by the researchers who did not replicate the McCabe and Castel study:
• First, they did not question the integrity of the original research. David McCabe (Note: David McCabe,
the first author of the original paper, tragically passed away in 2011 at the age of 41. At the time of his
death, he was an assistant professor of Psychology at Colorado State University and he had started to
build a solid body of published research, and he was also married with two young children. The
problems with replicating his experiments were only published after his death, so it is impossible to
know what his thoughts might have been about the issues these challenges raised.) and Alan Castel
are respected researchers who carefully reported on a series of well-conducted experiments. They
even noted that the original paper was carefully reported, even if journalists and other psychologists
had occasionally exaggerated the findings: “Although McCabe and Castel (2008) did not overstate
their findings, many others have. Sometimes these overstatements were linguistic
exaggerations…Other overstatements made claims beyond what McCabe and Castel themselves
reported.” [p. 720]
• Replication is an essential part of the scientific process. Michael and his colleagues did not back off of
the importance of their difficulty reproducing the McCabe and Castel results. Clearly, McCabe and
Castel’s conclusions—that “there is something special about the brain images with respect to
influencing judgments of scientific credibility”—need to taken as possibly incorrect.
• Michael and his colleagues looked closely at the McCabe and Castel results and their own, and they
looked for interesting reasons that the results of the two sets of studies might be different.

THE “REPLICATION CRISIS”THE “REPLICATION CRISIS”
In recent years, there has been increased effort in the sciences (psychology, medicine, economics, etc.) to
redo previous experiments to test their reliability. The findings have been disappointing at times.
The Reproducibility Project has attempted to replicate 100 studies within the field of psychology that were
published with statistically significant results; they found that many of these results did not replicate well.
Some did not reach statistical significance when replicated. Others reached statistical significance, but with
much weaker effects than in the original study.
How could this happen?
• ChanceChance. Psychologist use statistics to confirm that their results did not occur simply because of
chance (Within psychology, the most common standard for p-values is “p < .05”. What this means is that there is less than a 5% probability that the results happened just by random chance, and therefore a 95% probability that a results reflects a meaningful pattern in human psychology. We call this statistical significance.) Even though a published study may reveal statistically significant results, there is still a possibility that those results were random. • Publication bias.Publication bias. Psychology research journals are far more likely to publish studies that find statistically significant results than they are studies that fail to find statistically significant results. What this means is that studies that yield results that are not statistically significant are very unlikely to get published. Let’s say that twenty researchers are all studying the same phenomenon. Out of the twenty, one gets statistically significant results, while the other nineteen all get non-significant results. The statistically significant result was likely just a result of randomness, but because of publication bias, that one study’s results are far more likely to be published than are the results of the other nineteen. Note that this “replication crisis” itself does not mean that the original studies were bad, fraudulent, or even wrong. What it means, at its core, is that replication found results that were different from the results of the original studies. These results were sufficiently different that we might no longer be secure in our knowledge of what those results mean. Further replication and testing in other directions might give us a better understanding of why the results were different, but that too will require time and resources. ▪ Subtle effectsSubtle effects: Perhaps the brain pictures really do influence their judgments, but only for some people or under very specific circumstances. ▪ Alternative explanationsAlternative explanations: Perhaps people assume that irrelevant information is not typically presented in scientific reports. People may have believed that the brain images provided additional evidence for the claims. ▪ Things have changedThings have changed: The McCabe and Castel study was conducted in 2008 and the failed replication was in 2013. Neuroscience as very new to the general public in 2008, but a mere 5 years later, in 2013, it may have seemed less impressive. Do images really directly affect people’s judgments of the quality of scientific thinking? Maybe yes. Maybe no. That’s still an open question. One Final Note When we wrote to Dr. Alan Castel for permission to use his stimuli in this article, he not only consented, but he also sent us his data and copies of all of his stimuli. He sent copies of research by a variety of people, some research that has supported his work with David McCabe and some that has not. He even included a copy of the 10-experiment paper that you just read about, the one that failed to replicate the McCabe and Castel study. The goal is to find the truth, not to insist that everything you publish is the last word on the topic. In fact, if it is the last word, then you are probably studying something so boring that no one else really cares. Scientists disagree with one another all the time. But the disagreements are (usually) not personal. The evidence is not always neat and tidy, and the best interpretation of complex results is seldom obvious. At its https://osf.io/ezcuj/ best, it is possible for scientists to disagree passionately about theory and evidence, and later to relax over a cool drink, laugh and talk about friends or sports or life and love. WATCHING TV IS RELATED TO MATH ABILITYWATCHING TV IS RELATED TO MATH ABILITY Television is often criticized for having a negative impact on our youth. Everything from aggressive behavior to obesity in children seems to be blamed on their television viewing habits. On the other hand, TV also provides us with much of our news and entertainment, and has become a major source of education for children, with shows like Sesame Street teaching children to count and say the alphabet. Recently, researchers Ian McAtee and Leo Geraci at Harvard University did some research to examine if TV watching might have beneficial effects on cognition. The approach was fairly simple. Children between the ages of 12-14 were either asked to watch a television sitcom or do arithmetic problems, and while they were doing these activities, images of their brains were recorded using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). This technique measures the flow of blood to specific parts of the brain during performance, allowing scientists to create images of the areas that are activated during cognition. Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Brain Imaging and Messy Science. Authored byAuthored by: Patrick Carroll for Lumen Learning. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Reading a Scientific Paper for Psychology and the Social Sciences: A Critical Guide. Authored byAuthored by: Pedro Cordeiro, Victor E. C. Ortuu00f1o, Maria Paula Paixu00e3o, Jou00e3o Maru00f4co. Provided byProvided by: Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Coimbra. Located atLocated at: http://pch.psychopen.eu/article/view/136/html. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • What is a Scholarly Article? video. Provided byProvided by: Coastal Carolina University. Located atLocated at: http://www.coastal.edu/intranet/library/videos/browse.html. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike • The Replication Crisis. Authored byAuthored by: Colin Thomas William. Provided byProvided by: Ivy Tech Community College. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning. Authored byAuthored by: David P. McCabe & Alan D. Castel (2008). Provided byProvided by: Cognition. LicenseLicense: All Rights Reserved. License TermsLicense Terms: Used with permission from Alan Castel PSYCH IN REAL LIFE: BRAIN IMAGING AND MESSY SCIENCE LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe replication and its importance to psychology This is a little difficult for a psychologist to ask, but here goes: when you think of a “science” which one of these is more likely to come to mind: physics or psychology? We suspect you chose “physics” (though we don’t have the data, so maybe not!). Despite the higher “status” of physics and chemistry in the world of science over psychology, good scientific reasoning is just as important in psychology. Valid logic, careful methodology, strong results, and empirically supported conclusions should be sought after regardless of the topic area. We would like to you to exercise your scientific reasoning using the example below. Read the passage “Watching TV is Related to Math Ability” and answer a few questions afterwards. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://pch.psychopen.eu/article/view/136/html https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://www.coastal.edu/intranet/library/videos/browse.html https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Results revealed that similar areas of the parietal lobes were active during TV watching (the red area of the brain image on the top) and during arithmetic solving (the red area of the brain image on the bottom). This area of the brain has been implicated in other research as being important for abstract thought, suggesting that both TV watching and arithmetic processing may have beneficial effects on cognition. “We were somewhat surprised that TV watching would activate brain areas involved in higher-order thought processes because TV watching is typically considered a passive activity,” said McAtee. Added Geraci, “The next step is to see what specific content on the TV show led to the pattern of activation that mimicked math performance, so we need to better understand that aspect of the data. We also need to compare TV watching to other types of cognitive skills, like reading comprehension and writing.” Although this is only the beginning to this type of research, these findings certainly question the accepted wisdom that the “idiot box” is harmful to children’s cognitive functioning. TRY ITTRY IT Please rate whether you agree or disagree with the following statements about the article. There are no correct answers. The article was well written. strongly agree disagree agree strongly agree The title, “Watching TV is Related to Math Ability” was a good description of the results. strongly agree disagree agree strongly agree The scientific argument in the article made sense. strongly agree disagree agree strongly agree It is pretty surprising to learn that watching television can improve your math ability, and the fact that we can identify the area in the brain that produces this relationship shows how far psychology has progressed as a science. Or maybe not. The article you just read and rated was not an account of real research. Ian McAtee and Leo Geraci are not real people and the study discussed was never conducted (as far as we know). The article was written by psychologists David McCabe and Alan Castel for a study they published in 2008. (Note: David P. McCabe & Alan https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/03123719/Screen-Shot-2017-08-03-at-7.32.47-AM1 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/03123719/Screen-Shot-2017-08-03-at-7.32.47-AM1 TRY ITTRY IT https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11316 D. Castel (2008). Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning. Cognition, 107, 343-352.) They asked people to do exactly what you just did: read this article and two others and rate them. McCabe and Castel wondered if people’s biases about science influence the way they judge the information they read. In other words, if what you are reading looks more scientific, do you assume it is better science? In recent years, neuroscience has impressed a lot of people as “real science,” when compared to the “soft science” of psychology. Did you notice the pictures of the brain next to the article that you just read? Do you think that picture had any influence on your evaluation of the scientific quality of the article? The brain pictures actually added no new information that was not already in the article itself other than showing you exactly where in the brain the relevant part of the parietal lobe is located. The red marks are in the same locations in both brain pictures, but we already knew that “Results revealed that similar areas in the parietal lobes were active during TV watching…and during arithmetic solving.” The McCabe & Castel Experiment McCabe and Castel wrote three brief (fake) scientific articles that appeared to be typical reports like those you might find in a textbook or news source, all with brain activity as part of the story. In addition to the one you read (“Watching TV is related to math ability “) others had these titles: “Meditation enhances creative thought” and “Playing video games benefits attention.” All of the articles had flawed scientific reasoning. In the “Watching TV is Related to Math Ability” article that you read, the only “result” that is reported is that a particular brain area (a part of the parietal lobe) is active when a person is watching TV and when he or she is working on math. The highlighted part of the next sentence is where the article goes too far: “This area of the brain has been implicated in other research as being important for abstract thought, suggesting that both tv watching and arithmetic processing may have beneficial effects onsuggesting that both tv watching and arithmetic processing may have beneficial effects on cognitioncognition.” The fact that the same area of the brain is active for two different activities does not “suggest” that either one is beneficial or that there is any interesting similarity in mental or brain activity between the processes. The final part of the article goes on and on about how this supposedly surprising finding is intriguing and deserves extensive exploration. The researchers asked 156 college students to read the three articles and rate them for how much they made sense scientifically, as well as rating the quality of the writing and the accuracy of the title. Everybody read exactly the same articles, but the picture that accompanied the article differed according to create three experimental conditions. For the article in the brain image condition, subjects saw one of the following brain images to the side of the article: Figure 1. Subjects in the experimental condition were shown ONE of the applicable brain images with each article they read. Graphs are a common and effective way to display results in science and other areas, but most people are so used to seeing graphs that (according to McCabe and Castel) people should be less impressed by them than by brain images. The figures below show the graphs that accompanied the three articles for the bar graph condition. The results shown in the graphs were made up by the experimenters, but what they show is consistent with the information in the article. Figure 2. Participants in the bar graph condition were shown ONE of the bar graphs with each article they read. Finally, in the control condition, the article was presented without any accompanying figure or picture. The control condition tells us how the subjects rate the articles without any extraneous, but potentially biasing, illustrations. The Procedure Each participant read all three articles: one with a brain image, one with a bar graph, and one without any illustration (the control condition). Across all the participants, each article was presented approximately the same number of times in each condition, and the order in which the articles were presented was randomized. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/03144210/image3 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/03144210/image3 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/03144302/image2 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/03144302/image2 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=5104 TRY ITTRY IT https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11317 TRY ITTRY IT Use the graph below to show your predicted results of the experiment. Move the bars to the point where you think people generally agreed or disagreed with the statement that “the scientific reasoning in the article made sense.” Higher bars mean that the person believes the reasoning in the article is better, and a lower bar means that they judge the reasoning as worse. Click on “Show Results” when you are done to compare your prediction with the actual results. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/brain_imaging.html AnswerAnswer The Ratings Immediately after reading each article, the participants rated their agreement with three statements: (a) The article was well written, (b) The title was a good description of the results, and (c) The scientific reasoning in the article made sense. Each rating was on a 4-point scale: (score=1) strongly disagree, (score=2) disagree, (score=3) agree, and (score=4) strongly agree. Remember that the written part of the articles was exactly the same in all three conditions, so the ratings should have been the same if people were not using the illustrations to influence their conclusions. Before going on, let’s make sure you know the basic design of this experiment. In other words, can you identify the critical variables used in the study according to their function? Results RESULTS FOR (a) ACCURACY OF THE TITLE AND (b) QUALITY OF THE WRITING The first two questions for the participants were about (a) the accuracy of the title and (b) the quality of the writing. These questions were included to assure that the participants had read the articles closely. The experimenters expected that there would be no differences in the ratings for the three conditions for these questions. For the question about the title, their prediction was correct. Subjects gave about the same rating to the titles in all three conditions, agreeing that it was accurate. For question (b) about the quality of the writing, the experimenters found that the two conditions with illustrations (the brain images and the bar graphs) were rated higher than the control condition. Apparently just the presence of an illustration made the writing seem better. This result was not predicted. RESULTS FOR (c) SCIENTIFIC REASONING ASSESSMENT The main hypothesis behind this study was that subjects would rate the quality of the scientific reasoning in the article higher when it was accompanied by a brain image than when there was a bar graph or there was no illustration at all. If the ratings differed among conditions, then the illustrations—which added nothing substantial that was not in the writing—had to be the cause. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/brain_imaging.html RESULTS: The results supported the experimenters’ prediction. The scientific reasoning for the Brain Image condition was rated as significantly higher than for either other condition. There was no significant difference between the Bar Graph condition and the Control condition. Here is a graph of the results: Conclusions McCabe and Castel conducted two more experiments, changing the stories, the images, and the wording of the questions in each. Across the three experiments, they tested almost 400 college students and their results were consistent: participants rated the quality of scientific reasoning higher when the writing was accompanied by a brain image than in other conditions. The implications of this study go beyond brain images. The deeper idea is that any information that symbolizes something we believe is important can influence our thinking, sometimes making us less thoughtful than we might otherwise be. This other information could be a brain image or some statistical jargon that sounds impressive or a mathematical formula that we don’t understand or a statement that the author teaches at Harvard University rather than Littletown State College. In a study also published in 2008, Deena Weisberg and her colleagues at Yale University conducted a study similar to the one you just read. (Note: Deena Skolnick Weisberg, Frank C. Keil, Joshua Goodstein, Elizabeth Rawson, & Jeremy R. Gray (2008). The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(3), 470-477) Weisberg had people read brief descriptions of psychological phenomena (involving memory, attention, reasoning, emotion, and other similar topics). They rated the scientific quality of the explanations. Instead of images, Weisberg had some explanations that included entirely superfluous and useless brain information (e.g., “people feel strong emotion because the amygdala processes emotion”) or no such brain information. Weisberg found that a good explanation was rated as even better when it included a brain reference (which was completely irrelevant). When the explanation was flawed, students were fairly good at catching the reasoning problems UNLESS the explanation contained the irrelevant brain reference. In that case, the students rated the flawed explanations as being good. Weinstein and her colleague call the problem “the seductive allure of neuroscience explanations.” Does it Replicate? The Messy World of Real Science A few years after the McCabe and Castel study was published, some psychologists (Note: Robert B. Michael, Eryn J. Newman, Matti Vuorre, Geoff Cumming, and Maryanne Garry (2013). On the (non)persuasive power of a brain image. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20(4), 720-725.) at the University of Victoria in New Zealand, led by Robert Michael, were intrigued by the results and they were impressed by how frequently the paper had been cited by other researchers (about 40 citations per year between 2008 and 2012—a reasonably strong citation record). They wanted to explore the brain image effect, so they started by simply replicating the original study. (Note: They actually tried to replicate Experiment 3 in the McCabe and Castel study. You read Experiment 1. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/03145755/image1 TRY ITTRY IT https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11320 These two experiments were similar and supported the same conclusions, but Dr. Michael and his colleagues preferred Experiment 3 for some technical reasons.) In their first attempt at replication, the researchers recruited and tested people using an online site called Mechanical Turk. With 197 participants, they found no hint of an effect of the brain image on people’s judgments about the validity of the conclusions of the article they read. In a second replication study, they tested students from their university and again found no statistically significant effect. In this second attempt, the results were in the predicted direction (the presence of a brain image was associated with higher ratings), but the differences were not strong enough to be persuasive. They tried slight variations on instructions and people recruited, but across 10 different replication studies, only one produced a statistically significant effect. So, did Dr. Michael and his colleagues accuse McCabe and Castel of doing something wrong? Did they tear apart the experiments we described earlier and show that they were poorly planned, incorrectly analyzed, or interpreted in a deceptive way? Not at all. It is instructive to see how professional scientists approached the problem of failing to replicate a study. Here is a quick review of the approach taken by the researchers who did not replicate the McCabe and Castel study: • First, they did not question the integrity of the original research. David McCabe (Note: David McCabe, the first author of the original paper, tragically passed away in 2011 at the age of 41. At the time of his death, he was an assistant professor of Psychology at Colorado State University and he had started to build a solid body of published research, and he was also married with two young children. The problems with replicating his experiments were only published after his death, so it is impossible to know what his thoughts might have been about the issues these challenges raised.) and Alan Castel are respected researchers who carefully reported on a series of well-conducted experiments. They even noted that the original paper was carefully reported, even if journalists and other psychologists had occasionally exaggerated the findings: “Although McCabe and Castel (2008) did not overstate their findings, many others have. Sometimes these overstatements were linguistic exaggerations…Other overstatements made claims beyond what McCabe and Castel themselves reported.” [p. 720] • Replication is an essential part of the scientific process. Michael and his colleagues did not back off of the importance of their difficulty reproducing the McCabe and Castel results. Clearly, McCabe and Castel’s conclusions—that “there is something special about the brain images with respect to influencing judgments of scientific credibility”—need to taken as possibly incorrect. • Michael and his colleagues looked closely at the McCabe and Castel results and their own, and they looked for interesting reasons that the results of the two sets of studies might be different. ▪ Subtle effectsSubtle effects: Perhaps the brain pictures really do influence their judgments, but only for some people or under very specific circumstances. ▪ Alternative explanationsAlternative explanations: Perhaps people assume that irrelevant information is not typically presented in scientific reports. People may have believed that the brain images provided additional evidence for the claims. ▪ Things have changedThings have changed: The McCabe and Castel study was conducted in 2008 and the failed replication was in 2013. Neuroscience as very new to the general public in 2008, but a mere 5 years later, in 2013, it may have seemed less impressive. Do images really directly affect people’s judgments of the quality of scientific thinking? Maybe yes. Maybe no. That’s still an open question. THE “REPLICATION CRISIS”THE “REPLICATION CRISIS” In recent years, there has been increased effort in the sciences (psychology, medicine, economics, etc.) to redo previous experiments to test their reliability. The findings have been disappointing at times. The Reproducibility Project has attempted to replicate 100 studies within the field of psychology that were published with statistically significant results; they found that many of these results did not replicate well. Some did not reach statistical significance when replicated. Others reached statistical significance, but with much weaker effects than in the original study. How could this happen? • ChanceChance. Psychologist use statistics to confirm that their results did not occur simply because of chance. Within psychology, the most common standard for p-values is “p < .05”. This p-value means that there is less than a 5% probability that the results of an experiment happened just by random chance, and a 95% probability that the results were statistically significant. Even though a published study may reveal statistically significant results, there is still a possibility that those results were random. • Publication bias.Publication bias. Psychology research journals are far more likely to publish studies that find statistically significant results than they are studies that fail to find statistically significant results. What this means is that studies that yield results that are not statistically significant are very unlikely to get published. Let’s say that twenty researchers are all studying the same phenomenon. Out of the twenty, one gets statistically significant results, while the other nineteen all get non-significant results. The statistically significant result was likely just a result of randomness, but because of publication bias, that one study’s results are far more likely to be published than are the results of the other nineteen. Note that this “replication crisis” itself does not mean that the original studies were bad, fraudulent, or even wrong. What it means, at its core, is that replication found results that were different from the results of the original studies. These results were sufficiently different that we might no longer be secure in our knowledge of what those results mean. Further replication and testing in other directions might give us a better understanding of why the results were different, but that too will require time and resources. One Final Note When we wrote to Dr. Alan Castel for permission to use his stimuli in this article, he not only consented, but he also sent us his data and copies of all of his stimuli. He sent copies of research by a variety of people, some research that has supported his work with David McCabe and some that has not. He even included a copy of the 10-experiment paper that you just read about, the one that failed to replicate the McCabe and Castel study. The goal is to find the truth, not to insist that everything you publish is the last word on the topic. In fact, if it is the last word, then you are probably studying something so boring that no one else really cares. Scientists disagree with one another all the time. But the disagreements are (usually) not personal. The evidence is not always neat and tidy, and the best interpretation of complex results is seldom obvious. At its best, it is possible for scientists to disagree passionately about theory and evidence, and later to relax over a cool drink, laugh and talk about friends or sports or life and love. Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Brain Imaging and Messy Science. Authored byAuthored by: Patrick Carroll for Lumen Learning. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • The Replication Crisis. Authored byAuthored by: Colin Thomas William. Provided byProvided by: Ivy Tech Community College. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning. Authored byAuthored by: David P. McCabe & Alan D. Castel (2008). Provided byProvided by: Cognition. LicenseLicense: All Rights Reserved. License TermsLicense Terms: Used with permission from Alan Castel https://osf.io/ezcuj/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1894 PUTTING IT TOGETHER: PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES In this module, you learned to • define and apply the scientific method to psychology • describe the strengths and weaknesses of descriptive, experimental, and correlational research • define the basic elements of a statistical investigation Psychologists use the scientific method to examine human behavior and mental processes. Some of the methods you learned about include descriptive, experimental, and correlational research designs. Watch the CrashCourse video to review the material you learned, then read through the following examples and see if you can come up with your own design for each type of study. Case Study:Case Study: a detailed analysis of a particular person, group, business, event, etc. This approach is commonly used to to learn more about rare examples with the goal of describing that particular thing. • Ted Bundy was one of America’s most notorious serial killers who murdered at least 30 women and was executed in 1989. Dr. Al Carlisle evaluated Bundy when he was first arrested and conducted a psychological analysis of Bundy’s development of his sexual fantasies merging into reality (Ramsland, 2012). Carlisle believes that there was a gradual evolution of three processes that guided his actions: fantasy, dissociation, and compartmentalization (Ramsland, 2012). Read Imagining Ted Bundy (http://goo.gl/rGqcUv) for more information on this case study. Naturalistic ObservationNaturalistic Observation: a researcher unobtrusively collects information without the participant’s awareness. • Drain and Engelhardt (2013) observed six nonverbal children with autism’s evoked and spontaneous communicative acts. Each of the children attended a school for children with autism and were in different classes. They were observed for 30 minutes of each school day. By observing these children without them knowing, they were able to see true communicative acts without any external influences. SurveySurvey: participants are asked to provide information or responses to questions on a survey or structure assessment. • Educational psychologists can ask students to report their grade point average and what, if anything, they eat for breakfast on an average day. A healthy breakfast has been associated with better academic performance (Digangi’s 1999). Archival research:Archival research: researchers examine data that has already been collected for other purposes. • Anderson (1987) tried to find the relationship between uncomfortably hot temperatures and aggressive behavior, which was then looked at with two studies done on violent and nonviolent crime. Based on previous research that had been done by Anderson and Anderson (1984), it was predicted that violent crimes would be more prevalent during the hotter time of year and the years in which it was hotter weather in general. The study confirmed this prediction. Longitudinal Study:Longitudinal Study: researchers recruit a sample of participants and track them for an extended period of time. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shadow-boxing/201208/imagining-ted-bundy https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shadow-boxing/201208/imagining-ted-bundy • In a study of a representative sample of 856 children Eron and his colleagues (1972) found that a boy’s exposure to media violence at age eight was significantly related to his aggressive behavior ten years later, after he graduated from high school. Cross-Sectional Study:Cross-Sectional Study: researchers gather participants from different groups (commonly different ages) and look for differences between the groups. • In 1996, Russell surveyed people of varying age groups and found that people in their 20s tend to report being more lonely than people in their 70s. Correlational Design:Correlational Design: two different variables are measured to determine whether there is a relationship between them. • Thornhill et al. (2003) had people rate how physically attractive they found other people to be. They then had them separately smell t-shirts those people had worn (without knowing which clothes belonged to whom) and rate how good or bad their body oder was. They found that the more attractive someone was the more pleasant their body order was rated to be. Experiment:Experiment: researchers create a controlled environment in which they can carefully manipulate at least one variable to test its effect on another. The key here is that the researchers can cause a change in one variable. • Clinical psychologists can test a new pharmaceutical treatment for depression by giving some patients the new pill and others an already-tested one to see which is the more effective treatment. Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Methods for Collecting Research Data. Authored byAuthored by: Dr. Scott Roberts, Dr. Ryan Curtis, Samantha Levy, and Dr. Dylan Selterman. Provided byProvided by: University of Maryland. Located atLocated at: http://openpsyc.blogspot.com/2014/06/ methods-for-collecting-research-data.html. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Psychological Research - Crash Course Psychology #2. Authored byAuthored by: Hank Green. Provided byProvided by: Crash Course. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFV71QPvX2I. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License DISCUSSION: RESEARCH IN PSYCHOLOGY Analyzing Research Step 1Step 1: Visit the Public Library of Science (PLOS One) website: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/browse/ psychology (a peer-reviewed journal that freely publishes research articles with open licenses). Do a search for an article that interests you, then answer the following: 1. What is the hyperlink to the study you chose? 2. What is the title of the study, and who conducted the research? 3. Describe the study in a few sentences in your own words. 4. Identify and describe either the basic assumption of the researchers, or if it was an experiment, the hypothesis. Why were they conducting this research? 5. How was the study performed? What methods were used? 6. What were the results and conclusions of this study? 7. What questions do you still have after reading about this study? For example, if you were to conduct another study based off of this study, what questions would you ask and what would you still want to find out? Step 2Step 2: Respond to at least TWO other posts in responses in a paragraph with at least 75 words. Your comments should facilitate a discussion and can highlight your own thoughts about the study. Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Discussion: Research in Psychology. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://openpsyc.blogspot.com/2014/06/methods-for-collecting-research-data.html http://openpsyc.blogspot.com/2014/06/methods-for-collecting-research-data.html https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFV71QPvX2I http://journals.plos.org/plosone/browse/psychology http://journals.plos.org/plosone/browse/psychology https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ MODULE 3: BIOPSYCHOLOGY WHY IT MATTERS: BIOPSYCHOLOGY Different brain imaging techniques provide scientists with insight into different aspects of how the human brain functions. Left to right, PET scan (positron emission tomography), CT scan (computed tomography), and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) are three types of scans. (credit “left”: modification of work by Health and Human Services Department, National Institutes of Health; credit “center”: modification of work by “Aceofhearts1968″/Wikimedia Commons; credit “right”: modification of work by Kim J, Matthews NL, Park S.) Have you ever taken a device apart to find out how it works? Many of us have done so, whether to attempt a repair or simply to satisfy our curiosity. A device’s internal workings are often distinct from its user interface on the outside. For example, we don’t think about microchips and circuits when we turn up the volume on a mobile phone; instead, we think about getting the volume just right. Similarly, the inner workings of the human body are often distinct from the external expression of those workings. It is the job of psychologists to find the connection between these—for example, to figure out how the firings of millions of neurons become a thought. This module strives to explain the biological mechanisms that underlie behavior. These physiological and anatomical foundations are the basis for many areas of psychology. In this module, you will learn how genetics influence both physiological and psychological traits. You will become familiar with the structure and function of the nervous system, learn how the nervous system interacts with the endocrine system, and understand the nature vs. nurture debate. AnswerAnswer Arnst, C. (2003, November). Commentary: Getting rational about health-care rationing. Bloomberg Businessweek Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2003-11-16/commentary-getting-rational-about- health-care-rationing Berridge, K. C., & Robinson, T. E. (1998). What is the role of dopamine in reward: Hedonic impact, reward learning, or incentive salience? Brain Research Reviews, 28, 309–369. Chandola, T., Brunner, E., & Marmot, M. (2006). Chronic stress at work and the metabolic syndrome: A prospective study. BMJ, 332, 521–524. Comings, D. E., Gonzales, N., Saucier, G., Johnson, J. P., & MacMurray, J. P. (2000). The DRD4 gene and the spiritual transcendence scale of the character temperament index. Psychiatric Genetics, 10, 185–189. Confer, J. C., Easton, J. A., Fleischman, D. S., Goetz, C. D., Lewis, D. M. G, Perilloux, C., & Buss, D. M. (2010). Evolutionary psychology: Controversies, questions, prospects, and limitations. American Psychologist, 65, 110–126. Gaines, C. (2013, August). An A-Rod suspension would save the Yankees as much as $37.5 million in 2014 alone. Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/an-a-rod-suspension-would-save-the- yankees-as-much-as-375-million-in-2014-2013-8 Gardner, E. L. (2011). Addiction and brain reward and antireward pathways. Advances in Psychosomatic Medicine, 30, 22–60. George, O., Le Moal, M., & Koob, G. F. (2012). Allostasis and addiction: Role of the dopamine and corticotropin- releasing factor systems. Physiology & Behavior, 106, 58–64. Glaser, R., & Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K. (2005). Stress-induced immune dysfunction: Implications for health. Nature Reviews Immunology, 5, 243–251. Gong, L., Parikh, S., Rosenthal, P. J., & Greenhouse, B. (2013). Biochemical and immunological mechanisms by which sickle cell trait protects against malaria. Malaria Journal. Advance online publication. doi:10.1186/ 1475-2875-12-317 Hardt, O., Einarsson, E. Ö., & Nader, K. (2010). A bridge over troubled water: Reconsolidation as a link between cognitive and neuroscientific memory research traditions. Annual Review of Psychology, 61, 141–167. Macmillan, M. (1999). The Phineas Gage Information Page. Retrieved from http://www.uakron.edu/gage March, J. S., Silva, S., Petrycki, S., Curry, J., Wells, K., Fairbank, J., … Severe, J. (2007). The treatment for adolescents with depression study (TADS): Long-term effectiveness and safety outcomes. Arch Gen Psychiatry, 64, 1132–1143. Mustanski, B. S., DuPree, M. G., Nievergelt, C. M., Bocklandt, S., Schork, N. J., & Hamer, D. H. (2005). A genome wide scan of male sexual orientation. Human Genetics, 116, 272–278. National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2001, July). Anabolic steroid abuse: What are the health consequences of steroid abuse? National Institutes of Health. Retrieved from http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research- reports/anabolic-steroid-abuse/what-are-health-consequences-steroid-abuse Squire, L. R. (2009). The legacy of patient H. M. for neuroscience. Neuron, 61, 6–9. Tienari, P., Wynne, L. C., Sorri, A., et al. (2004). Genotype–environment interaction in schizophrenia spectrum disorder: long-term follow-up study of Finnish adoptees. British Journal of Psychiatry, 184, 216–222. University of Utah Genetic Science Learning Center. (n.d.). What are genetic disorders? Retrieved from http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/disorders/whataregd/ Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Psychology. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@4.100:1/Psychology. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/. http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@4.100:1/Psychology https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ NEURAL COMMUNICATION What you’ll learn to do: identify the basic structures of a neuron, the function of each structure, and how messages travel through the neuron Neuron in tissue culture. Ever wonder how your brain actually works? What exactly is going on inside of your small, wrinkly mass while you read this text? In this section, you’ll learn about the basics of neural communication in the brain, which is the brain’s way of sending messages to and from different regions in order to relay critical information about your body and its surroundings. Glia and neurons are the two cell types that make up the nervous system. While glia generally play supporting roles, the communication between neurons is fundamental to all of the functions associated with the nervous system. Neuronal communication is made possible by the neuron’s specialized structures, like the soma, dendrites, axons, terminal buttons, and synaptic vesicles. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/15040629/neuron https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/15040629/neuron Neuronal communication is an electrochemical event. The dendrites contain receptors for neurotransmitters released by nearby neurons. If the signals received from other neurons are sufficiently strong, an action potential will travel down the length of the axon to the terminal buttons, resulting in the release of neurotransmitters into the synapse. Different neurotransmitters are associated with different functions. Often, psychological disorders involve imbalances in a given neurotransmitter system. Therefore, psychotropic drugs are prescribed in an attempt to bring the neurotransmitters back into balance. Drugs can act either as agonists or as antagonists for a given neurotransmitter system. LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explain the role and function of the basic structures of a neuron • Describe how neurons communicate with each other • Explain how drugs act as agonists or antagonists for a given neurotransmitter system Neurons Psychologists striving to understand the human mind may study the nervous systemnervous system. Learning how the cells and organs (like the brain) function, help us understand the biological basis behind human psychology. The nervous system is composed of two basic cell types: glial cells (also known as glia) and neurons. Glial cellsGlial cells, which outnumber neurons ten to one, are traditionally thought to play a supportive role to neurons, both physically and metabolically. Glial cells provide scaffolding on which the nervous system is built, help neurons line up closely with each other to allow neuronal communication, provide insulation to neurons, transport nutrients and waste products, and mediate immune responses. NeuronsNeurons, on the other hand, serve as interconnected information processors that are essential for all of the tasks of the nervous system. This section briefly describes the structure and function of neurons. Neuron Structure Neurons are the central building blocks of the nervous system, 100 billion strong at birth. Like all cells, neurons consist of several different parts, each serving a specialized function (Figure 1). A neuron’s outer surface is made up of a semipermeable membranesemipermeable membrane. This membrane allows smaller molecules and molecules without an electrical charge to pass through it, while stopping larger or highly charged molecules. Figure 1. This illustration shows a prototypical neuron, which is being myelinated. The nucleus of the neuron is located in the soma, or cell body. The somasoma has branching extensions known as dendritesdendrites. The neuron is a small information processor, and dendrites serve as input sites where signals are received from other neurons. These signals are transmitted electrically across the soma and down a major extension from the soma known as the axonaxon, which ends at multiple terminal buttonsterminal buttons. The terminal buttons contain synaptic vesiclessynaptic vesicles that house neurotransmittersneurotransmitters, the chemical messengers of the nervous system. Axons range in length from a fraction of an inch to several feet. In some axons, glial cells form a fatty substance known as the myelin sheathmyelin sheath, which coats the axon and acts as an insulator, increasing the speed at which the signal travels. The myelin sheath is crucial for the normal operation of the neurons within the nervous system: the loss of the insulation it provides can be detrimental to normal function. To understand how this works, let’s consider an example. Multiple sclerosis (MS), an autoimmune disorder, involves a large-scale loss of the myelin sheath on axons throughout the nervous system. The resulting interference in the electrical signal prevents the quick transmittal of information by neurons and can lead to a number of symptoms, such as dizziness, fatigue, loss of motor control, and sexual dysfunction. While some treatments may help to modify the course of the disease and manage certain symptoms, there is currently no known cure for multiple sclerosis. In healthy individuals, the neuronal signal moves rapidly down the axon to the terminal buttons, where synaptic vesicles release neurotransmitters into the synapse (Figure 2). The synapsesynapse is a very small space between two neurons and is an important site where communication between neurons occurs. Once neurotransmitters are released into the synapse, they travel across the small space and bind with corresponding receptors on the dendrite of an adjacent neuron. ReceptorsReceptors, proteins on the cell surface where neurotransmitters attach, vary in shape, with different shapes “matching” different neurotransmitters. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2031 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Click through the links at the top of this interactive simulation to review the parts of a nerve cell and to take a closer look at how neurons communicate. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2031 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2031 TRY ITTRY IT How does a neurotransmitter “know” which receptor to bind to? The neurotransmitter and the receptor have what is referred to as a lock-and-key relationship—specific neurotransmitters fit specific receptors similar to how a key fits a lock. The neurotransmitter binds to any receptor that it fits. Figure 2. (a) The synapse is the space between the terminal button of one neuron and the dendrite of another neuron. (b) In this pseudo-colored image from a scanning electron microscope, a terminal button (green) has been opened to reveal the synaptic vesicles (orange and blue) inside. Each vesicle contains about 10,000 neurotransmitter molecules. (credit b: modification of work by Tina Carvalho, NIH-NIGMS; scale-bar data from Matt Russell) https://apps.childrenshospital.org/clinical/animation/neuron/ An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2031 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2031 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2031 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2031 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2031 GLOSSARYGLOSSARY axon:axon: major extension of the soma dendrite:dendrite: branch-like extension of the soma that receives incoming signals from other neurons glial cell:glial cell: nervous system cell that provides physical and metabolic support to neurons, including neuronal insulation and communication, and nutrient and waste transport myelin sheath:myelin sheath: fatty substance that insulates axons neuron:neuron: cells in the nervous system that act as interconnected information processors, which are essential for all of the tasks of the nervous system neurotransmitter:neurotransmitter: chemical messenger of the nervous system receptor:receptor: protein on the cell surface where neurotransmitters attach semipermeable membrane:semipermeable membrane: cell membrane that allows smaller molecules or molecules without an electrical charge to pass through it, while stopping larger or highly charged molecules soma:soma: cell body synapse:synapse: small gap between two neurons where communication occurs synaptic vesicle:synaptic vesicle: storage site for neurotransmitters Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Addition of link to learning. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Neuron in tissue culture. Located atLocated at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neuron_in_tissue_culture . LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Cells of the Nervous System. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:SO2ufnKm@7/Cells-of-the-Nervous-System. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • 2-Minute Neuroscience: The Neuron. Authored byAuthored by: Neuroscientifically Challenged. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qS83wD29PY. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neuron_in_tissue_culture https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:SO2ufnKm@7/Cells-of-the-Nervous-System https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qS83wD29PY THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND ENDOCRINE SYSTEM What you’ll learn to do: describe the role of the nervous system and endocrine systems In this section, you’ll learn about the basics of the central nervous system, which consists of the brain and spinal cord, as well as the peripheral nervous system. The peripheral nervous systemperipheral nervous system is comprised of the somatic and autonomic nervous systems. The somaticsomatic nervous systemnervous system transmits sensory and motor signals to and from the central nervous system. The autonomicautonomic nervous systemnervous system controls the function of our organs and glands, and can be divided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions. SympatheticSympathetic activation prepares us for fight or flight, while parasympatheticparasympathetic activation is associated with normal functioning under relaxed conditions. The endocrineendocrine systemsystem consists of a series of glands that produce chemical substances known as hormones, which produce widespread effects on the body. Got all that? We’ll review each of these systems in the coming pages. Visit this course online to take this short practice quiz: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/15233230/Blausen_0822_SpinalCord LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe the difference between the central and peripheral nervous systems and the somatic and autonomic nervous systems • Differentiate between the sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions of the autonomic nervous system • Describe the endocrine system and explain its primary responsibilities within the body The Central Nervous System and the Peripheral Nervous System The nervous systemnervous system can be divided into two major subdivisions: the central nervous system (CNS)central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS)peripheral nervous system (PNS), shown in Figure 1. The CNS is comprised of the brain and spinal cord; the PNS connects the CNS to the rest of the body. In this section, we focus on the peripheral nervous system; later, we look at the brain and spinal cord. Figure 1. The nervous system is divided into two major parts: (a) the Central Nervous System and (b) the Peripheral Nervous System. Peripheral Nervous System The peripheral nervous system is made up of thick bundles of axons, called nerves, carrying messages back and forth between the CNS and the muscles, organs, and senses in the periphery of the body (i.e., everything outside the CNS). The PNS has two major subdivisions: the somatic nervous system and the autonomic nervous system. The somatic nervous systemsomatic nervous system is associated with activities traditionally thought of as conscious or voluntary. It is involved in the relay of sensory and motor information to and from the CNS; therefore, it consists of motor neurons and sensory neurons. Motor neurons, carrying instructions from the CNS to the muscles, are efferent fibers (efferent means “moving away from”). Sensory neurons, carrying sensory information to the CNS, are afferent fibers (afferent means “moving toward”). Each nerve is basically a two-way superhighway, containing thousands of axons, both efferent and afferent. The autonomic nervous systemautonomic nervous system controls our internal organs and glands and is generally considered to be outside the realm of voluntary control. It can be further subdivided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions (Figure 2). The sympathetic nervous systemsympathetic nervous system is involved in preparing the body for stress-related activities; the parasympathetic nervous systemparasympathetic nervous system is associated with returning the body to routine, day-to-day operations. The two systems have complementary functions, operating in tandem to maintain the body’s homeostasis. HomeostasisHomeostasis is a state of equilibrium, in which biological conditions (such as body temperature) are maintained at optimal levels. Figure 2. The sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions of the autonomic nervous system have the opposite effects on various systems. The sympathetic nervous system is activated when we are faced with stressful or high-arousal situations. The activity of this system was adaptive for our ancestors, increasing their chances of survival. Imagine, for example, that one of our early ancestors, out hunting small game, suddenly disturbs a large bear with her cubs. At that moment, his body undergoes a series of changes—a direct function of sympathetic activation—preparing him to face the threat. His pupils dilate, his heart rate and blood pressure increase, his bladder relaxes, his liver releases glucose, and adrenaline surges into his bloodstream. This constellation of physiological changes, known as the fight or flight responsefight or flight response, allows the body access to energy reserves and heightened sensory capacity so that it might fight off a threat or run away to safety. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Reinforce what you’ve learned about the nervous system by playing this BBC-produced interactive game about the nervous system. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 TRY ITTRY IT While it is clear that such a response would be critical for survival for our ancestors, who lived in a world full of real physical threats, many of the high-arousal situations we face in the modern world are more psychological in nature. For example, think about how you feel when you have to stand up and give a presentation in front of a roomful of people, or right before taking a big test. You are in no real physical danger in those situations, and yet you have evolved to respond to any perceived threat with the fight or flight response. This kind of response is not nearly as adaptive in the modern world; in fact, we suffer negative health consequences when faced constantly with psychological threats that we can neither fight nor flee. Recent research suggests that an increase in susceptibility to heart disease (Chandola, Brunner, & Marmot, 2006) and impaired function of the immune system (Glaser & Kiecolt-Glaser, 2005) are among the many negative consequences of persistent and repeated exposure to stressful situations. Once the threat has been resolved, the parasympathetic nervous system takes over and returns bodily functions to a relaxed state. Our hunter’s heart rate and blood pressure return to normal, his pupils constrict, he regains control of his bladder, and the liver begins to store glucose in the form of glycogen for future use. These processes are associated with activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. https://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/interactives/3djigsaw_02/index.shtml?nervous An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER Hopefully, you do not face real physical threats from potential predators on a daily basis. However, you probably have your fair share of stress. What situations are your most common sources of stress? What can you do to try to minimize the negative consequences of these particular stressors in your life? The Endocrine System The endocrine systemendocrine system consists of a series of glands that produce chemical substances known as hormoneshormones (Figure 1). Like neurotransmitters, hormones are chemical messengers that must bind to a receptor in order to send their signal. However, unlike neurotransmitters, which are released in close proximity to cells with their receptors, hormones are secreted into the bloodstream and travel throughout the body, affecting any cells that contain receptors for them. Thus, whereas neurotransmitters’ effects are localized, the effects of hormones are widespread. Also, hormones are slower to take effect, and tend to be longer lasting. Figure 3. The major glands of the endocrine system are shown. The study of psychology and the endocrine system is called behavioral endocrinology, which is the scientific study of the interaction between hormones and behavior. This interaction is bidirectional: hormones can influence behavior, and behavior can sometimes influence hormone concentrations. Hormones regulate behaviors such as aggression, mating, and parenting of individuals. Hormones are involved in regulating all sorts of bodily functions, and they are ultimately controlled through interactions between the hypothalamus (in the central nervous system) and the pituitary gland (in the endocrine system). Imbalances in hormones are related to a number of disorders. This section explores some of the major glands that make up the endocrine system and the hormones secreted by these glands. Major Glands The pituitary glandpituitary gland descends from the hypothalamus at the base of the brain, and acts in close association with it. The pituitary is often referred to as the “master gland” because its messenger hormones control all the other glands in the endocrine system, although it mostly carries out instructions from the hypothalamus. In addition to An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 TRY ITTRY IT messenger hormones, the pituitary also secretes growth hormone, endorphins for pain relief, and a number of key hormones that regulate fluid levels in the body. Located in the neck, the thyroid glandthyroid gland releases hormones that regulate growth, metabolism, and appetite. In hyperthyroidism, or Grave’s disease, the thyroid secretes too much of the hormone thyroxine, causing agitation, bulging eyes, and weight loss. In hypothyroidism, reduced hormone levels cause sufferers to experience tiredness, and they often complain of feeling cold. Fortunately, thyroid disorders are often treatable with medications that help reestablish a balance in the hormones secreted by the thyroid. The adrenal glandsadrenal glands sit atop our kidneys and secrete hormones involved in the stress response, such as epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine (noradrenaline). The pancreaspancreas is an internal organ that secretes hormones that regulate blood sugar levels: insulin and glucagon. These pancreatic hormones are essential for maintaining stable levels of blood sugar throughout the day by lowering blood glucose levels (insulin) or raising them (glucagon). People who suffer from diabetesdiabetes do not produce enough insulin; therefore, they must take medications that stimulate or replace insulin production, and they must closely control the amount of sugars and carbohydrates they consume. The gonadsgonads secrete sexual hormones, which are important in reproduction, and mediate both sexual motivation and behavior. The female gonads are the ovaries; the male gonads are the testis. Ovaries secrete estrogens and progesterone, and the testes secrete androgens, such as testosterone. DIG DEEPER: ATHLETES AND ANABOLIC STEROIDSDIG DEEPER: ATHLETES AND ANABOLIC STEROIDS Although it is against most laws to do so, many professional athletes and body builders use anabolic steroid drugs to improve their athletic performance and physique. Anabolic steroid drugs mimic the effects of the body’s own steroid hormones, like testosterone and its derivatives. These drugs have the potential to provide a competitive edge by increasing muscle mass, strength, and endurance, although not all users may experience these results. Moreover, use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) does not come without risks. Anabolic steroid use has been linked with a wide variety of potentially negative outcomes, ranging in severity from largely cosmetic (acne) to life threatening (heart attack). Furthermore, use of these substances can result in profound changes in mood and can increase aggressive behavior (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2001). Baseball player Alex Rodriguez (A-Rod) has been at the center of a media storm regarding his use of illegal PEDs. Rodriguez’s performance on the field was unparalleled while using the drugs; his success played a large role in negotiating a contract that made him the highest paid player in professional baseball. Although Rodriguez maintains that he has not used PEDs for the several years, he received a substantial suspension in 2013 that, if upheld, will cost him more than 20 million dollars in earnings (Gaines, 2013). What are your thoughts on athletes and doping? Why or why not should the use of PEDs be banned? What advice would you give an athlete who was considering using PEDs? LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Learn more about endocrinology from The Noba Psychology article, “Hormones and Behavior.” Hormones and Behavior How might behaviors affect hormones? Extensive studies on male zebra finches and their singing (only males finches sing) demonstrate that the hormones testosterone and estradiol affect their singing, but the reciprocal relation also occurs; that is, behavior can affect hormone concentrations. For example, the sight of a territorial intruder may elevate blood testosterone concentrations in resident male birds and thereby stimulate singing or fighting behavior. Similarly, male mice or rhesus monkeys that lose a fight decrease circulating testosterone concentrations for several days or even weeks afterward. Comparable results have also been reported in humans. Testosterone concentrations are affected not only in humans involved in physical combat, but also in those involved in simulated battles. For example, testosterone concentrations were elevated in winners and reduced in losers of regional chess tournaments. People do not have to be directly involved in a contest to have their hormones affected by the outcome of the contest. Male fans of both the Brazilian and Italian teams were recruited to provide saliva samples to be assayed for testosterone before and after the final game of the World Cup soccer match in 1994. Brazil and Italy were tied going into the final game, but Brazil won on a penalty kick at the last possible moment. The Brazilian fans were elated and the Italian fans were crestfallen. When the samples were assayed, 11 of 12 Brazilian fans who were sampled had increased testosterone concentrations, and 9 of 9 Italian fans had decreased testosterone concentrations, compared with pre-game baseline values (Dabbs, 2000). In some cases, hormones can be affected by anticipation of behavior. For example, testosterone concentrations also influence sexual motivation and behavior in women. In one study, the interaction between sexual intercourse and testosterone was compared with other activities (cuddling or exercise) in women (van Anders, Hamilton, Schmidt, & Watson, 2007). On three separate occasions, women provided a pre-activity, post-activity, and next- morning saliva sample. After analysis, the women’s testosterone was determined to be elevated prior to intercourse as compared to other times. Thus, an anticipatory relationship exists between sexual behavior and testosterone. Testosterone values were higher post-intercourse compared to exercise, suggesting that engaging in sexual behavior may also influence hormone concentrations in women. http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/hormones-behavior An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 TRY ITTRY IT GLOSSARYGLOSSARY adrenal gland:adrenal gland: sits atop our kidneys and secretes hormones involved in the stress response autonomic nervous system:autonomic nervous system: controls our internal organs and glands central nervous system (CNS):central nervous system (CNS): brain and spinal cord diabetes:diabetes: disease related to insufficient insulin production endocrine system:endocrine system: series of glands that produce chemical substances known as hormones fight or flight response:fight or flight response: activation of the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system, allowing access to energy reserves and heightened sensory capacity so that we might fight off a given threat or run away to safety gonad:gonad: secretes sexual hormones, which are important for successful reproduction, and mediate both sexual motivation and behavior homeostasis:homeostasis: state of equilibrium—biological conditions, such as body temperature, are maintained at optimal levels hormone:hormone: chemical messenger released by endocrine glands pancreas:pancreas: secretes hormones that regulate blood sugar parasympathetic nervous system:parasympathetic nervous system: associated with routine, day-to-day operations of the body peripheral nervous system (PNS):peripheral nervous system (PNS): connects the brain and spinal cord to the muscles, organs and senses in the periphery of the body pituitary gland:pituitary gland: secretes a number of key hormones, which regulate fluid levels in the body, and a number of messenger hormones, which direct the activity of other glands in the endocrine system thyroid:thyroid: secretes hormones that regulate growth, metabolism, and appetite somatic nervous system:somatic nervous system: relays sensory and motor information to and from the CNS sympathetic nervous system:sympathetic nervous system: involved in stress-related activities and functions THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER Given the negative health consequences associated with the use of anabolic steroids, what kinds of considerations might be involved in a person’s decision to use them? An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=106 Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • The Endocrine System. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:34oFmAxl@6/The-Endocrine-System. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/. • Hormones and Behavior and introductory section and part on endocrinology. Authored byAuthored by: Randy J. Nelson. Provided byProvided by: The Ohio State University. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king- introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/hormones-behavior. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike • Parts of the Nervous System. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:-xs7Ve8V@6/Parts-of-the-Nervous-System. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 Public domain contentPublic domain content • Spinal Cord. Authored byAuthored by: BruceBlaus. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfer%27s_myelopathy#/media/File:Blausen_0822_SpinalCord . LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution PARTS OF THE BRAIN What you’ll learn to do: identify and describe the parts of the brain In this section, you’ll learn about the specific parts of the brain and their roles and functions. While this is not an anatomy class, you’ll see how important it is to understand the parts of the brain and what they do so that we can understand mental processes and behavior. Watch this CrashCourse Psychology video for an overview on the brain and the interesting topics we’ll cover: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:34oFmAxl@6/The-Endocrine-System https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/hormones-behavior http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/hormones-behavior https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:-xs7Ve8V@6/Parts-of-the-Nervous-System https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfer%27s_myelopathy#/media/File:Blausen_0822_SpinalCord https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/15045703/brainlobes A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explain the two hemispheres of the brain, lateralization and plasticity • Identify the location and function of the lobes of the brain The Central Nervous System The central nervous system (CNS), consists of the brain and the spinal cord. The Brain The brain is a remarkably complex organ comprised of billions of interconnected neurons and glia. It is a bilateral, or two-sided, structure that can be separated into distinct lobes. Each lobe is associated with certain types of functions, but, ultimately, all of the areas of the brain interact with one another to provide the foundation for our thoughts and behaviors. The Spinal Cord It can be said that the spinal cord is what connects the brain to the outside world. Because of it, the brain can act. The spinal cord is like a relay station, but a very smart one. It not only routes messages to and from the brain, but it also has its own system of automatic processes, called reflexes. Figure 1. The surface of the brain is covered with gyri and sulci. A deep sulcus is called a fissure, such as the longitudinal fissure that divides the brain into left and right hemispheres. (credit: modification of work by Bruce Blaus) The top of the spinal cord merges with the brain stem, where the basic processes of life are controlled, such as breathing and digestion. In the opposite direction, the spinal cord ends just below the ribs—contrary to what we might expect, it does not extend all the way to the base of the spine. The spinal cord is functionally organized in 30 segments, corresponding with the vertebrae. Each segment is connected to a specific part of the body through the peripheral nervous system. Nerves branch out from the spine at each vertebra. Sensory nerves bring messages in; motor nerves send messages out to the muscles and organs. Messages travel to and from the brain through every segment. Some sensory messages are immediately acted on by the spinal cord, without any input from the brain. Withdrawal from heat and knee jerk are two examples. When a sensory message meets certain parameters, the spinal cord initiates an automatic reflex. The signal passes from the sensory nerve to a simple processing center, which initiates a motor command. Seconds are saved, because messages don’t have to go the brain, be processed, and get sent back. In matters of survival, the spinal reflexes allow the body to react extraordinarily fast. The spinal cord is protected by bony vertebrae and cushioned in cerebrospinal fluid, but injuries still occur. When the spinal cord is damaged in a particular segment, all lower segments are cut off from the brain, causing paralysis. Therefore, the lower on the spine damage is, the fewer functions an injured individual loses. The Two Hemispheres The surface of the brain, known as the cerebral cortexcerebral cortex, is very uneven, characterized by a distinctive pattern of folds or bumps, known as gyrigyri (singular: gyrus), and grooves, known as sulcisulci (singular: sulcus), shown in Figure 1. These gyri and sulci form important landmarks that allow us to separate the brain into functional centers. The most prominent sulcus, known as the longitudinal fissure, is the deep groove that separates the brain into two halves or hemispheres: the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere. There is evidence of some specialization of function—referred to as lateralizationlateralization—in each hemisphere, mainly regarding differences in language ability. Beyond that, however, the differences that have been found have been minor. What we do know is that the left hemisphere controls the right half of the body, and the right hemisphere controls the left half of the body. The two hemispheres are connected by a thick band of neural fibers known as the corpus callosumcorpus callosum, consisting of about 200 million axons. The corpus callosum allows the two hemispheres to communicate with each other and allows for information being processed on one side of the brain to be shared with the other side. Normally, we are not aware of the different roles that our two hemispheres play in day-to-day functions, but there are people who come to know the capabilities and functions of their two hemispheres quite well. In some cases of severe epilepsy, doctors elect to sever the corpus callosum as a means of controlling the spread of seizures (Figure 2). While this is an effective treatment option, it results in individuals who have split brains. After surgery, these split-brain patients show a variety of interesting behaviors. For instance, a split-brain patient is unable to name a picture that is shown in the patient’s left visual field because the information is only available in the largely nonverbal right hemisphere. However, they are able to recreate the picture with their left hand, which is also controlled by the right hemisphere. When the more verbal left hemisphere sees the picture that the hand drew, the patient is able to name it (assuming the left hemisphere can interpret what was drawn by the left hand). Figure 2. (a, b) The corpus callosum connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain. (c) A scientist spreads this dissected sheep brain apart to show the corpus callosum between the hemispheres. (credit c: modification of work by Aaron Bornstein) LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING This interactive animation from the Nobel Prize website walks users through the hemispheres of the brain. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch this video to see an incredible example of the challenges facing a split-brain patient shortly following the surgery to sever her corpus callosum. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 TRY ITTRY IT Much of what we know about the functions of different areas of the brain comes from studying changes in the behavior and ability of individuals who have suffered damage to the brain. For example, researchers study the behavioral changes caused by strokes to learn about the functions of specific brain areas. A stroke, caused by an interruption of blood flow to a region in the brain, causes a loss of brain function in the affected region. The damage can be in a small area, and, if it is, this gives researchers the opportunity to link any resulting behavioral changes to a specific area. The types of deficits displayed after a stroke will be largely dependent on where in the brain the damage occurred. Consider Theona, an intelligent, self-sufficient woman, who is 62 years old. Recently, she suffered a stroke in the front portion of her right hemisphere. As a result, she has great difficulty moving her left leg. (As you learned earlier, the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body; also, the brain’s main motor centers are located at the front of the head, in the frontal lobe.) Theona has also experienced behavioral changes. For example, while in the produce section of the grocery store, she sometimes eats grapes, strawberries, and apples directly from their bins before paying for them. This behavior—which would have been very embarrassing to her before the stroke—is consistent with damage in another region in the frontal lobe—the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with judgment, reasoning, and impulse control. http://www.nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/split-brain/splitbrainexp.html https://educationalgames.nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/split-brain/ A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 Watch this second about another patient who underwent a dramatic surgery to prevent her seizures. You’ll learn more about the brain’s ability to change, adapt, and reorganize itself, also known as brain plasticityplasticity. A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 Forebrain Structures The two hemispheres of the cerebral cortex are part of the forebrainforebrain (Figure 3), which is the largest part of the brain. The forebrain contains the cerebral cortex and a number of other structures that lie beneath the cortex (called subcortical structures): thalamus, hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and the limbic system (collection of structures). The cerebral cortex, which is the outer surface of the brain, is associated with higher level processes such as consciousness, thought, emotion, reasoning, language, and memory. Each cerebral hemisphere can be subdivided into four lobes, each associated with different functions. Figure 3. The brain and its parts can be divided into three main categories: the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain. Lobes of the Brain The four lobes of the brain are the frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes (Figure 4). The frontal lobefrontal lobe is located in the forward part of the brain, extending back to a fissure known as the central sulcus. The frontal lobe is involved in reasoning, motor control, emotion, and language. It contains the motor cortexmotor cortex, which is involved in planning and coordinating movement; the prefrontal cortexprefrontal cortex, which is responsible for higher-level cognitive functioning; and Broca’s areaBroca’s area, which is essential for language production. Figure 4. The lobes of the brain are shown. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 TRY ITTRY IT People who suffer damage to Broca’s area have great difficulty producing language of any form. For example, Padma was an electrical engineer who was socially active and a caring, involved mother. About twenty years ago, she was in a car accident and suffered damage to her Broca’s area. She completely lost the ability to speak and form any kind of meaningful language. There is nothing wrong with her mouth or her vocal cords, but she is unable to produce words. She can follow directions but can’t respond verbally, and she can read but no longer write. She can do routine tasks like running to the market to buy milk, but she could not communicate verbally if a situation called for it. Probably the most famous case of frontal lobe damage is that of a man by the name of Phineas Gage. On September 13, 1848, Gage (age 25) was working as a railroad foreman in Vermont. He and his crew were using an iron rod to tamp explosives down into a blasting hole to remove rock along the railway’s path. Unfortunately, the iron rod created a spark and caused the rod to explode out of the blasting hole, into Gage’s face, and through his skull (Figure 5). Although lying in a pool of his own blood with brain matter emerging from his head, Gage was conscious and able to get up, walk, and speak. But in the months following his accident, people noticed that his personality had changed. Many of his friends described him as no longer being himself. Before the accident, it was said that Gage was a well-mannered, soft-spoken man, but he began to behave in odd and inappropriate ways after the accident. Such changes in personality would be consistent with loss of impulse control—a frontal lobe function. Beyond the damage to the frontal lobe itself, subsequent investigations into the rod’s path also identified probable damage to pathways between the frontal lobe and other brain structures, including the limbic system. With connections between the planning functions of the frontal lobe and the emotional processes of the limbic system severed, Gage had difficulty controlling his emotional impulses. However, there is some evidence suggesting that the dramatic changes in Gage’s personality were exaggerated and embellished. Gage’s case occurred in the midst of a 19th century debate over localization—regarding whether certain areas of the brain are associated with particular functions. On the basis of extremely limited information about Gage, the extent of his injury, and his life before and after the accident, scientists tended to find support for their own views, on whichever side of the debate they fell (Macmillan, 1999). Figure 5. (a) Phineas Gage holds the iron rod that penetrated his skull in an 1848 railroad construction accident. (b) Gage’s prefrontal cortex was severely damaged in the left hemisphere. The rod entered Gage’s face on the left side, passed behind his eye, and exited through the top of his skull, before landing about 80 feet away. (credit a: modification of work by Jack and Beverly Wilgus) A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch either (or both) clip(s) about Phineas Gage to learn more about his accident and injury. A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 Figure 6: Specific body parts like the tongue or fingers are mapped onto certain areas of the brain including the primary motor cortex. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/01/20221528/motorcortex https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/01/20221528/motorcortex Figure 7. Spatial relationships in the body are mirrored in the organization of the somatosensory cortex. Figure 8. Damage to either Broca’s area or Wernicke’s area can result in language deficits. The types of deficits are very different, however, depending on which area is affected. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 TRY ITTRY IT One particularly fascinating area in the frontal lobe is called the “primary motor cortex”. This strip running along the side of the brain is in charge of voluntary movements like waving goodbye, wiggling your eyebrows, and kissing. It is an excellent example of the way that the various regions of the brain are highly specialized. Interestingly, each of our various body parts has a unique portion of the primary motor cortex devoted to it (see Figure 6). Each individual finger has about as much dedicated brain space as your entire leg. Your lips, in turn, require about as much dedicated brain processing as all of your fingers and your hand combined! Because the cerebral cortex in general, and the frontal lobe in particular, are associated with such sophisticated functions as planning and being self-aware they are often thought of as a higher, less primal portion of the brain. Indeed, other animals such as rats and kangaroos while they do have frontal regions of their brain do not have the same level of development in the cerebral cortices. The closer an animal is to humans on the evolutionary tree—think chimpanzees and gorillas, the more developed is this portion of their brain. The brain’s parietal lobeparietal lobe is located immediately behind the frontal lobe, and is involved in processing information from the body’s senses. It contains the somatosensory cortexsomatosensory cortex, which is essential for processing sensory information from across the body, such as touch, temperature, and pain. The somatosensory cortex is organized topographically, which means that spatial relationships that exist in the body are maintained on the surface of the somatosensory cortex. For example, the portion of the cortex that processes sensory information from the hand is adjacent to the portion that processes information from the wrist. The temporal lobetemporal lobe is located on the side of the head (temporal means “near the temples”), and is associated with hearing, memory, emotion, and some aspects of language. The auditory cortexauditory cortex, the main area responsible for processing auditory information, is located within the temporal lobe. Wernicke’s areaWernicke’s area, important for speech comprehension, is also located here. Whereas individuals with damage to Broca’s area have difficulty producing language, those with damage to Wernicke’s area can produce sensible language, but they are unable to understand it (Figure 8). The occipital lobeoccipital lobe is located at the very back of the brain, and contains the primary visual cortex, which is responsible for interpreting incoming visual information. The occipital cortex is organized retinotopically, which means there is a close relationship between the position of an object in a person’s visual field and the position of that object’s representation on the cortex. You will learn much more about how visual information is processed in the occipital lobe when you study sensation and perception. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 FOOD FOR THOUGHTFOOD FOR THOUGHT Consider the following advice from Joseph LeDoux, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at New York University, as you learn about the specific parts of the brain: Be suspicious of any statement that says a brain area is a center responsible for some function. The notion of functions being products of brain areas or centers is left over from the days when most evidence about brain function was based on the effects of brain lesions localized to specific areas. Today, we think of functions as products of systems rather than of areas. Neurons in areas contribute because they are part of a system. The amygdala, for example, contributes to threat detection because it is part of a threat detection system. And just because the amygdala contributes to threat detection does not mean that threat detection is the only function to which it contributes. Amygdala neurons, for example, are also components of systems that process the significance of stimuli related to eating, drinking, sex, and addictive drugs. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 TRY ITTRY IT An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2036 GLOSSARYGLOSSARY auditory cortex:auditory cortex: strip of cortex in the temporal lobe that is responsible for processing auditory information Broca’s area:Broca’s area: region in the left hemisphere that is essential for language production cerebral cortex:cerebral cortex: surface of the brain that is associated with our highest mental capabilities corpus callosum:corpus callosum: thick band of neural fibers connecting the brain’s two hemispheres forebrain:forebrain: largest part of the brain, containing the cerebral cortex, the thalamus, and the limbic system, among other structures frontal lobe:frontal lobe: part of the cerebral cortex involved in reasoning, motor control, emotion, and language; contains motor cortex gyrusgyrus (plural: gyri): bump or ridge on the cerebral cortex hemisphere:hemisphere: left or right half of the brain lateralization:lateralization: concept that each hemisphere of the brain is associated with specialized functions longitudinal fissure:longitudinal fissure: deep groove in the brain’s cortex motor cortex:motor cortex: strip of cortex involved in planning and coordinating movement occipital lobe:occipital lobe: part of the cerebral cortex associated with visual processing; contains the primary visual cortex parietal lobe:parietal lobe: part of the cerebral cortex involved in processing various sensory and perceptual information; contains the primary somatosensory cortex prefrontal cortex:prefrontal cortex: area in the frontal lobe responsible for higher-level cognitive functioning somatosensory cortex:somatosensory cortex: essential for processing sensory information from across the body, such as touch, temperature, and pain sulcussulcus (plural: sulci): depressions or grooves in the cerebral cortex temporal lobe:temporal lobe: part of cerebral cortex associated with hearing, memory, emotion, and some aspects of language; contains primary auditory cortex Wernicke’s area:Wernicke’s area: important for speech comprehension Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Introduction. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • The Brain and Spinal Cord. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:_Io4zP0c@7/The-Brain-and-Spinal-Cord. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/. • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • The Amygdala Is Not The Brains Fear Center. Authored byAuthored by: Joseph LeDoux. Located atLocated at: http://thepsychreport.com/science/the-amygdala-is-not-the-brains-fear-center/. ProjectProject: The Psych Report. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike • Motor cortex paragraphs and image. Authored byAuthored by: Robert Biswas-Diener. Provided byProvided by: Portland State University. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/modules/the-brain-and-nervous-system. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Meet Your Master: Getting to Know Your Brain - Crash Course Psychology #4. Provided byProvided by: CrashCourse . Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHrmiy4W9C0. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • Split Brain mpeg1video. Authored byAuthored by: mrsrooboy. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C8qu8FnuAo&feature=youtu.be. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • Brain Plasticity - the story of Jody. Authored byAuthored by: Streetwisdom Billy. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaDlLD97CLM&feature=youtu.be. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • Phineas Gage (LEGO Stop-Motion Music Video). Authored byAuthored by: Brad Wray. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nikOxNfjqs. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License Public domain contentPublic domain content • brain image. Authored byAuthored by: Henry Gray. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lobes_of_the_brain_NL.svg. LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known Copyright https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:_Io4zP0c@7/The-Brain-and-Spinal-Cord https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://thepsychreport.com/science/the-amygdala-is-not-the-brains-fear-center/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/modules/the-brain-and-nervous-system https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHrmiy4W9C0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C8qu8FnuAo&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaDlLD97CLM&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nikOxNfjqs https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lobes_of_the_brain_NL.svg https://creativecommons.org/about/pdm THE LIMBIC SYSTEM AND OTHER BRAIN AREAS LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Identify and describe the role of the parts of the limbic system, the midbrain, and hindbrain Areas of the Forebrain Other areas of the forebrainforebrain (which includes the lobes that you learned about previously), are the parts located beneath the cerebral cortex, including the thalamus and the limbic system. The thalamusthalamus is a sensory relay for the brain. All of our senses, with the exception of smell, are routed through the thalamus before being directed to other areas of the brain for processing (Figure 1). Figure 1. The thalamus serves as the relay center of the brain where most senses are routed for processing. The limbic systemlimbic system is involved in processing both emotion and memory. Interestingly, the sense of smell projects directly to the limbic system; therefore, not surprisingly, smell can evoke emotional responses in ways that other sensory modalities cannot. The limbic system is made up of a number of different structures, but three of the most important are the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the hypothalamus (Figure 2). The hippocampushippocampus is an essential structure for learning and memory. The amygdalaamygdala is involved in our experience of emotion and in tying emotional meaning to our memories. The hypothalamushypothalamus regulates a number of homeostatic processes, including the regulation of body temperature, appetite, and blood pressure. The hypothalamus also serves as an interface between the nervous system and the endocrine system and in the regulation of sexual motivation and behavior. Figure 2. The limbic system is involved in mediating emotional response and memory. THE CASE OF HENRY MOLAISON (H.M.)THE CASE OF HENRY MOLAISON (H.M.) In 1953, Henry Gustav Molaison (H. M.) was a 27-year-old man who experienced severe seizures. In an attempt to control his seizures, H. M. underwent brain surgery to remove his hippocampus and amygdala. Following the surgery, H.M’s seizures became much less severe, but he also suffered some unexpected—and devastating—consequences of the surgery: he lost his ability to form many types of new memories. For example, he was unable to learn new facts, such as who was president of the United States. He was able to learn new skills, but afterward he had no recollection of learning them. For example, while he might learn to use a computer, he would have no conscious memory of ever having used one. He could not remember new faces, and he was unable to remember events, even immediately after they occurred. Researchers were fascinated by his experience, and he is considered one of the most studied cases in medical and psychological history (Hardt, Einarsson, & Nader, 2010; Squire, 2009). Indeed, his case has provided tremendous insight into the role that the hippocampus plays in the consolidation of new learning into explicit memory. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1999 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1999 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1999 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1999 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1999 TRY ITTRY IT LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Clive Wearing, an accomplished musician, lost the ability to form new memories when his hippocampus was damaged through illness. Check out the first few minutes of this documentary video for an introduction to this man and his condition. Midbrain and Hindbrain Structures The midbrainmidbrain is comprised of structures located deep within the brain, between the forebrain and the hindbrain. The reticular formationreticular formation is centered in the midbrain, but it actually extends up into the forebrain and down into the hindbrain. The reticular formation is important in regulating the sleep/wake cycle, arousal, alertness, and motor activity. The substantia nigrasubstantia nigra (Latin for “black substance”) and the ventral tegmental area (VTA)ventral tegmental area (VTA) are also located in the midbrain (Figure 3). Both regions contain cell bodies that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine, and both are critical for movement. Degeneration of the substantia nigra and VTA is involved in Parkinson’s disease. In addition, these structures are involved in mood, reward, and addiction (Berridge & Robinson, 1998; Gardner, 2011; George, Le Moal, & Koob, 2012). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipD_G7U2FcM Figure 3. The substantia nigra and ventral tegmental area (VTA) are located in the midbrain. The hindbrainhindbrain is located at the back of the head and looks like an extension of the spinal cord. It contains the medulla, pons, and cerebellum (Figure 4). The medullamedulla controls the automatic processes of the autonomic nervous system, such as breathing, blood pressure, and heart rate. The word ponspons literally means “bridge,” and as the name suggests, the pons serves to connect the brain and spinal cord. It also is involved in regulating brain activity during sleep. The medulla, pons, and midbrain together are known as the brainstem. Figure 4. The pons, medulla, and cerebellum make up the hindbrain. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Click on the link below to review each part of the brain and its purpose through the PsychSim Tutorial. The tutorial is only intended for practice. Please disregard the final screen that requests you submit answers to your instructor. • Brain and Behavior For a fun recap of the parts of the brain, watch the following short clip from the old cartoon, Pinky and the Brain: The cerebellumcerebellum (Latin for “little brain”) receives messages from muscles, tendons, joints, and structures in our ear to control balance, coordination, movement, and motor skills. The cerebellum is also thought to be an important area for processing some types of memories. In particular, procedural memory, or memory involved in learning and remembering how to perform tasks, is thought to be associated with the cerebellum. Recall that H. M. was unable to form new explicit memories, but he could learn new tasks. This is likely due to the fact that H. M.’s cerebellum remained intact. http://bcs.worthpublishers.com/webpub/Ektron/Myers_Psychology%2010e/PsychSim5_Tutorials/Brain_and_Behavior/brainandbehavior.htm A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1999 WHAT DO YOU THINK?: BRAIN DEAD AND ON LIFE SUPPORTWHAT DO YOU THINK?: BRAIN DEAD AND ON LIFE SUPPORT What would you do if your spouse or loved one was declared brain dead but his or her body was being kept alive by medical equipment? Whose decision should it be to remove a feeding tube? Should medical care costs be a factor? On February 25, 1990, a Florida woman named Terri Schiavo went into cardiac arrest, apparently triggered by a bulimic episode. She was eventually revived, but her brain had been deprived of oxygen for a long time. Brain scans indicated that there was no activity in her cerebral cortex, and she suffered from severe and permanent cerebral atrophy. Basically, Schiavo was in a vegetative state. Medical professionals determined that she would never again be able to move, talk, or respond in any way. To remain alive, she required a feeding tube, and there was no chance that her situation would ever improve. On occasion, Schiavo’s eyes would move, and sometimes she would groan. Despite the doctors’ insistence to the contrary, her parents believed that these were signs that she was trying to communicate with them. After 12 years, Schiavo’s husband argued that his wife would not have wanted to be kept alive with no feelings, sensations, or brain activity. Her parents, however, were very much against removing her feeding tube. Eventually, the case made its way to the courts, both in the state of Florida and at the federal level. By 2005, the courts found in favor of Schiavo’s husband, and the feeding tube was removed on March 18, 2005. Schiavo died 13 days later. Why did Schiavo’s eyes sometimes move, and why did she groan? Although the parts of her brain that control thought, voluntary movement, and feeling were completely damaged, her brainstem was still intact. Her medulla and pons maintained her breathing and caused involuntary movements of her eyes and the occasional groans. Over the 15-year period that she was on a feeding tube, Schiavo’s medical costs may have topped $7 million (Arnst, 2003). These questions were brought to popular conscience 25 years ago in the case of Terri Schiavo, and they persist today. In 2013, a 13-year-old girl who suffered complications after tonsil surgery was declared brain dead. There was a battle between her family, who wanted her to remain on life support, and the hospital’s policies regarding persons declared brain dead. In another complicated 2013–14 case in Texas, a pregnant EMT professional declared brain dead was kept alive for weeks, despite her spouse’s directives, which were based on her wishes should this situation arise. In this case, state laws designed to protect an unborn fetus came into consideration until doctors determined the fetus unviable. Decisions surrounding the medical response to patients declared brain dead are complex. What do you think about these issues? An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1999 TRY ITTRY IT THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER You read about H. M.’s memory deficits following the bilateral removal of his hippocampus and amygdala. Have you encountered a character in a book, television program, or movie that suffered memory deficits? How was that character similar to and different from H. M.? GLOSSARYGLOSSARY amygdala:amygdala: structure in the limbic system involved in our experience of emotion and tying emotional meaning to our memories cerebellum:cerebellum: hindbrain structure that controls our balance, coordination, movement, and motor skills, and it is thought to be important in processing some types of memory cerebral cortex:cerebral cortex: surface of the brain that is associated with our highest mental capabilities forebrain:forebrain: largest part of the brain, containing the cerebral cortex, the thalamus, and the limbic system, among other structures hindbrain:hindbrain: division of the brain containing the medulla, pons, and cerebellum hippocampus:hippocampus: structure in the temporal lobe associated with learning and memory hypothalamus:hypothalamus: forebrain structure that regulates sexual motivation and behavior and a number of homeostatic processes; serves as an interface between the nervous system and the endocrine system limbic system:limbic system: collection of structures involved in processing emotion and memory medulla:medulla: hindbrain structure that controls automated processes like breathing, blood pressure, and heart rate midbrain:midbrain: division of the brain located between the forebrain and the hindbrain; contains the reticular formation pons:pons: hindbrain structure that connects the brain and spinal cord; involved in regulating brain activity during sleep reticular formation:reticular formation: midbrain structure important in regulating the sleep/wake cycle, arousal, alertness, and motor activity thalamus:thalamus: sensory relay for the brain ventral tegmental area (VTA):ventral tegmental area (VTA): midbrain structure where dopamine is produced: associated with mood, reward, and addiction Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification and adaptation, addition of tutorial. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • The Brain and Spinal Cord. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:_Io4zP0c@7/The-Brain-and-Spinal-Cord#CNX_Psych_03_04_Lobes. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. LicenseLicense TermsTerms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • pinky and the brain-brainstem. Authored byAuthored by: ctdalilah. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snO68aJTOpM. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License BRAIN IMAGING LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe the types of techniques available to clinicians and researchers to image or scan the brain You have learned how brain injury can provide information about the functions of different parts of the brain. Increasingly, however, we are able to obtain that information using brain imagingbrain imaging techniques on individuals who have not suffered brain injury. In this section, we take a more in-depth look at some of the techniques that are available for imaging the brain, including techniques that rely on radiation, magnetic fields, or electrical activity within the brain. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:_Io4zP0c@7/The-Brain-and-Spinal-Cord#CNX_Psych_03_04_Lobes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snO68aJTOpM Figure 1. A CT scan can be used to show brain tumors. (a) The image on the left shows a healthy brain, whereas (b) the image on the right indicates a brain tumor in the left frontal lobe. (credit a: modification of work by “Aceofhearts1968″/Wikimedia Commons; credit b: modification of work by Roland Schmitt et al) Figure 2. A PET scan is helpful for showing activity in different parts of the brain. (credit: Health and Human Services Department, National Institutes of Health) Techniques Involving Radiation A computerized tomography (CT) scancomputerized tomography (CT) scan involves taking a number of x-rays of a particular section of a person’s body or brain (Figure 1). The x-rays pass through tissues of different densities at different rates, allowing a computer to construct an overall image of the area of the body being scanned. A CT scan is often used to determine whether someone has a tumor, or significant brain atrophy. Positron emission tomography (PET)Positron emission tomography (PET) scans create pictures of the living, active brain (Figure 2). An individual receiving a PET scan drinks or is injected with a mildly radioactive substance, called a tracer. Once in the bloodstream, the amount of tracer in any given region of the brain can be monitored. As brain areas become more active, more blood flows to that area. A computer monitors the movement of the tracer and creates a rough map of active and inactive areas of the brain during a given behavior. PET scans show little detail, are unable to pinpoint events precisely in time, and require that the brain be exposed to radiation; therefore, this technique has been replaced by the fMRI as an alternative diagnostic tool. However, combined with CT, PET technology is still being used in certain contexts. For example, CT/PET scans allow better imaging of the activity of neurotransmitter receptors and open new avenues in schizophrenia research. In this hybrid CT/PET technology, CT contributes clear images of brain structures, while PET shows the brain’s activity. Figure 3. An fMRI shows activity in the brain over time. This image represents a single frame from an fMRI. (credit: modification of work by Kim J, Matthews NL, Park S.) LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Visit this virtual lab to learn more about MRI and fMRI. Techniques Involving Magnetic Fields In magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a person is placed inside a machine that generates a strong magnetic field. The magnetic field causes the hydrogen atoms in the body’s cells to move. When the magnetic field is turned off, the hydrogen atoms emit electromagnetic signals as they return to their original positions. Tissues of different densities give off different signals, which a computer interprets and displays on a monitor. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) operates on the same principles, but it shows changes in brain activity over time by tracking blood flow and oxygen levels. The fMRI provides more detailed images of the brain’s structure, as well as better accuracy in time, than is possible in PET scans (Figure 3). With their high level of detail, MRI and fMRI are often used to compare the brains of healthy individuals to the brains of individuals diagnosed with psychological disorders. This comparison helps determine what structural and functional differences exist between these populations. Techniques Involving Electrical Activity In some situations, it is helpful to gain an understanding of the overall activity of a person’s brain, without needing information on the actual location of the activity. Electroencephalography (EEG)Electroencephalography (EEG) serves this purpose by providing a measure of a brain’s electrical activity. An array of electrodes is placed around a person’s head (Figure 4). The signals received by the electrodes result in a printout of the electrical activity of his or her brain, or brainwaves, showing both the frequency (number of waves per second) and amplitude (height) of the recorded brainwaves, with an accuracy within milliseconds. Such information is especially helpful to researchers studying sleep patterns among individuals with sleep disorders. https://web.csulb.edu/~cwallis/482/fmri/fmri.html An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1993 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1993 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1993 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1993 TRY ITTRY IT Figure 4. Using caps with electrodes, modern EEG research can study the precise timing of overall brain activities. (credit: SMI Eye Tracking) An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1993 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1993 GLOSSARYGLOSSARY computerized tomography (CT) scan:computerized tomography (CT) scan: imaging technique in which a computer coordinates and integrates multiple x-rays of a given area electroencephalography (EEG):electroencephalography (EEG): recording the electrical activity of the brain via electrodes on the scalp functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI):functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): MRI that shows changes in metabolic activity over time magnetic resonance imaging (MRI):magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): magnetic fields used to produce a picture of the tissue being imaged positron emission tomography (PET) scan:positron emission tomography (PET) scan: involves injecting individuals with a mildly radioactive substance and monitoring changes in blood flow to different regions of the brain An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1993 Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Parts of the Nervous System. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:-xs7Ve8V@6/Parts-of-the-Nervous-System#CNX_Psych_03_03_Autonomic. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 LATERALIZATION AND NEUROPLASTICITY You may very well have heard that there are right-brained and left-brained people in the world. But, does this make sense to you? That you’re using only half of your brain? Better yet, does it make sense to you that we are using only 10% of our brain power, as is commonly purported? The reality is that we use ALL portions of our brains, and that there is no such thing as right- nor left-brained, yet these myths persist. Phineas Gage was the FIRST to really SHOW us not only about brain organization and lateralization, but also a little about brain plasticity. In OUR worlds, we can see this via the somewhat miraculous recovery of Gabby Giffords. Be sure to read the following and consider how many places you’ve heard the myth about using 10% of our brains: Do People Only Use 10% of Their Brains? https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:-xs7Ve8V@6/Parts-of-the-Nervous-System#CNX_Psych_03_03_Autonomic https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.today.com/health/if-gabby-giffords-still-struggles-speak-how-can-she-sing-2D11888324 https://www.today.com/health/if-gabby-giffords-still-struggles-speak-how-can-she-sing-2D11888324 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-people-only-use-10-percent-of-their-brains/?redirect=1 NATURE AND NURTURE What you’ll learn to do: explain how nature, nurture, and epigenetics influence personality and behavior How do we become who we are? Traditionally, people’s answers have placed them in one of two camps: nature or nurture. The one says genes determine an individual while the other claims the environment is the linchpin for development. Since the 16th century, when the terms “nature” and “nurture” first came into use, many people have spent ample time debating which is more important, but these discussions have more often led to ideological cul-de-sacs rather than pinnacles of insight. New research into epigenetics—the science of how the environment influences genetic expression—is changing the conversation. As psychologist David S. Moore explains in his newest book, The Developing Genome, this burgeoning field reveals that what counts is not what genes you have so much as what your genes are doing. And what your genes are doing is influenced by the ever-changing environment they’re in. Factors like stress, nutrition, and exposure to toxins all play a role in how genes are expressed—essentially which genes are turned on or off. Unlike the static conception of nature or nurture, epigenetic research demonstrates how genes and environments continuously interact to produce characteristics throughout a lifetime. LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Investigate the historic nature vs. nurture debate and describe techniques psychologists use to learn about the origin of traits https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/15044853/1024px-DNA_methylation Figure 1. Researchers have learned a great deal about the nature-nurture dynamic by working with animals. But of course many of the techniques used to study animals cannot be applied to people. Separating these two influences in human subjects is a greater research challenge. [Photo: mharrsch] • Explain the basic principles of the theory of evolution by natural selection, genetic variation, and mutation The Nature vs. Nurture Debate Are you the way you are because you were born that way, or because of the way you were raised? Do your genetics and biology dictate your personality and behavior, or is it your environment and how you were raised? These questions are central to the age-old nature-nurturenature-nurture debate. In the history of psychology, no other question has caused so much controversy and offense: We are so concerned with nature–nurture because our very sense of moral character seems to depend on it. While we may admire the athletic skills of a great basketball player, we think of his height as simply a gift, a payoff in the “genetic lottery.” For the same reason, no one blames a short person for his height or someone’s congenital disability on poor decisions: To state the obvious, it’s “not their fault.” But we do praise the concert violinist (and perhaps her parents and teachers as well) for her dedication, just as we condemn cheaters, slackers, and bullies for their bad behavior.The problem is, most human characteristics aren’t usually as clear-cut as height or instrument-mastery, affirming our nature–nurture expectations strongly one way or the other. In fact, even the great violinist might have some inborn qualities—perfect pitch, or long, nimble fingers—that support and reward her hard work. And the basketball player might have eaten a diet while growing up that promoted his genetic tendency for being tall. When we think about our own qualities, they seem under our control in some respects, yet beyond our control in others. And often the traits that don’t seem to have an obvious cause are the ones that concern us the most and are far more personally significant. What about how much we drink or worry? What about our honesty, or religiosity, or sexual orientation? They all come from that uncertain zone, neither fixed by nature nor totally under our own control. One major problem with answering nature-nurture questions about people is, how do you set up an experiment? In nonhuman animals, there are relatively straightforward experiments for tackling nature–nurture questions. Say, for example, you are interested in aggressiveness in dogs. You want to test for the more important determinant of aggression: being born to aggressive dogs or being raised by them. You could mate two aggressive dogs—angry Chihuahuas—together, and mate two nonaggressive dogs—happy beagles—together, then switch half the puppies from each litter between the different sets of parents to raise. You would then have puppies born to aggressive parents (the Chihuahuas) but being raised by nonaggressive parents (the Beagles), and vice versa, in litters that mirror each other in puppy distribution. The big questions are: Would the Chihuahua parents raise aggressive beagle puppies? Would the beagle parents raise nonaggressive Chihuahua puppies? Would the puppies’ nature win out, regardless of who raised them? Or… would the result be a combination of nature and nurture? Much of the most significant nature–nurture research has been done in this way (Scott & Fuller, 1998), and animal breeders have been doing it successfully for thousands of years. In fact, it is fairly easy to breed animals for behavioral traits. With people, however, we can’t assign babies to parents at random, or select parents with certain behavioral characteristics to mate, merely in the interest of science (though history does include horrific examples of such practices, in misguided attempts at “eugenics,” the shaping of human characteristics through intentional breeding). In typical human families, children’s biological parents raise them, so it is very difficult to know whether children act like their parents due to genetic (nature) or environmental (nurture) reasons. Nevertheless, despite our restrictions on setting up human-based experiments, we do see real-world examples of nature-nurture at work in the human sphere—though they only provide partial answers to our many questions. The science of how genes and environments work together to influence behavior is called behavioral geneticsbehavioral genetics. The easiest opportunity we https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/21142023/doggies https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/21142023/doggies Figure 2. Studies focused on twins have lead to important insights about the biological origins of many personality characteristics. [Photo: ethermoon] have to observe this is the adoption studyadoption study. When children are put up for adoption, the parents who give birth to them are no longer the parents who raise them. This setup isn’t quite the same as the experiments with dogs (children aren’t assigned to random adoptive parents in order to suit the particular interests of a scientist) but adoption still tells us some interesting things, or at least confirms some basic expectations. For instance, if the biological child of tall parents were adopted into a family of short people, do you suppose the child’s growth would be affected? What about the biological child of a Spanish-speaking family adopted at birth into an English- speaking family? What language would you expect the child to speak? And what might these outcomes tell you about the difference between height and language in terms of nature-nurture? Another option for observing nature-nurture in humans involves twin studiestwin studies. There are two types of twins: monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ). Monozygotic twins, also called “identical” twins, result from a single zygote (fertilized egg) and have the same DNA. They are essentially clones. Dizygotic twins, also known as “fraternal” twins, develop from two zygotes and share 50% of their DNA. Fraternal twins are ordinary siblings who happen to have been born at the same time. To analyze nature–nurture using twins, we compare the similarity of MZ and DZ pairs. Sticking with the features of height and spoken language, let’s take a look at how nature and nurture apply: Identical twins, unsurprisingly, are almost perfectly similar for height. The heights of fraternal twins, however, are like any other sibling pairs: more similar to each other than to people from other families, but hardly identical. This contrast between twin types gives us a clue about the role genetics plays in determining height. Now consider spoken language. If one identical twin speaks Spanish at home, the co-twin with whom she is raised almost certainly does too. But the same would be true for a pair of fraternal twins raised together. In terms of spoken language, fraternal twins are just as similar as identical twins, so it appears that the genetic match of identical twins doesn’t make much difference. Twin and adoption studies are two instances of a much broader class of methods for observing nature-nurture called quantitative geneticsquantitative genetics, the scientific discipline in which similarities among individuals are analyzed based on how biologically related they are. We can do these studies with siblings and half-siblings, cousins, twins who have been separated at birth and raised separately (Bouchard, Lykken, McGue, & Segal, 1990; such twins are very rare and play a smaller role than is commonly believed in the science of nature–nurture), or with entire extended families (see Plomin, DeFries, Knopik, & Neiderhiser, 2012, for a complete introduction to research methods relevant to nature–nurture). For better or for worse, contentions about nature–nurture have intensified because quantitative genetics produces a number called a heritability coefficientheritability coefficient, varying from 0 to 1, that is meant to provide a single measure of genetics’ influence of a trait. In a general way, a heritability coefficient measures how strongly differences among individuals are related to differences among their genes. But beware: Heritability coefficients, although simple to compute, are deceptively difficult to interpret. Nevertheless, numbers that provide simple answers to complicated questions tend to have a strong influence on the human imagination, and a great deal of time has been spent discussing whether the heritability of intelligence or personality or depression is equal to one number or another. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/21142159/twoboys https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/21142159/twoboys Figure 3. Quantitative genetics uses statistical methods to study the effects that both heredity and environment have on test subjects. These methods have provided us with the heritability coefficient which measures how strongly differences among individuals for a trait are related to differences among their genes. [Image: EMSL] Figure 4. Research over the last half century has revealed how central genetics are to behavior. The more genetically related people are the more similar they are not just physically but also in terms of personality and behavior. [Photo: 藍川芥 aikawake] One reason nature–nurture continues to fascinate us so much is that we live in an era of great scientific discovery in genetics, comparable to the times of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, with regard to astronomy and physics. Every day, it seems, new discoveries are made, new possibilities proposed. When Francis Galton first started thinking about nature–nurture in the late-19th century he was very influenced by his cousin, Charles Darwin, but genetics per se was unknown. Mendel’s famous work with peas, conducted at about the same time, went undiscovered for 20 years; quantitative genetics was developed in the 1920s; DNA was discovered by Watson and Crick in the 1950s; the human genome was completely sequenced at the turn of the 21st century; and we are now on the verge of being able to obtain the specific DNA sequence of anyone at a relatively low cost. No one knows what this new genetic knowledge will mean for the study of nature–nurture, but as we will see in the next section, answers to nature–nurture questions have turned out to be far more difficult and mysterious than anyone imagined. What Have We Learned About Nature–Nurture? It would be satisfying to be able to say that nature–nurture studies have given us conclusive and complete evidence about where traits come from, with some traits clearly resulting from genetics and others almost entirely from environmental factors, such as childrearing practices and personal will; but that is not the case. Instead, everything has turned out to have some footing in genetics. The more genetically-related people are, the more similar they are—for everything: height, weight, intelligence, personality, mental illness, etc. Sure, it seems like common sense that some traits have a genetic bias. For example, adopted children resemble their biological parents even if they have never met them, and identical twins are more similar to each other than are fraternal twins. And while certain psychological traits, such as personality or mental illness (e.g., schizophrenia), seem reasonably influenced by genetics, it turns out that the same is true for political attitudes, how much television people watch (Plomin, Corley, DeFries, & Fulker, 1990), and whether or not they get divorced (McGue & Lykken, 1992). It may seem surprising, but genetic influence on behavior is a relatively recent discovery. In the middle of the 20th century, psychology was dominated by the doctrine of behaviorism, which held that behavior could only be explained in terms of environmental factors. Psychiatry concentrated on psychoanalysis, which probed for roots of behavior in individuals’ early life-histories. The truth is, neither behaviorism nor psychoanalysis is incompatible with genetic influences on behavior, and neither Freud nor Skinner was naive about the importance of organic processes in behavior. Nevertheless, in their day it was widely thought that children’s personalities were shaped entirely by imitating their parents’ behavior, and that schizophrenia was caused by certain kinds of “pathological mothering.” Whatever the outcome of our broader discussion of nature–nurture, the basic fact that the best predictors of an adopted child’s personality or mental health are found in the biological parents he or she has never met, rather than in the adoptive parents who raised him or her, presents a significant challenge to purely environmental explanations of personality or psychopathology. The message is clear: You can’t leave genes out of the equation. But keep in https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/21142506/dna3 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/21142506/dna3 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2040 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2040 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2040 TRY ITTRY IT mind, no behavioral traits are completely inherited, so you can’t leave the environment out altogether, either. Trying to untangle the various ways nature-nurture influences human behavior can be messy, and often common- sense notions can get in the way of good science. One very significant contribution of behavioral genetics that has changed psychology for good can be very helpful to keep in mind: When your subjects are biologically- related, no matter how clearly a situation may seem to point to environmental influence, it is never safe to interpret a behavior as wholly the result of nurture without further evidence. For example, when presented with data showing that children whose mothers read to them often are likely to have better reading scores in third grade, it is tempting to conclude that reading to your kids out loud is important to success in school; this may well be true, but the study as described is inconclusive, because there are genetic as well as environmental pathways between the parenting practices of mothers and the abilities of their children. This is a case where “correlation does not imply causation,” as they say. To establish that reading aloud causes success, a scientist can either study the problem in adoptive families (in which the genetic pathway is absent) or by finding a way to randomly assign children to oral reading conditions. THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER • Is your personality more like one of your parents than the other? If you have a sibling, is his or her personality like yours? In your family, how did these similarities and differences develop? What do you think caused them? • Can you think of a human characteristic for which genetic differences would play almost no role? Defend your choice. • Do you think the time will come when we will be able to predict almost everything about someone by examining their DNA on the day they are born? • Identical twins are more similar than fraternal twins for the trait of aggressiveness, as well as for criminal behavior. Do these facts have implications for the courtroom? If it can be shown that a violent criminal had violent parents, should it make a difference in culpability or sentencing? Psychological researchers study genetics in order to better understand the biological basis that contributes to certain behaviors. While all humans share certain biological mechanisms, we are each unique. And while our bodies have many of the same parts—brains and hormones and cells with genetic codes—these are expressed in a wide variety of behaviors, thoughts, and reactions. Why do two people infected by the same disease have different outcomes: one surviving and one succumbing to the ailment? How are genetic diseases passed through family lines? Are there genetic components to psychological disorders, such as depression or schizophrenia? To what extent might there be a psychological basis to health conditions such as childhood obesity? Figure 5. Normal blood cells travel freely through the blood vessels, while sickle-shaped cells form blockages preventing blood flow. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Visit this website to learn more about how a mutation in DNA leads to sickle-cell anemia. To explore these questions, let’s start by focusing on a specific disease, sickle-cell anemia, and how it might affect two infected sisters. Sickle-cell anemiaSickle-cell anemia is a genetic condition in which red blood cells, which are normally round, take on a crescent-like shape (Figure 5). The changed shape of these cells affects how they function: sickle-shaped cells can clog blood vessels and block blood flow, leading to high fever, severe pain, swelling, and tissue damage. Many people with sickle-cell anemia—and the particular genetic mutation that causes it—die at an early age. While the notion of “survival of the fittest” may suggest that people suffering from this disease have a low survival rate and therefore the disease will become less common, this is not the case. Despite the negative evolutionary effects associated with this genetic mutation, the sickle-cell gene remains relatively common among people of African descent. Why is this? The explanation is illustrated with the following scenario. Imagine two young women—Luwi and Sena—sisters in rural Zambia, Africa. Luwi carries the gene for sickle-cell anemia; Sena does not carry the gene. Sickle-cell carriers have one copy of the sickle-cell gene but do not have full- blown sickle-cell anemia. They experience symptoms only if they are severely dehydrated or are deprived of oxygen (as in mountain climbing). Carriers are thought to be immune from malaria (an often deadly disease that is widespread in tropical climates) because changes in their blood chemistry and immune functioning prevent the malaria parasite from having its effects (Gong, Parikh, Rosenthal, & Greenhouse, 2013). However, full-blown sickle-cell anemia, with two copies of the sickle-cell gene, does not provide immunity to malaria. While walking home from school, both sisters are bitten by mosquitos carrying the malaria parasite. Luwi does not get malaria because she carries the sickle-cell mutation. Sena, on the other hand, develops malaria and dies just two weeks later. Luwi survives and eventually has children, to whom she may pass on the sickle-cell mutation. Malaria is rare in the United States, so the sickle-cell gene benefits nobody: the gene manifests primarily in health problems—minor in carriers, severe in the full-blown disease—with no health benefits for carriers. However, the situation is quite different in other parts of the world. In parts of Africa where malaria is prevalent, having the sickle-cell mutation does provide health benefits for carriers (protection from malaria). This is precisely the situation that Charles Darwin describes in the theory of evolution by natural selectiontheory of evolution by natural selection (Figure 6). In simple terms, the theory states that organisms that are better suited for their environment will survive and reproduce, while those that are poorly suited for their environment will die off. In our example, we can see that as a carrier, Luwi’s mutation is highly adaptive in her African homeland; however, if she resided in the United States (where malaria is much less common), her mutation could prove costly—with a high probability of the disease in her descendants and minor health problems of her own. https://www.dnalc.org/resources/3d/17-sickle-cell.html Figure 6. (a) In 1859, Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution by natural selection in his book, On the Origin of Species. (b) The book contains just one illustration: this diagram that shows how species evolve over time through natural selection. DIG DEEPER: TWO PERSPECTIVES ON GENETICS AND BEHAVIORDIG DEEPER: TWO PERSPECTIVES ON GENETICS AND BEHAVIOR It’s easy to get confused about two fields that study the interaction of genes and the environment, such as the fields of evolutionary psychologyevolutionary psychology and behavioral geneticsbehavioral genetics. How can we tell them apart? In both fields, it is understood that genes not only code for particular traits, but also contribute to certain patterns of cognition and behavior. Evolutionary psychology focuses on how universal patterns of behavior and cognitive processes have evolved over time. Therefore, variations in cognition and behavior would make individuals more or less successful in reproducing and passing those genes to their offspring. Evolutionary psychologists study a variety of psychological phenomena that may have evolved as adaptations, including fear response, food preferences, mate selection, and cooperative behaviors (Confer et al., 2010). Whereas evolutionary psychologists focus on universal patterns that evolved over millions of years, behavioral geneticists study how individual differences arise, in the present, through the interaction of genes and the environment. When studying human behavior, behavioral geneticists often employ twin and adoption studies to research questions of interest. Twin studies compare the rates that a given behavioral trait is shared among identical and fraternal twins; adoption studies compare those rates among biologically related relatives and adopted relatives. Both approaches provide some insight into the relative importance of genes and environment for the expression of a given trait. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch this interview with renowned evolutionary psychologist Davis Buss for an explanation of how a psychologist approaches evolution and how this approach fits within the field of social science. https://youtu.be/xbRCFuet0Nk An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2040 TRY ITTRY IT Genetic Variation Genetic variation, the genetic difference between individuals, is what contributes to a species’ adaptation to its environment. In humans, genetic variation begins with an egg, about 100 million sperm, and fertilization. Fertile women ovulate roughly once per month, releasing an egg from follicles in the ovary. The egg travels, via the fallopian tube, from the ovary to the uterus, where it may be fertilized by a sperm. The egg and the sperm each contain 23 chromosomes. ChromosomesChromosomes are long strings of genetic material known as deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). DNA is a helix-shaped molecule made up of nucleotide base pairs. In each chromosome, sequences of DNA make up genesgenes that control or partially control a number of visible characteristics, known as traits, such as eye color, hair color, and so on. A single gene may have multiple possible variations, or alleles. An alleleallele is a specific version of a gene. So, a given gene may code for the trait of hair color, and the different alleles of that gene affect which hair color an individual has. When a sperm and egg fuse, their 23 chromosomes pair up and create a zygote with 23 pairs of chromosomes. Therefore, each parent contributes half the genetic information carried by the offspring; the resulting physical characteristics of the offspring (called the phenotype) are determined by the interaction of genetic material supplied by the parents (called the genotype). A person’s genotypegenotype is the genetic makeup of that individual. Phenotype,Phenotype, on the other hand, refers to the individual’s inherited physical characteristics (Figure 7). Figure 7. (a) Genotype refers to the genetic makeup of an individual based on the genetic material (DNA) inherited from one’s parents. (b) Phenotype describes an individual’s observable characteristics, such as hair color, skin color, height, and build. (credit a: modification of work by Caroline Davis; credit b: modification of work by Cory Zanker) Most traits are controlled by multiple genes, but some traits are controlled by one gene. A characteristic like cleftcleft chinchin, for example, is influenced by a single gene from each parent. In this example, we will call the gene for cleft chin “B,” and the gene for smooth chin “b.” Cleft chin is a dominant trait, which means that having the dominantdominant alleleallele either from one parent (Bb) or both parents (BB) will always result in the phenotype associated with the dominant allele. When someone has two copies of the same allele, they are said to be homozygoushomozygous for that allele. When someone has a combination of alleles for a given gene, they are said to be heterozygousheterozygous. For example, smooth chin is a recessive trait, which means that an individual will only display the smooth chin phenotype if they are homozygous for that recessive allelerecessive allele (bb). Imagine that a woman with a cleft chin has a child with a man with a smooth chin. What type of chin will their child have? The answer to that depends on which alleles each parent carries. If the woman is homozygous for cleft chin (BB), her offspring will always have cleft chin. It gets a little more complicated, however, if the mother is heterozygous for this gene (Bb). Since the father has a smooth chin—therefore homozygous for the recessive allele (bb)—we can expect the offspring to have a 50% chance of having a cleft chin and a 50% chance of having a smooth chin (Figure 8). Figure 8. (a) A Punnett square is a tool used to predict how genes will interact in the production of offspring. The capital B represents the dominant allele, and the lowercase b represents the recessive allele. In the example of the cleft chin, where B is cleft chin (dominant allele), wherever a pair contains the dominant allele, B, you can expect a cleft chin phenotype. You can expect a smooth chin phenotype only when there are two copies of the recessive allele, bb. (b) A cleft chin, shown here, is an inherited trait. Sickle-cell anemia is just one of many genetic disorders caused by the pairing of two recessive genes. For example, phenylketonuria (PKU)phenylketonuria (PKU) is a condition in which individuals lack an enzyme that normally converts harmful amino acids into harmless byproducts. If someone with this condition goes untreated, he or she will experience significant deficits in cognitive function, seizures, and increased risk of various psychiatric disorders. Because PKU is a recessive trait, each parent must have at least one copy of the recessive allele in order to produce a child with the condition (Figure 9). Figure 9. In this Punnett square, N represents the normal allele, and p represents the recessive allele that is associated with PKU. If two individuals mate who are both heterozygous for the allele associated with PKU, their offspring have a 25% chance of expressing the PKU phenotype. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2040 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2040 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2040 TRY ITTRY IT GLOSSARYGLOSSARY adoption studyadoption study: a behavior genetic research method that involves comparison of adopted children to their adoptive and biological parents allele:allele: specific version of a gene behavioral geneticsbehavioral genetics: the empirical science of how genes and environments combine to generate behavior chromosome:chromosome: long strand of genetic information So far, we have discussed traits that involve just one gene, but few human characteristics are controlled by a single gene. Most traits are polygenicpolygenic: controlled by more than one gene. Height is one example of a polygenic trait, as are skin color and weight. Where do harmful genes that contribute to diseases like PKU come from? Gene mutations provide one source of harmful genes. A mutationmutation is a sudden, permanent change in a gene. While many mutations can be harmful or lethal, once in a while, a mutation benefits an individual by giving that person an advantage over those who do not have the mutation. Recall that the theory of evolution asserts that individuals best adapted to their particular environments are more likely to reproduce and pass on their genes to future generations. In order for this process to occur, there must be competition—more technically, there must be variability in genes (and resultant traits) that allow for variation in adaptability to the environment. If a population consisted of identical individuals, then any dramatic changes in the environment would affect everyone in the same way, and there would be no variation in selection. In contrast, diversity in genes and associated traits allows some individuals to perform slightly better than others when faced with environmental change. This creates a distinct advantage for individuals best suited for their environments in terms of successful reproduction and genetic transmission. deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA):deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA): helix-shaped molecule made of nucleotide base pairs dominant allele:dominant allele: allele whose phenotype will be expressed in an individual that possesses that allele genetic environmental correlation:genetic environmental correlation: view of gene-environment interaction that asserts our genes affect our environment, and our environment influences the expression of our genes genotype:genotype: genetic makeup of an individual heterozygous:heterozygous: consisting of two different alleles heritability coefficientheritability coefficient: an easily misinterpreted statistical construct that purports to measure the role of genetics in the explanation of differences among individuals homozygous:homozygous: consisting of two identical alleles mutation:mutation: sudden, permanent change in a gene phenotype:phenotype: individual’s inheritable physical characteristics polygenic:polygenic: multiple genes affecting a given trait quantitative geneticsquantitative genetics: scientific and mathematical methods for inferring genetic and environmental processes based on the degree of genetic and environmental similarity among organisms recessive allele:recessive allele: allele whose phenotype will be expressed only if an individual is homozygous for that allele theory of evolution by natural selection:theory of evolution by natural selection: states that organisms that are better suited for their environments will survive and reproduce compared to those that are poorly suited for their environments twin studiestwin studies: a behavior genetic research method that involves comparison of the similarity of identical (monozygotic; MZ) and fraternal (dizygotic; DZ) twins Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • DNA image. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_methylation#/media/File:DNA_methylation . LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • The End of Nature Versus Nurture. Authored byAuthored by: Evan Nesterak. Located atLocated at: http://thepsychreport.com/books/the-end-of-nature-versus-nurture/. ProjectProject: The Psych Report. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike • The Nature-Nurture Question. Authored byAuthored by: Eric Turkheimer. Provided byProvided by: University of Virginia. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/modules/the-nature-nurture-question. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC- SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike • Psychology. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@4.100:1/Psychology. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/. GENE-ENVIRONMENT INTERACTIONS LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe epigenetics and examine how gene-environment interactions are critical for expression of physical and psychological characteristics Genes do not exist in a vacuum. Although we are all biological organisms, we also exist in an environment that is incredibly important in determining not only when and how our genes express themselves, but also in what combination. Each of us represents a unique interaction between our genetic makeup and our environment; range of reaction is one way to describe this interaction. Range of reactionRange of reaction asserts that our genes set the boundaries within which we can operate, and our environment interacts with the genes to determine where in that range we will fall. For example, if an individual’s genetic makeup predisposes her to high levels of intellectual potential and she is reared in a rich, stimulating environment, then she will be more likely to achieve her full potential than if she were raised under conditions of significant deprivation. According to the concept of range of reaction, genes set definite limits on potential, and environment determines how much of that potential is achieved. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_methylation#/media/File:DNA_methylation https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ http://thepsychreport.com/books/the-end-of-nature-versus-nurture/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/modules/the-nature-nurture-question https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@4.100:1/Psychology https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Figure 1. Nature and nurture work together like complex pieces of a human puzzle. The interaction of our environment and genes makes us the individuals we are. (credit “puzzle”: modification of work by Cory Zanker; credit “houses”: modification of work by Ben Salter; credit “DNA”: modification of work by NHGRI) An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1975 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Visit this site for an engaging video primer on the epigenetics of twin studies. Another perspective on the interaction between genes and the environment is the concept of geneticgenetic environmental correlationenvironmental correlation. Stated simply, our genes influence our environment, and our environment influences the expression of our genes (Figure 1). Not only do our genes and environment interact, as in range of reaction, but they also influence one another bidirectionally. For example, the child of an NBA player would probably be exposed to basketball from an early age. Such exposure might allow the child to realize his or her full genetic, athletic potential. Thus, the parents’ genes, which the child shares, influence the child’s environment, and that environment, in turn, is well suited to support the child’s genetic potential. In another approach to gene-environment interactions, the field of epigeneticsepigenetics looks beyond the genotype itself and studies how the same genotype can be expressed in different ways. In other words, researchers study how the same genotype can lead to very different phenotypes. As mentioned earlier, gene expression is often influenced by environmental context in ways that are not entirely obvious. For instance, identical twins share the same genetic information (identical twinsidentical twins develop from a single fertilized egg that split, so the genetic material is exactly the same in each; in contrast, fraternal twinsfraternal twins develop from two different eggs fertilized by different sperm, so the genetic material varies as with non-twin siblings). But even with identical genes, there remains an incredible amount of variability in how gene expression can unfold over the course of each twin’s life. Sometimes, one twin will develop a disease and the other will not. In one example, Tiffany, an identical twin, died from cancer at age 7, but her twin, now 19 years old, has never had cancer. Although these individuals share an identical genotype, their phenotypes differ as a result of how that genetic information is expressed over time. The epigenetic perspective is very different from range of reaction, because here the genotype is not fixed and limited. http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics/twins/ Figure 2. Identical twins are the perfect example of epigenetics. Although they share exactly the same DNA, their unique experiences in life will cause some genes (and not others) to express themselves. This is why, over time, identical twins come to look and behave differently. [Image: Inese Dunajeva] GenesGenes affect more than our physical characteristics. Indeed, scientists have found genetic linkages to a number of behavioral characteristics, ranging from basic personality traits to sexual orientation to spirituality (for examples, see Mustanski et al., 2005; Comings, Gonzales, Saucier, Johnson, & MacMurray, 2000). Genes are also associated with temperament and a number of psychological disorders, such as depression and schizophrenia. So while it is true that genes provide the biological blueprints for our cells, tissues, organs, and body, they also have significant impact on our experiences and our behaviors. Let’s look at the following findings regarding schizophrenia in light of our three views of gene-environment interactions. Which view do you think best explains this evidence? In a study of people who were given up for adoption, adoptees whose biological mothers had schizophrenia and who had been raised in a disturbed family environment were much more likely to develop schizophrenia or another psychotic disorder than were any of the other groups in the study: • Of adoptees whose biological mothers had schizophrenia (high genetic risk) and who were raised in disturbed family environments, 36.8% were likely to develop schizophrenia. • Of adoptees whose biological mothers had schizophrenia (high genetic risk) and who were raised in healthy family environments, 5.8% were likely to develop schizophrenia. • Of adoptees with a low genetic risk (whose mothers did not have schizophrenia) and who were raised in disturbed family environments, 5.3% were likely to develop schizophrenia. • Of adoptees with a low genetic risk (whose mothers did not have schizophrenia) and who were raised in healthy family environments, 4.8% were likely to develop schizophrenia (Tienari et al., 2004). The study shows that adoptees with high genetic risk were especially likely to develop schizophrenia only if they were raised in disturbed home environments. This research lends credibility to the notion that both genetic vulnerability and environmental stress are necessary for schizophrenia to develop, and that genes alone do not tell the full tale. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/21125943/twinsies https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/21125943/twinsies DIG DEEPER: PARENTAL INVESTMENT AND PROGRAMMING OF STRESSDIG DEEPER: PARENTAL INVESTMENT AND PROGRAMMING OF STRESS RESPONSES IN OFFSPRINGRESPONSES IN OFFSPRING The most comprehensive study to date of variations in parental investment and epigenetic inheritance in mammals is that of the maternally transmitted responses to stress in rats. In rat pups, maternal nurturing (licking and grooming) during the first week of life is associated with long-term programming of individual differences in stress responsiveness, emotionality, cognitive performance, and reproductive behavior (Caldji et al., 1998; Francis, Diorio, Liu, & Meaney, 1999; Liu et al., 1997; Myers, Brunelli, Shair, Squire, & Hofer, 1989; Stern, 1997). In adulthood, the offspring of mothers that exhibit increased levels of pup licking and grooming over the first week of life show increased expression of the glucocorticoid receptor in the hippocampus (a brain structure associated with stress responsivity as well as learning and memory) and a lower hormonal response to stress compared with adult animals reared by low licking and grooming mothers (Francis et al., 1999; Liu et al., 1997). Moreover, rat pups that received low levels of maternal licking and grooming during the first week of life showed decreased histone acetylation and increased DNA methylation of a neuron-specific promoter of the glucocorticoid receptor gene (Weaver et al., 2004). The expression of this gene is then reduced, the number of glucocorticoid receptors in the brain is decreased, and the animals show a higher hormonal response to stress throughout their life. The effects of maternal care on stress hormone responses and behavior in the offspring can be eliminated in adulthood by pharmacological treatment (HDAC inhibitor trichostatin A, TSA) or dietary amino acid supplementation (methyl donor L-methionine), treatments that influence histone acetylation, DNA methylation, and expression of the glucocorticoid receptor gene (Weaver et al., 2004;Weaver et al., 2005). This series of experiments shows that histone acetylation and DNA methylation of the glucocorticoid receptor gene promoter is a necessary link in the process leading to the long-term physiological and behavioral sequelae of poor maternal care. This points to a possible molecular target for treatments that may reverse or ameliorate the traces of childhood maltreatment. Several studies have attempted to determine to what extent the findings from model animals are transferable to humans. Examination of post-mortem brain tissue from healthy human subjects found that the human equivalent of the glucocorticoid receptor gene promoter (NR3C1 exon 1F promoter) is also unique to the individual (Turner, Pelascini, Macedo, & Muller, 2008). A similar study examining newborns showed that methylation of the glucocorticoid receptor gene promoter maybe an early epigenetic marker of maternal mood and risk of increased hormonal responses to stress in infants 3 months of age (Oberlander et al., 2008). Although further studies are required to examine the functional consequence of this DNA methylation, these findings are consistent with our studies in the neonate and adult offspring of low licking and grooming mothers that show increased DNA methylation of the promoter of the glucocorticoid receptor gene, decreased glucocorticoid receptor gene expression, and increased hormonal responses to stress (Weaver et al., 2004). Examination of brain tissue from suicide victims found that the human glucocorticoid receptor gene promoter is also more methylated in the brains of individuals who had experienced maltreatment during childhood (McGowan et al., 2009). Examination of blood samples from adult patients with bipolar disorder, who also retrospectively reported on their experiences of childhood abuse and neglect, found that the degree of DNA methylation of the human glucocorticoid receptor gene promoter was strongly positively related to the reported experience of childhood maltreatment decades earlier. Watch this video to see another example of how diet can alter the phenotype of genetically identical mice. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1975 TRY ITTRY IT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfAV4poRkJ4 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1975 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1975 GLOSSARYGLOSSARY epigenome:epigenome: a dynamic layer of information associated with DNA that differs between individuals and can be altered through various experiences and environments epigenetics:epigenetics: study of gene-environment interactions, such as how the same genotype leads to different phenotypes fraternal twins:fraternal twins: twins who develop from two different eggs fertilized by different sperm, so their genetic material varies the same as in non-twin siblings gene:gene: sequence of DNA that controls or partially controls physical characteristics identical twins:identical twins: twins that develop from the same sperm and egg range of reaction:range of reaction: asserts our genes set the boundaries within which we can operate, and our environment interacts with the genes to determine where in that range we will fall An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1975 Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Human Genetics. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:vQpw884b@8/Human-Genetics. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/ contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • Epigenetics in Psychology (Dig Deeper activity and image of twins). Authored byAuthored by: Ian Weaver. Provided byProvided by: Dalhousie University. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/modules/epigenetics-in-psychology?r=LDExNDY3. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Introducing epigenetics - Intro to Psychology. Authored byAuthored by: Udacity. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCZ-flJ-QxA. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/ 4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 PUTTING IT TOGETHER: BIOPSYCHOLOGY LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES In this module, you learned to • identify the basic structures of a neuron, the function of each structure, and how messages travel through the neuron • describe the role of the nervous system and endocrine systems • identify and describe the parts of the brain http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:vQpw884b@8/Human-Genetics https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/modules/epigenetics-in-psychology?r=LDExNDY3 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCZ-flJ-QxA An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2852 • explain how nature, nurture, and epigenetics influence personality and behavior Read this abstract from Lane Beckes, James A. Coan, and Karen Hasselmo’s 2012 study, “Familiarity promotes the blurring of self and other in the neural representation of threat.” Neurobiological investigations of empathy often support an embodied simulation account. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we monitored statistical associations between brain activations indicating self-focused threat to those indicating threats to a familiar friend or an unfamiliar stranger. Results in regions such as the anterior insula, putamen and supramarginal gyrus indicate that self-focused threat activations are robustly correlated with friend-focused threat activations but not stranger-focused threat activations. These results suggest that one of the defining features of human social bonding may be increasing levels of overlap between neural representations of self and other. This article presents a novel and important methodological approach to fMRI empathy studies, which informs how differences in brain activation can be detected in such studies and how covariate approaches can provide novel and important information regarding the brain and empathy. Did you recognize any of the concepts discussed in this module? This study used fMRI to examine the brain activation of people as they looked at cues and received, or were threatened with receiving, mild electric shocks while holding hands with either a friend or a stranger. The results showed the expected response—brain activation in the anterior insula, putamen, and supramarginal gyrus when a person was threatened with a shock. What was remarkable, however, was that people showed nearly the same brain activation when a friend was threatened with the shock, but not a stranger. This provides insight into studies on empathy, and the idea that the concept of “self” can expand to include others as well. As you can see, there is a limitless amount of information that could be studied on the brain. Neuroscience is a relatively new field, but the more research that is done, the more it appears that much of human behavior and mental processes—the key interests for psychological study—are intimately intertwined with activity in the brain. Understanding the brain is important no matter what type of psychology you will be involved with, because its effects permeate all human behavior. The more we learn about the brain and its functioning, the better able we are to work towards repairing the brain or mimicking its capabilities. These advances in research lead to medical discoveries and breakthroughs, such as the one explained in the following video: Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Familiarity promotes the blurring of self and other in the neural representation of threat. Authored byAuthored by: Lane Beckes, James A. Coan, and Karen Hasselmo. Provided byProvided by: Oxford Academic. Located atLocated at: https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/8/6/670/1611749/Familiarity-promotes-the-blurring-of-self-and. ProjectProject: Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (2012) 8 (6): 670-677. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC: Attribution- NonCommercial • Psychology and the Brain. Provided byProvided by: Boundless. Located atLocated at: https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/biological-foundations-of-psychology-3/psychology-and-the-brain-406/ studying-the-brain-149-12684/. ProjectProject: Boundless Psychology. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • The nerve bypass: how to move a paralysed hand. Provided byProvided by: Nature. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60fAjaRfwnU. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/8/6/670/1611749/Familiarity-promotes-the-blurring-of-self-and https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/biological-foundations-of-psychology-3/psychology-and-the-brain-406/studying-the-brain-149-12684/ https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/biological-foundations-of-psychology-3/psychology-and-the-brain-406/studying-the-brain-149-12684/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60fAjaRfwnU DISCUSSION: BIOPSYCHOLOGY Using Your Brain Step 1Step 1: Write a discussion post of at least 150 words based on the following prompt (answer both questions): • Think of an activity you did today. Using what you learned in this module, describe at least five different parts of your brain and how they were involved in that activity. • If you were a psychologist or neuroscientist interested in learning more about one of those brain parts, what methods could you use to learn more about the brain? (Consider types of studies you could create, experiments you could design, brain-imaging techniques, and other methods described in your reading) Step 2Step 2: In a productive post that facilitates discussion, comment on at least TWO other posts with at least 75 words each. Add your own thoughts about the parts of the brain and methods used to study it. Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Using Your Brain Discussion: Biopsychology. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ MODULE 4: SENSATION AND PERCEPTION WHY IT MATTERS: SENSATION AND PERCEPTION If you were standing in the midst of this street scene, you would be absorbing and processing numerous pieces of sensory input. (credit: modification of work by Cory Zanker) Imagine standing on a city street corner. You might be struck by movement everywhere as cars and people go about their business, by the sound of a street musician’s melody or a horn honking in the distance, by the smell of exhaust fumes or of food being sold by a nearby vendor, and by the sensation of hard pavement under your feet. We rely on our sensory systems to provide important information about our surroundings. We use this information to successfully navigate and interact with our environment so that we can find nourishment, seek shelter, maintain social relationships, and avoid potentially dangerous situations. But while sensory information is critical to our survival, there is so much information available at any given time that we would be overwhelmed if we were forced to attend to all of it. In fact, we are aware of only a fraction of the sensory information taken in by our sensory systems at any given time. This module will provide an overview of how sensory information is received and processed by the nervous system and how that affects our conscious experience of the world. We begin by learning the distinction between sensation and perception. Then we consider the physical properties of light and sound stimuli, along with an overview of the basic structure and function of the major sensory systems. The module will close with a discussion of a historically important theory of perception called the Gestalt theory. This theory attempts to explain some underlying principles of perception. AnswerAnswer Aaron, J. I., Mela, D. J., & Evans, R. E. (1994). 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Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Introduction to Sensation and Perception. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:SPm67RdT@6/Introduction. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/. SENSATION AND PERCEPTION What you’ll learn to do: differentiate between sensation and perception Sensation and perception are two separate processes that are very closely related. Sensation is input about the physical world obtained by our sensory receptors, and perception is the process by which the brain selects, organizes, and interprets these sensations. In other words, senses are the physiological basis of perception. Perception of the same senses may vary from one person to another because each person’s brain interprets stimuli differently based on that individual’s learning, memory, emotions, and expectations. LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Define sensation and explain its connection to the concepts of absolute threshold, difference threshold, and subliminal messages • Discuss the roles attention, motivation, and sensory adaptation play in perception http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:SPm67RdT@6/Introduction https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/02212759/Signac_-_Portrait_de_Fe%CC%81lix_Fe%CC%81ne%CC%81on Figure 1. The absolute threshold for detecting light is greater than you probably imagined—the human eye can see a candle on a clear night up to 30 miles away! Sensation What does it mean to sense something? Sensory receptors are specialized neurons that respond to specific types of stimuli. When sensory information is detected by a sensory receptor, sensationsensation has occurred. For example, light that enters the eye causes chemical changes in cells that line the back of the eye. These cells relay messages, in the form of action potentials (as you learned when studying biopsychology), to the central nervous system. The conversion from sensory stimulus energy to action potential is known as transductiontransduction. You have probably known since elementary school that we have five senses: vision, hearing (audition), smell (olfaction), taste (gustation), and touch (somatosensation). It turns out that this notion of five senses is oversimplified. We also have sensory systems that provide information about balance (the vestibular sense), body position and movement (proprioception and kinesthesia), pain (nociception), and temperature (thermoception). The sensitivity of a given sensory system to the relevant stimuli can be expressed as an absolute threshold. Absolute thresholdAbsolute threshold refers to the minimum amount of stimulus energy that must be present for the stimulus to be detected 50% of the time. Another way to think about this is by asking how dim can a light be or how soft can a sound be and still be detected half of the time. The sensitivity of our sensory receptors can be quite amazing. It has been estimated that on a clear night, the most sensitive sensory cells in the back of the eye can detect a candle flame 30 miles away (Okawa & Sampath, 2007). Under quiet conditions, the hair cells (the receptor cells of the inner ear) can detect the tick of a clock 20 feet away (Galanter, 1962). It is also possible for us to get messages that are presented below the threshold for conscious awareness—these are called subliminal messagessubliminal messages. A stimulus reaches a physiological threshold when it is strong enough to excite sensory receptors and send nerve impulses to the brain: This is an absolute threshold. A message below that threshold is said to be subliminal: We receive it, but we are not consciously aware of it. Over the years there has been a great deal of speculation about the use of subliminal messages in advertising, rock music, and self-help audio programs. Research evidence shows that in laboratory settings, people can process and respond to information outside of awareness. But this does not mean that we obey these messages like zombies; in fact, hidden messages have little effect on behavior outside the laboratory (Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc, 1980; Rensink, 2004; Nelson, 2008; Radel, Sarrazin, Legrain, & Gobancé, 2009; Loersch, Durso, & Petty, 2013). https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/01/26190242/3631956828_1a4c9c4d93_z https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/01/26190242/3631956828_1a4c9c4d93_z Figure 2. Priming can be used to improve intellectual test performance. Research subjects primed with the stereotype of a professor – a sort of intellectual role model – outperformed those primed with an anti- intellectual stereotype. [Photo: Jeremy Wilburn] DIG DEEPER: UNCONSCIOUS PERCEPTIONDIG DEEPER: UNCONSCIOUS PERCEPTION These days, most scientific research on unconscious processes is aimed at showing that people do not need consciousness for certain psychological processes or behaviors. One such example is attitude formation. The most basic process of attitude formation is through mere exposure (Zajonc, 1968). Merely perceiving a stimulus repeatedly, such as a brand on a billboard one passes every day or a song that is played on the radio frequently, renders it more positive. Interestingly, mere exposure does not require conscious awareness of the object of an attitude. In fact, mere-exposure effectsmere-exposure effects occur even when novel stimuli are presented subliminally for extremely brief durations (e.g., Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc, 1980). Intriguingly, in such subliminal mere-exposure experiments, participants indicate a preference for, or a positive attitude towards, stimuli they do not consciously remember being exposed to. Another example of modern research on unconscious processes is research on primingpriming. In a well-known experiment by a research team led by the American psychologist John Bargh (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996), half the participants were primed with the stereotype of the elderly by doing a language task (they had to make sentences on the basis of lists of words). These lists contained words commonly associated with the elderly (e.g., “old,” “bingo,” “walking stick,” “Florida”). The remaining participants received a language task in which the critical words were replaced by words not related to the elderly. After participants had finished they were told the experiment was over, but they were secretly monitored to see how long they took to walk to the nearest elevator. The primed participants took significantly longer. That is, after being exposed to words typically associated with being old, they behaved in line with the stereotype of old people: being slow.Such priming effects have been shown in many different domains. For example, Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg (1998) demonstrated that priming can improve intellectual performance. They asked their participants to answer 42 general knowledge questions taken from the game Trivial Pursuit. Under normal conditions, participants answered about 50% of the questions correctly. However, participants primed with the stereotype of professors—who are by most people seen as intelligent—managed to answer 60% of the questions correctly. Conversely, performance of participants primed with the “dumb” stereotype of hooligans dropped to 40%. TRY ITTRY IT Absolute thresholds are generally measured under incredibly controlled conditions in situations that are optimal for sensitivity. Sometimes, we are more interested in how much difference in stimuli is required to detect a difference between them. This is known as the just noticeable difference (jnd)just noticeable difference (jnd) or difference thresholddifference threshold. Unlike the absolute threshold, the difference threshold changes depending on the stimulus intensity. As an example, imagine yourself in a very dark movie theater. If an audience member were to receive a text message on her cell phone which caused her screen to light up, chances are that many people would notice the change in illumination in the theater. However, if the same thing happened in a brightly lit arena during a basketball game, very few people would notice. The cell phone brightness does not change, but its ability to be detected as a change in illumination varies dramatically between the two contexts. Ernst Weber proposed this theory of change in difference threshold in the 1830s, and it has become known as Weber’s lawWeber’s law: The difference threshold is a constant fraction of the original stimulus, as the example illustrates. It is the idea that bigger stimuli require larger differences to be noticed. For example, it will be much harder for your friend to reliably tell the difference between 10 and 11 lbs. (or 5 versus 5.5 kg) than it is for 1 and 2 lbs. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/01/26185844/prof https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/01/26185844/prof An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2109 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2109 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2109 THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER Think about a time when you failed to notice something around you because your attention was focused elsewhere. If someone pointed it out, were you surprised that you hadn’t noticed it right away? Perception While our sensory receptors are constantly collecting information from the environment, it is ultimately how we interpret that information that affects how we interact with the world. PerceptionPerception refers to the way sensory information is organized, interpreted, and consciously experienced. Perception involves both bottom-up and top- down processing. Bottom-up processingBottom-up processing refers to the fact that perceptions are built from sensory input. On the other hand, how we interpret those sensations is influenced by our available knowledge, our experiences, and our thoughts. This is called top-down processingtop-down processing. Look at the shape in Figure 1 below. Seen alone, your brain engages in bottom-up processing. There are two thick vertical lines and three thin horizontal lines. There is no context to give it a specific meaning, so there is no top-down processing involved. Figure 3. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/01/26161444/Screen-Shot-2017-01-26-at-10.13.34-AM https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/01/26161444/Screen-Shot-2017-01-26-at-10.13.34-AM Now, look at the same shape in two different contexts. Surrounded by sequential letters, your brain expects the shape to be a letter and to complete the sequence. In that context, you perceive the lines to form the shape of the letter “B.” Figure 4. Surrounded by numbers, the same shape now looks like the number “13.” Figure 5. When given a context, your perception is driven by your cognitive expectations. Now you are processing the shape in a top-down fashion. One way to think of this concept is that sensation is a physical process, whereas perception is psychological. For example, upon walking into a kitchen and smelling the scent of baking cinnamon rolls, the sensation is the scent receptors detecting the odor of cinnamon, but the perception may be “Mmm, this smells like the bread Grandma used to bake when the family gathered for holidays.” An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2109 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2109 TRY ITTRY IT LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING See for yourself how inattentional blindness works by watching this selective attention test from Simons and Chabris (1999): LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Read more on inattentional blindness though this link to the Noba Project website. Although our perceptions are built from sensations, not all sensations result in perception. In fact, we often don’t perceive stimuli that remain relatively constant over prolonged periods of time. This is known as sensorysensory adaptationadaptation. Imagine entering a classroom with an old analog clock. Upon first entering the room, you can hear the ticking of the clock; as you begin to engage in conversation with classmates or listen to your professor greet the class, you are no longer aware of the ticking. The clock is still ticking, and that information is still affecting sensory receptors of the auditory system. The fact that you no longer perceive the sound demonstrates sensory adaptation and shows that while closely associated, sensation and perception are different. Attention and Perception There is another factor that affects sensation and perception: attention. Attention plays a significant role in determining what is sensed versus what is perceived. Imagine you are at a party full of music, chatter, and laughter. You get involved in an interesting conversation with a friend, and you tune out all the background noise. If someone interrupted you to ask what song had just finished playing, you would probably be unable to answer that question. One of the most interesting demonstrations of how important attention is in determining our perception of the environment occurred in a famous study conducted by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris (1999). In this study, participants watched a video of people dressed in black and white passing basketballs. Participants were asked to count the number of times the team in white passed the ball. During the video, a person dressed in a black gorilla costume walks among the two teams. You would think that someone would notice the gorilla, right? Nearly half of the people who watched the video didn’t notice the gorilla at all, despite the fact that he was clearly visible for nine seconds. Because participants were so focused on the number of times the white team was passing the ball, they completely tuned out other visual information. Failure to notice something that is completely visible because of a lack of attention is called inattentional blindnessinattentional blindness. In a similar experiment, researchers tested inattentional blindness by asking participants to observe images moving across a computer screen. They were instructed to focus on either white or black objects, disregarding the other color. When a red cross passed across the screen, about one third of subjects did not notice it (Figure 4) (Most, Simons, Scholl, & Chabris, 2000). http://nobaproject.com/modules/failures-of-awareness-the-case-of-inattentional-blindness A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2109 Figure 6. Nearly one third of participants in a study did not notice that a red cross passed on the screen because their attention was focused on the black or white figures. (credit: Cory Zanker) Motivations, Expectations, and Perception Motivation can also affect perception. Have you ever been expecting a really important phone call and, while taking a shower, you think you hear the phone ringing, only to discover that it is not? If so, then you have experienced how motivation to detect a meaningful stimulus can shift our ability to discriminate between a true sensory stimulus and background noise. The ability to identify a stimulus when it is embedded in a distracting background is called signal detection theorysignal detection theory. This might also explain why a mother is awakened by a quiet murmur from her baby but not by other sounds that occur while she is asleep. Signal detection theory has practical applications, such as increasing air traffic controller accuracy. Controllers need to be able to detect planes among many signals (blips) that appear on the radar screen and follow those planes as they move through the sky. In fact, the original work of the researcher who developed signal detection theory was focused on improving the sensitivity of air traffic controllers to plane blips (Swets, 1964). Our perceptions can also be affected by our beliefs, values, prejudices, expectations, and life experiences. As you will see later in this module, individuals who are deprived of the experience of binocular vision during critical periods of development have trouble perceiving depth (Fawcett, Wang, & Birch, 2005). The shared experiences of people within a given cultural context can have pronounced effects on perception. For example, Marshall Segall, Donald Campbell, and Melville Herskovits (1963) published the results of a multinational study in which they demonstrated that individuals from Western cultures were more prone to experience certain types of visual illusions than individuals from non-Western cultures, and vice versa. One such illusion that Westerners were more likely to experience was the Müller-Lyer illusionMüller-Lyer illusion (Figure 5): The lines appear to be different lengths, but they are actually the same length. Figure 7. In the Müller-Lyer illusion, lines appear to be different lengths although they are identical. (a) Arrows at the ends of lines may make the line on the right appear longer, although the lines are the same length. (b) When applied to a three-dimensional image, the line on the right again may appear longer although both black lines are the same length. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING If you want to learn more about the differences between sensation and perception, you can review in this CrashCourse Psychology video: An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2109 TRY ITTRY IT These perceptual differences were consistent with differences in the types of environmental features experienced on a regular basis by people in a given cultural context. People in Western cultures, for example, have a perceptual context of buildings with straight lines, what Segall’s study called a carpentered world (Segall et al., 1966). In contrast, people from certain non-Western cultures with an uncarpentered view, such as the Zulu of South Africa, whose villages are made up of round huts arranged in circles, are less susceptible to this illusion (Segall et al., 1999). It is not just vision that is affected by cultural factors. Indeed, research has demonstrated that the ability to identify an odor, and rate its pleasantness and its intensity, varies cross-culturally (Ayabe-Kanamura, Saito, Distel, Martínez-Gómez, & Hudson, 1998). Children described as thrill seekers are more likely to show taste preferences for intense sour flavors (Liem, Westerbeek, Wolterink, Kok, & de Graaf, 2004), which suggests that basic aspects of personality might affect perception. Furthermore, individuals who hold positive attitudes toward reduced-fat foods are more likely to rate foods labeled as reduced fat as tasting better than people who have less positive attitudes about these products (Aaron, Mela, & Evans, 1994). A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2109 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2109 GLOSSARYGLOSSARY absolute threshold:absolute threshold: minimum amount of stimulus energy that must be present for the stimulus to be detected 50% of the time bottom-up processing:bottom-up processing: system in which perceptions are built from sensory input inattentional blindness:inattentional blindness: failure to notice something that is completely visible because of a lack of attention just noticeable difference:just noticeable difference: difference in stimuli required to detect a difference between the stimuli mere-exposure effectsmere-exposure effects: the result of developing a more positive attitude towards a stimulus after repeated instances of mere exposure to it. THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER Think about a time when you failed to notice something around you because your attention was focused elsewhere. If someone pointed it out, were you surprised that you hadn’t noticed it right away? perception:perception: way that sensory information is interpreted and consciously experienced primingpriming: the process by which recent experiences increase a trait’s accessibility. sensation:sensation: what happens when sensory information is detected by a sensory receptor signal detection theory:signal detection theory: change in stimulus detection as a function of current mental state subliminal message:subliminal message: message presented below the threshold of conscious awareness top-down processing:top-down processing: interpretation of sensations is influenced by available knowledge, experiences, and thoughts transduction:transduction: conversion from sensory stimulus energy to action potential An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2109 Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Sensation versus Perception. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:K-DZ-03P@5/Sensation-versus-Perception. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • Introduction to Sensation. Provided byProvided by: Boundless. Located atLocated at: https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/sensation-and-perception-5/introduction-to-sensation-37/introduction- to-sensation-157-12692/. ProjectProject: Boundless Psychology. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Dig Deeper on the Unconscious and image. Authored byAuthored by: Ap Dijksterhuis Radboud. Provided byProvided by: University Nijmegen. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/modules/the-unconscious. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike • Sensation and Perception, last example on Weber's Law. Authored byAuthored by: Adam John Privitera. Provided byProvided by: Chemeketa Community College. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/modules/sensation-and-perception. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike • Candle in the dark. Authored byAuthored by: pratanti. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. Located atLocated at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pratanti/3631956828. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Section on bottom-up versus top-down processing. Authored byAuthored by: Dr. Scott Roberts, Dr. Ryan Curtis, Samantha Levy, and Dr. Dylan Selterman. Provided byProvided by: OpenPsyc. Located atLocated at: http://openpsyc.blogspot.com/2014/06/ bottom-up-vs-top-down-processing.html. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Sensation & Perception - Crash Course Psychology #5. Provided byProvided by: CrashCourse. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unWnZvXJH2o. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License Public domain contentPublic domain content • Painting. Authored byAuthored by: Paul Signac. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9_des_Artistes_Ind%C3%A9pendants#/media/File:Signac_- _Portrait_de_F%C3%A9lix_F%C3%A9n%C3%A9on . 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(credit “top left”: modification of work by “rajkumar1220″/Flickr”; credit “top right”: modification of work by Thomas Leuthard; credit “middle left”: modification of work by Demietrich Baker; credit “middle right”: modification of work by “kaybee07″/Flickr; credit “bottom left”: modification of work by “Isengardt”/Flickr; credit “bottom right”: modification of work by Willem Heerbaart) VISION What you’ll learn to do: explain the process of vision and how people see color and depth The visual system constructs a mental representation of the world around us. This contributes to our ability to successfully navigate through physical space and interact with important individuals and objects in our environments. This section will provide an overview of the basic anatomy and function of the visual system. In addition, you’ll explore our ability to perceive color and depth. LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe the basic anatomy of the visual system • Describe how light waves enable vision • Describe the trichromatic theory of color vision and the opponent-process theory • Describe how monocular and binocular cues are used in the perception of depth Figure 1. The anatomy of the eye is illustrated in this diagram. Anatomy of the Visual System The eye is the major sensory organ involved in visionvision (Figure 1). Light waves are transmitted across the cornea and enter the eye through the pupil. The corneacornea is the transparent covering over the eye. It serves as a barrier between the inner eye and the outside world, and it is involved in focusing light waves that enter the eye. The pupilpupil is the small opening in the eye through which light passes, and the size of the pupil can change as a function of light levels as well as emotional arousal. When light levels are low, the pupil will become dilated, or expanded, to allow more light to enter the eye. When light levels are high, the pupil will constrict, or become smaller, to reduce the amount of light that enters the eye. The pupil’s size is controlled by muscles that are connected to the irisiris, which is the colored portion of the eye. After passing through the pupil, light crosses the lenslens, a curved, transparent structure that serves to provide additional focus. The lens is attached to muscles that can change its shape to aid in focusing light that is reflected from near or far objects. In a normal-sighted individual, the lens will focus images perfectly on a small indentation in the back of the eye known as the foveafovea, which is part of the retinaretina, the light-sensitive lining of the eye. The fovea contains densely packed specialized photoreceptor cells (Figure 2). These photoreceptorphotoreceptor cells, known as conescones, are light-detecting cells. The cones are specialized types of photoreceptors that work best in bright light conditions. Cones are very sensitive to acute detail and provide tremendous spatial resolution. They also are directly involved in our ability to perceive color. While cones are concentrated in the fovea, where images tend to be focused, rods, another type of photoreceptor, are located throughout the remainder of the retina. RodsRods are specialized photoreceptors that work well in low light conditions, and while they lack the spatial resolution and color function of the cones, they are involved in our vision in dimly lit environments as well as in our perception of movement on the periphery of our visual field. Figure 2. The two types of photoreceptors are shown in this image. Rods are colored green and cones are blue. We have all experienced the different sensitivities of rods and cones when making the transition from a brightly lit environment to a dimly lit environment. Imagine going to see a blockbuster movie on a clear summer day. As you walk from the brightly lit lobby into the dark theater, you notice that you immediately have difficulty seeing much of anything. After a few minutes, you begin to adjust to the darkness and can see the interior of the theater. In the bright environment, your vision was dominated primarily by cone activity. As you move to the dark environment, rod activity dominates, but there is a delay in transitioning between the phases. If your rods do not transform light into nerve impulses as easily and efficiently as they should, you will have difficulty seeing in dim light, a condition known as night blindness. Rods and cones are connected (via several interneurons) to retinal ganglion cells. Axons from the retinal ganglion cells converge and exit through the back of the eye to form the optic nerve. The optic nerveoptic nerve carries visual information from the retina to the brain. There is a point in the visual field called the blind spotblind spot: Even when light from a small object is focused on the blind spot, we do not see it. We are not consciously aware of our blind spots for two reasons: First, each eye gets a slightly different view of the visual field; therefore, the blind spots do not overlap. Second, our visual system fills in the blind spot so that although we cannot respond to visual information that occurs in that portion of the visual field, we are also not aware that information is missing. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 TRY ITTRY IT Figure 3. This illustration shows the optic chiasm at the front of the brain and the pathways to the occipital lobe at the back of the brain, where visual sensations are processed into meaningful perceptions. The optic nerve from each eye merges just below the brain at a point called the optic chiasmoptic chiasm. As Figure 3 shows, the optic chiasm is an X-shaped structure that sits just below the cerebral cortex at the front of the brain. At the point of the optic chiasm, information from the right visual field (which comes from both eyes) is sent to the left side of the brain, and information from the left visual field is sent to the right side of the brain. Once inside the brain, visual information is sent via a number of structures to the occipital lobe at the back of the brain for processing. Visual information might be processed in parallel pathways which can generally be described as the “what pathway” (the ventral pathway) and the “where/how” pathway (the dorsal pathway). The “what pathway” is involved in object recognition and identification, while the “where/how pathway” is involved with location in space and how one might interact with a particular visual stimulus (Milner & Goodale, 2008; Ungerleider & Haxby, 1994). For example, when you see a ball rolling down the street, the “what pathway” identifies what the object is, and the “where/how pathway” identifies its location or movement in space. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 TRY ITTRY IT Figure 4. Visual areas in the brain. Amplitude and Wavelength As mentioned above, light enters your eyes as a wave. It is important to understand some basic properties of waves to see how they impact what we see. Two physical characteristics of a wave are amplitudeamplitude and wavelength (Figure 5). The amplitude of a wave is the height of a wave as measured from the highest point on the wavewave (peakpeak or crestcrest) to the lowest point on the wave (trough). WavelengthWavelength refers to the length of a wave from one peak to the next. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/26200309/visualpathways https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/26200309/visualpathways Figure 5. The amplitude or height of a wave is measured from the peak to the trough. The wavelength is measured from peak to peak. Figure 6. This figure illustrates waves of differing wavelengths/frequencies. At the top of the figure, the red wave has a long wavelength/short frequency. Moving from top to bottom, the wavelengths decrease and frequencies increase. Wavelength is directly related to the frequency of a given wave form. FrequencyFrequency refers to the number of waves that pass a given point in a given time period and is often expressed in terms of hertz (Hzhertz (Hz), or cycles per second. Longer wavelengths will have lower frequencies, and shorter wavelengths will have higher frequencies (Figure 6). Light Waves The visible spectrumvisible spectrum is the portion of the larger electromagnetic spectrum that we can see. As Figure 7 shows, the electromagnetic spectrumelectromagnetic spectrum encompasses all of the electromagnetic radiation that occurs in our environment and includes gamma rays, x-rays, ultraviolet light, visible light, infrared light, microwaves, and radio waves. The visible spectrum in humans is associated with wavelengths that range from 380 to 740 nm—a very small distance, since a nanometer (nm) is one billionth of a meter. Other species can detect other portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. For instance, honeybees can see light in the ultraviolet range (Wakakuwa, Stavenga, & Arikawa, 2007), and some snakes can detect infrared radiation in addition to more traditional visual light cues (Chen, Deng, Brauth, Ding, & Tang, 2012; Hartline, Kass, & Loop, 1978). Figure 7. Light that is visible to humans makes up only a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Figure 8. Different wavelengths of light are associated with our perception of different colors. (credit: modification of work by Johannes Ahlmann) An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 TRY ITTRY IT In humans, light wavelength is associated with perception of color (Figure 8). Within the visible spectrum, our experience of red is associated with longer wavelengths, greens are intermediate, and blues and violets are shorter in wavelength. (An easy way to remember this is the mnemonic ROYGBIV: rred, oorange, yyellow, ggreen, bblue, iindigo, vviolet.) The amplitude of light waves is associated with our experience of brightness or intensity of color, with larger amplitudes appearing brighter. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 We do not see the world in black and white; neither do we see it as two-dimensional (2-D) or flat (just height and width, no depth). Let’s look at how color vision works and how we perceive three dimensions (height, width, and depth). Color Vision Normal-sighted individuals have three different types of cones that mediate color visioncolor vision. Each of these cone types is maximally sensitive to a slightly different wavelength of light. According to the Young-Helmholtz trichromatictrichromatic theory of color visiontheory of color vision, shown in Figure 9, all colors in the spectrum can be produced by combining red, green, and blue. The three types of cones are each receptive to one of the colors. Figure 9. This figure illustrates the different sensitivities for the three cone types found in a normal-sighted individual. (credit: modification of work by Vanessa Ezekowitz) The trichromatic theory of color vision is not the only theory—another major theory of color vision is known as the opponent-process theoryopponent-process theory. According to this theory, color is coded in opponent pairs: black-white, yellow-blue, and green-red. The basic idea is that some cells of the visual system are excited by one of the opponent colors and inhibited by the other. So, a cell that was excited by wavelengths associated with green would be inhibited by wavelengths associated with red, and vice versa. One of the implications of opponent processing is that we do not experience greenish-reds or yellowish-blues as colors. Another implication is that this leads to the experience of negative afterimages. An afterimageafterimage describes the continuation of a visual sensation after removal of the stimulus. For example, when you stare briefly at the sun and then look away from it, you may still perceive a spot of light although the stimulus (the sun) has been removed. When color is involved in the stimulus, the color pairings identified in the opponent-process theory lead to a negative afterimage. You can test this concept using the flag in Figure 10. Figure 10. Stare at the white dot for 30–60 seconds and then move your eyes to a blank piece of white paper. What do you see? This is known as a negative afterimage, and it provides empirical support for the opponent-process theory of color vision. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 TRY ITTRY IT But these two theories—the trichromatic theory of color vision and the opponent-process theory—are not mutually exclusive. Research has shown that they just apply to different levels of the nervous system. For visual processing on the retina, trichromatic theory applies: the cones are responsive to three different wavelengths that represent red, blue, and green. But once the signal moves past the retina on its way to the brain, the cells respond in a way consistent with opponent-process theory (Land, 1959; Kaiser, 1997). An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 Depth Perception Our ability to perceive spatial relationships in three-dimensional (3-D) space is known as depth perceptiondepth perception. With depth perception, we can describe things as being in front, behind, above, below, or to the side of other things. Our world is three-dimensional, so it makes sense that our mental representation of the world has three- dimensional properties. We use a variety of cues in a visual scene to establish our sense of depth. Some of these are binocular cuesbinocular cues, which means that they rely on the use of both eyes. One example of a binocular depth cue is binocular disparitybinocular disparity, the slightly different view of the world that each of our eyes receives. To experience this slightly different view, do this simple exercise: extend your arm fully and extend one of your fingers and focus on that finger. Now, close your left eye without moving your head, then open your left eye and close your right eye without moving your head. You will notice that your finger seems to shift as you alternate between the two eyes because of the slightly different view each eye has of your finger. A 3-D movie works on the same principle: the special glasses you wear allow the two slightly different images projected onto the screen to be seen separately by your left and your right eye. As your brain processes these images, you have the illusion that the leaping animal or running person is coming right toward you. Although we rely on binocular cues to experience depth in our 3-D world, we can also perceive depth in 2-D arrays. Think about all the paintings and photographs you have seen. Generally, you pick up on depth in these images even though the visual stimulus is 2-D. When we do this, we are relying on a number of monocular cuesmonocular cues, or cues that require only one eye. If you think you can’t see depth with one eye, note that you don’t bump into things when using only one eye while walking—and, in fact, we have more monocular cues than binocular cues. The following video of anamorphic art demonstrates how we rely on these monocular cues to see depth, even when the depth is only imagined. A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 An example of a monocular cue would be what is known as linear perspectivelinear perspective. Linear perspective refers to the fact that we perceive depth when we see two parallel lines that seem to converge in an image (Figure 11). Some other monocular depth cues are interposition, the partial overlap of objects, the relative size and closeness of images to the horizon, relative size, and the variation between light and shadow. Figure 11. We perceive depth in a two-dimensional figure like this one through the use of monocular cues like linear perspective, like the parallel lines converging as the road narrows in the distance. (credit: Marc Dalmulder) DIG DEEPER: STEREOBLINDNESSDIG DEEPER: STEREOBLINDNESS Bruce Bridgeman was born with an extreme case of lazy eye that resulted in him being stereoblind, or unable to respond to binocular cues of depth. He relied heavily on monocular depth cues, but he never had a true appreciation of the 3-D nature of the world around him. This all changed one night in 2012 while Bruce was seeing a movie with his wife. The movie the couple was going to see was shot in 3-D, and even though he thought it was a waste of money, Bruce paid for the 3-D glasses when he purchased his ticket. As soon as the film began, Bruce put on the glasses and experienced something completely new. For the first time in his life he appreciated the true depth of the world around him. Remarkably, his ability to perceive depth persisted outside of the movie theater. There are cells in the nervous system that respond to binocular depth cues. Normally, these cells require activation during early development in order to persist, so experts familiar with Bruce’s case (and others like his) assume that at some point in his development, Bruce must have experienced at least a fleeting moment of binocular vision. It was enough to ensure the survival of the cells in the visual system tuned to binocular cues. The mystery now is why it took Bruce nearly 70 years to have these cells activated (Peck, 2012). TRY ITTRY IT An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 Photos in this activity from of GlacierNPS, Alicia Nijdam, KlipschFan, scillystuff, rhondawebber (CC-BY-2.0) LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING All of this talk about vision may have you wondering what this has to do with psychology. Remember that sensation is input about the physical world obtained by our sensory receptors, and perception is the process by which the brain selects, organizes, and interprets these sensations. In other words, senses are the physiological basis of perception. Perception of the same senses may vary from one person to another because each person’s brain interprets stimuli differently based on that individual’s learning, memory, emotions, and expectations. It is for this reason that psychologists study sensation—in order to understand perception, which is clearly a component of behavior and mental processes (the definition of psychology). To see this all in action, visit the BBC website HERE to participate in the sensation lab. Complete the twenty exercises and click on the “explanation” after each question to learn about how our senses are easily fooled. Integration with Other Modalities Vision is not an encapsulated system. It interacts with and depends on other sensory modalities. For example, when you move your head in one direction, your eyes reflexively move in the opposite direction to compensate, allowing you to maintain your gaze on the object that you are looking at. This reflex is called the vestibulo-ocularvestibulo-ocular reflexreflex. It is achieved by integrating information from both the visual and the vestibular system (which knows about body motion and position). You can experience this compensation quite simply. First, while you keep your head still and your gaze looking straight ahead, wave your finger in front of you from side to side. Notice how the image of the finger appears blurry. Now, keep your finger steady and look at it while you move your head from side to side. Notice how your eyes reflexively move to compensate the movement of your head and how the image of the finger stays sharp and stable. Vision also interacts with your proprioceptive system, to help you find where all your body parts are, and with your auditory system, to help you understand the sounds people make when they speak. You can learn more about this in the multimodal module. Finally, vision is also often implicated in a blending-of-sensations phenomenon known as synesthesiasynesthesia. Synesthesia occurs when one sensory signal gives rise to two or more sensations. The most common type is grapheme-color synesthesia. About 1 in 200 individuals experience a sensation of color associated with specific letters, numbers, or words: the number 1 might always be seen as red, the number 2 as orange, etc. But the more fascinating forms of synesthesia blend sensations from entirely different sensory modalities, like taste and color or music and color: the taste of chicken might elicit a sensation of green, for example, and the timbre of violin a deep purple. THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER Take a look at a few of your photos or personal works of art. Can you find examples of linear perspective as a potential depth cue? http://www.flickr.com/photos/glaciernps/4454825783/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/anijdam/2586190200/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/klipsch_fan/230712919/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/scillystuff/1572120541/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhondawebber/3699334339/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 https://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/interactives/senseschallenge/senses.swf GLOSSARYGLOSSARY amplitude:amplitude: height of a wave afterimage:afterimage: continuation of a visual sensation after removal of the stimulus binocular cue:binocular cue: cue that relies on the use of both eyes binocular disparity:binocular disparity: slightly different view of the world that each eye receives blind spot:blind spot: point where we cannot respond to visual information in that portion of the visual field cone:cone: specialized photoreceptor that works best in bright light conditions and detects color cornea:cornea: transparent covering over the eye depth perception:depth perception: ability to perceive depth electromagnetic spectrum:electromagnetic spectrum: all the electromagnetic radiation that occurs in our environment fovea:fovea: small indentation in the retina that contains cones frequency:frequency: number of waves that pass a given point in a given time period hertz (Hz):hertz (Hz): cycles per second; measure of frequency iris:iris: colored portion of the eye lens:lens: curved, transparent structure that provides additional focus for light entering the eye linear perspective:linear perspective: perceive depth in an image when two parallel lines seem to converge monocular cue:monocular cue: cue that requires only one eye opponent-process theory of color perception:opponent-process theory of color perception: color is coded in opponent pairs: black-white, yellow-blue, and red-green optic chiasm:optic chiasm: X-shaped structure that sits just below the brain’s ventral surface; represents the merging of the optic nerves from the two eyes and the separation of information from the two sides of the visual field to the opposite side of the brain optic nerve:optic nerve: carries visual information from the retina to the brain peak:peak: (also, crest) highest point of a wave photoreceptor:photoreceptor: light-detecting cell pupil:pupil: small opening in the eye through which light passes retina:retina: light-sensitive lining of the eye rod:rod: specialized photoreceptor that works well in low light conditions synesthesiasynesthesia: the blending of two or more sensory experiences, or the automatic activation of a secondary (indirect) sensory experience due to certain aspects of the primary (direct) sensory stimulation trichromatic theory of color perception:trichromatic theory of color perception: color vision is mediated by the activity across the three groups of cones trough:trough: lowest point of a wave vestibulo-ocular reflex:vestibulo-ocular reflex: coordination of motion information with visual information that allows you to maintain your gaze on an object while you move visible spectrum:visible spectrum: portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that we can see wavelength:wavelength: length of a wave from one peak to the next peak An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2111 Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Vision. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:E-7sLQFP@5/Vision. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/ 4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Waves and Wavelenghts. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:1Cicp6CO@8/Waves-and-Wavelengths. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • Vision, information and visual and ventral and dorsal pathways, Integration with Other Modalities. Authored byAuthored by: Simona Buetti and Alejandro Lleras . Provided byProvided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/modules/vision. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike • Waves and Wavelengths. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:1Cicp6CO@8/Waves-and-Wavelengths. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Amazing Anamorphic Illusions. Authored byAuthored by: brusspup. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBNHPk-Lnkk. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License HEARING What you’ll learn to do: explain the basics of hearing Our auditory system converts pressure waves into meaningful sounds. This translates into our ability to hear the sounds of nature, to appreciate the beauty of music, and to communicate with one another through spoken language. This section will provide an overview of the basic anatomy and function of the auditory system. It will include a discussion of how the sensory stimulus is translated into neural impulses, where in the brain that information is processed, how we perceive pitch, and how we know where sound is coming from. LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe the basic anatomy and function of the auditory system • Show how physical properties of sound waves are associated with perceptual experience • Explain how we encode and perceive pitch and localize sound • Describe types of hearing loss http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:E-7sLQFP@5/Vision https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:1Cicp6CO@8/Waves-and-Wavelengths https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/modules/vision https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:1Cicp6CO@8/Waves-and-Wavelengths https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBNHPk-Lnkk https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/01/27190240/christian-1157044_1280 Figure 1. The ear is divided into outer (pinna and tympanic membrane), middle (the three ossicles: malleus, incus, and stapes), and inner (cochlea and basilar membrane) divisions. How We Hear Our auditory system converts pressure waves into meaningful sounds. This translates into our ability to hear the sounds of nature, to appreciate the beauty of music, and to communicate with one another through spoken language. This section will provide an overview of the basic anatomy and function of the auditory system. It will include a discussion of how the sensory stimulus is translated into neural impulses, where in the brain that information is processed, how we perceive pitch, and how we know where sound is coming from. Anatomy of the Auditory System The ear can be separated into multiple sections. The outer ear includes the pinnapinna, which is the visible part of the ear that protrudes from our heads, the auditory canal, and the tympanic membranetympanic membrane, or eardrum. The middle ear contains three tiny bones known as the ossiclesossicles, which are named the malleusmalleus (or hammer), incusincus (or anvil), and the stapesstapes (or stirrup). The inner ear contains the semi-circular canals, which are involved in balance and movement (the vestibular sense), and the cochlea. The cochleacochlea is a fluid-filled, snail-shaped structure that contains the sensory receptor cells (hair cells) of the auditory system (Figure 1). Sound waves travel along the auditory canal and strike the tympanic membrane, causing it to vibrate. This vibration results in movement of the three ossicles. As the ossicles move, the stapes presses into a thin membrane of the cochlea known as the oval window. As the stapes presses into the oval window, the fluid inside the cochlea begins to move, which in turn stimulates hair cellshair cells, which are auditory receptor cells of the inner ear embedded in the basilar membrane. The basilar membranebasilar membrane is a thin strip of tissue within the cochlea. Sitting on the basilar membrane is the organ of Corti, which runs the entire length of the basilar membrane from the base (by the oval window) to the apex (the “tip” of the spiral). The organ of Corti includes three rows of outer hair cells and one row of inner hair cells. The hair cells sense the vibrations by way of their tiny hairs, or stereocillia. The outer hair cells seem to function to mechanically amplify the sound-induced vibrations, whereas the inner hair cells form synapses with the auditory nerve and transduce those vibrations into action potentials, or neural spikes, which are transmitted along the auditory nerve to higher centers of the auditory pathways. The activation of hair cells is a mechanical process: the stimulation of the hair cell ultimately leads to activation of the cell. As hair cells become activated, they generate neural impulses that travel along the auditory nerve to the brain. Auditory information is shuttled to the inferior colliculus, the medial geniculate nucleus of the thalamus, and finally to the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe of the brain for processing. Like the visual system, there is also evidence suggesting that information about auditory recognition and localization is processed in parallel streams (Rauschecker & Tian, 2000; Renier et al., 2009). An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 TRY ITTRY IT Watch the process of audition in the following video: Sound Waves As mentioned above, the vibration of the tympanic membrane is what triggers the sequence of events that lead to our perception of sound. Sound waves travel into our ears at various speeds and amplitudes. Like light waves, the physical properties of sound waves are associated with various aspects of our perception of sound. The frequency of a sound wave is associated with our perception of that sound’s pitchpitch. High-frequency sound waves are perceived as high-pitched sounds, while low-frequency sound waves are perceived as low-pitched sounds. The audible range of sound frequencies is between 20 and 20000 Hz, with greatest sensitivity to those frequencies that fall in the middle of this range. As was the case with the visible spectrum, other species show differences in their audible ranges. For instance, chickens have a very limited audible range, from 125 to 2000 Hz. Mice have an audible range from 1000 to 91000 Hz, and the beluga whale’s audible range is from 1000 to 123000 Hz. Our pet dogs and cats have audible ranges of about 70–45000 Hz and 45–64000 Hz, respectively (Strain, 2003). The loudness of a given sound is closely associated with the amplitude of the sound wave. Higher amplitudes are associated with louder sounds. Loudness is measured in terms of decibels (dB)decibels (dB), a logarithmic unit of sound intensity. A typical conversation would correlate with 60 dB; a rock concert might check in at 120 dB (Figure 2). A whisper 5 feet away or rustling leaves are at the low end of our hearing range; sounds like a window air conditioner, a normal conversation, and even heavy traffic or a vacuum cleaner are within a tolerable range. However, there is the potential for hearing damage from about 80 dB to 130 dB: These are sounds of a food processor, power lawnmower, heavy truck (25 feet away), subway train (20 feet away), live rock music, and a jackhammer. The threshold for pain is about 130 dB, a jet plane taking off or a revolver firing at close range (Dunkle, 1982). Figure 2. This figure illustrates the loudness of common sounds. (credit “planes”: modification of work by Max Pfandl; credit “crowd”: modification of work by Christian Holmér; credit “blender”: modification of work by Jo Brodie; credit “car”: modification of work by NRMA New Cars/Flickr; credit “talking”: modification of work by Joi Ito; credit “leaves”: modification of work by Aurelijus Valeiša) LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch this brief video demonstrating how frequency and amplitude interact in our perception of loudness. TRY ITTRY IT Although wave amplitude is generally associated with loudness, there is some interaction between frequency and amplitude in our perception of loudness within the audible range. For example, a 10 Hz sound wave is inaudible no matter the amplitude of the wave. A 1000 Hz sound wave, on the other hand, would vary dramatically in terms of perceived loudness as the amplitude of the wave increased. Of course, different musical instruments can play the same musical note at the same level of loudness, yet they still sound quite different. This is known as the timbre of a sound. TimbreTimbre refers to a sound’s purity, and it is affected by the complex interplay of frequency, amplitude, and timing of sound waves. https://www.lynda.com/Logic-Pro-tutorials/perception-frequency-amplitude/86649/96460-4.html An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 Pitch Perception We know that different frequencies of sound waves are associated with differences in our perception of the pitch of those sounds. Low-frequency sounds are lower pitched, and high-frequency sounds are higher pitched. But how does the auditory system differentiate among various pitches? Several theories have been proposed to account for pitch perception. We’ll discuss two of them here: temporal theory and place theory.The temporaltemporal theorytheory of pitch perception asserts that frequency is coded by the activity level of a sensory neuron. This would mean that a given hair cell would fire action potentials related to the frequency of the sound wave. While this is a very intuitive explanation, we detect such a broad range of frequencies (20–20,000 Hz) that the frequency of action potentials fired by hair cells cannot account for the entire range. Because of properties related to sodium channels on the neuronal membrane that are involved in action potentials, there is a point at which a cell cannot fire any faster (Shamma, 2001).The place theoryplace theory of pitch perception suggests that different portions of the basilar membrane are sensitive to sounds of different frequencies. More specifically, the base of the basilar membrane responds best to high frequencies and the tip of the basilar membrane responds best to low frequencies. Therefore, hair cells that are in the base portion would be labeled as high-pitch receptors, while those in the tip of basilar membrane would be labeled as low-pitch receptors (Shamma, 2001).In reality, both theories explain different aspects of pitch perception. At frequencies up to about 4000 Hz, it is clear that both the rate of action potentials and place contribute to our perception of pitch. However, much higher frequency sounds can only be encoded using place cues (Shamma, 2001). Sound Localization The ability to locate sound in our environments is an important part of hearinghearing. Localizing sound could be considered similar to the way that we perceive depth in our visual fields. Like the monocular and binocular cues that provided information about depth, the auditory system uses both monauralmonaural (one-eared) and binauralbinaural (two- eared) cues to localize sound. Each pinna interacts with incoming sound waves differently, depending on the sound’s source relative to our bodies. This interaction provides a monaural cue that is helpful in locating sounds that occur above or below and in front or behind us. The sound waves received by your two ears from sounds that come from directly above, below, in front, or behind you would be identical; therefore, monaural cues are essential (Grothe, Pecka, & McAlpine, 2010). Figure 3. Localizing sound involves the use of both monaural and binaural cues. (credit “plane”: modification of work by Max Pfandl) An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 TRY ITTRY IT Binaural cues, on the other hand, provide information on the location of a sound along a horizontal axis by relying on differences in patterns of vibration of the eardrum between our two ears. If a sound comes from an off-center location, it creates two types of binaural cues: interaural level differences and interaural timing differences. Interaural level differenceInteraural level difference refers to the fact that a sound coming from the right side of your body is more intense at your right ear than at your left ear because of the attenuation of the sound wave as it passes through your head. Interaural timing differenceInteraural timing difference refers to the small difference in the time at which a given sound wave arrives at each ear (Figure 3). Certain brain areas monitor these differences to construct where along a horizontal axis a sound originates (Grothe et al., 2010). An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 Hearing Loss DeafnessDeafness is the partial or complete inability to hear. Some people are born deaf, which is known as congenitalcongenital deafnessdeafness. Many others begin to suffer from conductive hearing lossconductive hearing loss because of age, genetic predisposition, or environmental effects, including exposure to extreme noise (noise-induced hearing loss, as shown in Figure 4, certain illnesses (such as measles or mumps), or damage due to toxins (such as those found in certain solvents and metals). Conductive hearing loss involves structural damage to the ear such as failure in the vibration of the eardrum and/or movement of the ossicles. Figure 4. Environmental factors that can lead to conductive hearing loss include regular exposure to loud music or construction equipment. (a) Rock musicians and (b) construction workers are at risk for this type of hearing loss. (credit a: modification of work by Kenny Sun; credit b: modification of work by Nick Allen) WHAT DO YOU THINK?: DEAF CULTUREWHAT DO YOU THINK?: DEAF CULTURE In the United States and other places around the world, deaf people have their own language, schools, and customs. This is called deaf culture. In the United States, deaf individuals often communicate using American Sign Language (ASL); ASL has no verbal component and is based entirely on visual signs and gestures. The primary mode of communication is signing. One of the values of deaf culture is to continue traditions like using sign language rather than teaching deaf children to try to speak, read lips, or have cochlear implant surgery. When a child is diagnosed as deaf, parents have difficult decisions to make. Should the child be enrolled in mainstream schools and taught to verbalize and read lips? Or should the child be sent to a school for deaf children to learn ASL and have significant exposure to deaf culture? Do you think there might be differences in the way that parents approach these decisions depending on whether or not they are also deaf? Given the mechanical nature by which the sound wave stimulus is transmitted from the eardrum through the ossicles to the oval window of the cochlea, some degree of hearing loss is inevitable. With conductive hearing loss, hearing problems are associated with a failure in the vibration of the eardrum and/or movement of the ossicles. These problems are often dealt with through devices like hearing aids that amplify incoming sound waves to make vibration of the eardrum and movement of the ossicles more likely to occur. When the hearing problem is associated with a failure to transmit neural signals from the cochlea to the brain, it is called sensorineural hearing losssensorineural hearing loss. This type of loss accelerates with age and can be caused by prolonged exposure to loud noises, which causes damage to the hair cells within the cochlea. One disease that results in sensorineural hearing loss is Ménière’s diseaseMénière’s disease. Although not well understood, Ménière’s disease results in a degeneration of inner ear structures that can lead to hearing loss, tinnitus (constant ringing or buzzing), vertigovertigo (a sense of spinning), and an increase in pressure within the inner ear (Semaan & Megerian, 2011). This kind of loss cannot be treated with hearing aids, but some individuals might be candidates for a cochlear implant as a treatment option. Cochlear implantsCochlear implants are electronic devices that consist of a microphone, a speech processor, and an electrode array. The device receives incoming sound information and directly stimulates the auditory nerve to transmit information to the brain. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. 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You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 TRY ITTRY IT GLOSSARYGLOSSARY basilar membrane:basilar membrane: thin strip of tissue within the cochlea that contains the hair cells which serve as the sensory receptors for the auditory system binaural cue:binaural cue: two-eared cue to localize sound cochlear implant:cochlear implant: electronic device that consists of a microphone, a speech processor, and an electrode array to directly stimulate the auditory nerve to transmit information to the brain conductive hearing loss:conductive hearing loss: failure in the vibration of the eardrum and/or movement of the ossicles congenital deafness:congenital deafness: deafness from birth deafness:deafness: partial or complete inability to hear hair cell:hair cell: auditory receptor cell of the inner ear incus:incus: middle ear ossicle; also known as the anvil interaural: level differenceinteraural: level difference sound coming from one side of the body is more intense at the closest ear because of the attenuation of the sound wave as it passes through the head interaural timing difference:interaural timing difference: small difference in the time at which a given sound wave arrives at each ear malleus:malleus: middle ear ossicle; also known as the hammer Ménière’s disease:Ménière’s disease: results in a degeneration of inner ear structures that can lead to hearing loss, tinnitus, vertigo, and an increase in pressure within the inner ear monaural cue:monaural cue: one-eared cue to localize sound pinna:pinna: visible part of the ear that protrudes from the head THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER If you had to choose to lose either your vision or your hearing, which would you choose and why? place theory of pitch perception:place theory of pitch perception: different portions of the basilar membrane are sensitive to sounds of different frequencies sensorineural hearing loss:sensorineural hearing loss: failure to transmit neural signals from the cochlea to the brain stapes:stapes: middle ear ossicle; also known as the stirrup temporal theory of pitch perception:temporal theory of pitch perception: sound’s frequency is coded by the activity level of a sensory neuron tympanic membrane:tympanic membrane: eardrum vertigo:vertigo: spinning sensation An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2113 Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Hearing. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:0nKfpXqb@6/Hearing. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Information on corti. Authored byAuthored by: Andrew J. Oxenham . Provided byProvided by: University of Minnesota. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/modules/hearing. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Process of Hearing. Authored byAuthored by: psy1113. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCCcFDoyBxM. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License Public domain contentPublic domain content • Rock concert. Authored byAuthored by: 12matamoros. Provided byProvided by: Pixabay. Located atLocated at: https://pixabay.com/p-1157044/?no_redirect. LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known Copyright https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:0nKfpXqb@6/Hearing https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/modules/hearing https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCCcFDoyBxM https://pixabay.com/p-1157044/?no_redirect https://creativecommons.org/about/pdm TASTE AND SMELL What you’ll learn to do: describe the basic anatomy and functions of taste, smell, touch, pain, and the vestibular sense Vision and hearing have received an incredible amount of attention from researchers over the years. While there is still much to be learned about how these sensory systems work, we have a much better understanding of them than of our other sensory modalities. In this section, we will explore our chemical senses (taste and smell) and our body senses (touch, temperature, pain, balance, and body position). LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Summarize the chemical process of taste and smell • Explain the receptors that respond to touch The Chemical Senses Taste (gustation) and smell (olfaction) are called chemical senses because both have sensory receptors that respond to molecules in the food we eat or in the air we breathe. There is a pronounced interaction between our chemical senses. For example, when we describe the flavor of a given food, we are really referring to both gustatory and olfactory properties of the food working in combination. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/01/31152803/3027430438_02821f919d_z Figure 1. (a) Taste buds are composed of a number of individual taste receptors cells that transmit information to nerves. (b) This micrograph shows a close-up view of the tongue’s surface. (credit a: modification of work by Jonas Töle; credit b: scale-bar data from Matt Russell) Taste (Gustation) You have learned since elementary school that there are four basic groupings of tastetaste: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Research demonstrates, however, that we have at least six taste groupings. UmamiUmami is our fifth taste. Umami is actually a Japanese word that roughly translates to yummy, and it is associated with a taste for monosodium glutamate (Kinnamon & Vandenbeuch, 2009). There is also a growing body of experimental evidence suggesting that we possess a taste for the fatty content of a given food (Mizushige, Inoue, & Fushiki, 2007). Molecules from the food and beverages we consume dissolve in our saliva and interact with taste receptors on our tongue and in our mouth and throat. Taste budsTaste buds are formed by groupings of taste receptor cells with hair-like extensions that protrude into the central pore of the taste bud (Figure 1). Taste buds have a life cycle of ten days to two weeks, so even destroying some by burning your tongue won’t have any long-term effect; they just grow right back. Taste molecules bind to receptors on this extension and cause chemical changes within the sensory cell that result in neural impulses being transmitted to the brain via different nerves, depending on where the receptor is located. Taste information is transmitted to the medulla, thalamus, and limbic system, and to the gustatory cortex, which is tucked underneath the overlap between the frontal and temporal lobes (Maffei, Haley, & Fontanini, 2012; Roper, 2013). Smell (Olfaction) Olfactory receptorOlfactory receptor cells are located in a mucous membrane at the top of the nose. Small hair-like extensions from these receptors serve as the sites for odor molecules dissolved in the mucus to interact with chemical receptors located on these extensions (Figure 2). Once an odor molecule has bound a given receptor, chemical changes within the cell result in signals being sent to the olfactory bulbolfactory bulb: a bulb-like structure at the tip of the frontal lobe where the olfactory nerves begin. From the olfactory bulb, information is sent to regions of the limbic system and to the primary olfactory cortex, which is located very near the gustatory cortex (Lodovichi & Belluscio, 2012; Spors et al., 2013). Figure 2. Olfactory receptors are the hair-like parts that extend from the olfactory bulb into the mucous membrane of the nasal cavity. Olfactory receptors are complex proteins called G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). These structures are proteins that weave back and forth across the membranes of olfactory cells seven times, forming structures outside the cell that sense odorant molecules and structures inside the cell that activate the neural message ultimately conveyed to the brain by olfactory neurons. The structures that sense odorants can be thought of as tiny binding pockets with sites that respond to active parts of molecules (e.g., carbon chains). There are about 350 functional olfactory genes in humans; each gene expresses a particular kind of olfactory receptor. All olfactory receptors of a given kind project to structures called glomeruli (paired clusters of cells found on both sides of the brain). For a single molecule, the pattern of activation across the glomeruli paints a picture of the chemical structure of the molecule. Thus, the olfactory system can identify a vast array of chemicals present in the environment. Most of the odors we encounter are actually mixtures of chemicals (e.g., bacon odor). The olfactory system creates an image for the mixture and stores it in memory just as it does for the odor of a single molecule (Shepherd, 2005). There is tremendous variation in the sensitivity of the olfactory systems of different species. We often think of dogs as having far superior olfactory systems than our own, and indeed, dogs can do some remarkable things with their noses. There is some evidence to suggest that dogs can “smell” dangerous drops in blood glucose levels as well as cancerous tumors (Wells, 2010). Dogs’ extraordinary olfactory abilities may be due to the increased number of functional genes for olfactory receptors (between 800 and 1200), compared to the fewer than 400 observed in humans and other primates (Niimura & Nei, 2007). Many species respond to chemical messages, known as pheromonespheromones, sent by another individual (Wysocki & Preti, 2004). Pheromonal communication often involves providing information about the reproductive status of a potential mate. So, for example, when a female rat is ready to mate, she secretes pheromonal signals that draw attention from nearby male rats. Pheromonal activation is actually an important component in eliciting sexual behavior in the male rat (Furlow, 1996, 2012; Purvis & Haynes, 1972; Sachs, 1997). There has also been a good deal of research (and controversy) about pheromones in humans (Comfort, 1971; Russell, 1976; Wolfgang- Kimball, 1992; Weller, 1998). An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2158 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2158 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2158 TRY ITTRY IT GLOSSARYGLOSSARY olfactory bulb:olfactory bulb: bulb-like structure at the tip of the frontal lobe, where the olfactory nerves begin olfactory receptor:olfactory receptor: sensory cell for the olfactory system pheromone:pheromone: chemical message sent by another individual taste bud:taste bud: grouping of taste receptor cells with hair-like extensions that protrude into the central pore of the taste bud umami:umami: taste for monosodium glutamate LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES As mentioned earlier, a food’s flavor represents an interaction of both gustatory and olfactory information. Think about the last time you were seriously congested due to a cold or the flu. What changes did you notice in the flavors of the foods that you ate during this time? Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • The Other Senses. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:Nw9FOKLs@6/The-Other-Senses. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/ contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • Paragraph on olfactory receptors. Authored byAuthored by: Linda Bartoshuk and Derek Snyder . Provided byProvided by: University of Florida. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/modules/taste-and-smell?r=LDIzOTky. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike • Touch photo. Authored byAuthored by: Wendy Longo. Located atLocated at: https://www.google.com/search?q=5+senses&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS727US727&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjCwNPv1-zRAhUJj1QKHdLfC- EQ_AUICCgB&biw=1255&bih=743#tbs=sur:fc&tbm=isch&q=touch&imgrc=D65TnqDgRi27_M%3A. LicenseLicense: CC BY-ND: Attribution-NoDerivatives TOUCH AND PAIN LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explain the receptors that respond to touch http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:Nw9FOKLs@6/The-Other-Senses https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/modules/taste-and-smell?r=LDIzOTky https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://www.google.com/search?q=5+senses&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS727US727&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjCwNPv1-zRAhUJj1QKHdLfC-EQ_AUICCgB&biw=1255&bih=743#tbs=sur:fc&tbm=isch&q=touch&imgrc=D65TnqDgRi27_M%3A https://www.google.com/search?q=5+senses&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS727US727&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjCwNPv1-zRAhUJj1QKHdLfC-EQ_AUICCgB&biw=1255&bih=743#tbs=sur:fc&tbm=isch&q=touch&imgrc=D65TnqDgRi27_M%3A https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ Figure 1. There are many types of sensory receptors located in the skin, each attuned to specific touch-related stimuli. • Explain the importance of pain and give examples of how expectations and context affect pain and touch experiences. Touch, Thermoception, and Noiception A number of receptors are distributed throughout the skin to respond to various touch-related stimuli (Figure 1). These receptors include Meissner’s corpuscles, Pacinian corpuscles, Merkel’s disks, and Ruffini corpuscles. Meissner’s corpusclesMeissner’s corpuscles respond to pressure and lower frequency vibrations, and Pacinian corpusclePacinian corpuscles detect transient pressure and higher frequency vibrations. Merkel’s disksMerkel’s disks respond to light pressure, while RuffiniRuffini corpusclescorpuscles detect stretch (Abraira & Ginty, 2013). The skin can convey many sensations, such as the biting cold of a wind, the comfortable pressure of a hand holding yours, or the irritating itch from a woolen scarf. The different types of information activate specific receptors that convert the stimulation of the skin to electrical nerve impulses, a process called transduction. There are three main groups of receptors in our skin: mechanoreceptors, responding to mechanical stimuli, such as stroking, stretching, or vibration of the skin; thermoreceptors, responding to cold or hot temperatures; and chemoreceptors, responding to certain types of chemicals either applied externally or released within the skin (such as histamine from an inflammation). For an overview of the different receptor types and their properties, see Table 1. The experience of pain usually starts with activation of nociceptorsnociceptors—receptors that fire specifically to potentially tissue-damaging stimuli. Most of the nociceptors are subtypes of either chemoreceptors or mechanoreceptors. When tissue is damaged or inflamed, certain chemical substances are released from the cells, and these substances activate the chemosensitive nociceptors. Mechanoreceptive nociceptors have a high threshold for activation—they respond to mechanical stimulation that is so intense it might damage the tissue. Sensory information collected from the receptors and free nerve endings travels up the spinal cord and is transmitted to regions of the medulla, thalamus, and ultimately to somatosensory cortex, which is located in the postcentral gyrus of the parietal lobe. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2160 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2160 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2160 TRY ITTRY IT Table 1. Categories of low-threshold mechanoreceptors* Identity of receptorIdentity of receptor Size of receptor*Size of receptor* Type of skin whereType of skin where foundfound Speed ofSpeed of adaptation*adaptation* AdequateAdequate stimulus*stimulus* Merkel’s disks small, sharp borders glabrous* slow pressure Meissner’s corpusles small, sharp borders glabrous rapid indentation Ruffini corpuscles large, diffuse borders hairy + glabrous slow stretching Pacinian corpuscles large, diffuse borders hairy + glabrous rapid vibration *Terms: Adequate stimulusAdequate stimulus-the type of stimulus that the receptor is specialized to receive and respond to. Glabrous skinGlabrous skin-the hairless skin found on our palms and the soles of our feet. This skin has a higher density of receptors of a more complex range, which reflects the fact that we use these areas of our body to actively explore our surroundings and to discriminate tactile properties of objects we’re interacting with. Low-threshold mechanoreceptors-Low-threshold mechanoreceptors-mechanoreceptors that respond to stimulus that is so light it doesn’t threaten to damage the tissue around it. high-threshold mechanoreceptors respond to stimulation of higher intensity, and are a type of nociceptor. Receptive fieldReceptive field-the space of skin or tissue in which stimulation will elicit a response in the receptor. Smaller receptive fields make the receptor more sensitive to details. Speed adaptationSpeed adaptation-slowly adapting mechanoreceptors continue to fire action potentials during sustained stimulation. Rapidly adapting mechanoreceptors continue to fire action potentials in response to stimulus onset and offset (i.e. to stimuli changes), and help detect stimulus movement on the skin. LIFE WITHOUT PAIN?LIFE WITHOUT PAIN? Imagine a life free of pain. How would it be—calm, fearless, serene? Would you feel invulnerable, invincible? Getting rid of pain is a popular quest—a quick search for “pain-free life” on Google returns well over 4 million hits—including links to various bestselling self-help guides promising a pain-free life in only 7 steps, 6 weeks, or 3 minutes. Pain management is a billion-dollar market, and involves much more than just pharmaceuticals. Surely a life with no pain would be a better one? Well, consider one of the “lucky few”: 12-year-old “Thomas” has never felt deep pain. Not even when a fracture made him walk around with one leg shorter than the other, so that the bones of his healthy leg were slowly crushed to destruction underneath the knee joint. For Thomas and other members of a large Swedish family, life without pain is a harsh reality because of a mutated gene that affects the growth of the nerves conducting deep pain. Most of those affected suffer from joint damage and frequent fractures to bones in their feet and hands; some end up in wheelchairs even before they reach puberty (Minde et al., 2004). It turns out pain—generally—serves us well. Living without a sense of touch sounds less attractive than being free of pain—touch is a source of pleasure and essential to how we feel. Losing the sense of touch has severe implications—something patient G. L. experienced when an antibiotics treatment damaged the type of nerves that signal touch from her skin and the position of her joints and muscles. She reported feeling like she’d lost her physical self from her nose down, making her “disembodied”—like she no longer had any connection to the body attached to her head. If she didn’t look at her arms and legs they could just “wander off” without her knowing—initially she was unable to walk, and even after she relearned this skill she was so dependent on her visual attention that closing her eyes would cause her to land in a hopeless heap on the floor. Only light caresses like those from her children’s hands can make her feel she has a body, but even these sensations remain vague and elusive (Olausson et al., 2002; Sacks, 1985). LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch this video to learn more about congenital insensitivity to pain. Pain Perception Pain is an unpleasant experience that involves both physical and psychological components. Feeling pain is quite adaptive because it makes us aware of an injury, and it motivates us to remove ourselves from the cause of that injury. In addition, pain also makes us less likely to suffer additional injury because we will be gentler with our injured body parts. Generally speaking, pain can be considered to be neuropathic or inflammatory in nature. Pain that signals some type of tissue damage is known as inflammatory paininflammatory pain. In some situations, pain results from damage to neurons of either the peripheral or central nervous system. As a result, pain signals that are sent to the brain get exaggerated. This type of pain is known as neuropathic painneuropathic pain. Multiple treatment options for pain relief range from relaxation therapy to the use of analgesic medications to deep brain stimulation. The most effective treatment option for a given individual will depend on a number of considerations, including the severity and persistence of the pain and any medical/psychological conditions. Some individuals are born without the ability to feel pain. This very rare genetic disorder is known as congenitalcongenital insensitivity to paininsensitivity to pain (or congenital analgesiacongenital analgesia). While those with congenital analgesia can detect differences in temperature and pressure, they cannot experience pain. As a result, they often suffer significant injuries. Young children have serious mouth and tongue injuries because they have bitten themselves repeatedly. Not surprisingly, individuals suffering from this disorder have much shorter life expectancies due to their injuries and secondary infections of injured sites (U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2013). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vLsZ_dXFAg Action Potentials in the Receptor Cells Travel as Nerve Impulses with Different Speeds When you step on a pin, this activates a host of mechanoreceptors, many of which are nociceptors. You may have noticed that the sensation changes over time. First you feel a sharp stab that propels you to remove your foot, and only then you feel a wave of more aching pain. The sharp stab is signaled via fast-conducting A-fibers, which project to the somatosensory cortex. This part of the cortex is somatotopically organized—that is, the sensory signals are represented according to where in the body they stem from (see homunculus illustration, Figure 2). The unpleasant ache you feel after the sharp pin stab is a separate, simultaneous signal sent from the nociceptors in your foot via thin C-pain or Aδ-fibers to the insular cortex and other brain regions involved in processing of emotion and interoception (see Figure 3a for a schematic representation of this pathway). The experience of stepping on a pin is, in other words, composed by two separate signals: one discriminatory signal allowing us to localize the touch stimulus and distinguish whether it’s a blunt or a sharp stab; and one affective signal that lets us know that stepping on the pin is bad. It is common to divide pain into sensory–discriminatory and affective–motivational aspects (Auvray, Myin, & Spence, 2010). This distinction corresponds, at least partly, to how this information travels from the peripheral to the central nervous system and how it is processed in the brain (Price, 2000). Figure 2a. The Homunculus: Homunculus means “little man”, and here you see a scale model of the human body distorted to reflect the relative space that body parts occupy in the somatosensory cortex. As you can see, the lips, hands, feet and genitals send more somatosensory projections to the brain than do any other body parts. Figure 2b. Cortical mapping of the sensory homunculus: The body parts are represented in specific locations on the somatosensory cortex. Representations map out somatotopically, with the feet located medially and shoulders and arms laterally to the interhemispheric fissure. Facial structures are represented in a different location to the scalp and head; the face oriented «upside down» with the forehead pointing towards the shoulders. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/27135056/homunculus https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/27135056/homunculus Figure 3: Pain processing pathways. Left – Ascending pain pathways: An injury is signaled simultaneously via fast-conducting Aα or Aβ-fibres and slow-conducting C-pain or Aδ-fibres. The fast A-fibres signal pressure, stretching and other tissue movements to the somatosensory cortex via the dorsal column nuclei. The C-pain and Aδ-fibres sends pain information from nociceptors in the tissue or skin, and transmits these signals to second order neurons in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord. The second order Pain Is Necessary for Survival, but Our Brain Can Stop It if It Needs To In April 2003, the climber Aron Ralston found himself at the floor of Blue John Canyon in Utah, forced to make an appalling choice: face a slow but certain death—or amputate his right arm. Five days earlier he fell down the canyon—since then he had been stuck with his right arm trapped between an 800-lb boulder and the steep sandstone wall. Weak from lack of food and water and close to giving up, it occurred to him like an epiphany that if he broke the two bones in his forearm he could manage to cut off the rest with his pocket knife. The thought of freeing himself and surviving made him so exited he spent the next 40 minutes completely engrossed in the task: first snapping his bones using his body as a lever, then sticking his fingers into the arm, pinching bundles of muscle fibers and severing them one by one, before cutting the blue arteries and the pale “noodle-like” nerves. The pain was unimportant. Only cutting through the thick white main nerve made him stop for a minute—the flood of pain, he describes, was like thrusting his entire arm “into a cauldron of magma.” Finally free, he rappelled down a cliff and walked another 7 miles until he was rescued by some hikers (Ralston, 2010). How is it possible to do something so excruciatingly painful to yourself, as Aron Ralston did, and still manage to walk, talk, and think rationally afterwards? The answer lies within the brain, where signals from the body are interpreted. When we perceive somatosensory and nociceptive signals from the body, the experience is highly subjective and malleable by motivation, attention, emotion, and context. neurons then cross over to the opposite side, where they form the ascending spinothalamic tract. This tract projects signals to nuclei in the medulla and midbrain on the way up to the thalamus (T). The thalamus relays the information to the somatosensory and insular cortex, as well as cortical regions mediating different aspects of the pain experience such as affective responses in the cingulate cortex. Right – Descending pain modulation pathways: Information from the environment and certain motivational states can activate this top–down pathway. Several areas in the limbic forebrain including the anterior cingulate and insular cortex, nuclei in the amygdala and the hypothalamus (H), project to the midbrain periaqueductal grey (PAG), which then modulates ascending pain transmission from the afferent pain system indirectly through the rostral ventromedial medulla (RVM) in the brainstem. This modulating system produces analgesia by the release of endogenous opioids, and uses ON- and OFF-cells to exert either inhibitory (green) or facilitatory (red) control of nociceptive signals at the spinal dorsal horn. The Motivation–Decision Model and Descending Modulation of Pain According to the motivation–decision model, the brain automatically and continuously evaluates the pros and cons of any situation—weighing impending threats and available rewards (Fields, 2004, 2006). Anything more important for survival than avoiding the pain activates the brain’s descending pain modulatory system—a top- down system involving several parts of the brain and brainstem, which inhibits nociceptive signaling so that the more important actions can be attended to. In Aron’s extreme case, his actions were likely based on such an unconscious decision process—taking into account his homeostatic state (his hunger, thirst, the inflammation and decay of his crushed hand slowly affecting the rest of his body), the sensory input available (the sweet smell of his dissolving skin, the silence around him indicating his solitude), and his knowledge about the threats facing him (death, or excruciating pain that won’t kill him) versus the potential rewards (survival, seeing his family again). Aron’s story illustrates the evolutionary advantage to being able to shut off pain: The descending pain modulatory system allows us to go through with potentially life-saving actions. However, when one has reached safety or obtained the reward, healing is more important. The very same descending system can then “crank up” nociception from the body to promote healing and motivate us to avoid potentially painful actions. To facilitate or inhibit nociceptive signals from the body, the descending pain modulatory system uses a set of ON- or OFF-cells in the brainstem, which regulates how much of the nociceptive signal reaches the brain. The descending system is dependent on opioid signaling, and analgesics like morphine relieve pain via this circuit (Petrovic, Kalso, Petersson, & Ingvar, 2002). The Analgesic Power of Reward Thinking about the good things, like his loved ones and the life ahead of him, was probably pivotal to Aron’s survival. The promise of a reward can be enough to relieve pain. Expecting pain relief (getting less pain is often the best possible outcome if you’re in pain, i.e., it is a reward) from a medical treatment contributes to the placebo effect—where pain relief is due at least partly to your brain’s descending modulation circuit, and such relief depends on the brain’s own opioid system (Eippert et al., 2009; Eippert, Finsterbusch, Bingel, & Buchel, 2009; Levine, Gordon, & Fields, 1978). Eating tasty food, listening to good music, or feeling pleasant touch on your skin also decreases pain in both animals and humans, presumably through the same mechanism in the brain (Leknes & Tracey, 2008). In a now classic experiment, Dum and Herz (1984) either fed rats normal rat food or let them feast on highly rewarding chocolate-covered candy (rats love sweets) while standing on a metal plate until they learned exactly what to expect when placed there. When the plate was heated up to a noxious/painful level, the rats that expected candy endured the temperature for twice as long as the rats expecting normal chow. Moreover, this effect was completely abolished when the rats’ opioid (endorphin) system was blocked with a drug, indicating that the analgesic effect of reward anticipation was caused by endorphin release. For Aron the climber, both the stress from knowing that death was impending and the anticipation of the reward it would be to survive probably flooded his brain with endorphins, contributing to the wave of excitement and euphoria he experienced while he carried out the amputation “like a five-year-old unleashed on his Christmas presents” (Ralston, 2010). This altered his experience of the pain from the extreme tissue damage he was causing and enabled him to focus on freeing himself. Our brain, it turns out, can modulate the perception of how An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2160 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2160 TRY ITTRY IT unpleasant pain is, while still retaining the ability to experience the intensity of the sensation (Rainville, Duncan, Price, Carrier, & Bushnell, 1997; Rainville, Feine, Bushnell, & Duncan, 1992). Social rewards, like holding the hand of your boyfriend or girlfriend, have pain-reducing effects. Even looking at a picture of him/her can have similar effects—in fact, seeing a picture of a person we feel close to not only reduces subjective pain ratings, but also the activity in pain-related brain areas (Eisenberger et al., 2011). The most common things to do when wanting to help someone through a painful experience—being present and holding the person’s hand—thus seems to have a measurably positive effect. The Power of the Mind The context of pain and touch has a great impact on how we interpret it. Just imagine how different it would feel to Aron if someone amputated his hand against his will and for no discernible reason. Prolonged pain from injuries can be easier to bear if the incident causing them provides a positive context—like a war wound that testifies to a soldier’s courage and commitment—or phantom pain from a hand that was cut off to enable life to carry on. The relative meaning of pain is illustrated by a recent experiment, where the same moderately painful heat was administered to participants in two different contexts—one control context where the alternative was a non-painful heat; and another where the alternative was an intensely painful heat. In the control context, where the moderate heat was the least preferable outcome, it was (unsurprisingly) rated as painful. In the other context it was the best possible outcome, and here the exact same moderately painful heat was actually rated as pleasant—because it meant the intensely painful heat had been avoided. This somewhat surprising change in perception—where pain becomes pleasant because it represents relief from something worse—highlights the importance of the meaning individuals ascribe to their pain, which can have decisive effects in pain treatment (Leknes et al., 2013). In the case of touch, knowing who or what is stroking your skin can make all the difference—try thinking about slugs the next time someone strokes your skin if you want an illustration of this point. Pain and pleasure not only share modulatory systems—another common attribute is that we don’t need to be on the receiving end of it ourselves in order to experience it. How did you feel when you read about Aron cutting through his own tissue, or “Thomas” destroying his own bones unknowingly? Did you cringe? It’s quite likely that some of your brain areas processing affective aspects of pain were active even though the nociceptors in your skin and deep tissue were not firing. Pain can be experienced vicariously, as can itch, pleasurable touch, and other sensations. Tania Singer and her colleagues found in an fMRI study that some of the same brain areas that were active when participants felt pain on their own skin (anterior cingulate and insula) were also active when they were given a signal that a loved one was feeling the pain. Those who were most “empathetic” also showed the largest brain responses (Singer et al., 2004). A similar effect has been found for pleasurable touch: The posterior insula of participants watching videos of someone else’s arm being gently stroked shows the same activation as if they were receiving the touch themselves (Morrison, Bjornsdotter, & Olausson, 2011). GLOSSARYGLOSSARY congenital insensitivity to pain (congenital analgesia):congenital insensitivity to pain (congenital analgesia): genetic disorder that results in the inability to experience pain inflammatory pain:inflammatory pain: signal that some type of tissue damage has occurred Meissner’s corpuscle:Meissner’s corpuscle: touch receptor that responds to pressure and lower frequency vibrations Merkel’s disk:Merkel’s disk: touch receptor that responds to light touch neuropathic pain:neuropathic pain: pain from damage to neurons of either the peripheral or central nervous system nociception:nociception: sensory signal indicating potential harm and maybe pain Pacinian corpuscle:Pacinian corpuscle: touch receptor that detects transient pressure and higher frequency vibrations Ruffini corpuscle:Ruffini corpuscle: touch receptor that detects stretch vestibular sense:vestibular sense: contributes to our ability to maintain balance and body posture Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification and adaptation, addition of Noba Link to Learning and CrashCourse video. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • The Other Senses. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:Nw9FOKLs@6/The-Other-Senses. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/ contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • Touch and Pain, information on mechanoreceptors through the power of the mind. Authored byAuthored by: Guro E. Loseth, Dan-Mikael Ellingson, and Siri Leknes . Provided byProvided by: University of Oslo, University of Gothenburg. LocatedLocated atat: http://nobaproject.com/modules/touch-and-pain. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike THE VESTIBULAR SENSE LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe the basic functions of the vestibular, proprioceptive, and kinesthetic sensory systems The Vestibular Sense, Proprioception, and Kinesthesia The vestibular sensevestibular sense contributes to our ability to maintain balance and body posture. As Figure 1 shows, the major sensory organs (utricle, saccule, and the three semicircular canals) of this system are located next to the cochlea in the inner ear. The vestibular organs are fluid-filled and have hair cells, similar to the ones found in the auditory system, which respond to movement of the head and gravitational forces. When these hair cells are stimulated, they send signals to the brain via the vestibular nerve. Although we may not be consciously aware of our vestibular system’s sensory information under normal circumstances, its importance is apparent when we experience motion sickness and/or dizziness related to infections of the inner ear (Khan & Chang, 2013). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:Nw9FOKLs@6/The-Other-Senses https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/modules/touch-and-pain https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Figure 1. The major sensory organs of the vestibular system are located next to the cochlea in the inner ear. These include the utricle, saccule, and the three semicircular canals (posterior, superior, and horizontal). In addition to maintaining balance, the vestibular system collects information critical for controlling movement and the reflexes that move various parts of our bodies to compensate for changes in body position. Therefore, both proprioceptionproprioception (perception of body position) and kinesthesiakinesthesia (perception of the body’s movement through space) interact with information provided by the vestibular system. These sensory systems also gather information from receptors that respond to stretch and tension in muscles, joints, skin, and tendons (Lackner & DiZio, 2005; Proske, 2006; Proske & Gandevia, 2012). Proprioceptive and kinesthetic information travels to the brain via the spinal column. Several cortical regions in addition to the cerebellum receive information from and send information to the sensory organs of the proprioceptive and kinesthetic systems. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2170 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING You can review the things you learned about the senses in the following CrashCourse video: An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2170 TRY ITTRY IT GLOSSARYGLOSSARY kinesthesia:kinesthesia: perception of the body’s movement through space proprioception:proprioception: perception of body position vestibular sense:vestibular sense: contributes to our ability to maintain balance and body posture An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2170 DefinitionDefinition ApplicationApplication Vestibular Sense Sensory system that contributes to balance and the sense of spatial orientation. You have an ear infection and frequently feel dizzy. Or if you were to experience vertigo, you might feel like your entire body was spinning in space and be unable to walk. Propioception The sense of the position of parts of the body, relative to other neighboring parts of the body. Focuses on the body’s cognitive awareness of movement. You step off a curb and know where to put your foot. You push an elevator button and control how hard you have to press down with your fingers. Kinesthesia Awareness of the position and movement of the parts of the body using sensory organs in joints and muscles. Kinesthesia is a key component in muscle memory and hand-eye coordination. It is more behavioral than propioception. You are aware of your arm movement while swinging a golf club. Focuses on the body’s movements and not on equilibrium or balance. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2117 Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • The Other Senses. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:Nw9FOKLs@6/The-Other-Senses. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/ contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • Homunculus - Crash Course Psychology #6. Provided byProvided by: CrashCourse. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxZWtc0mYpQ. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • Additional Sensory Systems, information for chart. Provided byProvided by: Boundless. Located atLocated at: https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/sensation-and-perception-5/sensory- processes-38/additional-sensory-systems-166-12701/. ProjectProject: Boundless Psychology. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike PERCEPTION What you’ll learn to do: define perception and give examples of gestalt principles and multimodal perception Seeing something is not the same thing as making sense of what you see. Why is it that our senses are so easily fooled? In this section, you will come to see how our perceptions are not infallible, and they can be influenced by bias, prejudice, and other factors. Psychologists are interested in how these false perceptions influence our thoughts and behavior. Watch this CrashCourse video for a good overview of perception: LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Give examples of gestalt principles, including the figure-ground relationship, proximity, similarity, continuity, and closure • Define the basic terminology and basic principles of multimodal perception • Give examples of multimodal and crossmodal behavioral effects https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:Nw9FOKLs@6/The-Other-Senses https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxZWtc0mYpQ https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/sensation-and-perception-5/sensory-processes-38/additional-sensory-systems-166-12701/ https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/sensation-and-perception-5/sensory-processes-38/additional-sensory-systems-166-12701/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/01204244/5704563713_dd5a8c0de1_o Gestalt Principles of Perception In the early part of the 20th century, Max Wertheimer published a paper demonstrating that individuals perceived motion in rapidly flickering static images—an insight that came to him as he used a child’s toy tachistoscope. Wertheimer, and his assistants Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka, who later became his partners, believed that perception involved more than simply combining sensory stimuli. This belief led to a new movement within the field of psychology known as Gestalt psychologyGestalt psychology. The word gestalt literally means form or pattern, but its use reflects the idea that the whole is different from the sum of its parts. In other words, the brain creates a perception that is more than simply the sum of available sensory inputs, and it does so in predictable ways. Gestalt psychologists translated these predictable ways into principles by which we organize sensory information. As a result, Gestalt psychology has been extremely influential in the area of sensation and perception (Rock & Palmer, 1990). One Gestalt principle is the figure-ground relationshipfigure-ground relationship. According to this principle, we tend to segment our visual world into figure and ground. Figure is the object or person that is the focus of the visual field, while the ground is the background. As Figure 1 shows, our perception can vary tremendously, depending on what is perceived as figure and what is perceived as ground. Presumably, our ability to interpret sensory information depends on what we label as figure and what we label as ground in any particular case, although this assumption has been called into question (Peterson & Gibson, 1994; Vecera & O’Reilly, 1998). Figure 1. The concept of figure-ground relationship explains why this image can be perceived either as a vase or as a pair of faces. Another Gestalt principle for organizing sensory stimuli into meaningful perception is proximityproximity. This principle asserts that things that are close to one another tend to be grouped together, as Figure 2 illustrates. Figure 2. The Gestalt principle of proximity suggests that you see (a) one block of dots on the left side and (b) three columns on the right side. How we read something provides another illustration of the proximity concept. For example, we read this sentence like this, notl iket hiso rt hat. We group the letters of a given word together because there are no spaces between the letters, and we perceive words because there are spaces between each word. Here are some more examples: Cany oum akes enseo ft hiss entence? What doth es e wor dsmea n? We might also use the principle of similaritysimilarity to group things in our visual fields. According to this principle, things that are alike tend to be grouped together (Figure 3). For example, when watching a football game, we tend to group individuals based on the colors of their uniforms. When watching an offensive drive, we can get a sense of the two teams simply by grouping along this dimension. Figure 3. When looking at this array of dots, we likely perceive alternating rows of colors. We are grouping these dots according to the principle of similarity. Two additional Gestalt principles are the law oflaw of continuitycontinuity (or good continuation) and closureclosure. The law of continuity suggests that we are more likely to perceive continuous, smooth flowing lines rather than jagged, broken lines (Figure 4). The principle of closure states that we organize our perceptions into complete objects rather than as a series of parts (Figure 5). Figure 4. Good continuation would suggest that we are more likely to perceive this as two overlapping lines, rather than four lines meeting in the center. Figure 5. Closure suggests that we will perceive a complete circle and rectangle rather than a series of segments. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch this podcast showing real world illustrations of Gestalt principles. DIG DEEPER: THE DEPTHS OF PERCEPTION: BIAS, PREJUDICE, ANDDIG DEEPER: THE DEPTHS OF PERCEPTION: BIAS, PREJUDICE, AND CULTURAL FACTORSCULTURAL FACTORS In this module, you have learned that perception is a complex process. Built from sensations, but influenced by our own experiences, biases, prejudices, and cultures, perceptions can be very different from person to person. Research suggests that implicit racial prejudice and stereotypes affect perception. For instance, several studies have demonstrated that non-Black participants identify weapons faster and are more likely to identify non- weapons as weapons when the image of the weapon is paired with the image of a Black person (Payne, 2001; Payne, Shimizu, & Jacoby, 2005). Furthermore, White individuals’ decisions to shoot an armed target in a video game is made more quickly when the target is Black (Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002; Correll, Urland, & Ito, 2006). This research is important, considering the number of very high-profile cases in the last few decades in which young Blacks were killed by people who claimed to believe that the unarmed individuals were armed and/or represented some threat to their personal safety. TRY ITTRY IT According to Gestalt theorists, pattern perceptionpattern perception, or our ability to discriminate among different figures and shapes, occurs by following the principles described above. You probably feel fairly certain that your perception accurately matches the real world, but this is not always the case. Our perceptions are based on perceptualperceptual hypotheseshypotheses: educated guesses that we make while interpreting sensory information. These hypotheses are informed by a number of factors, including our personalities, experiences, and expectations. We use these hypotheses to generate our perceptual set. For instance, research has demonstrated that those who are given verbal priming produce a biased interpretation of complex ambiguous figures (Goolkasian & Woodbury, 2010). https://secure-hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/e/c/0/ec024ff6bc3adce3/TPF_031Gestalt_020709.m4v?c_id=1316744&expiration=1485984203&hwt=3dfc11440d95d65189642fcece86be5d An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2117 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2117 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2117 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2117 Figure 6. The way we receive the information from the world is called sensation while our interpretation of that information is called perception. [Image: Laurens van Lieshou] THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER Have you ever listened to a song on the radio and sung along only to find out later that you have been singing the wrong lyrics? Once you found the correct lyrics, did your perception of the song change? Multi-Modal Perception Although it has been traditional to study the various senses independently, most of the time, perception operates in the context of information supplied by multiple sensorysensory modalitiesmodalities at the same time. For example, imagine if you witnessed a car collision. You could describe the stimulus generated by this event by considering each of the senses independently; that is, as a set of unimodalunimodal stimuli. Your eyes would be stimulated with patterns of light energy bouncing off the cars involved. Your ears would be stimulated with patterns of acoustic energy emanating from the collision. Your nose might even be stimulated by the smell of burning rubber or gasoline. However, all of this information would be relevant to the same thing: your perception of the car collision. Indeed, unless someone was to explicitly ask you to describe your perception in unimodal terms, you would most likely experience the event as a unified bundle of sensations from multiple senses. In other words, your perception would be multimodalmultimodal. The question is whether the various sources of information involved in this multimodal stimulus are processed separately by the perceptual system or not. For the last few decades, perceptual research has pointed to the importance of multimodal perceptionmultimodal perception: the effects on the perception of events and objects in the world that are observed when there is information from more than one sensory modality. Most of this research indicates that, at some point in perceptual processing, information from the various sensory modalities is integratedintegrated. In other words, the information is combined and treated as a unitary representation of the world. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/27203138/percep https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/27203138/percep Behavioral Effects of Multimodal Perception Although neuroscientists tend to study very simple interactions between neurons, the fact that they’ve found so many crossmodal areas of the cortex seems to hint that the way we experience the world is fundamentally multimodal. Our intuitions about perception are consistent with this; it does not seem as though our perception of events is constrained to the perception of each sensory modality independently. Rather, we perceive a unified world, regardless of the sensory modality through which we perceive it. It will probably require many more years of research before neuroscientists uncover all the details of the neural machinery involved in this unified experience. In the meantime, experimental psychologists have contributed to our understanding of multimodal perception through investigations of the behavioral effects associated with it. These effects fall into two broad classes. The first class—multimodal phenomenamultimodal phenomena—concerns the binding of inputs from multiple sensory modalities and the effects of this binding on perception. The second class—crossmodalcrossmodal phenomenaphenomena—concerns the influence of one sensory modality on the perception of another (Spence, Senkowski, & Roder, 2009). Multimodal Phenomena Audiovisual Speech Multimodal phenomena concern stimuli that generate simultaneous (or nearly simultaneous) information in more than one sensory modality. As discussed above, speech is a classic example of this kind of stimulus. When an individual speaks, she generates sound waves that carry meaningful information. If the perceiver is also looking at the speaker, then that perceiver also has access to visual patterns that carry meaningful information. Of course, as anyone who has ever tried to lipread knows, there are limits on how informative visual speech information is. Even so, the visual speech pattern alone is sufficient for very robust speech perception. Most people assume that deaf individuals are much better at lipreading than individuals with normal hearing. It may come as a surprise to learn, however, that some individuals with normal hearing are also remarkably good at lipreading (sometimes called “speechreading”). In fact, there is a wide range of speechreading ability in both normal hearing and deaf populations (Andersson, Lyxell, Rönnberg, & Spens, 2001). However, the reasons for this wide range of performance are not well understood (Auer & Bernstein, 2007; Bernstein, 2006; Bernstein, Auer, & Tucker, 2001; Mohammed et al., 2005). How does visual information about speech interact with auditory information about speech? One of the earliest investigations of this question examined the accuracy of recognizing spoken words presented in a noisy context, much like in the example above about talking at a crowded party. To study this phenomenon experimentally, some irrelevant noise (“white noise”—which sounds like a radio tuned between stations) was presented to participants. Embedded in the white noise were spoken words, and the participants’ task was to identify the words. There were two conditions: one in which only the auditory component of the words was presented (the “auditory-alone” condition), and one in both the auditory and visual components were presented (the “audiovisual” condition). The noise levels were also varied, so that on some trials, the noise was very loud relative to the loudness of the words, and on other trials, the noise was very soft relative to the words. Sumby and Pollack (1954) found that the accuracy of identifying the spoken words was much higher for the audiovisual condition than it was in the auditory-alone condition. In addition, the pattern of results was consistent with the Principle of Inverse Effectiveness: The advantage gained by audiovisual presentation was highest when the auditory-alone condition performance was lowest (i.e., when the noise was loudest). At these noise levels, the audiovisual advantage was considerable: It was estimated that allowing the participant to see the speaker was equivalent to turning the volume of the noise down by over half. Clearly, the audiovisual advantage can have dramatic effects on behavior. Another phenomenon using audiovisual speech is a very famous illusion called the “McGurk effect” (named after one of its discoverers). In the classic formulation of the illusion, a movie is recorded of a speaker saying the syllables “gaga.” Another movie is made of the same speaker saying the syllables “baba.” Then, the auditory portion of the “baba” movie is dubbed onto the visual portion of the “gaga” movie. This combined stimulus is presented to participants, who are asked to report what the speaker in the movie said. McGurk and MacDonald (1976) reported that 98 percent of their participants reported hearing the syllable “dada”—which was in neither the visual nor the auditory components of the stimulus. These results indicate that when visual and auditory information about speech is integrated, it can have profound effects on perception. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2117 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2117 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2117 TRY ITTRY IT An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2117 Tactile/Visual Interactions in Body Ownership Not all multisensory integration phenomena concern speech, however. One particularly compelling multisensory illusion involves the integration of tactile and visual information in the perception of body ownership. In the “rubber hand illusion” (Botvinick & Cohen, 1998), an observer is situated so that one of his hands is not visible. A fake rubber hand is placed near the obscured hand, but in a visible location. The experimenter then uses a light paintbrush to simultaneously stroke the obscured hand and the rubber hand in the same locations. For example, if the middle finger of the obscured hand is being brushed, then the middle finger of the rubber hand will also be brushed. This sets up a correspondence between the tactile sensations (coming from the obscured hand) and the visual sensations (of the rubber hand). After a short time (around 10 minutes), participants report feeling as though the rubber hand “belongs” to them; that is, that the rubber hand is a part of their body. This feeling can be so strong that surprising the participant by hitting the rubber hand with a hammer often leads to a reflexive withdrawing of the obscured hand—even though it is in no danger at all. It appears, then, that our awareness of our own bodies may be the result of multisensory integration. Crossmodal Phenomena Crossmodal phenomena are distinguished from multimodal phenomena in that they concern the influence one sensory modality has on the perception of another. Figure 7. Ventriloquists are able to trick us into believing that what we see and what we hear are the same where, in truth, they are not. [Image: Indiapuppet] LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Participate in the double-flash experiment here. Take a look at the bouncing balls illusion here. Visual Influence on Auditory Localization A famous (and commonly experienced) crossmodal illusion is referred to as “the ventriloquism effect.” When a ventriloquist appears to make a puppet speak, she fools the listener into thinking that the location of the origin of the speech sounds is at the puppet’s mouth. In other words, instead of localizing the auditory signal (coming from the mouth of a ventriloquist) to the correct place, our perceptual system localizes it incorrectly (to the mouth of the puppet). Why might this happen? Consider the information available to the observer about the location of the two components of the stimulus: the sounds from the ventriloquist’s mouth and the visual movement of the puppet’s mouth. Whereas it is very obvious where the visual stimulus is coming from (because you can see it), it is much more difficult to pinpoint the location of the sounds. In other words, the very precise visual location of mouth movement apparently overrides the less well-specified location of the auditory information. More generally, it has been found that the location of a wide variety of auditory stimuli can be affected by the simultaneous presentation of a visual stimulus (Vroomen & De Gelder, 2004). In addition, the ventriloquism effect has been demonstrated for objects in motion: The motion of a visual object can influence the perceived direction of motion of a moving sound source (Soto-Faraco, Kingstone, & Spence, 2003). Auditory Influence on Visual Perception A related illusion demonstrates the opposite effect: where sounds have an effect on visual perception. In the double-flash illusion, a participant is asked to stare at a central point on a computer monitor. On the extreme edge of the participant’s vision, a white circle is briefly flashed one time. There is also a simultaneous auditory event: either one beep or two beeps in rapid succession. Remarkably, participants report seeing two visual flashes when the flash is accompanied by two beeps; the same stimulus is seen as a single flash in the context of a single beep or no beep (Shams, Kamitani, & Shimojo, 2000). In other words, the number of heard beeps influences the number of seen flashes! Another illusion involves the perception of collisions between two circles (called “balls”) moving toward each other and continuing through each other. Such stimuli can be perceived as either two balls moving through each other or as a collision between the two balls that then bounce off each other in opposite directions. Sekuler, Sekuler, and Lau (1997) showed that the presentation of an auditory stimulus at the time of contact between the two balls strongly influenced the perception of a collision event. In this case, the perceived sound influences the interpretation of the ambiguous visual stimulus. Crossmodal Speech Several crossmodal phenomena have also been discovered for speech stimuli. These crossmodal speech effects usually show altered perceptual processing of unimodal stimuli (e.g., acoustic patterns) by virtue of prior experience with the alternate unimodal stimulus (e.g., optical patterns). For example, Rosenblum, Miller, and Sanchez (2007) conducted an experiment examining the ability to become familiar with a person’s voice. Their first interesting finding was unimodal: Much like what happens when someone repeatedly hears a person speak, perceivers can become familiar with the “visual voice” of a speaker. That is, they can become familiar with the https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/27203253/ventril https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/27203253/ventril http://www.cns.atr.jp/~kmtn/soundInducedIllusoryFlash2/ http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/mot-bounce/index.html GLOSSARYGLOSSARY closure:closure: organizing our perceptions into complete objects rather than as a series of parts crossmodal phenomenacrossmodal phenomena: effects that concern the influence of the perception of one sensory modality on the perception of another double flash illusiondouble flash illusion: the false perception of two visual flashes when a single flash is accompanied by two auditory beeps figure-ground relationship:figure-ground relationship: segmenting our visual world into figure and ground Gestalt psychology:Gestalt psychology: field of psychology based on the idea that the whole is different from the sum of its parts< good continuation:good continuation: (also, continuity) we are more likely to perceive continuous, smooth flowing lines rather than jagged, broken lines integratedintegrated: the process by which the perceptual system combines information arising from more than one modality McGurk effectMcGurk effect: an effect in which conflicting visual and auditory components of a speech stimulus result in an illusory percept multimodalmultimodal: of or pertaining to multiple sensory modalities multimodal perceptionmultimodal perception: the effects that concurrent stimulation in more than one sensory modality has on the perception of events and objects in the world multimodal phenomenamultimodal phenomena: effects that concern the binding of inputs from multiple sensory modalities pattern perception:pattern perception: ability to discriminate among different figures and shapes perceptual hypothesis:perceptual hypothesis: educated guess used to interpret sensory information principle of closure:principle of closure: organize perceptions into complete objects rather than as a series of parts proximity:proximity: things that are close to one another tend to be grouped together rubber hand illusionrubber hand illusion: the false perception of a fake hand as belonging to a perceiver, due to multimodal sensory information sensory modalitiessensory modalities: a type of sense; for example, vision or audition similarity:similarity: things that are alike tend to be grouped together unimodalunimodal: of or pertaining to a single sensory modality person’s speaking style simply by seeing that person speak. Even more astounding was their crossmodal finding: Familiarity with this visual information also led to increased recognition of the speaker’s auditory speech, to which participants had never had exposure. Similarly, it has been shown that when perceivers see a speaking face, they can identify the (auditory-alone) voice of that speaker, and vice versa (Kamachi, Hill, Lander, & Vatikiotis-Bateson, 2003; Lachs & Pisoni, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c; Rosenblum, Smith, Nichols, Lee, & Hale, 2006). In other words, the visual form of a speaker engaged in the act of speaking appears to contain information about what that speaker should sound like. Perhaps more surprisingly, the auditory form of speech seems to contain information about what the speaker should look like. THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER In the late 17th century, a scientist named William Molyneux asked the famous philosopher John Locke a question relevant to modern studies of multisensory processing. The question was this: Imagine a person who has been blind since birth, and who is able, by virtue of the sense of touch, to identify three dimensional shapes such as spheres or pyramids. Now imagine that this person suddenly receives the ability to see. Would the person, without using the sense of touch, be able to identify those same shapes visually? Can modern research in multimodal perception help answer this question? Why or why not? How do the studies about crossmodal phenomena inform us about the answer to this question? Figure 1. This 3-D street art demonstrates how artists utilize illusions to portray depth on a 2-D sidewalk. Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Modification of content on multi-modal perception. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Perception Poster Show Concept. Authored byAuthored by: Jon Ashcroft. Located atLocated at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/theilluminated/5704563713. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Gestalt Principles of Psychology. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:cOcxAR_r@5/Gestalt-Principles-of-Percepti#Figure_05_06_Continuity. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/. • Multi-Modal Perception. Authored byAuthored by: Lorin Lachs. Provided byProvided by: California State University, Fresno. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/modules/multi-modal-perception. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Perceiving is Believing - Crash Course Psychology #7. Provided byProvided by: CrashCourse. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n46umYA_4dM. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • The McGurk Effect. Provided byProvided by: BBC. Located atLocated at: https://youtu.be/G-lN8vWm3m0?t=32s. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • The Rubber Hand Illusion. Provided byProvided by: BBC. Located atLocated at: https://youtu.be/sxwn1w7MJvk. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License ILLUSIONS LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explain how and why psychologists use illusions Why Illusions? Psychologists have analyzed perceptual systems for more than a century. Vision and hearing have received the most attention by far, but other perceptual systems, like those for smell taste movement, balance, touch, and pain, have also been studied extensively. Perception scientists use a variety of approaches to study these systems—they design experiments, study neurological patients with damaged brain regions, and create perceptual illusions that toy with the brain’s efforts to interpret the sensory world. Creation and testing of perceptual illusions has been a fruitful approach to the study of perception—particularly visual perception—since the early days of psychology. People often think that visual illusions are simply amusing tricks that provide us with entertainment. Many illusions are fun to experience, but perception scientists create illusions based on their understanding of the perceptual system. Once they have created a successful illusion, the scientist can explore what people experience, what parts of the brain are involved in interpretation of the illusion, and what variables increase or diminish the strength of the illusion. Scientists are not alone in this interest. Visual artists have discovered and used many illusion-producing principles for centuries, allowing them to create the experience of depth, movement, light and shadow, and relative size on two- dimensional canvases. Depth Illusions When we look at the world, we are not very good at detecting the absolute qualities of things—their exact size or color or shape. What we are very good at is judging objects in the context of other objects and conditions. Let’s take a look at a few illusions to see how they are based on insights about our perception. Look at Figure 2 below. Which of the two horizontal yellow lines looks wider, the top one or the bottom one? https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/theilluminated/5704563713 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:cOcxAR_r@5/Gestalt-Principles-of-Percepti#Figure_05_06_Continuity https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/modules/multi-modal-perception https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n46umYA_4dM https://youtu.be/G-lN8vWm3m0?t=32s https://youtu.be/sxwn1w7MJvk https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/14154724/Horizontal_3d_graffiti_%C5%81%C3%B3d%C5%BA_Schillera_Passage https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/14154724/Horizontal_3d_graffiti_%C5%81%C3%B3d%C5%BA_Schillera_Passage Figure 2. The Ponzo Illusion. Most people experience the top line as wider. They are both exactly the same length. This experience is called the Ponzo illusion. Even though you know that the lines are the same length, it is difficult to see them as identical. Our perceptual system takes the context into account, here using the converging “railroad tracks” to produce an experience of depth. Then, using some impressive mental geometry, our brain adjusts the experienced length of the top line to be consistent with the size it would have if it were that far away: if two lines are the same length on my retina, but different distances from me, the more distant line must be in reality longer. You experience a world that “makes sense” rather than a world that reflects the actual objects in front of you. There are many depth illusions. It is difficult to see the drawing on the left below as a two-dimensional figure. The converging lines and smaller square at the center seem to coax our perceptual systems into seeing depth, even though we know that the drawing is flat. This urge to see depth is probably so strong because our ability to use two-dimensional information to infer a three dimensional world is essential for allowing us to operate in the world. The picture on the right below is a driving tunnel, something you would need to process at high speed if you were in a car going through it. Your quick and detailed use of converging lines and other cues allows you to make sense of this 3-D world. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/07210125/Ponzo_illusion.gif https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/07210125/Ponzo_illusion.gif Figure 3. Understanding depth enables us to function in a 3-dimensional world. Light and Size Illusions Depth is not the only quality in the world that shows how we adjust what we experience to fit the surrounding world. Look at the two gray squares in the figure below. Which one looks darker? Figure 4. Which gray square appears darker? Most people experience the square on the right as the darker of the two gray squares. You’ve probably already guessed that the squares are actually identical in shade, but the surrounding area—black on the left and white on the right—influence how our perceptual systems interpret the gray area. In this case, the greater difference in shading between the white surrounding area and the gray square on the right results in the experience of a darker square. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/07210639/Screen-Shot-2017-02-07-at-3.04.55-PM https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/07210639/Screen-Shot-2017-02-07-at-3.04.55-PM https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/07211928/Simultaneous_Contrast https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/07211928/Simultaneous_Contrast Here is another example below. The two triangular figures are identical in shade, but the triangle on the left looks lighter against the dark background of the cross when compared to the triangle in the white area on the right. Figure 5. Benary Cross Our visual systems work with more than simple contrast. They also use our knowledge of how the world works to adjust our perceptual experience. Look at the checkerboard below. There are two squares with letters in them, one marked “A” and the other “B”. Which one of those two squares is darker? https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/07212941/569px-Benary_Cross.svg_ https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/07212941/569px-Benary_Cross.svg_ An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3576 Figure 6. Which looks darker, A or B? This seems like an easy comparison, but the truth is that squares A and B are identical in shade. Our perceptual system adjusts our experience by taking some visual information into account. First, “A” is one of the “dark squares” and “B” is a “light square” if we take the checkerboard pattern into account. Perhaps even more impressive, our visual systems notice that “B” is in a shadow. Object in a shadow appear darker, so our experience is adjusted to take account of effect of the shadow, resulting in perceiving square B as being lighter than square A, which sits in the bright light. And if you really don’t believe your eyes, take a look at a video showing the same color tiles here. One final illusion takes us back to adjustment for size. Look at the two sets of circles below. Your task is to adjust the center circle on the left so it is the same actual size as the center circle on the right. The surrounding circles will not change in size, though the right of circles will expand to accommodate the size of the center circle. Use the slide bar with the label “Size of left circle” to make your adjustments. When you are satisfied with your adjustment, check your accuracy by clicking on the “Verify Diameter” button. Click “Reset” to try again. This illusion is called the Ebbinghaus illusion, created by Hermann Ebbinghaus, one of the early founders of experimental psychology. It is shown again below. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/07213735/Optical.greysquares.arp_ https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/07213735/Optical.greysquares.arp_ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRvo1jRXiI8 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3576 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3576 TRY ITTRY IT LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING If you want to explore more visual illusions, here is a great site with dozens of interesting illusions created by Michael Bach. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3576 In this version of the illusion, most people see the circle on the right as larger than the one on the left. The two orange circles are exactly the same size. The Ebbinghaus illusion again illustrates the tendency of our perceptual systems to adjust our experience of the world to the surrounding context. How do you think a psychologist might use the Ebbinghaus illusion to learn about mental processes or behavior (shown again below)? Read on to see an actual example from a psychologist at Colorado State University. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/02202255/650px-Mond-vergleich.svg_ http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/ Figure 1. Do you suspect that the perceived size of a golf hole will affect putting performance? Ebbinghaus in the Real World Imagine that you are in a golf competition in which you are putting against someone with the same experience and skill that you have. There is one problem: Your opponent gets to putt into a hole that is 10% larger than the hole you have to use. You’d probably think that the competition was unfairly biased against you. Now imagine a somewhat different situation. You and your opponent are about equal in ability and the holes you are using are the same size, but the hole that your opponent is using looks 10% larger than the one you are using. Would your opponent have an unfair advantage now? If you read the earlier section on the Ebbinghaus effect, you have an idea how psychologists could exploit your perceptual system (and your opponent’s) to test this very question. Psychologist Jessica Witt and her colleagues Sally Linkenauger and Dennis Proffitt recruited research participants with no unusual golf experience to participate in a putting task. They competed against themselves rather than against another person. The experimenters made the task challenging by using a hole with a 2-inch diameter, which is about half the diameter of the hole you will find on a golf course. An overhead projector mounted on the ceiling of their lab allowed them to project Ebbinghaus’s circles around the putting hole. Some participants saw the putting hole surrounded by circles that were smaller than the hole in the center; the other half saw surrounding black circles that were larger. Participants putted from about 11½ feet away. They took 10 putts in one condition, and then 10 in the other condition. Half of the participants putted with the large surrounding circles first and half saw the small surrounding circles first. This procedure is called counterbalancingcounterbalancing. If there is any advantage (e.g., getting better over time with practice) or disadvantage (e.g., getting tired of putting), counterbalancing assures that both conditions are equally exposed to the positive or negative effects of which task goes first or second. Failure to take account of this type of problem means that you may have a confounding variableconfounding variable—practice or fatigue—that influences performance. A confounding variable is something that could influence performance, but is not part of the study. We try to control (that is, neutralize) potentially confounding variables so they cannot be the cause of performance differences. So, for instance, if everyone did the large surrounding circles condition first and then the small surrounding circles, then differences in performance could be due to order of conditions (leading to practice or fatigue effects) rather than the size of the surrounding circles. By counterbalancing, we don’t get rid of the effects of practice or fatigue for any particular person, but—across all the participants—practice or fatigue should affect both conditions (both types of Ebbinghaus circles) equally. The experimenters wanted to know two things. First, did they actually produce the Ebbinghaus illusion? Remember: there is no guarantee that people see or think the way your theory says they should. So just before the participant started putting in a particular condition, he or she drew a circle using a computerized drawing tool, attempting to match the exact size of the putting hole. This is better than simply asking, “do you see the illusion?” The drawing task attempts to directly measure what they perceive. Second, the experimenters wanted to see if the perceived size of the hole influenced putting accuracy. They recorded the success or failure of each putt. Each participant could get a score of 0 to 10 successful putts in each condition. Methods Summary Recap the steps you’ve read about thus far: 1. The participant practices putting to get used to the task. 2. The participant completes the first condition (large surrounding circles for half of the participants and small surrounding circles for the other half). https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/14025440/ball-1842170_1920 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/14025440/ball-1842170_1920 TRY ITTRY IT Now that you know the details of Jessica Witt’s experiment, see if you can answer the following questions. ClickNow that you know the details of Jessica Witt’s experiment, see if you can answer the following questions. Click on the option you think is correct and then click the ‘Show Answer’ link to see if you’re right.on the option you think is correct and then click the ‘Show Answer’ link to see if you’re right. Question 1: What is the independent variable as described in this study?Question 1: What is the independent variable as described in this study? The size of the putting hole is the independent variable. The size of the circles surrounding the putting hole is the independent variable. The distance the person had to putt is the independent variable. There are two independent variables: the size of the putting hole and the size of the surrounding circles. AnswerAnswer An INDEPENDENT VARIABLE is something intentionally manipulated (changed) by the experimenter. To test the effect of the Ebbinghaus illusion, the experimenters had participants putt into holes surrounded by larger circles and smaller circles. This “manipulation” of the size of the surrounding holes is the independent variable. Question 2: What is the dependent variable in this study?Question 2: What is the dependent variable in this study? The number of successful putts is the dependent variable. The size of the circle drawn by the participant is the dependent variable. The size of the putting hole is the dependent variable. There are two dependent variables: the number of successful putts and the size of the circle drawn by the participants are both dependent variables. AnswerAnswer A DEPENDENT VARIABLE is some behavior or thought process measured by the experimenter. This study had two dependent variables: • (a) the size of the circle drawn by the participant • (b) the number of successful putts Both dependent variables were measured for each condition, so each participant drew 2 circles and had 0 to 10 successful putts in both the large surrounding circles condition and the small surrounding circles condition. TRY ITTRY IT Question 3: How did the participants perceive the holes?Question 3: How did the participants perceive the holes? Resize the bars below by clicking and dragging them to show your predicted results when the subjects were asked to draw the circles. Make a general prediction based on your understanding of the experiment. ◦ The participant draws a circle corresponding to his or her estimation of the actual size of the putting hole. This allows the experimenters to determine if the Ebbinghaus effect actually occurred. ◦ The participant putts 10 times in this condition. 3. Participant completes the second condition (whichever condition they have not yet done). ◦ The participant draws a circle corresponding to his or her estimation of the actual size of the putting hole. ◦ The participant putts 10 times in this condition. Now see if you can guess the results of this study. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3576 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3576 AnswerAnswer This question tested whether or not the Ebbinghaus effect was produced in this experiment. If there is no difference between the bars, that would mean that participants didn’t experience the Ebbinghaus illusion. The exact height of the bars is not important here, but the relative heights should look something like this: The taller bar on the right means that the center putting hole looks larger when it is surrounded by smaller circles than when the same hole is surrounded by large circles: The Ebbinghaus illusion. This result was important because the reasoning behind the experiment was dependent on successfully producing the Ebbinghaus illusion. There is a technical term for a dependent variable that is used to determine if your independent variable is actually working: a manipulation checkmanipulation check. Good experimenters use manipulation checks to be sure they aren’t fooling themselves into believing that they have done something that really didn’t work. Question 4: Can you guess how well the participants putted?Question 4: Can you guess how well the participants putted? Resize the bars below by clicking and dragging them to show your predicted results when the subjects putted. AnswerAnswer This question lets you check out your skills as a psychologist. The description of the experiment did not include the researchers’ hypothesis, so you have to decide for yourself what you think is going to happen. The three possible patterns of results are shown below. The graph you drew fit one of these patterns. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/23070233/bars11 TRY ITTRY IT Before we show you the actual results of the study, write our your prediction. Do you think the illusion affected putting performance? Why or why not? Explain your answer in the text box below: AnswerAnswer Until now, we haven’t told you exactly how the Ebbinghaus illusion was predicted to influence putting—only that the experimenters thought it would have some sort of influence. So here is what they said. The experimenters thought that the perceived size of the hole would affect the SELF-CONFIDENCE of the person as he or she putted. If you are putting into a larger hole (or what is PERCEIVED as a larger hole) you should be more confident that you will sink your putt. Remember, this is just a prediction based on the experimenters’ reasoning. Their ideas came from interviewing skilled athletes who claimed that objects seemed larger and time seemed to slow down as they gained skill. If the ball you have to catch is bigger or the person blocking you is slower, you can perform at a higher level. The experimenters could be right or they could be wrong. Your own reasoning might be different than that of the experimenters. For instance, perhaps you thought that people would be MORE CAREFUL if they thought the hole was smaller. That would be a perfectly fine hypothesis. Interestingly, it makes the opposite prediction from the experimenters’ self-confidence hypothesis. This “careful putting with smaller holes” theory predicts that people should putt better when they perceive the hole as smaller (i.e., when the surrounding circles are large). The experimenters’ “more confidence with larger holes” hypothesis predicts that people should putt better when they perceive the hole as larger. Here are the actual results. First, the hole was perceived as larger when it was surrounded by smaller holes, so there is evidence that they successfully produced the Ebbinghaus illusion. Second, the experimenters predicted that participants would be more successful when the hole seemed larger (i.e., surrounded by smaller circles). Consistent with these predictions, the results looked like this: This is not the only experiment that has used a sports context to study the effects of illusions. Other experiments have shown that people hit softballs better when the balls are perceived as larger. People score higher in darts when the board appears larger. Athletes kick field goals and return tennis balls more successfully when the goal posts or tennis balls appear larger. In all of these studies, the balls or boards or goal posts were not actually larger, but they were perceived as larger because the experimenters created illusions. Skilled athletes often report https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/23070056/bars21 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3576 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch this interview with Psychologist Jessica Witt to see her talk about how her research utilizing the Ebbinghaus illusion impacts a golfer’s perception and performance. You can also read about more about similar variations of her research here. that targets appear larger or time slows down when they are “in the zone”, as if practice and skill create their own perceptual illusions that increase confidence and make difficult challenges feel easier. A Final Note: Science Doesn’t Always Produce Simple Results Professor Witt’s study had interesting results; however, they weren’t quite as simple as we have made them seem. The researchers actually had two different hole sizes: 2 inches and 4 inches. The Ebbinghaus circles were adjusted to be relatively larger or smaller than the putting hole. The Ebbinghaus illusion worked for the smaller (2 inch) putting holes, but not for the larger (4 inch) putting holes. In other words, when people drew the circles as they perceived them (the “manipulation check” dependent variable), they drew different sized circles for the 2 inch holes (the Ebbinghaus illusion), but the same size circles for the 4 inch holes (no Ebbinghaus illusion). For the larger (4 inch) putting holes, putting accuracy was the same for the two different conditions. This didn’t bother the experimenters, because—as we have already noted—the participants did not experience the Ebbinghaus illusion with the larger holes. If the holes were perceived as the same, then self-confidence should not have been affected and, in turn, putting should not have been better in one condition than the other. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/23070152/bars3 http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2016/12/action-visual-perception.aspx An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3576 In the research paper, the experimenters suggest a few technical reasons that the larger hole might not have produced the Ebbinghaus illusion, but they admit that they have no definitive explanation. That’s okay. Science often yields messy results—and these can be the basis for new experiments and sometimes for really interesting discoveries. The world is not as simple as our theories try to make it seem. Happily, in science, as in many aspects of life, you learn more from your failures than your successes, so good scientists don’t try to hide from results they don’t expect. Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Ebbinghaus Application and Text on Illusions. Authored byAuthored by: Patrick J Carroll. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Mond-Vergleich image. Authored byAuthored by: Fibonacci. Located atLocated at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mond-vergleich.svg. ProjectProject: Wikimedia. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • A hole in the head: Golf and Perception. Authored byAuthored by: sciencentral. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDNfTUOSjFw. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • golf picture. Authored byAuthored by: coffee. Provided byProvided by: Pixabay. Located atLocated at: https://pixabay.com/en/ball-golf-golf-ball-golf-course-1842170/. LicenseLicense: CC0: No Rights Reserved • Ponzo Illusion. Authored byAuthored by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ponzo_illusion.gif. LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known Copyright • Contrast Illusion. Authored byAuthored by: Paaliaq. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Contrast_illusions#/media/File:Simultaneous_Contrast . LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution- ShareAlike • Benary Cross Illusion. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Contrast_illusions#/media/File:Benary_Cross.svg. LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known Copyright • Checkerboard Illusion. Authored byAuthored by: Adrian Pingstone . Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Optical.greysquares.arp . LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known Copyright • Horizontal 3D grafitti. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Horizontal_3d_graffiti,_%C5%81%C3%B3d%C5%BA_Schillera_Passage . LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike Public domain contentPublic domain content • Baltimore Harbor Tunnel. Authored byAuthored by: ErgoSum88. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Centered_tunnel_perspective#/media/File:Baltimore_Harbor_Tunnel_I-895_02.JPG. LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known Copyright • Simple shape square optical illusion. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Optical_illusions#/media/File:PSM_V54_D322_Simple_shape_creating_optical_illusion_2 . LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known Copyright • Ebbinghaus Illusion. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mond-vergleich.svg. LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known Copyright PUTTING IT TOGETHER: SENSATION AND PERCEPTION LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES In this module, you learned to • differentiate between sensation and perception • explain the process of vision and how people see color and depth • explain the basics of hearing • describe the basic anatomy and functions of taste, smell, touch, pain, and the vestibular sense • define perception and give examples of gestalt principles and multimodal perception In this module, you learned about the way our senses work and the impact they have on our perception of the world. Our impressive sensory abilities allow us to experience the most enjoyable and most miserable experiences, as well as everything in between. Our eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin provide an interface for the brain to interact with the world around us. While there is simplicity in covering each sensory modality independently, we are organisms that have evolved the ability to process multiple modalities as a unified experience. While the information covered in this module may initially seem straightforward and stagnant, you saw in the example from Jessica Witt’s research on perception that a person’s perception of the size of a golf hole can impact their performance. The ways that perception can alter our behavior and the impact this has on mental processes is of particular interest to psychologists. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mond-vergleich.svg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDNfTUOSjFw https://pixabay.com/en/ball-golf-golf-ball-golf-course-1842170/ https://creativecommons.org/about/cc0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ponzo_illusion.gif https://creativecommons.org/about/pdm https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Contrast_illusions#/media/File:Simultaneous_Contrast https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Contrast_illusions#/media/File:Benary_Cross.svg https://creativecommons.org/about/pdm https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Optical.greysquares.arp https://creativecommons.org/about/pdm https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Horizontal_3d_graffiti,_%C5%81%C3%B3d%C5%BA_Schillera_Passage https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Centered_tunnel_perspective#/media/File:Baltimore_Harbor_Tunnel_I-895_02.JPG https://creativecommons.org/about/pdm https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Optical_illusions#/media/File:PSM_V54_D322_Simple_shape_creating_optical_illusion_2 https://creativecommons.org/about/pdm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mond-vergleich.svg https://creativecommons.org/about/pdm Figure 1. Google Cardboard. A video element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can watch it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2947 Figure 2. Pincushion distortion. Figure 3. Barrel distortion. One current area of interest is the influence of psychological principles on virtual reality design. Think about it. How can designers create a 3-dimensional world on a 2-dimensional plane? They must first consider the way that we interpret visual cues and how we see depth. Consider Google Cardboard. In 2014, two Google engineers created a cardboard viewer lens that allows users to place their smartphones inside and view the world as if they entered a virtual reality. This was a huge leap forward in reducing the cost of and increasing access to virtual reality. But how did they do it? In order to feel like you are immersed in the gaming world, you need to remove the distractions that exist outside of the immediate visual field. Hence, the box around the phone. You also need to feel like you are inside of the world, so the box includes lenses that adjust your focal point and magnify the picture on the screen (Figure 1). You also need the world to be 3-dimensional. As you learned, your eyes rely on several monocular and binocular cues in order to see depth. Binocular disparity describes the slightly unique view of the world we see from each of our two eyes (which explains why if you hold an object near your face and close one eye, then open it and close the other, that object appears to move). To create this effect, developers put a barrier between the left and right visual fields and split the screen in two, so that the image on the screen is slightly different. The picture on your phone shows up like this: Because you are viewing the image through magnified lenses, there is a distortion called the pincushion distortion, which stretches the image in the corners of the view. To counteract that and make the work appear normal, developers apply a barrel distortion to the viewer, which explains why you see the image in the video with the pinched corners. Advances in virtual reality are also important to psychology because virtual reality is a treatment method used to help those with psychological disorders. Consider PTSD or phobias, for example. In a virtual world, a counselor can create situations and experiences designed to recreate the triggers for specific behaviors and assist the client in using coping mechanisms to deal with threatening situations. Virtual reality therapy can be used in numerous ways as a type of exposure therapy, even assisting people with autism as they practice recognizing and interpreting social cues or helping those with depression to make choices to help them prevent negative thoughts. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/26142949/Google-Cardboard https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/26142949/Google-Cardboard https://vr.google.com/cardboard/ https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2947#pb-interactive-content https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/26150327/768px-Pincushion_distortion.svg_ https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/26150327/768px-Pincushion_distortion.svg_ Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Putting It Together: Sensation and Perception. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Google Cardboard VR with Camera Viewer. Authored byAuthored by: sndrv. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. Located atLocated at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sndrv/16905172090. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Distortion images. Authored byAuthored by: WolfWings. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distortion_(optics). LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known Copyright • Google Cardboard. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cardboard. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Introductory Paragraph. Authored byAuthored by: Adam John Privitera . Provided byProvided by: Chemeketa Community College. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/modules/sensation-and-perception. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Public domain contentPublic domain content • Google Cardboard image. Authored byAuthored by: Evan Amos. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cardboard#/media/File:Google-Cardboard . LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known Copyright DISCUSSION: SENSATION AND PERCEPTION Cultural Influences on Perception STEP 1STEP 1: Respond to the following prompt in a primary post of at least 150-200 words: Sensation refers to an actual event; perception refers to how we interpret the event. What are some cultural differences that might affect responses to particular stimuli? Create a post using examples from the text as well as your own experiences. STEP 2STEP 2: Thoughtfully respond to a minimum of 2 classmates with posts of at least 100 words each. Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Discussion: Sensation and Perception. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Discussion idea. Authored byAuthored by: Terry Davis . Provided byProvided by: Wiley College. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/sndrv/16905172090 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distortion_(optics) https://creativecommons.org/about/pdm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cardboard https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/modules/sensation-and-perception https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cardboard#/media/File:Google-Cardboard https://creativecommons.org/about/pdm https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ MODULE 5: STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS WHY IT MATTERS: STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS Sleep, which we all experience, is a quiet and mysterious pause in our daily lives. Two sleeping children are depicted in this 1895 oil painting titled Zwei schlafende Mädchen auf der Ofenbank, which translates as “two sleeping girls on the stove,” by Swiss painter Albert Anker. Our lives involve regular, dramatic changes in the degree to which we are aware of our surroundings and our internal states. While awake, we feel alert and aware of the many important things going on around us. Our experiences change dramatically while we are in deep sleep and once again when we are dreaming. Sometimes, we seek to alter our awareness and experience by using psychoactive drugs; that is, drugs that alter the central nervous system and produce a change of consciousness or a deep meditative state. Consciousness is an awareness of external and internal stimuli. As discussed in the module on the biology of psychology, the brain activity during different phases of consciousness produces characteristic brain waves, which can be observed by electroencephalography (EEG) and other types of analysis. This module will discuss states of consciousness with a particular emphasis on sleep. You’ll learn about the different stages of sleep, sleep disorders as well as the altered states of consciousness produced by psychoactive drugs, hypnosis, and meditation. AnswerAnswer Aggarwal, S. K., Carter, G. T., Sullivan, M. D., ZumBrunnen, C., Morrill, R., & Mayer, J. D. (2009). Medicinal use of cannabis in the United States: Historical perspectives, current trends, and future directions. Journal of Opioid Management, 5, 153–168. Alhola, P. & Polo-Kantola, P. (2007). Sleep Deprivation: Impact on cognitive performance. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 3, 553–557. Alladin, A. (2012). Cognitive hypnotherapy for major depressive disorder. 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CONSCIOUSNESS AND BIOLOGICAL RHYTHMS What you’ll learn to do: describe consciousness and biological rhythms Are you tired? Have you ever pulled an all-nighter? How did you feel the next day? Do you think your lack of sleep impacted your behavior? Chances are, you could answer that question with a resounding, “yes!”. Because psychologists are interested in mental processes and behavior, it’s essential to study consciousness, or our awareness, as humans. States of consciousness vary over the course of the day and throughout our lives, and sleep plays a major role in alertness levels. Important factors in daily changes in consciousness are biological rhythms, and, more specifically, the circadian rhythms generated by the suprachiasmatic nucleus. Typically, our biological clocks are aligned with our external environment, and light tends to be an important cue in setting this clock. When people travel across multiple time zones or work rotating shifts, they can experience disruptions of https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.48:zywvQOJS@5/Introduction https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/16165526/consciousnessimage their circadian cycles that can lead to insomnia, sleepiness, and decreased alertness. If people go extended periods of time without sleep, they will accrue a sleep debt and potentially experience a number of adverse psychological and physiological consequences. LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe consciousness and circadian rhythms • Explain disruptions in biological rhythms, including sleep debt Consciousness ConsciousnessConsciousness describes our awareness of internal and external stimuli. Awareness of internal stimuli includes feeling pain, hunger, thirst, sleepiness, and being aware of our thoughts and emotions. Awareness of external stimuli includes seeing the light from the sun, feeling the warmth of a room, and hearing the voice of a friend. We experience different states of consciousness and different levels of awareness on a regular basis. We might even describe consciousness as a continuum that ranges from full awareness to a deep sleep. SleepSleep is a state marked by relatively low levels of physical activity and reduced sensory awareness that is distinct from periods of rest that occur during wakefulness. WakefulnessWakefulness is characterized by high levels of sensory awareness, thought, and behavior. In between these extremes are states of consciousness related to daydreaming, intoxication as a result of alcohol or other drug use, meditative states, hypnotic states, and altered states of consciousness following sleep deprivation. We might also experience unconscious states of being via drug-induced anesthesia for medical purposes. Often, we are not completely aware of our surroundings, even when we are fully awake. For instance, have you ever daydreamed while driving home from work or school without really thinking about the drive itself? You were capable of engaging in the all of the complex tasks involved with operating a motor vehicle even though you were not aware of doing so. Many of these processes, like much of psychological behavior, are rooted in our biology. Biological Rhythms Biological rhythmsBiological rhythms are internal rhythms of biological activity. A woman’s menstrual cycle is an example of a biological rhythm—a recurring, cyclical pattern of bodily changes. One complete menstrual cycle takes about 28 days—a lunar month—but many biological cycles are much shorter. For example, body temperature fluctuates cyclically over a 24-hour period (Figure 1). Alertness is associated with higher body temperatures, and sleepiness with lower body temperatures. Figure 1. This chart illustrates the circadian change in body temperature over 28 hours in a group of eight young men. Body temperature rises throughout the waking day, peaking in the afternoon, and falls during sleep with the lowest point occurring during the very early morning hours. This pattern of temperature fluctuation, which repeats every day, is one example of a circadian rhythm. A circadian rhythmcircadian rhythm is a biological rhythm that takes place over a period of about 24 hours. Our sleep-wake cycle, which is linked to our environment’s natural light-dark cycle, is perhaps the most obvious example of a circadian rhythm, but we also have daily fluctuations in heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar, and body temperature. Some circadian rhythms play a role in changes in our state of consciousness. If we have biological rhythms, then is there some sort of biological clockbiological clock? In the brain, the hypothalamus, which lies above the pituitary gland, is a main center of homeostasis. HomeostasisHomeostasis is the tendency to maintain a balance, or optimal level, within a biological system. The brain’s clock mechanism is located in an area of the hypothalamus known as the suprachiasmatic nucleussuprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN)(SCN). The axons of light-sensitive neurons in the retina provide information to the SCN based on the amount of light present, allowing this internal clock to be synchronized with the outside world (Klein, Moore, & Reppert, 1991; Welsh, Takahashi, & Kay, 2010) (Figure 2). Figure 2. The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) serves as the brain’s clock mechanism. The clock sets itself with light information received through projections from the retina. A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2100 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch this brief video describing circadian rhythms and how they affect sleep. Problems with Circadian Rhythms Generally, and for most people, our circadian cycles are aligned with the outside world. For example, most people sleep during the night and are awake during the day. One important regulator of sleep-wake cycles is the hormone melatoninmelatonin. The pineal glandpineal gland, an endocrine structure located inside the brain that releases melatonin, is thought to be involved in the regulation of various biological rhythms and of the immune system during sleep (Hardeland, Pandi- Perumal, & Cardinali, 2006). Melatonin release is stimulated by darkness and inhibited by light. There are individual differences with regards to our sleep- wake cycle. For instance, some people would say they are morning people, while others would consider themselves to be night owls. These individual differences in circadian patterns of activity are known as a person’s chronotype, and research demonstrates that morning larks and night owls differ with regard to sleep regulation (Taillard, Philip, Coste, Sagaspe, & Bioulac, 2003). Sleep regulationSleep regulation refers to the brain’s control of switching between sleep and wakefulness as well as coordinating this cycle with the outside world. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2100 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2100 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2100 TRY ITTRY IT THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER We experience shifts in our circadian clocks in the fall and spring of each year with time changes associated with daylight saving time. Is springing ahead or falling back easier for you to adjust to, and why do you think that is? Disruptions of Normal Sleep Whether lark, owl, or somewhere in between, there are situations in which a person’s circadian clock gets out of synchrony with the external environment. One way that this happens involves traveling across multiple time zones. When we do this, we often experience jet lag. Jet lagJet lag is a collection of symptoms that results from the mismatch between our internal circadian cycles and our environment. These symptoms include fatigue, sluggishness, irritability, and insomniainsomnia (i.e., a consistent difficulty in falling or staying asleep for at least three nights a week over a month’s time) (Roth, 2007). Individuals who do rotating shift work are also likely to experience disruptions in circadian cycles. Rotating shiftRotating shift workwork refers to a work schedule that changes from early to late on a daily or weekly basis. For example, a person may work from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Monday, 3:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, and 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday. In such instances, the individual’s schedule changes so frequently that it becomes difficult for a normal circadian rhythm to be maintained. This often results in sleeping problems, and it can lead to signs of depression and anxiety. These kinds of schedules are common for individuals working in health care professions and service industries, and they are associated with persistent feelings of exhaustion and agitation that can make someone more prone to making mistakes on the job (Gold et al., 1992; Presser, 1995). Rotating shift work has pervasive effects on the lives and experiences of individuals engaged in that kind of work, which is clearly illustrated in stories reported in a qualitative study that researched the experiences of middle-aged nurses who worked rotating shifts (West, Boughton & Byrnes, 2009). Several of the nurses interviewed commented that their work schedules affected their relationships with their family. One of the nurses said, If you’ve had a partner who does work regular job 9 to 5 office hours . . . the ability to spend time, good time with them when you’re not feeling absolutely exhausted . . . that would be one of the problems that I’ve encountered. (West et al., 2009, p. 114) While disruptions in circadian rhythms can have negative consequences, there are things we can do to help us realign our biological clocks with the external environment. Some of these approaches, such as using a bright light as shown in Figure 1, have been shown to alleviate some of the problems experienced by individuals Figure 1. Devices like this are designed to provide exposure to bright light to help people maintain a regular circadian cycle. They can be helpful for people working night shifts or for people affected by seasonal variations in light. suffering from jet lag or from the consequences of rotating shift work. Because the biological clock is driven by light, exposure to bright light during working shifts and dark exposure when not working can help combat insomnia and symptoms of anxiety and depression (Huang, Tsai, Chen, & Hsu, 2013). Insufficient Sleep We all NEEDNEED sleep, this we know. What we do not know, however, is WHY we need sleep. See the following for a discussion regarding this: https://youtu.be/EQvhzdVwNMA. When people have difficulty getting sleep due to their work or the demands of day-to-day life, they accumulate a sleep debt. A person with a sleep debtsleep debt does not get sufficient sleep on a chronic basis. The consequences of sleep debt include decreased levels of alertness and mental efficiency. Interestingly, since the advent of electric light, the amount of sleep that people get has declined. While we certainly welcome the convenience of having the darkness lit up, we also suffer the consequences of reduced amounts of sleep because we are more active during the nighttime hours than our ancestors were. As a result, many of us sleep less than 7–8 hours a night and accrue a sleep debt. While there is tremendous variation in any given individual’s sleep needs, the National Sleep Foundation (n.d.) cites research to estimate that newborns require the most sleep (between 12 and 18 hours a night) and that this amount declines to just 7–9 hours by the time we are adults. If you lie down to take a nap and fall asleep very easily, chances are you may have sleep debt. Given that college students are notorious for suffering from significant sleep debt (Hicks, Fernandez, & Pelligrini, 2001; Hicks, Johnson, & Pelligrini, 1992; Miller, Shattuck, & Matsangas, 2010), chances are you and your classmates deal with sleep debt-related issues on a regular basis. The table below shows recommended amounts of sleep at different ages. Sleep Needs at Different Ages AgeAge Nightly Sleep NeedsNightly Sleep Needs 0–3 months 12–18 hours 3 months–1 year 14–15 hours 1–3 years 12–14 hours 3–5 years 11–13 hours 5–10 years 10–11 hours 10–18 years 8–10 hours 18 and older 7–9 hours Sleep debt and sleep deprivation have significant negative psychological and physiological consequences. As mentioned earlier, lack of sleep can result in decreased mental alertness and cognitive function. In addition, sleep deprivation often results in depression-like symptoms. These effects can occur as a function of accumulated sleep debt or in response to more acute periods of sleep deprivation. It may surprise you to know that sleep deprivation is associated with obesity, increased blood pressure, increased levels of stress hormones, and reduced immune functioning (Banks & Dinges, 2007). Furthermore, individuals suffering from sleep deprivation can also put themselves and others at risk when they put themselves behind the wheel of a car or work with dangerous https://youtu.be/EQvhzdVwNMA Figure 2. This figure illustrates some of the negative consequences of sleep deprivation. While cognitive deficits may be the most obvious, many body systems are negatively impacted by lack of sleep. (credit: modification of work by Mikael Häggström) LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING To assess your own sleeping habits, read this article about sleep needs. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2100 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2100 TRY ITTRY IT machinery. Some research suggests that sleep deprivation affects cognitive and motor function as much as, if not more than, alcohol intoxication (Williamson & Feyer, 2000). The amount of sleep we get varies across the lifespan. When we are very young, we spend up to 16 hours a day sleeping. As we grow older, we sleep less. In fact, a meta-analysismeta-analysis, which is a study that combines the results of many related studies, conducted within the last decade indicates that by the time we are 65 years old, we average fewer than 7 hours of sleep per day (Ohayon, Carskadon, Guilleminault, & Vitiello, 2004). As the amount of time we sleep varies over our lifespan, presumably the sleep debt would adjust accordingly. https://sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2100 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2100 GLOSSARYGLOSSARY biological rhythm:biological rhythm: internal cycle of biological activity circadian rhythm:circadian rhythm: biological rhythm that occurs over approximately 24 hours consciousness:consciousness: awareness of internal and external stimuli homeostasis:homeostasis: tendency to maintain a balance, or optimal level, within a biological system insomnia:insomnia: consistent difficulty in falling or staying asleep for at least three nights a week over a month’s time jet lag:jet lag: collection of symptoms brought on by travel from one time zone to another that results from the mismatch between our internal circadian cycles and our environment melatonin:melatonin: hormone secreted by the endocrine gland that serves as an important regulator of the sleep-wake cycle meta-analysis:meta-analysis: study that combines the results of several related studies pineal gland:pineal gland: endocrine structure located inside the brain that releases melatonin rotating shift work:rotating shift work: work schedule that changes from early to late on a daily or weekly basis sleep:sleep: state marked by relatively low levels of physical activity and reduced sensory awareness that is distinct from periods of rest that occur during wakefulness sleep debt:sleep debt: result of insufficient sleep on a chronic basis sleep regulation:sleep regulation: brain’s control of switching between sleep and wakefulness as well as coordinating this cycle with the outside world suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN):suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN): area of the hypothalamus in which the body’s biological clock is located wakefulness:wakefulness: characterized by high levels of sensory awareness, thought, and behavior THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER What do you do to adjust to the differences in your daily schedule throughout the week? Are you running a sleep debt when daylight saving time begins or ends? LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explain blindsight and what it reveals about consciousness If you have already studied about the brain (in the Biopsychology module) then the picture below of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex should look familiar. Click on the part of the brain that is most heavily involved in vision. https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290512824128219968/embed https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290512824128219968/embed Blindsight What do you think would happen if your occipital lobes were damaged? Back in the 1970s, most scientists and physicians would have said, “you would become blind.” It turns out that the answer is more complicated than that. When he was 8-years old, Graham Young from Oxford, England, was injured in a bicycle accident. Afterwards, he reported that parts of his vision were gone. He told his doctors that he could no longer see anything to the right of his center of vision with either his left or right eye. The left side of his visual world in both eyes was normal. Although he says that he would sometimes walk into objects to his right because he couldn’t see them, when tested fifteen years later, an optician discovered that Mr. Young seemed to respond to visual movements in his “blind” area. Figure 1. The illustration shows a top-down view of the neural pathway from the eyes (shown at the top) to the occipital lobes (shown at the bottom). The blue and red lines show the main pathways of information that run from the eyes through the thalamus to the occipital lobes. Because of Graham Young’s damage to his left visual cortex, he cannot see in his right visual field, which affects both eyes. Graham Young was put into contact with Psychologists Larry Weiskrantz and Elizabeth Warrington, who had worked previously with a person (known as DB) who seemed to have a similar ability to see despite blindness. DB could report shapes and colors, movement and the orientation of objects despite claiming that he could see nothing. He said that he was guessing, but he was usually right about colors and shapes and other characteristics of the objects. Before we go on, please take a moment to theorize about what might be going on with Graham Young and DB. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/18200627/Screen-Shot-2017-07-18-at-3.05.52-PM https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/18200627/Screen-Shot-2017-07-18-at-3.05.52-PM An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2100 TRY ITTRY IT BLINDSIGHT IN ACTIONBLINDSIGHT IN ACTION Here is a brief video of the man who experiences complete blindness because his visual cortex in both hemispheres has been damaged. The researchers (including Dr. Weiskrantz, mentioned above) set up an obstacle course for the man (whose face is blurred to protect his privacy). Watch how well he moves through the objects without help. The man behind him is just there as a safety precaution. https://youtube.com/watch?v=ACkxe_5Ubq8%3Frel%3D0 Figure 2. The green and purple lines represent the primary visual pathway that produces our conscious experience of vision. The red lines roughly represent the secondary pathways that produce visual information with reduced conscious experience, or none at all. (These secondary pathways are not shown precisely). People with blindsight have been tested for their ability to detect color differences, brightness changes, the ability to discriminate between various shapes, as well as tracking movement. Critically, people with blindsight have the conscious experience of blindness, often feeling like they are guessing despite their high level of accuracy. How can blindsight happen? Your conscious experience of the world around you, of the choices and decisions you make, and of the emotions and attitudes that motivate you are not the totality of your mental activity or of your brain’s processing of information. Many, perhaps most, psychologists believe that consciousness is only a small part of your total cognitive activity. (Note: Source: http://marketingland.com/wp-content/ml-loads/2014/09/iceberg-ss-1920 ) A person is considered to be blind if he or she has no conscious experience of the visual world. This conscious experience is based on the flow of information from the eyes through the thalamus in the middle of the brain to the primary visual cortex in the occipital lobe at the back of the brain. If the primary visual cortex is damaged or fails to receive input due to disruption of visual pathway, then the person will not “see” the objects and events that we normally associate with vision. Blindsight occurs because the visual system has a primary pathway (retina to thalamus to primary visual cortex), but it also has secondary pathways (retina to thalamus to other brain areas). These “other brain areas” include parts of the frontal lobe that guide eye movements, parts of the midbrain that help guide visual attention, and parts of the occipital lobe that process features of the visual perception, including shape, movement, and color. (Note: A recent literature review of evidence for the existence of the pathways to the cerebral cortex: Rabbo, F. A., Koch, G., Lefevre, C., & Seizeur, R. (2015). Direct geniculo- extrastriate pathways: A review of the literature. Surgical and Radiologic Anatomy, 37(8), 891-899.) The existence of visual processing areas for isolated features of vision and the fact that these areas get some direct visual information (i.e, input that does not first go to the primary visual cortex) means that it is possible for a person to respond accurately to questions about color or motion or shape without consciously “seeing” the objects that have color or shape or are moving. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/13223623/brainimages1 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/13223623/brainimages1 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2100 TRY ITTRY IT EXAMINING BLINDSIGHTEXAMINING BLINDSIGHT You can see Graham Young as he is tested in the lab in this video that shows him along with psychologist Larry Weizkrantz. The video clip (watch just the first 3 minutes), from a program hosted by neurologist V. S. Ramachandran, goes on to explain a theory as to why blindsight occurs. https://youtube.com/watch?v=ny5qMKTcURE%3Fstart%3D01%26end%3D188 It is important to remember that YOU have these same “unconscious” pathways in your visual system. That means your conscious experience of the visual world may not include all of the visual information you are processing. In other words, you may “know” more than you “see”. Blindsight is not the only condition that involves unconscious or low-consciousness processing. Other neurological syndromes that have an unconscious element include amnesia, hemispatial neglect, dyslexia, aphasia, and various agnosias. (Note: See Consciousness Lost and Found: A Neuropsychological Exploration by Larry Weiskrantz (1997, Oxford University Press). Dr. Weiskrantz is one of the scientists who first described blindsight and studied people with the condition.) Creating Blindsight in the Laboratory Wouldn’t it be great if we could produce blindsight in the laboratory, in order to better understand visual processing and conscious experience? Maybe with college student volunteers as our subjects? Crazy idea? Figure 3. Perhaps an unsuspecting student volunteer for transcranial magnetic stimulation. It turns out, researchers have already done it. Using precisely aimed magnetic pulses, researchers can temporarily disrupt specific areas of the primary visual cortex—the area responsible for conscious vision—without injury. This “blindness” lasts only a fraction of a second, after which vision returns to normal. Would you volunteer to be a participant? Let’s look at how this works. TMS: Transcranial Magnetic StimulationTMS: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a procedure used to stimulate neurons in the brain. A device referred to as a “wand” contains an electric coil that generates a magnetic field that in turn creates a small electric current in the brain. (Note: The physics of electromagnetism is fascinating, but we will spare you the details here. You may have studied it in some other class, and there are many readable online sources (e.g., Wikipedia). TMS is a great example of the convergence of technology and psychology that is the basis of modern neuroscience.) The electric current induces neurons (brain cells) to produce neural signals called action potentials. When action potentials are produced in normal brain processes, they allow neurons to communicate with one another. However, when action potentials are induced by an outside force—here by the TMS wand—they are meaningless and temporarily interfere with communication between neurons. If only a single pulse of electromagnetic energy is produced, then the disruption of the neurons in the targeted region lasts only a fraction of a second. Multiple pulses, called repetitive TMS (rTMS), can produce longer lasting effects. In fact, rTMS is now used by therapists as a treatment for depression and neuropathic pain. The TMS pulse can be aimed very precisely at a small area of the brain. When the target is the primary visual cortex in the occipital lobe, the TMS pulse can be focused to interfere with neural communication in a tiny region of the of the visual field—so small and occurring for such a short time that you would not even notice. However brief the duration or tiny the affected area, the person receiving the TMS pulse is temporary blind in a small part of the visual field. Laboratory Research on Unconscious Visual Processing Dr. Tony Ro is a professor of psychology at the City University of New York. He started studying the connection between consciousness and brain processing more than 20 years ago, and he was one of the earliest researchers to apply TMS technology to the study of visual perception. In one study, Dr. Ro and graduate students Jennifer Boyer and Stephenie Harrison used TMS technology to see if normal people could process features of visual stimuli without conscious awareness of those stimuli. In other words, they wanted to know if they could they create temporary blindsight in normal subjects in a laboratory. Remember that blindsight involves unconscious awareness of “features” of objects and events, such as the shape of an object or the direction of its movement. This study focused on two visual features: orientation and color. You and I see orientation (horizontal or vertical) or color (red or green) as part of the experience of some object. A line is horizontal. A box is red. For a person with blindsight, “horizontal” is experienced without any shape associated with it. “Red” is experienced without awareness of the thing that is red. This is the blindsight condition that Dr. Ro and his colleagues wanted to reproduce in the laboratory with the help of volunteer subjects. Let’s walk through the experiment to understand how it was designed and conducted. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/14023407/7658074952_5d73170e01_k https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/14023407/7658074952_5d73170e01_k An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2100 TRY ITTRY IT Experiment 1: Unconscious Detection of Orientation SETUPSETUP: The TMS wand was precisely adjusted so the TMS pulse was aimed at the back of the brain (primary visual cortex in the occipital lobes) affecting a very small area of the visual field. For example, imagine the gray box below as a computer screen. The plus sign in the middle is a fixation point. You (the participant in the study) fixate your eyes on this plus sign and hold them there during each trial. The TMS pulse is adjusted to your individual brain so that the area shown as a blue circle (used here only for explanation purposes) is momentarily “blind” when the pulse is active. This is a painstaking process that involves fine calibration of the wand based on feedback from the participant about what he or she can see when different targets are shown on the screen. Figure 4. Researchers adjusted the TMS wand until the circle would temporarily disappear from a person’s visual field. TESTINGTESTING: In one of Dr. Ro’s experiments, participants had to guess the orientation of a line, sometimes when they were temporarily blinded (in a tiny area of the visual cortex) by a TMS pulse. The study consisted of a series of trials. On each trial, either a horizontal or a vertical line was flashed for a fraction of a second on the computer screen in front of the participant. On some of these trials, a TMS pulse disrupted the neurons in the visual cortex. On other trials, there was no TMS pulse. The no-pulse trials served as a kind of control condition. Click on the slideshow below to see the steps in the vertical line condition. You can use the arrows at the bottom to navigate through the slides. https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290512849455705778/embed RESULTSRESULTS: By chance, if you have to choose between two equally likely options (horizontal or vertical), you would be correct about 50% of the time. On the trials when the subjects reported that they did not “see” anything at all, they correctly guessed the orientation of the line 75% of the time, performance that is significantly better than chance. There was also a strong positive correlation (r = +0.93) between accuracy and confidence: the more confident the subject in his or her guess, the more likely it was that the guess was correct. Keep in mind that, in all of these cases, the subjects started by saying that they saw nothing. That was about 60% of the trials. On the other 40% of trials, the subjects reported seeing something, even if it was a slight blur, and these trials did not count. Not surprisingly, accuracy was near perfect when subjects were conscious of seeing the bar and its orientation. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/19052107/Screen-Shot-2018-10-19-at-12.20.41-AM https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/19052107/Screen-Shot-2018-10-19-at-12.20.41-AM https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290512849455705778/embed TESTING BLINDSIGHT WITH TMSTESTING BLINDSIGHT WITH TMS Here is a video about a similar experiment conducted by Dr. Ro and his colleagues. The experiment in the video involves detecting yet another feature of objects: their shape. The basic procedures and results are similar to the ones you have just read. https://youtube.com/watch?v=_Y4KsUqmuUw%3Frel%3D0 Variations of the Experiment A second study using the color of a circle rather than the orientation of a bar was reported in the same paper. Otherwise, the procedures were the same as in the first experiment and the results consistent with the results for the bar orientation experiment. Conclusions from the Research The experimenters succeeded in producing the experience of blindness using the TMS apparatus, and they also succeeded in producing evidence for unconscious processing of features of the visual experience in normal (college student) volunteers. These results, when put together with the experiences of people with neurological damage, strengthen the case for the theory that some of our visual perception of the world takes place outside of our awareness. The college students have shown that this unconscious processing is not the result of brain damage, but rather is part of our normal perception of the world. Some Final Words This module has been about consciousness. It is common to assume that everything we know about the world around us and about our own thoughts and internal experiences must go through the doorway of our conscious mind. Evidence from blindsight is just one of several lines of research that shows that we process more information than we are aware of. Learning just how much this unconscious information can influence our thoughts and actions, our preferences and beliefs, is an important challenge for the rising generation of scientists. https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/4818 Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Psychology in Real Life: Blindsight. Authored byAuthored by: Patrick Carroll for Lumen Learning. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • What is Consciousness?. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:tefy7E6c@6/What-Is-Consciousness. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • Authored byAuthored by: Robert Fludd. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#/media/File:RobertFuddBewusstsein17Jh . LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known Copyright • Reprogramming Our Circadian Rhythms for the Modern World. Authored byAuthored by: Big Think. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtCQ9jzC-Ek. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • Visual pathways image. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_visual_pathway.svg. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • College student in the park. Authored byAuthored by: CollegeDegrees360. Located atLocated at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/83633410@N07/7658074952. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • TN Blindsight. Authored byAuthored by: CANlabTilburg. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACkxe_5Ubq8. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • TMS image. Authored byAuthored by: Losey DM, Stocco A, Abernethy JA and Rao RPN . Located atLocated at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2016.00072/full. ProjectProject: Navigating a 2D Virtual World Using Direct Brain Stimulation.. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Image, neuro-ms. Authored byAuthored by: Baburov. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neuro-ms . LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Seeing Beyond the Visual Cortex - Science Nation. Authored byAuthored by: National Science Foundation. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y4KsUqmuUw. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • Blindsight experiment - 1989. Authored byAuthored by: Conrad Weiskrantz. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=50&v=wDt_Txi7pC0. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:tefy7E6c@6/What-Is-Consciousness https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#/media/File:RobertFuddBewusstsein17Jh https://creativecommons.org/about/pdm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtCQ9jzC-Ek https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_visual_pathway.svg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/83633410@N07/7658074952 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACkxe_5Ubq8 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2016.00072/full https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neuro-ms https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y4KsUqmuUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=50&v=wDt_Txi7pC0 PSYCH IN REAL LIFE: CONSCIOUSNESS AND BLINDSIGHT LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explain blindsight and what it reveals about consciousness If you have already studied about the brain (in the Biopsychology module) then the picture below of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex should look familiar. Click on the part of the brain that is most heavily involved in vision. https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290512824128219968/embed Blindsight What do you think would happen if your occipital lobes were damaged? Back in the 1970s, most scientists and physicians would have said, “you would become blind.” It turns out that the answer is more complicated than that. When he was 8-years old, Graham Young from Oxford, England, was injured in a bicycle accident. Afterwards, he reported that parts of his vision were gone. He told his doctors that he could no longer see anything to the right of his center of vision with either his left or right eye. The left side of his visual world in both eyes was normal. Although he says that he would sometimes walk into objects to his right because he couldn’t see them, when tested fifteen years later, an optician discovered that Mr. Young seemed to respond to visual movements in his “blind” area. https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290512824128219968/embed TRY ITTRY IT https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11394 Figure 1. The illustration shows a top-down view of the neural pathway from the eyes (shown at the top) to the occipital lobes (shown at the bottom). The blue and red lines show the main pathways of information that run from the eyes through the thalamus to the occipital lobes. Because of Graham Young’s damage to his left visual cortex, he cannot see in his right visual field, which affects both eyes. Graham Young was put into contact with Psychologists Larry Weiskrantz and Elizabeth Warrington, who had worked previously with a person (known as DB) who seemed to have a similar ability to see despite blindness. DB could report shapes and colors, movement and the orientation of objects despite claiming that he could see nothing. He said that he was guessing, but he was usually right about colors and shapes and other characteristics of the objects. Before we go on, please take a moment to theorize about what might be going on with Graham Young and DB. People with blindsight have been tested for their ability to detect color differences, brightness changes, the ability to discriminate between various shapes, as well as tracking movement. Critically, people with blindsight have the conscious experience of blindness, often feeling like they are guessing despite their high level of accuracy. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/18200627/Screen-Shot-2017-07-18-at-3.05.52-PM https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/18200627/Screen-Shot-2017-07-18-at-3.05.52-PM BLINDSIGHT IN ACTIONBLINDSIGHT IN ACTION Here is a brief video of the man who experiences complete blindness because his visual cortex in both hemispheres has been damaged. The researchers (including Dr. Weiskrantz, mentioned above) set up an obstacle course for the man (whose face is blurred to protect his privacy). Watch how well he moves through the objects without help. The man behind him is just there as a safety precaution. https://youtube.com/watch?v=ACkxe_5Ubq8%3Frel%3D0 Figure 2. The green and purple lines represent the primary visual pathway that produces our conscious experience of vision. The red lines roughly represent the secondary pathways that produce visual information with reduced conscious experience, or none at all. (These secondary pathways are not shown precisely). TRY ITTRY IT https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11395 How can blindsight happen? Your conscious experience of the world around you, of the choices and decisions you make, and of the emotions and attitudes that motivate you are not the totality of your mental activity or of your brain’s processing of information. Many, perhaps most, psychologists believe that consciousness is only a small part of your total cognitive activity. (Note: Source: http://marketingland.com/wp-content/ml-loads/2014/09/iceberg-ss-1920 ) A person is considered to be blind if he or she has no conscious experience of the visual world. This conscious experience is based on the flow of information from the eyes through the thalamus in the middle of the brain to the primary visual cortex in the occipital lobe at the back of the brain. If the primary visual cortex is damaged or fails to receive input due to disruption of visual pathway, then the person will not “see” the objects and events that we normally associate with vision. Blindsight occurs because the visual system has a primary pathway (retina to thalamus to primary visual cortex), but it also has secondary pathways (retina to thalamus to other brain areas). These “other brain areas” include parts of the frontal lobe that guide eye movements, parts of the midbrain that help guide visual attention, and parts of the occipital lobe that process features of the visual perception, including shape, movement, and color. (Note: A recent literature review of evidence for the existence of the pathways to the cerebral cortex: Rabbo, F. A., Koch, G., Lefevre, C., & Seizeur, R. (2015). Direct geniculo- extrastriate pathways: A review of the literature. Surgical and Radiologic Anatomy, 37(8), 891-899.) The existence of visual processing areas for isolated features of vision and the fact that these areas get some direct visual information (i.e, input that does not first go to the primary visual cortex) means that it is possible for a person to respond accurately to questions about color or motion or shape without consciously “seeing” the objects that have color or shape or are moving. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/13223623/brainimages1 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/13223623/brainimages1 EXAMINING BLINDSIGHTEXAMINING BLINDSIGHT You can see Graham Young as he is tested in the lab in this video that shows him along with psychologist Larry Weizkrantz. The video clip (watch just the first 3 minutes), from a program hosted by neurologist V. S. Ramachandran, goes on to explain a theory as to why blindsight occurs. https://youtube.com/watch?v=ny5qMKTcURE%3Fstart%3D01%26end%3D188 Figure 3. Perhaps an unsuspecting student volunteer for transcranial magnetic stimulation. It is important to remember that YOU have these same “unconscious” pathways in your visual system. That means your conscious experience of the visual world may not include all of the visual information you are processing. In other words, you may “know” more than you “see”. Blindsight is not the only condition that involves unconscious or low-consciousness processing. Other neurological syndromes that have an unconscious element include amnesia, hemispatial neglect, dyslexia, aphasia, and various agnosias. (Note: See Consciousness Lost and Found: A Neuropsychological Exploration by Larry Weiskrantz (1997, Oxford University Press). Dr. Weiskrantz is one of the scientists who first described blindsight and studied people with the condition.) Creating Blindsight in the Laboratory Wouldn’t it be great if we could produce blindsight in the laboratory, in order to better understand visual processing and conscious experience? Maybe with college student volunteers as our subjects? Crazy idea? It turns out, researchers have already done it. Using precisely aimed magnetic pulses, researchers can temporarily disrupt specific areas of the primary visual cortex—the area responsible for conscious vision—without injury. This “blindness” lasts only a fraction of a second, after which vision returns to normal. Would you volunteer to be a participant? Let’s look at how this works. TMS: Transcranial Magnetic StimulationTMS: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a procedure used to stimulate neurons in the brain. A device referred to as a “wand” contains an electric coil that generates a magnetic field that in turn creates a small electric current in the brain. (Note: The physics of electromagnetism is fascinating, but we will spare you the details here. You may have studied it in some other class, and there are many readable online sources (e.g., Wikipedia). TMS is a great example of the convergence of technology and psychology that is the basis of modern neuroscience.) The electric current induces neurons (brain cells) to produce neural signals called action potentials. When action potentials are produced in normal brain processes, they allow neurons to communicate with one another. However, when action potentials are induced by an outside force—here by the TMS wand—they are meaningless and temporarily interfere with communication between neurons. If only a single pulse of electromagnetic energy is produced, then the disruption of the neurons in the targeted region lasts only a fraction of a second. Multiple pulses, called repetitive TMS (rTMS), can produce longer lasting effects. In fact, rTMS is now used by therapists as a treatment for depression and neuropathic pain. The TMS pulse can be aimed very precisely at a small area of the brain. When the target is the primary visual cortex in the occipital lobe, the TMS pulse can be focused to interfere with neural communication in a tiny region https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/14023407/7658074952_5d73170e01_k https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/14023407/7658074952_5d73170e01_k of the of the visual field—so small and occurring for such a short time that you would not even notice. However brief the duration or tiny the affected area, the person receiving the TMS pulse is temporary blind in a small part of the visual field. Laboratory Research on Unconscious Visual Processing Dr. Tony Ro is a professor of psychology at the City University of New York. He started studying the connection between consciousness and brain processing more than 20 years ago, and he was one of the earliest researchers to apply TMS technology to the study of visual perception. In one study, Dr. Ro and graduate students Jennifer Boyer and Stephenie Harrison used TMS technology to see if normal people could process features of visual stimuli without conscious awareness of those stimuli. In other words, they wanted to know if they could they create temporary blindsight in normal subjects in a laboratory. Remember that blindsight involves unconscious awareness of “features” of objects and events, such as the shape of an object or the direction of its movement. This study focused on two visual features: orientation and color. You and I see orientation (horizontal or vertical) or color (red or green) as part of the experience of some object. A line is horizontal. A box is red. For a person with blindsight, “horizontal” is experienced without any shape associated with it. “Red” is experienced without awareness of the thing that is red. This is the blindsight condition that Dr. Ro and his colleagues wanted to reproduce in the laboratory with the help of volunteer subjects. Let’s walk through the experiment to understand how it was designed and conducted. Experiment 1: Unconscious Detection of Orientation SETUPSETUP: The TMS wand was precisely adjusted so the TMS pulse was aimed at the back of the brain (primary visual cortex in the occipital lobes) affecting a very small area of the visual field. For example, imagine the gray box below as a computer screen. The plus sign in the middle is a fixation point. You (the participant in the study) fixate your eyes on this plus sign and hold them there during each trial. The TMS pulse is adjusted to your individual brain so that the area shown as a blue circle (used here only for explanation purposes) is momentarily “blind” when the pulse is active. This is a painstaking process that involves fine calibration of the wand based on feedback from the participant about what he or she can see when different targets are shown on the screen. Figure 4. Researchers adjusted the TMS wand until the circle would temporarily disappear from a person’s visual field. TESTINGTESTING: In one of Dr. Ro’s experiments, participants had to guess the orientation of a line, sometimes when they were temporarily blinded (in a tiny area of the visual cortex) by a TMS pulse. The study consisted of a series of trials. On each trial, either a horizontal or a vertical line was flashed for a fraction of a second on the computer screen in front of the participant. On some of these trials, a TMS pulse disrupted the neurons in the visual cortex. On other trials, there was no TMS pulse. The no-pulse trials served as a kind of control condition. Click on the slideshow below to see the steps in the vertical line condition. You can use the arrows at the bottom to navigate through the slides. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/19052107/Screen-Shot-2018-10-19-at-12.20.41-AM https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/07/19052107/Screen-Shot-2018-10-19-at-12.20.41-AM TRY ITTRY IT https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11396 TESTING BLINDSIGHT WITH TMSTESTING BLINDSIGHT WITH TMS Here is a video about a similar experiment conducted by Dr. Ro and his colleagues. The experiment in the video involves detecting yet another feature of objects: their shape. The basic procedures and results are similar to the ones you have just read. https://youtube.com/watch?v=_Y4KsUqmuUw%3Frel%3D0 https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290512849455705778/embed RESULTSRESULTS: By chance, if you have to choose between two equally likely options (horizontal or vertical), you would be correct about 50% of the time. On the trials when the subjects reported that they did not “see” anything at all, they correctly guessed the orientation of the line 75% of the time, performance that is significantly better than chance. There was also a strong positive correlation (r = +0.93) between accuracy and confidence: the more confident the subject in his or her guess, the more likely it was that the guess was correct. Keep in mind that, in all of these cases, the subjects started by saying that they saw nothing. That was about 60% of the trials. On the other 40% of trials, the subjects reported seeing something, even if it was a slight blur, and these trials did not count. Not surprisingly, accuracy was near perfect when subjects were conscious of seeing the bar and its orientation. Variations of the Experiment A second study using the color of a circle rather than the orientation of a bar was reported in the same paper. Otherwise, the procedures were the same as in the first experiment and the results consistent with the results for the bar orientation experiment. Conclusions from the Research The experimenters succeeded in producing the experience of blindness using the TMS apparatus, and they also succeeded in producing evidence for unconscious processing of features of the visual experience in normal (college student) volunteers. These results, when put together with the experiences of people with neurological damage, strengthen the case for the theory that some of our visual perception of the world takes place outside of our awareness. The college students have shown that this unconscious processing is not the result of brain damage, but rather is part of our normal perception of the world. Some Final Words This module has been about consciousness. It is common to assume that everything we know about the world around us and about our own thoughts and internal experiences must go through the doorway of our conscious mind. Evidence from blindsight is just one of several lines of research that shows that we process more information than we are aware of. Learning just how much this unconscious information can influence our thoughts and actions, our preferences and beliefs, is an important challenge for the rising generation of scientists. https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290512849455705778/embed Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Psychology in Real Life: Blindsight. Authored byAuthored by: Patrick Carroll for Lumen Learning. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Visual pathways image. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_visual_pathway.svg. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • College student in the park. Authored byAuthored by: CollegeDegrees360. Located atLocated at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/83633410@N07/7658074952. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • TN Blindsight. Authored byAuthored by: CANlabTilburg. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACkxe_5Ubq8. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • TMS image. Authored byAuthored by: Losey DM, Stocco A, Abernethy JA and Rao RPN . Located atLocated at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2016.00072/full. ProjectProject: Navigating a 2D Virtual World Using Direct Brain Stimulation.. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Image, neuro-ms. Authored byAuthored by: Baburov. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neuro-ms . LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Seeing Beyond the Visual Cortex - Science Nation. Authored byAuthored by: National Science Foundation. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y4KsUqmuUw. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • Blindsight experiment - 1989. Authored byAuthored by: Conrad Weiskrantz. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=50&v=wDt_Txi7pC0. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License SLEEP AND SLEEP STAGES What you’ll learn to do: describe what happens to the brain and body during sleep We devote a very large portion of time to sleep, and our brains have complex systems that control various aspects of sleep. Several hormones important for physical growth and maturation are secreted during sleep. While the reason we sleep remains something of a mystery, there is some evidence to suggest that sleep is very important to learning and memory. You may not feel particularly busy while you sleep, but you’ll learn in this section that your brain and body are quite active. You pass through four different stages of sleep. In this section, you’ll learn more about these sleep stages, dreaming, and sleep disorders. LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe areas of the brain and hormone secretions involved in sleep • Describe several theories (adaptive and cognitive) aimed at explaining the function of sleep https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_visual_pathway.svg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/83633410@N07/7658074952 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACkxe_5Ubq8 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2016.00072/full https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neuro-ms https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y4KsUqmuUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=50&v=wDt_Txi7pC0 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/08192626/7658254172_091a89cd3b_z • Differentiate between REM and non-REM sleep • Describe the stages of sleep We spend approximately one-third of our lives sleeping. Given the average life expectancy for U.S. citizens falls between 73 and 79 years old (Singh & Siahpush, 2006), we can expect to spend approximately 25 years of our lives sleeping. Some animals never sleep (e.g., several fish and amphibian species); other animals can go extended periods of time without sleep and without apparent negative consequences (e.g., dolphins); yet some animals (e.g., rats) die after two weeks of sleep deprivation (Siegel, 2008). Why do we devote so much time to sleeping? Is it absolutely essential that we sleep? This section will consider these questions and explore various explanations for why we sleep. What is Sleep? You have read that sleep is distinguished by low levels of physical activity and reduced sensory awareness. As discussed by Siegel (2008), a definition of sleep must also include mention of the interplay of the circadian and homeostatic mechanisms that regulate sleep. Homeostatic regulation of sleep is evidenced by sleep rebound following sleep deprivation. Sleep rebound refers to the fact that a sleep-deprived individual will tend to take longer falling asleep during subsequent opportunities for sleep. Sleep is characterized by certain patterns of activity of the brain that can be visualized using electroencephalography (EEG), and different phases of sleep can be differentiated using EEG as well (Figure 1). Sleep-wake cycles seem to be controlled by multiple brain areas acting in conjunction with one another. Some of these areas include the thalamus, the hypothalamus, and the pons. As already mentioned, the hypothalamus contains the SCN—the biological clock of the body—in addition to other nuclei that, in conjunction with the thalamus, regulate slow-wave sleep. The pons is important for regulating rapid eye movement (REM) sleep (National Institutes of Health, n.d.). Sleep is also associated with the secretion and regulation of a number of hormones from several endocrine glands including: melatonin, follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH), and growth hormone (National Institutes of Health, n.d.). You have read that the pineal gland releases melatonin during sleep (Figure 2). Melatonin is thought to be involved in the regulation of various biological rhythms and the immune system (Hardeland et al., 2006). During sleep, the pituitary gland secretes both FSH and LH which are important in regulating the reproductive system (Christensen et al., 2012; Sofikitis et al., 2008). The pituitary gland also secretes growth hormone, during sleep, which plays a role in physical growth and maturation as well as other metabolic processes (Bartke, Sun, & Longo, 2013). Figure 1. This is a segment of a polysonograph (PSG), a recording of several physical variables during sleep. The x-axis shows passage of time in seconds; this record includes 30 seconds of data. The location of the sets of electrode that produced each signal is labeled on the y-axis. The red box encompasses EEG output, and the waveforms are characteristic of a specific stage of sleep. Other curves show other sleep-related data, such as body temperature, muscle activity, and heartbeat. Figure 2. The pineal and pituitary glands secrete a number of hormones during sleep. Why Do We Sleep? Given the central role that sleep plays in our lives and the number of adverse consequences that have been associated with sleep deprivation, one would think that we would have a clear understanding of why it is that we sleep. Unfortunately, this is not the case; however, several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the function of sleep. Adaptive Function of Sleep One popular hypothesis of sleep incorporates the perspective of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology is a discipline that studies how universal patterns of behavior and cognitive processes have evolved over time as a result of natural selection. Variations and adaptations in cognition and behavior make individuals more or less successful in reproducing and passing their genes to their offspring. One hypothesis from this perspective might argue that sleep is essential to restore resources that are expended during the day. Just as bears hibernate in the winter when resources are scarce, perhaps people sleep at night to reduce their energy expenditures. While this is an intuitive explanation of sleep, there is little research that supports this explanation. In fact, it has been suggested that there is no reason to think that energetic demands could not be addressed with periods of rest and inactivity (Frank, 2006; Rial et al., 2007), and some research has actually found a negative correlation between energetic demands and the amount of time spent sleeping (Capellini, Barton, McNamara, Preston, & Nunn, 2008). Another evolutionary hypothesis of sleep holds that our sleep patterns evolved as an adaptive response to predatory risks, which increase in darkness. Thus we sleep in safe areas to reduce the chance of harm. Again, this is an intuitive and appealing explanation for why we sleep. Perhaps our ancestors spent extended periods of time asleep to reduce attention to themselves from potential predators. Comparative research indicates, however, that the relationship that exists between predatory risk and sleep is very complex and equivocal. Some research suggests that species that face higher predatory risks sleep fewer hours than other species (Capellini et al., An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2102 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch this video to learn more about the function of sleep and the harmful effects of sleep deprivation. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2102 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Learn about the connection between memory and sleep in the following clip: TRY ITTRY IT 2008), while other researchers suggest there is no relationship between the amount of time a given species spends in deep sleep and its predation risk (Lesku, Roth, Amlaner, & Lima, 2006). It is quite possible that sleep serves no single universally adaptive function, and different species have evolved different patterns of sleep in response to their unique evolutionary pressures. While we have discussed the negative outcomes associated with sleep deprivation, it should be pointed out that there are many benefits that are associated with adequate amounts of sleep. A few such benefits listed by the National Sleep Foundation (n.d.) include maintaining healthy weight, lowering stress levels, improving mood, and increasing motor coordination, as well as a number of benefits related to cognition and memory formation. Cognitive Function of Sleep Another theory regarding why we sleep involves sleep’s importance for cognitive function and memory formation (Rattenborg, Lesku, Martinez-Gonzalez, & Lima, 2007). Indeed, we know sleep deprivation results in disruptions in cognition and memory deficits (Brown, 2012), leading to impairments in our abilities to maintain attention, make decisions, and recall long-term memories. Moreover, these impairments become more severe as the amount of sleep deprivation increases (Alhola & Polo-Kantola, 2007). Furthermore, slow-wave sleep after learning a new task can improve resultant performance on that task (Huber, Ghilardi, Massimini, & Tononi, 2004) and seems essential for effective memory formation (Stickgold, 2005). Understanding the impact of sleep on cognitive function should help you understand that cramming all night for a test may be not effective and can even prove counterproductive. Sleep has also been associated with other cognitive benefits. Research indicates that included among these possible benefits are increased capacities for creative thinking (Cai, Mednick, Harrison, Kanady, & Mednick, 2009; Wagner, Gais, Haider, Verleger, & Born, 2004), language learning (Fenn, Nusbaum, & Margoliash, 2003; Gómez, Bootzin, & Nadel, 2006), and inferential judgments (Ellenbogen, Hu, Payne, Titone, & Walker, 2007). It is possible that even the processing of emotional information is influenced by certain aspects of sleep (Walker, 2009). An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2102 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2102 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2102 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2102 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2102 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2102 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2102 Visit this course online to take this short practice quiz: Visit this course online to take this short practice quiz: THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER Have you (or someone you know) ever experienced significant periods of sleep deprivation because of simple insomnia, high levels of stress, or as a side effect from a medication? What were the consequences of missing out on sleep? Stages of Sleep Sleep is not a uniform state of being. Instead, sleep is composed of several different stages that can be differentiated from one another by the patterns of brain wave activity that occur during each stage. These changes in brain wave activity can be visualized using EEG and are distinguished from one another by both the frequency and amplitude of brain waves (Figure 3). Sleep can be divided into two different general phases: REM sleep and non-REM (NREM) sleep. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is characterized by darting movements of the eyes under closed eyelids. Brain waves during REM sleep appear very similar to brain waves during wakefulness. In contrast, non-REM (NREM) sleep is subdivided into three stages distinguished from each other and from wakefulness by characteristic patterns of brain waves. The first three stages of sleep are NREM sleep, while the fourth and final stage of sleep is REM sleep. In this section, we will discuss each of these stages of sleep and their associated patterns of brain wave activity. [Note that psychologists originally identified four stages of non-REM sleep, but these were revised in 2008, resulting in just three distinct phases of NREM sleep. You will see that stage 3 of NREM sleep is sometimes presented as both stage 3 and stage 4 in various texts.] NREM Stages of Sleep The first stage of NREM sleep is known as stage 1 sleep. Stage 1 sleep is a transitional phase that occurs between wakefulness and sleep, the period during which we drift off to sleep. During this time, there is a slowdown in both the rates of respiration and heartbeat. In addition, stage 1 sleep involves a marked decrease in both overall muscle tension and core body temperature. In terms of brain wave activity, stage 1 sleep is associated with both alpha and theta waves. The early portion of stage 1 sleep produces alpha waves, which are relatively low frequency (8–13Hz), high amplitude patterns of electrical activity (waves) that become synchronized (Figure 3). This pattern of brain wave activity resembles that of someone who is very relaxed, yet awake. As an individual continues through stage 1 sleep, there is an increase in theta wave activity. Theta waves are even lower frequency (4–7 Hz), higher amplitude brain waves than alpha waves. It is relatively easy to wake someone from stage 1 sleep; in fact, people often report that they have not been asleep if they are awoken during stage 1 sleep. Figure 3. Brainwave activity changes dramatically across the different stages of sleep. As we move into stage 2 sleep, the body goes into a state of deep relaxation. Theta waves still dominate the activity of the brain, but they are interrupted by brief bursts of activity known as sleep spindles (Figure 4). A sleep spindle is a rapid burst of higher frequency brain waves that may be important for learning and memory (Fogel & Smith, 2011; Poe, Walsh, & Bjorness, 2010). In addition, the appearance of K-complexes is often associated with stage 2 sleep. A K-complex is a very high amplitude pattern of brain activity that may in some cases occur in response to environmental stimuli. Thus, K-complexes might serve as a bridge to higher levels of arousal in response to what is going on in our environments (Halász, 1993; Steriade & Amzica, 1998). https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2015/02/26123807/EEG-Graphic-1 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2015/02/26123807/EEG-Graphic-1 Figure 4. Stage 2 sleep is characterized by the appearance of both sleep spindles and K-complexes. Stage 3 of sleep is often referred to as deep sleep or slow-wave sleep because these stages are characterized by low frequency (up to 4 Hz), high amplitude delta waves (Figure 5). During this time, an individual’s heart rate and respiration slow dramatically. It is much more difficult to awaken someone from sleep during stage 3 than during earlier stages. Interestingly, individuals who have increased levels of alpha brain wave activity (more often associated with wakefulness and transition into stage 1 sleep) during stage 3 often report that they do not feel refreshed upon waking, regardless of how long they slept (Stone, Taylor, McCrae, Kalsekar, & Lichstein, 2008). An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2102 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2102 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2102 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2102 TRY ITTRY IT Figure 5. Delta waves, which are low frequency and high amplitude, characterize slow-wave stage 3 sleep. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2015/02/26125158/Screen-Shot-2017-04-26-at-7.51.38-AM https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2015/02/26125158/Screen-Shot-2017-04-26-at-7.51.38-AM Figure 6. (a) A period of rapid eye movement is marked by the short red line segment. The brain waves associated with REM sleep, outlined in the red box, look very similar to those seen during wakefulness. REM Sleep As mentioned earlier, REM sleep is marked by rapid movements of the eyes. The brain waves associated with this stage of sleep are very similar to those observed when a person is awake, as shown in Figure 6, and this is the period of sleep in which dreaming occurs. It is also associated with paralysis of muscle systems in the body with the exception of those that make circulation and respiration possible. Therefore, no movement of voluntary muscles occurs during REM sleep in a normal individual; REM sleep is often referred to as paradoxical sleep because of this combination of high brain activity and lack of muscle tone. Like NREM sleep, REM has been implicated in various aspects of learning and memory (Wagner, Gais, & Born, 2001), although there is disagreement within the scientific community about how important both NREM and REM sleep are for normal learning and memory (Siegel, 2001). If people are deprived of REM sleep and then allowed to sleep without disturbance, they will spend more time in REM sleep in what would appear to be an effort to recoup the lost time in REM. This is known as the REM rebound, and it suggests that REM sleep is also homeostatically regulated. Aside from the role that REM sleep may play in processes related to learning and memory, REM sleep may also be involved in emotional processing and regulation. In such instances, REM rebound may actually represent an adaptive response to stress in nondepressed individuals by suppressing the emotional salience of aversive events that occurred in wakefulness (Suchecki, Tiba, & Machado, 2012). While sleep deprivation in general is associated with a number of negative consequences (Brown, 2012), the consequences of REM deprivation appear to be less profound (as discussed in Siegel, 2001). In fact, some have suggested that REM deprivation can actually be beneficial in some circumstances. For instance, REM sleep deprivation has been demonstrated to improve symptoms of people suffering from major depression, and many effective antidepressant medications suppress REM sleep (Riemann, Berger, & Volderholzer, 2001; Vogel, 1975). It should be pointed out that some reviews of the literature challenge this finding, suggesting that sleep deprivation that is not limited to REM sleep is just as effective or more effective at alleviating depressive symptoms among some patients suffering from depression. In either case, why sleep deprivation improves the mood of some patients is not entirely understood (Giedke & Schwärzler, 2002). Recently, however, some have suggested that sleep deprivation might change emotional processing so that various stimuli are more likely to be perceived as positive in nature (Gujar, Yoo, Hu, & Walker, 2011). The hypnogram below (Figure 7) shows a person’s passage through the stages of sleep. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2015/02/26125459/Screen-Shot-2017-04-26-at-7.53.29-AM https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2015/02/26125459/Screen-Shot-2017-04-26-at-7.53.29-AM LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Read this article that describes the various stages of sleep. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2102 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2102 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2102 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2102 TRY ITTRY IT Figure 7. This hypnogram illustrates how an individual moves through the various stages of sleep. Deeper NREM sleep occurs early on in the night, while the duration of REM sleep increases as the night progresses. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2015/02/26125708/Sleep-Stages1 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2015/02/26125708/Sleep-Stages1 https://www.verywell.com/the-four-stages-of-sleep-2795920 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2102 GLOSSARYGLOSSARY alpha wave:alpha wave: type of relatively low frequency, relatively high amplitude brain wave that becomes synchronized; characteristic of the beginning of stage 1 sleep delta wave:delta wave: type of low frequency, high amplitude brain wave characteristic of stage 3 and stage 4 sleep evolutionary psychology:evolutionary psychology: discipline that studies how universal patterns of behavior and cognitive processes have evolved over time as a result of natural selection K-complex:K-complex: very high amplitude pattern of brain activity associated with stage 2 sleep that may occur in response to environmental stimuli non-REM (NREM):non-REM (NREM): period of sleep outside periods of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep rapid eye movement (REM) sleep:rapid eye movement (REM) sleep: period of sleep characterized by brain waves very similar to those during wakefulness and by darting movements of the eyes under closed eyelids sleep rebound:sleep rebound: sleep-deprived individuals will experience longer sleep latencies during subsequent opportunities for sleep sleep spindle:sleep spindle: rapid burst of high frequency brain waves during stage 2 sleep that may be important for learning and memory stage 1 sleep:stage 1 sleep: first stage of sleep; transitional phase that occurs between wakefulness and sleep; the period during which a person drifts off to sleep stage 2 sleep:stage 2 sleep: second stage of sleep; the body goes into deep relaxation; characterized by the appearance of sleep spindles stage 3 sleep:stage 3 sleep: third stage of sleep; deep sleep characterized by low frequency, high amplitude delta waves theta wave:theta wave: type of low frequency, low amplitude brain wave characteristic of the end of stage 1 sleep THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER Researchers believe that one important function of sleep is to facilitate learning and memory. How does knowing this help you in your college studies? What changes could you make to your study and sleep habits to maximize your mastery of the material covered in class? Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Sleep and Why We Sleep. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:HBTk06bf@7/Sleep-and-Why-We-Sleep. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • Image of sleeping girl. Authored byAuthored by: College Degrees 360. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. Located atLocated at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/83633410@N07/7658254172. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • What would happen if you didnt sleep? - Claudia Aguirre. Authored byAuthored by: Ted-Ed. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqONk48l5vY. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • The Connection Between Sleep and Memory . Provided byProvided by: Science360 Video. Located atLocated at: https://science360.gov/obj/video/1bdb1ef6-8a9c-4c06-b8f3-5f6045daf859/connection-between-sleep-memory. LicenseLicense: All Rights Reserved https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:HBTk06bf@7/Sleep-and-Why-We-Sleep https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/83633410@N07/7658254172 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqONk48l5vY https://science360.gov/obj/video/1bdb1ef6-8a9c-4c06-b8f3-5f6045daf859/connection-between-sleep-memory DREAMS AND DREAMING LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe and differentiate between theories on why we dream Dreams The meaning of dreams varies across different cultures and periods of time. By the late 19th century, German psychiatrist Sigmund Freud had become convinced that dreams represented an opportunity to gain access to the unconscious. By analyzing dreams, Freud thought people could increase self-awareness and gain valuable insight to help them deal with the problems they faced in their lives. Freud made distinctions between the manifest content and the latent content of dreams. Manifest contentManifest content is the actual content, or storyline, of a dream. Latent contentLatent content, on the other hand, refers to the hidden meaning of a dream. For instance, if a woman dreams about being chased by a snake, Freud might have argued that this represents the woman’s fear of sexual intimacy, with the snake serving as a symbol of a man’s penis. Freud was not the only theorist to focus on the content of dreams. The 20th century Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung believed that dreams allowed us to tap into the collective unconsciouscollective unconscious. The collective unconscious, as described by Jung, is a theoretical repository of information he believed to be shared by everyone. According to Jung, certain symbols in dreams reflected universal archetypes with meanings that are similar for all people regardless of culture or location. The sleep and dreaming researcher Rosalind Cartwright, however, believes that dreams simply reflect life events that are important to the dreamer. Unlike Freud and Jung, Cartwright’s ideas about dreaming have found empirical support. For example, she and her colleagues published a study in which women going through divorce were asked several times over a five month period to report the degree to which their former spouses were on their minds. These same women were awakened during REM sleep in order to provide a detailed account of their dream content. There was a significant positive correlation between the degree to which women thought about their former spouses during waking hours and the number of times their former spouses appeared as characters in their dreams (Cartwright, Agargun, Kirkby, & Friedman, 2006). Recent research (Horikawa, Tamaki, Miyawaki, & Kamitani, 2013) has uncovered new techniques by which researchers may effectively detect and classify the visual images that occur during dreaming by using fMRI for neural measurement of brain activity patterns, opening the way for additional research in this area. Recently, neuroscientists have also become interested in understanding why we dream. For example, Hobson (2009) suggests that dreaming may represent a state of protoconsciousness. In other words, dreaming involves constructing a virtual reality in our heads that we might use to help us during wakefulness. Among a variety of neurobiological evidence, John Hobson cites research on lucid dreams as an opportunity to better understand dreaming in general. Lucid dreamsLucid dreams are dreams in which certain aspects of wakefulness are maintained during a dream state. In a lucid dream, a person becomes aware of the fact that they are dreaming, and as such, they can control the dream’s content (LaBerge, 1990). Theories on Dreaming While the Freudian theory of dreaming may be the most well known, and Cartwright’s suggestions on dreaming the most plausible, there are several other theories about the purpose of dreaming. The threat-simulation theorythreat-simulation theory suggests that dreaming should be seen as an ancient biological defense mechanism. Dreams are thought to LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Review the purpose and stages of sleep as well as the reasons why we dream in the following CrashCourse video: An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2091 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2091 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2091 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2091 TRY ITTRY IT provide an evolutionary advantage because of their capacity to repeatedly simulate potential threatening events. This process enhances the neurocognitive mechanisms required for efficient threat perception and avoidance. The expectation-fulfillment theoryexpectation-fulfillment theory posits that dreaming serves to discharge emotional arousals (however minor) that haven’t been expressed during the day. This practice frees up space in the brain to deal with the emotional arousals of the next day and allows instinctive urges to stay intact. In effect, the expectation is fulfilled (the action is “completed”) in a metaphorical form so that a false memory is not created. This theory explains why dreams are usually forgotten immediately afterwards. One prominent neurobiological theory of dreaming is the activation-synthesis theoryactivation-synthesis theory, which states that dreams don’t actually mean anything. They are merely electrical brain impulses that pull random thoughts and imagery from our memories. The theory posits that humans construct dream stories after they wake up, in a natural attempt to make sense of the nonsensical. However, given the vast documentation of the realistic aspects of human dreaming, as well as indirect experimental evidence that other mammals such as cats also dream, evolutionary psychologists have theorized that dreaming does indeed serve a purpose. The continual-activation theorycontinual-activation theory proposes that dreaming is a result of brain activation and synthesis. Dreaming and REM sleep are simultaneously controlled by different brain mechanisms. The hypothesis states that the function of sleep is to process, encode, and transfer data from short-term memory to long-term memory through a process called consolidation. However, there is not much evidence to back this up. NREM sleep processes the conscious- related memory (declarative memory), and REM sleep processes the unconscious related memory (procedural memory). The underlying assumption of continual-activation theory is that, during REM sleep, the unconscious part of the brain is busy processing procedural memory. Meanwhile, the level of activation in the conscious part of the brain descends to a very low level as the inputs from the senses are basically disconnected. This triggers the “continual-activation” mechanism to generate a data stream from the memory stores to flow through to the conscious part of the brain. A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2091 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2091 GLOSSARYGLOSSARY activation-synthesis theory:activation-synthesis theory: states that dreams don’t actually mean anything. Instead, dreams are merely electrical brain impulses that pull random thoughts and imagery from our memories. collective unconscious:collective unconscious: theoretical repository of information shared by all people across cultures, as described by Carl Jung continual-activation theory:continual-activation theory: proposes that dreaming is a result of brain activation and synthesis; its assumption is that, during REM sleep, the unconscious part of the brain is busy processing procedural memory latent content:latent content: hidden meaning of a dream, per Sigmund Freud’s view of the function of dreams lucid dream:lucid dream: people become aware that they are dreaming and can control the dream’s content manifest content:manifest content: storyline of events that occur during a dream, per Sigmund Freud’s view of the function of dreams threat-simulation theory:threat-simulation theory: suggests that dreaming should be seen as an ancient biological defense mechanism that provides an evolutionary advantage because of its capacity to repeatedly simulate potential threatening events, thus enhancing the mechanisms required for efficient threat avoidance. Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Stages of Sleep. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:G4i0FY3z@5/Stages-of-Sleep. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/ 4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • The Nature and Meaning of Dreams. Provided byProvided by: Boundless. Located atLocated at: https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/states-of-consciousness-6/sleep-and-dreaming-42/the- nature-and-meaning-of-dreams-184-12719/. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • To Sleep, Perchance to Dream - Crash Course Psychology #9. Provided byProvided by: CrashCourse. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMHus-0wFSo. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License SLEEP PROBLEMS AND DISORDERS LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe the symptoms and treatments for insomnia, sleep apnea, and narcolepsy Many people experience disturbances in their sleep at some point in their lives. Depending on the population and sleep disorder being studied, between 30% and 50% of the population suffers from a sleep disorder at some point in their lives (Bixler, Kales, Soldatos, Kaels, & Healey, 1979; Hossain & Shapiro, 2002; Ohayon, 1997, 2002; Ohayon & Roth, 2002). This section will describe several sleep disorders as well as some of their treatment options. Insomnia Insomnia, a consistent difficulty in falling or staying asleep, is the most common of the sleep disorders. Individuals with insomnia often experience long delays between the times that they go to bed and actually fall asleep. In addition, these individuals may wake up several times during the night only to find that they have difficulty getting back to sleep. As mentioned earlier, one of the criteria for insomnia involves experiencing these symptoms for at least three nights a week for at least one month’s time (Roth, 2007). It is not uncommon for people suffering from insomnia to experience increased levels of anxiety about their inability to fall asleep. This becomes a self-perpetuating cycle because increased anxiety leads to increased arousal, and higher levels of arousal make the prospect of falling asleep even more unlikely. Chronic insomnia is almost always associated with feeling overtired and may be associated with symptoms of depression. There may be many factors that contribute to insomnia, including age, drug use, exercise, mental status, and bedtime routines. Not surprisingly, insomnia treatment may take one of several different approaches. People who suffer from insomnia might limit their use of stimulant drugs (such as caffeine) or increase their amount of physical exercise during the day. Some people might turn to over-the-counter (OTC) or prescribed sleep medications to help them sleep, but this should be done sparingly because many sleep medications result in dependence and alter the nature of the sleep cycle, and they can increase insomnia over time. Those who continue to have insomnia, particularly if it affects their quality of life, should seek professional treatment. Some forms of psychotherapy, such as cognitive-behavioral therapycognitive-behavioral therapy, can help sufferers of insomnia. Cognitive- behavioral therapy is a type of psychotherapy that focuses on cognitive processes and problem behaviors. The treatment of insomnia likely would include stress management techniques and changes in problematic behaviors that could contribute to insomnia (e.g., spending more waking time in bed). Cognitive-behavioral therapy has been demonstrated to be quite effective in treating insomnia (Savard, Simard, Ivers, & Morin, 2005; Williams, Roth, Vatthauer, & McCrae, 2013). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:G4i0FY3z@5/Stages-of-Sleep https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/states-of-consciousness-6/sleep-and-dreaming-42/the-nature-and-meaning-of-dreams-184-12719/ https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/states-of-consciousness-6/sleep-and-dreaming-42/the-nature-and-meaning-of-dreams-184-12719/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMHus-0wFSo DIG DEEPER: A SLEEPWALKING DEFENSE?DIG DEEPER: A SLEEPWALKING DEFENSE? On January 16, 1997, Scott Falater sat down to dinner with his wife and children and told them about difficulties he was experiencing on a project at work. After dinner, he prepared some materials to use in leading a church youth group the following morning, and then he attempted repair the family’s swimming pool pump before retiring to bed. The following morning, he awoke to barking dogs and unfamiliar voices from downstairs. As he went to investigate what was going on, he was met by a group of police officers who arrested him for the murder of his wife (Cartwright, 2004; CNN, 1999). Yarmila Falater’s body was found in the family’s pool with 44 stab wounds. A neighbor called the police after witnessing Falater standing over his wife’s body before dragging her into the pool. Upon a search of the premises, police found blood-stained clothes and a bloody knife in the trunk of Falater’s car, and he had blood stains on his neck. Remarkably, Falater insisted that he had no recollection of hurting his wife in any way. His children and his wife’s parents all agreed that Falater had an excellent relationship with his wife and they couldn’t think of a reason that would provide any sort of motive to murder her (Cartwright, 2004). Scott Falater had a history of regular episodes of sleepwalking as a child, and he had even behaved violently toward his sister once when she tried to prevent him from leaving their home in his pajamas during a sleepwalking episode. He suffered from no apparent anatomical brain anomalies or psychological disorders. It appeared that Scott Falater had killed his wife in his sleep, or at least, that is the defense he used when he was tried for his wife’s murder (Cartwright, 2004; CNN, 1999). In Falater’s case, a jury found him guilty of first degree murder in June of 1999 (CNN, 1999); however, there are other murder cases where the sleepwalking defense has been used successfully. As scary as it sounds, many sleep researchers believe that homicidal sleepwalking is possible in individuals suffering from the types of sleep disorders described below (Broughton et al., 1994; Cartwright, 2004; Mahowald, Schenck, & Cramer Bornemann, 2005; Pressman, 2007). Parasomnias A parasomniaparasomnia is one of a group of sleep disorders in which unwanted, disruptive motor activity and/or experiences during sleep play a role. Parasomnias can occur in either REM or NREM phases of sleep. Sleepwalking, restless leg syndrome, and night terrors are all examples of parasomnias (Mahowald & Schenck, 2000). Sleepwalking In sleepwalkingsleepwalking, or somnambulism, the sleeper engages in relatively complex behaviors ranging from wandering about to driving an automobile. During periods of sleepwalking, sleepers often have their eyes open, but they are not responsive to attempts to communicate with them. Sleepwalking most often occurs during slow-wave sleep, but it can occur at any time during a sleep period in some affected individuals (Mahowald & Schenck, 2000). Historically, somnambulism has been treated with a variety of pharmacotherapies ranging from benzodiazepines to antidepressants. However, the success rate of such treatments is questionable. Guilleminault et al. (2005) found that sleepwalking was not alleviated with the use of benzodiazepines. However, all of their somnambulistic patients who also suffered from sleep-related breathing problems showed a marked decrease in sleepwalking when their breathing problems were effectively treated. REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD) REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD)REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) occurs when the muscle paralysis associated with the REM sleep phase does not occur. Individuals who suffer from RBD have high levels of physical activity during REM sleep, especially during disturbing dreams. These behaviors vary widely, but they can include kicking, punching, scratching, yelling, and behaving like an animal that has been frightened or attacked. People who suffer from this disorder can injure themselves or their sleeping partners when engaging in these behaviors. Furthermore, these types of behaviors ultimately disrupt sleep, although affected individuals have no memories that these behaviors have occurred (Arnulf, 2012). An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=126 TRY ITTRY IT This disorder is associated with a number of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. In fact, this relationship is so robust that some view the presence of RBD as a potential aid in the diagnosis and treatment of a number of neurodegenerative diseases (Ferini-Strambi, 2011). Clonazepam, an anti-anxiety medication with sedative properties, is most often used to treat RBD. It is administered alone or in conjunction with doses of melatonin (the hormone secreted by the pineal gland). As part of treatment, the sleeping environment is often modified to make it a safer place for those suffering from RBD (Zangini, Calandra-Buonaura, Grimaldi, & Cortelli, 2011). Other Parasomnias A person with restless leg syndromerestless leg syndrome has uncomfortable sensations in the legs during periods of inactivity or when trying to fall asleep. This discomfort is relieved by deliberately moving the legs, which, not surprisingly, contributes to difficulty in falling or staying asleep. Restless leg syndrome is quite common and has been associated with a number of other medical diagnoses, such as chronic kidney disease and diabetes (Mahowald & Schenck, 2000). There are a variety of drugs that treat restless leg syndrome: benzodiazepines, opiates, and anticonvulsants (Restless Legs Syndrome Foundation, n.d.). Night terrorsNight terrors result in a sense of panic in the sufferer and are often accompanied by screams and attempts to escape from the immediate environment (Mahowald & Schenck, 2000). Although individuals suffering from night terrors appear to be awake, they generally have no memories of the events that occurred, and attempts to console them are ineffective. Typically, individuals suffering from night terrors will fall back asleep again within a short time. Night terrors apparently occur during the NREM phase of sleep (Provini, Tinuper, Bisulli, & Lagaresi, 2011). Generally, treatment for night terrors is unnecessary unless there is some underlying medical or psychological condition that is contributing to the night terrors (Mayo Clinic, n.d.). Sleep Apnea Sleep apneaSleep apnea is defined by episodes during which a sleeper’s breathing stops. These episodes can last 10–20 seconds or longer and often are associated with brief periods of arousal. While individuals suffering from sleep apnea may not be aware of these repeated disruptions in sleep, they do experience increased levels of fatigue. Many individuals diagnosed with sleep apnea first seek treatment because their sleeping partners indicate that they snore loudly and/or stop breathing for extended periods of time while sleeping (Henry & Rosenthal, 2013). Sleep apnea is much more common in overweight people and is often associated with loud snoring. Surprisingly, sleep apnea may exacerbate cardiovascular disease (Sánchez-de-la-Torre, Campos-Rodriguez, & Barbé, 2012). While sleep apnea is less common in thin people, anyone, regardless of their weight, who snores loudly or gasps for air while sleeping, should be checked for sleep apnea. While people are often unaware of their sleep apnea, they are keenly aware of some of the adverse consequences of insufficient sleep. Consider a patient who believed that as a result of his sleep apnea he “had three car accidents in six weeks. They were ALL my fault. Two of them I didn’t even know I was involved in until afterwards” (Henry & Rosenthal, 2013, p. 52). It is not uncommon for people suffering from undiagnosed or untreated sleep apnea to fear that their careers will be affected by the lack of sleep, illustrated by this statement from another patient, “I’m in a job where there’s a premium on being mentally alert. I was really sleepy… and having trouble concentrating…. It was getting to the point where it was kind of scary” (Henry & Rosenthal, 2013, p. 52). There are two types of sleep apnea: obstructive sleep apneaobstructive sleep apnea and central sleep apnea. Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when an individual’s airway becomes blocked during sleep, and air is prevented from entering the lungs. In Figure 1. (a) A typical CPAP device used in the treatment of sleep apnea is (b) affixed to the head with straps, and a mask that covers the nose and mouth. Figure 2. The Safe to Sleep campaign educates the public about how to minimize risk factors associated with SIDS. This campaign is sponsored in part by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. central sleep apneacentral sleep apnea, disruption in signals sent from the brain that regulate breathing cause periods of interrupted breathing (White, 2005). One of the most common treatments for sleep apnea involves the use of a special device during sleep. A continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP)continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device includes a mask that fits over the sleeper’s nose and mouth, which is connected to a pump that pumps air into the person’s airways, forcing them to remain open, as shown in Figure 1. Some newer CPAP masks are smaller and cover only the nose. This treatment option has proven to be effective for people suffering from mild to severe cases of sleep apnea (McDaid et al., 2009). However, alternative treatment options are being explored because consistent compliance by users of CPAP devices is a problem. Recently, a new EPAP (excitatory positive air pressure) device has shown promise in double-blind trials as one such alternative (Berry, Kryger, & Massie, 2011). SIDS In sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) an infant stops breathing during sleep and dies. Infants younger than 12 months appear to be at the highest risk for SIDS, and boys have a greater risk than girls. A number of risk factors have been associated with SIDS including premature birth, smoking within the home, and hyperthermia. There may also be differences in both brain structure and function in infants that die from SIDS (Berkowitz, 2012; Mage & Donner, 2006; Thach, 2005). The substantial amount of research on SIDS has led to a number of recommendations to parents to protect their children (Figure 2). For one, research suggests that infants should be placed on their backs when put down to sleep, and their cribs should not contain any items which pose suffocation threats, such as blankets, pillows or padded crib bumpers (cushions that cover the bars of a crib). Infants should not have caps placed on their heads when put down to sleep in order to prevent overheating, and people in the child’s household should abstain from smoking in the home. Recommendations like these have helped to decrease the number of infant deaths from SIDS in recent years (Mitchell, 2009; Task Force on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, 2011). An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=126 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=126 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=126 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=126 TRY ITTRY IT Narcolepsy Unlike the other sleep disorders described in this section, a person with narcolepsynarcolepsy cannot resist falling asleep at inopportune times. These sleep episodes are often associated with cataplexycataplexy, which is a lack of muscle tone or muscle weakness, and in some cases involves complete paralysis of the voluntary muscles. This is similar to the kind of paralysis experienced by healthy individuals during REM sleep (Burgess & Scammell, 2012; Hishikawa & Shimizu, 1995; Luppi et al., 2011). Narcoleptic episodes take on other features of REM sleep. For example, around one third of individuals diagnosed with narcolepsy experience vivid, dream-like hallucinations during narcoleptic attacks (Chokroverty, 2010). Surprisingly, narcoleptic episodes are often triggered by states of heightened arousal or stress. The typical episode can last from a minute or two to half an hour. Once awakened from a narcoleptic attack, people report that they feel refreshed (Chokroverty, 2010). Obviously, regular narcoleptic episodes could interfere with the ability to perform one’s job or complete schoolwork, and in some situations, narcolepsy can result in significant harm and injury (e.g., driving a car or operating machinery or other potentially dangerous equipment). Generally, narcolepsy is treated using psychomotor stimulant drugs, such as amphetamines (Mignot, 2012). These drugs promote increased levels of neural activity. Narcolepsy is associated with reduced levels of the signaling molecule hypocretin in some areas of the brain (De la Herrán-Arita & Drucker-Colín, 2012; Han, 2012), and the traditional stimulant drugs do not have direct effects on this system. Therefore, it is quite likely that new medications that are developed to treat narcolepsy will be designed to target the hypocretin system. There is a tremendous amount of variability among sufferers, both in terms of how symptoms of narcolepsy manifest and the effectiveness of currently available treatment options. This is illustrated by McCarty’s (2010) case study of a 50-year-old woman who sought help for the excessive sleepiness during normal waking hours that she had experienced for several years. She indicated that she had fallen asleep at inappropriate or dangerous times, including while eating, while socializing with friends, and while driving her car. During periods of emotional arousal, the woman complained that she felt some weakness in the right side of her body. Although she did not experience any dream-like hallucinations, she was diagnosed with narcolepsy as a result of sleep testing. In her case, the fact that her cataplexy was confined to the right side of her body was quite unusual. Early attempts to treat her condition with a stimulant drug alone were unsuccessful. However, when a stimulant drug was used in conjunction with a popular antidepressant, her condition improved dramatically. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=126 GLOSSARYGLOSSARY cataplexy:cataplexy: lack of muscle tone or muscle weakness, and in some cases complete paralysis of the voluntary muscles central sleep apnea:central sleep apnea: sleep disorder with periods of interrupted breathing due to a disruption in signals sent from the brain that regulate breathing cognitive-behavioral therapy:cognitive-behavioral therapy: psychotherapy that focuses on cognitive processes and problem behaviors that is sometimes used to treat sleep disorders such as insomnia continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP):continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP): device used to treat sleep apnea; includes a mask that fits over the sleeper’s nose and mouth, which is connected to a pump that pumps air into the person’s airways, forcing them to remain open narcolepsy:narcolepsy: sleep disorder in which the sufferer cannot resist falling to sleep at inopportune times night terror:night terror: sleep disorder in which the sleeper experiences a sense of panic and may scream or attempt to escape from the immediate environment obstructive sleep apnea:obstructive sleep apnea: sleep disorder defined by episodes when breathing stops during sleep as a result of blockage of the airway parinsomnia:parinsomnia: one of a group of sleep disorders characterized by unwanted, disruptive motor activity and/or experiences during sleep REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD):REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD): sleep disorder in which the muscle paralysis associated with the REM sleep phase does not occur; sleepers have high levels of physical activity during REM sleep, especially during disturbing dreams restless leg syndrome:restless leg syndrome: sleep disorder in which the sufferer has uncomfortable sensations in the legs when trying to fall asleep that are relieved by moving the legs sleep apnea:sleep apnea: sleep disorder defined by episodes during which breathing stops during sleep sleepwalking:sleepwalking: (also, somnambulism) sleep disorder in which the sleeper engages in relatively complex behaviors sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS):sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS): infant (one year old or younger) with no apparent medical condition suddenly dies during sleep An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=126 THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER What factors might contribute to your own experiences with insomnia? Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Sleep Problems and Disorders. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:Mq2OJ5oK@7/Sleep-Problems-and-Disorders. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/. http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:Mq2OJ5oK@7/Sleep-Problems-and-Disorders https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2104 DRUGS AND CONSCIOUSNESS What you’ll learn to do: explain how drugs affect consciousness While we all experience altered states of consciousness in the form of sleep on a regular basis, some people use drugs and other substances that result in altered states of consciousness as well. This section will present information relating to the use of various psychoactive drugs and problems associated with such use. You’ll also learned about other altered states of consciousness like hypnosis and meditation. This CrashCourse video gives an excellent overview of these altered states: LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe how substance abuse disorders are diagnosed • Explain how depressants impact nervous system activity • Identify stimulants and describe how they affect the brain and body • Identify opioids and describe how they impact the brain and behavior • Describe hallucinogens and how they affect the brain and behavior • Compare and contrast between depressants, stimulants, opioids, and hallucinogens Substance Abuse Disorders The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,, Fifth Edition (DSM-5)(DSM-5) is used by clinicians to diagnose individuals suffering from various psychological disorders. Drug use disorders are addictive disorders, and the criteria for specific substance (drug) use disorders are described in DSM-5. A person https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/14223552/800px-Mandelbrot_Islands_of_Consciousness LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Read through this fascinating comic created by Stuart McMillen about psychologist’s Bruce Alexander’s Rat Park study on addiction, found here. For more information on Bruce Alexander’s study and a better understanding of addiction, listen to Johann Hari’s TED Talk, “Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong.” who has a substance use disorder often uses more of the substance than they originally intended to and continues to use that substance despite experiencing significant adverse consequences. In individuals diagnosed with a substance use disorder, there is a compulsive pattern of drug use that is often associated with both physical and psychological dependence. Physical dependencePhysical dependence involves changes in normal bodily functions—the user will experience withdrawal from the drug upon cessation of use. In contrast, a person who has psychological dependencepsychological dependence has an emotional, rather than physical, need for the drug and may use the drug to relieve psychological distress. ToleranceTolerance is linked to physiological dependence, and it occurs when a person requires more and more drug to achieve effects previously experienced at lower doses. Tolerance can cause the user to increase the amount of drug used to a dangerous level—even to the point of overdose and death. Drug withdrawalwithdrawal includes a variety of negative symptoms experienced when drug use is discontinued. These symptoms usually are opposite of the effects of the drug. For example, withdrawal from sedative drugs often produces unpleasant arousal and agitation. In addition to withdrawal, many individuals who are diagnosed with substance use disorders will also develop tolerance to these substances. Psychological dependence, or drug craving, is a recent addition to the diagnostic criteria for substance use disorder in DSM-5. This is an important factor because we can develop tolerance and experience withdrawal from any number of drugs that we do not abuse. In other words, physical dependence in and of itself is of limited utility in determining whether or not someone has a substance use disorder. Drug Categories The effects of all psychoactive drugs occur through their interactions with our endogenous neurotransmitter systems. Many of these drugs, and their relationships, are shown in Figure 1. As you have learned, drugs can act as agonists or antagonists of a given neurotransmitter system. An agonist facilitates the activity of a neurotransmitter system, and antagonists impede neurotransmitter activity. The main categories of drugs are depressantsdepressants, stimulantsstimulants, and hallucinogenshallucinogens. You’ll learn more about these types drugs in the coming pages. http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/rat-park/ https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong Figure 1. This figure illustrates various drug categories and overlap among them. (credit: modification of work by Derrick Snider) An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2104 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2104 TRY ITTRY IT Depressants Ethanol, which we commonly refer to as alcohol, is in a class of psychoactive drugs known as depressants (Figure 1). A depressantdepressant is a drug that tends to suppress central nervous system activity. Other depressants include barbiturates and benzodiazepines. These drugs share in common their ability to serve as agonists of the gamma-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) neurotransmitter system. Because GABA has a quieting effect on the brain, GABA agonists also have a quieting effect; these types of drugs are often prescribed to treat both anxiety and insomnia. Figure 2. The GABA-gated chloride (Cl-) channel is embedded in the cell membrane of certain neurons. The channel has multiple receptor sites where alcohol, barbiturates, and benzodiazepines bind to exert their effects. The binding of these molecules opens the chloride channel, allowing negatively-charged chloride ions (Cl-) into the neuron’s cell body. Changing its charge in a negative direction pushes the neuron away from firing; thus, activating a GABA neuron has a quieting effect on the brain. Acute alcohol administration results in a variety of changes to consciousness. At rather low doses, alcohol use is associated with feelings of euphoria. As the dose increases, people report feeling sedated. Generally, alcohol is associated with decreases in reaction time and visual acuity, lowered levels of alertness, and reduction in behavioral control. With excessive alcohol use, a person might experience a complete loss of consciousness and/ or difficulty remembering events that occurred during a period of intoxication (McKim & Hancock, 2013). In addition, if a pregnant woman consumes alcohol, her infant may be born with a cluster of birth defects and symptoms collectively called fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) or fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS). With repeated use of many central nervous system depressants, such as alcohol, a person becomes physically dependent upon the substance and will exhibit signs of both tolerance and withdrawal. Psychological dependence An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2104 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2104 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2104 TRY ITTRY IT on these drugs is also possible. Therefore, the abuse potential of central nervous system depressants is relatively high. Drug withdrawal is usually an aversive experience, and it can be a life-threatening process in individuals who have a long history of very high doses of alcohol and/or barbiturates. This is of such concern that people who are trying to overcome addiction to these substances should only do so under medical supervision. Stimulants StimulantsStimulants are drugs that tend to increase overall levels of neural activity. Many of these drugs act as agonists of the dopamine neurotransmitter system. Dopamine activity is often associated with reward and craving; therefore, drugs that affect dopamine neurotransmission often have abuse liability. Drugs in this category include cocaine, amphetamines (including methamphetamine), cathinones (i.e., bath salts), MDMA (ecstasy), nicotine, and caffeine. Cocaine can be taken in multiple ways. While many users snort cocaine, intravenous injection and ingestion are also common. The freebase version of cocaine, known as crack, is a potent, smokable version of the drug. Like many other stimulants, cocaine agonizes the dopamine neurotransmitter system by blocking the reuptake of dopamine in the neuronal synapse. Figure 3. Crack rocks like these are smoked to achieve a high. Compared with other routes of administration, smoking a drug allows it to enter the brain more rapidly, which can often enhance the user’s experience. (credit: modification of work by U.S. Department of Justice) DIG DEEPER: CRACK COCAINEDIG DEEPER: CRACK COCAINE Crack (Figure 3) is often considered to be more addictive than cocaine itself because it is smokable and reaches the brain very quickly. Crack is often less expensive than other forms of cocaine; therefore, it tends to be a more accessible drug for individuals from impoverished segments of society. During the 1980s, many drug laws were rewritten to punish crack users more severely than cocaine users. This led to discriminatory sentencing with low-income, inner-city minority populations receiving the harshest punishments. The wisdom of these laws has recently been called into question, especially given research that suggests crack may not be more addictive than other forms of cocaine, as previously thought (Haasen & Krausz, 2001; Reinerman, 2007). Figure 4. As one of their mechanisms of action, cocaine and amphetamines block the reuptake of dopamine from the synapse into the presynaptic cell. Amphetamines have a mechanism of action quite similar to cocaine in that they block the reuptake of dopamine in addition to stimulating its release (Figure 4). While amphetamines are often abused, they are also commonly prescribed to children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It may seem counterintuitive that stimulant medications are prescribed to treat a disorder that involves hyperactivity, but the therapeutic effect comes from increases in neurotransmitter activity within certain areas of the brain associated with impulse control. In recent years, methamphetamine (meth) use has become increasingly widespread. MethamphetamineMethamphetamine is a type of amphetamine that can be made from ingredients that are readily available (e.g., medications containing pseudoephedrine, a compound found in many over-the- counter cold and flu remedies). Despite recent changes in laws designed to make obtaining pseudoephedrine more difficult, methamphetamine continues to be an easily accessible and relatively inexpensive drug option (Shukla, Crump, & Chrisco, 2012). The cocaine, amphetamine, cathinones, and MDMA users seek a euphoric higheuphoric high, feelings of intense elation and pleasure, especially in those users who take the drug via intravenous injection or smoking. Repeated use of these stimulants can have significant adverse consequences. Users can experience physical symptoms that include nausea, elevated blood pressure, and increased heart rate. In addition, these drugs can cause feelings of anxiety, hallucinations, and paranoia (Fiorentini et al., 2011). Normal brain functioning is altered after repeated use of these drugs. For example, repeated use can lead to overall depletion among the monoamine neurotransmitters (dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin). People may engage in compulsive use of these stimulant substances in part to try to reestablish normal levels of these neurotransmitters (Jayanthi & Ramamoorthy, 2005; Rothman, Blough, & Baumann, 2007). CaffeineCaffeine is another stimulant drug. While it is probably the most commonly used drug in the world, the potency of this particular drug pales in comparison to the other stimulant drugs described in this section. Generally, people use caffeine to maintain increased levels of alertness and arousal. Caffeine is found in many common medicines (such as weight loss drugs), beverages, foods, and even cosmetics (Herman & Herman, 2013). While caffeine may have some indirect effects on dopamine neurotransmission, its primary mechanism of action involves antagonizing adenosine activity (Porkka-Heiskanen, 2011). While caffeine is generally considered a relatively safe drug, high blood levels of caffeine can result in insomnia, agitation, muscle twitching, nausea, irregular heartbeat, and even death (Reissig, Strain, & Griffiths, 2009; Wolt, Ganetsky, & Babu, 2012). In 2012, Kromann and Nielson reported on a case study of a 40-year-old woman who suffered significant ill effects from her use of caffeine. The woman used caffeine in the past to boost her mood and to provide energy, but over the course of several years, she increased her caffeine consumption to the point that she was consuming three liters of soda each day. Although she had been taking a prescription antidepressant, her symptoms of depression continued to worsen and she began to suffer physically, displaying significant warning signs of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Upon admission to an outpatient clinic for treatment of mood disorders, she met all of the diagnostic criteria for substance dependence and was advised to dramatically limit her caffeine intake. Once she was able to limit her use to less than 12 ounces of soda a day, both her mental and physical health gradually improved. Despite the prevalence of caffeine use and the large number of people who confess to suffering from caffeine addiction, this was the first published description of soda dependence appearing in scientific literature. Nicotine is highly addictive, and the use of tobacco products is associated with increased risks of heart disease, stroke, and a variety of cancers. Nicotine exerts its effects through its interaction with acetylcholine receptors. Acetylcholine functions as a neurotransmitter in motor neurons. In the central nervous system, it plays a role in arousal and reward mechanisms. Nicotine is most commonly used in the form of tobacco products like cigarettes or chewing tobacco; therefore, there is a tremendous interest in developing effective smoking cessation techniques. To date, people have used a variety of nicotine replacement therapies in addition to various psychotherapeutic options in an attempt to discontinue their use of tobacco products. In general, smoking cessation programs may be effective in the short term, but it is unclear whether these effects persist (Cropley, LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING To learn more about some of the most commonly abused prescription and street drugs, check out the Commonly Abused Drugs Chart and the Commonly Abused Prescription Drugs Chart from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2104 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2104 TRY ITTRY IT Theadom, Pravettoni, & Webb, 2008; Levitt, Shaw, Wong, & Kaczorowski, 2007; Smedslund, Fisher, Boles, & Lichtenstein, 2004). Opioids An opioidopioid is one of a category of drugs that includes heroin, morphine, methadone, and codeine. Opioids have analgesic properties; that is, they decrease pain. Humans have an endogenous opioid neurotransmitter system—the body makes small quantities of opioid compounds that bind to opioid receptors reducing pain and producing euphoria. Thus, opioid drugs, which mimic this endogenous painkilling mechanism, have an extremely high potential for abuse. Natural opioids, called opiates, are derivatives of opium, which is a naturally occurring compound found in the poppy plant. There are now several synthetic versions of opiate drugs (correctly called opioids) that have very potent painkilling effects, and they are often abused. For example, the National Institutes of Drug Abuse has sponsored research that suggests the misuse and abuse of the prescription pain killers hydrocodone and oxycodone are significant public health concerns (Maxwell, 2006). In 2013, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended tighter controls on their medical use. Historically, heroin has been a major opioid drug of abuse (Figure 5). Heroin can be snorted, smoked, or injected intravenously. Like the stimulants described earlier, the use of heroin is associated with an initial feeling of euphoria followed by periods of agitation. Because heroin is often administered via intravenous injection, users often bear needle track marks on their arms and, like all abusers of intravenous drugs, have an increased risk for contraction of both tuberculosis and HIV. https://www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abuse/commonly-abused-drugs-charts https://www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abuse/commonly-abused-drugs-charts Figure 5. (a) Common paraphernalia for heroin preparation and use are shown here in a needle exchange kit. (b) Heroin is cooked on a spoon over a candle. (credit a: modification of work by Todd Huffman) An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2104 TRY ITTRY IT Aside from their utility as analgesic drugs, opioid-like compounds are often found in cough suppressants, anti- nausea, and anti-diarrhea medications. Given that withdrawal from a drug often involves an experience opposite to the effect of the drug, it should be no surprise that opioid withdrawal resembles a severe case of the flu. While opioid withdrawal can be extremely unpleasant, it is not life-threatening (Julien, 2005). Still, people experiencing opioid withdrawal may be given methadonemethadone to make withdrawal from the drug less difficult. Methadone is a synthetic opioid that is less euphorigenic than heroin and similar drugs. Methadone clinicsMethadone clinics help people who previously struggled with opioid addiction manage withdrawal symptoms through the use of methadone. Other drugs, including the opioid buprenorphine, have also been used to alleviate symptoms of opiate withdrawal. CodeineCodeine is an opioid with relatively low potency. It is often prescribed for minor pain, and it is available over-the- counter in some other countries. Like all opioids, codeine does have abuse potential. In fact, abuse of prescription opioid medications is becoming a major concern worldwide (Aquina, Marques-Baptista, Bridgeman, & Merlin, 2009; Casati, Sedefov, & Pfeiffer-Gerschel, 2012). Figure 6. Psychedelic images like this are often associated with hallucinogenic compounds. (credit: modification of work by “new 1lluminati”/Flickr) Figure 7. Medical marijuana shops are becoming more and more common in the United States. (credit: Laurie Avocado) DIG DEEPER: MEDICAL MARIJUANADIG DEEPER: MEDICAL MARIJUANA While the possession and use of marijuana is illegal in most states, it is now legal in Washington, Colorado, Oregon, and Alaska to possess limited quantities of marijuana for recreational use. In contrast, medical marijuana use is now legal in nearly half of the United States. Medical marijuana is marijuana that is prescribed by a doctor for the treatment of a health condition. For example, people who undergo chemotherapy will often be prescribed marijuana to stimulate their appetites and prevent excessive weight loss resulting from the side effects of chemotherapy treatment. Marijuana may also have some promise in the treatment of a variety of medical conditions (Mather, Rauwendaal, Moxham-Hall, & Wodak, 2013; Robson, 2014; Schicho & Storr, 2014). While medical marijuana laws have been passed on a state-by-state basis, federal laws still classify this as an illicit substance, making conducting research on the potentially beneficial medicinal uses of marijuana problematic. There is quite a bit of controversy within the scientific community as to the extent to which marijuana might have medicinal benefits due to a lack of large- scale, controlled research (Bostwick, 2012). As a result, many scientists have urged the federal government to allow for relaxation of current marijuana laws and classifications in order to facilitate a more widespread study of the drug’s effects (Aggarwal et al., 2009; Bostwick, 2012; Kogan & Mechoulam, 2007). Until recently, the United States Department of Justice routinely arrested people involved and seized marijuana used in medicinal settings. In the latter part of 2013, however, the United States Department of Justice issued statements indicating that they would not continue to challenge state medical marijuana laws. This shift in policy may be in response to the scientific community’s recommendations and/or reflect changing public opinion regarding marijuana. TRY ITTRY IT Hallucinogens A hallucinogenhallucinogen is one of a class of drugs that results in profound alterations in sensory and perceptual experiences (Figure 6). In some cases, users experience vivid visual hallucinations. Common hallucinogens include marijuana, psilocybin (shrooms), mescaline (peyote), and LSD. It is also common for these types of drugs to cause hallucinations of body sensations (e.g., feeling as if you are a giant) and a skewed perception of the passage of time. As a group, hallucinogens are incredibly varied in terms of the neurotransmitter systems they affect. Mescaline and LSD are serotonin agonists, and PCP (angel dust) and ketamine (an animal anesthetic) act as antagonists of the NMDA glutamate receptor. In general, these drugs are not thought to possess the same sort of abuse potential as other classes of drugs discussed in this section. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2104 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2104 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Practice your understanding of how drugs affect neurotransmitters in the brain in the the PsychSim Tutorial “Your Mind on Drugs.” The tutorial is only intended for practice. Please disregard the final screen that requests you submit answers to your instructor. Then visit the Mouse Party website to see a visual example of how drugs alter the chemicals in the brain. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2104 TRY ITTRY IT GLOSSARYGLOSSARY codeine:codeine: opiate with relatively low potency often prescribed for minor pain depressant:depressant: drug that tends to suppress central nervous system activity euphoric high:euphoric high: feelings of intense elation and pleasure from drug use hallucinogen:hallucinogen: one of a class of drugs that results in profound alterations in sensory and perceptual experiences, often with vivid hallucinations methadone:methadone: synthetic opioid that is less euphorogenic than heroin and similar drugs; used to manage withdrawal symptoms in opiate users methadone clinic:methadone clinic: uses methadone to treat withdrawal symptoms in opiate users Summary of Psychoactive Drugs Substance use disorder is defined in DSM-5 as a compulsive pattern of drug use despite negative consequences. Both physical and psychological dependence are important parts of this disorder. Alcohol, barbiturates, and benzodiazepines are central nervous system depressants that affect GABA neurotransmission. Cocaine, amphetamine, cathinones, and MDMA are all central nervous stimulants that agonize dopamine neurotransmission, while nicotine and caffeine affect acetylcholine and adenosine, respectively. Opiate drugs serve as powerful analgesics through their effects on the endogenous opioid neurotransmitter system, and hallucinogenic drugs cause pronounced changes in sensory and perceptual experiences. The hallucinogens are variable with regards to the specific neurotransmitter systems they affect. http://bcs.worthpublishers.com/webpub/Ektron/Myers_Psychology%2010e/PsychSim5_Tutorials/Your_Mind_On_Drugs/your_mind_on_drugs.htm http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/mouse/ methamphetamine:methamphetamine: type of amphetamine that can be made from pseudoephedrine, an over-the-counter drug; widely manufactured and abusedopiate/opioid:opiate/opioid: one of a category of drugs that has strong analgesic properties; opiates are produced from the resin of the opium poppy; includes heroin, morphine, methadone, and codeine opiate/opioid:opiate/opioid: one of a category of drugs that has strong analgesic properties; opiates are produced from the resin of the opium poppy; includes heroin, morphine, methadone, and codeine physical dependence:physical dependence: changes in normal bodily functions that cause a drug user to experience withdrawal symptoms upon cessation of use psychological dependence:psychological dependence: emotional, rather than a physical, need for a drug which may be used to relieve psychological distress stimulant:stimulant: drug that tends to increase overall levels of neural activity; includes caffeine, nicotine, amphetamines, and cocaine tolerance:tolerance: state of requiring increasing quantities of the drug to gain the desired effect withdrawal:withdrawal: variety of negative symptoms experienced when drug use is discontinued Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Psychology. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:fOU1RGxh@6/Substance-Use-and-Abuse. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/ contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • Mandelbrot Islands of Consciousness image. Authored byAuthored by: David R. Ingham. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mandelbrot_Islands_of_Consciousness . LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known Copyright All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Altered States - Crash Course Psychology #10. Provided byProvided by: CrashCourse. Located atLocated at: https://youtu.be/9PW1fwKjo-Y?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License HYPNOSIS AND MEDITATION LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe hypnosis and meditation Our states of consciousness change as we move from wakefulness to sleep. We also alter our consciousness through the use of various psychoactive drugs. This final section will consider hypnotic and meditative states as additional examples of altered states of consciousness experienced by some individuals. Hypnosis HypnosisHypnosis is a state of extreme self-focus and attention in which minimal attention is given to external stimuli. In the therapeutic setting, a clinician often will use relaxation and suggestion in an attempt to alter the thoughts and perceptions of a patient. Hypnosis has also been used to draw out information believed to be buried deeply in someone’s memory. For individuals who are especially open to the power of suggestion, this can prove to be a very effective technique, and brain imaging studies have demonstrated that hypnotic states are associated with global changes in brain functioning (Del Casale et al., 2012; Guldenmund, Vanhaudenhuyse, Boly, Laureys, & Soddu, 2012). Historically, hypnosis has been viewed with some suspicion because of its portrayal in popular media and entertainment (Figure 1). Therefore, it is important to make a distinction between hypnosis as an empirically based therapeutic approach versus as a form of entertainment. Contrary to popular belief, individuals undergoing https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:fOU1RGxh@6/Substance-Use-and-Abuse https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mandelbrot_Islands_of_Consciousness https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/about/pdm https://youtu.be/9PW1fwKjo-Y?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6 Figure 1. Popular portrayals of hypnosis have led to some widely-held misconceptions. TRY ITTRY IT hypnosis usually have clear memories of the hypnotic experience and are in control of their own behaviors. While hypnosis may be useful in enhancing memory or a skill, such enhancements are very modest in nature (Raz, 2011). How exactly does a hypnotist bring a participant to a state of hypnosis? While there are variations, there are four parts that appear consistent in bringing people into the state of suggestibility associated with hypnosis (National Research Council, 1994). These components include: The participant is guided to focus on one thing, such as the hypnotist’s words or a ticking watch. The participant is made comfortable and is directed to be relaxed and sleepy. The participant is told to be open to the process of hypnosis, trust the hypnotist and let go. The participant is encouraged to use his or her imagination. These steps are conducive to being open to the heightened suggestibility of hypnosis. People vary in terms of their ability to be hypnotized, but a review of available research suggests that most people are at least moderately hypnotizable (Kihlstrom, 2013). Hypnosis in conjunction with other techniques is used for a variety of therapeutic purposes and has shown to be at least somewhat effective for pain management, treatment of depression and anxiety, smoking cessation, and weight loss (Alladin, 2012; Elkins, Johnson, & Fisher, 2012; Golden, 2012; Montgomery, Schnur, & Kravits, 2012). Some scientists are working to determine whether the power of suggestion can affect cognitive processes such as learning, with a view to using hypnosis in educational settings (Wark, 2011). Furthermore, there is some evidence that hypnosis can alter processes that were once thought to be automatic and outside the purview of voluntary control, such as reading (Lifshitz, Aubert Bonn, Fischer, Kashem, & Raz, 2013; Raz, Shapiro, Fan, & Posner, 2002). However, it should be noted that others have suggested that the automaticity of these processes remains intact (Augustinova & Ferrand, 2012). How does hypnosis work? Two theories attempt to answer this question: One theory views hypnosis as dissociation and the other theory views it as the performance of a social role. According to the dissociation view, hypnosis is effectively a dissociated state of consciousness, much like our earlier example where you may drive to work, but you are only minimally aware of the process of driving because your attention is focused elsewhere. This theory is supported by Ernest Hilgard’s research into hypnosis and pain. In Hilgard’s experiments, he induced participants into a state of hypnosis, and placed their arms into ice water. Participants were told they would not feel pain, but they could press a button if they did; while they reported not feeling pain, they did, in fact, press the button, suggesting a dissociation of consciousness while in the hypnotic state (Hilgard & Hilgard, 1994). Taking a different approach to explain hypnosis, the social-cognitive theory of hypnosis sees people in hypnotic states as performing the social role of a hypnotized person. As you will learn when you study social roles, people’s behavior can be shaped by their expectations of how they should act in a given situation. Some view a hypnotized person’s behavior not as an altered or dissociated state of consciousness, but as their fulfillment of the social expectations for that role. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=137 Figure 2. (a) This is a statue of a meditating Buddha, representing one of the many religious traditions of which meditation plays a part. (b) People practicing meditation may experience an alternate state of consciousness. (credit a: modification of work by Jim Epler; credit b: modification of work by Caleb Roenigk) Meditation MeditationMeditation is the act of focusing on a single target (such as the breath or a repeated sound) to increase awareness of the moment. While hypnosis is generally achieved through the interaction of a therapist and the person being treated, an individual can perform meditation alone. Often, however, people wishing to learn to meditate receive some training in techniques to achieve a meditative state. A meditative state, as shown by EEG recordings of newly-practicing meditators, is not an altered state of consciousness per se; however, patterns of brain waves exhibited by expert meditators may represent a unique state of consciousness (Fell, Axmacher, & Haupt, 2010). Although there are a number of different techniques in use, the central feature of all meditation is clearing the mind in order to achieve a state of relaxed awareness and focus (Chen et al., 2013; Lang et al., 2012). Mindfulness meditation has recently become popular. In the variation of meditation, the meditator’s attention is focused on some internal process or an external object (Zeidan, Grant, Brown, McHaffie, & Coghill, 2012). Meditative techniques have their roots in religious practices (Figure 2), but their use has grown in popularity among practitioners of alternative medicine. Research indicates that meditation may help reduce blood pressure, and the American Heart Association suggests that meditation might be used in conjunction with more traditional treatments as a way to manage hypertension, although there is not sufficient data for a recommendation to be made (Brook et al., 2013). Like hypnosis, meditation also shows promise in stress management, sleep quality (Caldwell, Harrison, Adams, Quin, & Greeson, 2010), treatment of mood and anxiety disorders (Chen et al., 2013; Freeman et al., 2010; Vøllestad, Nielsen, & Nielsen, 2012), and pain management (Reiner, Tibi, & Lipsitz, 2013). LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch this video describe the results of a brain imaging study in individuals who underwent specific mindfulness-meditative techniques. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=137 TRY ITTRY IT GLOSSARYGLOSSARY hypnosishypnosis: state of extreme self-focus and attention in which minimal attention is given to external stimuli meditationmeditation: clearing the mind in order to achieve a state of relaxed awareness and focus An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=137 THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER • Under what circumstances would you be willing to consider hypnosis and/or meditation as a treatment option? What kind of information would you need before you made a decision to use these techniques? Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Other States of Consciousness. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:-J7Q2uv1@6/Other-States-of-Consciousness. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/. PUTTING IT TOGETHER: STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES In this module, you learned to: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-16406814 http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:-J7Q2uv1@6/Other-States-of-Consciousness https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Visit the NYTimes article, “You Draw It: Just How Bad Is the Drug Overdose Epidemic?” to take a look at current trends and the alarming amount of deaths caused by drug overdoses. A 2017 survey in Utah found that about 80 percent of heroin users started with prescription drugs. • describe consciousness and biological rhythms • describe what happens to the brain and body during sleep • explain how drugs affect consciousness Remember that psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Consider how your behavior is affected by varying states of consciousness—what happens if you don’t get enough sleep? How does your concentration and mood change? What happens to your conscious awareness when you take strong medications or drugs? In this module, you learned that varying states of consciousness, whether it be tiredness from jet lag, deep sleep, daydreaming, alcohol or drug use, hypnosis, or meditation, can all change physiological components in the mind as well as behavior. While we have control over some of these altered states, like meditation, there are sometimes variables outside of our control that lead to things like sleep disorders. Drug use often begins as a personal choice or something prescribed by a doctor, but many drugs have addictive qualities that make them hard to put down. Substance abuse disorders can develop out of drug use, and those with drug addictions struggle with physical and psychological dependence on the drug. This is an especially important issue for us today because death by drug overdoses has been dramatically increasing over the past few years. Take a look at the interactive below to see the increasing prevalence of drug overdoses. As you read in the article above, in 2015 there were 52,000 American deaths from all drug overdoses. Two thirds of them, 33,000, were from opioids, compared to 16,000 in 2010 and 4,000 in 1999. Death from opioid drug overdoses were nearly equal to the number of deaths from car crashes, with deaths from heroin alone accounting for more deaths than from gun violence. In 2016, deaths from overdoses increased over the previous year by 26% in Connecticut, 35% in Delaware, 39% in Maine, and 62% in Maryland. Nearly half of all opioid overdose deaths involve a prescription opioid. The governor of Maryland declared a State of Emergency in March 2017 to combat the epidemic and CDC director Thomas Frieden has said that “America is awash in opioids; urgent action is critical.” With this sudden, extreme increase in drug overdoses, psychologists and psychiatrists will continue to play an important role in researching, educating, and preventing substance abuse disorders. You can read more about what researchers are doing at the Addiction Connection or even find some practical tips on ways to prevent a drug overdose in this article from Psychology Today. Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Opioid Epidemic. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Generic temazepam 10 mg tablets. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temazepam#/media/File:Temazepam_10mg_tablets-1 . LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike https://youtu.be/3mufsteNrTI https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/14/upshot/drug-overdose-epidemic-you-draw-it.html https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/26123017/1280px-Temazepam_10mg_tablets-1 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/26123017/1280px-Temazepam_10mg_tablets-1 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-addiction-connection https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-addiction-connection/201407/how-prevent-drug-overdose https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temazepam#/media/File:Temazepam_10mg_tablets-1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ DISCUSSION: STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS Sleep Stages STEP 1STEP 1: Respond to the following in a primary post of at least 150-200 words: • What are the stages of sleep and what is the importance of sleep? • Most of us feel like we never get enough sleep. What can you do to improve your sleep and improve your consciousness during waking hours? STEP 2STEP 2: Thoughtfully respond to a minimum of 2 classmates with secondary posts of at least 75-100 words. Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Discussion: States of Consciousness. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Discussion ideas. Authored byAuthored by: Terry Davis . Provided byProvided by: Wiley College. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ MODULE 6: LEARNING WHY IT MATTERS: LEARNING Figure 1. Loggerhead sea turtle hatchlings are born knowing how to find the ocean and how to swim. Unlike the sea turtle, humans must learn how to swim (and surf). (credit “turtle”: modification of work by Becky Skiba, USFWS; credit “surfer”: modification of work by Mike Baird) The summer sun shines brightly on a deserted stretch of beach. Suddenly, a tiny grey head emerges from the sand, then another and another. Soon the beach is teeming with loggerhead sea turtle hatchlings (Figure 1). Although only minutes old, the hatchlings know exactly what to do. Their flippers are not very efficient for moving across the hot sand, yet they continue onward, instinctively. Some are quickly snapped up by gulls circling overhead and others become lunch for hungry ghost crabs that dart out of their holes. Despite these dangers, the hatchlings are driven to leave the safety of their nest and find the ocean. Not far down this same beach, Ben and his son, Julian, paddle out into the ocean on surfboards. A wave approaches. Julian crouches on his board, then jumps up and rides the wave for a few seconds before losing his balance. He emerges from the water in time to watch his father ride the face of the wave. Unlike baby sea turtles, which know how to find the ocean and swim with no help from their parents, we are not born knowing how to swim (or surf). Yet we humans pride ourselves on our ability to learn. In fact, over thousands of years and across cultures, we have created institutions devoted entirely to learning. But have you ever asked yourself how exactly it is that we learn? What processes are at work as we come to know what we know? This module focuses on the primary ways in which learning occurs. AnswerAnswer Anderson, C. A., & Gentile, D. A. (2008). Media violence, aggression, and public policy. In E. Borgida & S. Fiske (Eds.), Beyond common sense: Psychological science in the courtroom (p. 322). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63, 575–582. Cangi, K., & Daly, M. (2013). The effects of token economies on the occurrence of appropriate and inappropriate behaviors by children with autism in a social skills setting. West Chester University: Journal of Undergraduate Research. Retrieved from http://www.wcupa.edu/UndergraduateResearch/journal/documents/cangi_S2012 Carlson, L., Holscher, C., Shipley, T., & Conroy Dalton, R. (2010). Getting lost in buildings. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(5), 284–289. Cialdini, R. B. (2008). Influence: Science and practice (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education. Chance, P. (2009). Learning and behavior (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. DeAngelis, T. (2010). ‘Little Albert’ regains his identity. Monitor on Psychology, 41(1), 10. Franzen, H. (2001, May 24). Gambling, like food and drugs, produces feelings of reward in the brain. Scientific American [online]. Retrieved from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gamblinglike-food-and-dru Fryer, R. G., Jr. (2010, April). Financial incentives and student achievement: Evidence from randomized trials. National Bureau of Economic Research [NBER] Working Paper, No. 15898. Retrieved from http://www.nber.org/ papers/w15898 Garcia, J., & Koelling, R. A. (1966). Relation of cue to consequence in avoidance learning. Psychonomic Science, 4, 123–124. Garcia, J., & Rusiniak, K. W. (1980). What the nose learns from the mouth. In D. Müller-Schwarze & R. M. Silverstein (Eds.), Chemical signals: Vertebrates and aquatic invertebrates (pp. 141–156). New York, NY: Plenum Press. Gershoff, E. T. (2002). Corporal punishment by parents and associated child behaviors and experiences: A meta- analytic and theoretical review. Psychological Bulletin, 128(4), 539–579. doi:10.1037//0033-2909.128.4.539 Gershoff, E.T., Grogan-Kaylor, A., Lansford, J. E., Chang, L., Zelli, A., Deater-Deckard, K., & Dodge, K. A. (2010). Parent discipline practices in an international sample: Associations with child behaviors and moderation by perceived normativeness. Child Development, 81(2), 487–502. Hickock, G. (2010). The role of mirror neurons in speech and language processing. Brain and Language, 112, 1–2. Holmes, S. (1993). Food avoidance in patients undergoing cancer chemotherapy. Support Care Cancer, 1(6), 326–330. Hunt, M. (2007). The story of psychology. New York, NY: Doubleday. Huston, A. C., Donnerstein, E., Fairchild, H., Feshbach, N. D., Katz, P. A., Murray, J. P., . . . Zuckerman, D. (1992). Big world, small screen: The role of television in American society. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Hutton, J. L., Baracos, V. E., & Wismer, W. V. (2007). Chemosensory dysfunction is a primary factor in the evolution of declining nutritional status and quality of life with patients with advanced cancer. Journal of Pain Symptom Management, 33(2), 156–165. Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery. (n.d.). WTVP on gambling. Retrieved from http://www.addictionrecov.org/ InTheNews/Gambling/ Jacobsen, P. B., Bovbjerg, D. H., Schwartz, M. D., Andrykowski, M. A., Futterman, A. D., Gilewski, T., . . . Redd, W. H. (1993). Formation of food aversions in cancer patients receiving repeated infusions of chemotherapy. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 31(8), 739–748. Kirsch, SJ (2010). Media and youth: A developmental perspective. Malden MA: Wiley Blackwell. Lefrançois, G. R. (2012). Theories of human learning: What the professors said (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Miller, L. E., Grabell, A., Thomas, A., Bermann, E., & Graham-Bermann, S. A. (2012). The associations between community violence, television violence, intimate partner violence, parent-child aggression, and aggression in sibling relationships of a sample of preschoolers. Psychology of Violence, 2(2), 165–78. doi:10.1037/a0027254 Murrell, A., Christoff, K. & Henning, K. (2007) Characteristics of domestic violence offenders: associations with childhood exposure to violence. Journal of Family Violence, 22(7), 523-532. Pavlov, I. P. (1927). Conditioned reflexes: An investigation of the physiological activity of the cerebral cortex (G. V. Anrep, Ed. & Trans.). London, UK: Oxford University Press. Rizzolatti, G., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L., & Gallese, V. (2002). From mirror neurons to imitation: Facts and speculations. In A. N. Meltzoff & W. Prinz (Eds.), The imitative mind: Development, evolution, and brain bases (pp. 247–66). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. Rizzolatti, G., Fogassi, L., & Gallese, V. (2006, November). Mirrors in the mind. Scientific American [online], pp. 54–61. Roy, A., Adinoff, B., Roehrich, L., Lamparski, D., Custer, R., Lorenz, V., . . . Linnoila, M. (1988). Pathological gambling: A psychobiological study. Archives of General Psychiatry, 45(4), 369–373. doi:10.1001/ archpsyc.1988.01800280085011 Skinner, B. F. (1938). The behavior of organisms: An experimental analysis. New York, NY: Appleton-Century- Crofts. Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. New York, NY: Macmillan. Skinner, B. F. (1961). Cumulative record: A selection of papers. New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Skinner’s utopia: Panacea, or path to hell? (1971, September 20). Time [online]. Retrieved from http://www.wou.edu/~girodm/611/Skinner%27s_utopia Skolin, I., Wahlin, Y. B., Broman, D. A., Hursti, U-K. K., Larsson, M. V., & Hernell, O. (2006). Altered food intake and taste perception in children with cancer after start of chemotherapy: Perspectives of children, parents and nurses. Supportive Care in Cancer, 14, 369–78. Thorndike, E. L. (1911). Animal intelligence: An experimental study of the associative processes in animals. Psychological Monographs, 8. Tolman, E. C., & Honzik, C. H. (1930). Degrees of hunger, reward, and non-reward, and maze performance in rats. University of California Publications in Psychology, 4, 241–256. Tolman, E. C., Ritchie, B. F., & Kalish, D. (1946). Studies in spatial learning: II. Place learning versus response learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 36, 221–229. doi:10.1037/h0060262 Watson, J. B. & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3, 1–14. Watson, J. B. (1919). Psychology from the standpoint of a behaviorist. Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott. Yamamoto, S., Humle, T., & Tanaka, M. (2013). Basis for cumulative cultural evolution in chimpanzees: Social learning of a more efficient tool-use technique. PLoS ONE, 8(1): e55768. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0055768 Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Introduction to Learning. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:Nc0-RFXN@4/Introduction. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/ content/col11629/latest/. http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:Nc0-RFXN@4/Introduction https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ WHAT IS LEARNING? What you’ll learn to do: explain learning and the process of classical conditioning In this section, you’ll learn about learning. It might not be “learning” as you typically think of the word, because we’re not talking about going to school, or studying, or even effortfully trying to remember something. Instead, you’ll see that one of the main types of behavioral learning that we do is simply through an automatic process of association, known as classical conditioning. In classical conditioning, organisms learn to associate events that repeatedly happen together, and researchers study how a reflexive response to a stimulus can be mapped to a different stimulus—by training an association between the two stimuli. Ivan Pavlov’s experiments show how stimulus-response bonds are formed. Watson, the founder of behaviorism, was greatly influenced by Pavlov’s work. He tested humans by conditioning fear in an infant known as Little Albert. His findings suggest that classical conditioning can explain how some fears develop. LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Recognize and define three basic forms of learning—classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/04/11014319/dog-580466_1920 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=176 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=176 TRY ITTRY IT Learning Birds build nests and migrate as winter approaches. Infants suckle at their mother’s breast. Dogs shake water off wet fur. Salmon swim upstream to spawn, and spiders spin intricate webs. What do these seemingly unrelated behaviors have in common? They all are unlearned behaviors. Both instincts and reflexes are innate behaviors that organisms are born with. ReflexesReflexes are a motor or neural reaction to a specific stimulus in the environment. They tend to be simpler than instincts, involve the activity of specific body parts and systems (e.g., the knee-jerk reflex and the contraction of the pupil in bright light), and involve more primitive centers of the central nervous system (e.g., the spinal cord and the medulla). In contrast, instinctsinstincts are innate behaviors that are triggered by a broader range of events, such as aging and the change of seasons. They are more complex patterns of behavior, involve movement of the organism as a whole (e.g., sexual activity and migration), and involve higher brain centers. Both reflexes and instincts help an organism adapt to its environment and do not have to be learned. For example, every healthy human baby has a sucking reflex, present at birth. Babies are born knowing how to suck on a nipple, whether artificial (from a bottle) or human. Nobody teaches the baby to suck, just as no one teaches a sea turtle hatchling to move toward the ocean. Learning, like reflexes and instincts, allows an organism to adapt to its environment. But unlike instincts and reflexes, learned behaviors involve change and experience: learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior or knowledge that results from experience. In contrast to the innate behaviors discussed above, learning involves acquiring knowledge and skills through experience. Looking back at our surfing scenario, Julian will have to spend much more time training with his surfboard before he learns how to ride the waves like his father. Learning to surf, as well as any complex learning process (e.g., learning about the discipline of psychology), involves a complex interaction of conscious and unconscious processes. Learning has traditionally been studied in terms of its simplest components—the associations our minds automatically make between events. Our minds have a natural tendency to connect events that occur closely together or in sequence. Associative learningAssociative learning occurs when an organism makes connections between stimuli or events that occur together in the environment. You will see that associative learning is central to all three basic learning processes discussed in this module; classical conditioning tends to involve unconscious processes, operant conditioning tends to involve conscious processes, and observational learning adds social and cognitive layers to all the basic associative processes, both conscious and unconscious. These learning processes will be discussed in detail later, but it is helpful to have a brief overview of each as you begin to explore how learning is understood from a psychological perspective. In classical conditioning, also known as Pavlovian conditioning, organisms learn to associate events—or stimuli—that repeatedly happen together. We experience this process throughout our daily lives. For example, you might see a flash of lightning in the sky during a storm and then hear a loud boom of thunder. The sound of the thunder naturally makes you jump (loud noises have that effect by reflex). Because lightning reliably predicts the impending boom of thunder, you may associate the two and jump when you see lightning. Psychological researchers study this associative process by focusing on what can be seen and measured—behaviors. Researchers ask if one stimulus triggers a reflex, can we train a different stimulus to trigger that same reflex? In operant conditioning, organisms learn, again, to associate events—a behavior and its consequence (reinforcement or punishment). A pleasant consequence encourages more of that behavior in the future, whereas a punishment deters the behavior. Imagine you are teaching your dog, Hodor, to sit. You tell Hodor to sit, and give Figure 1. In operant conditioning, a response is associated with a consequence. This dog has learned that certain behaviors result in receiving a treat. (credit: Crystal Rolfe) An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=176 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING For a sneak peak and overview of the main different types of learning, watch the CrashCourse psychology below. We’ll learn about each of these topics in greater depth throughout this module. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=176 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=176 TRY ITTRY IT him a treat when he does. After repeated experiences, Hodor begins to associate the act of sitting with receiving a treat. He learns that the consequence of sitting is that he gets a doggie biscuit (Figure 1). Conversely, if the dog is punished when exhibiting a behavior, it becomes conditioned to avoid that behavior (e.g., receiving a small shock when crossing the boundary of an invisible electric fence). Observational learning extends the effective range of both classical and operant conditioning. In contrast to classical and operant conditioning, in which learning occurs only through direct experience, observational learning is the process of watching others and then imitating what they do. A lot of learning among humans and other animals comes from observational learning. To get an idea of the extra effective range that observational learning brings, consider Ben and his son Julian from the introduction. How might observation help Julian learn to surf, as opposed to learning by trial and error alone? By watching his father, he can imitate the moves that bring success and avoid the moves that lead to failure. Can you think of something you have learned how to do after watching someone else? All of the approaches covered in this module are part of a particular tradition in psychology, called behaviorism. However, these approaches you’ll be introduced to do not represent the entire study of learning. Separate traditions of learning have taken shape within different fields of psychology, such as memory and cognition, so you will find that other sections of this book will round out your understanding of the topic. Over time these traditions tend to converge. For example, in this module you will see how cognition has come to play a larger role in behaviorism, whose more extreme adherents once insisted that behaviors are triggered by the environment with no intervening thought. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=176 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=176 GLOSSARYGLOSSARY associative learning:associative learning: form of learning that involves connecting certain stimuli or events that occur together in the environment (classical and operant conditioning) instinct:instinct: unlearned knowledge, involving complex patterns of behavior; instincts are thought to be more prevalent in lower animals than in humans learning:learning: change in behavior or knowledge that is the result of experience reflex:reflex: unlearned, automatic response by an organism to a stimulus in the environment THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER • What is your personal definition of learning? How do your ideas about learning compare with the definition of learning presented in this text? • What kinds of things have you learned through the process of classical conditioning? Operant conditioning? Observational learning? How did you learn them? Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • What is Learning?. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:QNyXkiP7@5/What-Is-Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/ content/col11629/latest/. • dog picture. Authored byAuthored by: skeeze. Located atLocated at: https://pixabay.com/en/dog-canine-labrador-retriever-580466/. LicenseLicense: CC0: No Rights Reserved All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • How to Train a Brain - Crash Course Psychology #11. Provided byProvided by: CrashCourse. Located atLocated at: https://youtu.be/qG2SwE_6uVM?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License CLASSICAL CONDITIONING LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explain how classical conditioning occurs • Identify the NS, UCS, UCR, CS, and CR in classical conditioning situations • Describe the processes of acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, and discrimination https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:QNyXkiP7@5/What-Is-Learning https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://pixabay.com/en/dog-canine-labrador-retriever-580466/ https://creativecommons.org/about/cc0 https://youtu.be/qG2SwE_6uVM?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6 Figure 1. Ivan Pavlov’s research on the digestive system of dogs unexpectedly led to his discovery of the learning process now known as classical conditioning. Does the name Ivan Pavlov ring a bell? Even if you are new to the study of psychology, chances are that you have heard of Pavlov and his famous dogs. Pavlov (1849–1936), a Russian scientist, performed extensive research on dogs and is best known for his experiments in classical conditioning (Figure 1). As we discussed briefly in the previous section, classicalclassical conditioningconditioning is a process by which we learn to associate stimuli and, consequently, to anticipate events. Pavlov came to his conclusions about how learning occurs completely by accident. Pavlov was a physiologist, not a psychologist. Physiologists study the life processes of organisms, from the molecular level to the level of cells, organ systems, and entire organisms. Pavlov’s area of interest was the digestive system (Hunt, 2007). In his studies with dogs, Pavlov surgically implanted tubes inside dogs’ cheeks to collect saliva. He then measured the amount of saliva produced in response to various foods. Over time, Pavlov (1927) observed that the dogs began to salivate not only at the taste of food, but also at the sight of food, at the sight of an empty food bowl, and even at the sound of the laboratory assistants’ footsteps. Salivating to food in the mouth is reflexive, so no learning is involved. However, dogs don’t naturally salivate at the sight of an empty bowl or the sound of footsteps. These unusual responses intrigued Pavlov, and he wondered what accounted for what he called the dogs’ “psychic secretions” (Pavlov, 1927). To explore this phenomenon in an objective manner, Pavlov designed a series of carefully controlled experiments to see which stimuli would cause the dogs to salivate. He was able to train the dogs to salivate in response to stimuli that clearly had nothing to do with food, such as the sound of a bell, a light, and a touch on the leg. Through his experiments, Pavlov realized that an organism has two types of responses to its environment: (1) unconditioned (unlearned) responses, or reflexes, and (2) conditioned (learned) responses. In Pavlov’s experiments, the dogs salivated each time meat powder was presented to them. The meat powder in this situation was an unconditioned stimulus (UCS)unconditioned stimulus (UCS): a stimulus that elicits a reflexive response in an organism. The dogs’ salivation was an unconditioned response (UCR)unconditioned response (UCR): a natural (unlearned) reaction to a given stimulus. Before conditioning, think of the dogs’ stimulus and response like this: Meat powder (UCS) → Salivation (UCR)Meat powder (UCS) → Salivation (UCR) In classical conditioning, a neutral stimulusneutral stimulus is presented immediately before an unconditioned stimulus. Pavlov would sound a tone (like ringing a bell) and then give the dogs the meat powder (Figure 2). The tone was the neutral stimulus (NS), which is a stimulus that does not naturally elicit a response. Prior to conditioning, the dogs did not salivate when they just heard the tone because the tone had no association for the dogs. Quite simply this pairing means: Tone (NS) + Meat Powder (UCS) → Salivation (UCR)Tone (NS) + Meat Powder (UCS) → Salivation (UCR) When Pavlov paired the tone with the meat powder over and over again, the previously neutral stimulus (the tone) also began to elicit salivation from the dogs. Thus, the neutral stimulus became the conditioned stimulus (CS)conditioned stimulus (CS), which is a stimulus that elicits a response after repeatedly being paired with an unconditioned stimulus. Eventually, the dogs began to salivate to the tone alone, just as they previously had salivated at the sound of the assistants’ footsteps. The behavior caused by the conditioned stimulus is called the conditioned response (CR)conditioned response (CR). In the case of Pavlov’s dogs, they had learned to associate the tone (CS) with being fed, and they began to salivate (CR) in anticipation of food. Tone (CS) → Salivation (CR)Tone (CS) → Salivation (CR) Figure 2. Before conditioning, an unconditioned stimulus (food) produces an unconditioned response (salivation), and a neutral stimulus (bell) does not produce a response. During conditioning, the unconditioned stimulus (food) is presented repeatedly just after the presentation of the neutral stimulus (bell). After conditioning, the neutral stimulus alone produces a conditioned response (salivation), thus becoming a conditioned stimulus. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Now that you have learned about the process of classical conditioning, do you think you can condition Pavlov’s dog? Visit this website to play the game. Next, view the following video to learn more about Pavlov and his dogs: An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2297 TRY ITTRY IT https://www.nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/pavlov/pavlov.html A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2297 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2297 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2297 Real World Application of Classical Conditioning How does classical conditioning work in the real world? Let’s say you have a cat named Tiger, who is quite spoiled. You keep her food in a separate cabinet, and you also have a special electric can opener that you use only to open cans of cat food. For every meal, Tiger hears the distinctive sound of the electric can opener (“zzhzhz”) and then gets her food. Tiger quickly learns that when she hears “zzhzhz” she is about to get fed. What do you think Tiger does when she hears the electric can opener? She will likely get excited and run to where you are preparing her food. This is an example of classical conditioning. In this case, what are the UCS, CS, UCR, and CR?What if the cabinet holding Tiger’s food becomes squeaky? In that case, Tiger hears “squeak” (the cabinet), “zzhzhz” (the electric can opener), and then she gets her food. Tiger will learn to get excited when she hears the “squeak” of the cabinet. Pairing a new neutral stimulus (“squeak”) with the conditioned stimulus (“zzhzhz”) is called higher-order conditioning, or second-order conditioning. This means you are using the conditioned stimulus of the can opener to condition another stimulus: the squeaky cabinet (Figure 3). It is hard to achieve anything above second-order conditioning. For example, if you ring a bell, open the cabinet (“squeak”), use the can opener (“zzhzhz”), and then feed Tiger, Tiger will likely never get excited when hearing the bell alone. Figure 3. In higher-order conditioning, an established conditioned stimulus is paired with a new neutral stimulus (the second-order stimulus), so that eventually the new stimulus also elicits the conditioned response, without the initial conditioned stimulus being presented. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Get some more practice with classical conditioning through the following PsychSim Tutorial. The tutorial is only intended for practice. Please disregard the final screen that requests you submit answers to your instructor. • Classical Conditioning Figure 4. Kate holds a southern stingray at Stingray City in the Cayman Islands. These stingrays have been classically conditioned to associate the sound of a boat motor with food provided by tourists. (credit: Kathryn Dumper) EVERYDAY CONNECTION: CLASSICAL CONDITIONING AT STINGRAY CITYEVERYDAY CONNECTION: CLASSICAL CONDITIONING AT STINGRAY CITY Kate and her husband Scott recently vacationed in the Cayman Islands, and booked a boat tour to Stingray City, where they could feed and swim with the southern stingrays. The boat captain explained how the normally solitary stingrays have become accustomed to interacting with humans. About 40 years ago, fishermen began to clean fish and conch (unconditioned stimulus) at a particular sandbar near a barrier reef, and large numbers of stingrays would swim in to eat (unconditioned response) what the fishermen threw into the water; this continued for years. By the late 1980s, word of the large group of stingrays spread among scuba divers, who then started feeding them by hand. Over time, the southern stingrays in the area were classically conditioned much like Pavlov’s dogs. When they hear the sound of a boat engine (neutral stimulus that becomes a conditioned stimulus), they know that they will get to eat (conditioned response). As soon as Kate and Scott reached Stingray City, over two dozen stingrays surrounded their tour boat. The couple slipped into the water with bags of squid, the stingrays’ favorite treat. The swarm of stingrays bumped and rubbed up against their legs like hungry cats (Figure 4). Kate and Scott were able to feed, pet, and even kiss (for luck) these amazing creatures. Then all the squid was gone, and so were the stingrays. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING For a humorous look at conditioning, watch the following from the television show The Office, where Jim conditions Dwight to expect a breath mint every time Jim’s computer makes a specific sound. See if you can identify the NS, UCS, UCR, CS, and CR. Classical conditioning also applies to humans, even babies. For example, Sara buys formula in blue canisters for her six-month-old daughter, Angelina. Whenever Sara takes out a formula container, Angelina gets excited, tries to reach toward the food, and most likely salivates. Why does Angelina get excited when she sees the formula canister? What are the UCS, CS, UCR, and CR here? So far, all of the examples have involved food, but classical conditioning extends beyond the basic need to be fed. Consider our earlier example of a dog whose owners install an invisible electric dog fence. A small electrical shock (unconditioned stimulus) elicits discomfort (unconditioned response). When the unconditioned stimulus (shock) is paired with a neutral stimulus (the edge of a yard), the dog associates the discomfort (unconditioned response) with the edge of the yard (conditioned stimulus) and stays within the set boundaries. http://bcs.worthpublishers.com/webpub/Ektron/Myers_Psychology%2010e/PsychSim5_Tutorials/ClassicalConditioning/ClassicalConditioning.htm An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2297 The Office Classical Conditioning from Susann Stanley on Vimeo. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2297 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2297 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2297 TRY ITTRY IT THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER Can you think of an example in your life of how classical conditioning has produced a positive emotional response, such as happiness or excitement? How about a negative emotional response, such as fear, anxiety, or anger? Processes in Classical Conditioning Now that you know how classical conditioning works and have seen several examples, let’s take a look at some of the general processes involved. In classical conditioning, the initial period of learning is known as acquisition, when an organism learns to connect a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus. During acquisitionacquisition, the neutral stimulus begins to elicit the conditioned response, and eventually the neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus capable of eliciting the conditioned response by itself. Timing is important for conditioning to occur. Typically, there should only be a brief interval between presentation of the conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus. Depending on what is being conditioned, sometimes this interval is as little as five seconds (Chance, 2009). However, with other types of conditioning, the interval can be up to several hours. Taste aversionTaste aversion is a type of conditioning in which an interval of several hours may pass between the conditioned stimulus (something ingested) and the unconditioned stimulus (nausea or illness). Here’s how it works. Between classes, you and a friend grab a quick lunch from a food cart on campus. You share a dish of chicken curry and head off to your next class. A few hours later, you feel nauseous and become ill. Although your friend is fine and you determine that you have intestinal flu (the food is not the culprit), you’ve developed a taste aversion; the next time you are at a restaurant and someone orders curry, you immediately feel ill. While the chicken dish is not what made you sick, you are experiencing taste aversion: you’ve been conditioned to be averse to a food after a single, unpleasant experience. https://vimeo.com/35754924 https://vimeo.com/user10186722 https://vimeo.com How does this occur—conditioning based on a single instance and involving an extended time lapse between the event and the unpleasant stimulus? Research into taste aversion suggests that this response may be an evolutionary adaptation designed to help organisms quickly learn to avoid harmful foods (Garcia & Rusiniak, 1980; Garcia & Koelling, 1966). Not only may this contribute to species survival via natural selection, but it may also help us develop strategies for challenges such as helping cancer patients through the nausea induced by certain treatments (Holmes, 1993; Jacobsen et al., 1993; Hutton, Baracos, & Wismer, 2007; Skolin et al., 2006). Once we have established the connection between the unconditioned stimulus and the conditioned stimulus, how do we break that connection and get the dog, cat, or child to stop responding? In Tiger’s case, imagine what would happen if you stopped using the electric can opener for her food and began to use it only for human food. Now, Tiger would hear the can opener, but she would not get food. In classical conditioning terms, you would be giving the conditioned stimulus, but not the unconditioned stimulus. Pavlov explored this scenario in his experiments with dogs: sounding the tone without giving the dogs the meat powder. Soon the dogs stopped responding to the tone. ExtinctionExtinction is the decrease in the conditioned response when the unconditioned stimulus is no longer presented with the conditioned stimulus. When presented with the conditioned stimulus alone, the dog, cat, or other organism would show a weaker and weaker response, and finally no response. In classical conditioning terms, there is a gradual weakening and disappearance of the conditioned response. What happens when learning is not used for a while—when what was learned lies dormant? As we just discussed, Pavlov found that when he repeatedly presented the bell (conditioned stimulus) without the meat powder (unconditioned stimulus), extinction occurred; the dogs stopped salivating to the bell. However, after a couple of hours of resting from this extinction training, the dogs again began to salivate when Pavlov rang the bell. What do you think would happen with Tiger’s behavior if your electric can opener broke, and you did not use it for several months? When you finally got it fixed and started using it to open Tiger’s food again, Tiger would remember the association between the can opener and her food—she would get excited and run to the kitchen when she heard the sound. The behavior of Pavlov’s dogs and Tiger illustrates a concept Pavlov called spontaneous recovery: the return of a previously extinguished conditioned response following a rest period (Figure 5). Figure 5. This is the curve of acquisition, extinction, and spontaneous recovery. The rising curve shows the conditioned response quickly getting stronger through the repeated pairing of the conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus (acquisition). Then the curve decreases, which shows how the conditioned response weakens when only the conditioned stimulus is presented (extinction). After a break or pause from conditioning, the conditioned response reappears (spontaneous recovery). Of course, these processes also apply in humans. For example, let’s say that every day when you walk to campus, an ice cream truck passes your route. Day after day, you hear the truck’s music (neutral stimulus), so you finally stop and purchase a chocolate ice cream bar. You take a bite (unconditioned stimulus) and then your mouth waters (unconditioned response). This initial period of learning is known as acquisition, when you begin to connect the neutral stimulus (the sound of the truck) and the unconditioned stimulus (the taste of the chocolate ice cream in your mouth). During acquisition, the conditioned response gets stronger and stronger through repeated pairings of the conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus. Several days (and ice cream bars) later, you notice that your mouth begins to water (conditioned response) as soon as you hear the truck’s musical jingle—even before you bite into the ice cream bar. Then one day you head down the street. You hear the truck’s music (conditioned stimulus), and your mouth waters (conditioned response). However, when you get to the truck, you discover that they are all out of ice cream. You leave disappointed. The next few days you pass by the truck and hear the music, but don’t stop to get an ice cream bar because you’re running late for class. You begin to salivate less and less when you hear the music, until by the end of the week, your mouth no longer waters when you hear the tune. This illustrates extinction. The conditioned response weakens when only the conditioned stimulus (the sound of the truck) is presented, without being followed by the unconditioned stimulus (chocolate ice cream in the mouth). Then the weekend comes. You don’t have to go to class, so you don’t pass the truck. Monday morning arrives and you take your usual route to campus. You round the corner and hear the truck again. What do you think happens? Your mouth begins to water again. Why? After a break from conditioning, the conditioned response reappears, which indicates spontaneous recovery. Acquisition and extinction involve the strengthening and weakening, respectively, of a learned association. Two other learning processes—stimulus discrimination and stimulus generalization—are involved in distinguishing which stimuli will trigger the learned association. Animals (including humans) need to distinguish between An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2297 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2297 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2297 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2297 TRY ITTRY IT stimuli—for example, between sounds that predict a threatening event and sounds that do not—so that they can respond appropriately (such as running away if the sound is threatening). When an organism learns to respond differently to various stimuli that are similar, it is called stimulus discriminationstimulus discrimination. In classical conditioning terms, the organism demonstrates the conditioned response only to the conditioned stimulus. Pavlov’s dogs discriminated between the basic tone that sounded before they were fed and other tones (e.g., the doorbell), because the other sounds did not predict the arrival of food. Similarly, Tiger, the cat, discriminated between the sound of the can opener and the sound of the electric mixer. When the electric mixer is going, Tiger is not about to be fed, so she does not come running to the kitchen looking for food. On the other hand, when an organism demonstrates the conditioned response to stimuli that are similar to the condition stimulus, it is called stimulus generalizationstimulus generalization, the opposite of stimulus discrimination. The more similar a stimulus is to the condition stimulus, the more likely the organism is to give the conditioned response. For instance, if the electric mixer sounds very similar to the electric can opener, Tiger may come running after hearing its sound. But if you do not feed her following the electric mixer sound, and you continue to feed her consistently after the electric can opener sound, she will quickly learn to discriminate between the two sounds (provided they are sufficiently dissimilar that she can tell them apart). Sometimes, classical conditioning can lead to habituation. HabituationHabituation occurs when we learn not to respond to a stimulus that is presented repeatedly without change. As the stimulus occurs over and over, we learn not to focus our attention on it. For example, imagine that your neighbor or roommate constantly has the television blaring. This background noise is distracting and makes it difficult for you to focus when you’re studying. However, over time, you become accustomed to the stimulus of the television noise, and eventually you hardly notice it any longer. Classical Conditioning and Behaviorism John B. Watson, shown in Figure 6, is considered the founder of behaviorism. Behaviorism is a school of thought that arose during the first part of the 20th century, which incorporates elements of Pavlov’s classical conditioning (Hunt, 2007). In stark contrast with Freud, who considered the reasons for behavior to be hidden in the unconscious, Watson championed the idea that all behavior can be studied as a simple stimulus-response reaction, without regard for internal processes. Watson argued that in order for psychology to become a legitimate science, it must shift its concern away from internal mental processes because mental processes cannot be seen or measured. Instead, he asserted that psychology must focus on outward observable behavior that can be measured. Figure 6. John B. Watson used the principles of classical conditioning in the study of human emotion. Watson’s ideas were influenced by Pavlov’s work. According to Watson, human behavior, just like animal behavior, is primarily the result of conditioned responses. Whereas Pavlov’s work with dogs involved the conditioning of reflexes, Watson believed the same principles could be extended to the conditioning of human emotions (Watson, 1919). Thus began Watson’s work with his graduate student Rosalie Rayner and a baby called Little Albert. Through their experiments with Little Albert, Watson and Rayner (1920) demonstrated how fears can be conditioned. In 1920, Watson was the chair of the psychology department at Johns Hopkins University. Through his position at the university he came to meet Little Albert’s mother, Arvilla Merritte, who worked at a campus hospital (DeAngelis, 2010). Watson offered her a dollar to allow her son to be the subject of his experiments in classical conditioning. Through these experiments, Little Albert was exposed to and conditioned to fear certain things. Initially he was presented with various neutral stimuli, including a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, masks, cotton wool, and a white rat. He was not afraid of any of these things. Then Watson, with the help of Rayner, conditioned Little Albert to associate these stimuli with an emotion—fear. For example, Watson handed Little Albert the white rat, and Little Albert enjoyed playing with it. Then Watson made a loud sound, by striking a hammer against a metal bar hanging behind Little Albert’s head, each time Little Albert touched the rat. Little Albert was frightened by the sound—demonstrating a reflexive fear of sudden loud noises—and began to cry. Watson repeatedly paired the loud sound with the white rat. Soon Little Albert became frightened by the white rat alone. In this case, what are the UCS, CS, UCR, and CR? Days later, Little Albert demonstrated stimulus generalization—he became afraid of other furry things: a rabbit, a furry coat, and even a Santa Claus mask (Figure 7). Watson had succeeded in conditioning a fear response in Little Albert, thus demonstrating that emotions could become conditioned responses. It had been Watson’s intention to produce a phobia—a persistent, excessive fear of a specific object or situation— through conditioning alone, thus countering Freud’s view that phobias are caused by deep, hidden conflicts in the mind. However, there is no evidence that Little Albert experienced phobias in later years. Little Albert’s mother moved away, ending the experiment, and Little Albert himself died a few years later of unrelated causes. While Watson’s research provided new insight into conditioning, it would be considered unethical by today’s standards. Figure 7. Through stimulus generalization, Little Albert came to fear furry things, including Watson in a Santa Claus mask. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING View scenes from John Watson’s experiment in which Little Albert was conditioned to respond in fear to furry objects. As you watch the video, look closely at Little Albert’s reactions and the manner in which Watson and Rayner present the stimuli before and after conditioning. Based on what you see, would you come to the same conclusions as the researchers? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMnhyGozLyE&list=TLijGHR5tdqJMrfg-LFJbKg-Qa4taw_Da- EVERYDAY CONNECTION: ADVERTISING AND ASSOCIATIVE LEARNINGEVERYDAY CONNECTION: ADVERTISING AND ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING Advertising executives are pros at applying the principles of associative learning. Think about the car commercials you have seen on television. Many of them feature an attractive model. By associating the model with the car being advertised, you come to see the car as being desirable (Cialdini, 2008). You may be asking yourself, does this advertising technique actually work? According to Cialdini (2008), men who viewed a car commercial that included an attractive model later rated the car as being faster, more appealing, and better designed than did men who viewed an advertisement for the same car minus the model. Have you ever noticed how quickly advertisers cancel contracts with a famous athlete following a scandal? As far as the advertiser is concerned, that athlete is no longer associated with positive feelings; therefore, the athlete cannot be used as an unconditioned stimulus to condition the public to associate positive feelings (the unconditioned response) with their product (the conditioned stimulus). Now that you are aware of how associative learning works, see if you can find examples of these types of advertisements on television, in magazines, or on the Internet. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. 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You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2297 TRY ITTRY IT KEY TAKEAWAYSKEY TAKEAWAYS acquisition:acquisition: period of initial learning in classical conditioning in which a human or an animal begins to connect a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus will begin to elicit the conditioned response classical conditioning:classical conditioning: learning in which the stimulus or experience occurs before the behavior and then gets paired or associated with the behavior conditioned response (CR):conditioned response (CR): response caused by the conditioned stimulus conditioned stimulus (CS):conditioned stimulus (CS): stimulus that elicits a response due to its being paired with an unconditioned stimulus extinction:extinction: decrease in the conditioned response when the unconditioned stimulus is no longer paired with the conditioned stimulus habituation:habituation: when we learn not to respond to a stimulus that is presented repeatedly without change higher-order conditioning:higher-order conditioning: (also, second-order conditioning) using a conditioned stimulus to condition a neutral stimulus neutral stimulus (NS:)neutral stimulus (NS:) stimulus that does not initially elicit a response spontaneous recovery:spontaneous recovery: return of a previously extinguished conditioned response stimulus discrimination:stimulus discrimination: ability to respond differently to similar stimuli stimulus generalization:stimulus generalization: demonstrating the conditioned response to stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimulus unconditioned response (UCR):unconditioned response (UCR): natural (unlearned) behavior to a given stimulus unconditioned stimulus (UCS):unconditioned stimulus (UCS): stimulus that elicits a reflexive response An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2297 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2313 Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification and adaptation. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Classical Conditioning. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:hSW_wIIP@6/Classical-Conditioning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Classical Conditioning - Ivan Pavlov. Authored byAuthored by: BullyingNewsVideos. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhqumfpxuzI. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • The Office Classical Conditioning. Authored byAuthored by: Susann Stanley. Provided byProvided by: Vimeo. Located atLocated at: https://vimeo.com/35754924. LicenseLicense: All Rights Reserved OPERANT CONDITIONING What you’ll learn to do: explain operant conditioning, reinforcement, and punishment You’ve already learned about classical conditioning, or conditioning by association. This section will focus on operant conditioning, which emphasizes reinforcement for behaviors. In operant conditioning, the motivation for a behavior happens after the behavior is demonstrated. An animal or a human receives a consequence (reinforcer or punisher) after performing a specific behavior. You’ll learn that all types of reinforcement (positive or negative) increase the likelihood of a behavioral response, while all types of punishment decrease the likelihood of a behavioral response. Watch this video for a review of classical conditioning and an introduction of operant conditioning to help you differentiate between the two types of learning: LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Define and give examples of operant conditioning • Explain the difference between reinforcement and punishment (including positive and negative reinforcement and positive and negative punishment) • Define shaping • Differentiate between primary and secondary reinforcers https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:hSW_wIIP@6/Classical-Conditioning https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhqumfpxuzI https://vimeo.com/35754924 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2313 TRY ITTRY IT The previous section of this module focused on the type of associative learning known as classical conditioning. Remember that in classical conditioning, something in the environment triggers a reflex automatically, and researchers train the organism to react to a different stimulus. Now we turn to the second type of associative learning, operant conditioning. In operant conditioningoperant conditioning, organisms learn to associate a behavior and its consequence (Table 1). A pleasant consequence makes that behavior more likely to be repeated in the future. For example, Spirit, a dolphin at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, does a flip in the air when her trainer blows a whistle. The consequence is that she gets a fish. Table 1. Classical and Operant Conditioning ComparedTable 1. Classical and Operant Conditioning Compared Classical Conditioning Operant Conditioning Conditioning approach An unconditioned stimulus (such as food) is paired with a neutral stimulus (such as a bell). The neutral stimulus eventually becomes the conditioned stimulus, which brings about the conditioned response (salivation). The target behavior is followed by reinforcement or punishment to either strengthen or weaken it, so that the learner is more likely to exhibit the desired behavior in the future. Stimulus timing The stimulus occurs immediately before the response. The stimulus (either reinforcement or punishment) occurs soon after the response. Psychologist B. F. Skinner saw that classical conditioning is limited to existing behaviors that are reflexively elicited, and it doesn’t account for new behaviors such as riding a bike. He proposed a theory about how such behaviors come about. Skinner believed that behavior is motivated by the consequences we receive for the behavior: the reinforcements and punishments. His idea that learning is the result of consequences is based on the law of effectlaw of effect, which was first proposed by psychologist Edward Thorndike. According to the law of effect, behaviors that are followed by consequences that are satisfying to the organism are more likely to be repeated, and behaviors that are followed by unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated (Thorndike, 1911). Essentially, if an organism does something that brings about a desired result, the organism is more likely to do it again. If an organism does something that does not bring about a desired result, the organism is less likely to do it again. An example of the law of effect is in employment. One of the reasons (and often the main reason) we show up for work is because we get paid to do so. If we stop getting paid, we will likely stop showing up—even if we love our job. Working with Thorndike’s law of effect as his foundation, Skinner began conducting scientific experiments on animals (mainly rats and pigeons) to determine how organisms learn through operant conditioning (Skinner, 1938). He placed these animals inside an operant conditioning chamber, which has come to be known as a “Skinner box” (Figure 1). A Skinner box contains a lever (for rats) or disk (for pigeons) that the animal can press or peck for a food reward via the dispenser. Speakers and lights can be associated with certain behaviors. A recorder counts the number of responses made by the animal. Figure 1. (a) B. F. Skinner developed operant conditioning for systematic study of how behaviors are strengthened or weakened according to their consequences. (b) In a Skinner box, a rat presses a lever in an operant conditioning chamber to receive a food reward. (credit a: modification of work by “Silly rabbit”/Wikimedia Commons) An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2313 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch the following clip to learn more about operant conditioning and to watch an interview with Skinner as he talks about conditioning pigeons. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2313 TRY ITTRY IT In discussing operant conditioning, we use several everyday words—positive, negative, reinforcement, and punishment—in a specialized manner. In operant conditioning, positive and negative do not mean good and bad. Instead, positive means you are adding something, and negative means you are taking something away. Reinforcement means you are increasing a behavior, and punishment means you are decreasing a behavior. Reinforcement can be positive or negative, and punishment can also be positive or negative. All reinforcers (positive or negative) increase the likelihood of a behavioral response. All punishers (positive or negative) decrease the likelihood of a behavioral response. Now let’s combine these four terms: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment (Table 1). LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch this clip from The Big Bang Theory to see Sheldon Cooper explain the commonly confused terms of negative reinforcement and punishment. Table 1. Positive and Negative Reinforcement and Punishment ReinforcementReinforcement PunishmentPunishment PositivePositive Something is added to increase the likelihood of a behavior. Something is added to decrease the likelihood of a behavior. NegativeNegative Something is removed to increase the likelihood of a behavior. Something is removed to decrease the likelihood of a behavior. Reinforcement The most effective way to teach a person or animal a new behavior is with positive reinforcement. In positivepositive reinforcementreinforcement, a desirable stimulus is added to increase a behavior. For example, you tell your five-year-old son, Jerome, that if he cleans his room, he will get a toy. Jerome quickly cleans his room because he wants a new art set. Let’s pause for a moment. Some people might say, “Why should I reward my child for doing what is expected?” But in fact we are constantly and consistently rewarded in our lives. Our paychecks are rewards, as are high grades and acceptance into our preferred school. Being praised for doing a good job and for passing a driver’s test is also a reward. Positive reinforcement as a learning tool is extremely effective. It has been found that one of the most effective ways to increase achievement in school districts with below-average reading scores was to pay the children to read. Specifically, second-grade students in Dallas were paid $2 each time they read a book and passed a short quiz about the book. The result was a significant increase in reading comprehension (Fryer, 2010). What do you think about this program? If Skinner were alive today, he would probably think this was a great idea. He was a strong proponent of using operant conditioning principles to influence students’ behavior at school. In fact, in addition to the Skinner box, he also invented what he called a teaching machine that was designed to reward small steps in learning (Skinner, 1961)—an early forerunner of computer-assisted learning. His teaching machine tested students’ knowledge as they worked through various school subjects. If students answered questions correctly, they received immediate positive reinforcement and could continue; if they answered incorrectly, they did not receive any reinforcement. The idea was that students would spend additional time studying the material to increase their chance of being reinforced the next time (Skinner, 1961). In negative reinforcementnegative reinforcement, an undesirable stimulus is removed to increase a behavior. For example, car manufacturers use the principles of negative reinforcement in their seatbelt systems, which go “beep, beep, beep” until you fasten your seatbelt. The annoying sound stops when you exhibit the desired behavior, increasing the likelihood that you will buckle up in the future. Negative reinforcement is also used frequently in horse training. Riders apply pressure—by pulling the reins or squeezing their legs—and then remove the pressure when the horse performs the desired behavior, such as turning or speeding up. The pressure is the negative stimulus that the horse wants to remove. Punishment Many people confuse negative reinforcement with punishment in operant conditioning, but they are two very different mechanisms. Remember that reinforcement, even when it is negative, always increases a behavior. In contrast, punishmentpunishment always decreases a behavior. In positive punishment, you add an undesirable stimulus to decrease a behavior. An example of positive punishmentpositive punishment is scolding a student to get the student to stop texting in class. In this case, a stimulus (the reprimand) is added in order to decrease the behavior (texting in class). In negative punishmentnegative punishment, you remove a pleasant stimulus to decrease a behavior. For example, when a child misbehaves, a parent can take away a favorite toy. In this case, a stimulus (the toy) is removed in order to decrease the behavior. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhI5h5JZi-U An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2313 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2313 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2313 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2313 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2313 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2313 TRY ITTRY IT Punishment, especially when it is immediate, is one way to decrease undesirable behavior. For example, imagine your four year-old son, Brandon, hit his younger brother. You have Brandon write 50 times “I will not hit my brother” (positive punishment). Chances are he won’t repeat this behavior. While strategies like this are common today, in the past children were often subject to physical punishment, such as spanking. It’s important to be aware of some of the drawbacks in using physical punishment on children. First, punishment may teach fear. Brandon may become fearful of the hitting, but he also may become fearful of the person who delivered the punishment—you, his parent. Similarly, children who are punished by teachers may come to fear the teacher and try to avoid school (Gershoff et al., 2010). Consequently, most schools in the United States have banned corporal punishment. Second, punishment may cause children to become more aggressive and prone to antisocial behavior and delinquency (Gershoff, 2002). They see their parents resort to spanking when they become angry and frustrated, so, in turn, they may act out this same behavior when they become angry and frustrated. For example, because you spank Margot when you are angry with her for her misbehavior, she might start hitting her friends when they won’t share their toys. While positive punishment can be effective in some cases, Skinner suggested that the use of punishment should be weighed against the possible negative effects. Today’s psychologists and parenting experts favor reinforcement over punishment—they recommend that you catch your child doing something good and reward her for it. Make sure you understand the distinction between negative reinforcement and punishment in the following video: Still confused? Watch the following short clip for another example and explanation of positive and negative reinforcement as well as positive and negative punishment. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2313 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2313 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2313 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Here is a brief video of Skinner’s pigeons playing ping pong. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2313 TRY ITTRY IT Shaping In his operant conditioning experiments, Skinner often used an approach called shaping. Instead of rewarding only the target behavior, in shapingshaping, we reward successive approximations of a target behavior. Why is shaping needed? Remember that in order for reinforcement to work, the organism must first display the behavior. Shaping is needed because it is extremely unlikely that an organism will display anything but the simplest of behaviors spontaneously. In shaping, behaviors are broken down into many small, achievable steps. The specific steps used in the process are the following: Reinforce any response that resembles the desired behavior. Then reinforce the response that more closely resembles the desired behavior. You will no longer reinforce the previously reinforced response. Next, begin to reinforce the response that even more closely resembles the desired behavior. Continue to reinforce closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior. Finally, only reinforce the desired behavior. Shaping is often used in teaching a complex behavior or chain of behaviors. Skinner used shaping to teach pigeons not only such relatively simple behaviors as pecking a disk in a Skinner box, but also many unusual and entertaining behaviors, such as turning in circles, walking in figure eights, and even playing ping pong; the technique is commonly used by animal trainers today. An important part of shaping is stimulus discrimination. Recall Pavlov’s dogs—he trained them to respond to the tone of a bell, and not to similar tones or sounds. This discrimination is also important in operant conditioning and in shaping behavior. It’s easy to see how shaping is effective in teaching behaviors to animals, but how does shaping work with humans? Let’s consider parents whose goal is to have their child learn to clean his room. They use shaping to help him master steps toward the goal. Instead of performing the entire task, they set up these steps and reinforce each step. First, he cleans up one toy. Second, he cleans up five toys. Third, he chooses whether to pick up ten toys or put his books and clothes away. Fourth, he cleans up everything except two toys. Finally, he cleans his entire room. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2313 Primary and Secondary Reinforcers Rewards such as stickers, praise, money, toys, and more can be used to reinforce learning. Let’s go back to Skinner’s rats again. How did the rats learn to press the lever in the Skinner box? They were rewarded with food each time they pressed the lever. For animals, food would be an obvious reinforcer. What would be a good reinforce for humans? For your daughter Sydney, it was the promise of a toy if she cleaned her room. How about Joaquin, the soccer player? If you gave Joaquin a piece of candy every time he made a goal, you would be using a primary reinforcer. Primary reinforcers are reinforcers that have innate reinforcing qualities. These kinds of reinforcers are not learned. Water, food, sleep, shelter, sex, and touch, among others, are primary reinforcersprimary reinforcers. Pleasure is also a primary reinforcer. Organisms do not lose their drive for these things. For most people, jumping in a cool lake on a very hot day would be reinforcing and the cool lake would be innately reinforcing—the water would cool the person off (a physical need), as well as provide pleasure. A secondary reinforcersecondary reinforcer has no inherent value and only has reinforcing qualities when linked with a primary reinforcer. Praise, linked to affection, is one example of a secondary reinforcer, as when you called out “Great shot!” every time Joaquin made a goal. Another example, money, is only worth something when you can use it to buy other things—either things that satisfy basic needs (food, water, shelter—all primary reinforcers) or other secondary reinforcers. If you were on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and you had stacks of money, the money would not be useful if you could not spend it. What about the stickers on the behavior chart? They also are secondary reinforcers. Sometimes, instead of stickers on a sticker chart, a token is used. Tokens, which are also secondary reinforcers, can then be traded in for rewards and prizes. Entire behavior management systems, known as token economies, are built around the use of these kinds of token reinforcers. Token economies have been found to be very effective at modifying behavior in a variety of settings such as schools, prisons, and mental hospitals. For example, a study by Cangi and Daly (2013) found that use of a token economy increased appropriate social behaviors and reduced inappropriate behaviors in a group of autistic school children. Autistic children tend to exhibit disruptive behaviors such as pinching and hitting. When the children in the study exhibited appropriate behavior (not hitting or pinching), they received a “quiet hands” token. When they hit or pinched, they lost a token. The children could then exchange specified amounts of tokens for minutes of playtime. Figure 2. Sticker charts are a form of positive reinforcement and a tool for behavior modification. Once this little girl earns a certain number of stickers for demonstrating a desired behavior, she will be rewarded with a trip to the ice cream parlor. (credit: Abigail Batchelder) EVERYDAY CONNECTION: BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION IN CHILDRENEVERYDAY CONNECTION: BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION IN CHILDREN Parents and teachers often use behavior modification to change a child’s behavior. Behavior modification uses the principles of operant conditioning to accomplish behavior change so that undesirable behaviors are switched for more socially acceptable ones. Some teachers and parents create a sticker chart, in which several behaviors are listed (Figure 2). Sticker charts are a form of token economies, as described in the text. Each time children perform the behavior, they get a sticker, and after a certain number of stickers, they get a prize, or reinforcer. The goal is to increase acceptable behaviors and decrease misbehavior. Remember, it is best to reinforce desired behaviors, rather than to use punishment. In the classroom, the teacher can reinforce a wide range of behaviors, from students raising their hands, to walking quietly in the hall, to turning in their homework. At home, parents might create a behavior chart that rewards children for things such as putting away toys, brushing their teeth, and helping with dinner. In order for behavior modification to be effective, the reinforcement needs to be connected with the behavior; the reinforcement must matter to the child and be done consistently. Time-out is another popular technique used in behavior modification with children. It operates on the principle of negative punishment. When a child demonstrates an undesirable behavior, she is removed from the desirable activity at hand (Figure 3). For example, say that Sophia and her brother Mario are playing with building blocks. Sophia throws some blocks at her brother, so you give her a warning that she will go to time-out if she does it again. A few minutes later, she throws more blocks at Mario. You remove Sophia from the room for a few minutes. When she comes back, she doesn’t throw blocks. There are several important points that you should know if you plan to implement time-out as a behavior modification technique. First, make sure the child is being removed from a desirable activity and placed in a Figure 3. Time-out is a popular form of negative punishment used by caregivers. When a child misbehaves, he or she is removed from a desirable activity in an effort to decrease the unwanted behavior. For example, (a) a child might be playing on the playground with friends and push another child; (b) the child who misbehaved would then be removed from the activity for a short period of time. (credit a: modification of work by Simone Ramella; credit b: modification of work by “JefferyTurner”/Flickr) less desirable location. If the activity is something undesirable for the child, this technique will backfire because it is more enjoyable for the child to be removed from the activity. Second, the length of the time-out is important. The general rule of thumb is one minute for each year of the child’s age. Sophia is five; therefore, she sits in a time-out for five minutes. Setting a timer helps children know how long they have to sit in time-out. Finally, as a caregiver, keep several guidelines in mind over the course of a time-out: remain calm when directing your child to time-out; ignore your child during time-out (because caregiver attention may reinforce misbehavior); and give the child a hug or a kind word when time-out is over. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2313 TRY ITTRY IT THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER • Explain the difference between negative reinforcement and punishment, and provide several examples of each based on your own experiences. • Think of a behavior that you have that you would like to change. How could you use behavior modification, specifically positive reinforcement, to change your behavior? What is your positive reinforcer? GLOSSARYGLOSSARY law of effect:law of effect: behavior that is followed by consequences satisfying to the organism will be repeated and behaviors that are followed by unpleasant consequences will be discouraged negative punishment:negative punishment: taking away a pleasant stimulus to decrease or stop a behavior negative reinforcement:negative reinforcement: taking away an undesirable stimulus to increase a behavior operant conditioning:operant conditioning: form of learning in which the stimulus/experience happens after the behavior is demonstrated positive punishment:positive punishment: adding an undesirable stimulus to stop or decrease a behavior positive reinforcement:positive reinforcement: adding a desirable stimulus to increase a behavior primary reinforcer:primary reinforcer: has innate reinforcing qualities (e.g., food, water, shelter, sex) punishment:punishment: implementation of a consequence in order to decrease a behavior reinforcement:reinforcement: implementation of a consequence in order to increase a behavior secondary reinforcer:secondary reinforcer: has no inherent value unto itself and only has reinforcing qualities when linked with something else (e.g., money, gold stars, poker chips) shaping:shaping: rewarding successive approximations toward a target behavior Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification and adaptation, addition of Big Bang Learning example. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Operant Conditioning. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:r470BCFb@7/Operant-Conditioning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • Learning: Negative Reinforcement vs. Punishment. Authored byAuthored by: ByPass Publishing. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imkbuKomPXI. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Operant Conditioning. Authored byAuthored by: jenningh. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_ctJqjlrHA. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • The difference between classical and operant conditioning . Authored byAuthored by: Peggy Andover. Provided byProvided by: TedED. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6LEcM0E0io. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • BF Skinner Foundation - Pigeon Ping Pong Clip. Provided byProvided by: bfskinnerfoundation. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGazyH6fQQ4. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • Operant Conditioning. Authored byAuthored by: Dr. Mindy Rutherford. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSHJbIJK9TI. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License REINFORCEMENT SCHEDULES LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Distinguish between reinforcement schedules Remember, the best way to teach a person or animal a behavior is to use positive reinforcement. For example, Skinner used positive reinforcement to teach rats to press a lever in a Skinner box. At first, the rat might randomly hit the lever while exploring the box, and out would come a pellet of food. After eating the pellet, what do you think the hungry rat did next? It hit the lever again, and received another pellet of food. Each time the rat hit the lever, a pellet of food came out. When an organism receives a reinforcer each time it displays a behavior, it is called continuous reinforcementcontinuous reinforcement. This reinforcement schedule is the quickest way to teach someone a behavior, and it is especially effective in training a new behavior. Let’s look back at the dog that was learning to sit earlier in the module. Now, each time he sits, you give him a treat. Timing is important here: you will be most successful if you present the reinforcer immediately after he sits, so that he can make an association between the target behavior (sitting) and the consequence (getting a treat). Once a behavior is trained, researchers and trainers often turn to another type of reinforcement schedule—partial reinforcement. In partial reinforcementpartial reinforcement, also referred to as intermittent reinforcement, the person or animal does not get reinforced every time they perform the desired behavior. There are several different types of partial https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:r470BCFb@7/Operant-Conditioning https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imkbuKomPXI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_ctJqjlrHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6LEcM0E0io https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGazyH6fQQ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSHJbIJK9TI reinforcement schedules (Table 1). These schedules are described as either fixed or variable, and as either interval or ratio. Fixed refers to the number of responses between reinforcements, or the amount of time between reinforcements, which is set and unchanging. Variable refers to the number of responses or amount of time between reinforcements, which varies or changes. Interval means the schedule is based on the time between reinforcements, and ratio means the schedule is based on the number of responses between reinforcements. Table 1. Reinforcement Schedules ReinforcementReinforcement ScheduleSchedule DescriptionDescription ResultResult ExampleExample Fixed interval Reinforcement is delivered at predictable time intervals (e.g., after 5, 10, 15, and 20 minutes). Moderate response rate with significant pauses after reinforcement Hospital patient uses patient-controlled, doctor- timed pain relief Variable interval Reinforcement is delivered at unpredictable time intervals (e.g., after 5, 7, 10, and 20 minutes). Moderate yet steady response rate Checking Facebook Fixed ratio Reinforcement is delivered after a predictable number of responses (e.g., after 2, 4, 6, and 8 responses). High response rate with pauses after reinforcement Piecework—factory worker getting paid for every x number of items manufactured Variable ratio Reinforcement is delivered after an unpredictable number of responses (e.g., after 1, 4, 5, and 9 responses). High and steady response rate Gambling Now let’s combine these four terms. A fixed interval reinforcement schedulefixed interval reinforcement schedule is when behavior is rewarded after a set amount of time. For example, June undergoes major surgery in a hospital. During recovery, she is expected to experience pain and will require prescription medications for pain relief. June is given an IV drip with a patient- controlled painkiller. Her doctor sets a limit: one dose per hour. June pushes a button when pain becomes difficult, and she receives a dose of medication. Since the reward (pain relief) only occurs on a fixed interval, there is no point in exhibiting the behavior when it will not be rewarded. With a variable interval reinforcement schedulevariable interval reinforcement schedule, the person or animal gets the reinforcement based on varying amounts of time, which are unpredictable. Say that Manuel is the manager at a fast-food restaurant. Every once in a while someone from the quality control division comes to Manuel’s restaurant. If the restaurant is clean and the service is fast, everyone on that shift earns a $20 bonus. Manuel never knows when the quality control person will show up, so he always tries to keep the restaurant clean and ensures that his employees provide prompt and courteous service. His productivity regarding prompt service and keeping a clean restaurant are steady because he wants his crew to earn the bonus. With a fixed ratio reinforcement schedulefixed ratio reinforcement schedule, there are a set number of responses that must occur before the behavior is rewarded. Carla sells glasses at an eyeglass store, and she earns a commission every time she sells a pair of glasses. She always tries to sell people more pairs of glasses, including prescription sunglasses or a backup pair, so she can increase her commission. She does not care if the person really needs the prescription sunglasses, Carla just wants her bonus. The quality of what Carla sells does not matter because her commission is not based on quality; it’s only based on the number of pairs sold. This distinction in the quality of performance can help determine which reinforcement method is most appropriate for a particular situation. Fixed ratios are better suited to optimize the quantity of output, whereas a fixed interval, in which the reward is not quantity based, can lead to a higher quality of output. In a variable ratio reinforcement schedulevariable ratio reinforcement schedule, the number of responses needed for a reward varies. This is the most powerful partial reinforcement schedule. An example of the variable ratio reinforcement schedule is gambling. Imagine that Sarah—generally a smart, thrifty woman—visits Las Vegas for the first time. She is not a gambler, but out of curiosity she puts a quarter into the slot machine, and then another, and another. Nothing happens. Two dollars in quarters later, her curiosity is fading, and she is just about to quit. But then, the machine lights up, bells go off, and Sarah gets 50 quarters back. That’s more like it! Sarah gets back to inserting quarters with renewed interest, and a few minutes later she has used up all her gains and is $10 in the hole. Now might be a An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2304 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2304 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2304 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2304 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2304 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2304 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2304 TRY ITTRY IT sensible time to quit. And yet, she keeps putting money into the slot machine because she never knows when the next reinforcement is coming. She keeps thinking that with the next quarter she could win $50, or $100, or even more. Because the reinforcement schedule in most types of gambling has a variable ratio schedule, people keep trying and hoping that the next time they will win big. This is one of the reasons that gambling is so addictive—and so resistant to extinction. In operant conditioning, extinction of a reinforced behavior occurs at some point after reinforcement stops, and the speed at which this happens depends on the reinforcement schedule. In a variable ratio schedule, the point of extinction comes very slowly, as described above. But in the other reinforcement schedules, extinction may come quickly. For example, if June presses the button for the pain relief medication before the allotted time her doctor has approved, no medication is administered. She is on a fixed interval reinforcement schedule (dosed hourly), so extinction occurs quickly when reinforcement doesn’t come at the expected time. Among the reinforcement schedules, variable ratio is the most productive and the most resistant to extinction. Fixed interval is the least productive and the easiest to extinguish (Figure 1). Figure 1. The four reinforcement schedules yield different response patterns. The variable ratio schedule is unpredictable and yields high and steady response rates, with little if any pause after reinforcement (e.g., gambler). A fixed ratio schedule is predictable and produces a high response rate, with a short pause after reinforcement (e.g., eyeglass saleswoman). The variable interval schedule is unpredictable and produces a moderate, steady response rate (e.g., restaurant manager). The fixed interval schedule yields a scallop-shaped response pattern, reflecting a significant pause after reinforcement (e.g., surgery patient). Figure 2. Some research suggests that pathological gamblers use gambling to compensate for abnormally low levels of the hormone norepinephrine, which is associated with stress and is secreted in moments of arousal and thrill. (credit: Ted Murphy) CONNECT THE CONCEPTS: GAMBLING AND THE BRAINCONNECT THE CONCEPTS: GAMBLING AND THE BRAIN Skinner (1953) stated, “If the gambling establishment cannot persuade a patron to turn over money with no return, it may achieve the same effect by returning part of the patron’s money on a variable-ratio schedule” (p. 397). Skinner uses gambling as an example of the power and effectiveness of conditioning behavior based on a variable ratio reinforcement schedule. In fact, Skinner was so confident in his knowledge of gambling addiction that he even claimed he could turn a pigeon into a pathological gambler (“Skinner’s Utopia,” 1971). Beyond the power of variable ratio reinforcement, gambling seems to work on the brain in the same way as some addictive drugs. The Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery (n.d.) reports evidence suggesting that pathological gambling is an addiction similar to a chemical addiction (Figure 2). Specifically, gambling may activate the reward centers of the brain, much like cocaine does. Research has shown that some pathological gamblers have lower levels of the neurotransmitter (brain chemical) known as norepinephrine than do normal gamblers (Roy, et al., 1988). According to a study conducted by Alec Roy and colleagues, norepinephrine is secreted when a person feels stress, arousal, or thrill; pathological gamblers use gambling to increase their levels of this neurotransmitter. Another researcher, neuroscientist Hans Breiter, has done extensive research on gambling and its effects on the brain. Breiter (as cited in Franzen, 2001) reports that “Monetary reward in a gambling-like experiment produces brain activation very similar to that observed in a cocaine addict receiving an infusion of cocaine” (para. 1). Deficiencies in serotonin (another neurotransmitter) might also contribute to compulsive behavior, including a gambling addiction. It may be that pathological gamblers’ brains are different than those of other people, and perhaps this difference may somehow have led to their gambling addiction, as these studies seem to suggest. However, it is very difficult to ascertain the cause because it is impossible to conduct a true experiment (it would be unethical to try to turn randomly assigned participants into problem gamblers). Therefore, it may be that causation actually moves in the opposite direction—perhaps the act of gambling somehow changes neurotransmitter levels in some gamblers’ brains. It also is possible that some overlooked factor, or confounding variable, played a role in both the gambling addiction and the differences in brain chemistry. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Review the principles and terminology connected to operant conditioning through the following PsychSim Tutorial. The tutorial is only intended for practice. Please disregard the final screen that requests you submit answers to your instructor. • Operant Conditioning GLOSSARYGLOSSARY continuous reinforcement:continuous reinforcement: rewarding a behavior every time it occurs http://bcs.worthpublishers.com/webpub/Ektron/myersAP1e/PsychSim5%20Tutorials/Operant_Conditioning/operant_conditioning.htm fixed interval reinforcement schedule:fixed interval reinforcement schedule: behavior is rewarded after a set amount of time fixed ratio reinforcement schedule:fixed ratio reinforcement schedule: set number of responses must occur before a behavior is rewarded operant conditioning:operant conditioning: form of learning in which the stimulus/experience happens after the behavior is demonstrated variable interval reinforcement schedule:variable interval reinforcement schedule: behavior is rewarded after unpredictable amounts of time have passed variable ratio reinforcement schedule:variable ratio reinforcement schedule: number of responses differ before a behavior is rewarded An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2304 Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification and adaptation, addition of tutorial. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • LicenseLicense: Other CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Operant Conditioning. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:r470BCFb@7/Operant-Conditioning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Learning: Schedules of Reinforcement. Authored byAuthored by: ByPass Publishing. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLx5yl0sxeM. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:r470BCFb@7/Operant-Conditioning https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLx5yl0sxeM LATENT LEARNING What you’ll learn to do: describe latent learning and observational learning Classical and operant conditioning are responsible for a good bit of the behaviors we learn and develop, but certainly there are other things we learn simply through observation and thought. Latent learning is a form of learning that occurs without any obvious reinforcement of the behavior or associations that are learned. According to Albert Bandura, learning can occur by watching others and then modeling what they do or say. This is known as observational learning. There are specific steps in the process of modeling that must be followed if learning is to be successful. These steps include attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. Through modeling, Bandura has shown that children learn many things both good and bad simply by watching their parents, siblings, and others. What have you learned by observation? LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explain latent learning and cognitive maps • Describe Edward Tolman’s experiment on latent learning Although strict behaviorists such as Skinner and Watson refused to believe that cognition (such as thoughts and expectations) plays a role in learning, another behaviorist, Edward C. Tolman, had a different opinion. Tolman’s experiments with rats demonstrated that organisms can learn even if they do not receive immediate reinforcement (Tolman & Honzik, 1930; Tolman, Ritchie, & Kalish, 1946). https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/03/06215233/Traquair_House_Maze Figure 1. Psychologist Edward Tolman found that rats use cognitive maps to navigate through a maze. Have you ever worked your way through various levels on a video game? You learned when to turn left or right, move up or down. In that case you were relying on a cognitive map, just like the rats in a maze. (credit: modification of work by “FutUndBeidl”/Flickr) Latent learningLatent learning is a form of learning that is not immediately expressed in an overt response. It occurs without any obvious reinforcement of the behavior or associations that are learned. Latent learning is not readily apparent to the researcher because it is not shown behaviorally until there is sufficient motivation. This type of learning broke the constraints of behaviorism, which stated that processes must be directly observable and that learning was the direct consequence of conditioning to stimuli. In the experiments, Tolman placed hungry rats in a maze with no reward for finding their way through it. He also studied a comparison group that was rewarded with food at the end of the maze. As the unreinforced rats explored the maze, they developed a cognitive mapcognitive map: a mental picture of the layout of the maze (Figure 1). After 10 sessions in the maze without reinforcement, food was placed in a goal box at the end of the maze. As soon as the rats became aware of the food, they were able to find their way through the maze quickly, just as quickly as the comparison group, which had been rewarded with food all along. This is known as latent learning: learning that occurs but is not observable in behavior until there is a reason to demonstrate it. Latent learning also occurs in humans. Children may learn by watching the actions of their parents but only demonstrate it at a later date, when the learned material is needed. For example, suppose that Ravi’s dad drives him to school every day. In this way, Ravi learns the route from his house to his school, but he’s never driven there himself, so he has not had a chance to demonstrate that he’s learned the way. One morning Ravi’s dad has to leave early for a meeting, so he can’t drive Ravi to school. Instead, Ravi follows the same route on his bike that his dad would have taken in the car. This demonstrates latent learning. Ravi had learned the route to school, but had no need to demonstrate this knowledge earlier. EVERYDAY CONNECTION: THIS PLACE IS LIKE A MAZEEVERYDAY CONNECTION: THIS PLACE IS LIKE A MAZE Have you ever gotten lost in a building and couldn’t find your way back out? While that can be frustrating, you’re not alone. At one time or another we’ve all gotten lost in places like a museum, hospital, or university library. Whenever we go someplace new, we build a mental representation—or cognitive map—of the location, as Tolman’s rats built a cognitive map of their maze. However, some buildings are confusing because they include many areas that look alike or have short lines of sight. Because of this, it’s often difficult to predict what’s around a corner or decide whether to turn left or right to get out of a building. Psychologist Laura Carlson (2010) suggests that what we place in our cognitive map can impact our success in navigating through the environment. She suggests that paying attention to specific features upon entering a building, such as a picture on the wall, a fountain, a statue, or an escalator, adds information to our cognitive map that can be used later to help find our way out of the building. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch this video to learn more about Carlson’s studies on cognitive maps and navigation in buildings. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3883 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3883 TRY ITTRY IT Tolman’s Experiment Edward Tolman was studying traditional trial-and-error learning when he realized that some of his research subjects (rats) actually knew more than their behavior initially indicated. In one of Tolman’s classic experiments, he observed the behavior of three groups of hungry rats that were learning to navigate mazes. The first groupfirst group always received a food reward at the end of the maze, so the payoff for learning the maze was real and immediate. The second groupsecond group never received any food reward, so there was no incentive to learn to navigate the maze effectively. The third groupthird group was like the second group for the first 10 days, but on the 11th day, food was now placed at the end of the maze. As you might expect when considering the principles of conditioning, the rats in the first group quickly learned to negotiate the maze, while the rats of the second group seemed to wander aimlessly through it. The rats in the third group, however, although they wandered aimlessly for the first 10 days, quickly learned to navigate to the end of the maze as soon as they received food on day 11. By the next day, the rats in the third group had caught up in their learning to the rats that had been rewarded from the beginning. It was clear to Tolman that the rats that had been allowed to experience the maze, even without any reinforcement, had nevertheless learned something, and Tolman called this latent learning. Latent learningLatent learning is to learning that is not reinforced and not demonstrated until there is motivation to do so. Tolman argued that the rats had formed a “cognitive map” of the maze but did not demonstrate this knowledge until they received reinforcement. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2010-11-lost-architecture-bias-cognitive-video.html An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3883 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3883 TRY ITTRY IT Figure 1. The maze. As you can see from the map, the maze had lots of doors and curtains to make it difficult for the rats to master. The blue marks represent doors that swung both directions, which prevented the rat from seeing most of the junctions as it approached. This forced the rat to go through the door to discover what was on the other side. The green forms show curtains. These hung down and prevented the rat from getting a long distance perspective and it also meant that they could not see a wall at the end of a wrong turn until they had already made a choice and moved in that direction. The rat was always in a small area, unable to see beyond the next door or curtain, so learning the maze was a formidable task. Now that you’ve learned the design of the study, let’s take a closer look at what happened in the study. The results for the three groups will be shown in these graphs. The graph on the left is for the group that always received food. The middle graph is for the rats that did not received food for the first 10 trials and then, on Trial #11, started to receive food. The graph on the right is for rats that never received food. The red dots indicate how the rats did in each of the three conditions. The Y-axis (vertical axis) indicates how many wrong turns, or errors, the rats in each condition made on average. The X-axis (horizontal axis) shows the different trials. This is the first trial, so none of the rats knew there was food in the food box. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/03/08034423/Screen-Shot-2017-03-07-at-9.43.56-PM https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/03/08034423/Screen-Shot-2017-03-07-at-9.43.56-PM An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3883 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3883 TRY ITTRY IT An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3883 TRY ITTRY IT Let’s see how the rats in each group did over the next four trials. Notice all the groups made fewer errors and continue to do so in Trial 4. Now look more closely at trials 4 and 5. Are you starting to see a difference between the groups? Use the dotted line in the middle of the graphs as a reference point for comparing the groups. Which group seems to be getting to the line faster? https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/03/14165855/Screen-Shot-2017-04-14-at-12.58.34-PM https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/03/14170238/Screen-Shot-2017-04-14-at-1.02.20-PM An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3883 Let’s pick up at Trial 7. Notice that the group on the left, which receives food on every trial, continues to improve at a faster rate than the other two groups. These two groups are both performing at the same level and are making about 20 wrong turns on each trial on average. At Trial 10, we are at a critical point in the experiment because things are about to change on the next trial for the rats shown in the middle graph. Something special will happen to this group. Food will now appear in the food box! Of course, they won’t know this until they get there, so the effects of the change should not appear on the next trial. As you can see from the graphs for Trial 11, the groups shown in the middle and right graphs still look the same. The rats in the left group are now making fewer wrong turns than either of the other two groups. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/03/14170618/Screen-Shot-2017-04-14-at-1.06.01-PM An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3883 WORK IT OUTWORK IT OUT Your task here is to predict what is going to happen on Trial 12 for the “no food until Trial 11” group. Option A: Notice that this result is the same as the “no food on any trial” group. So, if you choose option A, you think that they will not act differently now than they acted on the first 11 trials and they will continue to make a lot of wrong turns. Option B: This option suggests that they are now motivated to learn the path to the food, but that they will do so in small steps, just as we have seen for all three groups up to this point. Option B says that they are moving in the direction of the “food on every trial” group, but that it will take some extra learning to get there. Option C: This option says that they already know the path to the food and, now that they are motivated to get there, they will show that they already know just as much as the “food on every trial” group. Their performance on Trial 12 will be the same as the low-error performance of the “food on every trial” group. So, what happened to the rats in the group that began to receive food at Trial 11? They were immediately able to make their way through the maze without making many wrong turns to get to the food. They made about the same number of errors as the “Food on Every Trial” group! Tolman interpreted this to mean that they had created a mental map of the maze during the first 11 trials…and when they needed to get food, they could find their way to the food box very efficiently! As we look at trials 13, 14, and 15, notice how the graph for the group of rats on the left –- the ones that received food on every trial — and the graph for the group of rats in the middle — the ones that started receiving food at https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/03/14170741/22506109386_e2d8c8a166_k https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/03/14170759/3-graphs https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/03/14170950/Screen-Shot-2017-04-14-at-1.09.29-PM An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3883 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3883 TRY ITTRY IT GLOSSARYGLOSSARY cognitive map:cognitive map: mental picture of the layout of the environment latent learning:latent learning: learning that occurs, but it may not be evident until there is a reason to demonstrate it trial 11 — now look similar. And the rats that never received food continued to make more than 15 errors in each trial on average. Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Authored byAuthored by: Patrick Carroll for Lumen Learning. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Latent Learning: Learning Before Doing. Provided byProvided by: Open Learning Initiative. Located atLocated at: https://oli.cmu.edu/jcourse/workbook/activity/page?context=df3e71c60a0001dc051db622d622b3f7. ProjectProject: Psychology. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike • Operant Conditioning and Observational Learning. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:r470BCFb@7/Operant-Conditioning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • Latent Learning. Authored byAuthored by: Boundless. Located atLocated at: https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/learning-7/cognitive-approaches-to-learning-48/latent-learning-202-12737/. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Traquair House Maze. Authored byAuthored by: marsroverdriver. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Traquair_House_Maze . LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/03/14171032/Screen-Shot-2017-04-14-at-1.10.18-PM https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://oli.cmu.edu/jcourse/workbook/activity/page?context=df3e71c60a0001dc051db622d622b3f7 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:r470BCFb@7/Operant-Conditioning https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/learning-7/cognitive-approaches-to-learning-48/latent-learning-202-12737/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Traquair_House_Maze https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Figure 1. This spider monkey learned to drink water from a plastic bottle by seeing the behavior modeled by a human. (credit: U.S. Air Force, Senior Airman Kasey Close) OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explain observational learning and the steps in the modeling process Previous sections of this module focused on classical and operant conditioning, which are forms of associative learning. In observational learningobservational learning, we learn by watching others and then imitating, or modeling, what they do or say. The individuals performing the imitated behavior are called models. Research suggests that this imitative learning involves a specific type of neuron, called a mirror neuron (Hickock, 2010; Rizzolatti, Fadiga, Fogassi, & Gallese, 2002; Rizzolatti, Fogassi, & Gallese, 2006). Humans and other animals are capable of observational learning. As you will see, the phrase “monkey see, monkey do” really is accurate (Figure 1). The same could be said about other animals. For example, in a study of social learning in chimpanzees, researchers gave juice boxes with straws to two groups of captive chimpanzees. The first group dipped the straw into the juice box, and then sucked on the small amount of juice at the end of the straw. The second group sucked through the straw directly, getting much more juice. When the first group, the “dippers,” observed the second group, “the suckers,” what do you think happened? All of the “dippers” in the first group switched to sucking through the straws directly. By simply observing the other chimps and modeling their behavior, they learned that this was a more efficient method of getting juice (Yamamoto, Humle, and Tanaka, 2013). Imitation is much more obvious in humans, but is imitation really the sincerest form of flattery? Consider Claire’s experience with observational learning. Claire’s nine-year- old son, Jay, was getting into trouble at school and was defiant at home. Claire feared that Jay would end up like her brothers, two of whom were in prison. One day, after yet another bad day at school and another negative note from the teacher, Claire, at her wit’s end, beat her son with a belt to get him to behave. Later that night, as she put her children to bed, Claire witnessed her four-year-old daughter, Anna, take a belt to her teddy bear and whip it. Claire was horrified, realizing that Anna was imitating her mother. It was then that Claire knew she wanted to discipline her children in a different manner. Like Tolman, whose experiments with rats suggested a cognitive component to learning, psychologist Albert Bandura’s ideas about learning were different from those of strict behaviorists. Bandura and other researchers proposed a brand of behaviorism called social learning theorysocial learning theory, which took cognitive processes into account. According to Bandura, pure behaviorism could not explain why learning can take place in the absence of external reinforcement. He felt that internal mental states must also have a role in learning and that observational learning involves much more than imitation. In imitation, a person simply copies what the model does. Observational learning is much more complex. According to Lefrançois (2012) there are several ways that observational learning can occur: You learn a new response. After watching your coworker get chewed out by your boss for coming in late, you start leaving home 10 minutes earlier so that you won’t be late. You choose whether or not to imitate the model depending on what you saw happen to the model. Remember Julian and his father? When learning to surf, Julian might watch how his father pops up successfully on his surfboard and then attempt to do the same thing. On the other hand, Julian might learn not to touch a hot stove after watching his father get burned on a stove. You learn a general rule that you can apply to other situations. Figure 2. (a) Yoga students learn by observation as their yoga instructor demonstrates the correct stance and movement for her students (live model). (b) Models don’t have to be present for learning to occur: through symbolic modeling, this child can learn a behavior by watching someone demonstrate it on television. (credit a: modification of work by Tony Cecala; credit b: modification of work by Andrew Hyde) LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Latent learning and modeling are used all the time in the world of marketing and advertising. This commercial played for months across the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut areas, Derek Jeter, an award-winning baseball player for the New York Yankees, is advertising a Ford. The commercial aired in a part of the country where Jeter is an incredibly well-known athlete. He is wealthy, and considered very loyal and good looking. What message are the advertisers sending by having him featured in the ad? How effective do you think it is? An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3887 TRY ITTRY IT Bandura identified three kinds of models: live, verbal, and symbolic. A live model demonstrates a behavior in person, as when Ben stood up on his surfboard so that Julian could see how he did it. A verbal instructional model does not perform the behavior, but instead explains or describes the behavior, as when a soccer coach tells his young players to kick the ball with the side of the foot, not with the toe. A symbolic model can be fictional characters or real people who demonstrate behaviors in books, movies, television shows, video games, or Internet sources (Figure 2). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j5Xr1t6DJc An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3887 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3887 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch the following to see a portion of the famous Bobo doll experiment, including an interview with Albert Bandura. Steps in the Modeling Process Of course, we don’t learn a behavior simply by observing a model. Bandura described specific steps in the process of modeling that must be followed if learning is to be successful: attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. First, you must be focused on what the model is doing—you have to pay attention. Next, you must be able to retain, or remember, what you observed; this is retention. Then, you must be able to perform the behavior that you observed and committed to memory; this is reproduction. Finally, you must have motivation. You need to want to copy the behavior, and whether or not you are motivated depends on what happened to the model. If you saw that the model was reinforced for her behavior, you will be more motivated to copy her. This is known as vicarious reinforcement. On the other hand, if you observed the model being punished, you would be less motivated to copy her. This is called vicarious punishment. For example, imagine that four-year-old Allison watched her older sister Kaitlyn playing in their mother’s makeup, and then saw Kaitlyn get a time out when their mother came in. After their mother left the room, Allison was tempted to play in the make-up, but she did not want to get a time-out from her mother. What do you think she did? Once you actually demonstrate the new behavior, the reinforcement you receive plays a part in whether or not you will repeat the behavior.Bandura researched modeling behavior, particularly children’s modeling of adults’ aggressive and violent behaviors (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1961). He conducted an experiment with a five-foot inflatable doll that he called a Bobo doll. In the experiment, children’s aggressive behavior was influenced by whether the teacher was punished for her behavior. In one scenario, a teacher acted aggressively with the doll, hitting, throwing, and even punching the doll, while a child watched. There were two types of responses by the children to the teacher’s behavior. When the teacher was punished for her bad behavior, the children decreased their tendency to act as she had. When the teacher was praised or ignored (and not punished for her behavior), the children imitated what she did, and even what she said. They punched, kicked, and yelled at the doll. What are the implications of this study? Bandura concluded that we watch and learn, and that this learning can have both prosocial and antisocial effects. Prosocial (positive) models can be used to encourage socially acceptable behavior. Parents in particular should take note of this finding. If you want your children to read, then read to them. Let them see you reading. Keep books in your home. Talk about your favorite books. If you want your children to be healthy, then let them see you eat right and exercise, and spend time engaging in physical fitness activities together. The same holds true for qualities like kindness, courtesy, and honesty. The main idea is that children observe and learn from their parents, even their parents’ morals, so be consistent and toss out the old adage “Do as I say, not as I do,” because children tend to copy what you do instead of what you say. Besides parents, many public figures, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, are viewed as prosocial models who are able to inspire global social change. Can you think of someone who has been a prosocial model in your life? The antisocial effects of observational learning are also worth mentioning. As you saw from the example of Claire at the beginning of this section, her daughter viewed Claire’s aggressive behavior and copied it. Research suggests that this may help to explain why abused children often grow up to be abusers themselves (Murrell, Christoff, & Henning, 2007). In fact, about 30% of abused children become abusive parents (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2013). We tend to do what we know. Abused children, who grow up witnessing their Figure 3. Can video games make us violent? Psychological researchers study this topic. (credit: “woodleywonderworks”/Flickr) LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch the Crash Course video The Bobo Beatdown for further explanation on observational learning. TRY ITTRY IT parents deal with anger and frustration through violent and aggressive acts, often learn to behave in that manner themselves. Sadly, it’s a vicious cycle that’s difficult to break. Some studies suggest that violent television shows, movies, and video games may also have antisocial effects (Figure 3) although further research needs to be done to understand the correlational and causational aspects of media violence and behavior. Some studies have found a link between viewing violence and aggression seen in children (Anderson & Gentile, 2008; Kirsch, 2010; Miller, Grabell, Thomas, Bermann, & Graham-Bermann, 2012). These findings may not be surprising, given that a child graduating from high school has been exposed to around 200,000 violent acts including murder, robbery, torture, bombings, beatings, and rape through various forms of media (Huston et al., 1992). Not only might viewing media violence affect aggressive behavior by teaching people to act that way in real life situations, but it has also been suggested that repeated exposure to violent acts also desensitizes people to it. Psychologists are working to understand this dynamic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=128Ts5r9NRE An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3887 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3887 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3887 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3887 THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER What is something you have learned how to do after watching someone else? The Bobo Doll Experiment Bandura studied the impact of an adult’s behavior on the behavior of children who saw them. One of his independent variables was whether or not the adult was hostile or aggressive toward the Bobo doll, so for some children the adults acted aggressively (treatment condition) and for others they did not (control condition 1) and for yet other children there were no adults at all (control condition 2). He was also interested to learn if the sex of the child and/or the sex of the adult model influenced what the child learned. Phase 1 of the Experiment: The Observation Phase The observation phase of the experiment is when the children see the behavior of the adults. Each child was shown into a room where an adult was already sitting near the Bobo doll. The child was positioned so he or she could easily see the adult. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3887 TRY ITTRY IT Figure 4. Set-up of the Bobo Doll experiment. Phase 2 of the Experiment: Frustration Dr. Bandura thought that the children might be a bit more likely to show aggressive behavior if they were frustrated. The second phase of the experiment was designed to produce this frustration. After a child had watched the adult in phase 1, he or she was taken to another room, one that also contained a lot of attractive, fun toys and was told that is was fine to play with the toys. As soon as the child started to enjoy playing with the toys, the experimenter said something. Phase 3 of the Experiment: The Testing Phase After the child was told to stop playing with “the very best toys,” the experimenter said that he or she could play with any of the toys in the next room. Then the child was taken to a third room. This room contained a variety of toys. Many of the toys were engaging and interactive, but not the type that encouraged aggressive play. Critically, https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/03/14172414/Screen-Shot-2017-04-14-at-1.23.51-PM https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/03/14172414/Screen-Shot-2017-04-14-at-1.23.51-PM An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3887 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3887 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3887 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3887 TRY ITTRY IT the Bobo doll and the hammer that the model had used in the first phase were now in this new play room. The goal of this phase in the experiment was to see how the child would react without a model around. The child was allowed to play freely for 20 minutes. Note that an adult did stay in the room so the child would not feel abandoned or frightened. However, this adult worked inconspicuously in a corner and interacted with the child as little as possible. During the 20 minutes that the child played alone in the third room, the experimenters observed his or her behavior from behind a see-through mirror. Using a complex system that we won’t go into here, the experimenters counted the number of various types of behaviors that the child showed during this period. These behaviors included ones directed at the Bobo doll, as well as those involving any of the other toys. They were particularly interested in the number of behaviors the child showed that clearly imitated the actions of the adults that the child had observed earlier, in phase 1. Below are the results for the number of imitative physically aggressive acts the children showed on average toward the Bobo doll. These acts included hitting and punching the Bobo doll. On the left, you see the two modeling conditions: aggression by the model in phase 1 or no aggression by the model in phase 1. Note: Children in the no-model conditions showed very few physically aggressive acts and their results do not change the interpretation, so we will keep the results simple by leaving them out of the table. Male ModelMale Model Female ModelFemale Model BoysBoys GirlsGirls BoysBoys GirlsGirls AggressionAggression 25.8 7.2 12.4 5.5 No AggressionNo Aggression 1.5 0.0 0.2 2.5 The story is a slightly, though not completely, different when we look at imitative verbal aggression, rather than physical aggression. The table below shows the number of verbally aggressive statements by the boys and girls under different conditions in the experiment. Verbally aggressive statements were ones like the models had made: for example, “Sock him” and “Kick him down!” An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3887 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3887 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3887 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3887 TRY ITTRY IT GLOSSARYGLOSSARY model:model: person who performs a behavior that serves as an example (in observational learning) observational learning:observational learning: type of learning that occurs by watching others vicarious punishment:vicarious punishment: process where the observer sees the model punished, making the observer less likely to imitate the model’s behavior vicarious reinforcement:vicarious reinforcement: process where the observer sees the model rewarded, making the observer more likely to imitate the model’s behavior An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=3887 Note: Just as was true for the physically aggressive acts, children in the no model conditions showed very few verbally aggressive acts either and their results do not change the interpretation, so we will keep the results simple by leaving them out of the table. Male ModelMale Model Female ModelFemale Model BoysBoys GirlsGirls BoysBoys GirlsGirls AggressionAggression 12.7 2.0 4.3 13.7 No AggressionNo Aggression 0.0 0.0 1.1 0.3 Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Authored byAuthored by: Patrick Carroll for Lumen Learning. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Observational Learning. Provided byProvided by: Open Learning Initiative. Located atLocated at: https://oli.cmu.edu/jcourse/workbook/activity/page?context=df3e71c70a0001dc01587dcb723e2002. ProjectProject: Psychology. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike • Psychology. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@4.100:1/Psychology. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • Albert Bandura Bobo Doll experiment. Authored byAuthored by: kpharden. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0iWpSNu3NU. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/ 4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 PUTTING IT TOGETHER: LEARNING LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES In this module, you learned to • explain learning and the process of classical conditioning • explain operant conditioning, reinforcement, and punishment • describe latent learning and observational learning Are you superstitious? If so, you are definitely not alone. There are quite a few famous athletes who have reported a long list of superstitious behaviors. Michael Jordan wore his University of North Carolina basketball shorts under his Chicago Bulls uniform, tennis superstar Serena Williams is known to bounce the ball five times before her first serve and two times before her second, basketballer Kevin Garnett (and many others since him) insist on eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before games. How might these behaviors be linked to the concepts you learned about conditioning in this module? Curiously, even B.F. Skinner began to see signs of superstitious behavior in pigeons during his experiments. Pigeons, like humans, associate rewards with superstitious rituals when they see positive results. When pigeons looked over their left shoulder (operant conditioning), they were hopeful that a reward would come, just as an athlete who wears the same lucky socks comes to associate the special socks with superior performance. Research into superstition has shown that, even if the behaviors seem silly, they can be effective in improving performance, most likely due to the increased confidence and security people feel when they engage in these rituals. https://youtube.com/watch?v=7XbH78wscGw%3Frel%3D0 Hopefully, you can continue to see and find examples of all types of conditioning in your life. From classically conditioned food aversions, operantly conditioned rewards, or surprising latent learning, there are applications of learning all around you. Have you heard that there are “Learning Styles?” This rather ubiquitous myth is persisting despite the fact that we have quite a bit of information indicating that there are NO SUCH THINGS! Yes, you read that right, learning styles are a myth and they are actually doing moremore harm than good. Check out this recent Press Release from the APA indicating that belief in learning styles myth may be detrimental! (Note: DeLessio, Joe (2015, June 15). Why Superstitions Help Athletes Perform Better. Retrieved from http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/06/why-superstitions-help-athletes-perform-better.html) Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Putting It Together: Learning. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Superstitious Behavior. Provided byProvided by: ThePantheion's Channel. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XbH78wscGw&feature=youtu.be. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://oli.cmu.edu/jcourse/workbook/activity/page?context=df3e71c70a0001dc01587dcb723e2002 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@4.100:1/Psychology https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0iWpSNu3NU https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/05/learning-styles-myth?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=apa-press-release&utm_content=learning-styles-may30 https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/05/learning-styles-myth?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=apa-press-release&utm_content=learning-styles-may30 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XbH78wscGw&feature=youtu.be DISCUSSION: LEARNING What I Learned STEP 1STEP 1: Think of different, specific, examples of things you have learned through the types of conditioning discussed in this module. Write a discussion post explaining the behaviors you learned, and identify the key “components” and vocabulary of the learning, such as the UCS, UCR, CS, CR, positive or negative reinforcement, shaping, etc. The entire post should be at least 200 words and respond to the following prompt: 1. Describe one example of something learned through classical conditioning.classical conditioning. 2. Describe one example of something learned through operant conditioning.operant conditioning. 3. Describe one example of something learned through observational learning or latent learning.observational learning or latent learning. STEP 2STEP 2: Comment on at least TWO other posts in at least 75 words per post. Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Discussion: Learning. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ MODULE 7: MEMORY WHY IT MATTERS: MEMORY Figure 1. Photographs can trigger our memories and bring past experiences back to life. (credit: modification of work by Cory Zanker) We may be top-notch learners, but if we don’t have a way to store what we’ve learned, what good is the knowledge we’ve gained? Take a few minutes to imagine what your day might be like if you could not remember anything you had learned. You would have to figure out how to get dressed. What clothing should you wear, and how do buttons and zippers work? You would need someone to teach you how to brush your teeth and tie your shoes. Who would you ask for help with these tasks, since you wouldn’t recognize the faces of these people in your house? Wait . . . is this even your house? Uh oh, your stomach begins to rumble and you feel hungry. You’d like something to eat, but you don’t know where the food is kept or even how to prepare it. Oh dear, this is getting confusing. Maybe it would be best just go back to bed. A bed . . . what is a bed? We have an amazing capacity for memory, but how, exactly, do we process and store information? Are there different kinds of memory, and if so, what characterizes the different types? How, exactly, do we retrieve our memories? And why do we forget? This module will explore these questions as we learn about memory. AnswerAnswer Abel, M., & Bäuml, K.-H. T. (2013). Sleep can reduce proactive interference. Memory, 22(4), 332–339. doi:10.1080/09658211.2013.785570. Retrieved from http://www.psychologie.uni-regensburg.de/Baeuml/ papers_in_press/sleepPI Anderson, N. S. (1969). The influence of acoustic similarity on serial recall of letter sequences. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 21(3), 248–255. Anderson, R. C. (1984). Role of the reader’s schema in comprehension, learning, and memory. In R. C. Anderson, J. Osborn, & R. J. Tierney (Eds.), Learning to read in American schools: Basal Readers and Content Texts (pp. 243–257). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Atkinson, R. C., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its control processes. In K. W. Spence & J. T. Spence (Eds.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Volume 2 (pp. 89–195). New York, NY: Academic Press. Baddeley, A. (2004). Your memory: A user’s guide. Richmond Hill, Canada: Firefly Books. Baddeley, A. D., & Hitch, G. (1974). Working memory. In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory (Vol. 8, pp. 47–89). New York, NY: Academic Press. Bayley, P. J., & Squire, L. R. (2002). Medial temporal lobe amnesia: Gradual acquisition of factual information by nondeclarative memory. Journal of Neuroscience, 22, 5741–5748. Bellezza, F. S. (1981). Mnemonic devices: Classification, characteristics and criteria. Review of Educational Research, 51, 247–275. Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. (2009). Reevaluating lineups: Why witnesses make mistakes and how to reduce the chance of a misidentification. Retrieved from The Innocence Project website: http://www.innocenceproject.org/docs/Eyewitness_ID_Report Blockland, A. (1996). Acetylcholine: A neurotransmitter for learning and memory? Brain Research Reviews, 21, 285–300. Bodie, G. D., Powers, W. G., & Fitch-Hauser, M. (2006). Chunking, priming, and active learning: Toward an innovative approach to teaching communication-related skills. Interactive Learning Environment, 14(2), 119–135. Bousfield, W. (1935). The occurrence of clustering in the recall of randomly arranged associates. Journal of General Psychology, 49, 229–240. Bransford, J. D., & McCarrell, N. S. (1974). A sketch of a cognitive approach to comprehension. In W. B. Weimer & D. J. Palermo (Eds.), Cognition and the symbolic processes (pp. 189–229). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Briere, J., & Conte, J. (1993). Self-reported amnesia for abuse in adults molested as children. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 6, 21–31. Carli, L. (1999). Cognitive reconstruction, hindsight, and reactions to victims and perpetrators. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(8), 966–979. doi:10.1177/01461672992511005 Ceci, S. J., & Bruck, M. (1993). Child witness: Translating research into policy. Social Policy Report, 7(3), 1–30. Ceci, S. J., & Bruck, M. (1995). Jeopardy in the courtroom: A scientific analysis of children’s testimony. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Cheit, R. E. (2007). The recovered memory project. Retrieved from http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/. Christianson, S. A. (1992). The handbook of emotion and memory: Research and theory. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Clark, R. E., Zola, S. M., & Squire, L. R. (2000). Impaired recognition memory in rats after damage to the hippocampus. The Journal of Neuroscience, 20(23), 8853–8860. Corkin, S. (1965). Tactually-guided maze learning in man: Effects of unilateral cortical excisions and bilateral hippocampal lesions. Neuropsychologia, 3, 339–351. Corkin, S. (1968). Acquisition of motor skill after bilateral medial temporal-lobe excision. Neuropsychologia, 6, 255–264. Corkin, S., Amaral D. G., González, R. G., Johnson, K. A., & Hyman, B. T. (1997). H. M.’s medial temporal lobe lesion: Findings from magnetic resonance imaging. Journal of Neuroscience, 17(10), 3964–3979. Craik, F. I. M., & Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: A framework for memory research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11, 671–684. Craik, F. I. M., Moroz, T. M., Moscovitch, M., Stuss, D. T., Winocur, G., Tulving, E., & Kapur, S. (1999). In search of the self: A positron emission tomography study. Psychological Science, 10(1), 26–34. Craik, F. I. M., & Tulving, E. (1975). Depth of processing and the retention of words in episodic memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 104(3), 268–294. Craik, F. I. M., & Watkins, M. J. (1973). The role of rehearsal in short-term memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 12, 599–607. Green, J. T., & Woodruff-Pak, D. S. (2000). Eyeblink classical conditioning in aging animals. In D. S. Woodruff- Pak & J. E. Steinmetz (Eds.), Eyeblink classical conditioning: Animal models (Vol. 2, pp.155–178). Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic. Greenberg, D. L. (2004). President Bush’s false [flashbulb] memory of 9/11/01. Applied. Cognitive Psychology, 18(3), 363–370. doi:10.1002/acp.1016 Devilly, G. J. (2007). If nothing happened why do I still hurt? An update on the memory wars. InPsych, 29(2), 16–18. Ebbinghaus, H. (1964). Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology (H. A. Ruger & C. E. Bussenius, Trans.). New York, NY: Dover. (Original work published 1885) Goodman, G. S. (2006). Children’s eyewitness memory: A modern history and contemporary commentary. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 811–832. Hassabis D., & Maguire E. A. (2007). Deconstructing episodic memory with construction. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(7), 299–306. Jacobs, J. (1887). Experiments on “prehension.” Mind, 12, 75–79. Josselyn, J. A. (2010). Continuing the search for the engram: Examining the mechanism of fear memories. Journal of Psychiatry Neuroscience, 35(4), 221–228. Kapur, S., Craik, F. I. M., Tulving, E., Wilson, A. A., Houle, S., & Brown, G. M. (1994). Neuroanatomical correlates of encoding in episodic memory: Levels of processing effect. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 91(6), 208–2011. Lashley K. S. (1950). In search of the engram. Society of Experimental Biology Symposium, 4: Psychological Mechanisms in Animal Behavior. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Loftus, E. F., & Palmer, J. C. (1974). Reconstruction of auto-mobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13, 585–589. MacLeod, C. M., Gopie, N., Hourihan, K. L., Neary, K. R., & Ozubko, J. D. (2010). The production effect: Delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36(3), 671–685. Mayford, M., Siegelbaum, S. A., & Kandel, E. R. (2012). Synapses and memory storage. New York, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. McGaugh, J. L. (2003). Memory and emotion: The making of lasting memories. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. McLeod, S. A. (2011). Anterograde amnesia [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/ anterograde-amnesia.html Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 68, 81–87. Myhrer, T. (2003). Neurotransmitter systems involved in learning and memory in the rat: A meta-analysis based on studies of four behavioral tasks. Brain Research Reviews, 41(2–3), 268–287. Newseum. (n.d.). G-men and journalists: D. C. sniper [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.newseum.org/ exhibits-and-theaters/temporary-exhibits/g-men-and-journalists/sniper/ Nickerson, R. S., & Adams, M. J. (1979). Long-term memory for a common object. Cognitive Psychology, 11(3), 287–307. Paivio, A. (1986). Mental representations: A dual coding approach. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Parker, E. S., Cahill, L., & McGaugh, J. L. (2006). A case of unusual autobiographical remembering. Neurocase, 12, 35–49. Payne, B. K., Jacoby, L. L., & Lambert, A. J. (2004). Memory monitoring and the control of stereotype distortion. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 52–64. Pew Research Center (2011, September 1). Ten years after 9/11: United in remembrance, divided over policies. Washington, DC: People Press. Pipe, M.-E. (1996). Children’s eyewitness memory. New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 25(2), 36–43. Pipe, M.-E., Lamb, M., Orbach, Y., & Esplin, P. W. (2004). Recent research on children’s testimony about experienced and witnessed events. Developmental Review, 24, 440–468. Roediger, H. L., & DeSoto, K. A. (in press). The psychology of reconstructive memory. In J. Wright (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral sciences, 2e. Oxford, UK: Elsevier. Roediger, H. L., III, & McDermott, K. B. (2000). Tricks of memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9, 123–127. Rogers, T. B., Kuiper, N. A., & Kirker, W. S. (1977). Self-reference and the encoding of personal information. Journal of Personal Social Psychology, 35(9), 677–688. Schacter, D. (2001). The seven sins of memory: How the mind forgets and remembers. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin. Steinmetz, J. E. (1999). A renewed interest in human classical eyeblink conditioning. Psychological Science, 10, 24–25. Tigner, R. B. (1999). Putting memory research to good use. College Teaching, 47(4), 149–152. Tulving, E. (1972). Episodic and semantic memory. In E. Tulving & W. Dolandson (Eds.), Organization of memory (pp. 381–403). New York, NY: Academic Press. Tulving, E. (2002, February). Episodic memory: From mind to brain. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 1–25. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.53.100901.135114 van Praag, H. (2008). Neurogenesis and exercise: Past and future directions. NeuroMolecular Medicine, 10(2), 128–140. Wells, G. L., & Quinlivan, D. S. (2009). Suggestive eyewitness identification procedures and the Supreme Court’s reliability test in light of eyewitness science: 30 years later. Law and Human Behavior, 33, 1–24. doi:10.1007/ s10979-008-9130-3 Wrubel, B. (Writer), & Spiller, M. (Director). (2010). The Old Wagon [Television series episode]. In S. Levitan & C. Lloyd (Executive producers), Modern Family. 20th Century Fox Television. Yogo, M., & Fujihara, S. (2008). Working memory capacity can be improved by expressive writing: A randomized experiment in a Japanese sample. British Journal of Health Psychology, 13(1), 77–80. doi:10.1348/ 135910707X25244 Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Introduction to Memory. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:m3fzcXQd@4/Introduction. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/ content/col11629/latest/. MEMORY ENCODING What you’ll learn to do: explain the process of memory Our memory has three basic functions: encoding, storing, and retrieving information. Encoding is the act of getting information into our memory system through automatic or effortful processing. Storage is retention of the information, and retrieval is the act of getting information out of storage and into conscious awareness through recall, recognition, and relearning. There are various models that aim to explain how we utilize our memory. In this section, you’ll learn about some of these models as well as the importance of recall, recognition, and relearning. http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:m3fzcXQd@4/Introduction https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/24163536/brainmemory An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=229 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING To get a good overview of all of these concepts and to pique your interest, you may choose to begin this module by watching John Gabrieli’s lecture on memory. Listen for some key vocabulary terms you’ll learn about soon, particularly: • the three-stage model of memory • short-term memory • serial position effect • primacy • recency • Ebbinghaus forgetting curve • proactive interference • retroactive interference • flashbulb memories • false memories Figure 1. Encoding involves the input of information into the memory system. Storage is the retention of the encoded information. Retrieval, or getting the information out of memory and back into awareness, is the third function. LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explain the two major processes of encoding and the three different ways that we encode sensory information. • Describe the three stages of memory storage Memory is an information processing system; therefore, we often compare it to a computer. MemoryMemory is the set of processes used to encode, store, and retrieve information over different periods of time. Encoding We get information into our brains through a process called encodingencoding, which is the input of information into the memory system. Once we receive sensory information from the environment, our brains label or code it. We organize the information with other similar information and connect new concepts to existing concepts. Encoding information occurs through automatic processing and effortful processing. If someone asks you what you ate for lunch today, more than likely you could recall this information quite easily. This is known as automatic processingautomatic processing, or the encoding of details like time, space, frequency, and the meaning of words. Automatic processing is usually Figure 2. When you first learn new skills such as driving a car, you have to put forth effort and attention to encode information about how to start a car, how to brake, how to handle a turn, and so on. Once you know how to drive, you can encode additional information about this skill automatically. (credit: Robert Couse-Baker) TRY ITTRY IT done without any conscious awareness. Recalling the last time you studied for a test is another example of automatic processing. But what about the actual test material you studied? It probably required a lot of work and attention on your part in order to encode that information. This is known as effortful processingeffortful processing (Figure 2). What are the most effective ways to ensure that important memories are well encoded? Even a simple sentence is easier to recall when it is meaningful (Anderson, 1984). Read the following sentences (Bransford & McCarrell, 1974), then look away and count backwards from 30 by threes to zero, and then try to write down the sentences (no peeking back at this page!). 1. The notes were sour because the seams split. 2. The voyage wasn’t delayed because the bottle shattered. 3. The haystack was important because the cloth ripped. How well did you do? By themselves, the statements that you wrote down were most likely confusing and difficult for you to recall. Now, try writing them again, using the following prompts: bagpipe, ship christening (shattering a bottle over the bow of the ship is a symbol of good luck), and parachutist. Next count backwards from 40 by fours, then check yourself to see how well you recalled the sentences this time. You can see that the sentences are now much more memorable because each of the sentences was placed in context. Material is far better encoded when you make it meaningful. There are three types of encoding. The encoding of words and their meaning is known as semantic encodingsemantic encoding. It was first demonstrated by William Bousfield (1935) in an experiment in which he asked people to memorize words. The 60 words were actually divided into 4 categories of meaning, although the participants did not know An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=229 this because the words were randomly presented. When they were asked to remember the words, they tended to recall them in categories, showing that they paid attention to the meanings of the words as they learned them. Visual encodingVisual encoding is the encoding of images, and acoustic encodingacoustic encoding is the encoding of sounds, words in particular. To see how visual encoding works, read over this list of words: car, level, dog, truth, book, value. If you were asked later to recall the words from this list, which ones do you think you’d most likely remember? You would probably have an easier time recalling the words car, dog, and book, and a more difficult time recalling the words level, truth, and value. Why is this? Because you can recall images (mental pictures) more easily than words alone. When you read the words car, dog, and book you created images of these things in your mind. These are concrete, high-imagery words. On the other hand, abstract words like level, truth, and value are low-imagery words. High-imagery words are encoded both visually and semantically (Paivio, 1986), thus building a stronger memory. Now let’s turn our attention to acoustic encoding. You are driving in your car and a song comes on the radio that you haven’t heard in at least 10 years, but you sing along, recalling every word. In the United States, children often learn the alphabet through song, and they learn the number of days in each month through rhyme: “Thirty days hath September, / April, June, and November; / All the rest have thirty-one, / Save February, with twenty- eight days clear, / And twenty-nine each leap year.” These lessons are easy to remember because of acoustic encoding. We encode the sounds the words make. This is one of the reasons why much of what we teach young children is done through song, rhyme, and rhythm. Which of the three types of encoding do you think would give you the best memory of verbal information? Some years ago, psychologists Fergus Craik and Endel Tulving (1975) conducted a series of experiments to find out. Participants were given words along with questions about them. The questions required the participants to process the words at one of the three levels. The visual processing questions included such things as asking the participants about the font of the letters. The acoustic processing questions asked the participants about the sound or rhyming of the words, and the semantic processing questions asked the participants about the meaning of the words. After participants were presented with the words and questions, they were given an unexpected recall or recognition task. Words that had been encoded semantically were better remembered than those encoded visually or acoustically. Semantic encoding involves a deeper level of processing than the shallower visual or acoustic encoding. Craik and Tulving concluded that we process verbal information best through semantic encoding, especially if we apply what is called the self-reference effect. The self-reference effect is the tendency for an individual to have better memory for information that relates to oneself in comparison to material that has less personal relevance (Rogers, Kuiper & Kirker, 1977). Could semantic encoding be beneficial to you as you attempt to memorize the concepts in this module? Recoding The process of encoding is selective, and in complex situations, relatively few of many possible details are noticed and encoded. The process of encoding always involves recodingrecoding—that is, taking the information from the form it is delivered to us and then converting it in a way that we can make sense of it. For example, you might try to remember the colors of a rainbow by using the acronym ROY G BIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). The process of recoding the colors into a name can help us to remember. However, recoding can also introduce errors—when we accidentally add information during encoding, then remember that new material as if it had been part of the actual experience (as discussed below). Although it requires more effort, using images and associations can improve the process of recoding. [Image: Leo Reynolds] Psychologists have studied many recoding strategies that can be used during study to improve retention. First, research advises that, as we study, we should think of the meaning of the events (Craik & Lockhart, 1972), and we should try to relate new events to information we already know. This helps us form associations that we can use to retrieve information later. Second, imagining events also makes them more memorable; creating vivid images out of information (even verbal information) can greatly improve later recall (Bower & Reitman, 1972). Creating imagery is part of the technique Simon Reinhard uses to remember huge numbers of digits, but we can all use images to encode information more effectively. The basic concept behind good encoding strategies is to form distinctive memories (ones that stand out), and to form links or associations among memories to help later retrieval (Hunt & McDaniel, 1993). Using study strategies such as the ones described here is challenging, but the effort is well worth the benefits of enhanced learning and retention. We emphasized earlier that encoding is selective: people cannot encode all information they are exposed to. However, recoding can add information that was not even seen or heard during the initial encoding phase. Several of the recoding processes, like forming associations between memories, can happen without our awareness. This is one reason people can sometimes remember events that did not actually happen—because during the process of recoding, details got added. One common way of inducing false memories in the laboratory employs a word-list technique (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Participants hear lists of 15 words, like door, glass, pane, shade, ledge, sill, house, open, curtain, frame, view, breeze, sash, screen, and shutter. Later, participants are given a test in which they are shown a list of words and asked to pick out the ones they’d heard earlier. This second list contains some words from the first list (e.g., door, pane, frame) and some words not from the list (e.g., arm, phone, bottle). In this example, one of the words on the test is window, which—importantly—does not appear in the first list, but which is related to other words in that list. When subjects were tested, they were reasonably accurate with the studied words (door, etc.), recognizing them 72% of the time. However, when window was on the test, they falsely recognized it as having been on the list 84% of the time (Stadler, Roediger, & McDermott, 1999). The same thing happened with many other lists the authors used. This phenomenon is referred to as the DRM (for Deese-Roediger-McDermott) effect. One explanation for such results is that, while students listened to items in the list, the words triggered the students to think about window, even though window was never presented. In this way, people seem to encode events that are not actually part of their experience. Because humans are creative, we are always going beyond the information we are given: we automatically make associations and infer from them what is happening. But, as with the word association mix-up above, sometimes we make false memories from our inferences—remembering the inferences themselves as if they were actual experiences. To illustrate this, Brewer (1977) gave people sentences to remember that were designed to elicit pragmatic inferences. Inferences, in general, refer to instances when something is not explicitly stated, but we are still able to guess the undisclosed intention. For example, if your friend told you that she didn’t want to go out to eat, you may infer that she doesn’t have the money to go out, or that she’s too tired. With pragmatic inferences, there is usually one particular inference you’re likely to make. Consider the statement Brewer (1977) gave her participants: “The karate champion hit the cinder block.” After hearing or seeing this sentence, participants who were given a memory test tended to remember the statement as having been, “The karate champion broke the cinder block.” This remembered statement is not necessarily a logical inference (i.e., it is perfectly reasonable that a karate champion could hit a cinder block without breaking it). Nevertheless, the pragmatic conclusion from hearing such a sentence is that the block was likely broken. The participants remembered this inference they made while hearing the sentence in place of the actual words that were in the sentence (see also McDermott & Chan, 2006). Encoding—the initial registration of information—is essential in the learning and memory process. Unless an event is encoded in some fashion, it will not be successfully remembered later. However, just because an event is encoded (even if it is encoded well), there’s no guarantee that it will be remembered later. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/01025413/encoding https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/01025413/encoding An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=229 TRY ITTRY IT GLOSSARYGLOSSARY acoustic encoding:acoustic encoding: input of sounds, words, and music automatic processing:automatic processing: encoding of informational details like time, space, frequency, and the meaning of words effortful processing:effortful processing: encoding of information that takes effort and attention encoding:encoding: input of information into the memory system memory:memory: system or process that stores what we learn for future use semantic encodingsemantic encoding: input of words and their meaning visual encodingvisual encoding: input of images Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • How Memory Functions. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:I97J3Te3@7/Problems-with-Memory. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/. • Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval). Authored byAuthored by: Kathleen B. McDermott and Henry L. Roediger III . Provided byProvided by: Washington University in St. Louis. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king- introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/memory-encoding-storage-retrieval. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike • How Memory Functions. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:-RwqQWzt@6/How-Memory-Functions. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • Brain picture. Authored byAuthored by: Johnhain. Provided byProvided by: Pixabay. Located atLocated at: https://pixabay.com/en/brain-mind-obsession-work-activity-954823/. LicenseLicense: CC0: No Rights Reserved STORAGE LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe the three stages of memory storage • Describe and distinguish between implicit and explicit memory and semantic and episodic memory Once the information has been encoded, we have to somehow have to retain it. Our brains take the encoded information and place it in storage. StorageStorage is the creation of a permanent record of information. In order for a memory to go into storage (i.e., long-term memory), it has to pass through three distinct stages: Sensory MemorySensory Memory, Short-Term MemoryShort-Term Memory, and finally Long-Term MemoryLong-Term Memory. These stages were first proposed by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin (1968). Their model of human memory (Figure 1), called Atkinson-Shiffrin (A-S), is based on the belief that we process memories in the same way that a computer processes information. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:I97J3Te3@7/Problems-with-Memory https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/memory-encoding-storage-retrieval http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/memory-encoding-storage-retrieval https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:-RwqQWzt@6/How-Memory-Functions https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://pixabay.com/en/brain-mind-obsession-work-activity-954823/ https://creativecommons.org/about/cc0 Figure 1. According to the Atkinson-Shiffrin model of memory, information passes through three distinct stages in order for it to be stored in long-term memory. But A-S is just one model of memory. Others, such as Baddeley and Hitch (1974), have proposed a model where short-term memory itself has different forms. In this model, storing memories in short-term memory is like opening different files on a computer and adding information. The type of short-term memory (or computer file) depends on the type of information received. There are memories in visual-spatial form, as well as memories of spoken or written material, and they are stored in three short-term systems: a visuospatial sketchpad, an episodic buffer, and a phonological loop. According to Baddeley and Hitch, a central executive part of memory supervises or controls the flow of information to and from the three short-term systems. Sensory Memory In the Atkinson-Shiffrin model, stimuli from the environment are processed first in sensory memorysensory memory: storage of brief sensory events, such as sights, sounds, and tastes. It is very brief storage—up to a couple of seconds. We are constantly bombarded with sensory information. We cannot absorb all of it, or even most of it. And most of it has no impact on our lives. For example, what was your professor wearing the last class period? As long as the professor was dressed appropriately, it does not really matter what she was wearing. Sensory information about sights, sounds, smells, and even textures, which we do not view as valuable information, we discard. If we view something as valuable, the information will move into our short-term memory system. One study of sensory memory researched the significance of valuable information on short-term memory storage. J. R. Stroop discovered a memory phenomenon in the 1930s: you will name a color more easily if it appears printed in that color, which is called the Stroop effectStroop effect. In other words, the word “red” will be named more quickly, regardless of the color the word appears in, than any word that is colored red. Try an experiment: name the colors of the words you are given in Figure 2. Do not read the words, but say the color the word is printed in. For example, upon seeing the word “yellow” in green print, you should say “green,” not “yellow.” This experiment is fun, but it’s not as easy as it seems. Figure 2. The Stroop effect describes why it is difficult for us to name a color when the word and the color of the word are different. Figure 3. Work through this series of numbers using the recall exercise explained above to determine the longest string of digits that you can store. Short-Term Memory Short-term memory (STM)Short-term memory (STM) is a temporary storage system that processes incoming sensory memory; sometimes it is called working memory. Short-term memory takes information from sensory memory and sometimes connects that memory to something already in long-term memory. Short-term memory storage lasts about 20 seconds. George Miller (1956), in his research on the capacity of memory, found that most people can retain about 7 items in STM. Some remember 5, some 9, so he called the capacity of STM 7 plus or minus 2. Think of short-term memory as the information you have displayed on your computer screen—a document, a spreadsheet, or a web page. Then, information in short-term memory goes to long-term memory (you save it to your hard drive), or it is discarded (you delete a document or close a web browser). This step of rehearsalrehearsal, the conscious repetition of information to be remembered, to move STM into long-term memory is called memorymemory consolidationconsolidation. You may find yourself asking, “How much information can our memory handle at once?” To explore the capacity and duration of your short-term memory, have a partner read the strings of random numbers (Figure 3) out loud to you, beginning each string by saying, “Ready?” and ending each by saying, “Recall,” at which point you should try to write down the string of numbers from memory. Note the longest string at which you got the series correct. For most people, this will be close to 7, Miller’s famous 7 plus or minus 2. Recall is somewhat better for random numbers than for random letters (Jacobs, 1887), and also often slightly better for information we hear (acoustic encoding) rather than see (visual encoding) (Anderson, 1969). An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2257 TRY ITTRY IT Long-term Memory Long-term memory (LTM)Long-term memory (LTM) is the continuous storage of information. Unlike short-term memory, the storage capacity of LTM has no limits. It encompasses all the things you can remember that happened more than just a few minutes ago to all of the things that you can remember that happened days, weeks, and years ago. In keeping with the computer analogy, the information in your LTM would be like the information you have saved on the hard drive. It isn’t there on your desktop (your short-term memory), but you can pull up this information when you want it, at least most of the time. Not all long-term memories are strong memories. Some memories can only be recalled through prompts. For example, you might easily recall a fact— “What is the capital of the United States?”—or a procedure—“How do you ride a bike?”—but you might struggle to recall the name of the restaurant you had dinner when you were on vacation in France last summer. A prompt, such as that the restaurant was named after its owner, who spoke to you about your shared interest in soccer, may help you recall the name of the restaurant. Long-term memory is divided into two types: explicit and implicit (Figure 4). Understanding the different types is important because a person’s age or particular types of brain trauma or disorders can leave certain types of LTM intact while having disastrous consequences for other types. Explicit memoriesExplicit memories are those we consciously try to remember and recall. For example, if you are studying for your chemistry exam, the material you are learning will be part of your explicit memory. (Note: Sometimes, but not always, the terms explicit memory and declarative memory are used interchangeably.) Implicit memoriesImplicit memories are memories that are not part of our consciousness. They are memories formed from behaviors. Implicit memory is also called non-declarative memory. Figure 4. There are two components of long-term memory: explicit and implicit. Explicit memory includes episodic and semantic memory. Implicit memory includes procedural memory and things learned through conditioning. Procedural memoryProcedural memory is a type of implicit memory: it stores information about how to do things. It is the memory for skilled actions, such as how to brush your teeth, how to drive a car, how to swim the crawl (freestyle) stroke. If you are learning how to swim freestyle, you practice the stroke: how to move your arms, how to turn your head to alternate breathing from side to side, and how to kick your legs. You would practice this many times until you become good at it. Once you learn how to swim freestyle and your body knows how to move through the water, you will never forget how to swim freestyle, even if you do not swim for a couple of decades. Similarly, if you present an accomplished guitarist with a guitar, even if he has not played in a long time, he will still be able to play quite well. Explicit memory has to do with the storage of facts and events we personally experienced. Explicit (declarative) memory has two parts: semantic memory and episodic memory. Semantic means having to do with language and knowledge about language. An example would be the question “what does argumentative mean?” Stored in our semantic memory is knowledge about words, concepts, and language-based knowledge and facts. For example, answers to the following questions are stored in your semantic memory: • Who was the first President of the United States? • What is democracy? • What is the longest river in the world? Episodic memoryEpisodic memory is information about events we have personally experienced. The concept of episodic memory was first proposed about 40 years ago (Tulving, 1972). Since then, Tulving and others have looked at scientific evidence and reformulated the theory. Currently, scientists believe that episodic memory is memory about Figure 7. Marilu Henner’s super autobiographical memory is known as hyperthymesia. (credit: Mark Richardson) EVERYDAY CONNECTION: CAN YOU REMEMBER EVERYTHING YOU EVER DIDEVERYDAY CONNECTION: CAN YOU REMEMBER EVERYTHING YOU EVER DID OR SAID?OR SAID? Episodic memories are also called autobiographical memories. Let’s quickly test your autobiographical memory. What were you wearing exactly five years ago today? What did you eat for lunch on April 10, 2009? You probably find it difficult, if not impossible, to answer these questions. Can you remember every event you have experienced over the course of your life—meals, conversations, clothing choices, weather conditions, and so on? Most likely none of us could even come close to answering these questions; however, American actress Marilu Henner, best known for the television show Taxi, can remember. She has an amazing and highly superior autobiographical memory (Figure 7). Very few people can recall events in this way; right now, only 12 known individuals have this ability, and only a few have been studied (Parker, Cahill & McGaugh 2006). And although hyperthymesia normally appears in adolescence, two children in the United States appear to have memories from well before their tenth birthdays. happenings in particular places at particular times, the what, where, and when of an event (Tulving, 2002). It involves recollection of visual imagery as well as the feeling of familiarity (Hassabis & Maguire, 2007). LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch these Part 1 and Part 2 video clips on superior autobiographical memory from the television news show 60 Minutes. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2257 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2257 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2257 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2257 TRY ITTRY IT GLOSSARYGLOSSARY Atkinson-Shiffrin model (A-S):Atkinson-Shiffrin model (A-S): memory model that states we process information through three systems: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory automatic processing:automatic processing: encoding of informational details like time, space, frequency, and the meaning of words declarative memory:declarative memory: type of long-term memory of facts and events we personally experience effortful processing:effortful processing: encoding of information that takes effort and attention episodic memory:episodic memory: type of declarative memory that contains information about events we have personally experienced, also known as autobiographical memory explicit memory:explicit memory: memories we consciously try to remember and recall implicit memory:implicit memory: memories that are not part of our consciousness memory:memory: system or process that stores what we learn for future use THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER • Describe something you have learned that is now in your procedural memory. Discuss how you learned this information. • Describe something you learned in high school that is now in your semantic memory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHeEQ85m79I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en23bCvp-Fw memory consolidation:memory consolidation: active rehearsal to move information from short-term memory into long-term memory procedural memory:procedural memory: type of long-term memory for making skilled actions, such as how to brush your teeth, how to drive a car, and how to swim retrieval:retrieval: act of getting information out of long-term memory storage and back into conscious awareness self-reference effect:self-reference effect: tendency for an individual to have better memory for information that relates to oneself in comparison to material that has less personal relevance semantic encoding:semantic encoding: input of words and their meaning semantic memory:semantic memory: type of declarative memory about words, concepts, and language-based knowledge and facts sensory memory:sensory memory: storage of brief sensory events, such as sights, sounds, and tastes short-term memory (STM):short-term memory (STM): (also, working memory) holds about seven bits of information before it is forgotten or stored, as well as information that has been retrieved and is being used storage:storage: creation of a permanent record of information Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • How Memory Functions. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:-RwqQWzt@6/How-Memory-Functions. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 RETRIEVAL LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explain retrieval cues and define recall, recognition, and relearning So you have worked hard to encode (via effortful processing) and store some important information for your upcoming final exam. How do you get that information back out of storage when you need it? The act of getting information out of memory storage and back into conscious awareness is known as retrievalretrieval. This would be similar to finding and opening a paper you had previously saved on your computer’s hard drive. Now it’s back on your desktop, and you can work with it again. Our ability to retrieve information from long-term memory is vital to our everyday functioning. You must be able to retrieve information from memory in order to do everything from knowing how to brush your hair and teeth, to driving to work, to knowing how to perform your job once you get there. Psychologists distinguish information that is available in memory from that which is accessible (Tulving & Pearlstone, 1966). Available information is the information that is stored in memory—but precisely how much and what types are stored cannot be known. That is, all we can know is what information we can retrieve—accessible information. The assumption is that accessible information represents only a tiny slice of the information available in our brains. Most of us have had the experience of trying to remember some fact or event, giving up, and then—all of a sudden!—it comes to us at a later time, even after we’ve stopped trying to remember it. Similarly, we all know the experience of failing to recall a fact, but then, if we are given several choices (as in a multiple-choice test), we are easily able to recognize it. http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:-RwqQWzt@6/How-Memory-Functions https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ We can’t know the entirety of what is in our memory, but only that portion we can actually retrieve. Something that cannot be retrieved now and which is seemingly gone from memory may, with different cues applied, reemerge. [Photo: sean dreilinger] Memory Cues What factors determine what information can be retrieved from memory? One critical factor is the type of hints, or cues, in the environment. You may hear a song on the radio that suddenly evokes memories of an earlier time in your life, even if you were not trying to remember it when the song came on. Nevertheless, the song is closely associated with that time, so it brings the experience to mind. The general principle that underlies the effectiveness of retrieval cues is the encoding specificity principleencoding specificity principle (Tulving & Thomson, 1973): when people encode information, they do so in specific ways. For example, take the song on the radio: perhaps you heard it while you were at a terrific party, having a great, philosophical conversation with a friend. Thus, the song became part of that whole complex experience. Years later, even though you haven’t thought about that party in ages, when you hear the song on the radio, the whole experience rushes back to you. In general, the encoding specificity principle states that, to the extent a retrieval cue (the song) matches or overlaps the memory trace of an experience (the party, the conversation), it will be effective in evoking the memory. A classic experiment on the encoding specificity principle had participants memorize a set of words in a unique setting. Later, the participants were tested on the word sets, either in the same location they learned the words or a different one. As a result of encoding specificity, the students who took the test in the same place they learned the words were actually able to recall more words (Godden & Baddeley, 1975) than the students who took the test in a new setting. In this instance, the physical context itself provided cues for retrieval. This is why it’s good to study for midterms and finals in the same room you’ll be taking them in. One caution with this principle, though, is that, for the cue to work, it can’t match too many other experiences (Nairne, 2002; Watkins, 1975). Consider a lab experiment. Suppose you study 100 items; 99 are words, and one is a picture—of a penguin, item 50 in the list. Afterwards, the cue “recall the picture” would evoke “penguin” perfectly. No one would miss it. However, if the word “penguin” were placed in the same spot among the other 99 words, its memorability would be exceptionally worse. This outcome shows the power of distinctiveness: one picture is perfectly recalled from among 99 words because it stands out. Now consider what would happen if the experiment were repeated, but there were 25 pictures distributed within the 100-item list. Although the picture of the penguin would still be there, the probability that the cue “recall the picture” (at item 50) would be useful for the penguin would drop correspondingly. Watkins (1975) referred to this outcome as demonstrating the cue overloadcue overload principleprinciple. That is, to be effective, a retrieval cue cannot be overloaded with too many memories. For the cue “recall the picture” to be effective, it should only match one item in the target set (as in the one-picture, 99-word case). To sum up how memory cues function: for a retrieval cue to be effective, a match must exist between the cue and the desired target memory; furthermore, to produce the best retrieval, the cue-target relationship should be distinctive. Types of Retrieval There are three ways you can retrieve information out of your long-term memory storage system: recall, recognition, and relearning. RecallRecall is what we most often think about when we talk about memory retrieval: it means you can access information without cues. For example, you would use recall for an essay test. RecognitionRecognition happens when you identify information that you have previously learned after encountering it again. It involves a process of comparison. When you take a multiple-choice test, you are relying on recognition to help you choose the correct answer. Here is another example. Let’s say you graduated from high school 10 years ago, and you have returned to your hometown for your 10-year reunion. You may not be able to recall all of your classmates, but you recognize many of them based on their yearbook photos. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/01204348/thinking https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/01204348/thinking The third form of retrieval is relearningrelearning, and it’s just what it sounds like. It involves learning information that you previously learned. Whitney took Spanish in high school, but after high school she did not have the opportunity to speak Spanish. Whitney is now 31, and her company has offered her an opportunity to work in their Mexico City office. In order to prepare herself, she enrolls in a Spanish course at the local community center. She’s surprised at how quickly she’s able to pick up the language after not speaking it for 13 years; this is an example of relearning. Recall and Recognition Psychologists measure memory performance by using production tests (involving recall) or recognition tests (involving the selection of correct from incorrect information, e.g., a multiple-choice test). For example, with our list of 100 words, one group of people might be asked to recall the list in any order (a free recall test), while a different group might be asked to circle the 100 studied words out of a mix with another 100, unstudied words (a recognition test). In this situation, the recognition test would likely produce better performance from participants than the recall test. We usually think of recognition tests as being quite easy, because the cue for retrieval is a copy of the actual event that was presented for study. After all, what could be a better cue than the exact target (memory) the person is trying to access? In most cases, this line of reasoning is true; nevertheless, recognition tests do not provide perfect indexes of what is stored in memory. That is, you can fail to recognize a target staring you right in the face, yet be able to recall it later with a different set of cues (Watkins & Tulving, 1975). For example, suppose you had the task of recognizing the surnames of famous authors. At first, you might think that being given the actual last name would always be the best cue. However, research has shown this not necessarily to be true (Muter, 1984). When given names such as Tolstoy, Shaw, Shakespeare, and Lee, subjects might well say that Tolstoy and Shakespeare are famous authors, whereas Shaw and Lee are not. But, when given a cued recall test using first names, people often recall items (produce them) that they had failed to recognize before. For example, in this instance, a cue like George Bernard ________ often leads to a recall of “Shaw,” even though people initially failed to recognize Shaw as a famous author’s name. Yet, when given the cue “William,” people may not come up with Shakespeare, because William is a common name that matches many people (the cue overload principle at work). This strange fact—that recall can sometimes lead to better performance than recognition—can be explained by the encoding specificity principle. As a cue, George Bernard _________ matches the way the famous writer is stored in memory better than does his surname, Shaw, does (even though it is the target). Further, the match is quite distinctive with George Bernard ___________, but the cue William _________________ is much more overloaded (Prince William, William Yeats, William Faulkner, will.i.am). The phenomenon we have been describing is called the recognition failure of recallable words, which highlights the point that a cue will be most effective depending on how the information has been encoded (Tulving & Thomson, 1973). The point is, the cues that work best to evoke retrieval are those that recreate the event or name to be remembered, whereas sometimes even the target itself, such as Shaw in the above example, is not the best cue. Which cue will be most effective depends on how the information has been encoded. Retrieval and Reconstruction Whenever we think about our past, we engage in the act of retrieval. We usually think that retrieval is an objective act because we tend to imagine that retrieving a memory is like pulling a book from a shelf, and after we are done with it, we return the book to the shelf just as it was. However, research shows this assumption to be false; far from being a static repository of data, the memory is constantly changing. In fact, every time we retrieve a memory, it is altered. For example, the act of retrieval itself (of a fact, concept, or event) makes the retrieved memory much more likely to be retrieved again, a phenomenon called the testing effect or the retrieval practice effect (Pyc & Rawson, 2009; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). However, retrieving some information can actually cause us to forget other information related to it, a phenomenon called retrieval-induced forgetting (Anderson, Bjork, & Bjork, 1994). Thus the act of retrieval can be a double-edged sword—strengthening the memory just retrieved (usually by a large amount) but harming related information (though this effect is often relatively small). Retrieval of distant memories is reconstructive. We weave the concrete bits and pieces of events in with assumptions and preferences to form a coherent story (Bartlett, 1932). For example, if during your 10th birthday, your dog got to your cake before you did, you would likely tell that story for years afterward. Say, then, in later An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2261 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Review the concepts from this section on encoding, storage, and retrieval in the following CrashCourse video: An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2261 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2261 TRY ITTRY IT GLOSSARYGLOSSARY encoding specificity principleencoding specificity principle: the hypothesis that a retrieval cue will be effective to the extent that information encoded from the cue overlaps or matches information in the engram or memory trace. long-term memory (LTM):long-term memory (LTM): continuous storage of information years you misremember where the dog actually found the cake, but repeat that error over and over during subsequent retellings of the story. Over time, that inaccuracy would become a basic fact of the event in your mind. Just as retrieval practice (repetition) enhances accurate memories, so will it strengthen errors or false memories (McDermott, 2006). Sometimes memories can even be manufactured just from hearing a vivid story. Consider the following episode, recounted by Jean Piaget, the famous developmental psychologist, from his childhood: One of my first memories would date, if it were true, from my second year. I can still see, most clearly, the following scene, in which I believed until I was about 15. I was sitting in my pram . . . when a man tried to kidnap me. I was held in by the strap fastened round me while my nurse bravely tried to stand between me and the thief. She received various scratches, and I can still vaguely see those on her face. . . . When I was about 15, my parents received a letter from my former nurse saying that she had been converted to the Salvation Army. She wanted to confess her past faults, and in particular to return the watch she had been given as a reward on this occasion. She had made up the whole story, faking the scratches. I therefore must have heard, as a child, this story, which my parents believed, and projected it into the past in the form of a visual memory. . . . Many real memories are doubtless of the same order. (Norman & Schacter, 1997, pp. 187–188) Piaget’s vivid account represents a case of a pure reconstructive memory. He heard the tale told repeatedly, and doubtless told it (and thought about it) himself. The repeated telling cemented the events as though they had really happened, just as we are all open to the possibility of having “many real memories … of the same order.” The fact that one can remember precise details (the location, the scratches) does not necessarily indicate that the memory is true, a point that has been confirmed in laboratory studies, too (e.g., Norman & Schacter, 1997). recall:recall: accessing information without cues recognition:recognition: identifying previously learned information after encountering it again, usually in response to a cue relearning:relearning: learning information that was previously learned retrieval:retrieval: act of getting information out of long-term memory storage and back into conscious awareness storage:storage: creation of a permanent record of information Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • How Memory Functions. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:-RwqQWzt@6/How-Memory-Functions. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval). Authored byAuthored by: Kathleen B. McDermott and Henry L. Roediger III . Provided byProvided by: Washington University in St. Louis. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king- introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/memory-encoding-storage-retrieval. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • How We Make Memories - Crash Course Psychology #13. Provided byProvided by: CrashCourse. Located atLocated at: https://youtu.be/bSycdIx-C48?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License PARTS OF THE BRAIN INVOLVED WITH MEMORY LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explain the brain functions involved in memory; recognize the roles of the hippocampus, amygdala, and cerebellum in memory Are memories stored in just one part of the brain, or are they stored in many different parts of the brain? Karl Lashley began exploring this problem, about 100 years ago, by making lesions in the brains of animals such as rats and monkeys. He was searching for evidence of the engramengram: the group of neurons that serve as the “physical representation of memory” (Josselyn, 2010). First, Lashley (1950) trained rats to find their way through a maze. Then, he used the tools available at the time—in this case a soldering iron—to create lesions in the rats’ brains, specifically in the cerebral cortex. He did this because he was trying to erase the engram, or the original memory trace that the rats had of the maze. Lashley did not find evidence of the engram, and the rats were still able to find their way through the maze, regardless of the size or location of the lesion. Based on his creation of lesions and the animals’ reaction, he formulated the equipotentiality hypothesisequipotentiality hypothesis: if part of one area of the brain involved in memory is damaged, another part of the same area can take over that memory function (Lashley, 1950). Although Lashley’s early work did not confirm the existence of the engram, modern psychologists are making progress locating it. Eric Kandel, for example, spent decades working on the synapse, the basic structure of the brain, and its role in controlling the flow of information through neural circuits needed to store memories (Mayford, Siegelbaum, & Kandel, 2012). Many scientists believe that the entire brain is involved with memory. However, since Lashley’s research, other scientists have been able to look more closely at the brain and memory. They have argued that memory is located in specific parts of the brain, and specific neurons can be recognized for their involvement in forming memories. The main parts of the brain involved with memory are the amygdala, the hippocampus, the cerebellum, and the prefrontal cortex (Figure 1). http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:-RwqQWzt@6/How-Memory-Functions https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/memory-encoding-storage-retrieval http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/memory-encoding-storage-retrieval https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://youtu.be/bSycdIx-C48?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6 Figure 1. The amygdala is involved in fear and fear memories. The hippocampus is associated with declarative and episodic memory as well as recognition memory. The cerebellum plays a role in processing procedural memories, such as how to play the piano. The prefrontal cortex appears to be involved in remembering semantic tasks. The Amygdala First, let’s look at the role of the amygdala in memory formation. The main job of the amygdala is to regulate emotions, such as fear and aggression. The amygdala plays a part in how memories are stored because storage is influenced by stress hormones. For example, one researcher experimented with rats and the fear response (Josselyn, 2010). Using Pavlovian conditioning, a neutral tone was paired with a foot shock to the rats. This produced a fear memory in the rats. After being conditioned, each time they heard the tone, they would freeze (a defense response in rats), indicating a memory for the impending shock. Then the researchers induced cell death in neurons in the lateral amygdala, which is the specific area of the brain responsible for fear memories. They found the fear memory faded (became extinct). Because of its role in processing emotional information, the amygdala is also involved in memory consolidation: the process of transferring new learning into long-term memory. The amygdala seems to facilitate encoding memories at a deeper level when the event is emotionally arousing. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING In this TED Talk called “A Mouse. A Laser Beam. A Manipulated Memory,” Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu from MIT talk about using laser beams to manipulate fear memory in rats. Find out why their work caused a media frenzy once it was published in Science. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING For a closer look at how memory works, as well as how researchers are now studying H. M.’s brain, take a few minutes to view this video from Nova PBS. The Hippocampus Another group of researchers also experimented with rats to learn how the hippocampus functions in memory processing. They created lesions in the hippocampi of the rats, and found that the rats demonstrated memory impairment on various tasks, such as object recognition and maze running. They concluded that the hippocampus is involved in memory, specifically normal recognition memory as well as spatial memory (when the memory tasks are like recall tests) (Clark, Zola, & Squire, 2000). Another job of the hippocampus is to project information to cortical regions that give memories meaning and connect them with other connected memories. It also plays a part in memory consolidation: the process of transferring new learning into long-term memory. Injury to this area leaves us unable to process new declarative memories. One famous patient, known for years only as H. M., had both his left and right temporal lobes (hippocampi) removed in an attempt to help control the seizures he had been suffering from for years (Corkin, Amaral, González, Johnson, & Hyman, 1997). As a result, his declarative memory was significantly affected, and he could not form new semantic knowledge. He lost the ability to form new memories, yet he could still remember information and events that had occurred prior to the surgery. The Cerebellum and Prefrontal Cortex Although the hippocampus seems to be more of a processing area for explicit memories, you could still lose it and be able to create implicit memories (procedural memory, motor learning, and classical conditioning), thanks to your cerebellum. For example, one classical conditioning experiment is to accustom subjects to blink when they are given a puff of air. When researchers damaged the cerebellums of rabbits, they discovered that the rabbits were not able to learn the conditioned eye-blink response (Steinmetz, 1999; Green & Woodruff-Pak, 2000). Other researchers have used brain scans, including positron emission tomography (PET) scans, to learn how people process and retain information. From these studies, it seems the prefrontal cortex is involved. In one study, participants had to complete two different tasks: either looking for the letter a in words (considered a perceptual task) or categorizing a noun as either living or non-living (considered a semantic task) (Kapur et al., 1994). Participants were then asked which words they had previously seen. Recall was much better for the semantic task than for the perceptual task. According to PET scans, there was much more activation in the left inferior prefrontal cortex in the semantic task. In another study, encoding was associated with left frontal activity, while retrieval of information was associated with the right frontal region (Craik et al., 1999). Neurotransmitters There also appear to be specific neurotransmitters involved with the process of memory, such as epinephrine, dopamine, serotonin, glutamate, and acetylcholine (Myhrer, 2003). There continues to be discussion and debate among researchers as to which neurotransmitter plays which specific role (Blockland, 1996). Although we don’t yet know which role each neurotransmitter plays in memory, we do know that communication among neurons via neurotransmitters is critical for developing new memories. Repeated activity by neurons leads to increased https://www.ted.com/talks/steve_ramirez_and_xu_liu_a_mouse_a_laser_beam_a_manipulated_memory https://www.pbs.org/video/2365029824/ An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=232 Figure 2. Most people can remember where they were when they first heard about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This is an example of a flashbulb memory: a record of an atypical and unusual event that has very strong emotional associations. (credit: Michael Foran) neurotransmitters in the synapses and more efficient and more synaptic connections. This is how memory consolidation occurs. It is also believed that strong emotions trigger the formation of strong memories, and weaker emotional experiences form weaker memories; this is called arousal theoryarousal theory (Christianson, 1992). For example, strong emotional experiences can trigger the release of neurotransmitters, as well as hormones, which strengthen memory; therefore, our memory for an emotional event is usually better than our memory for a non-emotional event. When humans and animals are stressed, the brain secretes more of the neurotransmitter glutamate, which helps them remember the stressful event (McGaugh, 2003). This is clearly evidenced by what is known as the flashbulb memory phenomenon. A flashbulb memoryflashbulb memory is an exceptionally clear recollection of an important event (Figure 2). Where were you when you first heard about the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Most likely you can remember where you were and what you were doing. In fact, a Pew Research Center (2011) survey found that for those Americans who were age 8 or older at the time of the event, 97% can recall the moment they learned of this event, even a decade after it happened. DIG DEEPER: INACCURATE AND FALSE MEMORIESDIG DEEPER: INACCURATE AND FALSE MEMORIES Even flashbulb memories can have decreased accuracy with the passage of time, even with very important events. For example, on at least three occasions, when asked how he heard about the terrorist attacks of 9/11, President George W. Bush responded inaccurately. In January 2002, less than 4 months after the attacks, the then sitting President Bush was asked how he heard about the attacks. He responded: I was sitting there, and my Chief of Staff—well, first of all, when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on. And you know, I thought it was pilot error and I was amazed that anybody could make such a terrible mistake. (Greenberg, 2004, p. 2) Contrary to what President Bush recalled, no one saw the first plane hit, except people on the ground near the twin towers. The first plane was not videotaped because it was a normal Tuesday morning in New York City, until the first plane hit. Some people attributed Bush’s wrong recall of the event to conspiracy theories. However, there is a much more benign explanation: human memory, even flashbulb memories, can be frail. In fact, memory can be so frail that we can convince a person an event happened to them, even when it did not. In studies, research participants will recall hearing a word, even though they never heard the word. For example, participants were given a list of 15 sleep-related words, but the word “sleep” was not on the list. Participants recalled hearing the word “sleep” even though they did not actually hear it (Roediger & McDermott, 2000). The researchers who discovered this named the theory after themselves and a fellow researcher, calling it the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=232 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=232 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=232 TRY ITTRY IT GLOSSARYGLOSSARY arousal theory:arousal theory: strong emotions trigger the formation of strong memories and weaker emotional experiences form weaker memories THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER Describe a flashbulb memory of a significant event in your life. engram:engram: physical trace of memory equipotentiality hypothesis:equipotentiality hypothesis: some parts of the brain can take over for damaged parts in forming and storing memories flashbulb memory:flashbulb memory: exceptionally clear recollection of an important event An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=232 Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Flashbulb Memory. Authored byAuthored by: Kara McCord. Located atLocated at: https://youtu.be/mPhW9bUI4F0. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Parts of the Brain Involved with Memory. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:Lbm_tyot@7/Parts-of-the-Brain-Involved-wi. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/. https://youtu.be/mPhW9bUI4F0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:Lbm_tyot@7/Parts-of-the-Brain-Involved-wi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ AMNESIA AND FORGETTING What you’ll learn to do: explain and give examples of forgetting and memory failure All of us at times have felt dismayed, frustrated, and even embarrassed when our memories have failed us. Our memory is flexible and prone to many errors, which is why eyewitness testimony has been found to be largely unreliable. There are several reasons why forgetting occurs. In cases of brain trauma or disease, forgetting may be due to amnesia. Another reason we forget is due to encoding failure. We can’t remember something if we never stored it in our memory in the first place. In this section, you’ll learn about seven memory errors that also contribute to forgetting. Sometimes, information is actually stored in our memory, but we cannot access it due to interference. Proactive interference happens when old information hinders the recall of newly learned information. Retroactive interference happens when information learned more recently hinders the recall of older information. Let’s hope you don’t forget these new things you learn! https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/03/01040236/5065345783_b2c2cab1d3_z Figure 1. This diagram illustrates the timeline of retrograde and anterograde amnesia. Memory problems that extend back in time before the injury and prevent retrieval of information previously stored in long-term memory are known as retrograde amnesia. Conversely, memory problems that extend forward in time from the point of injury and prevent the formation of new memories are called anterograde amnesia. LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Compare and contrast the two anterograde and retrograde amnesia • Explain encoding failure and give examples of common memory errors You may pride yourself on your amazing ability to remember the birthdates and ages of all of your friends and family members, or you may be able recall vivid details of your 5th birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s. However, all of us have at times felt frustrated, and even embarrassed, when our memories have failed us. There are several reasons why this happens. Amnesia AmnesiaAmnesia is the loss of long-term memory that occurs as the result of disease, physical trauma, or psychological trauma. Psychologist Tulving (2002) and his colleagues at the University of Toronto studied K.C. for years. K.C. suffered a traumatic head injury in a motorcycle accident and then had severe amnesia. Tulving writes, the outstanding fact about K.C.’s mental make-up is his utter inability to remember any events, circumstances, or situations from his own life. His episodic amnesia covers his whole life, from birth to the present. The only exception is the experiences that, at any time, he has had in the last minute or two. (Tulving, 2002, p. 14) Anterograde Amnesia There are two common types of amnesia: anterograde amnesia and retrograde amnesia (Figure 1). Anterograde amnesia is commonly caused by brain trauma, such as a blow to the head. With anterograde amnesiaanterograde amnesia, you cannot remember new information, although you can remember information and events that happened prior to your injury. The hippocampus is usually affected (McLeod, 2011). This suggests that damage to the brain has resulted in the inability to transfer information from short-term to long-term memory; that is, the inability to consolidate memories. Many people with this form of amnesia are unable to form new episodic or semantic memories, but are still able to form new procedural memories (Bayley & Squire, 2002). This was true of H. M., which was discussed earlier. The brain damage caused by his surgery resulted in anterograde amnesia. H. M. would read the same magazine over and over, having no memory of ever reading it—it was always new to him. He also could not remember people he had met after his surgery. If you were introduced to H. M. and then you left the room for a few minutes, he would not know you upon your return and would introduce himself to you again. However, when presented the same puzzle several days in a row, although he did not remember having seen the puzzle before, his speed at solving it became faster each day (because of relearning) (Corkin, 1965, 1968). Figure 2. To help remember which amnesia is which (retrograde vs. anterograde), just think of the word “retro” (e.g., that lamp from the 70’s is so retro) to help remind you that this amnesia deals with forgetting old memories. [Image: Richard Davis] LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING View the video story profiling Scott Bolzan’s amnesia and his attempts to get his life back. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2276 TRY ITTRY IT Retrograde Amnesia Retrograde amnesiaRetrograde amnesia is loss of memory for events that occurred prior to the trauma. People with retrograde amnesia cannot remember some or even all of their past. They have difficulty remembering episodic memories. What if you woke up in the hospital one day and there were people surrounding your bed claiming to be your spouse, your children, and your parents? The trouble is you don’t recognize any of them. You were in a car accident, suffered a head injury, and now have retrograde amnesia. You don’t remember anything about your life prior to waking up in the hospital. This may sound like the stuff of Hollywood movies, and Hollywood has been fascinated with the amnesia plot for nearly a century, going all the way back to the film Garden of Lies from 1915 to more recent movies such as the Jason Bourne trilogy starring Matt Damon. However, for real-life sufferers of retrograde amnesia, like former NFL football player Scott Bolzan, the story is not a Hollywood movie. Bolzan fell, hit his head, and deleted 46 years of his life in an instant. He is now living with one of the most extreme cases of retrograde amnesia on record. Forgetting “I’ve a grand memory for forgetting,” quipped Robert Louis Stevenson. ForgettingForgetting refers to loss of information from long-term memory. We all forget things, like a loved one’s birthday, someone’s name, or where we put our car keys. As you’ve come to see, memory is fragile, and forgetting can be frustrating and even embarrassing. But why do we forget? To answer this question, we will look at several perspectives on forgetting. Encoding Failure Sometimes memory loss happens before the actual memory process begins, which is encoding failure. We can’t remember something if we never stored it in our memory in the first place. This would be like trying to find a book on your e-reader that you never actually purchased and downloaded. Often, in order to remember something, we must pay attention to the details and actively work to process the information (effortful encoding). Lots of times we don’t do this. For instance, think of how many times in your life you’ve seen a penny. Can you accurately recall what the front of a U.S. penny looks like? When researchers Raymond Nickerson and Marilyn Adams (1979) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/02025841/retro https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/02025841/retro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSSrpqnQ7U Figure 3. Can you tell which coin, (a), (b), (c), or (d) is the accurate depiction of a US nickel? The correct answer is (c). asked this question, they found that most Americans don’t know which one it is. The reason is most likely encoding failure. Most of us never encode the details of the penny. We only encode enough information to be able to distinguish it from other coins. If we don’t encode the information, then it’s not in our long-term memory, so we will not be able to remember it. Memory Errors Psychologist Daniel Schacter (2001), a well-known memory researcher, offers seven ways our memories fail us. He calls them the seven sins of memory and categorizes them into three groups: forgetting, distortion, and intrusion (Table 1). Table 1. Schacter’s Seven Sins of Memory SinSin TypeType DescriptionDescription ExampleExample Transience Forgetting Accessibility of memory decreases over time Forget events that occurred long ago Absentmindedness Forgetting Forgetting caused by lapses in attention Forget where your phone is Blocking Forgetting Accessibility of information is temporarily blocked Tip of the tongue Misattribution Distortion Source of memory is confused Recalling a dream memory as a waking memory Suggestibility Distortion False memories Result from leading questions Bias Distortion Memories distorted by current belief system Align memories to current beliefs Persistence Intrusion Inability to forget undesirable memories Traumatic events Let’s look at the first sin of the forgetting errors: transiencetransience, which means that memories can fade over time. Here’s an example of how this happens. Nathan’s English teacher has assigned his students to read the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Nathan comes home from school and tells his mom he has to read this book for class. “Oh, I loved that book!” she says. Nathan asks her what the book is about, and after some hesitation she says, “Well . . . I know I read the book in high school, and I remember that one of the main characters is named Scout, and her father is an attorney, but I honestly don’t remember anything else.” Nathan wonders if his mother actually read the book, and his mother is surprised she can’t recall the plot. What is going on here is storage decay: unused information tends to fade with the passage of time. Figure 4. The Ebbinghaus forgetting curve shows how quickly memory for new information decays. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2276 TRY ITTRY IT In 1885, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus analyzed the process of memorization. First, he memorized lists of nonsense syllables. Then he measured how much he learned (retained) when he attempted to relearn each list. He tested himself over different periods of time from 20 minutes later to 30 days later. The result is his famous forgetting curve (Figure 4). Due to storage decay, an average person will lose 50% of the memorized information after 20 minutes and 70% of the information after 24 hours (Ebbinghaus, 1885/1964). Your memory for new information decays quickly and then eventually levels out. Are you constantly losing your cell phone? Have you ever driven back home to make sure you turned off the stove? Have you ever walked into a room for something, but forgotten what it was? You probably answered yes to at least one, if not all, of these examples—but don’t worry, you are not alone. We are all prone to committing the memory error known as absentmindedness. These lapses in memory are caused by breaks in attention or our focus being somewhere else. Cynthia, a psychologist, recalls a time when she recently committed the memory error of absentmindednessabsentmindedness. When I was completing court-ordered psychological evaluations, each time I went to the court, I was issued a temporary identification card with a magnetic strip which would open otherwise locked doors. As you can imagine, in a courtroom, this identification is valuable and important and no one wanted it to be lost or be picked up by a criminal. At the end of the day, I would hand in my temporary identification. One day, when I was almost done with an evaluation, my daughter’s day care called and said she was sick and needed to be picked up. It was flu season, I didn’t know how sick she was, and I was concerned. I finished up the evaluation in the next ten minutes, packed up my tools, and rushed to drive Figure 5. Blocking is also known as tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon. The memory is right there, but you can’t seem to recall it, just like not being able to remember the name of that very famous actor, Morgan Freeman. (credit: modification of work by D. Miller) to my daughter’s day care. After I picked up my daughter, I could not remember if I had handed back my identification or if I had left it sitting out on a table. I immediately called the court to check. It turned out that I had handed back my identification. Why could I not remember that? (personal communication, September 5, 2013) When have you experienced absentmindedness? “I just went and saw this movie called Oblivion, and it had that famous actor in it. Oh, what’s his name? He’s been in all of those movies, like The Shawshank Redemption and The Dark Knight trilogy. I think he’s even won an Oscar. Oh gosh, I can picture his face in my mind, and hear his distinctive voice, but I just can’t think of his name! This is going to bug me until I can remember it!” This particular error can be so frustrating because you have the information right on the tip of your tongue. Have you ever experienced this? If so, you’ve committed the error known as blockingblocking: you can’t access stored information. Now let’s take a look at the three errors of distortion: misattribution, suggestibility, and bias. Misattribution happens when you confuse the source of your information. Let’s say Alejandro was dating Lucia and they saw the first Hobbit movie together. Then they broke up and Alejandro saw the second Hobbit movie with someone else. Later that year, Alejandro and Lucia get back together. One day, they are discussing how the Hobbit books and movies are different and Alejandro says to Lucia, “I loved watching the second movie with you and seeing you jump out of your seat during that super scary part.” When Lucia responded with a puzzled and then angry look, Alejandro realized he’d committed the error of misattribution. What if someone is a victim of rape shortly after watching a television program? Is it possible that the victim could actually blame the rape on the person she saw on television because of misattribution? This is exactly what happened to Donald Thomson. Australian eyewitness expert Donald Thomson appeared on a live TV discussion about the unreliability of eyewitness memory. He was later arrested, placed in a lineup and identified by a victim as the man who had raped her. The police charged Thomson although the rape had occurred at the time he was on TV. They dismissed his alibi that he was in plain view of a TV audience and in the company of the other discussants, including an assistant commissioner of police. . . . Eventually, the investigators discovered that the rapist had attacked the woman as she was watching TV—the very program on which Thomson had appeared. Authorities eventually cleared Thomson. The woman had confused the rapist’s face with the face that she had seen on TV. (Baddeley, 2004, p. 133) The second distortion error is suggestibility. Suggestibility is similar to misattributionmisattribution, since it also involves false memories, but it’s different. With misattribution you create the false memory entirely on your own, which is what the victim did in the Donald Thomson case above. With suggestibility, it comes from someone else, such as a therapist or police interviewer asking leading questions of a witness during an interview. Figure 6. Many veterans of military conflicts involuntarily recall unwanted, unpleasant memories. (credit: Department of Defense photo by U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Michael R. Holzworth) TRY ITTRY IT Memories can also be affected by biasbias, which is the final distortion error. Schacter (2001) says that your feelings and view of the world can actually distort your memory of past events. There are several types of bias: Stereotypical bias involves racial and gender biases. For example, when Asian American and European American research participants were presented with a list of names, they more frequently incorrectly remembered typical African American names such as Jamal and Tyrone to be associated with the occupation basketball player, and they more frequently incorrectly remembered typical White names such as Greg and Howard to be associated with the occupation of politician (Payne, Jacoby, & Lambert, 2004). Egocentric bias involves enhancing our memories of the past (Payne et al., 2004). Did you really score the winning goal in that big soccer match, or did you just assist? Hindsight bias happens when we think an outcome was inevitable after the fact. This is the “I knew it all along” phenomenon. The reconstructive nature of memory contributes to hindsight bias (Carli, 1999). We remember untrue events that seem to confirm that we knew the outcome all along. Have you ever had a song play over and over in your head? How about a memory of a traumatic event, something you really do not want to think about? When you keep remembering something, to the point where you can’t “get it out of your head” and it interferes with your ability to concentrate on other things, it is called persistencepersistence. It’s Schacter’s seventh and last memory error. It’s actually a failure of our memory system because we involuntarily recall unwanted memories, particularly unpleasant ones (Figure 6). For instance, you witness a horrific car accident on the way to work one morning, and you can’t concentrate on work because you keep remembering the scene. Alternatively, some memories may be forgotten because we deliberately attempt to keep them out of mind. Over time, by actively trying not to remember an event, we can sometimes successfully keep the undesirable memory from being retrieved either by inhibiting the undesirable memory or generating diversionary thoughts (Anderson & Green, 2001). Imagine that you slipped and fell in your high school cafeteria during lunch time, and everyone at the surrounding tables laughed at you. You would likely wish to avoid thinking about that event and might try to prevent it from coming to mind. One way that you could accomplish this is by thinking of other, more positive, events that are associated with the cafeteria. Eventually, this memory may be suppressed to the point that it would only be retrieved with great difficulty (Hertel & Calcaterra, 2005). An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2276 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2276 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2276 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2276 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2276 Interference Sometimes information is stored in our memory, but for some reason it is inaccessible. This is known as interference, and there are two types: proactive interference and retroactive interference (Figure 7). Have you ever gotten a new phone number or moved to a new address, but right after you tell people the old (and wrong) phone number or address? When the new year starts, do you find you accidentally write the previous year? These are examples of proactive interference: when old information hinders the recall of newly learned information. Retroactive interference happens when information learned more recently hinders the recall of older information. For example, this week you are studying about Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory. Next week you study the humanistic perspective of Maslow and Rogers. Thereafter, you have trouble remembering Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of Development because you can only remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Figure 7. Sometimes forgetting is caused by a failure to retrieve information. This can be due to interference, either retroactive or proactive. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Review why we forget and types of interference through the following PsychSim Tutorial. The tutorial is only intended for practice. Please disregard the final screen that requests you submit answers to your instructor. • Forgetting For additional review, watch the CrashCourse psychology video on remembering and forgetting. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2276 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2276 TRY ITTRY IT GLOSSARYGLOSSARY absentmindedness:absentmindedness: lapses in memory that are caused by breaks in attention or our focus being somewhere else amnesia:amnesia: loss of long-term memory that occurs as the result of disease, physical trauma, or psychological trauma anterograde amnesia:anterograde amnesia: loss of memory for events that occur after the brain trauma bias:bias: how feelings and view of the world distort memory of past events forgetting:forgetting: loss of information from long-term memory misattribution:misattribution: memory error in which you confuse the source of your information persistence:persistence: failure of the memory system that involves the involuntary recall of unwanted memories, particularly unpleasant ones proactive interference:proactive interference: old information hinders the recall of newly learned information reconstruction:reconstruction: process of bringing up old memories that might be distorted by new information retrograde amnesia:retrograde amnesia: loss of memory for events that occurred prior to brain trauma retroactive interference:retroactive interference: information learned more recently hinders the recall of older information THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER Which of the seven memory errors presented by Schacter have you committed? Provide an example of each one. http://bcs.worthpublishers.com/webpub/Ektron/Myers_Psychology%2010e/PsychSim5_Tutorials/Forgetting/Forgetting.htm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVWbrNls-Kw&feature=youtu.be&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6 transience:transience: memory error in which unused memories fade with the passage of time Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification and adaptation, addition of tutorial. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Problems with Memory. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:I97J3Te3@7/Problems-with-Memory. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • Section on deliberately forgetting memories and image, Figure 2. Authored byAuthored by: Nicole Dudukovic and Brice Kuhl . Provided byProvided by: New York University. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king- introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/forgetting-and-amnesia. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike • Don't forget picture. Authored byAuthored by: Rachel Demsick. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution FLASHBULB MEMORIES Often considered to be so very detailed, vivid, and life-like, these memories are named beacuse of how much they seem to represent. Notice that I said, “seem?” Flashbulb memories are memories for rare, significant, emotional events. They may be very unique and personal to you (i.e. your first kiss, a personal best on a run, the birth of your child, etc.), but could also be rather global and something that most everyone experienced (i.e. Challenger explosion, 9/11 attacks, Hurricaine Katrina, Sandy Hook shooting, etc.). As you can imagine, for some of these flashbulb memories we want, almost need, for them to be wholly accurate, but as the linked Psychology Today article explains, these memories are just as fallible as any other memory. The difference seems to lie in our confidence in them. Yes, that is correct, we are significantly more confident that these flashbulb memories are infallible. Thanks to their emotional nature, the fact that they are vivid and detailed, and because of the personal connection to them, we simply struggle to believe that they are in any way different from the reality we experienced…but they are. EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY AND MEMORY CONSTRUCTION LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe the unreliability of eyewitness testimony • Explain the misinformation effect Memory Construction and Reconstruction The formulation of new memories is sometimes called constructionconstruction, and the process of bringing up old memories is called reconstructionreconstruction. Yet as we retrieve our memories, we also tend to alter and modify them. A memory pulled from long-term storage into short-term memory is flexible. New events can be added and we can change what we think we remember about past events, resulting in inaccuracies and distortions. People may not intend to distort facts, but it can happen in the process of retrieving old memories and combining them with new memories (Roediger and DeSoto, in press). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:I97J3Te3@7/Problems-with-Memory https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/forgetting-and-amnesia http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/forgetting-and-amnesia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-motives/201506/the-consistency-flashbulb-memories https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-motives/201506/the-consistency-flashbulb-memories Suggestibility When someone witnesses a crime, that person’s memory of the details of the crime is very important in catching the suspect. Because memory is so fragile, witnesses can be easily (and often accidentally) misled due to the problem of suggestibility. SuggestibilitySuggestibility describes the effects of misinformation from external sources that leads to the creation of false memories. In the fall of 2002, a sniper in the DC area shot people at a gas station, leaving Home Depot, and walking down the street. These attacks went on in a variety of places for over three weeks and resulted in the deaths of ten people. During this time, as you can imagine, people were terrified to leave their homes, go shopping, or even walk through their neighborhoods. Police officers and the FBI worked frantically to solve the crimes, and a tip hotline was set up. Law enforcement received over 140,000 tips, which resulted in approximately 35,000 possible suspects (Newseum, n.d.). Most of the tips were dead ends, until a white van was spotted at the site of one of the shootings. The police chief went on national television with a picture of the white van. After the news conference, several other eyewitnesses called to say that they too had seen a white van fleeing from the scene of the shooting. At the time, there were more than 70,000 white vans in the area. Police officers, as well as the general public, focused almost exclusively on white vans because they believed the eyewitnesses. Other tips were ignored. When the suspects were finally caught, they were driving a blue sedan. As illustrated by this example, we are vulnerable to the power of suggestion, simply based on something we see on the news. Or we can claim to remember something that in fact is only a suggestion someone made. It is the suggestion that is the cause of the false memory. Eyewitness Misidentification Even though memory and the process of reconstruction can be fragile, police officers, prosecutors, and the courts often rely on eyewitness identification and testimony in the prosecution of criminals. However, faulty eyewitness identification and testimony can lead to wrongful convictions (Figure 1). Figure 1. In studying cases where DNA evidence has exonerated people from crimes, the Innocence Project discovered that eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions (Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, 2009). How does this happen? In 1984, Jennifer Thompson, then a 22-year-old college student in North Carolina, was brutally raped at knifepoint. As she was being raped, she tried to memorize every detail of her rapist’s face and physical characteristics, vowing that if she survived, she would help get him convicted. After the police were contacted, a composite sketch was made of the suspect, and Jennifer was shown six photos. She chose two, one of which was of Ronald Cotton. After looking at the photos for 4–5 minutes, she said, “Yeah. This is the one,” and then she added, “I think this is the guy.” When questioned about this by the detective who asked, “You’re sure? Positive?” She said that it was him. Then she asked the detective if she did OK, and he reinforced her choice by telling her she did great. These kinds of unintended cues and suggestions by police officers can lead witnesses to identify the wrong suspect. The district attorney was concerned about her lack of certainty the first time, so she viewed a lineup of seven men. She said she was trying to decide between numbers 4 and 5, finally deciding that Cotton, number 5, “Looks most like him.” He was 22 years old. By the time the trial began, Jennifer Thompson had absolutely no doubt that she was raped by Ronald Cotton. She testified at the court hearing, and her testimony was compelling enough that it helped convict him. How did she go from, “I think it’s the guy” and it “Looks most like him,” to such certainty? Gary Wells and Deah Quinlivan (2009) assert it’s suggestive police identification procedures, such as stacking lineups to make the defendant stand out, telling the witness which person to identify, and confirming witnesses choices by telling them “Good choice,” or “You picked the guy.” After Cotton was convicted of the rape, he was sent to prison for life plus 50 years. After 4 years in prison, he was able to get a new trial. Jennifer Thompson once again testified against him. This time Ronald Cotton was given two life sentences. After serving 11 years in prison, DNA evidence finally demonstrated that Ronald Cotton did not commit the rape, was innocent, and had served over a decade in prison for a crime he did not commit. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING To learn more about Ronald Cotton and the fallibility of memory, watch these excellent Part 1 and Part 2 videos by 60 Minutes. DIG DEEPER: PRESERVING EYEWITNESS MEMORY: THE ELIZABETH SMARTDIG DEEPER: PRESERVING EYEWITNESS MEMORY: THE ELIZABETH SMART CASECASE Contrast the Cotton case with what happened in the Elizabeth Smart case. When Elizabeth was 14 years old and fast asleep in her bed at home, she was abducted at knifepoint. Her nine-year-old sister, Mary Katherine, was sleeping in the same bed and watched, terrified, as her beloved older sister was abducted. Mary Katherine was the sole eyewitness to this crime and was very fearful. In the coming weeks, the Salt Lake City police and the FBI proceeded with caution with Mary Katherine. They did not want to implant any false memories or mislead her in any way. They did not show her police line-ups or push her to do a composite sketch of the abductor. They knew if they corrupted her memory, Elizabeth might never be found. For several months, there was little or no progress on the case. Then, about 4 months after the kidnapping, Mary Katherine first recalled that she had heard the abductor’s voice prior to that night (he had worked one time as a handyman at the family’s home) and then she was able to name the person whose voice it was. The family contacted the press and others recognized him—after a total of nine months, the suspect was caught and Elizabeth Smart was returned to her family. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2273 TRY ITTRY IT Ronald Cotton’s story, unfortunately, is not unique. There are also people who were convicted and placed on death row, who were later exonerated. The Innocence Project is a non-profit group that works to exonerate falsely convicted people, including those convicted by eyewitness testimony. To learn more, you can visit http://www.innocenceproject.org. The Misinformation Effect Cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has conducted extensive research on memory. She has studied false memories as well as recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. Loftus also developed the misinformationmisinformation effect paradigmeffect paradigm, which holds that after exposure to incorrect information, a person may misremember the original event. According to Loftus, an eyewitness’s memory of an event is very flexible due to the misinformation effect. To test this theory, Loftus and John Palmer (1974) asked 45 U.S. college students to estimate the speed of cars using different forms of questions (Figure 2). The participants were shown films of car accidents and were asked to play the role of the eyewitness and describe what happened. They were asked, “About how fast were the cars going when they (smashed, collided, bumped, hit, contacted) each other?” The participants estimated the speed of the cars based on the verb used. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-SBTRLoPuo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtelV9lmzQc An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2273 Figure 2. When people are asked leading questions about an event, their memory of the event may be altered. (credit a: modification of work by Rob Young) Participants who heard the word “smashed” estimated that the cars were traveling at a much higher speed than participants who heard the word “contacted.” The implied information about speed, based on the verb they heard, had an effect on the participants’ memory of the accident. In a follow-up one week later, participants were asked if they saw any broken glass (none was shown in the accident pictures). Participants who had been in the “smashed” group were more than twice as likely to indicate that they did remember seeing glass. Loftus and Palmer demonstrated that a leading question encouraged them to not only remember the cars were going faster, but to also falsely remember that they saw broken glass. Studies have demonstrated that young adults (the typical research subjects in psychology) are often susceptible to misinformation, but that children and older adults can be even more susceptible (Bartlett & Memon, 2007; Ceci & Bruck, 1995). In addition, misinformation effects can occur easily, and without any intention to deceive (Allan & Gabbert, 2008). Even slight differences in the wording of a question can lead to misinformation effects. Subjects in one study were more likely to say yes when asked “Did you see the broken headlight?” than when asked “Did you see a broken headlight?” (Loftus, 1975). Other studies have shown that misinformation can corrupt memory even more easily when it is encountered in social situations (Gabbert, Memon, Allan, & Wright, 2004). This is a problem particularly in cases where more than one person witnesses a crime. In these cases, witnesses tend to talk to one another in the immediate aftermath of the crime, including as they wait for police to arrive. But because different witnesses are different people with different perspectives, they are likely to see or notice different things, and thus remember different things, even when they witness the same event. So when they communicate about the crime later, they not only reinforce common memories for the event, they also contaminate each other’s memories for the event (Gabbert, Memon, & Allan, 2003; Paterson & Kemp, 2006; Takarangi, Parker, & Garry, 2006). The misinformation effect has been modeled in the laboratory. Researchers had subjects watch a video in pairs. Both subjects sat in front of the same screen, but because they wore differently polarized glasses, they saw two different versions of a video, projected onto a screen. So, although they were both watching the same screen, and believed (quite reasonably) that they were watching the same video, they were actually watching two different versions of the video (Garry, French, Kinzett, & Mori, 2008). In the video, Eric the electrician is seen wandering through an unoccupied house and helping himself to the contents thereof. A total of eight details were different between the two videos. After watching the videos, the “co- witnesses” worked together on 12 memory test questions. Four of these questions dealt with details that were different in the two versions of the video, so subjects had the chance to influence one another. Then subjects worked individually on 20 additional memory test questions. Eight of these were for details that were different in the two videos. Subjects’ accuracy was highly dependent on whether they had discussed the details previously. Their accuracy for items they had not previously discussed with their co-witness was 79%. But for items that they had discussed, their accuracy dropped markedly, to 34%. That is, subjects allowed their co-witnesses to corrupt their memories for what they had seen. Controversies over Repressed and Recovered Memories Other researchers have described how whole events, not just words, can be falsely recalled, even when they did not happen. The idea that memories of traumatic events could be repressed has been a theme in the field of psychology, beginning with Sigmund Freud, and the controversy surrounding the idea continues today. Recall of false autobiographical memories is called false memory syndromefalse memory syndrome. This syndrome has received a lot of publicity, particularly as it relates to memories of events that do not have independent witnesses—often the only witnesses to the abuse are the perpetrator and the victim (e.g., sexual abuse). On one side of the debate are those who have recovered memories of childhood abuse years after it occurred. These researchers argue that some children’s experiences have been so traumatizing and distressing that they must lock those memories away in order to lead some semblance of a normal life. They believe that repressed memories can be locked away for decades and later recalled intact through hypnosis and guided imagery techniques (Devilly, 2007). Research suggests that having no memory of childhood sexual abuse is quite common in adults. For instance, one large-scale study conducted by John Briere and Jon Conte (1993) revealed that 59% of 450 men and women who were receiving treatment for sexual abuse that had occurred before age 18 had forgotten their experiences. Ross Cheit (2007) suggested that repressing these memories created psychological distress in adulthood. The Recovered Memory Project was created so that victims of childhood sexual abuse can recall these memories and allow the healing process to begin (Cheit, 2007; Devilly, 2007). On the other side, Loftus has challenged the idea that individuals can repress memories of traumatic events from childhood, including sexual abuse, and then recover those memories years later through therapeutic techniques such as hypnosis, guided visualization, and age regression. Loftus is not saying that childhood sexual abuse doesn’t happen, but she does question whether or not those memories are accurate, and she is skeptical of the questioning process used to access these memories, given that even the slightest suggestion from the therapist can lead to misinformation effects. For example, researchers Stephen Ceci and Maggie Brucks (1993, 1995) asked three-year-old children to use an anatomically correct doll to show where their pediatricians had touched them during an exam. Fifty-five percent of the children pointed to the genital/anal area on the dolls, even when they had not received any form of genital exam. Ever since Loftus published her first studies on the suggestibility of eyewitness testimony in the 1970s, social scientists, police officers, therapists, and legal practitioners have been aware of the flaws in interview practices. Consequently, steps have been taken to decrease suggestibility of witnesses. One way is to modify how witnesses are questioned. When interviewers use neutral and less leading language, children more accurately recall what happened and who was involved (Goodman, 2006; Pipe, 1996; Pipe, Lamb, Orbach, & Esplin, 2004). Another change is in how police lineups are conducted. It’s recommended that a blind photo lineup be used. This way the person administering the lineup doesn’t know which photo belongs to the suspect, minimizing the possibility of giving leading cues. Additionally, judges in some states now inform jurors about the possibility of misidentification. Judges can also suppress eyewitness testimony if they deem it unreliable. More on False Memories In early false memory studies, undergraduate subjects’ family members were recruited to provide events from the students’ lives. The student subjects were told that the researchers had talked to their family members and learned about four different events from their childhoods. The researchers asked if the now undergraduate students remembered each of these four events—introduced via short hints. The subjects were asked to write GLOSSARYGLOSSARY construction:construction: formulation of new memories false memory syndrome:false memory syndrome: recall of false autobiographical memories misattribution:misattribution: memory error in which you confuse the source of your information misinformation effect paradigm:misinformation effect paradigm: after exposure to incorrect information, a person may misremember the original event reconstruction:reconstruction: process of bringing up old memories that might be distorted by new information suggestibility:suggestibility: effects of misinformation from external sources that leads to the creation of false memories about each of the four events in a booklet and then were interviewed two separate times. The trick was that one of the events came from the researchers rather than the family (and the family had actually assured the researchers that this event had not happened to the subject). In the first such study, this researcher-introduced event was a story about being lost in a shopping mall and rescued by an older adult. In this study, after just being asked whether they remembered these events occurring on three separate occasions, a quarter of subjects came to believe that they had indeed been lost in the mall (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995). In subsequent studies, similar procedures were used to get subjects to believe that they nearly drowned and had been rescued by a lifeguard, or that they had spilled punch on the bride’s parents at a family wedding, or that they had been attacked by a vicious animal as a child, among other events (Heaps & Nash, 1999; Hyman, Husband, & Billings, 1995; Porter, Yuille, & Lehman, 1999). More recent false memory studies have used a variety of different manipulations to produce false memories in substantial minorities and even occasional majorities of manipulated subjects (Braun, Ellis, & Loftus, 2002; Lindsay, Hagen, Read, Wade, & Garry, 2004; Mazzoni, Loftus, Seitz, & Lynn, 1999; Seamon, Philbin, & Harrison, 2006; Wade, Garry, Read, & Lindsay, 2002). For example, one group of researchers used a mock-advertising study, wherein subjects were asked to review (fake) advertisements for Disney vacations, to convince subjects that they had once met the character Bugs Bunny at Disneyland—an impossible false memory because Bugs is a Warner Brothers character (Braun et al., 2002). Another group of researchers photoshopped childhood photographs of their subjects into a hot air balloon picture and then asked the subjects to try to remember and describe their hot air balloon experience (Wade et al., 2002). Other researchers gave subjects unmanipulated class photographs from their childhoods along with a fake story about a class prank, and thus enhanced the likelihood that subjects would falsely remember the prank (Lindsay et al., 2004). Using a false feedback manipulation, we have been able to persuade subjects to falsely remember having a variety of childhood experiences. In these studies, subjects are told (falsely) that a powerful computer system has analyzed questionnaires that they completed previously and has concluded that they had a particular experience years earlier. Subjects apparently believe what the computer says about them and adjust their memories to match this new information. A variety of different false memories have been implanted in this way. In some studies, subjects are told they once got sick on a particular food (Bernstein, Laney, Morris, & Loftus, 2005). These memories can then spill out into other aspects of subjects’ lives, such that they often become less interested in eating that food in the future (Bernstein & Loftus, 2009b). Other false memories implanted with this methodology include having an unpleasant experience with the character Pluto at Disneyland and witnessing physical violence between one’s parents (Berkowitz, Laney, Morris, Garry, & Loftus, 2008; Laney & Loftus, 2008). Importantly, once these false memories are implanted—whether through complex methods or simple ones—it is extremely difficult to tell them apart from true memories (Bernstein & Loftus, 2009a; Laney & Loftus, 2008). THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER Jurors place a lot of weight on eyewitness testimony. Imagine you are an attorney representing a defendant who is accused of robbing a convenience store. Several eyewitnesses have been called to testify against your client. What would you tell the jurors about the reliability of eyewitness testimony? An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2273 Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Problems with Memory. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:I97J3Te3@7/Problems-with-Memory. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • False Memories and more on the Misinformation Effect. Authored byAuthored by: Cara Laney and Elizabeth F. Loftus . Provided byProvided by: Reed College, University of California, Irvine. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy- king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/eyewitness-testimony-and-memory-biases. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • The Misinformation Effect. Authored byAuthored by: Eureka Foong. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMPIWkFtd88. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License WAYS TO ENHANCE MEMORY What you’ll learn to do: recognize and apply memory-enhancing strategies Figure 1. In some ways memory is like file drawers where you store mental information. Memory is also a series of processes: how does that information get filed to begin with and how does it get retrieved when needed? [Photo: Jason Carpenter] In 2013, Simon Reinhard sat in front of 60 people in a room at Washington University, where he memorized an increasingly long series of digits. On the first round, a computer generated 10 random digits—6 1 9 4 8 5 6 3 7 1—on a screen for 10 seconds. After the series disappeared, Simon typed them into his computer. His http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:I97J3Te3@7/Problems-with-Memory https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/eyewitness-testimony-and-memory-biases http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/eyewitness-testimony-and-memory-biases https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMPIWkFtd88 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/01023053/filedrawers https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/01023053/filedrawers LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Try this fun activity that employs a memory-enhancing strategy. recollection was perfect. In the next phase, 20 digits appeared on the screen for 20 seconds. Again, Simon got them all correct. No one in the audience (mostly professors, graduate students, and undergraduate students) could recall the 20 digits perfectly. Then came 30 digits, studied for 30 seconds; once again, Simon didn’t misplace even a single digit. For a final trial, 50 digits appeared on the screen for 50 seconds, and again, Simon got them all right. In fact, Simon would have been happy to keep going. His record in this task—called “forward digit span”—is 240 digits! When most of us witness a performance like that of Simon Reinhard, we think one of two things: First, maybe he’s cheating somehow. (No, he is not.) Second, Simon must have abilities more advanced than the rest of humankind. After all, psychologists established many years ago that the normal memory span for adults is about 7 digits, with some of us able to recall a few more and others a few less (Miller, 1956). That is why the first phone numbers were limited to 7 digits—psychologists determined that many errors occurred (costing the phone company money) when the number was increased to even 8 digits. But in normal testing, no one gets 50 digits correct in a row, much less 240. So, does Simon Reinhard simply have a photographic memory? He does not. Instead, Simon has taught himself simple strategies for remembering that have greatly increased his capacity for remembering virtually any type of material—digits, words, faces and names, poetry, historical dates, and so on. Twelve years earlier, before he started training his memory abilities, he had a digit span of 7, just like most of us. Simon has been training his abilities for about 10 years as of this writing, and has risen to be in the top two of “memory athletes.” In 2012, he came in second place in the World Memory Championships (composed of 11 tasks), held in London. He currently ranks second in the world, behind another German competitor, Johannes Mallow. In this section, we will explain the general principles by which you can improve your own memory. LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Recognize and apply memory-enhancing strategies, including mnemonics, rehearsal, chunking, and peg-words Most of us suffer from memory failures of one kind or another, and most of us would like to improve our memories so that we don’t forget where we put the car keys or, more importantly, the material we need to know for an exam. In this section, we’ll look at some ways to help you remember better, and at some strategies for more effective studying. Memory-Enhancing Strategies What are some everyday ways we can improve our memory, including recall? To help make sure information goes from short-term memory to long-term memory, you can use memory-enhancing strategiesmemory-enhancing strategies. One strategy is rehearsalrehearsal, or the conscious repetition of information to be remembered (Craik & Watkins, 1973). Think about how you learned your multiplication tables as a child. You may recall that 6 x 6 = 36, 6 x 7 = 42, and 6 x 8 = 48. Memorizing these facts is rehearsal. Another strategy is chunkingchunking: you organize information into manageable bits or chunks (Bodie, Powers, & Fitch- Hauser, 2006). Chunking is useful when trying to remember information like dates and phone numbers. Instead of trying to remember 5205550467, you remember the number as 520-555-0467. So, if you met an interesting person at a party and you wanted to remember his phone number, you would naturally chunk it, and you could repeat the number over and over, which is the rehearsal strategy. You could also enhance memory by using elaborative rehearsalelaborative rehearsal: a technique in which you think about the meaning of the new information and its relation to knowledge already stored in your memory (Tigner, 1999). For example, in this case, you could remember that 520 is an area code for Arizona and the person you met is from https://sites.google.com/site/whydontstudentslikeschoolbook/interactive-activities/letter-memorization-test Figure 2. This is a knuckle mnemonic to help you remember the number of days in each month. Months with 31 days are represented by the protruding knuckles and shorter months fall in the spots between knuckles. (credit: modification of work by Cory Zanker) Arizona. This would help you better remember the 520 prefix. If the information is retained, it goes into long-term memory. Mnemonic devicesMnemonic devices are memory aids that help us organize information for encoding (Figure 2). They are especially useful when we want to recall larger bits of information such as steps, stages, phases, and parts of a system (Bellezza, 1981). Brian needs to learn the order of the planets in the solar system, but he’s having a hard time remembering the correct order. His friend Kelly suggests a mnemonic device that can help him remember. Kelly tells Brian to simply remember the name Mr. VEM J. SUN, and he can easily recall the correct order of the planets: MMercury, VVenus, EEarth, MMars, JJupiter, SSaturn, UUranus, and NNeptune. You might use a mnemonic device to help you remember someone’s name, a mathematical formula, or the seven levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. If you have ever watched the television show Modern Family, you might have seen Phil Dunphy explain how he remembers names: The other day I met this guy named Carl. Now, I might forget that name, but he was wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt. What’s a band like the Grateful Dead? Phish. Where do fish live? The ocean. What else lives in the ocean? Coral. Hello, Co-arl. (Wrubel & Spiller, 2010) It seems the more vivid or unusual the mnemonic, the easier it is to remember. The key to using any mnemonic successfully is to find a strategy that works for you. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch this fascinating TED Talk titled “Feats of Memory Anyone Can Do.” The lecture is given by Joshua Foer, a science writer who “accidentally” won the U. S. Memory Championships. He explains a mnemonic device called the memory palace. Some other strategies that are used to improve memory include expressive writing and saying words aloud. Expressive writing helps boost your short-term memory, particularly if you write about a traumatic experience in your life. Masao Yogo and Shuji Fujihara (2008) had participants write for 20-minute intervals several times per month. The participants were instructed to write about a traumatic experience, their best possible future selves, or a trivial topic. The researchers found that this simple writing task increased short-term memory capacity after five weeks, but only for the participants who wrote about traumatic experiences. Psychologists can’t explain why this writing task works, but it does. What if you want to remember items you need to pick up at the store? Simply say them out loud to yourself. A series of studies (MacLeod, Gopie, Hourihan, Neary, & Ozubko, 2010) found that saying a word out loud improves your memory for the word because it increases the word’s distinctiveness. Feel silly, saying random grocery items aloud? This technique works equally well if you just mouth the words. Using these techniques increased participants’ memory for the words by more than 10%. These techniques can also be used to help you study. Using Peg-Words Consider the case of Simon Reinhard. In 2013, he sat in front of 60 people in a room at Washington University, where he memorized an increasingly long series of digits. On the first round, a computer generated 10 random digits—6 1 9 4 8 5 6 3 7 1—on a screen for 10 seconds. After the series disappeared, Simon typed them into his computer. His recollection was perfect. In the next phase, 20 digits appeared on the screen for 20 seconds. Again, Simon got them all correct. No one in the audience (mostly professors, graduate students, and undergraduate students) could recall the 20 digits perfectly. Then came 30 digits, studied for 30 seconds; once again, Simon didn’t misplace even a single digit. For a final trial, 50 digits appeared on the screen for 50 seconds, and again, Simon got them all right. In fact, Simon would have been happy to keep going. His record in this task—called “forward digit span”—is 240 digits! Simon Reinhard’s ability to memorize huge numbers of digits. Although it was not obvious, Simon Reinhard used deliberate mnemonic devices to improve his memory. In a typical case, the person learns a set of cues and then applies these cues to learn and remember information. Consider the set of 20 items below that are easy to learn and remember (Bower & Reitman, 1972). 1. is a gun. 11 is penny-one, hot dog bun. 2. is a shoe. 12 is penny-two, airplane glue. 3. is a tree. 13 is penny-three, bumble bee. 4. is a door. 14 is penny-four, grocery store. 5. is knives. 15 is penny-five, big beehive. 6. is sticks. 16 is penny-six, magic tricks. 7. is oven. 17 is penny-seven, go to heaven. 8. is plate. 18 is penny-eight, golden gate. 9. is wine. 19 is penny-nine, ball of twine. 10. is hen. 20 is penny-ten, ballpoint pen. It would probably take you less than 10 minutes to learn this list and practice recalling it several times (remember to use retrieval practice!). If you were to do so, you would have a set of peg words on which you could “hang” memories. In fact, this mnemonic device is called the peg word technique. If you then needed to remember some discrete items—say a grocery list, or points you wanted to make in a speech—this method would let you do so in a very precise yet flexible way. Suppose you had to remember bread, peanut butter, bananas, lettuce, and so on. The way to use the method is to form a vivid image of what you want to remember and imagine it interacting with your peg words (as many as you need). For example, for these items, you might imagine a large gun (the first peg word) shooting a loaf of bread, then a jar of peanut butter inside a shoe, then large bunches of bananas hanging http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_can_do An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=244 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=244 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=244 TRY ITTRY IT from a tree, then a door slamming on a head of lettuce with leaves flying everywhere. The idea is to provide good, distinctive cues (the weirder the better!) for the information you need to remember while you are learning it. If you do this, then retrieving it later is relatively easy. You know your cues perfectly (one is gun, etc.), so you simply go through your cue word list and “look” in your mind’s eye at the image stored there (bread, in this case). This peg word method may sound strange at first, but it works quite well, even with little training (Roediger, 1980). One word of warning, though, is that the items to be remembered need to be presented relatively slowly at first, until you have practice associating each with its cue word. People get faster with time. Another interesting aspect of this technique is that it’s just as easy to recall the items in backwards order as forwards. This is because the peg words provide direct access to the memorized items, regardless of order. How did Simon Reinhard remember those digits? Essentially he has a much more complex system based on these same principles. In his case, he uses “memory palaces” (elaborate scenes with discrete places) combined with huge sets of images for digits. For example, imagine mentally walking through the home where you grew up and identifying as many distinct areas and objects as possible. Simon has hundreds of such memory palaces that he uses. Next, for remembering digits, he has memorized a set of 10,000 images. Every four-digit number for him immediately brings forth a mental image. So, for example, 6187 might recall Michael Jackson. When Simon hears all the numbers coming at him, he places an image for every four digits into locations in his memory palace. He can do this at an incredibly rapid rate, faster than 4 digits per 4 seconds when they are flashed visually, as in the demonstration at the beginning of the module. As noted, his record is 240 digits, recalled in exact order. Simon also holds the world record in an event called “speed cards,” which involves memorizing the precise order of a shuffled deck of cards. Simon was able to do this in 21.19 seconds! Again, he uses his memory palaces, and he encodes groups of cards as single images. How to Study Effectively Based on the information presented in this chapter, here are some strategies and suggestions to help you hone your study techniques (Figure 3). The key with any of these strategies is to figure out what works best for you. Figure 3. Memory techniques can be useful when studying for class. (credit: Barry Pousman) • Use elaborative rehearsalUse elaborative rehearsal: In a famous article, Craik and Lockhart (1972) discussed their belief that information we process more deeply goes into long-term memory. Their theory is called levels oflevels of processingprocessing. If we want to remember a piece of information, we should think about it more deeply and link it to other information and memories to make it more meaningful. For example, if we are trying to remember that the hippocampus is involved with memory processing, we might envision a hippopotamus with excellent memory and then we could better remember the hippocampus. • Apply the self-reference effectApply the self-reference effect: As you go through the process of elaborative rehearsal, it would be even more beneficial to make the material you are trying to memorize personally meaningful to you. In other words, make use of the self-reference effect. Write notes in your own words. Write definitions from the text, and then rewrite them in your own words. Relate the material to something you have already learned for another class, or think how you can apply the concepts to your own life. When you do this, you are building a web of retrieval cues that will help you access the material when you want to remember it. • Don’t forget the forgetting curveDon’t forget the forgetting curve: As you know, the information you learn drops off rapidly with time. Even if you think you know the material, study it again right before test time to increase the likelihood the information will remain in your memory. Overlearning can help prevent storage decay. • Rehearse, rehearse, rehearseRehearse, rehearse, rehearse: Review the material over time, in spaced and organized study sessions. Organize and study your notes, and take practice quizzes/exams. Link the new information to other information you already know well. • Be aware of interferenceBe aware of interference: To reduce the likelihood of interference, study during a quiet time without interruptions or distractions (like television or music). • Keep movingKeep moving: Of course you already know that exercise is good for your body, but did you also know it’s also good for your mind? Research suggests that regular aerobic exercise (anything that gets your heart rate elevated) is beneficial for memory (van Praag, 2008). Aerobic exercise promotes neurogenesis: the MEMORY TESTSMEMORY TESTS Apply some of the memory techniques you learned about by completing the memory exercises below: Go to http://garyfisk.com/anim/lecture_stm.swf. Do the demonstration. • How many digits were you able to remember without messing up at all? • How many digits did you remember out of the last sequence? Go to the Faces Memory Challenge found here: http://experiments.wustl.edu/ • How did you do? • Is it easier for you to remember faces or numbers? Why? Go to https://www.exploratorium.edu/memory/dont_forget/index.html. Play the memory solitaire game. Then play game #2: Tell Yourself a Story. • Did your memory improve the second time? Why or why not? An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=244 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=244 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=244 TRY ITTRY IT growth of new brain cells in the hippocampus, an area of the brain known to play a role in memory and learning. • Get enough sleepGet enough sleep: While you are sleeping, your brain is still at work. During sleep the brain organizes and consolidates information to be stored in long-term memory (Abel & Bäuml, 2013). • Make use of mnemonic devicesMake use of mnemonic devices: As you learned earlier in this chapter, mnemonic devices often help us to remember and recall information. There are different types of mnemonic devices, such as the acronym. An acronym is a word formed by the first letter of each of the words you want to remember. For example, even if you live near one, you might have difficulty recalling the names of all five Great Lakes. What if I told you to think of the word Homes? HOMES is an acronym that represents Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior: the five Great Lakes. Another type of mnemonic device is an acrostic: you make a phrase of all the first letters of the words. For example, if you are taking a math test and you are having difficulty remembering the order of operations, recalling the following sentence will help you: “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally,” because the order of mathematical operations is Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction. There also are jingles, which are rhyming tunes that contain key words related to the concept, such as i before e, except after c. http://garyfisk.com/anim/lecture_stm.swf http://experiments.wustl.edu/ https://www.exploratorium.edu/memory/dont_forget/index.html GLOSSARYGLOSSARY chunking:chunking: organizing information into manageable bits or chunks elaborative rehearsal:elaborative rehearsal: thinking about the meaning of the new information and its relation to knowledge already stored in your memory levels of processing:levels of processing: information that is thought of more deeply becomes more meaningful and thus better committed to memory memory-enhancing strategy:memory-enhancing strategy: technique to help make sure information goes from short-term memory to long- term memory mnemonic device:mnemonic device: memory aids that help organize information for encoding An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=244 THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER • Create a mnemonic device to help you remember a term or concept from this module. • What is an effective study technique that you have used? How is it similar to/different from the strategies suggested in this module? Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and addition of memory tests. Located atLocated at: http://Lumen%20Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Ways to Enhance Memory. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:FI0Dk4wx@5/Ways-to-Enhance-Memory. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/. • Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) and The Peg-Word System. Authored byAuthored by: Kathleen B. McDermott and Henry L. Roediger III . Provided byProvided by: Washington University in St. Louis. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/ textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/memory-encoding-storage-retrieval. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike PUTTING IT TOGETHER: MEMORY LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES In this module, you learned to • explain the process of memory • explain and give examples of forgetting and memory failure • recognize and apply memory-enhancing strategies Memory is the set of processes used to encode, store, and retrieve information over different periods of time. Interestingly, our memory is prone to errors and we sometimes remember things that never happened, misconstrue things that did, and forget things we shouldn’t. More and more memory researchers are digging deeper to better understand the place where memories are stored in the brain, also known as engrams. Fascinating new studies delve into memory reconsolidation, in which researchers more or less re-train a memory so that subjects no longer have the same memory trace. You can http://Lumen%20Learning https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:FI0Dk4wx@5/Ways-to-Enhance-Memory https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/memory-encoding-storage-retrieval http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/memory-encoding-storage-retrieval https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Figure 1. Studies show that forced recall, or testing, has a significant impact on remembering information a week later. imagine the applications of this in helping someone with a phobia or post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, in reducing the efficacy of their fear memory. Memory is important to our daily functioning and well-being, and it is of particular interest for students (like yourself!) because there is a lot to be remembered and little time to learn it all. You read about Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve and memory decay and discovered some techniques to counteract forgetfulness, such as using mnemonics, chunking, the peg-word system, and elaborative rehearsal. A 2008 study sought to determine which type of studying is most effective in learning new words and concepts. The study, by Jeffrey D. Karpicke and Henry L. Roediger III, had students learn forty pairs of Swahili words and their meanings in English. After learning all forty words one time through, they were split into 4 groups for the rest of the learning phase: 1. A group that studied all 40 words and got tested on all 40 words 2. A group that studied only the words they didn’t know already, then were tested on all 40 words 3. A group that studied all 40 words, but were tested only on the words they didn’t know 4. A group that studied only the words they didn’t know already, then were tested on only the words they didn’t know already Which way would be your preferred method for learning the new words? Do you ever study this way? A common study technique is to practice with flashcards, then put away the words you already know (similar to groups 2 or 4). Which group do you think learned the words the best a week later? It turns out that when tested one week later, both the first and second groups remembered about 80% of the words, while the third and fourth groups (that were tested only on the words they didn’t already know) only remembered about 35% of the words. This is a significant difference! This study demonstrated the importance of testing and the importance of retrieval practice in learning. This is why you may not want to complain too much if your instructor gives you a pop quiz, and also why it’s a good idea to force yourself to recall information and quiz yourself on the things you learn. (Note: Karpicke, J. D., & Roedinger, H. L., III. (n.d.). The Critical Importance of Retrieval for Learning. Science, 319, 966-968. doi:10.1126/science.1152408) Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Putting It Together: Memory. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Flashcards. Authored byAuthored by: Jonathon Trumball. Provided byProvided by: Flicrk. Located atLocated at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonathantrumbull/49841444. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution DISCUSSION: MEMORY Explaining Memory STEP 1STEP 1: In the discussion, write a post responding to bothboth of the following prompts: 1. Think of something you’ve learned so far in this course. Use one of the mnemonics or memory tricks you learned about in this module to help you remember a psychological concept. Explain your memory aid in a sentence or two. 2. In at least 100 words, describe one of your earliest childhood memories and explain it in the context of what you learned in this module. How was it encoded, stored, and retrieved, and has it fallen prey to any memory failure? https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/03/29220802/49841444_718c239855_z https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/03/29220802/49841444_718c239855_z https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonathantrumbull/49841444 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ STEP 2STEP 2: Thoughtfully respond to a minimum of TWO other posts in at least 75 words. Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Discussion: Memory. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ MODULE 8: THINKING, LANGUAGE, AND INTELLIGENCE WHY IT MATTERS: THINKING AND INTELLIGENCE Thinking is an important part of our human experience, and one that has captivated people for centuries. Today, it is one area of psychological study. The 19th-century Girl with a Book by José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior, the 20th-century sculpture The Thinker by August Rodin, and Shi Ke’s 10th-century painting Huike Thinking all reflect the fascination with the process of human thought. (credit “middle”: modification of work by Jason Rogers; credit “right”: modification of work by Tang Zu-Ming) Why is it so difficult to break habits—like reaching for your ringing phone even when you shouldn’t, such as when you’re driving? How does a person who has never seen or touched snow in real life develop an understanding of the concept of snow? How do young children acquire the ability to learn language with no formal instruction? Psychologists who study thinking explore questions like these. Cognitive psychologists also study intelligence. What is intelligence, and how does it vary from person to person? Are “street smarts” a kind of intelligence, and if so, how do they relate to other types of intelligence? What does an IQ test really measure? These questions and more will be explored in this module as you study thinking and intelligence. As a part of this discussion, we will consider thinking and briefly explore the development and use of language. We will also discuss problem solving and creativity, intelligence testing, and how our biology and environments interact to affect intelligence. After finishing this module, you will have a greater appreciation of the higher-level cognitive processes that contribute to our distinctiveness as a species. AnswerAnswer Abler, W. (2013). Sapir, Harris, and Chomsky in the twentieth century. Cognitive Critique, 7, 29–48. American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. (2013). Definition of intellectual disability. Retrieved from http://aaidd.org/intellectual-disability/definition#.UmkR2xD2Bh4 American Psychological Association. (2013). In Diagnostic and statistical manual of psychological disorders (5th ed., pp. 34–36). Washington, D. C.: American Psychological Association. Aronson, E. (Ed.). (1995). Social cognition. In The social animal (p. 151). New York: W.H. Freeman and Company. Atkins v. Virginia, 00-8452 (2002). Bartels, M., Rietveld, M., Van Baal, G., & Boomsma, D. I. (2002). Genetic and environmental influences on the development of intelligence. Behavior Genetics, 32(4), 237–238. Bartlett, F. C. (1932). 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Effectiveness of occupational therapy in remediating handwriting difficulties in primary students: Cognitive versus multisensory interventions. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada). Retrieved from http://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8080/bitstream/handle/1828/49/ Zwicker%20thesis ?sequence=1 Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Introduction to Thinking and Intelligence. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:3DT0XBfK@4/Introduction. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/. WHAT IS COGNITION? What you’ll learn to do: describe cognition and problem-solving strategies Imagine all of your thoughts as if they were physical entities, swirling rapidly inside your mind. How is it possible that the brain is able to move from one thought to the next in an organized, orderly fashion? The brain is endlessly perceiving, processing, planning, organizing, and remembering—it is always active. Yet, you don’t notice most of your brain’s activity as you move throughout your daily routine. This is only one facet of the complex processes involved in cognition. Simply put, cognition is thinking, and it encompasses the processes associated with perception, knowledge, problem solving, judgment, language, and memory. Scientists who study cognition are searching for ways to understand how we integrate, organize, and utilize our conscious cognitive experiences without being aware of all of the unconscious work that our brains are doing (for example, Kahneman, 2011). http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:3DT0XBfK@4/Introduction https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/1927/2016/10/22132101/5507777269_7514e305a2_z LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Distinguish between concepts and prototypes • Explain the difference between natural and artificial concepts Cognition Upon waking each morning, you begin thinking—contemplating the tasks that you must complete that day. In what order should you run your errands? Should you go to the bank, the cleaners, or the grocery store first? Can you get these things done before you head to class or will they need to wait until school is done? These thoughts are one example of cognition at work. Exceptionally complex, cognition is an essential feature of human consciousness, yet not all aspects of cognition are consciously experienced. Cognitive psychologyCognitive psychology is the field of psychology dedicated to examining how people think. It attempts to explain how and why we think the way we do by studying the interactions among human thinking, emotion, creativity, language, and problem solving, in addition to other cognitive processes. Cognitive psychologists strive to determine and measure different types of intelligence, why some people are better at problem solving than others, and how emotional intelligence affects success in the workplace, among countless other topics. They also sometimes focus on how we organize thoughts and information gathered from our environments into meaningful categories of thought, which will be discussed later. Categories and Concepts A categorycategory a set of objects that can be treated as equivalent in some way. For example, consider the following categories: trucks, wireless devices, weddings, psychopaths, and trout. Although the objects in a given category are different from one another, they have many commonalities. When you know something is a truck, you know quite a bit about it. The psychology of categories concerns how people learn, remember, and use informative categories such as trucks or psychopaths.The mental representations we form of categories are called concepts. There is a category of trucks in the world, and you also have a concept of trucks in your head. We assume that people’s concepts correspond more or less closely to the actual category, but it can be useful to distinguish the two, as when someone’s concept is not really correct. Concepts and Prototypes The human nervous system is capable of handling endless streams of information. The senses serve as the interface between the mind and the external environment, receiving stimuli and translating it into nervous impulses that are transmitted to the brain. The brain then processes this information and uses the relevant pieces to create thoughts, which can then be expressed through language or stored in memory for future use. To make this process more complex, the brain does not gather information from external environments only. When thoughts are formed, the brain also pulls information from emotions and memories (Figure 1). Emotion and memory are powerful influences on both our thoughts and behaviors. Figure 1. Sensations and information are received by our brains, filtered through emotions and memories, and processed to become thoughts. In order to organize this staggering amount of information, the brain has developed a file cabinet of sorts in the mind. The different files stored in the file cabinet are called concepts. ConceptsConcepts are categories or groupings of linguistic information, images, ideas, or memories, such as life experiences. Concepts are, in many ways, big ideas that are generated by observing details, and categorizing and combining these details into cognitive structures. You use concepts to see the relationships among the different elements of your experiences and to keep the information in your mind organized and accessible. Concepts are informed by our semantic memory (you will learn more about this concept when you study memory) and are present in every aspect of our lives; however, one of the easiest places to notice concepts is inside a classroom, where they are discussed explicitly. When you study United States history, for example, you learn about more than just individual events that have happened in America’s past. You absorb a large quantity of information by listening to and participating in discussions, examining maps, and reading first-hand accounts of people’s lives. Your brain analyzes these details and develops an overall understanding of American history. In the process, your brain gathers details that inform and refine your understanding of related concepts like democracy, power, and freedom. Concepts can be complex and abstract, like justice, or more concrete, like types of birds. In psychology, for example, Piaget’s stages of development are abstract concepts. Some concepts, like tolerance, are agreed upon by many people, because they have been used in various ways over many years. Other concepts, like the characteristics of your ideal friend or your family’s birthday traditions, are personal and individualized. In this way, concepts touch every aspect of our lives, from our many daily routines to the guiding principles behind the way governments function. Concepts are at the core of intelligent behavior. We expect people to be able to know what to do in new situations and when confronting new objects. If you go into a new classroom and see chairs, a blackboard, a projector, and a screen, you know what these things are and how they will be used. You’ll sit on one of the chairs and expect the instructor to write on the blackboard or project something onto the screen. You do this even if you have never seen any of these particular objects before, because you have concepts of classrooms, chairs, projectors, and so forth, that tell you what they are and what you’re supposed to do with them. Furthermore, if someone tells you a new fact about the projector—for example, that it has a halogen bulb—you are likely to extend this fact to other projectors you encounter. In short, concepts allow you to extend what you have learned about a limited number of objects to a potentially infinite set of entities. Figure 2. In 1930, Mohandas Gandhi led a group in peaceful protest against a British tax on salt in India. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=203 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=203 TRY ITTRY IT LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Test how well you can match the computer’s prototype for certain objects by playing the game, “Quick Draw!” Another technique used by your brain to organize information is the identification of prototypes for the concepts you have developed. A prototypeprototype is the best example or representation of a concept. For example, for the category of civil disobedience, your prototype could be Rosa Parks. Her peaceful resistance to segregation on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, is a recognizable example of civil disobedience. Or your prototype could be Mohandas Gandhi, sometimes called Mahatma Gandhi (“Mahatma” is an honorific title) (Figure 2). Mohandas Gandhi served as a nonviolent force for independence for India while simultaneously demanding that Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and Christian leaders—both Indian and British—collaborate peacefully. Although he was not always successful in preventing violence around him, his life provides a steadfast example of the civil disobedience prototype (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2013). Just as concepts can be abstract or concrete, we can make a distinction between concepts that are functions of our direct experience with the world and those that are more artificial in nature. Natural and Artificial Concepts In psychology, concepts can be divided into two categories, natural and artificial. Natural conceptsNatural concepts are created “naturally” through your experiences and can be developed from either direct or indirect experiences. For example, if you live in Essex Junction, Vermont, you have probably had a lot of direct experience with snow. You’ve watched it fall from the sky, you’ve seen lightly falling snow that barely covers the windshield of your car, and you’ve shoveled out 18 inches of fluffy white snow as you’ve thought, “This is perfect for skiing.” You’ve thrown snowballs at your best friend and gone sledding down the steepest hill in town. In short, you know snow. You know what it looks like, smells like, tastes like, and feels like. If, however, you’ve lived your whole life on the island of Saint Vincent in the Caribbean, you may never have actually seen snow, much less tasted, smelled, or touched it. You know snow from the indirect experience of seeing pictures of falling snow—or from watching films that feature snow as part of the setting. Either way, snow is a natural concept because you can construct an understanding of it through direct observations or experiences of snow (Figure 3). https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/ Figure 3. (a) Our concept of snow is an example of a natural concept—one that we understand through direct observation and experience. (b) In contrast, artificial concepts are ones that we know by a specific set of characteristics that they always exhibit, such as what defines different basic shapes. (credit a: modification of work by Maarten Takens; credit b: modification of work by “Shayan (USA)”/Flickr) An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=203 TRY ITTRY IT An artificial conceptartificial concept, on the other hand, is a concept that is defined by a specific set of characteristics. Various properties of geometric shapes, like squares and triangles, serve as useful examples of artificial concepts. A triangle always has three angles and three sides. A square always has four equal sides and four right angles. Mathematical formulas, like the equation for area (length × width) are artificial concepts defined by specific sets of characteristics that are always the same. Artificial concepts can enhance the understanding of a topic by building on one another. For example, before learning the concept of “area of a square” (and the formula to find it), you must understand what a square is. Once the concept of “area of a square” is understood, an understanding of area for other geometric shapes can be built upon the original understanding of area. The use of artificial concepts to define an idea is crucial to communicating with others and engaging in complex thought. According to Goldstone and Kersten (2003), concepts act as building blocks and can be connected in countless combinations to create complex thoughts. Schemata A schemaschema is a mental construct consisting of a cluster or collection of related concepts (Bartlett, 1932). There are many different types of schemata, and they all have one thing in common: schemata are a method of organizing information that allows the brain to work more efficiently. When a schema is activated, the brain makes immediate assumptions about the person or object being observed. There are several types of schemata. A role schemarole schema makes assumptions about how individuals in certain roles will behave (Callero, 1994). For example, imagine you meet someone who introduces himself as a firefighter. When this happens, your brain automatically activates the “firefighter schema” and begins making assumptions that this person is brave, selfless, and community-oriented. Despite not knowing this person, already you have unknowingly made judgments about him. Schemata also help you fill in gaps in the information you receive from the world around you. While schemata allow for more efficient information processing, there can be problems with schemata, regardless of whether they are accurate: Perhaps this particular firefighter is not brave, he just works as a firefighter to pay the bills while studying to become a children’s librarian. An event schemaevent schema, also known as a cognitive scriptcognitive script, is a set of behaviors that can feel like a routine. Think about what you do when you walk into an elevator (Figure 4). First, the doors open and you wait to let exiting Figure 4. What event schema do you perform when riding in an elevator? (credit: “Gideon”/Flickr) Figure 5. Texting while driving is dangerous, but it is a difficult event schema for some people to resist. TRY ITTRY IT passengers leave the elevator car. Then, you step into the elevator and turn around to face the doors, looking for the correct button to push. You never face the back of the elevator, do you? And when you’re riding in a crowded elevator and you can’t face the front, it feels uncomfortable, doesn’t it? Interestingly, event schemata can vary widely among different cultures and countries. For example, while it is quite common for people to greet one another with a handshake in the United States, in Tibet, you greet someone by sticking your tongue out at them, and in Belize, you bump fists (Cairns Regional Council, n.d.) Because event schemata are automatic, they can be difficult to change. Imagine that you are driving home from work or school. This event schema involves getting in the car, shutting the door, and buckling your seatbelt before putting the key in the ignition. You might perform this script two or three times each day. As you drive home, you hear your phone’s ring tone. Typically, the event schema that occurs when you hear your phone ringing involves locating the phone and answering it or responding to your latest text message. So without thinking, you reach for your phone, which could be in your pocket, in your bag, or on the passenger seat of the car. This powerful event schema is informed by your pattern of behavior and the pleasurable stimulation that a phone call or text message gives your brain. Because it is a schema, it is extremely challenging for us to stop reaching for the phone, even though we know that we endanger our own lives and the lives of others while we do it (Neyfakh, 2013) (Figure 5). Remember the elevator? It feels almost impossible to walk in and not face the door. Our powerful event schema dictates our behavior in the elevator, and it is no different with our phones. Current research suggests that it is the habit, or event schema, of checking our phones in many different situations that makes refraining from checking them while driving especially difficult (Bayer & Campbell, 2012). Because texting and driving has become a dangerous epidemic in recent years, psychologists are looking at ways to help people interrupt the “phone schema” while driving. Event schemata like these are the reason why many habits are difficult to break once they have been acquired. As we continue to examine thinking, keep in mind how powerful the forces of concepts and schemata are to our understanding of the world. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=203 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=203 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=203 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=203 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch this CrashCourse video to see more examples of concepts and prototypes. You’ll also get a preview on other key topics in cognition, including problem-solving strategies like algorithms and heuristics. GLOSSARYGLOSSARY artificial concept:artificial concept: concept that is defined by a very specific set of characteristics cognition:cognition: thinking, including perception, learning, problem solving, judgment, and memory cognitive psychology:cognitive psychology: field of psychology dedicated to studying every aspect of how people think concept:concept: category or grouping of linguistic information, objects, ideas, or life experiences cognitive script:cognitive script: set of behaviors that are performed the same way each time; also referred to as an event schema event schema:event schema: set of behaviors that are performed the same way each time; also referred to as a cognitive script natural concept:natural concept: mental groupings that are created “naturally” through your experiences prototypeprototype best representation of a concept:best representation of a concept: role schema:role schema: set of expectations that define the behaviors of a person occupying a particular role schema:schema: (plural = schemata) mental construct consisting of a cluster or collection of related concepts THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER Think about a natural concept that you know fully but that would be difficult for someone else to understand. Why it would be difficult to explain? Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • What is Cognition?. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:u8MlFxBQ@7/What-Is-Cognition. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/ content/col11629/latest/. • Paragraphs on categories and concepts. Authored byAuthored by: Gregory Murphy. Provided byProvided by: New York University. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/ modules/categories-and-concepts. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike • A Thinking Man Image. Authored byAuthored by: Wesley Nitsckie. Located atLocated at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nitsckie/5507777269. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Cognition: How Your Mind Can Amaze and Betray You - Crash Course Psychology #15. Provided byProvided by: CrashCourse. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R- sVnmmw6WY&feature=youtu.be&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6. LicenseLicense: All Rights Reserved. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License SOLVING PROBLEMS LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe problem solving strategies, including algorithms and heuristics • Explain some common roadblocks to effective problem solving People face problems every day—usually, multiple problems throughout the day. Sometimes these problems are straightforward: To double a recipe for pizza dough, for example, all that is required is that each ingredient in the recipe be doubled. Sometimes, however, the problems we encounter are more complex. For example, say you have a work deadline, and you must mail a printed copy of a report to your supervisor by the end of the business day. The report is time-sensitive and must be sent overnight. You finished the report last night, but your printer will not work today. What should you do? First, you need to identify the problem and then apply a strategy for solving the problem. Problem-Solving Strategies When you are presented with a problem—whether it is a complex mathematical problem or a broken printer, how do you solve it? Before finding a solution to the problem, the problem must first be clearly identified. After that, one of many problem solving strategies can be applied, hopefully resulting in a solution. A problem-solving strategyproblem-solving strategy is a plan of action used to find a solution. Different strategies have different action plans associated with them. For example, a well-known strategy is trial and errortrial and error. The old adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” describes trial and error. In terms of your broken printer, you could try checking the ink levels, and if that doesn’t work, you could check to make sure the paper tray isn’t jammed. Or maybe the printer isn’t actually connected to your laptop. When using trial and error, you would continue to try different solutions until you solved your problem. Although trial and error is not typically one of the most time-efficient strategies, it is a commonly used one. Table 1. Problem-Solving Strategies MethodMethod DescriptionDescription ExampleExample Trial and error Continue trying different solutions until problem is solved Restarting phone, turning off WiFi, turning off bluetooth in order to determine why your phone is malfunctioning Algorithm Step-by-step problem-solving formula Instruction manual for installing new software on your computer Heuristic General problem-solving framework Working backwards; breaking a task into steps https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:u8MlFxBQ@7/What-Is-Cognition https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/categories-and-concepts http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/categories-and-concepts https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/nitsckie/5507777269 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-sVnmmw6WY&feature=youtu.be&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-sVnmmw6WY&feature=youtu.be&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING What problem-solving method could you use to solve Einstein’s famous riddle? Another type of strategy is an algorithm. An algorithmalgorithm is a problem-solving formula that provides you with step-by- step instructions used to achieve a desired outcome (Kahneman, 2011). You can think of an algorithm as a recipe with highly detailed instructions that produce the same result every time they are performed. Algorithms are used frequently in our everyday lives, especially in computer science. When you run a search on the Internet, search engines like Google use algorithms to decide which entries will appear first in your list of results. Facebook also uses algorithms to decide which posts to display on your newsfeed. Can you identify other situations in which algorithms are used? A heuristicheuristic is another type of problem solving strategy. While an algorithm must be followed exactly to produce a correct result, a heuristic is a general problem-solving framework (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). You can think of these as mental shortcuts that are used to solve problems. A “rule of thumb” is an example of a heuristic. Such a rule saves the person time and energy when making a decision, but despite its time-saving characteristics, it is not always the best method for making a rational decision. Different types of heuristics are used in different types of situations, but the impulse to use a heuristic occurs when one of five conditions is met (Pratkanis, 1989): • 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 in the same moment Working backwardsWorking backwards is a useful heuristic in which you begin solving the problem by focusing on the end result. Consider this example: You live in Washington, D.C. and have been invited to a wedding at 4 PM on Saturday in Philadelphia. Knowing that Interstate 95 tends to back up any day of the week, you need to plan your route and time your departure accordingly. If you want to be at the wedding service by 3:30 PM, and it takes 2.5 hours to get to Philadelphia without traffic, what time should you leave your house? You use the working backwards heuristic to plan the events of your day on a regular basis, probably without even thinking about it. Another useful heuristic is the practice of accomplishing a large goal or task by breaking it into a series of smaller steps. Students often use this common method to complete a large research project or long essay for school. For example, students typically brainstorm, develop a thesis or main topic, research the chosen topic, organize their information into an outline, write a rough draft, revise and edit the rough draft, develop a final draft, organize the references list, and proofread their work before turning in the project. The large task becomes less overwhelming when it is broken down into a series of small steps. Figure 1. How long did it take you to solve this sudoku puzzle? (You can see the answer at the end of this section.) EVERYDAY CONNECTIONS: SOLVING PUZZLESEVERYDAY CONNECTIONS: SOLVING PUZZLES Problem-solving abilities can improve with practice. Many people challenge themselves every day with puzzles and other mental exercises to sharpen their problem-solving skills. Sudoku puzzles appear daily in most newspapers. Typically, a sudoku puzzle is a 9×9 grid. The simple sudoku below (Figure 1) is a 4×4 grid. To solve the puzzle, fill in the empty boxes with a single digit: 1, 2, 3, or 4. Here are the rules: The numbers must total 10 in each bolded box, each row, and each column; however, each digit can only appear once in a bolded box, row, and column. Time yourself as you solve this puzzle and compare your time with a classmate. Figure 2. Did you figure it out? (The answer is at the end of this section.) Once you understand how to crack this puzzle, you won’t forget. Here is another popular type of puzzle that challenges your spatial reasoning skills. Connect all nine dots with four connecting straight lines without lifting your pencil from the paper: Take a look at the “Puzzling Scales” logic puzzle below (Figure 3). Sam Loyd, a well-known puzzle master, created and refined countless puzzles throughout his lifetime (Cyclopedia of Puzzles, n.d.). Figure 3. The puzzle reads, “Since the scales now balance…and balance when arranged this way, then how many marbles will it require to balance with that top? AnswerAnswer Were you able to determine how many marbles are needed to balance the scales in the Puzzling Scales? You need nine. Were you able to solve the other problems above? Here are the answers: An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 TRY ITTRY IT Pitfalls to Problem-Solving Not all problems are successfully solved, however. What challenges stop us from successfully solving a problem? Albert Einstein once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Imagine a person in a room that has four doorways. One doorway that has always been open in the past is now locked. The person, accustomed to exiting the room by that particular doorway, keeps trying to get out through the same doorway even though the other three doorways are open. The person is stuck—but she just needs to go to another doorway, instead of trying to get out through the locked doorway. A mental setmental set is where you persist in approaching a problem in a way that has worked in the past but is clearly not working now. Functional fixednessFunctional fixedness is a type of mental set where you cannot perceive an object being used for something other than what it was LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Check out this Apollo 13 scene where the group of NASA engineers are given the task of overcoming functional fixedness. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 TRY ITTRY IT designed for. During the Apollo 13 mission to the moon, NASA engineers at Mission Control had to overcome functional fixedness to save the lives of the astronauts aboard the spacecraft. An explosion in a module of the spacecraft damaged multiple systems. The astronauts were in danger of being poisoned by rising levels of carbon dioxide because of problems with the carbon dioxide filters. The engineers found a way for the astronauts to use spare plastic bags, tape, and air hoses to create a makeshift air filter, which saved the lives of the astronauts. Researchers have investigated whether functional fixedness is affected by culture. In one experiment, individuals from the Shuar group in Ecuador were asked to use an object for a purpose other than that for which the object was originally intended. For example, the participants were told a story about a bear and a rabbit that were separated by a river and asked to select among various objects, including a spoon, a cup, erasers, and so on, to help the animals. The spoon was the only object long enough to span the imaginary river, but if the spoon was presented in a way that reflected its normal usage, it took participants longer to choose the spoon to solve the problem. (German & Barrett, 2005). The researchers wanted to know if exposure to highly specialized tools, as occurs with individuals in industrialized nations, affects their ability to transcend functional fixedness. It was determined that functional fixedness is experienced in both industrialized and nonindustrialized cultures (German & Barrett, 2005). In order to make good decisions, we use our knowledge and our reasoning. Often, this knowledge and reasoning is sound and solid. Sometimes, however, we are swayed by biases or by others manipulating a situation. For example, let’s say you and three friends wanted to rent a house and had a combined target budget of $1,600. The realtor shows you only very run-down houses for $1,600 and then shows you a very nice house for $2,000. Might you ask each person to pay more in rent to get the $2,000 home? Why would the realtor show you the run-down houses and the nice house? The realtor may be challenging your anchoring bias. An anchoring biasanchoring bias occurs when you focus on one piece of information when making a decision or solving a problem. In this case, you’re so focused on the amount of money you are willing to spend that you may not recognize what kinds of houses are available at that price point. The confirmation biasconfirmation bias is the tendency to focus on information that confirms your existing beliefs. For example, if you think that your professor is not very nice, you notice all of the instances of rude behavior exhibited by the professor while ignoring the countless pleasant interactions he is involved in on a daily basis. This bias proves that first impressions do matter and that we tend to look for information to confirm our initial judgments of others. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3RSqdj_VnY An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch this video from the Big Think to learn more about the confirmation bias. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Test your understanding of heuristics and common biases through this interactive website. You can also visit this site to see a clever music video explaining these and other cognitive biases. Hindsight biasHindsight bias leads you to believe that the event you just experienced was predictable, even though it really wasn’t. In other words, you knew all along that things would turn out the way they did. Representative biasRepresentative bias describes a faulty way of thinking, in which you unintentionally stereotype someone or something; for example, you may assume that your professors spend their free time reading books and engaging in intellectual conversation, because the idea of them spending their time playing volleyball or visiting an amusement park does not fit in with your stereotypes of professors. Finally, the availability heuristicavailability heuristic is a heuristic in which you make a decision based on an example, information, or recent experience that is that readily available to you, even though it may not be the best example to inform your decision.. To use a common example, would you guess there are more murders or more suicides in America each year? When asked, most people would guess there are more murders. In truth, there are twice as many suicides as there are murders each year. However, murders seem more common because we hear a lot more about murders on an average day. Unless someone we know or someone famous takes their own life, it does not make the news. Murders, on the other hand, we see in the news every day. This leads to the erroneous assumption that the easier it is to think of instances of something, the more often that thing occurs. Watch the following video for an example of the availability heuristic. Biases tend to “preserve that which is already established—to maintain our preexisting knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and hypotheses” (Aronson, 1995; Kahneman, 2011). These biases are summarized in Table 2 below. Table 2. Summary of Decision Biases BiasBias DescriptionDescription Anchoring Tendency to focus on one particular piece of information when making decisions or problem- solving Confirmation Focuses on information that confirms existing beliefs Hindsight Belief that the event just experienced was predictable Representative Unintentional stereotyping of someone or something Availability Decision is based upon either an available precedent or an example that may be faulty http://www.brainerrors.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RsbmjNLQkc An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 TRY ITTRY IT GLOSSARYGLOSSARY algorithm:algorithm: problem-solving strategy characterized by a specific set of instructions anchoring bias:anchoring bias: faulty heuristic in which you fixate on a single aspect of a problem to find a solution availability heuristic:availability heuristic: faulty heuristic in which you make a decision based on information readily available to you confirmation bias:confirmation bias: faulty heuristic in which you focus on information that confirms your beliefs functional fixedness:functional fixedness: inability to see an object as useful for any other use other than the one for which it was intended heuristic:heuristic: mental shortcut that saves time when solving a problem hindsight bias:hindsight bias: belief that the event just experienced was predictable, even though it really wasn’t mental set:mental set: continually using an old solution to a problem without results problem-solving strategy:problem-solving strategy: method for solving problems representative bias:representative bias: faulty heuristic in which you stereotype someone or something without a valid basis for your judgment trial and error:trial and error: problem-solving strategy in which multiple solutions are attempted until the correct one is found working backwards:working backwards: heuristic in which you begin to solve a problem by focusing on the end result THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER Which type of bias do you recognize in your own decision making processes? How has this bias affected how you’ve made decisions in the past and how can you use your awareness of it to improve your decisions making skills in the future? LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explain some common roadblocks to effective problem solving, including choice blindness An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 THE ATTRACTION PREFERENCE EXPERIMENTTHE ATTRACTION PREFERENCE EXPERIMENT You can learn the basics of the experiment conducted by Petter Johannson, Lars Hall and their colleagues by watching the following video (Note: The video is a segment from a BBC video from the science series called Horizons. This particular show was about decision making). Johannson and Hall were curious to see how often people noticed that there was a mismatch between their choice and the picture they were told they had chosen. Here’s how the experiment worked. Imagine that you are sitting across a table from an experimenter, who is dressed in a long sleeved black shirt. He shows you a pair of pictures of head-and-shoulder shots of two males or two females. On each trial, you indicate which of the two people in the pictures you find more attractive. After you make your choice, the experimenter hands you the card you just pointed at and asks you to explain why you preferred this person. Except that this didn’t always happen this way. Using a magician’s trick, on some trials, when the experimenter handed you the card, he actually handed you the card you did NOT choose. Watch this video to see the experimenter’s explain it. The researchers tested 120 college students (70 female, 50 male). The pictures were all of women. As the video showed, they made their choice and then immediately explained the reasons for their preference. Only 13% of the switches were detected immediately. Approximately 10% more switches were mentioned “retrospectively”, where a participant initially justified choosing the switched face, but later indicated some suspicion that the wrong picture had been presented. Most participants who detected a switch attributed it to a technical error rather than suspecting that it was part of the research procedure. Choice Blindness Some choices are easy (“Do you want pepperoni or anchovies on your pizza?”) and some choices are hard (“Are you going to get Amazon Echo or Google Home?”), but most of us like to think that we “know our own mind”—that is, when we finally make a choice, we are clear about our decision. Research by psychologists in Sweden shows that this confidence in our own self-knowledge may not always be justified. Choice blindness is the failure to recall a choice immediately after we have made that choice. If you go to an ice cream store, order a chocolate cone, and then accept a strawberry cone without noticing, that is choice blindness. If you go to an electronics store, select the new 55-inch Vizio television, and then fail to notice when they bring out (and expect you to pay for) the far more expensive 55-inch Sony television, that is choice blindness. If you order a burger and fries, and then don’t notice when soup-and-salad is placed in front of you, that is choice blindness. As you have seen, Johannson, Hall, and their colleagues (Note: Petter Johannson, Lars Hall, Sverker Sikström, & Andreas Olsson. (2005). Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task. Science, 310 (7 October 2005), 116-119.) found a method for inducing choice blindness in a laboratory setting, but they wanted to do more than simply demonstrate that people sometimes forget their choices. As psychological scientists, their goal is to explore an interesting phenomenon (i.e., choice blindness) to understand why it happens and to see if it tells us anything new about the way our minds work. But is it Real? The Value of Replication The video you just watched described an experiment with a surprising result: more than 75% of the time, people make a choice and then, without indicating that anything is amiss, they proceed to justify a choice they did not make. But how solid is this study and how much can we believe these results? Maybe the choice blindness An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 TRY ITTRY IT An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 TRY ITTRY IT experiment reported real results, but (even assuming that the experimenters were completely honest and careful) could this have just been a weird outcome that will never happen again? In other words, is this a reliable result or just a fluke? There is only one way to determine if a phenomenon is reliable, and that is replicationreplication. If you can’t replicate an effect, then you shouldn’t waste people’s time reading about it in a scientific paper. There are at least three different types of replication. 1. Direct ReplicationDirect Replication: Conduct exactly the same study again, usually with new participants from the same population as the original study. A successful replication would produce results similar to those in the original study. 2. Systematic ReplicationSystematic Replication: Conduct a study that is similar to the original one, but using slightly different methods or stimuli. 3. Conceptual ReplicationConceptual Replication: Conduct a very different study that still tests the original idea. In the current context, a conceptual replication would test the choice blindness idea using a method that did not involve choosing attractive people. So, can you believe the choice blindness phenomenon? Case #1 In the years just before they published their 2005 study, the experimenters conducted two similar studies. For these studies, the pictures were presented on a computer screen, and the computer switched the pictures on the critical trials, so no magic was necessary. The results were very similar to the results of the study reported in the video above. Case #2 When the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) made the video, they reconstructed the experiment in a form very similar to the original. They reported that 80% of the participants did not notice any switching of pictures—a result very similar to the original. Unfortunately, without a published report of the study, it is impossible to know if the scientific standards of the original study had been maintained. Case #3 In 2014, researchers at the National University of Singapore reported a study similar to the experiment shown in the video. The stimuli were presented using a computer rather than a live experimenter. In addition to choosing An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 TRY ITTRY IT An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 TRY ITTRY IT LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Visit this link to watch another video related about conceptual replication, this time related to taste. TRY ITTRY IT one of the two faces, the participants rated their confidence in their choice and they typed their explanation of their preference. The faces were all of Caucasian women (as in the original study), but the participants were all of Asian descent (ethnic backgrounds: Chinese, Indian, and Vietnamese). Their results were similar to those of the original study. Case #4 Here is video showing another study by Johannson and Hall. The video has no sound—only subtitles. Before an election, researchers polled people about their political preferences, selecting either right-wing or left- wing policies. The researchers secretly copied down the opposite of their responses and had the participants explain their answers. Fascinatingly, many people defended the views they said to have disagreed with. From Phenomenon to Scientific Exploration What you saw in the video is what a scientist would call a phenomenon—that is, a behavior that happens under certain conditions. The video showed that, if an experimenter is tricky enough, he or she can get people to justify choices that they never made. If you find this phenomenon interesting, then it may be worth your time to try to find out why it happens. (If you didn’t think it was interesting, then you will probably move on to find something that inspires you.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VPcl04Adh8 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 Any of the choices in the list above could explain—fully or in part—the choice blindness phenomenon, but each idea would need to be tested. That is where the science comes in. The starting point for science is something interesting (a surprising phenomenon). If we are motivated to ask why something happened, then we jump into the real work of science: exploring possible explanations. The next scientific step systematically (i.e., carefully and with specific purposes) changes elements of the procedures or stimuli to see how these changes affect the results. Remember that our dependent variable is the probability that the change in faces will be detected. So now we try to learn more about change blindness by seeing how changing specific details (independent variables) either increase or decrease people’s likelihood of noticing the switch in faces. Two Variables: Time and Similarity In the 2005 study, Johansson and Hall looked at two interesting variables that might influence detection of the mismatch. First, how rushed were the participants to make their decision? They gave some people only 2 seconds to choose the more attractive person. Others were given 5 seconds, and another group was given as long as people wanted (free choice). Should more time make someone more likely or less likely to notice that they have been given the picture they did not choose? The second variable was how similar the two faces were to one another. In some cases, the two faces were similar to each other in general features, while in other cases the two faces were more distinctly different. If the two faces are quite different, how should that affect your ability to notice? The Results If we put the two manipulated variables (time and similarity) together, that gives us six conditions: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2018/03/23162353/image11 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 TRY ITTRY IT In the figure below, adjust the bars to fit your predictions about how often people would notice the picture switch. Higher bars mean people more often noticed that the cards had been switched. Lower bars mean that people made one choice and didn’t notice when they were given the wrong picture. This isn’t easy because you need to take account of the two variables: (1) amount of time looking at the pictures before your choice and (2) similarity of the faces in the pictures. Most people make predictions that put the red bars lowest, the purple bars in the middle, and the green bars highest. This supports the idea that the more time you have to look at the pictures, the more likely you are to notice that the picture you have chosen is not the one the experimenter gave you. People also expect that the switch will be more noticeable if the faces are dissimilar. For example, if we look at the green bars with unlimited time, it makes sense that people will generally notice when the faces have been switched on them, and this is much greater when the two faces are very different (dissimilar condition) than when they are similar (similar condition). Click here to see the what most people expect the results to be. AnswerAnswer What Do These Results Tell Us? With just these results, we are still a long way from understanding choice blindness. The experiment you just read takes us a couple of steps in the right direction. First, the similarity of the faces is (surprisingly) not a particularly influential factor. This does not mean that the case is closed and similarity is unimportant, but it does suggest that confusion due to similarity may not be the whole story. The amount of time participants had to choose did have a big influence on detection of a switch in faces. When the participants were rushed (2 second condition), the chance of detecting a change was very slight. Given 5 seconds, detection improved, but not by a great amount. Unlimited time to choose made a substantial difference, but detection was still only around 25%. These results suggest that time to choose may be an important factor, but it is not the whole story. Furthermore, we are still not sure what it was about the extra time that led to improved detection. Did more time allow the participants to remember the faces better? Or perhaps their memory for faces was not improved, but they had more time to think of reasons they preferred one person over the other (her earrings, the way her hair flowed, a look in her eyes). These preferred features could signal to them that something was missing when the wrong picture was presented. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2018/03/23165302/unnamed Most people find it hard to believe that lots of people will be tricked by the switch in faces, even if the experimenter has good magician skills. So, what did happen? AnswerAnswer If you explore the research literature on choice blindness, you will find that the phenomenon has been studied from many angles. Experiments have been conducted in university laboratories and on the streets of a city in the Netherlands. Choice blindness in the video involved remembering what someone looked like, but choices involving sound, taste, and smell have also produced choice blindness. Even people’s judgments about their own personality and preferences is open to choice blindness. We don’t fully understand when and why choice blindness occurs, but it is an intriguing phenomenon, open to scientific curiosity. A Final Thought In a TED talk from 2016, Petter Johannson describes choice blindness to an audience. At the end he acknowledges that choice blindness can make people look silly or worse, but he also believes that this research provides us with an insight about people that may be reason for hope in a world seemingly full of discord and bereft of compromise. Here are the closing lines from his TED talk: This [choice blindness] may all seem a bit disturbing. But if you want to look at it from a positive direction, it could be seen as showing: Okay, so we’re all a little bit more flexible than we think. We can change our minds. Our attitudes are not set in stone. And we can also change the minds of others if we can only get them to engage with the issue and see it from the opposite view. … Getting rid of the need to stay consistent is actually a huge relief and makes [social] life so much easier to live. So the conclusion must be, “Know that you don’t know yourself. Or at least not as well as you think you do.” https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2018/03/24170040/similarvsdissimilar1 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2018/03/24170040/similarvsdissimilar1 http://www.lucs.lu.se/2016/12/petter-johansson-presented-choice-blindness-research-at-tedx/ First, people generally did not notice the change in faces. Overall, participants on fewer than 20% of the trials noticed any of the card switches. Most participants simply did not realize that the faces had been switched, and many were either very surprised when they were told what had happened or they simply didn’t believe the experimenters. There was an effect of time. The red bars (2 seconds to choose) are lower than the purple bars (5 seconds to choose), and the purple bars are lower than the green bars (unlimited time to choose), but the differences are fairly modest. The bigger surprise was the LACK of difference between the similar and dissimilar faces. In all three time conditions, there was no significant difference—barely a measurable difference–between the similar and dissimilar faces conditions. (Note: The results are more complex than the figure suggests. The data shown above are limited to first detections of the switch in pictures. After people notice that there has been a switch, they tend to be a bit suspicious and they are more vigilant about noticing changes. If all trials are taken into account, the data are still similar to these, but not quite as pretty. See the original paper for all the details.) An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=210 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2018/03/24170114/final-results Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification and adaptation. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Psychology in Real Life: Choice Blindness. Authored byAuthored by: Patrick Carroll for Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Problem-Solving. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:Lk3YnvuC@6/Problem-Solving. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/ content/col11629/latest/. • Actors Headshots . Authored byAuthored by: Vanity Studios. Located atLocated at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/149481436@N03/34277183806/in/photostream/. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Image of man. Provided byProvided by: Pixabay. Located atLocated at: https://pixabay.com/en/boy-portrait-outdoors-facial-men-s-3566903/. LicenseLicense: CC0: No Rights Reserved • https://pixabay.com/en/boy-portrait-outdoors-facial-men-s-3566903/. Authored byAuthored by: Simon Robben. Provided byProvided by: Pexels. Located atLocated at: https://www.pexels.com/photo/face-facial-hair-fine-looking-guy-614810/. LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known Copyright • image of businessman. Authored byAuthored by: RoyalAnwar. Provided byProvided by: Pixabay. Located atLocated at: https://pixabay.com/en/model-businessman-corporate-2911332/. LicenseLicense: CC0: No Rights Reserved • man in black shirt. Authored byAuthored by: songjayjay. Provided byProvided by: Pixabay. Located atLocated at: https://pixabay.com/en/face-men-s-asia-shirts-blacj-young-1391628/. LicenseLicense: CC0: No Rights Reserved • woman headshot. Authored byAuthored by: Richard Ha. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. Located atLocated at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/richardha101/31951459743/in/photolist-QFrzNX-V9Amf2-UM2ZU5-HMQxnd-WmpZx1-5ztiGT-ovm92d-28C1Eyi- qhwZzM-8szjMV-YRsM5B-LCTNFR-LtgVC9-LCUgd8-8gRLbQ-REArrY-WQNThG-ph52sx-2bC2DwH-qE61yp-28NspiC-21h8cj4-RVoBBc-29GiNJ3-21QEU6M-M1YTcp-PePwTJ-LALKtr-RVoBtg-Ry1bpy-FVr9BB-282GDDG-V7zSQJ- NwmdK9-29bSs5N-29mSb5G-272dN8p-26brtas-28tTQWf-RS1osg-WHoUSc-25uETMH-D7crwK-28m9fEh-25taZPB-JCwqE7-241e8Xp-265Ce4A-22V7VVo-25N7i4q . LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • businesswoman headshot. Authored byAuthored by: Richard Rives. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. Located atLocated at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/richpat2/38251159285/in/photostream/. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Can you solve Einsteinu2019s Riddle? . Authored byAuthored by: Dan Van der Vieren. Provided byProvided by: Ted-Ed. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rDVz_Fb6HQ&index=3&list=PLUmyCeox8XCwB8FrEfDQtQZmCc2qYMS5a. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • BBC Choice Blindness. Authored byAuthored by: BBC. Provided byProvided by: ChoiceBlindnessLab. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRqyw-EwgTk. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • Using Choice Blindness to Shift Political Attitudes and Voter Intentions. Provided byProvided by: ChoiceBlindnessLab. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_htNx0eWmgs. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License PSYCH IN REAL LIFE: CHOICE BLINDNESS LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explain some common roadblocks to effective problem solving, including choice blindness https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/choice/choice_blindness.html Choice Blindness Some choices are easy (“Do you want pepperoni or anchovies on your pizza?”) and some choices are hard (“Are you going to get Amazon Echo or Google Home?”), but most of us like to think that we “know our own mind”—that is, when we finally make a choice, we are clear about our decision. Research by psychologists in Sweden shows that this confidence in our own self-knowledge may not always be justified. Choice blindness is the failure to recall a choice immediately after we have made that choice. If you go to an ice cream store, order a chocolate cone, and then accept a strawberry cone without noticing, that is choice blindness. If you go to an electronics store, select the new 55-inch Vizio television, and then fail to notice when they bring out (and expect you to pay for) the far more expensive 55-inch Sony television, that is choice blindness. If you order a burger and fries, and then don’t notice when soup-and-salad is placed in front of you, that is choice blindness. As you have seen, Johannson, Hall, and their colleagues (Note: Petter Johannson, Lars Hall, Sverker Sikström, & Andreas Olsson. (2005). Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task. Science, 310 (7 October 2005), 116-119.) found a method for inducing choice blindness in a laboratory setting, but they wanted to do more than simply demonstrate that people sometimes forget their choices. As psychological scientists, their goal is to explore an interesting phenomenon (i.e., choice blindness) to understand why it happens and to see if it tells us anything new about the way our minds work. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:Lk3YnvuC@6/Problem-Solving https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/149481436@N03/34277183806/in/photostream/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://pixabay.com/en/boy-portrait-outdoors-facial-men-s-3566903/ https://creativecommons.org/about/cc0 https://www.pexels.com/photo/face-facial-hair-fine-looking-guy-614810/ https://creativecommons.org/about/pdm https://pixabay.com/en/model-businessman-corporate-2911332/ https://creativecommons.org/about/cc0 https://pixabay.com/en/face-men-s-asia-shirts-blacj-young-1391628/ https://creativecommons.org/about/cc0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/richardha101/31951459743/in/photolist-QFrzNX-V9Amf2-UM2ZU5-HMQxnd-WmpZx1-5ztiGT-ovm92d-28C1Eyi-qhwZzM-8szjMV-YRsM5B-LCTNFR-LtgVC9-LCUgd8-8gRLbQ-REArrY-WQNThG-ph52sx-2bC2DwH-qE61yp-28NspiC-21h8cj4-RVoBBc-29GiNJ3-21QEU6M-M1YTcp-PePwTJ-LALKtr-RVoBtg-Ry1bpy-FVr9BB-282GDDG-V7zSQJ-NwmdK9-29bSs5N-29mSb5G-272dN8p-26brtas-28tTQWf-RS1osg-WHoUSc-25uETMH-D7crwK-28m9fEh-25taZPB-JCwqE7-241e8Xp-265Ce4A-22V7VVo-25N7i4q https://www.flickr.com/photos/richardha101/31951459743/in/photolist-QFrzNX-V9Amf2-UM2ZU5-HMQxnd-WmpZx1-5ztiGT-ovm92d-28C1Eyi-qhwZzM-8szjMV-YRsM5B-LCTNFR-LtgVC9-LCUgd8-8gRLbQ-REArrY-WQNThG-ph52sx-2bC2DwH-qE61yp-28NspiC-21h8cj4-RVoBBc-29GiNJ3-21QEU6M-M1YTcp-PePwTJ-LALKtr-RVoBtg-Ry1bpy-FVr9BB-282GDDG-V7zSQJ-NwmdK9-29bSs5N-29mSb5G-272dN8p-26brtas-28tTQWf-RS1osg-WHoUSc-25uETMH-D7crwK-28m9fEh-25taZPB-JCwqE7-241e8Xp-265Ce4A-22V7VVo-25N7i4q https://www.flickr.com/photos/richardha101/31951459743/in/photolist-QFrzNX-V9Amf2-UM2ZU5-HMQxnd-WmpZx1-5ztiGT-ovm92d-28C1Eyi-qhwZzM-8szjMV-YRsM5B-LCTNFR-LtgVC9-LCUgd8-8gRLbQ-REArrY-WQNThG-ph52sx-2bC2DwH-qE61yp-28NspiC-21h8cj4-RVoBBc-29GiNJ3-21QEU6M-M1YTcp-PePwTJ-LALKtr-RVoBtg-Ry1bpy-FVr9BB-282GDDG-V7zSQJ-NwmdK9-29bSs5N-29mSb5G-272dN8p-26brtas-28tTQWf-RS1osg-WHoUSc-25uETMH-D7crwK-28m9fEh-25taZPB-JCwqE7-241e8Xp-265Ce4A-22V7VVo-25N7i4q https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/richpat2/38251159285/in/photostream/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rDVz_Fb6HQ&index=3&list=PLUmyCeox8XCwB8FrEfDQtQZmCc2qYMS5a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRqyw-EwgTk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_htNx0eWmgs https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/choice/choice_blindness.html A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=5106 THE ATTRACTION PREFERENCE EXPERIMENTTHE ATTRACTION PREFERENCE EXPERIMENT You can learn the basics of the experiment conducted by Petter Johannson, Lars Hall and their colleagues by watching the following video (Note: The video is a segment from a BBC video from the science series called Horizons. This particular show was about decision making). Johannson and Hall were curious to see how often people noticed that there was a mismatch between their choice and the picture they were told they had chosen. Here’s how the experiment worked. Imagine that you are sitting across a table from an experimenter, who is dressed in a long sleeved black shirt. He shows you a pair of pictures of head-and-shoulder shots of two males or two females. On each trial, you indicate which of the two people in the pictures you find more attractive. After you make your choice, the experimenter hands you the card you just pointed at and asks you to explain why you preferred this person. Except that this didn’t always happen this way. Using a magician’s trick, on some trials, when the experimenter handed you the card, he actually handed you the card you did NOT choose. Watch this video to see the experimenters explain it. The researchers tested 120 college students (70 female, 50 male). The pictures were all of women. As the video showed, they made their choice and then immediately explained the reasons for their preference. Only 13% of the switches were detected immediately. Approximately 10% more switches were mentioned “retrospectively”, where a participant initially justified choosing the switched face, but later indicated some suspicion that the wrong picture had been presented. Most participants who detected a switch attributed it to a technical error rather than suspecting that it was part of the research procedure. But is it Real? The Value of Replication The video you just watched described an experiment with a surprising result: more than 75% of the time, people make a choice and then, without indicating that anything is amiss, they proceed to justify a choice they did not make. But how solid is this study and how much can we believe these results? Maybe the choice blindness TRY ITTRY IT https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11518 TRY ITTRY IT https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11519 experiment reported real results, but (even assuming that the experimenters were completely honest and careful) could this have just been a weird outcome that will never happen again? In other words, is this a reliable result or just a fluke? There is only one way to determine if a phenomenon is reliable, and that is replicationreplication. If you can’t replicate an effect, then you shouldn’t waste people’s time reading about it in a scientific paper. There are at least three different types of replication. 1. Direct ReplicationDirect Replication: Conduct exactly the same study again, usually with new participants from the same population as the original study. A successful replication would produce results similar to those in the original study. 2. Systematic ReplicationSystematic Replication: Conduct a study that is similar to the original one, but using slightly different methods or stimuli. 3. Conceptual ReplicationConceptual Replication: Conduct a very different study that still tests the original idea. In the current context, a conceptual replication would test the choice blindness idea using a method that did not involve choosing attractive people. So, can you believe the choice blindness phenomenon? Case #1 In the years just before they published their 2005 study, the experimenters conducted two similar studies. For these studies, the pictures were presented on a computer screen, and the computer switched the pictures on the critical trials, so no magic was necessary. The results were very similar to the results of the study reported in the video above. Case #2 When the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) made the video, they reconstructed the experiment in a form very similar to the original. They reported that 80% of the participants did not notice any switching of pictures—a result very similar to the original. Unfortunately, without a published report of the study, it is impossible to know if the scientific standards of the original study had been maintained. Case #3 In 2014, researchers at the National University of Singapore reported a study similar to the experiment shown in the video. The stimuli were presented using a computer rather than a live experimenter. In addition to choosing one of the two faces, the participants rated their confidence in their choice and they typed their explanation of their preference. The faces were all of Caucasian women (as in the original study), but the participants were all of Asian descent (ethnic backgrounds: Chinese, Indian, and Vietnamese). Their results were similar to those of the original study. TRY ITTRY IT https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11520 A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=5106 TRY ITTRY IT https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11521 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Visit this link to watch another video related about conceptual replication, this time related to taste. Case #4 Here is video showing another study by Johannson and Hall. The video has no sound—only subtitles. Before an election, researchers polled people about their political preferences, selecting either right-wing or left- wing policies. The researchers secretly copied down the opposite of their responses and had the participants explain their answers. Fascinatingly, many people defended the views they said to have disagreed with. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VPcl04Adh8 TRY ITTRY IT https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11522 From Phenomenon to Scientific Exploration What you saw in the video is what a scientist would call a phenomenon—that is, a behavior that happens under certain conditions. The video showed that, if an experimenter is tricky enough, he or she can get people to justify choices that they never made. If you find this phenomenon interesting, then it may be worth your time to try to find out why it happens. (If you didn’t think it was interesting, then you will probably move on to find something that inspires you.) Any of the choices in the list above could explain—fully or in part—the choice blindness phenomenon, but each idea would need to be tested. That is where the science comes in. The starting point for science is something interesting (a surprising phenomenon). If we are motivated to ask why something happened, then we jump into the real work of science: exploring possible explanations. The next scientific step systematically (i.e., carefully and with specific purposes) changes elements of the procedures or stimuli to see how these changes affect the results. Remember that our dependent variable is the probability that the change in faces will be detected. So now we try to learn more about change blindness by seeing how changing specific details (independent variables) either increase or decrease people’s likelihood of noticing the switch in faces. Two Variables: Time and Similarity In the 2005 study, Johansson and Hall looked at two interesting variables that might influence detection of the mismatch. First, how rushed were the participants to make their decision? They gave some people only 2 seconds to choose the more attractive person. Others were given 5 seconds, and another group was given as long as people wanted (free choice). Should more time make someone more likely or less likely to notice that they have been given the picture they did not choose? The second variable was how similar the two faces were to one another. In some cases, the two faces were similar to each other in general features, while in other cases the two faces were more distinctly different. If the two faces are quite different, how should that affect your ability to notice? The Results If we put the two manipulated variables (time and similarity) together, that gives us six conditions: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2018/03/23162353/image11 TRY ITTRY IT In the figure below, adjust the bars to fit your predictions about how often people would notice the picture switch. Higher bars mean people more often noticed that the cards had been switched. Lower bars mean that people made one choice and didn’t notice when they were given the wrong picture. This isn’t easy because you need to take account of the two variables: (1) amount of time looking at the pictures before your choice and (2) similarity of the faces in the pictures. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/choice_blindness_bars.html AnswerAnswer Most people make predictions that put the red bars lowest, the purple bars in the middle, and the green bars highest. This supports the idea that the more time you have to look at the pictures, the more likely you are to notice that the picture you have chosen is not the one the experimenter gave you. People also expect that the switch will be more noticeable if the faces are dissimilar. For example, if we look at the green bars with unlimited time, it makes sense that people will generally notice when the faces have been switched on them, and this is much greater when the two faces are very different (dissimilar condition) than when they are similar (similar condition). What Do These Results Tell Us? With just these results, we are still a long way from understanding choice blindness. The experiment you just read takes us a couple of steps in the right direction. First, the similarity of the faces is (surprisingly) not a particularly influential factor. This does not mean that the case is closed and similarity is unimportant, but it does suggest that confusion due to similarity may not be the whole story. The amount of time participants had to choose did have a big influence on detection of a switch in faces. When the participants were rushed (2 second condition), the chance of detecting a change was very slight. Given 5 seconds, detection improved, but not by a great amount. Unlimited time to choose made a substantial difference, but detection was still only around 25%. These results suggest that time to choose may be an important factor, but it is not the whole story. Furthermore, we are still not sure what it was about the extra time that led to improved detection. Did more time allow the participants to remember the faces better? Or perhaps their memory for faces was not improved, but they had more time to think of reasons they preferred one person over the other (her earrings, the way her hair flowed, a look in her eyes). These preferred features could signal to them that something was missing when the wrong picture was presented. If you explore the research literature on choice blindness, you will find that the phenomenon has been studied from many angles. Experiments have been conducted in university laboratories and on the streets of a city in the Netherlands. Choice blindness in the video involved remembering what someone looked like, but choices involving sound, taste, and smell have also produced choice blindness. Even people’s judgments about their own https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2018/03/23165302/unnamed https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/choice_blindness_bars.html Most people find it hard to believe that lots of people will be tricked by the switch in faces, even if the experimenter has good magician skills. So, what did happen? AnswerAnswer personality and preferences is open to choice blindness. We don’t fully understand when and why choice blindness occurs, but it is an intriguing phenomenon, open to scientific curiosity. A Final Thought In a TED talk from 2016, Petter Johannson describes choice blindness to an audience. At the end he acknowledges that choice blindness can make people look silly or worse, but he also believes that this research provides us with an insight about people that may be reason for hope in a world seemingly full of discord and bereft of compromise. Here are the closing lines from his TED talk: This [choice blindness] may all seem a bit disturbing. But if you want to look at it from a positive direction, it could be seen as showing: Okay, so we’re all a little bit more flexible than we think. We can change our minds. Our attitudes are not set in stone. And we can also change the minds of others if we can only get them to engage with the issue and see it from the opposite view. … Getting rid of the need to stay consistent is actually a huge relief and makes [social] life so much easier to live. So the conclusion must be, “Know that you don’t know yourself. Or at least not as well as you think you do.” https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2018/03/24170040/similarvsdissimilar1 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2018/03/24170040/similarvsdissimilar1 http://www.lucs.lu.se/2016/12/petter-johansson-presented-choice-blindness-research-at-tedx/ First, people generally did not notice the change in faces. Overall, participants on fewer than 20% of the trials noticed any of the card switches. Most participants simply did not realize that the faces had been switched, and many were either very surprised when they were told what had happened or they simply didn’t believe the experimenters. There was an effect of time. The red bars (2 seconds to choose) are lower than the purple bars (5 seconds to choose), and the purple bars are lower than the green bars (unlimited time to choose), but the differences are fairly modest. The bigger surprise was the LACK of difference between the similar and dissimilar faces. In all three time conditions, there was no significant difference—barely a measurable difference–between the similar and dissimilar faces conditions. (Note: The results are more complex than the figure suggests. The data shown above are limited to first detections of the switch in pictures. After people notice that there has been a switch, they tend to be a bit suspicious and they are more vigilant about noticing changes. If all trials are taken into account, the data are still similar to these, but not quite as pretty. See the original paper for all the details.) Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Psychology in Real Life: Choice Blindness. Authored byAuthored by: Patrick Carroll for Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Actors Headshots . Authored byAuthored by: Vanity Studios. Located atLocated at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/149481436@N03/34277183806/in/photostream/. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Image of man. Provided byProvided by: Pixabay. Located atLocated at: https://pixabay.com/en/boy-portrait-outdoors-facial-men-s-3566903/. LicenseLicense: CC0: No Rights Reserved • man with beard. Authored byAuthored by: Simon Robben. Provided byProvided by: Pexels. Located atLocated at: https://www.pexels.com/photo/face-facial-hair-fine-looking-guy-614810/. LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known Copyright • image of businessman. Authored byAuthored by: RoyalAnwar. Provided byProvided by: Pixabay. Located atLocated at: https://pixabay.com/en/model-businessman-corporate-2911332/. LicenseLicense: CC0: No Rights Reserved • man in black shirt. Authored byAuthored by: songjayjay. Provided byProvided by: Pixabay. Located atLocated at: https://pixabay.com/en/face-men-s-asia-shirts-blacj-young-1391628/. LicenseLicense: CC0: No Rights Reserved • woman headshot. Authored byAuthored by: Richard Ha. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. 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License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • Using Choice Blindness to Shift Political Attitudes and Voter Intentions. Provided byProvided by: ChoiceBlindnessLab. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_htNx0eWmgs. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2018/03/24170114/final-results https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/149481436@N03/34277183806/in/photostream/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://pixabay.com/en/boy-portrait-outdoors-facial-men-s-3566903/ https://creativecommons.org/about/cc0 https://www.pexels.com/photo/face-facial-hair-fine-looking-guy-614810/ https://creativecommons.org/about/pdm https://pixabay.com/en/model-businessman-corporate-2911332/ https://creativecommons.org/about/cc0 https://pixabay.com/en/face-men-s-asia-shirts-blacj-young-1391628/ https://creativecommons.org/about/cc0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/richardha101/31951459743/in/photolist-QFrzNX-V9Amf2-UM2ZU5-HMQxnd-WmpZx1-5ztiGT-ovm92d-28C1Eyi-qhwZzM-8szjMV-YRsM5B-LCTNFR-LtgVC9-LCUgd8-8gRLbQ-REArrY-WQNThG-ph52sx-2bC2DwH-qE61yp-28NspiC-21h8cj4-RVoBBc-29GiNJ3-21QEU6M-M1YTcp-PePwTJ-LALKtr-RVoBtg-Ry1bpy-FVr9BB-282GDDG-V7zSQJ-NwmdK9-29bSs5N-29mSb5G-272dN8p-26brtas-28tTQWf-RS1osg-WHoUSc-25uETMH-D7crwK-28m9fEh-25taZPB-JCwqE7-241e8Xp-265Ce4A-22V7VVo-25N7i4q https://www.flickr.com/photos/richardha101/31951459743/in/photolist-QFrzNX-V9Amf2-UM2ZU5-HMQxnd-WmpZx1-5ztiGT-ovm92d-28C1Eyi-qhwZzM-8szjMV-YRsM5B-LCTNFR-LtgVC9-LCUgd8-8gRLbQ-REArrY-WQNThG-ph52sx-2bC2DwH-qE61yp-28NspiC-21h8cj4-RVoBBc-29GiNJ3-21QEU6M-M1YTcp-PePwTJ-LALKtr-RVoBtg-Ry1bpy-FVr9BB-282GDDG-V7zSQJ-NwmdK9-29bSs5N-29mSb5G-272dN8p-26brtas-28tTQWf-RS1osg-WHoUSc-25uETMH-D7crwK-28m9fEh-25taZPB-JCwqE7-241e8Xp-265Ce4A-22V7VVo-25N7i4q https://www.flickr.com/photos/richardha101/31951459743/in/photolist-QFrzNX-V9Amf2-UM2ZU5-HMQxnd-WmpZx1-5ztiGT-ovm92d-28C1Eyi-qhwZzM-8szjMV-YRsM5B-LCTNFR-LtgVC9-LCUgd8-8gRLbQ-REArrY-WQNThG-ph52sx-2bC2DwH-qE61yp-28NspiC-21h8cj4-RVoBBc-29GiNJ3-21QEU6M-M1YTcp-PePwTJ-LALKtr-RVoBtg-Ry1bpy-FVr9BB-282GDDG-V7zSQJ-NwmdK9-29bSs5N-29mSb5G-272dN8p-26brtas-28tTQWf-RS1osg-WHoUSc-25uETMH-D7crwK-28m9fEh-25taZPB-JCwqE7-241e8Xp-265Ce4A-22V7VVo-25N7i4q https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/richpat2/38251159285/in/photostream/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRqyw-EwgTk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_htNx0eWmgs LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE USE What you’ll learn to do: describe language acquisition and the role language plays in communication and thought Language is a communication system that involves using words and systematic rules to organize those words to transmit information from one individual to another. While language is a form of communication, not all communication is language. Many species communicate with one another through their postures, movements, odors, or vocalizations. This communication is crucial for species that need to interact and develop social relationships with their conspecifics. However, many people have asserted that it is language that makes humans unique among all of the animal species (Corballis & Suddendorf, 2007; Tomasello & Rakoczy, 2003). This section will focus on what distinguishes language as a special form of communication, how the use of language develops, and how language affects the way we think. LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Define basic terms used to describe language use • Characterize the typical content of conversation and its social implications Imagine two men of 30-something age, Adam and Ben, walking down the corridor. Judging from their clothing, they are young businessmen, taking a break from work. They then have this exchange. Adam: “You know, Gary bought a ring.” Ben: “Oh yeah? For Mary, isn’t it?” (Adam nods.) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/04/11013055/school-1063556_1920 Figure 1. Language is an essential tool that enables us to live the kind of lives we do. Much of contemporary human civilization wouldn’t have been possible without it. [Photo: Marc Wathieu] If you are watching this scene and hearing their conversation, what can you guess from this? First of all, you’d guess that Gary bought a ring for Mary, whoever Gary and Mary might be. Perhaps you would infer that Gary is getting married to Mary. What else can you guess? Perhaps that Adam and Ben are fairly close colleagues, and both of them know Gary and Mary reasonably well. In other words, you can guess the social relationships surrounding the people who are engaging in the conversation and the people whom they are talking about. Language is used in our everyday lives. If psychology is a science of behavior, scientific investigation of language use must be one of the most central topics—this is because language use is ubiquitous. Every human group has a language; human infants (except those who have unfortunate disabilities) learn at least one language without being taught explicitly. Even when children who don’t have much language to begin with are brought together, they can begin to develop and use their own language. There is at least one known instance where children who had had little language were brought together and developed their own language spontaneously with minimum input from adults. In Nicaragua in the 1980s, deaf children who were separately raised in various locations were brought together to schools for the first time. Teachers tried to teach them Spanish with little success. However, they began to notice that the children were using their hands and gestures, apparently to communicate with each other. Linguists were brought in to find out what was happening—it turned out the children had developed their own sign language by themselves. That was the birth of a new language, Nicaraguan Sign Language (Kegl, Senghas, & Coppola, 1999). Language is ubiquitous, and we humans are born to use it. How Do We Use Language? If language is so ubiquitous, how do we actually use it? To be sure, some of us use it to write diaries and poetry, but the primary form of language use is interpersonal. That’s how we learn language, and that’s how we use it. Just like Adam and Ben, we exchange words and utterances to communicate with each other. Let’s consider the simplest case of two people, Adam and Ben, talking with each other. According to Clark (1996), in order for them to carry out a conversation, they must keep track of common ground. Common groundCommon ground is a set of knowledge that the speaker and listener share and they think, assume, or otherwise take for granted that they share. So, when Adam says, “Gary bought a ring,” he takes for granted that Ben knows the meaning of the words he is using, whom Gary is, and what buying a ring means. When Ben says, “For Mary, isn’t it?” he takes for granted that Adam knows the meaning of these words, who Mary is, and what buying a ring for someone means. All these are part of their common ground. Figure 2. The “common ground” in a conversation helps people coordinate their language use. And as conversations progress common ground shifts and changes as the participants add new information and cooperate to help one another understand. [Photo: boellstiftung] Note that, when Adam presents the information about Gary’s purchase of a ring, Ben responds by presenting his inference about who the recipient of the ring might be, namely, Mary. In conversational terms, Ben’s utterance acts as evidence for his comprehension of Adam’s utterance—“Yes, I understood that Gary bought a ring”—and Adam’s nod acts as evidence that he now has understood what Ben has said too—“Yes, I understood that you understood that Gary has bought a ring for Mary.” This new information is now added to the initial common ground. Thus, the pair of utterances by Adam and Ben (called an adjacency pair) together with Adam’s affirmative nod jointly completes one proposition, “Gary bought a ring for Mary,” and adds this information to their common ground. This way, common ground changes as we talk, gathering new information that we agree on and have evidence that we share. It evolves as people take turns to assume the roles of speaker and listener, and actively engage in the exchange of meaning. Common ground helps people coordinate their language use. For instance, when a speaker says something to a listener, he or she takes into account their common ground, that is, what the speaker thinks the listener knows. Adam said what he did because he knew Ben would know who Gary was. He’d have said, “A friend of mine is getting married,” to another colleague who wouldn’t know Gary. This is called audience designaudience design (Fussell & Krauss, 1992); speakers design their utterances for their audiences by taking into account the audiences’ knowledge. If their audiences are seen to be knowledgeable about an object (such as Ben about Gary), they tend to use a brief label of the object (i.e., Gary); for a less knowledgeable audience, they use more descriptive words (e.g., “a friend of mine”) to help the audience understand their utterances (Box 1). So, language use is a cooperative activity, but how do we coordinate our language use in a conversational setting? To be sure, we have a conversation in small groups. The number of people engaging in a conversation at a time is rarely more than four. By some counts (e.g., Dunbar, Duncan, & Nettle, 1995;James, 1953), more than 90 percent of conversations happen in a group of four individuals or less. Certainly, coordinating conversation An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1255 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1255 TRY ITTRY IT An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=1255 TRY ITTRY IT among four is not as difficult as coordinating conversation among 10. But, even among only four people, if you think about it, everyday conversation is an almost miraculous achievement. We typically have a conversation by rapidly exchanging words and utterances in real time in a noisy environment. Think about your conversation at home in the morning, at a bus stop, in a shopping mall. How can we keep track of our common ground under such circumstances? Pickering and Garrod (2004) argue that we achieve our conversational coordination by virtue of our ability to interactively align each other’s actions at different levels of language use: lexiconlexicon (i.e., words and expressions), syntaxsyntax (i.e., grammatical rules for arranging words and expressions together), as well as speech rate and accent. For instance, when one person uses a certain expression to refer to an object in a conversation, others tend to use the same expression (e.g.,Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986). Furthermore, if someone says “the cowboy offered a banana to the robber,” rather than “the cowboy offered the robber a banana,” others are more likely to use the same syntactic structure (e.g., “the girl gave a book to the boy” rather than “the girl gave the boy a book”) even if different words are involved (Branigan, Pickering, & Cleland, 2000). Finally, people in conversation tend to exhibit similar accents and rates of speech, and they are often associated with people’s social identity (Giles, Coupland, & Coupland, 1991). So, if you have lived in different places where people have somewhat different accents (e.g., United States and United Kingdom), you might have noticed that you speak with Americans with an American accent, but speak with Britons with a British accent. Pickering and Garrod (2004) suggest that these interpersonal alignments at different levels of language use can activate similar situation models in the minds of those who are engaged in a conversation. Situation modelsSituation models are representations about the topic of a conversation. So, if you are talking about Gary and Mary with your friends, you might have a situation model of Gary giving Mary a ring in your mind. Pickering and Garrod’s theory is that as you describe this situation using language, others in the conversation begin to use similar words and grammar, and many other aspects of language use converge. As you all do so, similar situation models begin to be built in everyone’s mind through the mechanism known as priming. PrimingPriming occurs when your thinking about one concept (e.g., “ring”) reminds you about other related concepts (e.g., “marriage”, “wedding ceremony”). So, if everyone in the conversation knows about Gary, Mary, and the usual course of events associated with a ring—engagement, wedding, marriage, etc.— everyone is likely to construct a shared situation model about Gary and Mary. Thus, making use of our highly developed interpersonal ability to imitate (i.e., executing the same action as another person) and cognitive ability to infer (i.e., one idea leading to other ideas), we humans coordinate our common ground, share situation models, and communicate with each other. Figure 3. Studies show that people love to gossip. By gossiping, humans can communicate and share their representations about their social world—who their friends and enemies are, what the right thing to do is under what circumstances, and so on. [Photo: Bindaas Madhav] What Do We Talk About? What are humans doing when we are talking? Surely, we can communicate about mundane things such as what to have for dinner, but also more complex and abstract things such as the meaning of life and death, liberty, equality, and fraternity, and many other philosophical thoughts. Well, when naturally occurring conversations were actually observed (Dunbar, Marriott, & Duncan, 1997), a staggering 60%–70% of everyday conversation, for both men and women, turned out to be gossip—people talk about themselves and others whom they know. Just like Adam and Ben, more often than not, people use language to communicate about their social world. Gossip may sound trivial and seem to belittle our noble ability for language—surely one of the most remarkable human abilities of all that distinguish us from other animals. Au contraire, some have argued that gossip—activities to think and communicate about our social world—is one of the most critical uses to which language has been put. Dunbar (1996) conjectured that gossiping is the human equivalent of grooming, monkeys and primates attending and tending to each other by cleaning each other’s fur. He argues that it is an act of socializing, signaling the importance of one’s partner. Furthermore, by gossiping, humans can communicate and share their representations about their social world—who their friends and enemies are, what the right thing to do is under what circumstances, and so on. In so doing, they can regulate their social world—making more friends and enlarging one’s own group (often called the ingroupingroup, the group to which one belongs) against other groups (outgroupsoutgroups) that are more likely to be one’s enemies. Dunbar has argued that it is these social effects that have given humans an evolutionary advantage and larger brains, which, in turn, help humans to think more complex and abstract thoughts and, more important, maintain larger ingroups. Dunbar (1993) estimated an equation that predicts average group size of nonhuman primate genera from their average neocortex size (the part of the brain that supports higher order cognition). In line with his social brain hypothesissocial brain hypothesis, Dunbar showed that those primate genera that have larger brains tend to live in larger groups. Furthermore, using the same equation, he was able to estimate the group size that human brains can support, which turned out to be about 150—approximately the size of modern hunter-gatherer communities. Dunbar’s argument is that language, brain, and human group living have co-evolved—language and human sociality are inseparable. Dunbar’s hypothesis is controversial. Nonetheless, whether or not he is right, our everyday language use often ends up maintaining the existing structure of intergroup relationships. Language use can have implications for how we construe our social world. For one thing, there are subtle cues that people use to convey the extent to which someone’s action is just a special case in a particular context or a pattern that occurs across many contexts and more like a character trait of the person. According to Semin and Fiedler (1988), someone’s action can be described by an action verb that describes a concrete action (e.g., he runs), a state verb that describes the actor’s psychological state (e.g., he likes running), an adjective that describes the actor’s personality (e.g., he is athletic), or a noun that describes the actor’s role (e.g., he is an athlete). Depending on whether a verb or an adjective (or noun) is used, speakers can convey the permanency and stability of an actor’s tendency to act in a certain way—verbs convey particularity, whereas adjectives convey permanency. Intriguingly, people tend to describe positive actions of their ingroup members using adjectives (e.g., he is generous) rather than verbs (e.g., he gave a blind man some change), and negative actions of outgroup members using adjectives (e.g., he is cruel) rather than verbs (e.g., he kicked a dog). Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, and Semin (1989) called this a linguistic intergroup biaslinguistic intergroup bias, which can produce and reproduce the representation of intergroup relationships by painting a picture favoring the ingroup. That is, ingroup members are typically good, and if they do anything bad, that’s more an exception in special circumstances; in contrast, outgroup members are typically bad, and if they do anything good, that’s more an exception. Figure 4. Emotion and Talk. GLOSSARYGLOSSARY audience designaudience design: constructing utterances to suit the audience’s knowledge common groundcommon ground: information that is shared by people who engage in a conversation ingroupingroup: group to which a person belongs lexiconlexicon: words and expressions linguistic intergroup biaslinguistic intergroup bias: a tendency for people to characterize positive things about their ingroup using more abstract expressions, but negative things about their outgroups using more abstract expressions. outgroupoutgroup: group to which a person does not belong primingpriming: a stimulus presented to a person reminds him or her about other ideas associated with the stimulus situation modesituation model: a mental representation of an event, object, or situation constructed at the time of comprehending a linguistic description social brain hypothesissocial brain hypothesis: the hypothesis that the human brain has evolved, so that humans can maintain larger ingroups social networkssocial networks: networks of social relationships among individuals through which information can travel syntaxsyntax: rules by which words are strung together to form sentences In addition, when people exchange their gossip, it can spread through broader social networks. If gossip is transmitted from one person to another, the second person can transmit it to a third person, who then in turn transmits it to a fourth, and so on through a chain of communication. This often happens for emotive stories (Box 2). If gossip is repeatedly transmitted and spread, it can reach a large number of people. When stories travel through communication chains, they tend to become conventionalized (Bartlett, 1932). A Native American tale of the “War of the Ghosts” recounts a warrior’s encounter with ghosts traveling in canoes and his involvement with their ghostly battle. He is shot by an arrow but doesn’t die, returning home to tell the tale. After his narration, however, he becomes still, a black thing comes out of his mouth, and he eventually dies. When it was told to a student in England in the 1920s and retold from memory to another person, who, in turn, retold it to another and so on in a communication chain, the mythic tale became a story of a young warrior going to a battlefield, in which canoes became boats, and the black thing that came out of his mouth became simply his spirit (Bartlett, 1932). In other words, information transmitted multiple times was transformed to something that was easily understood by many, that is, information was assimilated into the common ground shared by most people in the linguistic community. More recently, Kashima (2000) conducted a similar experiment using a story that contained sequence of events that described a young couple’s interaction that included both stereotypical and counter-stereotypical actions (e.g., a man watching sports on TV on Sunday vs. a man vacuuming the house). After the retelling of this story, much of the counter-stereotypical information was dropped, and stereotypical information was more likely to be retained. Because stereotypes are part of the common ground shared by the community, this finding too suggests that conversational retellings are likely to reproduce conventional content. Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification and adaptation. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike • Language. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: https://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.75:8F6SrXfG@5/Language. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/ 4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Language and Language Use. Authored byAuthored by: Yoshihisa Kashima. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/language-and-language-use. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike • Language picture. Authored byAuthored by: geralt. Provided byProvided by: Pixabay. Located atLocated at: https://pixabay.com/en/school-board-languages-blackboard-1063556/. LicenseLicense: CC0: No Rights Reserved https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.75:8F6SrXfG@5/Language https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/language-and-language-use https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://pixabay.com/en/school-board-languages-blackboard-1063556/ https://creativecommons.org/about/cc0 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=205 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=205 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=205 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=205 TRY ITTRY IT LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Understand how the use of language develops • Explain the relationship between language and thinking Language is a communication system that involves using words and systematic rules to organize those words to transmit information from one individual to another. While language is a form of communication, not all communication is language. Many species communicate with one another through their postures, movements, odors, or vocalizations. This communication is crucial for species that need to interact and develop social relationships with their conspecifics. However, many people have asserted that it is language that makes humans unique among all of the animal species (Corballis & Suddendorf, 2007; Tomasello & Rakoczy, 2003). This section will focus on what distinguishes language as a special form of communication, how the use of language develops, and how language affects the way we think. Components of Language LanguageLanguage, be it spoken, signed, or written, has specific components: a lexicon and grammar. LexiconLexicon refers to the words of a given language. Thus, lexicon is a language’s vocabulary. GrammarGrammar refers to the set of rules that are used to convey meaning through the use of the lexicon (Fernández & Cairns, 2011). For instance, English grammar dictates that most verbs receive an “-ed” at the end to indicate past tense. Words are formed by combining the various phonemes that make up the language. A phonemephoneme (e.g., the sounds “ah” vs. “eh”) is a basic sound unit of a given language, and different languages have different sets of phonemes. Phonemes are combined to form morphemesmorphemes, which are the smallest units of language that convey some type of meaning (e.g., “I” is both a phoneme and a morpheme). An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=205 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=205 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=205 TRY ITTRY IT We use semantics and syntax to construct language. Semantics and syntax are part of a language’s grammar. SemanticsSemantics refers to the process by which we derive meaning from morphemes and words. SyntaxSyntax refers to the way words are organized into sentences (Chomsky, 1965; Fernández & Cairns, 2011). We apply the rules of grammar to organize the lexicon in novel and creative ways, which allow us to communicate information about both concrete and abstract concepts. We can talk about our immediate and observable surroundings as well as the surface of unseen planets. We can share our innermost thoughts, our plans for the future, and debate the value of a college education. We can provide detailed instructions for cooking a meal, fixing a car, or building a fire. The flexibility that language provides to relay vastly different types of information is a property that makes language so distinct as a mode of communication among humans. Language Development Given the remarkable complexity of a language, one might expect that mastering a language would be an especially arduous task; indeed, for those of us trying to learn a second language as adults, this might seem to be true. However, young children master language very quickly with relative ease. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement. Noam Chomsky (1965) criticized this behaviorist approach, asserting instead that the mechanisms underlying language acquisition are biologically determined. The use of language develops in the absence of formal instruction and appears to follow a very similar pattern in children from vastly different cultures and backgrounds. It would seem, therefore, that we are born with a biological predisposition to acquire a language (Chomsky, 1965; Fernández & Cairns, 2011). Moreover, it appears that there is a critical period for language acquisition, such that this proficiency at acquiring language is maximal early in life; generally, as people age, the ease with which they acquire and master new languages diminishes (Johnson & Newport, 1989; Lenneberg, 1967; Singleton, 1995). Children begin to learn about language from a very early age (Table 1). In fact, it appears that this is occurring even before we are born. Newborns show preference for their mother’s voice and appear to be able to discriminate between the language spoken by their mother and other languages. Babies are also attuned to the languages being used around them and show preferences for videos of faces that are moving in synchrony with the audio of spoken language versus videos that do not synchronize with the audio (Blossom & Morgan, 2006; Pickens, 1994; Spelke & Cortelyou, 1981). DIG DEEPER: THE CASE OF GENIEDIG DEEPER: THE CASE OF GENIE In the fall of 1970, a social worker in the Los Angeles area found a 13-year-old girl who was being raised in extremely neglectful and abusive conditions. The girl, who came to be known as Genie, had lived most of her life tied to a potty chair or confined to a crib in a small room that was kept closed with the curtains drawn. For a little over a decade, Genie had virtually no social interaction and no access to the outside world. As a result of these conditions, Genie was unable to stand up, chew solid food, or speak (Fromkin, Krashen, Curtiss, Rigler, & Rigler, 1974; Rymer, 1993). The police took Genie into protective custody. Genie’s abilities improved dramatically following her removal from her abusive environment, and early on, it appeared she was acquiring language—much later than would be predicted by critical period hypotheses that had been posited at the time (Fromkin et al., 1974). Genie managed to amass an impressive vocabulary in a relatively short amount of time. However, she never developed a mastery of the grammatical aspects of language (Curtiss, 1981). Perhaps being deprived of the opportunity to learn language during a critical period impeded Genie’s ability to fully acquire and use language. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Visit this website to learn more about how babies lose the ability to discriminate among all possible human phonemes as they age. Table 1. Stages of Language and Communication Development StageStage AgeAge Developmental Language and CommunicationDevelopmental Language and Communication 1 0–3 months Reflexive communication 2 3–8 months Reflexive communication; interest in others 3 8–13 months Intentional communication; sociability 4 12–18 months First words 5 18–24 months Simple sentences of two words 6 2–3 years Sentences of three or more words 7 3–5 years Complex sentences; has conversations You may recall that each language has its own set of phonemes that are used to generate morphemes, words, and so on. Babies can discriminate among the sounds that make up a language (for example, they can tell the difference between the “s” in vision and the “ss” in fission); early on, they can differentiate between the sounds of all human languages, even those that do not occur in the languages that are used in their environments. However, by the time that they are about 1 year old, they can only discriminate among those phonemes that are used in the language or languages in their environments (Jensen, 2011; Werker & Lalonde, 1988; Werker & Tees, 1984). After the first few months of life, babies enter what is known as the babbling stage, during which time they tend to produce single syllables that are repeated over and over. As time passes, more variations appear in the syllables that they produce. During this time, it is unlikely that the babies are trying to communicate; they are just as likely to babble when they are alone as when they are with their caregivers (Fernández & Cairns, 2011). Interestingly, babies who are raised in environments in which sign language is used will also begin to show babbling in the gestures of their hands during this stage (Petitto, Holowka, Sergio, Levy, & Ostry, 2004). Generally, a child’s first word is uttered sometime between the ages of 1 year to 18 months, and for the next few months, the child will remain in the “one word” stage of language development. During this time, children know a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXWGnryjEaY An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=205 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=205 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=205 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=205 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=205 TRY ITTRY IT number of words, but they only produce one-word utterances. The child’s early vocabulary is limited to familiar objects or events, often nouns. Although children in this stage only make one-word utterances, these words often carry larger meaning (Fernández & Cairns, 2011). So, for example, a child saying “cookie” could be identifying a cookie or asking for a cookie. As a child’s lexicon grows, she begins to utter simple sentences and to acquire new vocabulary at a very rapid pace. In addition, children begin to demonstrate a clear understanding of the specific rules that apply to their language(s). Even the mistakes that children sometimes make provide evidence of just how much they understand about those rules. This is sometimes seen in the form of overgeneralization. In this context, overgeneralization refers to an extension of a language rule to an exception to the rule. For example, in English, it is usually the case that an “s” is added to the end of a word to indicate plurality. For example, we speak of one dog versus two dogs. Young children will overgeneralize this rule to cases that are exceptions to the “add an s to the end of the word” rule and say things like “those two gooses” or “three mouses.” Clearly, the rules of the language are understood, even if the exceptions to the rules are still being learned (Moskowitz, 1978). Language and Thinking When we speak one language, we agree that words are representations of ideas, people, places, and events. The given language that children learn is connected to their culture and surroundings. But can words themselves shape the way we think about things? Psychologists have long investigated the question of whether language shapes thoughts and actions, or whether our thoughts and beliefs shape our language. Two researchers, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, began this investigation in the 1940s. They wanted to understand how the language habits of a community encourage members of that community to interpret language in a particular manner (Sapir, 1941/1964). Sapir and Whorf proposed that language determines thought, suggesting, for example, that a person whose community language did not have past-tense verbs would be challenged to think about the past (Whorf, 1956). Researchers have since identified this view as too absolute, pointing out a lack of empiricism behind what Sapir and Whorf proposed (Abler, 2013; Boroditsky, 2011; van Troyer, 1994). Today, psychologists continue to study and debate the relationship between language and thought. Figure 1. These two works of art depict saudade. (a) Saudade de Nápoles, which is translated into “missing Naples,” was painted by Bertha Worms in 1895. (b) Almeida Júnior painted Saudade in 1899. WHAT DO YOU THINK?: THE MEANING OF LANGUAGEWHAT DO YOU THINK?: THE MEANING OF LANGUAGE Think about what you know of other languages; perhaps you even speak multiple languages. Imagine for a moment that your closest friend fluently speaks more than one language. Do you think that friend thinks differently, depending on which language is being spoken? You may know a few words that are not translatable from their original language into English. For example, the Portuguese word saudade originated during the 15th century, when Portuguese sailors left home to explore the seas and travel to Africa or Asia. Those left behind described the emptiness and fondness they felt as saudade (Figure 1). The word came to express many meanings, including loss, nostalgia, yearning, warm memories, and hope. There is no single word in English that includes all of those emotions in a single description. Do words such as saudade indicate that different languages produce different patterns of thought in people? What do you think?? Language may indeed influence the way that we think, an idea known as linguistic determinism. One recent demonstration of this phenomenon involved differences in the way that English and Mandarin Chinese speakers talk and think about time. English speakers tend to talk about time using terms that describe changes along a horizontal dimension, for example, saying something like “I’m running behind schedule” or “Don’t get ahead of yourself.” While Mandarin Chinese speakers also describe time in horizontal terms, it is not uncommon to also use terms associated with a vertical arrangement. For example, the past might be described as being “up” and the future as being “down.” It turns out that these differences in language translate into differences in performance on cognitive tests designed to measure how quickly an individual can recognize temporal relationships. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=205 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Learn more about language, language acquisition, and especially the connection between language and thought in the following CrashCourse video: An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=205 TRY ITTRY IT GLOSSARYGLOSSARY grammar:grammar: set of rules that are used to convey meaning through the use of a lexicon language:language: communication system that involves using words to transmit information from one individual to another Specifically, when given a series of tasks with vertical priming, Mandarin Chinese speakers were faster at recognizing temporal relationships between months. Indeed, Boroditsky (2001) sees these results as suggesting that “habits in language encourage habits in thought” (p. 12). Language does not completely determine our thoughts—our thoughts are far too flexible for that—but habitual uses of language can influence our habit of thought and action. For instance, some linguistic practice seems to be associated even with cultural values and social institution. Pronoun drop is the case in point. Pronouns such as “I” and “you” are used to represent the speaker and listener of a speech in English. In an English sentence, these pronouns cannot be dropped if they are used as the subject of a sentence. So, for instance, “I went to the movie last night” is fine, but “Went to the movie last night” is not in standard English. However, in other languages such as Japanese, pronouns can be, and in fact often are, dropped from sentences. It turned out that people living in those countries where pronoun drop languages are spoken tend to have more collectivistic values (e.g., employees having greater loyalty toward their employers) than those who use non–pronoun drop languages such as English (Kashima & Kashima, 1998). It was argued that the explicit reference to “you” and “I” may remind speakers the distinction between the self and other, and the differentiation between individuals. Such a linguistic practice may act as a constant reminder of the cultural value, which, in turn, may encourage people to perform the linguistic practice. One group of researchers who wanted to investigate how language influences thought compared how English speakers and the Dani people of Papua New Guinea think and speak about color. The Dani have two words for color: one word for light and one word for dark. In contrast, the English language has 11 color words. Researchers hypothesized that the number of color terms could limit the ways that the Dani people conceptualized color. However, the Dani were able to distinguish colors with the same ability as English speakers, despite having fewer words at their disposal (Berlin & Kay, 1969). A recent review of research aimed at determining how language might affect something like color perception suggests that language can influence perceptual phenomena, especially in the left hemisphere of the brain. You may recall from earlier chapters that the left hemisphere is associated with language for most people. However, the right (less linguistic hemisphere) of the brain is less affected by linguistic influences on perception (Regier & Kay, 2009) lexicon:lexicon: the words of a given language morpheme:morpheme: smallest unit of language that conveys some type of meaning overgeneralization:overgeneralization: extension of a rule that exists in a given language to an exception to the rule phoneme:phoneme: basic sound unit of a given language Sapir-Whorf hypothesisSapir-Whorf hypothesis: the hypothesis that the language that people use determines their thoughts semantics:semantics: process by which we derive meaning from morphemes and words syntax:syntax: manner by which words are organized into sentences An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=205 Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification and adaptation. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike • Language: Crash Course Psychology #16. Authored byAuthored by: CrashCourse. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9shPouRWCs&feature=youtu.be&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Language. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:8F6SrXfG@5/Language. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/ latest/. • Paragraph on pronoun drop. Authored byAuthored by: Yoshihisa Kashima . Provided byProvided by: University of Melbourne. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/ modules/language-and-language-use. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike INTELLIGENCE AND CREATIVITY What you’ll learn to do: describe intelligence theories and intelligence testing Intelligence is a complex characteristic of cognition. Many theories have been developed to explain what intelligence is and how it works. There’s Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence that focuses on analytical, creative, and practical intelligence, but there is also Gardner’s theory which holds that intelligence is comprised of many factors. Still other theories focus on the importance of emotional intelligence. Which of the theories is most https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9shPouRWCs&feature=youtu.be&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6 http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:8F6SrXfG@5/Language https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/language-and-language-use http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/wendy-king-introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/language-and-language-use https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/02/22144215/magic-cube-cube-puzzle-play-54101 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=212 correct? And how can intelligence even be measured? This CrashCourse video gives a good overview of these topics: LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explain the triarchic theory of intelligence • Explain the multiple intelligences theory • Define creativity, divergent, and convergent thinking A four-and-a-half-year-old boy sits at the kitchen table with his father, who is reading a new story aloud to him. He turns the page to continue reading, but before he can begin, the boy says, “Wait, Daddy!” He points to the words on the new page and reads aloud, “Go, Pig! Go!” The father stops and looks at his son. “Can you read that?” he asks. “Yes, Daddy!” And he points to the words and reads again, “Go, Pig! Go!” This father was not actively teaching his son to read, even though the child constantly asked questions about letters, words, and symbols that they saw everywhere: in the car, in the store, on the television. The dad wondered about what else his son might understand and decided to try an experiment. Grabbing a sheet of blank paper, he wrote several simple words in a list: mom, dad, dog, bird, bed, truck, car, tree. He put the list down in front of the boy and asked him to read the words. “Mom, dad, dog, bird, bed, truck, car, tree,” he read, slowing down to carefully pronounce bird and truck. Then, “Did I do it, Daddy?” “You sure did! That is very good.” The father gave his little boy a warm hug and continued reading the story about the pig, all the while wondering if his son’s abilities were an indication of exceptional intelligence or simply a normal pattern of linguistic development. Like the father in this example, psychologists have wondered what constitutes intelligence and how it can be measured. Classifying Intelligence What exactly is intelligence? The way that researchers have defined the concept of intelligence has been modified many times since the birth of psychology. British psychologist Charles Spearman believed intelligence consisted of one general factor, called g, which could be measured and compared among individuals. Spearman focused on the commonalities among various intellectual abilities and de-emphasized what made each unique. Long before modern psychology developed, however, ancient philosophers, such as Aristotle, held a similar view (Cianciolo & Sternberg, 2004). Others psychologists believe that instead of a single factor, intelligence is a collection of distinct abilities. In the 1940s, Raymond Cattell proposed a theory of intelligence that divided general intelligence into two components: crystallized intelligence and fluid intelligence (Cattell, 1963). Crystallized intelligenceCrystallized intelligence is characterized as acquired knowledge and the ability to retrieve it. When you learn, remember, and recall information, you are using crystallized intelligence. You use crystallized intelligence all the time in your coursework by demonstrating that you have mastered the information covered in the course. Fluid intelligenceFluid intelligence encompasses the ability to see complex relationships and solve problems. Navigating your way home after being detoured onto an unfamiliar route because of road construction would draw upon your fluid intelligence. Fluid intelligence helps you tackle complex, abstract challenges in your daily life, whereas crystallized intelligence helps you overcome concrete, straightforward problems (Cattell, 1963). Other theorists and psychologists believe that intelligence should be defined in more practical terms. For example, what types of behaviors help you get ahead in life? Which skills promote success? Think about this for a moment. Being able to recite all 44 presidents of the United States in order is an excellent party trick, but will knowing this make you a better person? Figure 1. Sternberg’s theory identifies three types of intelligence: practical, creative, and analytical. TEST IT OUTTEST IT OUT Test your analytical intelligence with the prisoner hat riddle: Robert Sternberg developed another theory of intelligence, which he titled the triarchic theory of intelligencetriarchic theory of intelligence because it sees intelligence as comprised of three parts (Sternberg, 1988): practical, creative, and analytical intelligence (Figure 1). Practical intelligencePractical intelligence, as proposed by Sternberg, is sometimes compared to “street smarts.” Being practical means you find solutions that work in your everyday life by applying knowledge based on your experiences. This type of intelligence appears to be separate from traditional understanding of IQ; individuals who score high in practical intelligence may or may not have comparable scores in creative and analytical intelligence (Sternberg, 1988). This story about the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings illustrates both high and low practical intelligences. During the incident, one student left her class to go get a soda in an adjacent building. She planned to return to class, but when she returned to her building after getting her soda, she saw that the door she used to leave was now chained shut from the inside. Instead of thinking about why there was a chain around the door handles, she went to her class’s window and crawled back into the room. She thus potentially exposed herself to the gunman. Thankfully, she was not shot. On the other hand, a pair of students was walking on campus when they heard gunshots nearby. One friend said, “Let’s go check it out and see what is going on.” The other student said, “No way, we need to run away from the gunshots.” They did just that. As a result, both avoided harm. The student who crawled through the window demonstrated some creative intelligence but did not use common sense. She would have low practical intelligence. The student who encouraged his friend to run away from the sound of gunshots would have much higher practical intelligence. Analytical intelligenceAnalytical intelligence is closely aligned with academic problem solving and computations. Sternberg says that analytical intelligence is demonstrated by an ability to analyze, evaluate, judge, compare, and contrast. When reading a classic novel for literature class, for example, it is usually necessary to compare the motives of the main characters of the book or analyze the historical context of the story. In a science course such as anatomy, you must study the processes by which the body uses various minerals in different human systems. In developing an understanding of this topic, you are using analytical intelligence. When solving a challenging math problem, you would apply analytical intelligence to analyze different aspects of the problem and then solve it section by section. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=212 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=212 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=212 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=212 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=212 TRY ITTRY IT Creative intelligenceCreative intelligence is marked by inventing or imagining a solution to a problem or situation. Creativity in this realm can include finding a novel solution to an unexpected problem or producing a beautiful work of art or a well- developed short story. Imagine for a moment that you are camping in the woods with some friends and realize that you’ve forgotten your camp coffee pot. The person in your group who figures out a way to successfully brew coffee for everyone would be credited as having higher creative intelligence. Multiple Intelligences TheoryMultiple Intelligences Theory was developed by Howard Gardner, a Harvard psychologist and former student of Erik Erikson. Gardner’s theory, which has been refined for more than 30 years, is a more recent development among theories of intelligence. In Gardner’s theory, each person possesses at least eight intelligences. Among these eight intelligences, a person typically excels in some and falters in others (Gardner, 1983). The following table describes each type of intelligence. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=212 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING If you’re interesting in learning more, watch the BBC Documentary Battle of the Brains to see examples of how multiple intelligences are tested. In the video a musical prodigy, chess grandmaster, quantum physicist, fighter pilot, artist, dramatist, and IQ champion are all taken through a series of tests to determine who would be considered the most intelligent. Horizon- Battle of the Brains from Tatiana on Vimeo. Multiple Intelligences IntelligenceIntelligence TypeType CharacteristicsCharacteristics Representative CareerRepresentative Career Linguistic intelligence Perceives different functions of language, different sounds and meanings of words, may easily learn multiple languages Journalist, novelist, poet, teacher Logical- mathematical intelligence Capable of seeing numerical patterns, strong ability to use reason and logic Scientist, mathematician Musical intelligence Understands and appreciates rhythm, pitch, and tone; may play multiple instruments or perform as a vocalist Composer, performer Bodily kinesthetic intelligence High ability to control the movements of the body and use the body to perform various physical tasks Dancer, athlete, athletic coach, yoga instructor Spatial intelligence Ability to perceive the relationship between objects and how they move in space Choreographer, sculptor, architect, aviator, sailor Interpersonal intelligence Ability to understand and be sensitive to the various emotional states of others Counselor, social worker, salesperson Intrapersonal intelligence Ability to access personal feelings and motivations, and use them to direct behavior and reach personal goals Key component of personal success over time Naturalist intelligence High capacity to appreciate the natural world and interact with the species within it Biologist, ecologist, environmentalist Gardner’s theory is relatively new and needs additional research to better establish empirical support. At the same time, his ideas challenge the traditional idea of intelligence to include a wider variety of abilities, although it has been suggested that Gardner simply relabeled what other theorists called “cognitive styles” as “intelligences” (Morgan, 1996). Furthermore, developing traditional measures of Gardner’s intelligences is extremely difficult (Furnham, 2009; Gardner & Moran, 2006; Klein, 1997). Gardner’s inter- and intrapersonal intelligences are often combined into a single type: emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligenceEmotional intelligence encompasses 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 (Parker, Saklofske, & Stough, 2009). People with high emotional intelligence typically have well-developed social skills. Some researchers, including Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ, argue that emotional intelligence is a better predictor of success than traditional intelligence (Goleman, 1995). However, emotional intelligence has been widely debated, with researchers pointing out http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/intelligence/ https://vimeo.com/107250116 https://vimeo.com/user31467172 https://vimeo.com An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=212 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=212 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=212 TRY ITTRY IT inconsistencies in how it is defined and described, as well as questioning results of studies on a subject that is difficulty to measure and study emperically (Locke, 2005; Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2004) Intelligence can also have different meanings and values in different cultures. If you live on a small island, where most people get their food by fishing from boats, it would be important to know how to fish and how to repair a boat. If you were an exceptional angler, your peers would probably consider you intelligent. If you were also skilled at repairing boats, your intelligence might be known across the whole island. Think about your own family’s culture. What values are important for Latino families? Italian families? In Irish families, hospitality and telling an entertaining story are marks of the culture. If you are a skilled storyteller, other members of Irish culture are likely to consider you intelligent. Some cultures place a high value on working together as a collective. In these cultures, the importance of the group supersedes the importance of individual achievement. When you visit such a culture, how well you relate to the values of that culture exemplifies your cultural intelligence, sometimes referred to as cultural competence. THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER What influence do you think emotional intelligence plays in your personal life? Creativity What do the following have in common: the drug penicillin, the Eiffel Tower, the film Lord of the Rings, the General Theory of Relativity, the hymn Amazing Grace, the iPhone, the novel Don Quixote, the painting The Mona Lisa, a recipe for chocolate fudge, the soft drink Coca-Cola, the video game Wii Sports, the West Coast offense in football, and the zipper? You guessed right! All of the named items were products of the creative mind. Not one of them existed until somebody came up with the idea. Creativity is not something that you just pick like apples from a tree. Because creative ideas are so special, creators who come up with the best ideas are often highly rewarded with fame, fortune, or both. Nobel Prizes, Oscars, Pulitzers, and other honors bring fame, and big sales and box office bring fortune. Yet what is creativity in the first place? Figure 2. People often have difficulty describing where their creative ideas came from. When you think of something creative, how do you typically come up with it? Figure 3. Even with the three criteria for creativity (originality, usefulness, and surprise), determining whether art is “creative” can prove difficult. Especially with all the examples of artists whose work wasn’t deemed creative until after their deaths. [Image: Linus Bohman] Creativity: What Is It? Creativity happens when someone comes up with a creative idea. An example would be a creative solution to a difficult problem. But what makes an idea or solution creative? Creativity is the ability to generate, create, or discover new ideas, solutions, and possibilities. Very creative people often have intense knowledge about something, work on it for years, look at novel solutions, seek out the advice and help of other experts, and take risks. Although creativity is often associated with the arts, it is actually a vital form of intelligence that drives people in many disciplines to discover something new. Creativity can be found in every area of life, from the way you decorate your residence to a new way of understanding how a cell works. Although psychologists have offered several definitions of creativity (Plucker, Beghetto, & Dow, 2004; Runco & Jaeger, 2012), probably the best definition is the one recently adapted from the three criteria that the U.S. Patent Office uses to decide whether an invention can receive patent protection (Simonton, 2012). The first criterion is originality. The idea must have a low probability. Indeed, it often should be unique. Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity certainly satisfied this criterion. No other scientist came up with the idea. The second criterion is usefulness. The idea should be valuable or work. For example, a solution must, in fact, solve the problem. An original recipe that produces a dish that tastes too terrible to eat cannot be creative. In the case of Einstein’s theory, his relativity principle provided explanations for what otherwise would be inexplicable empirical results. The third and last criterion is surprise. The idea should be surprising, or at least nonobvious (to use the term used by the Patent Office). For instance, a solution that is a straightforward derivation from acquired expertise cannot be considered surprising even if it were original. Einstein’s relativity theory was not a step-by-step deduction from classical physics but rather the theory was built upon a new foundation that challenged the very basis of traditional physics.When applying these three criteria, it is critical to recognize that originality, usefulness, and surprise are all quantitative rather than qualitative attributes of an idea. Specifically, we really have to speak of degree to which an idea satisfies each of the three criteria. In addition, the three attributes should have a zero point, that is, it should be possible to speak of an idea lacking any originality, usefulness, or surprise whatsoever. Finally, we have to assume that if an idea scores zero on any one criterion then it must have zero creativity as well. For example, someone who reinvents the wheel is definitely producing a useful idea, but the idea has zero originality and hence no creativity whatsoever. Similarly, someone who invented a parachute made entirely out of steel reinforced concrete would get lots of credit for originality—and surprise!—but none for usefulness. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/29032313/rocks https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/29032313/rocks https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/29032538/artcreative https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/29032538/artcreative LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Test your own creativity using this link to take one of five common creativity tests. Cognitive Processes: How Do Creators Think? Figure 4. If you were tasked with thinking up as many uses for a brick as you could, how well would you do? Would you have thought to chisel the brick into a sculpture? What about using it as sidewalk chalk? [Image: Simon Hooks] Cognitive scientists have long been interested in the thinking processes that lead to creative ideas (Simonton & Damian, 2013). Indeed, many so-called “creativity tests” are actually measures of the thought processes believed to underlie the creative act (Simonton, 2003b). The following two measures are among the best known. The first is the Remote Associates Test, or RAT, that was introduced by Mednick (1962). Mednick believed that the creative process requires the ability to associate ideas that are considered very far apart conceptually. The RAT consists of items that require the respondent to identify a word that can be associated to three rather distinct stimulus words. For example, what word can be associated with the words “widow, bite, monkey”? The answer is spider (black widow spider, spider bite, spider monkey). This particular question is relatively easy, others are much more difficult, but it gives you the basic idea. The second measure is the Unusual Uses Task (Guilford, 1967; Torrance, 1974). Here, the participant is asked to generate alternative uses for a common object, such as a brick. The responses can be scored on four dimensions: (a) fluency, the total number of appropriate uses generated; (b) originality, the statistical rarity of the https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/29032642/sculpt https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/10/29032642/sculpt https://99u.com/articles/7160/test-your-creativity-5-classic-creative-challenges EVERYDAY CONNECTION: CREATIVITYEVERYDAY CONNECTION: CREATIVITY Dr. Tom Steitz, the Sterling Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at Yale University, has spent his career looking at the structure and specific aspects of RNA molecules and how their interactions cold help produce antibiotics and ward off diseases. As a result of his lifetime of work, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009. He wrote, “Looking back over the development and progress of my career in science, I am reminded how vitally important good mentorship is in the early stages of one’s career development and constant face-to-face conversations, debate and discussions with colleagues at all stages of research. Outstanding discoveries, insights and developments do not happen in a vacuum” (Steitz, 2010, para. 39). Based on Steitz’s comment, it becomes clear that someone’s creativity, although an individual strength, benefits from interactions with others. Think of a time when your creativity was sparked by a conversation with a friend or classmate. How did that person influence you and what problem did you solve using creativity? An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=212 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=212 TRY ITTRY IT GLOSSARYGLOSSARY analytical intelligence:analytical intelligence: aligned with academic problem solving and computations convergent thinkingconvergent thinking: the opposite of divergent thinking, the capacity to narrow in on the single “correct” answer or solution to a given question or problem (e.g., giving the right response on an intelligence tests) creativity:creativity: ability to generate, create, or discover new ideas, solutions, and possibilities creative intelligence:creative intelligence: ability to produce new products, ideas, or inventing a new, novel solution to a problem crystallized intelligence:crystallized intelligence: characterized by acquired knowledge and the ability to retrieve it cultural intelligence:cultural intelligence: ability with which people can understand and relate to those in another culture divergent thinkingdivergent thinking: the opposite of convergent thinking, the capacity for exploring multiple potential answers or solutions to a given question or problem (e.g., coming up with many different uses for a common object) uses given; (c) flexibility, the number of distinct conceptual categories implied by the various uses; and (d) elaboration, the amount of detail given for the generated uses. For example, using a brick as a paperweight represents a different conceptual category that using its volume to conserve water in a toilet tank. The capacity to produce unusual uses is but one example of the general cognitive ability to engage in divergent thinkingdivergent thinking (Guilford, 1967). Unlike convergent thinkingconvergent thinking, which converges on the single best answer or solution, divergent thinking comes up with multiple possibilities that might vary greatly in usefulness. Unfortunately, many different cognitive processes have been linked to creativity (Simonton & Damian, 2013). That is why we cannot use the singular; there is no such thing as the “creative process.” Nonetheless, the various processes do share one feature: All enable the person to “think outside the box” imposed by routine thinking—to venture into territory that would otherwise be ignored (Simonton, 2011). Creativity requires that you go where you don’t know where you’re going. emotional intelligence:emotional intelligence: ability to understand emotions and motivations in yourself and others fluid intelligence:fluid intelligence: ability to see complex relationships and solve problems Multiple Intelligences Theory:Multiple Intelligences Theory: Gardner’s theory that each person possesses at least eight types of intelligence practical intelligence:practical intelligence: aka “street smarts” triarchic theory of intelligence:triarchic theory of intelligence: Sternberg’s theory of intelligence; three facets of intelligence: practical, creative, and analytical Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification and adaptation. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Modification and adaptation of content on creativity. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • What Are Intelligence and Creativity?. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:llWPi2c1@5/What-Are-Intelligence-and-Crea. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/. • Rubik's cube. Provided byProvided by: Pixabay. Located atLocated at: https://www.pexels.com/photo/colorful-color-play-concentration-54101/. LicenseLicense: CC0: No Rights Reserved • Creativity. Authored byAuthored by: Dean Keith Simonton . Provided byProvided by: University of California, Davis. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/modules/creativity. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • Horizon Battle of the Brains. Authored byAuthored by: Tatiana. Provided byProvided by: BBC. Located atLocated at: https://vimeo.com/107250116. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Vimeo License • Can you solve the prisoner hat riddle? - Alex Gendler. Authored byAuthored by: Ted-Ed. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5vJSNXPEwA&index=1&list=PLUmyCeox8XCwB8FrEfDQtQZmCc2qYMS5a. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License • Controversy of Intelligence: Crash Course Psychology #23. Authored byAuthored by: CrashCourse. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xTz3QjcloI&feature=youtu.be&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License MEASURES OF INTELLIGENCE LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe the development of IQ tests, their purposes, and benefits • Explain the bell curve, and how IQ is measured While you’re likely familiar with the term “IQ” and associate it with the idea of intelligence, what does IQ really mean? IQ stands for intelligence quotientintelligence quotient and describes a score earned on a test designed to measure intelligence. You’ve already learned that there are many ways psychologists describe intelligence (or more aptly, intelligences). Similarly, IQ tests—the tools designed to measure intelligence—have been the subject of debate throughout their development and use. When might an IQ test be used? What do we learn from the results, and how might people use this information? IQ tests are expensive to administer and must be given by a licensed psychologist. Intelligence testing has been considered both a bane and a boon for education and social policy. In this section, we will explore what intelligence tests measure, how they are scored, and how they were developed. Measuring Intelligence It seems that the human understanding of intelligence is somewhat limited when we focus on traditional or academic-type intelligence. How then, can intelligence be measured? And when we measure intelligence, how do we ensure that we capture what we’re really trying to measure (in other words, that IQ tests function as valid measures of intelligence)? In the following paragraphs, we will explore the how intelligence tests were developed and the history of their use. The IQ test has been synonymous with intelligence for over a century. In the late 1800s, Sir Francis Galton developed the first broad test of intelligence (Flanagan & Kaufman, 2004). Although he was not a psychologist, his contributions to the concepts of intelligence testing are still felt today (Gordon, 1995). Reliable intelligence testing (you may recall from earlier modules that reliability refers to a test’s https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:llWPi2c1@5/What-Are-Intelligence-and-Crea https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.pexels.com/photo/colorful-color-play-concentration-54101/ https://creativecommons.org/about/cc0 http://nobaproject.com/modules/creativity https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://vimeo.com/107250116 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5vJSNXPEwA&index=1&list=PLUmyCeox8XCwB8FrEfDQtQZmCc2qYMS5a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xTz3QjcloI&feature=youtu.be&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6 Figure 1. French psychologist Alfred Binet helped to develop intelligence testing. (b) This page is from a 1908 version of the Binet- Simon Intelligence Scale. Children being tested were asked which face, of each pair, was prettier. ability to produce consistent results) began in earnest during the early 1900s with a researcher named Alfred Binet. Binet was asked by the French government to develop an intelligence test to use on children to determine which ones might have difficulty in school; it included many verbally based tasks. American researchers soon realized the value of such testing. Louis Terman, a Stanford professor, modified Binet’s work by standardizing the administration of the test and tested thousands of different-aged children to establish an average score for each age. As a result, the test was normed and standardized, which means that the test was administered consistently to a large enough representative sample of the population that the range of scores resulted in a bell curve (bell curves will be discussed later). StandardizationStandardization means that the manner of administration, scoring, and interpretation of results is consistent. NormingNorming involves giving a test to a large population so data can be collected comparing groups, such as age groups. The resulting data provide norms, or referential scores, by which to interpret future scores. Norms are not expectations of what a given group should know but a demonstration of what that group does know. Norming and standardizing the test ensures that new scores are reliable. This new version of the test was called the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale (Terman, 1916). Remarkably, an updated version of this test is still widely used today. In 1939, David Wechsler, a psychologist who spent part of his career working with World War I veterans, developed a new IQ test in the United States. Wechsler combined several subtests from other intelligence tests used between 1880 and World War I. These subtests tapped into a variety of verbal and nonverbal skills, because Wechsler believed that intelligence encompassed “the global capacity of a person to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment” (Wechsler, 1958, p. 7). He named the test the Wechsler- Bellevue Intelligence Scale (Wechsler, 1981). This combination of subtests became one of the most extensively used intelligence tests in the history of psychology. Although its name was later changed to the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and has been revised several times, the aims of the test remain virtually unchanged since its inception (Boake, 2002). Today, there are three intelligence tests credited to Wechsler, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-fourth edition (WAIS-IV), the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-V), and the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence—IV (WPPSI-IV) (Wechsler, 2012). These tests are used widely in schools and communities throughout the United States, and they are periodically normed and standardized as a means of recalibration. Interestingly, the periodic recalibrations have led to an interesting observation known as the Flynn effect. Named after James Flynn, who was among the first to describe this trend, the Flynn effectFlynn effect refers to the observation that each generation has a significantly higher IQ than the last. Flynn himself argues, however, that increased IQ scores do not necessarily mean that younger generations are more intelligent per se (Flynn, Shaughnessy, & Fulgham, 2012). As a part of the recalibration process, the WISC-V (which was released in 2014) was given to thousands of children across the country, and children taking the test today are compared with their same-age peers. The WISC-V is composed of 14 subtests, which comprise five indices, which then render an IQ score. The five indices are Verbal Comprehension, Visual Spatial, Fluid Reasoning, Working Memory, and Processing Speed. When the test is complete, individuals receive a score for each of the five indices and a Full Scale IQ score. The method of scoring reflects the understanding that intelligence is comprised of multiple abilities in several cognitive realms and focuses on the mental processes that the child used to arrive at his or her answers to each test item (Heaton, 2004). Ultimately, we are still left with the question of how valid intelligence tests are. Certainly, the most modern versions of these tests tap into more than verbal competencies, yet the specific skills that should be assessed in IQ testing, the degree to which any test can truly measure an individual’s intelligence, and the use of the results of IQ tests are still issues of debate (Gresham & Witt, 1997; Flynn, Shaughnessy, & Fulgham, 2012; Richardson, 2002; Schlinger, 2003). WHAT DO YOU THINK?: INTELLECTUALLY DISABLED CRIMINALS ANDWHAT DO YOU THINK?: INTELLECTUALLY DISABLED CRIMINALS AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENTCAPITAL PUNISHMENT The case of Atkins v. Virginia was a landmark case in the United States Supreme Court. On August 16, 1996, two men, Daryl Atkins and William Jones, robbed, kidnapped, and then shot and killed Eric Nesbitt, a local airman from the U.S. Air Force. A clinical psychologist evaluated Atkins and testified at the trial that Atkins had an IQ of 59. The mean IQ score is 100. The psychologist concluded that Atkins was mildly mentally retarded. The jury found Atkins guilty, and he was sentenced to death. Atkins and his attorneys appealed to the Supreme Court. In June 2002, the Supreme Court reversed a previous decision and ruled that executions of mentally retarded criminals are ‘cruel and unusual punishments’ prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. The court wrote in their decision: Clinical definitions of mental retardation require not only subaverage intellectual functioning, but also significant limitations in adaptive skills. Mentally retarded persons frequently know the difference between right and wrong and are competent to stand trial. Because of their impairments, however, by definition they have diminished capacities to understand and process information, to communicate, to abstract from mistakes and learn from experience, to engage in logical reasoning, to control impulses, and to understand others’ reactions. Their deficiencies do not warrant an exemption from criminal sanctions, but diminish their personal culpability (Atkins v. Virginia, 2002, par. 5). The court also decided that there was a state legislature consensus against the execution of the mentally retarded and that this consensus should stand for all of the states. The Supreme Court ruling left it up to the states to determine their own definitions of mental retardation and intellectual disability. The definitions vary among states as to who can be executed. In the Atkins case, a jury decided that because he had many contacts with his lawyers and thus was provided with intellectual stimulation, his IQ had reportedly increased, and he was now smart enough to be executed. He was given an execution date and then received a stay of execution after it was revealed that lawyers for co-defendant, William Jones, coached Jones to “produce a testimony against Mr. Atkins that did match the evidence” (Liptak, 2008). After the revelation of this misconduct, Atkins was re-sentenced to life imprisonment. Atkins v. Virginia (2002) highlights several issues regarding society’s beliefs around intelligence. In the Atkins case, the Supreme Court decided that intellectual disability does affect decision making and therefore should affect the nature of the punishment such criminals receive. Where, however, should the lines of intellectual disability be drawn? In May 2014, the Supreme Court ruled in a related case (Hall v. Florida) that IQ scores cannot be used as a final determination of a prisoner’s eligibility for the death penalty (Roberts, 2014). An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=216 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=216 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=216 TRY ITTRY IT Why Measure Intelligence? The value of IQ testing is most evident in educational or clinical settings. Children who seem to be experiencing learning difficulties or severe behavioral problems can be tested to ascertain whether the child’s difficulties can be partly attributed to an IQ score that is significantly different from the mean for her age group. Without IQ testing—or another measure of intelligence—children and adults needing extra support might not be identified effectively. In addition, IQ testing is used in courts to determine whether a defendant has special or extenuating circumstances that preclude him from participating in some way in a trial. People also use IQ testing results to seek disability benefits from the Social Security Administration. While IQ tests have sometimes been used as arguments in support of insidious purposes, such as the eugenics movement (Severson, 2011), the following case study demonstrates the usefulness and benefits of IQ testing. Candace, a 14-year-old girl experiencing problems at school, was referred for a court-ordered psychological evaluation. She was in regular education classes in ninth grade and was failing every subject. Candace had never been a stellar student but had always been passed to the next grade. Frequently, she would curse at any of her teachers who called on her in class. She also got into fights with other students and occasionally shoplifted. When she arrived for the evaluation, Candace immediately said that she hated everything about school, including the teachers, the rest of the staff, the building, and the homework. Her parents stated that they felt their daughter was picked on, because she was of a different race than the teachers and most of the other students. When asked why she cursed at her teachers, Candace replied, “They only call on me when I don’t know the answer. I don’t want to say, ‘I don’t know’ all of the time and look like an idiot in front of my friends. The teachers embarrass me.” She was given a battery of tests, including an IQ test. Her score on the IQ test was 68. What does Candace’s score say about her ability to excel or even succeed in regular education classes without assistance? The Bell Curve The results of intelligence tests follow the bell curve, a graph in the general shape of a bell. When the bell curve is used in psychological testing, the graph demonstrates a normal distribution of a trait, in this case, intelligence, in the human population. Many human traits naturally follow the bell curve. For example, if you lined up all your female schoolmates according to height, it is likely that a large cluster of them would be the average height for an American woman: 5’4”–5’6”. This cluster would fall in the center of the bell curve, representing the average height for American women (Figure 2). There would be fewer women who stand closer to 4’11”. The same would be true for women of above-average height: those who stand closer to 5’11”. The trick to finding a bell curve in nature is to use a large sample size. Without a large sample size, it is less likely that the bell curve will represent the wider population. A representative samplerepresentative sample is a subset of the population that accurately represents the general population. If, for example, you measured the height of the women in your classroom only, you might not actually have a representative sample. Perhaps the women’s basketball team wanted to take this course together, and they are all in your class. Because basketball players tend to be taller than average, the women in your class may not be a good representative sample of the population of American women. But if your sample included all the women at your school, it is likely that their heights would form a natural bell curve. Figure 2. Are you of below-average, average, or above-average height? The same principles apply to intelligence tests scores. Individuals earn a score called an intelligence quotient (IQ). Over the years, different types of IQ tests have evolved, but the way scores are interpreted remains the same. The average IQ score on an IQ test is 100. Standard deviationsStandard deviations describe how data are dispersed in a population and give context to large data sets. The bell curve uses the standard deviation to show how all scores are dispersed from the average score (Figure 3). In modern IQ testing, one standard deviation is 15 points. So a score of 85 would be described as “one standard deviation below the mean.” How would you describe a score of 115 and a score of 70? Any IQ score that falls within one standard deviation above and below the mean (between 85 and 115) is considered average, and 82% of the population has IQ scores in this range. An IQ score of 130 or above is considered a superior level. Figure 3. The majority of people have an IQ score between 85 and 115. Only 2.2% of the population has an IQ score below 70 (American Psychological Association [APA], 2013). A score of 70 or below indicates significant cognitive delays, major deficits in adaptive functioning, and difficulty meeting “community standards of personal independence and social responsibility” when compared to same- aged peers (APA, 2013, p. 37). An individual in this IQ range would be considered to have an intellectual disability and exhibit deficits in intellectual functioning and adaptive behavior (American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 2013). Formerly known as mental retardation, the accepted term now is intellectual disability, and it has four subtypes: mild, moderate, severe, and profound. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychological Disorders lists criteria for each subgroup (APA, 2013). Table 1. Characteristics of Cognitive Disorders IntellectualIntellectual DisabilityDisability SubtypeSubtype Percentage of IntellectuallyPercentage of Intellectually Disabled PopulationDisabled Population DescriptionDescription Mild 85% 3rd- to 6th-grade skill level in reading, writing, and math; may be employed and live independently Moderate 10% Basic reading and writing skills; functional self-care skills; requires some oversight Severe 5% Functional self-care skills; requires oversight of daily environment and activities Profound <1% May be able to communicate verbally or nonverbally; requires intensive oversight On the other end of the intelligence spectrum are those individuals whose IQs fall into the highest ranges. Consistent with the bell curve, about 2% of the population falls into this category. People are considered gifted if they have an IQ score of 130 or higher, or superior intelligence in a particular area. Long ago, popular belief suggested that people of high intelligence were maladjusted. This idea was disproven through a groundbreaking DIG DEEPER: WHAT’S IN A NAME? MENTAL RETARDATIONDIG DEEPER: WHAT’S IN A NAME? MENTAL RETARDATION In the past, individuals with IQ scores below 70 and significant adaptive and social functioning delays were diagnosed with mental retardation. When this diagnosis was first named, the title held no social stigma. In time, however, the degrading word “retard” sprang from this diagnostic term. “Retard” was frequently used as a taunt, especially among young people, until the words “mentally retarded” and “retard” became an insult. As such, the DSM-5 now labels this diagnosis as “intellectual disability.” Many states once had a Department of Mental Retardation to serve those diagnosed with such cognitive delays, but most have changed their name to Department of Developmental Disabilities or something similar in language. The Social Security Administration still uses the term “mental retardation” but is considering eliminating it from its programming (Goad, 2013). Earlier in the module, we discussed how language affects how we think. Do you think changing the title of this department has any impact on how people regard those with developmental disabilities? Does a different name give people more dignity, and if so, how? Does it change the expectations for those with developmental or cognitive disabilities? Why or why not? An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=216 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING This CrashCourse Psychology video elaborates on intelligence testing and explains the common WAIS and WISC IQ tests: An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=216 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=216 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=216 TRY ITTRY IT study of gifted children. In 1921, Lewis Terman began a longitudinal study of over 1500 children with IQs over 135 (Terman, 1925). His findings showed that these children became well-educated, successful adults who were, in fact, well-adjusted (Terman & Oden, 1947). Additionally, Terman’s study showed that the subjects were above average in physical build and attractiveness, dispelling an earlier popular notion that highly intelligent people were “weaklings.” Some people with very high IQs elect to join Mensa, an organization dedicated to identifying, researching, and fostering intelligence. Members must have an IQ score in the top 2% of the population, and they may be required to pass other exams in their application to join the group. GLOSSARYGLOSSARY Flynn effect:Flynn effect: observation that each generation has a significantly higher IQ than the previous generation intelligence quotient:intelligence quotient: (also, IQ) score on a test designed to measure intelligence norming:norming: administering a test to a large population so data can be collected to reference the normal scores for a population and its groups representative sample:representative sample: subset of the population that accurately represents the general population standard deviation:standard deviation: measure of variability that describes the difference between a set of scores and their mean standardization:standardization: method of testing in which administration, scoring, and interpretation of results are consistent THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER In thinking about the case of Candace described earlier, do you think that Candace benefited or suffered as a result of consistently being passed on to the next grade? Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Brains Vs. Bias: Crash Course Psychology #24. Provided byProvided by: CrashCourse. Located atLocated at: https://youtu.be/75g4d5sF3xI?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Measures of Intelligence. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:8iySjqqi@7/Measures-of-Intelligence. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/. THE SOURCE OF INTELLIGENCE LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe how genetics and the environment affect intelligence • Describe common learning disabilities A young girl, born of teenage parents, lives with her grandmother in rural Mississippi. They are poor—in serious poverty—but they do their best to get by with what they have. She learns to read when she is just 3 years old. As she grows older, she longs to live with her mother, who now resides in Wisconsin. She moves there at the age of 6 years. At 9 years of age, she is raped. During the next several years, several different male relatives repeatedly molest her. Her life unravels. She turns to drugs and sex to fill the deep, lonely void inside her. Her mother then sends her to Nashville to live with her father, who imposes strict behavioral expectations upon her, and over time, her wild life settles once again. She begins to experience success in school, and at 19 years old, becomes the youngest and first African-American female news anchor (“Dates and Events,” n.d.). The woman—Oprah Winfrey—goes on to become a media giant known for both her intelligence and her empathy. High Intelligence: Nature or Nurture? Where does high intelligence come from? Some researchers believe that intelligence is a trait inherited from a person’s parents. Scientists who research this topic typically use twin studies to determine the heritabilityheritability of intelligence. The Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart is one of the most well-known twin studies. In this https://youtu.be/75g4d5sF3xI?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6 http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:8iySjqqi@7/Measures-of-Intelligence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Figure 1. The correlations of IQs of unrelated versus related persons reared apart or together suggest a genetic component to intelligence. investigation, researchers found that identical twins raised together and identical twins raised apart exhibit a higher correlation between their IQ scores than siblings or fraternal twins raised together (Bouchard, Lykken, McGue, Segal, & Tellegen, 1990). The findings from this study reveal a genetic component to intelligence (Figure 1). At the same time, other psychologists believe that intelligence is shaped by a child’s developmental environment. If parents were to provide their children with intellectual stimuli from before they are born, it is likely that they would absorb the benefits of that stimulation, and it would be reflected in intelligence levels. The reality is that aspects of each idea are probably correct. In fact, one study suggests that although genetics seem to be in control of the level of intelligence, the environmental influences provide both stability and change to trigger manifestation of cognitive abilities (Bartels, Rietveld, Van Baal, & Boomsma, 2002). Certainly, there are behaviors that support the development of intelligence, but the genetic component of high intelligence should not be ignored. As with all heritable traits, however, it is not always possible to isolate how and when high intelligence is passed on to the next generation. Range of ReactionRange of Reaction is the theory that each person responds to the environment in a unique way based on his or her genetic makeup. According to this idea, your genetic potential is a fixed quantity, but whether you reach your full intellectual potential is dependent upon the environmental stimulation you experience, especially in childhood. Think about this scenario: A couple adopts a child who has average genetic intellectual potential. They raise her in an extremely stimulating environment. What will happen to the couple’s new daughter? It is likely that the stimulating environment will improve her intellectual outcomes over the course of her life. But what happens if this experiment is reversed? If a child with an extremely strong genetic background is placed in an environment that does not stimulate him: What happens? Interestingly, according to a longitudinal study of highly gifted individuals, it was found that “the two extremes of optimal and pathological experience are both represented disproportionately in the backgrounds of creative individuals”; however, those who experienced supportive family environments were more likely to report being happy (Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi, 1993, p. 187). Another challenge to determining origins of high intelligence is the confounding nature of our human social structures. It is troubling to note that some ethnic groups perform better on IQ tests than others—and it is likely that the results do not have much to do with the quality of each ethnic group’s intellect. The same is true for socioeconomic status. Children who live in poverty experience more pervasive, daily stress than children who do not worry about the basic needs of safety, shelter, and food. These worries can negatively affect how the brain functions and develops, causing a dip in IQ scores. Mark Kishiyama and his colleagues determined that children living in poverty demonstrated reduced prefrontal brain functioning comparable to children with damage to the lateral prefrontal cortex (Kishyama, Boyce, Jimenez, Perry, & Knight, 2009). The debate around the foundations and influences on intelligence exploded in 1969, when an educational psychologist named Arthur Jensen published the article “How Much Can We Boost I.Q. and Achievement” in the Harvard Educational Review. Jensen had administered IQ tests to diverse groups of students, and his results led him to the conclusion that IQ is determined by genetics. He also posited that intelligence was made up of two types of abilities: Level I and Level II. In his theory, Level I is responsible for rote memorization, whereas Level II is responsible for conceptual and analytical abilities. According to his findings, Level I remained consistent among the human race. Level II, however, exhibited differences among ethnic groups (Modgil & Routledge, 1987). Jensen’s most controversial conclusion was that Level II intelligence is prevalent among Asians, then Caucasians, then African Americans. Robert Williams was among those who called out racial bias in Jensen’s results (Williams, 1970). Obviously, Jensen’s interpretation of his own data caused an intense response in a nation that continued to grapple with the effects of racism (Fox, 2012). However, Jensen’s ideas were not solitary or unique; rather, they represented one of many examples of psychologists asserting racial differences in IQ and cognitive ability. In fact, Rushton and Jensen (2005) reviewed three decades worth of research on the relationship between race and cognitive ability. Jensen’s belief in the inherited nature of intelligence and the validity of the IQ test to be the truest measure of intelligence are at the core of his conclusions. If, however, you believe that intelligence is more than Levels I and II, or that IQ tests do not control for socioeconomic and cultural differences among people, then perhaps you can dismiss Jensen’s conclusions as a single window that looks out on the complicated and varied landscape of human intelligence. In a related story, parents of African American students filed a case against the State of California in 1979, because they believed that the testing method used to identify students with learning disabilities was culturally unfair as the tests were normed and standardized using white children (Larry P. v. Riles). The testing method used by the state disproportionately identified African American children as mentally retarded. This resulted in many students being incorrectly classified as “mentally retarded.” According to a summary of the case, Larry P. v. Riles: In violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, defendants have utilized standardized intelligence tests that are racially and culturally biased, have a discriminatory impact against black children, and have not been validated for the purpose of essentially permanent placements of black children into educationally dead-end, isolated, and stigmatizing classes for the so-called educable mentally retarded. Further, these federal laws have been violated by defendants’ general use of placement mechanisms that, taken together, have not been validated and result in a large over-representation of black children in the special E.M.R. classes. (Larry P. v. Riles, par. 6) Once again, the limitations of intelligence testing were revealed. What are Learning Disabilities? Learning disabilities are cognitive disorders that affect different areas of cognition, particularly language or reading. It should be pointed out that learning disabilities are not the same thing as intellectual disabilities. Learning disabilities are considered specific neurological impairments rather than global intellectual or developmental disabilities. A person with a language disability has difficulty understanding or using spoken language, whereas someone with a reading disability, such as dyslexia, has difficulty processing what he or she is reading. Often, learning disabilities are not recognized until a child reaches school age. One confounding aspect of learning disabilities is that they often affect children with average to above-average intelligence. At the same time, learning disabilities tend to exhibit comorbidity with other disorders, like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Anywhere between 30–70% of individuals with diagnosed cases of ADHD also have some sort of learning disability (Riccio, Gonzales, & Hynd, 1994). Let’s take a look at two examples of common learning disabilities: dysgraphia and dyslexia. Dysgraphia Children with dysgraphiadysgraphia have a learning disability that results in a struggle to write legibly. The physical task of writing with a pen and paper is extremely challenging for the person. These children often have extreme difficulty putting their thoughts down on paper (Smits-Engelsman & Van Galen, 1997). This difficulty is inconsistent with a person’s IQ. That is, based on the child’s IQ and/or abilities in other areas, a child with dysgraphia should be able to write, but can’t. Children with dysgraphia may also have problems with spatial abilities. Students with dysgraphia need academic accommodations to help them succeed in school. These accommodations can provide students with alternative assessment opportunities to demonstrate what they know (Barton, 2003). For example, a student with dysgraphia might be permitted to take an oral exam rather than a traditional paper-and-pencil test. Treatment is usually provided by an occupational therapist, although there is some question as to how effective such treatment is (Zwicker, 2005). Dyslexia Dyslexia is the most common learning disability in children. An individual with dyslexiadyslexia exhibits an inability to correctly process letters. The neurological mechanism for sound processing does not work properly in someone with dyslexia. As a result, dyslexic children may not understand sound-letter correspondence. A child with dyslexia may mix up letters within words and sentences—letter reversals, such as those shown in Figure 2, are a hallmark of this learning disability—or skip whole words while reading. A dyslexic child may have difficulty spelling words correctly while writing. Because of the disordered way that the brain processes letters and sound, learning to read is a frustrating experience. Some dyslexic individuals cope by memorizing the shapes of most words, but they never actually learn to read (Berninger, 2008). Figure 2. These written words show variations of the word “teapot” as written by individuals with dyslexia. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=219 TRY ITTRY IT An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=219 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=219 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=219 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=219 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=219 GLOSSARYGLOSSARY dysgraphia:dysgraphia: learning disability that causes extreme difficulty in writing legibly dyslexia:dyslexia: common learning disability in which letters are not processed properly by the brain range of reaction:range of reaction: each person’s response to the environment is unique based on his or her genetic make-up An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=219 THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER Do you believe your level of intelligence was improved because of the stimuli in your childhood environment? Why or why not? Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • The Source of Intelligence. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:EME_8apf@5/The-Source-of-Intelligence. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/. http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.49:EME_8apf@5/The-Source-of-Intelligence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ PUTTING IT TOGETHER: THINKING AND INTELLIGENCE LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES In this module, you learned to • describe cognition and problem-solving strategies • describe language acquisition and the role language plays in communication and thought • describe intelligence theories and intelligence testing For many people, intelligence is one of those concepts that seems to make sense and should be relatively easy to define, until you have to think too deeply about it. What exactly is it, anyway? Is it a good memory, a quick wit, a special ability in mathematical skills? Remember from your reading that Charles Spearman identified intelligence as a general thing, g, that consists of general enhanced abilities in reasoning, verbal abilities, and logic. Robert Sternberg said intelligence is comprised of three parts: practical, creative, and analytical intelligence. Howard Gardner identified eight distinct intelligences. Others still found things like emotional intelligence and creativity of critical importance. Just as it is difficult to narrowly define IQ, it is also difficult to measure it. Through the process of standardization and decades of administering IQ tests, researchers have a decent understanding that IQ can be generally measured, and that it is relatively stable over time. Even this belief in the validity and reliability of IQ testing continues to be challenged, however. In 2011, Angela Duckworth (who is well known for her studies on grit), headed up a team of researchers who conducted a meta-analysis of nearly fifty previous studies. These studies examined the effect of monetary incentives on IQ tests, with varying values of money offered. Some were offered small incentives of a few dollars or less, others given moderate sums, and some received larger rewards of $10 or more. Duckworth and her team wanted to know if these incentives would impact IQ scores. What do you think happened? Sure enough, the study found that incentives increased IQ scores by an average of 0.64 standard deviations, which is roughly a 10 point different on the IQ scale! The effect of motivation was even more dramatic with larger rewards, and also had a larger impact on those who first reported lower-than-average baseline IQ scores. The impact of the motivation was much smaller with those with above-average IQs and was not even measured on those with baseline IQs above 120. Duckwork and her colleagues essentially conclude that motivation, as well as other external factors such as employment, years of education, and academic achievement, all have an influence on IQ scores. She warns against jumping to extreme conclusions, however, because both motivation and intelligence are needed to perform well on an IQ test. (Note: Duckworth, A. L., Quinn, P. D., Lynam, D. R., Loeber, R., & Stouthamer-Loeber, https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/27135929/5843577306_06fd6132f7_z https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2016/11/27135929/5843577306_06fd6132f7_z LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Yet another interesting investigation into intelligence reveals that people have a curious tendency to prefer those with “natural” intelligence over those who have to strive for success. Read more about it at The Psych Report. M. (n.d.). Role of test motivation in intelligence testing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108(19), 7716-7720. doi:0.1073/pnas.1018601108) You can see that this field of research is ever-growing and evolving. Contemporary studies are examining the genetic components that correlate with high intelligence, and new studies will assuredly reveal more about where intelligence comes from and how it is best measured. Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Putting It Together: Thinking and Intelligence. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • exam image. Authored byAuthored by: Alberto G.. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. Located atLocated at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/albertogp123/5843577306. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution DISCUSSION: THINKING AND INTELLIGENCE Thinking about Intelligence STEP 1STEP 1: Answer TWO of the following questions in a discussion post of at least 200 words: 1. Do you think that people get smarter as they get older? In what ways might people gain or lose intellectual abilities as they age? 2. When you meet someone who strikes you as being smart, what types of cues or information do you typically attend to in order to arrive at this judgment? 3. How do you think socio-economic status affects an individual taking an intellectual abilities test? 4. Should psychologists be asking about group differences (different race, sex, culture, etc.) in intellectual ability? What do you think? 5. Which of Howard Gardner’s 8 types of intelligence do you think describes the way you learn best? Why? STEP 2STEP 2: Thoughtfully comment on at least TWO other posts in responses of at least 75 words each. Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Discussion: Thinking and Intelligence. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Discussion questions. Authored byAuthored by: Robert Biswas-Diener . Provided byProvided by: Portland State University. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/modules/intelligence. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike https://thepsychreport.com/science/people-favor-naturals-over-strivers-even-though-they-say-otherwise/ https://thepsychreport.com/science/people-favor-naturals-over-strivers-even-though-they-say-otherwise/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/albertogp123/5843577306 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ http://nobaproject.com/modules/intelligence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ MODULE 9: EMOTION AND MOTIVATION WHY IT MATTERS: EMOTION AND MOTIVATION Figure 1. Emotions can change in an instant, especially in response to an unexpected event. Surprise, fear, anger, and sadness are some immediate emotions that people experienced in the aftermath of the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. What are emotions? What causes them? What motivated some bystanders to immediately help others, while other people ran for safety? (credit: modification of work by Aaron “tango” Tang) What makes us behave as we do? What drives us to eat? What drives us toward sex? Is there a biological basis to explain the feelings we experience? How universal are emotions? In this module, we will explore issues relating to both motivation and emotion. We will begin with a discussion of several theories that have been proposed to explain motivation and why we engage in a given behavior. You will learn about the physiological needs that drive some human behaviors, as well as the importance of our social experiences in influencing our actions. Next, we will consider both eating and having sex as examples of motivated behaviors. What are the physiological mechanisms of hunger and satiety? What understanding do scientists have of why obesity occurs, and what treatments exist for obesity and eating disorders? How has research into human sex and sexuality evolved over the past century? How do psychologists understand and study the human experience of sexual orientation and gender identity? These questions—and more—will be explored. This module will close with a discussion of emotion. You will learn about several theories that have been proposed to explain how emotion occurs, the biological underpinnings of emotion, and the universality of emotions. AnswerAnswer Ahima, R. S., & Antwi, D. A. (2008). Brain regulation of appetite and satiety. Endocrinology and Metabolism Clinics of North America, 37, 811–823. Allen, L. S., & Gorski, R. A. (1992). Sexual orientation and the size of the anterior commissure in the human brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 89, 7199–7202. American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Feeding and eating disorders. Retrieved from http://www.dsm5.org/ documents/eating%20disorders%20fact%20sheet Arnold, H. J. (1976). 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American Psychologist, 35(2), 151–175. Zajonc, R. B. (1998). Emotions. In D. T. Gilbert & S. T. Fiske (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (4th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 591–632). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Introduction to Emotion and Motivation. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:UQgvP5NH@4/Introduction. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/. http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:UQgvP5NH@4/Introduction https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ MOTIVATION What you’ll learn to do: explain motivation, how it is influenced, and major theories about motivation https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/03/23040003/pexels-photo-209209 Figure 1. Intrinsic motivation comes from within the individual, while extrinsic motivation comes from outside the individual. TRY ITTRY IT Motivation to engage in a given behavior can come from internal and/or external factors. There are multiple theories have been put forward regarding motivation—biologically oriented theories that say the need to maintain bodily homeostasis motivates behavior, Bandura’s idea that our sense of self-efficacy motivates behavior, and others that focus on social aspects of motivation. In this section, you’ll learn about these theories as well as the famous work of Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Illustrate intrinsic and extrinsic motivation • Describe basic theories of motivation, including concepts such as instincts, drive reduction, and self- efficacy • Explain the basic concepts associated with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs Why do we do the things we do? What motivations underlie our behaviors? MotivationMotivation describes the wants or needs that direct behavior toward a goal. In addition to biological motives, motivations can be intrinsicintrinsic (arising from internal factors) or extrinsicextrinsic (arising from external factors) (Figure 1). Intrinsically motivated behaviors are performed because of the sense of personal satisfaction that they bring, while extrinsically motivated behaviors are performed in order to receive something from others. Think about why you are currently in college. Are you here because you enjoy learning and want to pursue an education to make yourself a more well-rounded individual? If so, then you are intrinsically motivated. However, if you are here because you want to get a college degree to make yourself more marketable for a high-paying career or to satisfy the demands of your parents, then your motivation is more extrinsic in nature. In reality, our motivations are often a mix of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors, but the nature of the mix of these factors might change over time (often in ways that seem counter-intuitive). There is an old adage: “Choose a job An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2509 Figure 2. Research suggests that when something we love to do, like icing cakes, becomes our job, our intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to do it may change. (credit: Agustín Ruiz) that you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life,” meaning that if you enjoy your occupation, work doesn’t seem like . . . well, work. Some research suggests that this isn’t necessarily the case (Daniel & Esser, 1980; Deci, 1972; Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999). According to this research, receiving some sort of extrinsic reinforcement (i.e., getting paid) for engaging in behaviors that we enjoy leads to those behaviors being thought of as work no longer providing that same enjoyment. As a result, we might spend less time engaging in these reclassified behaviors in the absence of any extrinsic reinforcement. For example, Odessa loves baking, so in her free time, she bakes for fun. Oftentimes, after stocking shelves at her grocery store job, she often whips up pastries in the evenings because she enjoys baking. When a coworker in the store’s bakery department leaves his job, Odessa applies for his position and gets transferred to the bakery department. Although she enjoys what she does in her new job, after a few months, she no longer has much desire to concoct tasty treats in her free time. Baking has become work in a way that changes her motivation to do it (Figure 2). What Odessa has experienced is called the overjustification effect—intrinsic motivation is diminished when extrinsic motivation is given. This can lead to extinguishing the intrinsic motivation and creating a dependence on extrinsic rewards for continued performance (Deci et al., 1999). Other studies suggest that intrinsic motivation may not be so vulnerable to the effects of extrinsic reinforcements, and in fact, reinforcements such as verbal praise might actually increase intrinsic motivation (Arnold, 1976; Cameron & Pierce, 1994). In that case, Odessa’s motivation to bake in her free time might remain high if, for example, customers regularly compliment her baking or cake decorating skills. These apparent discrepancies in the researchers’ findings may be understood by considering several factors. For one, physical reinforcement (such as money) and verbal reinforcement (such as praise) may affect an individual in very different ways. In fact, tangible rewards (i.e., money) tend to have more negative effects on intrinsic motivation than do intangible rewards (i.e., praise). Furthermore, the expectation of the extrinsic motivator by an individual is crucial: If the person expects to receive an extrinsic reward, then intrinsic motivation for the task tends to be reduced. If, however, there is no such expectation, and the extrinsic motivation is presented as a surprise, then intrinsic motivation for the task tends to persist (Deci et al., 1999). In educational settings, students are more likely to experience intrinsic motivation to learn when they feel a sense of belonging and respect in the classroom. This internalization can be enhanced if the evaluative aspects of the classroom are de-emphasized and if students feel that they exercise some control over the learning environment. Furthermore, providing students with activities that are challenging, yet doable, along with a rationale for engaging in various learning activities can enhance intrinsic motivation for those tasks (Niemiec & Ryan, 2009). Consider Hakim, a first-year law student with two courses this semester: Family Law and Criminal Law. The Family Law professor has a rather intimidating classroom: He likes to put students on the spot with tough questions, which often leaves students feeling belittled or embarrassed. Grades are based exclusively on quizzes and exams, and the instructor posts results of each test on the classroom door. In contrast, the Criminal Law professor facilitates classroom discussions and respectful debates in small groups. The majority of the course grade is not exam- based, but centers on a student-designed research project on a crime issue of the student’s choice. Research suggests that Hakim will be less intrinsically motivated in his Family Law course, where students are intimidated in the classroom setting, and there is an emphasis on teacher-driven evaluations. Hakim is likely to experience a higher level of intrinsic motivation in his Criminal Law course, where the class setting encourages inclusive collaboration and a respect for ideas, and where students have more influence over their learning activities. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2509 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2509 TRY ITTRY IT Figure 3. (a) William James proposed the instinct theory of motivation, asserting that behavior is driven by instincts. (b) In humans, instincts may include behaviors such as an infant’s rooting for a nipple and sucking. (credit b: modification of work by “Mothering Touch”/Flickr) Theories about Motivation William James (1842–1910) was an important contributor to early research into motivation, and he is often referred to as the father of psychology in the United States. James theorized that behavior was driven by a number of instincts, which aid survival (Figure 3). From a biological perspective, an instinctinstinct is a species-specific pattern of behavior that is not learned. There was, however, considerable controversy among James and his contemporaries over the exact definition of instinct. James proposed several dozen special human instincts, but many of his contemporaries had their own lists that differed. A mother’s protection of her baby, the urge to lick sugar, and hunting prey were among the human behaviors proposed as true instincts during James’s era. This view—that human behavior is driven by instincts—received a fair amount of criticism because of the undeniable role of learning in shaping all sorts of human behavior. In fact, as early as the 1900s, some instinctive behaviors were experimentally demonstrated to result from associative learning (recall when you learned about Watson’s conditioning of fear response in “Little Albert”) (Faris, 1921). Another early theory of motivation proposed that the maintenance of homeostasis is particularly important in directing behavior. You may recall from your earlier reading that homeostasis is the tendency to maintain a balance, or optimal level, within a biological system. In a body system, a control center (which is often part of the brain) receives input from receptors (which are often complexes of neurons). The control center directs effectors (which may be other neurons) to correct any imbalance detected by the control center. According to the drive theorydrive theory of motivation, deviations from homeostasis create physiological needs. These needs result in psychological drive states that direct behavior to meet the need and, ultimately, bring the system back to homeostasis. For example, if it’s been a while since you ate, your blood sugar levels will drop below normal. This low blood sugar will induce a physiological need and a corresponding drive state (i.e., hunger) that will direct you to seek out and consume food (Figure 4). Eating will eliminate the hunger, and, ultimately, your blood sugar levels will return to normal. Interestingly, drive theory also emphasizes the role that habits play in the type of behavioral response in which we engage. A habithabit is a pattern of behavior in which we regularly engage. Once we have engaged in a behavior that successfully reduces a drive, we are more likely to engage in that behavior whenever faced with that drive in the future (Graham & Weiner, 1996). Figure 4. Hunger and subsequent eating are the result of complex physiological processes that maintain homeostasis. (credit “left”: modification of work by “Gracie and Viv”/Flickr; credit “center”: modification of work by Steven Depolo; credit “right”: modification of work by Monica Renata) Extensions of drive theory take into account levels of arousal as potential motivators. Just as drive theory aims to return the body to homeostasis, arousal theory aims to find the optimal level of arousal. If we are underaroused, we become bored and will seek out some sort of stimulation. On the other hand, if we are overaroused, we will engage in behaviors to reduce our arousal (Berlyne, 1960). Most students have experienced this need to maintain optimal levels of arousal over the course of their academic career. Think about how much stress students experience toward the end of spring semester. They feel overwhelmed with seemingly endless exams, papers, and major assignments that must be completed on time. They probably yearn for the rest and relaxation that awaits them over the extended summer break. However, once they finish the semester, it doesn’t take too long before they begin to feel bored. Generally, by the time the next semester is beginning in the fall, many students are quite happy to return to school. This is an example of how arousal theory works. Figure 5. The concept of optimal arousal in relation to performance on a task is depicted here. Performance is maximized at the optimal level of arousal, and it tapers off during under- and overarousal. So what is the optimal level of arousal? What level leads to the best performance? Research shows that moderate arousal is generally best; when arousal is very high or very low, performance tends to suffer (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908). Think of your arousal level regarding taking an exam for this class. If your level is very low, such as boredom and apathy, your performance will likely suffer. Similarly, a very high level, such as extreme anxiety, can be paralyzing and hinder performance. Consider the example of a softball team facing a tournament. They are favored to win their first game by a large margin, so they go into the game with a lower level of arousal and get beat by a less skilled team. But optimal arousal level is more complex than a simple answer that the middle level is always best. Researchers Robert Yerkes (pronounced “Yerk-EES”) and John Dodson discovered that the optimal arousal level depends on the complexity and difficulty of the task to be performed (Figure 6). This relationship is known as Yerkes-DodsonYerkes-Dodson lawlaw, which holds that a simple task is performed best when arousal levels are relatively high and complex tasks are best performed when arousal levels are lower. Figure 6. Task performance is best when arousal levels are in a middle range, with difficult tasks best performed under lower levels of arousal and simple tasks best performed under higher levels of arousal. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2509 TRY ITTRY IT Self-efficacy and Social Motives Self-efficacySelf-efficacy is an individual’s belief in her own capability to complete a task, which may include a previous successful completion of the exact task or a similar task. Albert Bandura (1994) theorized that an individual’s sense of self-efficacy plays a pivotal role in motivating behavior. Bandura argues that motivation derives from expectations that we have about the consequences of our behaviors, and ultimately, it is the appreciation of our capacity to engage in a given behavior that will determine what we do and the future goals that we set for ourselves. For example, if you have a sincere belief in your ability to achieve at the highest level, you are more likely to take on challenging tasks and to not let setbacks dissuade you from seeing the task through to the end. A number of theorists have focused their research on understanding social motives (McAdams & Constantian, 1983; McClelland & Liberman, 1949; Murray et al., 1938). Among the motives they describe are needs for achievement, affiliation, and intimacy. It is the need for achievement that drives accomplishment and performance. The need for affiliation encourages positive interactions with others, and the need for intimacy causes us to seek deep, meaningful relationships. Henry Murray et al. (1938) categorized these needs into An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2509 LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Watch this video from Dan Pink’s Ted talk on “The surprising truth about what motivates us.” Think about what things motivate you, and how you anticipate that you might respond to the types of incentives explained in the talk. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2509 TRY ITTRY IT domains. For example, the need for achievement and recognition falls under the domain of ambition. Dominance and aggression were recognized as needs under the domain of human power, and play was a recognized need in the domain of interpersonal affection. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs While the theories of motivation described earlier relate to basic biological drives, individual characteristics, or social contexts, Abraham Maslow (1943) proposed a hierarchy of needs that spans the spectrum of motives ranging from the biological to the individual to the social. These needs are often depicted as a pyramid (Figure 7). Figure 7. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is illustrated here. In some versions of the pyramid, cognitive and aesthetic needs are also included between esteem and self- actualization. Others include another tier at the top of the pyramid for self-transcendence. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING Check out this interactive exercise that illustrates some of the important concepts in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Review Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as well as the other theories of motivation in this Crash Course video. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2509 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2509 TRY ITTRY IT At the base of the pyramid are all of the physiological needs that are necessary for survival. These are followed by basic needs for security and safety, the need to be loved and to have a sense of belonging, and the need to have self-worth and confidence. The top tier of the pyramid is self- actualization, which is a need that essentially equates to achieving one’s full potential, and it can only be realized when needs lower on the pyramid have been met. To Maslow and humanistic theorists, self-actualization reflects the humanistic emphasis on positive aspects of human nature. Maslow suggested that this is an ongoing, life-long process and that only a small percentage of people actually achieve a self-actualized state (Francis & Kritsonis, 2006; Maslow, 1943). According to Maslow (1943), one must satisfy lower-level needs before addressing those needs that occur higher in the pyramid. So, for example, if someone is struggling to find enough food to meet his nutritional requirements, it is quite unlikely that he would spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about whether others viewed him as a good person or not. Instead, all of his energies would be geared toward finding something to eat. However, it should be pointed out that Maslow’s theory has been criticized for its subjective nature and its inability to account for phenomena that occur in the real world (Leonard, 1982). Other research has more recently addressed that late in life, Maslow proposed a self-transcendence level above self- actualization—to represent striving for meaning and purpose beyond the concerns of oneself (Koltko-Rivera, 2006). For example, people sometimes make self-sacrifices in order to make a political statement or in an attempt to improve the conditions of others. Mohandas K. Gandhi, a world-renowned advocate for independence through nonviolent protest, on several occasions went on hunger strikes to protest a particular situation. People may starve themselves or otherwise put themselves in danger displaying higher-level motives beyond their own needs. https://www.wisc-online.com/learn/social-science/psychology/i2p401/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-exercise https://youtu.be/9hdSLiHaJz8?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6 GLOSSARYGLOSSARY drive theory:drive theory: deviations from homeostasis create physiological needs that result in psychological drive states that direct behavior to meet the need and ultimately bring the system back to homeostasis extrinsic motivation:extrinsic motivation: motivation that arises from external factors or rewards intrinsic motivation:intrinsic motivation: motivation based on internal feelings rather than external rewards habit:habit: pattern of behavior in which we regularly engage hierarchy of needs:hierarchy of needs: spectrum of needs ranging from basic biological needs to social needs to self-actualization instinct:instinct: species-specific pattern of behavior that is unlearned motivation:motivation: wants or needs that direct behavior toward some goal self-efficacyself-efficacy: individual’s belief in his own capabilities or capacities to complete a task Yerkes-Dodson law:Yerkes-Dodson law: simple tasks are performed best when arousal levels are relatively high, while complex tasks are best performed when arousal is lower THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER • Can you think of recent examples of how Maslow’s hierarchy of needs might have affected your behavior in some way? LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explain how different praise and mindsets can lead to different levels of performance How Mindset Influences Performance Imagine that you are a parent and your child has just brought home a report card from 4th grade that is really good. You look it over and feel proud of your son or daughter. With a wide grin on your face, you turn to your child and say: “I’m so proud of you! This report card is great! You __________” are so smart! must have worked so hard! have some jelly on your nose! We hope you didn’t choose the jelly statement. Between the other two options, which one would you be more likely to blurt out? It turns out that your choice could matter. Carol Dweck, who is now a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, has been studying factors that promote or interfere with achievement since the 1970s. Over this time, and especially since the mid-1990s, she came to realize that our ways of dealing with the world and particularly our behaviors in trying to achieve our own goals are influenced by what she calls “self-theories”: beliefs we have about our own abilities, strengths and weaknesses, and potential. These self-theories affect decisions we make about what is possible or sensible or reasonable to do in order to achieve our goals. Figure 1. Those with a growth mindset are optimistic about how the environment, experiences, and attitudes can influence intelligence. TRY ITTRY IT Before we start, here is one practice item. The 3×3 matrix is at the top and the pattern on the lower right is missing. Figure out which one of the eight patterns on the bottom, labeled 1 to 8, is the missing pattern. Before we discuss Carol Dweck’s work, please answer a few questions about your own beliefs. Try to answer based on your real ways of thinking. The questions are a bit repetitive, but answer each one without regard to your previous answers. Take the 8-question Mindset Quiz here or here Dr. Dweck and her colleagues have used questions like the ones you just answered to sort people into groups based on their beliefs about intelligence (and other abilities and skills). She has found that people tend to adopt one of two general set of beliefs about intelligence. People with a fixedfixed mindsetmindset tend to think of intelligence as an “entity”—something that is part of a person’s essential self. According to people with this belief, intelligence does not change much regardless of what we do or what we experience. Other people have a growth mindsetgrowth mindset, and they tend to think of intelligence as being “incremental”—a quality that can change for better or worse depending on what we do and on the experiences we have. Some people are strongly committed to one or the other end of the fixed vs. growth mindset scale, while others fall in-between to varying degrees. Study 1: Mueller & Dweck (1998) If Prof. Dweck is right, our mindset has a big impact on how well we achieve our potential—in school and in many other areas of our lives (for example, in sports, music, and business). But where do these different mindsets come from? There can be many reasons that a person comes to believe that intelligence is fixed or changeable, but one obvious influence on our way of thinking about ourselves is the messages we hear from adults as we grow up. Dweck and her then-graduate student Claudia Mueller wanted to see if they could influence the mindset of children, if only for a brief period of time, by giving different kinds of praise to the children. Their starting point was the unsurprising and well-established idea that praise is motivating. When we do something and receive praise, we are more likely to want to do that same thing again. But Mueller and Dweck wondered if all praise is equal. In particular, is it possible that certain types of praise that well-meaning parents and teachers often use could actually reduce a child’s motivation to learn and that child’s resiliency when he or she encounters challenges? The researchers recruited 128 fifth graders (70 girls and 58 boys ranging in age from 10 to 12) to participate in their study. Before we go into the details of the first experiment, please get a feel for the task that the children had to perform. You will have one minute to solve as many of the problems below as you can. (Note: Questions used with permission from http://www.smart-kit.com/scategory/brain-teasers/iq-test-questions/) For each problem, you will see a set of patterns arranged in a 3×3 matrix. Each matrix has one item missing, and your task is to figure out what the missing item is based on the changing patterns in the rows, columns, and diagonals. https://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/personality/quizshow.php?title=mindset-quiz_3YA&q=1 http://community.mindsetworks.com/what-s-my-mindset?view=quiz https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/04024500/13584535514_db32745625_k https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/04024500/13584535514_db32745625_k AnswerAnswer The correct answer is pattern #7. The pattern on the right in each row combines the dots from the other two patterns in that row. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2509 TRY ITTRY IT Now you will have ONE MINUTE to solve as many of the problems below as possible. Now that you’ve taken the test, how much would you like to try some more of these questions? Not at all 1 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11144140/practiceq 2 3 4 5 Very much How much did you enjoy working on these problems? Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 Very much How well do you think you did on these problems overall? Not very well 1 2 3 4 5 Very well If we gave you some more problems, would you prefer some more like the easier practice problem or some more like the hardest test problem you tried? Like the easier practice problem Like the hardest test problem The problem-solving task you just tried out is based on a widely used psychological test called the Raven’s Progressive Matrices. Most people find the test to be challenging, requiring close attention to detail and careful logical thinking. Mueller and Dweck chose this task because it could be adapted to be relatively easy or extremely difficult by changing the complexity of the patterns required for solution. The experiment had three stages, each based around a different set of matrix problems like the ones you worked on. Each child was tested one-on-one in an otherwise empty classroom by a research assistant. Stage 1: Pretest, Treatment, and Assessment of Motivation PRETEST The children were given instructions and 10 problems of that were fairly easy to solve. At the end of 4 minutes, they were stopped and the research assistant scored their answers. On average, the children attempted to answer 7.9 out of the 10 problems, and the mean number correct was 5.2. TREATMENT When you do something to manipulate an independent variable, that something you do (administer a pill, tell the participant something that might affect performance, etc.) is called a “treatment.” In this case, the treatment was the feedback the child received about his or her performance on the progressive matrices task. This treatment involved a bit of deception, because children received randomly assigned feedback. In other words, regardless of real performance, the children heard one of three statements depending on random assignment to a treatment condition. • First, every child was told: “Wow, you did very well on these problems. You got _____ right. That’s a really high score.” The minimum number right that a child heard was 80%, which is obviously well above the actual average of 51%. If a child got more than 80% correct, the actual number correct was used. • The next step was based on the treatment condition the child had been assigned to: ◦ Some of the children were praised for their ABILITY: “You must be smart at these problems.” ◦ Other children were praised for their EFFORT: “You must have worked hard at these problems.” ◦ The remaining children were in the CONTROL condition. They did not receive any additional feedback, aside from the general praise shown above. ASSESSMENT After receiving feedback and, for children in two of the conditions, additional praise, the children were asked a series of questions. The experimenters wanted to know if the success the children experienced in the first set of problems, along with the type of praise, influenced their choice of additional problems. They were told that they might get some more problems to solve and they were asked to choose the difficulty of those problems. There were several options, but the choice came down to this: ◦ Give me easy problems: “Problems that I’m pretty good at, so I can show that I’m smart.” ◦ Give me challenging problems: “Problems that I’ll learn a lot from, even if I won’t look so smart.” The children were then told that there might be some time at the end of the session to work on these problems they had chosen, but that the next problems they would work on had been determined before the experiment started. They were told this so they would not interpret the next problem set as being “easy” or “challenging” based on their selection. The results showed that the children were genuinely influenced by the praise they had received. The figure below shows the percentage of children choosing EASY problems, broken down by treatment condition. The children who were praised for how smart they were (ability) were far more likely to choose easy problems than were the children praise for working hard (effort). The control condition, children who were told they did well, but received no additional praise, were in the middle. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2509 TRY ITTRY IT Figure 2. The type of praise given influenced the types of problems students wanted to tackle. This graph shows the number of students choosing easy problems after given praise. Stage 2: Failure, Negative Feedback, and Consequences FAILURE Next, the children tried to solve a new set of 10 matrix problems and again they had 4 minutes. On the surface, these problems looked about the same as the first set, but they were considerably more difficult. After the 4-minute test period, the researchers scored the answers and, regardless of actual performance, they told the children that they had done poorly (“a lot worse”). No one was told that he or she had solved more than 50% correctly. In fact, this feedback was accurate. The results showed that the children found the problems difficult. On average, they attempted 5.8 of the 10 problems and correctly solved only 1.8 of them. There was no significant difference in number of problems solved for the three groups (ability feedback, effort feedback, and no- feedback control). https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11144717/typeofpraisegraph https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11144717/typeofpraisegraph CONSEQUENCES Now the experimenters wanted to know about the effect of “failure” on the children’s motivation (though the term “failure” was never used with the children). Immediately after receiving feedback, the children were asked a series of questions: • “How much would you like to take these problems home to work on?” [This was a measure of “task persistence”] • “How much did you like working on the first set of problems? How much did you enjoy working on the second set? How much fun were the problems? [These measured “task enjoyment”] • Using a somewhat complicated measure, the children were also asked to explain their difficulties with the second problem set by attributing failure to lack of ability or lack of effort. This was done in a way that they could explain their problems on the second set as partially due to low ability and partially to low effort. RESULTS • “How much would you like to take these problems home?” The children answered on a 1-to-6 scale, where higher numbers means more interest in taking the problems home to practice. Figure 3. How praise influenced students’ desires to take the problems home. Statistical note: the Ability group was significantly lower than the other two. There was no significant difference between the Control and Effort groups. • “How much fun were the problems?” The children answered on a 1-to-6 scale, where higher numbers means more enjoyment of the problems. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11145106/praisegivenforhome https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11145106/praisegivenforhome Figure 4. Tye type of praise given had a small, but noticeable, impact on how much students enjoyed the problems. Statistical note: all three groups were significantly different from each other. • Why did you perform poorly on this second set of problems? The children expressed their own explanation for their poor performance using a somewhat complicated procedure. It was not a simple ability vs. effort choice and they could apportion their failure partially to either cause (reference the original study for more details). https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11145455/praiseandfun https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11145455/praiseandfun An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2509 TRY ITTRY IT Instructions:Instructions: Click and drag the circles on the right (Posttest) to where you think they should be to reflect the results of the experiment. When you’re done, click the link below to see the actual results. AnswerAnswer An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2509 An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2509 TRY ITTRY IT Figure 5. When asked how much of their “failure” was due to low ability, those praised for ability were more likely to blame their own inability. When asked how much of their failure was due to low effort, those who were praised for ability did not blame their effort, rather their ability. STAGE 3: POSTTEST For the last stage of the experiment, the children were given a new set of problems that was similar in difficulty to the first set. The problems were moderately difficult, and the children had 4 minutes to solve as many as possible. The figure below shows the change in the average number of problems between the pretest (Stage 1) and the posttest (Stage 3). https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/29150742/Screen-Shot-2018-10-26-at-1.55.05-PM1 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/29150742/Screen-Shot-2018-10-26-at-1.55.05-PM1 Figure 5. The difference between the number of problems solved on the pre-test as compared with the post-test. An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2509 TRY ITTRY IT Using the figure below, which shows a sequence of influences beginning with either praise for effort or praise for ability, build a psychological theory. This is the psychological theory based on Dr. Dweck’s ideas, showing how the two different mindsets lead to different outcome. (Note: This particular version of her theory did not come directly from her papers. We have The Mueller and Dweck experiment shows how a single comment to a child can have at least a temporary effect. It is unlikely that these children were still influenced by that one comment (“You’re smart!” or “You worked hard!”) a day later or even an hour later. But at least for a short time in a controlled setting, the children were apparently affected by what the adult researcher said to them. Why would this matter? If a child repeatedly and consistently hears one sort of encouragement or the other, the child can internalize that way of thinking. Later, as an adolescent and then an adult, the individual’s “mindset” can determine how that person approaches new opportunities to learn and to grow intellectually. Before you go on, we’d like you to create a psychological theory. This may sound like a strange thing to do, because theories are often presented to you in textbooks as being the final summary of some research. Sometimes that is true, but the primary use of theories in real scientific research is as a temporary and changeable summary of a researcher’s ideas. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11150500/changes https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11150500/changes put them together in this form to illustrate how experience can influence thinking which then influences behavior.) What this theory says is that different kinds of praise encourage the child to focus on different goals. Praise for effort tells the child that the process of learning is important and reward comes from trying hard. Praise for ability tells the child that performance comes from something mysterious inside of you (“intelligence” or “talent”) rather than from what you do. According to the theory (and supported by the results), children who had been praised for effort could focus on the process of learning, so failure at hard problems could be seen as a challenge—even something fun—and failure could motivate them. The children who were praised for their intelligence, which effort cannot change, felt smart when they had easy problems, but the hard problems led to a disturbing realization: maybe I don’t have that magical ability. At stage 3 in the experiment, children who were energized by the difficult problems tackled the final set of problems, which were fairly easy, with enthusiasm that led to success. The children who were discouraged by failure handicapped themselves on the last set of problems, doing worse than they had at the beginning of the study. Figure 6. Students with a growth mindset demonstrated behaviors that led to better math performance. Next, let’s read about a second study by Dweck’s research team, though this one is described more briefly and with less detail. Study 2 is not an experiment because there are no manipulated variables. It is a longitudinal study, which means that the same participants (in this case, children) are tested repeatedly across a long period of time. Study 2: Blackwell, Trzesniewski, and Dweck (2007) In this study (Note: Lisa S. Blackwell, Kali H. Trzesniewski, and Carol S. Dweck (2007). Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across and adolescent transition: A longitudinal study and an intervention. Child Development, January/February 2007, Volume 78, Number 1, Pages 246 – 263.), Dweck and her colleagues administered a questionnaire about beliefs and attitudes to some 7th graders in public schools, and then they tracked 373 of the students from the beginning of the 7th grade to the end of 8th grade. This period, which marked the transition from elementary school to junior high school, was considered a particularly interesting time because it was a challenging, even stressful, time for the students and the children’s learning styles and attitudes could now have a substantial impact on their academic achievement. At the beginning of their 7th grade school year, the children were tested on their mindset (various levels of commitment to fixed or growth mindset), learning goals (preference for easy or challenging work), beliefs about effort (whether it tends to lead to improvement or not), and attitudes about failure (whether it is motivating or discouraging). The researchers focused on the students’ mathematics grades across the two years of the study. They chose mathematics because students tend to have strong beliefs about their skills (“I’m good at math” or “I’m not a math person”), which is influenced by their mindset and because math proficiency can be tested and graded fairly objectively. Although the study focused on math, the researchers were interested in any area of study or skill, not just math. The figure below shows the average grades (Note: More accurately, predicted grades from growth curves based on data and using a technique called hierarchical linear modeling.) of the students with strong fixed and strong growth mindsets based on the initial test. Students with mixed mindsets are not included in this graph. At the end of the first semester, there was a very modest difference of less than two points in math grades. The trends for the two lines are obviously different. The students with the fixed mindset (red line) showed a slight decline in average grades across the two years of the study. Students with the growth mindset (green line) show steady improvement across the two years, with their average grade increasing by nearly 3-points. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/04031723/math https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/04031723/math Figure 7. Differences in math grades between those with growth and fixed mindsets. At the beginning of the study, the students—then just starting the first term of the 7th grade—filled out a questionnaire about their attitudes and beliefs about learning. The table below summarizes these differences. (Note: This table is not in the research paper. It is based on correlations between answers to the mindset question and answers to questions about these other issues. See Table 1 of the published study.) The reason for these questions is an important part of the psychology of learning. Mindset itself (fixed vs. growth) doesn’t cause better or worse performance. Mindset leads to behaviors (types of studying, reactions to setbacks) that in turn affects the quality of learning. The researchers found that children with growth mindset (related to EFFORT praise in the first study) had different attitudes than children with fixed mindsets (related to ABILITY praise in the first study). The table below summarizes their findings. Fixed MindsetFixed Mindset Growth MindsetGrowth Mindset Preferred difficulty of work Easy success Challenging Belief about value of effort Doesn’t lead to improvement Leads to improvement Attitude about failure Discouraging Motivating The table indicates that children with different mindsets sought out different kinds of experience, with growth mindset children preferring challenging experiences, while those with a fixed mindset preferred easier learning experiences that led to easy success. The growth mindset students believed that working hard—effort—leads to improvement, while those with fixed mindsets tended to undervalue effort, believing that hard work is frustrating because we can’t do better than our “talents” or “innate abilities” allow us to do. Finally, the growth mindset children found difficult work and even failure to be a source of inspiration. They wanted to prove to themselves and others that they could do what was needed to succeed. The fixed mindset children tended to respond to difficulty and failure with discouragement, believing that it simply reaffirmed their own limitations. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11151210/mindsets https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11151210/mindsets An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2509 Takeaways The two studies we have discussed are just two of dozens of research projects by Dweck and others that show how mindset is related to differences in achievement. In another study, Grant and Dweck (2003) followed several hundred college students taking a pre-med organic chemistry course, as this is one of the most important and challenging courses for pre-med students at most universities. Students with a growth mindset outperformed students with a fixed mindset, and the two groups reported differences in attitudes and beliefs similar to those shown in the table above. Mindset is just one factor that influences how we learn and how we respond to challenges. Whether you have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset, you can study hard and do well in school and in other areas. Here is a summary point from Carol Dweck: “It should be noted that in these studies…students who have a fixed mindset but who are well prepared and do not encounter difficulties can do just fine. However, when they encounter challenges or obstacles they may then be at a disadvantage.” One last thing to remember is this: you can change your mindsetyou can change your mindset. If you regularly handicap yourself by your beliefs (I just don’t have the talent for this) and attitudes about learning (I can’t learn this), you can change those beliefs and attitudes. That change in mindset can be the difference between an effective response to challenges or an avoidance of those challenges. Keep in mind that your beliefs and attitudes are the result of many years of experience, so you won’t change your mindset overnight by simply deciding to be different. You may have to work at it. In particular, when you encounter difficulty—a poor grade on a test, a paper that has some negative comments from your professor, or a reading assignment that leaves you confused—that is the time that your mindset can have a huge impact on what you do next. Don’t let your mindset prevent you from realizing your abilities or reaching your potential! Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Psychology in Real Life: Growth Mindsets. Authored byAuthored by: Patrick Carroll for Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • Motivation. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:MLADqXMi@5/Motivation. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/ 4abf04bf-93a0-45c3-9cbc-2cefd46e68cc@5.48 • climbing picture. Provided byProvided by: Pixabay. Located atLocated at: https://www.pexels.com/photo/achievement-action-adventure-backlit-209209/. LicenseLicense: CC0: No Rights Reserved • picture of teacher with students. Authored byAuthored by: Army Medicine. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. Located atLocated at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/armymedicine/13584535514. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content • RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. Authored byAuthored by: Dan Pink. Located atLocated at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube License Public domain contentPublic domain content • Math student gets help from teacher. Authored byAuthored by: Sue Sapp. Provided byProvided by: U.S. Air Force. Located atLocated at: http://www.robins.af.mil/News/Photos/igphoto/2000659561/. LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known Copyright PSYCH IN REAL LIFE: GROWTH MINDSETS LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explain how different praise and mindsets can lead to different levels of performance https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:MLADqXMi@5/Motivation https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.pexels.com/photo/achievement-action-adventure-backlit-209209/ https://creativecommons.org/about/cc0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/armymedicine/13584535514 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc http://www.robins.af.mil/News/Photos/igphoto/2000659561/ https://creativecommons.org/about/pdm Figure 1. Those with a growth mindset are optimistic about how the environment, experiences, and attitudes can influence intelligence. How Mindset Influences Performance Imagine that you are a parent and your child has just brought home a report card from 4th grade that is really good. You look it over and feel proud of your son or daughter. With a wide grin on your face, you turn to your child and say: “I’m so proud of you! This report card is great! You __________” are so smart! must have worked so hard! have some jelly on your nose! We hope you didn’t choose the jelly statement. Between the other two options, which one would you be more likely to blurt out? It turns out that your choice could matter. Carol Dweck, who is now a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, has been studying factors that promote or interfere with achievement since the 1970s. Over this time, and especially since the mid-1990s, she came to realize that our ways of dealing with the world and particularly our behaviors in trying to achieve our own goals are influenced by what she calls “self-theories”: beliefs we have about our own abilities, strengths and weaknesses, and potential. These self-theories affect decisions we make about what is possible or sensible or reasonable to do in order to achieve our goals. Before we discuss Carol Dweck’s work, please answer a few questions about your own beliefs. Try to answer based on your real ways of thinking. The questions are a bit repetitive, but answer each one without regard to your previous answers. Take the 8-question Mindset Quiz here or here Dr. Dweck and her colleagues have used questions like the ones you just answered to sort people into groups based on their beliefs about intelligence (and other abilities and skills). She has found that people tend to adopt one of two general set of beliefs about intelligence. People with a fixedfixed mindsetmindset tend to think of intelligence as an “entity”—something that is part of a person’s essential self. According to people with this belief, intelligence does not change much regardless of what we do or what we experience. Other people have a growth mindsetgrowth mindset, and they tend to think of intelligence as being “incremental”—a quality that can change for better or worse depending on what we do and on the experiences we have. Some people are strongly committed to one or the other end of the fixed vs. growth mindset scale, while others fall in-between to varying degrees. Study 1: Mueller & Dweck (1998) If Prof. Dweck is right, our mindset has a big impact on how well we achieve our potential—in school and in many other areas of our lives (for example, in sports, music, and business). But where do these different mindsets come from? There can be many reasons that a person comes to believe that intelligence is fixed or changeable, but one obvious influence on our way of thinking about ourselves is the messages we hear from adults as we grow up. Dweck and her then-graduate student Claudia Mueller wanted to see if they could influence the mindset of children, if only for a brief period of time, by giving different kinds of praise to the children. Their starting point was the unsurprising and well-established idea that praise is motivating. When we do something and receive praise, we are more likely to want to do that same thing again. But Mueller and Dweck wondered if all praise is equal. In https://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/personality/quizshow.php?title=mindset-quiz_3YA&q=1 http://community.mindsetworks.com/what-s-my-mindset?view=quiz https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/04024500/13584535514_db32745625_k https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/04024500/13584535514_db32745625_k TRY ITTRY IT Before we start, here is one practice item. The 3×3 matrix is at the top and the pattern on the lower right is missing. Figure out which one of the eight patterns on the bottom, labeled 1 to 8, is the missing pattern. AnswerAnswer The correct answer is pattern #7. The pattern on the right in each row combines the dots from the other two patterns in that row. particular, is it possible that certain types of praise that well-meaning parents and teachers often use could actually reduce a child’s motivation to learn and that child’s resiliency when he or she encounters challenges? The researchers recruited 128 fifth graders (70 girls and 58 boys ranging in age from 10 to 12) to participate in their study. Before we go into the details of the first experiment, please get a feel for the task that the children had to perform. You will have one minute to solve as many of the problems below as you can. (Note: Questions used with permission from http://www.smart-kit.com/scategory/brain-teasers/iq-test-questions/) For each problem, you will see a set of patterns arranged in a 3×3 matrix. Each matrix has one item missing, and your task is to figure out what the missing item is based on the changing patterns in the rows, columns, and diagonals. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11144140/practiceq TRY ITTRY IT Now you will have ONE MINUTE to solve as many of the problems below as possible. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/mindset/test/mindset_test.html Now that you’ve taken the test, how much would you like to try some more of these questions? Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 Very much How much did you enjoy working on these problems? Not at all 1 2 3 4 5 Very much How well do you think you did on these problems overall? Not very well 1 2 3 4 5 Very well If we gave you some more problems, would you prefer some more like the easier practice problem or some more like the hardest test problem you tried? Like the easier practice problem Like the hardest test problem The problem-solving task you just tried out is based on a widely used psychological test called the Raven’s Progressive Matrices. Most people find the test to be challenging, requiring close attention to detail and careful logical thinking. Mueller and Dweck chose this task because it could be adapted to be relatively easy or extremely difficult by changing the complexity of the patterns required for solution. The experiment had three stages, each based around a different set of matrix problems like the ones you worked on. Each child was tested one-on-one in an otherwise empty classroom by a research assistant. Stage 1: Pretest, Treatment, and Assessment of Motivation PRETEST The children were given instructions and 10 problems of that were fairly easy to solve. At the end of 4 minutes, they were stopped and the research assistant scored their answers. On average, the children attempted to answer 7.9 out of the 10 problems, and the mean number correct was 5.2. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/mindset/test/mindset_test.html TREATMENT When you do something to manipulate an independent variable, that something you do (administer a pill, tell the participant something that might affect performance, etc.) is called a “treatment.” In this case, the treatment was the feedback the child received about his or her performance on the progressive matrices task. This treatment involved a bit of deception, because children received randomly assigned feedback. In other words, regardless of real performance, the children heard one of three statements depending on random assignment to a treatment condition. • First, every child was told: “Wow, you did very well on these problems. You got _____ right. That’s a really high score.” The minimum number right that a child heard was 80%, which is obviously well above the actual average of 51%. If a child got more than 80% correct, the actual number correct was used. • The next step was based on the treatment condition the child had been assigned to: ◦ Some of the children were praised for their ABILITY: “You must be smart at these problems.” ◦ Other children were praised for their EFFORT: “You must have worked hard at these problems.” ◦ The remaining children were in the CONTROL condition. They did not receive any additional feedback, aside from the general praise shown above. ASSESSMENT After receiving feedback and, for children in two of the conditions, additional praise, the children were asked a series of questions. The experimenters wanted to know if the success the children experienced in the first set of problems, along with the type of praise, influenced their choice of additional problems. They were told that they might get some more problems to solve and they were asked to choose the difficulty of those problems. There were several options, but the choice came down to this: ◦ Give me easy problems: “Problems that I’m pretty good at, so I can show that I’m smart.” ◦ Give me challenging problems: “Problems that I’ll learn a lot from, even if I won’t look so smart.” The children were then told that there might be some time at the end of the session to work on these problems they had chosen, but that the next problems they would work on had been determined before the experiment started. They were told this so they would not interpret the next problem set as being “easy” or “challenging” based on their selection. The results showed that the children were genuinely influenced by the praise they had received. The figure below shows the percentage of children choosing EASY problems, broken down by treatment condition. The children who were praised for how smart they were (ability) were far more likely to choose easy problems than were the children praise for working hard (effort). The control condition, children who were told they did well, but received no additional praise, were in the middle. TRY ITTRY IT https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11830 Figure 2. The type of praise given influenced the types of problems students wanted to tackle. This graph shows the number of students choosing easy problems after given praise. Stage 2: Failure, Negative Feedback, and Consequences FAILURE Next, the children tried to solve a new set of 10 matrix problems and again they had 4 minutes. On the surface, these problems looked about the same as the first set, but they were considerably more difficult. After the 4-minute test period, the researchers scored the answers and, regardless of actual performance, they told the children that they had done poorly (“a lot worse”). No one was told that he or she had solved more than 50% correctly. In fact, this feedback was accurate. The results showed that the children found the problems difficult. On average, they attempted 5.8 of the 10 problems and correctly solved only 1.8 of them. There was no significant difference in number of problems solved for the three groups (ability feedback, effort feedback, and no- feedback control). https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11144717/typeofpraisegraph https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11144717/typeofpraisegraph CONSEQUENCES Now the experimenters wanted to know about the effect of “failure” on the children’s motivation (though the term “failure” was never used with the children). Immediately after receiving feedback, the children were asked a series of questions: • “How much would you like to take these problems home to work on?” [This was a measure of “task persistence”] • “How much did you like working on the first set of problems? How much did you enjoy working on the second set? How much fun were the problems? [These measured “task enjoyment”] • Using a somewhat complicated measure, the children were also asked to explain their difficulties with the second problem set by attributing failure to lack of ability or lack of effort. This was done in a way that they could explain their problems on the second set as partially due to low ability and partially to low effort. RESULTS • “How much would you like to take these problems home?” The children answered on a 1-to-6 scale, where higher numbers means more interest in taking the problems home to practice. Figure 3. How praise influenced students’ desires to take the problems home. Statistical note: the Ability group was significantly lower than the other two. There was no significant difference between the Control and Effort groups. • “How much fun were the problems?” The children answered on a 1-to-6 scale, where higher numbers means more enjoyment of the problems. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11145106/praisegivenforhome https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11145106/praisegivenforhome Figure 4. Tye type of praise given had a small, but noticeable, impact on how much students enjoyed the problems. Statistical note: all three groups were significantly different from each other. • Why did you perform poorly on this second set of problems? The children expressed their own explanation for their poor performance using a somewhat complicated procedure. It was not a simple ability vs. effort choice and they could apportion their failure partially to either cause (reference the original study for more details). https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11145455/praiseandfun https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11145455/praiseandfun TRY ITTRY IT Instructions:Instructions: Click and drag the circles on the right (Posttest) to where you think they should be to reflect the results of the experiment. When you’re done, click the link below to see the actual results. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/mindset/linegraph2.html AnswerAnswer An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=5109 TRY ITTRY IT https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11831 Figure 5. When asked how much of their “failure” was due to low ability, those praised for ability were more likely to blame their own inability. When asked how much of their failure was due to low effort, those who were praised for ability did not blame their effort, rather their ability. STAGE 3: POSTTEST For the last stage of the experiment, the children were given a new set of problems that was similar in difficulty to the first set. The problems were moderately difficult, and the children had 4 minutes to solve as many as possible. The figure below shows the change in the average number of problems between the pretest (Stage 1) and the posttest (Stage 3). The Mueller and Dweck experiment shows how a single comment to a child can have at least a temporary effect. It is unlikely that these children were still influenced by that one comment (“You’re smart!” or “You worked hard!”) a day later or even an hour later. But at least for a short time in a controlled setting, the children were apparently affected by what the adult researcher said to them. Why would this matter? If a child repeatedly and consistently hears one sort of encouragement or the other, the child can internalize that way of thinking. Later, as an adolescent and then an adult, the individual’s “mindset” can determine how that person approaches new opportunities to learn and to grow intellectually. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/29150742/Screen-Shot-2018-10-26-at-1.55.05-PM1 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/29150742/Screen-Shot-2018-10-26-at-1.55.05-PM1 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/mindset/linegraph2.html Figure 5. The difference between the number of problems solved on the pre-test as compared with the post-test. TRY ITTRY IT Using the figure below, which shows a sequence of influences beginning with either praise for effort or praise for ability, build a psychological theory. https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290549119774223068/embed This is the psychological theory based on Dr. Dweck’s ideas, showing how the two different mindsets lead to different outcome. (Note: This particular version of her theory did not come directly from her papers. We have put them together in this form to illustrate how experience can influence thinking which then influences behavior.) What this theory says is that different kinds of praise encourage the child to focus on different goals. Praise for effort tells the child that the process of learning is important and reward comes from trying hard. Praise for ability tells the child that performance comes from something mysterious inside of you (“intelligence” or “talent”) rather than from what you do. According to the theory (and supported by the results), children who had been praised for effort could focus on the process of learning, so failure at hard problems could be seen as a challenge—even something fun—and failure could motivate them. The children who were praised for their intelligence, which effort cannot change, Before you go on, we’d like you to create a psychological theory. This may sound like a strange thing to do, because theories are often presented to you in textbooks as being the final summary of some research. Sometimes that is true, but the primary use of theories in real scientific research is as a temporary and changeable summary of a researcher’s ideas. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11150500/changes https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11150500/changes https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290549119774223068/embed felt smart when they had easy problems, but the hard problems led to a disturbing realization: maybe I don’t have that magical ability. At stage 3 in the experiment, children who were energized by the difficult problems tackled the final set of problems, which were fairly easy, with enthusiasm that led to success. The children who were discouraged by failure handicapped themselves on the last set of problems, doing worse than they had at the beginning of the study. Figure 6. Students with a growth mindset demonstrated behaviors that led to better math performance. Next, let’s read about a second study by Dweck’s research team, though this one is described more briefly and with less detail. Study 2 is not an experiment because there are no manipulated variables. It is a longitudinal study, which means that the same participants (in this case, children) are tested repeatedly across a long period of time. Study 2: Blackwell, Trzesniewski, and Dweck (2007) In this study (Note: Lisa S. Blackwell, Kali H. Trzesniewski, and Carol S. Dweck (2007). Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across and adolescent transition: A longitudinal study and an intervention. Child Development, January/February 2007, Volume 78, Number 1, Pages 246 – 263.), Dweck and her colleagues administered a questionnaire about beliefs and attitudes to some 7th graders in public schools, and then they tracked 373 of the students from the beginning of the 7th grade to the end of 8th grade. This period, which marked the transition from elementary school to junior high school, was considered a particularly interesting time because it was a challenging, even stressful, time for the students and the children’s learning styles and attitudes could now have a substantial impact on their academic achievement. At the beginning of their 7th grade school year, the children were tested on their mindset (various levels of commitment to fixed or growth mindset), learning goals (preference for easy or challenging work), beliefs about effort (whether it tends to lead to improvement or not), and attitudes about failure (whether it is motivating or discouraging). The researchers focused on the students’ mathematics grades across the two years of the study. They chose mathematics because students tend to have strong beliefs about their skills (“I’m good at math” or “I’m not a math person”), which is influenced by their mindset and because math proficiency can be tested and graded fairly objectively. Although the study focused on math, the researchers were interested in any area of study or skill, not just math. The figure below shows the average grades (Note: More accurately, predicted grades from growth curves based on data and using a technique called hierarchical linear modeling.) of the students with strong fixed and strong growth mindsets based on the initial test. Students with mixed mindsets are not included in this graph. At the end of the first semester, there was a very modest difference of less than two points in math grades. The trends for the two lines are obviously different. The students with the fixed mindset (red line) showed a slight decline in average grades across the two years of the study. Students with the growth mindset (green line) show steady improvement across the two years, with their average grade increasing by nearly 3-points. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/04031723/math https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/04031723/math Figure 7. Differences in math grades between those with growth and fixed mindsets. At the beginning of the study, the students—then just starting the first term of the 7th grade—filled out a questionnaire about their attitudes and beliefs about learning. The table below summarizes these differences. (Note: This table is not in the research paper. It is based on correlations between answers to the mindset question and answers to questions about these other issues. See Table 1 of the published study.) The reason for these questions is an important part of the psychology of learning. Mindset itself (fixed vs. growth) doesn’t cause better or worse performance. Mindset leads to behaviors (types of studying, reactions to setbacks) that in turn affects the quality of learning. The researchers found that children with growth mindset (related to EFFORT praise in the first study) had different attitudes than children with fixed mindsets (related to ABILITY praise in the first study). The table below summarizes their findings. Fixed MindsetFixed Mindset Growth MindsetGrowth Mindset Preferred difficulty of work Easy success Challenging Belief about value of effort Doesn’t lead to improvement Leads to improvement Attitude about failure Discouraging Motivating The table indicates that children with different mindsets sought out different kinds of experience, with growth mindset children preferring challenging experiences, while those with a fixed mindset preferred easier learning experiences that led to easy success. The growth mindset students believed that working hard—effort—leads to improvement, while those with fixed mindsets tended to undervalue effort, believing that hard work is frustrating because we can’t do better than our “talents” or “innate abilities” allow us to do. Finally, the growth mindset children found difficult work and even failure to be a source of inspiration. They wanted to prove to themselves and others that they could do what was needed to succeed. The fixed mindset children tended to respond to difficulty and failure with discouragement, believing that it simply reaffirmed their own limitations. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11151210/mindsets https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/05/11151210/mindsets Takeaways The two studies we have discussed are just two of dozens of research projects by Dweck and others that show how mindset is related to differences in achievement. In another study, Grant and Dweck (2003) followed several hundred college students taking a pre-med organic chemistry course, as this is one of the most important and challenging courses for pre-med students at most universities. Students with a growth mindset outperformed students with a fixed mindset, and the two groups reported differences in attitudes and beliefs similar to those shown in the table above. Mindset is just one factor that influences how we learn and how we respond to challenges. Whether you have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset, you can study hard and do well in school and in other areas. Here is a summary point from Carol Dweck: “It should be noted that in these studies…students who have a fixed mindset but who are well prepared and do not encounter difficulties can do just fine. However, when they encounter challenges or obstacles they may then be at a disadvantage.” One last thing to remember is this: you can change your mindsetyou can change your mindset. If you regularly handicap yourself by your beliefs (I just don’t have the talent for this) and attitudes about learning (I can’t learn this), you can change those beliefs and attitudes. That change in mindset can be the difference between an effective response to challenges or an avoidance of those challenges. Keep in mind that your beliefs and attitudes are the result of many years of experience, so you won’t change your mindset overnight by simply deciding to be different. You may have to work at it. In particular, when you encounter difficulty—a poor grade on a test, a paper that has some negative comments from your professor, or a reading assignment that leaves you confused—that is the time that your mindset can have a huge impact on what you do next. Don’t let your mindset prevent you from realizing your abilities or reaching your potential! Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original • Psychology in Real Life: Growth Mindsets. Authored byAuthored by: Patrick Carroll for Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously • picture of teacher with students. Authored byAuthored by: Army Medicine. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. Located atLocated at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/armymedicine/13584535514. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution Public domain contentPublic domain content • Math student gets help from teacher. Authored byAuthored by: Sue Sapp. Provided byProvided by: U.S. Air Force. Located atLocated at: http://www.robins.af.mil/News/Photos/igphoto/2000659561/. LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known Copyright https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/armymedicine/13584535514 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://www.robins.af.mil/News/Photos/igphoto/2000659561/ https://creativecommons.org/about/pdm HUNGER AND EATING What you’ll learn to do: describe hunger and eating in relation to motivation, obesity, anorexia, and bulimia Eating is essential for survival, and it is no surprise that a drive like hunger exists to ensure that we seek out sustenance. While this module will focus primarily on the physiological mechanisms that regulate hunger and eating, powerful social, cultural, and economic influences also play important roles. This section will explain the regulation of hunger, eating, and body weight, and we will discuss the adverse consequences of disordered eating. Visit this course online to take this short practice quiz: LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES • Describe how hunger and eating are regulated https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/03/23215037/3063941395_17c6537a0c_z • Differentiate between levels of overweight and obesity and the associated health consequences • Explain the health consequences resulting from anorexia and bulimia nervosa Physiological Mechanisms There are a number of physiological mechanisms that serve as the basis for hunger. When our stomachs are empty, they contract, causing both hunger pangs and the secretion of chemical messages that travel to the brain to serve as a signal to initiate feeding behavior. When our blood glucose levels drop, the pancreas and liver generate a number of chemical signals that induce hunger (Konturek et al., 2003; Novin, Robinson, Culbreth, & Tordoff, 1985) and thus initiate feeding behavior. For most people, once they have eaten, they feel satiationsatiation, or fullness and satisfaction, and their eating behavior stops. Like the initiation of eating, satiation is also regulated by several physiological mechanisms. As blood glucose levels increase, the pancreas and liver send signals to shut off hunger and eating (Drazen & Woods, 2003; Druce, Small, & Bloom, 2004; Greary, 1990). The food’s passage through the gastrointestinal tract also provides important satiety signals to the brain (Woods, 2004), and fat cells release leptinleptin, a satiety hormone. The various hunger and satiety signals that are involved in the regulation of eating are integrated in the brain. Research suggests that several areas of the hypothalamus and hindbrain are especially important sites where this integration occurs (Ahima & Antwi, 2008; Woods & D’Alessio, 2008). Ultimately, activity in the brain determines whether or not we engage in feeding behavior (Figure 1). Figure 1. Hunger and eating are regulated by a complex interplay of hunger and satiety signals that are integrated in the brain. LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING See how damage to the hypothalamus causes extreme dieting issues in the following PsychSim Tutorial. The tutorial is only intended for practice. Please disregard the final screen that requests you submit answers to your instructor. ◦ Hunger and the Fat Rat Metabolism and Body Weight Our body weight is affected by a number of factors, including gene-environment interactions, and the number of calories we consume versus the number of calories we burn in daily activity. If our caloric intake exceeds our caloric use, our bodies store excess energy in the form of fat. If we consume fewer calories than we burn off, then stored fat will be converted to energy. Our energy expenditure is obviously affected by our levels of activity, but our body’s metabolic rate also comes into play. A person’s metabolic ratemetabolic rate is the amount of energy that is http://bcs.worthpublishers.com/webpub/Ektron/myersAP1e/PsychSim5%20Tutorials/Hunger_And_The_Fat_Rat/hunger_and_fat_rat.htm expended in a given period of time, and there is tremendous individual variability in our metabolic rates. People with high rates of metabolism are able to burn off calories more easily than those with lower rates of metabolism. We all experience fluctuations in our weight from time to time, but generally, most people’s weights fluctuate within a narrow margin, in the absence of extreme changes in diet and/or physical activity. This observation led some to propose a set-point theory of body weight regulation. The set-point theoryset-point theory asserts that each individual has an ideal body weight, or set point, which is resistant to change. This set-point is genetically predetermined and efforts to move our weight significantly from the set-point are resisted by compensatory changes in energy intake and/or expenditure (Speakman et al., 2011). Some of the predictions generated from this particular theory have not received empirical support. For example, there are no changes in metabolic rate between individuals who had recently lost significant amounts of weight and a control group (Weinsier et al., 2000). In addition, the set-point theory fails to account for the influence of social and environmental factors in the regulation of body weight (Martin-Gronert & Ozanne, 2013; Speakman et al., 2011). Despite these limitations, set-point theory is still often used as a simple, intuitive explanation of how body weight is regulated. Obesity When someone weighs more than what is generally accepted as healthy for a given height, they are considered overweight or obese. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an adult with a bodybody mass indexmass index (BMI) between 25 and 29.9 is considered overweightoverweight (Figure 2). An adult with a BMIBMI of 30 or higher is considered obeseobese (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2012). People who are so overweight that they are at risk for death are classified as morbidly obese. Morbid obesityMorbid obesity is defined as having a BMI over 40. Note that although BMI has been used as a healthy weight indicator by the World Health Organization (WHO), the CDC, and other groups, its value as an assessment tool has been questioned. The BMI is most useful for studying populations, which is the work of these organizations. It is less useful in assessing an individual since height and weight measurements fail to account for important factors like fitness level. An athlete, for example, may have a high BMI because the tool doesn’t distinguish between the body’s percentage of fat and muscle in a person’s weight. 30” area covers approximately 140–350 pounds at height 4’11” and extends to approximately 265–350 pounds at height 6’6.”" width="684" height="559" data-media-type="image/jpeg">
Figure 2. This chart shows how adult BMI is calculated. Individuals find their height on the y-axis and their weight on the x-axis to
determine their BMI.
Being extremely overweight or obese is a risk factor for several negative health consequences. These include, but
are not limited to, an increased risk for cardiovascular disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, liver disease, sleep
apnea, colon cancer, breast cancer, infertility, and arthritis. Given that it is estimated that in the United States
around one-third of the adult population is obese and that nearly two-thirds of adults and one in six children
qualify as overweight (CDC, 2012), there is substantial interest in trying to understand how to combat this
important public health concern.
What causes someone to be overweight or obese? You have already read that both genes and environment are
important factors for determining body weight, and if more calories are consumed than expended, excess energy
is stored as fat. However, socioeconomic status and the physical environment must also be considered as
contributing factors (CDC, 2012). For example, an individual who lives in an impoverished neighborhood that is
overrun with crime may never feel comfortable walking or biking to work or to the local market. This might limit the
amount of physical activity in which he engages and result in an increased body weight. Similarly, some people
may not be able to afford healthy food options from their market, or these options may be unavailable (especially
in urban areas or poorer neighborhoods); therefore, some people rely primarily on available, inexpensive, high fat,
and high calorie fast food as their primary source of nutrition.

Figure 3. Gastric banding surgery creates a small pouch of stomach, reducing the size of the stomach that can be used for
digestion.
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch this video that describes two different types of bariatric surgeries.
Generally, overweight and obese individuals are encouraged to try to reduce their weights through a combination
of both diet and exercise. While some people are very successful with these approaches, many struggle to lose
excess weight. In cases in which a person has had no success with repeated attempts to reduce weight or is at
risk for death because of obesity, bariatric surgery may be recommended. Bariatric surgeryBariatric surgery is a type of surgery
specifically aimed at weight reduction, and it involves modifying the gastrointestinal system to reduce the amount
of food that can be eaten and/or limiting how much of the digested food can be absorbed (Figure 3) (Mayo Clinic,
2013). A recent meta-analysis suggests that bariatric surgery is more effective than non-surgical treatment for
obesity in the two-years immediately following the procedure, but to date, no long-term studies yet exist (Gloy et
al., 2013).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8D8zpLqpw8

Figure 4. Eugenia Martínez Vallejo, depicted in this 1680
painting, may have had Prader-Willi syndrome. At just
eight years old, she weighed approximately 120 pounds,
and she was nicknamed “La Monstrua” (the monster).
DIG DEEPER: PRADER-WILLI SYNDROMEDIG DEEPER: PRADER-WILLI SYNDROME
Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS) is a genetic disorder that results in persistent feelings of intense hunger and
reduced rates of metabolism. Typically, affected children have to be supervised around the clock to ensure that
they do not engage in excessive eating. Currently, PWS is the leading genetic cause of morbid obesity in
children, and it is associated with a number of cognitive deficits and emotional problems (Figure 4).
While genetic testing can be used to make a diagnosis,
there are a number of behavioral diagnostic criteria
associated with PWS. From birth to 2 years of age, lack
of muscle tone and poor sucking behavior may serve as
early signs of PWS. Developmental delays are seen
between the ages of 6 and 12, and excessive eating and
cognitive deficits associated with PWS usually onset a
little later.
While the exact mechanisms of PWS are not fully
understood, there is evidence that affected individuals
have hypothalamic abnormalities. This is not surprising,
given the hypothalamus’s role in regulating hunger and
eating. However, as you will learn in the next section of
this module, the hypothalamus is also involved in the
regulation of sexual behavior. Consequently, many
individuals suffering from PWS fail to reach sexual
maturity during adolescence.
There is no current treatment or cure for PWS. However,
if weight can be controlled in these individuals, then their
life expectancies are significantly increased (historically,
sufferers of PWS often died in adolescence or early
adulthood). Advances in the use of various psychoactive
medications and growth hormones continue to enhance
the quality of life for individuals with PWS (Cassidy &
Driscoll, 2009; Prader-Willi Syndrome Association, 2012).
An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
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An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2513
An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
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TRY ITTRY IT

An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2513
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch this news story about an Italian advertising campaign to raise public awareness of anorexia nervosa.
Eating Disorders
While nearly two out of three US adults struggle with issues related to being overweight, a smaller, but significant,
portion of the population has eating disorders that typically result in being normal weight or underweight. Often,
these individuals are fearful of gaining weight. Individuals who suffer from bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa
face many adverse health consequences (Mayo Clinic, 2012a, 2012b).
People suffering from bulimia nervosabulimia nervosa engage in binge eating behavior that is followed by an attempt to
compensate for the large amount of food consumed. Purging the food by inducing vomiting or through the use of
laxatives are two common compensatory behaviors. Some affected individuals engage in excessive amounts of
exercise to compensate for their binges. Bulimia is associated with many adverse health consequences that can
include kidney failure, heart failure, and tooth decay. In addition, these individuals often suffer from anxiety and
depression, and they are at an increased risk for substance abuse (Mayo Clinic, 2012b). The lifetime prevalence
rate for bulimia nervosa is estimated at around 1% for women and less than 0.5% for men (Smink, van Hoeken, &
Hoek, 2012).
As of the 2013 release of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, fifth edition, binge eating disorderbinge eating disorder is a disorder
recognized by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Unlike with bulimia, eating binges are not followed by
inappropriate behavior, such as purging, but they are followed by distress, including feelings of guilt and
embarrassment. The resulting psychological distress distinguishes binge eating disorder from overeating
(American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013).
Anorexia nervosaAnorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by the maintenance of a body weight well below average
through starvation and/or excessive exercise. Individuals suffering from anorexia nervosa often have a distorteddistorted
body imagebody image, referenced in literature as a type of body dysmorphia, meaning that they view themselves as
overweight even though they are not. Like bulimia nervosa, anorexia nervosa is associated with a number of
significant negative health outcomes: bone loss, heart failure, kidney failure, amenorrhea (cessation of the
menstrual period), reduced function of the gonads, and in extreme cases, death. Furthermore, there is an
increased risk for a number of psychological problems, which include anxiety disorders, mood disorders, and
substance abuse (Mayo Clinic, 2012a). Estimates of the prevalence of anorexia nervosa vary from study to study
but generally range from just under one percent to just over four percent in women. Generally, prevalence rates
are considerably lower for men (Smink et al., 2012).
While both anorexia and bulimia nervosa occur in men and women of many different cultures, Caucasian females
from Western societies tend to be the most at-risk population. Recent research indicates that females between
the ages of 15 and 19 are most at risk, and it has long been suspected that these eating disorders are culturally-
bound phenomena that are related to messages of a thin ideal often portrayed in popular media and the fashion
world (Figure 5) (Smink et al., 2012). While social factors play an important role in the development of eating
disorders, there is also evidence that genetic factors may predispose people to these disorders (Collier &
Treasure, 2004).

Figure 5. Young women in our society are inundated with images of extremely thin models (sometimes accurately depicted and
sometimes digitally altered to make them look even thinner). These images may contribute to eating disorders. (credit: Peter
Duhon)
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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Learn more about eating and body dysmorphic orders in the following Crash Course Psychology video.
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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
anorexia nervosa:anorexia nervosa: eating disorder characterized by an individual maintaining body weight that is well below
average through starvation and/or excessive exercise
binge eating disorder:binge eating disorder: type of eating disorder characterized by binge eating and associated distress
bulimia nervosa:bulimia nervosa: type of eating disorder characterized by binge eating followed by purging
distorted body image:distorted body image: individuals view themselves as overweight even though they are not
leptin:leptin: satiety hormone
metabolic rate:metabolic rate: amount of energy that is expended in a given period of time
morbid obesity:morbid obesity: adult with a BMI over 40
obese:obese: adult with a BMI of 30 or higher
overweight:overweight: adult with a BMI between 25 and 29.9
satiation:satiation: fullness; satisfaction
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Think about popular television programs on the air right now. What do the women in these programs
look like? What do the men look like? What kinds of messages do you think the media is sending
about men and women in our society?

set point theory:set point theory: assertion that each individual has an ideal body weight, or set point, that is resistant to change
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SEXUAL BEHAVIOR
What you’ll learn to do: describe sexual behavior and research
about sexuality
“Human sexuality” refers to people’s sexual interest in and attraction to others; it is the capacity to have erotic or
sexual feelings and experiences. Sexuality differs from biological sex, in that “sexuality” refers to the capacity for
sexual feelings and attraction, while “biological sex” refers to how one’s anatomy, physiology, hormones, and
genetics are classified (typically as male, female, or intersex). Sexuality is also separate from gender identity,
which is a person’s sense of their own gender, or sociocultural classification (i.e., man, woman, or another

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Figure 1. A male rat that cannot engage in sexual
behavior still seeks receptive females, suggesting that the
ability to engage in sexual behavior and the motivation to
do so are mediated by different systems in the brain.
(credit: Jason Snyder)
gender) based on biological sex (i.e., male or female). It is also distinct from—although it shapes—sexual
orientation, or one’s emotional and sexual attraction to a particular sex or gender.
Sexuality may be experienced and expressed in a variety of ways, including thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs,
attitudes, values, behaviors, practices, roles, and relationships. These manifest themselves not only in biological,
physical, and emotional ways, but also in sociocultural ways, which have to do with the effects of human society
and culture on one’s sexuality. Some researchers believe that sexual behavior is determined by genetics;
however, others assert that it is largely molded by the environment. Human sexuality impacts, and is impacted by,
cultural, political, legal, and philosophical aspects of life, and can interact with issues of morality, ethics, theology,
spirituality, or religion.
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Understand basic biological mechanisms regulating sexual behavior and motivation
• Explain the contributions of Alfred Kinsey’s and William Masters and Virginia Johnson’s research
made to our understanding of sexual behavior
• Describe variations sexual orientation and gender identity
Like food, sex is an important part of our lives. From an evolutionary perspective, the reason is
obvious—perpetuation of the species. Sexual behavior in humans, however, involves much more than
reproduction. This section provides an overview of research that has been conducted on human sexual behavior
and motivation. This section will close with a discussion of issues related to gender and sexual orientation.
Physiological Mechanisms of Sexual Behavior and Motivation
Much of what we know about the physiological mechanisms that underlie sexual behavior and motivation comes
from animal research. As you’ve learned, the hypothalamus plays an important role in motivated behaviors, and
sex is no exception. In fact, lesions to an area of the hypothalamus called the medial preoptic area completely
disrupt a male rat’s ability to engage in sexual behavior. Surprisingly, medial preoptic lesions do not change how
hard a male rat is willing to work to gain access to a sexually receptive female (Figure 1). This suggests that the
ability to engage in sexual behavior and the motivation to do so may be mediated by neural systems distinct from
one another.
Animal research suggests that limbic system structures
such as the amygdala and nucleus accumbens are
especially important for sexual motivation. Damage to these
areas results in a decreased motivation to engage in sexual
behavior, while leaving the ability to do so intact (Figure 2)
(Everett, 1990). Similar dissociations of sexual motivation
and sexual ability have also been observed in the female
rat (Becker, Rudick, & Jenkins, 2001; Jenkins & Becker,
2001).

Figure 2. The medial preoptic area, an area of the
hypothalamus, is involved in the ability to engage in
sexual behavior, but it does not affect sexual motivation.
In contrast, the amygdala and nucleus accumbens are
involved in motivation for sexual behavior, but they do not
affect the ability to engage in it.
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Although human sexual behavior is much more complex
than that seen in rats, some parallels between animals and
humans can be drawn from this research. The worldwide
popularity of drugs used to treat erectile dysfunction
(Conrad, 2005) speaks to the fact that sexual motivation
and the ability to engage in sexual behavior can also be
dissociated in humans. Moreover, disorders that involve
abnormal hypothalamic function are often associated with
hypogonadism (reduced function of the gonads) and
reduced sexual function (e.g., Prader-Willi syndrome).
Given the hypothalamus’s role in endocrine function, it is
not surprising that hormones secreted by the endocrine
system also play important roles in sexual motivation and
behavior. For example, many animals show no sign of
sexual motivation in the absence of the appropriate
combination of sex hormones from their gonads. While this
is not the case for humans, there is considerable evidence
that sexual motivation for both men and women varies as a
function of circulating testosterone levels (Bhasin, Enzlin,
Coviello, & Basson, 2007; Carter, 1992; Sherwin, 1988).
Kinsey’s Research
Before the late 1940s, access to reliable, empirically-based information on sex was limited. Physicians were
considered authorities on all issues related to sex, despite the fact that they had little to no training in these
issues, and it is likely that most of what people knew about sex had been learned either through their own
experiences or by talking with their peers. Convinced that people would benefit from a more open dialogue on
issues related to human sexuality, Dr. Alfred Kinsey of Indiana University initiated large-scale survey research on
the topic (Figure 3). The results of some of these efforts were published in two books—Sexual Behavior in the
Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female—which were published in 1948 and 1953, respectively
(Bullough, 1998).

Figure 3. In 1947, Alfred Kinsey established The Kinsey
Institute for Research, Sex, Gender and Reproduction at
Indiana University, shown here in 2011. The Kinsey
Institute has continued as a research site of important
psychological studies for decades.
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch this trailer from the 2004 film Kinsey that depicts Alfred Kinsey’s life and research.
At the time, the Kinsey reports were quite sensational.
Never before had the American public seen its private
sexual behavior become the focus of scientific scrutiny on
such a large scale. The books, which were filled with
statistics and scientific lingo, sold remarkably well to the
general public, and people began to engage in open
conversations about human sexuality. As you might
imagine, not everyone was happy that this information was
being published. In fact, these books were banned in some
countries. Ultimately, the controversy resulted in Kinsey
losing funding that he had secured from the Rockefeller
Foundation to continue his research efforts (Bancroft,
2004).
Although Kinsey’s research has been widely criticized as
being riddled with sampling and statistical errors (Jenkins,
2010), there is little doubt that this research was very
influential in shaping future research on human sexual
behavior and motivation. Kinsey described a remarkably
diverse range of sexual behaviors and experiences
reported by the volunteers participating in his research.
Behaviors that had once been considered exceedingly rare or problematic were demonstrated to be much more
common and innocuous than previously imagined (Bancroft, 2004; Bullough, 1998).
Among the results of Kinsey’s research were the findings that women are as interested and experienced in sex as
their male counterparts, that both males and females masturbate without adverse health consequences, and that
homosexual acts are fairly common (Bancroft, 2004). Kinsey also developed a continuum known as the Kinsey
scale that is still commonly used today to categorize an individual’s sexual orientation (Jenkins, 2010).
Masters and Johnson’s Research
In 1966, William Masters and Virginia Johnson published a book detailing the results of their observations of
nearly 700 people who agreed to participate in their study of physiological responses during sexual behavior.
Unlike Kinsey, who used personal interviews and surveys to collect data, Masters and Johnson observed people
having intercourse in a variety of positions, and they observed people masturbating, manually or with the aid of a
device. While this was occurring, researchers recorded measurements of physiological variables, such as blood
pressure and respiration rate, as well as measurements of sexual arousal, such as vaginal lubrication and penile
tumescence (swelling associated with an erection). In total, Masters and Johnson observed nearly 10,000 sexual
acts as a part of their research (Hock, 2008).
Based on these observations, Masters and Johnson divided the sexual response cyclesexual response cycle into four phases that are
fairly similar in men and women: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution (Figure 4). The excitementexcitement phase is
the arousal phase of the sexual response cycle, and it is marked by erection of the penis or clitoris and lubrication
and expansion of the vaginal canal. During plateauplateau, women experience further swelling of the vagina and
increased blood flow to the labia minora, and men experience full erection and often exhibit pre-ejaculatory fluid.
Both men and women experience increases in muscle tone during this time. OrgasmOrgasm is marked in women by
rhythmic contractions of the pelvis and uterus along with increased muscle tension. In men, pelvic contractions
are accompanied by a buildup of seminal fluid near the urethra that is ultimately forced out by contractions of
genital muscles, (i.e., ejaculation). ResolutionResolution is the relatively rapid return to an unaroused state accompanied by
a decrease in blood pressure and muscular relaxation. While many women can quickly repeat the sexual
response cycle, men must pass through a longer refractory period as part of resolution. The refractory period is a
period of time that follows an orgasm during which an individual is incapable of experiencing another orgasm. In
men, the duration of the refractory period can vary dramatically from individual to individual with some refractory

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

Figure 4. This graph illustrates the different phases of the sexual response cycle as described by Masters and Johnson.
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch the following episode of Crash Course Psychology in which Hank talks about Kinsey, Masters and
Johnson, sexuality, gender identity, hormones, and even looks into the idea of why we have sex.
periods as short as several minutes and others as long as a day. As men age, their refractory periods tend to
span longer periods of time.
In addition to the insights that their research provided with regards to the sexual response cycle and the multi-
orgasmic potential of women, Masters and Johnson also collected important information about reproductive
anatomy. Their research demonstrated the oft-cited statistic of the average size of a flaccid and an erect penis (3
and 6 inches, respectively) as well as dispelling long-held beliefs about relationships between the size of a man’s
erect penis and his ability to provide sexual pleasure to his female partner. Furthermore, they determined that the
vagina is a very elastic structure that can conform to penises of various sizes (Hock, 2008).

Figure 5. Between 3% and 10% of the adult population
identifies as homosexual. (credit: Till Krech)
Issues of sexual orientation have long fascinated scientists
interested in determining what causes one individual to be
heterosexual while another is homosexual. For many years,
people believed that these differences arose because of
different socialization and familial experiences. However,
research has consistently demonstrated that the family
backgrounds and experiences are very similar among
heterosexuals and homosexuals (Bell, Weinberg, &
Hammersmith, 1981; Ross & Arrindell, 1988).
Genetic and biological mechanisms have also been
proposed, and the balance of research evidence suggests
that sexual orientation has an underlying biological
component. For instance, over the past 25 years, research
has demonstrated gene-level contributions to sexual
orientation (Bailey & Pillard, 1991; Hamer, Hu, Magnuson,
Hu, & Pattatucci, 1993; Rodriguez-Larralde & Paradisi,
2009), with some researchers estimating that genes
account for at least half of the variability seen in human
sexual orientation (Pillard & Bailey, 1998). Other studies
report differences in brain structure and function between
heterosexuals and homosexuals (Allen & Gorski, 1992;
Byne et al., 2001; Hu et al., 2008; LeVay, 1991; Ponseti et
al., 2006; Rahman & Wilson, 2003a; Swaab & Hofman,
1990), and even differences in basic body structure and
function have been observed (Hall & Kimura, 1994; Lippa,
2003; Loehlin & McFadden, 2003; McFadden & Champlin,
2000; McFadden & Pasanen, 1998; Rahman & Wilson,
2003b). In aggregate, the data suggest that to a significant
extent, sexual orientations are something with which we are
born.
Misunderstandings about Sexual Orientation
Regardless of how sexual orientation is determined, research has made clear that sexual orientation is not a
choice, but rather it is a relatively stable characteristic of a person that cannot be changed. Claims of successful
gay conversion therapy have received wide criticism from the research community due to significant concerns
with research design, recruitment of experimental participants, and interpretation of data. As such, there is no
credible scientific evidence to suggest that individuals can change their sexual orientation (Jenkins, 2010).
Dr. Robert Spitzer, the author of one of the most widely-cited examples of successful conversion therapy,
apologized to both the scientific community and the gay community for his mistakes, and he publically recanted
his own paper in a public letter addressed to the editor of Archives of Sexual Behavior in the spring of 2012
(Carey, 2012). In this letter, Spitzer wrote,
I was considering writing something that would acknowledge that I now judge the major critiques of the
study as largely correct. . . . I believe I owe the gay community an apology for my study making
unproven claims of the efficacy of reparative therapy. I also apologize to any gay person who wasted
time or energy undergoing some form of reparative therapy because they believed that I had proven
that reparative therapy works with some “highly motivated” individuals. (Becker, 2012, pars. 2, 5)
Citing research that suggests not only that gay conversion therapy is ineffective, but also potentially harmful,
legislative efforts to make such therapy illegal have either been enacted (e.g., it is now illegal in California) or are
underway across the United States, and many professional organizations have issued statements against this
practice (Human Rights Campaign, n.d.)

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Read this draft of Dr. Spitzer’s letter.
Figure 6. Chaz Bono, a transgender male, is a well-known person who transitioned from female to male. (a) In the 1970s, the
world knew Chaz as Chastity Bono, the daughter of the famous entertaining duo Sonny and Cher; here young Chastity is pictured
with Sonny. (b) Later in life, Chaz transitioned to align his physical body with his gender identity. (credit b: modification of work by
“dvsross”/Flickr)
Gender Identity
Many people conflate sexual orientation with gender identity because of stereotypical attitudes that exist about
homosexuality. In reality, these are two related, but different, issues. Gender identityGender identity refers to one’s sense of
being male or female. Generally, our gender identities correspond to our chromosomal and phenotypic sex, but
this is not always the case. When individuals do not feel comfortable identifying with the gender associated with
their biological sex, then they experience gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoriaGender dysphoria is a diagnostic category in the fifth
edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) that describes individuals who do not
identify as the gender that most people would assume they are. This dysphoria must persist for at least six
months and result in significant distress or dysfunction to meet DSM-5 diagnostic criteria. In order for children to
be assigned this diagnostic category, they must verbalize their desire to become the other gender.
Many people who are classified as gender dysphoric seek to live their lives in ways that are consistent with their
own gender identity. This involves dressing in opposite-sex clothing and assuming an opposite-sex identity.
These individuals may also undertake transgender hormone therapytransgender hormone therapy in an attempt to make their bodies look more
like the opposite sex, and in some cases, they elect to have surgeries to alter the appearance of their external
genitalia to resemble that of their gender identity (Figure 6). While these may sound like drastic changes, gender
dysphoric individuals take these steps because their bodies seem to them to be a mistake of nature, and they
seek to correct this mistake.

http://www.truthwinsout.org/news/2012/04/24542/

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Hear firsthand about the transgender experience and the disconnect that occurs when one’s self-identity is
betrayed by one’s body. In this brief video, Chaz Bono discusses the difficulties of growing up identifying as
male, while living in a female body.
Cultural Factors in Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
Issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity are very much influenced by sociocultural factors. Even
the ways in which we define sexual orientation and gender vary from one culture to the next. While in the United
States exclusive heterosexuality is viewed as the norm, there are societies that have different attitudes regarding
homosexual behavior. In fact, in some instances, periods of exclusively homosexual behavior are socially
prescribed as a part of normal development and maturation. For example, in parts of New Guinea, young boys
are expected to engage in sexual behavior with other boys for a given period of time because it is believed that
doing so is necessary for these boys to become men (Baldwin & Baldwin, 1989).
There is a two-gendered culture in the United States. We tend to classify an individual as either male or female.
However, in some cultures there are additional gender variants resulting in more than two gender categories. For
example, in Thailand, you can be male, female, or kathoey. A kathoey is an individual who would be described as
intersexed or transgendered in the United States (Tangmunkongvorakul, Banwell, Carmichael, Utomo, & Sleigh,
2010).

https://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Chaz-Bonos-on-When-He-Knew-He-Was-Transgender-Video

DIG DEEPER: THE CASE OF DAVID REIMERDIG DEEPER: THE CASE OF DAVID REIMER
In August of 1965, Janet and Ronald Reimer of Winnipeg, Canada, welcomed the birth of their twin sons, Bruce
and Brian. Within a few months, the twins were experiencing urinary problems; doctors recommended the
problems could be alleviated by having the boys circumcised. A malfunction of the medical equipment used to
perform the circumcision resulted in Bruce’s penis being irreparably damaged. Distraught, Janet and Ronald
looked to expert advice on what to do with their baby boy. By happenstance, the couple became aware of Dr.
John Money at Johns Hopkins University and his theory of psychosexual neutrality (Colapinto, 2000).
Dr. Money had spent a considerable amount of time researching transgendered individuals and individuals born
with ambiguous genitalia. As a result of this work, he developed a theory of psychosexual neutrality. His theory
asserted that we are essentially neutral at birth with regard to our gender identity and that we don’t assume a
concrete gender identity until we begin to master language. Furthermore, Dr. Money believed that the way in
which we are socialized in early life is ultimately much more important than our biology in determining our
gender identity (Money, 1962).
Dr. Money encouraged Janet and Ronald to bring the twins to Johns Hopkins University, and he convinced
them that they should raise Bruce as a girl. Left with few other options at the time, Janet and Ronald agreed to
have Bruce’s testicles removed and to raise him as a girl. When they returned home to Canada, they brought
with them Brian and his “sister,” Brenda, along with specific instructions to never reveal to Brenda that she had
been born a boy (Colapinto, 2000).
Early on, Dr. Money shared with the scientific community the great success of this natural experiment that
seemed to fully support his theory of psychosexual neutrality (Money, 1975). Indeed, in early interviews with the
children it appeared that Brenda was a typical little girl who liked to play with “girly” toys and do “girly” things.
However, Dr. Money was less than forthcoming with information that seemed to argue against the success of
the case. In reality, Brenda’s parents were constantly concerned that their little girl wasn’t really behaving as
most girls did, and by the time Brenda was nearing adolescence, it was painfully obvious to the family that she
was really having a hard time identifying as a female. In addition, Brenda was becoming increasingly reluctant
to continue her visits with Dr. Money to the point that she threatened suicide if her parents made her go back to
see him again.
At that point, Janet and Ronald disclosed the true nature of Brenda’s early childhood to their daughter. While
initially shocked, Brenda reported that things made sense to her now, and ultimately, by the time she was an
adolescent, Brenda had decided to identify as a male. Thus, she became David Reimer.
David was quite comfortable in his masculine role. He made new friends and began to think about his future.
Although his castration had left him infertile, he still wanted to be a father. In 1990, David married a single
mother and loved his new role as a husband and father. In 1997, David was made aware that Dr. Money was
continuing to publicize his case as a success supporting his theory of psychosexual neutrality. This prompted
David and his brother to go public with their experiences in attempt to discredit the doctor’s publications. While
this revelation created a firestorm in the scientific community for Dr. Money, it also triggered a series of
unfortunate events that ultimately led to David committing suicide in 2004 (O’Connell, 2004).
This sad story speaks to the complexities involved in gender identity. While the Reimer case had earlier been
paraded as a hallmark of how socialization trumped biology in terms of gender identity, the truth of the story
made the scientific and medical communities more cautious in dealing with cases that involve intersex children
and how to deal with their unique circumstances. In fact, stories like this one have prompted measures to
prevent unnecessary harm and suffering to children who might have issues with gender identity. For example,
in 2013, a law took effect in Germany allowing parents of intersex children to classify their children as
indeterminate so that children can self-assign the appropriate gender once they have fully developed their own
gender identities (Paramaguru, 2013).
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch this news story about the experiences of David Reimer and his family.

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
bisexual:bisexual: emotional and erotic attractions to both same-sexed individuals and opposite-sexed individuals
excitement:excitement: phase of the sexual response cycle that involves sexual arousal
gender dysphoria:gender dysphoria: diagnostic category in DSM-5 for individuals who do not identify as the gender associated
with their biological sex
gender identity:gender identity: individual’s sense of being male or female
heterosexual:heterosexual: emotional and erotic attractions to opposite-sexed individuals
homosexual:homosexual: emotional and erotic attractions to same-sexed individuals
orgasm:orgasm: peak phase of the sexual response cycle associated with rhythmic muscle contractions (and
ejaculation)
plateau:plateau: phase of the sexual response cycle that falls between excitement and orgasm
refractory period:refractory period: time immediately following an orgasm during which an individual is incapable of experiencing
another orgasm
resolution:resolution: phase of the sexual response cycle following orgasm during which the body returns to its unaroused
state
sexual orientation:sexual orientation: emotional and erotic attraction to same-sexed individuals, opposite-sexed individuals, or
both
transgender hormone therapy:transgender hormone therapy: use of hormones to make one’s body look more like the opposite-sex
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EMOTION
What you’ll learn to do: explain theories of emotion and how we
express and recognize emotion
As we move through our daily lives, we experience a variety of emotions (which we often call “feelings”).
Emotions are subjective states of being that, physiologically speaking, involve physiological arousal,
psychological appraisal and cognitive processes, subjective experiences, and expressive behavior. Emotions are
often the driving force behind motivation (whether positive or negative) and are expressed and communicated
through a wide range of behaviors, such as tone of voice and body language.
Our psychological appraisal of a situation is informed by our experiences, background, and culture. Therefore,
different people may have different emotional experiences of similar situations. However, the ability to produce
and recognize emotional facial expressions seems to be universal. That said, cultures differ in how often and
under what circumstances it is “okay” to express various emotions, as well as how various expressions of
emotions are interpreted.
Have you ever thought about whywhy we have emotions? What purposes do they serve in our lives? Are the
functions of these emotions necessary for our survival both as individuals and as a whole? Emotions serve many
purposes/functions for us. After reading the following, can you identify ONE overarching concept that helps
explain what emotions do for us?
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Figure 1. Toddlers can cycle through emotions quickly,
being (a) extremely happy one moment and (b) extremely
sad the next. (credit a: modification of work by Kerry
Ceszyk; credit b: modification of work by Kerry Ceszyk)
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Compare and contrast the the Cannon-Bard, James-Lange, Schachter-Singer two-factor, and other
theories of emotion
As we move through our daily lives, we experience a variety of emotions. An emotionemotion is a subjective state of
being that we often describe as our feelings. The words emotion and mood are sometimes used interchangeably,
but psychologists use these words to refer to two different things. Typically, the word emotion indicates a
subjective, affective state that is relatively intense and that occurs in response to something we experience
(Figure 1). Emotions are often thought to be consciously experienced and intentional. Mood, on the other hand,
refers to a prolonged, less intense, affective state that does not occur in response to something we experience.
Mood states may not be consciously recognized and do not carry the intentionality that is associated with emotion
(Beedie, Terry, Lane, & Devonport, 2011). Here we will focus on emotion, and you will learn more about mood in
the chapter that covers psychological disorders.
We can be at the heights of joy or in the depths of despair
or. We might feel angry when we are betrayed, fear when
we are threatened, and surprised when something
unexpected happens. This section will outline some of the
most well-known theories explaining our emotional
experience and provide insight into the biological bases of
emotion. This section closes with a discussion of the
ubiquitous nature of facial expressions of emotion and our
abilities to recognize those expressions in others.
Theories of Emotion
Our emotional states are combinations of physiological
arousal, psychological appraisal, and subjective
experiences. Together, these are known as the
components of emotioncomponents of emotion. These appraisals are informed by
our experiences, backgrounds, and cultures. Therefore,
different people may have different emotional experiences
even when faced with similar circumstances. Over time, several different theories of emotion, shown in Figure 2,
have been proposed to explain how the various components of emotion interact with one another.
The James-Lange theoryJames-Lange theory of emotion asserts that emotions arise from physiological arousal. Recall what you have
learned about the sympathetic nervous system and our fight or flight response when threatened. If you were to
encounter some threat in your environment, like a venomous snake in your backyard, your sympathetic nervous
system would initiate significant physiological arousal, which would make your heart race and increase your
respiration rate. According to the James-Lange theory of emotion, you would only experience a feeling of fear
after this physiological arousal had taken place. Furthermore, different arousal patterns would be associated with
different feelings.
Other theorists, however, doubted that the physiological arousal that occurs with different types of emotions is
distinct enough to result in the wide variety of emotions that we experience. Thus, the Cannon-Bard theoryCannon-Bard theory of
emotion was developed. According to this view, physiological arousal and emotional experience occur
simultaneously, yet independently (Lang, 1994). So, when you see the venomous snake, you feel fear at exactly
the same time that your body mounts its fight or flight response. This emotional reaction would be separate and
independent of the physiological arousal, even though they co-occur.
The James-Lange and Cannon-Bard theories have each garnered some empirical support in various research
paradigms. For instance, Chwalisz, Diener, and Gallagher (1988) conducted a study of the emotional experiences
of people who had spinal cord injuries. They reported that individuals who were incapable of receiving autonomic
feedback because of their injuries still experienced emotion; however, there was a tendency for people with less
awareness of autonomic arousal to experience less intense emotions. More recently, research investigating the

facial feedback hypothesisfacial feedback hypothesis suggested that suppression of facial expression of emotion lowered the intensity of
some emotions experienced by participants (Davis, Senghas, & Ochsner, 2009). In both of these examples,
neither theory is fully supported because physiological arousal does not seem to be necessary for the emotional
experience, but this arousal does appear to be involved in enhancing the intensity of the emotional experience.
The Schachter-Singer two-factor theorySchachter-Singer two-factor theory of emotion is another variation on theories of emotions that takes into
account both physiological arousal and the emotional experience. According to this theory, emotions are
composed of two factors: physiological and cognitive. In other words, physiological arousal is interpreted in
context to produce the emotional experience. In revisiting our example involving the venomous snake in your
backyard, the two-factor theory maintains that the snake elicits sympathetic nervous system activation that is
labeled as fear given the context, and our experience is that of fear.

Figure 2. This figure illustrates the major assertions of the James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, and Schachter-Singer two-factor theories
of emotion. (credit “snake”: modification of work by “tableatny”/Flickr; credit “face”: modification of work by Cory Zanker)
It is important to point out that Schachter and Singer believed that physiological arousal is very similar across the
different types of emotions that we experience, and therefore, the cognitive appraisal of the situation is critical to

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the actual emotion experienced. In fact, it might be possible to misattribute arousal to an emotional experience if
the circumstances were right (Schachter & Singer, 1962).
To test their idea, Schachter and Singer performed a clever experiment. Male participants were randomly
assigned to one of several groups. Some of the participants received injections of epinephrine that caused bodily
changes that mimicked the fight-or-flight response of the sympathetic nervous system; however, only some of
these men were told to expect these reactions as side effects of the injection. The other men that received
injections of epinephrine were told either that the injection would have no side effects or that it would result in a
side effect unrelated to a sympathetic response, such as itching feet or headache. After receiving these injections,
participants waited in a room with someone else they thought was another subject in the research project. In
reality, the other person was a confederate of the researcher. The confederate engaged in scripted displays of
euphoric or angry behavior (Schachter & Singer, 1962).
When those subjects who were told that they should expect to feel symptoms of physiological arousal were asked
about any emotional changes that they had experienced related to either euphoria or anger (depending on how
their confederate behaved), they reported none. However, the men who weren’t expecting physiological arousal
as a function of the injection were more likely to report that they experienced euphoria or anger as a function of
their assigned confederate’s behavior. While everyone that received an injection of epinephrine experienced the
same physiological arousal, only those who were not expecting the arousal used context to interpret the arousal
as a change in emotional state (Schachter & Singer, 1962).
Strong emotional responses are associated with strong physiological arousal. This has led some to suggest that
the signs of physiological arousal, which include increased heart rate, respiration rate, and sweating, might serve
as a tool to determine whether someone is telling the truth or not. The assumption is that most of us would show
signs of physiological arousal if we were being dishonest with someone. A polygraphpolygraph, or lie detector test,
measures the physiological arousal of an individual responding to a series of questions. Someone trained in
reading these tests would look for answers to questions that are associated with increased levels of arousal as
potential signs that the respondent may have been dishonest on those answers. While polygraphs are still
commonly used, their validity and accuracy are highly questionable because there is no evidence that lying is
associated with any particular pattern of physiological arousal (Saxe & Ben-Shakhar, 1999).
The relationship between our experiencing of emotions and our cognitive processing of them, and the order in
which these occur, remains a topic of research and debate. Lazarus (1991) developed the cognitive-mediationalcognitive-mediational
theorytheory that asserts our emotions are determined by our appraisal of the stimulus. This appraisal mediates
between the stimulus and the emotional response, and it is immediate and often unconscious. In contrast to the
Schachter-Singer model, the appraisal precedes a cognitive label. You will learn more about Lazarus’s appraisal
concept when you study stress, health, and lifestyle.
Two other prominent views arise from the work of Robert Zajonc and Joseph LeDoux. Zajonc asserted that some
emotions occur separately from or prior to our cognitive interpretation of them, such as feeling fear in response to
an unexpected loud sound (Zajonc, 1998). He also believed in what we might casually refer to as a gut
feeling—that we can experience an instantaneous and unexplainable like or dislike for someone or something
(Zajonc, 1980). LeDoux also views some emotions as requiring no cognition: some emotions completely bypass
contextual interpretation. His research into the neuroscience of emotion has demonstrated the amygdala’s
primary role in fear (Cunha, Monfils, & LeDoux, 2010; LeDoux 1996, 2002). A fear stimulus is processed by the

PSYCHOLOGY IN MUSICPSYCHOLOGY IN MUSIC
Neuroscienctist Jospeh LeDoux does more than study emotional processing and conditioning in rats—he is
also the lead singer in his band, The Amygdaloids. His band often explains psychological music in their songs.
See an example of this in the song, Fearing.
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Review the theories of emotion in the following Crash Course Psychology video.
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brain through one of two paths: from the thalamus (where it is perceived) directly to the amygdala or from the
thalamus through the cortex and then to the amygdala. The first path is quick, while the second enables more
processing about details of the stimulus. In the following section, we will look more closely at the neuroscience of
emotional response.

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
body language:body language: emotional expression through body position or movement
Cannon-Bard theory of emotion:Cannon-Bard theory of emotion: physiological arousal and emotional experience occur at the same time
cognitive-mediational theory:cognitive-mediational theory: our emotions are determined by our appraisal of the stimulus
components of emotion:components of emotion: physiological arousal, psychological appraisal, and subjective experience
emotion:emotion: subjective state of being often described as feelings
facial feedback hypothesis:facial feedback hypothesis: facial expressions are capable of influencing our emotions
James-Lange theory of emotion:James-Lange theory of emotion: emotions arise from physiological arousal
polygraph:polygraph: lie detector test that measures physiological arousal of individuals as they answer a series of
questions
Schachter-Singer two-factor theory of emotion:Schachter-Singer two-factor theory of emotion: emotions consist of two factors: physiological and cognitive
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Think about times in your life when you have been absolutely elated (e.g., perhaps your school’s
basketball team just won a closely contested ballgame for the national championship) and very fearful
(e.g., you are about to give a speech in your public speaking class to a roomful of 100 strangers). How
would you describe how your arousal manifested itself physically? Were there marked differences in
physiological arousal associated with each emotional state?
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EXPRESSING AND RECOGNIZING EMOTION
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe the role that limbic structures play in emotional processing
• Classify and explain how emotions are recognized and expressed

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Figure 1. The limbic system, which includes the hypothalamus, thalamus, amygdala, and the hippocampus, is involved in
mediating emotional response and memory.
The Biology of Emotions
Earlier, you learned about the limbic system, which is the area of the brain involved in emotion and memory
(Figure 1). The limbic system includes the hypothalamus, thalamus, amygdala, and the hippocampus. The
hypothalamus plays a role in the activation of the sympathetic nervous system that is a part of any given
emotional reaction. The thalamus serves as a sensory relay center whose neurons project to both the amygdala
and the higher cortical regions for further processing. The amygdala plays a role in processing emotional
information and sending that information on to cortical structures (Fossati, 2012).The hippocampus integrates
emotional experience with cognition (Femenía, Gómez-Galán, Lindskog, & Magara, 2012).

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Work through this Open Colleges interactive 3D brain simulator for a refresher on the brain’s parts and their
functions. To begin, click the “Start Exploring” button. To access the limbic system, click the plus sign in the
right-hand menu (set of three tabs).
Amygdala
The amygdalaamygdala has received a great deal of attention from researchers interested in understanding the biological
basis for emotions, especially fear and anxiety (Blackford & Pine, 2012; Goosens & Maren, 2002; Maren, Phan, &
Liberzon, 2013). The amygdala is composed of various subnuclei, including the basolateral complex and the
central nucleus (Figure 2). The basolateral complexbasolateral complex has dense connections with a variety of sensory areas of the
brain. It is critical for classical conditioning and for attaching emotional value to learning processes and memory.
The central nucleuscentral nucleus plays a role in attention, and it has connections with the hypothalamus and various brainstem
areas to regulate the autonomic nervous and endocrine systems’ activity (Pessoa, 2010).

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Figure 2. The anatomy of the basolateral complex and central nucleus of the amygdala are illustrated in this diagram.
Animal research has demonstrated that there is increased activation of the amygdala in rat pups that have odor
cues paired with electrical shock when their mother is absent. This leads to an aversion to the odor cue that
suggests the rats learned to fear the odor cue. Interestingly, when the mother was present, the rats actually
showed a preference for the odor cue despite its association with an electrical shock. This preference was
associated with no increases in amygdala activation. This suggests a differential effect on the amygdala by the
context (the presence or absence of the mother) determined whether the pups learned to fear the odor or to be
attracted to it (Moriceau & Sullivan, 2006).
Raineki, Cortés, Belnoue, and Sullivan (2012) demonstrated that, in rats, negative early life experiences could
alter the function of the amygdala and result in adolescent patterns of behavior that mimic human mood disorders.
In this study, rat pups received either abusive or normal treatment during postnatal days 8–12. There were two

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Watch this video about research that demonstrates how the volume of the hippocampus can vary as a function
of traumatic experiences.
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forms of abusive treatment. The first form of abusive treatment had an insufficient bedding condition. The mother
rat had insufficient bedding material in her cage to build a proper nest that resulted in her spending more time
away from her pups trying to construct a nest and less times nursing her pups. The second form of abusive
treatment had an associative learning task that involved pairing odors and an electrical stimulus in the absence of
the mother, as described above. The control group was in a cage with sufficient bedding and was left undisturbed
with their mothers during the same time period. The rat pups that experienced abuse were much more likely to
exhibit depressive-like symptoms during adolescence when compared to controls. These depressive-like
behaviors were associated with increased activation of the amygdala.
Human research also suggests a relationship between the amygdala and psychological disorders of mood or
anxiety. Changes in amygdala structure and function have been demonstrated in adolescents who are either at-
risk or have been diagnosed with various mood and/or anxiety disorders (Miguel-Hidalgo, 2013; Qin et al., 2013).
It has also been suggested that functional differences in the amygdala could serve as a biomarker to differentiate
individuals suffering from bipolar disorder from those suffering from major depressive disorder (Fournier, Keener,
Almeida, Kronhaus, & Phillips, 2013).
Hippocampus
As mentioned earlier, the hippocampushippocampus is also involved in emotional processing. Like the amygdala, research has
demonstrated that hippocampal structure and function are linked to a variety of mood and anxiety disorders.
Individuals suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) show marked reductions in the volume of several
parts of the hippocampus, which may result from decreased levels of neurogenesis and dendritic branching (the
generation of new neurons and the generation of new dendrites in existing neurons, respectively) (Wang et al.,
2010). While it is impossible to make a causal claim with correlational research like this, studies have
demonstrated behavioral improvements and hippocampal volume increases following either pharmacological or
cognitive-behavioral therapy in individuals suffering from PTSD (Bremner & Vermetten, 2004; Levy-Gigi, Szabó,
Kelemen, & Kéri, 2013).
Facial Expression and Recognition of Emotions
Culture can impact the way in which people display emotion. A cultural display rulecultural display rule is one of a collection of
culturally specific standards that govern the types and frequencies of displays of emotions that are acceptable
(Malatesta & Haviland, 1982). Therefore, people from varying cultural backgrounds can have very different
cultural display rules of emotion. For example, research has shown that individuals from the United States
express negative emotions like fear, anger, and disgust both alone and in the presence of others, while Japanese
individuals only do so while alone (Matsumoto, 1990). Furthermore, individuals from cultures that tend to

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Even babies are good at reading emotions! Watch this clip from the Still Face Experiment to see an example of
how a baby responds to a sudden change in emotion from his mother.
Figure 3. The seven universal facial expressions of emotion are shown. (credit: modification of work by Cory Zanker)
emphasize social cohesion are more likely to engage in suppression of emotional reaction so they can evaluate
which response is most appropriate in a given context (Matsumoto, Yoo, & Nakagawa, 2008).Other distinct
cultural characteristics might be involved in emotionality. For instance, there may be gender differences involved
in emotional processing. While research into gender differences in emotional display is equivocal, there is some
evidence that men and women may differ in regulation of emotions (McRae, Ochsner, Mauss, Gabrieli, & Gross,
2008).
Despite different emotional display rules, our ability to recognize and produce facial expressions of emotion
appears to be universal. In fact, even congenitally blind individuals produce the same facial expression of
emotions, despite their never having the opportunity to observe these facial displays of emotion in other people.
This would seem to suggest that the pattern of activity in facial muscles involved in generating emotional
expressions is universal, and indeed, this idea was suggested in the late 19th century in Charles Darwin’s book
The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). In fact, there is substantial evidence for seven universal
emotions that are each associated with distinct facial expressions. These include: happiness, surprise, sadness,
fright, disgust, contempt, and anger (Figure 3) (Ekman & Keltner, 1997).
Does smiling make you happy? Or does being happy make you smile? The facial feedback hypothesisfacial feedback hypothesis asserts
that facial expressions are capable of influencing our emotions, meaning that smiling can make you feel happier
(Buck, 1980; Soussignan, 2001; Strack, Martin, & Stepper, 1988). Recent research explored how Botox, which
paralyzes facial muscles and limits facial expression, might affect emotion. Havas, Glenberg, Gutowski, Lucarelli,
and Davidson (2010) discovered that depressed individuals reported less depression after paralysis of their
frowning muscles with Botox injections.

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See how good you are at reading facial expressions in the following PsychSim Tutorial. The tutorial is only
intended for practice. Please disregard the final screen that requests you submit answers to your instructor.
• Expressing Emotion
If you’re interested, you can learn even more about reading facial expressions by trying your hand at detecting
liars in the PsychSim tutorial “Catching Liars.” The television program Lie to Me was based off of the idea that
people can learn to read facial microexpressions and detect when another person is telling a lie. Although many
criticize the human ability to actually detect lies through visual cues, psychologist Paul Ekman has done
extensive research on the human face and how to better read emotions through even the slighted facial
movements.
Another way to spot lies is through language. Watch this TEDEd video to learn more.
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Learn more about body language in Amy Cuddy’s Ted Talk, “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are.”
CONNECT THE CONCEPTS: AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER AND EXPRESSIONCONNECT THE CONCEPTS: AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER AND EXPRESSION
OF EMOTIONSOF EMOTIONS
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a set of neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by repetitive behaviors
and communication and social problems. Children who have autism spectrum disorders have difficulty
recognizing the emotional states of others, and research has shown that this may stem from an inability to
distinguish various nonverbal expressions of emotion (i.e., facial expressions) from one another (Hobson,
1986). In addition, there is evidence to suggest that autistic individuals also have difficulty expressing emotion
through tone of voice and by producing facial expressions (Macdonald et al., 1989). Difficulties with emotional
recognition and expression may contribute to the impaired social interaction and communication that
characterize autism; therefore, various therapeutic approaches have been explored to address these
difficulties. Various educational curricula, cognitive-behavioral therapies, and pharmacological therapies have
shown some promise in helping autistic individuals process emotionally relevant information (Bauminger, 2002;
Golan & Baron-Cohen, 2006; Guastella et al., 2010).
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Of course, emotion is not only displayed through facial expression. We also use the tone of our voices, various
behaviors, and body language to communicate information about our emotional states. Body languageBody language is the
expression of emotion in terms of body position or movement. Research suggests that we are quite sensitive to
the emotional information communicated through body language, even if we’re not consciously aware of it (de
Gelder, 2006; Tamietto et al., 2009).

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
basolateral complex:basolateral complex: part of the brain with dense connections with a variety of sensory areas of the brain; it is
critical for classical conditioning and attaching emotional value to memory
central nucleus:central nucleus: part of the brain involved in attention and has connections with the hypothalamus and various
brainstem areas to regulate the autonomic nervous and endocrine systems’ activity
cultural display rule:cultural display rule: one of the culturally specific standards that govern the types and frequencies of emotions
that are acceptable
emotion:emotion: subjective state of being often described as feelings
facial feedback hypothesisfacial feedback hypothesis: facial expressions are capable of influencing our emotions
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PUTTING IT TOGETHER: MOTIVATION AND
EMOTION
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
In this module, you learned to
• explain motivation, how it is influenced, and major theories about motivation
• describe hunger and eating in relation to motivation, obesity, anorexia, and bulimia
• describe sexual behavior and research about sexuality
• explain theories of emotion and how we express and recognize emotion
In this module, you learned about emotion and motivation, particularly in regards to hunger and sex. You also
learned about theories about motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and optimal levels of arousal.
Remember the overjustification effect—how intrinsic motivation is diminished when extrinsic motivation is given?
Can you think of an example of when this has applied to you in your life? Maybe you used to like doing something
because you found it enjoyable, but once your parents noticed and rewarded you for it, it became less exciting. It
turns out that researchers have combined work in the study of motivation, learning, developmental psychology,

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and social psychology (remember that many of the fields in psychology overlap!) to discover that children are
actually less likely to help an adult in need when offered a reward.
In a study by Felix Warneken and Michael Tomasello, children around 20
months old were observed to see if they would react with altruism when a
researcher dropped an object and needed help to pick it up. The children
were assigned to three groups: one group that was given the offer of a
reward (a previously shown toy) when asked to pick up the object (a pen or
a similar item that fell off the desk), one group that was given verbal praise,
and another control group in which the children were not addressed in any
way.
The good news is that the children were overwhelmingly altruistic and happy
to help, even if they were distracted by an enticing game. The interesting
news is that the children who were given nothing at all or just verbal praise
were nearly 40% more likely to help as opposed to those who had been
rewarded with a toy. How might this information change your approach as a
parent? What about as a teacher? Before you jump to any extreme
conclusions, however, keep in mind that the overjustifcation effect has
showed different types of results for different ages and types of behavior, so
a child at nearly 2 may not respond the same way as a teenager or adult.
Just as with all the other topics you’ve covered, there is more research to be
done and more we need to learn about what really motivates behavior
(2008, p. 1785–1788). (Note: Felix W., and Tomasello, M. (2008). Extrinsic Rewards Undermine Altruistic
Tendencies in 20-Month-Olds. Developmental Psychology, 44(6), 1785-1788. doi: 10.1037/a0013860)
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DISCUSSION: MOTIVATION AND EMOTION
What Motivates You?
STEP 1STEP 1: Respond to the following prompt in a post of at least 200 words:
• What motivates you to do your schoolwork for this course or for other classes? Discuss your views and
examine at least three things that you find most motivating, based on the theories presented in the
module.
STEP 2STEP 2: Comment on at least TWO other posts with thoughtful feedback of at least 75 words.
Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions
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• Discussion prompt. Authored byAuthored by: Terry Davis. Provided byProvided by: Wiley College. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution
• Discussion: Motivation and Emotion. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution

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MODULE 10: LIFESPAN DEVELOPMENT
WHY IT MATTERS: INTRODUCTION TO LIFESPAN
DEVELOPMENT
Figure 1. How have you changed since childhood? How are you the same? What will your life be like 25 years from now? Fifty
years from now? Lifespan development studies how you change as well as how you remain the same over the course of your life.
(credit: modification of work by Giles Cook)
Welcome to the story of your life. In this module we will explore the fascinating tale of how you have grown and
developed into the person you are today. We will also look at some ideas about who you will grow into tomorrow.
Yours is a story of lifespan development (Figure 1), from the start of life to the end.
The process of human growth and development is more obvious in infancy and childhood, yet your development
is happening this moment and will continue, minute by minute, for the rest of your life. Who you are today and
who you will be in the future depends on a blend of genetics, environment, culture, relationships, and more, as
you continue through each phase of life. You have experienced firsthand much of what is discussed in this
module. Now consider what psychological science has to say about your physical, cognitive, and psychosocial
development, from the womb to the tomb.

AnswerAnswer
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development: Length/height-for-age, weight-for-age, weight-for-length, weight-for-height and body mass index-for-
age. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization.
Winerman, L. (2011). Closing the achievement gap. Monitor of Psychology, 42(8), 36.
Wortman, J. H., & Park, C. L. (2008). Religion and spirituality in adjustment following bereavement: An integrative
review. Death Studies
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WHAT IS LIFESPAN DEVELOPMENT?
What you’ll learn to do: compare and contrast theories lifespan
development theories
Lifespan development explores how we change and grow from conception to death. This field of psychology is
studied by developmental psychologists. They view development as a lifelong process that can be studied
scientifically across three developmental domains: physical, cognitive development, and psychosocial.
There are many theories regarding how babies and children grow and develop into happy, healthy adults.
Sigmund Freud suggested that we pass through a series of psychosexual stages in which our energy is focused
on certain erogenous zones on the body. Eric Erikson modified Freud’s ideas and suggested a theory of
psychosocial development. Erikson said that our social interactions and successful completion of social tasks
shape our sense of self. Jean Piaget proposed a theory of cognitive development that explains how children think
and reason as they move through various stages. Finally, Lawrence Kohlberg turned his attention to moral
development. He said that we pass through three levels of moral thinking that build on our cognitive development.
You’ll learn about each of these theories in this section.
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe the three major issues in development: continuity and discontinuity, one common course of
development or many unique courses of development, and nature versus nurture
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,

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Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety. (Wordsworth, 1802)
In this poem, William Wordsworth writes, “the child is father of the man.” What does this seemingly incongruous
statement mean, and what does it have to do with lifespan development? Wordsworth might be suggesting that
the person he is as an adult depends largely on the experiences he had in childhood. Consider the following
questions: To what extent is the adult you are today influenced by the child you once were? To what extent is a
child fundamentally different from the adult he grows up to be?
These are the types of questions developmental psychologists try to answer, by studying how humans change
and grow from conception through childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and death. They view development as a
lifelong process that can be studied scientifically across three developmental domains—physical, cognitive, and
psychosocial development. Physical development involves growth and changes in the body and brain, the
senses, motor skills, and health and wellness. Cognitive development involves learning, attention, memory,
language, thinking, reasoning, and creativity. Psychosocial development involves emotions, personality, and
social relationships. We refer to these domains throughout the module.

CONNECT THE CONCEPTS: RESEARCH METHODS IN DEVELOPMENTALCONNECT THE CONCEPTS: RESEARCH METHODS IN DEVELOPMENTAL
PSYCHOLOGYPSYCHOLOGY
You’ve learned about a variety of research methods used by psychologists. Developmental psychologists use
many of these approaches in order to better understand how individuals change mentally and physically over
time. These methods include naturalistic observations, case studies, surveys, and experiments, among others.
Naturalistic observations involve observing behavior in its natural context. A developmental psychologist might
observe how children behave on a playground, at a daycare center, or in the child’s own home. While this
research approach provides a glimpse into how children behave in their natural settings, researchers have very
little control over the types and/or frequencies of displayed behavior.
In a case study, developmental psychologists collect a great deal of information from one individual in order to
better understand physical and psychological changes over the lifespan. This particular approach is an
excellent way to better understand individuals, who are exceptional in some way, but it is especially prone to
researcher bias in interpretation, and it is difficult to generalize conclusions to the larger population.
In one classic example of this research method being applied to a study of lifespan development Sigmund
Freud analyzed the development of a child known as “Little Hans” (Freud, 1909/1949). Freud’s findings helped
inform his theories of psychosexual development in children, which you will learn about later in this module.
Little Genie, the subject of a case study discussed in the module on thinking and intelligence, provides another
example of how psychologists examine developmental milestones through detailed research on a single
individual. In Genie’s case, her neglectful and abusive upbringing led to her being unable to speak until, at age
13, she was removed from that harmful environment. As she learned to use language, psychologists were able
to compare how her language acquisition abilities differed when occurring in her late-stage development
compared to the typical acquisition of those skills during the ages of infancy through early childhood (Fromkin,
Krashen, Curtiss, Rigler, & Rigler, 1974; Curtiss, 1981).
The survey method asks individuals to self-report important information about their thoughts, experiences, and
beliefs. This particular method can provide large amounts of information in relatively short amounts of time;
however, validity of data collected in this way relies on honest self-reporting, and the data is relatively shallow
when compared to the depth of information collected in a case study.
Experiments involve significant control over extraneous variables and manipulation of the independent variable.
As such, experimental research allows developmental psychologists to make causal statements about certain
variables that are important for the developmental process. Because experimental research must occur in a
controlled environment, researchers must be cautious about whether behaviors observed in the laboratory
translate to an individual’s natural environment.
Later in this module, you will learn about several experiments in which toddlers and young children observe
scenes or actions so that researchers can determine at what age specific cognitive abilities develop. For
example, children may observe a quantity of liquid poured from a short, fat glass into a tall, skinny glass. As the
experimenters question the children about what occurred, the subjects’ answers help psychologists understand
at what age a child begins to comprehend that the volume of liquid remained the same although the shapes of
the containers differs.
Across these three domains—physical, cognitive, and psychosocial—the normative approachnormative approach to development is
also discussed. This approach asks, “What is normal development?” In the early decades of the 20th century,
normative psychologists studied large numbers of children at various ages to determine norms (i.e., average
ages) of when most children reach specific developmental milestones in each of the three domains (Gesell, 1933,
1939, 1940; Gesell & Ilg, 1946; Hall, 1904). Although children develop at slightly different rates, we can use these
age-related averages as general guidelines to compare children with same-age peers to determine the
approximate ages they should reach specific normative events called developmental milestonesdevelopmental milestones (e.g., crawling,
walking, writing, dressing, naming colors, speaking in sentences, and starting puberty).
Not all normative events are universal, meaning they are not experienced by all individuals across all cultures.
Biological milestones, such as puberty, tend to be universal, but social milestones, such as the age when children
begin formal schooling, are not necessarily universal; instead, they affect most individuals in a particular cultureculture
(Gesell & Ilg, 1946). For example, in developed countries children begin school around 5 or 6 years old, but in
developing countries, like Nigeria, children often enter school at an advanced age, if at all (Huebler, 2005; United
Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], 2013).

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describes the developmental milestones for children
from 2 months through 5 years old. After reviewing the information, take this quiz to see how well you recall
what you’ve learned. If you are a parent with concerns about your child’s development, contact your
pediatrician.
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To better understand the normative approach, imagine two new mothers, Louisa and Kimberly, who are close
friends and have children around the same age. Louisa’s daughter is 14 months old, and Kimberly’s son is 12
months old. According to the normative approach, the average age a child starts to walk is 12 months. However,
at 14 months Louisa’s daughter still isn’t walking. She tells Kimberly she is worried that something might be wrong
with her baby. Kimberly is surprised because her son started walking when he was only 10 months old. Should
Louisa be worried? Should she be concerned if her daughter is not walking by 15 months or 18 months?
Issues in Developmental Psychology
There are many different theoretical approaches regarding human development. As we evaluate them in this
module, recall that developmental psychology focuses on how people change, and keep in mind that all the
approaches that we present in this module address questions of change: Is the change smooth or uneven
(continuous versus discontinuous)? Is this pattern of change the same for everyone, or are there many different
patterns of change (one course of development versus many courses)? How do genetics and environment
interact to influence development (nature versus nurture)?
Is Development Continuous or Discontinuous?
Continuous developmentContinuous development views development as a cumulative process, gradually improving on existing skills
(Figure 1). With this type of development, there is gradual change. Consider, for example, a child’s physical
growth: adding inches to her height year by year. In contrast, theorists who view development as discontinuousdiscontinuous
believe that development takes place in unique stages: It occurs at specific times or ages. With this type of
development, the change is more sudden, such as an infant’s ability to conceive object permanence.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/

Figure 1. The concept of continuous development can be visualized as a smooth slope of progression, whereas discontinuous
development sees growth in more discrete stages.
Figure 2. All children across the world love to play. Whether in (a) Florida or (b) South Africa, children enjoy exploring sand,
sunshine, and the sea. (credit a: modification of work by “Visit St. Pete/Clearwater”/Flickr; credit b: modification of work by
“stringer_bel”/Flickr)
TRY ITTRY IT
Is There One Course of Development or Many?
Is development essentially the same, or universal, for all children (i.e., there is one course of development) or
does development follow a different course for each child, depending on the child’s specific genetics and
environment (i.e., there are many courses of development)? Do people across the world share more similarities or
more differences in their development? How much do culture and genetics influence a child’s behavior?
Stage theories hold that the sequence of development is universal. For example, in cross-cultural studies of
language development, children from around the world reach language milestones in a similar sequence
(Gleitman & Newport, 1995). Infants in all cultures coo before they babble. They begin babbling at about the same
age and utter their first word around 12 months old. Yet we live in diverse contexts that have a unique effect on
each of us. For example, researchers once believed that motor development follows one course for all children
regardless of culture. However, child care practices vary by culture, and different practices have been found to
accelerate or inhibit achievement of developmental milestones such as sitting, crawling, and walking (Karasik,
Adolph, Tamis-LeMonda, & Bornstein, 2010).
For instance, let’s look at the Aché society in Paraguay. They spend a significant amount of time foraging in
forests. While foraging, Aché mothers carry their young children, rarely putting them down in order to protect them
from getting hurt in the forest. Consequently, their children walk much later: They walk around 23–25 months old,
in comparison to infants in Western cultures who begin to walk around 12 months old. However, as Aché children
become older, they are allowed more freedom to move about, and by about age 9, their motor skills surpass
those of U.S. children of the same age: Aché children are able to climb trees up to 25 feet tall and use machetes
to chop their way through the forest (Kaplan & Dove, 1987). As you can see, our development is influenced by
multiple contexts, so the timing of basic motor functions may vary across cultures. However, the functions
themselves are present in all societies (Figure 2).

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How Do Nature and Nurture Influence Development?
Are we who we are because of nature (biology and genetics), or are we who we are because of nurture (our
environment and culture)? This longstanding question is known in psychology as the nature versus nurture
debate. It seeks to understand how our personalities and traits are the product of our genetic makeup and
biological factors, and how they are shaped by our environment, including our parents, peers, and culture. For
instance, why do biological children sometimes act like their parents—is it because of genetics or because of
early childhood environment and what the child has learned from the parents? What about children who are
adopted—are they more like their biological families or more like their adoptive families? And how can siblings
from the same family be so different?
We are all born with specific genetic traits inherited from our parents, such as eye color, height, and certain
personality traits. Beyond our basic genotype, however, there is a deep interaction between our genes and our
environment: Our unique experiences in our environment influence whether and how particular traits are
expressed, and at the same time, our genes influence how we interact with our environment (Diamond, 2009;
Lobo, 2008). This module will show that there is a reciprocal interaction between nature and nurture as they both
shape who we become, but the debate continues as to the relative contributions of each.

DIG DEEPER: THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP: HOW DOES SOCIOECONOMICDIG DEEPER: THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP: HOW DOES SOCIOECONOMIC
STATUS AFFECT DEVELOPMENT?STATUS AFFECT DEVELOPMENT?
The achievement gap refers to the persistent difference in grades, test scores, and graduation rates that exist
among students of different ethnicities, races, and—in certain subjects—sexes (Winerman, 2011). Research
suggests that these achievement gaps are strongly influenced by differences in socioeconomic factors that
exist among the families of these children. While the researchers acknowledge that programs aimed at
reducing such socioeconomic discrepancies would likely aid in equalizing the aptitude and performance of
children from different backgrounds, they recognize that such large-scale interventions would be difficult to
achieve. Therefore, it is recommended that programs aimed at fostering aptitude and achievement among
disadvantaged children may be the best option for dealing with issues related to academic achievement gaps
(Duncan & Magnuson, 2005).
Low-income children perform significantly more poorly than their middle- and high-income peers on a number of
educational variables: They have significantly lower standardized test scores, graduation rates, and college
entrance rates, and they have much higher school dropout rates. There have been attempts to correct the
achievement gap through state and federal legislation, but what if the problems start before the children even
enter school?
Psychologists Betty Hart and Todd Risley (2006) spent their careers looking at early language ability and
progression of children in various income levels. In one longitudinal study, they found that although all the
parents in the study engaged and interacted with their children, middle- and high-income parents interacted
with their children differently than low-income parents. After analyzing 1,300 hours of parent-child interactions,
the researchers found that middle- and high-income parents talk to their children significantly more, starting
when the children are infants. By 3 years old, high-income children knew almost double the number of words
known by their low-income counterparts, and they had heard an estimated total of 30 million more words than
the low-income counterparts (Hart & Risley, 2003). And the gaps only become more pronounced. Before
entering kindergarten, high-income children score 60% higher on achievement tests than their low-income
peers (Lee & Burkam, 2002).
There are solutions to this problem. At the University of Chicago, experts are working with low-income families,
visiting them at their homes, and encouraging them to speak more to their children on a daily and hourly basis.
Other experts are designing preschools in which students from diverse economic backgrounds are placed in
the same classroom. In this research, low-income children made significant gains in their language
development, likely as a result of attending the specialized preschool (Schechter & Byeb, 2007). What other
methods or interventions could be used to decrease the achievement gap? What types of activities could be
implemented to help the children of your community or a neighboring community?
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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
cognitive development:cognitive development: domain of lifespan development that examines learning, attention, memory, language,
thinking, reasoning, and creativity
continuous development:continuous development: view that development is a cumulative process: gradually improving on existing skills
developmental milestone:developmental milestone: approximate ages at which children reach specific normative events
discontinuous development:discontinuous development:view that development takes place in unique stages, which happen at specific times
or ages
nature:nature: genes and biology
normative approach:normative approach: study of development using norms, or average ages, when most children reach specific
developmental milestones
nurture:nurture: environment and culture
physical development:physical development: domain of lifespan development that examines growth and changes in the body and
brain, the senses, motor skills, and health and wellness
psychosocial development:psychosocial development: domain of lifespan development that examines emotions, personality, and social
relationships
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• How are you different today from the person you were at 6 years old? What about at 16 years old?
How are you the same as the person you were at those ages?
• Your 3-year-old daughter is not yet potty trained. Based on what you know about the normative
approach, should you be concerned? Why or why not?
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PSYCHOSEXUAL AND PSYCHOSOCIAL
THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Define Freud’s theory of psychosexual development
• Describe the major tasks of child and adult psychosocial development according to Erikson

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Figure 1. Erik Erikson proposed the psychosocial theory
of development. In each stage of Erikson’s theory, there
is a psychosocial task that we must master in order to feel
a sense of competence.
Psychosexual Theory of Development
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) believed that personality develops during early childhood. For Freud, childhood
experiences shape our personalities and behavior as adults. Freud viewed development as discontinuous; he
believed that each of us must pass through a serious of stages during childhood, and that if we lack proper
nurturance and parenting during a stage, we may become stuck, or fixated, in that stage. Freud’s stages are
called the stages of psychosexual developmentpsychosexual development. According to Freud, children’s pleasure-seeking urges are
focused on a different area of the body, called an erogenous zone, at each of the five stages of development:
oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital.
While most of Freud’s ideas have not found support in modern research, we cannot discount the contributions
that Freud has made to the field of psychology. Psychologists today dispute Freud’s psychosexual stages as a
legitimate explanation for how one’s personality develops, but what we can take away from Freud’s theory is that
personality is shaped, in some part, by experiences we have in childhood. These stages are discussed in detail in
the module on personality.
Psychosocial Theory of Development
Erik Erikson (1902–1994) (Figure 1), another stage theorist, took Freud’s theory and modified it as psychosocial
theory. Erikson’s psychosocial developmentpsychosocial development theorytheory emphasizes the social nature of our development rather than
its sexual nature. While Freud believed that personality is shaped only in childhood, Erikson proposed that
personality development takes place all through the lifespan. Erikson suggested that how we interact with others
is what affects our sense of self, or what he called the ego identity.
Erikson proposed that we are motivated by a need to
achieve competence in certain areas of our lives. According
to psychosocial theory, we experience eight stages of
development over our lifespan, from infancy through late
adulthood. At each stage there is a conflict, or task, that we
need to resolve. Successful completion of each
developmental task results in a sense of competence and a
healthy personality. Failure to master these tasks leads to
feelings of inadequacy.
According to Erikson (1963), trust is the basis of our
development during infancy (birth to 12 months). Therefore,
the primary task of this stage is trust versus mistrust.
Infants are dependent upon their caregivers, so caregivers
who are responsive and sensitive to their infant’s needs
help their baby to develop a sense of trust; their baby will
see the world as a safe, predictable place. Unresponsive
caregivers who do not meet their baby’s needs can
engender feelings of anxiety, fear, and mistrust; their baby
may see the world as unpredictable.
As toddlers (ages 1–3 years) begin to explore their world,
they learn that they can control their actions and act on the
environment to get results. They begin to show clear
preferences for certain elements of the environment, such
as food, toys, and clothing. A toddler’s main task is to
resolve the issue of autonomy versus shame and doubt, by working to establish independence. This is the “me do
it” stage. For example, we might observe a budding sense of autonomy in a 2-year-old child who wants to choose
her clothes and dress herself. Although her outfits might not be appropriate for the situation, her input in such
basic decisions has an effect on her sense of independence. If denied the opportunity to act on her environment,
she may begin to doubt her abilities, which could lead to low self-esteem and feelings of shame.
Once children reach the preschool stage (ages 3–6 years), they are capable of initiating activities and asserting
control over their world through social interactions and play. According to Erikson, preschool children must

resolve the task of initiative versus guilt. By learning to plan and achieve goals while interacting with others,
preschool children can master this task. Those who do will develop self-confidence and feel a sense of purpose.
Those who are unsuccessful at this stage—with their initiative misfiring or stifled—may develop feelings of guilt.
How might over-controlling parents stifle a child’s initiative?
During the elementary school stage (ages 6–12), children face the task of industry versus inferiority. Children
begin to compare themselves to their peers to see how they measure up. They either develop a sense of pride
and accomplishment in their schoolwork, sports, social activities, and family life, or they feel inferior and
inadequate when they don’t measure up. What are some things parents and teachers can do to help children
develop a sense of competence and a belief in themselves and their abilities?
In adolescence (ages 12–18), children face the task of identity versus role confusion. According to Erikson, an
adolescent’s main task is developing a sense of self. Adolescents struggle with questions such as “Who am I?”
and “What do I want to do with my life?” Along the way, most adolescents try on many different selves to see
which ones fit. Adolescents who are successful at this stage have a strong sense of identity and are able to
remain true to their beliefs and values in the face of problems and other people’s perspectives. What happens to
apathetic adolescents, who do not make a conscious search for identity, or those who are pressured to conform
to their parents’ ideas for the future? These teens will have a weak sense of self and experience role confusion.
They are unsure of their identity and confused about the future.
People in early adulthood (i.e., 20s through early 40s) are concerned with intimacy versus isolation. After we have
developed a sense of self in adolescence, we are ready to share our life with others. Erikson said that we must
have a strong sense of self before developing intimate relationships with others. Adults who do not develop a
positive self-concept in adolescence may experience feelings of loneliness and emotional isolation.
When people reach their 40s, they enter the time known as middle adulthood, which extends to the mid-60s. The
social task of middle adulthood is generativity versus stagnation. Generativity involves finding your life’s work and
contributing to the development of others, through activities such as volunteering, mentoring, and raising children.
Those who do not master this task may experience stagnation, having little connection with others and little
interest in productivity and self-improvement.
From the mid-60s to the end of life, we are in the period of development known as late adulthood. Erikson’s task
at this stage is called integrity versus despair. He said that people in late adulthood reflect on their lives and feel
either a sense of satisfaction or a sense of failure. People who feel proud of their accomplishments feel a sense of
integrity, and they can look back on their lives with few regrets. However, people who are not successful at this
stage may feel as if their life has been wasted. They focus on what “would have,” “should have,” and “could have”
been. They face the end of their lives with feelings of bitterness, depression, and despair. Table 1 summarizes the
stages of Erikson’s theory.

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
psychosexual development:psychosexual development: process proposed by Freud in which pleasure-seeking urges focus on different
erogenous zones of the body as humans move through five stages of life
psychosocial development:psychosocial development: process proposed by Erikson in which social tasks are mastered as humans move
through eight stages of life from infancy to adulthood
Table 1. Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages of Development
StageStage
AgeAge
(years)(years)
DevelopmentalDevelopmental
TaskTask
DescriptionDescription
1 0–1 Trust vs. mistrust
Trust (or mistrust) that basic needs, such as nourishment and
affection, will be met
2 1–3
Autonomy vs.
shame/doubt
Develop a sense of independence in many tasks
3 3–6 Initiative vs. guilt
Take initiative on some activities—may develop guilt when
unsuccessful or boundaries overstepped
4 7–11
Industry vs.
inferiority
Develop self-confidence in abilities when competent or sense of
inferiority when not
5 12–18
Identity vs.
confusion
Experiment with and develop identity and roles
6 19–29
Intimacy vs.
isolation
Establish intimacy and relationships with others
7 30–64
Generativity vs.
stagnation
Contribute to society and be part of a family
8 65–
Integrity vs.
despair
Assess and make sense of life and meaning of contributions
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Figure 1. Jean Piaget spent over 50 years studying
children and how their minds develop.
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch this short clip to review the concepts of schema, assimilation and accommodation.
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Give examples of behavior and key vocabulary in each of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development
Cognitive Theory of Development
Jean Piaget (1896–1980) is another stage theorist who studied childhood development (Figure 1). Instead of
approaching development from a psychoanalytical or psychosocial perspective, Piaget focused on children’s
cognitive growth. He believed that thinking is a central aspect of development and that children are naturally
inquisitive. However, he said that children do not think and reason like adults (Piaget, 1930, 1932). His theory of
cognitive development holds that our cognitive abilities develop through specific stages, which exemplifies the
discontinuity approach to development. As we progress to a new stage, there is a distinct shift in how we think
and reason.
Piaget said that children develop schemata to help them
understand the world. SchemataSchemata are concepts (mental
models) that are used to help us categorize and interpret
information. By the time children have reached adulthood,
they have created schemata for almost everything. When
children learn new information, they adjust their schemata
through two processes: assimilation and accommodation.
First, they assimilate new information or experiences in
terms of their current schemata: assimilationassimilation is when they
take in information that is comparable to what they already
know. AccommodationAccommodation describes when they change their
schemata based on new information. This process
continues as children interact with their environment.
For example, 2-year-old Blake learned the schema for dogs
because his family has a Labrador retriever. When Blake
sees other dogs in his picture books, he says, “Look
mommy, dog!” Thus, he has assimilated them into his
schema for dogs. One day, Blake sees a sheep for the first
time and says, “Look mommy, dog!” Having a basic schema
that a dog is an animal with four legs and fur, Blake thinks
all furry, four-legged creatures are dogs. When Blake’s
mom tells him that the animal he sees is a sheep, not a
dog, Blake must accommodate his schema for dogs to
include more information based on his new experiences.
Blake’s schema for dog was too broad, since not all furry,
four-legged creatures are dogs. He now modifies his schema for dogs and forms a new one for sheep.

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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
This video shows a 4.5-year-old boy in the preoperational stage as he responds to Piaget’s conservation tasks.
In Piaget’s view, around the same time children develop object permanence, they also begin to exhibit stranger
anxiety, which is a fear of unfamiliar people. Babies may demonstrate this by crying and turning away from a
stranger, by clinging to a caregiver, or by attempting to reach their arms toward familiar faces such as parents.
Stranger anxiety results when a child is unable to assimilate the stranger into an existing schema; therefore, she
can’t predict what her experience with that stranger will be like, which results in a fear response.
Piaget’s second stage is the preoperational stagepreoperational stage, which is from approximately 2 to 7 years old. In this stage,
children can use symbols to represent words, images, and ideas, which is why children in this stage engage in
pretend play. A child’s arms might become airplane wings as he zooms around the room, or a child with a stick
might become a brave knight with a sword. Children also begin to use language in the preoperational stage, but
they cannot understand adult logic or mentally manipulate information (the term operational refers to logical
manipulation of information, so children at this stage are considered to be pre-operational). Children’s logic is
based on their own personal knowledge of the world so far, rather than on conventional knowledge. For example,
dad gave a slice of pizza to 10-year-old Keiko and another slice to her 3-year-old brother, Kenny. Kenny’s pizza
slice was cut into five pieces, so Kenny told his sister that he got more pizza than she did. Children in this stage
cannot perform mental operations because they have not developed an understanding of conservationconservation, which is
the idea that even if you change the appearance of something, it is still equal in size as long as nothing has been
removed or added.
During this stage, we also expect children to display egocentrismegocentrism, which means that the child is not able to take
the perspective of others. A child at this stage thinks that everyone sees, thinks, and feels just as they do. Let’s
look at Kenny and Keiko again. Keiko’s birthday is coming up, so their mom takes Kenny to the toy store to
choose a present for his sister. He selects an Iron Man action figure for her, thinking that if he likes the toy, his
sister will too. An egocentric child is not able to infer the perspective of other people and instead attributes his
own perspective. At some point during this stage and typically between 3 and 5 years old, children come to
understand that people have thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that are different from their own. This is known as
theory-of-mindtheory-of-mind (TOM).

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Piaget developed the Three-Mountain Task to determine the level of egocentrism displayed by children.
Children view a 3-dimensional mountain scene from one viewpoint, and are asked what another person at a
different viewpoint would see in the same scene. Watch the Three-Mountain Task in action in this short
vide from the University of Minnesota and the Science Museum of Minnesota.
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Piaget’s third stage is the concrete operational stageconcrete operational stage, which occurs from about 7 to 11 years old. In this stage,
children can think logically about real (concrete) events; they have a firm grasp on the use of numbers and start to
employ memory strategies. They can perform mathematical operations and understand transformations, such as
addition is the opposite of subtraction, and multiplication is the opposite of division. In this stage, children also
master the concept of conservation: Even if something changes shape, its mass, volume, and number stay the
same. For example, if you pour water from a tall, thin glass to a short, fat glass, you still have the same amount of
water. Remember Keiko and Kenny and the pizza? How did Keiko know that Kenny was wrong when he said that
he had more pizza?
Children in the concrete operational stage also understand the principle of reversibilityreversibility, which means that objects
can be changed and then returned back to their original form or condition. Take, for example, water that you
poured into the short, fat glass: You can pour water from the fat glass back to the thin glass and still have the
same amount (minus a couple of drops).
The fourth, and last, stage in Piaget’s theory is the formal operational stageformal operational stage, which is from about age 11 to
adulthood. Whereas children in the concrete operational stage are able to think logically only about concrete
events, children in the formal operational stage can also deal with abstract ideas and hypothetical situations.
Children in this stage can use abstract thinking to problem solve, look at alternative solutions, and test these
solutions. In adolescence, a renewed egocentrism occurs. For example, a 15-year-old with a very small pimple on

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
assimilation:assimilation: adjustment of a schema by adding information similar to what is already known
her face might think it is huge and incredibly visible, under the mistaken impression that others must share her
perceptions.
Beyond Formal Operational Thought
As with other major contributors of theories of development, several of Piaget’s ideas have come under criticism
based on the results of further research. For example, several contemporary studies support a model of
development that is more continuous than Piaget’s discrete stages (Courage & Howe, 2002; Siegler, 2005, 2006).
Many others suggest that children reach cognitive milestones earlier than Piaget describes (Baillargeon, 2004; de
Hevia & Spelke, 2010).
According to Piaget, the highest level of cognitive development is formal operational thought, which develops
between 11 and 20 years old. However, many developmental psychologists disagree with Piaget, suggesting a
fifth stage of cognitive development, known as the postformal stage (Basseches, 1984; Commons & Bresette,
2006; Sinnott, 1998). In postformal thinking, decisions are made based on situations and circumstances, and logic
is integrated with emotion as adults develop principles that depend on contexts. One way that we can see the
difference between an adult in postformal thought and an adolescent in formal operations is in terms of how they
handle emotionally charged issues.
It seems that once we reach adulthood our problem solving abilities change: As we attempt to solve problems, we
tend to think more deeply about many areas of our lives, such as relationships, work, and politics (Labouvie-Vief
& Diehl, 1999). Because of this, postformal thinkers are able to draw on past experiences to help them solve new
problems. Problem-solving strategies using postformal thought vary, depending on the situation. What does this
mean? Adults can recognize, for example, that what seems to be an ideal solution to a problem at work involving
a disagreement with a colleague may not be the best solution to a disagreement with a significant other.
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
Explain how you would use your understanding of one of the major developmental theories (psychosexual,
psychosocial, or cognitive) to deal with each of the difficulties listed below:
1. Your infant daughter puts everything in her mouth, including the dog’s food.
2. Your eight-year-old son is failing math; all he cares about is baseball.
3. Your two-year-old daughter refuses to wear the clothes you pick for her every morning, which makes
getting dressed a twenty-minute battle.
4. Your sixty-eight-year-old neighbor is chronically depressed and feels she has wasted her life.
5. Your 18-year-old daughter has decided not to go to college. Instead she’s moving to Colorado to
become a ski instructor.
6. Your 11-year-old son is the class bully.

accommodation:accommodation: adjustment of a schema by changing a scheme to accommodate new information different
from what was already known
concrete operational stage:concrete operational stage: third stage in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development; from about 7 to 11 years
old, children can think logically about real (concrete) events
conservation:conservation: idea that even if you change the appearance of something, it is still equal in size, volume, or
number as long as nothing is added or removed
egocentrism:egocentrism: preoperational child’s difficulty in taking the perspective of others
formal operational stage:formal operational stage: final stage in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development; from age 11 and up, children
are able to deal with abstract ideas and hypothetical situations
object permanence:object permanence: idea that even if something is out of sight, it still exists
preoperational stage:preoperational stage: second stage in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development; from ages 2 to 7, children learn
to use symbols and language but do not understand mental operations and often think illogically
schema:schema: (plural = schemata) concept (mental model) that is used to help us categorize and interpret information
sensorimotor stage:sensorimotor stage: first stage in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development; from birth through age 2, a child
learns about the world through senses and motor behavior
theory-of-mind:theory-of-mind: the understanding that people have thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that are different from
our own
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MORAL DEVELOPMENT
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe Kohlberg’s theory of moral development and the stages of reasoning
• Explain the procedure, results, and implications of Hamlin and Wynn’s research on moral reasoning in
infants
Theory of Moral Development
A major task beginning in childhood and continuing into adolescence is discerning right from wrong. Psychologist
Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–1987) extended upon the foundation that Piaget built regarding cognitive development.
Kohlberg believed that moral development, like cognitive development, follows a series of stages. To develop this
theory, Kohlberg posed moral dilemmas to people of all ages, and then he analyzed their answers to find
evidence of their particular stage of moral development. Before reading about the stages, take a minute to
consider how you would answer one of Kohlberg’s best-known moral dilemmas, commonly known as the Heinz
dilemma:
In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors
thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently

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Figure 1. Kohlberg identified three levels of moral reasoning: pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional: Each level is
associated with increasingly complex stages of moral development.
discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug
cost him to make. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The
sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get
together about $1,000, which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and
asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: “No, I discovered the drug and
I’m going to make money from it.” So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man’s store to steal the
drug for his wife. Should the husband have done that? (Kohlberg, 1969, p. 379)
How would you answer this dilemma? Kohlberg was not interested in whether you answer yes or no to the
dilemma: Instead, he was interested in the reasoning behind your answer.
After presenting people with this and various other moral dilemmas, Kohlberg reviewed people’s responses and
placed them in different stages of moral reasoningstages of moral reasoning (Figure 1). According to Kohlberg, an individual progresses
from the capacity for pre-conventional morality (before age 9) to the capacity for conventional morality (early
adolescence), and toward attaining post-conventional morality (once formal operational thought is attained), which
only a few fully achieve. Kohlberg placed in the highest stage responses that reflected the reasoning that Heinz
should steal the drug because his wife’s life is more important than the pharmacist making money. The value of a
human life overrides the pharmacist’s greed.

Figure 2. Maybe babies know more than we think they do!
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The Foundation of Moral Reasoning in Infants
The work of Lawrence Kohlberg was an important start to
modern research on moral development and reasoning.
However, Kohlberg relied on a specific method: he
presented moral dilemmas (like the Heinz problem) and
asked children and adults to explain what they would do
and—more importantly—why they would act in that
particular way. Kohlberg found that children tended to make
choices based on avoiding punishment and gaining praise.
But children are at a disadvantage compared to adults
when they must rely on language to convey their inner
thoughts and emotional reactions, so what they say may
not adequately capture the complexity of their thinking.
Starting in the 1980s, developmental psychologists created
new methods for studying the thought processes of
children, even of infants long before they acquire language.
One particularly effective method is to present children with
puppet shows, which grab their attention, and then record nonverbal behaviors, such as looking and choosing, to
identify children’s preferences or interests.
A research group at Yale University has been using the puppet show technique to study moral thinking of children
for much of the past decade. What they have discovered has given us a glimpse of surprisingly complex thought
processes that may serve as the foundation of moral reasoning.
EXPERIMENT 1: Do children prefer givers or takers?
In 2011, J. Kiley Hamlin and Karen Wynn put on puppet shows for very young children: 5-month-old infants. The
infants watch a puppet bouncing a ball. We’ll call this puppet the “bouncer puppet.” Two other puppets stand at
the back of the stage, one to left and the other to the right. After a few bounces, the ball gets away from the
bouncer puppet and rolls to the side of the stage toward one of the other puppets. This puppet grabs the ball. The
bouncer puppet turns toward the ball and opens its arms, as if asking for the ball back.
This is where the puppet show gets interesting (for a young infant, anyway!). Sometimes, the puppet with the ball
rolls it back to the bouncer puppet. This is the “giver puppet” condition. Other times, the infant sees a different
ending. As the bouncer puppet opens its arms to ask for the ball, the puppet with the ball turns and runs away
with it. This is the “taker puppet” condition. Although the giver and taker puppets are two copies of the same
animal doll, they are easily distinguished because they are wearing different colored shirts, and color is a quality
that infants easily distinguish and remember. It looks like this:
Each infant sees both conditions: the giver condition and the taker condition. Just after the end of the second
puppet show (i.e., the second condition), a new researcher, who doesn’t know which puppet was the giver and
which was the taker, sits in front of the infant with the giver puppet in one hand and the taker puppet in the other.
The 5-month-old infants are allowed to reach for a puppet. The one the child reaches out to touch is considered
the preferred puppet.

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WORK IT OUTWORK IT OUT
The puppet show is over and the experimenter is holding the two dolls—the giver puppet and the taker
puppet—in front of the infant. The reaching behavior of the infant is being videotaped for later analysis.
What do you think? Make a prediction about the results of this study—which should reflect your own “theory” of
children’s ability to judge and care about the types of behavior others display. Do you think infants will choose
the taker or the giver puppet? Do you expect the results to be significant? Explain your answer in the text box
below:
INSTRUCTIONS: Adjust the pink bar on the left to show the percentage of infants who reached for the giver
puppet. The yellow bar on the right will automatically adjust to make the total (sum of both bars) equal 100%.
AnswerAnswer
Here are the results from Experiment 1:
Figure 3. Results from experiment 1.
Experiment 1 suggests that these 5-month-old infants are not just passive observers in the world. They notice
what others do and, if we are interpreting the results of experiments like this one correctly, they distinguish
helpful behaviors (“prosocial behaviors”) from behaviors that hurt others (“antisocial behaviors”). But they do
more that that. They are attracted to those who are acting in a prosocial way, and they reject those who act in
an antisocial way.
These researchers also tested infants who were only 3-months old. These infants were so immature that they
did not yet have good control of their arms, so the experimenter could not use “reaching for one of the puppets”
as the dependent variable, as they did with the 5-month-olds. Three-month-old infants can control where they
look quite well, and previous research has indicated that very young infants will look longer at objects they
want. The researchers showed these very young infants the same puppet shows that were described above
and then, during the choice phase, they recorded which puppet (giver or taker) the 3-month-olds looked at
longer. The results were very similar to those found with the 5-month-olds. A strong majority of younger infants
(92%) looked longer at the giver puppet than the taker puppet.
But this isn’t the end of the story…

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EXPERIMENT 2: Do infants judge others based on their behavior?
In the research world, the early attempts to study something, when the researchers work to develop a solid and
reliable research procedure, is often the most challenging time. Once the researcher works through initial
problems and issues and begins to get consistent results, he or she can gain a deeper understanding by adding
new variables or testing different groups of subjects (e.g., older children or children with some interesting
psychological characteristics).
The study you just read about is an example of a simple, basic study. The researchers found that infants
preferred puppets that help another puppet (the puppet in the giver condition) over puppets that are not nice to
another puppet (the puppet in the taker condition). A common sense interpretation of this simple result is that
infants like nice behavior and they dislike hurtful behavior. And perhaps that is as complicated as an 8-month-old
infant’s thoughts can be. But maybe not.
Dr. Hamlin and her colleagues wondered if infants might consider more factors when judging an event. Adults
generally prefer situations where good things happen to someone rather than something harmful. However, when
adults see someone do something bad, they may find satisfaction in seeing that person punished by having
something bad happen to him or her. In a nutshell: good things should happen to good people and bad things
should happen to bad people. This is what is called “just world” thinking, where people get what they deserve.
In the study we will call Experiment 2, Hamlin’s team tested 8-month-old infants and repeated the procedures
from Experiment 1 with a major addition. In Experiment 1 (described above), the puppet bouncing the ball was a
neutral character, neither good nor bad. In Experiment 2, the infants saw 2 different shows. First, they saw the
bouncer puppet either helping or hindering another puppet. Then, they watched the same ball-bouncing puppet
show. Here is what happened:
• Puppet Show #1: A puppet is trying to open a box, but cannot quite succeed. Two puppets stand in the
background. For some infants, as the first puppet struggles to open the box, one of the puppets in the
back comes forward and helps to open the box. This is the helper puppet. For other children, as the first
puppet struggles, a puppet comes from the back and jumps on the box, slamming it shut. This is the
hinderer puppet. Each infant sees only a helper or a hinderer—not both. Here is a video showing the
helper puppet situation:
• Puppet Show #2: Just after the infants have watched the first show, the second puppet show begins.
This is the show that you read about in Experiment 1. The only thing that is new is that the bouncer
puppet, the one that loses the ball, is either the helper puppet from Puppet Show #1 or the hinderer
puppet from Puppet Show #1. Each infant sees this puppet lose the ball to a giver, who returns the ball,
and to a taker, who runs off with the ball.
This video demonstrates the second show. The elephant in the yellow shirt from the first show is now bouncing a
ball. After dropping the ball, the moose in the green shirt gives it back to him (the first clip), while the moose in the
red shirt takes it away (the second clip).

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Figure 4. This bar graph shows the results of Experiment
2 for 8-month-old infants. The blue bars show the
preferences for the infants who saw the Helper from the
first show as the bouncer in the second. Bar A is taller
than Bar B, showing the greater choice of the Giver than
the Taker puppet. The red bars show the reverse effect.
The babies strongly preferred the Taker (Bar C) to the
Giver (Bar D) when the puppet bouncing the ball had
been the Hinderer, who jumped on the box in the first
show.
So far we have concluded that even young babies prefer the “nice” puppet and show a preference for a puppet
who helps another puppet. But this only happened when the bouncer puppet was the Helper from the first puppet
show. What if, instead of the nice elephant in the yellow shirt bouncing the ball, the elephant in the red shirt (the
one who jumped on the duck’s box, remember?) was the one bouncing the ball? Imagine the same scenario: the
mean elephant in red shirt is bouncing the ball, he drops it, and the moose in the green shirt gives it to him or the
moose in the red shirt takes it away.
So now things are getting interesting, right? Do 8-month old
infants understand the concepts of revenge or justice? We
must always be careful when labeling behaviors of children
(or animals) with characteristics we use for human adults.
In the description above, we have talked of “nice puppets”
and “mean puppets” and used other loaded terms. It is
tempting to interpret the choices of the 8-month-olds as a
kind of revenge motive: the bad guy gets its just desserts
(the hinderer puppet has its ball stolen) and the good guy
gets its just reward (the helper puppet is itself helped by the
giver). Maybe that is what is going on, but we encourage
you to consider these very sophisticated types of thinking
as merely one hypothesis. Remember the facts—what did
the puppets do and what choices did the infants
make?—without committing yourself to the adult-level
interpretation.
The researchers believe that this type of thinking, which is
remarkably sophisticated, takes some cognitive
development. They tested 5-month-olds using the same
procedures, and the results with these younger infants was
different. The 5-month-olds showed an overwhelming
preference for the giver puppets, regardless of who was
bouncing the ball. Maybe it is too complex for them to
understand that the bouncer puppet in the second show
was the same puppet from the first show, Or perhaps their
memory processes are too fragile to hold onto information
for that length of time. Possibly the “revenge” motive is too
advanced a way of thinking. Or maybe something else is going on. What is clear is that 5-month-olds and
8-month-olds respond differently to the situations tested in the second experiment.

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EXPERIMENT 3: Do infants judge others based on their
preferences?
Across the first two experiments, infants appear to prefer puppets (and, by extension, maybe people, as well) that
are helpful over those that are not helpful. Experiment 2 complicated our story a bit, but it still appears that
prosocial behavior is attractive to infants and antisocial behavior is unattractive. But another experiment, again
using the bouncing ball show, suggests that infants as young as 8-months of age may have some other motives
that are less altruistic than the first two experiments indicate.
In a study by Hamlin, Mahanjan, Liberman, and Wynn from 2013, 9-month-old infants watched the bouncing ball
show, but with a new twist.
At the beginning of the experiment—Phase 1Phase 1—the infants were given a choice between graham crackers and
green beans. The experimenters determined which food the infant preferred.
Then, in Phase 2Phase 2, the infants watched a puppet make the same choice. For half of the infants, the puppet chose
the same food that they preferred, saying “Mmmm, yum! I like ___(graham crackers or green beans)!” and saying
“Eww, yuck! I don’t like _____ (graham crackers or green beans!” This was called the SIMILAR condition,
because the puppet was similar to the child in its food preference. For the other half of the infants, the puppet
chose the other food, choosing graham crackers if the infant preferred green beans and preferring green beans if
the infant liked graham crackers. This was the DISSIMILAR condition.
Why did experimenters do this? They wanted to know if young children form in-groups and out-groups by
perceiving some people as being like them and other people as being unlike them. The experimenters noted in
their research introduction that we (adults) are influenced by our perception that others are similar to us or not like
us. We tend to project positive qualities—being trustworthy, intelligent, kind—on people we perceive as similar to
ourselves, and people we see as unlike us are seen as having negative qualities—being relatively untrustworthy,
unintelligent, and unkind. (Note: The experimenters support these claims by citing the following studies: (1)
DeBruine, L.M. Facial resemblance enhances trust: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 2002, 269:
1307-1312. (2) Brewer, M.B. In-group bias in the minimal intergroup situation: A cognitive-motivational analysis.
Psychological Bulletin, 1979, 86: 307-324. (3) Doise, W., Cspely, G., Dann, and others. An experimental
investigation into the formation of intergroup representation. European Journal of Social Psychology, 1972, 2:
202-204.)
Of course, there is a big difference between claiming that adults use similarity to make judgments about others
and saying that infants less than a year of age do the same thing. However, the researchers note that some
recent research has suggested that infants less than a year old are more likely to develop peer friendships with
other infants who “share their own food, clothing or toy preferences” compared to those who don’t.
So, back to the experiment. In Phase 3Phase 3, the infants either saw a similar puppet (one that chose the food the baby
preferred) or a dissimilar puppet (one that chose the food the baby did not prefer) bouncing the ball. As in the
other experiments, the ball got away from the bouncer and rolled to the back of the stage. In one instance, the
giver puppet returned the ball and, in the other instance, the other puppet ran away with the ball. Finally, in PhasePhase
44, the 9-month-old baby was shown the giver and taker puppet and the experimenters recorded which of the two
puppets the baby preferred (reached out to touch). This video shows the dog in the light blue shirt giving the ball
back to the red bunny that preferred graham crackers.

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WORK IT OUTWORK IT OUT
Now make predictions for the results. Here is a matrix picture of the design of the experiment:
INSTRUCTIONS: Adjust bars A and C to make your predictions. Bar A represents the “nice” puppet who gave
the ball to the bouncer puppet that liked the same food as the child, while bar B represents the “mean” puppet
who took the ball away from the bouncer puppet who liked the same food as the child. Bar C represents the
“nice” puppet who gave the ball back to the puppet who did not like the same food as the child, and bar D
represents the puppet who took the ball away from the puppet who did not like the same food.
As before, move the bars on the left to indicate the percentage of infants preferring the giver puppet in the
similar condition (purple bars) and in the dissimilar condition (green bars). The bars on the right will adjust to
make the total in each of the similarity conditions equal 100%.
After you have recorded your predictions, click the “Show Answer” link to see the results from the experiment.
AnswerAnswer
Here are the results from Experiment 3:
Figure 5. Results from experiment 3.
These results are similar to those for the 8-month-olds in the previous experiment. But remember that, in this
experiment, the variable that distinguishes the two bouncer puppets was a food choice, not the prosocial or
antisocial behavior in Experiment 2. If we take the results from Experiments 2 and 3 together, the results here
suggest that the similar puppet is being treated as if it is nice or good. Puppets that treat this similar puppet in a
nice way are preferred. Conversely, the dissimilar puppets are treated as if they have done something negative
and puppets that treat these dissimilar puppets badly are preferred.
The experimenters also tested an older group of babies that were 14-months-old. The results for these older
babies were consistent with the 9-month-old and, if anything, the effects were stronger. Their results showed that

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all infants preferred when the giver puppet was nice to the puppet that was similar to them and all infants
preferred when puppets were mean to the puppet that was dissimilar to them.
Figure 6. These bar graphs show the results of the experiment when 14-month olds were tested. 100% of the children chose the
puppet that gave the ball back to the puppet that was similar to them, and 100% of children chose the puppet that took the ball
away from the puppet that had a different preference than they did.
CONCLUSIONS
This exercise started with a reminder that Lawrence Kohlberg found that children went through a long
developmental process in their moral reasoning. Based on children’s reasoning aloud about moral dilemmas,
Kohlberg concluded that children younger than about 8 or 9 years of age make moral decisions based on
avoiding punishment and receiving praise. Neither his research nor that of most others in the 1970s and 1980s
suggested that young children would use multiple sources of information and judgments about the meaning of
behaviors in their thinking what sorts of behaviors are better or worse.
If Dr. Hamlin and her colleagues are right, then infants are much more sophisticated and complex in their thinking
about the world than these earlier researchers thought. In Dr. Hamlin’s view, infants like good things to happen to
good puppets and people, and bad things to happen to bad puppets and people. Experiment 3 suggests that they
make judgments about more than helping and harming behavior. They prefer others who are like them (green
beans vs. graham crackers) and they don’t mind if others who are not like them have unpleasant experiences.
The research we have been reviewing is just part of an impressive set of research on infant thinking. The ideas
that the researchers have developed are intriguing and they are consistent with the modern view of the infant as
an active, creative thinker. At the same time, remember that science doesn’t rest on an early set of explanations
based on a small set of complicated experiments. Science pushed beyond what we currently know and believe.
This starts with curiosity on your part. Are the experimenters correct in interpreting reaching behavior as showing
a preference or is something else going on? Do infants really prefer prosocial behaviors to antisocial behaviors, or
is there some other explanation for their preferences? How else could we test moral judgments of infants without
using puppet shows? The next generation of creative scientists will push beyond what we know now, with new
research methods and new ideas about the mind.
We’ll give Dr. Hamlin the last word. Here is part of her conclusion section from an article that summarizes some of
the research we have been studying: “In sum, recent developmental research supports the claim that at least
some aspects of human morality are innate…Indeed, these early tendencies are far from shallow, mechanical
predispositions to behave well or knee-jerk reactions to particular states of the world. Infant moral inclinations are
sophisticated, flexible, and surprisingly consistent with adults’ moral inclinations, incorporating aspects of moral
goodness, evaluation, and retaliation. “ [Hamlin, 2013, p. 191]

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KEY TAKEAWAYSKEY TAKEAWAYS
stage of moral reasoning:stage of moral reasoning: process proposed by Kohlberg; humans move through three stages of moral
development
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PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT
What you’ll learn to do: explain the physical, cognitive, and
emotional development that occurs from infancy through
childhood
Think about the miraculous development that occurs during childhood in order for a tiny zygote to grow into a
walking, talking, thinking child. Newborn infants only weigh about 7.5 pounds but their physical, cognitive, and
psychosocial skills grow and change as they move through developmental stages. In this section, you’ll learn
about many of these changes. Some of these key concepts are discussed (as well as others you learned about
previously) in the following CrashCourse Psychology video:
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe the stages of prenatal development and the significance of prenatal care
• Define and differentiate between various infant reflexes
As discussed at the beginning of this module, developmental psychologists often divide our development into
three areas: physical development, cognitive development, and psychosocial development. Mirroring Erikson’s
stages, lifespan development is divided into different stages that are based on age. We will discuss prenatal,
infant, child, adolescent, and adult development.

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Figure 1. Sperm and ovum fuse at the point of
conception.
Prenatal Development
How did you come to be who you are? From beginning as a one-cell structure to your birth, your prenatalprenatal
developmentdevelopment occurred in an orderly and delicate sequence.
There are three stages of prenatal development: germinal, embryonic, and fetal. Let’s take a look at what
happens to the developing baby in each of these stages.
Germinal Stage (Weeks 1–2)
In the discussion of biopsychology earlier in the book, you learned about genetics and DNA. A mother and
father’s DNA is passed on to the child at the moment of conception. Conception occurs when sperm fertilizes an
egg and forms a zygotezygote (Figure 1). A zygote begins as a one-cell structure that is created when a sperm and egg
merge. The genetic makeup and sex of the baby are set at this point. During the first week after conception, the
zygote divides and multiplies, going from a one-cell structure to two cells, then four cells, then eight cells, and so
on. This process of cell division is called mitosis. MitosisMitosis is a fragile process, and fewer than one-half of all
zygotes survive beyond the first two weeks (Hall, 2004). After 5 days of mitosis there are 100 cells, and after 9
months there are billions of cells. As the cells divide, they become more specialized, forming different organs and
body parts. In the germinal stage, the mass of cells has yet to attach itself to the lining of the mother’s uterus.
Once it does, the next stage begins.
Embryonic Stage (Weeks 3–8)
After the zygote divides for about 7–10 days and has 150
cells, it travels down the fallopian tubes and implants itself
in the lining of the uterus. Upon implantation, this multi-
cellular organism is called an embryoembryo. Now blood vessels
grow, forming the placenta. The placentaplacenta is a structure
connected to the uterus that provides nourishment and
oxygen from the mother to the developing embryo via the
umbilical cord. Basic structures of the embryo start to
develop into areas that will become the head, chest, and
abdomen. During the embryonic stage, the heart begins to
beat and organs form and begin to function. The neural
tube forms along the back of the embryo, developing into the spinal cord and brain.
Fetal Stage (Weeks 9–40)
When the organism is about nine weeks old, the embryo is called a fetus. At this stage, the fetus is about the size
of a kidney bean and begins to take on the recognizable form of a human being as the “tail” begins to disappear.
From 9–12 weeks, the sex organs begin to differentiate. At about 16 weeks, the fetus is approximately 4.5 inches
long. Fingers and toes are fully developed, and fingerprints are visible. By the time the fetus reaches the sixth
month of development (24 weeks), it weighs up to 1.4 pounds. Hearing has developed, so the fetus can respond
to sounds. The internal organs, such as the lungs, heart, stomach, and intestines, have formed enough that a
fetus born prematurely at this point has a chance to survive outside of the mother’s womb. Throughout the fetal
stage the brain continues to grow and develop, nearly doubling in size from weeks 16 to 28. Around 36 weeks,
the fetus is almost ready for birth. It weighs about 6 pounds and is about 18.5 inches long, and by week 37 all of
the fetus’s organ systems are developed enough that it could survive outside the mother’s uterus without many of
the risks associated with premature birth. The fetus continues to gain weight and grow in length until
approximately 40 weeks. By then, the fetus has very little room to move around and birth becomes imminent. The
progression through the stages is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. During the fetal stage, the baby’s brain develops and the body adds size and weight, until the fetus reaches full-term
development.
TRY ITTRY IT

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Figure 2. A pregnant woman receives an ultrasound as
part of her prenatal care. (credit: United States Agency for
International Development)
Prenatal Influences
During each prenatal stage, genetic and environmental factors can affect development. The developing fetus is
completely dependent on the mother for life. It is important that the mother takes good care of herself and
receives prenatal careprenatal care, which is medical care during pregnancy that monitors the health of both the mother and
the fetus (Figure 2). According to the National Institutes of Health ([NIH], 2013), routine prenatal care is important
because it can reduce the risk of complications to the mother and fetus during pregnancy. In fact, women who are
trying to become pregnant or who may become pregnant should discuss pregnancy planning with their doctor.
They may be advised, for example, to take a vitamin containing folic acid, which helps prevent certain birth
defects, or to monitor aspects of their diet or exercise routines.
Recall that when the zygote attaches to the wall of the
mother’s uterus, the placenta is formed. The placenta
provides nourishment and oxygen to the fetus. Most
everything the mother ingests, including food, liquid, and
even medication, travels through the placenta to the fetus,
hence the common phrase “eating for two.” Anything the
mother is exposed to in the environment affects the fetus; if
the mother is exposed to something harmful, the child can
show life-long effects.
A teratogenteratogen is any environmental agent—biological,
chemical, or physical—that causes damage to the
developing embryo or fetus. There are different types of
teratogens. Alcohol and most drugs cross the placenta and
affect the fetus. Alcohol is not safe to drink in any amount
during pregnancy. Alcohol use during pregnancy has been
found to be the leading preventable cause of mental
retardation in children in the United States (Maier & West, 2001). Excessive maternal drinking while pregnant can
cause fetal alcohol spectrum disorders with life-long consequences for the child ranging in severity from minor to
major (Table 1). Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) are a collection of birth defects associated with heavy
consumption of alcohol during pregnancy. Physically, children with FASD may have a small head size and
abnormal facial features. Cognitively, these children may have poor judgment, poor impulse control, higher rates
of ADHD, learning issues, and lower IQ scores. These developmental problems and delays persist into adulthood
(Streissguth et al., 2004). Based on studies conducted on animals, it also has been suggested that a mother’s
alcohol consumption during pregnancy may predispose her child to like alcohol (Youngentob et al., 2007).

WHAT DO YOU THINK? SHOULD WOMEN WHO USE DRUGS DURINGWHAT DO YOU THINK? SHOULD WOMEN WHO USE DRUGS DURING
PREGNANCY BE ARRESTED AND JAILED?PREGNANCY BE ARRESTED AND JAILED?
As you now know, women who use drugs or alcohol during pregnancy can cause serious lifelong harm to their
child. Some people have advocated mandatory screenings for women who are pregnant and have a history of
drug abuse, and if the women continue using, to arrest, prosecute, and incarcerate them (Figdor & Kaeser,
1998). This policy was tried in Charleston, South Carolina, as recently as 20 years ago. The policy was called
the Interagency Policy on Management of Substance Abuse During Pregnancy, and had disastrous results.
The Interagency Policy applied to patients attending the obstetrics clinic at MUSC, which primarily
serves patients who are indigent or on Medicaid. It did not apply to private obstetrical patients. The
policy required patient education about the harmful effects of substance abuse during pregnancy. . . .
[A] statement also warned patients that protection of unborn and newborn children from the harms of
illegal drug abuse could involve the Charleston police, the Solicitor of the Ninth Judicial Court, and
the Protective Services Division of the Department of Social Services (DSS). (Jos, Marshall, &
Perlmutter, 1995, pp. 120–121)
This policy seemed to deter women from seeking prenatal care, deterred them from seeking other social
services, and was applied solely to low-income women, resulting in lawsuits. The program was canceled after 5
years, during which 42 women were arrested. A federal agency later determined that the program involved
human experimentation without the approval and oversight of an institutional review board (IRB). What were the
flaws in the program and how would you correct them? What are the ethical implications of charging pregnant
women with child abuse?
Table 1. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Facial Features
Facial FeatureFacial Feature Potential Effect of Fetal Alcohol SyndromePotential Effect of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
Head size Below-average head circumference
Eyes Smaller than average eye opening, skin folds at corners of eyes
Nose Low nasal bridge, short nose
Midface Smaller than average midface size
Lip and philtrum Thin upper lip, indistinct philtrum
Smoking is also considered a teratogen because nicotine travels through the placenta to the fetus. When the
mother smokes, the developing baby experiences a reduction in blood oxygen levels. According to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (2013), smoking while pregnant can result in premature birth, low-birth-weight
infants, stillbirth, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
Heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, almost all prescription medicines, and most over-the counter medications are
also considered teratogens. Babies born with a heroin addiction need heroin just like an adult addict. The child will
need to be gradually weaned from the heroin under medical supervision; otherwise, the child could have seizures
and die. Other teratogens include radiation, viruses such as HIV and herpes, and rubella (German measles).
Women in the United States are much less likely to be afflicted with rubella because most women received
childhood immunizations or vaccinations that protect the body from disease.
Each organ of the fetus develops during a specific period in the pregnancy, called the critical or sensitive periodcritical or sensitive period
(Figure 2). For example, research with primate models of FASD has demonstrated that the time during which a
developing fetus is exposed to alcohol can dramatically affect the appearance of facial characteristics associated
with fetal alcohol syndrome. Specifically, this research suggests that alcohol exposure that is limited to day 19 or
20 of gestation can lead to significant facial abnormalities in the offspring (Ashley, Magnuson, Omnell, & Clarren,
1999). Given regions of the brain also show sensitive periods during which they are most susceptible to the
teratogenic effects of alcohol (Tran & Kelly, 2003).

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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Take a few minutes to view this brief video clip illustrating several newborn reflexes.
If you are interested in learning more about human development in babies, watch this TED talk by Alison
Gopnik. Recent discoveries reveal that babies are probably smarter than we think.
InfancyInfancy
The average newborn weighs approximately 7.5 pounds. Although small, a newborn is not completely helpless
because his reflexes and sensory capacities help him interact with the environment from the moment of birth. All
healthy babies are born with newborn reflexesnewborn reflexes: inborn automatic responses to particular forms of stimulation.
Reflexes help the newborn survive until it is capable of more complex behaviors—these reflexes are crucial to
survival. They are present in babies whose brains are developing normally and usually disappear around 4–5
months old. Let’s take a look at some of these newborn reflexes. The rooting reflex is the newborn’s response to
anything that touches her cheek: When you stroke a baby’s cheek, she naturally turns her head in that direction
and begins to suck. The sucking reflex is the automatic, unlearned, sucking motions that infants do with their
mouths. Several other interesting newborn reflexes can be observed. For instance, if you put your finger into a
newborn’s hand, you will witness the grasping reflex, in which a baby automatically grasps anything that touches
his palms. The Moro reflex is the newborn’s response when she feels like she is falling. The baby spreads her
arms, pulls them back in, and then (usually) cries. How do you think these reflexes promote survival in the first
months of life?
What can young infants see, hear, and smell? Newborn infants’ sensory abilities are significant, but their senses
are not yet fully developed. Many of a newborn’s innate preferences facilitate interaction with caregivers and other
humans. Although vision is their least developed sense, newborns already show a preference for faces. Babies
who are just a few days old also prefer human voices, they will listen to voices longer than sounds that do not
involve speech (Vouloumanos & Werker, 2004), and they seem to prefer their mother’s voice over a stranger’s
voice (Mills & Melhuish, 1974). In an interesting experiment, 3-week-old babies were given pacifiers that played a
recording of the infant’s mother’s voice and of a stranger’s voice. When the infants heard their mother’s voice,
they sucked more strongly at the pacifier (Mills & Melhuish, 1974). Newborns also have a strong sense of smell.
For instance, newborn babies can distinguish the smell of their own mother from that of others. In a study by
MacFarlane (1978), 1-week-old babies who were being breastfed were placed between two gauze pads. One
gauze pad was from the bra of a nursing mother who was a stranger, and the other gauze pad was from the bra
of the infant’s own mother. More than two-thirds of the week-old babies turned toward the gauze pad with their
mother’s scent.

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
conception:conception: when a sperm fertilizes an egg and forms a zygote
critical (sensitive) period:critical (sensitive) period: time during fetal growth when specific parts or organs develop
embryo:embryo: multi-cellular organism in its early stages of development
mitosis:mitosis: process of cell division
newborn reflexes:newborn reflexes: inborn automatic response to a particular form of stimulation that all healthy babies are born
with
placenta:placenta: structure connected to the uterus that provides nourishment and oxygen to the developing baby
prenatal care:prenatal care: medical care during pregnancy that monitors the health of both the mother and the fetus
teratogen:teratogen: biological, chemical, or physical environmental agent that causes damage to the developing embryo
or fetus
zygote:zygote: structure created when a sperm and egg merge at conception; begins as a single cell and rapidly
divides to form the embryo and placenta
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CHILDHOOD
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Explain the physical development that occurs from infancy through childhood
• Explain the cognitive development that occurs from infancy through childhood
• Explain the emotional development that occurs from infancy through childhood, including attachment,
the development of a self-concept, and parenting styles
Physical Development
In infancy, toddlerhood, and early childhood, the body’s physical development is rapid (Figure 1). On average,
newborns weigh between 5 and 10 pounds, and a newborn’s weight typically doubles in six months and triples in
one year. By 2 years old the weight will have quadrupled, so we can expect that a 2 year old should weigh

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Figure 1. Children experience rapid physical changes through infancy and early childhood. (credit “left”: modification of work by
Kerry Ceszyk; credit “middle-left”: modification of work by Kristi Fausel; credit “middle-right”: modification of work by “devinf”/Flickr;
credit “right”: modification of work by Rose Spielman)
between 20 and 40 pounds. The average length of a newborn is 19.5 inches, increasing to 29.5 inches by 12
months and 34.4 inches by 2 years old (WHO Multicentre Growth Reference Study Group, 2006).
During infancy and childhood, growth does not occur at a steady rate (Carel, Lahlou, Roger, & Chaussain, 2004).
Growth slows between 4 and 6 years old: During this time children gain 5–7 pounds and grow about 2–3 inches
per year. Once girls reach 8–9 years old, their growth rate outpaces that of boys due to a pubertal growth spurt.
This growth spurt continues until around 12 years old, coinciding with the start of the menstrual cycle. By 10 years
old, the average girl weighs 88 pounds, and the average boy weighs 85 pounds.
We are born with all of the brain cells that we will ever have—about 100–200 billion neurons (nerve cells) whose
function is to store and transmit information (Huttenlocher & Dabholkar, 1997). However, the nervous system
continues to grow and develop. Each neural pathway forms thousands of new connections during infancy and
toddlerhood. This period of rapid neural growth is called blooming. Neural pathways continue to develop through
puberty. The blooming period of neural growth is then followed by a period of pruning, where neural connections
are reduced. It is thought that pruning causes the brain to function more efficiently, allowing for mastery of more
complex skills (Hutchinson, 2011). Blooming occurs during the first few years of life, and pruning continues
through childhood and into adolescence in various areas of the brain.
The size of our brains increases rapidly. For example, the brain of a 2-year-old is 55% of its adult size, and by 6
years old the brain is about 90% of its adult size (Tanner, 1978). During early childhood (ages 3–6), the frontal
lobes grow rapidly. Recalling our discussion of the 4 lobes of the brain earlier in this book, the frontal lobes are
associated with planning, reasoning, memory, and impulse control. Therefore, by the time children reach school
age, they are developmentally capable of controlling their attention and behavior. Through the elementary school
years, the frontal, temporal, occipital, and parietal lobes all grow in size. The brain growth spurts experienced in
childhood tend to follow Piaget’s sequence of cognitive development, so that significant changes in neural
functioning account for cognitive advances (Kolb & Whishaw, 2009; Overman, Bachevalier, Turner, & Peuster,
1992).
Motor development occurs in an orderly sequence as infants move from reflexive reactions (e.g., sucking and
rooting) to more advanced motor functioning. For instance, babies first learn to hold their heads up, then to sit
with assistance, and then to sit unassisted, followed later by crawling and then walking.
Motor skillsMotor skills refer to our ability to move our bodies and manipulate objects. Fine motor skillsFine motor skills focus on the muscles
in our fingers, toes, and eyes, and enable coordination of small actions (e.g., grasping a toy, writing with a pencil,
and using a spoon). Gross motor skillGross motor skills focus on large muscle groups that control our arms and legs and involve
larger movements (e.g., balancing, running, and jumping).
As motor skills develop, there are certain developmental milestones that young children should achieve (Table 1).
For each milestone there is an average age, as well as a range of ages in which the milestone should be reached.
An example of a developmental milestone is sitting. On average, most babies sit alone at 7 months old. Sitting
involves both coordination and muscle strength, and 90% of babies achieve this milestone between 5 and 9
months old. In another example, babies on average are able to hold up their head at 6 weeks old, and 90% of
babies achieve this between 3 weeks and 4 months old. If a baby is not holding up his head by 4 months old, he
is showing a delay. If the child is displaying delays on several milestones, that is reason for concern, and the

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parent or caregiver should discuss this with the child’s pediatrician. Some developmental delays can be identified
and addressed through early intervention.
Table 1. Developmental Milestones, Ages 2–5 Years
AgeAge
(years)(years)
PhysicalPhysical Personal/SocialPersonal/Social LanguageLanguage CognitiveCognitive
2
Kicks a ball;
walks up and
down stairs
Plays alongside other
children; copies adults
Points to objects when
named; puts 2–4 words
together in a sentence
Sorts shapes and colors;
follows 2-step instructions
3
Climbs and
runs; pedals
tricycle
Takes turns;
expresses many
emotions; dresses self
Names familiar things; uses
pronouns
Plays make believe; works
toys with parts (levers,
handles)
4
Catches balls;
uses scissors
Prefers social play to
solo play; knows likes
and interests
Knows songs and rhymes
by memory
Names colors and
numbers; begins writing
letters
5
Hops and
swings; uses
fork and
spoon
Distinguishes real
from pretend; likes to
please friends
Speaks clearly; uses full
sentences
Counts to 10 or higher;
prints some letters and
copies basic shapes
Cognitive Development
In addition to rapid physical growth, young children also exhibit significant development of their cognitive abilities.
Piaget thought that children’s ability to understand objects—such as learning that a rattle makes a noise when
shaken—was a cognitive skill that develops slowly as a child matures and interacts with the environment. Today,
developmental psychologists think Piaget was incorrect. Researchers have found that even very young children
understand objects and how they work long before they have experience with those objects (Baillargeon, 1987;
Baillargeon, Li, Gertner, & Wu, 2011). For example, children as young as 3 months old demonstrated knowledge
of the properties of objects that they had only viewed and did not have prior experience with them. In one study,
3-month-old infants were shown a truck rolling down a track and behind a screen. The box, which appeared solid

Figure 2. In Baillargeon’s study, infants observed a truck (a) roll down an unobstructed track, (b) roll down an unobstructed track
with an obstruction (box) beside it, and (c) roll down and pass through what appeared to be an obstruction.
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False-belief tasks are useful in determining a child’s acquisition of theory-of-mind (TOM). Take a look at this
video clip showing a false-belief task involving a box of crayons.
TRY ITTRY IT
but was actually hollow, was placed next to the track. The truck rolled past the box as would be expected. Then
the box was placed on the track to block the path of the truck. When the truck was rolled down the track this time,
it continued unimpeded. The infants spent significantly more time looking at this impossible event (Figure 2).
Baillargeon (1987) concluded that they knew solid objects cannot pass through each other. Baillargeon’s findings
suggest that very young children have an understanding of objects and how they work, which Piaget (1954) would
have said is beyond their cognitive abilities due to their limited experiences in the world.
Just as there are physical milestones that we expect children to reach, there are also cognitive milestones. It is
helpful to be aware of these milestones as children gain new abilities to think, problem solve, and communicate.
For example, infants shake their head “no” around 6–9 months, and they respond to verbal requests to do things
like “wave bye-bye” or “blow a kiss” around 9–12 months. Remember Piaget’s ideas about object permanence?
We can expect children to grasp the concept that objects continue to exist even when they are not in sight by
around 8 months old. Because toddlers (i.e., 12–24 months old) have mastered object permanence, they enjoy
games like hide and seek, and they realize that when someone leaves the room they will come back (Loop,
2013). Toddlers also point to pictures in books and look in appropriate places when you ask them to find objects.
Preschool-age children (i.e., 3–5 years old) also make steady progress in cognitive development. Not only can
they count, name colors, and tell you their name and age, but they can also make some decisions on their own,
such as choosing an outfit to wear. Preschool-age children understand basic time concepts and sequencing (e.g.,
before and after), and they can predict what will happen next in a story. They also begin to enjoy the use of humor
in stories. Because they can think symbolically, they enjoy pretend play and inventing elaborate characters and
scenarios. One of the most common examples of their cognitive growth is their blossoming curiosity. Preschool-
age children love to ask “Why?”
An important cognitive change occurs in children this age. Recall that Piaget described 2–3 year olds as
egocentric, meaning that they do not have an awareness of others’ points of view. Between 3 and 5 years old,
children come to understand that people have thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that are different from their own.
This is known as theory-of-mind (TOM). Children can use this skill to tease others, persuade their parents to
purchase a candy bar, or understand why a sibling might be angry. When children develop TOM, they can
recognize that others have false beliefs (Dennett, 1987; Callaghan et al., 2005).

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Figure 3. Because they understand luck and fairness,
children in middle and late childhood (6–11 years old) are
able to follow rules for games. (credit: Edwin Martinez)
Cognitive skills continue to expand in middle and late childhood (6–11 years old). Thought processes become
more logical and organized when dealing with concrete information (Figure 3). Children at this age understand
concepts such as the past, present, and future, giving them the ability to plan and work toward goals. Additionally,
they can process complex ideas such as addition and subtraction and cause-and-effect relationships. However,
children’s attention spans tend to be very limited until they are around 11 years old. After that point, it begins to
improve through adulthood.
One well-researched aspect of cognitive development is
language acquisition. As mentioned earlier, the order in
which children learn language structures is consistent
across children and cultures (Hatch, 1983). You’ve also
learned that some psychological researchers have
proposed that children possess a biological predisposition
for language acquisition.
Starting before birth, babies begin to develop language and
communication skills. At birth, babies apparently recognize
their mother’s voice and can discriminate between the
language(s) spoken by their mothers and foreign
languages, and they show preferences for faces that are
moving in synchrony with audible language (Blossom &
Morgan, 2006; Pickens, 1994; Spelke & Cortelyou, 1981).
Children communicate information through gesturing long
before they speak, and there is some evidence that gesture
usage predicts subsequent language development (Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 2005). In terms of producing
spoken language, babies begin to coo almost immediately. Cooing is a one-syllable combination of a consonant
and a vowel sound (e.g., coo or ba). Interestingly, babies replicate sounds from their own languages. A baby
whose parents speak French will coo in a different tone than a baby whose parents speak Spanish or Urdu. After
cooing, the baby starts to babble. Babbling begins with repeating a syllable, such as ma-ma, da-da, or ba-ba.
When a baby is about 12 months old, we expect her to say her first word for meaning, and to start combining
words for meaning at about 18 months.
At about 2 years old, a toddler uses between 50 and 200 words; by 3 years old they have a vocabulary of up to
1,000 words and can speak in sentences. During the early childhood years, children’s vocabulary increases at a
rapid pace. This is sometimes referred to as the “vocabulary spurt” and has been claimed to involve an expansion
in vocabulary at a rate of 10–20 new words per week. Recent research may indicate that while some children
experience these spurts, it is far from universal (as discussed in Ganger & Brent, 2004). It has been estimated
that, 5 year olds understand about 6,000 words, speak 2,000 words, and can define words and question their
meanings. They can rhyme and name the days of the week. Seven year olds speak fluently and use slang and
clichés (Stork & Widdowson, 1974).
What accounts for such dramatic language learning by children? Behaviorist B. F. Skinner thought that we learn
language in response to reinforcement or feedback, such as through parental approval or through being
understood. For example, when a two-year-old child asks for juice, he might say, “me juice,” to which his mother
might respond by giving him a cup of apple juice. Noam Chomsky (1957) criticized Skinner’s theory and proposed
that we are all born with an innate capacity to learn language. Chomsky called this mechanism a language
acquisition device (LAD). Who is correct? Both Chomsky and Skinner are right. Remember that we are a product
of both nature and nurture. Researchers now believe that language acquisition is partially inborn and partially
learned through our interactions with our linguistic environment (Gleitman & Newport, 1995; Stork & Widdowson,
1974).

EVERYDAY CONNECTION: THE IMPORTANCE OF PLAY AND RECESSEVERYDAY CONNECTION: THE IMPORTANCE OF PLAY AND RECESS
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (2007), unstructured play is an integral part of a child’s
development. It builds creativity, problem solving skills, and social relationships. Play also allows children to
develop a theory-of-mind as they imaginatively take on the perspective of others.
Outdoor play allows children the opportunity to directly experience and sense the world around them. While
doing so, they may collect objects that they come across and develop lifelong interests and hobbies. They also
benefit from increased exercise, and engaging in outdoor play can actually increase how much they enjoy
physical activity. This helps support the development of a healthy heart and brain. Unfortunately, research
suggests that today’s children are engaging in less and less outdoor play (Clements, 2004). Perhaps, it is no
surprise to learn that lowered levels of physical activity in conjunction with easy access to calorie-dense foods
with little nutritional value are contributing to alarming levels of childhood obesity (Karnik & Kanekar, 2012).
Despite the adverse consequences associated with reduced play, some children are over scheduled and have
little free time to engage in unstructured play. In addition, some schools have taken away recess time for
children in a push for students to do better on standardized tests, and many schools commonly use loss of
recess as a form of punishment. Do you agree with these practices? Why or why not?
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Harlow’s studies of monkeys were performed before modern ethics guidelines were in place, and today his
experiments are widely considered to be unethical and even cruel. Watch this video to see actual footage of
Harlow’s monkey studies.
Attachment
Psychosocial development occurs as children form relationships, interact with others, and understand and
manage their feelings. In social and emotional development, forming healthy attachments is very important and is
the major social milestone of infancy. AttachmentAttachment is a long-standing connection or bond with others.
Developmental psychologists are interested in how infants reach this milestone. They ask such questions as: How
do parent and infant attachment bonds form? How does neglect affect these bonds? What accounts for children’s
attachment differences?
Researchers Harry Harlow, John Bowlby, and Mary Ainsworth conducted studies designed to answer these
questions. In the 1950s, Harlow conducted a series of experiments on monkeys. He separated newborn monkeys
from their mothers. Each monkey was presented with two surrogate mothers. One surrogate monkey was made
out of wire mesh, and she could dispense milk. The other monkey was softer and made from cloth: This monkey
did not dispense milk. Research shows that the monkeys preferred the soft, cuddly cloth monkey, even though
she did not provide any nourishment. The baby monkeys spent their time clinging to the cloth monkey and only
went to the wire monkey when they needed to be feed. Prior to this study, the medical and scientific communities
generally thought that babies become attached to the people who provide their nourishment. However, Harlow
(1958) concluded that there was more to the mother-child bond than nourishment. Feelings of comfort and
security are the critical components to maternal-infant bonding, which leads to healthy psychosocial development.
Building on the work of Harlow and others, John Bowlby developed the concept of attachment theory. He defined
attachment as the affectional bond or tie that an infant forms with the mother (Bowlby, 1969). An infant must form
this bond with a primary caregiver in order to have normal social and emotional development. In addition, Bowlby
proposed that this attachment bond is very powerful and continues throughout life. He used the concept of secure
base to define a healthy attachment between parent and child (1988). A secure basesecure base is a parental presence that
gives the child a sense of safety as he explores his surroundings. Bowlby said that two things are needed for a
healthy attachment: The caregiver must be responsive to the child’s physical, social, and emotional needs; and
the caregiver and child must engage in mutually enjoyable interactions (Bowlby, 1969) (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Mutually enjoyable interactions promote the
mother-infant bond. (credit: Peter Shanks)
Figure 5. In secure attachment, the parent provides a
secure base for the toddler, allowing him to securely
explore his environment. (credit: Kerry Ceszyk)
While Bowlby thought attachment was an all-or-nothing
process, Mary Ainsworth’s (1970) research showed
otherwise. Ainsworth wanted to know if children differ in the
ways they bond, and if so, why. To find the answers, she
used the Strange Situation procedure to study attachment
between mothers and their infants (1970). In the Strange
Situation, the mother (or primary caregiver) and the infant
(age 12-18 months) are placed in a room together. There
are toys in the room, and the caregiver and child spend
some time alone in the room. After the child has had time to
explore her surroundings, a stranger enters the room. The
mother then leaves her baby with the stranger. After a few
minutes, she returns to comfort her child.
Based on how the infants/toddlers responded to the
separation and reunion, Ainsworth identified three types of
parent-child attachments: secure, avoidant, and resistant
(Ainsworth & Bell, 1970). A fourth style, known as
disorganized attachment, was later described (Main &
Solomon, 1990). The most common type of
attachment—also considered the healthiest—is called secure attachmentsecure attachment (Figure 5). In this type of attachment,
the toddler prefers his parent over a stranger. The attachment figure is used as a secure base to explore the
environment and is sought out in times of stress. Securely attached children were distressed when their
caregivers left the room in the Strange Situation experiment, but when their caregivers returned, the securely
attached children were happy to see them. Securely attached children have caregivers who are sensitive and
responsive to their needs.
With avoidant attachment (sometimes called insecure oravoidant attachment (sometimes called insecure or
anxious-avoidant)anxious-avoidant), the child is unresponsive to the parent,
does not use the parent as a secure base, and does not
care if the parent leaves. The toddler reacts to the parent
the same way she reacts to a stranger. When the parent
does return, the child is slow to show a positive reaction.
Ainsworth theorized that these children were most likely to
have a caregiver who was insensitive and inattentive to
their needs (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978).
In cases of resistant attachment (also called ambivalent orresistant attachment (also called ambivalent or
anxious-ambivalent/resistant)anxious-ambivalent/resistant), children tend to show clingy
behavior, but then they reject the attachment figure’s
attempts to interact with them (Ainsworth & Bell, 1970).
These children do not explore the toys in the room, as they
are too fearful. During separation in the Strange Situation,
they became extremely disturbed and angry with the
parent. When the parent returns, the children are difficult to
comfort. Resistant attachment is the result of the
caregivers’ inconsistent level of response to their child.
Finally, children with disorganized attachmentdisorganized attachment behaved oddly in the Strange Situation. They freeze, run around
the room in an erratic manner, or try to run away when the caregiver returns (Main & Solomon, 1990). This type of
attachment is seen most often in kids who have been abused. Research has shown that abuse disrupts a child’s
ability to regulate their emotions.
While Ainsworth’s research has found support in subsequent studies, it has also met criticism. Some researchers
have pointed out that a child’s temperament may have a strong influence on attachment (Gervai, 2009; Harris,
2009), and others have noted that attachment varies from culture to culture, a factor not accounted for in
Ainsworth’s research (Rothbaum, Weisz, Pott, Miyake, & Morelli, 2000; van Ijzendoorn & Sagi-Schwartz, 2008).

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Watch this video to view a clip of the Strange Situation. Try to identify which type of attachment baby Lisa
exhibits.
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Self-Concept
Just as attachment is the main psychosocial milestone of infancy, the primary psychosocial milestone of
childhood is the development of a positive sense of self. How does self-awareness develop? Infants don’t have a
self-concept, which is an understanding of who they are. If you place a baby in front of a mirror, she will reach out
to touch her image, thinking it is another baby. However, by about 18 months a toddler will recognize that the
person in the mirror is herself. How do we know this? In a well-known experiment, a researcher placed a red dot
of paint on children’s noses before putting them in front of a mirror (Amsterdam, 1972). Commonly known as the
mirror test, this behavior is demonstrated by humans and a few other species and is considered evidence of self-
recognition (Archer, 1992). At 18 months old they would touch their own noses when they saw the paint, surprised
to see a spot on their faces. By 24–36 months old children can name and/or point to themselves in pictures,
clearly indicating self-recognition.

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Children from 2–4 years old display a great increase in social behavior once they have established a self-concept.
They enjoy playing with other children, but they have difficulty sharing their possessions. Also, through play
children explore and come to understand their gender roles and can label themselves as a girl or boy (Chick,
Heilman-Houser, & Hunter, 2002). By 4 years old, children can cooperate with other children, share when asked,
and separate from parents with little anxiety. Children at this age also exhibit autonomy, initiate tasks, and carry
out plans. Success in these areas contributes to a positive sense of self. Once children reach 6 years old, they
can identify themselves in terms of group memberships: “I’m a first grader!” School-age children compare
themselves to their peers and discover that they are competent in some areas and less so in others (recall
Erikson’s task of industry versus inferiority). At this age, children recognize their own personality traits as well as
some other traits they would like to have. For example, 10-year-old Layla says, “I’m kind of shy. I wish I could be
more talkative like my friend Alexa.”
Development of a positive self-concept is important to healthy development. Children with a positive self-concept
tend to be more confident, do better in school, act more independently, and are more willing to try new activities
(Maccoby, 1980; Ferrer & Fugate, 2003). Formation of a positive self-concept begins in Erikson’s toddlerhood
stage, when children establish autonomy and become confident in their abilities. Development of self-concept
continues in elementary school, when children compare themselves to others. When the comparison is favorable,
children feel a sense of competence and are motivated to work harder and accomplish more. Self-concept is re-
evaluated in Erikson’s adolescence stage, as teens form an identity. They internalize the messages they have
received regarding their strengths and weaknesses, keeping some messages and rejecting others. Adolescents
who have achieved identity formation are capable of contributing positively to society (Erikson, 1968).
What can parents do to nurture a healthy self-concept? Diana Baumrind (1971, 1991) thinks parenting style may
be a factor. The way we parent is an important factor in a child’s socioemotional growth. Baumrind developed and
refined a theory describing four parenting styles: authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and uninvolved. With the
authoritativeauthoritative stylestyle, the parent gives reasonable demands and consistent limits, expresses warmth and affection,
and listens to the child’s point of view. Parents set rules and explain the reasons behind them. They are also
flexible and willing to make exceptions to the rules in certain cases—for example, temporarily relaxing bedtime
rules to allow for a nighttime swim during a family vacation. Of the four parenting styles, the authoritative style is
the one that is most encouraged in modern American society. American children raised by authoritative parents
tend to have high self-esteem and social skills. However, effective parenting styles vary as a function of culture
and, as Small (1999) points out, the authoritative style is not necessarily preferred or appropriate in all cultures.
In authoritarian styleauthoritarian style, the parent places high value on conformity and obedience. The parents are often strict,
tightly monitor their children, and express little warmth. In contrast to the authoritative style, authoritarian parents
probably would not relax bedtime rules during a vacation because they consider the rules to be set, and they
expect obedience. This style can create anxious, withdrawn, and unhappy kids. However, it is important to point
out that authoritarian parenting is as beneficial as the authoritative style in some ethnic groups (Russell, Crockett,
& Chao, 2010). For instance, first-generation Chinese American children raised by authoritarian parents did just
as well in school as their peers who were raised by authoritative parents (Russell et al., 2010).
For parents who employ the permissive stylepermissive style of parenting, the kids run the show and anything goes. Permissive
parents make few demands and rarely use punishment. They tend to be very nurturing and loving, and may play
the role of friend rather than parent. In terms of our example of vacation bedtimes, permissive parents might not
have bedtime rules at all—instead they allow the child to choose his bedtime whether on vacation or not. Not
surprisingly, children raised by permissive parents tend to lack self-discipline, and the permissive parenting style
is negatively associated with grades (Dornbusch, Ritter, Leiderman, Roberts, & Fraleigh, 1987). The permissive
style may also contribute to other risky behaviors such as alcohol abuse (Bahr & Hoffman, 2010), risky sexual
behavior especially among female children (Donenberg, Wilson, Emerson, & Bryant, 2002), and increased display
of disruptive behaviors by male children (Parent et al., 2011). However, there are some positive outcomes
associated with children raised by permissive parents. They tend to have higher self-esteem, better social skills,
and report lower levels of depression (Darling, 1999).
With the uninvolved styleuninvolved style of parenting, the parents are indifferent, uninvolved, and sometimes referred to as
neglectful. They don’t respond to the child’s needs and make relatively few demands. This could be because of
severe depression or substance abuse, or other factors such as the parents’ extreme focus on work. These
parents may provide for the child’s basic needs, but little else. The children raised in this parenting style are
usually emotionally withdrawn, fearful, anxious, perform poorly in school, and are at an increased risk of
substance abuse (Darling, 1999).

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Watch this optional lecture on child development from MIT’s John Gabrieli for an interesting overview of key
physical, social, and emotional developmental stages of childhood.
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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
attachment:attachment: long-standing connection or bond with others
authoritarian parenting style:authoritarian parenting style: parents place a high value on conformity and obedience, are often rigid, and
express little warmth to the child
authoritative parenting style:authoritative parenting style: parents give children reasonable demands and consistent limits, express warmth
and affection, and listen to the child’s point of view
As you can see, parenting styles influence childhood adjustment, but could a child’s temperament likewise
influence parenting? TemperamentTemperament refers to innate traits that influence how one thinks, behaves, and reacts with
the environment. Children with easy temperaments demonstrate positive emotions, adapt well to change, and are
capable of regulating their emotions. Conversely, children with difficult temperaments demonstrate negative
emotions and have difficulty adapting to change and regulating their emotions. Difficult children are much more
likely to challenge parents, teachers, and other caregivers (Thomas, 1984). Therefore, it’s possible that easy
children (i.e., social, adaptable, and easy to soothe) tend to elicit warm and responsive parenting, while
demanding, irritable, withdrawn children evoke irritation in their parents or cause their parents to withdraw
(Sanson & Rothbart, 1995).
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
Which parenting style describes how you were raised? Provide an example or two to support your answer.

avoidant attachment:avoidant attachment: characterized by child’s unresponsiveness to parent, does not use the parent as a secure
base, and does not care if parent leaves
cognitive empathy:cognitive empathy: ability to take the perspective of others and to feel concern for others
disorganized attachment:disorganized attachment: characterized by the child’s odd behavior when faced with the parent; type of
attachment seen most often with kids that are abused
fine motor skills:fine motor skills: use of muscles in fingers, toes, and eyes to coordinate small actions
gross motor skills:gross motor skills: use of large muscle groups to control arms and legs for large body movements
motor skills:motor skills: ability to move our body and manipulate objects
permissive parenting style:permissive parenting style: parents make few demands and rarely use punishment
resistant attachment:resistant attachment: characterized by the child’s tendency to show clingy behavior and rejection of the parent
when she attempts to interact with the child
secure attachment:secure attachment: characterized by the child using the parent as a secure base from which to explore
secure base:secure base: parental presence that gives the infant/toddler a sense of safety as he explores his surroundings
temperament:temperament: innate traits that influence how one thinks, behaves, and reacts with the environment
uninvolved parenting style:uninvolved parenting style: parents are indifferent, uninvolved, and sometimes referred to as neglectful; they
don’t respond to the child’s needs and make relatively few demands
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• Stages of Development. Provided byProvided by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:b7opmCF3@6/Stages-of-Development#Figure_09_02_Stages. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms:
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ADOLESCENCE
What you’ll learn to do: describe physical, cognitive, and emotional
development in adolescence and adulthood
Changes in development during childhood are rapid and more obvious than the changes that come later on in life,
but before you reach adulthood, there is one more large transition: adolescence. Adolescence brings the physical
development of puberty, as well as cognitive, social, and emotional changes. Following adolescence, transitions
are less obvious, but still significant throughout emerging adulthood and adulthood. Finally, growing older means
confronting many psychological, emotional, and social issues that come with entering the last phase of life. Watch
this video from a few of the world’s oldest people for some advice on how you can also live a fulfilling life until the
very end.

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Figure 1. Peers are a primary influence on our
development in adolescence. (credit: Sheila Tostes)
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe physical, cognitive, and emotional development that occurs during adolescence
Adolescence is a socially constructed concept. In pre-industrial society, children were considered adults when
they reached physical maturity, but today we have an extended time between childhood and adulthood called
adolescence. AdolescenceAdolescence is the period of development that begins at puberty and ends at emerging adulthood,
or into the mid- to late 20s. In the United States, adolescence is seen as a time to develop independence from
parents while remaining connected to them (Figure 1). The typical age range of adolescence is from 12 to 18
years, and this stage of development also has some predictable physical, cognitive, and psychosocial milestones.
Physical Development
As noted above, adolescence begins with puberty. While
the sequence of physical changes in puberty is predictable,
the onset and pace of puberty vary widely. Several physical
changes occur during puberty, such as adrenarcheadrenarche and
gonadarchegonadarche, the maturing of the adrenal glands and sex
glands, respectively. Also during this time, primary and
secondary sexual characteristics develop and mature.
Primary sexual characteristicsPrimary sexual characteristics are organs specifically
needed for reproduction, like the uterus and ovaries in
females and testes in males. Secondary sexualSecondary sexual
characteristicscharacteristics are physical signs of sexual maturation that
do not directly involve sex organs, such as development of
breasts and hips in girls, and development of facial hair and
a deepened voice in boys. Girls experience menarchemenarche, the
beginning of menstrual periods, usually around 12–13 years old, and boys experience spermarchespermarche, the first
ejaculation, around 13–14 years old.
During puberty, both sexes experience a rapid increase in height (i.e., growth spurt). For girls this begins between
8 and 13 years old, with adult height reached between 10 and 16 years old. Boys begin their growth spurt slightly
later, usually between 10 and 16 years old, and reach their adult height between 13 and 17 years old. Both nature
(i.e., genes) and nurture (e.g., nutrition, medications, and medical conditions) can influence height.
Because rates of physical development vary so widely among teenagers, puberty can be a source of pride or
embarrassment. Early maturing boys tend to be stronger, taller, and more athletic than their later maturing peers.
They are usually more popular, confident, and independent, but they are also at a greater risk for substance
abuse and early sexual activity (Flannery, Rowe, & Gulley, 1993; Kaltiala-Heino, Rimpela, Rissanen, & Rantanen,
2001). Early maturing girls may be teased or overtly admired, which can cause them to feel self-conscious about
their developing bodies. These girls are at a higher risk for depression, substance abuse, and eating disorders
(Ge, Conger, & Elder, 2001; Graber, Lewinsohn, Seeley, & Brooks-Gunn, 1997; Striegel-Moore & Cachelin,
1999). Late blooming boys and girls (i.e., they develop more slowly than their peers) may feel self-conscious
about their lack of physical development. Negative feelings are particularly a problem for late maturing boys, who
are at a higher risk for depression and conflict with parents (Graber et al., 1997) and more likely to be bullied
(Pollack & Shuster, 2000).
The adolescent brain also remains under development. Recall from your earlier study, that the brain consists of
six regions: temporal lobe, brain stem, cerebellum, occipital lobe (includes the visual cortex), parietal lobe, and
the frontal lobe. The frontal lobe consists of the prefrontal cortex, premotor cortex, and motor cortex. The
prefrontal lobe lies just behind the forehead. Up until puberty, brain cells continue to bloom in the frontal region.

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
According to neuroscientist Jay Giedd in the Frontline video “Inside the Teenage Brain” (2013), “It’s sort of
unfair to expect [teens] to have adult levels of organizational skills or decision-making before their brains are
finished being built.” Watch this segment on “The Wiring of the Adolescent Brain” to find out more about the
developing brain during adolescence.
Adolescents engage in increased risk-taking behaviors and emotional outbursts possibly because the frontal
lobes of their brains are still developing (Figure 2). Recall that this area is often called the “CEO of the brain”, as it
is responsible for judgment, impulse control, and planning. It is still maturing into early adulthood, up until around
age 25 (Casey, Tottenham, Liston, & Durston, 2005).
Figure 2. Brain growth continues into the early 20s. The development of the frontal lobe, in particular, is important during this
stage.
Brain maturity occurs when there is growth of new neural connections and the pruning of unused neurons and
connections. According to recent research, the brain regions tend to develop from the back to the front of the
brain. Also, myelin continues to grow around axons and neurons helping to speed transmission between the
various regions of the brain.

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Cognitive Development
More complex thinking abilities emerge during adolescence. Some researchers suggest this is due to increases in
processing speed and efficiency rather than as the result of an increase in mental capacity—in other words, due
to improvements in existing skills rather than development of new ones (Bjorkland, 1987; Case, 1985). During
adolescence, teenagers move beyond concrete thinking and become capable of abstract thought. Recall that
Piaget refers to this stage as formal operational thought. Teen thinking is also characterized by the ability to
consider multiple points of view, imagine hypothetical situations, debate ideas and opinions (e.g., politics, religion,
and justice), and form new ideas (Figure 3). In addition, it’s not uncommon for adolescents to question authority or
challenge established societal norms.Cognitive empathy, also known as theory-of-mind (which we discussed
earlier with regard to egocentrism), relates to the ability to take the perspective of others and feel concern for
others (Shamay-Tsoory, Tomer, & Aharon-Peretz, 2005). Cognitive empathy begins to increase in adolescence
and is an important component of social problem solving and conflict avoidance. According to one longitudinal
study, levels of cognitive empathy begin rising in girls around 13 years old, and around 15 years old in boys (Van
der Graaff et al., 2013). Teens who reported having supportive fathers with whom they could discuss their worries
were found to be better able to take the perspective of others (Miklikowska, Duriez, & Soenens, 2011).

Figure 3. Teenage thinking is characterized by the ability
to reason logically and solve hypothetical problems such
as how to design, plan, and build a structure. (credit: U.S.
Army RDECOM)
Psychosocial Development
Adolescents continue to refine their sense of self as they
relate to others. Erikson referred to the task of the
adolescent as one of identity versus role confusion. Thus, in
Erikson’s view, an adolescent’s main questions are “Who
am I?” and “Who do I want to be?” Some adolescents adopt
the values and roles that their parents expect for them.
Other teens develop identities that are in opposition to their
parents but align with a peer group. This is common as
peer relationships become a central focus in adolescents’
lives.
As adolescents work to form their identities, they pull away
from their parents, and the peer group becomes very
important (Shanahan, McHale, Osgood, & Crouter, 2007).
Despite spending less time with their parents, most teens
report positive feelings toward them (Moore, Guzman, Hair,
Lippman, & Garrett, 2004). Warm and healthy parent-child
relationships have been associated with positive child outcomes, such as better grades and fewer school
behavior problems, in the United States as well as in other countries (Hair et al., 2005).
It appears that most teens don’t experience adolescent storm and stress to the degree once famously suggested
by G. Stanley Hall, a pioneer in the study of adolescent development. Only small numbers of teens have major
conflicts with their parents (Steinberg & Morris, 2001), and most disagreements are minor. For example, in a
study of over 1,800 parents of adolescents from various cultural and ethnic groups, Barber (1994) found that
conflicts occurred over day-to-day issues such as homework, money, curfews, clothing, chores, and friends.
These types of arguments tend to decrease as teens develop (Galambos & Almeida, 1992).
Emerging Adulthood
The next stage of development is emerging adulthoodemerging adulthood. This is a relatively newly defined period of lifespan
development spanning from 18 years old to the mid-20s, characterized as an in-between time where identity
exploration is focused on work and love.
When does a person become an adult? There are many ways to answer this question. In the United States, you
are legally considered an adult at 18 years old. But other definitions of adulthood vary widely; in sociology, for
example, a person may be considered an adult when she becomes self-supporting, chooses a career, gets
married, or starts a family. The ages at which we achieve these milestones vary from person to person as well as
from culture to culture. For example, in the African country of Malawi, 15-year-old Njemile was married at 14
years old and had her first child at 15 years old. In her culture she is considered an adult. Children in Malawi take
on adult responsibilities such as marriage and work (e.g., carrying water, tending babies, and working fields) as
early as 10 years old. In stark contrast, independence in Western cultures is taking longer and longer, effectively
delaying the onset of adult life.
Why is it taking twenty-somethings so long to grow up? It seems that emerging adulthood is a product of both
Western culture and our current times (Arnett, 2000). People in developed countries are living longer, allowing the
freedom to take an extra decade to start a career and family. Changes in the workforce also play a role. For
example, 50 years ago, a young adult with a high school diploma could immediately enter the work force and
climb the corporate ladder. That is no longer the case. Bachelor’s and even graduate degrees are required more
and more often—even for entry-level jobs (Arnett, 2000). In addition, many students are taking longer (five or six
years) to complete a college degree as a result of working and going to school at the same time. After graduation,
many young adults return to the family home because they have difficulty finding a job. Changing cultural
expectations may be the most important reason for the delay in entering adult roles. Young people are spending
more time exploring their options, so they are delaying marriage and work as they change majors and jobs
multiple times, putting them on a much later timetable than their parents (Arnett, 2000).

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Review these concepts on adolescence and emerging adulthood in the Crash Course Psychology video.
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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
adolescence:adolescence: period of development that begins at puberty and ends at early adulthood
adrenarche:adrenarche: maturing of the adrenal glands
emerging adulthood:emerging adulthood: newly defined period of lifespan development from 18 years old to the mid-20s; young
people are taking longer to complete college, get a job, get married, and start a family
gonadarche:gonadarche: maturing of the sex glands
menarche:menarche: beginning of menstrual period; around 12–13 years old
primary sexual characteristics:primary sexual characteristics: organs specifically needed for reproduction
secondary sexual characteristics:secondary sexual characteristics: physical signs of sexual maturation that do not directly involve sex organs
spermarche:spermarche: first male ejaculation
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
Would you describe your experience of puberty as one of pride or embarrassment? Why?
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Figure 1. Physical declines of middle and late adulthood
can be minimized with proper exercise, nutrition, and an
active lifestyle. (credit: modification of work by Peter
Stevens)
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Aging doesn’t mean a person can’t explore new pursuits, learn new skills, and continue to grow. Watch this
inspiring story about Neil Unger who is a newbie to the world of skateboarding at 60 years old.
ADULTHOOD
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe physical, cognitive, and emotional development that occurs in adulthood
• Differentiate between fluid and crystallized intelligence
Adulthood begins around 20 years old and has three distinct stages: early, middle, and late. Each stage brings its
own set of rewards and challenges.
Physical Development
By the time we reach early adulthood (20 to early 40s), our
physical maturation is complete, although our height and
weight may increase slightly. In young adulthood, our
physical abilities are at their peak, including muscle
strength, reaction time, sensory abilities, and cardiac
functioning. Most professional athletes are at the top of their
game during this stage. Many women have children in the
young adulthood years, so they may see additional weight
gain and breast changes.
Middle adulthood extends from the 40s to the 60s (Figure
1). Physical decline is gradual. The skin loses some
elasticity, and wrinkles are among the first signs of aging.
Visual acuity decreases during this time. Women
experience a gradual decline in fertility as they approach
the onset of menopause, the end of the menstrual cycle,
around 50 years old. Both men and women tend to gain
weight: in the abdominal area for men and in the hips and
thighs for women. Hair begins to thin and turn gray.
Late adulthood is considered to extend from the 60s on.
This is the last stage of physical change. The skin
continues to lose elasticity, reaction time slows further, and muscle strength diminishes. Smell, taste, hearing, and
vision, so sharp in our twenties, decline significantly. The brain may also no longer function at optimal levels,
leading to problems like memory loss, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease in later years.
Cognitive Development
Because we spend so many years in adulthood (more than any other stage), cognitive changes are numerous. In
fact, research suggests that adult cognitive development is a complex, ever changing process that may be even
more active than cognitive development in infancy and early childhood (Fischer, Yan, & Stewart, 2003).

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
There is good news for the middle age brain. View this brief video to find out what it is.
Figure 2. There are many stereotypes of older adults.
They are sometimes seen as slow because of changes in
cognitive processing speed. They are though, on
average, excellent at drawing on personal experience and
knowledge. And they tend to outperform young adults
when it comes to social and emotional challenges. [Photo:
jessleecuizon]
Researchers have identified areas of both losses and gains in cognition in older age. Cognitive ability and
intelligence are often measured using standardized tests and validated measures. The psychometric approach
has identified two categories of intelligence that show different rates of change across the life span (Schaie &
Willis, 1996). Fluid intelligenceFluid intelligence refers to information processing abilities, such as logical reasoning, remembering
lists, spatial ability, and reaction time. Crystallized intelligenceCrystallized intelligence encompasses abilities that draw upon experience
and knowledge. Measures of crystallized intelligence include vocabulary tests, solving number problems, and
understanding texts.
With age, systematic declines are observed on cognitive
tasks requiring self-initiated, effortful processing, without the
aid of supportive memory cues (Park, 2000). Older adults
tend to perform poorer than young adults on memory tasks
that involve recall of information, where individuals must
retrieve information they learned previously without the help
of a list of possible choices. For example, older adults may
have more difficulty recalling facts such as names or
contextual details about where or when something
happened (Craik, 2000). What might explain these deficits
as we age? As we age, working memory, or our ability to
simultaneously store and use information, becomes less
efficient (Craik & Bialystok, 2006). The ability to process
information quickly also decreases with age. This slowing of
processing speed may explain age differences on many
different cognitive tasks (Salthouse, 2004). Some
researchers have argued that inhibitory functioning, or the
ability to focus on certain information while suppressing
attention to less pertinent information, declines with age
and may explain age differences in performance on
cognitive tasks (Hasher & Zacks, 1988). Finally, it is well
established that our hearing and vision decline as we age.
Longitudinal research has proposed that deficits in sensory functioning explain age differences in a variety of
cognitive abilities (Baltes & Lindenberger, 1997).
Fewer age differences are observed when memory cues are available, such as for recognition memory tasks, or
when individuals can draw upon acquired knowledge or experience. For example, older adults often perform as
well if not better than young adults on tests of word knowledge or vocabulary. With age often comes expertise,
and research has pointed to areas where aging experts perform as well or better than younger individuals. For
example, older typists were found to compensate for age-related declines in speed by looking farther ahead at
printed text (Salthouse, 1984). Compared to younger players, older chess experts are able to focus on a smaller
set of possible moves, leading to greater cognitive efficiency (Charness, 1981). Accrued knowledge of everyday
tasks, such as grocery prices, can help older adults to make better decisions than young adults (Tentori, Osheron,
Hasher, & May, 2001).
How do changes or maintenance of cognitive ability affect older adults’ everyday lives? Researchers have studied
cognition in the context of several different everyday activities. One example is driving. Although older adults often
have more years of driving experience, cognitive declines related to reaction time or attentional processes may
pose limitations under certain circumstances (Park & Gutchess, 2000). Research on interpersonal problem
solving suggested that older adults use more effective strategies than younger adults to navigate through social
and emotional problems (Blanchard-Fields, 2007). In the context of work, researchers rarely find that older
individuals perform poorer on the job (Park & Gutchess, 2000). Similar to everyday problem solving, older workers
may develop more efficient strategies and rely on expertise to compensate for cognitive decline.
How can we delay the onset of cognitive decline? Mental and physical activity seems to play a part (Figure 2).
Research has found adults who engage in mentally and physically stimulating activities experience less cognitive

Figure 3. Cognitive activities such as playing mahjong,
chess, or other games, can keep you mentally fit. The
same is true for solo pastimes like reading and
completing crossword puzzles. (credit: Philippe Put)
Figure 4. Social support is important as we age. (credit:
Gabriel Rocha)
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Learn more about the aging process through the following PsychSim Tutorial from the Worth Publishers’
Student Center for Discovering Psychology. Take the time to watch the video examples of adults explaining
their own experiences with aging. The tutorial is only intended for practice. Please disregard the final screen
that requests you submit answers to your instructor.
decline and have a reduced incidence of mild cognitive impairment and dementia (Hertzog, Kramer, Wilson, &
Lindenberger, 2009; Larson et al., 2006; Podewils et al., 2005).
Psychosocial Development
There are many theories about the social and emotional
aspects of aging. Some aspects of healthy aging include
activities, social connectedness, and the role of a person’s
culture. According to many theorists, including George
Vaillant (2002), who studied and analyzed over 50 years of
data, we need to have and continue to find meaning
throughout our lives. For those in early and middle
adulthood, meaning is found through work (Sterns & Huyck,
2001) and family life (Markus, Ryff, Curan, & Palmersheim,
2004). These areas relate to the tasks that Erikson referred
to as generativity versus intimacy. As mentioned previously,
adults tend to define themselves by what they do—their
careers. Earnings peak during this time, yet job satisfaction
is more closely tied to work that involves contact with other
people, is interesting, provides opportunities for
advancement, and allows some independence (Mohr &
Zoghi, 2006) than it is to salary (Iyengar, Wells, & Schwartz, 2006). How might being unemployed or being in a
dead-end job challenge adult well-being?
As people enter the final stages of life, they have what Erik Erikson described as a crisis over integrity versus
despair. In other words, they review the events of their lives and try to come to terms with the mark (or lack
thereof) that they have made on the world. People who believe they have had a positive impact on the world
through their contributions live the end of life with a sense of integrity. Those who feel they have not measured up
to certain standards—either their own or others’—develop a sense of despair.
Positive relationships with significant others in our adult
years have been found to contribute to a state of well-being
(Ryff & Singer, 2009). Most adults in the United States
identify themselves through their relationships with
family—particularly with spouses, children, and parents
(Markus et al., 2004). While raising children can be
stressful, especially when they are young, research
suggests that parents reap the rewards down the road, as
adult children tend to have a positive effect on parental
well-being (Umberson, Pudrovska, & Reczek, 2010).
Having a stable marriage has also been found to contribute
to well-being throughout adulthood (Vaillant, 2002).
Another aspect of positive aging is believed to be social
connectedness and social support. As we get older,
socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that our social
support and friendships dwindle in number, but remain as
close, if not more close than in our earlier years (Carstensen, 1992) (Figure 3).

• Signs of Aging
To learn more, view this video on aging in America.
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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
crystallized intelligencecrystallized intelligence: intelligence that draw upon experience and knowledge. Measures include vocabulary
tests, solving number problems, and understanding texts
fluid intelligencefluid intelligence: information processing abilities, such as logical reasoning, remembering lists, spatial ability,
and reaction time
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Figure 1. In some cultures, people’s bodies may be buried
in a cemetery after death. (credit: Christina Rutz)
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DEATH AND DYING
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Explain attitudes toward death and Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining,
depression, acceptance)
Every story has an ending. Death marks the end of your life story (Figure 1). Our culture and individual
backgrounds influence how we view death. In some cultures, death is accepted as a natural part of life and is
embraced. In contrast, until about 50 years ago in the United States, a doctor might not inform someone that they
were dying, and the majority of deaths occurred in hospitals. In 1967 that reality began to change with Cicely
Saunders, who created the first modern hospicehospice in England. The aim of hospice is to help provide a death with
dignity and pain management in a humane and comfortable environment, which is usually outside of a hospital
setting. In 1974, Florence Wald founded the first hospice in the United States. Today, hospice provides care for
1.65 million Americans and their families. Because of hospice care, many terminally ill people are able to spend
their last days at home.
Research has indicated that hospice care is beneficial for
the patient (Brumley, Enquidanos, & Cherin, 2003; Brumley
et al., 2007; Godkin, Krant, & Doster, 1984) and for the
patient’s family (Rhodes, Mitchell, Miller, Connor, & Teno,
2008; Godkin et al., 1984). Hospice patients report high
levels of satisfaction with hospice care because they are
able to remain at home and are not completely dependent
on strangers for care (Brumley et al., 2007). In addition,
hospice patients tend to live longer than non-hospice
patients (Connor, Pyenson, Fitch, Spence, & Iwasaki, 2007;
Temel et al., 2010). Family members receive emotional
support and are regularly informed of their loved one’s
treatment and condition. The family member’s burden of
care is also reduced (McMillan et al., 2006). Both the
patient and the patient’s family members report increased
family support, increased social support, and improved
coping while receiving hospice services (Godkin et al.,
1984).

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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams is Randy Pausch’s last lecture. Listen to his inspiring talk.
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How do you think you might react if you were diagnosed with a terminal illness like cancer? Elizabeth Kübler-Ross
(1969), who worked with the founders of hospice care, described the process of an individual accepting his own
death. She proposed five stages of grieffive stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Most individuals
experience these stages, but the stages may occur in different orders, depending on the individual. In addition,
not all people experience all of the stages. It is also important to note that some psychologists believe that the
more a dying person fights death, the more likely he is to remain stuck in the denial phase. This could make it
difficult for the dying person to face death with dignity. However, other psychologists believe that not facing death
until the very end is an adaptive coping mechanism for some people.
Whether due to illness or old age, not everyone facing death or the loss of a loved one experiences the negative
emotions outlined in the Kübler-Ross model (Nolen-Hoeksema & Larson, 1999). For example, research suggests
that people with religious or spiritual beliefs are better able to cope with death because of their hope in an afterlife
and because of social support from religious or spiritual associations (Hood, Spilka, Hunsberger, & Corsuch,
1996; McIntosh, Silver, & Wortman, 1993; Paloutzian, 1996; Samarel, 1991; Wortman & Park, 2008).
A prominent example of a person creating meaning through death is Randy Pausch, who was a well-loved and
respected professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in his mid-40s and
given only 3–6 months to live, Pausch focused on living in a fulfilling way in the time he had left. Instead of
becoming angry and depressed, he presented his now famous last lecture called “Really Achieving Your
Childhood Dreams.” In his moving, yet humorous talk, he shares his insights on seeing the good in others,
overcoming obstacles, and experiencing zero gravity, among many other things. Despite his terminal diagnosis,
Pausch lived the final year of his life with joy and hope, showing us that our plans for the future still matter, even if
we know that we are dying.
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Have you ever had to cope with the loss of a loved one? If so, what concepts described in this section
provide context that may help you understand your experience and process of grieving?
• If you were diagnosed with a terminal illness would you choose hospice care or a traditional death in a
hospital? Why?

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
five stages of grieffive stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance
hospice:hospice: service that provides a death with dignity; pain management in a humane and comfortable
environment; usually outside of a hospital setting
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PUTTING IT TOGETHER: LIFESPAN
DEVELOPMENT
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
In this module, you learned to
• compare and contrast theories lifespan development theories
• explain the physical, cognitive, and emotional development that occurs from infancy through childhood
• describe physical, cognitive, and emotional development in adolescence and adulthood
Our understanding of human nature has come a long way since the belief that children were just little adults in
need of instruction. Through ongoing research, we now know that children hit certain milestones that enable them
to take another viewpoint or understand the law of conservation, that babies can understand enough about the
world around them to make moral judgments, and that issues of physical, social, and cognitive
importance change across the lifespan.
Adolescence is one of the time periods of interest to psychologists, especially due to the focus on identity
formation, which often involves a period of exploration followed by commitments to particular identities.
Adolescence is characterized by risky behavior, which is made more likely by changes in the brain in which
reward-processing centers develop more rapidly than cognitive control systems, making adolescents more
sensitive to rewards than to possible negative consequences.

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Marcia (1966) described
identify formation during
adolescence as involving
both decision points and
commitments with respect
to ideologies (e.g.,
religion, politics) and
occupations. He
described four identity
statuses: foreclosure,
identity diffusion,
moratorium, and identity
achievement.
• Foreclosure occurs when
an individual commits to
an identity without
exploring options.
• Identity diffusion occurs
when adolescents neither
explore nor commit to any
identities.
• Moratorium is a state in which adolescents are actively exploring options but have not yet made
commitments.
• Identity achievement occurs when individuals have explored different options and then made identity
commitments.
Think about your own adolescent experience (you may consider yourself still in this life stage). Which identity
status best fits with your own experience? Do you feel committed to your current identity, or do you feel as though
you are still developing? Regardless of your answer, you can rest assured that human development does not end
with adolescence, and research proves that people can continue to learn, grow, and even change as long as they
would like.
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DISCUSSION: LIFESPAN DEVELOPMENT
Stages of Development
STEP 1STEP 1: In a discussion post of at least 200 words, demonstrate your understanding of concepts learned in this
module by responding to the following prompt:
• Pick an age: 1, 3, 7, 12, 15, 22, 35, 50, or 75. Think of your own experience or the experiences of those
you know at this age. Consider the major developmental theories you learned about in this module
(psychosexual, psychosocial, cognitive, and moral), and apply them to the age of your choosing.
Describe either your own experiences, experiences of someone else, or an imagined situation at this age
and use appropriate terms and definitions from the module to describe that stage of development. Do
you agree with the developmental theories that describe this age? Why or why not?
STEP 2STEP 2: Comment on TWO other posts in at least 75 words.

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MODULE 11: PERSONALITY
WHY IT MATTERS: PERSONALITY
What makes two individuals have different personalities? (credit: modification of work by Nicolas Alejandro)
Consider two brothers. One of these siblings will grow up to become a world leader. The other will struggle with
alcohol and drugs, eventually spending time in jail. What about each of their personalities propelled them to take
the path they did?
Three months before William Jefferson Blythe III was born, his father died in a car accident. He was raised by his
mother, Virginia Dell, and grandparents, in Hope, Arkansas. When he turned 4, his mother married Roger Clinton,
Jr., an alcoholic who was physically abusive to William’s mother. Six years later, Virginia gave birth to another
son, Roger. William, who later took the last name Clinton from his stepfather, became the 42nd president of the
United States. While Bill Clinton was making his political ascendance, his half-brother, Roger Clinton, was
arrested numerous times for drug charges, including possession, conspiracy to distribute cocaine, and driving
under the influence, serving time in jail. Two brothers, raised by the same people, took radically different paths in
their lives. Why did they make the choices they did? What internal forces shaped their decisions? Personality
psychology can help us answer these questions and more.
AnswerAnswer
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PERSONALITY AND THE PSYCHODYNAMIC
PERSPECTIVE
What you’ll learn to do: define personality and the contributions of
Freud and neo-Freudians to personality theory
Sigmund Freud presented the first comprehensive theory of personality. He was also the first to recognize that
much of our mental life takes place outside of our conscious awareness. He proposed three components to our
personality: the id, ego, and superego. The job of the ego is to balance the sexual and aggressive drives of the id
with the moral ideal of the superego. Freud also said that personality develops through a series of psychosexual
stages. In each stage, pleasure focuses on a specific erogenous zone. Failure to resolve a stage can lead one to
become fixated in that stage, leading to unhealthy personality traits. Successful resolution of the stages leads to a
healthy adult.
The neo-Freudians were psychologists whose work followed from Freud’s. They generally agreed with Freud that
childhood experiences matter, but they decreased the emphasis on sex and focused more on the social
environment and effects of culture on personality. Some of the notable neo-Freudians are Alfred Adler, Carl Jung,
Erik Erikson, and Karen Horney. The neo-Freudian approaches have been criticized, because they tend to be
philosophical rather than based on sound scientific research. You’ll learn about Freud and the neo-Freudian
perspectives on personality in this section. Watch this CrashCourse video for an excellent overview of these
concepts:
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Define personality and describe early theories about personality development

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Figure 1. Happy, sad, impatient, shy, fearful, curious,
helpful. What characteristics describe your personality?
• Describe the assumptions of the psychodynamic perspective on personality development, including
the id, ego, and superego
• Define and describe the defense mechanisms
• Define and describe the psychosexual stages of personality development
What is Personality?
PersonalityPersonality refers to the long-standing traits and patterns that propel individuals to consistently think, feel, and
behave in specific ways. Our personality is what makes us unique individuals. Each person has an idiosyncratic
pattern of enduring, long-term characteristics and a manner in which he or she interacts with other individuals and
the world around them. Our personalities are thought to be long term, stable, and not easily changed. The word
personality comes from the Latin word persona. In the ancient world, a persona was a mask worn by an actor.
While we tend to think of a mask as being worn to conceal one’s identity, the theatrical mask was originally used
to either represent or project a specific personality trait of a character (Figure 1).
Historical Perspectives
The concept of personality has been studied for at least
2,000 years, beginning with Hippocrates in 370 BCE
(Fazeli, 2012). Hippocrates theorized that personality traits
and human behaviors are based on four separate
temperaments associated with four fluids (“humors”) of the
body: choleric temperament (yellow bile from the liver),
melancholic temperament (black bile from the kidneys),
sanguine temperament (red blood from the heart), and
phlegmatic temperament (white phlegm from the lungs)
(Clark & Watson, 2008; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985; Lecci &
Magnavita, 2013; Noga, 2007). Centuries later, the influential Greek physician and philosopher Galen built on
Hippocrates’s theory, suggesting that both diseases and personality differences could be explained by
imbalances in the humors and that each person exhibits one of the four temperaments. For example, the choleric
person is passionate, ambitious, and bold; the melancholic person is reserved, anxious, and unhappy; the
sanguine person is joyful, eager, and optimistic; and the phlegmatic person is calm, reliable, and thoughtful (Clark
& Watson, 2008; Stelmack & Stalikas, 1991). Galen’s theory was prevalent for over 1,000 years and continued to
be popular through the Middle Ages.
In 1780, Franz Gall, a German physician, proposed that the distances between bumps on the skull reveal a
person’s personality traits, character, and mental abilities (Figure 2). According to Gall, measuring these
distances revealed the sizes of the brain areas underneath, providing information that could be used to determine
whether a person was friendly, prideful, murderous, kind, good with languages, and so on. Initially, phrenology
was very popular; however, it was soon discredited for lack of empirical support and has long been relegated to
the status of pseudoscience (Fancher, 1979).

Figure 2. The pseudoscience of measuring the areas of a
person’s skull is known as phrenology. (a) Gall developed
a chart that depicted which areas of the skull
corresponded to particular personality traits or
characteristics (Hothersall, 1995). (b) An 1825 lithograph
depicts Gall examining the skull of a young woman.
(credit b: modification of work by Wellcome Library,
London)
Figure 3. Developed from Galen’s theory of the four temperaments, Kant proposed trait words to describe each temperament.
Wundt later suggested the arrangement of the traits on two major axes.
In the centuries after Galen, other researchers contributed
to the development of his four primary temperament types,
most prominently Immanuel Kant (in the 18th century) and
psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (in the 19th century) (Eysenck,
2009; Stelmack & Stalikas, 1991; Wundt, 1874/1886)
(Figure 3). Kant agreed with Galen that everyone could be
sorted into one of the four temperaments and that there
was no overlap between the four categories (Eysenck,
2009). He developed a list of traits that could be used to
describe the personality of a person from each of the four
temperaments. However, Wundt suggested that a better
description of personality could be achieved using two
major axes: emotional/nonemotional and changeable/
unchangeable. The first axis separated strong from weak
emotions (the melancholic and choleric temperaments from
the phlegmatic and sanguine). The second axis divided the
changeable temperaments (choleric and sanguine) from the
unchangeable ones (melancholic and phlegmatic)
(Eysenck, 2009).

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View this video for a brief overview of some of the psychological perspectives on personality.
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Sigmund Freud’s psychodynamic perspective of personality was the first comprehensive theory of personality,
explaining a wide variety of both normal and abnormal behaviors. According to Freud, unconscious drives
influenced by sex and aggression, along with childhood sexuality, are the forces that influence our personality.
Freud attracted many followers who modified his ideas to create new theories about personality. These theorists,
referred to as neo-Freudians, generally agreed with Freud that childhood experiences matter, but they reduced
the emphasis on sex and focused more on the social environment and effects of culture on personality. The
perspective of personality proposed by Freud and his followers was the dominant theory of personality for the first
half of the 20th century.
Other major theories then emerged, including the learning, humanistic, biological, evolutionary, trait, and cultural
perspectives. In this module, we will explore these various perspectives on personality in depth.
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• How would you describe your own personality? Do you think that friends and family would describe
you in much the same way? Why or why not?
• How would you describe your personality in an online dating profile?
• What are some of your positive and negative personality qualities? How do you think these qualities
will affect your choice of career?

Freud and the Psychodynamic Perspective
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) is probably the most controversial and misunderstood psychological theorist. When
reading Freud’s theories, it is important to remember that he was a medical doctor, not a psychologist. There was
no such thing as a degree in psychology at the time that he received his education, which can help us understand
some of the controversy over his theories today. However, Freud was the first to systematically study and theorize
the workings of the unconscious mind in the manner that we associate with modern psychology.
In the early years of his career, Freud worked with Josef Breuer, a Viennese physician. During this time, Freud
became intrigued by the story of one of Breuer’s patients, Bertha Pappenheim, who was referred to by the
pseudonym Anna O. (Launer, 2005). Anna O. had been caring for her dying father when she began to experience
symptoms such as partial paralysis, headaches, blurred vision, amnesia, and hallucinations (Launer, 2005). In
Freud’s day, these symptoms were commonly referred to as hysteria. Anna O. turned to Breuer for help. He spent
2 years (1880–1882) treating Anna O. and discovered that allowing her to talk about her experiences seemed to
bring some relief of her symptoms. Anna O. called his treatment the “talking cure” (Launer, 2005). Despite the fact
the Freud never met Anna O., her story served as the basis for the 1895 book, Studies on Hysteria, which he co-
authored with Breuer. Based on Breuer’s description of Anna O.’s treatment, Freud concluded that hysteria was
the result of sexual abuse in childhood and that these traumatic experiences had been hidden from
consciousness. Breuer disagreed with Freud, which soon ended their work together. However, Freud continued to
work to refine talk therapy and build his theory on personality.
Levels of Consciousness
To explain the concept of conscious versus unconscious experience, Freud compared the mind to an iceberg
(Figure 4). He said that only about one-tenth of our mind is consciousconscious, and the rest of our mind is unconscious.
Our unconsciousunconscious refers to that mental activity of which we are unaware and are unable to access (Freud, 1923).
According to Freud, unacceptable urges and desires are kept in our unconscious through a process called
repression. For example, we sometimes say things that we don’t intend to say by unintentionally substituting
another word for the one we meant. You’ve probably heard of a Freudian slip, the term used to describe this.
Freud suggested that slips of the tongue are actually sexual or aggressive urges, accidentally slipping out of our
unconscious. Speech errors such as this are quite common. Seeing them as a reflection of unconscious desires,
linguists today have found that slips of the tongue tend to occur when we are tired, nervous, or not at our optimal
level of cognitive functioning (Motley, 2002).

Figure 4. Freud believed that we are only aware of a small amount of our mind’s activities and that most of it remains hidden from
us in our unconscious. The information in our unconscious affects our behavior, although we are unaware of it.
According to Freud, our personality develops from a conflict between two forces: our biological aggressive and
pleasure-seeking drives versus our internal (socialized) control over these drives. Our personality is the result of

Figure 5. The job of the ego, or self, is to balance the aggressive/pleasure-seeking drives of the id with the moral control of the
superego.
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our efforts to balance these two competing forces. Freud suggested that we can understand this by imagining
three interacting systems within our minds. He called them the id, ego, and superego (Figure 5).
The unconscious idid contains our most primitive drives or urges, and is present from birth. It directs impulses for
hunger, thirst, and sex. Freud believed that the id operates on what he called the “pleasure principle,” in which the
id seeks immediate gratification. Through social interactions with parents and others in a child’s environment, the
ego and superego develop to help control the id. The superegosuperego develops as a child interacts with others, learning
the social rules for right and wrong. The superego acts as our conscience; it is our moral compass that tells us
how we should behave. It strives for perfection and judges our behavior, leading to feelings of pride or—when we
fall short of the ideal—feelings of guilt. In contrast to the instinctual id and the rule-based superego, the egoego is the
rational part of our personality. It’s what Freud considered to be the self, and it is the part of our personality that is
seen by others. Its job is to balance the demands of the id and superego in the context of reality; thus, it operates
on what Freud called the “reality principle.” The ego helps the id satisfy its desires in a realistic way.
The id and superego are in constant conflict, because the id wants instant gratification regardless of the
consequences, but the superego tells us that we must behave in socially acceptable ways. Thus, the ego’s job is
to find the middle ground. It helps satisfy the id’s desires in a rational way that will not lead us to feelings of guilt.
According to Freud, a person who has a strong ego, which can balance the demands of the id and the superego,
has a healthy personality. Freud maintained that imbalances in the system can lead to neurosisneurosis (a tendency to
experience negative emotions), anxiety disorders, or unhealthy behaviors. For example, a person who is
dominated by their id might be narcissistic and impulsive. A person with a dominant superego might be controlled
by feelings of guilt and deny themselves even socially acceptable pleasures; conversely, if the superego is weak
or absent, a person might become a psychopath. An overly dominant superego might be seen in an over-
controlled individual whose rational grasp on reality is so strong that they are unaware of their emotional needs,
or, in a neurotic who is overly defensive (overusing ego defense mechanisms).

Figure 6. Defense mechanisms are unconscious protective behaviors that work to reduce anxiety.
While everyone uses defense mechanisms, Freud believed that overuse of them may be problematic. For
example, let’s say Joe Smith is a high school football player. Deep down, Joe feels sexually attracted to males.
His conscious belief is that being gay is immoral and that if he were gay, his family would disown him and he
would be ostracized by his peers. Therefore, there is a conflict between his conscious beliefs (being gay is wrong

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and will result in being ostracized) and his unconscious urges (attraction to males). The idea that he might be gay
causes Joe to have feelings of anxiety. How can he decrease his anxiety? Joe may find himself acting very
“macho,” making gay jokes, and picking on a school peer who is gay. This way, Joe’s unconscious impulses are
further submerged.
There are several different types of defense mechanisms. For instance, in repression, anxiety-causing memories
from consciousness are blocked. As an analogy, let’s say your car is making a strange noise, but because you do
not have the money to get it fixed, you just turn up the radio so that you no longer hear the strange noise.
Eventually you forget about it. Similarly, in the human psyche, if a memory is too overwhelming to deal with, it
might be repressedrepressed and thus removed from conscious awareness (Freud, 1920). This repressed memory might
cause symptoms in other areas.
Another defense mechanism is reaction formationreaction formation, in which someone expresses feelings, thoughts, and behaviors
opposite to their inclinations. In the above example, Joe made fun of a homosexual peer while himself being
attracted to males. In regressionregression, an individual acts much younger than their age. For example, a four-year-old
child who resents the arrival of a newborn sibling may act like a baby and revert to drinking out of a bottle. In
projectionprojection, a person refuses to acknowledge her own unconscious feelings and instead sees those feelings in
someone else. Other defense mechanisms include rationalizationrationalization, displacementdisplacement, and sublimationsublimation.
Stages of Psychosexual Development
Freud believed that personality develops during early childhood: Childhood experiences shape our personalities
as well as our behavior as adults. He asserted that we develop via a series of stages during childhood. Each of us
must pass through these childhood stages, and if we do not have the proper nurturing and parenting during a
stage, we will be stuck, or fixated, in that stage, even as adults.
In each psychosexual stage of developmentpsychosexual stage of development, the child’s pleasure-seeking urges, coming from the id, are focused
on a different area of the body, called an erogenous zone. The stages are oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital
(Table 1).
Freud’s psychosexual development theory is quite controversial. To understand the origins of the theory, it is
helpful to be familiar with the political, social, and cultural influences of Freud’s day in Vienna at the turn of the
20th century. During this era, a climate of sexual repression, combined with limited understanding and education
surrounding human sexuality, heavily influenced Freud’s perspective. Given that sex was a taboo topic, Freud
assumed that negative emotional states (neuroses) stemmed from suppression of unconscious sexual and
aggressive urges. For Freud, his own recollections and interpretations of patients’ experiences and dreams were
sufficient proof that psychosexual stages were universal events in early childhood.

Table 1. Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development
StageStage Age (years)Age (years) Erogenous ZoneErogenous Zone Major ConflictMajor Conflict Adult Fixation ExampleAdult Fixation Example
Oral 0–1 Mouth Weaning off breast or bottle Smoking, overeating
Anal 1–3 Anus Toilet training Neatness, messiness
Phallic 3–6 Genitals Oedipus/Electra complex Vanity, overambition
Latency 6–12 None None None
Genital 12+ Genitals None None
Oral Stage
In the oral stageoral stage (birth to 1 year), pleasure is focused on the mouth. Eating and the pleasure derived from sucking
(nipples, pacifiers, and thumbs) play a large part in a baby’s first year of life. At around 1 year of age, babies are
weaned from the bottle or breast, and this process can create conflict if not handled properly by caregivers.
According to Freud, an adult who smokes, drinks, overeats, or bites her nails is fixated in the oral stage of her
psychosexual development; she may have been weaned too early or too late, resulting in these fixation
tendencies, all of which seek to ease anxiety.
Anal Stage
After passing through the oral stage, children enter what Freud termed the anal stageanal stage (1–3 years). In this stage,
children experience pleasure in their bowel and bladder movements, so it makes sense that the conflict in this
stage is over toilet training. Freud suggested that success at the anal stage depended on how parents handled
toilet training. Parents who offer praise and rewards encourage positive results and can help children feel
competent. Parents who are harsh in toilet training can cause a child to become fixated at the anal stage, leading
to the development of an anal-retentive personality. The anal-retentive personality is stingy and stubborn, has a
compulsive need for order and neatness, and might be considered a perfectionist. If parents are too lenient in
toilet training, the child might also become fixated and display an anal-expulsive personality. The anal-expulsive
personality is messy, careless, disorganized, and prone to emotional outbursts.
Phallic Stage
Freud’s third stage of psychosexual development is the phallic stagephallic stage (3–6 years), corresponding to the age when
children become aware of their bodies and recognize the differences between boys and girls. The erogenous
zone in this stage is the genitals. Conflict arises when the child feels a desire for the opposite-sex parent, and
jealousy and hatred toward the same-sex parent. For boys, this is called the Oedipus complex, involving a boy’s
desire for his mother and his urge to replace his father who is seen as a rival for the mother’s attention. At the
same time, the boy is afraid his father will punish him for his feelings, so he experiences castration anxiety. The
Oedipus complex is successfully resolved when the boy begins to identify with his father as an indirect way to
have the mother. Failure to resolve the Oedipus complex may result in fixation and development of a personality
that might be described as vain and overly ambitious.
Girls experience a comparable conflict in the phallic stage—the Electra complex. The Electra complex, while often
attributed to Freud, was actually proposed by Freud’s protégé, Carl Jung (Jung & Kerenyi, 1963). A girl desires
the attention of her father and wishes to take her mother’s place. Jung also said that girls are angry with the
mother for not providing them with a penis—hence the term penis envy. While Freud initially embraced the Electra
complex as a parallel to the Oedipus complex, he later rejected it, yet it remains as a cornerstone of Freudian
theory, thanks in part to academics in the field (Freud, 1931/1968; Scott, 2005).

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Latency Period
Following the phallic stage of psychosexual development is a period known as the latency periodlatency period (6 years to
puberty). This period is not considered a stage, because sexual feelings are dormant as children focus on other
pursuits, such as school, friendships, hobbies, and sports. Children generally engage in activities with peers of the
same sex, which serves to consolidate a child’s gender-role identity.
Genital Stage
The final stage is the genital stagegenital stage (from puberty on). In this stage, there is a sexual reawakening as the
incestuous urges resurface. The young person redirects these urges to other, more socially acceptable partners
(who often resemble the other-sex parent). People in this stage have mature sexual interests, which for Freud
meant a strong desire for the opposite sex. Individuals who successfully completed the previous stages, reaching
the genital stage with no fixations, are said to be well-balanced, healthy adults.
While most of Freud’s ideas have not found support in modern research, we cannot discount the contributions
that Freud has made to the field of psychology. It was Freud who pointed out that a large part of our mental life is
influenced by the experiences of early childhood and takes place outside of our conscious awareness; his
theories paved the way for others.
Freud’s Theories Today
Empirical research assessing psychodynamic concepts has produced mixed results, with some concepts
receiving good empirical support, and others not faring as well. For example, the notion that we express strong
sexual feelings from a very early age, as the psychosexual stage model suggests, has not held up to empirical
scrutiny. On the other hand, the idea that there are dependent, control-oriented, and competitive personality
types—an idea also derived from the psychosexual stage model—does seem useful.
Many ideas from the psychodynamic perspective have been studied empirically. Luborsky and Barrett (2006)
reviewed much of this research; other useful reviews are provided by Bornstein (2005), Gerber (2007), and
Huprich (2009). For now, let’s look at three psychodynamic hypotheses that have received strong empirical
support.
• Unconscious processes influence our behavior as the psychodynamic perspective predicts. We perceive
and process much more information than we realize, and much of our behavior is shaped by feelings
and motives of which we are, at best, only partially aware (Bornstein, 2009, 2010). Evidence for the
importance of unconscious influences is so compelling that it has become a central element of
contemporary cognitive and social psychology (Robinson & Gordon, 2011).
• We all use ego defenses and they help determine our psychological adjustment and physical health.
People really do differ in the degree that they rely on different ego defenses—so much so that
researchers now study each person’s “defense style” (the unique constellation of defenses that we use).
It turns out that certain defenses are more adaptive than others: Rationalization and sublimation are
healthier (psychologically speaking) than repression and reaction formation (Cramer, 2006). Denial is,
quite literally, bad for your health, because people who use denial tend to ignore symptoms of illness
until it’s too late (Bond, 2004).
• Mental representations of self and others do indeed serve as blueprints for later relationships.Dozens
have studies have shown that mental images of our parents, and other significant figures, really do
shape our expectations for later friendships and romantic relationships. The idea that you choose a
romantic partner who resembles mom or dad is a myth, but it’s true that you expect to be treated by
others as you were treated by your parents early in life (Silverstein, 2007; Wachtel, 1997).

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
anal stage:anal stage: psychosexual stage in which children experience pleasure in their bowel and bladder movements
conscious:conscious: mental activity (thoughts, feelings, and memories) that we can access at any time
defense mechanism:defense mechanism: unconscious protective behaviors designed to reduce ego anxiety
displacement:displacement: ego defense mechanism in which a person transfers inappropriate urges or behaviors toward a
more acceptable or less threatening target
ego:ego: aspect of personality that represents the self, or the part of one’s personality that is visible to others
genital stage:genital stage: psychosexual stage in which the focus is on mature sexual interests
id:id: aspect of personality that consists of our most primitive drives or urges, including impulses for hunger, thirst,
and sex
latency period:latency period: psychosexual stage in which sexual feelings are dormant
neurosis:neurosis: tendency to experience negative emotions
oral stage:oral stage: psychosexual stage in which an infant’s pleasure is focused on the mouth
phallic stage:phallic stage: psychosexual stage in which the focus is on the genitals
personality:personality: long-standing traits and patterns that propel individuals to consistently think, feel, and behave in
specific ways
projection:projection: ego defense mechanism in which a person confronted with anxiety disguises their unacceptable
urges or behaviors by attributing them to other people
psychosexual stages of development:psychosexual stages of development: stages of child development in which a child’s pleasure-seeking urges
are focused on specific areas of the body called erogenous zones
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• What are some examples of defense mechanisms that you have used yourself or have witnessed
others using?

rationalization:rationalization: ego defense mechanism in which a person confronted with anxiety makes excuses to justify
behavior
reaction formation:reaction formation: ego defense mechanism in which a person confronted with anxiety swaps unacceptable
urges or behaviors for their opposites
regression:regression: ego defense mechanism in which a person confronted with anxiety returns to a more immature
behavioral state
repression:repression: ego defense mechanism in which anxiety-related thoughts and memories are kept in the
unconscious
sublimation:sublimation: ego defense mechanism in which unacceptable urges are channeled into more appropriate
activities
superego:superego: aspect of the personality that serves as one’s moral compass, or conscience
unconscious:unconscious: mental activity of which we are unaware and unable to access
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NEO-FREUDIANS: ADLER, ERIKSON, JUNG, AND
HORNEY
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Summarize the contributions of Neo-Freudians to personality theory, including Adler’s inferiority
complex, Erikson’s psychosocial stages, Jung’s ideas of the collective unconscious and archetypes,
and Horney’s coping styles
Freud attracted many followers who modified his ideas to create new theories about personality. These theorists,
referred to as neo-Freudians, generally agreed with Freud that childhood experiences matter, but deemphasized
sex, focusing more on the social environment and effects of culture on personality. Four notable neo-Freudians
include Alfred Adler, Erik Erikson, Carl Jung (pronounced “Yoong”), and Karen Horney (pronounced “HORN-
eye”).
Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler, a colleague of Freud’s and the first president of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society (Freud’s inner
circle of colleagues), was the first major theorist to break away from Freud (Figure 1). He subsequently founded a
school of psychology called individual psychologyindividual psychology, which focuses on our drive to compensate for feelings of
inferiority. Adler (1937, 1956) proposed the concept of the inferiority complexinferiority complex. An inferiority complex refers to a
person’s feelings that they lack worth and don’t measure up to the standards of others or of society. Adler’s ideas
about inferiority represent a major difference between his thinking and Freud’s. Freud believed that we are

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Figure 1. Alfred Adler proposed the concept of the
inferiority complex.
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
One of Adler’s major contributions to personality psychology was the idea that our birth order shapes our
personality. Follow this link to view a summary of birth order theory.
motivated by sexual and aggressive urges, but Adler (1930, 1961) believed that feelings of inferiority in childhood
are what drive people to attempt to gain superiority and that this striving is the force behind all of our thoughts,
emotions, and behaviors.
Adler also believed in the importance of social connections,
seeing childhood development emerging through social
development rather than the sexual stages Freud outlined.
Adler noted the inter-relatedness of humanity and the need
to work together for the betterment of all. He said, “The
happiness of mankind lies in working together, in living as if
each individual had set himself the task of contributing to
the common welfare” (Adler, 1964, p. 255) with the main
goal of psychology being “to recognize the equal rights and
equality of others” (Adler, 1961, p. 691).
With these ideas, Adler identified three fundamental social
tasks that all of us must experience: occupational tasks
(careers), societal tasks (friendship), and love tasks (finding
an intimate partner for a long-term relationship). Rather
than focus on sexual or aggressive motives for behavior as
Freud did, Adler focused on social motives. He also
emphasized conscious rather than unconscious motivation,
since he believed that the three fundamental social tasks
are explicitly known and pursued. That is not to say that
Adler did not also believe in unconscious processes—he
did—but he felt that conscious processes were more
important.
One of Adler’s major contributions to personality psychology was the idea that our birth order shapes our
personality. He proposed that older siblings, who start out as the focus of their parents’ attention but must share
that attention once a new child joins the family, compensate by becoming overachievers. The youngest children,
according to Adler, may be spoiled, leaving the middle child with the opportunity to minimize the negative
dynamics of the youngest and oldest children. Despite popular attention, research has not conclusively confirmed
Adler’s hypotheses about birth order.
Erik Erikson
As an art school dropout with an uncertain future, young Erik Erikson met Freud’s daughter, Anna Freud, while he
was tutoring the children of an American couple undergoing psychoanalysis in Vienna. It was Anna Freud who
encouraged Erikson to study psychoanalysis. Erikson received his diploma from the Vienna Psychoanalytic
Institute in 1933, and as Nazism spread across Europe, he fled the country and immigrated to the United States
that same year. As you learned when you studied lifespan development, Erikson later proposed a psychosocial
theory of development, suggesting that an individual’s personality develops throughout the lifespan—a departure
from Freud’s view that personality is fixed in early life. In his theory, Erikson emphasized the social relationships
that are important at each stage of personality development, in contrast to Freud’s emphasis on sex. Erikson
identified eight stages, each of which represents a conflict or developmental task (Table 1). The development of a
healthy personality and a sense of competence depend on the successful completion of each task.

http://www.bestpsychologydegrees.com/birth-order/

Table 1. Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages of Development
StageStage
AgeAge
(years)(years)
DevelopmentalDevelopmental
TaskTask
DescriptionDescription
1 0–1 Trust vs. mistrust
Trust (or mistrust) that basic needs, such as nourishment and
affection, will be met
2 1–3
Autonomy vs.
shame/doubt
Sense of independence in many tasks develops
3 3–6 Initiative vs. guilt
Take initiative on some activities, may develop guilt when success not
met or boundaries overstepped
4 7–11
Industry vs.
inferiority
Develop self-confidence in abilities when competent or sense of
inferiority when not
5 12–18
Identity vs.
confusion
Experiment with and develop identity and roles
6 19–29
Intimacy vs.
isolation
Establish intimacy and relationships with others
7 30–64
Generativity vs.
stagnation
Contribute to society and be part of a family
8 65–
Integrity vs.
despair
Assess and make sense of life and meaning of contributions
Carl Jung
Carl Jung (Figure 2) was a Swiss psychiatrist and protégé of Freud, who later split off from Freud and developed
his own theory, which he called analytical psychology. The focus of analytical psychology is on working to balance
opposing forces of conscious and unconscious thought, and experience within one’s personality. According to
Jung, this work is a continuous learning process—mainly occurring in the second half of life—of becoming aware
of unconscious elements and integrating them into consciousness.

Figure 2. Carl Jung was interested in exploring the
collective unconscious.
Jung’s split from Freud was based on two major
disagreements. First, Jung, like Adler and Erikson, did not
accept that sexual drive was the primary motivator in a
person’s mental life. Second, although Jung agreed with
Freud’s concept of a personal unconscious, he thought it to
be incomplete. In addition to the personal unconscious,
Jung focused on the collective unconscious.
The collective unconsciouscollective unconscious is a universal version of the
personal unconscious, holding mental patterns, or memory
traces, which are common to all of us (Jung, 1928). These
ancestral memories, which Jung called archetypesarchetypes, are
represented by universal themes in various cultures, as
expressed through literature, art, and dreams (Jung). Jung
said that these themes reflect common experiences of
people the world over, such as facing death, becoming
independent, and striving for mastery. Jung (1964) believed
that through biology, each person is handed down the same
themes and that the same types of symbols—such as the
hero, the maiden, the sage, and the trickster—are present
in the folklore and fairy tales of every culture. In Jung’s
view, the task of integrating these unconscious archetypal
aspects of the self is part of the self-realization process in
the second half of life. With this orientation toward self-
realization, Jung parted ways with Freud’s belief that
personality is determined solely by past events and
anticipated the humanistic movement with its emphasis on
self-actualization and orientation toward the future.
Jung also proposed two attitudes or approaches toward life:
extroversion and introversion (Jung, 1923) (Table 2). These
ideas are considered Jung’s most important contributions to
the field of personality psychology, as almost all models of
personality now include these concepts. If you are an
extrovert, then you are a person who is energized by being
outgoing and socially oriented: You derive your energy from being around others. If you are an introvert, then you
are a person who may be quiet and reserved, or you may be social, but your energy is derived from your inner
psychic activity. Jung believed a balance between extroversion and introversion best served the goal of self-
realization.
Table 2. Introverts and Extroverts
IntrovertIntrovert ExtrovertExtrovert
Energized by being alone Energized by being with others
Avoids attention Seeks attention
Speaks slowly and softly Speaks quickly and loudly
Thinks before speaking Thinks out loud
Stays on one topic Jumps from topic to topic
Prefers written communication Prefers verbal communication
Pays attention easily Distractible
Cautious Acts first, thinks later

CONNECT THE CONCEPTS: ARE ARCHETYPES GENETICALLY BASED?CONNECT THE CONCEPTS: ARE ARCHETYPES GENETICALLY BASED?
Jung proposed that human responses to archetypes are similar to instinctual responses in animals. One
criticism of Jung is that there is no evidence that archetypes are biologically based or similar to animal instincts
(Roesler, 2012). Jung formulated his ideas about 100 years ago, and great advances have been made in the
field of genetics since that time. We’ve found that human babies are born with certain capacities, including the
ability to acquire language. However, we’ve also found that symbolic information (such as archetypes) is not
encoded on the genome and that babies cannot decode symbolism, refuting the idea of a biological basis to
archetypes. Rather than being seen as purely biological, more recent research suggests that archetypes
emerge directly from our experiences and are reflections of linguistic or cultural characteristics (Young-
Eisendrath, 1995). Today, most Jungian scholars believe that the collective unconscious and archetypes are
based on both innate and environmental influences, with the differences being in the role and degree of each
(Sotirova-Kohli et al., 2013).
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Another concept proposed by Jung was the personapersona, which he referred to as a mask that we adopt. According to
Jung, we consciously create this persona; however, it is derived from both our conscious experiences and our
collective unconscious. What is the purpose of the persona? Jung believed that it is a compromise between who
we really are (our true self) and what society expects us to be. We hide those parts of ourselves that are not
aligned with society’s expectations.
Karen Horney
Karen Horney was one of the first women trained as a Freudian psychoanalyst. During the Great Depression,
Horney moved from Germany to the United States, and subsequently moved away from Freud’s teachings. Like
Jung, Horney believed that each individual has the potential for self-realization and that the goal of
psychoanalysis should be moving toward a healthy self rather than exploring early childhood patterns of
dysfunction. Horney also disagreed with the Freudian idea that girls have penis envy and are jealous of male
biological features. According to Horney, any jealousy is most likely culturally based, due to the greater privileges
that males often have, meaning that the differences between men’s and women’s personalities are culturally
based, not biologically based. She further suggested that men have womb envy, because they cannot give
birth.Horney’s theories focused on the role of unconscious anxiety. She suggested that normal growth can be
blocked by basic anxiety stemming from needs not being met, such as childhood experiences of loneliness and/or
isolation. How do children learn to handle this anxiety? Horney suggested three styles of coping (Table 3). The
first coping style, moving toward people, relies on affiliation and dependence. These children become dependent
on their parents and other caregivers in an effort to receive attention and affection, which provides relief from
anxiety (Burger, 2008). When these children grow up, they tend to use this same coping strategy to deal with
relationships, expressing an intense need for love and acceptance (Burger, 2008). The second coping style,
moving against people, relies on aggression and assertiveness. Children with this coping style find that fighting is
the best way to deal with an unhappy home situation, and they deal with their feelings of insecurity by bullying
other children (Burger, 2008). As adults, people with this coping style tend to lash out with hurtful comments and
exploit others (Burger, 2008). The third coping style, moving away from people, centers on detachment and
isolation. These children handle their anxiety by withdrawing from the world. They need privacy and tend to be

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
analytical psychology:analytical psychology: Jung’s theory focusing on the balance of opposing forces within one’s personality and
the significance of the collective unconscious
archetype:archetype: pattern that exists in our collective unconscious across cultures and societies
collective unconscious:collective unconscious: common psychological tendencies that have been passed down from one generation to
the next
individual psychology:individual psychology: school of psychology proposed by Adler that focuses on our drive to compensate for
feelings of inferiority
inferiority complex:inferiority complex: refers to a person’s feelings that they lack worth and don’t measure up to others’ or to
society’s standard
self-sufficient. When these children are adults, they continue to avoid such things as love and friendship, and they
also tend to gravitate toward careers that require little interaction with others (Burger, 2008).
Table 3. Horney’s Coping Styles
Coping StyleCoping Style DescriptionDescription ExampleExample
Moving toward
people
Affiliation and
dependence
Child seeking positive attention and affection from parent; adult
needing love
Moving against
people
Aggression and
manipulation
Child fighting or bullying other children; adult who is abrasive and
verbally hurtful, or who exploits others
Moving away
from people
Detachment and
isolation
Child withdrawn from the world and isolated; adult loner
Horney believed these three styles are ways in which people typically cope with day-to-day problems; however,
the three coping styles can become neurotic strategies if they are used rigidly and compulsively, leading a person
to become alienated from others.
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• What is your birth order? Do you agree or disagree with Adler’s description of your personality based
on his birth order theory, as described in the Link to Learning? Provide examples for support.
• Would you describe yourself as an extrovert or an introvert? Does this vary based on the situation?
Provide examples to support your points.
• Select an epic story that is popular in contemporary society (such as Harry Potter or Star Wars) and
explain it terms of Jung’s concept of archetypes.

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Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions
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EXPLAINING PERSONALITY: LEARNING AND
HUMANISTIC APPROACHES
What you’ll learn to do: describe and differentiate between
personality theories
Beyond Freud and the Neo-Freudians, there are many other approaches that work to explain personality. In this
section, you’ll learn about the behavioral, humanistic, biological, trait, and cultural perspectives. Watch this video
for an overview about the main philosophical approaches to studying personality:
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe the learning perspective on personality, including the concepts of reciprocal determinism,
self-efficacy, locus of control, and the person-situation debate
• Explain the contributions of humanists Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers to personality development
Learning Approaches
In contrast to the psychodynamic approaches of Freud and the neo-Freudians, which relate personality to inner
(and hidden) processes, the learning approaches focus only on observable behavior. This illustrates one
significant advantage of the learning approaches to personality over psychodynamics: Because learning
approaches involve observable, measurable phenomena, they can be scientifically tested.
The Behavioral Perspective
Behaviorists do not believe in biological determinism: They do not see personality traits as inborn. Instead, they
view personality as significantly shaped by the reinforcements and consequences outside of the organism. In
other words, people behave in a consistent manner based on prior learning. B. F. Skinner, a strict behaviorist,
believed that environment was solely responsible for all behavior, including the enduring, consistent behavior
patterns studied by personality theorists.

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As you may recall from your study on the psychology of learning, Skinner proposed that we demonstrate
consistent behavior patterns because we have developed certain response tendencies (Skinner, 1953). In other
words, we learn to behave in particular ways. We increase the behaviors that lead to positive consequences, and
we decrease the behaviors that lead to negative consequences. Skinner disagreed with Freud’s idea that
personality is fixed in childhood. He argued that personality develops over our entire life, not only in the first few
years. Our responses can change as we come across new situations; therefore, we can expect more variability
over time in personality than Freud would anticipate. For example, consider a young woman, Greta, a risk taker.
She drives fast and participates in dangerous sports such as hang gliding and kiteboarding. But after she gets
married and has children, the system of reinforcements and punishments in her environment changes. Speeding
and extreme sports are no longer reinforced, so she no longer engages in those behaviors. In fact, Greta now
describes herself as a cautious person.
The Social-Cognitive Perspective
Albert Bandura agreed with Skinner that personality develops through learning. He disagreed, however, with
Skinner’s strict behaviorist approach to personality development, because he felt that thinking and reasoning are
important components of learning. He presented a social-cognitive theory of personality that emphasizes both
learning and cognition as sources of individual differences in personality. In social-cognitive theory, the concepts
of reciprocal determinism, observational learning, and self-efficacy all play a part in personality development.
Reciprocal Determinism
In contrast to Skinner’s idea that the environment alone determines behavior, Bandura (1990) proposed the
concept of reciprocal determinism, in which cognitive processes, behavior, and context all interact, each factor
influencing and being influenced by the others simultaneously (Figure 1). Cognitive processes refer to all
characteristics previously learned, including beliefs, expectations, and personality characteristics. Behavior refers
to anything that we do that may be rewarded or punished. Finally, the context in which the behavior occurs refers
to the environment or situation, which includes rewarding/punishing stimuli.

Figure 1. Bandura proposed the idea of reciprocal determinism: Our behavior, cognitive processes, and situational context all
influence each other.
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Consider, for example, that you’re at a festival and one of the attractions is bungee jumping from a bridge. Do you
do it? In this example, the behavior is bungee jumping. Cognitive factors that might influence this behavior include
your beliefs and values, and your past experiences with similar behaviors. Finally, context refers to the reward
structure for the behavior. According to reciprocal determinism, all of these factors are in play.
Observational Learning
Bandura’s key contribution to learning theory was the idea that much learning is vicarious. We learn by observing
someone else’s behavior and its consequences, which Bandura called observational learning. He felt that this
type of learning also plays a part in the development of our personality. Just as we learn individual behaviors, we
learn new behavior patterns when we see them performed by other people or models. Drawing on the
behaviorists’ ideas about reinforcement, Bandura suggested that whether we choose to imitate a model’s
behavior depends on whether we see the model reinforced or punished. Through observational learning, we
come to learn what behaviors are acceptable and rewarded in our culture, and we also learn to inhibit deviant or
socially unacceptable behaviors by seeing what behaviors are punished.

Figure 2. Locus of control occurs on a continuum from internal to external.
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Take the Locus of Control questionnaire. Scores range from 0 to 13. A low score on this questionnaire indicates
an internal locus of control, and a high score indicates an external locus of control.
We can see the principles of reciprocal determinism at work in observational learning. For example, personal
factors determine which behaviors in the environment a person chooses to imitate, and those environmental
events in turn are processed cognitively according to other personal factors.
Self-Efficacy
Bandura (1977, 1995) has studied a number of cognitive and personal factors that affect learning and personality
development, and most recently has focused on the concept of self-efficacy. Self-efficacySelf-efficacy is our level of
confidence in our own abilities, developed through our social experiences. Self-efficacy affects how we approach
challenges and reach goals. In observational learning, self-efficacy is a cognitive factor that affects which
behaviors we choose to imitate as well as our success in performing those behaviors.
People who have high self-efficacy believe that their goals are within reach, have a positive view of challenges
seeing them as tasks to be mastered, develop a deep interest in and strong commitment to the activities in which
they are involved, and quickly recover from setbacks. Conversely, people with low self-efficacy avoid challenging
tasks because they doubt their ability to be successful, tend to focus on failure and negative outcomes, and lose
confidence in their abilities if they experience setbacks. Feelings of self-efficacy can be specific to certain
situations. For instance, a student might feel confident in her ability in English class but much less so in math
class.
Julian Rotter and Locus of Control
Julian Rotter (1966) proposed the concept of locus of control, another cognitive factor that affects learning and
personality development. Distinct from self-efficacy, which involves our belief in our own abilities, locus of controllocus of control
refers to our beliefs about the power we have over our lives. In Rotter’s view, people possess either an internal or
an external locus of control (Figure 2). Those of us with an internal locus of controlinternal locus of control (“internals”) tend to believe
that most of our outcomes are the direct result of our efforts. Those of us with an external locus of controlexternal locus of control
(“externals”) tend to believe that our outcomes are outside of our control. Externals see their lives as being
controlled by other people, luck, or chance. For example, say you didn’t spend much time studying for your
psychology test and went out to dinner with friends instead. When you receive your test score, you see that you
earned a D. If you possess an internal locus of control, you would most likely admit that you failed because you
didn’t spend enough time studying and decide to study more for the next test. On the other hand, if you possess
an external locus of control, you might conclude that the test was too hard and not bother studying for the next
test, because you figure you will fail it anyway. Researchers have found that people with an internal locus of
control perform better academically, achieve more in their careers, are more independent, are healthier, are better
able to cope, and are less depressed than people who have an external locus of control (Benassi, Sweeney, &
Durfour, 1988; Lefcourt, 1982; Maltby, Day, & Macaskill, 2007; Whyte, 1977, 1978, 1980).

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Walter Mischel and the Person-Situation Debate
Walter Mischel was a student of Julian Rotter and taught for years at Stanford, where he was a colleague of
Albert Bandura. Mischel surveyed several decades of empirical psychological literature regarding trait prediction
of behavior, and his conclusion shook the foundations of personality psychology. Mischel found that the data did
not support the central principle of the field—that a person’s personality traits are consistent across situations. His
report triggered a decades-long period of self-examination, known as the person-situation debate, among
personality psychologists.
Mischel suggested that perhaps we were looking for consistency in the wrong places. He found that although
behavior was inconsistent across different situations, it was much more consistent within situations—so that a
person’s behavior in one situation would likely be repeated in a similar one. And as you will see next regarding his
famous “marshmallow test,” Mischel also found that behavior is consistent in equivalent situations across time.
One of Mischel’s most notable contributions to personality psychology was his ideas on self-regulation. According
to Lecci & Magnavita (2013), “Self-regulation is the process of identifying a goal or set of goals and, in pursuing
these goals, using both internal (e.g., thoughts and affect) and external (e.g., responses of anything or anyone in
the environment) feedback to maximize goal attainment” (p. 6.3). Self-regulation is also known as will power.
When we talk about will power, we tend to think of it as the ability to delay gratification. For example, Bettina’s
teenage daughter made strawberry cupcakes, and they looked delicious. However, Bettina forfeited the pleasure
of eating one, because she is training for a 5K race and wants to be fit and do well in the race. Would you be able
to resist getting a small reward now in order to get a larger reward later? This is the question Mischel investigated
in his now-classic marshmallow test.
Mischel designed a study to assess self-regulation in young children. In the marshmallow study, Mischel and his
colleagues placed a preschool child in a room with one marshmallow on the table. The child was told that he
could either eat the marshmallow now, or wait until the researcher returned to the room and then he could have
two marshmallows (Mischel, Ebbesen & Raskoff, 1972). This was repeated with hundreds of preschoolers. What
Mischel and his team found was that young children differ in their degree of self-control. Mischel and his
colleagues continued to follow this group of preschoolers through high school, and what do you think they
discovered? The children who had more self-control in preschool (the ones who waited for the bigger reward)
were more successful in high school. They had higher SAT scores, had positive peer relationships, and were less
likely to have substance abuse issues; as adults, they also had more stable marriages (Mischel, Shoda, &
Rodriguez, 1989; Mischel et al., 2010). On the other hand, those children who had poor self-control in preschool
(the ones who grabbed the one marshmallow) were not as successful in high school, and they were found to have
academic and behavioral problems.

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
To learn more about the marshmallow test, watch Joachim de Posada’s TEDTalk video.
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Today, the debate is mostly resolved, and most psychologists consider both the situation and personal factors in
understanding behavior. For Mischel (1993), people are situation processors. The children in the marshmallow
test each processed, or interpreted, the rewards structure of that situation in their own way. Mischel’s approach to
personality stresses the importance of both the situation and the way the person perceives the situation. Instead
of behavior being determined by the situation, people use cognitive processes to interpret the situation and then
behave in accordance with that interpretation.
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
Do you have an internal or an external locus of control? Provide examples to support your answer.
Humanistic Approaches
As the “third force” in psychology, humanismhumanism is touted as a reaction both to the pessimistic determinism of
psychoanalysis, with its emphasis on psychological disturbance, and to the behaviorists’ view of humans
passively reacting to the environment, which has been criticized as making people out to be personality-less
robots. It does not suggest that psychoanalytic, behaviorist, and other points of view are incorrect but argues that
these perspectives do not recognize the depth and meaning of human experience, and fail to recognize the innate
capacity for self-directed change and transforming personal experiences. This perspective focuses on how
healthy people develop. One pioneering humanist, Abraham Maslow, studied people who he considered to be
healthy, creative, and productive, including Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham
Lincoln, and others. Maslow (1950, 1970) found that such people share similar characteristics, such as being
open, creative, loving, spontaneous, compassionate, concerned for others, and accepting of themselves. When
you studied motivation, you learned about one of the best-known humanistic theories, Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs theory, in which Maslow proposes that human beings have certain needs in common and that these needs
must be met in a certain order. The highest need is the need for self-actualization, which is the achievement of
our fullest potential.
Another humanistic theorist was Carl Rogers. One of Rogers’s main ideas about personality regards self-conceptself-concept,
our thoughts and feelings about ourselves. How would you respond to the question, “Who am I?” Your answer
can show how you see yourself. If your response is primarily positive, then you tend to feel good about who you
are, and you see the world as a safe and positive place. If your response is mainly negative, then you may feel
unhappy with who you are. Rogers further divided the self into two categories: the ideal self and the real self. The
ideal selfideal self is the person that you would like to be; the real selfreal self is the person you actually are. Rogers focused on
the idea that we need to achieve consistency between these two selves. We experience congruencecongruence when our
thoughts about our real self and ideal self are very similar—in other words, when our self-concept is accurate..
High congruence leads to a greater sense of self-worth and a healthy, productive life. Parents can help their
children achieve this by giving them unconditional positive regard, or unconditional love. According to Rogers
(1980), “As persons are accepted and prized, they tend to develop a more caring attitude towards themselves” (p.

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116). People raised in an environment of unconditional positive regard, in which no preconceived conditions of
worth are present, have the opportunity to fully actualize. When people are raised in an environment of conditional
positive regard, in which worth and love are only given under certain conditions, they must match or achieve
those conditions in order to receive the love or positive regard they yearn for. Their ideal self is thereby
determined by others based on these conditions, and they are forced to develop outside of their own true
actualizing tendency; this contributes to incongruenceincongruence and a greater gap between the real self and the ideal self.
Both Rogers’s and Maslow’s theories focus on individual choices and do not believe that biology is deterministic.
Unconditional Positive Regard
In the development of the self-concept, Rogers elevated the importance of unconditional positive regard, or
unconditional love. Personality Development and the Self-Concept
Rogers based his theories of personality development on humanistic psychology and theories of subjective
experience. He believed that everyone exists in a constantly changing world of experiences that they are at the
center of. A person reacts to changes in their phenomenal field, which includes external objects and people as
well as internal thoughts and emotions.
Figure 3 The phenomenal field refers to a person’s subjective reality, which includes external objects and people as well as
internal thoughts and emotions. The person’s motivations and environments both act on their phenomenal field.
Rogers believed that all behavior is motivated by self-actualizing tendencies, which drive a person to achieve at
their highest level. As a result of their interactions with the environment and others, an individual forms a structure
of the self or self-concept—an organized, fluid, conceptual pattern of concepts and values related to the self. If a
person has a positive self-concept, they tend to feel good about who they are and often see the world as a safe
and positive place. If they have a negative self-concept, they may feel unhappy with who they are.

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
congruence:congruence: state of being in which our thoughts about our real and ideal selves are very similar
ideal self:ideal self: person we would like to be
incongruence:incongruence: state of being in which there is a great discrepancy between our real and ideal selves
locus of control:locus of control: beliefs about the power we have over our lives; an external locus of control is the belief that our
outcomes are outside of our control; an internal locus of control is the belief that we control our own outcomes
real self:real self: person who we actually are
reciprocal determinism:reciprocal determinism: belief that one’s environment can determine behavior, but at the same time, people can
influence the environment with both their thoughts and behaviors
“The Good Life”
Rogers described life in terms of principles rather than stages of development. These principles exist in fluid
processes rather than static states. He claimed that a fully functioning person would continually aim to fulfill his or
her potential in each of these processes, achieving what he called “the good life.” These people would allow
personality and self-concept to emanate from experience. He found that fully functioning individuals had several
traits or tendencies in common:
1. A growing openness to experience–they move away from defensiveness.
2. An increasingly existential lifestyle–living each moment fully, rather than distorting the moment to fit
personality or self-concept.
3. Increasing organismic trust–they trust their own judgment and their ability to choose behavior that is
appropriate for each moment.
4. Freedom of choice–they are not restricted by incongruence and are able to make a wide range of
choices more fluently. They believe that they play a role in determining their own behavior and so feel
responsible for their own behavior.
5. Higher levels of creativity–they will be more creative in the way they adapt to their own circumstances
without feeling a need to conform.
6. Reliability and constructiveness–they can be trusted to act constructively. Even aggressive needs will be
matched and balanced by intrinsic goodness in congruent individuals.
7. A rich full life–they will experience joy and pain, love and heartbreak, fear and courage more intensely.
Criticisms of Rogers’ Theories
Like Maslow’s theories, Rogers’ were criticized for their lack of empirical evidence used in research. The holistic
approach of humanism allows for a great deal of variation but does not identify enough constant variables to be
researched with true accuracy. Psychologists also worry that such an extreme focus on the subjective experience
of the individual does little to explain or appreciate the impact of society on personality development.
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
Respond to the question, “Who am I?” Based on your response, do you have a negative or a positive self-
concept? What are some experiences that led you to develop this particular self-concept?

social-cognitive theory:social-cognitive theory: Bandura’s theory of personality that emphasizes both cognition and learning as sources
of individual differences in personality
self-concept:self-concept: our thoughts and feelings about ourselves
self-efficacy:self-efficacy: someone’s level of confidence in their own abilities
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EXPLAINING PERSONALITY: BIOLOGICAL
APPROACHES AND TRAIT THEORIES
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Explain biological approaches to understanding personality, including the findings of the Minnesota
Study of Twins Reared Apart, heritability, and temperament
• Discuss the early trait theories of Cattell and Eysenck
• Describe the Big Five factors and categorize someone who is high and low on each of the five traits
• Discuss personality differences of people from collectivist and individualist cultures and compare
the cultural-comparative approach, the indigenous approach, and the combined approach to studying
personality
Biological Approaches
How much of our personality is in-born and biological, and how much is influenced by the environment and culture
we are raised in? Psychologists who favor the biological approach believe that inherited predispositions as well as
physiological processes can be used to explain differences in our personalities (Burger, 2008).
In the field of behavioral genetics, the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart—a well-known study of the genetic
basis for personality—conducted research with twins from 1979 to 1999. In studying 350 pairs of twins, including
pairs of identical and fraternal twins reared together and apart, researchers found that identical twins, whether
raised together or apart, have very similar personalities (Bouchard, 1994; Bouchard, Lykken, McGue, Segal, &
Tellegen, 1990; Segal, 2012). These findings suggest the heritability of some personality traits. HeritabilityHeritability refers
to the proportion of difference among people that is attributed to genetics. Some of the traits that the study
reported as having more than a 0.50 heritability ratio include leadership, obedience to authority, a sense of well-
being, alienation, resistance to stress, and fearfulness. The implication is that some aspects of our personalities
are largely controlled by genetics; however, it’s important to point out that traits are not determined by a single
gene, but by a combination of many genes, as well as by epigenetic factors that control whether the genes are
expressed.

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Temperament
Most contemporary psychologists believe temperament has a biological basis due to its appearance very early in
our lives (Rothbart, 2011). As you learned when you studied lifespan development, Thomas and Chess (1977)
found that babies could be categorized into one of three temperaments: easy, difficult, or slow to warm up.
However, environmental factors (family interactions, for example) and maturation can affect the ways in which
children’s personalities are expressed (Carter et al., 2008).
Research suggests that there are two dimensions of our temperament that are important parts of our adult
personality—reactivity and self-regulation (Rothbart, Ahadi, & Evans, 2000). Reactivity refers to how we respond
to new or challenging environmental stimuli; self-regulation refers to our ability to control that response (Rothbart
& Derryberry, 1981; Rothbart, Sheese, Rueda, & Posner, 2011). For example, one person may immediately
respond to new stimuli with a high level of anxiety, while another barely notices it.

CONNECT THE CONCEPTS: BODY TYPE AND TEMPERAMENTCONNECT THE CONCEPTS: BODY TYPE AND TEMPERAMENT
Is there an association between your body type and your temperament? The constitutional perspective, which
examines the relationship between the structure of the human body and behavior, seeks to answer this
question (Genovese, 2008). The first comprehensive system of constitutional psychology was proposed by
American psychologist William H. Sheldon (1940, 1942). He believed that your body type can be linked to your
personality. Sheldon’s life’s work was spent observing human bodies and temperaments. Based on his
observations and interviews of hundreds of people, he proposed three body/personality types, which he called
somatotypes.
The three somatotypes are ectomorphs, endomorphs, and mesomorphs (Figure 1). Ectomorphs are thin with a
small bone structure and very little fat on their bodies. According to Sheldon, the ectomorph personality is
anxious, self-conscious, artistic, thoughtful, quiet, and private. They enjoy intellectual stimulation and feel
uncomfortable in social situations. Actors Adrien Brody and Nicole Kidman would be characterized as
ectomorphs. Endomorphs are the opposite of ectomorphs. Endomorphs have narrow shoulders and wide hips,
and carry extra fat on their round bodies. Sheldon described endomorphs as being relaxed, comfortable, good-
humored, even-tempered, sociable, and tolerant. Endomorphs enjoy affection and detest disapproval. Queen
Latifah and Jack Black would be considered endomorphs. The third somatotype is the mesomorph. This body
type falls between the ectomorph and the endomorph. Mesomorphs have large bone structure, well-defined
muscles, broad shoulders, narrow waists, and attractive, strong bodies. According to Sheldon, mesomorphs are
adventurous, assertive, competitive, and fearless. They are curious and enjoy trying new things, but can also
be obnoxious and aggressive. Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johannson would likely be mesomorphs.
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Figure 1. Sheldon proposed three somatotypes: endomorphs, mesomorphs, and ectomorphs. Do you think Sheldon’s ideas
about somatotypes are generally accurate about most people?
Sheldon (1949) also conducted further research into somatotypes and criminality. He measured the physical
proportions of hundreds of juvenile delinquent boys in comparison to male college students, and found that
problem youth were primarily mesomorphs. Why might this be? Perhaps it’s because they are quick to anger
and don’t have the restraint demonstrated by ectomorphs. Maybe it’s because a person with a mesomorphic
body type reflects high levels of testosterone, which may lead to more aggressive behavior. Can you think of
other explanations for Sheldon’s findings?
Sheldon’s method of somatotyping is not without criticism, as it has been considered largely subjective (Carter
& Heath, 1990; Cortés & Gatti, 1972; Parnell, 1958). More systematic and controlled research methods did not
support his findings (Eysenck, 1970). Consequently, it’s not uncommon to see his theory labeled as
pseudoscience, much like Gall’s theory of phrenology (Rafter, 2007; Rosenbaum, 1995). However, studies
involving correlations between somatotype, temperament, and children’s school performance (Sanford et al.,
1943; Parnell); somatotype and performance of pilots during wartime (Damon, 1955); and somatotype and
temperament (Peterson, Liivamagi, & Koskel, 2006) did support his theory.

THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Research suggests that many of our personality characteristics have a genetic component. What traits
do you think you inherited from your parents? Provide examples. How might modeling (environment)
influenced your characteristics as well?
Trait Theories
Trait theorists believe personality can be understood via the approach that all people have certain traitstraits, or
characteristic ways of behaving. Do you tend to be sociable or shy? Passive or aggressive? Optimistic or
pessimistic? Moody or even-tempered? Early trait theorists tried to describe all human personality traits. For
example, one trait theorist, Gordon Allport (Allport & Odbert, 1936), found 4,500 words in the English language
that could describe people. He organized these personality traits into three categories: cardinal traits, central
traits, and secondary traits. A cardinal trait is one that dominates your entire personality, and hence your
life—such as Ebenezer Scrooge’s greed and Mother Theresa’s altruism. Cardinal traits are not very common:
Few people have personalities dominated by a single trait. Instead, our personalities typically are composed of
multiple traits. Central traits are those that make up our personalities (such as loyal, kind, agreeable, friendly,
sneaky, wild, and grouchy). Secondary traits are those that are not quite as obvious or as consistent as central
traits. They are present under specific circumstances and include preferences and attitudes. For example, one
person gets angry when people try to tickle him; another can only sleep on the left side of the bed; and yet
another always orders her salad dressing on the side. And you—although not normally an anxious person—feel
nervous before making a speech in front of your English class.
In an effort to make the list of traits more manageable, Raymond Cattell (1946, 1957) narrowed down the list to
about 171 traits. However, saying that a trait is either present or absent does not accurately reflect a person’s
uniqueness, because all of our personalities are actually made up of the same traits; we differ only in the degree
to which each trait is expressed. Cattell (1957) identified 16 factors or dimensions of personality: warmth,
reasoning, emotional stability, dominance, liveliness, rule-consciousness, social boldness, sensitivity, vigilance,
abstractedness, privateness, apprehension, openness to change, self-reliance, perfectionism, and tension (Table
1). He developed a personality assessment based on these 16 factors, called the 16PF. Instead of a trait being
present or absent, each dimension is scored over a continuum, from high to low. For example, your level of
warmth describes how warm, caring, and nice to others you are. If you score low on this index, you tend to be
more distant and cold. A high score on this index signifies you are supportive and comforting.

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Follow this link to an assessment based on Cattell’s 16PF questionnaire to see which personality traits
dominate your personality.
Table 1. Personality Factors Measured by the 16PF Questionnaire
FactorFactor Low ScoreLow Score High ScoreHigh Score
Warmth Reserved, detached Outgoing, supportive
Intellect Concrete thinker Analytical
Emotional stability Moody, irritable Stable, calm
Aggressiveness Docile, submissive Controlling, dominant
Liveliness Somber, prudent Adventurous, spontaneous
Dutifulness Unreliable Conscientious
Social assertiveness Shy, restrained Uninhibited, bold
Sensitivity Tough-minded Sensitive, caring
Paranoia Trusting Suspicious
Abstractness Conventional Imaginative
Introversion Open, straightforward Private, shrewd
Anxiety Confident Apprehensive
Openmindedness Closeminded, traditional Curious, experimental
Independence Outgoing, social Self-sufficient
Perfectionism Disorganized, casual Organized, precise
Tension Relaxed Stressed

http://personality-testing.info/tests/16PF.php

Figure 2. Hans and Sybil Eysenck believed that our
personality traits are influenced by our genetic
inheritance. (credit: “Sirswindon”/Wikimedia Commons)
Psychologists Hans and Sybil Eysenck were personality
theorists (Figure 2) who focused on temperamenttemperament, the
inborn, genetically based personality differences that you
studied earlier in the module. They believed personality is
largely governed by biology. The Eysencks (Eysenck, 1990,
1992; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1963) viewed people as having
two specific personality dimensions: extroversion/
introversion and neuroticism/stability.
According to their theory, people high on the trait of
extroversion are sociable and outgoing, and readily connect
with others, whereas people high on the trait of introversion
have a higher need to be alone, engage in solitary
behaviors, and limit their interactions with others. In the
neuroticism/stability dimension, people high on neuroticism
tend to be anxious; they tend to have an overactive
sympathetic nervous system and, even with low stress,
their bodies and emotional state tend to go into a flight-or-
fight reaction. In contrast, people high on stability tend to
need more stimulation to activate their flight-or-fight
reaction and are considered more emotionally stable.
Based on these two dimensions, the Eysencks’ theory
divides people into four quadrants. These quadrants are
sometimes compared with the four temperaments
described by the Greeks: melancholic, choleric, phlegmatic, and sanguine (Figure 3).

Figure 3. The Eysencks described two factors to account for variations in our personalities: extroversion/introversion and
emotional stability/instability.
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Later, the Eysencks added a third dimension: psychoticism versus superego control (Eysenck, Eysenck & Barrett,
1985). In this dimension, people who are high on psychoticism tend to be independent thinkers, cold,
nonconformists, impulsive, antisocial, and hostile, whereas people who are high on superego control tend to have
high impulse control—they are more altruistic, empathetic, cooperative, and conventional (Eysenck, Eysenck &
Barrett, 1985).

The Big 5
While Cattell’s 16 factors may be too broad, the Eysenck’s two-factor system has been criticized for being too
narrow. Another personality theory, called the Five Factor ModelFive Factor Model, effectively hits a middle ground, with its five
factors referred to as the Big Five personality traits. It is the most popular theory in personality psychology today
and the most accurate approximation of the basic trait dimensions (Funder, 2001). The five traits are openness to
experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (Figure 4). A helpful way to
remember the traits is by using the mnemonic OCEAN.
In the Five Factor Model, each person has each trait, but they occur along a spectrum. Openness to experience is
characterized by imagination, feelings, actions, and ideas. People who score high on this trait tend to be curious
and have a wide range of interests. Conscientiousness is characterized by competence, self-discipline,
thoughtfulness, and achievement-striving (goal-directed behavior). People who score high on this trait are
hardworking and dependable. Numerous studies have found a positive correlation between conscientiousness
and academic success (Akomolafe, 2013; Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2008; Conrad & Patry, 2012; Noftle &
Robins, 2007; Wagerman & Funder, 2007). Extroversion is characterized by sociability, assertiveness,
excitement-seeking, and emotional expression. People who score high on this trait are usually described as
outgoing and warm. Not surprisingly, people who score high on both extroversion and openness are more likely to
participate in adventure and risky sports due to their curious and excitement-seeking nature (Tok, 2011). The
fourth trait is agreeableness, which is the tendency to be pleasant, cooperative, trustworthy, and good-natured.
People who score low on agreeableness tend to be described as rude and uncooperative, yet one recent study
reported that men who scored low on this trait actually earned more money than men who were considered more
agreeable (Judge, Livingston, & Hurst, 2012). The last of the Big Five traits is neuroticism, which is the tendency
to experience negative emotions. People high on neuroticism tend to experience emotional instability and are
characterized as angry, impulsive, and hostile. Watson and Clark (1984) found that people reporting high levels of
neuroticism also tend to report feeling anxious and unhappy. In contrast, people who score low in neuroticism
tend to be calm and even-tempered.

Figure 4. In the Five Factor Model, each person has five traits, each scored on a continuum from high to low. In the center column,
notice that the first letter of each trait spells the mnemonic OCEAN.
The Big Five personality factors each represent a range between two extremes. In reality, most of us tend to lie
somewhere midway along the continuum of each factor, rather than at polar ends. It’s important to note that the
Big Five traits are relatively stable over our lifespan, with some tendency for the traits to increase or decrease
slightly. Researchers have found that conscientiousness increases through young adulthood into middle age, as
we become better able to manage our personal relationships and careers (Donnellan & Lucas, 2008).
Agreeableness also increases with age, peaking between 50 to 70 years (Terracciano, McCrae, Brant, & Costa,
2005). Neuroticism and extroversion tend to decline slightly with age (Donnellan & Lucas; Terracciano et al.).
Additionally, The Big Five traits have been shown to exist across ethnicities, cultures, and ages, and may have

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
To find out about your personality and where you fall on the Big Five traits, follow this link to take the Big Five
personality test.
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substantial biological and genetic components (Jang, Livesley, & Vernon, 1996; Jang et al., 2006; McCrae &
Costa, 1997; Schmitt et al., 2007).
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Review the Big Five personality traits shown in Figure 4. On which areas would you expect you’d
score high? In which areas does the low score more accurately describe you?
Cultural Understandings of Personality
As you have learned in this module, personality is shaped by both genetic and environmental factors. The culture
in which you live is one of the most important environmental factors that shapes your personality (Triandis & Suh,
2002). The term cultureculture refers to all of the beliefs, customs, art, and traditions of a particular society. Culture is
transmitted to people through language as well as through the modeling of culturally acceptable and
nonacceptable behaviors that are either rewarded or punished (Triandis & Suh, 2002). With these ideas in mind,
personality psychologists have become interested in the role of culture in understanding personality. They ask
whether personality traits are the same across cultures or if there are variations. It appears that there are both
universal and culture-specific aspects that account for variation in people’s personalities.
Why might it be important to consider cultural influences on personality? Western ideas about personality may not
be applicable to other cultures (Benet-Martinez & Oishi, 2008). In fact, there is evidence that the strength of
personality traits varies across cultures. Let’s take a look at some of the Big Five factors (conscientiousness,
neuroticism, openness, and extroversion) across cultures. As you will learn when you study social psychology,
Asian cultures are more collectivist, and people in these cultures tend to be less extroverted. People in Central
and South American cultures tend to score higher on openness to experience, whereas Europeans score higher
on neuroticism (Benet-Martinez & Karakitapoglu-Aygun, 2003).
According to this study, there also seem to be regional personality differences within the United States (Figure 5).
Researchers analyzed responses from over 1.5 million individuals in the United States and found that there are
three distinct regional personality clusters: Cluster 1, which is in the Upper Midwest and Deep South, is
dominated by people who fall into the “friendly and conventional” personality; Cluster 2, which includes the West,
is dominated by people who are more relaxed, emotionally stable, calm, and creative; and Cluster 3, which

http://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/

Figure 5. Researchers found three distinct regional personality clusters in the United States. People tend to be friendly and
conventional in the Upper Midwest and Deep South; relaxed, emotionally stable, and creative in the West; and stressed, irritable,
and depressed in the Northeast (Rentfrow et al., 2013).
includes the Northeast, has more people who are stressed, irritable, and depressed. People who live in Clusters 2
and 3 are also generally more open (Rentfrow et al., 2013).
One explanation for the regional differences is selective migrationselective migration (Rentfrow et al., 2013). Selective migration is
the concept that people choose to move to places that are compatible with their personalities and needs. For
example, a person high on the agreeable scale would likely want to live near family and friends, and would
choose to settle or remain in such an area. In contrast, someone high on openness would prefer to settle in a
place that is recognized as diverse and innovative (such as California).
Personality in Individualist and Collectivist Cultures
Individualist cultures and collectivist cultures place emphasis on different basic values. People who live in
individualist cultures tend to believe that independence, competition, and personal achievement are important.
Individuals in Western nations such as the United States, England, and Australia score high on individualism
(Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmier, 2002). People who live in collectivist cultures value social harmony,
respectfulness, and group needs over individual needs. Individuals who live in countries in Asia, Africa, and South
America score high on collectivism (Hofstede, 2001; Triandis, 1995). These values influence personality. For
example, Yang (2006) found that people in individualist cultures displayed more personally oriented personality
traits, whereas people in collectivist cultures displayed more socially oriented personality traits.

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
culture:culture: all of the beliefs, customs, art, and traditions of a particular society
Five Factor Model:Five Factor Model: theory that personality is composed of five factors or traits, including openness,
conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism
heritability:heritability: proportion of difference among people that is attributed to genetics
selective migration:selective migration: concept that people choose to move to places that are compatible with their personalities
and needs
Approaches to Studying Personality in a Cultural Context
There are three approaches that can be used to study personality in a cultural context, the cultural-comparative
approach; the indigenous approach; and the combined approach, which incorporates elements of both views.
Since ideas about personality have a Western basis, the cultural-comparative approach seeks to test Western
ideas about personality in other cultures to determine whether they can be generalized and if they have cultural
validity (Cheung van de Vijver, & Leong, 2011). For example, recall from the previous section on the trait
perspective that researchers used the cultural-comparative approach to test the universality of McCrae and
Costa’s Five Factor Model. They found applicability in numerous cultures around the world, with the Big Five traits
being stable in many cultures (McCrae & Costa, 1997; McCrae et al., 2005). The indigenous approach came
about in reaction to the dominance of Western approaches to the study of personality in non-Western settings
(Cheung et al., 2011). Because Western-based personality assessments cannot fully capture the personality
constructs of other cultures, the indigenous model has led to the development of personality assessment
instruments that are based on constructs relevant to the culture being studied (Cheung et al., 2011). The third
approach to cross-cultural studies of personality is the combined approach, which serves as a bridge between
Western and indigenous psychology as a way of understanding both universal and cultural variations in
personality (Cheung et al., 2011).
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• According to the work of Rentfrow and colleagues, personalities are not randomly distributed. Instead
they fit into distinct geographic clusters. Based on where you live, do you agree or disagree with the
traits associated with yourself and the residents of your area of the country? Why or why not?

temperament:temperament: how a person reacts to the world, including their activity level, starting when they are very young
traits:traits: characteristic ways of behaving
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PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT
What you’ll learn to do: explain the use and purpose of common
personality tests
Personality tests are techniques designed to measure one’s personality. They are used to diagnose psychological
problems as well as to screen candidates for college and employment. There are two types of personality tests:
self-report inventories and projective tests. The MMPI is one of the most common self-report inventories. It asks a
series of true/false questions that are designed to provide a clinical profile of an individual. Projective tests use

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Figure 1. If you’ve ever taken a survey, you are probably familiar with Likert-type scale questions. Most personality inventories
employ these types of response scales.
ambiguous images or other ambiguous stimuli to assess an individual’s unconscious fears, desires, and
challenges. The Rorschach Inkblot Test, the TAT, the RISB, and the C-TCB are all forms of projective tests.
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe different types of personality tests, including the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
and common projective tests
Roberto, Mikhail, and Nat are college friends and all want to be police officers. Roberto is quiet and shy, lacks
self-confidence, and usually follows others. He is a kind person, but lacks motivation. Mikhail is loud and
boisterous, a leader. He works hard, but is impulsive and drinks too much on the weekends. Nat is thoughtful and
well liked. He is trustworthy, but sometimes he has difficulty making quick decisions. Of these three men, who
would make the best police officer? What qualities and personality factors make someone a good police officer?
What makes someone a bad or dangerous police officer?
A police officer’s job is very high in stress, and law enforcement agencies want to make sure they hire the right
people. Personality testing is often used for this purpose—to screen applicants for employment and job training.
Personality tests are also used in criminal cases and custody battles, and to assess psychological disorders. This
section explores the best known among the many different types of personality tests.
Self-Report Inventories
Self-report inventories are a kind of objective test used to assess personality. They typically use multiple-choice
items or numbered scales, which represent a range from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). They often
are called Likert scales after their developer, Rensis Likert (1932) (Figure 1).
One of the most widely used personality inventories is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI),
first published in 1943, with 504 true/false questions, and updated to the MMPI-2 in 1989, with 567 questions. The
original MMPI was based on a small, limited sample, composed mostly of Minnesota farmers and psychiatric

Figure 2. These true/false questions resemble the kinds of questions you would find on the MMPI.
patients; the revised inventory was based on a more representative, national sample to allow for better
standardization. The MMPI-2 takes 1–2 hours to complete. Responses are scored to produce a clinical profile
composed of 10 scales: hypochondriasis, depression, hysteria, psychopathic deviance (social deviance),
masculinity versus femininity, paranoia, psychasthenia (obsessive/compulsive qualities), schizophrenia,
hypomania, and social introversion. There is also a scale to ascertain risk factors for alcohol abuse. In 2008, the
test was again revised, using more advanced methods, to the MMPI-2-RF. This version takes about one-half the
time to complete and has only 338 questions (Figure 2). Despite the new test’s advantages, the MMPI-2 is more
established and is still more widely used. Typically, the tests are administered by computer. Although the MMPI
was originally developed to assist in the clinical diagnosis of psychological disorders, it is now also used for
occupational screening, such as in law enforcement, and in college, career, and marital counseling (Ben-Porath &
Tellegen, 2008).
In addition to clinical scales, the tests also have validity and reliability scales. (Recall the concepts of reliability
and validity from your study of psychological research.) One of the validity scales, the Lie Scale (or “L” Scale),
consists of 15 items and is used to ascertain whether the respondent is “faking good” (underreporting
psychological problems to appear healthier). For example, if someone responds “yes” to a number of
unrealistically positive items such as “I have never told a lie,” they may be trying to “fake good” or appear better
than they actually are.
Reliability scales test an instrument’s consistency over time, assuring that if you take the MMPI-2-RF today and
then again 5 years later, your two scores will be similar. Beutler, Nussbaum, and Meredith (1988) gave the MMPI
to newly recruited police officers and then to the same police officers 2 years later. After 2 years on the job, police
officers’ responses indicated an increased vulnerability to alcoholism, somatic symptoms (vague, unexplained
physical complaints), and anxiety. When the test was given an additional 2 years later (4 years after starting on
the job), the results suggested high risk for alcohol-related difficulties.
Projective Tests
Another method for assessment of personality is projective testingprojective testing. This kind of test relies on one of the defense
mechanisms proposed by Freud—projection—as a way to assess unconscious processes. During this type of
testing, a series of ambiguous cards is shown to the person being tested, who then is encouraged to project his
feelings, impulses, and desires onto the cards—by telling a story, interpreting an image, or completing a
sentence. Many projective tests have undergone standardization procedures (for example, Exner, 2002) and can
be used to access whether someone has unusual thoughts or a high level of anxiety, or is likely to become
volatile. Some examples of projective tests are the Rorschach Inkblot Test, the Thematic Apperception Test

Figure 3. These incomplete sentences resemble the types of questions on the RISB. How would you complete these sentences?
(TAT), the Contemporized-Themes Concerning Blacks test, the TEMAS (Tell-Me-A-Story), and the Rotter
Incomplete Sentence Blank (RISB).
The Rorschach Inkblot TestRorschach Inkblot Test was developed in 1921 by a Swiss psychologist named Hermann Rorschach
(pronounced “ROAR-shock”). It is a series of symmetrical inkblot cards that are presented to a client by a
psychologist. Upon presentation of each card, the psychologist asks the client, “What might this be?” What the
test-taker sees reveals unconscious feelings and struggles (Piotrowski, 1987; Weiner, 2003). The Rorschach has
been standardized using the Exner system and is effective in measuring depression, psychosis, and anxiety.
A second projective test is the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), created in the 1930s by Henry Murray, an
American psychologist, and a psychoanalyst named Christiana Morgan. A person taking the TAT is shown 8–12
ambiguous pictures and is asked to tell a story about each picture. The stories give insight into their social world,
revealing hopes, fears, interests, and goals. The storytelling format helps to lower a person’s resistance divulging
unconscious personal details (Cramer, 2004). The TAT has been used in clinical settings to evaluate
psychological disorders; more recently, it has been used in counseling settings to help clients gain a better
understanding of themselves and achieve personal growth. Standardization of test administration is virtually
nonexistent among clinicians, and the test tends to be modest to low on validity and reliability (Aronow, Weiss, &
Rezinkoff, 2001; Lilienfeld, Wood, & Garb, 2000). Despite these shortcomings, the TAT has been one of the most
widely used projective tests.
A third projective test is the Rotter Incomplete Sentence Blank (RISB)Rotter Incomplete Sentence Blank (RISB) developed by Julian Rotter in 1950 (recall
his theory of locus of control, covered earlier in this chapter). There are three forms of this test for use with
different age groups: the school form, the college form, and the adult form. The tests include 40 incomplete
sentences that people are asked to complete as quickly as possible (Figure 3). The average time for completing
the test is approximately 20 minutes, as responses are only 1–2 words in length. This test is similar to a word
association test, and like other types of projective tests, it is presumed that responses will reveal desires, fears,
and struggles. The RISB is used in screening college students for adjustment problems and in career counseling
(Holaday, Smith, & Sherry, 2010; Rotter & Rafferty 1950).
For many decades, these traditional projective tests have been used in cross-cultural personality assessments.
However, it was found that test bias limited their usefulness (Hoy-Watkins & Jenkins-Moore, 2008). It is difficult to
assess the personalities and lifestyles of members of widely divergent ethnic/cultural groups using personality
instruments based on data from a single culture or race (Hoy-Watkins & Jenkins-Moore, 2008). For example,
when the TAT was used with African-American test takers, the result was often shorter story length and low levels
of cultural identification (Duzant, 2005). Therefore, it was vital to develop other personality assessments that
explored factors such as race, language, and level of acculturation (Hoy-Watkins & Jenkins-Moore, 2008). To
address this need, Robert Williams developed the first culturally specific projective test designed to reflect the
everyday life experiences of African Americans (Hoy-Watkins & Jenkins-Moore, 2008). The updated version of
the instrument is the Contemporized-Themes Concerning Blacks Test (C-TCB)Contemporized-Themes Concerning Blacks Test (C-TCB) (Williams, 1972). The C-TCB

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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch this CrashCourse video to better understand how personality is measured:
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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
Contemporized-Themes Concerning Blacks Test (C-TCB):Contemporized-Themes Concerning Blacks Test (C-TCB): projective test designed to be culturally relevant to
African Americans, using images that relate to African-American culture
contains 20 color images that show scenes of African-American lifestyles. When the C-TCB was compared with
the TAT for African Americans, it was found that use of the C-TCB led to increased story length, higher degrees of
positive feelings, and stronger identification with the C-TCB (Hoy, 1997; Hoy-Watkins & Jenkins-Moore, 2008).
The TEMAS Multicultural Thematic Apperception TestTEMAS Multicultural Thematic Apperception Test is another tool designed to be culturally relevant to minority
groups, especially Hispanic youths. TEMAS—standing for “Tell Me a Story” but also a play on the Spanish word
temas (themes)—uses images and storytelling cues that relate to minority culture (Constantino, 1982).
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• How objective do you think you can be about yourself in answering questions on self-report personality
assessment measures? What implications might this have for the validity of the personality test?

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI):Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): personality test composed of a series of true/false
questions in order to establish a clinical profile of an individual
Projective test:Projective test: personality assessment in which a person responds to ambiguous stimuli, revealing hidden
feelings, impulses, and desires
Rorschach Inkblot Test:Rorschach Inkblot Test: projective test that employs a series of symmetrical inkblot cards that are presented to
a client by a psychologist in an effort to reveal the person’s unconscious desires, fears, and struggles
Rotter Incomplete Sentence Blank (RISB):Rotter Incomplete Sentence Blank (RISB): projective test that is similar to a word association test in which a
person completes sentences in order to reveal their unconscious desires, fears, and struggles
TEMAS Multicultural Thematic Apperception Test:TEMAS Multicultural Thematic Apperception Test: projective test designed to be culturally relevant to minority
groups, especially Hispanic youths, using images and storytelling that relate to minority culture
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT):Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): projective test in which people are presented with ambiguous images, and
they then make up stories to go with the images in an effort to uncover their unconscious desires, fears, and
struggles
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe the complications of developing personality assessments, including the importance of
reliability and validity
Part 1: Creating a Personality Questionnaire
Psychologists often assess a person’s personality using a questionnaire that is filled in by the person who is being
assessed. Such a tests is called a “self-report inventory.” To get into the spirit of personality assessment, please
complete the personality inventory below. It has only 10 questions. Simply decide much each pair of words or
phrases fits you.
Take the TIPI Personality Test
The questionnaire you just completed is called the TIPI: The Ten-Item Personality Inventory. It was created by
University of Texas psychologist Sam Gosling as a very brief measure of five personality characteristics:
Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Openness to Experience. These five
personality dimensions are called “The Big Five” and, taken together, they have been found to be an excellent
first-level summary of people’s personality.
Tests of the Big Five personality dimensions are widely used by researchers and by people in business and
education who want a general view of a person’s personality. There are several different self-report inventories
that have been developed to measure the Big Five traits, most with 50 or more questions. The TIPI, which you
just took, was developed for situations where time is very limited and the tester (usually a researcher) needs a
“good enough” version of the test. One of the longer versions would be used by someone needing a more reliable
and nuanced view of someone’s personality.
Looking at the TIPI, you might have the impression that creating a personality inventory is pretty easy. You come
up with a few obvious questions, find names that fit, and you’re ready to claim you are measuring something
about people’s personality.
Undoubtedly you can find some “personality tests” on the internet that fit this description, but tests created by
serious psychologists for use in research or in clinical settings must go through a much more careful development
process before they are widely accepted and used. And, even then, the tests continue to be studied, criticized,
and revised.
In this exercise, we will look more closely at some of the work that goes into creating a personality inventory or
questionnaire. To help you keep your eyes on the process of test construction, we want you to think about a

https://psychcentral.com/quizzes/personality-test/

personality dimension that is not as obvious as self-esteem or extraversion. We are going to assess
blirtatiousnessblirtatiousness.
Part 1: Creating the Blirt Scale
One of my closest friends is sometimes annoying and usually entertaining, but he never holds back; you always
know what he’s thinking. His wife is kind and friendly, and she is first to arrive when help is needed, but she hides
her feelings and opinions. It is not easy to know what she wants or where she stands.
Consider your own closest friends. Where do they fall on the continuum between my friends? Who is open and
easy to read, and who is private and guarded?
Back in the early 2000s, social psychologist William Swann and his colleagues became interested in the impact of
self-disclosure—the process of communicating information about ourselves to other people—on personal
relationships. In one paper, the researchers wrote about “blirters” and “brooders”—good labels for my two friends.
Early in their research, the psychologists realized that the story was not going to be simple. Enthusiastic self-
disclosure (blirting) is sometimes good for relationships and sometimes bad, and the same is true about
reluctance to self-disclose (brooding).
The researchers also realized that they didn’t really have a good way to sort people out on the self-disclosure
continuum. Self-selection (“I’m very open.” “I’m very private.”) often doesn’t fit with how other people—including
your friends—see you. And researchers’ first impressions (“He seems like a blirter.” “She seems like a brooder.”)
are extremely unreliable. They needed a better way to measure people’s willingness to self-disclose.
In this exercise, we’re going to give you a small taste of the process of creating a personality questionnaire. To do
this, we are going to re-create Dr. Swann’s “blirtatiousness” test that is now used by researchers studying self-
disclosure in personal relationships.
By the way, even serious psychologists seem to want to give their tests interesting names, so the name BLIRT
stands for Brief Loquaciousness and Interpersonal Responsiveness Test.
Scale Construction: What Questions Should We Use?
The first step in constructing a test or scale to measure some personal characteristic is to be clear about what it is
you are measuring. In their papers, Dr. Swann and his colleagues discuss what they mean by “blirtatiousness” in
detail, but here the following definition should be enough: Blirtatiousness is the extent to which people respond to
friends and partners quickly and effusively. A person is effusive if they excitedly show and express emotion.
One thing to notice about this definition is that it focuses on behavior more than inner feelings. It is the behaviors
of our friends and partners that affect us, regardless of their intentions and motivations, so that is what the BLIRT
scale is all about.
Obviously, the first step in creating a questionnaire is writing the questions, but this is not as straightforward as it
seems. Will they be open-ended (e.g., “How open-minded are you? ___). Probably not, as they are hard to score.
Forced-choice, where a person chooses one of several options, is a better choice. Some forced-choice questions
make you give rankings, or others may have you choose from options, like these questions from the Narcissistic
Personality Inventory:

https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/NPI/

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Figure 1. The questions from Terry Raskin’s Narcissistic Personality Inventory force participants to choose between two options.
Another common forced-choice format is the Likert (Note: The man who created the scale pronounced his name
as LICK-ert. Many psychologists—maybe even your instructor—pronounce it LIKE-ert. It probably doesn’t matter
much which way you say the name.) scale, which is composed of a statement (not a question) followed by 5 or 7
numbers allowing you to indicate your level of agreement with the statement. For example, here is an item from
the Rosenberg Self-Esteem inventory:
Figure 2. Morris Rosenberg’s questions on the self-esteem inventory utilize the Likert scale.
Dr. Swann and his team chose a 7-point Likert format to measure blirtatiousness. To do this, they needed to write
clear, simple statements that people could agree or disagree with, where different levels of agreement were
possible.
We aren’t going to ask you to write any questions, but join the test-development team by looking at the eight
statements below. Choose four that you think would be the best items to include in the BLIRT scale.
When they were developing the scale, Dr. Swann and his team wrote dozens of questions, and then pared them
down to 20. Then, they got 237 undergraduates to rate the 20 questions for how well they fit the qualities that the
BLIRT scale was trying to measure. (Note: Note: Notice that the four items from the BLIRT are about what you
DO. They aren’t about your beliefs (option 1), how you think other people see you (option 3), opinions about
yourself (option 4), or what you think about other people (option 6).)
Questionnaire writers have strategies to encourage people to read the statements carefully. For example, they
often write “reverse scoring” items. To show what this means, just below is the 7-point Likert scale used with the
Blirtatiousness questionnaire. Below that you will see two statements. Look at how the statements and the Likert
scale fit together.
Figure 3. A Likert scale.

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1. I speak my mind as soon as a thought enters my head.
◦ For this question, 1 means not blirtatious and 7 means very blirtatious.
2. I speak my mind as soon as a thought enters my head.
◦ For this question, 1 means very blirtatious and 7 means not blirtatious.
Dr. Swann and his team chose 8 items for the BLIRT scale and half were worded so that higher numbers mean
more blirtatious, and half so that high numbers mean less blirtatious. After the test, a process called “reverse
scoring” put all the questions back on the same scale, so that higher numbers mean more blirtatious. (Note:
Reverse scoring is simple: 7 becomes 1, 6 becomes 2, 5 becomes 3, 4 stays 4, 3 becomes 5, 2 becomes 6, and
1 becomes 7. Only the 4 items with the reverse wording are rescored this way. The goal is to make it so that
higher numbers mean more blirtatious for all the items.)
At this point in the test-creation process, Dr. Swann and his team settled on eight statements that seemed to
measure BLIRT. They were ready to administer the test, but before they could praise the test and its
effectiveness, they needed to be sure of a few things: the questions need to work together as a set, the test must
be reliable, and the test must be valid.
• The questions must work together as a set.The questions must work together as a set. In other words, we want to be sure that the 8 items are all
giving us responses about the same quality (blirtatiousness) and that the responses people are giving
are consistent with one another.
◦ You might think that a single question would be enough to measure blirtatiousness. Why ask 8
questions when one would do? But research has shown that asking variations on the same
question 8 or 10 different times gives a more stable measure. The questions must be slightly
different (enough to make people think carefully), but not too different (so they measure
different things).
◦ The researchers administered the BLIRT to 1,137 students and used statistical procedures
(Note: Cronbach’s alpha and Factor Analysis) to be sure that the 8 items in the scale worked
together. The results indicated that the 8 items on the scale were consistent with each other in
measuring the same psychological quality.
• The test must be reliableThe test must be reliable. The word “reliability” means “consistent.” We should be able to give you a test
of some quality (e.g., how extraverted you are) and then give you that same test again two months later,
and your scores should be pretty similar. This is important for what are called “stable traits”. Obviously,
some psychological qualities, like moods, change all the time and we would not expect consistency. But
blirtatiousness should be a stable trait.
◦ One common way to measure reliability of a test is a process called “test-retest reliability.” It is
as simple as it sounds: you give the test, wait some period of time, and give again to the same
people.
• The test must be valid.The test must be valid. Believe it or not, after all this work, we still don’t know if the BLIRT scale is
VALID. Validity is a question of whether or not we are measuring the thing we are trying to measure.
Reliability doesn’t tell us if a scale is valid; reliability simply means that we get consistent answers. So
how can we figure out if our test is valid or not? We’ll go into that in the next section.
The exercises you just reviewed give you a taste of the initial steps in creating a personality inventory. We started
by carefully defining the personality trait. We had to figure out how we were going to ask our questions, and we
chose a Likert scale. The questions had to be carefully written to be clear and focused on the trait we are
studying: blirtatiousness. Writing effective items usually involves a process of writing, testing, selection, rewriting,
retesting, and selecting again, until we are satisfied that our questions are good. Once we have compiled a
test–at least a candidate for the test–we need to administer it to people to see if it is reliable and internally
consistent (i.e., that all the questions are measuring the same trait).

MEASURING PERSONALITYMEASURING PERSONALITY
Before you go on, now is a good time to measure your blirtatiousness. It should only take a couple of minutes,
and you’ll find out if you are a blirter or a brooder when it’s completed.
Take the Blirt Test
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Part 2: Does the Blirt Scale Measure What It Claims to
Measure?
No one wants to use a scale that hasn’t been shown to be valid. And validity is really hard to show.
Analyzing Validity
Here is our challenge. Remember that blirtatiousness is the extent to which people respond to friends and
partners quickly and effusively. Our questions may look good, but we need evidence that the numbers we get
actually measure the trait.
There is no one way to determine the validity of a scale. Test developers like Dr. Swann usually take several
different approaches. They may compare the test results with other personality tests of similar traits (convergent
validity), or compare scores from the BLIRT test with other dissimilar tests (discriminant validity). Researchers
may also compare the results of the BLIRT test to real-world outcomes (criterion validity), or see if the results
work to predict people’s behavior in certain situations (predictive validity).
In the sections below, we will peek at some studies that try to assess these different aspects of validity.
Convergent and Discriminant Validity
One way to test the validity of a test is to compare it to results from tests of other traits for which validated tests
already exist. There are two types of comparisons that researchers look for when they validate a test. One is
called convergent validity and the other is called discriminant validity.
When testing for convergent validityconvergent validity, the researcher looks for other traits that are similar to (but not identical to)
the trait they are measuring. For example, we are studying blirtatiousness. It would be reasonable to think that a
person who is blirtatious is also assertive. The two traits—blirtatiousness and assertiveness—are not the same,
but they are certainly related. If our blirtatiousness scale is not at all related to assertiveness, then we should be
worried that we are not really measuring blirtatiousness successfully.
We can use the correlation between the BLIRT score and a score on a test of assertiveness to measure
convergent validity. The researchers gave a set of tests, including the BLIRT scale and a measure of
assertiveness (Note: The Rathus Assertiveness Schedule) to 1,397 college students. Assertiveness was just one
of several traits that were expected to be similar to blirtatiousness. (Note: Others included self-perceived social
confidence, extraversion, impulsivity, and self-liking.)

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Using the bar graph below, adjust the bars based on your prediction about who will be more blirtatious. Then
click the link below to see if your prediction is correct.
AnswerAnswer
We want our BLIRT score to have a moderate-to-strong relationship with traits that are similar, but we also want it
to be unrelated to traits or abilities that are not similar to blirtatiousness. Tests of discriminant validitydiscriminant validity compare our
BLIRT score to traits that should have weak or no relationship to blirtatiousness. For example, people who are
blirtatious may be good students or poor students or somewhere in-between. Knowing how blirtatious you are
should not tell us much about how good a student you are.
The researchers compared the BLIRT score of the 1,397 students mentioned earlier to their self-reported GPA.
(Note: Other traits assessed for discriminant validity were agreeableness, conscientiousness, affect intensity (how
strongly people were influenced by their emotions).)
Dr. Swann’s team compared 21 different traits and abilities to the blirtatiousness scale. Some assessed
convergent validity and others tested discriminant validity. The results were generally convincing: BLIRT scores
were similar to traits that should be related to blirtatiousness (good convergent validity) and unrelated to traits that
should have no connection to blirtatiousness (good discriminant validity).
Criterion Validity
Another way to test the validity of a measure is to see if it fits the way people behave in the real world. The BLIRT
researchers conducted two studies to see if BLIRT scores fit what we know about people’s personalities. CriterionCriterion
validityvalidity is the relationship between some measure and some real-world outcome.
Librarians or Salespeople?
Who do you think is more likely to be blirtatious, a salesperson or a librarian? The researchers found thirty
employees of car dealerships and libraries in central Texas and gave them the BLIRT scale. Their ages ranged
from 20 to 66 (average age = 34.3 years).
Most people expect salespeople to be more blirtatious than librarians. The researchers explained that we assume
that high blirters will look for a work environment that rewards “effusive, rapid responding,” while low blirters would
prefer a workplace that encourages “reflection and social inhibition.” As you can see, the results of the study were
consistent with this idea: salespeople had significantly higher blirt scores (on the average) than librarians.

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Using the bar graph below, adjust the bars based on your prediction about who will be more blirtatious. Then
click the link below to see if your prediction is correct.
AnswerAnswer
Asian Americans or European Americans?
How blirtatious a person is can be influenced by a lot of factors, including “cultural norms”—ways of acting that we
learn from our families and the people around us as we grow up. Although we shouldn’t overstate the difference,
Asian cultures tend to emphasize restraint of emotional expression, while European cultures are more likely to
encourage direct and rapid expression.
The researchers were able to get BLIRT scores from 2,800 students from European-American cultures and 698
students from Asian-American cultures. What would you predict about the BLIRT scores for these two groups?
As you can see, the results were consistent with the researchers’ expectations. The difference between the
groups was small, but statistically significant. The small difference indicates that we shouldn’t turn these modest
differences into cultural stereotypes, but the statistically significant difference suggests that cultural experiences
may have a real—if modest—effect on people’s blirtatiousness.
Predictive Validity
Another way to assess validity of the BLIRT scale is to see if it predicts people’s behavior in specific situations.
Based on research about first impressions, the experimenters believed that people who are open and expressive
should, in general, make better first impressions than people who are reserved and relatively quiet.

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After the conversations, the students rated their conversation partners on several different qualities. For
example, who do you think would be perceived as more responsive—a high blirter or a low blirter?
high blirter
low blirter
no difference
AnswerAnswer
To test this hypothesis, the researchers recruited college students and put them into pairs. The members of each
pair had a 7-minute “getting acquainted” telephone conversation. The members of the pairs did not know each
other and, in fact, they never saw each other. The participants also completed several personality measures,
including the BLIRT scale. Note that they were NOT paired based on their BLIRT scores, so there were different
combinations of blirtatiousness across the 32 pairs tested.
Measuring Personality
You now know more about creating a personality test than most people do. Scales like the BLIRT or the Big Five
test you took at the beginning of this exercise are used for serious purposes. Psychological researchers use them
in their studies, of course. But psychological tests are also used by companies in their hiring process, by
therapists trying to understand their patients, school systems assessing strengths and weaknesses of their
students, and even sports teams trying to identify the best athletes to fit their system.

Keeping in mind that this was a first-impression 7-minute conversation, who do you think would be seen as
more interesting: a high blirter or a low blirter?
high blirter
low blirter
no difference
AnswerAnswer
Here are some other qualities that were rated. Make your prediction for each one, and then check out the
results.
Who was rated as more likeable?
high blirter
low blirter
no difference
AnswerAnswer
Blirtatiousness is simply an example of a personality trait, and it is not among the most widely used scales. There
are hundreds of personality tests in use today. For example, the Big Five personality traits (conscientiousness,
agreeability, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion) are among the most widely used scales, and
they have been extensively studied and validated. Other qualities, like intelligence, self-esteem, and general
anxiety level, have also been widely studied, and they have well validated measures.

Who was rated as someone who “I’d like to be friends with?”
high blirter
low blirter
no difference
AnswerAnswer
Who was rated as more intelligent?
high blirter
low blirter
no difference
AnswerAnswer
convergent validityconvergent validity
We hope that this exercise has given you some insight into the characteristics of a good personality test, and the
work that goes into developing a useful scale. Next time you take one, consider the process that went into its
development.
GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
the relationship between traits that are similar to (but not identical to) the trait being
measured

criterion validitycriterion validity
discriminant validitydiscriminant validity
predictive validity:predictive validity:
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the relationship between some measure and some real-world outcome
the relationship between some traits that should have weak or no relationship
the relationship between experimental results and the ability to predict people’s behavior in
certain situations
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• Personality building image. Authored byAuthored by: Vic. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. Located atLocated at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/59632563@N04/6235678871. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution
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• Measuring Personality: Crash Course Psychology #22. Provided byProvided by: CrashCourse. Located atLocated at: https://youtu.be/sUrV6oZ3zsk?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6. LicenseLicense: Other. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard
YouTube License
• Sample of narcissistic personality disorder. Authored byAuthored by: Raskin, R.; Terry, H. Provided byProvided by: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Located atLocated at: https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/NPI/. ProjectProject: A principal-
components analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and further evidence of its construct validity. LicenseLicense: All Rights Reserved
• Sample of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem inventory. Authored byAuthored by: Morris Rosenberg. Located atLocated at: https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/RSE.php. ProjectProject: Society and the adolescent self-image. LicenseLicense: All Rights Reserved
PSYCH IN REAL LIFE: BLIRTATIOUSNESS,
QUESTIONNAIRES, AND VALIDITY
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe the complications of developing personality assessments, including the importance of
reliability and validity

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:Lsg7ohsh@4/Personality-Assessment

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/NPI/

https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/RSE.php

Part 1: Creating a Personality Questionnaire
Psychologists often assess a person’s personality using a questionnaire that is filled in by the person who is being
assessed. Such a tests is called a “self-report inventory.” To get into the spirit of personality assessment, please
complete the personality inventory below. It has only 10 questions. Simply decide much each pair of words or
phrases fits you.
Take the TIPI Personality Test
The questionnaire you just completed is called the TIPI: The Ten-Item Personality Inventory. It was created by
University of Texas psychologist Sam Gosling as a very brief measure of five personality characteristics:
Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Openness to Experience. These five
personality dimensions are called “The Big Five” and, taken together, they have been found to be an excellent
first-level summary of people’s personality.
Tests of the Big Five personality dimensions are widely used by researchers and by people in business and
education who want a general view of a person’s personality. There are several different self-report inventories
that have been developed to measure the Big Five traits, most with 50 or more questions. The TIPI, which you
just took, was developed for situations where time is very limited and the tester (usually a researcher) needs a
“good enough” version of the test. One of the longer versions would be used by someone needing a more reliable
and nuanced view of someone’s personality.
Looking at the TIPI, you might have the impression that creating a personality inventory is pretty easy. You come
up with a few obvious questions, find names that fit, and you’re ready to claim you are measuring something
about people’s personality.
Undoubtedly you can find some “personality tests” on the internet that fit this description, but tests created by
serious psychologists for use in research or in clinical settings must go through a much more careful development
process before they are widely accepted and used. And, even then, the tests continue to be studied, criticized,
and revised.
In this exercise, we will look more closely at some of the work that goes into creating a personality inventory or
questionnaire. To help you keep your eyes on the process of test construction, we want you to think about a
personality dimension that is not as obvious as self-esteem or extraversion. We are going to assess
blirtatiousnessblirtatiousness.
Part 1: Creating the Blirt Scale
One of my closest friends is sometimes annoying and usually entertaining, but he never holds back; you always
know what he’s thinking. His wife is kind and friendly, and she is first to arrive when help is needed, but she hides
her feelings and opinions. It is not easy to know what she wants or where she stands.
Consider your own closest friends. Where do they fall on the continuum between my friends? Who is open and
easy to read, and who is private and guarded?
Back in the early 2000s, social psychologist William Swann and his colleagues became interested in the impact of
self-disclosure—the process of communicating information about ourselves to other people—on personal
relationships. In one paper, the researchers wrote about “blirters” and “brooders”—good labels for my two friends.
Early in their research, the psychologists realized that the story was not going to be simple. Enthusiastic self-
disclosure (blirting) is sometimes good for relationships and sometimes bad, and the same is true about
reluctance to self-disclose (brooding).
The researchers also realized that they didn’t really have a good way to sort people out on the self-disclosure
continuum. Self-selection (“I’m very open.” “I’m very private.”) often doesn’t fit with how other people—including
your friends—see you. And researchers’ first impressions (“He seems like a blirter.” “She seems like a brooder.”)
are extremely unreliable. They needed a better way to measure people’s willingness to self-disclose.

https://psychcentral.com/quizzes/personality-test/

In this exercise, we’re going to give you a small taste of the process of creating a personality questionnaire. To do
this, we are going to re-create Dr. Swann’s “blirtatiousness” test that is now used by researchers studying self-
disclosure in personal relationships.
By the way, even serious psychologists seem to want to give their tests interesting names, so the name BLIRT
stands for Brief Loquaciousness and Interpersonal Responsiveness Test.
Scale Construction: What Questions Should We Use?
The first step in constructing a test or scale to measure some personal characteristic is to be clear about what it is
you are measuring. In their papers, Dr. Swann and his colleagues discuss what they mean by “blirtatiousness” in
detail, but here the following definition should be enough: Blirtatiousness is the extent to which people respond to
friends and partners quickly and effusively. A person is effusive if they excitedly show and express emotion.
One thing to notice about this definition is that it focuses on behavior more than inner feelings. It is the behaviors
of our friends and partners that affect us, regardless of their intentions and motivations, so that is what the BLIRT
scale is all about.
Obviously, the first step in creating a questionnaire is writing the questions, but this is not as straightforward as it
seems. Will they be open-ended (e.g., “How open-minded are you? ___). Probably not, as they are hard to score.
Forced-choice, where a person chooses one of several options, is a better choice. Some forced-choice questions
make you give rankings, or others may have you choose from options, like these questions from the Narcissistic
Personality Inventory:
Figure 1. The questions from Terry Raskin’s Narcissistic Personality Inventory force participants to choose between two options.
Another common forced-choice format is the Likert (Note: The man who created the scale pronounced his name
as LICK-ert. Many psychologists—maybe even your instructor—pronounce it LIKE-ert. It probably doesn’t matter
much which way you say the name.) scale, which is composed of a statement (not a question) followed by 5 or 7
numbers allowing you to indicate your level of agreement with the statement. For example, here is an item from
the Rosenberg Self-Esteem inventory:
Figure 2. Morris Rosenberg’s questions on the self-esteem inventory utilize the Likert scale.
Dr. Swann and his team chose a 7-point Likert format to measure blirtatiousness. To do this, they needed to write
clear, simple statements that people could agree or disagree with, where different levels of agreement were
possible.
We aren’t going to ask you to write any questions, but join the test-development team by looking at the eight
statements below. Choose four that you think would be the best items to include in the BLIRT scale.

https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/NPI/

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2018/03/24175056/Screen-Shot-2018-10-24-at-12.50.27-PM

https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/RSE.php

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2018/03/24175626/Screen-Shot-2018-10-24-at-12.56.09-PM

https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290550739684166808/embed
When they were developing the scale, Dr. Swann and his team wrote dozens of questions, and then pared them
down to 20. Then, they got 237 undergraduates to rate the 20 questions for how well they fit the qualities that the
BLIRT scale was trying to measure. (Note: Note: Notice that the four items from the BLIRT are about what you
DO. They aren’t about your beliefs (option 1), how you think other people see you (option 3), opinions about
yourself (option 4), or what you think about other people (option 6).)
Questionnaire writers have strategies to encourage people to read the statements carefully. For example, they
often write “reverse scoring” items. To show what this means, just below is the 7-point Likert scale used with the
Blirtatiousness questionnaire. Below that you will see two statements. Look at how the statements and the Likert
scale fit together.
Figure 3. A Likert scale.
1. I speak my mind as soon as a thought enters my head.
◦ For this question, 1 means not blirtatious and 7 means very blirtatious.
2. I speak my mind as soon as a thought enters my head.
◦ For this question, 1 means very blirtatious and 7 means not blirtatious.
Dr. Swann and his team chose 8 items for the BLIRT scale and half were worded so that higher numbers mean
more blirtatious, and half so that high numbers mean less blirtatious. After the test, a process called “reverse
scoring” put all the questions back on the same scale, so that higher numbers mean more blirtatious. (Note:
Reverse scoring is simple: 7 becomes 1, 6 becomes 2, 5 becomes 3, 4 stays 4, 3 becomes 5, 2 becomes 6, and
1 becomes 7. Only the 4 items with the reverse wording are rescored this way. The goal is to make it so that
higher numbers mean more blirtatious for all the items.)
At this point in the test-creation process, Dr. Swann and his team settled on eight statements that seemed to
measure BLIRT. They were ready to administer the test, but before they could praise the test and its
effectiveness, they needed to be sure of a few things: the questions need to work together as a set, the test must
be reliable, and the test must be valid.
• The questions must work together as a set.The questions must work together as a set. In other words, we want to be sure that the 8 items are all
giving us responses about the same quality (blirtatiousness) and that the responses people are giving
are consistent with one another.
◦ You might think that a single question would be enough to measure blirtatiousness. Why ask 8
questions when one would do? But research has shown that asking variations on the same
question 8 or 10 different times gives a more stable measure. The questions must be slightly
different (enough to make people think carefully), but not too different (so they measure
different things).
◦ The researchers administered the BLIRT to 1,137 students and used statistical procedures
(Note: Cronbach’s alpha and Factor Analysis) to be sure that the 8 items in the scale worked
together. The results indicated that the 8 items on the scale were consistent with each other in
measuring the same psychological quality.
• The test must be reliableThe test must be reliable. The word “reliability” means “consistent.” We should be able to give you a test
of some quality (e.g., how extraverted you are) and then give you that same test again two months later,
and your scores should be pretty similar. This is important for what are called “stable traits”. Obviously,
some psychological qualities, like moods, change all the time and we would not expect consistency. But
blirtatiousness should be a stable trait.
◦ One common way to measure reliability of a test is a process called “test-retest reliability.” It is
as simple as it sounds: you give the test, wait some period of time, and give again to the same
people.

https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290550739684166808/embed

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2018/03/24180330/likert

TRY ITTRY IT
https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11820
MEASURING PERSONALITYMEASURING PERSONALITY
Before you go on, now is a good time to measure your blirtatiousness. It should only take a couple of minutes,
and you’ll find out if you are a blirter or a brooder when it’s completed.
Take the Blirt Test
• The test must be valid.The test must be valid. Believe it or not, after all this work, we still don’t know if the BLIRT scale is
VALID. Validity is a question of whether or not we are measuring the thing we are trying to measure.
Reliability doesn’t tell us if a scale is valid; reliability simply means that we get consistent answers. So
how can we figure out if our test is valid or not? We’ll go into that in the next section.
The exercises you just reviewed give you a taste of the initial steps in creating a personality inventory. We started
by carefully defining the personality trait. We had to figure out how we were going to ask our questions, and we
chose a Likert scale. The questions had to be carefully written to be clear and focused on the trait we are
studying: blirtatiousness. Writing effective items usually involves a process of writing, testing, selection, rewriting,
retesting, and selecting again, until we are satisfied that our questions are good. Once we have compiled a
test–at least a candidate for the test–we need to administer it to people to see if it is reliable and internally
consistent (i.e., that all the questions are measuring the same trait).
Part 2: Does the Blirt Scale Measure What It Claims to
Measure?
No one wants to use a scale that hasn’t been shown to be valid. And validity is really hard to show.
Analyzing Validity
Here is our challenge. Remember that blirtatiousness is the extent to which people respond to friends and
partners quickly and effusively. Our questions may look good, but we need evidence that the numbers we get
actually measure the trait.
There is no one way to determine the validity of a scale. Test developers like Dr. Swann usually take several
different approaches. They may compare the test results with other personality tests of similar traits (convergent
validity), or compare scores from the BLIRT test with other dissimilar tests (discriminant validity). Researchers
may also compare the results of the BLIRT test to real-world outcomes (criterion validity), or see if the results
work to predict people’s behavior in certain situations (predictive validity).
In the sections below, we will peek at some studies that try to assess these different aspects of validity.
Convergent and Discriminant Validity
One way to test the validity of a test is to compare it to results from tests of other traits for which validated tests
already exist. There are two types of comparisons that researchers look for when they validate a test. One is
called convergent validity and the other is called discriminant validity.
When testing for convergent validityconvergent validity, the researcher looks for other traits that are similar to (but not identical to)
the trait they are measuring. For example, we are studying blirtatiousness. It would be reasonable to think that a
person who is blirtatious is also assertive. The two traits—blirtatiousness and assertiveness—are not the same,

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/03/are-you-a-blirter-or-a-brooder-take-this-test.html

TRY ITTRY IT
https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11821
TRY ITTRY IT
https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11822
TRY ITTRY IT
Using the bar graph below, adjust the bars based on your prediction about who will be more blirtatious. Then
click the link below to see if your prediction is correct.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/blirt_graph1.html
AnswerAnswer
but they are certainly related. If our blirtatiousness scale is not at all related to assertiveness, then we should be
worried that we are not really measuring blirtatiousness successfully.
We can use the correlation between the BLIRT score and a score on a test of assertiveness to measure
convergent validity. The researchers gave a set of tests, including the BLIRT scale and a measure of
assertiveness (Note: The Rathus Assertiveness Schedule) to 1,397 college students. Assertiveness was just one
of several traits that were expected to be similar to blirtatiousness. (Note: Others included self-perceived social
confidence, extraversion, impulsivity, and self-liking.)
We want our BLIRT score to have a moderate-to-strong relationship with traits that are similar, but we also want it
to be unrelated to traits or abilities that are not similar to blirtatiousness. Tests of discriminant validitydiscriminant validity compare our
BLIRT score to traits that should have weak or no relationship to blirtatiousness. For example, people who are
blirtatious may be good students or poor students or somewhere in-between. Knowing how blirtatious you are
should not tell us much about how good a student you are.
The researchers compared the BLIRT score of the 1,397 students mentioned earlier to their self-reported GPA.
(Note: Other traits assessed for discriminant validity were agreeableness, conscientiousness, affect intensity (how
strongly people were influenced by their emotions).)
Dr. Swann’s team compared 21 different traits and abilities to the blirtatiousness scale. Some assessed
convergent validity and others tested discriminant validity. The results were generally convincing: BLIRT scores
were similar to traits that should be related to blirtatiousness (good convergent validity) and unrelated to traits that
should have no connection to blirtatiousness (good discriminant validity).
Criterion Validity
Another way to test the validity of a measure is to see if it fits the way people behave in the real world. The BLIRT
researchers conducted two studies to see if BLIRT scores fit what we know about people’s personalities. CriterionCriterion
validityvalidity is the relationship between some measure and some real-world outcome.
Librarians or Salespeople?
Who do you think is more likely to be blirtatious, a salesperson or a librarian? The researchers found thirty
employees of car dealerships and libraries in central Texas and gave them the BLIRT scale. Their ages ranged
from 20 to 66 (average age = 34.3 years).

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/blirt_graph1.html

TRY ITTRY IT
Using the bar graph below, adjust the bars based on your prediction about who will be more blirtatious. Then
click the link below to see if your prediction is correct.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/blirt_graph2.html
AnswerAnswer
Most people expect salespeople to be more blirtatious than librarians. The researchers explained that we assume
that high blirters will look for a work environment that rewards “effusive, rapid responding,” while low blirters would
prefer a workplace that encourages “reflection and social inhibition.” As you can see, the results of the study were
consistent with this idea: salespeople had significantly higher blirt scores (on the average) than librarians.
Asian Americans or European Americans?
How blirtatious a person is can be influenced by a lot of factors, including “cultural norms”—ways of acting that we
learn from our families and the people around us as we grow up. Although we shouldn’t overstate the difference,
Asian cultures tend to emphasize restraint of emotional expression, while European cultures are more likely to
encourage direct and rapid expression.
The researchers were able to get BLIRT scores from 2,800 students from European-American cultures and 698
students from Asian-American cultures. What would you predict about the BLIRT scores for these two groups?
As you can see, the results were consistent with the researchers’ expectations. The difference between the
groups was small, but statistically significant. The small difference indicates that we shouldn’t turn these modest
differences into cultural stereotypes, but the statistically significant difference suggests that cultural experiences
may have a real—if modest—effect on people’s blirtatiousness.
Predictive Validity
Another way to assess validity of the BLIRT scale is to see if it predicts people’s behavior in specific situations.
Based on research about first impressions, the experimenters believed that people who are open and expressive
should, in general, make better first impressions than people who are reserved and relatively quiet.

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/blirt_graph2.html

Keeping in mind that this was a first-impression 7-minute conversation, who do you think would be seen as
more interesting: a high blirter or a low blirter?
high blirter
low blirter
no difference
AnswerAnswer
Here are some other qualities that were rated. Make your prediction for each one, and then check out the
results.
Who was rated as more likeable?
high blirter
low blirter
no difference
AnswerAnswer
agreeability, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion) are among the most widely used scales, and
they have been extensively studied and validated. Other qualities, like intelligence, self-esteem, and general
anxiety level, have also been widely studied, and they have well validated measures.
We hope that this exercise has given you some insight into the characteristics of a good personality test, and the
work that goes into developing a useful scale. Next time you take one, consider the process that went into its
development.

Who was rated as someone who “I’d like to be friends with?”
high blirter
low blirter
no difference
AnswerAnswer
Who was rated as more intelligent?
high blirter
low blirter
no difference
AnswerAnswer
convergent validityconvergent validity
criterion validitycriterion validity
discriminant validitydiscriminant validity
GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
the relationship between traits that are similar to (but not identical to) the trait being
measured
the relationship between some measure and some real-world outcome
the relationship between some traits that should have weak or no relationship

predictive validity:predictive validity: the relationship between experimental results and the ability to predict people’s behavior in
certain situations
Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions
CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original
• Psychology in Real Life: Blirtatiousness, Questionnaires, and Validity. Authored byAuthored by: Patrick Carroll for Lumen Learning. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution
All rights reserved contentAll rights reserved content
• Sample of narcissistic personality disorder. Authored byAuthored by: Raskin, R.; Terry, H. Provided byProvided by: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Located atLocated at: https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/NPI/. ProjectProject: A principal-
components analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and further evidence of its construct validity. LicenseLicense: All Rights Reserved
• Sample of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem inventory. Authored byAuthored by: Morris Rosenberg. Located atLocated at: https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/RSE.php. ProjectProject: Society and the adolescent self-image. LicenseLicense: All Rights Reserved
RESOURCE: PERSONALITY TESTS
Click on these links to access some common personality tests (note that some of the tests were already found
within the readings in this module).
1. Big Five personality test: http://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/
2. Kiersey Temperament Sorter http://www.keirsey.com/sorter/register.aspx. This test is very similar to the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
3. Another Myers-Briggs type test: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp
4. Cattell’s 16PF questionnaire: http://personality-testing.info/tests/16PF.php
5. Basic version of the color personality test: http://www.colorcode.com/choose_personality_test/
Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions
CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original
• Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/NPI/

https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/RSE.php

http://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/

http://www.keirsey.com/sorter/register.aspx

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp

http://personality-testing.info/tests/16PF.php

https://www.colorcode.com/choose_personality_test/

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

PUTTING IT TOGETHER: PERSONALITY
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
In this module, you learned to
• define personality and the contributions of Freud and neo-Freudians to personality theory
• describe and differentiate between personality theories
• explain the use and purpose of common personality tests
Personality psychology is about how individuals differ from each other in their characteristic ways of thinking,
feeling, and behaving. In this module, you examined some of the foundational theories that explain personality
and learned about personality testing today. Some of the most interesting questions about personality attributes
involve issues of stability and change. Are shy children destined to become shy adults? Are the typical personality
attributes of adults different from the typical attributes of adolescents? Do people become more self-controlled
and better able to manage their negative emotions as they become adults? What mechanisms explain personality
stability and what mechanisms account for personality change?
Remember that the Big Five personality traits include:
• extraversion (attributes such as assertive, confident, independent, outgoing, and sociable),
• agreeableness (attributes such as cooperative, kind, modest, and trusting),
• conscientiousness (attributes such as hard working, dutiful, self-controlled, and goal-oriented),
• neuroticism (attributes such as anxious, tense, moody, and easily angered),
• openness (attributes such as artistic, curious, inventive, and open-minded).
The Big Five is one of the most common ways of organizing the vast range of personality attributes that seem to
distinguish one person from the next. In a meta-analysis of several studies of the Big Five test, Roberts, Walton,
and Viechtbauer found that in general, average levels of extraversion (especially the attributes linked to self-
confidence and independence), agreeableness, and conscientiousness appear to increase with age whereas
neuroticism appears to decrease with age (Roberts et al., 2006). Openness also declines with age, especially
after mid-life (Roberts et al., 2006). These changes are often viewed as positive trends given that higher levels of
agreeableness and conscientiousness and lower levels of neuroticism are associated with seemingly desirable
outcomes such as increased relationship stability and quality, greater success at work, better health, a reduced
risk of criminality and mental health problems, and even decreased mortality. This pattern of positive average
changes in personality attributes is known as the maturity principle of adult personality development (Caspi,
Roberts, & Shiner, 2005). The basic idea is that attributes associated with positive adaptation and attributes
associated with the successful fulfillment of adult roles tend to increase during adulthood in terms of their average
levels.
Beyond providing insights into the general outline of adult personality development, Roberts et al. (2006) found
that young adulthood (the period between the ages of 18 and the late 20s) was the most active time in the
lifespan for observing average changes, although average differences in personality attributes were observed
across the lifespan. Such a result might be surprising in light of the intuition that adolescence is a time of
personality change and maturation. However, young adulthood is typically a time in the lifespan that includes a
number of life changes in terms of finishing school, starting a career, committing to romantic partnerships, and
parenthood (Donnellan, Conger, & Burzette, 2007; Rindfuss, 1991). Finding that young adulthood is an active
time for personality development provides circumstantial evidence that adult roles might generate pressures for
certain patterns of personality development. Indeed, this is one potential explanation for the maturity principle of
personality development.

It should be emphasized again that average
trends are summaries that do not necessarily
apply to all individuals. Some people do not
conform to the maturity principle. The possibility
of exceptions to general trends is the reason it
is necessary to study individual patterns of
personality development. The methods for this
kind of research are becoming increasingly
popular (e.g., Vaidya, Gray, Haig, Mroczek, &
Watson, 2008) and existing studies suggest
that personality changes differ across people
(Roberts & Mroczek, 2008). These new
research methods work best when researchers
collect more than two waves of longitudinal
data covering longer spans of time. This kind of
research design is still somewhat uncommon in
psychological studies but it will likely
characterize the future of research on
personality stability.
So, while personality is still considered
relatively stable over the lifespan, take hope, as it is not set in stone. Many personality attributes are linked to life
experiences in a mutually reinforcing cycle: Personality attributes seem to shape environmental contexts, and
those contexts often then accentuate and reinforce those very personality attributes. Even so, personality change
or transformation is possible because individuals respond to their environments.
Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions
CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously
• Putting It Together: Personality. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Personality Stability and Change. Authored byAuthored by: M. Brent Donnellan. Provided byProvided by: Michigan State University. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/modules/personality-stability-and-change?r=MTc0ODYsMzIxMDc%3D.
ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Man adjusting tie. Authored byAuthored by: Alex France. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. Located atLocated at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexfrance/3221301604/. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
DISCUSSION: PERSONALITY
Personality and the Grinch
In this discussion, you will post a minimum THREE times. First, in a primary post of between 150-200 words,
then at least twice on other posts in the class (at least 75 words each).
STEP 1:STEP 1: Analyze the Grinch’s personality and behavior from any version of the book or movie of How the Grinch
Stole Christmas using the psychological perspective or theory of your choice. Watch any version of the Grinch or
view this clip below to help you analyze the Grinch’s personality development. Consider the content of this
module and the various theories to explain personality, including Freud and the psychodynamic perspective, neo-
Freudians like Adler, Erikson, Jung, and Horney, as well as learning, humanistic, and biological approaches.
Explain in a paragraph or two which two psychological theories you think best explain the Grinch’s personality
characteristics. Include evidences of the Grinch’s behavior as well as details about the perspective.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=0lq1JIWQSlc%3Frel%3D0
STEP 2:STEP 2: After you have posted your initial post, return to the discussion to comment on at least TWO other posts.
Your comments should be at least 75 words or more and help facilitate the conversation. You can kindly agree or
disagree with other responses, comment on what insights you learned from their post, or add thoughts to
strengthen their analysis.

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MODULE 12: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
WHY IT MATTERS: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Trayvon Martin, 17, was shot to death at the hands of George Zimmerman, a volunteer neighborhood watchman, in 2012. Was his
death the result of self-defense or racial bias? That question drew hundreds of people to rally on each side of this heated debate.
(credit “signs”: modification of work by David Shankbone; credit “walk”: modification of work by “Fibonacci Blue”/Flickr)
Humans are diverse, and sometimes our differences make it challenging for us to get along with one another. A
poignant example is that of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African American who was shot by a neighborhood
watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, in a predominantly White neighborhood in 2012. Zimmerman grew
suspicious of the boy dressed in a hoodie and pursued Martin. A physical altercation ended with Zimmerman
fatally shooting Martin. Zimmerman claimed that he acted in self-defense; Martin was unarmed. A Florida jury
found Zimmerman not guilty of second degree murder nor of manslaughter.
Several groups protested what they deemed racial profiling and brutality against an unarmed Black male.
Zimmerman, who has a Peruvian mother and a German father, was accused of being racist. Some media
coverage was criticized for inflaming racial politics in their coverage.
In spite of conflicts such as these, people also to work together to create positive change. For example, after the
9/11 terrorist attacks, people rallied together and charitable donations skyrocket (Brown & Minty, 2006). This
module explores how the presence of other people influences the behavior of individuals, dyads, and groups.
Social factors can determine whether human behavior tends toward conflict or harmony.
AnswerAnswer
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SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND INFLUENCES ON
BEHAVIOR
What you’ll learn to do: recognize aspects of social psychology,
including the fundamental attribution error, biases, social roles,
and social norms, in your daily life
Social psychology is the study of how people affect one another’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. In this
section, you’ll learn about how our attitudes about others and our perception of our self can be deceiving. You’ll
examine situational forces that have a strong influence on human behavior including social roles, social norms,
and scripts. You’ll learn about how humans use the social environment as a source of information, or cues, on
how to behave. Situational influences on our behavior have important consequences, such as whether we will
help a stranger in an emergency or how we would behave in an unfamiliar environment.
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe situational versus dispositional influences on behavior
• Give examples of the fundamental attribution error and other common biases, including the actor-
observer bias and the self-serving bias

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Figure 1. Social psychology deals with all kinds of
interactions between people, spanning a wide range of
how we connect: from moments of confrontation to
moments of working together and helping others, as
shown here. (credit: Sgt. Derec Pierson, U.S. Army)
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• Explain the just-world phenomenon
Social psychologySocial psychology examines how people affect one another, and it looks at the power of the situation. Social
psychologists assert that an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are very much influenced by social
situations. Essentially, people will change their behavior to align with the social situation at hand. If we are in a
new situation or are unsure how to behave, we will take our cues from other individuals.
The field of social psychology studies topics at both the intra- and interpersonal levels. IntrapersonalIntrapersonal topics (those
that pertain to the individual) include emotions and attitudes, the self, and social cognition (the ways in which we
think about ourselves and others). InterpersonalInterpersonal topics (those that pertain to dyads and groups) include helping
behavior (Figure 1), aggression, prejudice and discrimination, attraction and close relationships, and group
processes and intergroup relationships.
Social psychologists focus on how people construe or
interpret situations and how these interpretations influence
their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (Ross & Nisbett,
1991). Thus, social psychology studies individuals in a
social context and how situational variables interact to
influence behavior. In this module, we discuss the
intrapersonal processes of self-presentation, cognitive
dissonance and attitude change, and the interpersonal
processes of conformity and obedience, aggression and
altruism, and, finally, love and attraction.
Situational and Dispositional
Influences on Behavior
Behavior is a product of both the situation (e.g., cultural
influences, social roles, and the presence of bystanders)
and of the person (e.g., personality characteristics).
Subfields of psychology tend to focus on one influence or
behavior over others. SituationismSituationism is the view that our behavior and actions are determined by our immediate
environment and surroundings. In contrast, dispositionismdispositionism holds that our behavior is determined by internal
factors (Heider, 1958). An internal factorinternal factor is an attribute of a person and includes personality traits and
temperament. Social psychologists have tended to take the situationist perspective, whereas personality
psychologists have promoted the dispositionist perspective. Modern approaches to social psychology, however,
take both the situation and the individual into account when studying human behavior (Fiske, Gilbert, & Lindzey,
2010). In fact, the field of social-personality psychology has emerged to study the complex interaction of internal
and situational factors that affect human behavior (Mischel, 1977; Richard, Bond, & Stokes-Zoota, 2003).

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Figure 2. In the quizmaster study, people tended to
disregard the influence of the situation and wrongly
concluded that a questioner’s knowledge was greater
than their own. (credit: Steve Jurvetson)
Fundamental Attribution Error
In the United States, the predominant culture tends to favor a dispositional approach in explaining human
behavior. Why do you think this is? We tend to think that people are in control of their own behaviors, and,
therefore, any behavior change must be due to something internal, such as their personality, habits, or
temperament. According to some social psychologists, people tend to overemphasize internal factors as
explanations—or attributions—for the behavior of other people. They tend to assume that the behavior of another
person is a trait of that person, and to underestimate the power of the situation on the behavior of others. They
tend to fail to recognize when the behavior of another is due to situational variables, and thus to the person’s
state. This erroneous assumption is called the fundamental attribution errorfundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977; Riggio & Garcia, 2009).
To better understand, imagine this scenario: Greg returns home from work, and upon opening the front door his
wife happily greets him and inquires about his day. Instead of greeting his wife, Greg yells at her, “Leave me
alone!” Why did Greg yell at his wife? How would someone committing the fundamental attribution error explain
Greg’s behavior? The most common response is that Greg is a mean, angry, or unfriendly person (his traits). This
is an internal or dispositional explanation. However, imagine that Greg was just laid off from his job due to
company downsizing. Would your explanation for Greg’s behavior change? Your revised explanation might be
that Greg was frustrated and disappointed for losing his job; therefore, he was in a bad mood (his state). This is
now an external or situational explanation for Greg’s behavior.
The fundamental attribution error is so powerful that people often overlook obvious situational influences on
behavior. A classic example was demonstrated in a series of experiments known as the quizmaster study (Ross,
Amabile, & Steinmetz, 1977). Student participants were randomly assigned to play the role of a questioner (the
quizmaster) or a contestant in a quiz game. Questioners developed difficult questions to which they knew the
answers, and they presented these questions to the contestants. The contestants answered the questions
correctly only 4 out of 10 times (Figure 2). After the task, the questioners and contestants were asked to rate their
own general knowledge compared to the average student. Questioners did not rate their general knowledge
higher than the contestants, but the contestants rated the questioners’ intelligence higher than their own. In a
second study, observers of the interaction also rated the questioner as having more general knowledge than the
contestant. The obvious influence on performance is the situation. The questioners wrote the questions, so of
course they had an advantage. Both the contestants and observers made an internal attribution for the
performance. They concluded that the questioners must be more intelligent than the contestants.
As demonstrated in the example above, the fundamental
attribution error is considered a powerful influence in how
we explain the behaviors of others. However, it should be
noted that some researchers have suggested that the
fundamental attribution error may not be as powerful as it is
often portrayed. In fact, a recent review of more than 173
published studies suggests that several factors (e.g., high
levels of idiosyncrasy of the character and how well
hypothetical events are explained) play a role in
determining just how influential the fundamental attribution
error is (Malle, 2006).
Is the Fundamental Attribution
Error a Universal Phenomenon?
You may be able to think of examples of the fundamental
attribution error in your life. Do people in all cultures commit
the fundamental attribution error? Research suggests that they do not. People from an individualistic cultureindividualistic culture, that

Figure 3. People from collectivistic cultures, such as some Asian cultures, are more likely to emphasize relationships with others
than to focus primarily on the individual. Activities such as (a) preparing a meal, (b) hanging out, and (c) playing a game engage
people in a group. (credit a: modification of work by Arian Zwegers; credit b: modification of work by “conbon33″/Flickr; credit c:
modification of work by Anja Disseldorp)
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is, a culture that focuses on individual achievement and autonomy, have the greatest tendency to commit the
fundamental attribution error. Individualistic cultures, which tend to be found in western countries such as the
United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, promote a focus on the individual. Therefore, a person’s
disposition is thought to be the primary explanation for her behavior. In contrast, people from a collectivistic
culture, that is, a culture that focuses on communal relationships with others, such as family, friends, and
community (Figure 3), are less likely to commit the fundamental attribution error (Markus & Kitayama, 1991;
Triandis, 2001).
Why do you think this is the case? Collectivistic cultures, which tend to be found in east Asian countries and in
Latin American and African countries, focus on the group more than on the individual (Nisbett, Peng, Choi, &
Norenzayan, 2001). This focus on others provides a broader perspective that takes into account both situational
and cultural influences on behavior; thus, a more nuanced explanation of the causes of others’ behavior becomes
more likely. Table 1 summarizes compares individualistic and collectivist cultures.
Table 1. Characteristics of Individualistic and Collectivistic Cultures
Individualistic CultureIndividualistic Culture Collectivistic CultureCollectivistic Culture
Achievement oriented Relationship oriented
Focus on autonomy Focus on group autonomy
Dispositional perspective Situational perspective
Independent Interdependent
Analytic thinking style Holistic thinking style
Actor-Observer Bias
Returning to our earlier example, Greg knew that he lost his job, but an observer would not know. So a naïve
observer would tend to attribute Greg’s hostile behavior to Greg’s disposition rather than to the true, situational

Figure 4. Actor-observer bias is evident when subjects
explain their own reasons for liking a girlfriend versus
their impressions of others’ reasons for liking a girlfriend.
cause. Why do you think we underestimate the influence of the situation on the behaviors of others? One reason
is that we often don’t have all the information we need to make a situational explanation for another person’s
behavior. The only information we might have is what is observable. Due to this lack of information we have a
tendency to assume the behavior is due to a dispositional, or internal, factor. When it comes to explaining our own
behaviors, however, we have much more information available to us. If you came home from school or work
angry and yelled at your dog or a loved one, what would your explanation be? You might say you were very tired
or feeling unwell and needed quiet time—a situational explanation. The actor-observer biasactor-observer bias is the phenomenon of
attributing other people’s behavior to internal factors (fundamental attribution error) while attributing our own
behavior to situational forces (Jones & Nisbett, 1971; Nisbett, Caputo, Legant, & Marecek, 1973; Choi & Nisbett,
1998). As actors of behavior, we have more information available to explain our own behavior. However as
observers, we have less information available; therefore, we tend to default to a dispositionist perspective.
One study on the actor-observer bias investigated reasons male participants gave for why they liked their
girlfriend (Nisbett et al., 1973). When asked why participants liked their own girlfriend, participants focused on
internal, dispositional qualities of their girlfriends (for example, her pleasant personality). The participants’
explanations rarely included causes internal to themselves, such as dispositional traits (for example, “I need
companionship.”). In contrast, when speculating why a male friend likes his girlfriend, participants were equally
likely to give dispositional and external explanations. This supports the idea that actors tend to provide few
internal explanations but many situational explanations for their own behavior. In contrast, observers tend to
provide more dispositional explanations for a friend’s behavior (Figure 4).
Self-Serving Bias
Following an outcome, self-serving bias are those
attributions that enable us to see ourselves in favorable
light (for example, making internal attributions for success
and external attributions for failures). When you do well at a
task, for example acing an exam, it is in your best interest
to make a dispositional attribution for your behavior (“I’m
smart,”) instead of a situational one (“The exam was
easy,”). The tendency of an individual to take credit by
making dispositional or internal attributions for positive
outcomes but situational or external attributions for negative
outcomes is known as the self-serving biasself-serving bias (or self-serving
attribution) (Miller & Ross, 1975). This bias serves to
protect self-esteem. You can imagine that if people always
made situational attributions for their behavior, they would
never be able to take credit and feel good about their
accomplishments.
We can understand self-serving bias by digging more
deeply into attributionattribution, a belief about the cause of a result. One model of attribution proposes three main
dimensions: locus of control (internal versus external), stability (stable versus unstable), and controllability
(controllable versus uncontrollable). In this context, stability refers the extent to which the circumstances that
result in a given outcome are changeable. The circumstances are considered stable if they are unlikely to change.
Controllability refers to the extent to which the circumstances that are associated with a given outcome can be
controlled. Obviously, those things that we have the power to control would be labeled controllable (Weiner,
1979).
Consider the example of how we explain our favorite sports team’s wins. Research shows that we make internal,
stable, and controllable attributions for our team’s victory (Figure 5) (Grove, Hanrahan, & McInman, 1991). For
example, we might tell ourselves that our team is talented (internal), consistently works hard (stable), and uses
effective strategies (controllable). In contrast, we are more likely to make external, unstable, and uncontrollable
attributions when our favorite team loses. For example, we might tell ourselves that the other team has more
experienced players or that the referees were unfair (external), the other team played at home (unstable), and the
cold weather affected our team’s performance (uncontrollable).

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Figure 5. We tend to believe that our team wins because
it’s better, but loses for reasons it cannot control (Roesch
& Amirkham, 1997). (credit: “TheAHL”/Flickr)
Figure 6. People who hold just-world beliefs tend to blame
the people in poverty for their circumstances, ignoring
situational and cultural causes of poverty. (credit: Adrian
Miles)
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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch this TED video to apply some of the concepts you learned about attribution and bias.
Just-World Hypothesis
One consequence of westerners’ tendency to provide
dispositional explanations for behavior is victim blame (Jost
& Major, 2001). When people experience bad fortune,
others tend to assume that they somehow are responsible
for their own fate. A common ideology, or worldview, in the
United States is the just-world hypothesis. The just-worldjust-world
hypothesishypothesis is the belief that people get the outcomes they
deserve (Lerner & Miller, 1978). In order to maintain the
belief that the world is a fair place, people tend to think that
good people experience positive outcomes, and bad people
experience negative outcomes (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek,
2004; Jost & Major, 2001). The ability to think of the world
as a fair place, where people get what they deserve, allows
us to feel that the world is predictable and that we have
some control over our life outcomes (Jost et al., 2004; Jost
& Major, 2001). For example, if you want to experience positive outcomes, you just need to work hard to get
ahead in life.
Can you think of a negative consequence of the just-world
hypothesis? One negative consequence is people’s
tendency to blame poor individuals for their plight. What
common explanations are given for why people live in
poverty? Have you heard statements such as, “The poor
are lazy and just don’t want to work” or “Poor people just
want to live off the government”? What types of
explanations are these, dispositional or situational? These
dispositional explanations are clear examples of the
fundamental attribution error. Blaming poor people for their
poverty ignores situational factors that impact them, such
as high unemployment rates, recession, poor educational
opportunities, and the familial cycle of poverty (Figure 6).
Other research shows that people who hold just-world
beliefs have negative attitudes toward people who are
unemployed and people living with AIDS (Sutton &
Douglas, 2005). In the United States and other countries,
victims of sexual assault may find themselves blamed for
their abuse. Victim advocacy groups, such as Domestic
Violence Ended (DOVE), attend court in support of victims to ensure that blame is directed at the perpetrators of
sexual violence, not the victims.

GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
actor-observer bias:actor-observer bias: phenomenon of explaining other people’s behaviors are due to internal factors and our
own behaviors are due to situational forces
attribution:attribution: explanation for the behavior of other people
collectivist culture:collectivist culture: culture that focuses on communal relationships with others such as family, friends, and
community
dispositionism:dispositionism: describes a perspective common to personality psychologists, which asserts that our behavior is
determined by internal factors, such as personality traits and temperament
fundamental attribution error:fundamental attribution error: tendency to overemphasize internal factors as attributions for behavior and
underestimate the power of the situation
individualistic culture:individualistic culture: culture that focuses on individual achievement and autonomy
internal factor:internal factor: internal attribute of a person, such as personality traits or temperament
just-world hypothesis:just-world hypothesis: ideology common in the United States that people get the outcomes they deserve
self-serving bias:self-serving bias: tendency for individuals to take credit by making dispositional or internal attributions for
positive outcomes and situational or external attributions for negative outcomes
situationism:situationism: describes a perspective that behavior and actions are determined by the immediate environment
and surroundings; a view promoted by social psychologists
social psychology:social psychology: field of psychology that examines how people impact or affect each other, with particular
focus on the power of the situation
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Provide a personal example of an experience in which your behavior was influenced by the power of
the situation.
• Think of an example in the media of a sports figure—player or coach—who gives a self-serving
attribution for winning or losing. Examples might include accusing the referee of incorrect calls, in the
case of losing, or citing their own hard work and talent, in the case of winning.
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SOCIAL NORMS AND SCRIPTS
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe social roles, social norms, and scripts and how they influence behavior

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Figure 1. Being a student is just one of the many social
roles you have. (credit: “University of Michigan
MSIS”/Flickr)
• Explain the process and the findings of Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment
Social Roles
One major social determinant of human behavior is our social roles. A social rolesocial role is a pattern of behavior that is
expected of a person in a given setting or group (Hare, 2003). Each one of us has several social roles. You may
be, at the same time, a student, a parent, an aspiring teacher, a son or daughter, a spouse, and a lifeguard. How
do these social roles influence your behavior? Social roles are defined by culturally shared knowledge. That is,
nearly everyone in a given culture knows what behavior is expected of a person in a given role. For example,
what is the social role for a student? If you look around a college classroom you will likely see students engaging
in studious behavior, taking notes, listening to the professor, reading the textbook, and sitting quietly at their
desks (Figure 1). Of course you may see students deviating from the expected studious behavior such as texting
on their phones or using Facebook on their laptops, but in all cases, the students that you observe are attending
class—a part of the social role of students.
Social roles, and our related behavior, can vary across
different settings. How do you behave when you are
engaging in the role of son or daughter and attending a
family function? Now imagine how you behave when you
are engaged in the role of employee at your workplace. It is
very likely that your behavior will be different. Perhaps you
are more relaxed and outgoing with your family, making
jokes and doing silly things. But at your workplace you
might speak more professionally, and although you may be
friendly, you are also serious and focused on getting the
work completed. These are examples of how our social
roles influence and often dictate our behavior to the extent
that identity and personality can vary with context (that is, in
different social groups) (Malloy, Albright, Kenny, Agatstein
& Winquist, 1997).
Social Norms
As discussed previously, social roles are defined by a culture’s shared knowledge of what is expected behavior of
an individual in a specific role. This shared knowledge comes from social norms. A social normsocial norm is a group’s
expectation of what is appropriate and acceptable behavior for its members—how they are supposed to behave
and think (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955; Berkowitz, 2004). How are we expected to act? What are we expected to talk
about? What are we expected to wear? In our discussion of social roles we noted that colleges have social norms
for students’ behavior in the role of student and workplaces have social norms for employees’ behaviors in the
role of employee. Social norms are everywhere including in families, gangs, and on social media outlets. What
are some social norms on Facebook?

Figure 2. Young people struggle to become independent
at the same time they are desperately trying to fit in with
their peers. (credit: Monica Arellano-Ongpin)
CONNECT THE CONCEPTS: TWEENS, TEENS, AND SOCIAL NORMSCONNECT THE CONCEPTS: TWEENS, TEENS, AND SOCIAL NORMS
My 11-year-old daughter, Jessica, recently told me she
needed shorts and shirts for the summer, and that she
wanted me to take her to a store at the mall that is
popular with preteens and teens to buy them. I have
noticed that many girls have clothes from that store, so I
tried teasing her. I said, “All the shirts say ‘Aero’ on the
front. If you are wearing a shirt like that and you have a
substitute teacher, and the other girls are all wearing that
type of shirt, won’t the substitute teacher think you are all
named ‘Aero’?”
My daughter replied, in typical 11-year-old fashion, “Mom,
you are not funny. Can we please go shopping?”
I tried a different tactic. I asked Jessica if having clothing
from that particular store will make her popular. She
replied, “No, it will not make me popular. It is what the
popular kids wear. It will make me feel happier.” How can
a label or name brand make someone feel happier?
Think back to what you’ve learned about lifespan
development. What is it about pre-teens and young teens
that make them want to fit in (Figure 2)? Does this
change over time? Think back to your high school experience, or look around your college campus. What is the
main name brand clothing you see? What messages do we get from the media about how to fit in?
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Scripts
Because of social roles, people tend to know what behavior is expected of them in specific, familiar settings. A
scriptscript is a person’s knowledge about the sequence of events expected in a specific setting (Schank & Abelson,
1977). How do you act on the first day of school, when you walk into an elevator, or are at a restaurant? For
example, at a restaurant in the United States, if we want the server’s attention, we try to make eye contact. In
Brazil, you would make the sound “psst” to get the server’s attention. You can see the cultural differences in
scripts. To an American, saying “psst” to a server might seem rude, yet to a Brazilian, trying to make eye contact
might not seem an effective strategy. Scripts are important sources of information to guide behavior in given
situations. Can you imagine being in an unfamiliar situation and not having a script for how to behave? This could
be uncomfortable and confusing. How could you find out about social norms in an unfamiliar culture?

Figure 3. Iraqi prisoners of war were abused by their
American captors in Abu Ghraib prison, during the second
Iraq war. The abominable behavior of the guards has
drawn parallels to the Stanford Prison Experiment.(credit:
United States Department of Defense)
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Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment
One famous experiment known for studying the ways that people adopt social roles and scripts was the StanfordStanford
prison experimentprison experiment, conducted by social psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues at Stanford University. In
the summer of 1971, an advertisement was placed in a California newspaper asking for male volunteers to
participate in a study about the psychological effects of prison life. The pool of volunteers was whittled down to 24
healthy male college students. Each student was paid $15 per day and was randomly assigned to play the role of
either a prisoner or a guard in the study.
A mock prison was constructed in the basement of the
psychology building at Stanford. Participants assigned to
play the role of prisoners were “arrested” at their homes by
Palo Alto police officers, booked at a police station, and
subsequently taken to the mock prison. The experiment
was scheduled to run for several weeks. To the surprise of
the researchers, both the “prisoners” and “guards” assumed
their roles with zeal.
In a relatively short time, the guards came to harass the
prisoners in an increasingly sadistic manner, through a
complete lack of privacy, lack of basic comforts such as
mattresses to sleep on, and through degrading chores and
late-night counts. The prisoners, in turn, began to show
signs of severe anxiety and hopelessness—they began
tolerating the guards’ abuse. After only six days, the
experiment had to be ended due to the participants’
deteriorating behavior.
One possible conclusion of this experiment is that the
guards and prisoners enacted their social roles by engaging
in behaviors appropriate to the roles: the guards gave
orders and the prisoners followed orders. Social norms
require guards to be authoritarian and prisoners to be
submissive. When prisoners rebelled, they violated these
social norms, which led to upheaval. Perhaps the specific
acts engaged by the guards and the prisoners derived from
scripts. For example, guards degraded the prisoners by
forcing them do push-ups and by removing all privacy. Prisoners rebelled by throwing pillows and trashing their
cells.
It should be noted that some of the Stanford Prison Experiment’s findings have been called into question, and
Zimbardo has been criticized for using unethical and unscientific practices. For example, were the guards and
prisoners really following scripts and norms, or were they over-exaggerating their behaviors in order to “please”
the experimenter, or re-enacting behaviors they had heard about or seen? Critics have noted that Zimbardo
instructed the guards to exert psychological control over the prisoners, and that some of the participants
intentionally behaved in a way that would help the study, so that, as one guard later put it, “the researchers would
have something to work with.”
The experiment has also been criticized for its small sample size and unrepresentative sample population,
especially given that flyers recruiting people for the experiment advertised it as dealing with “prison life”. The
results of the experiment have never been successfully replicated. These recent criticisms of the study will
hopefully lead to further research that can better explain why people adopt scripts and conform to expected social
norms. Can you think of another way to design an experiment that would touch on the way that social roles,
norms, and scripts affect behavior?

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
script:script: person’s knowledge about the sequence of events in a specific setting
social norm:social norm: group’s expectations regarding what is appropriate and acceptable for the thoughts and behavior
of its members
social role:social role: socially defined pattern of behavior that is expected of a person in a given setting or group
Stanford prison experiment:Stanford prison experiment: Stanford University conducted an experiment in a mock prison that demonstrated
the power of social roles, social norms, and scripts
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THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Try attending a religious service very different from your own and see how you feel and behave
without knowing the appropriate script. Or, try attending an important, personal event that you have
never attended before, such as a bar mitzvah (a coming-of-age ritual in Jewish culture), a quinceañera
(in some Latin American cultures a party is given to a girl who is turning 15 years old), a wedding, a
funeral, or a sporting event new to you, such as horse racing or bull riding. Observe and record your
feelings and behaviors in this unfamiliar setting for which you lack the appropriate script. Do you
silently observe the action, or do you ask another person for help interpreting the behaviors of people
at the event? Describe in what ways your behavior would change if you were to attend a similar event
in the future?
• Name and describe at least three social roles you have adopted for yourself. Why did you adopt these
roles? What are some roles that are expected of you, but that you try to resist?
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ATTITUDES AND PERSUASION
What you’ll learn to do: describe how attitudes can be changed
through cognitive dissonance and persuasion
Attitudes are our evaluations or feelings toward a person, idea, or object and typically are positive or negative.
Our attitudes and beliefs are influenced not only by external forces, but also by internal influences that we control.
An internal form of attitude change is cognitive dissonance or the tension we experience when our thoughts,
feelings, and behaviors are in conflict. In order to reduce dissonance, individuals can change their behavior,
attitudes, or cognitions, or add a new cognition. Consider the example case of a person who has adopted the
attitude that they will no longer eat high fat food, but eat a high-fat doughnut anyway. They might attempt to
alleviate this cognitive dissonance through one of the four cognitive reduction techniques:
1. Change behavior or cognition (“I will not eat any more of this doughnut”)
2. Justify behavior or cognition by changing the conflicting cognition (“I’m allowed to cheat every once in a
while”)
3. Justify behavior or cognition by adding new cognitions (“I’ll spend 30 extra minutes at the gym to work
this off”)
4. Ignore or deny any information that conflicts with existing beliefs (“This doughnut is not high in fat”)
Can you think of times you’ve experience cognitive dissonance, and what you did to reduce the internal conflict?
Other ways that attitudes are affected include external forces of persuasion, such as advertising. The features of
advertising that influence our behaviors include the source, message, and audience. There are two primary routes
to persuasion: the central route to persuasion uses facts and information to persuade potential consumers; the
peripheral route uses positive association with cues such as beauty, fame, and positive emotions.

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LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Define attitude and recognize how people’s attitudes are internally changed through cognitive
dissonance
• Explain how people’s attitudes are externally changed through persuasion
• Compare the peripheral and central routes to persuasion
Social psychologists have documented how the power of the situation can influence our behaviors. Now we turn
to how the power of the situation can influence our attitudes and beliefs. AttitudeAttitude is our evaluation of a person, an
idea, or an object. We have attitudes for many things ranging from products that we might pick up in the
supermarket to people around the world to political policies. Typically, attitudes are favorable or unfavorable:
positive or negative (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). And, they have three components: an affective component
(feelings), a behavioral component (the effect of the attitude on behavior), and a cognitive component (belief and
knowledge) (Rosenberg & Hovland, 1960).
For example, you may hold a positive attitude toward recycling. This attitude should result in positive feelings
toward recycling (such as “It makes me feel good to recycle” or “I enjoy knowing that I make a small difference in
reducing the amount of waste that ends up in landfills”). Certainly, this attitude should be reflected in our behavior:
You actually recycle as often as you can. Finally, this attitude will be reflected in favorable thoughts (for example,
“Recycling is good for the environment” or “Recycling is the responsible thing to do”).
Our attitudes and beliefs are not only influenced by external forces, but also by internal influences that we control.
Like our behavior, our attitudes and thoughts are not always changed by situational pressures, but they can be
consciously changed by our own free will. In this section we discuss the conditions under which we would want to
change our own attitudes and beliefs.

What is Cognitive Dissonance?
Social psychologists have documented that feeling good about ourselves and maintaining positive self-esteem is
a powerful motivator of human behavior (Tavris & Aronson, 2008). In the United States, members of the
predominant culture typically think very highly of themselves and view themselves as good people who are above
average on many desirable traits (Ehrlinger, Gilovich, & Ross, 2005). Often, our behavior, attitudes, and beliefs
are affected when we experience a threat to our self-esteem or positive self-image. Psychologist Leon Festinger
(1957) defined cognitive dissonancecognitive dissonance as psychological discomfort arising from holding two or more inconsistent
attitudes, behaviors, or cognitions (thoughts, beliefs, or opinions). Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance
states that when we experience a conflict in our behaviors, attitudes, or beliefs that runs counter to our positive
self-perceptions, we experience psychological discomfort (dissonance). For example, if you believe smoking is
bad for your health but you continue to smoke, you experience conflict between your belief and behavior.

Figure 1. Cognitive dissonance is aroused by inconsistent beliefs and behaviors. Believing cigarettes are bad for your health, but
smoking cigarettes anyway, can cause cognitive dissonance. To reduce cognitive dissonance, individuals can change their
behavior, as in quitting smoking, or change their belief, such as discounting the evidence that smoking is harmful. (credit
“cigarettes”: modification of work by CDC/Debora Cartagena; “patch”: modification of “RegBarc”/Wikimedia Commons; “smoking”:
modification of work by Tim Parkinson)

Figure 2. A person who has chosen a difficult path must
deal with cognitive dissonance in addition to many other
discomforts. (credit: Tyler J. Bolken)
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TRY ITTRY IT
Later research documented that only conflicting cognitions that threaten individuals’ positive self-image cause
dissonance (Greenwald & Ronis, 1978). Additional research found that dissonance is not only psychologically
uncomfortable but also can cause physiological arousal (Croyle & Cooper, 1983) and activate regions of the brain
important in emotions and cognitive functioning (van Veen, Krug, Schooler, & Carter, 2009). When we experience
cognitive dissonance, we are motivated to decrease it because it is psychologically, physically, and mentally
uncomfortable. We can reduce cognitive dissonance by bringing our cognitions, attitudes, and behaviors in
line—that is, making them harmonious. This can be done in different ways, such as:
• changing our discrepant behavior (e.g., stop smoking),
• changing our cognitions through rationalization or denial (e.g., telling ourselves that health risks can be
reduced by smoking filtered cigarettes),
• adding a new cognition (e.g., “Smoking suppresses my appetite so I don’t become overweight, which is
good for my health.”).
A classic example of cognitive dissonance is John, a 20-year-old who enlists in the military. During boot camp he
is awakened at 5:00 a.m., is chronically sleep deprived, yelled at, covered in sand flea bites, physically bruised
and battered, and mentally exhausted (Figure 2). It gets worse. Recruits that make it to week 11 of boot camp
have to do 54 hours of continuous training.
Not surprisingly, John is miserable. No one likes to be
miserable. In this type of situation, people can change their
beliefs, their attitudes, or their behaviors. The last option, a
change of behaviors, is not available to John. He has
signed on to the military for four years, and he cannot
legally leave.
If John keeps thinking about how miserable he is, it is going
to be a very long four years. He will be in a constant state of
cognitive dissonance. As an alternative to this misery, John
can change his beliefs or attitudes. He can tell himself, “I
am becoming stronger, healthier, and sharper. I am
learning discipline and how to defend myself and my
country. What I am doing is really important.” If this is his
belief, he will realize that he is becoming stronger through
his challenges. He then will feel better and not experience
cognitive dissonance, which is an uncomfortable state.
The Effect of Initiation
The military example demonstrates the observation that a difficult initiationinitiation into a group influences us to like the
group more, due to the justification of effort. We do not want to have wasted time and effort to join a group that we
eventually leave. A classic experiment by Aronson and Mills (1959) demonstrated this justification of effort effect.
College students volunteered to join a campus group that would meet regularly to discuss the psychology of sex.
Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: no initiation, an easy initiation, and a difficult
initiation into the group. After participating in the first discussion, which was deliberately made very boring,
participants rated how much they liked the group. Participants who underwent a difficult initiation process to join
the group rated the group more favorably than did participants with an easy initiation or no initiation (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Justification of effort has a distinct effect on a person liking a group. Students in the difficult initiation condition liked the
group more than students in other conditions due to the justification of effort.
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Similar effects can be seen in a more recent study of how student effort affects course evaluations. Heckert,
Latier, Ringwald-Burton, and Drazen (2006) surveyed 463 undergraduates enrolled in courses at a midwestern
university about the amount of effort that their courses required of them. In addition, the students were also asked
to evaluate various aspects of the course. Given what you’ve just read, it will come as no surprise that those
courses that were associated with the highest level of effort were evaluated as being more valuable than those
that did not. Furthermore, students indicated that they learned more in courses that required more effort,
regardless of the grades that they received in those courses (Heckert et al., 2006).
Besides the classic military example and group initiation, can you think of other examples of cognitive
dissonance? Here is one: Marco and Maria live in Fairfield County, Connecticut, which is one of the wealthiest
areas in the United States and has a very high cost of living. Marco telecommutes from home and Maria does not
work outside of the home. They rent a very small house for more than $3000 a month. Maria shops at
consignment stores for clothes and economizes where she can. They complain that they never have any money
and that they cannot buy anything new. When asked why they do not move to a less expensive location, since
Marco telecommutes, they respond that Fairfield County is beautiful, they love the beaches, and they feel
comfortable there. How does the theory of cognitive dissonance apply to Marco and Maria’s choices?

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Figure 4. We encounter attempts at persuasion attempts
everywhere. Persuasion is not limited to formal
advertising; we are confronted with it throughout our
everyday world. (credit: Robert Couse-Baker)
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
Cognitive dissonance often arises after making an important decision, called post-decision dissonance (or in
popular terms, buyer’s remorse). Describe a recent decision you made that caused dissonance and describe
how you resolved it.
Persuasion
In the previous section we discussed that the motivation to reduce cognitive dissonance leads us to change our
attitudes, behaviors, and/or cognitions to make them consonant. PersuasionPersuasion is the process of changing our
attitude toward something based on some kind of communication. Much of the persuasion we experience comes
from outside forces. How do people convince others to change their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors (Figure 4)?
What communications do you receive that attempt to persuade you to change your attitudes, beliefs, and
behaviors?
Yale Attitude Change Approach
The topic of persuasion has been one of the most
extensively researched areas in social psychology (Fiske et
al., 2010). During the Second World War, Carl Hovland
extensively researched persuasion for the U.S. Army. After
the war, Hovland continued his exploration of persuasion at
Yale University. Out of this work came a model called the
Yale attitude change approachYale attitude change approach, which describes the
conditions under which people tend to change their
attitudes. Hovland demonstrated that certain features of the
source of a persuasive message, the content of the
message, and the characteristics of the audience will
influence the persuasiveness of a message (Hovland,
Janis, & Kelley, 1953).
Features of the source of the persuasive message include
the credibility of the speaker (Hovland & Weiss, 1951) and
the physical attractiveness of the speaker (Eagly &
Chaiken, 1975; Petty, Wegener, & Fabrigar, 1997). Thus, speakers who are credible, or have expertise on the
topic, and who are deemed as trustworthy are more persuasive than less credible speakers. Similarly, more
attractive speakers are more persuasive than less attractive speakers. The use of famous actors and athletes to
advertise products on television and in print relies on this principle. The immediate and long term impact of the
persuasion also depends, however, on the credibility of the messenger (Kumkale & Albarracín, 2004).
Features of the message itself that affect persuasion include subtlety (the quality of being important, but not
obvious) (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; Walster & Festinger, 1962); sidedness (that is, having more than one side)
(Crowley & Hoyer, 1994; Igou & Bless, 2003; Lumsdaine & Janis, 1953); timing (Haugtvedt & Wegener, 1994;

Figure 5. Persuasion can take one of two paths, and the durability of the end result depends on the path.
Miller & Campbell, 1959), and whether both sides are presented. Messages that are more subtle are more
persuasive than direct messages. Arguments that occur first, such as in a debate, are more influential if
messages are given back-to-back. However, if there is a delay after the first message, and before the audience
needs to make a decision, the last message presented will tend to be more persuasive (Miller & Campbell, 1959).
Features of the audience that affect persuasion are attention (Albarracín & Wyer, 2001; Festinger & Maccoby,
1964), intelligence, self-esteem (Rhodes & Wood, 1992), and age (Krosnick & Alwin, 1989). In order to be
persuaded, audience members must be paying attention. People with lower intelligence are more easily
persuaded than people with higher intelligence; whereas people with moderate self-esteem are more easily
persuaded than people with higher or lower self-esteem (Rhodes & Wood, 1992). Finally, younger adults aged
18–25 are more persuadable than older adults.
Elaboration Likelihood Model
An especially popular model that describes the dynamics of persuasion is the elaboration likelihood model of
persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The elaboration likelihood modelelaboration likelihood model considers the variables of the attitude
change approach—that is, features of the source of the persuasive message, contents of the message, and
characteristics of the audience are used to determine when attitude change will occur. According to the
elaboration likelihood model of persuasion, there are two main routes that play a role in delivering a persuasive
message: central and peripheral (Figure 5).
The central route is logic driven and uses data and facts to convince people of an argument’s worthiness. For
example, a car company seeking to persuade you to purchase their model will emphasize the car’s safety
features and fuel economy. This is a direct route to persuasion that focuses on the quality of the information. In
order for the central route of persuasion to be effective in changing attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors, the
argument must be strong and, if successful, will result in lasting attitude change.
The central routecentral route to persuasion works best when the target of persuasion, or the audience, is analytical and
willing to engage in processing of the information. From an advertiser’s perspective, what products would be best
sold using the central route to persuasion? What audience would most likely be influenced to buy the product?
One example is buying a computer. It is likely, for example, that small business owners might be especially
influenced by the focus on the computer’s quality and features such as processing speed and memory capacity.
The peripheral routeperipheral route is an indirect route that uses peripheral cues to associate positivity with the message (Petty
& Cacioppo, 1986). Instead of focusing on the facts and a product’s quality, the peripheral route relies on
association with positive characteristics such as positive emotions and celebrity endorsement. For example,
having a popular athlete advertise athletic shoes is a common method used to encourage young adults to
purchase the shoes. This route to attitude change does not require much effort or information processing. This
method of persuasion may promote positivity toward the message or product, but it typically results in less
permanent attitude or behavior change. The audience does not need to be analytical or motivated to process the
message. In fact, a peripheral route to persuasion may not even be noticed by the audience, for example in the

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Figure 6. With the foot-in-the-door technique, a small request such as (a) wearing a campaign button can turn into a large request,
such as (b) putting campaigns signs in your yard. (credit a: modification of work by Joe Crawford; credit b: modification of work by
“shutterblog”/Flickr)
strategy of product placement. Product placement refers to putting a product with a clear brand name or brand
identity in a TV show or movie to promote the product (Gupta & Lord, 1998). For example, one season of the
reality series American Idol prominently showed the panel of judges drinking out of cups that displayed the Coca-
Cola logo. What other products would be best sold using the peripheral route to persuasion? Another example is
clothing: A retailer may focus on celebrities that are wearing the same style of clothing.
Foot-in-the-door Technique
Researchers have tested many persuasion strategies that are effective in selling products and changing people’s
attitude, ideas, and behaviors. One effective strategy is the foot-in-the-door technique (Cialdini, 2001; Pliner, Hart,
Kohl, & Saari, 1974). Using the foot-in-the-door techniquefoot-in-the-door technique, the persuader gets a person to agree to bestow a
small favor or to buy a small item, only to later request a larger favor or purchase of a bigger item. The foot-in-the-
door technique was demonstrated in a study by Freedman and Fraser (1966) in which participants who agreed to
post small sign in their yard or sign a petition were more likely to agree to put a large sign in their yard than
people who declined the first request (Figure 6). Research on this technique also illustrates the principle of
consistency (Cialdini, 2001): Our past behavior often directs our future behavior, and we have a desire to maintain
consistency once we have a committed to a behavior.
A common application of foot-in-the-door is when teens ask their parents for a small permission (for example,
extending curfew by a half hour) and then asking them for something larger. Having granted the smaller request
increases the likelihood that parents will acquiesce with the later, larger request.

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Read more about persuasion at The Noba Project website.
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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
attitude:attitude: evaluations of or feelings toward a person, idea, or object that are typically positive or negative
central route persuasion:central route persuasion: logic-driven arguments using data and facts to convince people of an argument’s
worthiness
cognitive dissonance:cognitive dissonance: psychological discomfort that arises from a conflict in a person’s behaviors, attitudes, or
beliefs that runs counter to one’s positive self-perception
foot-in-the-door technique:foot-in-the-door technique: persuasion of one person by another person, encouraging a person to agree to a
small favor, or to buy a small item, only to later request a larger favor or purchase of a larger item
peripheral route persuasion:peripheral route persuasion: one person persuades another person; an indirect route that relies on association
of peripheral cues (such as positive emotions and celebrity endorsement) to associate positivity with a message
persuasion:persuasion: process of changing our attitude toward something based on some form of communication
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How would a store owner use the foot-in-the-door technique to sell you an expensive product? For example, say
that you are buying the latest model smartphone, and the salesperson suggests you purchase the best data plan.
You agree to this. The salesperson then suggests a bigger purchase—the three-year extended warranty. After
agreeing to the smaller request, you are more likely to also agree to the larger request. You may have
encountered this if you have bought a car. When salespeople realize that a buyer intends to purchase a certain
model, they might try to get the customer to pay for many or most available options on the car.
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
Describe a time when you or someone you know used the foot-in-the-door technique to gain someone’s
compliance.
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GROUP BEHAVIOR
What you’ll learn to do: explain how conformity, obedience,
groupthink, social facilitation, social loafing, altruism, and attraction
relate to group behavior
The power of the situation can lead people to conform, or go along with the group, even in the face of inaccurate
information. Conformity to group norms is driven by two motivations, the desire to fit in and be liked and the desire
to be accurate and gain information from the group. Authority figures also have influence over our behaviors, and
many people become obedient and follow orders even if the orders are contrary to their personal values.
Conformity to group pressures can also result in groupthink, or the faulty decision-making process that results
from cohesive group members trying to maintain group harmony. Group situations can improve human behavior
through facilitating performance on easy tasks, but inhibiting performance on difficult tasks. The presence of
others can also lead to social loafing when individual efforts cannot be evaluated. In this section, you’ll learn about
each of these concepts as well as the influences that lead to helpful, prosocial behavior.

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Figure 1. These line segments illustrate the judgment task
in Asch’s conformity study. Which line on the right—a, b,
or c—is the same length as line x on the left?
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe the results of research on conformity, and distinguish between normative and informational
social influence.
• Describe Stanley Milgram’s experiment and its implications
• Illustrate when the presence of others is likely to result in groupthink, social facilitation, or social loafing
Conformity
Solomon Asch conducted several experiments in the 1950s to determine how people are affected by the thoughts
and behaviors of other people. In one study, a group of participants was shown a series of printed line segments
of different lengths: a, b, and c (Figure 1). Participants were then shown a fourth line segment: x. They were
asked to identify which line segment from the first group (a, b, or c) most closely resembled the fourth line
segment in length.
Each group of participants had only one true, naïve subject.
The remaining members of the group were confederates of
the researcher. A confederateconfederate is a person who is aware of
the experiment and works for the researcher. Confederates
are used to manipulate social situations as part of the
research design, and the true, naïve participants believe
that confederates are, like them, uninformed participants in
the experiment. In Asch’s study, the confederates identified
a line segment that was obviously shorter than the target
line—a wrong answer. The naïve participant then had to
identify aloud the line segment that best matched the target
line segment.
How often do you think the true participant aligned with the
confederates’ response? That is, how often do you think the
group influenced the participant, and the participant gave
the wrong answer? Asch (1955) found that 76% of participants conformed to group pressure at least once by
indicating the incorrect line. ConformityConformity is the change in a person’s behavior to go along with the group, even if he
does not agree with the group. Why would people give the wrong answer? What factors would increase or
decrease someone giving in or conforming to group pressure?
The Asch effectThe Asch effect is the influence of the group majority on an individual’s judgment.
What factors make a person more likely to yield to group pressure? Research shows that the size of the majority,
the presence of another dissenter, and the public or relatively private nature of responses are key influences on
conformity.
• The size of the majority: The greater the number of people in the majority, the more likely an individual
will conform. There is, however, an upper limit: a point where adding more members does not increase
conformity. In Asch’s study, conformity increased with the number of people in the majority—up to seven
individuals. At numbers beyond seven, conformity leveled off and decreased slightly (Asch, 1955).
• The presence of another dissenter: If there is at least one dissenter, conformity rates drop to near zero
(Asch, 1955).
• The public or private nature of the responses: When responses are made publicly (in front of others),
conformity is more likely; however, when responses are made privately (e.g., writing down the
response), conformity is less likely (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955).
The finding that conformity is more likely to occur when responses are public than when they are private is the
reason government elections require voting in secret, so we are not coerced by others (Figure 2). The Asch effect
can be easily seen in children when they have to publicly vote for something. For example, if the teacher asks
whether the children would rather have extra recess, no homework, or candy, once a few children vote, the rest
will comply and go with the majority. In a different classroom, the majority might vote differently, and most of the

Figure 2. Voting for government officials in the United
States is private to reduce the pressure of conformity.
(credit: Nicole Klauss)
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children would comply with that majority. When someone’s vote changes if it is made in public versus private, this
is known as compliance. Compliance can be a form of conformity. Compliance is going along with a request or
demand, even if you do not agree with the request. In Asch’s studies, the participants complied by giving the
wrong answers, but privately did not accept that the obvious wrong answers were correct.
Now that you have learned about the Asch line
experiments, why do you think the participants conformed?
The correct answer to the line segment question was
obvious, and it was an easy task. Researchers have
categorized the motivation to conform into two types:
normative social influence and informational social
influence (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955).
In normative social influencenormative social influence, people conform to the group
norm to fit in, to feel good, and to be accepted by the group.
However, with informational social influenceinformational social influence, people
conform because they believe the group is competent and
has the correct information, particularly when the task or
situation is ambiguous. What type of social influence was
operating in the Asch conformity studies? Since the line
judgment task was unambiguous, participants did not need
to rely on the group for information. Instead, participants
complied to fit in and avoid ridicule, an instance of
normative social influence.
An example of informational social influence may be what to do in an emergency situation. Imagine that you are in
a movie theater watching a film and what seems to be smoke comes in the theater from under the emergency exit
door. You are not certain that it is smoke—it might be a special effect for the movie, such as a fog machine. When
you are uncertain you will tend to look at the behavior of others in the theater. If other people show concern and
get up to leave, you are likely to do the same. However, if others seem unconcerned, you are likely to stay put
and continue watching the movie (Figure 3).

Figure 3. People in crowds tend to take cues from others and act accordingly. (a) An audience is listening to a lecture and people
are relatively quiet, still, and attentive to the speaker on the stage. (b) An audience is at a rock concert where people are dancing,
singing, and possibly engaging in activities like crowd surfing. (credit a: modification of work by Matt Brown; credit b: modification
of work by Christian Holmér)
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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch the following to see a clip of the Asch experiment:
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How would you have behaved if you were a participant in Asch’s study? Many students say they would not
conform, that the study is outdated, and that people nowadays are more independent. To some extent this may
be true. Research suggests that overall rates of conformity may have reduced since the time of Asch’s research.
Furthermore, efforts to replicate Asch’s study have made it clear that many factors determine how likely it is that
someone will demonstrate conformity to the group. These factors include the participant’s age, gender, and socio-
cultural background (Bond & Smith, 1996; Larsen, 1990; Walker & Andrade, 1996).

Figure 4. The Milgram experiment showed the surprising degree to which people obey authority. Two out of three (65%)
participants continued to administer shocks to an unresponsive learner.
Stanley Milgram’s Experiment
Conformity is one effect of the influence of others on our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Another form of social
influence is obedience to authority. ObedienceObedience is the change of an individual’s behavior to comply with a demand
by an authority figure. People often comply with the request because they are concerned about a consequence if
they do not comply. To demonstrate this phenomenon, we review another classic social psychology experiment.
Stanley Milgram was a social psychology professor at Yale who was influenced by the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a
Nazi war criminal. Eichmann’s defense for the atrocities he committed was that he was “just following orders.”
Milgram (1963) wanted to test the validity of this defense, so he designed an experiment and initially recruited 40
men for his experiment. The volunteer participants were led to believe that they were participating in a study to
improve learning and memory. The participants were told that they were to teach other students (learners) correct
answers to a series of test items. The participants were shown how to use a device that they were told delivered
electric shocks of different intensities to the learners. The participants were told to shock the learners if they gave
a wrong answer to a test item—that the shock would help them to learn. The participants gave (or believed they
gave) the learners shocks, which increased in 15-volt increments, all the way up to 450 volts. The participants did
not know that the learners were confederates and that the confederates did not actually receive shocks.
In response to a string of incorrect answers from the learners, the participants obediently and repeatedly shocked
them. The confederate learners cried out for help, begged the participant teachers to stop, and even complained
of heart trouble. Yet, when the researcher told the participant-teachers to continue the shock, 65% of the
participants continued the shock to the maximum voltage and to the point that the learner became unresponsive
(Figure 4). What makes someone obey authority to the point of potentially causing serious harm to another
person?
Several variations of the original Milgram experiment were conducted to test the boundaries of obedience. When
certain features of the situation were changed, participants were less likely to continue to deliver shocks (Milgram,
1965). For example, when the setting of the experiment was moved to an office building, the percentage of
participants who delivered the highest shock dropped to 48%. When the learner was in the same room as the
teacher, the highest shock rate dropped to 40%. When the teachers’ and learners’ hands were touching, the
highest shock rate dropped to 30%. When the researcher gave the orders by phone, the rate dropped to 23%.
These variations show that when the humanity of the person being shocked was increased, obedience
decreased. Similarly, when the authority of the experimenter decreased, so did obedience.

EXAMPLESEXAMPLES
Watch a modern example of the Milgram experiment here.
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This case is still very applicable today. What does a person do if an authority figure orders something done? What
if the person believes it is incorrect, or worse, unethical? In a study by Martin and Bull (2008), midwives privately
filled out a questionnaire regarding best practices and expectations in delivering a baby. Then, a more senior
midwife and supervisor asked the junior midwives to do something they had previously stated they were opposed
to. Most of the junior midwives were obedient to authority, going against their own beliefs.
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Conduct a conformity study the next time you are in an elevator. After you enter the elevator, stand
with your back toward the door. See if others conform to your behavior. Did your results turn out as
expected?
• Most students adamantly state that they would never have turned up the voltage in the Milgram
experiment. Do you think you would have refused to shock the learner? Looking at your own past
behavior, what evidence suggests that you would go along with the order to increase the voltage?
Groupthink
When in group settings, we are often influenced by the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors around us. Whether it is
due to normative or informational social influence, groups have power to influence individuals. Another
phenomenon of group conformity is groupthink. GroupthinkGroupthink is the modification of the opinions of members of a
group to align with what they believe is the group consensus (Janis, 1972). In group situations, the group often
takes action that individuals would not perform outside the group setting because groups make more extreme
decisions than individuals do. Moreover, groupthink can hinder opposing trains of thought. This elimination of
diverse opinions contributes to faulty decision by the group.

DIG DEEPER: GROUPTHINK IN THE U.S. GOVERNMENTDIG DEEPER: GROUPTHINK IN THE U.S. GOVERNMENT
There have been several instances of groupthink in the U.S. government. One example occurred when the
United States led a small coalition of nations to invade Iraq in March 2003. This invasion occurred because a
small group of advisors and former President George W. Bush were convinced that Iraq represented a
significant terrorism threat with a large stockpile of weapons of mass destruction at its disposal. Although some
of these individuals may have had some doubts about the credibility of the information available to them at the
time, in the end, the group arrived at a consensus that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and represented
a significant threat to national security. It later came to light that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction,
but not until the invasion was well underway. As a result, 6000 American soldiers were killed and many more
civilians died. How did the Bush administration arrive at their conclusions? Here is a video of Colin Powell
discussing the information he had, 10 years after his famous United Nations speech, in which he spoke about
how Iraq most certainly had materials to create weapons of mass destruction (“Colin Powell regrets,” 2011). Do
you see evidence of groupthink?
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Why does groupthink occur? There are several causes of groupthink, which makes it preventable. When the
group is highly cohesive, or has a strong sense of connection, maintaining group harmony may become more
important to the group than making sound decisions. If the group leader is directive and makes his opinions
known, this may discourage group members from disagreeing with the leader. If the group is isolated from hearing
alternative or new viewpoints, groupthink may be more likely. How do you know when groupthink is occurring?
There are several symptoms of groupthink including the following:
• perceiving the group as invulnerable or invincible—believing it can do no wrong
• believing the group is morally correct
• self-censorship by group members, such as withholding information to avoid disrupting the group
consensus
• the quashing of dissenting group members’ opinions
• the shielding of the group leader from dissenting views
• perceiving an illusion of unanimity among group members
• holding stereotypes or negative attitudes toward the out-group or others’ with differing viewpoints (Janis,
1972)
Given the causes and symptoms of groupthink, how can it be avoided? There are several strategies that can
improve group decision making including seeking outside opinions, voting in private, having the leader withhold
position statements until all group members have voiced their views, conducting research on all viewpoints,
weighing the costs and benefits of all options, and developing a contingency plan (Janis, 1972; Mitchell &
Eckstein, 2009).
Group Polarization
Another phenomenon that occurs within group settings is group polarization. Group polarizationGroup polarization (Teger & Pruitt,
1967) is the strengthening of an original group attitude after the discussion of views within a group. That is, if a

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU6KMYlDyWc

Figure 5. The attention of the crowd can motivate a skilled athlete. (credit: Tommy Gilligan/USMA)
Social Loafing
Another way in which a group presence can affect our performance is social loafing. Social loafingSocial loafing is the exertion
of less effort by a person working together with a group. Social loafing occurs when our individual performance
cannot be evaluated separately from the group. Thus, group performance declines on easy tasks (Karau &
Williams, 1993). Essentially individual group members loaf and let other group members pick up the slack.
Because each individual’s efforts cannot be evaluated, individuals become less motivated to perform well. For
example, consider a group of people cooperating to clean litter from the roadside. Some people will exert a great
amount of effort, while others will exert little effort. Yet the entire job gets done, and it may not be obvious who
worked hard and who didn’t.
As a college student you may have experienced social loafing while working on a group project. Have you ever
had to contribute more than your fair share because your fellow group members weren’t putting in the work? This
may happen when a professor assigns a group grade instead of individual grades. If the professor doesn’t know
how much effort each student contributed to a project, some students may be inclined to let more conscientious
students do more of the work. The chance of social loafing in student work groups increases as the size of the
group increases (Shepperd & Taylor, 1999).
Interestingly, the opposite of social loafing occurs when the task is complex and difficult (Bond & Titus, 1983;
Geen, 1989). Remember the previous discussion of choking under pressure? This happens when you perform a

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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Consider examples of social influence and groupthink and review the concepts you learned previously about
conformity and obedience in the following CrashCourse video:
difficult task and your individual performance can be evaluated. In a group setting, such as the student work
group, if your individual performance cannot be evaluated, there is less pressure for you to do well, and thus less
anxiety or physiological arousal (Latané, Williams, & Harkens, 1979). This puts you in a relaxed state in which you
can perform your best, if you choose (Zajonc, 1965). If the task is a difficult one, many people feel motivated and
believe that their group needs their input to do well on a challenging project (Jackson & Williams, 1985). Given
what you learned about social loafing, what advice would you give a new professor about how to design group
projects? If you suggested that individuals’ efforts should not be evaluated, to prevent the anxiety of choking
under pressure, but that the task must be challenging, you have a good understanding of the concepts discussed
in this section. Alternatively, you can suggest that individuals’ efforts should be evaluated, but the task should be
easy so as to facilitate performance. Good luck trying to convince your professor to only assign easy projects!
The table below summarizes the types of social influence you have learned about in this module.
Table 1. Types of Social Influence
Type ofType of
SocialSocial
InfluenceInfluence
DescriptionDescription
Conformity Changing your behavior to go along with the group even if you do not agree with the group
Compliance Going along with a request or demand
Normative
social
influence
Conformity to a group norm to fit in, feel good, and be accepted by the group
Informational
social
influence
Conformity to a group norm prompted by the belief that the group is competent and has the
correct information
Obedience Changing your behavior to please an authority figure or to avoid aversive consequences
Groupthink Group members modify their opinions to match what they believe is the group consensus
Group
polarization
Strengthening of the original group attitude after discussing views within a group
Social
facilitation
Improved performance when an audience is watching versus when the individual performs the
behavior alone
Social loafing
Exertion of less effort by a person working in a group because individual performance cannot
be evaluated separately from the group, thus causing performance decline on easy tasks

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
Asch effect:Asch effect: group majority influences an individual’s judgment, even when that judgment is inaccurate
confederate:confederate: person who works for a researcher and is aware of the experiment, but who acts as a participant;
used to manipulate social situations as part of the research design
conformity:conformity: when individuals change their behavior to go along with the group even if they do not agree with the
group
group polarization:group polarization: strengthening of the original group attitude after discussing views within the group
groupthink:groupthink: group members modify their opinions to match what they believe is the group consensus
informational social influence:informational social influence: conformity to a group norm prompted by the belief that the group is competent
and has the correct information
normative social influence:normative social influence: conformity to a group norm to fit in, feel good, and be accepted by the group
obedience:obedience: change of behavior to please an authority figure or to avoid aversive consequences
social facilitation:social facilitation: improved performance when an audience is watching versus when the individual performs the
behavior alone
social loafing:social loafing: exertion of less effort by a person working in a group because individual performance cannot be
evaluated separately from the group, thus causing performance decline on easy tasks
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Figure 1. People often overestimate their willingness to
help others in need especially when they are asked about
a hypothetical situation rather than encountering one in
real life. [Image: Ed Yourdon]
THE BYSTANDER EFFECT AND ALTRUISM
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Explain the factors that influence human altruism, including reciprocal altruism and diffusion of
responsibility.
Go to YouTube and search for episodes of “Primetime: What Would You Do?” You will find video segments in
which apparently innocent individuals are victimized, while onlookers typically fail to intervene. The events are all
staged, but they are very real to the bystanders on the scene. The entertainment offered is the nature of the
bystanders’ responses, and viewers are outraged when bystanders fail to intervene. They are convinced that they
would have helped. But would they? Viewers are overly optimistic in their beliefs that they would play the hero.
Helping may occur frequently, but help is not always given to those in need. So when do people help, and when
do they not? All people are not equally helpful—who helps? Why would a person help another in the first place?
Many factors go into a person’s decision to help—a fact that the viewers do not fully appreciate. This module will
answer the question: Who helps when and why?
When Do People Help?
Social psychologists began trying to answer this question
following the unfortunate murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964
(Dovidio, Piliavin, Schroeder, & Penner, 2006; Penner,
Dovidio, Piliavin, & Schroeder, 2005). A knife-wielding
assailant attacked Kitty repeatedly as she was returning to
her apartment early one morning. At least 38 people may
have been aware of the attack, but no one came to save
her. Based on this case, researchers Latané and Darley
(1968) described a phenomenon called the bystanderbystander
effecteffect. The bystander effect is a phenomenon in which a
witness or bystander does not volunteer to help a victim or
person in distress. Instead, they just watch what is
happening. Social psychologists hold that we make these
decisions based on the social situation, not our own
personality variables. Why do you think the bystanders
didn’t help Genovese? What are the benefits to helping her? What are the risks? It is very likely you listed more
costs than benefits to helping. In this situation, bystanders likely feared for their own lives—if they went to her aid
the attacker might harm them. However, how difficult would it have been to make a phone call to the police from
the safety of their apartments? Why do you think no one helped in any way?
More recently, in 2010, Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax was stabbed when he apparently tried to intervene in an argument
between a man and woman. As he lay dying in the street, only one man checked his status, but many others
simply glanced at the scene and continued on their way. (One passerby did stop to take a cellphone photo,
however.)
Unfortunately, failures to come to the aid of someone in need are not unique, as the segments on “What Would
You Do?” show. Help is not always forthcoming for those who may need it the most. Trying to understand why
people do not always help became the focus of bystander interventionbystander intervention research (e.g., Latané & Darley, 1970).
To answer the question regarding when people help, researchers have focused on
1. how bystanders come to define emergencies,

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Figure 2. How does being in a crowd decrease
someone’s chance of being helped? How does being in a
crowd increase someone’s chance of being helped?
[Image: flowcomm]
2. when they decide to take responsibility for helping, and
3. how the costs and benefits of intervening affect their decisions of whether to help.
Defining the situation: The role of pluralistic ignorance
The decision to help is not a simple yes/no proposition. In fact, a series of questions must be addressed before
help is given—even in emergencies in which time may be of the essence. Sometimes help comes quickly; an
onlooker recently jumped from a Philadelphia subway platform to help a stranger who had fallen on the track.
Help was clearly needed and was quickly given. But some situations are ambiguous, and potential helpers may
have to decide whether a situation is one in which help, in fact, needs to be given.
To define ambiguous situations (including many emergencies), potential helpers may look to the action of others
to decide what should be done. But those others are looking around too, also trying to figure out what to do.
Everyone is looking, but no one is acting! Relying on others to define the situation and to then erroneously
conclude that no intervention is necessary when help is actually needed is called pluralistic ignorancepluralistic ignorance (Latané &
Darley, 1970). When people use the inactions of others to define their own course of action, the resulting
pluralistic ignorance leads to less help being given.
Do I have to be the one to help?: Diffusion of responsibility
Simply being with others may facilitate or inhibit whether we
get involved in other ways as well. In situations in which
help is needed, the presence or absence of others may
affect whether a bystander will assume personal
responsibility to give the assistance. If the bystander is
alone, personal responsibility to help falls solely on the
shoulders of that person. But what if others are present?
Although it might seem that having more potential helpers
around would increase the chances of the victim getting
help, the opposite is often the case. Knowing that someone
else couldhelp seems to relieve bystanders of personal
responsibility, so bystanders do not intervene. This
phenomenon is known as diffusion of responsibilitydiffusion of responsibility (Darley
& Latané, 1968).
On the other hand, watch the video of the race officials
following the 2013 Boston Marathon after two bombs
exploded as runners crossed the finish line. Despite the
presence of many spectators, the yellow-jacketed race
officials immediately rushed to give aid and comfort to the
victims of the blast. Each one no doubt felt a personal responsibility to help by virtue of their official capacity in the
event; fulfilling the obligations of their roles overrode the influence of the diffusion of responsibility effect.
There is an extensive body of research showing the negative impact of pluralistic ignorance and diffusion of
responsibility on helping (Fisher et al., 2011), in both emergencies and everyday need situations. These studies
show the tremendous importance potential helpers place on the social situation in which unfortunate events
occur, especially when it is not clear what should be done and who should do it. Other people provide important
social information about how we should act and what our personal obligations might be. But does knowing a
person needs help and accepting responsibility to provide that help mean the person will get assistance? Not
necessarily.
The costs and rewards of helping
The nature of the help needed plays a crucial role in determining what happens next. Specifically, potential
helpers engage in a cost–benefit analysiscost–benefit analysis before getting involved (Dovidio et al., 2006). If the needed help is of
relatively low cost in terms of time, money, resources, or risk, then help is more likely to be given. Lending a
classmate a pencil is easy; confronting the knife-wielding assailant who attacked Kitty Genovese is an entirely

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Figure 1. Evolutionary theory suggests that being a good
helper was a benefit for survival and reproductive
success. And we don’t just help our family members,
reciprocal altruism has also been a benefit to our survival.
[Image: TimJN1, https://goo.gl/iTQfWk, CC BY-SA 2.0,
https://goo.gl/eH69he]
different matter. As the unfortunate case of Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax demonstrates, intervening may cost the life of
the helper.
The potential rewards of helping someone will also enter into the equation, perhaps offsetting the cost of helping.
Thanks from the recipient of help may be a sufficient reward. If helpful acts are recognized by others, helpers may
receive social rewards of praise or monetary rewards. Even avoiding feelings of guilt if one does not help may be
considered a benefit. Potential helpers consider how much helping will cost and compare those costs to the
rewards that might be realized; it is the economics of helping. If costs outweigh the rewards, helping is less likely.
If rewards are greater than cost, helping is more likely.
Why Help?
Finally, the question of why a person would help needs to be asked. What motivation is there for that behavior?
Psychologists have suggested that 1) evolutionary forces may serve to predispose humans to help others, 2)
egoistic concerns may determine if and when help will be given, and 3) selfless, altruistic motives may also
promote helping in some cases.
Evolutionary roots for prosocial behavior
Our evolutionary past may provide keys about why we help (Buss, 2004). Our very survival was no doubt
promoted by the prosocial relations with clan and family members, and, as a hereditary consequence, we may
now be especially likely to help those closest to us—blood-related relatives with whom we share a genetic
heritage. According to evolutionary psychology, we are helpful in ways that increase the chances that our DNA
will be passed along to future generations (Burnstein, Crandall, & Kitayama, 1994)—the goal of the “selfish gene”
(Dawkins, 1976). Our personal DNA may not always move on, but we can still be successful in getting some
portion of our DNA transmitted if our daughters, sons, nephews, nieces, and cousins survive to produce offspring.
The favoritism shown for helping our blood relatives is called kin selection (Hamilton, 1964).
But, we do not restrict our relationships just to our own
family members. We live in groups that include individuals
who are unrelated to us, and we often help them too. Why?
Reciprocal altruismReciprocal altruism (Trivers, 1971) provides the answer.
Because of reciprocal altruism, we are all better off in the
long run if we help one another. If helping someone now
increases the chances that you will be helped later, then
your overall chances of survival are increased. There is the
chance that someone will take advantage of your help and
not return your favors. But people seem predisposed to
identify those who fail to reciprocate, and punishments
including social exclusion may result (Buss, 2004).
Cheaters will not enjoy the benefit of help from others,
reducing the likelihood of the survival of themselves and
their kin.
Evolutionary forces may provide a general inclination for
being helpful, but they may not be as good an explanation
for why we help in the here and now. What factors serve as
proximal influences for decisions to help?
Egoistic motivation for helping
Most people would like to think that they help others because they are concerned about the other person’s plight.
In truth, the reasons why we help may be more about ourselves than others: Egoistic or selfish motivations may
make us help. Implicitly, we may ask, “What’s in it for me?” There are two major theories that explain what types
of reinforcement helpers may be seeking. The negative state relief model (e.g., Cialdini, Darby, & Vincent, 1973;
Cialdini, Kenrick, & Baumann, 1982) suggests that people sometimes help in order to make themselves feel
better. Whenever we are feeling sad, we can use helping someone else as a positive mood boost to feel happier.

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Through socialization, we have learned that helping can serve as a secondary reinforcement that will relieve
negative moods (Cialdini & Kenrick, 1976).
The arousal: cost–reward modelarousal: cost–reward model provides an additional way to understand why people help (e.g., Piliavin,
Dovidio, Gaertner, & Clark, 1981). This model focuses on the aversive feelings aroused by seeing another in
need. If you have ever heard an injured puppy yelping in pain, you know that feeling, and you know that the best
way to relieve that feeling is to help and to comfort the puppy. Similarly, when we see someone who is suffering in
some way (e.g., injured, homeless, hungry), we vicariously experience a sympathetic arousal that is unpleasant,
and we are motivated to eliminate that aversive state. One way to do that is to help the person in need. By
eliminating the victim’s pain, we eliminate our own aversive arousal. Helping is an effective way to alleviate our
own discomfort.
As an egoistic model, the arousal: cost–reward model explicitly includes the cost/reward considerations that come
into play. Potential helpers will find ways to cope with the aversive arousal that will minimize their costs—maybe
by means other than direct involvement. For example, the costs of directly confronting a knife-wielding assailant
might stop a bystander from getting involved, but the cost of some indirect help (e.g., calling the police) may be
acceptable. In either case, the victim’s need is addressed. Unfortunately, if the costs of helping are too high,
bystanders may reinterpret the situation to justify not helping at all. We now know that the attack of Kitty
Genovese was a murderous assault, but it may have been misperceived as a lover’s spat by someone who just
wanted to go back to sleep. For some, fleeing the situation causing their distress may do the trick (Piliavin et al.,
1981).
The egoistically based negative state relief model and the arousal: cost–reward model see the primary motivation
for helping as being the helper’s own outcome. Recognize that the victim’s outcome is of relatively little concern to
the helper—benefits to the victim are incidental byproducts of the exchange (Dovidio et al., 2006). The victim may
be helped, but the helper’s real motivation according to these two explanations is egoistic: Helpers help to the
extent that it makes them feel better.

Figure 4. A woman giving alms to a monk in Laos.
[Image: Peter Nijenhuis]
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
See this excerpt from the popular TV series Friends episode for a discussion of the egoism versus altruism
debate.
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Altruistic help
Although many researchers believe that egoismegoism is the only
motivation for helping, others suggest that
altruismaltruism—helping that has as its ultimate goal the
improvement of another’s welfare—may also be a
motivation for helping under the right circumstances.
Batson (2011) has offered the empathy–altruism modelempathy–altruism model to
explain altruistically motivated helping for which the helper
expects no benefits. According to this model, the key for
altruism is empathizing with the victim, that is, putting
oneself in the shoes of the victim and imagining how the
victim must feel. When taking this perspective and having
empathic concernempathic concern, potential helpers become primarily
interested in increasing the well-being of the victim, even if
the helper must incur some costs that might otherwise be
easily avoided. The empathy–altruism model does not
dismiss egoistic motivations; helpers not empathizing with a
victim may experience personal distress and have an
egoistic motivation, not unlike the feelings and motivations
explained by the arousal: cost–reward model. Because
egoistically motivated individuals are primarily concerned
with their own cost–benefit outcomes, they are less likely to
help if they think they can escape the situation with no costs
to themselves. In contrast, altruistically motivated helpers
are willing to accept the cost of helping to benefit a person
with whom they have empathized—this “self-sacrificial”
approach to helping is the hallmark of altruism (Batson,
2011).
Although there is still some controversy about whether
people can ever act for purely altruistic motives, it is
important to recognize that, while helpers may derive some
personal rewards by helping another, the help that has been given is also benefitting someone who was in need.
The residents who offered food, blankets, and shelter to stranded runners who were unable to get back to their
hotel rooms because of the Boston Marathon bombing undoubtedly received positive rewards because of the help
they gave, but those stranded runners who were helped got what they needed badly as well. “In fact, it is quite
remarkable how the fates of people who have never met can be so intertwined and complementary. Your benefit
is mine; and mine is yours” (Dovidio et al., 2006, p. 143).

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
altruismaltruism: a motivation for helping that has the improvement of another’s welfare as its ultimate goal, with no
expectation of any benefits for the helper
arousal: cost–reward model:arousal: cost–reward model: an egoistic theory proposed by Piliavin et al. (1981) that claims that seeing a
person in need leads to the arousal of unpleasant feelings, and observers are motivated to eliminate that
aversive state, often by helping the victim. A cost–reward analysis: may lead observers to react in ways other
than offering direct assistance, including indirect help, reinterpretation of the situation, or fleeing the scene.
bystander effectbystander effect: situation in which a witness or bystander does not volunteer to help a victim or person in
distress
bystander interventionbystander intervention: the phenomenon whereby people intervene to help others in need even if the other is a
complete stranger and the intervention puts the helper at risk
cost–benefit analysiscost–benefit analysis: a decision-making process that compares the cost of an action or thing against the
expected benefit to help determine the best course of action
diffusion of responsibilitydiffusion of responsibility: when deciding whether to help a person in need, knowing that there are others who
could also provide assistance relieves bystanders of some measure of personal responsibility, reducing the
likelihood that bystanders will intervene
egoismegoism: a motivation for helping that has the improvement of the helper’s own circumstances as its primary
goal
empathic concernempathic concern: according to Batson’s empathy–altruism hypothesis, observers who empathize with a
person in need (that is, put themselves in the shoes of the victim and imagine how that person feels) will
experience empathic concern and have an altruistic motivation for helping
empathy–altruism modelempathy–altruism model: an altruistic theory proposed by Batson (2011) that claims that people who put
themselves in the shoes of a victim and imagining how the victim feel will experience empathic concern that
evokes an altruistic motivation for helping.
pluralistic ignorancepluralistic ignorance: relying on the actions of others to define an ambiguous need situation and to then
erroneously conclude that no help or intervention is necessary
prosocial behaviorprosocial behavior: social behavior that benefits another person
reciprocal altruismreciprocal altruism: according to evolutionary psychology, a genetic predisposition for people to help those who
have previously helped them.
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• The next time you see someone needing help, observe your surroundings. Look to see if the
bystander effect is in action and take measures to make sure the person gets help. If you aren’t able to
help, notify an adult or authority figure that can.
• What do you think is the primary motive for helping behavior: egoism or altruism? Are there any
professions in which people are being “pure” altruists, or are some egoistic motivations always playing
a role?
Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions
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psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/helping-and-prosocial-behavior. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Aggression and Prosocial Behavior question and bystander effect section. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:QoyK23PR@5/Prosocial-Behavior. LicenseLicense: CC BY:
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ATTRACTION AND LOVE
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe attraction and the triangular theory of love
• Explain the social exchange theory as it applies to relationships
Forming Relationships
What do you think is the single most influential factor in determining with whom you become friends and whom
you form romantic relationships? You might be surprised to learn that the answer is simple: the people with whom
you have the most contact. This most important factor is proximity. You are more likely to be friends with people
you have regular contact with. For example, there are decades of research that shows that you are more likely to
become friends with people who live in your dorm, your apartment building, or your immediate neighborhood than
with people who live farther away (Festinger, Schachler, & Back, 1950). It is simply easier to form relationships
with people you see often because you have the opportunity to get to know them.
One of the reasons why proximity matters to attraction is that it breeds familiarity; people are more attracted to
that which is familiar. Just being around someone or being repeatedly exposed to them increases the likelihood
that we will be attracted to them. We also tend to feel safe with familiar people, as it is likely we know what to
expect from them. Dr. Robert Zajonc (1968) labeled this phenomenon the mere-exposure effectmere-exposure effect. More
specifically, he argued that the more often we are exposed to a stimulus (e.g., sound, person) the more likely we
are to view that stimulus positively. Moreland and Beach (1992) demonstrated this by exposing a college class to
four women (similar in appearance and age) who attended different numbers of classes, revealing that the more
classes a woman attended, the more familiar, similar, and attractive she was considered by the other students.
There is a certain comfort in knowing what to expect from others; consequently research suggests that we like
what is familiar. While this is often on a subconscious level, research has found this to be one of the most basic
principles of attraction (Zajonc, 1980). For example, a young man growing up with an overbearing mother may be
attracted to other overbearing women not because he likes being dominated but rather because it is what he
considers normal (i.e., familiar).
Similarity is another factor that influences who we form relationships with. We are more likely to become friends or
lovers with someone who is similar to us in background, attitudes, and lifestyle. In fact, there is no evidence that
opposites attract. Rather, we are attracted to people who are most like us (Figure 1) (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, &
Cook, 2001). Why do you think we are attracted to people who are similar to us? Sharing things in common will
certainly make it easy to get along with others and form connections. When you and another person share similar
music taste, hobbies, food preferences, and so on, deciding what to do with your time together might be easy.
HomophilyHomophily is the tendency for people to form social networks, including friendships, marriage, business
relationships, and many other types of relationships, with others who are similar (McPherson et al., 2001).

Figure 1. People tend to be attracted to similar people.
Many couples share a cultural background. This can be
quite obvious in a ceremony such as a wedding, and
more subtle (but no less significant) in the day-to-day
workings of a relationship. (credit: modification of work by
Shiraz Chanawala)
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But, homophily limits our exposure to diversity (McPherson
et al., 2001). By forming relationships only with people who
are similar to us, we will have homogenous groups and will
not be exposed to different points of view. In other words,
because we are likely to spend time with those who are
most like ourselves, we will have limited exposure to those
who are different than ourselves, including people of
different races, ethnicities, social-economic status, and life
situations.
Once we form relationships with people, we desire
reciprocity. ReciprocityReciprocity is the give and take in relationships.
We contribute to relationships, but we expect to receive
benefits as well. That is, we want our relationships to be a
two way street. We are more likely to like and engage with
people who like us back. Self-disclosure is part of the two
way street. Self-disclosureSelf-disclosure is the sharing of personal
information (Laurenceau, Barrett, & Pietromonaco, 1998).
We form more intimate connections with people with whom
we disclose important information about ourselves. Indeed,
self-disclosure is a characteristic of healthy intimate
relationships, as long as the information disclosed is consistent with our own views (Cozby, 1973).
Attraction
We have discussed how proximity and similarity lead to the formation of relationships, and that reciprocity and
self-disclosure are important for relationship maintenance. But, what features of a person do we find attractive?
We don’t form relationships with everyone that lives or works near us, so how is it that we decide which specific
individuals we will select as friends and lovers?
Researchers have documented several characteristics in men and women that humans find attractive. First we
look for friends and lovers who are physically attractive. People differ in what they consider attractive, and
attractiveness is culturally influenced. Research, however, suggests that some universally attractive features in
women include large eyes, high cheekbones, a narrow jaw line, a slender build (Buss, 1989), and a lower waist-
to-hip ratio (Singh, 1993). For men, attractive traits include being tall, having broad shoulders, and a narrow waist
(Buss, 1989). Both men and women with high levels of facial and body symmetry are generally considered more
attractive than asymmetric individuals (Fink, Neave, Manning, & Grammer, 2006; Penton-Voak et al., 2001;
Rikowski & Grammer, 1999). Social traits that people find attractive in potential female mates include warmth,
affection, and social skills; in males, the attractive traits include achievement, leadership qualities, and job skills
(Regan & Berscheid, 1997). Although humans want mates who are physically attractive, this does not mean that
we look for the most attractive person possible. In fact, this observation has led some to propose what is known
as the matching hypothesis which asserts that people tend to pick someone they view as their equal in physical
attractiveness and social desirability (Taylor, Fiore, Mendelsohn, & Cheshire, 2011). For example, you and most
people you know likely would say that a very attractive movie star is out of your league. So, even if you had
proximity to that person, you likely would not ask them out on a date because you believe you likely would be

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Learn more about attraction and beauty at The Noba Project website.
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rejected. People weigh a potential partner’s attractiveness against the likelihood of success with that person. If
you think you are particularly unattractive (even if you are not), you likely will seek partners that are fairly
unattractive (that is, unattractive in physical appearance or in behavior).
Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love
We typically love the people with whom we form relationships, but the type of love we have for our family, friends,
and lovers differs. Robert Sternberg (1986) proposed that there are three components of love: intimacy, passion,
and commitment. These three components form a triangle that defines multiple types of love: this is known as
Sternberg’s triangular theory of loveSternberg’s triangular theory of love (Figure 2). Intimacy is the sharing of details and intimate thoughts and
emotions. Passion is the physical attraction—the flame in the fire. Commitment is standing by the person—the “in
sickness and health” part of the relationship.

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Figure 2. According to Sternberg’s triangular theory of love, seven types of love can be described from combinations of three
components: intimacy, passion, and commitment. (credit: modification of work by “Lnesa”/Wikimedia Commons)
Sternberg (1986) states that a healthy relationship will have all three components of love—intimacy, passion, and
commitment—which is described as consummate love (Figure 3). However, different aspects of love might be
more prevalent at different life stages. Other forms of love include liking, which is defined as having intimacy but
no passion or commitment. Infatuation is the presence of passion without intimacy or commitment. Empty love is
having commitment without intimacy or passion. Companionate love, which is characteristic of close friendships
and family relationships, consists of intimacy and commitment but no passion. Romantic love is defined by having
passion and intimacy, but no commitment. Finally, fatuous love is defined by having passion and commitment, but
no intimacy, such as a long term sexual love affair. Can you describe other examples of relationships that fit these
different types of love?
Taking this theory a step further, anthropologist Helen Fisher explained that she scanned the brains (using fMRI)
of people who had just fallen in love and observed that their brain chemistry was “going crazy,” similar to the brain
of an addict on a drug high (Cohen, 2007). Specifically, serotonin production increased by as much as 40% in
newly in-love individuals. Further, those newly in love tended to show obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
Conversely, when a person experiences a breakup, the brain processes it in a similar way to quitting a heroin
habit (Fisher, Brown, Aron, Strong, & Mashek, 2009). Thus, those who believe that breakups are physically
painful are correct! Another interesting point is that long-term love and sexual desire activate different areas of the
brain. More specifically, sexual needs activate the part of the brain that is particularly sensitive to innately
pleasurable things such as food, sex, and drugs (i.e., the striatum—a rather simplistic reward system), whereas
love requires conditioning—it is more like a habit. When sexual needs are rewarded consistently, then love can

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch this TED talk by Helen Fisher to learn more about the brain in love.
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Figure 3. According to Sternberg, consummate love
describes a healthy relationship containing intimacy,
passion, and commitment. (credit: Kerry Ceszyk)
Figure 4. Acting like naïve economists, people may keep
track of the costs and benefits of maintaining a
relationship. Typically, only those relationships in which
the benefits outweigh the costs will be maintained.
develop. In other words, love grows out of positive rewards, expectancies, and habit (Cacioppo, Bianchi-
Demicheli, Hatfield & Rapson, 2012).
Social Exchange Theory
We have discussed why we form relationships, what
attracts us to others, and different types of love. But what
determines whether we are satisfied with and stay in a
relationship? One theory that provides an explanation is
social exchange theory. According to social exchange
theory, we act as naïve economists in keeping a tally of the
ratio of costs and benefits of forming and maintaining a
relationship with others (Figure 4) (Rusbult & Van Lange,
2003).
People are motivated to maximize the benefits of social exchanges, or relationships, and minimize the costs.
People prefer to have more benefits than costs, or to have nearly equal costs and benefits, but most people are
dissatisfied if their social exchanges create more costs than benefits. Let’s discuss an example. If you have ever
decided to commit to a romantic relationship, you probably considered the advantages and disadvantages of your
decision. What are the benefits of being in a committed romantic relationship? You may have considered having
companionship, intimacy, and passion, but also being comfortable with a person you know well. What are the
costs of being in a committed romantic relationship? You may think that over time boredom from being with only
one person may set in; moreover, it may be expensive to share activities such as attending movies and going to

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
altruism:altruism: humans’ desire to help others even if the costs outweigh the benefits of helping
companionate love:companionate love: type of love consisting of intimacy and commitment, but not passion; associated with close
friendships and family relationships
consummate love:consummate love: type of love occurring when intimacy, passion, and commitment are all present
empathy:empathy: capacity to understand another person’s perspective—to feel what he or she feels
homophily:homophily: tendency for people to form social networks, including friendships, marriage, business relationships,
and many other types of relationships, with others who are similar
mere-exposure effect:mere-exposure effect: the more often we are exposed to a stimulus (e.g., sound, person) the more likely we are
to view that stimulus positively
prosocial behavior:prosocial behavior: voluntary behavior with the intent to help other people
reciprocity:reciprocity: give and take in relationships
romantic love:romantic love: type of love consisting of intimacy and passion, but no commitment
self-disclosure:self-disclosure: sharing personal information in relationships
social exchange theory:social exchange theory: humans act as naïve economists in keeping a tally of the ratio of costs and benefits of
forming and maintain a relationship, with the goal to maximize benefits and minimize costs
triangular theory of love:triangular theory of love: model of love based on three components: intimacy, passion, and commitment;
several types of love exist, depending on the presence or absence of each of these components
dinner. However, the benefits of dating your romantic partner presumably outweigh the costs, or you wouldn’t
continue the relationship.
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Think about your recent friendships and romantic relationship(s). What factors do you think influenced
the development of these relationships? What attracted you to becoming friends or romantic partners?
• Have you ever used a social exchange theory approach to determine how satisfied you were in a
relationship, either a friendship or romantic relationship? Have you ever had the costs outweigh the
benefits of a relationship? If so, how did you address this imbalance?

Figure 1. Does holding a loved one’s hand decrease your
experience of pain?
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Examine the relationship between romantic ties and the experience of pain or pleasure
Relationships and Health
One of the greatest medicines in the world doesn’t come in pill form and it can’t be injected with a syringe. No
surgery is required. It is other people.
An impressive amount of research from psychology and medicine supports the claim that having a strong social
support network— supportive friends and family—is associated with maintaining both physical and psychological
health and recovering quickly and effectively from physical and psychological problems. Loneliness and isolation
are risk-factors to leading a healthy, happy life.
The goal of scientific psychology is to understand the deep underlying causes of psychological and behavioral
factors. Evidence that there is an association between health and social support is the beginning—not the
end—of scientific investigation. We want to know why such a relationship exists. This curiosity is not simply an
academic exercise. Treatments can only be improved and targeted to specific needs if we understand how they
work.
Correlations can identify interesting relationships (e.g., there is a positive correlation between a person’s amount
of social support and success in recovering from physical and psychological problems), but they usually cannot
provide strong evidence for why that relationship exists. That is the job of experiments.
When you design an experiment, you must often create a very specific situation to test and explore your ideas.
We have been talking in grand terms about “social support networks” and “mental and physical health,” but
individual experiments typically cannot work on such a broad scale. Instead, the experimenter tries to find a single
simple type of social support that can be manipulated in the laboratory and a single simple element of health that
can be measured and studied in the laboratory. One disadvantage of this sharp focus on a specific situation in
experiments is that a single experiment—even a single set of related experiments—is unlikely to fully identify the
causes we are looking for. Experimental evidence typically accumulates slowly, over long periods of time, filled
with apparent contradictions that can take time and effort to sort out.
We are going to look at two experiments from different
research teams that take a similar approach to trying to
understand if social contact influences a health-related
experience—in this case, pain—and how such an influence
might work (i.e., what might be the causal mechanisms?).
Experiment 1: Love and Pain
Sarah L. Master and her colleagues (Note: Sarah Master
was then a graduate student at UCLA and is now a
research associate with a Ph.D. at UCLA. Several of her
co-authors are major figures in the field of health
psychology. For example, co-author Shelly Taylor is one of
the founders of the field of health psychology.) conducted a
simple experiment that they published in 2009. Their
subjects were healthy college students who volunteered to
participate in an experiment that tested the idea that contact
with a romantic partner can reduce our experience of pain.

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PARTICIPANTS
Master and her colleagues recruited heterosexual couples to participate in their study. (Note: Researchers must
often decide between restricting characteristics of their subjects to simplify factors influencing the results versus
opening the experiment to a broader range of subjects to improve generalizability and representativeness.
Restriction of the participants in this study to heterosexual couples does not imply that couples with other gender
identities or sexual orientations are either unimportant or uninteresting.) The women were the actual subjects in
the study. Their male partners participated as part of the experimental manipulation. The participants were in
stable, long-term (defined here as longer than 6 months) relationships.
PAIN INDUCTION
Before the experiment began, each woman was tested to find her personal pain experiences for thermal
stimulation (i.e., heat), which was produced by a medical device called a thermode. Different people experience
and report pain very differently, so calibration of the thermal stimulation to the individual’s pain experience was
essential. The thermal stimulation during the experiment was adjusted to the point at which the subject reported a
“moderate” level of discomfort (10 on a 20-point discomfort scale) when the heat was applied. This means that
different people experienced different objective amounts of heat, while the subjective “discomfort” should have
been approximately the same. The heat stimulus was delivered to the soft inside of the right forearm (Note:
Alternating among three different locations on different trials.), and each one lasted for 6 seconds.
EXPERIMENTAL CONDITIONS
There were seven conditions in the experiment.
In three of the conditions, the woman held something in her hand as she experienced the painful thermal
stimulation. She held either:
• The hand of her partner (who sat behind a curtain, and—except for his hand—was not visible.
• The hand of a male stranger (who was also behind a curtain).
• An object: a squeeze ball.
In three other conditions, the woman looked at a picture on a computer screen in front of her. She saw either:
• A picture of her partner taken while the woman was being prepared for the experiment.
• A picture of a male stranger (similar age and matched for ethnicity with the woman’s partner).
• An object: a picture of a chair.
One control (or baseline) condition:
• The woman looked at a fixation cross on the computer screen.
The figure below shows summarizes the organization (technically, the “design”) of the experiment.

An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=319
TRY ITTRY IT
A “condition” or “level” is a variation on something manipulated by the experimenter. An independent variable is
made up of variations. For some procedure to be an independent variable, it must have at least two conditions
(otherwise it is a constant and not a variable).
~feedback: numberconditionsstu
PROCEDURE
The woman received twelve thermal stimulations in each condition. The order of presentation of conditions was
randomized for each woman. (Note: The randomization procedure was a bit more complicated than this
explanation suggests. See the original paper if you want to know exactly what they did.) There was a 20-second
break between stimulations. After each stimulation, the subject rated how “uncomfortable” the stimulus was on a
21-point scale.
RESULTS
The results in this study are not shown on the original 21-point scale. To take account of individual differences,
the control condition (i.e., looking at a fixation cross on a computer screen) the experimenters found the difference
between each person’s average control condition unpleasantness rating and her rating for each condition. For
example, imagine that one participant has the following average “unpleasantness” ratings (on the 21-point scale):
(Note: As any doctor will tell you, getting a valid and reliable rating of pain is notoriously difficult. Master and her
colleagues used a scale (the Gracely Box Scale) that is widely used in research and has been extensively
validated.)
The control rating (10) is then subtracted from each of the treatment ratings. This becomes the score that is
analyzed (called a “difference score”). This method allows each woman to have a different general pain level (in
the example, it is “10” but another person might have “6” or “12” as her average). The difference score looks at
each person’s change from her personal baseline under the various conditions. Here are the difference scores for
the example above:

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An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
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TRY ITTRY IT
The initial screen below shows all six of the treatment conditions as a tiny bit more painful than the baseline
control. Make your predictions based on your own theory about the possible positive or negative effects of
holding the hands of a person you love or of a stranger, or looking at a picture of a person you love or a
stranger while you are in pain. Remember that zero baseline control is still very painful, so zero does not mean
that there is no pain.
AnswerAnswer
An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=319
An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
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TRY ITTRY IT
For the difference scores, a positive number means that the experience in that condition was more painful than it
was in the control condition. A negative number means that the experience in that condition was less painful than
it was in the control condition. The exact number used indicates how much more or less painful the experience
was.
Before we show you the actual results of the experiment, we’d like you to predict what you think happened in this
experiment. Use the figure below. The zero baseline is the control condition. Your predictions are about the six
treatment conditions. You can click and drag on a bar to move the bar up, if you think that condition was more
painful for the subject than the baseline control. And you can move a bar down if you think that condition was less
painful than the baseline control condition.

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An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=319
Let’s use these results to rank the order of the conditions in terms of their effect on pain. Drag the condition
name on the right into the appropriate box next to the rank order number on the left.
CONCLUSIONS
These results suggest that there is something special about a person we love—or at least someone we like. Dr.
Master noted that looking at a picture of a loved one may be slightly more beneficial than holding his hand, though
this difference did not quite reach statistical significance. Holding a stranger’s hand exaggerated the pain
experience by a considerable amount, so it is clear that (in the context of this experiment) human contact alone is
not enough to relieve pain.
Dr. Master make a practical suggestion: If you are going to have a painful medical procedure, bringing a picture of
someone you love may be helpful in reducing the pain. In fact, based on comparison of the hand holding and
picture viewing conditions, you may actually be better off bringing a picture than bringing the actual person to the
painful procedure.
Here is her final conclusion: “In sum, these findings challenge the notion that the beneficial effects of social
support come solely from supportive social interactions and suggest that simple reminders of loved ones may be
sufficient to engender feelings of support.” If you think back to the introduction to this activity, we said that our
goal was to find out how and why social support leads to better health outcomes. As we cautioned you, this
experiment doesn’t even come close to answering that question. However, it does take us one little step in the
right direction, suggesting that “social support” may be more complicated than just having people near us or even
a group of friends. “Social support” may involve triggering certain cognitive (mental) processes, such as memories
and emotions, that are associated with strong positive relationships. That is for future research to clarify.
Experiment 2: Reducing Pain in the Brain
A completely different group of researchers, led by Jarred Younger (Note: Jarred Younger, Arthur Aron, Sara
Parke, Neil Chatterjee, and Sean Mackey. (2010). Viewing pictures of a romantic partner reduces experimental
pain: Involvement of neural reward systems. PLoS one, 5 (10), e13309.) at the Stanford University School of

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/09/23190547/image1-1

Medicine used fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to view the brains of people in an experiment very
similar to the one you just studied. Just as in the previous study, they used heat to produce pain, though the
location was at the base of the thumb on the palm of the left hand. They used two levels of heat, which they
labeled as “moderate” and “high”. They only tested picture-viewing; there was no hand holding in this study.
DETAILS OF THE EXPERIMENT
Younger and his colleagues tested both females and males by scanning their brains as they looked at pictures of
romantic partners or mere friends. There was also a control condition explained below.
Each person brought to the experiment several pictures of his or her romantic partner. Only participants who
reported being “intensely in love” and who scored at a very high level on the Passionate Love Scale (a
standardized measure of passionate love) were included in the study. The participants also brought some pictures
of a friend or acquaintance of the same gender and attractiveness as the romantic partner. In the experiment, the
participants used the same procedures that were used in the other study you read. When looking at the picture,
they were asked to focus on the picture and think about the person in the picture (romantic partner or friend).
For a third control or baseline condition, the experimenters wanted to see if looking at the picture was merely a
distraction from the pain. In this distraction control condition, the participant was given a category name (e.g.,
animals, fruits, actors, politicians) and was asked to say aloud as many examples of that category as possible
(ANIMALS: dog, bear, salmon, eagle, etc.).
GOAL OF THE EXPERIMENT
The experimenters were interested in a very specific hypothesis. They wondered if thinking about someone we
love intensely activates our brain’s reward system. This is a group of structures deep in the center of the brain
surrounding some neural structures called the basal ganglia (see figure below). Among their reward-related
activities is their production of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which they transport to regions throughout the
brain. Dopamine is an important part of the pleasure and learning experiences associated with rewarding
activities.

Figure 2. The basal ganglia play an important role in producing dopamine in the brain.
Because they were interested in testing the idea that the reward system might be activated by viewing someone
we passionately love, the experimenters focused their brain scanning on the reward system areas shown above.
However, they also looked at other brain areas, so they could determine if the reward system was more strongly
associated with pain reduction than other areas.
RESULTS OF THE REWARD SYSTEM EXPERIMENT
By now, you should have the idea that things are seldom simple in the world of science. First, the basic results
from the first study you read about were found here as well. Participants reported significantly less pain when they
looked at a picture of their romantic partner than when they looked at a stranger. Unfortunately (if you wanted
simple results), almost exactly the same reduction in pain was found in the distraction control condition.
The figure below shows the results. These researchers used an 11-point pain scale (0=no pain, 10=worst pain
imaginable), so the numbers cannot be directly compared to those in the first study. However, higher numbers
mean more pain, so the results can be understood easily.

An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=319
TRY ITTRY IT
These results alone suggest that looking at pictures of someone we love may be nothing more than a distraction
from the pain. However, this experiment was different than the first one because it had another dimension: the
brain scans. What did they indicate?
BRAIN IMAGING RESULTS
The brain images add an interesting dimension to our understanding of pain and pain relief. When participants
were looking at pictures of their romantic partner, the reward regions of the brain were very active. In fact, there
was a strong correlation between the amount of activity in this region and the level of pain the person reported:
more activity was associated with less pain.
Figure 3. These cross-sections of the brain show the general areas where researchers were focused during the experiment. The
figure on the left shows the brain region responding when the subject held her partner’s hand. The figure on the right shows the
regions of the brain activated when the subject was distracted.
If the reward systems (in the figure above, the red circle in the brain on the left) were also activated by the
distraction task, then we are back to the idea that looking at our romantic partner is just a way of distracting

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ourselves. But that is NOT what they found. Activity in the reward regions of the brain were not strongly correlated
with pain relief during the distraction task. However, other regions of the brain did have a strong relationship to
pain relief in the distraction condition (see the blue circles on the brain to the right in the figure above). These are
brain areas involved in memory, language, and making choices—exactly the systems that are active when we
think about words that fit a particular category.
CONCLUSIONS
This study by Jarred Younger and his colleagues suggests that there may be multiple ways to reduce our
experience of pain. The two approaches studied here (touching someone we love and generating words) may
produce the similar analgesic effects: both result in less pain. But in terms of underlying causal mechanisms, such
as the brain systems involved in reducing pain, very different things may be taking place.
This is not the end of the story. Finding a brain region associated with some experience is not an explanation; it is
simply a first step in finding how a brain system works. Finding two sets of brain regions which both produce the
same effect suggests that our explanation of how pain reduction is accomplished by the brain is not going to be
simple.
Finally, if you were hoping to find out if there were sex differences in the effects we discussed, unfortunately the
experimenters felt they did not have enough subjects to reliably test to see if men and women differ in their
response to pain or in the regions of the brain associated with pain reduction. Perhaps one of you will conduct the
experiment that answers those questions!
General Conclusions
We started this exercise with a discussion of social support and health. People with stronger social support
networks tend to have better health outcomes. When we asked how this works, we zoomed in on a very specific
type of social support: a romantic relationship, which involve deep and complex connections between two people.
It would be reasonable to suggest that this type of relationship might have the potential to produce the strongest
possible form of social support.
Both experiments showed that social support in the form of touching someone we love (or seeing a picture of that
person in the first experiment) can reduce pain, when compared to control conditions. The second experiment
points to the brain’s reward system as a possible source of pain relief. We still don’t know the brain mechanism
that produces the pain experience; it is possible that we fully feel the pain, but the positive feelings associated
with the person we love balance out the negative experience of pain. Or perhaps the reward system can actually
turn down the intensity of the pain experience, so we really feel less pain when we are with those we love. The
scientists of your generation will have the opportunity to explore these mysteries.
Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions
CC licensed content, OriginalCC licensed content, Original
• Modification and adaptation, addition of link to learning. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution
• Psychology in Real Life: Love and Pain. Authored byAuthored by: Patrick Carroll for Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution
CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously
• Prosocial Behavior. Authored byAuthored by: OpenStax College. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/contents/Sr8Ev5Og@5.52:QoyK23PR@5/Prosocial-Behavior. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution. License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/
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• Paragraph on love and the brain. Authored byAuthored by: Debi Brannan and Cynthia D. Mohr . Provided byProvided by: Western Oregon University, Portland State University. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/textbooks/introduction-to-
psychology-the-full-noba-collection/modules/love-friendship-and-social-support. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Paragraphs on familiarity and the mere exposure effect. Authored byAuthored by: Debi Brannan and Cynthia D. Mohr. Provided byProvided by: Western Oregon University, Portland State University. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/
modules/love-friendship-and-social-support. ProjectProject: The Noba Project. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Patrick Carroll for Lumen Learning. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_ganglia. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• holding hands. Authored byAuthored by: Will Milne. Provided byProvided by: Pexels. Located atLocated at: https://www.pexels.com/photo/diverse-diversity-hands-hold-302354/. LicenseLicense: CC0: No Rights Reserved

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PSYCH IN REAL LIFE: LOVE AND PAIN
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Examine the relationship between romantic ties and the experience of pain or pleasure
Relationships and Health
One of the greatest medicines in the world doesn’t come in pill form and it can’t be injected with a syringe. No
surgery is required. It is other people.
An impressive amount of research from psychology and medicine supports the claim that having a strong social
support network— supportive friends and family—is associated with maintaining both physical and psychological
health and recovering quickly and effectively from physical and psychological problems. Loneliness and isolation
are risk-factors to leading a healthy, happy life.
The goal of scientific psychology is to understand the deep underlying causes of psychological and behavioral
factors. Evidence that there is an association between health and social support is the beginning—not the
end—of scientific investigation. We want to know why such a relationship exists. This curiosity is not simply an
academic exercise. Treatments can only be improved and targeted to specific needs if we understand how they
work.
Correlations can identify interesting relationships (e.g., there is a positive correlation between a person’s amount
of social support and success in recovering from physical and psychological problems), but they usually cannot
provide strong evidence for why that relationship exists. That is the job of experiments.
When you design an experiment, you must often create a very specific situation to test and explore your ideas.
We have been talking in grand terms about “social support networks” and “mental and physical health,” but
individual experiments typically cannot work on such a broad scale. Instead, the experimenter tries to find a single
simple type of social support that can be manipulated in the laboratory and a single simple element of health that
can be measured and studied in the laboratory. One disadvantage of this sharp focus on a specific situation in
experiments is that a single experiment—even a single set of related experiments—is unlikely to fully identify the
causes we are looking for. Experimental evidence typically accumulates slowly, over long periods of time, filled
with apparent contradictions that can take time and effort to sort out.

Figure 1. Does holding a loved one’s hand decrease your
experience of pain?
We are going to look at two experiments from different
research teams that take a similar approach to trying to
understand if social contact influences a health-related
experience—in this case, pain—and how such an influence
might work (i.e., what might be the causal mechanisms?).
Experiment 1: Love and Pain
Sarah L. Master and her colleagues (Note: Sarah Master
was then a graduate student at UCLA and is now a
research associate with a Ph.D. at UCLA. Several of her
co-authors are major figures in the field of health
psychology. For example, co-author Shelly Taylor is one of
the founders of the field of health psychology.) conducted a
simple experiment that they published in 2009. Their
subjects were healthy college students who volunteered to
participate in an experiment that tested the idea that contact
with a romantic partner can reduce our experience of pain.
PARTICIPANTS
Master and her colleagues recruited heterosexual couples
to participate in their study. (Note: Researchers must often decide between restricting characteristics of their
subjects to simplify factors influencing the results versus opening the experiment to a broader range of subjects to
improve generalizability and representativeness. Restriction of the participants in this study to heterosexual
couples does not imply that couples with other gender identities or sexual orientations are either unimportant or
uninteresting.) The women were the actual subjects in the study. Their male partners participated as part of the
experimental manipulation. The participants were in stable, long-term (defined here as longer than 6 months)
relationships.
PAIN INDUCTION
Before the experiment began, each woman was tested to find her personal pain experiences for thermal
stimulation (i.e., heat), which was produced by a medical device called a thermode. Different people experience
and report pain very differently, so calibration of the thermal stimulation to the individual’s pain experience was
essential. The thermal stimulation during the experiment was adjusted to the point at which the subject reported a
“moderate” level of discomfort (10 on a 20-point discomfort scale) when the heat was applied. This means that
different people experienced different objective amounts of heat, while the subjective “discomfort” should have
been approximately the same. The heat stimulus was delivered to the soft inside of the right forearm (Note:
Alternating among three different locations on different trials.), and each one lasted for 6 seconds.
EXPERIMENTAL CONDITIONS
There were seven conditions in the experiment.
In three of the conditions, the woman held something in her hand as she experienced the painful thermal
stimulation. She held either:
• The hand of her partner (who sat behind a curtain, and—except for his hand—was not visible.
• The hand of a male stranger (who was also behind a curtain).
• An object: a squeeze ball.
In three other conditions, the woman looked at a picture on a computer screen in front of her. She saw either:
• A picture of her partner taken while the woman was being prepared for the experiment.
• A picture of a male stranger (similar age and matched for ethnicity with the woman’s partner).
• An object: a picture of a chair.

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/09/24172030/diverse-diversity-hands-302354

An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=5107
TRY ITTRY IT
https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11766
A “condition” or “level” is a variation on something manipulated by the experimenter. An independent variable is
made up of variations. For some procedure to be an independent variable, it must have at least two conditions
(otherwise it is a constant and not a variable).
One control (or baseline) condition:
• The woman looked at a fixation cross on the computer screen.
The figure below shows summarizes the organization (technically, the “design”) of the experiment.
PROCEDURE
The woman received twelve thermal stimulations in each condition. The order of presentation of conditions was
randomized for each woman. (Note: The randomization procedure was a bit more complicated than this
explanation suggests. See the original paper if you want to know exactly what they did.) There was a 20-second
break between stimulations. After each stimulation, the subject rated how “uncomfortable” the stimulus was on a
21-point scale.
RESULTS
The results in this study are not shown on the original 21-point scale. To take account of individual differences,
the control condition (i.e., looking at a fixation cross on a computer screen) the experimenters found the difference
between each person’s average control condition unpleasantness rating and her rating for each condition. For
example, imagine that one participant has the following average “unpleasantness” ratings (on the 21-point scale):
(Note: As any doctor will tell you, getting a valid and reliable rating of pain is notoriously difficult. Master and her
colleagues used a scale (the Gracely Box Scale) that is widely used in research and has been extensively
validated.)

TRY ITTRY IT
The initial screen below shows all six of the treatment conditions as a tiny bit more painful than the baseline
control. Make your predictions based on your own theory about the possible positive or negative effects of
holding the hands of a person you love or of a stranger, or looking at a picture of a person you love or a
stranger while you are in pain. Remember that zero baseline control is still very painful, so zero does not mean
that there is no pain.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/love_pain.html
The control rating (10) is then subtracted from each of the treatment ratings. This becomes the score that is
analyzed (called a “difference score”). This method allows each woman to have a different general pain level (in
the example, it is “10” but another person might have “6” or “12” as her average). The difference score looks at
each person’s change from her personal baseline under the various conditions. Here are the difference scores for
the example above:
For the difference scores, a positive number means that the experience in that condition was more painful than it
was in the control condition. A negative number means that the experience in that condition was less painful than
it was in the control condition. The exact number used indicates how much more or less painful the experience
was.
Before we show you the actual results of the experiment, we’d like you to predict what you think happened in this
experiment. Use the figure below. The zero baseline is the control condition. Your predictions are about the six
treatment conditions. You can click and drag on a bar to move the bar up, if you think that condition was more
painful for the subject than the baseline control. And you can move a bar down if you think that condition was less
painful than the baseline control condition.

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/09/23185607/image5

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/09/23185811/image4

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/love_pain.html

AnswerAnswer
An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=5107
An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=5107
TRY ITTRY IT
https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11767
Let’s use these results to rank the order of the conditions in terms of their effect on pain. Drag the condition
name on the right into the appropriate box next to the rank order number on the left.
https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290477388969288438/embed

CONCLUSIONS
These results suggest that there is something special about a person we love—or at least someone we like. Dr.
Master noted that looking at a picture of a loved one may be slightly more beneficial than holding his hand, though
this difference did not quite reach statistical significance. Holding a stranger’s hand exaggerated the pain
experience by a considerable amount, so it is clear that (in the context of this experiment) human contact alone is
not enough to relieve pain.
Dr. Master make a practical suggestion: If you are going to have a painful medical procedure, bringing a picture of
someone you love may be helpful in reducing the pain. In fact, based on comparison of the hand holding and
picture viewing conditions, you may actually be better off bringing a picture than bringing the actual person to the
painful procedure.
Here is her final conclusion: “In sum, these findings challenge the notion that the beneficial effects of social
support come solely from supportive social interactions and suggest that simple reminders of loved ones may be
sufficient to engender feelings of support.” If you think back to the introduction to this activity, we said that our

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/09/23190547/image1-1

https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290477388969288438/embed

goal was to find out how and why social support leads to better health outcomes. As we cautioned you, this
experiment doesn’t even come close to answering that question. However, it does take us one little step in the
right direction, suggesting that “social support” may be more complicated than just having people near us or even
a group of friends. “Social support” may involve triggering certain cognitive (mental) processes, such as memories
and emotions, that are associated with strong positive relationships. That is for future research to clarify.
Experiment 2: Reducing Pain in the Brain
A completely different group of researchers, led by Jarred Younger (Note: Jarred Younger, Arthur Aron, Sara
Parke, Neil Chatterjee, and Sean Mackey. (2010). Viewing pictures of a romantic partner reduces experimental
pain: Involvement of neural reward systems. PLoS one, 5 (10), e13309.) at the Stanford University School of
Medicine used fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to view the brains of people in an experiment very
similar to the one you just studied. Just as in the previous study, they used heat to produce pain, though the
location was at the base of the thumb on the palm of the left hand. They used two levels of heat, which they
labeled as “moderate” and “high”. They only tested picture-viewing; there was no hand holding in this study.
DETAILS OF THE EXPERIMENT
Younger and his colleagues tested both females and males by scanning their brains as they looked at pictures of
romantic partners or mere friends. There was also a control condition explained below.
Each person brought to the experiment several pictures of his or her romantic partner. Only participants who
reported being “intensely in love” and who scored at a very high level on the Passionate Love Scale (a
standardized measure of passionate love) were included in the study. The participants also brought some pictures
of a friend or acquaintance of the same gender and attractiveness as the romantic partner. In the experiment, the
participants used the same procedures that were used in the other study you read. When looking at the picture,
they were asked to focus on the picture and think about the person in the picture (romantic partner or friend).
For a third control or baseline condition, the experimenters wanted to see if looking at the picture was merely a
distraction from the pain. In this distraction control condition, the participant was given a category name (e.g.,
animals, fruits, actors, politicians) and was asked to say aloud as many examples of that category as possible
(ANIMALS: dog, bear, salmon, eagle, etc.).
GOAL OF THE EXPERIMENT
The experimenters were interested in a very specific hypothesis. They wondered if thinking about someone we
love intensely activates our brain’s reward system. This is a group of structures deep in the center of the brain
surrounding some neural structures called the basal ganglia (see figure below). Among their reward-related
activities is their production of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which they transport to regions throughout the
brain. Dopamine is an important part of the pleasure and learning experiences associated with rewarding
activities.

TRY ITTRY IT
https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11769
These results alone suggest that looking at pictures of someone we love may be nothing more than a distraction
from the pain. However, this experiment was different than the first one because it had another dimension: the
brain scans. What did they indicate?
BRAIN IMAGING RESULTS
The brain images add an interesting dimension to our understanding of pain and pain relief. When participants
were looking at pictures of their romantic partner, the reward regions of the brain were very active. In fact, there
was a strong correlation between the amount of activity in this region and the level of pain the person reported:
more activity was associated with less pain.
Figure 3. These cross-sections of the brain show the general areas where researchers were focused during the experiment. The
figure on the left shows the brain region responding when the subject held her partner’s hand. The figure on the right shows the
regions of the brain activated when the subject was distracted.
If the reward systems (in the figure above, the red circle in the brain on the left) were also activated by the
distraction task, then we are back to the idea that looking at our romantic partner is just a way of distracting
ourselves. But that is NOT what they found. Activity in the reward regions of the brain were not strongly correlated
with pain relief during the distraction task. However, other regions of the brain did have a strong relationship to
pain relief in the distraction condition (see the blue circles on the brain to the right in the figure above). These are

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brain areas involved in memory, language, and making choices—exactly the systems that are active when we
think about words that fit a particular category.
CONCLUSIONS
This study by Jarred Younger and his colleagues suggests that there may be multiple ways to reduce our
experience of pain. The two approaches studied here (touching someone we love and generating words) may
produce the similar analgesic effects: both result in less pain. But in terms of underlying causal mechanisms, such
as the brain systems involved in reducing pain, very different things may be taking place.
This is not the end of the story. Finding a brain region associated with some experience is not an explanation; it is
simply a first step in finding how a brain system works. Finding two sets of brain regions which both produce the
same effect suggests that our explanation of how pain reduction is accomplished by the brain is not going to be
simple.
Finally, if you were hoping to find out if there were sex differences in the effects we discussed, unfortunately the
experimenters felt they did not have enough subjects to reliably test to see if men and women differ in their
response to pain or in the regions of the brain associated with pain reduction. Perhaps one of you will conduct the
experiment that answers those questions!
General Conclusions
We started this exercise with a discussion of social support and health. People with stronger social support
networks tend to have better health outcomes. When we asked how this works, we zoomed in on a very specific
type of social support: a romantic relationship, which involve deep and complex connections between two people.
It would be reasonable to suggest that this type of relationship might have the potential to produce the strongest
possible form of social support.
Both experiments showed that social support in the form of touching someone we love (or seeing a picture of that
person in the first experiment) can reduce pain, when compared to control conditions. The second experiment
points to the brain’s reward system as a possible source of pain relief. We still don’t know the brain mechanism
that produces the pain experience; it is possible that we fully feel the pain, but the positive feelings associated
with the person we love balance out the negative experience of pain. Or perhaps the reward system can actually
turn down the intensity of the pain experience, so we really feel less pain when we are with those we love. The
scientists of your generation will have the opportunity to explore these mysteries.
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PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION
What you’ll learn to do: explain prejudice, discrimination, and
aggression
Throughout this module we have discussed how people interact and influence one another’s thoughts, feelings,
and behaviors in both positive and negative ways. People can work together to achieve great things, such as
helping each other in emergencies: recall the heroism displayed during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. People also can
do great harm to one another, such as conforming to group norms that are immoral and obeying authority to the
point of murder: consider the mass conformity of Nazis during WWII. In this section we will discuss a negative
side of human behavior—prejudice, discrimination, and aggression.

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Figure 1. Prejudice and discrimination occur across the globe. (a) A 1939 sign in German-occupied Poland warns “No Entrance
for Poles!” (b) An African-American male drinks from a designated “colored” water fountain in Oklahoma in 1939 during the era of
racial segregation as a practice of discrimination. (c) A member of the Westboro Baptist Church, widely identified as a hate group,
engages in discrimination based on religion and sexual orientation. (credit b: modification of work by United States Farm Security
Administration; credit c: modification of work by “JCWilmore”/Wikimedia Commons)
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Define and provide examples of prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination
• Explain why prejudice and discrimination exist while demonstrating an understanding of scapegoat
theory, in-groups, and out-groups
Human conflict can result in crime, war, and mass murder, such as genocide. Prejudice and discrimination often
are root causes of human conflict, which explains how strangers come to hate one another to the extreme of
causing others harm. Prejudice and discrimination affect everyone. In this section we will examine the definitions
of prejudice and discrimination, examples of these concepts, and causes of these biases.
Understanding Prejudice and Discrimination
As we discussed in the opening story of Trayvon Martin, humans are very diverse and although we share many
similarities, we also have many differences. The social groups we belong to help form our identities (Tajfel, 1974).
These differences may be difficult for some people to reconcile, which may lead to prejudice toward people who
are different. PrejudicePrejudice is a negative attitude and feeling toward an individual based solely on one’s membership
in a particular social group (Allport, 1954; Brown, 2010). Prejudice is common against people who are members
of an unfamiliar cultural group. Thus, certain types of education, contact, interactions, and building relationships
with members of different cultural groups can reduce the tendency toward prejudice. In fact, simply imagining
interacting with members of different cultural groups might affect prejudice. Indeed, when experimental
participants were asked to imagine themselves positively interacting with someone from a different group, this led
to an increased positive attitude toward the other group and an increase in positive traits associated with the other
group. Furthermore, imagined social interaction can reduce anxiety associated with inter-group interactions (Crisp
& Turner, 2009). What are some examples of social groups that you belong to that contribute to your identity?
Social groups can include gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, social class, religion, sexual orientation, profession,
and many more. And, as is true for social roles, you can simultaneously be a member of more than one social
group. An example of prejudice is having a negative attitude toward people who are not born in the United States.
Although people holding this prejudiced attitude do not know all people who were not born in the United States,
they dislike them due to their status as foreigners.
Can you think of a prejudiced attitude you have held toward a group of people? How did your prejudice develop?
Prejudice often begins in the form of a stereotypestereotype—that is, a negative belief about individuals based solely on
their membership in a group, regardless of their individual characteristics. Stereotypes become overgeneralized
and applied to all members of a group. For example, someone holding prejudiced attitudes toward older adults,
may believe that older adults are slow and incompetent (Cuddy, Norton, & Fiske, 2005; Nelson, 2004). We cannot
possibly know each individual person of advanced age to know that all older adults are slow and incompetent.
Therefore, this negative belief is overgeneralized to all members of the group, even though many of the individual
group members may in fact be spry and intelligent.

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
This video demonstrates the concepts of prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination. In the video, a social
experiment is conducted in a park where three people try to steal a bike out in the open. The race and gender
of the thief is varied: a white male teenager, a black male teenager, and a white female. Does anyone try to
stop them? The treatment of the teenagers in the video demonstrates the concept of racism.
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Another example of a well-known stereotype involves beliefs about racial differences among athletes. As Hodge,
Burden, Robinson, and Bennett (2008) point out, Black male athletes are often believed to be more athletic, yet
less intelligent, than their White male counterparts. These beliefs persist despite a number of high profile
examples to the contrary. Sadly, such beliefs often influence how these athletes are treated by others and how
they view themselves and their own capabilities. Whether or not you agree with a stereotype, stereotypes are
generally well-known within in a given culture (Devine, 1989).
Sometimes people will act on their prejudiced attitudes toward a group of people, and this behavior is known as
discrimination. DiscriminationDiscrimination is negative action toward an individual as a result of one’s membership in a
particular group (Allport, 1954; Dovidio & Gaertner, 2004). As a result of holding negative beliefs (stereotypes)
and negative attitudes (prejudice) about a particular group, people often treat the target of prejudice poorly, such
as excluding older adults from their circle of friends. Table 1 summarizes the characteristics of stereotypes,
prejudice, and discrimination. Have you ever been the target of discrimination? If so, how did this negative
treatment make you feel?
Table 1. Connecting Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
ItemItem FunctionFunction ConnectionConnection ExampleExample
Stereotype
Cognitive;
thoughts about
people
Overgeneralized beliefs about people
may lead to prejudice.
“Yankees fans are arrogant
and obnoxious.”
Prejudice
Affective; feelings
about people,
both positive and
negative
Feelings may influence treatment of
others, leading to discrimination.
“I hate Yankees fans; they
make me angry.”
Discrimination
Behavior; positive
or negative
treatment of
others
Holding stereotypes and harboring
prejudice may lead to excluding,
avoiding, and biased treatment of
group members.
“I would never hire nor
become friends with a person
if I knew he or she were a
Yankees fan.”
So far, we’ve discussed stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination as negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
because these are typically the most problematic. However, it is important to also point out that people can hold
positive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward individuals based on group membership; for example, they
would show preferential treatment for people who are like themselves—that is, who share the same gender, race,
or favorite sports team.

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Types of Prejudice and Discrimination
When we meet strangers we automatically process three pieces of information about them: their race, gender,
and age (Ito & Urland, 2003). Why are these aspects of an unfamiliar person so important? Why don’t we instead
notice whether their eyes are friendly, whether they are smiling, their height, the type of clothes they are wearing?
Although these secondary characteristics are important in forming a first impression of a stranger, the social
categories of race, gender, and age provide a wealth of information about an individual. This information,
however, often is based on stereotypes. We may have different expectations of strangers depending on their
race, gender, and age. What stereotypes and prejudices do you hold about people who are from a race, gender,
and age group different from your own?
Racism
RacismRacism is prejudiceprejudice and discriminationdiscrimination against an individual based solely on one’s membership in a specific racial
group (such as toward African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, European Americans).
What are some stereotypes of various racial or ethnic groups? Research suggests cultural stereotypes for Asian
Americans include cold, sly, and intelligent; for Latinos, cold and unintelligent; for European Americans, cold and
intelligent; and for African Americans, aggressive, athletic, and more likely to be law breakers (Devine & Elliot,
1995; Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002; Sommers & Ellsworth, 2000; Dixon & Linz, 2000).
Racism exists for many racial and ethnic groups. For example, Blacks are significantly more likely to have their
vehicles searched during traffic stops than Whites, particularly when Blacks are driving in predominately White
neighborhoods, (a phenomenon often termed “DWB,” or “driving while Black.”) (Rojek, Rosenfeld, & Decker,
2012)
Mexican Americans and other Latino groups also are targets of racism from the police and other members of the
community. For example, when purchasing items with a personal check, Latino shoppers are more likely than
White shoppers to be asked to show formal identification (Dovidio et al., 2010).
In one case of alleged harassment by the police, several East Haven, Connecticut, police officers were arrested
on federal charges due to reportedly continued harassment and brutalization of Latinos. When the accusations
came out, the mayor of East Haven was asked, “What are you doing for the Latino community today?” The Mayor
responded, “I might have tacos when I go home, I’m not quite sure yet” (“East Haven Mayor,” 2012) This
statement undermines the important issue of racial profiling and police harassment of Latinos, while belittling
Latino culture by emphasizing an interest in a food product stereotypically associated with Latinos.
Racism is prevalent toward many other groups in the United States including Native Americans, Arab Americans,
Jewish Americans, and Asian Americans. Have you witnessed racism toward any of these racial or ethnic
groups? Are you aware of racism in your community?
One reason modern forms of racism, and prejudice in general, are hard to detect is related to the dual attitudes
model (Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler, 2000). Humans have two forms of attitudes: explicit attitudes, which are
conscious and controllable, and implicit attitudes, which are unconscious and uncontrollable (Devine, 1989; Olson
& Fazio, 2003). Because holding egalitarian views is socially desirable (Plant & Devine, 1998), most people do
not show extreme racial bias or other prejudices on measures of their explicit attitudes. However, measures of

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Take one of the Implicit Association Tests about social attitudes. These tests were created by Harvard and
designed to register implicit attitudes, or subtle biases, that we might not even know we have.
View this interactive about the Shelling Effect and consider its implications for reducing segregation.
Figure 2. Women now have many jobs previously closed
to them, though they still face challenges in male-
dominated occupations. (credit: “Alex”/Flickr)
implicit attitudes often show evidence of mild to strong racial bias or other prejudices (Greenwald, McGee, &
Schwartz, 1998; Olson & Fazio, 2003).
Sexism
SexismSexism is prejudiceprejudice and discriminationdiscrimination toward individuals based on their sex. Typically, sexism takes the form of
men holding biases against women, but either sex can show sexism toward their own or their opposite sex. Like
racism, sexism may be subtle and difficult to detect. Common forms of sexism in modern society include gender
role expectations, such as expecting women to be the caretakers of the household. Sexism also includes people’s
expectations for how members of a gender group should behave. For example, women are expected to be
friendly, passive, and nurturing, and when women behave in an unfriendly, assertive, or neglectful manner they
often are disliked for violating their gender role (Rudman, 1998). Research by Laurie Rudman (1998) finds that
when female job applicants self-promote, they are likely to be viewed as competent, but they may be disliked and
are less likely to be hired because they violated gender expectations for modesty. Sexism can exist on a societal
level such as in hiring, employment opportunities, and education. Women are less likely to be hired or promoted
in male-dominated professions such as engineering, aviation, and construction (Figure 2) (Blau, Ferber, &
Winkler, 2010; Ceci & Williams, 2011). Have you ever experienced or witnessed sexism? Think about your family
members’ jobs or careers. Why do you think there are differences in the jobs women and men have, such as
more women nurses but more male surgeons (Betz, 2008)?
Ageism
People often form judgments and hold expectations about
people based on their age. These judgments and
expectations can lead to ageismageism, or prejudiceprejudice and
discriminationdiscrimination toward individuals based solely on their age.
Typically, ageism occurs against older adults, but ageism
also can occur toward younger adults. Think of
expectations you hold for older adults. How could
someone’s expectations influence the feelings they hold
toward individuals from older age groups? Ageism is
widespread in U.S. culture (Nosek, 2005), and a common
ageist attitude toward older adults is that they are
incompetent, physically weak, and slow (Greenberg,
Schimel, & Martens, 2002) and some people consider older
adults less attractive. Some cultures, however, including
some Asian, Latino, and African American cultures, both
outside and within the United States afford older adults respect and honor.
Ageism can also occur toward younger adults. What expectations do you hold toward younger people? Does
society expect younger adults to be immature and irresponsible? How might these two forms of ageism affect a
younger and older adult who are applying for a sales clerk position?
Homophobia
Another form of prejudice is homophobiahomophobia: prejudiceprejudice and discriminationdiscrimination of individuals based solely on their sexual
orientation. Like ageism, homophobia is a widespread prejudice in U.S. society that is tolerated by many people
(Herek & McLemore, 2013; Nosek, 2005). Negative feelings often result in discrimination, such as the exclusion of

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/education.html

http://www.understandingprejudice.org/segregation/

DIG DEEPER: RESEARCH INTO HOMOPHOBIADIG DEEPER: RESEARCH INTO HOMOPHOBIA
Some people are quite passionate in their hatred for nonheterosexuals in our society. In some cases, people
have been tortured and/or murdered simply because they were not heterosexual. This passionate response has
led some researchers to question what motives might exist for homophobic people. Adams, Wright, & Lohr
(1996) conducted a study investigating this issue and their results were quite an eye-opener.
In this experiment, male college students were given a scale that assessed how homophobic they were; those
with extreme scores were recruited to participate in the experiment. In the end, 64 men agreed to participate
and were split into 2 groups: homophobic men and nonhomophobic men. Both groups of men were fitted with a
penile plethysmograph, an instrument that measures changes in blood flow to the penis and serves as an
objective measurement of sexual arousal.
All men were shown segments of sexually explicit videos. One of these videos involved a sexual interaction
between a man and a woman (heterosexual clip). One video displayed two females engaged in a sexual
interaction (homosexual female clip), and the final video displayed two men engaged in a sexual interaction
(homosexual male clip). Changes in penile tumescence were recorded during all three clips, and a subjective
measurement of sexual arousal was also obtained. While both groups of men became sexually aroused to the
heterosexual and female homosexual video clips, only those men who were identified as homophobic showed
sexual arousal to the homosexual male video clip. While all men reported that their erections indicated arousal
for the heterosexual and female homosexual clips, the homophobic men indicated that they were not sexually
aroused (despite their erections) to the male homosexual clips. Adams et al. (1996) suggest that these findings
may indicate that homophobia is related to homosexual arousal that the homophobic individuals either deny or
are unaware.
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lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people from social groups and the avoidance of LGBT neighbors
and co-workers. This discrimination also extends to employers deliberately declining to hire qualified LGBT job
applicants. Have you experienced or witnessed homophobia? If so, what stereotypes, prejudiced attitudes, and
discrimination were evident?
Why do Prejudice and Discrimination Exist?
PrejudicePrejudice and discriminationdiscrimination persist in society due to social learning and conformity to social norms. Children
learn prejudiced attitudes and beliefs from society: their parents, teachers, friends, the media, and other sources
of socialization, such as Facebook (O’Keeffe & Clarke-Pearson, 2011). If certain types of prejudice and
discrimination are acceptable in a society, there may be normative pressures to conform and share those
prejudiced beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. For example, public and private schools are still somewhat
segregated by social class. Historically, only children from wealthy families could afford to attend private schools,
whereas children from middle- and low-income families typically attended public schools. If a child from a low-
income family received a merit scholarship to attend a private school, how might the child be treated by
classmates? Can you recall a time when you held prejudiced attitudes or beliefs or acted in a discriminatory
manner because your group of friends expected you to?

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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch the following clip for an example of stereotype threats, which is when a person’s performance can be
affected simply by the concern that they will perform in a way that confirms a stereotype about them.
Stereotypes and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
When we hold a stereotypestereotype about a person, we have expectations that he or she will fulfill that stereotype. A self-self-
fulfilling prophecyfulfilling prophecy is an expectation held by a person that alters his or her behavior in a way that tends to make it
true. When we hold stereotypes about a person, we tend to treat the person according to our expectations. This
treatment can influence the person to act according to our stereotypic expectations, thus confirming our
stereotypic beliefs. Research by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) found that disadvantaged students whose
teachers expected them to perform well had higher grades than disadvantaged students whose teachers
expected them to do poorly.
Consider this example of cause and effect in a self-fulfilling prophecy: If an employer expects an openly gay male
job applicant to be incompetent, the potential employer might treat the applicant negatively during the interview by
engaging in less conversation, making little eye contact, and generally behaving coldly toward the applicant (Hebl,
Foster, Mannix, & Dovidio, 2002). In turn, the job applicant will perceive that the potential employer dislikes him,
and he will respond by giving shorter responses to interview questions, making less eye contact, and generally
disengaging from the interview. After the interview, the employer will reflect on the applicant’s behavior, which
seemed cold and distant, and the employer will conclude, based on the applicant’s poor performance during the
interview, that the applicant was in fact incompetent. Thus, the employer’s stereotype—gay men are incompetent
and do not make good employees—is reinforced. Do you think this job applicant is likely to be hired? Treating
individuals according to stereotypic beliefs can lead to prejudice and discrimination.
Another dynamic that can reinforce stereotypes is confirmation bias. When interacting with the target of our
prejudice, we tend to pay attention to information that is consistent with our stereotypic expectations and ignore
information that is inconsistent with our expectations. In this process, known as confirmation biasconfirmation bias, we seek out
information that supports our stereotypes and ignore information that is inconsistent with our stereotypes (Wason
& Johnson-Laird, 1972). In the job interview example, the employer may not have noticed that the job applicant
was friendly and engaging, and that he provided competent responses to the interview questions in the beginning
of the interview. Instead, the employer focused on the job applicant’s performance in the later part of the
interview, after the applicant changed his demeanor and behavior to match the interviewer’s negative treatment.
Have you ever fallen prey to the self-fulfilling prophecy or confirmation bias, either as the source or target of such
bias? How might we stop the cycle of the self-fulfilling prophecy? Social class stereotypes of individuals tend to
arise when information about the individual is ambiguous. If information is unambiguous, stereotypes do not tend
to arise (Baron et al., 1995).

Figure 3. These children are very young, but they are
already aware of their gender in-group and out-group.
(credit: modification of work by Simone Ramella)
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Review the concepts you’ve learned about prejudice and discrimination in this Crash Course video.
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In-Groups and Out-Groups
As discussed previously in this section, we all belong to a
gender, race, age, and social economic group. These
groups provide a powerful source of our identity and self-
esteem (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). These groups serve as our
in-groups. An in-groupin-group is a group that we identify with or
see ourselves as belonging to. A group that we don’t belong
to, or an out-groupout-group, is a group that we view as
fundamentally different from us. For example, if you are
female, your gender in-group includes all females, and your
gender out-group includes all males (Figure 3). People
often view gender groups as being fundamentally different
from each other in personality traits, characteristics, social
roles, and interests. Because we often feel a strong sense
of belonging and emotional connection to our in-groups, we
develop in-group bias: a preference for our own group over
other groups. This in-group bias can result in prejudice and
discrimination because the out-group is perceived as
different and is less preferred than our in-group.
Despite the group dynamics that seem only to push groups
toward conflict, there are forces that promote reconciliation
between groups: the expression of empathy, of acknowledgment of past suffering on both sides, and the halt of
destructive behaviors.
One function of prejudice is to help us feel good about ourselves and maintain a positive self-concept. This need
to feel good about ourselves extends to our in-groups: We want to feel good and protect our in-groups. We seek
to resolve threats individually and at the in-group level. This often happens by blaming an out-group for the
problem. ScapegoatingScapegoating is the act of blaming an out-group when the in-group experiences frustration or is blocked
from obtaining a goal (Allport, 1954).

GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
ageism:ageism: prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based solely on their age
confirmation bias:confirmation bias: seeking out information that supports our stereotypes while ignoring information that is
inconsistent with our stereotypes
discrimination:discrimination: negative actions toward individuals as a result of their membership in a particular group
homophobia:homophobia: prejudice and discrimination against individuals based solely on their sexual orientation
in-group:in-group: group that we identify with or see ourselves as belonging to
in-group bias:in-group bias: preference for our own group over other groups
out-group:out-group: group that we don’t belong to—one that we view as fundamentally different from us
prejudice:prejudice: negative attitudes and feelings toward individuals based solely on their membership in a particular
group
racism:racism: prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based solely on their race
scapegoating:scapegoating: act of blaming an out-group when the in-group experiences frustration or is blocked from
obtaining a goal
self-fulfilling prophecy:self-fulfilling prophecy: treating stereotyped group members according to our biased expectations only to have
this treatment influence the individual to act according to our stereotypic expectations, thus confirming our
stereotypic beliefs
sexism:sexism: prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based on their sex
stereotype:stereotype: negative beliefs about individuals based solely on their membership in a group, regardless of their
individual characteristics
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Give an example when you felt that someone was prejudiced against you. What do you think caused
this attitude? Did this person display any discrimination behaviors and, if so, how?
• Give an example when you felt prejudiced against someone else. How did you discriminate against
them? Why do you think you did this?
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AGGRESSION
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe aggression and bullying

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Figure 1. Human males and nonhuman male primates
endeavor to gain and display dominance over other
males, as demonstrated in the behavior of these
monkeys. (credit: “Arcadiuš”/Flickr)
Aggression
Humans engage in aggressionaggression when they seek to cause harm or pain to another person. Aggression takes two
forms depending on one’s motives: hostile or instrumental. Hostile aggressionHostile aggression is motivated by feelings of anger
with intent to cause pain; a fight in a bar with a stranger is an example of hostile aggression. In contrast,
instrumental aggressioninstrumental aggression is motivated by achieving a goal and does not necessarily involve intent to cause pain
(Berkowitz, 1993); a contract killer who murders for hire displays instrumental aggression.
There are many different theories as to why aggression exists. Some researchers argue that aggression serves
an evolutionary function (Buss, 2004). Men are more likely than women to show aggression (Wilson & Daly,
1985). From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, human male aggression, like that in nonhuman primates,
likely serves to display dominance over other males, both to protect a mate and to perpetuate the male’s genes
(Figure 1). Sexual jealousy is part of male aggression; males endeavor to make sure their mates are not
copulating with other males, thus ensuring their own paternity of the female’s offspring. Although aggression
provides an obvious evolutionary advantage for men, women also engage in aggression. Women typically display
instrumental forms of aggression, with their aggression serving as a means to an end (Dodge & Schwartz, 1997).
For example, women may express their aggression covertly, for example, by communication that impairs the
social standing of another person. Another theory that explains one of the functions of human aggression is
frustration aggression theoryfrustration aggression theory (Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer, & Sears, 1939). This theory states that when humans
are prevented from achieving an important goal, they become frustrated and aggressive.
Bullying
A modern form of aggression is bullying. As you learn in
your study of child development, socializing and playing
with other children is beneficial for children’s psychological
development. However, as you may have experienced as a
child, not all play behavior has positive outcomes. Some
children are aggressive and want to play roughly. Other
children are selfish and do not want to share toys. One form
of negative social interactions among children that has
become a national concern is bullying. BullyingBullying is repeated
negative treatment of another person, often an adolescent,
over time (Olweus, 1993). A one-time incident in which one
child hits another child on the playground would not be
considered bullying: Bullying is repeated behavior. The
negative treatment typical in bullying is the attempt to inflict
harm, injury, or humiliation, and bullying can include
physical or verbal attacks. However, bullying doesn’t have
to be physical or verbal, it can be psychological. Research finds gender differences in how girls and boys bully
others (American Psychological Association, 2010; Olweus, 1993). Boys tend to engage in direct, physical
aggression such as physically harming others. Girls tend to engage in indirect, social forms of aggression such as
spreading rumors, ignoring, or socially isolating others. Based on what you have learned about child development
and social roles, why do you think boys and girls display different types of bullying behavior?
Bullying involves three parties: the bully, the victim, and witnesses or bystanders. The act of bullying involves an
imbalance of power with the bully holding more power—physically, emotionally, and/or socially over the victim.
The experience of bullying can be positive for the bully, who may enjoy a boost to self-esteem. However, there
are several negative consequences of bullying for the victim, and also for the bystanders. How do you think
bullying negatively impacts adolescents? Being the victim of bullying is associated with decreased mental health,
including experiencing anxiety and depression (APA, 2010). Victims of bullying may underperform in schoolwork
(Bowen, 2011). Bullying also can result in the victim committing suicide (APA, 2010). How might bullying
negatively affect witnesses?
Although there is not one single personality profile for who becomes a bully and who becomes a victim of bullying
(APA, 2010), researchers have identified some patterns in children who are at a greater risk of being bullied
(Olweus, 1993): Children who are emotionally reactive are at a greater risk for being bullied. Bullies may be
attracted to children who get upset easily because the bully can quickly get an emotional reaction from them.

Figure 2. Because cyberbullying is not physical in nature,
cyberbullies and their victims are most often female;
however, there is much evidence that male homosexuals
are frequently victims of cyberbullying as well (Hinduja &
Patchin, 2011). (credit: Steven Depolo)
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch this Crash Course video to learn about the ideas of aggression and altruism. You can also read more
about research on aggression and violence at the Noba Psychology website.
An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
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An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
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TRY ITTRY IT
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Children who are different from others are likely to be targeted for bullying. Children who are overweight,
cognitively impaired, or racially or ethnically different from their peer group may be at higher risk. Gay, lesbian,
bisexual, and transgender teens are at very high risk of being bullied and hurt due to their sexual orientation.
Cyberbullying
With the rapid growth of technology, and widely available
mobile technology and social networking media, a new form
of bullying has emerged: cyberbullying (Hoff & Mitchell,
2009). CyberbullyingCyberbullying, like bullying, is repeated behavior that
is intended to cause psychological or emotional harm to
another person. What is unique about cyberbullying is that it
is typically covert, concealed, done in private, and the bully
can remain anonymous. This anonymity gives the bully
power, and the victim may feel helpless, unable to escape
the harassment, and unable to retaliate (Spears, Slee,
Owens, & Johnson, 2009).
Cyberbullying can take many forms, including harassing a
victim by spreading rumors, creating a website defaming
the victim, and ignoring, insulting, laughing at, or teasing
the victim (Spears et al., 2009). In cyberbullying, it is more
common for girls to be the bullies and victims because
cyberbullying is nonphysical and is a less direct form of
bullying (Figure 2) (Hoff & Mitchell, 2009). Interestingly, girls
who become cyberbullies often have been the victims of
cyberbullying at one time (Vandebosch & Van Cleemput,
2009). The effects of cyberbullying are just as harmful as traditional bullying and include the victim feeling
frustration, anger, sadness, helplessness, powerlessness, and fear. Victims will also experience lower self-
esteem (Hoff & Mitchell, 2009; Spears et al., 2009). Furthermore, recent research suggests that both
cyberbullying victims and perpetrators are more likely to experience suicidal ideation, and they are more likely to
attempt suicide than individuals who have no experience with cyberbullying (Hinduja & Patchin, 2010). What
features of technology make cyberbullying easier and perhaps more accessible to young adults? What can
parents, teachers, and social networking websites, like Facebook, do to prevent cyberbullying?

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
aggression:aggression: seeking to cause harm or pain to another person
bullying:bullying: a person, often an adolescent, being treated negatively repeatedly and over time
bystander effect:bystander effect: situation in which a witness or bystander does not volunteer to help a victim or person in
distress
cyberbullying:cyberbullying: repeated behavior that is intended to cause psychological or emotional harm to another person
and that takes place online
diffusion of responsibility:diffusion of responsibility: tendency for no one in a group to help because the responsibility to help is spread
throughout the group
hostile aggression:hostile aggression: aggression motivated by feelings of anger with intent to cause pain
instrumental aggression:instrumental aggression: aggression motivated by achieving a goal and does not necessarily involve intent to
cause pain
An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=318
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
Have you ever experienced or witnessed bullying or cyberbullying? How did it make you feel? What did you do
about it? After reading this section would you have done anything differently?
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PUTTING IT TOGETHER: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
In this module, you learned to
• recognize aspects of social psychology, including the fundamental attribution error, biases, social
roles, and social norms, in your daily life
• describe how attitudes can be changed through cognitive dissonance and persuasion
• explain how conformity, obedience, groupthink, social facilitation, social loafing, and altruism relate to
group behavior

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• explain prejudice, discrimination, and aggression
In this module, you learned about a wide spectrum of human behavior and interaction. Social psychology is
fascinating, sometimes shocking (both figuratively and literally!), and ever-evolving. You learned about the way
we attribute our own and other people’s behavior to either situational or dispositional factors and how we have a
tendency to fall prey to the fundamental attribution error. We are easily influence by those around us, whether it
be through persuasion or a desire to conform or obey. We also behave differently in groups, and sometimes show
prejudices or discriminate against those who aren’t like us.
Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, recently wrote a
book called Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior, in which he examines our desire to fit in,
yet not be like everyone else. He was interviewed by Ilaria Schlitz for The Psych Report. Read their interview
below and consider how Berger’s responses fit in with the things you learned about in this module.
Ilaria Schlitz:Ilaria Schlitz:
You begin yourYou begin your
book by talkingbook by talking
about yourabout your
research onresearch on
BMW ownersBMW owners
and how theyand how they
perceiveperceive
themselves andthemselves and
others. Whatothers. What
were the originswere the origins
of the research?of the research?
Jonah Berger:Jonah Berger:
The research
actually started
with an
anecdote. I was
in Washington,
DC visiting my
family and
talking to my
father. I was
telling him I was
doing some
research on social influence and he was lamenting social influence’s affect on the world. He was saying, “Oh
God, in DC, lawyers are all so heavily influenced. When they become partner, the first thing they do is buy a new
BMW.” What I pointed out is that that’s true Dad, but you’re a DC lawyer, you drive a BMW. He said, “No, but I
drive a blue one and they all drive gray ones.”
Sometimes we see influence—we readily see our peers doing the same thing as the folks next to them. Yet
there’s one place where we often fail to see influence, and that is ourselves. Often because it has a nonconscious
effect on our behavior, we are not aware that it is influencing us. The effect that it has is not as simplistic as we
might think. We often tend to think of influence as conforming or imitation, people doing the same thing as others.
That happens sometimes, but just as often people differentiate themselves. People don’t just do one or the other,
they do both simultaneously. They want to be optimally distinct, or similar but different. Invisible Influence is all
about how sometimes seemingly conflicting motivations shape our behavior, and how by understanding the
science we can all live healthier and happier lives.
IS: Is social influence really inevitable or is it possible to overcome it by being aware of the ways we areIS: Is social influence really inevitable or is it possible to overcome it by being aware of the ways we are
influenced?influenced?
JB:JB: The most interesting question is not if we can correct against it, but should we correct against it. We definitely
have this notion that being influenced is bad, and indeed there are cases where being influenced is bad, but there

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are just as many cases where being influenced is helpful. Imagine that you had to pick where to go out to eat or
what movie to watch without talking to anyone else—you couldn’t use online reviews, you couldn’t ask your
friends. Life would be a lot harder. Others often provide useful information that helps us make better and faster
decisions. They also help us get motivated. Comparing ourselves to others encourages us to work harder and
perform better. Just as influence can hurt, it can also help. The reason I wrote the book was really to help people
be aware of influence. If we understand what influence is and when it’s happening, we can try to take advantage
of its upsides and avoid its down sides
IS: In your book, you mention the role of influence in politics. What are some of the ways that you’ve noticedIS: In your book, you mention the role of influence in politics. What are some of the ways that you’ve noticed
social influence being used in politics lately?social influence being used in politics lately?
JB:JB: I was recently working with a group that wanted conservatives to support clean energy. If you think about it,
conservatives should love this type of energy. It’s cheaper, which is something conservatives like. It reduces
reliance on foreign oil, which helps national security. Conservatives should support clean energy and yet they
don’t. When you ask conservatives why, one politician said it very nicely, he said, “Clean energy? That’s
something Al Gore supports and if Al Gore supports something then it’s probably not for me.”
Even something like politics, where we think it’s all about the issues, what something signals or communicates
has a big impact on behavior. There’s a very nice body of research showing that party often matters more than
policy. If you’re looking at a particular policy, how you vote on that policy depends almost entirely on whether you
think that policy is supported by your party or the opposite party. Even in important decisions such as how we
vote, others have an impact on our decisions.
IS: How do companies take advantage of the extent to which social influence affects what people buy? Is there aIS: How do companies take advantage of the extent to which social influence affects what people buy? Is there a
company that comes to mind that harnesses social influence in a particularly positive way?company that comes to mind that harnesses social influence in a particularly positive way?
JB:JB: It’s not just companies using influence to sell stuff. Movember [has] done a great job of using social influence
to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for men’s cancers. Donations are usually a private behavior, people have
no idea what someone’s donating to. Because of that, we can’t follow suit. We have no idea what they’re doing,
so we can’t imitate their behavior. Movember came along and said let’s make a public signal of an otherwise
private act. You’re not just donating money, you’re wearing a mustache. Because you’re wearing a mustache, it’s
easier for people to see that you donated and as a result other people are more likely to donate. Whether we’re
buying a car because our neighbor bought one recently, or we’re supporting a cause because we can tell that
people are doing it, companies and organizations that make behavior visible can harness influence to get their
message to catch on.
IS: What are some ways that individuals can harness social influence to make positive changes in their own lives?IS: What are some ways that individuals can harness social influence to make positive changes in their own lives?
JB:JB: Any time we’re trying to achieve something, whether we’re trying to lose weight, exercise more, put in extra
hours at the office, peers are a powerful motivating force. We did some research showing that NBA basketball
teams are actually more likely to win when they are behind, but just by a little, because that gap causes people to
be motivated and try harder. If you’re trying to lose weight for example, rather than just doing it by yourself, pair
up with someone else and say “Hey, who can lose 15 pounds faster?” Or if you’re trying to run faster or train
harder, rather than training at home, work out at the gym where other people are around. Running on a treadmill
next to someone, rather than far away, will actually motivate you to work harder. Social facilitation can increase
performance and encourage us to do better. Rather than trying to control or motivate our behavior by ourselves,
others are often a better way to do it.
IS: Is there anything else you’d like to add?IS: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
JB:JB: These motivations often don’t live on their own. We often think about conforming and imitation and then we
think about differentiation and uniqueness, but these two things often work in concert. We want to be similar but
different. We want to be, in some sense, optimally distinct. It’s a little bit like Goldilocks. I call it the Goldilocks
effect, where too similar is bad—we don’t want to be the same as everybody else—but too different is also
bad—we don’t want to stand out and have no one else be like us. We’re trying to walk the line between being
similar and different—being part of a group, feeling kinship, feeling support and validation for our choices, but also
feeling unique and special by differentiating ourselves from the group.

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DISCUSSION: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Thinking about Social Psychology
STEP 1STEP 1: In a post of at least 200 words, respond to ONE of the questions below:
1. Do you ever try to persuade friends or family members to do something? How do you try to persuade
them? How do they try to persuade you? Give specific examples.
2. If you were a social psychologist, what would you want to research? Why? How would you go about it?
3. If you were a college professor, what would you do to increase the success of in-class learning teams?
Consider what you learned about group behavior in this module.
4. Have you ever been part of a group that made a poor decision and, if so, were any of the symptoms of
groupthink present in your group? How could that be prevented?
STEP 2STEP 2: Comment on at least TWO other posts in responses of at least 75 words.
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MODULE 13: STRESS, LIFESTYLE, AND
HEALTH
WHY IT MATTERS: STRESS, LIFESTYLE, AND
HEALTH
Figure 1. Exams are a stressful, but unavoidable, element of college life. (credit “left”: modification of work by Travis K. Mendoza;
credit “center”: modification of work by “albertogp123”/Flickr; credit “right”: modification of work by Jeffrey Pioquinto, SJ)
Few would deny that today’s college students are under a lot of pressure. In addition to many usual stresses and
strains incidental to the college experience (e.g., exams, term papers, and the dreaded freshman 15), students
today are faced with increased college tuitions, burdensome debt, and difficulty finding employment after
graduation. A significant population of non-traditional college students may face additional stressors, such as
raising children or holding down a full-time job while working toward a degree.
Of course, life is filled with many additional challenges beyond those incurred in college or the workplace. We
might have concerns with financial security, difficulties with friends or neighbors, family responsibilities, and we
may not have enough time to do the things we want to do. Even minor hassles—losing things, traffic jams, and
loss of internet service—all involve pressure and demands that can make life seem like a struggle and that can
compromise our sense of well-being. That is, all can be stressful in some way.
Scientific interest in stress, including how we adapt and cope, has been longstanding in psychology; indeed, after
nearly a century of research on the topic, much has been learned and many insights have been developed. This
module examines stress and highlights our current understanding of the phenomenon, including its psychological
and physiological natures, its causes and consequences, and the steps we can take to master stress rather than
become its victim.
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STRESS
What you’ll learn to do: describe stress, its impact on the body, and
identify common stressors
Stress is a process whereby an individual perceives and responds to events appraised as overwhelming or
threatening to one’s well-being. The scientific study of how stress and emotional factors impact health and well-
being is called health psychologyhealth psychology, a field devoted to studying the general impact of psychological factors on
health. While there are circumstances in which stress can be good, we know that stress can have serious
negative consequences on the body.
Stressors can be chronic (long term) or acute (short term), and can include traumatic events, significant life
changes, daily hassles, and situations in which people are frequently exposed to challenging and unpleasant
events. Many potential stressors include events or situations that require us to make changes in our lives, such as
a divorce or moving to a new residence. Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe developed the Social Readjustment
Rating Scale (SRRS) to measure stress by assigning a number of life change units to life events that typically
require some adjustment, including positive events. Although the SRRS has been criticized on a number of
grounds, extensive research has shown that the accumulation of many LCUs is associated with increased risk of
illness. Many potential stressors also include daily hassles, which are minor irritations and annoyances that can
build up over time. In addition, jobs that are especially demanding, offer little control over one’s working
environment, or involve unfavorable working conditions can lead to job strain, thereby setting the stage for job
burnout.

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LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe various definitions of stress, including the difference between stimulus-based and response-
based stress and good stress and bad stress
• Describe the contributions of Walter Cannon (fight or flight) and Hans Selye (general adaptation
syndrome) to the stress research field
• Explain what occurs in the sympathetic nervous system, and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal
system during stress
What is Stress?
The term stressstress as it relates to the human condition first emerged in scientific literature in the 1930s, but it did not
enter the popular vernacular until the 1970s (Lyon, 2012). Today, we often use the term loosely in describing a
variety of unpleasant feeling states; for example, we often say we are stressed out when we feel frustrated, angry,
conflicted, overwhelmed, or fatigued. Despite the widespread use of the term, stress is a fairly vague concept that
is difficult to define with precision.
Researchers have had a difficult time agreeing on an acceptable definition of stress. Some have conceptualized
stress as a demanding or threatening event or situation (e.g., a high-stress job, overcrowding, and long commutes
to work). Such conceptualizations are known as stimulus-based definitions because they characterize stress as a
stimulus that causes certain reactions. Stimulus-based definitions of stress are problematic, however, because
they fail to recognize that people differ in how they view and react to challenging life events and situations. For
example, a conscientious student who has studied diligently all semester would likely experience less stress
during final exams week than would a less responsible, unprepared student.
Others have conceptualized stress in ways that emphasize the physiological responses that occur when faced
with demanding or threatening situations (e.g., increased arousal). These conceptualizations are referred to as
response-based definitions because they describe stress as a response to environmental conditions. For
example, the endocrinologist Hans Selye, a famous stress researcher, once defined stress as the “response of
the body to any demand, whether it is caused by, or results in, pleasant or unpleasant conditions” (Selye, 1976, p.
74). Selye’s definition of stress is response-based in that it conceptualizes stress chiefly in terms of the body’s
physiological reaction to any demand that is placed on it. Neither stimulus-based nor response-based definitions
provide a complete definition of stress. Many of the physiological reactions that occur when faced with demanding
situations (e.g., accelerated heart rate) can also occur in response to things that most people would not consider
to be genuinely stressful, such as receiving unanticipated good news: an unexpected promotion or raise.
A useful way to conceptualize stress is to view it as a process whereby an individual perceives and responds to
events that he appraises as overwhelming or threatening to his well-being (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). A critical
element of this definition is that it emphasizes the importance of how we appraise—that is, judge—demanding or
threatening events (often referred to as stressorsstressors); these appraisals, in turn, influence our reactions to such
events. Two kinds of appraisals of a stressor are especially important in this regard: primary and secondary
appraisals. A primary appraisalprimary appraisal involves judgment about the degree of potential harm or threat to well-being that a
stressor might entail. A stressor would likely be appraised as a threat if one anticipates that it could lead to some
kind of harm, loss, or other negative consequence; conversely, a stressor would likely be appraised as a
challenge if one believes that it carries the potential for gain or personal growth. For example, an employee who is
promoted to a leadership position would likely perceive the promotion as a much greater threat if she believed the
promotion would lead to excessive work demands than if she viewed it as an opportunity to gain new skills and
grow professionally. Similarly, a college student on the cusp of graduation may face the change as a threat or a
challenge (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Graduating from college and entering the
workforce can be viewed as either a threat (loss of
financial support) or a challenge (opportunity for
independence and growth). (credit: Timothy Zanker)
The perception of a threat triggers a secondary appraisalsecondary appraisal:
judgment of the options available to cope with a stressor, as
well as perceptions of how effective such options will be
(Lyon, 2012) (Figure 2). As you may recall from what you
learned about self-efficacy, an individual’s belief in his
ability to complete a task is important (Bandura, 1994). A
threat tends to be viewed as less catastrophic if one
believes something can be done about it (Lazarus &
Folkman, 1984). Imagine that two middle-aged women,
Robin and Maria, perform breast self-examinations one
morning and each woman notices a lump on the lower
region of her left breast. Although both women view the
breast lump as a potential threat (primary appraisal), their
secondary appraisals differ considerably. In considering the
breast lump, some of the thoughts racing through Robin’s
mind are, “Oh my God, I could have breast cancer! What if
the cancer has spread to the rest of my body and I cannot
recover? What if I have to go through chemotherapy? I’ve
heard that experience is awful! What if I have to quit my
job? My husband and I won’t have enough money to pay
the mortgage. Oh, this is just horrible…I can’t deal with it!”
On the other hand, Maria thinks, “Hmm, this may not be
good. Although most times these things turn out to be benign, I need to have it checked out. If it turns out to be
breast cancer, there are doctors who can take care of it because the medical technology today is quite advanced.
I’ll have a lot of different options, and I’ll be just fine.” Clearly, Robin and Maria have different outlooks on what
might turn out to be a very serious situation: Robin seems to think that little could be done about it, whereas Maria
believes that, worst case scenario, a number of options that are likely to be effective would be available. As such,
Robin would clearly experience greater stress than would Maria.

Figure 2. When encountering a stressor, a person judges its potential threat (primary appraisal) and then determines if effective
options are available to manage the situation. Stress is likely to result if a stressor is perceived as extremely threatening or
threatening with few or no effective coping options available.
To be sure, some stressors are inherently more stressful than others in that they are more threatening and leave
less potential for variation in cognitive appraisals (e.g., objective threats to one’s health or safety). Nevertheless,
appraisal will still play a role in augmenting or diminishing our reactions to such events (Everly & Lating, 2002).

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TRY ITTRY IT
If a person appraises an event as harmful and believes that the demands imposed by the event exceed the
available resources to manage or adapt to it, the person will subjectively experience a state of stress. In contrast,
if one does not appraise the same event as harmful or threatening, she is unlikely to experience stress. According
to this definition, environmental events trigger stress reactions by the way they are interpreted and the meanings
they are assigned. In short, stress is largely in the eye of the beholder: it’s not so much what happens to you as it
is how you respond (Selye, 1976).
Good Stress?
Although stress carries a negative connotation, at times it may be of some benefit. Stress can motivate us to do
things in our best interests, such as study for exams, visit the doctor regularly, exercise, and perform to the best
of our ability at work. Indeed, Selye (1974) pointed out that not all stress is harmful. He argued that stress can
sometimes be a positive, motivating force that can improve the quality of our lives. This kind of stress, which
Selye called eustresseustress (from the Greek eu = “good”), is a good kind of stress associated with positive feelings,
optimal health, and performance. A moderate amount of stress can be beneficial in challenging situations. For
example, athletes may be motivated and energized by pregame stress, and students may experience similar
beneficial stress before a major exam. Indeed, research shows that moderate stress can enhance both immediate
and delayed recall of educational material. Male participants in one study who memorized a scientific text
passage showed improved memory of the passage immediately after exposure to a mild stressor as well as one
day following exposure to the stressor (Hupbach & Fieman, 2012).
Increasing one’s level of stress will cause performance to change in a predictable way. As shown in Figure 3, as
stress increases, so do performance and general well-being (eustress); when stress levels reach an optimal level
(the highest point of the curve), performance reaches its peak. A person at this stress level is colloquially at the
top of his game, meaning he feels fully energized, focused, and can work with minimal effort and maximum
efficiency. But when stress exceeds this optimal level, it is no longer a positive force—it becomes excessive and
debilitating, or what Selye termed distressdistress (from the Latin dis = “bad”). People who reach this level of stress feel
burned out; they are fatigued, exhausted, and their performance begins to decline. If the stress remains
excessive, health may begin to erode as well (Everly & Lating, 2002).

Figure 3. As the stress level increases from low to
moderate, so does performance (eustress). At the optimal
level (the peak of the curve), performance has reached its
peak. If stress exceeds the optimal level, it will reach the
distress region, where it will become excessive and
debilitating, and performance will decline (Everly & Lating,
2002).
Figure 4. Nearly half of U.S. adults indicated that their
stress levels have increased over the last five years
(Neelakantan, 2013).
The Prevalence of Stress
Stress is everywhere and, as shown in Figure 4, it has been
on the rise over the last several years. Each of us is
acquainted with stress—some are more familiar than
others. In many ways, stress feels like a load you just can’t
carry—a feeling you experience when, for example, you
have to drive somewhere in a crippling blizzard, when you
wake up late the morning of an important job interview,
when you run out of money before the next pay period, and
before taking an important exam for which you realize you
are not fully prepared.
Stress is an experience that evokes a variety of responses, including those that are physiological (e.g.,
accelerated heart rate, headaches, or gastrointestinal problems), cognitive (e.g., difficulty concentrating or making
decisions), and behavioral (e.g., drinking alcohol, smoking, or taking actions directed at eliminating the cause of
the stress). Although stress can be positive at times, it can have deleterious health implications, contributing to
the onset and progression of a variety of physical illnesses and diseases (Cohen & Herbert, 1996).
The scientific study of how stress and other psychological factors impact health falls within the realm of healthhealth
psychologypsychology, a subfield of psychology devoted to understanding the importance of psychological influences on
health, illness, and how people respond when they become ill (Taylor, 1999). Health psychology emerged as a
discipline in the 1970s, a time during which there was increasing awareness of the role behavioral and lifestyle
factors play in the development of illnesses and diseases (Straub, 2007). In addition to studying the connection
between stress and illness, health psychologists investigate issues such as why people make certain lifestyle
choices (e.g., smoking or eating unhealthy food despite knowing the potential adverse health implications of such
behaviors). Health psychologists also design and investigate the effectiveness of interventions aimed at changing
unhealthy behaviors. Perhaps one of the more fundamental tasks of health psychologists is to identify which
groups of people are especially at risk for negative health outcomes, based on psychological or behavioral
factors. For example, measuring differences in stress levels among demographic groups and how these levels
change over time can help identify populations who may have an increased risk for illness or disease.
Figure 5 depicts the results of three national surveys in which several thousand individuals from different
demographic groups completed a brief stress questionnaire; the surveys were administered in 1983, 2006, and
2009 (Cohen & Janicki-Deverts, 2012). All three surveys demonstrated higher stress in women than in men.
Unemployed individuals reported high levels of stress in all three surveys, as did those with less education and
income; retired persons reported the lowest stress levels. However, from 2006 to 2009 the greatest increase in
stress levels occurred among men, Whites, people aged 45–64, college graduates, and those with full-time
employment. One interpretation of these findings is that concerns surrounding the 2008–2009 economic downturn
(e.g., threat of or actual job loss and substantial loss of retirement savings) may have been especially stressful to
White, college-educated, employed men with limited time remaining in their working careers.

ose with an income of $25,001 to $35,000 steadily increased from 14 in 1983 to 16 in 2006 to a little under 17 in
2009. The mean stress scores for those with an income of $35,001–$50,000 steadily increased from a little under
13 in 1983 to a little over 15 in 2006 to a little over 16 in 2009. The mean stress scores for those with an income
of $50,001–$75,000 increased rapidly from 12 in 1983 to a little under 15 in 2006, then slightly increased to a little
over 15 in 2009. The mean stress scores for those with an income of $75,001 or more steadily increased from 12
in 1983 to a little under 13 in 2006 to a little over 14 in 2009.” width=”975″ height=”914″ data-media-type=”image/
jpeg”>
Figure 5. The charts above, adapted from Cohen & Janicki-Deverts (2012), depict the mean stress level scores among different
demographic groups during the years 1983, 2006, and 2009. Across categories of sex, age, race, education level, employment
status, and income, stress levels generally show a marked increase over this quarter-century time span.
TRY ITTRY IT

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Figure 6. Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon first
articulated and named the fight-or-flight response, the
nervous system’s sympathetic response to a significant
stressor.
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Think of a time in which you and others you know (family members, friends, and classmates)
experienced an event that some viewed as threatening and others viewed as challenging. What were
some of the differences in the reactions of those who experienced the event as threatening compared
to those who viewed the event as challenging? Why do you think there were differences in how these
individuals judged the same event?
Early Contributions to the Study of Stress
As previously stated, scientific interest in stress goes back nearly a century. One of the early pioneers in the study
of stress was Walter Cannon, an eminent American physiologist at Harvard Medical School (Figure 6). In the
early part of the 20th century, Cannon was the first to identify the body’s physiological reactions to stress.
Cannon and the Fight-or-Flight
Response
Imagine that you are hiking in the beautiful mountains of
Colorado on a warm and sunny spring day. At one point
during your hike, a large, frightening-looking black bear
appears from behind a stand of trees and sits about 50
yards from you. The bear notices you, sits up, and begins to
lumber in your direction. In addition to thinking, “This is
definitely not good,” a constellation of physiological
reactions begins to take place inside you. Prompted by a
deluge of epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine
(noradrenaline) from your adrenal glands, your pupils begin
to dilate. Your heart starts to pound and speeds up, you
begin to breathe heavily and perspire, you get butterflies in
your stomach, and your muscles become tense, preparing
you to take some kind of direct action. Cannon proposed
that this reaction, which he called the fight-or-flightfight-or-flight
responseresponse, occurs when a person experiences very strong
emotions—especially those associated with a perceived
threat (Cannon, 1932). During the fight-or-flight response,
the body is rapidly aroused by activation of both the
sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine system (Figure 7). This arousal helps prepare the person to either
fight or flee from a perceived threat.

Figure 7. Fight or flight is a physiological response to a stressor.
Figure 8. Hans Selye specialized in research about
stress. In 2009, his native Hungary honored his work with
this stamp, released in conjunction with the 2nd annual
World Conference on Stress.
According to Cannon, the fight-or-flight response is a built-in mechanism that assists in maintaining
homeostasis—an internal environment in which physiological variables such as blood pressure, respiration,
digestion, and temperature are stabilized at levels optimal for survival. Thus, Cannon viewed the fight-or-flight
response as adaptive because it enables us to adjust internally and externally to changes in our surroundings,
which is helpful in species survival.
Selye and the General Adaptation Syndrome
Another important early contributor to the stress field was
Hans Selye, mentioned earlier. He would eventually
become one of the world’s foremost experts in the study of
stress (Figure 8). As a young assistant in the biochemistry
department at McGill University in the 1930s, Selye was
engaged in research involving sex hormones in rats.
Although he was unable to find an answer for what he was
initially researching, he incidentally discovered that when
exposed to prolonged negative stimulation
(stressorsstressors)—such as extreme cold, surgical injury,
excessive muscular exercise, and shock—the rats showed
signs of adrenal enlargement, thymus and lymph node
shrinkage, and stomach ulceration. Selye realized that
these responses were triggered by a coordinated series of
physiological reactions that unfold over time during
continued exposure to a stressor. These physiological reactions were nonspecific, which means that regardless of
the type of stressor, the same pattern of reactions would occur. What Selye discovered was the general
adaptation syndrome, the body’s nonspecific physiological response to stress.
The general adaptation syndrome, shown in Figure 9, consists of three stages: (1) alarm reaction, (2) stage of
resistance, and (3) stage of exhaustion (Selye, 1936; 1976). Alarm reactionAlarm reaction describes the body’s immediate
reaction upon facing a threatening situation or emergency, and it is roughly analogous to the fight-or-flight
response described by Cannon. During an alarm reaction, you are alerted to a stressor, and your body alarms

Figure 9. The three stages of Selye’s general adaptation syndrome are shown in this graph. Prolonged stress ultimately results in
exhaustion.
you with a cascade of physiological reactions that provide you with the energy to manage the situation. A person
who wakes up in the middle of the night to discover her house is on fire, for example, is experiencing an alarm
reaction.
If exposure to a stressor is prolonged, the organism will enter the stage of resistancestage of resistance. During this stage, the initial
shock of alarm reaction has worn off and the body has adapted to the stressor. Nevertheless, the body also
remains on alert and is prepared to respond as it did during the alarm reaction, although with less intensity. For
example, suppose a child who went missing is still missing 72 hours later. Although the parents would obviously
remain extremely disturbed, the magnitude of physiological reactions would likely have diminished over the 72
intervening hours due to some adaptation to this event.
If exposure to a stressor continues over a longer period of time, the stage of exhaustionstage of exhaustion ensues. At this stage, the
person is no longer able to adapt to the stressor: the body’s ability to resist becomes depleted as physical wear
takes its toll on the body’s tissues and organs. As a result, illness, disease, and other permanent damage to the
body—even death—may occur. If a missing child still remained missing after three months, the long-term stress
associated with this situation may cause a parent to literally faint with exhaustion at some point or even to develop
a serious and irreversible illness.
In short, Selye’s general adaptation syndrome suggests that stressors tax the body via a three-phase
process—an initial jolt, subsequent readjustment, and a later depletion of all physical resources—that ultimately
lays the groundwork for serious health problems and even death. It should be pointed out, however, that this
model is a response-based conceptualization of stress, focusing exclusively on the body’s physical responses
while largely ignoring psychological factors such as appraisal and interpretation of threats. Nevertheless, Selye’s
model has had an enormous impact on the field of stress because it offers a general explanation for how stress
can lead to physical damage and, thus, disease. As we shall discuss later, prolonged or repeated stress has been
implicated in development of a number of disorders such as hypertension and coronary artery disease.

Figure 10. This diagram shows the functioning of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. The hypothalamus activates the
pituitary gland, which in turn activates the adrenal glands, increasing their secretion of cortisol.
In short bursts, this process can have some favorable effects, such as providing extra energy, improving immune
system functioning temporarily, and decreasing pain sensitivity. However, extended release of cortisol—as would
happen with prolonged or chronic stress—often comes at a high price. High levels of cortisol have been shown to
produce a number of harmful effects. For example, increases in cortisol can significantly weaken our immune
system (Glaser & Kiecolt-Glaser, 2005), and high levels are frequently observed among depressed individuals
(Geoffroy, Hertzman, Li, & Power, 2013). In summary, a stressful event causes a variety of physiological
reactions that activate the adrenal glands, which in turn release epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol. These
hormones affect a number of bodily processes in ways that prepare the stressed person to take direct action, but
also in ways that may heighten the potential for illness.
When stress is extreme or chronic, it can have profoundly negative consequences. For example, stress often
contributes to the development of certain psychological disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder, major
depressive disorder, and other serious psychiatric conditions. Additionally, we noted earlier that stress is linked to
the development and progression of a variety of physical illnesses and diseases. For example, researchers in one
study found that people injured during the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center disaster or who developed
post-traumatic stress symptoms afterward later suffered significantly elevated rates of heart disease (Jordan,
Miller-Archie, Cone, Morabia, & Stellman, 2011). Another investigation yielded that self-reported stress symptoms
among aging and retired Finnish food industry workers were associated with morbidity 11 years later. This study
also predicted the onset of musculoskeletal, nervous system, and endocrine and metabolic disorders (Salonen,
Arola, Nygård, & Huhtala, 2008). Another study reported that male South Korean manufacturing employees who
reported high levels of work-related stress were more likely to catch the common cold over the next several
months than were those employees who reported lower work-related stress levels (Park et al., 2011). Later, you
will explore the mechanisms through which stress can produce physical illness and disease.

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TRY ITTRY IT
GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
alarm reaction:alarm reaction: first stage of the general adaptation syndrome; characterized as the body’s immediate
physiological reaction to a threatening situation or some other emergency; analogous to the fight-or-flight
response
cortisol:cortisol: stress hormone released by the adrenal glands when encountering a stressor; helps to provide a boost
of energy, thereby preparing the individual to take action
distress:distress: bad form of stress; usually high in intensity; often leads to exhaustion, fatigue, feeling burned out;
associated with erosions in performance and health
eustress:eustress: good form of stress; low to moderate in intensity; associated with positive feelings, as well as optimal
health and performance
fight-or-flight response:fight-or-flight response: set of physiological reactions (increases in blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate,
and sweat) that occur when an individual encounters a perceived threat; these reactions are produced by
activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine system
general adaptation syndrome:general adaptation syndrome: Hans Selye’s three-stage model of the body’s physiological reactions to stress
and the process of stress adaptation: alarm reaction, stage of resistance, and stage of exhaustion
health psychology:health psychology: subfield of psychology devoted to studying psychological influences on health, illness, and
how people respond when they become ill
hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis:hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis: set of structures found in both the limbic system (hypothalamus) and
the endocrine system (pituitary gland and adrenal glands) that regulate many of the body’s physiological
reactions to stress through the release of hormones
primary appraisal:primary appraisal: judgment about the degree of potential harm or threat to well-being that a stressor might
entail
secondary appraisal:secondary appraisal: judgment of options available to cope with a stressor and their potential effectiveness
stage of exhaustion:stage of exhaustion: third stage of the general adaptation syndrome; the body’s ability to resist stress becomes
depleted; illness, disease, and even death may occur
stage of resistance:stage of resistance: second stage of the general adaptation syndrome; the body adapts to a stressor for a
period of time
stress:stress: process whereby an individual perceives and responds to events that one appraises as overwhelming or
threatening to one’s well-being
stressors:stressors: environmental events that may be judged as threatening or demanding; stimuli that initiate the stress
process
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STRESSORS
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe different types of possible stressors, including major life readjustments and the connection
between stressors, job strain, and job burnout
For an individual to experience stress, he must first encounter a potential stressor. In general, stressors can be
placed into one of two broad categories: chronic and acute. Chronic stressors include events that persist over an
extended period of time, such as caring for a parent with dementia, long-term unemployment, or imprisonment.
Acute stressors involve brief focal events that sometimes continue to be experienced as overwhelming well after
the event has ended, such as falling on an icy sidewalk and breaking your leg (Cohen, Janicki-Deverts, & Miller,
2007). Whether chronic or acute, potential stressors come in many shapes and sizes. They can include major
traumatic events, significant life changes, daily hassles, as well as other situations in which a person is regularly
exposed to threat, challenge, or danger.
Traumatic Events
Some stressors involve traumatic events or situations in which a person is exposed to actual or threatened death
or serious injury. Stressors in this category include exposure to military combat, threatened or actual physical
assaults (e.g., physical attacks, sexual assault, robbery, childhood abuse), terrorist attacks, natural disasters
(e.g., earthquakes, floods, hurricanes), and automobile accidents. Men, non-Whites, and individuals in lower
socioeconomic status (SES) groups report experiencing a greater number of traumatic events than do women,
Whites, and individuals in higher SES groups (Hatch & Dohrenwend, 2007). Some individuals who are exposed to
stressors of extreme magnitude develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): a chronic stress reaction
characterized by experiences and behaviors that may include intrusive and painful memories of the stressor
event, jumpiness, persistent negative emotional states, detachment from others, angry outbursts, and avoidance
of reminders of the event (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013).
Life Changes
Most stressors that we encounter are not nearly as intense as the ones described above. Many potential
stressors we face involve events or situations that require us to make changes in our ongoing lives and require
time as we adjust to those changes. Examples include death of a close family member, marriage, divorce, and
moving (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Some fairly typical life events, such as moving,
can be significant stressors. Even when the move is
intentional and positive, the amount of resulting change in
daily life can cause stress. (credit: “Jellaluna”/Flickr)
In the 1960s, psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard
Rahe wanted to examine the link between life stressors and
physical illness, based on the hypothesis that life events
requiring significant changes in a person’s normal life
routines are stressful, whether these events are desirable
or undesirable. They developed the Social ReadjustmentSocial Readjustment
Rating Scale (SRRS)Rating Scale (SRRS), consisting of 43 life events that
require varying degrees of personal readjustment (Holmes
& Rahe, 1967). Many life events that most people would
consider pleasant (e.g., holidays, retirement, marriage) are
among those listed on the SRRS; these are examples of
eustress. Holmes and Rahe also proposed that life events
can add up over time, and that experiencing a cluster of
stressful events increases one’s risk of developing physical
illnesses.
In developing their scale, Holmes and Rahe asked 394
participants to provide a numerical estimate for each of the
43 items; each estimate corresponded to how much
readjustment participants felt each event would require.
These estimates resulted in mean value scores for each
event—often called life change units (LCUs) (Rahe,
McKeen, & Arthur, 1967). The numerical scores ranged from 11 to 100, representing the perceived magnitude of
life change each event entails. Death of a spouse ranked highest on the scale with 100 LCUs, and divorce ranked
second highest with 73 LCUs. In addition, personal injury or illness, marriage, and job termination also ranked
highly on the scale with 53, 50, and 47 LCUs, respectively. Conversely, change in residence (20 LCUs), change
in eating habits (15 LCUs), and vacation (13 LCUs) ranked low on the scale (Table 1). Minor violations of the law
ranked the lowest with 11 LCUs. To complete the scale, participants checked yes for events experienced within
the last 12 months. LCUs for each checked item are totaled for a score quantifying the amount of life change.
Agreement on the amount of adjustment required by the various life events on the SRRS is highly consistent,
even cross-culturally (Holmes & Masuda, 1974).

Table 1. Some Stressors on the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (Holmes & Rahe, 1967)
Life eventLife event Life change unitsLife change units
Death of a close family member 63
Personal injury or illness 53
Dismissal from work 47
Change in financial state 38
Change to different line of work 36
Outstanding personal achievement 28
Beginning or ending school 26
Change in living conditions 25
Change in working hours or conditions 20
Change in residence 20
Change in schools 20
Change in social activities 18
Change in sleeping habits 16
Change in eating habits 15
Minor violation of the law 11
Extensive research has demonstrated that accumulating a high number of life change units within a brief period of
time (one or two years) is related to a wide range of physical illnesses (even accidents and athletic injuries) and
mental health problems (Monat & Lazarus, 1991; Scully, Tosi, & Banning, 2000). In an early demonstration,
researchers obtained LCU scores for U.S. and Norwegian Navy personnel who were about to embark on a six-
month voyage. A later examination of medical records revealed positive (but small) correlations between LCU
scores prior to the voyage and subsequent illness symptoms during the ensuing six-month journey (Rahe, 1974).
In addition, people tend to experience more physical symptoms, such as backache, upset stomach, diarrhea, and
acne, on specific days in which self-reported LCU values are considerably higher than normal, such as the day of
a family member’s wedding (Holmes & Holmes, 1970).
The Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) provides researchers a simple, easy-to-administer way of
assessing the amount of stress in people’s lives, and it has been used in hundreds of studies (Thoits, 2010).
Despite its widespread use, the scale has been subject to criticism. First, many of the items on the SRRS are
vague; for example, death of a close friend could involve the death of a long-absent childhood friend that requires
little social readjustment (Dohrenwend, 2006). In addition, some have challenged its assumption that undesirable
life events are no more stressful than desirable ones (Derogatis & Coons, 1993). However, most of the available
evidence suggests that, at least as far as mental health is concerned, undesirable or negative events are more
strongly associated with poor outcomes (such as depression) than are desirable, positive events (Hatch &
Dohrenwend, 2007). Perhaps the most serious criticism is that the scale does not take into consideration
respondents’ appraisals of the life events it contains. As you recall, appraisal of a stressor is a key element in the
conceptualization and overall experience of stress. Being fired from work may be devastating to some but a
welcome opportunity to obtain a better job for others. The SRRS remains one of the most well-known instruments
in the study of stress, and it is a useful tool for identifying potential stress-related health outcomes (Scully et al.,
2000).

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Go to this site to complete the SRRS scale and determine the total number of LCUs you have experienced over
the last year.
CONNECT THE CONCEPTS: CORRELATIONAL RESEARCHCONNECT THE CONCEPTS: CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH
The Holmes and Rahe Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) uses the correlational research method to
identify the connection between stress and health. That is, respondents’ LCU scores are correlated with the
number or frequency of self-reported symptoms indicating health problems. These correlations are typically
positive—as LCU scores increase, the number of symptoms increase. Consider all the thousands of studies
that have used this scale to correlate stress and illness symptoms: If you were to assign an average correlation
coefficient to this body of research, what would be your best guess? How strong do you think the correlation
coefficient would be? Why can’t the SRRS show a causal relationship between stress and illness? If it were
possible to show causation, do you think stress causes illness or illness causes stress?
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TRY ITTRY IT
Hassles
Potential stressors do not always involve major life events. Daily hasslesDaily hassles—the minor irritations and annoyances
that are part of our everyday lives (e.g., rush hour traffic, lost keys, obnoxious coworkers, inclement weather,
arguments with friends or family)—can build on one another and leave us just as stressed as life change events
(Figure 2) (Kanner, Coyne, Schaefer, & Lazarus, 1981).

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTCS_82.htm

Figure 2. Daily commutes, whether (a) on the road or (b) via public transportation, can be hassles that contribute to our feelings of
everyday stress. (credit a: modification of work by Jeff Turner; credit b: modification of work by “epSos.de”/Flickr)
Researchers have demonstrated that the frequency of daily hassles is actually a better predictor of both physical
and psychological health than are life change units. In a well-known study of San Francisco residents, the
frequency of daily hassles was found to be more strongly associated with physical health problems than were life
change events (DeLongis, Coyne, Dakof, Folkman, & Lazarus, 1982). In addition, daily minor hassles, especially
interpersonal conflicts, often lead to negative and distressed mood states (Bolger, DeLongis, Kessler, & Schilling,
1989). Cyber hassles that occur on social media may represent a new source of stress. In one investigation,
undergraduates who, over a 10-week period, reported greater Facebook-induced stress (e.g., guilt or discomfort
over rejecting friend requests and anger or sadness over being unfriended by another) experienced increased
rates of upper respiratory infections, especially if they had larger social networks (Campisi et al., 2012). Clearly,
daily hassles can add up and take a toll on us both emotionally and physically.
Other Stressors
Stressors can include situations in which one is frequently exposed to challenging and unpleasant events, such
as difficult, demanding, or unsafe working conditions. Although most jobs and occupations can at times be
demanding, some are clearly more stressful than others (Figure 3). For example, most people would likely agree
that a firefighter’s work is inherently more stressful than that of a florist. Equally likely, most would agree that jobs
containing various unpleasant elements, such as those requiring exposure to loud noise (heavy equipment
operator), constant harassment and threats of physical violence (prison guard), perpetual frustration (bus driver in
a major city), or those mandating that an employee work alternating day and night shifts (hotel desk clerk), are
much more demanding—and thus, more stressful—than those that do not contain such elements. Table 2 lists
several occupations and some of the specific stressors associated with those occupations (Sulsky & Smith,
2005).

Figure 3. (a) Police officers and (b) firefighters hold high stress occupations. (credit a: modification of work by Australian Civil-
Military Centre; credit b: modification of work by Andrew Magill)
Table 2. Occupations and Their Related Stressors
OccupationOccupation Stressors Specific to Occupation (Sulsky & Smith, 2005)Stressors Specific to Occupation (Sulsky & Smith, 2005)
Police
officer
physical dangers, excessive paperwork, red tape, dealing with court system, coworker and
supervisor conflict, lack of support from the public
Firefighter uncertainty over whether a serious fire or hazard awaits after an alarm
Social
worker
little positive feedback from jobs or from the public, unsafe work environments, frustration in
dealing with bureaucracy, excessive paperwork, sense of personal responsibility for clients,
work overload
Teacher
Excessive paperwork, lack of adequate supplies or facilities, work overload, lack of positive
feedback, vandalism, threat of physical violence
Nurse
Work overload, heavy physical work, patient concerns (dealing with death and medical
concerns), interpersonal problems with other medical staff (especially physicians)
Emergency
medical
worker
Unpredictable and extreme nature of the job, inexperience
Air traffic
controller
Little control over potential crisis situations and workload, fear of causing an accident, peak
traffic situations, general work environment
Clerical and
secretarial
work
Little control over job mobility, unsupportive supervisors, work overload, lack of perceived
control
Managerial
work
Work overload, conflict and ambiguity in defining the managerial role, difficult work relationships
Although the specific stressors for these occupations are diverse, they seem to share two common denominators:
heavy workload and uncertainty about and lack of control over certain aspects of a job. Both of these factors
contribute to job strainjob strain, a work situation that combines excessive job demands and workload with little discretion

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
A humorous example illustrating lack of supervisory support can be found in the 1999 comedy Office Space.
Follow this link to view a brief excerpt in which a sympathetic character’s insufferable boss makes a last-minute
demand that he “go ahead and come in” to the office on both Saturday and Sunday.
in decision making or job control (Karasek & Theorell, 1990). Clearly, many occupations other than the ones listed
in Table 2 involve at least a moderate amount of job strain in that they often involve heavy workloads and little job
control (e.g., inability to decide when to take breaks). Such jobs are often low-status and include those of factory
workers, postal clerks, supermarket cashiers, taxi drivers, and short-order cooks. Job strain can have adverse
consequences on both physical and mental health; it has been shown to be associated with increased risk of
hypertension (Schnall & Landsbergis, 1994), heart attacks (Theorell et al., 1998), recurrence of heart disease
after a first heart attack (Aboa-Éboulé et al., 2007), significant weight loss or gain (Kivimäki et al., 2006), and
major depressive disorder (Stansfeld, Shipley, Head, & Fuhrer, 2012). A longitudinal study of over 10,000 British
civil servants reported that workers under 50 years old who earlier had reported high job strain were 68% more
likely to later develop heart disease than were those workers under 50 years old who reported little job strain
(Chandola et al., 2008).
Some people who are exposed to chronically stressful work conditions can experience job burnoutjob burnout, which is a
general sense of emotional exhaustion and cynicism in relation to one’s job (Maslach & Jackson, 1981). Job
burnout occurs frequently among those in human service jobs (e.g., social workers, teachers, therapists, and
police officers). Job burnout consists of three dimensions. The first dimension is exhaustion—a sense that one’s
emotional resources are drained or that one is at the end of her rope and has nothing more to give at a
psychological level. Second, job burnout is characterized by depersonalization: a sense of emotional detachment
between the worker and the recipients of his services, often resulting in callous, cynical, or indifferent attitudes
toward these individuals. Third, job burnout is characterized by diminished personal accomplishment, which is the
tendency to evaluate one’s work negatively by, for example, experiencing dissatisfaction with one’s job-related
accomplishments or feeling as though one has categorically failed to influence others’ lives through one’s work.
Job strain appears to be one of the greatest risk factors leading to job burnout, which is most commonly observed
in workers who are older (ages 55–64), unmarried, and whose jobs involve manual labor. Heavy alcohol
consumption, physical inactivity, being overweight, and having a physical or lifetime mental disorder are also
associated with job burnout (Ahola, et al., 2006). In addition, depression often co-occurs with job burnout. One
large-scale study of over 3,000 Finnish employees reported that half of the participants with severe job burnout
had some form of depressive disorder (Ahola et al., 2005). Job burnout is often precipitated by feelings of having
invested considerable energy, effort, and time into one’s work while receiving little in return (e.g., little respect or
support from others or low pay) (Tatris, Peeters, Le Blanc, Schreurs, & Schaufeli, 2001).
As an illustration, consider CharlieAnn, a nursing assistant who worked in a nursing home. CharlieAnn worked
long hours for little pay in a difficult facility. Her supervisor was domineering, unpleasant, and unsupportive; he
was disrespectful of CharlieAnn’s personal time, frequently informing her at the last minute she must work several
additional hours after her shift ended or that she must report to work on weekends. CharlieAnn had very little
autonomy at her job. She had little say in her day-to-day duties and how to perform them, and she was not
permitted to take breaks unless her supervisor explicitly told her that she could. CharlieAnn did not feel as though
her hard work was appreciated, either by supervisory staff or by the residents of the home. She was very unhappy
over her low pay, and she felt that many of the residents treated her disrespectfully.
After several years, CharlieAnn began to hate her job. She dreaded going to work in the morning, and she
gradually developed a callous, hostile attitude toward many of the residents. Eventually, she began to feel as
though she could no longer help the nursing home residents. CharlieAnn’s absenteeism from work increased, and
one day she decided that she had had enough and quit. She now has a job in sales, vowing never to work in
nursing again.
Finally, our close relationships with friends and family—particularly the negative aspects of these
relationships—can be a potent source of stress. Negative aspects of close relationships can include adverse
exchanges and conflicts, lack of emotional support or confiding, and lack of reciprocity. All of these can be
overwhelming, threatening to the relationship, and thus stressful. Such stressors can take a toll both emotionally
and physically. A longitudinal investigation of over 9,000 British civil servants found that those who at one point
had reported the highest levels of negative interactions in their closest relationship were 34% more likely to

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TRY ITTRY IT
GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
daily hassles:daily hassles: minor irritations and annoyances that are part of our everyday lives and are capable of producing
stress
job burnout:job burnout: general sense of emotional exhaustion and cynicism in relation to one’s job; consists of three
dimensions: exhaustion, depersonalization, and sense of diminished personal accomplishment
job strain:job strain: work situation involving the combination of excessive job demands and workload with little decision
making latitude or job control
Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS):Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS): popular scale designed to measure stress; consists of 43 potentially
stressful events, each of which has a numerical value quantifying how much readjustment is associated with
the event
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experience serious heart problems (fatal or nonfatal heart attacks) over a 13–15 year period, compared to those
who experienced the lowest levels of negative interaction (De Vogli, Chandola & Marmot, 2007).
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Suppose you want to design a study to examine the relationship between stress and illness, but you
cannot use the Social Readjustment Rating Scale. How would you go about measuring stress? How
would you measure illness? What would you need to do in order to tell if there is a cause-effect
relationship between stress and illness?
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STRESS AND ILLNESS
What you’ll learn to do: explain the negative physiological
responses to stress
In this section, we will discuss stress and illness. As stress researcher Robert Sapolsky (1998) describes,
stress-related disease emerges, predominantly, out of the fact that we so often activate a physiological
system that has evolved for responding to acute physical emergencies, but we turn it on for months on
end, worrying about mortgages, relationships, and promotions. (p. 6)
The stress response, as noted earlier, consists of a coordinated but complex system of physiological reactions
that are called upon as needed. These reactions are beneficial at times because they prepare us to deal with
potentially dangerous or threatening situations (for example, recall our old friend, the fearsome bear on the trail).
However, health is affected when physiological reactions are sustained, as can happen in response to ongoing
stress. A number of studies have demonstrated that stress weakens the functioning of the immune system.
Cardiovascular disorders are serious medical conditions that have been consistently shown to be influenced by
stress and negative emotions, such as anger, negative affectivity, and depression. Other psychophysiological
disorders that are known to be influenced by stress and emotional factors include asthma and tension headaches.
To watch an overview about the impact that stressors have on the body, watch this optional lecture from MIT’s
John Gabrieli on stress:
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe how stress impacts the functioning of the immune system
• Describe how stress and emotional factors can lead to the development and exacerbation of
cardiovascular disorders
Psychophysiological Disorders
If the reactions that compose the stress response are chronic or if they frequently exceed normal ranges, they can
lead to cumulative wear and tear on the body, in much the same way that running your air conditioner on full blast
all summer will eventually cause wear and tear on it. For example, the high blood pressure that a person under
considerable job strain experiences might eventually take a toll on his heart and set the stage for a heart attack or
heart failure. Also, someone exposed to high levels of the stress hormone cortisol might become vulnerable to
infection or disease because of weakened immune system functioning (McEwen, 1998).

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Robert Sapolsky, a noted Stanford University neurobiologist and professor, has for over 30 years conducted
extensive research on stress, its impact on our bodies, and how psychological tumult can escalate
stress—even in baboons. Here are two videos featuring Dr. Sapolsky: one is regarding killer stress and the
other is an excellent in-depth documentary from National Geographic.
Physical disorders or diseases whose symptoms are brought about or worsened by stress and emotional factors
are called psychophysiological disorderspsychophysiological disorders. The physical symptoms of psychophysiological disorders are real and
they can be produced or exacerbated by psychological factors (hence the psycho and physiological in
psychophysiological). A list of frequently encountered psychophysiological disorders is provided in Table 1.
Table 1. Types of Psychophysiological Disorders (adapted from Everly & Lating, 2002)
Type of Psychophysiological DisorderType of Psychophysiological Disorder ExamplesExamples
Cardiovascular hypertension, coronary heart disease
Gastrointestinal irritable bowel syndrome
Respiratory asthma, allergy
Musculoskeletal low back pain, tension headaches
Skin acne, eczema, psoriasis
In addition to stress itself, emotional upset and certain stressful personality traits have been proposed as potential
contributors to ill health. Franz Alexander (1950), an early-20th-century psychoanalyst and physician, once
postulated that various diseases are caused by specific unconscious conflicts. For example, he linked
hypertension to repressed anger, asthma to separation anxiety, and ulcers to an unconscious desire to “remain in
the dependent infantile situation—to be loved and cared for” (Alexander, 1950, p. 102). Although hypertension
does appear to be linked to anger (as you will learn below), Alexander’s assertions have not been supported by
research. Years later, Friedman and Booth-Kewley (1987), after statistically reviewing 101 studies examining the
link between personality and illness, proposed the existence of disease-prone personality characteristics,
including depression, anger/hostility, and anxiety. Indeed, a study of over 61,000 Norwegians identified
depression as a risk factor for all major disease-related causes of death (Mykletun et al., 2007). In addition,
neuroticism—a personality trait that reflects how anxious, moody, and sad one is—has been identified as a risk
factor for chronic health problems and mortality (Ploubidis & Grundy, 2009).
Before we discuss two kinds of psychophysiological disorders about which a great deal is known: cardiovascular
disorders and asthma, it is necessary to turn our attention to a discussion of the immune system—one of the
major pathways through which stress and emotional factors can lead to illness and disease.
Stress and the Immune System
In a sense, the immune systemimmune system is the body’s surveillance system. It consists of a variety of structures, cells, and
mechanisms that serve to protect the body from invading toxins and microorganisms that can harm or damage
the body’s tissues and organs. When the immune system is working as it should, it keeps us healthy and disease
free by eliminating bacteria, viruses, and other foreign substances that have entered the body (Everly & Lating,
2002).

https://killerstress.stanford.edu/

Immune System Errors
Sometimes, the immune system will function erroneously. For example, sometimes it can go awry by mistaking
your body’s own healthy cells for invaders and repeatedly attacking them. When this happens, the person is said
to have an autoimmune disease, which can affect almost any part of the body. How an autoimmune disease
affects a person depends on what part of the body is targeted. For instance, rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune
disease that affects the joints, results in joint pain, stiffness, and loss of function. Systemic lupus erythematosus,
an autoimmune disease that affects the skin, can result in rashes and swelling of the skin. Grave’s disease, an
autoimmune disease that affects the thyroid gland, can result in fatigue, weight gain, and muscle aches (National
Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases [NIAMS], 2012).
In addition, the immune system may sometimes break down and be unable to do its job. This situation is referred
to as immunosuppressionimmunosuppression, the decreased effectiveness of the immune system. When people experience
immunosuppression, they become susceptible to any number of infections, illness, and diseases. For example,
acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a serious and lethal disease that is caused by human
immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which greatly weakens the immune system by infecting and destroying antibody-
producing cells, thus rendering a person vulnerable to any of a number of opportunistic infections (Powell, 1996).
Stressors and Immune Function
The question of whether stress and negative emotional states can influence immune function has captivated
researchers for over three decades, and discoveries made over that time have dramatically changed the face of
health psychology (Kiecolt-Glaser, 2009). PsychoneuroimmunologyPsychoneuroimmunology is the field that studies how psychological
factors such as stress influence the immune system and immune functioning. The term psychoneuroimmunology
was first coined in 1981, when it appeared as the title of a book that reviewed available evidence for associations
between the brain, endocrine system, and immune system (Zacharie, 2009). To a large extent, this field evolved
from the discovery that there is a connection between the central nervous system and the immune system.
Some of the most compelling evidence for a connection between the brain and the immune system comes from
studies in which researchers demonstrated that immune responses in animals could be classically conditioned
(Everly & Lating, 2002). For example, Ader and Cohen (1975) paired flavored water (the conditioned stimulus)
with the presentation of an immunosuppressive drug (the unconditioned stimulus), causing sickness (an
unconditioned response). Not surprisingly, rats exposed to this pairing developed a conditioned aversion to the
flavored water. However, the taste of the water itself later produced immunosuppression (a conditioned
response), indicating that the immune system itself had been conditioned. Many subsequent studies over the
years have further demonstrated that immune responses can be classically conditioned in both animals and
humans (Ader & Cohen, 2001). Thus, if classical conditioning can alter immunity, other psychological factors
should be capable of altering it as well.
Hundreds of studies involving tens of thousands of participants have tested many kinds of brief and chronic
stressors and their effect on the immune system (e.g., public speaking, medical school examinations,
unemployment, marital discord, divorce, death of spouse, burnout and job strain, caring for a relative with
Alzheimer’s disease, and exposure to the harsh climate of Antarctica). It has been repeatedly demonstrated that
many kinds of stressors are associated with poor or weakened immune functioning (Glaser & Kiecolt-Glaser,
2005; Kiecolt-Glaser, McGuire, Robles, & Glaser, 2002; Segerstrom & Miller, 2004).
When evaluating these findings, it is important to remember that there is a tangible physiological connection
between the brain and the immune system. For example, the sympathetic nervous system innervates immune
organs such as the thymus, bone marrow, spleen, and even lymph nodes (Maier, Watkins, & Fleshner, 1994).
Also, we noted earlier that stress hormones released during hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activation
can adversely impact immune function. One way they do this is by inhibiting the production of lymphocyteslymphocytes, white
blood cells that circulate in the body’s fluids that are important in the immune response (Everly & Lating, 2002).
Some of the more dramatic examples demonstrating the link between stress and impaired immune function
involve studies in which volunteers were exposed to viruses. The rationale behind this research is that because
stress weakens the immune system, people with high stress levels should be more likely to develop an illness
compared to those under little stress. In one memorable experiment using this method, researchers interviewed
276 healthy volunteers about recent stressful experiences (Cohen et al., 1998). Following the interview, these

Figure 1. This graph shows the percentages of participants who developed colds (after receiving the cold virus) after reporting
having experienced chronic stressors lasting at least one month, three months, and six months (adapted from Cohen et al., 1998).
participants were given nasal drops containing the cold virus (in case you are wondering why anybody would ever
want to participate in a study in which they are subjected to such treatment, the participants were paid $800 for
their trouble). When examined later, participants who reported experiencing chronic stressors for more than one
month—especially enduring difficulties involving work or relationships—were considerably more likely to have
developed colds than were participants who reported no chronic stressors (Figure 1).
In another study, older volunteers were given an influenza virus vaccination. Compared to controls, those who
were caring for a spouse with Alzheimer’s disease (and thus were under chronic stress) showed poorer antibody
response following the vaccination (Kiecolt-Glaser, Glaser, Gravenstein, Malarkey, & Sheridan, 1996).
Other studies have demonstrated that stress slows down wound healing by impairing immune responses
important to wound repair (Glaser & Kiecolt-Glaser, 2005). In one study, for example, skin blisters were induced
on the forearm. Subjects who reported higher levels of stress produced lower levels of immune proteins
necessary for wound healing (Glaser et al., 1999). Stress, then, is not so much the sword that kills the knight, so
to speak; rather, it’s the sword that breaks the knight’s shield, and your immune system is that shield.

Figure 2. Telomeres are shorter in adults who experienced more trauma as children (adapted from Blackburn & Epel, 2012).
STRESS AND AGING: A TALE OF TELOMERESSTRESS AND AGING: A TALE OF TELOMERES
Have you ever wondered why people who are stressed often seem to have a haggard look about them? A
pioneering study from 2004 suggests that the reason is because stress can actually accelerate the cell biology
of aging.
Stress, it seems, can shorten telomeres, which are segments of DNA that protect the ends of chromosomes.
Shortened telomeres can inhibit or block cell division, which includes growth and proliferation of new cells,
thereby leading to more rapid aging (Sapolsky, 2004). In the study, researchers compared telomere lengths in
the white blood cells in mothers of chronically ill children to those of mothers of healthy children (Epel et al.,
2004). Mothers of chronically ill children would be expected to experience more stress than would mothers of
healthy children. The longer a mother had spent caring for her ill child, the shorter her telomeres (the correlation
between years of caregiving and telomere length was r = -.40). In addition, higher levels of perceived stress
were negatively correlated with telomere size (r = -.31). These researchers also found that the average
telomere length of the most stressed mothers, compared to the least stressed, was similar to what you would
find in people who were 9–17 years older than they were on average.
Numerous other studies since have continued to find associations between stress and eroded telomeres
(Blackburn & Epel, 2012). Some studies have even demonstrated that stress can begin to erode telomeres in
childhood and perhaps even before children are born. For example, childhood exposure to violence (e.g.,
maternal domestic violence, bullying victimization, and physical maltreatment) was found in one study to
accelerate telomere erosion from ages 5 to 10 (Shalev et al., 2013). Another study reported that young adults
whose mothers had experienced severe stress during their pregnancy had shorter telomeres than did those
whose mothers had stress-free and uneventful pregnancies (Entringer et al., 2011). Further, the corrosive
effects of childhood stress on telomeres can extend into young adulthood. In an investigation of over 4,000 U.K.
women ages 41–80, adverse experiences during childhood (e.g., physical abuse, being sent away from home,
and parent divorce) were associated with shortened telomere length (Surtees et al., 2010), and telomere size
decreased as the amount of experienced adversity increased (Figure 2).

Efforts to dissect the precise cellular and physiological mechanisms linking short telomeres to stress and
disease are currently underway. For the time being, telomeres provide us with yet another reminder that stress,
especially during early life, can be just as harmful to our health as smoking or fast food (Blackburn & Epel,
2012).
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Cardiovascular Disorders
The cardiovascular system is composed of the heart and blood circulation system. For many years, disorders that
involve the cardiovascular system—known as cardiovascular disorderscardiovascular disorders—have been a major focal point in the
study of psychophysiological disorders because of the cardiovascular system’s centrality in the stress response
(Everly & Lating, 2002). Heart diseaseHeart disease is one such condition. Each year, heart disease causes approximately one
in three deaths in the United States, and it is the leading cause of death in the developed world (Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2011; Shapiro, 2005).
The symptoms of heart disease vary somewhat depending on the specific kind of heart disease one has, but they
generally involve angina—chest pains or discomfort that occur when the heart does not receive enough blood
(Office on Women’s Health, 2009). The pain often feels like the chest is being pressed or squeezed; burning
sensations in the chest and shortness of breath are also commonly reported. Such pain and discomfort can
spread to the arms, neck, jaws, stomach (as nausea), and back (American Heart Association [AHA], 2012a)
(Figure 3).

Figure 3. Males and females often experience different symptoms of a heart attack.
A major risk factor for heart disease is hypertensionhypertension, which is high blood pressure. Hypertension forces a person’s
heart to pump harder, thus putting more physical strain on the heart. If left unchecked, hypertension can lead to a
heart attack, stroke, or heart failure; it can also lead to kidney failure and blindness. Hypertension is a serious
cardiovascular disorder, and it is sometimes called the silent killer because it has no symptoms—one who has
high blood pressure may not even be aware of it (AHA, 2012b).
Many risk factors contributing to cardiovascular disorders have been identified. These risk factors include social
determinants such as aging, income, education, and employment status, as well as behavioral risk factors that
include unhealthy diet, tobacco use, physical inactivity, and excessive alcohol consumption; obesity and diabetes
are additional risk factors (World Health Organization [WHO], 2013).
Over the past few decades, there has been much greater recognition and awareness of the importance of stress
and other psychological factors in cardiovascular health (Nusair, Al-dadah, & Kumar, 2012). Indeed, exposure to
stressors of many kinds has also been linked to cardiovascular problems; in the case of hypertension, some of
these stressors include job strain (Trudel, Brisson, & Milot, 2010), natural disasters (Saito, Kim, Maekawa, Ikeda,
& Yokoyama, 1997), marital conflict (Nealey-Moore, Smith, Uchino, Hawkins, & Olson-Cerny, 2007), and
exposure to high traffic noise levels at one’s home (de Kluizenaar, Gansevoort, Miedema, & de Jong, 2007).
Perceived discrimination appears to be associated with hypertension among African Americans (Sims et al.,
2012). In addition, laboratory-based stress tasks, such as performing mental arithmetic under time pressure,
immersing one’s hand into ice water (known as the cold pressor test), mirror tracing, and public speaking have all
been shown to elevate blood pressure (Phillips, 2011).
Are you Type A or Type B?
Sometimes research ideas and theories emerge from seemingly trivial observations. In the 1950s, cardiologist
Meyer Friedman was looking over his waiting room furniture, which consisted of upholstered chairs with armrests.
Friedman decided to have these chairs reupholstered. When the man doing the reupholstering came to the office
to do the work, he commented on how the chairs were worn in a unique manner—the front edges of the cushions
were worn down, as were the front tips of the arm rests. It seemed like the cardiology patients were tapping or
squeezing the front of the armrests, as well as literally sitting on the edge of their seats (Friedman & Rosenman,
1974). Were cardiology patients somehow different than other types of patients? If so, how?

Figure 4. (a) Type A individuals are characterized as
intensely driven, (b) while Type B people are
characterized as laid-back and relaxed. (credit a:
modification of work by Greg Hernandez; credit b:
modification of work by Elvert Barnes)
After researching this matter, Friedman and his colleague, Ray Rosenman, came to understand that people who
are prone to heart disease tend to think, feel, and act differently than those who are not. These individuals tend to
be intensively driven workaholics who are preoccupied with deadlines and always seem to be in a rush. According
to Friedman and Rosenman, these individuals exhibit Type AType A behavior pattern; those who are more relaxed and
laid-back were characterized as Type BType B (Figure 4). In a sample of Type As and Type Bs, Friedman and
Rosenman were startled to discover that heart disease was over seven times more frequent among the Type As
than the Type Bs (Friedman & Rosenman, 1959).
The major components of the Type A pattern include an
aggressive and chronic struggle to achieve more and more
in less and less time (Friedman & Rosenman, 1974).
Specific characteristics of the Type A pattern include an
excessive competitive drive, chronic sense of time urgency,
impatience, and hostility toward others (particularly those
who get in the person’s way).
An example of a person who exhibits Type A behavior
pattern is Jeffrey. Even as a child, Jeffrey was intense and
driven. He excelled at school, was captain of the swim
team, and graduated with honors from an Ivy League
college. Jeffrey never seems able to relax; he is always
working on something, even on the weekends. However,
Jeffrey always seems to feel as though there are not enough hours in the day to accomplish all he feels he
should. He volunteers to take on extra tasks at work and often brings his work home with him; he often goes to
bed angry late at night because he feels that he has not done enough. Jeffrey is quick tempered with his
coworkers; he often becomes noticeably agitated when dealing with those coworkers he feels work too slowly or
whose work does not meet his standards. He typically reacts with hostility when interrupted at work. He has
experienced problems in his marriage over his lack of time spent with family. When caught in traffic during his
commute to and from work, Jeffrey incessantly pounds on his horn and swears loudly at other drivers. When
Jeffrey was 52, he suffered his first heart attack.
By the 1970s, a majority of practicing cardiologists believed that Type A behavior pattern was a significant risk
factor for heart disease (Friedman, 1977). Indeed, a number of early longitudinal investigations demonstrated a
link between Type A behavior pattern and later development of heart disease (Rosenman et al., 1975; Haynes,
Feinleib, & Kannel, 1980).
Subsequent research examining the association between Type A and heart disease, however, failed to replicate
these earlier findings (Glassman, 2007; Myrtek, 2001). Because Type A theory did not pan out as well as they
had hoped, researchers shifted their attention toward determining if any of the specific elements of Type A predict
heart disease.
Extensive research clearly suggests that the anger/hostility dimension of Type A behavior pattern may be one of
the most important factors in the development of heart disease. This relationship was initially described in the
Haynes et al. (1980) study mentioned above: Suppressed hostility was found to substantially elevate the risk of
heart disease for both men and women. Also, one investigation followed over 1,000 male medical students from
32 to 48 years. At the beginning of the study, these men completed a questionnaire assessing how they react to
pressure; some indicated that they respond with high levels of angeranger, whereas others indicated that they respond
with less anger. Decades later, researchers found that those who earlier had indicated the highest levels of anger
were over 6 times more likely than those who indicated less anger to have had a heart attack by age 55, and they
were 3.5 times more likely to have experienced heart disease by the same age (Chang, Ford, Meoni, Wang, &
Klag, 2002). From a health standpoint, it clearly does not pay to be an angry young person.
After reviewing and statistically summarizing 35 studies from 1983 to 2006, Chida and Steptoe (2009) concluded
that the bulk of the evidence suggests that anger and hostility constitute serious long-term risk factors for adverse
cardiovascular outcomes among both healthy individuals and those already suffering from heart disease. One
reason angry and hostile moods might contribute to cardiovascular diseases is that such moods can create social
strain, mainly in the form of antagonistic social encounters with others. This strain could then lay the foundation
for disease-promoting cardiovascular responses among hostile individuals (Vella, Kamarck, Flory, & Manuck,
2012). In this transactional model, hostility and social strain form a cycle (Figure 5).

Figure 5. According to the transactional model of hostility for predicting social interactions (Vella et al., 2012), the thoughts and
feelings of a hostile person promote antagonistic behavior toward others, which in turn reinforces complimentary reactions from
others, thereby intensifying ones’ hostile disposition and intensifying the cyclical nature of this relationship.
For example, suppose Kaitlin has a hostile disposition; she has a cynical, distrustful attitude toward others and
often thinks that other people are out to get her. She is very defensive around people, even those she has known
for years, and she is always looking for signs that others are either disrespecting or belittling her. In the shower
each morning before work, she often mentally rehearses what she would say to someone who said or did
something that angered her, such as making a political statement that was counter to her own ideology. As Kaitlin
goes through these mental rehearsals, she often grins and thinks about the retaliation on anyone who will irk her
that day.
Socially, she is confrontational and tends to use a harsh tone with people, which often leads to very disagreeable
and sometimes argumentative social interactions. As you might imagine, Kaitlin is not especially popular with
others, including coworkers, neighbors, and even members of her own family. They either avoid her at all costs or
snap back at her, which causes Kaitlin to become even more cynical and distrustful of others, making her
disposition even more hostile. Kaitlin’s hostility—through her own doing—has created an antagonistic
environment that cyclically causes her to become even more hostile and angry, thereby potentially setting the
stage for cardiovascular problems.
In addition to anger and hostility, a number of other negative emotional states have been linked with heart
disease, including negative affectivity and depression (Suls & Bunde, 2005). NegativeNegative affectivityaffectivity is a tendency to
experience distressed emotional states involving anger, contempt, disgust, guilt, fear, and nervousness (Watson,
Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). It has been linked with the development of both hypertension and heart disease. For
example, over 3,000 initially healthy participants in one study were tracked longitudinally, up to 22 years. Those
with higher levels of negative affectivity at the time the study began were substantially more likely to develop and
be treated for hypertension during the ensuing years than were those with lower levels of negative affectivity
(Jonas & Lando, 2000). In addition, a study of over 10,000 middle-aged London-based civil servants who were
followed an average of 12.5 years revealed that those who earlier had scored in the upper third on a test of
negative affectivity were 32% more likely to have experienced heart disease, heart attack, or angina over a period

Figure 6. This graph shows the incidence of heart attacks among men and women by depression score quartile (adapted from
Barefoot & Schroll, 1996).
of years than were those who scored in the lowest third (Nabi, Kivimaki, De Vogli, Marmot, & Singh-Manoux,
2008). Hence, negative affectivity appears to be a potentially vital risk factor for the development of
cardiovascular disorders.
Depression and the Heart
For centuries, poets and folklore have asserted that there is a connection between moods and the heart
(Glassman & Shapiro, 1998). You are no doubt familiar with the notion of a broken heart following a disappointing
or depressing event and have encountered that notion in songs, films, and literature.
Perhaps the first to recognize the link between depressiondepression and heart diseaseheart disease was Benjamin Malzberg (1937), who
found that the death rate among institutionalized patients with melancholia (an archaic term for depression) was
six times higher than that of the population. A classic study in the late 1970s looked at over 8,000 manic-
depressive persons in Denmark, finding a nearly 50% increase in deaths from heart disease among these
patients compared with the general Danish population (Weeke, 1979). By the early 1990s, evidence began to
accumulate showing that depressed individuals who were followed for long periods of time were at increased risk
for heart disease and cardiac death (Glassman, 2007). In one investigation of over 700 Denmark residents, those
with the highest depression scores were 71% more likely to have experienced a heart attack than were those with
lower depression scores (Barefoot & Schroll, 1996). Figure 6 illustrates the gradation in risk of heart attacks for
both men and women.
After more than two decades of research, it is now clear that a relationship exists: Patients with heart disease
have more depression than the general population, and people with depression are more likely to eventually
develop heart disease and experience higher mortality than those who do not have depression (Hare, Toukhsati,
Johansson, & Jaarsma, 2013); the more severe the depression, the higher the risk (Glassman, 2007). Consider
the following: In one study, death rates from cardiovascular problems was substantially higher in depressed

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people; depressed men were 50% more likely to have died from cardiovascular problems, and depressed women
were 70% more likely (Ösby, Brandt, Correia, Ekbom, & Sparén, 2001). A statistical review of 10 longitudinal
studies involving initially healthy individuals revealed that those with elevated depressive symptoms have, on
average, a 64% greater risk of developing heart disease than do those with fewer symptoms (Wulsin & Singal,
2003). A study of over 63,000 registered nurses found that those with more depressed symptoms when the study
began were 49% more likely to experience fatal heart disease over a 12-year period (Whang et al., 2009).
The American Heart Association, fully aware of the established importance of depression in cardiovascular
diseases, several years ago recommended routine depression screening for all heart disease patients (Lichtman
et al., 2008). Recently, they have recommended including depression as a risk factor for heart disease patients
(AHA, 2014).
Although the exact mechanisms through which depression might produce heart problems have not been fully
clarified, a recent investigation examining this connection in early life has shed some light. In an ongoing study of
childhood depression, adolescents who had been diagnosed with depression as children were more likely to be
obese, smoke, and be physically inactive than were those who had not received this diagnosis (Rottenberg et al.,
2014). One implication of this study is that depression, especially if it occurs early in life, may increase the
likelihood of living an unhealthy lifestyle, thereby predisposing people to an unfavorable cardiovascular disease
risk profile.
It is important to point out that depression may be just one piece of the emotional puzzle in elevating the risk for
heart disease, and that chronically experiencing several negative emotional states may be especially important. A
longitudinal investigation of Vietnam War veterans found that depression, anxiety, hostility, and trait anger each
independently predicted the onset of heart disease (Boyle, Michalek, & Suarez, 2006). However, when each of
these negative psychological attributes was combined into a single variable, this new variable (which researchers
called psychological risk factor) predicted heart disease more strongly than any of the individual variables. Thus,
rather than examining the predictive power of isolated psychological risk factors, it seems crucial for future
researchers to examine the effects of combined and more general negative emotional and psychological traits in
the development of cardiovascular illnesses.
Stress and Asthma
Asthma, a chronic disease in which the airways of the respiratory system become obstructed, leading to difficulty
breathing, is another illness exacerbated and influenced by psychological factors. Many studies over the years
have demonstrated that some people with asthma will experience asthma-like symptoms if they expect to
experience such symptoms, such as when breathing an inert substance that they (falsely) believe will lead to
airway obstruction (Sodergren & Hyland, 1999). As stress and emotions directly affect immune and respiratory
functions, psychological factors likely serve as one of the most common triggers of asthma exacerbation (Trueba
& Ritz, 2013). A longitudinal study of 145 children found that parenting difficulties during the first year of life
increased the chances that the child developed asthma by 107% (Klinnert et al., 2001). In addition, a cross-
sectional study of over 10,000 Finnish college students found that high rates of parent or personal conflicts (e.g.,
parental divorce, separation from spouse, or severe conflicts in other long-term relationships) increased the risk of
asthma onset (Kilpeläinen, Koskenvuo, Helenius, & Terho, 2002). Further, a study of over 4,000 middle-aged men
who were interviewed in the early 1990s and again a decade later found that breaking off an important life
partnership (e.g., divorce or breaking off relationship from parents) increased the risk of developing asthma by
124% over the time of the study (Loerbroks, Apfelbacher, Thayer, Debling, & Stürmer, 2009).

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
cardiovascular disorders:cardiovascular disorders: disorders that involve the heart and blood circulation system
heart disease:heart disease: several types of adverse heart conditions, including those that involve the heart’s arteries or
valves or those involving the inability of the heart to pump enough blood to meet the body’s needs; can include
heart attack and stroke
hypertension:hypertension: high blood pressure
psychophysiological disorders:psychophysiological disorders: physical disorders or diseases in which symptoms are brought about or
worsened by stress and emotional factors
immune system:immune system: various structures, cells, and mechanisms that protect the body from foreign substances that
can damage the body’s tissues and organs
immunosuppression:immunosuppression: decreased effectiveness of the immune system
lymphocytes:lymphocytes: white blood cells that circulate in the body’s fluids and are especially important in the body’s
immune response
psychoneuroimmunology:psychoneuroimmunology: field that studies how psychological factors (such as stress) influence the immune
system and immune functioning
Type A:Type A: psychological and behavior pattern exhibited by individuals who tend to be extremely competitive,
impatient, rushed, and hostile toward others
Type B:Type B: psychological and behavior pattern exhibited by a person who is relaxed and laid back
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REGULATING STRESS
What you’ll learn to do: describe methods to cope with stress and
explain ways to increase happiness
As you learned in the previous section, stress—especially if it is chronic—takes a toll on our bodies and can have
enormously negative health implications. When we experience events in our lives that we appraise as stressful, it
is essential that we use effective coping strategies to manage our stress. Coping refers to mental and behavioral
efforts that we use to deal with problems relating to stress, including its presumed cause and the unpleasant
feelings and emotions it produces.
Happiness is conceptualized as an enduring state of mind that consists of the capacity to experience pleasure in
daily life, as well as the ability to engage one’s skills and talents to enrich one’s life and the lives of others.
Although people around the world generally report that they are happy, there are differences in average
happiness levels across nations. Although people have a tendency to overestimate the extent to which their
happiness set points would change for the better or for the worse following certain life events, researchers have
identified a number of factors that are consistently related to happiness. In recent years, positive psychology has
emerged as an area of study seeking to identify and promote qualities that lead to greater happiness and
fulfillment in our lives. These components include positive affect, optimism, and flow.
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Define coping and differentiate between problem-focused and emotion-focused coping
• Describe the importance of perceived control in our reactions to stress
• Explain how social support is vital in health and longevity

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TRY ITTRY IT
• Identify common stress reduction techniques
Coping Styles
Lazarus and Folkman (1984) distinguished two fundamental kinds of coping: problem-focused coping and
emotion-focused coping. In problem-focused coping, one attempts to manage or alter the problem that is causing
one to experience stress (i.e., the stressor). Problem-focused copingProblem-focused coping strategies are similar to strategies used in
everyday problem-solving: they typically involve identifying the problem, considering possible solutions, weighing
the costs and benefits of these solutions, and then selecting an alternative (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). As an
example, suppose Bradford receives a midterm notice that he is failing statistics class. If Bradford adopts a
problem-focused coping approach to managing his stress, he would be proactive in trying to alleviate the source
of the stress. He might contact his professor to discuss what must be done to raise his grade, he might also
decide to set aside two hours daily to study statistics assignments, and he may seek tutoring assistance. A
problem-focused approach to managing stress means we actively try to do things to address the problem.
Emotion-focused copingEmotion-focused coping, in contrast, consists of efforts to change or reduce the negative emotions associated
with stress. These efforts may include avoiding, minimizing, or distancing oneself from the problem, or positive
comparisons with others (“I’m not as bad off as she is”), or seeking something positive in a negative event (“Now
that I’ve been fired, I can sleep in for a few days”). In some cases, emotion-focused coping strategies involve
reappraisal, whereby the stressor is construed differently (and somewhat self-deceptively) without changing its
objective level of threat (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). For example, a person sentenced to federal prison who
thinks, “This will give me a great chance to network with others,” is using reappraisal. If Bradford adopted an
emotion-focused approach to managing his midterm deficiency stress, he might watch a comedy movie, play
video games, or spend hours on Twitter to take his mind off the situation. In a certain sense, emotion-focused
coping can be thought of as treating the symptoms rather than the actual cause.
While many stressors elicit both kinds of coping strategies, problem-focused coping is more likely to occur when
encountering stressors we perceive as controllable, while emotion-focused coping is more likely to predominate
when faced with stressors that we believe we are powerless to change (Folkman & Lazarus, 1980). Clearly,
emotion-focused coping is more effective in dealing with uncontrollable stressors. For example, if at midnight you
are stressing over a 40-page paper due in the morning that you have not yet started, you are probably better off
recognizing the hopelessness of the situation and doing something to take your mind off it; taking a problem-
focused approach by trying to accomplish this task would only lead to frustration, anxiety, and even more stress.
Fortunately, most stressors we encounter can be modified and are, to varying degrees, controllable. A person
who cannot stand her job can quit and look for work elsewhere; a middle-aged divorcee can find another potential
partner; the freshman who fails an exam can study harder next time, and a breast lump does not necessarily
mean that one is fated to die of breast cancer.

Control and Stress
The desire and ability to predict events, make decisions, and affect outcomes—that is, to enact control in our
lives—is a basic tenet of human behavior (Everly & Lating, 2002). Albert Bandura (1997) stated that “the intensity
and chronicity of human stress is governed largely by perceived control over the demands of one’s life” (p. 262).
As cogently described in his statement, our reaction to potential stressors depends to a large extent on how much
control we feel we have over such things. Perceived controlPerceived control is our beliefs about our personal capacity to exert
influence over and shape outcomes, and it has major implications for our health and happiness (Infurna &
Gerstorf, 2014). Extensive research has demonstrated that perceptions of personal control are associated with a
variety of favorable outcomes, such as better physical and mental health and greater psychological well-being
(Diehl & Hay, 2010). Greater personal control is also associated with lower reactivity to stressors in daily life. For
example, researchers in one investigation found that higher levels of perceived control at one point in time were
later associated with lower emotional and physical reactivity to interpersonal stressors (Neupert, Almeida, &
Charles, 2007). Further, a daily diary study with 34 older widows found that their stress and anxiety levels were
significantly reduced on days during which the widows felt greater perceived control (Ong, Bergeman, & Bisconti,
2005).

Figure 1. Seligman’s learned helplessness experiments with dogs used an apparatus that measured when the animals would
move from a floor delivering shocks to one without.
DIG DEEPER: LEARNED HELPLESSNESSDIG DEEPER: LEARNED HELPLESSNESS
When we lack a sense of control over the events in our lives, particularly when those events are threatening,
harmful, or noxious, the psychological consequences can be profound. In one of the better illustrations of this
concept, psychologist Martin Seligman conducted a series of classic experiments in the 1960s (Seligman &
Maier, 1967) in which dogs were placed in a chamber where they received electric shocks from which they
could not escape. Later, when these dogs were given the opportunity to escape the shocks by jumping across a
partition, most failed to even try; they seemed to just give up and passively accept any shocks the
experimenters chose to administer. In comparison, dogs who were previously allowed to escape the shocks
tended to jump the partition and escape the pain.
Seligman believed that the dogs who failed to try to escape the later shocks were demonstrating learned
helplessness: They had acquired a belief that they were powerless to do anything about the noxious stimulation
they were receiving. Seligman also believed that the passivity and lack of initiative these dogs demonstrated
was similar to that observed in human depression. Therefore, Seligman speculated that acquiring a sense of
learned helplessness might be an important cause of depression in humans: Humans who experience negative
life events that they believe they are unable to control may become helpless. As a result, they give up trying to
control or change the situation and some may become depressed and show lack of initiative in future situations
in which they can control the outcomes (Seligman, Maier, & Geer, 1968).
Seligman and colleagues later reformulated the original learned helplessness model of depression (Abramson,
Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978). In their reformulation, they emphasized attributions (i.e., a mental explanation for
why something occurred) that lead to the perception that one lacks control over negative outcomes are
important in fostering a sense of learned helplessness. For example, suppose a coworker shows up late to
work; your belief as to what caused the coworker’s tardiness would be an attribution (e.g., too much traffic, slept
too late, or just doesn’t care about being on time).

The reformulated version of Seligman’s study holds that the attributions made for negative life events contribute
to depression. Consider the example of a student who performs poorly on a midterm exam. This model
suggests that the student will make three kinds of attributions for this outcome: internal vs. external (believing
the outcome was caused by his own personal inadequacies or by environmental factors), stable vs. unstable
(believing the cause can be changed or is permanent), and global vs. specific (believing the outcome is a sign
of inadequacy in most everything versus just this area). Assume that the student makes an internal (“I’m just
not smart”), stable (“Nothing can be done to change the fact that I’m not smart”) and global (“This is another
example of how lousy I am at everything”) attribution for the poor performance. The reformulated theory
predicts that the student would perceive a lack of control over this stressful event and thus be especially prone
to developing depression. Indeed, research has demonstrated that people who have a tendency to make
internal, global, and stable attributions for bad outcomes tend to develop symptoms of depression when faced
with negative life experiences (Peterson & Seligman, 1984).
Seligman’s learned helplessness model has emerged over the years as a leading theoretical explanation for the
onset of major depressive disorder. The latest reformulation of this model is now known as hopelessness
theory.
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People who report higher levels of perceived control view their health as controllable, thereby making it more
likely that they will better manage their health and engage in behaviors conducive to good health (Bandura, 2004).
Not surprisingly, greater perceived control has been linked to lower risk of physical health problems, including
declines in physical functioning (Infurna, Gerstorf, Ram, Schupp, & Wagner, 2011), heart attacks (Rosengren et
al., 2004), and both cardiovascular disease incidence (Stürmer, Hasselbach, & Amelang, 2006) and mortality from
cardiac disease (Surtees et al., 2010). In addition, longitudinal studies of British civil servants have found that
those in low-status jobs (e.g., clerical and office support staff) in which the degree of control over the job is
minimal are considerably more likely to develop heart disease than those with high-status jobs or considerable
control over their jobs (Marmot, Bosma, Hemingway, & Stansfeld, 1997).
The link between perceived control and health may provide an explanation for the frequently observed
relationship between social class and health outcomes (Kraus, Piff, Mendoza-Denton, Rheinschmidt, & Keltner,
2012). In general, research has found that more affluent individuals experience better health mainly because they
tend to believe that they can personally control and manage their reactions to life’s stressors (Johnson & Krueger,
2006). Perhaps buoyed by the perceived level of control, individuals of higher social class may be prone to
overestimating the degree of influence they have over particular outcomes. For example, those of higher social
class tend to believe that their votes have greater sway on election outcomes than do those of lower social class,
which may explain higher rates of voting in more affluent communities (Krosnick, 1990). Other research has found
that a sense of perceived control can protect less affluent individuals from poorer health, depression, and reduced
life-satisfaction—all of which tend to accompany lower social standing (Lachman & Weaver, 1998).
Taken together, findings from these and many other studies clearly suggest that perceptions of control and coping
abilities are important in managing and coping with the stressors we encounter throughout life.

THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Try to think of an example in which you coped with a particular stressor by using problem-focused
coping. What was the stressor? What did your problem-focused efforts involve? Were they effective?
Social Support
The need to form and maintain strong, stable relationships with others is a powerful, pervasive, and fundamental
human motive (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Building strong interpersonal relationships with others helps us
establish a network of close, caring individuals who can provide social support in times of distress, sorrow, and
fear. Social supportSocial support can be thought of as the soothing impact of friends, family, and acquaintances (Baron & Kerr,
2003). Social support can take many forms, including advice, guidance, encouragement, acceptance, emotional
comfort, and tangible assistance (such as financial help). Thus, other people can be very comforting to us when
we are faced with a wide range of life stressors, and they can be extremely helpful in our efforts to manage these
challenges. Even in nonhuman animals, species mates can offer social support during times of stress. For
example, elephants seem to be able to sense when other elephants are stressed and will often comfort them with
physical contact—such as a trunk touch—or an empathetic vocal response (Krumboltz, 2014).
Scientific interest in the importance of social support first emerged in the 1970s when health researchers
developed an interest in the health consequences of being socially integrated (Stroebe & Stroebe, 1996). Interest
was further fueled by longitudinal studies showing that social connectedness reduced mortality. In one classic
study, nearly 7,000 Alameda County, California, residents were followed over 9 years. Those who had previously
indicated that they lacked social and community ties were more likely to die during the follow-up period than those
with more extensive social networks. Compared to those with the most social contacts, isolated men and women
were, respectively, 2.3 and 2.8 times more likely to die. These trends persisted even after controlling for a variety
of health-related variables, such as smoking, alcohol consumption, self-reported health at the beginning of the
study, and physical activity (Berkman & Syme, 1979).
Since the time of that study, social support has emerged as one of the well-documented psychosocial factors
affecting health outcomes (Uchino, 2009). A statistical review of 148 studies conducted between 1982 and 2007
involving over 300,000 participants concluded that individuals with stronger social relationships have a 50%
greater likelihood of survival compared to those with weak or insufficient social relationships (Holt-Lunstad, Smith,
& Layton, 2010). According to the researchers, the magnitude of the effect of social support observed in this study
is comparable with quitting smoking and exceeded many well-known risk factors for mortality, such as obesity and
physical inactivity.

Figure 2. Close relationships with others, whether (a) a group of friends or (b) a family circle, provide more than happiness and
fulfillment—they can help foster good health. (credit a: modification of work by Nattachai Noogure; credit b: modification of work by
Christian Haugen)
A number of large-scale studies have found that individuals with low levels of social support are at greater risk of
mortality, especially from cardiovascular disorders (Brummett et al., 2001). Further, higher levels of social
supported have been linked to better survival rates following breast cancer (Falagas et al., 2007) and infectious
diseases, especially HIV infection (Lee & Rotheram-Borus, 2001). In fact, a person with high levels of social
support is less likely to contract a common cold. In one study, 334 participants completed questionnaires
assessing their sociability; these individuals were subsequently exposed to a virus that causes a common cold
and monitored for several weeks to see who became ill. Results showed that increased sociability was linearly
associated with a decreased probability of developing a cold (Cohen, Doyle, Turner, Alper, & Skoner, 2003).
For many of us, friends are a vital source of social support. But what if you found yourself in a situation in which
you lacked friends or companions? For example, suppose a popular high school student attends a far-away
college, does not know anyone, and has trouble making friends and meaningful connections with others during
the first semester. What can be done? If real life social support is lacking, access to distant friends via social
media may help compensate. In a study of college freshmen, those with few face-to-face friends on campus but
who communicated electronically with distant friends were less distressed that those who did not (Raney & Troop-
Gordon, 2012). Also, for some people, our families—especially our parents—are a major source of social support.
Social support appears to work by boosting the immune system, especially among people who are experiencing
stress (Uchino, Vaughn, Carlisle, & Birmingham, 2012). In a pioneering study, spouses of cancer patients who
reported high levels of social support showed indications of better immune functioning on two out of three immune
functioning measures, compared to spouses who were below the median on reported social support (Baron,
Cutrona, Hicklin, Russell, & Lubaroff, 1990). Studies of other populations have produced similar results, including
those of spousal caregivers of dementia sufferers, medical students, elderly adults, and cancer patients (Cohen &
Herbert, 1996; Kiecolt-Glaser, McGuire, Robles, & Glaser, 2002).
In addition, social support has been shown to reduce blood pressure for people performing stressful tasks, such
as giving a speech or performing mental arithmetic (Lepore, 1998). In these kinds of studies, participants are
usually asked to perform a stressful task either alone, with a stranger present (who may be either supportive or
unsupportive), or with a friend present. Those tested with a friend present generally exhibit lower blood pressure
than those tested alone or with a stranger (Fontana, Diegnan, Villeneuve, & Lepore, 1999). In one study, 112
female participants who performed stressful mental arithmetic exhibited lower blood pressure when they received
support from a friend rather than a stranger, but only if the friend was a male (Phillips, Gallagher, & Carroll, 2009).
Although these findings are somewhat difficult to interpret, the authors mention that it is possible that females feel
less supported and more evaluated by other females, particularly females whose opinions they value.
Taken together, the findings above suggest one of the reasons social support is connected to favorable health
outcomes is because it has several beneficial physiological effects in stressful situations. However, it is also
important to consider the possibility that social support may lead to better health behaviors, such as a healthy
diet, exercising, smoking cessation, and cooperation with medical regimens (Uchino, 2009).

DIG DEEPER: COPING WITH PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATIONDIG DEEPER: COPING WITH PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION
While having social support is quite beneficial, being the recipient of prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory
behaviors is associated with a number of negative outcomes. In their literature review, Brondolo, Brady,
Pencille, Beatty, and Contrada (2009) describe how racial prejudice and discrimination serve as unique,
significant stressors for those who are the targets of such attitudes and behavior. Being the target of racism is
associated with increased rates of depression, lowered self-esteem, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease.
Given the complex and pervasive nature of racism as a stressor, Brondolo et al. (2009) point out the
importance of coping with this specific stressor. Their review is aimed at determining which coping strategies
are most effective at offsetting negative health outcomes associated with racism-related stress. The authors
examine the effectiveness of three coping strategies: focusing on racial identity to handle race-related stress,
anger expression/suppression, and seeking social support. You’ve learned a bit about social support, so we’ll
focus the remainder of this discussion on the potential coping strategies of focusing on racial identity and anger
expression/suppression.
Focusing on racial identity refers to the process by which a person comes to feel as if he belongs to a given
racial group; this may increase a sense of pride associated with group membership. Brondolo et al. (2009)
suggest that a strong sense of racial identity might help an individual who is the target of racism differentiate
between prejudicial attitudes/behaviors that are directed toward his group as a whole rather than at him as a
person. Furthermore, the sense of belonging to his group might alleviate the distress of being ostracized by
others. However, the research literature on the effectiveness of this technique has produced mixed results.
Anger expression/suppression refers to the options available as a function of the anger evoked by racial
prejudice and discrimination. Put simply, a target of racist attitudes and behaviors can act upon her anger or
suppress her anger. As discussed by Brondolo et al. (2009), there has been very little research on the
effectiveness of either approach; the results are quite mixed with some showing anger expression and others
showing anger suppression as the healthier option.
In the end, racism-related stress is a complex issue and each of the coping strategies discussed here has
strengths and weaknesses. Brondolo et al. (2009) argue that it is imperative that additional research be
conducted to ascertain the most effective strategies for coping with the negative outcomes that are experienced
by the targets of racism.
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Stress Reduction Techniques
Beyond having a sense of control and establishing social support networks, there are numerous other means by
which we can manage stress. A common technique people use to combat stress is exerciseexercise (Salmon, 2001). It is
well-established that exercise, both of long (aerobic) and short (anaerobic) duration, is beneficial for both physical
and mental health (Everly & Lating, 2002). There is considerable evidence that physically fit individuals are more
resistant to the adverse effects of stress and recover more quickly from stress than less physically fit individuals
(Cotton, 1990). In a study of more than 500 Swiss police officers and emergency service personnel, increased
physical fitness was associated with reduced stress, and regular exercise was reported to protect against stress-
related health problems (Gerber, Kellman, Hartman, & Pühse, 2010).

Figure 3. Stress reduction techniques may include (a) exercise, (b) meditation and relaxation, or (c) biofeedback. (credit a:
modification of work by “UNE Photos”/Flickr; credit b: modification of work by Caleb Roenigk; credit c: modification of work by Dr.
Carmen Russoniello)
GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
biofeedback:biofeedback: stress-reduction technique using electronic equipment to measure a person’s involuntary
(neuromuscular and autonomic) activity and provide feedback to help the person gain a level of voluntary
control over these processes
coping:coping: mental or behavioral efforts used to manage problems relating to stress, including its cause and the
unpleasant feelings and emotions it produces
perceived control:perceived control: peoples’ beliefs concerning their capacity to influence and shape outcomes in their lives
relaxation response technique:relaxation response technique: stress reduction technique combining elements of relaxation and meditation
One reason exercise may be beneficial is because it might buffer some of the deleterious physiological
mechanisms of stress. One study found rats that exercised for six weeks showed a decrease in hypothalamic-
pituitary-adrenal responsiveness to mild stressors (Campeau et al., 2010). In high-stress humans, exercise has
been shown to prevent telomere shortening, which may explain the common observation of a youthful
appearance among those who exercise regularly (Puterman et al., 2010). Further, exercise in later adulthood
appears to minimize the detrimental effects of stress on the hippocampus and memory (Head, Singh, & Bugg,
2012). Among cancer survivors, exercise has been shown to reduce anxiety (Speck, Courneya, Masse, Duval, &
Schmitz, 2010) and depressive symptoms (Craft, VanIterson, Helenowski, Rademaker, & Courneya, 2012).
Clearly, exercise is a highly effective tool for regulating stress.
In the 1970s, Herbert Benson, a cardiologist, developed a stress reduction method called the relaxation responserelaxation response
techniquetechnique (Greenberg, 2006). The relaxation response technique combines relaxation with transcendental
meditationmeditation, and consists of four components (Stein, 2001): sitting upright on a comfortable chair with feet on the
ground and body in a relaxed position, a quiet environment with eyes closed, repeating a word or a phrase—a
mantra—to oneself, such as “alert mind, calm body,” passively allowing the mind to focus on pleasant thoughts,
such as nature or the warmth of your blood nourishing your body.
The relaxation response approach is conceptualized as a general approach to stress reduction that reduces
sympathetic arousal, and it has been used effectively to treat people with high blood pressure (Benson & Proctor,
1994).
Another technique to combat stress, biofeedbackbiofeedback, was developed by Gary Schwartz at Harvard University in the
early 1970s. Biofeedback is a technique that uses electronic equipment to accurately measure a person’s
neuromuscular and autonomic activity—feedback is provided in the form of visual or auditory signals. The main
assumption of this approach is that providing somebody biofeedback will enable the individual to develop
strategies that help gain some level of voluntary control over what are normally involuntary bodily processes
(Schwartz & Schwartz, 1995). A number of different bodily measures have been used in biofeedback research,
including facial muscle movement, brain activity, and skin temperature, and it has been applied successfully with
individuals experiencing tension headaches, high blood pressure, asthma, and phobias (Stein, 2001).

social support:social support: soothing and often beneficial support of others; can take different forms, such as advice,
guidance, encouragement, acceptance, emotional comfort, and tangible assistance
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POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe the field of positive psychology and identify the kinds of problems it addresses
• Give examples of flow
In 1998, Seligman (the same person who conducted the learned helplessness experiments mentioned earlier),
who was then president of the American Psychological Association, urged psychologists to focus more on
understanding how to build human strength and psychological well-being. In deliberately setting out to create a
new direction and new orientation for psychology, Seligman helped establish a growing movement and field of
research called positive psychology (Compton, 2005). In a very general sense, positive psychologypositive psychology can be
thought of as the science of happiness; it is an area of study that seeks to identify and promote those qualities
that lead to greater fulfillment in our lives. This field looks at people’s strengths and what helps individuals to lead
happy, contented lives, and it moves away from focusing on people’s pathology, faults, and problems. According
to Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000), positive psychology,
at the subjective level is about valued subjective experiences: well-being, contentment, and satisfaction
(in the past); hope and optimism (for the future); and… happiness (in the present). At the individual
level, it is about positive individual traits: the capacity for love and vocation, courage, interpersonal skill,
aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness, originality, future mindedness, spirituality, high talent,
and wisdom. (p. 5)
Some of the topics studied by positive psychologists include altruism and empathy, creativity, forgiveness and
compassion, the importance of positive emotions, enhancement of immune system functioning, savoring the
fleeting moments of life, and strengthening virtues as a way to increase authentic happiness (Compton, 2005).
Recent efforts in the field of positive psychology have focused on extending its principles toward peace and well-
being at the level of the global community. In a war-torn world in which conflict, hatred, and distrust are common,
such an extended “positive peace psychology” could have important implications for understanding how to
overcome oppression and work toward global peace (Cohrs, Christie, White, & Das, 2013).

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DIG DEEPER: THE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATING HEALTHY MINDSDIG DEEPER: THE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATING HEALTHY MINDS
On the campus of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the
Waisman Center conducts rigorous scientific research on healthy aspects of the mind, such as kindness,
forgiveness, compassion, and mindfulness. Established in 2008 and led by renowned neuroscientist Dr.
Richard J. Davidson, the Center examines a wide range of ideas, including such things as a kindness
curriculum in schools, neural correlates of prosocial behavior, psychological effects of Tai Chi training, digital
games to foster prosocial behavior in children, and the effectiveness of yoga and breathing exercises in
reducing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
According to its website, the Center was founded after Dr. Davidson was challenged by His Holiness, the 14th
Dalai Lama, “to apply the rigors of science to study positive qualities of mind” (Center for Investigating Health
Minds, 2013). The Center continues to conduct scientific research with the aim of developing mental health
training approaches that help people to live happier, healthier lives).
Figure 1. Positive affect describes positive states, which
may be temporary, while optimism describes a general
tendency to have a positive outlook.
Positive Affect and Optimism
Taking a cue from positive psychology, extensive research over the last 10-15 years has examined the
importance of positive psychological attributes in physical well-being. Qualities that help promote psychological
well-being (e.g., having meaning and purpose in life, a sense of autonomy, positive emotions, and satisfaction
with life) are linked with a range of favorable health outcomes (especially improved cardiovascular health) mainly
through their relationships with biological functions and health behaviors (such as diet, physical activity, and sleep
quality) (Boehm & Kubzansky, 2012). The quality that has received attention is positive affectpositive affect, which refers to
pleasurable engagement with the environment, such as happiness, joy, enthusiasm, alertness, and excitement
(Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). The characteristics of positive affect, as with negative affect (those who view
the world in generally negative terms), can be brief, long-lasting, or trait-like (Pressman & Cohen, 2005).
Independent of age, gender, and income, positive affect is associated with greater social connectedness,
emotional and practical support, adaptive coping efforts, and lower depression; it is also associated with longevity
and favorable physiological functioning (Steptoe, O’Donnell, Marmot, & Wardle, 2008).
Positive affect also serves as a protective factor against heart disease. In a 10-year study of Nova Scotians, the
rate of heart disease was 22% lower for each one-point increase on the measure of positive affect, from 1 (no
positive affect expressed) to 5 (extreme positive affect) (Davidson, Mostofsky, & Whang, 2010). In terms of our
health, the expression, “don’t worry, be happy” is helpful advice indeed. There has also been much work
suggesting that optimismoptimism—the general tendency to look on the bright side of things—is also a significant predictor
of positive health outcomes.
Although positive affect and optimism are related in some
ways, they are not the same (Pressman & Cohen, 2005).
Whereas positive affect is mostly concerned with positive
feeling states, optimism has been regarded as a
generalized tendency to expect that good things will happen
(Chang, 2001). It has also been conceptualized as a
tendency to view life’s stressors and difficulties as
temporary and external to oneself (Peterson & Steen,
2002). Numerous studies over the years have consistently
shown that optimism is linked to longevity, healthier
behaviors, fewer postsurgical complications, better immune
functioning among men with prostate cancer, and better
treatment adherence (Rasmussen & Wallio, 2008). Further,
optimistic people report fewer physical symptoms, less
pain, better physical functioning, and are less likely to be
rehospitalized following heart surgery (Rasmussen,
Scheier, & Greenhouse, 2009).

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TRY ITTRY IT
Flow
Another factor that seems to be important in fostering a deep sense of well-being is the ability to derive flow from
the things we do in life. FlowFlow is described as a particular experience that is so engaging and engrossing that it
becomes worth doing for its own sake (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). It is usually related to creative endeavors and
leisure activities, but it can also be experienced by workers who like their jobs or students who love studying
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1999). Many of us instantly recognize the notion of flow. In fact, the term derived from
respondents’ spontaneous use of the term when asked to describe how it felt when what they were doing was
going well. When people experience flow, they become involved in an activity to the point where they feel they
lose themselves in the activity. They effortlessly maintain their concentration and focus, they feel as though they
have complete control of their actions, and time seems to pass more quickly than usual (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997).
Flow is considered a pleasurable experience, and it typically occurs when people are engaged in challenging
activities that require skills and knowledge they know they possess. For example, people would be more likely
report flow experiences in relation to their work or hobbies than in relation to eating. When asked the question,
“Do you ever get involved in something so deeply that nothing else seems to matter, and you lose track of time?”
about 20% of Americans and Europeans report having these flow-like experiences regularly (Csikszentmihalyi,
1997).
Although wealth and material possessions are nice to have, the notion of flow suggests that neither are
prerequisites for a happy and fulfilling life. Finding an activity that you are truly enthusiastic about, something so
absorbing that doing it is reward itself (whether it be playing tennis, studying Arabic, writing children’s novels, or
cooking lavish meals) is perhaps the real key. According to Csikszentmihalyi (1999), creating conditions that
make flow experiences possible should be a top social and political priority. How might this goal be achieved?
How might flow be promoted in school systems? In the workplace? What potential benefits might be accrued from
such efforts?
In an ideal world, scientific research endeavors should inform us on how to bring about a better world for all
people. The field of positive psychology promises to be instrumental in helping us understand what truly builds
hope, optimism, happiness, healthy relationships, flow, and genuine personal fulfillment.
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Think of an activity you participate in that you find engaging and absorbing. For example, this might be
something like playing video games, reading, or a hobby. What are your experiences typically like
while engaging in this activity? Do your experiences conform to the notion of flow? If so, how? Do you
think these experiences have enriched your life? Why or why not?

GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
flow:flow: state involving intense engagement in an activity; usually is experienced when participating in creative,
work, and leisure endeavors
happiness:happiness: enduring state of mind consisting of joy, contentment, and other positive emotions; the sense that
one’s life has meaning and value
optimism:optimism: tendency toward a positive outlook and positive expectations
positive affect:positive affect: state or a trait that involves pleasurable engagement with the environment, the dimensions of
which include happiness, joy, enthusiasm, alertness, and excitement
positive psychology:positive psychology: scientific area of study seeking to identify and promote those qualities that lead to happy,
fulfilled, and contented lives
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Examine the importance of habitual behavior in our daily lives
Habits: The Good, the Bad, and the Consequences
Think back across the last hour. What have you been doing?
Which of the last hour’s activities were habitual—done at particular times of the day on a predictable schedule?
How much of the time were you “on automatic”, guided by well-practiced routines that require little thought? Often,
as we drive a car or walk to our workplace, work out at the gym or shop for groceries, our actions are unconscious
and stereotyped as we think about something unrelated to what we are doing.
Habits have gotten a bad reputation in popular literature. Eating too much and chatting online too much and so
many other things we supposedly do too much are blamed on “bad habits”. And, in a world that prizes novelty and
creativity, the idea that habits are “automatic” suggests that we may be going through life like zombies, not
mindful and not experiencing our lives deeply enough.
But habits can be positive, too. Writer Gretchen Rubin notes that “habits are the invisible architecture of our daily
lives…Our habits shape our existence, and our future. If we change our habits, we change our lives.” (Note: The
quotation comes from her book about changing habits: Better than Before.) Habits free us from always having to
plan our next action and use willpower to get things done.
Habits may be “automatic” in the sense that they free up our conscious minds to think about other things, but they
can be changed and they can be chosen. For millennia, religious teachers and moral philosophers have urged us
to choose who we wish to be by shaping our own habits. We don’t become better by trying harder; we become
better by eliminating the need to try—we just do it.
How Much of Your Time is Guided by Habits?
One obvious way to find out what people do during the day is to ask them. In fact, pause to do that now. How
much time do you think you spend in habit-driven activities? What percentage would you say, between 0 and
100%?
You probably found that it is not easy to come up with a number here. What counts as a “habit”? And how well
can we remember how long we were engaged in one activity or another? It is easier to remember interesting
things than dull things, so there may be built-in biases in our memories to recall the engaging activities rather than
the repetitive, habitual ones.

The Diary Method
Wood, Quinn, and Kashy (2002) used a different approach, one that did not rely so much on memory: the diary
method. They didn’t invent this research approach, but they were the first to apply it to the study of habits. This
method doesn’t really involve keeping a diary in the traditional sense. Instead, it involves periodically “sampling”
people’s activities along with some personal reflections on what they are doing.
Here is how it worked. Wood and her colleagues recruited college students and provided each one with a
programmed wristwatch that buzzed once every hour. When the wristwatch (Note: Today, cell phones are likely to
be used for diary studies, but in 2002, only about 60 of students had clamshell-style cell phones, and the “smart
phones” were still 5 years in the future.) buzzed, the student recorded what he or she was doing. Then, the
student answered a series of questions about this activity:
• How often they engaged in that behavior.
• Their current physical location.
• The physical location in which they generally performed the behavior.
• Which other people—if any—were involved in the activity.
• The amount of attention needed for successful performance (1 to 4: almost none to constant attention)
• The degree of difficulty of the behavior (1 to 5: very easy to very difficult)
• The intensity of emotions felt as they engaged in the activity (1 to 5: much more negative than normal to
much more positive than normal)
They also answered an open-ended question: what were you thinking about while you were engaged in the
activity?
The Results of the Diary Study
The researchers analyzed the “diary” reports of 279 students across two version of this study. When they defined
“habitual behaviors” as activities that regularly occurred at the same time and place, they found that 41% of the
behaviors could be considered habitual. If this result actually generalizes the rest of us, then nearly half of our
time is spent engaging in habit-driven activities.
In a separate analysis, the researchers approached the idea of a habit in a different way. They reasoned that if
habits are somewhat automatic, then we can think about something else while we are engaged in the habitual
behaviors. Because they asked the students what they were doing and what they were thinking about, the
researchers were able to determine how often there was a mismatch between behavior and thoughts.
Approximately 47% of the time, thoughts were about something other than what they were doing, a percentage
very close to the 43% estimate from the previous paragraph. However, even though the data support the idea that
we can and often do think about other things while engaging in habitual behaviors, we are not zombies—about
40% of the time, people were thinking about activities they labeled as habits while engaging in them. The
experimenters explain that this is “consistent with the idea that this mode of behavior is best characterized by
minimal or sporadic cognitive monitoring and not by the complete absence of thought.” (Note: Wood, Quinn, &
Kashy (2002), page 1281.)
The researchers report one other interesting finding about habitual behaviors. When people engaged in habitual
behaviors they reported lower negative emotions than when they were performing non-habitual activities.
Specifically, habitual behaviors were associated with lower stress, reduced likelihood of feeling overwhelmed, and
lower probability of feeling out of control. Happily, people did not feel less interested or less motivated while
engaging in habitual behaviors, so reduced emotional reactions were not caused by becoming disengaged or less
attentive.
Studying Habits by Changing Them
An important insight about habits is that they are activated by triggers in the environment. These triggers can be
people or places, events or the time of day. The important idea is that we have learned to respond to something
outside of us (i.e., the trigger) with a specific behavior (the habit). We will come back to this idea that the situation
initiates the habitual behavior later when we talk about changing your own habits, but first we will look at a set of
studies by Wendy Wood, David Neal, and their colleagues. This is just one of many studies of habits that these

Figure 1. Are you a habitual popcorn eater?
Figure 2. Researchers set out to test whether students
would eat more popcorn in a movie-theater room, like this
one, or in a regular meeting room.
and other researchers have conducted. It will give you an idea of how we can learn more about psychological
processes by manipulating the details of a common event to see how people’s behavior changes.
The Popcorn Study
Movie theater attendance is on the decline in the United
States, but going to the movies is still popular. Of course,
we go to the theater to see the movie, but for many people
the experience is just not complete without the right
refreshments: popcorn, candy, and soft drinks. You may be
too health-conscious to buy these snacks, but most movie
theaters depend on their concession stands to stay open.
(Note: According to research reported in Stanford Business,
20% of theater revenue comes from food sales, but a
whopping 40% of profits come from food. They suggest that
the high price of these snacks helps keep ticket prices
down. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-does-
movie-popcorn-cost-so-much) Eating popcorn in a movie
theater is a great example of a habit: a behavior that is
triggered by a particular setting—the movie theater.
In 2011, David Neal, Wendy Wood, and some of their
students published a study in which they used the movie
theater-popcorn connection to study habitual behaviors. (Note: David T. Neal, Wendy Wood, Mengju Wu, & David
Kurlander (2011). The pull of the past: When do habits persist despite conflict with motives? Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(11), 1428-1437.) They looked for evidence that movie theaters really do trigger
eating popcorn. But checking out the validity of that claim was just the starting point for studying the popcorn
habit.
The Setup
The experiments were conducted on the campus of the
University of Southern California (USC). The campus has a
cinema that regularly shows films that are popular among
students. (Note: This study was conducted in 2011. Habits
change as social conventions change, so we can’t
guarantee that the USC cinema is still a popular attraction
on campus.) They recruited students and assigned them to
one of two conditions. In the Cinema condition, the students
went into the theater before the regular movie started and
they watched and rated movie trailers. The important thing
to understand is that the setting looked, sounded, smelled,
and felt like a movie theater (which, of course, it was).
Other students were recruited to come, at the same time of
day, to a meeting room near the movie theater. These
students were asked to listen to watch and rate music
videos. The music videos had been pretested to assure that
they were as interesting and engaging as the movie trailers
that the cinema group watched. For this meeting room
condition, the room was as comfortable as the theater and the task was as engaging as the one in the theater, but
the location did not look or sound, smell or feel like a movie theater. It was a meeting room.
Next came the critical prop for this experiment: a full box of popcorn was given to each person, along with a cup
of water. No one made a big deal about the popcorn, but (unknown to the participants) the main question was:
how much popcorn would people eat?

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TRY ITTRY IT
Where do you think the participants ate more popcorn: in the cinema or in the meeting room? Move the bars
below to give your estimate of the percentage of the box of popcorn (this is the percentage number on the Y-
axis) that was eaten—on the average—by the participants in each location.
AnswerAnswer
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TRY ITTRY IT
Now adjust the bar graphs to give your estimate of the percentage of the box of popcorn that was eaten—on
the average—by the participants in each location. Brown represents stale popcorn and yellow represents fresh
popcorn.
AnswerAnswer
The first question was the easy one. But we left out a crucial piece of information: half of the participants in each
location had nice fresh popcorn, but the other half had rubbery, stale popcorn. Now, how much fresh or stale
popcorn do you think participants ate in the two locations?
Now perhaps the people in the cinema just didn’t notice that the stale popcorn was stale. Fortunately, the
experimenters anticipated that question, so they asked the students to rate the taste of the popcorn. Here is what
they found:

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To interpret the results, look at the size of the difference between the brown (stale popcorn) bar and the yellow
(fresh popcorn) bar. A bigger difference means that the participants were more influenced by the taste of the
popcorn. A smaller difference means that the stale versus fresh popcorn didn’t influence their behavior so
much—or, in other words, that habit was more powerful than taste. As you can see, in the cinema—the habitual
place to eat popcorn—subjects not only ate more popcorn, but they were less influenced by the quality of the
popcorn. This is exactly what you would expect if people are engaging in a learned behavior rather than
responding to factors that generally influence how much we eat—such as how good the food tastes.
Figure 3. Researchers found that students in both conditions rated the popcorn pretty low, and many students who didn’t like the
stale popcorn still ate it.

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There was no statistically significant difference in the ratings between the cinema and meeting room groups. But
notice that, if anything, the cinema subjects rated the stale popcorn tasted as being slightly worse than the
meeting room subjects did. The subjects in the cinema knew that the stale popcorn tasted bad, but they still ate it.
Are we sure that habit had something to do with this behavior? The experimenters asked participants to rate the
strength of their own habit of eating popcorn in movie theaters. Of course, some people didn’t like popcorn much,
while others wouldn’t think of going to the movies and skipping the popcorn. The experimenters divided the
participants into three groups, based on their ratings of the strength of their popcorn-at-the-movies habit. Here is
what they found for the subjects in the cinema condition:
Figure 4. This shows those with either weak, medium, or strong popcorn-eating habits, and how much they ate in the cinema
condition. Those with weak popcorn habits still ate a lot of fresh popcorn (the most, even!), but they ate the least amount of stale
popcorn.
On the average, the three groups ate about the same amount of popcorn. But—once again—notice the difference
between the brown (stale) and yellow (fresh) bars. Participants with weak movie-popcorn habits ate a lot of the
fresh popcorn, but not much of the stale popcorn. The stale-fresh difference was smaller for the medium movie-
popcorn habit group. And, for the students with a strong movie-popcorn habit, there was no significant difference
in the amount of fresh versus stale popcorn consumed (with slightly more stale popcorn than fresh actually
eaten!). The students with strong habits knew that the stale popcorn was nasty, but they still ate it as if it were
fresh.

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TRY ITTRY IT
What do you think happened in the meeting room? You already know that they ate less popcorn in general, and
that they at less stale popcorn than fresh. But did habit strength affect them as much as it did for the folks in the
cinema? Make your prediction using the bars below.
AnswerAnswer
Students with stronger cinema-popcorn habits did eat slightly more popcorn overall than those with weaker
habits, but look at the DIFFERENCE between the two bars at each habit level. At all three habit strengths,
participants ate about the same amount LESS stale popcorn than fresh. This is the sort of thing that people do
when they are aware of the food they are eating. If something tastes good, you eat it. If something tastes bad,
you leave it in the box.
These results are consistent with the idea that the cinema environment triggers the popcorn-eating habit. The
habitual popcorn eater consumes popcorn in the triggering environment (here, the cinema setting) even if the
popcorn is not worth eating. In a different environment (the meeting room) the habit is not triggered, so popcorn
consumption is much more determined by its quality, regardless of the strength of that habit in the cinema setting.
Breaking Bad Habits
The experimenters weren’t quite done. They had demonstrated that a habit cued by the right context can lead to
behaviors that no one would consciously choose: like eating bad popcorn. However, they also wanted to know if
interfering with the situation could reduce the power of the habit.
In a second study, the experimenters went back to the cinema. There was no meeting room condition. This time
they wanted the cinema to trigger the popcorn habit, but they asked if changing some essential part of the
habitual behavior would reduce its power.
Which hand do you use to hold the box of popcorn? Which hand do you use to grab a kernel or two and raise it
(them) to your mouth? I hold the box with my left hand and feed myself with my right. Always.
For this study, the experimenters put a handle on the popcorn box and instructed half of the subjects to hold the
box with their usual hand, and the other half to hold it with the other hand—the one they usually don’t use. (Note:
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time, and no one violated the instructions very often. Happily, most college students are willing to cooperate with
researchers.)
The theory here is simple: If we change something about the habit, then we reduce its power. In turn, we become
more aware of what we are doing—more guided by our conscious goals and less by our automatic sequences of
behavior. Is that what happened?
Results
As with the first study, the experimenters divided the subjects into those with weak, medium, and strong movie-
popcorn habits. The participants ate less popcorn in this experiment than in the first one, (Note: This difference in
average consumption is not discussed in the research article, and it might be nice to know why popcorn
consumption was down in the second study. Nevertheless, the more important results was the difference between
stale and fresh popcorn consumption in the three habit levels.) but the pattern of results was still interesting. Here
is what happened when participants used their usual hands for holding the box and eating.
Figure 5. Those who used their typical hand when eating popcorn in the cinema condition were more likely to eat popcorn if they
had strong popcorn-eating habits.
Notice that these results are very similar to the results of the first experiment, except that habit strength had a
stronger influence on amount of popcorn consumed. Most importantly, at low habit strength, students ate less
stale popcorn than fresh. At stronger habit strengths, the quality of the popcorn didn’t matter. They just ate a lot of
it.

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TRY ITTRY IT
But what happens in the cinema, with all of its cues for eating popcorn, when an important part of the habit is
altered? Make your prediction by moving the bars in the figure below. Remember that the opposite hand
condition is supposed to reduce the power of the habit. It just doesn’t feel the same.
AnswerAnswer
At the weak habit level, the participants are not eating much popcorn at all. As habit strength increases, the
desire to eat popcorn presumably also increases, but notice that the quality of the popcorn is increasingly
important (look at the differences between the brown and yellow bars). The habit is not eliminated, but
conscious evaluation of the popcorn is now having a greater influence on behavior.
The second study is important for a practical reason. It suggests that the strength of a habit can be influenced by
minor changes to our routine. Habits can be weakened and they can be eliminated. And that leads us to our final
topic.
How to Create Good Habits
Let’s imagine that you want to start a new habit. For example, maybe it is time to get into shape, so you decide
that you want to run every afternoon before dinner.
No one can give you a guaranteed system for creating a new habit—or for breaking an unwanted habit. However,
habit experts, like Dr. Wood and Dr. Neal—have some advice that comes from their research.
• Don’t believe simple formulas about making or breaking habits.Don’t believe simple formulas about making or breaking habits. In 1960, a popular self-help book
claimed that forming a habit takes 21 days. (Note: Maxwell Maltz (1960) Psycho-Cybernetics. Prentice-
Hall.) If this is true, then you just need to be sure to run before dinner every day for three weeks and
you’ve done it! In 2010, psychologist Pippa Lally found that this timeframe for creating a new habit takes,
on the average 66 days. But Dr. Lally’s more important point is that many factors determine how long
habit formation takes. Her research showed a range of times from 18 days to 254, estimates based on
self-reports. New behaviors vary in complexity and people have a variety of motivations and goals,
different personalities and social support systems. True habit formation is a long-term commitment, so
plan to make a conscious effort for many months.
• Make your habit the default behavior for a particular time or place.Make your habit the default behavior for a particular time or place. Habits are created from actions that
are repeated frequently and in a particular context. This is particularly important on those days when

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your motivation is low—when you would rather sit at home than go out and run. But your brain is on your
side in this. In a 2013 study, Neal and Wood found that, when we are tired or distracted, we avoid
making decisions. (Note: David T. Neal, Wendy Wood, & A. Drolet. (2013). How do people adhere to
goals when willpower is low? The profits (and pitfalls) of strong habits. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 10(4), 959-975.) In other words, we go with the decision that is easier. If you make your new
habit (running before dinner) your default behavior, it will be easier to just go out and run than to put in
the effort to decide to do something else.
• New habits require effortNew habits require effort.
• Choose your cuesChoose your cues. This point is related to the previous one about creating a routine. Habits are
associated with cues. This is very obvious with “bad habits” where we know that a particular smell makes
us want to eat or just hearing the cellphone ring can take our attention away from something important
that we are doing. If you want to create a habit, use cues to take over some of the effort. For the person
wanting to run each day, let the ritual of changing out of your work clothes create a set of
associations—the drawer with your running shorts or the closet with your shoes—that help you get out of
the house and onto the trail.
• Make a habit to break a habitMake a habit to break a habit. Old habits are hard to break. New habits can be hard to learn, but in
general—assuming you stay motivated—it is easier to get rid of an unwanted habit by replacing it with
something you want to do. You may like to drink a beer (or a soda or something else that isn’t water)
when you get home from work. If taking that drink is a habit, you may find it hard to resist. But if you start
your new running regimen, running as you get home from work, the unwanted habit will need to move
aside. And every day that you don’t engage in the unwanted habit (because you are on your 5-mile run)
it becomes weaker and easier to resist.
Final Thoughts
At the beginning of this activity, we suggested that “habits are the invisible architecture of our daily lives.” A lot of
our time is spent engaging in habitual activities, some good, some bad, and most of them useful for getting
ourselves through the day. But we have also suggested that old habits can be changed and new habits can be
chosen and learned. In fact, this area of psychology says that you can decide what kind of person you want to be,
and there is a reasonable chance you can become that person. But it isn’t easy and it won’t happen over night.
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PSYCH IN REAL LIFE: HABITS
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Examine the importance of habitual behavior in our daily lives

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Habits: The Good, the Bad, and the Consequences
Think back across the last hour. What have you been doing?
Which of the last hour’s activities were habitual—done at particular times of the day on a predictable schedule?
How much of the time were you “on automatic”, guided by well-practiced routines that require little thought? Often,
as we drive a car or walk to our workplace, work out at the gym or shop for groceries, our actions are unconscious
and stereotyped as we think about something unrelated to what we are doing.
Habits have gotten a bad reputation in popular literature. Eating too much and chatting online too much and so
many other things we supposedly do too much are blamed on “bad habits”. And, in a world that prizes novelty and
creativity, the idea that habits are “automatic” suggests that we may be going through life like zombies, not
mindful and not experiencing our lives deeply enough.
But habits can be positive, too. Writer Gretchen Rubin notes that “habits are the invisible architecture of our daily
lives…Our habits shape our existence, and our future. If we change our habits, we change our lives.” (Note: The
quotation comes from her book about changing habits: Better than Before.) Habits free us from always having to
plan our next action and use willpower to get things done.
Habits may be “automatic” in the sense that they free up our conscious minds to think about other things, but they
can be changed and they can be chosen. For millennia, religious teachers and moral philosophers have urged us
to choose who we wish to be by shaping our own habits. We don’t become better by trying harder; we become
better by eliminating the need to try—we just do it.
How Much of Your Time is Guided by Habits?
One obvious way to find out what people do during the day is to ask them. In fact, pause to do that now. How
much time do you think you spend in habit-driven activities? What percentage would you say, between 0 and
100%?
You probably found that it is not easy to come up with a number here. What counts as a “habit”? And how well
can we remember how long we were engaged in one activity or another? It is easier to remember interesting
things than dull things, so there may be built-in biases in our memories to recall the engaging activities rather than
the repetitive, habitual ones.
The Diary Method
Wood, Quinn, and Kashy (2002) used a different approach, one that did not rely so much on memory: the diary
method. They didn’t invent this research approach, but they were the first to apply it to the study of habits. This
method doesn’t really involve keeping a diary in the traditional sense. Instead, it involves periodically “sampling”
people’s activities along with some personal reflections on what they are doing.
Here is how it worked. Wood and her colleagues recruited college students and provided each one with a
programmed wristwatch that buzzed once every hour. When the wristwatch (Note: Today, cell phones are likely to
be used for diary studies, but in 2002, only about 60 of students had clamshell-style cell phones, and the “smart
phones” were still 5 years in the future.) buzzed, the student recorded what he or she was doing. Then, the
student answered a series of questions about this activity:
• How often they engaged in that behavior.
• Their current physical location.
• The physical location in which they generally performed the behavior.
• Which other people—if any—were involved in the activity.
• The amount of attention needed for successful performance (1 to 4: almost none to constant attention)
• The degree of difficulty of the behavior (1 to 5: very easy to very difficult)
• The intensity of emotions felt as they engaged in the activity (1 to 5: much more negative than normal to
much more positive than normal)

They also answered an open-ended question: what were you thinking about while you were engaged in the
activity?
The Results of the Diary Study
The researchers analyzed the “diary” reports of 279 students across two version of this study. When they defined
“habitual behaviors” as activities that regularly occurred at the same time and place, they found that 41% of the
behaviors could be considered habitual. If this result actually generalizes the rest of us, then nearly half of our
time is spent engaging in habit-driven activities.
In a separate analysis, the researchers approached the idea of a habit in a different way. They reasoned that if
habits are somewhat automatic, then we can think about something else while we are engaged in the habitual
behaviors. Because they asked the students what they were doing and what they were thinking about, the
researchers were able to determine how often there was a mismatch between behavior and thoughts.
Approximately 47% of the time, thoughts were about something other than what they were doing, a percentage
very close to the 43% estimate from the previous paragraph. However, even though the data support the idea that
we can and often do think about other things while engaging in habitual behaviors, we are not zombies—about
40% of the time, people were thinking about activities they labeled as habits while engaging in them. The
experimenters explain that this is “consistent with the idea that this mode of behavior is best characterized by
minimal or sporadic cognitive monitoring and not by the complete absence of thought.” (Note: Wood, Quinn, &
Kashy (2002), page 1281.)
The researchers report one other interesting finding about habitual behaviors. When people engaged in habitual
behaviors they reported lower negative emotions than when they were performing non-habitual activities.
Specifically, habitual behaviors were associated with lower stress, reduced likelihood of feeling overwhelmed, and
lower probability of feeling out of control. Happily, people did not feel less interested or less motivated while
engaging in habitual behaviors, so reduced emotional reactions were not caused by becoming disengaged or less
attentive.
Studying Habits by Changing Them
An important insight about habits is that they are activated by triggers in the environment. These triggers can be
people or places, events or the time of day. The important idea is that we have learned to respond to something
outside of us (i.e., the trigger) with a specific behavior (the habit). We will come back to this idea that the situation
initiates the habitual behavior later when we talk about changing your own habits, but first we will look at a set of
studies by Wendy Wood, David Neal, and their colleagues. This is just one of many studies of habits that these
and other researchers have conducted. It will give you an idea of how we can learn more about psychological
processes by manipulating the details of a common event to see how people’s behavior changes.

Figure 1. Are you a habitual popcorn eater?
Figure 2. Researchers set out to test whether students
would eat more popcorn in a movie-theater room, like this
one, or in a regular meeting room.
The Popcorn Study
Movie theater attendance is on the decline in the United
States, but going to the movies is still popular. Of course,
we go to the theater to see the movie, but for many people
the experience is just not complete without the right
refreshments: popcorn, candy, and soft drinks. You may be
too health-conscious to buy these snacks, but most movie
theaters depend on their concession stands to stay open.
(Note: According to research reported in Stanford Business,
20% of theater revenue comes from food sales, but a
whopping 40% of profits come from food. They suggest that
the high price of these snacks helps keep ticket prices
down. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-does-
movie-popcorn-cost-so-much) Eating popcorn in a movie
theater is a great example of a habit: a behavior that is
triggered by a particular setting—the movie theater.
In 2011, David Neal, Wendy Wood, and some of their
students published a study in which they used the movie
theater-popcorn connection to study habitual behaviors. (Note: David T. Neal, Wendy Wood, Mengju Wu, & David
Kurlander (2011). The pull of the past: When do habits persist despite conflict with motives? Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(11), 1428-1437.) They looked for evidence that movie theaters really do trigger
eating popcorn. But checking out the validity of that claim was just the starting point for studying the popcorn
habit.
The Setup
The experiments were conducted on the campus of the
University of Southern California (USC). The campus has a
cinema that regularly shows films that are popular among
students. (Note: This study was conducted in 2011. Habits
change as social conventions change, so we can’t
guarantee that the USC cinema is still a popular attraction
on campus.) They recruited students and assigned them to
one of two conditions. In the Cinema condition, the students
went into the theater before the regular movie started and
they watched and rated movie trailers. The important thing
to understand is that the setting looked, sounded, smelled,
and felt like a movie theater (which, of course, it was).
Other students were recruited to come, at the same time of
day, to a meeting room near the movie theater. These
students were asked to listen to watch and rate music
videos. The music videos had been pretested to assure that
they were as interesting and engaging as the movie trailers
that the cinema group watched. For this meeting room
condition, the room was as comfortable as the theater and the task was as engaging as the one in the theater, but
the location did not look or sound, smell or feel like a movie theater. It was a meeting room.
Next came the critical prop for this experiment: a full box of popcorn was given to each person, along with a cup
of water. No one made a big deal about the popcorn, but (unknown to the participants) the main question was:
how much popcorn would people eat?

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TRY ITTRY IT
Where do you think the participants ate more popcorn: in the cinema or in the meeting room? Move the bars
below to give your estimate of the percentage of the box of popcorn (this is the percentage number on the Y-
axis) that was eaten—on the average—by the participants in each location.
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AnswerAnswer
TRY ITTRY IT
Now adjust the bar graphs to give your estimate of the percentage of the box of popcorn that was eaten—on
the average—by the participants in each location. Brown represents stale popcorn and yellow represents fresh
popcorn.
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AnswerAnswer
The first question was the easy one. But we left out a crucial piece of information: half of the participants in each
location had nice fresh popcorn, but the other half had rubbery, stale popcorn. Now, how much fresh or stale
popcorn do you think participants ate in the two locations?
Now perhaps the people in the cinema just didn’t notice that the stale popcorn was stale. Fortunately, the
experimenters anticipated that question, so they asked the students to rate the taste of the popcorn. Here is what
they found:

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TRY ITTRY IT
What do you think happened in the meeting room? You already know that they ate less popcorn in general, and
that they at less stale popcorn than fresh. But did habit strength affect them as much as it did for the folks in the
cinema? Make your prediction using the bars below.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/habits3.html
AnswerAnswer
Students with stronger cinema-popcorn habits did eat slightly more popcorn overall than those with weaker
habits, but look at the DIFFERENCE between the two bars at each habit level. At all three habit strengths,
participants ate about the same amount LESS stale popcorn than fresh. This is the sort of thing that people do
when they are aware of the food they are eating. If something tastes good, you eat it. If something tastes bad,
you leave it in the box.
These results are consistent with the idea that the cinema environment triggers the popcorn-eating habit. The
habitual popcorn eater consumes popcorn in the triggering environment (here, the cinema setting) even if the
popcorn is not worth eating. In a different environment (the meeting room) the habit is not triggered, so popcorn
consumption is much more determined by its quality, regardless of the strength of that habit in the cinema setting.
Breaking Bad Habits
The experimenters weren’t quite done. They had demonstrated that a habit cued by the right context can lead to
behaviors that no one would consciously choose: like eating bad popcorn. However, they also wanted to know if
interfering with the situation could reduce the power of the habit.
In a second study, the experimenters went back to the cinema. There was no meeting room condition. This time
they wanted the cinema to trigger the popcorn habit, but they asked if changing some essential part of the
habitual behavior would reduce its power.
Which hand do you use to hold the box of popcorn? Which hand do you use to grab a kernel or two and raise it
(them) to your mouth? I hold the box with my left hand and feed myself with my right. Always.
For this study, the experimenters put a handle on the popcorn box and instructed half of the subjects to hold the
box with their usual hand, and the other half to hold it with the other hand—the one they usually don’t use. (Note:
Reports collected after the experiment indicated that most participants followed these instructions almost all of the
time, and no one violated the instructions very often. Happily, most college students are willing to cooperate with
researchers.)

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The theory here is simple: If we change something about the habit, then we reduce its power. In turn, we become
more aware of what we are doing—more guided by our conscious goals and less by our automatic sequences of
behavior. Is that what happened?
Results
As with the first study, the experimenters divided the subjects into those with weak, medium, and strong movie-
popcorn habits. The participants ate less popcorn in this experiment than in the first one, (Note: This difference in
average consumption is not discussed in the research article, and it might be nice to know why popcorn
consumption was down in the second study. Nevertheless, the more important results was the difference between
stale and fresh popcorn consumption in the three habit levels.) but the pattern of results was still interesting. Here
is what happened when participants used their usual hands for holding the box and eating.
Figure 5. Those who used their typical hand when eating popcorn in the cinema condition were more likely to eat popcorn if they
had strong popcorn-eating habits.
Notice that these results are very similar to the results of the first experiment, except that habit strength had a
stronger influence on amount of popcorn consumed. Most importantly, at low habit strength, students ate less
stale popcorn than fresh. At stronger habit strengths, the quality of the popcorn didn’t matter. They just ate a lot of
it.

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TRY ITTRY IT
But what happens in the cinema, with all of its cues for eating popcorn, when an important part of the habit is
altered? Make your prediction by moving the bars in the figure below. Remember that the opposite hand
condition is supposed to reduce the power of the habit. It just doesn’t feel the same.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/habits4.html
AnswerAnswer
At the weak habit level, the participants are not eating much popcorn at all. As habit strength increases, the
desire to eat popcorn presumably also increases, but notice that the quality of the popcorn is increasingly
important (look at the differences between the brown and yellow bars). The habit is not eliminated, but
conscious evaluation of the popcorn is now having a greater influence on behavior.
The second study is important for a practical reason. It suggests that the strength of a habit can be influenced by
minor changes to our routine. Habits can be weakened and they can be eliminated. And that leads us to our final
topic.
How to Create Good Habits
Let’s imagine that you want to start a new habit. For example, maybe it is time to get into shape, so you decide
that you want to run every afternoon before dinner.
No one can give you a guaranteed system for creating a new habit—or for breaking an unwanted habit. However,
habit experts, like Dr. Wood and Dr. Neal—have some advice that comes from their research.
• Don’t believe simple formulas about making or breaking habits.Don’t believe simple formulas about making or breaking habits. In 1960, a popular self-help book
claimed that forming a habit takes 21 days. (Note: Maxwell Maltz (1960) Psycho-Cybernetics. Prentice-
Hall.) If this is true, then you just need to be sure to run before dinner every day for three weeks and
you’ve done it! In 2010, psychologist Pippa Lally found that this timeframe for creating a new habit takes,
on the average 66 days. But Dr. Lally’s more important point is that many factors determine how long
habit formation takes. Her research showed a range of times from 18 days to 254, estimates based on
self-reports. New behaviors vary in complexity and people have a variety of motivations and goals,
different personalities and social support systems. True habit formation is a long-term commitment, so
plan to make a conscious effort for many months.
• Make your habit the default behavior for a particular time or place.Make your habit the default behavior for a particular time or place. Habits are created from actions that
are repeated frequently and in a particular context. This is particularly important on those days when
your motivation is low—when you would rather sit at home than go out and run. But your brain is on your
side in this. In a 2013 study, Neal and Wood found that, when we are tired or distracted, we avoid
making decisions. (Note: David T. Neal, Wendy Wood, & A. Drolet. (2013). How do people adhere to
goals when willpower is low? The profits (and pitfalls) of strong habits. Journal of Personality and Social

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Psychology, 10(4), 959-975.) In other words, we go with the decision that is easier. If you make your new
habit (running before dinner) your default behavior, it will be easier to just go out and run than to put in
the effort to decide to do something else.
• New habits require effortNew habits require effort.
• Choose your cuesChoose your cues. This point is related to the previous one about creating a routine. Habits are
associated with cues. This is very obvious with “bad habits” where we know that a particular smell makes
us want to eat or just hearing the cellphone ring can take our attention away from something important
that we are doing. If you want to create a habit, use cues to take over some of the effort. For the person
wanting to run each day, let the ritual of changing out of your work clothes create a set of
associations—the drawer with your running shorts or the closet with your shoes—that help you get out of
the house and onto the trail.
• Make a habit to break a habitMake a habit to break a habit. Old habits are hard to break. New habits can be hard to learn, but in
general—assuming you stay motivated—it is easier to get rid of an unwanted habit by replacing it with
something you want to do. You may like to drink a beer (or a soda or something else that isn’t water)
when you get home from work. If taking that drink is a habit, you may find it hard to resist. But if you start
your new running regimen, running as you get home from work, the unwanted habit will need to move
aside. And every day that you don’t engage in the unwanted habit (because you are on your 5-mile run)
it becomes weaker and easier to resist.
Final Thoughts
At the beginning of this activity, we suggested that “habits are the invisible architecture of our daily lives.” A lot of
our time is spent engaging in habitual activities, some good, some bad, and most of them useful for getting
ourselves through the day. But we have also suggested that old habits can be changed and new habits can be
chosen and learned. In fact, this area of psychology says that you can decide what kind of person you want to be,
and there is a reasonable chance you can become that person. But it isn’t easy and it won’t happen over night.
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PUTTING IT TOGETHER: STRESS, LIFESTYLE,
AND HEALTH
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
In this module, you learned to
• describe stress, its impact on the body, and identify common stressors
• explain the negative physiological responses to stress
• describe methods to cope with stress and explain ways to increase happiness

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Ahh, take a deep breath in. Now take a deep, relaxing breath out.
Feels good, doesn’t it? You are done with this module on stress
and hopefully now feel better equipped to understand it, deal with
it, and are ready to increase the happiness in your life. You
already learned about ways to increase your happiness and
develop better habits, but we will summarize with some key
points about happiness below:
1. A Proactive Life is a Happy OneA Proactive Life is a Happy One
Happy people have positive goals and positive tasks. Proactive
people are 15% more satisfied with their lives than more passive
people. As happiness researcher Ed Diener explains, “happy
people set goals for themselves again and again.”
2. An Active Life is a Happy OneAn Active Life is a Happy One
Regular physical activity keeps the body healthy and makes the spirit happy. Daily walks raise the level of
happiness 12%. David Niven says, “people who stay fit via sports are healthier, more positive, and more
successful.”
3. Doing Good for the World is a Source of HappinessDoing Good for the World is a Source of Happiness
Those who regularly do good things for others are 24% happier than those who only live for themselves. John A.
Schindler wrote, “live as a giving person. Those who give are happier than those who only take. Those who give
to others discover the beauty in the world.”
4. Rest and Relaxation Bring HappinessRest and Relaxation Bring Happiness
The central point of a healthy and happy life is to find the balance between rest and activity. Besides, work,
physical activity, and time spent with others, we need time to rest and relax. We need to get enough sleep.
Scientific research shows that relaxed people think more positively and are happier. Every hour of sleep missed
lowers the positivity one can experience during the day.
5. Positive ThinkingPositive Thinking
Those who think positively double their chance to realize happiness. Those who wish to be happy should think
positively. The positive characteristics of wisdom, love, peace, inner power and joy in life should be set as the
central point of one’s life. One should exercise a conscious decision to be positive. Fo example, we can ask
ourselves, “ how can I go through the day in a positive way?”
6. Too Much Television Makes You UnhappyToo Much Television Makes You Unhappy
Scientific research states, “every hour of television lowers the general quality of life by 5%.” Those who would like
to grow in terms of happiness, should stop watching TV. (David Niven: Die 100 Geheimnisse glücklicher
Menschen. München 2000, Seite 32 f.)
7. Foster FriendshipFoster Friendship
Build on your positive circle of friends. Cancer stricken women who met with a group once a week raised their
survival chances to twice as high as those who didn’t meet with a group. In the western world, there is a strong
tendency towards isolation. There are many single and lonely people. People who have a good circle of friends
are happier and not isolated. We should take care of our friendships and practice positive activities with them.
8. HumorHumor
Those with a good sense of humor raise their positivity by 33%. We should foster our sense of humor and learn to
not take things so seriously. We should learn to laugh at ourselves. Those who are able to do so, can live lighter
and brighter. It is good to see cheerful films, read funny books, and to visit joyful people.
9. Self-ConfidenceSelf-Confidence

Happy people believe in themselves. They believe in their goals, their wisdom, and power. They see themselves
as winners. They know they will prevail in the long term.
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DISCUSSION: STRESS, LIFESTYLE, AND HEALTH
Thoughts on Stress and Happiness
STEP 1STEP 1: Answer ONE of the following questions in a discussion post of at least 200 words:
1. Imagine your 17-year old sister is about to start her first semester of college. She’s always been one to
do it all, but can become easily stressed. What advice would you give her about ways to manage her
stress, prevent stress, and cope with stress? Use specific theories and examples from your reading.
2. Do you know people who are happy in one way but not in others? People who are high in life
satisfaction, for example, but low in enjoying life or high in negative feelings? What should they do to
increase their happiness across all three types of subjective well-being?
STEP 2STEP 2: Write a thoughtful post of at least 75 words on at least TWO classmates’ posts.
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MODULE 14: PSYCHOLOGICAL
DISORDERS
WHY IT MATTERS: PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS
Figure 1. A wreath is laid in memoriam to victims of the Washington Navy Yard shooting. (credit: modification of work by D. Myles
Cullen, US Department of Defense)
On Monday, September 16, 2013, a gunman killed 12 people as the workday began at the Washington Navy Yard
in Washington, DC. Aaron Alexis, 34, had a troubled history: he thought that he was being controlled by radio
waves, and a month earlier, he had complained of noises coming from the linen closet in his military housing. He
called the police to complain about voices in his head and being under surveillance by “shadowy forces” (Thomas,
Levine, Date, & Cloherty, 2013).
While Alexis’s actions cannot be excused, it is clear that he had some form of mental illness. Mental illness is not
necessarily a cause of violence; it is far more likely that the mentally ill will be victims rather than perpetrators of
violence (Stuart, 2003). If, however, Alexis had received the help he needed, this tragedy might have been
averted.
This module will clarify what psychological disorders are, how they are diagnosed and classified, their symptoms,
and insights into their causes.
AnswerAnswer

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INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGICAL
DISORDERS
What you’ll learn to do: define psychological disorders and
explain how they are classified
Psychological disorders are conditions characterized by abnormal thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Although
challenging, it is essential for psychologists and mental health professionals to agree on what experiences and
actions constitute the presence of a psychological disorder. Inner experiences and behaviors that are atypical or
violate social norms could signify the presence of a disorder; however, each of these criteria alone is inadequate.
It is generally accepted that a psychological disorder is defined by significant disturbances in thoughts, feelings,
and behaviors; these disturbances must reflect some kind of dysfunction (biological, psychological, or
developmental), must cause significant impairment in one’s life, and must not reflect culturally expected reactions
to certain life events.
In this section, you’ll learn about how disorders are defined, and also how they are diagnosed and classified.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is essentially a classification manual that
clinicians can use to read about the criteria, prevalence, risk factors, and details about over 200 disorders.

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LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe how psychological disorders are defined, as well as the inherent difficulties in doing so
• Describe the basic features of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition
(DSM-5) and how it is used to classify disorders
• Discuss historical and supernatural perspectives as well as modern and biological perspectives on the
origin of psychological disorders
• Describe the diathesis-stress model and its importance to the study of psychopathology
What are Psychological Disorders?
A psychological disorderpsychological disorder is a condition characterized by abnormal thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors. PsychopathologyPsychopathology is the study of psychological disorders, including their symptoms, etiologyetiology (i.e., their
causes), and treatment. The term psychopathology can also refer to the manifestation of a psychological disorder.
Although consensus can be difficult, it is extremely important for mental health professionals to agree on what
kinds of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are truly abnormal in the sense that they genuinely indicate the
presence of psychopathology. Certain patterns of behavior and inner experience can easily be labeled as
abnormal and clearly signify some kind of psychological disturbance. The person who washes his hands 40 times
per day and the person who claims to hear the voices of demons exhibit behaviors and inner experiences that
most would regard as abnormal: beliefs and behaviors that suggest the existence of a psychological disorder. But,
consider the nervousness a young man feels when talking to attractive women or the loneliness and longing for
home a freshman experiences during her first semester of college—these feelings may not be regularly present,
but they fall in the range of normal. So, what kinds of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors represent a true
psychological disorder? Psychologists work to distinguish psychological disorders from inner experiences and
behaviors that are merely situational, idiosyncratic, or unconventional.
Definition of a Psychological Disorder
Perhaps the simplest approach to conceptualizing psychological disorders is to label behaviors, thoughts, and
inner experiences that are atypical, distressful, dysfunctional, and sometimes even dangerous, as signs of a
disorder. For example, if you ask a classmate for a date and you are rejected, you probably would feel a little
dejected. Such feelings would be normal. If you felt extremely depressed—so much so that you lost interest in
activities, had difficulty eating or sleeping, felt utterly worthless, and contemplated suicide—your feelings would be
atypicalatypical, would deviate from the norm, and could signify the presence of a psychological disorder. Just because
something is atypical, however, does not necessarily mean it is disordered.
For example, only about 4% of people in the United States have red hair, so red hair is considered an atypical
characteristic (Figure 1), but it is not considered disordered, it’s just unusual. And it is less unusual in Scotland,
where approximately 13% of the population has red hair (“DNA Project Aims,” 2012). As you will learn, some
disorders, although not exactly typical, are far from atypical, and the rates in which they appear in the population
are surprisingly high.

Figure 1. Red hair is considered unusual, but not
abnormal. (a) Isla Fischer, (b) Prince Harry, and (c)
Marcia Cross are three natural redheads. (credit a:
modification of work by Richard Goldschmidt; credit b:
modification of work by Glyn Lowe; credit c: modification
of work by Kirk Weaver)
Figure 2. Eye contact is one of many social gestures that
vary from culture to culture. (credit: Joi Ito)
If we can agree that merely being atypical is an insufficient
criterion for a having a psychological disorder, is it
reasonable to consider behavior or inner experiences that
differ from widely expected cultural values or expectations
as disordered? Using this criterion, a woman who walks
around a subway platform wearing a heavy winter coat in
July while screaming obscenities at strangers may be
considered as exhibiting symptoms of a psychological
disorder. Her actions and clothes violate socially accepted
rules governing appropriate dress and behavior; these
characteristics are atypical.
Cultural Expectations
Violating cultural expectations is not, in and of itself, a
satisfactory means of identifying the presence of a psychological disorder. Since behavior varies from one cultureculture
to another, what may be expected and considered appropriate in one culture may not be viewed as such in other
cultures. For example, returning a stranger’s smile is expected in the United States because a pervasive social
norm dictates that we reciprocate friendly gestures. A person who refuses to acknowledge such gestures might
be considered socially awkward—perhaps even disordered—for violating this expectation. However, such
expectations are not universally shared. Cultural expectations in Japan involve showing reserve, restraint, and a
concern for maintaining privacy around strangers. Japanese people are generally unresponsive to smiles from
strangers (Patterson et al., 2007). Eye contact provides another example. In the United States and Europe, eye
contact with others typically signifies honesty and attention. However, most Latin-American, Asian, and African
cultures interpret direct eye contact as rude, confrontational, and aggressive (Pazain, 2010). Thus, someone who
makes eye contact with you could be considered appropriate and respectful or brazen and offensive, depending
on your culture (Figure 2).
Hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that are not
physically present) in Western societies is a violation of
cultural expectations, and a person who reports such inner
experiences is readily labeled as psychologically
disordered. In other cultures, visions that, for example,
pertain to future events may be regarded as normal
experiences that are positively valued (Bourguignon, 1970).
Finally, it is important to recognize that cultural norms
change over time: what might be considered typical in a
society at one time may no longer be viewed this way later,
similar to how fashion trends from one era may elicit
quizzical looks decades later—imagine how a headband,
legwarmers, and the big hair of the 1980s would go over on
your campus today.
The American Psychiatric
Association (APA) Definition
Many of the features of the harmful dysfunction model are incorporated in a formal definition of psychological
disorder developed by the . According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA) (2013), a psychological
disorder is a condition that is said to consist of the following:
• There are significant disturbances in thoughts, feelings, and behaviorsThere are significant disturbances in thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. A person must experience inner
states (e.g., thoughts and/or feelings) and exhibit behaviors that are clearly disturbed—that is, unusual,
but in a negative, self-defeating way. Often, such disturbances are troubling to those around the
individual who experiences them. For example, an individual who is uncontrollably preoccupied by
thoughts of germs spends hours each day bathing, has inner experiences, and displays behaviors that
most would consider atypical and negative (disturbed) and that would likely be troubling to family
members.

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• The disturbances reflect some kind of biological, psychological, or developmental dysfunctionThe disturbances reflect some kind of biological, psychological, or developmental dysfunction. Disturbed
patterns of inner experiences and behaviors should reflect some flaw (dysfunction) in the internal
biological, psychological, and developmental mechanisms that lead to normal, healthy psychological
functioning. For example, the hallucinations observed in schizophrenia could be a sign of brain
abnormalities.
• The disturbances lead to significant distress or disability in one’s lifeThe disturbances lead to significant distress or disability in one’s life. A person’s inner experiences and
behaviors are considered to reflect a psychological disorder if they cause the person considerable
distress, or greatly impair his ability to function as a normal individual (often referred to as functional
impairment, or occupational and social impairment). As an illustration, a person’s fear of social situations
might be so distressing that it causes the person to avoid all social situations (e.g., preventing that
person from being able to attend class or apply for a job).
• The disturbances do not reflect expected or culturally approved responses to certain eventsThe disturbances do not reflect expected or culturally approved responses to certain events.
Disturbances in thoughts, feelings, and behaviors must be socially unacceptable responses to certain
events that often happen in life. For example, it is perfectly natural (and expected) that a person would
experience great sadness and might wish to be left alone following the death of a close family member.
Because such reactions are in some ways culturally expected, the individual would not be assumed to
signify a mental disorder.
Some believe that there is no essential criterion or set of criteria that can definitively distinguish all cases of
disorder from nondisorder (Lilienfeld & Marino, 1999). In truth, no single approach to defining a psychological
disorder is adequate by itself, nor is there universal agreement on where the boundary is between disordered and
not disordered. From time to time we all experience anxiety, unwanted thoughts, and moments of sadness; our
behavior at other times may not make much sense to ourselves or to others. These inner experiences and
behaviors can vary in their intensity, but are only considered disordered when they are highly disturbing to us and/
or others, suggest a dysfunction in normal mental functioning, and are associated with significant distress or
disability in social or occupational activities.

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• Identify a behavior that is considered unusual or abnormal in your own culture that would be
considered normal and expected in another culture.
Diagnosing and Classifying Psychological Disorders
A first step in the study of psychological disorders is carefully and systematically discerning significant signs and
symptoms. How do mental health professionals ascertain whether or not a person’s inner states and behaviors
truly represent a psychological disorder? Arriving at a proper diagnosisdiagnosis—that is, appropriately identifying and
labeling a set of defined symptoms—is absolutely crucial. This process enables professionals to use a common
language with others in the field and aids in communication about the disorder with the patient, colleagues and
the public. A proper diagnosis is an essential element to guide proper and successful treatment. For these
reasons, classification systems that organize psychological disorders systematically are necessary.
The Diagnostic And Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)
Although a number of classification systems have been developed over time, the one that is used by most mental
health professionals in the United States is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM-5)(DSM-5), published by the American Psychiatric Association (2013). (Note that the American Psychiatric
Association differs from the American Psychological Association; both are abbreviated APA.) The first edition of
the DSM, published in 1952, classified psychological disorders according to a format developed by the U.S. Army
during World War II (Clegg, 2012). In the years since, the DSM has undergone numerous revisions and editions.
The most recent edition, published in 2013, is the DSM-5 (APA, 2013). The DSM-5 includes many categories of
disorders (e.g., anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, and dissociative disorders). Each disorder is described in
detail, including an overview of the disorder (diagnostic features), specific symptoms required for diagnosis
(diagnostic criteria), prevalence information (what percent of the population is thought to be afflicted with the
disorder), and risk factors associated with the disorder. Figure 3 shows lifetime prevalence rates—the percentage
of people in a population who develop a disorder in their lifetime—of various psychological disorders among U.S.
adults. These data were based on a national sample of 9,282 U.S. residents (National Comorbidity Survey, 2007).

Figure 3. The graph shows the breakdown of psychological disorders, comparing the percentage prevalence among adult males
and adult females in the United States. Because the data is from 2007, the categories shown here are from the DSM-IV, which
has been supplanted by the DSM-5. Most categories remain the same; however, alcohol abuse now falls under a broader Alcohol
Use Disorder category.
The DSM-5 also provides information about comorbiditycomorbidity; the co-occurrence of two disorders. For example, the
DSM-5 mentions that 41% of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) also meet the diagnostic criteria
for major depressive disorder (Figure 4). Drug use is highly comorbid with other mental illnesses; 6 out of 10
people who have a substance use disorder also suffer from another form of mental illness (National Institute on
Drug Abuse [NIDA], 2007).

Figure 4. Obsessive-compulsive disorder and major depressive disorder frequently occur in the same person.
The DSM has changed considerably in the half-century since it was originally published. The first two editions of
the DSM, for example, listed homosexuality as a disorder; however, in 1973, the APA voted to remove it from the
manual (Silverstein, 2009). Additionally, beginning with the DSM-III in 1980, mental disorders have been
described in much greater detail, and the number of diagnosable conditions has grown steadily, as has the size of
the manual itself. DSM-I included 106 diagnoses and was 130 total pages, whereas DSM-III included more than 2
times as many diagnoses (265) and was nearly seven times its size (886 total pages) (Mayes & Horowitz, 2005).
Although DSM-5 is longer than DSM-IV, the volume includes only 237 disorders, a decrease from the 297
disorders that were listed in DSM-IV. The latest edition, DSM-5, includes revisions in the organization and naming
of categories and in the diagnostic criteria for various disorders (Regier, Kuhl, & Kupfer, 2012), while emphasizing
careful consideration of the importance of gender and cultural difference in the expression of various symptoms
(Fisher, 2010).
Some believe that establishing new diagnoses might overpathologize the human condition by turning common
human problems into mental illnesses (The Associated Press, 2013). Indeed, the finding that nearly half of all
Americans will meet the criteria for a DSM disorder at some point in their life (Kessler et al., 2005) likely fuels
much of this skepticism. The DSM-5 is also criticized on the grounds that its diagnostic criteria have been
loosened, thereby threatening to “turn our current diagnostic inflation into diagnostic hyperinflation” (Frances,
2012, para. 22). For example, DSM-IV specified that the symptoms of major depressive disorder must not be
attributable to normal bereavement (loss of a loved one). The DSM-5, however, has removed this bereavement
exclusion, essentially meaning that grief and sadness after a loved one’s death can constitute major depressive
disorder.

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The International Classification of Diseases
A second classification system, the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), is also widely recognized.
Published by the World Health Organization (WHO), the ICD was developed in Europe shortly after World War II
and, like the DSM, has been revised several times. The categories of psychological disorders in both the DSM
and ICD are similar, as are the criteria for specific disorders; however, some differences exist. Although the ICD is
used for clinical purposes, this tool is also used to examine the general health of populations and to monitor the
prevalence of diseases and other health problems internationally (WHO, 2013). The ICD is in its 10th edition
(ICD-10); however, efforts are now underway to develop a new edition (ICD-11) that, in conjunction with the
changes in DSM-5, will help harmonize the two classification systems as much as possible (APA, 2013).
A study that compared the use of the two classification systems found that worldwide the ICD is more frequently
used for clinical diagnosis, whereas the DSM is more valued for research (Mezzich, 2002). Most research findings
concerning the etiology and treatment of psychological disorders are based on criteria set forth in the DSM
(Oltmanns & Castonguay, 2013). The DSM also includes more explicit disorder criteria, along with an extensive
and helpful explanatory text (Regier et al., 2012). The DSM is the classification system of choice among U.S.
mental health professionals, and this module is based on the DSM paradigm.

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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch this CrashCourse Psychology video to better understand the history of diagnosing psychological
disorders and how they are classified.
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The Compassionate View of Psychological Disorders
As these disorders are outlined, please bear two things in mind. First, remember that psychological disorders
represent extremes of inner experience and behavior. If, while reading about these disorders, you feel that these
descriptions begin to personally characterize you, do not worry—this moment of enlightenment probably means
nothing more than you are normal. Each of us experiences episodes of sadness, anxiety, and preoccupation with
certain thoughts—times when we do not quite feel ourselves. These episodes should not be considered
problematic unless the accompanying thoughts and behaviors become extreme and have a disruptive effect on
one’s life. Second, understand that people with psychological disorders are far more than just embodiments of
their disorders. We do not use terms such as schizophrenics, depressives, or phobics because they are labels
that objectify people who suffer from these conditions, thus promoting biased and disparaging assumptions about
them. It is important to remember that a psychological disorder is not what a person is; it is something that a
person has—through no fault of his or her own. As is the case with cancer or diabetes, those with psychological
disorders suffer debilitating, often painful conditions that are not of their own choosing. These individuals deserve
to be viewed and treated with compassion, understanding, and dignity.
Supernatural Perspectives of Psychological Disorders
For centuries, psychological disorders were viewed from a supernatural perspective: attributed to a force beyond
scientific understanding. Those afflicted were thought to be practitioners of black magic or possessed by spirits
(Figure 5) (Maher & Maher, 1985). For example, convents throughout Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries
reported hundreds of nuns falling into a state of frenzy in which the afflicted foamed at the mouth, screamed and
convulsed, sexually propositioned priests, and confessed to having carnal relations with devils or Christ. Although,
today, these cases would suggest serious mental illness; at the time, these events were routinely explained as
possession by devilish forces (Waller, 2009a). Similarly, grievous fits by young girls are believed to have
precipitated the witch panic in New England late in the 17th century (Demos, 1983). Such beliefs in supernatural
causes of mental illness are still held in some societies today; for example, beliefs that supernatural forces cause
mental illness are common in some cultures in modern-day Nigeria (Aghukwa, 2012).

Figure 5. In The Extraction of the Stone of Madness, a
15th century painting by Hieronymus Bosch, a practitioner
is using a tool to extract an object (the supposed “stone of
madness”) from the head of an afflicted person.
Figure 6. Although the cause of dancing mania, depicted
in this painting, was unclear, the behavior was attributed
to supernatural forces.
DIG DEEPER: DANCING MANIADIG DEEPER: DANCING MANIA
Between the 11th and 17th centuries, a curious epidemic
swept across Western Europe. Groups of people would
suddenly begin to dance with wild abandon. This
compulsion to dance—referred to as dancing
mania—sometimes gripped thousands of people at a
time (Figure 6). Historical accounts indicate that those
afflicted would sometimes dance with bruised and bloody
feet for days or weeks, screaming of terrible visions and
begging priests and monks to save their souls (Waller,
2009b). What caused dancing mania is not known, but
several explanations have been proposed, including
spider venom and ergot poisoning (“Dancing Mania,”
2011).
Historian John Waller (2009a, 2009b) has provided a comprehensive and convincing explanation of dancing
mania that suggests the phenomenon was attributable to a combination of three factors: psychological distress,
social contagion, and belief in supernatural forces. Waller argued that various disasters of the time (such as
famine, plagues, and floods) produced high levels of psychological distress that could increase the likelihood of
succumbing to an involuntary trance state. Waller indicated that anthropological studies and accounts of
possession rituals show that people are more likely to enter a trance state if they expect it to happen, and that
entranced individuals behave in a ritualistic manner, their thoughts and behavior shaped by the spiritual beliefs
of their culture. Thus, during periods of extreme physical and mental distress, all it took were a few
people—believing themselves to have been afflicted with a dancing curse—to slip into a spontaneous trance
and then act out the part of one who is cursed by dancing for days on end.
Biological Perspectives of Psychological Disorders
The biological perspective views psychological disorders as linked to biological phenomena, such as genetic
factors, chemical imbalances, and brain abnormalities; it has gained considerable attention and acceptance in
recent decades (Wyatt & Midkiff, 2006). Evidence from many sources indicates that most psychological disorders
have a genetic component; in fact, there is little dispute that some disorders are largely due to genetic factors.
The graph in Figure 7 shows heritability estimates for schizophrenia.

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Figure 7. A person’s risk of developing schizophrenia increases if a relative has schizophrenia. The closer the genetic relationship,
the higher the risk.
Findings such as these have led many of today’s researchers to search for specific genes and genetic mutations
that contribute to mental disorders. Also, sophisticated neural imaging technology in recent decades has revealed
how abnormalities in brain structure and function might be directly involved in many disorders, and advances in
our understanding of neurotransmitters and hormones have yielded insights into their possible connections. The
biological perspective is currently thriving in the study of psychological disorders.
The Diathesis-Stress Model of Psychological Disorders
Despite advances in understanding the biological basis of psychological disorders, the psychosocial perspective
is still very important. This perspective emphasizes the importance of learning, stress, faulty and self-defeating
thinking patterns, and environmental factors. Perhaps the best way to think about psychological disorders, then, is
to view them as originating from a combination of biological and psychological processes. Many develop not from
a single cause, but from a delicate fusion between partly biological and partly psychosocial factors.
The diathesis-stress modeldiathesis-stress model (Zuckerman, 1999) integrates biological and psychosocial factors to predict the
likelihood of a disorder. This diathesis-stress model suggests that people with an underlying predisposition for a
disorder (i.e., a diathesis) are more likely than others to develop a disorder when faced with adverse
environmental or psychological events (i.e., stress), such as childhood maltreatment, negative life events, trauma,
and so on. A diathesis is not always a biological vulnerability to an illness; some diatheses may be psychological
(e.g., a tendency to think about life events in a pessimistic, self-defeating way).
The key assumption of the diathesis-stress model is that both factors, diathesis and stress, are necessary in the
development of a disorder. Different models explore the relationship between the two factors: the level of stress
needed to produce the disorder is inversely proportional to the level of diathesis.

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
atypical:atypical: describes behaviors or feelings that deviate from the norm
comorbidity:comorbidity: co-occurrence of two disorders in the same individual
diagnosis:diagnosis: determination of which disorder a set of symptoms represents
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5):Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5): authoritative index of mental
disorders and the criteria for their diagnosis; published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA)
diathesis-stress model:diathesis-stress model: suggests that people with a predisposition for a disorder (a diathesis) are more likely to
develop the disorder when faced with stress; model of psychopathology
etiology:etiology: cause or causes of a psychological disorder
harmful dysfunction:harmful dysfunction: model of psychological disorders resulting from the inability of an internal mechanism to
perform its natural function
International Classification of Diseases (ICD):International Classification of Diseases (ICD): authoritative index of mental and physical diseases, including
infectious diseases, and the criteria for their diagnosis; published by the World Health Organization (WHO)
psychological disorder:psychological disorder: condition characterized by abnormal thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
psychopathology:psychopathology: study of psychological disorders, including their symptoms, causes, and treatment;
manifestation of a psychological disorder
supernatural:supernatural: describes a force beyond scientific understanding
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THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Even today, some believe that certain occurrences have supernatural causes. Think of an event,
recent or historical, for which others have provided supernatural explanation.

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Figure 1. While everyone may experience some level of
anxiety at one time or another, those with anxiety
disorders experience it consistently and so intensely that
it has a significantly negative impact on their quality of life.
• Although related to anxiety disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder is now classified as a “Trauma-and-
Stressor-Related Disorder.” PTSD is defined as a disorder in which the experience of a traumatic or
profoundly stressful event, such as combat, sexual assault, or natural disaster, produces a constellation
of symptoms that must last for one month or more. These symptoms include intrusive and distressing
memories of the event, flashbacks, avoidance of stimuli or situations that are connected to the event,
persistently negative emotional states, feeling detached from others, irritability, proneness toward
outbursts, and a tendency to be easily startled. Not everyone who experiences a traumatic event will
develop PTSD; a variety of risk factors associated with its development have been identified.
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Distinguish normal anxiety from pathological anxiety
• Explain phobias and their acquisition through learning
• Describe the main features of social anxiety disorder
• Explain panic disorder and panic attacks
• Describe the symptoms and prevalence of generalized anxiety disorder
Everybody experiences anxiety from time to time. Although anxiety is closely related to fear, the two states
possess important differences. Fear involves an instantaneous reaction to an imminent threat, whereas anxiety
involves apprehension, avoidance, and cautiousness regarding a potential threat, danger, or other negative event
(Craske, 1999). While anxiety is unpleasant to most people, it is important to our health, safety, and well-being.
Anxiety motivates us to take actions—such as preparing for exams, watching our weight, showing up to work on
time—that enable us to avert potential future problems. Anxiety also motivates us to avoid certain things—such as
running up debts and engaging in illegal activities—that could lead to future trouble. Most individuals’ level and
duration of anxiety approximates the magnitude of the potential threat they face. For example, suppose a single
woman in her late 30s who wishes to marry is concerned about the possibility of having to settle for a spouse who
is less attractive and educated than desired. This woman likely would experience anxiety of greater intensity and
duration than would a 21-year-old college junior who is having trouble finding a date for the annual social. Some
people, however, experience anxiety that is excessive, persistent, and greatly out of proportion to the actual
threat; if one’s anxiety has a disruptive influence on one’s live, this is a strong indicator that the individual is
experiencing an anxiety disorder.
Anxiety disordersAnxiety disorders are characterized by excessive and
persistent fear and anxiety, and by related disturbances in
behavior (APA, 2013). Although anxiety is universally
experienced, anxiety disorders cause considerable distress.
As a group, anxiety disorders are common: approximately
25%–30% of the U.S. population meets the criteria for at
least one anxiety disorder during their lifetime (Kessler et
al., 2005). Also, these disorders appear to be much more
common in women than they are in men; within a 12-month
period, around 23% of women and 14% of men will
experience at least one anxiety disorder (National
Comorbidity Survey, 2007). Anxiety disorders are the most
frequently occurring class of mental disorders and are often
comorbid with each other and with other mental disorders
(Kessler, Ruscio, Shear, & Wittchen, 2009).
Specific Phobia
Phobia is a Greek word that means fear. A person
diagnosed with a specificspecific phobiaphobia (formerly known as simple
phobiaphobia) experiences excessive, distressing, and persistent
fear or anxiety about a specific object or situation (such as
animals, enclosed spaces, elevators, or flying) (APA, 2013).
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relation to the phobic stimulus is irrational, some people with a specific phobia may go to great lengths to avoid
the phobic stimulus (the object or situation that triggers the fear and anxiety). Typically, the fear and anxiety a
phobic stimulus elicits is disruptive to the person’s life. For example, a man with a phobia of flying might refuse to
accept a job that requires frequent air travel, thus negatively affecting his career. Clinicians who have worked with
people who have specific phobias have encountered many kinds of phobias, some of which are shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Specific Phobias
PhobiaPhobia Feared Object or SituationFeared Object or Situation
Acrophobia heights
Aerophobia flying
Arachnophobia spiders
Claustrophobia enclosed spaces
Cynophobia dogs
Hematophobia blood
Ophidiophobia snakes
Taphophobia being buried alive
Trypanophobia injections
Xenophobia strangers

Figure 2. An ancient Roman agora in Tyre, Lebanon. This
is one of the public spaces after which the condition
agoraphobia is named.
Specific phobias are common; in the United States, around
12.5% of the population will meet the criteria for a specific
phobia at some point in their lifetime (Kessler et al., 2005).
One type of phobia, agoraphobiaagoraphobia, is listed in the DSM-5 as
a separate anxiety disorder. Agoraphobia, which literally
means “fear of the marketplace,” is characterized by
intense fear, anxiety, and avoidance of situations in which it
might be difficult to escape or receive help if one
experiences symptoms of a panic attack (a state of extreme
anxiety that we will discuss shortly). These situations
include public transportation, open spaces (parking lots),
enclosed spaces (stores), crowds, or being outside the
home alone (APA, 2013). About 1.4% of Americans
experience agoraphobia during their lifetime (Kessler et al.,
2005).
Acquisition of Phobias Through
Learning
Many theories suggest that phobias develop through
learning. Rachman (1977) proposed that phobias can be
acquired through three major learning pathways. The first
pathway is through classical conditioningclassical conditioning. As you may
recall, classical conditioning is a form of learning in which a
previously neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditioned
stimulus (UCS) that reflexively elicits an unconditioned
response (UCR), eliciting the same response through its
association with the unconditioned stimulus. The response
is called a conditioned response (CR). For example, a child
who has been bitten by a dog may come to fear dogs
because of her past association with pain. In this case, the dog bite is the UCS and the fear it elicits is the UCR.
Because a dog was associated with the bite, any dog may come to serve as a conditioned stimulus, thereby
eliciting fear; the fear the child experiences around dogs, then, becomes a CR.
The second pathway of phobia acquisition is through vicarious learning, such as modelingmodeling. For example, a child
who observes his cousin react fearfully to spiders may later express the same fears, even though spiders have
never presented any danger to him. This phenomenon has been observed in both humans and nonhuman
primates (Olsson & Phelps, 2007). A study of laboratory-reared monkeys readily acquired a fear of snakes after
observing wild-reared monkeys react fearfully to snakes (Mineka & Cook, 1993).
The third pathway is through verbal transmission or information. For example, a child whose parents, siblings,
friends, and classmates constantly tell her how disgusting and dangerous snakes are may come to acquire a fear
of snakes.
Interestingly, people are more likely to develop phobias of things that do not represent much actual danger to
themselves, such as animals and heights, and are less likely to develop phobias toward things that present
legitimate danger in contemporary society, such as motorcycles and weapons (Öhman & Mineka, 2001). Why
might this be so? One theory suggests that the human brain is evolutionarily predisposed to more readily
associate certain objects or situations with fear (Seligman, 1971). This theory argues that throughout our
evolutionary history, our ancestors associated certain stimuli (e.g., snakes, spiders, heights, and thunder) with
potential danger. As time progressed, the mind has become adapted to more readily develop fears of these things
than of others. Experimental evidence has consistently demonstrated that conditioned fears develop more readily
to fear-relevant stimuli (images of snakes and spiders) than to fear-irrelevant stimuli (images of flowers and
berries) (Öhman & Mineka, 2001). Such prepared learning has also been shown to occur in monkeys. In one
study (Cook & Mineka, 1989), monkeys watched videotapes of model monkeys reacting fearfully to either fear-
relevant stimuli (toy snakes or a toy crocodile) or fear-irrelevant stimuli (flowers or a toy rabbit). The observer
monkeys developed fears of the fear-relevant stimuli but not the fear-irrelevant stimuli.

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Social Anxiety Disorder
Social anxiety disorderSocial anxiety disorder (formerly called social phobia) is characterized by extreme and persistent fear or anxiety
and avoidance of social situations in which the person could potentially be evaluated negatively by others (APA,
2013). As with specific phobias, social anxiety disorder is common in the United States; a little over 12% of all
Americans experience social anxiety disorder during their lifetime (Kessler et al., 2005).
The heart of the fear and anxiety in social anxiety disorder is the person’s concern that he may act in a humiliating
or embarrassing way, such as appearing foolish, showing symptoms of anxiety (blushing), or doing or saying
something that might lead to rejection (such as offending others). The kinds of social situations in which
individuals with social anxiety disorder usually have problems include public speaking, having a conversation,
meeting strangers, eating in restaurants, and, in some cases, using public restrooms. Although many people
become anxious in social situations like public speaking, the fear, anxiety, and avoidance experienced in social
anxiety disorder are highly distressing and lead to serious impairments in life. Adults with this disorder are more
likely to experience lower educational attainment and lower earnings (Katzelnick et al., 2001), perform more
poorly at work and are more likely to be unemployed (Moitra, Beard, Weisberg, & Keller, 2011), and report greater
dissatisfaction with their family lives, friends, leisure activities, and income (Stein & Kean, 2000).
When people with social anxiety disorder are unable to avoid situations that provoke anxiety, they typically
perform safety behaviorssafety behaviors: mental or behavioral acts that reduce anxiety in social situations by reducing the
chance of negative social outcomes. Safety behaviors include avoiding eye contact, rehearsing sentences before
speaking, talking only briefly, and not talking about oneself (Alden & Bieling, 1998). Other examples of safety
behaviors include the following (Marker, 2013):
• assuming roles in social situations that minimize interaction with others (e.g., taking pictures, setting up
equipment, or helping prepare food)
• asking people many questions to keep the focus off of oneself
• selecting a position to avoid scrutiny or contact with others (sitting in the back of the room)
• wearing bland, neutral clothes to avoid drawing attention to oneself
• avoiding substances or activities that might cause anxiety symptoms (such as caffeine, warm clothing,
and physical exercise)
Although these behaviors are intended to prevent the person with social anxiety disorder from doing something
awkward that might draw criticism, these actions usually exacerbate the problem because they do not allow the
individual to disconfirm his negative beliefs, often eliciting rejection and other negative reactions from others
(Alden & Bieling, 1998).
People with social anxiety disorder may resort to self-medication, such as drinking alcohol, as a means to avert
the anxiety symptoms they experience in social situations (Battista & Kocovski, 2010). The use of alcohol when
faced with such situations may become negatively reinforcing: encouraging individuals with social anxiety disorder

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to turn to the substance whenever they experience anxiety symptoms. The tendency to use alcohol as a coping
mechanism for social anxiety, however, can come with a hefty price tag: a number of large scale studies have
reported a high rate of comorbidity between social anxiety disorder and alcohol use disorder (Morris, Stewart, &
Ham, 2005).
As with specific phobias, it is highly probable that the fears inherent to social anxiety disorder can develop through
conditioning experiences. For example, a child who is subjected to early unpleasant social experiences (e.g.,
bullying at school) may develop negative social images of herself that become activated later in anxiety-provoking
situations (Hackmann, Clark, & McManus, 2000). Indeed, one study reported that 92% of a sample of adults with
social anxiety disorder reported a history of severe teasing in childhood, compared to only 35% of a sample of
adults with panic disorder (McCabe, Antony, Summerfeldt, Liss, & Swinson, 2003).
One of the most well-established risk factors for developing social anxiety disorder is behavioral inhibition (Clauss
& Blackford, 2012). Behavioral inhibition is thought to be an inherited trait, and it is characterized by a consistent
tendency to show fear and restraint when presented with unfamiliar people or situations (Kagan, Reznick, &
Snidman, 1988). Behavioral inhibition is displayed very early in life; behaviorally inhibited toddlers and children
respond with great caution and restraint in unfamiliar situations, and they are often timid, fearful, and shy around
unfamiliar people (Fox, Henderson, Marshall, Nichols, & Ghera, 2005). A recent statistical review of studies
demonstrated that behavioral inhibition was associated with more than a sevenfold increase in the risk of
development of social anxiety disorder, demonstrating that behavioral inhibition is a major risk factor for the
disorder (Clauss & Blackford, 2012).
Panic Disorder
Imagine that you are at the mall one day with your friends and—suddenly and inexplicably—you begin sweating
and trembling, your heart starts pounding, you have trouble breathing, and you start to feel dizzy and nauseous.
This episode lasts for 10 minutes and is terrifying because you start to think that you are going to die. When you
visit your doctor the following morning and describe what happened, she tells you that you have experienced a
panic attack (Figure 1). If you experience another one of these episodes two weeks later and worry for a month or
more that similar episodes will occur in the future, it is likely that you have developed panic disorder.

Figure 1. Some of the physical manifestations of a panic attack are shown. People may also experience sweating, trembling,
feelings of faintness, or a fear of losing control, among other symptoms.
People with panic disorderpanic disorder experience recurrent (more than one) and unexpected panic attacks, along with at
least one month of persistent concern about additional panic attacks, worry over the consequences of the attacks,
or self-defeating changes in behavior related to the attacks (e.g., avoidance of exercise or unfamiliar situations)
(APA, 2013). As is the case with other anxiety disorders, the panic attacks cannot result from the physiological
effects of drugs and other substances, a medical condition, or another mental disorder. A panic attackpanic attack is defined
as a period of extreme fear or discomfort that develops abruptly and reaches a peak within 10 minutes. Its
symptoms include accelerated heart rate, sweating, trembling, choking sensations, hot flashes or chills, dizziness
or lightheadedness, fears of losing control or going crazy, and fears of dying (APA, 2013). Sometimes panic
attacks are expected, occurring in response to specific environmental triggers (such as being in a tunnel); other
times, these episodes are unexpected and emerge randomly (such as when relaxing). According to the DSM-5,
the person must experience unexpected panic attacks to qualify for a diagnosis of panic disorder.
Experiencing a panic attack is often terrifying. Rather than recognizing the symptoms of a panic attack merely as
signs of intense anxiety, individuals with panic disorder often misinterpret them as a sign that something is
intensely wrong internally (thinking, for example, that the pounding heart represents an impending heart attack).
Panic attacks can occasionally precipitate trips to the emergency room because several symptoms of panic
attacks are, in fact, similar to those associated with heart problems (e.g., palpitations, racing pulse, and a
pounding sensation in the chest) (Root, 2000). Unsurprisingly, those with panic disorder fear future attacks and
may become preoccupied with modifying their behavior in an effort to avoid future panic attacks. For this reason,
panic disorder is often characterized as fear of fear (Goldstein & Chambless, 1978).
Panic attacks themselves are not mental disorders. Indeed, around 23% of Americans experience isolated panic
attacks in their lives without meeting the criteria for panic disorder (Kessler et al., 2006), indicating that panic

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attacks are fairly common. Panic disorder is, of course, much less common, afflicting 4.7% of Americans during
their lifetime (Kessler et al., 2005). Many people with panic disorder develop agoraphobia, which is marked by
fear and avoidance of situations in which escape might be difficult or help might not be available if one were to
develop symptoms of a panic attack. People with panic disorder often experience a comorbid disorder, such as
other anxiety disorders or major depressive disorder (APA, 2013).
Researchers are not entirely sure what causes panic disorder. Children are at a higher risk of developing panic
disorder if their parents have the disorder (Biederman et al., 2001), and family and twins studies indicate that the
heritability of panic disorder is around 43% (Hettema, Neale, & Kendler, 2001). The exact genes and gene
functions involved in this disorder, however, are not well-understood (APA, 2013). Neurobiological theories of
panic disorder suggest that a region of the brain called the locus coeruleus may play a role in this disorder.
Located in the brainstem, the locus coeruleuslocus coeruleus is the brain’s major source of norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter
that triggers the body’s fight-or-flight response. Activation of the locus coeruleus is associated with anxiety and
fear, and research with nonhuman primates has shown that stimulating the locus coeruleus either electrically or
through drugs produces panic-like symptoms (Charney et al., 1990). Such findings have led to the theory that
panic disorder may be caused by abnormal norepinephrine activity in the locus coeruleus (Bremner, Krystal,
Southwick, & Charney, 1996).
Conditioning theories of panic disorder propose that panic attacks are classical conditioningclassical conditioning responses to subtle
bodily sensations resembling those normally occurring when one is anxious or frightened (Bouton, Mineka, &
Barlow, 2001). For example, consider a child who has asthma. An acute asthma attack produces sensations,
such as shortness of breath, coughing, and chest tightness, that typically elicit fear and anxiety. Later, when the
child experiences subtle symptoms that resemble the frightening symptoms of earlier asthma attacks (such as
shortness of breath after climbing stairs), he may become anxious, fearful, and then experience a panic attack. In
this situation, the subtle symptoms would represent a conditioned stimulus, and the panic attack would be a
conditioned response. The finding that panic disorder is nearly three times as frequent among people with asthma
as it is among people without asthma (Weiser, 2007) supports the possibility that panic disorder has the potential
to develop through classical conditioning.
Cognitive factors may play an integral part in panic disorder. Generally, cognitive theories (Clark, 1996) argue that
those with panic disorder are prone to interpret ordinary bodily sensations catastrophically, and these fearful
interpretations set the stage for panic attacks. For example, a person might detect bodily changes that are
routinely triggered by innocuous events such getting up from a seated position (dizziness), exercising (increased
heart rate, shortness of breath), or drinking a large cup of coffee (increased heart rate, trembling). The individual
interprets these subtle bodily changes catastrophically (“Maybe I’m having a heart attack!”). Such interpretations
create fear and anxiety, which trigger additional physical symptoms; subsequently, the person experiences a
panic attack. Support of this contention rests with findings that people with more severe catastrophic thoughts
about sensations have more frequent and severe panic attacks, and among those with panic disorder, reducing
catastrophic cognitions about their sensations is as effective as medication in reducing panic attacks (Good &
Hinton, 2009).

Figure 2. Worry is a defining feature of generalized
anxiety disorder. (credit: Freddie Peña)
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Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Alex was always worried about many things. He worried that his children would drown when they played at the
beach. Each time he left the house, he worried that an electrical short circuit would start a fire in his home. He
worried that his wife would lose her job at the prestigious law firm. He worried that his daughter’s minor staph
infection could turn into a massive life-threatening condition. These and other worries constantly weighed heavily
on Alex’s mind, so much so that they made it difficult for him to make decisions and often left him feeling tense,
irritable, and worn out. One night, Alex’s wife was to drive their son home from a soccer game. However, his wife
stayed after the game and talked with some of the other parents, resulting in her arriving home 45 minutes late.
Alex had tried to call his cell phone three or four times, but he could not get through because the soccer field did
not have a signal. Extremely worried, Alex eventually called the police, convinced that his wife and son had not
arrived home because they had been in a terrible car accident.
Alex suffers from generalized anxiety disordergeneralized anxiety disorder: a relatively continuous state of excessive, uncontrollable, and
pointless worry and apprehension. People with generalized anxiety disorder often worry about routine, everyday
things, even though their concerns are unjustified (Figure 2). For example, an individual may worry about her
health and finances, the health of family members, the safety of her children, or minor matters (e.g., being late for
an appointment) without having any legitimate reason for doing so (APA, 2013). A diagnosis of generalized
anxiety disorder requires that the diffuse worrying and apprehension characteristic of this disorder—what
Sigmund Freud referred to as free-floating anxiety—is not part of another disorder, occurs more days than not for
at least six months, and is accompanied by any three of the following symptoms: restlessness, difficulty
concentrating, being easily fatigued, muscle tension, irritability, and sleep difficulties.
About 5.7% of the U.S. population will develop symptoms of
generalized anxiety disorder during their lifetime (Kessler et
al., 2005), and females are 2 times as likely as males to
experience the disorder (APA, 2013). Generalized anxiety
disorder is highly comorbid with mood disorders and other
anxiety disorders (Noyes, 2001), and it tends to be chronic.
Also, generalized anxiety disorder appears to increase the
risk for heart attacks and strokes, especially in people with
preexisting heart conditions (Martens et al., 2010).
Although there have been few investigations aimed at
determining the heritability of generalized anxiety disorder,
a summary of available family and twin studies suggests
that genetic factors play a modest role in the disorder
(Hettema et al., 2001). Cognitive theories of generalized
anxiety disorder suggest that worry represents a mental
strategy to avoid more powerful negative emotions (Aikins
& Craske, 2001), perhaps stemming from earlier unpleasant or traumatic experiences. Indeed, one longitudinal
study found that childhood maltreatment was strongly related to the development of this disorder during adulthood
(Moffitt et al., 2007); worrying might distract people from remembering painful childhood experiences.

GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
agoraphobia:agoraphobia: anxiety disorder characterized by intense fear, anxiety, and avoidance of situations in which it
might be difficult to escape if one experiences symptoms of a panic attack
anxiety disorder:anxiety disorder: characterized by excessive and persistent fear and anxiety, and by related disturbances in
behavior
generalized anxiety disorder:generalized anxiety disorder: characterized by a continuous state of excessive, uncontrollable, and pointless
worry and apprehension
locus coeruleus:locus coeruleus: area of the brainstem that contains norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter that triggers the body’s
fight-or-flight response; has been implicated in panic disorder
panic attack:panic attack: period of extreme fear or discomfort that develops abruptly; symptoms of panic attacks are both
physiological and psychological
panic disorder:panic disorder: anxiety disorder characterized by unexpected panic attacks, along with at least one month of
worry about panic attacks or self-defeating behavior related to the attacks
safety behavior:safety behavior: mental and behavior acts designed to reduce anxiety in social situations by reducing the
chance of negative social outcomes; common in social anxiety disorder
social anxiety disorder:social anxiety disorder: characterized by extreme and persistent fear or anxiety and avoidance of social
situations in which one could potentially be evaluated negatively by others
specific phobia:specific phobia: anxiety disorder characterized by excessive, distressing, and persistent fear or anxiety about a
specific object or situation
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OCD AND PTSD
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe the main features, development, and prevalence of obsessive-compulsive disorder, body
dysmorphic disorder, and hoarding disorder
• Describe the nature, development, symptoms, and risk factors associated with posttraumatic stress
disorder
Obsessive-compulsive and related disordersObsessive-compulsive and related disorders are a group of overlapping disorders that generally involve intrusive,
unpleasant thoughts and repetitive behaviors. Many of us experience unwanted thoughts from time to time (e.g.,
craving double cheeseburgers when dieting), and many of us engage in repetitive behaviors on occasion (e.g.,
pacing when nervous). However, obsessive-compulsive and related disorders elevate the unwanted thoughts and
repetitive behaviors to a status so intense that these cognitions and activities disrupt daily life. Included in this
category are obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), body dysmorphic disorder, and hoarding disorder.

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Watch this video to understand why people who are simply orderly or meticulous are probably not suffering
from obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders
People with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) experience thoughts and urges that are intrusive and
unwanted (obsessions) and/or the need to engage in repetitive behaviors or mental acts (compulsions). A person
with this disorder might, for example, spend hours each day washing his hands or constantly checking and
rechecking to make sure that a stove, faucet, or light has been turned off.
Obsessions are more than just unwanted thoughts that seem to randomly jump into our head from time to time,
such as recalling an insensitive remark a coworker made recently, and they are more significant than day-to-day
worries we might have, such as justifiable concerns about being laid off from a job. Rather, obsessions are
characterized as persistent, unintentional, and unwanted thoughts and urges that are highly intrusive, unpleasant,
and distressing (APA, 2013). Common obsessionsobsessions include concerns about germs and contamination, doubts
(“Did I turn the water off?”), order and symmetry (“I need all the spoons in the tray to be arranged a certain way”),
and urges that are aggressive or lustful. Usually, the person knows that such thoughts and urges are irrational
and thus tries to suppress or ignore them, but has an extremely difficult time doing so. These obsessive
symptoms sometimes overlap, such that someone might have both contamination and aggressive obsessions
(Abramowitz & Siqueland, 2013).
Compulsions are repetitive and ritualistic acts that are typically carried out primarily as a means to minimize the
distress that obsessions trigger or to reduce the likelihood of a feared event (APA, 2013). CompulsionsCompulsions often
include such behaviors as repeated and extensive hand washing, cleaning, checking (e.g., that a door is locked),
and ordering (e.g., lining up all the pencils in a particular way), and they also include such mental acts as
counting, praying, or reciting something to oneself (Figure 1). Compulsions characteristic of OCD are not
performed out of pleasure, nor are they connected in a realistic way to the source of the distress or feared event.
Approximately 2.3% of the U.S. population will experience OCD in their lifetime (Ruscio, Stein, Chiu, & Kessler,
2010) and, if left untreated, OCD tends to be a chronic condition creating lifelong interpersonal and psychological
problems (Norberg, Calamari, Cohen, & Riemann, 2008).

Figure 1. (a) Repetitive hand washing and (b) checking
(e.g., that a door is locked) are common compulsions
among those with obsessive-compulsive disorder. (credit
a: modification of work by the USDA; credit b:
modification of work by Bradley Gordon)
Figure 2. Those who suffer from hoarding disorder have
great difficulty in discarding possessions, usually resulting
in an accumulation of items that clutter living or work
areas. (credit: “puuikibeach”/Flickr)
Body Dysmorphic Disorder
An individual with body dysmorphic disorderbody dysmorphic disorder is preoccupied
with a perceived flaw in her physical appearance that is
either nonexistent or barely noticeable to other people
(APA, 2013). These perceived physical defects cause the
person to think she is unattractive, ugly, hideous, or
deformed. These preoccupations can focus on any bodily
area, but they typically involve the skin, face, or hair. The
preoccupation with imagined physical flaws drives the
person to engage in repetitive and ritualistic behavioral and
mental acts, such as constantly looking in the mirror, trying
to hide the offending body part, comparisons with others,
and, in some extreme cases, cosmetic surgery (Phillips,
2005). An estimated 2.4% of the adults in the United States
meet the criteria for body dysmorphic disorder, with slightly higher rates in women than in men (APA, 2013).
Hoarding Disorder
Although hoarding was traditionally considered to be a symptom of OCD, considerable evidence suggests that
hoarding represents an entirely different disorder (Mataix-Cols et al., 2010). People with hoarding disorderhoarding disorder cannot
bear to part with personal possessions, regardless of how valueless or useless these possessions are. As a
result, these individuals accumulate excessive amounts of usually worthless items that clutter their living areas
(Figure 2). Often, the quantity of cluttered items is so excessive that the person is unable use his kitchen, or sleep
in his bed. People who suffer from this disorder have great difficulty parting with items because they believe the
items might be of some later use, or because they form a sentimental attachment to the items (APA, 2013).
Importantly, a diagnosis of hoarding disorder is made only if the hoarding is not caused by another medical
condition and if the hoarding is not a symptom of another disorder (e.g., schizophrenia) (APA, 2013).
Causes of OCD
The results of family and twin studies suggest that OCD has
a moderate genetic component. The disorder is five times
more frequent in the first-degree relatives of people with
OCD than in people without the disorder (Nestadt et al.,
2000). Additionally, the concordance rate of OCD among
identical twins is around 57%; however, the concordance
rate for fraternal twins is 22% (Bolton, Rijsdijk, O’Connor,
Perrin, & Eley, 2007). Studies have implicated about two
dozen potential genes that may be involved in OCD; these
genes regulate the function of three neurotransmitters:
serotonin, dopamine, and glutamate (Pauls, 2010). Many of
these studies included small sample sizes and have yet to
be replicated. Thus, additional research needs to be done
in this area.
A brain region that is believed to play a critical role in OCD
is the orbitofrontal cortexorbitofrontal cortex (Kopell & Greenberg, 2008), an area of the frontal lobe involved in learning and
decision-making (Rushworth, Noonan, Boorman, Walton, & Behrens, 2011) (Figure 3). In people with OCD, the
orbitofrontal cortex becomes especially hyperactive when they are provoked with tasks in which, for example,
they are asked to look at a photo of a toilet or of pictures hanging crookedly on a wall (Simon, Kaufmann, Müsch,
Kischkel, & Kathmann, 2010). The orbitofrontal cortex is part of a series of brain regions that, collectively, is called
the OCD circuit; this circuit consists of several interconnected regions that influence the perceived emotional
value of stimuli and the selection of both behavioral and cognitive responses (Graybiel & Rauch, 2000). As with
the orbitofrontal cortex, other regions of the OCD circuit show heightened activity during symptom provocation
(Rotge et al., 2008), which suggests that abnormalities in these regions may produce the symptoms of OCD
(Saxena, Bota, & Brody, 2001). Consistent with this explanation, people with OCD show a substantially higher

Figure 3. Different regions of the brain may be associated with different psychological disorders.
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Watch this CrashCourse psychology video to learn about the accurate definitions of phobias and OCD and how
these contrast with common, incorrect descriptions of the terms.
degree of connectivity of the orbitofrontal cortex and other regions of the OCD circuit than do those without OCD
(Beucke et al., 2013).
The findings discussed above were based on imaging studies, and they highlight the potential importance of brain
dysfunction in OCD. However, one important limitation of these findings is the inability to explain differences in
obsessions and compulsions. Another limitation is that the correlational relationship between neurological
abnormalities and OCD symptoms cannot imply causation (Abramowitz & Siqueland, 2013).

CONNECT THE CONCEPTS: CONDITIONING AND OCDCONNECT THE CONCEPTS: CONDITIONING AND OCD
The symptoms of OCD have been theorized to be learned responses, acquired and sustained as the result of a
combination of two forms of learning: classical conditioning and operant conditioning (Mowrer, 1960; Steinmetz,
Tracy, & Green, 2001). Specifically, the acquisition of OCD may occur first as the result of classical
conditioning, whereby a neutral stimulus becomes associated with an unconditioned stimulus that provokes
anxiety or distress. When an individual has acquired this association, subsequent encounters with the neutral
stimulus trigger anxiety, including obsessive thoughts; the anxiety and obsessive thoughts (which are now a
conditioned response) may persist until she identifies some strategy to relieve it. Relief may take the form of a
ritualistic behavior or mental activity that, when enacted repeatedly, reduces the anxiety. Such efforts to relieve
anxiety constitute an example of negative reinforcement (a form of operant conditioning). Recall from the
chapter on learning that negative reinforcement involves the strengthening of behavior through its ability to
remove something unpleasant or aversive. Hence, compulsive acts observed in OCD may be sustained
because they are negatively reinforcing, in the sense that they reduce anxiety triggered by a conditioned
stimulus.
Suppose an individual with OCD experiences obsessive thoughts about germs, contamination, and disease
whenever she encounters a doorknob. What might have constituted a viable unconditioned stimulus? Also,
what would constitute the conditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, and conditioned response? What
kinds of compulsive behaviors might we expect, and how do they reinforce themselves? What is decreased?
Additionally, and from the standpoint of learning theory, how might the symptoms of OCD be treated
successfully?
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Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Extremely stressful or traumatic events, such as combat, natural disasters, and terrorist attacks, place the people
who experience them at an increased risk for developing psychological disorders such as posttraumatic stressposttraumatic stress
disorder (PTSD)disorder (PTSD). Throughout much of the 20th century, this disorder was called shell shock and combat neurosis
because its symptoms were observed in soldiers who had engaged in wartime combat. By the late 1970s it had
become clear that women who had experienced sexual traumas (e.g., rape, domestic battery, and incest) often
experienced the same set of symptoms as did soldiers (Herman, 1997). The term posttraumatic stress disorder
was developed given that these symptoms could happen to anyone who experienced psychological trauma.
A Broader Definition of PTSD
PTSD was listed among the anxiety disorders in previous DSM editions. In DSM-5, it is now listed among a group
called Trauma-and-Stressor-Related Disorders. For a person to be diagnosed with PTSD, she be must exposed
to, witness, or experience the details of a traumatic experience (e.g., a first responder), one that involves “actual
or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence” (APA, 2013, p. 271). These experiences can include such
events as combat, threatened or actual physical attack, sexual assault, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and
automobile accidents. This criterion makes PTSD the only disorder listed in the DSM in which a cause (extreme
trauma) is explicitly specified.
Symptoms of PTSD include intrusive and distressing memories of the event, flashbacksflashbacks (states that can last from
a few seconds to several days, during which the individual relives the event and behaves as if the event were

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occurring at that moment [APA, 2013]), avoidance of stimuli connected to the event, persistently negative
emotional states (e.g., fear, anger, guilt, and shame), feelings of detachment from others, irritability, proneness
toward outbursts, and an exaggerated startle response (jumpiness). For PTSD to be diagnosed, these symptoms
must occur for at least one month.
Roughly 7% of adults in the United States, including 9.7% of women and 3.6% of men, experience PTSD in their
lifetime (National Comorbidity Survey, 2007), with higher rates among people exposed to mass trauma and
people whose jobs involve duty-related trauma exposure (e.g., police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical
personnel) (APA, 2013). Nearly 21% of residents of areas affected by Hurricane Katrina suffered from PTSD one
year following the hurricane (Kessler et al., 2008), and 12.6% of Manhattan residents were observed as having
PTSD 2–3 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks (DiGrande et al., 2008).
Risk Factors for PTSD
Of course, not everyone who experiences a traumatic event will go on to develop PTSD; several factors strongly
predict the development of PTSD: trauma experience, greater trauma severity, lack of immediate social support,
and more subsequent life stress (Brewin, Andrews, & Valentine, 2000). Traumatic events that involve harm by
others (e.g., combat, rape, and sexual molestation) carry greater risk than do other traumas (e.g., natural
disasters) (Kessler, Sonnega, Bromet, Hughes, & Nelson, 1995). Factors that increase the risk of PTSD include
female gender, low socioeconomic status, low intelligence, personal history of mental disorders, history of
childhood adversity (abuse or other trauma during childhood), and family history of mental disorders (Brewin et
al., 2000). Personality characteristics such as neuroticism and somatization (the tendency to experience physical
symptoms when one encounters stress) have been shown to elevate the risk of PTSD (Bramsen, Dirkzwager, &
van der Ploeg, 2000). People who experience childhood adversity and/or traumatic experiences during adulthood
are at significantly higher risk of developing PTSD if they possess one or two short versions of a gene that
regulates the neurotransmitter serotonin (Xie et al., 2009). This suggests a possible diathesis-stress interpretation
of PTSD: its development is influenced by the interaction of psychosocial and biological factors.
Support for Sufferers of PTSD
Research has shown that social support following a traumatic event can reduce the likelihood of PTSD (Ozer,
Best, Lipsey, & Weiss, 2003). Social support is often defined as the comfort, advice, and assistance received from
relatives, friends, and neighbors. Social support can help individuals cope during difficult times by allowing them
to discuss feelings and experiences and providing a sense of being loved and appreciated. A 14-year study of
1,377 American Legionnaires who had served in the Vietnam War found that those who perceived less social
support when they came home were more likely to develop PTSD than were those who perceived greater support
(Figure 1). In addition, those who became involved in the community were less likely to develop PTSD, and they
were more likely to experience a remission of PTSD than were those who were less involved (Koenen, Stellman,
Stellman, & Sommer, 2003).

Figure 1. PTSD was first recognized in soldiers who had
engaged in combat. Research has shown that strong
social support decreases the risk of PTSD. This person
stands at the Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall. (credit:
Kevin Stanchfield)
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Learning and Development of PTSD
PTSD learning models suggest that some symptoms are
developed and maintained through classical conditioning.
The traumatic event may act as an unconditioned stimulus
that elicits an unconditioned response characterized by
extreme fear and anxiety. Cognitive, emotional,
physiological, and environmental cues accompanying or
related to the event are conditioned stimuli. These traumatic
reminders evoke conditioned responses (extreme fear and
anxiety) similar to those caused by the event itself (Nader,
2001). A person who was in the vicinity of the Twin Towers
during the 9/11 terrorist attacks and who developed PTSD
may display excessive hypervigilance and distress when
planes fly overhead; this behavior constitutes a conditioned
response to the traumatic reminder (conditioned stimulus of
the sight and sound of an airplane). Differences in how
conditionable individuals are help to explain differences in
the development and maintenance of PTSD symptoms
(Pittman, 1988). Conditioning studies demonstrate
facilitated acquisition of conditioned responses and delayed
extinction of conditioned responses in people with PTSD
(Orr et al., 2000).
Cognitive factors are important in the development and
maintenance of PTSD. One model suggests that two key
processes are crucial: disturbances in memory for the
event, and negative appraisals of the trauma and its
aftermath (Ehlers & Clark, 2000). According to this theory,
some people who experience traumas do not form coherent
memories of the trauma; memories of the traumatic event
are poorly encoded and, thus, are fragmented,
disorganized, and lacking in detail. Therefore, these
individuals are unable remember the event in a way that gives it meaning and context. A rape victim who cannot
coherently remember the event may remember only bits and pieces (e.g., the attacker repeatedly telling her she
is stupid); because she was unable to develop a fully integrated memory, the fragmentary memory tends to stand
out. Although unable to retrieve a complete memory of the event, she may be haunted by intrusive fragments
involuntarily triggered by stimuli associated with the event (e.g., memories of the attacker’s comments when
encountering a person who resembles the attacker). This interpretation fits previously discussed material
concerning PTSD and conditioning. The model also proposes that negative appraisals of the event (“I deserved to
be raped because I’m stupid”) may lead to dysfunctional behavioral strategies (e.g., avoiding social activities
where men are likely to be present) that maintain PTSD symptoms by preventing both a change in the nature of
the memory and a change in the problematic appraisals.

GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
body dysmorphic disorder:body dysmorphic disorder: involves excessive preoccupation with an imagined defect in physical appearance
flashback:flashback: psychological state lasting from a few seconds to several days, during which one relives a traumatic
event and behaves as though the event were occurring at that moment
hoarding disorder:hoarding disorder: characterized by persistent difficulty in parting with possessions, regardless of their actual
value or usefulness
obsessive-compulsive and related disorders:obsessive-compulsive and related disorders: group of overlapping disorders listed in the DSM-5 that involves
intrusive, unpleasant thoughts and/or repetitive behaviors
obsessive-compulsive disorder:obsessive-compulsive disorder: characterized by the tendency to experience intrusive and unwanted thoughts
and urges (obsession) and/or the need to engage in repetitive behaviors or mental acts (compulsions) in
response to the unwanted thoughts and urges
orbitofrontal cortex:orbitofrontal cortex: area of the frontal lobe involved in learning and decision-making
posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD):posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): experiencing a profoundly traumatic event leads to a constellation of
symptoms that include intrusive and distressing memories of the event, avoidance of stimuli connected to the
event, negative emotional states, feelings of detachment from others, irritability, proneness toward outbursts,
hypervigilance, and a tendency to startle easily; these symptoms must occur for at least one month
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MOOD DISORDERS
What you’ll learn to do: describe the characteristic symptoms and
risk factors of mood disorders, including major depressive disorder
and bipolar disorder
Mood disorders are those in which the person experiences severe disturbances in mood and emotion. They
include depressive disorders and bipolar and related disorders. Depressive disorders include major depressive
disorder, which is characterized by episodes of profound sadness and loss of interest or pleasure in usual
activities and other associated features, and persistent depressive disorder, which marked by a chronic state of
sadness. Bipolar disorder is characterized by mood states that vacillate between sadness and euphoria; a
diagnosis of bipolar disorder requires experiencing at least one manic episode, which is defined as a period of
extreme euphoria, irritability, and increased activity.
Mood disorders appear to have a genetic component, with genetic factors playing a more prominent role in bipolar
disorder than in depression. Both biological and psychological factors are important in the development of
depression. People who suffer from mental health problems, especially mood disorders, are at heightened risk for
suicide.
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe the symptoms, results, and risk factors of major depressive disorder

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/855/2017/03/29202014/black-and-white-woman-girl-sitting

Figure 1. Mood disorders are characterized by massive
disruptions in mood. Symptoms can range from the
extreme sadness and hopelessness of depression to the
extreme elation and irritability of mania. (credit: Kiran
Foster)
• Understand the differences between major depressive disorder and persistent depressive disorder,
and identify two subtypes of depression
• Describe the symptoms and risk factors of bipolar disorder
• Describe genetic, biological, and psychological explanations of major depressive disorder
• Discuss the relationship between mood disorders and suicidal ideation, as well as factors associated
with suicide
Major Depressive Disorder
Blake cries all day and feeling that he is worthless and his life is hopeless, he cannot get out of bed. Crystal stays
up all night, talks very rapidly, and went on a shopping spree in which she spent $3,000 on furniture, although she
cannot afford it. Maria recently had a baby, and she feels overwhelmed, teary, anxious, and panicked, and
believes she is a terrible mother—practically every day since the baby was born. All these individuals
demonstrate symptoms of a potential mood disorder.
Mood disorders (Figure 1) are characterized by severe disturbances in mood and emotions—most often
depression, but also mania and elation (Rothschild, 1999). All of us experience fluctuations in our moods and
emotional states, and often these fluctuations are caused by events in our lives. We become elated if our favorite
team wins the World Series and dejected if a romantic relationship ends or if we lose our job. At times, we feel
fantastic or miserable for no clear reason. People with mood disorders also experience mood fluctuations, but
their fluctuations are extreme, distort their outlook on life, and impair their ability to function.
The DSM-5 lists two general categories of mood disorders.
Depressive disorders are a group of disorders in which
depression is the main feature. Depression is a vague term
that, in everyday language, refers to an intense and
persistent sadness. Depression is a heterogeneous mood
state—it consists of a broad spectrum of symptoms that
range in severity. Depressed people feel sad, discouraged,
and hopeless. These individuals lose interest in activities
once enjoyed, often experience a decrease in drives such
as hunger and sex, and frequently doubt personal worth.
Depressive disorders vary by degree, but this
module highlights the most well-known: major depressive
disorder (sometimes called unipolar depression).
Bipolar and related disorders are a group of disorders in
which mania is the defining feature. Mania is a state of
extreme elation and agitation. When people experience
mania, they may become extremely talkative, behave
recklessly, or attempt to take on many tasks
simultaneously. The most recognized of these disorders is
bipolar disorder.
Major Depressive Disorder
According to the DSM-5, the defining symptoms of majormajor
depressive disorderdepressive disorder include “depressed mood most of the
day, nearly every day” (feeling sad, empty, hopeless, or
appearing tearful to others), and loss of interest and
pleasure in usual activities (APA, 2013). In addition to
feeling overwhelmingly sad most of each day, people with
depression will no longer show interest or enjoyment in
activities that previously were gratifying, such as hobbies,
sports, sex, social events, time spent with family, and so on. Friends and family members may notice that the

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person has completely abandoned previously enjoyed hobbies; for example, an avid tennis player who develops
major depressive disorder no longer plays tennis (Rothschild, 1999).
To receive a diagnosis of major depressive disorder, one must experience a total of five symptoms for at least a
two-week period; these symptoms must cause significant distress or impair normal functioning, and they must not
be caused by substances or a medical condition. At least one of the two symptoms mentioned above must be
present, plus any combination of the following symptoms (APA, 2013):
• significant weight loss (when not dieting) or weight gain and/or significant decrease or increase in
appetite;
• difficulty falling asleep or sleeping too much;
• psychomotor agitation (the person is noticeably fidgety and jittery, demonstrated by behaviors like the
inability to sit, pacing, hand-wringing, pulling or rubbing of the skin, clothing, or other objects) or
psychomotor retardation (the person talks and moves slowly, for example, talking softly, very little, or in a
monotone);
• fatigue or loss of energy;
• feelings of worthlessness or guilt;
• difficulty concentrating and indecisiveness; and
• suicidal ideationsuicidal ideation: thoughts of death (not just fear of dying), thinking about or planning suicide, or making
an actual suicide attempt.
Major depressive disorder is considered episodic: its symptoms are typically present at their full magnitude for a
certain period of time and then gradually abate. Approximately 50%–60% of people who experience an episode of
major depressive disorder will have a second episode at some point in the future; those who have had two
episodes have a 70% chance of having a third episode, and those who have had three episodes have a 90%
chance of having a fourth episode (Rothschild, 1999). Although the episodes can last for months, a majority a
people diagnosed with this condition (around 70%) recover within a year. However, a substantial number do not
recover; around 12% show serious signs of impairment associated with major depressive disorder after 5 years
(Boland & Keller, 2009). In the long-term, many who do recover will still show minor symptoms that fluctuate in
their severity (Judd, 2012).
Results of Major Depressive Disorder
Major depressive disorder is a serious and incapacitating condition that can have a devastating effect on the
quality of one’s life. The person suffering from this disorder lives a profoundly miserable existence that often
results in unavailability for work or education, abandonment of promising careers, and lost wages; occasionally,
the condition requires hospitalization. The majority of those with major depressive disorder report having faced
some kind of discrimination, and many report that having received such treatment has stopped them from
initiating close relationships, applying for jobs for which they are qualified, and applying for education or training
(Lasalvia et al., 2013). Major depressive disorder also takes a toll on health. Depression is a risk factor for the
development of heart disease in healthy patients, as well as adverse cardiovascular outcomes in patients with
preexisting heart disease (Whooley, 2006).
Risk Factors for Major Depressive Disorder
Major depressive disorder is often referred to as the common cold of psychiatric disorders. Around 6.6% of the
U.S. population experiences major depressive disorder each year; 16.9% will experience the disorder during their
lifetime (Kessler & Wang, 2009). It is more common among women than among men, affecting approximately
20% of women and 13% of men at some point in their life (National Comorbidity Survey, 2007). The greater risk

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among women is not accounted for by a tendency to report symptoms or to seek help more readily, suggesting
that gender differences in the rates of major depressive disorder may reflect biological and gender-related
environmental experiences (Kessler, 2003).
Lifetime rates of major depressive disorder tend to be highest in North and South America, Europe, and Australia;
they are considerably lower in Asian countries (Hasin, Fenton, & Weissman, 2011). The rates of major depressive
disorder are higher among younger age cohorts than among older cohorts, perhaps because people in younger
age cohorts are more willing to admit depression (Kessler & Wang, 2009).
A number of risk factors are associated with major depressive disorder: unemployment (including homemakers);
earning less than $20,000 per year; living in urban areas; or being separated, divorced, or widowed (Hasin et al.,
2011). Comorbid disorders include anxiety disorders and substance abuse disorders (Kessler & Wang, 2009).
Subtypes of Depression
The DSM-5 lists several different subtypes of depression. These subtypes—what the DSM-5 refer to as
specifiers—are not specific disorders; rather, they are labels used to indicate specific patterns of symptoms or to
specify certain periods of time in which the symptoms may be present. One subtype, seasonal patternseasonal pattern, applies to
situations in which a person experiences the symptoms of major depressive disorder only during a particular time
of year (e.g., fall or winter). In everyday language, people often refer to this subtype as the winter blues.
Another subtype, peripartum onsetperipartum onset (commonly referred to as postpartum depressionpostpartum depression), applies to women who
experience major depression during pregnancy or in the four weeks following the birth of their child (APA, 2013).
These women often feel very anxious and may even have panic attacks. They may feel guilty, agitated, and be
weepy. They may not want to hold or care for their newborn, even in cases in which the pregnancy was desired
and intended. In extreme cases, the mother may have feelings of wanting to harm her child or herself. In a horrific
illustration, a woman named Andrea Yates, who suffered from extreme peripartum-onset depression (as well as
other mental illnesses), drowned her five children in a bathtub (Roche, 2002). Most women with peripartum-onset
depression do not physically harm their children, but most do have difficulty being adequate caregivers (Fields,
2010). A surprisingly high number of women experience symptoms of peripartum-onset depression. A study of
10,000 women who had recently given birth found that 14% screened positive for peripartum-onset depression,
and that nearly 20% reported having thoughts of wanting to harm themselves (Wisner et al., 2013).
People with persistent depressive disorderpersistent depressive disorder (previously known as dysthymiadysthymia) experience depressed moods most
of the day nearly every day for at least two years, as well as at least two of the other symptoms of major
depressive disorder. People with persistent depressive disorder are chronically sad and melancholy, but do not
meet all the criteria for major depression. However, episodes of full-blown major depressive disorder can occur
during persistent depressive disorder (APA, 2013).
Bipolar Disorder
A person with bipolar disorderbipolar disorder (commonly known as manic depressionmanic depression) often experiences mood states that
vacillate between depression and mania; that is, the person’s mood is said to alternate from one emotional
extreme to the other (in contrast to unipolar, which indicates a persistently sad mood).
To be diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a person must have experienced a manic episode at least once in his life;
although major depressive episodes are common in bipolar disorder, they are not required for a diagnosis (APA,
2013). According to the DSM-5, a manic episodemanic episode is characterized as a “distinct period of abnormally and
persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood and abnormally and persistently increased activity or energy

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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Not sleeping for days on end. Long periods of euphoria. Racing thoughts. Grandiose ideas. Mania. Depression.
All of these are symptoms of Bipolar Disorder. In the following episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank talks
about mood disorders and their causes as well as how these disorders can impact people’s lives.
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lasting at least one week,” that lasts most of the time each day (APA, 2013, p. 124). During a manic episode,
some experience a mood that is almost euphoric and become excessively talkative, sometimes spontaneously
starting conversations with strangers; others become excessively irritable and complain or make hostile
comments. The person may talk loudly and rapidly, exhibiting flight of ideasflight of ideas, abruptly switching from one topic to
another. These individuals are easily distracted, which can make a conversation very difficult. They may exhibit
grandiosity, in which they experience inflated but unjustified self-esteem and self-confidence. For example, they
might quit a job in order to “strike it rich” in the stock market, despite lacking the knowledge, experience, and
capital for such an endeavor. They may take on several tasks at the same time (e.g., several time-consuming
projects at work) and yet show little, if any, need for sleep; some may go for days without sleep. Patients may also
recklessly engage in pleasurable activities that could have harmful consequences, including spending sprees,
reckless driving, making foolish investments, excessive gambling, or engaging in sexual encounters with
strangers (APA, 2013).
During a manic episode, individuals usually feel as though they are not ill and do not need treatment. However,
the reckless behaviors that often accompany these episodes—which can be antisocial, illegal, or physically
threatening to others—may require involuntary hospitalization (APA, 2013). Some patients with bipolar disorder
will experience a rapid-cycling subtype, which is characterized by at least four manic episodes (or some
combination of at least four manic and major depressive episodes) within one year.
Risk Factors for Bipolar Disorder
Bipolar disorder is considerably less frequent than major depressive disorder. In the United States, 1 out of every
167 people meets the criteria for bipolar disorder each year, and 1 out of 100 meet the criteria within their lifetime
(Merikangas et al., 2011). The rates are higher in men than in women, and about half of those with this disorder
report onset before the age of 25 (Merikangas et al., 2011). Around 90% of those with bipolar disorder have a
comorbid disorder, most often an anxiety disorder or a substance abuse problem. Unfortunately, close to half of
the people suffering from bipolar disorder do not receive treatment (Merikangas & Tohen, 2011). Suicide rates are
extremely high among those with bipolar disorder: around 36% of individuals with this disorder attempt suicide at
least once in their lifetime (Novick, Swartz, & Frank, 2010), and between 15%–19% complete suicide (Newman,
2004).

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Figure 2. Many medications designed to treat mood
disorders work by altering neurotransmitter activity in the
neural synapse.
The Biological Basis of Mood Disorders
Mood disorders have been shown to have a strong genetic and biological basis. Relatives of those with major
depressive disorder have double the risk of developing major depressive disorder, whereas relatives of patients
with bipolar disorder have over nine times the risk (Merikangas et al., 2011). The rate of concordance for major
depressive disorder is higher among identical twins than fraternal twins (50% vs. 38%, respectively), as is that of
bipolar disorder (67% vs. 16%, respectively), suggesting that genetic factors play a stronger role in bipolar
disorder than in major depressive disorder (Merikangas et al. 2011).People with mood disorders often have
imbalances in certain neurotransmitters, particularly norepinephrine and serotonin (Thase, 2009). These
neurotransmitters are important regulators of the bodily functions that are disrupted in mood disorders, including
appetite, sex drive, sleep, arousal, and mood. Medications that are used to treat major depressive disorder
typically boost serotonin and norepinephrine activity, whereas lithium—used in the treatment of bipolar
disorder—blocks norepinephrine activity at the synapses (Figure 2).
Depression is linked to abnormal activity in several regions
of the brain (Fitzgerald, Laird, Maller, & Daskalakis, 2008)
including those important in assessing the emotional
significance of stimuli and experiencing emotions
(amygdala), and in regulating and controlling emotions (like
the prefrontal cortex, or PFC) (LeMoult, Castonguay,
Joormann, & McAleavey, 2013). Depressed individuals
show elevated amygdala activity (Drevets, Bogers, &
Raichle, 2002), especially when presented with negative
emotional stimuli, such as photos of sad faces (Figure 3)
(Surguladze et al., 2005). Interestingly, heightened
amygdala activation to negative emotional stimuli among
depressed persons occurs even when stimuli are presented
outside of conscious awareness (Victor, Furey, Fromm,
Öhman, & Drevets, 2010), and it persists even after the
negative emotional stimuli are no longer present (Siegle,
Thompson, Carter, Steinhauer, & Thase, 2007).
Additionally, depressed individuals exhibit less activation in
the prefrontal, particularly on the left side (Davidson,
Pizzagalli, & Nitschke, 2009). Because the PFC can
dampen amygdala activation, thereby enabling one to
suppress negative emotions (Phan et al., 2005), decreased
activation in certain regions of the PFC may inhibit its ability
to override negative emotions that might then lead to more
negative mood states (Davidson et al., 2009). These
findings suggest that depressed persons are more prone to
react to emotionally negative stimuli, yet have greater difficulty controlling these reactions.

Figure 3. Depressed individuals react to negative
emotional stimuli, such as sad faces, with greater
amygdala activation than do non-depressed individuals.
(credit: Ian Munroe)
Since the 1950s, researchers have noted that depressed
individuals have abnormal levels of cortisol, a stress
hormone released into the blood by the neuroendocrine
system during times of stress (Mackin & Young, 2004).
When cortisol is released, the body initiates a fight-or-flight
response in reaction to a threat or danger. Many people
with depression show elevated cortisol levels (Holsboer &
Ising, 2010), especially those reporting a history of early life
trauma such as the loss of a parent or abuse during
childhood (Baes, Tofoli, Martins, & Juruena, 2012). Such
findings raise the question of whether high cortisol levels
are a cause or a consequence of depression. High levels of
cortisol are a risk factor for future depression (Halligan,
Herbert, Goodyer, & Murray, 2007), and cortisol activates
activity in the amygdala while deactivating activity in the
PFC (McEwen, 2005)—both brain disturbances are
connected to depression. Thus, high cortisol levels may
have a causal effect on depression, as well as on its brain
function abnormalities (van Praag, 2005). Also, because
stress results in increased cortisol release (Michaud,
Matheson, Kelly, Anisman, 2008), it is equally reasonable to assume that stress may precipitate depression.
A Diathesis-Stress Model and Major Depressive Disorders
Indeed, it has long been believed that stressful life events can trigger depression, and research has consistently
supported this conclusion (Mazure, 1998). Stressful life events include significant losses, such as death of a loved
one, divorce or separation, and serious health and money problems; life events such as these often precede the
onset of depressive episodes (Brown & Harris, 1989). In particular, exit events—instances in which an important
person departs (e.g., a death, divorce or separation, or a family member leaving home)—often occur prior to an
episode (Paykel, 2003). Exit events are especially likely to trigger depression if these happenings occur in a way
that humiliates or devalues the individual. For example, people who experience the breakup of a relationship
initiated by the other person develop major depressive disorder at a rate more than 2 times that of people who
experience the death of a loved one (Kendler, Hettema, Butera, Gardner, & Prescott, 2003).
Likewise, individuals who are exposed to traumatic stress during childhood—such as separation from a parent,
family turmoil, and maltreatment (physical or sexual abuse)—are at a heightened risk of developing depression at
any point in their lives (Kessler, 1997). A recent review of 16 studies involving over 23,000 subjects concluded
that those who experience childhood maltreatment are more than 2 times as likely to develop recurring and
persistent depression (Nanni, Uher, & Danese, 2012).
Of course, not everyone who experiences stressful life events or childhood adversities succumbs to
depression—indeed, most do not. Clearly, a diathesis-stressdiathesis-stress interpretation of major depressive disorder, in which
certain predispositions or vulnerability factors influence one’s reaction to stress, would seem logical. If so, what
might such predispositions be? A study by Caspi and others (2003) suggests that an alteration in a specific gene
that regulates serotoninserotonin (the 5-HTTLPR gene) might be one culprit. These investigators found that people who
experienced several stressful life events were significantly more likely to experience episodes of major depression
if they carried one or two short versions of this gene than if they carried two long versions. Those who carried one
or two short versions of the 5-HTTLPR gene were unlikely to experience an episode, however, if they had
experienced few or no stressful life events. Numerous studies have replicated these findings, including studies of
people who experienced maltreatment during childhood (Goodman & Brand, 2009). In a recent investigation
conducted in the United Kingdom (Brown & Harris, 2013), researchers found that childhood maltreatment before
age 9 elevated the risk of chronic adult depression (a depression episode lasting for at least 12 months) among
those individuals having one (LS) or two (SS) short versions of the 5-HTTLPR gene (Figure 4). Childhood
maltreatment did not increase the risk for chronic depression for those have two long (LL) versions of this gene.
Thus, genetic vulnerability may be one mechanism through which stress potentially leads to depression.

Figure 4. A study on gene-environment interaction in people experiencing chronic depression in adulthood suggests a much
higher incidence in individuals with a short version of the gene in combination with childhood maltreatment (Brown & Harris,
2013).
Cognitive Theories of Depression
Cognitive theories of depression take the view that depression is triggered by negative thoughts, interpretations,
self-evaluations, and expectations (Joormann, 2009). These diathesis-stress modelsdiathesis-stress models propose that depression is
triggered by a “cognitive vulnerability” (negative and maladaptive thinking) and by precipitating stressful life events
(Gotlib & Joormann, 2010). Perhaps the most well-known cognitive theory of depression was developed in the
1960s by psychiatrist Aaron Beck, based on clinical observations and supported by research (Beck, 2008). Beck
theorized that depression-prone people possess depressive schemas, or mental predispositions to think about
most things in a negative way (Beck, 1976). Depressive schemas contain themes of loss, failure, rejection,
worthlessness, and inadequacy, and may develop early in childhood in response to adverse experiences, then
remain dormant until they are activated by stressful or negative life events. Depressive schemas prompt
dysfunctional and pessimistic thoughts about the self, the world, and the future. Beck believed that this
dysfunctional style of thinking is maintained by cognitive biases, or errors in how we process information about
ourselves, which lead us to focus on negative aspects of experiences, interpret things negatively, and block
positive memories (Beck, 2008). A person whose depressive schema consists of a theme of rejection might be
overly attentive to social cues of rejection (more likely to notice another’s frown), and he might interpret this cue
as a sign of rejection and automatically remember past incidents of rejection. Longitudinal studies have supported
Beck’s theory, in showing that a preexisting tendency to engage in this negative, self-defeating style of
thinking—when combined with life stress—over time predicts the onset of depression (Dozois & Beck, 2008).
Cognitive therapies for depression, aimed at changing a depressed person’s negative thinking, were developed
as an expansion of this theory (Beck, 1976).
Another cognitive theory of depression, hopelessness theoryhopelessness theory, postulates that a particular style of negative thinking
leads to a sense of hopelessness, which then leads to depression (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989).
According to this theory, hopelessness is an expectation that unpleasant outcomes will occur or that desired
outcomes will not occur, and there is nothing one can do to prevent such outcomes. A key assumption of this
theory is that hopelessness stems from a tendency to perceive negative life events as having stable (“It’s never
going to change”) and global (“It’s going to affect my whole life”) causes, in contrast to unstable (“It’s fixable”) and
specific (“It applies only to this particular situation”) causes, especially if these negative life events occur in
important life realms, such as relationships, academic achievement, and the like. Suppose a student who wishes
to go to law school does poorly on an admissions test. If the student infers negative life events as having stable
and global causes, she may believe that her poor performance has a stable and global cause (“I lack intelligence,
and it’s going to prevent me from ever finding a meaningful career”), as opposed to an unstable and specific
cause (“I was sick the day of the exam, so my low score was a fluke”). Hopelessness theory predicts that people
who exhibit this cognitive style in response to undesirable life events will view such events as having negative
implications for their future and self-worth, thereby increasing the likelihood of hopelessness—the primary cause
of depression (Abramson et al., 1989). One study testing hopelessness theory measured the tendency to make

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TRY ITTRY IT
negative inferences for bad life effects in participants who were experiencing uncontrollable stressors. Over the
ensuing six months, those with scores reflecting high cognitive vulnerability were 7 times more likely to develop
depression compared to those with lower scores (Kleim, Gonzalo, & Ehlers, 2011).
A third cognitive theory of depression focuses on how people’s thoughts about their distressed
moods—depressed symptoms in particular—can increase the risk and duration of depression. This theory, which
focuses on rumination in the development of depression, was first described in the late 1980s to explain the
higher rates of depression in women than in men (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1987). Rumination is the repetitive and
passive focus on the fact that one is depressed and dwelling on depressed symptoms, rather that distracting
one’s self from the symptoms or attempting to address them in an active, problem-solving manner (Nolen-
Hoeksema, 1991). When people ruminate, they have thoughts such as “Why am I so unmotivated? I just can’t get
going. I’m never going to get my work done feeling this way” (Nolen-Hoeksema & Hilt, 2009, p. 393). Women are
more likely than men to ruminate when they are sad or depressed (Butler & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1994), and the
tendency to ruminate is associated with increases in depression symptoms (Nolen-Hoeksema, Larson, &
Grayson, 1999), heightened risk of major depressive episodes (Abela & Hankin, 2011), and chronicity of such
episodes (Robinson & Alloy, 2003).
Suicide
For some people with mood disorders, the extreme emotional pain they experience becomes unendurable.
Overwhelmed by hopelessness, devastated by incapacitating feelings of worthlessness, and burdened with the
inability to adequately cope with such feelings, they may consider suicide to be a reasonable way out. SuicideSuicide,
defined by the CDC as “death caused by self-directed injurious behavior with any intent to die as the result of the
behavior” (CDC, 2013a), in a sense represents an outcome of several things going wrong all at the same time
Crosby, Ortega, & Melanson, 2011). Not only must the person be biologically or psychologically vulnerable, but he
must also have the means to perform the suicidal act, and he must lack the necessary protective factors (e.g.,
social support from friends and family, religion, coping skills, and problem-solving skills) that provide comfort and
enable one to cope during times of crisis or great psychological pain (Berman, 2009).Suicide is not listed as a
disorder in the DSM-5; however, suffering from a mental disorder—especially a mood disorder—poses the
greatest risk for suicide. Around 90% of those who complete suicides have a diagnosis of at least one mental
disorder, with mood disorders being the most frequent (Fleischman, Bertolote, Belfer, & Beautrais, 2005). In fact,
the association between major depressive disorder and suicide is so strong that one of the criteria for the disorder
is thoughts of suicide, as discussed above (APA, 2013).Suicide rates can be difficult to interpret because some
deaths that appear to be accidental may in fact be acts of suicide (e.g., automobile crash). Nevertheless,
investigations into U.S. suicide rates have uncovered these facts:
• Suicide was the 10th leading cause of death for all ages in 2010 (Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention [CDC], 2012).
• There were 38,364 suicides in 2010 in the United States—an average of 105 each day (CDC, 2012).
• Suicide among males is 4 times higher than among females and accounts for 79% of all suicides;
firearms are the most commonly used method of suicide for males, whereas poisoning is the most
commonly used method for females (CDC, 2012).
• From 1991 to 2003, suicide rates were consistently higher among those 65 years and older. Since 2001,
however, suicide rates among those ages 25–64 have risen consistently, and, since 2006, suicide rates
have been greater for those ages 65 and older (CDC, 2013b). This increase in suicide rates among
middle-aged Americans has prompted concern in some quarters that baby boomers (individuals born
between 1946–1964) who face economic worry and easy access to prescription medication may be
particularly vulnerable to suicide (Parker-Pope, 2013).
• The highest rates of suicide within the United States are among American Indians/Alaskan natives and
Non-Hispanic Whites (CDC, 2013b).

TRY ITTRY IT
• Suicide rates vary across the United States, with the highest rates consistently found in the mountain
states of the west (Alaska, Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado, and Idaho) (Berman, 2009).
Contrary to popular belief, suicide rates peak during the springtime (April and May), not during the holiday season
or winter. In fact, suicide rates are generally lowest during the winter months (Postolache et al., 2010).
Rick Factors for Suicide
Suicidal risk is especially high among people with substance abuse problems. Individuals with alcohol
dependence are at 10 times greater risk for suicide than the general population (Wilcox, Conner, & Caine, 2004).
The risk of suicidal behavior is especially high among those who have made a prior suicide attempt. Among those
who attempt suicide, 16% make another attempt within a year and over 21% make another attempt within four
years (Owens, Horrocks, & House, 2002). Suicidal individuals may be at high risk for terminating their life if they
have a lethal means in which to act, such as a firearm in the home (Brent & Bridge, 2003). Withdrawal from social
relationships, feeling as though one is a burden to others, and engaging in reckless and risk-taking behaviors may
be precursors to suicidal behavior (Berman, 2009). A sense of entrapment or feeling unable to escape one’s
miserable feelings or external circumstances (e.g., an abusive relationship with no perceived way out) predicts
suicidal behavior (O’Connor, Smyth, Ferguson, Ryan, & Williams, 2013). Tragically, reports of suicides among
adolescents following instances of cyberbullying have emerged in recent years. In one widely-publicized case a
few years ago, Phoebe Prince, a 15-year-old Massachusetts high school student, committed suicide following
incessant harassment and taunting from her classmates via texting and Facebook (McCabe, 2010).
Suicides can have a contagious effect on people. For example, another’s suicide, especially that of a family
member, heightens one’s risk of suicide (Agerbo, Nordentoft, & Mortensen, 2002). Additionally, widely-publicized
suicides tend to trigger copycat suicides in some individuals. One study examining suicide statistics in the United
States from 1947–1967 found that the rates of suicide skyrocketed for the first month after a suicide story was
printed on the front page of the New York Times (Phillips, 1974). Austrian researchers found a significant increase
in the number of suicides by firearms in the three weeks following extensive reports in Austria’s largest
newspaper of a celebrity suicide by gun (Etzersdorfer, Voracek, & Sonneck, 2004). A review of 42 studies
concluded that media coverage of celebrity suicides is more than 14 times more likely to trigger copycat suicides
than is coverage of non-celebrity suicides (Stack, 2000). This review also demonstrated that the medium of
coverage is important: televised stories are considerably less likely to prompt a surge in suicides than are
newspaper stories. Research suggests that a trend appears to be emerging whereby people use online social
media to leave suicide notes, although it is not clear to what extent suicide notes on such media might induce
copycat suicides (Ruder, Hatch, Ampanozi, Thali, & Fischer, 2011). Nevertheless, it is reasonable to conjecture
that suicide notes left by individuals on social media may influence the decisions of other vulnerable people who
encounter them (Luxton, June, & Fairall, 2012).
One possible contributing factor in suicide is brain chemistry. Contemporary neurological research shows that
disturbances in the functioning of serotonin are linked to suicidal behavior (Pompili et al., 2010). Low levels of
serotonin predict future suicide attempts and suicide completions, and low levels have been observed post-
mortem among suicide victims (Mann, 2003). Serotonin dysfunction, as noted earlier, is also known to play an
important role in depression; low levels of serotonin have also been linked to aggression and impulsivity (Stanley
et al., 2000). The combination of these three characteristics constitutes a potential formula for suicide—especially
violent suicide. A classic study conducted during the 1970s found that patients with major depressive disorder
who had very low levels of serotonin attempted suicide more frequently and more violently than did patients with
higher levels (Asberg, Thorén, Träskman, Bertilsson, & Ringberger, 1976; Mann, 2003).
Suicidal thoughts, plans, and even off-hand remarks (“I might kill myself this afternoon”) should always be taken
extremely seriously. People who contemplate terminating their life need immediate help. Below are links to two
excellent websites that contain resources (including hotlines) for people who are struggling with suicidal ideation,
have loved ones who may be suicidal, or who have lost loved ones to suicide: http://www.afsp.org and
http://suicidology.org.

http://www.afsp.org

Home

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
bipolar and related disorders:bipolar and related disorders: group of mood disorders in which mania is the defining feature
bipolar disorder:bipolar disorder: mood disorder characterized by mood states that vacillate between depression and mania
diathesis-stress:diathesis-stress: theory in which certain predispositions or vulnerability factors influence one’s reaction to stress
depressive disorder:depressive disorder: one of a group of mood disorders in which depression is the defining feature
flight of ideas:flight of ideas: symptom of mania that involves an abruptly switching in conversation from one topic to another
hopelessness theory:hopelessness theory: cognitive theory of depression proposing that a style of thinking that perceives negative
life events as having stable and global causes leads to a sense of hopelessness and then to depression
major depressive disorder:major depressive disorder: commonly referred to as “depression” or “major depression,” characterized by
sadness or loss of pleasure in usual activities, as well other symptoms
mania:mania: state of extreme elation and agitation
manic episode:manic episode: period in which an individual experiences mania, characterized by extremely cheerful and
euphoric mood, excessive talkativeness, irritability, increased activity levels, and other symptoms
mood disorder:mood disorder: one of a group of disorders characterized by severe disturbances in mood and emotions; the
categories of mood disorders listed in the DSM-5 are bipolar and related disorders and depressive disorders
peripartum onset:peripartum onset: subtype of depression that applies to women who experience an episode of major depression
either during pregnancy or in the four weeks following childbirth
persistent depressive disorder:persistent depressive disorder: depressive disorder characterized by a chronically sad and melancholy mood
rumination:rumination: in depression, tendency to repetitively and passively dwell on one’s depressed symptoms, their
meanings, and their consequences
seasonal pattern:seasonal pattern: subtype of depression in which a person experiences the symptoms of major depressive
disorder only during a particular time of year
suicide:suicide: death caused by intentional, self-directed injurious behavior
suicidal ideation:suicidal ideation: thoughts of death by suicide, thinking about or planning suicide, or making a suicide attempt
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THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Think of someone you know who seems to have a tendency to make negative, self-defeating
explanations for negative life events. How might this tendency lead to future problems? What steps do
you think could be taken to change this thinking style?

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SCHIZOPHRENIA AND DISSOCIATIVE
DISORDERS
What you’ll learn to do: explain symptoms and potential causes of
schizophrenic and dissociative disorders
Schizophrenia is a severe disorder characterized by a complete breakdown in one’s ability to function in life; it
often requires hospitalization. People with schizophrenia experience hallucinations and delusions, and they have
extreme difficulty regulating their emotions and behavior. Thinking is incoherent and disorganized, behavior is
extremely bizarre, emotions are flat, and motivation to engage in most basic life activities is lacking.

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Schizophrenia is not to be confused with multiple personality disorder, which is technically termed dissociative
identity disorder. The main characteristic of dissociative disorders is that people become dissociated from their
sense of self, resulting in memory and identity disturbances. Dissociative disorders listed in the DSM-5 include
dissociative amnesia, depersonalization/derealization disorder, and dissociative identity disorder. A person with
dissociative amnesia is unable to recall important personal information, often after a stressful or traumatic
experience. In this section, you’ll learn about the differences between schizophrenia and these disorders.
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Categorize and describe the major symptoms of schizophrenia
• Describe the interplay between genetic, biological, and environmental factors that are associated with
the development of schizophrenia
• Identify and differentiate the symptoms and potential causes of dissociative amnesia,
depersonalization/ derealization disorder, and dissociative identity disorder
Schizophrenia
SchizophreniaSchizophrenia is a devastating psychological disorder that is characterized by major disturbances in thought,
perception, emotion, and behavior. About 1% of the population experiences schizophrenia in their lifetime, and
usually the disorder is first diagnosed during early adulthood (early to mid-20s). Most people with schizophrenia
experience significant difficulties in many day-to-day activities, such as holding a job, paying bills, caring for
oneself (grooming and hygiene), and maintaining relationships with others. Frequent hospitalizations are more
often the rule rather than the exception with schizophrenia. Even when they receive the best treatments available,
many with schizophrenia will continue to experience serious social and occupational impairment throughout their
lives.
What is schizophrenia? First, schizophrenia is not a condition involving a split personality; that is, schizophrenia is
not the same thing as dissociative identity disorder (better known as multiple personality disorder). These
disorders are sometimes confused because the word schizophrenia first coined by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen
Bleuler in 1911, derives from Greek words that refer to a “splitting” (schizo) of psychic functions (phrene) (Green,
2001).
Schizophrenia is considered a psychotic disorder, or one in which the person’s thoughts, perceptions, and
behaviors are impaired to the point where she is not able to function normally in life. In informal terms, one who
suffers from a psychotic disorder (that is, has a psychosis) is disconnected from the world in which most of us live.
Symptoms of Schizophrenia
The main symptoms of schizophrenia include hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking, disorganized or
abnormal motor behavior, and negative symptoms (APA, 2013). A hallucinationhallucination is a perceptual experience that
occurs in the absence of external stimulation. Auditory hallucinations (hearing voices) occur in roughly two-thirds
of patients with schizophrenia and are by far the most common form of hallucination (Andreasen, 1987). The
voices may be familiar or unfamiliar, they may have a conversation or argue, or the voices may provide a running
commentary on the person’s behavior (Tsuang, Farone, & Green, 1999).

Figure 1. Tactile hallucinations, like that of imaginary
spiders crawling on the skin, are another type of
hallucination.
Less common are visual hallucinations (seeing things that
are not there) and olfactory hallucinations (smelling odors
that are not actually present).
DelusionsDelusions are beliefs that are contrary to reality and are
firmly held even in the face of contradictory evidence. Many
of us hold beliefs that some would consider odd, but a
delusion is easily identified because it is clearly absurd. A
person with schizophrenia may believe that his mother is
plotting with the FBI to poison his coffee, or that his
neighbor is an enemy spy who wants to kill him. These
kinds of delusions are known as paranoid delusionsparanoid delusions, which
involve the (false) belief that other people or agencies are
plotting to harm the person. People with schizophrenia also
may hold grandiose delusionsgrandiose delusions, beliefs that one holds
special power, unique knowledge, or is extremely important.
For example, the person who claims to be Jesus Christ, or
who claims to have knowledge going back 5,000 years, or
who claims to be a great philosopher is experiencing
grandiose delusions. Other delusions include the belief that
one’s thoughts are being removed (thought withdrawal) or
thoughts have been placed inside one’s head (thought
insertion). Another type of delusion is somatic delusionsomatic delusion,
which is the belief that something highly abnormal is
happening to one’s body (e.g., that one’s kidneys are being eaten by cockroaches).
Disorganized thinkingDisorganized thinking refers to disjointed and incoherent thought processes—usually detected by what a person
says. The person might ramble, exhibit loose associations (jump from topic to topic), or talk in a way that is so
disorganized and incomprehensible that it seems as though the person is randomly combining words.
Disorganized thinking is also exhibited by blatantly illogical remarks (e.g., “Fenway Park is in Boston. I live in
Boston. Therefore, I live at Fenway Park.”) and by tangentiality: responding to others’ statements or questions by
remarks that are either barely related or unrelated to what was said or asked. For example, if a person diagnosed
with schizophrenia is asked if she is interested in receiving special job training, she might state that she once rode
on a train somewhere. To a person with schizophrenia, the tangential (slightly related) connection between job
training and riding a train are sufficient enough to cause such a response.
Disorganized or abnormal motor behaviorDisorganized or abnormal motor behavior refers to unusual behaviors and movements: becoming unusually
active, exhibiting silly child-like behaviors (giggling and self-absorbed smiling), engaging in repeated and
purposeless movements, or displaying odd facial expressions and gestures. In some cases, the person will exhibit
catatonic behaviors, which show decreased reactivity to the environment, such as posturing, in which the person
maintains a rigid and bizarre posture for long periods of time, or catatonic stupor, a complete lack of movement
and verbal behavior.
Schizophrenia has positive and negative symptoms. Positive symptomsPositive symptoms of schizophrenia are symptoms of
commission, meaning they are something that individuals do or think. Examples include the hallucinations,
delusions, and bizarre or disorganized behavior describe above. Negative symptoms. Negative symptoms are those that reflect
noticeable decreases and absences in certain behaviors, emotions, or drives (Green, 2001). A person who
exhibits diminished emotional expression shows no emotion in his facial expressions, speech, or movements,
even when such expressions are normal or expected (also known as flat affect). Avolition is characterized by a
lack of motivation to engage in self-initiated and meaningful activity, including the most basic of tasks, such as
bathing and grooming. Alogia refers to reduced speech output; in simple terms, patients do not say much.
Another negative symptom is asociality, or social withdrawal and lack of interest in engaging in social interactions
with others. A final negative symptom, anhedonia, refers to an inability to experience pleasure. One who exhibits
anhedonia expresses little interest in what most people consider to be pleasurable activities, such as hobbies,
recreation, or sexual activity.

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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch this video and try to identify which classic symptoms of schizophrenia are shown.
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Causes of Schizophrenia
There is considerable evidence suggesting that schizophrenia has a genetic basis. The risk of developing
schizophrenia is nearly 6 times greater if one has a parent with schizophrenia than if one does not (Goldstein,
Buka, Seidman, & Tsuang, 2010). Additionally, one’s risk of developing schizophrenia increases as genetic
relatedness to family members diagnosed with schizophrenia increases (Gottesman, 2001).
Genes
When considering the role of genetics in schizophrenia, as in any disorder, conclusions based on family and twin
studies are subject to criticism. This is because family members who are closely related (such as siblings) are
more likely to share similar environments than are family members who are less closely related (such as cousins);
further, identical twins may be more likely to be treated similarly by others than might fraternal twins. Thus, family
and twin studies cannot completely rule out the possible effects of shared environments and experiences. Such
problems can be corrected by using adoption studies, in which children are separated from their parents at an
early age. One of the first adoption studies of schizophrenia conducted by Heston (1966) followed 97 adoptees,
including 47 who were born to mothers with schizophrenia, over a 36-year period. Five of the 47 adoptees (11%)
whose mothers had schizophrenia were later diagnosed with schizophrenia, compared to none of the 50 control
adoptees. Other adoption studies have consistently reported that for adoptees who are later diagnosed with
schizophrenia, their biological relatives have a higher risk of schizophrenia than do adoptive relatives (Shih,
Belmonte, & Zandi, 2004).
Although adoption studies have supported the hypothesis that genetic factors contribute to schizophrenia, they
have also demonstrated that the disorder most likely arises from a combination of genetic and environmental
factors, rather than just genes themselves. For example, investigators in one study examined the rates of
schizophrenia among 303 adoptees (Tienari et al., 2004). A total of 145 of the adoptees had biological mothers
with schizophrenia; these adoptees constituted the high genetic risk group. The other 158 adoptees had mothers
with no psychiatric history; these adoptees composed the low genetic risk group. The researchers managed to
determine whether the adoptees’ families were either healthy or disturbed. For example, the adoptees were
considered to be raised in a disturbed family environment if the family exhibited a lot of criticism, conflict, and a
lack of problem-solving skills. The findings revealed that adoptees whose mothers had schizophrenia (high
genetic risk) and who had been raised in a disturbed family environment were much more likely to develop
schizophrenia or another psychotic disorder (36.8%) than were adoptees whose biological mothers had
schizophrenia but who had been raised in a healthy environment (5.8%), or than adoptees with a low genetic risk
who were raised in either a disturbed (5.3%) or healthy (4.8%) environment. Because the adoptees who were at
high genetic risk were likely to develop schizophrenia only if they were raised in a disturbed home environment,

Figure 2. Schizophrenia is associated with enlarged
ventricles in the brain.
this study supports a diathesis-stress interpretation of schizophrenia—both genetic vulnerability and
environmental stress are necessary for schizophrenia to develop, genes alone do not show the complete picture.
Neurotransmitters
If we accept that schizophrenia is at least partly genetic in origin, as it seems to be, it makes sense that the next
step should be to identify biological abnormalities commonly found in people with the disorder. Perhaps not
surprisingly, a number of neurobiological factors have indeed been found to be related to schizophrenia. One
such factor that has received considerable attention for many years is the neurotransmitter dopamine. Interest in
the role of dopamine in schizophrenia was stimulated by two sets of findings: drugs that increase dopamine levels
can produce schizophrenia-like symptoms, and medications that block dopamine activity reduce the symptoms
(Howes & Kapur, 2009). The dopamine hypothesisdopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia proposed that an overabundance of
dopamine or too many dopamine receptors are responsible for the onset and maintenance of schizophrenia
(Snyder, 1976). More recent work in this area suggests that abnormalities in dopamine vary by brain region and
thus contribute to symptoms in unique ways. In general, this research has suggested that an overabundance of
dopamine in the limbic system may be responsible for some symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusions,
whereas low levels of dopamine in the prefrontal cortex might be responsible primarily for the negative symptoms
(avolition, alogia, asociality, and anhedonia) (Davis, Kahn, Ko, & Davidson, 1991). In recent years, serotonin has
received attention, and newer antipsychotic medications used to treat the disorder work by blocking serotonin
receptors (Baumeister & Hawkins, 2004).
Brain Anatomy
Brain imaging studies reveal that people with schizophrenia
have enlarged ventriclesventricles, the cavities within the brain that
contain cerebral spinal fluid (Green, 2001). This finding is
important because larger than normal ventricles suggests
that various brain regions are reduced in size, thus implying
that schizophrenia is associated with a loss of brain tissue.
In addition, many people with schizophrenia display a
reduction in gray matter (cell bodies of neurons) in the
frontal lobes (Lawrie & Abukmeil, 1998), and many show
less frontal lobe activity when performing cognitive tasks
(Buchsbaum et al., 1990). The frontal lobes are important in
a variety of complex cognitive functions, such as planning
and executing behavior, attention, speech, movement, and
problem solving. Hence, abnormalities in this region provide
merit in explaining why people with schizophrenia
experience deficits in these of areas.
Events During Pregnancy
Why do people with schizophrenia have these brain abnormalities? A number of environmental factors that could
impact normal brain development might be at fault. High rates of obstetric complications in the births of children
who later developed schizophrenia have been reported (Cannon, Jones, & Murray, 2002). In addition, people are
at an increased risk for developing schizophrenia if their mother was exposed to influenza during the first trimester
of pregnancy (Brown et al., 2004). Research has also suggested that a mother’s emotional stress during
pregnancy may increase the risk of schizophrenia in offspring. One study reported that the risk of schizophrenia is
elevated substantially in offspring whose mothers experienced the death of a relative during the first trimester of
pregnancy (Khashan et al., 2008).
Marijuana
Another variable that is linked to schizophrenia is marijuanamarijuana use. Although a number of reports have shown that
individuals with schizophrenia are more likely to use marijuana than are individuals without schizophrenia

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(Thornicroft, 1990), such investigations cannot determine if marijuana use leads to schizophrenia, or vice versa.
However, a number of longitudinal studies have suggested that marijuana use is, in fact, a risk factor for
schizophrenia. A classic investigation of over 45,000 Swedish conscripts who were followed up after 15 years
found that those individuals who had reported using marijuana at least once by the time of conscription were more
than 2 times as likely to develop schizophrenia during the ensuing 15 years than were those who reported never
using marijuana; those who had indicated using marijuana 50 or more times were 6 times as likely to develop
schizophrenia (Andréasson, Allbeck, Engström, & Rydberg, 1987). More recently, a review of 35 longitudinal
studies found a substantially increased risk of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders in people who had
used marijuana, with the greatest risk in the most frequent users (Moore et al., 2007). Other work has found that
marijuana use is associated with an onset of psychotic disorders at an earlier age (Large, Sharma, Compton,
Slade, & Nielssen, 2011). Overall, the available evidence seems to indicate that marijuana use plays a causal role
in the development of schizophrenia, although it is important to point out that marijuana use is not an essential or
sufficient risk factor as not all people with schizophrenia have used marijuana and the majority of marijuana users
do not develop schizophrenia (Casadio, Fernandes, Murray, & Di Forti, 2011). One plausible interpretation of the
data is that early marijuana use may disrupt normal brain development during important early maturation periods
in adolescence (Trezza, Cuomo, & Vanderschuren, 2008). Thus, early marijuana use may set the stage for the
development of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, especially among individuals with an established
vulnerability (Casadio et al., 2011).
Schizophrenia: Early Warning Signs
Early detection and treatment of conditions such as heart disease and cancer have improved survival rates and
quality of life for people who suffer from these conditions. A new approach involves identifying people who show
minor symptoms of psychosis, such as unusual thought content, paranoia, odd communication, delusions,
problems at school or work, and a decline in social functioning—which are coined prodromal symptomsprodromal symptoms—and
following these individuals over time to determine which of them develop a psychotic disorder and which factors
best predict such a disorder. A number of factors have been identified that predict a greater likelihood that
prodromal individuals will develop a psychotic disorder: genetic risk (a family history of psychosis), recent
deterioration in functioning, high levels of unusual thought content, high levels of suspicion or paranoia, poor
social functioning, and a history of substance abuse (Fusar-Poli et al., 2013). Further research will enable a more
accurate prediction of those at greatest risk for developing schizophrenia, and thus to whom early intervention
efforts should be directed.

Figure 3. The most well-known dissociative disorder is
dissociative identity disorder, in which people exhibit more
than one identity.
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Dissociative Disorders
Dissociative disordersDissociative disorders are characterized by an individual
becoming split off, or dissociated, from her core sense of
self. Memory and identity become disturbed; these
disturbances have a psychological rather than physical
cause. Dissociative disorders listed in the DSM-5 include
dissociative amnesia, depersonalization/derealization
disorder, and dissociative identity disorder.
Dissociative Amnesia
Amnesia refers to the partial or total forgetting of some
experience or event. An individual with dissociativedissociative
amnesiaamnesia is unable to recall important personal information,
usually following an extremely stressful or traumatic
experience such as combat, natural disasters, or being the
victim of violence. The memory impairments are not caused
by ordinary forgetting. Some individuals with dissociative
amnesia will also experience dissociative fuguedissociative fugue (from the
word “to flee” in French), whereby they suddenly wander
away from their home, experience confusion about their
identity, and sometimes even adopt a new identity
(Cardeña & Gleaves, 2006). Most fugue episodes last only a few hours or days, but some can last longer. One
study of residents in communities in upstate New York reported that about 1.8% experienced dissociative
amnesia in the previous year (Johnson, Cohen, Kasen, & Brook, 2006).
Some have questioned the validity of dissociative amnesia (Pope, Hudson, Bodkin, & Oliva, 1998); it has even
been characterized as a “piece of psychiatric folklore devoid of convincing empirical support” (McNally, 2003, p.
275). Notably, scientific publications regarding dissociative amnesia rose during the 1980s and reached a peak in
the mid-1990s, followed by an equally sharp decline by 2003; in fact, only 13 cases of individuals with dissociative
amnesia worldwide could be found in the literature that same year (Pope, Barry, Bodkin, & Hudson, 2006).
Further, no description of individuals showing dissociative amnesia following a trauma exists in any fictional or
nonfictional work prior to 1800 (Pope, Poliakoff, Parker, Boynes, & Hudson, 2006). However, a study of 82
individuals who enrolled for treatment at a psychiatric outpatient hospital found that nearly 10% met the criteria for
dissociative amnesia, perhaps suggesting that the condition is underdiagnosed, especially in psychiatric
populations (Foote, Smolin, Kaplan, Legatt, & Lipschitz, 2006).
Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder
Depersonalization/derealization disorderDepersonalization/derealization disorder is characterized by recurring episodes of depersonalization,
derealization, or both. Depersonalization is defined as feelings of “unreality or detachment from, or unfamiliarity
with, one’s whole self or from aspects of the self” (APA, 2013, p. 302). Individuals who experience
depersonalizationdepersonalization might believe their thoughts and feelings are not their own; they may feel robotic as though they
lack control over their movements and speech; they may experience a distorted sense of time and, in extreme
cases, they may sense an “out-of-body” experience in which they see themselves from the vantage point of
another person. DerealizationDerealization is conceptualized as a sense of “unreality or detachment from, or unfamiliarity with,

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Review the differences between schizophrenia and the once-called multiple personality disorder in the following
episode of CrashCourse Psychology.
the world, be it individuals, inanimate objects, or all surroundings” (APA, 2013, p. 303). A person who experiences
derealization might feel as though he is in a fog or a dream, or that the surrounding world is somehow artificial
and unreal. Individuals with depersonalization/derealization disorder often have difficulty describing their
symptoms and may think they are going crazy (APA, 2013).
Dissociative Identity Disorder
By far, the most well-known dissociative disorder is dissociative identity disorderdissociative identity disorder (formerly called multiple
personality disorder). People with dissociative identity disorder exhibit two or more separate personalities or
identities, each well-defined and distinct from one another. They also experience memory gaps for the time during
which another identity is in charge (e.g., one might find unfamiliar items in her shopping bags or among her
possessions), and in some cases may report hearing voices, such as a child’s voice or the sound of somebody
crying (APA, 2013). The study of upstate New York residents mentioned above (Johnson et al., 2006) reported
that 1.5% of their sample experienced symptoms consistent with dissociative identity disorder in the previous
year.
Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is highly controversial. Some believe that people fake symptoms to avoid the
consequences of illegal actions (e.g., “I am not responsible for shoplifting because it was my other personality”).
In fact, it has been demonstrated that people are generally skilled at adopting the role of a person with different
personalities when they believe it might be advantageous to do so. As an example, Kenneth Bianchi was an
infamous serial killer who, along with his cousin, murdered over a dozen females around Los Angeles in the late
1970s. Eventually, he and his cousin were apprehended. At Bianchi’s trial, he pled not guilty by reason of insanity,
presenting himself as though he had DID and claiming that a different personality (“Steve Walker”) committed the
murders. When these claims were scrutinized, he admitted faking the symptoms and was found guilty (Schwartz,
1981).
A second reason DID is controversial is because rates of the disorder suddenly skyrocketed in the 1980s. More
cases of DID were identified during the five years prior to 1986 than in the preceding two centuries (Putnam,
Guroff, Silberman, Barban, & Post, 1986). Although this increase may be due to the development of more
sophisticated diagnostic techniques, it is also possible that the popularization of DID—helped in part by Sybil, a
popular 1970s book (and later film) about a woman with 16 different personalities—may have prompted clinicians
to overdiagnose the disorder (Piper & Merskey, 2004). Casting further scrutiny on the existence of multiple
personalities or identities is the recent suggestion that the story of Sybil was largely fabricated, and the idea for
the book might have been exaggerated (Nathan, 2011).
Despite its controversial nature, DID is clearly a legitimate and serious disorder, and although some people may
fake symptoms, others suffer their entire lives with it. People with this disorder tend to report a history of childhood
trauma, some cases having been corroborated through medical or legal records (Cardeña & Gleaves, 2006).
Research by Ross et al. (1990) suggests that in one study about 95% of people with DID were physically and/or
sexually abused as children. Of course, not all reports of childhood abuse can be expected to be valid or
accurate. However, there is strong evidence that traumatic experiences can cause people to experience states of
dissociation, suggesting that dissociative states—including the adoption of multiple personalities—may serve as a
psychologically important coping mechanism for threat and danger (Dalenberg et al., 2012).

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
catatonic behavior:catatonic behavior: decreased reactivity to the environment; includes posturing and catatonic stupor
delusion:delusion: belief that is contrary to reality and is firmly held, despite contradictory evidence
depersonalization/derealization disorder:depersonalization/derealization disorder: dissociative disorder in which people feel detached from the self
(depersonalization), and the world feels artificial and unreal (derealization)
disorganized/abnormal motor behavior:disorganized/abnormal motor behavior: highly unusual behaviors and movements (such as child-like
behaviors), repeated and purposeless movements, and displaying odd facial expressions and gestures
disorganized thinking:disorganized thinking: disjointed and incoherent thought processes, usually detected by what a person says
dissociative amnesia:dissociative amnesia: dissociative disorder characterized by an inability to recall important personal information,
usually following an extremely stressful or traumatic experience
dissociative disorders:dissociative disorders: group of DSM-5 disorders in which the primary feature is that a person becomes
dissociated, or split off, from his or her core sense of self, resulting in disturbances in identity and memory
dissociative fugue:dissociative fugue: symptom of dissociative amnesia in which a person suddenly wanders away from one’s
home and experiences confusion about his or her identity
dissociative identity disorder:dissociative identity disorder: dissociative disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder) in which a
person exhibits two or more distinct, well-defined personalities or identities and experiences memory gaps for
the time during which another identity emerged
dopamine hypothesis:dopamine hypothesis: theory of schizophrenia that proposes that an overabundance of dopamine or dopamine
receptors is responsible for the onset and maintenance of schizophrenia
grandiose delusion:grandiose delusion: characterized by beliefs that one holds special power, unique knowledge, or is extremely
important
hallucination:hallucination: perceptual experience that occurs in the absence of external stimulation, such as the auditory
hallucinations (hearing voices) common to schizophrenia
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Try to find an example (via a search engine) of a past instance in which a person committed a horrible
crime, was apprehended, and later claimed to have dissociative identity disorder during the trial. What
was the outcome? Was the person revealed to be faking? If so, how was this determined?

negative symptom:negative symptom: characterized by decreases and absences in certain normal behaviors, emotions, or drives,
such as an expressionless face, lack of motivation to engage in activities, reduced speech, lack of social
engagement, and inability to experience pleasure
paranoid delusion:paranoid delusion: characterized by beliefs that others are out to harm them
prodromal symptom:prodromal symptom: in schizophrenia, one of the early minor symptoms of psychosis
schizophrenia:schizophrenia: severe disorder characterized by major disturbances in thought, perception, emotion, and
behavior with symptoms that include hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking and behavior, and
negative symptoms
somatic delusion:somatic delusion: belief that something highly unusual is happening to one’s body or internal organs
ventricle:ventricle: one of the fluid-filled cavities within the brain
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PERSONALITY DISORDERS
What you’ll learn to do: describe and differentiate between
personality disorders, including borderline and antisocial
personality disorder
Individuals with personality disorders exhibit a personality style that is inflexible, causes distress and impairment,
and creates problems for themselves and others. The DSM-5 recognizes 10 personality disorders, organized into
three clusters. The disorders in Cluster A include those characterized by a personality style that is odd and
eccentric. These include paranoid, schizoid, and schizotypal disorders. Cluster B includes personality disorders
characterized chiefly by a personality style that is impulsive, dramatic, highly emotional, and erratic (antisocial,
histrionic, narcissistic, borderline) and those in Cluster C are characterized by a nervous and fearful personality
style.
Two Cluster B personality disorders, borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder, are
especially problematic. People with borderline personality disorder show marked instability in mood, behavior, and
self-image, as well as impulsivity. They cannot stand to be alone, are unpredictable, have a history of stormy
relationships, and frequently display intense and inappropriate anger. Genetic factors and adverse childhood
experiences (e.g., sexual abuse) appear to be important in its development. People with antisocial personality
display a lack of regard for the rights of others; they are impulsive, deceitful, irresponsible, and unburdened by
any sense of guilt. Genetic factors and socialization both appear to be important in the origin of antisocial
personality disorder. Research has also shown that those with this disorder do not experience emotions the way
most other people do.
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Define personality disorders and distinguish between the three clusters of personality disorders

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• Identify the basic features of borderline personality disorder, and its etiology
• Describe the basic features of antisocial personality disorder and its etiology
Personality Disorders
The term personality refers loosely to one’s stable, consistent, and distinctive way of thinking about, feeling,
acting, and relating to the world. People with personality disorderspersonality disorders exhibit a personality style that differs markedly
from the expectations of their culture, is pervasive and inflexible, begins in adolescence or early adulthood, and
causes distress or impairment (APA, 2013). Generally, individuals with these disorders exhibit enduring
personality styles that are extremely troubling and often create problems for them and those with whom they
come into contact. Their maladaptive personality styles frequently bring them into conflict with others, disrupt their
ability to develop and maintain social relationships, and prevent them from accomplishing realistic life goals.
The DSM-5 recognizes 10 personality disorders, organized into 3 different clusters. Cluster ACluster A disorders include
paranoid personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, and schizotypal personality disorder. People with
these disorders display a personality style that is odd or eccentric. Cluster BCluster B disorders include antisocial
personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and borderline personality
disorder. People with these disorders usually are impulsive, overly dramatic, highly emotional, and erratic. ClusterCluster
CC disorders include avoidant personality disorder, dependent personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive
personality disorder (which is not the same thing as obsessive-compulsive disorder). People with these disorders
often appear to be nervous and fearful. The table provides a description of each of the DSM-5 personality
disorders:

Table 1. DSM-5 Personality Disorders
DSM-5DSM-5
PersonalityPersonality
DisorderDisorder
DescriptionDescription ClusterCluster
Paranoid
harbors a pervasive and unjustifiable suspiciousness and mistrust of others; reluctant
to confide in or become close to others; reads hidden demeaning or threatening
meaning into benign remarks or events; takes offense easily and bears grudges; not
due to schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders
A
Schizoid
lacks interest and desire to form relationships with others; aloof and shows emotional
coldness and detachment; indifferent to approval or criticism of others; lacks close
friends or confidants; not due to schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders, not an
autism spectrum disorder
A
Schizotypal
exhibits eccentricities in thought, perception, emotion, speech, and behavior; shows
suspiciousness or paranoia; has unusual perceptual experiences; speech is often
idiosyncratic; displays inappropriate emotions; lacks friends or confidants; not due to
schizophrenia or other psychotic disorder, or to autism spectrum disorder
A
Antisocial
continuously violates the rights of others; history of antisocial tendencies prior to age
15; often lies, fights, and has problems with the law; impulsive and fails to think
ahead; can be deceitful and manipulative in order to gain profit or pleasure;
irresponsible and often fails to hold down a job or pay financial debts; lacks feelings
for others and remorse over misdeeds
B
Histrionic
excessively overdramatic, emotional, and theatrical; feels uncomfortable when not the
center of others’ attention; behavior is often inappropriately seductive or provocative;
speech is highly emotional but often vague and diffuse; emotions are shallow and
often shift rapidly; may alienate friends with demands for constant attention
B
Narcissistic
overinflated and unjustified sense of self-importance and preoccupied with fantasies
of success; believes he is entitled to special treatment from others; shows arrogant
attitudes and behaviors; takes advantage of others; lacks empathy
B
Borderline
unstable in self-image, mood, and behavior; cannot tolerate being alone and
experiences chronic feelings of emptiness; unstable and intense relationships with
others; behavior is impulsive, unpredictable, and sometimes self-damaging; shows
inappropriate and intense anger; makes suicidal gestures
B
Avoidant
socially inhibited and oversensitive to negative evaluation; avoids occupations that
involve interpersonal contact because of fears of criticism or rejection; avoids
relationships with others unless guaranteed to be accepted unconditionally; feels
inadequate and views self as socially inept and unappealing; unwilling to take risks or
engage in new activities if they may prove embarrassing
C
Dependent
allows others to take over and run her life; is submissive, clingy, and fears separation;
cannot make decisions without advice and reassurance from others; lacks self-
confidence; cannot do things on her own; feels uncomfortable or helpless when alone
C
Obsessive-
Compulsive
pervasive need for perfectionism that interferes with the ability to complete tasks;
preoccupied with details, rules, order, and schedules; excessively devoted to work at
the expense of leisure and friendships; rigid, inflexible, and stubborn; insists things be
done his way; miserly with money
C
Slightly over 9% of the U.S. population suffers from a personality disorder, with avoidant and schizoid personality
disorders the most frequent (Lezenweger, Lane, Loranger, & Kessler, 2007). Two of these personality disorders,
borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder, are regarded by many as especially
problematic.

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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch the following CrashCourse psychology video for an overview of personality disorders:
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Figure 1. Those with borderline personality disorder may
quickly change their mood or behavior.
Borderline Personality Disorder
The “borderline” in borderline personality disorder was
originally coined in the late 1930s in an effort to describe
patients who appeared anxious, but were prone to brief
psychotic experiences—that is, patients who were thought
to be literally on the borderline between anxiety and
psychosis (Freeman, Stone, Martin, & Reinecke, 2005).
Today, borderline personality disorderborderline personality disorder has a completely
different meaning. Borderline personality disorder is
characterized chiefly by instability in interpersonal
relationships, self-image, and mood, as well as marked
impulsivity (APA, 2013). People with borderline personality
disorder cannot tolerate the thought of being alone and will
make frantic efforts (including making suicidal gestures and
engaging in self-mutilation) to avoid abandonment or
separation (whether real or imagined). Their relationships are intense and unstable; for example, a lover may be
idealized early in a relationship, but then later vilified at the slightest sign she appears to no longer show interest.
These individuals have an unstable view of self and, thus, might suddenly display a shift in personal attitudes,
interests, career plans, and choice of friends. For example, a law school student may, despite having invested
tens of thousands of dollars toward earning a law degree and despite having performed well in the program,
consider dropping out and pursuing a career in another field. People with borderline personality disorder may be
highly impulsive and may engage in reckless and self-destructive behaviors such as excessive gambling,
spending money irresponsibly, substance abuse, engaging in unsafe sex, and reckless driving. They sometimes
show intense and inappropriate anger that they have difficulty controlling, and they can be moody, sarcastic,
bitter, and verbally abusive.

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The prevalence of borderline personality disorder in the U.S. population is estimated to be around 1.4%
(Lezenweger et al., 2007), but the rates are higher among those who use mental health services; approximately
10% of mental health outpatients and 20% of psychiatric inpatients meet the criteria for diagnosis (APA, 2013).
Additionally, borderline personality disorder is comorbid with anxiety, mood, and substance use disorders
(Lezenweger et al., 2007).
Biological Basis for Borderline Personality Disorder
Genetic factors appear to be important in the development of borderline personality disorder. For example, core
personality traits that characterize this disorder, such as impulsivity and emotional instability, show a high degree
of heritability (Livesley, 2008). Also, the rates of borderline personality disorder among relatives of people with this
disorder have been found to be as high as 24.9% (White, Gunderson, Zanarani, & Hudson, 2003). Individuals with
borderline personality disorder report experiencing childhood physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse at rates far
greater than those observed in the general population (Afifi et al., 2010), indicating that environmental factors are
also crucial. These findings would suggest that borderline personality disorder may be determined by an
interaction between genetic factors and adverse environmental experiences. Consistent with this hypothesis, one
study found that the highest rates of borderline personality disorder were among individuals with a borderline
temperament (characterized by high novelty seeking and high harm-avoidance) and those who experienced
childhood abuse and/or neglect (Joyce et al., 2003).
Antisocial Personality Disorder
Most human beings live in accordance with a moral compass, a sense of right and wrong. Most individuals learn
at a very young age that there are certain things that should not be done. We learn that we should not lie or cheat.
We are taught that it is wrong to take things that do not belong to us, and that it is wrong to exploit others for
personal gain. We also learn the importance of living up to our responsibilities, of doing what we say we will do.
People with antisocial personality disorder, however, do not seem to have a moral compass. These individuals act
as though they neither have a sense of nor care about right or wrong. Not surprisingly, these people represent a
serious problem for others and for society in general.
According to the DSM-5, the individual with antisocial personality disorderantisocial personality disorder (sometimes referred to as
psychopathy) shows no regard at all for other people’s rights or feelings. This lack of regard is exhibited a number
of ways and can include repeatedly performing illegal acts, lying to or conning others, impulsivity and
recklessness, irritability and aggressiveness toward others, and failure to act in a responsible way (e.g., leaving
debts unpaid) (APA, 2013). The worst part about antisocial personality disorder, however, is that people with this
disorder have no remorse over one’s misdeeds; these people will hurt, manipulate, exploit, and abuse others and
not feel any guilt. Signs of this disorder can emerge early in life; however, a person must be at least 18 years old
to be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder.
People with antisocial personality disorder seem to view the world as self-serving and unkind. They seem to think
that they should use whatever means necessary to get by in life. They tend to view others not as living, thinking,
feeling beings, but rather as pawns to be used or abused for a specific purpose. They often have an over-inflated
sense of themselves and can appear extremely arrogant. They frequently display superficial charm; for example,
without really meaning it they might say exactly what they think another person wants to hear. They lack empathy:
they are incapable of understanding the emotional point-of-view of others. People with this disorder may become
involved in illegal enterprises, show cruelty toward others, leave their jobs with no plans to obtain another job,
have multiple sexual partners, repeatedly get into fights with others, and show reckless disregard for themselves
and others (e.g., repeated arrests for driving while intoxicated) (APA, 2013).

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A useful way to conceptualize antisocial personality disorder is boiling the diagnosis down to three major
concepts: disinhibition, boldness, and meanness (Patrick, Fowles, & Krueger, 2009). Disinhibition is a propensity
toward impulse control problems, lack of planning and forethought, insistence on immediate gratification, and
inability to restrain behavior. Boldness describes a tendency to remain calm in threatening situations, high self-
assurance, a sense of dominance, and a tendency toward thrill-seeking. Meanness is defined as “aggressive
resource seeking without regard for others,” and is signaled by a lack of empathy, disdain for and lack of close
relationships with others, and a tendency to accomplish goals through cruelty (Patrick et al., 2009, p. 913).
Risk Factors for Antisocial Personality Disorder
Antisocial personality disorder is observed in about 3.6% of the population; the disorder is much more common
among males, with a 3 to 1 ratio of men to women, and it is more likely to occur in men who are younger,
widowed, separated, divorced, of lower socioeconomic status, who live in urban areas, and who live in the
western United States (Compton, Conway, Stinson, Colliver, & Grant, 2005). Compared to men with antisocial
personality disorder, women with the disorder are more likely to have experienced emotional neglect and sexual
abuse during childhood, and they are more likely to have had parents who abused substances and who engaged
in antisocial behaviors themselves (Alegria et al., 2013).
The table below shows some of the differences in the specific types of antisocial behaviors that men and women
with antisocial personality disorder exhibit (Alegria et al., 2013).
Table 1. Gender Differences in Antisocial Personality Disorder
Men with antisocial personality disorder are more likelyMen with antisocial personality disorder are more likely
than women with antisocial personality disorder tothan women with antisocial personality disorder to
Women with antisocial personality disorder areWomen with antisocial personality disorder are
more likely than men with antisocial personality tomore likely than men with antisocial personality to
• do things that could easily hurt themselves or
others
• receive three or more traffic tickets for reckless
driving
• have their driver’s license suspended
• destroy others’ property
• start a fire on purpose
• make money illegally
• do anything that could lead to arrest
• hit someone hard enough to injure them
• hurt an animal on purpose
• run away from home overnight
• frequently miss school or work
• lie frequently
• forge someone’s signature
• get into a fight that comes to blows with an
intimate partner
• live with others besides the family for at
least one month
• harass, threaten, or blackmail someone
Family, twin, and adoption studies suggest that both genetic and environmental factors influence the development
of antisocial personality disorder, as well as general antisocial behavior (criminality, violence, aggressiveness)
(Baker, Bezdjian, & Raine, 2006). Personality and temperament dimensions that are related to this disorder,
including fearlessness, impulsive antisociality, and callousness, have a substantial genetic influence (Livesley &
Jang, 2008). Adoption studies clearly demonstrate that the development of antisocial behavior is determined by
the interaction of genetic factors and adverse environmental circumstances (Rhee & Waldman, 2002). For
example, one investigation found that adoptees of biological parents with antisocial personality disorder were
more likely to exhibit adolescent and adult antisocial behaviors if they were raised in adverse adoptive family
environments (e.g., adoptive parents had marital problems, were divorced, used drugs, and had legal problems)

than if they were raised in a more normal adoptive environment (Cadoret, Yates, Ed, Woodworth, & Stewart,
1995).
Researchers who are interested in the importance of environment in the development of antisocial personality
disorder have directed their attention to such factors as the community, the structure and functioning of the family,
and peer groups. Each of these factors influences the likelihood of antisocial behavior. One longitudinal
investigation of more than 800 Seattle-area youth measured risk factors for violence at 10, 14, 16, and 18 years of
age (Herrenkohl et al., 2000). The risk factors examined included those involving the family, peers, and
community. A portion of the findings from this study are provided in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Longitudinal studies have helped to identify risk factors for predicting violent behavior.
Those with antisocial tendencies do not seem to experience emotions the way most other people do. These
individuals fail to show fear in response to environment cues that signal punishment, pain, or noxious stimulation.
For instance, they show less skin conductance (sweatiness on hands) in anticipation of electric shock than do
people without antisocial tendencies (Hare, 1965). Skin conductance is controlled by the sympathetic nervous

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
antisocial personality disorder:antisocial personality disorder: characterized by a lack of regard for others’ rights, impulsivity, deceitfulness,
irresponsibility, and lack of remorse over misdeeds
borderline personality disorder:borderline personality disorder: instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, and mood, as well as
impulsivity; key features include intolerance of being alone and fear of abandonment, unstable relationships,
unpredictable behavior and moods, and intense and inappropriate anger
personality disorder:personality disorder: group of DSM-5 disorders characterized by an inflexible and pervasive personality style
that differs markedly from the expectations of one’s culture and causes distress and impairment; people with
these disorders have a personality style that frequently brings them into conflict with others and disrupts their
ability to develop and maintain social relationships
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system and is used to assess autonomic nervous system functioning. When the sympathetic nervous system is
active, people become aroused and anxious, and sweat gland activity increases. Thus, increased sweat gland
activity, as assessed through skin conductance, is taken as a sign of arousal or anxiety. For those with antisocial
personality disorder, a lack of skin conductance may indicate the presence of characteristics such as emotional
deficits and impulsivity that underlie the propensity for antisocial behavior and negative social relationships (Fung
et al., 2005).
While emotional deficits may contribute to antisocial personality disorder, so too might an inability to relate to
others’ pain. In a recent study, 80 prisoners were shown photos of people being intentionally hurt by others (e.g.,
someone crushing a person’s hand in an automobile door) while undergoing brain imaging (Decety, Skelly, &
Kiehl, 2013). Prisoners who scored high on a test of antisocial tendencies showed significantly less activation in
brain regions involved in the experience of empathy and feeling concerned for others than did prisoners with low
scores on the antisocial test. Notably, the prisoners who scored high on the antisocial test showed greater
activation in a brain area involved self-awareness, cognitive function, and interpersonal experience. The
investigators suggested that the heightened activation in this region when watching social interactions involving
one person harming another may reflect a propensity or desire for this kind of behavior.
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CHILDHOOD DISORDERS
What you’ll learn to do: explain common childhood disorders,
including attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism
spectrum disorder
Neurodevelopmental disorders are a group of disorders that are typically diagnosed during childhood and are
characterized by developmental deficits in personal, social, academic, and intellectual realms; these disorders
include attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder. ADHD is characterized by a
pervasive pattern of inattention and/or hyperactive and impulsive behavior that interferes with normal functioning.
Genetic and neurobiological factors contribute to the development of ADHD, which can persist well into adulthood
and is often associated with poor long-term outcomes. The major features of autism spectrum disorder include
deficits in social interaction and communication and repetitive movements or interests. As with ADHD, genetic
factors appear to play a prominent role in the development of autism spectrum disorder; exposure to
environmental pollutants such as mercury have also been linked to the development of this disorder. Although it is
believed by some that autism is triggered by the MMR vaccination, evidence does not support this claim.
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe the symptoms, prevalence, and contributing factors of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder
• Describe the symptoms and prevalence of autism spectrum disorder, as well as the contributing
factors that cause the disorder
Most of the disorders we have discussed so far are typically diagnosed in adulthood, although they can and
sometimes do occur during childhood. However, there are a group of conditions that, when present, are

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diagnosed early in childhood, often before the time a child enters school. These conditions are listed in the DSM-5
as neurodevelopmental disordersneurodevelopmental disorders, and they involve developmental problems in personal, social, academic, and
intellectual functioning (APA, 2013). In this section, we will discuss two such disorders: attention deficit/
hyperactivity disorder and autism.
Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
Diego is always active, from the time he wakes up in the morning until the time he goes to bed at night. His
mother reports that he came out the womb kicking and screaming, and he has not stopped moving since. He has
a sweet disposition, but always seems to be in trouble with his teachers, parents, and after-school program
counselors. He seems to accidentally break things; he lost his jacket three times last winter, and he never seems
to sit still. His teachers believe he is a smart child, but he never finishes anything he starts and is so impulsive that
he does not seem to learn much in school.
Diego likely has attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The symptoms of this disorder were first
described by Hans Hoffman in the 1920s. While taking care of his son while his wife was in the hospital giving
birth to a second child, Hoffman noticed that the boy had trouble concentrating on his homework, had a short
attention span, and had to repeatedly go over easy homework to learn the material (Jellinek & Herzog, 1999).
Later, it was discovered that many hyperactive children—those who are fidgety, restless, socially disruptive, and
have trouble with impulse control—also display short attention spans, problems with concentration, and
distractibility. By the 1970s, it had become clear that many children who display attention problems often also
exhibit signs of hyperactivity. In recognition of such findings, the DSM-III (published in 1980) included a new
disorder: attention deficit disorder with and without hyperactivity, now known as attention deficit/hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD).
A child with ADHD shows a constant pattern of inattention and/or hyperactive and impulsive behavior that
interferes with normal functioning (APA, 2013). Some of the signs of inattention include great difficulty with and
avoidance of tasks that require sustained attention (such as conversations or reading), failure to follow
instructions (often resulting in failure to complete school work and other duties), disorganization (difficulty keeping
things in order, poor time management, sloppy and messy work), lack of attention to detail, becoming easily
distracted, and forgetfulness. Hyperactivity is characterized by excessive movement, and includes fidgeting or
squirming, leaving one’s seat in situations when remaining seated is expected, having trouble sitting still (e.g., in a
restaurant), running about and climbing on things, blurting out responses before another person’s question or
statement has been completed, difficulty waiting one’s turn for something, and interrupting and intruding on
others. Frequently, the hyperactive child comes across as noisy and boisterous. The child’s behavior is hasty,
impulsive, and seems to occur without much forethought; these characteristics may explain why adolescents and
young adults diagnosed with ADHD receive more traffic tickets and have more automobile accidents than do
others (Thompson, Molina, Pelham, & Gnagy, 2007).
ADHD occurs in about 5% of children (APA, 2013). On the average, boys are 3 times more likely to have ADHD
than are girls; however, such findings might reflect the greater propensity of boys to engage in aggressive and
antisocial behavior and thus incur a greater likelihood of being referred to psychological clinics (Barkley, 2006).
Children with ADHD face severe academic and social challenges. Compared to their non-ADHD counterparts,
children with ADHD have lower grades and standardized test scores and higher rates of expulsion, grade
retention, and dropping out (Loe & Feldman, 2007). They also are less well-liked and more often rejected by their
peers (Hoza et al., 2005).
Previously, ADHD was thought to fade away by adolescence. However, longitudinal studies have suggested that
ADHD is a chronic problem, one that can persist into adolescence and adulthood (Barkley, Fischer, Smallish, &
Fletcher, 2002). A recent study found that 29.3% of adults who had been diagnosed with ADHD decades earlier
still showed symptoms (Barbaresi et al., 2013). Somewhat troubling, this study also reported that nearly 81% of
those whose ADHD persisted into adulthood had experienced at least one other comorbid disorder, compared to
47% of those whose ADHD did not persist.
Life Problems from ADHD
Children diagnosed with ADHD face considerably worse long-term outcomes than do those children who do not
receive such a diagnosis. In one investigation, 135 adults who had been identified as having ADHD symptoms in

the 1970s were contacted decades later and interviewed (Klein et al., 2012). Compared to a control sample of
136 participants who had never been diagnosed with ADHD, those who were diagnosed as children:
• had worse educational attainment (more likely to have dropped out of high school and less likely to have
earned a bachelor’s degree);
• had lower socioeconomic status;
• held less prestigious occupational positions;
• were more likely to be unemployed;
• made considerably less in salary;
• scored worse on a measure of occupational functioning (indicating, for example, lower job satisfaction,
poorer work relationships, and more firings);
• scored worse on a measure of social functioning (indicating, for example, fewer friendships and less
involvement in social activities);
• were more likely to be divorced; and
• were more likely to have non-alcohol-related substance abuse problems. (Klein et al., 2012)
Longitudinal studies also show that children diagnosed with ADHD are at higher risk for substance abuse
problems. One study reported that childhood ADHD predicted later drinking problems, daily smoking, and use of
marijuana and other illicit drugs (Molina & Pelham, 2003). The risk of substance abuse problems appears to be
even greater for those with ADHD who also exhibit antisocial tendencies (Marshal & Molina, 2006).
Causes of ADHD
Family and twin studies indicate that genetics play a significant role in the development of ADHD. Burt (2009), in a
review of 26 studies, reported that the median rate of concordance for identical twins was .66 (one study reported
a rate of .90), whereas the median concordance rate for fraternal twins was .20. This study also found that the
median concordance rate for unrelated (adoptive) siblings was .09; although this number is small, it is greater
than 0, thus suggesting that the environment may have at least some influence. Another review of studies
concluded that the heritability of inattention and hyperactivity were 71% and 73%, respectively (Nikolas & Burt,
2010).
The specific genes involved in ADHD are thought to include at least two that are important in the regulation of the
neurotransmitter dopamine (Gizer, Ficks, & Waldman, 2009), suggesting that dopamine may be important in
ADHD. Indeed, medications used in the treatment of ADHD, such as methylphenidate (Ritalin) and amphetamine
with dextroamphetamine (Adderall), have stimulant qualities and elevate dopamine activity. People with ADHD
show less dopamine activity in key regions of the brain, especially those associated with motivation and reward
(Volkow et al., 2009), which provides support to the theory that dopamine deficits may be a vital factor in the
development this disorder (Swanson et al., 2007).
Brain imaging studies have shown that children with ADHD exhibit abnormalities in their frontal lobes, an area in
which dopamine is in abundance. Compared to children without ADHD, those with ADHD appear to have smaller
frontal lobe volume, and they show less frontal lobe activation when performing mental tasks. Recall that one of
the functions of the frontal lobes is to inhibit our behavior. Thus, abnormalities in this region may go a long way
toward explaining the hyperactive, uncontrolled behavior of ADHD.
By the 1970s, many had become aware of the connection between nutritional factors and childhood behavior. At
the time, much of the public believed that hyperactivity was caused by sugar and food additives, such as artificial
coloring and flavoring. Undoubtedly, part of the appeal of this hypothesis was that it provided a simple explanation
of (and treatment for) behavioral problems in children. A statistical review of 16 studies, however, concluded that
sugar consumption has no effect at all on the behavioral and cognitive performance of children (Wolraich, Wilson,
& White, 1995). Additionally, although food additives have been shown to increase hyperactivity in non-ADHD
children, the effect is rather small (McCann et al., 2007). Numerous studies, however, have shown a significant
relationship between exposure to nicotine in cigarette smoke during the prenatal period and ADHD (Linnet et al.,
2003). Maternal smoking during pregnancy is associated with the development of more severe symptoms of the
disorder (Thakur et al., 2013).
Is ADHD caused by poor parenting? Not likely. Remember, the genetics studies discussed above suggested that
the family environment does not seem to play much of a role in the development of this disorder; if it did, we
would expect the concordance rates to be higher for fraternal twins and adoptive siblings than has been

DIG DEEPER: WHY IS THE PREVALENCE RATE OF ADHD INCREASING?DIG DEEPER: WHY IS THE PREVALENCE RATE OF ADHD INCREASING?
Many people believe that the rates of ADHD have increased in recent years, and there is evidence to support
this contention. In a recent study, investigators found that the parent-reported prevalence of ADHD among
children (4–17 years old) in the United States increased by 22% during a 4-year period, from 7.8% in 2003 to
9.5% in 2007 (CDC, 2010). Over time this increase in parent-reported ADHD was observed in all
sociodemographic groups and was reflected by substantial increases in 12 states (Indiana, North Carolina, and
Colorado were the top three). The increases were greatest for older teens (ages 15–17), multiracial and
Hispanic children, and children with a primary language other than English. Another investigation found that
from 1998–2000 through 2007–2009 the parent-reported prevalence of ADHD increased among U.S. children
between the ages of 5–17 years old, from 6.9% to 9.0% (Akinbami, Liu, Pastor, & Reuben, 2011).
A major weakness of both studies was that children were not actually given a formal diagnosis. Instead, parents
were simply asked whether or not a doctor or other health-care provider had ever told them their child had
ADHD; the reported prevalence rates thus may have been affected by the accuracy of parental memory.
Nevertheless, the findings from these studies raise important questions concerning what appears to be a
demonstrable rise in the prevalence of ADHD. Although the reasons underlying this apparent increase in the
rates of ADHD over time are poorly understood and, at best, speculative, several explanations are viable:
ADHD may be over-diagnosed by doctors who are too quick to medicate children as a behavior treatment.
There is greater awareness of ADHD now than in the past. Nearly everyone has heard of ADHD, and most
parents and teachers are aware of its key symptoms. Thus, parents may be quick to take their children to a
doctor if they believe their child possesses these symptoms, or teachers may be more likely now than in the
past to notice the symptoms and refer the child for evaluation. The use of computers, video games, iPhones,
and other electronic devices has become pervasive among children in the early 21st century, and these devices
could potentially shorten children’s attentions spans. Thus, what might seem like inattention to some parents
and teachers could simply reflect exposure to too much technology. ADHD diagnostic criteria have changed
over time.
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demonstrated. All things considered, the evidence seems to point to the conclusion that ADHD is triggered more
by genetic and neurological factors and less by social or environmental ones.
Autism Spectrum Disorder
A seminal paper published in 1943 by psychiatrist Leo Kanner described an unusual neurodevelopmental
condition he observed in a group of children. He called this condition early infantile autism, and it was
characterized mainly by an inability to form close emotional ties with others, speech and language abnormalities,
repetitive behaviors, and an intolerance of minor changes in the environment and in normal routines (Bregman,
2005). What the DSM-5 refers to as autism spectrum disorder today, is a direct extension of Kanner’s work.
Autism spectrum disorder is probably the most misunderstood and puzzling of the neurodevelopmental disorders.
Children with this disorder show signs of significant disturbances in three main areas: (a) deficits in social
interaction, (b) deficits in communication, and (c) repetitive patterns of behavior or interests. These disturbances

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Here is an instructive and poignant video highlighting severe autism.
TRY ITTRY IT
appear early in life and cause serious impairments in functioning (APA, 2013). The child with autism spectrum
disorder might exhibit deficits in social interaction by not initiating conversations with other children or turning their
head away when spoken to. These children do not make eye contact with others and seem to prefer playing alone
rather than with others. In a certain sense, it is almost as though these individuals live in a personal and isolated
social world others are simply not privy to or able to penetrate. Communication deficits can range from a complete
lack of speech, to one word responses (e.g., saying “Yes” or “No” when replying to questions or statements that
require additional elaboration), to echoed speech (e.g., parroting what another person says, either immediately or
several hours or even days later), to difficulty maintaining a conversation because of an inability to reciprocate
others’ comments. These deficits can also include problems in using and understanding nonverbal cues (e.g.,
facial expressions, gestures, and postures) that facilitate normal communication.
Repetitive patterns of behavior or interests can be exhibited a number of ways. The child might engage in
stereotyped, repetitive movements (rocking, head-banging, or repeatedly dropping an object and then picking it
up), or she might show great distress at small changes in routine or the environment. For example, the child might
throw a temper tantrum if an object is not in its proper place or if a regularly-scheduled activity is rescheduled. In
some cases, the person with autism spectrum disorder might show highly restricted and fixated interests that
appear to be abnormal in their intensity. For instance, the person might learn and memorize every detail about
something even though doing so serves no apparent purpose. Importantly, autism spectrum disorder is not the
same thing as intellectual disability, although these two conditions are often comorbid. The DSM-5 specifies that
the symptoms of autism spectrum disorder are not caused or explained by intellectual disability.
Life Problems From Autism Spectrum Disorder
Autism spectrum disorder is referred to in everyday language as autism; in fact, the disorder was termed “autistic
disorder” in earlier editions of the DSM, and its diagnostic criteria were much narrower than those of autism
spectrum disorder. The qualifier “spectrum” in autism spectrum disorder is used to indicate that individuals with
the disorder can show a range, or spectrum, of symptoms that vary in their magnitude and severity: some severe,
others less severe. The previous edition of the DSM included a diagnosis of Asperger’s disorder, generally
recognized as a less severe form of autistic disorder; individuals diagnosed with Asperger’s disorder were
described as having average or high intelligence and a strong vocabulary, but exhibiting impairments in social
interaction and social communication, such as talking only about their special interests (Wing, Gould, & Gillberg,
2011). However, because research has failed to demonstrate that Asperger’s disorder differs qualitatively from
autistic disorder, the DSM-5 does not include it, which is prompting concerns among some parents that their
children may no longer be eligible for special services (“Asperger’s Syndrome Dropped,” 2012). Some individuals
with autism spectrum disorder, particularly those with better language and intellectual skills, can live and work
independently as adults. However, most do not because the symptoms remain sufficient to cause serious
impairment in many realms of life (APA, 2013).
Currently, estimates indicate that nearly 1 in 88 children in the United States has autism spectrum disorder; the
disorder is 5 times more common in boys (1 out of 54) than girls (1 out of 252) (CDC, 2012). Rates of autistic
spectrum disorder have increased dramatically since the 1980s. For example, California saw an increase of 273%
in reported cases from 1987 through 1998 (Byrd, 2002); between 2000 and 2008, the rate of autism diagnoses in
the United States increased 78% (CDC, 2012). Although it is difficult to interpret this increase, it is possible that
the rise in prevalence is the result of the broadening of the diagnosis, increased efforts to identify cases in the
community, and greater awareness and acceptance of the diagnosis. In addition, mental health professionals are
now more knowledgeable about autism spectrum disorder and are better equipped to make the diagnosis, even in
subtle cases (Novella, 2008).

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Causes of Autism Spectrum Disorder
Early theories of autism placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the child’s parents, particularly the mother.
Bruno Bettelheim (an Austrian-born American child psychologist who was heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud’s
ideas) suggested that a mother’s ambivalent attitudes and her frozen and rigid emotions toward her child were the
main causal factors in childhood autism. In what must certainly stand as one of the more controversial assertions
in psychology over the last 50 years, he wrote, “I state my belief that the precipitating factor in infantile autism is
the parent’s wish that his child should not exist” (Bettelheim, 1967, p. 125). As you might imagine, Bettelheim did
not endear himself to a lot of people with this position; incidentally, no scientific evidence exists supporting his
claims.
The exact causes of autism spectrum disorder remain unknown despite massive research efforts over the last two
decades (Meek, Lemery-Chalfant, Jahromi, & Valiente, 2013). Autism appears to be strongly influenced by
genetics, as identical twins show concordance rates of 60%–90%, whereas concordance rates for fraternal twins
and siblings are 5%–10% (Autism Genome Project Consortium, 2007). Many different genes and gene mutations
have been implicated in autism (Meek et al., 2013). Among the genes involved are those important in the
formation of synaptic circuits that facilitate communication between different areas of the brain (Gauthier et al.,
2011). A number of environmental factors are also thought to be associated with increased risk for autism
spectrum disorder, at least in part, because they contribute to new mutations. These factors include exposure to
pollutants, such as plant emissions and mercury, urban versus rural residence, and vitamin D deficiency (Kinney,
Barch, Chayka, Napoleon, & Munir, 2009).
Child Vaccinations and Autism Spectrum Disorder
In the late 1990s, a prestigious medical journal published an article purportedly showing that autism is triggered
by the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine. These findings were very controversial and drew a great
deal of attention, sparking an international forum on whether children should be vaccinated. In a shocking turn of
events, some years later the article was retracted by the journal that had published it after accusations of fraud on
the part of the lead researcher. Despite the retraction, the reporting in popular media led to concerns about a
possible link between vaccines and autism persisting. A recent survey of parents, for example, found that roughly
a third of respondents expressed such a concern (Kennedy, LaVail, Nowak, Basket, & Landry, 2011); and
perhaps fearing that their children would develop autism, more than 10% of parents of young children refuse or
delay vaccinations (Dempsey et al., 2011). Some parents of children with autism mounted a campaign against
scientists who refuted the vaccine-autism link. Even politicians and several well-known celebrities weighed in; for
example, actress Jenny McCarthy (who believed that a vaccination caused her son’s autism) co-authored a book
on the matter. However, there is no scientific evidence that a link exists between autism and vaccinations
(Hughes, 2007). Indeed, a recent study compared the vaccination histories of 256 children with autism spectrum
disorder with that of 752 control children across three time periods during their first two years of life (birth to 3
months, birth to 7 months, and birth to 2 years) (DeStefano, Price, & Weintraub, 2013). At the time of the study,
the children were between 6 and 13 years old, and their prior vaccination records were obtained. Because
vaccines contain immunogens (substances that fight infections), the investigators examined medical records to
see how many immunogens children received to determine if those children who received more immunogens
were at greater risk for developing autism spectrum disorder. The results of this study, a portion of which are
shown in Figure 2, clearly demonstrate that the quantity of immunogens from vaccines received during the first
two years of life were not at all related to the development of autism spectrum disorder. There is not a relationship
between vaccinations and autism spectrum disorders.
Why does concern over vaccines and autism spectrum disorder persist? Since the proliferation of the Internet in
the 1990s, parents have been constantly bombarded with online information that can become magnified and take
on a life of its own. The enormous volume of electronic information pertaining to autism spectrum disorder,

Figure 2. In terms of their exposure to immunogens in vaccines, overall, there is not a significant difference between children with
autism spectrum disorder and their age-matched controls without the disorder (DeStefano et al., 2013).
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KEY TAKEAWAYSKEY TAKEAWAYS
attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder:attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: childhood disorder characterized by inattentiveness and/or hyperactive,
impulsive behavior
combined with how difficult it can be to grasp complex scientific concepts, can make separating good research
from bad challenging (Downs, 2008). Notably, the study that fueled the controversy reported that 8 out of 12
children—according to their parents—developed symptoms consistent with autism spectrum disorder shortly after
receiving a vaccination. To conclude that vaccines cause autism spectrum disorder on this basis, as many did, is
clearly incorrect for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because correlation does not imply causation,
as you’ve learned.
Additionally, as was the case with diet and ADHD in the 1970s, the notion that autism spectrum disorder is
caused by vaccinations is appealing to some because it provides a simple explanation for this condition. Like all
disorders, however, there are no simple explanations for autism spectrum disorder. Although the research
discussed above has shed some light on its causes, science is still a long way from complete understanding of
the disorder.

autism spectrum disorder:autism spectrum disorder: childhood disorder characterized by deficits in social interaction and communication,
and repetitive patterns of behavior or interests
neurodevelopmental disorder:neurodevelopmental disorder: one of the disorders that are first diagnosed in childhood and involve
developmental problems in academic, intellectual, social functioning
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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Learn more about each of the psychological disorders through the National Institute of Mental Health.
Or for an interesting application of the various mental disorders, take a look at this YouTube playlist with
disorders as they are characterized in popular media. These case studies were developed by students in Dr.
Caleb Lack’s psychology class.
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REVIEW: CLASSIFYING PSYCHOLOGICAL
DISORDERS
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Evaluate scenarios and descriptions to identify and differentiate between psychological disorders
As you’ve learned, there are many different categories of mental disorders, and many different facets of human
behavior and personality that can become disordered. Keep reading to review each of the main categorizations
you learned about in this module.
Anxiety or fear that interferes with normal functioning may be classified as an anxiety disorder. Commonly
recognized categories include specific phobiasspecific phobias: a specific unrealistic fear; social anxiety disordersocial anxiety disorder: extreme fear
and avoidance of social situations; panic disorderpanic disorder: suddenly overwhelmed by panic even though there is no
apparent reason to be frightened; agoraphobiaagoraphobia: an intense fear and avoidance of situations in which it might be
difficult to escape; and generalized anxiety disorder:generalized anxiety disorder: a relatively continuous state of tension, apprehension, and
dread. Posttraumatic stress disorder is similar disorder, although classified as a trauma- and stressor-related
disorder.
While similar to anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorders and posttraumatic stress disorders now have
their own distinct categories of classification within the DSM-5 because symptoms of anxiety are not necessarily
present. With obsessive-compulsive disorderobsessive-compulsive disorder, a person is obsessed with unwanted, unpleasant thoughts and/or
compulsively engages in repetitive behaviors or mental acts, perhaps as a way of coping with the

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obsessions. PTSDPTSD is as a disorder in which the experience of a traumatic or profoundly stressful event, such as
combat, sexual assault, or natural disaster, produces a constellation of symptoms that must last for one month or
more. These symptoms include intrusive and distressing memories of the event, flashbacks, avoidance of stimuli
or situations that are connected to the event, persistently negative emotional states, feeling detached from others,
irritability, proneness toward outbursts, and a tendency to be easily startled.
Other affective (emotion/mood) processes can also become disordered. Mood disorder involving unusually
intense and sustained sadness, melancholia, or despair is known as major depressive disordermajor depressive disorder. Milder but still
prolonged depression can be diagnosed as dysthymia. Bipolar disorderBipolar disorder is characterized by mood states that
vacillate between sadness and euphoria; a diagnosis of bipolar disorder requires experiencing at least one manic
episode, which is defined as a period of extreme euphoria, irritability, and increased activity. Mood disorders
appear to have a genetic component, with genetic factors playing a more prominent role in bipolar disorder than in
depression. Both biological and psychological factors are important in the development of depression. People
who suffer from mental health problems, especially mood disorders, are at heightened risk for suicide.
Patterns of belief, language use and perception of reality can also become disordered (e.g., delusions, thought
disorder, hallucinations). The most common psychotic disorder in this domain is schizophreniaschizophrenia, which is a severe
disorder characterized by a complete breakdown in one’s ability to function in life. People with schizophrenia
experience hallucinations and delusions, and they have extreme difficulty regulating their emotions and behavior.
Thinking is incoherent and disorganized, behavior is extremely bizarre, emotions are flat, and motivation to
engage in most basic life activities is lacking. Considerable evidence shows that genetic factors play a central role
in schizophrenia; however, adoption studies have highlighted the additional importance of environmental factors.
Neurotransmitter and brain abnormalities, which may be linked to environmental factors such as obstetric
complications or exposure to influenza during the gestational period, have also been implicated. A promising new
area of schizophrenia research involves identifying individuals who show prodromal symptoms and following them
over time to determine which factors best predict the development of schizophrenia. Future research may enable
us to pinpoint those especially at risk for developing schizophrenia and who may benefit from early intervention.
The main characteristic of dissociative disordersdissociative disorders is that people become dissociated from their sense of self,
resulting in memory and identity disturbances. Dissociative disorders listed in the DSM-5 include dissociative
amnesia, depersonalization/derealization disorder, and dissociative identity disorder. A person with dissociativedissociative
amnesiaamnesia is unable to recall important personal information, often after a stressful or traumatic experience.
Depersonalization/derealization disorderDepersonalization/derealization disorder is characterized by recurring episodes of depersonalization (i.e.,
detachment from or unfamiliarity with the self) and/or derealization (i.e., detachment from or unfamiliarity with the
world). A person with dissociative identity disorder exhibits two or more well-defined and distinct personalities or
identities, as well as memory gaps for the time during which another identity was present.
Dissociative identity disorderDissociative identity disorder has generated controversy, mainly because some believe its symptoms can be
faked by patients if presenting its symptoms somehow benefits the patient in avoiding negative consequences or
taking responsibility for one’s actions. The diagnostic rates of this disorder have increased dramatically following
its portrayal in popular culture. However, many people legitimately suffer over the course of a lifetime with this
disorder.
Personality—the fundamental characteristics of a person that influence thoughts and behaviors across situations
and time—may be considered disordered if judged to be abnormally rigid and maladaptive. Individuals with
personality disorders exhibit a personality style that is inflexible, causes distress and impairment, and creates
problems for themselves and others. The DSM-5 recognizes 10 personality disorders, organized into three
clusters. The disorders in Cluster A include those characterized by a personality style that is odd and eccentric.
These include paranoidparanoid, schizoidschizoid, and schizotypalschizotypal personality disorders. Cluster B includes personality disorders
characterized chiefly by a personality style that is impulsive, dramatic, highly emotional, and erratic (antisocialantisocial,
histrionichistrionic, narcissisticnarcissistic, and borderlineborderline) and those in Cluster C are characterized by a nervous and fearful
personality style (avoidantavoidant, dependentdependent, and obsessive-compulsiveobsessive-compulsive).
Neurodevelopmental disorders are a group of disorders that are typically diagnosed during childhood and are
characterized by developmental deficits in personal, social, academic, and intellectual realms; these disorders
include attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorderautism spectrum disorder. ADHD is characterized by a
pervasive pattern of inattention and/or hyperactive and impulsive behavior that interferes with normal functioning.
Genetic and neurobiological factors contribute to the development of ADHD, which can persist well into adulthood
and is often associated with poor long-term outcomes. The major features of autism spectrum disorder include
deficits in social interaction and communication and repetitive movements or interests. As with ADHD, genetic

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Practice identifying psychological disorders in the following PsychSim tutorial. The tutorial is only intended for
practice. Please disregard the final screen that requests you submit answers to your instructor.
• Mystery Client
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TRY ITTRY IT
factors appear to play a prominent role in the development of autism spectrum disorder; exposure to
environmental pollutants such as mercury have also been linked to the development of this disorder. Although it is
believed by some that autism is triggered by the MMR vaccination, evidence does not support this claim.
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PUTTING IT TOGETHER: PSYCHOLOGICAL
DISORDERS
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
In this module, you learned to
• define psychological disorders and explain how they are classified
• describe the features and characteristic symptoms of anxiety disorders (generalized anxiety disorder,
panic disorder, phobias), obsessive-compulsive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder;
differentiate these anxiety disorders from each other
• describe the characteristic symptoms and risk factors of mood disorders, including major depressive
disorder and bipolar disorder
• explain symptoms and potential causes of schizophrenic and dissociative disorders

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• define personality disorders and distinguish between the three clusters of personality disorders
• explain common childhood disorders, including attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism
spectrum disorder
This module covered a lot of ground and gave you a foundation for understanding psychological disorders. If you
are interested in learning more, there are entire courses on abnormal psychology and classes on specific mental
illnesses as well. In this module, you learned about how mental disorders are defined and classified using the
DSM-V, and how psychologists, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals identify mental illnesses. One
tendency while reading through this material is for students to self-diagnose, as it is easy to identify with various
descriptions of mental disorders. Be wary of self-diagnosis as you may see symptoms that aren’t there, or miss
symptoms or signs of something more serious. If you do think you may be suffering from a mental illness (defined
as significant disturbances in thoughts, feelings, and behaviors causing impairment in one’s life), then please
seek for help from a counselor, doctor, or other trained professional. Hopefully, your reading from this module has
also helped you to better understand mental illness and be less inclined to judge or stigmatize those who are
suffering from or managing an illness.
To quickly review the main disorders from your reading, take a moment to consider how you might visually or
artistically represent each of the disorders. Watch this video from architect and graphic designer Federico Babina
to see his interpretation of various mental disorders. How might you change or alter his depictions, or what would
you add to this list?
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DISCUSSION: PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS
Diagnosing Disorders
STEP 1:STEP 1: Respond to the following prompt in a post between 200 and 400 words:
• Pick one of the mental disorders you learned about in this module. Think of a fictional character who you
think might fit, at least to some extent, that type of disorder. Consider cartoon characters, Disney
princesses, favorite sitcom characters, etc. Do some more research on the disorder to write up a
diagnosis. Explain which disorder the character may have, describe the disorder, then provide at least
three evidences or examples of how or why that character meets the description of the mental illness.
STEP 2STEP 2: Comment on at least TWO classmates’ posts in a response of 75 words or more.
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MODULE 15: THERAPY AND
TREATMENT
WHY IT MATTERS: THERAPY AND TREATMENT
Figure 1. Many forms of therapy have been developed to treat a wide array of problems. These marines who served in Iraq and
Afghanistan, together with community mental health volunteers, are part of the Ocean Therapy program at Camp Pendleton, a
program in which learning to surf is combined with group discussions. The program helps vets recover, especially vets who suffer
from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
What comes to mind when you think about therapy for psychological problems? You might picture someone lying
on a couch talking about his childhood while the therapist sits and takes notes, à la Sigmund Freud. But can you
envision a therapy session in which someone is wearing virtual reality headgear to conquer a fear of snakes?
In this module, you will see that approaches to therapy include both psychological and biological interventions, all
with the goal of alleviating distress. Because psychological problems can originate from various sources—biology,
genetics, childhood experiences, conditioning, and sociocultural influences—psychologists have developed many
different therapeutic techniques and approaches. For example, some psychologists believe that psychotherapy
should involve a close personal relationship between therapist and client, while others believe their main
responsibility is to help the patient change behavior. The Ocean Therapy program shown in Figure 1 uses
multiple approaches to support the mental health of veterans in the group.

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MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT: THEN AND NOW
What you’ll learn to do: describe the treatment of mental health
disorders over time
It was once believed that people with psychological disorders, or those exhibiting strange behavior, were
possessed by demons. These people were forced to take part in exorcisms, were imprisoned, or executed. Later,
asylums were built to house the mentally ill, but the patients received little to no treatment, and many of the
methods used were cruel. Philippe Pinel and Dorothea Dix argued for more humane treatment of people with
psychological disorders. In the mid-1960s, the deinstitutionalization movement gained support and asylums were
closed, enabling people with mental illness to return home and receive treatment in their own communities. Some
did go to their family homes, but many became homeless due to a lack of resources and support mechanisms.
Today, instead of asylums, there are psychiatric hospitals run by state governments and local community
hospitals, with the emphasis on short-term stays. However, most people suffering from mental illness are not
hospitalized. A person suffering symptoms could speak with a primary care physician, who most likely would refer
him to someone who specializes in therapy. The person can receive outpatient mental health services from a
variety of sources, including psychologists, psychiatrists, marriage and family therapists, school counselors,
clinical social workers, and religious personnel. These therapy sessions would be covered through insurance,
government funds, or private (self) pay.
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Explain how people with psychological disorders have been treated throughout the ages and discuss
deinstitutionalization

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Figure 1. This painting by Francisco Goya, called The
Madhouse, depicts a mental asylum and its inhabitants in
the early 1800s. It portrays those with psychological
disorders as victims.
• Describe the ways in which mental health services are delivered today, including the distinction
between voluntary and involuntary treatment
Mental Health Treatment in the
Past
For much of history, the mentally ill have been treated very
poorly. It was believed that mental illness was caused by
demonic possession, witchcraft, or an angry god (Szasz,
1960). For example, in medieval times, abnormal behaviors
were viewed as a sign that a person was possessed by
demons. If someone was considered to be possessed,
there were several forms of treatment to release spirits from
the individual. The most common treatment was exorcism,
often conducted by priests or other religious figures:
Incantations and prayers were said over the person’s body,
and she may have been given some medicinal drinks.
Another form of treatment for extreme cases of mental
illness was trephining: A small hole was made in the
afflicted individual’s skull to release spirits from the body.
Most people treated in this manner died. In addition to
exorcism and trephining, other practices involved execution
or imprisonment of people with psychological disorders. Still
others were left to be homeless beggars. Generally speaking, most people who exhibited strange behaviors were
greatly misunderstood and treated cruelly. The prevailing theory of psychopathology in earlier history was the idea
that mental illness was the result of demonic possession by either an evil spirit or an evil god because early
beliefs incorrectly attributed all unexplainable phenomena to deities deemed either good or evil.
From the late 1400s to the late 1600s, a common belief perpetuated by some religious organizations was that
some people made pacts with the devil and committed horrible acts, such as eating babies (Blumberg, 2007).
These people were considered to be witches and were tried and condemned by courts—they were often burned
at the stake. Worldwide, it is estimated that tens of thousands of mentally ill people were killed after being
accused of being witches or under the influence of witchcraft (Hemphill, 1966)
By the 18th century, people who were considered odd and unusual were placed in asylums (Figure 1). AsylumsAsylums
were the first institutions created for the specific purpose of housing people with psychological disorders, but the
focus was ostracizing them from society rather than treating their disorders. Often these people were kept in
windowless dungeons, beaten, chained to their beds, and had little to no contact with caregivers.
In the late 1700s, a French physician, Philippe Pinel, argued for more humane treatment of the mentally ill. He
suggested that they be unchained and talked to, and that’s just what he did for patients at La Salpêtrière in Paris
in 1795 (Figure 2). Patients benefited from this more humane treatment, and many were able to leave the
hospital.

Figure 2. This painting by Tony Robert-Fleury depicts Dr.
Philippe Pinel ordering the removal of chains from
patients at the Salpêtrière asylum in Paris.
Figure 3. Dorothea Dix was a social reformer who
became an advocate for the indigent insane and was
instrumental in creating the first American mental asylum.
She did this by relentlessly lobbying state legislatures and
Congress to set up and fund such institutions.
In the 19th century, Dorothea Dix led reform efforts for
mental health care in the United States (Figure 3). She
investigated how those who are mentally ill and poor were
cared for, and she discovered an underfunded and
unregulated system that perpetuated abuse of this
population (Tiffany, 1891). Horrified by her findings, Dix
began lobbying various state legislatures and the U.S.
Congress for change (Tiffany, 1891). Her efforts led to the
creation of the first mental asylums in the United States.
Despite reformers’ efforts, however, a typical asylum was filthy, offered very little treatment, and often kept people
for decades. At Willard Psychiatric Center in upstate New York, for example, one treatment was to submerge
patients in cold baths for long periods of time. Electroshock treatment was also used, and the way the treatment
was administered often broke patients’ backs; in 1943, doctors at Willard administered 1,443 shock treatments
(Willard Psychiatric Center, 2009). (Electroshock is now called electroconvulsive treatment, and the therapy is still
used, but with safeguards and under anesthesia. A brief application of electric stimulus is used to produce a
generalized seizure. Controversy continues over its effectiveness versus the side effects.) Many of the wards and
rooms were so cold that a glass of water would be frozen by morning (Willard Psychiatric Center, 2009). Willard’s
doors were not closed until 1995. Conditions like these remained commonplace until well into the 20th century.
Starting in 1954 and gaining popularity in the 1960s, antipsychotic medications were introduced. These proved a
tremendous help in controlling the symptoms of certain psychological disorders, such as psychosis. Psychosis
was a common diagnosis of individuals in mental hospitals, and it was often evidenced by symptoms like
hallucinations and delusions, indicating a loss of contact with reality. Then in 1963, Congress passed and John F.
Kennedy signed the Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act, which
provided federal support and funding for community mental health centers (National Institutes of Health, 2013).
This legislation changed how mental health services were delivered in the United States. It started the process of
deinstitutionalizationdeinstitutionalization, the closing of large asylums, by providing for people to stay in their communities and be
treated locally. In 1955, there were 558,239 severely mentally ill patients institutionalized at public hospitals
(Torrey, 1997). By 1994, by percentage of the population, there were 92% fewer hospitalized individuals (Torrey,
1997).

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
View this timeline showing the history of mental institutions in the United States.
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TRY ITTRY IT
Mental Health Treatment
Before we explore the various approaches to therapy used today, let’s begin our study of therapy by looking at
how many people experience mental illness and how many receive treatment. According to the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services (2013), 19% of U.S. adults experienced mental illness in 2012. For teens (ages
13–18), the rate is similar to that of adults, and for children ages 8–15, current estimates suggest that 13%
experience mental illness in a given year (National Institute of Mental Health [NIMH], n.d.-a). In 2016, the number
was slightly lower with 18.53% of adults reporting that they suffered from a mental illness (see Mental Health
America for more statistics).
With many different treatment options available, approximately how many people receive mental health treatment
per year? According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), in 2008,
13.4% of adults received treatment for a mental health issue (NIMH, n.d.-b). These percentages, shown in Figure
4, reflect the number of adults who received care in inpatient and outpatient settings and/or used prescription
medication for psychological disorders. The “2016 State of Mental Health in America” report showed that 57% of
adults with mental illnesses do not receive any treatment. Stigmas about mental illness, cost, insurance concerns,
awareness, and accessibility are all contributing factors as to why more do not receive treatment (MHA).

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http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/issues/2016-state-mental-health-america-report-overview-historical-data

Figure 4. The percentage of adults who received mental health treatment in 2004–2008 is shown. Adults seeking treatment
increased slightly from 2004 to 2008.
Children and adolescents also receive mental health services. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) found that approximately half (50.6%) of children
with mental disorders had received treatment for their disorder within the past year (NIMH, n.d.-c). However, there
were some differences between treatment rates by category of disorder (Figure 5). For example, children with
anxiety disorders were least likely to have received treatment in the past year, while children with ADHD or a
conduct disorder were more likely to receive treatment. Can you think of some possible reasons for these
differences in receiving treatment?

Figure 5. About one-third to one-half of U.S. adolescents (ages 8–15) with mental disorders receive treatment, with behavior-
related disorders more likely to be treated.
Considering the many forms of treatment for mental health disorders available today, how did these forms of
treatment emerge? Let’s take a look at the history of mental health treatment from the past (with some
questionable approaches in light of modern understanding of mental illness) to where we are today.
Mental Health Treatment Today
Today, there are community mental health centers across the nation. They are located in neighborhoods near the
homes of clients, and they provide large numbers of people with mental health services of various kinds and for
many kinds of problems. Unfortunately, part of what occurred with deinstitutionalization was that those released
from institutions were supposed to go to newly created centers, but the system was not set up effectively. Centers
were underfunded, staff was not trained to handle severe illnesses such as schizophrenia, there was high staff
burnout, and no provision was made for the other services people needed, such as housing, food, and job
training. Without these supports, those people released under deinstitutionalization often ended up homeless.
Even today, a large portion of the homeless population is considered to be mentally ill (Figure 6). Statistics show
that 26% of homeless adults living in shelters experience mental illness (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development [HUD], 2011).

Figure 6. (a) Of the homeless individuals in U.S. shelters, about one-quarter have a severe mental illness (HUD, 2011). (b)
Correctional institutions also report a high number of individuals living with mental illness. (credit a: modification of work by C.G.P.
Grey; credit b: modification of work by Bart Everson)
Another group of the mentally ill population is involved in the corrections system. According to a 2006 special
report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), approximately 705,600 mentally ill adults were incarcerated in the
state prison system, and another 78,800 were incarcerated in the federal prison system. A further 479,000 were in
local jails. According to the study, “people with mental illnesses are overrepresented in probation and parole
populations at estimated rates ranging from two to four times the general population” (Prins & Draper, 2009, p.
23). The Treatment Advocacy Center reported that the growing number of mentally ill inmates has placed a
burden on the correctional system (Torrey et al., 2014).
Today, instead of asylums, there are psychiatric hospitals run by state governments and local community
hospitals focused on short-term care. In all types of hospitals, the emphasis is on short-term stays, with the
average length of stay being less than two weeks and often only several days. This is partly due to the very high
cost of psychiatric hospitalization, which can be about $800 to $1000 per night (Stensland, Watson, & Grazier,
2012). Therefore, insurance coverage often limits the length of time a person can be hospitalized for treatment.
Usually individuals are hospitalized only if they are an imminent threat to themselves or others.
Most people suffering from mental illnesses are not hospitalized. If someone is feeling very depressed, complains
of hearing voices, or feels anxious all the time, he or she might seek psychological treatment. A friend, spouse, or
parent might refer someone for treatment. The individual might go see his primary care physician first and then be
referred to a mental health practitioner.
Some people seek treatment because they are involved with the state’s child protective services—that is, their
children have been removed from their care due to abuse or neglect. The parents might be referred to psychiatric
or substance abuse facilities and the children would likely receive treatment for trauma. If the parents are
interested in and capable of becoming better parents, the goal of treatment might be family reunification. For other
children whose parents are unable to change—for example, the parent or parents who are heavily addicted to
drugs and refuse to enter treatment—the goal of therapy might be to help the children adjust to foster care and/or
adoption (Figure 7).

Figure 7. Therapy with children may involve play. (credit:
“LizMarie_AK”/Flick4)
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TRY ITTRY IT
Some people seek therapy because the criminal justice
system referred them or required them to go. For some
individuals, for example, attending weekly counseling
sessions might be a condition of parole. If an individual is
mandated to attend therapy, she is seeking services
involuntarily. Involuntary treatmentInvoluntary treatment refers to therapy that is
not the individual’s choice. Other individuals might
voluntarily seek treatment. Voluntary treatmentVoluntary treatment means the
person chooses to attend therapy to obtain relief from
symptoms.
Psychological treatment can occur in a variety of places. An
individual might go to a community mental health center or
a practitioner in private or community practice. A child might
see a school counselor, school psychologist, or school
social worker. An incarcerated person might receive group
therapy in prison. There are many different types of
treatment providers, and licensing requirements vary from
state to state. Besides psychologists and psychiatrists, there are clinical social workers, marriage and family
therapists, and trained religious personnel who also perform counseling and therapy.
A range of funding sources pay for mental health treatment: health insurance, government, and private pay. In the
past, even when people had health insurance, the coverage would not always pay for mental health services. This
changed with the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008, which requires group health plans and
insurers to make sure there is parity of mental health services (U.S. Department of Labor, n.d.). This means that
co-pays, total number of visits, and deductibles for mental health and substance abuse treatment need to be
equal to and cannot be more restrictive or harsher than those for physical illnesses and medical/surgical
problems.
Finding treatment sources is also not always easy: there may be limited options, especially in rural areas and low-
income urban areas; waiting lists; poor quality of care available for indigent patients; and financial obstacles such
as co-pays, deductibles, and time off from work. Over 85% of the l,669 federally designated mental health
professional shortage areas are rural; often primary care physicians and law enforcement are the first-line mental
health providers (Ivey, Scheffler, & Zazzali, 1998), although they do not have the specialized training of a mental
health professional, who often would be better equipped to provide care. Availability, accessibility, and
acceptability (the stigma attached to mental illness) are all problems in rural areas. Approximately two-thirds of
those with symptoms receive no care at all (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2005; Wagenfeld,
Murray, Mohatt, & DeBruiynb, 1994). At the end of 2013, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced an
investment of $50 million to help improve access and treatment for mental health problems as part of the Obama
administration’s effort to strengthen rural communities.

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
asylum:asylum: institution created for the specific purpose of housing people with psychological disorders
deinstitutionalization:deinstitutionalization: process of closing large asylums and integrating people back into the community where
they can be treated locally
involuntary treatment:involuntary treatment: therapy that is mandated by the courts or other systems
voluntary treatment:voluntary treatment: therapy that a person chooses to attend in order to obtain relief from her symptoms
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THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Do you think there is a stigma associated with mentally ill persons today? Why or why not?
• What are some places in your community that offer mental health services? Would you feel
comfortable seeking assistance at one of these facilities? Why or why not?
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TYPES OF TREATMENT AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
What you’ll learn to do: identify and explain the basic
characteristics of various types of therapy
There’s no one way to treat a mental disorder, but psychotherapy or medicine, or a combination of the two are the
most common treatment methods. Psychotherapy does not necessarily mean employing Freud’s psychoanalytical
approach (although that is one method), but instead refers a variety of therapy methods that psychologists,
psychiatrists, and counselors use to help their patients. In this section, you’ll learn about the following types of
psychotherapy:
• Psychoanalysis was developed by Sigmund Freud. Freud’s theory is that a person’s psychological
problems are the result of repressed impulses or childhood trauma. The goal of the therapist is to help a
person uncover buried feelings by using techniques such as free association and dream analysis.
• Play therapy is a psychodynamic therapy technique often used with children. The idea is that children
play out their hopes, fantasies, and traumas, using dolls, stuffed animals, and sandbox figurines.
• In behavior therapy, a therapist employs principles of learning from classical and operant conditioning to
help clients change undesirable behaviors. Counterconditioning is a commonly used therapeutic
technique in which a client learns a new response to a stimulus that has previously elicited an
undesirable behavior via classical conditioning. Principles of operant conditioning can be applied to help
people deal with a wide range of psychological problems. Token economy is an example of a popular
operant conditioning technique.
• Cognitive therapy is a technique that focuses on how thoughts lead to feelings of distress. The idea
behind cognitive therapy is that how you think determines how you feel and act. Cognitive therapists help
clients change dysfunctional thoughts in order to relieve distress. Cognitive-behavioral therapy explores
how our thoughts affect our behavior. Cognitive-behavioral therapy aims to change cognitive distortions
and self-defeating behaviors.

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• Humanistic therapy focuses on helping people achieve their potential. One form of humanistic therapy
developed by Carl Rogers is known as client-centered or Rogerian therapy. Client-centered therapists
use the techniques of active listening, unconditional positive regard, genuineness, and empathy to help
clients become more accepting of themselves.
Often in combination with psychotherapy, people can be prescribed biologically based treatments such as
psychotropic medications and/or other medical procedures such as electro-convulsive therapy.
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe psychoanalysis as a treatment approach
One of the goals of therapy is to help a person stop repeating and reenacting destructive patterns and to start
looking for better solutions to difficult situations. This goal is reflected in the following poem:
Autobiography in Five Short Chapters by Portia Nelson (1993)by Portia Nelson (1993)
Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in. I am lost. . . . I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
Chapter Two
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in this same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter Three
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in . . . it’s a habit . . . but,
my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
Chapter Four
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
Chapter Five
I walk down another street.
Two types of therapy are psychotherapy and biomedical therapy. Both types of treatment help people with
psychological disorders, such as depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia. PsychotherapyPsychotherapy is a psychological
treatment that employs various methods to help someone overcome personal problems, or to attain personal

Figure 1. This is the famous couch in Freud’s consulting
room. Patients were instructed to lie comfortably on the
couch and to face away from Freud in order to feel less
inhibited and to help them focus. Today, a psychotherapy
patient is not likely to lie on a couch; instead he is more
likely to sit facing the therapist (Prochaska & Norcross,
2010). (credit: Robert Huffstutter)
growth. Biomedical therapyBiomedical therapy involves medication and/or medical procedures to treat psychological disorders. First,
we will explore the various psychotherapeutic orientations outlined in Table 1 (many of these orientations were
discussed in the Introduction module). In addition to psychotherapy and the biomedical approach, there is also a
social approach to treatment, which focuses on family or group therapies.
Table 1. Various Psychotherapy Techniques
TypeType DescriptionDescription ExampleExample
Psychodynamic
psychotherapy
Talk therapy based on belief that the
unconscious and childhood conflicts impact
behavior
Patient talks about his past
Play therapy
Psychoanalytical therapy wherein interaction
with toys is used instead of talk; used in child
therapy
Patient (child) acts out family scenes with
dolls
Behavior
therapy
Principles of learning applied to change
undesirable behaviors
Patient learns to overcome fear of
elevators through several stages of
relaxation techniques
Cognitive
therapy
Awareness of cognitive process helps
patients eliminate thought patterns that lead
to distress
Patient learns not to overgeneralize failure
based on single failure
Cognitive-
behavioral
therapy
Work to change cognitive distortions and self-
defeating behaviors
Patient learns to identify self-defeating
behaviors to overcome an eating disorder
Humanistic
therapy
Increase self-awareness and acceptance
through focus on conscious thoughts
Patient learns to articulate thoughts that
keep her from achieving her goals
Psychotherapy Techniques: Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis was developed by Sigmund Freud and was
the first form of psychotherapy. It was the dominant
therapeutic technique in the early 20th century, but it has
since waned significantly in popularity. Freud believed most
of our psychological problems are the result of repressed
impulses and trauma experienced in childhood, and he
believed psychoanalysis would help uncover long-buried
feelings. In a psychoanalyst’s office, you might see a
patient lying on a couch speaking of dreams or childhood
memories, and the therapist using various Freudian
methods such as free associationfree association and dream analysis
(Figure 1). In free association, the patient relaxes and then
says whatever comes to mind at the moment. However,
Freud felt that the ego would at times try to block, or
repress, unacceptable urges or painful conflicts during free
association. Consequently, a patient would demonstrate
resistance to recalling these thoughts or situations. In
dream analysisdream analysis, a therapist interprets the underlying
meaning of dreams.
Psychoanalysis is a therapy approach that typically takes
years. Over the course of time, the patient reveals a great
deal about himself to the therapist. Freud suggested that
during this patient-therapist relationship, the patient comes
to develop strong feelings for the therapist—maybe positive

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
biomedical therapy:biomedical therapy: treatment that involves medication and/or medical procedures to treat psychological
disorders
dream analysis:dream analysis: technique in psychoanalysis in which patients recall their dreams and the psychoanalyst
interprets them to reveal unconscious desires or struggles
free association:free association: technique in psychoanalysis in which the patient says whatever comes to mind at the moment
psychoanalysis:psychoanalysis: therapeutic orientation developed by Sigmund Freud that employs free association, dream
analysis, and transference to uncover repressed feelings
psychotherapy:psychotherapy: (also, psychodynamic psychotherapy) psychological treatment that employs various methods to
help someone overcome personal problems, or to attain personal growth
transference:transference: process in psychoanalysis in which the patient transfers all of the positive or negative emotions
associated with the patient’s other relationships to the psychoanalyst
feelings, maybe negative feelings. Freud called this transferencetransference: the patient transfers all the positive or negative
emotions associated with the patient’s other relationships to the psychoanalyst. For example, Crystal is seeing a
psychoanalyst. During the years of therapy, she comes to see her therapist as a father figure. She transfers her
feelings about her father onto her therapist, perhaps in an effort to gain the love and attention she did not receive
from her own father.
Today, Freud’s psychoanalytical perspective has been expanded upon by the developments of subsequent
theories and methodologies: the psychodynamic perspectivepsychodynamic perspective. This approach to therapy remains centered on the
role of people’s internal drives and forces, but treatment is less intensive than Freud’s original model.
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COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe how cognitive and cognitive-behavioral therapy are used as treatment methods
• Describe systematic desensitization
Psychotherapy: Cognitive and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive therapyCognitive therapy is a form of psychotherapy that focuses on how a person’s thoughts lead to feelings of distress.
The idea behind cognitive therapy is that how you think determines how you feel and act. Cognitive therapists
help their clients change dysfunctional thoughts in order to relieve distress. They help a client see how they
misinterpret a situation (cognitive distortion). For example, a client may overgeneralize. Because Ray failed one
test in his Psychology 101 course, he feels he is stupid and worthless. These thoughts then cause his mood to
worsen. Therapists also help clients recognize when they blow things out of proportion. Because Ray failed his
Psychology 101 test, he has concluded that he’s going to fail the entire course and probably flunk out of college
altogether. These errors in thinking have contributed to Ray’s feelings of distress. His therapist will help him
challenge these irrational beliefs, focus on their illogical basis, and correct them with more logical and rational
thoughts and beliefs.
Cognitive therapy was developed by psychiatrist Aaron Beck in the 1960s. His initial focus was on depression and
how a client’s self-defeating attitude served to maintain a depression despite positive factors in her life (Beck,
Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979)(Figure 1). Through questioning, a cognitive therapist can help a client recognize
dysfunctional ideas, challenge catastrophizing thoughts about themselves and their situations, and find a more
positive way to view things (Beck, 2011).
One of the first forms of cognitive-behavior therapy was rational emotive therapy (RET), which was founded by
Albert Ellis and grew out of his dislike of Freudian psychoanalysis (Daniel, n.d.). Behaviorists such as Joseph
Wolpe also influenced Ellis’s therapeutic approach (National Association of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapists,
2009). During the 1980s and 1990s, cognitive and behavioral techniques were merged into cognitive-behavioral
therapy. Pivotal to this merging was the successful development of treatments for panic disorder by David M.
Clark in the UK and David H. Barlow in the U.S. Over time, cognitive-behavioral therapy came to be known not
only as a therapy, but as an umbrella category for all cognitive-based psychotherapies.

Figure 1. Your emotional reactions are the result of your thoughts about the situation rather than the situation itself. For instance, if
you consistently interpret events and emotions around the themes of loss and defeat, then you are likely to be depressed.
Through therapy, you can learn more logical ways to interpret situations.
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
View a brief video in which Judith Beck, psychologist and daughter of Aaron Beck, talks about cognitive therapy
and conducts a session with a client.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) helps clients examine how their thoughts affect their behavior. It aims to
change cognitive distortions and self-defeating behaviors. For example, if it’s your first time meeting new people,
you may have the automatic thought, “These people won’t like me because I have nothing interesting to share.”
That thought itself is not what’s troublesome; the appraisal (or evaluation) that it might have merit is what’s
troublesome. The goal of CBT is to help people make adaptive, instead of maladaptive, appraisals (e.g., “I do
know interesting things!”). This technique of reappraisal, or cognitive restructuring, is a fundamental aspect of
CBT. With cognitive restructuring, it is the therapist’s job to help point out when a person has an inaccurate or
maladaptive thought, so that the patient can either eliminate it or modify it to be more adaptive. In essence, this
approach is designed to change the way people think as well as how they act.
In total, hundreds of studies have shown the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy in the treatment of
numerous psychological disorders such as depression, PTSD, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, bipolar
disorder, and substance abuse (Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavior Therapy, n.d.). For example, CBT has been
found to be effective in decreasing levels of hopelessness and suicidal thoughts in previously suicidal teenagers
(Alavi, Sharifi, Ghanizadeh, & Dehbozorgi, 2013). Cognitive-behavioral therapy has also been effective in
reducing PTSD in specific populations, such as transit workers (Lowinger & Rombom, 2012).
Cognitive-behavioral therapy aims to change cognitive distortions and self-defeating behaviors using techniques
like the ABC model. With this model, there is an AAction (sometimes called an activating event), the BBelief about
the event, and the CConsequences of this belief. Let’s say, Jon and Joe both go to a party. Jon and Joe each have
met a young woman at the party: Jon is talking with Megan most of the party, and Joe is talking with Amanda. At
the end of the party, Jon asks Megan for her phone number and Joe asks Amanda. Megan tells Jon she would
rather not give him her number, and Amanda tells Joe the same thing. Both Jon and Joe are surprised, as they
thought things were going well. What can Jon and Joe tell themselves about why the women were not interested?
Let’s say Jon tells himself he is a loser, or is ugly, or “has no game.” Jon then gets depressed and decides not to

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Watch this video clip for an overview of CBT:
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go to another party, which starts a cycle that keeps him depressed. Joe tells himself that he had bad breath, goes
out and buys a new toothbrush, goes to another party, and meets someone new.
Jon’s belief about what happened results in a consequence of further depression, whereas Joe’s belief does not.
Jon is internalizing the attribution or reason for the rebuffs, which triggers his depression. On the other hand, Joe
is externalizing the cause, so his thinking does not contribute to feelings of depression. Cognitive-behavioral
therapy examines specific maladaptive and automatic thoughts and cognitive distortions. Some examples of
cognitive distortions are all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, and jumping to conclusions. In
overgeneralization, someone takes a small situation and makes it huge—for example, instead of saying, “This
particular woman was not interested in me,” the man says, “I am ugly, a loser, and no one is ever going to be
interested in me.”
All or nothing thinking, which is a common type of cognitive distortion for people suffering from depression,
reflects extremes. In other words, everything is black or white. After being turned down for a date, Jon begins to
think, “No woman will ever go out with me. I’m going to be alone forever.” He begins to feel anxious and sad as he
contemplates his future.
The third kind of distortion involves jumping to conclusions—assuming that people are thinking negatively about
you or reacting negatively to you, even though there is no evidence. Consider the example of Savannah and
Hillaire, who recently met at a party. They have a lot in common, and Savannah thinks they could become friends.
She calls Hillaire to invite her for coffee. Since Hillaire doesn’t answer, Savannah leaves her a message. Several
days go by and Savannah never hears back from her potential new friend. Maybe Hillaire never received the
message because she lost her phone or she is too busy to return the phone call. But if Savannah believes that
Hillaire didn’t like Savannah or didn’t want to be her friend, she is demonstrating the cognitive distortion of
jumping to conclusions.
How effective is CBT? One client said this about his cognitive-behavioral therapy:
I have had many painful episodes of depression in my life, and this has had a negative effect on my
career and has put considerable strain on my friends and family. The treatments I have received, such
as taking antidepressants and psychodynamic counseling, have helped [me] to cope with the symptoms
and to get some insights into the roots of my problems. CBT has been by far the most useful approach I
have found in tackling these mood problems. It has raised my awareness of how my thoughts impact on
my moods. How the way I think about myself, about others and about the world can lead me into
depression. It is a practical approach, which does not dwell so much on childhood experiences, whilst
acknowledging that it was then that these patterns were learned. It looks at what is happening now, and
gives tools to manage these moods on a daily basis. (Martin, 2007, n.p.)

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The first steps in systematic desensitization is the development
of a “hierarchy of fears.” This simply means that you must help
your Miriam create a list of situations related to her fear of public
speaking. Then you create a hierarchy. This means that you
have her organize the situations from the least frightening to the
most frightening.
For the next step in this exercise, you will need to take on
Miriam’s role as the client. Imagine that you have developed a
list of frightening situations, from ones that make you only slightly
uncomfortable to ones that nearly make you sick with anxiety.
Remember that systematic desensitization works by putting the person in a series of situations. The early ones
are not threatening or are only mildly threatening. However, as soon as your client learns to cope with each
situation, you start working on the next most frightening situation.
So we’re ready to start, right? Wrong!
Behavioral therapy teaches the client to cope with an anxiety-producing situation by replacing fear with an
alternative response. A common alternative response is relaxation. This idea is that fear and anxiety cannot
coexist with relaxation—if you are relaxed, you can’t be fully afraid.
However, most people are not very good at relaxing on command. So the behavioral therapist will teach the client
how to relax effectively. The techniques are ones often used in meditation—slow breathing and focus on positive
thoughts. Psychologist Kevin Arnold explains a deep breathing technique in this video.
Miriam’s Treatment
Miriam is an imaginary person, but behavioral therapy is used by thousands of therapist with their clients every
day. Review the following table to discover how Miriam’s therapy progressed. Her story is based on a fairly typical
series of therapy sessions, though please understand that each person’s course of therapy is unique.

Miriam’s
therapy:
Preparation
Prior to starting progressive exposure, Miriam created her hierarchy of fears. She spent several
two session working on relaxation. She practiced relaxation at home several times a day until
she and you, her therapist, agreed that she was ready to start treatment.
Miriam’s
therapy:
Exposure
Session 1
The bottom (lowest anxiety) of Miriam’s fear hierarchy was chatting with friends about everyday
topics. When asked to rate the fear level associated with doing this on a 1 to 10 scale, Miriam
said 1: No fear at all.
Miriam brought two friends with her to the therapy session today. You had them sit in a
comfortable part of your office, drinking tea and chatting for 15 minutes. Afterwards Miriam
reported her fear level during the chat as a 1 on a ten-point scale: no fear.
You then had her sit in a comfortable chair and think about giving a talk about the challenges of
her job to a small, friendly audience. At the beginning of this task, she rated her anxiety as 3 on
a 10-point scale. As she thought about it—with helpful suggestions from you—she also relaxed,
using her relaxation training. After about 10 minutes, she reported her anxiety had dropped to 1,
the lowest level of anxiety on your scale.
You gave Miriam “homework”—to repeat this exercise twice a day until the next session.
Miriam’s
therapy:
Exposure
Session 2
At the beginning of today’s session, you had Miriam repeat the task from the previous session of
thinking about talking about her job to a small, friendly group. At the beginning she rated her
fear at 2, but it dropped to 1 within a few minutes.
Now you took Miriam to the next level. You had her imagine telling a large audience of company
executives about some technical problem she was working on at her job. At the beginning, just
thinking about doing this led to a fear level of 5. After 10 minutes, her fear level dropped to 2.
You repeated the exercise with a different topic and a different group, with similar results.
Relaxation was practiced throughout the session.
You gave Miriam homework again—to practice a similar situation at home.
Miriam’s
therapy:
Exposure
Session 3
You started this situation with a new scenario similar to the one Miriam did in the last session
and practiced at home. She was quickly able to drop her anxiety level to 1.
You had a professional photography group create a video of someone very similar in
appearance and manner to Miriam giving a talk in from of a small friendly audience on a topic
similar to one Miriam might give. You asked her to watch this video and imagine herself in the
place of the real speaker. She rated this a 6 on the anxiety scale. Over several repetitions, her
rating dropped to 2.
For homework, Miriam watched the video several times a day. You instructed her in ways to
make the video seem MORE REAL, so she could really feel the anxiety of being in front of
people.
Miriam’s
therapy:
Exposure
Session 4
You have had Miriam arrange to give a talk NEXT SESSION to a small group of Miriam’s co-
workers. You also had Miriam prepare the talk. Today you practiced the talk with her. At the
start of the practice session, with only you there, Miriam rated her anxiety level at 9 out of 10.
Over the course of the hour, her anxiety level dropped to 5.
Her homework was to continue to practice the talk and to work on relaxation.
Miriam’s
therapy:
Exposure
Session 5
Today, Miriam gave the talk to the small group. Her anxiety rating before she went in front of
them was 10. Except for a little stumbling at the start, the 20-minute presentation went well.
Miriam reported an anxiety level of 4 after the talk.

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We’ll skip a
few
sessions.
We hope you have the basic idea.
Miriam’s
therapy:
Exposure
Session 5
In this last session, you have arranged for Miriam to be the introductory speaker at a literacy
tutoring volunteer organization nearby. Miriam has done a small amount of volunteer work with
the organization, but she knows very little about it. With the help of the staff, she prepares a talk
during the week before this session.
The audience is composed of 45 people, all interested in doing literacy tutoring, who have come
to the literacy center for an information session. Miriam knows none of them and none of them
has ever heard of her.
Miriam’s introductory comments take about 15 minutes. She rates her anxiety level before going
out at 8. After the talk, she rates her anxiety at 2. In fact, she said it was almost fun.
After
Therapy
Miriam continues to see you for a few more sessions. You give her additional homework and
you help her develop a plan that includes arranging to give professional presentations for her
job and continuing to give talks at the literacy volunteer organization. Miriam reports that none of
these ideas create an anxiety level above 3 when she thinks about doing them.
You just learned about Systematic Desensitization, a form of exposure therapy. Flooding is another type of
exposure therapy. To understand how it works, let’s review a few points from Systematic Desensitization.
In flooding therapy, you would skip the earliest situations described in systematic desensitization and you would
move directly to highly threatening situations. Right after Miriam had mastered relaxation, your first session would
require Miriam to give an actual talk. You would probably not start with the most extreme situation, but your goal
would be to start Miriam in situations that she would immediately rate as 9 or 10 on the anxiety scale.
Flooding has the potential to be more traumatic for Miriam (for your client), so it must be arranged carefully. But
the same principles of learning work for flooding that work for systematic desensitization:
• The person consciously works to replace anxiety and fear with relaxation.
• The unconscious parts of the mind learn that the situation does not result in horrible outcomes. New
expectations replace old fears.
• Learning does not just happen immediately. Homework and repeated practice reinforce the new positive
response to situations that once produced fear.

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
cognitive-behavioral therapy:cognitive-behavioral therapy: form of psychotherapy that aims to change cognitive distortions and self-defeating
behaviors
cognitive therapy:cognitive therapy: form of psychotherapy that focuses on how a person’s thoughts lead to feelings of distress,
with the aim of helping them change these irrational thoughts
rational emotive therapy (RET):rational emotive therapy (RET): form of cognitive-behavioral therapy
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HUMANISTIC THERAPY AND OTHER
TREATMENTS
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Explain the basic characteristics of humanistic therapy
• Explain the basic characteristics of mindfulness, treatment for addiction, and other emerging
psychological treatments
• Compare and evaluate various forms of psychotherapy
• Explain and compare biomedical therapies

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Figure 1. The quality of the relationship between therapist
and patient is of great importance in person-centered
therapy.
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Psychotherapy: Humanistic Therapy
Humanistic psychology focuses on helping people achieve
their potential. So it makes sense that the goal of
humanistic therapy is to help people become more self-
aware and accepting of themselves. In contrast to
psychoanalysis, humanistic therapists focus on conscious
rather than unconscious thoughts. They also emphasize the
patient’s present and future, as opposed to exploring the
patient’s past.
Psychologist Carl Rogers developed a therapeutic
orientation known as Rogerian, or client-centered therapyclient-centered therapy
(also sometimes called person-centered therapy or PCT).
Note the change from patients to clients. Rogers (1951) felt
that the term patient suggested the person seeking help
was sick and looking for a cure. Since this is a form of
nondirective therapynondirective therapy, a therapeutic approach in which the
therapist does not give advice or provide interpretations but
helps the person to identify conflicts and understand
feelings, Rogers (1951) emphasized the importance of the
person taking control of his own life to overcome life’s
challenges.
In client-centered therapy, the therapist uses the technique of active listening. In active listening, the therapist
acknowledges, restates, and clarifies what the client expresses. Therapists also practice what Rogers called
unconditional positive regardunconditional positive regard, which involves not judging clients and simply accepting them for who they are.
Rogers (1951) also felt that therapists should demonstrate genuineness, empathy, and acceptance toward their
clients because this helps people become more accepting of themselves, which results in personal growth.
Psychotherapy: Mindfulness
One age-old practice that has seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years is mindfulness. MindfulnessMindfulness is a
process that tries to cultivate a nonjudgmental, yet attentive, mental state. It is a therapy that focuses on one’s
awareness of bodily sensations, thoughts, and the outside environment. Whereas other therapies work to modify
or eliminate these sensations and thoughts, mindfulness focuses on non-judgmentally accepting them (Kabat-
Zinn, 2003; Baer, 2003). For example, whereas CBT may actively confront and work to change a maladaptive
thought, mindfulness therapy works to acknowledge and accept the thought, understanding that the thought is
spontaneous and not what the person truly believes. There are two important components of mindfulness: (1)
self-regulation of attention, and (2) orientation toward the present moment (Bishop et al., 2004). Mindfulness is
thought to improve mental health because it draws attention away from past and future stressors, encourages
acceptance of troubling thoughts and feelings, and promotes physical relaxation.
Psychologists have adapted the practice of mindfulness as a form of psychotherapy, generally called
mindfulness-based therapy (MBT). Several types of MBT have become popular in recent years, including
mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) (e.g., Kabat-Zinn, 1982) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy
(MBCT) (e.g., Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2002).

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Figure 2. Substance use and abuse costs the United
States over $600 billion a year (NIDA, 2012). This addict
is using heroin. (credit: “jellymc – urbansnaps”/Flickr)
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MBSR uses meditation, yoga, and attention to physical experiences to reduce stress. The hope is that reducing a
person’s overall stress will allow that person to more objectively evaluate his or her thoughts. In MBCT, rather
than reducing one’s general stress to address a specific problem, attention is focused on one’s thoughts and their
associated emotions. For example, MBCT helps prevent relapses in depression by encouraging patients to
evaluate their own thoughts objectively and without value judgment (Baer, 2003). Although cognitive behavioral
therapy (CBT) may seem similar to this, it focuses on “pushing out” the maladaptive thought, whereas
mindfulness-based cognitive therapy focuses on “not getting caught up” in it.
Treatment for AddictionTreatment for Addiction
Addiction and substance abuse disorders are difficult to treat because chronic substance use can permanently
alter the neural structure in the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with decision-making and
judgment, thus driving a person to use drugs and/or alcohol (Muñoz-Cuevas, Athilingam, Piscopo, & Wilbrecht,
2013). This helps explain why relapse rates tend to be high. About 40%–60% of individuals relapserelapse, which means
they return to abusing drugs and/or alcohol after a period of improvement (National Institute on Drug Abuse
[NIDA], 2008).
The goal of substance-related treatment is to help an addicted person stop compulsive drug-seeking behaviors
(NIDA, 2012). This means an addicted person will need long-term treatment, similar to a person battling a chronic
physical disease such as hypertension or diabetes. Treatment usually includes behavioral therapy and/or
medication, depending on the individual (NIDA, 2012). Specialized therapies have also been developed for
specific types of substance-related disorders, including alcohol, cocaine, and opioids (McGovern & Carroll, 2003).
Substance-related treatment is considered much more cost-effective than incarceration or not treating those with
addictions (NIDA, 2012).
Specific factors make substance-related treatment much
more effective. One factor is duration of treatment.
Generally, the addict needs to be in treatment for at least
three months to achieve a positive outcome (Simpson,
1981; Simpson, Joe, & Bracy, 1982; NIDA, 2012). This is
due to the psychological, physiological, behavioral, and
social aspects of abuse (Simpson, 1981; Simpson et al.,
1982; NIDA, 2012).While individual therapy is used in the
treatment of substance-related disorders, group therapy is
the most widespread treatment modality (Weiss, Jaffee, de
Menil, & Cogley, 2004). The rationale behind using group
therapy for addiction treatment is that addicts are much
more likely to maintain sobriety in a group format. It has
been suggested that this is due to the rewarding and
therapeutic benefits of the group, such as support,
affiliation, identification, and even confrontation (Center for
Substance Abuse Treatment, 2005).Treatment also usually
involves medications to detox the addict safely after an
overdose, to prevent seizures and agitation that often occur
in detox, to prevent reuse of the drug, and to manage
withdrawal symptoms. Getting off drugs often involves the
use of drugs—some of which can be just as addictive. Detox can be difficult and dangerous.Frequently, a person
who is addicted to drugs and/or alcohol has comorbid disorderscomorbid disorders, meaning they may have additional diagnoses of
other psychological disorders. In cases of comorbidity, the best treatment is thought to address both (or multiple)
disorders simultaneously (NIDA, 2012). Behavior therapies are used to treat comorbid conditions, and in many
cases, medications are used along with psychotherapy.

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Emerging Treatments
With growth in research and technology, psychologists have been able to develop new treatment strategies in
recent years. Often, these approaches focus on enhancing existing treatments, such as cognitive-behavioral
therapies, through the use of technological advances. For example, internet- and mobile-delivered therapies
make psychological treatments more available, through smartphones and online access. Clinician-supervised
online CBT modules allow patients to access treatment from home on their own schedule—an opportunity
particularly important for patients with less geographic or socioeconomic access to traditional treatments.
Furthermore, smartphones help extend therapy to patients’ daily lives, allowing for symptom tracking, homework
reminders, and more frequent therapist contact.
Another benefit of technology is cognitive bias modificationcognitive bias modification. Here, patients are given exercises, often through the
use of video games, aimed at changing their problematic thought processes. For example, researchers might use
a mobile app to train alcohol abusers to avoid stimuli related to alcohol. One version of this game flashes four
pictures on the screen—three alcohol cues (e.g., a can of beer, the front of a bar) and one health-related image
(e.g., someone drinking water). The goal is for the patient to tap the healthy picture as fast as s/he can. Games
like these aim to target patients’ automatic, subconscious thoughts that may be difficult to direct through
conscious effort. That is, by repeatedly tapping the healthy image, the patient learns to “ignore” the alcohol cues,
so when those cues are encountered in the environment, they will be less likely to trigger the urge to drink.
Approaches like these are promising because of their accessibility, however they require further research to
establish their effectiveness.
Yet another emerging treatment employs CBT-enhancing pharmaceutical agents. These are drugs used to
improve the effects of therapeutic interventions. Based on research from animal experiments, researchers have
found that certain drugs influence the biological processes known to be involved in learning. Thus, if people take
these drugs while going through psychotherapy, they are better able to “learn” the techniques for improvement.
For example, the antibiotic d-cycloserine improves treatment for anxiety disorders by facilitating the learning
processes that occur during exposure therapy. Ongoing research in this exciting area may prove to be quite
fruitful.
Evaluating Various Forms of Psychotherapy
How can we assess the effectiveness of psychotherapy? Is one technique more effective than another? For
anyone considering therapy, these are important questions. According to the American Psychological Association,
three factors work together to produce successful treatment. The first is the use of evidence-based treatment that
is deemed appropriate for your particular issue. The second important factor is the clinical expertise of the
psychologist or therapist. The third factor is your own characteristics, values, preferences, and culture. Many
people begin psychotherapy feeling like their problem will never be resolved; however, psychotherapy helps
people see that they can do things to make their situation better. Psychotherapy can help reduce a person’s
anxiety, depression, and maladaptive behaviors. Through psychotherapy, individuals can learn to engage in
healthy behaviors designed to help them better express emotions, improve relationships, think more positively,

Figure 3. Therapy comes in many different forms and
settings, but one critical factor in its success is the
relationship between the therapist and client.
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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Review each of the types of psychotherapy you’ve learned about in this lesson in the following CrashCourse
video.
TRY ITTRY IT
and perform more effectively at work or school. In discussing therapeutic orientations, it is important to note that
many clinicians incorporate techniques from multiple approaches, a practice known as integrative or eclecticeclectic
psychotherapypsychotherapy.
Consider the following advantages and disadvantages of
some of the major forms of psychotherapy:
• PsychoanalysisPsychoanalysis: Psychoanalysis was once the
only type of psychotherapy available, but presently
the number of therapists practicing this approach
is decreasing around the world. Psychoanalysis is
not appropriate for some types of patients,
including those with severe psychopathology or
mental retardation. Further, psychoanalysis is
often expensive because treatment usually lasts
many years. Still, some patients and therapists
find the prolonged and detailed analysis very
rewarding.
• Cognitive-Behavioral TherapyCognitive-Behavioral Therapy: CBT interventions
tend to be relatively brief, making them cost-
effective for the average consumer. In addition, CBT is an intuitive treatment that makes logical sense to
patients. It can also be adapted to suit the needs of many different populations. One disadvantage,
however, is that CBT does involve significant effort on the patient’s part, because the patient is an active
participant in treatment. Therapists often assign “homework” (e.g., worksheets for recording one’s
thoughts and behaviors) between sessions to maintain the cognitive and behavioral habits the patient is
working on. The greatest strength of CBT is the abundance of empirical support for its effectiveness.
• Humanistic TherapyHumanistic Therapy: One key advantage of person-centered therapy is that it is highly acceptable to
patients. In other words, people tend to find the supportive, flexible environment of this approach very
rewarding. Furthermore, some of the themes of PCT translate well to other therapeutic approaches. For
example, most therapists of any orientation find that clients respond well to being treated with
nonjudgmental empathy.
Many studies have explored the effectiveness of psychotherapy. For example, one large-scale study that
examined 16 meta-analyses of CBT reported that it was equally effective or more effective than other therapies in
treating PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder, depression, and social phobia (Butlera, Chapmanb, Formanc, &
Becka, 2006). Another study found that CBT was as effective at treating depression (43% success rate) as
prescription medication (50% success rate) compared to the placebo rate of 25% (DeRubeis et al., 2005).
Another meta-analysis found that psychodynamic therapy was also as effective at treating these types of
psychological issues as CBT (Shedler, 2010). However, no studies have found one psychotherapeutic approach
more effective than another (Abbass, Kisely, & Kroenke, 2006; Chorpita et al., 2011), nor have they shown any
relationship between a client’s treatment outcome and the level of the clinician’s training or experience (Wampold,
2007). Regardless of which type of psychotherapy an individual chooses, one critical factor that determines the
success of treatment is the person’s relationship with the psychologist or therapist.

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Biomedical Therapies
Humans have a long, and sometimes disturbing history of biomedical treatment of disorders. In ancient and
medieval times, the process of trepanation – a drilling or cracking of a hole in the skull to expose the brain – was
sometimes used to free evil spirits or demons from within a person’s head.
Trepanation ultimately fell out of favor as a treatment for psychological disorders. However, in the 20th century
another biomedical procedure, lobotomy, gained in use. LobotomyLobotomy is a form of psychosurgery in which parts of
the frontal lobe of the brain are destroyed or their connections to other parts of the brain severed. The goal of
lobotomy was usually to calm symptoms in people with serious psychological disorders, such as schizophrenia.
Lobotomy was widely used during the twentieth century – indeed, it was so mainstream that Antonio Moniz won a
Nobel Prize in physiology for his work on one lobotomy procedure. However, lobotomy was always highly
controversial, and widely criticized as a tool of behavioral control of people who were engaged in behaviors that
were not clinical in nature. By the 1960s and 1970s lobotomy fell out of favor in the United States.
One of the reasons lobotomy fell out of favor was the development in the 1950s and 1960s of new medications for
the treatment of psychological disorders; these are now the most widely used forms of biological treatment. While
these are often used in combination with psychotherapy, they also are taken by individuals not in therapy. This is
known as biomedical therapybiomedical therapy. Medications used to treat psychological disorders are called psychotropic
medications and are prescribed by medical doctors, including psychiatrists. In Louisiana and New Mexico,
psychologists are able to prescribe some types of these medications (American Psychological Association, 2014).
Different types and classes of medications are prescribed for different disorders. A depressed person might be
given an antidepressant, a bipolar individual might be given a mood stabilizer, and a schizophrenic individual
might be given an antipsychotic. These medications treat the symptoms of a psychological disorder. They can
help people feel better so that they can function on a daily basis, but they do not cure the disorder. Some people
may only need to take a psychotropic medication for a short period of time. Others with severe disorders like
bipolar disorder or schizophrenia may need to take psychotropic medication for a long time. Table 1 shows the
types of medication and how they are used.

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Table 1. Commonly Prescribed Psychotropic Medications
Type ofType of
MedicationMedication
Used to TreatUsed to Treat
Brand NamesBrand Names
of Commonlyof Commonly
PrescribedPrescribed
MedicationsMedications
How They WorkHow They Work Side EffectsSide Effects
Antipsychotics
(developed in
the 1950s)
Schizophrenia
and other
types of
severe
thought
disorders
Haldol,
Mellaril,
Prolixin,
Thorazine
Treat positive psychotic
symptoms such as auditory and
visual hallucinations, delusions,
and paranoia by blocking the
neurotransmitter dopamine
Long-term use can
lead to tardive
dyskinesia, involuntary
movements of the
arms, legs, tongue and
facial muscles,
resulting in
Parkinson’s-like
tremors
Atypical
Antipsychotics
(developed in
the late
1980s)
Schizophrenia
and other
types of
severe
thought
disorders
Abilify,
Risperdal,
Clozaril
Treat the negative symptoms of
schizophrenia, such as
withdrawal and apathy, by
targeting both dopamine and
serotonin receptors; newer
medications may treat both
positive and negative
symptoms
Can increase the risk
of obesity and diabetes
as well as elevate
cholesterol levels;
constipation, dry
mouth, blurred vision,
drowsiness, and
dizziness
Anti-
depressants
Depression
and
increasingly
for anxiety
Paxil, Prozac,
Zoloft
(selective
serotonin
reuptake
inhibitors,
[SSRIs]);
Tofranil and
Elavil
(tricyclics)
Alter levels of neurotransmitters
such as serotonin and
norepinephrine
SSRIs: headache,
nausea, weight gain,
drowsiness, reduced
sex drive
Tricyclics: dry mouth,
constipation, blurred
vision, drowsiness,
reduced sex drive,
increased risk of
suicide
Anti-anxiety
agents
Anxiety and
agitation that
occur in OCD,
PTSD, panic
disorder, and
social phobia
Xanax,
Valium, Ativan
Depress central nervous
system activity
Drowsiness, dizziness,
headache, fatigue,
lightheadedness
Mood
Stabilizers
Bipolar
disorder
Lithium,
Depakote,
Lamictal,
Tegretol
Treat episodes of mania as well
as depression
Excessive thirst,
irregular heartbeat,
itching/rash, swelling
(face, mouth, and
extremities), nausea,
loss of appetite
Stimulants ADHD
Adderall,
Ritalin
Improve ability to focus on a
task and maintain attention
Decreased appetite,
difficulty sleeping,
stomachache,
headache

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TRY ITTRY IT
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch this CrashCourse video to learn more about research, biomedical therapy and drug treatments, as well
as alternative biological treatments.
DIG DEEPER: EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICEDIG DEEPER: EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE
A buzzword in therapy today is evidence-based practice. However, it’s not a novel concept but one that has
been used in medicine for at least two decades. Evidence-based practice is used to reduce errors in treatment
selection by making clinical decisions based on research (Sackett & Rosenberg, 1995). In any case, evidence-
based treatment is on the rise in the field of psychology. So what is it, and why does it matter? In an effort to
determine which treatment methodologies are evidenced-based, professional organizations such as the
American Psychological Association (APA) have recommended that specific psychological treatments be used
to treat certain psychological disorders (Chambless & Ollendick, 2001). According to the APA (2005),
“Evidence-based practice in psychology (EBPP) is the integration of the best available research with clinical
expertise in the context of patient characteristics, culture, and preferences” (p. 1).
The foundational idea behind evidence based treatment is that best practices are determined by research
evidence that has been compiled by comparing various forms of treatment (Charman & Barkham, 2005). These
treatments are then operationalized and placed in treatment manuals—trained therapists follow these manuals.
The benefits are that evidence-based treatment can reduce variability between therapists to ensure that a
specific approach is delivered with integrity (Charman & Barkham, 2005). Therefore, clients have a higher
chance of receiving therapeutic interventions that are effective at treating their specific disorder. While EBPP is
based on randomized control trials, critics of EBPP reject it stating that the results of trials cannot be applied to
individuals and instead determinations regarding treatment should be based on a therapist’s judgment (Mullen
& Streiner, 2004).
REVIEW: TYPES OF THERAPIESREVIEW: TYPES OF THERAPIES
Test your ability to identify the types of treatments for mental disorders as they are described in the following
PsychSim Tutorial. The tutorial is only intended for practice. Please disregard the final screen that requests you
submit answers to your instructor.
Another biologically based treatment that continues to be used, although infrequently, is electroconvulsive therapyelectroconvulsive therapy
(ECT)(ECT) (formerly known by its unscientific name as electroshock therapy). It involves using an electrical current to
induce seizures to help alleviate the effects of severe depression. The exact mechanism is unknown, although it
does help alleviate symptoms for people with severe depression who have not responded to traditional drug
therapy (Pagnin, de Queiroz, Pini, & Cassano, 2004). About 85% of people treated with ECT improve (Reti, n.d.).
However, the memory loss associated with repeated administrations has led to it being implemented as a last
resort (Donahue, 2000; Prudic, Peyser, & Sackeim, 2000). A more recent alternative is transcranial magnetic
stimulation (TMS), a procedure approved by the FDA in 2008 that uses magnetic fields to stimulate nerve cells in
the brain to improve depression symptoms; it is used when other treatments have not worked (Mayo Clinic, 2012).

• Mystery Therapist
GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
biomedical therapy:biomedical therapy: treatment that involves medication and/or medical procedures to treat psychological
disorders
cognitive bias modificationcognitive bias modification: using exercises (e.g., computer games) to change problematic thinking habits
comorbid disorder:comorbid disorder: individual who has two or more diagnoses, which often includes a substance abuse
diagnosis and another psychiatric diagnosis, such as depression, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia
eclectic psychotherapyeclectic psychotherapy: also called integrative psychotherapy, this term refers to approaches combining
multiple orientations (e.g., CBT with psychoanalytic elements).
electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)electroconvulsive therapy (ECT): type of biomedical therapy that involves using an electrical current to induce
seizures in a person to help alleviate the effects of severe depression
humanistic therapy:humanistic therapy: therapeutic orientation aimed at helping people become more self-aware and accepting of
themselves
lobotomy:lobotomy: a form of psychosurgery in which parts of the frontal lobe of the brain are destroyed or their
connections to other parts of the brain severed
mindfulness:mindfulness: a process that tries to cultivate a nonjudgmental, yet attentive, mental state. It is a therapy that
focuses on one’s awareness of bodily sensations, thoughts, and the outside environment
nondirective therapy:nondirective therapy: therapeutic approach in which the therapist does not give advice or provide interpretations
but helps the person identify conflicts and understand feelings
rational emotive therapy (RET):rational emotive therapy (RET): form of cognitive-behavioral therapy
relapse:relapse: repeated drug use and/or alcohol use after a period of improvement from substance abuse
Rogerian (client-centered therapy):Rogerian (client-centered therapy): non-directive form of humanistic psychotherapy developed by Carl Rogers
that emphasizes unconditional positive regard and self-acceptance
unconditional positive regard:unconditional positive regard: fundamental acceptance of a person regardless of what they say or do; term
associated with humanistic psychology
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Explain how conditioning aids in therapy techniques, particularly through memory reconsolidation
Problems with memory are at the core of many psychological disorders. For example, people suffering from both
clinical-level depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) often have difficulty remembering details of
specific memories, especially for happy experiences. This is called overgeneralized autobiographical memory
(OGM). A therapist might ask a depressed person showing OGM to recall a recent happy experience. The
depressed person might answer, “When I was visiting my friends last weekend,” but then be unable to recall or
describe any particular events or interactions during that visit that were enjoyable or rewarding. For another
example, people suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) experience less confidence in the accuracy
of memories they retrieve than people without the disorder. This uncertainty about memory can lead to obsessive
thoughts about whether they turned off the stove or paid the electric bill when it was due. People with OCD also
tend to show a bias to retrieve threatening memories. Nearly every major psychological disorder you will study in
this course has some aspect of memory that is either a symptom or a process that maintains the disorder or more
often both.
You may also have learned by now that remembering and thinking about past events—either recent or long
ago—is the basis of most forms of psychotherapy. The psychodynamic therapy developed by Sigmund Freud is

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Figure 1. Older theories on memory said that memories
were stored like printed books, but new research
suggests that they are not so set.
almost entirely based on remembering actual experiences or recent dreams. Even newer forms of therapy, like
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), involve a great deal of memory work.
It may seem that research laboratories in universities and medical centers are a long way from psychotherapists’
offices, but professional therapists keep up with new developments in basic research and they often collaborate
with researchers in bridging the gap between new theories and the application of those theories in the real world.
A great example of the basic research-applied research connection is the development of therapies that can
change the emotional impact of some memories without erasing or otherwise distorting them.
Memory ConsolidationMemory Consolidation
Until the early part of the 21st century, most people thought
of memories—particularly memories of personal events,
technically known as autobiographical memories—as
mental representations that become relatively stable and
unchangeable very quickly. We knew that memories do not
stabilize immediately, however, because brain trauma (e.g.,
a concussion) or certain drugs could interfere with people’s
ability to recall events immediately before the trauma or
administration of the drug. The neural processes that occur
between an experience and the stabilization of the memory
for that experience is called consolidationconsolidation. Consolidation is
complex, with some consolidation processes taking minutes
to hours and other consolidation processes taking weeks,
months, or even years. For the rest of this reading, we will
concern ourselves with the quick part of consolidation that
occurs in the hours and days immediately after an
experience.
The idea of consolidation does not rule out forgetting.
Memories can fade—that is,, lose details—or become
impossible to retrieve. In the reading on memory, you also learned that misinformation that a person hears shortly
after an event can be incorporated into the memory. But the idea is that the final version of the memory is fixed
once it has consolidated within a few hours. This late-20th century theory says that memory is like a book. When
it is first printed, the ink must dry (the consolidation process that takes up to a few hours), but when that has
occurred, the contents of the book don’t change. The ink may fade over time or you may have trouble finding it in
your library, but the contents of the book never change, no matter how often you pull it out to read it.
ReconsolidationReconsolidation
Around the beginning of the current century, our understanding of memory was shaken by new research, first in
animal labs, but later with humans. (Note: The basic idea of reconsolidation and some relevant research had
been around for decades, but the idea did not grab hold and the supporting research was not sufficient until the
last two decades.) The study that initially caught the attention of memory scientists was a study using rats as
subjects by Karim Nader, Glenn Schafe, and Joseph Le Doux of New York University in the year 2000. They
taught their animals a fear memory by pairing a particular sound with a mild, but unpleasant shock using classical
conditioning. (Note: If you’ve forgotten what classical conditioning is, we will review it when we discuss a human
version of Nader, Schafe, and Le Doux’s study.) The researchers found that they could change a memory that
had already been consolidated if they did just the right things at just the right time.

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Figure 2. Research on consolidation supports the idea
that memory is saved somewhat like a computer file: the
original file is there, but that file can be modified and re-
saved.
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DAY 1 – CONTROL GROUPDAY 1 – CONTROL GROUP
On Day 1 for the control group, we create a memory for participants so that they come to “fear” a yellow box.
Day 1 is successful when classical conditioning of the fear response to the yellow box is complete. The
participant now shows a fear response to the yellow box.
What Nader and his colleagues found was that memories
become open to changes for a brief period of time when
they are retrieved. For a few hours, the changed memories
can be disrupted (e.g., by trauma to the brain, by drugs,
and by other means), but once they have reconsolidatedreconsolidated,
they become the new version of the memory. This newer
theory of memory says that our memories are not really like
books, which don’t change after the print has dried. Now
memory is more like a computer file that is updated withoutmemory is more like a computer file that is updated without
saving the originalsaving the original. You originally create the memory
(consolidation) and store it away. When you retrieve the
memory, you can change some information in the file, but
this new version now becomes the memory. Many
researchers believe we don’t have a backup version of the
original memory. All we have is the new, modified memory
of the event.
Reconsolidation: In the BasicReconsolidation: In the Basic
Research LabResearch Lab
The theory of reconsolidation has changed the way we think about the stability and accuracy of memories, but a
scientific theory must be more than interesting or novel: it must be supported by careful research. There is now an
impressive body of research about reconsolidation. We have already mentioned experiments with rats by Karim
Nader and his colleagues, but we will go into more detail on a study by Elizabeth Phelps, a highly respected
psychologist who is one of the leaders on modern neuroscience of emotion and cognition. The study we will
discuss is by Dr. Phelps, Daniella Schiller (now an associate professor of psychiatry at Mt. Sinai hospital in New
York), and some of their colleagues.
You may remember learning about classical conditioning. Ivan Pavlov discovered how classical conditioning
works when he trained dogs to salivate when they heard a bell (click HEREHERE to review classical conditioning). Dr.
Phelps and her colleagues classically conditioned volunteer research participants to fear a shock. They allowed
this learning (i.e., the conditioned fear response) to consolidate, and then figured out the way to eliminate the fear
response.
To start, we are going to look at what happened in one of the control conditions, which will give you an idea about
what normally happens with this kind of fear learning.
Note: we used emoticons in the exercise above, but the actual dependent variable in the study was a
physiological measure of fear: skin conductance. When we are scared, our sweat glands respond by producing
sweat, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, but always some. This moisture on our skin changes the way that
electricity moves across the skin, and these changes can be detected and measured, even if the changes are
very subtle. This is the skin conductance response (called SCR). Detection of changes in skin conductance is
simple, requiring only some detectors on your fingers, and it is painless.

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Classical Conditioning

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DAY 2 – CONTROL GROUPDAY 2 – CONTROL GROUP
For the control group, day involves extinction, which is the process of unlearning the fear response. Extinction
is simple. You repeatedly show the person the yellow box, but there are no shocks. Over time, the person
learns a new association: the yellow box means no shock. But this takes some time.
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DAY 3 – CONTROL GROUPDAY 3 – CONTROL GROUP
What is shown above is what typically happens. Despite the fact that the person learned on day that the yellow
box does not signal a shock, if you wait a while (hours or, as in this case, 24 hours), the fear response has
returned. This is called spontaneous recovery of the fear response.
Day 2 has been successful. The person is no longer afraid of the yellow box. But, we’re still not quite done. We
need to test for spontaneous recovery. Let’s go to day 3.
Spontaneous recovery is one of the big problems with extinction training. You can get rid of a response for a
while, but the response can return over and over again. According to the researchers—Dr. Phelps and Dr.
Schiller—the problem may be that the person has two memories: one where the yellow box means a shock is
coming, and another that means the yellow box equates to no shock. These two memories are both available, so
when a yellow box happens to retrieve the first memory (yellow box = shock), the fear response returns.
So how can we change the first memory without creating a new memory? Here is a second condition in the
experiment. We’re going to call this group the “10-Minute Group,” and we’ll explain why shortly.
The first step involves the same process as in the control group and involves conditioning the subject to “fear” a
yellow box.
DAY 1 – 10-MINUTE GROUPDAY 1 – 10-MINUTE GROUP
Day 1 for this new group is exactly the same as day 1 in the Control Condition. We teach participants to “fear”
the yellow box.
Now let’s go to day 2. Remember from the control group that day 2 involves extinction, which is the process of
unlearning the fear response. But for this new group, we’re going to try something different to see if we can
replace their original memory without creating a new memory.
Memory ReactivationMemory Reactivation
This time, before we begin the process of extinction, we are going to get the person to think about the shock
experience—that is, we want them to retrieve the full fear memory—before they start extinction. Once the full
memory is reactivated, there is a 10-minute delay, and then the subjects go through the same extinction trials that
the Control Group subjects experienced on Day 2.

DAY 1 – 6-HOUR GROUPDAY 1 – 6-HOUR GROUP
Day 1 for this new group is exactly the same as day 1 for both of the previous groups. We teach participants to
“fear” the yellow box.
DAY 2 – 6 HOUR GROUPDAY 2 – 6 HOUR GROUP
Day 2 is very similar to day 2 for the 10-Minute group. The only difference is that the delay has been increased
to 6 hours.
An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2628
DAY 3 – 6-HOUR GROUPDAY 3 – 6-HOUR GROUP
When we test the 6-Hour Group on day 3, we see that spontaneous recovery has occurred:
This experiment is important because it serves as a control to help us determine if “rewriting a memory” is actually
the correct interpretation of the results. In this experiment, the memory is reactivated (just like in the 10-minute
group), but the memory is then allowed to deactivate over a 6-hour delay. If there is no spontaneous recovery in
this condition, then rewriting memory is not a particularly convincing explanation for the results. If there is
spontaneous recovery of fear, then the theory that we are actually rewriting a memory is more convincing.
So let’s see what happens.
The procedure on day 3 is the same for all three groups, but the responses are different. Participants in the two
control conditions (control group and 6-hour group) both act the same: they both show spontaneous recovery of
the fear response. Those in the reconsolidation treatment condition (the 10-minute group), however, show no
spontaneous recovery of the fear response.
Interpreting Results
Let’s take another look at the results of the study by Schiller, Phelps, and their colleagues. The Y-axis on the
graph below shows the skin conductance response of the subjects. Higher values indicate higher levels of fear.
(Note: The actual dependent variable was a bit more complicated than the simple measure of skin conductance
suggested in the figure. Consult the original study if you need to know the exact way that skin conductance was
measured.) You will be adjusting the lines, so move them up to indicate more fear and down to indicate less fear.

An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2628
TRY ITTRY IT
Instructions:Instructions: Click and drag the circles on the right (day 3) to where you think they should be to reflect the
results of the experiment. When you’re done, click the link below to see the actual results.
AnswerAnswer
The figure above shows the actual results from the experiment. The green line (control group) and the blue line
(6-hour group) show slight declines in fear level, but not much. These two groups are not significantly different
statistically on either day 1 or day 3. The fact that these two groups showed high levels of fear on day 3 is
consistent with spontaneous recovery of the fear response after extinction on day 2.
The X-axis shows the end of Day 1, after successful fear conditioning, and the first trial on Day 3, when
spontaneous recovery is being measured.
We have placed the circles for day 1 in their correct positions. The fact that they sit high on the graph reflects the
fact that all three groups of participants were successfully conditioned on day 1 to fear the yellow box. The
differences among the three lines are not statistically significant. (Note: In real research, we seldom find exactly
the same averages for different conditions. There is always some natural variability. We use statistical tests to be
sure that these typical differences are not greater than we would expect by chance.) Your task is to grab the
circles on the right and move them to the appropriate positions for the results of the experiment. You can move
them up or down or leave them where they are. When you have entered your solution, you can look at the actual
results.
Remember, spontaneous recovery means that the person returns to the fear level they had learned earlier, on
day 1. No spontaneous recovery means that the fear response (high levels of skin conductance) had been
eliminated. Lower fear is shown if the dots get closer to the X-axis.

The red line (10-minute group) drops dramatically from day 1 to day 3. This means that the fear these subjects
learned on day 1 and then had extinguished on day 2 remained extinguished on day 3. There was no
spontaneous recovery of the fear response. These results are consistent with the idea that a learned fear
response can either stay strong across several days (see the two control conditions) or it can be eliminated
(see the reinstatement treatment condition) if new learning takes place under just the right conditions (i.e., while
the fear memory is still active).
An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2628
WATCH ITWATCH IT
This video shows the experimenters you have been reading about (Daniella Schiller and Elizabeth Phelps)
discussing their work and you will even see a reenactment of part of the study. The video does not include
many of the technical details you just went through, but it shows some of the procedures and the researchers
give you some idea of the implications of their work.
Keep in mind that one experiment doesn’t convince anyone—certainly not experienced scientists. But, when
many similar experiments are conducted and they generally give consistent results, then scientist become
increasingly confident that the results are not just due to chance, but that they are seeing something real. Go
online (for example, use Google Scholar) and search for “memory reinstatement” and you will find many studies
that are related to the one you have just studied. Together, these experiments suggest that memories can be
altered. In fact, every time we retrieve a memory, it is possible that we alter details or emotional elements of the
memory. Our memories may change across our lifetimes in profound ways.
What is the practical value of this research?
At the very end of the video, you heard Dr. Phelps (from an interview in 2009) explain the potential for turning this
research into a useful procedure for therapists:
So, you know, at this point, how this works in the clinic is going to be all speculation. But what this data
suggests might happen in the future is: if you come into the clinic with a fear-related disorder, like a
phobia or PTSD, if we can understand how these memories are re-stored when they are retrieved,
much as we did in this study, we then may be able to time our therapeutic interventions in such a way
where we aren’t creating new learning that’s overriding those earlier memories but actually rewriting
them, in a sense. If we can time that correctly so we can target these mechanisms, perhaps we’d have
a more effective, long-lasting outcome.
One of the goals of this research, then, is to give therapists a way of working with memory disorders. Of course,
rather than creating a fear as the researchers did, therapists work with people who experience debilitating fear-
related memories that came from experiences, often traumatic ones, in their lives. The therapist’s job is to help
the person overcome the disabling experiences of fear. In most cases, they would like to reduce the emotional
impact of the experience, which is part of the memory itself, without actually changing the facts that are
remembered.
This application of reconsolidation theory to therapy is already underway. Here are the basic steps in this therapy:
• REINSTATEMENT: Have the person retrieve the memory. Be sure that the retrieval is emotionally
powerful. If the person avoids fully reactivating the memory in its complete painful form, then reduction of
the emotional impact will be impossible. The emotion may be fear or anxiety or some other strong
negative response.
• REDUCTION OF EMOTIONAL IMPACT: While the memory is active and painful, the therapist acts to
reduce its impact. There are two approaches to this, using the example of a phobia (irrational fear) to
illustrate the method:

An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2628
WATCH ITWATCH IT
Here is a video about the work of Merel Kindt, a therapist and memory researcher. Dr. Kindt uses the drug
propranolol, which interferes with the reconsolidation of the fear aspect of a memory, though it does not prevent
the person from feeling fear during the training session nor does it interfere with the person’s memory for the
events that occurred.
GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
consolidationconsolidation: the neural processes that occur between an experience and the stabilization of the memory
reconsolidationreconsolidation: the process of replacing or disrupting a stored memory with a new version of the memory
An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2628
◦ EXTINCTION OF THE FEAR RESPONSE: In a therapy session, a person with a phobia (e.g.,
fear of spiders or dogs or heights) might (a) have the fear response reactivated (have them
stand near a spider or dog or on a high perch) and then, (b) through continuous or repeated
exposure to the source of fear with support from the therapist and experience of no bad
consequences (not getting bitten or not falling), show a reduction of the fear response.
◦ DRUGS THAT BLOCK FEAR MEMORY: In a therapy session, a person with a phobia (e.g.,
fear of spiders or dogs or heights) might (a) have the fear response reactivated (have them
stand near a spider or dog or on a high perch) and then, (b) the person is given propranolol, a
drug that inhibits the storage of emotional aspects of a memory.
• REPETITION ACROSS DAY OR WEEKS: For a deep-seated problem, it is very unlikely that a single
session will eliminate or even substantially reduce the automatic negative emotional response. The
process of reinstatement followed by either extinction or drug intervention is necessary for effective
treatment.
As you can see from the video, therapists can now use the new insights coming from research on reconsolidation
of memory to help in their treatment of people with disorders that include memory dysfunctions. The video
showed treatment of a phobia, but reconsolidation therapy has also been used with some success with people
suffering from PTSD.
The reconsolidation research discussed is this exercise is just one example of the relationship between basic
research taking place in scientific laboratories and practical application of discoveries about the mind and brain in
the real world. Psychology in the 21st century owes a great deal to researchers in the 20th century, but old dogma
is constantly being updated and even overthrown in favor of better ideas that come from deeper understanding of
the causes of human behavior.

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PSYCH IN REAL LIFE: RECONSOLIDATION
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Explain how conditioning aids in therapy techniques, particularly through memory reconsolidation
Problems with memory are at the core of many psychological disorders. For example, people suffering from both
clinical-level depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) often have difficulty remembering details of
specific memories, especially for happy experiences. This is called overgeneralized autobiographical memory
(OGM). A therapist might ask a depressed person showing OGM to recall a recent happy experience. The
depressed person might answer, “When I was visiting my friends last weekend,” but then be unable to recall or
describe any particular events or interactions during that visit that were enjoyable or rewarding. For another
example, people suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) experience less confidence in the accuracy
of memories they retrieve than people without the disorder. This uncertainty about memory can lead to obsessive
thoughts about whether they turned off the stove or paid the electric bill when it was due. People with OCD also
tend to show a bias to retrieve threatening memories. Nearly every major psychological disorder you will study in
this course has some aspect of memory that is either a symptom or a process that maintains the disorder or more
often both.
You may also have learned by now that remembering and thinking about past events—either recent or long
ago—is the basis of most forms of psychotherapy. The psychodynamic therapy developed by Sigmund Freud is
almost entirely based on remembering actual experiences or recent dreams. Even newer forms of therapy, like
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), involve a great deal of memory work.
It may seem that research laboratories in universities and medical centers are a long way from psychotherapists’
offices, but professional therapists keep up with new developments in basic research and they often collaborate
with researchers in bridging the gap between new theories and the application of those theories in the real world.
A great example of the basic research-applied research connection is the development of therapies that can
change the emotional impact of some memories without erasing or otherwise distorting them.

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Figure 1. Older theories on memory said that memories
were stored like printed books, but new research
suggests that they are not so set.
Memory ConsolidationMemory Consolidation
Until the early part of the 21st century, most people thought
of memories—particularly memories of personal events,
technically known as autobiographical memories—as
mental representations that become relatively stable and
unchangeable very quickly. We knew that memories do not
stabilize immediately, however, because brain trauma (e.g.,
a concussion) or certain drugs could interfere with people’s
ability to recall events immediately before the trauma or
administration of the drug. The neural processes that occur
between an experience and the stabilization of the memory
for that experience is called consolidationconsolidation. Consolidation is
complex, with some consolidation processes taking minutes
to hours and other consolidation processes taking weeks,
months, or even years. For the rest of this reading, we will
concern ourselves with the quick part of consolidation that
occurs in the hours and days immediately after an
experience.
The idea of consolidation does not rule out forgetting.
Memories can fade—that is,, lose details—or become
impossible to retrieve. In the reading on memory, you also learned that misinformation that a person hears shortly
after an event can be incorporated into the memory. But the idea is that the final version of the memory is fixed
once it has consolidated within a few hours. This late-20th century theory says that memory is like a book. When
it is first printed, the ink must dry (the consolidation process that takes up to a few hours), but when that has
occurred, the contents of the book don’t change. The ink may fade over time or you may have trouble finding it in
your library, but the contents of the book never change, no matter how often you pull it out to read it.
ReconsolidationReconsolidation
Around the beginning of the current century, our understanding of memory was shaken by new research, first in
animal labs, but later with humans. (Note: The basic idea of reconsolidation and some relevant research had
been around for decades, but the idea did not grab hold and the supporting research was not sufficient until the
last two decades.) The study that initially caught the attention of memory scientists was a study using rats as
subjects by Karim Nader, Glenn Schafe, and Joseph Le Doux of New York University in the year 2000. They
taught their animals a fear memory by pairing a particular sound with a mild, but unpleasant shock using classical
conditioning. (Note: If you’ve forgotten what classical conditioning is, we will review it when we discuss a human
version of Nader, Schafe, and Le Doux’s study.) The researchers found that they could change a memory that
had already been consolidated if they did just the right things at just the right time.

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Figure 2. Research on consolidation supports the idea
that memory is saved somewhat like a computer file: the
original file is there, but that file can be modified and re-
saved.
DAY 1 – CONTROL GROUPDAY 1 – CONTROL GROUP
On Day 1 for the control group, we create a memory for participants so that they come to “fear” a yellow box.
https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290546448752562838/embed
Day 1 is successful when classical conditioning of the fear response to the yellow box is complete. The
participant now shows a fear response to the yellow box.
What Nader and his colleagues found was that memories
become open to changes for a brief period of time when
they are retrieved. For a few hours, the changed memories
can be disrupted (e.g., by trauma to the brain, by drugs,
and by other means), but once they have reconsolidatedreconsolidated,
they become the new version of the memory. This newer
theory of memory says that our memories are not really like
books, which don’t change after the print has dried. Now
memory is more like a computer file that is updated withoutmemory is more like a computer file that is updated without
saving the originalsaving the original. You originally create the memory
(consolidation) and store it away. When you retrieve the
memory, you can change some information in the file, but
this new version now becomes the memory. Many
researchers believe we don’t have a backup version of the
original memory. All we have is the new, modified memory
of the event.
Reconsolidation: In the BasicReconsolidation: In the Basic
Research LabResearch Lab
The theory of reconsolidation has changed the way we think about the stability and accuracy of memories, but a
scientific theory must be more than interesting or novel: it must be supported by careful research. There is now an
impressive body of research about reconsolidation. We have already mentioned experiments with rats by Karim
Nader and his colleagues, but we will go into more detail on a study by Elizabeth Phelps, a highly respected
psychologist who is one of the leaders on modern neuroscience of emotion and cognition. The study we will
discuss is by Dr. Phelps, Daniella Schiller (now an associate professor of psychiatry at Mt. Sinai hospital in New
York), and some of their colleagues.
You may remember learning about classical conditioning. Ivan Pavlov discovered how classical conditioning
works when he trained dogs to salivate when they heard a bell (click HEREHERE to review classical conditioning). Dr.
Phelps and her colleagues classically conditioned volunteer research participants to fear a shock. They allowed
this learning (i.e., the conditioned fear response) to consolidate, and then figured out the way to eliminate the fear
response.
To start, we are going to look at what happened in one of the control conditions, which will give you an idea about
what normally happens with this kind of fear learning.
Note: we used emoticons in the exercise above, but the actual dependent variable in the study was a
physiological measure of fear: skin conductance. When we are scared, our sweat glands respond by producing
sweat, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, but always some. This moisture on our skin changes the way that
electricity moves across the skin, and these changes can be detected and measured, even if the changes are
very subtle. This is the skin conductance response (called SCR). Detection of changes in skin conductance is
simple, requiring only some detectors on your fingers, and it is painless.

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Classical Conditioning

https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290546448752562838/embed

DAY 2 – CONTROL GROUPDAY 2 – CONTROL GROUP
For the control group, day involves extinction, which is the process of unlearning the fear response. Extinction
is simple. You repeatedly show the person the yellow box, but there are no shocks. Over time, the person
learns a new association: the yellow box means no shock. But this takes some time.
https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290546508380486878/embed
DAY 3 – CONTROL GROUPDAY 3 – CONTROL GROUP
https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290546510022063328/embed
What is shown above is what typically happens. Despite the fact that the person learned on day that the yellow
box does not signal a shock, if you wait a while (hours or, as in this case, 24 hours), the fear response has
returned. This is called spontaneous recovery of the fear response.
Day 2 has been successful. The person is no longer afraid of the yellow box. But, we’re still not quite done. We
need to test for spontaneous recovery. Let’s go to day 3.
Spontaneous recovery is one of the big problems with extinction training. You can get rid of a response for a
while, but the response can return over and over again. According to the researchers—Dr. Phelps and Dr.
Schiller—the problem may be that the person has two memories: one where the yellow box means a shock is
coming, and another that means the yellow box equates to no shock. These two memories are both available, so
when a yellow box happens to retrieve the first memory (yellow box = shock), the fear response returns.
So how can we change the first memory without creating a new memory? Here is a second condition in the
experiment. We’re going to call this group the “10-Minute Group,” and we’ll explain why shortly.
The first step involves the same process as in the control group and involves conditioning the subject to “fear” a
yellow box.
DAY 1 – 10-MINUTE GROUPDAY 1 – 10-MINUTE GROUP
Day 1 for this new group is exactly the same as day 1 in the Control Condition. We teach participants to “fear”
the yellow box.
Now let’s go to day 2. Remember from the control group that day 2 involves extinction, which is the process of
unlearning the fear response. But for this new group, we’re going to try something different to see if we can
replace their original memory without creating a new memory.
Memory ReactivationMemory Reactivation
This time, before we begin the process of extinction, we are going to get the person to think about the shock
experience—that is, we want them to retrieve the full fear memory—before they start extinction. Once the full
memory is reactivated, there is a 10-minute delay, and then the subjects go through the same extinction trials that
the Control Group subjects experienced on Day 2.
This reintroduction of the yellow box on day 2 is the one event that did not happen in the control condition you
read about earlier. It turns out that this reactivation step is crucial to preventing spontaneous recovery.

https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290546508380486878/embed

https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290546510022063328/embed

TRY ITTRY IT
https://assessments.lumenlearning.com/assessments/11942
DAY 1 – 6-HOUR GROUPDAY 1 – 6-HOUR GROUP
Day 1 for this new group is exactly the same as day 1 for both of the previous groups. We teach participants to
“fear” the yellow box.
DAY 2 – 6 HOUR GROUPDAY 2 – 6 HOUR GROUP
Day 2 is very similar to day 2 for the 10-Minute group. The only difference is that the delay has been increased
to 6 hours.
DAY 2 – 10-MINUTE GROUPDAY 2 – 10-MINUTE GROUP
https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290546543069713688/embed
After the extinction process has been completed on day 2, the question is this: will the person show spontaneous
recovery of the fear response on day 3? If they do show spontaneous recovery, then our new procedure
(reinstatement of the memory on day 2) has failed to produce the change in memory that we hoped for.
The last step is to again test for spontaneous recovery.
DAY 3 – 10-MINUTE GROUPDAY 3 – 10-MINUTE GROUP
The procedure on Day 3 for this group is exactly the same as it was for the Control Group. What is different is
the subjects’ response. There is NO SPONTANEOUS RECOVERYNO SPONTANEOUS RECOVERY for this group. The fear response is gone.
The experimenters attribute this lack of a fear response to a changed memory, one that now associates theThe experimenters attribute this lack of a fear response to a changed memory, one that now associates the
yellow box with no shock.yellow box with no shock.
https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290546550269430598/embed
So far, the experimenters have shown that fear can be learned (day 1), extinguished (day 2), and then
spontaneously recover (day 3) for the control condition. By contrast, the reactivation condition shows that, if the
full memory is activated on day 2 just before extinction, then the fear response does not spontaneously recover.
However, our journey is not quite complete. The experimenters claim that a reactivated memory acts like a new
memory: it is open to change for only a brief time and then it becomes stable again. So the day 2 extinction
process should only work to change the original memory for a short while—at most, a few hours. If the memory is
reactivated, but extinction is delayed for a few hours, then the memory should not be changed because it has had
time to reconsolidate.
The final experiment tests this idea. The only difference between this new group and the last group is the time
delay on the second day. Rather than waiting 10 minutes between reactivating the memory and extinction, the
experimenters waited 6 hours. After 6 hours, the fear memory should no longer be active and extinction should
not change the memory.
This experiment is important because it serves as a control to help us determine if “rewriting a memory” is actually
the correct interpretation of the results. In this experiment, the memory is reactivated (just like in the 10-minute

https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290546543069713688/embed

https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290546550269430598/embed

DAY 3 – 6-HOUR GROUPDAY 3 – 6-HOUR GROUP
When we test the 6-Hour Group on day 3, we see that spontaneous recovery has occurred:
https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290546555284854198/embed
group), but the memory is then allowed to deactivate over a 6-hour delay. If there is no spontaneous recovery in
this condition, then rewriting memory is not a particularly convincing explanation for the results. If there is
spontaneous recovery of fear, then the theory that we are actually rewriting a memory is more convincing.
So let’s see what happens.
The procedure on day 3 is the same for all three groups, but the responses are different. Participants in the two
control conditions (control group and 6-hour group) both act the same: they both show spontaneous recovery of
the fear response. Those in the reconsolidation treatment condition (the 10-minute group), however, show no
spontaneous recovery of the fear response.
Interpreting Results
Let’s take another look at the results of the study by Schiller, Phelps, and their colleagues. The Y-axis on the
graph below shows the skin conductance response of the subjects. Higher values indicate higher levels of fear.
(Note: The actual dependent variable was a bit more complicated than the simple measure of skin conductance
suggested in the figure. Consult the original study if you need to know the exact way that skin conductance was
measured.) You will be adjusting the lines, so move them up to indicate more fear and down to indicate less fear.
The X-axis shows the end of Day 1, after successful fear conditioning, and the first trial on Day 3, when
spontaneous recovery is being measured.
We have placed the circles for day 1 in their correct positions. The fact that they sit high on the graph reflects the
fact that all three groups of participants were successfully conditioned on day 1 to fear the yellow box. The
differences among the three lines are not statistically significant. (Note: In real research, we seldom find exactly
the same averages for different conditions. There is always some natural variability. We use statistical tests to be
sure that these typical differences are not greater than we would expect by chance.) Your task is to grab the
circles on the right and move them to the appropriate positions for the results of the experiment. You can move
them up or down or leave them where they are. When you have entered your solution, you can look at the actual
results.
Remember, spontaneous recovery means that the person returns to the fear level they had learned earlier, on
day 1. No spontaneous recovery means that the fear response (high levels of skin conductance) had been
eliminated. Lower fear is shown if the dots get closer to the X-axis.

https://lumenlearning.h5p.com/content/1290546555284854198/embed

TRY ITTRY IT
Instructions:Instructions: Click and drag the circles on the right (day 3) to where you think they should be to reflect the
results of the experiment. When you’re done, click the link below to see the actual results.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/reconsolidation/linegraph1.html
AnswerAnswer
The figure above shows the actual results from the experiment. The green line (control group) and the blue line
(6-hour group) show slight declines in fear level, but not much. These two groups are not significantly different
statistically on either day 1 or day 3. The fact that these two groups showed high levels of fear on day 3 is
consistent with spontaneous recovery of the fear response after extinction on day 2.
The red line (10-minute group) drops dramatically from day 1 to day 3. This means that the fear these subjects
learned on day 1 and then had extinguished on day 2 remained extinguished on day 3. There was no
spontaneous recovery of the fear response. These results are consistent with the idea that a learned fear
response can either stay strong across several days (see the two control conditions) or it can be eliminated
(see the reinstatement treatment condition) if new learning takes place under just the right conditions (i.e., while
the fear memory is still active).
Keep in mind that one experiment doesn’t convince anyone—certainly not experienced scientists. But, when
many similar experiments are conducted and they generally give consistent results, then scientist become
increasingly confident that the results are not just due to chance, but that they are seeing something real. Go
online (for example, use Google Scholar) and search for “memory reinstatement” and you will find many studies
that are related to the one you have just studied. Together, these experiments suggest that memories can be
altered. In fact, every time we retrieve a memory, it is possible that we alter details or emotional elements of the
memory. Our memories may change across our lifetimes in profound ways.

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/oerfiles/Psychology/interactives/reconsolidation/linegraph1.html

WATCH ITWATCH IT
This video shows the experimenters you have been reading about (Daniella Schiller and Elizabeth Phelps)
discussing their work and you will even see a reenactment of part of the study. The video does not include
many of the technical details you just went through, but it shows some of the procedures and the researchers
give you some idea of the implications of their work.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=P42DyPRdTEA%3Frel%3D0
What is the practical value of this research?
At the very end of the video, you heard Dr. Phelps (from an interview in 2009) explain the potential for turning this
research into a useful procedure for therapists:
So, you know, at this point, how this works in the clinic is going to be all speculation. But what this data
suggests might happen in the future is: if you come into the clinic with a fear-related disorder, like a
phobia or PTSD, if we can understand how these memories are re-stored when they are retrieved,
much as we did in this study, we then may be able to time our therapeutic interventions in such a way
where we aren’t creating new learning that’s overriding those earlier memories but actually rewriting
them, in a sense. If we can time that correctly so we can target these mechanisms, perhaps we’d have
a more effective, long-lasting outcome.
One of the goals of this research, then, is to give therapists a way of working with memory disorders. Of course,
rather than creating a fear as the researchers did, therapists work with people who experience debilitating fear-
related memories that came from experiences, often traumatic ones, in their lives. The therapist’s job is to help
the person overcome the disabling experiences of fear. In most cases, they would like to reduce the emotional
impact of the experience, which is part of the memory itself, without actually changing the facts that are
remembered.
This application of reconsolidation theory to therapy is already underway. Here are the basic steps in this therapy:
• REINSTATEMENT: Have the person retrieve the memory. Be sure that the retrieval is emotionally
powerful. If the person avoids fully reactivating the memory in its complete painful form, then reduction of
the emotional impact will be impossible. The emotion may be fear or anxiety or some other strong
negative response.
• REDUCTION OF EMOTIONAL IMPACT: While the memory is active and painful, the therapist acts to
reduce its impact. There are two approaches to this, using the example of a phobia (irrational fear) to
illustrate the method:
◦ EXTINCTION OF THE FEAR RESPONSE: In a therapy session, a person with a phobia (e.g.,
fear of spiders or dogs or heights) might (a) have the fear response reactivated (have them
stand near a spider or dog or on a high perch) and then, (b) through continuous or repeated
exposure to the source of fear with support from the therapist and experience of no bad
consequences (not getting bitten or not falling), show a reduction of the fear response.
◦ DRUGS THAT BLOCK FEAR MEMORY: In a therapy session, a person with a phobia (e.g.,
fear of spiders or dogs or heights) might (a) have the fear response reactivated (have them
stand near a spider or dog or on a high perch) and then, (b) the person is given propranolol, a
drug that inhibits the storage of emotional aspects of a memory.
• REPETITION ACROSS DAY OR WEEKS: For a deep-seated problem, it is very unlikely that a single
session will eliminate or even substantially reduce the automatic negative emotional response. The
process of reinstatement followed by either extinction or drug intervention is necessary for effective
treatment.

WATCH ITWATCH IT
Here is a video about the work of Merel Kindt, a therapist and memory researcher. Dr. Kindt uses the drug
propranolol, which interferes with the reconsolidation of the fear aspect of a memory, though it does not prevent
the person from feeling fear during the training session nor does it interfere with the person’s memory for the
events that occurred.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HDXWBHCusqs%3Frel%3D0
GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
consolidationconsolidation: the neural processes that occur between an experience and the stabilization of the memory
reconsolidationreconsolidation: the process of replacing or disrupting a stored memory with a new version of the memory
As you can see from the video, therapists can now use the new insights coming from research on reconsolidation
of memory to help in their treatment of people with disorders that include memory dysfunctions. The video
showed treatment of a phobia, but reconsolidation therapy has also been used with some success with people
suffering from PTSD.
The reconsolidation research discussed is this exercise is just one example of the relationship between basic
research taking place in scientific laboratories and practical application of discoveries about the mind and brain in
the real world. Psychology in the 21st century owes a great deal to researchers in the 20th century, but old dogma
is constantly being updated and even overthrown in favor of better ideas that come from deeper understanding of
the causes of human behavior.
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TREATMENT MODALITIES
What you’ll learn to do: explain and compare treatment modalities
There are several modalities, or methods, of treatment: individual therapy, group therapy, couples therapy, and
family therapy are the most common. In an individual therapy session, a client works one-on-one with a trained
therapist. In group therapy, usually 5–10 people meet with a trained group therapist to discuss a common issue
(e.g., divorce, grief, eating disorders, substance abuse, or anger management). Couples therapy involves two
people in an intimate relationship who are having difficulties and are trying to resolve them. The couple may be
dating, partnered, engaged, or married. The therapist helps them resolve their problems as well as implement
strategies that will lead to a healthier and happier relationship. Family therapy is a special form of group therapy.
The therapy group is made up of one or more families. The goal of this approach is to enhance the growth of each
individual family member and the family as a whole.
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe the types and benefits of different types of group therapies
• Explain why the sociocultural model is important in therapy and what type of cultural barriers prevent
some people from receiving mental health services
Once a person seeks treatment, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, he has an intakeintake done to assess his clinical
needs. An intake is the therapist’s first meeting with the client. The therapist gathers specific information to
address the client’s immediate needs, such as the presenting problem, the client’s support system, and insurance
status. The therapist informs the client about confidentiality, fees, and what to expect in treatment. ConfidentialityConfidentiality
means the therapist cannot disclose confidential communications to any third party unless mandated or permitted

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TRY ITTRY IT
by law to do so. During the intake, the therapist and client will work together to discuss treatment goals. Then a
treatment plan will be formulated, usually with specific measurable objectives. Also, the therapist and client will
discuss how treatment success will be measured and the estimated length of treatment. There are several
different modalities of treatment (Figure 1): Individual therapy, family therapy, couples therapy, and group therapy
are the most common.
Figure 1. Therapy may occur (a) one-on-one between a therapist and client, or (b) in a group setting. (credit a: modification of
work by Connor Ashleigh, AusAID/Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade)
Individual Therapy
In individual therapyindividual therapy, also known as individual psychotherapy or individual counseling, the client and clinician
meet one-on-one (usually from 45 minutes to 1 hour). These meetings typically occur weekly or every other week,
and sessions are conducted in a confidential and caring environment (Figure 2). The clinician will work with clients
to help them explore their feelings, work through life challenges, identify aspects of themselves and their lives that
they wish to change, and set goals to help them work towards these changes. A client might see a clinician for
only a few sessions, or the client may attend individual therapy sessions for a year or longer. The amount of time
spent in therapy depends on the needs of the client as well as her personal goals.

Figure 2. In group therapy, usually 5–10 people meet with
a trained therapist to discuss a common issue such as
divorce, grief, an eating disorder, substance abuse, or
anger management. (credit: Cory Zanker)
Group Therapy
In group therapygroup therapy, a clinician meets together with several
clients with similar problems (Figure 2). When children are
placed in group therapy, it is particularly important to match
clients for age and problems. One benefit of group therapy
is that it can help decrease a client’s shame and isolation
about a problem while offering needed support, both from
the therapist and other members of the group (American
Psychological Association, 2014). A nine-year-old sexual
abuse victim, for example, may feel very embarrassed and
ashamed. If he is placed in a group with other sexually
abused boys, he will realize that he is not alone. A child
struggling with poor social skills would likely benefit from a
group with a specific curriculum to foster special skills. A
woman suffering from post-partum depression could feel
less guilty and more supported by being in a group with
similar women.
Group therapy also has some specific limitations. Members
of the group may be afraid to speak in front of other people
because sharing secrets and problems with complete
strangers can be stressful and overwhelming. There may be personality clashes and arguments among group
members. There could also be concerns about confidentiality: Someone from the group might share what another
participant said to people outside of the group.
Another benefit of group therapy is that members can confront each other about their patterns. For those with
some types of problems, such as sexual abusers, group therapy is the recommended treatment. Group treatment
for this population is considered to have several benefits:
Group treatment is more economical than individual, couples, or family therapy. Sexual abusers often
feel more comfortable admitting and discussing their offenses in a treatment group where others are
modeling openness. Clients often accept feedback about their behavior more willingly from other group
members than from therapists. Finally, clients can practice social skills in group treatment settings.
(McGrath, Cumming, Burchard, Zeoli, & Ellerby, 2009)
Groups that have a strong educational component are called psycho-educational groups. For example, a group
for children whose parents have cancer might discuss in depth what cancer is, types of treatment for cancer, and
the side effects of treatments, such as hair loss. Often, group therapy sessions with children take place in school.
They are led by a school counselor, a school psychologist, or a school social worker. Groups might focus on test
anxiety, social isolation, self-esteem, bullying, or school failure (Shechtman, 2002). Whether the group is held in
school or in a clinician’s office, group therapy has been found to be effective with children facing numerous kinds
of challenges (Shechtman, 2002).
During a group session, the entire group could reflect on an individual’s problem or difficulties, and others might
disclose what they have done in that situation. When a clinician is facilitating a group, the focus is always on
making sure that everyone benefits and participates in the group and that no one person is the focus of the entire
session. Groups can be organized in various ways: some have an overarching theme or purpose, some are time-
limited, some have open membership that allows people to come and go, and some are closed. Some groups are
structured with planned activities and goals, while others are unstructured: There is no specific plan, and group
members themselves decide how the group will spend its time and on what goals it will focus. This can become a
complex and emotionally charged process, but it is also an opportunity for personal growth (Page & Berkow,
1994).
Couples Therapy
Couples therapyCouples therapy involves two people in an intimate relationship who are having difficulties and are trying to
resolve them (Figure 3). The couple may be dating, partnered, engaged, or married. The primary therapeutic

Figure 3. In couples counseling, a therapist helps people
work on their relationship. (credit: Cory Zanker)
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch this video to get some more details view a structural family session.
TRY ITTRY IT
orientation used in couples counseling is cognitive-behavioral therapy (Rathus & Sanderson, 1999). Couples
meet with a therapist to discuss conflicts and/or aspects of their relationship that they want to change. The
therapist helps them see how their individual backgrounds, beliefs, and actions are affecting their relationship.
Often, a therapist tries to help the couple resolve these problems, as well as implement strategies that will lead to
a healthier and happier relationship, such as how to listen, how to argue, and how to express feelings. However,
sometimes, after working with a therapist, a couple will realize that they are too incompatible and will decide to
separate. Some couples seek therapy to work out their problems, while others attend therapy to determine
whether staying together is the best solution. Counseling couples in a high-conflict and volatile relationship can be
difficult. In fact, psychologists Peter Pearson and Ellyn Bader, who founded the Couples Institute in Palo Alto,
California, have compared the experience of the clinician in couples’ therapy to be like “piloting a helicopter in a
hurricane” (Weil, 2012, para. 7).
Family Therapy
Family therapyFamily therapy is a special form of group therapy,
consisting of one or more families. Although there are many
theoretical orientations in family therapy, one of the most
predominant is the systems approach. The family is viewed
as an organized system, and each individual within the
family is a contributing member who creates and maintains
processes within the system that shape behavior (Minuchin,
1985). Each member of the family influences and is
influenced by the others. The goal of this approach is to
enhance the growth of each family member as well as that
of the family as a whole.
Often, dysfunctional patterns of communication that
develop between family members can lead to conflict. A
family with this dynamic might wish to attend therapy together rather than individually. In many cases, one
member of the family has problems that detrimentally affect everyone. For example, a mother’s depression, teen
daughter’s eating disorder, or father’s alcohol dependence could affect all members of the family. The therapist
would work with all members of the family to help them cope with the issue, and to encourage resolution and
growth in the case of the individual family member with the problem.
With family therapy, the nuclear family (i.e., parents and children) or the nuclear family plus whoever lives in the
household (e.g., grandparent) come into treatment. Family therapists work with the whole family unit to heal the
family. There are several different types of family therapy. In structural family therapy, the therapist examines and
discusses the boundaries and structure of the family: who makes the rules, who sleeps in the bed with whom,
how decisions are made, and what are the boundaries within the family. In some families, the parents do not work
together to make rules, or one parent may undermine the other, leading the children to act out. The therapist
helps them resolve these issues and learn to communicate more effectively.
In strategic family therapystrategic family therapy, the goal is to address specific problems within the family that can be dealt with in a
relatively short amount of time. Typically, the therapist would guide what happens in the therapy session and
design a detailed approach to resolving each member’s problem (Madanes, 1991).

An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
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An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=2654
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Your best friend tells you that she is concerned about her cousin. The cousin—a teenage girl—is
constantly coming home after her curfew, and your friend suspects that she has been drinking. What
treatment modality would you recommend to your friend and why?
Cultural Factors and Therapy
The sociocultural perspective looks at you, your behaviors, and your symptoms in the context of your culture and
background. For example, José is an 18-year-old Hispanic male from a traditional family. José comes to
treatment because of depression. During the intake session, he reveals that he is gay and is nervous about telling
his family. He also discloses that he is concerned because his religious background has taught him that
homosexuality is wrong. How does his religious and cultural background affect him? How might his cultural
background affect how his family reacts if José were to tell them he is gay?
As our society becomes increasingly multiethnic and multiracial, mental health professionals must develop
cultural competencecultural competence (Figure 4), which means they must understand and address issues of race, culture, and
ethnicity. They must also develop strategies to effectively address the needs of various populations for which
Eurocentric therapies have limited application (Sue, 2004). For example, a counselor whose treatment focuses on
individual decision making may be ineffective at helping a Chinese client with a collectivist approach to problem
solving (Sue, 2004).
Multicultural counseling and therapy aims to offer both a helping role and process that uses modalities and
defines goals consistent with the life experiences and cultural values of clients. It strives to recognize client
identities to include individual, group, and universal dimensions, advocate the use of universal and culture-specific
strategies and roles in the healing process, and balancs the importance of individualism and collectivism in the
assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of client and client systems (Sue, 2001).
This therapeutic perspective integrates the impact of cultural and social norms, starting at the beginning of
treatment. Therapists who use this perspective work with clients to obtain and integrate information about their
cultural patterns into a unique treatment approach based on their particular situation (Stewart, Simmons, &
Habibpour, 2012). Sociocultural therapy can include individual, group, family, and couples treatment modalities.

Figure 4. How do your cultural and religious beliefs affect your attitude toward mental health treatment? (credit “top-left”:
modification of work by Staffan Scherz; credit “top-left-middle”: modification of work by Alejandra Quintero Sinisterra; credit “top-
right-middle”: modification of work by Pedro Ribeiro Simões; credit “top-right”: modification of work by Agustin Ruiz; credit “bottom-
left”: modification of work by Czech Provincial Reconstruction Team; credit “bottom-left-middle”: modification of work by Arian
Zwegers; credit “bottom-right-middle”: modification of work by “Wonderlane”/Flickr; credit “bottom-right”: modification of work by
Shiraz Chanawala)
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch this short video to learn more about cultural competence and sociocultural treatments.
Barriers to Treatment
Statistically, ethnic minorities tend to utilize mental health services less frequently than White, middle-class
Americans (Alegría et al., 2008; Richman, Kohn-Wood, & Williams, 2007). Why is this so? Perhaps the reason
has to do with access and availability of mental health services. Ethnic minorities and individuals of low
socioeconomic status (SES) report that barriers to services include lack of insurance, transportation, and time
(Thomas & Snowden, 2002). However, researchers have found that even when income levels and insurance
variables are taken into account, ethnic minorities are far less likely to seek out and utilize mental health services.
And when access to mental health services is comparable across ethnic and racial groups, differences in service
utilization remain (Richman et al., 2007).
In a study involving thousands of women, it was found that the prevalence rate of anorexia was similar across
different races, but that bulimia nervosa was more prevalent among Hispanic and African American women when
compared with non-Hispanic whites (Marques et al., 2011). Although they have similar or higher rates of eating
disorders, Hispanic and African American women with these disorders tend to seek and engage in treatment far
less than Caucasian women. These findings suggest ethnic disparities in access to care, as well as clinical and
referral practices that may prevent Hispanic and African American women from receiving care, which could
include lack of bilingual treatment, stigma, fear of not being understood, family privacy, and lack of education
about eating disorders.
Perceptions and attitudes toward mental health services may also contribute to this imbalance. A recent study at
King’s College, London, found many complex reasons why people do not seek treatment: self-sufficiency and not
seeing the need for help, not seeing therapy as effective, concerns about confidentiality, and the many effects of
stigma and shame (Clement et al., 2014). And in another study, African Americans exhibiting depression were
less willing to seek treatment due to fear of possible psychiatric hospitalization as well as fear of the treatment
itself (Sussman, Robins, & Earls, 1987). Instead of mental health treatment, many African Americans prefer to be
self-reliant or use spiritual practices (Snowden, 2001; Belgrave & Allison, 2010). For example, it has been found
that the Black church plays a significant role as an alternative to mental health services by providing prevention

and treatment-type programs designed to enhance the psychological and physical well-being of its members
(Blank, Mahmood, Fox, & Guterbock, 2002).
Additionally, people belonging to ethnic groups that already report concerns about prejudice and discrimination
are less likely to seek services for a mental illness because they view it as an additional stigma (Gary, 2005;
Townes, Cunningham, & Chavez-Korell, 2009; Scott, McCoy, Munson, Snowden, & McMillen, 2011). For
example, in one recent study of 462 older Korean Americans (over the age of 60) many participants reported
suffering from depressive symptoms. However, 71% indicated they thought depression was a sign of personal
weakness, and 14% reported that having a mentally ill family member would bring shame to the family (Jang,
Chiriboga, & Okazaki, 2009).
Language differences are a further barrier to treatment. In the previous study on Korean Americans’ attitudes
toward mental health services, it was found that there were no Korean-speaking mental health professionals
where the study was conducted (Orlando and Tampa, Florida) (Jang et al., 2009). Because of the growing
number of people from ethnically diverse backgrounds, there is a need for therapists and psychologists to develop
knowledge and skills to become culturally competent (Ahmed, Wilson, Henriksen, & Jones, 2011). Those
providing therapy must approach the process from the context of the unique culture of each client (Sue & Sue,
2007).

DIG DEEPER: TREATMENT PERCEPTIONSDIG DEEPER: TREATMENT PERCEPTIONS
By the time a child is a senior in high school, 20% of his classmates—that is 1 in 5—will have experienced a
mental health problem (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999), and 8%—about 1 in 12—will
have attempted suicide (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014). Of those classmates experiencing
mental disorders, only 20% will receive professional help (U.S. Public Health Service, 2000). Why?
It seems that the public has a negative perception of children and teens with mental health disorders. According
to researchers from Indiana University, the University of Virginia, and Columbia University, interviews with over
1,300 U.S. adults show that they believe children with depression are prone to violence and that if a child
receives treatment for a psychological disorder, then that child is more likely to be rejected by peers at school.
Bernice Pescosolido, author of the study, asserts that this is a misconception. However, stigmatization of
psychological disorders is one of the main reasons why young people do not get the help they need when they
are having difficulties. Pescosolido and her colleagues caution that this stigma surrounding mental illness,
based on misconceptions rather than facts, can be devastating to the emotional and social well-being of our
nation’s children.
This warning played out as a national tragedy in the 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary. In her blog,
Suzy DeYoung (2013), co-founder of Sandy Hook Promise (the organization parents and concerned others set
up in the wake of the school massacre) speaks to treatment perceptions and what happens when children do
not receive the mental health treatment they desperately need.
I’ve become accustomed to the reaction when I tell people where I’m from. Eleven months later, it’s as
consistent as it was back in January. Just yesterday, inquiring as to the availability of a rental house this
holiday season, the gentleman taking my information paused to ask, “Newtown, CT? Isn’t that where
that…that thing happened?
A recent encounter in the Massachusetts Berkshires, however, took me by surprise.
It was in a small, charming art gallery. The proprietor, a woman who looked to be in her 60s, asked where
we were from. My response usually depends on my present mood and readiness for the inevitable
dialogue. Sometimes it’s simply, Connecticut. This time, I replied, Newtown, CT. The woman’s demeanor
abruptly shifted from one of amiable graciousness to one of visible agitation.
“Oh my god,” she said wide eyed and open mouthed. “Did you know her?”
. . . .
“Her?” I inquired
That woman,” she replied with disdain, “that woman that raised that monster.”
“That woman’s” name was Nancy Lanza. Her son, Adam, killed her with a rifle blast to the head before
heading out to kill 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT last
December 14th.
When Nelba Marquez Greene, whose beautiful 6-year-old daughter, Ana, was killed by Adam Lanza, was
recently asked how she felt about “that woman,” this was her reply:
“She’s a victim herself. And it’s time in America that we start looking at mental illness with compassion,
and helping people who need it.
“This was a family that needed help, an individual that needed help and didn’t get it. And what better can
come of this, of this time in America, than if we can get help to people who really need it?” (pars. 1–7,
10–15)
Fortunately, we are starting to see campaigns related to the destigmatization of mental illness and an increase
in public education and awareness. Join the effort by encouraging and supporting those around you to seek
help if they need it. To learn more, visit the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) website
(http://www.nami.org/). The nation’s largest nonprofit mental health advocacy and support organization is NAMI.
TRY ITTRY IT

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
confidentiality:confidentiality: therapist cannot disclose confidential communications to any third party, unless mandated or
permitted by law
couples therapy:couples therapy: two people in an intimate relationship, such as husband and wife, who are having difficulties
and are trying to resolve them with therapy
cultural competencecultural competence therapist’s understanding and attention to issues of race, culture, and ethnicity in providing
treatment
family therapy:family therapy: special form of group therapy consisting of one or more families
group therapy:group therapy: treatment modality in which 5–10 people with the same issue or concern meet together with a
trained clinician
individual therapy:individual therapy: treatment modality in which the client and clinician meet one-on-one
intake:intake: therapist’s first meeting with the client in which the therapist gathers specific information to address the
client’s immediate needs
strategic family therapy:strategic family therapy: therapist guides the therapy sessions and develops treatment plans for each family
member for specific problems that can addressed in a short amount of time
structural family therapy:structural family therapy: therapist examines and discusses with the family the boundaries and structure of the
family: who makes the rules, who sleeps in the bed with whom, how decisions are made, and what are the
boundaries within the family
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THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• What is your attitude toward mental health treatment? Would you seek treatment if you were
experiencing symptoms or having trouble functioning in your life? Why or why not? In what ways do
you think your cultural and/or religious beliefs influence your attitude toward psychological
intervention?

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PUTTING IT TOGETHER: TREATMENT AND
THERAPY
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
In this module, you learned to
• describe the treatment of mental health disorders over time
• identify and explain the basic characteristics of various types of therapy
• explain and compare treatment modalities
In this module, you covered a full gamut of treatment methods, including psychotherapy in its many forms as well
as biomedical therapies. Put yourself in the shoes of a mental health counselor. Which treatment method or
methods would you prefer to study or utilize in your practice? Which type of counseling would you prefer to seek
out as a patient? Review the common types of psychotherapy below:
• Psychodynamic TherapyPsychodynamic Therapy: The primary focus is to reveal the unconscious content of a client’s psyche in
an effort to alleviate psychic tension. Although its roots are in psychoanalysis, psychodynamic therapy
tends to be briefer and less intensive than traditional psychoanalysis.
• Behavioral TherapyBehavioral Therapy: These methods focus exclusively on behaviors, or on behaviors in combination with
thoughts and feelings that might be causing them. Those who practice behavioral therapy tend to look
more at specific, learned behaviors and how the environment has an impact on those behaviors. Two
primary types include operant conditioning and classical conditioning.
• Cognitive and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)Cognitive and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): Cognitive therapy seeks to identify maladaptive
cognitions (thoughts), appraisals, beliefs, and reactions, with the aim of influencing destructive negative
emotions. CBT combines cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy to address maladaptive cognitions as
well as dysfunctional behaviors.
• Humanistic TherapyHumanistic Therapy: This form is explicitly concerned with the human context of the development of the
individual with an emphasis on subjective meaning, a rejection of determinism, and a concern for
positive growth rather than pathology. It posits an inherent human capacity to maximize potential.
• Group TherapyGroup Therapy: In this type of social therapy, one or more therapists treat a small group of clients
together as a group.
• Eclectic TherapyEclectic Therapy: Recently, many practitioners have begun to take what’s known as an eclectic
approach, meaning they combine aspects of multiple types of therapies. This approach can be useful in
that is uses the techniques and theories that work best in a specific patient’s scenario, rather than
sticking solely to the methods of one discipline.
Biomedical therapies approach psychological disorders as having biological causes and focus on eliminating or
alleviating symptoms of psychological disorders. The mind and body are viewed as connected; poor physical
health leads to poor mental health, and vice versa.
Biomedical therapies and psychotherapy are often used in conjunction with one another to treat the whole person.
Not all individuals will require biomedical therapy; however, for some, biomedical approaches can help enhance
the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic approaches. For example, an individual with schizophrenia who is
bombarded with visual or auditory hallucinations may find it difficult to focus in psychotherapy; with medication,

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the individual’s hallucinations can be eliminated or reduced to a level that allows the individual to benefit from
psychotherapy.
• PharmacotherapyPharmacotherapy: “Pharmacotherapy” refers to the use of medications in biomedical treatment.
Medications exist in four classes: antipsychotics, antidepressants, anti-cycling agents, and
hypnoanxiolytics. In general, the effectiveness of medications is upwards of 80%, but some of the
medications also contain serious side effects. Once the medication is discontinued, symptoms often
return; however, prolonged use can lead to other problems. Different types and classes of medications
are prescribed for different disorders. A depressed person might be given an antidepressant, a bipolar
individual might be given a mood stabilizer, and a schizophrenic individual might be given an
antipsychotic. These medications treat the symptoms of a psychological disorder; they can help people
feel better so that they can function on a daily basis, but they do not cure the disorder. Some people may
only need to take a psychotropic medication for a short period of time. Others, with severe disorders like
bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, may need to take psychotropic medication continuously for effective
symptom management.
• ECTECT: Another biologically based treatment that continues to be used, although infrequently, is
electroconvulsive therapy (ECT; formerly known by the unscientific name “electroshock therapy”). It
involves using an electrical current to induce seizures in the brain in order to help alleviate the effects of
certain mental conditions, such as severe forms of depression or bipolar disorder. The exact mechanism
is unknown, although it does help alleviate symptoms for people with severe depression who have not
responded to traditional drug therapy (Pagnin, de Queiroz, Pini, & Cassano, 2004). About 85% of people
treated with ECT improve (Reti, n.d.). However, the memory loss associated with repeated
administrations has led to it typically being implemented as a last resort (Donahue, 2000; Prudic, Peyser,
& Sackeim, 2000). A more recent alternative to ECT is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a
procedure approved by the FDA in 2008 that uses magnetic fields to stimulate nerve cells in the brain to
improve depression symptoms; like ECT, it is used when other treatments have not worked (Mayo Clinic,
2012).
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DISCUSSION: THERAPY AND TREATMENT
Thinking about Treatment
STEP 1STEP 1: Choose ONE of the following questions and respond to it in a post of at least 200 words.
1. Psychoanalytic theory is no longer the dominant therapeutic approach, because it lacks empirical
support. Yet many consumers continue to seek psychoanalytic or psychodynamic treatments. Do you
think psychoanalysis still has a place in mental health treatment? If so, why?
2. What might be some advantages and disadvantages of technological advances in psychological
treatment? What will psychotherapy look like 100 years from now?
3. Some people have argued that all therapies are about equally effective, and that they all affect change
through common factors such as the involvement of a supportive therapist. Does this claim sound
reasonable to you? Why or why not?
4. When choosing a psychological treatment for a specific patient, what factors besides the treatment’s
demonstrated efficacy should be taken into account?
STEP 2STEP 2: Respond to at least TWO other posts in responses of at least 100 words.

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MODULE 16: INDUSTRIAL-
ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
WHY IT MATTERS: INDUSTRIAL-
ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
Figure 1. What does an office look like? For people who telecommute, their workspace may be adapted to fit their lifestyle. (credit:
“left”: modification of work by Cory Zanker; credit “center”: modification of work by “@Saigon”/Flickr; credit “right”: modification of
work by Daniel Lobo)
In July 2012, Yahoo!, one of the largest and oldest web companies, announced the appointment of Marissa
Mayer as CEO. Yahoo! had struggled to define itself and excel in the industry for several years, and the
appointment of Mayer, a top Google executive, made big news. Among her many decisions, in February 2013,
Mayer announced that employees would no longer be allowed to telecommute. Telecommuting is representative
of many management innovations that have been made in recent years, largely by tech companies.
Telecommuting reflects a belief on the part of companies that employees are responsible, self-motivating, and
perhaps work best when they are left alone. It also has an impact on work–family balance, though which way is
yet unclear. And telecommuting reflects the more general trend of increasing overlap between workers’ time spent
on the job and time spent off the job.
The reversal of this policy at Yahoo! brought controversy and a lot of questions about what it meant. Mayer has
stayed largely quiet on her reasoning behind the decision, except to say that it was meant to better the company.
She finally addressed her decision briefly at the 2013 Great Place to Work conference (Tkaczyk, 2013) by saying,
among other things, that while “people are more productive when they’re alone, they’re more collaborative and
innovative when they’re together.” Interestingly, shortly after the Yahoo! change, consumer electronics retailer
Best Buy also eliminated telecommuting as an option for their employees. Will the change make Yahoo! more
innovative or more productive? How has the change affected employees at the company, particularly working
parents and those taking care of elderly relatives? Was the change introduced in the most effective way? These
are questions that are commonly studied by a branch of psychology called industrial and organizational
psychology.
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territories) and basis for 2013. Retrieved from http://www1.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/state_13.cfm
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (n.d.). Facts about sexual harassment. Retrieved from
http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/publications/fs-sex.cfm
Van De Water, T. (1997). Psychology’s entrepreneurs and the marketing of industrial psychology. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 82, 486–499.
van Knippenberg, D., van Knippenberg, B., Monden, L., & de Lima, F. (2002). Organizational identification after a
merger: A social identity perspective. British Journal of Social Psychology, 41, 233–252.
Vinchur, A. J., & Koppes, L. L. (2014). Early contributors to the science and practice of industrial psychology. In L.
L. Koppes, (Ed.), Historical perspectives in industrial and organizational psychology (pp. 37–58). Mahweh, NJ:
Erlbaum.
Weiss, H. M. (2002). Deconstructing job satisfaction: Separating evaluations, beliefs and affective experiences.
Human Resouces Management Review, 12, 173–194.
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INDUSTRIAL-ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
What you’ll learn to do: describe the purpose of industrial-
organizational psychology and examine its application to hiring and
evaluating employees
The field of I-O psychology had its birth in industrial psychology and the use of psychological concepts to aid in
personnel selection. However, with research such as the Hawthorne study, which you’ll learn about, psychologists
discovered that productivity was affected more by human interaction and not physical factors; the field of industrial
psychology expanded to include organizational psychology. Both WWI and WWII had a strong influence on the
development of an expansion of industrial psychology in the United States and elsewhere: the tasks the
psychologists were assigned led to development of tests and research in how the psychological concepts could
assist industry and other areas. This movement aided in expanding industrial psychology to include organizational
psychology.
Industrial psychology studies the attributes of jobs, applicants of those jobs, and methods for assessing fit to a
job. These procedures include job analysis, applicant testing, and interviews. It also studies and puts into place
procedures for the orientation of new employees and ongoing training of employees. The process of hiring
employees can be vulnerable to bias, which is illegal, and industrial psychologists must develop methods for
adhering to the law in hiring. Performance appraisal systems are an active area of research and practice in
industrial psychology.

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Figure 1. (a) Industrial psychology focuses on hiring and maintaining employees. (b) Organizational psychology is interested in
employee relationships and organizational culture. (credit a: modification of work by Cory Zanker; credit b: modification of work by
Vitor Lima)
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe the scope of study in the field of industrial and organizational psychology
• Describe the history of industrial and organizational psychology
What Is Industrial and Organizational Psychology?
In 2012, people who worked in the United States spent an average of 56.4 hours per week working (Bureau of
Labor Statistics—U.S. Department of Labor, 2013). Sleeping was the only other activity they spent more time on
with an average of 61.2 hours per week. The workday is a significant portion of workers’ time and energy. It
impacts their lives and their family’s lives in positive and negative physical and psychological ways. Industrial andIndustrial and
organizational (I-O) psychologyorganizational (I-O) psychology is a branch of psychology that studies how human behavior and psychology affect
work and how they are affected by work.
Industrial and organizational psychologists work in four main contexts: academia, government, consulting firms,
and business. Most I-O psychologists have a master’s or doctorate degree. The field of I-O psychology can be
divided into three broad areas (Figure 1 and Figure 2): industrial, organizational, and human factors. IndustrialIndustrial
psychologypsychology is concerned with describing job requirements and assessing individuals for their ability to meet those
requirements. In addition, once employees are hired, industrial psychology studies and develops ways to train,
evaluate, and respond to those evaluations. As a consequence of its concern for candidate characteristics,
industrial psychology must also consider issues of legality regarding discrimination in hiring. OrganizationalOrganizational
psychologpsychology is a discipline interested in how the relationships among employees affect those employees and the
performance of a business. This includes studying worker satisfaction, motivation, and commitment. This field
also studies management, leadership, and organizational culture, as well as how an organization’s structures,
management and leadership styles, social norms, and role expectations affect individual behavior. As a result of
its interest in worker wellbeing and relationships, organizational psychology also considers the subjects of
harassment, including sexual harassment, and workplace violence. Human factors psychologyHuman factors psychology is the study of how
workers interact with the tools of work and how to design those tools to optimize workers’ productivity, safety, and
health. These studies can involve interactions as straightforward as the fit of a desk, chair, and computer to a
human having to sit on the chair at the desk using the computer for several hours each day. They can also
include the examination of how humans interact with complex displays and their ability to interpret them
accurately and quickly. In Europe, this field is referred to as ergonomics.

Figure 2. Human factors psychology is the study of interactions between humans, tools, and work systems.

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Find out what I-O psychologists do on the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP)
website—a professional organization for people working in the discipline. This site also offers several I-O
psychologist profiles.
The Historical Development of Industrial and Organizational
Psychology
Industrial and organizational psychology had its origins in the early 20th century. Several influential early
psychologists studied issues that today would be categorized as industrial psychology: James Cattell
(1860–1944) at Columbia, Hugo Münsterberg (1863–1916) at Harvard, Walter Dill Scott (1869–1955) at
Northwestern, Robert Yerkes (1876–1956) and Walter Bingham (1880–1952) at Dartmouth, and Lillian Gilbreth
(1878–1972) at Purdue. Cattell, Münsterberg, and Scott had been students of Wilhelm Wundt, the father of
experimental psychology. Some of these researchers had been involved in work in the area of industrial
psychology before World War I. Cattell’s contribution to industrial psychology is largely reflected in his founding of
a psychological consulting company, which is still operating today called the Psychological Corporation, and in the
accomplishments of students at Columbia in the area of industrial psychology. In 1913, Münsterberg published
Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, which covered topics such as employee selection, employee training, and
effective advertising.
Scott was one of the first psychologists to apply psychology to advertising, management, and personnel selection.
In 1903, Scott published two books: The Theory of Advertising and Psychology of Advertising. They are the first
books to describe the use of psychology in the business world. By 1911 he published two more books, Influencing
Men in Business and Increasing Human Efficiency in Business. In 1916 a newly formed division in the Carnegie
Institute of Technology hired Scott to conduct applied research on employee selection (Katzell & Austin,
1992).The focus of all this research was in what we now know as industrial psychology; it was only later in the
century that the field of organizational psychology developed as an experimental science (Katzell & Austin, 1992).
In addition to their academic positions, these researchers also worked directly for businesses as consultants.The
involvement of the United States in World War I in April 1917 catalyzed the participation in the military effort of
psychologists working in this area. At that time Yerkes was the president of the 25-year-old AmericanAmerican
Psychological Association (APA)Psychological Association (APA). The APA is a professional association in the United States for clinical and
research psychologists. Today the APA performs a number of functions including holding conferences,
accrediting university degree programs, and publishing scientific journals. Yerkes organized a group under the
Surgeon General’s Office (SGO) that developed methods for screening and selecting enlisted men. They
developed the Army Alpha test to measure mental abilities. The Army Beta test was a non-verbal form of the test
that was administered to illiterate and non-English-speaking draftees. Scott and Bingham organized a group
under the Adjutant General’s Office (AGO) with the goal to develop selection methods for officers. They created a
catalogue of occupational needs for the Army, essentially a job-description system and a system of performance
ratings and occupational skill tests for officers (Katzell & Austin, 1992).
After the war, work on personnel selection continued. For example, Millicent Pond, who received a PhD from Yale
University, worked at several businesses and was director of employment test research at Scoville Manufacturing
Company. She researched the selection of factory workers, comparing the results of pre-employment tests with
various indicators of job performance. These studies were published in a series of research articles in the Journal
of Personnel Research in the late 1920s (Vinchur & Koppes, 2014).
From 1929 to 1932 Elton Mayo (1880–1949) and his colleagues began a series of studies at a plant near
Chicago, Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works (Figure 3). This long-term project took industrial psychology
beyond just employee selection and placement to a study of more complex problems of interpersonal relations,
motivation, and organizational dynamics. These studies mark the origin of organizational psychology. They began
as research into the effects of the physical work environment (e.g., level of lighting in a factory), but the
researchers found that the psychological and social factors in the factory were of more interest than the physical
factors. These studies also examined how human interaction factors, such as supervisorial style, enhanced or
decreased productivity.

https://www.siop.org/psychatwork.aspx

Figure 3. Hawthorne Works provided the setting for
several early I-O studies.
LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Watch this video to hear first-hand accounts of the original Hawthorne studies from those who participated in
the research.
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TRY ITTRY IT
Analysis of the findings by later researchers led to the term
the Hawthorne effectHawthorne effect, which describes the increase in
performance of individuals who are noticed, watched, and
paid attention to by researchers or supervisors (Figure 4).
What the original researchers found was that any change in
a variable, such as lighting levels, led to an improvement in
productivity; this was true even when the change was
negative, such as a return to poor lighting. The effect faded
when the attention faded (Roethlisberg & Dickson, 1939).
The Hawthorne-effect concept endures today as an
important experimental consideration in many fields and a
factor that has to be controlled for in an experiment. In other
words, an experimental treatment of some kind may produce an effect simply because it involves greater attention
of the researchers on the participants (McCarney et al., 2007).
In the 1930s, researchers began to study employees’ feelings about their jobs. Kurt Lewin also conducted
research on the effects of various leadership styles, team structure, and team dynamics (Katzell & Austin, 1992).
Lewin is considered the founder of social psychology and much of his work and that of his students produced
results that had important influences in organizational psychology. Lewin and his students’ research included an
important early study that used children to study the effect of leadership style on aggression, group dynamics, and
satisfaction (Lewin, Lippitt, & White, 1939). Lewin was also responsible for coining the term group dynamics, and
he was involved in studies of group interactions, cooperation, competition, and communication that bear on
organizational psychology.
Parallel to these studies in industrial and organizational psychology, the field of human factors psychology was
also developing. Frederick Taylor was an engineer who saw that if one could redesign the workplace there would
be an increase in both output for the company and wages for the workers. In 1911 he put forward his theory in a
book titled, The Principles of Scientific Management (Figure 5). His book examines management styles,
personnel selection and training, as well as the work itself, using time and motion studies.

Figure 5. (a) Frederick Taylor (1911) strived to engineer
workplaces to increase productivity, based on the ideas
he set forth in (b) his book, The Principles of Scientific
Management. (c) Taylor designed this steam hammer at
the Midvale Steel Company. (credit c: modification of
work by “Kheel Center, Cornell University”/Flickr)
One of the examples of Taylor’s theory in action involved
workers handling heavy iron ingots. Taylor showed that the
workers could be more productive by taking work rests.
This method of rest increased worker productivity from 12.5
to 47.0 tons moved per day with less reported fatigue as
well as increased wages for the workers who were paid by
the ton. At the same time, the company’s cost was reduced
from 9.2 cents to 3.9 cents per ton. Despite these increases
in productivity, Taylor’s theory received a great deal of
criticism at the time because it was believed that it would
exploit workers and reduce the number of workers needed.
Also controversial was the underlying concept that only a
manager could determine the most efficient method of
working, and that while at work, a worker was incapable of
this. Taylor’s theory was underpinned by the notion that a
worker was fundamentally lazy and the goal of Taylor’s
scientific management approach was to maximize productivity without much concern for worker well-being. His
approach was criticized by unions and those sympathetic to workers (Van De Water, 1997).
Gilbreth was another influential I-O psychologist who strove to find ways to increase productivity (Figure 6). Using
time and motion studies, Gilbreth and her husband, Frank, worked to make workers more efficient by reducing the
number of motions required to perform a task. She not only applied these methods to industry but also to the
home, office, shops, and other areas. She investigated employee fatigue and time management stress and found
many employees were motivated by money and job satisfaction. In 1914, Gilbreth wrote the book title, The
Psychology of Management: The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching, and Installing Methods of Least
Waste, and she is known as the mother of modern management. Some of Gilbreth’s contributions are still in use
today: you can thank her for the idea to put shelves inside on refrigerator doors, and she also came up with the
concept of using a foot pedal to operate the lid of trash can (Gilbreth, 1914, 1998; Koppes, 1997; Lancaster,
2004). Gilbreth was the first woman to join the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1926, and in 1966
she was awarded the Hoover Medal of the American Society of Civil Engineers. You may have unknowingly
already heard of Lillian Gilbreth, as her life with her husband and 12 kids is detailed in a book later made into a
1950 movie, Cheaper by the Dozen, authored by two of her children.
Taylor and Gilbreth’s work improved productivity, but these innovations also improved the fit between technology
and the human using it. The study of machine–human fit is known as ergonomics or human factors psychology.

Figure 6. (a) Lillian Gilbreth studied efficiency improvements that were applicable in the workplace, home, and other areas. She is
credited with the idea of (b) putting shelves on the inside of refrigerator doors and (c) foot-pedal-operated garbage cans. (credit b:
modification of work by “Goedeker’s”/Flickr; credit c: modification of work by Kerry Ceszyk)
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TRY ITTRY IT
From WWII to Today
World War II also drove the expansion of industrial psychology. Bingham was hired as the chief psychologist for
the War Department (now the Department of Defense) and developed new systems for job selection,
classification, training, ad performance review, plus methods for team development, morale change, and attitude
change (Katzell & Austin, 1992). Other countries, such as Canada and the United Kingdom, likewise saw growth
in I-O psychology during World War II (McMillan, Stevens, & Kelloway, 2009). In the years after the war, both
industrial psychology and organizational psychology became areas of significant research effort. Concerns about
the fairness of employment tests arose, and the ethnic and gender biases in various tests were evaluated with
mixed results. In addition, a great deal of research went into studying job satisfaction and employee motivation
(Katzell & Austin, 1992). Today, I-O psychology is a diverse and deep field of research and practice, as you will
learn about in the rest of this chapter. The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), a division
of the APA, lists 8,000 members (SIOP, 2014) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics—U.S. Department of Labor
(2013) has projected this profession will have the greatest growth of all job classifications in the 20 years following
2012. On average, a person with a master’s degree in industrial-organizational psychology will earn over $80,000
a year, while someone with a doctorate will earn over $110,000 a year (Khanna, Medsker, & Ginter, 2012).

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
Hawthorne effect:Hawthorne effect: increase in performance of individuals who are noticed, watched, and paid attention to by
researchers or supervisors
human factors psychology:human factors psychology: branch of psychology that studies how workers interact with the tools of work and
how to design those tools to optimize workers’ productivity, safety, and health
industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology:industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology: field in psychology that applies scientific principles to the study of
work and the workplace
industrial psychology:industrial psychology: branch of psychology that studies job characteristics, applicant characteristics, and how
to match them; also studies employee training and performance appraisal
organizational psychology:organizational psychology: branch of psychology that studies the interactions between people working in
organizations and the effects of those interactions on productivity
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Which of the broad areas of I-O psychology interests you the most and why?
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SELECTING EMPLOYEES
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Explain the aspects of employee selection, including candidate testing and interviewing
• What are some of the KSAs (knowledge, skills, and abilities) that are required for your current position
or a position you wish to have in the future?
• Describe the laws designed to prevent bias and discrimination in hiring

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LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
The O*Net database describes the skills, knowledge, and education required for occupations, as well as what
personality types and work styles are best suited to the role. See what it has to say about being a food server in
a restaurant or an elementary school teacher or an industrial-organizational psychologist.
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TRY ITTRY IT
The branch of I-O psychology known as industrial psychology focuses on identifying and matching persons to
tasks within an organization. This involves job analysisjob analysis, which means accurately describing the task or job. Then,
organizations must identify the characteristics of applicants for a match to the job analysis. It also involves training
employees from their first day on the job throughout their tenure within the organization, and appraising their
performance along the way.
Selecting Employees
When you read job advertisements, do you ever wonder how the company comes up with the job description?
Often, this is done with the help of I-O psychologists. There are two related but different approaches to job
analysis—you may be familiar with the results of each as they often appear on the same job advertisement. The
first approach is task-oriented and lists in detail the tasks that will be performed for the job. Each task is typically
rated on scales for how frequently it is performed, how difficult it is, and how important it is to the job. The second
approach is worker-oriented. This approach describes the characteristics required of the worker to successfully
perform the job. This second approach has been called job specification (Dierdorff & Wilson, 2003). For job
specification, the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that the job requires are identified.
Observation, surveys, and interviews are used to obtain the information required for both types of job analysis. It
is possible to observe someone who is proficient in a position and analyze what skills are apparent. Another
approach used is to interview people presently holding that position, their peers, and their supervisors to get a
consensus of what they believe are the requirements of the job.
How accurate and reliable is a job analysis? Research suggests that it can depend on the nature of the
descriptions and the source for the job analysis. For example, Dierdorff & Wilson (2003) found that job analyses
developed from descriptions provided by people holding the job themselves were the least reliable; however, they
did not study or speculate why this was the case.
The United States Department of Labor maintains a database of previously compiled job analyses for different
jobs and occupations. This allows the I-O psychologist to access previous analyses for nearly any type of
occupation. This system is called O*NetO*Net (accessible at www.online.onetcenter.org). The site is open and you can
see the KSAs that are listed for your own position or one you might be curious about. Each occupation lists the
tasks, knowledge, skills, abilities, work context, work activities, education requirements, interests, personality
requirements, and work styles that are deemed necessary for success in that position. You can also see data on
average earnings and projected job growth in that industry.
Candidate Analysis and Testing
Once a company identifies potential candidates for a position, the candidates’ knowledge, skills, and other
abilities must be evaluated and compared with the job description. These evaluations can involve testing, an
interview, and work samples or exercises. You learned about personality tests in the module on personality; in the

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WHAT DO YOU THINK? USING CUTOFF SCORES TO DETERMINE JOBWHAT DO YOU THINK? USING CUTOFF SCORES TO DETERMINE JOB
SELECTIONSELECTION
Many positions require applicants to take tests as part of the selection process. These can include IQ tests, job-
specific skills tests, or personality tests. The organization may set cutoff scores (i.e., a score below which a
candidate will not move forward) for each test to determine whether the applicant moves on to the next stage.
For example, there was a case of Robert Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate who applied for a position with
the police force in New London, Connecticut. As part of the selection process, Jordan took the Wonderlic
Personnel Test (WPT), a test designed to measure cognitive ability.
Jordan did not make it to the interview stage because his WPT score of 33, equivalent to an IQ score of 125
(100 is the average IQ score), was too high. The New London Police department policy is to not interview
anyone who has a WPT score over 27 (equivalent to an IQ score over 104) because they believe anyone who
scores higher would be bored with police work. The average score for police officers nationwide is the
equivalent of an IQ score of 104 (Jordan v. New London, 2000; ABC News, 2000).
Jordan sued the police department alleging that his rejection was discrimination and his civil rights were
violated because he was denied equal protection under the law. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a
lower court’s decision that the city of New London did not discriminate against him because the same standards
were applied to everyone who took the exam (The New York Times, 1999).
What do you think? When might universal cutoff points make sense in a hiring decision, and when might they
eliminate otherwise potentially strong employees?
Figure 1. Studies of job interviews show that they are
more effective at predicting future job performance when
they are structured.
I-O context, they are used to identify the personality characteristics of the candidate in an effort to match those to
personality characteristics that would ensure good performance on the job. For example, a high rating of
agreeableness might be desirable in a customer support position. However, it is not always clear how best to
correlate personality characteristics with predictions of job performance. It might be that too high of a score on
agreeableness is actually a hindrance in the customer support position. For example, if a customer has a
misperception about a product or service, agreeing with their misperception will not ultimately lead to resolution of
their complaint. Any use of personality tests should be accompanied by a verified assessment of what scores on
the test correlate with good performance (Arthur, Woehr, & Graziano, 2001). Other types of tests that may be
given to candidates include IQ tests, integrity tests, and physical tests, such as drug tests or physical fitness tests.
Interviews
Most jobs for mid-size to large-size businesses in the
United States require a personal interview as a step in the
selection process. Because interviews are commonly used,
they have been the subject of considerable research by
industrial psychologists. Information derived from job
analysis usually forms the basis for the types of questions
asked. Interviews can provide a more dynamic source of
information about the candidate than standard testing
measures. Importantly, social factors and body language
can influence the outcome of the interview. These include
influences, such as the degree of similarity of the applicant
to the interviewer and nonverbal behaviors, such as hand
gestures, head nodding, and smiling (Bye, Horverak,
Sandal, Sam, & Vivjer, 2014; Rakić, Steffens, &
Mummendey, 2011).
There are two types of interviews: unstructured and
structured. In an unstructured interview, the interviewer may
ask different questions of each different candidate. One
candidate might be asked about her career goals, and another might be asked about his previous work
experience. In an unstructured interview, the questions are often, though not always, unspecified beforehand. And
in an unstructured interview the responses to questions asked are generally not scored using a standard system.
In a structured interview, the interviewer asks the same questions of every candidate, the questions are prepared

EVERYDAY CONNECTIONS: PREPARING FOR THE JOB INTERVIEWEVERYDAY CONNECTIONS: PREPARING FOR THE JOB INTERVIEW
You might be wondering if psychology research can tell you how to succeed in a job interviewjob interview. As you can
imagine, most research is concerned with the employer’s interest in choosing the most appropriate candidate
for the job, a goal that makes sense for the candidate too. But suppose you are not the only qualified candidate
for the job; is there a way to increase your chances of being hired? A limited amount of research has addressed
this question.
As you might expect, nonverbal cues are important in an interview. Liden, Martin, & Parsons (1993) found that
lack of eye contact and smiling on the part of the applicant led to lower applicant ratings. Studies of impression
management on the part of an applicant have shown that self-promotion behaviors generally have a positive
impact on interviewers (Gilmore & Ferris, 1989). Different personality types use different forms of impression
management, for example extroverts use verbal self-promotion, and applicants high in agreeableness use non-
verbal methods such as smiling and eye contact. Self-promotion was most consistently related with a positive
outcome for the interview, particularly if it was related to the candidate’s person–job fit. However, it is possible
to overdo self-promotion with experienced interviewers (Howard & Ferris, 1996). Barrick, Swider & Stewart
(2010) examined the effect of first impressions during the rapport building that typically occurs before an
interview begins. They found that initial judgments by interviewers during this period were related to job offers
and that the judgments were about the candidate’s competence and not just likability. Levine and Feldman
(2002) looked at the influence of several nonverbal behaviors in mock interviews on candidates’ likability and
projections of competence. Likability was affected positively by greater smiling behavior. Interestingly, other
behaviors affected likability differently depending on the gender of the applicant. Men who displayed higher eye
contact were less likable; women were more likable when they made greater eye contact. However, for this
study male applicants were interviewed by men and female applicants were interviewed by women. In a study
carried out in a real setting, DeGroot & Gooty (2009) found that nonverbal cues affected interviewers’
assessments about candidates. They looked at visual cues, which can often be modified by the candidate and
vocal (nonverbal) cues, which are more difficult to modify. They found that interviewer judgment was positively
affected by visual and vocal cues of conscientiousness, visual and vocal cues of openness to experience, and
vocal cues of extroversion.
What is the take home message from the limited research that has been done? Learn to be aware of your
behavior during an interview. You can do this by practicing and soliciting feedback from mock interviews. Pay
attention to any nonverbal cues you are projecting and work at presenting nonverbal cures that project
confidence and positive personality traits. And finally, pay attention to the first impression you are making as it
may also have an impact in the interview.
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in advance, and the interviewer uses a standardized rating system for each response. With this approach, the
interviewer can accurately compare two candidates’ interviews. In a meta-analysis of studies examining the
effectiveness of various types of job interviews, McDaniel, Whetzel, Schmidt & Maurer (1994) found that
structured interviews were more effective at predicting subsequent job performance of the job candidate.
Training and Evaluating Employees
Training is an important element of success and performance in many jobs. Most jobs begin with an orientation
period during which the new employee is provided information regarding the company history, policies, and
administrative protocols such as time tracking, benefits, and reporting requirements. An important goal of
orientation training is to educate the new employee about the organizational culture, the values, visions,
hierarchies, norms and ways the company’s employees interact—essentially how the organization is run, how it

Figure 1. Training usually begins with an orientation
period during which a new employee learns about
company policies, practices, and culture. (credit: Cory
Zanker)
operates, and how it makes decisions. There will also be training that is specific to the job the individual was hired
to do, or training during the individual’s period of employment that teaches aspects of new duties, or how to use
new physical or software tools. Much of these kinds of training will be formalized for the employee; for example,
orientation training is often accomplished using software presentations, group presentations by members of the
human resources department or with people in the new hire’s department (Figure 1).
Mentoring is a form of informal training in which an
experienced employee guides the work of a new employee.
In some situations, mentors will be formally assigned to a
new employee, while in others a mentoring relationship may
develop informally.
Mentoring effects on the mentor and the employee being
mentored, the protégé, have been studied in recent years.
In a review of mentoring studies, Eby, Allen, Evans, Ng, &
DuBois (2008) found significant but small effects of
mentoring on performance (i.e., behavioral outcomes),
motivation and satisfaction, and actual career outcomes. In
a more detailed review, Allen, Eby, Poteet, Lentz, & Lima
(2004) found that mentoring positively affected a protégé’s
compensation and number of promotions compared with
non-mentored employees. In addition, protégés were more
satisfied with their careers and had greater job satisfaction.
All of the effects were small but significant. Eby, Durley,
Evans, & Ragins (2006) examined mentoring effects on the
mentor and found that mentoring was associated with greater job satisfaction and organizational commitment.
Gentry, Weber, & Sadri (2008) found that mentoring was positively related with performance ratings by
supervisors. Allen, Lentz, & Day (2006) found in a comparison of mentors and non-mentors that mentoring led to
greater reported salaries and promotions.
Mentoring is recognized to be particularly important to the career success of women (McKeen & Bujaki, 2007) by
creating connections to informal networks, adopting a style of interaction that male managers are comfortable
with, and with overcoming discrimination in job promotions.
Gender combinations in mentoring relationships are also an area of active study. Ragins & Cotton (1999) studied
the effects of gender on the outcomes of mentoring relationships and found that protégés with a history of male
mentors had significantly higher compensation especially for male protégés. The study found that female
mentor–male protégé relationships were considerably rarer than the other gender combinations.
In an examination of a large number of studies on the effectiveness of organizational training to meet its goals,
Arthur, Bennett, Edens, and Bell (2003) found that training was, in fact, effective when measured by the
immediate response of the employee to the training effort, evaluation of learning outcomes (e.g., a test at the end
of the training), behavioral measurements of job activities by a supervisor, and results-based criteria (e.g.,
productivity or profits). The examined studies represented diverse forms of training including self-instruction,
lecture and discussion, and computer assisted training.
Evaluating Employees
Industrial and organizational psychologists are typically involved in designing performance-appraisal systems for
organizations. These systems are designed to evaluate whether each employee is performing her job
satisfactorily. Industrial and organizational psychologists study, research, and implement ways to make work
evaluations as fair and positive as possible; they also work to decrease the subjectivity involved with performance
ratings. Fairly evaluated work helps employees do their jobs better, improves the likelihood of people being in the
right jobs for their talents, maintains fairness, and identifies company and individual training needs.
Performance appraisalsPerformance appraisals are typically documented several times a year, often with a formal process and an annual
face-to-face brief meeting between an employee and his supervisor. It is important that the original job analysisjob analysis
play a role in performance appraisal as well as any goals that have been set by the employee or by the employee
and supervisor. The meeting is often used for the supervisor to communicate specific concerns about the
employee’s performance and to positively reinforce elements of good performance. It may also be used to discuss

Figure 2. In a 360-degree performance appraisal, supervisors, customers, direct reports, peers, and the employee himself rate an
employee’s performance.
specific performance rewards, such as a pay increase, or consequences of poor performance, such as a
probationary period. Part of the function of performance appraisals for the organization is to document poor
performance to bolster decisions to terminate an employee.
Performance appraisals are becoming more complex processes within organizations and are often used to
motivate employees to improve performance and expand their areas of competence, in addition to assessing their
job performance. In this capacity, performance appraisals can be used to identify opportunities for training or
whether a particular training program has been successful. One approach to performance appraisal is called
360-degree feedback appraisal (Figure 2). In this system, the employee’s appraisal derives from a combination of
ratings by supervisors, peers, employees supervised by the employee, and from the employee herself.
Occasionally, outside observers may be used as well, such as customers. The purpose of 360-degree system is
to give the employee (who may be a manager) and supervisor different perspectives of the employee’s job
performance; the system should help employees make improvements through their own efforts or through
training. The system is also used in a traditional performance-appraisal context, providing the supervisor with
more information with which to make decisions about the employee’s position and compensation (Tornow,
1993a).
Few studies have assessed the effectiveness of 360-degree methods, but Atkins and Wood (2002) found that the
self and peer ratings were unreliable as an assessment of an employee’s performance and that even supervisors

tended to underrate employees that gave themselves modest feedback ratings. However, a different perspective
sees this variability in ratings as a positive in that it provides for greater learning on the part of the employees as
they and their supervisor discuss the reasons for the discrepancies (Tornow, 1993b).
In theory, performance appraisals should be an asset for an organization wishing to achieve its goals, and most
employees will actually solicit feedback regarding their jobs if it is not offered (DeNisi & Kluger, 2000). However, in
practice, many performance evaluations are disliked by organizations, employees, or both (Fletcher, 2001), and
few of them have been adequately tested to see if they do in fact improve performance or motivate employees
(DeNisi & Kluger, 2000). One of the reasons evaluations fail to accomplish their purpose in an organization is that
performance appraisal systems are often used incorrectly or are of an inappropriate type for an organization’s
particular culture (Schraeder, Becton, & Portis, 2007). An organization’s culture is how the organization is run,
how it operates, and how it makes decisions. It is based on the collective values, hierarchies, and how individuals
within the organization interact. Examining the effectiveness of performance appraisal systems in particular
organizations and the effectiveness of training for the implementation of the performance appraisal system is an
active area of research in industrial psychology (Fletcher, 2001).
Bias and Protections in Hiring
In an ideal hiring process, an organization would generate a job analysis that accurately reflects the requirements
of the position, and it would accurately assess candidates’ KSAs to determine who the best individual is to carry
out the job’s requirements. For many reasons, hiring decisions in the real world are often made based on factors
other than matching a job analysis to KSAs. As mentioned earlier, interview rankings can be influenced by other
factors: similarity to the interviewer (Bye, Horverak, Sandal, Sam, & Vijver, 2014) and the regional accent of the
interviewee (Rakić, Steffens, & Mummendey 2011). A study by Agerström & Rooth (2011) examined hiring
managers’ decisions to invite equally qualified normal-weight and obese job applicants to an interview. The
decisions of the hiring managers were based on photographs of the two applicants. The study found that hiring
managers that scored high on a test of negative associations with overweight people displayed a bias in favor of
inviting the equally qualified normal-weight applicant but not inviting the obese applicant. The association test
measures automatic or subconscious associations between an individual’s negative or positive values and, in this
case, the body-weight attribute. A meta-analysis of experimental studies found that physical attractiveness
benefited individuals in various job-related outcomes such as hiring, promotion, and performance review (Hosoda,
Stone-Romero, & Coats, 2003). They also found that the strength of the benefit appeared to be decreasing with
time between the late 1970s and the late 1990s.
Some hiring criteria may be related to a particular group an applicant belongs to and not individual abilities.
Unless membership in that group directly affects potential job performance, a decision based on group
membership is discriminatory (Figure 3). To combat hiring discrimination, in the United States there are numerous
city, state, and federal laws that prevent hiring based on various group-membership criteria. For example, did you
know it is illegal for a potential employer to ask your age in an interview? Did you know that an employer cannot
ask you whether you are married, a U.S. citizen, have disabilities, or what your race or religion is? They cannot
even ask questions that might shed some light on these attributes, such as where you were born or who you live
with. These are only a few of the restrictions that are in place to prevent discrimination in hiring. In the United
States, federal anti-discrimination laws are administered by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
(EEOC).
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is responsible for enforcing federal laws that make
it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of the person’s race, color, religion, sex
(including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability, or genetic information. Figure 4 provides some
of the legal language from laws that have been passed to prevent discrimination.
The United States has several specific laws regarding fairness and avoidance of discrimination. The Equal Pay
Act requires that equal pay for men and women in the same workplace who are performing equal work. Despite
the law, persistent inequities in earnings between men and women exist. Corbett & Hill (2012) studied one facet
of the gender gap by looking at earnings in the first year after college in the United States. Just comparing the
earnings of women to men, women earn about 82 cents for every dollar a man earns in their first year out of

Figure 3. (a) Pregnancy, (b) religion, and (c) age are some of the criteria on which hiring decisions cannot legally be made. (credit
a: modification of work by Sean McGrath; credit b: modification of work by Ze’ev Barkan; credit c: modification of work by David
Hodgson)

Figure 4. The laws shown here protect employees in the U.S. from discriminatory practices.
college. However, some of this difference can be explained by education, career, and life choices, such as
choosing majors with lower earning potential or specific jobs within a field that have less responsibility. When
these factors were corrected the study found an unexplained seven-cents-on-the-dollar gap in the first year after
college that can be attributed to gender discrimination in pay. This approach to analysis of the gender pay gap,
called the human capital model, has been criticized. Lips (2013) argues that the education, career, and life
choices can, in fact, be constrained by necessities imposed by gender discrimination. This suggests that
removing these factors entirely from the gender gap equation leads to an estimate of the size of the pay gap that
is too small.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it illegal to treat individuals unfavorably because of their race or
color of their skin: An employer cannot discriminate based on skin color, hair texture, or other immutableimmutable
characteristicscharacteristics, which are traits of an individual that are fundamental to her identity, in hiring, benefits, promotions,
or termination of employees. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 amends the Civil Rights Act; it prohibits

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case in which women plaintiffs were attempting to group together in
a class-action suit against Walmart for gender discrimination in promotion and pay. The case was important
because it was the only practical way for individual women who felt they had been discriminated against to
sustain a court battle for redress of their claims. The Court ultimately decided against the plaintiffs, and the right
to a class-action suit was denied. However, the case itself effectively publicized the issue of gender
discrimination in employment. This video discusses the case history and issues. This PBS NewsHour presents
the arguments in the court case.
job (e.g., employment, pay, and termination) discrimination of a woman because she is pregnant as long as she
can perform the work required.
The Supreme Court ruling in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. made it illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to
include educational requirements in a job description (e.g., high school diploma) that negatively impacts one race
over another if the requirement cannot be shown to be directly related to job performance. The EEOC (2014)
received more than 94,000 charges of various kinds of employment discrimination in 2013. Many of the filings are
for multiple forms of discrimination and include charges of retaliation for making a claim, which itself is illegal.
Only a small fraction of these claims become suits filed in a federal court, although the suits may represent the
claims of more than one person. In 2013, there were 148 suits filed in federal courts.
Federal legislation does not protect employees in the private sector from discrimination related to sexual
orientation and gender identity. These groups include lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals. There is
evidence of discrimination derived from surveys of workers, studies of complaint filings, wage comparison studies,
and controlled job-interview studies (Badgett, Sears, Lau, & Ho, 2009). Federal legislation protects federal
employees from such discrimination; the District of Columbia and 20 states have laws protecting public and
private employees from discrimination for sexual orientation (American Civil Liberties Union, n.d). Most of the
states with these laws also protect against discrimination based on gender identity. Gender identity, as discussed
when you learned about sexual behavior, refers to one’s sense of being male or female.
Many cities and counties have adopted local legislation preventing discrimination based on sexual orientation or
gender identity (Human Rights Campaign, 2013a), and some companies have recognized a benefit to explicitly
stating that their hiring must not discriminate on these bases (Human Rights Campaign, 2013b).
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 states people may not be discriminated against due to the
nature of their disability. A disability is defined as a physical or mental impairment that limits one or more major
life activities such as hearing, walking, and breathing. An employer must make reasonable accommodations for
the performance of a disabled employee’s job. This might include making the work facility handicapped accessible
with ramps, providing readers for blind personnel, or allowing for more frequent breaks. The ADA has now been
expanded to include individuals with alcoholism, former drug use, obesity, or psychiatric disabilities. The premise
of the law is that disabled individuals can contribute to an organization and they cannot be discriminated against
because of their disabilities (O’Keefe & Bruyere, 1994).
The Civil Rights Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act make provisions for bona fide occupationalbona fide occupational
qualifications (BFOQs)qualifications (BFOQs), which are requirements of certain occupations for which denying an individual
employment would otherwise violate the law. For example, there may be cases in which religion, national origin,
age, and sex are bona fide occupational qualifications. There are no BFOQ exceptions that apply to race,
although the first amendment protects artistic expressions, such as films, in making race a requirement of a role.
Clearcut examples of BFOQs would be hiring someone of a specific religion for a leadership position in a worship
facility, or for an executive position in religiously affiliated institutions, such as the president of a university with
religious ties. Age has been determined to be a BFOQ for airline pilots; hence, there are mandatory retirement
ages for safety reasons. Sex has been determined as a BFOQ for guards in male prisons.
Sex (gender) is the most common reason for invoking a BFOQ as a defense against accusing an employer of
discrimination (Manley, 2009). Courts have established a three-part test for sex-related BFOQs that are often
used in other types of legal cases for determining whether a BFOQ exists. The first of these is whether all or

Figure 5. Hooters restaurants only hire female wait staff.
(credit: “BemLoira BemDavassa”/Flickr)
WHAT DO YOU THINK? HOOTERS AND BFOQ LAWSWHAT DO YOU THINK? HOOTERS AND BFOQ LAWS
The restaurant chain Hooters, which hires only female
wait staff and has them dress in a sexually provocative
manner, is commonly cited as a discriminatory employer.
The chain would argue that the female employees are an
essential part of their business in that they market
through sex appeal and the wait staff attract customers.
Men have filed discrimination charges against Hooters in
the past for not hiring them as wait staff simply because
they are men. The chain has avoided a court decision on
their hiring practices by settling out of court with the
plaintiffs in each case. Do you think their practices violate
the Civil Rights Act? See if you can apply the three court
tests to this case and make a decision about whether a
case that went to trial would find in favor of the plaintiff or
the chain.
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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
Americans with Disabilities Act:Americans with Disabilities Act: employers cannot discriminate against any individual based on a disability
substantially all women would be unable to perform a job. This is the reason most physical limitations, such as
“able to lift 30 pounds,” fail as reasons to discriminate because most women are able to lift this weight. The
second test is the “essence of the business” test, in which having to choose the other gender would undermine
the essence of the business operation. This test was the reason the now defunct Pan American World Airways
(i.e., Pan Am) was told it could not hire only female flight attendants. Hiring men would not have undermined the
essense of this business. On a deeper level, this means that hiring cannot be made purely on customers’ or
others’ preferences. The third and final test is whether the employer cannot make reasonable alternative
accomodations, such as reassigning staff so that a woman does not have to work in a male-only part of a jail or
other gender-specific facility. Privacy concerns are a major reason why discrimination based on gender is upheld
by the courts, for example in situations such as hires for nursing or custodial staff (Manley, 2009). Most cases of
BFOQs are decided on a case-by-case basis and these court decisions inform policy and future case decisions.

bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ):bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ): requirement of certain occupations for which denying an individual
employment would otherwise violate the law, such as requirements concerning religion or sex
immutable characteristic:immutable characteristic: traits that employers cannot use to discriminate in hiring, benefits, promotions, or
termination; these traits are fundamental to one’s personal identity (e.g. skin color and hair texture)
job analysis:job analysis: determining and listing tasks associated with a particular job
performance appraisal:performance appraisal: evaluation of an employee’s success or lack of success at performing the duties of the
job
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC):U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC): responsible for enforcing federal laws that make it
illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of the person’s race, color, religion, sex
(including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability, or genetic information
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JOB SATISFACTION
What you’ll learn to do: explain how industrial-organizational
psychologists assess leadership and organization
Human factors psychology, or ergonomics, studies the interface between workers and their machines and
physical environments. Human factors psychologists specifically seek to design machines to better support the
workers using them. Psychologists may be involved in design of work tools such as software, displays, or
machines from the beginning of the design process or during the testing an already developed product. Human
factor psychologists are also involved in the development of best design recommendations and regulations. One
important aspect of human factors psychology is enhancing worker safety. Human factors research involves
efforts to understand and improve interactions between technology systems and their human operators.
Human–software interactions are a large sector of this research.
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Explain the measurement and determinants of job satisfaction
Organizational psychology is the second major branch of study and practice within the discipline of industrial and
organizational psychology. In organizational psychologyorganizational psychology, the focus is on social interactions and their effect on the
individual and on the functioning of the organization. In this section, you will learn about the work organizational
psychologists have done to understand job satisfaction, different styles of management, different styles of
leadership, organizational culture, and teamwork.

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Job Satisfaction
Some people love their jobs, some people tolerate their jobs, and some people cannot stand their jobs. JobJob
satisfactionsatisfaction describes the degree to which individuals enjoy their job. It was described by Edwin Locke (1976) as
the state of feeling resulting from appraising one’s job experiences. While job satisfaction results from both how
we think about our work (our cognition) and how we feel about our work (our affect) (Saari & Judge, 2004), it is
described in terms of affect. Job satisfaction is impacted by the work itself, our personality, and the culture we
come from and live in (Saari & Judge, 2004).
Job satisfaction is typically measured after a change in an organization, such as a shift in the management model,
to assess how the change affects employees. It may also be routinely measured by an organization to assess one
of many factors expected to affect the organization’s performance. In addition, polling companies like Gallup
regularly measure job satisfaction on a national scale to gather broad information on the state of the economy and
the workforce (Saad, 2012).
Job satisfaction is measured using questionnaires that employees complete. Sometimes a single question might
be asked in a very straightforward way to which employees respond using a rating scale, such as a Likert scale,
which was discussed in the module on personality. A Likert scale (typically) provides five possible answers to a
statement or question that allows respondents to indicate their positive-to-negative strength of agreement or
strength of feeling regarding the question or statement. Thus the possible responses to a question such as “How
satisfied are you with your job today?” might be “Very satisfied,” “Somewhat satisfied,” “Neither satisfied, nor
dissatisfied,” “Somewhat dissatisfied,” and “Very dissatisfied.” More commonly the survey will ask a number of
questions about the employee’s satisfaction to determine more precisely why he is satisfied or dissatisfied.
Sometimes these surveys are created for specific jobs; at other times, they are designed to apply to any job. Job
satisfaction can be measured at a global level, meaning how satisfied in general the employee is with work, or at
the level of specific factors intended to measure which aspects of the job lead to satisfaction (Table 1).
Table 1. Factors Involved in Job Satisfaction–Dissatisfaction
FactorFactor DescriptionDescription
Autonomy Individual responsibility, control over decisions
Work content Variety, challenge, role clarity
Communication Feedback
Financial rewards Salary and benefits
Growth and development Personal growth, training, education
Promotion Career advancement opportunity
Coworkers Professional relations or adequacy
Supervision and feedback Support, recognition, fairness
Workload Time pressure, tedium
Work demands Extra work requirements, insecurity of position
Research has suggested that the work-content factor, which includes variety, difficulty level, and role clarity of the
job, is the most strongly predictive factor of overall job satisfaction (Saari & Judge, 2004). In contrast, there is only
a weak correlation between pay level and job satisfaction (Judge, Piccolo, Podsakoff, Shaw, & Rich, 2010). Judge
et al. (2010) suggest that individuals adjust or adapt to higher pay levels: Higher pay no longer provides the
satisfaction the individual may have initially felt when her salary increased.

DIG DEEPER: JOB SATISFACTION IN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENCIESDIG DEEPER: JOB SATISFACTION IN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
A 2013 study of job satisfaction in the U.S. federal government found indexes of job satisfaction plummeting
compared to the private sector. The largest factor in the decline was satisfaction with pay, followed by training
and development opportunities. The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, has
conducted research on federal employee job satisfaction since 2003. Its primary goal is to improve the federal
government’s management. However, the results also provide information to those interested in obtaining
employment with the federal government.
Among large agencies, the highest job satisfaction ranking went to NASA, followed by the Department of
Commerce and the intelligence community. The lowest scores went to the Department of Homeland Security.
The data used to derive the job satisfaction score come from three questions on the Federal Employee
Viewpoint Survey. The questions are: I recommend my organization as a good place to work. Considering
everything, how satisfied are you with your job? Considering everything, how satisfied are you with your
organization?
The questions have a range of six possible answers, spanning a range of strong agreement or satisfaction to
strong disagreement or dissatisfaction. How would you answer these questions with regard to your own job?
Would these questions adequately assess your job satisfaction?
You can explore the Best Places To Work In The Federal Government study at their Web site:
www.bestplacestowork.org. The Office of Personnel Management also produces a report based on their
survey: www.fedview.opm.gov.
Why should we care about job satisfaction? Or more specifically, why should an employer care about job
satisfaction? Measures of job satisfaction are somewhat correlated with job performance; in particular, they
appear to relate to organizational citizenship or discretionary behaviors on the part of an employee that further the
goals of the organization (Judge & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2012). Job satisfaction is related to general life
satisfaction, although there has been limited research on how the two influence each other or whether personality
and cultural factors affect both job and general life satisfaction. One carefully controlled study suggested that the
relationship is reciprocal: Job satisfaction affects life satisfaction positively, and vice versa (Judge & Watanabe,
1993). Of course, organizations cannot control life satisfaction’s influence on job satisfaction. Job satisfaction,
specifically low job satisfaction, is also related to withdrawal behaviors, such as leaving a job or absenteeism
(Judge & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2012). The relationship with turnover itself, however, is weak (Judge & Kammeyer-
Mueller, 2012). Finally, it appears that job satisfaction is related to organizational performance, which suggests
that implementing organizational changes to improve employee job satisfaction will improve organizational
performance (Judge & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2012).
There is opportunity for more research in the area of job satisfaction. For example, Weiss (2002) suggests that
the concept of job satisfaction measurements have combined both emotional and cognitive concepts, and
measurements would be more reliable and show better relationships with outcomes like performance if the
measurement of job satisfaction separated these two possible elements of job satisfaction.
Job stressstress affects job satisfaction. Job stress, or job strain, is caused by specific stressors in an occupation.
Stress can be an ambigious term as it is used in common language. Stress is the perception and response of an
individual to events judged as ovewhelming or threatening to the individual’s well-being (Gyllensten & Palmer,
2005). The events themselves are the stressors. Stress is a result of an employee’s perception that the demands
placed on them exceed their ability to meet them (Gyllensten & Palmer, 2005), such as having to fill multiple roles
in a job or life in general, workplace role ambiguity, lack of career progress, lack of job security, lack of control
over work outcomes, isolation, work overload, discrimination, harrassment, and bullying (Colligan & Higgins,
2005). The stressors are different for women than men and these differences are a significant area of research
(Gyllensten & Palmer, 2005). Job stress leads to poor employee health, job performance, and family life (Colligan
& Higgins, 2005).
As already mentioned, job insecurity contributes significantly to job stress. Two increasing threats to job security
are downsizing events and corporate mergers. Businesses typically involve I-O psychologists in planning for,
implementing, and managing these types of organizational change.
DownsizingDownsizing is an increasingly common response to a business’s pronounced failure to achieve profit goals, and it
involves laying off a significant percentage of the company’s employees. Industrial-organizational psychologists

Figure 1. When companies are combined through a merger (or acquisition), there are often cuts due to duplication of core
functions, like sales and accounting, at each company.
may be involved in all aspects of downsizing: how the news is delivered to employees (both those being let go
and those staying), how laid-off employees are supported (e.g., separation packages), and how retained
employees are supported. The latter is important for the organization because downsizing events affect the
retained employee’s intent to quit, organizational commitment, and job insecurity (Ugboro, 2006).
In addition to downsizing as a way of responding to outside strains on a business, corporations often grow larger
by combining with other businesses. This can be accomplished through a merger (i.e., the joining of two
organizations of equal power and status) or an acquisition (i.e., one organization purchases the other). In an
acquisition, the purchasing organization is usually the more powerful or dominant partner. In both cases, there is
usually a duplication of services between the two companies, such as two accounting departments and two sales
forces. Both departments must be merged, which commonly involves a reduction of staff (Figure 1). This leads to
organizational processes and stresses similar to those that occur in downsizing events. Mergers require
determining how the organizational culture will change, to which employees also must adjust (van Knippenberg,
van Knippenberg, Monden, & de Lima, 2002). There can be additional stress on workers as they lose their
connection to the old organization and try to make connections with the new combined group (Amiot, Terry,
Jimmieson, & Callan, 2006). Research in this area focuses on understanding employee reactions and making
practical recommendations for managing these organizational changes.
Work-Family-Balance
Many people juggle the demands of work life with the demands of their home life, whether it be caring for children
or taking care of an elderly parent; this is known as work-family balancework-family balance. We might commonly think about work

LINK TO LEARNINGLINK TO LEARNING
Glassdoor is a website that posts job satisfaction reviews for different careers and organizations. Use this site
to research possible careers and/or organizations that interest you.
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interfering with family, but it is also the case that family responsibilities may conflict with work obligations (Carlson,
Kacmar, & Williams, 2000). Greenhaus and Beutell (1985) first identified three sources of work–family conflicts:
time devoted to work makes it difficult to fulfill requirements of family, or vice versa, strain from participation in
work makes it difficult to fulfill requirements of family, or vice versa, and specific behaviors required by work make
it difficult to fulfill the requirements of family, or vice versa.
Women often have greater responsibility for family demands, including home care, child care, and caring for aging
parents, yet men in the United States are increasingly assuming a greater share of domestic responsibilities.
However, research has documented that women report greater levels of stress from work–family conflict
(Gyllensten & Palmer, 2005).
There are many ways to decrease work–family conflict and improve people’s job satisfaction (Posig & Kickul,
2004). These include support in the home, which can take various forms: emotional (listening), practical (help with
chores). Workplace support can include understanding supervisors, flextime, leave with pay, and telecommuting.
Flextime usually involves a requirement of core hours spent in the workplace around which the employee may
schedule his arrival and departure from work to meet family demands. TelecommutingTelecommuting involves employees
working at home and setting their own hours, which allows them to work during different parts of the day, and to
spend part of the day with their family. Recall that Yahoo! had a policy of allowing employees to telecommute and
then rescinded the policy. There are also organizations that have onsite daycare centers, and some companies
even have onsite fitness centers and health clinics. In a study of the effectiveness of different coping methods,
Lapierre & Allen (2006) found practical support from home more important than emotional support. They also
found that immediate-supervisor support for a worker significantly reduced work–family conflict through such
mechanisms as allowing an employee the flexibility needed to fulfill family obligations. In contrast, flextime did not
help with coping and telecommuting actually made things worse, perhaps reflecting the fact that being at home
intensifies the conflict between work and family because with the employee in the home, the demands of family
are more evident.
Posig & Kickul (2004) identify exemplar corporations with policies designed to reduce work–family conflict.
Examples include IBM’s policy of three years of job-guaranteed leave after the birth of a child, Lucent
Technologies offer of one year’s childbirth leave at half pay, and SC Johnson’s program of concierge services for
daytime errands.

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GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
downsizing:downsizing: process in which an organization tries to achieve greater overall efficiency by reducing the number
of employees
job satisfaction:job satisfaction: degree of pleasure that employees derive from their job
telecommuting:telecommuting: employees’ ability to set their own hours allowing them to work from home at different parts of
the day
work–family balance:work–family balance: occurs when people juggle the demands of work life with the demands of family life
workplace violence:workplace violence: violence or the threat of violence against workers; can occur inside or outside the
workplace
work team:work team: group of people within an organization or company given a specific task to achieve together
Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions
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LEADERSHIP AND ORGANIZATION
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe key and terms associated with management and leadership, including Theory X and Theory
Y and transactional and transformational leadership
• Explain the significance of organizational culture
Management and Organizational Structure
A significant portion of I-O research focuses on management and human relations. Douglas McGregor (1960)
combined scientific managementscientific management (a theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflows with the
main objective of improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity) and human relations into the notion
of leadership behavior. His theory lays out two different styles called Theory X and Theory Y. In the Theory XTheory X
approach to management, managers assume that most people dislike work and are not innately self-directed.
Theory X managers perceive employees as people who prefer to be led and told which tasks to perform and
when. Their employees have to be watched carefully to be sure that they work hard enough to fulfill the
organization’s goals. Theory X workplaces will often have employees punch a clock when arriving and leaving the
workplace: Tardiness is punished. Supervisors, not employees, determine whether an employee needs to stay
late, and even this decision would require someone higher up in the command chain to approve the extra hours.
Theory X supervisors will ignore employees’ suggestions for improved efficiency and reprimand employees for
speaking out of order. These supervisors blame efficiency failures on individual employees rather than the
systems or policies in place. Managerial goals are achieved through a system of punishments and threats rather
than enticements and rewards. Managers are suspicious of employees’ motivations and always suspect selfish
motivations for their behavior at work (e.g., being paid is their sole motivation for working).
In the Theory YTheory Y approach, on the other hand, managers assume that most people seek inner satisfaction and
fulfillment from their work. Employees function better under leadership that allows them to participate in, and
provide input about, setting their personal and work goals. In Theory Y workplaces, employees participate in

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decisions about prioritizing tasks; they may belong to teams that, once given a goal, decide themselves how it will
be accomplished. In such a workplace, employees are able to provide input on matters of efficiency and safety.
One example of Theroy Y in action is the policy of Toyota production lines that allows any employee to stop the
entire line if a defect or other issue appears, so that the defect can be fixed and its cause remedied (Toyota Motor
Manufacturing, 2013). A Theory Y workplace will also meaningfully consult employees on any changes to the
work process or management system. In addition, the organization will encourage employees to contribute their
own ideas. McGregor (1960) characterized Theory X as the traditional method of management used in the United
States. He argued that a Theory Y approach was needed to improve organizational output and the wellbeing of
individuals. The table below summarizes how these two management approaches differ.
Table 1. Theory X and Theory Y Management Styles
Theory XTheory X Theory YTheory Y
People dislike work and avoid it. People enjoy work and find it natural.
People avoid responsibility. People are more satisified when given responsibility.
People want to be told what to do. People want to take part in setting their own work goals.
Goals are achieved through rules and punishments. Goals are achieved through enticements and rewards.
Another management style was described by Donald Clifton, who focused his research on how an organization
can best use an individual’s strengths, an approach he called strengths-based management. He and his
colleagues interviewed 8,000 managers and concluded that it is important to focus on a person’s strengths, not
their weaknesses. A strength is a particular enduring talent possessed by an individual that allows her to provide
consistent, near-perfect performance in tasks involving that talent. Clifton argued that our strengths provide the
greatest opportunity for growth (Buckingham & Clifton, 2001). An example of a strength is public speaking or the
ability to plan a successful event. The strengths-based approach is very popular although its effect on
organization performance is not well-studied. However, Kaiser & Overfield (2011) found that managers often
neglected improving their weaknesses and overused their strengths, both of which interfered with performance.
Leadership is an important element of management. Leadership styles have been of major interest within I-O
research, and researchers have proposed numerous theories of leadership. Bass (1985) popularized and
developed the concepts of transactional leadership versus transformational leadership styles. In transactionaltransactional
leadershipleadership, the focus is on supervision and organizational goals, which are achieved through a system of rewards
and punishments (i.e., transactions). Transactional leaders maintain the status quo: They are managers. This is in
contrast to the transformational leader. People who have transformational leadershiptransformational leadership possess four attributes to
varying degrees: They are charismatic (highly liked role models), inspirational (optimistic about goal attainment),
intellectually stimulating (encourage critical thinking and problem solving), and considerate (Bass, Avolio, &
Atwater, 1996).
As women increasingly take on leadership roles in corporations, questions have arisen as to whether there are
differences in leadership styles between men and women (Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, & van Engen, 2003).
Eagly & Johnson (1990) conducted a meta-analysis to examine gender and leadership style. They found, to a
slight but significant degree, that women tend to practice an interpersonal style of leadership (i.e., she focuses on
the morale and welfare of the employees) and men practice a task-oriented style (i.e., he focuses on
accomplishing tasks). However, the differences were less pronounced when one looked only at organizational
studies and excluded laboratory experiments or surveys that did not involve actual organizational leaders. Larger
sex-related differences were observed when leadership style was categorized as democratic or autocratic, and
these differences were consistent across all types of studies. The authors suggest that similarities between the
sexes in leadership styles are attributable to both sexes needing to conform the organization’s culture;
additionally, they propose that sex-related differences reflect inherent differences in the strengths each sex brings
to bear on leadership practice. In another meta-analysis of leadership style, Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, & van
Engen (2003) found that women tended to exhibit the characteristics of transformational leaders, while men were
more likely to be transactional leaders. However, the differences are not absolute; for example, women were
found to use methods of reward for performance more often than men, which is a component of transactional
leadership. The differences they found were relatively small. As Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, & van Engen (2003)
point out, research shows that transformational leadership approaches are more effective than transactional
approaches, although individual leaders typically exhibit elements of both approaches.

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Figure 1. Teamwork is an essential part of the modern
workplace.
Goals, Teamwork, and Work Teams
The workplace today is rapidly changing due to a variety of
factors, such as shifts in technology, economics, foreign
competition, globalization, and workplace demographics.
Organizations need to respond quickly to changes in these
factors. Many companies are responding to these changes
by structuring their organizations so that work can be
delegated to work teams, which bring together diverse
skills, experience, and expertise. This is in contrast to
organizational structures that have individuals at their base
(Naquin & Tynan, 2003). In the team-based approach,
teams are brought together and given a specific task or
goal to accomplish. Despite their burgeoning popularity,
team structures do not always deliver greater
productivity—the work of teams is an active area of
research (Naquin & Tynan, 2003).
Why do some teams work well while others do not? There
are many contributing factors. For example, teams can
mask team members that are not working (i.e., social
loafing). Teams can be inefficient due to poor
communication; they can have poor decision-making skills due to conformity effects; and, they can have conflict
within the group. The popularity of teams may in part result from the team halo effect: Teams are given credit for
their successes. but individuals within a team are blamed for team failures (Naquin & Tynan, 2003). One aspect of
team diversity is their gender mix. Researchers have explored whether gender mix has an effect on team
performance. On the one hand, diversity can introduce communication and interpersonal-relationship problems
that hinder performance, but on the other hand diversity can also increase the team’s skill set, which may include
skills that can actually improve team member interactions. Hoogendoorn, Oosterbeek, & van Praag (2013)
studied project teams in a university business school in which the gender mix of the teams was manipulated.
They found that gender-balanced teams (i.e., nearly equal numbers of men and women) performed better, as
measured by sales and profits, than predominantly male teams. The study did not have enough data to determine
the relative performance of female dominated teams. The study was unsuccessful in identifying which mechanism
(interpersonal relationships, learning, or skills mixes) accounted for performance improvement.
There are three basic types of teams: problem resolution teams, creative teams, and tactical teams. Problem
resolution teams are created for the purpose of solving a particular problem or issue; for example, the diagnostic
teams at the Centers for Disease Control. Creative teams are used to develop innovative possibilities or solutions;
for example, design teams for car manufacturers create new vehicle models. Tactical teams are used to execute
a well-defined plan or objective, such as a police or FBI SWAT team handling a hostage situation (Larson &
LaFasto, 1989). One area of active research involves a fourth kind of team—the virtual team; these studies
examine how groups of geographically disparate people brought together using digital communications
technology function (Powell, Piccoli, & Ives, 2004). Virtual teams are more common due to the growing
globalization of organizations and the use of consulting and partnerships facilitated by digital communication.

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Organizational Culture
Each company and organization has an organizational culture. Organizational cultureOrganizational culture encompasses the values,
visions, hierarchies, norms, and interactions among its employees. It is how an organization is run, how it
operates, and how it makes decisions—the industry in which the organization participates may have an influence.
Different departments within one company can develop their own subculture within the organization’s culture.
Ostroff, Kinicki, and Tamkins (2003) identify three layers in organizational culture: observable artifacts, espoused
values, and basic assumptions. Observable artifacts are the symbols, language (jargon, slang, and humor),
narratives (stories and legends), and practices (rituals) that represent the underlying cultural assumptions.
Espoused values are concepts or beliefs that the management or the entire organization endorses. They are the
rules that allow employees to know which actions they should take in different situations and which information
they should adhere to. These basic assumptions generally are unobservable and unquestioned. Researchers
have developed survey instruments to measure organizational culture.
With the workforce being a global marketplace, your company may have a supplier in Korea and another in
Honduras and have employees in the United States, China, and South Africa. You may have coworkers of
different religious, ethnic, or racial backgrounds than yourself. Your coworkers may be from different places
around the globe. Many workplaces offer diversity training to help everyone involved bridge and understand
cultural differences. Diversity trainingDiversity training educates participants about cultural differences with the goal of improving
teamwork. There is always the potential for prejudice between members of two groups, but the evidence suggests
that simply working together, particularly if the conditions of work are set carefully that such prejudice can be
reduced or eliminated. Pettigrew and Tropp (2006) conducted a meta-analysis to examine the question of whether
contact between groups reduced prejudice between those groups. They found that there was a moderate but
significant effect. They also found that, as previously theorized, the effect was enhanced when the two groups
met under conditions in which they have equal standing, common goals, cooperation between the groups, and
especially support on the part of the institution or authorities for the contact.

DIG DEEPER: MANAGING GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCESDIG DEEPER: MANAGING GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCES
An important consideration in managing employees is age. Workers’ expectations and attitudes are developed
in part by experience in particular cultural time periods. Generational constructs are somewhat arbitrary, yet
they may be helpful in setting broad directions to organizational management as one generation leaves the
workforce and another enters it. The baby boomer generation (born between 1946 and 1964) is in the process
of leaving the workforce and will continue to depart it for a decade or more. Generation X (born between the
early 1960s and the 1980s) are now in the middle of their careers. Millennials (born from 1979 to the early
1994) began to come of age at the turn of the century, and are early in their careers.
Today, as these three different generations work side by side in the workplace, employers and managers need
to be able to identify their unique characteristics. Each generation has distinctive expectations, habits, attitudes,
and motivations (Elmore, 2010). One of the major differences among these generations is knowledge of the use
of technology in the workplace. Millennials are technologically sophisticated and believe their use of technology
sets them apart from other generations. They have also been characterized as self-centered and overly self-
confident. Their attitudinal differences have raised concerns for managers about maintaining their motivation as
employees and their ability to integrate into organizational culture created by baby boomers (Myers &
Sadaghiani, 2010). For example, millennials may expect to hear that they need to pay their dues in their jobs
from baby boomers who believe they paid their dues in their time. Yet millennials may resist doing so because
they value life outside of work to a greater degree (Myers & Sadaghiani, 2010). Meister & Willyerd (2010)
suggest alternative approaches to training and mentoring that will engage millennials and adapt to their need
for feedback from supervisors: reverse mentoring, in which a younger employee educates a senior employee in
social media or other digital resources. The senior employee then has the opportunity to provide useful
guidance within a less demanding role.
Recruiting and retaining millennials and Generation X employees poses challenges that did not exist in
previous generations. The concept of building a career with the company is not relatable to most Generation X
employees, who do not expect to stay with one employer for their career. This expectation arises from of a
reduced sense of loyalty because they do not expect their employer to be loyal to them (Gibson, Greenwood, &
Murphy, 2009). Retaining Generation X workers thus relies on motivating them by making their work meaningful
(Gibson, Greenwood, & Murphy, 2009). Since millennials lack an inherent loyalty to the company, retaining
them also requires effort in the form of nurturing through frequent rewards, praise, and feedback.
Millennials are also interested in having many choices, including options in work scheduling, choice of job
duties, and so on. They also expect more training and education from their employers. Companies that offer the
best benefit package and brand attract millennials (Myers & Sadaghiani, 2010).
One well-recognized negative aspect of organizational culture is a culture of harassmentharassment, including sexual
harassment. Most organizations of any size have developed sexual harassment policies that define sexual
harassment (or harassment in general) and the procedures the organization has set in place to prevent and
address it when it does occur. Thus, in most jobs you have held, you were probably made aware of the
company’s sexual harassment policy and procedures, and may have received training related to the policy. The
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (n.d.) provides the following description of sexual harassmentsexual harassment:
Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a
sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an
individual’s employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance, or creates an
intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment. (par. 2)
One form of sexual harassment is called quid pro quo. Quid pro quo means you give something to get something,
and it refers to a situation in which organizational rewards are offered in exchange for sexual favors. Quid pro quo
harassment is often between an employee and a person with greater power in the organization. For example, a
supervisor might request an action, such as a kiss or a touch, in exchange for a promotion, a positive
performance review, or a pay raise. Another form of sexual harassment is the threat of withholding a reward if a
sexual request is refused. Hostile environment sexual harassment is another type of workplace harassment. In
this situation, an employee experiences conditions in the workplace that are considered hostile or intimidating. For
example, a work environment that allows offensive language or jokes or displays sexually explicit images. Isolated
occurrences of these events do not constitute harassment, but a pattern of repeated occurrences does. In
addition to violating organizational policies against sexual harassment, these forms of harassment are illegal.

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Harassment does not have to be sexual; it may be related to any of the protected classes in the statutes regulated
by the EEOC: race, national origin, religion, or age.
Violence in the Workplace
In the summer of August 1986, a part-time postal worker with a troubled work history walked into the Edmond,
Oklahoma, post office and shot and killed 15 people, including himself. From his action, the term “going postal”
was coined, describing a troubled employee who engages in extreme violence.
Workplace violence is one aspect of workplace safety that I-O psychologists study. Workplace violenceWorkplace violence is any act
or threat of physical violence, harassment, intimidation, or other threatening, disruptive behavior that occurs at the
workplace. It ranges from threats and verbal abuse to physical assaults and even homicide (Occupational Safety
& Health Administration, 2014).
There are different targets of workplace violence: a person could commit violence against coworkers, supervisors,
or property. Warning signs often precede such actions: intimidating behavior, threats, sabotaging equipment, or
radical changes in a coworker’s behavior. Often there is intimidation and then escalation that leads to even further
escalation. It is important for employees to involve their immediate supervisor if they ever feel intimidated or
unsafe.
Murder is the second leading cause of death in the workplace. It is also the primary cause of death for women in
the workplace. Every year there are nearly two million workers who are physically assaulted or threatened with
assault. Many are murdered in domestic violence situations by boyfriends or husbands who chose the woman’s
workplace to commit their crimes.
There are many triggers for workplace violence. A significant trigger is the feeling of being treated unfairly,
unjustly, or disrespectfully. In a research experiment, Greenberg (1993) examined the reactions of students who
were given pay for a task. In one group, the students were given extensive explanations for the pay rate. In the
second group, the students were given a curt uninformative explanation. The students were made to believe the
supervisor would not know how much money the student withdrew for payment. The rate of stealing (taking more
pay than they were told they deserved) was higher in the group who had been given the limited explanation. This
is a demonstration of the importance of procedural justice in organizations. Procedural justiceProcedural justice refers to the
fairness of the processes by which outcomes are determined in conflicts with or among employees.
In another study by Greenberg & Barling (1999), they found a history of aggression and amount of alcohol
consumed to be accurate predictors of workplace violence against a coworker. Aggression against a supervisor
was predicted if a worker felt unfairly treated or untrusted. Job security and alcohol consumption predicted
aggression against a subordinate. To understand and predict workplace violence, Greenberg & Barling (1999)
emphasize the importance of considering the employee target of aggression or violence and characteristics of
both the workplace characteristics and the aggressive or violent person.

GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
diversity training:diversity training: training employees about cultural differences with the goal of improving teamwork
organizational culture:organizational culture: values, visions, hierarchies, norms and interactions between its employees; how an
organization is run, how it operates, and how it makes decisions
procedural justice:procedural justice: fairness by which means are used to achieve results in an organization
sexual harassment:sexual harassment: sexually-based behavior that is knowingly unwanted and has an adverse effect of a
person’s employment status, interferes with a person’s job performance, or creates a hostile or intimidating
work environment
scientific management:scientific management: theory of management that analyzed and synthesized workflows with the main objective
of improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity
Theory X:Theory X: assumes workers are inherently lazy and unproductive; managers must have control and use
punishments
Theory Y:Theory Y: assumes workers are people who seek to work hard and productively; managers and workers can
find creative solutions to problems; workers do not need to be controlled and punished
transactional leadership style:transactional leadership style: characteristic of leaders who focus on supervision and organizational goals
achieved through a system of rewards and punishments; maintenance of the organizational status quo
transformational leadership style:transformational leadership style: characteristic of leaders who are charismatic role models, inspirational,
intellectually stimulating, and individually considerate and who seek to change the organization
workplace violence:workplace violence: violence or the threat of violence against workers; can occur inside or outside the
workplace
work team:work team: group of people within an organization or company given a specific task to achieve together
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HUMAN FACTORS PSYCHOLOGY AND
WORKPLACE DESIGN
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Describe the field of human factors psychology and give examples of its application
Human factors psychology (or ergonomics, a term that is favored in Europe) is the third subject area within
industrial and organizational psychology. This field is concerned with the integration of the human-machine
interface in the workplace, through design, and specifically with researching and designing machines that fit
human requirements. The integration may be physical or cognitive, or a combination of both. Anyone who needs
to be convinced that the field is necessary need only try to operate an unfamiliar television remote control or use a
new piece of software for the first time. Whereas the two other areas of I-O psychology focus on the interface
between the worker and team, group, or organization, human factors psychology focuses on the individual
worker’s interaction with a machine, work station, information displays, and the local environment, such as
lighting. In the United States, human factors psychology has origins in both psychology and engineering; this is

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reflected in the early contributions of Lillian Gilbreth (psychologist and engineer) and her husband Frank Gilbreth
(engineer).
Human factor professionals are involved in design from the beginning of a project, as is more common in software
design projects, or toward the end in testing and evaluation, as is more common in traditional industries (Howell,
2003). Another important role of human factor professionals is in the development of regulations and principles of
best design. These regulations and principles are often related to work safety. For example, the Three Mile Island
nuclear accident lead to Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requirements for additional instrumentation in
nuclear facilities to provide operators with more critical information and increased operator training (United States
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 2013). The American National Standards Institute (ANSI, 2000), an independent
developer of industrial standards, develops many standards related to ergonomic design, such as the design of
control-center workstations that are used for transportation control or industrial process control.
Many of the concerns of human factors psychology are related to workplace safety. These concerns can be
studied to help prevent work-related injuries of individual workers or those around them. Safety protocols may
also be related to activities, such as commercial driving or flying, medical procedures, and law enforcement, that
have the potential to impact the public.
One of the methods used to reduce accidents in the workplace is a checklistchecklist. The airline industry is one industry
that uses checklists. Pilots are required to go through a detailed checklist of the different parts of the aircraft
before takeoff to ensure that all essential equipment is working correctly. Astronauts also go through checklists
before takeoff. The surgical safety checklist shown in Figure 1 was developed by the World Health Organization
(WHO) and serves as the basis for many checklists at medical facilities.

Figure 1. Checklists, such as the WHO surgical checklist shown here, help reduce workplace accidents.
Safety concerns also lead to limits to how long an operator, such as a pilot or truck driver, is allowed to operate
the equipment. Recently the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) introduced limits for how long a pilot is allowed
to fly without an overnight break.
Howell (2003) outlines some important areas of research and practice in the field of human factors. These are
summarized in Table 1.

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Table 1. Areas of Study in Human Factors Psychology
AreaArea DescriptionDescription I-O QuestionsI-O Questions
Attention
Includes vigilance and monitoring, recognizing signals
in noise, mental resources, and divided attention
How is attention maintained? What
about tasks maintains attention?
How to design systems to support
attention?
Cognitive
engineering
Includes human software interactions in complex
automated systems, especially the decision-making
processes of workers as they are supported by the
software system
How do workers use and obtain
information provided by software?
Task
analysis
Breaking down the elements of a task
How can a task be performed more
efficiently? How can a task be
performed more safely?
Cognitive
task
analysis
Breaking down the elements of a cognitive task How are decisions made?
As an example of research in human factors psychology Bruno & Abrahão (2012) examined the impact of the
volume of operator decisions on the accuracy of decisions made within an information security center at a
banking institution in Brazil. The study examined a total of about 45,000 decisions made by 35 operators and 4
managers over a period of 60 days. Their study found that as the number of decisions made per day by the
operators climbed, that is, as their cognitive effort increased, the operators made more mistakes in falsely
identifying incidents as real security breaches (when, in reality, they were not). Interestingly, the opposite mistake
of identifying real intrusions as false alarms did not increase with increased cognitive demand. This appears to be
good news for the bank, since false alarms are not as costly as incorrectly rejecting a genuine threat. These kinds
of studies combine research on attention, perception, teamwork, and human–computer interactions in a field of
considerable societal and business significance. This is exactly the context of the events that led to the massive
data breach for Target in the fall of 2013. Indications are that security personnel received signals of a security
breach but did not interpret them correctly, thus allowing the breach to continue for two weeks until an outside
agency, the FBI, informed the company (Riley, Elgin, Lawrence, & Matlack, 2014).

GLOSSARYGLOSSARY
checklist:checklist: method used to reduce workplace accidents
An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-psychology/?p=324
THINK IT OVERTHINK IT OVER
• Describe an example of a technology or team and technology interaction that you have had in the
context of school or work that could have benefited from better design. What were the effects of the
poor design? Make one suggestion for its improvement.
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License TermsLicense Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/.
PUTTING IT TOGETHER: INDUSTRIAL-
ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
LEARNING OBJECTIVESLEARNING OBJECTIVES
In this module, you learned to
• describe the purpose of industrial-organizational psychology and examine its application to hiring and
evaluating employees
• explain how industrial-organizational psychologists assess leadership and organization
If you spent roughly 50 years of your life at work and work roughly forty hours a week, you can expect to work well
over 100,000 hours in your lifetime. That’s a lot of time! It’s no surprise then that psychologists are interested in
the social and organizational aspects of the workplace. Business owners, human resource officers, managers,
employers, and employees alike can benefit from understanding industrial-organizational psychology. Particularly
in our modern, fast-paced, profit-driven society, researchers are interested in behavior in the workplace as well as
consumer habits. Psychologists in these fields often team up with economists, marketers, and business
academics to discover more about what motivates behavior.
Consider the following: how much does a CEO make compared to the average worker? If you’re like most
Americans (many economists included), you probably have an estimate in your head that roughly translates as
“too much.” Pressed for a number, you might come up with a figure around 30 to 1.

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That’s a lot. Far more than what Americans
say they’d like it to be—about 7 to 1—but
much, much less than what it actually is: more
than 300 to 1. Put in real dollars, the average
CEO at a S&P 500 company today makes
about $12 million a year to the average
employee’s $36,000. We’re just as bad
at guesstimating wealth inequality.
But despite our ignorance, the vast majority of
Americans care a lot about the widening gap
between the rich and the middle class. In a
recent poll by Pew Research, Americans
named inequality the greatest threat to the
world — ahead of ethnic conflict, nuclear
weapons and climate change.
But do we care enough to change where we
shop? New research suggests we do.
In a series of online experiments, researchers Bhavya Mohan, Mike Norton and Rohit Deshpandé at Harvard
Business School found people were much more willing to buy a range of products, like towels and televisions,
from companies that pay their CEOs salaries closer to what they pay their average employees.
For example, in one experiment, they told people about a set of high-quality, 100 percent Turkish cotton towels.
They told one group that the CEO of the company makes $24 million and the average worker makes $24,000 — a
1,000 to 1 ratio like Walmart is estimated to have. The other group was told that the CEO makes 60 times more
than the average worker (as is the case at Costco) — in this case, $1,344,000 to the average workers’ $24,000.
Then they asked them how fair they thought the company’s wages were and how willing they were to buy the
towels. People said they were much more willing to buy from the Costco-type store than the Walmart one.
The researchers ran the experiment again, using different products — batteries, vacuum cleaners, restaurant gift
cards — and varying CEO pay ratios — 1,000 to 1, 60 to 1 or 5 to 1. In all their experiments, people said they
were much more willing to buy from companies with lower pay ratios.
They tried varying prices, offering 10, 20 and 50 percent discounts on products sold at the store with a higher pay
ratio. They also had people compare stores side by side and asked them how much they would be willing to pay
for identical products. Again, people still liked the stores with more equal wages — so much so that consumers
said they would pay more for products at stores with low ratios, while stores with high ratios like Walmart would
have to slash prices in half just to entice consumers to buy.
“We were surprised by how much it took to get a similar willingness to buy,” Mohan told me. “The high pay ratio
really affected their perception of the company and their product.”
One explanation for the finding is that consumers hate buying from stores they think are making a huge profit off
them. But this rationale doesn’t necessarily apply to wages. As Mohan and her colleagues note, companies with a
high pay ratio might actually appear to be more competitive and have higher quality products, because they can
attract the best talent with lavish compensation packages. Companies with low ratios, on the other hand, might
appear too “soft.”
So they tested that too. But Mohan and her colleagues didn’t find that consumers’ judgments about a company’s
management or the quality of its products were affected by paying their CEOs less.
They also looked at which consumers were most likely to be persuaded by pay ratios. It could be that a low ratio
might turn off Republican buyers who, according to a number of studies, tend to favor slightly greater
inequality than their Democratic counterparts. Democrats and Independents, as the researchers expected, liked
companies with lower ratios more, but Republicans were indifferent, suggesting if a company like Costco
advertised their low pay ratio they wouldn’t be alienating many, if any, of their customers.
It’s also yet to be seen how people’s preferences play out in real life. The participants in Mohan’s study didn’t
actually buy televisions or towels or lamps. They just said how willing they were to buy them. And as Mohan was
quick to point out, it’s much easier to state our best intentions than follow through with them.

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http://www.aflcio.org/Corporate-Watch/Paywatch-2014

http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/10/16/middle-easterners-see-religious-and-ethnic-hatred-as-top-global-threat/

http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/15-091_eb472863-c73b-4aca-a8ee-d7dc1748a91d

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3152092?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

“CEO pay is out of control. I agree about that, absolutely,” Elson said. “But most consumers are completely,
utterly unaware about the internal management of companies. People buy on quality and price.”
Elson equates it to a PR scandal. When workers in Apple’s Chinese factories began killing themselves or when
Bank of America awarded its executives multimillion dollar bonuses in the midst of the financial meltdown, public
outrage did not result in change.
But even if the results in Mohan’s study were a bit exaggerated, real life results tend to go in the same direction.
In follow-up studies, Mohan and her colleagues are now testing to see if consumers actually do choose stores
with low pay ratios over others when shopping with their own money. The final tally isn’t in, but preliminary data
suggests they do.
Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions
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DISCUSSION: INDUSTRIAL-ORGANIZATIONAL
PSYCHOLOGY
Thinking about Industrial/Organizational Psychology
STEP 1STEP 1: Respond to ONE of the following questions in a post of at least 200 words:
1. After reading this module, what topic or topics in I/O psychology seemed most interesting to you? Why?
What other things would you like to know about this topic?
2. One of your friends started a window washing business a few years ago, and his business has slowly
grown. He’s now at the point where he needs to hire employees. What advice would you give him about
how to conduct an interview? Use recommendations from your reading to support your answer.
STEP 2STEP 2: Post a thoughtful and conversation-facilitating comment on at least TWO other posts, in at least 75
words each.
Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions
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• Discussion: Industrial-Organizational Psychology. Provided byProvided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseLicense: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
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• Discussion questions. Authored byAuthored by: Berrin Erdogan and Talya N. Bauer . Provided byProvided by: Portland State University, Kou00e7 University. Located atLocated at: http://nobaproject.com/modules/industrial-organizational-i-o-psychology.
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Introduction to Psychology
Introduction to Psychology

Lumen Learning

Contents
Course Contents
About This Course
What’s New?
About Lumen
Course Contents at a Glance
Module 1: Psychological Foundations
Module 2: Psychological Research
Module 3: Biopsychology
Module 4: State of Consciousness
Module 5: Sensation and Perception
Module 6: Thinking and Intelligence
Module 7: Memory
Module 8: Learning
Module 9: Lifespan Development
Module 10: Social Psychology
Module 11: Personality
Module 12: Emotion and Motivation
Module 13: Industrial-Organizational Psychology
Module 14: Psychological Disorders
Module 15: Therapy and Treatment
Module 16: Stress, Lifestyle, and Health
Learning Outcomes
Module 1: Psychological Foundations
Module 2: Psychological Research
Biological Psychology Domain
Module 3: Biopsychology
Module 4: State of Consciousness
Cognitive Psychology Domain
Module 5: Sensation and Perception
Module 6: Thinking and Intelligence
Module 7: Memory
Developmental Psychology Domain
Module 8: Learning
Module 9: Lifespan Development
Social and Personality Psychology Domain
Module 10: Social Psychology
Module 11: Personality
Module 12: Emotion and Motivation
Module 13: Industrial-Organizational Psychology
Mental and Physical Health Domain
Module 14: Psychological Disorders
Module 15: Therapy and Treatment
Module 16: Stress, Lifestyle, and Health

Module 1: Psychological Foundations
Why It Matters: Psychological Foundations
The History of Psychology
What you’ll learn to do: describe the evolution of psychology and the major pioneers in the field
Learning Objectives
What is Psychology?
Try It
Wundt and Structuralism
Try It
James and Functionalism
Try It
Try It
Psychoanalytic Theory
The Id, Ego, and Superego
Psychosexual Theory of Development
Try It
Gestalt Psychology (Wertheimer, Koffka, and Köhler)
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
The History of Psychology Continued
Learning Objectives
Behavioral Psychology
Try It
Maslow, Rogers, and Humanism
Try It
The Cognitive Revolution
Cognitive Psychology
Try It
Multicultural Psychology
Link to Learning
Summary of the History of Psychology
Try It
Glossary
Domains in Psychology
What you’ll learn to do: identify the various approaches, fields, and subfields of psychology along with their major concepts and important figures
Learning Objectives
Introduction to Contemporary Psychology
Link to Learning
Helpful Hints
Try It

The Biological Domain
Evolutionary Psychology
Sensation and Perception
Try It

The Cognitive Domain
Try It
The Developmental Domain
Behavioral Psychology
Try It

The Social and Personality Psychology Domain
Personality Psychology
Try It

The Mental and Physical Health Domain
Clinical Psychology
Health Psychology
Try It

Other Psychological Subfields
Industrial-Organizational Psychology
Sport and Exercise Psychology
Forensic Psychology
Link to Learning
Try It
Glossary
Careers in Psychology
What you’ll learn to do: describe the value of psychology and possible careers paths for those who study psychology
Learning Objectives
Merits of an Education in Psychology
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Careers in Psychology
Other Careers in Academic Settings
Career Options Outside of Academics
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Putting It Together: Psychological Foundations
Learning Objectives
Word Aversion
How prevalent is an aversion to “moist” and who’s averse?
What makes a word aversive?
What do we learn from these studies?

Discussion: Foundations of Psychology
Perspectives in Psychology
Module 2: Psychological Research
Why It Matters: Psychological Research
The Scientific Method
What you’ll learn to do: define and apply the scientific method to psychology
Learning Objectives
Try It
The Process of Scientific Research
The Basic Principles of the Scientific Method
Try It
Try It
Applying the Scientific Method
Try It
Link to Learning

Why the Scientific Method Is Important for Psychology
Link to Learning
Research Involving Human Participants
Try It
Dig Deeper: Ethics and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study
Research Involving Animal Subjects
Try It
Glossary
Descriptive Research
What you’ll learn to do: describe the strengths and weaknesses of descriptive, experimental, and correlational research
More on Research
Learning Objectives

Descriptive Research
Try It
Case Studies
Link to Learning
Try It
Naturalistic Observation
Try It
Surveys
Try It
Think It Over
Archival Research
Longitudinal and Cross-Sectional Research
Try It
Glossary
Correlational Research
Learning Objectives
Correlational Research
Link to Learning
Try It
Correlation Does Not Indicate Causation
Try It
Link to Learning
Illusory Correlations
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Experiments
Learning Objectives
Causality: Conducting Experiments and Using the Data
The Experimental Hypothesis
Designing an Experiment
Try It
Independent and Dependent Variables
Try It
Selecting and Assigning Experimental Participants
Try It
Issues to Consider
Try It
Link to Learning
Glossary
Statistical Thinking
What you’ll learn to do: define basic elements of a statistical investigation
Learning Objectives
Interpreting Experimental Findings
Reporting Research
Link to Learning
Dig Deeper: The Vaccine-Autism Myth and the Retraction of Published Studies
Reliability and Validity
Everyday Connection: How Valid Is the SAT?
Try It
Introduction to Statistical Thinking
Distributional Thinking
Try It
Statistical Significance
P-value
Try It
Generalizability
Try It
Cause and Effect Conclusions
THE REPLICATION CRISIS
Conclusion
Learn More
Think It Over
Glossary
How to Read Research
Learning Objectives
Link to Learning
Try It
Learning Objectives
Watching TV is Related to Math Ability
Try It
The McCabe & Castel Experiment
Try It
The Procedure
The Ratings
Try It
Results
RESULTS FOR (a) ACCURACY OF THE TITLE AND (b) QUALITY OF THE WRITING
RESULTS FOR (c) SCIENTIFIC REASONING ASSESSMENT
Try It
Conclusions
Does it Replicate? The Messy World of Real Science
Try It
The “Replication Crisis”
One Final Note
Psych in Real Life: Brain Imaging and Messy Science
Learning Objectives
Watching TV is Related to Math Ability
Try It
The McCabe & Castel Experiment
Try It
The Procedure
The Ratings
Try It
Results
RESULTS FOR (a) ACCURACY OF THE TITLE AND (b) QUALITY OF THE WRITING
RESULTS FOR (c) SCIENTIFIC REASONING ASSESSMENT
Try It
Conclusions
Does it Replicate? The Messy World of Real Science
Try It
The “Replication Crisis”
One Final Note
Putting It Together: Psychological Research
Learning Objectives
Discussion: Research in Psychology
Analyzing Research
Module 3: Biopsychology
Why It Matters: Biopsychology
Neural Communication
What you’ll learn to do: identify the basic structures of a neuron, the function of each structure, and how messages travel through the neuron
Learning Objectives
Neurons
Neuron Structure
Link to Learning
Try It
Glossary
The Nervous System and Endocrine System
What you’ll learn to do: describe the role of the nervous system and endocrine systems
Learning Objectives
The Central Nervous System and the Peripheral Nervous System
Peripheral Nervous System
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
The Endocrine System
Major Glands
Try It
Dig Deeper: Athletes and Anabolic Steroids
Hormones and Behavior
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Parts of the Brain
What you’ll learn to do: identify and describe the parts of the brain
Learning Objectives

The Central Nervous System
The Brain
The Spinal Cord
The Two Hemispheres
Link to Learning
Link to Learning
Try It
Forebrain Structures
Lobes of the Brain
Try It
Link to learning
Try It
Food for Thought
Try It
Glossary
The Limbic System and Other Brain Areas
Learning Objectives
Areas of the Forebrain
The Case of Henry Molaison (H.M.)
Try It
Link to Learning
Midbrain and Hindbrain Structures
Link to Learning
What Do You Think?: Brain Dead and on Life Support
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Brain Imaging
Learning Objectives
Techniques Involving Radiation
Techniques Involving Magnetic Fields
Link to Learning
Techniques Involving Electrical Activity
Try It
Glossary
Lateralization and Neuroplasticity
Nature and Nurture
What you’ll learn to do: explain how nature, nurture, and epigenetics influence personality and behavior
Learning Objectives
The Nature vs. Nurture Debate
What Have We Learned About Nature–Nurture?
Try It
Think It Over
Link to Learning
Dig Deeper: Two Perspectives on Genetics and Behavior
Link to Learning
Try It
Genetic Variation
Try It
Glossary
Gene-Environment Interactions
Learning Objectives
Link to Learning
DiG Deeper: Parental Investment and programming of stress responses in Offspring
Try It
Glossary
Putting It Together: Biopsychology
Learning Objectives
Discussion: Biopsychology
Using Your Brain
Module 4: Sensation and Perception
Why It Matters: Sensation and Perception
Sensation and Perception
What you’ll learn to do: differentiate between sensation and perception
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Sensation
Dig Deeper: Unconscious Perception
Try It
Think It Over
Perception
Try It
Attention and Perception
Link to Learning
Link to Learning
Motivations, Expectations, and Perception
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Vision
What you’ll learn to do: explain the process of vision and how people see color and depth
Learning Objectives
Anatomy of the Visual System
Try It
Try It
Amplitude and Wavelength
Light Waves
Try It
Color Vision
Try It
Depth Perception
Dig Deeper: Stereoblindness
Try It
Integration with Other Modalities
Link to Learning
Think It Over
Glossary
Hearing
What you’ll learn to do: explain the basics of hearing
Learning Objectives

How We Hear
Anatomy of the Auditory System
Try It
Sound Waves
Link to Learning
Try It
Pitch Perception
Sound Localization
Try It
Hearing Loss
What Do You Think?: Deaf Culture
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Taste and Smell
What you’ll learn to do: describe the basic anatomy and functions of taste, smell, touch, pain, and the vestibular sense
Learning Objectives
The Chemical Senses
Taste (Gustation)
Smell (Olfaction)
Try It
Learning Objectives
Glossary
Touch and Pain
Learning Objectives
Touch, Thermoception, and Noiception
Try It
Pain Perception
Life Without Pain?
Link to Learning
Action Potentials in the Receptor Cells Travel as Nerve Impulses with Different Speeds
Pain Is Necessary for Survival, but Our Brain Can Stop It if It Needs To
The Motivation–Decision Model and Descending Modulation of Pain
The Analgesic Power of Reward
The Power of the Mind
Try It
Glossary
The Vestibular Sense
Learning Objectives
The Vestibular Sense, Proprioception, and Kinesthesia
Link to Learning
Try It
Glossary
Perception
What you’ll learn to do: define perception and give examples of gestalt principles and multimodal perception
Learning Objectives

Gestalt Principles of Perception
Link to Learning
Dig Deeper: The Depths of Perception: Bias, Prejudice, and Cultural Factors
Try It
Think It Over
Multi-Modal Perception
Behavioral Effects of Multimodal Perception
Multimodal Phenomena
Audiovisual Speech
Try It
Tactile/Visual Interactions in Body Ownership
Crossmodal Phenomena
Visual Influence on Auditory Localization
Auditory Influence on Visual Perception
Link to Learning
Crossmodal Speech
Think It Over
Glossary
Illusions
Learning Objectives
Why Illusions?
Depth Illusions
Light and Size Illusions
Try It
Link to Learning
Ebbinghaus in the Real World
Methods Summary
Try It
Try It
Try It
Link to Learning
A Final Note: Science Doesn’t Always Produce Simple Results
Putting It Together: Sensation and Perception
Learning Objectives
Discussion: Sensation and Perception
Cultural Influences on Perception
Module 5: State of Consciousness
Why It Matters: States of Consciousness
Consciousness and Biological Rhythms
What you’ll learn to do: describe consciousness and biological rhythms
Learning Objectives
Consciousness
Biological Rhythms
Problems with Circadian Rhythms
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Disruptions of Normal Sleep
Insufficient Sleep
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Learning Objectives
Blindsight
Try It
Blindsight in Action
How can blindsight happen?
Try It
Examining Blindsight
Creating Blindsight in the Laboratory
TMS: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
Laboratory Research on Unconscious Visual Processing
Experiment 1: Unconscious Detection of Orientation
Try It
Variations of the Experiment
Testing Blindsight with TMS
Conclusions from the Research
Some Final Words
Psych in Real Life: Consciousness and Blindsight
Learning Objectives
Blindsight
Try It
Blindsight in Action
How can blindsight happen?
Try It
Examining Blindsight
Creating Blindsight in the Laboratory
TMS: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
Laboratory Research on Unconscious Visual Processing
Experiment 1: Unconscious Detection of Orientation
Try It
Variations of the Experiment
Testing Blindsight with TMS
Conclusions from the Research
Some Final Words
Sleep and Sleep Stages
What you’ll learn to do: describe what happens to the brain and body during sleep
Learning Objectives
What is Sleep?
Why Do We Sleep?
Adaptive Function of Sleep
Cognitive Function of Sleep
Link to Learning
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over

Stages of Sleep
NREM Stages of Sleep
Try It
REM Sleep
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Dreams and Dreaming
Learning Objectives
Dreams
Theories on Dreaming
Link to Learning
Try It
Glossary
Sleep Problems and Disorders
Learning Objectives
Insomnia
Parasomnias
Sleepwalking
Dig Deeper: A Sleepwalking Defense?
REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD)
Other Parasomnias
Try It
Sleep Apnea
SIDS
Narcolepsy
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Drugs and Consciousness
What you’ll learn to do: explain how drugs affect consciousness
Learning Objectives
Substance Abuse Disorders
Link to Learning
Drug Categories
Try It
Depressants
Try It
Stimulants
Dig Deeper: Crack Cocaine
Link to Learning
Try It
Opioids
Try It
Hallucinogens
Dig Deeper: Medical Marijuana
Try It
Summary of Psychoactive Drugs
Link to Learning
Try It
Glossary
Hypnosis and Meditation
Learning Objectives
Hypnosis
Try It
Meditation
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Putting It Together: States of Consciousness
Learning Objectives
link tO Learning
Discussion: States of Consciousness
Sleep Stages
Module 6: Learning
Why It Matters: Learning

What Is Learning?
What you’ll learn to do: explain learning and the process of classical conditioning
Learning Objectives
Learning
Try It
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Classical Conditioning
Learning Objectives
Link to Learning
Try It
Real World Application of Classical Conditioning
Link to Learning
Everyday Connection: Classical Conditioning at Stingray City
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over

Processes in Classical Conditioning
Try It
Classical Conditioning and Behaviorism
Link to Learning
Everyday Connection: Advertising and Associative Learning
Try It
Key Takeaways
Operant Conditioning
What you’ll learn to do: explain operant conditioning, reinforcement, and punishment
Learning Objectives
Try It
Link to Learning
Try It
Reinforcement
Link to Learning
Punishment
Try It
Shaping
Link to Learning
Try It
Primary and Secondary Reinforcers
Everyday Connection: Behavior Modification in Children
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Reinforcement Schedules
Learning Objectives
Try It
Connect the Concepts: Gambling and the Brain
Link to Learning
Glossary
Latent Learning
What you’ll learn to do: describe latent learning and observational learning
Learning Objectives
Everyday Connection: This Place Is Like a Maze
Link to Learning
Try It
Tolman’s Experiment
Try It
Try It
Try It
Work It out
Try It
Glossary
Observational Learning
Learning Objectives
Link to Learning
Try It
Steps in the Modeling Process
Link to Learning
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over

The Bobo Doll Experiment
Phase 1 of the Experiment: The Observation Phase
Phase 2 of the Experiment: Frustration
Try It
Phase 3 of the Experiment: The Testing Phase
Try It
Try It
Glossary
Putting It Together: Learning
Learning Objectives
Discussion: Learning
What I Learned
Module 7: Memory
Why It Matters: Memory
Memory Encoding
What you’ll learn to do: explain the process of memory
Link to Learning
Learning Objectives
Encoding
Try It
Recoding
Try It
Glossary
Storage
Learning Objectives
Sensory Memory
Short-Term Memory
Long-term Memory
Try It
Everyday Connection: Can You Remember Everything You Ever Did or Said?
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Retrieval
Learning Objectives
Memory Cues
Types of Retrieval
Recall and Recognition
Retrieval and Reconstruction
Link to Learning
Try It
Glossary
Parts of the Brain Involved with Memory
Learning Objectives
The Amygdala
Link to Learning
The Hippocampus
Link to Learning
The Cerebellum and Prefrontal Cortex
Neurotransmitters
Dig Deeper: Inaccurate and False Memories
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Amnesia and Forgetting
What you’ll learn to do: explain and give examples of forgetting and memory failure
Learning Objectives
Amnesia
Anterograde Amnesia
Retrograde Amnesia
Link to Learning
Try It

Forgetting
Encoding Failure
Memory Errors
Try It
Try It
Interference
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Flashbulb Memories
Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Construction
Learning Objectives
Memory Construction and Reconstruction
Suggestibility
Eyewitness Misidentification
Link to Learning
Dig Deeper: Preserving Eyewitness Memory: The Elizabeth Smart Case
Try It
The Misinformation Effect
Controversies over Repressed and Recovered Memories
More on False Memories
Think It Over
Glossary
Ways to Enhance Memory
What you’ll learn to do: recognize and apply memory-enhancing strategies
Learning Objectives
Memory-Enhancing Strategies
Link to Learning
Link to Learning
Using Peg-Words
Try It
How to Study Effectively
Memory Tests
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Putting It Together: Memory
Learning Objectives
Discussion: Memory
Explaining Memory
Module 8: Thinking, Language, and Intelligence
Why It Matters: Thinking and Intelligence
What Is Cognition?
What you’ll learn to do: describe cognition and problem-solving strategies
Learning Objectives
Cognition
Categories and Concepts
Concepts and Prototypes
Try It
link to learning
Natural and Artificial Concepts
Try It
Schemata
Try It
Link to Learning
Think It Over
Glossary
Solving Problems
Learning Objectives
Problem-Solving Strategies
Link to Learning
Everyday Connections: Solving Puzzles
Try It

Pitfalls to Problem-Solving
Link to Learning
Try It
Link to Learning
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Learning Objectives
Choice Blindness
The Attraction Preference Experiment
But is it Real? The Value of Replication
Case #1
Try It
Case #2
Try It
Case #3
Try It
Case #4
Try It
Link to Learning
From Phenomenon to Scientific Exploration
Try It
Two Variables: Time and Similarity
The Results
Try It
What Do These Results Tell Us?
A Final Thought
Psych in Real Life: Choice Blindness
Learning Objectives
Choice Blindness
The Attraction Preference Experiment
But is it Real? The Value of Replication
Case #1
Try It
Case #2
Try It
Case #3
Try It
Case #4
Try It
Link to Learning
From Phenomenon to Scientific Exploration
Try It
Two Variables: Time and Similarity
The Results
Try It
What Do These Results Tell Us?
A Final Thought
Language and Language Use
What you’ll learn to do: describe language acquisition and the role language plays in communication and thought
Learning Objectives
How Do We Use Language?
Try It
Try It
What Do We Talk About?
Glossary
Language Development
Learning Objectives
Components of Language
Try It
Try It
Language Development
Dig Deeper: The Case of Genie
Link to Learning
Try It
Language and Thinking
What Do You Think?: The Meaning of Language
Link to Learning
Try It
Glossary
Intelligence and Creativity
What you’ll learn to do: describe intelligence theories and intelligence testing
Learning Objectives
Classifying Intelligence
Test It Out
Try It
link to learning
Try It
Think It Over
Creativity
Creativity: What Is It?
Cognitive Processes: How Do Creators Think?
Link to Learning
Everyday Connection: Creativity
Try It
Glossary
Measures of Intelligence
Learning Objectives
Measuring Intelligence
What Do You Think?: Intellectually Disabled Criminals and Capital Punishment
Try It
Why Measure Intelligence?
The Bell Curve
Dig Deeper: What’s in a Name? Mental Retardation
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
The Source of Intelligence
Learning Objectives
High Intelligence: Nature or Nurture?
What are Learning Disabilities?
Dysgraphia
Dyslexia
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Putting It Together: Thinking and Intelligence
Learning Objectives
Link to Learning
Discussion: Thinking and Intelligence
Thinking about Intelligence
Module 9: Emotion and Motivation
Why It Matters: Emotion and Motivation
Motivation
What you’ll learn to do: explain motivation, how it is influenced, and major theories about motivation
Learning Objectives
Try It
Try It

Theories about Motivation
Try It
Self-efficacy and Social Motives
Link to Learning
Try It

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Learning Objectives
How Mindset Influences Performance
Study 1: Mueller & Dweck (1998)
Try It
Try It
Stage 1: Pretest, Treatment, and Assessment of Motivation
PRETEST
TREATMENT
ASSESSMENT
Try It
Stage 2: Failure, Negative Feedback, and Consequences
FAILURE
CONSEQUENCES
RESULTS
STAGE 3: POSTTEST
Try It
Try It
Try It

Study 2: Blackwell, Trzesniewski, and Dweck (2007)
Takeaways
Psych in Real Life: Growth Mindsets
Learning Objectives
How Mindset Influences Performance
Study 1: Mueller & Dweck (1998)
Try It
Try It
Stage 1: Pretest, Treatment, and Assessment of Motivation
PRETEST
TREATMENT
ASSESSMENT
Try It
Stage 2: Failure, Negative Feedback, and Consequences
FAILURE
CONSEQUENCES
RESULTS
STAGE 3: POSTTEST
Try It
Try It
Try It

Study 2: Blackwell, Trzesniewski, and Dweck (2007)
Takeaways
Hunger and Eating
What you’ll learn to do: describe hunger and eating in relation to motivation, obesity, anorexia, and bulimia
Learning Objectives
Physiological Mechanisms
Link to Learning
Metabolism and Body Weight
Obesity
Link to Learning
Dig Deeper: Prader-Willi Syndrome
Try It

Eating Disorders
Link to Learning
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Sexual Behavior
What you’ll learn to do: describe sexual behavior and research about sexuality
Learning Objectives
Physiological Mechanisms of Sexual Behavior and Motivation
Try It
Kinsey’s Research
Link to Learning
Masters and Johnson’s Research
Link to Learning
Try It

Sexual Orientation
Misunderstandings about Sexual Orientation
Link to Learning
Gender Identity
Link to Learning
Cultural Factors in Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
Dig Deeper: The Case of David Reimer
Link to Learning
Try It
Glossary
Emotion
What you’ll learn to do: explain theories of emotion and how we express and recognize emotion
Learning Objectives
Theories of Emotion
Try It
Psychology in Music
Link to Learning
Try It
Learning Objectives
Glossary
Expressing and Recognizing Emotion
Learning Objectives

The Biology of Emotions
Link to Learning
Amygdala
Hippocampus
Link to Learning
Try It
Facial Expression and Recognition of Emotions
Link to Learning
Link to Learning
Link to Learning
Connect the Concepts: Autism Spectrum Disorder and Expression of Emotions
Try It
Glossary
Putting It Together: Motivation and Emotion
Learning Objectives
Discussion: Motivation and Emotion
What Motivates You?
Module 10: Lifespan Development
Why It Matters: Introduction to Lifespan Development

What Is Lifespan Development?
What you’ll learn to do: compare and contrast theories lifespan development theories
Learning Objectives
Connect the Concepts: Research Methods in Developmental Psychology
Link to Learning
Try It
Issues in Developmental Psychology
Is Development Continuous or Discontinuous?
Is There One Course of Development or Many?
Try It
How Do Nature and Nurture Influence Development?
Dig Deeper: The Achievement Gap: How Does Socioeconomic Status Affect Development?
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Psychosexual and Psychosocial Theories of Development
Learning Objectives
Psychosexual Theory of Development
Psychosocial Theory of Development
Try It
Glossary
Cognitive Development
Learning Objectives
Cognitive Theory of Development
Link to Learning
Try It
Link to Learning
Try It
Link to Learning
Link to Learning
Try It
Try It
Beyond Formal Operational Thought
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Moral Development
Learning ObjectiveS
Theory of Moral Development
Try It
The Foundation of Moral Reasoning in Infants
EXPERIMENT 1: Do children prefer givers or takers?
Try It
Work It Out
EXPERIMENT 2: Do infants judge others based on their behavior?
Try It
Try It
EXPERIMENT 3: Do infants judge others based on their preferences?
Try It
Work It Out
CONCLUSIONS
Key Takeaways
Prenatal Development
What you’ll learn to do: explain the physical, cognitive, and emotional development that occurs from infancy through childhood
Learning Objectives
Prenatal Development
Germinal Stage (Weeks 1–2)
Embryonic Stage (Weeks 3–8)
Fetal Stage (Weeks 9–40)
Try It
Prenatal Influences
What Do You Think? Should Women Who Use Drugs During Pregnancy Be Arrested and Jailed?
Try It
Infancy
Link to Learning
Try It
Glossary
Childhood
Learning Objectives
Physical Development
Try It
Cognitive Development
Link to Learning
Try It
Everyday Connection: The Importance of Play and Recess
Attachment
Link to Learning
Link to Learning
Try It
Self-Concept
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Adolescence
What you’ll learn to do: describe physical, cognitive, and emotional development in adolescence and adulthood
Learning Objectives
Physical Development
Link to Learning
Try It
Cognitive Development
Psychosocial Development
Emerging Adulthood
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Adulthood
Learning Objectives
Physical Development
Link to Learning
Cognitive Development
Link to Learning
Psychosocial Development
Link to Learning
Try It
Glossary
Death and Dying
Learning Objectives
Try It
Try It
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Putting It Together: Lifespan Development
Learning Objectives
Discussion: Lifespan Development
Stages of Development
Module 11: Personality
Why It Matters: Personality
Personality and the Psychodynamic Perspective
What you’ll learn to do: define personality and the contributions of Freud and neo-Freudians to personality theory
Learning Objectives

What is Personality?
Historical Perspectives
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over

Freud and the Psychodynamic Perspective
Levels of Consciousness
Try It
Defense Mechanisms
Try It
Stages of Psychosexual Development
Oral Stage
Anal Stage
Phallic Stage
Latency Period
Genital Stage
Freud’s Theories Today
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Neo-Freudians: Adler, Erikson, Jung, and Horney
Learning Objectives
Alfred Adler
Link to Learning
Erik Erikson
Carl Jung
Connect the Concepts: Are Archetypes Genetically Based?
Try It
Karen Horney
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Explaining Personality: Learning and Humanistic Approaches
What you’ll learn to do: describe and differentiate between personality theories
Learning Objectives

Learning Approaches
The Behavioral Perspective
The Social-Cognitive Perspective
Reciprocal Determinism
Try It
Observational Learning
Self-Efficacy
Julian Rotter and Locus of Control
Link to Learning
Try It
Walter Mischel and the Person-Situation Debate
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over

Humanistic Approaches
Unconditional Positive Regard
Try It
“The Good Life”
Criticisms of Rogers’ Theories
Think It Over
Glossary
Explaining Personality: Biological Approaches and Trait Theories
Learning Objectives

Biological Approaches
Try It
Temperament
Connect the Concepts: Body Type and Temperament
Try It
Think It Over

Trait Theories
Link to Learning
Try It
The Big 5
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over

Cultural Understandings of Personality
Personality in Individualist and Collectivist Cultures
Approaches to Studying Personality in a Cultural Context
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Personality Assessment
What you’ll learn to do: explain the use and purpose of common personality tests
Learning Objectives
Self-Report Inventories
Projective Tests
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Learning Objectives

Part 1: Creating a Personality Questionnaire
Part 1: Creating the Blirt Scale
Scale Construction: What Questions Should We Use?
Try It
Measuring Personality

Part 2: Does the Blirt Scale Measure What It Claims to Measure?
Analyzing Validity
Convergent and Discriminant Validity
Try It
Try It
Criterion Validity
Librarians or Salespeople?
Try It
Asian Americans or European Americans?
Try It
Predictive Validity
Try It
Measuring Personality
Glossary
Psych in Real Life: Blirtatiousness, Questionnaires, and Validity
Learning Objectives

Part 1: Creating a Personality Questionnaire
Part 1: Creating the Blirt Scale
Scale Construction: What Questions Should We Use?
Try It
Measuring Personality

Part 2: Does the Blirt Scale Measure What It Claims to Measure?
Analyzing Validity
Convergent and Discriminant Validity
Try It
Try It
Criterion Validity
Librarians or Salespeople?
Try It
Asian Americans or European Americans?
Try It
Predictive Validity
Try It
Measuring Personality
Glossary
Resource: Personality Tests
Putting It Together: Personality
Learning Objectives
Discussion: Personality
Personality and the Grinch
Module 12: Social Psychology
Why It Matters: Social Psychology

Social Psychology and Influences on Behavior
What you’ll learn to do: recognize aspects of social psychology, including the fundamental attribution error, biases, social roles, and social norms, in your daily life
Learning Objectives
Situational and Dispositional Influences on Behavior
Try It
Fundamental Attribution Error
Is the Fundamental Attribution Error a Universal Phenomenon?
Try It
Actor-Observer Bias
Self-Serving Bias
Try It
Just-World Hypothesis
Link to Learning
Think It Over
Glossary
Social Norms and Scripts
Learning Objectives
Social Roles
Social Norms
Connect the Concepts: Tweens, Teens, and Social Norms
Scripts
Try It
Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Attitudes and Persuasion
What you’ll learn to do: describe how attitudes can be changed through cognitive dissonance and persuasion
Learning Objectives
Try It
What is Cognitive Dissonance?
Try It
The Effect of Initiation
Try It
Think It Over

Persuasion
Yale Attitude Change Approach
Elaboration Likelihood Model
Try It
Foot-in-the-door Technique
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Group Behavior
What you’ll learn to do: explain how conformity, obedience, groupthink, social facilitation, social loafing, altruism, and attraction relate to group behavior
Learning OBjectives
Conformity
Try It
Link to Learning
Try It
Stanley Milgram’s Experiment
Examples
Try It
Think It Over
Groupthink
Dig Deeper: Groupthink in the U.S. Government
Try It
Group Polarization
Try It
Social Facilitation
Social Loafing
Link to Learning
Try It
Glossary
The Bystander Effect and Altruism
Learning Objectives
When Do People Help?
Defining the situation: The role of pluralistic ignorance
Do I have to be the one to help?: Diffusion of responsibility
The costs and rewards of helping
Why Help?
Evolutionary roots for prosocial behavior
Egoistic motivation for helping
Altruistic help
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Attraction and Love
Learning Objectives
Forming Relationships
Try It
Attraction
Link to Learning
Try It
Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love
Link to Learning
Try It
Social Exchange Theory
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Learning Objectives
Relationships and Health
Experiment 1: Love and Pain
PARTICIPANTS
PAIN INDUCTION
EXPERIMENTAL CONDITIONS
PROCEDURE
Try It
RESULTS
Try It
Try It
CONCLUSIONS
Experiment 2: Reducing Pain in the Brain
DETAILS OF THE EXPERIMENT
GOAL OF THE EXPERIMENT
RESULTS OF THE REWARD SYSTEM EXPERIMENT
Try It
BRAIN IMAGING RESULTS
CONCLUSIONS
General Conclusions
Psych in Real Life: Love and Pain
Learning Objectives
Relationships and Health
Experiment 1: Love and Pain
PARTICIPANTS
PAIN INDUCTION
EXPERIMENTAL CONDITIONS
PROCEDURE
Try It
RESULTS
Try It
Try It
CONCLUSIONS
Experiment 2: Reducing Pain in the Brain
DETAILS OF THE EXPERIMENT
GOAL OF THE EXPERIMENT
RESULTS OF THE REWARD SYSTEM EXPERIMENT
Try It
BRAIN IMAGING RESULTS
CONCLUSIONS
General Conclusions
Prejudice and Discrimination
What you’ll learn to do: explain prejudice, discrimination, and aggression
Learning Objectives
Understanding Prejudice and Discrimination
Link to Learning
Try It
Types of Prejudice and Discrimination
Racism
Link to Learning
Sexism
Ageism
Homophobia
Dig Deeper: Research into Homophobia
Try It

Why do Prejudice and Discrimination Exist?
Stereotypes and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Link to Learning
In-Groups and Out-Groups
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Aggression
Learning Objectives
Aggression
Bullying
Cyberbullying
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Putting It Together: Social Psychology
Learning Objectives
Discussion: Social Psychology
Thinking about Social Psychology
Module 13: Stress, Lifestyle, and Health
Why It Matters: Stress, Lifestyle, and Health
Stress
What you’ll learn to do: describe stress, its impact on the body, and identify common stressors
Learning Objectives

What is Stress?
Try It
Good Stress?
The Prevalence of Stress
Try It
Think It Over
Early Contributions to the Study of Stress
Cannon and the Fight-or-Flight Response
Selye and the General Adaptation Syndrome
Try It
The Physiological Basis of Stress
Try It
Glossary
Stressors
Learning Objectives
Traumatic Events
Life Changes
Link to Learning
Connect the Concepts: Correlational Research
Try It
Hassles
Other Stressors
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Stress and Illness
What you’ll learn to do: explain the negative physiological responses to stress
Learning Objectives
Psychophysiological Disorders
Link to Learning
Stress and the Immune System
Immune System Errors
Stressors and Immune Function
Stress and Aging: A Tale of Telomeres
Try It
Cardiovascular Disorders
Are you Type A or Type B?
Depression and the Heart
Stress and Asthma
Try It
Glossary
Regulating Stress
What you’ll learn to do: describe methods to cope with stress and explain ways to increase happiness
Learning Objectives
Coping Styles
Try It
Control and Stress
Dig Deeper: Learned Helplessness
Try It
Think It Over
Social Support
Dig Deeper: Coping with Prejudice and Discrimination
Try It
Stress Reduction Techniques
Glossary
Positive Psychology
Learning Objectives
Dig Deeper: The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds
Positive Affect and Optimism
Flow
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Learning Objectives
Habits: The Good, the Bad, and the Consequences
How Much of Your Time is Guided by Habits?
The Diary Method
The Results of the Diary Study
Studying Habits by Changing Them
The Popcorn Study
The Setup
Try It
Try It
Try It
Breaking Bad Habits
Results
Try It
How to Create Good Habits
Final Thoughts
Psych in Real Life: Habits
Learning Objectives
Habits: The Good, the Bad, and the Consequences
How Much of Your Time is Guided by Habits?
The Diary Method
The Results of the Diary Study
Studying Habits by Changing Them
The Popcorn Study
The Setup
Try It
Try It
Try It
Breaking Bad Habits
Results
Try It
How to Create Good Habits
Final Thoughts
Putting It Together: Stress, Lifestyle, and Health
Learning Objectives
Discussion: Stress, Lifestyle, and Health
Thoughts on Stress and Happiness
Module 14: Psychological Disorders
Why It Matters: Psychological Disorders

Introduction to Psychological Disorders
What you’ll learn to do: define psychological disorders and explain how they are classified
Learning Objectives

What are Psychological Disorders?
Definition of a Psychological Disorder
Cultural Expectations
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) Definition
Try It
Try It
Think It Over

Diagnosing and Classifying Psychological Disorders
The Diagnostic And Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)
Try It
The International Classification of Diseases
Try It
The Compassionate View of Psychological Disorders
Link to Learning
Try It
Supernatural Perspectives of Psychological Disorders
Dig Deeper: Dancing Mania
Biological Perspectives of Psychological Disorders
The Diathesis-Stress Model of Psychological Disorders
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Anxiety Disorders
What you’ll learn to do: describe the features and characteristic symptoms of anxiety disorders (generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, phobias), obsessive-compulsive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder; differentiate these anxiety disorders from each other
Learning Objectives
Specific Phobia
Acquisition of Phobias Through Learning
Try It
Social Anxiety Disorder
Try It
Try It
Panic Disorder
Try It
Try It
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Try It
Glossary
OCD and PTSD
Learning Objectives
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders
Try It
Link to Learning
Body Dysmorphic Disorder
Hoarding Disorder
Causes of OCD
Link to Learning
Connect the Concepts: Conditioning and OCD
Try It
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
A Broader Definition of PTSD
Try It
Risk Factors for PTSD
Support for Sufferers of PTSD
Learning and Development of PTSD
Try It
Glossary
Mood Disorders
What you’ll learn to do: describe the characteristic symptoms and risk factors of mood disorders, including major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder
Learning Objectives

Major Depressive Disorder
Major Depressive Disorder
Try It
Results of Major Depressive Disorder
Risk Factors for Major Depressive Disorder
Try It
Subtypes of Depression
Bipolar Disorder
Link to Learning
Risk Factors for Bipolar Disorder
Try It

The Biological Basis of Mood Disorders
A Diathesis-Stress Model and Major Depressive Disorders
Cognitive Theories of Depression
Try It

Suicide
Rick Factors for Suicide
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Schizophrenia and Dissociative Disorders
What you’ll learn to do: explain symptoms and potential causes of schizophrenic and dissociative disorders
Learning Objectives

Schizophrenia
Symptoms of Schizophrenia
Link to Learning
Try It
Causes of Schizophrenia
Genes
Neurotransmitters
Brain Anatomy
Events During Pregnancy
Marijuana
Schizophrenia: Early Warning Signs
Try It

Dissociative Disorders
Dissociative Amnesia
Try It
Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder
Dissociative Identity Disorder
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Personality Disorders
What you’ll learn to do: describe and differentiate between personality disorders, including borderline and antisocial personality disorder
Learning Objectives

Personality Disorders
Link to Learning
Try It
Borderline Personality Disorder
Biological Basis for Borderline Personality Disorder
Try It

Antisocial Personality Disorder
Try It
Risk Factors for Antisocial Personality Disorder
Try It
Glossary
Childhood Disorders
What you’ll learn to do: explain common childhood disorders, including attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder
Learning Objectives

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
Life Problems from ADHD
Causes of ADHD
Dig Deeper: Why Is the Prevalence Rate of ADHD Increasing?
Try It

Autism Spectrum Disorder
Life Problems From Autism Spectrum Disorder
Link to Learning
Try It
Causes of Autism Spectrum Disorder
Child Vaccinations and Autism Spectrum Disorder
Try It
Key Takeaways
Review: Classifying Psychological Disorders
Learning Objectives
Link to Learning
Link to Learning
Try It
Putting It Together: Psychological Disorders
Learning Objectives
Discussion: Psychological Disorders
Diagnosing Disorders
Module 15: Therapy and Treatment
Why It Matters: Therapy and Treatment
Mental Health Treatment: Then and Now
What you’ll learn to do: describe the treatment of mental health disorders over time
Learning Objectives

Mental Health Treatment in the Past
Link to Learning
Try It
Mental Health Treatment
Mental Health Treatment Today
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Types of Treatment and Psychoanalysis
What you’ll learn to do: identify and explain the basic characteristics of various types of therapy
Learning Objectives
Psychotherapy Techniques: Psychoanalysis
Link to Learning
Try It
Glossary
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
Learning Objectives
Psychotherapy: Cognitive and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
Link to Learning
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
Link to Learning
Try It

Behavior Therapy: How Does it Work?
Try It
Try It
Miriam’s Treatment
Try It
Try It
Glossary
Humanistic Therapy and Other Treatments
Learning Objectives

Psychotherapy: Humanistic Therapy
Try It
Psychotherapy: Mindfulness
Treatment for Addiction
Try It
Emerging Treatments
Evaluating Various Forms of Psychotherapy
Link to Learning
Try It
Biomedical Therapies
Try It
Link to Learning
Dig Deeper: Evidence-based Practice
Review: Types of Therapies
Glossary
Learning Objectives
Memory Consolidation
Reconsolidation
Reconsolidation: In the Basic Research Lab
DAY 1 – Control Group
DAY 2 – Control Group
DAY 3 – Control Group
Day 1 – 10-Minute Group
Memory Reactivation
Day 2 – 10-Minute Group
Try It
Day 3 – 10-Minute Group
Day 1 – 6-Hour Group
Day 2 – 6 Hour Group
Day 3 – 6-Hour Group
Interpreting Results
Try It
Watch It
What is the practical value of this research?
WAtch It
Glossary
Psych in Real Life: Reconsolidation
Learning Objectives
Memory Consolidation
Reconsolidation
Reconsolidation: In the Basic Research Lab
DAY 1 – Control Group
DAY 2 – Control Group
DAY 3 – Control Group
Day 1 – 10-Minute Group
Memory Reactivation
Day 2 – 10-Minute Group
Try It
Day 3 – 10-Minute Group
Day 1 – 6-Hour Group
Day 2 – 6 Hour Group
Day 3 – 6-Hour Group
Interpreting Results
Try It
Watch It
What is the practical value of this research?
WAtch It
Glossary
Treatment Modalities
What you’ll learn to do: explain and compare treatment modalities
Learning Objectives
Individual Therapy
Try It
Group Therapy
Couples Therapy
Family Therapy
Link to Learning
Try It
Think It Over
Cultural Factors and Therapy
Link to Learning
Barriers to Treatment
Dig Deeper: Treatment Perceptions
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Putting It Together: Treatment and Therapy
Learning Objectives
Discussion: Therapy and Treatment
Thinking about Treatment
Module 16: Industrial-Organizational Psychology
Why It Matters: Industrial-Organizational Psychology

Industrial-Organizational Psychology
What you’ll learn to do: describe the purpose of industrial-organizational psychology and examine its application to hiring and evaluating employees
Learning Objectives

What Is Industrial and Organizational Psychology?
Link to Learning
The Historical Development of Industrial and Organizational Psychology
Link to Learning
Try It
From WWII to Today
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Selecting Employees
Learning Objectives
Selecting Employees
Link to Learning
Try It
Candidate Analysis and Testing
What Do You Think? Using Cutoff Scores to Determine Job Selection
Interviews
Everyday Connections: Preparing for the Job Interview
Try It

Training and Evaluating Employees
Evaluating Employees
Bias and Protections in Hiring
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
Link to Learning
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
What Do You Think? Hooters and BFOQ Laws
Try It
Glossary
Job Satisfaction
What you’ll learn to do: explain how industrial-organizational psychologists assess leadership and organization
Learning Objectives
Job Satisfaction
Dig Deeper: Job Satisfaction in Federal Government Agencies
Work-Family-Balance
Link to Learning
Try It
Glossary
Leadership and Organization
Learning Objectives
Management and Organizational Structure
Try It
Goals, Teamwork, and Work Teams
Organizational Culture
Try It
Dig Deeper: Managing Generational Differences
Violence in the Workplace
Try It
Glossary
Human Factors Psychology and Workplace Design
Learning Objectives
Try It
Think It Over
Glossary
Putting It Together: Industrial-Organizational Psychology
Learning Objectives
Discussion: Industrial-Organizational Psychology
Thinking about Industrial/Organizational Psychology

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