Psychology: Unit 9 chapter 12 and 13

Motivation and work

Perspectives on motivation

Psychologists define motivation as the energizing and directing of behavior. The four perspectives discussed in this chapter are the instinct/evolutionary, drive-reduction, arousal, and hierarchy of needs perspective.

Instincts are rigidly patterned, complex behaviors found throughout a species, such as the nest-building behaviors of species of birds. Early instincts theorists, influenced by Darwin's theory of natural selection, tries to classify human behaviors as though they were propelled by such instincts. When it became clear that they were naming, not explaining, behaviors, this approach fell into disfavor. The underlying idea- that genes predispose species-typical behavior - is, however, still influential in evolutionary psychology,which studies behaviors in search of their adaptive functions.

Drive-reducing theory proposes that physiological needs (hunger, thirst) create aroused psychological states that drive us (motivate us) to reduce or satisfy those needs (by eating, drinking). The physiological aim of drive reduction is internal stability, or homeostasis. We are most strongly driven when pushed by our need to reduce a drive (such as satisfying hunger), and also pulled by an external incentive (the smell of cooking food, for example). Depending on our personal and cultural histories, we will respond more to some stimuli (for example, raw oysters) than to others.

Not all behaviors reduce immediate physiological needs or tension states. Arousal theory helps explain the motivation for these behaviors. Curiosity-driven behaviors, for example, suggest that too little as well as too much stimulation can motivate people to seek an optimum level of arousal.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs proposes a pyramid-shaped sequence in which lower-level needs, such as the need to love, to belong, or to be respected. Although critics note that Maslow's sequence of needs is not universal, his hierarchy provides a framework for thinking about motivated behaviors.

Hunger

Washburn and Cannon showed that hunger's inner push corresponds to the stomach's contractions, but hunger has other causes. Variations in body chemistry that influences our feelings of hunger include those of insulin (secreted by fat cells; signals brain to increase metabolism and decrease hunger), orexin (secreted by the hypothalamus; triggers hunger), ghrelin (secreted by empty stomach; sends hunger signals to brain), and PYY (secreted by digestive tract; sends not-hungry signals to brain). All this information is integrated in two areas of the hypothalamus, which regulates the body's weight by affecting our feelings of hunger and satiety. Researchers differ on whether the body has a precise set point (a biologically fixed tendency to maintain an optimum weight) or a settling point (an environmentally and biologically influenced level at which weight settles in response to caloric intake and output).

Our hunger is influenced not only by our physical state but also by our memory of when we last ate and our expectation of when we should eat again. And although we humans as a species prefer certain tastes (such as sweet and salty), we learn to satisfy those preferences with specific food eaten in the context of our families and our culture. Some of our taste preferences, such as the avoidance of new foods or of foods that have made us ill, have survival value.

In the past half-century, a dramatic increase in poor body image has coincided with a rise in eating disorders among women in Western cultures. In both anorexia and bulimia, psychological factors, such as challenging family settings and weight-obsessed societal pressures, apparently overwhelm the homeostatic drive to maintain a balanced internal state. People with anorexia nervosa (usually adolescent females) starve themselves but continue to diet because they view themselves as fat; those with bulimia nervosa (primarily females in their teens and twenties) binge and purge in secret. In addition to cultural pressures, low self-esteem and negative emotions seem to interact with stressful life experiences to produce these disorders. Twin research also indicates, however, that these eating disorders may have a genetic component.

Sexual Motivation

Masters and Johnson described four stages in the human sexual response cycle: excitement, plateau, orgasm, (which seems to involve similar feelings and brain activity in males and females), and resolution. During the resolution phase, males experience a refractory period, when renewed arousal and orgasm are impossible. Sexual disorders (problems that consistently impair sexual arousal or functioning, such as premature ejaculation, female orgasmic disorder, and erectile disorder) are being successfully treated by behaviorally oriented therapy, which assumes that people learn and can modify their sexual responses, or with drug therapy.

The sex hormones testosterone and estrogen are present in both males and females, but males have higher level of testosterone and females a higher level of estrogen. These hormones help our bodies develop and function as either male or female. In nonhuman animals, they also help stimulate sexual activity. Assuming a normal level is present, hormones have a looser influence on human sexual behavior, though desire does rise slightly at ovulation among women with mates. Unlike other mammalian females, women's sexuality is more responsive to testosterone level than to estrogen level. Short-term shifts in testosterone level are normal in men.

Erotic material and other external stimuli can trigger sexual arousal in both men and women, although the activated brain areas differ somewhat. Sexually explicit material may lead people to perceive their partners as comparatively less appealing and to devalue their relationships. Sexually coercive material tends to increase viewer's acceptance of rape and violence toward women. In combination with the internal hormonal push and the external pull of sexual stimuli, fantasies (imagined stimuli) influence sexual arousal.

Adolescents' physical maturation fosters a sexual dimension to their emerging identity, but rates of teen intercourse vary from culture to culture. In the twentieth century, increased teen sexual activity in North America was reflected in increase rates if adolescent pregnancies. Factors to teen pregnancy include ignorance of the potential consequence of sexual activity; guilt related to sexual activity; minimal communication about contraception with parents, partners, and peers; alcohol use; and mass media norms of unprotected promiscuity.

STIs – sexually transmitted infections, such as the human papilloma virus, AIDS, and others – have spread rapidly. People under the age of 25 account for two-thirds if such infections, and teen girls seems especially vulnerable because of their less mature bodies and lower levels of protective antibodies. Attempts to protects teens through comprehensive sex-education programs include a greater emphasis on teen abstinence. High intelligence, religiosity, father presence, and participation in service learning programs tend to be predictors of teen sexual restraint.

Studies indicate that about 3 or 4 percent of men and 1 or 2 percent of women are homosexual, and that sexual orientation is enduring. Research does not support cause-effect links between homosexuality and any of the following: a child's relationship with parents, father-absent homes, fear or hatred of people of the other gender, childhood sexual experiences, peer relationships, or dating experiences. Evidence supporting the likelihood of a biological component of homosexuality is found in studies of same-sex behavior in several hundred species, straight-gay differences in body and brain characteristics, genetics studies of family members and twins, and the effect of exposure to certain hormones during critical periods of prenatal development. The increasing public perception that sexual orientation is biological influenced is reflected in increasing acceptance of gays and lesbians and their relationships.

Scientific research on sexual motivation does not attempt to define the personal meaning of sex in our lives, but sex research and education are not value-free. Some say their sex-related values, recognizing the emotions significance of sexual expression.

The need to belong

Our need to affiliate – to feel connected and identified with others – boosted our ancestors' changes for survival, which may explain why humans in every society live in groups. The need to belong appears when people seek social acceptance, work to maintain relationships (or mourn their loss), and feel the joy of love (or the gloom of loneliness). Ostracized – excluded or shunned by others – people suffer from stress and depression – a real pain that increases activity in the same brain areas that respond to physical pain. When socially excluded, they may engage in self-defeating behaviors (performing below their ability) or in antisocial behaviors.

Motivation at Work

People may vary their work as a job, a career, or a calling. Those in the last group report the highest satisfaction – a feeling consistent with flow, the involved focused state of consciousness in which we have a diminished awareness of ourselves and of passing time. Industrial -organization (I/O) psychology studies behavior in the workplace through the three subfields of personnel psychology, organizational psychology, and human factors psychology.

Personnel psychologists work with organizations to devise selection methods for new employees, recruit and evaluate applicants, design and evaluate training programs, identify people's strengths, analyze job content, and appraise individual and organizational performance. Subjective interviews lead to quickly formed impressions, but they tend to foster the interviewer illusion – a feeling of overconfidence in one's intuitive ability to predict employee success. Structured interviews (which pinpoint job-relevant strengths) are better predictors because they reduce interviewers' memory distortions and biases. Checklists, graphic rating scales, and behavior rating scales are useful performance appraisal methods. Forms of bias that can affect performance appraisal are halo errors (judgments based in personal qualities rather in-the-job behavior), leniency or severity errors (blanket judgment treating everyones too kindly or harshly), and recency errors (judgments based on easily remembered recent behavior).

Achievement motivation is the desire for significant accomplishment; for mastery of things, people, or ideas; and for attaining a high standard. Organizations turn to I/O psychologists because research shows that the most productive and engaged workers are those working in satisfaction also tend to translate into higher profits, higher productivity, lower turnover, and more loyal customers.

Effective managers focus their training on people's strengths rather than on weak ares that may never advance to the point where they can contribute to the organization's success. They attempt to “catch the employee doing something right” and reward that behavior. Effective managers also work with employees to set specific, challenging, and measurable objectives and to outline detailed paths to achieving those goals. Leadership style should be appropriate for the people and goals involved. Task leadership sets standards, organizes work, and focuses attention on goals. Social leadership builds teamwork, mediates conflict, and offers support. Manager's personalities do matter, and some may be better suited to one leadership style that to the other, or to a combination of the two.

Chapter 13 Emotion

Theories of emotion

The three components of emotion are (1) physiological arousal, (2) expressive behaviors, and (3) conscious experience. William James and Carl Lange proposed that we feel emotion after we notice our physiological responses. Walter Cannon and Philip Bard believed that we feel emotion at the same time that our bodies respond. Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer's two-factor theory of emotion focused on the interplay of thinking and feeling, not on the timing of feelings. They proposed that emotions have two components, physical arousal and a cognitive label.

Embodied Emotion

The automatic nervous system (ANS) controls arousal. Its sympathetic division mobilizes us for action by directing adrenals to release stress hormones, which in turn increase heart rate, blood pressure, and blood sugar levels, and by triggering other defensive physical reactions. The parasympathetic division calms us after a crisis has passed, though arousal diminishes gradually.

Very high or very low arousal can be disruptive. We perform best when arousal is moderate, though this varies with the difficulty of the task. For easy or well-learned tasks, best performance is linked to high arousal. For difficult tasks, performance peaks at lower levels.

We display similar physiological arousal during fear, anger, and sexual arousal. Observers would have trouble discerning these states from measuring physiological responses alone, but our emotional experiences (and sometimes our facial expressions) differ during these three states.

Using sophisticated equipment, researchers have found linkages between some emotions and minute movements of muscles in the brow (during fear) and cheeks (during joy) and under the eyes (during joy). Brain scans also show increased activity in the amygdala during fear. Differences also appear in the brain's cortical areas. Negative emotions (disgust, for example) trigger more activity in the right prefrontal cortex, whereas positive moods (enthusiasm, for example) register in the left frontal lobe, which has a rich supply of dominate receptors.

The spillover effect occurs when our arousal from one event influences our response to other events. Although not completely undifferentiated, emotional arousal is sometimes general enough to require us to define the emotion we are experiencing. Arousal fuels emotion; cognition channels it.

Emotional responses are immediate when sensory input goes directly to the amygdala via the thalamus, bypassing the cortex, triggering a rapid reaction that is often outside our conscious awareness. Response to complex emotions (such as guilt, happiness, and love) require interpretation and are routed along the slower route to the cortex for analysis.

Expressed Emotion

Most people can detect nonverbal cues, and we are especially sensitive to nonverbal threats. Experience contributes to our sensitivity to cues, as studies of abused children show.

Women generally are better than men at reading people's emotional cues, including those displayed during deception. Women also give more detailed description of their emotional reactions, more readily describe themselves as emotional, and express empathy more often, in words and in their facial expressions. Women surpass men in conveying happiness, but men communicate anger better.

Facial muscles reveal signs of emotion. But lie detection methods based on facial expressions don't yet exist, and most if us have difficulty detecting expressions of deceit. The absence of verbal or emotional cues in e-mails deprives us of an important source of information.

The meaning of gestures varies with culture, but many facial expressions, such as those of happiness and fear, are found all over the world (and among children blind from birth), indicating that these expressions are culturally universal aspects of emotions. Cultures differ, however, in the amount of emotional expression they consider acceptable, in prelinguistic, prehistoric times, emotional expressions could have enhanced survival by enabling survival by enabling communication of threats, greetings, and submission. Some emotional expressions help is to take in more sensory information or to avoid taking in toxic substances.

The facial feedback hypothesis proposes that expression amplify our emotional by activating muscles associated with specific states, and the muscles signal the body to respond as though we were experiencing those states. Thus, when we stimulate the facial expression normally associated with happiness, we may feel happier. Similarly, the behavior feedback hypothesis assumes that if we move our body as we would when experiencing some emotion (shuffling along with downcast eyes, as when sad), we are likely to feel that emotion to some degree.

Experienced Emotion

Carroll Izard's research found the 10 basic emotions of joy, interest-excitement, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame, and guilt. Some psychologists believe that pride and love may also be basic emotions. Emotions can be placed along two basic dimensions: arousal (high versus low) and valence (pleasant, or positive, versus unpleasant, or negative).

What we learn through experience best explains the variety of human fears. We learn specific fears through conditioning (associating emotions with specific situations) and through observational learning (watching others display fear in response to certain events or surrounding.)

We are biologically prepared to learn some fears (snakes, spiders, height) but not others (fast driving, bombs, electricity). The amygdala plays a key role in fear learning, associating fear with specific situations. The amygdala receives information from cortical areas that process emotions, and it sends information to other areas that produce the bodily symptoms of fear. People differ in the extent to which they are fearful or fearless, and part of that difference is genetic.

Frustrating or insulting actions we interpret as willful, unjustified, and avoidable may evoke anger. Research does not support the catharsis hypothesis- the idea that releasing negative energy will calm aggressive tendencies. Venting rage may calm us temporarily, but in the long run it does not reduce anger and may actually amplify it. Anger is better handled by waiting until the level of physical arousal diminishes, calming oneself, and expressing grievances in ways that promote reconciliation rather than retaliation. When reconciliation fails, forgivingness can reduce one's anger and its physical symptoms.

The feel-good, do-good phenomenon is our increased willingness to help other when we are in a good mood, Research in positive psychology is currently exploring the causes and consequences if subjective well-being (self-perceived happiness or satisfaction with life), supplementing psychology's traditional focus on negative emotions.

Negative emotions is highest just after we wake up and before we go to sleep. Positive emotion rises gradually, peaking about seven hours after we rise, then falls gradually. The moods triggered by the day's good or bad events seldom last beyond that day. Even significant bad events, such as a serious illness, seldom destroy happiness for long, although we tend to underestimate our capacity to adapt.

At a basic level, money helps us avoid pain by enabling better nutrition, health care, education, and science and these in turn increase happiness. Increase in wealth can also increase happiness in the short term. But in the longer term, research does not show an increase in happiness accompanying affluence at either the individual or national level.

The adaptation-level phenomenon is our tendency to assess stimuli (including material possessions) by contrasting them with a neutral level that changes with out experience. The relative-deprivation principle is our perception that we are less well off than other with whom we compare ourselves. Thus, happiness is relative to both our past experience and our comparisons with others.

Happiness is in part genetically influenced, and in part under our own control. Research-based suggestions for improving our won happiness are (1) realizing that enduring happiness doesn't come from financial success; (2) taking control of one's time; (3) acting happy; (4) seeking work and leisure that engage one's skills; (5) exercising regularly; (6) getting adequate sleep; (7) giving priority to close relationships; (8) focusing beyond oneself; (9) being grateful for what we have and (10) nurturing one spiritual selves.

Psychology - Unit 8 - Chapter 9, 10, 11

Memory, Thinking and Language, and Intelligence

The phenomenon of memory

Memory is the persistence of learning over time, through the storage and retrieval of information. Flashbulb memories, which are attached to emotionally significant moments or events, differ from most other memories in their striking clarity.                                                                                                                                                          The Atkinson-Shriffin classic three-stage model of memory suggests that we (1) register fleeting sensory memories, some of which are (2) processed into on-screen short-term memories, a tiny fraction of which are (3) encoded for long-term memory and, possibly later retrieval. In pointing out the limits of this model, contemporary memory researchers note that we register some information automatically, bypassing the first two stages. And they prefer the term working memory (rather than short-term memory) because it emphasizes a more active role in this second processing stage, where we rehearse and manipulate information, associating new stimuli with older stored memories. The working meory model includes visual-spatial and auditory subsystem, coordinated by a central executive processor that focuses attention where needed.

Encoding: Getting information In

We unconsciously and automatically encode incidental information, such as space, time and frequency. We also register well-learned information, such as words in out native language, by this form of processing.

Automatic processing happens unconsciously, as we absorb information (space, time, frequency, well-learned material) in our environment. Effortful processing (of meaning, imagery, organization) requires conscious attention and deliberate effort (rehearsal). The next-in-line effect  is our tendency to forget (through failure in encoding) what the person ahead of us in line has said because we are focusing on what we will say in our upcoming turn. The spacing effect is our tendency to retain information more easily if we practice it in one long session (cramming). The serial position effect is our tendency to recall the first and last items in a long list (such as grocery list) more easily than we recall the inverting items.

Visual encoding (of picture images) and acoustic encoding (of sounds, especially of words) are shallower forms of processing than is semantic encoding (of meaning). We process verbal information best when we encode it semantically, especially if we apply the self-reference effect, making information “relevant to me”.

Encoding imagery aids effortful processing because vivid images are very memorable. We tend to remember concrete nouns better than abstract nouns because, for example, we can associate both an image and a meaning with gorilla, but only a meaning with process. Many Mnemonic devices (memory strategies or aids) rely on imagery. Other trap items in memory by combining visual encoding (imagining a series of vivid images) and acoustic encoding (a memorable rhyme).

We remember organized information better than we do random data, and chunking and hierarchies are two ways to organize information. In chunking, we cluster information into familiar, manageable units, such as words into sentences. In hierarchies, we process information by dividing it into logical levels, beginnings with the most general and moving to the most specific.

Storage: Retaining Information

As information enters the memory system through our senses, we register and store visual images via iconic memory, in which picture images last no more than a few tenths of a second. We register and store sounds via echoic memory, where echoes of auditory stimuli may linger as long as 3 or 4 seconds.

At any given time, we can focus on and process only about seven items of information (either new or retrieval from our memory store). Without rehearsal, information disappears within seconds from short-term memory and is forgotten.

Our capacity for storing information permanently in long-term memory is essentially unlimited.

Contemporary researchers are focusing on memory-related changes within and between single neurons. As experience strengthens the pathways between neurons, synapses transmit signal more efficiently. In a process known as long-term potential (LTP), sending neurons in these pathways release neurotransmitters more quickly, and receiving neurons may develop additional receptors, increasing their ability to detect the incoming neurotransmitters. LTP appears to be the neural basis for learning and memory.

By enabling the production of extra glucose (which fuels brain activity), stress hormones alert the brain to important events. The amygdala, an emotion-processing structure in the brain's limbic system, arouses brain areas that process emotion. These emotion-triggered hormonal changes may produce indelible memories.

We are often not aware of our implicit (procedural) memories- Our memories of our own skills and operantly and classically conditioned responses. These memories are processed in part conditioned responses. The memories are processed in part by the cerebellum, near the brainstem. We consciously recall our explicit (declarative) memories – our general knowledge, specific factors, and personally experienced events.  Explicit memories are processed in various subregions of the hippocampus ( a neural center in the limbic system) and sent for storage in other areas in the brain. The implicit and explicit memory system are independent. Damage to the hippocampus may destroy the ability to consciously recall memories, without destroying skills or classically conditioned responses.

Retrieval: Getting Information Out

Recall is the ability  to retrieve information not in conscious awareness; a fill-in-the-blank question tests recall. Recognition is the ability to identify items previously learned; a multiple choice question tests recognition. Relearning is the ability to master previously stored information more quickly than you originally learned it.

Retrieval cues are bits of related information we encode while processing a target piece of information. These bits are linked in some way to the context of the target, and they become a part of a web of stored associations. When one of these associated bits catches out attention into our conscious awareness. This process of activating associations (often unconsciously) is priming.

The context in which we originally experienced an event or encoded a thought can flood our memories with  retrieval cues, leading us to the target memory. If we are in a different context that is very similar to the original one, we may experience deja vu as many of these cues return and trick us into unconsciously retrieving the target memory. 

Specific states or emotions can prime us to recall events associated with those stated or emotions. While in a good mood, we tend to retrieve memories consisted – or congruent – with that happy state. When depressed we more easily recall negative memories. Moods also prime us to interpret others' behavior in ways consistent with our emotions.

Forgetting

Without an ability to forget, we would be overwhelmed by out-of-date and irrelevant information. Our memory can fail us through forgetting (absent-mindedness, transience, and blocking), through distortion (misattribution, suggestibility, and bias), and through intrusion (persistence if unwanted memories).

What we encode (whether automatically or through Effortless processing) is only a very limited portion of the sensory stimuli around us. And as we age, our encoding grows slower and less efficient. Without encoding, information does not enter out long-term memory store and cannot be retrieved.

Encoded memories may fade after storage. From his research on learning and retention, Ebbinghaus determined that the course of forgetting is initially rapid, then levels off with time, this principle became known as the forgetting curve.

One way retrieval failure happens is when old and new information compete for retrieval. In proactive interference, something we learned in the past ( a friend's old phone number) interferences with out ability to recall something we have recently learned ( the friend's new number). In retroactive interference, something we have recently learned ( vocabulary in this semester's Spanish course) interferes with something we learned in the past (vocabulary in last year's French course).

Freud believed that we banish from conscious thought anxiety-arousing thought, feelings, and memories – a concept he called repression. In his view, this motivated forgetting submerges memories but leaves them available for later retrieval under the right condition. Memory researchers tend to believe that repression rarely occurs.

Memory construction

Memories are not stored or retrieved as exact copies of our experiences, rather, we construct our memories, using both stored and new information. If children or adults are subtly exposed to misinformation after an event, or if they repeatedly imagine and rehearse an event that never occurred, they may incorporate the misleading details into their memory of what actually happened. Memory is thus best understood not only as a cognitive and a biological phenomenon, but also as a social-cultural phenomenon.

When we process memories, we encode and store various aspects of them in different locations in the brain. In resembling a memory during retrieval, we may successfully retrieve something we have heard, read, or imagined, but attribute it to the wrong source. Source amnesia is one of two main components of false memories. (the other is the misinformation effect).

False memories feel like true memories and are equally durable, so neither the sincerity nor the longevity of a memory signifies it is real. True memories contain more details than imagined ones, which tend to be gist of an event- the meaning and feelings associated with it.  

A supporting argument: Even very young children can accumulatively recall events (and the people involved) if a neutral person talks with them in words they can understand, asks non leading questions, and uses the cognitive interview technique. A rejecting argument: Preschoolers are more suggestible than older children or adults, and they can be induced, through suggestive questions, to report false events.

Psychologists motivated to protect abuse children and wrongly accused adults tend to agree on seven points: (1) Innocent people have been falsely convicted of abuse that never happened, and true abusers have used the controversy over recovered memories to avoid punishment. (2) incest and abuse happen, and they leave lasting scars. (3) forgetting isolated past events, either good or bad is an everyday occurrence for all of us. (4) recovering good or bad memories, triggered by some memory cue, is commonplace, but memory researchers question whether we forcibly repress memories in Freud's sense, to avoid anxiety or pain. (5) memories obtained under the influence of hypnosis or drugs are unreliable. (6) infantile amnesia – the inability to recall memories from the first 3 years of life – makes recovery of very early childhood memories unlikely. (7) both real and false memories cause suffering and can lead to stress disorders.

Improving memory

The psychology of memory suggests concrete strategies for improved memory. These include scheduling spaced study times; actively rehearsing information to be learned; aiding encoding by making well-organized, vivid, and personally meaningful associations; using mnemonic techniques; returning to contexts and moods that are rich with associations; recording memories before misinformation can corrupt them; minimizing interference; and self-testing to rehearse information and find gaps in your memory.

Thinking and language

Thinking

Cognition is a term covering all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communication.

We use concepts to simplify and order the world around us. We divide clusters of objects, events, ideas, or people into categories based on their similarities. In creating hierarchies, we subdivide these categories into smaller and more detailed units. We form other concepts, such as triangles, by definition (three-sides objects). But we form most concepts around prototypes, or best examples of a category. Matching objects and ideas against prototypes is an efficient way of making snap judgments about what belongs in a specific category. 

An algorithm is a time-consuming but through set of rules or procedures (such as a recipe for cookies, or a step-by-step description for evacuating a building during a fire) that guarantees a solution to a problem. A heuristic is a simpler thinking strategy (such as running for an exit if you smell heavy smoke) that may allow is to incorrect solutions. Insight differs form both because it is not a strategy-based solution, but rather an Aha! reaction-a sudden flash of inspiration that solves a problem.

The confirmation bias predispose us to verify rather than challenge our hypnosis. Fixation, such as mental set and functional fixedness, may leave us doggedly pursuing one line of reasoning and prevent us from taking the fresh perspective that would let us solve the problem.

The representativeness heuristic leads is to judge the likelihood of things in term of how they represent our prototype for a group of items. The availability heuristic leads us to judge the likelihood of thing based on how vivid they are or how readily they come to mind. Either of these two thinking shortcuts can cause us to ignore important information or to underestimate the chances of something happening.

The main drawback of overconfidence is that our tendencies to seek confirmation of our hypotheses and to use quick and easy heuristic can blind us to our vulnerable to error – a fault that can be tragic if we are in a position of responsibility. But on a personal level, overconfident people tend to live happier lives, make difficult decisions more easily,and seem more credible.

An issue can be presented (or framed) in different but equally logical ways, but the subtle wording can nudge us in the direction the questioner wants us to take. (consider, for example, “Do you think people should be free to smoke in public places? “ versus “Do you think smokers should have the right to expose the lungs of nonsmokers to second-hand smoke?”)

We tend to judge conclusions that agree with our beliefs as more logical than those that do not match our beliefs. This belief bias can lead us to accept invalid conclusions and reject valid ones.

Belief perseverance is clinging to our ides because the explanation we once accepted as valid lingers in our mind even after it has been discredited. The best remedy for this form of bias is making the effort to consider evidence supporting the opposite position.

 Although it sometimes leads us astray, human intuition can be remarkably efficient and adaptive, giving us instant help when we need it. As we gain expertise in a field, for example, we grow adept at making quick, shrewd judgments. Smart thinkers will welcome their intuitions but check them against available evidence, hoping to avoid overconfidence and biased and illogical thinking.

Language

All languages have the same basic structural units. Phonemes are the basic units of sound and language. Morphemes are the elementary units of meaning; some (such as I) are words, but most are elements such as prefixes (anti-) or suffixes (-ing). Grammar is the system of rules (mental rules, not those taught in English classes) that enable us to communicate and understand others. Semantics, which is part of grammar, is set of rules for deriving meaning in a given language. Syntax, also a part of grammar, is the set of rules for ordering words into sentences.

At about 4 months of age, infants babble, making a wide range of sounds found in language located all over the world. By about 10 months, their babbling contains only the sounds found in their household language. Around 12 months of age, babies speak in single words. This one-word stage evolves into two-word (telegraphic) utterances before their second birthday. Shortly after that, children begin speaking in full sentences. The timing of these stages varies a little from one child to another, but all children follow this sequence.

Behaviorists B.F. Skinner (representing the nurture side of the language-developing  debate) proposed that we learn language by the familiar principles of association (of sights of things with sounds of words), imitating (of words and syntax modeled by others), and reinforcement (with smiles and hugs after saying something right). Challenge this claim, linguist Noam Chomsky (representing the nature position) argues that were born with language acquisition device that biologically prepares is to learn language. He cites as evidence the species-wide presence of language and its underlying universal grammar; children's amazing rate of acquiring vocabulary; and the uniform sequence of the stage of language development. Statistical learning is the ability to detect speech patterns (such as syllable breaks). Childhood is a critical period for learning spoken and signed language: Children who do not learn language during this early period lose their ability to fully master language. 

Thinking and language

Although the linguistic determinism hypothesis suggest that language determines thought, it is more accurate to say that language influences thought. Words convey ideas, and research on people who are bilingual demonstrates that different languages embody different ways of thinking. Studies of the effects of the generic pronoun he show that subtle prejudices can be conveyed by the words we choose to express our everyday thoughts. Some evidence indicates that vocabulary enrichment, particularly immersion in bilingual education, can enhance thinking.

We often think in images when we use procedural memory - our unconscious memory system for motor and cognitive skills and conditioned association. Researchers have found that thinking in images is especially useful for mentally practicing upcoming events and can actually increase our skills. 

Animal thinking and language

Both humans and the great apes form concepts, display insight, use and create tools, transmit cultural innovations, and have a theory of mind (including the capacity for reasoning, self-recognition, empathy, imitation, and understanding another's mind).

Bees dance to communicate the direction and distance of food, parrots sort items by number, and dogs comprehend and respond to complicated human commands. Several species of apes have learned to communicate with humans by signing or by pushing buttons wired to a computer. These apes have developed vocabularies of hundreds of words, communicated by striking these words together,and have taught their skills to younger animals, who – like humans tend to acquire the skills most easily and thoroughly taught them at a very young age. Netherless, research reveals an important difference between apes' and humans' facilities with language. Only humans can master the verbal or signed expression of complex rules of syntax.

Intelligence

What is intelligence?

Intelligence is a socially constructed concept that differs from culture to culture. The two big controversies in current research on intelligence are (1) whether it is one overall ability or many, and (2) whether neuroscientists can locate and measure intelligence within the brain. To reify intelligence is to treat it as though it were a real object, not an abstract concept. Most psychologists now define intelligence as the ability to learn from experience to solve problems, and adapt to new situations.

Arguments for considering intelligence as a general mental ability underlying all specific mental ability underlying all specific mental abilities are based in part on factor analysis. This statistical procedure has been used to show that mental abilities tend to form clusters, and that people tend to show about the same level of competence in all abilities in the cluster. In the mid-twenties century, Charles Spearman ( a developer of factor analysis) names this common level of intelligence the g factor. Some psychologists today agree with Spearman's idea that we have a common level of intelligence that can predict our abilities in all other academic areas.

Howard Gardner dispute of one general intelligence. He proposes eight independent intelligences: Linguistic (word smart), Logical-mathematical (number smarts), musical (music smarts), spatial (space smarts), bodily-kinesthetic (body smarts), intrapersonal (self smart), interpersonal (people smarts), and natural (nature smarts). Robert Sternberg's triarchic theory proposes only three intelligences: analytical (academies problem solving), creative, and practical intelligences.

The four components of emotional intelligence are the ability to perceive emotions (to recognize them in faces, music, and stories), to understand emotions (to predict them and how they change and blend), to manage emotions ( to know how to express them in varied situations) and to use emotions. Critics of the ideas of emotional intelligence question whether we stretch the ideas of intelligence too far when we apply it to emotions.

Creativity is the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas. It correlates somewhat with intelligence, but beyond a score of 120, that correlation dwindles. It also correlates with expertise, imaginative thinking skills, a venturesome personality, intrinsic motivation, and the support offered by a creative environment. Different brain areas are active when we engage in convergent thinking (the type required for multiple imaginative solutions).

Recent studies indicate come correlation (about +.40) between brain size (adjusted for body size) and intelligence score. The brain's tendency to decrease in size during late adulthood, as nonverbal; intelligence test score also decrease, supports this idea to some extent. And autopsies of some highly educated people revealed above-average volumes of synapses and gray matter. But the direction of the relationship is not clear. Larger brain size may enable greater intelligence; greater intelligence may lead to experiences that exercise the brain and build more connections, thus increasing its size; or some third factor may be at work.

Studies of brain functioning show that people who score high on intelligence tests tend also to retrieve information from memory more quickly, and to perceive stimuli faster than others. These differences are reflected in neurological studies that show faster brain response times.

Assessing Intelligence

Psychologists define intelligence test as a method for assessing an individuals mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores. More than a century ago in France, Alfred Binet and his collaborator Theodor Simon started the modern intelligence-testing movement by developing questions that helped predict children's future progress in the Paris school system. Lewis Terman of Standford university revised Binet's works for use in the United States. Terman believed his Standford-Binet could help guide people toward appropriate opportunities, but more than Binet, he believed intelligence is inherited. During the early twentieth century, intelligence tests were, regrettably, sometimes used to “document” assumptions about the innate inferiority of certain ethnic and immigrant groups. Intelligence test scores have been expressed as an intelligence quotient (IQ), established by dividing mental age by chronological age times 100.

Aptitude tests are designed to predict what you can learn. Achievement tests are designed to assess what you have learned. The WAIS (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale), and aptitude test, is the most widely used intelligence tests for adult. Two similar Wechsler scales are designed to test intelligence in preschool and older children. The SAT scores and their score on a test of general intelligence correlated at a very high level: +.82.

Standardizing a test is the process of administering the test to a representative sample of future test-takers in order to establish a basis for meaningful comparisons of scores. The distribution of many physical and psychological attributes forms a normal curve (also known as a bell-shaped-curve) – a roughly symmetrical shape in which most scores cluster around an average, and increasingly fewer are distributed at the extremes. Intelligence test score has risen 27 points – a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect.

A test is reliable when it yields consistent results. To establish reliability, researchers compare the consistency of test-takers' scores on two halves of  the test, alternate forms of the test, or retests on the same test. A test can be reliable but not valid.

A valid test measures or predicts what it is supposed to. Content validity is the extent to which a test samples the pertinent behavior ( as a driving test measure driving ability). Predictive validity is the extent to which the test predicts a behavior it is designed to predict  (aptitude tests have predictive ability if they can predict future achievements). 

The dynamics of intelligence

The stability of intelligence test scores increase with age. By age 4, scores fluctuate somewhat but begin to predict adolescent and adult scores. At about age 7, scores become fairly stable and consistent.

If an intelligence test is valid, the two groups of people falling at the extremes of the normal curve should be significantly different, and they are. Those with scores below 70, the cut-off mark for the diagnosis of mental retardation, vary in their abilities form near-normal, to (at the very lowest scoring levels) requiring constant aid and supervision. Down syndrome is a form of retardation with a physical cause – an extra copy of chromosome 21. High scoring people, contrary to popular myths, tend to be healthy, well adjusted, and unusually successful academically. Schools sometimes “track” such children, separating them from those with lower scores. Such programs can become self-fulfilling prophecies as children live up to – or down to – other's perceptions of their ability.  

Genetic and environmental influences on intelligence

Studies of twins, family members, and adopted children together support the idea that there is a significant genetic contribution to intelligence scores. The most genetically similar people have the most similar scores, ranging from about +.85 for identical twins raised together, to about +.33 for unrelated individuals raised together. No “genius gene” has been discovered yet but the search is under way. Heritability of intelligence refers to the extent to which variation in intelligence test scores in a group of people being studied is attributable to genetic factors. Heritability never applies to an individual's intelligence, but only to differences among people.

Studies   of twins, family member, and adopted children also provide evidence of environmental influence. The intelligence test scores of fraternal twins raised together are more similar than those of other siblings, and the scores of identical twins raised apart are less similar (though still very highly correlated) than the scores of identical twins raised together. Other studies, of children reared in extremely impoverished, enriched, or culturally different environments, indicate that life experiences significantly influence intelligence tests performance.

As a group, white Americans tend to have an average intelligence test score about 8 to 15 points higher than their Hispanic or African-American counterparts. This gap has dropped recently among children. The evidence suggests that environmental differences are largely responsible for these group differences. Six points were considered in this chapter. (1) The races are remarkably alike genetically. (2) Race is a socially, not biologically, defined category. (3) Asian students outperform North American students on math achievement and aptitude test. (4) Intelligence test performance of todays, better-fed, better-educated, and more test-prepared population exceeds that of the 1930s population, by the same margin that the score of the average white today exceeds that of the average black. (5) white and black infants tend to score equally well on tests predicting future intelligence. (6) in different eras, different ethnic groups have experienced periods of remarkable achievement.

This chapter considered seven ways that males and females differ in their abilities. (1) girls are better spellers. (2) girls are more verbally fluent and can remember more words. (3) girls are better at locating objects. (4) girls are more sensitive to touch, taste, and color. (5) boys are outnumber girls in counts of underachievement.

 (6) boys outperform girls at math problems solving, though girls outperform boys in math computations.

(7)Women detect emotions more easily than men do.

Aptitude tests aim to predict how well a test-taker will perform in a given situation. So they are necessarily biased in the sense that they are sensitive to performance differences caused by cultural experience. But bias can also mean what psychologists commonly mean by the term – that a biased test predicts less accurately for one group than for another. In this sense of the term, most experts do not consider the major aptitude tests to be significantly biased. Stereotype threat is a self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype. This phenomenon appears in some instances in intelligence testing among African-Americans and among women of all colors.

Psychology - Unit 7 - Chapter 8

Learning
How do we learn?

Learning is a relatively permanent change in an organism's behavior due to experience. In associative learning, we learn to associate two stimuli (as in classical conditioning) or a response and its consequences (as in operant conditioning). In observational learning, we learn by watching others' experiences and examples.

Classical conditioning

Classical conditioning is a type of learning in which an organism comes to associate stimuli. Pavlov's work on classical conditioning laid the foundation for behaviorism, the view that psychology should be an objective science that studies behavior without reference to mental processes. In classical conditioning, a UR is an even that occurs naturally (such as salivation), in response to some stimulus. A US is something that naturally and automatically (without learning) triggers the unlearned response (as food i the mouth triggers salivation). A CS in classical condition is an originally neutral stimulus (such as a bell) that, through learning (salivation). A CR is the learned response (salivating) to the originally neutral but now conditioned stimulus.

Classical conditioning occurs most readily when a CS is presented just before (ideally, about a half-second before) a US, preparing the organism for the upcoming event. This finding supports the view that classical conditioning is biologically adaptive.

In classical conditioning, extinction is diminished responding when the CS no longer signals an impending US. Spontaneous recovery is the appearance of a formerly extinguished response, following a rest period. Generalization is the tendency to respond to stimuli that are similar to a CS. Discrimination is the learned ability to distinguish between a CS and other irrelevant stimuli.

Generalization (our tendency to respond to stimuli similar to a CS) has survival value because it lets is extend a learned response to other stimuli in a given category – as in fleeing from all dangerous animals. Discrimination (our learned ability to distinguish between a CS and other irrelevant stimuli) also has survival; value because it lets us limit our learned responses to appropriate stimuli – as in fleeing from a rampaging lion but nor from a playful kitten.

The early behaviorists' optimism that learning principles would generalize from one response to another and from one species to another has given way to the understanding that conditioning principles are influenced by our thought, perceptions, and expectations. In classical conditioning, humans and other animals learn when to “expect” a US, and their awareness of the link between stimuli and responses can weaken associations.

Early behaviorists believed that any natural response could be conditioned to any neutral stimulus in any given organism. Learning theorists have abandoned this belief. Each species is biologically prepared to learn associations – such as humans' fear of spiders and snakes, or rats' aversion to tastes associated with nausea – that enhance its survival. Outside the laboratory, a CS tends to have a natural association with the US it predicts.

Pavlov taught us that significant psychological phenomena can be studied objectively, and that condoning principles have important applications, such as by suggesting how some fears are learned and can be treated. He also demonstrated that principles of learning apply across species, although later research modified this finding somewhat by showing by showing that in many species cognition and biological predispositions place some limits on associative learning.

Classical conditioning techniques are used in treatment programs for those recovering from alcohol and other drug abuse and to condition more appropriate responses in therapy for emotional disorders, The body's immune system also appears to respond to classical conditioning.

Operant Conditioning

In classical conditioning, the organism forms associations between behaviors it does not control; this form of conditioning involves respondent behavior (automatic responses to some stimulus). In operant conditioning, the organism learns associations between its own behavior and resulting events; this form of conditioning involves operant behavior (behavior that operates on the environment, producing consequences).

Thorndike's law of effect asserts that rewarded behavior is likely to recur, using this as his starting point, skinner devoted his life to exploring the principles and conditions of learning through operant conditioning.

In shaping, we use reinforcers to guide a person's or an animal's behavior toward a desired goal. Building on existing behaviors, we reward successive approximations to some desired behaviors. Because nonverbal animals and babies can respond only to what they perceive, their reactions demonstrate which events they can discriminate.

Positive reinforcers adds something desirable to increase the frequency of a behavior. Negative reinforcement removes something undesirable to increase the frequency of a behavior. Primary reinforcers (such as receiving food when hungry or having nausea end during an illness) are innately satisfying – no learning is required. Conditioning (or secondary) reinforcers (such as cash) are satisfying because we have learned to associate them with more basic rewards (such as food or medicine we buy with them). Immediate reinforcers (such as the nicotine addict's cigarette) offer immediate payback; delayed reinforcers (such as a weekly paycheck) require the ability to delay gratification.

Both positive punishment (administering an undesirable consequence, such as spanking) and negative punishment (withdrawing something desirable, such as taking away a favorite toy) attempt to decrease the frequency of a behavior (a child's disobedience). Negative reinforcement (such as taking aspirin) removes something undesirable (such as a headache) to increase the frequency of a behavior. Punishment's undesirable side effects may include suppressing rather than changing unwanted behaviors, teaching aggression, creating fear, and encouraging discrimination (so that the undesirable behavior appears when the punisher is not present), and fostering depression and feelings of helplessness.

Latent learning, as shown in rats' learning of cognitive maps or children delayed imitation of others' behavior, indicates that we can learn from experience, without apparent reinforcement. An external reward's ability to undermine our interest and pleasure in an activity weakens the idea that behaviors that are rewarded will increase in frequency.

Biological constrains predispose organism to learn associations that are naturally adaptive. Training that attempts to override these tendencies will probably not endure because the animals will revert to their biologically predispose patterns.

Many psychologists criticized Skinner for underestimating the importance of cognition and biological constrains on learning. They also engage in a vigorous intellectual debate with him over the nature of human freedom and the strategies and ethics of managing people.

In school, teachers can sue shaping techniques to guide students' behaviors. Interactive software and Web sites an provide immediate feedback to students. In sports, coaches can build players' skills and self-confidence by rewarding small improvements. At work, managers can boost productivity and morale by rewarding well-defined and achievable behaviors. At home, we can control our energy usage by comparing recent consumptions with past consumptions.  Parents can reward behaviors they consider desirable, but not those that are undesirable. Individually, we can reinforce our own desired behaviors and extinguish undesirable ones by stating our goals, monitoring the frequency of desired behaviors, and cutting back on incentives as behaviors become habitual.

Classical and operant conditioning are similar in being forms of associative learning. Both also involve acquisitions, extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, and Discrimination. And both are influenced – and sometimes constrained – by cognitive processes and biological predispositions. These two forms of learning differ in an important way. In classical conditioning, an organism associates different stimuli that it does not control and responds automatically (respondent behaviors). In operant conditioning, an organism associates its own behaviors with their consequences.

Learning by observation

 In observational learning, we observe and imitate others. Mirror neurons,  located in the brain's frontal lobes, demonstrate a neural basis for observational learning. They fire when we perform certain actions (such as responding to pain or moving our mouth to form words), or when we observe someone else performing those actions.

Bandura and others demonstrated that we are likely to imitate actions that go unpunished. And we tend to imitate models we perceive as similar to us, successful, or admirable.

Research shows that children tend to imitate what a model does and says, whether the behavior is prosocial (positive, constructive, and helpful) or antisocial. If a model's actions and words are inconsistent, children may imitate the hypocrisy they observe.

Correlations show relationships, but not the direction of influence. Correlation studies show that violence viewing and violent behavior are linked, but they do not prove that watching violent TV causes children to become violent. Children who behave violently may enjoy watching violence on TV, or some third factor may cause children both to behave violently and to prefer watching violent programs. To prove cause and effect, researchers have designed experiments in which some participants view violence (in rough play or verbal responses to videos), the people who viewed violence tend to be more aggressive and less sympathetic. Two factors – imitation and desensitization – seem to contribute to the violence effect.

Psychology - Unit 6 - Chapter 7

States of Consciousness

Consciousness and information Processing

Consciousness, currently defined as our awareness of ourselves and our environment , occurs in the normal states of seeing and hearing, reasoning and remembering, but also in the altered consciousness of sleep, hypnotic states, and chemically induced hallucinations. Psychology began as the study of consciousness, then, under the behaviorists, turned to the study of observable behavior. Under the impact of discoveries in neuroscience and cognitive psychology, the scientific investigation of states of mind is again one of psychology's pursuits.

We process information on two levels. Our conscious processing is a serial and relatively slow, but this focused state of awareness enables is to perform voluntary acts, solve novel problems, and communicate with other. In unconscious processing, we perform familiar tasks automatically, and our sensory system and neural pathways register stimuli rapidly and simultaneously.

Sleep and Dreams

Our initial “biological clocks” create periodic physiological fluctuations. These cycles annually (as in women's variations in appetite and mood), every 28 days (as in women's menstrual periods), every 24 hours (as in daily cycles of alertness), and every 90 minutes (as in human stages).

The circadian rhythm's 24-hour cycle regulates our daily schedule of sleeping and waking. This cycle is in part a response to light striking the retina, signaling the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the hypothalamus to trigger alterations in the level of biochemical substances, including decreased output of sleep-inducing melatonin by the pineal gland. Time changes, long flights, shifts in sleep schedules, and exposure to bright light can reset this biological clock.

The cycle of five sleep stages totals 90 minutes. Leaving the alpha waves of the awake, relaxed stage, we descend into transitional Stage 1 sleep, often with the sensation of falling or floating. Stage 2 sleep (the stage in which we spend the most time) follows about 20 minutes later, with its characteristics sleep spindles. Then follow Stages 3 and 4, together lasting about 30 minutes with large, slow delta waves. Reversing course, we retrace our path through these stages, with one difference: about an hour after falling asleep, we begin approximately 10 minutes of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, in which most dreaming occurs. In this fifth stage (also known as paradoxical sleep), we are internally aroused but outwardly paralyzed. As this up-and-down cycle repeats during a normal night's sleep, periods of Stage 4 and then Stage 3 sleep progressively shorten and dreaming REM sleep lengthens.

Most people, if allowed to sleep as long as they want, will average about 9 hours. But sleep is affected by age – newborns, for example, sleep twice as much as adults. People also differ in their individual sleep requirement, and twin studies indicate these differences may be partly genetic. Cultural expectations about “the perfect sleep” also help determine the amount of sleep we feel is adequate.

Sleep deprivation puts people at risk not only for fatigue, but also for a depressed immune system; impaired concentration, creativity, and communication; irritability; and slowed performance (with greater vulnerability to accidents). Chronic sleep deprivation can alter metabolic and hormonal functioning, creating conditions that may contribute to obesity, hypertension, and memory.

Sleep may have played a protective role in human evolution by keeping people safe during potentially dangerous periods. Sleep gives the brain time to heal, as it restores and repairs damaged neurons. During sleep, we restore and rebuild memories of the day's experience, and a good night's sleep promotes insightful problem-solving the next day. Sleep also encourages growth; the pituitary gland secretes a growth hormone in Stage 4 sleep.

The disorder of sleep include insomnia (recurring wakefulness), narcolepsy (sudden uncontrollable sleepiness or lapsing into REM sleep). Sleep apnea (the stopping of breathing while asleep), night terrors (high arousal and the appearance of being terrified), sleepwalking, and sleeptalking. Sleep apnea mainly targets overweight men. Children are most prone to night terrors, sleepwalking and sleeptalking.

We usually dream of ordinary events and everyday experiences, 80 percent of them involving some anxiety or misfortune. Fewer than 10 percent of dreams (and less among women) have any sexual content. Most dreams occur during REM sleep; those that happen during non-REM sleep tend to be vague fleeting images.

Why do we dream? (1) Freud believed dreams provide a safety valve, because their manifest content (or story line) is a censored version of latent content (some underlying meaning that gratifies our unconscious wishes). (2) The information-processing perspective on dreaming is that dreams help us sort out the day's experiences and fix them in memory. (3) Other physiological theories of dreaming propose that REM-induced regular brain stimulation helps develop and preserve neural pathways in th brain.

(4)The activation-synthesis explanation of dreaming is that REM sleep triggers impulses in the visual cortex, evoking random visual images that our brain tries to weave into a story line.

(5)The brain-maturation/cognitive-development perspective believes dreams represent the dreamer's level of development, knowledge, and understanding. Despite their differences most sleep theorists agree that REM sleep and its associated dreams serve an important function, as shown by the REM rebound that occurs following REM deprivation.

Hypnosis

Psychologists now agree that hypnosis is a state of heightened suggestibility to which people are subject in varying degree. Research indicates that the strength, stamina, learning, and perceptual abilities of hypnotized people may be matched by those of motivated unhypnotized people.

Highly hypnotizable people can focus attention totally on a task, become imaginatively absorbed in it, and entertain fanciful possibilities. Hypnosis does not enhance recall of forgotten events and may evoke false memories. Hypnotized people, like unhypnotized people, may perform unlikely acts when told to do so by an authoritative person. Posthypnotic suggestions have helped harness their own healing powers to reduce headaches and other addictions. Hypnosis can contribute to significant pain relief.

The belief that hypnosis produces a dissociation - a split-between normal sensation and conscious awareness gains support from three sets of findings. (1) Hypnotized people may carry out posthypnotic suggestions when no one is watching. (2) Brain scans of hypnotized people told to “see” things that are not there. (such as color) show activity in brain areas that usually light up only when we are sensing real stimuli. (3) people hypnotized for pain relief may show activity in brain areas that receive sensory information but not in areas that normally process that information. Those who reject the hypnosis-as-altered-consciousness view believe that hypnosis is a by-product of normal social and cognitive processes and that the hypnotized person is unknowingly acting out the role of “good subject.” On one experiment supporting this interpretation, researchers tell hypnotized people that hypnosis reveals their gullibility and the participants that the participants stop responding as directed. Contemporary researchers are intrigued by the puzzle of how brain activity, attention, and social influences interact to create hypnotic phenomena.

Drugs and Consciousness

A psychoactive drug is a chemical substance that alters perceptions and mood.

Psychoactive drugs alter perceptions and moods. Continued us of these drugs produces the tolerance (requiring larger doses to achieve the same effect) and may lead to physical or psychological dependence. Addition is compulsive drug craving and use. Three common misconceptions about addictions are that (1) addictive drugs quickly corrupt; (2) therapy is always required to overcome addiction: and (3) the concept of addictions can meaningfully be extended beyond chemical dependence to a wide range of other behaviors.

Depressant, stimulants, and hallucinogens are the three main categories of psychoactive drugs. These substances interfere with neurotransmissions by stimulating, inhibiting, or mimicking the activity of chemical messengers (neurotransmitters) at synapses in the brain. The effects of psychoactive drugs also depend on the user's expectations.

Depressants, such as alcohol, barbiturates, and the opiates, reduce neural activity and slow body functions. Alcohol is a disinhibitor. It increases the likelihood that we will act on impulses - - harmful or helpful – that we might not express in the absence of alcohol. It also slows nervous system activity, impairs judgment, reduces self-awareness, and disrupts memory processes by suppressing REM sleep. If people believe they have consumed alcoholic beverage, they will behave accordingly and explain their behavior as alcohol – induced.

Stimulants- Caffeine, nicotine, the amphetamines, cocaine, and Ecstasy – excite neural activity and speed up body functions. Methamphetamine is highly addictive, and continued use may permanently reduce dopamine production. Cocaine blocks the reuptake of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin at synapses in the brain and gives users a 15- to 30 – minute rush of intense high feelings, followed by a crash. Cocaine is highly addictive, and its risks include cardiovascular mild hallucinogens. By releasing serotonin and blocking its reuptake at synapses, Ecstasy produces a euphoric high and feelings of intimacy. Its repeated use may suppress the immune system, disrupt the circadian clock, destroy serotonin-producing neurons, and permanently damage mood and memory. Combined with physical activity, it can cause dehydrations, leading to potentially fatal overheating.

Hallucinogens, such as LSD and marijuana, distort perceptions and evoke sensory images in the absence of sensory input. LSD is chemically similar to one type of serotonin. The user's mood and expectations influence the effects of LSD, but common components are hallucinations and emotions varying from euphoria to panic. Marijuana's main active ingredient, THC, triggers a variety of effects, including disinhibitor, a euphoric high, feelings of relaxation, relief from pain, and intense sensitivity to colors, sounds, tastes, and smells. It may also amplify feelings of anxiety or depression, impair motor coordination and reaction time, disrupt memory formations, and – because of the inhaled smoke in which it travels – damage lung tissue.

Psychological factors (such as stress, depression, and hopelessness) and social factors (such as peer pressure) combine to lead many people to experiment on – drugs. Cultural and ethnic groups have differing rates of drug use. Twin and adoption studies, as well as animals and molecular genetics studies, indicate that some people are biologically more likely to become dependent on drugs such as alcohol. Each of these influences – biological, psychological, and social-cultural – offers a possible path for drug prevention and treatment programs.

Near-Death Experiences

About one-third of those who have survived a brush with death, such as through cardiac arrest, later recall visionary near-death experiences. These sometimes involve out-of-body sensations and seeing or traveling toward a bright light. Dualist's interpret these experiences as evidence of human immortality. Monists point out that reports of such experiences closely parallel reports of hallucinations and may be products of a brain under stress.