Psychology

• Effects of Birth Order


  • Oldest - Indulged / Protected by parents, Middle - Competitive "catch-up to Youngest - spoiled center of attention, Only - spoiled, Achievement
• Five Factor Model

  • Personality traits derived from five higher-order traits - Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness (CANOE)
• Personalities shape how individuals interpret and react to things, creating situations in which they react
• Approaches to Behavior

  • Biological, Evolutionary, Psychodynamic, Behavioral, Cognitive
• Personality is an individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting, showing consistency over time and across situations
• Alfred Adler: 'Personality is defined through striving for superiority (Healthy), could lead to inferiority complex (Negatively affects you)'
• Albert Bandura (1925-2021) emphasized the interaction between individuals & situations in learning behaviors through conditioning and imitation
• Gene-Environment Interaction


  • Genetically influenced traits, assessing behavior by observing it in realistic situations, past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior
• Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology experiment in 1879
• Social-Cognitive Theory


  • Individuals learn behaviors through conditioning and imitation, thoughts affect behavior, reciprocal determinism - the interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment
• Humanistic theory emphasizes individual potential for growth, stress on individual choice & free will; Social-Cultural theory focuses on how culture influences thinking and actions (gender, age, race)
• Birth order affected our striving for superiority and personality
• Debate about the extent to which behavior is inherited (nature) or acquired (nurture)
• Personality


  A person's general style of interacting with the world and people, explaining differences in general styles of behavior
• Personality Disorders in the DSM-5 involve impairment in self-interpersonal functioning combined with one or more pathological traits
• Personality Disorders are consistent across time and situation, not typical of age, not culture, not solely due to effects of substances
• Behavioral Psychology

  • Founded by Watson, emphasizes learning, especially each person's experience with rewards & punishments, observable behavior
• History of Psychology: Socrates & Plato believed knowledge is born within us, Aristotle believed knowledge grows from experiences stored in our memories, Francis Bacon developed the scientific method which modern psychology relies on
• Cognitive Psychology


  • Emphasizes ways to receive, store, retrieve information, and how people process information
• Collectives: large, loosely formed relationships, brief, spontaneous (e.g., audience at a show, people at a park)
• Primary group: small social group with long-lasting relationships, love/care, goal = relationship, identity (e.g., family, partner, friends)
• B.F. Skinner (Behaviorism) introduced the concept of reinforcement to control and maintain behavior
• Wilhelm Wundt establishes the first psychology experiment

  1879
• Gestalt Psychology


  • Consciousness can be best understood by observing it as a total experience rather than breaking it down
• Edward Titchener developed structuralism where conscious experience is broken into objective sensations and subjective feelings
• William James (Functionalism) believed consciousness works to help people adapt to their environment and wrote the first modern book of Psychology in 1890 (The Principles of Psychology)
• Sigmund Freud (Psychoanalysis) in the 1890s believed unconscious motives and internal conflicts determine behavior and is a famous psychologist
• Secondary group: larger, goal-oriented, temporary (e.g., sports, study group, coworker)
• Cluster A, Cluster B, Cluster C in the DSM-5 refer to different personality disorder categories
• John B. Watson (Behaviorism) believed the study of psychology should be limited to observable behavior
• the theory set forth by psychologist Albert Bandura which states that a person's behavior both influences and is influenced by personal factors and the social environment.
• Bandura found that children who observed aggressive actions were more likely to exhibit similar behaviors themselves.