Lecture 1 + 2
What are the types of causality?
bonus: describe/define each of them!
Material - the underlying, unchanging essence of a thing (BIO)
Efficient - the succession of events that originate or sustain motion (Risk factors)
Formal - the framework or organization of an object (concept or model)
Final - the purpose or goal of why a behavior is being carried out (reinforcement/learning)
What is the inclusive fitness theory? (aka kin selection)
There can be a biological advantage for saving relatives at the expense of the self as long as the ent effect is to leave more of the shared genes in the gene pool
What were the findings for the heritability of IQ? What about the lifespan changes in the environmental and genetic influences on IQ?
What is the law of effect?
another for of learning introduced by Thorndike
- behavioral responses that were most closely followed by a satisfying result were most likely to become established patterns and to occur again in response to the same stimulus.
also the beginning of reinforcement theory
What was socrates type of orientation/what was it and what was its influence on modern psychology?
humanistic -> places humanity on a higher plane than other life; socrates represents humanistic orientation and began tradition that was developed and progressed by plato and aristotle
- influence on modern psychology -> soul was elaborated as central element in the interpretation of life offered by plato and aristotle
What types of causality do all scientists assume?
What two types of theorists endorse formal cause and are silent about final cause?
Bonus: what's your position on the issue of causality and why?
Material and efficient; trait theorists and stage theorists
anything that remotely makes sense works :)
What are the three most common conditions in which many cultures considered infanticide acceptable?
1. if the child is the product of adultery
2. if the child is judged to be too sickly or deformed to justify the energy necessary to rear them
3. If the parent does not have the resources to raise the child without jeopardizing other important considerations
What is the logic and assumption of twin studies? What about adoption studies?
Twin studies - provide opportunity for natural environment to explore nature/nurture impact; assume twins reared tg will have similarities containing both genes and environment but if reared apart it'll be genes only
Adoption studies - allows you to compare kids to their bio parents and adoptive parents (thus genes vs environment); assumes no selective placement
Discuss classical condition (and touch upon generalization, discrimination, and extinction!)
you probably got it right :)
Watson and Rayner used this form of conditioning in their famous (cruel) experiment
What was psychophysics and its impact on psychology? What about Darwin's theory of evolution (which also galton was apart of)?
psychophysics (weber/helmhholtsz) - weber found that this threshold of detectable difference between the two points carried with the places of stimulation (coined Webers lab which was about law of weight discrimination); helmholtz stress d the importance of observing sensations as opposed to objects sensed; BOTH - pointed to an area of investigation not easily accommodated in physics, physiology or natural philosophy lone and that was the emerging subjct-matter of psychology (WOO)
Darwins theory of evolution (darwin and galton) - darwin introduced "evolution of moral attitudes in his framework, pointing out the survival value of moral development", Galton emphasized the value of testing and an associated statistical approach to defining population trends
What are the two models of the nature of humans that Reese & Overton (1970) compared? Explain them
Passive reactive model - 2 levels of cause;organism is acted upon by the environment and only reacts to what has been done to it (goals are non-essential because the organism is simply acting out of its own learning history)
Active organismic model - 3 or 4 levels of cause; organism actively creates their environment (goals can be seen as motivating bx)
What is the influence of evolutionary psychology on decision making?
if focus is on everyday situation, people help: 1. very young or very old ppl rather than those of intermediate age, 2. the sick over the healthy, 3. the poor over the wealthy
if focus is on life or death situations, people help: 1. close kin over distant kin, 2. young over old, 3. healthy over the sick, 4. wealthy over the poor, 5. premenopausal women over postmenopausal women
***criteria shifts from common courtesy (helping those less able to help themselves) to those w the most biological potential
What are the differences between structuralism and gestalt psychology? Which people went with which approach?
Structuralism (Wundt and Tichener) - they were big on introspection and mainly wanted to study immediate consciousness
Gestalt Psychology (Wertheimer, Koffka, and Kohler) - saw humans as actively imposing order on their environment; whole is different than the sum of its parts
What did Watson and Rayner demonstrate in their 1920 study?
The basis of phobias (conditioned a phobia into poor little albert)
What was the impact of functionalism on psychology?
Provided a transitional from structural psychology to behaviorism
What are the "two cause" views of the mind? Explain them (hint: there are four views)
radical materialism - denies the importance of mental events; words and actions need to explained but consciousness does not
panpsychism - grants consciousness to ALL matter
epiphenomenalism - grants a mind to only organism that show some form of mentation/mind has a view of what the organism is doing but this is a reflected view of whats happening on a physical level and causally irrelevant
identity theory - most physical events do NOT have a mental representation. Some do have mental representations and those correspond to consciousness, and can influence bx. Mental events based on physical states so still no need to go beyond two levels of cause
What was eugenics impact on immigration?
Madison Grants book "The Passing of the Great Race" - saw the three great races as Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean
- eugencisits saw flood of immigration in to the US as a "weakening" of the American "genetic stock"
- eugenics movement fueled racial discrimination and congress passed temporary immigration restriction laws (1921) that became permanent (1924)
What was psychoanalysis and who started it?
What did post-watson behaviorism look like? Which psychologists led the field?
research w animals was dominant in academic psychology
basic principles of learning were the goal
number of psychologist sled the field - futhrie, hull, spence, tolman, and skinner
What were Hall's accomplishments in regards to psychology as a field? (what did he do for the field sorry weird wording)
Big role in firmly establishing psychology in the US through substantive and practical activities. Succeeded in securing recognition of psychology as a profession (YAY)
What are the different views of symbolic interactionists, skinner, and mischel on the formation of the self?
symbolic interactionists - notion of the self is a social construction (Created through interactions w others)
skinner - hates introspection, purely product of environment (🥴)
Mischel - personality traits is better explained in terms that allow for situational specificity (personality = traits and environment/context)
What was the eugenics movements influence on forced sterilization and european countries?
U.S conducted many forced sterilizations (carrie buck was raped and became pregnant and then judged morally deficient - case went to supreme court and they said it was ok to sterilize her - > forced sterilizations in U.S. skyrocketed after this -> 3 generations of what the us at that point defined as "imbeciles" was enough to justify sterilization)
Also in europe, Hitler latched on to eugenics and institutionalized killing of many "lesser" people began - criminally insane, institutionalized, not german citizens, had certain diseases -> eventually led to full blown holocaust)
Who were the leaders of functionalism and what did they study?
William James (major founder), and James Angell (another leader)
studied the mental operations (not mental elements); mind as mediator between the environment and the organism
What is the difference between reinforcement and punishment? differentiate between positive and negative
Reinforcement comes in 2 forms:
- Positive reinforcement is the presentation of something positive (behavior frequency goes up)
- Negative reinforcement is the removal of something negative (behavior frequency goes up).
Punishment comes in 2 forms:
- The presentation of something aversive (behavior frequency goes down)
- The removal of something positive (behavior frequency goes down)
Influenced many behaviorists and t he movement played an important role in the expansion of the behaviorist model of psychology inAmerica and the emergence of cognitive psychology. Contributed greatly to the reformulation of psychology