psych final

The 'Lucifer Effect'

"The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational factors."- Philip Zimbardo

Autonomy vs Agency

- Autonomy: People direct their own actions, and take responsibility for the results of those actions - Agency: People allow others to direct their actions and pass off the responsibility for the consequences to the person giving the orders • Milgram proposed that 2 conditions must be in place for a person to enter the agency state: - The person giving the orders must be perceived as being qualified to direct other people's behavior (ex: they are seen as legitimate) - The person being ordered about must believe that the authority figure will accept responsibility for what happens

Dopamine & Incentives

- Dopamine is the key to 'fun' (and to every other type of incentive)! - Nucleus Accumbens: 'reward centers' regulate effort to obtain something pleasurable

Drives VS Incentives

- Drives are created by inner needs or desires and can be seen as a force "pushing" from inside of us - Incentives are external stimuli that appeal to our wants or desires, and can be used to "pull" us in our actions • We are hungry, thirsty, feeling sexy or afraid, so we have a drive to find food, drink water, have sex, or seek shelter • Employers can use the prospect of a raise in salary as an incentive for us to work harder and follow employer goals and policies

Facial Perceptual Targets for Different Emotions

- Our eyes (and brains) attend to specific features of faces to judge another's emotional state

Stressors

- Stressors are events and conditions that 1) are perceived/appraised as overwhelmingly challenging, threatening, and/or harmful 2) trigger our bodies 'stress system' -Stressors can vary as a function of intensity and/or persistence

The Self

- The 'self' is a bridge between the social world and the 'inner world' of each person

Stress & Depression

- The diathesis stress model argues that depression arises due to both a vulnerability to depression and to some stressful or challenging life event

Appraisal: Choosing How to View a Situation

- There are very few conditions that are inherently and universally stressful; we can often choose our appraisal, or at least learn to - Negative Appraisal: threat (yikes this is beyond me) -> stressed + distracted - Positive Appraisal: Challenge (im going to beat this exam) -> aroused + focused

The 'Yerkes-Dodson Law' & Optimal Arousal Theory

- We all have our unique 'optimal' level of arousal - Level of Arousal: 1) dopamine too low- sleep 2) Optimal level of arousal: We regulate our 'optimal' level of dopamine! 3) dopamine too high- panic + anxiety

Incentives Can Also Be Inherently Fun

- We don't always need something to want something - What 'need' is addressed by roller coasters?

The Implicit Association Task (IAT)

- good or bad - white or black - black or bad / white or good: The categories have now become more complex, but the task remains the same!

The Pressure to Conform: The Asch Experiment

- guy picked obvious wrong line length bc all the ppl before him said the same (wrong) answer - in the absence of peer pressure, the error rate decreases - Overall, 37% of the participants adopted the (wrong) answer of the group

Thinking Habits Supporting Prejudice

1) Availability Heuristic: Stereotypes are built on vivid cases rather than statistics 2) Confirmation Bias: We don't look for counter examples to our stereotypes! 3) Just-World Fallacy: "They should have known better!"; blaming the victim! 4) Cognitive Dissonance: "My culture and family treats minorities this way - can we really be wrong?"

Biological Systems Regulated by Homeostasis

1) Body temperature: the enzymes in our cells require an optimal temperature range to function (e.g. 98.6F) 2) Fluid balance: our cells live in a watery environment; water that is lost must be replaced 3) Electrolyte balance: electrolytes such as sodium, potassium, etc must be maintained in order for cells to function 4) Short-term energy balance: our cells require food (e.g. sugar) to function 5) Long-term energy balance: we must maintain a store of energy (e.g. fat) We are highly motivated to maintain these systems

The 5 Stage Model of Helping

1) notice the event 2) interpret the event as an emergency 3) assume responsibility 4) know how to assist 5) implement decision - if we fail any of these steps then we will fail to help

Hippocampal Atrophy in Depression

A negative correlation exists between lifetime depression & hippocampal volume

Fear: The Amygdala & Threat Detection

Amygdala: helps recognize + interpret emotional messages + memories; important in the experience of fear + aggression - more fearful -> increase in amygdala activity

Anal Fixation

Anal Expulsive: parent overly lenient with potty training -> disorderly, messy, expressive, artistic, disregard for rules Anal retentive: Parent overly strict with potty training -> orderly, clean, detail focused, controlling, rule abiding

The Egos's Defense Mechanism

Anna Freud: the ego uses these mechanisms to keep threatening material from reaching awarness 1) Denial: when events or realities that are threatening to the ego are ignored 2) Displacement: when a sexual or aggressive impulse is redirected from the actual (threatening) target to another, less threatening target 3) Projection: when one's own unacceptable wishes or impulses are attributed to the person who was the object of the unacceptable wish/impulse 4) Reaction formation: when an unacceptable wish/impulse is transformed into an exaggerated version of its opposite 5) Repression: removal from conscious awareness/memory of an unacceptable wish/impulse. Repression plays a role in most of the other defense mechanisms. 6) Sublimation: when an unacceptable wish or impulse is 'translated' into a socially acceptable behavior

The Bystander Effect

As you add more people to a group, you get 'diffusion of responsibility'

Abraham Maslow pyramid

Basic needs: 1) Physiological needs: food, water, warmth, rest 2) Safety needs: security, safety Psychological needs: 3) Belongingness + love needs: intimate relationships, friends 4) Esteem needs: prestige + feeling of accomplishment Self-fulfillment needs: 5) Self-actualization: achieving ones full potential, including creative activities

primal drives + ego

Civilization Supergo Ego Id Primal Drives -> thirst, hunger, sex & agression - Conscious Mind (What we are aware of on a moment-to moment basis): Superego + Ego - Unconscious Mind (Memories, wishes, desires, that are not accessible to the conscious mind): Ego, Id, Primal Drives

Chronic Daily Difficulties

Daily difficulties can be caused by facing too many tasks, too little time, and too little control Daily difficulties can be accentuated by a lack of social power and freedom • being bullied • living in poverty • living under oppressive political conditions

Human + their face / The 'Basic' Emotions

Facial expressions of emotion play a critical role in social communication Paul Ekman - the 6 basic emotions: anger, fear, disgust, surprise, happiness, sadness - basic emotions are universal - Basic emotions (and their recognition) are "hard-wired" into the human nervous system

Homeostasis

Homeostatic systems seek to maintain some critical 'system variable' (e.g. room temperature) at an optimal level through negative feedback

Stress & The Sympathetic Nervous System

INCREASED: - Pupil dilation - Bronchial dilation - Heart rate/blood pressure - Glucose release from liver -Adrenaline release DECREASED - parasympathetic processes **the SNS acts quickly to set these processes in motion, while circulating levels of adrenaline allow the system to remain active

Positive Appraisal & the Prefrontal Cortex & Stress Reduction

Positive appraisal leads to increased activity in the prefrontal cortex and decreased amygdala activity

Social Support & Telomeres

Social support increases the expression of telomerase, an enzyme that repairs telomeres

The Psychosexual Stages

The child progresses through these sequentially 1) Oral: birth- 18 mo + mouth 2) Anal: 18 mo-3 + anus 3) Phallic (Oedipal): 3 - 5/6 + genitals 4) Latency: 6- puberty + reduced interest in sex 5) Genital: puberty + genitals

Conditions of Obedience

The proximity of both the experimenter and the learner make a huge difference % of teacher going all the way to XXX: - baseline: 65% - teacher instructs another person to give the shocks: 95% - Teacher and learner are in the same room: 40% - experimenter is in another room: 21% - experimenter is dressed in normal clothing: 20%

Cognitive Dissonance

We sometimes behave in ways that are contrary to who we believe we are (or ought to be) as a person

Theories of Altruism: Theory of Inclusive Fitness VS Theory of Reciprocal Altruism

Why do we and other animals exhibit altruistic behavior? Why help each other at all? • Theory of Inclusive Fitness: altruistic behavior directed toward kin - we share our genes with our family - natural selection operates on genes, not individuals • Theory of Reciprocal Altruism: altruistic behavior directed at a stranger - altruism is expected to be reciprocated at some point in the future, either to oneself or one's kin

Which of the following is FALSE about altruistic + pro-social behaviors? + list 4 true

activity in the anterior cingulate cortex decreases when viewing somebody elses pain/ distress TRUE: 1) the theory of inclusive fitness argues that we are motivated to help our close relatives 2) the theory of reciprocal altruism argues that we are motivated to help others if we expect to receive help in return 3) oxytocin reduces amygdala activity to threats 4) monkeys know when they are being treated unfairly

Which of the following statements is TRUE about the findings of human neuroimaging studies that use 'subliminal' presentation of threatening faces?

amygdala activity increases even if participants claim they do not see the threatening face

Stereotype Threat

if asked race on test, POC will do worst

Which of the following statements accurately describes the actor-observer bias?

if we do something good we are likely to attribute our behavior to a dispositional cause

A human patient who has a bilateral lesion of the amygdala would be expected to exhibit which of the following outcomes after a fear learning experiment?

impaired fear learning and intact declarative knowledge of the CS-US association

Which of the following classes of antidepressant drugs do NOT affect the serotonin system?

norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitors TRUE 1) MAO inhibitors 2) selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors 3) serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors 4) tricyclic antidepressants

Helping & Group Size

percentage of helping + time it takes to help decrease as group size increases

Which of the following statements best describes the findings of studies that have examined the neural correlates of racial prejudice?

presentation of black faces leads to increased activation of the amygdala in white people and black people

All of the following are relatively brief, empirically supported treatments for depression and anxiety EXCEPT:

psychoanalysis TRUE: 1) cognitive-behavioral therapy 2) virtual reality exposure therapy 3) mindfulness-based cognitive therapy 4) systematic desensitization

Which of the following behaviors is best explained by the 'optimal arousal' theory of motivation?

solving a crossword puzzle

All of the following may be considered sources of 'drive' motivation EXCEPT:

status TRUE - food, water, sex, safety

A prevailing stereotype is that women are worse at math than men. Studies have suggested that if we are reminded of our gender prior to taking a math exam, women do indeed perform more poorly. This is likely because of

stereotype threat

Obedience to Authority / The Milgram Experiment

student appears to be getting shocks but in reality there are no shocks; teacher is the person of interest Milgran's Findings: 65% of participants (teachers) continued to the highest level of 450 volts (XXX)

Which of the following social cognitive processes explains why we tend judge our own poor driving as justified by circumstances, but view the poor driving of others on the road as evidence of their incompetence?

the actor-observer bias

All of the following pieces of evidence support the 'monoamine hypothesis' of depression EXCEPT:

the drug iproniazid, an inhibitor of MAO, makes depression worse TRUE: 1) tricyclic antidepressants can alleviate depression 2) selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors can alleviate depression 3) monoamine oxidase inhibitors can alleviate depression 4) norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitors can alleviate depression

Which of the following is FALSE about Freud's psychodynamic model of the mind?

the id is part of the conscious mind TRUE: 1) the id is concerned with basic drives such as hunger, thirst, sex and aggression 2) the ego follows the reality principle 3) the superego is concerned with society's laws and morals 4) the id follows the pleasure principle

When something terrible happens to a racial or ethnic minority group, those in the majority tend to explain what has happened based on dispositional characteristics of that group (e.g. "they must have done something to deserve it"). Which of the following social cognitive processes explains this phenomenon?

the just world fallacy

Valence VS Intensity

valence: negative/positive intensity: high/low

All of the following were observed in Solomon Asch's classic studies of conformity EXCEPT:

when another person is present who shares our opinion, we are still likely to conform to the overall group's opinion TRUE: 1) when we are in a group situation, we tend to align our opinions to those of the group 2) some participants conform to the group's opinion because they genuinely believe the group must be right (e.g. informational conformity) 3) some participants conform to the group's opinion because they think the group will disapprove if they believe him or her to be deviant (e.g. normative conformity) 4) when a participant is able to write his or her opinion on a piece of paper, he or she is less likely to conform to the group opinion

In Stanley Milgram's studies of obedience to authority, which one of the following conditions resulted in the highest amount of obedience?

when the 'teacher' was able to instruct somebody else to deliver the 'shocks'

Drives & Drive-Reduction Theory

• A drive is an aroused/tense state related to a (usually biological) need (ex hunger, thirst, safety, maybe sex) • Drive-reduction theory proposes that organisms are motivated to reduce these drives, such as eating to reduce the feeling of hunger, drinking to reduce thirst • Need (food, water, safety) -> Drive (hunger, thirst, fear) -> Drive-Reducing Behaviors (eating, drinking, seeking shelter) -> Negative Feedback • Negative feedback resulting from the behavior reduces the drive and restores homeostasis

The Psychodynamic Model (Freud)

• According to Freud, personality emerges from the dynamic interplay between id, ego and superego in each individual • Conflicts between the divisions of the mind are resolved by ego defense mechanisms • Personality develops in childhood as the individual passes through stages of psychosexual development

Psychosexual Development

• According to Freud, we are all born with a 'life force' (an energy) known as libido, which is erotic in nature • Human children experience an inevitable progression through developmental periods - these periods represent stages in psychological growth related to what will eventually become adult sexuality • During each stage of development, the libido is focused on a particular part of the body that is sensitive to pleasure called erogenous zones • The child must successfully navigate each stage or else risk becoming developmentally 'fixated'

Altruism

• Altruism is the offering of assistance to others without the expectation of immediate reward • Altruism is associated with the 'pro-social' emotions such as empathy (the ability to understand and 'feel' the emotions of others) • The capacity for altruism has evolved to be part of human psychology - empathy and altruism must have functioned over evolutionary time in some way to increase our ancestors' success in surviving and reproducing

Catastrophic Events

• An event that most people agree is harmful and overwhelming • Examples include earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, war/combat, and wildfires • It can be one single event or chronic, ongoing conditions • Short-term effects include increased heart attacks on the day of the event • Long term effects may include depression, nightmares, anxiety, and flashbacks

Attribution Theory (situational vs dispositional)

• Attribution Theory argues that we explain other people's behavior in 2 ways: - situational attributions: Based on factors outside or independent of the person - dispositional attributions: Based on the person's assumed traits, personality, abilities, etc • Attributions are typically made very quickly - they are an example of fast thinking • How do we explain our own behavior? The behavior of others? • An attribution is a conclusion about the cause of an observed behavior or event

Bipolar Disorder + symptoms of mania

• Bipolar disorder is characterized by cyclical periods of unipolar depression and mania • Episodes of mania can last a few days to several months; the depression that follows typically lasts much longer • Affects men and women in equal numbers • Mania can range from mild to severe and may be characterized by: High energy, Overly good mood, Little need for sleep, Feelings of power, Fast erratic talking, Racing thoughts, Impatience, Irritability, Aggression

Major Life Events

• Can be negative, such as a death in family, loss of job, or heart attack • Can be positive, such as marriage, starting college or a new job, or the birth or adoption of a child

Heritability

• Close relatives of those who suffer from depressive or bipolar disorders are 10X more likely to develop a disorder of their own • The concordance rate for monozygotic twins is approximately 69% for bipolar disorder; whereas it is only 19% for dizygotic twins • The concordance rate for monozygotic twins is the same whether they are raised together or apart

Depression & The Monoamine Hypothesis

• Depression has been loosely linked to the monoamine neurotransmitters - dopamine (DA), norepinephrine (NE), serotonin (5-HT) • Reserpine ,a drug used to treat high blood pressure, was reported in the 1950s to cause depression - Reserpine interferes with the storage of monoamines (DA, NE, 5-HT) in synaptic vesicles • Iproniazid, a drug used to treat tuberculosis, can alleviate depression - Iproniazid is an monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitor, which prevents the breakdown of monoamines ** Monoamine levels low (DA, NE, 5-HT): increased depression ** Monoamine levels high: decreased depression * MAO inhibitors are nonselective

Symptoms of Depression

• Depression is associated with a number of psychological and physical symptoms, including: 1) Depressed mood 2) Loss of ability to experience pleasure 3) Restlessness, irritability and/or anxiety 4) Lack of energy and concentration 5) Difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep 6) Constipation, aches and pains 7) Thoughts of death or suicide A diagnosis requires that several of these symptoms be experienced over time and significantly impact functioning

Emotions vs 'Feelings'

• Emotional 'triggers' can be either external or internal Emotional Trigger leads to: 1) Feelings: feelings can be by- products of emotional reactions, but they can also trigger emotional reactions) 2) Physiological & Behavioral Reactions

Emotions

• Emotions are psychological states consisting of: 1) physiological arousal (ex: sympathetic nervous system activity) 2) behavioral reactions (ex: facial and postural expressions, fight or flight) 3) subjective experiences or 'feelings' (ex: surprise, sadness, anger, fear)

Emotions vs. 'Moods'

• Emotions are: 1) intense 2) attributable to a identifiable cause 3) short-lived • Moods are typically less intense than emotions, but last for a much longer time • Moods may or may not be attributable to specific causes

Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic (categories of motivation)

• Extrinsic motivations compel us to engage in behaviors for an external reward that the behaviors might bring (grades, money, status) • Intrinsic motivations compel us to engage in behaviors because they are rewarding in their own sake (they are fun) • Work involving intrinsic rewards is associated with psychological well-being

Groupthink

• Groupthink is a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing and moral judgments that result from 'group' pressures

Oxytocin

• Hormone released from the pituitary during labor to induce contractions and to promote mother infant-bond after birth • Also synthesized and released in the brain, where it promotes prosocial behaviors, including empathy, trust, intimacy and bonding • Reduces stress and anxiety, promotes relaxation decreases Amygdala activation

Humanistic Theories (Abraham Maslow + Carl Rogers)

• Human motivations range from the fundamental/biological to the spiritual • Each of us is designed to develop into a competent, fulfilled and compassionate human being, unless we lack a growth- promoting environment • We are reasoning creatures, and face problems in a mostly rational manner and try to make good decisions that will benefit ourselves and others • Personality is formed from a natural human striving toward self-actualization

Food (drive/incentive)

• If we are hungry, we will have a drive to consume sugar (or any other source of calories) • Sugar also happens to be sweet, which is rewarding in its own right (and therefore has incentive value) • We sometimes seek out sugary foods even when we are not hungry • Foods that are not calorically dense may satisfy a drive of hunger, but they have no inherent incentive value

The Actor-Observer Bias

• In every social situation, we are either an actor or an observer • If we are the actor, we attribute our good behavior to dispositional causes and our bad behavior to situational causes • If we are the observer, we tend to find a way attribute others' good behavior to situational causes and their bad behavior to dispositional causes • There are always situational causes for both our own and others' behavior!

Drives Can Create Incentives

• Incentives can also be learned motivations • A stimulus (ex: money) can become associated with fulfillment of a biological need (e.g. food, water, safety, sex) and come to trigger motivated behavior • Drive (ex: hunger, thirst, fear, sex) -> Money -> Access to Drive-Reducing Things (ex: food, water, shelter, a mate) -> Drive Reduction • Drive reduction serves to strengthen the value of a stimulus, creating an incentive

Suicide

• Individuals with unipolar depression are 29X more likely to attempt suicide than a person in the general population • men are at very high risk of suicide when depression is severe because they tend to employ methods that are more violent

Seeking Optimal Arousal

• Many behaviors cannot be easily connected to a biological need, and instead seem to be driven by a desire to increase our physiological level of arousal • Curiosity, as with kids and these monkeys, may be a way of increasing stimulation to reach an optimum level of arousal

Psychoanalysis After Freud

• Many of Freud's colleagues went on to further develop psychoanalytic theory after his death • Contemporary psychoanalytic theories de- emphasize the importance of sex as a motivator and largely abandon Freud's stages of psychosexual development • Most modern psychoanalysts instead focus on unconscious conflicts related to psychosocial development as determinants of personality (parent/child interactions, cultural influences, etc)

Mood Stabilizers for Mania

• Mood stabilizers are used to treat mania • They include 1)the naturally-occurring salt lithium 2) anticonvulsant drugs (e.g. Depakote, Tegretol, Lamictal) 3) new generation anti- psychotics (e.g. Abilify, Seroquel) • Their mechanisms are largely poorly understood

What is Motivation?

• Motivations are mental states that compel organisms to engage in purposive behavior (behavior directed toward achieving some goal or satisfying some need or desire) • Motivations are psychological forces that initiate actions, direct them toward the desired goal, and encourage us to sustain the effort necessary to attain that goal • Motivations can't be observed directly, but we can measure them indirectly by looking at the intensity and persistence of a behavior

Modern Antidepressants

• Nearly all modern antidepressants target one or more of the monoamines (DA, NE, 5-HT) • Modern antidepressants include: 1) Tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) - non-specific inhibitors of the reuptake of NE & 5-HT (e.g. Imipramine, Desipramine) 2) Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs)- specific for the 5-HT system (e.g. Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Lexapro, Celexa) 3) Serotonin-Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors (SNRIs) - targets 5-HT and NE equally (e.g. Effexor, Pristiq, Cymbalta) 4) Norepinephrine-Dopamine Reuptake Inhibitors - (NDRIs) no affinity for 5-HT (e.g. Wellbutrin)

The Availability Heuristic

• Our tendency to focus on and remember the vivid, attention grabbing examples • This cognitive bias is easily applied to the out-group, but usually never to the in-group - Terrible things + people who look different = 2 vivid things!

I Feel Your Pain: Empathy & the Brain / anterior cingulate cortex

• Participants viewed images of hands and feet of another person either in pain or not in pain • The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is a brain region involved in the subjective experience of pain (the emotional aspects of pain) • The ACC becomes active when we view another person experiencing pain in direct relation with the amount of empathy we feel

Implicit Prejudice (Mahzarin Banaji)

• People are very unlikely to admit (or even be conscious of) prejudice • Implicit prejudice is automatic, unconscious bias against a group - example of fast thinking • Implicit prejudice tends to be subtle and often exists even in people who do not consider themselves prejudiced

What is Personality & How is it Related to Motivation?

• Personality is the set of common human psychological characteristics and unique patterns of traits and behavior possessed by each individual • These sets of traits and behavior patterns are organized, integrated, and relatively enduring throughout a person's life • At the core of every theory of personality, there is a theory of motivation (what drives us, what are our needs or wants?) The fact that we refer to personality characteristics as 'types' suggests that they are stable and enduring

Positive Illusions

• Positive illusions are false beliefs with beneficial consequences - We have uncritically positive views of ourselves - We have illusions of control - We have unrealistic optimism

Prejudice & Discrimination

• Prejudice: unjustified (usually negative) attitudes toward a group (and its members) - Components of Prejudice: 1) beliefs (stereotypes) 2) emotions (anger, envy, fear, disgust) 3) Predispositions to act (discriminate) • Discrimination: unjustified behavior selectively applied to members of a group

Self Esteem

• Self-esteem is a psychological construct that reflects a person's overall subjective emotional evaluation of his or her own worth

Behaviorist-Incentive Theories (BF Skinner)

• Skinner argued that our personality is no different from any other aspect of our behavior • There is no internal agent that determines who we are as a person • What we call 'personality' is a collection of behaviors governed by the laws of learning and based on a lifetime of experiences shaped by reinforcement • Personality like any behavior is changeable

Cognitive Pillars of Conflict (stereotypes vs in group bias)

• Stereotypes: beliefs about a group, applied and generalized to every member of a group • In-Group Bias: the tendency to favor and extend loyalty to members of one's own group (the 'in-group') over other people (the 'out- group') - exists universally in all societies - can be created artificially by randomly assigning people to two arbitrary categories - appears spontaneously as soon as a group identity is created (ex: Stanford Prison Experiment)

Cortisol

• Stress also results in the release of cortisol, a hormone produced in the adrenal gland • The hypothalamus triggers the release of cortisol from the adrenal gland - instructs the pituitary to release a hormone known as adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) • ACTH travels through the blood to the pituitary glands and promotes the release of cortisol • This system is referred to as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis

Pleasure Principle VS Reality Principle

• The 'id' follows the pleasure principle, a desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain at all costs - demands satisfaction of basic drives such as sex, hunger, and thirst • The 'ego' follows the reality principle, a desire to reconcile the id with the demands of the superego (ex: customs, morals, laws) - concerned with assuring the safety and functioning of the individual and allowing him/her to delay pleasurable gratification until an appropriate time • The ego must balance the persistent wants of the id

The Fundamental Attribution Error

• The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to attribute other people's behavior to their (internal) dispositions, while ignoring situational (external) factors • Information about possible situational influences is often invisible to the observer • If an immediate attribution is required, it is easier to attribute someone else's behavior to dispositional (internal) causes • Examination of situational factors, if they are not readily apparent, requires slow thinking

The Defense of Self

• The self is constantly making self-evaluations ("how do I compare?") • We are driven to maintain our sense of 'self worth (self-esteem) • The self must therefore be able to defend against its own negative judgments or avoid them altogether • We achieve this through the use of cognitive biases

The Self-Serving Bias

• The self-serving bias is a tendency to make errors in judgment that are always in your own favor - We overestimate our own contributions - We attribute our successes to our own efforts or characteristics, and our failures to circumstances, bad luck, or to other people - We overestimate our positive attributes relative to other people, always seeing ourselves as 'above average' - By definition, we can't all be above average!

The Stress Response

• The stress response allows us to get ready for vigorous activity (and is perfectly normal!) • All of the physiological responses that are involved in stress help to mobilize the body's fight or flight • The sympathetic nervous system becomes active, causing the adrenal gland to secrete the hormone adrenaline, resulting in: - increased glucose (energy) availability and metabolism - increased cardiovascular output - increased lung capacity (dilation of bronchi) - focused attention

Unipolar Depression

• Unipolar depression consists of unremitting depression or periods of depression without mania • Affects7%oftheU.S. population, with a median onset of age 32 • Affects women 2-3X more than men • Dysthymia is a milder, more chronic version

The 'Just-World' Fallacy

• Variation of the actor-observer bias, but applied to groups • When good things happen to our in-group, we attribute that to our good qualities • When bad things happen to the out-group, we attribute that to their shortcomings

Impression Management the self

• We pay attention, often unconsciously, to how other people react to us and try to control the way we appear to others • We do this, in part, to make sure we are being 'ourselves' or the selves we want to be

Conditions of Conformity (informational vs normative)

• We sometimes conform to the group's opinion because we genuinely believe the group must be right - this is known as informational conformity • We sometimes conform to the group's opinion because we think the group will disapprove of us having a different opinion - this is known as normative conformity When at least 1 other person is present who shares our opinion, we are much less likely to conform to the group's opinion

Dealing With Dissonance

• ______ our behavior or cognition ("I will not eat any more of this doughnut") • ______ our behavior or cognition by changing the conflicting cognition ("I'm allowed to cheat on my diet every once in a while") • Justify our behavior or cognition by adding new _______ ("I'll spend 30 extra minutes at the gym to work this doughnut off") • ______ or _____ information that conflicts with existing beliefs ("This doughnut is not really that high in fat")