Dispositional factors: internal factors
Situational factors: external factors
-Consistency (ex. talkative at home tend to be talkative at work)
-Stability (ex. talkative at 30 ten to be talkative at 40)
-Individual differences (ex. almost none, but since people differ on how frequently they talk and how active they are, thus personality traits such as talkativeness and activity level
Independent self: people see themselves as A.) being a unique individual with a stable collection of personal traits and B.) that their traits drive behavior
Interdependent self: people see themselves as A.) defined differently in each new social context and B.) social context, rather than internal traits, are the primary drivers of behavior.
the tendency to short circut a rational decision process by relying on a # of simplifying stratagies or rules of thumb. they allow us to cope w/the complex environment surrounding our desicions BUT they lead to systematic and predicatable biases.
trade offs
*Experiment examples:
1.) Conditioned taste aversions. Associating food and nausea (even if unrelated)
Evolutionary predisposition: Sight/sound + nausea doesn't lead to conditioning Time course differs from other forms of CC: a longer delay between stimulus and response Can occur in one trial
2.) Cognitive heuristics facilitate efficient information, since the world is a complicated place, we make shortcuts (ex. what happens more, stomach cancer or homicide? more people say homicide because its all they hear about, never really hear about stomach cancer)
What is the Flynn effect? Describe several reasons it may be occurring
The increase in intelligence test scores overtime (ex. IQ of 100 in 1980 is lower than a 100 in 2000)
-Better nutrition and fewer toxins
-fewer infectious diseases
-Test familiarity
-modern complexities, greater stimulation
Validity: they show impressive validity in relation to a wide range of important outcomes.
Real world outcomes: the prediction of occupational attainment, divorce, and mortality.
-personality ratings collected early in life were related to happiness, physical health, and mortality risk assessed several decades later.
-self ratings of neuroticism are associated with a wide array of clinical syndromes, including anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, substance use disorders, somatoform disorders, eating disorders, personality and conduct disorders, and SCZ.
The tendency to overestimate dispositional factors (and underestimate situational ones) when evaluating the behaviors of others.
the bias to be affected by an inital anchor even if the anchor is arbitrary and to insufficiently adjust our judgments away from that anchor. ex.) buying a used car, they say that the car is 20,000 dollars even though it is only worth 14,000 so when they lower the price you think you got a deal.
complex causes have complex outcomes
1.) The diathesis-stress model: looking at twins and finding out that getting SCZ is not purely genetic, but has environmental factors that lay into it as well
2.) Why are there more people getting diagnosed with mental disorders?
Getting sicker
Changing diagnostic criteria
Changing cultural norms
Greater awareness of disorders
Pressure to diagnose (e.g., insurance, services)
Availability & awareness of medication
Better at diagnosing
Less stigma reporting illness
3.) Dragon kids.
Kids born in the year of the dragon are "believed to be destined for good fortune and greatness"
Are more likely to have college degrees, higher test scores
Differences are attributable in part to parents' expectations
4.)Person-situation debate (Traits reflect general patterns, which may not hold in specific situations.
Some situations provide more opportunity for personality differences to emerge)
A child may be born with genes for high intelligence, but if that child grows up in a deprived environment where he/she is malnourished or lacks access to mental stimulation, the child may not score well on measures of IQ.
This means that when personality psychologists talk about introverts and extroverts, they are not really talking about two distinct types of people who are completely and qualitatively different from one another. Instead, they are talking about people who score relatively low or high along a continuous distribution. (Characteristics can go from low->high w/all diff. intermediate values possible. One doesn't simply have the trait or not, but can possess varying amounts of it).
Most psychological research is conducted on:
-Western
-Educated
-Industrialized
-Rich
-Democratic samples
Having non-representative samples:
-doesn't hurt internal validity: doesn't compromise how manipulation of the IV affects the DV
-Hursts external validity: Not clear whether the results would extend to other samples
the bias to by systematically affected by the way in which info is presented while holding the objective in fo constant. ex.) people are more likely to want 75% lean beef than 25% fat even though they are the exacate same thing.
psych studies not about you
1.) Psychopathology since even if you think you have some of these symptoms, doesn't actually mean you have a mental disorder (I don't think this is good enough or right)
2.) Birth order effect
-Correlation does not equal causation
-Gain insight through careful design and statistical controls
-Data on social mobility: suggests that IQ contribute to income independently of SES (social economic status)
-statistically control for for other confounding variables (ex. test relationship between IQ and income, after removing the influence of other variables like parents wealth
Iq is effective in telling if you will do good w/ high complexity job (high correlation)
IQ is associated with certain jobs
IQ predicts when you will die: more likely to die if IQ is low, the higher the IQ the less likely to die (if you do stupid stuff, you may die)
A way to remember them is by using the acronym OCEAN or CANOE
-Conscientiousness (careful, organized, hard working, and follow rules)
-Agreeableness (Compassionate, cooperative, warm, and caring to others. People low in agreeableness tend to be rude, hostile, and to pursue their own interests over those of others)
-Neuroticism (interpersonally sensitive and experience negative emotions like anxiety, fear, sadness and anger)
-Openness (Seek out and appreciate new things like thoughts, feelings, values, and experiences)
-Extraversion (Sociable, outgoing, active and assertive)
Normative influences: people go along with the crowd because they are concerned about what others think of them (wanting to be liked)
Informational influences: conformity that results from a concern to act in a socially approved manner as determined by how other act (wanting to be right)
Diffusion of responsibility: occurs when people who need to make a decision wait for someone else to act instead.
Pluralistic ignorance: Individuals falsely believing that other in their group differ in attitudes, beliefs or behaviors (ex. binge drinking in college and gang violence)
System 1: our intuitive decision making which is typically fast, automatic, effortless, implicit and emotional
System 2: is our more delibrative decision making system which is slower, conscious, effortful, explicit, logical
mind body connection
1.) Split brain
2.) Connection between health and our personalities (ex. extraversion has a negative correlation with depression and agreeableness has a negative correlation with heart disease).
Studies show that IQ scores of identical twins may be more similar than those of fraternal twins. Siblings who were raised together in the same environment have more similar IQs than those of adopted children who were brought up in the same household.
Genes, via their influences on morphology and physiology, create a framework within which the environment acts to shape the behavior of an individual. The difference between shared and non-shared environments is that shared environments refer to common experiences between siblings such as living conditions, while non-shared refers to separate experiences such as friends, teachers, etc. which each sibling has independent of the other. (non-shared has more of an impact)
% of people who when to 450v
Standard condition: 65%
Free choice condition (choose what level of shock to administer): 2%
Contradicting experimenters (one says do it, the other says don't): 0%
"Ordinary man" (not a scientist giving orders): 20%
Two confederates quite: 10%
Only responsible for reading: 93%
Less prestigious location (not @ Yale): 47.5%
Force hand on to shock plate: 30%
Instructions came via phone: 21%
HOW PARTICIPANTS ACTED DEPENDED ON THE SITUATION THEY FOUND THEMSELVES IN!!!!!!
Different from the original
-Stopped at 150v (critical cutoff) (80% of people who got to 150v in the original study usually went to 450v)
-Significant pre-screening
-Told participants 3 times that they could withdraw
-Rapid and thorough debriefing
-Observed by a clinical psychologist (if they showed any signs of severe stress they had to stop)
Results:
-70% of participants went to 150v
-No gender differences
-Participants in 2009 performed very similarly to participants in 1963
bias we are unaware of
online test that compares two groups and how quickly you apply positive/negative words to them (have tests for gender, age, weight, race, etc
no self serving bias, no lying about feelings since it is measuring unconscious bias