Intro Psych - Exam 4

• Generalized Anxiety Disorder Prevalence:

  i)     Global Lifetime Prevalence = 3.7%

  ii)    Lifetime Prevalence in US = 7.8%
• Specific Phobias (Fear of a specific situation or object)

  (1)   Lifetime prevalence globally: 7.4%

  (2)  Lifetime prevalence in the U.S.: 12.5%
• Social Phobias (Fear of one or more situations in which the person might be exposed to the scrutiny of other people)

  (1)   Lifetime prevalence globally: 4%

  (2)  Lifetime prevalence in the U.S.: 12%
• In order for obsessions and/or compulsions to result in a diagnosis of OCD, engaging in obsessions and/or compulsions must take up a significant amount of the person’s time, at least 1 hour per day, and must cause significant distress or impairment in functioning.
• Major Depressive Disorder:

  i)     Global Lifetime Prevalence: 11-15%

  ii)    Lifetime Prevalence in US: 19-20%
• Bipolar Disorder I Prevalence:

  i)     Global Lifetime Prevalence: 0.6%

  ii)    Lifetime Prevalence in US: 1%
• Schizophrenia Prevalence:

  a)     Global life-time prevalence: .5 to 1%

  b)     Lifetime prevalence in US: .5%
• Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia:

        Avolition: lack of energy and seeming absence of interest in usually routine activities.

      Alogia: reductions in speech or speech lacking substantive content.

    Social Withdrawal: often occurs as positive symptoms begin to return or become more severe.

  Lack of Emotional Content:

    Anhedonia: inability to experience pleasure

  Blunted or flat affect: little to no outward expression of emotion
• Concordance Rate: The percentage of individuals with genes in common with the mentally ill individual who also have the disorder.
• Concordance Rates for Schizophrenia:

  i)     Non-Twin Full Siblings: 9%

  ii)    Dizygotic Twins: 17%

  iii)   Monozygotic Twins: 48%
• Generalized Anxiety Disorder:

  a)     Excessive and uncontrollable anxiety and worry, on more days than not, over a 6-month period.

  b)     Problems are created by anxiety, such as restlessness, fatigue, irritability, or sleep disturbance.

  c)     Symptoms can cause significant distress or impair functioning.
• Phobia Symptoms:

  a)     Experience fear that is persistent, irrational, and excessive AND

  b)     Try to avoid feared situation/object or endure with intense distress AND

  c)     The avoidance behavior interferes significantly with normal activities or relationships with others.
• PTSD Symptoms:

  a)     The individual has flashbacks

  b)     The individual may avoid anything that reminds them of the trauma.

  c)     They may feel emotionally numb/restricted in their ability to feel.

  d)     They may feel a sense of a foreshortened future, that they will never marry, have a family, or live a long full life.

  e)     They may be jumpy or easily startled, hypervigilant to their surroundings, and quick to anger.
• Major Depressive Disorder Symptoms:

  a)     Must experience at least one major depressive episode, which is defined as:

  i)      A depressed mood or a loss of pleasure or interest (i.e., anhedonia) for at least two weeks straight.

  b)     Must also have four other symptoms such as:

        (unintentional) weight loss or gain

      Sleeping problems every day

     Fatigue or loss of energy every day

     Feelings of worthlessness or guilt every day.

       Suicidal ideation, specific suicide plan or attempted suicide
• Bipolar Disorder I Symptoms

  1. Must have experienced at least one manic episode

  2. Abnormal or persistent elevated, expansive, or irritable mood for at least one week straight

  3. The mood is sufficiently severe to cause marked interference with occupational or social functioning

  4. Must also experience at least three from a list of symptoms
• Symptoms of manic episode

  • Inflated self-esteem or grandiosity
  • Decreased need for sleep
  • Racing thoughts
  • Increased goal-directed activity
  • Excessive involvement in activities with high potential for painful consequences
• Psychosis involves major disturbances in thought, emotion, or behavior to the point of a distorted perception of reality.
• Positive Symptoms of Schizophrenia:

  Delusions: idiosyncratic beliefs others would view as misinterpretations of reality.

  Hallucinations: distortions in perception. They involve the individual having a sensory experience without any external physical stimuli.
• Catatonia: rigidity of an unusual posture maintained for long periods of time. Also can be an unusual or purposeless increase in motor activity.
• Waxy flexibility: the individual can be positioned and will maintain that posture (almost like a wax statue)
• An attribution is the process of ascribing situational or dispositional causes to our own or others behavior.
• Situational Causes: external to the actor, in the actor’s environment

  •    Examples - requirements from others, norms, recent events
  •    If the behavior has situational causes, we expect the actor to behave differently if the situation were different.
• Dispositional Causes: Internal to the actor

  • Example - personality traits, attitudes, beliefs
  •    If the behavior has dispositional causes, we expect the actor to behave the same regardless of the situation.
• The Fundamental Attribution Error is our tendency to attribute others’ behavior mostly to dispositional causes and to ignore or discount the situational causes for the behavior.
• Self-serving Bias is the tendency to attribute our positive actions (e.g., successes to dispositional causes) and our negative actions (e.g., failures) to situational causes.
• Social Psychology focuses on the role of social forces in shaping what we think and what we do.
• Findings of Milgram's Obedience Study:

  i)      65% of participants went all the way to XXX, the last possible shock level.

  ii)    Individual characteristics are not irrelevant to our behavior, but the situation can also be very powerful.

  iii)   General findings have been replicated across gender, race, age, socioeconomic status, culture, and time.
• Informational Influence: Others’ behavior provides information that helps us make rational and logical judgements about objective reality.
• Normative Influence: We desire to follow social norms and experience social approval.
• Findings from Solomon Asch's Conformity Study:

  • Participants conformed to the group on about 1/3 of the target trials.
• Groupthink is a mode of thinking in which the desire for harmony in group decision-making overrides the realistic appraisal of alternatives. Some examples are the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cover-up of Jerry Sandusky’s child abuse.
• Social Loafing is the tendency for people to exert less individual effort when working with a group toward a common goal. One example of Social Loafing could be a group project in which only one or two of the members of the group put much effort into the project and the other members put in little effort.
• Characteristics Likely To Increase Groupthink:

  • Sense of invulnerability
  • Lack of Disagreement
  • Illusion of Unanimity
  • Insularity: Members prevent the group from hearing potentially useful, but disruptive, information from outside the group (a form of confirmation bias)
• Deindividuation is the loss of self-awareness and self-restraint in certain group situations. Examples could be the KKK or Nazi Germany.
• Characteristics Likely to Lead To Deindividuation:

  • Anonymity (e.g., uniforms, masks, among strangers)
  • High physiological arousal
• Bystander Intervention Series of Decisions:

  1.     We notice the incident and interpret it as an emergency.

  2.     We assume responsibility for helping.

  3.     We have the ability/resources to help.
• One critical decision made in the decision process that occurs before engaging in bystander intervention is “We assume responsibility for helping”. Diffusion of Responsibility impedes this step as it is when multiple people have potential responsibility, each individual is less likely to intervene. All the individuals who could possibly be responsible, by diffusion of responsibility, assume that someone else is going to intervene and do something which often ultimately leads to no one taking responsibility.
• Informed Consent:

  a)     Knowledgeable: The participant has knowledge of the study they are participating in, its intent/research question, what they are expected to do, etc.

  b)     Voluntary: The participant chooses by their own will to participate in the research and isn’t coerced or otherwise manipulated into participating in the research.

  c)     Competent: The participant has to be competent enough to understand what is being asked of them and what they are consenting to.
• Factors that Predict who we Love/Attracted To:

  a)     Similarity: the tendency to be more attracted to those who we are similar to.

  b)     Proximity: the tendency to be more attracted to those who we are around most often.

  c)     Familiarity: the tendency to hold more positive attitudes towards people and things with which we are more familiar.
• Three Components of Sternberg's Triangle Theory of Love:

  a)     Passion: drives us towards our loved one; leads to physical attraction and sexual consummation.

  b)     Intimacy: feelings of closeness, connection, and bondedness.

  c)     Commitment: a decision to love someone and maintain that love.