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LESSON 1 (8 hours)
Task 1. Read the texts and translate new words of professional thesaurus.
Introduction
It is always a difficult question to ask, where to begin to tell the story of the history of psychology. Some would start with ancient Greece; others would look to a demarcation in the late 19th century when the science of psychology was formally proposed and instituted. These two perspectives, and all that is in between, are appropriate for describing a history of psychology. The interested student will have no trouble finding an abundance of resources on all of these time frames and perspectives (Goodwin, 2011; Leahey, 2012; Schultz & Schultz, 2007).
Psychology is an exciting field and the history of psychology offers the opportunity to make sense of how it has grown and developed. The history of psychology also provides perspective. Rather than a dry collection of names and dates, the history of psychology tells us about the important intersection of time and place that defines who we are. Consider what happens when you meet someone for the first time. The conversation usually begins with a series of questions such as, “Where did you grow up?” “How long have you lived here?” “Where did you go to school?” The importance of history in defining who we are cannot be understated. Whether you are seeing a physician, talking with a counselor, or applying for a job, everything begins with a history. The same is true for studying the history of psychology; getting a history of the field helps to make sense of where we are and how we got here.
A Prehistory of Psychology
Precursors to psychology can be found in philosophy and physiology. Philosophers such as John Locke (1632–1704) and Thomas Reid (1710–1796) promoted empiricism, the idea that all knowledge comes from experience. The work of Locke, Reid, and others emphasized the role of the human observer and the primacy of the senses in defining how the mind comes to acquire knowledge. In colleges and universities in the early 1800s, these principles were taught as courses on mental and moral philosophy. Most often these courses taught about the mind based on the faculties of intellect, will, and the senses.
Physiology and Psychophysics
Philosophical questions about the nature of mind and knowledge were matched in the 19th century by physiological investigations of the sensory systems of the human observer. German physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) measured the speed of the neural impulse and explored the physiology of hearing and vision. His work indicated that our senses can deceive us and are not a mirror of the external world. Such work showed that even though the human senses were fallible, the mind could be measured using the methods of science. In all, it suggested that a science of psychology was feasible.
An important implication of Helmholtz’s work was that there is a psychological reality and a physical reality and that the two are not identical. This was not a new idea; philosophers like John Locke had written extensively on the topic, and in the 19th century, philosophical speculation about the nature of mind became subject to the rigors of science.
The question of the relationship between the mental (experiences of the senses) and the material (external reality) was investigated by a number of German researchers including Ernst Weber and Gustav Fechner. Their work was called psychophysics, and it introduced methods for measuring the relationship between physical stimuli and human perception that would serve as the basis for the new science of psychology.
The formal development of modern psychology is usually credited to the work of German physician, physiologist, and philosopher Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920). Wundt helped to establish the field of experimental psychology by serving as a strong promoter of the idea that psychology could be an experimental field and by providing classes, textbooks, and a laboratory for training students. In 1875, he joined the faculty at the University of Leipzig and quickly began to make plans for the creation of a program of experimental psychology. In 1879, he complemented his lectures on experimental psychology with a laboratory experience: an event that has served as the popular date for the establishment of the science of psychology.
The response to the new science was immediate and global. Wundt attracted students from around the world to study the new experimental psychology and work in his lab. Students were trained to offer detailed self-reports of their reactions to various stimuli, a procedure known as introspection. The goal was to identify the elements of consciousness. In addition to the study of sensation and perception, research was done on mental chronometry, more commonly known as reaction time. The work of Wundt and his students demonstrated that the mind could be measured and the nature of consciousness could be revealed through scientific means. It was an exciting proposition, and one that found great interest in America. After the opening of Wundt’s lab in 1879, it took just four years for the first psychology laboratory to open in the United States.
Toward a Functional Psychology
While Titchener and his followers adhered to a structural psychology, others in America were pursuing different approaches. William James, G. Stanley Hall, and James McKeen Cattell were among a group that became identified with “functionalism.” Influenced by Darwin’s evolutionary theory, functionalists were interested in the activities of the mind—what the mind does. An interest in functionalism opened the way for the study of a wide range of approaches, including animal and comparative psychology. William James (1842–1910) is regarded as writing perhaps the most influential and important book in the field of psychology, Principles of Psychology, published in 1890. Opposed to the reductionist ideas of Titchener, James proposed that consciousness is ongoing and continuous; it cannot be isolated and reduced to elements. For James, consciousness helped us adapt to our environment in such ways as allowing us to make choices and have personal responsibility over those choices.
At Harvard, James occupied a position of authority and respect in psychology and philosophy. Through his teaching and writing, he influenced psychology for generations. One of his students, Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–1930), faced many of the challenges that confronted Margaret Floy Washburn and other women interested in pursuing graduate education in psychology. With much persistence, Calkins was able to study with James at Harvard. She eventually completed all the requirements for the doctoral degree, but Harvard refused to grant her a diploma because she was a woman. Despite these challenges, Calkins went on to become an accomplished researcher and the first woman elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1905.
- Stanley Hall (1844–1924) made substantial and lasting contributions to the establishment of psychology in the United States. At Johns Hopkins University, he founded the first psychological laboratory in America in 1883. In 1887, he created the first journal of psychology in America, American Journal of Psychology. In 1892, he founded the American Psychological Association (APA); in 1909, he invited and hosted Freud at Clark University (the only time Freud visited America). Influenced by evolutionary theory, Hall was interested in the process of adaptation and human development. Using surveys and questionnaires to study children, Hall wrote extensively on child development and education. While graduate education in psychology was restricted for women in Hall’s time, it was all but non-existent for African Americans. In another first, Hall mentored Francis Cecil Sumner (1895–1954) who, in 1920, became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in psychology in America.
James McKeen Cattell (1860–1944) received his Ph.D. with Wundt but quickly turned his interests to the assessment of individual differences. Influenced by the work of Darwin’s cousin, Frances Galton, Cattell believed that mental abilities such as intelligence were inherited and could be measured using mental tests. Like Galton, he believed society was better served by identifying those with superior intelligence and supported efforts to encourage them to reproduce. Such beliefs were associated with eugenics (the promotion of selective breeding) and fueled early debates about the contributions of heredity and environment in defining who we are. At Columbia University, Cattell developed a department of psychology that became world famous also promoting psychological science through advocacy and as a publisher of scientific journals and reference works.
The Growth of Psychology
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, psychology continued to grow and flourish worldwide. It was large enough to accommodate varying points of view on the nature of mind and behavior. Gestalt psychology is a good example. The Gestalt movement began in Germany with the work of Max Wertheimer (1880–1943). Opposed to the reductionist approach of Wundt’s laboratory psychology, Wertheimer and his colleagues Kurt Koffka (1886– 1941), Wolfgang Kohler (1887–1967), and Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) believed that studying the whole of any experience was richer than studying individual aspects of that experience. The saying “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” is a Gestalt perspective. Consider that a melody is an additional element beyond the collection of notes that comprise it. The Gestalt psychologists proposed that the mind often processes information simultaneously rather than sequentially. For instance, when you look at a photograph, you see a whole image, not just a collection of pixels of color. Using Gestalt principles, Wertheimer and his colleagues also explored the nature of learning and thinking. Most of the German Gestalt psychologists were Jewish and were forced to flee the Nazi regime due to the threats posed on both academic and personal freedoms. In America, they were able to introduce a new audience to the Gestalt perspective, demonstrating how it could be applied to perception and learning. In many ways, the work of the Gestalt psychologists served as a precursor to the rise of cognitive psychology.
Behaviorism emerged early in the 20th century and became one of the major forces in psychology. Championed by psychologists such as John B. Watson (1878–1958) and B. F. Skinner (1904–1990), behaviorism rejected any reference to mind and viewed overt and observable behavior as the proper subject matter of psychology. Through the scientific study of behavior, it was hoped that laws of learning could be derived that would promote the prediction and control of behavior. Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) influenced early behaviorism. His work on conditioned learning, popularly referred to as classical conditioning, provided support for the notion that learning and behavior were controlled by events in the environment and could be explained with no reference to mind or consciousness. For decades, behaviorism dominated in many countries’ psychology. By the 1960s, psychologists began to recognize that behaviorism was unable to fully explain human behavior because it neglected mental processes. The turn toward a cognitive psychology was not new. In the 1930s, British psychologist Frederic C. Bartlett (1886–1969) explored the idea of the constructive mind, recognizing that people use their past experiences to construct frameworks in which to understand new experiences. Some of the major pioneers in American cognitive psychology include Jerome Bruner (1915–), Roger Brown (1925–1997), and George Miller (1920–2012). In the 1950s, Bruner conducted pioneering studies on cognitive aspects of sensation and perception. Brown conducted original research on language and memory, coined the term “flashbulb memory,” and figured out how to study the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. Miller’s research on working memory is legendary. His 1956 paper “The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information” is one of the most highly cited papers in psychology. A popular interpretation of Miller’s research was that the number of bits of information an average human can hold in working memory is 7 ± 2. Around the same time, the study of computer science was growing and was used as an analogy to explore and understand how the mind works. The work of Miller and others in the 1950s and 1960s has inspired tremendous interest in cognition and neuroscience, both of which dominate much of contemporary American psychology.
Applied Psychology in America
In America, there has always been an interest in the application of psychology to everyday life. Mental testing is an important example. Modern intelligence tests were developed by the French psychologist Alfred Binet (1857–1911). His goal was to develop a test that would identify schoolchildren in need of educational support. His test, which included tasks of reasoning and problem solving, was introduced in the United States by Henry Goddard (1866–1957) and later standardized by Lewis Terman (1877–1956) at Stanford University. The assessment and meaning of intelligence has fueled debates in American psychology and society for nearly 100 years. Much of this is captured in the nature-nurture debate that raises questions about the relative contributions of heredity and environment in determining intelligence (Fancher, 1987).
Applied psychology was not limited to mental testing. What psychologists were learning in their laboratories was applied in many settings including the military, business, industry, and education. The early 20th century was witness to rapid advances in applied psychology. Hugo Munsterberg (1863–1916) of Harvard University made contributions to such areas as employee selection, eyewitness testimony, and psychotherapy. Walter D. Scott (1869–1955) and Harry Hollingworth (1880–1956) produced original work on the psychology of advertising and marketing. Lillian Gilbreth (1878–1972) was a pioneer in industrial psychology and engineering psychology. Working with her husband, Frank, they promoted the use of time and motion studies to improve efficiency in industry. Lillian also brought the efficiency movement to the home, designing kitchens and appliances including the pop-up trashcan and refrigerator door shelving. Their psychology of efficiency also found plenty of applications at home with their 12 children. The experience served as the inspiration for the movie Cheaper by the Dozen.
Clinical psychology was also an early application of experimental psychology in America. Lightner Witmer (1867–1956) received his Ph.D. in experimental psychology with Wilhelm Wundt and returned to the University of Pennsylvania, where he opened a psychological clinic in 1896. Witmer believed that because psychology dealt with the study of sensation and perception, it should be of value in treating children with learning and behavioral problems. He is credited as the founder of both clinical and school psychology.
Psychology as a Profession
(at the example of the USA)
As the roles of psychologists and the needs of the public continued to change, it was necessary for psychology to begin to define itself as a profession. Without standards for training and practice, anyone could use the title psychologist and offer services to the public. As early as 1917, applied psychologists organized to create standards for education, training, and licensure. By the 1930s, these efforts led to the creation of the American Association for Applied Psychology (AAAP). While the American Psychological Association (APA) represented the interests of academic psychologists, AAAP served those in education, industry, consulting, and clinical work.
The advent of WWII changed everything. The psychiatric casualties of war were staggering, and there were simply not enough mental health professionals to meet the need. Recognizing the shortage, the federal government urged the AAAP and APA to work together to meet the mental health needs of the nation. The result was the merging of the AAAP and the APA and a focus on the training of professional psychologists. Through the provisions of National Mental Health Act of 1946, funding was made available that allowed the APA, the Veterans Administration, and the Public Health Service to work together to develop training programs that would produce clinical psychologists. These efforts led to the convening of the Boulder Conference on Graduate Education in Clinical Psychology in 1949 in Boulder, Colorado. The meeting launched doctoral training in psychology and gave us the scientist-practitioner model of training. Similar meetings also helped launch doctoral training programs in counseling and school psychology. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, alternatives to Boulder have been debated. In 1973, the Vail Conference on Professional Training in Psychology proposed the scholar-practitioner model and the Psy.D. degree (Doctor of Psychology). It is a training model that emphasizes clinical training and practice that has become more common.
Psychology and Society
Given that psychology deals with the human condition, it is not surprising that psychologists would involve themselves in social issues. For more than a century, psychology and psychologists have been agents of social action and change. Using the methods and tools of science, psychologists have challenged assumptions, stereotypes, and stigma. Founded in 1936, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) has supported research and action on a wide range of social issues. Individually, there have been many psychologists whose efforts have promoted social change. Helen Thompson Woolley (1874–1947) and Leta S. Hollingworth (1886–1939) were pioneers in research on the psychology of sex differences. Working in the early 20th century, when women’s rights were marginalized, Thompson examined the assumption that women were overemotional compared to men and found that emotion did not influence women’s decisions any more than it did men’s ones. Hollingworth found that menstruation did not negatively impact women’s cognitive or motor abilities. Such work combatted harmful stereotypes and showed that psychological research could contribute to social change.
Among the first generation of African American psychologists, Mamie Phipps Clark (1917– 1983) and her husband Kenneth Clark (1914–2005) studied the psychology of race and demonstrated the ways in which school segregation negatively impacted the self-esteem of African American children. Their research was influential in the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, which ended school segregation. In psychology, greater advocacy for issues impacting the African American community were advanced by the creation of the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi) in 1968.
In 1957, psychologist Evelyn Hooker (1907–1996) published the paper “The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual” reporting on her research that showed no significant differences in psychological adjustment between homosexual and heterosexual men. Her research helped to de-pathologize homosexuality and contributed to the decision by the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1973.
Conclusion
Growth and expansion have been a constant in psychology. In the latter part of the 20th century, areas such as social, developmental, and personality psychology made major contributions to our understanding of what it means to be human. Today neuroscience is enjoying tremendous interest and growth. As mentioned at the beginning, it is a challenge to cover all the history of psychology in such a short space. Errors of omission and commission are likely in such a selective review. The history of psychology helps to set a stage upon which the story of psychology can be told. This brief summary provides some glimpse into the depth and rich content offered by the history of psychology. It is hoped that you will be able to see these connections and have a greater understanding and appreciation for both the unity and diversity of the field of psychology.
Vocabulary
Behaviorism – the study of behavior.
Cognitive psychology – the study of mental processes.
Consciousness – awareness of ourselves and our environment.
Empiricism – the belief that knowledge comes from experience.
Eugenics – the practice of selective breeding to promote desired traits.
Flashbulb memory – a highly detailed and vivid memory of an emotionally significant event.
Functionalism – a school of American psychology that focused on the utility of consciousness.
Gestalt psychology – an attempt to study the unity of experience.
Individual differences – ways in which people differ in terms of their behavior, emotion, cognition and development.
Introspection – a method of focusing on internal processes.
Neural impulse – an electro-chemical signal that enables neurons to communicate.
Practitioner-Scholar Model – a model of training of professional psychologists that emphasizes clinical practice.
Psychophysics – study of the relationships between physical stimuli and the perception of those stimuli.
Realism – a point of view that emphasizes the importance of the senses in providing knowledge of the external world
Scientist-practitioner model – a model of training of professional psychologists that emphasizes the development of both – research and clinical skills.
Structuralism – a school of American psychology that sought to describe the elements of conscious experience.
Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon – the inability to pull a word from memory even though there is the sensation that that word is available.
TASK 2.
Please, make up a timeline of at least 25 dates and events from all the texts above.
TASK 3.
Discussion Questions (in a written form):
- Why was psychophysics important to the development of psychology as a science?
- How have psychologists participated in the advancement of social issues? 3. Name some ways in which psychology began to be applied to the general public and everyday problems.
- Describe functionalism and structuralism and their influences on behaviorism and cognitive psychology.
LESSON 2 (8 hours)
Task 1. Read the texts and translate new words of professional thesaurus.
Research Designs
In the early 1970’s, a man named Uri Geller tricked the world: he convinced hundreds of thousands of people that he could bend spoons and slow watches using only the power of his mind. In fact, if you were in the audience, you would have likely believed he had psychic powers. Everything looked authentic—this man had to have paranormal abilities! So, why have you probably never heard of him before? Because when Uri was asked to perform his miracles in line with scientific experimentation, he was no longer able to do them. That is, even though it seemed like he was doing the impossible, when he was tested by science, he proved to be nothing more than a clever magician.
When we look at dinosaur bones to make educated guesses about extinct life, or systematically chart the heavens to learn about the relationships between stars and planets, or study magicians to figure out how they perform their tricks, we are forming observations — the foundation of science. Although we are all familiar with the saying “seeing is believing,” conducting science is more than just what your eyes perceive. Science is the result of systematic and intentional study of the natural world. And psychology is no different. In the movie Jerry Maguire, Cuba Gooding, Jr. became famous for using the phrase, “Show me the money!” In psychology, as in all sciences, we might say, “Show me the data!”
One of the important steps in scientific inquiry is to test our research questions, otherwise known as hypotheses. However, there are many ways to test hypotheses in psychological research. Which method you choose will depend on the type of questions you are asking, as well as what resources are available to you. All methods have limitations, which is why the best research uses a variety of methods.
Most psychological research can be divided into two types: experimental and correlational research.
Experimental Research
If somebody gave you $20 that absolutely had to be spent today, how would you choose to spend it? Would you spend it on an item you’ve been eyeing for weeks, or would you donate the money to charity? Which option do you think would bring you the most happiness? If you’re like most people, you’d choose to spend the money on yourself (duh, right?). Our intuition is that we’d be happier if we spent the money on ourselves. Knowing that our intuition can sometimes be wrong, Professor Elizabeth Dunn (2008) at the University of British Columbia set out to conduct an experiment on spending and happiness. She gave each of the participants in her experiment $20 and then told them they had to spend the money by the end of the day. Some of the participants were told they must spend the money on themselves, and some were told they must spend the money on others (either charity or a gift for someone). At the end of the day, she measured participants’ levels of happiness using a self-report questionnaire. (But wait, how do you measure something like happiness when you can’t really see it? Psychologists measure many abstract concepts, such as happiness and intelligence, by beginning with operational definitions of the concepts.
In an experiment, researchers manipulate, or cause changes, in the independent variable, and observe or measure any impact of those changes in the dependent variable. The independent variable is the one under the experimenter’s control, or the variable that is intentionally altered between groups. In the case of Dunn’s experiment, the independent variable was whether participants spent the money on themselves or on others. The dependent variable is the variable that is not manipulated at all, or the one where the effect happens. One way to help remember this is that the dependent variable “depends” on what happens to the independent variable. In our example, the participants’ happiness (the dependent variable in this experiment) depends on how the participants spend their money (the independent variable). Thus, any observed changes or group differences in happiness can be attributed to whom the money was spent on. What Dunn and her colleagues found was that, after all the spending had been done, the people who had spent the money on others were happier than those who had spent the money on themselves. In other words, spending on others causes us to be happier than spending on ourselves. Do you find this surprising?
But wait! Doesn’t happiness depend on a lot of different factors—for instance, a person’s upbringing or life circumstances? What if some people had happy childhoods and that’s why they’re happier? Or what if some people dropped their toast that morning and it fell jam-side down and ruined their whole day? It is correct to recognize that these factors and many more can easily affect a person’s level of happiness. So how can we accurately conclude that spending money on others causes happiness, as in the case of Dunn’s experiment?
The most important thing about experiments is random assignment. Participants don’t get to pick which condition they are in (e.g., participants didn’t choose whether they were supposed to spend the money on themselves versus others). The experimenter assigns them to a particular condition based on the flip of a coin or the roll of a die or any other random method. Why do researchers do this? With Dunn’s study, there is the obvious reason: you can imagine which condition most people would choose to be in, if given the choice. But another equally important reason is that random assignment makes it so the groups, on average, are similar on all characteristics except what the experimenter manipulates.
By randomly assigning people to conditions (self-spending versus other-spending), some people with happy childhoods should end up in each condition. Likewise, some people who had dropped their toast that morning (or experienced some other disappointment) should end up in each condition. As a result, the distribution of all these factors will generally be consistent across the two groups, and this means that on average the two groups will be relatively equivalent on all these factors. Random assignment is critical to experimentation because if the only difference between the two groups is the independent variable, we can infer that the independent variable is the cause of any observable difference (e.g., in the amount of happiness they feel at the end of the day).
Here’s another example of the importance of random assignment: Let’s say your class is going to form two basketball teams, and you get to be the captain of one team. The class is to be divided evenly between the two teams. If you get to pick the players for your team first, whom will you pick? You’ll probably pick the tallest members of the class or the most athletic. You probably won’t pick the short, uncoordinated people, unless there are no other options. As a result, your team will be taller and more athletic than the other team. But what if we want the teams to be fair? How can we do this when we have people of varying height and ability? All we have to do is randomly assign players to the two teams. Most likely, some tall and some short people will end up on your team, and some tall and some short people will end up on the other team. The average height of the teams will be approximately the same. That is the power of random assignment!
Other considerations
In addition to using random assignment, you should avoid introducing confounds into your experiments. Confounds are things that could undermine your ability to draw causal inferences. For example, if you wanted to test if a new happy pill will make people happier, you could randomly assign participants to take the happy pill or not (the independent variable) and compare these two groups on their self-reported happiness (the dependent variable). However, if some participants know they are getting the happy pill, they might develop expectations that influence their self-reported happiness. This is sometimes known as a placebo effect. Sometimes a person just knowing that he or she is receiving special treatment or something new is enough to actually cause changes in behavior or perception: In other words, even if the participants in the happy pill condition were to report being happier, we wouldn’t know if the pill was actually making them happier or if it was the placebo effect—an example of a confound. A related idea is participant demand. This occurs when participants try to behave in a way, they think the experimenter wants them to behave. Placebo effects and participant demand often occur unintentionally. Even experimenter expectations can influence the outcome of a study. For example, if the experimenter knows who took the happy pill and who did not, and the dependent variable is the experimenter’s observations of people’s happiness, then the experimenter might perceive improvements in the happy pill group that are not really there.
One way to prevent these confounds from affecting the results of a study is to use a double-blind procedure. In a double-blind procedure, neither the participant nor the experimenter knows which condition the participant is in. For example, when participants are given the happy pill or the fake pill, they don’t know which one they are receiving. This way the participants shouldn’t experience the placebo effect, and will be unable to behave as the researcher expects (participant demand). Likewise, the researcher doesn’t know which pill each participant is taking (at least in the beginning—later, the researcher will get the results for data-analysis purposes), which means the researcher’s expectations can’t influence his or her observations. Therefore, because both parties are “blind” to the condition, neither will be able to behave in a way that introduces a confound. At the end of the day, the only difference between groups will be which pills the participants received, allowing the researcher to determine if the happy pill actually caused people to be happier.
Correlational Designs
When scientists passively observe and measure phenomena it is called correlational research. Here, we do not intervene and change behavior, as we do in experiments. In correlational research, we identify patterns of relationships, but we usually cannot infer what causes what. Importantly, with correlational research, you can examine only two variables at a time, no more and no less. So, what if you wanted to test whether spending on others is related to happiness, but you don’t have $20 to give to each participant? You could use a correlational design—which is exactly what Professor Dunn did, too. She asked people how much of their income they spent on others or donated to charity, and later she asked them how happy they were. Do you think these two variables were related? Yes, they were! The more money people reported spending on others, the happier they were.
Quasi-Experimental Designs
What if you want to study the effects of marriage on a variable? For example, does marriage make people happier? Can you randomly assign some people to get married and others to remain single? Of course not. So how can you study these important variables? You can use a quasi-experimental design.
A quasi-experimental design is similar to experimental research, except that random assignment to conditions is not used. Instead, we rely on existing group memberships (e.g., married vs. single). We treat these as the independent variables, even though we don’t assign people to the conditions and don’t manipulate the variables. As a result, with quasi-experimental designs causal inference is more difficult. For example, married people might differ on a variety of characteristics from unmarried people. If we find that married participants are happier than single participants, it will be hard to say that marriage causes happiness, because the people who got married might have already been happier than the people who have remained single.
Taking into account that experimental and quasi-experimental designs can seem pretty similar, let’s take another example to distinguish them. Imagine you want to know who is a better professor: Dr. Smith or Dr. Khan. To judge their ability, you’re going to look at their students’ final grades. Here, the independent variable is the professor (Dr. Smith vs. Dr. Khan) and the dependent variable is the students’ grades. In an experimental design, you would randomly assign students to one of the two professors and then compare the students’ final grades. However, in real life, researchers can’t randomly force students to take one professor over the other; instead, the researchers would just have to use the preexisting classes and study them as-is (quasi-experimental design). Again, the key difference is random assignment to the conditions of the independent variable. Although the quasi-experimental design (where the students choose which professor they want) may seem random, it’s most likely not. For example, maybe students heard Dr. Smith sets low expectations, so slackers prefer this class, whereas Dr. Khan sets higher expectations, so smarter students prefer that one. This now introduces a confounding variable (student intelligence) that will almost certainly have an effect on students’ final grades, regardless of how skilled the professor is. So, even though a quasiexperimental design is similar to an experimental design (i.e., it has a manipulated independent variable), because there’s no random assignment, you can’t reasonably draw the same conclusions that you would with an experimental design.
Longitudinal Studies
Another powerful research design is the longitudinal study. Longitudinal studies track the same people over time. Some longitudinal studies last a few weeks, some a few months, some a year or more. Some studies that have contributed a lot to psychology followed the same people over decades. For example, one study followed more than 20,000 Germans for two decades. From these longitudinal data, psychologist Rich Lucas (2003) was able to determine that people who end up getting married indeed start off a bit happier than their peers who never marry. Longitudinal studies like this provide valuable evidence for testing many theories in psychology, but they can be quite costly to conduct, especially if they follow many people for many years.
Surveys
A survey is a way of gathering information, using old-fashioned questionnaires or the Internet. Compared to a study conducted in a psychology laboratory, surveys can reach a larger number of participants at a much lower cost. Although surveys are typically used for correlational research, this is not always the case. An experiment can be carried out using surveys as well. For example, King and Napa (1998) presented participants with different types of stimuli on paper: either a survey completed by a happy person or a survey completed by an unhappy person. They wanted to see whether happy people were judged as more likely to get into heaven compared to unhappy people. Can you figure out the independent and dependent variables in this study? Can you guess what the results were? Happy people (vs. unhappy people; the independent variable) were judged as more likely to go to heaven (the dependent variable) compared to unhappy people! Surveys provide researchers with some significant advantages in gathering data. They make it possible to reach large numbers of people while keeping costs to the researchers and the time commitments of participants relatively low. Research Designs 32 Likewise, correlational research can be conducted without the use of surveys. For instance, psychologists Lee Ann Harker and Dacher Keltner (2001) examined the smile intensity of women’s college yearbook photos. Smiling in the photos was correlated with being married 10 years later!
Research Methods: Why You Need Them
Just look at any major news outlet and you’ll find research routinely being reported. Sometimes the journalist understands the research methodology, sometimes not (e.g., correlational evidence is often incorrectly represented as causal evidence). Often, the media are quick to draw a conclusion for you. After reading this module, you should recognize that the strength of a scientific finding lies in the strength of its methodology. Therefore, in order to be a savvy consumer of research, you need to understand the pros and cons of different methods and the distinctions among them. Plus, understanding how psychologists systematically go about answering research questions will help you to solve problems in other domains, both personal and professional, not just in psychology.
TASK 2.
Please, provide explanation to the vocabulary below. You can add the words by your own.
Vocabulary
Confounds –
Correlation –
Dependent variable –
Experimenter expectations –
Independent variable –
Longitudinal study –
Operational definitions –
Participant demand –
Placebo effect –
Quasi-experimental design –
Random assignment –
TASK 3.
Discussion Questions
- What are some key differences between experimental and correlational research?
- Why might researchers sometimes use methods other than experiments?
- How are surveys related to correlational and experimental designs?
Extra task:
Please, make up a crossword of key words (as for you) to the topic “Research Designs”.
LESSON 3 (6 hours)
Task 1. Read the texts and translate new words of professional thesaurus.
Two Types of Conditioning
Although Ivan Pavlov won a Nobel Prize for studying digestion, he is much more famous for something else: working with a dog, a bell, and a bowl of saliva. Many people are familiar with the classic study of “Pavlov’s dog,” but rarely do they understand the significance of its discovery. In fact, Pavlov’s work helps explain why some people get anxious just looking at a crowded bus, why the sound of a morning alarm is so hated, and even why we swear off certain foods we’ve only tried once. Classical (or Pavlovian) conditioning is one of the fundamental ways we learn about the world around us. But it is far more than just a theory of learning; it is also arguably a theory of identity. For, once you understand classical conditioning, you’ll recognize that your favorite music, clothes, even political candidate, might all be a result of the same process that makes a dog drool at the sound of bell.
Around the turn of the 20th century, scientists who were interested in understanding the behavior of animals and humans began to appreciate the importance of two very basic forms of learning. One, which was first studied by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, is known as classical, or Pavlovian conditioning. In his famous experiment, Pavlov rang a bell and then gave a dog some food. After repeating this pairing multiple times, the dog eventually treated the bell as a signal for food, and began salivating in anticipation of the treat. This kind of result has been reproduced in the lab using a wide range of signals (e.g., tones, light, tastes, settings) paired with many different events besides food (e.g., drugs, shocks, illness).
We now believe that this same learning process is engaged, for example, when humans associate a drug, they’ve taken with the environment in which they’ve taken it; when they associate a stimulus (e.g., a symbol for vacation, like a big beach towel) with an emotional event (like a burst of happiness); and when they associate the flavor of a food with getting food poisoning. Although classical conditioning may seem “old” or “too simple” a theory, it is still widely studied today for at least two reasons: First, it is a straightforward test of associative learning that can be used to study other, more complex behaviors. Second, because classical conditioning is always occurring in our lives, its effects on behavior have important implications for understanding normal and disordered behavior in humans.
In a general way, classical conditioning occurs whenever neutral stimuli are associated with psychologically significant events. With food poisoning, for example, although having fish for dinner may not normally be something to be concerned about (i.e., a “neutral stimuli”), if it causes you to get sick, you will now likely associate that neutral stimuli (the fish) with the psychologically significant event of getting sick. These paired events are often described using terms that can be applied to any situation.
The dog food in Pavlov’s experiment is called the unconditioned stimulus (US) because it elicits an unconditioned response (UR). That is, without any kind of “training” or “teaching,” the stimulus produces a natural or instinctual reaction. In Pavlov’s case, the food (US) automatically makes the dog drool (UR). Other examples of unconditioned stimuli include loud noises (US) that startle us (UR), or a hot shower (US) that produces pleasure (UR).
On the other hand, a conditioned stimulus produces a conditioned response. A conditioned stimulus (CS) is a signal that has no importance to the organism until it is paired with something that does have importance. For example, in Pavlov’s experiment, the bell is the conditioned stimulus. Before the dog has learned to associate the bell (CS) with the presence of food (US), hearing the bell means nothing to the dog. However, after multiple pairings of the bell with the presentation of food, the dog starts to drool at the sound of the bell. This drooling in response to the bell is the conditioned response (CR). Although it can be confusing, the conditioned response is almost always the same as the unconditioned response. However, it is called the conditioned response because it is conditional on (or, depends on) being paired with the conditioned stimulus (e.g., the bell). To help make this clearer, consider becoming really hungry when you see the logo for a fast-food restaurant. There’s a good chance you’ll start salivating. Although it is the actual eating of the food (US) that normally produces the salivation (UR), simply seeing the restaurant’s logo (CS) can trigger the same reaction (CR).
Another example you are probably very familiar with involves your alarm clock. If you’re like most people, waking up early usually makes you unhappy. In this case, waking up early (US) produces a natural sensation of grumpiness (UR). Rather than waking up early on your own, though, you likely have an alarm clock that plays a tone to wake you. Before setting your alarm to that particular tone, let’s imagine you had neutral feelings about it (i.e., the tone had no prior meaning for you). However, now that you use it to wake up every morning, you psychologically “pair” that tone (CS) with your feelings of grumpiness in the morning (UR). After enough pairings, this tone (CS) will automatically produce your natural response of grumpiness (CR). Thus, this linkage between the unconditioned stimulus (US; waking up early) and the conditioned stimulus (CS; the tone) is so strong that the unconditioned response (UR; being grumpy) will become a conditioned response (CR; e.g., hearing the tone at any point in the day—whether waking up or walking down the street—will make you grumpy). Modern studies of classical conditioning use a very wide range of CSs and USs and measure a wide range of conditioned responses.
Although classical conditioning is a powerful explanation for how we learn many different things, there is a second form of conditioning that also helps explain how we learn. First studied by Edward Thorndike, and later extended by B. F. Skinner, this second type of conditioning is known as instrumental or operant conditioning. Operant conditioning occurs when a behavior (as opposed to a stimulus) is associated with the occurrence of a significant event. In the best-known example, a rat in a laboratory learns to press a lever in a cage (called a “Skinner box”) to receive food. Because the rat has no “natural” association between pressing a lever and getting food, the rat has to learn this connection. At first, the rat may simply explore its cage, climbing on top of things, burrowing under things, in search of food. Eventually while poking around its cage, the rat accidentally presses the lever, and a food pellet drops in. This voluntary behavior is called an operant behavior, because it “operates” on the environment (i.e., it is an action that the animal itself makes).
Now, once the rat recognizes that it receives a piece of food every time it presses the lever, the behavior of lever-pressing becomes reinforced. That is, the food pellets serve as reinforcers because they strengthen the rat’s desire to engage with the environment in this particular manner. In a parallel example, imagine that you’re playing a street-racing video game. As you drive through one city course multiple times, you try a number of different streets to get to the finish line. On one of these trials, you discover a shortcut that dramatically improves your overall time. You have learned this new path through operant conditioning. That is, by engaging with your environment (operant responses), you performed a sequence of behaviors that that was positively reinforced (i.e., you found the shortest distance to the finish line). And now that you’ve learned how to drive this course, you will perform that same sequence of driving behaviors (just as the rat presses on the lever) to receive your reward of a faster finish.
Operant conditioning research studies how the effects of a behavior influence the probability that it will occur again. For example, the effects of the rat’s lever-pressing behavior (i.e., receiving a food pellet) influences the probability that it will keep pressing the lever. For, according to Thorndike’s law of effect, when a behavior has a positive (satisfying) effect or consequence, it is likely to be repeated in the future. However, when a behavior has a negative (painful/annoying) consequence, it is less likely to be repeated in the future. Effects that increase behaviors are referred to as reinforcers, and effects that decrease them are referred to as punishers.
An everyday example that helps to illustrate operant conditioning is striving for a good grade in class—which could be considered a reward for students (i.e., it produces a positive emotional response). In order to get that reward (similar to the rat learning to press the lever), the student needs to modify his/her behavior. For example, the student may learn that speaking up in class gets him/her participation points (a reinforcer), so the student speaks up repeatedly. However, the student also learns that s/he shouldn’t speak up about just anything; talking about topics unrelated to school actually costs points. Therefore, through the student’s freely chosen behaviors, s/he learns which behaviors are reinforced and which are punished.
An important distinction of operant conditioning is that it provides a method for studying how consequences influence “voluntary” behavior. The rat’s decision to press the lever is voluntary, in the sense that the rat is free to make and repeat that response whenever it wants. Classical conditioning, on the other hand, is just the opposite —depending instead on “involuntary” behavior (e.g., the dog doesn’t choose to drool; it just does). So, whereas the rat must actively participate and perform some kind of behavior to attain its reward, the dog in Pavlov’s experiment is a passive participant. One of the lessons of operant conditioning research, then, is that voluntary behavior is strongly influenced by its consequences.
In classical conditioning, the animal behaves as if it has learned to associate a stimulus with a significant event. In operant conditioning, the animal behaves as if it has learned to associate a behavior with a significant event. Another difference is that the response in the classical situation (e. g., salivation) is elicited by a stimulus that comes before it, whereas the response in the operant case is not elicited by any particular stimulus. Instead, operant responses are said to be emitted. The word “emitted” further conveys the idea that operant behaviors are essentially voluntary in nature.
Understanding classical and operant conditioning provides psychologists with many tools for understanding learning and behavior in the world outside the lab. This is in part because the two types of learning occur continuously throughout our lives. It has been said that “much like the laws of gravity, the laws of learning are always in effect”.
Observational Learning
Not all forms of learning are accounted for entirely by classical and operant conditioning. Imagine a child walking up to a group of children playing a game on the playground. The game looks fun, but it is new and unfamiliar. Rather than joining the game immediately, the child opts to sit back and watch the other children play a round or two. Observing the others, the child takes note of the ways in which they behave while playing the game. By watching the behavior of the other kids, the child can figure out the rules of the game and even some strategies for doing well at the game. This is called observational learning. Observational learning is a component of Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1977), which posits that individuals can learn novel responses via observation of key others’ behaviors.
Observational learning does not necessarily require reinforcement, but instead hinges on the presence of others, referred to as social models. Social models are typically of higher status or authority compared to the observer, examples of which include parents, teachers, and police officers. In the example above, the children who already know how to play the game could be thought of as being authorities — and are therefore social models — even though they are the same age as the observer. By observing how the social models behave, an individual is able to learn how to act in a certain situation. Other examples of observational learning might include a child learning to place her napkin in her lap by watching her parents at the dinner table, or a customer learning where to find the ketchup and mustard after observing other customers at a hot dog stand.
Bandura theorizes that the observational learning process consists of four parts. The first is attention — as, quite simply, one must pay attention to what s/he is observing in order to learn. The second part is retention: to learn one must be able to retain the behavior s/he is observing in memory. The third part of observational learning, initiation, acknowledges that the learner must be able to execute (or initiate) the learned behavior. Lastly, the observer must possess the motivation to engage in observational learning. In our vignette, the child must want to learn how to play the game in order to properly engage in observational learning.
Researchers have conducted countless experiments designed to explore observational learning, the most famous of which is Albert Bandura’s “Bobo doll experiment.”
In this experiment Bandura had children individually observe an adult social model interact with a clown doll (“Bobo”). For one group of children, the adult interacted aggressively with Bobo: punching it, kicking it, throwing it, and even hitting it in the face with a toy mallet. Another group of children watched the adult interact with other toys, displaying no aggression toward Bobo. In both instances the adult left and the children were allowed to interact with Bobo on their own. Bandura found that children exposed to the aggressive social model were significantly more likely to behave aggressively toward Bobo, hitting and kicking him, compared to those exposed to the non-aggressive model. The researchers concluded that the children in the aggressive group used their observations of the adult social model’s behavior to determine that aggressive behavior toward Bobo was acceptable.
While reinforcement was not required to elicit the children’s behavior in Bandura’s first experiment, it is important to acknowledge that consequences do play a role within observational learning. A future adaptation of this study demonstrated that children in the aggression group showed less aggressive behavior if they witnessed the adult model receive punishment for aggressing against Bobo. Bandura referred to this process as vicarious reinforcement, as the children did not experience the reinforcement or punishment directly, yet were still influenced by observing it.
Vocabulary
Blocking
In classical conditioning, the finding that no conditioning occurs to a stimulus if it is combined with a previously conditioned stimulus during conditioning trials. Suggests that information, surprise value, or prediction error is important in conditioning.
Categorize
To sort or arrange different items into classes or categories.
Classical conditioning
The procedure in which an initially neutral stimulus (the conditioned stimulus, or CS) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (or US). The result is that the conditioned stimulus begins to elicit a conditioned response (CR). Classical conditioning is nowadays considered important as both a behavioral phenomenon and as a method to study simple associative learning. Same as Pavlovian conditioning.
Conditioned compensatory response.
In classical conditioning, a conditioned response that opposes, rather than is the same as, the unconditioned response. It functions to reduce the strength of the unconditioned response. Often seen in conditioning when drugs are used as unconditioned stimuli.
Conditioned response (CR)
The response that is elicited by the conditioned stimulus after classical conditioning has taken place.
Conditioned stimulus (CS)
An initially neutral stimulus (like a bell, light, or tone) that elicits a conditioned response after it has been associated with an unconditioned stimulus.
Context
Stimuli that are in the background whenever learning occurs. For instance, the Skinner box or room in which learning takes place is the classic example of a context. However, “context” can also be provided by internal stimuli, such as the sensory effects of drugs (e.g., being under the influence of alcohol has stimulus properties that provide a context) and mood states (e. g., being happy or sad). It can also be provided by a specific period in time—the passage of time is sometimes said to change the “temporal context.”
Discriminative stimulus
In operant conditioning, a stimulus that signals whether the response will be reinforced. It is said to “set the occasion” for the operant response.
Extinction
Decrease in the strength of a learned behavior that occurs when the conditioned stimulus is presented without the unconditioned stimulus (in classical conditioning) or when the behavior is no longer reinforced (in instrumental conditioning). The term describes both the procedure (the US or reinforcer is no longer presented) as well as the result of the procedure (the learned response declines). Behaviors that have been reduced in strength through extinction are said to be “extinguished.”
Fear conditioning
A type of classical or Pavlovian conditioning in which the conditioned stimulus (CS) is associated with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US), such as a foot shock. As a consequence of learning, the CS comes to evoke fear. The phenomenon is thought to be involved in the development of anxiety disorders in humans.
Goal-directed behavior
Instrumental behavior that is influenced by the animal’s knowledge of the association between the behavior and its consequence and the current value of the consequence. Sensitive to the reinforcer devaluation effect.
Habit
Instrumental behavior that occurs automatically in the presence of a stimulus and is no longer influenced by the animal’s knowledge of the value of the reinforcer. Insensitive to the reinforcer devaluation effect.
Instrumental conditioning
Process in which animals learn about the relationship between their behaviors and their consequences. Also known as operant conditioning.
Law of effect
The idea that instrumental or operant responses are influenced by their effects. Responses that are followed by a pleasant state of affairs will be strengthened and those that are followed by discomfort will be weakened. Nowadays, the term refers to the idea that operant or instrumental behaviors are lawfully controlled by their consequences.
Observational learning
Learning by observing the behavior of others.
Operant
A behavior that is controlled by its consequences. The simplest example is the rat’s leverpressing, which is controlled by the presentation of the reinforcer.
Operant conditioning
See instrumental conditioning.
Pavlovian conditioning
See classical conditioning.
Prediction error
When the outcome of a conditioning trial is different from that which is predicted by the conditioned stimuli that are present on the trial (i.e., when the US is surprising). Prediction error is necessary to create Pavlovian conditioning (and associative learning generally). As learning occurs over repeated conditioning trials, the conditioned stimulus increasingly predicts the unconditioned stimulus, and prediction error declines. Conditioning works to correct or reduce prediction error.
Preparedness
The idea that an organism’s evolutionary history can make it easy to learn a particular association. Because of preparedness, you are more likely to associate the taste of tequila, and not the circumstances surrounding drinking it, with getting sick. Similarly, humans are more likely to associate images of spiders and snakes than flowers and mushrooms with aversive outcomes like shocks.
Punisher
A stimulus that decreases the strength of an operant behavior when it is made a consequence of the behavior.
Quantitative law of effect
A mathematical rule that states that the effectiveness of a reinforcer at strengthening an operant response depends on the amount of reinforcement earned for all alternative behaviors. A reinforcer is less effective if there is a lot of reinforcement in the environment for other behaviors.
Reinforcer
Any consequence of a behavior that strengthens the behavior or increases the likelihood that it will be performed it again.
Reinforcer devaluation effect
The finding that an animal will stop performing an instrumental response that once led to a reinforcer if the reinforcer is separately made aversive or undesirable.
Renewal effect
Recovery of an extinguished response that occurs when the context is changed after extinction. Especially strong when the change of context involves return to the context in which conditioning originally occurred. Can occur after extinction in either classical or instrumental conditioning.
Social Learning Theory
The theory that people can learn new responses and behaviors by observing the behavior of others.
Social models
Authorities that are the targets for observation and who model behaviors.
Spontaneous recovery
Recovery of an extinguished response that occurs with the passage of time after extinction. Can occur after extinction in either classical or instrumental conditioning.
Stimulus control
When an operant behavior is controlled by a stimulus that precedes it.
Taste aversion learning
The phenomenon in which a taste is paired with sickness, and this causes the organism to reject—and dislike—that taste in the future.
Unconditioned response (UR)
In classical conditioning, an innate response that is elicited by a stimulus before (or in the absence of) conditioning.
Unconditioned stimulus (US)
In classical conditioning, the stimulus that elicits the response before conditioning occurs.
Vicarious reinforcement
Learning that occurs by observing the reinforcement or punishment of another person.
TASK 2.
Discussion Questions
- Describe three examples of Pavlovian (classical) conditioning that you have seen in your own behavior, or that of your friends or family, in the past few days.
- Describe three examples of instrumental (operant) conditioning that you have seen in your own behavior, or that of your friends or family, in the past few days.
- Drugs can be potent reinforcers. Discuss how Pavlovian conditioning and instrumental conditioning can work together to influence drug taking.
- In the modern world, processed foods are highly available and have been engineered to be highly palatable and reinforcing. Discuss how Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning can work together to explain why people often eat too much.
- How does blocking challenge the idea that pairings of a CS and US are sufficient to cause Pavlovian conditioning? What is important in creating Pavlovian learning?
- How does the reinforcer devaluation effect challenge the idea that reinforcers merely “stamp in” the operant response? What does the effect tell us that animals actually learn in operant conditioning?
- With regards to social learning do you think people learn violence from observing violence in movies? Why or why not?
- What do you think you have learned through social learning? Who are your social models?
TASK 3.
Please, present your point of view and ideas of correlation between learning and behaviour.
LESSON 4 (10 hours)
States of Consciousness
Task 1. Read the texts and translate new words of professional thesaurus.
Have you ever had a fellow motorist stopped beside you at a red light, singing his brains out, or picking his nose, or otherwise behaving in ways he might not normally do in public? There is something about being alone in a car that encourages people to zone out and forget that others can see them. And although these little lapses of attention are amusing for the rest of us, they are also instructive when it comes to the topic of consciousness.
Consciousness is a term meant to indicate awareness. It includes awareness of the self, of bodily sensations, of thoughts and of the environment. In English, we use the opposite word “unconscious” to indicate senselessness or a barrier to awareness, as in the case of “Theresa fell off the ladder and hit her head, knocking herself unconscious.” And yet, psychological theory and research suggest that consciousness and unconsciousness are more complicated than falling off a ladder. That is, consciousness is more than just being “on” or “off.” For instance, Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939)—perhaps the most influential psychologist of all time—understood that even while we are awake, many things lay outside the realm of our conscious awareness (like being in the car and forgetting the rest of the world can see into your windows and hear your singing). In response to this notion, Freud introduced the concept of the “subconscious” (Freud, 2001) and proposed that some of our memories and even our basic motivations are not always accessible to our conscious minds.
Upon reflection of what constitutes this “awareness of consciousness,” though, it is easy to see how slippery a topic it is. For example, are people conscious when they’re daydreaming? What about when they’re drunk? Clearly, consciousness is more of a continuum than an onor-off state of being. In this module, we will describe several levels of consciousness and then discuss altered states of consciousness such as hypnosis and sleep.
Levels of Awareness
In 1957, a marketing researcher inserted the words “Eat Popcorn” onto one frame of a film being shown all across the United States. And although that frame was only on screen for 1/24th of a second—a speed too fast to be perceived by conscious awareness—the researcher reported an increase in popcorn sales by nearly 60%. Almost immediately, all forms of “subliminal messaging” were regulated in the US and banned in countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom. And even though it was later shown that the researcher had made up the data (he hadn’t even inserted the words into the movie frame), this fear about influences on our subconscious persists. At its heart, this issue pits various levels of awareness against one another. On the one hand, we have the “low awareness” of subtle, even subliminal influences. On the other hand, there is you — the conscious thinking, feeling which includes all that you are currently aware of, even reading this sentence. However, when we consider these different levels of awareness separately, we can better understand how they operate.
Low Awareness
Outside of being in a coma, you are constantly receiving and evaluating sensory information. Although any moment has too many sights, smells, and sounds for them all to be consciously considered, our brains are nonetheless processing all that information. For example, have you ever been at a party, overwhelmed by all the people and conversation, when out of nowhere you hear your name called? Even though you have no idea what else the person is saying, you are somehow conscious of your name (for more on this, “the cocktail party effect,” see Noba’s Module on Attention). So, even though you may not be aware of various stimuli in your environment, your brain is paying closer attention than you think.
Similar to a reflex (like jumping when startled), some cues in our environment, or significant sensory information, will automatically elicit a response from us even though we never consciously perceive it. For example, Öhman and Soares (1994) took participants with a fear of snakes and connected them to a machine that measured subtle variations in sweating. The researchers then flashed pictures of different items (e.g., mushrooms, flowers, and most importantly, snakes) on a screen in front of them, but did so at speeds that left the participant clueless to what he or she had actually seen. However, when snake pictures were flashed, these participants started sweating more (i.e., a sign of fear), even though they had no idea what they’d just viewed!
Yet just because our brains perceive these stimuli without our conscious awareness, do they really affect our subsequent thoughts and behaviors? In a landmark study, Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996) had participants solve a word search puzzle where the answers pertained to words about the elderly (e.g., “old,” “grandma”) or something random (e.g., “notebook,” “tomato”). Afterward, the researchers secretly measured how fast the participants walked down the hallway exiting the experiment. And although none of the participants were aware of a theme to the answers, those who had solved a puzzle with elderly words (vs. those random ones) walked more slowly down the hallway!
This effect called priming (i.e., readily “activating” certain concepts and associations from one’s memory) has been replicated in a number of other studies. For example, priming the people by having them drink from a warm glass (vs. a cold one) resulted in behaving more “warmly” toward others. Although all of these influences occur beneath one’s conscious awareness, they still have a significant effect on one’s subsequent thoughts and behaviors.
In the last two decades researchers have made advances in studying aspects of psychology that exist beyond conscious awareness. As you can understand, it is difficult to use self-reports and surveys to ask people about motives or beliefs that they, themselves, might not even be aware of! One way of side-stepping this difficulty can be found in the implicit associations test, or IAT. This research method uses computers to assess people’s reaction times to various stimuli and is a very difficult test to fake because it records automatic reactions that occur in milliseconds. For instance, to shed light on deeply held biases, the IAT might present photographs of Caucasian faces and Asian faces while asking research participants to click buttons indicating either “good” or “bad” as quickly as possible. This method can help uncover non-conscious biases as well as those that we are motivated to suppress. Even if the participant clicks “good” for every face shown, the IAT can still pick up minute delays in responding. Delays are associated with more mental effort needed to process information. When information is processed quickly—as in the example of white faces being judged as “good” — it can be contrasted with slower processing — as in the example of Asian faces being judged as “good” — and the difference in processing speed is reflective of bias. In this regard, the IAT has been used for investigating stereotypes as well as self-esteem.
High Awareness
Just because we may be influenced by these “invisible” factors, it doesn’t mean we are helplessly controlled by them. The other side of the awareness continuum is known as “high awareness.” This is what you think of as effortful attention and decision making. For example, when you listen to a funny story on a date, consider which class schedule would be preferable, or complete a complex math problem, you are engaging a state of consciousness that allows you to be highly aware of and focused on particular details in your environment.
Mindfulness is a state of this heightened conscious awareness of the thoughts passing through one’s head. For example, have you ever snapped at someone in frustration, only to take a moment and reflect on why you responded so aggressively? This more effortful consideration of your thoughts could be described as an expansion of your conscious awareness as you take the time to consider the possible influences on your thoughts. Research has shown that when you engage in this more deliberate consideration, you are less persuaded by irrelevant yet biasing influences, like the presence of a celebrity in an advertisement. Higher awareness is also associated with recognizing when you’re using a stereotype, rather than fairly evaluating another person.
Constantly, we’re alternating between low and high thinking states: the less we’re paying attention, the more likely we’re influenced by non-conscious stimuli. And although these subliminal influences may have an effect on us regardless of how effortfully we’re thinking, we can use our higher conscious awareness to blunt or even reverse the effect of them. In what’s known as the Flexible Correction Model, as long as people are aware that their thoughts or behavior is being influenced by an undue, outside source, they will correct their attitude against the bias.
To help make this relationship between lower and higher conscious thoughts clearer, imagine the brain is like a train terminal and all of our thoughts are the different trains you can ride. Sometimes, when you have low awareness, you just jump on the first train that opens its doors for you. However, if you’re more mindful of your thoughts, you can pause to consider all the various trains and select the one that will best get you to your destination. But this analogy, and all the other research we’ve discussed, has only applied to your standard conception of consciousness. So what about other states—like sleeping, daydreaming, or hypnosis —how are these related to our conscious awareness?
Other States of Consciousness
If you’ve ever watched a stage hypnotist perform, it may paint a misleading portrait of this state of consciousness. The hypnotized people on stage, for example, appear to be in a state similar to sleep. However, as the hypnotist continues with the show, you would recognize some profound differences between sleep and hypnosis. Namely, when you’re asleep, hearing the word “strawberry” doesn’t make you flap your arms like a chicken. In stage performances, the hypnotized participants appear to be highly suggestible, to the point that they are seemingly under the hypnotist’s control. Such performances are entertaining but have a way of sensationalizing the true nature of hypnotic states.
Hypnosis is an actual, documented phenomenon—one that has been studied and debated for over 200 years. Franz Mesmer (1734 – 1815) is often credited as among the first people to “discover” hypnosis, which he used to treat members of elite society who were experiencing psychological distress. It is from Mesmer’s name that we get the English word, “mesmerize” meaning “to entrance or transfix a person’s attention.” Mesmer attributed the effect of hypnosis to “animal magnetism,” a supposed universal force (similar to gravity) that operates through all human bodies. Even at the time, such an account of hypnosis was not scientifically supported, and Mesmer himself was frequently the center of controversy.
Over the years, researchers have proposed that hypnosis is a mental state characterized by reduced peripheral awareness and increased focus on a singular stimulus, which results in an enhanced susceptibility to suggestion. For example, the hypnotist will usually induce hypnosis by getting the person to pay attention only to the hypnotist’s voice. As the individual focuses more and more on that, s/he begins to forget the context of the setting and responds to the hypnotist’s suggestions as if they were his or her own. Some people are naturally more suggestible, and therefore more “hypnotizable” than are others, and this is especially true for those who score high in empathy. One common “trick” of stage hypnotists is to discard volunteers who are less suggestible than others. Regardless of one’s predisposition to being hypnotized, this mental state relies on two psychological processes: a dissociation of the self, and reduction in elaborative (or “critical”) thinking.
Dissociation is the separation of one’s awareness from everything besides what one is centrally focused on. For example, if you’ve ever been daydreaming in class, you were likely so caught up in the fantasy that you didn’t hear a word the teacher said. During hypnosis, this dissociation becomes even more extreme. That is, a person concentrates so much on the words of the hypnotist that s/he loses perspective of the rest of the world around them. As a consequence of dissociation, a person is less effortful, and less self-conscious in consideration of his or her own thoughts and behaviors. Similar to low awareness states, where one often acts on the first thought that comes to mind, so, too, in hypnosis does the individual simply follow the first thought that comes to mind, i.e., the hypnotist’s suggestion. Still, just because one is more susceptible to suggestion under hypnosis, it doesn’t mean s/he will do anything that’s ordered. To be hypnotized, you must first want to be hypnotized (i.e., you can’t be hypnotized against your will), and once you are hypnotized, you won’t do anything you wouldn’t also do while in a more natural state of consciousness.
Today, hypnotherapy is still used in a variety of formats, and it has evolved from Mesmer’s early tinkering with the concept. Modern hypnotherapy often uses a combination of relaxation, suggestion, motivation and expectancies to create a desired mental or behavioral state. Although there is mixed evidence on whether hypnotherapy can help with addiction reduction (e.g., quitting smoking) there is some evidence that it can be successful in treating sufferers of acute and chronic pain. For example, one study examined the treatment of burn patients with either hypnotherapy, pseudo-hypnosis (i.e., a placebo condition), or no treatment at all. Afterward, even though people in the placebo condition experienced a 16% decrease in pain, those in the actual hypnosis condition experienced a reduction of nearly 50% (Patterson et al., 1996). Thus, even though hypnosis may be sensationalized for television and movies, its ability to disassociate a person from their environment (or their pain) in conjunction with increased suggestibility to a clinician’s recommendations (e.g., “you will feel less anxiety about your chronic pain”) is a documented practice with actual medical benefits.
Now, similar to hypnotic states, trance states also involve a dissociation of the self; however, people in a trance state are said to have less voluntary control over their behaviors and actions. Trance states often occur in religious ceremonies, where the person believes he or she is “possessed” by an otherworldly being or force. While in trance, people report anecdotal accounts of a “higher consciousness” or communion with a greater power. However, the body of research investigating this phenomenon tends to reject the claim that these experiences constitute an “altered state of consciousness.”
Most researchers today describe both hypnosis and trance states as “subjective” alterations of consciousness, not an actually distinct or evolved form. Just like you feel different when you’re in a state of deep relaxation, so, too, are hypnotic and trance states simply shifts from the standard conscious experience. Researchers contend that even though both hypnotic and trance states appear and feel wildly different than the normal human experience, they can be explained by standard socio-cognitive factors like imagination, expectation, and the interpretation of the situation.
Sleep
You may have experienced the sensation, as you are falling asleep, of falling and then found yourself jerking forward and grabbing out as if you were really falling. Sleep is a unique state of consciousness. People generally follow a “biological clock” that impacts when they naturally become drowsy, when they fall asleep, and the time they naturally awaken. The hormone melatonin increases at night and is associated with becoming sleepy. Your natural daily rhythm, or Circadian Rhythm, can be influenced by the amount of daylight to which you are exposed as well as your work and activity schedule. Changing your location, such as flying from Canada to England, can disrupt your natural sleep rhythms, and we call this jet lag. You can overcome jet lag by synchronizing yourself to the local schedule by exposing yourself to daylight and forcing yourself to stay awake even though you are naturally sleepy.
Interestingly, sleep itself is more than shutting off for the night (or for a nap). Instead of turning off like a light with a flick of a switch, your shift in consciousness is reflected in your brain’s electrical activity. While you are awake and alert your brain activity is marked by beta waves. Beta waves are characterized by being high in frequency but low in intensity. In addition, they are the most inconsistent brain wave and this reflects the wide variation in sensory input that a person processes during the day. As you begin to relax all these change to alpha waves. These waves reflect brain activity that is less frequent, more consistent and more intense. As you slip into actual sleep you transition through 5 stages of sleep, each characterized by its own unique pattern of brain activity:
- Stage 1: is a light sleep and is marked by theta waves
- Stage 2: is deeper sleep (here there are “sleep spindles,” or occasional very high intensity brain waves).
- Stage 3: is marked by greater muscle relaxation and the appearance of delta waves
- Stage 4: is very relaxed and marked by delta waves
- Stage 5: sleep marked by rapid eye movement (REM). It is here that people dream most vividly. Interestingly, this stage is—where brain activity is concerned—similar to wakefulness. That is, the brain waves occur less intensely than in other stages of sleep.
Dreams are, arguably, the most interesting aspect of sleep. Throughout history dreams have been given special importance because of their unique, almost mystical nature. They have been thought to be predictions of the future, hints of hidden aspects of the self, important lessons about how to live life, or opportunities to engage in impossible deeds like flying. There are several competing theories of why humans dream. One is that it is our nonconscious attempt to make sense of our daily experiences and learning. Another, popularized by Freud, is that dreams represent taboo or troublesome wishes or desires. Regardless of the specific reason we know a few facts about dreams: all humans dream, we dream at every stage of sleep, but dreams during REM sleep are especially vivid. One under explored area of dream research is the possible social functions of dreams: we often share our dreams with others and use them for entertainment value.
Sleep serves many functions, one of which is to give us a period of mental and physical restoration. Children generally need more sleep than adults since they are developing. It is so vital, in fact, that a lack of sleep is associated with a wide range of problems. People who do not receive adequate sleep are more irritable, have slower reaction time, have more difficulty sustaining attention, and make poorer decisions. Interestingly, this is an issue relevant to the lives of college students. In one highly cited study researchers found that 1 in 5 students took more than 30 minutes to fall asleep at night, 1 in 10 occasionally took sleep medications, and more than half reported being “mostly tired” in the mornings.
Psychoactive Drugs
On April 16, 1943, Albert Hoffman—a Swiss chemist working in a pharmaceutical company— accidentally ingested a newly synthesized drug. The drug—lysergic acid diethylimide (LSD)— turned out to be a powerful hallucinogen. Hoffman went home and later reported the effects of the drug, describing them as seeing the world through a “warped mirror” and experiencing visions of “extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors.” Hoffman had discovered what members of many traditional cultures around the world already knew: there are substances that, when ingested, can have a powerful effect on perception and on consciousness.
Drugs operate on human physiology in a variety of ways and researchers and medical doctors tend to classify drugs according to their effects. Here we will briefly cover 3 categories of drugs: hallucinogens, depressants, and stimulants.
Hallucinogens
It is possible that hallucinogens are the substance that have, historically, been used the most widely. Traditional societies have used plant-based hallucinogens such as peyote, ebene, and psilocybin mushrooms in a wide range of religious ceremonies. Hallucinogens are substances that alter a person’s perceptions, often by creating visions or hallucinations that are not real. There are a wide range of hallucinogens and many are used as recreational substances in industrialized societies. Common examples include marijuana, LSD, and MDMA, also known as “ecstasy.” Marijuana is the dried flowers of the hemp plant and is often smoked to produce euphoria. The active ingredient in marijuana is called THC and can produce distortions in the perception of time, can create a sense of rambling, unrelated thoughts, and is sometimes associated with increased hunger or excessive laughter. The use and possession of marijuana is illegal in most places but this appears to be a trend that is changing. Uruguay, Bangladesh, several of the United States, and a few other countries have recently legalized marijuana. This may be due, in part, to changing public attitudes or to the fact that marijuana is increasingly used for medical purposes such as the management of nausea or treating glaucoma.
Depressants
Depressants are substances that, as their name suggests, slow down the body’s physiology and mental processes. Alcohol is the most widely used depressant. Alcohol’s effects include the reduction of inhibition, meaning that intoxicated people are more likely to act in ways they would otherwise be reluctant to. Alcohol’s psychological effects are the result of it increasing the neurotransmitter GABA. There are also physical effects, such as loss of balance and coordination, and these stem from the way that alcohol interferes with the coordination of the visual and motor systems of the brain. Despite the fact that alcohol is so widely accepted in many cultures it is also associated with a variety of dangers. First, alcohol is toxic, meaning that it acts like a poison because it is possible to drink more alcohol than the body can effectively remove from the bloodstream. When a person’s blood alcohol content (BAC) reaches 0.3 to 0.4% there is a serious risk of death. Second, the lack of judgment and physical control associated with alcohol is associated with more risk taking behavior or dangerous behavior such as drunk driving. Finally, alcohol is addictive and heavy drinkers often experience significant interference with their ability to work effectively or in their close relationships.
Other common depressants include opiates (also called “narcotics”), which are substances synthesized from the poppy flower. Opiates stimulate endorphins production in the brain and because of this they are often used as pain killers by medical professionals. Unfortunately, because opiates such as Oxycontin so reliably produce euphoria they are increasingly used — illegally — as recreational substances. Opiates are highly addictive.
Stimulants
Stimulants are substances that “speed up” the body’s physiological and mental processes. Two commonly used stimulants are caffeine—the drug found in coffee and tea—and nicotine, the active drug in cigarettes and other tobacco products. These substances are both legal and relatively inexpensive, leading to their widespread use. Many people are attracted to stimulants because they feel more alert when under the influence of these drugs. As with any drug there are health risks associated with consumption. For example, over intoxication of these types of stimulants can result in anxiety, headaches, and insomnia. Similarly, smoking cigarettes—the most common means of ingesting nicotine—is associated with higher risks of cancer. For instance, among heavy smokers 90% of lung cancer is directly attributable to smoking.
There are other stimulants such as cocaine and methamphetamine (also known as “crystal meth” or “ice”) that are illegal substances that are commonly used. These substances act by blocking “re-uptake” of dopamine in the brain. This means that the brain does not naturally clear out the dopamine and that it builds up in the synapse, creating euphoria and alertness. As the effects wear off it stimulates strong cravings for more of the drug. Because of this these powerful stimulants are highly addictive.
Conclusion
When you think about your daily life it is easy to get lulled into the belief that there is one “setting” for your conscious thought. That is, you likely believe that you hold the same opinions, values, and memories across the day and throughout the week. But “you” are like a dimmer switch on a light that can be turned from full darkness increasingly on up to full brightness. This switch is consciousness. At your brightest setting you are fully alert and aware; at dimmer settings you are day dreaming; and sleep or being knocked unconscious represent dimmer settings still. The degree to which you are in high, medium, or low states of conscious awareness affect how susceptible you are to persuasion, how clear your judgment is, and how much detail you can recall. Understanding levels of awareness, then, is at the heart of understanding how we learn, decide, remember and many other vital psychological processes.
Vocabulary
Blood Alcohol Content (BAC)
Blood Alcohol Content (BAC): a measure of the percentage of alcohol found in a person’s blood. This measure is typically the standard used to determine the extent to which a person is intoxicated, as in the case of being too impaired to drive a vehicle.
Circadian Rhythm
Circadian Rhythm: The physiological sleep-wake cycle. It is influenced by exposure to sunlight as well as daily schedule and activity. Biologically, it includes changes in body temperature, blood pressure and blood sugar.
Consciousness
Consciousness: the awareness or deliberate perception of a stimulus
Cues
Cues: a stimulus that has a particular significance to the perceiver (e.g., a sight or a sound that has special relevance to the person who saw or heard it)
Depressants
Depressants: a class of drugs that slow down the body’s physiological and mental processes.
Dissociation
Dissociation: the heightened focus on one stimulus or thought such that many other things around you are ignored; a disconnect between one’s awareness of their environment and the one object the person is focusing on
Euphoria
Euphoria: an intense feeling of pleasure, excitement or happiness.
Flexible Correction Model
Flexible Correction Model: the ability for people to correct or change their beliefs and evaluations if they believe these judgments have been biased (e.g., if someone realizes they only thought their day was great because it was sunny, they may revise their evaluation of the day to account for this “biasing” influence of the weather)
Hallucinogens
Hallucinogens: substances that, when ingested, alter a person’s perceptions, often by creating hallucinations that are not real or distorting their perceptions of time.
Hypnosis
Hypnosis: the state of consciousness whereby a person is highly responsive to the suggestions of another; this state usually involves a dissociation with one’s environment and an intense focus on a single stimulus, which is usually accompanied by a sense of relaxation
Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy: The use of hypnotic techniques such as relaxation and suggestion to help engineer desirable change such as lower pain or quitting smoking.
Implicit Associations Test
Implicit Associations Test (IAT): A computer reaction time test that measures a person’s automatic associations with concepts. For instance, the IAT could be used to measure how quickly a person makes positive or negative evaluations of members of various ethnic groups.
Jet Lag
Jet Lag: The state of being fatigued and/or having difficulty adjusting to a new time zone after traveling a long distance (across multiple time zones).
Melatonin
Melatonin: A hormone associated with increased drowsiness and sleep.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness: a state of heightened focus on the thoughts passing through one’s head, as well as a more controlled evaluation of those thoughts (e.g., do you reject or support the thoughts you’re having?)
Priming
Priming: the activation of certain thoughts or feelings that make them easier to think of and act upon
Stimulants
Stimulants: a class of drugs that speed up the body’s physiological and mental processes.
Trance States
Trance: a state of consciousness characterized by the experience of “out-of-body possession,” or an acute dissociation between one’s self and the current, physical environment surrounding them.
TASK 2.
Discussion Questions
- If someone were in a coma after an accident, and you wanted to better understand how “conscious” or aware s/he were, how might you go about it?
- What are some of the factors in daily life that interfere with people’s ability to get adequate sleep? What interferes with your sleep?
- How frequently do you remember your dreams? Do you have recurring images or themes in your dreams? Why do you think that is?
- Consider times when you fantasize or let your mind wander? Describe these times: are you more likely to be alone or with others? Are there certain activities you engage in that seem particularly prone to daydreaming?
- A number of traditional societies use consciousness altering substances in ceremonies. Why do you think they do this?
- Do you think attitudes toward drug use are changing over time? If so, how? Why do you think these changes occur?
- Students in high school and college are increasingly using stimulants such as Adderol as study aids and “performance enhancers.” What is your opinion of this trend?
TASK 3.
Please, provide the Definitions of Consciousness and its States in accordance with the scientific research and theories.
LESSON 5 (10 hours)
Memory
Task 1. Read the texts and translate new words of professional thesaurus.
“Memory” is a single term that reflects a number of different abilities: holding information briefly while working with it (working memory), remembering episodes of one’s life (episodic memory), and our general knowledge of facts of the world (semantic memory), among other types. Remembering episodes involves three processes: encoding information (learning it, by perceiving it and relating it to past knowledge), storing it (maintaining it over time), and then retrieving it (accessing the information when needed). Failures can occur at any stage, leading to forgetting or to having false memories. The key to improving one’s memory is to improve processes of encoding and to use techniques that guarantee effective retrieval. Good encoding techniques include relating new information to what one already knows, forming mental images, and creating associations among information that needs to be remembered. The key to good retrieval is developing effective cues that will lead the rememberer back to the encoded information. Classic mnemonic systems, known since the time of the ancient Greeks and still used by some today, can greatly improve one’s memory abilities.
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 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. 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 module, we reveal what psychologists and others have learned about memory, and we also explain the general principles by which you can improve your own memory for factual material.
Varieties of Memory
For most of us, remembering digits relies on short-term memory, or working memory — the ability to hold information in our minds for a brief time and work with it (e.g., multiplying 24 x 17 without using paper would rely on working memory). Another type of memory is episodic memory — the ability to remember the episodes of our lives. If you were given the task of recalling everything you did 2 days ago, that would be a test of episodic memory; you would be required to mentally travel through the day in your mind and note the main events. Semantic memory is our storehouse of more-or-less permanent knowledge, such as the meanings of words in a language (e.g., the meaning of “parasol”) and the huge collection of facts about the world (e.g., there are 196 countries in the world, and 206 bones in your body). Collective memory refers to the kind of memory that people in a group share (whether family, community, schoolmates, or citizens of a state or a country). For example, residents of small towns often strongly identify with those towns, remembering the local customs and historical events in a unique way. That is, the community’s collective memory passes stories and recollections between neighbors and to future generations, forming a memory system unto itself.
Psychologists continue to debate the classification of types of memory, as well as which types rely on others, but for this module we will focus on episodic memory. Episodic memory is usually what people think of when they hear the word “memory”. For example, when people say that an older relative is “losing her memory” due to Alzheimer’s disease, the type of memory-loss they are referring to is the inability to recall events, or episodic memory. (Semantic memory is actually preserved in early-stage Alzheimer’s disease). Although remembering specific events that have happened over the course of one’s entire life (e.g., your experiences in sixth grade) can be referred to as autobiographical memory, we will focus primarily on the episodic memories of more recent events.
Three Stages of the Learning/Memory Process
Psychologists distinguish between three necessary stages in the learning and memory process: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Encoding is defined as the initial learning of information; storage refers to maintaining information over time; retrieval is the ability to access information when you need it. If you meet someone for the first time at a party, you need to encode her name, while you associate her name with her face. Then you need to maintain the information over time. If you see her a week later, you need to recognize her face and have it to serve as a cue to retrieve her name. Any successful act of remembering requires that all three stages be intact. However, two types of errors can also occur. Forgetting is one type: you see the person you met at the party and you cannot recall her name. The other error is misremembering (false recall or false recognition): you see someone who looks like Lyn Goff and call the person by that name (false recognition of the face). Or, you might see the real Lyn Goff, recognize her face, but then call her by the name of another woman you met at the party (misrecall of her name).
Whenever forgetting or misremembering occurs, we can ask, at which stage in the learning/ memory process was there a failure? — though it is often difficult to answer this question with precision. One reason for this inaccuracy is that the three stages are not as discrete as our description implies. Rather, all three stages depend on one another. How we encode information determines how it will be stored and what cues will be effective when we try to retrieve it. And too, the act of retrieval itself also changes the way information is subsequently remembered, usually aiding later recall of the retrieved information. The central point for now is that the three stages —encoding, storage, and retrieval — affect one another, and are inextricably bound together. Encoding Encoding refers to the initial experience of perceiving and learning information. Psychologists often study recall by having participants study a list of pictures or words. Encoding in these situations is fairly straightforward. However, “real life” encoding is much more challenging. When you walk across campus, for example, you encounter countless sights and sounds — friends passing by, people playing Frisbee, music in the air. The physical and mental environments are much too rich for you to encode all the happenings around you or the internal thoughts you have in response to them. So, an important first principle of encoding.
Encoding
Encoding refers to the initial experience of perceiving and learning information. Psychologists often study recall by having participants study a list of pictures or words. Encoding in these situations is fairly straightforward. However, “real life” encoding is much more challenging. When you walk across campus, for example, you encounter countless sights and sounds — friends passing by, people playing Frisbee, music in the air. The physical and mental environments are much too rich for you to encode all the happenings around you or the internal thoughts you have in response to them. So, an important first principle of encoding is that it is selective: we attend to some events in our environment and we ignore others. A second point about encoding is that it is prolific; we are always encoding the events of our lives — attending to the world, trying to understand it. Normally this presents no problem, as our days are filled with routine occurrences, so we don’t need to pay attention to everything. But if something does happen that seems strange — during your daily walk across campus, you see a giraffe — then we pay close attention and try to understand why we are seeing what we are seeing.
Right after your typical walk across campus (one without the appearance of a giraffe), you would be able to remember the events reasonably well if you were asked. You could say whom you bumped into, what song was playing from a radio, and so on. However, suppose someone asked you to recall the same walk a month later. You wouldn’t stand a chance. You would likely be able to recount the basics of a typical walk across campus, but not the precise details of that particular walk. Yet, if you had seen a giraffe during that walk, the event would have been fixed in your mind for a long time, probably for the rest of your life. You would tell your friends about it, and, on later occasions when you saw a giraffe, you might be reminded of the day you saw one on campus. Psychologists have long pinpointed distinctiveness — having an event stand out as quite different from a background of similar events — as a key to remembering events.
In addition, when vivid memories are tinged with strong emotional content, they often seem to leave a permanent mark on us. Public tragedies, such as terrorist attacks, often create vivid memories in those who witnessed them. But even those of us not directly involved in such events may have vivid memories of them, including memories of first hearing about them. For example, many people are able to recall their exact physical location when they first learned about the assassination or accidental death of a national figure. The term “flashbulb memory” was originally coined by Brown and Kulik (1977) to describe this sort of vivid memory of finding out an important piece of news. The name refers to how some memories seem to be captured in the mind like a flash photograph; because of the distinctiveness and emotionality of the news, they seem to become permanently etched in the mind with exceptional clarity compared to other memories.
Take a moment and think back on your own life. Is there a particular memory that seems sharper than others? A memory where you can recall unusual details, like the colors of mundane things around you, or the exact positions of surrounding objects? Although people have great confidence in flashbulb memories like these, the truth is, our objective accuracy with them is far from perfect. That is, even though people may have great confidence in what they recall, their memories are not as accurate (e.g., what the actual colors were; where objects were truly placed) as they tend to imagine. Nonetheless, all other things being equal, distinctive and emotional events are well-remembered.
Details do not leap perfectly from the world into a person’s mind. We might say that we went to a party and remember it, but what we remember is (at best) what we encoded. As noted above, 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 recoding — 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).
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, 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
Storage
Every experience we have changes our brains. That may seem like a bold, even strange, claim at first, but it’s true. We encode each of our experiences within the structures of the nervous system, making new impressions in the process — and each of those impressions involves changes in the brain. Psychologists (and neurobiologists) say that experiences leave memory traces, or engrams (the two terms are synonyms). Memories have to be stored somewhere in the brain, so in order to do so, the brain biochemically alters itself and its neural tissue. Just like you might write yourself a note to remind you of something, the brain “writes” a memory trace, changing its own physical composition to do so. The basic idea is that events (occurrences in our environment) create engrams through a process of consolidation: the neural changes that occur after learning to create the memory trace of an experience. Although neurobiologists are concerned with exactly what neural processes change when memories are created, for psychologists, the term memory trace simply refers to the physical change in the nervous system (whatever that may be, exactly) that represents our experience.
Although the concept of engram or memory trace is extremely useful, we shouldn’t take the term too literally. It is important to understand that memory traces are not perfect little packets of information that lie dormant in the brain, waiting to be called forward to give an accurate report of past experience. Memory traces are not like video or audio recordings, capturing experience with great accuracy; as discussed earlier, we often have errors in our memory, which would not exist if memory traces were perfect packets of information. Thus, it is wrong to think that remembering involves simply “reading out” a faithful record of past experience. Rather, when we remember past events, we reconstruct them with the aid of our memory traces—but also with our current belief of what happened. For example, if you were trying to recall for the police who started a fight at a bar, you may not have a memory trace of who pushed whom first. However, let’s say you remember that one of the guys held the door open for you. When thinking back to the start of the fight, this knowledge (of how one guy was friendly to you) may unconsciously influence your memory of what happened in favor of the nice guy. Thus, memory is a construction of what you actually recall and what you believe happened. In a phrase, remembering is reconstructive (we reconstruct our past with the aid of memory traces) not reproductive (a perfect reproduction or recreation of the past).
Psychologists refer to the time between learning and testing as the retention interval. Memories can consolidate during that time, aiding retention. However, experiences can also occur that undermine the memory. For example, think of what you had for lunch yesterday — a pretty easy task. However, if you had to recall what you had for lunch 17 days ago, you may well fail (assuming you don’t eat the same thing every day). The 16 lunches you’ve had since that one have created retroactive interference. Retroactive interference refers to new activities (i.e., the subsequent lunches) during the retention interval (i.e., the time between the lunch 17 days ago and now) that interfere with retrieving the specific, older memory (i.e., the lunch details from 17 days ago). But just as newer things can interfere with remembering older things, so can the opposite happen. Proactive interference is when past memories interfere with the encoding of new ones. For example, if you have ever studied a second language, often times the grammar and vocabulary of your native language will pop into your head, impairing your fluency in the foreign language.
Retroactive interference is one of the main causes of forgetting. For example, if you witnessed a car crash but subsequently heard people describing it from their own perspective, this new information may interfere with or disrupt your own personal recollection of the crash. In fact, you may even come to remember the event happening exactly as the others described it! This misinformation effect in eyewitness memory represents a type of retroactive interference that can occur during the retention interval. Of course, if correct information is given during the retention interval, the witness’s memory will usually be improved.
Although interference may arise between the occurrence of an event and the attempt to recall it, the effect itself is always expressed when we retrieve memories, the topic to which we turn next.
Retrieval
Endel Tulving argued that “the key process in memory is retrieval” (1991). Why should retrieval be given more prominence than encoding or storage? For one thing, if information were encoded and stored but could not be retrieved, it would be useless. As discussed previously in this module, we encode and store thousands of events —conversations, sights and sounds — every day, creating memory traces. However, we later access only a tiny portion of what we’ve taken in. Most of our memories will never be used — in the sense of being brought back to mind, consciously. This fact seems so obvious that we rarely reflect on it. All those events that happened to you in the fourth grade that seemed so important then? Now, many years later, you would struggle to remember even a few. You may wonder if the traces of those memories still exist in some latent form. Unfortunately, with currently available methods, it is impossible to know.
Psychologists distinguish information that is available in memory from that which is accessible. 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.
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 principle: 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 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.
Vocabulary
Autobiographical memory
Memory for the events of one’s life.
Consolidation
The process occurring after encoding that is believed to stabilize memory traces.
Cue overload principle
The principle stating that the more memories that are associated to a particular retrieval cue, the less effective the cue will be in prompting retrieval of any one memory.
Distinctiveness
The principle that unusual events (in a context of similar events) will be recalled and recognized better than uniform (nondistinctive) events.
Encoding
The initial experience of perceiving and learning events.
Encoding 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.
Engrams
A term indicating the change in the nervous system representing an event; also, memory trace.
Episodic memory
Memory for events in a particular time and place.
Flashbulb memory
Vivid personal memories of receiving the news of some momentous (and usually emotional) event.
Memory traces
A term indicating the change in the nervous system representing an event.
Misinformation effect
When erroneous information occurring after an event is remembered as having been part of the original event.
Mnemonic devices
A strategy for remembering large amounts of information, usually involving imaging events occurring on a journey or with some other set of memorized cues.
Recoding
The ubiquitous process during learning of taking information in one form and converting it to another form, usually one more easily remembered.
Retrieval
The process of accessing stored information.
Retroactive interference
The phenomenon whereby events that occur after some particular event of interest will usually cause forgetting of the original event.
Semantic memory
The more or less permanent store of knowledge that people have.
Storage
The stage in the learning/memory process that bridges encoding and retrieval; the persistence of memory over time.
TASK 2.
Discussion Questions
- Mnemonists like Simon Reinhard develop mental “journeys,” which enable them to use the method of loci. Develop your own journey, which contains 20 places, in order, that you know well. One example might be: the front walkway to your parents’ apartment; their doorbell; the couch in their living room; etc. Be sure to use a set of places that you know well and that have a natural order to them (e.g., the walkway comes before the doorbell).
- Now you are more than halfway toward being able to memorize a set of 20 nouns rather quickly. As an optional second step, develop a program for a friend in form of a list of 20 nouns as the method to attempt to remember the 20 items. Find out the peculiarities in the scientific literature yourself. You can search for the set of 20 items below that are easy to learn and remember described by Bower & Reitman in 1972.
- Recall a recent argument or misunderstanding you have had about memory (e.g., a debate over whether your girlfriend/boyfriend had agreed to something). In light of what you have just learned about memory, how do you think about it? Is it possible that the disagreement can be understood by one of you making a pragmatic inference?
- Think about what you’ve just learned in this module and about how you study for tests. On the basis of what you have just learned, is there something that you want to try that might help your study habits?
LESSON 6 (6 hours)
Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases
Task 1. Read the texts and translate new words of professional thesaurus.
Eyewitnesses can provide very compelling legal testimony, but rather than recording experiences flawlessly, their memories are susceptible to a variety of errors and biases. They (like the rest of us) can make errors in remembering specific details and can even remember whole events that did not actually happen. In this module, we discuss several of the common types of errors, and what they can tell us about human memory and its interactions with the legal system.
What Is Eyewitness Testimony?
Eyewitness testimony is what happens when a person witnesses a crime (or accident, or other legally important event) and later gets up on the stand and recalls for the court all the details of the witnessed event. It involves a more complicated process than might initially be presumed. It includes what happens during the actual crime to facilitate or hamper witnessing, as well as everything that happens from the time the event is over to the later courtroom appearance. The eyewitness may be interviewed by the police and numerous lawyers, describe the perpetrator to several different people, and make an identification of the perpetrator, among other things.
Why Is Eyewitness Testimony an Important Area of Psychological Research?
When an eyewitness stands up in front of the court and describes what happened from her own perspective, this testimony can be extremely compelling—it is hard for those hearing this testimony to take it “with a grain of salt,” or otherwise adjust its power. But to what extent is this necessary?
There is now a wealth of evidence, from research conducted over several decades, suggesting that eyewitness testimony is probably the most persuasive form of evidence presented in court, but in many cases, its accuracy is dubious. There is also evidence that mistaken eyewitness evidence can lead to wrongful conviction—sending people to prison for years or decades, even to death row, for crimes they did not commit. Faulty eyewitness testimony has been implicated in at least 75% of DNA exoneration cases—more than any other cause. In a particularly famous case, a man named Ronald Cotton was identified by a rape victim, Jennifer Thompson, as her rapist, and was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. After more than 10 years, he was exonerated (and the real rapist identified) based on DNA evidence.
There is also hope, though, that many of the errors may be avoidable if proper precautions are taken during the investigative and judicial processes. Psychological science has taught us what some of those precautions might involve, and we discuss some of that science now.
Misinformation
In an early study of eyewitness memory, undergraduate subjects first watched a slideshow depicting a small red car driving and then hitting a pedestrian. Some subjects were then asked leading questions about what had happened in the slides. For example, subjects were asked, “How fast was the car traveling when it passed the yield sign?” But this question was actually designed to be misleading, because the original slide included a stop sign rather than a yield sign.
Later, subjects were shown pairs of slides. One of the pair was the original slide containing the stop sign; the other was a replacement slide containing a yield sign. Subjects were asked which of the pair they had previously seen. Subjects who had been asked about the yield sign were likely to pick the slide showing the yield sign, even though they had originally seen the slide with the stop sign. In other words, the misinformation in the leading question led to inaccurate memory.
This phenomenon is called the misinformation effect, because the misinformation that subjects were exposed to after the event (here in the form of a misleading question) apparently contaminates subjects’ memories of what they witnessed. Hundreds of subsequent studies have demonstrated that memory can be contaminated by erroneous information that people are exposed to after they witness an event. The misinformation in these studies has led people to incorrectly remember everything from small but crucial details of a perpetrator’s appearance to objects as large as a barn that wasn’t there at all.
These 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. In addition, misinformation effects can occur easily, and without any intention to deceive. 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?”.
Other studies have shown that misinformation can corrupt memory even more easily when Misinformation can be introduced into the memory of a witness between the time of seeing an event and reporting it later. Something as straightforward as which sort of traffic sign was in place at an intersection can be confused if subjects are exposed to erroneous information after the initial incident. it is encountered in social situations. 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.
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.
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 cowitness 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.
Identifying Perpetrators
In addition to correctly remembering many details of the crimes they witness, eyewitnesses often need to remember the faces and other identifying features of the perpetrators of those crimes. Eyewitnesses are often asked to describe that perpetrator to law enforcement and later to make identifications from books of mug shots or lineups. Here, too, there is a substantial body of research demonstrating that eyewitnesses can make serious, but often understandable and even predictable, errors.
In most jurisdictions in the United States, lineups are typically conducted with pictures, called photo spreads, rather than with actual people standing behind one-way glass. The eyewitness is given a set of small pictures of perhaps six or eight individuals who are dressed similarly and photographed in similar circumstances. One of these individuals is the police suspect, and the remainder are “foils” or “fillers” (people known to be innocent of the particular crime under investigation). If the eyewitness identifies the suspect, then the investigation of that suspect is likely to progress. If a witness identifies a foil or no one, then the police may choose to move their investigation in another direction.
This process is modeled in laboratory studies of eyewitness identifications. In these studies, research subjects witness a mock crime (often as a short video) and then are asked to make an identification from a photo or a live lineup. Sometimes the lineups are target present, meaning that the perpetrator from the mock crime is actually in the lineup, and sometimes they are target absent, meaning that the lineup is made up entirely of foils. The subjects, or mock witnesses, are given some instructions and asked to pick the perpetrator out of the lineup. The particular details of the witnessing experience, the instructions, and the lineup members can all influence the extent to which the mock witness is likely to pick the perpetrator out of the lineup, or indeed to make any selection at all. Mock witnesses (and indeed real witnesses) can make errors in two different ways. They can fail to pick the perpetrator out of a target present lineup (by picking a foil or by neglecting to make a selection), or they can pick a foil in a target absent lineup (wherein the only correct choice is to not make a selection).
Some factors have been shown to make eyewitness identification errors particularly likely. These include poor vision or viewing conditions during the crime, particularly stressful witnessing experiences, too little time to view the perpetrator or perpetrators, too much delay between witnessing and identifying, and being asked to identify a perpetrator from a race other than one’s own.
It is hard for the legal system to do much about most of these problems. But there are some things that the justice system can do to help lineup identifications “go right.” For example, investigators can put together high-quality, fair lineups. A fair lineup is one in which the suspect and each of the foils is equally likely to be chosen by someone who has read an eyewitness description of the perpetrator but who did not actually witness the crime. This means that no one in the lineup should “stick out,” and that everyone should match the description given by the eyewitness. Other important recommendations that have come out of this research include better ways to conduct lineups, “double blind” lineups, unbiased instructions for witnesses, and conducting lineups in a sequential fashion.
Kinds of Memory Biases
Memory is also susceptible to a wide variety of other biases and errors. People can forget events that happened to them and people they once knew. They can mix up details across time and place. They can even remember whole complex events that never happened at all. Importantly, these errors, once made, can be very hard to unmake. A memory is no less “memorable” just because it is wrong.
Some small memory errors are commonplace, and you have no doubt experienced many of them. You set down your keys without paying attention, and then cannot find them later when you go to look for them. You try to come up with a person’s name but cannot find it, even though you have the sense that it is right at the tip of your tongue (psychologists actually call this the tip-of-the-tongue effect, or TOT).
Other sorts of memory biases are more complicated and longer lasting. For example, it turns out that our expectations and beliefs about how the world works can have huge influences on our memories. Because many aspects of our everyday lives are full of redundancies, our memory systems take advantage of the recurring patterns by forming and using schemata, or memory templates. Thus, we know to expect that a library will have shelves and tables and librarians, and so we don’t have to spend energy noticing these at the time. The result of this lack of attention, however, is that one is likely to remember schema-consistent information (such as tables), and to remember them in a rather generic way, whether or not they were actually present.
False Memory
Some memory errors are so “large” that they almost belong in a class of their own: false memories. Back in the early 1990s a pattern emerged whereby people would go into therapy for depression and other everyday problems, but over the course of the therapy develop memories for violent and horrible victimhood. These patients’ therapists claimed that the patients were recovering genuine memories of real childhood abuse, buried deep in their minds for years or even decades. But some experimental psychologists believed that the memories were instead likely to be false — created in therapy. These researchers then set out to see whether it would indeed be possible for wholly false memories to be created by procedures similar to those used in these patients’ therapy.
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 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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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.
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.
Conclusion
To conclude, eyewitness testimony is very powerful and convincing to jurors, even though it is not particularly reliable. Identification errors occur, and these errors can lead to people being falsely accused and even convicted. Likewise, eyewitness memory can be corrupted by leading questions, misinterpretations of events, conversations with co-witnesses, and their own expectations for what should have happened. People can even come to remember whole events that never occurred. The problems with memory in the legal system are real. But what can we do to start to fix them? A number of specific recommendations have already been made, and many of these are in the process of being implemented. Some of these recommendations are aimed at specific legal procedures, including when and how witnesses should be interviewed, and how lineups should be constructed and conducted. Other recommendations call for appropriate education (often in the form of expert witness testimony) to be provided to jury members and others tasked with assessing eyewitness memory. Eyewitness testimony can be of great value to the legal system, but decades of research now argues that this testimony is often given far more weight than its accuracy justifies.
TASK 2.
Please, make up an Active Vocabulary of the Lesson which includes the following words and word combinations and 5 more related to the topic of the lesson (up to you):
False memories –
Foils –
Misinformation effect –
Mock witnesses –
Photo spreads –
Schema (plural: schemata) –
TASK 3.
Discussion Questions.
- Imagine that you are a juror in a murder case where an eyewitness testifies. In what ways might your knowledge of memory errors affect your use of this testimony?
- How true to life do you think television shows such as CSI or Law & Order are in their portrayals of eyewitnesses?
- Many jurisdictions in the United States use “show-ups,” where an eyewitness is brought to a suspect (who may be standing on the street or in handcuffs in the back of a police car) and asked, “Is this the perpetrator?” Is this a good or bad idea, from a psychological perspective? Why?
LESSON 7 (6 hours)
Functions of Emotions
Task 1. Read the texts and translate new words of professional thesaurus.
Emotions play a crucial role in our lives because they have important functions. This module describes those functions, dividing the discussion into three areas: the intrapersonal, the interpersonal, and the social and cultural functions of emotions. The section on the intrapersonal functions of emotion describes the roles that emotions play within each of us individually; the section on the interpersonal functions of emotion describes the meanings of emotions to our relationships with others; and the section on the social and cultural functions of emotion describes the roles and meanings that emotions have to the maintenance and effective functioning of our societies and cultures at large. All in all we will see that emotions are a crucially important aspect of our psychological composition, having meaning and function to each of us individually, to our relationships with others in groups, and to our societies as a whole.
Introduction
It is impossible to imagine life without emotion. We treasure our feelings — the joy at a ball game, the pleasure of the touch of a loved one, or the fun with friends on a night out. Even negative emotions are important, such as the sadness when a loved one dies, the anger when violated, the fear that overcomes us in a scary or unknown situation, or the guilt or shame toward others when our sins are made public. Emotions color life experiences and give those experiences meaning and flavor.
In fact, emotions play many important roles in people’s lives and have been the topic of scientific inquiry in psychology for well over a century. This module explores why we have emotions and why they are important. Doing so requires us to understand the function of emotions, and this module does so below by dividing the discussion into three sections. The first concerns the intrapersonal functions of emotion, which refer to the role that emotions play within each of us individually. The second concerns the interpersonal functions of emotion, which refer to the role emotions play between individuals within a group. The third concerns the social and cultural functions of emotion, which refer to the role that emotions play in the maintenance of social order within a society. All in all, we will see that emotions inform us of who we are, what our relationships with others are like, and how to behave in social interactions. Emotions give meaning to events; without emotions, those events would be mere facts. Emotions help coordinate interpersonal relationships. And emotions play an important role in the cultural functioning of keeping human societies together.
Intrapersonal Functions of Emotion
Emotions Help us Act Quickly with Minimal Conscious Awareness
Emotions are rapid information-processing systems that help us act with minimal thinking. Problems associated with birth, battle, death, and seduction have occurred throughout evolutionary history and emotions evolved to aid humans in adapting to those problems rapidly and with minimal conscious cognitive intervention. If we did not have emotions, we could not make rapid decisions concerning whether to attack, defend, flee, care for others, reject food, or approach something useful, all of which were functionally adaptive in our evolutionary history and helped us to survive. For instance, drinking spoiled milk or eating rotten eggs has negative consequences for our welfare. The emotion of disgust, however, helps us immediately take action by not ingesting them in the first place or by vomiting them out. This response is adaptive because it aids, ultimately, in our survival and allows us to act immediately without much thinking. In some instances, taking the time to sit and rationally think about what to do, calculating cost–benefit ratios in one’s mind, is a luxury that might cost one one’s life. Emotions evolved so that we can act without that depth of thinking.
Emotions Prepare the Body for Immediate Action
Emotions prepare us for behavior. When triggered, emotions orchestrate systems such as perception, attention, inference, learning, memory, goal choice, motivational priorities, physiological reactions, motor behaviors, and behavioral decision making. Emotions simultaneously activate certain systems and deactivate others in order to prevent the chaos of competing systems operating at the same time, allowing for coordinated responses to environmental stimuli. For instance, when we are afraid, our bodies shut down temporarily unneeded digestive processes, resulting in saliva reduction (a dry mouth); blood flows disproportionately to the lower half of the body; the visual field expands; and air is breathed in, all preparing the body to flee. Emotions initiate a system of components that includes subjective experience, expressive behaviors, physiological reactions, action tendencies, and cognition, all for the purposes of specific actions; the term “emotion” is, in reality, a metaphor for these reactions.
One common misunderstanding many people have when thinking about emotions, however, is the belief that emotions must always directly produce action. This is not true. Emotion certainly prepares the body for action; but whether people actually engage in action is dependent on many factors, such as the context within which the emotion has occurred, the target of the emotion, the perceived consequences of one’s actions, previous experiences, and so forth. Thus, emotions are just one of many determinants of behavior, albeit an important one.
Emotions Influence Thoughts
Emotions are also connected to thoughts and memories. Memories are not just facts that are encoded in our brains; they are colored with the emotions felt at those times the facts occurred. Thus, emotions serve as the neural glue that connects those disparate facts in our minds. That is why it is easier to remember happy thoughts when happy, and angry times when angry. Emotions serve as the affective basis of many attitudes, values, and beliefs that we have about the world and the people around us; without emotions those attitudes, values, and beliefs would be just statements without meaning, and emotions give those statements meaning. Emotions influence our thinking processes, sometimes in constructive ways, sometimes not. It is difficult to think critically and clearly when we feel intense emotions, but easier when we are not overwhelmed with emotions.
Emotions Motivate Future Behaviors
Because emotions prepare our bodies for immediate action, influence thoughts, and can be felt, they are important motivators of future behavior. Many of us strive to experience the feelings of satisfaction, joy, pride, or triumph in our accomplishments and achievements. At the same time, we also work very hard to avoid strong negative feelings; for example, once we have felt the emotion of disgust when drinking the spoiled milk, we generally work very hard to avoid having those feelings again (e.g., checking the expiration date on the label before buying the milk, smelling the milk before drinking it, watching if the milk curdles in one’s coffee before drinking it). Emotions, therefore, not only influence immediate actions but also serve as an important motivational basis for future behaviors.
Interpersonal Functions of Emotion
Emotions are expressed both verbally through words and nonverbally through facial expressions, voices, gestures, body postures, and movements. We are constantly expressing emotions when interacting with others, and others can reliably judge those emotional expressions; thus, emotions have signal value to others and influence others and our social interactions. Emotions and their expressions communicate information to others about our feelings, intentions, relationship with the target of the emotions, and the environment. Because emotions have this communicative signal value, they help solve social problems by evoking responses from others, by signaling the nature of interpersonal relationships, and by providing incentives for desired social behavior.
Emotional Expressions Facilitate Specific Behaviors in Perceivers
Because facial expressions of emotion are universal social signals, they contain meaning not only about the expressor’s psychological state but also about that person’s intent and subsequent behavior. This information affects what the perceiver is likely to do. People observing fearful faces, for instance, are more likely to produce approach-related behaviors, whereas people who observe angry faces are more likely to produce avoidance-related behaviors. Even subliminal presentation of smiles produces increases in how much beverage people pour and consume and how much they are willing to pay for it; presentation of angry faces decreases these behaviors. Also, emotional displays evoke specific, complementary emotional responses from observers; for example, anger evokes fear in others.
Emotional Expressions Signal the Nature of Interpersonal Relationships
Emotional expressions provide information about the nature of the relationships among interactants. Some of the most important and provocative set of findings in this area come from studies involving married couples. In this research, married couples visited a laboratory after having not seen each other for 24 hours, and then engaged in intimate conversations about daily events or issues of conflict. Discrete expressions of contempt, especially by the men, and disgust, especially by the women, predicted later marital dissatisfaction and even divorce.
Emotional Expressions Provide Incentives for Desired Social Behavior
Facial expressions of emotion are important regulators of social interaction. In the developmental literature, this concept has been investigated under the concept of social referencing; that is, the process whereby infants seek out information from others to clarify a situation and then use that information to act. To date, the strongest demonstration of social referencing comes from work on the visual cliff. In the first study to investigate this concept, Campos and colleagues placed mothers on the far end of the “cliff” from the infant. Mothers first smiled to the infants and placed a toy on top the safety glass to attract them; infants invariably began crawling to their mothers. When the infants were in the center of the table, however, the mother then posed an expression of fear, sadness, anger, interest, or joy. The results were clearly different for the different faces; no infant crossed the table when the mother showed fear; only 6% did when the mother posed anger, 33% crossed when the mother posed sadness, and approximately 75% of the infants crossed when the mother posed joy or interest.
Other studies provide similar support for facial expressions as regulators of social interaction. In one study, experimenters posed facial expressions of neutral, anger, or disgust toward babies as they moved toward an object and measured the amount of inhibition the babies showed in touching the object. The results for 10- and 15-month olds were the same: anger produced the greatest inhibition, followed by disgust, with neutral the least. This study was later replicated using joy and disgust expressions, altering the method so that the infants were not allowed to touch the toy (compared with a distractor object) until one hour after exposure to the expression. At 14 months of age, significantly more infants touched the toy when they saw joyful expressions, but fewer touched the toy when the infants saw disgust.
Social and Cultural Functions of Emotion
If you stop to think about many things we take for granted in our daily lives, we cannot help but come to the conclusion that modern human life is a colorful tapestry of many groups and individual lives woven together in a complex yet functional way. For example, when you’re hungry, you might go to the local grocery store and buy some food. Ever stop to think about how you’re able to do that? You might buy a banana that was grown in a field in southeast Asia being raised by farmers there, where they planted the tree, cared for it, and picked the fruit. They probably handed that fruit off to a distribution chain that allowed multiple people somewhere to use tools such as cranes, trucks, cargo bins, ships or airplanes (that were also created by multiple people somewhere) to bring that banana to your store. The store had people to care for that banana until you came and got it and to barter with you for it (with your money). You may have gotten to the store riding a vehicle that was produced somewhere else in the world by others, and you were probably wearing clothes produced by some other people somewhere else.
Thus, human social life is complex. Individuals are members of multiple groups, with multiple social roles, norms, and expectations, and people move rapidly in and out of the multiple groups of which they are members. Moreover, much of human social life is unique because it revolves around cities, where many people of disparate backgrounds come together. This creates the enormous potential for social chaos, which can easily occur if individuals are not coordinated well and relationships not organized systematically.
One of the important functions of culture is to provide this necessary coordination and organization. Doing so allows individuals and groups to negotiate the social complexity of human social life, thereby maintaining social order and preventing social chaos. Culture does this by providing a meaning and information system to its members, which is shared by a group and transmitted across generations, that allows the group to meet basic needs of survival, pursue happiness and well-being, and derive meaning from life. Culture is what allowed the banana from southeast Asia to appear on your table.
Cultural transmission of the meaning and information system to its members is, therefore, a crucial aspect of culture. One of the ways this transmission occurs is through the development of worldviews (including attitudes, values, beliefs, and norms) related to emotions. Worldviews related to emotions provide guidelines for desirable emotions that facilitate norms for regulating individual behaviors and interpersonal relationships. Our cultural backgrounds tell us which emotions are ideal to have, and which are not. The cultural transmission of information related to emotions occurs in many ways, from childrearers to children, as well as from the cultural products available in our world, such as books, movies, ads, and the like.
Cultures also inform us about what to do with our emotions — that is, how to manage or modify them — when we experience them. One of the ways in which this is done is through the management of our emotional expressions through cultural display rules. These are rules that are learned early in life that specify the management and modification of our emotional expressions according to social circumstances. Thus, we learn that “big boys don’t cry” or to laugh at the boss’s jokes even though they’re not funny. By affecting how individuals express their emotions, culture also influences how people experience them as well.
Because one of the major functions of culture is to maintain social order in order to ensure group efficiency and thus survival, cultures create worldviews, rules, guidelines, and norms concerning emotions because emotions have important intra- and interpersonal functions, as described above, and are important motivators of behavior. Norms concerning emotion and its regulation in all cultures serve the purpose of maintaining social order. Cultural worldviews and norms help us manage and modify our emotional reactions (and thus behaviors) by helping us to have certain kinds of emotional experiences in the first place and by managing our reactions and subsequent behaviors once we have them. By doing so, our culturally moderated emotions can help us engage in socially appropriate behaviors, as defined by our cultures, and thus reduce social complexity and increase social order, avoiding social chaos. All of this allows us to live relatively harmonious and constructive lives in groups. If cultural worldviews and norms about emotions did not exist, people would just run amok having all kinds of emotional experiences, expressing their emotions and then behaving in all sorts of unpredictable and potentially harmful ways. If that were the case, it would be very difficult for groups and societies to function effectively, and even for humans to survive as a species, if emotions were not regulated in culturally defined ways for the common, social good. Thus, emotions play a critical role in the successful functioning of any society and culture.
TASK 2.
Please, make up an Active Vocabulary of the Lesson which includes the following words and word combinations and 5 more related to the topic of the lesson (up to you):
Cultural display rules
Interpersonal
Intrapersonal
Social and cultural
Social referencing
TASK 3.
Discussion Questions.
- When emotions occur, why do they simultaneously activate certain physiological and psychological systems in the body and deactivate others?
- Why is it difficult for people to act rationally and think happy thoughts when they are angry? Conversely, why is it difficult to remember sad memories or have sad thoughts when people are happy?
- You’re walking down a deserted street when you come across a stranger who looks scared. What would you say? What would you do? Why?
- You’re walking down a deserted street when you come across a stranger who looks angry. What would you say? What would you do? Why?
- Think about the messages children receive from their environment (such as from parents, mass media, the Internet, Hollywood movies, billboards, and storybooks). In what ways do these messages influence the kinds of emotions that children should and should not feel?
LESSON 8 (8 hours)
Motives and Goals
Task 1. Read the texts and translate new words of professional thesaurus.
Your decisions and behaviors are often the result of a goal or motive you possess. This lesson provides an overview of the main theories and findings on goals and motivation. We address the origins, manifestations, and types of goals, and the various factors that influence motivation in goal pursuit. We further address goal conflict and, specifically, the exercise of self-control in protecting long-term goals from momentary temptations.
Introduction
Every New Year, many people make resolutions — or goals — that go unsatisfied: eat healthier; pay better attention in class; lose weight. As much as we know our lives would improve if we actually achieved these goals, people quite often don’t follow through. But what if that didn’t have to be the case? What if every time we made a goal, we actually accomplished it? Each day, our behavior is the result of countless goals—maybe not goals in the way we think of them, like getting that beach body or being the first person to land on Mars. But even with “mundane” goals, like getting food from the grocery store, or showing up to work on time, we are often enacting the same psychological processes involved with achieving loftier dreams. To understand how we can better attain our goals, let’s begin with defining what a goal is and what underlies it, psychologically.
A goal is the cognitive representation of a desired state, or, in other words, our mental idea of how we’d like things to turn out. This desired end state of a goal can be clearly defined (e.g., stepping on the surface of Mars), or it can be more abstract and represent a state that is never fully completed (e.g., eating healthy). Underlying all of these goals, though, is motivation, or the psychological driving force that enables action in the pursuit of that goal. Motivation can stem from two places. First, it can come from the benefits associated with the process of pursuing a goal (intrinsic motivation). For example, you might be driven by the desire to have a fulfilling experience while working on your Mars mission. Second, motivation can also come from the benefits associated with achieving a goal (extrinsic motivation), such as the fame and fortune that come with being the first person on Mars. One easy way to consider intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is through the eyes of a student. Does the student work hard on assignments because the act of learning is pleasing (intrinsic motivation)? Or does the student work hard to get good grades, which will help land a good job (extrinsic motivation)?
Social psychologists recognize that goal pursuit and the motivations that underlie it do not depend solely on an individual’s personality. Rather, they are products of personal characteristics and situational factors. Indeed, cues in a person’s immediate environment — including images, words, sounds, and the presence of other people —can activate, or prime, a goal. This activation can be conscious, such that the person is aware of the environmental cues influencing his/her pursuit of a goal. However, this activation can also occur outside a person’s awareness, and lead to nonconscious goal pursuit. In this case, the person is unaware of why s/he is pursuing a goal and may not even realize that s/he is pursuing it.
In this lesson, we review key aspects of goals and motivation. First, we discuss the origins and manifestation of goals. Then, we review factors that influence individuals’ motivation in the course of pursuing a goal (self-regulation). Finally, we discuss what motivates individuals to keep following their goals when faced with other conflicting desires — for example, when a tempting opportunity to socialize on Facebook presents itself in the course of studying for an exam (self-control).
The Origins and Manifestation of Goals
Goal Adoption
What makes us commit to a goal? Researchers tend to agree that commitment stems from the sense that a goal is both valuable and attainable, and that we adopt goals that are highly likely to bring positive outcomes (i.e., one’s commitment = the value of the goal × the expectancy it will be achieved). This process of committing to a goal can occur without much conscious deliberation. For example, people infer value and attainability, and will nonconsciously determine their commitment based on those factors, as well as the outcomes of past goals. Indeed, people often learn about themselves the same way they learn about other people — by observing their behaviors (in this case, their own) and drawing inferences about their preferences. For example, after taking a kickboxing class, you might infer from your efforts that you are indeed committed to staying physically fit.
Goal Priming
We don’t always act on our goals in every context. For instance, sometimes we’ll order a salad for lunch, in keeping with our dietary goals, while other times we’ll order only dessert. So, what makes people adhere to a goal in any given context? Cues in the immediate environment (e.g., objects, images, sounds — anything that primes a goal) can have a remarkable influence on the pursuit of goals to which people are already committed. How do these cues work? In memory, goals are organized in associative networks. That is, each goal is connected to other goals, concepts, and behaviors. Particularly, each goal is connected to corresponding means — activities and objects that help us attain the goal. For example, the goal to stay physically fit may be associated with several means, including a nearby gym, one’s bicycle, or even a training partner. Cues related to the goal or means (e.g., an ad for running shoes, a comment about weight loss) can activate or prime the pursuit of that goal. For example, the presence of one’s training partner, or even seeing the word “workout” in a puzzle, can activate the goal of staying physically fit and, hence, increase a person’s motivation to exercise. Soon after goal priming, the motivation to act on the goal peaks then slowly declines, after some delay, as the person moves away from the primer or after s/he pursues the goal.
Consequences of Goal Activation
The activation of a goal and the accompanying increase in motivation can influence many aspects of behavior and judgment, including how people perceive, evaluate, and feel about the world around them. Indeed, motivational states can even alter something as fundamental as visual perception. For example, Balcetis and Dunning (2006) showed participants an ambiguous figure (e.g., “I3”) and asked them whether they saw the letter B or the number 13. The researchers found that when participants had the goal of seeing a letter (e. g., because seeing a number required the participants to drink a gross tasting juice), they in fact saw a B. It wasn’t that the participants were simply lying, either; their goal literally changed how they perceived the world!
Goals can also exert a strong influence on how people evaluate the objects (and people) around them. When pursuing a goal such as quenching one’s thirst, people evaluate goal-relevant objects (e.g., a glass) more positively than objects that are not relevant to the goal (e. g., a pencil). Furthermore, those with the goal of quenching their thirst rate the glass more positively than people who are not pursuing the goal. As discussed earlier, priming a goal can lead to behaviors like this (consistent with the goal), even though the person isn’t necessarily aware of why (i.e., the source of the motivation). For example, after research participants saw words related to achievement (in the context of solving a word search), they automatically performed better on a subsequent achievement test — without being at all aware that the achievement words had influenced them.
Self-Regulation in Goal Pursuit
Many of the behaviors we like to engage in are inconsistent with achieving our goals. For example, you may want to be physically fit, but you may also really like German chocolate cake. Self-regulation refers to the process through which individuals alter their perceptions, feelings, and actions in the pursuit of a goal. For example, filling up on fruits at a dessert party is one way someone might alter his or her actions to help with goal attainment. In the following section, we review the main theories and findings on self-regulation.
From Deliberation to Implementation
Self-regulation involves two basic stages, each with its own distinct mindset. First, a person must decide which of many potential goals to pursue at a given point in time (deliberative phase). While in the deliberative phase, a person often has a mindset that fosters an effective assessment of goals. That is, one tends to be open-minded and realistic about available goals to pursue.
However, such scrutiny of one’s choices sometimes hinders action. For example, in the deliberative phase about how to spend time, someone might consider improving health, academic performance, or developing a hobby. At the same time, though, this deliberation involves considering realistic obstacles, such as one’s busy schedule, which may discourage the person from believing the goals can likely be achieved (and thus, doesn’t work toward any of them). However, after deciding which goal to follow, the second stage involves planning specific actions related to the goal (implemental phase). In the implemental phase, a person tends to have a mindset conducive to the effective implementation of a goal through immediate action — i.e., with the planning done, we’re ready to jump right into attaining our goal. Unfortunately, though, this mindset often leads to closed-mindedness and unrealistically positive expectations about the chosen goal. For example, in order to follow a health goal, a person might register for a gym membership and start exercising. In doing so, s/he assumes this is all that’s needed to achieve the goal (closed-mindedness), and after a few weeks, it should be accomplished (unrealistic expectations).
Regulation of Ought- and Ideals-Goals
In addition to two phases in goal pursuit, research also distinguishes between two distinct self-regulatory orientations (or perceptions of effectiveness) in pursuing a goal: prevention and promotion. A prevention focus emphasizes safety, responsibility, and security needs, and views goals as “oughts”. That is, for those who are prevention-oriented, a goal is viewed as something they should be doing, and they tend to focus on avoiding potential problems (e.g., exercising to avoid health threats). This self-regulatory focus leads to a vigilant strategy aimed at avoiding losses (the presence of negatives) and approaching non-losses (the absence of negatives). On the other hand, a promotion focus views goals as “ideals,” and emphasizes hopes, accomplishments, and advancement needs. Here, people view their goals as something they want to do that will bring them added pleasure (e.g., exercising because being healthy allows them to do more activities). This type of orientation leads to the adoption of an eager strategy concerned with approaching gains (the presence of positives) and avoiding non-gains (the absence of positives).
To compare these two strategies, consider the goal of saving money. Prevention-focused people will save money because they believe it’s what they should be doing (an ought), and because they’re concerned about not having any money (avoiding a harm). Promotion-focused people, on the other hand, will save money because they want to have extra funds (a desire) so they can do new and fun activities (attaining an advancement). Although these two strategies result in very similar behaviors, emphasizing potential losses will motivate individuals with a prevention focus, whereas emphasizing potential gains will motivate individuals with a promotion focus. And these orientations — responding better to either a prevention or promotion focus — differ across individuals (chronic regulatory focus) and situations (momentary regulatory focus).
A Cybernetic Process of Self-Regulation
Self-regulation depends on feelings that arise from comparing actual progress to expected progress. During goal pursuit, individuals calculate the discrepancy between their current state (i.e., all goal-related actions completed so far) and their desired end state (i.e., what they view as “achieving the goal”). After determining this difference, the person then acts to close that gap. In this cybernetic process of self-regulation (or, internal system directing how a person should control behavior), a higher-than-expected rate of closing the discrepancy creates a signal in the form of positive feelings. For example, if you’re nearly finished with a class project (i.e., a low discrepancy between your progress and what it will take to completely finish), you feel good about yourself. However, these positive feelings tend to make individuals “coast,” or reduce their efforts on the focal goal, and shift their focus to other goals (e.g., you’re almost done with your project for one class, so you start working on a paper for another). By contrast, a lower-than-expected rate of closing the gap elicits negative feelings, which leads to greater effort investment on the focal goal. If it is the day before a project’s due and you’ve hardly started it, you will likely feel anxious and stop all other activities to make progress on your project.
Highlighting One Goal or Balancing Between Goals
When we’ve completed steps toward achieving our goal, looking back on the behaviors or actions that helped us make such progress can have implications for future behaviors and actions (see The Dynamics of Self-Regulation framework). Remember, commitment results from the perceived value and attainability of a goal, whereas progress describes the perception of a reduced discrepancy between the current state and desired end state (i.e., the cybernetic process). After achieving a goal, when people interpret their previous actions as a sign of commitment to it, they tend to highlight the pursuit of that goal, prioritizing it and putting more effort toward it. However, when people interpret their previous actions as a sign of progress, they tend to balance between the goal and other goals, putting less effort into the focal goal. For example, if buying a product on sale reinforces your commitment to the goal of saving money, you will continue to behave financially responsibly. However, if you perceive the same action (buying the sale item) as evidence of progress toward the goal of saving money, you might feel like you can “take a break” from your goal, justifying splurging on a subsequent purchase. Several factors can influence the meanings people assign to previous goal actions. For example, the more confident a person is about a commitment to a goal, the more likely s/he is to infer progress rather than commitment from his/her actions.
Conflicting Goals and Self-Control
In the pursuit of our ordinary and extraordinary goals (e.g., staying physically or financially healthy, landing on Mars), we inevitably come across other goals (e.g., eating delicious food, exploring Earth) that might get in the way of our lofty ambitions. In such situations, we must exercise self-control to stay on course. Self-control is the capacity to control impulses, emotions, desires, and actions in order to resist a temptation (e.g., going on a shopping spree) and protect a valued goal (e.g., stay financially sound). As such, self-control is a process of self-regulation in contexts involving a clear trade-off between long-term interests (e.g., health, financial, or Martian) and some form of immediate gratification. For example, whereas reading each page of a textbook requires self-regulation, doing so while resisting the tempting sounds of friends socializing in the next room requires self-control. And although you may tend to believe self-control is just a personal characteristic that varies across individuals, it is like a muscle, in that it becomes drained by being used but is also strengthened in the process.
Self-Control as an Innate Ability
Mischel, Shoda, and Rodriguez (1989) identified enduring individual differences in self-control and found that the persistent capacity to postpone immediate gratification for the sake of future interests leads to greater cognitive and social competence over the course of a lifetime. In a famous series of lab experiments (first conducted by Mischel & Baker, 1975), preschoolers 3–5 years old were asked to choose between getting a smaller treat immediately (e.g., a single marshmallow) or waiting as long as 15 minutes to get a better one (e.g., two marshmallows). Some children were better-able to exercise self-control than others, resisting the temptation to take the available treat and waiting for the better one. Following up with these preschoolers ten years later, the researchers found that the children who were able to wait longer in the experiment for the second marshmallow (vs. those who more quickly ate the single marshmallow) performed better academically and socially, and had better psychological coping skills as adolescents.
Self-Control as a Limited Resource
Beyond personal characteristics, the ability to exercise self-control can fluctuate from one context to the next. In particular, previous exertion of self-control (e.g., choosing not to eat a donut) drains individuals of the limited physiological and psychological resources required to continue the pursuit of a goal (e.g., later in the day, again resisting a sugary treat). Ego-depletion refers to this exhaustion of resources from resisting a temptation. That is, just like bicycling for two hours would exhaust someone before a basketball game, exerting self-control reduces individuals’ capacity to exert more self-control in a consequent task — whether that task is in the same domain (e.g., resisting a donut and then continuing to eat healthy) or a different one (e.g., resisting a donut and then continuing to be financially responsible). For example, in a study by Baumeister et al. (1998), research participants who forced themselves to eat radishes instead of tempting chocolates were subsequently less persistent (i.e., gave up sooner) at attempting an unsolvable puzzle task compared to the participants who had not exerted self-control to resist the chocolates.
A Prerequisite to Self-Control: Identification
Although factors such as resources and personal characteristics contribute to the successful exercise of self-control, identifying the self-control conflict inherent to a particular situation is an important — and often overlooked — prerequisite. For example, if you have a long-term goal of getting better sleep but don’t perceive that staying up late on a Friday night is inconsistent with this goal, you won’t have a self-control conflict. The successful pursuit of a goal in the face of temptation requires that individuals first identify they are having impulses that need to be controlled. However, individuals often fail to identify self-control conflicts because many everyday temptations seem to have very minimal negative consequences: one bowl of ice cream is unlikely to destroy a person’s health, but what about 200 bowls of ice cream over the course of a few months?
People are more likely to identify a self-control conflict, and exercise self-control, when they think of a choice as part of a broader pattern of repeated behavior rather than as an isolated choice. For example, rather than seeing one bowl of ice cream as an isolated behavioral decision, the person should try to recognize that this “one bowl of ice cream” is actually part of a nightly routine. Indeed, when considering broader decision patterns, consistent temptations become more problematic for long-term interests. Moreover, conflict identification is more likely if people see their current choices as similar to their future choices.
Self-Control Processes: Counteracting Temptation
The protection of a valued goal involves several cognitive and behavioral strategies ultimately aimed at “counteracting” the pull of temptations and pushing oneself toward goal-related alternatives. One such cognitive process involves decreasing the value of temptations and increasing the value of goal-consistent objects or actions. For example, health-conscious individuals might tell themselves a sugary treat is less appealing than a piece of fruit in order to direct their choice toward the latter. Other behavioral strategies include a precommitment to pursue goals and forgo temptation (e.g., leaving one’s credit card at home before going to the mall), establishing rewards for goals and penalties for temptations, or physically approaching goals and distancing oneself from temptations (e.g., pushing away a dessert plate). These self-control processes can benefit individuals’ long-term interests, either consciously or without conscious awareness. Thus, at times, individuals automatically activate goal-related thoughts in response to temptation, and inhibit temptation-related thoughts in the presence of goal cues.
Conclusion
People often make New Year’s resolutions with the idea that attaining one’s goals is simple: “I just have to choose to eat healthier, right?” However, after going through this module and learning a social-cognitive approach to the main theories and findings on goals and motivation, we see that even the most basic decisions take place within a much larger and more complex mental framework. From the principles of goal priming and how goals influence perceptions, feelings, and actions, to the factors of self-regulation and self-control, we have learned the phases, orientations, and fluctuations involved in the course of everyday goal pursuit. Looking back on prior goal failures, it may seem impossible to achieve some of our desires. But, through understanding our own mental representation of our goals (i.e., the values and expectancies behind them), we can help cognitively modify our behavior to achieve our dreams. If you do, who knows? — maybe you will be the first person to step on Mars.
Vocabulary
Balancing between goals
Shifting between a focal goal and other goals or temptations by putting less effort into the focal goal — usually with the intention of coming back to the focal goal at a later point in time.
Commitment
The sense that a goal is both valuable and attainable
Conscious goal activation
When a person is fully aware of contextual influences and resulting goal-directed behavior.
Deliberative phase
The first of the two basic stages of self-regulation in which individuals decide which of many potential goals to pursue at a given point in time.
Ego-depletion
The exhaustion of physiological and/or psychological resources following the completion of effortful self-control tasks, which subsequently leads to reduction in the capacity to exert more self-control.
Extrinsic motivation
Motivation stemming from the benefits associated with achieving a goal such as obtaining a monetary reward.
Goal
The cognitive representation of a desired state (outcome).
Goal priming
The activation of a goal following exposure to cues in the immediate environment related to the goal or its corresponding means (e.g., images, words, sounds).
Highlighting a goal
Prioritizing a focal goal over other goals or temptations by putting more effort into the focal goal.
Implemental phase
The second of the two basic stages of self-regulation in which individuals plan specific actions related to their selected goal.
Intrinsic motivation
Motivation stemming from the benefits associated with the process of pursuing a goal such as having a fulfilling experience.
Means
Activities or objects that contribute to goal attainment.
Motivation
The psychological driving force that enables action in the course of goal pursuit. Nonconscious goal activation
When activation occurs outside a person’s awareness, such that the person is unaware of the reasons behind her goal-directed thoughts and behaviors.
Prevention focus
One of two self-regulatory orientations emphasizing safety, responsibility, and security needs, and viewing goals as “oughts.” This self-regulatory focus seeks to avoid losses (the presence of negatives) and approach non-losses (the absence of negatives).
Progress
The perception of reducing the discrepancy between one’s current state and one’s desired state in goal pursuit.
Promotion focus
One of two self-regulatory orientations emphasizing hopes, accomplishments, and advancement needs, and viewing goals as “ideals.” This self-regulatory focus seeks to approach gains (the presence of positives) and avoid non-gains (the absence of positives).
Self-control
The capacity to control impulses, emotions, desires, and actions in order to resist a temptation and adhere to a valued goal.
Self-regulation
The processes through which individuals alter their emotions, desires, and actions in the course of pursuing a goal.
TASK 2.
Discussion Questions
- What is the difference between goal and motivation?
- What is the difference between self-regulation and self-control?
- How do positive and negative feelings inform goal pursuit in a cybernetic self-regulation process?
- Describe the characteristics of the deliberative mindset that allows individuals to decide between different goals. How might these characteristics hinder the implemental phase of self-regulation?
- You just read a module on “Goals and Motivation,” and you believe it is a sign of commitment to the goal of learning about social psychology. Define commitment in this context. How would interpreting your efforts as a sign of commitment influence your motivation to read more about social psychology? By contrast, how would interpreting your efforts as a sign of progress influence your motivation to read more?
- Mel and Alex are friends. Mel has a prevention focus self-regulatory orientation, whereas Alex has a promotion focus. They are both training for a marathon and are looking for motivational posters to hang in their respective apartments. While shopping, they find a poster with the following Confucius quote: “The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential … . These are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.” Who is this poster more likely to help stay motivated for the marathon (Mel or Alex)? Why? Find or write a quote that might help the other friend.
- Give an example in which an individual fails to exercise self-control. What are some factors that can cause such a self-control failure?
TASK 3.
Please, do in a written form:
- Describe the antecedents and consequences of goal activation.
- Describe the factors that influence motivation in the course of goal pursuit.
- Explain the process underlying goal activation, self-regulation, and self-control.
- Give examples of goal activation effects, self-regulation processes, and self-control processes.
LESSON 9 (8 hours)
The Healthy Life
Task 1. Read the texts and translate new words of professional thesaurus.
Our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors play an important role in our health. Not only do they influence our day-to-day health practices, but they can also influence how our body functions. This module provides an overview of health psychology, which is a field devoted to understanding the connections between psychology and health. Discussed here are examples of topics a health psychologist might study, including stress, psychosocial factors related to health and disease, how to use psychology to improve health, and the role of psychology in medicine.
What Is Health Psychology?
Today, we face more chronic disease than ever before because we are living longer lives while also frequently behaving in unhealthy ways. One example of a chronic disease is coronary heart disease (CHD): It is the number one cause of death worldwide (World Health Organization, 2013). CHD develops slowly over time and typically appears midlife, but related heart problems can persist for years after the original diagnosis or cardiovascular event. In managing illnesses that persist over time (other examples might include cancer, diabetes, and long-term disability) many psychological factors will determine the progression of the ailment. For example, do patients seek help when appropriate? Do they follow doctor recommendations? Do they develop negative psychological symptoms due to lasting illness (e.g., depression)? Also important is that psychological factors can play a significant role in who develops these diseases, the prognosis, and the nature of the symptoms related to the illness. Health psychology is a relatively new, interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on these very issues, or more specifically, the role of psychology in maintaining health, as well as preventing and treating illness.
Consideration of how psychological and social factors influence health is especially important today because many of the leading causes of illness in developed countries are often attributed to psychological and behavioral factors. In the case of CHD, discussed above, psychosocial factors, such as excessive stress, smoking, unhealthy eating habits, and some personality traits can also lead to increased risk of disease and worse health outcomes. That being said, many of these factors can be adjusted using psychological techniques. For example, clinical health psychologists can improve health practices like poor dietary choices and smoking, they can teach important stress reduction techniques, and they can help treat psychological disorders tied to poor health.
Health psychology considers how the choices we make, the behaviors we engage in, and even the emotions that we feel, can play an important role in our overall health. Health psychology relies on the Biopsychosocial Model of Health. This model posits that biology, psychology, and social factors are just as important in the development of disease as biological causes (e.g., germs, viruses), which is consistent with the World Health Organization (1946) definition of health. This model replaces the older Biomedical Model of Health, which primarily considers the physical, or pathogenic, factors contributing to illness. Thanks to advances in medical technology, there is a growing understanding of the physiology underlying the mind–body connection, and in particular, the role that different feelings can have on our body’s function. Health psychology researchers working in the fields of psychosomatic medicine and psychoneuroimmunology, for example, are interested in understanding how psychological factors can “get under the skin” and influence our physiology in order to better understand how factors like stress can make us sick.
Stress And Health
You probably know exactly what it’s like to feel stress, but what you may not know is that it can objectively influence your health. Answers to questions like, “How stressed do you feel?” or “How overwhelmed do you feel?” can predict your likelihood of developing both minor illnesses as well as serious problems like future heart attack. To understand how health psychologists study these types of associations, we will describe one famous example of a stress and health study. Imagine that you are a research subject for a moment. After you check into a hotel room as part of the study, the researchers ask you to report your general levels of stress. Not too surprising; however, what happens next is that you receive droplets of cold virus into your nose! The researchers intentionally try to make you sick by exposing you to an infectious illness. After they expose you to the virus, the researchers will then evaluate you for several days by asking you questions about your symptoms, monitoring how much mucus you are producing by weighing your used tissues, and taking body fluid samples — all to see if you are objectively ill with a cold. Now, the interesting thing is that not everyone who has drops of cold virus put in their nose develops the illness. Studies like this one find that people who are less stressed and those who are more positive at the beginning of the study are at a decreased risk of developing a cold.
Importantly, it is not just major life stressors (e.g., a family death, a natural disaster) that increase the likelihood of getting sick. Even small daily hassles like getting stuck in traffic or fighting with your girlfriend can raise your blood pressure, alter your stress hormones, and even suppress your immune system function.
It is clear that stress plays a major role in our mental and physical health, but what exactly is it? The term stress was originally derived from the field of mechanics where it is used to describe materials under pressure. The word was first used in a psychological manner by researcher Hans Selye. He was examining the effect of an ovarian hormone that he thought caused sickness in a sample of rats. Surprisingly, he noticed that almost any injected hormone produced this same sickness. He smartly realized that it was not the hormone under investigation that was causing these problems, but instead, the aversive experience of being handled and injected by researchers that led to high physiological arousal and, eventually, to health problems like ulcers. Selye (1946) coined the term stressor to label a stimulus that had this effect on the body and developed a model of the stress response called the General Adaptation Syndrome. Since then, psychologists have studied stress in a myriad of ways, including stress as negative events (e.g., natural disasters or major life changes like dropping out of school), as chronically difficult situations (e.g., taking care of a loved one with Alzheimer’s), as short-term hassles, as a biological fight-or-flight response, and even as clinical illness like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It continues to be one of the most important and well-studied psychological correlates of illness, because excessive stress causes potentially damaging wear and tear on the body and can influence almost any imaginable disease process.
Protecting Our Health
An important question that health psychologists ask is: What keeps us protected from disease and alive longer? When considering this issue of resilience, five factors are often studied in terms of their ability to protect (or sometimes harm) health. They are: 1. Coping
- Control and Self-Efficacy
- Social Relationships
- Dispositions and Emotions
- Stress Management
Coping Strategies
How individuals cope with the stressors they face can have a significant impact on health. Coping is often classified into two categories: problem-focused coping or emotion-focused coping. Problem-focused coping is thought of as actively addressing the event that is causing stress in an effort to solve the issue at hand. For example, say you have an important exam coming up next week. A problem-focused strategy might be to spend additional time over the weekend studying to make sure you understand all of the material. Emotion-focused coping, on the other hand, regulates the emotions that come with stress. In the above examination example, this might mean watching a funny movie to take your mind off the anxiety you are feeling. In the short term, emotion-focused coping might reduce feelings of stress, but problem-focused coping seems to have the greatest impact on mental wellness. That being said, when events are uncontrollable (e.g., the death of a loved one), emotion-focused coping directed at managing your feelings, at first, might be the better strategy. Therefore, it is always important to consider the match of the stressor to the coping strategy when evaluating its plausible benefits.
Control and Self-Efficacy
Another factor tied to better health outcomes and an improved ability to cope with stress is having the belief that you have control over a situation. For example, in one study where participants were forced to listen to unpleasant (stressful) noise, those who were led to believe that they had control over the noise performed much better on proofreading tasks afterwards. In other words, even though participants did not have actual control over the noise, the control belief aided them in completing the task. In similar studies, perceived control benefited immune system functioning. Outside of the laboratory, studies have shown that older residents in assisted living facilities, which are notorious for low control, lived longer and showed better health outcomes when given control over something as simple as watering a plant or choosing when student volunteers came to visit. In addition, feeling in control of a threatening situation can actually change stress hormone levels. Believing that you have control over your own behaviors can also have a positive influence on important outcomes like smoking cessation, contraception use, and weight management. When individuals do not believe they have control, they do not try to change. Self-efficacy is closely related to control, in that people with high levels of this trait believe they can complete tasks and reach their goals. Just as feeling in control can reduce stress and improve health, higher self-efficacy can reduce stress and negative health behaviors, and is associated with better health.
Social Relationships
Research has shown that the impact of social isolation on our risk for disease and death is similar in magnitude to the risk associated with smoking regularly. In fact, the importance of social relationships for our health is so significant that some scientists believe our body has developed a physiological system that encourages us to seek out our relationships, especially in times of stress. Social integration is the concept used to describe the number of social roles that you have, as well as the lack of isolation. For example, you might be a daughter, a basketball team member, a Humane Society volunteer, a coworker, and a student. Maintaining these different roles can improve your health via encouragement from those around you to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Those in your social network might also provide you with social support (e.g., when you are under stress). This support might include emotional help (e.g., a hug when you need it), tangible help (e.g., lending you money), or advice. By helping to improve health behaviors and reduce stress, social relationships can have a powerful, protective impact on health, and in some cases, might even help people with serious illnesses stay alive longer.
Dispositions and Emotions: What’s Risky and What’s Protective?
Negative dispositions and personality traits have been strongly tied to an array of health risks. One of the earliest negative trait-to-health connections was discovered in the 1950s by two cardiologists. They made the interesting discovery that there were common behavioral and psychological patterns among their heart patients that were not present in other patient samples. This pattern included being competitive, impatient, hostile, and time urgent. They labeled it Type A Behavior. Importantly, it was found to be associated with double the risk of heart disease as compared with Type B Behavior. Since the 1950s, researchers have discovered that it is the hostility and competitiveness components of Type A that are especially harmful to heart health. Hostile individuals are quick to get upset, and this angry arousal can damage the arteries of the heart. In addition, given their negative personality style, hostile people often lack a heath-protective supportive social network.
Positive traits and states, on the other hand, are often health protective. For example, characteristics like positive emotions (e.g., feeling happy or excited) have been tied to a wide range of benefits such as increased longevity, a reduced likelihood of developing some illnesses, and better outcomes once you are diagnosed with certain diseases (e.g., heart disease, HIV). Across the world, even in the most poor and underdeveloped nations, positive emotions are consistently tied to better health. Positive emotions can also serve as the “antidote” to stress, protecting us against some of its damaging effects. Similarly, looking on the bright side can also improve health. Optimism has been shown to improve coping, reduce stress, and predict better disease outcomes like recovering from a heart attack more rapidly.
Stress Management
About 20 percent of Americans report having stress, with 18–33 year-olds reporting the highest levels (American Psychological Association, 2012). Given that the sources of our stress are often difficult to change (e.g., personal finances, current job), a number of interventions have been designed to help reduce the aversive responses to duress. For example, relaxation activities and forms of meditation are techniques that allow individuals to reduce their stress via breathing exercises, muscle relaxation, and mental imagery. Physiological arousal from stress can also be reduced via biofeedback, a technique where the individual is shown bodily information that is not normally available to them (e.g., heart rate), and then taught strategies to alter this signal. This type of intervention has even shown promise in reducing heart and hypertension risk, as well as other serious conditions. But reducing stress does not have to be complicated! For example, exercise is a great stress reduction activity that has a myriad of health benefits.
The Importance Of Good Health Practices
As a student, you probably strive to maintain good grades, to have an active social life, and to stay healthy (e.g., by getting enough sleep), but there is a popular joke about what it’s like to be in college: you can only pick two of these things. The busy life of a college student doesn’t always allow you to maintain all three areas of your life, especially during test-taking periods. In one study, researchers found that students taking exams were more stressed and, thus, smoked more, drank more caffeine, had less physical activity, and had worse sleep habits, all of which could have detrimental effects on their health. Positive health practices are especially important in times of stress when your immune system is compromised due to high stress and the elevated frequency of exposure to the illnesses of your fellow students in lecture halls, cafeterias, and dorms.
Psychologists study both health behaviors and health habits. The former are behaviors that can improve or harm your health. Some examples include regular exercise, flossing, and wearing sunscreen, versus negative behaviors like drunk driving, pulling all-nighters, or smoking. These behaviors become habits when they are firmly established and performed automatically. For example, do you have to think about putting your seatbelt on or do you do it automatically? Habits are often developed early in life thanks to parental encouragement or the influence of our peer group.
While these behaviors sound minor, studies have shown that those who engaged in more of these protective habits (e.g., getting 7–8 hours of sleep regularly, not smoking or drinking excessively, exercising) had fewer illnesses, felt better, and were less likely to die over a 9–12- year follow-up period. For college students, health behaviors can even influence academic performance. For example, poor sleep quality and quantity are related to weaker learning capacity and academic performance. Due to the effects that health behaviors can have, much effort is put forward by psychologists to understand how to change unhealthy behaviors, and to understand why individuals fail to act in healthy ways. Health promotion involves enabling individuals to improve health by focusing on behaviors that pose a risk for future illness, as well as spreading knowledge on existing risk factors. These might be genetic risks you are born with, or something you developed over time like obesity, which puts you at risk for Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, among other illnesses.
Psychology And Medicine
There are many psychological factors that influence medical treatment outcomes. For example, older individuals, women and those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are all more likely to seek medical care. On the other hand, some individuals who need care might avoid it due to financial obstacles or preconceived notions about medical practitioners or the illness. Thanks to the growing amount of medical information online, many people now use the Internet for health information and 38% percent report that this influences their decision to see a doctor. Unfortunately, this is not always a good thing because individuals tend to do a poor job assessing the credibility of health information. For example, college-student participants reading online articles about HIV and syphilis rated a physician’s article and a college student’s article as equally credible if the participants said they were familiar with the health topic. Credibility of health information often means how accurate or trustworthy the information is, and it can be influenced by irrelevant factors, such as the website’s design, logos, or the organization’s contact information. Similarly, many people post health questions on online, unmoderated forums where anyone can respond, which allows for the possibility of inaccurate information being provided for serious medical conditions by unqualified individuals.
After individuals decide to seek care, there is also variability in the information they give their medical provider. Poor communication (e.g., due to embarrassment or feeling rushed) can influence the accuracy of the diagnosis and the effectiveness of the prescribed treatment. Similarly, there is variation following a visit to the doctor. While most individuals are tasked with a health recommendation (e.g., buying and using a medication appropriately, losing weight, going to another expert), not everyone adheres to medical recommendations. For example, many individuals take medications inappropriately (e.g., stopping early, not filling prescriptions) or fail to change their behaviors (e.g., quitting smoking). Unfortunately, getting patients to follow medical orders is not as easy as one would think. For example, in one study, over one third of diabetic patients failed to get proper medical care that would prevent or slow down diabetes-related blindness! Fortunately, as mobile technology improves, physicians now have the ability to monitor adherence and work to improve it (e.g., with pill bottles that monitor if they are opened at the right time). Even text messages are useful for improving treatment adherence and outcomes in depression, smoking cessation, and weight loss.
Being A Health Psychologist
Training as a clinical health psychologist provides a variety of possible career options. Clinical health psychologists often work on teams of physicians, social workers, allied health professionals, and religious leaders. These teams may be formed in locations like rehabilitation centers, hospitals, primary care offices, emergency care centers, or in chronic illness clinics. Work in each of these settings will pose unique challenges in patient care, but the primary responsibility will be the same. Clinical health psychologists will evaluate physical, personal, and environmental factors contributing to illness and preventing improved health. In doing so, they will then help create a treatment strategy that takes into account all dimensions of a person’s life and health, which maximizes its potential for success. Those who specialize in health psychology can also conduct research to discover new health predictors and risk factors, or develop interventions to prevent and treat illness. Researchers studying health psychology work in numerous locations, such as universities, public health departments, hospitals, and private organizations. In the related field of behavioral medicine, careers focus on the application of this type of research. Occupations in this area might include jobs in occupational therapy, rehabilitation, or preventative medicine. Training as a health psychologist provides a wide skill set applicable in a number of different professional settings and career paths.
The Future Of Health Psychology
Much of the past medical research literature provides an incomplete picture of human health. “Health care” is often “illness care.” That is, it focuses on the management of symptoms and illnesses as they arise. As a result, in many developed countries, we are faced with several health epidemics that are difficult and costly to treat. These include obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, to name a few. The National Institutes of Health have called for researchers to use the knowledge we have about risk factors to design effective interventions to reduce the prevalence of preventable illness. Additionally, there are a growing number of individuals across developed countries with multiple chronic illnesses and/or lasting disabilities, especially with older age. Addressing their needs and maintaining their quality of life will require skilled individuals who understand how to properly treat these populations. Health psychologists will be on the forefront of work in these areas.
With this focus on prevention, it is important that health psychologists move beyond studying risk (e.g., depression, stress, hostility, low socioeconomic status) in isolation, and move toward studying factors that confer resilience and protection from disease. There is, fortunately, a growing interest in studying the positive factors that protect our health with evidence strongly indicating that people with higher positivity live longer, suffer fewer illnesses, and generally feel better. Seligman (2008) has even proposed a field of “Positive Health” to specifically study those who exhibit “above average” health — something we do not think about enough. By shifting some of the research focus to identifying and understanding these health-promoting factors, we may capitalize on this information to improve public health.
Innovative interventions to improve health are already in use and continue to be studied. With recent advances in technology, we are starting to see great strides made to improve health with the aid of computational tools. For example, there are hundreds of simple applications (apps) that use email and text messages to send reminders to take medication, as well as mobile apps that allow us to monitor our exercise levels and food intake (in the growing mobile-health, or m-health, field). These m-health applications can be used to raise health awareness, support treatment and compliance, and remotely collect data on a variety of outcomes. Also exciting are devices that allow us to monitor physiology in real time; for example, to better understand the stressful situations that raise blood pressure or heart rate. With advances like these, health psychologists will be able to serve the population better, learn more about health and health behavior, and develop excellent health-improving strategies that could be specifically targeted to certain populations or individuals. These leaps in equipment development, partnered with growing health psychology knowledge and exciting advances in neuroscience and genetic research, will lead health researchers and practitioners into an exciting new time where, hopefully, we will understand more and more about how to keep people healthy.
Vocabulary
Adherence
In health, it is the ability of a patient to maintain a health behavior prescribed by a physician. This might include taking medication as prescribed, exercising more, or eating less high-fat food.
Behavioral medicine
A field similar to health psychology that integrates psychological factors (e.g., emotion, behavior, cognition, and social factors) in the treatment of disease. This applied field includes clinical areas of study, such as occupational therapy, hypnosis, rehabilitation or medicine, and preventative medicine.
Biofeedback
The process by which physiological signals, not normally available to human perception, are transformed into easy-to-understand graphs or numbers. Individuals can then use this information to try to change bodily functioning (e.g., lower blood pressure, reduce muscle tension).
Biomedical Model of Health
A reductionist model that posits that ill health is a result of a deviation from normal function, which is explained by the presence of pathogens, injury, or genetic abnormality.
Biopsychosocial Model of Health
An approach to studying health and human function that posits the importance of biological, psychological, and social (or environmental) processes.
Chronic disease
A health condition that persists over time, typically for periods longer than three months (e.g., HIV, asthma, diabetes).
Control
Feeling like you have the power to change your environment or behavior if you need or want to.
Daily hassles
Irritations in daily life that are not necessarily traumatic, but that cause difficulties and
repeated stress.
Emotion-focused coping
Coping strategy aimed at reducing the negative emotions associated with a stressful event.
General Adaptation Syndrome
A three-phase model of stress, which includes a mobilization of physiological resources phase, a coping phase, and an exhaustion phase (i.e., when an organism fails to cope with the stress adequately and depletes its resources).
Health
According to the World Health Organization, it is a complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
Health behavior
Any behavior that is related to health—either good or bad.
Hostility
An experience or trait with cognitive, behavioral, and emotional components. It often includes cynical thoughts, feelings of emotion, and aggressive behavior.
Mind–body connection
The idea that our emotions and thoughts can affect how our body functions.
Problem-focused coping
A set of coping strategies aimed at improving or changing stressful situations.
Psychoneuroimmunology
A field of study examining the relationship among psychology, brain function, and immune function.
Psychosomatic medicine
An interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on how biological, psychological, and social processes contribute to physiological changes in the body and health over time.
Resilience
The ability to “bounce back” from negative situations (e.g., illness, stress) to normal functioning or to simply not show poor outcomes in the face of adversity. In some cases, resilience may lead to better functioning following the negative experience (e.g., post-traumatic growth).
Self-efficacy
The belief that one can perform adequately in a specific situation.
Social integration
The size of your social network or number of social roles (e.g., son, sister, student, employee, team member).
Social support
The perception or actuality that we have a social network that can help us in times of need and provide us with a variety of useful resources (e.g., advice, love, money).
Stress
A pattern of physical and psychological responses in an organism after it perceives a
threatening event that disturbs its homeostasis and taxes its abilities to cope with the event.
Stressor
An event or stimulus that induces feelings of stress.
Type A Behavior
Type A behavior is characterized by impatience, competitiveness, neuroticism, hostility, and anger.
Type B Behavior
Type B behavior reflects the absence of Type A characteristics and is represented by less competitive, aggressive, and hostile behavior patterns.
TASK 2.
Discussion Questions :
- What psychological factors contribute to health?
- Which psychosocial constructs and behaviors might help protect us from the damaging effects of stress?
- What kinds of interventions might help to improve resilience? Who will these interventions help the most?
- How should doctors use research in health psychology when meeting with patients?
- Why do clinical health psychologists play a critical role in improving public health?
TASK 3.
- Explain theoretical models of health, as well as the role of psychological stress in the development of disease.
- Describe psychological factors that contribute to resilience and improved health.
- Defend the relevance and importance of psychology to the field of medicine.
LESSON 10 (10 hours)
Judgment and Decision Making
Humans are not perfect decision makers. Not only are we not perfect, but we depart from perfection or rationality in systematic and predictable ways. The understanding of these systematic and predictable departures is core to the field of judgment and decision making. By understanding these limitations, we can also identify strategies for making better and more effective decisions.
Task 1. Read the texts and translate new words of professional thesaurus.
Introduction
Every day you have the opportunity to make countless decisions: should you eat dessert, cheat on a test, or attend a sports event with your friends. If you reflect on your own history of choices you will realize that they vary in quality; some are rational and some are not. This module provides an overview of decision making and includes discussion of many of the common biases involved in this process. In his Nobel Prize–winning work, psychologist Herbert Simon argued that our decisions are bounded in their rationality. According to the bounded rationality framework, human beings try to make rational decisions (such as weighing the costs and benefits of a choice) but our cognitive limitations prevent us from being fully rational. Time and cost constraints limit the quantity and quality of the information that is available to us. Moreover, we only retain a relatively small amount of information in our usable memory. And limitations on intelligence and perceptions constrain the ability of even very bright decision makers to accurately make the best choice based on the information that is available.
About 15 years after the publication of Simon’s seminal work, Tversky and Kahneman produced their own Nobel Prize–winning research, which provided critical information about specific systematic and predictable biases, or mistakes, that influence judgment (Kahneman received the prize after Tversky’s death). The work of Simon, Tversky, and Kahneman paved the way to our modern understanding of judgment and decision making. And their two Nobel prizes signaled the broad acceptance of the field of behavioral decision research as a mature area of intellectual study.
What Would a Rational Decision Look Like?
Imagine that during your senior year in college, you apply to a number of doctoral programs, law schools, or business schools (or another set of programs in whatever field most interests you). The good news is that you receive many acceptance letters. So, how should you decide where to go? Bazerman and Moore (2013) outline the following six steps that you should take to make a rational decision: (1) define the problem (i.e., selecting the right graduate program), (2) identify the criteria necessary to judge the multiple options (location, prestige, faculty, etc.), (3) weight the criteria (rank them in terms of importance to you), (4) generate alternatives (the schools that admitted you), (5) rate each alternative on each criterion (rate each school on each criteria that you identified, and (6) compute the optimal decision. Acting rationally would require that you follow these six steps in a fully rational manner.
I strongly advise people to think through important decisions such as this in a manner similar to this process. Unfortunately, we often don’t. Many of us rely on our intuitions far more than we should. And when we do try to think systematically, the way we enter data into such formal decision-making processes is often biased. Fortunately, psychologists have learned a great deal about the biases that affect our thinking. This knowledge about the systematic and predictable mistakes that even the best and the brightest make can help you identify flaws in your thought processes and reach better decisions.
Biases in Our Decision Process
Simon’s concept of bounded rationality taught us that judgment deviates from rationality, but it did not tell us how judgment is biased. Tversky and Kahneman’s (1974) research helped to diagnose the specific systematic, directional biases that affect human judgment. These biases are created by the tendency to short-circuit a rational decision process by relying on a number of simplifying strategies, or rules of thumb, known as heuristics. Heuristics allow us to cope with the complex environment surrounding our decisions. Unfortunately, they also lead to systematic and predictable biases.
To highlight some of these biases please answer the following three quiz items:
Problem 1 (adapted from Alpert & Raiffa, 1969):
Listed below are 10 uncertain quantities. Do not look up any information on these items. For each, write down your best estimate of the quantity. Next, put a lower and upper bound around your estimate, such that you are 98 percent confident that your range surrounds the actual quantity. Respond to each of these items even if you admit to knowing very little about these quantities.
- The first year the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded
- The date the French celebrate “Bastille Day”
- The distance from the Earth to the Moon
- The height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa
- Number of students attending Oxford University (as of 2014)
- Number of people who have traveled to space (as of 2013)
- 2012-2013 annual budget for the University of Pennsylvania
- Average life expectancy in Bangladesh (as of 2012)
- World record for pull-ups in a 24-hour period
- Number of colleges and universities in the Boston metropolitan area
Problem 2 (adapted from Joyce & Biddle, 1981):
We know that executive fraud occurs and that it has been associated with many recent financial scandals. And, we know that many cases of management fraud go undetected even when annual audits are performed. Do you think that the incidence of significant executive-level management fraud is more than 10 in 1,000 firms (that is, 1 percent) audited by Big Four accounting firms?
- Yes, more than 10 in 1,000 Big Four clients have significant executive-level management fraud.
- No, fewer than 10 in 1,000 Big Four clients have significant executive-level management fraud.
What is your estimate of the number of Big Four clients per 1,000 that have significant executive-level management fraud? (Fill in the blank below with the appropriate number.)
________ in 1,000 Big Four clients have significant executive-level management fraud.
Problem 3 (adapted from Tversky & Kahneman, 1981):
Imagine that the United States is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual avian disease that is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed. Assume that the exact scientific estimates of the consequences of the programs are as follows.
- Program A: If Program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved.
- Program B: If Program B is adopted, there is a one-third probability that 600 people will be saved and a two-thirds probability that no people will be saved.
Which of the two programs would you favor?
Overconfidence
On the first problem, if you set your ranges so that you were justifiably 98 percent confident, you should expect that approximately 9.8, or nine to 10, of your ranges would include the actual value. So, let’s look at the correct answers:
- 1901
- 14th of July
- 384,403 km (238,857 mi)
- 56.67 m (183 ft)
- 22,384 (as of 2014)
- 536 people (as of 2013)
- $6.007 billion
- 70.3 years (as of 2012)
- 4,321
- 52
Count the number of your 98% ranges that actually surrounded the true quantities. If you surrounded nine to 10, you were appropriately confident in your judgments. But most readers surround only between three (30%) and seven (70%) of the correct answers, despite claiming 98% confidence that each range would surround the true value. As this problem shows, humans tend to be overconfident in their judgments.
Anchoring
Regarding the second problem, people vary a great deal in their final assessment of the level of executive-level management fraud, but most think that 10 out of 1,000 is too low. When I run this exercise in class, half of the students respond to the question that I asked you to answer. The other half receive a similar problem, but instead are asked whether the correct answer is higher or lower than 200 rather than 10. Most people think that 200 is high. But, again, most people claim that this “anchor” does not affect their final estimate. Yet, on average, people who are presented with the question that focuses on the number 10 (out of 1,000) give answers that are about one-half the size of the estimates of those facing questions that use an anchor of 200. When we are making decisions, any initial anchor that we face is likely to influence our judgments, even if the anchor is arbitrary. That is, we insufficiently adjust our judgments away from the anchor.
Framing
Turning to Problem 3, most people choose Program A, which saves 200 lives for sure, over Program B. But, again, if I was in front of a classroom, only half of my students would receive this problem. The other half would have received the same set-up, but with the following two options:
- Program C: If Program C is adopted, 400 people will die.
- Program D: If Program D is adopted, there is a one-third probability that no one will die and a two-thirds probability that 600 people will die.
Which of the two programs would you favor?
Careful review of the two versions of this problem clarifies that they are objectively the same. Saving 200 people (Program A) means losing 400 people (Program C), and Programs B and D are also objectively identical. Yet, in one of the most famous problems in judgment and decision making, most individuals choose Program A in the first set and Program D in the second set. People respond very differently to saving versus losing lives — even when the difference is based just on the “framing” of the choices.
The problem that I asked you to respond to was framed in terms of saving lives, and the implied reference point was the worst outcome of 600 deaths. Most of us, when we make decisions that concern gains, are risk averse; as a consequence, we lock in the possibility of saving 200 lives for sure. In the alternative version, the problem is framed in terms of losses. Now the implicit reference point is the best outcome of no deaths due to the Asian disease. And in this case, most people are risk seeking when making decisions regarding losses.
These are just three of the many biases that affect even the smartest among us. Other research shows that we are biased in favor of information that is easy for our minds to retrieve, are insensitive to the importance of base rates and sample sizes when we are making inferences, assume that random events will always look random, search for information that confirms our expectations even when disconfirming information would be more informative, claim a priori knowledge that didn’t exist due to the hindsight bias, and are subject to a host of other effects that continue to be developed in the literature.
Contemporary Developments
Bounded rationality served as the integrating concept of the field of behavioral decision research for 40 years. Then, in 2000, Thaler suggested that decision making is bounded in two ways not precisely captured by the concept of bounded rationality. First, he argued that our willpower is bounded and that, as a consequence, we give greater weight to present concerns than to future concerns. Our immediate motivations are often inconsistent with our long-term interests in a variety of ways, such as the common failure to save adequately for retirement or the difficulty many people have staying on a diet. Second, Thaler suggested that our self-interest is bounded such that we care about the outcomes of others. Sometimes we positively value the outcomes of others — giving them more of a commodity than is necessary out of a desire to be fair, for example. And, in unfortunate contexts, we sometimes are willing to forgo our own benefits out of a desire to harm others.
Chugh, Banaji, and Bazerman (2005) and Banaji and Bhaskar (2000) introduced the concept of bounded ethicality, which refers to the notion that our ethics are limited in ways we are not even aware of ourselves. Second, Chugh and Bazerman (2007) developed the concept of bounded awareness to refer to the broad array of focusing failures that affect our judgment, specifically the many ways in which we fail to notice obvious and important information that is available to us.
A final development is the application of judgment and decision-making research to the areas of behavioral economics, behavioral finance, and behavioral marketing, among others. In each case, these fields have been transformed by applying and extending research from the judgment and decision-making literature.
Fixing Our Decisions
Ample evidence documents that even smart people are routinely impaired by biases. Early research demonstrated, unfortunately, that awareness of these problems does little to reduce bias. The good news is that more recent research documents interventions that do help us overcome our faulty thinking.
One critical path to fixing our biases is provided in Stanovich and West’s (2000) distinction between System 1 and System 2 decision making. System 1 processing is our intuitive system, which is typically fast, automatic, effortless, implicit, and emotional. System 2 refers to decision making that is slower, conscious, effortful, explicit, and logical. The six logical steps of decision making outlined earlier describe a System 2 process.
Clearly, a complete System 2 process is not required for every decision we make. In most situations, our System 1 thinking is quite sufficient; it would be impractical, for example, to logically reason through every choice we make while shopping for groceries. But, preferably, System 2 logic should influence our most important decisions. Nonetheless, we use our System 1 processes for most decisions in life, relying on it even when making important decisions.
The key to reducing the effects of bias and improving our decisions is to transition from trusting our intuitive System 1 thinking toward engaging more in deliberative System 2 thought. Unfortunately, the busier and more rushed people are, the more they have on their minds, and the more likely they are to rely on System 1 thinking (Chugh, 2004). The frantic pace of professional life suggests that executives often rely on System 1 thinking.
Fortunately, it is possible to identify conditions where we rely on intuition at our peril and substitute more deliberative thought. One fascinating example of this substitution comes from journalist Michael Lewis’ (2003) account of how Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, improved the outcomes of the failing baseball team after recognizing that the intuition of baseball executives was limited and systematically biased and that their intuitions had been incorporated into important decisions in ways that created enormous mistakes. Lewis (2003) documents that baseball professionals tend to overgeneralize from their personal experiences, be overly influenced by players’ very recent performances, and overweigh what they see with their own eyes, despite the fact that players’ multiyear records provide far better data. By substituting valid predictors of future performance (System 2 thinking), the Athletics were able to outperform expectations given their very limited payroll.
Another important direction for improving decisions comes from Thaler and Sunstein’s (2008) book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Rather than setting out to debias human judgment, Thaler and Sunstein outline a strategy for how “decision architects” can change environments in ways that account for human bias and trigger better decisions as a result. For example, Beshears, Choi, Laibson, and Madrian (2008) have shown that simple changes to defaults can dramatically improve people’s decisions. They tackle the failure of many people to save for retirement and show that a simple change can significantly influence enrollment in 401(k) programs. In most companies, when you start your job, you need to proactively sign up to join the company’s retirement savings plan. Many people take years before getting around to doing so. When, instead, companies automatically enroll their employees in 401(k) programs and give them the opportunity to “opt out,” the net enrollment rate rises significantly. By changing defaults, we can counteract the human tendency to live with the status quo.
Similarly, Johnson and Goldstein’s (2003) cross-European organ donation study reveals that countries that have opt-in organ donation policies, where the default is not to harvest people’s organs without their prior consent, sacrifice thousands of lives in comparison to opt-out policies, where the default is to harvest organs. The United States and too many other countries require that citizens opt in to organ donation through a proactive effort; as a consequence, consent rates range between 4.25%–44% across these countries. In contrast, changing the decision architecture to an opt-out policy improves consent rates to 85.9% to 99.98%. Designing the donation system with knowledge of the power of defaults can dramatically change donation rates without changing the options available to citizens. In contrast, a more intuitive strategy, such as the one in place in the United States, inspires defaults that result in many unnecessary deaths.
Concluding Thoughts
Our days are filled with decisions ranging from the small (what should I wear today?) to the important (should we get married?). Many have real world consequences on our health, finances and relationships. Simon, Kahneman, and Tversky created a field that highlights the surprising and predictable deficiencies of the human mind when making decisions. As we understand more about our own biases and thinking shortcomings, we can begin to take them into account or to avoid them. Only now have we reached the frontier of using this knowledge to help people make better decisions.
TASK 2.
Please, make up an Active Vocabulary of the Lesson containing the following notions and 5 more (up to you) :
Anchoring
Biases
Bounded awareness
Bounded ethicality
Bounded rationality
Bounded self-interest
Bounded willpower
Framing
Heuristics
Overconfident
System 1
System 2
TASK 3.
Discussion Questions
- Are the biases in this module a problem in the real world?
- How would you use this module to be a better decision maker?
- Can you see any biases in today’s newspaper?
TASK 4.
Please, do in a written form:
- Enumerate the systematic biases that affect our judgment and decision making.
- Develop strategies for making better decisions.
LESSON 11 (10 hours)
Adolescent Development
Adolescence is a period that begins with puberty and ends with the transition to adulthood (approximately ages 10–20). Physical changes associated with puberty are triggered by hormones. Cognitive changes include improvements in complex and abstract thought, as well as development that happens at different rates in distinct parts of the brain and increases adolescents’ propensity for risky behavior because increases in sensation-seeking and reward motivation precede increases in cognitive control. Adolescents’ relationships with parents go through a period of redefinition in which adolescents become more autonomous, and aspects of parenting, such as distal monitoring and psychological control, become more salient. Peer relationships are important sources of support and companionship during adolescence yet can also promote problem behaviors. Same-sex peer groups evolve into mixed-sex peer groups, and adolescents’ romantic relationships tend to emerge from these groups. Identity formation occurs as adolescents explore and commit to different roles and ideological positions. Nationality, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, religious background, sexual orientation, and genetic factors shape how adolescents behave and how others respond to them, and are sources of diversity in adolescence.
Task 1. Read the texts and translate new words of professional thesaurus.
Introduction
Adolescence is a developmental stage that has been defined as starting with puberty and ending with the transition to adulthood (approximately ages 10–20). Adolescence has evolved historically, with evidence indicating that this stage is lengthening as individuals start puberty earlier and transition to adulthood later than in the past. Puberty today begins, on average, at age 10–11 years for girls and 11–12 years for boys. This average age of onset has decreased gradually over time since the 19th century by 3–4 months per decade, which has been attributed to a range of factors including better nutrition, obesity, increased father absence, and other environmental factors. Completion of formal education, financial independence from parents, marriage, and parenthood have all been markers of the end of adolescence and beginning of adulthood, and all of these transitions happen, on average, later now than in the past. In fact, the prolonging of adolescence has prompted the introduction of a new developmental period called emerging adulthood that captures these developmental changes out of adolescence and into adulthood, occurring from approximately ages 18 to 29.
This lesson will outline changes that occur during adolescence in three domains: physical, cognitive, and social. Within the social domain, changes in relationships with parents, peers, and romantic partners will be considered. Next, the lessson turns to adolescents’ psychological and behavioral adjustment, including identity formation, aggression and antisocial behavior, anxiety and depression, and academic achievement. Finally, the module summarizes sources of diversity in adolescents’ experiences and development.
Physical Changes
Physical changes of puberty mark the onset of adolescence. For both boys and girls, these changes include a growth spurt in height, growth of pubic and underarm hair, and skin changes (e.g., pimples). Boys also experience growth in facial hair and a deepening of their voice. Girls experience breast development and begin menstruating. These pubertal changes are driven by hormones, particularly an increase in testosterone for boys and estrogen for girls.
Cognitive Changes
Major changes in the structure and functioning of the brain occur during adolescence and result in cognitive and behavioral developments. Cognitive changes during adolescence include a shift from concrete to more abstract and complex thinking. Such changes are fostered by improvements during early adolescence in attention, memory, processing speed, and metacognition (ability to think about thinking and therefore make better use of strategies like mnemonic devices that can improve thinking). Early in adolescence, changes in the brain’s dopaminergic system contribute to increases in adolescents’ sensation-seeking and reward motivation. Later in adolescence, the brain’s cognitive control centers in the prefrontal cortex develop, increasing adolescents’ self-regulation and future orientation. The difference in timing of the development of these different regions of the brain contributes to more risk taking during middle adolescence because adolescents are motivated to seek thrills that sometimes come from risky behavior, such as reckless driving, smoking, or drinking, and have not yet developed the cognitive control to resist impulses or focus equally on the potential risks. One of the world’s leading experts on adolescent development, Laurence Steinberg, likens this to engaging a powerful engine before the braking system is in place. The result is that adolescents are more prone to risky behaviors than are children or adults.
Social Changes
Parents
Although peers take on greater importance during adolescence, family relationships remain important too. One of the key changes during adolescence involves a renegotiation of parent–child relationships. As adolescents strive for more independence and autonomy during this time, different aspects of parenting become more salient. For example, parents’ distal supervision and monitoring become more important as adolescents spend more time away from parents and in the presence of peers. Parental monitoring encompasses a wide range of behaviors such as parents’ attempts to set rules and know their adolescents’ friends, activities, and whereabouts, in addition to adolescents’ willingness to disclose information to their parents. Psychological control, which involves manipulation and intrusion into adolescents’ emotional and cognitive world through invalidating adolescents’ feelings and pressuring them to think in particular ways, is another aspect of parenting that becomes more salient during adolescence and is related to more problematic adolescent adjustment.
Peers
As children become adolescents, they usually begin spending more time with their peers and less time with their families, and these peer interactions are increasingly unsupervised by adults. Children’s notions of friendship often focus on shared activities, whereas adolescents’ notions of friendship increasingly focus on intimate exchanges of thoughts and feelings. During adolescence, peer groups evolve from primarily single-sex to mixed-sex. Adolescents within a peer group tend to be similar to one another in behavior and attitudes, which has been explained as being a function of homophily (adolescents who are similar to one another choose to spend time together in a “birds of a feather flock together” way) and influence (adolescents who spend time together shape each other’s behavior and attitudes). One of the most widely studied aspects of adolescent peer influence is known as deviant peer contagion, which is the process by which peers reinforce problem behavior by laughing or showing other signs of approval that then increase the likelihood of future problem behavior.
Peers can serve both positive and negative functions during adolescence. Negative peer pressure can lead adolescents to make riskier decisions or engage in more problematic behavior than they would alone or in the presence of their family. For example, adolescents are much more likely to drink alcohol, use drugs, and commit crimes when they are with their friends than when they are alone or with their family. However, peers also serve as an important source of social support and companionship during adolescence, and adolescents with positive peer relationships are happier and better adjusted than those who are socially isolated or have conflictual peer relationships.
Crowds are an emerging level of peer relationships in adolescence. In contrast to friendships (which are reciprocal dyadic relationships) and cliques (which refer to groups of individuals who interact frequently), crowds are characterized more by shared reputations or images than actual interactions. These crowds reflect different prototypic identities (such as jocks or brains) and are often linked with adolescents’ social status and peers’ perceptions of their values or behaviors.
Romantic relationships
Adolescence is the developmental period during which romantic relationships typically first emerge. Initially, same-sex peer groups that were common during childhood expand into mixed-sex peer groups that are more characteristic of adolescence. Romantic relationships often form in the context of these mixed-sex peer groups. Although romantic relationships during adolescence are often short-lived rather than long-term committed partnerships, their importance should not be minimized. Adolescents spend a great deal of time focused on romantic relationships, and their positive and negative emotions are more tied to romantic relationships (or lack thereof) than to friendships, family relationships, or school. Romantic relationships contribute to adolescents’ identity formation, changes in family and peer relationships, and adolescents’ emotional and behavioral adjustment.
Furthermore, romantic relationships are centrally connected to adolescents’ emerging sexuality. Parents, policymakers, and researchers have devoted a great deal of attention to adolescents’ sexuality, in large part because of concerns related to sexual intercourse, contraception, and preventing teen pregnancies. However, sexuality involves more than this narrow focus. For example, adolescence is often when individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender come to perceive themselves as such (Russell, Clarke, & Clary, 2009). Thus, romantic relationships are a domain in which adolescents experiment with new behaviors and identities.
Behavioral and Psychological Adjustment
Identity formation
Theories of adolescent development often focus on identity formation as a central issue. For example, in Erikson’s (1968) classic theory of developmental stages, identity formation was highlighted as the primary indicator of successful development during adolescence (in contrast to role confusion, which would be an indicator of not successfully meeting the task of adolescence). 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. Building on this work, other researchers have investigated more specific aspects of identity. For example, Phinney (1989) proposed a model of ethnic identity development that included stages of unexplored ethnic identity, ethnic identity search, and achieved ethnic identity.
Aggression and antisocial behavior
Several major theories of the development of antisocial behavior treat adolescence as an important period. Patterson’s (1982) early versus late starter model of the development of aggressive and antisocial behavior distinguishes youths whose antisocial behavior begins during childhood (early starters) versus adolescence (late starters). According to the theory, early starters are at greater risk for long-term antisocial behavior that extends into adulthood than are late starters. Late starters who become antisocial during adolescence are theorized to experience poor parental monitoring and supervision, aspects of parenting that become more salient during adolescence. Poor monitoring and lack of supervision contribute to increasing involvement with deviant peers, which in turn promotes adolescents’ own antisocial behavior. Late starters desist from antisocial behavior when changes in the environment make other options more appealing. Similarly, Moffitt’s (1993) life-course persistent versus adolescent-limited model distinguishes between antisocial behavior that begins in childhood versus adolescence. Moffitt regards adolescent-limited antisocial behavior as resulting from a “maturity gap” between adolescents’ dependence on and control by adults and their desire to demonstrate their freedom from adult constraint. However, as they continue to develop, and legitimate adult roles and privileges become available to them, there are fewer incentives to engage in antisocial behavior, leading to desistance in these antisocial behaviors.
Anxiety and depression
Developmental models of anxiety and depression also treat adolescence as an important period, especially in terms of the emergence of gender differences in prevalence rates that persist through adulthood. Starting in early adolescence, compared with males, females have rates of anxiety that are about twice as high and rates of depression that are 1.5 to 3 times as high (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Although the rates vary across specific anxiety and depression diagnoses, rates for some disorders are markedly higher in adolescence than in childhood or adulthood. For example, prevalence rates for specific phobias are about 5% in children and 3%–5% in adults but 16% in adolescents. Anxiety and depression are particularly concerning because suicide is one of the leading causes of death during adolescence. Developmental models focus on interpersonal contexts in both childhood and adolescence that foster depression and anxiety. Family adversity, such as abuse and parental psychopathology, during childhood sets the stage for social and behavioral problems during adolescence. Adolescents with such problems generate stress in their relationships (e.g., by resolving conflict poorly and excessively seeking reassurance) and select into more maladaptive social contexts (e.g., “misery loves company” scenarios in which depressed youths select other depressed youths as friends and then frequently co-ruminate as they discuss their problems, exacerbating negative affect and stress). These processes are intensified for girls compared with boys because girls have more relationship-oriented goals related to intimacy and social approval, leaving them more vulnerable to disruption in these relationships. Anxiety and depression then exacerbate problems in social relationships, which in turn contribute to the stability of anxiety and depression over time.
Academic achievement
Adolescents spend more waking time in school than in any other context. Academic achievement during adolescence is predicted by interpersonal (e.g., parental engagement in adolescents’ education), intrapersonal (e.g., intrinsic motivation), and institutional (e. g., school quality) factors. Academic achievement is important in its own right as a marker of positive adjustment during adolescence but also because academic achievement sets the stage for future educational and occupational opportunities. The most serious consequence of school failure, particularly dropping out of school, is the high risk of unemployment or underemployment in adulthood that follows. High achievement can set the stage for college or future vocational training and opportunities.
Diversity
Adolescent development does not necessarily follow the same pathway for all individuals. Certain features of adolescence, particularly with respect to biological changes associated with puberty and cognitive changes associated with brain development, are relatively universal. But other features of adolescence depend largely on circumstances that are more environmentally variable. For example, adolescents growing up in one country might have different opportunities for risk taking than adolescents in a different country, and supports and sanctions for different behaviors in adolescence depend on laws and values that might be specific to where adolescents live. Likewise, different cultural norms regarding family and peer relationships shape adolescents’ experiences in these domains. For example, in some countries, adolescents’ parents are expected to retain control over major decisions, whereas in other countries, adolescents are expected to begin sharing in or taking control of decision making.
Even within the same country, adolescents’ gender, ethnicity, immigrant status, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and personality can shape both how adolescents behave and how others respond to them, creating diverse developmental contexts for different adolescents. For example, early puberty (that occurs before most other peers have experienced puberty) appears to be associated with worse outcomes for girls than boys, likely in part because girls who enter puberty early tend to associate with older boys, which in turn is associated with early sexual behavior and substance use. For adolescents who are ethnic or sexual minorities, discrimination sometimes presents a set of challenges that nonminorities do not face.
Finally, genetic variations contribute an additional source of diversity in adolescence. Current approaches emphasize gene X environment interactions, which often follow a differential susceptibility model. That is, particular genetic variations are considered riskier than others, but genetic variations also can make adolescents more or less susceptible to environmental factors. For example, the association between the CHRM2genotype and adolescent externalizing behavior (aggression and delinquency) has been found in adolescents whose parents are low in monitoring behaviors. Thus, it is important to bear in mind that individual differences play an important role in adolescent development. Conclusions Adolescent development is characterized by biological, cognitive, and social changes. Social changes are particularly notable as adolescents become more autonomous from their parents, spend more time with peers, and begin exploring romantic relationships and sexuality. Adjustment during adolescence is reflected in 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. Despite these generalizations, factors such as country of residence, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation shape development in ways that lead to diversity of experiences across adolescence.
TASK 2.
Please, make up an Active Vocabulary of the Lesson containing the following notions and 5 more (up to you) :
Crowds
Deviant peer contagion
Differential susceptibility
Foreclosure
Homophily
Identity achievement
Identity diffusion
Moratorium
Psychological control
TASK 3.
Discussion Questions
- What can parents do to promote their adolescents’ positive adjustment?
- In what ways do changes in brain development and cognition make adolescents particularly susceptible to peer influence?
- How could interventions designed to prevent or reduce adolescents’ problem behavior be developed to take advantage of what we know about adolescent development?
- Reflecting on your own adolescence, provide examples of times when you think your experience was different from those of your peers as a function of something unique about you.
- In what ways was your experience of adolescence different from your parents’ experience of adolescence? How do you think adolescence may be different 20 years from now?
TASK 4.
Please, do in a written form:
- Describe major features of physical, cognitive, and social development during adolescence.
- Explain why adolescence is a period of heightened risk taking.
- Explain sources of diversity in adolescent development.