Introduction to Psychology

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Introduction to Psychology by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons
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Contents

Publisher Information

Chapter 1. Introducing Psychology

1.1 Psychology as a Science

1.2 The Evolution of Psychology: History, Approaches, and Questions
1.3 Chapter Summary

Chapter 2. Psychological Science

2.1 Psychologists Use the Scientific Method to Guide Their Research

2.2 Psychologists Use Descriptive, Correlational, and Experimental
Research Designs to Understand Behavior
2.3 You Can Be an Informed Consumer of Psychological Research
2.4 Chapter Summary

Chapter 3. Brains, Bodies, and Behavior

3.1 The Neuron Is the Building Block of the Nervous System

3.2 Our Brains Control Our Thoughts, Feelings, and Behavior
3.3 Psychologists Study the Brain Using Many Different Methods
3.4 Putting It All Together: The Nervous System and the Endocrine System
3.5 Chapter Summary
Chapter 4. Sensing and Perceiving

4.1 We Experience Our World Through Sensation

4.2 Seeing
4.3 Hearing
4.4 Tasting, Smelling, and Touching
4.5 Accuracy and Inaccuracy in Perception
4.6 Chapter Summary

Chapter 5. States of Consciousness

5.1 Sleeping and Dreaming Revitalize Us for Action

5.2 Altering Consciousness With Psychoactive Drugs
5.3 Altering Consciousness Without Drugs
5.4 Chapter Summary

Chapter 6. Growing and Developing

6.1 Conception and Prenatal Development

6.2 Infancy and Childhood: Exploring and Learning
6.3 Adolescence: Developing Independence and Identity
6.4 Early and Middle Adulthood: Building Effective Lives
6.5 Late Adulthood: Aging, Retiring, and Bereavement
6.6 Chapter Summary

Chapter 7. Learning
7.1 Learning by Association: Classical Conditioning
7.2 Changing Behavior Through Reinforcement and Punishment: Operant
Conditioning
7.3 Learning by Insight and Observation
7.4 Using the Principles of Learning to Understand Everyday Behavior
7.5 Chapter Summary

Chapter 8. Remembering and Judging

8.1 Memories as Types and Stages

8.2 How We Remember: Cues to Improving Memory
8.3 Accuracy and Inaccuracy in Memory and Cognition
8.4 Chapter Summary

Chapter 9. Intelligence and Language

9.1 Defining and Measuring Intelligence

9.2 The Social, Cultural, and Political Aspects of Intelligence
9.3 Communicating With Others: The Development and Use of Language
9.4 Chapter Summary

Chapter 10. Emotions and Motivations

10.1 The Experience of Emotion

10.2 Stress: The Unseen Killer
10.3 Positive Emotions: The Power of Happiness
10.4 Two Fundamental Human Motivations: Eating and Mating
10.5 Chapter Summary

Chapter 11: Personality

11.1 Personality and Behavior: Approaches and Measurement

11.2 The Origins of Personality
11.3 Is Personality More Nature or More Nurture? Behavioral and
Molecular Genetics
11.4 Chapter Summary

Chapter 12: Defining Psychological Disorders

12.1 Psychological Disorder: What Makes a Behavior “Abnormal”?

12.2 Anxiety and Dissociative Disorders: Fearing the World Around Us
12.3 Mood Disorders: Emotions as Illness
12.4 Schizophrenia: The Edge of Reality and Consciousness
12.5 Personality Disorders
12.6 Somatoform, Factitious, and Sexual Disorders
12.7 Chapter Summary

Chapter 13: Treating Psychological Disorders

13.1 Reducing Disorder by Confronting It: Psychotherapy

13.2 Reducing Disorder Biologically: Drug and Brain Therapy
13.3 Reducing Disorder by Changing the Social Situation
13.4 Evaluating Treatment and Prevention: What Works?
13.5 Chapter Summary
Chapter 14: Psychology in Our Social Lives

14.1 Social Cognition: Making Sense of Ourselves and Others

14.2 Interacting With Others: Helping, Hurting, and Conforming
14.3 Working With Others: The Costs and Benefits of Social Groups
14.4 Chapter Summary
Publisher Information

Introduction to Psychology is
adapted from a work produced
and distributed under a Creative
Commons license (CC BY-NC-
SA) in 2010 by a publisher who has requested that they and the original
author not receive attribution. This adapted edition is produced by the
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Chapter 1. Introducing Psychology

Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. The word

“psychology” comes from the Greek words “psyche,” meaning life, and
“logos,” meaning explanation. Psychology is a popular major for students, a
popular topic in the public media, and a part of our everyday lives.
Television shows such as Dr. Phil feature psychologists who provide
personal advice to those with personal or family difficulties. Crime dramas
such as CSI, Lie to Me, and others feature the work of forensic
psychologists who use psychological principles to help solve crimes. And
many people have direct knowledge about psychology because they have
visited psychologists, for instance, school counselors, family therapists, and
religious, marriage, or bereavement counselors.

Because we are frequently exposed to the work of psychologists in our

everyday lives, we all have an idea about what psychology is and what
psychologists do. In many ways I am sure that your conceptions are correct.
Psychologists do work in forensic fields, and they do provide counseling
and therapy for people in distress. But there are hundreds of thousands of
psychologists in the world, and most of them work in other places, doing
work that you are probably not aware of.

Most psychologists work in research laboratories, hospitals, and other field

settings where they study the behavior of humans and animals. For instance,
my colleagues in the Psychology Department at the University of Maryland
study such diverse topics as anxiety in children, the interpretation of
dreams, the effects of caffeine on thinking, how birds recognize each other,
how praying mantises hear, how people from different cultures react
differently in negotiation, and the factors that lead people to engage in
terrorism. Other psychologists study such topics as alcohol and drug
addiction, memory, emotion, hypnosis, love, what makes people aggressive
or helpful, and the psychologies of politics, prejudice, culture, and religion.
Psychologists also work in schools and businesses, and they use a variety of
methods, including observation, questionnaires, interviews, and laboratory
studies, to help them understand behavior.

This chapter provides an introduction to the broad field of psychology and

the many approaches that psychologists take to understanding human
behavior. We will consider how psychologists conduct scientific research,
with an overview of some of the most important approaches used and topics
studied by psychologists, and also consider the variety of fields in which
psychologists work and the careers that are available to people with
psychology degrees. I expect that you may find that at least some of your
preconceptions about psychology will be challenged and changed, and you
will learn that psychology is a field that will provide you with new ways of
thinking about your own thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Figure 1.1
Psychology is in part the study of behavior. Why do you think these people are behaving the way they

are?

[1]

1. Dominic Alves – Café Smokers – CC BY 2.0; Daniela Vladimirova – Reservoir Dogs

debate, 3 in the morning – CC BY 2.0; Kim Scarborough – Old Ladies – CC BY-SA 2.0;
Pedro Ribeiro Simões – Playing Chess – CC BY 2.0; epSos .de – Young Teenagers Playing
Guitar Band of Youth – CC BY 2.0; Marco Zanferrari – 1… – CC BY-SA 2.0; CC BY 2.0
Pedro Ribeiro Simões – Relaxing – CC BY 2.0. ↵
1.1 Psychology as a Science

Learning Objectives

1. Explain why using our intuition about everyday behavior is insufficient for a
complete understanding of the causes of behavior.

2. Describe the difference between values and facts and explain how the scientific
method is used to differentiate between the two.

Despite the differences in their interests, areas of study, and approaches, all
psychologists have one thing in common: They rely on scientific methods.
Research psychologists use scientific methods to create new knowledge
about the causes of behavior, whereas psychologist-practitioners, such as
clinical, counseling, industrial-organizational, and school psychologists, use
existing research to enhance the everyday life of others. The science of
psychology is important for both researchers and practitioners.

In a sense all humans are scientists. We all have an interest in asking and
answering questions about our world. We want to know why things happen,
when and if they are likely to happen again, and how to reproduce or change
them. Such knowledge enables us to predict our own behavior and that of
others. We may even collect data (i.e., any information collected through
formal observation or measurement) to aid us in this undertaking. It has
been argued that people are “everyday scientists” who conduct research
projects to answer questions about behavior (Nisbett & Ross, 1980). When
we perform poorly on an important test, we try to understand what caused
our failure to remember or understand the material and what might help us
do better the next time. When our good friends Monisha and Charlie break
up, despite the fact that they appeared to have a relationship made in
heaven, we try to determine what happened. When we contemplate the rise
of terrorist acts around the world, we try to investigate the causes of this
problem by looking at the terrorists themselves, the situation around them,
and others’ responses to them.

The Problem of Intuition

The results of these “everyday” research projects can teach us many

principles of human behavior. We learn through experience that if we give
someone bad news, he or she may blame us even though the news was not
our fault. We learn that people may become depressed after they fail at an
important task. We see that aggressive behavior occurs frequently in our
society, and we develop theories to explain why this is so. These insights are
part of everyday social life. In fact, much research in psychology involves
the scientific study of everyday behavior (Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1967).

The problem, however, with the way people collect and interpret data in
their everyday lives is that they are not always particularly thorough. Often,
when one explanation for an event seems “right,” we adopt that explanation
as the truth even when other explanations are possible and potentially more
accurate. For example, eyewitnesses to violent crimes are often extremely
confident in their identifications of the perpetrators of these crimes. But
research finds that eyewitnesses are no less confident in their identifications
when they are incorrect than when they are correct (Cutler & Wells, 2009;
Wells & Hasel, 2008). People may also become convinced of the existence
of extrasensory perception (ESP), or the predictive value of astrology, when
there is no evidence for either (Gilovich, 1993). Furthermore, psychologists
have also found that there are a variety of cognitive and motivational biases
that frequently influence our perceptions and lead us to draw erroneous
conclusions (Fiske & Taylor, 2007; Hsee & Hastie, 2006). In summary,
accepting explanations for events without testing them thoroughly may lead
us to think that we know the causes of things when we really do not.

Research Focus: Unconscious Preferences for the Letters of Our Own Name

A study reported in the Journal of Consumer Research (Brendl, Chattopadhyay, Pelham, &
Carvallo, 2005) demonstrates the extent to which people can be unaware of the causes of their
own behavior. The research demonstrated that, at least under certain conditions (and although
they do not know it), people frequently prefer brand names that contain the letters of their own
name to brand names that do not contain the letters of their own name.

The research participants were recruited in pairs and were told that the research was a taste test
of different types of tea. For each pair of participants, the experimenter created two teas and
named them by adding the word stem “oki” to the first three letters of each participant’s first
name. For example, for Jonathan and Elisabeth, the names of the teas would have been Jonoki
and Elioki.

The participants were then shown 20 packets of tea that were supposedly being tested. Eighteen
packets were labeled with made-up Japanese names (e.g., “Mataku” or “Somuta”), and two were
labeled with the brand names constructed from the participants’ names. The experimenter
explained that each participant would taste only two teas and would be allowed to choose one
packet of these two to take home.

One of the two participants was asked to draw slips of paper to select the two brands that would
be tasted at this session. However, the drawing was rigged so that the two brands containing the
participants’ name stems were always chosen for tasting. Then, while the teas were being
brewed, the participants completed a task designed to heighten their needs for self-esteem, and
that was expected to increase their desire to choose a brand that had the letters of their own
name. Specifically, the participants all wrote about an aspect of themselves that they would like
to change.
 After the teas were ready, the participants tasted them and then chose to take a packet of one of
the teas home with them. After they made their choice, the participants were asked why they
chose the tea they had chosen, and then the true purpose of the study was explained to them.

The results of this study found that participants chose the tea that included the first three letters
of their own name significantly more frequently (64% of the time) than they chose the tea that
included the first three letters of their partner’s name (only 36% of the time). Furthermore, the
decisions were made unconsciously; the participants did not know why they chose the tea they
chose. When they were asked, more than 90% of the participants thought that they had chosen
on the basis of taste, whereas only 5% of them mentioned the real cause—that the brand name
contained the letters of their name.

Once we learn about the outcome of a given event (e.g., when we read about
the results of a research project), we frequently believe that we would have
been able to predict the outcome ahead of time. For instance, if half of a
class of students is told that research concerning attraction between people
has demonstrated that “opposites attract” and the other half is told that
research has demonstrated that “birds of a feather flock together,” most of
the students will report believing that the outcome that they just read about
is true, and that they would have predicted the outcome before they had read
about it. Of course, both of these contradictory outcomes cannot be true. (In
fact, psychological research finds that “birds of a feather flock together” is
generally the case.) The problem is that just reading a description of
research findings leads us to think of the many cases we know that support
the findings, and thus makes them seem believable. The tendency to think
that we could have predicted something that has already occurred that we
probably would not have been able to predict is called the hindsight bias, or
the tendency to think that we could have predicted something that has
already occurred that we probably would not have been able to predict.
Why Psychologists Rely on Empirical
Methods

All scientists, whether they are physicists, chemists, biologists, sociologists,

or psychologists, use empirical methods to study the topics that interest
them. Empirical methods include the processes of collecting and organizing
data and drawing conclusions about those data. The empirical methods used
by scientists have developed over many years and provide a basis for
collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data within a common framework in
which information can be shared. We can label the scientific method as the
set of assumptions, rules, and procedures that scientists use to conduct
empirical research.

Figure 1.2

Psychologists use a variety of techniques to measure and

understand human behavior.

Tim Sheerman-Chase – “Volunteer Duty” Psychology Testing –

CC BY 2.0

CAFNR – CC BY-NC 2.0

Although scientific research is an important method of studying human

behavior, not all questions can be answered using scientific approaches.
Statements that cannot be objectively measured or objectively determined to
be true or false are not within the domain of scientific inquiry. Scientists
therefore draw a distinction between values and facts. Values are personal
statements such as “Abortion should not be permitted in this country,” “I
will go to heaven when I die,” or “It is important to study psychology.”
Facts are objective statements determined to be accurate through empirical
study. Examples are “There were more than 21,000 homicides in the United
States in 2009,” or “Research demonstrates that individuals who are
exposed to highly stressful situations over long periods of time develop
more health problems than those who are not.”

Because values cannot be considered to be either true or false, science

cannot prove or disprove them. Nevertheless, as shown in Table 1.1
“Examples of Values and Facts in Scientific Research”, research can
sometimes provide facts that can help people develop their values. For
instance, science may be able to objectively measure the impact of
unwanted children on a society or the psychological trauma suffered by
women who have abortions. The effect of capital punishment on the crime
rate in the United States may also be determinable. This factual information
can and should be made available to help people formulate their values
about abortion and capital punishment, as well as to enable governments to
articulate appropriate policies. Values also frequently come into play in
determining what research is appropriate or important to conduct. For
instance, the U.S. government has recently supported and provided funding
for research on HIV, AIDS, and terrorism, while denying funding for
research using human stem cells.
Table 1.1 Examples of Values and Facts in Scientific Research
 Personal value Scientific fact

Welfare payments should be reduced The U.S. government paid more than $21 billion in
for unmarried parents. unemployment insurance in 2010.

There were more than 30,000 deaths caused by handguns

Handguns should be outlawed.
in the United States in 2009.

More than 35% of college students indicate that blue is

Blue is my favorite color.
their favorite color.

Smoking increases the incidence of cancer and heart

It is important to quit smoking.
disease.

Stangor, C. (2011). Research methods for the behavioral sciences (4th ed.). Mountain View, CA:
Cengage.

Although scientists use research to help establish facts, the distinction

between values and facts is not always clear-cut. Sometimes statements that
scientists consider to be factual later, on the basis of further research, turn
out to be partially or even entirely incorrect. Although scientific procedures
do not necessarily guarantee that the answers to questions will be objective
and unbiased, science is still the best method for drawing objective
conclusions about the world around us. When old facts are discarded, they
are replaced with new facts based on newer and more correct data. Although
science is not perfect, the requirements of empiricism and objectivity result
in a much greater chance of producing an accurate understanding of human
behavior than is available through other approaches.

Levels of Explanation in Psychology

The study of psychology spans many different topics at many different

levels of explanation which are the perspectives that are used to understand
behavior. Lower levels of explanation are more closely tied to biological
influences, such as genes, neurons, neurotransmitters, and hormones,
whereas the middle levels of explanation refer to the abilities and
characteristics of individual people, and the highest levels of explanation
relate to social groups, organizations, and cultures (Cacioppo, Berntson,
Sheridan, & McClintock, 2000).

The same topic can be studied within psychology at different levels of

explanation, as shown in Figure 1.3 “Levels of Explanation”. For instance,
the psychological disorder known as depression affects millions of people
worldwide and is known to be caused by biological, social, and cultural
factors. Studying and helping alleviate depression can be accomplished at
low levels of explanation by investigating how chemicals in the brain
influence the experience of depression. This approach has allowed
psychologists to develop and prescribe drugs, such as Prozac, which may
decrease depression in many individuals (Williams, Simpson, Simpson, &
Nahas, 2009). At the middle levels of explanation, psychological therapy is
directed at helping individuals cope with negative life experiences that may
cause depression. And at the highest level, psychologists study differences
in the prevalence of depression between men and women and across
cultures. The occurrence of psychological disorders, including depression, is
substantially higher for women than for men, and it is also higher in Western
cultures, such as in the United States, Canada, and Europe, than in Eastern
cultures, such as in India, China, and Japan (Chen, Wang, Poland, & Lin,
2009; Seedat et al., 2009). These sex and cultural differences provide insight
into the factors that cause depression. The study of depression in
psychology helps remind us that no one level of explanation can explain
everything. All levels of explanation, from biological to personal to cultural,
are essential for a better understanding of human behavior.
Figure 1.3 Levels of Explanation

The Challenges of Studying Psychology

Understanding and attempting to alleviate the costs of psychological

disorders such as depression is not easy, because psychological experiences
are extremely complex. The questions psychologists pose are as difficult as
those posed by doctors, biologists, chemists, physicists, and other scientists,
if not more so (Wilson, 1998).

A major goal of psychology is to predict behavior by understanding its

causes. Making predictions is difficult in part because people vary and
respond differently in different situations. Individual differences are the
variations among people on physical or psychological dimensions. For
instance, although many people experience at least some symptoms of
depression at some times in their lives, the experience varies dramatically
among people. Some people experience major negative events, such as
severe physical injuries or the loss of significant others, without
experiencing much depression, whereas other people experience severe
depression for no apparent reason. Other important individual differences
that we will discuss in the chapters to come include differences in
extraversion, intelligence, self-esteem, anxiety, aggression, and conformity.

Because of the many individual difference variables that influence behavior,

we cannot always predict who will become aggressive or who will perform
best in graduate school or on the job. The predictions made by psychologists
(and most other scientists) are only probabilistic. We can say, for instance,
that people who score higher on an intelligence test will, on average, do
better than people who score lower on the same test, but we cannot make
very accurate predictions about exactly how any one person will perform.

Another reason that it is difficult to predict behavior is that almost all

behavior is multiply determined, or produced by many factors. And these
factors occur at different levels of explanation. We have seen, for instance,
that depression is caused by lower-level genetic factors, by medium-level
personal factors, and by higher-level social and cultural factors. You should
always be skeptical about people who attempt to explain important human
behaviors, such as violence, child abuse, poverty, anxiety, or depression, in
terms of a single cause.

Furthermore, these multiple causes are not independent of one another; they
are associated such that when one cause is present other causes tend to be
present as well. This overlap makes it difficult to pinpoint which cause or
causes are operating. For instance, some people may be depressed because
of biological imbalances in neurotransmitters in their brain. The resulting
depression may lead them to act more negatively toward other people
around them, which then leads those other people to respond more
negatively to them, which then increases their depression. As a result, the
biological determinants of depression become intertwined with the social
responses of other people, making it difficult to disentangle the effects of
each cause.

Another difficulty in studying psychology is that much human behavior is

caused by factors that are outside our conscious awareness, making it
impossible for us, as individuals, to really understand them. The role of
unconscious processes was emphasized in the theorizing of the Austrian
neurologist Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), who argued that many
psychological disorders were caused by memories that we have repressed
and thus remain outside our consciousness. Unconscious processes will be
an important part of our study of psychology, and we will see that current
research has supported many of Freud’s ideas about the importance of the
unconscious in guiding behavior.

Key Takeaways

Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior.

Though it is easy to think that everyday situations have commonsense answers,

scientific studies have found that people are not always as good at predicting
outcomes as they think they are.

The hindsight bias leads us to think that we could have predicted events that we
actually could not have predicted.

People are frequently unaware of the causes of their own behaviors.

Psychologists use the scientific method to collect, analyze, and interpret evidence.

Employing the scientific method allows the scientist to collect empirical data
objectively, which adds to the accumulation of scientific knowledge.

Psychological phenomena are complex, and making predictions about them is

difficult because of individual differences and because they are multiply determined
 at different levels of explanation.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Can you think of a time when you used your intuition to analyze an outcome, only to
be surprised later to find that your explanation was completely incorrect? Did this
surprise help you understand how intuition may sometimes lead us astray?

2. Describe the scientific method in a way that someone who knows nothing about
science could understand it.

3. Consider a behavior that you find to be important and think about its potential causes
at different levels of explanation. How do you think psychologists would study this
behavior?

References

Brendl, C. M., Chattopadhyay, A., Pelham, B. W., & Carvallo, M. (2005).

Name letter branding: Valence transfers when product specific needs are
active. Journal of Consumer Research, 32(3), 405–415.

Cacioppo, J. T., Berntson, G. G., Sheridan, J. F., & McClintock, M. K.

(2000). Multilevel integrative analyses of human behavior: Social
neuroscience and the complementing nature of social and biological
approaches. Psychological Bulletin, 126(6), 829–843.

Chen, P.-Y., Wang, S.-C., Poland, R. E., & Lin, K.-M. (2009). Biological
variations in depression and anxiety between East and West. CNS
Neuroscience & Therapeutics, 15(3), 283–294.
Cutler, B. L., & Wells, G. L. (2009). Expert testimony regarding eyewitness
identification. In J. L. Skeem, S. O. Lilienfeld, & K. S. Douglas (Eds.),
Psychological science in the courtroom: Consensus and controversy (pp.
100–123). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (2007). Social cognition: From brains to

culture. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Gilovich, T. (1993). How we know what isn’t so: The fallibility of human
reason in everyday life. New York, NY: Free Press.

Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. Hillsdale, NJ:

Erlbaum.

Hsee, C. K., & Hastie, R. (2006). Decision and experience: Why don’t we
choose what makes us happy? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(1), 31–37.

Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Levine

(Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation (Vol. 15, pp. 192–240). Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press.

Nisbett, R. E., & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and

shortcomings of social judgment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Seedat, S., Scott, K. M., Angermeyer, M. C., Berglund, P., Bromet, E. J.,
Brugha, T. S.,…Kessler, R. C. (2009). Cross-national associations between
gender and mental disorders in the World Health Organization World Mental
Health Surveys. Archives of General Psychiatry, 66(7), 785–795.

Wells, G. L., & Hasel, L. E. (2008). Eyewitness identification: Issues in

common knowledge and generalization. In E. Borgida & S. T. Fiske (Eds.),
Beyond common sense: Psychological science in the courtroom (pp. 159–
176). Malden, NJ: Blackwell.
Williams, N., Simpson, A. N., Simpson, K., & Nahas, Z. (2009). Relapse
rates with long-term antidepressant drug therapy: A meta-analysis. Human
Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental, 24(5), 401–408.

Wilson, E. O. (1998). Consilience: The unity of knowledge. New York, NY:

Vintage Books
1.2 The Evolution of Psychology: History,
Approaches, and Questions

Learning Objectives

1. Explain how psychology changed from a philosophical to a scientific discipline.

2. List some of the most important questions that concern psychologists.

3. Outline the basic schools of psychology and how each school has contributed to
psychology.

In this section we will review the history of psychology with a focus on the
important questions that psychologists ask and the major approaches (or
schools) of psychological inquiry. The schools of psychology that we will
review are summarized in Table 1.2 “The Most Important Approaches
(Schools) of Psychology”, and Figure 1.5 “Timeline Showing Some of the
Most Important Psychologists” presents a timeline of some of the most
important psychologists, beginning with the early Greek philosophers and
extending to the present day. Table 1.2 “The Most Important Approaches
(Schools) of Psychology” and Figure 1.5 “Timeline Showing Some of the
Most Important Psychologists” both represent a selection of the most
important schools and people; to mention all the approaches and all the
psychologists who have contributed to the field is not possible in one
chapter.

The approaches that psychologists have used to assess the issues that
interest them have changed dramatically over the history of psychology.
Perhaps most importantly, the field has moved steadily from speculation
about behavior toward a more objective and scientific approach as the
technology available to study human behavior has improved (Benjamin &
Baker, 2004). There has also been an increasing influx of women into the
field. Although most early psychologists were men, now most
psychologists, including the presidents of the most important psychological
organizations, are women.
Table 1.2 The Most Important Approaches (Schools) of Psychology
 School of Important
Description
psychology contributors

Uses the method of introspection to identify the

Wilhelm Wundt,
Structuralism basic elements or “structures” of psychological
Edward B. Titchener
experience

Attempts to understand why animals and humans

Functionalism have developed the particular psychological aspects William James
that they currently possess

Focuses on the role of our unconscious thoughts, Sigmund Freud, Carl

Psychodynamic feelings, and memories and our early childhood Jung, Alfred Adler, Erik
experiences in determining behavior Erickson

Based on the premise that it is not possible to

objectively study the mind, and therefore that John B. Watson, B. F.
Behaviorism
psychologists should limit their attention to the Skinner
study of behavior itself

Hermann Ebbinghaus,
The study of mental processes, including perception,
Cognitive Sir Frederic Bartlett,
thinking, memory, and judgments
Jean Piaget

The study of how the social situations and the Fritz Heider, Leon
Social-cultural cultures in which people find themselves influence Festinger, Stanley
thinking and behavior Schachter

Figure 1.4 Female Psychologists

Although most of the earliest psychologists were men, women

are increasingly contributing to psychology. The first female

president of the American Psychological Association was Mary

Whiton Calkins (1861–1930). Calkins made significant

contributions to the study of memory and the self-concept.

Mahzarin Banaji (left), Marilynn Brewer (not pictured), and

Linda Bartoshuk (right) are all recent presidents of the

American Psychological Society.

Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung – Keynote: Mahzarin R. Banaji – CC

BY-SA 2.0; NIDCD Inside Newsletter – no copyright.

Figure 1.5 Timeline Showing Some of the Most Important Psychologists

Although it cannot capture every important psychologist, this timeline shows some of the most important

contributors to the history of psychology.

Although psychology has changed dramatically over its history, the most important questions that
psychologists address have remained constant. Some of these questions follow, and we will discuss
them both in this chapter and in the chapters to come:

Nature versus nurture. Are genes or environment most influential

in determining the behavior of individuals and in accounting for
differences among people? Most scientists now agree that both
genes and environment play crucial roles in most human
behaviors, and yet we still have much to learn about how nature
(our biological makeup) and nurture (the experiences that we have
during our lives) work together (Harris, 1998; Pinker, 2002). The
proportion of the observed differences on characteristics among
people (e.g., in terms of their height, intelligence, or optimism)
that is due to genetics is known as the heritability of the
characteristic, and we will make much use of this term in the
chapters to come. We will see, for example, that the heritability of
intelligence is very high (about .85 out of 1.0) and that the
heritability of extraversion is about .50. But we will also see that
nature and nurture interact in complex ways, making the question
of “Is it nature or is it nurture?” very difficult to answer.
Free will versus determinism. This question concerns the extent to
which people have control over their own actions. Are we the
products of our environment, guided by forces out of our control,
or are we able to choose the behaviors we engage in? Most of us
like to believe in free will, that we are able to do what we want—
for instance, that we could get up right now and go fishing. And
our legal system is premised on the concept of free will; we
punish criminals because we believe that they have choice over
their behaviors and freely choose to disobey the law. But as we
will discuss later in the research focus in this section, recent
research has suggested that we may have less control over our
own behavior than we think we do (Wegner, 2002).
Accuracy versus inaccuracy. To what extent are humans good
information processors? Although it appears that people are “good
enough” to make sense of the world around them and to make
decent decisions (Fiske, 2003), they are far from perfect. Human
 judgment is sometimes compromised by inaccuracies in our
thinking styles and by our motivations and emotions. For instance,
our judgment may be affected by our desires to gain material
wealth and to see ourselves positively and by emotional responses
to the events that happen to us.

Figure 1.6

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden (left

photo) meet with BP executives to discuss the disastrous oil

spill in the Gulf of Mexico (right photo). Psychologists study the

causes of poor judgments such as those made by these

executives.

The White House – United States Government Work;

International Bird Rescue Research Center – CC BY 2.0

Conscious versus unconscious processing. To what extent are we

conscious of our own actions and the causes of them, and to what
extent are our behaviors caused by influences that we are not
aware of? Many of the major theories of psychology, ranging from
the Freudian psychodynamic theories to contemporary work in
cognitive psychology, argue that much of our behavior is
determined by variables that we are not aware of.
Differences versus similarities. To what extent are we all similar,
and to what extent are we different? For instance, are there basic
psychological and personality differences between men and
 women, or are men and women by and large similar? And what
about people from different ethnicities and cultures? Are people
around the world generally the same, or are they influenced by
their backgrounds and environments in different ways?
Personality, social, and cross-cultural psychologists attempt to
answer these classic questions.

Early Psychologists

The earliest psychologists that we know about are the Greek philosophers Plato (428–347 BC) and
Aristotle (384–322 BC). These philosophers asked many of the same questions that today’s
psychologists ask; for instance, they questioned the distinction between nature and nurture and the
existence of free will. In terms of the former, Plato argued on the nature side, believing that certain
kinds of knowledge are innate or inborn, whereas Aristotle was more on the nurture side, believing
that each child is born as an “empty slate” (in Latin a tabula rasa) and that knowledge is primarily
acquired through learning and experience.

Figure 1.7
The earliest psychologists were the Greek

philosophers Plato (left) and Aristotle. Plato

believed that much knowledge was innate,

whereas Aristotle thought that each child was

born as an “empty slate” and that knowledge

was primarily acquired through learning and

experience.

Image Editor – Plato and Aristotle – CC BY 2.0

European philosophers continued to ask these fundamental questions during the Renaissance. For
instance, the French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650) also considered the issue of free will,
arguing in its favor and believing that the mind controls the body through the pineal gland in the brain
(an idea that made some sense at the time but was later proved incorrect). Descartes also believed in
the existence of innate natural abilities. A scientist as well as a philosopher, Descartes dissected
animals and was among the first to understand that the nerves controlled the muscles. He also
addressed the relationship between mind (the mental aspects of life) and body (the physical aspects of
life). Descartes believed in the principle of dualism: that the mind is fundamentally different from the
mechanical body. Other European philosophers, including Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), John Locke
(1632–1704), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), also weighed in on these issues.

The fundamental problem that these philosophers faced was that they had few methods for settling
their claims. Most philosophers didn’t conduct any research on these questions, in part because they
didn’t yet know how to do it, and in part because they weren’t sure it was even possible to objectively
study human experience. But dramatic changes came during the 1800s with the help of the first two
research psychologists: the German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), who developed a
psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, and the American psychologist William James (1842–
1910), who founded a psychology laboratory at Harvard University.

Structuralism: Introspection and the

Awareness of Subjective Experience

Wundt’s research in his laboratory in Liepzig focused on the nature of

consciousness itself. Wundt and his students believed that it was possible to
analyze the basic elements of the mind and to classify our conscious
experiences scientifically. Wundt began the field known as structuralism, a
school of psychology whose goal was to identify the basic elements or
“structures” of psychological experience. Its goal was to create a “periodic
table” of the “elements of sensations,” similar to the periodic table of
elements that had recently been created in chemistry.

Structuralists used the method of introspection to attempt to create a map of

the elements of consciousness. Introspection involves asking research
participants to describe exactly what they experience as they work on
mental tasks, such as viewing colors, reading a page in a book, or
performing a math problem. A participant who is reading a book might
report, for instance, that he saw some black and colored straight and curved
marks on a white background. In other studies the structuralists used newly
invented reaction time instruments to systematically assess not only what
the participants were thinking but how long it took them to do so. Wundt
discovered that it took people longer to report what sound they had just
heard than to simply respond that they had heard the sound. These studies
marked the first time researchers realized that there is a difference between
the sensation of a stimulus and the perception of that stimulus, and the idea
of using reaction times to study mental events has now become a mainstay
of cognitive psychology.

Figure 1.8
Wilhelm Wundt (seated at left) and Edward Titchener (right)

helped create the structuralist school of psychology. Their goal

was to classify the elements of sensation through introspection.

Wikimedia Commons – Wundt research group – no copyright;

David Webb – Edward Bradford Titchener – CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Perhaps the best known of the structuralists was Edward Bradford Titchener
(1867–1927). Titchener was a student of Wundt who came to the United
States in the late 1800s and founded a laboratory at Cornell University. In
his research using introspection, Titchener and his students claimed to have
identified more than 40,000 sensations, including those relating to vision,
hearing, and taste.

An important aspect of the structuralist approach was that it was rigorous

and scientific. The research marked the beginning of psychology as a
science, because it demonstrated that mental events could be quantified. But
the structuralists also discovered the limitations of introspection. Even
highly trained research participants were often unable to report on their
subjective experiences. When the participants were asked to do simple math
problems, they could easily do them, but they could not easily answer how
they did them. Thus the structuralists were the first to realize the importance
of unconscious processes—that many important aspects of human
psychology occur outside our conscious awareness, and that psychologists
cannot expect research participants to be able to accurately report on all of
their experiences.
Functionalism and Evolutionary Psychology

In contrast to Wundt, who attempted to understand the nature of

consciousness, the goal of William James and the other members of the
school of functionalism was to understand why animals and humans have
developed the particular psychological aspects that they currently possess
(Hunt, 1993). For James, one’s thinking was relevant only to one’s behavior.
As he put it in his psychology textbook, “My thinking is first and last and
always for the sake of my doing” (James, 1890).

James and the other members of the functionalist school were influenced by
Charles Darwin’s (1809–1882) theory of natural selection, which proposed
that the physical characteristics of animals and humans evolved because
they were useful, or functional. The functionalists believed that Darwin’s
theory applied to psychological characteristics too. Just as some animals
have developed strong muscles to allow them to run fast, the human brain,
so functionalists thought, must have adapted to serve a particular function in
human experience.

Figure 1.9
The functionalist school of psychology, founded by the American psychologist William James (left), was

influenced by the work of Charles Darwin.

Wikimedia Commons – public domain. Darwin portrait courtesy of George Richmond, Wikimedia

Commons – public domain.

Although functionalism no longer exists as a school of psychology, its basic principles have been

absorbed into psychology and continue to influence it in many ways. The work of the functionalists has

developed into the field of evolutionary psychology, a branch of psychology that applies the Darwinian

theory of natural selection to human and animal behavior (Dennett, 1995; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992).

Evolutionary psychology accepts the functionalists’ basic assumption, namely that many human

psychological systems, including memory, emotion, and personality, serve key adaptive functions. As we

will see in the chapters to come, evolutionary psychologists use evolutionary theory to understand many

different behaviors including romantic attraction, stereotypes and prejudice, and even the causes of many

psychological disorders.

A key component of the ideas of evolutionary psychology is fitness. Fitness refers to the extent to which

having a given characteristic helps the individual organism survive and reproduce at a higher rate than
do other members of the species who do not have the characteristic. Fitter organisms pass on their genes

more successfully to later generations, making the characteristics that produce fitness more likely to

become part of the organism’s nature than characteristics that do not produce fitness. For example, it has

been argued that the emotion of jealousy has survived over time in men because men who experience

jealousy are more fit than men who do not. According to this idea, the experience of jealously leads men

to be more likely to protect their mates and guard against rivals, which increases their reproductive

success (Buss, 2000).

Despite its importance in psychological theorizing, evolutionary psychology also has some limitations.

One problem is that many of its predictions are extremely difficult to test. Unlike the fossils that are used

to learn about the physical evolution of species, we cannot know which psychological characteristics our

ancestors possessed or did not possess; we can only make guesses about this. Because it is difficult to

directly test evolutionary theories, it is always possible that the explanations we apply are made up after

the fact to account for observed data (Gould & Lewontin, 1979). Nevertheless, the evolutionary approach

is important to psychology because it provides logical explanations for why we have many psychological

characteristics.

Psychodynamic Psychology

Perhaps the school of psychology that is most familiar to the general public
is the psychodynamic approach to understanding behavior, which was
championed by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and his followers.
Psychodynamic psychology is an approach to understanding human
behavior that focuses on the role of unconscious thoughts, feelings, and
memories. Freud developed his theories about behavior through extensive
analysis of the patients that he treated in his private clinical practice. Freud
believed that many of the problems that his patients experienced, including
anxiety, depression, and sexual dysfunction, were the result of the effects of
painful childhood experiences that the person could no longer remember.

Figure 1.10
Sigmund Freud and the other psychodynamic psychologists believed that many of our thoughts and

emotions are unconscious. Psychotherapy was designed to help patients recover and confront their “lost”

memories.

Max Halberstadt – Wikimedia Commons -public domain.

Freud’s ideas were extended by other psychologists whom he influenced,

including Carl Jung (1875–1961), Alfred Adler (1870–1937), Karen Horney
(1855–1952), and Erik Erikson (1902–1994). These and others who follow
the psychodynamic approach believe that it is possible to help the patient if
the unconscious drives can be remembered, particularly through a deep and
thorough exploration of the person’s early sexual experiences and current
sexual desires. These explorations are revealed through talk therapy and
dream analysis, in a process called psychoanalysis.

The founders of the school of psychodynamics were primarily practitioners

who worked with individuals to help them understand and confront their
psychological symptoms. Although they did not conduct much research on
their ideas, and although later, more sophisticated tests of their theories have
not always supported their proposals, psychodynamics has nevertheless had
substantial impact on the field of psychology, and indeed on thinking about
human behavior more generally (Moore & Fine, 1995). The importance of
the unconscious in human behavior, the idea that early childhood
experiences are critical, and the concept of therapy as a way of improving
human lives are all ideas that are derived from the psychodynamic approach
and that remain central to psychology.

Behaviorism and the Question of Free Will

Although they differed in approach, both structuralism and functionalism

were essentially studies of the mind. The psychologists associated with the
school of behaviorism, on the other hand, were reacting in part to the
difficulties psychologists encountered when they tried to use introspection
to understand behavior. Behaviorism is a school of psychology that is based
on the premise that it is not possible to objectively study the mind, and
therefore that psychologists should limit their attention to the study of
behavior itself. Behaviorists believe that the human mind is a “black box”
into which stimuli are sent and from which responses are received. They
argue that there is no point in trying to determine what happens in the box
because we can successfully predict behavior without knowing what
happens inside the mind. Furthermore, behaviorists believe that it is possible
to develop laws of learning that can explain all behaviors.

The first behaviorist was the American psychologist John B. Watson (1878–
1958). Watson was influenced in large part by the work of the Russian
physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), who had discovered that dogs would
salivate at the sound of a tone that had previously been associated with the
presentation of food. Watson and the other behaviorists began to use these
ideas to explain how events that people and other organisms experienced in
their environment (stimuli) could produce specific behaviors (responses).
For instance, in Pavlov’s research the stimulus (either the food or, after
learning, the tone) would produce the response of salivation in the dogs.

In his research Watson found that systematically exposing a child to fearful

stimuli in the presence of objects that did not themselves elicit fear could
lead the child to respond with a fearful behavior to the presence of the
stimulus (Watson & Rayner, 1920; Beck, Levinson, & Irons, 2009). In the
best known of his studies, an 8-month-old boy named Little Albert was used
as the subject. Here is a summary of the findings:
The boy was placed in the middle of a room; a white laboratory rat was placed near him
and he was allowed to play with it. The child showed no fear of the rat. In later trials,
the researchers made a loud sound behind Albert’s back by striking a steel bar with a
hammer whenever the baby touched the rat. The child cried when he heard the noise.
After several such pairings of the two stimuli, the child was again shown the rat. Now,
however, he cried and tried to move away from the rat.

In line with the behaviorist approach, the boy had learned to associate the
white rat with the loud noise, resulting in crying.

Figure 1.11
B. F. Skinner was a member of the behaviorist school of psychology. He argued that free will is an illusion

and that all behavior is determined by environmental factors.

Wikimedia Commons – CC BY 3.0.

The most famous behaviorist was Burrhus Frederick (B. F.) Skinner (1904–
1990), who expanded the principles of behaviorism and also brought them
to the attention of the public at large. Skinner used the ideas of stimulus and
response, along with the application of rewards or reinforcements, to train
pigeons and other animals. And he used the general principles of
behaviorism to develop theories about how best to teach children and how
to create societies that were peaceful and productive. Skinner even
developed a method for studying thoughts and feelings using the behaviorist
approach (Skinner, 1957, 1968, 1972).

Research Focus: Do We Have Free Will?

The behaviorist research program had important implications for the fundamental questions
about nature and nurture and about free will. In terms of the nature-nurture debate, the
behaviorists agreed with the nurture approach, believing that we are shaped exclusively by our
environments. They also argued that there is no free will, but rather that our behaviors are
determined by the events that we have experienced in our past. In short, this approach argues that
organisms, including humans, are a lot like puppets in a show who don’t realize that other people
are controlling them. Furthermore, although we do not cause our own actions, we nevertheless
believe that we do because we don’t realize all the influences acting on our behavior.

Recent research in psychology has suggested that Skinner and the behaviorists might well have
been right, at least in the sense that we overestimate our own free will in responding to the
events around us (Libet, 1985; Matsuhashi & Hallett, 2008; Wegner, 2002). In one
demonstration of the misperception of our own free will, neuroscientists Soon, Brass, Heinze,
and Haynes (2008) placed their research participants in a functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) brain scanner while they presented them with a series of letters on a computer screen.
The letter on the screen changed every one-half second. The participants were asked, whenever
they decided to, to press either of two buttons. Then they were asked to indicate which letter was
showing on the screen when they decided to press the button. The researchers analyzed the brain
images to see if they could predict which of the two buttons the participant was going to press,
even before the letter at which he or she had indicated the decision to press a button. Suggesting
that the intention to act occurred in the brain before the research participants became aware of it,
the researchers found that the prefrontal cortex region of the brain showed activation that could
be used to predict the button press as long as 10 seconds before the participants said that they
decided which button to press.
 Research has found that we are more likely to think that we control our behavior when the desire
to act occurs immediately prior to the outcome, when the thought is consistent with the outcome,
and when there are no other apparent causes for the behavior. Aarts, Custers, and Wegner (2005)
asked their research participants to control a rapidly moving square along with a computer that
was also controlling the square independently. The participants pressed a button to stop the
movement. When participants were exposed to words related to the location of the square just
before they stopped its movement, they became more likely to think that they controlled the
motion, even when it was actually the computer that stopped it. And Dijksterhuis, Preston,
Wegner, and Aarts (2008) found that participants who had just been exposed to first-person
singular pronouns, such as “I” and “me,” were more likely to believe that they controlled their
actions than were people who had seen the words “computer” or “God.”

The idea that we are more likely to take ownership for our actions in some cases than in others is
also seen in our attributions for success and failure. Because we normally expect that our
behaviors will be met with success, when we are successful we easily believe that the success is
the result of our own free will. When an action is met with failure, on the other hand, we are less
likely to perceive this outcome as the result of our free will, and we are more likely to blame the
outcome on luck or our teacher (Wegner, 2003).

The behaviorists made substantial contributions to psychology by

identifying the principles of learning. Although the behaviorists were
incorrect in their beliefs that it was not possible to measure thoughts and
feelings, their ideas provided new ideas that helped further our
understanding regarding the nature-nurture debate as well as the question of
free will. The ideas of behaviorism are fundamental to psychology and have
been developed to help us better understand the role of prior experiences in
a variety of areas of psychology.

The Cognitive Approach and Cognitive

Neuroscience

Science is always influenced by the technology that surrounds it, and

psychology is no exception. Thus it is no surprise that beginning in the
1960s, growing numbers of psychologists began to think about the brain and
about human behavior in terms of the computer, which was being developed
and becoming publicly available at that time. The analogy between the brain
and the computer, although by no means perfect, provided part of the
impetus for a new school of psychology called cognitive psychology.
Cognitive psychology is a field of psychology that studies mental
processes, including perception, thinking, memory, and judgment. These
actions correspond well to the processes that computers perform.

Although cognitive psychology began in earnest in the 1960s, earlier

psychologists had also taken a cognitive orientation. Some of the important
contributors to cognitive psychology include the German psychologist
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909), who studied the ability of people to
remember lists of words under different conditions, and the English
psychologist Sir Frederic Bartlett (1886–1969), who studied the cognitive
and social processes of remembering. Bartlett created short stories that were
in some ways logical but also contained some very unusual and unexpected
events. Bartlett discovered that people found it very difficult to recall the
stories exactly, even after being allowed to study them repeatedly, and he
hypothesized that the stories were difficult to remember because they did
not fit the participants’ expectations about how stories should go. The idea
that our memory is influenced by what we already know was also a major
idea behind the cognitive-developmental stage model of Swiss psychologist
Jean Piaget (1896–1980). Other important cognitive psychologists include
Donald E. Broadbent (1926–1993), Daniel Kahneman (1934–), George
Miller (1920–), Eleanor Rosch (1938–), and Amos Tversky (1937–1996).
 The War of the Ghosts

The War of the Ghosts was a story used by Sir Frederic Bartlett to test the influence of
prior expectations on memory. Bartlett found that even when his British research
participants were allowed to read the story many times they still could not remember it
well, and he believed this was because it did not fit with their prior knowledge.

One night two young men from Egulac went down to the river to hunt seals
and while they were there it became foggy and calm. Then they heard war-
cries, and they thought: “Maybe this is a war-party.” They escaped to the
shore, and hid behind a log. Now canoes came up, and they heard the noise
of paddles, and saw one canoe coming up to them. There were five men in
the canoe, and they said:
“What do you think? We wish to take you along. We are going up the river
to make war on the people.”
One of the young men said, “I have no arrows.”
“Arrows are in the canoe,” they said.
“I will not go along. I might be killed. My relatives do not know where I
have gone. But you,” he said, turning to the other, “may go with them.”
So one of the young men went, but the other returned home.
And the warriors went on up the river to a town on the other side of
Kalama. The people came down to the water and they began to fight, and
many were killed. But presently the young man heard one of the warriors
say, “Quick, let us go home: that Indian has been hit.” Now he thought:
“Oh, they are ghosts.” He did not feel sick, but they said he had been shot.
So the canoes went back to Egulac and the young man went ashore to his
house and made a fire. And he told everybody and said: “Behold I
accompanied the ghosts, and we went to fight. Many of our fellows were
killed, and many of those who attacked us were killed. They said I was hit,
and I did not feel sick.”
He told it all, and then he became quiet. When the sun rose he fell down.
Something black came out of his mouth. His face became contorted. The
people jumped up and cried.
He was dead. (Bartlett, 1932)

In its argument that our thinking has a powerful influence on behavior, the
cognitive approach provided a distinct alternative to behaviorism. According
to cognitive psychologists, ignoring the mind itself will never be sufficient
because people interpret the stimuli that they experience. For instance, when
a boy turns to a girl on a date and says, “You are so beautiful,” a behaviorist
would probably see that as a reinforcing (positive) stimulus. And yet the girl
might not be so easily fooled. She might try to understand why the boy is
making this particular statement at this particular time and wonder if he
might be attempting to influence her through the comment. Cognitive
psychologists maintain that when we take into consideration how stimuli are
evaluated and interpreted, we understand behavior more deeply.

Cognitive psychology remains enormously influential today, and it has

guided research in such varied fields as language, problem solving, memory,
intelligence, education, human development, social psychology, and
psychotherapy. The cognitive revolution has been given even more life over
the past decade as the result of recent advances in our ability to see the brain
in action using neuroimaging techniques. Neuroimaging is the use of
various techniques to provide pictures of the structure and function of the
living brain (Ilardi & Feldman, 2001). These images are used to diagnose
brain disease and injury, but they also allow researchers to view information
processing as it occurs in the brain, because the processing causes the
involved area of the brain to increase metabolism and show up on the scan.
We have already discussed the use of one neuroimaging technique,
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), in the research focus earlier
in this section, and we will discuss the use of neuroimaging techniques in
many areas of psychology in the chapters to follow.

Social-Cultural Psychology

A final school, which takes a higher level of analysis and which has had
substantial impact on psychology, can be broadly referred to as the social-
cultural approach. The field of social-cultural psychology is the study of
how the social situations and the cultures in which people find themselves
influence thinking and behavior. Social-cultural psychologists are
particularly concerned with how people perceive themselves and others, and
how people influence each other’s behavior. For instance, social
psychologists have found that we are attracted to others who are similar to
us in terms of attitudes and interests (Byrne, 1969), that we develop our own
beliefs and attitudes by comparing our opinions to those of others
(Festinger, 1954), and that we frequently change our beliefs and behaviors
to be similar to those of the people we care about—a process known as
conformity.

An important aspect of social-cultural psychology are social norms—the

ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that are shared by group members
and perceived by them as appropriate (Asch, 1952; Cialdini, 1993). Norms
include customs, traditions, standards, and rules, as well as the general
values of the group. Many of the most important social norms are
determined by the culture in which we live, and these cultures are studied by
cross-cultural psychologists. A culture represents the common set of social
norms, including religious and family values and other moral beliefs, shared
by the people who live in a geographical region (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus,
& Nisbett, 1998; Markus, Kitayama, & Heiman, 1996; Matsumoto, 2001).
Cultures influence every aspect of our lives, and it is not inappropriate to
say that our culture defines our lives just as much as does our evolutionary
experience (Mesoudi, 2009).

Psychologists have found that there is a fundamental difference in social

norms between Western cultures (including those in the United States,
Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand) and East Asian
cultures (including those in China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, India, and
Southeast Asia). Norms in Western cultures are primarily oriented toward
individualism, which is about valuing the self and one’s independence from
others. Children in Western cultures are taught to develop and to value a
sense of their personal self, and to see themselves in large part as separate
from the other people around them. Children in Western cultures feel special
about themselves; they enjoy getting gold stars on their projects and the best
grade in the class. Adults in Western cultures are oriented toward promoting
their own individual success, frequently in comparison to (or even at the
expense of) others.

Norms in the East Asian culture, on the other hand, are oriented toward
interdependence or collectivism. In these cultures children are taught to
focus on developing harmonious social relationships with others. The
predominant norms relate to group togetherness and connectedness, and
duty and responsibility to one’s family and other groups. When asked to
describe themselves, the members of East Asian cultures are more likely
than those from Western cultures to indicate that they are particularly
concerned about the interests of others, including their close friends and
their colleagues.

David Amsler – Walking Alone – CC BY 2.0;

Amanda – Family – CC BY-NC 2.0.

In Western cultures social norms promote a focus on the self

(individualism), whereas in Eastern cultures the focus is more

on families and social groups (collectivism).

Another important cultural difference is the extent to which people in

different cultures are bound by social norms and customs, rather than being
free to express their own individuality without considering social norms
(Chan, Gelfand, Triandis, & Tzeng, 1996). Cultures also differ in terms of
personal space, such as how closely individuals stand to each other when
talking, as well as the communication styles they employ.

It is important to be aware of cultures and cultural differences because

people with different cultural backgrounds increasingly come into contact
with each other as a result of increased travel and immigration and the
development of the Internet and other forms of communication. In the
United States, for instance, there are many different ethnic groups, and the
proportion of the population that comes from minority (non-White) groups
is increasing from year to year. The social-cultural approach to
understanding behavior reminds us again of the difficulty of making broad
generalizations about human nature. Different people experience things
differently, and they experience them differently in different cultures.

The Many Disciplines of Psychology

Psychology is not one discipline but rather a collection of many

subdisciplines that all share at least some common approaches and that
work together and exchange knowledge to form a coherent discipline (Yang
& Chiu, 2009). Because the field of psychology is so broad, students may
wonder which areas are most suitable for their interests and which types of
careers might be available to them. Table 1.3 “Some Career Paths in
Psychology” will help you consider the answers to these questions. You can
learn more about these different fields of psychology and the careers
associated with them at http://www.apa.org/careers/psyccareers/.

Table 1.3 Some Career Paths in Psychology

Psychology field Description Career opportunities

This field examines the

physiological bases of behavior
Most biopsychologists work in research
in animals and humans by
Biopsychology settings—for instance, at universities, for
studying the functioning of
and neuroscience the federal government, and in private
different brain areas and the
research labs.
effects of hormones and
neurotransmitters on behavior.

Clinical and counseling psychologists

These are the largest fields of provide therapy to patients with the goal of
Clinical and psychology. The focus is on the improving their life experiences. They work
counseling assessment, diagnosis, causes, in hospitals, schools, social agencies, and in
psychology and treatment of mental private practice. Because the demand for
disorders. this career is high, entry to academic
programs is highly competitive.

This field uses sophisticated

Cognitive psychologists work primarily in
research methods, including
Cognitive research settings, although some (such as
reaction time and brain imaging
psychology those who specialize in human-computer
to study memory, language, and
interactions) consult for businesses.
thinking of humans.

Many work in research settings, although

These psychologists conduct
others work in schools and community
Developmental research on the cognitive,
agencies to help improve and evaluate the
psychology emotional, and social changes
effectiveness of intervention programs such
that occur across the lifespan.
as Head Start.
Psychology field Description Career opportunities

Forensic psychologists apply

Forensic psychologists work in the criminal
psychological principles to
justice system. They may testify in court
Forensic understand the behavior of
and may provide information about the
psychology judges, attorneys, courtroom
reliability of eyewitness testimony and jury
juries, and others in the
selection.
criminal justice system.

Health psychologists are

Health psychologists work with medical
concerned with understanding
Health professionals in clinical settings to promote
how biology, behavior, and the
psychology better health, conduct research, and teach at
social situation influence health
universities.
and illness.

There are a wide variety of career

opportunities in these fields, generally
Industrial-organizational working in businesses. These psychologists
Industrial-
psychology applies psychology help select employees, evaluate employee
organizational and
to the workplace with the goal performance, and examine the effects of
environmental
of improving the performance different working conditions on behavior.
psychology
and well-being of employees. They may also work to design equipment
and environments that improve employee
performance and reduce accidents.

These psychologists study Most work in academic settings, but the

people and the differences skills of personality psychologists are also
among them. The goal is to in demand in business—for instance, in
Personality
develop theories that explain advertising and marketing. PhD programs
psychology
the psychological processes of in personality psychology are often
individuals, and to focus on connected with programs in social
individual differences. psychology.
Psychology field Description Career opportunities

School psychologists work in elementary

This field studies how people and secondary schools or school district
School and learn in school, the offices with students, teachers, parents, and
educational effectiveness of school administrators. They may assess children’s
psychology programs, and the psychology psychological and learning problems and
of teaching. develop programs to minimize the impact
of these problems.

This field examines people’s

interactions with other people. Many social psychologists work in
Social and cross-
Topics of study include marketing, advertising, organizational,
cultural
conformity, group behavior, systems design, and other applied
psychology
leadership, attitudes, and person psychology fields.
perception.

This field studies the

psychological aspects of sports
behavior. The goal is to
Sports psychologists work in gyms,
Sports understand the psychological
schools, professional sports teams, and
psychology factors that influence
other areas where sports are practiced.
performance in sports,
including the role of exercise
and team interactions.

Psychology in Everyday Life: How to Effectively Learn and Remember

One way that the findings of psychological research may be particularly helpful to you is in
terms of improving your learning and study skills. Psychological research has provided a
substantial amount of knowledge about the principles of learning and memory. This information
can help you do better in this and other courses, and can also help you better learn new concepts
and techniques in other areas of your life.

The most important thing you can learn in college is how to better study, learn, and remember.
These skills will help you throughout your life, as you learn new jobs and take on other
responsibilities. There are substantial individual differences in learning and memory, such that
some people learn faster than others. But even if it takes you longer to learn than you think it
should, the extra time you put into studying is well worth the effort. And you can learn to learn
—learning to effectively study and to remember information is just like learning any other skill,
such as playing a sport or a video game.

To learn well, you need to be ready to learn. You cannot learn well when you are tired, when you
are under stress, or if you are abusing alcohol or drugs. Try to keep a consistent routine of
sleeping and eating. Eat moderately and nutritiously, and avoid drugs that can impair memory,
particularly alcohol. There is no evidence that stimulants such as caffeine, amphetamines, or any
of the many “memory enhancing drugs” on the market will help you learn (Gold, Cahill, &
Wenk, 2002; McDaniel, Maier, & Einstein, 2002). Memory supplements are usually no more
effective than drinking a can of sugared soda, which also releases glucose and thus improves
memory slightly.

Psychologists have studied the ways that best allow people to acquire new information, to retain
it over time, and to retrieve information that has been stored in our memories. One important
finding is that learning is an active process. To acquire information most effectively, we must
actively manipulate it. One active approach is rehearsal—repeating the information that is to be
learned over and over again. Although simple repetition does help us learn, psychological
research has found that we acquire information most effectively when we actively think about or
elaborate on its meaning and relate the material to something else.

When you study, try to elaborate by connecting the information to other things that you already
know. If you want to remember the different schools of psychology, for instance, try to think
about how each of the approaches is different from the others. As you make the comparisons
among the approaches, determine what is most important about each one and then relate it to the
features of the other approaches. In an important study showing the effectiveness of elaborative
encoding, Rogers, Kuiper, and Kirker (1977) found that students learned information best when
they related it to aspects of themselves (a phenomenon known as the self-reference effect). This
research suggests that imagining how the material relates to your own interests and goals will
help you learn it.

An approach known as the method of loci involves linking each of the pieces of information that
you need to remember to places that you are familiar with. You might think about the house that
you grew up in and the rooms in it. Then you could put the behaviorists in the bedroom, the
structuralists in the living room, and the functionalists in the kitchen. Then when you need to
remember the information, you retrieve the mental image of your house and should be able to
“see” each of the people in each of the areas.

One of the most fundamental principles of learning is known as the spacing effect. Both humans
and animals more easily remember or learn material when they study the material in several
shorter study periods over a longer period of time, rather than studying it just once for a long
period of time. Cramming for an exam is a particularly ineffective way to learn.

Psychologists have also found that performance is improved when people set difficult yet
realistic goals for themselves (Locke & Latham, 2006). You can use this knowledge to help you
learn. Set realistic goals for the time you are going to spend studying and what you are going to
learn, and try to stick to those goals. Do a small amount every day, and by the end of the week
you will have accomplished a lot.

Our ability to adequately assess our own knowledge is known as metacognition. Research
suggests that our metacognition may make us overconfident, leading us to believe that we have
learned material even when we have not. To counteract this problem, don’t just go over your
notes again and again. Instead, make a list of questions and then see if you can answer them.
Study the information again and then test yourself again after a few minutes. If you made any
mistakes, study again. Then wait for a half hour and test yourself again. Then test again after 1
day and after 2 days. Testing yourself by attempting to retrieve information in an active manner
is better than simply studying the material because it will help you determine if you really know
it.

In summary, everyone can learn to learn better. Learning is an important skill, and following the
previously mentioned guidelines will likely help you learn better.

Key Takeaways

The first psychologists were philosophers, but the field became more empirical and
objective as more sophisticated scientific approaches were developed and employed.

Some basic questions asked by psychologists include those about nature versus
nurture, free will versus determinism, accuracy versus inaccuracy, and conscious
versus unconscious processing.

The structuralists attempted to analyze the nature of consciousness using

introspection.

The functionalists based their ideas on the work of Darwin, and their approaches led
to the field of evolutionary psychology.

The behaviorists explained behavior in terms of stimulus, response, and

reinforcement, while denying the presence of free will.

Cognitive psychologists study how people perceive, process, and remember

information.

Psychodynamic psychology focuses on unconscious drives and the potential to

improve lives through psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.

The social-cultural approach focuses on the social situation, including how cultures
and social norms influence our behavior.
 Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. What type of questions can psychologists answer that philosophers might not be able
to answer as completely or as accurately? Explain why you think psychologists can
answer these questions better than philosophers can.

2. Choose one of the major questions of psychology and provide some evidence from
your own experience that supports one side or the other.

3. Choose two of the fields of psychology discussed in this section and explain how
they differ in their approaches to understanding behavior and the level of explanation
at which they are focused.

References

Aarts, H., Custers, R., & Wegner, D. M. (2005). On the inference of

personal authorship: Enhancing experienced agency by priming effect
information. Consciousness and Cognition: An International Journal, 14(3),
439–458.

Asch, S. E. (1952). Social psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall;

Cialdini, R. B. (1993). Influence: Science and practice (3rd ed.). New York,
NY: Harper Collins College.

Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Benjamin, L. T., Jr., & Baker, D. B. (2004). From seance to science: A

history of the profession of psychology in America. Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth/Thomson.
Buss, D. M. (2000). The dangerous passion: Why jealousy is as necessary
as love and sex. New York, NY: Free Press.

Byrne, D. (1969). Attitudes and attraction. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances

in experimental social psychology (Vol. 4, pp. 35–89). New York, NY:
Academic Press.

Chan, D. K. S., Gelfand, M. J., Triandis, H. C., & Tzeng, O. (1996).

Tightness-looseness revisited: Some preliminary analyses in Japan and the
United States. International Journal of Psychology, 31, 1–12.

Dennett, D. (1995). Darwin’s dangerous idea: Evolution and the meanings

of life. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster; Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L.
(1992). The psychological foundations of culture. In J. H. Barkow & L.
Cosmides (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the
generation of culture (p. 666). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Dijksterhuis, A., Preston, J., Wegner, D. M., & Aarts, H. (2008). Effects of
subliminal priming of self and God on self-attribution of authorship for
events. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(1), 2–9.

Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human

Relations, 7, 117–140.

Fiske, S. T. (2003). Social beings. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Fiske, A., Kitayama, S., Markus, H., & Nisbett, R. (1998). The cultural
matrix of social psychology. In D. Gilbert, S. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.),
The handbook of social psychology (4th ed., pp. 915–981). New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill.

Gold, P. E., Cahill, L., & Wenk, G. L. (2002). Ginkgo biloba: A cognitive
enhancer? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 3(1), 2–11.
Gould, S. J., & Lewontin, R. C. (1979). The spandrels of San Marco and the
Panglossian paradigm: A critique of the adaptationist programme. In
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London (Series B, Vol. 205, pp. 581–
598).

Harris, J. (1998). The nurture assumption: Why children turn out the way
they do. New York, NY: Touchstone Books; Pinker, S. (2002). The blank
slate: The modern denial of human nature. New York, NY: Penguin Putnam.

Hunt, M. (1993). The story of psychology. New York, NY: Anchor Books.

Ilardi, S. S., & Feldman, D. (2001). The cognitive neuroscience paradigm: A

unifying metatheoretical framework for the science and practice of clinical
psychology. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 57(9), 1067–1088.

James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. New York, NY: Dover.

Libet, B. (1985). Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious

will in voluntary action. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 8(4), 529–566;
Matsuhashi, M., & Hallett, M. (2008). The timing of the conscious intention
to move. European Journal of Neuroscience, 28(11), 2344–2351.

Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2006). New directions in goal-setting theory.

Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15(5), 265–268.

Markus, H. R., Kitayama, S., & Heiman, R. J. (1996). Culture and “basic”
psychological principles. In E. T. Higgins & A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.), Social
psychology: Handbook of basic principles (pp. 857–913). New York, NY:
Guilford Press.

Matsumoto, D. (Ed.). (2001). The handbook of culture and psychology. New

York, NY: Oxford University Press.
McDaniel, M. A., Maier, S. F., & Einstein, G. O. (2002). “Brain-specific”
nutrients: A memory cure? Psychological Science in the Public Interest,
3(1), 12–38.

Mesoudi, A. (2009). How cultural evolutionary theory can inform social

psychology and vice versa. Psychological Review, 116(4), 929–952.

Moore, B. E., & Fine, B. D. (1995). Psychoanalysis: The major concepts.

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Rogers, T. B., Kuiper, N. A., & Kirker, W. S. (1977). Self-reference and the
encoding of personal information. Journal of Personality & Social
Psychology, 35(9), 677–688.

Soon, C. S., Brass, M., Heinze, H.-J., & Haynes, J.-D. (2008). Unconscious
determinants of free decisions in the human brain. Nature Neuroscience,
11(5), 543–545.

Skinner, B. (1957). Verbal behavior. Acton, MA: Copley; Skinner, B.

(1968). The technology of teaching. New York, NY: Appleton-Century-
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Vintage Books.

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of Experimental Psychology, 3(1), 1–14; Beck, H. P., Levinson, S., & Irons,
G. (2009). Finding Little Albert: A journey to John B. Watson’s infant
laboratory. American Psychologist, 64(7), 605–614.

Wegner, D. M. (2002). The illusion of conscious will. Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press.

Wegner, D. M. (2003). The mind’s best trick: How we experience conscious

will. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(2), 65–69.
Yang, Y.-J., & Chiu, C.-Y. (2009). Mapping the structure and dynamics of
psychological knowledge: Forty years of APA journal citations (1970–
2009). Review of General Psychology, 13(4), 349–356.
1.3 Chapter Summary

Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Most psychologists

work in research laboratories, hospitals, and other field settings where they
study the behavior of humans and animals. Some psychologists are
researchers and others are practitioners, but all psychologists use scientific
methods to inform their work.

Although it is easy to think that everyday situations have commonsense

answers, scientific studies have found that people are not always as good at
predicting outcomes as they often think they are. The hindsight bias leads
us to think that we could have predicted events that we could not actually
have predicted.

Employing the scientific method allows psychologists to objectively and

systematically understand human behavior.

Psychologists study behavior at different levels of explanation, ranging

from lower biological levels to higher social and cultural levels. The same
behaviors can be studied and explained within psychology at different
levels of explanation.

The first psychologists were philosophers, but the field became more
objective as more sophisticated scientific approaches were developed and
employed. Some of the most important historical schools of psychology
include structuralism, functionalism, behaviorism, and psychodynamic
psychology. Cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, and social-
cultural psychology are some important contemporary approaches.

Some of the basic questions asked by psychologists, both historically and

currently, include those about the relative roles of nature versus nurture in
behavior, free will versus determinism, accuracy versus inaccuracy, and
conscious versus unconscious processing.

Psychological phenomena are complex, and making predictions about them

is difficult because they are multiply determined at different levels of
explanation. Research has found that people are frequently unaware of the
causes of their own behaviors.

There are a variety of available career choices within psychology that

provide employment in many different areas of interest.
Chapter 2. Psychological Science

Psychologists study the behavior of both humans and animals, and the main
purpose of this research is to help us understand people and to improve the
quality of human lives. The results of psychological research are relevant to
problems such as learning and memory, homelessness, psychological
disorders, family instability, and aggressive behavior and violence.
Psychological research is used in a range of important areas, from public
policy to driver safety. It guides court rulings with respect to racism and
sexism (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954; Fiske, Bersoff, Borgida,
Deaux, & Heilman, 1991), as well as court procedure, in the use of lie
detectors during criminal trials, for example (Saxe, Dougherty, & Cross,
1985). Psychological research helps us understand how driver behavior
affects safety (Fajen & Warren, 2003), which methods of educating children
are most effective (Alexander & Winne, 2006; Woolfolk-Hoy, 2005), how to
best detect deception (DePaulo et al., 2003), and the causes of terrorism
(Borum, 2004).

Some psychological research is basic research. Basic research is research

that answers fundamental questions about behavior. For instance,
biopsychologists study how nerves conduct impulses from the receptors in
the skin to the brain, and cognitive psychologists investigate how different
types of studying influence memory for pictures and words. There is no
particular reason to examine such things except to acquire a better
knowledge of how these processes occur. Applied research is research that
investigates issues that have implications for everyday life and provides
solutions to everyday problems. Applied research has been conducted to
study, among many other things, the most effective methods for reducing
depression, the types of advertising campaigns that serve to reduce drug and
alcohol abuse, the key predictors of managerial success in business, and the
indicators of effective government programs, such as Head Start.

Basic research and applied research inform each other, and advances in
science occur more rapidly when each type of research is conducted (Lewin,
1999). For instance, although research concerning the role of practice on
memory for lists of words is basic in orientation, the results could
potentially be applied to help children learn to read. Correspondingly,
psychologist-practitioners who wish to reduce the spread of AIDS or to
promote volunteering frequently base their programs on the results of basic
research. This basic AIDS or volunteering research is then applied to help
change people’s attitudes and behaviors.

The results of psychological research are reported primarily in research

articles published in scientific journals, and your instructor may require you
to read some of these. The research reported in scientific journals has been
evaluated, critiqued, and improved by scientists in the field through the
process of peer review. In this book there are many citations to original
research articles, and I encourage you to read those reports when you find a
topic interesting. Most of these papers are readily available online through
your college or university library. It is only by reading the original reports
that you will really see how the research process works. Some of the most
important journals in psychology are provided here for your information.

Psychological Journals

The following is a list of some of the most important journals in various subdisciplines of
psychology. The research articles in these journals are likely to be available in your college
library. You should try to read the primary source material in these journals when you can.

General Psychology
 American Journal of Psychology

American Psychologist

Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Psychological Bulletin

Psychological Methods

Psychological Review

Psychological Science

Biopsychology and Neuroscience

Behavioral Neuroscience

Journal of Comparative Psychology

Psychophysiology

Clinical and Counseling Psychology

Journal of Abnormal Psychology

Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology

Journal of Counseling Psychology

Cognitive Psychology

Cognition

Cognitive Psychology

Journal of Experimental Psychology

Journal of Memory and Language

Perception & Psychophysics

Cross-Cultural, Personality, and Social Psychology

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology

 Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Journal of Personality

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Developmental Psychology

Child Development

Developmental Psychology

Educational and School Psychology

Educational Psychologist

Journal of Educational Psychology

Review of Educational Research

Environmental, Industrial, and Organizational Psychology

Journal of Applied Psychology

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Organizational Psychology

Organizational Research Methods

Personnel Psychology

In this chapter you will learn how psychologists develop and test their
research ideas; how they measure the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of
individuals; and how they analyze and interpret the data they collect. To
really understand psychology, you must also understand how and why the
research you are reading about was conducted and what the collected data
mean. Learning about the principles and practices of psychological research
will allow you to critically read, interpret, and evaluate research.

In addition to helping you learn the material in this course, the ability to
interpret and conduct research is also useful in many of the careers that you
might choose. For instance, advertising and marketing researchers study
how to make advertising more effective, health and medical researchers
study the impact of behaviors such as drug use and smoking on illness, and
computer scientists study how people interact with computers. Furthermore,
even if you are not planning a career as a researcher, jobs in almost any area
of social, medical, or mental health science require that a worker be
informed about psychological research.

References

Alexander, P. A., & Winne, P. H. (Eds.). (2006). Handbook of educational

psychology (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates;
Woolfolk-Hoy, A. E. (2005). Educational psychology (9th ed.). Boston, MA:
Allyn & Bacon.

Borum, R. (2004). Psychology of terrorism. Tampa: University of South

Florida.

Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954); Fiske, S. T., Bersoff, D.
N., Borgida, E., Deaux, K., & Heilman, M. E. (1991). Social science
research on trial: Use of sex stereotyping research in Price Waterhouse v.
Hopkins. American Psychologist, 46(10), 1049–1060.

DePaulo, B. M., Lindsay, J. J., Malone, B. E., Muhlenbruck, L., Charlton,

K., & Cooper, H. (2003). Cues to deception. Psychological Bulletin, 129(1),
74–118.
Fajen, B. R., & Warren, W. H. (2003). Behavioral dynamics of steering,
obstacle avoidance, and route selection. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 29(2), 343–362.

Lewin, K. (1999). The complete social scientist: A Kurt Lewin reader (M. Gold, Ed.). Washington,
DC: American Psychological Association.

Saxe, L., Dougherty, D., & Cross, T. (1985). The validity of polygraph testing: Scientific analysis and
public controversy. American Psychologist, 40, 355–366.
2.1 Psychologists Use the Scientific Method
to Guide Their Research

Learning Objectives

1. Describe the principles of the scientific method and explain its importance in
conducting and interpreting research.

2. Differentiate laws from theories and explain how research hypotheses are developed
and tested.

3. Discuss the procedures that researchers use to ensure that their research with humans
and with animals is ethical.

Psychologists aren’t the only people who seek to understand human

behavior and solve social problems. Philosophers, religious leaders, and
politicians, among others, also strive to provide explanations for human
behavior. But psychologists believe that research is the best tool for
understanding human beings and their relationships with others. Rather than
accepting the claim of a philosopher that people do (or do not) have free
will, a psychologist would collect data to empirically test whether or not
people are able to actively control their own behavior. Rather than accepting
a politician’s contention that creating (or abandoning) a new center for
mental health will improve the lives of individuals in the inner city, a
psychologist would empirically assess the effects of receiving mental health
treatment on the quality of life of the recipients. The statements made by
psychologists are empirical, which means they are based on systematic
collection and analysis of data.
The Scientific Method

All scientists (whether they are physicists, chemists, biologists, sociologists,

or psychologists) are engaged in the basic processes of collecting data and
drawing conclusions about those data. The methods used by scientists have
developed over many years and provide a common framework for
developing, organizing, and sharing information. The scientific method is
the set of assumptions, rules, and procedures scientists use to conduct
research.

In addition to requiring that science be empirical, the scientific method

demands that the procedures used be objective, or free from the personal
bias or emotions of the scientist. The scientific method proscribes how
scientists collect and analyze data, how they draw conclusions from data,
and how they share data with others. These rules increase objectivity by
placing data under the scrutiny of other scientists and even the public at
large. Because data are reported objectively, other scientists know exactly
how the scientist collected and analyzed the data. This means that they do
not have to rely only on the scientist’s own interpretation of the data; they
may draw their own, potentially different, conclusions.

Most new research is designed to replicate—that is, to repeat, add to, or

modify—previous research findings. The scientific method therefore results
in an accumulation of scientific knowledge through the reporting of research
and the addition to and modifications of these reported findings by other
scientists.

Laws and Theories as Organizing Principles

One goal of research is to organize information into meaningful statements

that can be applied in many situations. Principles that are so general as to
apply to all situations in a given domain of inquiry are known as laws.
There are well-known laws in the physical sciences, such as the law of
gravity and the laws of thermodynamics, and there are some universally
accepted laws in psychology, such as the law of effect and Weber’s law. But
because laws are very general principles and their validity has already been
well established, they are themselves rarely directly subjected to scientific
test.

The next step down from laws in the hierarchy of organizing principles is
theory. A theory is an integrated set of principles that explains and predicts
many, but not all, observed relationships within a given domain of inquiry.
One example of an important theory in psychology is the stage theory of
cognitive development proposed by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. The
theory states that children pass through a series of cognitive stages as they
grow, each of which must be mastered in succession before movement to the
next cognitive stage can occur. This is an extremely useful theory in human
development because it can be applied to many different content areas and
can be tested in many different ways.

Good theories have four important characteristics. First, good theories are
general, meaning they summarize many different outcomes. Second, they
are parsimonious, meaning they provide the simplest possible account of
those outcomes. The stage theory of cognitive development meets both of
these requirements. It can account for developmental changes in behavior
across a wide variety of domains, and yet it does so parsimoniously—by
hypothesizing a simple set of cognitive stages. Third, good theories provide
ideas for future research. The stage theory of cognitive development has
been applied not only to learning about cognitive skills, but also to the study
of children’s moral (Kohlberg, 1966) and gender (Ruble & Martin, 1998)
development.
Finally, good theories are falsifiable (Popper, 1959), which means the
variables of interest can be adequately measured and the relationships
between the variables that are predicted by the theory can be shown through
research to be incorrect. The stage theory of cognitive development is
falsifiable because the stages of cognitive reasoning can be measured and
because if research discovers, for instance, that children learn new tasks
before they have reached the cognitive stage hypothesized to be required for
that task, then the theory will be shown to be incorrect.

No single theory is able to account for all behavior in all cases. Rather,
theories are each limited in that they make accurate predictions in some
situations or for some people but not in other situations or for other people.
As a result, there is a constant exchange between theory and data: Existing
theories are modified on the basis of collected data, and the new modified
theories then make new predictions that are tested by new data, and so forth.
When a better theory is found, it will replace the old one. This is part of the
accumulation of scientific knowledge.

The Research Hypothesis

Theories are usually framed too broadly to be tested in a single experiment.

Therefore, scientists use a more precise statement of the presumed
relationship among specific parts of a theory—a research hypothesis—as the
basis for their research. A research hypothesis is a specific and falsifiable
prediction about the relationship between or among two or more variables,
where a variable is any attribute that can assume different values among
different people or across different times or places. The research hypothesis
states the existence of a relationship between the variables of interest and
the specific direction of that relationship. For instance, the research
hypothesis “Using marijuana will reduce learning” predicts that there is a
relationship between a variable “using marijuana” and another variable
called “learning.” Similarly, in the research hypothesis “Participating in
psychotherapy will reduce anxiety,” the variables that are expected to be
related are “participating in psychotherapy” and “level of anxiety.”

When stated in an abstract manner, the ideas that form the basis of a
research hypothesis are known as conceptual variables. Conceptual
variables are abstract ideas that form the basis of research hypotheses.
Sometimes the conceptual variables are rather simple—for instance, “age,”
“gender,” or “weight.” In other cases the conceptual variables represent
more complex ideas, such as “anxiety,” “cognitive development,”
“learning,” self-esteem,” or “sexism.”

The first step in testing a research hypothesis involves turning the

conceptual variables into measured variables, which are variables
consisting of numbers that represent the conceptual variables. For instance,
the conceptual variable “participating in psychotherapy” could be
represented as the measured variable “number of psychotherapy hours the
patient has accrued” and the conceptual variable “using marijuana” could be
assessed by having the research participants rate, on a scale from 1 to 10,
how often they use marijuana or by administering a blood test that measures
the presence of the chemicals in marijuana.

Psychologists use the term operational definition to refer to a precise

statement of how a conceptual variable is turned into a measured variable.
The relationship between conceptual and measured variables in a research
hypothesis is diagrammed in Figure 2.1 “Diagram of a Research
Hypothesis”. The conceptual variables are represented within circles at the
top of the figure, and the measured variables are represented within squares
at the bottom. The two vertical arrows, which lead from the conceptual
variables to the measured variables, represent the operational definitions of
the two variables. The arrows indicate the expectation that changes in the
conceptual variables (psychotherapy and anxiety in this example) will cause
changes in the corresponding measured variables. The measured variables
are then used to draw inferences about the conceptual variables.

Figure 2.1 Diagram of a Research Hypothesis

In this research hypothesis, the conceptual variable of attending psychotherapy is

operationalized using the number of hours of psychotherapy the client has
completed, and the conceptual variable of anxiety is operationalized using self-
reported levels of anxiety. The research hypothesis is that more psychotherapy will
be related to less reported anxiety.

Table 2.1 “Examples of the Operational Definitions of Conceptual Variables

That Have Been Used in Psychological Research” lists some potential
operational definitions of conceptual variables that have been used in
psychological research. As you read through this list, note that in contrast to
the abstract conceptual variables, the measured variables are very specific.
This specificity is important for two reasons. First, more specific definitions
mean that there is less danger that the collected data will be misunderstood
by others. Second, specific definitions will enable future researchers to
replicate the research.

Table 2.1 Examples of the Operational Definitions of Conceptual Variables That Have Been Used in
Psychological Research
Conceptual
Operational definitions
variable

Number of presses of a button that administers shock to another

student
Aggression
Number of seconds taken to honk the horn at the car ahead after a
stoplight turns green

Number of inches that an individual places his or her chair away

Interpersonal from another person

attraction Number of millimeters of pupil dilation when one person looks at

another

Number of days per month an employee shows up to work on time

Employee
Rating of job satisfaction from 1 (not at all satisfied) to 9
satisfaction
(extremely satisfied)

Number of groups able to correctly solve a group performance

Decision-making
task
skills
Number of seconds in which a person solves a problem

Number of negative words used in a creative story

Depression
Number of appointments made with a psychotherapist
Conducting Ethical Research

One of the questions that all scientists must address concerns the ethics of
their research. Physicists are concerned about the potentially harmful
outcomes of their experiments with nuclear materials. Biologists worry
about the potential outcomes of creating genetically engineered human
babies. Medical researchers agonize over the ethics of withholding
potentially beneficial drugs from control groups in clinical trials. Likewise,
psychologists are continually considering the ethics of their research.

Research in psychology may cause some stress, harm, or inconvenience for

the people who participate in that research. For instance, researchers may
require introductory psychology students to participate in research projects
and then deceive these students, at least temporarily, about the nature of the
research. Psychologists may induce stress, anxiety, or negative moods in
their participants, expose them to weak electrical shocks, or convince them
to behave in ways that violate their moral standards. And researchers may
sometimes use animals in their research, potentially harming them in the
process.

Decisions about whether research is ethical are made using established

ethical codes developed by scientific organizations, such as the American
Psychological Association, and federal governments. In the United States,
the Department of Health and Human Services provides the guidelines for
ethical standards in research. Some research, such as the research conducted
by the Nazis on prisoners during World War II, is perceived as immoral by
almost everyone. Other procedures, such as the use of animals in research
testing the effectiveness of drugs, are more controversial.

Scientific research has provided information that has improved the lives of
many people. Therefore, it is unreasonable to argue that because scientific
research has costs, no research should be conducted. This argument fails to
consider the fact that there are significant costs to not doing research and
that these costs may be greater than the potential costs of conducting the
research (Rosenthal, 1994). In each case, before beginning to conduct the
research, scientists have attempted to determine the potential risks and
benefits of the research and have come to the conclusion that the potential
benefits of conducting the research outweigh the potential costs to the
research participants.

Characteristics of an Ethical Research Project Using Human Participants

Trust and positive rapport are created between the researcher and the participant.

The rights of both the experimenter and participant are considered, and the
relationship between them is mutually beneficial.

The experimenter treats the participant with concern and respect and attempts to
make the research experience a pleasant and informative one.

Before the research begins, the participant is given all information relevant to his or
her decision to participate, including any possibilities of physical danger or
psychological stress.

The participant is given a chance to have questions about the procedure answered,
thus guaranteeing his or her free choice about participating.

After the experiment is over, any deception that has been used is made public, and
the necessity for it is explained.

The experimenter carefully debriefs the participant, explaining the underlying

research hypothesis and the purpose of the experimental procedure in detail and
answering any questions.

The experimenter provides information about how he or she can be contacted and
offers to provide information about the results of the research if the participant is
 interested in receiving it. (Stangor, 2011)

This list presents some of the most important factors that psychologists take
into consideration when designing their research. The most direct ethical
concern of the scientist is to prevent harm to the research participants. One
example is the well-known research of Stanley Milgram (1974)
investigating obedience to authority. In these studies, participants were
induced by an experimenter to administer electric shocks to another person
so that Milgram could study the extent to which they would obey the
demands of an authority figure. Most participants evidenced high levels of
stress resulting from the psychological conflict they experienced between
engaging in aggressive and dangerous behavior and following the
instructions of the experimenter. Studies such as those by Milgram are no
longer conducted because the scientific community is now much more
sensitized to the potential of such procedures to create emotional discomfort
or harm.

Another goal of ethical research is to guarantee that participants have free

choice regarding whether they wish to participate in research. Students in
psychology classes may be allowed, or even required, to participate in
research, but they are also always given an option to choose a different
study to be in, or to perform other activities instead. And once an
experiment begins, the research participant is always free to leave the
experiment if he or she wishes to. Concerns with free choice also occur in
institutional settings, such as in schools, hospitals, corporations, and prisons,
when individuals are required by the institutions to take certain tests, or
when employees are told or asked to participate in research.

Researchers must also protect the privacy of the research participants. In

some cases data can be kept anonymous by not having the respondents put
any identifying information on their questionnaires. In other cases the data
cannot be anonymous because the researcher needs to keep track of which
respondent contributed the data. In this case one technique is to have each
participant use a unique code number to identify his or her data, such as the
last four digits of the student ID number. In this way the researcher can keep
track of which person completed which questionnaire, but no one will be
able to connect the data with the individual who contributed them.

Perhaps the most widespread ethical concern to the participants in

behavioral research is the extent to which researchers employ deception.
Deceptionoccurs whenever research participants are not completely and
fully informed about the nature of the research project before participating
in it. Deception may occur in an active way, such as when the researcher
tells the participants that he or she is studying learning when in fact the
experiment really concerns obedience to authority. In other cases the
deception is more passive, such as when participants are not told about the
hypothesis being studied or the potential use of the data being collected.

Some researchers have argued that no deception should ever be used in any
research (Baumrind, 1985). They argue that participants should always be
told the complete truth about the nature of the research they are in, and that
when participants are deceived there will be negative consequences, such as
the possibility that participants may arrive at other studies already expecting
to be deceived. Other psychologists defend the use of deception on the
grounds that it is needed to get participants to act naturally and to enable the
study of psychological phenomena that might not otherwise get
investigated. They argue that it would be impossible to study topics such as
altruism, aggression, obedience, and stereotyping without using deception
because if participants were informed ahead of time what the study
involved, this knowledge would certainly change their behavior. The codes
of ethics of the American Psychological Association and other organizations
allow researchers to use deception, but these codes also require them to
explicitly consider how their research might be conducted without the use of
deception.

Ensuring That Research Is Ethical

Making decisions about the ethics of research involves weighing the costs
and benefits of conducting versus not conducting a given research project.
The costs involve potential harm to the research participants and to the field,
whereas the benefits include the potential for advancing knowledge about
human behavior and offering various advantages, some educational, to the
individual participants. Most generally, the ethics of a given research project
are determined through a cost-benefit analysis, in which the costs are
compared to the benefits. If the potential costs of the research appear to
outweigh any potential benefits that might come from it, then the research
should not proceed.

Arriving at a cost-benefit ratio is not simple. For one thing, there is no way
to know ahead of time what the effects of a given procedure will be on
every person or animal who participates or what benefit to society the
research is likely to produce. In addition, what is ethical is defined by the
current state of thinking within society, and thus perceived costs and
benefits change over time. The U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services regulations require that all universities receiving funds from the
department set up an Institutional Review Board (IRB) to determine whether
proposed research meets department regulations. The Institutional Review
Board (IRB) is a committee of at least five members whose goal it is to
determine the cost-benefit ratio of research conducted within an institution.
The IRB approves the procedures of all the research conducted at the
institution before the research can begin. The board may suggest
modifications to the procedures, or (in rare cases) it may inform the scientist
that the research violates Department of Health and Human Services
guidelines and thus cannot be conducted at all.

One important tool for ensuring that research is ethical is the use of
informed consent. A sample informed consent form is shown in Figure 2.2
“Sample Consent Form”. Informed consent, conducted before a participant
begins a research session, is designed to explain the research procedures
and inform the participant of his or her rights during the investigation. The
informed consent explains as much as possible about the true nature of the
study, particularly everything that might be expected to influence
willingness to participate, but it may in some cases withhold some
information that allows the study to work.

Figure 2.2 Sample Consent Form

The informed consent form explains the research procedures and informs the participant of his or her

rights during the investigation.

Adapted from Stangor, C. (2011). Research methods for the behavioral sciences (4th ed.). Mountain View,

CA: Cengage.
Because participating in research has the potential for producing long-term
changes in the research participants, all participants should be fully
debriefed immediately after their participation. The debriefing is a
procedure designed to fully explain the purposes and procedures of the
research and remove any harmful aftereffects of participation.

Research With Animals

Because animals make up an important part of the natural world, and

because some research cannot be conducted using humans, animals are also
participants in psychological research. Most psychological research using
animals is now conducted with rats, mice, and birds, and the use of other
animals in research is declining (Thomas & Blackman, 1992). As with
ethical decisions involving human participants, a set of basic principles has
been developed that helps researchers make informed decisions about such
research; a summary is shown below.

APA Guidelines on Humane Care and Use of Animals in Research

The following are some of the most important ethical principles from the American
Psychological Association’s guidelines on research with animals.

Psychologists acquire, care for, use, and dispose of animals in compliance with
current federal, state, and local laws and regulations, and with professional
standards.

Psychologists trained in research methods and experienced in the care of laboratory

animals supervise all procedures involving animals and are responsible for ensuring
appropriate consideration of their comfort, health, and humane treatment.
 Psychologists ensure that all individuals under their supervision who are using
animals have received instruction in research methods and in the care, maintenance,
and handling of the species being used, to the extent appropriate to their role.

Psychologists make reasonable efforts to minimize the discomfort, infection, illness,

and pain of animal subjects.

Psychologists use a procedure subjecting animals to pain, stress, or privation only

when an alternative procedure is unavailable and the goal is justified by its
prospective scientific, educational, or applied value.

Psychologists perform surgical procedures under appropriate anesthesia and follow

techniques to avoid infection and minimize pain during and after surgery.

When it is appropriate that an animal’s life be terminated, psychologists proceed

rapidly, with an effort to minimize pain and in accordance with accepted procedures.
(American Psychological Association, 2002)

Understanding Animal Research – Rabbit in

Research for Animal Testing – CC BY 2.0.

Psychologists may use animals in their research, but they make

reasonable efforts to minimize the discomfort the animals

experience.
Because the use of animals in research involves a personal value, people
naturally disagree about this practice. Although many people accept the
value of such research (Plous, 1996), a minority of people, including
animal-rights activists, believes that it is ethically wrong to conduct research
on animals. This argument is based on the assumption that because animals
are living creatures just as humans are, no harm should ever be done to
them.

Most scientists, however, reject this view. They argue that such beliefs
ignore the potential benefits that have and continue to come from research
with animals. For instance, drugs that can reduce the incidence of cancer or
AIDS may first be tested on animals, and surgery that can save human lives
may first be practiced on animals. Research on animals has also led to a
better understanding of the physiological causes of depression, phobias, and
stress, among other illnesses. In contrast to animal-rights activists, then,
scientists believe that because there are many benefits that accrue from
animal research, such research can and should continue as long as the
humane treatment of the animals used in the research is guaranteed.

Key Takeaways

Psychologists use the scientific method to generate, accumulate, and report scientific
knowledge.

Basic research, which answers questions about behavior, and applied research, which
finds solutions to everyday problems, inform each other and work together to
advance science.

Research reports describing scientific studies are published in scientific journals so

that other scientists and laypersons may review the empirical findings.
 Organizing principles, including laws, theories and research hypotheses, give
structure and uniformity to scientific methods.

Concerns for conducting ethical research are paramount. Researchers assure that
participants are given free choice to participate and that their privacy is protected.
Informed consent and debriefing help provide humane treatment of participants.

A cost-benefit analysis is used to determine what research should and should not be
allowed to proceed.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Give an example from personal experience of how you or someone you know have
benefited from the results of scientific research.

2. Find and discuss a research project that in your opinion has ethical concerns. Explain
why you find these concerns to be troubling.

3. Indicate your personal feelings about the use of animals in research. When should
and should not animals be used? What principles have you used to come to these
conclusions?

References

American Psychological Association. (2002). Ethical principles of

psychologists. American Psychologist, 57, 1060–1073.

Baumrind, D. (1985). Research using intentional deception: Ethical issues

revisited. American Psychologist, 40, 165–174.
Kohlberg, L. (1966). A cognitive-developmental analysis of children’s sex-
role concepts and attitudes. In E. E. Maccoby (Ed.), The development of sex
differences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New

York, NY: Harper and Row.

Plous, S. (1996). Attitudes toward the use of animals in psychological

research and education. Psychological Science, 7, 352–358.

Popper, K. R. (1959). The logic of scientific discovery. New York, NY:

Basic Books.

Rosenthal, R. (1994). Science and ethics in conducting, analyzing, and

reporting psychological research. Psychological Science, 5, 127–134.

Ruble, D., & Martin, C. (1998). Gender development. In W. Damon (Ed.),

Handbook of child psychology (5th ed., pp. 933–1016). New York, NY: John
Wiley & Sons.

Stangor, C. (2011). Research methods for the behavioral sciences (4th ed.).
Mountain View, CA: Cengage.

Thomas, G., & Blackman, D. (1992). The future of animal studies in

psychology. American Psychologist, 47, 1678.
2.2 Psychologists Use Descriptive,
Correlational, and Experimental Research
Designs to Understand Behavior

Learning Objectives

1. Differentiate the goals of descriptive, correlational, and experimental research

designs and explain the advantages and disadvantages of each.

2. Explain the goals of descriptive research and the statistical techniques used to
interpret it.

3. Summarize the uses of correlational research and describe why correlational research
cannot be used to infer causality.

4. Review the procedures of experimental research and explain how it can be used to
draw causal inferences.

Psychologists agree that if their ideas and theories about human behavior are
to be taken seriously, they must be backed up by data. However, the
research of different psychologists is designed with different goals in mind,
and the different goals require different approaches. These varying
approaches, summarized in Table 2.2 “Characteristics of the Three Research
Designs”, are known as research designs. A research design is the specific
method a researcher uses to collect, analyze, and interpret data.
Psychologists use three major types of research designs in their research,
and each provides an essential avenue for scientific investigation.
Descriptive research is research designed to provide a snapshot of the
current state of affairs. Correlational research is research designed to
discover relationships among variables and to allow the prediction of future
events from present knowledge. Experimental research is research in
which initial equivalence among research participants in more than one
group is created, followed by a manipulation of a given experience for these
groups and a measurement of the influence of the manipulation. Each of the
three research designs varies according to its strengths and limitations, and
it is important to understand how each differs.

Table 2.2 Characteristics of the Three Research Designs

 Research
Goal Advantages Disadvantages
design

Does not assess

Provides a relatively
relationships among
To create a snapshot of complete picture of what is
variables. May be
Descriptive the current state of occurring at a given time.
unethical if participants
affairs Allows the development of
do not know they are
questions for further study.
being observed.

Allows testing of expected

Cannot be used to draw
To assess the relationships between and
inferences about the
relationships between among variables and the
Correlational causal relationships
and among two or making of predictions. Can
between and among the
more variables assess these relationships in
variables.
everyday life events.

To assess the causal Cannot experimentally

Allows drawing of
impact of one or more manipulate many
conclusions about the causal
Experimental experimental important variables. May
relationships among
manipulations on a be expensive and time
variables.
dependent variable consuming.

There are three major research designs used by psychologists, and each has its own
advantages and disadvantages.

Stangor, C. (2011). Research methods for the behavioral sciences (4th ed.). Mountain View, CA:
Cengage.

Descriptive Research: Assessing the Current

State of Affairs

Descriptive research is designed to create a snapshot of the current thoughts,

feelings, or behavior of individuals. This section reviews three types of
descriptive research: case studies, surveys, and naturalistic observation.

Sometimes the data in a descriptive research project are based on only a

small set of individuals, often only one person or a single small group.
These research designs are known as case studies—descriptive records of
one or more individual’s experiences and behavior. Sometimes case studies
involve ordinary individuals, as when developmental psychologist Jean
Piaget used his observation of his own children to develop his stage theory
of cognitive development. More frequently, case studies are conducted on
individuals who have unusual or abnormal experiences or characteristics or
who find themselves in particularly difficult or stressful situations. The
assumption is that by carefully studying individuals who are socially
marginal, who are experiencing unusual situations, or who are going
through a difficult phase in their lives, we can learn something about human
nature.

Sigmund Freud was a master of using the psychological difficulties of

individuals to draw conclusions about basic psychological processes. Freud
wrote case studies of some of his most interesting patients and used these
careful examinations to develop his important theories of personality. One
classic example is Freud’s description of “Little Hans,” a child whose fear
of horses the psychoanalyst interpreted in terms of repressed sexual
impulses and the Oedipus complex (Freud (1909/1964).
Figure 2.4
Political polls reported in newspapers and on the Internet are descriptive research designs that provide snapshots of the likely

voting behavior of a population.

Michael Stillwell – CC BY-SA 2.0

Another well-known case study is Phineas Gage, a man whose thoughts and
emotions were extensively studied by cognitive psychologists after a
railroad spike was blasted through his skull in an accident. Although there is
question about the interpretation of this case study (Kotowicz, 2007), it did
provide early evidence that the brain’s frontal lobe is involved in emotion
and morality (Damasio et al., 2005). An interesting example of a case study
in clinical psychology is described by Rokeach (1964), who investigated in
detail the beliefs and interactions among three patients with schizophrenia,
all of whom were convinced they were Jesus Christ.

In other cases the data from descriptive research projects come in the form
of a survey—a measure administered through either an interview or a
written questionnaire to get a picture of the beliefs or behaviors of a sample
of people of interest. The people chosen to participate in the research
(known as the sample) are selected to be representative of all the people
that the researcher wishes to know about (the population). In election polls,
for instance, a sample is taken from the population of all “likely voters” in
the upcoming elections.

The results of surveys may sometimes be rather mundane, such as “Nine out
of ten doctors prefer Tymenocin,” or “The median income in Montgomery
County is $36,712.” Yet other times (particularly in discussions of social
behavior), the results can be shocking: “More than 40,000 people are killed
by gunfire in the United States every year,” or “More than 60% of women
between the ages of 50 and 60 suffer from depression.” Descriptive research
is frequently used by psychologists to get an estimate of the prevalence (or
incidence) of psychological disorders.

A final type of descriptive research—known as naturalistic observation—

is research based on the observation of everyday events. For instance, a
developmental psychologist who watches children on a playground and
describes what they say to each other while they play is conducting
descriptive research, as is a biopsychologist who observes animals in their
natural habitats. One example of observational research involves a
systematic procedure known as the strange situation, used to get a picture of
how adults and young children interact. The data that are collected in the
strange situation are systematically coded in a coding sheet such as that
shown in Table 2.3 “Sample Coding Form Used to Assess Child’s and
Mother’s Behavior in the Strange Situation”.

Table 2.3 Sample Coding Form Used to Assess Child’s and Mother’s Behavior in the Strange
Situation
Coder name: Olive

Coding categories

Episode Proximity Contact Resistance Avoidance

Mother and baby play alone 1 1 1 1

Mother puts baby down 4 1 1 1

Stranger enters room 1 2 3 1

Mother leaves room; stranger

1 3 1 1
plays with baby

Mother reenters, greets and

may comfort baby, then leaves 4 2 1 2
again

Stranger tries to play with

1 3 1 1
baby

Mother reenters and picks up

6 6 1 2
baby

Coding categories explained

Proximity The baby moves toward, grasps, or climbs on the adult.

This table represents a sample coding sheet from an episode of the “strange situation,” in
which an infant (usually about 1 year old) is observed playing in a room with two adults—the
child’s mother and a stranger. Each of the four coding categories is scored by the coder from
1 (the baby makes no effort to engage in the behavior) to 7 (the baby makes a significant
effort to engage in the behavior). More information about the meaning of the coding can be
found in Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall (1978).
 Coder name: Olive

The baby resists being put down by the adult by crying or trying
Maintaining contact
to climb back up.

The baby pushes, hits, or squirms to be put down from the adult’s
Resistance
arms.

Avoidance The baby turns away or moves away from the adult.

This table represents a sample coding sheet from an episode of the “strange situation,” in
which an infant (usually about 1 year old) is observed playing in a room with two adults—the
child’s mother and a stranger. Each of the four coding categories is scored by the coder from
1 (the baby makes no effort to engage in the behavior) to 7 (the baby makes a significant
effort to engage in the behavior). More information about the meaning of the coding can be
found in Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall (1978).

Stangor, C. (2011). Research methods for the behavioral sciences (4th ed.). Mountain View, CA:
Cengage.

The results of descriptive research projects are analyzed using descriptive

statistics—numbers that summarize the distribution of scores on a
measured variable. Most variables have distributions similar to that shown
in Figure 2.5 “Height Distribution”, where most of the scores are located
near the center of the distribution, and the distribution is symmetrical and
bell-shaped. A data distribution that is shaped like a bell is known as a
normal distribution.

Table 2.4 Height and Family Income for 25 Students

Student name Height in inches Family income in dollars

Lauren 62 48,000

Courtnie 62 57,000

Leslie 63 93,000

Renee 64 107,000

Katherine 64 110,000

Jordan 65 93,000

Rabiah 66 46,000

Alina 66 84,000

Young Su 67 68,000

Martin 67 49,000

Hanzhu 67 73,000

Caitlin 67 3,800,000

Steven 67 107,000

Emily 67 64,000

Amy 68 67,000

Jonathan 68 51,000

Julian 68 48,000

Alissa 68 93,000

Christine 69 93,000
 Student name Height in inches Family income in dollars

Candace 69 111,000

Xiaohua 69 56,000

Charlie 70 94,000

Timothy 71 73,000

Ariane 72 70,000

Logan 72 44,000

Figure 2.5 Height Distribution

The distribution of the heights of the students in a class will form a normal distribution. In this sample the

mean (M) = 67.12 and the standard deviation (s) = 2.74.

A distribution can be described in terms of its central tendency—that is, the

point in the distribution around which the data are centered—and its
dispersion, or spread. The arithmetic average, or arithmetic mean, is the
most commonly used measure of central tendency. It is computed by
calculating the sum of all the scores of the variable and dividing this sum by
the number of participants in the distribution (denoted by the letter N). In
the data presented in Figure 2.5 “Height Distribution”, the mean height of
the students is 67.12 inches. The sample mean is usually indicated by the
letter M.

In some cases, however, the data distribution is not symmetrical. This

occurs when there are one or more extreme scores (known as outliers) at
one end of the distribution. Consider, for instance, the variable of family
income (see Figure 2.6 “Family Income Distribution”), which includes an
outlier (a value of $3,800,000). In this case the mean is not a good measure
of central tendency. Although it appears from Figure 2.6 “Family Income
Distribution” that the central tendency of the family income variable should
be around $70,000, the mean family income is actually $223,960. The single
very extreme income has a disproportionate impact on the mean, resulting in
a value that does not well represent the central tendency.

The median is used as an alternative measure of central tendency when

distributions are not symmetrical. The median is the score in the center of
the distribution, meaning that 50% of the scores are greater than the median
and 50% of the scores are less than the median. In our case, the median
household income ($73,000) is a much better indication of central tendency
than is the mean household income ($223,960).

Figure 2.6 Family Income Distribution

The distribution of family incomes is likely to be nonsymmetrical because some incomes can be very

large in comparison to most incomes. In this case the median or the mode is a better indicator of central

tendency than is the mean.

A final measure of central tendency, known as the mode, represents the

value that occurs most frequently in the distribution. You can see from
Figure 2.6 “Family Income Distribution” that the mode for the family
income variable is $93,000 (it occurs four times).

In addition to summarizing the central tendency of a distribution,

descriptive statistics convey information about how the scores of the
variable are spread around the central tendency. Dispersion refers to the
extent to which the scores are all tightly clustered around the central
tendency, like this:

Figure 2.7
Or they may be more spread out away from it, like this:

Figure 2.8

One simple measure of dispersion is to find the largest (the maximum) and
the smallest (the minimum) observed values of the variable and to compute
the range of the variable as the maximum observed score minus the
minimum observed score. You can check that the range of the height
variable in Figure 2.5 “Height Distribution” is 72 – 62 = 10. The standard
deviation, symbolized as s, is the most commonly used measure of
dispersion. Distributions with a larger standard deviation have more spread.
The standard deviation of the height variable is s = 2.74, and the standard
deviation of the family income variable is s = $745,337.

An advantage of descriptive research is that it attempts to capture the

complexity of everyday behavior. Case studies provide detailed information
about a single person or a small group of people, surveys capture the
thoughts or reported behaviors of a large population of people, and
naturalistic observation objectively records the behavior of people or
animals as it occurs naturally. Thus descriptive research is used to provide a
relatively complete understanding of what is currently happening.

Despite these advantages, descriptive research has a distinct disadvantage in

that, although it allows us to get an idea of what is currently happening, it is
usually limited to static pictures. Although descriptions of particular
experiences may be interesting, they are not always transferable to other
individuals in other situations, nor do they tell us exactly why specific
behaviors or events occurred. For instance, descriptions of individuals who
have suffered a stressful event, such as a war or an earthquake, can be used
to understand the individuals’ reactions to the event but cannot tell us
anything about the long-term effects of the stress. And because there is no
comparison group that did not experience the stressful situation, we cannot
know what these individuals would be like if they hadn’t had the stressful
experience.

Correlational Research: Seeking

Relationships Among Variables

In contrast to descriptive research, which is designed primarily to provide

static pictures, correlational research involves the measurement of two or
more relevant variables and an assessment of the relationship between or
among those variables. For instance, the variables of height and weight are
systematically related (correlated) because taller people generally weigh
more than shorter people. In the same way, study time and memory errors
are also related, because the more time a person is given to study a list of
words, the fewer errors he or she will make. When there are two variables in
the research design, one of them is called the predictor variable and the
other the outcome variable. The research design can be visualized like this,
where the curved arrow represents the expected correlation between the two
variables:

Figure 2.2.2

One way of organizing the data from a correlational study with two
variables is to graph the values of each of the measured variables using a
scatter plot. As you can see in Figure 2.10 “Examples of Scatter Plots”, a
scatter plot is a visual image of the relationship between two variables. A
point is plotted for each individual at the intersection of his or her scores for
the two variables. When the association between the variables on the scatter
plot can be easily approximated with a straight line, as in parts (a) and (b) of
Figure 2.10 “Examples of Scatter Plots”, the variables are said to have a
linear relationship.

When the straight line indicates that individuals who have above-average
values for one variable also tend to have above-average values for the other
variable, as in part (a), the relationship is said to be positive linear.
Examples of positive linear relationships include those between height and
weight, between education and income, and between age and mathematical
abilities in children. In each case people who score higher on one of the
variables also tend to score higher on the other variable. Negative linear
relationships, in contrast, as shown in part (b), occur when above-average
values for one variable tend to be associated with below-average values for
the other variable. Examples of negative linear relationships include those
between the age of a child and the number of diapers the child uses, and
between practice on and errors made on a learning task. In these cases
people who score higher on one of the variables tend to score lower on the
other variable.

Relationships between variables that cannot be described with a straight line

are known as nonlinear relationships. Part (c) of Figure 2.10 “Examples of
Scatter Plots” shows a common pattern in which the distribution of the
points is essentially random. In this case there is no relationship at all
between the two variables, and they are said to be independent. Parts (d) and
(e) of Figure 2.10 “Examples of Scatter Plots” show patterns of association
in which, although there is an association, the points are not well described
by a single straight line. For instance, part (d) shows the type of relationship
that frequently occurs between anxiety and performance. Increases in
anxiety from low to moderate levels are associated with performance
increases, whereas increases in anxiety from moderate to high levels are
associated with decreases in performance. Relationships that change in
direction and thus are not described by a single straight line are called
curvilinear relationships.

Figure 2.10 Examples of Scatter Plots

Some examples of relationships between two variables as shown in scatter plots. Note that the Pearson

correlation coefficient (r) between variables that have curvilinear relationships will likely be close to zero.

Adapted from Stangor, C. (2011). Research methods for the behavioral sciences (4th ed.). Mountain View,

CA: Cengage.

The most common statistical measure of the strength of linear relationships

among variables is the Pearson correlation coefficient, which is
symbolized by the letter r. The value of the correlation coefficient ranges
from r = –1.00 to r = +1.00. The direction of the linear relationship is
indicated by the sign of the correlation coefficient. Positive values of r (such
as r = .54 or r = .67) indicate that the relationship is positive linear (i.e., the
pattern of the dots on the scatter plot runs from the lower left to the upper
right), whereas negative values of r (such as r = –.30 or r = –.72) indicate
negative linear relationships (i.e., the dots run from the upper left to the
lower right). The strength of the linear relationship is indexed by the
distance of the correlation coefficient from zero (its absolute value). For
instance, r = –.54 is a stronger relationship than r = .30, and r = .72 is a
stronger relationship than r = –.57. Because the Pearson correlation
coefficient only measures linear relationships, variables that have
curvilinear relationships are not well described by r, and the observed
correlation will be close to zero.

It is also possible to study relationships among more than two measures at

the same time. A research design in which more than one predictor variable
is used to predict a single outcome variable is analyzed through multiple
regression (Aiken & West, 1991). Multiple regression is a statistical
technique, based on correlation coefficients among variables, that allows
predicting a single outcome variable from more than one predictor variable.
For instance, Figure 2.11 “Prediction of Job Performance From Three
Predictor Variables” shows a multiple regression analysis in which three
predictor variables are used to predict a single outcome. The use of multiple
regression analysis shows an important advantage of correlational research
designs—they can be used to make predictions about a person’s likely score
on an outcome variable (e.g., job performance) based on knowledge of other
variables.

Figure 2.11 Prediction of Job Performance From Three Predictor Variables

Multiple regression allows scientists to predict the scores on a single outcome variable using more than

one predictor variable.

An important limitation of correlational research designs is that they cannot

be used to draw conclusions about the causal relationships among the
measured variables. Consider, for instance, a researcher who has
hypothesized that viewing violent behavior will cause increased aggressive
play in children. He has collected, from a sample of fourth-grade children, a
measure of how many violent television shows each child views during the
week, as well as a measure of how aggressively each child plays on the
school playground. From his collected data, the researcher discovers a
positive correlation between the two measured variables.

Although this positive correlation appears to support the researcher’s

hypothesis, it cannot be taken to indicate that viewing violent television
causes aggressive behavior. Although the researcher is tempted to assume
that viewing violent television causes aggressive play,
Figure 2.2.2

there are other possibilities. One alternate possibility is that the causal
direction is exactly opposite from what has been hypothesized. Perhaps
children who have behaved aggressively at school develop residual
excitement that leads them to want to watch violent television shows at
home:

Figure 2.2.2

Although this possibility may seem less likely, there is no way to rule out
the possibility of such reverse causation on the basis of this observed
correlation. It is also possible that both causal directions are operating and
that the two variables cause each other:

Figure 2.2.2

Still another possible explanation for the observed correlation is that it has
been produced by the presence of a common-causal variable (also known as
a third variable). A common-causal variable is a variable that is not part
of the research hypothesis but that causes both the predictor and the
outcome variable and thus produces the observed correlation between them.
In our example a potential common-causal variable is the discipline style of
the children’s parents. Parents who use a harsh and punitive discipline style
may produce children who both like to watch violent television and who
behave aggressively in comparison to children whose parents use less harsh
discipline:

Figure 2.2.2

In this case, television viewing and aggressive play would be positively

correlated (as indicated by the curved arrow between them), even though
neither one caused the other but they were both caused by the discipline
style of the parents (the straight arrows). When the predictor and outcome
variables are both caused by a common-causal variable, the observed
relationship between them is said to be spurious. A spurious relationship is
a relationship between two variables in which a common-causal variable
produces and “explains away” the relationship. If effects of the common-
causal variable were taken away, or controlled for, the relationship between
the predictor and outcome variables would disappear. In the example the
relationship between aggression and television viewing might be spurious
because by controlling for the effect of the parents’ disciplining style, the
relationship between television viewing and aggressive behavior might go
away.

Common-causal variables in correlational research designs can be thought

of as “mystery” variables because, as they have not been measured, their
presence and identity are usually unknown to the researcher. Since it is not
possible to measure every variable that could cause both the predictor and
outcome variables, the existence of an unknown common-causal variable is
always a possibility. For this reason, we are left with the basic limitation of
correlational research: Correlation does not demonstrate causation. It is
important that when you read about correlational research projects, you keep
in mind the possibility of spurious relationships, and be sure to interpret the
findings appropriately. Although correlational research is sometimes
reported as demonstrating causality without any mention being made of the
possibility of reverse causation or common-causal variables, informed
consumers of research, like you, are aware of these interpretational
problems.

In sum, correlational research designs have both strengths and limitations.

One strength is that they can be used when experimental research is not
possible because the predictor variables cannot be manipulated.
Correlational designs also have the advantage of allowing the researcher to
study behavior as it occurs in everyday life. And we can also use
correlational designs to make predictions—for instance, to predict from the
scores on their battery of tests the success of job trainees during a training
session. But we cannot use such correlational information to determine
whether the training caused better job performance. For that, researchers
rely on experiments.
Experimental Research: Understanding the
Causes of Behavior

The goal of experimental research design is to provide more definitive

conclusions about the causal relationships among the variables in the
research hypothesis than is available from correlational designs. In an
experimental research design, the variables of interest are called the
independent variable (or variables) and the dependent variable. The
independent variable in an experiment is the causing variable that is
created (manipulated) by the experimenter. The dependent variable in an
experiment is a measured variable that is expected to be influenced by the
experimental manipulation. The research hypothesis suggests that the
manipulated independent variable or variables will cause changes in the
measured dependent variables. We can diagram the research hypothesis by
using an arrow that points in one direction. This demonstrates the expected
direction of causality:

Figure 2.2.3

Research Focus: Video Games and Aggression

Consider an experiment conducted by Anderson and Dill (2000). The study was designed to test
the hypothesis that viewing violent video games would increase aggressive behavior. In this
research, male and female undergraduates from Iowa State University were given a chance to
play with either a violent video game (Wolfenstein 3D) or a nonviolent video game (Myst).
During the experimental session, the participants played their assigned video games for 15
minutes. Then, after the play, each participant played a competitive game with an opponent in
which the participant could deliver blasts of white noise through the earphones of the opponent.
The operational definition of the dependent variable (aggressive behavior) was the level and
duration of noise delivered to the opponent. The design of the experiment is shown in Figure
2.17 “An Experimental Research Design”.

Figure 2.17 An Experimental Research Design

Two advantages of the experimental research design are (1) the assurance that the independent variable

(also known as the experimental manipulation) occurs prior to the measured dependent variable, and (2)

the creation of initial equivalence between the conditions of the experiment (in this case by using random

assignment to conditions).

Experimental designs have two very nice features. For one, they guarantee that the independent
variable occurs prior to the measurement of the dependent variable. This eliminates the
possibility of reverse causation. Second, the influence of common-causal variables is controlled,
and thus eliminated, by creating initial equivalence among the participants in each of the
experimental conditions before the manipulation occurs.

The most common method of creating equivalence among the experimental conditions is
through random assignment to conditions, a procedure in which the condition that each
participant is assigned to is determined through a random process, such as drawing numbers out
of an envelope or using a random number table. Anderson and Dill first randomly assigned
about 100 participants to each of their two groups (Group A and Group B). Because they used
 random assignment to conditions, they could be confident that, before the experimental
manipulation occurred, the students in Group A were, on average, equivalent to the students in
Group B on every possible variable, including variables that are likely to be related to
aggression, such as parental discipline style, peer relationships, hormone levels, diet—and in fact
everything else.

Then, after they had created initial equivalence, Anderson and Dill created the experimental
manipulation—they had the participants in Group A play the violent game and the participants in
Group B play the nonviolent game. Then they compared the dependent variable (the white noise
blasts) between the two groups, finding that the students who had viewed the violent video game
gave significantly longer noise blasts than did the students who had played the nonviolent game.

Anderson and Dill had from the outset created initial equivalence between the groups. This
initial equivalence allowed them to observe differences in the white noise levels between the two
groups after the experimental manipulation, leading to the conclusion that it was the independent
variable (and not some other variable) that caused these differences. The idea is that the only
thing that was different between the students in the two groups was the video game they had
played.

Despite the advantage of determining causation, experiments do have

limitations. One is that they are often conducted in laboratory situations
rather than in the everyday lives of people. Therefore, we do not know
whether results that we find in a laboratory setting will necessarily hold up
in everyday life. Second, and more important, is that some of the most
interesting and key social variables cannot be experimentally manipulated.
If we want to study the influence of the size of a mob on the destructiveness
of its behavior, or to compare the personality characteristics of people who
join suicide cults with those of people who do not join such cults, these
relationships must be assessed using correlational designs, because it is
simply not possible to experimentally manipulate these variables.
 Key Takeaways

Descriptive, correlational, and experimental research designs are used to collect and
analyze data.

Descriptive designs include case studies, surveys, and naturalistic observation. The
goal of these designs is to get a picture of the current thoughts, feelings, or behaviors
in a given group of people. Descriptive research is summarized using descriptive
statistics.

Correlational research designs measure two or more relevant variables and assess a
relationship between or among them. The variables may be presented on a scatter
plot to visually show the relationships. The Pearson Correlation Coefficient (r) is a
measure of the strength of linear relationship between two variables.

Common-causal variables may cause both the predictor and outcome variable in a
correlational design, producing a spurious relationship. The possibility of common-
causal variables makes it impossible to draw causal conclusions from correlational
research designs.

Experimental research involves the manipulation of an independent variable and the

measurement of a dependent variable. Random assignment to conditions is normally
used to create initial equivalence between the groups, allowing researchers to draw
causal conclusions.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. There is a negative correlation between the row that a student sits in in a large class
(when the rows are numbered from front to back) and his or her final grade in the
 class. Do you think this represents a causal relationship or a spurious relationship,
and why?

2. Think of two variables (other than those mentioned in this book) that are likely to be
correlated, but in which the correlation is probably spurious. What is the likely
common-causal variable that is producing the relationship?

3. Imagine a researcher wants to test the hypothesis that participating in psychotherapy

will cause a decrease in reported anxiety. Describe the type of research design the
investigator might use to draw this conclusion. What would be the independent and
dependent variables in the research?

References

Aiken, L., & West, S. (1991). Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting
interactions. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Ainsworth, M. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of
attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Anderson, C. A., & Dill, K. E. (2000). Video games and aggressive

thoughts, feelings, and behavior in the laboratory and in life. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 78(4), 772–790.

Damasio, H., Grabowski, T., Frank, R., Galaburda, A. M., Damasio, A. R.,
Cacioppo, J. T., & Berntson, G. G. (2005). The return of Phineas Gage:
Clues about the brain from the skull of a famous patient. In Social
neuroscience: Key readings. (pp. 21–28). New York, NY: Psychology Press.

Freud, S. (1964). Analysis of phobia in a five-year-old boy. In E. A.

Southwell & M. Merbaum (Eds.), Personality: Readings in theory and
research (pp. 3–32). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. (Original work published
1909)

Kotowicz, Z. (2007). The strange case of Phineas Gage. History of the

Human Sciences, 20(1), 115–131.

Rokeach, M. (1964). The three Christs of Ypsilanti: A psychological study.

New York, NY: Knopf.
2.3 You Can Be an Informed Consumer of
Psychological Research

Learning Objectives

1. Outline the four potential threats to the validity of research and discuss how they
may make it difficult to accurately interpret research findings.

2. Describe how confounding may reduce the internal validity of an experiment.

3. Explain how generalization, replication, and meta-analyses are used to assess the
external validity of research findings.

Good research is valid research. When research is valid, the conclusions

drawn by the researcher are legitimate. For instance, if a researcher
concludes that participating in psychotherapy reduces anxiety, or that taller
people are smarter than shorter people, the research is valid only if the
therapy really works or if taller people really are smarter. Unfortunately,
there are many threats to the validity of research, and these threats may
sometimes lead to unwarranted conclusions. Often, and despite researchers’
best intentions, some of the research reported on websites as well as in
newspapers, magazines, and even scientific journals is invalid. Validity is
not an all-or-nothing proposition, which means that some research is more
valid than other research. Only by understanding the potential threats to
validity will you be able to make knowledgeable decisions about the
conclusions that can or cannot be drawn from a research project. There are
four major types of threats to the validity of research, and informed
consumers of research are aware of each type.
 Threats to the Validity of Research

1. Threats to construct validity. Although it is claimed that the measured variables

measure the conceptual variables of interest, they actually may not.

2. Threats to statistical conclusion validity. Conclusions regarding the research may be

incorrect because no statistical tests were made or because the statistical tests were
incorrectly interpreted.

3. Threats to internal validity. Although it is claimed that the independent variable

caused the dependent variable, the dependent variable actually may have been
caused by a confounding variable.

4. Threats to external validity. Although it is claimed that the results are more general,
the observed effects may actually only be found under limited conditions or for
specific groups of people. (Stangor, 2011)

One threat to valid research occurs when there is a threat to construct

validity. Construct validity refers to the extent to which the variables used
in the research adequately assess the conceptual variables they were
designed to measure. One requirement for construct validity is that the
measure be reliable, where reliability refers to the consistency of a
measured variable. A bathroom scale is usually reliable, because if we step
on and off it a couple of times the scale will consistently measure the same
weight every time. Other measures, including some psychological tests, may
be less reliable, and thus less useful.

Normally, we can assume that the researchers have done their best to assure
the construct validity of their measures, but it is not inappropriate for you,
as an informed consumer of research, to question this. It is always important
to remember that the ability to learn about the relationship between the
conceptual variables in a research hypothesis is dependent on the
operational definitions of the measured variables. If the measures do not
really measure the conceptual variables that they are designed to assess
(e.g., if a supposed IQ test does not really measure intelligence), then they
cannot be used to draw inferences about the relationship between the
conceptual variables (Nunnally, 1978).

The statistical methods that scientists use to test their research hypotheses
are based on probability estimates. You will see statements in research
reports indicating that the results were “statistically significant” or “not
statistically significant.” These statements will be accompanied by statistical
tests, often including statements such as “p < 0.05” or about confidence
intervals. These statements describe the statistical significance of the data
that have been collected. Statistical significance refers to the confidence
with which a scientist can conclude that data are not due to chance or
random error. When a researcher concludes that a result is statistically
significant, he or she has determined that the observed data was very
unlikely to have been caused by chance factors alone. Hence, there is likely
a real relationship between or among the variables in the research design.
Otherwise, the researcher concludes that the results were not statistically
significant.

Statistical conclusion validity refers to the extent to which we can be

certain that the researcher has drawn accurate conclusions about the
statistical significance of the research. Research will be invalid if the
conclusions made about the research hypothesis are incorrect because
statistical inferences about the collected data are in error. These errors can
occur either because the scientist inappropriately infers that the data do
support the research hypothesis when in fact they are due to chance, or
when the researcher mistakenly fails to find support for the research
hypothesis. Normally, we can assume that the researchers have done their
best to ensure the statistical conclusion validity of a research design, but we
must always keep in mind that inferences about data are probabilistic and
never certain—this is why research never “proves” a theory.

Internal validity refers to the extent to which we can trust the conclusions
that have been drawn about the causal relationship between the independent
and dependent variables (Campbell & Stanley, 1963). Internal validity
applies primarily to experimental research designs, in which the researcher
hopes to conclude that the independent variable has caused the dependent
variable. Internal validity is maximized when the research is free from the
presence of confounding variables—variables other than the independent
variable on which the participants in one experimental condition differ
systematically from those in other conditions.

Consider an experiment in which a researcher tested the hypothesis that

drinking alcohol makes members of the opposite sex look more attractive.
Participants older than 21 years of age were randomly assigned either to
drink orange juice mixed with vodka or to drink orange juice alone. To
eliminate the need for deception, the participants were told whether or not
their drinks contained vodka. After enough time had passed for the alcohol
to take effect, the participants were asked to rate the attractiveness of
pictures of members of the opposite sex. The results of the experiment
showed that, as predicted, the participants who drank the vodka rated the
photos as significantly more attractive.

If you think about this experiment for a minute, it may occur to you that
although the researcher wanted to draw the conclusion that the alcohol
caused the differences in perceived attractiveness, the expectation of having
consumed alcohol is confounded with the presence of alcohol. That is, the
people who drank alcohol also knew they drank alcohol, and those who did
not drink alcohol knew they did not. It is possible that simply knowing that
they were drinking alcohol, rather than the effect of the alcohol itself, may
have caused the differences (see Figure 2.18 “An Example of
Confounding”). One solution to the problem of potential expectancy effects
is to tell both groups that they are drinking orange juice and vodka but really
give alcohol to only half of the participants (it is possible to do this because
vodka has very little smell or taste). If differences in perceived
attractiveness are found, the experimenter could then confidently attribute
them to the alcohol rather than to the expectancies about having consumed
alcohol.

Figure 2.18 An Example of Confounding

Confounding occurs when a variable that is not part of the research hypothesis is “mixed up,” or

confounded with, the variable in the research hypothesis. In the bottom panel alcohol consumed and

alcohol expectancy are confounded, but in the top panel they are separate (independent). Confounding

makes it impossible to be sure that the independent variable (rather than the confounding variable) caused

the dependent variable.

Another threat to internal validity can occur when the experimenter knows
the research hypothesis and also knows which experimental condition the
participants are in. The outcome is the potential for experimenter bias, a
situation in which the experimenter subtly treats the research participants in
the various experimental conditions differently, resulting in an invalid
confirmation of the research hypothesis. In one study demonstrating
experimenter bias, Rosenthal and Fode (1963) sent twelve students to test a
research hypothesis concerning maze learning in rats. Although it was not
initially revealed to the students, they were actually the participants in an
experiment. Six of the students were randomly told that the rats they would
be testing had been bred to be highly intelligent, whereas the other six
students were led to believe that the rats had been bred to be unintelligent.
In reality there were no differences among the rats given to the two groups
of students. When the students returned with their data, a startling result
emerged. The rats run by students who expected them to be intelligent
showed significantly better maze learning than the rats run by students who
expected them to be unintelligent. Somehow the students’ expectations
influenced their data. They evidently did something different when they
tested the rats, perhaps subtly changing how they timed the maze running or
how they treated the rats. And this experimenter bias probably occurred
entirely out of their awareness.

To avoid experimenter bias, researchers frequently run experiments in

which the researchers are blind to condition. This means that although the
experimenters know the research hypotheses, they do not know which
conditions the participants are assigned to. Experimenter bias cannot occur
if the researcher is blind to condition. In a double-blind experiment, both
the researcher and the research participants are blind to condition. For
instance, in a double-blind trial of a drug, the researcher does not know
whether the drug being given is the real drug or the ineffective placebo, and
the patients also do not know which they are getting. Double-blind
experiments eliminate the potential for experimenter effects and at the same
time eliminate participant expectancy effects.

While internal validity refers to conclusions drawn about events that

occurred within the experiment, external validity refers to the extent to
which the results of a research design can be generalized beyond the
specific way the original experiment was conducted. Generalization refers
to the extent to which relationships among conceptual variables can be
demonstrated in a wide variety of people and a wide variety of manipulated
or measured variables.

Psychologists who use college students as participants in their research may

be concerned about generalization, wondering if their research will
generalize to people who are not college students. And researchers who
study the behaviors of employees in one company may wonder whether the
same findings would translate to other companies. Whenever there is reason
to suspect that a result found for one sample of participants would not hold
up for another sample, then research may be conducted with these other
populations to test for generalization.

Recently, many psychologists have been interested in testing hypotheses

about the extent to which a result will replicate across people from different
cultures (Heine, 2010). For instance, a researcher might test whether the
effects on aggression of viewing violent video games are the same for
Japanese children as they are for American children by showing violent and
nonviolent films to a sample of both Japanese and American schoolchildren.
If the results are the same in both cultures, then we say that the results have
generalized, but if they are different, then we have learned a limiting
condition of the effect (see Figure 2.19 “A Cross-Cultural Replication”).

Figure 2.19 A Cross-Cultural Replication

In a cross-cultural replication, external validity is observed if the same effects that have been found in one

culture are replicated in another culture. If they are not replicated in the new culture, then a limiting

condition of the original results is found.

Unless the researcher has a specific reason to believe that generalization will
not hold, it is appropriate to assume that a result found in one population
(even if that population is college students) will generalize to other
populations. Because the investigator can never demonstrate that the
research results generalize to all populations, it is not expected that the
researcher will attempt to do so. Rather, the burden of proof rests on those
who claim that a result will not generalize.

Because any single test of a research hypothesis will always be limited in

terms of what it can show, important advances in science are never the result
of a single research project. Advances occur through the accumulation of
knowledge that comes from many different tests of the same theory or
research hypothesis. These tests are conducted by different researchers using
different research designs, participants, and operationalizations of the
independent and dependent variables. The process of repeating previous
research, which forms the basis of all scientific inquiry, is known as
replication.

Scientists often use a procedure known as meta-analysis to summarize

replications of research findings. A meta-analysis is a statistical technique
that uses the results of existing studies to integrate and draw conclusions
about those studies. Because meta-analyses provide so much information,
they are very popular and useful ways of summarizing research literature.

A meta-analysis provides a relatively objective method of reviewing

research findings because it (1) specifies inclusion criteria that indicate
exactly which studies will or will not be included in the analysis, (2)
systematically searches for all studies that meet the inclusion criteria, and
(3) provides an objective measure of the strength of observed relationships.
Frequently, the researchers also include—if they can find them—studies that
have not been published in journals.

Psychology in Everyday Life: Critically Evaluating the Validity of Websites

The validity of research reports published in scientific journals is likely to be high because the
hypotheses, methods, results, and conclusions of the research have been rigorously evaluated by
other scientists, through peer review, before the research was published. For this reason, you will
want to use peer-reviewed journal articles as your major source of information about
psychological research.

Although research articles are the gold standard for validity, you may also need and desire to get
at least some information from other sources. The Internet is a vast source of information from
which you can learn about almost anything, including psychology. Search engines—such as
Google or Yahoo!—bring hundreds or thousands of hits on a topic, and online encyclopedias,
such as Wikipedia, provide articles about relevant topics.

Although you will naturally use the web to help you find information about fields such as
psychology, you must also realize that it is important to carefully evaluate the validity of the
information you get from the web. You must try to distinguish information that is based on
empirical research from information that is based on opinion, and between valid and invalid
data. The following material may be helpful to you in learning to make these distinctions.

The techniques for evaluating the validity of websites are similar to those that are applied to
evaluating any other source of information. Ask first about the source of the information. Is the
domain a “.com” (business), “.gov” (government), or “.org” (nonprofit) entity? This information
can help you determine the author’s (or organization’s) purpose in publishing the website. Try to
determine where the information is coming from. Is the data being summarized from objective
sources, such as journal articles or academic or government agencies? Does it seem that the
author is interpreting the information as objectively as possible, or is the data being interpreted
to support a particular point of view? Consider what groups, individuals, and political or
commercial interests stand to gain from the site. Is the website potentially part of an advocacy
group whose web pages reflect the particular positions of the group? Material from any group’s
site may be useful, but try to be aware of the group’s purposes and potential biases.

Also, ask whether or not the authors themselves appear to be a trustworthy source of
information. Do they hold positions in an academic institution? Do they have peer-reviewed
publications in scientific journals? Many useful web pages appear as part of organizational sites
and reflect the work of that organization. You can be more certain of the validity of the
information if it is sponsored by a professional organization, such as the American Psychological
Association or the American Psychological Society.

Try to check on the accuracy of the material and discern whether the sources of information
seem current. Is the information cited such that you can read it in its original form? Reputable
websites will probably link to other reputable sources, such as journal articles and scholarly
books. Try to check the accuracy of the information by reading at least some of these sources
yourself.
It is fair to say that all authors, researchers, and organizations have at least some bias and that the
information from any site can be invalid. But good material attempts to be fair by
acknowledging other possible positions, interpretations, or conclusions. A critical examination of
the nature of the websites you browse for information will help you determine if the information
is valid and will give you more confidence in the information you take from it.

Key Takeaways

Research is said to be valid when the conclusions drawn by the researcher are
legitimate. Because all research has the potential to be invalid, no research ever
“proves” a theory or research hypothesis.

Construct validity, statistical conclusion validity, internal validity, and external

validity are all types of validity that people who read and interpret research need to
be aware of.

Construct validity refers to the assurance that the measured variables adequately
measure the conceptual variables

Statistical conclusion validity refers to the assurance that inferences about statistical
significance are appropriate.

Internal validity refers to the assurance that the independent variable has caused the
dependent variable. Internal validity is greater when confounding variables are
reduced or eliminated.

External validity is greater when effects can be replicated across different

manipulations, measures, and populations. Scientists use meta-analyses to better
understand the external validity of research.
 Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. The Pepsi Cola Corporation, now PepsiCo Inc., conducted the “Pepsi Challenge” by
randomly assigning individuals to taste either a Pepsi or a Coke. The researchers
labeled the glasses with only an “M” (for Pepsi) or a “Q” (for Coke) and asked the
participants to rate how much they liked the beverage. The research showed that
subjects overwhelmingly preferred glass “M” over glass “Q,” and the researchers
concluded that Pepsi was preferred to Coke. Can you tell what confounding variable
is present in this research design? How would you redesign the research to eliminate
the confound?

2. Locate a research report of a meta-analysis. Determine the criteria that were used to
select the studies and report on the findings of the research.

References

Campbell, D. T., & Stanley, J. C. (1963). Experimental and quasi-

experimental designs for research. Chicago: Rand McNally.

Heine, S. J. (2010). Cultural psychology. In S. T. Fiske, D. T. Gilbert, & G.

Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (5th ed., Vol. 2, pp. 1423–
1464). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Nunnally, J. C. (1978). Pyschometric theory. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Rosenthal, R., & Fode, K. L. (1963). The effect of experimenter bias on the
performance of the albino rat. Behavioral Science, 8, 183–189.

Stangor, C. (2011). Research methods for the behavioral sciences (4th ed.).
Mountain View, CA: Cengage.
2.4 Chapter Summary

Psychologists study the behavior of both humans and animals in order to

understand and improve the quality of human lives.

Psychological research may be either basic or applied in orientation. Basic

research and applied research inform each other, and advances in science
occur more rapidly when both types of research are conducted.

The results of psychological research are reported primarily in research

reports in scientific journals. These research reports have been evaluated,
critiqued, and improved by other scientists through the process of peer
review.

The methods used by scientists have developed over many years and
provide a common framework through which information can be collected,
organized, and shared.

The scientific method is the set of assumptions, rules, and procedures that
scientists use to conduct research. In addition to requiring that science be
empirical, the scientific method demands that the procedures used be
objective, or free from personal bias.

Scientific findings are organized by theories, which are used to summarize

and make new predictions, but theories are usually framed too broadly to be
tested in a single experiment. Therefore, scientists normally use the research
hypothesis as a basis for their research.

Scientists use operational definitions to turn the ideas of interest—

conceptual variables—into measured variables.
Decisions about whether psychological research using human and animals
is ethical are made using established ethical codes developed by scientific
organizations and on the basis of judgments made by the local Institutional
Review Board. These decisions are made through a cost-benefit analysis, in
which the costs are compared to the benefits. If the potential costs of the
research appear to outweigh any potential benefits that might come from it,
then the research should not proceed.

Descriptive research is designed to provide a snapshot of the current state of

affairs. Descriptive research allows the development of questions for further
study but does not assess relationships among variables. The results of
descriptive research projects are analyzed using descriptive statistics.

Correlational research assesses the relationships between and among two or

more variables. It allows making predictions but cannot be used to draw
inferences about the causal relationships between and among the variables.
Linear relationships between variables are normally analyzed using the
Pearson correlation coefficient.

The goal of experimental research is to assess the causal impact of one or

more experimental manipulations on a dependent variable. Because
experimental research creates initial equivalence among the participants in
the different experimental conditions, it allows drawing conclusions about
the causal relationships among variables. Experimental designs are not
always possible because many important variables cannot be
experimentally manipulated.

Because all research has the potential for invalidity, research never “proves”
a theory or hypothesis.

Threats to construct validity involve potential inaccuracies in the

measurement of the conceptual variables.
Threats to statistical conclusion validity involve potential inaccuracies in
the statistical testing of the relationships among variables.

Threats to internal validity involve potential inaccuracies in assumptions

about the causal role of the independent variable on the dependent variable.

Threats to external validity involve potential inaccuracy regarding the

generality of observed findings.

Informed consumers of research are aware of the strengths of research but

are also aware of its potential limitations.
Chapter 3. Brains, Bodies, and
Behavior

Did a Neurological Disorder Cause a Musician to Compose Boléro and an Artist

to Paint It 66 Years Later?

In 1986 Anne Adams was working as a cell biologist at the University of Toronto in Ontario,
Canada. She took a leave of absence from her work to care for a sick child, and while she was
away, she completely changed her interests, dropping biology entirely and turning her attention
to art. In 1994 she completed her painting Unravelling Boléro, a translation of Maurice Ravel’s
famous orchestral piece onto canvas. This artwork is a filled with themes of repetition. Each bar
of music is represented by a lacy vertical figure, with the height representing volume, the shape
representing note quality, and the color representing the music’s pitch. Like Ravel’s music (see
the video below), which is a hypnotic melody consisting of two melodial themes repeated eight
times over 340 musical bars, the theme in the painting repeats and builds, leading to a dramatic
change in color from blue to orange and pink, a representation of Boléro’s sudden and dramatic
climax.

Adams’s depiction of Ravel’s orchestral piece Boléro was painted during the very early phase of
her illness in 1994.

Maurice Ravel’s Composition Boléro (1928)

(click to see video)

This is a video clip of Maurice Ravel’s Boléro, composed in 1928 during the early phases of his
illness.

Shortly after finishing the painting, Adams began to experience behavioral problems, including
increased difficulty speaking. Neuroimages of Adams’s brain taken during this time show that
regions in the front part of her brain, which are normally associated with language processing,
 had begun to deteriorate, while at the same time, regions of the brain responsible for the
integration of information from the five senses were unusually well developed (Seeley et al.,
2008). The deterioration of the frontal cortex is a symptom of frontotemporal dementia, a
disease that is associated with changes in artistic and musical tastes and skills (Miller, Boone,
Cummings, Read, & Mishkin, 2000), as well as with an increase in repetitive behaviors
(Aldhous, 2008).

What Adams did not know at the time was that her brain may have been undergoing the same
changes that Ravel’s had undergone 66 years earlier. In fact, it appears that Ravel may have
suffered from the same neurological disorder. Ravel composed Boléro at age 53, when he
himself was beginning to show behavioral symptoms that were interfering with his ability to
move and speak. Scientists have concluded, based on an analysis of his written notes and letters,
that Ravel was also experiencing the effects of frontotemporal dementia (Amaducci, Grassi, &
Boller, 2002). If Adams and Ravel were both affected by the same disease, this could explain
why they both became fascinated with the repetitive aspects of their arts, and it would present a
remarkable example of the influence of our brains on behavior.

Every behavior begins with biology. Our behaviors, as well as our thoughts
and feelings, are produced by the actions of our brains, nerves, muscles, and
glands. In this chapter we will begin our journey into the world of
psychology by considering the biological makeup of the human being,
including the most remarkable of human organs—the brain. We’ll consider
the structure of the brain and also the methods that psychologists use to
study the brain and to understand how it works.

We will see that the body is controlled by an information highway known as

the nervous system, a collection of hundreds of billions of specialized and
interconnected cells through which messages are sent between the brain
and the rest of the body. The nervous system consists of the central
nervous system (CNS), made up of the brain and the spinal cord, and the
peripheral nervous system (PNS), the neurons that link the CNS to our
skin, muscles, and glands. And we will see that our behavior is also
influenced in large part by the endocrine system, the chemical regulator of
the body that consists of glands that secrete hormones.

Although this chapter begins at a very low level of explanation, and

although the topic of study may seem at first to be far from the everyday
behaviors that we all engage in, a full understanding of the biology
underlying psychological processes is an important cornerstone of your new
understanding of psychology. We will consider throughout the chapter how
our biology influences important human behaviors, including our mental
and physical health, our reactions to drugs, as well as our aggressive
responses and our perceptions of other people. This chapter is particularly
important for contemporary psychology because the ability to measure
biological aspects of behavior, including the structure and function of the
human brain, is progressing rapidly, and understanding the biological
foundations of behavior is an increasingly important line of psychological
study.

References

Aldhous, P. (2008, April 7). “Boléro”: Beautiful symptom of a terrible

disease. New Scientist. Retrieved from
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13599-bolero-beautiful-symptom-
of-a-terrible-disease.html

Amaducci, L., Grassi, E., & Boller, F. (2002). Maurice Ravel and right-
hemisphere musical creativity: Influence of disease on his last musical
works? European Journal of Neurology, 9(1), 75–82.

Miller, B. L., Boone, K., Cummings, J. L., Read, S. L., & Mishkin, F.
(2000). Functional correlates of musical and visual ability in frontotemporal
dementia. British Journal of Psychiatry, 176, 458–463.

Seeley, W. W., Matthews, B. R., Crawford, R. K., Gorno-Tempini, M. L.,

Foti, D., Mackenzie, I. R., & Miller, B. L. (2008). “Unravelling Boléro”:
Progressive aphasia, transmodal creativity, and the right posterior
neocortex. Brain, 131(1), 39–49.
3.1 The Neuron Is the Building Block of the
Nervous System

Learning Objectives

1. Describe the structure and functions of the neuron.

2. Draw a diagram of the pathways of communication within and between neurons.

3. List three of the major neurotransmitters and describe their functions.

The nervous system is composed of more than 100 billion cells known as
neurons. A neuron is a cell in the nervous system whose function it is to
receive and transmit information. As you can see in Figure 3.2
“Components of the Neuron”, neurons are made up of three major parts: a
cell body, or soma, which contains the nucleus of the cell and keeps the cell
alive; a branching treelike fiber known as the dendrite, which collects
information from other cells and sends the information to the soma; and a
long, segmented fiber known as the axon, which transmits information
away from the cell body toward other neurons or to the muscles and glands.

Figure 3.2 Components of the Neuron

Figure 3.3
The nervous system, including the brain, is made up of billions of interlinked neurons. This vast interconnected web is responsible

for all human thinking, feeling, and behavior.

MR McGill – Neurons, In Vitro Color! – CC BY-NC 2.0

Some neurons have hundreds or even thousands of dendrites, and these

dendrites may themselves be branched to allow the cell to receive
information from thousands of other cells. The axons are also specialized,
and some, such as those that send messages from the spinal cord to the
muscles in the hands or feet, may be very long—even up to several feet in
length. To improve the speed of their communication, and to keep their
electrical charges from shorting out with other neurons, axons are often
surrounded by a myelin sheath. The myelin sheath is a layer of fatty tissue
surrounding the axon of a neuron that both acts as an insulator and allows
faster transmission of the electrical signal. Axons branch out toward their
ends, and at the tip of each branch is a terminal button.

Neurons Communicate Using Electricity and

Chemicals

The nervous system operates using an electrochemical process (see Note

3.12 “Video Clip: The Electrochemical Action of the Neuron”). An
electrical charge moves through the neuron itself and chemicals are used to
transmit information between neurons. Within the neuron, when a signal is
received by the dendrites, is it transmitted to the soma in the form of an
electrical signal, and, if the signal is strong enough, it may then be passed
on to the axon and then to the terminal buttons. If the signal reaches the
terminal buttons, they are signaled to emit chemicals known as
neurotransmitters, which communicate with other neurons across the spaces
between the cells, known as synapses.
 Video Clip: The Electrochemical Action of the Neuron

(click to see video)

This video clip shows a model of the electrochemical action of the neuron
and neurotransmitters.

The electrical signal moves through the neuron as a result of changes in the
electrical charge of the axon. Normally, the axon remains in the resting
potential, a state in which the interior of the neuron contains a greater
number of negatively charged ions than does the area outside the cell. When
the segment of the axon that is closest to the cell body is stimulated by an
electrical signal from the dendrites, and if this electrical signal is strong
enough that it passes a certain level or threshold, the cell membrane in this
first segment opens its gates, allowing positively charged sodium ions that
were previously kept out to enter. This change in electrical charge that
occurs in a neuron when a nerve impulse is transmitted is known as the
action potential. Once the action potential occurs, the number of positive
ions exceeds the number of negative ions in this segment, and the segment
temporarily becomes positively charged.

As you can see in Figure 3.4 “The Myelin Sheath and the Nodes of
Ranvier”, the axon is segmented by a series of breaks between the sausage-
like segments of the myelin sheath. Each of these gaps is a node of Ranvier.
The electrical charge moves down the axon from segment to segment, in a
set of small jumps, moving from node to node. When the action potential
occurs in the first segment of the axon, it quickly creates a similar change in
the next segment, which then stimulates the next segment, and so forth as
the positive electrical impulse continues all the way down to the end of the
axon. As each new segment becomes positive, the membrane in the prior
segment closes up again, and the segment returns to its negative resting
potential. In this way the action potential is transmitted along the axon,
toward the terminal buttons. The entire response along the length of the
axon is very fast—it can happen up to 1,000 times each second.

Figure 3.4 The Myelin Sheath and the Nodes of Ranvier

The myelin sheath wraps around the axon but also leaves small gaps called the nodes of Ranvier. The

action potential jumps from node to node as it travels down the axon.

An important aspect of the action potential is that it operates in an all or

nothing manner. What this means is that the neuron either fires completely,
such that the action potential moves all the way down the axon, or it does
not fire at all. Thus neurons can provide more energy to the neurons down
the line by firing faster but not by firing more strongly. Furthermore, the
neuron is prevented from repeated firing by the presence of a refractory
period—a brief time after the firing of the axon in which the axon cannot
fire again because the neuron has not yet returned to its resting potential.

Neurotransmitters: The Body’s Chemical

Messengers

Not only do the neural signals travel via electrical charges within the
neuron, but they also travel via chemical transmission between the neurons.
Neurons are separated by junction areas known as synapses, areas where
the terminal buttons at the end of the axon of one neuron nearly, but don’t
quite, touch the dendrites of another. The synapses provide a remarkable
function because they allow each axon to communicate with many dendrites
in neighboring cells. Because a neuron may have synaptic connections with
thousands of other neurons, the communication links among the neurons in
the nervous system allow for a highly sophisticated communication system.

When the electrical impulse from the action potential reaches the end of the
axon, it signals the terminal buttons to release neurotransmitters into the
synapse. A neurotransmitter is a chemical that relays signals across the
synapses between neurons. Neurotransmitters travel across the synaptic
space between the terminal button of one neuron and the dendrites of other
neurons, where they bind to the dendrites in the neighboring neurons.
Furthermore, different terminal buttons release different neurotransmitters,
and different dendrites are particularly sensitive to different
neurotransmitters. The dendrites will admit the neurotransmitters only if
they are the right shape to fit in the receptor sites on the receiving neuron.
For this reason, the receptor sites and neurotransmitters are often compared
to a lock and key (Figure 3.5 “The Synapse”).

Figure 3.5 The Synapse

When the nerve impulse reaches the terminal button, it triggers the release of neurotransmitters into the

synapse. The neurotransmitters fit into receptors on the receiving dendrites in the manner of a lock and

key.

When neurotransmitters are accepted by the receptors on the receiving

neurons their effect may be either excitatory (i.e., they make the cell more
likely to fire) or inhibitory (i.e., they make the cell less likely to fire).
Furthermore, if the receiving neuron is able to accept more than one
neurotransmitter, then it will be influenced by the excitatory and inhibitory
processes of each. If the excitatory effects of the neurotransmitters are
greater than the inhibitory influences of the neurotransmitters, the neuron
moves closer to its firing threshold, and if it reaches the threshold, the action
potential and the process of transferring information through the neuron
begins.

Neurotransmitters that are not accepted by the receptor sites must be

removed from the synapse in order for the next potential stimulation of the
neuron to happen. This process occurs in part through the breaking down of
the neurotransmitters by enzymes, and in part through reuptake, a process
in which neurotransmitters that are in the synapse are reabsorbed into the
transmitting terminal buttons, ready to again be released after the neuron
fires.

More than 100 chemical substances produced in the body have been
identified as neurotransmitters, and these substances have a wide and
profound effect on emotion, cognition, and behavior. Neurotransmitters
regulate our appetite, our memory, our emotions, as well as our muscle
action and movement. And as you can see in Table 3.1 “The Major
Neurotransmitters and Their Functions”, some neurotransmitters are also
associated with psychological and physical diseases.

Drugs that we might ingest—either for medical reasons or recreationally—

can act like neurotransmitters to influence our thoughts, feelings, and
behavior. An agonist is a drug that has chemical properties similar to a
particular neurotransmitter and thus mimics the effects of the
neurotransmitter. When an agonist is ingested, it binds to the receptor sites
in the dendrites to excite the neuron, acting as if more of the
neurotransmitter had been present. As an example, cocaine is an agonist for
the neurotransmitter dopamine. Because dopamine produces feelings of
pleasure when it is released by neurons, cocaine creates similar feelings
when it is ingested. An antagonist is a drug that reduces or stops the
normal effects of a neurotransmitter. When an antagonist is ingested, it
binds to the receptor sites in the dendrite, thereby blocking the
neurotransmitter. As an example, the poison curare is an antagonist for the
neurotransmitter acetylcholine. When the poison enters the brain, it binds to
the dendrites, stops communication among the neurons, and usually causes
death. Still other drugs work by blocking the reuptake of the
neurotransmitter itself—when reuptake is reduced by the drug, more
neurotransmitter remains in the synapse, increasing its action.

Table 3.1 The Major Neurotransmitters and Their Functions

Neurotransmitter Description and function Notes

A common neurotransmitter
used in the spinal cord and
motor neurons to stimulate Alzheimer’s disease is associated with an
Acetylcholine
muscle contractions. It’s also undersupply of acetylcholine. Nicotine is
(ACh)
used in the brain to regulate an agonist that acts like acetylcholine.
memory, sleeping, and
dreaming.

Involved in movement,
Schizophrenia is linked to increases in
motivation, and emotion,
dopamine, whereas Parkinson’s disease is
Dopamine produces feelings of
Dopamine linked to reductions in dopamine (and
pleasure when released by the
dopamine agonists may be used to treat
brain’s reward system, and it’s
it).
also involved in learning.

Endorphins are natural pain relievers.

Released in response to They are related to the compounds found
behaviors such as vigorous in drugs such as opium, morphine, and
Endorphins
exercise, orgasm, and eating heroin. The release of endorphins creates
spicy foods. the runner’s high that is experienced after
intense physical exertion.

A lack of GABA can lead to involuntary

motor actions, including tremors and
seizures. Alcohol stimulates the release of
GABA (gamma- The major inhibitory GABA, which inhibits the nervous system
aminobutyric acid) neurotransmitter in the brain. and makes us feel drunk. Low levels of
GABA can produce anxiety, and GABA
agonists (tranquilizers) are used to reduce
anxiety.
Neurotransmitter Description and function Notes

The most common

neurotransmitter, it’s released
in more than 90% of the brain’s Excess glutamate can cause
Glutamate
synapses. Glutamate is found in overstimulation, migraines and seizures.
the food additive MSG
(monosodium glutamate).

Low levels of serotonin are associated

Involved in many functions, with depression, and some drugs designed
Serotonin including mood, appetite, to treat depression (known as selective
sleep, and aggression. serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs)
serve to prevent their reuptake.

Key Takeaways

The central nervous system (CNS) is the collection of neurons that make up the brain
and the spinal cord.

The peripheral nervous system (PNS) is the collection of neurons that link the CNS
to our skin, muscles, and glands.

Neurons are specialized cells, found in the nervous system, which transmit
information. Neurons contain a dendrite, a soma, and an axon.

Some axons are covered with a fatty substance known as the myelin sheath, which
surrounds the axon, acting as an insulator and allowing faster transmission of the
electrical signal

The dendrite is a treelike extension that receives information from other neurons and
transmits electrical stimulation to the soma.
 The axon is an elongated fiber that transfers information from the soma to the
terminal buttons.

Neurotransmitters relay information chemically from the terminal buttons and across
the synapses to the receiving dendrites using a type of lock and key system.

The many different neurotransmitters work together to influence cognition, memory,

and behavior.

Agonists are drugs that mimic the actions of neurotransmitters, whereas antagonists
are drugs that block the action of neurotransmitters.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Draw a picture of a neuron and label its main parts.

2. Imagine an action that you engage in every day and explain how neurons and
neurotransmitters might work together to help you engage in that action.
3.2 Our Brains Control Our Thoughts,
Feelings, and Behavior

Learning Objectives

1. Describe the structures and function of the “old brain” and its influence on behavior.

2. Explain the structure of the cerebral cortex (its hemispheres and lobes) and the
function of each area of the cortex.

3. Define the concepts of brain plasticity, neurogenesis, and brain lateralization.

If you were someone who understood brain anatomy and were to look at the
brain of an animal that you had never seen before, you would nevertheless
be able to deduce the likely capacities of the animal. This is because the
brains of all animals are very similar in overall form. In each animal the
brain is layered, and the basic structures of the brain are similar (see Figure
3.6 “The Major Structures in the Human Brain”). The innermost structures
of the brain—the parts nearest the spinal cord—are the oldest part of the
brain, and these areas carry out the same the functions they did for our
distant ancestors. The “old brain” regulates basic survival functions, such as
breathing, moving, resting, and feeding, and creates our experiences of
emotion. Mammals, including humans, have developed further brain layers
that provide more advanced functions—for instance, better memory, more
sophisticated social interactions, and the ability to experience emotions.
Humans have a very large and highly developed outer layer known as the
cerebral cortex (see Figure 3.7 “Cerebral Cortex”), which makes us
particularly adept at these processes.
Figure 3.6 The Major Structures in the Human Brain

The major brain parts are colored and labeled.

Source: Adapted from Camazine, S. (n.d.). Images of the brain. Medical, science, and nature things:

Photography and digital imagery by Scott Camazine.

Figure 3.7 Cerebral Cortex

Humans have a very large and highly developed outer brain layer known as the cerebral cortex. The

cortex provides humans with excellent memory, outstanding cognitive skills, and the ability to experience

complex emotions.

Adapted from Wikia Education. (n.d.). Cerebral cortex.

The Old Brain: Wired for Survival

The brain stem is the oldest and innermost region of the brain. It’s
designed to control the most basic functions of life, including breathing,
attention, and motor responses (Figure 3.8 “The Brain Stem and the
Thalamus”). The brain stem begins where the spinal cord enters the skull
and forms the medulla, the area of the brain stem that controls heart rate
and breathing. In many cases the medulla alone is sufficient to maintain life
—animals that have the remainder of their brains above the medulla severed
are still able to eat, breathe, and even move. The spherical shape above the
medulla is the pons, a structure in the brain stem that helps control the
movements of the body, playing a particularly important role in balance and
walking.

Running through the medulla and the pons is a long, narrow network of
neurons known as the reticular formation. The job of the reticular
formation is to filter out some of the stimuli that are coming into the brain
from the spinal cord and to relay the remainder of the signals to other areas
of the brain. The reticular formation also plays important roles in walking,
eating, sexual activity, and sleeping. When electrical stimulation is applied
to the reticular formation of an animal, it immediately becomes fully awake,
and when the reticular formation is severed from the higher brain regions,
the animal falls into a deep coma.

Figure 3.8 The Brain Stem and the Thalamus

The brain stem is an extension of the spinal cord, including the medulla, the pons, the thalamus, and the

reticular formation.

Above the brain stem are other parts of the old brain that also are involved
in the processing of behavior and emotions (see Figure 3.9 “The Limbic
System”). The thalamus is the egg-shaped structure above the brain stem
that applies still more filtering to the sensory information that is coming up
from the spinal cord and through the reticular formation, and it relays some
of these remaining signals to the higher brain levels (Guillery & Sherman,
2002). The thalamus also receives some of the higher brain’s replies,
forwarding them to the medulla and the cerebellum. The thalamus is also
important in sleep because it shuts off incoming signals from the senses,
allowing us to rest.

Figure 3.9 The Limbic System

This diagram shows the major parts of the limbic system, as well as the pituitary gland, which is

controlled by it.

The cerebellum (literally, “little brain”) consists of two wrinkled ovals

behind the brain stem. It functions to coordinate voluntary movement.
People who have damage to the cerebellum have difficulty walking, keeping
their balance, and holding their hands steady. Consuming alcohol influences
the cerebellum, which is why people who are drunk have more difficulty
walking in a straight line. Also, the cerebellum contributes to emotional
responses, helps us discriminate between different sounds and textures, and
is important in learning (Bower & Parsons, 2003).

Whereas the primary function of the brain stem is to regulate the most basic
aspects of life, including motor functions, the limbic system is largely
responsible for memory and emotions, including our responses to reward
and punishment. The limbic system is a brain area, located between the
brain stem and the two cerebral hemispheres, that governs emotion and
memory. It includes the amygdala, the hypothalamus, and the hippocampus.

The amygdalaconsists of two “almond-shaped” clusters (amygdala comes

from the Latin word for “almond”) and is primarily responsible for
regulating our perceptions of, and reactions to, aggression and fear. The
amygdala has connections to other bodily systems related to fear, including
the sympathetic nervous system (which we will see later is important in fear
responses), facial responses (which perceive and express emotions), the
processing of smells, and the release of neurotransmitters related to stress
and aggression (Best, 2009). In one early study, Klüver and Bucy (1939)
damaged the amygdala of an aggressive rhesus monkey. They found that the
once angry animal immediately became passive and no longer responded to
fearful situations with aggressive behavior. Electrical stimulation of the
amygdala in other animals also influences aggression. In addition to helping
us experience fear, the amygdala also helps us learn from situations that
create fear. When we experience events that are dangerous, the amygdala
stimulates the brain to remember the details of the situation so that we learn
to avoid it in the future (Sigurdsson, Doyère, Cain, & LeDoux, 2007).

Located just under the thalamus (hence its name) the hypothalamus is a
brain structure that contains a number of small areas that perform a variety
of functions, including the important role of linking the nervous system to
the endocrine system via the pituitary gland. Through its many interactions
with other parts of the brain, the hypothalamus helps regulate body
temperature, hunger, thirst, and sex, and responds to the satisfaction of these
needs by creating feelings of pleasure. Olds and Milner (1954) discovered
these reward centers accidentally after they had momentarily stimulated the
hypothalamus of a rat. The researchers noticed that after being stimulated,
the rat continued to move to the exact spot in its cage where the stimulation
had occurred, as if it were trying to re-create the circumstances surrounding
its original experience. Upon further research into these reward centers,
Olds (1958) discovered that animals would do almost anything to re-create
enjoyable stimulation, including crossing a painful electrified grid to receive
it. In one experiment a rat was given the opportunity to electrically stimulate
its own hypothalamus by pressing a pedal. The rat enjoyed the experience so
much that it pressed the pedal more than 7,000 times per hour until it
collapsed from sheer exhaustion.

The hippocampusconsists of two “horns” that curve back from the

amygdala. The hippocampus is important in storing information in long-
term memory. If the hippocampus is damaged, a person cannot build new
memories, living instead in a strange world where everything he or she
experiences just fades away, even while older memories from the time
before the damage are untouched.

The Cerebral Cortex Creates Consciousness

and Thinking

All animals have adapted to their environments by developing abilities that

help them survive. Some animals have hard shells, others run extremely
fast, and some have acute hearing. Human beings do not have any of these
particular characteristics, but we do have one big advantage over other
animals—we are very, very smart.

You might think that we should be able to determine the intelligence of an

animal by looking at the ratio of the animal’s brain weight to the weight of
its entire body. But this does not really work. The elephant’s brain is one
thousandth of its weight, but the whale’s brain is only one ten-thousandth of
its body weight. On the other hand, although the human brain is one 60th of
its body weight, the mouse’s brain represents one fortieth of its body weight.
Despite these comparisons, elephants do not seem 10 times smarter than
whales, and humans definitely seem smarter than mice.

The key to the advanced intelligence of humans is not found in the size of
our brains. What sets humans apart from other animals is our larger
cerebral cortex—the outer bark-like layer of our brain that allows us to so
successfully use language, acquire complex skills, create tools, and live in
social groups (Gibson, 2002). In humans, the cerebral cortex is wrinkled
and folded, rather than smooth as it is in most other animals. This creates a
much greater surface area and size, and allows increased capacities for
learning, remembering, and thinking. The folding of the cerebral cortex is
referred to as corticalization.

Although the cortex is only about one tenth of an inch thick, it makes up
more than 80% of the brain’s weight. The cortex contains about 20 billion
nerve cells and 300 trillion synaptic connections (de Courten-Myers, 1999).
Supporting all these neurons are billions more glial cells (glia), cells that
surround and link to the neurons, protecting them, providing them with
nutrients, and absorbing unused neurotransmitters. The glia come in
different forms and have different functions. For instance, the myelin sheath
surrounding the axon of many neurons is a type of glial cell. The glia are
essential partners of neurons, without which the neurons could not survive
or function (Miller, 2005).

The cerebral cortex is divided into two hemispheres, and each hemisphere is
divided into four lobes, each separated by folds known as fissures. If we
look at the cortex starting at the front of the brain and moving over the top
(see Figure 3.10 “The Two Hemispheres”), we see first the frontal lobe
(behind the forehead), which is responsible primarily for thinking, planning,
memory, and judgment. Following the frontal lobe is the parietal lobe,
which extends from the middle to the back of the skull and which is
responsible primarily for processing information about touch. Then comes
the occipital lobe, at the very back of the skull, which processes visual
information. Finally, in front of the occipital lobe (pretty much between the
ears) is the temporal lobe, responsible primarily for hearing and language.

Figure 3.10 The Two Hemispheres

The brain is divided into two hemispheres (left and right), each of which has four lobes (temporal, frontal,

occipital, and parietal). Furthermore, there are specific cortical areas that control different processes.

Functions of the Cortex

When the German physicists Gustav Fritsch and Eduard Hitzig (1870/2009)
applied mild electric stimulation to different parts of a dog’s cortex, they
discovered that they could make different parts of the dog’s body move.
Furthermore, they discovered an important and unexpected principle of
brain activity. They found that stimulating the right side of the brain
produced movement in the left side of the dog’s body, and vice versa. This
finding follows from a general principle about how the brain is structured,
called contralateral control. The brain is wired such that in most cases the
left hemisphere receives sensations from and controls the right side of the
body, and vice versa.

Fritsch and Hitzig also found that the movement that followed the brain
stimulation only occurred when they stimulated a specific arch-shaped
region that runs across the top of the brain from ear to ear, just at the front of
the parietal lobe (see Figure 3.11 “The Sensory Cortex and the Motor
Cortex”). Fritsch and Hitzig had discovered the motor cortex, the part of
the cortex that controls and executes movements of the body by sending
signals to the cerebellum and the spinal cord. More recent research has
mapped the motor cortex even more fully, by providing mild electronic
stimulation to different areas of the motor cortex in fully conscious patients
while observing their bodily responses (because the brain has no sensory
receptors, these patients feel no pain). As you can see in Figure 3.11 “The
Sensory Cortex and the Motor Cortex”, this research has revealed that the
motor cortex is specialized for providing control over the body, in the sense
that the parts of the body that require more precise and finer movements,
such as the face and the hands, also are allotted the greatest amount of
cortical space.

Figure 3.11 The Sensory Cortex and the Motor Cortex

The portion of the sensory and motor cortex devoted to receiving messages that control specific regions of

the body is determined by the amount of fine movement that area is capable of performing. Thus the hand

and fingers have as much area in the cerebral cortex as does the entire trunk of the body.

Just as the motor cortex sends out messages to the specific parts of the body,
the somatosensory cortex, an area just behind and parallel to the motor
cortex at the back of the frontal lobe, receives information from the skin’s
sensory receptors and the movements of different body parts. Again, the
more sensitive the body region, the more area is dedicated to it in the
sensory cortex. Our sensitive lips, for example, occupy a large area in the
sensory cortex, as do our fingers and genitals.

Other areas of the cortex process other types of sensory information. The
visual cortex is the area located in the occipital lobe (at the very back of
the brain) that processes visual information. If you were stimulated in the
visual cortex, you would see flashes of light or color, and perhaps you
remember having had the experience of “seeing stars” when you were hit in,
or fell on, the back of your head. The temporal lobe, located on the lower
side of each hemisphere, contains the auditory cortex, which is responsible
for hearing and language. The temporal lobe also processes some visual
information, providing us with the ability to name the objects around us
(Martin, 2007).

As you can see in Figure 3.11 “The Sensory Cortex and the Motor Cortex”,
the motor and sensory areas of the cortex account for a relatively small part
of the total cortex. The remainder of the cortex is made up of association
areasin which sensory and motor information is combined and associated
with our stored knowledge. These association areas are the places in the
brain that are responsible for most of the things that make human beings
seem human. The association areas are involved in higher mental functions,
such as learning, thinking, planning, judging, moral reflecting, figuring, and
spatial reasoning.

The Brain Is Flexible: Neuroplasticity

The control of some specific bodily functions, such as movement, vision,

and hearing, is performed in specified areas of the cortex, and if these areas
are damaged, the individual will likely lose the ability to perform the
corresponding function. For instance, if an infant suffers damage to facial
recognition areas in the temporal lobe, it is likely that he or she will never
be able to recognize faces (Farah, Rabinowitz, Quinn, & Liu, 2000). On the
other hand, the brain is not divided up in an entirely rigid way. The brain’s
neurons have a remarkable capacity to reorganize and extend themselves to
carry out particular functions in response to the needs of the organism, and
to repair damage. As a result, the brain constantly creates new neural
communication routes and rewires existing ones. Neuroplasticity refers to
the brain’s ability to change its structure and function in response to
experience or damage. Neuroplasticity enables us to learn and remember
new things and adjust to new experiences.

Our brains are the most “plastic” when we are young children, as it is during
this time that we learn the most about our environment. On the other hand,
neuroplasticity continues to be observed even in adults (Kolb & Fantie,
1989). The principles of neuroplasticity help us understand how our brains
develop to reflect our experiences. For instance, accomplished musicians
have a larger auditory cortex compared with the general population
(Bengtsson et al., 2005) and also require less neural activity to move their
fingers over the keys than do novices (Münte, Altenmüller, & Jäncke, 2002).
These observations reflect the changes in the brain that follow our
experiences.

Plasticity is also observed when there is damage to the brain or to parts of

the body that are represented in the motor and sensory cortexes. When a
tumor in the left hemisphere of the brain impairs language, the right
hemisphere will begin to compensate to help the person recover the ability
to speak (Thiel et al., 2006). And if a person loses a finger, the area of the
sensory cortex that previously received information from the missing finger
will begin to receive input from adjacent fingers, causing the remaining
digits to become more sensitive to touch (Fox, 1984).

Although neurons cannot repair or regenerate themselves as skin or blood

vessels can, new evidence suggests that the brain can engage in
neurogenesis, the forming of new neurons (Van Praag, Zhao, Gage, &
Gazzaniga, 2004). These new neurons originate deep in the brain and may
then migrate to other brain areas where they form new connections with
other neurons (Gould, 2007). This leaves open the possibility that someday
scientists might be able to “rebuild” damaged brains by creating drugs that
help grow neurons.
Research Focus: Identifying the Unique Functions of the Left and Right
Hemispheres Using Split-Brain Patients

We have seen that the left hemisphere of the brain primarily senses and controls the motor
movements on the right side of the body, and vice versa. This fact provides an interesting way to
study brain lateralization—the idea that the left and the right hemispheres of the brain are
specialized to perform different functions. Gazzaniga, Bogen, and Sperry (1965) studied a
patient, known as W. J., who had undergone an operation to relieve severe seizures. In this
surgery the region that normally connects the two halves of the brain and supports
communication between the hemispheres, known as the corpus callosum, is severed. As a result,
the patient essentially becomes a person with two separate brains. Because the left and right
hemispheres are separated, each hemisphere develops a mind of its own, with its own sensations,
concepts, and motivations (Gazzaniga, 2005).

In their research, Gazzaniga and his colleagues tested the ability of W. J. to recognize and
respond to objects and written passages that were presented to only the left or to only the right
brain hemispheres (see Figure 3.12 “Visual and Verbal Processing in the Split-Brain Patient”).
The researchers had W. J. look straight ahead and then flashed, for a fraction of a second, a
picture of a geometrical shape to the left of where he was looking. By doing so, they assured that
—because the two hemispheres had been separated—the image of the shape was experienced
only in the right brain hemisphere (remember that sensory input from the left side of the body is
sent to the right side of the brain). Gazzaniga and his colleagues found that W. J. was able to
identify what he had been shown when he was asked to pick the object from a series of shapes,
using his left hand, but that he could not do this when the object was shown in the right visual
field. On the other hand, W. J. could easily read written material presented in the right visual
field (and thus experienced in the left hemisphere) but not when it was presented in the left
visual field.

Figure 3.12 Visual and Verbal Processing in the Split-Brain Patient

The information that is presented on the left side of our field of vision is transmitted to the right brain

hemisphere, and vice versa. In split-brain patients, the severed corpus callosum does not permit

information to be transferred between hemispheres, which allows researchers to learn about the functions

of each hemisphere. In the sample on the left, the split-brain patient could not choose which image had

been presented because the left hemisphere cannot process visual information. In the sample on the right

the patient could not read the passage because the right brain hemisphere cannot process language.

This research, and many other studies following it, has demonstrated that the two brain
hemispheres specialize in different abilities. In most people the ability to speak, write, and
understand language is located in the left hemisphere. This is why W. J. could read passages that
were presented on the right side and thus transmitted to the left hemisphere, but could not read
passages that were only experienced in the right brain hemisphere. The left hemisphere is also
better at math and at judging time and rhythm. It is also superior in coordinating the order of
complex movements—for example, lip movements needed for speech. The right hemisphere, on
the other hand, has only very limited verbal abilities, and yet it excels in perceptual skills. The
right hemisphere is able to recognize objects, including faces, patterns, and melodies, and it can
put a puzzle together or draw a picture. This is why W. J. could pick out the image when he saw
it on the left, but not the right, visual field.

Although Gazzaniga’s research demonstrated that the brain is in fact lateralized, such that the
two hemispheres specialize in different activities, this does not mean that when people behave in
a certain way or perform a certain activity they are only using one hemisphere of their brains at a
time. That would be drastically oversimplifying the concept of brain differences. We normally
use both hemispheres at the same time, and the difference between the abilities of the two
hemispheres is not absolute (Soroker et al., 2005).

Psychology in Everyday Life: Why Are Some People Left-Handed?

Across cultures and ethnic groups, about 90% of people are mainly right-handed, whereas only
10% are primarily left-handed (Peters, Reimers, & Manning, 2006). This fact is puzzling, in part
because the number of left-handers is so low, and in part because other animals, including our
closest primate relatives, do not show any type of handedness. The existence of right-handers
and left-handers provides an interesting example of the relationship among evolution, biology,
and social factors and how the same phenomenon can be understood at different levels of
analysis (Harris, 1990; McManus, 2002).

At least some handedness is determined by genetics. Ultrasound scans show that 9 out of 10
fetuses suck the thumb of their right hand, suggesting that the preference is determined before
birth (Hepper, Wells, & Lynch, 2005), and the mechanism of transmission has been linked to a
gene on the X chromosome (Jones & Martin, 2000). It has also been observed that left-handed
people are likely to have fewer children, and this may be in part because the mothers of left-
handers are more prone to miscarriages and other prenatal problems (McKeever, Cerone, Suter,
& Wu, 2000).

But culture also plays a role. In the past, left-handed children were forced to write with their
right hands in many countries, and this practice continues, particularly in collectivistic cultures,
such as India and Japan, where left-handedness is viewed negatively as compared with
individualistic societies, such as the United States. For example, India has about half as many
left-handers as the United States (Ida & Mandal, 2003).

There are both advantages and disadvantages to being left-handed in a world where most people
are right-handed. One problem for lefties is that the world is designed for right-handers.
Automatic teller machines (ATMs), classroom desks, scissors, microscopes, drill presses, and
table saws are just some examples of everyday machinery that is designed with the most
important controls on the right side. This may explain in part why left-handers suffer somewhat
more accidents than do right-handers (Dutta & Mandal, 2006).

Despite the potential difficulty living and working in a world designed for right-handers, there
seem to be some advantages to being left-handed. Throughout history, a number of prominent
artists have been left-handed, including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Pablo Picasso, and
Max Escher. Because the right hemisphere is superior in imaging and visual abilities, there may
be some advantage to using the left hand for drawing or painting (Springer & Deutsch, 1998).
Left-handed people are also better at envisioning three-dimensional objects, which may explain
why there is such a high number of left-handed architects, artists, and chess players in proportion
to their numbers (Coren, 1992). However, there are also more left-handers among those with
reading disabilities, allergies, and migraine headaches (Geschwind & Behan, 2007), perhaps due
to the fact that a small minority of left-handers owe their handedness to a birth trauma, such as
being born prematurely (Betancur, Vélez, Cabanieu, & le Moal, 1990).

In sports in which handedness may matter, such as tennis, boxing, fencing, or judo, left-handers
may have an advantage. They play many games against right-handers and learn how to best
handle their styles. Right-handers, however, play very few games against left-handers, which
may make them more vulnerable. This explains why a disproportionately high number of left-
handers are found in sports where direct one-on-one action predominates. In other sports, such as
golf, there are fewer left-handed players because the handedness of one player has no effect on
the competition.

The fact that left-handers excel in some sports suggests the possibility that they may have also
had an evolutionary advantage because their ancestors may have been more successful in
important skills such as hand-to-hand combat (Bodmer & McKie, 1994). At this point, however,
this idea remains only a hypothesis, and determinants of human handedness are yet to be fully
understood.
 Key Takeaways

The old brain—including the brain stem, medulla, pons, reticular formation,
thalamus, cerebellum, amygdala, hypothalamus, and hippocampus—regulates basic
survival functions, such as breathing, moving, resting, feeding, emotions, and
memory.

The cerebral cortex, made up of billions of neurons and glial cells, is divided into the
right and left hemispheres and into four lobes.

The frontal lobe is primarily responsible for thinking, planning, memory, and
judgment. The parietal lobe is primarily responsible for bodily sensations and touch.
The temporal lobe is primarily responsible for hearing and language. The occipital
lobe is primarily responsible for vision. Other areas of the cortex act as association
areas, responsible for integrating information.

The brain changes as a function of experience and potential damage in a process

known as plasticity. The brain can generate new neurons through neurogenesis.

The motor cortex controls voluntary movements. Body parts requiring the most
control and dexterity take up the most space in the motor cortex.

The sensory cortex receives and processes bodily sensations. Body parts that are the
most sensitive occupy the greatest amount of space in the sensory cortex.

The left cerebral hemisphere is primarily responsible for language and speech in
most people, whereas the right hemisphere specializes in spatial and perceptual
skills, visualization, and the recognition of patterns, faces, and melodies.

The severing of the corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres, creates a
“split-brain patient,” with the effect of creating two separate minds operating in one
person.

Studies with split-brain patients as research participants have been used to study
brain lateralization.
 Neuroplasticity allows the brain to adapt and change as a function of experience or
damage.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Do you think that animals experience emotion? What aspects of brain structure
might lead you to believe that they do or do not?

2. Consider your own experiences and speculate on which parts of your brain might be
particularly well developed as a result of these experiences.

3. Which brain hemisphere are you likely to be using when you search for a fork in the
silverware drawer? Which brain hemisphere are you most likely to be using when
you struggle to remember the name of an old friend?

4. Do you think that encouraging left-handed children to use their right hands is a good
idea? Why or why not?

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3.3 Psychologists Study the Brain Using
Many Different Methods

Learning Objective

1. Compare and contrast the techniques that scientists use to view and understand brain
structures and functions.

One problem in understanding the brain is that it is difficult to get a good

picture of what is going on inside it. But there are a variety of empirical
methods that allow scientists to look at brains in action, and the number of
possibilities has increased dramatically in recent years with the introduction
of new neuroimaging techniques. In this section we will consider the
various techniques that psychologists use to learn about the brain. Each of
the different techniques has some advantages, and when we put them
together, we begin to get a relatively good picture of how the brain functions
and which brain structures control which activities.

Perhaps the most immediate approach to visualizing and understanding the

structure of the brain is to directly analyze the brains of human cadavers.
When Albert Einstein died in 1955, his brain was removed and stored for
later analysis. Researcher Marian Diamond (1999) later analyzed a section
of the Einstein’s cortex to investigate its characteristics. Diamond was
interested in the role of glia, and she hypothesized that the ratio of glial cells
to neurons was an important determinant of intelligence. To test this
hypothesis, she compared the ratio of glia to neurons in Einstein’s brain
with the ratio in the preserved brains of 11 other more “ordinary” men.
However, Diamond was able to find support for only part of her research
hypothesis. Although she found that Einstein’s brain had relatively more
glia in all the areas that she studied than did the control group, the difference
was only statistically significant in one of the areas she tested. Diamond
admits a limitation in her study is that she had only one Einstein to compare
with 11 ordinary men.

Lesions Provide a Picture of What Is Missing

An advantage of the cadaver approach is that the brains can be fully studied,
but an obvious disadvantage is that the brains are no longer active. In other
cases, however, we can study living brains. The brains of living human
beings may be damaged, for instance, as a result of strokes, falls,
automobile accidents, gunshots, or tumors. These damages are called
lesions. In rare occasions, brain lesions may be created intentionally through
surgery, such as that designed to remove brain tumors or (as in split-brain
patients) to reduce the effects of epilepsy. Psychologists also sometimes
intentionally create lesions in animals to study the effects on their behavior.
In so doing, they hope to be able to draw inferences about the likely
functions of human brains from the effects of the lesions in animals.

Lesions allow the scientist to observe any loss of brain function that may
occur. For instance, when an individual suffers a stroke, a blood clot
deprives part of the brain of oxygen, killing the neurons in the area and
rendering that area unable to process information. In some cases, the result
of the stroke is a specific lack of ability. For instance, if the stroke
influences the occipital lobe, then vision may suffer, and if the stroke
influences the areas associated with language or speech, these functions will
suffer. In fact, our earliest understanding of the specific areas involved in
speech and language were gained by studying patients who had experienced
strokes.

Figure 3.13

John M. Harlow – Phineas Gage –

public domain.

Areas in the frontal lobe of

Phineas Gage were damaged when

a metal rod blasted through it.

Although Gage lived through the

accident, his personality, emotions,

and moral reasoning were

influenced. The accident helped

scientists understand the role of the

frontal lobe in these processes.

It is now known that a good part of our moral reasoning abilities are located
in the frontal lobe, and at least some of this understanding comes from
lesion studies. For instance, consider the well-known case of Phineas Gage,
a 25-year-old railroad worker who, as a result of an explosion, had an iron
rod driven into his cheek and out through the top of his skull, causing major
damage to his frontal lobe (Macmillan, 2000). Although remarkably Gage
was able to return to work after the wounds healed, he no longer seemed to
be the same person to those who knew him. The amiable, soft-spoken Gage
had become irritable, rude, irresponsible, and dishonest. Although there are
questions about the interpretation of this case study (Kotowicz, 2007), it did
provide early evidence that the frontal lobe is involved in emotion and
morality (Damasio et al., 2005).

More recent and more controlled research has also used patients with lesions
to investigate the source of moral reasoning. Michael Koenigs and his
colleagues (Koenigs et al., 2007) asked groups of normal persons,
individuals with lesions in the frontal lobes, and individuals with lesions in
other places in the brain to respond to scenarios that involved doing harm to
a person, even though the harm ultimately saved the lives of other people
(Miller, 2008).

In one of the scenarios the participants were asked if they would be willing
to kill one person in order to prevent five other people from being killed. As
you can see in Figure 3.14 “The Frontal Lobe and Moral Judgment”, they
found that the individuals with lesions in the frontal lobe were significantly
more likely to agree to do the harm than were individuals from the two other
groups.

Figure 3.14 The Frontal Lobe and Moral Judgment

Koenigs and his colleagues (2007) found that the frontal lobe is important in moral judgment. Persons
with lesions in the frontal lobe were more likely to be willing to harm one person in order to save the lives

of five others than were control participants or those with lesions in other parts of the brain.

Recording Electrical Activity in the Brain

In addition to lesion approaches, it is also possible to learn about the brain

by studying the electrical activity created by the firing of its neurons. One
approach, primarily used with animals, is to place detectors in the brain to
study the responses of specific neurons. Research using these techniques has
found, for instance, that there are specific neurons, known as feature
detectors, in the visual cortex that detect movement, lines and edges, and
even faces (Kanwisher, 2000).

Figure 3.15

Festive Colors – CC BY-SA 2.0.

A participant in an EEG study has a number of electrodes

placed around the head, which allows the researcher to study

the activity of the person’s brain. The patterns of electrical

activity vary depending on the participant’s current state (e.g.,

whether he or she is sleeping or awake) and on the tasks the

person is engaging in.

A less invasive approach, and one that can be used on living humans, is
electroencephalography (EEG). The EEG is a technique that records the
electrical activity produced by the brain’s neurons through the use of
electrodes that are placed around the research participant’s head. An EEG
can show if a person is asleep, awake, or anesthetized because the brain
wave patterns are known to differ during each state. EEGs can also track the
waves that are produced when a person is reading, writing, and speaking,
and are useful for understanding brain abnormalities, such as epilepsy. A
particular advantage of EEG is that the participant can move around while
the recordings are being taken, which is useful when measuring brain
activity in children who often have difficulty keeping still. Furthermore, by
following electrical impulses across the surface of the brain, researchers can
observe changes over very fast time periods.

Peeking Inside the Brain: Neuroimaging

Although the EEG can provide information about the general patterns of
electrical activity within the brain, and although the EEG allows the
researcher to see these changes quickly as they occur in real time, the
electrodes must be placed on the surface of the skull and each electrode
measures brain waves from large areas of the brain. As a result, EEGs do
not provide a very clear picture of the structure of the brain.

But techniques exist to provide more specific brain images. Functional

magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a type of brain scan that uses a
magnetic field to create images of brain activity in each brain area. The
patient lies on a bed within a large cylindrical structure containing a very
strong magnet. Neurons that are firing use more oxygen, and the need for
oxygen increases blood flow to the area. The fMRI detects the amount of
blood flow in each brain region, and thus is an indicator of neural activity.
Very clear and detailed pictures of brain structures (see, e.g., Figure 3.16
“fMRI Image”) can be produced via fMRI. Often, the images take the form
of cross-sectional “slices” that are obtained as the magnetic field is passed
across the brain. The images of these slices are taken repeatedly and are
superimposed on images of the brain structure itself to show how activity
changes in different brain structures over time. When the research
participant is asked to engage in tasks while in the scanner (e.g., by playing
a game with another person), the images can show which parts of the brain
are associated with which types of tasks. Another advantage of the fMRI is
that is it noninvasive. The research participant simply enters the machine
and the scans begin.

Although the scanners themselves are expensive, the advantages of fMRIs

are substantial, and they are now available in many university and hospital
settings. fMRI is now the most commonly used method of learning about
brain structure.

Figure 3.16 fMRI Image

The fMRI creates brain images of brain structure and activity. In this image the red and yellow areas

represent increased blood flow and thus increased activity. From your knowledge of brain structure, can

you guess what this person is doing?

Photo courtesy of the National Institutes of Health, Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

There is still one more approach that is being more frequently implemented
to understand brain function, and although it is new, it may turn out to be the
most useful of all. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a
procedure in which magnetic pulses are applied to the brain of living
persons with the goal of temporarily and safely deactivating a small brain
region. In TMS studies the research participant is first scanned in an fMRI
machine to determine the exact location of the brain area to be tested. Then
the electrical stimulation is provided to the brain before or while the
participant is working on a cognitive task, and the effects of the stimulation
on performance are assessed. If the participant’s ability to perform the task
is influenced by the presence of the stimulation, then the researchers can
conclude that this particular area of the brain is important to carrying out the
task.

The primary advantage of TMS is that it allows the researcher to draw

causal conclusions about the influence of brain structures on thoughts,
feelings, and behaviors. When the TMS pulses are applied, the brain region
becomes less active, and this deactivation is expected to influence the
research participant’s responses. Current research has used TMS to study the
brain areas responsible for emotion and cognition and their roles in how
people perceive intention and approach moral reasoning (Kalbe et al., 2010;
Van den Eynde et al., 2010; Young, Camprodon, Hauser, Pascual-Leone, &
Saxe, 2010). TMS is also used as a treatment for a variety of psychological
conditions, including migraine, Parkinson’s disease, and major depressive
disorder.

Research Focus: Cyberostracism

Neuroimaging techniques have important implications for understanding our behavior, including
our responses to those around us. Naomi Eisenberger and her colleagues (2003) tested the
hypothesis that people who were excluded by others would report emotional distress and that
images of their brains would show that they experienced pain in the same part of the brain where
physical pain is normally experienced. In the experiment, 13 participants were each placed into
an fMRI brain-imaging machine. The participants were told that they would be playing a
computer “Cyberball” game with two other players who were also in fMRI machines (the two
opponents did not actually exist, and their responses were controlled by the computer).

Each of the participants was measured under three different conditions. In the first part of the
experiment, the participants were told that as a result of technical difficulties, the link to the
other two scanners could not yet be made, and thus at first they could not engage in, but only
watch, the game play. This allowed the researchers to take a baseline fMRI reading. Then, during
a second inclusion scan, the participants played the game, supposedly with the two other players.
During this time, the other players threw the ball to the participants. In the third, exclusion, scan,
however, the participants initially received seven throws from the other two players but were
then excluded from the game because the two players stopped throwing the ball to the
participants for the remainder of the scan (45 throws).

The results of the analyses showed that activity in two areas of the frontal lobe was significantly
greater during the exclusion scan than during the inclusion scan. Because these brain regions are
known from prior research to be active for individuals who are experiencing physical pain, the
authors concluded that these results show that the physiological brain responses associated with
being socially excluded by others are similar to brain responses experienced upon physical
injury.

Further research (Chen, Williams, Fitness, & Newton, 2008; Wesselmann, Bagg, & Williams,
2009) has documented that people react to being excluded in a variety of situations with a
variety of emotions and behaviors. People who feel that they are excluded, or even those who
observe other people being excluded, not only experience pain, but feel worse about themselves
and their relationships with people more generally, and they may work harder to try to restore
their connections with others.

Key Takeaways

Studying the brains of cadavers can lead to discoveries about brain structure, but
these studies are limited due to the fact that the brain is no longer active.

Lesion studies are informative about the effects of lesions on different brain regions.

Electrophysiological recording may be used in animals to directly measure brain

activity.

Measures of electrical activity in the brain, such as electroencephalography (EEG),

are used to assess brain-wave patterns and activity.
 Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measures blood flow in the brain
during different activities, providing information about the activity of neurons and
thus the functions of brain regions.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is used to temporarily and safely

deactivate a small brain region, with the goal of testing the causal effects of the
deactivation on behavior.

Exercise and Critical Thinking

1. Consider the different ways that psychologists study the brain, and think of a
psychological characteristic or behavior that could be studied using each of the
different techniques.

References

Chen, Z., Williams, K. D., Fitness, J., & Newton, N. C. (2008). When hurt
will not heal: Exploring the capacity to relive social and physical pain.
Psychological Science, 19(8), 789–795.

Damasio, H., Grabowski, T., Frank, R., Galaburda, A. M., Damasio, A. R.,
Cacioppo, J. T., & Berntson, G. G. (2005). The return of Phineas Gage:
Clues about the brain from the skull of a famous patient. In Social
neuroscience: Key readings (pp. 21–28). New York, NY: Psychology Press.

Diamond, M. C. (1999). Why Einstein’s brain? New Horizons for Learning.

Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does

rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290–
292.

Kalbe, E., Schlegel, M., Sack, A. T., Nowak, D. A., Dafotakis, M., Bangard,
C.,…Kessler, J. (2010). Dissociating cognitive from affective theory of
mind: A TMS study. Cortex: A Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous
System and Behavior, 46(6), 769–780.

Kanwisher, N. (2000). Domain specificity in face perception. Nature

Neuroscience, 3(8), 759–763.

Koenigs, M., Young, L., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Cushman, F., Hauser, M.,
& Damasio, A. (2007). Damage to the prefontal cortex increases utilitarian
moral judgments. Nature, 446(7138), 908–911.

Kotowicz, Z. (2007). The strange case of Phineas Gage. History of the

Human Sciences, 20(1), 115–131.

Macmillan, M. (2000). An odd kind of fame: Stories of Phineas Gage.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Miller, G. (2008). The roots of morality. Science, 320, 734–737.

Van den Eynde, F., Claudino, A. M., Mogg, A., Horrell, L., Stahl, D.,…
Schmidt, U. (2010). Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation reduces
cue-induced food craving in bulimic disorders. Biological Psychiatry, 67(8),
793–795.

Wesselmann, E. D., Bagg, D., & Williams, K. D. (2009). “I feel your pain”:
The effects of observing ostracism on the ostracism detection system.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(6), 1308–1311.

Young, L., Camprodon, J. A., Hauser, M., Pascual-Leone, A., & Saxe, R.
(2010). Disruption of the right temporoparietal junction with transcranial
magnetic stimulation reduces the role of beliefs in moral judgments. PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America, 107(15), 6753–6758.
3.4 Putting It All Together: The Nervous
System and the Endocrine System

Learning Objectives

1. Summarize the primary functions of the CNS and of the subsystems of the PNS.

2. Explain how the electrical components of the nervous system and the chemical
components of the endocrine system work together to influence behavior.

Now that we have considered how individual neurons operate and the roles
of the different brain areas, it is time to ask how the body manages to “put it
all together.” How do the complex activities in the various parts of the brain,
the simple all-or-nothing firings of billions of interconnected neurons, and
the various chemical systems within the body, work together to allow the
body to respond to the social environment and engage in everyday
behaviors? In this section we will see that the complexities of human
behavior are accomplished through the joint actions of electrical and
chemical processes in the nervous system and the endocrine system.

Electrical Control of Behavior: The Nervous

System

The nervous system (see Figure 3.17 “The Functional Divisions of the
Nervous System”), the electrical information highway of the body, is made
up of nerves—bundles of interconnected neurons that fire in synchrony to
carry messages. The central nervous system (CNS), made up of the brain
and spinal cord, is the major controller of the body’s functions, charged with
interpreting sensory information and responding to it with its own
directives. The CNS interprets information coming in from the senses,
formulates an appropriate reaction, and sends responses to the appropriate
system to respond accordingly. Everything that we see, hear, smell, touch,
and taste is conveyed to us from our sensory organs as neural impulses, and
each of the commands that the brain sends to the body, both consciously and
unconsciously, travels through this system as well.

Figure 3.17 The Functional Divisions of the Nervous System

Nerves are differentiated according to their function. A sensory (or

afferent) neuroncarries information from the sensory receptors, whereas a
motor (or efferent) neurontransmits information to the muscles and
glands. An interneuron, which is by far the most common type of neuron,
is located primarily within the CNS and is responsible for communicating
among the neurons. Interneurons allow the brain to combine the multiple
sources of available information to create a coherent picture of the sensory
information being conveyed.

The spinal cord is the long, thin, tubular bundle of nerves and supporting
cells that extends down from the brain. It is the central throughway of
information for the body. Within the spinal cord, ascending tracts of sensory
neurons relay sensory information from the sense organs to the brain while
descending tracts of motor neurons relay motor commands back to the body.
When a quicker-than-usual response is required, the spinal cord can do its
own processing, bypassing the brain altogether. A reflex is an involuntary
and nearly instantaneous movement in response to a stimulus. Reflexes are
triggered when sensory information is powerful enough to reach a given
threshold and the interneurons in the spinal cord act to send a message back
through the motor neurons without relaying the information to the brain (see
Figure 3.18 “The Reflex”). When you touch a hot stove and immediately
pull your hand back, or when you fumble your cell phone and instinctively
reach to catch it before it falls, reflexes in your spinal cord order the
appropriate responses before your brain even knows what is happening.

Figure 3.18 The Reflex

The central nervous system can interpret signals from sensory neurons and respond to them extremely

quickly via the motor neurons without any need for the brain to be involved. These quick responses,
known as reflexes, can reduce the damage that we might experience as a result of, for instance, touching a

hot stove.

If the central nervous system is the command center of the body, the
peripheral nervous system (PNS) represents the front line. The PNS links
the CNS to the body’s sense receptors, muscles, and glands. As you can see
in Figure 3.19 “The Autonomic Nervous System”, the peripheral nervous
system is itself divided into two subsystems, one controlling internal
responses and one controlling external responses.

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is the division of the PNS that
governs the internal activities of the human body, including heart rate,
breathing, digestion, salivation, perspiration, urination, and sexual arousal.
Many of the actions of the ANS, such as heart rate and digestion, are
automatic and out of our conscious control, but others, such as breathing
and sexual activity, can be controlled and influenced by conscious
processes.

The somatic nervous system (SNS) is the division of the PNS that controls
the external aspects of the body, including the skeletal muscles, skin, and
sense organs. The somatic nervous system consists primarily of motor
nerves responsible for sending brain signals for muscle contraction.

The autonomic nervous system itself can be further subdivided into the
sympathetic and parasympathetic systems (see Figure 3.19 “The Autonomic
Nervous System”). The sympathetic division of the ANS is involved in
preparing the body for behavior, particularly in response to stress, by
activating the organs and the glands in the endocrine system. The
parasympathetic division of the ANStends to calm the body by slowing the
heart and breathing and by allowing the body to recover from the activities
that the sympathetic system causes. The sympathetic and the
parasympathetic divisions normally function in opposition to each other,
such that the sympathetic division acts a bit like the accelerator pedal on a
car and the parasympathetic division acts like the brake.

Figure 3.19 The Autonomic Nervous System

The autonomic nervous system has two divisions: The sympathetic division acts to energize the body,

preparing it for action. The parasympathetic division acts to calm the body, allowing it to rest.

Our everyday activities are controlled by the interaction between the

sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. For example, when we
get out of bed in the morning, we would experience a sharp drop in blood
pressure if it were not for the action of the sympathetic system, which
automatically increases blood flow through the body. Similarly, after we eat
a big meal, the parasympathetic system automatically sends more blood to
the stomach and intestines, allowing us to efficiently digest the food. And
perhaps you’ve had the experience of not being at all hungry before a
stressful event, such as a sports game or an exam (when the sympathetic
division was primarily in action), but suddenly finding yourself starved
afterward, as the parasympathetic takes over. The two systems work
together to maintain vital bodily functions, resulting in homeostasis, the
natural balance in the body’s systems.

The Body’s Chemicals Help Control

Behavior: The Endocrine System

The nervous system is designed to protect us from danger through its

interpretation of and reactions to stimuli. But a primary function of the
sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems is to interact with the
endocrine system to elicit chemicals that provide another system for
influencing our feelings and behaviors.

A gland in the endocrine system is made up of groups of cells that function

to secrete hormones. A hormone is a chemical that moves throughout the
body to help regulate emotions and behaviors. When the hormones released
by one gland arrive at receptor tissues or other glands, these receiving
receptors may trigger the release of other hormones, resulting in a series of
complex chemical chain reactions. The endocrine system works together
with the nervous system to influence many aspects of human behavior,
including growth, reproduction, and metabolism. And the endocrine system
plays a vital role in emotions. Because the glands in men and women differ,
hormones also help explain some of the observed behavioral differences
between men and women. The major glands in the endocrine system are
shown in Figure 3.20 “The Major Glands of the Endocrine System”.
Figure 3.20 The Major Glands of the Endocrine System

The male is shown on the left and the female on the right.

The pituitary gland, a small pea-sized gland located near the center of the
brain, is responsible for controlling the body’s growth, but it also has many
other influences that make it of primary importance to regulating behavior.
The pituitary secretes hormones that influence our responses to pain as well
as hormones that signal the ovaries and testes to make sex hormones. The
pituitary gland also controls ovulation and the menstrual cycle in women.
Because the pituitary has such an important influence on other glands, it is
sometimes known as the “master gland.”

Other glands in the endocrine system include the pancreas, which secretes
hormones designed to keep the body supplied with fuel to produce and
maintain stores of energy; the pineal gland, located in the middle of the
brain, which secretes melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate the wake-
sleep cycle; and the thyroid and parathyroid glands, which are responsible
for determining how quickly the body uses energy and hormones, and
controlling the amount of calcium in the blood and bones.

The body has two triangular adrenal glands, one atop each kidney. The
adrenal glandsproduce hormones that regulate salt and water balance in
the body, and they are involved in metabolism, the immune system, and
sexual development and function. The most important function of the
adrenal glands is to secrete the hormones epinephrine (also known as
adrenaline) and norepinephrine (also known as noradrenaline) when we are
excited, threatened, or stressed. Epinephrine and norepinephrine stimulate
the sympathetic division of the ANS, causing increased heart and lung
activity, dilation of the pupils, and increases in blood sugar, which give the
body a surge of energy to respond to a threat. The activity and role of the
adrenal glands in response to stress provides an excellent example of the
close relationship and interdependency of the nervous and endocrine
systems. A quick-acting nervous system is essential for immediate activation
of the adrenal glands, while the endocrine system mobilizes the body for
action.

The male sex glands, known as the testes, secrete a number of hormones,
the most important of which is testosterone, the male sex hormone.
Testosterone regulates body changes associated with sexual development,
including enlargement of the penis, deepening of the voice, growth of facial
and pubic hair, and the increase in muscle growth and strength. The ovaries,
the female sex glands, are located in the pelvis. They produce eggs and
secrete the female hormones estrogen and progesterone. Estrogen is
involved in the development of female sexual features, including breast
growth, the accumulation of body fat around the hips and thighs, and the
growth spurt that occurs during puberty. Both estrogen and progesterone are
also involved in pregnancy and the regulation of the menstrual cycle.
Recent research has pinpointed some of the important roles of the sex
hormones in social behavior. Dabbs, Hargrove, and Heusel (1996) measured
the testosterone levels of 240 men who were members of 12 fraternities at
two universities. They also obtained descriptions of the fraternities from
university officials, fraternity officers, yearbook and chapter house
photographs, and researcher field notes. The researchers correlated the
testosterone levels and the descriptions of each fraternity. They found that
the fraternities with the highest average testosterone levels were also more
wild and unruly, and one of these fraternities was known across campus for
the crudeness of its behavior. On the other hand, the fraternities with the
lowest average testosterone levels were more well behaved, friendly and
pleasant, academically successful, and socially responsible. Banks and
Dabbs (1996) found that juvenile delinquents and prisoners who had high
levels of testosterone also acted more violently, and Tremblay et al. (1998)
found that testosterone was related to toughness and leadership behaviors in
adolescent boys. Although testosterone levels are higher in men than in
women, the relationship between testosterone and aggression is not limited
to males. Studies have also shown a positive relationship between
testosterone and aggression and related behaviors (such as competitiveness)
in women (Cashdan, 2003).

It must be kept in mind that the observed relationships between testosterone

levels and aggressive behavior that have been found in these studies do not
prove that testosterone causes aggression—the relationships are only
correlational. In fact, there is evidence that the relationship between
violence and testosterone also goes in the other direction: Playing an
aggressive game, such as tennis or even chess, increases the testosterone
levels of the winners and decreases the testosterone levels of losers (Gladue,
Boechler, & McCaul, 1989; Mazur, Booth, & Dabbs, 1992), and perhaps
this is why excited soccer fans sometimes riot when their team wins.
Recent research has also begun to document the role that female sex
hormones may play in reactions to others. A study about hormonal
influences on social-cognitive functioning (Macrae, Alnwick, Milne, &
Schloerscheidt, 2002) found that women were more easily able to perceive
and categorize male faces during the more fertile phases of their menstrual
cycles. Although researchers did not directly measure the presence of
hormones, it is likely that phase-specific hormonal differences influenced
the women’s perceptions.

At this point you can begin to see the important role the hormones play in
behavior. But the hormones we have reviewed in this section represent only
a subset of the many influences that hormones have on our behaviors. In the
chapters to come we will consider the important roles that hormones play in
many other behaviors, including sleeping, sexual activity, and helping and
harming others.

Key Takeaways

The body uses both electrical and chemical systems to create homeostasis.

The CNS is made up of bundles of nerves that carry messages to and from the PNS

The peripheral nervous system is composed of the autonomic nervous system (ANS)
and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The ANS is further divided into the
sympathetic (activating) and parasympathetic (calming) nervous systems. These
divisions are activated by glands and organs in the endocrine system.

Specific nerves, including sensory neurons, motor neurons, and interneurons, each
have specific functions.

The spinal cord may bypass the brain by responding rapidly using reflexes.

The pituitary gland is a master gland, affecting many other glands.

 Hormones produced by the pituitary and adrenal glands regulate growth, stress,
sexual functions, and chemical balance in the body.

The adrenal glands produce epinephrine and norepinephrine, the hormones

responsible for our reactions to stress.

The sex hormones, testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone, play an important role
in sex differences.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Recall a time when you were threatened or stressed. What physiological reactions
did you experience in the situation, and what aspects of the endocrine system do you
think created those reactions?

2. Consider the emotions that you have experienced over the past several weeks. What
hormones do you think might have been involved in creating those emotions?

References

Banks, T., & Dabbs, J. M., Jr. (1996). Salivary testosterone and cortisol in
delinquent and violent urban subculture. Journal of Social Psychology,
136(1), 49–56.

Cashdan, E. (2003). Hormones and competitive aggression in women.

Aggressive Behavior, 29(2), 107–115.

Dabbs, J. M., Jr., Hargrove, M. F., & Heusel, C. (1996). Testosterone

differences among college fraternities: Well-behaved vs. rambunctious.
Personality and Individual Differences, 20(2), 157–161.
Gladue, B. A., Boechler, M., & McCaul, K. D. (1989). Hormonal response
to competition in human males. Aggressive Behavior, 15(6), 409–422;
Mazur, A., Booth, A., & Dabbs, J. M. (1992). Testosterone and chess
competition. Social Psychology Quarterly, 55(1), 70–77.

Macrae, C. N., Alnwick, K. A., Milne, A. B., & Schloerscheidt, A. M.

(2002). Person perception across the menstrual cycle: Hormonal influences
on social-cognitive functioning. Psychological Science, 13(6), 532–536.

Tremblay, R. E., Schaal, B., Boulerice, B., Arseneault, L., Soussignan, R.

G., Paquette, D., & Laurent, D. (1998). Testosterone, physical aggression,
dominance, and physical development in early adolescence. International
Journal of Behavioral Development, 22(4), 753–777.
3.5 Chapter Summary

All human behavior, thoughts, and feelings are produced by the actions of
our brains, nerves, muscles, and glands.

The body is controlled by the nervous system, consisting of the central

nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS) and the
endocrine system, which is made up of glands that create and control
hormones.

Neurons are the cells in the nervous system. Neurons are composed of a
soma that contains the nucleus of the cell; a dendrite that collects
information from other cells and sends the information to the soma; and a
long segmented fiber, known as the axon, which transmits information
away from the cell body toward other neurons and to the muscles and
glands.

The nervous system operates using an electrochemical process. An

electrical charge moves through the neuron itself, and chemicals are used to
transmit information between neurons. Within the neuron, the electrical
charge occurs in the form of an action potential. The action potential
operates in an all-or-nothing manner.

Neurons are separated by junction areas known as synapses.

Neurotransmitters travel across the synaptic space between the terminal
button of one neuron and the dendrites of other neurons, where they bind to
the dendrites in the neighboring neurons. More than 100 chemical
substances produced in the body have been identified as neurotransmitters,
and these substances have a wide and profound effect on emotion,
cognition, and behavior.
Drugs that we may ingest may either mimic (agonists) or block
(antagonists) the operations of neurotransmitters.

The brains of all animals are layered, and generally quite similar in overall
form.

The brain stem is the oldest and innermost region of the brain. It controls
the most basic functions of life, including breathing, attention, and motor
responses. The brain stem includes the medulla, the pons, and the reticular
formation.

Above the brain stem are other parts of the old brain involved in the
processing of behavior and emotions, including the thalamus, the
cerebellum, and the limbic system. The limbic system includes the
amygdala, the hypothalamus, and the hippocampus.

The cerebral cortex contains about 20 billion nerve cells and 300 trillion
synaptic connections, and it’s supported by billions more glial cells that
surround and link to the neurons. The cerebral cortex is divided into two
hemispheres, and each hemisphere is divided into four lobes, each separated
by folds known as fissures.

The frontal lobe is primarily responsible for thinking, planning, memory,

and judgment. The parietal lobe is responsible for processing information
about touch. The occipital lobe processes visual information, and the
temporal lobe is responsible for hearing and language. The cortex also
includes the motor cortex, the somatosensory cortex, the visual cortex, the
auditory cortex, and the association areas.

The brain can develop new neurons, a process known as neurogenesis, as

well as new routes for neural communications (neuroplasticity).
Psychologists study the brain using cadaver and lesion approaches, as well
as through neuroimaging techniques that include electroencephalography
(EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and transcranial
magnetic stimulation (TMS).

Sensory (afferent) neurons carry information from the sensory receptors,

whereas motor (efferent) neurons transmit information to the muscles and
glands. Interneurons, by far the most common of neurons, are located
primarily within the CNS and responsible for communicating among the
neurons.

The peripheral nervous system is itself divided into two subsystems, one
controlling internal responses (the autonomic nervous system, ANS) and
one controlling external responses (the somatic nervous system). The
sympathetic division of the ANS is involved in preparing the body for
behavior by activating the organs and the glands in the endocrine system.
The parasympathetic division of the ANS tends to calm the body by
slowing the heart and breathing and by allowing the body to recover from
the activities that the sympathetic system causes.

Glands in the endocrine system include the pituitary gland, the pancreas, the
adrenal glands, and the male and female sex glands. The male sex hormone
testosterone and the female sex hormones estrogen and progesterone play
important roles in behavior and contribute to gender differences.
Chapter 4. Sensing and Perceiving

Misperception by Those Trained to Accurately

Perceive a Threat

On September 6, 2007, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ summit was
being held in downtown Sydney, Australia. World leaders, including the then-current U.S.
president, George W. Bush, were attending the summit. Many roads in the area were closed for
security reasons, and police presence was high.

As a prank, eight members of the Australian television satire The Chaser’s War on Everything
assembled a false motorcade made up of two black four-wheel-drive vehicles, a black sedan, two
motorcycles, body guards, and chauffeurs (see the video below). Group member Chas
Licciardello was in one of the cars disguised as Osama bin Laden. The motorcade drove through
Sydney’s central business district and entered the security zone of the meeting. The motorcade
was waved on by police, through two checkpoints, until the Chaser group decided it had taken
the gag far enough and stopped outside the InterContinental Hotel where former President Bush
was staying. Licciardello stepped out onto the street and complained, in character as bin Laden,
about not being invited to the APEC Summit. Only at this time did the police belatedly check the
identity of the group members, finally arresting them.

Chaser APEC Motorcade Stunt

(click to see video)

Motorcade Stunt performed by the Chaser pranksters in 2007.

Afterward, the group testified that it had made little effort to disguise its attempt as anything
more than a prank. The group’s only realistic attempt to fool police was its Canadian-flag
marked vehicles. Other than that, the group used obviously fake credentials, and its security
 passes were printed with “JOKE,” “Insecurity,” and “It’s pretty obvious this isn’t a real pass,” all
clearly visible to any police officer who might have been troubled to look closely as the
motorcade passed. The required APEC 2007 Official Vehicle stickers had the name of the
group’s show printed on them, and this text: “This dude likes trees and poetry and certain types
of carnivorous plants excite him.” In addition, a few of the “bodyguards” were carrying
camcorders, and one of the motorcyclists was dressed in jeans, both details that should have
alerted police that something was amiss.

The Chaser pranksters later explained the primary reason for the stunt. They wanted to make a
statement about the fact that bin Laden, a world leader, had not been invited to an APEC Summit
where issues of terror were being discussed. The secondary motive was to test the event’s
security. The show’s lawyers approved the stunt, under the assumption that the motorcade would
be stopped at the APEC meeting.

The ability to detect and interpret the events that are occurring around us
allows us to respond to these stimuli appropriately (Gibson & Pick, 2000).
In most cases the system is successful, but as you can see from the above
example, it is not perfect. In this chapter we will discuss the strengths and
limitations of these capacities, focusing on both sensation—awareness
resulting from the stimulation of a sense organ, and perception—the
organization and interpretation of sensations. Sensation and perception
work seamlessly together to allow us to experience the world through our
eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin, but also to combine what we are currently
learning from the environment with what we already know about it to make
judgments and to choose appropriate behaviors.

The study of sensation and perception is exceedingly important for our

everyday lives because the knowledge generated by psychologists is used in
so many ways to help so many people. Psychologists work closely with
mechanical and electrical engineers, with experts in defense and military
contractors, and with clinical, health, and sports psychologists to help them
apply this knowledge to their everyday practices. The research is used to
help us understand and better prepare people to cope with such diverse
events as driving cars, flying planes, creating robots, and managing pain
(Fajen & Warren, 2003).
Figure 4.1
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope – Primary Mirror Segment Engineering Design Unit – CC BY-
NC-ND 2.0; Paul L Dineen – P1050494 – CC BY 2.0; Nicolas Raymond – Golden Dawn Bridge-
HDR – CC BY 2.0; Vancouver Film School – CC BY 2.0.

Mechanical engineers, industrial psychologists, sports psychologists, and video game designers use knowledge about sensation

and perception to create and improve everyday objects and behaviors.

We will begin the chapter with a focus on the six senses of seeing, hearing,
smelling, touching, tasting, and monitoring the body’s positions
(proprioception). We will see that sensation is sometimes relatively direct,
in the sense that the wide variety of stimuli around us inform and guide our
behaviors quickly and accurately, but nevertheless is always the result of at
least some interpretation. We do not directly experience stimuli, but rather
we experience those stimuli as they are created by our senses. Each sense
accomplishes the basic process of transduction—the conversion of stimuli
detected by receptor cells to electrical impulses that are then transported to
the brain—in different, but related, ways.

After we have reviewed the basic processes of sensation, we will turn to the
topic of perception, focusing on how the brain’s processing of sensory
experience can not only help us make quick and accurate judgments, but
also mislead us into making perceptual and judgmental errors, such as those
that allowed the Chaser group to breach security at the APEC meeting.

References

Fajen, B. R., & Warren, W. H. (2003). Behavioral dynamics of steering,

obstacle avoidance, and route selection. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 29(2), 343–362.

Gibson, E. J., & Pick, A. D. (2000). An ecological approach to perceptual

learning and development. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
4.1 We Experience Our World Through
Sensation

Learning Objectives

1. Review and summarize the capacities and limitations of human sensation.

2. Explain the difference between sensation and perception and describe how
psychologists measure sensory and difference thresholds.

Sensory Thresholds: What Can We

Experience?

Humans possess powerful sensory capacities that allow us to sense the

kaleidoscope of sights, sounds, smells, and tastes that surround us. Our eyes
detect light energy and our ears pick up sound waves. Our skin senses touch,
pressure, hot, and cold. Our tongues react to the molecules of the foods we
eat, and our noses detect scents in the air. The human perceptual system is
wired for accuracy, and people are exceedingly good at making use of the
wide variety of information available to them (Stoffregen & Bardy, 2001).

In many ways our senses are quite remarkable. The human eye can detect
the equivalent of a single candle flame burning 30 miles away and can
distinguish among more than 300,000 different colors. The human ear can
detect sounds as low as 20 hertz (vibrations per second) and as high as
20,000 hertz, and it can hear the tick of a clock about 20 feet away in a quiet
room. We can taste a teaspoon of sugar dissolved in 2 gallons of water, and
we are able to smell one drop of perfume diffused in a three-room
apartment. We can feel the wing of a bee on our cheek dropped from 1
centimeter above (Galanter, 1962).

Link

To get an idea of the range of sounds that the human ear can sense, try testing your hearing here:

http://test-my-hearing.com

Figure 4.2

Wikimedia Commons – CC BY 3.0.

The dog’s highly sensitive sense of smell comes in useful in

searches for missing persons, explosives, foods, and drugs.

Although there is much that we do sense, there is even more that we do not.
Dogs, bats, whales, and some rodents all have much better hearing than we
do, and many animals have a far richer sense of smell. Birds are able to see
the ultraviolet light that we cannot (see Figure 4.3 “Ultraviolet Light and
Bird Vision”) and can also sense the pull of the earth’s magnetic field. Cats
have an extremely sensitive and sophisticated sense of touch, and they are
able to navigate in complete darkness using their whiskers. The fact that
different organisms have different sensations is part of their evolutionary
adaptation. Each species is adapted to sensing the things that are most
important to them, while being blissfully unaware of the things that don’t
matter.

Figure 4.3 Ultraviolet Light and Bird Vision

Because birds can see ultraviolet light but humans cannot, what looks to us like a plain black bird looks

much different to a bird.

Source: Adapted from Fatal Light Awareness Program. (2008). Flap Research – public domain.

Measuring Sensation

Psychophysics is the branch of psychology that studies the effects of

physical stimuli on sensory perceptions and mental states. The field of
psychophysics was founded by the German psychologist Gustav Fechner
(1801–1887), who was the first to study the relationship between the
strength of a stimulus and a person’s ability to detect the stimulus.

The measurement techniques developed by Fechner and his colleagues are

designed in part to help determine the limits of human sensation. One
important criterion is the ability to detect very faint stimuli. The absolute
threshold of a sensation is defined as the intensity of a stimulus that allows
an organism to just barely detect it.

In a typical psychophysics experiment, an individual is presented with a

series of trials in which a signal is sometimes presented and sometimes not,
or in which two stimuli are presented that are either the same or different.
Imagine, for instance, that you were asked to take a hearing test. On each of
the trials your task is to indicate either “yes” if you heard a sound or “no” if
you did not. The signals are purposefully made to be very faint, making
accurate judgments difficult.

The problem for you is that the very faint signals create uncertainty.
Because our ears are constantly sending background information to the
brain, you will sometimes think that you heard a sound when none was
there, and you will sometimes fail to detect a sound that is there. Your task
is to determine whether the neural activity that you are experiencing is due
to the background noise alone or is a result of a signal within the noise.

The responses that you give on the hearing test can be analyzed using signal
detection analysis. Signal detection analysis is a technique used to
determine the ability of the perceiver to separate true signals from
background noise (Macmillan & Creelman, 2005; Wickens, 2002). As you
can see in Figure 4.4 “Outcomes of a Signal Detection Analysis”, each
judgment trial creates four possible outcomes: A hit occurs when you, as the
listener, correctly say “yes” when there was a sound. A false alarm occurs
when you respond “yes” to no signal. In the other two cases you respond
“no”—either a miss (saying “no” when there was a signal) or a correct
rejection (saying “no” when there was in fact no signal).

Figure 4.4 Outcomes of a Signal Detection Analysis

Our ability to accurately detect stimuli is measured using a signal detection analysis. Two of the possible

decisions (hits and correct rejections) are accurate; the other two (misses and false alarms) are errors.

The analysis of the data from a psychophysics experiment creates two

measures. One measure, known as sensitivity, refers to the true ability of the
individual to detect the presence or absence of signals. People who have
better hearing will have higher sensitivity than will those with poorer
hearing. The other measure, response bias, refers to a behavioral tendency
to respond “yes” to the trials, which is independent of sensitivity.

Imagine for instance that rather than taking a hearing test, you are a soldier
on guard duty, and your job is to detect the very faint sound of the breaking
of a branch that indicates that an enemy is nearby. You can see that in this
case making a false alarm by alerting the other soldiers to the sound might
not be as costly as a miss (a failure to report the sound), which could be
deadly. Therefore, you might well adopt a very lenient response bias in
which whenever you are at all unsure, you send a warning signal. In this
case your responses may not be very accurate (your sensitivity may be low
because you are making a lot of false alarms) and yet the extreme response
bias can save lives.

Another application of signal detection occurs when medical technicians

study body images for the presence of cancerous tumors. Again, a miss (in
which the technician incorrectly determines that there is no tumor) can be
very costly, but false alarms (referring patients who do not have tumors to
further testing) also have costs. The ultimate decisions that the technicians
make are based on the quality of the signal (clarity of the image), their
experience and training (the ability to recognize certain shapes and textures
of tumors), and their best guesses about the relative costs of misses versus
false alarms.

Although we have focused to this point on the absolute threshold, a second

important criterion concerns the ability to assess differences between
stimuli. The difference threshold (or just noticeable difference [JND]),
refers to the change in a stimulus that can just barely be detected by the
organism. The German physiologist Ernst Weber (1795–1878) made an
important discovery about the JND—namely, that the ability to detect
differences depends not so much on the size of the difference but on the size
of the difference in relationship to the absolute size of the stimulus.
Weber’s law maintains that the just noticeable difference of a stimulus is a
constant proportion of the original intensity of the stimulus. As an example,
if you have a cup of coffee that has only a very little bit of sugar in it (say 1
teaspoon), adding another teaspoon of sugar will make a big difference in
taste. But if you added that same teaspoon to a cup of coffee that already
had 5 teaspoons of sugar in it, then you probably wouldn’t taste the
difference as much (in fact, according to Weber’s law, you would have to
add 5 more teaspoons to make the same difference in taste).
One interesting application of Weber’s law is in our everyday shopping
behavior. Our tendency to perceive cost differences between products is
dependent not only on the amount of money we will spend or save, but also
on the amount of money saved relative to the price of the purchase. I would
venture to say that if you were about to buy a soda or candy bar in a
convenience store and the price of the items ranged from $1 to $3, you
would think that the $3 item cost “a lot more” than the $1 item. But now
imagine that you were comparing between two music systems, one that cost
$397 and one that cost $399. Probably you would think that the cost of the
two systems was “about the same,” even though buying the cheaper one
would still save you $2.

Research Focus: Influence without Awareness

If you study Figure 4.5 “Absolute Threshold”, you will see that the absolute threshold is the
point where we become aware of a faint stimulus. After that point, we say that the stimulus is
conscious because we can accurately report on its existence (or its nonexistence) better than 50%
of the time. But can subliminal stimuli (events that occur below the absolute threshold and of
which we are not conscious) have an influence on our behavior?

Figure 4.5 Absolute Threshold

As the intensity of a stimulus increases, we are more likely to perceive it. Stimuli below the absolute

threshold can still have at least some influence on us, even though we cannot consciously detect them.

A variety of research programs have found that subliminal stimuli can influence our judgments
and behavior, at least in the short term (Dijksterhuis, 2010). But whether the presentation of
subliminal stimuli can influence the products that we buy has been a more controversial topic in
psychology. In one relevant experiment, Karremans, Stroebe, and Claus (2006) had Dutch
college students view a series of computer trials in which a string of letters such as BBBBBBBBB
or BBBbBBBBB were presented on the screen. To be sure they paid attention to the display, the
students were asked to note whether the strings contained a small b. However, immediately
before each of the letter strings, the researchers presented either the name of a drink that is
popular in Holland (Lipton Ice) or a control string containing the same letters as Lipton Ice
(NpeicTol). These words were presented so quickly (for only about one fiftieth of a second) that
the participants could not see them.

Then the students were asked to indicate their intention to drink Lipton Ice by answering
questions such as “If you would sit on a terrace now, how likely is it that you would order Lipton
Ice,” and also to indicate how thirsty they were at the time. The researchers found that the
students who had been exposed to the “Lipton Ice” words (and particularly those who indicated
that they were already thirsty) were significantly more likely to say that they would drink Lipton
Ice than were those who had been exposed to the control words.

If it were effective, procedures such as this (we can call the technique “subliminal advertising”
because it advertises a product outside awareness) would have some major advantages for
advertisers, because it would allow them to promote their products without directly interrupting
the consumers’ activity and without the consumers’ knowing they are being persuaded. People
cannot counterargue with, or attempt to avoid being influenced by, messages received outside
awareness. Due to fears that people may be influenced without their knowing, subliminal
advertising has been legally banned in many countries, including Australia, Great Britain, and
the United States.

Although it has been proven to work in some research, subliminal advertising’s effectiveness is
still uncertain. Charles Trappey (1996) conducted a meta-analysis in which he combined 23
leading research studies that had tested the influence of subliminal advertising on consumer
choice. The results of his meta-analysis showed that subliminal advertising had a negligible
effect on consumer choice. And Saegert (1987, p. 107) concluded that “marketing should quit
giving subliminal advertising the benefit of the doubt,” arguing that the influences of subliminal
stimuli are usually so weak that they are normally overshadowed by the person’s own decision
making about the behavior.

Taken together then, the evidence for the effectiveness of subliminal advertising is weak, and its
effects may be limited to only some people and in only some conditions. You probably don’t
 have to worry too much about being subliminally persuaded in your everyday life, even if
subliminal ads are allowed in your country. But even if subliminal advertising is not all that
effective itself, there are plenty of other indirect advertising techniques that are used and that do
work. For instance, many ads for automobiles and alcoholic beverages are subtly sexualized,
which encourages the consumer to indirectly (even if not subliminally) associate these products
with sexuality. And there is the ever more frequent “product placement” techniques, where
images of brands (cars, sodas, electronics, and so forth) are placed on websites and in popular
television shows and movies. Harris, Bargh, & Brownell (2009) found that being exposed to
food advertising on television significantly increased child and adult snacking behaviors, again
suggesting that the effects of perceived images, even if presented above the absolute threshold,
may nevertheless be very subtle.

Another example of processing that occurs outside our awareness is seen

when certain areas of the visual cortex are damaged, causing blindsight, a
condition in which people are unable to consciously report on visual stimuli
but nevertheless are able to accurately answer questions about what they
are seeing. When people with blindsight are asked directly what stimuli
look like, or to determine whether these stimuli are present at all, they
cannot do so at better than chance levels. They report that they cannot see
anything. However, when they are asked more indirect questions, they are
able to give correct answers. For example, people with blindsight are able to
correctly determine an object’s location and direction of movement, as well
as identify simple geometrical forms and patterns (Weiskrantz, 1997). It
seems that although conscious reports of the visual experiences are not
possible, there is still a parallel and implicit process at work, enabling
people to perceive certain aspects of the stimuli.
 Key Takeaways

Sensation is the process of receiving information from the environment through our
sensory organs. Perception is the process of interpreting and organizing the incoming
information in order that we can understand it and react accordingly.

Transduction is the conversion of stimuli detected by receptor cells to electrical

impulses that are transported to the brain.

Although our experiences of the world are rich and complex, humans—like all
species—have their own adapted sensory strengths and sensory limitations.

Sensation and perception work together in a fluid, continuous process.

Our judgments in detection tasks are influenced by both the absolute threshold of the
signal as well as our current motivations and experiences. Signal detection analysis
is used to differentiate sensitivity from response biases.

The difference threshold, or just noticeable difference, is the ability to detect the
smallest change in a stimulus about 50% of the time. According to Weber’s law, the
just noticeable difference increases in proportion to the total intensity of the
stimulus.

Research has found that stimuli can influence behavior even when they are presented
below the absolute threshold (i.e., subliminally). The effectiveness of subliminal
advertising, however, has not been shown to be of large magnitude.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. The accidental shooting of one’s own soldiers (friendly fire) frequently occurs in
wars. Based on what you have learned about sensation, perception, and
 psychophysics, why do you think soldiers might mistakenly fire on their own
soldiers?

2. If we pick up two letters, one that weighs 1 ounce and one that weighs 2 ounces, we
can notice the difference. But if we pick up two packages, one that weighs 3 pounds
1 ounce and one that weighs 3 pounds 2 ounces, we can’t tell the difference. Why?

3. Take a moment and lie down quietly in your bedroom. Notice the variety and levels
of what you can see, hear, and feel. Does this experience help you understand the
idea of the absolute threshold?

References

Dijksterhuis, A. (2010). Automaticity and the unconscious. In S. T. Fiske, D.

T. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (5th ed.,
Vol. 1, pp. 228–267). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Galanter, E. (1962). Contemporary Psychophysics. In R. Brown, E.

Galanter, E. H. Hess, & G. Mandler (Eds.), New directions in psychology.
New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Harris, J. L., Bargh, J. A., & Brownell, K. D. (2009). Priming effects of

television food advertising on eating behavior. Health Psychology, 28(4),
404–413.

Karremans, J. C., Stroebe, W., & Claus, J. (2006). Beyond Vicary’s

fantasies: The impact of subliminal priming and brand choice. Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, 42(6), 792–798.

Macmillan, N. A., & Creelman, C. D. (2005). Detection theory: A user’s

guide (2nd ed). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; Wickens, T. D.
(2002). Elementary signal detection theory. New York, NY: Oxford
University Press.

Saegert, J. (1987). Why marketing should quit giving subliminal advertising

the benefit of the doubt. Psychology and Marketing, 4(2), 107–120.

Stoffregen, T. A., & Bardy, B. G. (2001). On specification and the senses.

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(2), 195–261.

Trappey, C. (1996). A meta-analysis of consumer choice and subliminal

advertising. Psychology and Marketing, 13, 517–530.

Weiskrantz, L. (1997). Consciousness lost and found: A neuropsychological

exploration. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
4.2 Seeing

Learning Objectives

1. Identify the key structures of the eye and the role they play in vision.

2. Summarize how the eye and the visual cortex work together to sense and perceive
the visual stimuli in the environment, including processing colors, shape, depth, and
motion.

Whereas other animals rely primarily on hearing, smell, or touch to

understand the world around them, human beings rely in large part on
vision. A large part of our cerebral cortex is devoted to seeing, and we have
substantial visual skills. Seeing begins when light falls on the eyes,
initiating the process of transduction. Once this visual information reaches
the visual cortex, it is processed by a variety of neurons that detect colors,
shapes, and motion, and that create meaningful perceptions out of the
incoming stimuli.

The air around us is filled with a sea of electromagnetic energy; pulses of

energy waves that can carry information from place to place. As you can see
in Figure 4.6 “The Electromagnetic Spectrum”, electromagnetic waves vary
in their wavelength—the distance between one wave peak and the next
wave peak, with the shortest gamma waves being only a fraction of a
millimeter in length and the longest radio waves being hundreds of
kilometers long. Humans are blind to almost all of this energy—our eyes
detect only the range from about 400 to 700 billionths of a meter, the part of
the electromagnetic spectrum known as the visible spectrum.
Figure 4.6 The Electromagnetic Spectrum

Only a small fraction of the electromagnetic energy that surrounds us (the visible spectrum) is detectable

by the human eye.

The Sensing Eye and the Perceiving Visual

Cortex

As you can see in Figure 4.7 “Anatomy of the Human Eye”, light enters the
eye through the cornea, a clear covering that protects the eye and begins to
focus the incoming light. The light then passes through the pupil, a small
opening in the center of the eye. The pupil is surrounded by the iris, the
colored part of the eye that controls the size of the pupil by constricting or
dilating in response to light intensity. When we enter a dark movie theater
on a sunny day, for instance, muscles in the iris open the pupil and allow
more light to enter. Complete adaptation to the dark may take up to 20
minutes.

Behind the pupil is the lens, a structure that focuses the incoming light on
theretina, the layer of tissue at the back of the eye that contains
photoreceptor cells. As our eyes move from near objects to distant objects, a
process known as visual accommodation occurs. Visual accommodation is
the process of changing the curvature of the lens to keep the light entering
the eye focused on the retina. Rays from the top of the image strike the
bottom of the retina and vice versa, and rays from the left side of the image
strike the right part of the retina and vice versa, causing the image on the
retina to be upside down and backward. Furthermore, the image projected
on the retina is flat, and yet our final perception of the image will be three
dimensional.

Figure 4.7 Anatomy of the Human Eye

Light enters the eye through the transparent cornea, passing through the pupil at the center of the iris. The

lens adjusts to focus the light on the retina, where it appears upside down and backward. Receptor cells on

the retina send information via the optic nerve to the visual cortex.
Accommodation is not always perfect, and in some cases the light that is
hitting the retina is a bit out of focus. As you can see in Figure 4.8 “Normal,
Nearsighted, and Farsighted Eyes”, if the focus is in front of the retina, we
say that the person is nearsighted, and when the focus is behind the retina
we say that the person is farsighted. Eyeglasses and contact lenses correct
this problem by adding another lens in front of the eye, and laser eye
surgery corrects the problem by reshaping the eye’s own lens.

Figure 4.8 Normal, Nearsighted, and Farsighted Eyes

For people with normal vision (left), the lens properly focuses incoming light on the retina. For people

who are nearsighted (center), images from far objects focus too far in front of the retina, whereas for

people who are farsighted (right), images from near objects focus too far behind the retina. Eyeglasses

solve the problem by adding a secondary, corrective, lens.

The retina contains layers of neurons specialized to respond to light (see

Figure 4.9 “The Retina With Its Specialized Cells”). As light falls on the
retina, it first activates receptor cells known as rods and cones. The
activation of these cells then spreads to the bipolar cells and then to the
ganglion cells, which gather together and converge, like the strands of a
rope, forming the optic nerve. The optic nerve is a collection of millions of
ganglion neurons that sends vast amounts of visual information, via the
thalamus, to the brain. Because the retina and the optic nerve are active
processors and analyzers of visual information, it is not inappropriate to
think of these structures as an extension of the brain itself.
Figure 4.9 The Retina With Its Specialized Cells

When light falls on the retina, it creates a photochemical reaction in the rods and cones at the back of the

retina. The reactions then continue to the bipolar cells, the ganglion cells, and eventually to the optic

nerve.

Rods are visual neurons that specialize in detecting black, white, and gray
colors. There are about 120 million rods in each eye. The rods do not
provide a lot of detail about the images we see, but because they are highly
sensitive to shorter-waved (darker) and weak light, they help us see in dim
light, for instance, at night. Because the rods are located primarily around
the edges of the retina, they are particularly active in peripheral vision
(when you need to see something at night, try looking away from what you
want to see). Cones are visual neurons that are specialized in detecting fine
detail and colors. The 5 million or so cones in each eye enable us to see in
color, but they operate best in bright light. The cones are located primarily
in and around the fovea, which is the central point of the retina.
To demonstrate the difference between rods and cones in attention to detail,
choose a word in this text and focus on it. Do you notice that the words a
few inches to the side seem more blurred? This is because the word you are
focusing on strikes the detail-oriented cones, while the words surrounding it
strike the less-detail-oriented rods, which are located on the periphery.

Figure 4.10 Mona Lisa’s Smile

Margaret Livingstone (2002) found an interesting effect that demonstrates the different processing
capacities of the eye’s rods and cones—namely, that the Mona Lisa’s smile, which is widely referred to as

“elusive,” is perceived differently depending on how one looks at the painting. Because Leonardo da

Vinci painted the smile in low-detail brush strokes, these details are better perceived by our peripheral

vision (the rods) than by the cones. Livingstone found that people rated the Mona Lisa as more cheerful

when they were instructed to focus on her eyes than they did when they were asked to look directly at her

mouth. As Livingstone put it, “She smiles until you look at her mouth, and then it fades, like a dim star

that disappears when you look directly at it.”

Photo courtesy of the Louvre Museum.

As you can see in Figure 4.11 “Pathway of Visual Images Through the
Thalamus and Into the Visual Cortex”, the sensory information received by
the retina is relayed through the thalamus to corresponding areas in the
visual cortex, which is located in the occipital lobe at the back of the brain.
Although the principle of contralateral control might lead you to expect that
the left eye would send information to the right brain hemisphere and vice
versa, nature is smarter than that. In fact, the left and right eyes each send
information to both the left and the right hemisphere, and the visual cortex
processes each of the cues separately and in parallel. This is an adaptational
advantage to an organism that loses sight in one eye, because even if only
one eye is functional, both hemispheres will still receive input from it.

Figure 4.11 Pathway of Visual Images Through the Thalamus and Into the Visual Cortex
The left and right eyes each send information to both the left and the right brain hemisphere.

The visual cortex is made up of specialized neurons that turn the sensations
they receive from the optic nerve into meaningful images. Because there are
no photoreceptor cells at the place where the optic nerve leaves the retina, a
hole or blind spot in our vision is created (see Figure 4.12 “Blind Spot
Demonstration”). When both of our eyes are open, we don’t experience a
problem because our eyes are constantly moving, and one eye makes up for
what the other eye misses. But the visual system is also designed to deal
with this problem if only one eye is open—the visual cortex simply fills in
the small hole in our vision with similar patterns from the surrounding
areas, and we never notice the difference. The ability of the visual system to
cope with the blind spot is another example of how sensation and perception
work together to create meaningful experience.

Figure 4.12 Blind Spot Demonstration

You can get an idea of the extent of your blind spot (the place where the optic nerve leaves the retina) by

trying this demonstration. Close your left eye and stare with your right eye at the cross in the diagram.

You should be able to see the elephant image to the right (don’t look at it, just notice that it is there). If

you can’t see the elephant, move closer or farther away until you can. Now slowly move so that you are

closer to the image while you keep looking at the cross. At one distance (probably a foot or so), the

elephant will completely disappear from view because its image has fallen on the blind spot.

Perception is created in part through the simultaneous action of thousands of

feature detector neurons—specialized neurons, located in the visual
cortex, that respond to the strength, angles, shapes, edges, and movements
of a visual stimulus (Kelsey, 1997; Livingstone & Hubel, 1988). The feature
detectors work in parallel, each performing a specialized function. When
faced with a red square, for instance, the parallel line feature detectors, the
horizontal line feature detectors, and the red color feature detectors all
become activated. This activation is then passed on to other parts of the
visual cortex where other neurons compare the information supplied by the
feature detectors with images stored in memory. Suddenly, in a flash of
recognition, the many neurons fire together, creating the single image of the
red square that we experience (Rodriguez et al., 1999).

Figure 4.13 The Necker Cube

The Necker cube is an example of how the visual system creates perceptions out of sensations. We do not

see a series of lines, but rather a cube. Which cube we see varies depending on the momentary outcome of

perceptual processes in the visual cortex.

Some feature detectors are tuned to selectively respond to particularly

important objects, for instance, faces, smiles, and other parts of the body
(Downing, Jiang, Shuman, & Kanwisher, 2001; Haxby et al., 2001). When
researchers disrupted face recognition areas of the cortex using the magnetic
pulses of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), people were temporarily
unable to recognize faces, and yet they were still able to recognize houses
(McKone, Kanwisher, & Duchaine, 2007; Pitcher, Walsh, Yovel, &
Duchaine, 2007).
Perceiving Color

It has been estimated that the human visual system can detect and
discriminate among 7 million color variations (Geldard, 1972), but these
variations are all created by the combinations of the three primary colors:
red, green, and blue. The shade of a color, known as hue, is conveyed by
the wavelength of the light that enters the eye (we see shorter wavelengths
as more blue and longer wavelengths as more red), and we detect brightness
from the intensity or height of the wave (bigger or more intense waves are
perceived as brighter).

Figure 4.14 Low- and High-Frequency Sine Waves and Low- and High-Intensity Sine Waves and Their

Corresponding Colors
Light waves with shorter frequencies are perceived as more blue than red; light waves with higher

intensity are seen as brighter.

In his important research on color vision, Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–

1894) theorized that color is perceived because the cones in the retina come
in three types. One type of cone reacts primarily to blue light (short
wavelengths), another reacts primarily to green light (medium wavelengths),
and a third reacts primarily to red light (long wavelengths). The visual
cortex then detects and compares the strength of the signals from each of the
three types of cones, creating the experience of color. According to this
Young-Helmholtz trichromatic color theory, what color we see depends
on the mix of the signals from the three types of cones. If the brain is
receiving primarily red and blue signals, for instance, it will perceive purple;
if it is receiving primarily red and green signals it will perceive yellow; and
if it is receiving messages from all three types of cones it will perceive
white.

The different functions of the three types of cones are apparent in people
who experience color blindness—the inability to detect either green and/or
red colors. About 1 in 50 people, mostly men, lack functioning in the red- or
green-sensitive cones, leaving them only able to experience either one or
two colors (Figure 4.15).

Figure 4.15

People with normal color vision can see the number 42 in the first image and the number 12 in the second

(they are vague but apparent). However, people who are color blind cannot see the numbers at all.

Wikimedia Commons.

The trichromatic color theory cannot explain all of human vision, however.
For one, although the color purple does appear to us as a mixing of red and
blue, yellow does not appear to be a mix of red and green. And people with
color blindness, who cannot see either green or red, nevertheless can still
see yellow. An alternative approach to the Young-Helmholtz theory, known
as the opponent-process color theory, proposes that we analyze sensory
information not in terms of three colors but rather in three sets of “opponent
colors”: red-green, yellow-blue, and white-black. Evidence for the
opponent-process theory comes from the fact that some neurons in the retina
and in the visual cortex are excited by one color (e.g., red) but inhibited by
another color (e.g., green).

One example of opponent processing occurs in the experience of an

afterimage. If you stare at the flag on the left side of Figure 4.16 “U.S. Flag”
for about 30 seconds (the longer you look, the better the effect), and then
move your eyes to the blank area to the right of it, you will see the
afterimage. When we stare at the green stripes, our green receptors habituate
and begin to process less strongly, whereas the red receptors remain at full
strength. When we switch our gaze, we see primarily the red part of the
opponent process. Similar processes create blue after yellow and white after
black.

Figure 4.16 U.S. Flag

The presence of an afterimage is best explained by the opponent-process theory of color perception. Stare

at the flag for a few seconds, and then move your gaze to the blank space next to it. Do you see the

afterimage?

Mike Swanson – U.S. Flag (inverted) – public domain.

The tricolor and the opponent-process mechanisms work together to

produce color vision. When light rays enter the eye, the red, blue, and green
cones on the retina respond in different degrees, and send different strength
signals of red, blue, and green through the optic nerve. The color signals are
then processed both by the ganglion cells and by the neurons in the visual
cortex (Gegenfurtner & Kiper, 2003).

Perceiving Form

One of the important processes required in vision is the perception of form.

German psychologists in the 1930s and 1940s, including Max Wertheimer
(1880–1943), Kurt Koffka (1886–1941), and Wolfgang Köhler (1887–
1967), argued that we create forms out of their component sensations based
on the idea of the gestalt, a meaningfully organized whole. The idea of the
gestalt is that the “whole is more than the sum of its parts.” Some examples
of how gestalt principles lead us to see more than what is actually there are
summarized in Table 4.1 “Summary of Gestalt Principles of Form
Perception”.

Table 4.1 Summary of Gestalt Principles of Form Perception

Principle Description Example Image

Figure 4.1
At right, you
may see a vase
We structure
or you may see
input such that
two faces, but
we always see
Figure and in either case,
a figure
ground you will
(image) against
organize the
a ground
image as a
(background).
figure against a
ground.

Figure 4.1

You are more

likely to see
Stimuli that are three similar
similar to each columns
Similarity other tend to be among the XYX
grouped characters at
together. right than you
are to see four
rows.
Principle Description Example Image

Figure 4.1

Do you see
four or eight
images at
We tend to
right?
group nearby
Proximity Principles of
figures
proximity
together.
suggest that
you might see
only four.
Principle Description Example Image

At right, most
people see a
line of dots that
moves from
Figure 4.1
the lower left
We tend to to the upper
perceive right, rather
stimuli in than a line that
smooth, moves from
Continuity continuous the left and
ways rather then suddenly
than in more turns down.
discontinuous The principle
ways. of continuity
leads us to see
most lines as
following the
smoothest
possible path.
Principle Description Example Image

Figure 4.1

Closure leads
We tend to fill
us to see a
in gaps in an
single spherical
incomplete
Closure object at right
image to create
rather than a
a complete,
set of unrelated
whole object.
cones.

Perceiving Depth

Depth perception is the ability to perceive three-dimensional space and to

accurately judge distance. Without depth perception, we would be unable to
drive a car, thread a needle, or simply navigate our way around the
supermarket (Howard & Rogers, 2001). Research has found that depth
perception is in part based on innate capacities and in part learned through
experience (Witherington, 2005).

Psychologists Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk (1960) tested the ability to
perceive depth in 6- to 14-month-old infants by placing them on a visual
cliff, a mechanism that gives the perception of a dangerous drop-off, in
which infants can be safely tested for their perception of depth (Figure 4.22
“Visual Cliff”). The infants were placed on one side of the “cliff,” while
their mothers called to them from the other side. Gibson and Walk found
that most infants either crawled away from the cliff or remained on the
board and cried because they wanted to go to their mothers, but the infants
perceived a chasm that they instinctively could not cross. Further research
has found that even very young children who cannot yet crawl are fearful of
heights (Campos, Langer, & Krowitz, 1970). On the other hand, studies
have also found that infants improve their hand-eye coordination as they
learn to better grasp objects and as they gain more experience in crawling,
indicating that depth perception is also learned (Adolph, 2000).

Depth perception is the result of our use of depth cues, messages from our
bodies and the external environment that supply us with information about
space and distance. Binocular depth cues are depth cues that are created
by retinal image disparity—that is, the space between our eyes, and thus
which require the coordination of both eyes. One outcome of retinal
disparity is that the images projected on each eye are slightly different from
each other. The visual cortex automatically merges the two images into one,
enabling us to perceive depth. Three-dimensional movies make use of
retinal disparity by using 3-D glasses that the viewer wears to create a
different image on each eye. The perceptual system quickly, easily, and
unconsciously turns the disparity into 3-D.

An important binocular depth cue is convergence, the inward turning of our

eyes that is required to focus on objects that are less than about 50 feet
away from us. The visual cortex uses the size of the convergence angle
between the eyes to judge the object’s distance. You will be able to feel your
eyes converging if you slowly bring a finger closer to your nose while
continuing to focus on it. When you close one eye, you no longer feel the
tension—convergence is a binocular depth cue that requires both eyes to
work.
The visual system also uses accommodation to help determine depth. As the
lens changes its curvature to focus on distant or close objects, information
relayed from the muscles attached to the lens helps us determine an object’s
distance. Accommodation is only effective at short viewing distances,
however, so while it comes in handy when threading a needle or tying
shoelaces, it is far less effective when driving or playing sports.

Although the best cues to depth occur when both eyes work together, we are
able to see depth even with one eye closed. Monocular depth cues are
depth cues that help us perceive depth using only one eye (Sekuler & Blake,
2006). Some of the most important are summarized in Table 4.2 “Monocular
Depth Cues That Help Us Judge Depth at a Distance”.

Table 4.2 Monocular Depth Cues That Help Us Judge Depth at a Distance
Name Description Example Image

The fence
posts at right
appear Figure 4.2
farther away
We tend to see
not only
objects higher
because they
Position up in our field
become
of vision as
smaller but
farther away.
also because
they appear
Andrew Huff – Rotted Fence – CC BY 2.0.
higher up in
the picture.

Figure 4.2
Assuming that
At right, the
the objects in
cars in the
a scene are the
distance
same size,
Relative size appear
smaller
smaller than
objects are
those nearer
perceived as
to us.
farther away. Allan Ferguson – Trolley Crosses Freeway – CC
BY 2.0.
Name Description Example Image

Figure 4.2

We know that
the tracks at
right are
Parallel lines parallel.
Linear appear to When they
perspective converge at a appear closer
distance. together, we
determine
they are
farther away.

Bo Insogna, TheLightningMan.com – Lightning

Striking By The Train Tracks – CC BY-NC-ND
2.0.
Name Description Example Image

The eye We see the Figure 4.2

receives more images at
reflected light right as
from objects extending
that are closer and indented
Light and to us. according to
shadow Normally, their
light comes shadowing. If
from above, we invert the
so darker picture, the
images are in images will
shadow. reverse.

Figure 4.2

At right,
When one
because the
object
blue star
overlaps
covers the
Interposition another
pink bar, it is
object, we
seen as closer
view it as
than the
closer.
yellow moon.
 Name Description Example Image

The artist Figure 4.2

who painted
the picture on
Objects that
the right used
appear hazy,
aerial
or that are
Aerial perspective
covered with
perspective to make the
smog or dust,
distant hills
appear farther
more hazy
away.
and thus
appear Frans Koppelaar – Landscape near Bologna – CC
farther away. BY-SA 2.5.

Photo sources: TBD

Perceiving Motion

Many animals, including human beings, have very sophisticated perceptual

skills that allow them to coordinate their own motion with the motion of
moving objects in order to create a collision with that object. Bats and birds
use this mechanism to catch up with prey, dogs use it to catch a Frisbee, and
humans use it to catch a moving football. The brain detects motion partly
from the changing size of an image on the retina (objects that look bigger
are usually closer to us) and in part from the relative brightness of objects.

We also experience motion when objects near each other change their
appearance. The beta effect refers to the perception of motion that occurs
when different images are presented next to each other in succession (see
Note 4.43 “Beta Effect and Phi Phenomenon”). The visual cortex fills in the
missing part of the motion and we see the object moving. The beta effect is
used in movies to create the experience of motion. A related effect is the phi
phenomenon, in which we perceive a sensation of motion caused by the
appearance and disappearance of objects that are near each other. The phi
phenomenon looks like a moving zone or cloud of background color
surrounding the flashing objects. The beta effect and the phi phenomenon
are other examples of the importance of the gestalt—our tendency to “see
more than the sum of the parts.”

Beta Effect and Phi Phenomenon

In the beta effect, our eyes detect motion from a series of still images, each with the object in a
different place. This is the fundamental mechanism of motion pictures (movies). In the phi
phenomenon, the perception of motion is based on the momentary hiding of an image.

Phi phenomenon: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Lilac-Chaser.gif

Beta effect:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Phi_phenomenom_no_watermark.gif

Key Takeaways

Vision is the process of detecting the electromagnetic energy that surrounds us. Only
a small fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum is visible to humans.

The visual receptor cells on the retina detect shape, color, motion, and depth.

Light enters the eye through the transparent cornea and passes through the pupil at
the center of the iris. The lens adjusts to focus the light on the retina, where it
appears upside down and backward. Receptor cells on the retina are excited or
 inhibited by the light and send information to the visual cortex through the optic
nerve.

The retina has two types of photoreceptor cells: rods, which detect brightness and
respond to black and white, and cones, which respond to red, green, and blue. Color
blindness occurs when people lack function in the red- or green-sensitive cones.

Feature detector neurons in the visual cortex help us recognize objects, and some
neurons respond selectively to faces and other body parts.

The Young-Helmholtz trichromatic color theory proposes that color perception is the
result of the signals sent by the three types of cones, whereas the opponent-process
color theory proposes that we perceive color as three sets of opponent colors: red-
green, yellow-blue, and white-black.

The ability to perceive depth occurs through the result of binocular and monocular
depth cues.

Motion is perceived as a function of the size and brightness of objects. The beta
effect and the phi phenomenon are examples of perceived motion.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Consider some ways that the processes of visual perception help you engage in an
everyday activity, such as driving a car or riding a bicycle.

2. Imagine for a moment what your life would be like if you couldn’t see. Do you think
you would be able to compensate for your loss of sight by using other senses?
References

Adolph, K. E. (2000). Specificity of learning: Why infants fall over a

veritable cliff. Psychological Science, 11(4), 290–295.

Campos, J. J., Langer, A., & Krowitz, A. (1970). Cardiac responses on the
visual cliff in prelocomotor human infants. Science, 170(3954), 196–197.

Downing, P. E., Jiang, Y., Shuman, M., & Kanwisher, N. (2001). A cortical
area selective for visual processing of the human body. Science, 293(5539),
2470–2473.

Gegenfurtner, K. R., & Kiper, D. C. (2003). Color vision. Annual Review of

Neuroscience, 26, 181–206.

Geldard, F. A. (1972). The human senses (2nd ed.). New York, NY: John
Wiley & Sons.

Gibson, E. J., & Walk, R. D. (1960). The “visual cliff.” Scientific American,
202(4), 64–71.

Haxby, J. V., Gobbini, M. I., Furey, M. L., Ishai, A., Schouten, J. L., &
Pietrini, P. (2001). Distributed and overlapping representations of faces and
objects in ventral temporal cortex. Science, 293(5539), 2425–2430.

Howard, I. P., & Rogers, B. J. (2001). Seeing in depth: Basic mechanisms

(Vol. 1). Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Porteous.

Kelsey, C.A. (1997). Detection of visual information. In W. R. Hendee & P.

N. T. Wells (Eds.), The perception of visual information (2nd ed.). New
York, NY: Springer Verlag.

Livingstone M. S. (2000). Is it warm? Is it real? Or just low spatial

frequency? Science, 290, 1299.

Livingstone, M., & Hubel, D. (1998). Segregation of form, color,

movement, and depth: Anatomy, physiology, and perception. Science, 240,
740–749.

McKone, E., Kanwisher, N., & Duchaine, B. C. (2007). Can generic

expertise explain special processing for faces? Trends in Cognitive Sciences,
11, 8–15;

Pitcher, D., Walsh, V., Yovel, G., & Duchaine, B. (2007). TMS evidence for
the involvement of the right occipital face area in early face processing.
Current Biology, 17, 1568–1573.

Rodriguez, E., George, N., Lachaux, J.-P., Martinerie, J., Renault, B., &
Varela, F. J. (1999). Perception’s shadow: Long-distance synchronization of
human brain activity. Nature, 397(6718), 430–433.

Sekuler, R., & Blake, R., (2006). Perception (5th ed.). New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill.

Witherington, D. C. (2005). The development of prospective grasping

control between 5 and 7 months: A longitudinal study. Infancy, 7(2), 143–
161.
4.3 Hearing

Learning Objectives

1. Draw a picture of the ear and label its key structures and functions, and describe the
role they play in hearing.

2. Describe the process of transduction in hearing.

Like vision and all the other senses, hearing begins with transduction.
Sound waves that are collected by our ears are converted into neural
impulses, which are sent to the brain where they are integrated with past
experience and interpreted as the sounds we experience. The human ear is
sensitive to a wide range of sounds, ranging from the faint tick of a clock in
a nearby room to the roar of a rock band at a nightclub, and we have the
ability to detect very small variations in sound. But the ear is particularly
sensitive to sounds in the same frequency as the human voice. A mother can
pick out her child’s voice from a host of others, and when we pick up the
phone we quickly recognize a familiar voice. In a fraction of a second, our
auditory system receives the sound waves, transmits them to the auditory
cortex, compares them to stored knowledge of other voices, and identifies
the identity of the caller.

The Ear

Just as the eye detects light waves, the ear detects sound waves. Vibrating
objects (such as the human vocal chords or guitar strings) cause air
molecules to bump into each other and produce sound waves, which travel
from their source as peaks and valleys much like the ripples that expand
outward when a stone is tossed into a pond. Unlike light waves, which can
travel in a vacuum, sound waves are carried within mediums such as air,
water, or metal, and it is the changes in pressure associated with these
mediums that the ear detects.

As with light waves, we detect both the wavelength and the amplitude of
sound waves. The wavelength of the sound wave (known as frequency) is
measured in terms of the number of waves that arrive per second and
determines our perception of pitch, the perceived frequency of a sound.
Longer sound waves have lower frequency and produce a lower pitch,
whereas shorter waves have higher frequency and a higher pitch.

The amplitude, or height of the sound wave, determines how much energy
it contains and is perceived as loudness (the degree of sound volume).
Larger waves are perceived as louder. Loudness is measured using the unit
of relative loudness known as the decibel. Zero decibels represent the
absolute threshold for human hearing, below which we cannot hear a sound.
Each increase in 10 decibels represents a tenfold increase in the loudness of
the sound (see Figure 4.29 “Sounds in Everyday Life”). The sound of a
typical conversation (about 60 decibels) is 1,000 times louder than the
sound of a faint whisper (30 decibels), whereas the sound of a jackhammer
(130 decibels) is 10 billion times louder than the whisper.

Figure 4.29 Sounds in Everyday Life

The human ear can comfortably hear sounds up to 80 decibels. Prolonged exposure to sounds above 80

decibels can cause hearing loss.

Audition begins in the pinna, the external and visible part of the ear, which
is shaped like a funnel to draw in sound waves and guide them into the
auditory canal. At the end of the canal, the sound waves strike the tightly
stretched, highly sensitive membrane known as the tympanic membrane
(or eardrum), which vibrates with the waves. The resulting vibrations are
relayed into the middle ear through three tiny bones, known as the ossicles
—the hammer (or malleus), anvil (or incus), and stirrup (or stapes)—to the
cochlea, a snail-shaped liquid-filled tube in the inner ear. The vibrations
cause the oval window, the membrane covering the opening of the cochlea,
to vibrate, disturbing the fluid inside the cochlea.

The movements of the fluid in the cochlea bend the hair cells of the inner
ear, much in the same way that a gust of wind bends over wheat stalks in a
field. The movements of the hair cells trigger nerve impulses in the attached
neurons, which are sent to the auditory nerve and then to the auditory cortex
in the brain. The cochlea contains about 16,000 hair cells, each of which
holds a bundle of fibers known as cilia on its tip. The cilia are so sensitive
that they can detect a movement that pushes them the width of a single
atom. To put things in perspective, cilia swaying at the width of an atom is
equivalent to the tip of the Eiffel Tower swaying by half an inch (Corey et
al., 2004).

Figure 4.30 The Human Ear

Sound waves enter the outer ear and are transmitted through the auditory canal to the eardrum. The

resulting vibrations are moved by the three small ossicles into the cochlea, where they are detected by hair

cells and sent to the auditory nerve.

Although loudness is directly determined by the number of hair cells that

are vibrating, two different mechanisms are used to detect pitch. The
frequency theory of hearing proposes that whatever the pitch of a sound
wave, nerve impulses of a corresponding frequency will be sent to the
auditory nerve. For example, a tone measuring 600 hertz will be transduced
into 600 nerve impulses a second. This theory has a problem with high-
pitched sounds, however, because the neurons cannot fire fast enough. To
reach the necessary speed, the neurons work together in a sort of volley
system in which different neurons fire in sequence, allowing us to detect
sounds up to about 4,000 hertz.

Not only is frequency important, but location is critical as well. The cochlea
relays information about the specific area, or place, in the cochlea that is
most activated by the incoming sound. The place theory of hearing
proposes that different areas of the cochlea respond to different frequencies.
Higher tones excite areas closest to the opening of the cochlea (near the oval
window). Lower tones excite areas near the narrow tip of the cochlea, at the
opposite end. Pitch is therefore determined in part by the area of the cochlea
firing the most frequently.

Just as having two eyes in slightly different positions allows us to perceive

depth, so the fact that the ears are placed on either side of the head enables
us to benefit from stereophonic, or three-dimensional, hearing. If a sound
occurs on your left side, the left ear will receive the sound slightly sooner
than the right ear, and the sound it receives will be more intense, allowing
you to quickly determine the location of the sound. Although the distance
between our two ears is only about 6 inches, and sound waves travel at 750
miles an hour, the time and intensity differences are easily detected
(Middlebrooks & Green, 1991). When a sound is equidistant from both ears,
such as when it is directly in front, behind, beneath or overhead, we have
more difficulty pinpointing its location. It is for this reason that dogs (and
people, too) tend to cock their heads when trying to pinpoint a sound, so that
the ears receive slightly different signals.

Hearing Loss

More than 31 million Americans suffer from some kind of hearing

impairment (Kochkin, 2005). Conductive hearing loss is caused by physical
damage to the ear (such as to the eardrums or ossicles) that reduce the
ability of the ear to transfer vibrations from the outer ear to the inner ear.
Sensorineural hearing loss, which is caused by damage to the cilia or to the
auditory nerve, is less common overall but frequently occurs with age
(Tennesen, 2007). The cilia are extremely fragile, and by the time we are 65
years old, we will have lost 40% of them, particularly those that respond to
high-pitched sounds (Chisolm, Willott, & Lister, 2003).

Prolonged exposure to loud sounds will eventually create sensorineural

hearing loss as the cilia are damaged by the noise. People who constantly
operate noisy machinery without using appropriate ear protection are at high
risk of hearing loss, as are people who listen to loud music on their
headphones or who engage in noisy hobbies, such as hunting or
motorcycling. Sounds that are 85 decibels or more can cause damage to
your hearing, particularly if you are exposed to them repeatedly. Sounds of
more than 130 decibels are dangerous even if you are exposed to them
infrequently. People who experience tinnitus (a ringing or a buzzing
sensation) after being exposed to loud sounds have very likely experienced
some damage to their cilia. Taking precautions when being exposed to loud
sound is important, as cilia do not grow back.

While conductive hearing loss can often be improved through hearing aids
that amplify the sound, they are of little help to sensorineural hearing loss.
But if the auditory nerve is still intact, a cochlear implant may be used. A
cochlear implant is a device made up of a series of electrodes that are placed
inside the cochlea. The device serves to bypass the hair cells by stimulating
the auditory nerve cells directly. The latest implants utilize place theory,
enabling different spots on the implant to respond to different levels of
pitch. The cochlear implant can help children hear who would normally be
deaf, and if the device is implanted early enough, these children can
frequently learn to speak, often as well as normal children do (Dettman,
Pinder, Briggs, Dowell, & Leigh, 2007; Dorman & Wilson, 2004).
 Key Takeaways

Sound waves vibrating through mediums such as air, water, or metal are the stimulus
energy that is sensed by the ear.

The hearing system is designed to assess frequency (pitch) and amplitude (loudness).

Sound waves enter the outer ear (the pinna) and are sent to the eardrum via the
auditory canal. The resulting vibrations are relayed by the three ossicles, causing the
oval window covering the cochlea to vibrate. The vibrations are detected by the cilia
(hair cells) and sent via the auditory nerve to the auditory cortex.

There are two theories as to how we perceive pitch: The frequency theory of hearing
suggests that as a sound wave’s pitch changes, nerve impulses of a corresponding
frequency enter the auditory nerve. The place theory of hearing suggests that we hear
different pitches because different areas of the cochlea respond to higher and lower
pitches.

Conductive hearing loss is caused by physical damage to the ear or eardrum and may
be improved by hearing aids or cochlear implants. Sensorineural hearing loss, caused
by damage to the hair cells or auditory nerves in the inner ear, may be produced by
prolonged exposure to sounds of more than 85 decibels.

Exercise and Critical Thinking

1. Given what you have learned about hearing in this chapter, are you engaging in any
activities that might cause long-term hearing loss? If so, how might you change your
behavior to reduce the likelihood of suffering damage?
References

Chisolm, T. H., Willott, J. F., & Lister, J. J. (2003). The aging auditory
system: Anatomic and physiologic changes and implications for
rehabilitation. International Journal of Audiology, 42(Suppl. 2), 2S3–2S10.

Corey, D. P., García-Añoveros, J., Holt, J. R., Kwan, K. Y., Lin, S.-Y.,
Vollrath, M. A., Amalfitano, A.,…Zhang, D.-S. (2004). TRPA1 is a
candidate for the mechano-sensitive transduction channel of vertebrate hair
cells. Nature, 432, 723–730. Retrieved from
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v432/n7018/full/nature03066.html

Dettman, S. J., Pinder, D., Briggs, R. J. S., Dowell, R. C., & Leigh, J. R.
(2007). Communication development in children who receive the cochlear
implant younger than 12 months: Risk versus benefits. Ear and Hearing,
28(2, Suppl.), 11S–18S;

Dorman, M. F., & Wilson, B. S. (2004). The design and function of cochlear
implants. American Scientist, 92, 436–445.

Kochkin, S. (2005). MarkeTrak VII: Hearing loss population tops 31 million

people. Hearing Review, 12(7) 16–29.

Middlebrooks, J. C., & Green, D. M. (1991). Sound localization by human

listeners. Annual Review of Psychology, 42, 135–159.

Tennesen, M. (2007, March 10). Gone today, hear tomorrow. New Scientist,
2594, 42–45.
4.4 Tasting, Smelling, and Touching

Learning Objectives

1. Summarize how the senses of taste and olfaction transduce stimuli into perceptions.

2. Describe the process of transduction in the senses of touch and proprioception.

3. Outline the gate control theory of pain. Explain why pain matters and how it may be
controlled.

Although vision and hearing are by far the most important, human sensation
is rounded out by four other senses, each of which provides an essential
avenue to a better understanding of and response to the world around us.
These other senses are touch, taste, smell, and our sense of body position
and movement (proprioception).

Tasting

Taste is important not only because it allows us to enjoy the food we eat, but
even more crucial, because it leads us toward foods that provide energy
(sugar, for instance) and away from foods that could be harmful. Many
children are picky eaters for a reason—they are biologically predisposed to
be very careful about what they eat. Together with the sense of smell, taste
helps us maintain appetite, assess potential dangers (such as the odor of a
gas leak or a burning house), and avoid eating poisonous or spoiled food.

Our ability to taste begins at the taste receptors on the tongue. The tongue
detects six different taste sensations, known respectively as sweet, salty,
sour, bitter, piquancy (spicy), and umami (savory). Umami is a meaty taste
associated with meats, cheeses, soy, seaweed, and mushrooms, and
particularly found in monosodium glutamate (MSG), a popular flavor
enhancer (Ikeda, 1909/2002; Sugimoto & Ninomiya, 2005).

Our tongues are covered with taste buds, which are designed to sense
chemicals in the mouth. Most taste buds are located in the top outer edges of
the tongue, but there are also receptors at the back of the tongue as well as
on the walls of the mouth and at the back of the throat. As we chew food, it
dissolves and enters the taste buds, triggering nerve impulses that are
transmitted to the brain (Northcutt, 2004). Human tongues are covered with
2,000 to 10,000 taste buds, and each bud contains between 50 and 100 taste
receptor cells. Taste buds are activated very quickly; a salty or sweet taste
that touches a taste bud for even one tenth of a second will trigger a neural
impulse (Kelling & Halpern, 1983). On average, taste buds live for about 5
days, after which new taste buds are created to replace them. As we get
older, however, the rate of creation decreases making us less sensitive to
taste. This change helps explain why some foods that seem so unpleasant in
childhood are more enjoyable in adulthood.

The area of the sensory cortex that responds to taste is in a very similar
location to the area that responds to smell, a fact that helps explain why the
sense of smell also contributes to our experience of the things we eat. You
may remember having had difficulty tasting food when you had a bad cold,
and if you block your nose and taste slices of raw potato, apple, and parsnip,
you will not be able to taste the differences between them. Our experience
of texture in a food (the way we feel it on our tongues) also influences how
we taste it.
Smelling

As we breathe in air through our nostrils, we inhale airborne chemical

molecules, which are detected by the 10 million to 20 million receptor cells
embedded in the olfactory membrane of the upper nasal passage. The
olfactory receptor cells are topped with tentacle-like protrusions that contain
receptor proteins. When an odor receptor is stimulated, the membrane sends
neural messages up the olfactory nerve to the brain (see Figure 4.31 “Smell
Receptors”).

Figure 4.31 Smell Receptors

There are more than 1,000 types of odor receptor cells in the olfactory membrane.

We have approximately 1,000 types of odor receptor cells (Bensafi et al.,

2004), and it is estimated that we can detect 10,000 different odors (Malnic,
Hirono, Sato, & Buck, 1999). The receptors come in many different shapes
and respond selectively to different smells. Like a lock and key, different
chemical molecules “fit” into different receptor cells, and odors are detected
according to their influence on a combination of receptor cells. Just as the
10 digits from 0 to 9 can combine in many different ways to produce an
endless array of phone numbers, odor molecules bind to different
combinations of receptors, and these combinations are decoded in the
olfactory cortex. As you can see in Figure 4.32 “Age Differences in Smell”,
women tend to have a more acute sense of smell than men. The sense of
smell peaks in early adulthood and then begins a slow decline. By ages 60
to 70, the sense of smell has become sharply diminished.

Figure 4.32 Age Differences in Smell

The ability to identify common odorants declines markedly between 20 and 70 years of age.

Adapted from Murphy, C. (1986). Taste and smell in the elderly. In H. L. Meiselman & R. S. Rivlin

(Eds.), Clinical measurement of taste and smell (Vol. 1, pp. 343–371). New York, NY: Macmillan.

Touching

The sense of touch is essential to human development. Infants thrive when

they are cuddled and attended to, but not if they are deprived of human
contact (Baysinger, Plubell, & Harlow, 1973; Feldman, 2007; Haradon,
Bascom, Dragomir, & Scripcaru, 1994). Touch communicates warmth,
caring, and support, and is an essential part of the enjoyment we gain from
our social interactions with close others (Field et al., 1997; Kelter, 2009).
The skin, the largest organ in the body, is the sensory organ for touch. The
skin contains a variety of nerve endings, combinations of which respond to
particular types of pressures and temperatures. When you touch different
parts of the body, you will find that some areas are more ticklish, whereas
other areas respond more to pain, cold, or heat.

The thousands of nerve endings in the skin respond to four basic sensations:
Pressure, hot, cold, and pain, but only the sensation of pressure has its own
specialized receptors. Other sensations are created by a combination of the
other four. For instance:

The experience of a tickle is caused by the stimulation of

neighboring pressure receptors.
The experience of heat is caused by the stimulation of hot and
cold receptors.
The experience of itching is caused by repeated stimulation of
pain receptors.
The experience of wetness is caused by repeated stimulation of
cold and pressure receptors.

The skin is important not only in providing information about touch and
temperature but also in proprioception—the ability to sense the position
and movement of our body parts. Proprioception is accomplished by
specialized neurons located in the skin, joints, bones, ears, and tendons,
which send messages about the compression and the contraction of muscles
throughout the body. Without this feedback from our bones and muscles, we
would be unable to play sports, walk, or even stand upright.

The ability to keep track of where the body is moving is also provided by
the vestibular system, a set of liquid-filled areas in the inner ear that
monitors the head’s position and movement, maintaining the body’s balance.
As you can see in Figure 4.33 “The Vestibular System”, the vestibular
system includes the semicircular canals and the vestibular sacs. These sacs
connect the canals with the cochlea. The semicircular canals sense the
rotational movements of the body and the vestibular sacs sense linear
accelerations. The vestibular system sends signals to the neural structures
that control eye movement and to the muscles that keep the body upright.

Figure 4.33 The Vestibular System

The vestibular system includes the semicircular canals (brown) that transduce the rotational movements of

the body and the vestibular sacs (blue) that sense linear accelerations.

Experiencing Pain

We do not enjoy it, but the experience of pain is how the body informs us
that we are in danger. The burn when we touch a hot radiator and the sharp
stab when we step on a nail lead us to change our behavior, preventing
further damage to our bodies. People who cannot experience pain are in
serious danger of damage from wounds that others with pain would quickly
notice and attend to.

The gate control theory of painproposes that pain is determined by the

operation of two types of nerve fibers in the spinal cord. One set of smaller
nerve fibers carries pain from the body to the brain, whereas a second set of
larger fibers is designed to stop or start (as a gate would) the flow of pain
(Melzack & Wall, 1996). It is for this reason that massaging an area where
you feel pain may help alleviate it—the massage activates the large nerve
fibers that block the pain signals of the small nerve fibers (Wall, 2000).

Experiencing pain is a lot more complicated than simply responding to

neural messages, however. It is also a matter of perception. We feel pain less
when we are busy focusing on a challenging activity (Bantick, Wise,
Ploghaus, Clare, Smith, & Tracey, 2002), which can help explain why sports
players may feel their injuries only after the game. We also feel less pain
when we are distracted by humor (Zweyer, Velker, & Ruch, 2004). And pain
is soothed by the brain’s release of endorphins, natural hormonal pain
killers. The release of endorphins can explain the euphoria experienced in
the running of a marathon (Sternberg, Bailin, Grant, & Gracely, 1998).

Key Takeaways

The ability to taste, smell, and touch are important because they help us avoid harm
from environmental toxins.

The many taste buds on our tongues and inside our mouths allow us to detect six
basic taste sensations: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, piquancy, and umami.
 In olfaction, transduction occurs as airborne chemicals that are inhaled through the
nostrils are detected by receptors in the olfactory membrane. Different chemical
molecules fit into different receptor cells, creating different smells.

On average, women have a better sense of smell than men, and the ability to smell
diminishes with age.

We have a range of different nerve endings embedded in the skin, combinations of

which respond to the four basic sensations of pressure, hot, cold, and pain. But only
the sensation of pressure has its own specialized receptors.

Proprioception is our ability to sense the positions and movements of our body parts.
Postural and movement information is detected by special neurons located in the
skin, joints, bones, ears, and tendons, which pick up messages from the compression
and the contraction of muscles throughout the body.

The vestibular system, composed of structures in the inner ear, monitors the head’s
position and movement, maintaining the body’s balance.

Gate control theory explains how large and small neurons work together to transmit
and regulate the flow of pain to the brain.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Think of the foods that you like to eat the most. Which of the six taste sensations do
these foods have, and why do you think that you like these particular flavors?

2. Why do you think that women might have a better developed sense of smell than do
men?

3. Why is experiencing pain a benefit for human beings?

References

Bantick, S. J., Wise, R. G., Ploghaus, A., Clare, S., Smith, S. M., & Tracey,
I. (2002). Imaging how attention modulates pain in humans using functional
MRI. Brain: A Journal of Neurology, 125(2), 310–319.

Baysinger, C. M., Plubell, P. E., & Harlow, H. F. (1973). A variable-

temperature surrogate mother for studying attachment in infant monkeys.
Behavior Research Methods & Instrumentation, 5(3), 269–272.

Bensafi, M., Zelano, C., Johnson, B., Mainland, J., Kahn, R., & Sobel, N.
(2004). Olfaction: From sniff to percept. In M. S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The
cognitive neurosciences (3rd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Feldman, R. (2007). Maternal-infant contact and child development:

Insights from the kangaroo intervention. In L. L’Abate (Ed.), Low-cost
approaches to promote physical and mental health: Theory, research, and
practice (pp. 323–351). New York, NY: Springer Science + Business Media.

Field, T., Lasko, D., Mundy, P., Henteleff, T., Kabat, S., Talpins, S., &
Dowling, M. (1997). Brief report: Autistic children’s attentiveness and
responsivity improve after touch therapy. Journal of Autism and
Developmental Disorders, 27(3), 333–338.

Haradon, G., Bascom, B., Dragomir, C., & Scripcaru, V. (1994). Sensory
functions of institutionalized Romanian infants: A pilot study. Occupational
Therapy International, 1(4), 250–260.

Ikeda, K. (2002). [New seasonings]. Chemical Senses, 27(9), 847–849.

Translated and shortened to 75% by Y. Ogiwara & Y. Ninomiya from the
Journal of the Chemical Society of Tokyo, 30, 820–836. (Original work
published 1909).
Kelling, S. T., & Halpern, B. P. (1983). Taste flashes: Reaction times,
intensity, and quality. Science, 219, 412–414.

Keltner, D. (2009). Born to be good: The science of a meaningful life. New

York, NY: Norton.

Malnic, B., Hirono, J., Sato, T., & Buck, L. B. (1999). Combinatorial
receptor codes for odors. Cell, 96, 713–723.

Melzack, R., & Wall, P. (1996). The challenge of pain. London, England:
Penguin.

Northcutt, R. G. (2004). Taste buds: Development and evolution. Brain,

Behavior and Evolution, 64(3), 198–206.

Sternberg, W. F., Bailin, D., Grant, M., & Gracely, R. H. (1998).

Competition alters the perception of noxious stimuli in male and female
athletes. Pain, 76(1–2), 231–238.

Sugimoto, K., & Ninomiya, Y. (2005). Introductory remarks on umami

research: Candidate receptors and signal transduction mechanisms on
umami. Chemical Senses, 30(Suppl. 1), Pi21–i22.

Wall, P. (2000). Pain: The science of suffering. New York, NY: Columbia
University Press.

Zweyer, K., Velker, B., & Ruch, W. (2004). Do cheerfulness, exhilaration,

and humor production moderate pain tolerance? A FACS study. Humor:
International Journal of Humor Research, 17(1-2), 85–119.
4.5 Accuracy and Inaccuracy in Perception

Learning Objectives

1. Describe how sensation and perception work together through sensory interaction,
selective attention, sensory adaptation, and perceptual constancy.

2. Give examples of how our expectations may influence our perception, resulting in
illusions and potentially inaccurate judgments.

The eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin sense the world around us, and in
some cases perform preliminary information processing on the incoming
data. But by and large, we do not experience sensation—we experience the
outcome of perception—the total package that the brain puts together from
the pieces it receives through our senses and that the brain creates for us to
experience. When we look out the window at a view of the countryside, or
when we look at the face of a good friend, we don’t just see a jumble of
colors and shapes—we see, instead, an image of a countryside or an image
of a friend (Goodale & Milner, 2006).

How the Perceptual System Interprets the

Environment

This meaning-making involves the automatic operation of a variety of

essential perceptual processes. One of these is sensory interaction—the
working together of different senses to create experience. Sensory
interaction is involved when taste, smell, and texture combine to create the
flavor we experience in food. It is also involved when we enjoy a movie
because of the way the images and the music work together.

Although you might think that we understand speech only through our sense
of hearing, it turns out that the visual aspect of speech is also important. One
example of sensory interaction is shown in the McGurk effect—an error in
perception that occurs when we misperceive sounds because the audio and
visual parts of the speech are mismatched. You can witness the effect
yourself by viewing Note 4.69 “Video Clip: The McGurk Effect”.

Video Clip: The McGurk Effect

(click to see video)

The McGurk effect is an error in sound perception that occurs when there is
a mismatch between the senses of hearing and seeing. You can experience it
here.

Other examples of sensory interaction include the experience of nausea that

can occur when the sensory information being received from the eyes and
the body does not match information from the vestibular system (Flanagan,
May, & Dobie, 2004) and synesthesia—an experience in which one
sensation (e.g., hearing a sound) creates experiences in another (e.g.,
vision). Most people do not experience synesthesia, but those who do link
their perceptions in unusual ways, for instance, by experiencing color when
they taste a particular food or by hearing sounds when they see certain
objects (Ramachandran, Hubbard, Robertson, & Sagiv, 2005).

Another important perceptual process is selective attention—the ability to

focus on some sensory inputs while tuning out others. View Note 4.71
“Video Clip: Selective Attention” and count the number of times the people
playing with the ball pass it to each other. You may find that, like many
other people who view it for the first time, you miss something important
because you selectively attend to only one aspect of the video (Simons &
Chabris, 1999). Perhaps the process of selective attention can help you see
why the security guards completely missed the fact that the Chaser group’s
motorcade was a fake—they focused on some aspects of the situation, such
as the color of the cars and the fact that they were there at all, and
completely ignored others (the details of the security information).

Video Clip: Selective Attention

(click to see video)

Watch this video and carefully count how many times the people pass the
ball to each other.

Selective attention also allows us to focus on a single talker at a party while

ignoring other conversations that are occurring around us (Broadbent, 1958;
Cherry, 1953). Without this automatic selective attention, we’d be unable to
focus on the single conversation we want to hear. But selective attention is
not complete; we also at the same time monitor what’s happening in the
channels we are not focusing on. Perhaps you have had the experience of
being at a party and talking to someone in one part of the room, when
suddenly you hear your name being mentioned by someone in another part
of the room. This cocktail party phenomenon shows us that although
selective attention is limiting what we processes, we are nevertheless at the
same time doing a lot of unconscious monitoring of the world around us—
you didn’t know you were attending to the background sounds of the party,
but evidently you were.

A second fundamental process of perception is sensory adaptation—a

decreased sensitivity to a stimulus after prolonged and constant exposure.
When you step into a swimming pool, the water initially feels cold, but after
a while you stop noticing it. After prolonged exposure to the same stimulus,
our sensitivity toward it diminishes and we no longer perceive it. The ability
to adapt to the things that don’t change around us is essential to our survival,
as it leaves our sensory receptors free to detect the important and
informative changes in our environment and to respond accordingly. We
ignore the sounds that our car makes every day, which leaves us free to pay
attention to the sounds that are different from normal, and thus likely to
need our attention. Our sensory receptors are alert to novelty and are
fatigued after constant exposure to the same stimulus.

If sensory adaptation occurs with all senses, why doesn’t an image fade
away after we stare at it for a period of time? The answer is that, although
we are not aware of it, our eyes are constantly flitting from one angle to the
next, making thousands of tiny movements (called saccades) every minute.
This constant eye movement guarantees that the image we are viewing
always falls on fresh receptor cells. What would happen if we could stop the
movement of our eyes? Psychologists have devised a way of testing the
sensory adaptation of the eye by attaching an instrument that ensures a
constant image is maintained on the eye’s inner surface. Participants are
fitted with a contact lens that has miniature slide projector attached to it.
Because the projector follows the exact movements of the eye, the same
image is always projected, stimulating the same spot, on the retina. Within a
few seconds, interesting things begin to happen. The image will begin to
vanish, then reappear, only to disappear again, either in pieces or as a whole.
Even the eye experiences sensory adaptation (Yarbus, 1967).

One of the major problems in perception is to ensure that we always

perceive the same object in the same way, despite the fact that the sensations
that it creates on our receptors changes dramatically. The ability to perceive
a stimulus as constant despite changes in sensation is known as perceptual
constancy. Consider our image of a door as it swings. When it is closed, we
see it as rectangular, but when it is open, we see only its edge and it appears
as a line. But we never perceive the door as changing shape as it swings—
perceptual mechanisms take care of the problem for us by allowing us to see
a constant shape.

The visual system also corrects for color constancy. Imagine that you are
wearing blue jeans and a bright white t-shirt. When you are outdoors, both
colors will be at their brightest, but you will still perceive the white t-shirt as
bright and the blue jeans as darker. When you go indoors, the light shining
on the clothes will be significantly dimmer, but you will still perceive the t-
shirt as bright. This is because we put colors in context and see that,
compared to its surroundings, the white t-shirt reflects the most light
(McCann, 1992). In the same way, a green leaf on a cloudy day may reflect
the same wavelength of light as a brown tree branch does on a sunny day.
Nevertheless, we still perceive the leaf as green and the branch as brown.

Illusions

Although our perception is very accurate, it is not perfect. Illusionsoccur

when the perceptual processes that normally help us correctly perceive the
world around us are fooled by a particular situation so that we see
something that does not exist or that is incorrect. Figure 4.34 “Optical
Illusions as a Result of Brightness Constancy (Left) and Color Constancy
(Right)” presents two situations in which our normally accurate perceptions
of visual constancy have been fooled.

Figure 4.34 Optical Illusions as a Result of Brightness Constancy (Left) and Color Constancy (Right)
Look carefully at the snakelike pattern on the left. Are the green strips really brighter than the

background? Cover the white curves and you’ll see they are not. Square A in the right-hand image looks

very different from square B, even though they are exactly the same.

Edward H. Adelson – Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

Another well-known illusion is the Mueller-Lyer illusion (see Figure 4.35

“The Mueller-Lyre Illusion”). The line segment in the bottom arrow looks
longer to us than the one on the top, even though they are both actually the
same length. It is likely that the illusion is, in part, the result of the failure of
monocular depth cues—the bottom line looks like an edge that is normally
farther away from us, whereas the top one looks like an edge that is
normally closer.

Figure 4.35 The Mueller-Lyre Illusion

The Mueller-Lyre illusion makes the line segment at the top of the left picture appear shorter than the one

at the bottom. The illusion is caused, in part, by the monocular distance cue of depth—the bottom line

looks like an edge that is normally farther away from us, whereas the top one looks like an edge that is

normally closer.

The moon illusion refers to the fact that the moon is perceived to be about
50% larger when it is near the horizon than when it is seen overhead, despite
the fact that both moons are the same size and cast the same size retinal
image. The monocular depth cues of position and aerial perspective create
the illusion that things that are lower and more hazy are farther away. The
skyline of the horizon (trees, clouds, outlines of buildings) also gives a cue
that the moon is far away, compared to a moon at its zenith. If we look at a
horizon moon through a tube of rolled up paper, taking away the
surrounding horizon cues, the moon will immediately appear smaller.

The Ponzo illusion operates on the same principle. As you can see in Figure
4.37 “The Ponzo Illusion”, the top yellow bar seems longer than the bottom
one, but if you measure them you’ll see that they are exactly the same
length. The monocular depth cue of linear perspective leads us to believe
that, given two similar objects, the distant one can only cast the same size
retinal image as the closer object if it is larger. The topmost bar therefore
appears longer.

Figure 4.37 The Ponzo Illusion

The Ponzo illusion is caused by a failure of the monocular depth cue of linear perspective: Both bars are

the same size even though the top one looks larger.

Illusions demonstrate that our perception of the world around us may be

influenced by our prior knowledge. But the fact that some illusions exist in
some cases does not mean that the perceptual system is generally inaccurate
—in fact, humans normally become so closely in touch with their
environment that that the physical body and the particular environment that
we sense and perceive becomes embodied—that is, built into and linked
with—our cognition, such that the worlds around us become part of our
brain (Calvo & Gamila, 2008). The close relationship between people and
their environments means that, although illusions can be created in the lab
and under some unique situations, they may be less common with active
observers in the real world (Runeson, 1988).

The Important Role of Expectations in

Perception

Our emotions, mind-set, expectations, and the contexts in which our

sensations occur all have a profound influence on perception. People who
are warned that they are about to taste something bad rate what they do taste
more negatively than people who are told that the taste won’t be so bad
(Nitschke et al., 2006), and people perceive a child and adult pair as looking
more alike when they are told that they are parent and child (Bressan & Dal
Martello, 2002). Similarly, participants who see images of the same baby
rate it as stronger and bigger when they are told it is a boy as opposed to
when they are told it is a girl (Stern & Karraker, 1989),and research
participants who learn that a child is from a lower-class background
perceive the child’s scores on an intelligence test as lower than people who
see the same test taken by a child they are told is from an upper-class
background (Darley & Gross, 1983). Plassmann, O’Doherty, Shiv, and
Rangel (2008)< found that wines were rated more positively and caused
greater brain activity in brain areas associated with pleasure when they were
said to cost more than when they were said to cost less. And even experts
can be fooled: Professional referees tended to assign more penalty cards to
soccer teams for videotaped fouls when they were told that the team had a
history of aggressive behavior than when they had no such expectation
(Jones, Paull, & Erskine, 2002).

Our perceptions are also influenced by our desires and motivations. When
we are hungry, food-related words tend to grab our attention more than non-
food-related words (Mogg, Bradley, Hyare, & Lee, 1998), we perceive
objects that we can reach as bigger than those that we cannot reach (Witt &
Proffitt, 2005), and people who favor a political candidate’s policies view
the candidate’s skin color more positively than do those who oppose the
candidate’s policies (Caruso, Mead, & Balcetis, 2009). Even our culture
influences perception. Chua, Boland, and Nisbett (2005) showed American
and Asian graduate students different images, such as an airplane, an
animal, or a train, against complex backgrounds. They found that (consistent
with their overall individualistic orientation) the American students tended
to focus more on the foreground image, while Asian students (consistent
with their interdependent orientation) paid more attention to the image’s
context. Furthermore, Asian-American students focused more or less on the
context depending on whether their Asian or their American identity had
been activated.

Psychology in Everyday Life: How Understanding Sensation and Perception Can

Save Lives

Human factors is the field of psychology that uses psychological knowledge, including the
principles of sensation and perception, to improve the development of technology. Human
factors has worked on a variety of projects, ranging from nuclear reactor control centers and
airplane cockpits to cell phones and websites (Proctor & Van Zandt, 2008). For instance, modern
televisions and computer monitors were developed on the basis of the trichromatic color theory,
using three color elements placed close enough together so that the colors are blended by the
eye. Knowledge of the visual system also helped engineers create new kinds of displays, such as
those used on notebook computers and music players, and better understand how using cell
phones while driving may contribute to automobile accidents (Lee & Strayer, 2004).

Human factors also has made substantial contributions to airline safety. About two thirds of
accidents on commercial airplane flights are caused by human error (Nickerson, 1998). During
takeoff, travel, and landing, the pilot simultaneously communicates with ground control,
maneuvers the plane, scans the horizon for other aircraft, and operates controls. The need for a
useable interface that works easily and naturally with the pilot’s visual perception is essential.

Psychologist Conrad Kraft (1978) hypothesized that as planes land, with no other distance cues
visible, pilots may be subjected to a type of moon illusion, in which the city lights beyond the
runway appear much larger on the retina than they really are, deceiving the pilot into landing too
early. Kraft’s findings caused airlines to institute new flight safety measures, where copilots must
call out the altitude progressively during the descent, which has probably decreased the number
of landing accidents.

Figure 4.38 presents the design of an airplane instrument panel before and after it was
redesigned by human factors psychologists. On the left is the initial design in which the controls
were crowded and cluttered, in no logical sequence, each control performing one task. The
controls were more or less the same in color, and the gauges were not easy to read. The
redesigned digital cockpit shows a marked improvement in usability. More of the controls are
color-coded and multifunctional so that there is less clutter on the dashboard. Screens make use
of LCD and 3-D graphics. Text sizes are changeable—increasing readability—and many of the
functions have become automated, freeing up the pilots concentration for more important
activities.

One important aspect of the redesign was based on the principles of sensory adaptation. Displays
that are easy to see in darker conditions quickly become unreadable when the sun shines directly
on them. It takes the pilot a relatively long time to adapt to the suddenly much brighter display.
Furthermore, perceptual contrast is important. The display cannot be so bright at night that the
pilot is unable to see targets in the sky or on the land. Human factors psychologists used these
principles to determine the appropriate stimulus intensity needed on these displays so that pilots
would be able to read them accurately and quickly under a wide range of conditions. The
psychologists accomplished this by developing an automatic control mechanism that senses the
ambient light visible through the front cockpit windows and that detects the light falling on the
display surface, and then automatically adjusts the intensity of the display for the pilot
(Silverstein, Krantz, Gomer, Yeh, & Monty, 1990; Silverstein & Merrifield, 1985).
 Key Takeaways

Sensory interaction occurs when different senses work together, for instance, when
taste, smell, and touch together produce the flavor of food.

Selective attention allows us to focus on some sensory experiences while tuning out
others.

Sensory adaptation occurs when we become less sensitive to some aspects of our
environment, freeing us to focus on more important changes.

Perceptual constancy allows us to perceive an object as the same, despite changes in

sensation.

Cognitive illusions are examples of how our expectations can influence our
perceptions.

Our emotions, motivations, desires, and even our culture can influence our
perceptions.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Consider the role of the security personnel at the APEC meeting who let the Chaser
group’s car enter the security area. List some perceptual processes that might have
been at play.

2. Consider some cases where your expectations about what you think you might be
going to experience have influenced your perceptions of what you actually
experienced.
References

Bressan, P., & Dal Martello, M. F. (2002). Talis pater, talis filius: Perceived
resemblance and the belief in genetic relatedness. Psychological Science,
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Broadbent, D. E. (1958). Perception and communication. New York, NY:

Pergamon.

Calvo, P., & Gomila, T. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of cognitive science: An

embodied approach. San Diego, CA: Elsevier.

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influences perception of biracial candidates’ skin tone. PNAS Proceedings of
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4.6 Chapter Summary

Sensation and perception work seamlessly together to allow us to detect

both the presence of, and changes in, the stimuli around us.

The study of sensation and perception is exceedingly important for our

everyday lives because the knowledge generated by psychologists is used in
so many ways to help so many people.

Each sense accomplishes the basic process of transduction—the conversion

of stimuli detected by receptor cells into electrical impulses that are then
transported to the brain—in different, but related, ways.

Psychophysics is the branch of psychology that studies the effects of

physical stimuli on sensory perceptions. Psychophysicists study the
absolute threshold of sensation as well as the difference threshold, or just
noticeable difference (JND). Weber’s law maintains that the JND of a
stimulus is a constant proportion of the original intensity of the stimulus.

Most of our cerebral cortex is devoted to seeing, and we have substantial

visual skills. The eye is a specialized system that includes the cornea, pupil,
iris, lens, and retina. Neurons, including rods and cones, react to light
landing on the retina and send it to the visual cortex via the optic nerve.

Images are perceived, in part, through the action of feature detector

neurons.

The shade of a color, known as hue, is conveyed by the wavelength of the

light that enters the eye. The Young-Helmholtz trichromatic color theory
and the opponent-process color theory are theories of how the brain
perceives color.

Depth is perceived using both binocular and monocular depth cues.

Monocular depth cues are based on gestalt principles. The beta effect and
the phi phenomenon are important in detecting motion.

The ear detects both the amplitude (loudness) and frequency (pitch) of
sound waves.

Important structures of the ear include the pinna, eardrum, ossicles, cochlea,
and the oval window.

The frequency theory of hearing proposes that as the pitch of a sound wave
increases, nerve impulses of a corresponding frequency are sent to the
auditory nerve. The place theory of hearing proposes that different areas of
the cochlea respond to different frequencies.

Sounds that are 85 decibels or more can cause damage to your hearing,
particularly if you are exposed to them repeatedly. Sounds that exceed 130
decibels are dangerous, even if you are exposed to them infrequently.

The tongue detects six different taste sensations, known respectively as

sweet, salty, sour, bitter, piquancy (spicy), and umami (savory).

We have approximately 1,000 types of odor receptor cells and it is

estimated that we can detect 10,000 different odors.

Thousands of nerve endings in the skin respond to four basic sensations:

Pressure, hot, cold, and pain, but only the sensation of pressure has its own
specialized receptors. The ability to keep track of where the body is moving
is provided by the vestibular system.
Perception involves the processes of sensory interaction, selective attention,
sensory adaptation, and perceptual constancy.

Although our perception is very accurate, it is not perfect. Our expectations

and emotions color our perceptions and may result in illusions.
Chapter 5. States of
Consciousness

An Unconscious Killing

During the night of May 23, 1987, Kenneth Parks, a 23-year old Canadian with a wife, a baby
daughter, and heavy gambling debts, got out of his bed, climbed into his car, and drove 15 miles
to the home of his wife’s parents in the suburbs of Toronto. There, he attacked them with a
knife, killing his mother-in-law and severely injuring his father-in-law. Parks then drove to a
police station and stumbled into the building, holding up his bloody hands and saying, “I think I
killed some people…my hands.” The police arrested him and took him to a hospital, where
surgeons repaired several deep cuts on his hands. Only then did police discover that he had
indeed assaulted his in-laws.

Parks claimed that he could not remember anything about the crime. He said that he
remembered going to sleep in his bed, then awakening in the police station with bloody hands,
but nothing in between. His defense was that he had been asleep during the entire incident and
was not aware of his actions (Martin, 2009).

Not surprisingly, no one believed this explanation at first. However, further investigation
established that he did have a long history of sleepwalking, he had no motive for the crime, and
despite repeated attempts to trip him up in numerous interviews, he was completely consistent in
his story, which also fit the timeline of events. Parks was examined by a team of sleep
specialists, who found that the pattern of brain waves that occurred while he slept was very
abnormal (Broughton, Billings, Cartwright, & Doucette, 1994). The specialists eventually
concluded that sleepwalking, probably precipitated by stress and anxiety over his financial
troubles, was the most likely explanation of his aberrant behavior. They also agreed that such a
combination of stressors was unlikely to happen again, so he was not likely to undergo another
such violent episode and was probably not a hazard to others. Given this combination of
 evidence, the jury acquitted Parks of murder and assault charges. He walked out of the
courtroom a free man (Wilson, 1998).

Consciousness is defined as our subjective awareness of ourselves and our

environment (Koch, 2004). The experience of consciousness is fundamental
to human nature. We all know what it means to be conscious, and we
assume (although we can never be sure) that other human beings experience
their consciousness similarly to how we experience ours.

The study of consciousness has long been important to psychologists and

plays a role in many important psychological theories. For instance,
Sigmund Freud’s personality theories differentiated between the
unconscious and the conscious aspects of behavior, and present-day
psychologists distinguish between automatic (unconscious) and controlled
(conscious) behaviors and between implicit (unconscious) and explicit
(conscious) memory (Petty, Wegener, Chaiken, & Trope, 1999; Shanks,
2005).

Some philosophers and religious practices argue that the mind (or soul) and
the body are separate entities. For instance, the French philosopher René
Descartes (1596–1650) was a proponent of dualism, the idea that the mind,
a nonmaterial entity, is separate from (although connected to) the physical
body. In contrast to the dualists, psychologists believe that consciousness
(and thus the mind) exists in the brain, not separate from it. In fact,
psychologists believe that consciousness is the result of the activity of the
many neural connections in the brain, and that we experience different
states of consciousness depending on what our brain is currently doing
(Dennett, 1991; Koch & Greenfield, 2007).
Figure 5.1
The French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650) was a proponent of dualism, the theory that the

mind and body are two separate entities. Psychologists reject this idea, however, believing that

consciousness is a result of activity in the brain, not separate from it.

André Hatala – Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

The study of consciousness is also important to the fundamental

psychological question regarding the presence of free will. Although we
may understand and believe that some of our behaviors are caused by forces
that are outside our awareness (i.e., unconscious), we nevertheless believe
that we have control over, and are aware that we are engaging in, most of
our behaviors. To discover that we, or even someone else, has engaged in a
complex behavior, such as driving in a car and causing severe harm to
others, without being at all conscious of one’s actions, is so unusual as to be
shocking. And yet psychologists are increasingly certain that a great deal of
our behavior is caused by processes of which we are unaware and over
which we have little or no control (Libet, 1999; Wegner, 2003).

Our experience of consciousness is functional because we use it to guide

and control our behavior, and to think logically about problems (DeWall,
Baumeister, & Masicampo, 2008). Consciousness allows us to plan
activities and to monitor our progress toward the goals we set for ourselves.
And consciousness is fundamental to our sense of morality—we believe
that we have the free will to perform moral actions while avoiding immoral
behaviors.

But in some cases consciousness may become aversive, for instance when
we become aware that we are not living up to our own goals or
expectations, or when we believe that other people perceive us negatively.
In these cases we may engage in behaviors that help us escape from
consciousness, for example through the use of alcohol or other psychoactive
drugs (Baumeister, 1998).

Because the brain varies in its current level and type of activity,
consciousness is transitory. If we drink too much coffee or beer, the caffeine
or alcohol influences the activity in our brain, and our consciousness may
change. When we are anesthetized before an operation or experience a
concussion after a knock on the head, we may lose consciousness entirely
as a result of changes in brain activity. We also lose consciousness when we
sleep, and it is with this altered state of consciousness that we begin our
chapter.

References

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ed., Vol. 2, pp. 680–740). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Broughton, R. J., Billings, R., Cartwright, R., & Doucette, D. (1994).

Homicidal somnambulism: A case report. Sleep: Journal of Sleep Research
& Sleep Medicine, 17(3), 253–264.

Dennett, D. C. (1991). Consciousness explained. Boston, MA: Little,

Brown and Company; Koch, C., & Greenfield, S. (2007). How does
consciousness happen? Scientific American, 76–83.

DeWall, C., Baumeister, R., & Masicampo, E. (2008). Evidence that logical
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Englewood, CO: Roberts & Co.

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6, 8(9), 47–57; Wegner, D. M. (2003). The mind’s best trick: How we
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(2005). Implicit learning. In K. Lamberts (Ed.), Handbook of cognition (pp.
202–220). London, England: Sage.

Wilson, C. (1998). The mammoth book of true crime. New York, NY:
Robinson Publishing.
5.1 Sleeping and Dreaming Revitalize Us for
Action

Learning Objectives

1. Draw a graphic showing the usual phases of sleep during a normal night and notate
the characteristics of each phase.

2. Review the disorders that affect sleep and the costs of sleep deprivation.

3. Outline and explain the similarities and differences among the different theories of
dreaming.

The lives of all organisms, including humans, are influenced by regularly

occurring cycles of behaviors known as biological rhythms. One important
biological rhythm is the annual cycle that guides the migration of birds and
the hibernation of bears. Women also experience a 28-day cycle that guides
their fertility and menstruation. But perhaps the strongest and most
important biorhythm is the daily circadian rhythm (from the Latin circa,
meaning “about” or “approximately,” and dian, meaning “daily”) that
guides the daily waking and sleeping cycle in many animals.

Many biological rhythms are coordinated by changes in the level and

duration of ambient light, for instance, as winter turns into summer and as
night turns into day. In some animals, such as birds, the pineal gland in the
brain is directly sensitive to light and its activation influences behavior, such
as mating and annual migrations. Light also has a profound effect on
humans. We are more likely to experience depression during the dark winter
months than during the lighter summer months, an experience known as
seasonal affective disorder (SAD), and exposure to bright lights can help
reduce this depression (McGinnis, 2007).

Sleep is also influenced by ambient light. The ganglion cells in the retina
send signals to a brain area above the thalamus called the suprachiasmatic
nucleus, which is the body’s primary circadian “pacemaker.” The
suprachiasmatic nucleus analyzes the strength and duration of the light
stimulus and sends signals to the pineal gland when the ambient light level
is low or its duration is short. In response, the pineal gland secretes
melatonin, a powerful hormone that facilitates the onset of sleep.

Research Focus: Circadian Rhythms Influence the Use of Stereotypes in Social

Judgments

The circadian rhythm influences our energy levels such that we have more energy at some times
of day than others. Galen Bodenhausen (1990) argued that people may be more likely to rely on
their stereotypes (i.e., their beliefs about the characteristics of social groups) as a shortcut to
making social judgments when they are tired than when they have more energy. To test this
hypothesis, he asked 189 research participants to consider cases of alleged misbehavior by other
college students and to judge the probability of the accused students’ guilt. The accused students
were identified as members of particular social groups, and they were accused of committing
offenses that were consistent with stereotypes of these groups.

One case involved a student athlete accused of cheating on an exam, one case involved a
Hispanic student who allegedly physically attacked his roommate, and a third case involved an
African American student who had been accused of selling illegal drugs. Each of these offenses
had been judged via pretesting in the same student population to be stereotypically (although, of
course, unfairly) associated with each social group. The research participants were also provided
with some specific evidence about the case that made it ambiguous whether the person had
 actually committed the crime, and then asked to indicate the likelihood of the student’s guilt on
an 11-point scale (0 = extremely unlikely to 10 = extremely likely).

Participants also completed a measure designed to assess their circadian rhythms—whether they
were more active and alert in the morning (Morning types) or in the evening (Evening types).
The participants were then tested at experimental sessions held either in the morning (9 a.m.) or
in the evening (8 p.m.). As you can see in Figure 5.2 “Circadian Rhythms and Stereotyping”, the
participants were more likely to rely on their negative stereotypes of the person they were
judging at the time of day in which they reported being less active and alert. Morning people
used their stereotypes more when they were tested in the evening, and evening people used their
stereotypes more when they were tested in the morning.

Figure 5.2 Circadian Rhythms and Stereotyping

Students who indicated that they had more energy in the morning relied on their stereotypes more at night,

and students who indicated that they had more energy in the night relied on their stereotypes more in the

morning.

Adapted from Bodenhausen, G. V. (1990). Stereotypes as judgmental heuristics: Evidence of circadian

variations in discrimination. Psychological Science, 1, 319–322.

Sleep Stages: Moving Through the Night

Although we lose consciousness as we sleep, the brain nevertheless remains

active. The patterns of sleep have been tracked in thousands of research
participants who have spent nights sleeping in research labs while their
brain waves were recorded by monitors, such as an electroencephalogram,
or EEG (Figure 5.3 “Sleep Labs”).

Sleep researchers have found that sleeping people undergo a fairly

consistent pattern of sleep stages, each lasting about 90 minutes. As you can
see in Figure 5.4 “Stages of Sleep”, these stages are of two major types:
Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is a sleep stage characterized by the
presence of quick fast eye movements and dreaming. REM sleep accounts
for about 25% of our total sleep time. During REM sleep, our awareness of
external events is dramatically reduced, and consciousness is dominated
primarily by internally generated images and a lack of overt thinking
(Hobson, 2004). During this sleep stage our muscles shut down, and this is
probably a good thing as it protects us from hurting ourselves or trying to
act out the scenes that are playing in our dreams. The second major sleep
type, non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep is a deep sleep,
characterized by very slow brain waves, that is further subdivided into three
stages: N1, N2, and N3. Each of the sleep stages has its own distinct pattern
of brain activity (Dement & Kleitman, 1957).

Figure 5.4 Stages of Sleep

During a typical night, our sleep cycles move between REM and non-REM sleep, with each cycle
repeating at about 90-minute intervals. The deeper non-REM sleep stages usually occur earlier in the

night.

As you can see in Figure 5.5 “EEG Recordings of Brain Patterns During
Sleep”, the brain waves that are recorded by an EEG as we sleep show that
the brain’s activity changes during each stage of sleeping. When we are
awake, our brain activity is characterized by the presence of very fast beta
waves. When we first begin to fall asleep, the waves get longer (alpha
waves), and as we move into stage N1 sleep, which is characterized by the
experience of drowsiness, the brain begins to produce even slower theta
waves. During stage N1 sleep, some muscle tone is lost, as well as most
awareness of the environment. Some people may experience sudden jerks or
twitches and even vivid hallucinations during this initial stage of sleep.

Figure 5.5 EEG Recordings of Brain Patterns During Sleep

Each stage of sleep has its own distinct pattern of brain activity.

Normally, if we are allowed to keep sleeping, we will move from stage N1

to stage N2 sleep. During stage N2, muscular activity is further decreased
and conscious awareness of the environment is lost. This stage typically
represents about half of the total sleep time in normal adults. Stage N2 sleep
is characterized by theta waves interspersed with bursts of rapid brain
activity known as sleep spindles.

Stage N3, also known as slow wave sleep, is the deepest level of sleep,
characterized by an increased proportion of very slow delta waves. This is
the stage in which most sleep abnormalities, such as sleepwalking,
sleeptalking, nightmares, and bed-wetting occur. The sleepwalking murders
committed by Mr. Parks would have occurred in this stage. Some skeletal
muscle tone remains, making it possible for affected individuals to rise from
their beds and engage in sometimes very complex behaviors, but
consciousness is distant. Even in the deepest sleep, however, we are still
aware of the external world. If smoke enters the room or if we hear the cry
of a baby we are likely to react, even though we are sound asleep. These
occurrences again demonstrate the extent to which we process information
outside consciousness.

After falling initially into a very deep sleep, the brain begins to become
more active again, and we normally move into the first period of REM sleep
about 90 minutes after falling asleep. REM sleep is accompanied by an
increase in heart rate, facial twitches, and the repeated rapid eye movements
that give this stage its name. People who are awakened during REM sleep
almost always report that they were dreaming, while those awakened in
other stages of sleep report dreams much less often. REM sleep is also
emotional sleep. Activity in the limbic system, including the amygdala, is
increased during REM sleep, and the genitals become aroused, even if the
content of the dreams we are having is not sexual. A typical 25-year-old
man may have an erection nearly half of the night, and the common
“morning erection” is left over from the last REM period before waking.

Normally we will go through several cycles of REM and non-REM sleep

each night (Figure 5.5 “EEG Recordings of Brain Patterns During Sleep”).
The length of the REM portion of the cycle tends to increase through the
night, from about 5 to 10 minutes early in the night to 15 to 20 minutes
shortly before awakening in the morning. Dreams also tend to become more
elaborate and vivid as the night goes on. Eventually, as the sleep cycle
finishes, the brain resumes its faster alpha and beta waves and we awake,
normally refreshed.

Sleep Disorders: Problems in Sleeping

According to a recent poll (National Sleep Foundation, 2009), about one-

fourth of American adults say they get a good night’s sleep only a few
nights a month or less. These people are suffering from a sleep disorder
known as insomnia, defined as persistent difficulty falling or staying asleep.
Most cases of insomnia are temporary, lasting from a few days to several
weeks, but in some cases insomnia can last for years.

Insomnia can result from physical disorders such as pain due to injury or
illness, or from psychological problems such as stress, financial worries, or
relationship difficulties. Changes in sleep patterns, such as jet lag, changes
in work shift, or even the movement to or from daylight savings time can
produce insomnia. Sometimes the sleep that the insomniac does get is
disturbed and nonrestorative, and the lack of quality sleep produces
impairment of functioning during the day. Ironically, the problem may be
compounded by people’s anxiety over insomnia itself: Their fear of being
unable to sleep may wind up keeping them awake. Some people may also
develop a conditioned anxiety to the bedroom or the bed.

People who have difficulty sleeping may turn to drugs to help them sleep.
Barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and other sedatives are frequently marketed
and prescribed as sleep aids, but they may interrupt the natural stages of the
sleep cycle, and in the end are likely to do more harm than good. In some
cases they may also promote dependence. Most practitioners of sleep
medicine today recommend making environmental and scheduling changes
first, followed by therapy for underlying problems, with pharmacological
remedies used only as a last resort.

Figure 5.6

Sarah – Big giant ouchie – CC BY 2.0.

Taking pills to sleep is not recommended unless all other methods of

improving sleep have been tried.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, some steps that can be used to
combat insomnia include the following:

Use the bed and bedroom for sleep and sex only. Do not spend
time in bed during the day.
Establish a regular bedtime routine and a regular sleep-wake
schedule.
Think positively about your sleeping—try not to get anxious just
because you are losing a little sleep.
 Do not eat or drink too much close to bedtime.
Create a sleep-promoting environment that is dark, cool, and
comfortable.
Avoid disturbing noises—consider a bedside fan or white-noise
machine to block out disturbing sounds.
Consume less or no caffeine, particularly late in the day.
Avoid alcohol and nicotine, especially close to bedtime.
Exercise, but not within 3 hours before bedtime.
Avoid naps, particularly in the late afternoon or evening.
Keep a sleep diary to identify your sleep habits and patterns that
you can share with your doctor.

Another common sleep problem is sleep apnea, a sleep disorder

characterized by pauses in breathing that last at least 10 seconds during
sleep (Morgenthaler, Kagramanov, Hanak, & Decker, 2006). In addition to
preventing restorative sleep, sleep apnea can also cause high blood pressure
and may raise the risk of stroke and heart attack (Yaggi et al., 2005).

Most sleep apnea is caused by an obstruction of the walls of the throat that
occurs when we fall asleep. It is most common in obese or older individuals
who have lost muscle tone and is particularly common in men. Sleep apnea
caused by obstructions is usually treated with an air machine that uses a
mask to create a continuous pressure that prevents the airway from
collapsing, or with mouthpieces that keep the airway open. If all other
treatments have failed, sleep apnea may be treated with surgery to open the
airway.

Narcolepsy is a disorder characterized by extreme daytime sleepiness with

frequent episodes of “nodding off.” The syndrome may also be
accompanied by attacks of cataplexy, in which the individual loses muscle
tone, resulting in a partial or complete collapse. It is estimated that at least
200,000 Americans suffer from narcolepsy, although only about a quarter of
these people have been diagnosed (National Heart, Lung, and Blood
Institute, 2008).

Narcolepsy is in part the result of genetics—people who suffer from the

disease lack neurotransmitters that are important in keeping us alert (Taheri,
Zeitzer, & Mignot, 2002)—and is also the result of a lack of deep sleep.
While most people descend through the sequence of sleep stages, then move
back up to REM sleep soon after falling asleep, narcolepsy sufferers move
directly into REM and undergo numerous awakenings during the night,
often preventing them from getting good sleep.

Narcolepsy can be treated with stimulants, such as amphetamines, to

counteract the daytime sleepiness, or with antidepressants to treat a
presumed underlying depression. However, since these drugs further disrupt
already-abnormal sleep cycles, these approaches may, in the long run, make
the problem worse. Many sufferers find relief by taking a number of
planned short naps during the day, and some individuals may find it easier
to work in jobs that allow them to sleep during the day and work at night.

Other sleep disorders occur when cognitive or motor processes that should
be turned off or reduced in magnitude during sleep operate at higher than
normal levels (Mahowald & Schenck, 2000). One example is somnamulism
(sleepwalking), in which the person leaves the bed and moves around while
still asleep. Sleepwalking is more common in childhood, with the most
frequent occurrences around the age of 12 years. About 4% of adults
experience somnambulism (Mahowald & Schenck, 2000).

Sleep terrors is a disruptive sleep disorder, most frequently experienced in

childhood, that may involve loud screams and intense panic. The sufferer
cannot wake from sleep even though he or she is trying to. In extreme cases,
sleep terrors may result in bodily harm or property damage as the sufferer
moves about abruptly. Up to 3% of adults suffer from sleep terrors, which
typically occur in sleep stage N3 (Mahowald & Schenck, 2000).

Other sleep disorders include bruxism, in which the sufferer grinds his teeth
during sleep; restless legs syndrome, in which the sufferer reports an itching,
burning, or otherwise uncomfortable feeling in his legs, usually exacerbated
when resting or asleep; and periodic limb movement disorder, which
involves sudden involuntary movement of limbs. The latter can cause sleep
disruption and injury for both the sufferer and bed partner.

Although many sleep disorders occur during non-REM sleep, REM sleep
behavior disorder (Mahowald & Schenck, 2005) is a condition in which
people (usually middle-aged or older men) engage in vigorous and bizarre
physical activities during REM sleep in response to intense, violent dreams.
As their actions may injure themselves or their sleeping partners, this
disorder, thought to be neurological in nature, is normally treated with
hypnosis and medications.

The Heavy Costs of Not Sleeping

Our preferred sleep times and our sleep requirements vary throughout our
life cycle. Newborns tend to sleep between 16 and 18 hours per day,
preschoolers tend to sleep between 10 and 12 hours per day, school-aged
children and teenagers usually prefer at least 9 hours of sleep per night, and
most adults say that they require 7 to 8 hours per night (Mercer, Merritt, &
Cowell, 1998; National Sleep Foundation, 2008). There are also individual
differences in need for sleep. Some people do quite well with fewer than 6
hours of sleep per night, whereas others need 9 hours or more. The most
recent study by the National Sleep Foundation suggests that adults should
get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night (Figure 5.8 “Average Hours of
Required Sleep per Night”), and yet Americans now average fewer than 7
hours.

Figure 5.7

Hope For Gorilla – sleeping kid in NSC – CC BY 2.0.

Are you getting enough sleep to maintain your health and

abilities to concentrate? This student doesn’t seem to be.

Figure 5.8 Average Hours of Required Sleep per Night

The average U.S. adult reported getting only 6.7 hours of sleep per night, which is less than the

recommended range propose by the National Sleep Foundation.

Adapted from National Sleep Foundation. (2008). Sleep in America Poll. Washington, DC: Author.

Retrieved from http://www.sleepfoundation.org/sites/default/files/2008%20POLL%20SOF.PDF.

Getting needed rest is difficult in part because school and work schedules
still follow the early-to-rise timetable that was set years ago. We tend to stay
up late to enjoy activities in the evening but then are forced to get up early
to go to work or school. The situation is particularly bad for college
students, who are likely to combine a heavy academic schedule with an
active social life and who may, in some cases, also work. Getting enough
sleep is a luxury that many of us seem to be unable or unwilling to afford,
and yet sleeping is one of the most important things we can do for
ourselves. Continued over time, a nightly deficit of even only 1 or 2 hours
can have a substantial impact on mood and performance.

Sleep has a vital restorative function, and a prolonged lack of sleep results
in increased anxiety, diminished performance, and, if severe and extended,
may even result in death. Many road accidents involve sleep deprivation,
and people who are sleep deprived show decrements in driving performance
similar to those who have ingested alcohol (Hack, Choi, Vijayapalan,
Davies, & Stradling, 2001; Williamson & Feyer, 2000). Poor treatment by
doctors (Smith-Coggins, Rosekind, Hurd, & Buccino, 1994) and a variety of
industrial accidents have also been traced in part to the effects of sleep
deprivation.

Good sleep is also important to our health and longevity. It is no surprise

that we sleep more when we are sick, because sleep works to fight infection.
Sleep deprivation suppresses immune responses that fight off infection, and
can lead to obesity, hypertension, and memory impairment (Ferrie et al.,
2007; Kushida, 2005). Sleeping well can even save our lives. Dew et al.
(2003) found that older adults who had better sleep patterns also lived
longer.

Figure 5.9 The Effects of Sleep Deprivation

In 1964, 17-year-old high school student Randy Gardner remained awake for 264 hours (11 days) in order

to set a new Guinness World Record. At the request of his worried parents, he was monitored by a U.S.

Navy psychiatrist, Lt. Cmdr. John J. Ross. This chart maps the progression of his behavioral changes over

the 11 days.

Adapted from Ross, J. J. (1965). Neurological findings after prolonged sleep deprivation. Archives of

Neurology, 12, 399–403.

Dreams and Dreaming

Dreams are the succession of images, thoughts, sounds, and emotions that
passes through our minds while sleeping. When people are awakened from
REM sleep, they normally report that they have been dreaming, suggesting
that people normally dream several times a night but that most dreams are
forgotten on awakening (Dement, 1997). The content of our dreams
generally relates to our everyday experiences and concerns, and frequently
our fears and failures (Cartwright, Agargun, Kirkby, & Friedman, 2006;
Domhoff, Meyer-Gomes, & Schredl, 2005).

Many cultures regard dreams as having great significance for the dreamer,
either by revealing something important about the dreamer’s present
circumstances or predicting his future. The Austrian psychologist Sigmund
Freud (1913/1988) analyzed the dreams of his patients to help him
understand their unconscious needs and desires, and psychotherapists still
make use of this technique today. Freud believed that the primary function
of dreams was wish fulfillment, or the idea that dreaming allows us to act
out the desires that we must repress during the day. He differentiated
between the manifest content of the dream (i.e., its literal actions) and its
latent content (i.e., the hidden psychological meaning of the dream). Freud
believed that the real meaning of dreams is often suppressed by the
unconscious mind in order to protect the individual from thoughts and
feelings that are hard to cope with. By uncovering the real meaning of
dreams through psychoanalysis, Freud believed that people could better
understand their problems and resolve the issues that create difficulties in
their lives.

Although Freud and others have focused on the meaning of dreams, other
theories about the causes of dreams are less concerned with their content.
One possibility is that we dream primarily to help with consolidation, or the
moving of information into long-term memory (Alvarenga et al., 2008;
Zhang (2004). Rauchs, Desgranges, Foret, and Eustache (2005) found that
rats that had been deprived of REM sleep after learning a new task were less
able to perform the task again later than were rats that had been allowed to
dream, and these differences were greater on tasks that involved learning
unusual information or developing new behaviors. Payne and Nadel (2004)
argued that the content of dreams is the result of consolidation—we dream
about the things that are being moved into long-term memory. Thus
dreaming may be an important part of the learning that we do while sleeping
(Hobson, Pace-Schott, and Stickgold, 2000).

The activation-synthesis theory of dreaming (Hobson & McCarley, 1977;

Hobson, 2004) proposes still another explanation for dreaming—namely,
that dreams are our brain’s interpretation of the random firing of neurons in
the brain stem. According to this approach, the signals from the brain stem
are sent to the cortex, just as they are when we are awake, but because the
pathways from the cortex to skeletal muscles are disconnected during REM
sleep, the cortex does not know how to interpret the signals. As a result, the
cortex strings the messages together into the coherent stories we experience
as dreams.

Although researchers are still trying to determine the exact causes of

dreaming, one thing remains clear—we need to dream. If we are deprived of
REM sleep, we quickly become less able to engage in the important tasks of
everyday life, until we are finally able to dream again.

Key Takeaways

Consciousness, our subjective awareness of ourselves and our environment, is

functional because it allows us to plan activities and monitor our goals.
 Psychologists believe the consciousness is the result of neural activity in the brain.

Human and animal behavior is influenced by biological rhythms, including annual,

monthly, and circadian rhythms.

Sleep consists of two major stages: REM and non-REM sleep. Non-REM sleep has
three substages, known as stage N1, N2, and N3.

Each sleep stage is marked by a specific pattern of biological responses and brain
wave patterns.

Sleep is essential for adequate functioning during the day. Sleep disorders, including
insomnia, sleep apnea, and narcolepsy, may make it hard for us to sleep well.

Dreams occur primarily during REM sleep. Some theories of dreaming, such
Freud’s, are based on the content of the dreams. Other theories of dreaming propose
that dreaming is related to memory consolidation. The activation-synthesis theory of
dreaming is based only on neural activity.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. If you happen to be home alone one night, try this exercise: At nightfall, leave the
lights and any other powered equipment off. Does this influence what time you go to
sleep as opposed to your normal sleep time?

2. Review your own sleep patterns. Are you getting enough sleep? What makes you
think so?

3. Review some of the dreams that you have had recently. Consider how each of the
theories of dreaming we have discussed would explain your dreams.
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5.2 Altering Consciousness With
Psychoactive Drugs

Learning Objectives

1. Summarize the major psychoactive drugs and their influences on consciousness and
behavior.

2. Review the evidence regarding the dangers of recreational drugs.

A psychoactive drug is a chemical that changes our states of

consciousness, and particularly our perceptions and moods. These drugs are
commonly found in everyday foods and beverages, including chocolate,
coffee, and soft drinks, as well as in alcohol and in over-the-counter drugs,
such as aspirin, Tylenol, and cold and cough medication. Psychoactive drugs
are also frequently prescribed as sleeping pills, tranquilizers, and antianxiety
medications, and they may be taken, illegally, for recreational purposes. As
you can see in Table 5.1 “Psychoactive Drugs by Class”, the four primary
classes of psychoactive drugs are stimulants, depressants, opioids, and
hallucinogens.

Psychoactive drugs affect consciousness by influencing how

neurotransmitters operate at the synapses of the central nervous system
(CNS). Some psychoactive drugs are agonists, which mimic the operation of
a neurotransmitter; some are antagonists, which block the action of a
neurotransmitter; and some work by blocking the reuptake of
neurotransmitters at the synapse.
Table 5.1 Psychoactive Drugs by Class
 Dangers
Psychological Physical Addiction
Mechanism Symptoms Drug and side
dependence dependence potential
effects

Stimulants

May create
Caffeine Low Low Low
dependence

Has major

negative health

Nicotine effects if High High High

smoked or

chewed

Stimulants block Decreased

the reuptake of Cocaine appetite, Low Low Moderate
Enhanced
dopamine, headache
mood and
norepinephrine,
increased Possible
and serotonin in
energy dependence,
the synapses of
accompanied
the CNS.
by severe

“crash” with
Moderate to
Amphetamines depression as Moderate Low
high
drug effects

wear off,

particularly if

smoked or

injected

Depressants
 Dangers
Psychological Physical Addiction
Mechanism Symptoms Drug and side
dependence dependence potential
effects

Impaired
Depressants
judgment, loss
change
of
consciousness by
coordination,
increasing the
Alcohol dizziness, Moderate Moderate Moderate
production of the
nausea, and
neurotransmitter Calming
eventually a
GABA and effects, sleep,
loss of
decreasing the pain relief,
consciousness
production of the slowed heart

neurotransmitter rate and Sluggishness,

acetylcholine, respiration slowed speech,

Barbiturates and
usually at the drowsiness, in Moderate Moderate Moderate
benzodiazepines
level of the severe cases,

thalamus and the coma or death

reticular
Brain damage
formation. Toxic inhalants High High High
and death

Opioids
 Dangers
Psychological Physical Addiction
Mechanism Symptoms Drug and side
dependence dependence potential
effects

Side effects

include

nausea,
Opium Moderate Moderate Moderate
vomiting,

tolerance, and

addiction.

Slowing of Restlessness,
The chemical
many body irritability,
makeup of
functions, headache and
opioids is similar
constipation, body aches,
to the
respiratory and tremors,
endorphins, the Morphine High Moderate Moderate
cardiac nausea,
neurotransmitters
depression, vomiting, and
that serve as the
and the rapid severe
body’s “natural
development abdominal
pain reducers.”
of tolerance pain

All side effects

of morphine

but about
Heroin High Moderate High
twice as

addictive as

morphine

Hallucinogens
 Dangers
Psychological Physical Addiction
Mechanism Symptoms Drug and side
dependence dependence potential
effects

The chemical

compositions of Mild

the intoxication;
Marijuana Low Low Low
hallucinogens enhanced

are similar to the Altered perception

neurotransmitters consciousness;

serotonin and hallucinations

epinephrine, and
LSD, Hallucinations;
they act
mescaline, PCP, enhanced Low Low Low
primarily by
and peyote perception
mimicking them.

In some cases the effects of psychoactive drugs mimic other naturally

occurring states of consciousness. For instance, sleeping pills are prescribed
to create drowsiness, and benzodiazepines are prescribed to create a state of
relaxation. In other cases psychoactive drugs are taken for recreational
purposes with the goal of creating states of consciousness that are
pleasurable or that help us escape our normal consciousness.

The use of psychoactive drugs, and especially those that are used illegally,
has the potential to create very negative side effects (Table 5.1
“Psychoactive Drugs by Class”). This does not mean that all drugs are
dangerous, but rather that all drugs can be dangerous, particularly if they are
used regularly over long periods of time. Psychoactive drugs create negative
effects not so much through their initial use but through the continued use,
accompanied by increasing doses, that ultimately may lead to drug abuse.
The problem is that many drugs create tolerance: an increase in the dose
required to produce the same effect, which makes it necessary for the user to
increase the dosage or the number of times per day that the drug is taken. As
the use of the drug increases, the user may develop a dependence, defined
as a need to use a drug or other substance regularly. Dependence can be
psychological, in which the drug is desired and has become part of the
everyday life of the user, but no serious physical effects result if the drug is
not obtained; or physical, in which serious physical and mental effects
appear when the drug is withdrawn. Cigarette smokers who try to quit, for
example, experience physical withdrawal symptoms, such as becoming tired
and irritable, as well as extreme psychological cravings to enjoy a cigarette
in particular situations, such as after a meal or when they are with friends.

Users may wish to stop using the drug, but when they reduce their dosage
they experience withdrawal—negative experiences that accompany
reducing or stopping drug use, including physical pain and other symptoms.
When the user powerfully craves the drug and is driven to seek it out, over
and over again, no matter what the physical, social, financial, and legal
cost, we say that he or she has developed an addiction to the drug.

It is a common belief that addiction is an overwhelming, irresistibly

powerful force, and that withdrawal from drugs is always an unbearably
painful experience. But the reality is more complicated and in many cases
less extreme. For one, even drugs that we do not generally think of as being
addictive, such as caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol, can be very difficult to
quit using, at least for some people. On the other hand, drugs that are
normally associated with addiction, including amphetamines, cocaine, and
heroin, do not immediately create addiction in their users. Even for a highly
addictive drug like cocaine, only about 15% of users become addicted
(Robinson & Berridge, 2003; Wagner & Anthony, 2002). Furthermore, the
rate of addiction is lower for those who are taking drugs for medical reasons
than for those who are using drugs recreationally. Patients who have become
physically dependent on morphine administered during the course of
medical treatment for a painful injury or disease are able to be rapidly
weaned off the drug afterward, without becoming addicts. Robins, Davis,
and Goodwin (1974) found that the majority of soldiers who had become
addicted to morphine while overseas were quickly able to stop using after
returning home.

This does not mean that using recreational drugs is not dangerous. For
people who do become addicted to drugs, the success rate of recovery is
low. These drugs are generally illegal and carry with them potential criminal
consequences if one is caught and arrested. Drugs that are smoked may
produce throat and lung cancers and other problems. Snorting (“sniffing”)
drugs can lead to a loss of the sense of smell, nosebleeds, difficulty in
swallowing, hoarseness, and chronic runny nose. Injecting drugs
intravenously carries with it the risk of contracting infections such as
hepatitis and HIV. Furthermore, the quality and contents of illegal drugs are
generally unknown, and the doses can vary substantially from purchase to
purchase. The drugs may also contain toxic chemicals.

Another problem is the unintended consequences of combining drugs,

which can produce serious side effects. Combining drugs is dangerous
because their combined effects on the CNS can increase dramatically and
can lead to accidental or even deliberate overdoses. For instance, ingesting
alcohol or benzodiazepines along with the usual dose of heroin is a frequent
cause of overdose deaths in opiate addicts, and combining alcohol and
cocaine can have a dangerous impact on the cardiovascular system
(McCance-Katz, Kosten, & Jatlow, 1998).

Although all recreational drugs are dangerous, some can be more deadly
than others. One way to determine how dangerous recreational drugs are is
to calculate a safety ratio, based on the dose that is likely to be fatal divided
by the normal dose needed to feel the effects of the drug. Drugs with lower
ratios are more dangerous because the difference between the normal and
the lethal dose is small. For instance, heroin has a safety ratio of 6 because
the average fatal dose is only 6 times greater than the average effective
dose. On the other hand, marijuana has a safety ratio of 1,000. This is not to
say that smoking marijuana cannot be deadly, but it is much less likely to be
deadly than is heroin. The safety ratios of common recreational drugs are
shown in Table 5.2 “Popular Recreational Drugs and Their Safety Ratios”.

Table 5.2 Popular Recreational Drugs and Their Safety Ratios

 Safety
Drug Description Street or brand names
ratio

Heroin Strong depressant Smack, junk, H 6

“Rave” drug (not Ecstacy), also Georgia home boy, liquid ecstasy,
GHB (Gamma hydroxy butyrate) 8
used as a “date rape” drug. liquid X, liquid G, fantasy

Isobutyl nitrite Depressant and toxic inhalant Poppers, rush, locker room 8

Alcohol Active compound is ethanol 10

Active ingredient in over-the-

DXM (Dextromethorphan) counter cold and cough 10

medicines

Methamphetamine May be injected or smoked Meth, crank 10

Cocaine May be inhaled or smoked Crack, coke, rock, blue 15

MDMA
Very powerful stimulant Ecstasy 16
(methylene­dioxymetham­phetamine)

Codeine Depressant 20

Methadone Opioid 20

Mescaline Hallucinogen 24

Centrax, Dalmane, Doral, Halcion,

Benzodiazepine Prescription tranquilizer Librium, ProSom, Restoril, Xanax, 30

Valium

Ketamine Prescription anesthetic Ketanest, Ketaset, Ketalar 40

DMT (Dimethyl­tryptamine) Hallucinogen 50

Drugs with lower safety ratios have a greater risk of brain damage and death.
 Safety
Drug Description Street or brand names
ratio

Luminal (Phenobarbital),
Usually prescribed as a sleeping
Phenobarbital Mebaraland, Nembutal, Seconal, 50
pill
Sombulex

Prozac Antidepressant 100

Often inhaled from whipped

Nitrous oxide Laughing gas 150
cream dispensers

Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) Acid 1,000

Marijuana (Cannabis) Active ingredient is THC Pot, spliff, weed 1,000

Drugs with lower safety ratios have a greater risk of brain damage and death.

Gable, R. (2004). Comparison of acute lethal toxicity of commonly abused psychoactive substances.
Addiction, 99(6), 686–696.

Speeding Up the Brain With Stimulants:

Caffeine, Nicotine, Cocaine, and
Amphetamines

A stimulant is a psychoactive drug that operates by blocking the reuptake

of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin in the synapses of the CNS.
Because more of these neurotransmitters remain active in the brain, the
result is an increase in the activity of the sympathetic division of the
autonomic nervous system (ANS). Effects of stimulants include increased
heart and breathing rates, pupil dilation, and increases in blood sugar
accompanied by decreases in appetite. For these reasons, stimulants are
frequently used to help people stay awake and to control weight.
Used in moderation, some stimulants may increase alertness, but used in an
irresponsible fashion they can quickly create dependency. A major problem
is the “crash” that results when the drug loses its effectiveness and the
activity of the neurotransmitters returns to normal. The withdrawal from
stimulants can create profound depression and lead to an intense desire to
repeat the high.

Caffeine is a bitter psychoactive drug found in the beans, leaves, and fruits
of plants, where it acts as a natural pesticide. It is found in a wide variety of
products, including coffee, tea, soft drinks, candy, and desserts. In North
America, more than 80% of adults consume caffeine daily (Lovett, 2005).
Caffeine acts as a mood enhancer and provides energy. Although the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration lists caffeine as a safe food substance, it has
at least some characteristics of dependence. People who reduce their
caffeine intake often report being irritable, restless, and drowsy, as well as
experiencing strong headaches, and these withdrawal symptoms may last up
to a week. Most experts feel that using small amounts of caffeine during
pregnancy is safe, but larger amounts of caffeine can be harmful to the fetus
(U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2007).

Nicotine is a psychoactive drug found in the nightshade family of plants,

where it acts as a natural pesticide. Nicotine is the main cause for the
dependence-forming properties of tobacco use, and tobacco use is a major
health threat. Nicotine creates both psychological and physical addiction,
and it is one of the hardest addictions to break. Nicotine content in cigarettes
has slowly increased over the years, making quitting smoking more and
more difficult. Nicotine is also found in smokeless (chewing) tobacco.

People who want to quit smoking sometimes use other drugs to help them.
For instance, the prescription drug Chantix acts as an antagonist, binding to
nicotine receptors in the synapse, which prevents users from receiving the
normal stimulant effect when they smoke. At the same time, the drug also
releases dopamine, the reward neurotransmitter. In this way Chantix
dampens nicotine withdrawal symptoms and cravings. In many cases people
are able to get past the physical dependence, allowing them to quit smoking
at least temporarily. In the long run, however, the psychological enjoyment
of smoking may lead to relapse.

Cocaine is an addictive drug obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. In
the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a primary constituent in many
popular tonics and elixirs and, although it was removed in 1905, was one of
the original ingredients in Coca-Cola. Today cocaine is taken illegally as
recreational drug.

Figure 5.10

Pizza Pros – snort – CC BY-NC 2.0.

Snorting cocaine tends to cause a high that

averages about 15 to 30 minutes.

Cocaine has a variety of adverse effects on the body. It constricts blood

vessels, dilates pupils, and increases body temperature, heart rate, and blood
pressure. It can cause headaches, abdominal pain, and nausea. Since cocaine
also tends to decrease appetite, chronic users may also become
malnourished. The intensity and duration of cocaine’s effects, which include
increased energy and reduced fatigue, depend on how the drug is taken. The
faster the drug is absorbed into the bloodstream and delivered to the brain,
the more intense the high. Injecting or smoking cocaine produces a faster,
stronger high than snorting it. However, the faster the drug is absorbed, the
faster the effects subside. The high from snorting cocaine may last 30
minutes, whereas the high from smoking “crack” cocaine may last only 10
minutes. In order to sustain the high, the user must administer the drug
again, which may lead to frequent use, often in higher doses, over a short
period of time (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2009). Cocaine has a
safety ratio of 15, making it a very dangerous recreational drug.

Amphetamine is a stimulant that produces increased wakefulness and

focus, along with decreased fatigue and appetite. Amphetamine is used in
prescription medications to treat attention deficit disorder (ADD) and
narcolepsy, and to control appetite. Some brand names of amphetamines are
Adderall, Benzedrine, Dexedrine, and Vyvanse. But amphetamine (“speed”)
is also used illegally as a recreational drug. The methylated version of
amphetamine, methamphetamine (“meth” or “crank”), is currently favored
by users, partly because it is available in ampoules ready for use by
injection (Csaky & Barnes, 1984). Meth is a highly dangerous drug with a
safety ratio of only 10.

Amphetamines may produce a very high level of tolerance, leading users to

increase their intake, often in “jolts” taken every half hour or so. Although
the level of physical dependency is small, amphetamines may produce very
strong psychological dependence, effectively amounting to addiction.
Continued use of stimulants may result in severe psychological depression.
The effects of the stimulant methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA),
also known as “Ecstasy,” provide a good example. MDMA is a very strong
stimulant that very successfully prevents the reuptake of serotonin,
dopamine, and norepinephrine. It is so effective that when used repeatedly it
can seriously deplete the amount of neurotransmitters available in the brain,
producing a catastrophic mental and physical “crash” resulting in serious,
long-lasting depression. MDMA also affects the temperature-regulating
mechanisms of the brain, so in high doses, and especially when combined
with vigorous physical activity like dancing, it can cause the body to
become so drastically overheated that users can literally “burn up” and die
from hyperthermia and dehydration.

Slowing Down the Brain With Depressants:

Alcohol, Barbiturates and Benzodiazepines,
and Toxic Inhalants

In contrast to stimulants, which work to increase neural activity, a

depressant acts to slow down consciousness. A depressant is a
psychoactive drug that reduces the activity of the CNS. Depressants are
widely used as prescription medicines to relieve pain, to lower heart rate and
respiration, and as anticonvulsants. Depressants change consciousness by
increasing the production of the neurotransmitter GABA and decreasing the
production of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, usually at the level of the
thalamus and the reticular formation. The outcome of depressant use
(similar to the effects of sleep) is a reduction in the transmission of impulses
from the lower brain to the cortex (Csaky & Barnes, 1984).

The most commonly used of the depressants is alcohol, a colorless liquid,

produced by the fermentation of sugar or starch, that is the intoxicating
agent in fermented drinks. Alcohol is the oldest and most widely used drug
of abuse in the world. In low to moderate doses, alcohol first acts to remove
social inhibitions by slowing activity in the sympathetic nervous system. In
higher doses, alcohol acts on the cerebellum to interfere with coordination
and balance, producing the staggering gait of drunkenness. At high blood
levels, further CNS depression leads to dizziness, nausea, and eventually a
loss of consciousness. High enough blood levels such as those produced by
“guzzling” large amounts of hard liquor at parties can be fatal. Alcohol is
not a “safe” drug by any means—its safety ratio is only 10.

Alcohol use is highly costly to societies because so many people abuse

alcohol and because judgment after drinking can be substantially impaired.
It is estimated that almost half of automobile fatalities are caused by alcohol
use, and excessive alcohol consumption is involved in a majority of violent
crimes, including rape and murder (Abbey, Ross, McDuffie, & McAuslan,
1996). Alcohol increases the likelihood that people will respond
aggressively to provocations (Bushman, 1993, 1997; Graham, Osgood,
Wells, & Stockwell, 2006). Even people who are not normally aggressive
may react with aggression when they are intoxicated. Alcohol use also leads
to rioting, unprotected sex, and other negative outcomes.

Figure 5.11

oatsy40 – Bottles – CC BY 2.0.

Alcohol is the most widely used drug of abuse in the world.

Alcohol acts as a general depressant in the central nervous

system, where its actions are similar to those of general

anesthetics.

Alcohol increases aggression in part because it reduces the ability of the

person who has consumed it to inhibit his or her aggression (Steele &
Southwick, 1985). When people are intoxicated, they become more self-
focused and less aware of the social situation. As a result, they become less
likely to notice the social constraints that normally prevent them from
engaging aggressively, and are less likely to use those social constraints to
guide them. For instance, we might normally notice the presence of a police
officer or other people around us, which would remind us that being
aggressive is not appropriate. But when we are drunk, we are less likely to
be so aware. The narrowing of attention that occurs when we are intoxicated
also prevents us from being cognizant of the negative outcomes of our
aggression. When we are sober, we realize that being aggressive may
produce retaliation, as well as cause a host of other problems, but we are
less likely to realize these potential consequences when we have been
drinking (Bushman & Cooper, 1990). Alcohol also influences aggression
through expectations. If we expect that alcohol will make us more
aggressive, then we tend to become more aggressive when we drink.

Barbiturates are depressants that are commonly prescribed as sleeping

pills and painkillers. Brand names include Luminal (Phenobarbital),
Mebaraland, Nembutal, Seconal, and Sombulex. In small to moderate doses,
barbiturates produce relaxation and sleepiness, but in higher doses
symptoms may include sluggishness, difficulty in thinking, slowness of
speech, drowsiness, faulty judgment, and eventually coma or even death
(Medline Plus, 2008).

Related to barbiturates, benzodiazepines are a family of depressants used to

treat anxiety, insomnia, seizures, and muscle spasms. In low doses, they
produce mild sedation and relieve anxiety; in high doses, they induce sleep.
In the United States, benzodiazepines are among the most widely prescribed
medications that affect the CNS. Brand names include Centrax, Dalmane,
Doral, Halcion, Librium, ProSom, Restoril, Xanax, and Valium.

Toxic inhalants are also frequently abused as depressants. These drugs are
easily accessible as the vapors of glue, gasoline, propane, hair spray, and
spray paint, and are inhaled to create a change in consciousness. Related
drugs are the nitrites (amyl and butyl nitrite; “poppers,” “rush,” “locker
room”) and anesthetics such as nitrous oxide (laughing gas) and ether.
Inhalants are some of the most dangerous recreational drugs, with a safety
index below 10, and their continued use may lead to permanent brain
damage.

Opioids: Opium, Morphine, Heroin, and

Codeine

Opioids are chemicals that increase activity in opioid receptor neurons in

the brain and in the digestive system, producing euphoria, analgesia, slower
breathing, and constipation. Their chemical makeup is similar to the
endorphins, the neurotransmitters that serve as the body’s “natural pain
reducers.” Natural opioids are derived from the opium poppy, which is
widespread in Eurasia, but they can also be created synthetically.

Opium is the dried juice of the unripe seed capsule of the opium poppy. It
may be the oldest drug on record, known to the Sumerians before 4000 BC.
Morphine and heroin are stronger, more addictive drugs derived from
opium, while codeine is a weaker analgesic and less addictive member of
the opiate family. When morphine was first refined from opium in the early
19th century, it was touted as a cure for opium addiction, but it didn’t take
long to discover that it was actually more addicting than raw opium. When
heroin was produced a few decades later, it was also initially thought to be a
more potent, less addictive painkiller but was soon found to be much more
addictive than morphine. Heroin is about twice as addictive as morphine,
and creates severe tolerance, moderate physical dependence, and severe
psychological dependence. The danger of heroin is demonstrated in the fact
that it has the lowest safety ratio (6) of all the drugs listed in Table 5.1
“Psychoactive Drugs by Class”.

The opioids activate the sympathetic division of the ANS, causing blood
pressure and heart rate to increase, often to dangerous levels that can lead to
heart attack or stroke. At the same time the drugs also influence the
parasympathetic division, leading to constipation and other negative side
effects. Symptoms of opioid withdrawal include diarrhea, insomnia,
restlessness, irritability, and vomiting, all accompanied by a strong craving
for the drug. The powerful psychological dependence of the opioids and the
severe effects of withdrawal make it very difficult for morphine and heroin
abusers to quit using. In addition, because many users take these drugs
intravenously and share contaminated needles, they run a very high risk of
being infected with diseases. Opioid addicts suffer a high rate of infections
such as HIV, pericarditis (an infection of the membrane around the heart),
and hepatitis B, any of which can be fatal.

Figure 5.12
urbansnaps – kennymc – Woman injecting heroin – CC BY 2.0.

Intravenous injection of heroin typically causes a rush within 7

to 8 seconds. This method of drug use provides the highest

intensity and quickest onset of the initial rush but is also the

most dangerous.

Hallucinogens: Cannabis, Mescaline, and

LSD

The drugs that produce the most extreme alteration of consciousness are the
hallucinogens, psychoactive drugs that alter sensation and perception and
that may create hallucinations. The hallucinogens are frequently known as
“psychedelics.” Drugs in this class include lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD,
or “Acid”), mescaline, and phencyclidine (PCP), as well as a number of
natural plants including cannabis (marijuana), peyote, and psilocybin. The
chemical compositions of the hallucinogens are similar to the
neurotransmitters serotonin and epinephrine, and they act primarily as
agonists by mimicking the action of serotonin at the synapses. The
hallucinogens may produce striking changes in perception through one or
more of the senses. The precise effects a user experiences are a function not
only of the drug itself, but also of the user’s preexisting mental state and
expectations of the drug experience. In large part, the user tends to get out
of the experience what he or she brings to it.The hallucinations that may be
experienced when taking these drugs are strikingly different from everyday
experience and frequently are more similar to dreams than to everyday
consciousness.

Cannabis (marijuana) is the most widely used hallucinogen. Until it was

banned in the United States under the Marijuana Tax Act of 1938, it was
widely used for medical purposes. In recent years, cannabis has again been
frequently prescribed for the treatment of pain and nausea, particularly in
cancer sufferers, as well as for a wide variety of other physical and
psychological disorders (Ben Amar, 2006). While medical marijuana is now
legal in several American states, it is still banned under federal law, putting
those states in conflict with the federal government. Marijuana also acts as a
stimulant, producing giggling, laughing, and mild intoxication. It acts to
enhance perception of sights, sounds, and smells, and may produce a
sensation of time slowing down. It is much less likely to lead to antisocial
acts than that other popular intoxicant, alcohol, and it is also the one
psychedelic drug whose use has not declined in recent years (National
Institute on Drug Abuse, 2009).

Although the hallucinogens are powerful drugs that produce striking “mind-
altering” effects, they do not produce physiological or psychological
tolerance or dependence. While they are not addictive and pose little
physical threat to the body, their use is not advisable in any situation in
which the user needs to be alert and attentive, exercise focused awareness or
good judgment, or demonstrate normal mental functioning, such as driving a
car, studying, or operating machinery.
Why We Use Psychoactive Drugs

People have used, and often abused, psychoactive drugs for thousands of
years. Perhaps this should not be suprising, because many people find using
drugs to be fun and enjoyable. Even when we know the potential costs of
using drugs, we may engage in them anyway because the pleasures of using
the drugs are occurring right now, whereas the potential costs are abstract
and occur in the future.

Research Focus: Risk Tolerance Predicts Cigarette Use

Because drug and alcohol abuse is a behavior that has such important negative consequences for
so many people, researchers have tried to understand what leads people to use drugs. Carl Lejuez
and his colleagues (Lejuez, Aklin, Bornovalova, & Moolchan, 2005) tested the hypothesis that
cigarette smoking was related to a desire to take risks. In their research they compared risk-
taking behavior in adolescents who reported having tried a cigarette at least once with those who
reported that they had never tried smoking.

Participants in the research were 125 5th- through 12th-graders attending after-school programs
throughout inner-city neighborhoods in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. Eighty percent
of the adolescents indicated that they had never tried even a puff of a cigarette, and 20%
indicated that they had had at least one puff of a cigarette.

The participants were tested in a laboratory where they completed the Balloon Analogue Risk
Task (BART), a measure of risk taking (Lejuez et al., 2002). The BART is a computer task in
which the participant pumps up a series of simulated balloons by pressing on a computer key.
With each pump the balloon appears bigger on the screen, and more money accumulates in a
temporary “bank account.” However, when a balloon is pumped up too far, the computer
generates a popping sound, the balloon disappears from the screen, and all the money in the
temporary bank is lost. At any point during each balloon trial, the participant can stop pumping
 up the balloon, click on a button, transfer all money from the temporary bank to the permanent
bank, and begin with a new balloon.

Because the participants do not have precise information about the probability of each balloon
exploding, and because each balloon is programmed to explode after a different number of
pumps, the participants have to determine how much to pump up the balloon. The number of
pumps that participants take is used as a measure of their tolerance for risk. Low-tolerance
people tend to make a few pumps and then collect the money, whereas more risky people pump
more times into each balloon.

Supporting the hypothesis that risk tolerance is related to smoking, Lejuez et al. found that the
tendency to take risks was indeed correlated with cigarette use: The participants who indicated
that they had puffed on a cigarette had significantly higher risk-taking scores on the BART than
did those who had never tried smoking.

Individual ambitions, expectations, and values also influence drug use.

Vaughan, Corbin, and Fromme (2009) found that college students who
expressed positive academic values and strong ambitions had less alcohol
consumption and alcohol-related problems, and cigarette smoking has
declined more among youth from wealthier and more educated homes than
among those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (Johnston, O’Malley,
Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2004).

Drug use is in part the result of socialization. Children try drugs when their
friends convince them to do it, and these decisions are based on social
norms about the risks and benefits of various drugs. In the period 1991 to
1997, the percentage of 12th-graders who responded that they perceived
“great harm in regular marijuana use” declined from 79% to 58%, while
annual use of marijuana in this group rose from 24% to 39% (Johnston et
al., 2004). And students binge drink in part when they see that many other
people around them are also binging (Clapp, Reed, Holmes, Lange, & Voas,
2006).
Figure 5.13 Use of Various Drugs by 12th-Graders in 2005

Despite the fact that young people have experimented with cigarettes,
alcohol, and other dangerous drugs for many generations, it would be better
if they did not. All recreational drug use is associated with at least some
risks, and those who begin using drugs earlier are also more likely to use
more dangerous drugs later (Lynskey et al., 2003). Furthermore, as we will
see in the next section, there are many other enjoyable ways to alter
consciousness that are safer.

Key Takeaways

Psychoactive drugs are chemicals that change our state of consciousness. They work
by influencing neurotransmitters in the CNS.

Using psychoactive drugs may create tolerance and, when they are no longer used,
withdrawal. Addiction may result from tolerance and the difficulty of withdrawal.

Stimulants, including caffeine, nicotine, and amphetamine, increase neural activity

by blocking the reuptake of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin in the CNS.

Depressants, including, alcohol, barbiturates, and benzodiazepines, decrease

consciousness by increasing the production of the neurotransmitter GABA and
 decreasing the production of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine.

Opioids, including codeine, opium, morphine and heroin, produce euphoria and
analgesia by increasing activity in opioid receptor neurons.

Hallucinogens, including cannabis, mescaline, and LSD, create an extreme alteration

of consciousness as well as the possibility of hallucinations.

Recreational drug use is influenced by social norms as well as by individual

differences. People who are more likely to take risks are also more likely to use
drugs.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Do people you know use psychoactive drugs? Which ones? Based on what you have
learned in this section, why do you think that they are used, and do you think that
their side effects are harmful?

2. Consider the research reported in the research focus on risk and cigarette smoking.
What are the potential implications of the research for drug use? Can you see any
weaknesses in the study caused by the fact that the results are based on correlational
analyses?

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Ben Amar, M. (2006). Cannabinoids in medicine: A review of their

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Bushman, B. J. (1993). Human aggression while under the influence of

alcohol and other drugs: An integrative research review. Current Directions
in Psychological Science, 2(5), 148–152;

Bushman, B. J. (Ed.). (1997). Effects of alcohol on human aggression:

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Bushman, B. J., & Cooper, H. M. (1990). Effects of alcohol on human

aggression: An integrative research review. Psychological Bulletin, 107(3),
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Clapp, J., Reed, M., Holmes, M., Lange, J., & Voas, R. (2006). Drunk in
public, drunk in private: The relationship between college students, drinking
environments and alcohol consumption. The American Journal of Drug and
Alcohol Abuse, 32(2), 275–285.

Csaky, T. Z., & Barnes, B. A. (1984). Cutting’s handbook of pharmacology

(7th ed.). East Norwalk, CT: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Graham, K., Osgood, D. W., Wells, S., & Stockwell, T. (2006). To what
extent is intoxication associated with aggression in bars? A multilevel
analysis. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 67(3), 382–390.

Johnston, L. D., O’Malley, P. M., Bachman, J. G., & Schulenberg, J. E.

(2004). Monitoring the future: National results on adolescent drug use. Ann
Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan (conducted
for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute of Health).

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(2005). Differences in risk-taking propensity across inner-city adolescent
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Lejuez, C. W., Read, J. P., Kahler, C. W., Richards, J. B., Ramsey, S. E.,
Stuart, G. L.,…Brown, R. A. (2002). Evaluation of a behavioral measure of
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Lynskey, M. T., Heath, A. C., Bucholz, K. K., Slutske, W. S., Madden, P. A.

F., Nelson, E. C.,…Martin, N. G. (2003). Escalation of drug use in early-
onset cannabis users vs co-twin controls. Journal of the American Medical
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McCance-Katz, E., Kosten, T., & Jatlow, P. (1998). Concurrent use of

cocaine and alcohol is more potent and potentially more toxic than use of
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5.3 Altering Consciousness Without Drugs

Learning Objective

1. Review the ways that people may alter consciousness without using drugs.

Although the use of psychoactive drugs can easily and profoundly change
our experience of consciousness, we can also—and often more safely—alter
our consciousness without drugs. These altered states of consciousness are
sometimes the result of simple and safe activities, such as sleeping,
watching television, exercising, or working on a task that intrigues us. In
this section we consider the changes in consciousness that occur through
hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and meditation, as well as through other non-
drug-induced mechanisms.

Changing Behavior Through Suggestion: The

Power of Hypnosis

Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815) was an Austrian doctor who believed

that all living bodies were filled with magnetic energy. In his practice,
Mesmer passed magnets over the bodies of his patients while telling them
their physical and psychological problems would disappear. The patients
frequently lapsed into a trancelike state (they were said to be “mesmerized”)
and reported feeling better when they awoke (Hammond, 2008).

Figure 5.14 Franz Anton Mesmer passed magnets over the bodies of his patients to put them in a
trancelike state; the patients were “mesmerized.”

Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

Although subsequent research testing the effectiveness of Mesmer’s

techniques did not find any long-lasting improvements in his patients, the
idea that people’s experiences and behaviors could be changed through the
power of suggestion has remained important in psychology. James Braid, a
Scottish physician, coined the term hypnosis in 1843, basing it on the Greek
word for sleep (Callahan, 1997).

Hypnosis is a trance-like state of consciousness, usually induced by a

procedure known as hypnotic induction, which consists of heightened
suggestibility, deep relaxation, and intense focus (Nash & Barnier, 2008).
Hypnosis became famous in part through its use by Sigmund Freud in an
attempt to make unconscious desires and emotions conscious and thus able
to be considered and confronted (Baker & Nash, 2008).

Because hypnosis is based on the power of suggestion, and because some

people are more suggestible than others, these people are more easily
hypnotized. Hilgard (1965) found that about 20% of the participants he
tested were entirely unsusceptible to hypnosis, whereas about 15% were
highly responsive to it. The best participants for hypnosis are people who
are willing or eager to be hypnotized, who are able to focus their attention
and block out peripheral awareness, who are open to new experiences, and
who are capable of fantasy (Spiegel, Greenleaf, & Spiegel, 2005).

People who want to become hypnotized are motivated to be good subjects,

to be open to suggestions by the hypnotist, and to fulfill the role of a
hypnotized person as they perceive it (Spanos, 1991). The hypnotized state
results from a combination of conformity, relaxation, obedience, and
suggestion (Fassler, Lynn, & Knox, 2008). This does not necessarily
indicate that hypnotized people are “faking” or lying about being
hypnotized. Kinnunen, Zamansky, and Block (1994) used measures of skin
conductance (which indicates emotional response by measuring
perspiration, and therefore renders it a reliable indicator of deception) to test
whether hypnotized people were lying about having been hypnotized. Their
results suggested that almost 90% of their supposedly hypnotized subjects
truly believed that they had been hypnotized.

One common misconception about hypnosis is that the hypnotist is able to

“take control” of hypnotized patients and thus can command them to engage
in behaviors against their will. Although hypnotized people are suggestible
(Jamieson & Hasegawa, 2007), they nevertheless retain awareness and
control of their behavior and are able to refuse to comply with the
hypnotist’s suggestions if they so choose (Kirsch & Braffman, 2001). In
fact, people who have not been hypnotized are often just as suggestible as
those who have been (Orne & Evans, 1965).

Another common belief is that hypnotists can lead people to forget the
things that happened to them while they were hypnotized. Hilgard and
Cooper (1965) investigated this question and found that they could lead
people who were very highly susceptible through hypnosis to show at least
some signs of posthypnotic amnesia (e.g., forgetting where they had learned
information that had been told to them while they were under hypnosis), but
that this effect was not strong or common.

Some hypnotists have tried to use hypnosis to help people remember events,
such as childhood experiences or details of crime scenes, that they have
forgotten or repressed. The idea is that some memories have been stored but
can no longer be retrieved, and that hypnosis can aid in the retrieval process.
But research finds that this is not successful: People who are hypnotized and
then asked to relive their childhood act like children, but they do not
accurately recall the things that occurred to them in their own childhood
(Silverman & Retzlaff, 1986). Furthermore, the suggestibility produced
through hypnosis may lead people to erroneously recall experiences that
they did not have (Newman & Baumeister, 1996). Many states and
jurisdictions have therefore banned the use of hypnosis in criminal trials
because the “evidence” recovered through hypnosis is likely to be fabricated
and inaccurate.

Hypnosis is also frequently used to attempt to change unwanted behaviors,

such as to reduce smoking, overeating, and alcohol abuse. The effectiveness
of hypnosis in these areas is controversial, although at least some successes
have been reported. Kirsch, Montgomery, and Sapirstein (1995) found that
that adding hypnosis to other forms of therapies increased the effectiveness
of the treatment, and Elkins and Perfect (2008) reported that hypnosis was
useful in helping people stop smoking. Hypnosis is also effective in
improving the experiences of patients who are experiencing anxiety
disorders, such as PTSD (Cardena, 2000; Montgomery, David, Winkel,
Silverstein, & Bovbjerg, 2002), and for reducing pain (Montgomery,
DuHamel, & Redd, 2000; Paterson & Jensen, 2003).

Reducing Sensation to Alter Consciousness:

Sensory Deprivation

Sensory deprivation is the intentional reduction of stimuli affecting one or

more of the five senses, with the possibility of resulting changes in
consciousness. Sensory deprivation is used for relaxation or meditation
purposes, and in physical and mental health-care programs to produce
enjoyable changes in consciousness. But when deprivation is prolonged, it is
unpleasant and can be used as a means of torture.

Although the simplest forms of sensory deprivation require nothing more

than a blindfold to block the person’s sense of sight or earmuffs to block the
sense of sound, more complex devices have also been devised to
temporarily cut off the senses of smell, taste, touch, heat, and gravity. In
1954 John Lilly, a neurophysiologist at the National Institute of Mental
Health, developed the sensory deprivation tank. The tank is filled with water
that is the same temperature as the human body, and salts are added to the
water so that the body floats, thus reducing the sense of gravity. The tank is
dark and soundproof, and the person’s sense of smell is blocked by the use
of chemicals in the water, such as chlorine.

Figure 5.15

Jon Roig – Sensory Deprivation Tank – CC BY 2.0.

Treatment in sensory deprivation tanks has been shown to help

with a variety of psychological and medical issues.

The sensory deprivation tank has been used for therapy and relaxation. In a
typical session for alternative healing and meditative purposes, a person
may rest in an isolation tank for up to an hour. Treatment in isolation tanks
has been shown to help with a variety of medical issues, including insomnia
and muscle pain (Suedfeld, 1990b; Bood, Sundequist, Kjellgren, Nordström,
& Norlander, 2007; Kjellgren, Sundequist, Norlander, & Archer, 2001),
headaches (Wallbaum, Rzewnicki, Steele, & Suedfeld, 1991), and addictive
behaviors such as smoking, alcoholism, and obesity (Suedfeld, 1990a).

Although relatively short sessions of sensory deprivation can be relaxing

and both mentally and physically beneficial, prolonged sensory deprivation
can lead to disorders of perception, including confusion and hallucinations
(Yuksel, Kisa, Avdemin, & Goka, 2004). It is for this reason that sensory
deprivation is sometimes used as an instrument of torture (Benjamin, 2006).

Meditation

Meditation refers to techniques in which the individual focuses on

something specific, such as an object, a word, or one’s breathing, with the
goal of ignoring external distractions, focusing on one’s internal state, and
achieving a state of relaxation and well-being. Followers of various Eastern
religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism) use meditation to achieve a
higher spiritual state, and popular forms of meditation in the West, such as
yoga, Zen, and Transcendental Meditation, have originated from these
practices. Many meditative techniques are very simple. You simply need to
sit in a comfortable position with your eyes closed and practice deep
breathing. You might want to try it out for yourself (Note 5.43 “Video Clip:
Try Meditation”).

Video Clip: Try Meditation

(click to see video)

Here is a simple meditation exercise you can do in your own home.

Brain imaging studies have indicated that meditation is not only relaxing but
can also induce an altered state of consciousness. Cahn and Polich (2006)
found that experienced meditators in a meditative state had more prominent
alpha and theta waves, and other studies have shown declines in heart rate,
skin conductance, oxygen consumption, and carbon dioxide elimination
during meditation (Dillbeck, Glenn, & Orme-Johnson, 1987; Fenwick,
1987). These studies suggest that the action of the sympathetic division of
the autonomic nervous system (ANS) is suppressed during meditation,
creating a more relaxed physiological state as the meditator moves into
deeper states of relaxation and consciousness.

Figure 5.16

Mitchell Joyce – Meditation – CC BY-NC 2.0.

Research has found that regular meditation has

positive physiological and psychological effects.

Research has found that regular meditation can mediate the effects of stress
and depression, and promote well-being (Grossman, Niemann, Schmidt, &
Walach, 2004; Reibel, Greeson, Brainard, & Rosenzweig, 2001; Salmon et
al., 2004). Meditation has also been shown to assist in controlling blood
pressure (Barnes, Treiber, & Davis, 2001; Walton et al., 2004). A study by
Lyubimov (1992) showed that during meditation, a larger area of the brain
was responsive to sensory stimuli, suggesting that there is greater
coordination between the two brain hemispheres as a result of meditation.
Lutz and others (2004) demonstrated that those who meditate regularly (as
opposed to those who do not) tend to utilize a greater part of their brain and
that their gamma waves are faster and more powerful. And a study of
Tibetan Buddhist monks who meditate daily found that several areas of the
brain can be permanently altered by the long-term practice of meditation
(Lutz, Greischar, Rawlings, Ricard, & Davidson, 2004).
It is possible that the positive effects of meditation could also be found by
using other methods of relaxation. Although advocates of meditation claim
that meditation enables people to attain a higher and purer consciousness,
perhaps any kind of activity that calms and relaxes the mind, such as
working on crossword puzzles, watching television or movies, or engaging
in other enjoyed behaviors, might be equally effective in creating positive
outcomes. Regardless of the debate, the fact remains that meditation is, at
the very least, a worthwhile relaxation strategy.

Psychology in Everyday Life: The Need to Escape Everyday Consciousness

We may use recreational drugs, drink alcohol, overeat, have sex, and gamble for fun, but in some
cases these normally pleasurable behaviors are abused, leading to exceedingly negative
consequences for us. We frequently refer to the abuse of any type of pleasurable behavior as an
“addiction,” just as we refer to drug or alcohol addiction.

Roy Baumeister and his colleagues (Baumeister, 1991) have argued that the desire to avoid
thinking about the self (what they call the “escape from consciousness”) is an essential
component of a variety of self-defeating behaviors. Their approach is based on the idea that
consciousness involves self-awareness, the process of thinking about and examining the self.
Normally we enjoy being self-aware, as we reflect on our relationships with others, our goals,
and our achievements. But if we have a setback or a problem, or if we behave in a way that we
determine is inappropriate or immoral, we may feel stupid, embarrassed, or unlovable. In these
cases self-awareness may become burdensome. And even if nothing particularly bad is
happening at the moment, self-awareness may still feel unpleasant because we have fears about
what might happen to us or about mistakes that we might make in the future.

Baumeister argues that when self-awareness becomes unpleasant, the need to forget about the
negative aspects of the self may become so strong that we turn to altered states of consciousness.
Baumeister believes that in these cases we escape the self by narrowing our focus of attention to
a particular action or activity, which prevents us from having to think about ourselves and the
implications of various events for our self-concept.

Baumeister has analyzed a variety of self-defeating behaviors in terms of the desire to escape
consciousness. Perhaps most obvious is suicide—the ultimate self-defeating behavior and the
ultimate solution for escaping the negative aspects of self-consciousness. People who commit
suicide are normally depressed and isolated. They feel bad about themselves, and suicide is a
relief from the negative aspects of self-reflection. Suicidal behavior is often preceded by a period
of narrow and rigid cognitive functioning that serves as an escape from the very negative view of
the self brought on by recent setbacks or traumas (Baumeister, 1990).

Alcohol abuse may also accomplish an escape from self-awareness by physically interfering
with cognitive functioning, making it more difficult to recall the aspects of our self-
consciousness (Steele & Josephs, 1990). And cigarette smoking may appeal to people as a low-
level distractor that helps them to escape self-awareness. Heatherton and Baumeister (1991)
argued that binge eating is another way of escaping from consciousness. Binge eaters, including
those who suffer from bulimia nervosa, have unusually high standards for the self, including
success, achievement, popularity, and body thinness. As a result they find it difficult to live up to
these standards. Because these individuals evaluate themselves according to demanding criteria,
they will tend to fall short periodically. Becoming focused on eating, according to Heatherton
and Baumeister, is a way to focus only on one particular activity and to forget the broader,
negative aspects of the self.

The removal of self-awareness has also been depicted as the essential part of the appeal of
masochism, in which people engage in bondage and other aspects of submission. Masochists are
frequently tied up using ropes, scarves, neckties, stockings, handcuffs, and gags, and the
outcome is that they no longer feel that they are in control of themselves, which relieves them
from the burdens of the self (Baumeister, 1991).Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Escaping the self:
Alcoholism, spirituality, masochism, and other flights from the burden of selfhood. New York,
NY: Basic Books.

Newman and Baumeister (1996)Newman, L. S., & Baumeister, R. F. (1996). Toward an

explanation of the UFO abduction phenomenon: Hypnotic elaboration, extraterrestrial
sadomasochism, and spurious memories. Psychological Inquiry, 7(2), 99–126. have argued that
even the belief that one has been abducted by aliens may be driven by the need to escape
everyday consciousness. Every day at least several hundred (and more likely several thousand)
Americans claim that they are abducted by these aliens, although most of these stories occur
after the individuals have consulted with a psychotherapist or someone else who believes in alien
abduction. Again, Baumeister and his colleagues have found a number of indications that people
who believe that they have been abducted may be using the belief as a way of escaping self-
consciousness.

Key Takeaways

Hypnosis is a trance-like state of conscious consisting of heightened susceptibility,

deep relaxation, and intense focus.

Hypnosis is not useful for helping people remember past events, but it can be used to
alleviate anxiety and pain.

Sensory deprivation is the intentional reduction of stimulation to one or more of the

senses. It can be used therapeutically to treat insomnia, muscle tension, and pain.

Meditation refers to a range of techniques that can create relaxation and well-being.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Do you think that you would be a good candidate for hypnosis? Why or why not?

2. Try the meditation exercise in this section for three consecutive days. Do you feel
any different when or after you meditate?
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5.4 Chapter Summary

Consciousness is our subjective awareness of ourselves and our

environment.

Consciousness is functional because we use it to reason logically, to plan

activities, and to monitor our progress toward the goals we set for
ourselves.

Consciousness has been central to many theories of psychology. Freud’s

personality theories differentiated between the unconscious and the
conscious aspects of behavior, and present-day psychologists distinguish
between automatic (unconscious) and controlled (conscious) behaviors and
between implicit (unconscious) and explicit (conscious) cognitive
processes.

The French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650) was a proponent of

dualism, the idea that the mind, a nonmaterial entity, is separate from
(although connected to) the physical body. In contrast to the dualists,
psychologists believe the consciousness (and thus the mind) exists in the
brain, not separate from it.

The behavior of organisms is influenced by biological rhythms, including

the daily circadian rhythms that guide the waking and sleeping cycle in
many animals.

Sleep researchers have found that sleeping people undergo a fairly

consistent pattern of sleep stages, each lasting about 90 minutes. Each of
the sleep stages has its own distinct pattern of brain activity. Rapid eye
movement (REM) accounts for about 25% of our total sleep time, during
which we dream. Non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep is a deep
sleep characterized by very slow brain waves, and is further subdivided into
three stages: stages N1, N2, and N3.

Sleep has a vital restorative function, and a prolonged lack of sleep results
in increased anxiety, diminished performance, and if severe and extended,
even death. Sleep deprivation suppresses immune responses that fight off
infection, and can lead to obesity, hypertension, and memory impairment.

Some people suffer from sleep disorders, including insomnia, sleep apnea,
narcolepsy, sleepwalking, and REM sleep behavior disorder.

Freud believed that the primary function of dreams was wish fulfillment,
and he differentiated between the manifest and latent content of dreams.
Other theories of dreaming propose that we dream primarily to help with
consolidation—the moving of information into long-term memory. The
activation-synthesis theory of dreaming proposes that dreams are simply
our brain’s interpretation of the random firing of neurons in the brain stem.

Psychoactive drugs are chemicals that change our states of consciousness,

and particularly our perceptions and moods. The use (especially in
combination) of psychoactive drugs has the potential to create very negative
side effects, including tolerance, dependence, withdrawal symptoms, and
addiction.

Stimulants, including caffeine, nicotine, cocaine, and amphetamine, are

psychoactive drugs that operate by blocking the reuptake of dopamine,
norepinephrine, and serotonin in the synapses of the central nervous system
(CNS). Some amphetamines, such as Ecstasy, have very low safety ratios
and thus are highly dangerous.

Depressants, including alcohol, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and toxic

inhalants, reduce the activity of the CNS. They are widely used as
prescription medicines to relieve pain, to lower heart rate and respiration,
and as anticonvulsants. Toxic inhalants are some of the most dangerous
recreational drugs, with a safety index below 10, and their continued use
may lead to permanent brain damage.

Opioids, including opium, morphine, heroin, and codeine, are chemicals

that increase activity in opioid receptor neurons in the brain and in the
digestive system, producing euphoria, analgesia, slower breathing, and
constipation.

Hallucinogens, including cannabis, mescaline, and LSD, are psychoactive

drugs that alter sensation and perception and which may create
hallucinations.

Even when we know the potential costs of using drugs, we may engage in
using them anyway because the rewards from using the drugs are occurring
right now, whereas the potential costs are abstract and only in the future.
And drugs are not the only things we enjoy or can abuse. It is normal to
refer to the abuse of other behaviors, such as gambling, sex, overeating, and
even overworking as “addictions” to describe the overuse of pleasant
stimuli.

Hypnosis is a trance-like state of consciousness, usually induced by a

procedure known as hypnotic induction, which consists of heightened
suggestibility, deep relaxation, and intense focus. Hypnosis also is
frequently used to attempt to change unwanted behaviors, such as to reduce
smoking, eating, and alcohol abuse.

Sensory deprivation is the intentional reduction of stimuli affecting one or

more of the five senses, with the possibility of resulting changes in
consciousness. Although sensory deprivation is used for relaxation or
meditation purposes and to produce enjoyable changes in consciousness,
when deprivation is prolonged, it is unpleasant and can be used as a means
of torture.

Meditation refers to techniques in which the individual focuses on

something specific, such as an object, a word, or one’s breathing, with the
goal of ignoring external distractions. Meditation has a variety of positive
health effects.
Chapter 6. Growing and
Developing

The Repository for Germinal Choice

During the 1970s, American millionaire Robert Klark Graham began one of the most
controversial and unique sperm banks in the world. He called it the Repository for Germinal
Choice. The sperm bank was part of a project that attempted to combat the “genetic decay”
Graham saw all around him. He believed human reproduction was experiencing a genetic
decline, making for a population of “retrograde humans,” and he was convinced that the way to
save the human race was to breed the best genes of his generation (Plotz, 2001).

Graham began his project by collecting sperm samples from the most intelligent and highly
achieving people he could find, including scientists, entrepreneurs, athletes, and even Nobel
Prize winners. Then he advertised for potential mothers, who were required to be married to
infertile men, educated, and financially well-off. Graham mailed out catalogs to the potential
mothers, describing the donors using code names such as “Mr. Grey-White,” who was “ruggedly
handsome, outgoing, and positive, a university professor, expert marksman who enjoys the
classics,” and “Mr. Fuchsia,” who was an “Olympic gold medalist, tall, dark, handsome, bright,
a successful businessman and author” (Plotz, 2001). When the mother had made her choice, the
sperm sample was delivered by courier and insemination was carried out at home. Before it
closed following Graham’s death in 1999, the repository claimed responsibility for the birth of
228 children.

But did Graham’s project actually create superintelligent babies? Although it is difficult to be
sure, because very few interviews with the offspring have been permitted, at least some of the
repository’s progeny are indeed smart. Reporter for Slate magazine David Plotz (2001) spoke to
nine families who benefited from the repository, and they proudly touted their children’s
achievements. He found that most of the offspring in the families interviewed seem to resemble
 their genetic fathers. Three from donor Mr. Fuchsia, the Olympic gold medalist, are reportedly
gifted athletes. Several who excel in math and science were fathered by professors of math and
science.

And the offspring, by and large, seem to be doing well, often attending excellent schools and
maintaining very high grade-point averages. One of the offspring, now 26 years old, is
particularly intelligent. In infancy, he could mark the beat of classical music with his hands. In
kindergarten, he could read Hamlet and was learning algebra, and at age 6, his IQ was already
180. But he refused to apply to prestigious universities, such as Harvard or Yale, opting instead
to study at a smaller progressive college and to major in comparative religion, with the aim of
becoming an elementary school teacher. He is now an author of children’s books.

Although it is difficult to know for sure, it appears that at least some of the children of the
repository are indeed outstanding. But can the talents, characteristics, and skills of this small
repository sample be attributed to genetics alone? After all, consider the parents of these
children: Plotz reported that the parents, particularly the mothers, were highly involved in their
children’s development and took their parental roles very seriously. Most of the parents studied
child care manuals, coached their children’s sports teams, practiced reading with their kids, and
either home-schooled them or sent them to the best schools in their areas. And the families were
financially well-off. Furthermore, the mothers approached the repository at a relatively older
child-bearing age, when all other options were exhausted. These children were desperately
wanted and very well loved. It is undeniable that, in addition to their genetic backgrounds, all
this excellent nurturing played a significant role in the development of the repository children.

Although the existence of the repository provides interesting insight into the potential
importance of genetics on child development, the results of Graham’s experiment are
inconclusive. The offspring interviewed are definitely smart and talented, but only one of them
was considered a true genius and child prodigy. And nurture may have played as much a role as
nature in their outcomes (Olding, 2006; Plotz, 2001).

The goal of this chapter is to investigate the fundamental, complex, and

essential process of human development. Development refers to the
physiological, behavioral, cognitive, and social changes that occur
throughout human life, which are guided by both genetic predispositions
(nature) and by environmental influences (nurture). We will begin our study
of development at the moment of conception, when the father’s sperm
unites with the mother’s egg, and then consider prenatal development in the
womb. Next we will focus on infancy, the developmental stage that begins
at birth and continues to one year of age, and childhood, the period
between infancy and the onset of puberty. Finally, we will consider the
developmental changes that occur during adolescence—the years between
the onset of puberty and the beginning of adulthood; the stages of
adulthood itself, including emerging, early, middle, and older adulthood;
and finally, the preparations for and eventual facing of death.

Each of the stages of development has its unique physical, cognitive, and
emotional changes that define the stage and that make each stage unique,
one from the other. The psychologist and psychoanalyst Erik Erikson (1963,
p. 202) proposed a model of life-span development that provides a useful
guideline for thinking about the changes we experience throughout life. As
you can see in Table 6.1 “Challenges of Development as Proposed by Erik
Erikson”, Erikson believed that each life stage has a unique challenge that
the person who reaches it must face. And according to Erikson, successful
development involves dealing with and resolving the goals and demands of
each of the life stages in a positive way.

Table 6.1 Challenges of Development as Proposed by Erik Erikson

 Stage Age range Key challenge Positive resolution of challenge

Birth to 12
Trust versus The child develops a feeling of trust in his or
Oral-sensory to 18
mistrust her caregivers.
months

The child learns what he or she can and

18 months Autonomy versus
Muscular-anal cannot control and develops a sense of free
to 3 years shame/doubt
will.

Initiative versus The child learns to become independent by

Locomotor 3 to 6 years
guilt exploring, manipulating, and taking action.

The child learns to do things well or correctly

Industry versus
Latency 6 to 12 years according to standards set by others,
inferiority
particularly in school.

12 to 18 Identity versus The adolescent develops a well-defined and

Adolescence
years role confusion positive sense of self in relationship to others.

The person develops the ability to give and

Young 19 to 40 Intimacy versus
receive love and to make long-term
adulthood years isolation
commitments.

The person develops an interest in guiding

Middle 40 to 65 Generativity
the development of the next generation, often
adulthood years versus stagnation
by becoming a parent.

Late Ego integrity The person develops acceptance of his or her

65 to death
adulthood versus despair life as it was lived.

Source: Adapted from Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society. New York, NY: Norton (p. 202).

As we progress through this chapter, we will see that Robert Klark Graham
was in part right—nature does play a substantial role in development (it has
been found, for instance, that identical twins, who share all of their genetic
code, usually begin sitting up and walking on the exact same days). But
nurture is also important—we begin to be influenced by our environments
even while still in the womb, and these influences remain with us
throughout our development. Furthermore, we will see that we play an
active role in shaping our own lives. Our own behavior influences how and
what we learn, how people respond to us, and how we develop as
individuals. As you read the chapter, you will no doubt get a broader view
of how we each pass through our own lives. You will see how we learn and
adapt to life’s changes, and this new knowledge may help you better
understand and better guide your own personal life journey.

References

Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society. New York, NY: Norton.

Olding, P. (2006, June 15). The genius sperm bank. BBC News. Retrieved
from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/spermb
ank/doron/index_textonly.shtml.

Plotz, D. (2001, February 8). The “genius babies,” and how they grew.
Slate. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/id/100331.
6.1 Conception and Prenatal Development

Learning Objectives

1. Review the stages of prenatal development.

2. Explain how the developing embryo and fetus may be harmed by the presence of
teratogens and describe what a mother can do to reduce her risk.

Conception occurs when an egg from the mother is fertilized by a sperm

from the father. In humans, the conception process begins with ovulation,
when an ovum, or egg (the largest cell in the human body), which has been
stored in one of the mother’s two ovaries, matures and is released into the
fallopian tube. Ovulation occurs about halfway through the woman’s
menstrual cycle and is aided by the release of a complex combination of
hormones. In addition to helping the egg mature, the hormones also cause
the lining of the uterus to grow thicker and more suitable for implantation of
a fertilized egg.

If the woman has had sexual intercourse within 1 or 2 days of the egg’s
maturation, one of the up to 500 million sperm deposited by the man’s
ejaculation, which are traveling up the fallopian tube, may fertilize the egg.
Although few of the sperm are able to make the long journey, some of the
strongest swimmers succeed in meeting the egg. As the sperm reach the egg
in the fallopian tube, they release enzymes that attack the outer jellylike
protective coating of the egg, each trying to be the first to enter. As soon as
one of the millions of sperm enters the egg’s coating, the egg immediately
responds by both blocking out all other challengers and at the same time
pulling in the single successful sperm.

The Zygote

Within several hours, half of the 23 chromosomes from the egg and half of
the 23 chromosomes from the sperm fuse together, creating a zygote—a
fertilized ovum. The zygote continues to travel down the fallopian tube to
the uterus. Although the uterus is only about 4 inches away in the woman’s
body, this is nevertheless a substantial journey for a microscopic organism,
and fewer than half of zygotes survive beyond this earliest stage of life. If
the zygote is still viable when it completes the journey, it will attach itself to
the wall of the uterus, but if it is not, it will be flushed out in the woman’s
menstrual flow. During this time, the cells in the zygote continue to divide:
The original two cells become four, those four become eight, and so on,
until there are thousands (and eventually trillions) of cells. Soon the cells
begin to differentiate, each taking on a separate function. The earliest
differentiation is between the cells on the inside of the zygote, which will
begin to form the developing human being, and the cells on the outside,
which will form the protective environment that will provide support for the
new life throughout the pregnancy.

The Embryo

Once the zygote attaches to the wall of the uterus, it is known as the
embryo. During the embryonic phase, which will last for the next 6 weeks,
the major internal and external organs are formed, each beginning at the
microscopic level, with only a few cells. The changes in the embryo’s
appearance will continue rapidly from this point until birth.
While the inner layer of embryonic cells is busy forming the embryo itself,
the outer layer is forming the surrounding protective environment that will
help the embryo survive the pregnancy. This environment consists of three
major structures: The amniotic sac is the fluid-filled reservoir in which the
embryo (soon to be known as a fetus) will live until birth, and which acts as
both a cushion against outside pressure and as a temperature regulator. The
placenta is an organ that allows the exchange of nutrients between the
embryo and the mother, while at the same time filtering out harmful
material. The filtering occurs through a thin membrane that separates the
mother’s blood from the blood of the fetus, allowing them to share only the
material that is able to pass through the filter. Finally, the umbilical
cordlinks the embryo directly to the placenta and transfers all material to
the fetus. Thus the placenta and the umbilical cord protect the fetus from
many foreign agents in the mother’s system that might otherwise pose a
threat.

The Fetus

Beginning in the 9th week after conception, the embryo becomes a fetus.
The defining characteristic of the fetal stage is growth. All the major aspects
of the growing organism have been formed in the embryonic phase, and
now the fetus has approximately six months to go from weighing less than
an ounce to weighing an average of 6 to 8 pounds. That’s quite a growth
spurt.

The fetus begins to take on many of the characteristics of a human being,

including moving (by the 3rd month the fetus is able to curl and open its
fingers, form fists, and wiggle its toes), sleeping, as well as early forms of
swallowing and breathing. The fetus begins to develop its senses, becoming
able to distinguish tastes and respond to sounds. Research has found that the
fetus even develops some initial preferences. A newborn prefers the
mother’s voice to that of a stranger, the languages heard in the womb over
other languages (DeCasper & Fifer, 1980; Moon, Cooper, & Fifer, 1993),
and even the kinds of foods that the mother ate during the pregnancy
(Mennella, Jagnow, & Beauchamp, 2001). By the end of the 3rd month of
pregnancy, the sexual organs are visible.

How the Environment Can Affect the

Vulnerable Fetus

Prenatal development is a complicated process and may not always go as

planned. About 45% of pregnancies result in a miscarriage, often without
the mother ever being aware it has occurred (Moore & Persaud, 1993).
Although the amniotic sac and the placenta are designed to protect the
embryo, substances that can harm the fetus, known as teratogens, may
nevertheless cause problems. Teratogens include general environmental
factors, such as air pollution and radiation, but also the cigarettes, alcohol,
and drugs that the mother may use. Teratogens do not always harm the fetus,
but they are more likely to do so when they occur in larger amounts, for
longer time periods, and during the more sensitive phases, as when the fetus
is growing most rapidly. The most vulnerable period for many of the fetal
organs is very early in the pregnancy—before the mother even knows she is
pregnant.

Harmful substances that the mother ingests may harm the child. Cigarette
smoking, for example, reduces the blood oxygen for both the mother and
child and can cause a fetus to be born severely underweight. Another serious
threat is fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), a condition caused by maternal
alcohol drinking that can lead to numerous detrimental developmental
effects, including limb and facial abnormalities, genital anomalies, and
mental retardation. One in about every 500 babies in the United States is
born with fetal alcohol syndrome, and it is considered one of the leading
causes of retardation in the world today (Niccols, 1994). Because there is no
known safe level of alcohol consumption for a pregnant woman, the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that “a pregnant
woman should not drink alcohol” (Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, 2005). Therefore, the best approach for expectant mothers is to
avoid alcohol completely. Maternal drug abuse is also of major concern and
is considered one of the greatest risk factors facing unborn children.

Figure 6.1

Daniel Lobo – Ecografía – CC BY 2.0.

Prenatal screenings, including a sonogram, help detect potential

birth defects and other potentially dangerous conditions.

The environment in which the mother is living also has a major impact on
infant development (Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 2000; Haber & Toro, 2004).
Children born into homelessness or poverty are more likely to have mothers
who are malnourished, who suffer from domestic violence, stress, and other
psychological problems, and who smoke or abuse drugs. And children born
into poverty are also more likely to be exposed to teratogens. Poverty’s
impact may also amplify other issues, creating substantial problems for
healthy child development (Evans & English, 2002; Gunnar & Quevedo,
2007).

Mothers normally receive genetic and blood tests during the first months of
pregnancy to determine the health of the embryo or fetus. They may
undergo sonogram, ultrasound, amniocentesis, or other testing. The
screenings detect potential birth defects, including neural tube defects,
chromosomal abnormalities (such as Down syndrome), genetic diseases,
and other potentially dangerous conditions. Early diagnosis of prenatal
problems can allow medical treatment to improve the health of the fetus.

Key Takeaways

Development begins at the moment of conception, when the sperm from the father
merges with the egg from the mother.

Within a span of 9 months, development progresses from a single cell into a zygote
and then into an embryo and fetus.

The fetus is connected to the mother through the umbilical cord and the placenta,
which allow the fetus and mother to exchange nourishment and waste. The fetus is
protected by the amniotic sac.

The embryo and fetus are vulnerable and may be harmed by the presence of
teratogens.

Smoking, alcohol use, and drug use are all likely to be harmful to the developing
embryo or fetus, and the mother should entirely refrain from these behaviors during
pregnancy or if she expects to become pregnant.

Environmental factors, especially homelessness and poverty, have a substantial

negative effect on healthy child development.
 Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. What behaviors must a woman avoid engaging in when she decides to try to become
pregnant, or when she finds out she is pregnant? Do you think the ability of a mother
to engage in healthy behaviors should influence her choice to have a child?

2. Given the negative effects of poverty on human development, what steps do you
think that societies should take to try to reduce poverty?

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2005). Alcohol use and
pregnancy. Retrieved from
http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/factsheets/FAS_alcoholuse.pdf

DeCasper, A. J., & Fifer, W. P. (1980). Of human bonding: Newborns prefer

their mothers’ voices. Science, 208, 1174–1176;

Duncan, G., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2000). Family poverty, welfare reform, and
child development. Child Development, 71(1), 188–196;

Evans, G. W., & English, K. (2002). The environment of poverty: Multiple

stressor exposure, psychophysiological stress, and socio-emotional
adjustment. Child Development, 73(4), 1238–1248;

Gunnar, M., & Quevedo, K. (2007). The neurobiology of stress and

development. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 145–173.

Haber, M., & Toro, P. (2004). Homelessness among families, children, and
adolescents: An ecological–developmental perspective. Clinical Child and
Family Psychology Review, 7(3), 123–164.

Mennella, J. A., Jagnow, C. P., & Beauchamp, G. K. (2001). Prenatal and

postnatal flavor learning by human infants. Pediatrics, 107(6), e88.

Moon, C., Cooper, R. P., & Fifer, W. P. (1993). Two-day-olds prefer their
native language. Infant Behavior & Development, 16, 495–500.

Moore, K., & Persaud, T. (1993). The developing human: Clinically

oriented embryology (5th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Saunders.

Niccols, G. A. (1994). Fetal alcohol syndrome: Implications for

psychologists. Clinical Psychology Review, 14, 91–111.
6.2 Infancy and Childhood: Exploring and
Learning

Learning Objectives

1. Describe the abilities that newborn infants possess and how they actively interact
with their environments.

2. List the stages in Piaget’s model of cognitive development and explain the concepts
that are mastered in each stage

3. Critique Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and describe other theories that
complement and expand on it.

4. Summarize the important processes of social development that occur in infancy and
childhood.

If all has gone well, a baby is born sometime around the 38th week of
pregnancy. The fetus is responsible, at least in part, for its own birth because
chemicals released by the developing fetal brain trigger the muscles in the
mother’s uterus to start the rhythmic contractions of childbirth. The
contractions are initially spaced at about 15-minute intervals but come more
rapidly with time. When the contractions reach an interval of 2 to 3 minutes,
the mother is requested to assist in the labor and help push the baby out.

The Newborn Arrives With Many Behaviors

Intact

Newborns are already prepared to face the new world they are about to
experience. As you can see in Table 6.2 “Survival Reflexes in Newborns”,
babies are equipped with a variety of reflexes, each providing an ability that
will help them survive their first few months of life as they continue to learn
new routines to help them survive in and manipulate their environments.

Table 6.2 Survival Reflexes in Newborns

Name Stimulus Response Significance

The baby turns its head

Rooting The baby’s cheek is toward the stroking, Ensures the infant’s feeding
reflex stroked. opens its mouth, and tries will be a reflexive habit
to suck.

(click to see video)

Protects eyes from strong

A light is flashed in the The baby closes both
Blink reflex and potentially dangerous
baby’s eyes. eyes.
stimuli

(click to see video)

A soft pinprick is
Withdrawal Keeps the exploring infant
applied to the sole of The baby flexes the leg.
reflex away from painful stimuli
the baby’s foot.

(click to see video)

The baby turns its head to

Tonic neck The baby is laid down Helps develop hand-eye
one side and extends the
reflex on its back. coordination
arm on the same side.

(click to see video)

The baby grasps the

An object is pressed
object pressed and can
Grasp reflex into the palm of the Helps in exploratory learning
even hold its own weight
baby.
for a brief period.

(click to see video)

Name Stimulus Response Significance

The baby extends arms Protects from falling; could

Loud noises or a
and legs and quickly have assisted infants in
Moro reflex sudden drop in height
brings them in as if trying holding onto their mothers
while holding the baby.
to grasp something. during rough traveling

(click to see video)

The baby is suspended

Baby makes stepping
Stepping with bare feet just Helps encourage motor
motions as if trying to
reflex above a surface and is development
walk.
moved forward.

(click to see video)

In addition to reflexes, newborns have preferences—they like sweet tasting

foods at first, while becoming more open to salty items by 4 months of age
(Beauchamp, Cowart, Menellia, & Marsh, 1994; Blass & Smith, 1992).
Newborns also prefer the smell of their mothers. An infant only 6 days old
is significantly more likely to turn toward its own mother’s breast pad than
to the breast pad of another baby’s mother (Porter, Makin, Davis, &
Christensen, 1992), and a newborn also shows a preference for the face of
its own mother (Bushnell, Sai, & Mullin, 1989).

Although infants are born ready to engage in some activities, they also
contribute to their own development through their own behaviors. The
child’s knowledge and abilities increase as it babbles, talks, crawls, tastes,
grasps, plays, and interacts with the objects in the environment (Gibson,
Rosenzweig, & Porter, 1988; Gibson & Pick, 2000; Smith & Thelen, 2003).
Parents may help in this process by providing a variety of activities and
experiences for the child. Research has found that animals raised in
environments with more novel objects and that engage in a variety of
stimulating activities have more brain synapses and larger cerebral cortexes,
and they perform better on a variety of learning tasks compared with
animals raised in more impoverished environments (Juraska, Henderson, &
Müller, 1984). Similar effects are likely occurring in children who have
opportunities to play, explore, and interact with their environments (Soska,
Adolph, & Johnson, 2010).

Research Focus: Using the Habituation Technique to Study What Infants Know

It may seem to you that babies have little ability to view, hear, understand, or remember the
world around them. Indeed, the famous psychologist William James presumed that the newborn
experiences a “blooming, buzzing confusion” (James, 1890, p. 462). And you may think that,
even if babies do know more than James gave them credit for, it might not be possible to find out
what they know. After all, infants can’t talk or respond to questions, so how would we ever find
out? But over the past two decades, developmental psychologists have created new ways to
determine what babies know, and they have found that they know much more than you, or
William James, might have expected.

One way that we can learn about the cognitive development of babies is by measuring their
behavior in response to the stimuli around them. For instance, some researchers have given
babies the chance to control which shapes they get to see or which sounds they get to hear
according to how hard they suck on a pacifier (Trehub & Rabinovitch, 1972). The sucking
behavior is used as a measure of the infants’ interest in the stimuli—the sounds or images they
suck hardest in response to are the ones we can assume they prefer.

Another approach to understanding cognitive development by observing the behavior of infants

is through the use of the habituation technique. Habituation refers to the decreased
responsiveness toward a stimulus after it has been presented numerous times in succession.
Organisms, including infants, tend to be more interested in things the first few times they
experience them and become less interested in them with more frequent exposure.
Developmental psychologists have used this general principle to help them understand what
babies remember and understand.

In the habituation procedure, a baby is placed in a high chair and presented with visual stimuli
while a video camera records the infant’s eye and face movements. When the experiment begins,
a stimulus (e.g., the face of an adult) appears in the baby’s field of view, and the amount of time
the baby looks at the face is recorded by the camera. Then the stimulus is removed for a few
seconds before it appears again and the gaze is again measured. Over time, the baby starts to
habituate to the face, such that each presentation elicits less gazing at the stimulus. Then, a new
stimulus (e.g., the face of a different adult or the same face looking in a different direction) is
presented, and the researchers observe whether the gaze time significantly increases. You can see
that, if the infant’s gaze time increases when a new stimulus is presented, this indicates that the
baby can differentiate the two stimuli.

Figure 6.2

Toshimasa Ishibashi – CC BY 2.0.

The habituation procedure is used to

assess the cognitive abilities of infants.

Although this procedure is very simple, it allows researchers to create variations that reveal a
great deal about a newborn’s cognitive ability. The trick is simply to change the stimulus in
 controlled ways to see if the baby “notices the difference.” Research using the habituation
procedure has found that babies can notice changes in colors, sounds, and even principles of
numbers and physics. For instance, in one experiment reported by Karen Wynn (1995), 6-month-
old babies were shown a presentation of a puppet that repeatedly jumped up and down either two
or three times, resting for a couple of seconds between sequences (the length of time and the
speed of the jumping were controlled). After the infants habituated to this display, the
presentation was changed such that the puppet jumped a different number of times. As you can
see in Figure 6.3 “Can Infants Do Math?”, the infants’ gaze time increased when Wynn changed
the presentation, suggesting that the infants could tell the difference between the number of
jumps.

Figure 6.3 Can Infants Do Math?

Karen Wynn found that babies that had habituated to a puppet jumping either two or three times

significantly increased their gaze when the puppet began to jump a different number of times.

Adapted from Wynn, K. (1995). Infants possess a system of numerical knowledge. Current Directions in

Psychological Science, 4, 172–176.

Cognitive Development During Childhood

Childhood is a time in which changes occur quickly. The child is growing

physically, and cognitive abilities are also developing. During this time the
child learns to actively manipulate and control the environment, and is first
exposed to the requirements of society, particularly the need to control the
bladder and bowels. According to Erik Erikson, the challenges that the child
must attain in childhood relate to the development of initiative, competence,
and independence. Children need to learn to explore the world, to become
self-reliant, and to make their own way in the environment.

Figure 6.4

mirjoran – Jean Piaget – CC BY 2.0.

Jean Piaget developed his theories of child development by

observing the behaviors of children.

These skills do not come overnight. Neurological changes during childhood

provide children the ability to do some things at certain ages, and yet make
it impossible for them to do other things. This fact was made apparent
through the groundbreaking work of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget.
During the 1920s, Piaget was administering intelligence tests to children in
an attempt to determine the kinds of logical thinking that children were
capable of. In the process of testing the children, Piaget became intrigued,
not so much by the answers that the children got right, but more by the
answers they got wrong. Piaget believed that the incorrect answers that the
children gave were not mere shots in the dark but rather represented specific
ways of thinking unique to the children’s developmental stage. Just as
almost all babies learn to roll over before they learn to sit up by themselves,
and learn to crawl before they learn to walk, Piaget believed that children
gain their cognitive ability in a developmental order. These insights—that
children at different ages think in fundamentally different ways—led to
Piaget’s stage model of cognitive development.

Piaget argued that children do not just passively learn but also actively try to
make sense of their worlds. He argued that, as they learn and mature,
children develop schemas—patterns of knowledge in long-term memory—
that help them remember, organize, and respond to information.
Furthermore, Piaget thought that when children experience new things, they
attempt to reconcile the new knowledge with existing schemas. Piaget
believed that the children use two distinct methods in doing so, methods that
he called assimilation and accommodation (see Figure 6.5 “Assimilation
and Accommodation”).

Figure 6.5 Assimilation and Accommodation

When children employ assimilation, they use already developed schemas to
understand new information. If children have learned a schema for horses,
then they may call the striped animal they see at the zoo a horse rather than
a zebra. In this case, children fit the existing schema to the new information
and label the new information with the existing knowledge.
Accommodation, on the other hand, involves learning new information,
and thus changing the schema. When a mother says, “No, honey, that’s a
zebra, not a horse,” the child may adapt the schema to fit the new stimulus,
learning that there are different types of four-legged animals, only one of
which is a horse.

Piaget’s most important contribution to understanding cognitive

development, and the fundamental aspect of his theory, was the idea that
development occurs in unique and distinct stages, with each stage occurring
at a specific time, in a sequential manner, and in a way that allows the child
to think about the world using new capacities. Piaget’s stages of cognitive
development are summarized in Table 6.3 “Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive
Development”.

Table 6.3 Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Approximate
Stage Characteristics Stage attainments
age range

The child experiences the world through

Birth to about 2
Sensorimotor the fundamental senses of seeing, Object permanence
years
hearing, touching, and tasting.

Children acquire the ability to internally

represent the world through language Theory of mind;
Preoperational 2 to 7 years and mental imagery. They also start to rapid increase in
see the world from other people’s language ability
perspectives.

Children become able to think logically.

Concrete They can increasingly perform
7 to 11 years Conservation
operational operations on objects that are only
imagined.

Adolescents can think systematically,

Formal 11 years to can reason about abstract concepts, and
Abstract logic
operational adulthood can understand ethics and scientific
reasoning.

The first developmental stage for Piaget was the sensorimotor stage, the
cognitive stage that begins at birth and lasts until around the age of 2. It is
defined by the direct physical interactions that babies have with the objects
around them. During this stage, babies form their first schemas by using
their primary senses—they stare at, listen to, reach for, hold, shake, and
taste the things in their environments.

During the sensorimotor stage, babies’ use of their senses to perceive the
world is so central to their understanding that whenever babies do not
directly perceive objects, as far as they are concerned, the objects do not
exist. Piaget found, for instance, that if he first interested babies in a toy and
then covered the toy with a blanket, children who were younger than 6
months of age would act as if the toy had disappeared completely—they
never tried to find it under the blanket but would nevertheless smile and
reach for it when the blanket was removed. Piaget found that it was not until
about 8 months that the children realized that the object was merely covered
and not gone. Piaget used the term object permanence to refer to the child’s
ability to know that an object exists even when the object cannot be
perceived.

Video Clip: Object Permanence

(click to see video)

Children younger than about 8 months of age do not understand object

permanence.

At about 2 years of age, and until about 7 years of age, children move into
the preoperational stage. During this stage, children begin to use language
and to think more abstractly about objects, but their understanding is more
intuitive and without much ability to deduce or reason. The thinking is
preoperational, meaning that the child lacks the ability to operate on or
transform objects mentally. In one study that showed the extent of this
inability, Judy DeLoache (1987) showed children a room within a small
dollhouse. Inside the room, a small toy was visible behind a small couch.
The researchers took the children to another lab room, which was an exact
replica of the dollhouse room, but full-sized. When children who were 2.5
years old were asked to find the toy, they did not know where to look—they
were simply unable to make the transition across the changes in room size.
Three-year-old children, on the other hand, immediately looked for the toy
behind the couch, demonstrating that they were improving their operational
skills.

The inability of young children to view transitions also leads them to be

egocentric—unable to readily see and understand other people’s viewpoints.
Developmental psychologists define the theory of mind as the ability to
take another person’s viewpoint, and the ability to do so increases rapidly
during the preoperational stage. In one demonstration of the development of
theory of mind, a researcher shows a child a video of another child (let’s call
her Anna) putting a ball in a red box. Then Anna leaves the room, and the
video shows that while she is gone, a researcher moves the ball from the red
box into a blue box. As the video continues, Anna comes back into the
room. The child is then asked to point to the box where Anna will probably
look to find her ball. Children who are younger than 4 years of age typically
are unable to understand that Anna does not know that the ball has been
moved, and they predict that she will look for it in the blue box. After 4
years of age, however, children have developed a theory of mind—they
realize that different people can have different viewpoints, and that
(although she will be wrong) Anna will nevertheless think that the ball is
still in the red box.

After about 7 years of age, the child moves into the concrete operational
stage, which is marked by more frequent and more accurate use of
transitions, operations, and abstract concepts, including those of time,
space, and numbers. An important milestone during the concrete operational
stage is the development of conservation—the understanding that changes
in the form of an object do not necessarily mean changes in the quantity of
the object. Children younger than 7 years generally think that a glass of milk
that is tall holds more milk than a glass of milk that is shorter and wider, and
they continue to believe this even when they see the same milk poured back
and forth between the glasses. It appears that these children focus only on
one dimension (in this case, the height of the glass) and ignore the other
dimension (width). However, when children reach the concrete operational
stage, their abilities to understand such transformations make them aware
that, although the milk looks different in the different glasses, the amount
must be the same.

Video Clip: Conservation

(click to see video)

Children younger than about 7 years of age do not understand the principles
of conservation.

At about 11 years of age, children enter the formal operational stage,

which is marked by the ability to think in abstract terms and to use scientific
and philosophical lines of thought. Children in the formal operational stage
are better able to systematically test alternative ideas to determine their
influences on outcomes. For instance, rather than haphazardly changing
different aspects of a situation that allows no clear conclusions to be drawn,
they systematically make changes in one thing at a time and observe what
difference that particular change makes. They learn to use deductive
reasoning, such as “if this, then that,” and they become capable of imagining
situations that “might be,” rather than just those that actually exist.

Piaget’s theories have made a substantial and lasting contribution to

developmental psychology. His contributions include the idea that children
are not merely passive receptacles of information but rather actively engage
in acquiring new knowledge and making sense of the world around them.
This general idea has generated many other theories of cognitive
development, each designed to help us better understand the development of
the child’s information-processing skills (Klahr & McWinney, 1998;
Shrager & Siegler, 1998). Furthermore, the extensive research that Piaget’s
theory has stimulated has generally supported his beliefs about the order in
which cognition develops. Piaget’s work has also been applied in many
domains—for instance, many teachers make use of Piaget’s stages to
develop educational approaches aimed at the level children are
developmentally prepared for (Driscoll, 1994; Levin, Siegler, & Druyan,
1990).

Over the years, Piagetian ideas have been refined. For instance, it is now
believed that object permanence develops gradually, rather than more
immediately, as a true stage model would predict, and that it can sometimes
develop much earlier than Piaget expected. Renée Baillargeon and her
colleagues (Baillargeon, 2004; Wang, Baillargeon, & Brueckner, 2004)
placed babies in a habituation setup, having them watch as an object was
placed behind a screen, entirely hidden from view. The researchers then
arranged for the object to reappear from behind another screen in a different
place. Babies who saw this pattern of events looked longer at the display
than did babies who witnessed the same object physically being moved
between the screens. These data suggest that the babies were aware that the
object still existed even though it was hidden behind the screen, and thus
that they were displaying object permanence as early as 3 months of age,
rather than the 8 months that Piaget predicted.

Another factor that might have surprised Piaget is the extent to which a
child’s social surroundings influence learning. In some cases, children
progress to new ways of thinking and retreat to old ones depending on the
type of task they are performing, the circumstances they find themselves in,
and the nature of the language used to instruct them (Courage & Howe,
2002). And children in different cultures show somewhat different patterns
of cognitive development. Dasen (1972) found that children in non-Western
cultures moved to the next developmental stage about a year later than did
children from Western cultures, and that level of schooling also influenced
cognitive development. In short, Piaget’s theory probably understated the
contribution of environmental factors to social development.

More recent theories (Cole, 1996; Rogoff, 1990; Tomasello, 1999), based in
large part on the sociocultural theory of the Russian scholar Lev Vygotsky
(1962, 1978), argue that cognitive development is not isolated entirely
within the child but occurs at least in part through social interactions. These
scholars argue that children’s thinking develops through constant
interactions with more competent others, including parents, peers, and
teachers.

An extension of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory is the idea of community

learning, in which children serve as both teachers and learners. This
approach is frequently used in classrooms to improve learning as well as to
increase responsibility and respect for others. When children work
cooperatively together in groups to learn material, they can help and support
each other’s learning as well as learn about each other as individuals,
thereby reducing prejudice (Aronson, Blaney, Stephan, Sikes, & Snapp,
1978; Brown, 1997).

Social Development During Childhood

It is through the remarkable increases in cognitive ability that children learn

to interact with and understand their environments. But these cognitive
skills are only part of the changes that are occurring during childhood.
Equally crucial is the development of the child’s social skills—the ability to
understand, predict, and create bonds with the other people in their
environments.

Knowing the Self: The Development of the

Self-Concept

One of the important milestones in a child’s social development is learning

about his or her own self-existence. This self-awareness is known as
consciousness, and the content of consciousness is known as the self-
concept. The self-concept is a knowledge representation or schema that
contains knowledge about us, including our beliefs about our personality
traits, physical characteristics, abilities, values, goals, and roles, as well as
the knowledge that we exist as individuals (Kagan, 1991).

Figure 6.6

Kona Gallagher – Hey baby, want to play? – CC

BY-SA 2.0; Chi King – Hey, What’s Going On? –
CC BY 2.0; Molly Marshall – Brentley’s
Reflection – CC BY-NC 2.0.

A simple test of self-awareness is the ability to recognize

oneself in a mirror. Humans and chimpanzees can pass the test;

dogs never do.

Some animals, including chimpanzees, orangutans, and perhaps dolphins,
have at least a primitive sense of self (Boysen & Himes, 1999). In one study
(Gallup, 1970), researchers painted a red dot on the foreheads of
anesthetized chimpanzees and then placed each animal in a cage with a
mirror. When the chimps woke up and looked in the mirror, they touched the
dot on their faces, not the dot on the faces in the mirror. These actions
suggest that the chimps understood that they were looking at themselves and
not at other animals, and thus we can assume that they are able to realize
that they exist as individuals. On the other hand, most other animals,
including, for instance dogs, cats, and monkeys, never realize that it is they
themselves in the mirror.

Infants who have a similar red dot painted on their foreheads recognize
themselves in a mirror in the same way that the chimps do, and they do this
by about 18 months of age (Povinelli, Landau, & Perilloux, 1996). The
child’s knowledge about the self continues to develop as the child grows. By
age 2, the infant becomes aware of his or her sex, as a boy or a girl. By age
4, self-descriptions are likely to be based on physical features, such as hair
color and possessions, and by about age 6, the child is able to understand
basic emotions and the concepts of traits, being able to make statements
such as, “I am a nice person” (Harter, 1998).

Soon after children enter grade school (at about age 5 or 6), they begin to
make comparisons with other children, a process known as social
comparison. For example, a child might describe himself as being faster
than one boy but slower than another (Moretti & Higgins, 1990). According
to Erikson, the important component of this process is the development of
competence and autonomy—the recognition of one’s own abilities relative
to other children. And children increasingly show awareness of social
situations—they understand that other people are looking at and judging
them the same way that they are looking at and judging others (Doherty,
2009).

Successfully Relating to Others: Attachment

One of the most important behaviors a child must learn is how to be

accepted by others—the development of close and meaningful social
relationships. The emotional bonds that we develop with those with whom
we feel closest, and particularly the bonds that an infant develops with the
mother or primary caregiver, are referred to as attachment (Cassidy &
Shaver, 1999).

Figure 6.7

Children develop appropriate attachment styles through their

interactions with caregivers.

Sharon Mollerus – Moms and Boys at the Fountain – CC BY

2.0.

As late as the 1930s, psychologists believed that children who were raised
in institutions such as orphanages, and who received good physical care and
proper nourishment, would develop normally, even if they had little
interaction with their caretakers. But studies by the developmental
psychologist John Bowlby (1953) and others showed that these children did
not develop normally—they were usually sickly, emotionally slow, and
generally unmotivated. These observations helped make it clear that normal
infant development requires successful attachment with a caretaker.

In one classic study showing the importance of attachment, Wisconsin

University psychologists Harry and Margaret Harlow investigated the
responses of young monkeys, separated from their biological mothers, to
two surrogate mothers introduced to their cages. One—the wire mother—
consisted of a round wooden head, a mesh of cold metal wires, and a bottle
of milk from which the baby monkey could drink. The second mother was a
foam-rubber form wrapped in a heated terry-cloth blanket. The Harlows
found that, although the infant monkeys went to the wire mother for food,
they overwhelmingly preferred and spent significantly more time with the
warm terry-cloth mother that provided no food but did provide comfort
(Harlow, 1958).

Video Clip: The Harlows’ Monkeys

(click to see video)

The studies by the Harlows showed that young monkeys preferred the warm
mother that provided a secure base to the cold mother that provided food.

The Harlows’ studies confirmed that babies have social as well as physical
needs. Both monkeys and human babies need a secure base that allows them
to feel safe. From this base, they can gain the confidence they need to
venture out and explore their worlds. Erikson (Table 6.1 “Challenges of
Development as Proposed by Erik Erikson”) was in agreement on the
importance of a secure base, arguing that the most important goal of infancy
was the development of a basic sense of trust in one’s caregivers.
Developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth, a student of John Bowlby,
was interested in studying the development of attachment in infants.
Ainsworth created a laboratory test that measured an infant’s attachment to
his or her parent. The test is called the strange situation because it is
conducted in a context that is unfamiliar to the child and therefore likely to
heighten the child’s need for his or her parent (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters,
& Wall, 1978). During the procedure, which lasts about 20 minutes, the
parent and the infant are first left alone, while the infant explores the room
full of toys. Then a strange adult enters the room and talks for a minute to
the parent, after which the parent leaves the room. The stranger stays with
the infant for a few minutes, and then the parent again enters and the
stranger leaves the room. During the entire session, a video camera records
the child’s behaviors, which are later coded by trained coders.

Video Clip: The Strange Situation

(click to see video)

In the strange situation, children are observed responding to the comings

and goings of parents and unfamiliar adults in their environments.

On the basis of their behaviors, the children are categorized into one of four
groups, where each group reflects a different kind of attachment relationship
with the caregiver. A child with a secure attachment style usually explores
freely while the mother is present and engages with the stranger. The child
may be upset when the mother departs but is also happy to see the mother
return. A child with an ambivalent (sometimes called insecure-resistant)
attachment style is wary about the situation in general, particularly the
stranger, and stays close or even clings to the mother rather than exploring
the toys. When the mother leaves, the child is extremely distressed and is
ambivalent when she returns. The child may rush to the mother but then fail
to cling to her when she picks up the child. A child with an avoidant
(sometimes called insecure-avoidant) attachment style will avoid or ignore
the mother, showing little emotion when the mother departs or returns. The
child may run away from the mother when she approaches. The child will
not explore very much, regardless of who is there, and the stranger will not
be treated much differently from the mother.

Finally, a child with a disorganized attachment style seems to have no

consistent way of coping with the stress of the strange situation—the child
may cry during the separation but avoid the mother when she returns, or the
child may approach the mother but then freeze or fall to the floor. Although
some cultural differences in attachment styles have been found (Rothbaum,
Weisz, Pott, Miyake, & Morelli, 2000), research has also found that the
proportion of children who fall into each of the attachment categories is
relatively constant across cultures (see Figure 6.8 “Proportion of Children
With Different Attachment Styles”).

Figure 6.8 Proportion of Children With Different Attachment Styles

The graph shows the approximate proportion of children who have each of the four attachment styles. These proportions are fairly

constant across cultures.

You might wonder whether differences in attachment style are determined

more by the child (nature) or more by the parents (nurture). Most
developmental psychologists believe that socialization is primary, arguing
that a child becomes securely attached when the mother is available and
able to meet the needs of the child in a responsive and appropriate manner,
but that the insecure styles occur when the mother is insensitive and
responds inconsistently to the child’s needs. In a direct test of this idea,
Dutch researcher Dymphna van den Boom (1994) randomly assigned some
babies’ mothers to a training session in which they learned to better respond
to their children’s needs. The research found that these mothers’ babies were
more likely to show a secure attachment style in comparison to the mothers
in a control group that did not receive training.

But the attachment behavior of the child is also likely influenced, at least in
part, by temperament, the innate personality characteristics of the infant.
Some children are warm, friendly, and responsive, whereas others tend to be
more irritable, less manageable, and difficult to console. These differences
may also play a role in attachment (Gillath, Shaver, Baek, & Chun, 2008;
Seifer, Schiller, Sameroff, Resnick, & Riordan, 1996). Taken together, it
seems safe to say that attachment, like most other developmental processes,
is affected by an interplay of genetic and socialization influences.

Research Focus: Using a Longitudinal Research Design to Assess the Stability of

Attachment

You might wonder whether the attachment style displayed by infants has much influence later in
life. In fact, research has found that the attachment styles of children predict their emotions and
their behaviors many years later (Cassidy & Shaver, 1999). Psychologists have studied the
persistence of attachment styles over time using longitudinal research designs—research
designs in which individuals in the sample are followed and contacted over an extended period
of time, often over multiple developmental stages.

In one such study, Waters, Merrick, Treboux, Crowell, and Albersheim (2000) examined the
extent of stability and change in attachment patterns from infancy to early adulthood. In their
research, 60 middle-class infants who had been tested in the strange situation at 1 year of age
were recontacted 20 years later and interviewed using a measure of adult attachment. Waters and
colleagues found that 72% of the infants received the same secure versus insecure attachment
classification in early adulthood as they had received as infants. The adults who changed
categorization (usually from secure to insecure) were primarily those who had experienced
traumatic events, such as the death or divorce of parents, severe illnesses (contracted by the
parents or the children themselves), or physical or sexual abuse by a family member.

In addition to finding that people generally display the same attachment style over time,
longitudinal studies have also found that the attachment classification received in infancy (as
assessed using the strange situation or other measures) predicts many childhood and adult
behaviors. Securely attached infants have closer, more harmonious relationship with peers, are
less anxious and aggressive, and are better able to understand others’ emotions than are those
who were categorized as insecure as infants (Lucas-Thompson & Clarke-Stewart, (2007). And
securely attached adolescents also have more positive peer and romantic relationships than their
less securely attached counterparts (Carlson, Sroufe, & Egeland, 2004).

Conducting longitudinal research is a very difficult task, but one that has substantial rewards.
When the sample is large enough and the time frame long enough, the potential findings of such
a study can provide rich and important information about how people change over time and the
causes of those changes. The drawbacks of longitudinal studies include the cost and the
difficulty of finding a large sample that can be tracked accurately over time and the time (many
years) that it takes to get the data. In addition, because the results are delayed over an extended
period, the research questions posed at the beginning of the study may become less relevant over
time as the research continues.

Cross-sectional research designs represent an alternative to longitudinal designs. In a cross-

sectional research design, age comparisons are made between samples of different people at
different ages at one time. In one example, Jang, Livesley, and Vernon (1996) studied two groups
of identical and nonidentical (fraternal) twins, one group in their 20s and the other group in their
50s, to determine the influence of genetics on personality. They found that genetics played a
more significant role in the older group of twins, suggesting that genetics became more
significant for personality in later adulthood.

Cross-sectional studies have a major advantage in that the scientist does not have to wait for
years to pass to get results. On the other hand, the interpretation of the results in a cross-sectional
study is not as clear as those from a longitudinal study, in which the same individuals are studied
over time. Most important, the interpretations drawn from cross-sectional studies may be
confounded by cohort effects. Cohort effects refer to the possibility that differences in cognition
or behavior at two points in time may be caused by differences that are unrelated to the changes
in age. The differences might instead be due to environmental factors that affect an entire age
group. For instance, in the study by Jang, Livesley, and Vernon (1996) that compared younger
and older twins, cohort effects might be a problem. The two groups of adults necessarily grew up
in different time periods, and they may have been differentially influenced by societal
experiences, such as economic hardship, the presence of wars, or the introduction of new
technology. As a result, it is difficult in cross-sectional studies such as this one to determine
whether the differences between the groups (e.g., in terms of the relative roles of environment
and genetics) are due to age or to other factors.

Key Takeaways

Babies are born with a variety of skills and abilities that contribute to their survival,
and they also actively learn by engaging with their environments.

The habituation technique is used to demonstrate the newborn’s ability to remember

and learn from experience.

Children use both assimilation and accommodation to develop functioning schemas

of the world.

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development proposes that children develop in a specific

series of sequential stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and
formal operational.

Piaget’s theories have had a major impact, but they have also been critiqued and
expanded.

Social development requires the development of a secure base from which children
feel free to explore. Attachment styles refer to the security of this base and more
 generally to the type of relationship that people, and especially children, develop
with those who are important to them.

Longitudinal and cross-sectional studies are each used to test hypotheses about
development, and each approach has advantages and disadvantages.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Give an example of a situation in which you or someone else might show cognitive
assimilation and cognitive accommodation. In what cases do you think each process
is most likely to occur?

2. Consider some examples of how Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories of cognitive

development might be used by teachers who are teaching young children.

3. Consider the attachment styles of some of your friends in terms of their relationships
with their parents and other friends. Do you think their style is secure?

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6.3 Adolescence: Developing Independence
and Identity

Learning Objectives

1. Summarize the physical and cognitive changes that occur for boys and girls during
adolescence.

2. Explain how adolescents develop a sense of morality and of self-identity.

Adolescence is defined as the years between the onset of puberty and the
beginning of adulthood. In the past, when people were likely to marry in
their early 20s or younger, this period might have lasted only 10 years or
less—starting roughly between ages 12 and 13 and ending by age 20, at
which time the child got a job or went to work on the family farm, married,
and started his or her own family. Today, children mature more slowly,
move away from home at later ages, and maintain ties with their parents
longer. For instance, children may go away to college but still receive
financial support from parents, and they may come home on weekends or
even to live for extended time periods. Thus the period between puberty and
adulthood may well last into the late 20s, merging into adulthood itself. In
fact, it is appropriate now to consider the period of adolescence and that of
emerging adulthood (the ages between 18 and the middle or late 20s)
together.

During adolescence, the child continues to grow physically, cognitively, and

emotionally, changing from a child into an adult. The body grows rapidly in
size and the sexual and reproductive organs become fully functional. At the
same time, as adolescents develop more advanced patterns of reasoning and
a stronger sense of self, they seek to forge their own identities, developing
important attachments with people other than their parents. Particularly in
Western societies, where the need to forge a new independence is critical
(Baumeister & Tice, 1986; Twenge, 2006), this period can be stressful for
many children, as it involves new emotions, the need to develop new social
relationships, and an increasing sense of responsibility and independence.

Although adolescence can be a time of stress for many teenagers, most of

them weather the trials and tribulations successfully. For example, the
majority of adolescents experiment with alcohol sometime before high
school graduation. Although many will have been drunk at least once,
relatively few teenagers will develop long-lasting drinking problems or
permit alcohol to adversely affect their school or personal relationships.
Similarly, a great many teenagers break the law during adolescence, but
very few young people develop criminal careers (Farrington, 1995). These
facts do not, however, mean that using drugs or alcohol is a good idea. The
use of recreational drugs can have substantial negative consequences, and
the likelihood of these problems (including dependence, addiction, and even
brain damage) is significantly greater for young adults who begin using
drugs at an early age.

Physical Changes in Adolescence

Adolescence begins with the onset of puberty, a developmental period in

which hormonal changes cause rapid physical alterations in the body,
culminating in sexual maturity. Although the timing varies to some degree
across cultures, the average age range for reaching puberty is between 9 and
14 years for girls and between 10 and 17 years for boys (Marshall & Tanner,
1986).
Puberty begins when the pituitary gland begins to stimulate the production
of the male sex hormone testosterone in boys and the female sex hormones
estrogen and progesterone in girls. The release of these sex hormones
triggers the development of the primary sex characteristics, the sex organs
concerned with reproduction (Figure 6.9 “Sex Characteristics”). These
changes include the enlargement of the testicles and the penis in boys and
the development of the ovaries, uterus, and vagina in girls. In addition,
secondary sex characteristics (features that distinguish the two sexes from
each other but are not involved in reproduction) are also developing, such
as an enlarged Adam’s apple, a deeper voice, and pubic and underarm hair
in boys and enlargement of the breasts, hips, and the appearance of pubic
and underarm hair in girls (Figure 6.9 “Sex Characteristics”). The
enlargement of breasts is usually the first sign of puberty in girls and, on
average, occurs between ages 10 and 12 (Marshall & Tanner, 1986). Boys
typically begin to grow facial hair between ages 14 and 16, and both boys
and girls experience a rapid growth spurt during this stage. The growth spurt
for girls usually occurs earlier than that for boys, with some boys continuing
to grow into their 20s.

Figure 6.9 Sex Characteristics

Puberty brings dramatic changes in the body, including the development of primary and secondary sex

characteristics.

A major milestone in puberty for girls is menarche, the first menstrual

period, typically experienced at around 12 or 13 years of age (Anderson,
Dannal, & Must, 2003). The age of menarche varies substantially and is
determined by genetics, as well as by diet and lifestyle, since a certain
amount of body fat is needed to attain menarche. Girls who are very slim,
who engage in strenuous athletic activities, or who are malnourished may
begin to menstruate later. Even after menstruation begins, girls whose level
of body fat drops below the critical level may stop having their periods. The
sequence of events for puberty is more predictable than the age at which
they occur. Some girls may begin to grow pubic hair at age 10 but not attain
menarche until age 15. In boys, facial hair may not appear until 10 years
after the initial onset of puberty.
The timing of puberty in both boys and girls can have significant
psychological consequences. Boys who mature earlier attain some social
advantages because they are taller and stronger and, therefore, often more
popular (Lynne, Graber, Nichols, Brooks-Gunn, & Botvin, 2007). At the
same time, however, early-maturing boys are at greater risk for delinquency
and are more likely than their peers to engage in antisocial behaviors,
including drug and alcohol use, truancy, and precocious sexual activity.
Girls who mature early may find their maturity stressful, particularly if they
experience teasing or sexual harassment (Mendle, Turkheimer, & Emery,
2007; Pescovitz & Walvoord, 2007). Early-maturing girls are also more
likely to have emotional problems, a lower self-image, and higher rates of
depression, anxiety, and disordered eating than their peers (Ge, Conger, &
Elder, 1996).

Cognitive Development in Adolescence

Although the most rapid cognitive changes occur during childhood, the
brain continues to develop throughout adolescence, and even into the 20s
(Weinberger, Elvevåg, & Giedd, 2005). During adolescence, the brain
continues to form new neural connections, but also casts off unused neurons
and connections (Blakemore, 2008). As teenagers mature, the prefrontal
cortex, the area of the brain responsible for reasoning, planning, and
problem solving, also continues to develop (Goldberg, 2001). And myelin,
the fatty tissue that forms around axons and neurons and helps speed
transmissions between different regions of the brain, also continues to grow
(Rapoport et al., 1999).

Adolescents often seem to act impulsively, rather than thoughtfully, and this
may be in part because the development of the prefrontal cortex is, in
general, slower than the development of the emotional parts of the brain,
including the limbic system (Blakemore, 2008). Furthermore, the hormonal
surge that is associated with puberty, which primarily influences emotional
responses, may create strong emotions and lead to impulsive behavior. It has
been hypothesized that adolescents may engage in risky behavior, such as
smoking, drug use, dangerous driving, and unprotected sex in part because
they have not yet fully acquired the mental ability to curb impulsive
behavior or to make entirely rational judgments (Steinberg, 2007).

The new cognitive abilities that are attained during adolescence may also
give rise to new feelings of egocentrism, in which adolescents believe that
they can do anything and that they know better than anyone else, including
their parents (Elkind, 1978, p. 199). Teenagers are likely to be highly self-
conscious, often creating an imaginary audience in which they feel that
everyone is constantly watching them (Goossens, Beyers, Emmen, & van
Aken, 2002). Because teens think so much about themselves, they
mistakenly believe that others must be thinking about them, too (Rycek,
Stuhr, McDermott, Benker, & Swartz, 1998). It is no wonder that everything
a teen’s parents do suddenly feels embarrassing to them when they are in
public.

Social Development in Adolescence

Some of the most important changes that occur during adolescence involve
the further development of the self-concept and the development of new
attachments. Whereas young children are most strongly attached to their
parents, the important attachments of adolescents move increasingly away
from parents and increasingly toward peers (Harris, 1998). As a result,
parents’ influence diminishes at this stage.

According to Erikson (Table 6.1 “Challenges of Development as Proposed

by Erik Erikson”), the main social task of the adolescent is the search for a
unique identity—the ability to answer the question, “Who am I?” In the
search for identity, the adolescent may experience role confusion in which
he or she is balancing or choosing among identities, taking on negative or
undesirable identities, or temporarily giving up looking for an identity
altogether if things are not going well.

One approach to assessing identity development was proposed by James

Marcia (1980). In his approach, adolescents are asked questions regarding
their exploration of and commitment to issues related to occupation,
politics, religion, and sexual behavior. The responses to the questions allow
the researchers to classify the adolescent into one of four identity categories
(see Table 6.4 “James Marcia’s Stages of Identity Development”).

Table 6.4 James Marcia’s Stages of Identity Development

Identity-diffusion The individual does not have firm commitments regarding the issues in
status question and is not making progress toward them.

The individual has not engaged in any identity experimentation and has
Foreclosure status
established an identity based on the choices or values of others.

The individual is exploring various choices but has not yet made a clear
Moratorium status
commitment to any of them.

Identity- The individual has attained a coherent and committed identity based on
achievement status personal decisions.

Source: Adapted from Marcia, J. (1980). Identity in adolescence. Handbook of adolescent psychology,
5, 145–160.

Figure 6.10
Adolescents search for stable attachments through the

development of social identities.

Russell Mondy – Mission vs. Balboa – CC BY-NC 2.0; Gage

Skidmore – Teen Titans cosplay – CC BY-SA 2.0; Toni Protto –

Mistura Freak – CC BY 2.0.

Studies assessing how teens pass through Marcia’s stages show that,
although most teens eventually succeed in developing a stable identity, the
path to it is not always easy and there are many routes that can be taken.
Some teens may simply adopt the beliefs of their parents or the first role that
is offered to them, perhaps at the expense of searching for other, more
promising possibilities (foreclosure status). Other teens may spend years
trying on different possible identities (moratorium status) before finally
choosing one.

To help them work through the process of developing an identity, teenagers

may well try out different identities in different social situations. They may
maintain one identity at home and a different type of persona when they are
with their peers. Eventually, most teenagers do integrate the different
possibilities into a single self-concept and a comfortable sense of identity
(identity-achievement status).

For teenagers, the peer group provides valuable information about the self-
concept. For instance, in response to the question “What were you like as a
teenager? (e.g., cool, nerdy, awkward?),” posed on the website Answerbag,
one teenager replied in this way:
I’m still a teenager now, but from 8th–9th grade I didn’t really know what I wanted at
all. I was smart, so I hung out with the nerdy kids. I still do; my friends mean the world
to me. But in the middle of 8th I started hanging out with whom you may call the
“cool” kids…and I also hung out with some stoners, just for variety. I pierced various
parts of my body and kept my grades up. Now, I’m just trying to find who I am. I’m
even doing my sophomore year in China so I can get a better view of what I want.
(Answerbag, 2007)

Responses like this one demonstrate the extent to which adolescents are
developing their self-concepts and self-identities and how they rely on peers
to help them do that. The writer here is trying out several (perhaps
conflicting) identities, and the identities any teen experiments with are
defined by the group the person chooses to be a part of. The friendship
groups (cliques, crowds, or gangs) that are such an important part of the
adolescent experience allow the young adult to try out different identities,
and these groups provide a sense of belonging and acceptance (Rubin,
Bukowski, & Parker, 2006). A big part of what the adolescent is learning is
social identity, the part of the self-concept that is derived from one’s group
memberships. Adolescents define their social identities according to how
they are similar to and differ from others, finding meaning in the sports,
religious, school, gender, and ethnic categories they belong to.

Developing Moral Reasoning: Kohlberg’s

Theory

The independence that comes with adolescence requires independent

thinking as well as the development of morality—standards of behavior that
are generally agreed on within a culture to be right or proper. Just as Piaget
believed that children’s cognitive development follows specific patterns,
Lawrence Kohlberg (1984) argued that children learn their moral values
through active thinking and reasoning, and that moral development follows
a series of stages. To study moral development, Kohlberg posed moral
dilemmas to children, teenagers, and adults, such as the following:
A man’s wife is dying of cancer and there is only one drug that can save her. The only
place to get the drug is at the store of a pharmacist who is known to overcharge people
for drugs. The man can only pay $1,000, but the pharmacist wants $2,000, and refuses
to sell it to him for less, or to let him pay later. Desperate, the man later breaks into the
pharmacy and steals the medicine. Should he have done that? Was it right or wrong?
Why? (Kohlberg, 1984)

Video Clip: People Being Interviewed About Kohlberg’s

Stages

(click to see video)

As you can see in Table 6.5 “Lawrence Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral

Reasoning”, Kohlberg concluded, on the basis of their responses to the
moral questions, that, as children develop intellectually, they pass through
three stages of moral thinking: the preconventional level, the conventional
level, and the postconventional level.

Table 6.5 Lawrence Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Reasoning

Age Moral Stage Description

Until about the age of 9, children, focus on self-interest. At

Young Preconventional this stage, punishment is avoided and rewards are sought. A
children morality person at this level will argue, “The man shouldn’t steal the
drug, as he may get caught and go to jail.”

By early adolescence, the child begins to care about how

situational outcomes impact others and wants to please and be
accepted. At this developmental phase, people are able to
Older value the good that can be derived from holding to social
children, Conventional norms in the form of laws or less formalized rules. For
adolescents, morality example, a person at this level may say, “He should not steal
most adults the drug, as everyone will see him as a thief, and his wife,
who needs the drug, wouldn’t want to be cured because of
thievery,” or, “No matter what, he should obey the law
because stealing is a crime.”

At this stage, individuals employ abstract reasoning to justify

behaviors. Moral behavior is based on self-chosen ethical
principles that are generally comprehensive and universal,
Postconventional such as justice, dignity, and equality. Someone with self-
Many adults
morality chosen principles may say, “The man should steal the drug to
cure his wife and then tell the authorities that he has done so.
He may have to pay a penalty, but at least he has saved a
human life.”

Although research has supported Kohlberg’s idea that moral reasoning

changes from an early emphasis on punishment and social rules and
regulations to an emphasis on more general ethical principles, as with
Piaget’s approach, Kohlberg’s stage model is probably too simple. For one,
children may use higher levels of reasoning for some types of problems, but
revert to lower levels in situations where doing so is more consistent with
their goals or beliefs (Rest, 1979). Second, it has been argued that the stage
model is particularly appropriate for Western, rather than non-Western,
samples in which allegiance to social norms (such as respect for authority)
may be particularly important (Haidt, 2001). And there is frequently little
correlation between how children score on the moral stages and how they
behave in real life.

Perhaps the most important critique of Kohlberg’s theory is that it may

describe the moral development of boys better than it describes that of girls.
Carol Gilligan (1982) has argued that, because of differences in their
socialization, males tend to value principles of justice and rights, whereas
females value caring for and helping others. Although there is little evidence
that boys and girls score differently on Kohlberg’s stages of moral
development (Turiel, 1998), it is true that girls and women tend to focus
more on issues of caring, helping, and connecting with others than do boys
and men (Jaffee & Hyde, 2000).If you don’t believe this, ask yourself when
you last got a thank-you note from a man.

Key Takeaways

Adolescence is the period of time between the onset of puberty and emerging
adulthood.

Emerging adulthood is the period from age 18 years until the mid-20s in which
young people begin to form bonds outside the family, attend college, and find work.
Even so, they tend not to be fully independent and have not taken on all the
responsibilities of adulthood. This stage is most prevalent in Western cultures.

Puberty is a developmental period in which hormonal changes cause rapid physical

alterations in the body.
 The cerebral cortex continues to develop during adolescence and early adulthood,
enabling improved reasoning, judgment, impulse control, and long-term planning.

A defining aspect of adolescence is the development of a consistent and committed

self-identity. The process of developing an identity can take time but most
adolescents succeed in developing a stable identity.

Kohlberg’s theory proposes that moral reasoning is divided into the following stages:
preconventional morality, conventional morality, and postconventional morality.

Kohlberg’s theory of morality has been expanded and challenged, particularly by

Gilligan, who has focused on differences in morality between boys and girls.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Based on what you learned in this chapter, do you think that people should be
allowed to drive at age 16? Why or why not? At what age do you think they should
be allowed to vote and to drink alcohol?

2. Think about your experiences in high school. What sort of cliques or crowds were
there? How did people express their identities in these groups? How did you use
your groups to define yourself and develop your own identity?

References

Anderson, S. E., Dannal, G. E., & Must, A. (2003). Relative weight and race
influence average age at menarche: Results from two nationally
representative surveys of U.S. girls studied 25 years apart. Pediatrics, 111,
844–850.
Answerbag. (2007, March 20). What were you like as a teenager? (e.g.,
cool, nerdy, awkward?). Retrieved from
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/171753

Baumeister, R. F., & Tice, D. M. (1986). How adolescence became the

struggle for self: A historical transformation of psychological development.
In J. Suls & A. G. Greenwald (Eds.), Psychological perspectives on the self
(Vol. 3, pp. 183–201). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Blakemore, S. J. (2008). Development of the social brain during

adolescence. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61, 40–49.

Elkind, D. (1978). The child’s reality: Three developmental themes.

Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Farrington, D. P. (1995). The challenge of teenage antisocial behavior. In M.

Rutter & M. E. Rutter (Eds.), Psychosocial disturbances in young people:
Challenges for prevention (pp. 83–130). New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.

Ge, X., Conger, R. D., & Elder, G. H., Jr. (1996). Coming of age too early:
Pubertal influences on girls’ vulnerability to psychological distress. Child
Development, 67(6), 3386–3400.

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s

development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Goldberg, E. (2001). The executive brain: Frontal lobes and the civilized
mind. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Goossens, L., Beyers, W., Emmen, M., & van Aken, M. (2002). The
imaginary audience and personal fable: Factor analyses and concurrent
validity of the “new look” measures. Journal of Research on Adolescence,
12(2), 193–215.

Harris, J. (1998), The nurture assumption—Why children turn out the way
they do. New York, NY: Free Press.

Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist
approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108(4), 814–834.

Kohlberg, L. (1984). The psychology of moral development: Essays on

moral development (Vol. 2, p. 200). San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row.

Jaffee, S., & Hyde, J. S. (2000). Gender differences in moral orientation: A

meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 126(5), 703–726.

Lynne, S. D., Graber, J. A., Nichols, T. R., Brooks-Gunn, J., & Botvin, G. J.
(2007). Links between pubertal timing, peer influences, and externalizing
behaviors among urban students followed through middle school. Journal of
Adolescent Health, 40, 181.e7–181.e13 (p. 198).

Mendle, J., Turkheimer, E., & Emery, R. E. (2007). Detrimental

psychological outcomes associated with early pubertal timing in adolescent
girls. Developmental Review, 27, 151–171; Pescovitz, O. H., & Walvoord,
E. C. (2007). When puberty is precocious: Scientific and clinical aspects.
Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.

Marcia, J. (1980). Identity in adolescence. Handbook of Adolescent

Psychology, 5, 145–160.

Marshall, W. A., & Tanner, J. M. (1986). Puberty. In F. Falkner & J. M.

Tanner (Eds.), Human growth: A comprehensive treatise (2nd ed., pp. 171–
209). New York, NY: Plenum Press.
Rapoport, J. L., Giedd, J. N., Blumenthal, J., Hamburger, S., Jeffries, N.,
Fernandez, T.,…Evans, A. (1999). Progressive cortical change during
adolescence in childhood-onset schizophrenia: A longitudinal magnetic
resonance imaging study. Archives of General Psychiatry, 56(7), 649–654.

Rest, J. (1979). Development in judging moral issues. Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press.

Rubin, K. H., Bukowski, W. M., & Parker, J. G. (2006). Peer interactions,

relationships, and groups. In N. Eisenberg, W. Damon, & R. M. Lerner
(Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Social, emotional, and personality
development (6th ed., Vol. 3, pp. 571–645). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley &
Sons.

Rycek, R. F., Stuhr, S. L., Mcdermott, J., Benker, J., & Swartz, M. D.
(1998). Adolescent egocentrism and cognitive functioning during late
adolescence. Adolescence, 33, 746–750.

Steinberg, L. (2007). Risk taking in adolescence: New perspectives from

brain and behavioral science. Current Directions in Psychological Science,
16, 55–59.

Turiel, E. (1998). The development of morality. In W. Damon (Ed.),

Handbook of child psychology: Socialization (5th ed., Vol. 3, pp. 863–932).
New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.

Twenge, J. M. (2006). Generation me: Why today’s young Americans are

more confident, assertive, entitled—and more miserable than ever before.
New York, NY: Free Press.

Weinberger, D. R., Elvevåg, B., & Giedd, J. N. (2005). The adolescent

brain: A work in progress. National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
Retrieved from
http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/resources/pdf/BRAIN.pdf
6.4 Early and Middle Adulthood: Building
Effective Lives

Learning Objective

1. Review the physical and cognitive changes that accompany early and middle
adulthood

Until the 1970s, psychologists tended to treat adulthood as a single

developmental stage, with few or no distinctions made among the various
periods that we pass through between adolescence and death. Present-day
psychologists realize, however, that physical, cognitive, and emotional
responses continue to develop throughout life, with corresponding changes
in our social needs and desires. Thus the three stages of early adulthood,
middle adulthood, and late adulthood each has its own physical, cognitive,
and social challenges.

In this section, we will consider the development of our cognitive and

physical aspects that occur during early adulthood and middle adulthood
—roughly the ages between 25 and 45 and between 45 and 65, respectively.
These stages represent a long period of time—longer, in fact, than any of the
other developmental stages—and the bulk of our lives is spent in them.
These are also the periods in which most of us make our most substantial
contributions to society, by meeting two of Erik Erikson’s life challenges:
We learn to give and receive love in a close, long-term relationship, and we
develop an interest in guiding the development of the next generation, often
by becoming parents.
Psychology in Everyday Life: What Makes a Good Parent?

One thing that you may have wondered about as you grew up, and which you may start to think
about again if you decide to have children yourself, concerns the skills involved in parenting.
Some parents are strict, others are lax; some parents spend a lot of time with their kids, trying to
resolve their problems and helping to keep them out of dangerous situations, whereas others
leave their children with nannies or in day care. Some parents hug and kiss their kids and say
that they love them over and over every day, whereas others never do. Do these behaviors
matter? And what makes a “good parent”?

We have already considered two answers to this question, in the form of what all children
require: (1) babies need a conscientious mother who does not smoke, drink, or use drugs during
her pregnancy, and (2) infants need caretakers who are consistently available, loving, and
supportive to help them form a secure base. One case in which these basic goals are less likely to
be met is when the mother is an adolescent. Adolescent mothers are more likely to use drugs and
alcohol during their pregnancies, to have poor parenting skills in general, and to provide
insufficient support for the child (Ekéus, Christensson, & Hjern, 2004). As a result, the babies of
adolescent mothers have higher rates of academic failure, delinquency, and incarceration in
comparison to children of older mothers (Moore & Brooks-Gunn, 2002).

Normally, it is the mother who provides early attachment, but fathers are not irrelevant. In fact,
studies have found that children whose fathers are more involved tend to be more cognitively
and socially competent, more empathic, and psychologically better adjusted, compared with
children whose fathers are less involved (Rohner & Veneziano, 2001). In fact, Amato (1994)
found that, in some cases, the role of the father can be as or even more important than that of the
mother in the child’s overall psychological health and well-being. Amato concluded, “Regardless
of the quality of the mother-child relationship, the closer adult offspring were to their fathers, the
happier, more satisfied, and less distressed they reported being” (p. 1039).

As the child grows, parents take on one of four types of parenting styles—parental behaviors
that determine the nature of parent-child interactions and that guide their interaction with the
child. These styles depend on whether the parent is more or less demanding and more or less
responsive to the child (see Figure 6.11 “Parenting Styles”). Authoritarian parents are
demanding but not responsive. They impose rules and expect obedience, tending to give orders
(“Eat your food!”) and enforcing their commands with rewards and punishment, without
providing any explanation of where the rules came from, except “Because I said so!” Permissive
parents, on the other hand, tend to make few demands and give little punishment, but they are
responsive in the sense that they generally allow their children to make their own rules.
Authoritative parents are demanding (“You must be home by curfew”), but they are also
responsive to the needs and opinions of the child (“Let’s discuss what an appropriate curfew
might be”). They set rules and enforce them, but they also explain and discuss the reasons
behind the rules. Finally, rejecting-neglecting parents are undemanding and unresponsive
overall.

Figure 6.11 Parenting Styles

Parenting styles can be divided into four types, based on the combination of demandingness and
responsiveness. The authoritative style, characterized by both responsiveness and also demandingness, is

the most effective.

Many studies of children and their parents, using different methods, measures, and samples, have
reached the same conclusion—namely, that authoritative parenting, in comparison to the other
three styles, is associated with a wide range of psychological and social advantages for children.
Parents who use the authoritative style, with its combination of demands on the children as well
as responsiveness to the children’s needs, have kids who have better psychological adjustment,
school performance, and psychosocial maturity, compared with parents who use the other styles
(Baumrind, 1996; Grolnick & Ryan, 1989). On the other hand, there are at least some cultural
differences in the effectiveness of different parenting styles. Although the reasons for the
differences are not completely understood, strict authoritarian parenting styles seem to work
better in African American families than in European American families (Tamis-LeMonda,
Briggs, McClowry, & Snow, 2008), and better in Chinese families than in American families
(Chang, Lansford, Schwartz, & Farver, 2004).

Despite the fact that different parenting styles are differentially effective overall, every child is
different and parents must be adaptable. Some children have particularly difficult temperaments,
and these children require more parenting. Because these difficult children demand more
parenting, the behaviors of the parents matter more for the children’s development than they do
for other, less demanding children who require less parenting overall (Pleuss & Belsky, 2010).
These findings remind us how the behavior of the child can influence the behavior of the people
in his or her environment.

Although the focus is on the child, the parents must never forget about each other. Parenting is
time consuming and emotionally taxing, and the parents must work together to create a
relationship in which both mother and father contribute to the household tasks and support each
other. It is also important for the parents to invest time in their own intimacy, as happy parents
are more likely to stay together, and divorce has a profoundly negative impact on children,
particularly during and immediately after the divorce (Burt, Barnes, McGue, & Iaconon, 2008;
Ge, Natsuaki, & Conger, 2006).
Physical and Cognitive Changes in Early and
Middle Adulthood

Compared with the other stages, the physical and cognitive changes that
occur in the stages of early and middle adulthood are less dramatic. As
individuals pass into their 30s and 40s, their recovery from muscular strain
becomes more prolonged, and their sensory abilities may become somewhat
diminished, at least when compared with their prime years, during the teens
and early 20s (Panno, 2004). Visual acuity diminishes somewhat, and many
people in their late 30s and early 40s begin to notice that their eyes are
changing and they need eyeglasses. Adults in their 30s and 40s may also
begin to suffer some hearing loss because of damage to the hair cells (cilia)
in the inner ear (Lacher-Fougëre & Demany, 2005).< And it is during
middle adulthood that many people first begin to suffer from ailments such
as high cholesterol and high blood pressure as well as low bone density
(Shelton, 2006). Corresponding to changes in our physical abilities, our
cognitive and sensory abilities also seem to show some, but not dramatic,
decline during this stage.

Menopause

The stages of both early and middle adulthood bring about a gradual decline
in fertility, particularly for women. Eventually, women experience
menopause, the cessation of the menstrual cycle, which usually occurs at
around age 50. Menopause occurs because of the gradual decrease in the
production of the female sex hormones estrogen and progesterone, which
slows the production and release of eggs into the uterus. Women whose
menstrual cycles have stopped for 12 consecutive months are considered to
have entered menopause (Minkin & Wright, 2004).
Researchers have found that women’s responses to menopause are both
social as well as physical, and that they vary substantially across both
individuals and cultures. Within individuals, some women may react more
negatively to menopause, worrying that they have lost their femininity and
that their final chance to bear children is over, whereas other women may
regard menopause more positively, focusing on the new freedom from
menstrual discomfort and unwanted pregnancy. In Western cultures such as
in the United States, women are likely to see menopause as a challenging
and potentially negative event, whereas in India, where older women enjoy
more social privileges than do younger ones, menopause is more positively
regarded (Avis & Crawford, 2008).

Menopause may have evolutionary benefits. Infants have better chances of

survival when their mothers are younger and have more energy to care for
them, and the presence of older women who do not have children of their
own to care for (but who can help out with raising grandchildren) can be
beneficial to the family group. Also consistent with the idea of an
evolutionary benefit of menopause is that the decline in fertility occurs
primarily for women, who do most of the child care and who need the
energy of youth to accomplish it. If older women were able to have children
they might not be as able to effectively care for them. Most men never
completely lose their fertility, but they do experience a gradual decrease in
testosterone levels, sperm count, and speed of erection and ejaculation.

Social Changes in Early and Middle

Adulthood

Perhaps the major marker of adulthood is the ability to create an effective

and independent life. Whereas children and adolescents are generally
supported by parents, adults must make their own living and must start their
own families. Furthermore, the needs of adults are different from those of
younger persons.

Although the timing of the major life events that occur in early and middle
adulthood vary substantially across individuals, they nevertheless tend to
follow a general sequence, known as a social clock. The social clock refers
to the culturally preferred “right time” for major life events, such as moving
out of the childhood house, getting married, and having children. People
who do not appear to be following the social clock (e.g., young adults who
still live with their parents, individuals who never marry, and couples who
choose not to have children) may be seen as unusual or deviant, and they
may be stigmatized by others (DePaulo, 2006; Rook, Catalano, & Dooley,
1989).

Although they are doing it later, on average, than they did even 20 or 30
years ago, most people do eventually marry. Marriage is beneficial to the
partners, both in terms of mental health and physical health. People who are
married report greater life satisfaction than those who are not married and
also suffer fewer health problems (Gallagher & Waite, 2001; Liu &
Umberson, 2008).

Divorce is more common now than it was 50 years ago. In 2003 almost half
of marriages in the United States ended in divorce (Bureau of the Census,
2007),although about three quarters of people who divorce will remarry.
Most divorces occur for couples in their 20s, because younger people are
frequently not mature enough to make good marriage choices or to make
marriages last. Marriages are more successful for older adults and for those
with more education (Goodwin, Mosher, & Chandra, 2010).

Parenthood also involves a major and long-lasting commitment, and one

that can cause substantial stress on the parents. The time and finances
invested in children create stress, which frequently results in decreased
marital satisfaction (Twenge, Campbell, & Foster, 2003). This decline is
especially true for women, who bear the larger part of the burden of raising
the children and taking care of the house, despite the fact they increasingly
also work and have careers.

Despite the challenges of early and middle adulthood, the majority of

middle-aged adults are not unhappy. These years are often very satisfying,
as families have been established, careers have been entered into, and some
percentage of life goals has been realized (Eid & Larsen, 2008).

Key Takeaways

It is in early and middle adulthood that muscle strength, reaction time, cardiac
output, and sensory abilities begin to decline.

One of the key signs of aging in women is the decline in fertility, culminating in
menopause, which is marked by the cessation of the menstrual period.

The different social stages in adulthood, such as marriage, parenthood, and work, are
loosely determined by a social clock, a culturally recognized time for each phase.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Compare your behavior, values, and attitudes regarding marriage and work to the
attitudes of your parents and grandparents. In what way are your values similar? In
what ways are they different?

2. Draw a timeline of your own planned or preferred social clock. What factors do you
think will make it more or less likely that you will be able to follow the timeline?
References

Amato, P. R. (1994). Father-child relations, mother-child relations, and

offspring psychological well-being in adulthood. Journal of Marriage and
the Family, 56, 1031–1042.

Avis, N. E., & Crawford, S. (2008). Cultural differences in symptoms and

attitudes toward menopause. Menopause Management, 17(3), 8–13.

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Chang, L., Lansford, J. E., Schwartz, D., & Farver, J. M. (2004). Marital
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6.5 Late Adulthood: Aging, Retiring, and
Bereavement

Learning Objectives

1. Review the physical, cognitive, and social changes that accompany late adulthood.

2. Describe the psychological and physical outcomes of bereavement.

We have seen that, over the course of their lives, most individuals are able
to develop secure attachments; reason cognitively, socially and morally; and
create families and find appropriate careers. Eventually, however, as people
enter into their 60s and beyond, the aging process leads to faster changes in
our physical, cognitive, and social capabilities and needs, and life begins to
come to its natural conclusion, resulting in the final life stage, beginning in
the 60s, known as late adulthood.

Despite the fact that the body and mind are slowing, most older adults
nevertheless maintain an active lifestyle, remain as happy or are happier
than when they were younger, and increasingly value their social
connections with family and friends (Angner, Ray, Saag, & Allison, 2009).
Kennedy, Mather, and Carstensen (2004) found that people’s memories of
their lives became more positive with age, and Myers and Diener (1996)
found that older adults tended to speak more positively about events in their
lives, particularly their relationships with friends and family, than did
younger adults.
Cognitive Changes During Aging

The changes associated with aging do not affect everyone in the same way,
and they do not necessarily interfere with a healthy life. Former Beatles
drummer Ringo Starr celebrated his 70th birthday in 2010 by playing at
Radio City Music Hall, and Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger (who once
supposedly said, “I’d rather be dead than singing ‘Satisfaction’ at 45”)
continues to perform as he pushes 70. The golfer Tom Watson almost won
the 2010 British Open golf tournament at the age of 59, playing against
competitors in their 20s and 30s. And people such as the financier Warren
Buffet, U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg, and actress Betty White, each in
their 80s, all enjoy highly productive and energetic lives.

Figure 6.12

Aging does not affect everyone equally. All of these people—in

their 60s, 70s, or 80s—still maintain active and productive

lives.

Eva Rinaldi – Ringo Starr and all his band – CC BY-SA 2.0;
Alan Light – Betty White – CC BY 2.0; xiquinhosilva – 56892-

The-Rolling-Stones-14-On-Fire – CC BY 2.0.

Researchers are beginning to better understand the factors that allow some
people to age better than others. For one, research has found that the people
who are best able to adjust well to changing situations early in life are also
able to better adjust later in life (Rubin, 2007; Sroufe, Collins, Egeland, &
Carlson, 2009). Perceptions also matter. People who believe that the elderly
are sick, vulnerable, and grumpy often act according to such beliefs
(Nemmers, 2005), and Levy, Slade, Kunkel, and Kasl (2002) found that the
elderly who had more positive perceptions about aging also lived longer.

In one important study concerning the role of expectations on memory,

Becca Levy and Ellen Langer (1994) found that, although young American
and Chinese students performed equally well on cognitive tasks, older
Americans performed significantly more poorly on those tasks than did their
Chinese counterparts. Furthermore, this difference was explained by beliefs
about aging—in both cultures, the older adults who believed that memory
declined with age also showed more actual memory declines than did the
older adults who believed that memory did not decline with age. In addition,
more older Americans than older Chinese believed that memory declined
with age, and as you can see in Figure 6.13, older Americans performed
more poorly on the memory tasks.

Figure 6.13
Is Memory Influenced by Cultural Stereotypes? Levy and Langer (1994) found that although younger

samples did not differ, older Americans performed significantly more poorly on memory tasks than did

older Chinese, and that these differences were due to different expectations about memory in the two

cultures.

Adapted from Levy, B., & Langer, E. (1994). Aging free from negative stereotypes: Successful memory in

China among the American deaf. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66(6), 989–997.

Whereas it was once believed that almost all older adults suffered from a
generalized memory loss, research now indicates that healthy older adults
actually experience only some particular types of memory deficits, while
other types of memory remain relatively intact or may even improve with
age. Older adults do seem to process information more slowly—it may take
them longer to evaluate information and to understand language, and it takes
them longer, on average, than it does younger people, to recall a word that
they know, even though they are perfectly able to recognize the word once
they see it (Burke, Shafto, Craik, & Salthouse, 2008). Older adults also have
more difficulty inhibiting and controlling their attention (Persad, Abeles,
Zacks, & Denburg, 2002), making them, for example, more likely to talk
about topics that are not relevant to the topic at hand when conversing
(Pushkar et al., 2000).

But slower processing and less accurate executive control does not always
mean worse memory, or even worse intelligence. Perhaps the elderly are
slower in part because they simply have more knowledge. Indeed, older
adults have more crystallized intelligence—that is, general knowledge
about the world, as reflected in semantic knowledge, vocabulary, and
language. As a result, adults generally outperform younger people on
measures of history, geography, and even on crossword puzzles, where this
information is useful (Salthouse, 2004). It is this superior knowledge
combined with a slower and more complete processing style, along with a
more sophisticated understanding of the workings of the world around them,
that gives the elderly the advantage of “wisdom” over the advantages of
fluid intelligence—the ability to think and acquire information quickly and
abstractly—which favor the young (Baltes, Staudinger, & Lindenberger,
1999; Scheibe, Kunzmann, & Baltes, 2009).

The differential changes in crystallized versus fluid intelligence help explain

why the elderly do not necessarily show poorer performance on tasks that
also require experience (i.e., crystallized intelligence), although they show
poorer memory overall. A young chess player may think more quickly, for
instance, but a more experienced chess player has more knowledge to draw
on. Older adults are also more effective at understanding the nuances of
social interactions than younger adults are, in part because they have more
experience in relationships (Blanchard-Fields, Mienaltowski, & Seay, 2007).

Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease

Some older adults suffer from biologically based cognitive impairments in

which the brain is so adversely affected by aging that it becomes very
difficult for the person to continue to function effectively. Dementia is
defined as a progressive neurological disease that includes loss of cognitive
abilities significant enough to interfere with everyday behaviors, and
Alzheimer’s disease is a form of dementia that, over a period of years,
leads to a loss of emotions, cognitions, and physical functioning, and which
is ultimately fatal. Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease are most likely to be
observed in individuals who are 65 and older, and the likelihood of
developing Alzheimer’s doubles about every 5 years after age 65. After age
85, the risk reaches nearly 8% per year (Hebert et al., 1995). Dementia and
Alzheimer’s disease both produce a gradual decline in functioning of the
brain cells that produce the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Without this
neurotransmitter, the neurons are unable to communicate, leaving the brain
less and less functional.

Figure 6.14 A Healthy Brain (Left) Versus a Brain With Advanced Alzheimer’s Disease (Right)

Dementia and Alzheimer’s are in part heritable, but there is increasing

evidence that the environment also plays a role. And current research is
helping us understand the things that older adults can do to help them slow
down or prevent the negative cognitive outcomes of aging, including
dementia and Alzheimer’s (Pushkar, Bukowski, Schwartzman, Stack, &
White, 2007). Older adults who continue to keep their minds active by
engaging in cognitive activities, such as reading, playing musical
instruments, attending lectures, or doing crossword puzzles, who maintain
social interactions with others, and who keep themselves physically fit have
a greater chance of maintaining their mental acuity than those who do not
(Cherkas et al., 2008; Verghese et al., 2003). In short, although physical
illnesses may occur to anyone, the more people keep their brains active and
the more they maintain a healthy and active lifestyle, the more healthy their
brains will remain (Ertel, Glymour, & Berkman, 2008).

Social Changes During Aging: Retiring

Effectively

Because of increased life expectancy in the 21st century, elderly people can
expect to spend approximately a quarter of their lives in retirement. Leaving
one’s career is a major life change and can be a time when people
experience anxiety, depression, and other negative changes in the self-
concept and in self-identity. On the other hand, retirement may also serve as
an opportunity for a positive transition from work and career roles to
stronger family and community member roles, and the latter may have a
variety of positive outcomes for the individual. Retirement may be a relief
for people who have worked in boring or physically demanding jobs,
particularly if they have other outlets for stimulation and expressing self-
identity.

Psychologist Mo Wang (2007) observed the well-being of 2,060 people

between the ages of 51 and 61 over an 8-year period, and made the
following recommendations to make the retirement phase a positive one:

1. Continue to work part time past retirement, in order to ease into

retirement status slowly.
2. Plan for retirement—this is a good idea financially, but also
making plans to incorporate other kinds of work or hobbies into
postemployment life makes sense.
 3. Retire with someone—if the retiree is still married, it is a good
idea to retire at the same time as a spouse, so that people can
continue to work part time and follow a retirement plan together.
4. Have a happy marriage—people with marital problems tend to
find retirement more stressful because they do not have a positive
home life to return to and can no longer seek refuge in long
working hours. Couples that work on their marriages can make
their retirements a lot easier.
5. Take care of physical and financial health—a sound financial plan
and good physical health can ensure a healthy, peaceful
retirement.
6. Retire early from a stressful job—people who stay in stressful
jobs for fear that they will lose their pensions or won’t be able to
find work somewhere else feel trapped. Toxic environments can
take a severe emotional toll on an employee. Leaving early from
an unsatisfying job may make retirement a relief.
7. Retire “on time”—retiring too early or too late can cause people to
feel “out of sync” or to feel they have not achieved their goals.

Whereas these seven tips are helpful for a smooth transition to retirement,
Wang also notes that people tend to be adaptable, and that no matter how
they do it, retirees will eventually adjust to their new lifestyles.

Death, Dying, and Bereavement

Living includes dealing with our own and our loved ones’ mortality. In her
book, On Death and Dying (1997), Elizabeth Kübler-Ross describes five
phases of grief through which people pass in grappling with the knowledge
that they or someone close to them is dying:
 1. Denial: “I feel fine.” “This can’t be happening; not to me.”
2. Anger: “Why me? It’s not fair!” “How can this happen to me?”
“Who is to blame?”
3. Bargaining: “Just let me live to see my children graduate.” “I’d do
anything for a few more years.” “I’d give my life savings if…”
4. Depression: “I’m so sad, why bother with anything?” “I’m going
to die. What’s the point?” “I miss my loved ones—why go on?”
5. Acceptance: “I know my time has come; it’s almost my time.”

Despite Ross’s popularity, there are a growing number of critics of her

theory who argue that her five-stage sequence is too constraining because
attitudes toward death and dying have been found to vary greatly across
cultures and religions, and these variations make the process of dying
different according to culture (Bonanno, 2009). As an example, Japanese
Americans restrain their grief (Corr, Nabe, & Corr, 2009) so as not to
burden other people with their pain. By contrast, Jews observe a 7-day,
publicly announced mourning period. In some cultures the elderly are more
likely to be living and coping alone, or perhaps only with their spouse,
whereas in other cultures, such as the Hispanic culture, the elderly are more
likely to be living with their sons and daughters and other relatives, and this
social support may create a better quality of life for them (Diaz-Cabello,
2004).

Margaret Stroebe and her colleagues (2008) found that although most
people adjusted to the loss of a loved one without seeking professional
treatment, many had an increased risk of mortality, particularly within the
early weeks and months after the loss. These researchers also found that
people going through the grieving process suffered more physical and
psychological symptoms and illnesses and used more medical services.
The health of survivors during the end of life is influenced by factors such
as circumstances surrounding the loved one’s death, individual personalities,
and ways of coping. People serving as caretakers to partners or other family
members who are ill frequently experience a great deal of stress themselves,
making the dying process even more stressful. Despite the trauma of the
loss of a loved one, people do recover and are able to continue with
effective lives. Grief intervention programs can go a long way in helping
people cope during the bereavement period (Neimeyer, Holland, Currier, &
Mehta, 2008).

Key Takeaways

Most older adults maintain an active lifestyle, remain as happy or happier as when
they were younger, and increasingly value their social connections with family and
friends

Although older adults have slower cognitive processing overall (fluid intelligence),
their experience in the form of crystallized intelligence—or existing knowledge
about the world and the ability to use it—is maintained and even strengthened during
old age.

Expectancies about change in aging vary across cultures and may influence how
people respond to getting older.

A portion of the elderly suffer from age-related brain diseases, such as dementia, a
progressive neurological disease that includes significant loss of cognitive abilities,
and Alzheimer’s disease, a fatal form of dementia that is related to changes in the
cerebral cortex.

Two significant social stages in late adulthood are retirement and dealing with grief
and bereavement. Studies show that a well-planned retirement can be a pleasant
experience.
 A significant number of people going through the grieving process are at increased
risk of mortality and physical and mental illness, but grief counseling can be
effective in helping these people cope with their loss.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. How do the people in your culture view aging? What stereotypes are there about the
elderly? Are there other ways that people in your society might learn to think about
aging that would be more beneficial?

2. Based on the information you have read in this chapter, what would you tell your
parents about how they can best maintain healthy physical and cognitive function
into late adulthood?

References

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Bonanno, G. (2009). The other side of sadness: What the new science of
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6.6 Chapter Summary

Development begins at conception when a sperm from the father fertilizes

an egg from the mother creating a new life. The resulting zygote grows into
an embryo and then a fetus.

Babies are born prepared with reflexes and cognitive skills that contribute
to their survival and growth.

Piaget’s stage model of cognitive development proposes that children learn

through assimilation and accommodation and that cognitive development
follows specific sequential stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete
operational, and formal operational.

An important part of development is the attainment of social skills,

including the formation of the self-concept and attachment.

Adolescence involves rapid physical changes, including puberty, as well as

continued cognitive changes. Moral development continues in adolescence.
In Western cultures, adolescence blends into emerging adulthood, the period
from age 18 until the mid-20s.

Muscle strength, reaction time, cardiac output, and sensory abilities begin to
slowly decline in early and middle adulthood. Fertility, particularly for
women, also decreases, and women eventually experience menopause.

Most older adults maintain an active lifestyle—remaining as happy or

happier than they were when they were younger—and increasingly value
their social connections with family and friends.
Although older adults have slower cognitive processing overall (fluid
intelligence), their experience in the form of crystallized intelligence, or
existing knowledge about the world and the ability to use it, is maintained
and even strengthened during aging. A portion of the elderly suffer from
age-related brain diseases, such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Chapter 7. Learning

My Story of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

It is a continuous challenge living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and

I’ve suffered from it for most of my life. I can look back now and gently laugh at
all the people who thought I had the perfect life. I was young, beautiful, and
talented, but unbeknownst to them, I was terrorized by an undiagnosed
debilitating mental illness.
Having been properly diagnosed with PTSD at age 35, I know that there is not
one aspect of my life that has gone untouched by this mental illness. My PTSD
was triggered by several traumas, most importantly a sexual attack at knifepoint
that left me thinking I would die. I would never be the same after that attack. For
me there was no safe place in the world, not even my home. I went to the police
and filed a report. Rape counselors came to see me while I was in the hospital, but
I declined their help, convinced that I didn’t need it. This would be the most
damaging decision of my life.
For months after the attack, I couldn’t close my eyes without envisioning the face
of my attacker. I suffered horrific flashbacks and nightmares. For four years after
the attack I was unable to sleep alone in my house. I obsessively checked
windows, doors, and locks. By age 17, I’d suffered my first panic attack. Soon I
became unable to leave my apartment for weeks at a time, ending my modeling
career abruptly. This just became a way of life. Years passed when I had few or no
symptoms at all, and I led what I thought was a fairly normal life, just thinking I
had a “panic problem.”
Then another traumatic event retriggered the PTSD. It was as if the past had
evaporated, and I was back in the place of my attack, only now I had
uncontrollable thoughts of someone entering my house and harming my daughter.
I saw violent images every time I closed my eyes. I lost all ability to concentrate
or even complete simple tasks. Normally social, I stopped trying to make friends
or get involved in my community. I often felt disoriented, forgetting where, or
who, I was. I would panic on the freeway and became unable to drive, again
ending a career. I felt as if I had completely lost my mind. For a time, I managed
to keep it together on the outside, but then I became unable to leave my house
again.
Around this time I was diagnosed with PTSD. I cannot express to you the
enormous relief I felt when I discovered my condition was real and treatable. I felt
safe for the first time in 32 years. Taking medication and undergoing behavioral
therapy marked the turning point in my regaining control of my life. I’m
rebuilding a satisfying career as an artist, and I am enjoying my life. The world is
new to me and not limited by the restrictive vision of anxiety. It amazes me to
 think back to what my life was like only a year ago, and just how far I’ve come.
For me there is no cure, no final healing. But there are things I can do to ensure
that I never have to suffer as I did before being diagnosed with PTSD. I’m no
longer at the mercy of my disorder, and I would not be here today had I not had
the proper diagnosis and treatment. The most important thing to know is that it’s
never too late to seek help. (Philips, 2010)

The topic of this chapter is learning—the relatively permanent change in knowledge or

behavior that is the result of experience. Although you might think of learning in terms of what
you need to do before an upcoming exam, the knowledge that you take away from your classes,
or new skills that you acquire through practice, these changes represent only one component of
learning. In fact, learning is a broad topic that is used to explain not only how we acquire new
knowledge and behavior but also a wide variety of other psychological processes including the
development of both appropriate and inappropriate social behaviors, and even how a person may
acquire a debilitating psychological disorder such as PTSD.

Figure 7.1 Watson and Skinner

John B. Watson (right) and B. F. Skinner (left) were champions

of the behaviorist school of learning.

Silly rabbit – B.F. Skinner at the Harvard Psychology

Department, circa 1950 – CC BY 3.0; John Broadus Watson at

Johns Hopkins c. 1908-1921 – public domain.

Learning is perhaps the most important human capacity. Learning allows us to create effective
lives by being able to respond to changes. We learn to avoid touching hot stoves, to find our way
home from school, and to remember which people have helped us in the past and which people
have been unkind. Without the ability to learn from our experiences, our lives would be
 remarkably dangerous and inefficient. The principles of learning can also be used to explain a
wide variety of social interactions, including social dilemmas in which people make important,
and often selfish, decisions about how to behave by calculating the costs and benefits of
different outcomes.

The study of learning is closely associated with the behaviorist school of psychology, in which it
was seen as an alternative scientific perspective to the failure of introspection. The behaviorists,
including John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner, focused their research entirely on behavior, to the
exclusion of any kinds of mental processes. For behaviorists, the fundamental aspect of learning
is the process of conditioning—the ability to connect stimuli (the changes that occur in the
environment) with responses (behaviors or other actions).

But conditioning is just one type of learning. We will also consider other types, including
learning through insight, as well as observational learning (also known as modeling). In each
case we will see not only what psychologists have learned about the topics but also the
important influence that learning has on many aspects of our everyday lives. And we will see
that in some cases learning can be maladaptive—for instance, when a person like P. K. Philips
continually experiences disruptive memories and emotional responses to a negative event.

References

Philips, P. K. (2010). My story of survival: Battling PTSD. Anxiety

Disorders Association of America. Retrieved from
http://www.adaa.org/living-with-anxiety/personal-stories/my-story-survival-
battling-ptsd
7.1 Learning by Association: Classical
Conditioning

Learning Objectives

1. Describe how Pavlov’s early work in classical conditioning influenced the

understanding of learning.

2. Review the concepts of classical conditioning, including unconditioned stimulus

(US), conditioned stimulus (CS), unconditioned response (UR), and conditioned
response (CR).

3. Explain the roles that extinction, generalization, and discrimination play in

conditioned learning.

Pavlov Demonstrates Conditioning in Dogs

In the early part of the 20th century, Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov
(1849–1936) was studying the digestive system of dogs when he noticed an
interesting behavioral phenomenon: The dogs began to salivate when the lab
technicians who normally fed them entered the room, even though the dogs
had not yet received any food. Pavlov realized that the dogs were salivating
because they knew that they were about to be fed; the dogs had begun to
associate the arrival of the technicians with the food that soon followed their
appearance in the room.

Figure 7.2 Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Pavlov’s research made substantial contributions to our understanding of learning.

LIFE Photo Archive – Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

With his team of researchers, Pavlov began studying this process in more
detail. He conducted a series of experiments in which, over a number of
trials, dogs were exposed to a sound immediately before receiving food. He
systematically controlled the onset of the sound and the timing of the
delivery of the food, and recorded the amount of the dogs’ salivation.
Initially the dogs salivated only when they saw or smelled the food, but after
several pairings of the sound and the food, the dogs began to salivate as
soon as they heard the sound. The animals had learned to associate the
sound with the food that followed.

Pavlov had identified a fundamental associative learning process called

classical conditioning. Classical conditioning refers to learning that occurs
when a neutral stimulus (e.g., a tone) becomes associated with a stimulus
(e.g., food) that naturally produces a behavior. After the association is
learned, the previously neutral stimulus is sufficient to produce the behavior.

As you can see in Figure 7.3 “4-Panel Image of Whistle and Dog”,
psychologists use specific terms to identify the stimuli and the responses in
classical conditioning. The unconditioned stimulus (US) is something
(such as food) that triggers a natural occurring response, and the
unconditioned response (UR) is the naturally occurring response (such as
salivation) that follows the unconditioned stimulus. The conditioned
stimulus (CS) is a neutral stimulus that, after being repeatedly presented
prior to the unconditioned stimulus, evokes a similar response as the
unconditioned stimulus. In Pavlov’s experiment, the sound of the tone
served as the conditioned stimulus that, after learning, produced the
conditioned response (CR), which is the acquired response to the formerly
neutral stimulus. Note that the UR and the CR are the same behavior—in
this case salivation—but they are given different names because they are
produced by different stimuli (the US and the CS, respectively).

Figure 7.3 4-Panel Image of Whistle and Dog

Top left: Before conditioning, the unconditioned stimulus (US) naturally produces the unconditioned

response (UR). Top right: Before conditioning, the neutral stimulus (the whistle) does not produce the

salivation response. Bottom left: The unconditioned stimulus (US), in this case the food, is repeatedly

presented immediately after the neutral stimulus. Bottom right: After learning, the neutral stimulus (now

known as the conditioned stimulus or CS), is sufficient to produce the conditioned responses (CR).

Conditioning is evolutionarily beneficial because it allows organisms to

develop expectations that help them prepare for both good and bad events.
Imagine, for instance, that an animal first smells a new food, eats it, and
then gets sick. If the animal can learn to associate the smell (CS) with the
food (US), then it will quickly learn that the food creates the negative
outcome, and not eat it the next time.

The Persistence and Extinction of

Conditioning

After he had demonstrated that learning could occur through association,

Pavlov moved on to study the variables that influenced the strength and the
persistence of conditioning. In some studies, after the conditioning had
taken place, Pavlov presented the sound repeatedly but without presenting
the food afterward. Figure 7.4 “Acquisition, Extinction, and Spontaneous
Recovery” shows what happened. As you can see, after the intial acquisition
(learning) phase in which the conditioning occurred, when the CS was then
presented alone, the behavior rapidly decreased—the dogs salivated less and
less to the sound, and eventually the sound did not elicit salivation at all.
Extinction refers to the reduction in responding that occurs when the
conditioned stimulus is presented repeatedly without the unconditioned
stimulus.

Figure 7.4 Acquisition, Extinction, and Spontaneous Recovery

Acquisition: The CS and the US are repeatedly paired together and behavior increases. Extinction: The CS

is repeatedly presented alone, and the behavior slowly decreases. Spontaneous recovery: After a pause,

when the CS is again presented alone, the behavior may again occur and then again show extinction.

Although at the end of the first extinction period the CS was no longer
producing salivation, the effects of conditioning had not entirely
disappeared. Pavlov found that, after a pause, sounding the tone again
elicited salivation, although to a lesser extent than before extinction took
place. The increase in responding to the CS following a pause after
extinction is known as spontaneous recovery. When Pavlov again
presented the CS alone, the behavior again showed extinction until it
disappeared again.

Although the behavior has disappeared, extinction is never complete. If

conditioning is again attempted, the animal will learn the new associations
much faster than it did the first time.

Pavlov also experimented with presenting new stimuli that were similar, but
not identical to, the original conditioned stimulus. For instance, if the dog
had been conditioned to being scratched before the food arrived, the
stimulus would be changed to being rubbed rather than scratched. He found
that the dogs also salivated upon experiencing the similar stimulus, a
process known as generalization. Generalization refers to the tendency to
respond to stimuli that resemble the original conditioned stimulus. The
ability to generalize has important evolutionary significance. If we eat some
red berries and they make us sick, it would be a good idea to think twice
before we eat some purple berries. Although the berries are not exactly the
same, they nevertheless are similar and may have the same negative
properties.

Lewicki (1985) conducted research that demonstrated the influence of

stimulus generalization and how quickly and easily it can happen. In his
experiment, high school students first had a brief interaction with a female
experimenter who had short hair and glasses. The study was set up so that
the students had to ask the experimenter a question, and (according to
random assignment) the experimenter responded either in a negative way or
a neutral way toward the students. Then the students were told to go into a
second room in which two experimenters were present, and to approach
either one of them. However, the researchers arranged it so that one of the
two experimenters looked a lot like the original experimenter, while the
other one did not (she had longer hair and no glasses). The students were
significantly more likely to avoid the experimenter who looked like the
earlier experimenter when that experimenter had been negative to them than
when she had treated them more neutrally. The participants showed stimulus
generalization such that the new, similar-looking experimenter created the
same negative response in the participants as had the experimenter in the
prior session.

The flip side of generalization is discrimination—the tendency to respond

differently to stimuli that are similar but not identical. Pavlov’s dogs quickly
learned, for example, to salivate when they heard the specific tone that had
preceded food, but not upon hearing similar tones that had never been
associated with food. Discrimination is also useful—if we do try the purple
berries, and if they do not make us sick, we will be able to make the
distinction in the future. And we can learn that although the two people in
our class, Courtney and Sarah, may look a lot alike, they are nevertheless
different people with different personalities.

In some cases, an existing conditioned stimulus can serve as an

unconditioned stimulus for a pairing with a new conditioned stimulus—a
process known as second-order conditioning. In one of Pavlov’s studies,
for instance, he first conditioned the dogs to salivate to a sound, and then
repeatedly paired a new CS, a black square, with the sound. Eventually he
found that the dogs would salivate at the sight of the black square alone,
even though it had never been directly associated with the food. Secondary
conditioners in everyday life include our attractions to things that stand for
or remind us of something else, such as when we feel good on a Friday
because it has become associated with the paycheck that we receive on that
day, which itself is a conditioned stimulus for the pleasures that the
paycheck buys us.
The Role of Nature in Classical Conditioning

As we have seen in Chapter 1 “Introducing Psychology”, scientists

associated with the behavioralist school argued that all learning is driven by
experience, and that nature plays no role. Classical conditioning, which is
based on learning through experience, represents an example of the
importance of the environment. But classical conditioning cannot be
understood entirely in terms of experience. Nature also plays a part, as our
evolutionary history has made us better able to learn some associations than
others.

Clinical psychologists make use of classical conditioning to explain the

learning of a phobia—a strong and irrational fear of a specific object,
activity, or situation. For example, driving a car is a neutral event that would
not normally elicit a fear response in most people. But if a person were to
experience a panic attack in which he suddenly experienced strong negative
emotions while driving, he may learn to associate driving with the panic
response. The driving has become the CS that now creates the fear response.

Psychologists have also discovered that people do not develop phobias to

just anything. Although people may in some cases develop a driving phobia,
they are more likely to develop phobias toward objects (such as snakes,
spiders, heights, and open spaces) that have been dangerous to people in the
past. In modern life, it is rare for humans to be bitten by spiders or snakes,
to fall from trees or buildings, or to be attacked by a predator in an open
area. Being injured while riding in a car or being cut by a knife are much
more likely. But in our evolutionary past, the potential of being bitten by
snakes or spiders, falling out of a tree, or being trapped in an open space
were important evolutionary concerns, and therefore humans are still
evolutionarily prepared to learn these associations over others (Öhman &
Mineka, 2001; LoBue & DeLoache, 2010).
Another evolutionarily important type of conditioning is conditioning
related to food. In his important research on food conditioning, John Garcia
and his colleagues (Garcia, Kimeldorf, & Koelling, 1955; Garcia, Ervin, &
Koelling, 1966) attempted to condition rats by presenting either a taste, a
sight, or a sound as a neutral stimulus before the rats were given drugs (the
US) that made them nauseous. Garcia discovered that taste conditioning was
extremely powerful—the rat learned to avoid the taste associated with
illness, even if the illness occurred several hours later. But conditioning the
behavioral response of nausea to a sight or a sound was much more difficult.
These results contradicted the idea that conditioning occurs entirely as a
result of environmental events, such that it would occur equally for any kind
of unconditioned stimulus that followed any kind of conditioned stimulus.
Rather, Garcia’s research showed that genetics matters—organisms are
evolutionarily prepared to learn some associations more easily than others.
You can see that the ability to associate smells with illness is an important
survival mechanism, allowing the organism to quickly learn to avoid foods
that are poisonous.

Classical conditioning has also been used to help explain the experience of
posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as in the case of P. K. Philips
described in the chapter opener. PTSD is a severe anxiety disorder that can
develop after exposure to a fearful event, such as the threat of death
(American Psychiatric Association, 1994). PTSD occurs when the
individual develops a strong association between the situational factors that
surrounded the traumatic event (e.g., military uniforms or the sounds or
smells of war) and the US (the fearful trauma itself). As a result of the
conditioning, being exposed to, or even thinking about the situation in
which the trauma occurred (the CS), becomes sufficient to produce the CR
of severe anxiety (Keane, Zimering, & Caddell, 1985).

Figure 7.5
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) represents a case of

classical conditioning to a severe trauma that does not easily

become extinct. In this case the original fear response,

experienced during combat, has become conditioned to a loud

noise. When the person with PTSD hears a loud noise, she

experiences a fear response even though she is now far from the

site of the original trauma.

Marc Wathieu – Luigi Coppola – CC BY-NC 2.0.

PTSD develops because the emotions experienced during the event have
produced neural activity in the amygdala and created strong conditioned
learning. In addition to the strong conditioning that people with PTSD
experience, they also show slower extinction in classical conditioning tasks
(Milad et al., 2009). In short, people with PTSD have developed very strong
associations with the events surrounding the trauma and are also slow to
show extinction to the conditioned stimulus.

Key Takeaways

In classical conditioning, a person or animal learns to associate a neutral stimulus

(the conditioned stimulus, or CS) with a stimulus (the unconditioned stimulus, or
 US) that naturally produces a behavior (the unconditioned response, or UR). As a
result of this association, the previously neutral stimulus comes to elicit the same
response (the conditioned response, or CR).

Extinction occurs when the CS is repeatedly presented without the US, and the CR
eventually disappears, although it may reappear later in a process known as
spontaneous recovery.

Stimulus generalization occurs when a stimulus that is similar to an already-

conditioned stimulus begins to produce the same response as the original stimulus
does.

Stimulus discrimination occurs when the organism learns to differentiate between the
CS and other similar stimuli.

In second-order conditioning, a neutral stimulus becomes a CS after being paired

with a previously established CS.

Some stimuli—response pairs, such as those between smell and food—are more
easily conditioned than others because they have been particularly important in our
evolutionary past.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. A teacher places gold stars on the chalkboard when the students are quiet and
attentive. Eventually, the students start becoming quiet and attentive whenever the
teacher approaches the chalkboard. Can you explain the students’ behavior in terms
of classical conditioning?

2. Recall a time in your life, perhaps when you were a child, when your behaviors were
influenced by classical conditioning. Describe in detail the nature of the
unconditioned and conditioned stimuli and the response, using the appropriate
psychological terms.
 3. If posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a type of classical conditioning, how might
psychologists use the principles of classical conditioning to treat the disorder?

References

American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical

manual of mental disorders (4th ed., text rev.). Washington, DC: Author.

Garcia, J., Ervin, F. R., & Koelling, R. A. (1966). Learning with prolonged
delay of reinforcement. Psychonomic Science, 5(3), 121–122.

Garcia, J., Kimeldorf, D. J., & Koelling, R. A. (1955). Conditioned aversion

to saccharin resulting from exposure to gamma radiation. Science, 122,
157–158.

Keane, T. M., Zimering, R. T., & Caddell, J. M. (1985). A behavioral

formulation of posttraumatic stress disorder in Vietnam veterans. The
Behavior Therapist, 8(1), 9–12.

Lewicki, P. (1985). Nonconscious biasing effects of single instances on

subsequent judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48,
563–574.

LoBue, V., & DeLoache, J. S. (2010). Superior detection of threat-relevant

stimuli in infancy. Developmental Science, 13(1), 221–228.

Milad, M. R., Pitman, R. K., Ellis, C. B., Gold, A. L., Shin, L. M., Lasko, N.
B.,…Rauch, S. L. (2009). Neurobiological basis of failure to recall
extinction memory in posttraumatic stress disorder. Biological Psychiatry,
66(12), 1075–82.
Öhman, A., & Mineka, S. (2001). Fears, phobias, and preparedness: Toward
an evolved module of fear and fear learning. Psychological Review, 108(3),
483–522.
7.2 Changing Behavior Through
Reinforcement and Punishment: Operant
Conditioning

Learning Objectives

1. Outline the principles of operant conditioning.

2. Explain how learning can be shaped through the use of reinforcement schedules and
secondary reinforcers.

In classical conditioning the organism learns to associate new stimuli with

natural, biological responses such as salivation or fear. The organism does
not learn something new but rather begins to perform in an existing
behavior in the presence of a new signal. Operant conditioning, on the
other hand, is learning that occurs based on the consequences of behavior
and can involve the learning of new actions. Operant conditioning occurs
when a dog rolls over on command because it has been praised for doing so
in the past, when a schoolroom bully threatens his classmates because doing
so allows him to get his way, and when a child gets good grades because her
parents threaten to punish her if she doesn’t. In operant conditioning the
organism learns from the consequences of its own actions.

How Reinforcement and Punishment

Influence Behavior: The Research of
Thorndike and Skinner

Psychologist Edward L. Thorndike (1874–1949) was the first scientist to

systematically study operant conditioning. In his research Thorndike (1898)
observed cats who had been placed in a “puzzle box” from which they tried
to escape (Note 7.21 “Video Clip: Thorndike’s Puzzle Box”). At first the
cats scratched, bit, and swatted haphazardly, without any idea of how to get
out. But eventually, and accidentally, they pressed the lever that opened the
door and exited to their prize, a scrap of fish. The next time the cat was
constrained within the box it attempted fewer of the ineffective responses
before carrying out the successful escape, and after several trials the cat
learned to almost immediately make the correct response.

Observing these changes in the cats’ behavior led Thorndike to develop his
law of effect, the principle that responses that create a typically pleasant
outcome in a particular situation are more likely to occur again in a similar
situation, whereas responses that produce a typically unpleasant outcome
are less likely to occur again in the situation (Thorndike, 1911). The essence
of the law of effect is that successful responses, because they are
pleasurable, are “stamped in” by experience and thus occur more frequently.
Unsuccessful responses, which produce unpleasant experiences, are
“stamped out” and subsequently occur less frequently.

Video Clip: Thorndike’s Puzzle Box

(click to see video)

When Thorndike placed his cats in a puzzle box, he found that they learned
to engage in the important escape behavior faster after each trial. Thorndike
described the learning that follows reinforcement in terms of the law of
effect.
The influential behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner (1904–1990)
expanded on Thorndike’s ideas to develop a more complete set of principles
to explain operant conditioning. Skinner created specially designed
environments known as operant chambers (usually called Skinner boxes) to
systemically study learning. A Skinner box (operant chamber) is a
structure that is big enough to fit a rodent or bird and that contains a bar or
key that the organism can press or peck to release food or water. It also
contains a device to record the animal’s responses.

The most basic of Skinner’s experiments was quite similar to Thorndike’s

research with cats. A rat placed in the chamber reacted as one might expect,
scurrying about the box and sniffing and clawing at the floor and walls.
Eventually the rat chanced upon a lever, which it pressed to release pellets
of food. The next time around, the rat took a little less time to press the
lever, and on successive trials, the time it took to press the lever became
shorter and shorter. Soon the rat was pressing the lever as fast as it could eat
the food that appeared. As predicted by the law of effect, the rat had learned
to repeat the action that brought about the food and cease the actions that
did not.

Skinner studied, in detail, how animals changed their behavior through

reinforcement and punishment, and he developed terms that explained the
processes of operant learning (Table 7.1 “How Positive and Negative
Reinforcement and Punishment Influence Behavior”). Skinner used the term
reinforcer to refer to any event that strengthens or increases the likelihood
of a behavior and the term punisher to refer to any event that weakens or
decreases the likelihood of a behavior. And he used the terms positive and
negative to refer to whether a reinforcement was presented or removed,
respectively. Thus positive reinforcementstrengthens a response by
presenting something pleasant after the response and negative
reinforcementstrengthens a response by reducing or removing something
unpleasant. For example, giving a child praise for completing his homework
represents positive reinforcement, whereas taking aspirin to reduced the
pain of a headache represents negative reinforcement. In both cases, the
reinforcement makes it more likely that behavior will occur again in the
future.

Figure 7.6 Rat in a Skinner Box

B. F. Skinner used a Skinner box to study operant learning. The

box contains a bar or key that the organism can press to receive

food and water, and a device that records the organism’s

responses.

Andreas1 – Skinner box – CC BY-SA 3.0.

Table 7.1 How Positive and Negative Reinforcement and Punishment Influence Behavior
 Operant
conditioning Description Outcome Example
term

Positive Add or increase a Behavior is Giving a student a prize after he gets

reinforcement pleasant stimulus strengthened an A on a test

Reduce or remove Taking painkillers that eliminate

Negative Behavior is
an unpleasant pain increases the likelihood that
reinforcement strengthened
stimulus you will take painkillers again

Positive Present or add an Behavior is Giving a student extra homework

punishment unpleasant stimulus weakened after she misbehaves in class

Negative Reduce or remove a Behavior is Taking away a teen’s computer after

punishment pleasant stimulus weakened he misses curfew

Reinforcement, either positive or negative, works by increasing the

likelihood of a behavior. Punishment, on the other hand, refers to any event
that weakens or reduces the likelihood of a behavior. Positive
punishmentweakens a response by presenting something unpleasant after
the response, whereas negative punishmentweakens a response by
reducing or removing something pleasant. A child who is grounded after
fighting with a sibling (positive punishment) or who loses out on the
opportunity to go to recess after getting a poor grade (negative punishment)
is less likely to repeat these behaviors.

Although the distinction between reinforcement (which increases behavior)

and punishment (which decreases it) is usually clear, in some cases it is
difficult to determine whether a reinforcer is positive or negative. On a hot
day a cool breeze could be seen as a positive reinforcer (because it brings in
cool air) or a negative reinforcer (because it removes hot air). In other cases,
reinforcement can be both positive and negative. One may smoke a cigarette
both because it brings pleasure (positive reinforcement) and because it
eliminates the craving for nicotine (negative reinforcement).

It is also important to note that reinforcement and punishment are not

simply opposites. The use of positive reinforcement in changing behavior is
almost always more effective than using punishment. This is because
positive reinforcement makes the person or animal feel better, helping create
a positive relationship with the person providing the reinforcement. Types of
positive reinforcement that are effective in everyday life include verbal
praise or approval, the awarding of status or prestige, and direct financial
payment. Punishment, on the other hand, is more likely to create only
temporary changes in behavior because it is based on coercion and typically
creates a negative and adversarial relationship with the person providing the
reinforcement. When the person who provides the punishment leaves the
situation, the unwanted behavior is likely to return.

Creating Complex Behaviors Through

Operant Conditioning

Perhaps you remember watching a movie or being at a show in which an

animal—maybe a dog, a horse, or a dolphin—did some pretty amazing
things. The trainer gave a command and the dolphin swam to the bottom of
the pool, picked up a ring on its nose, jumped out of the water through a
hoop in the air, dived again to the bottom of the pool, picked up another
ring, and then took both of the rings to the trainer at the edge of the pool.
The animal was trained to do the trick, and the principles of operant
conditioning were used to train it. But these complex behaviors are a far cry
from the simple stimulus-response relationships that we have considered
thus far. How can reinforcement be used to create complex behaviors such
as these?

One way to expand the use of operant learning is to modify the schedule on
which the reinforcement is applied. To this point we have only discussed a
continuous reinforcement schedule, in which the desired response is
reinforced every time it occurs; whenever the dog rolls over, for instance, it
gets a biscuit. Continuous reinforcement results in relatively fast learning
but also rapid extinction of the desired behavior once the reinforcer
disappears. The problem is that because the organism is used to receiving
the reinforcement after every behavior, the responder may give up quickly
when it doesn’t appear.

Most real-world reinforcers are not continuous; they occur on a partial (or
intermittent) reinforcement schedule—a schedule in which the responses
are sometimes reinforced, and sometimes not. In comparison to continuous
reinforcement, partial reinforcement schedules lead to slower initial
learning, but they also lead to greater resistance to extinction. Because the
reinforcement does not appear after every behavior, it takes longer for the
learner to determine that the reward is no longer coming, and thus extinction
is slower. The four types of partial reinforcement schedules are summarized
in Table 7.2 “Reinforcement Schedules”.

Table 7.2 Reinforcement Schedules

Reinforcement
Explanation Real-world example
schedule

Factory workers who are paid

Behavior is reinforced after a specific
Fixed-ratio according to the number of
number of responses
products they produce

Behavior is reinforced after an average, but Payoffs from slot machines and
Variable-ratio
unpredictable, number of responses other games of chance

Behavior is reinforced for the first response People who earn a monthly
Fixed-interval
after a specific amount of time has passed salary

Behavior is reinforced for the first response

Person who checks voice mail
Variable-interval after an average, but unpredictable, amount
for messages
of time has passed

Partial reinforcement schedules are determined by whether the

reinforcement is presented on the basis of the time that elapses between
reinforcement (interval) or on the basis of the number of responses that the
organism engages in (ratio), and by whether the reinforcement occurs on a
regular (fixed) or unpredictable (variable) schedule. In a fixed-interval
schedule, reinforcement occurs for the first response made after a specific
amount of time has passed. For instance, on a one-minute fixed-interval
schedule the animal receives a reinforcement every minute, assuming it
engages in the behavior at least once during the minute. As you can see in
Figure 7.7 “Examples of Response Patterns by Animals Trained Under
Different Partial Reinforcement Schedules”, animals under fixed-interval
schedules tend to slow down their responding immediately after the
reinforcement but then increase the behavior again as the time of the next
reinforcement gets closer. (Most students study for exams the same way.) In
a variable-interval schedule, the reinforcers appear on an interval
schedule, but the timing is varied around the average interval, making the
actual appearance of the reinforcer unpredictable. An example might be
checking your e-mail: You are reinforced by receiving messages that come,
on average, say every 30 minutes, but the reinforcement occurs only at
random times. Interval reinforcement schedules tend to produce slow and
steady rates of responding.

Figure 7.7 Examples of Response Patterns by Animals Trained Under Different Partial Reinforcement

Schedules

Schedules based on the number of responses (ratio types) induce greater response rate than do schedules

based on elapsed time (interval types). Also, unpredictable schedules (variable types) produce stronger

responses than do predictable schedules (fixed types).

Adapted from Kassin, S. (2003). Essentials of psychology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Retrieved from Essentials of Psychology Prentice Hall Companion Website:

http://wps.prenhall.com/hss_kassin_essentials_1/15/3933/1006917.cw/index.html.

In a fixed-ratio schedule, a behavior is reinforced after a specific number

of responses. For instance, a rat’s behavior may be reinforced after it has
pressed a key 20 times, or a salesperson may receive a bonus after she has
sold 10 products. As you can see in Figure 7.7 “Examples of Response
Patterns by Animals Trained Under Different Partial Reinforcement
Schedules”, once the organism has learned to act in accordance with the
fixed-reinforcement schedule, it will pause only briefly when reinforcement
occurs before returning to a high level of responsiveness. A variable-ratio
scheduleprovides reinforcers after a specific but average number of
responses. Winning money from slot machines or on a lottery ticket are
examples of reinforcement that occur on a variable-ratio schedule. For
instance, a slot machine may be programmed to provide a win every 20
times the user pulls the handle, on average. As you can see in Figure 7.8
“Slot Machine”, ratio schedules tend to produce high rates of responding
because reinforcement increases as the number of responses increase.

Figure 7.8 Slot Machine

Slot machines are examples of a variable-ratio reinforcement

schedule.

Jeff Kubina – Slot Machine – CC BY-SA 2.0.

Complex behaviors are also created through shaping, the process of guiding
an organism’s behavior to the desired outcome through the use of successive
approximation to a final desired behavior. Skinner made extensive use of
this procedure in his boxes. For instance, he could train a rat to press a bar
two times to receive food, by first providing food when the animal moved
near the bar. Then when that behavior had been learned he would begin to
provide food only when the rat touched the bar. Further shaping limited the
reinforcement to only when the rat pressed the bar, to when it pressed the
bar and touched it a second time, and finally, to only when it pressed the bar
twice. Although it can take a long time, in this way operant conditioning can
create chains of behaviors that are reinforced only when they are completed.

Reinforcing animals if they correctly discriminate between similar stimuli

allows scientists to test the animals’ ability to learn, and the discriminations
that they can make are sometimes quite remarkable. Pigeons have been
trained to distinguish between images of Charlie Brown and the other
Peanuts characters (Cerella, 1980), and between different styles of music
and art (Porter & Neuringer, 1984; Watanabe, Sakamoto & Wakita, 1995).

Behaviors can also be trained through the use of secondary reinforcers.

Whereas a primary reinforcer includes stimuli that are naturally preferred
or enjoyed by the organism, such as food, water, and relief from pain, a
secondary reinforcer (sometimes called conditioned reinforcer) is a neutral
event that has become associated with a primary reinforcer through
classical conditioning. An example of a secondary reinforcer would be the
whistle given by an animal trainer, which has been associated over time
with the primary reinforcer, food. An example of an everyday secondary
reinforcer is money. We enjoy having money, not so much for the stimulus
itself, but rather for the primary reinforcers (the things that money can buy)
with which it is associated.

Key Takeaways

Edward Thorndike developed the law of effect: the principle that responses that
create a typically pleasant outcome in a particular situation are more likely to occur
again in a similar situation, whereas responses that produce a typically unpleasant
outcome are less likely to occur again in the situation.
 B. F. Skinner expanded on Thorndike’s ideas to develop a set of principles to explain
operant conditioning.

Positive reinforcement strengthens a response by presenting something that is

typically pleasant after the response, whereas negative reinforcement strengthens a
response by reducing or removing something that is typically unpleasant.

Positive punishment weakens a response by presenting something typically

unpleasant after the response, whereas negative punishment weakens a response by
reducing or removing something that is typically pleasant.

Reinforcement may be either partial or continuous. Partial reinforcement schedules

are determined by whether the reinforcement is presented on the basis of the time
that elapses between reinforcements (interval) or on the basis of the number of
responses that the organism engages in (ratio), and by whether the reinforcement
occurs on a regular (fixed) or unpredictable (variable) schedule.

Complex behaviors may be created through shaping, the process of guiding an

organism’s behavior to the desired outcome through the use of successive
approximation to a final desired behavior.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Give an example from daily life of each of the following: positive reinforcement,
negative reinforcement, positive punishment, negative punishment.

2. Consider the reinforcement techniques that you might use to train a dog to catch and
retrieve a Frisbee that you throw to it.

3. Watch the following two videos from current television shows. Can you determine
which learning procedures are being demonstrated?
 1. The Office: http://www.break.com/usercontent/2009/11/the-office-altoid-
experiment-1499823

2. The Big Bang Theory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA96Fba-WHk

References

Cerella, J. (1980). The pigeon’s analysis of pictures. Pattern Recognition,

12, 1–6.

Porter, D., & Neuringer, A. (1984). Music discriminations by pigeons.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 10(2),
138–148;

Thorndike, E. L. (1898). Animal intelligence: An experimental study of the

associative processes in animals. Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association.

Thorndike, E. L. (1911). Animal intelligence: Experimental studies. New

York, NY: Macmillan. Retrieved from
http://www.archive.org/details/animalintelligen00thor

Watanabe, S., Sakamoto, J., & Wakita, M. (1995). Pigeons’ discrimination

of painting by Monet and Picasso. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of
Behavior, 63(2), 165–174.
7.3 Learning by Insight and Observation

Learning Objective

1. Understand the principles of learning by insight and observation.

John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner were behaviorists who believed that all
learning could be explained by the processes of conditioning—that is, that
associations, and associations alone, influence learning. But some kinds of
learning are very difficult to explain using only conditioning. Thus, although
classical and operant conditioning play a key role in learning, they
constitute only a part of the total picture.

One type of learning that is not determined only by conditioning occurs

when we suddenly find the solution to a problem, as if the idea just popped
into our head. This type of learning is known as insight, the sudden
understanding of a solution to a problem. The German psychologist
Wolfgang Köhler (1925) carefully observed what happened when he
presented chimpanzees with a problem that was not easy for them to solve,
such as placing food in an area that was too high in the cage to be reached.
He found that the chimps first engaged in trial-and-error attempts at solving
the problem, but when these failed they seemed to stop and contemplate for
a while. Then, after this period of contemplation, they would suddenly seem
to know how to solve the problem, for instance by using a stick to knock the
food down or by standing on a chair to reach it. Köhler argued that it was
this flash of insight, not the prior trial-and-error approaches, which were so
important for conditioning theories, that allowed the animals to solve the
problem.

Edward Tolman (Tolman & Honzik, 1930) studied the behavior of three
groups of rats that were learning to navigate through mazes. The first group
always received a reward of food at the end of the maze. The second group
never received any reward, and the third group received a reward, but only
beginning on the 11th day of the experimental period. As you might expect
when considering the principles of conditioning, the rats in the first group
quickly learned to negotiate the maze, while the rats of the second group
seemed to wander aimlessly through it. The rats in the third group, however,
although they wandered aimlessly for the first 10 days, quickly learned to
navigate to the end of the maze as soon as they received food on day 11. By
the next day, the rats in the third group had caught up in their learning to the
rats that had been rewarded from the beginning.

It was clear to Tolman that the rats that had been allowed to experience the
maze, even without any reinforcement, had nevertheless learned something,
and Tolman called this latent learning. Latent learning refers to learning
that is not reinforced and not demonstrated until there is motivation to do
so. Tolman argued that the rats had formed a “cognitive map” of the maze
but did not demonstrate this knowledge until they received reinforcement.

Observational Learning: Learning by

Watching

The idea of latent learning suggests that animals, and people, may learn
simply by experiencing or watching. Observational learning (modeling) is
learning by observing the behavior of others. To demonstrate the
importance of observational learning in children, Bandura, Ross, and Ross
(1963) showed children a live image of either a man or a woman interacting
with a Bobo doll, a filmed version of the same events, or a cartoon version
of the events. As you can see in Note 7.44 “Video Clip: Bandura Discussing
Clips From His Modeling Studies” the Bobo doll is an inflatable balloon
with a weight in the bottom that makes it bob back up when you knock it
down. In all three conditions, the model violently punched the clown,
kicked the doll, sat on it, and hit it with a hammer.

Video Clip: Bandura Discussing Clips From His Modeling

Studies

(click to see video)

Take a moment to see how Albert Bandura explains his research into the
modeling of aggression in children.

The researchers first let the children view one of the three types of
modeling, and then let them play in a room in which there were some really
fun toys. To create some frustration in the children, Bandura let the children
play with the fun toys for only a couple of minutes before taking them away.
Then Bandura gave the children a chance to play with the Bobo doll.

If you guessed that most of the children imitated the model, you would be
correct. Regardless of which type of modeling the children had seen, and
regardless of the sex of the model or the child, the children who had seen
the model behaved aggressively—just as the model had done. They also
punched, kicked, sat on the doll, and hit it with the hammer. Bandura and
his colleagues had demonstrated that these children had learned new
behaviors, simply by observing and imitating others.

Observational learning is useful for animals and for people because it allows
us to learn without having to actually engage in what might be a risky
behavior. Monkeys that see other monkeys respond with fear to the sight of
a snake learn to fear the snake themselves, even if they have been raised in a
laboratory and have never actually seen a snake (Cook & Mineka, 1990). As
Bandura put it,
the prospects for [human] survival would be slim indeed if one could learn only by
suffering the consequences of trial and error. For this reason, one does not teach
children to swim, adolescents to drive automobiles, and novice medical students to
perform surgery by having them discover the appropriate behavior through the
consequences of their successes and failures. The more costly and hazardous the
possible mistakes, the heavier is the reliance on observational learning from competent
learners. (Bandura, 1977, p. 212)

Although modeling is normally adaptive, it can be problematic for children

who grow up in violent families. These children are not only the victims of
aggression, but they also see it happening to their parents and siblings.
Because children learn how to be parents in large part by modeling the
actions of their own parents, it is no surprise that there is a strong
correlation between family violence in childhood and violence as an adult.
Children who witness their parents being violent or who are themselves
abused are more likely as adults to inflict abuse on intimate partners or their
children, and to be victims of intimate violence (Heyman & Slep, 2002). In
turn, their children are more likely to interact violently with each other and
to aggress against their parents (Patterson, Dishion, & Bank, 1984).

Research Focus: The Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggression

The average American child watches more than 4 hours of television every day, and 2 out of 3 of
the programs they watch contain aggression. It has been estimated that by the age of 12, the
average American child has seen more than 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence. At the
same time, children are also exposed to violence in movies, video games, and virtual reality
games, as well as in music videos that include violent lyrics and imagery (The Henry J. Kaiser
Family Foundation, 2003; Schulenburg, 2007; Coyne & Archer, 2005).

It might not surprise you to hear that these exposures to violence have an effect on aggressive
behavior. The evidence is impressive and clear: The more media violence people, including
children, view, the more aggressive they are likely to be (Anderson et al., 2003; Cantor et al.,
2001). The relation between viewing television violence and aggressive behavior is about as
strong as the relation between smoking and cancer or between studying and academic grades.
People who watch more violence become more aggressive than those who watch less violence.

It is clear that watching television violence can increase aggression, but what about violent video
games? These games are more popular than ever, and also more graphically violent. Youths
spend countless hours playing these games, many of which involve engaging in extremely
violent behaviors. The games often require the player to take the role of a violent person, to
identify with the character, to select victims, and of course to kill the victims. These behaviors
are reinforced by winning points and moving on to higher levels, and are repeated over and over.

Again, the answer is clear—playing violent video games leads to aggression. A recent meta-
analysis by Anderson and Bushman (2001) reviewed 35 research studies that had tested the
effects of playing violent video games on aggression. The studies included both experimental
and correlational studies, with both male and female participants in both laboratory and field
settings. They found that exposure to violent video games is significantly linked to increases in
aggressive thoughts, aggressive feelings, psychological arousal (including blood pressure and
heart rate), as well as aggressive behavior. Furthermore, playing more video games was found to
relate to less altruistic behavior.

In one experiment, Bushman and Anderson (2002) assessed the effects of viewing violent video
games on aggressive thoughts and behavior. Participants were randomly assigned to play either a
violent or a nonviolent video game for 20 minutes. Each participant played one of four violent
video games (Carmageddon, Duke Nukem, Mortal Kombat, or Future Cop) or one of four
nonviolent video games (Glider Pro, 3D Pinball, Austin Powers, or Tetra Madness).

Participants then read a story, for instance this one about Todd, and were asked to list 20
thoughts, feelings, and actions about how they would respond if they were Todd:
 Todd was on his way home from work one evening when he had to brake quickly
for a yellow light. The person in the car behind him must have thought Todd was
going to run the light because he crashed into the back of Todd’s car, causing a lot
of damage to both vehicles. Fortunately, there were no injuries. Todd got out of his
car and surveyed the damage. He then walked over to the other car.

As you can see in Figure 7.9 “Results From Bushman and Anderson, 2002”, the students who
had played one of the violent video games responded much more aggressively to the story than
did those who played the nonviolent games. In fact, their responses were often extremely
aggressive. They said things like “Call the guy an idiot,” “Kick the other driver’s car,” “This
guy’s dead meat!” and “What a dumbass!”

Figure 7.9 Results From Bushman and Anderson, 2002

Anderson and Bushman (2002) found that college students who had just played a violent video game

expressed significantly more violent responses to a story than did those who had just played a nonviolent

video game.

Adapted from Bushman, B. J., & Anderson, C. A. (2002). Violent video games and hostile expectations: A

test of the general aggression model. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(12), 1679–1686.

However, although modeling can increase violence, it can also have positive effects. Research
has found that, just as children learn to be aggressive through observational learning, they can
also learn to be altruistic in the same way (Seymour, Yoshida, & Dolan, 2009).
 Key Takeaways

Not all learning can be explained through the principles of classical and operant
conditioning.

Insight is the sudden understanding of the components of a problem that makes the
solution apparent.

Latent learning refers to learning that is not reinforced and not demonstrated until
there is motivation to do so.

Observational learning occurs by viewing the behaviors of others.

Both aggression and altruism can be learned through observation.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Describe a time when you learned something by insight. What do you think led to
your learning?

2. Imagine that you had a 12-year-old brother who spent many hours a day playing
violent video games. Basing your answer on the material covered in this chapter, do
you think that your parents should limit his exposure to the games? Why or why not?

3. How might we incorporate principles of observational learning to encourage acts of

kindness and selflessness in our society?

References

Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2001). Effects of violent video games

on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect,
physiological arousal, and prosocial behavior: A meta-analytic review of the
scientific literature. Psychological Science, 12(5), 353–359.

Anderson, C. A., Berkowitz, L., Donnerstein, E., Huesmann, L. R., Johnson,

J. D., Linz, D.,…Wartella, E. (2003). The influence of media violence on
youth. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 4(3), 81–110.

Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavior

change. Psychological Review, 84, 191–215.

Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1963). Imitation of film-mediated

aggressive models. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66(1),
3–11.

Bushman, B. J., & Anderson, C. A. (2002). Violent video games and hostile
expectations: A test of the general aggression model. Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, 28(12), 1679–1686.

Cantor, J., Bushman, B. J., Huesmann, L. R., Groebel, J., Malamuth, N. M.,
Impett, E. A.,…Singer, J. L. (Eds.). (2001). Some hazards of television
viewing: Fears, aggression, and sexual attitudes. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage.

Cook, M., & Mineka, S. (1990). Selective associations in the observational

conditioning of fear in rhesus monkeys. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 16(4), 372–389.

Coyne, S. M., & Archer, J. (2005). The relationship between indirect and
physical aggression on television and in real life. Social Development,
14(2), 324–337.

Heyman, R. E., & Slep, A. M. S. (2002). Do child abuse and interparental

violence lead to adulthood family violence? Journal of Marriage and
Family, 64(4), 864–870.

Köhler, W. (1925). The mentality of apes (E. Winter, Trans.). New York, NY:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Patterson, G. R., Dishion, T. J., & Bank, L. (1984). Family interaction: A

process model of deviancy training. Aggressive Behavior, 10(3), 253–267.

Schulenburg, C. (2007, January). Dying to entertain: Violence on prime time

broadcast television, 1998 to 2006. Los Angeles, CA: Parents Television
Council. Retrieved from
http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/publications/reports/violencestudy/exsummar
y.asp.

Seymour, B., Yoshida W., & Dolan, R. (2009) Altruistic learning. Frontiers
in Behavioral Neuroscience, 3, 23. doi:10.3389/neuro.07.023.2009

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. (2003, Spring). Key facts. Menlo
Park, CA: Author. Retrieved from http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/Key-
Facts-TV-Violence.pdf

Tolman, E. C., & Honzik, C. H. (1930). Introduction and removal of reward,

and maze performance in rats. University of California Publications in
Psychology, 4, 257–275.
7.4 Using the Principles of Learning to
Understand Everyday Behavior

Learning Objectives

1. Review the ways that learning theories can be applied to understanding and
modifying everyday behavior.

2. Describe the situations under which reinforcement may make people less likely to
enjoy engaging in a behavior.

3. Explain how principles of reinforcement are used to understand social dilemmas

such as the prisoner’s dilemma and why people are likely to make competitive
choices in them.

The principles of learning are some of the most general and most powerful
in all of psychology. It would be fair to say that these principles account for
more behavior using fewer principles than any other set of psychological
theories. The principles of learning are applied in numerous ways in
everyday settings. For example, operant conditioning has been used to
motivate employees, to improve athletic performance, to increase the
functioning of those suffering from developmental disabilities, and to help
parents successfully toilet train their children (Simek & O’Brien, 1981;
Pedalino & Gamboa, 1974; Azrin & Foxx, 1974; McGlynn, 1990). In this
section we will consider how learning theories are used in advertising, in
education, and in understanding competitive relationships between
individuals and groups.
Using Classical Conditioning in Advertising

Classical conditioning has long been, and continues to be, an effective tool
in marketing and advertising (Hawkins, Best, & Coney, 1998). The general
idea is to create an advertisement that has positive features such that the ad
creates enjoyment in the person exposed to it. The enjoyable ad serves as
the unconditioned stimulus (US), and the enjoyment is the unconditioned
response (UR). Because the product being advertised is mentioned in the ad,
it becomes associated with the US, and then becomes the conditioned
stimulus (CS). In the end, if everything has gone well, seeing the product
online or in the store will then create a positive response in the buyer,
leading him or her to be more likely to purchase the product.

Video Clip: Television Ads

(click to see video)

Can you determine how classical conditioning is being used in these

commercials?

A similar strategy is used by corporations that sponsor teams or events. For

instance, if people enjoy watching a college basketball team playing
basketball, and if that team is sponsored by a product, such as Pepsi, then
people may end up experiencing positive feelings when they view a can of
Pepsi. Of course, the sponsor wants to sponsor only good teams and good
athletes because these create more pleasurable responses.

Advertisers use a variety of techniques to create positive advertisements,

including enjoyable music, cute babies, attractive models, and funny
spokespeople. In one study, Gorn (1982) showed research participants
pictures of different writing pens of different colors, but paired one of the
pens with pleasant music and the other with unpleasant music. When given
a choice as a free gift, more people chose the pen color associated with the
pleasant music. And Schemer, Matthes, Wirth, and Textor (2008) found that
people were more interested in products that had been embedded in music
videos of artists that they liked and less likely to be interested when the
products were in videos featuring artists that they did not like.

Another type of ad that is based on principles of classical conditioning is

one that associates fear with the use of a product or behavior, such as those
that show pictures of deadly automobile accidents to encourage seatbelt use
or images of lung cancer surgery to discourage smoking. These ads have
also been found to be effective (Das, de Wit, & Stroebe, 2003; Perloff,
2003; Witte & Allen, 2000), due in large part to conditioning. When we see
a cigarette and the fear of dying has been associated with it, we are
hopefully less likely to light up.

Taken together then, there is ample evidence of the utility of classical

conditioning, using both positive as well as negative stimuli, in advertising.
This does not, however, mean that we are always influenced by these ads.
The likelihood of conditioning being successful is greater for products that
we do not know much about, where the differences between products are
relatively minor, and when we do not think too carefully about the choices
(Schemer et al., 2008).

Psychology in Everyday Life: Operant Conditioning in the Classroom

John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner believed that all learning was the result of reinforcement, and
thus that reinforcement could be used to educate children. For instance, Watson wrote in his
book on behaviorism,

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to

bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to
 become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-
chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants,
tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my
facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been
doing it for many thousands of years (Watson, 1930, p. 82).

Skinner promoted the use of programmed instruction, an educational tool that consists of self-
teaching with the aid of a specialized textbook or teaching machine that presents material in a
logical sequence (Skinner, 1965). Programmed instruction allows students to progress through a
unit of study at their own rate, checking their own answers and advancing only after answering
correctly. Programmed instruction is used today in many classes, for instance to teach computer
programming (Emurian, 2009).

Although reinforcement can be effective in education, and teachers make use of it by awarding
gold stars, good grades, and praise, there are also substantial limitations to using reward to
improve learning. To be most effective, rewards must be contingent on appropriate behavior. In
some cases teachers may distribute rewards indiscriminately, for instance by giving praise or
good grades to children whose work does not warrant it, in the hope that they will “feel good
about themselves” and that this self-esteem will lead to better performance. Studies indicate,
however, that high self-esteem alone does not improve academic performance (Baumeister,
Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs, 2003). When rewards are not earned, they become meaningless and
no longer provide motivation for improvement.

Another potential limitation of rewards is that they may teach children that the activity should be
performed for the reward, rather than for one’s own interest in the task. If rewards are offered too
often, the task itself becomes less appealing. Mark Lepper and his colleagues (Lepper, Greene, &
Nisbett, 1973) studied this possibility by leading some children to think that they engaged in an
activity for a reward, rather than because they simply enjoyed it. First, they placed some fun felt-
tipped markers in the classroom of the children they were studying. The children loved the
markers and played with them right away. Then, the markers were taken out of the classroom,
and the children were given a chance to play with the markers individually at an experimental
session with the researcher. At the research session, the children were randomly assigned to one
of three experimental groups. One group of children (the expected reward condition) was told
that if they played with the markers they would receive a good drawing award. A second group
(the unexpected reward condition) also played with the markers, and also got the award—but
they were not told ahead of time that they would be receiving the award; it came as a surprise
after the session. The third group (the no reward group) played with the markers too, but got no
award.

Then, the researchers placed the markers back in the classroom and observed how much the
children in each of the three groups played with them. As you can see in Figure 7.10
“Undermining Intrinsic Interest”, the children who had been led to expect a reward for playing
with the markers during the experimental session played with the markers less at the second
session than they had at the first session. The idea is that, when the children had to choose
whether or not to play with the markers when the markers reappeared in the classroom, they
based their decision on their own prior behavior. The children in the no reward groups and the
children in the unexpected reward groups realized that they played with the markers because
they liked them. Children in the expected award condition, however, remembered that they were
promised a reward for the activity the last time they played with the markers. These children,
then, were more likely to draw the inference that they play with the markers only for the external
reward, and because they did not expect to get an award for playing with the markers in the
classroom, they determined that they didn’t like them. Expecting to receive the award at the
session had undermined their initial interest in the markers.

Figure 7.10 Undermining Intrinsic Interest

Mark Lepper and his colleagues (1973) found that giving rewards for playing with markers, which the

children naturally enjoyed, could reduce their interest in the activity.

Adapted from Lepper, M. R., Greene, D., & Nisbett, R. E. (1973). Undermining children’s intrinsic

interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the “overjustification” hypothesis. Journal of Personality & Social

Psychology, 28(1), 129–137.

This research suggests that, although giving rewards may in many cases lead us to perform an
activity more frequently or with more effort, reward may not always increase our liking for the
activity. In some cases reward may actually make us like an activity less than we did before we
were rewarded for it. This outcome is particularly likely when the reward is perceived as an
obvious attempt on the part of others to get us to do something. When children are given money
by their parents to get good grades in school, they may improve their school performance to gain
the reward. But at the same time their liking for school may decrease. On the other hand,
rewards that are seen as more internal to the activity, such as rewards that praise us, remind us of
our achievements in the domain, and make us feel good about ourselves as a result of our
accomplishments are more likely to be effective in increasing not only the performance of, but
also the liking of, the activity (Hulleman, Durik, Schweigert, & Harackiewicz, 2008; Ryan &
Deci, 2002).

Other research findings also support the general principle that punishment is generally less
effective than reinforcement in changing behavior. In a recent meta-analysis, Gershoff (2002)
found that although children who were spanked by their parents were more likely to immediately
comply with the parents’ demands, they were also more aggressive, showed less ability to
control aggression, and had poorer mental health in the long term than children who were not
spanked. The problem seems to be that children who are punished for bad behavior are likely to
change their behavior only to avoid the punishment, rather than by internalizing the norms of
being good for its own sake. Punishment also tends to generate anger, defiance, and a desire for
revenge. Moreover, punishment models the use of aggression and ruptures the important
relationship between the teacher and the learner (Kohn, 1993).
Reinforcement in Social Dilemmas

The basic principles of reinforcement, reward, and punishment have been

used to help understand a variety of human behaviors (Rotter, 1945;
Bandura, 1977; Miller & Dollard, 1941). The general idea is that, as
predicted by principles of operant learning and the law of effect, people act
in ways that maximize their outcomes, where outcomes are defined as the
presence of reinforcers and the absence of punishers.

Consider, for example, a situation known as the commons dilemma, as

proposed by the ecologist Garrett Hardin (1968). Hardin noted that in many
European towns there was at one time a centrally located pasture, known as
the commons, which was shared by the inhabitants of the village to graze
their livestock. But the commons was not always used wisely. The problem
was that each individual who owned livestock wanted to be able to use the
commons to graze his or her own animals. However, when each group
member took advantage of the commons by grazing many animals, the
commons became overgrazed, the pasture died, and the commons was
destroyed.

Although Hardin focused on the particular example of the commons, the

basic dilemma of individual desires versus the benefit of the group as whole
can also be found in many contemporary public goods issues, including the
use of limited natural resources, air pollution, and public land. In large cities
most people may prefer the convenience of driving their own car to work
each day rather than taking public transportation. Yet this behavior uses up
public goods (the space on limited roadways, crude oil reserves, and clean
air). People are lured into the dilemma by short-term rewards, seemingly
without considering the potential long-term costs of the behavior, such as air
pollution and the necessity of building even more highways.
A social dilemma such as the commons dilemma is a situation in which the
behavior that creates the most positive outcomes for the individual may in
the long term lead to negative consequences for the group as a whole. The
dilemmas are arranged in a way that it is easy to be selfish, because the
personally beneficial choice (such as using water during a water shortage or
driving to work alone in one’s own car) produces reinforcements for the
individual. Furthermore, social dilemmas tend to work on a type of “time
delay.” The problem is that, because the long-term negative outcome (the
extinction of fish species or dramatic changes in the earth’s climate) is far
away in the future and the individual benefits are occurring right now, it is
difficult for an individual to see how many costs there really are. The
paradox, of course, is that if everyone takes the personally selfish choice in
an attempt to maximize his or her own outcomes, the long-term result is
poorer outcomes for every individual in the group. Each individual prefers
to make use of the public goods for himself or herself, whereas the best
outcome for the group as a whole is to use the resources more slowly and
wisely.

One method of understanding how individuals and groups behave in social

dilemmas is to create such situations in the laboratory and observe how
people react to them. The best known of these laboratory simulations is
called the prisoner’s dilemma game (Poundstone, 1992). This game
represents a social dilemma in which the goals of the individual compete
with the goals of another individual (or sometimes with a group of other
individuals). Like all social dilemmas, the prisoner’s dilemma assumes that
individuals will generally try to maximize their own outcomes in their
interactions with others.

In the prisoner’s dilemma game, the participants are shown a payoff matrix
in which numbers are used to express the potential outcomes for each of the
players in the game, given the decisions each player makes. The payoffs are
chosen beforehand by the experimenter to create a situation that models
some real-world outcome. Furthermore, in the prisoner’s dilemma game, the
payoffs are normally arranged as they would be in a typical social dilemma,
such that each individual is better off acting in his or her immediate self-
interest, and yet if all individuals act according to their self-interests, then
everyone will be worse off.

In its original form, the prisoner’s dilemma game involves a situation in

which two prisoners (we’ll call them Frank and Malik) have been accused
of committing a crime. The police believe that the two worked together on
the crime, but they have only been able to gather enough evidence to
convict each of them of a more minor offense. In an attempt to gain more
evidence, and thus to be able to convict the prisoners of the larger crime,
each of the prisoners is interrogated individually, with the hope that he will
confess to having been involved in the more major crime, in return for a
promise of a reduced sentence if he confesses first. Each prisoner can make
either the cooperative choice (which is to not confess) or the competitive
choice (which is to confess).

The incentives for either confessing or not confessing are expressed in a

payoff matrix such as the one shown in Figure 7.11 “The Prisoner’s
Dilemma”. The top of the matrix represents the two choices that Malik
might make (to either confess that he did the crime or not confess), and the
side of the matrix represents the two choices that Frank might make (also to
either confess or not confess). The payoffs that each prisoner receives, given
the choices of each of the two prisoners, are shown in each of the four
squares.

Figure 7.11 The Prisoner’s Dilemma

In the prisoner’s dilemma game, two suspected criminals are interrogated separately. The matrix indicates

the outcomes for each prisoner, measured as the number of years each is sentenced to prison, as a result of

each combination of cooperative (don’t confess) and competitive (confess) decisions. Outcomes for Malik

are in black and outcomes for Frank are in grey.

If both prisoners take the cooperative choice by not confessing (the situation
represented in the upper left square of the matrix), there will be a trial, the
limited available information will be used to convict each prisoner, and they
each will be sentenced to a relatively short prison term of three years.
However, if either of the prisoners confesses, turning “state’s evidence”
against the other prisoner, then there will be enough information to convict
the other prisoner of the larger crime, and that prisoner will receive a
sentence of 30 years, whereas the prisoner who confesses will get off free.
These outcomes are represented in the lower left and upper right squares of
the matrix. Finally, it is possible that both players confess at the same time.
In this case there is no need for a trial, and in return the prosecutors offer a
somewhat reduced sentence (of 10 years) to each of the prisoners.

The prisoner’s dilemma has two interesting characteristics that make it a

useful model of a social dilemma. For one, the prisoner’s dilemma is
arranged such that a positive outcome for one player does not necessarily
mean a negative outcome for the other player. If you consider again the
matrix in Figure 7.11 “The Prisoner’s Dilemma”, you can see that if one
player takes the cooperative choice (to not confess) and the other takes the
competitive choice (to confess), then the prisoner who cooperates loses,
whereas the other prisoner wins. However, if both prisoners make the
cooperative choice, each remaining quiet, then neither gains more than the
other, and both prisoners receive a relatively light sentence. In this sense
both players can win at the same time.

Second, the prisoner’s dilemma matrix is arranged such that each individual
player is motivated to take the competitive choice, because this choice leads
to a higher payoff regardless of what the other player does. Imagine for a
moment that you are Malik, and you are trying to decide whether to
cooperate (don’t confess) or to compete (confess). And imagine that you are
not really sure what Frank is going to do. Remember the goal of the
individual is to maximize outcomes. The values in the matrix make it clear
that if you think that Frank is going to confess, you should confess yourself
(to get 10 rather than 30 years in prison). And, it is also clear that if you
think Frank is not going to confess, you should still confess (to get 0 rather
than 3 years in prison). So the matrix is arranged such that the “best”
alternative for each player, at least in the sense of pure reward and self-
interest, is to make the competitive choice, even though in the end both
players would prefer the combination in which both players cooperate to the
one in which they both compete.

Although initially specified in terms of the two prisoners, similar payoff

matrices can be used to predict behavior in many different types of
dilemmas involving two or more parties and including choices of helping
and not helping, working and loafing, and paying and not paying debts. For
instance, we can use the prisoner’s dilemma to help us understand
roommates living together in a house who might not want to contribute to
the housework. Each of them would be better off if they relied on the other
to clean the house. Yet if neither of them makes an effort to clean the house
(the cooperative choice), the house becomes a mess and they will both be
worse off.

Key Takeaways

Learning theories have been used to change behaviors in many areas of everyday
life.

Some advertising uses classical conditioning to associate a pleasant response with a

product.

Rewards are frequently and effectively used in education but must be carefully
designed to be contingent on performance and to avoid undermining interest in the
activity.

Social dilemmas, such as the prisoner’s dilemma, can be understood in terms of a

desire to maximize one’s outcomes in a competitive relationship.
 Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Find and share with your class some examples of advertisements that make use of
classical conditioning to create positive attitudes toward products.

2. Should parents use both punishment as well as reinforcement to discipline their

children? On what principles of learning do you base your opinion?

3. Think of a social dilemma other than one that has been discussed in this chapter, and
explain people’s behavior in it in terms of principles of learning.

References

Azrin, N., & Foxx, R. M. (1974). Toilet training in less than a day. New
York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. New York, NY: General

Learning Press;

Baumeister, R. F., Campbell, J. D., Krueger, J. I., & Vohs, K. D. (2003).

Does high self-esteem cause better performance, interpersonal success,
happiness, or healthier lifestyles? Psychological Science in the Public
Interest, 4, 1–44.

Das, E. H. H. J., de Wit, J. B. F., & Stroebe, W. (2003). Fear appeals

motivate acceptance of action recommendations: Evidence for a positive
bias in the processing of persuasive messages. Personality & Social
Psychology Bulletin, 29(5), 650–664.

Emurian, H. H. (2009). Teaching Java: Managing instructional tactics to

optimize student learning. International Journal of Information &
Communication Technology Education, 3(4), 34–49.

Gershoff, E. T. (2002). Corporal punishment by parents and associated child

behaviors and experiences: A meta-analytic and theoretical review.
Psychological Bulletin, 128(4), 539–579.

Gorn, G. J. (1982). The effects of music in advertising on choice behavior:

A classical conditioning approach. Journal of Marketing, 46(1), 94–101.

Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162, 1243–1248.

Hawkins, D., Best, R., & Coney, K. (1998.) Consumer Behavior: Building
Marketing Strategy (7th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.

Hulleman, C. S., Durik, A. M., Schweigert, S. B., & Harackiewicz, J. M.

(2008). Task values, achievement goals, and interest: An integrative
analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100(2), 398–416.

Kohn, A. (1993). Punished by rewards: The trouble with gold stars,

incentive plans, A’s, praise, and other bribes. Boston, MA: Houghton
Mifflin and Company.

Lepper, M. R., Greene, D., & Nisbett, R. E. (1973). Undermining children’s

intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the “overjustification”
hypothesis. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 28(1), 129–137.

McGlynn, S. M. (1990). Behavioral approaches to neuropsychological

rehabilitation. Psychological Bulletin, 108, 420–441.

Miller, N., & Dollard, J. (1941). Social learning and imitation. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
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absenteeism: Intervention in one industrial setting. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 59, 694–697.

Perloff, R. M. (2003). The dynamics of persuasion: Communication and

attitudes in the 21st century (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.

Poundstone, W. (1992). The prisoner’s dilemma. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Rotter, J. B. (1945). Social learning and clinical psychology. Upper Saddle

River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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An organismic-dialectical perspective. In E. L. Deci & R. M. Ryan (Eds.),
Handbook of self-determination research (pp. 3–33). Rochester, NY:
University of Rochester Press.

Schemer, C., Matthes, J. R., Wirth, W., & Textor, S. (2008). Does “Passing
the Courvoisier” always pay off? Positive and negative evaluative
conditioning effects of brand placements in music videos. Psychology &
Marketing, 25(10), 923–943.

Schemer, C., Matthes, J. R., Wirth, W., & Textor, S. (2008). Does “Passing
the Courvoisier” always pay off? Positive and negative evaluative
conditioning effects of brand placements in music videos. Psychology &
Marketing, 25(10), 923–943.

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lowering your score and getting more out of your game. New York, NY:
Doubleday & Company.

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for effective public health campaigns. Health Education & Behavior, 27(5),
591–615.
7.5 Chapter Summary

Classical conditioning was first studied by physiologist Ivan Pavlov. In

classical conditioning a person or animal learns to associate a neutral
stimulus (the conditioned stimulus, or CS) with a stimulus (the
unconditioned stimulus, or US) that naturally produces a behavior (the
unconditioned response, or UR). As a result of this association, the
previously neutral stimulus comes to elicit the same or similar response (the
conditioned response, or CR).

Classically conditioned responses show extinction if the CS is repeatedly

presented without the US. The CR may reappear later in a process known as
spontaneous recovery.

Organisms may show stimulus generalization, in which stimuli similar to

the CS may produce similar behaviors, or stimulus discrimination, in which
the organism learns to differentiate between the CS and other similar
stimuli.

Second-order conditioning occurs when a second CS is conditioned to a

previously established CS.

Psychologist Edward Thorndike developed the law of effect: the idea that
responses that are reinforced are “stamped in” by experience and thus occur
more frequently, whereas responses that are punishing are “stamped out”
and subsequently occur less frequently.

B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) expanded on Thorndike’s ideas to develop a set

of principles to explain operant conditioning.
Positive reinforcement strengthens a response by presenting a something
pleasant after the response, and negative reinforcement strengthens a
response by reducing or removing something unpleasant. Positive
punishment weakens a response by presenting something unpleasant after
the response, whereas negative punishment weakens a response by reducing
or removing something pleasant.

Shaping is the process of guiding an organism’s behavior to the desired

outcome through the use of reinforcers.

Reinforcement may be either partial or continuous. Partial-reinforcement

schedules are determined by whether the reward is presented on the basis of
the time that elapses between rewards (interval) or on the basis of the
number of responses that the organism engages in (ratio), and by whether
the reinforcement occurs on a regular (fixed) or unpredictable (variable)
schedule.

Not all learning can be explained through the principles of classical and
operant conditioning. Insight is the sudden understanding of the
components of a problem that makes the solution apparent, and latent
learning refers to learning that is not reinforced and not demonstrated until
there is motivation to do so.

Learning by observing the behavior of others and the consequences of those

behaviors is known as observational learning. Aggression, altruism, and
many other behaviors are learned through observation.

Learning theories can and have been applied to change behaviors in many
areas of everyday life. Some advertising uses classical conditioning to
associate a pleasant response with a product.

Rewards are frequently and effectively used in education but must be

carefully designed to be contingent on performance and to avoid
undermining interest in the activity.

Social dilemmas, such as the prisoner’s dilemma, can be understood in

terms of a desire to maximize one’s outcomes in a competitive relationship.
Chapter 8. Remembering and
Judging

She Was Certain, but She Was Wrong

In 1984 Jennifer Thompson was a 22-year-old college student in North Carolina. One night a
man broke into her apartment, put a knife to her throat, and raped her. According to her own
account, Ms. Thompson studied her rapist throughout the incident with great determination to
memorize his face. She said:

I studied every single detail on the rapist’s face. I looked at his hairline; I looked
for scars, for tattoos, for anything that would help me identify him. When and if I
survived.

Ms. Thompson went to the police that same day to create a sketch of her attacker, relying on
what she believed was her detailed memory. Several days later, the police constructed a
photographic lineup. Thompson identified Ronald Cotton as the rapist, and she later testified
against him at trial. She was positive it was him, with no doubt in her mind.

I was sure. I knew it. I had picked the right guy, and he was going to go to jail. If
there was the possibility of a death sentence, I wanted him to die. I wanted to flip
the switch.

As positive as she was, it turned out that Jennifer Thompson was wrong. But it was not until
after Mr. Cotton had served 11 years in prison for a crime he did not commit that conclusive
DNA evidence indicated that Bobby Poole was the actual rapist, and Cotton was released from
jail. Jennifer Thompson’s memory had failed her, resulting in a substantial injustice. It took
definitive DNA testing to shake her confidence, but she now knows that despite her confidence
in her identification, it was wrong. Consumed by guilt, Thompson sought out Cotton when he
was released from prison, and they have since become friends (Innocence Project, n.d.;
Thompson, 2000).
 Picking Cotton: A Memoir of Injustice and Redemption

(click to see video)

Although Jennifer Thompson was positive that it was Ronald Cotton who had raped her, her
memory was inaccurate. Conclusive DNA testing later proved that he was not the attacker.
Watch this book trailer about the story.

Jennifer Thompson is not the only person to have been fooled by her memory of events. Over
the past 10 years, almost 400 people have been released from prison when DNA evidence
confirmed that they could not have committed the crime for which they had been convicted. And
in more than three-quarters of these cases, the cause of the innocent people being falsely
convicted was erroneous eyewitness testimony (Wells, Memon, & Penrod, 2006).

Eyewitness Testimony

(click to see video)

Watch this video for Lesley Stahl’s 60 Minutes segment on this case.

The two subjects of this chapter are memory, defined as the ability to store
and retrieve information over time, and cognition, defined as the processes
of acquiring and using knowledge. It is useful to consider memory and
cognition in the same chapter because they work together to help us
interpret and understand our environments.

Memory and cognition represent the two major interests of cognitive

psychologists. The cognitive approach became the most important school of
psychology during the 1960s, and the field of psychology has remained in
large part cognitive since that time. The cognitive school was influenced in
large part by the development of the electronic computer, and although the
differences between computers and the human mind are vast, cognitive
psychologists have used the computer as a model for understanding the
workings of the mind.
Differences between Brains and Computers

In computers, information can be accessed only if one knows the exact location of
the memory. In the brain, information can be accessed through spreading activation
from closely related concepts.

The brain operates primarily in parallel, meaning that it is multitasking on many

different actions at the same time. Although this is changing as new computers are
developed, most computers are primarily serial—they finish one task before they
start another.

In computers, short-term (random-access) memory is a subset of long-term (read-

only) memory. In the brain, the processes of short-term memory and long-term
memory are distinct.

In the brain, there is no difference between hardware (the mechanical aspects of the
computer) and software (the programs that run on the hardware).

In the brain, synapses, which operate using an electrochemical process, are much
slower but also vastly more complex and useful than the transistors used by
computers.

Computers differentiate memory (e.g., the hard drive) from processing (the central
processing unit), but in brains there is no such distinction. In the brain (but not in
computers) existing memory is used to interpret and store incoming information,
and retrieving information from memory changes the memory itself.

The brain is self-organizing and self-repairing, but computers are not. If a person
suffers a stroke, neural plasticity will help him or her recover. If we drop our laptop
and it breaks, it cannot fix itself.

The brain is significantly bigger than any current computer. The brain is estimated to
have 25,000,000,000,000,000 (25 million billion) interactions among axons,
dendrites, neurons, and neurotransmitters, and that doesn’t include the
 approximately 1 trillion glial cells that may also be important for information
processing and memory.

Although cognitive psychology began in earnest at about the same time that the electronic
computer was first being developed, and although cognitive psychologists have frequently used
the computer as a model for understanding how the brain operates, research in cognitive
neuroscience has revealed many important differences between brains and computers. The
neuroscientist Chris Chatham (2007) provided the list of differences between brains and
computers shown here. You might want to check out the website and the responses to it at
http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2007/03/why_the_brain_is_not_ like_a_co.php.

We will begin the chapter with the study of memory. Our memories allow
us to do relatively simple things, such as remembering where we parked our
car or the name of the current president of the United States, but also allow
us to form complex memories, such as how to ride a bicycle or to write a
computer program. Moreover, our memories define us as individuals—they
are our experiences, our relationships, our successes, and our failures.
Without our memories, we would not have a life.

At least for some things, our memory is very good (Bahrick, 2000). Once
we learn a face, we can recognize that face many years later. We know the
lyrics of many songs by heart, and we can give definitions for tens of
thousands of words. Mitchell (2006) contacted participants 17 years after
they had been briefly exposed to some line drawings in a lab and found that
they still could identify the images significantly better than participants who
had never seen them.
Figure 8.1 Kim Peek
Kim Peek, the subject of the movie Rain Man, was believed to have memorized the contents of more than

10,000 books. He could read a book in about an hour.

Darold A. Treffert – Kim Peek, diagnosed with Savant syndrome – The copyright holder of this file allows

anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that the copyright holder is properly attributed. Redistribution,

derivative work, commercial use, and all other use is permitted.

For some people, memory is truly amazing. Consider, for instance, the case
of Kim Peek, who was the inspiration for the Academy Award–winning film
Rain Man (Figure 8.1 “Kim Peek” and Note 8.5 “Video Clip: Kim Peek”).
Although Peek’s IQ was only 87, significantly below the average of about
100, it is estimated that he memorized more than 10,000 books in his
lifetime (Wisconsin Medical Society, n.d.; “Kim Peek,” 2004). The Russian
psychologist A. R. Luria (2004) has described the abilities of a man known
as “S,” who seems to have unlimited memory. S remembers strings of
hundreds of random letters for years at a time, and seems in fact to never
forget anything.

Video Clip: Kim Peek

(click to see video)

You can view an interview with Kim Peek and see some of his amazing
memory abilities at this link.

In this chapter we will see how psychologists use behavioral responses

(such as memory tests and reaction times) to draw inferences about what
and how people remember. And we will see that although we have very
good memory for some things, our memories are far from perfect (Schacter,
1996). The errors that we make are due to the fact that our memories are not
simply recording devices that input, store, and retrieve the world around us.
Rather, we actively process and interpret information as we remember and
recollect it, and these cognitive processes influence what we remember and
how we remember it. Because memories are constructed, not recorded,
when we remember events we don’t reproduce exact replicas of those
events (Bartlett, 1932).

In the last section of the chapter we will focus primarily on cognition, with
a particular consideration for cases in which cognitive processes lead us to
distort our judgments or misremember information. We will see that our
prior knowledge can influence our memory. People who read the words
“dream, sheets, rest, snore, blanket, tired, and bed” and then are asked to
remember the words often think that they saw the word sleep even though
that word was not in the list (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). And we will
see that in other cases we are influenced by the ease with which we can
retrieve information from memory or by the information that we are
exposed to after we first learn something.

Although much research in the area of memory and cognition is basic in

orientation, the work also has profound influence on our everyday
experiences. Our cognitive processes influence the accuracy and inaccuracy
of our memories and our judgments, and they lead us to be vulnerable to the
types of errors that eyewitnesses such as Jennifer Thompson may make.
Understanding these potential errors is the first step in learning to avoid
them.

References

Bahrick, H. P. (2000). Long-term maintenance of knowledge. In E. Tulving

& F. I. M. Craik (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of memory (pp. 347–362).
New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge

University Press.

Chatham, C. (2007, March 27). 10 important differences between brains

and computers. Developing Intelligence. Retrieved from
http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2007/03/why_the_brain_
is_not_like_a_co.php

Innocence Project. (n.d.). Ronald Cotton. Retrieved from

http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/72.php.

Kim Peek: Savant who was the inspiration for the film Rain Man. (2009,
December 23). The Times. Retrieved from
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6965115.ece

Luria, A. (2004). The mind of a mnemonist: A little book about a vast

memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Mitchell, D. B. (2006). Nonconscious priming after 17 years: Invulnerable

implicit memory? Psychological Science, 17(11), 925–928.

Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories:

Remembering words not presented in lists. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21(4), 803–814.

Schacter, D. L. (1996). Searching for memory: The brain, the mind, and the
past (1st ed.). New York, NY: Basic Books.

Thompson, J. (2000, June 18). I was certain, but I was wrong. New York
Times. Retrieved from
http://faculty.washington.edu/gloftus/Other_Information/Legal_Stuff/Articl
es/News_Articles/Thompson_NYT_6_18_2000.html

Wells, G. L., Memon, A., & Penrod, S. D. (2006). Eyewitness evidence:

Improving its probative value. Psychological Science in the Public Interest,
7(2), 45–75.

Wisconsin Medical Society. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/_SAVANT/_PROFILES/kim_peek
/_media/video/expedition/video.html.
8.1 Memories as Types and Stages

Learning Objectives

1. Compare and contrast explicit and implicit memory, identifying the features that
define each.

2. Explain the function and duration of eidetic and echoic memories.

3. Summarize the capacities of short-term memory and explain how working memory
is used to process information in it.

As you can see in Table 8.1 “Memory Conceptualized in Terms of Types,

Stages, and Processes”, psychologists conceptualize memory in terms of
types, in terms of stages, and in terms of processes. In this section we will
consider the two types of memory, explicit memory and implicit memory,
and then the three major memory stages: sensory, short-term, and long-term
(Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968). Then, in the next section, we will consider the
nature of long-term memory, with a particular emphasis on the cognitive
techniques we can use to improve our memories. Our discussion will focus
on the three processes that are central to long-term memory: encoding,
storage, and retrieval.

Table 8.1 Memory Conceptualized in Terms of Types, Stages, and Processes

 Explicit memory
As types
Implicit memory

Sensory memory

As stages Short-term memory

Long-term memory

Encoding

As processes Storage

Retrieval

Explicit Memory

When we assess memory by asking a person to consciously remember

things, we are measuring explicit memory. Explicit memory refers to
knowledge or experiences that can be consciously remembered. As you can
see in Figure 8.2 “Types of Memory”, there are two types of explicit
memory: episodic and semantic. Episodic memory refers to the firsthand
experiences that we have had (e.g., recollections of our high school
graduation day or of the fantastic dinner we had in New York last year).
Semantic memory refers to our knowledge of facts and concepts about the
world (e.g., that the absolute value of −90 is greater than the absolute value
of 9 and that one definition of the word “affect” is “the experience of feeling
or emotion”).

Figure 8.2 Types of Memory

Explicit memory is assessed using measures in which the individual being
tested must consciously attempt to remember the information. A recall
memory test is a measure of explicit memory that involves bringing from
memory information that has previously been remembered. We rely on our
recall memory when we take an essay test, because the test requires us to
generate previously remembered information. A multiple-choice test is an
example of a recognition memory test, a measure of explicit memory that
involves determining whether information has been seen or learned before.

Your own experiences taking tests will probably lead you to agree with the
scientific research finding that recall is more difficult than recognition.
Recall, such as required on essay tests, involves two steps: first generating
an answer and then determining whether it seems to be the correct one.
Recognition, as on multiple-choice test, only involves determining which
item from a list seems most correct (Haist, Shimamura, & Squire, 1992).
Although they involve different processes, recall and recognition memory
measures tend to be correlated. Students who do better on a multiple-choice
exam will also, by and large, do better on an essay exam (Bridgeman &
Morgan, 1996).

A third way of measuring memory is known as relearning (Nelson, 1985).

Measures of relearning (or savings)assess how much more quickly
information is processed or learned when it is studied again after it has
already been learned but then forgotten. If you have taken some French
courses in the past, for instance, you might have forgotten most of the
vocabulary you learned. But if you were to work on your French again,
you’d learn the vocabulary much faster the second time around. Relearning
can be a more sensitive measure of memory than either recall or recognition
because it allows assessing memory in terms of “how much” or “how fast”
rather than simply “correct” versus “incorrect” responses. Relearning also
allows us to measure memory for procedures like driving a car or playing a
piano piece, as well as memory for facts and figures.

Implicit Memory

While explicit memory consists of the things that we can consciously report
that we know, implicit memory refers to knowledge that we cannot
consciously access. However, implicit memory is nevertheless exceedingly
important to us because it has a direct effect on our behavior. Implicit
memory refers to the influence of experience on behavior, even if the
individual is not aware of those influences. As you can see in Figure 8.2
“Types of Memory”, there are three general types of implicit memory:
procedural memory, classical conditioning effects, and priming.

Procedural memory refers to our often unexplainable knowledge of how to

do things. When we walk from one place to another, speak to another person
in English, dial a cell phone, or play a video game, we are using procedural
memory. Procedural memory allows us to perform complex tasks, even
though we may not be able to explain to others how we do them. There is no
way to tell someone how to ride a bicycle; a person has to learn by doing it.
The idea of implicit memory helps explain how infants are able to learn.
The ability to crawl, walk, and talk are procedures, and these skills are
easily and efficiently developed while we are children despite the fact that
as adults we have no conscious memory of having learned them.

A second type of implicit memory is classical conditioning effects, in which

we learn, often without effort or awareness, to associate neutral stimuli
(such as a sound or a light) with another stimulus (such as food), which
creates a naturally occurring response, such as enjoyment or salivation. The
memory for the association is demonstrated when the conditioned stimulus
(the sound) begins to create the same response as the unconditioned
stimulus (the food) did before the learning.

The final type of implicit memory is known as priming, or changes in

behavior as a result of experiences that have happened frequently or
recently. Priming refers both to the activation of knowledge (e.g., we can
prime the concept of “kindness” by presenting people with words related to
kindness) and to the influence of that activation on behavior (people who
are primed with the concept of kindness may act more kindly).

One measure of the influence of priming on implicit memory is the word

fragment test, in which a person is asked to fill in missing letters to make
words. You can try this yourself: First, try to complete the following word
fragments, but work on each one for only three or four seconds. Do any
words pop into mind quickly?

_ib_a_y

_h_s__i_n

_o_k

_h_is_

Now read the following sentence carefully:

“He got his materials from the shelves, checked them out, and then left the building.”

Then try again to make words out of the word fragments.

I think you might find that it is easier to complete fragments 1 and 3 as
“library” and “book,” respectively, after you read the sentence than it was
before you read it. However, reading the sentence didn’t really help you to
complete fragments 2 and 4 as “physician” and “chaise.” This difference in
implicit memory probably occurred because as you read the sentence, the
concept of “library” (and perhaps “book”) was primed, even though they
were never mentioned explicitly. Once a concept is primed it influences our
behaviors, for instance, on word fragment tests.

Our everyday behaviors are influenced by priming in a wide variety of

situations. Seeing an advertisement for cigarettes may make us start
smoking, seeing the flag of our home country may arouse our patriotism,
and seeing a student from a rival school may arouse our competitive spirit.
And these influences on our behaviors may occur without our being aware
of them.

Research Focus: Priming Outside Awareness Influences Behavior

One of the most important characteristics of implicit memories is that they are frequently formed
and used automatically, without much effort or awareness on our part. In one demonstration of
the automaticity and influence of priming effects, John Bargh and his colleagues (Bargh, Chen,
& Burrows, 1996) conducted a study in which they showed college students lists of five
scrambled words, each of which they were to make into a sentence. Furthermore, for half of the
research participants, the words were related to stereotypes of the elderly. These participants saw
words such as the following:

in Florida retired live people

bingo man the forgetful plays

The other half of the research participants also made sentences, but from words that had nothing
to do with elderly stereotypes. The purpose of this task was to prime stereotypes of elderly
people in memory for some of the participants but not for others.

The experimenters then assessed whether the priming of elderly stereotypes would have any
effect on the students’ behavior—and indeed it did. When the research participant had gathered
all of his or her belongings, thinking that the experiment was over, the experimenter thanked him
or her for participating and gave directions to the closest elevator. Then, without the participants
knowing it, the experimenters recorded the amount of time that the participant spent walking
from the doorway of the experimental room toward the elevator. As you can see in Figure 8.3
“Results From Bargh, Chen, and Burrows, 1996”, participants who had made sentences using
words related to elderly stereotypes took on the behaviors of the elderly—they walked
significantly more slowly as they left the experimental room.

Figure 8.3 Results From Bargh, Chen, and Burrows, 1996

Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996) found that priming words associated with the elderly made people walk

more slowly.

Adapted from Bargh, J. A., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: Direct

effects of trait construct and stereotype activation on action. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology,

71, 230–244.

To determine if these priming effects occurred out of the awareness of the participants, Bargh
and his colleagues asked still another group of students to complete the priming task and then to
indicate whether they thought the words they had used to make the sentences had any
relationship to each other, or could possibly have influenced their behavior in any way. These
 students had no awareness of the possibility that the words might have been related to the elderly
or could have influenced their behavior.

Stages of Memory: Sensory, Short-Term, and

Long-Term Memory

Another way of understanding memory is to think about it in terms of stages

that describe the length of time that information remains available to us.
According to this approach (see Figure 8.4 “Memory Duration”),
information begins in sensory memory, moves to short-term memory, and
eventually moves to long-term memory. But not all information makes it
through all three stages; most of it is forgotten. Whether the information
moves from shorter-duration memory into longer-duration memory or
whether it is lost from memory entirely depends on how the information is
attended to and processed.

Figure 8.4 Memory Duration

Memory can characterized in terms of stages—the length of time that information remains available to us.

Adapted from Atkinson, R. C., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its

control processes. In K. Spence (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 2). Oxford,

England: Academic Press.

Sensory Memory

Sensory memory refers to the brief storage of sensory information. Sensory

memory is a memory buffer that lasts only very briefly and then, unless it is
attended to and passed on for more processing, is forgotten. The purpose of
sensory memory is to give the brain some time to process the incoming
sensations, and to allow us to see the world as an unbroken stream of events
rather than as individual pieces.

Visual sensory memory is known as iconic memory. Iconic memory was

first studied by the psychologist George Sperling (1960). In his research,
Sperling showed participants a display of letters in rows, similar to that
shown in Figure 8.5 “Measuring Iconic Memory”. However, the display
lasted only about 50 milliseconds (1/20 of a second). Then, Sperling gave
his participants a recall test in which they were asked to name all the letters
that they could remember. On average, the participants could remember
only about one-quarter of the letters that they had seen.

Figure 8.5 Measuring Iconic Memory

Sperling (1960) showed his participants displays such as this one for only 1/20th of a second. He found

that when he cued the participants to report one of the three rows of letters, they could do it, even if the

cue was given shortly after the display had been removed. The research demonstrated the existence of

iconic memory.

Adapted from Sperling, G. (1960). The information available in brief visual presentation. Psychological

Monographs, 74(11), 1–29.

Sperling reasoned that the participants had seen all the letters but could
remember them only very briefly, making it impossible for them to report
them all. To test this idea, in his next experiment he first showed the same
letters, but then after the display had been removed, he signaled to the
participants to report the letters from either the first, second, or third row. In
this condition, the participants now reported almost all the letters in that
row. This finding confirmed Sperling’s hunch: Participants had access to all
of the letters in their iconic memories, and if the task was short enough, they
were able to report on the part of the display he asked them to. The “short
enough” is the length of iconic memory, which turns out to be about 250
milliseconds (¼ of a second).

Auditory sensory memory is known as echoic memory. In contrast to iconic

memories, which decay very rapidly, echoic memories can last as long as 4
seconds (Cowan, Lichty, & Grove, 1990). This is convenient as it allows
you—among other things—to remember the words that you said at the
beginning of a long sentence when you get to the end of it, and to take notes
on your psychology professor’s most recent statement even after he or she
has finished saying it.

In some people iconic memory seems to last longer, a phenomenon known

as eidetic imagery (or “photographic memory”) in which people can report
details of an image over long periods of time. These people, who often
suffer from psychological disorders such as autism, claim that they can
“see” an image long after it has been presented, and can often report
accurately on that image. There is also some evidence for eidetic memories
in hearing; some people report that their echoic memories persist for
unusually long periods of time. The composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
may have possessed eidetic memory for music, because even when he was
very young and had not yet had a great deal of musical training, he could
listen to long compositions and then play them back almost perfectly
(Solomon, 1995).

Short-Term Memory

Most of the information that gets into sensory memory is forgotten, but
information that we turn our attention to, with the goal of remembering it,
may pass into short-term memory. Short-term memory (STM) is the place
where small amounts of information can be temporarily kept for more than
a few seconds but usually for less than one minute (Baddeley, Vallar, &
Shallice, 1990). Information in short-term memory is not stored
permanently but rather becomes available for us to process, and the
processes that we use to make sense of, modify, interpret, and store
information in STM are known as working memory.

Although it is called “memory,” working memory is not a store of memory

like STM but rather a set of memory procedures or operations. Imagine, for
instance, that you are asked to participate in a task such as this one, which is
a measure of working memory (Unsworth & Engle, 2007). Each of the
following questions appears individually on a computer screen and then
disappears after you answer the question:

Is 10 × 2 − 5 = 15? (Answer YES OR NO) Then remember “S”

Is 12 ÷ 6 − 2 = 1? (Answer YES OR NO) Then remember “R”

 Is 10 × 2 = 5? (Answer YES OR NO) Then remember “P”

Is 8 ÷ 2 − 1 = 1? (Answer YES OR NO) Then remember “T”

Is 6 × 2 − 1 = 8? (Answer YES OR NO) Then remember “U”

Is 2 × 3 − 3 = 0? (Answer YES OR NO) Then remember “Q”

To successfully accomplish the task, you have to answer each of the math
problems correctly and at the same time remember the letter that follows the
task. Then, after the six questions, you must list the letters that appeared in
each of the trials in the correct order (in this case S, R, P, T, U, Q).

To accomplish this difficult task you need to use a variety of skills. You
clearly need to use STM, as you must keep the letters in storage until you
are asked to list them. But you also need a way to make the best use of your
available attention and processing. For instance, you might decide to use a
strategy of “repeat the letters twice, then quickly solve the next problem,
and then repeat the letters twice again including the new one.” Keeping this
strategy (or others like it) going is the role of working memory’s central
executive—the part of working memory that directs attention and
processing. The central executive will make use of whatever strategies seem
to be best for the given task. For instance, the central executive will direct
the rehearsal process, and at the same time direct the visual cortex to form
an image of the list of letters in memory. You can see that although STM is
involved, the processes that we use to operate on the material in memory are
also critical.

Short-term memory is limited in both the length and the amount of

information it can hold. Peterson and Peterson (1959) found that when
people were asked to remember a list of three-letter strings and then were
immediately asked to perform a distracting task (counting backward by
threes), the material was quickly forgotten (see Figure 8.6 “STM Decay”),
such that by 18 seconds it was virtually gone.
Figure 8.6 STM Decay

Peterson and Peterson (1959) found that information that was not rehearsed decayed quickly from

memory.

Adapted from Peterson, L., & Peterson, M. J. (1959). Short-term retention of individual verbal items.

Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58(3), 193–198.

One way to prevent the decay of information from short-term memory is to

use working memory to rehearse it. Maintenance rehearsal is the process
of repeating information mentally or out loud with the goal of keeping it in
memory. We engage in maintenance rehearsal to keep a something that we
want to remember (e.g., a person’s name, e-mail address, or phone number)
in mind long enough to write it down, use it, or potentially transfer it to
long-term memory.
If we continue to rehearse information it will stay in STM until we stop
rehearsing it, but there is also a capacity limit to STM. Try reading each of
the following rows of numbers, one row at a time, at a rate of about one
number each second. Then when you have finished each row, close your
eyes and write down as many of the numbers as you can remember.

019

3586

10295

861059

1029384

75674834

657874104

6550423897

If you are like the average person, you will have found that on this test of
working memory, known as a digit span test, you did pretty well up to about
the fourth line, and then you started having trouble. I bet you missed some
of the numbers in the last three rows, and did pretty poorly on the last one.

The digit span of most adults is between five and nine digits, with an
average of about seven. The cognitive psychologist George Miller (1956)
referred to “seven plus or minus two” pieces of information as the “magic
number” in short-term memory. But if we can only hold a maximum of
about nine digits in short-term memory, then how can we remember larger
amounts of information than this? For instance, how can we ever remember
a 10-digit phone number long enough to dial it?

One way we are able to expand our ability to remember things in STM is by
using a memory technique called chunking. Chunking is the process of
organizing information into smaller groupings (chunks), thereby increasing
the number of items that can be held in STM. For instance, try to remember
this string of 12 letters:
XOFCBANNCVTM

You probably won’t do that well because the number of letters is more than
the magic number of seven.

Now try again with this one:

MTVCNNABCFOX

Would it help you if I pointed out that the material in this string could be
chunked into four sets of three letters each? I think it would, because then
rather than remembering 12 letters, you would only have to remember the
names of four television stations. In this case, chunking changes the number
of items you have to remember from 12 to only four.

Experts rely on chunking to help them process complex information.

Herbert Simon and William Chase (1973) showed chess masters and chess
novices various positions of pieces on a chessboard for a few seconds each.
The experts did a lot better than the novices in remembering the positions
because they were able to see the “big picture.” They didn’t have to
remember the position of each of the pieces individually, but chunked the
pieces into several larger layouts. But when the researchers showed both
groups random chess positions—positions that would be very unlikely to
occur in real games—both groups did equally poorly, because in this
situation the experts lost their ability to organize the layouts (see Figure 8.7
“Possible and Impossible Chess Positions”). The same occurs for basketball.
Basketball players recall actual basketball positions much better than do
nonplayers, but only when the positions make sense in terms of what is
happening on the court, or what is likely to happen in the near future, and
thus can be chunked into bigger units (Didierjean & Marmèche, 2005).

Figure 8.7 Possible and Impossible Chess Positions

Experience matters: Experienced chess players are able to recall the positions of the game on the right

much better than are those who are chess novices. But the experts do no better than the novices in

remembering the positions on the left, which cannot occur in a real game.

If information makes it past short term-memory it may enter long-term

memory (LTM), memory storage that can hold information for days,
months, and years. The capacity of long-term memory is large, and there is
no known limit to what we can remember (Wang, Liu, & Wang, 2003).
Although we may forget at least some information after we learn it, other
things will stay with us forever. In the next section we will discuss the
principles of long-term memory.
 Key Takeaways

Memory refers to the ability to store and retrieve information over time.

For some things our memory is very good, but our active cognitive processing of
information assures that memory is never an exact replica of what we have
experienced.

Explicit memory refers to experiences that can be intentionally and consciously

remembered, and it is measured using recall, recognition, and relearning. Explicit
memory includes episodic and semantic memories.

Measures of relearning (also known as savings) assess how much more quickly
information is learned when it is studied again after it has already been learned but
then forgotten.

Implicit memory refers to the influence of experience on behavior, even if the

individual is not aware of those influences. The three types of implicit memory are
procedural memory, classical conditioning, and priming.

Information processing begins in sensory memory, moves to short-term memory, and

eventually moves to long-term memory.

Maintenance rehearsal and chunking are used to keep information in short-term

memory.

The capacity of long-term memory is large, and there is no known limit to what we
can remember.
 Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. List some situations in which sensory memory is useful for you. What do you think
your experience of the stimuli would be like if you had no sensory memory?

2. Describe a situation in which you need to use working memory to perform a task or
solve a problem. How do your working memory skills help you?

References

Atkinson, R. C., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1968). Human memory: A proposed

system and its control processes. In K. Spence (Ed.), The psychology of
learning and motivation (Vol. 2). Oxford, England: Academic Press.

Baddeley, A. D., Vallar, G., & Shallice, T. (1990). The development of the
concept of working memory: Implications and contributions of
neuropsychology. In G. Vallar & T. Shallice (Eds.), Neuropsychological
impairments of short-term memory (pp. 54–73). New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.

Bargh, J. A., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social

behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype activation on
action. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 71, 230–244.

Bridgeman, B., & Morgan, R. (1996). Success in college for students with
discrepancies between performance on multiple-choice and essay tests.
Journal of Educational Psychology, 88(2), 333–340.

Cowan, N., Lichty, W., & Grove, T. R. (1990). Properties of memory for
unattended spoken syllables. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 16(2), 258–268.

Didierjean, A., & Marmèche, E. (2005). Anticipatory representation of

visual basketball scenes by novice and expert players. Visual Cognition,
12(2), 265–283.

Haist, F., Shimamura, A. P., & Squire, L. R. (1992). On the relationship

between recall and recognition memory. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 18(4), 691–702.

Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some
limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review,
63(2), 81–97.

Nelson, T. O. (1985). Ebbinghaus’s contribution to the measurement of

retention: Savings during relearning. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 11(3), 472–478.

Peterson, L., & Peterson, M. J. (1959). Short-term retention of individual

verbal items. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58(3), 193–198.

Simon, H. A., & Chase, W. G. (1973). Skill in chess. American Scientist,

61(4), 394–403.

Solomon, M. (1995). Mozart: A life. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.

Sperling, G. (1960). The information available in brief visual presentation.

Psychological Monographs, 74(11), 1–29.

Unsworth, N., & Engle, R. W. (2007). On the division of short-term and

working memory: An examination of simple and complex span and their
relation to higher order abilities. Psychological Bulletin, 133(6), 1038–1066.
Wang, Y., Liu, D., & Wang, Y. (2003). Discovering the capacity of human
memory. Brain & Mind, 4(2), 189–198.
8.2 How We Remember: Cues to Improving
Memory

Learning Objectives

1. Label and review the principles of encoding, storage, and retrieval.

2. Summarize the types of amnesia and their effects on memory.

3. Describe how the context in which we learn information can influence our memory
of that information.

Although it is useful to hold information in sensory and short-term memory,

we also rely on our long-term memory (LTM). We want to remember the
name of the new boy in the class, the name of the movie we saw last week,
and the material for our upcoming psychology test. Psychological research
has produced a great deal of knowledge about long-term memory, and this
research can be useful as you try to learn and remember new material (see
Table 8.2 “Helpful Memory Techniques Based on Psychological Research”).
In this section we will consider this question in terms of the types of
processing that we do on the information we want to remember. To be
successful, the information that we want to remember must be encoded and
stored, and then retrieved.

Table 8.2 Helpful Memory Techniques Based on Psychological Research

Technique Description Useful example

Think, for instance, “Proactive interference is

Use elaborative Material is better remembered
like retroactive interference but it occurs in a
encoding. if it is processed more fully.
forward manner.”

Think, for instance, “I remember a time when

Make use of the Material is better remembered I knew the answer to an exam question but
self-reference if it is linked to thoughts about couldn’t quite get it to come to mind. This
effect. the self. was an example of the tip-of-the-tongue
phenomenon.”

Information that we have Review the material that you have already
Be aware of the
learned drops off rapidly with studied right before the exam to increase the
forgetting curve.
time. likelihood it will remain in memory.

Information is learned better

Make use of the Study a little bit every day; do not cram at the
when it is studied in shorter
spacing effect. last minute.
periods spaced over time.

We can continue to learn even

Rely on Keep studying, even if you think you already
after we think we know the
overlearning. have it down.
information perfectly.

We have better retrieval when

Use context- If possible, study under conditions similar to
it occurs in the same situation
dependent the conditions in which you will take the
in which we learned the
retrieval. exam.
material.

We have better retrieval when Many possibilities, but don’t study under the
Use state-
we are in the same influence of drugs or alcohol, unless you plan
dependent
psychological state as we were to use them on the day of the exam (which is
retrieval.
when we learned the material. not recommended).
Encoding and Storage: How Our Perceptions
Become Memories

Encoding is the process by which we place the things that we experience

into memory. Unless information is encoded, it cannot be remembered. I’m
sure you’ve been to a party where you’ve been introduced to someone and
then—maybe only seconds later—you realize that you do not remember the
person’s name. Of course it’s not really surprising that you can’t remember
the name, because you probably were distracted and you never encoded the
name to begin with.

Not everything we experience can or should be encoded. We tend to encode

things that we need to remember and not bother to encode things that are
irrelevant. Look at Figure 8.8 “Pennies in Different Styles”, which shows
different images of U.S. pennies. Can you tell which one is the real one?
Nickerson and Adams (1979) found that very few of the U.S. participants
they tested could identify the right one. We see pennies a lot, but we don’t
bother to encode their features.

Figure 8.8 Pennies in Different Styles

Can you identify the “real” penny? We tend to have poor memory for things that don’t matter, even if we

see them frequently.

One way to improve our memory is to use better encoding strategies. Some
ways of studying are more effective than others. Research has found that we
are better able to remember information if we encode it in a meaningful
way. When we engage in elaborative encoding we process new information
in ways that make it more relevant or meaningful (Craik & Lockhart, 1972;
Harris & Qualls, 2000).

Imagine that you are trying to remember the characteristics of the different
schools of psychology we discussed in Chapter 1 “Introducing Psychology”.
Rather than simply trying to remember the schools and their characteristics,
you might try to relate the information to things you already know. For
instance, you might try to remember the fundamentals of the cognitive
school of psychology by linking the characteristics to the computer model.
The cognitive school focuses on how information is input, processed, and
retrieved, and you might think about how computers do pretty much the
same thing. You might also try to organize the information into meaningful
units. For instance, you might link the cognitive school to structuralism
because both were concerned with mental processes. You also might try to
use visual cues to help you remember the information. You might look at the
image of Freud and imagine what he looked like as a child. That image
might help you remember that childhood experiences were an important part
of Freudian theory. Each person has his or her unique way of elaborating on
information; the important thing is to try to develop unique and meaningful
associations among the materials.

Research Focus: Elaboration and Memory

In an important study showing the effectiveness of elaborative encoding, Rogers, Kuiper, and
Kirker (1977) studied how people recalled information that they had learned under different
processing conditions. All the participants were presented with the same list of 40 adjectives to
learn, but through the use of random assignment, the participants were given one of four
different sets of instructions about how to process the adjectives.

Participants assigned to the structural task condition were asked to judge whether the word was
printed in uppercase or lowercase letters. Participants in the phonemic task condition were asked
whether or not the word rhymed with another given word. In the semantic task condition, the
participants were asked if the word was a synonym of another word. And in the self-reference
task condition, participants were asked to indicate whether or not the given adjective was or was
not true of themselves. After completing the specified task, each participant was asked to recall
as many adjectives as he or she could remember.

Rogers and his colleagues hypothesized that different types of processing would have different
effects on memory. As you can see in Figure 8.9 “Self-Reference Effect Results”, the students in
the self-reference task condition recalled significantly more adjectives than did students in any
other condition. This finding, known as the self-reference effect, is powerful evidence that the
self-concept helps us organize and remember information. The next time you are studying for an
 exam, you might try relating the material to your own experiences. The self-reference effect
suggests that doing so will help you better remember the information (Symons & Johnson,
1997).

Figure 8.9 Self-Reference Effect Results

Participants recalled the same words significantly better when they were processed in relation to the self

than when they were processed in other ways.

Adapted from Rogers, T. B., Kuiper, N. A., & Kirker, W. S. (1977). Self-reference and the encoding of

personal information. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 35(9), 677–688.

Using the Contributions of Hermann

Ebbinghaus to Improve Your Memory

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) was a pioneer of the study of memory.

In this section we consider three of his most important findings, each of
which can help you improve your memory. In his research, in which he was
the only research participant, Ebbinghaus practiced memorizing lists of
nonsense syllables, such as the following:
DIF, LAJ, LEQ, MUV, WYC, DAL, SEN, KEP, NUD

You can imagine that because the material that he was trying to learn was
not at all meaningful, it was not easy to do. Ebbinghaus plotted how many
of the syllables he could remember against the time that had elapsed since
he had studied them. He discovered an important principle of memory:
Memory decays rapidly at first, but the amount of decay levels off with time
(Figure 8.10 “Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve”). Although Ebbinghaus looked
at forgetting after days had elapsed, the same effect occurs on longer and
shorter time scales. Bahrick (1984) found that students who took a Spanish
language course forgot about one half of the vocabulary that they had
learned within three years, but that after that time their memory remained
pretty much constant. Forgetting also drops off quickly on a shorter time
frame. This suggests that you should try to review the material that you have
already studied right before you take an exam; that way, you will be more
likely to remember the material during the exam.

Figure 8.10 Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

Hermann Ebbinghaus found that memory for information drops off rapidly at first but then levels off after

time.

Ebbinghaus also discovered another important principle of learning, known

as the spacing effect. The spacing effect refers to the fact that learning is
better when the same amount of study is spread out over periods of time
than it is when it occurs closer together or at the same time. This means that
even if you have only a limited amount of time to study, you’ll learn more if
you study continually throughout the semester (a little bit every day is best)
than if you wait to cram at the last minute before your exam (Figure 8.11
“Effects of Massed Versus Distributed Practice on Learning”). Another good
strategy is to study and then wait as long as you can before you forget the
material. Then review the information and again wait as long as you can
before you forget it. (This probably will be a longer period of time than the
first time.) Repeat and repeat again. The spacing effect is usually considered
in terms of the difference between distributed practice (practice that is
spread out over time) and massed practice (practice that comes in one
block), with the former approach producing better memory.

Figure 8.11 Effects of Massed Versus Distributed Practice on Learning

The spacing effect refers to the fact that memory is better when it is distributed rather than massed. Leslie,

Lee Ann, and Nora all studied for four hours total, but the students who spread out their learning into

smaller study sessions did better on the exam.

Ebbinghaus also considered the role of overlearning—that is, continuing to

practice and study even when we think that we have mastered the material.
Ebbinghaus and other researchers have found that overlearning helps
encoding (Driskell, Willis, & Copper, 1992). Students frequently think that
they have already mastered the material but then discover when they get to
the exam that they have not. The point is clear: Try to keep studying and
reviewing, even if you think you already know all the material.

Retrieval

Even when information has been adequately encoded and stored, it does not
do us any good if we cannot retrieve it. Retrieval refers to the process of
reactivating information that has been stored in memory. You can get an
idea of the difficulty posed by retrieval by simply reading each of the words
(but not the categories) in the sidebar below to someone. Tell the person that
after you have read all the words, you will ask her to recall the words.

After you read the list to your friend, give her enough time to write down all
the words that she can recall. Make sure that she cannot recall any more and
then, for the words that were not listed, prompt your friend with some of the
category names: “Do you remember any words that were furniture? Do you
remember any words that were tools?” I think you will find that the category
names, which serve as retrieval cues, will help your friend remember
information that she could not retrieve otherwise.

Retrieval Demonstration

Try this test of the ability to retrieve information with a classmate. The instructions are in the
text.
Apple (Fruit)

Dresser (Furniture)

Sander (Tool)

Pomegranate (Fruit)

Sunflower (Flower)

Tangerine (Fruit)

Chair (Furniture)

Peony (Flower)

Banana (Fruit)

Sofa (Furniture)

Bench (Furniture)

Strawberry (Fruit)

Television stand (Furniture)

Magnolia (Flower)

Rose (Flower)

Wrench (Tool)

Screwdriver (Tool)

Dahlia (Flower)

Drill press (Tool)

 Hammer (Tool)

We’ve all experienced retrieval failure in the form of the frustrating tip-of-
the-tongue phenomenon, in which we are certain that we know something
that we are trying to recall but cannot quite come up with it. You can try this
one on your friends as well. Read your friend the names of the 10 states
listed in the sidebar below, and ask him to name the capital city of each
state. Now, for the capital cities that your friend can’t name, give him just
the first letter of the capital city. You’ll probably find that having the first
letters of the cities helps with retrieval. The tip-of-the-tongue experience is a
very good example of the inability to retrieve information that is actually
stored in memory.

States and Capital Cities

Try this demonstration of the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon with a classmate. Instructions are in
the text.
 Georgia (Atlanta)

Maryland (Annapolis)

California (Sacramento)

Louisiana (Baton Rouge)

Florida (Tallahassee)

Colorado (Denver)

New Jersey (Trenton)

Arizona (Phoenix)

Nebraska (Lincoln)

Kentucky (Frankfort)

We are more likely to be able to retrieve items from memory when

conditions at retrieval are similar to the conditions under which we encoded
them. Context-dependent learning refers to an increase in retrieval when
the external situation in which information is learned matches the situation
in which it is remembered. Godden and Baddeley (1975) conducted a study
to test this idea using scuba divers. They asked the divers to learn a list of
words either when they were on land or when they were underwater. Then
they tested the divers on their memory, either in the same or the opposite
situation. As you can see in Figure 8.12 “Results From Godden and
Baddeley, 1975”, the divers’ memory was better when they were tested in
the same context in which they had learned the words than when they were
tested in the other context.

Figure 8.12 Results From Godden and Baddeley, 1975

Godden and Baddeley (1975) tested the memory of scuba divers to learn and retrieve information in

different contexts and found strong evidence for context-dependent learning.

Adapted from Godden, D. R., & Baddeley, A. D. (1975). Context-dependent memory in two natural

environments: On land and underwater. British Journal of Psychology, 66(3), 325–331.

You can see that context-dependent learning might also be important in

improving your memory. For instance, you might want to try to study for an
exam in a situation that is similar to the one in which you are going to take
the exam.

Whereas context-dependent learning refers to a match in the external

situation between learning and remembering, state-dependent learning
refers to superior retrieval of memories when the individual is in the same
physiological or psychological state as during encoding. Research has
found, for instance, that animals that learn a maze while under the influence
of one drug tend to remember their learning better when they are tested
under the influence of the same drug than when they are tested without the
drug (Jackson, Koek, & Colpaert, 1992). And research with humans finds
that bilinguals remember better when tested in the same language in which
they learned the material (Marian & Kaushanskaya, 2007). Mood states may
also produce state-dependent learning. People who learn information when
they are in a bad (rather than a good) mood find it easier to recall these
memories when they are tested while they are in a bad mood, and vice
versa. It is easier to recall unpleasant memories than pleasant ones when
we’re sad, and easier to recall pleasant memories than unpleasant ones when
we’re happy (Bower, 1981; Eich, 2008).

Variations in the ability to retrieve information are also seen in the serial
position curve. When we give people a list of words one at a time (e.g., on
flashcards) and then ask them to recall them, the results look something like
those in Figure 8.13 “The Serial Position Curve”. People are able to retrieve
more words that were presented to them at the beginning and the end of the
list than they are words that were presented in the middle of the list. This
pattern, known as the serial position curve, is caused by two retrieval
phenomenon: The primacy effect refers to a tendency to better remember
stimuli that are presented early in a list. The recency effect refers to the
tendency to better remember stimuli that are presented later in a list.

Figure 8.13 The Serial Position Curve

The serial position curve is the result of both primacy effects and recency effects.

There are a number of explanations for primacy and recency effects, but one
of them is in terms of the effects of rehearsal on short-term and long-term
memory (Baddeley, Eysenck, & Anderson, 2009). Because we can keep the
last words that we learned in the presented list in short-term memory by
rehearsing them before the memory test begins, they are relatively easily
remembered. So the recency effect can be explained in terms of
maintenance rehearsal in short-term memory. And the primacy effect may
also be due to rehearsal—when we hear the first word in the list we start to
rehearse it, making it more likely that it will be moved from short-term to
long-term memory. And the same is true for the other words that come early
in the list. But for the words in the middle of the list, this rehearsal becomes
much harder, making them less likely to be moved to LTM.

In some cases our existing memories influence our new learning. This may
occur either in a backward way or a forward way. Retroactive interference
occurs when learning something new impairs our ability to retrieve
information that was learned earlier. For example, if you have learned to
program in one computer language, and then you learn to program in
another similar one, you may start to make mistakes programming the first
language that you never would have made before you learned the new one.
In this case the new memories work backward (retroactively) to influence
retrieval from memory that is already in place.

In contrast to retroactive interference, proactive interference works in a

forward direction. Proactive interference occurs when earlier learning
impairs our ability to encode information that we try to learn later. For
example, if we have learned French as a second language, this knowledge
may make it more difficult, at least in some respects, to learn a third
language (say Spanish), which involves similar but not identical vocabulary.

Figure 8.14 Proactive and Retroactive Interference

Retroactive and proactive interference can both influence memory.

The Structure of LTM: Categories,

Prototypes, and Schemas

Memories that are stored in LTM are not isolated but rather are linked
together into categories—networks of associated memories that have
features in common with each other. Forming categories, and using
categories to guide behavior, is a fundamental part of human nature.
Associated concepts within a category are connected through spreading
activation, which occurs when activating one element of a category
activates other associated elements. For instance, because tools are
associated in a category, reminding people of the word “screwdriver” will
help them remember the word “wrench.” And, when people have learned
lists of words that come from different categories (e.g., as in Note 8.33
“Retrieval Demonstration”), they do not recall the information haphazardly.
If they have just remembered the word “wrench,” they are more likely to
remember the word “screwdriver” next than they are to remember the word
“dahlia,” because the words are organized in memory by category and
because “dahlia” is activated by spreading activation from “wrench” (Srull
& Wyer, 1989).

Some categories have defining features that must be true of all members of
the category. For instance, all members of the category “triangles” have
three sides, and all members of the category “birds” lay eggs. But most
categories are not so well-defined; the members of the category share some
common features, but it is impossible to define which are or are not
members of the category. For instance, there is no clear definition of the
category “tool.” Some examples of the category, such as a hammer and a
wrench, are clearly and easily identified as category members, whereas
other members are not so obvious. Is an ironing board a tool? What about a
car?

Members of categories (even those with defining features) can be compared

to the category prototype, which is the member of the category that is most
average or typical of the category. Some category members are more
prototypical of, or similar to, the category than others. For instance, some
category members (robins and sparrows) are highly prototypical of the
category “birds,” whereas other category members (penguins and ostriches)
are less prototypical. We retrieve information that is prototypical of a
category faster than we retrieve information that is less prototypical (Rosch,
1975).

Figure 8.15 Prototypicality

Category members vary in terms of their prototypicality. Some

cats are “better” members of the category than are others.

Airwolfhound – Lion – Linton Zoo – CC BY-SA 2.0; A.Davey

– Lucy the Cat – CC BY 2.0; Pete Hunt – Bald Cat 1 – CC BY-

NC 2.0; hehaden – Pepsi – CC BY-NC 2.0.

Mental categories are sometimes referred to as schemas—patterns of

knowledge in long-term memory that help us organize information. We have
schemas about objects (that a triangle has three sides and may take on
different angles), about people (that Sam is friendly, likes to golf, and
always wears sandals), about events (the particular steps involved in
ordering a meal at a restaurant), and about social groups (we call these
group schemas stereotypes).

Figure 8.16 Different Schemas

Our schemas about people, couples, and events help us organize

and remember information.

Pedro Ribeiro Simões – Beautiful smile – CC BY 2.0; Pier-Luc

Bergeron – A happy couple and a happy photographer – CC

BY-SA 2.0; Emiliano Horcada – Wedding – Flopy & Pol – CC

BY 2.0.

Schemas are important in part because they help us remember new

information by providing an organizational structure for it. Read the
following paragraph (Bransford & Johnson, 1972) and then try to write
down everything you can remember.
The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups.
Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you
have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities, that is the next step; otherwise you
are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few
things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important, but
complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first the whole
procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of
life. It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate
future, but then one never can tell. After the procedure is completed, one arranges the
materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places.
Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be
repeated. However, that is part of life.

It turns out that people’s memory for this information is quite poor, unless
they have been told ahead of time that the information describes “doing the
laundry,” in which case their memory for the material is much better. This
demonstration of the role of schemas in memory shows how our existing
knowledge can help us organize new information, and how this organization
can improve encoding, storage, and retrieval.

The Biology of Memory

Just as information is stored on digital media such as DVDs and flash

drives, the information in LTM must be stored in the brain. The ability to
maintain information in LTM involves a gradual strengthening of the
connections among the neurons in the brain. When pathways in these neural
networks are frequently and repeatedly fired, the synapses become more
efficient in communicating with each other, and these changes create
memory. This process, known as long-term potentiation (LTP), refers to
the strengthening of the synaptic connections between neurons as result of
frequent stimulation (Lynch, 2002). Drugs that block LTP reduce learning,
whereas drugs that enhance LTP increase learning (Lynch et al., 1991).
Because the new patterns of activation in the synapses take time to develop,
LTP happens gradually. The period of time in which LTP occurs and in
which memories are stored is known as the period of consolidation.

Memory is not confined to the cortex; it occurs through sophisticated

interactions between new and old brain structures (Figure 8.17 “Schematic
Image of Brain With Hippocampus, Amygdala, and Cerebellum
Highlighted”). One of the most important brain regions in explicit memory
is the hippocampus, which serves as a preprocessor and elaborator of
information (Squire, 1992). The hippocampus helps us encode information
about spatial relationships, the context in which events were experienced,
and the associations among memories (Eichenbaum, 1999). The
hippocampus also serves in part as a switching point that holds the memory
for a short time and then directs the information to other parts of the brain,
such as the cortex, to actually do the rehearsing, elaboration, and long-term
storage (Jonides, Lacey, & Nee, 2005). Without the hippocampus, which
might be described as the brain’s “librarian,” our explicit memories would
be inefficient and disorganized.

Figure 8.17 Schematic Image of Brain With Hippocampus, Amygdala, and Cerebellum Highlighted

Different brain structures help us remember different types of information. The hippocampus is

particularly important in explicit memories, the cerebellum is particularly important in implicit memories,

and the amygdala is particularly important in emotional memories.

While the hippocampus is handling explicit memory, the cerebellum and the
amygdala are concentrating on implicit and emotional memories,
respectively. Research shows that the cerebellum is more active when we
are learning associations and in priming tasks, and animals and humans with
damage to the cerebellum have more difficulty in classical conditioning
studies (Krupa, Thompson, & Thompson, 1993; Woodruff-Pak, Goldenberg,
Downey-Lamb, Boyko, & Lemieux, 2000). The storage of many of our
most important emotional memories, and particularly those related to fear, is
initiated and controlled by the amygdala (Sigurdsson, Doyère, Cain, &
LeDoux, 2007).

Evidence for the role of different brain structures in different types of

memories comes in part from case studies of patients who suffer from
amnesia, a memory disorder that involves the inability to remember
information. As with memory interference effects, amnesia can work in
either a forward or a backward direction, affecting retrieval or encoding. For
people who suffer damage to the brain, for instance, as a result of a stroke or
other trauma, the amnesia may work backward. The outcome is retrograde
amnesia, a memory disorder that produces an inability to retrieve events
that occurred before a given time. Demonstrating the fact that LTP takes
time (the process of consolidation), retrograde amnesia is usually more
severe for memories that occurred just prior to the trauma than it is for older
memories, and events that occurred just before the event that caused
memory loss may never be recovered because they were never completely
encoded.

Organisms with damage to the hippocampus develop a type of amnesia that

works in a forward direction to affect encoding, known as anterograde
amnesia. Anterograde amnesia is the inability to transfer information from
short-term into long-term memory, making it impossible to form new
memories. One well-known case study was a man named Henry Gustav
Molaison (before he died in 2008, he was referred to only as H. M.) who
had parts of his hippocampus removed to reduce severe seizures (Corkin,
Amaral, González, Johnson, & Hyman, 1997). Following the operation,
Molaison developed virtually complete anterograde amnesia. Although he
could remember most of what had happened before the operation, and
particularly what had occurred early in his life, he could no longer create
new memories. Molaison was said to have read the same magazines over
and over again without any awareness of having seen them before.

Cases of anterograde amnesia also provide information about the brain

structures involved in different types of memory (Bayley & Squire, 2005;
Helmuth, 1999; Paller, 2004). Although Molaison’s explicit memory was
compromised because his hippocampus was damaged, his implicit memory
was not (because his cerebellum was intact). He could learn to trace shapes
in a mirror, a task that requires procedural memory, but he never had any
explicit recollection of having performed this task or of the people who
administered the test to him.

Although some brain structures are particularly important in memory, this

does not mean that all memories are stored in one place. The American
psychologist Karl Lashley (1929) attempted to determine where memories
were stored in the brain by teaching rats how to run mazes, and then
lesioning different brain structures to see if they were still able to complete
the maze. This idea seemed straightforward, and Lashley expected to find
that memory was stored in certain parts of the brain. But he discovered that
no matter where he removed brain tissue, the rats retained at least some
memory of the maze, leading him to conclude that memory isn’t located in a
single place in the brain, but rather is distributed around it.

Long-term potentiation occurs as a result of changes in the synapses, which

suggests that chemicals, particularly neurotransmitters and hormones, must
be involved in memory. There is quite a bit of evidence that this is true.
Glutamate, a neurotransmitter and a form of the amino acid glutamic acid, is
perhaps the most important neurotransmitter in memory (McEntee & Crook,
1993). When animals, including people, are under stress, more glutamate is
secreted, and this glutamate can help them remember (McGaugh, 2003).
The neurotransmitter serotonin is also secreted when animals learn, and
epinephrine may also increase memory, particularly for stressful events
(Maki & Resnick, 2000; Sherwin, 1998). Estrogen, a female sex hormone,
also seems critical, because women who are experiencing menopause, along
with a reduction in estrogen, frequently report memory difficulties (Chester,
2001).

Our knowledge of the role of biology in memory suggests that it might be

possible to use drugs to improve our memories, and Americans spend
several hundred million dollars per year on memory supplements with the
hope of doing just that. Yet controlled studies comparing memory
enhancers, including Ritalin, methylphenidate, ginkgo biloba, and
amphetamines, with placebo drugs find very little evidence for their
effectiveness (Gold, Cahill, & Wenk, 2002; McDaniel, Maier, & Einstein,
2002). Memory supplements are usually no more effective than drinking a
sugared soft drink, which also releases glucose and thus improves memory
slightly. This is not to say that we cannot someday create drugs that will
significantly improve our memory. It is likely that this will occur in the
future, but the implications of these advances are as yet unknown (Farah et
al., 2004; Turner & Sahakian, 2006).

Although the most obvious potential use of drugs is to attempt to improve

memory, drugs might also be used to help us forget. This might be desirable
in some cases, such as for those suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder
(PTSD) who are unable to forget disturbing memories. Although there are
no existing therapies that involve using drugs to help people forget, it is
possible that they will be available in the future. These possibilities will
raise some important ethical issues: Is it ethical to erase memories, and if it
is, is it desirable to do so? Perhaps the experience of emotional pain is a part
of being a human being. And perhaps the experience of emotional pain may
help us cope with the trauma.
 Key Takeaways

Information is better remembered when it is meaningfully elaborated.

Hermann Ebbinghaus made important contributions to the study of learning,

including modeling the forgetting curve, and studying the spacing effect and the
benefits of overlearning.

Context- and state-dependent learning, as well as primacy and recency effects,

influence long-term memory.

Memories are stored in connected synapses through the process of long-term

potentiation (LTP). In addition to the cortex, other parts of the brain, including the
hippocampus, cerebellum, and the amygdala, are also important in memory.

Damage to the brain may result in retrograde amnesia or anterograde amnesia. Case
studies of patients with amnesia can provide information about the brain structures
involved in different types of memory.

Memory is influenced by chemicals including glutamate, serotonin, epinephrine, and

estrogen.

Studies comparing memory enhancers with placebo drugs find very little evidence
for their effectiveness.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Plan a course of action to help you study for your next exam, incorporating as many
of the techniques mentioned in this section as possible. Try to implement the plan.

2. Make a list of some the schemas that you have stored in your memory. What are the
contents of each schema, and how might you use the schema to help you remember
 new information?

3. In the film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” the characters undergo a
medical procedure designed to erase their memories of a painful romantic
relationship. Would you engage in such a procedure if it was safely offered to you?

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8.3 Accuracy and Inaccuracy in Memory and
Cognition

Learning Objectives

1. Outline the variables that can influence the accuracy of our memory for events.

2. Explain how schemas can distort our memories.

3. Describe the representativeness heuristic and the availability heuristic and explain
how they may lead to errors in judgment.

As we have seen, our memories are not perfect. They fail in part due to our
inadequate encoding and storage, and in part due to our inability to
accurately retrieve stored information. But memory is also influenced by the
setting in which it occurs, by the events that occur to us after we have
experienced an event, and by the cognitive processes that we use to help us
remember. Although our cognition allows us to attend to, rehearse, and
organize information, cognition may also lead to distortions and errors in
our judgments and our behaviors.

In this section we consider some of the cognitive biases that are known to
influence humans. Cognitive biases are errors in memory or judgment that
are caused by the inappropriate use of cognitive processes (Table 8.3
“Cognitive Processes That Pose Threats to Accuracy”). The study of
cognitive biases is important both because it relates to the important
psychological theme of accuracy versus inaccuracy in perception, and
because being aware of the types of errors that we may make can help us
avoid them and therefore improve our decision-making skills.

Table 8.3 Cognitive Processes That Pose Threats to Accuracy

Cognitive process Description Potential threat to accuracy

Uncertainty about the source of a

The ability to accurately identify the
Source monitoring memory may lead to mistaken
source of a memory
judgments.

The tendency to verify and confirm Once beliefs become established,

Confirmation bias our existing memories rather than to they become self-perpetuating and
challenge and disconfirm them difficult to change.

When schemas prevent us from Creativity may be impaired by the

Functional
seeing and using information in new overuse of traditional, expectancy-
fixedness
and nontraditional ways based thinking.

Errors in memory that occur when Eyewitnesses who are questioned by

Misinformation new but incorrect information the police may change their
effect influences existing accurate memories of what they observed at
memories the crime scene.

Eyewitnesses may be very confident

When we are more certain that our
that they have accurately identified a
Overconfidence memories and judgments are
suspect, even though their memories
accurate than we should be
are incorrect.

We may base our judgments on a

When some stimuli, (e.g., those that
single salient event while we ignore
are colorful, moving, or unexpected)
Salience hundreds of other equally
grab our attention and make them
informative events that we do not
more likely to be remembered
see.
Cognitive process Description Potential threat to accuracy

After a coin has come up “heads”

Tendency to make judgments many times in a row, we may
Representativeness
according to how well the event erroneously think that the next flip is
heuristic
matches our expectations more likely to be “tails” (the
gambler’s fallacy).

We may overestimate the crime

Availability Idea that things that come to mind
statistics in our own area, because
heuristic easily are seen as more common
these crimes are so easy to recall.

We may think that we contributed

Cognitive Idea that some memories are more more to a project than we really did
accessibility highly activated than others because it is so easy to remember
our own contributions.

When we “replay” events such that

We may feel particularly bad about
they turn out differently (especially
Counterfactual events that might not have occurred
when only minor changes in the
thinking if only a small change had occurred
events leading up to them make a
before them.
difference)

Source Monitoring: Did It Really Happen?

One potential error in memory involves mistakes in differentiating the

sources of information. Source monitoring refers to the ability to
accurately identify the source of a memory. Perhaps you’ve had the
experience of wondering whether you really experienced an event or only
dreamed or imagined it. If so, you wouldn’t be alone. Rassin, Merkelbach,
and Spaan (2001) reported that up to 25% of college students reported being
confused about real versus dreamed events. Studies suggest that people who
are fantasy-prone are more likely to experience source monitoring errors
(Winograd, Peluso, & Glover, 1998), and such errors also occur more often
for both children and the elderly than for adolescents and younger adults
(Jacoby & Rhodes, 2006).

In other cases we may be sure that we remembered the information from

real life but be uncertain about exactly where we heard it. Imagine that you
read a news story in a tabloid magazine such as the National Enquirer.
Probably you would have discounted the information because you know that
its source is unreliable. But what if later you were to remember the story but
forget the source of the information? If this happens, you might become
convinced that the news story is true because you forget to discount it. The
sleeper effect refers to attitude change that occurs over time when we forget
the source of information (Pratkanis, Greenwald, Leippe, & Baumgardner,
1988).

In still other cases we may forget where we learned information and

mistakenly assume that we created the memory ourselves. Kaavya
Viswanathan, the author of the book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got
Wild, and Got a Life, was accused of plagiarism when it was revealed that
many parts of her book were very similar to passages from other material.
Viswanathan argued that she had simply forgotten that she had read the
other works, mistakenly assuming she had made up the material herself.
And the musician George Harrison claimed that he was unaware that the
melody of his song “My Sweet Lord” was almost identical to an earlier song
by another composer. The judge in the copyright suit that followed ruled
that Harrison didn’t intentionally commit the plagiarism. (Please use this
knowledge to become extra vigilant about source attributions in your written
work, not to try to excuse yourself if you are accused of plagiarism.)
Schematic Processing: Distortions Based on
Expectations

We have seen that schemas help us remember information by organizing

material into coherent representations. However, although schemas can
improve our memories, they may also lead to cognitive biases. Using
schemas may lead us to falsely remember things that never happened to us
and to distort or misremember things that did. For one, schemas lead to the
confirmation bias, which is the tendency to verify and confirm our existing
memories rather than to challenge and disconfirm them. The confirmation
bias occurs because once we have schemas, they influence how we seek out
and interpret new information. The confirmation bias leads us to remember
information that fits our schemas better than we remember information that
disconfirms them (Stangor & McMillan, 1992), a process that makes our
stereotypes very difficult to change. And we ask questions in ways that
confirm our schemas (Trope & Thompson, 1997). If we think that a person
is an extrovert, we might ask her about ways that she likes to have fun,
thereby making it more likely that we will confirm our beliefs. In short,
once we begin to believe in something—for instance, a stereotype about a
group of people—it becomes very difficult to later convince us that these
beliefs are not true; the beliefs become self-confirming.

Darley and Gross (1983) demonstrated how schemas about social class
could influence memory. In their research they gave participants a picture
and some information about a fourth-grade girl named Hannah. To activate a
schema about her social class, Hannah was pictured sitting in front of a nice
suburban house for one-half of the participants and pictured in front of an
impoverished house in an urban area for the other half. Then the participants
watched a video that showed Hannah taking an intelligence test. As the test
went on, Hannah got some of the questions right and some of them wrong,
but the number of correct and incorrect answers was the same in both
conditions. Then the participants were asked to remember how many
questions Hannah got right and wrong. Demonstrating that stereotypes had
influenced memory, the participants who thought that Hannah had come
from an upper-class background remembered that she had gotten more
correct answers than those who thought she was from a lower-class
background.

Our reliance on schemas can also make it more difficult for us to “think
outside the box.” Peter Wason (1960) asked college students to determine
the rule that was used to generate the numbers 2-4-6 by asking them to
generate possible sequences and then telling them if those numbers followed
the rule. The first guess that students made was usually “consecutive
ascending even numbers,” and they then asked questions designed to
confirm their hypothesis (“Does 102-104-106 fit?” “What about 404-406-
408?”). Upon receiving information that those guesses did fit the rule, the
students stated that the rule was “consecutive ascending even numbers.” But
the students’ use of the confirmation bias led them to ask only about
instances that confirmed their hypothesis, and not about those that would
disconfirm it. They never bothered to ask whether 1-2-3 or 3-11-200 would
fit, and if they had they would have learned that the rule was not
“consecutive ascending even numbers,” but simply “any three ascending
numbers.” Again, you can see that once we have a schema (in this case a
hypothesis), we continually retrieve that schema from memory rather than
other relevant ones, leading us to act in ways that tend to confirm our
beliefs.

Functional fixedness occurs when people’s schemas prevent them from

using an object in new and nontraditional ways. Duncker (1945) gave
participants a candle, a box of thumbtacks, and a book of matches, and
asked them to attach the candle to the wall so that it did not drip onto the
table below (Figure 8.19 “Functional Fixedness”). Few of the participants
realized that the box could be tacked to the wall and used as a platform to
hold the candle. The problem again is that our existing memories are
powerful, and they bias the way we think about new information. Because
the participants were “fixated” on the box’s normal function of holding
thumbtacks, they could not see its alternative use.

Figure 8.19 Functional Fixedness

In the candle-tack-box problem, functional fixedness may lead us to see the box only as a box and not as a

potential candleholder.

Misinformation Effects: How Information

That Comes Later Can Distort Memory

A particular problem for eyewitnesses such as Jennifer Thompson is that our

memories are often influenced by the things that occur to us after we have
learned the information (Erdmann, Volbert, & Böhm, 2004; Loftus, 1979;
Zaragoza, Belli, & Payment, 2007). This new information can distort our
original memories such that the we are no longer sure what is the real
information and what was provided later. The misinformation effect refers
to errors in memory that occur when new information influences existing
memories.

In an experiment by Loftus and Palmer (1974), participants viewed a film of

a traffic accident and then, according to random assignment to experimental
conditions, answered one of three questions:

“About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”

“About how fast were the cars going when they smashed each other?”

“About how fast were the cars going when they contacted each other?”

As you can see in Figure 8.20 “Misinformation Effect”, although all the
participants saw the same accident, their estimates of the cars’ speed varied
by condition. Participants who had been asked about the cars “smashing”
each other estimated the highest average speed, and those who had been
asked the “contacted” question estimated the lowest average speed.

Figure 8.20 Misinformation Effect

Participants viewed a film of a traffic accident and then answered a question about the accident.

According to random assignment, the verb in the question was filled by either “hit,” “smashed,” or

“contacted” each other. The wording of the question influenced the participants’ memory of the accident.

Adapted from Loftus, E. F., & Palmer, J. C. (1974). Reconstruction of automobile destruction: An

example of the interaction between language and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,

13(5), 585–589.

In addition to distorting our memories for events that have actually

occurred, misinformation may lead us to falsely remember information that
never occurred. Loftus and her colleagues asked parents to provide them
with descriptions of events that did (e.g., moving to a new house) and did
not (e.g., being lost in a shopping mall) happen to their children. Then
(without telling the children which events were real or made-up) the
researchers asked the children to imagine both types of events. The children
were instructed to “think real hard” about whether the events had occurred
(Ceci, Huffman, Smith, & Loftus, 1994). More than half of the children
generated stories regarding at least one of the made-up events, and they
remained insistent that the events did in fact occur even when told by the
researcher that they could not possibly have occurred (Loftus & Pickrell,
1995). Even college students are susceptible to manipulations that make
events that did not actually occur seem as if they did (Mazzoni, Loftus, &
Kirsch, 2001).

The ease with which memories can be created or implanted is particularly

problematic when the events to be recalled have important consequences.
Therapists often argue that patients may repress memories of traumatic
events they experienced as children, such as childhood sexual abuse, and
then recover the events years later as the therapist leads them to recall the
information—for instance, by using dream interpretation and hypnosis
(Brown, Scheflin, & Hammond, 1998).

But other researchers argue that painful memories such as sexual abuse are
usually very well remembered, that few memories are actually repressed,
and that even if they are it is virtually impossible for patients to accurately
retrieve them years later (McNally, Bryant, & Ehlers, 2003; Pope, Poliakoff,
Parker, Boynes, & Hudson, 2007).These researchers have argued that the
procedures used by the therapists to “retrieve” the memories are more likely
to actually implant false memories, leading the patients to erroneously recall
events that did not actually occur. Because hundreds of people have been
accused, and even imprisoned, on the basis of claims about “recovered
memory” of child sexual abuse, the accuracy of these memories has
important societal implications. Many psychologists now believe that most
of these claims of recovered memories are due to implanted, rather than
real, memories (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994).

Overconfidence

One of the most remarkable aspects of Jennifer Thompson’s mistaken

identity of Ronald Cotton was her certainty. But research reveals a pervasive
cognitive bias toward overconfidence, which is the tendency for people to
be too certain about their ability to accurately remember events and to make
judgments. David Dunning and his colleagues (Dunning, Griffin,
Milojkovic, & Ross, 1990) asked college students to predict how another
student would react in various situations. Some participants made
predictions about a fellow student whom they had just met and interviewed,
and others made predictions about their roommates whom they knew very
well. In both cases, participants reported their confidence in each prediction,
and accuracy was determined by the responses of the people themselves.
The results were clear: Regardless of whether they judged a stranger or a
roommate, the participants consistently overestimated the accuracy of their
own predictions.

Eyewitnesses to crimes are also frequently overconfident in their memories,

and there is only a small correlation between how accurate and how
confident an eyewitness is. The witness who claims to be absolutely certain
about his or her identification (e.g., Jennifer Thompson) is not much more
likely to be accurate than one who appears much less sure, making it almost
impossible to determine whether a particular witness is accurate or not
(Wells & Olson, 2003).

I am sure that you have a clear memory of when you first heard about the
9/11 attacks in 2001, and perhaps also when you heard that Princess Diana
was killed in 1997 or when the verdict of the O. J. Simpson trial was
announced in 1995. This type of memory, which we experience along with a
great deal of emotion, is known as a flashbulb memory—a vivid and
emotional memory of an unusual event that people believe they remember
very well. (Brown & Kulik, 1977).

People are very certain of their memories of these important events, and
frequently overconfident. Talarico and Rubin (2003) tested the accuracy of
flashbulb memories by asking students to write down their memory of how
they had heard the news about either the September 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks or about an everyday event that had occurred to them during the
same time frame. These recordings were made on September 12, 2001. Then
the participants were asked again, either 1, 6, or 32 weeks later, to recall
their memories. The participants became less accurate in their recollections
of both the emotional event and the everyday events over time. But the
participants’ confidence in the accuracy of their memory of learning about
the attacks did not decline over time. After 32 weeks the participants were
overconfident; they were much more certain about the accuracy of their
flashbulb memories than they should have been. Schmolck, Buffalo, and
Squire (2000) found similar distortions in memories of news about the
verdict in the O. J. Simpson trial.

Heuristic Processing: Availability and

Representativeness

Another way that our information processing may be biased occurs when
we use heuristics, which are information-processing strategies that are
useful in many cases but may lead to errors when misapplied. Let’s consider
two of the most frequently applied (and misapplied) heuristics: the
representativeness heuristic and the availability heuristic.

In many cases we base our judgments on information that seems to

represent, or match, what we expect will happen, while ignoring other
potentially more relevant statistical information. When we do so, we are
using the representativeness heuristic. Consider, for instance, the puzzle
presented in Table 8.4 “The Representativeness Heuristic”. Let’s say that
you went to a hospital, and you checked the records of the babies that were
born today. Which pattern of births do you think you are most likely to find?

Table 8.4 The Representativeness Heuristic

List A List B

6:31 a.m. Girl 6:31 a.m. Boy

8:15 a.m. Girl 8:15 a.m. Girl

9:42 a.m. Girl 9:42 a.m. Boy

1:13 p.m. Girl 1:13 p.m. Girl

3:39 p.m. Boy 3:39 p.m. Girl

5:12 p.m. Boy 5:12 p.m. Boy

7:42 p.m. Boy 7:42 p.m. Girl

11:44 p.m. Boy 11:44 p.m. Boy

Using the representativeness heuristic may lead us to incorrectly believe that some patterns of
observed events are more likely to have occurred than others. In this case, list B seems more
random, and thus is judged as more likely to have occurred, but statistically both lists are
equally likely.

Most people think that list B is more likely, probably because list B looks
more random, and thus matches (is “representative of”) our ideas about
randomness. But statisticians know that any pattern of four girls and four
boys is mathematically equally likely. The problem is that we have a schema
of what randomness should be like, which doesn’t always match what is
mathematically the case. Similarly, people who see a flipped coin come up
“heads” five times in a row will frequently predict, and perhaps even wager
money, that “tails” will be next. This behavior is known as the gambler’s
fallacy. But mathematically, the gambler’s fallacy is an error: The likelihood
of any single coin flip being “tails” is always 50%, regardless of how many
times it has come up “heads” in the past.
Our judgments can also be influenced by how easy it is to retrieve a
memory. The tendency to make judgments of the frequency or likelihood that
an event occurs on the basis of the ease with which it can be retrieved from
memory is known as the availability heuristic (MacLeod & Campbell,
1992; Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). Imagine, for instance, that I asked you
to indicate whether there are more words in the English language that begin
with the letter “R” or that have the letter “R” as the third letter. You would
probably answer this question by trying to think of words that have each of
the characteristics, thinking of all the words you know that begin with “R”
and all that have “R” in the third position. Because it is much easier to
retrieve words by their first letter than by their third, we may incorrectly
guess that there are more words that begin with “R,” even though there are
in fact more words that have “R” as the third letter.

The availability heuristic may also operate on episodic memory. We may

think that our friends are nice people, because we see and remember them
primarily when they are around us (their friends, who they are, of course,
nice to). And the traffic might seem worse in our own neighborhood than we
think it is in other places, in part because nearby traffic jams are more easily
retrieved than are traffic jams that occur somewhere else.

Salience and Cognitive Accessibility

Still another potential for bias in memory occurs because we are more likely
to attend to, and thus make use of and remember, some information more
than other information. For one, we tend to attend to and remember things
that are highly salient, meaning that they attract our attention. Things that
are unique, colorful, bright, moving, and unexpected are more salient
(McArthur & Post, 1977; Taylor & Fiske, 1978). In one relevant study,
Loftus, Loftus, and Messo (1987) showed people images of a customer
walking up to a bank teller and pulling out either a pistol or a checkbook.
By tracking eye movements, the researchers determined that people were
more likely to look at the gun than at the checkbook, and that this reduced
their ability to accurately identify the criminal in a lineup that was given
later. The salience of the gun drew people’s attention away from the face of
the criminal.

The salience of the stimuli in our social worlds has a big influence on our
judgment, and in some cases may lead us to behave in ways that we might
better not have. Imagine, for instance, that you wanted to buy a new music
player for yourself. You’ve been trying to decide whether to get the iPod or
the Zune. You checked Consumer Reports online and found that, although
the players differed on many dimensions, including price, battery life,
ability to share music, and so forth, the Zune was nevertheless rated
significantly higher by owners than was the iPod. As a result, you decide to
purchase the Zune the next day. That night, however, you go to a party, and
a friend shows you her iPod. You check it out, and it seems really cool. You
tell her that you were thinking of buying a Zune, and she tells you that you
are crazy. She says she knows someone who had one and it had a lot of
problems—it didn’t download music correctly, the battery died right after
the warranty expired, and so forth—and that she would never buy one.
Would you still buy the Zune, or would you switch your plans?

If you think about this question logically, the information that you just got
from your friend isn’t really all that important. You now know the opinion
of one more person, but that can’t change the overall rating of the two
machines very much. On the other hand, the information your friend gives
you, and the chance to use her iPod, are highly salient. The information is
right there in front of you, in your hand, whereas the statistical information
from Consumer Reports is only in the form of a table that you saw on your
computer. The outcome in cases such as this is that people frequently ignore
the less salient but more important information, such as the likelihood that
events occur across a large population (these statistics are known as base
rates), in favor of the less important but nevertheless more salient
information.

People also vary in the schemas that they find important to use when
judging others and when thinking about themselves. Cognitive accessibility
refers to the extent to which knowledge is activated in memory, and thus
likely to be used in cognition and behavior. For instance, you probably
know a person who is a golf nut (or fanatic of another sport). All he can talk
about is golf. For him, we would say that golf is a highly accessible
construct. Because he loves golf, it is important to his self-concept, he sets
many of his goals in terms of the sport, and he tends to think about things
and people in terms of it (“if he plays golf, he must be a good person!”).
Other people have highly accessible schemas about environmental issues,
eating healthy food, or drinking really good coffee. When schemas are
highly accessible, we are likely to use them to make judgments of ourselves
and others, and this overuse may inappropriately color our judgments.

Counterfactual Thinking

In addition to influencing our judgments about ourselves and others, the

ease with which we can retrieve potential experiences from memory can
have an important effect on our own emotions. If we can easily imagine an
outcome that is better than what actually happened, then we may experience
sadness and disappointment; on the other hand, if we can easily imagine that
a result might have been worse than what actually happened, we may be
more likely to experience happiness and satisfaction. The tendency to think
about and experience events according to “what might have been” is known
as counterfactual thinking (Kahneman & Miller, 1986; Roese, 2005).
Imagine, for instance, that you were participating in an important contest,
and you won the silver (second-place) medal. How would you feel?
Certainly you would be happy that you won the silver medal, but wouldn’t
you also be thinking about what might have happened if you had been just a
little bit better—you might have won the gold medal! On the other hand,
how might you feel if you won the bronze (third-place) medal? If you were
thinking about the counterfactuals (the “what might have beens”) perhaps
the idea of not getting any medal at all would have been highly accessible;
you’d be happy that you got the medal that you did get, rather than coming
in fourth.

Figure 8.21 Counterfactual Thinking

Does the bronze medalist look happier to you than the silver medalist? Medvec, Madey, and Gilovich

(1995) found that, on average, bronze medalists were happier.

kinnigurl – Winter Olympic Men’s Snowboard Cross medalists – CC BY-SA 2.0.

Tom Gilovich and his colleagues (Medvec, Madey, & Gilovich, 1995)
investigated this idea by videotaping the responses of athletes who won
medals in the 1992 Summer Olympic Games. They videotaped the athletes
both as they learned that they had won a silver or a bronze medal and again
as they were awarded the medal. Then the researchers showed these videos,
without any sound, to raters who did not know which medal which athlete
had won. The raters were asked to indicate how they thought the athlete was
feeling, using a range of feelings from “agony” to “ecstasy.” The results
showed that the bronze medalists were, on average, rated as happier than
were the silver medalists. In a follow-up study, raters watched interviews
with many of these same athletes as they talked about their performance.
The raters indicated what we would expect on the basis of counterfactual
thinking—the silver medalists talked about their disappointments in having
finished second rather than first, whereas the bronze medalists focused on
how happy they were to have finished third rather than fourth.

You might have experienced counterfactual thinking in other situations.

Once I was driving across country, and my car was having some engine
trouble. I really wanted to make it home when I got near the end of my
journey; I would have been extremely disappointed if the car broke down
only a few miles from my home. Perhaps you have noticed that once you
get close to finishing something, you feel like you really need to get it done.
Counterfactual thinking has even been observed in juries. Jurors who were
asked to award monetary damages to others who had been in an accident
offered them substantially more in compensation if they barely avoided
injury than they offered if the accident seemed inevitable (Miller, Turnbull,
& McFarland, 1988).

Psychology in Everyday Life: Cognitive Biases in the Real World

Perhaps you are thinking that the kinds of errors that we have been talking about don’t seem that
important. After all, who really cares if we think there are more words that begin with the letter
“R” than there actually are, or if bronze medal winners are happier than the silver medalists?
These aren’t big problems in the overall scheme of things. But it turns out that what seem to be
relatively small cognitive biases on the surface can have profound consequences for people.

Why would so many people continue to purchase lottery tickets, buy risky investments in the
stock market, or gamble their money in casinos when the likelihood of them ever winning is so
low? One possibility is that they are victims of salience; they focus their attention on the salient
likelihood of a big win, forgetting that the base rate of the event occurring is very low. The belief
in astrology, which all scientific evidence suggests is not accurate, is probably driven in part by
the salience of the occasions when the predictions are correct. When a horoscope comes true
(which will, of course, happen sometimes), the correct prediction is highly salient and may allow
people to maintain the overall false belief.

People may also take more care to prepare for unlikely events than for more likely ones, because
the unlikely ones are more salient. For instance, people may think that they are more likely to die
from a terrorist attack or a homicide than they are from diabetes, stroke, or tuberculosis. But the
odds are much greater of dying from the latter than the former. And people are frequently more
afraid of flying than driving, although the likelihood of dying in a car crash is hundreds of times
greater than dying in a plane crash (more than 50,000 people are killed on U.S. highways every
year). Because people don’t accurately calibrate their behaviors to match the true potential risks
(e.g., they drink and drive or don’t wear their seatbelts), the individual and societal level costs
are often quite large (Slovic, 2000).

Salience and accessibility also color how we perceive our social worlds, which may have a big
influence on our behavior. For instance, people who watch a lot of violent television shows also
view the world as more dangerous (Doob & Macdonald, 1979), probably because violence
becomes more cognitively accessible for them. We also unfairly overestimate our contribution to
joint projects (Ross & Sicoly, 1979), perhaps in part because our own contributions are highly
accessible, whereas the contributions of others are much less so.

Even people who should know better, and who need to know better, are subject to cognitive
biases. Economists, stock traders, managers, lawyers, and even doctors make the same kinds of
mistakes in their professional activities that people make in their everyday lives (Gilovich,
Griffin, & Kahneman, 2002). Just like us, these people are victims of overconfidence, heuristics,
and other biases.

Furthermore, every year thousands of individuals, such as Ronald Cotton, are charged with and
often convicted of crimes based largely on eyewitness evidence. When eyewitnesses testify in
courtrooms regarding their memories of a crime, they often are completely sure that they are
identifying the right person. But the most common cause of innocent people being falsely
convicted is erroneous eyewitness testimony (Wells, Wright, & Bradfield, 1999). The many
people who were convicted by mistaken eyewitnesses prior to the advent of forensic DNA and
who have now been exonerated by DNA tests have certainly paid for all-too-common memory
errors (Wells, Memon, & Penrod, 2006).

Although cognitive biases are common, they are not impossible to control, and psychologists and
other scientists are working to help people make better decisions. One possibility is to provide
people with better feedback about their judgments. Weather forecasters, for instance, learn to be
quite accurate in their judgments because they have clear feedback about the accuracy of their
predictions. Other research has found that accessibility biases can be reduced by leading people
to consider multiple alternatives rather than focus only on the most obvious ones, and
particularly by leading people to think about opposite possible outcomes than the ones they are
expecting (Lilienfeld, Ammirtai, & Landfield, 2009). Forensic psychologists are also working to
reduce the incidence of false identification by helping police develop better procedures for
interviewing both suspects and eyewitnesses (Steblay, Dysart, Fulero, & Lindsay, 2001).

Key Takeaways

Our memories fail in part due to inadequate encoding and storage, and in part due to
the inability to accurately retrieve stored information.

The human brain is wired to develop and make use of social categories and schemas.
Schemas help us remember new information but may also lead us to falsely
 remember things that never happened to us and to distort or misremember things that
did.

A variety of cognitive biases influence the accuracy of our judgments.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Consider a time when you were uncertain if you really experienced an event or only
imagined it. What impact did this have on you, and how did you resolve it?

2. Consider again some of the cognitive schemas that you hold in your memory. How
do these knowledge structures bias your information processing and behavior, and
how might you prevent them from doing so?

3. Imagine that you were involved in a legal case in which an eyewitness claimed that
he had seen a person commit a crime. Based on your knowledge about memory and
cognition, what techniques would you use to reduce the possibility that the
eyewitness was making a mistaken identification?

References

Brown, D., Scheflin, A. W., & Hammond, D. C. (1998). Memory, trauma

treatment, and the law. New York, NY: Norton.

Brown, R., & Kulik, J. (1977). Flashbulb memories. Cognition, 5, 73–98.

Ceci, S. J., Huffman, M. L. C., Smith, E., & Loftus, E. F. (1994). Repeatedly
thinking about a non-event: Source misattributions among preschoolers.
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8.4 Chapter Summary

Memory and cognition are the two major interests of cognitive

psychologists. The cognitive school was influenced in large part by the
development of the electronic computer. Psychologists conceptualize
memory in terms of types, stages, and processes.

Explicit memory is assessed using measures in which the individual being

tested must consciously attempt to remember the information. Explicit
memory includes semantic and episodic memory. Explicit memory tests
include recall memory tests, recognition memory tests, and measures of
relearning (also known as savings).

Implicit memory refers to the influence of experience on behavior, even if

the individual is not aware of those influences. Implicit memory is made up
of procedural memory, classical conditioning effects, and priming. Priming
refers both to the activation of knowledge and to the influence of that
activation on behavior. An important characteristic of implicit memories is
that they are frequently formed and used automatically, without much effort
or awareness on our part.

Sensory memory, including iconic and echoic memory, is a memory buffer

that lasts only very briefly and then, unless it is attended to and passed on
for more processing, is forgotten.

Information that we turn our attention to may move into short-term memory
(STM). STM is limited in both the length and the amount of information it
can hold. Working memory is a set of memory procedures or operations that
operates on the information in STM. Working memory’s central executive
directs the strategies used to keep information in STM, such as maintenance
rehearsal, visualization, and chunking.

Long-term memory (LTM) is memory storage that can hold information for
days, months, and years. The information that we want to remember in
LTM must be encoded and stored, and then retrieved. Some strategies for
improving LTM include elaborative encoding, relating information to the
self, making use of the forgetting curve and the spacing effect, overlearning,
and being aware of context- and state-dependent retrieval effects.

Memories that are stored in LTM are not isolated but rather are linked
together into categories and schemas. Schemas are important in part
because they help us encode and retrieve information by providing an
organizational structure for it.

The ability to maintain information in LTM involves a gradual

strengthening of the connections among the neurons in the brain, known as
long-term potentiation (LTP). The hippocampus is important in explicit
memory, the cerebellum is important in implicit memory, and the amygdala
is important in emotional memory. A number of neurotransmitters are
important in consolidation and memory. Evidence for the role of different
brain structures in different types of memories comes in part from case
studies of patients who suffer from amnesia.

Cognitive biases are errors in memory or judgment that are caused by the
inappropriate use of cognitive processes. These biases are caused by the
overuse of schemas, the reliance on salient and cognitive accessible
information, and the use of rule-of-thumb strategies known as heuristics.
These biases include errors in source monitoring, the confirmation bias,
functional fixedness, the misinformation effect, overconfidence, and
counterfactual thinking. Understanding the potential cognitive errors we
frequently make can help us make better decisions and engage in more
appropriate behaviors.
Chapter 9. Intelligence and
Language

How We Talk (or Do Not Talk) about Intelligence

In January 2005, the president of Harvard University, Lawrence H. Summers, sparked an uproar
during a presentation at an economic conference on women and minorities in the science and
engineering workforce. During his talk, Summers proposed three reasons why there are so few
women who have careers in math, physics, chemistry, and biology. One explanation was that it
might be due to discrimination against women in these fields, and a second was that it might be
a result of women’s preference for raising families rather than for competing in academia. But
Summers also argued that women might be less genetically capable of performing science and
mathematics—that they may have less “intrinsic aptitude” than do men.

Summers’s comments on genetics set off a flurry of responses. One of the conference
participants, a biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, walked out on the talk, and
other participants said that they were deeply offended. Summers replied that he was only putting
forward hypotheses based on the scholarly work assembled for the conference, and that research
has shown that genetics have been found to be very important in many domains, compared with
environmental factors. As an example, he mentioned the psychological disorder of autism,
which was once believed to be a result of parenting but is now known to be primarily genetic in
origin.

The controversy did not stop with the conference. Many Harvard faculty members were
appalled that a prominent person could even consider the possibility that mathematical skills
were determined by genetics, and the controversy and protests that followed the speech led to
first ever faculty vote for a motion expressing a “lack of confidence” in a Harvard president.
 Summers resigned his position, in large part as a result of the controversy, in 2006 (Goldin,
Goldin, & Foulkes, 2005).

The characteristic that is most defining of human beings as a species is that

our large cerebral cortexes make us very, very smart. In this chapter we
consider how psychologists conceptualize and measure human intelligence
—the ability to think, to learn from experience, to solve problems, and to
adapt to new situations. We’ll consider whether intelligence involves a
single ability or many different abilities, how we measure intelligence, what
intelligence predicts, and how cultures and societies think about it. We’ll
also consider intelligence in terms of nature versus nurture and in terms of
similarities versus differences among people.

Intelligence is important because it has an impact on many human

behaviors. Intelligence is more strongly related than any other individual
difference variable to successful educational, occupational, economic, and
social outcomes. Scores on intelligence tests predict academic and military
performance, as well as success in a wide variety of jobs (Ones,
Viswesvaran, & Dilchert, 2005; Schmidt & Hunter, 1998). Intelligence is
also negatively correlated with criminal behaviors—the average intelligence
quotient (IQ) of delinquent adolescents is about 7 points lower than that of
other adolescents (Wilson & Herrnstein, 1985)—and positively correlated
with health-related outcomes, including longevity (Gottfredson, 2004;
Gottfredson & Deary, 2004). At least some of this latter relationship may be
due to the fact that people who are more intelligent are better able to predict
and avoid accidents and to understand and follow instructions from doctors
or on drug labels. Simonton (2006) also found that among U.S. presidents,
the ability to effectively lead was well predicted by ratings of the
president’s intelligence.
The advantages of having a higher IQ increase as life settings become more
complex. The correlation between IQ and job performance is higher in more
mentally demanding occupations, such as physician or lawyer, than in less
mentally demanding occupations, like clerk or newspaper delivery person
(Salgado et al., 2003). Although some specific personality traits, talents, and
physical abilities are important for success in some jobs, intelligence
predicts performance across all types of jobs.

Our vast intelligence also allows us to have language, a system of

communication that uses symbols in a regular way to create meaning.
Language gives us the ability communicate our intelligence to others by
talking, reading, and writing. As the psychologist Steven Pinker put it,
language is the “the jewel in the crown of cognition” (Pinker, 1994).
Although other species have at least some ability to communicate, none of
them have language. In the last section of this chapter we will consider the
structure and development of language, as well as its vital importance to
human beings.

References

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offended: Harvard president’s comments underscored the gender bias we’ve
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Simonton, D. K. (2006). Presidential IQ, openness, intellectual brilliance,

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9.1 Defining and Measuring Intelligence

Learning Objectives

1. Define intelligence and list the different types of intelligences psychologists study.

2. Summarize the characteristics of a scientifically valid intelligence test.

3. Outline the biological and environmental determinants of intelligence.

Psychologists have long debated how to best conceptualize and measure

intelligence (Sternberg, 2003). These questions include how many types of
intelligence there are, the role of nature versus nurture in intelligence, how
intelligence is represented in the brain, and the meaning of group
differences in intelligence.

General (g) Versus Specific (s) Intelligences

In the early 1900s, the French psychologist Alfred Binet (1857–1914) and
his colleague Henri Simon (1872–1961) began working in Paris to develop
a measure that would differentiate students who were expected to be better
learners from students who were expected to be slower learners. The goal
was to help teachers better educate these two groups of students. Binet and
Simon developed what most psychologists today regard as the first
intelligence test, which consisted of a wide variety of questions that
included the ability to name objects, define words, draw pictures, complete
sentences, compare items, and construct sentences.
Binet and Simon (Binet, Simon, & Town, 1915; Siegler, 1992) believed that
the questions they asked their students, even though they were on the
surface dissimilar, all assessed the basic abilities to understand, reason, and
make judgments. And it turned out that the correlations among these
different types of measures were in fact all positive; students who got one
item correct were more likely to also get other items correct, even though
the questions themselves were very different.

On the basis of these results, the psychologist Charles Spearman (1863–

1945) hypothesized that there must be a single underlying construct that all
of these items measure. He called the construct that the different abilities
and skills measured on intelligence tests have in common the general
intelligence factor (g). Virtually all psychologists now believe that there is
a generalized intelligence factor, g, that relates to abstract thinking and that
includes the abilities to acquire knowledge, to reason abstractly, to adapt to
novel situations, and to benefit from instruction and experience
(Gottfredson, 1997; Sternberg, 2003). People with higher general
intelligence learn faster.

Soon after Binet and Simon introduced their test, the American psychologist
Lewis Terman (1877–1956) developed an American version of Binet’s test
that became known as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test. The Stanford-
Binet is a measure of general intelligence made up of a wide variety of tasks
including vocabulary, memory for pictures, naming of familiar objects,
repeating sentences, and following commands.

Although there is general agreement among psychologists that g exists,

there is also evidence for specific intelligence (s), a measure of specific
skills in narrow domains. One empirical result in support of the idea of s
comes from intelligence tests themselves. Although the different types of
questions do correlate with each other, some items correlate more highly
with each other than do other items; they form clusters or clumps of
intelligences.

One distinction is between fluid intelligence, which refers to the capacity to

learn new ways of solving problems and performing activities, and
crystallized intelligence, which refers to the accumulated knowledge of the
world we have acquired throughout our lives (Salthouse, 2004). These
intelligences must be different because crystallized intelligence increases
with age—older adults are as good as or better than young people in solving
crossword puzzles—whereas fluid intelligence tends to decrease with age
(Horn, Donaldson, & Engstrom, 1981; Salthouse, 2004).

Other researchers have proposed even more types of intelligences. L. L.

Thurstone (1938) proposed that there were seven clusters of primary mental
abilities, made up of word fluency, verbal comprehension, spatial ability,
perceptual speed, numerical ability, inductive reasoning, and memory. But
even these dimensions tend to be at least somewhat correlated, showing
again the importance of g.

One advocate of the idea of multiple intelligences is the psychologist Robert

Sternberg. Sternberg has proposed a triarchic (three-part) theory of
intelligence that proposes that people may display more or less analytical
intelligence, creative intelligence, and practical intelligence. Sternberg
(1985, 2003) argued that traditional intelligence tests assess analytical
intelligence, the ability to answer problems with a single right answer, but
that they do not well assess creativity (the ability to adapt to new situations
and create new ideas) or practicality (e.g., the ability to write good memos
or to effectively delegate responsibility).

As Sternberg proposed, research has found that creativity is not highly

correlated with analytical intelligence (Furnham & Bachtiar, 2008), and
exceptionally creative scientists, artists, mathematicians, and engineers do
not score higher on intelligence than do their less creative peers (Simonton,
2000). Furthermore, the brain areas that are associated with convergent
thinking, thinking that is directed toward finding the correct answer to a
given problem, are different from those associated with divergent thinking,
the ability to generate many different ideas for or solutions to a single
problem (Tarasova, Volf, & Razoumnikova, 2010). On the other hand, being
creative often takes some of the basic abilities measured by g, including the
abilities to learn from experience, to remember information, and to think
abstractly (Bink & Marsh, 2000).

Figure 9.2

Test your divergent thinking. How many uses for a paper clip

can you think of?

Dead Hochman – paper clips – CC BY 2.0.

Studies of creative people suggest at least five components that are likely to
be important for creativity:

1. Expertise. Creative people have carefully studied and know a lot

about the topic that they are working in. Creativity comes with a
lot of hard work (Ericsson, 1998; Weisberg, 2006).
 2. Imaginative thinking. Creative people often view a problem in a
visual way, allowing them to see it from a new and different point
of view.
3. Risk taking. Creative people are willing to take on new but
potentially risky approaches.
4. Intrinsic interest. Creative people tend to work on projects
because they love doing them, not because they are paid for them.
In fact, research has found that people who are paid to be creative
are often less creative than those who are not (Hennessey &
Amabile, 2010).
5. Working in a creative environment. Creativity is in part a social
phenomenon. Simonton (1992) found that the most creative
people were supported, aided, and challenged by other people
working on similar projects.

The last aspect of the triarchic model, practical intelligence, refers primarily
to intelligence that cannot be gained from books or formal learning.
Practical intelligence represents a type of “street smarts” or “common
sense” that is learned from life experiences. Although a number of tests have
been devised to measure practical intelligence (Sternberg, Wagner, &
Okagaki, 1993; Wagner & Sternberg, 1985), research has not found much
evidence that practical intelligence is distinct from g or that it is predictive
of success at any particular tasks (Gottfredson, 2003). Practical intelligence
may include, at least in part, certain abilities that help people perform well
at specific jobs, and these abilities may not always be highly correlated with
general intelligence (Sternberg, Wagner, & Okagaki, 1993). On the other
hand, these abilities or skills are very specific to particular occupations and
thus do not seem to represent the broader idea of intelligence.

Another champion of the idea of multiple intelligences is the psychologist

Howard Gardner (1983, 1999). Gardner argued that it would be
evolutionarily functional for different people to have different talents and
skills, and proposed that there are eight intelligences that can be
differentiated from each other (Table 9.1 “Howard Gardner’s Eight Specific
Intelligences”). Gardner noted that some evidence for multiple intelligences
comes from the abilities of autistic savants, people who score low on
intelligence tests overall but who nevertheless may have exceptional skills
in a given domain, such as math, music, art, or in being able to recite
statistics in a given sport (Treffert & Wallace, 2004).

Table 9.1 Howard Gardner’s Eight Specific Intelligences

Intelligence Description

Linguistic The ability to speak and write well

Logico-
The ability to use logic and mathematical skills to solve problems
mathematical

Spatial The ability to think and reason about objects in three dimensions

Musical The ability to perform and enjoy music

Kinesthetic (body) The ability to move the body in sports, dance, or other physical activities

Interpersonal The ability to understand and interact effectively with others

Intrapersonal The ability to have insight into the self

The ability to recognize, identify, and understand animals, plants, and other
Naturalistic
living things

Source: Adapted from Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence reframed: Multiple intelligences for the 21st
century. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Figure 9.3

Although intelligence is often conceptualized in a general way

(as the g factor), there is a variety of specific skills that can be

useful for particular tasks.

Nayu Kim – Playing piano – CC BY 2.0; Helgi Halldórsson –

Run faster, Jump higher – CC BY-SA 2.0; Thomas Hawk –

Bahamian Clown – CC BY-NC 2.0; Sudipta Mallick – painter –

CC BY 2.0; Blondinrikard Fröberg – Torsten, math teacher –

CC BY 2.0.

The idea of multiple intelligences has been influential in the field of

education, and teachers have used these ideas to try to teach differently to
different students. For instance, to teach math problems to students who
have particularly good kinesthetic intelligence, a teacher might encourage
the students to move their bodies or hands according to the numbers. On the
other hand, some have argued that these “intelligences” sometimes seem
more like “abilities” or “talents” rather than real intelligence. And there is
no clear conclusion about how many intelligences there are. Are sense of
humor, artistic skills, dramatic skills, and so forth also separate
intelligences? Furthermore, and again demonstrating the underlying power
of a single intelligence, the many different intelligences are in fact
correlated and thus represent, in part, g (Brody, 2003).
Measuring Intelligence: Standardization and
the Intelligence Quotient

The goal of most intelligence tests is to measure g, the general intelligence

factor. Good intelligence tests are reliable, meaning that they are consistent
over time, and also demonstrate construct validity, meaning that they
actually measure intelligence rather than something else. Because
intelligence is such an important individual difference dimension,
psychologists have invested substantial effort in creating and improving
measures of intelligence, and these tests are now the most accurate of all
psychological tests. In fact, the ability to accurately assess intelligence is
one of the most important contributions of psychology to everyday public
life.

Intelligence changes with age. A 3-year-old who could accurately multiply

183 by 39 would certainly be intelligent, but a 25-year-old who could not do
so would be seen as unintelligent. Thus understanding intelligence requires
that we know the norms or standards in a given population of people at a
given age. The standardization of a test involves giving it to a large
number of people at different ages and computing the average score on the
test at each age level.

It is important that intelligence tests be standardized on a regular basis,

because the overall level of intelligence in a population may change over
time. The Flynn effect refers to the observation that scores on intelligence
tests worldwide have increased substantially over the past decades (Flynn,
1999). Although the increase varies somewhat from country to country, the
average increase is about 3 IQ points every 10 years. There are many
explanations for the Flynn effect, including better nutrition, increased access
to information, and more familiarity with multiple-choice tests (Neisser,
1998). But whether people are actually getting smarter is debatable (Neisser,
1997).

Once the standardization has been accomplished, we have a picture of the

average abilities of people at different ages and can calculate a person’s
mental age, which is the age at which a person is performing intellectually.
If we compare the mental age of a person to the person’s chronological age,
the result is the intelligence quotient (IQ), a measure of intelligence that is
adjusted for age. A simple way to calculate IQ is by using the following
formula:

IQ = mental age ÷ chronological age × 100.

Thus a 10-year-old child who does as well as the average 10-year-old child
has an IQ of 100 (10 ÷ 10 × 100), whereas an 8-year-old child who does as
well as the average 10-year-old child would have an IQ of 125 (10 ÷ 8 ×
100). Most modern intelligence tests are based the relative position of a
person’s score among people of the same age, rather than on the basis of this
formula, but the idea of an intelligence “ratio” or “quotient” provides a good
description of the score’s meaning.

A number of scales are based on the IQ. The Wechsler Adult lntelligence
Scale (WAIS) is the most widely used intelligence test for adults (Watkins,
Campbell, Nieberding, & Hallmark, 1995). The current version of the
WAIS, the WAIS-IV, was standardized on 2,200 people ranging from 16 to
90 years of age. It consists of 15 different tasks, each designed to assess
intelligence, including working memory, arithmetic ability, spatial ability,
and general knowledge about the world (see Figure 9.4 “Sample Items From
the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)”). The WAIS-IV yields scores
on four domains: verbal, perceptual, working memory, and processing
speed. The reliability of the test is high (more than 0.95), and it shows
substantial construct validity. The WAIS-IV is correlated highly with other
IQ tests such as the Stanford-Binet, as well as with criteria of academic and
life success, including college grades, measures of work performance, and
occupational level. It also shows significant correlations with measures of
everyday functioning among the mentally retarded.

The Wechsler scale has also been adapted for preschool children in the form
of the Wechsler Primary and Preschool Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI-III)
and for older children and adolescents in the form of the Wechsler
Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-IV).

Figure 9.4 Sample Items From the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
Source: Adapted from Thorndike, R. L., & Hagen, E. P. (1997). Cognitive Abilities Test (Form 5):
Research handbook. Chicago, IL: Riverside Publishing.

The intelligence tests that you may be most familiar with are aptitude tests,
which are designed to measure one’s ability to perform a given task, for
instance, to do well in college or in postgraduate training. Most U.S.
colleges and universities require students to take the Scholastic Assessment
Test (SAT) or the American College Test (ACT), and postgraduate schools
require the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), Medical College
Admissions Test (MCAT), or the Law School Admission Test (LSAT).
These tests are useful for selecting students because they predict success in
the programs that they are designed for, particularly in the first year of the
program (Kuncel, Hezlett, & Ones, 2010). These aptitude tests also
measure, in part, intelligence. Frey and Detterman (2004) found that the
SAT correlated highly (between about r = .7 and r = .8) with standard
measures of intelligence.

Intelligence tests are also used by industrial and organizational

psychologists in the process of personnel selection. Personnel selection is
the use of structured tests to select people who are likely to perform well at
given jobs (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998). The psychologists begin by
conducting a job analysis in which they determine what knowledge, skills,
abilities, and personal characteristics (KSAPs) are required for a given job.
This is normally accomplished by surveying and/or interviewing current
workers and their supervisors. Based on the results of the job analysis, the
psychologists choose selection methods that are most likely to be predictive
of job performance. Measures include tests of cognitive and physical ability
and job knowledge tests, as well as measures of IQ and personality.
The Biology of Intelligence

The brain processes underlying intelligence are not completely understood,

but current research has focused on four potential factors: brain size,
sensory ability, speed and efficience of neural transmission, and working
memory capacity.

There is at least some truth to the idea that smarter people have bigger
brains. Studies that have measured brain volume using neuroimaging
techniques find that larger brain size is correlated with intelligence
(McDaniel, 2005), and intelligence has also been found to be correlated with
the number of neurons in the brain and with the thickness of the cortex
(Haier, 2004; Shaw et al., 2006). It is important to remember that these
correlational findings do not mean that having more brain volume causes
higher intelligence. It is possible that growing up in a stimulating
environment that rewards thinking and learning may lead to greater brain
growth (Garlick, 2003), and it is also possible that a third variable, such as
better nutrition, causes both brain volume and intelligence.

Another possibility is that the brains of more intelligent people operate

faster or more efficiently than the brains of the less intelligent. Some
evidence supporting this idea comes from data showing that people who are
more intelligent frequently show less brain activity (suggesting that they
need to use less capacity) than those with lower intelligence when they work
on a task (Haier, Siegel, Tang, & Abel, 1992). And the brains of more
intelligent people also seem to run faster than the brains of the less
intelligent. Research has found that the speed with which people can
perform simple tasks—such as determining which of two lines is longer or
pressing, as quickly as possible, one of eight buttons that is lighted—is
predictive of intelligence (Deary, Der, & Ford, 2001). Intelligence scores
also correlate at about r = .5 with measures of working memory (Ackerman,
Beier, & Boyle, 2005), and working memory is now used as a measure of
intelligence on many tests.

Although intelligence is not located in a specific part of the brain, it is more

prevalent in some brain areas than others. Duncan et al. (2000) administered
a variety of intelligence tasks and observed the places in the cortex that were
most active. Although different tests created different patterns of activation,
as you can see in Figure 9.5 “Where Is Intelligence?”, these activated areas
were primarily in the outer parts of the cortex, the area of the brain most
involved in planning, executive control, and short-term memory.

Figure 9.5 Where Is Intelligence?

fMRI studies have found that the areas of the brain most related to intelligence are in the outer parts of the

cortex.

Source: Adapted from Duncan, J., Seitz, R. J., Kolodny, J., Bor, D., Herzog, H., Ahmed, A.,…Emslie, H.

(2000). A neural basis for general intelligence. Science, 289(5478), 457–460.

Is Intelligence Nature or Nurture?

Intelligence has both genetic and environmental causes, and these have been
systematically studied through a large number of twin and adoption studies
(Neisser et al., 1996; Plomin, DeFries, Craig, & McGuffin, 2003). These
studies have found that between 40% and 80% of the variability in IQ is due
to genetics, meaning that overall genetics plays a bigger role than does
environment in creating IQ differences among individuals (Plomin &
Spinath, 2004). The IQs of identical twins correlate very highly (r = .86),
much higher than do the scores of fraternal twins who are less genetically
similar (r = .60). And the correlations between the IQs of parents and their
biological children (r = .42) is significantly greater than the correlation
between parents and adopted children (r = .19). The role of genetics gets
stronger as children get older. The intelligence of very young children (less
than 3 years old) does not predict adult intelligence, but by age 7 it does,
and IQ scores remain very stable in adulthood (Deary, Whiteman, Starr,
Whalley, & Fox, 2004).

But there is also evidence for the role of nurture, indicating that individuals
are not born with fixed, unchangeable levels of intelligence. Twins raised
together in the same home have more similar IQs than do twins who are
raised in different homes, and fraternal twins have more similar IQs than do
nontwin siblings, which is likely due to the fact that they are treated more
similarly than are siblings.
The fact that intelligence becomes more stable as we get older provides
evidence that early environmental experiences matter more than later ones.
Environmental factors also explain a greater proportion of the variance in
intelligence for children from lower-class households than they do for
children from upper-class households (Turkheimer, Haley, Waldron,
D’Onofrio, & Gottesman, 2003). This is because most upper-class
households tend to provide a safe, nutritious, and supporting environment
for children, whereas these factors are more variable in lower-class
households.

Social and economic deprivation can adversely affect IQ. Children from
households in poverty have lower IQs than do children from households
with more resources even when other factors such as education, race, and
parenting are controlled (Brooks-Gunn & Duncan, 1997). Poverty may lead
to diets that are undernourishing or lacking in appropriate vitamins, and
poor children may also be more likely to be exposed to toxins such as lead
in drinking water, dust, or paint chips (Bellinger & Needleman, 2003). Both
of these factors can slow brain development and reduce intelligence.

If impoverished environments can harm intelligence, we might wonder

whether enriched environments can improve it. Government-funded after-
school programs such as Head Start are designed to help children learn.
Research has found that attending such programs may increase intelligence
for a short time, but these increases rarely last after the programs end
(McLoyd, 1998; Perkins & Grotzer, 1997). But other studies suggest that
Head Start and similar programs may improve emotional intelligence and
reduce the likelihood that children will drop out of school or be held back a
grade (Reynolds, Temple, Robertson, & Mann 2001).

Intelligence is improved by education; the number of years a person has

spent in school correlates at about r = .6 with IQ (Ceci, 1991). In part this
correlation may be due to the fact that people with higher IQ scores enjoy
taking classes more than people with low IQ scores, and they thus are more
likely to stay in school. But education also has a causal effect on IQ.
Comparisons between children who are almost exactly the same age but
who just do or just do not make a deadline for entering school in a given
school year show that those who enter school a year earlier have higher IQ
than those who have to wait until the next year to begin school (Baltes &
Reinert, 1969; Ceci & Williams, 1997). Children’s IQs tend to drop
significantly during summer vacations (Huttenlocher, Levine, & Vevea,
1998), a finding that suggests that a longer school year, as is used in Europe
and East Asia, is beneficial.

It is important to remember that the relative roles of nature and nurture can
never be completely separated. A child who has higher than average
intelligence will be treated differently than a child who has lower than
average intelligence, and these differences in behaviors will likely amplify
initial differences. This means that modest genetic differences can be
multiplied into big differences over time.

Psychology in Everyday Life: Emotional Intelligence

Although most psychologists have considered intelligence a cognitive ability, people also use
their emotions to help them solve problems and relate effectively to others. Emotional
intelligence refers to the ability to accurately identify, assess, and understand emotions, as well
as to effectively control one’s own emotions (Feldman-Barrett & Salovey, 2002; Mayer, Salovey,
& Caruso, 2000).

The idea of emotional intelligence is seen in Howard Gardner’s interpersonal intelligence (the
capacity to understand the emotions, intentions, motivations, and desires of other people) and
intrapersonal intelligence (the capacity to understand oneself, including one’s emotions). Public
interest in, and research on, emotional intellgence became widely prevalent following the
publication of Daniel Goleman’s best-selling book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter
More Than IQ (Goleman, 1998).

There are a variety of measures of emotional intelligence (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2008;
Petrides & Furnham, 2000). One popular measure, the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional
Intelligence Test (http://www.emotionaliq.org), includes items about the ability to understand,
experience, and manage emotions, such as these:

What mood(s) might be helpful to feel when meeting in-laws for the very first time?

Tom felt anxious and became a bit stressed when he thought about all the work he
needed to do. When his supervisor brought him an additional project, he felt ____
(fill in the blank).

Contempt most closely combines which two emotions?

1. anger and fear

2. fear and surprise

3. disgust and anger

4. surprise and disgust

Debbie just came back from vacation. She was feeling peaceful and content. How
well would each of the following actions help her preserve her good mood?

Action 1: She started to make a list of things at home that she needed to
do.

Action 2: She began thinking about where and when she would go on her
next vacation.

Action 3: She decided it was best to ignore the feeling since it wouldn’t
last anyway.

One problem with emotional intelligence tests is that they often do not show a great deal of
reliability or construct validity (Føllesdal & Hagtvet, 2009).Although it has been found that
people with higher emotional intelligence are also healthier (Martins, Ramalho, & Morin, 2010),
findings are mixed about whether emotional intelligence predicts life success—for instance, job
performance (Harms & Credé, 2010). Furthermore, other researchers have questioned the
construct validity of the measures, arguing that emotional intelligence really measures
knowledge about what emotions are, but not necessarily how to use those emotions (Brody,
2004), and that emotional intelligence is actually a personality trait, a part of g, or a skill that can
be applied in some specific work situations—for instance, academic and work situations (Landy,
2005).

Although measures of the ability to understand, experience, and manage emotions may not
predict effective behaviors, another important aspect of emotional intelligence—emotion
regulation—does. Emotion regulation refers to the ability to control and productively use one’s
emotions. Research has found that people who are better able to override their impulses to seek
immediate gratification and who are less impulsive also have higher cognitive and social
intelligence. They have better SAT scores, are rated by their friends as more socially adept, and
cope with frustration and stress better than those with less skill at emotion regulation (Ayduk et
al., 2000; Eigsti et al., 2006; Mischel & Ayduk, 2004).

Because emotional intelligence seems so important, many school systems have designed
programs to teach it to their students. However, the effectiveness of these programs has not been
rigorously tested, and we do not yet know whether emotional intelligence can be taught, or if
learning it would improve the quality of people’s lives (Mayer & Cobb, 2000).

Key Takeaways

Intelligence is the ability to think, to learn from experience, to solve problems, and to
adapt to new situations. Intelligence is important because it has an impact on many
human behaviors.

Psychologists believe that there is a construct that accounts for the overall
differences in intelligence among people, known as general intelligence (g).
 There is also evidence for specific intelligences (s), measures of specific skills in
narrow domains, including creativity and practical intelligence.

The intelligence quotient (IQ) is a measure of intelligence that is adjusted for age.
The Wechsler Adult lntelligence Scale (WAIS) is the most widely used IQ test for
adults.

Brain volume, speed of neural transmission, and working memory capacity are
related to IQ.

Between 40% and 80% of the variability in IQ is due to genetics, meaning that
overall genetics plays a bigger role than does environment in creating IQ differences
among individuals.

Intelligence is improved by education and may be hindered by environmental factors

such as poverty.

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to identify, assess, manage, and control
one’s emotions. People who are better able to regulate their behaviors and emotions
are also more successful in their personal and social encounters.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Consider your own IQ. Are you smarter than the average person? What specific
intelligences do you think you excel in?

2. Did your parents try to improve your intelligence? Do you think their efforts were
successful?

3. Consider the meaning of the Flynn effect. Do you think people are really getting
smarter?
 4. Give some examples of how emotional intelligence (or the lack of it) influences your
everyday life and the lives of other people you know.

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9.2 The Social, Cultural, and Political Aspects
of Intelligence

Learning Objectives

1. Explain how very high and very low intelligence is defined and what it means to
have them.

2. Consider and comment on the meaning of biological and environmental explanations

for gender and racial differences in IQ.

3. Define stereotype threat and explain how it might influence scores on intelligence
tests.

Intelligence is defined by the culture in which it exists. Most people in

Western cultures tend to agree with the idea that intelligence is an important
personality variable that should be admired in those who have it. But people
from Eastern cultures tend to place less emphasis on individual intelligence
and are more likely to view intelligence as reflecting wisdom and the desire
to improve the society as a whole rather than only themselves (Baral & Das,
2004; Sternberg, 2007). And in some cultures, such as the United States, it is
seen as unfair and prejudicial to argue, even at a scholarly conference, that
men and women might have different abilities in domains such as math and
science and that these differences might be caused by genetics (even though,
as we have seen, a great deal of intelligence is determined by genetics). In
short, although psychological tests accurately measure intelligence, it is
cultures that interpret the meanings of those tests and determine how people
with differing levels of intelligence are treated.
Extremes of Intelligence: Retardation and
Giftedness

The results of studies assessing the measurement of intelligence show that

IQ is distributed in the population in the form of a normal distribution (or
bell curve), which is the pattern of scores usually observed in a variable
that clusters around its average. In a normal distribution, the bulk of the
scores fall toward the middle, with many fewer scores falling at the
extremes. The normal distribution of intelligence (Figure 9.6 “Distribution
of IQ Scores in the General Population”) shows that on IQ tests, as well as
on most other measures, the majority of people cluster around the average
(in this case, where IQ = 100), and fewer are either very smart or very dull.
Because the standard deviation of an IQ test is about 15, this means that
about 2% of people score above an IQ of 130 (often considered the
threshold for giftedness), and about the same percentage score below an IQ
of 70 (often being considered the threshold for mental retardation).

Although Figure 9.6 “Distribution of IQ Scores in the General Population”

presents a single distribution, the actual IQ distribution varies by sex such
that the distribution for men is more spread out than is the distribution for
women. These sex differences mean that about 20% more men than women
fall in the extreme (very smart or very dull) ends of the distribution
(Johnson, Carothers, & Deary, 2009). Boys are about five times more likely
to be diagnosed with the reading disability dyslexia than are girls (Halpern,
1992), and are also more likely to be classified as mentally retarded. But
boys are also about 20% more highly represented in the upper end of the IQ
distribution.

Figure 9.6 Distribution of IQ Scores in the General Population

The normal distribution of IQ scores in the general population shows that most people have about average

intelligence, while very few have extremely high or extremely low intelligence.

Extremely Low Intelligence

One end of the distribution of intelligence scores is defined by people with

very low IQ. Mental retardation is a generalized disorder ascribed to
people who have an IQ below 70, who have experienced deficits since
childhood, and who have trouble with basic life skills, such as dressing and
feeding oneself and communicating with others (Switzky & Greenspan,
2006). About 1% of the United States population, most of them males,
fulfill the criteria for mental retardation, but some children who are
diagnosed as mentally retarded lose the classification as they get older and
better learn to function in society. A particular vulnerability of people with
low IQ is that they may be taken advantage of by others, and this is an
important aspect of the definition of mental retardation (Greenspan,
Loughlin, & Black, 2001).Mental retardation is divided into four categories:
mild, moderate, severe, and profound. Severe and profound mental
retardation is usually caused by genetic mutations or accidents during birth,
whereas mild forms have both genetic and environmental influences.

One cause of mental retardation is Down syndrome, a chromosomal

disorder leading to mental retardation caused by the presence of all or part
of an extra 21st chromosome. The incidence of Down syndrome is estimated
at 1 per 800 to 1,000 births, although its prevalence rises sharply in those
born to older mothers. People with Down syndrome typically exhibit a
distinctive pattern of physical features, including a flat nose, upwardly
slanted eyes, a protruding tongue, and a short neck.

Figure 9.7

About one in every 800 to 1,000 children has Down syndrome.

charamelody – Just Happy – CC BY-NC 2.0; Andreas-

photography – Beauty is in the eye of the beholder – CC BY-

NC 2.0.

Societal attitudes toward individuals with mental retardation have changed

over the past decades. We no longer use terms such as “moron,” “idiot,” or
“imbecile” to describe these people, although these were the official
psychological terms used to describe degrees of retardation in the past.
Laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) have made it
illegal to discriminate on the basis of mental and physical disability, and
there has been a trend to bring the mentally retarded out of institutions and
into our workplaces and schools. In 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that
the execution of people with mental retardation is “cruel and unusual
punishment,” thereby ending this practice (Atkins v. Virginia, 2002).
Extremely High Intelligence

Having extremely high IQ is clearly less of a problem than having

extremely low IQ, but there may also be challenges to being particularly
smart. It is often assumed that schoolchildren who are labeled as “gifted”
may have adjustment problems that make it more difficult for them to create
social relationships. To study gifted children, Lewis Terman and his
colleagues (Terman & Oden, 1959) selected about 1,500 high school
students who scored in the top 1% on the Stanford-Binet and similar IQ
tests (i.e., who had IQs of about 135 or higher), and tracked them for more
than seven decades (the children became known as the “termites” and are
still being studied today). This study found, first, that these students were
not unhealthy or poorly adjusted but rather were above average in physical
health and were taller and heavier than individuals in the general population.
The students also had above average social relationships—for instance,
being less likely to divorce than the average person (Seagoe, 1975).

Terman’s study also found that many of these students went on to achieve
high levels of education and entered prestigious professions, including
medicine, law, and science. Of the sample, 7% earned doctoral degrees, 4%
earned medical degrees, and 6% earned law degrees. These numbers are all
considerably higher than what would have been expected from a more
general population. Another study of young adolescents who had even
higher IQs found that these students ended up attending graduate school at a
rate more than 50 times higher than that in the general population (Lubinski
& Benbow, 2006).

As you might expect based on our discussion of intelligence, kids who are
gifted have higher scores on general intelligence (g). But there are also
different types of giftedness. Some children are particularly good at math or
science, some at automobile repair or carpentry, some at music or art, some
at sports or leadership, and so on. There is a lively debate among scholars
about whether it is appropriate or beneficial to label some children as
“gifted and talented” in school and to provide them with accelerated special
classes and other programs that are not available to everyone. Although
doing so may help the gifted kids (Colangelo & Assouline, 2009), it also
may isolate them from their peers and make such provisions unavailable to
those who are not classified as “gifted.”

Sex Differences in Intelligence

As discussed in the introduction to Chapter 9 “Intelligence and Language”,

Lawrence Summers’s claim about the reasons why women might be
underrepresented in the hard sciences was based in part on the assumption
that environment, such as the presence of gender discrimination or social
norms, was important but also in part on the possibility that women may be
less genetically capable of performing some tasks than are men. These
claims, and the responses they provoked, provide another example of how
cultural interpretations of the meanings of IQ can create disagreements and
even guide public policy. The fact that women earn many fewer degrees in
the hard sciences than do men is not debatable (as shown in Figure 9.9
“Bachelor’s Degrees Earned by Women in Selected Fields (2006)”), but the
reasons for these differences are.

Figure 9.9 Bachelor’s Degrees Earned by Women in Selected Fields (2006)

Women tend to earn more degrees in the biological and social sciences, whereas men earn more in

engineering, math, and the physical sciences.

National Science Foundation (2010). Downloaded from:

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf08321/content.cfm?pub_id=3785&id=2

Differences in degree choice are probably not due to overall intelligence

because men and women have almost identical intelligence as measured by
standard IQ and aptitude tests (Hyde, 2005). On the other hand, it is possible
that the differences are due to variability in intelligence, because more men
than women have very high (as well as very low) intelligence. Perhaps
success in the mathematical and physical sciences requires very high IQ,
and this favors men.

There are also observed sex differences on some particular types of tasks.
Women tend to do better than men on some verbal tasks, including spelling,
writing, and pronouncing words (Halpern et al., 2007), and they have better
emotional intelligence in the sense that they are better at detecting and
recognizing the emotions of others (McClure, 2000).

On average, men do better than women on tasks requiring spatial ability,

such as the mental rotation tasks shown in Figure 9.10 (Voyer, Voyer, &
Bryden, 1995). Boys tend to do better than girls on both geography and
geometry tasks (Vogel, 1996). On the math part of the Scholastic
Assessment Test (SAT), boys with scores of 700 or above outnumber girls
by more than 10 to 1 (Benbow & Stanley, 1983), but there are also more
boys in the lowest end of the distribution as well.

Figure 9.10

Men outperform women on measures of spatial rotation, such as this task requires, but women are better

at recognizing the emotions of others.

Adapted from Halpern, D. F., Benbow, C. P., Geary, D. C., Gur, R. C., Hyde, J. S., & Gernsbache, M. A.

(2007). The science of sex differences in science and mathematics. Psychological Science in the Public

Interest, 8(1), 1–51.

Although these differences are real, and can be important, keep in mind that
like virtually all sex group differences, the average difference between men
and women is small compared to the average differences within each sex.
There are many women who are better than the average man on spatial
tasks, and many men who score higher than the average women in terms of
emotional intelligence. Sex differences in intelligence allow us to make
statements only about average differences and do not say much about any
individual person.
Although society may not want to hear it, differences between men and
women may be in part genetically determined, perhaps by differences in
brain lateralization or by hormones (Kimura & Hampson, 1994; Voyer,
Voyer, & Bryden, 1995). But nurture is also likely important (Newcombe &
Huttenlocker, 2006). As infants, boys and girls show no or few differences
in spatial or counting abilities, suggesting that the differences occur at least
in part as a result of socialization (Spelke, 2005). Furthermore, the number
of women entering the hard sciences has been increasing steadily over the
past years, again suggesting that some of the differences may have been due
to gender discrimination and societal expectations about the appropriate
roles and skills of women.

Racial Differences in Intelligence

Although their bell curves overlap considerably, there are also differences in
which members of different racial and ethnic groups cluster along the IQ
line. The bell curves for some groups (Jews and East Asians) are centered
somewhat higher than for Whites in general (Lynn, 1996; Neisser et al.,
1996). Other groups, including Blacks and Hispanics, have averages
somewhat lower than those of Whites. The center of the IQ distribution for
African Americans is about 85, and that for Hispanics is about 93 (Hunt &
Carlson, 2007).

The observed average differences in intelligence between groups has at

times led to malicious and misguided attempts to try to correct for them
through discriminatory treatment of people from different races, ethnicities,
and nationalities (Lewontin, Rose, & Kamin, 1984). One of the most
egregious was the spread of eugenics, the proposal that one could improve
the human species by encouraging or permitting reproduction of only those
people with genetic characteristics judged desirable.
Eugenics became immensely popular in the United States in the early 20th
century and was supported by many prominent psychologists, including Sir
Francis Galton. Dozens of universities, including those in the Ivy League,
offered courses in eugenics, and the topic was presented in most high school
and college biology texts (Selden, 1999). Belief in the policies of eugenics
led the U.S. Congress to pass laws designed to restrict immigration from
other countries supposedly marked by low intelligence, particularly those in
eastern and southern Europe. And because more than one-half of the U.S.
states passed laws requiring the sterilization of low-IQ individuals, more
than 60,000 Americans, mostly African Americans and other poor
minorities, underwent forced sterilizations. Fortunately, the practice of
sterilization was abandoned between the 1940s and the 1960s, although
sterilization laws remained on the books in some states until the 1970s.

One explanation for race differences in IQ is that intelligence tests are

biased against some groups and in favor of others. By bias, what
psychologists mean is that a test predicts outcomes—such as grades or
occupational success—better for one group than it does for another. If IQ is
a better predictor of school grade point average for Whites than it is for
Asian Americans, for instance, then the test would be biased against Asian
Americans, even though the average IQ scores for Asians might be higher.
But IQ tests do not seem to be racially biased because the observed
correlations between IQ tests and both academic and occupational
achievement are about equal across races (Brody, 1992).

Another way that tests might be biased is if questions are framed such that
they are easier for people from one culture to understand than for people
from other cultures. For example, even a very smart person will not do well
on a test if he or she is not fluent in the language in which the test is
administered, or does not understand the meaning of the questions being
asked. But modern intelligence tests are designed to be culturally neutral,
and group differences are found even on tests that only ask about spatial
intelligence. Although some researchers still are concerned about the
possibility that intelligence tests are culturally biased, it is probably not the
case that the tests are creating all of the observed group differences (Suzuki
& Valencia, 1997).

Research Focus: Stereotype Threat

Although intelligence tests may not be culturally biased, the situation in which one takes a test
may be. One environmental factor that may affect how individuals perform and achieve is their
expectations about their ability at a task. In some cases these beliefs may be positive, and they
have the effect of making us feel more confident and thus better able to perform tasks. For
instance, research has found that because Asian students are aware of the cultural stereotype that
“Asians are good at math,” reminding them of this fact before they take a difficult math test can
improve their performance on the test (Walton & Cohen, 2003). On the other hand, sometimes
these beliefs are negative, and they create negative self-fulfilling prophecies such that we
perform more poorly just because of our knowledge about the stereotypes.

In 1995 Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson tested the hypothesis that the differences in
performance on IQ tests between Blacks and Whites might be due to the activation of negative
stereotypes (Steele & Aronson, 1995). Because Black students are aware of the stereotype that
Blacks are intellectually inferior to Whites, this stereotype might create a negative expectation,
which might interfere with their performance on intellectual tests through fear of confirming that
stereotype.

In support of this hypothesis, the experiments revealed that Black college students performed
worse (in comparison to their prior test scores) on standardized test questions when this task was
described to them as being diagnostic of their verbal ability (and thus when the stereotype was
relevant), but that their performance was not influenced when the same questions were described
as an exercise in problem solving. And in another study, the researchers found that when Black
students were asked to indicate their race before they took a math test (again activating the
stereotype), they performed more poorly than they had on prior exams, whereas White students
were not affected by first indicating their race.

Steele and Aronson argued that thinking about negative stereotypes that are relevant to a task
that one is performing creates stereotype threat—performance decrements that are caused by
the knowledge of cultural stereotypes. That is, they argued that the negative impact of race on
standardized tests may be caused, at least in part, by the performance situation itself. Because the
threat is “in the air,” Black students may be negatively influenced by it.

Research has found that stereotype threat effects can help explain a wide variety of performance
decrements among those who are targeted by negative stereotypes. For instance, when a math
task is described as diagnostic of intelligence, Latinos and Latinas perform more poorly than do
Whites (Gonzales, Blanton, & Williams, 2002). Similarly, when stereotypes are activated,
children with low socioeconomic status perform more poorly in math than do those with high
socioeconomic status, and psychology students perform more poorly than do natural science
students (Brown, Croizet, Bohner, Fournet, & Payne, 2003; Croizet & Claire, 1998). Even
groups who typically enjoy advantaged social status can be made to experience stereotype threat.
White men perform more poorly on a math test when they are told that their performance will be
compared with that of Asian men (Aronson, Lustina, Good, Keough, & Steele, 1999), and
Whites perform more poorly than Blacks on a sport-related task when it is described to them as
measuring their natural athletic ability (Stone, 2002; Stone, Lynch, Sjomeling, & Darley, 1999).

Research has found that stereotype threat is caused by both cognitive and emotional factors
(Schmader, Johns, & Forbes, 2008). On the cognitive side, individuals who are experiencing
stereotype threat show an increased vigilance toward the environment as well as increased
attempts to suppress stereotypic thoughts. Engaging in these behaviors takes cognitive capacity
away from the task. On the affective side, stereotype threat occurs when there is a discrepancy
between our positive concept of our own skills and abilities and the negative stereotypes that
suggest poor performance. These discrepancies create stress and anxiety, and these emotions
make it harder to perform well on the task.

Stereotype threat is not, however, absolute; we can get past it if we try. What is important is to
reduce the self doubts that are activated when we consider the negative stereotypes.
 Manipulations that affirm positive characteristics about the self or one’s social group are
successful at reducing stereotype threat (Marx & Roman, 2002; McIntyre, Paulson, & Lord,
2003). In fact, just knowing that stereotype threat exists and may influence our performance can
help alleviate its negative impact (Johns, Schmader, & Martens, 2005).

In summary, although there is no definitive answer to why IQ bell curves

differ across racial and ethnic groups, and most experts believe that
environment is important in pushing the bell curves apart, genetics can also
be involved. It is important to realize that, although IQ is heritable, this does
not mean that group differences are caused by genetics. Although some
people are naturally taller than others (height is heritable), people who get
plenty of nutritious food are taller than people who do not, and this
difference is clearly due to environment. This is a reminder that group
differences may be created by environmental variables but also able to be
reduced through appropriate environmental actions such as educational and
training programs.

Key Takeaways

IQ is distributed in the population in the form of a normal distribution (frequently

known as a bell curve).

Mental retardation is a generalized disorder ascribed to people who have an IQ

below 70, who have experienced deficits since childhood, and who have trouble with
basic life skills, such as dressing and feeding oneself and communicating with
others. One cause of mental retardation is Down syndrome.

Extremely intelligent individuals are not unhealthy or poorly adjusted, but rather are
above average in physical health and taller and heavier than individuals in the
general population.
 Men and women have almost identical intelligence, but men have more variability in
their IQ scores than do women.

On average, men do better than women on tasks requiring spatial ability, whereas
women do better on verbal tasks and score higher on emotional intelligence.

Although their bell curves overlap considerably, there are also average group
differences for members of different racial and ethnic groups.

The observed average differences in intelligence between racial and ethnic groups
has at times led to malicious attempts to correct for them, such as the eugenics
movement in the early part of the 20th century.

The situation in which one takes a test may create stereotype threat—performance
decrements that are caused by the knowledge of cultural stereotypes.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Were Lawrence Summers’s ideas about the potential causes of differences between
men and women math and hard sciences careers offensive to you? Why or why not?

2. Do you think that we should give intelligence tests? Why or why not? Does it matter
to you whether or not the tests have been standardized and shown to be reliable and
valid?

3. Give your ideas about the practice of providing accelerated classes to children listed
as “gifted” in high school. What are the potential positive and negative outcomes of
doing so? What research evidence has helped you form your opinion?

4. Consider the observed sex and racial differences in intelligence. What implications
do you think the differences have for education and career choices?
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When white men can’t do math: Necessary and sufficient factors in
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Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002).

Baral, B. D., & Das, J. P. (2004). Intelligence: What is indigenous to India

and what is shared? In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), International handbook of
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Benbow, C. P., & Stanley, J. C. (1983). Sex differences in mathematical

reasoning ability: More facts. Science, 222(4627), 1029–1031.

Brody, N. (1992). Intelligence (2nd ed.). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Brown, R., Croizet, J.-C., Bohner, G., Fournet, M., & Payne, A. (2003).
Automatic category activation and social behaviour: The moderating role of
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Colangelo, N., & Assouline, S. (2009). Acceleration: Meeting the academic

and social needs of students. In T. Balchin, B. Hymer, & D. J. Matthews
(Eds.), The Routledge international companion to gifted education (pp.
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Croizet, J.-C., & Claire, T. (1998). Extending the concept of stereotype and
threat to social class: The intellectual underperformance of students from
low socioeconomic backgrounds. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 24(6), 588–594.

Gonzales, P. M., Blanton, H., & Williams, K. J. (2002). The effects of

stereotype threat and double-minority status on the test performance of
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Greenspan, S., Loughlin, G., & Black, R. S. (2001). Credulity and gullibility
in people with developmental disorders: A framework for future research. In
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(Vol. 24, pp. 101–135). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Halpern, D. F. (1992). Sex differences in cognitive abilities (2nd ed.).

Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Halpern, D. F., Benbow, C. P., Geary, D. C., Gur, R. C., Hyde, J. S., &
Gernsbache, M. A. (2007). The science of sex differences in science and
mathematics. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 8(1), 1–51.

Hunt, E., & Carlson, J. (2007). Considerations relating to the study of group
differences in intelligence. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2(2),
194–213.

Hyde, J. S. (2005). The gender similarities hypothesis. American

Psychologist, 60(6), 581–592.
Johns, M., Schmader, T., & Martens, A. (2005). Knowing is half the battle:
Teaching stereotype threat as a means of improving women’s math
performance. Psychological Science, 16(3), 175–179.

Johnson, W., Carothers, A., & Deary, I. J. (2009). A role for the X
chromosome in sex differences in variability in general intelligence?
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Kimura, D., & Hampson, E. (1994). Cognitive pattern in men and women is
influenced by fluctuations in sex hormones. Current Directions in
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youth after 35 years: Uncovering antecedents for the development of math-
science expertise. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1(4), 316–345.

Lynn, R. (1996). Racial and ethnic differences in intelligence in the United

States on the differential ability scale. Personality and Individual
Differences, 20(2), 271–273;

Marx, D. M., & Roman, J. S. (2002). Female role models: Protecting

women’s math test performance. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 28(9), 1183–1193;

McClure, E. B. (2000). A meta-analytic review of sex differences in facial

expression processing and their development in infants, children, and
adolescents. Psychological Bulletin, 126(3), 424–453.

McIntyre, R. B., Paulson, R. M., & Lord, C. G. (2003). Alleviating women’s

mathematics stereotype threat through salience of group achievements.
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Neisser, U., Boodoo, G., Bouchard, T. J., Jr., Boykin, A. W., Brody, N.,
Ceci, S. J.,…Urbina, S. (1996). Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns.
American Psychologist, 51(2), 77–101.

Newcombe, N. S., & Huttenlocher, J. (2006). Development of spatial

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Seagoe, M. V. (1975). Terman and the gifted. Los Altos, CA: William
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Selden, S. (1999). Inheriting shame: The story of eugenics and racism in

America. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Spelke, E. S. (2005). Sex differences in intrinsic aptitude for mathematics

and science? A critical review. American Psychologist, 60(9), 950–958.

Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual
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(Eds.), Handbook of cultural psychology (pp. 547–568). New York, NY:
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Stone, J. (2002). Battling doubt by avoiding practice: The effects of

stereotype threat on self-handicapping in White athletes. Personality and
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Stone, J., Lynch, C. I., Sjomeling, M., & Darley, J. M. (1999). Stereotype
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intelligence: Educational implications. American Psychologist, 52(10),
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Voyer, D., Voyer, S., & Bryden, M. P. (1995). Magnitude of sex differences
in spatial abilities: A meta-analysis and consideration of critical variables.
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Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. (2003). Stereotype lift. Journal of

Experimental Social Psychology, 39(5), 456–467.
9.3 Communicating With Others: The
Development and Use of Language

Learning Objectives

1. Review the components and structure of language.

2. Explain the biological underpinnings of language.

3. Outline the theories of language development.

Human language is the most complex behavior on the planet and, at least as
far as we know, in the universe. Language involves both the ability to
comprehend spoken and written words and to create communication in real
time when we speak or write. Most languages are oral, generated through
speaking. Speaking involves a variety of complex cognitive, social, and
biological processes including operation of the vocal cords, and the
coordination of breath with movements of the throat and mouth, and tongue.
Other languages are sign languages, in which the communication is
expressed by movements of the hands. The most common sign language is
American Sign Language (ASL), currently spoken by more than 500,000
people in the United States alone.

Although language is often used for the transmission of information (“turn

right at the next light and then go straight,” “Place tab A into slot B”), this is
only its most mundane function. Language also allows us to access existing
knowledge, to draw conclusions, to set and accomplish goals, and to
understand and communicate complex social relationships. Language is
fundamental to our ability to think, and without it we would be nowhere
near as intelligent as we are.

Language can be conceptualized in terms of sounds, meaning, and the

environmental factors that help us understand it. Phonemes are the
elementary sounds of our language, morphemes are the smallest units of
meaning in a language, syntax is the set of grammatical rules that control
how words are put together, and contextual information is the elements of
communication that are not part of the content of language but that help us
understand its meaning.

The Components of Language

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that makes a meaningful difference

in a language. The word “bit” has three phonemes, /b/, /i/, and /t/ (in
transcription, phonemes are placed between slashes), and the word “pit”
also has three: /p/, /i/, and /t/. In spoken languages, phonemes are produced
by the positions and movements of the vocal tract, including our lips, teeth,
tongue, vocal cords, and throat, whereas in sign languages phonemes are
defined by the shapes and movement of the hands.

There are hundreds of unique phonemes that can be made by human

speakers, but most languages only use a small subset of the possibilities.
English contains about 45 phonemes, whereas other languages have as few
as 15 and others more than 60. The Hawaiian language contains only about
a dozen phonemes, including 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, and u) and 7 consonants
(h, k, l, m, n, p, and w).

In addition to using a different set of phonemes, because the phoneme is

actually a category of sounds that are treated alike within the language,
speakers of different languages are able to hear the difference only between
some phonemes but not others. This is known as the categorical perception
of speech sounds. English speakers can differentiate the /r/ phoneme from
the /l/ phoneme, and thus “rake” and “lake” are heard as different words. In
Japanese, however, /r/ and /l/ are the same phoneme, and thus speakers of
that language cannot tell the difference between the word “rake” and the
word “lake.” Try saying the words “cool” and “keep” out loud. Can you
hear the difference between the two /k/ sounds? To English speakers they
both sound the same, but to speakers of Arabic these represent two different
phonemes.

Infants are born able to understand all phonemes, but they lose their ability
to do so as they get older; by 10 months of age a child’s ability to recognize
phonemes becomes very similar to that of the adult speakers of the native
language. Phonemes that were initially differentiated come to be treated as
equivalent (Werker & Tees, 2002).

Figure 9.11

When adults hear speech sounds that gradually change from one phoneme to another, they do not hear the

continuous change; rather, they hear one sound until they suddenly begin hearing the other. In this case,

the change is from /ba/ to /pa/.

Adapted from Wood, C. C. (1976). Discriminability, response bias, and phoneme categories in

discrimination of voice onset time. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 60(6), 1381–1389.
Whereas phonemes are the smallest units of sound in language, a
morpheme is a string of one or more phonemes that makes up the smallest
units of meaning in a language. Some morphemes, such as one-letter words
like “I” and “a,” are also phonemes, but most morphemes are made up of
combinations of phonemes. Some morphemes are prefixes and suffixes used
to modify other words. For example, the syllable “re-” as in “rewrite” or
“repay” means “to do again,” and the suffix “-est” as in “happiest” or
“coolest” means “to the maximum.”

Syntax is the set of rules of a language by which we construct sentences.

Each language has a different syntax. The syntax of the English language
requires that each sentence have a noun and a verb, each of which may be
modified by adjectives and adverbs. Some syntaxes make use of the order in
which words appear, while others do not. In English, “The man bites the
dog” is different from “The dog bites the man.” In German, however, only
the article endings before the noun matter. “Der Hund beisst den Mann”
means “The dog bites the man” but so does “Den Mann beisst der Hund.”

Words do not possess fixed meanings but change their interpretation as a

function of the context in which they are spoken. We use contextual
information—the information surrounding language—to help us interpret
it. Examples of contextual information include the knowledge that we have
and that we know that other people have, and nonverbal expressions such as
facial expressions, postures, gestures, and tone of voice. Misunderstandings
can easily arise if people aren’t attentive to contextual information or if
some of it is missing, such as it may be in newspaper headlines or in text
messages.

Examples in Which Syntax Is Correct but the Interpretation Can Be Ambiguous

Grandmother of Eight Makes Hole in One

 Milk Drinkers Turn to Powder

Farmer Bill Dies in House

Old School Pillars Are Replaced by Alumni

Two Convicts Evade Noose, Jury Hung

Include Your Children When Baking Cookies

The Biology and Development of Language

Anyone who has tried to master a second language as an adult knows the
difficulty of language learning. And yet children learn languages easily and
naturally. Children who are not exposed to language early in their lives will
likely never learn one. Case studies, including Victor the “Wild Child,” who
was abandoned as a baby in France and not discovered until he was 12, and
Genie, a child whose parents kept her locked in a closet from 18 months
until 13 years of age, are (fortunately) two of the only known examples of
these deprived children. Both of these children made some progress in
socialization after they were rescued, but neither of them ever developed
language (Rymer, 1993). This is also why it is important to determine
quickly if a child is deaf and to begin immediately to communicate in sign
language. Deaf children who are not exposed to sign language during their
early years will likely never learn it (Mayberry, Lock, & Kazmi, 2002).

Research Focus: When Can We Best Learn Language? Testing the Critical Period
Hypothesis

For many years psychologists assumed that there was a critical period (a time in which learning
can easily occur) for language learning, lasting between infancy and puberty, and after which
language learning was more difficult or impossible (Lenneberg, 1967; Penfield & Roberts,
1959). But more recent research has provided a different interpretation.

An important study by Jacqueline Johnson and Elissa Newport (1989) using Chinese and Korean
speakers who had learned English as a second language provided the first insight. The
participants were all adults who had immigrated to the United States between 3 and 39 years of
age and who were tested on their English skills by being asked to detect grammatical errors in
sentences. Johnson and Newport found that the participants who had begun learning English
before they were 7 years old learned it as well as native English speakers but that the ability to
learn English dropped off gradually for the participants who had started later. Newport and
Johnson also found a correlation between the age of acquisition and the variance in the ultimate
learning of the language. While early learners were almost all successful in acquiring their
language to a high degree of proficiency, later learners showed much greater individual
variation.

Johnson and Newport’s finding that children who immigrated before they were 7 years old
learned English fluently seemed consistent with the idea of a “critical period” in language
learning. But their finding of a gradual decrease in proficiency for those who immigrated
between 8 and 39 years of age was not—rather, it suggested that there might not be a single
critical period of language learning that ended at puberty, as early theorists had expected, but that
language learning at later ages is simply better when it occurs earlier. This idea was reinforced in
research by Hakuta, Bialystok, and Wiley (2003), who examined U.S. census records of
language learning in millions of Chinese and Spanish speakers living in the United States. The
census form asks respondents to describe their own English ability using one of five categories:
“not at all,” “not well,” “well,” “very well,” and “speak only English.” The results of this
research dealt another blow to the idea of the critical period, because it showed that regardless of
what year was used as a cutoff point for the end of the critical period, there was no evidence for
any discontinuity in language-learning potential. Rather, the results (Figure 9.12 “English
Proficiency in Native Chinese Speakers”) showed that the degree of success in second-language
acquisition declined steadily throughout the respondent’s life span. The difficulty of learning
language as one gets older is probably due to the fact that, with age, the brain loses its plasticity
—that is, its ability to develop new neural connections.
 Figure 9.12 English Proficiency in Native Chinese Speakers

Hakuta, Bialystok, and Wiley (2003) found no evidence for critical periods in language learning.

Regardless of level of education, self-reported second-language skills decreased consistently across age of

immigration.

Adapted from Hakuta, K., Bialystok, E., & Wiley, E. (2003). Critical evidence: A test of the critical-period

hypothesis for second-language acquisition. Psychological Science, 14(1), 31–38.

For the 90% of people who are right-handed, language is stored and
controlled by the left cerebral cortex, although for some left-handers this
pattern is reversed. These differences can easily be seen in the results of
neuroimaging studies that show that listening to and producing language
creates greater activity in the left hemisphere than in the right. Broca’s
area, an area in front of the left hemisphere near the motor cortex, is
responsible for language production (Figure 9.13 “Drawing of Brain
Showing Broca’s and Wernicke’s Areas”). This area was first localized in
the 1860s by the French physician Paul Broca, who studied patients with
lesions to various parts of the brain. Wernicke’s area, an area of the brain
next to the auditory cortex, is responsible for language comprehension.

Figure 9.13 Drawing of Brain Showing Broca’s and Wernicke’s Areas

For most people the left hemisphere is specialized for language. Broca’s area, near the motor cortex, is

involved in language production, whereas Wernicke’s area, near the auditory cortex, is specialized for

language comprehension.

Evidence for the importance of Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas in language is

seen in patients who experience aphasia, a condition in which language
functions are severely impaired. People with Broca’s aphasia have difficulty
producing speech, whereas people with damage to Wernicke’s area can
produce speech, but what they say makes no sense and they have trouble
understanding language.

Learning Language

Language learning begins even before birth, because the fetus can hear
muffled versions of speaking from outside the womb. Moon, Cooper, and
Fifer (1993) found that infants only two days old sucked harder on a pacifier
when they heard their mothers’ native language being spoken than when
they heard a foreign language, even when strangers were speaking the
languages. Babies are also aware of the patterns of their native language,
showing surprise when they hear speech that has a different patterns of
phonemes than those they are used to (Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, 2004).

During the first year or so after birth, and long before they speak their first
words, infants are already learning language. One aspect of this learning is
practice in producing speech. By the time they are 6 to 8 weeks old, babies
start making vowel sounds (“ooohh,” “aaahh,” “goo”) as well as a variety of
cries and squeals to help them practice.

At about 7 months, infants begin babbling, engaging in intentional

vocalizations that lack specific meaning. Children babble as practice in
creating specific sounds, and by the time they are 1 year old, the babbling
uses primarily the sounds of the language that they are learning (de
Boysson-Bardies, Sagart, & Durand, 1984). These vocalizations have a
conversational tone that sounds meaningful even though it isn’t. Babbling
also helps children understand the social, communicative function of
language. Children who are exposed to sign language babble in sign by
making hand movements that represent real language (Petitto & Marentette,
1991).

Figure 9.14
Babies often engage in vocal exchanges to help them practice

language.

Jonathan Klinger – CC BY-SA 2.0.

At the same time that infants are practicing their speaking skills by
babbling, they are also learning to better understand sounds and eventually
the words of language. One of the first words that children understand is
their own name, usually by about 6 months, followed by commonly used
words like “bottle,” “mama,” and “doggie” by 10 to 12 months (Mandel,
Jusczyk, & Pisoni, 1995).

The infant usually produces his or her first words at about 1 year of age. It is
at this point that the child first understands that words are more than sounds
—they refer to particular objects and ideas. By the time children are 2 years
old, they have a vocabulary of several hundred words, and by kindergarten
their vocabularies have increased to several thousand words. By fifth grade
most children know about 50,000 words and by the time they are in college,
about 200,000.

The early utterances of children contain many errors, for instance, confusing
/b/ and /d/, or /c/ and /z/. And the words that children create are often
simplified, in part because they are not yet able to make the more complex
sounds of the real language (Dobrich & Scarborough, 1992). Children may
say “keekee” for kitty, “nana” for banana, and “vesketti” for spaghetti in
part because it is easier. Often these early words are accompanied by
gestures that may also be easier to produce than the words themselves.
Children’s pronunciations become increasingly accurate between 1 and 3
years, but some problems may persist until school age.

Most of a child’s first words are nouns, and early sentences may include
only the noun. “Ma” may mean “more milk please” and “da” may mean
“look, there’s Fido.” Eventually the length of the utterances increases to two
words (“mo ma” or “da bark”), and these primitive sentences begin to
follow the appropriate syntax of the native language.

Because language involves the active categorization of sounds and words

into higher level units, children make some mistakes in interpreting what
words mean and how to use them. In particular, they often make
overextensions of concepts, which means they use a given word in a broader
context than appropriate. A child might at first call all adult men “daddy” or
all animals “doggie.”

Children also use contextual information, particularly the cues that parents
provide, to help them learn language. Infants are frequently more attuned to
the tone of voice of the person speaking than to the content of the words
themselves, and are aware of the target of speech. Werker, Pegg, and
McLeod (1994) found that infants listened longer to a woman who was
speaking to a baby than to a woman who was speaking to another adult.

Children learn that people are usually referring to things that they are
looking at when they are speaking (Baldwin, 1993), and that that the
speaker’s emotional expressions are related to the content of their speech.
Children also use their knowledge of syntax to help them figure out what
words mean. If a child hears an adult point to a strange object and say, “this
is a dirb,” they will infer that a “dirb” is a thing, but if they hear them say,
“this is a one of those dirb things” they will infer that it refers to the color or
other characteristic of the object. And if they hear the word “dirbing,” they
will infer that “dirbing” is something that we do (Waxman, 1990).

How Children Learn Language: Theories of

Language Acquisition

Psychological theories of language learning differ in terms of the

importance they place on nature versus nurture. Yet it is clear that both
matter. Children are not born knowing language; they learn to speak by
hearing what happens around them. On the other hand, human brains, unlike
those of any other animal, are prewired in a way that leads them, almost
effortlessly, to learn language.

Perhaps the most straightforward explanation of language development is

that it occurs through principles of learning, including association,
reinforcement, and the observation of others (Skinner, 1965). There must be
at least some truth to the idea that language is learned, because children
learn the language that they hear spoken around them rather than some other
language. Also supporting this idea is the gradual improvement of language
skills with time. It seems that children modify their language through
imitation, reinforcement, and shaping, as would be predicted by learning
theories.

But language cannot be entirely learned. For one, children learn words too
fast for them to be learned through reinforcement. Between the ages of 18
months and 5 years, children learn up to 10 new words every day (Anglin,
1993). More importantly, language is more generative than it is imitative.
Generativity refers to the fact that speakers of a language can compose
sentences to represent new ideas that they have never before been exposed
to. Language is not a predefined set of ideas and sentences that we choose
when we need them, but rather a system of rules and procedures that allows
us to create an infinite number of statements, thoughts, and ideas, including
those that have never previously occurred. When a child says that she
“swimmed” in the pool, for instance, she is showing generativity. No adult
speaker of English would ever say “swimmed,” yet it is easily generated
from the normal system of producing language.

Other evidence that refutes the idea that all language is learned through
experience comes from the observation that children may learn languages
better than they ever hear them. Deaf children whose parents do not speak
ASL very well nevertheless are able to learn it perfectly on their own, and
may even make up their own language if they need to (Goldin-Meadow &
Mylander, 1998). A group of deaf children in a school in Nicaragua, whose
teachers could not sign, invented a way to communicate through made-up
signs (Senghas, Senghas, & Pyers, 2005). The development of this new
Nicaraguan Sign Language has continued and changed as new generations
of students have come to the school and started using the language.
Although the original system was not a real language, it is becoming closer
and closer every year, showing the development of a new language in
modern times.

The linguist Noam Chomsky is a believer in the nature approach to

language, arguing that human brains contain a language acquisition device
that includes a universal grammar that underlies all human language
(Chomsky, 1965, 1972). According to this approach, each of the many
languages spoken around the world (there are between 6,000 and 8,000) is
an individual example of the same underlying set of procedures that are
hardwired into human brains. Chomsky’s account proposes that children are
born with a knowledge of general rules of syntax that determine how
sentences are constructed.

Chomsky differentiates between the deep structure of an idea—how the

idea is represented in the fundamental universal grammar that is common to
all languages, and the surface structure of the idea—how it is expressed in
any one language. Once we hear or express a thought in surface structure,
we generally forget exactly how it happened. At the end of a lecture, you
will remember a lot of the deep structure (i.e., the ideas expressed by the
instructor), but you cannot reproduce the surface structure (the exact words
that the instructor used to communicate the ideas).

Although there is general agreement among psychologists that babies are

genetically programmed to learn language, there is still debate about
Chomsky’s idea that there is a universal grammar that can account for all
language learning. Evans and Levinson (2009) surveyed the world’s
languages and found that none of the presumed underlying features of the
language acquisition device were entirely universal. In their search they
found languages that did not have noun or verb phrases, that did not have
tenses (e.g., past, present, future), and even some that did not have nouns or
verbs at all, even though a basic assumption of a universal grammar is that
all languages should share these features.

Bilingualism and Cognitive Development

Although it is less common in the United States than in other countries,

bilingualism (the ability to speak two languages) is becoming more and
more frequent in the modern world. Nearly one-half of the world’s
population, including 18% of U.S. citizens, grows up bilingual.

In recent years many U.S. states have passed laws outlawing bilingual
education in schools. These laws are in part based on the idea that students
will have a stronger identity with the school, the culture, and the
government if they speak only English, and in part based on the idea that
speaking two languages may interfere with cognitive development.

Some early psychological research showed that, when compared with

monolingual children, bilingual children performed more slowly when
processing language, and their verbal scores were lower. But these tests
were frequently given in English, even when this was not the child’s first
language, and the children tested were often of lower socioeconomic status
than the monolingual children (Andrews, 1982).

More current research that has controlled for these factors has found that,
although bilingual children may in some cases learn language somewhat
slower than do monolingual children (Oller & Pearson, 2002), bilingual and
monolingual children do not significantly differ in the final depth of
language learning, nor do they generally confuse the two languages
(Nicoladis & Genesee, 1997). In fact, participants who speak two languages
have been found to have better cognitive functioning, cognitive flexibility,
and analytic skills in comparison to monolinguals (Bialystok, 2009).
Research (Figure 9.15 “Gray Matter in Bilinguals”) has also found that
learning a second language produces changes in the area of the brain in the
left hemisphere that is involved in language, such that this area is denser and
contains more neurons (Mechelli et al., 2004). Furthermore, the increased
density is stronger in those individuals who are most proficient in their
second language and who learned the second language earlier. Thus, rather
than slowing language development, learning a second language seems to
increase cognitive abilities.

Figure 9.15 Gray Matter in Bilinguals

Andrea Mechelli and her colleagues (2004) found that children who were bilingual had increased gray

matter density (i.e., more neurons) in cortical areas related to language in comparison to monolinguals

(panel a), that gray matter density correlated positively with second language proficiency (panel b) and
that gray matter density correlated negatively with the age at which the second language was learned

(panel c).

Adapted from Mechelli, A., Crinion, J. T., Noppeney, U., O’Doherty, J., Ashburner, J., Frackowiak, R. S.,

& Price C. J. (2004). Structural plasticity in the bilingual brain: Proficiency in a second language and age

at acquisition affect grey-matter density. Nature, 431, 757.

Can Animals Learn Language?

Nonhuman animals have a wide variety of systems of communication.

Some species communicate using scents; others use visual displays, such as
baring the teeth, puffing up the fur, or flapping the wings; and still others
use vocal sounds. Male songbirds, such as canaries and finches, sing songs
to attract mates and to protect territory, and chimpanzees use a combination
of facial expressions, sounds, and actions, such as slapping the ground, to
convey aggression (de Waal, 1989). Honeybees use a “waggle dance” to
direct other bees to the location of food sources (von Frisch, 1956). The
language of vervet monkeys is relatively advanced in the sense that they use
specific sounds to communicate specific meanings. Vervets make different
calls to signify that they have seen either a leopard, a snake, or a hawk
(Seyfarth & Cheney, 1997).

Despite their wide abilities to communicate, efforts to teach animals to use

language have had only limited success. One of the early efforts was made
by Catherine and Keith Hayes, who raised a chimpanzee named Viki in their
home along with their own children. But Viki learned little and could never
speak (Hayes & Hayes, 1952). Researchers speculated that Viki’s
difficulties might have been in part because the she could not create the
words in her vocal cords, and so subsequent attempts were made to teach
primates to speak using sign language or by using boards on which they can
point to symbols.
Allen and Beatrix Gardner worked for many years to teach a chimpanzee
named Washoe to sign using ASL. Washoe, who lived to be 42 years old,
could label up to 250 different objects and make simple requests and
comments, such as “please tickle” and “me sorry” (Fouts, 1997). Washoe’s
adopted daughter Loulis, who was never exposed to human signers, learned
more than 70 signs simply by watching her mother sign.

The most proficient nonhuman language speaker is Kanzi, a bonobo who

lives at the Language Learning Center at Georgia State University (Savage-
Rumbaugh, & Lewin, 1994). As you can see in Note 9.44 “Video Clip:
Language Recognition in Bonobos”, Kanzi has a propensity for language
that is in many ways similar to humans’. He learned faster when he was
younger than when he got older, he learns by observation, and he can use
symbols to comment on social interactions, rather than simply for food
treats. Kanzi can also create elementary syntax and understand relatively
complex commands. Kanzi can make tools and can even play Pac-Man.

Video Clip: Language Recognition in Bonobos

(click to see video)

The bonobo Kanzi is the most proficient known nonhuman language

speaker.

And yet even Kanzi does not have a true language in the same way that
humans do. Human babies learn words faster and faster as they get older,
but Kanzi does not. Each new word he learns is almost as difficult as the
one before. Kanzi usually requires many trials to learn a new sign, whereas
human babies can speak words after only one exposure. Kanzi’s language is
focused primarily on food and pleasure and only rarely on social
relationships. Although he can combine words, he generates few new
phrases and cannot master syntactic rules beyond the level of about a 2-
year-old human child (Greenfield & Savage-Rumbaugh, 1991).

In sum, although many animals communicate, none of them have a true

language. With some exceptions, the information that can be communicated
in nonhuman species is limited primarily to displays of liking or disliking,
and related to basic motivations of aggression and mating. Humans also use
this more primitive type of communication, in the form of nonverbal
behaviors such as eye contact, touch, hand signs, and interpersonal distance,
to communicate their like or dislike for others, but they (unlike animals)
also supplant this more primitive communication with language. Although
other animal brains share similarities to ours, only the human brain is
complex enough to create language. What is perhaps most remarkable is
that although language never appears in nonhumans, language is universal
in humans. All humans, unless they have a profound brain abnormality or
are completely isolated from other humans, learn language.

Language and Perception

To this point in the chapter we have considered intelligence and language as

if they are separate concepts. But what if language influences our thinking?
The idea that language and its structures influence and limit human thought
is called linguistic relativity.

The most frequently cited example of this possibility was proposed by

Benjamin Whorf (1897–1941), an American linguist who was particularly
interested in Native American languages. Whorf argued that the Inuit people
of Canada (sometimes known as Eskimos) had many words for snow,
whereas English speakers have only one, and that this difference influenced
how the different cultures perceived snow. Whorf argued that the Inuit
perceived and categorized snow in finer details than English speakers
possibly could, because the English language constrained perception.

Although the idea of linguistic relativism seemed reasonable, research has

suggested that language has less influence on thinking than might be
expected. For one, in terms of perceptions of snow, although it is true that
the Inuit do make more distinctions among types of snow than do English
speakers, the latter also make some distinctions (think “powder,” “slush,”
“whiteout,” and so forth). And it is also possible that thinking about snow
may influence language, rather than the other way around.

In a more direct test of the possibility that language influences thinking,

Eleanor Rosch (1973) compared people from the Dani culture of New
Guinea, who have only two terms for color (“dark” and “bright”), with
English speakers who use many more terms. Rosch hypothesized that if
language constrains perception and categorization, then the Dani should
have a harder time distinguishing colors than would English speakers. But
her research found that when the Dani were asked to categorize colors using
new categories, they did so in almost the same way that English speakers
did. Similar results were found by Frank, Everett, Fedorenko, and Gibson
(2008), who showed that the Amazonian tribe known as the Pirahã, who
have no linguistic method for expressing exact quantities (not even the
number “one”), were nevertheless able to perform matches with large
numbers without problem.

Although these data led researchers to conclude that the language we use to
describe color and number does not influence our underlying understanding
of the underlying sensation, another more recent study has questioned this
assumption. Roberson, Davies, and Davidoff (2000) conducted another
study with Dani participants and found that, at least for some colors, the
names that they used to describe colors did influence their perceptions of the
colors. Other researchers continue to test the possibility that our language
influences our perceptions, and perhaps even our thoughts (Levinson, 1998),
and yet the evidence for this possibility is, as of now, mixed.

Key Takeaways

Language involves both the ability to comprehend spoken and written words and to
speak and write. Some languages are sign languages, in which the communication is
expressed by movements of the hands.

Phonemes are the elementary sounds of our language, morphemes are the smallest
units of meaningful language, syntax is the grammatical rules that control how words
are put together, and contextual information is the elements of communication that
help us understand its meaning.

Recent research suggests that there is not a single critical period of language
learning, but that language learning is simply better when it occurs earlier.

Broca’s area is responsible for language production. Wernicke’s area is responsible

for language comprehension.

Language learning begins even before birth. An infant usually produces his or her
first words at about 1 year of age.

One explanation of language development is that it occurs through principles of

learning, including association, reinforcement, and the observation of others.

Noam Chomsky argues that human brains contain a language acquisition module
that includes a universal grammar that underlies all human language. Chomsky
differentiates between the deep structure and the surface structure of an idea.

Although other animals communicate and may be able to express ideas, only the
human brain is complex enough to create real language.
 Our language may have some influence on our thinking, but it does not affect our
underlying understanding of concepts.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. What languages do you speak? Did you ever try to learn a new one? What problems
did you have when you did this? Would you consider trying to learn a new language?

2. Some animals, such as Kanzi, display at least some language. Do you think that this
means that they are intelligent?

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9.4 Chapter Summary

Intelligence—the ability to think, to learn from experience, to solve

problems, and to adapt to new situations—is more strongly related than any
other individual difference variable to successful educational, occupational,
economic, and social outcomes.

The French psychologist Alfred Binet and his colleague Henri Simon
developed the first intelligence test in the early 1900s. Charles Spearman
called the construct that the different abilities and skills measured on
intelligence tests have in common the general intelligence factor, or simply
“g.”

There is also evidence for specific intelligences (s), measures of specific

skills in narrow domains. Robert Sternberg has proposed a triarchic (three-
part) theory of intelligence, and Howard Gardner has proposed that there
are eight different specific intelligences.

Good intelligence tests both are reliable and have construct validity.
Intelligence tests are the most accurate of all psychological tests. IQ tests
are standardized, which allows calculation of mental age and the
intelligence quotient (IQ),

The Wechsler Adult lntelligence Scale (WAIS) is the most widely used
intelligence test for adults. Other intelligence tests include aptitude tests
such as the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT), American College Test
(ACT), and Graduate Record Examination (GRE), and structured tests used
for personnel selection.

Smarter people have somewhat larger brains, which operate more

efficiently and faster than the brains of the less intelligent. Although
intelligence is not located in a specific part of the brain, it is more prevalent
in some brain areas than others.

Intelligence has both genetic and environmental causes, and between 40%
and 80% of the variability in IQ is heritable. Social and economic
deprivation, including poverty, can adversely affect IQ, and intelligence is
improved by education.

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to identify, assess, manage, and

control one’s emotions. However, tests of emotional intelligence are often
unreliable, and emotional intelligence may be a part of g, or a skill that can
be applied in some specific work situations.

About 3% of Americans score above an IQ of 130 (the threshold for

giftedness), and about the same percentage score below an IQ of 70 (the
threshold for mental retardation). Males are about 20% more common in
these extremes than are women.

Women and men show overall equal intelligence, but there are sex
differences on some types of tasks. There are also differences in which
members of different racial and ethnic groups cluster along the IQ line. The
causes of these differences are not completely known. These differences
have at times led to malicious, misguided, and discriminatory attempts to
try to correct for them, such as eugenics.

Language involves both the ability to comprehend spoken and written

words and to create communication in real time when we speak or write.
Language can be conceptualized in terms of sounds (phonemes), meaning
(morphemes and syntax), and the environmental factors that help us
understand it (contextual information).
Language is best learned during the critical period between 3 and 7 years of
age.

Broca’s area, an area of the brain in front of the left hemisphere near the
motor cortex, is responsible for language production, and Wernicke’s area,
an area of the brain next to the auditory cortex, is responsible for language
comprehension.

Children learn language quickly and naturally, progressing through stages

of babbling, first words, first sentences, and then a rapid increase in
vocabulary. Children often make overextensions of concepts.

Some theories of language learning are based on principles of learning.

Noam Chomsky argues that human brains contain a language acquisition
device that includes a universal grammar that underlies all human language
and that allows generativity. Chomsky differentiates between the deep
structure and the surface structure of an idea.

Bilingualism is becoming more and more frequent in the modern world.

Bilingual children may show more cognitive function and flexibility than
do monolingual children.

Nonhuman animals have a wide variety of systems of communication. But

efforts to teach animals to use human language have had only limited
success. Although many animals communicate, none of them have a true
language.
Chapter 10. Emotions and
Motivations

Captain Sullenberger Conquers His Emotions

He was 3,000 feet up in the air when the sudden loss of power in his airplane put his life, as well
as the lives of 150 other passengers and crew members, in his hands. Both of the engines on
flight 1539 had shut down, and his options for a safe landing were limited.

Sully kept flying the plane and alerted the control tower to the situation:

This is Cactus 1539…hit birds. We lost thrust in both engines. We’re turning back
towards La Guardia.

When the tower gave him the compass setting and runway for a possible landing, Sullenberger’s
extensive experience allowed him to give a calm response:

I’m not sure if we can make any runway…Anything in New Jersey?

Captain Sullenberger was not just any pilot in a crisis, but a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot
with 40 years of flight experience. He had served as a flight instructor and the Airline Pilots
Association safety chairman. Training had quickened his mental processes in assessing the
threat, allowing him to maintain what tower operators later called an “eerie calm.” He knew the
capabilities of his plane.

When the tower suggested a runway in New Jersey, Sullenberger calmly replied:

We’re unable. We may end up in the Hudson.

Figure 10.1 Captain Sullenberger and His Plane on the Hudson

Imagine that you are on a plane that you know is going to crash.

What emotions would you experience, and how would you

respond to them? Would the rush of fear cause you to panic, or

could you control your emotions like Captain Sullenberger did,

as he calmly calculated the heading, position, thrust, and

elevation of the plane, and then landed it on the Hudson River?

Ingrid Taylar – Sully Sullenberger – CC BY 2.0; Dane Deasy –

Flight 1549 Crash – CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

The last communication from Captain Sullenberger to the tower advised of the eventual
outcome:

We’re going to be in the Hudson.

He calmly set the plane down on the water. Passengers reported that the landing was like
landing on a rough runway. The crew kept the passengers calm as women, children, and then the
rest of the passengers were evacuated onto the boats of the rescue personnel that had quickly
arrived. Captain Sullenberger then calmly walked the aisle of the plane to be sure that everyone
was out before joining the 150 other rescued survivors (Levin, 2009; National Transportation
Safety Board, 2009).

Some called it “grace under pressure,” and others the “miracle on the Hudson.” But
psychologists see it as the ultimate in emotion regulation—the ability to control and
productively use one’s emotions.
The topic of this chapter is affect, defined as the experience of feeling or
emotion. Affect is an essential part of the study of psychology because it
plays such an important role in everyday life. As we will see, affect guides
behavior, helps us make decisions, and has a major impact on our mental
and physical health.

The two fundamental components of affect are emotions and motivation.

Both of these words have the same underlying Latin root, meaning “to
move.” In contrast to cognitive processes that are calm, collected, and
frequently rational, emotions and motivations involve arousal, or our
experiences of the bodily responses created by the sympathetic division of
the autonomic nervous system (ANS). Because they involve arousal,
emotions and motivations are “hot”—they “charge,” “drive,” or “move” our
behavior.

When we experience emotions or strong motivations, we feel the

experiences. When we become aroused, the sympathetic nervous system
provides us with energy to respond to our environment. The liver puts extra
sugar into the bloodstream, the heart pumps more blood, our pupils dilate to
help us see better, respiration increases, and we begin to perspire to cool the
body. The stress hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine are released. We
experience these responses as arousal.

An emotion is a mental and physiological feeling state that directs our

attention and guides our behavior. Whether it is the thrill of a roller-coaster
ride that elicits an unexpected scream, the flush of embarrassment that
follows a public mistake, or the horror of a potential plane crash that creates
an exceptionally brilliant response in a pilot, emotions move our actions.
Emotions normally serve an adaptive role: We care for infants because of
the love we feel for them, we avoid making a left turn onto a crowded
highway because we fear that a speeding truck may hit us, and we are
particularly nice to Mandy because we are feeling guilty that we didn’t go
to her party. But emotions may also be destructive, such as when a
frustrating experience leads us to lash out at others who do not deserve it.

Motivations are closely related to emotions. A motivation is a driving force

that initiates and directs behavior. Some motivations are biological, such as
the motivation for food, water, and sex. But there are a variety of other
personal and social motivations that can influence behavior, including the
motivations for social approval and acceptance, the motivation to achieve,
and the motivation to take, or to avoid taking, risks (Morsella, Bargh, &
Gollwitzer, 2009). In each case we follow our motivations because they are
rewarding. As predicted by basic theories of operant learning, motivations
lead us to engage in particular behaviors because doing so makes us feel
good.

Motivations are often considered in psychology in terms of drives, which

are internal states that are activated when the physiological characteristics
of the body are out of balance, and goals, which are desired end states that
we strive to attain. Motivation can thus be conceptualized as a series of
behavioral responses that lead us to attempt to reduce drives and to attain
goals by comparing our current state with a desired end state (Lawrence,
Carver, & Scheier, 2002). Like a thermostat on an air conditioner, the body
tries to maintain homeostasis, the natural state of the body’s systems, with
goals, drives, and arousal in balance. When a drive or goal is aroused—for
instance, when we are hungry—the thermostat turns on and we start to
behave in a way that attempts to reduce the drive or meet the goal (in this
case to seek food). As the body works toward the desired end state, the
thermostat continues to check whether or not the end state has been
reached. Eventually, the need or goal is satisfied (we eat), and the relevant
behaviors are turned off. The body’s thermostat continues to check for
homeostasis and is always ready to react to future needs.
In addition to more basic motivations such as hunger, a variety of other
personal and social motivations can also be conceptualized in terms of
drives or goals. When the goal of studying for an exam is hindered because
we take a day off from our schoolwork, we may work harder on our
studying on the next day to move us toward our goal. When we are dieting,
we may be more likely to have a big binge on a day when the scale says that
we have met our prior day’s goals. And when we are lonely, the motivation
to be around other people is aroused and we try to socialize. In many, if not
most cases, our emotions and motivations operate out of our conscious
awareness to guide our behavior (Freud, 1922; Hassin, Bargh, & Zimerman,
2009; Williams, Bargh, Nocera, & Gray, 2009).

We begin this chapter by considering the role of affect on behavior,

discussing the most important psychological theories of emotions. Then we
will consider how emotions influence our mental and physical health. We
will discuss how the experience of long-term stress causes illness, and then
turn to research on positive thinking and what has been learned about the
beneficial health effects of more positive emotions. Finally, we will review
some of the most important human motivations, including the behaviors of
eating and sex. The importance of this chapter is not only in helping you
gain an understanding the principles of affect but also in helping you
discover the important roles that affect plays in our everyday lives, and
particularly in our mental and physical health. The study of the interface
between affect and physical health—that principle that “everything that is
physiological is also psychological”—is a key focus of the branch of
psychology known as health psychology. The importance of this topic has
made health psychology one of the fastest growing fields in psychology.
References

Freud, S. (1922). The unconscious. The Journal of Nervous and Mental

Disease, 56(3), 291; Hassin, R. R., Bargh, J. A., & Zimerman, S. (2009).
Automatic and flexible: The case of nonconscious goal pursuit. Social
Cognition, 27(1), 20–36.

Lawrence, J. W., Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (2002). Velocity toward

goal attainment in immediate experience as a determinant of affect. Journal
of Applied Social Psychology, 32(4), 788–802.

Levin, A. (2009, June 9). Experience averts tragedy in Hudson landing.

USA Today. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-
06-08-hudson_N.htm.

Morsella, E., Bargh, J. A., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2009). Oxford handbook of

human action. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

National Transportation Safety Board. (2009, June 9). Excerpts of Flight

1549 cockpit communications. USA Today. Retrieved from
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-06-09-hudson-cockpit-
transcript_N.htm

Williams, L. E., Bargh, J. A., Nocera, C. C., & Gray, J. R. (2009). The
unconscious regulation of emotion: Nonconscious reappraisal goals
modulate emotional reactivity. Emotion, 9(6), 847–854.
10.1 The Experience of Emotion

Learning Objectives

1. Explain the biological experience of emotion.

2. Summarize the psychological theories of emotion.

3. Give examples of the ways that emotion is communicated.

The most fundamental emotions, known as the basic emotions, are those of
anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. The basic emotions
have a long history in human evolution, and they have developed in large
part to help us make rapid judgments about stimuli and to quickly guide
appropriate behavior (LeDoux, 2000). The basic emotions are determined in
large part by one of the oldest parts of our brain, the limbic system,
including the amygdala, the hypothalamus, and the thalamus. Because they
are primarily evolutionarily determined, the basic emotions are experienced
and displayed in much the same way across cultures (Ekman, 1992;
Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002, 2003; Fridland, Ekman, & Oster, 1987), and
people are quite accurate at judging the facial expressions of people from
different cultures. View Note 10.8 “Video Clip: The Basic Emotions” to see
a demonstration of the basic emotions.

Video Clip: The Basic Emotions

(click to see video)

Not all of our emotions come from the old parts of our brain; we also
interpret our experiences to create a more complex array of emotional
experiences. For instance, the amygdala may sense fear when it senses that
the body is falling, but that fear may be interpreted completely differently
(perhaps even as “excitement”) when we are falling on a roller-coaster ride
than when we are falling from the sky in an airplane that has lost power. The
cognitive interpretations that accompany emotions—known as cognitive
appraisal—allow us to experience a much larger and more complex set of
secondary emotions, as shown in Figure 10.2 “The Secondary Emotions”.
Although they are in large part cognitive, our experiences of the secondary
emotions are determined in part by arousal (on the vertical axis of Figure
10.2 “The Secondary Emotions”) and in part by their valence—that is,
whether they are pleasant or unpleasant feelings (on the horizontal axis of
Figure 10.2 “The Secondary Emotions”)

Figure 10.2 The Secondary Emotions

The secondary emotions are those that have a major cognitive component. They are determined by both

their level of arousal (low to high) and their valence (pleasant to unpleasant).

Adapted from Russell, J. A. (1980). A circumplex model of affect. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, 39, 1161–1178.

When you succeed in reaching an important goal, you might spend some
time enjoying your secondary emotions, perhaps the experience of joy,
satisfaction, and contentment. But when your close friend wins a prize that
you thought you had deserved, you might also experience a variety of
secondary emotions (in this case, the negative ones)—for instance, feeling
angry, sad, resentful, and ashamed. You might mull over the event for weeks
or even months, experiencing these negative emotions each time you think
about it (Martin & Tesser, 2006).

The distinction between the primary and the secondary emotions is

paralleled by two brain pathways: a fast pathway and a slow pathway
(Damasio, 2000; LeDoux, 2000; Ochsner, Bunge, Gross, & Gabrielli, 2002).
The thalamus acts as the major gatekeeper in this process (Figure 10.3
“Slow and Fast Emotional Pathways”). Our response to the basic emotion of
fear, for instance, is primarily determined by the fast pathway through the
limbic system. When a car pulls out in front of us on the highway, the
thalamus activates and sends an immediate message to the amygdala. We
quickly move our foot to the brake pedal. Secondary emotions are more
determined by the slow pathway through the frontal lobes in the cortex.
When we stew in jealousy over the loss of a partner to a rival or recollect on
our win in the big tennis match, the process is more complex. Information
moves from the thalamus to the frontal lobes for cognitive analysis and
integration, and then from there to the amygdala. We experience the arousal
of emotion, but it is accompanied by a more complex cognitive appraisal,
producing more refined emotions and behavioral responses.

Figure 10.3 Slow and Fast Emotional Pathways

There are two emotional pathways in the brain (one slow and one fast), both of which are controlled by

the thalamus.

Although emotions might seem to you to be more frivolous or less

important in comparison to our more rational cognitive processes, both
emotions and cognitions can help us make effective decisions. In some
cases we take action after rationally processing the costs and benefits of
different choices, but in other cases we rely on our emotions. Emotions
become particularly important in guiding decisions when the alternatives
between many complex and conflicting alternatives present us with a high
degree of uncertainty and ambiguity, making a complete cognitive analysis
difficult. In these cases we often rely on our emotions to make decisions,
and these decisions may in many cases be more accurate than those
produced by cognitive processing (Damasio, 1994; Dijksterhuis, Bos,
Nordgren, & van Baaren, 2006; Nordgren & Dijksterhuis, 2009; Wilson &
Schooler, 1991).

The Cannon-Bard and James-Lange Theories

of Emotion

Recall for a moment a situation in which you have experienced an intense

emotional response. Perhaps you woke up in the middle of the night in a
panic because you heard a noise that made you think that someone had
broken into your house or apartment. Or maybe you were calmly cruising
down a street in your neighborhood when another car suddenly pulled out in
front of you, forcing you to slam on your brakes to avoid an accident. I’m
sure that you remember that your emotional reaction was in large part
physical. Perhaps you remember being flushed, your heart pounding, feeling
sick to your stomach, or having trouble breathing. You were experiencing
the physiological part of emotion—arousal—and I’m sure you have had
similar feelings in other situations, perhaps when you were in love, angry,
embarrassed, frustrated, or very sad.

If you think back to a strong emotional experience, you might wonder about
the order of the events that occurred. Certainly you experienced arousal, but
did the arousal come before, after, or along with the experience of the
emotion? Psychologists have proposed three different theories of emotion,
which differ in terms of the hypothesized role of arousal in emotion (Figure
10.4 “Three Theories of Emotion”).

Figure 10.4 Three Theories of Emotion

The Cannon-Bard theory proposes that emotions and arousal occur at the same time. The James-Lange

theory proposes the emotion is the result of arousal. Schachter and Singer’s two-factor model proposes

that arousal and cognition combine to create emotion.

If your experiences are like mine, as you reflected on the arousal that you
have experienced in strong emotional situations, you probably thought
something like, “I was afraid and my heart started beating like crazy.” At
least some psychologists agree with this interpretation. According to the
theory of emotion proposed by Walter Cannon and Philip Bard, the
experience of the emotion (in this case, “I’m afraid”) occurs alongside our
experience of the arousal (“my heart is beating fast”). According to the
Cannon-Bard theory of emotion, the experience of an emotion is
accompanied by physiological arousal. Thus, according to this model of
emotion, as we become aware of danger, our heart rate also increases.

Although the idea that the experience of an emotion occurs alongside the
accompanying arousal seems intuitive to our everyday experiences, the
psychologists William James and Carl Lange had another idea about the role
of arousal. According to the James-Lange theory of emotion, our
experience of an emotion is the result of the arousal that we experience.
This approach proposes that the arousal and the emotion are not
independent, but rather that the emotion depends on the arousal. The fear
does not occur along with the racing heart but occurs because of the racing
heart. As William James put it, “We feel sorry because we cry, angry
because we strike, afraid because we tremble” (James, 1884, p. 190). A
fundamental aspect of the James-Lange theory is that different patterns of
arousal may create different emotional experiences.

There is research evidence to support each of these theories. The operation

of the fast emotional pathway (Figure 10.3 “Slow and Fast Emotional
Pathways”) supports the idea that arousal and emotions occur together. The
emotional circuits in the limbic system are activated when an emotional
stimulus is experienced, and these circuits quickly create corresponding
physical reactions (LeDoux, 2000). The process happens so quickly that it
may feel to us as if emotion is simultaneous with our physical arousal.

On the other hand, and as predicted by the James-Lange theory, our

experiences of emotion are weaker without arousal. Patients who have
spinal injuries that reduce their experience of arousal also report decreases
in emotional responses (Hohmann, 1966). There is also at least some
support for the idea that different emotions are produced by different
patterns of arousal. People who view fearful faces show more amygdala
activation than those who watch angry or joyful faces (Whalen et al., 2001;
Witvliet & Vrana, 1995), we experience a red face and flushing when we are
embarrassed but not when we experience other emotions (Leary, Britt,
Cutlip, & Templeton, 1992), and different hormones are released when we
experience compassion than when we experience other emotions (Oatley,
Keltner, & Jenkins, 2006).

The Two-Factor Theory of Emotion

Whereas the James-Lange theory proposes that each emotion has a different
pattern of arousal, the two-factor theory of emotion takes the opposite
approach, arguing that the arousal that we experience is basically the same
in every emotion, and that all emotions (including the basic emotions) are
differentiated only by our cognitive appraisal of the source of the arousal.
The two-factor theory of emotion asserts that the experience of emotion is
determined by the intensity of the arousal we are experiencing, but that the
cognitive appraisal of the situation determines what the emotion will be.
Because both arousal and appraisal are necessary, we can say that emotions
have two factors: an arousal factor and a cognitive factor (Schachter &
Singer, 1962):

emotion = arousal + cognition

In some cases it may be difficult for a person who is experiencing a high

level of arousal to accurately determine which emotion she is experiencing.
That is, she may be certain that she is feeling arousal, but the meaning of the
arousal (the cognitive factor) may be less clear. Some romantic
relationships, for instance, have a very high level of arousal, and the
partners alternatively experience extreme highs and lows in the relationship.
One day they are madly in love with each other and the next they are in a
huge fight. In situations that are accompanied by high arousal, people may
be unsure what emotion they are experiencing. In the high arousal
relationship, for instance, the partners may be uncertain whether the
emotion they are feeling is love, hate, or both at the same time (sound
familiar?). The tendency for people to incorrectly label the source of the
arousal that they are experiencing is known as the misattribution of
arousal.

Figure 10.5 Capilano River Bridge

Arousal caused by the height of this bridge was misattributed as attraction by the men who were

interviewed by an attractive woman as they crossed it.

Goobiebilly – Capilano suspension bridge – CC BY 2.0.

In one interesting field study by Dutton and Aron (1974), an attractive

young woman approached individual young men as they crossed a wobbly,
long suspension walkway hanging more than 200 feet above a river in
British Columbia, Canada. The woman asked each man to help her fill out a
class questionnaire. When he had finished, she wrote her name and phone
number on a piece of paper, and invited him to call if he wanted to hear
more about the project. More than half of the men who had been
interviewed on the bridge later called the woman. In contrast, men
approached by the same woman on a low solid bridge, or who were
interviewed on the suspension bridge by men, called significantly less
frequently. The idea of misattribution of arousal can explain this result—the
men were feeling arousal from the height of the bridge, but they
misattributed it as romantic or sexual attraction to the woman, making them
more likely to call her.

Research Focus: Misattributing Arousal

If you think a bit about your own experiences of different emotions, and if you consider the
equation that suggests that emotions are represented by both arousal and cognition, you might
start to wonder how much was determined by each. That is, do we know what emotion we are
experiencing by monitoring our feelings (arousal) or by monitoring our thoughts (cognition)?
The bridge study you just read about might begin to provide you an answer: The men seemed to
be more influenced by their perceptions of how they should be feeling (their cognition) rather
than by how they actually were feeling (their arousal).

Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer (1962) directly tested this prediction of the two-factor
theory of emotion in a well-known experiment. Schachter and Singer believed that the cognitive
part of the emotion was critical—in fact, they believed that the arousal that we are experiencing
could be interpreted as any emotion, provided we had the right label for it. Thus they
hypothesized that if an individual is experiencing arousal for which he has no immediate
explanation, he will “label” this state in terms of the cognitions that are created in his
environment. On the other hand, they argued that people who already have a clear label for their
arousal would have no need to search for a relevant label, and therefore should not experience an
emotion.
In the research, male participants were told that they would be participating in a study on the
effects of a new drug, called “suproxin,” on vision. On the basis of this cover story, the men were
injected with a shot of the neurotransmitter epinephrine, a drug that normally creates feelings of
tremors, flushing, and accelerated breathing in people. The idea was to give all the participants
the experience of arousal.

Then, according to random assignment to conditions, the men were told that the drug would
make them feel certain ways. The men in the epinephrine informed condition were told the truth
about the effects of the drug—they were told that they would likely experience tremors, their
hands would start to shake, their hearts would start to pound, and their faces might get warm and
flushed. The participants in the epinephrine-uninformed condition, however, were told
something untrue—that their feet would feel numb, that they would have an itching sensation
over parts of their body, and that they might get a slight headache. The idea was to make some of
the men think that the arousal they were experiencing was caused by the drug (the informed
condition), whereas others would be unsure where the arousal came from (the uninformed
condition).

Then the men were left alone with a confederate who they thought had received the same
injection. While they were waiting for the experiment (which was supposedly about vision) to
begin, the confederate behaved in a wild and crazy (Schachter and Singer called it “euphoric”)
manner. He wadded up spitballs, flew paper airplanes, and played with a hula-hoop. He kept
trying to get the participant to join in with his games. Then right before the vision experiment
was to begin, the participants were asked to indicate their current emotional states on a number
of scales. One of the emotions they were asked about was euphoria.

If you are following the story, you will realize what was expected: The men who had a label for
their arousal (the informed group) would not be experiencing much emotion because they
already had a label available for their arousal. The men in the misinformed group, on the other
hand, were expected to be unsure about the source of the arousal. They needed to find an
explanation for their arousal, and the confederate provided one. As you can see in Figure 10.6
“Results From Schachter and Singer, 1962” (left side), this is just what they found. The
participants in the misinformed condition were more likely to be experiencing euphoria (as
measured by their behavioral responses with the confederate) than were those in the informed
condition.

Then Schachter and Singer conducted another part of the study, using new participants.
Everything was exactly the same except for the behavior of the confederate. Rather than being
euphoric, he acted angry. He complained about having to complete the questionnaire he had been
asked to do, indicating that the questions were stupid and too personal. He ended up tearing up
the questionnaire that he was working on, yelling “I don’t have to tell them that!” Then he
grabbed his books and stormed out of the room.

What do you think happened in this condition? The answer is the same thing: The misinformed
participants experienced more anger (again as measured by the participant’s behaviors during the
waiting period) than did the informed participants. (Figure 10.6 “Results From Schachter and
Singer, 1962”, right side) The idea is that because cognitions are such strong determinants of
emotional states, the same state of physiological arousal could be labeled in many different
ways, depending entirely on the label provided by the social situation. As Schachter and Singer
put it: “Given a state of physiological arousal for which an individual has no immediate
explanation, he will ‘label’ this state and describe his feelings in terms of the cognitions
available to him” (Schachter & Singer, 1962, p. 381).

Figure 10.6 Results From Schachter and Singer, 1962

Results of the study by Schachter and Singer (1962) support the two-factor theory of emotion. The

participants who did not have a clear label for their arousal took on the emotion of the confederate.
 Adapted from Schachter, S., & Singer, J. E. (1962). Cognitive, social and physiological determinants of

emotional state. Psychological Review, 69, 379–399.

Because it assumes that arousal is constant across emotions, the two-factor

theory also predicts that emotions may transfer or “spill over” from one
highly arousing event to another. My university basketball team recently
won the NCAA basketball championship, but after the final victory some
students rioted in the streets near the campus, lighting fires and burning
cars. This seems to be a very strange reaction to such a positive outcome for
the university and the students, but it can be explained through the spillover
of the arousal caused by happiness to destructive behaviors. The principle of
excitation transfer refers to the phenomenon that occurs when people who
are already experiencing arousal from one event tend to also experience
unrelated emotions more strongly.

In sum, each of the three theories of emotion has something to support it. In
terms of Cannon-Bard, emotions and arousal generally are subjectively
experienced together, and the spread is very fast. In support of the James-
Lange theory, there is at least some evidence that arousal is necessary for
the experience of emotion, and that the patterns of arousal are different for
different emotions. And in line with the two-factor model, there is also
evidence that we may interpret the same patterns of arousal differently in
different situations.

Communicating Emotion

In addition to experiencing emotions internally, we also express our

emotions to others, and we learn about the emotions of others by observing
them. This communication process has evolved over time, and is highly
adaptive. One way that we perceive the emotions of others is through their
nonverbal communication, that is, communication that does not involve
words (Ambady & Weisbuch, 2010; Anderson, 2007). Nonverbal
communication includes our tone of voice, gait, posture, touch, and facial
expressions, and we can often accurately detect the emotions that other
people are experiencing through these channels. Table 10.1 “Some Common
Nonverbal Communicators” shows some of the important nonverbal
behaviors that we use to express emotion and some other information
(particularly liking or disliking, and dominance or submission).

Table 10.1 Some Common Nonverbal Communicators

Nonverbal cue Description Examples

Rules about the appropriate Standing nearer to someone can expressing

Proxemics
use of personal space liking or dominance.

Body building, breast augmentation, weight

Expressions based on
Body appearance loss, piercings, and tattoos are often used to
alterations to our body
appear more attractive to others.

A more “open” body position can denote

Body positioning Expressions based on how
liking; a faster walking speed can
and movement our body appears
communicate dominance.

Behaviors and signs made The peace sign communicates liking; the
Gestures
with our hands or faces “finger” communicates disrespect.

Smiling or frowning and staring or avoiding

The variety of emotions that
looking at the other can express liking or
Facial expressions we express, or attempt to
disliking, as well as dominance or
hide, through our face
submission.

Clues to identity or emotions Pronunciation, accents, and dialect can be

Paralanguage
contained in our voices used to communicate identity and liking.
Just as there is no “universal” spoken language, there is no universal
nonverbal language. For instance, in the United States and many Western
cultures we express disrespect by showing the middle finger (the “finger” or
the “bird”). But in Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, the “V” sign
(made with back of the hand facing the recipient) serves a similar purpose.
In countries where Spanish, Portuguese, or French are spoken, a gesture in
which a fist is raised and the arm is slapped on the bicep is equivalent to the
finger, and in Russia, Indonesia, Turkey, and China a sign in which the hand
and fingers are curled and the thumb is thrust between the middle and index
fingers is used for the same purpose.

The most important communicator of emotion is the face. The face contains
43 different muscles that allow it to make more than 10,000 unique
configurations and to express a wide variety of emotions. For example,
happiness is expressed by smiles, which are created by two of the major
muscles surrounding the mouth and the eyes, and anger is created by
lowered brows and firmly pressed lips.

In addition to helping us express our emotions, the face also helps us feel
emotion. The facial feedback hypothesis proposes that the movement of
our facial muscles can trigger corresponding emotions. Fritz Strack and his
colleagues (1988) asked their research participants to hold a pen in their
teeth (mimicking the facial action of a smile) or between their lips (similar
to a frown), and then had them rate the funniness of a cartoon. They found
that the cartoons were rated as more amusing when the pen was held in the
“smiling” position—the subjective experience of emotion was intensified by
the action of the facial muscles.

These results, and others like them, show that our behaviors, including our
facial expressions, are influenced by, but also influence our affect. We may
smile because we are happy, but we are also happy because we are smiling.
And we may stand up straight because we are proud, but we are proud
because we are standing up straight (Stepper & Strack, 1993).Stepper, S., &
Strack, F. (1993). Proprioceptive determinants of emotional and nonemotional feelings. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 64(2), 211–220.

Key Takeaways

Emotions are the normally adaptive mental and physiological feeling states that
direct our attention and guide our behavior.

Emotional states are accompanied by arousal, our experiences of the bodily

responses created by the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system.

Motivations are forces that guide behavior. They can be biological, such as hunger
and thirst; personal, such as the motivation for achievement; or social, such as the
motivation for acceptance and belonging.

The most fundamental emotions, known as the basic emotions, are those of anger,
disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise.

Cognitive appraisal allows us to also experience a variety of secondary emotions.

According to the Cannon-Bard theory of emotion, the experience of an emotion is

accompanied by physiological arousal.

According to the James-Lange theory of emotion, our experience of an emotion is

the result of the arousal that we experience.

According to the two-factor theory of emotion, the experience of emotion is

determined by the intensity of the arousal we are experiencing, and the cognitive
appraisal of the situation determines what the emotion will be.

When people incorrectly label the source of the arousal that they are experiencing,
we say that they have misattributed their arousal.
 We express our emotions to others through nonverbal behaviors, and we learn about
the emotions of others by observing them.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Consider the three theories of emotion that we have discussed and provide an
example of a situation in which a person might experience each of the three proposed
patterns of arousal and emotion.

2. Describe a time when you used nonverbal behaviors to express your emotions or to
detect the emotions of others. What specific nonverbal techniques did you use to
communicate?

References

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T. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (5th ed.,
Vol. 1, pp. 464–497). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Andersen, P. (2007). Nonverbal communication: Forms and functions (2nd

ed.). Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.

Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human

brain. New York, NY: Grosset/Putnam.

Damasio, A. (2000). The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the
making of consciousness. New York, NY: Mariner Books.

Dijksterhuis, A., Bos, M. W., Nordgren, L. F., & van Baaren, R. B. (2006).
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Dutton, D., & Aron, A. (1974). Some evidence for heightened sexual
attraction under conditions of high anxiety. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 30, 510–517.

Ekman, P. (1992). Are there basic emotions? Psychological Review, 99(3),

550–553.

Elfenbein, H. A., & Ambady, N. (2002). On the universality and cultural

specificity of emotion recognition: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin,
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Fridlund, A. J., Ekman, P., & Oster, H. (1987). Facial expressions of

emotion. In A. Siegman & S. Feldstein (Eds.), Nonverbal behavior and
communication (2nd ed., pp. 143–223). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
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Hohmann, G. W. (1966). Some effects of spinal cord lesions on experienced

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James, W. (1884). What is an emotion? Mind, 9(34), 188–205.

LeDoux, J. E. (2000). Emotion circuits in the brain. Annual Review of
Neuroscience, 23, 155–184.

Leary, M. R., Britt, T. W., Cutlip, W. D., & Templeton, J. L. (1992). Social
blushing. Psychological Bulletin, 112(3), 446–460.

Martin, L. L., & Tesser, A. (2006). Extending the goal progress theory of
rumination: Goal reevaluation and growth. In L. J. Sanna & E. C. Chang
(Eds.), Judgments over time: The interplay of thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors (pp. 145–162). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Nordgren, L. F., & Dijksterhuis, A. P. (2009). The devil is in the
deliberation: Thinking too much reduces preference consistency. Journal of
Consumer Research, 36(1), 39–46.

Oatley, K., Keltner, D., & Jenkins, J. M. (2006). Understanding emotions

(2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

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Rethinking feelings: An fMRI study of the cognitive regulation of emotion.
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Schachter, S., & Singer, J. (1962). Cognitive, social, and physiological

determinants of emotional state. Psychological Review, 69, 379–399.

Strack, F., Martin, L., & Stepper, S. (1988). Inhibiting and facilitating
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indices of affective dimensions. Psychophysiology, 32(5), 436–443.
10.2 Stress: The Unseen Killer

Learning Objectives

1. Define stress and review the body’s physiological responses to it.

2. Summarize the negative health consequences of prolonged stress.

3. Explain the differences in how people respond to stress.

4. Review the methods that are successful in coping with stress.

Emotions matter because they influence our behavior. And there is no

emotional experience that has a more powerful influence on us than stress.
Stress refers to the physiological responses that occur when an organism
fails to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats (Selye,
1956). Extreme negative events, such as being the victim of a terrorist
attack, a natural disaster, or a violent crime, may produce an extreme form
of stress known as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a medical
syndrome that includes symptoms of anxiety, sleeplessness, nightmares, and
social withdrawal. PTSD is frequently experienced by soldiers who return
home from wars, with those who have experienced more extreme events
during the war also experiencing more PTSD.

When it is extreme or prolonged, stress can create substantial health

problems. Survivors of hurricane Katrina had three times the rate of heart
attacks than the national average in the years following the disaster, and this
is probably due to the stress that the hurricane created1. And people in New
York City who lived nearer to the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks reported
experiencing more stress in the year following it than those who lived
farther away (Pulcino et al., 2003). But stress is not unique to the experience
of extremely traumatic events. It can also occur, and have a variety of
negative outcomes, in our everyday lives.

The Negative Effects of Stress

The physiologist Hans Seyle (1907–1982) studied stress by examining how

rats responded to being exposed to stressors such as extreme cold, infection,
shock, or excessive exercise (Seyle, 1936, 1974, 1982). Seyle found that
regardless of the source of the stress, the rats experienced the same series of
physiological changes as they suffered the prolonged stress. Seyle created
the term general adaptation syndrome to refer to the three distinct phases
of physiological change that occur in response to long-term stress: alarm,
resistance, and exhaustion (Figure 10.8 “General Adaptation Syndrome”).

Figure 10.8 General Adaptation Syndrome

Hans Seyle’s research on the general adaptation syndrome documented the stages of prolonged exposure

to stress.

The experience of stress creates both an increase in general arousal in the

sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), as well as
another, even more complex, system of physiological changes through the
HPA axis ((Reference None not found in Book)). The HPA axis is a
physiological response to stress involving interactions among the
hypothalamus, the pituitary, and the adrenal glands. The HPA response
begins when the hypothalamus secretes releasing hormones that direct the
pituitary gland to release the hormone ACTH. ACTH then directs the
adrenal glands to secrete more hormones, including epinephrine,
norepinephrine, and cortisol, a stress hormone that releases sugars into the
blood, helping preparing the body to respond to threat (Rodrigues, LeDoux,
& Sapolsky, 2009).

Figure 10.9 HPA Axis

Stress activates the HPA axis. The result is the secretion of epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol.
The initial arousal that accompanies stress is normally quite adaptive
because it helps us respond to potentially dangerous events. The experience
of prolonged stress, however, has a direct negative influence on our physical
health, because at the same time that stress increases activity in the
sympathetic division of the ANS, it also suppresses activity in the
parasympathetic division of the ANS. When stress is long-term, the HPA
axis remains active and the adrenals continue to produce cortisol. This
increased cortisol production exhausts the stress mechanism, leading to
fatigue and depression.

The HPA reactions to persistent stress lead to a weakening of the immune

system, making us more susceptible to a variety of health problems
including colds and other diseases (Cohen & Herbert, 1996; Faulkner &
Smith, 2009; Miller, Chen, & Cole, 2009; Uchino, Smith, Holt-Lunstad,
Campo, & Reblin, 2007). Stress also damages our DNA, making us less
likely to be able to repair wounds and respond to the genetic mutations that
cause disease (Epel et al., 2006). As a result, wounds heal more slowly
when we are under stress, and we are more likely to get cancer (Kiecolt-
Glaser, McGuire, Robles, & Glaser, 2002; Wells, 2006).

Chronic stress is also a major contributor to heart disease. Although heart

disease is caused in part by genetic factors, as well as high blood pressure,
high cholesterol, and cigarette smoking, it is also caused by stress (Krantz &
McCeney, 2002). Long-term stress creates two opposite effects on the
coronary system. Stress increases cardiac output (i.e., the heart pumps more
blood) at the same time that it reduces the ability of the blood vessels to
conduct blood through the arteries, as the increase in levels of cortisol leads
to a buildup of plaque on artery walls (Dekker et al., 2008). The
combination of increased blood flow and arterial constriction leads to
increased blood pressure (hypertension), which can damage the heart
muscle, leading to heart attack and death.
Stressors in Our Everyday Lives

The stressors for Seyle’s rats included electric shock and exposure to cold.
Although these are probably not on your top-10 list of most common
stressors, the stress that you experience in your everyday life can also be
taxing. Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe (1967) developed a measure of
some everyday life events that might lead to stress, and you can assess your
own likely stress level by completing the measure in Table 10.2 “The
Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale”. You might want to pay particular attention
to this score, because it can predict the likelihood that you will get sick.
Rahe and colleagues (1970) asked 2,500 members of the military to
complete the rating scale and then assessed the health records of the soldiers
over the following 6 months. The results were clear: The higher the scale
score, the more likely the soldier was to end up in the hospital.

Table 10.2 The Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale

Life event Score

Death of spouse 100

Divorce 73

Marital separation from mate 65

Detention in jail, other institution 63

Death of a close family member 63

Major personal injury or illness 53

Marriage 50

Fired from work 47

Marital reconciliation 45

Retirement 45

Major change in the health or behavior of a family member 44

Pregnancy 40

Sexual difficulties 39

Gaining a new family member (e.g., through birth, adoption, oldster moving, etc.) 39

Major business readjustment (e.g., merger, reorganization, bankruptcy) 39

Major change in financial status 38

Death of close friend 37

Change to different line of work 36

Major change in the number of arguments with spouse 35

Life event Score

Taking out a mortgage or loan for a major purchase 31

Foreclosure on a mortgage or loan 30

Major change in responsibilities at work 29

Son or daughter leaving home (e.g., marriage, attending college) 29

Trouble with in-laws 29

Outstanding personal achievement 28

Spouse beginning or ceasing to work outside the home 26

Beginning or ceasing formal schooling 26

Major change in living conditions 25

Revision of personal habits (dress, manners, associations, etc.) 24

Trouble with boss 23

Major change in working hours or conditions 20

Change in residence 20

Change to a new school 20

Major change in usual type and/or amount of recreation 19

Major change in church activities (a lot more or less than usual) 19

Major change in social activities (clubs, dancing, movies, visiting) 18

Taking out a mortgage or loan for a lesser purchase (e.g., for a car, television , freezer,
17
etc.)
 Life event Score

Major change in sleeping habits 16

Major change in the number of family get-togethers 15

Major change in eating habits 15

Vacation 13

Christmas season 12

Minor violations of the law (e.g., traffic tickets, etc.) 11

Total ______

You can calculate your score on this scale by adding the total points across
each of the events that you have experienced over the past year. Then use
Table 10.3 “Interpretation of Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale” to determine
your likelihood of getting ill.

Table 10.3 Interpretation of Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale

Number of life-change units Chance of developing a stress-related illness (%)

Less than 150 30

150–299 50

More than 300 80

Although some of the items on the Holmes and Rahe scale are more major,
you can see that even minor stressors add to the total score. Our everyday
interactions with the environment that are essentially negative, known as
daily hassles, can also create stress as well as poorer health outcomes
(Hutchinson & Williams, 2007). Events that may seem rather trivial
altogether, such as misplacing our keys, having to reboot our computer
because it has frozen, being late for an assignment, or getting cut off by
another car in rush-hour traffic, can produce stress (Fiksenbaum,
Greenglass, & Eaton, 2006). Glaser (1985) found that medical students who
were tested during, rather than several weeks before, their school
examination periods showed lower immune system functioning. Other
research has found that even more minor stressors, such as having to do
math problems during an experimental session, can compromise the
immune system (Cacioppo et al., 1998).

Responses to Stress

Not all people experience and respond to stress in the same way, and these
differences can be important. The cardiologists Meyer Friedman and R. H.
Rosenman (1974) were among the first to study the link between stress and
heart disease. In their research they noticed that even though the partners in
married couples often had similar lifestyles, diet, and exercise patterns, the
husbands nevertheless generally had more heart disease than did the wives.
As they tried to explain the difference, they focused on the personality
characteristics of the partners, finding that the husbands were more likely
than the wives to respond to stressors with negative emotions and hostility.

Recent research has shown that the strongest predictor of a physiological

stress response from daily hassles is the amount of negative emotion that
they evoke. People who experience strong negative emotions as a result of
everyday hassles, and who respond to stress with hostility experience more
negative health outcomes than do those who react in a less negative way
(McIntyre, Korn, & Matsuo, 2008; Suls & Bunde, 2005). Williams and his
colleagues (2001) found that people who scored high on measures of anger
were three times more likely to suffer from heart attacks in comparison to
those who scored lower on anger.

On average, men are more likely than are women to respond to stress by
activating the fight-or-flight response, which is an emotional and
behavioral reaction to stress that increases the readiness for action. The
arousal that men experience when they are stressed leads them to either go
on the attack, in an aggressive or revenging way, or else retreat as quickly as
they can to safety from the stressor. The fight-or-flight response allows men
to control the source of the stress if they think they can do so, or if that is
not possible, it allows them to save face by leaving the situation. The fight-
or-flight response is triggered in men by the activation of the HPA axis.

Women, on the other hand, are less likely to take a fight-or-flight response
to stress. Rather, they are more likely to take a tend-and-befriend response
(Taylor et al., 2000). The tend-and-befriend response is a behavioral
reaction to stress that involves activities designed to create social networks
that provide protection from threats. This approach is also self-protective
because it allows the individual to talk to others about her concerns, as well
as to exchange resources, such as child care. The tend-and-befriend
response is triggered in women by the release of the hormone ocytocin,
which promotes affiliation. Overall, the tend-and-befriend response is
healthier than the flight-or-flight response because it does not produce the
elevated levels of arousal related to the HPA, including the negative results
that accompany increased levels of cortisol. This may help explain why
women, on average, have less heart disease and live longer than men.

Managing Stress

No matter how healthy and happy we are in our everyday lives, there are
going to be times when we experience stress. But we do not need to throw
up our hands in despair when things go wrong; rather, we can use our
personal and social resources to help us.

Perhaps the most common approach to dealing with negative affect is to

attempt to suppress, avoid, or deny it. You probably know people who seem
to be stressed, depressed, or anxious, but they cannot or will not see it in
themselves. Perhaps you tried to talk to them about it, to get them to open
up to you, but were rebuffed. They seem to act as if there is no problem at
all, simply moving on with life without admitting or even trying to deal with
the negative feelings. Or perhaps you have even taken a similar approach
yourself. Have you ever had an important test to study for or an important
job interview coming up, and rather than planning and preparing for it, you
simply tried put it out of your mind entirely?

Research has found that ignoring stress is not a good approach for coping
with it. For one, ignoring our problems does not make them go away. If we
experience so much stress that we get sick, these events will be detrimental
to our life even if we do not or cannot admit that they are occurring.
Suppressing our negative emotions is also not a very good option, at least in
the long run, because it tends to fail (Gross & Levenson, 1997). For one, if
we know that we have that big exam coming up, we have to focus on the
exam itself to suppress it. We can’t really suppress or deny our thoughts,
because we actually have to recall and face the event to make the attempt to
not think about it. Doing so takes effort, and we get tired when we try to do
it. Furthermore, we may continually worry that our attempts to suppress will
fail. Suppressing our emotions might work out for a short while, but when
we run out of energy the negative emotions may shoot back up into
consciousness, causing us to reexperience the negative feelings that we had
been trying to avoid.
Daniel Wegner and his colleagues (Wegner, Schneider, Carter, & White,
1987) directly tested whether people would be able to effectively suppress a
simple thought. He asked them to not think about a white bear for 5 minutes
but to ring a bell in case they did. (Try it yourself; can you do it?) However,
participants were unable to suppress the thought as instructed. The white
bear kept popping into mind, even when the participants were instructed to
avoid thinking about it. You might have had this experience when you were
dieting or trying to study rather than party; the chocolate bar in the kitchen
cabinet and the fun time you were missing at the party kept popping into
mind, disrupting your work.

Suppressing our negative thoughts does not work, and there is evidence that
the opposite is true: When we are faced with troubles, it is healthy to let out
the negative thoughts and feelings by expressing them, either to ourselves or
to others. James Pennebaker and his colleagues (Pennebaker, Colder, &
Sharp, 1990; Watson & Pennebaker, 1989) have conducted many
correlational and experimental studies that demonstrate the advantages to
our mental and physical health of opening up versus suppressing our
feelings. This research team has found that simply talking about or writing
about our emotions or our reactions to negative events provides substantial
health benefits. For instance, Pennebaker and Beall (1986) randomly
assigned students to write about either the most traumatic and stressful
event of their lives or trivial topics. Although the students who wrote about
the traumas had higher blood pressure and more negative moods
immediately after they wrote their essays, they were also less likely to visit
the student health center for illnesses during the following six months. Other
research studied individuals whose spouses had died in the previous year,
finding that the more they talked about the death with others, the less likely
they were to become ill during the subsequent year. Daily writing about
one’s emotional states has also been found to increase immune system
functioning (Petrie, Fontanilla, Thomas, Booth, & Pennebaker, 2004).
Opening up probably helps in various ways. For one, expressing our
problems to others allows us to gain information, and possibly support, from
them (remember the tend-and-befriend response that is so effectively used
to reduce stress by women). Writing or thinking about one’s experiences
also seems to help people make sense of these events and may give them a
feeling of control over their lives (Pennebaker & Stone, 2004).

It is easier to respond to stress if we can interpret it in more positive ways.

Kelsey et al. (1999) found that some people interpret stress as a challenge
(something that they feel that they can, with effort, deal with), whereas
others see the same stress as a threat (something that is negative and
fearful). People who viewed stress as a challenge had fewer physiological
stress responses than those who viewed it as a threat—they were able to
frame and react to stress in more positive ways.

Emotion Regulation

Emotional responses such as the stress reaction are useful in warning us

about potential danger and in mobilizing our response to it, so it is a good
thing that we have them. However, we also need to learn how to control our
emotions, to prevent them from letting our behavior get out of control. The
ability to successfully control our emotions is known as emotion
regulation.

Emotion regulation has some important positive outcomes. Consider, for

instance, research by Walter Mischel and his colleagues. In their studies,
they had 4- and 5-year-old children sit at a table in front of a yummy snack,
such as a chocolate chip cookie or a marshmallow. The children were told
that they could eat the snack right away if they wanted. However, they were
also told that if they could wait for just a couple of minutes, they’d be able
to have two snacks—both the one in front of them and another just like it.
However, if they ate the one that was in front of them before the time was
up, they would not get a second.

Mischel found that some children were able to override the impulse to seek
immediate gratification to obtain a greater reward at a later time. Other
children, of course, were not; they just ate the first snack right away.
Furthermore, the inability to delay gratification seemed to occur in a
spontaneous and emotional manner, without much thought. The children
who could not resist simply grabbed the cookie because it looked so
yummy, without being able to stop themselves (Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999;
Strack & Deutsch, 2007).

The ability to regulate our emotions has important consequences later in

life. When Mischel followed up on the children in his original study, he
found that those who had been able to self-regulate grew up to have some
highly positive characteristics: They got better SAT scores, were rated by
their friends as more socially adept, and were found to cope with frustration
and stress better than those children who could not resist the tempting
cookie at a young age. Thus effective self-regulation can be recognized as
an important key to success in life (Ayduk et al., 2000; Eigsti et al., 2006;
Mischel & Ayduk, 2004).

Emotion regulation is influenced by body chemicals, particularly the

neurotransmitter serotonin. Preferences for small, immediate rewards over
large but later rewards have been linked to low levels of serotonin in
animals (Bizot, Le Bihan, Peuch, Hamon, & Thiebot, 1999; Liu, Wilkinson,
& Robbins, 2004), and low levels of serotonin are tied to violence and
impulsiveness in human suicides (Asberg, Traskman, & Thoren, 1976).
Research Focus: Emotion Regulation Takes Effort

Emotion regulation is particularly difficult when we are tired, depressed, or anxious, and it is
under these conditions that we more easily let our emotions get the best of us (Muraven &
Baumeister, 2000). If you are tired and worried about an upcoming exam, you may find yourself
getting angry and taking it out on your roommate, even though she really hasn’t done anything to
deserve it and you don’t really want to be angry at her. It is no secret that we are more likely fail
at our diets when we are under a lot of stress, or at night when we are tired.

Muraven, Tice, and Baumeister (1998) conducted a study to demonstrate that emotion regulation
—that is, either increasing or decreasing our emotional responses—takes work. They speculated
that self-control was like a muscle; it just gets tired when it is used too much. In their experiment
they asked their participants to watch a short movie about environmental disasters involving
radioactive waste and their negative effects on wildlife. The scenes included sick and dying
animals and were very upsetting. According to random assignment to condition, one group (the
increase emotional response condition) was told to really get into the movie and to express their
emotions, one group was to hold back and decrease their emotional responses (the decrease
emotional response condition), and the third (control) group received no emotional regulation
instructions.

Both before and after the movie, the experimenter asked the participants to engage in a measure
of physical strength by squeezing as hard as they could on a handgrip exerciser, a device used for
strengthening hand muscles. The experimenter put a piece of paper in the grip and timed how
long the participants could hold the grip together before the paper fell out. Figure 10.10 “Results
From Muraven, Tice, and Baumeister, 1998” shows the results of this study. It seems that
emotion regulation does indeed take effort, because the participants who had been asked to
control their emotions showed significantly less ability to squeeze the handgrip after the movie
than they had showed before it, whereas the control group showed virtually no decrease. The
emotion regulation during the movie seems to have consumed resources, leaving the participants
with less capacity to perform the handgrip task.

Figure 10.10 Results From Muraven, Tice, and Baumeister, 1998

 Participants who were instructed to regulate their emotions, either by increasing or decreasing their

emotional responses to a move, had less energy left over to squeeze a handgrip in comparison to those

who did not regulate their emotions.

Adapted from Muraven, M., Tice, D. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (1998). Self-control as a limited resource:

Regulatory depletion patterns. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 74(3), 774–789.

In other studies, people who had to resist the temptation to eat chocolates and cookies, who
made important decisions, or who were forced to conform to others all performed more poorly
on subsequent tasks that took energy, including giving up on tasks earlier and failing to resist
temptation (Vohs & Heatherton, 2000).

Can we improve our emotion regulation? It turns out that training in self-
regulation—just like physical training—can help. Students who practiced
doing difficult tasks, such as exercising, avoiding swearing, or maintaining
good posture, were later found to perform better in laboratory tests of
emotion regulation such as maintaining a diet or completing a puzzle
(Baumeister, Gailliot, DeWall, & Oaten, 2006; Baumeister, Schmeichel, &
Vohs, 2007; Oaten & Cheng, 2006).
 Key Takeaways

Stress refers to the physiological responses that occur when an organism fails to
respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats.

The general adaptation syndrome refers to the three distinct phases of physiological
change that occur in response to long-term stress: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.

Stress is normally adaptive because it helps us respond to potentially dangerous

events by activating the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system. But
the experience of prolonged stress has a direct negative influence on our physical
health.

Chronic stress is a major contributor to heart disease. It also decreases our ability to
fight off colds and infections.

Stressors can occur as a result of both major and minor everyday events.

Men tend to respond to stress with the fight-or-flight response, whereas women are
more likely to take a tend-and-befriend response.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Consider a time when you experienced stress, and how you responded to it. Do you
now have a better understanding of the dangers of stress? How will you change your
coping mechanisms based on what you have learned?

2. Are you good at emotion regulation? Can you think of a time that your emotions got
the better of you? How might you make better use of your emotions?

1
American Medical Association. (2009). Three-fold heart attack increase in
Hurricane Katrina survivors. Retrieved from http://www.ama-
assn.org/ama/pub/news/news/heart-attack-katrina-survivors.shtml

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10.3 Positive Emotions: The Power of
Happiness

Learning Objectives

1. Understand the important role of positive emotions and happiness in responding to

stress.

2. Understand the factors that increase, and do not increase, happiness.

Although stress is an emotional response that can kill us, our emotions can
also help us cope with and protect ourselves from it. The stress of the
Monday through Friday grind can be offset by the fun that we can have on
the weekend, and the concerns that we have about our upcoming chemistry
exam can be offset by a positive attitude toward school, life, and other
people. Put simply, the best antidote for stress is a happy one: Think
positively, have fun, and enjoy the company of others.

You have probably heard about the “power of positive thinking”—the idea
that thinking positively helps people meet their goals and keeps them
healthy, happy, and able to effectively cope with the negative events that
occur to them. It turns out that positive thinking really works. People who
think positively about their future, who believe that they can control their
outcomes, and who are willing to open up and share with others are
healthier people (Seligman, & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).

The power of positive thinking comes in different forms, but they are all
helpful. Some researchers have focused on optimism, a general tendency to
expect positive outcomes, finding that optimists are happier and have less
stress (Carver & Scheier, 2009). Others have focused self-efficacy, the
belief in our ability to carry out actions that produce desired outcomes.
People with high self-efficacy respond to environmental and other threats in
an active, constructive way—by getting information, talking to friends, and
attempting to face and reduce the difficulties they are experiencing. These
people too are better able to ward off their stresses in comparison to people
with less self-efficacy (Thompson, 2009).

Self-efficacy helps in part because it leads us to perceive that we can control

the potential stressors that may affect us. Workers who have control over
their work environment (e.g., by being able to move furniture and control
distractions) experience less stress, as do patients in nursing homes who are
able to choose their everyday activities (Rodin, 1986). Glass, Reim, and
Singer (1971) found that participants who believed that they could stop a
loud noise experienced less stress than those who did not think that they
could, even though the people who had the option never actually used it.
The ability to control our outcomes may help explain why animals and
people who have higher status live longer (Sapolsky, 2005).

Suzanne Kobasa and her colleagues (Kobasa, Maddi, & Kahn, 1982) have
argued that the tendency to be less affected by life’s stressors can be
characterized as an individual difference measure that has a relationship to
both optimism and self-efficacy known as hardiness. Hardy individuals are
those who are more positive overall about potentially stressful life events,
who take more direct action to understand the causes of negative events, and
who attempt to learn from them what may be of value for the future. Hardy
individuals use effective coping strategies, and they take better care of
themselves.

Taken together, these various coping skills, including optimism, self-

efficacy, and hardiness, have been shown to have a wide variety of positive
effects on our health. Optimists make faster recoveries from illnesses and
surgeries (Carver et al., 2005). People with high self-efficacy have been
found to be better able to quit smoking and lose weight and are more likely
to exercise regularly (Cohen & Pressman, 2006). And hardy individuals
seem to cope better with stress and other negative life events (Dolbier,
Smith, & Steinhardt, 2007). The positive effects of positive thinking are
particularly important when stress is high. Baker (2007) found that in
periods of low stress, positive thinking made little difference in responses to
stress, but that during stressful periods optimists were less likely to smoke
on a day-to-day basis and to respond to stress in more productive ways, such
as by exercising.

It is possible to learn to think more positively, and doing so can be

beneficial. Antoni et al. (2001) found that pessimistic cancer patients who
were given training in optimism reported more optimistic outlooks after the
training and were less fatigued after their treatments. And Maddi, Kahn, and
Maddi (1998) found that a “hardiness training” program that included
focusing on ways to effectively cope with stress was effective in increasing
satisfaction and decreasing self-reported stress.

The benefits of taking positive approaches to stress can last a lifetime.

Christopher Peterson and his colleagues (Peterson, Seligman, Yurko, Martin,
& Friedman, 1998) found that the level of optimism reported by people who
had first been interviewed when they were in college during the years
between 1936 and 1940 predicted their health over the next 50 years.
Students who had a more positive outlook on life in college were less likely
to have died up to 50 years later of all causes, and they were particularly
likely to have experienced fewer accidental and violent deaths, in
comparison to students who were less optimistic. Similar findings were
found for older adults. After controlling for loneliness, marital status,
economic status, and other correlates of health, Levy and Myers found that
older adults with positive attitudes and higher self-efficacy had better health
and lived on average almost 8 years longer than their more negative peers
(Levy & Myers, 2005; Levy, Slade, & Kasl, 2002). And Diener, Nickerson,
Lucas, and Sandvik (2002) found that people who had cheerier dispositions
earlier in life had higher income levels and less unemployment when they
were assessed 19 years later.

Finding Happiness Through Our

Connections With Others

Happiness is determined in part by genetic factors, such that some people

are naturally happier than others (Braungart, Plomin, DeFries, & Fulker,
1992; Lykken, 2000), but also in part by the situations that we create for
ourselves. Psychologists have studied hundreds of variables that influence
happiness, but there is one that is by far the most important. People who
report that they have positive social relationships with others—the
perception of social support—also report being happier than those who
report having less social support (Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999;
Diener, Tamir, & Scollon, 2006). Married people report being happier than
unmarried people (Pew, 2006)1, and people who are connected with and
accepted by others suffer less depression, higher self-esteem, and less social
anxiety and jealousy than those who feel more isolated and rejected (Leary,
1990).

Social support also helps us better cope with stressors. Koopman,

Hermanson, Diamond, Angell, and Spiegel (1998) found that women who
reported higher social support experienced less depression when adjusting
to a diagnosis of cancer, and Ashton et al. (2005) found a similar buffering
effect of social support for AIDS patients. People with social support are
less depressed overall, recover faster from negative events, and are less
likely to commit suicide (Au, Lau, & Lee, 2009; Bertera, 2007; Compton,
Thompson, & Kaslow, 2005; Skärsäter, Langius, Ågren, Häagström, &
Dencker, 2005).

Social support buffers us against stress in several ways. For one, having
people we can trust and rely on helps us directly by allowing us to share
favors when we need them. These are the direct effects of social support.
But having people around us also makes us feel good about ourselves. These
are the appreciation effects of social support. Gençöz and Özlale (2004)
found that students with more friends felt less stress and reported that their
friends helped them, but they also reported that having friends made them
feel better about themselves. Again, you can see that the tend-and-befriend
response, so often used by women, is an important and effective way to
reduce stress.

What Makes Us Happy?

One difficulty that people face when trying to improve their happiness is
that they may not always know what will make them happy. As one
example, many of us think that if we just had more money we would be
happier. While it is true that we do need money to afford food and adequate
shelter for ourselves and our families, after this minimum level of wealth is
reached, more money does not generally buy more happiness (Easterlin,
2005). For instance, as you can see in Figure 10.11 “Income and
Happiness”, even though income and material success has improved
dramatically in many countries over the past decades, happiness has not.
Despite tremendous economic growth in France, Japan, and the United
States between 1946 to 1990, there was no increase in reports of well-being
by the citizens of these countries. Americans today have about three times
the buying power they had in the 1950s, and yet overall happiness has not
increased. The problem seems to be that we never seem to have enough
money to make us “really” happy. Csikszentmihalyi (1999) reported that
people who earned $30,000 per year felt that they would be happier if they
made $50,000 per year, but that people who earned $100,000 per year said
that they would need $250,000 per year to make them happy.

Figure 10.11 Income and Happiness

Although personal income keeps rising, happiness does not.

Layard, R. (2005). Happiness: Lessons from a new science. New York, NY: Penguin.

These findings might lead us to conclude that we don’t always know what
does or what might make us happy, and this seems to be at least partially
true. For instance, Jean Twenge and her colleagues (Twenge, Campbell &
Foster, 2003) have found in several studies that although people with
children frequently claim that having children makes them happy, couples
who do not have children actually report being happier than those who do.

Psychologists have found that people’s ability to predict their future

emotional states is not very accurate (Wilson & Gilbert, 2005). For one,
people overestimate their emotional reactions to events. Although people
think that positive and negative events that might occur to them will make a
huge difference in their lives, and although these changes do make at least
some difference in life satisfaction, they tend to be less influential than we
think they are going to be. Positive events tend to make us feel good, but
their effects wear off pretty quickly, and the same is true for negative events.
For instance, Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman (1978) interviewed
people who had won more than $50,000 in a lottery and found that they
were not happier than they had been in the past, and were also not happier
than a control group of similar people who had not won the lottery. On the
other hand, the researchers found that individuals who were paralyzed as a
result of accidents were not as unhappy as might be expected.

How can this possibly be? There are several reasons. For one, people are
resilient; they bring their coping skills to play when negative events occur,
and this makes them feel better. Secondly, most people do not continually
experience very positive, or very negative, affect over a long period of time,
but rather adapt to their current circumstances. Just as we enjoy the second
chocolate bar we eat less than we enjoy the first, as we experience more and
more positive outcomes in our daily lives we habituate to them and our life
satisfaction returns to a more moderate level (Small, Zatorre, Dagher,
Evans, & Jones-Gotman, 2001).

Another reason that we may mispredict our happiness is that our social
comparisons change when our own status changes as a result of new events.
People who are wealthy compare themselves to other wealthy people,
people who are poor tend to compare with other poor people, and people
who are ill tend to compare with other ill people, When our comparisons
change, our happiness levels are correspondingly influenced. And when
people are asked to predict their future emotions, they may focus only on
the positive or negative event they are asked about, and forget about all the
other things that won’t change. Wilson, Wheatley, Meyers, Gilbert, and
Axsom (2000) found that when people were asked to focus on all the more
regular things that they will still be doing in the future (working, going to
church, socializing with family and friends, and so forth), their predictions
about how something really good or bad would influence them were less
extreme.

If pleasure is fleeting, at least misery shares some of the same quality. We

might think we can’t be happy if something terrible, such as the loss of a
partner or child, were to happen to us, but after a period of adjustment most
people find that happiness levels return to prior levels (Bonnano et al.,
2002). Health concerns tend to put a damper on our feeling of well-being,
and those with a serious disability or illness show slightly lowered mood
levels. But even when health is compromised, levels of misery are lower
than most people expect (Lucas, 2007; Riis et al., 2005). For instance,
although disabled individuals have more concern about health, safety, and
acceptance in the community, they still experience overall positive
happiness levels (Marinić & Brkljačić, 2008). Taken together, it has been
estimated that our wealth, health, and life circumstances account for only
15% to 20% of life satisfaction scores (Argyle, 1999). Clearly the main
ingredient in happiness lies beyond, or perhaps beneath, external factors.
 Key Takeaways

Positive thinking can be beneficial to our health.

Optimism, self-efficacy, and hardiness all relate to positive health outcomes.

Happiness is determined in part by genetic factors, but also by the experience of

social support.

People may not always know what will make them happy.

Material wealth plays only a small role in determining happiness.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Are you a happy person? Can you think of ways to increase your positive emotions?

2. Do you know what will make you happy? Do you believe that material wealth is not
as important as you might have thought it would be?

1
Pew Research Center (2006, February 13). Are we happy yet? Retrieved
from http://pewresearch.org/pubs/301/are-we-happy-yet.

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10.4 Two Fundamental Human Motivations:
Eating and Mating

Learning Objectives

1. Understand the biological and social responses that underlie eating behavior.

2. Understand the psychological and physiological responses that underlie sexual

behavior.

Eating: Healthy Choices Make Healthy Lives

Along with the need to drink fresh water, which humans can normally attain
in all except the most extreme situations, the need for food is the most
fundamental and important human need. More than 1 in 10 U.S. households
contain people who live without enough nourishing food, and this lack of
proper nourishment has profound effects on their abilities to create effective
lives (Hunger Notes, n.d.)1. When people are extremely hungry, their
motivation to attain food completely changes their behavior. Hungry people
become listless and apathetic to save energy and then become completely
obsessed with food. Ancel Keys and his colleagues (Keys, Brožek,
Henschel, Mickelsen, & Taylor, 1950) found that volunteers who were
placed on severely reduced-calorie diets lost all interest in sex and social
activities, becoming preoccupied with food.

Like most interesting psychological phenomena, the simple behavior of

eating has both biological and social determinants (Figure 10.12
“Biological, Psychological, and Social-Cultural Contributors to Eating”).
Biologically, hunger is controlled by the interactions among complex
pathways in the nervous system and a variety of hormonal and chemical
systems in the brain and body. The stomach is of course important. We feel
more hungry when our stomach is empty than when it is full. But we can
also feel hunger even without input from the stomach. Two areas of the
hypothalamus are known to be particularly important in eating. The lateral
part of the hypothalamus responds primarily to cues to start eating, whereas
the ventromedial part of the hypothalamus primarily responds to cues to
stop eating. If the lateral part of the hypothalamus is damaged, the animal
will not eat even if food is present, whereas if the ventromedial part of the
hypothalamus is damaged, the animal will eat until it is obese (Wolf &
Miller, 1964).

Figure 10.12 Biological, Psychological, and Social-Cultural Contributors to Eating

Hunger is also determined by hormone levels (Figure 10.13 “Eating Is
Influenced by the Appetite Hormones”). Glucose is the main sugar that the
body uses for energy, and the brain monitors blood glucose levels to
determine hunger. Glucose levels in the bloodstream are regulated by
insulin, a hormone secreted by the pancreas gland. When insulin is low,
glucose is not taken up by body cells, and the body begins to use fat as an
energy source. Eating and appetite are also influenced by other hormones,
including orexin, ghrelin, and leptin (Brennan & Mantzoros, 2006;
Nakazato et al., 2001).

Figure 10.13 Eating Is Influenced by the Appetite Hormones

Insulin, secreted by the pancreas, controls blood glucose; leptin, secreted by fat cells, monitors energy

levels; orexin, secreted by the hypothalamus, triggers hunger; ghrelin, secreted by an empty stomach,

increases food intake.

Normally the interaction of the various systems that determine hunger

creates a balance or homeostasis in which we eat when we are hungry and
stop eating when we feel full. But homeostasis varies among people; some
people simply weigh more than others, and there is little they can do to
change their fundamental weight. Weight is determined in large part by the
basal metabolic rate, the amount of energy expended while at rest. Each
person’s basal metabolic rate is different, due to his or her unique physical
makeup and physical behavior. A naturally occurring low metabolic rate,
which is determined entirely by genetics, makes weight management a very
difficult undertaking for many people.

How we eat is also influenced by our environment. When researchers rigged

clocks to move faster, people got hungrier and ate more, as if they thought
they must be hungry again because so much time had passed since they last
ate (Schachter, 1968). And if we forget that we have already eaten, we are
likely to eat again even if we are not actually hungry (Rozin, Dow,
Moscovitch, & Rajaram, 1998).

Cultural norms about appropriate weights also influence eating behaviors.

Current norms for women in Western societies are based on a very thin body
ideal, emphasized by television and movie actresses, models, and even
children’s dolls, such as the ever-popular Barbie. These norms for excessive
thinness are very difficult for most women to attain: Barbie’s measurements,
if translated to human proportions, would be about 36 in.-18 in.-33 in. at
bust-waist-hips, measurements that are attained by less than 1 in 100,000
women (Norton, Olds, Olive, & Dank, 1996). Many women idealize being
thin and yet are unable to reach the standard that they prefer.

Eating Disorders

In some cases, the desire to be thin can lead to eating disorders, which are
estimated to affect about 1 million males and 10 million females the United
States alone (Hoek & van Hoeken, 2003; Patrick, 2002). Anorexia nervosa
is an eating disorder characterized by extremely low body weight, distorted
body image, and an obsessive fear of gaining weight. Nine out of 10
sufferers are women. Anorexia begins with a severe weight loss diet and
develops into a preoccupation with food and dieting.

Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by binge eating

followed by purging. Bulimia nervosa begins after the dieter has broken a
diet and gorged. Bulimia involves repeated episodes of overeating, followed
by vomiting, laxative use, fasting, or excessive exercise. It is most common
in women in their late teens or early 20s, and it is often accompanied by
depression and anxiety, particularly around the time of the binging. The
cycle in which the person eats to feel better, but then after eating becomes
concerned about weight gain and purges, repeats itself over and over again,
often with major psychological and physical results.

Eating disorders are in part heritable (Klump, Burt, McGue, & Iacono,
2007), and it is not impossible that at least some have been selected through
their evolutionary significance in coping with food shortages (Guisinger,
2008). Eating disorders are also related psychological causes, including low
self-esteem, perfectionism, and the perception that one’s body weight is too
high (Vohs et al., 2001), as well as to cultural norms about body weight and
eating (Crandall, 1988). Because eating disorders can create profound
negative health outcomes, including death, people who suffer from them
should seek treatment. This treatment is often quite effective.

Figure 10.14

Eating disorders can lead people to be either too fat or too thin.

Both are unhealthy.

Tony Alter – Epidemic – CC BY 2.0; Charlotte Astrid – Body

Image – CC BY 2.0.
Obesity

Although some people eat too little, eating too much is also a major
problem. Obesity is a medical condition in which so much excess body fat
has accumulated in the body that it begins to have an adverse impact on
health. In addition to causing people to be stereotyped and treated less
positively by others (Crandall, Merman, & Hebl, 2009), uncontrolled
obesity leads to health problems including cardiovascular disease, diabetes,
sleep apnea, arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, and some types of cancer
(Gustafson, Rothenberg, Blennow, Steen, & Skoog, 2003). Obesity also
reduces life expectancy (Haslam & James, 2005).

Obesity is determined by calculating the body mass index (BMI), a

measurement that compares one’s weight and height. People are defined as
overweight when their BMI is greater than 25 kg/m2 and as obese when it is
greater than 30 kg/m2. If you know your height and weight, you can go to
https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/BMI/bmicalc.htm to
calculate your BMI.

Obesity is a leading cause of death worldwide. Its prevalence is rapidly

increasing, and it is one of the most serious public health problems of the
21st century. Although obesity is caused in part by genetics, it is increased
by overeating and a lack of physical activity (Nestle & Jacobson, 2000;
James, 2008).

There are really only two approaches to controlling weight: eat less and
exercise more. Dieting is difficult for anyone, but it is particularly difficult
for people with slow basal metabolic rates, who must cope with severe
hunger to lose weight. Although most weight loss can be maintained for
about a year, very few people are able to maintain substantial weight loss
through dieting alone for more than three years (Miller, 1999). Substantial
weight loss of more than 50 pounds is typically seen only when weight loss
surgery has been performed (Douketis, Macie, Thabane, & Williamson,
2005). Weight loss surgery reduces stomach volume or bowel length,
leading to earlier satiation and reduced ability to absorb nutrients from food.

Although dieting alone does not produce a great deal of weight loss over
time, its effects are substantially improved when it is accompanied by more
physical activity. People who exercise regularly, and particularly those who
combine exercise with dieting, are less likely to be obese (Borer, 2008).
Exercise not only improves our waistline but also makes us healthier
overall. Exercise increases cardiovascular capacity, lowers blood pressure,
and helps improve diabetes, joint flexibility, and muscle strength (American
Heart Association, 1998)2. Exercise also slows the cognitive impairments
that are associated with aging (Kramer, Erickson, & Colcombe, 2006).

Because the costs of exercise are immediate but the benefits are long-term,
it may be difficult for people who do not exercise to get started. It is
important to make a regular schedule, to work exercise into one’s daily
activities, and to view exercise not as a cost but as an opportunity to
improve oneself (Schomer & Drake, 2001). Exercising is more fun when it
is done in groups, so team exercise is recommended (Kirchhoff, Elliott,
Schlichting, & Chin, 2008).

A recent report found that only about one-half of Americans perform the 30
minutes of exercise 5 times a week that the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention suggests as the minimum healthy amount (Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, 2007)3. As for the other half of Americans, they
most likely are listening to the guidelines, but they are unable to stick to the
regimen. Almost half of the people who start an exercise regimen give it up
by the 6-month mark (American Heart Association, 1998)2. This is a
problem, given that exercise has long-term benefits only if it is continued.

Sex: The Most Important Human Behavior

Perhaps the most important aspect of human experience is the process of

reproduction. Without it, none of us would be here. Successful reproduction
in humans involves the coordination of a wide variety of behaviors,
including courtship, sex, household arrangements, parenting, and child care.

The Experience of Sex

The sexual drive, with its reward of intense pleasure in orgasm, is highly
motivating. The biology of the sexual response was studied in detail by
Masters and Johnson (1966), who monitored or filmed more than 700 men
and women while they masturbated or had intercourse. Masters and Johnson
found that the sexual response cycle—the biological sexual response in
humans—was very similar in men and women, and consisted of four stages:

1. Excitement. The genital areas become engorged with blood.

Women’s breasts and nipples may enlarge and the vagina expands
and secretes lubricant.
2. Plateau. Breathing, pulse, and blood pressure increase as orgasm
feels imminent. The penis becomes fully enlarged. Vaginal
secretions continue and the clitoris may retract.
3. Orgasm. Muscular contractions occur throughout the body, but
particularly in the genitals. The spasmodic ejaculations of sperm
are similar to the spasmodic contractions of vaginal walls, and the
 experience of orgasm is similar for men and women. The
woman’s orgasm helps position the uterus to draw sperm inward
(Thornhill & Gangestad, 1995).
4. Resolution. After orgasm the body gradually returns to its
prearoused state. After one orgasm, men typically experience a
refractory period, in which they are incapable of reaching another
orgasm for several minutes, hours, or even longer. Women may
achieve several orgasms before entering the resolution stage.

The sexual response cycle and sexual desire are regulated by the sex
hormones estrogen in women and testosterone in both women and in men.
Although the hormones are secreted by the ovaries and testes, it is the
hypothalamus and the pituitary glands that control the process. Estrogen
levels in women vary across the menstrual cycle, peaking during ovulation
(Pillsworth, Haselton, & Buss, 2004). Women are more interested in having
sex during ovulation but can experience high levels of sexual arousal
throughout the menstrual cycle.

In men, testosterone is essential to maintain sexual desire and to sustain an

erection, and testosterone injections can increase sexual interest and
performance (Aversa et al., 2000; Jockenhövel et al., 2009). Testosterone is
also important in the female sex cycle. Women who are experiencing
menopause may develop a loss of interest in sex, but this interest may be
rekindled through estrogen and testosterone replacement treatments (Meston
& Frohlich, 2000).

Although their biological determinants and experiences of sex are similar,

men and women differ substantially in their overall interest in sex, the
frequency of their sexual activities, and the mates they are most interested
in. Men show a more consistent interest in sex, whereas the sexual desires
of women are more likely to vary over time (Baumeister, 2000). Men
fantasize about sex more often than women, and their fantasies are more
physical and less intimate (Leitenberg & Henning, 1995). Men are also
more willing to have casual sex than are women, and their standards for sex
partners is lower (Petersen & Hyde, 2010; Saad, Eba, & Sejean, 2009).

Gender differences in sexual interest probably occur in part as a result of the

evolutionary predispositions of men and women, and this interpretation is
bolstered by the finding that gender differences in sexual interest are
observed cross-culturally (Buss, 1989). Evolutionarily, women should be
more selective than men in their choices of sex partners because they must
invest more time in bearing and nurturing their children than do men (most
men do help out, of course, but women simply do more [Buss & Kenrick,
1998]). Because they do not need to invest a lot of time in child rearing,
men may be evolutionarily predisposed to be more willing and desiring of
having sex with many different partners and may be less selective in their
choice of mates. Women, on the other hand, because they must invest
substantial effort in raising each child, should be more selective.

The Many Varieties of Sexual Behavior

Sex researchers have found that sexual behavior varies widely, not only
between men and women but within each sex (Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin,
1948/1998; Kinsey, 1953/1998). About a quarter of women report having a
low sexual desire, and about 1% of people report feeling no sexual attraction
whatsoever (Bogaert, 2004; Feldhaus-Dahir, 2009; West et al., 2008). There
are also people who experience hyperactive sexual drives. For about 3% to
6% of the population (mainly men), the sex drive is so strong that it
dominates life experience and may lead to hyperactive sexual desire
disorder (Kingston & Firestone, 2008).
There is also variety in sexual orientation, which is the direction of our
sexual desire toward people of the opposite sex, people of the same sex, or
people of both sexes. The vast majority of human beings have a heterosexual
orientation—their sexual desire is focused toward members of the opposite
sex. A smaller minority is primarily homosexual (i.e., they have sexual
desire for members of their own sex). Between 3% and 4% of men are gay,
and between 1% and 2% of women are lesbian. Another 1% of the
population reports being bisexual (having desires for both sexes). The love
and sexual lives of homosexuals are little different from those of
heterosexuals, except where their behaviors are constrained by cultural
norms and local laws. As with heterosexuals, some gays and lesbians are
celibate, some are promiscuous, but most are in committed, long-term
relationships (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994).

Although homosexuality has been practiced as long as records of human

behavior have been kept, and occurs in many animals at least as frequently
as it does in humans, cultures nevertheless vary substantially in their
attitudes toward it. In Western societies such as the United States and
Europe, attitudes are becoming progressively more tolerant of
homosexuality, but it remains unacceptable in many other parts of the world.
The American Psychiatric Association no longer considers homosexuality to
be a “mental illness,” although it did so until 1973. Because prejudice
against gays and lesbians can lead to experiences of ostracism, depression,
and even suicide (Kulkin, Chauvin, & Percle, 2000), these improved
attitudes can benefit the everyday lives of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals.

Whether sexual orientation is driven more by nature or by nurture has

received a great deal of research attention, and research has found that
sexual orientation is primarily biological (Mustanski, Chivers, & Bailey,
2002). Areas of the hypothalamus are different in homosexual men, as well
as in animals with homosexual tendencies, than they are in heterosexual
members of the species, and these differences are in directions such that gay
men are more similar to women than are straight men (Gladue, 1994; Lasco,
Jordan, Edgar, Petito, & Byrne, 2002; Rahman & Wilson, 2003). Twin
studies also support the idea that there is a genetic component to sexual
orientation. Among male identical twins, 52% of those with a gay brother
also reported homosexuality, whereas the rate in fraternal twins was just
22% (Bailey et al., 1999; Pillard & Bailey, 1998). There is also evidence
that sexual orientation is influenced by exposure and responses to sex
hormones (Hershberger & Segal, 2004; Williams & Pepitone, 2000).

Psychology in Everyday Life: Regulating Emotions to Improve Our Health

Although smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, using recreational drugs, engaging in unsafe sex,
and eating too much may produce enjoyable positive emotions in the short term, they are some
of the leading causes of negative health outcomes and even death in the long term (Mokdad,
Marks, Stroup, & Gerberding, 2004). To avoid these negative outcomes, we must use our
cognitive resources to plan, guide, and restrain our behaviors. And we (like Captain
Sullenberger) can also use our emotion regulation skills to help us do better.

Even in an age where the addictive and detrimental health effects of cigarette smoking are well
understood, more than 60% of children try smoking before they are 18 years old, and more than
half who have smoked have tried and failed to quit (Fryar, Merino, Hirsch, & Porter, 2009).
Although smoking is depicted in movies as sexy and alluring, it is highly addictive and probably
the most dangerous thing we can do to our body. Poor diet and physical inactivity combine to
make up the second greatest threat to our health. But we can improve our diet by eating more
natural and less processed food, and by monitoring our food intake. And we can start and
maintain an exercise program. Exercise keeps us happier, improves fitness, and leads to better
health and lower mortality (Fogelholm, 2010; Galper, Trivedi, Barlow, Dunn, & Kampert, 2006;
Hassmén, Koivula, & Uutela, 2000). And exercise also has a variety of positive influences on
our cognitive processes, including academic performance (Hillman, Erickson, & Kramer, 2008).
Alcohol abuse, and particularly binge drinking (i.e., having five or more drinks in one sitting), is
often the norm among high school and college students, but it has severe negative health
consequences. Bingeing leads to deaths from car crashes, drowning, falls, gunshots, and alcohol
poisoning (Valencia-Martín, Galán, & Rodríguez-Artalejo, 2008). Binge-drinking students are
also more likely to be involved in other risky behaviors, such as smoking, drug use, dating
violence, or attempted suicide (Miller, Naimi, Brewer, & Jones, 2007). Binge drinking may also
damage neural pathways in the brain (McQueeny et al., 2009) and lead to lifelong alcohol abuse
and dependency (Kim et al., 2008). Illicit drug use has also been increasing and is linked to the
spread of infectious diseases such as HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C (Monteiro, 2001).

Some teens abstain from sex entirely, particularly those who are very religious, but most
experiment with it. About half of U.S. children under 18 report having had intercourse, a rate
much higher than in other parts of the world. Although sex is fun, it can also kill us if we are not
careful. Sexual activity can lead to guilt about having engaged in the act itself, and may also lead
to unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV infection.
Alcohol consumption also leads to risky sexual behavior. Sex partners who have been drinking
are less likely to practice safe sex and have an increased risk of STIs, including HIV infection
(Hutton, McCaul, Santora, & Erbelding 2008; Raj et al., 2009).

It takes some work to improve and maintain our health and happiness, and our desire for the
positive emotional experiences that come from engaging in dangerous behaviors can get in the
way of this work. But being aware of the dangers, working to control our emotions, and using
our resources to engage in healthy behaviors and avoid unhealthy ones are the best things we can
do for ourselves.

Key Takeaways

Biologically, hunger is controlled by the interactions among complex pathways in

the nervous system and a variety of hormonal and chemical systems in the brain and
body.
How we eat is also influenced by our environment, including social norms about
appropriate body size.

Homeostasis varies among people and is determined by the basal metabolic rate.
Low metabolic rates, which are determined entirely by genetics, make weight
management a very difficult undertaking for many people.

Eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, affect more than
10 million people (mostly women) in the United States alone.

Obesity is a medical condition in which so much excess body fat has accumulated in
the body that it begins to have an adverse impact on health. Uncontrolled obesity
leads to health problems including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, sleep apnea,
arthritis, and some types of cancer.

The two approaches to controlling weight are to eat less and exercise more.

Sex drive is regulated by the sex hormones estrogen in women and testosterone in
both women and men.

Although their biological determinants and experiences of sex are similar, men and
women differ substantially in their overall interest in sex, the frequency of their
sexual activities, and the mates they are most interested in.

Sexual behavior varies widely, not only between men and women but also within
each sex.

There is also variety in sexual orientation: toward people of the opposite sex, people
of the same sex, or people of both sexes. The determinants of sexual orientation are
primarily biological.

We can outwit stress, obesity, and other health risks through appropriate healthy
action.
 Exercise and Critical Thinking

1. Consider your own eating and sex patterns. Are they healthy or unhealthy? What can
you do to improve them?

1
Hunger Notes. (n.d.). How many children are hungry in the United States?
Retrieved from
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ha.

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10.5 Chapter Summary

Affect guides behavior, helps us make decisions, and has a major impact on
our mental and physical health. Affect is guided by arousal—our
experiences of the bodily responses created by the sympathetic division of
the autonomic nervous system.

Emotions are the mental and physiological feeling states that direct our
attention and guide our behavior. The most fundamental emotions, known
as the basic emotions, are those of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness,
and surprise. A variety of secondary emotions are determined by the process
of cognitive appraisal. The distinction between the primary and the
secondary emotions is paralleled by two brain pathways: a fast pathway and
a slow pathway.

There are three primary theories of emotion, each supported by research

evidence. The Cannon-Bard theory of emotion proposed that the experience
of an emotion is accompanied by physiological arousal. The James-Lange
theory of emotion proposes that our experience of an emotion is the result
of the arousal that we experience. The two-factor theory of emotion asserts
that the experience of emotion is determined by the intensity of the arousal
we are experiencing, but that the cognitive appraisal of the situation
determines what the emotion will be. When people incorrectly label the
source of the arousal that they are experiencing, we say that they have
misattributed their arousal.

We communicate and perceive emotion in part through nonverbal

communication and through facial expressions. The facial feedback
hypothesis proposes that we also experience emotion in part through our
own facial expressions.

Stress refers to the physiological responses that occur when an organism

fails to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats. When it is
extreme or prolonged, stress can create substantial health problems.

The general adaptation syndrome describes the three phases of

physiological change that occur in response to long-term stress: alarm,
resistance, and exhaustion. Stress creates a long-term negative effect on the
body by activating the HPA axis, which produces the stress hormone
cortisol. The HPA reactions to persistent stress lead to a weakening of the
immune system. Chronic stress is also a major contributor to heart disease.

The stress that we experience in our everyday lives, including daily hassles,
can be taxing. People who experience strong negative emotions as a result
of these hassles exhibit more negative stress responses those who react in a
less negative way.

On average, men are more likely than are women to respond to stress by
activating the fight-or-flight response, whereas women are more likely to
respond using the tend-and-befriend response.

Attempting to ignore or suppress our stressors is not effective, in part

because it is difficult to do. It is healthier to let out the negative thoughts
and feelings by expressing them, either to ourselves or to others. It is easier
to respond to stress if we can interpret it in more positive ways—for
instance, as a challenge rather than a threat.

The ability to successfully control our emotions is known as emotion

regulation. Regulating emotions takes effort, but the ability to do so can
have important positive health outcomes.
The best antidote for stress is to think positively, have fun, and enjoy the
company of others. People who express optimism, self-efficacy, and
hardiness cope better with stress and experience better health overall.
Happiness is determined in part by genetic factors such that some people
are naturally happier than others, but it is also facilitated by social support
—our positive social relationships with others.

People do not often know what will make them happy. After a minimum
level of wealth is reached, more money does not generally buy more
happiness. Although people think that positive and negative events will
make a huge difference in their lives, and although these changes do make
at least some difference in life satisfaction, they tend to be less influential
than we think they are going to be.

A motivation is a driving force that initiates and directs behavior.

Motivations are often considered in psychology in terms of drives and
goals, with the goal of maintaining homeostasis.

Eating is a primary motivation determined by hormonal and social factors.

Cultural norms about appropriate weights influence eating behaviors. The
desire to be thin can lead to eating disorders including anorexia nervosa and
bulimia nervosa.

Uncontrolled obesity leads to health problems including cardiovascular

disease, diabetes, sleep apnea, arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, and some
types of cancer. It is a leading preventable cause of death worldwide. The
two approaches to controlling weight are eating less and exercising more.

Sex is a fundamental motivation that involves the coordination of a wide

variety of behaviors, including courtship, sex, household arrangements,
parenting, and child care. The sexual response cycle is similar in men and
women. The sex hormone testosterone is particularly important for sex
drive, in both men and women.

Sexual behavior varies widely, not only between men and women but
within each sex.

The vast majority of human beings have a heterosexual orientation, but a

smaller minority is primarily homosexual or bisexual. The love and sexual
lives of homosexuals and bisexual are little different from those of
heterosexuals, except where their behaviors are constrained by cultural
norms and local laws.
Chapter 11: Personality

Identical Twins Reunited after 35 Years

Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein were identical twins who were adopted
into separate families immediately after their births in 1968. It was only at
the age of 35 that the twins were reunited and discovered how similar they
were to each other.

Paula Bernstein grew up in a happy home in suburban New York. She loved
her adopted parents and older brother and even wrote an article titled “Why
I Don’t Want to Find My Birth Mother.” Elyse’s childhood, also a happy
one, was followed by college and then film school abroad.

In 2003, 35 years after she was adopted, Elyse, acting on a whim, inquired
about her biological family at the adoption agency. The response came
back: “You were born on October 9, 1968, at 12:51 p.m., the younger of
twin girls. You’ve got a twin sister Paula and she’s looking for you.”

“Oh my God, I’m a twin! Can you believe this? Is this really happening?”
Elyse cried.

Elyse dialed Paula’s phone number: “It’s almost like I’m hearing my own
voice in a recorder back at me,” she said.

“It’s funny because I feel like in a way I was talking to an old, close friend I
never knew I had…we had an immediate intimacy, and yet, we didn’t know
each other at all,” Paula said.

The two women met for the first time at a café for lunch and talked until the
late evening.

“We had 35 years to catch up on,” said Paula. “How do you start asking
somebody, ‘What have you been up to since we shared a womb together?’
Where do you start?”

With each new detail revealed, the twins learned about their remarkable
similarities. They’d both gone to graduate school in film. They both loved
to write, and they had both edited their high school yearbooks. They have
similar taste in music.

“I think, you know, when we met it was undeniable that we were twins.
Looking at this person, you are able to gaze into your own eyes and see
yourself from the outside. This identical individual has the exact same DNA
and is essentially your clone. We don’t have to imagine,” Paula said.

Now they finally feel like sisters.

“But it’s perhaps even closer than sisters,” Elyse said, “Because we’re also
twins.”

The twins, who both now live in Brooklyn, combined their writing skills to
write a book called Identical Strangers about their childhoods and their
experience of discovering an identical twin in their mid-30s (Spilius, 2007;
Kuntzman, 2007).

Elyse and Paula

(click to see video)

You can learn more about the experiences of Paula Bernstein and Elyse
Schein by viewing this video.

One of the most fundamental tendencies of human beings is to size up other

people. We say that Bill is fun, that Marian is adventurous, or that Frank is
dishonest. When we make these statements, we mean that we believe that
these people have stable individual characteristics—their personalities.
Personality is defined as an individual’s consistent patterns of feeling,
thinking, and behaving (John, Robins, & Pervin, 2008).

The tendency to perceive personality is a fundamental part of human nature,

and a most adaptive one. If we can draw accurate generalizations about
what other people are normally like, we can predict how they will behave in
the future, and this can help us determine how they are likely to respond in
different situations. Understanding personality can also help us better
understand psychological disorders and the negative behavioral outcomes
they may produce. In short, personality matters because it guides behavior.

In this chapter we will consider the wide variety of personality traits found
in human beings. We’ll consider how and when personality influences our
behavior, and how well we perceive the personalities of others. We will also
consider how psychologists measure personality, and the extent to which
personality is caused by nature versus nurture. The fundamental goal of
personality psychologists is to understand what makes people different from
each other (the study of individual differences), but they also find that
people who share genes (as do Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein) have a
remarkable similarity in personality.

References

John, O. P., Robins, R. W., & Pervin, L. A. (2008). Handbook of personality

psychology: Theory and research (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Kuntzman, G. (2007, October 6). Separated twins Paula Bernstein and

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http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/30/39/30_39twins.html

Spilius, A. (2007, October 27). Identical twins reunited after 35 years.

Telegraph. Retrieved from
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1567542/Identical-twins-
reunited-after-35-years.html.
11.1 Personality and Behavior: Approaches
and Measurement

Learning Objectives

1. Outline and critique the early approaches to assessing personality.

2. Define and review the strengths and limitations of the trait approach to personality.

3. Summarize the measures that have been used to assess psychological disorders.

Early theories assumed that personality was expressed in people’s physical

appearance. One early approach, developed by the German physician Franz
Joseph Gall (1758–1828) and known as phrenology, was based on the idea
that we could measure personality by assessing the patterns of bumps on
people’s skulls (Figure 11.1 “Phrenology”). In the Victorian age, phrenology
was taken seriously and many people promoted its use as a source of
psychological insight and self-knowledge. Machines were even developed
for helping people analyze skulls (Simpson, 2005). However, because
careful scientific research did not validate the predictions of the theory,
phrenology has now been discredited in contemporary psychology.

Figure 11.1 Phrenology

This definition of phrenology with a chart of the skull appeared in Webster’s Academic Dictionary, circa

1895.

Webster’s Academic Dictionary – Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

Another approach, known as somatology, championed by the psychologist

William Herbert Sheldon (1898–1977), was based on the idea that we could
determine personality from people’s body types (Figure 11.2 “Sheldon’s
Body Types”). Sheldon (1940) argued that people with more body fat and a
rounder physique (“endomorphs”) were more likely to be assertive and bold,
whereas thinner people (“ectomorphs”) were more likely to be introverted
and intellectual. As with phrenology, scientific research did not validate the
predictions of the theory, and somatology has now been discredited in
contemporary psychology.

Figure 11.2 Sheldon’s Body Types

William Sheldon erroneously believed that people with different body types had different personalities.
Another approach to detecting personality is known as physiognomy, or the
idea that it is possible to assess personality from facial characteristics. In
contrast to phrenology and somatology, for which no research support has
been found, contemporary research has found that people are able to detect
some aspects of a person’s character—for instance, whether they are gay or
straight and whether they are Democrats or Republicans—at above chance
levels by looking only at his or her face (Rule & Ambady, 2010; Rule,
Ambady, Adams, & Macrae, 2008; Rule, Ambady, & Hallett, 2009).

Despite these results, the ability to detect personality from faces is not
guaranteed. Olivola and Todorov (2010) recently studied the ability of
thousands of people to guess the personality characteristics of hundreds of
thousands of faces on the website What’s My Image?
(http://www.whatsmyimage.com). In contrast to the predictions of
physiognomy, the researchers found that these people would have made
more accurate judgments about the strangers if they had just guessed, using
their expectations about what people in general are like, rather than trying to
use the particular facial features of individuals to help them. It seems then
that the predictions of physiognomy may also, in the end, find little
empirical support.

Personality as Traits

Personalities are characterized in terms of traits, which are relatively

enduring characteristics that influence our behavior across many situations.
Personality traits such as introversion, friendliness, conscientiousness,
honesty, and helpfulness are important because they help explain
consistencies in behavior.

The most popular way of measuring traits is by administering personality

tests on which people self-report about their own characteristics.
Psychologists have investigated hundreds of traits using the self-report
approach, and this research has found many personality traits that have
important implications for behavior. You can see some examples of the
personality dimensions that have been studied by psychologists and their
implications for behavior in Table 11.1 “Some Personality Traits That
Predict Behavior”, and you can try completing a trait measure at the website
shown in Note 11.5 “Example of a Trait Measure”.

Table 11.1 Some Personality Traits That Predict Behavior

 Examples of behaviors
Trait Description exhibited by people who have
the trait

Authoritarianism A cluster of traits including Authoritarians are more likely

(Adorno, Frenkel- conventionalism, superstition, to be prejudiced, to conform to
Brunswik, Levinson, & toughness, and exaggerated concerns leaders, and to display rigid
Sanford, 1950) with sexuality behaviors.

Individualists prefer to engage

Individualism is the tendency to focus in behaviors that make them
Individualism-
on oneself and one’s personal goals; stand out from others, whereas
collectivism (Triandis,
collectivism is the tendency to focus collectivists prefer to engage in
1989)
on one’s relations with others. behaviors that emphasize their
similarity to others.

In comparison to those with an

People with higher internal
external locus of control, people with
Internal versus external locus of control are happier, less
an internal locus of control are more
locus of control depressed, and healthier in
likely to believe that life events are
(Rotter, 1966) comparison to those with an
due largely to their own efforts and
external locus of control.
personal characteristics.

Those high in need for

The desire to make significant
Need for achievement achievement select tasks that are
accomplishments by mastering skills
(McClelland, 1958) not too difficult to be sure they
or meeting high standards
will succeed in them.

Need for cognition People high in the need for

The extent to which people engage in
(Cacioppo & Petty, cognition pay more attention to
and enjoy effortful cognitive activities
1982) arguments in ads.
 Examples of behaviors
Trait Description exhibited by people who have
the trait

Refers to differences in the People with a promotion

motivations that energize behavior, orientation are more motivated
Regulatory focus
varying from a promotion orientation by goals of gaining money,
(Shah, Higgins, &
(seeking out new opportunities) to a whereas those with prevention
Friedman, 1998)
prevention orientation (avoiding orientation are more concerned
negative outcomes) about losing money.

People high in self-

Self-consciousness
The tendency to introspect and consciousness spend more time
(Fenigstein, Sheier, &
examine one’s inner self and feelings preparing their hair and makeup
Buss, 1975)
before they leave the house.

High self-esteem is associated

High self-esteem means having a
Self-esteem with a variety of positive
positive attitude toward oneself and
(Rosenberg, 1965) psychological and health
one’s capabilities.
outcomes.

Sensation seekers are more

likely to engage in risky
Sensation seeking The motivation to engage in extreme
behaviors such as extreme and
(Zuckerman, 2007) and risky behaviors
risky sports, substance abuse,
unsafe sex, and crime.

Sources: Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The
authoritarian personality. New York, NY: Harper; Triandis, H. (1989). The self and social behavior in
differing cultural contexts. Psychological Review, 93, 506–520; Rotter, J. (1966). Generalized
expectancies of internal versus external locus of control of reinforcement. Psychological
Monographs, 80; McClelland, D. C. (1958). Methods of measuring human motivation. In John W.
Atkinson (Ed.), Motives in fantasy, action and society. Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand; Cacioppo, J.
T., & Petty, R. E. (1982). The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42,
116–131; Shah, J., Higgins, T., & Friedman, R. S. (1998). Performance incentives and means: How
regulatory focus influences goal attainment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(2),
285–293; Fenigstein, A., Scheier, M. F., & Buss, A. H. (1975). Public and private self-consciousness:
Assessment and theory. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43, 522–527; Rosenberg, M.
(1965). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; Zuckerman,
M. (2007). Sensation seeking and risky behavior. Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association.

Example of a Trait Measure

You can try completing a self-report measure of personality (a short form of the Five-Factor
Personality Test) here. There are 120 questions and it should take you about 15–20 minutes to
complete. You will receive feedback about your personality after you have finished the test.

http://www.personalitytest.net/ipip/ipipneo120.htm

As with intelligence tests, the utility of self-report measures of personality

depends on their reliability and construct validity. Some popular measures
of personality are not useful because they are unreliable or invalid. Perhaps
you have heard of a personality test known as the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator (MBTI). If so, you are not alone, because the MBTI is the most
widely administered personality test in the world, given millions of times a
year to employees in thousands of companies. The MBTI categorizes people
into one of four categories on each of four dimensions: introversion versus
extraversion, sensing versus intuiting, thinking versus feeling, and judging
versus perceiving.

Although completing the MBTI can be useful for helping people think about
individual differences in personality, and for “breaking the ice” at meetings,
the measure itself is not psychologically useful because it is not reliable or
valid. People’s classifications change over time, and scores on the MBTI do
not relate to other measures of personality or to behavior (Hunsley, Lee, &
Wood, 2003). Measures such as the MBTI remind us that it is important to
scientifically and empirically test the effectiveness of personality tests by
assessing their stability over time and their ability to predict behavior.

One of the challenges of the trait approach to personality is that there are so
many of them; there are at least 18,000 English words that can be used to
describe people (Allport & Odbert, 1936). Thus a major goal of
psychologists is to take this vast number of descriptors (many of which are
very similar to each other) and to determine the underlying important or
“core” traits among them (John, Angleitner, & Ostendorf, 1988).

The trait approach to personality was pioneered by early psychologists,

including Gordon Allport (1897–1967), Raymond Cattell (1905–1998), and
Hans Eysenck (1916–1997). Each of these psychologists believed in the
idea of the trait as the stable unit of personality, and each attempted to
provide a list or taxonomy of the most important trait dimensions. Their
approach was to provide people with a self-report measure and then to use
statistical analyses to look for the underlying “factors” or “clusters” of traits,
according to the frequency and the co-occurrence of traits in the
respondents.

Allport (1937) began his work by reducing the 18,000 traits to a set of about
4,500 traitlike words that he organized into three levels according to their
importance. He called them “cardinal traits” (the most important traits),
“central traits” (the basic and most useful traits), and “secondary traits” (the
less obvious and less consistent ones). Cattell (1990) used a statistical
procedure known as factor analysis to analyze the correlations among traits
and to identify the most important ones. On the basis of his research he
identified what he referred to as “source” (more important) and “surface”
(less important) traits, and he developed a measure that assessed 16
dimensions of traits based on personality adjectives taken from everyday
language.

Hans Eysenck was particularly interested in the biological and genetic

origins of personality and made an important contribution to understanding
the nature of a fundamental personality trait: extraversion versus
introversion (Eysenck, 1998). Eysenck proposed that people who are
extroverted (i.e., who enjoy socializing with others) have lower levels of
naturally occurring arousal than do introverts (who are less likely to enjoy
being with others). Eysenck argued that extroverts have a greater desire to
socialize with others to increase their arousal level, which is naturally too
low, whereas introverts, who have naturally high arousal, do not desire to
engage in social activities because they are overly stimulating.

The fundamental work on trait dimensions conducted by Allport, Cattell,

Eysenck, and many others has led to contemporary trait models, the most
important and well-validated of which is the Five-Factor (Big Five) Model
of Personality. According to this model, there are five fundamental
underlying trait dimensions that are stable across time, cross-culturally
shared, and explain a substantial proportion of behavior (Costa & McCrae,
1992; Goldberg, 1982). As you can see in Table 11.2 “The Five Factors of
the Five-Factor Model of Personality”, the five dimensions (sometimes
known as the “Big Five”) are agreeableness, conscientiousness,
extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience. (You can remember
them using the watery acronyms CANOE or OCEAN.)

Table 11.2 The Five Factors of the Five-Factor Model of Personality

 Examples of behaviors
Dimension Sample items Description
predicted by the trait

Individuals who are highly

open to experience tend to
“I have a vivid A general appreciation
have distinctive and
imagination”; “I for art, emotion,
unconventional decorations
Openness to have a rich adventure, unusual
in their home. They are also
experience vocabulary”; “I ideas, imagination,
likely to have books on a
have excellent curiosity, and variety of
wide variety of topics, a
ideas.” experience
diverse music collection, and
works of art on display.

“I am always
A tendency to show Individuals who are
prepared”; “I am
self-discipline, act conscientious have a
Conscientiousness exacting in my
dutifully, and aim for preference for planned rather
work”; “I follow a
achievement than spontaneous behavior.
schedule.”

“I am the life of the

The tendency to
party”; “I feel Extroverts enjoy being with
experience positive
comfortable around people. In groups they like to
Extraversion emotions and to seek
people”; “I talk to talk, assert themselves, and
out stimulation and the
a lot of different draw attention to themselves.
company of others
people at parties.”
 Examples of behaviors
Dimension Sample items Description
predicted by the trait

A tendency to be
compassionate and Agreeable individuals value
“I am interested in cooperative rather than getting along with others.
people”; “I feel suspicious and They are generally
Agreeableness others’ emotions”; antagonistic toward considerate, friendly,
“I make people feel others; reflects generous, helpful, and
at ease.” individual differences in willing to compromise their
general concern for interests with those of others.
social harmony

Those who score high in

neuroticism are more likely
The tendency to to interpret ordinary
“I am not usually
experience negative situations as threatening and
relaxed”; “I get
emotions, such as anger, minor frustrations as
Neuroticism upset easily”; “I
anxiety, or depression; hopelessly difficult. They
am easily
sometimes called may have trouble thinking
disturbed”
“emotional instability” clearly, making decisions,
and coping effectively with
stress.

A large body of research evidence has supported the five-factor model. The
Big Five dimensions seem to be cross-cultural, because the same five
factors have been identified in participants in China, Japan, Italy, Hungary,
Turkey, and many other countries (Triandis & Suh, 2002). The Big Five
dimensions also accurately predict behavior. For instance, a pattern of high
conscientiousness, low neuroticism, and high agreeableness predicts
successful job performance (Tett, Jackson, & Rothstein, 1991). Scores on
the Big Five dimensions also predict the performance of U.S. presidents;
ratings of openness to experience are correlated positively with ratings of
presidential success, whereas ratings of agreeableness are correlated
negatively with success (Rubenzer, Faschingbauer, & Ones, 2000). The Big
Five factors are also increasingly being used in helping researchers
understand the dimensions of psychological disorders such as anxiety and
depression (Oldham, 2010; Saulsman & Page, 2004).

An advantage of the five-factor approach is that it is parsimonious. Rather

than studying hundreds of traits, researchers can focus on only five
underlying dimensions. The Big Five may also capture other dimensions
that have been of interest to psychologists. For instance, the trait dimension
of need for achievement relates to the Big Five variable of
conscientiousness, and self-esteem relates to low neuroticism. On the other
hand, the Big Five factors do not seem to capture all the important
dimensions of personality. For instance, the Big Five does not capture moral
behavior, although this variable is important in many theories of personality.
And there is evidence that the Big Five factors are not exactly the same
across all cultures (Cheung & Leung, 1998).

Situational Influences on Personality

One challenge to the trait approach to personality is that traits may not be as
stable as we think they are. When we say that Malik is friendly, we mean
that Malik is friendly today and will be friendly tomorrow and even next
week. And we mean that Malik is friendlier than average in all situations.
But what if Malik were found to behave in a friendly way with his family
members but to be unfriendly with his fellow classmates? This would clash
with the idea that traits are stable across time and situation.
The psychologist Walter Mischel (1968) reviewed the existing literature on
traits and found that there was only a relatively low correlation (about r =
.30) between the traits that a person expressed in one situation and those that
they expressed in other situations. In one relevant study, Hartshorne, May,
Maller, & Shuttleworth (1928) examined the correlations among various
behavioral indicators of honesty in children. They also enticed children to
behave either honestly or dishonestly in different situations, for instance, by
making it easy or difficult for them to steal and cheat. The correlations
among children’s behavior was low, generally less than r = .30, showing
that children who steal in one situation are not always the same children
who steal in a different situation. And similar low correlations were found in
adults on other measures, including dependency, friendliness, and
conscientiousness (Bem & Allen, 1974).

Psychologists have proposed two possibilities for these low correlations.

One possibility is that the natural tendency for people to see traits in others
leads us to believe that people have stable personalities when they really do
not. In short, perhaps traits are more in the heads of the people who are
doing the judging than they are in the behaviors of the people being
observed. The fact that people tend to use human personality traits, such as
the Big Five, to judge animals in the same way that they use these traits to
judge humans is consistent with this idea (Gosling, 2001). And this idea also
fits with research showing that people use their knowledge representation
(schemas) about people to help them interpret the world around them and
that these schemas color their judgments of others’ personalities (Fiske &
Taylor, 2007).

Research has also shown that people tend to see more traits in other people
than they do in themselves. You might be able to get a feeling for this by
taking the following short quiz. First, think about a person you know—your
mom, your roommate, or a classmate—and choose which of the three
responses on each of the four lines best describes him or her. Then answer
the questions again, but this time about yourself.

1. Energetic Relaxed Depends on the situation

2. Skeptical Trusting Depends on the situation

3. Quiet Talkative Depends on the situation

4. Intense Calm Depends on the situation

Richard Nisbett and his colleagues (Nisbett, Caputo, Legant, & Marecek,
1973) had college students complete this same task for themselves, for their
best friend, for their father, and for the (at the time well-known) newscaster
Walter Cronkite. As you can see in Figure 11.3 “We Tend to Overestimate
the Traits of Others.”, the participants chose one of the two trait terms more
often for other people than they did for themselves, and chose “depends on
the situation” more frequently for themselves than they did for the other
people. These results also suggest that people may perceive more consistent
traits in others than they should.

Figure 11.3 We Tend to Overestimate the Traits of Others.

Nisbett, Caputo, Legant, and Marecek (1973) found that participants checked off a trait term (such as
“energetic” or “talkative”) rather than “depends on the situation” less often when asked to describe

themselves than when asked to describe others.

Adapted from Nisbett, R. E., Caputo, C., Legant, P., & Marecek, J. (1973). Behavior as seen by the actor

and as seen by the observer. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27(2), 154–164.

The human tendency to perceive traits is so strong that it is very easy to

convince people that trait descriptions of themselves are accurate. Imagine
that you had completed a personality test and the psychologist administering
the measure gave you this description of your personality:
You have a great need for other people to like and admire you. You have a tendency to
be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused capacity, which you have not
turned to your advantage. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are
generally able to compensate for them. Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you
tend to be worrisome and insecure inside. At times you have serious doubts as to
whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.

I would imagine that you might find that it described you. You probably do
criticize yourself at least sometimes, and you probably do sometimes worry
about things. The problem is that you would most likely have found some
truth in a personality description that was the opposite. Could this
description fit you too?
You frequently stand up for your own opinions even if it means that others may judge
you negatively. You have a tendency to find the positives in your own behavior. You
work to the fullest extent of your capabilities. You have few personality weaknesses,
but some may show up under stress. You sometimes confide in others that you are
concerned or worried, but inside you maintain discipline and self-control. You generally
believe that you have made the right decision and done the right thing.

The Barnum effect refers to the observation that people tend to believe in
descriptions of their personality that supposedly are descriptive of them but
could in fact describe almost anyone. The Barnum effect helps us
understand why many people believe in astrology, horoscopes, fortune-
telling, palm reading, tarot card reading, and even some personality tests.
People are likely to accept descriptions of their personality if they think that
they have been written for them, even though they cannot distinguish their
own tarot card or horoscope readings from those of others at better than
chance levels (Hines, 2003). Again, people seem to believe in traits more
than they should.

Figure 11.4

The popularity of tarot card reading, crystal ball reading,

horoscopes, palm reading, and other techniques shows the

human propensity to believe in traits.

Conny Sandland – Fortune teller in Little India, Klang,

Malaysia – CC BY-NC 2.0; thaths – Tarot cards on a Thai

fortune teller’s table – CC BY-NC 2.0.

A second way that psychologists responded to Mischel’s findings was by

searching even more carefully for the existence of traits. One insight was
that the relationship between a trait and a behavior is less than perfect
because people can express their traits in different ways (Mischel & Shoda,
2008). People high in extraversion, for instance, may become teachers,
salesmen, actors, or even criminals. Although the behaviors are very
different, they nevertheless all fit with the meaning of the underlying trait.

Psychologists also found that, because people do behave differently in

different situations, personality will only predict behavior when the
behaviors are aggregated or averaged across different situations. We might
not be able to use the personality trait of openness to experience to
determine what Saul will do on Friday night, but we can use it to predict
what he will do over the next year in a variety of situations. When many
measurements of behavior are combined, there is much clearer evidence for
the stability of traits and for the effects of traits on behavior (Roberts &
DelVecchio, 2000; Srivastava, John, Gosling, & Potter, 2003).

Taken together, these findings make a very important point about

personality, which is that it not only comes from inside us but is also shaped
by the situations that we are exposed to. Personality is derived from our
interactions with and observations of others, from our interpretations of
those interactions and observations, and from our choices of which social
situations we prefer to enter or avoid (Bandura, 1986). In fact, behaviorists
such as B. F. Skinner explain personality entirely in terms of the
environmental influences that the person has experienced. Because we are
profoundly influenced by the situations that we are exposed to, our behavior
does change from situation to situation, making personality less stable than
we might expect. And yet personality does matter—we can, in many cases,
use personality measures to predict behavior across situations.

The MMPI and Projective Tests

One of the most important measures of personality (which is used primarily

to assess deviations from a “normal” or “average” personality) is the
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), a test used
around the world to identify personality and psychological disorders
(Tellegen et al., 2003). The MMPI was developed by creating a list of more
than 1,000 true-false questions and choosing those that best differentiated
patients with different psychological disorders from other people. The
current version (the MMPI-2) has more than 500 questions, and the items
can be combined into a large number of different subscales. Some of the
most important of these are shown in Table 11.3 “Some of the Major
Subscales of the MMPI”, but there are also scales that represent family
problems, work attitudes, and many other dimensions. The MMPI also has
questions that are designed to detect the tendency of the respondents to lie,
fake, or simply not answer the questions.

Table 11.3 Some of the Major Subscales of the MMPI

No. of
Abbreviation Description What is measured
items

Hs Hypochondriasis Concern with bodily symptoms 32

D Depression Depressive symptoms 57

Hy Hysteria Awareness of problems and vulnerabilities 60

Conflict, struggle, anger, respect for

Pd Psychopathic deviate 50
society’s rules

Stereotypical masculine or feminine

MF Masculinity/femininity 56
interests/behaviors

Pa Paranoia Level of trust, suspiciousness, sensitivity 40

Worry, anxiety, tension, doubts,

Pt Psychasthenia 48
obsessiveness

Sc Schizophrenia Odd thinking and social alienation 78

Ma Hypomania Level of excitability 46

Si Social introversion People orientation 69

To interpret the results, the clinician looks at the pattern of responses across
the different subscales and makes a diagnosis about the potential
psychological problems facing the patient. Although clinicians prefer to
interpret the patterns themselves, a variety of research has demonstrated that
computers can often interpret the results as well as can clinicians (Garb,
1998; Karon, 2000). Extensive research has found that the MMPI-2 can
accurately predict which of many different psychological disorders a person
suffers from (Graham, 2006).

One potential problem with a measure like the MMPI is that it asks people
to consciously report on their inner experiences. But much of our
personality is determined by unconscious processes of which we are only
vaguely or not at all aware. Projective measures are measures of
personality in which unstructured stimuli, such as inkblots, drawings of
social situations, or incomplete sentences, are shown to participants, who
are asked to freely list what comes to mind as they think about the stimuli.
Experts then score the responses for clues to personality. The proposed
advantage of these tests is that they are more indirect—they allow the
respondent to freely express whatever comes to mind, including perhaps the
contents of their unconscious experiences.

One commonly used projective test is the Rorschach Inkblot Test, developed
by the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach (1884–1922). The Rorschach
Inkblot Test is a projective measure of personality in which the respondent
indicates his or her thoughts about a series of 10 symmetrical inkblots
(Figure 11.5 “Rorschach Inkblots”). The Rorschach is administered millions
of time every year. The participants are asked to respond to the inkblots, and
their responses are systematically scored in terms of what, where, and why
they saw what they saw. For example, people who focus on the details of the
inkblots may have obsessive-compulsive tendencies, whereas those who
talk about sex or aggression may have sexual or aggressive problems.
Figure 11.5 Rorschach Inkblots

The Rorschach Inkblot Test is a projective test

designed to assess psychological disorders.

Dominic Alves – Fuji Butterfly – CC BY 2.0.

Another frequently administered projective test is the Thematic

Apperception Test (TAT), developed by the psychologist Henry Murray
(1893–1988). The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is a projective
measure of personality in which the respondent is asked to create stories
about sketches of ambiguous situations, most of them of people, either alone
or with others (Figure 11.6 “Sample Card From the TAT”). The sketches are
shown to individuals, who are asked to tell a story about what is happening
in the picture. The TAT assumes that people may be unwilling or unable to
admit their true feelings when asked directly but that these feelings will
show up in the stories about the pictures. Trained coders read the stories and
use them to develop a personality profile of the respondent.

Other popular projective tests include those that ask the respondent to draw
pictures, such as the Draw-A-Person test (Machover, 1949), and free
association tests in which the respondent quickly responds with the first
word that comes to mind when the examiner says a test word. Another
approach is the use of “anatomically correct” dolls that feature
representations of the male and female genitals. Investigators allow children
to play with the dolls and then try to determine on the basis of the play if the
children may have been sexually abused.

The advantage of projective tests is that they are less direct, allowing people
to avoid using their defense mechanisms and therefore show their “true”
personality. The idea is that when people view ambiguous stimuli they will
describe them according to the aspects of personality that are most
important to them, and therefore bypass some of the limitations of more
conscious responding.

Despite their widespread use, however, the empirical evidence supporting

the use of projective tests is mixed (Karon, 2000; Wood, Nezworski,
Lilienfeld, & Garb, 2003). The reliability of the measures is low because
people often produce very different responses on different occasions. The
construct validity of the measures is also suspect because there are very few
consistent associations between Rorschach scores or TAT scores and most
personality traits. The projective tests often fail to distinguish between
people with psychological disorders and those without or to correlate with
other measures of personality or with behavior.

In sum, projective tests are more useful as icebreakers to get to know a

person better, to make the person feel comfortable, and to get some ideas
about topics that may be of importance to that person than for accurately
diagnosing personality.

Psychology in Everyday Life: Leaders and Leadership

One trait that has been studied in thousands of studies is leadership, the ability to direct or
inspire others to achieve goals. Trait theories of leadership are theories based on the idea that
some people are simply “natural leaders” because they possess personality characteristics that
make them effective (Zaccaro, 2007). Consider Bill Gates, the founder of the Microsoft
Corporation, shown in Figure 11.7 “Varieties of Leaders”. What characteristics do you think he
possessed that allowed him to create such a strong company, even though many similar
companies failed?

Figure 11.7 Varieties of Leaders

Which personality traits do you think characterize these

leaders?

[1]

Research has found that being intelligent is an important characteristic of leaders, as long as the
leader communicates to others in a way that is easily understood by his or her followers
(Simonton, 1994, 1995). Other research has found that people with good social skills, such as the
ability to accurately perceive the needs and goals of the group members and to communicate
with others, also tend to make good leaders (Kenny & Zaccaro, 1983).

Because so many characteristics seem to be related to leader skills, some researchers have
attempted to account for leadership not in terms of individual traits, but rather in terms of a
package of traits that successful leaders seem to have. Some have considered this in terms of
charisma (Sternberg & Lubart, 1995; Sternberg, 2002). Charismatic leaders are leaders who
are enthusiastic, committed, and self-confident; who tend to talk about the importance of group
goals at a broad level; and who make personal sacrifices for the group. Charismatic leaders
express views that support and validate existing group norms but that also contain a vision of
what the group could or should be. Charismatic leaders use their referent power to motivate,
uplift, and inspire others. And research has found a positive relationship between a leader’s
charisma and effective leadership performance (Simonton, 1988).

Another trait-based approach to leadership is based on the idea that leaders take either
transactional or transformational leadership styles with their subordinates (Bass, 1999; Pieterse,
Van Knippenberg, Schippers, & Stam, 2010). Transactional leaders are the more regular leaders,
who work with their subordinates to help them understand what is required of them and to get
the job done. Transformational leaders, on the other hand, are more like charismatic leaders—
they have a vision of where the group is going, and attempt to stimulate and inspire their workers
to move beyond their present status and to create a new and better future.

Despite the fact that there appear to be at least some personality traits that relate to leadership
ability, the most important approaches to understanding leadership take into consideration both
the personality characteristics of the leader as well as the situation in which the leader is
operating. In some cases the situation itself is important. For instance, you might remember that
President George W. Bush’s ratings as a leader increased dramatically after the September 11,
2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. This is a classic example of how a situation
can influence the perceptions of a leader’s skill.

In still other cases, different types of leaders may perform differently in different situations.
Leaders whose personalities lead them to be more focused on fostering harmonious social
relationships among the members of the group, for instance, are particularly effective in
situations in which the group is already functioning well and yet it is important to keep the group
members engaged in the task and committed to the group outcomes. Leaders who are more task-
oriented and directive, on the other hand, are more effective when the group is not functioning
well and needs a firm hand to guide it (Ayman, Chemers, & Fiedler, 1995).

Key Takeaways

Personality is an individual’s consistent patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving.

Personality is driven in large part by underlying individual motivations, where

motivation refers to a need or desire that directs behavior.

Early theories assumed that personality was expressed in people’s physical

appearance. One of these approaches, known as physiognomy, has been validated by
 current research.

Personalities are characterized in terms of traits—relatively enduring characteristics

that influence our behavior across many situations.

The most important and well-validated theory about the traits of normal personality
is the Five-Factor Model of Personality.

There is often only a low correlation between the specific traits that a person
expresses in one situation and those that he expresses in other situations. This is in
part because people tend to see more traits in other people than they do in
themselves. Personality predicts behavior better when the behaviors are aggregated
or averaged across different situations.

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is the most important

measure of psychological disorders.

Projective measures are measures of personality in which unstructured stimuli, such

as inkblots, drawings of social situations, or incomplete sentences are shown to
participants, who are asked to freely list what comes to mind as they think about the
stimuli. Despite their widespread use, however, the empirical evidence supporting
the use of projective tests is mixed.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Consider your own personality and those of people you know. What traits do you
enjoy in other people, and what traits do you dislike?

2. Consider some of the people who have had an important influence on you. What
were the personality characteristics of these people that made them so influential?
References

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Ayman, R., Chemers, M. M., & Fiedler, F. (1995). The contingency model
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Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social

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11.2 The Origins of Personality

Learning Objectives

1. Describe the strengths and limitations of the psychodynamic approach to explaining

personality.

2. Summarize the accomplishments of the neo-Freudians.

3. Identify the major contributions of the humanistic approach to understanding

personality.

Although measures such as the Big Five and the Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory (MMPI) are able to effectively assess personality,
they do not say much about where personality comes from. In this section
we will consider two major theories of the origin of personality:
psychodynamic and humanistic approaches.

Psychodynamic Theories of Personality: The

Role of the Unconscious

One of the most important psychological approaches to understanding

personality is based on the theorizing of the Austrian physician and
psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), who founded what today is
known as the psychodynamic approach to understanding personality.
Many people know about Freud because his work has had a huge impact on
our everyday thinking about psychology, and the psychodynamic approach
is one of the most important approaches to psychological therapy
(Roudinesco, 2003; Taylor, 2009). Freud is probably the best known of all
psychologists, in part because of his impressive observation and analyses of
personality (there are 24 volumes of his writings). As is true of all theories,
many of Freud’s ingenious ideas have turned out to be at least partially
incorrect, and yet other aspects of his theories are still influencing
psychology.

Freud was influenced by the work of the French neurologist Jean-Martin

Charcot (1825–1893), who had been interviewing patients (almost all
women) who were experiencing what was at the time known as hysteria.
Although it is no longer used to describe a psychological disorder, hysteria
at the time referred to a set of personality and physical symptoms that
included chronic pain, fainting, seizures, and paralysis.

Charcot could find no biological reason for the symptoms. For instance,
some women experienced a loss of feeling in their hands and yet not in their
arms, and this seemed impossible given that the nerves in the arms are the
same that are in the hands. Charcot was experimenting with the use of
hypnosis, and he and Freud found that under hypnosis many of the
hysterical patients reported having experienced a traumatic sexual
experience, such as sexual abuse, as children (Dolnick, 1998).

Freud and Charcot also found that during hypnosis the remembering of the
trauma was often accompanied by an outpouring of emotion, known as
catharsis, and that following the catharsis the patient’s symptoms were
frequently reduced in severity. These observations led Freud and Charcot to
conclude that these disorders were caused by psychological rather than
physiological factors.

Freud used the observations that he and Charcot had made to develop his
theory regarding the sources of personality and behavior, and his insights
are central to the fundamental themes of psychology. In terms of free will,
Freud did not believe that we were able to control our own behaviors.
Rather, he believed that all behaviors are predetermined by motivations that
lie outside our awareness, in the unconscious. These forces show themselves
in our dreams, in neurotic symptoms such as obsessions, while we are under
hypnosis, and in Freudian “slips of the tongue” in which people reveal their
unconscious desires in language. Freud argued that we rarely understand
why we do what we do, although we can make up explanations for our
behaviors after the fact. For Freud the mind was like an iceberg, with the
many motivations of the unconscious being much larger, but also out of
sight, in comparison to the consciousness of which we are aware (Figure
11.8 “Mind as Iceberg”).

Figure 11.8 Mind as Iceberg

In Sigmund Freud’s conceptualization of personality, the most important motivations are unconscious, just

as the major part of an iceberg is under water.

Id, Ego, and Superego

Freud proposed that the mind is divided into three components: id, ego, and
superego, and that the interactions and conflicts among the components
create personality (Freud, 1923/1943). According to Freudian theory, the id
is the component of personality that forms the basis of our most primitive
impulses. The id is entirely unconscious, and it drives our most important
motivations, including the sexual drive (libido) and the aggressive or
destructive drive (Thanatos). According to Freud, the id is driven by the
pleasure principle—the desire for immediate gratification of our sexual and
aggressive urges. The id is why we smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, view
pornography, tell mean jokes about people, and engage in other fun or
harmful behaviors, often at the cost of doing more productive activities.

In stark contrast to the id, the superego represents our sense of morality and
oughts. The superego tell us all the things that we shouldn’t do, or the duties
and obligations of society. The superego strives for perfection, and when we
fail to live up to its demands we feel guilty.

In contrast to the id, which is about the pleasure principle, the function of
the ego is based on the reality principle—the idea that we must delay
gratification of our basic motivations until the appropriate time with the
appropriate outlet. The ego is the largely conscious controller or decision-
maker of personality. The ego serves as the intermediary between the
desires of the id and the constraints of society contained in the superego
(Figure 11.9 “Ego, Id, and Superego in Interaction”). We may wish to
scream, yell, or hit, and yet our ego normally tells us to wait, reflect, and
choose a more appropriate response.

Figure 11.9 Ego, Id, and Superego in Interaction

Freud believed that psychological disorders, and particularly the experience
of anxiety, occur when there is conflict or imbalance among the motivations
of the id, ego, and superego. When the ego finds that the id is pressing too
hard for immediate pleasure, it attempts to correct for this problem, often
through the use of defense mechanisms—unconscious psychological
strategies used to cope with anxiety and to maintain a positive self-image.
Freud believed that the defense mechanisms were essential for effective
coping with everyday life, but that any of them could be overused (Table
11.4 “The Major Freudian Defense Mechanisms”).

Table 11.4 The Major Freudian Defense Mechanisms

Defense
Definition Possible behavioral example
mechanism

A student who is angry at her professor

Diverting threatening impulses away
for a low grade lashes out at her
Displacement from the source of the anxiety and
roommate, who is a safer target of her
toward a more acceptable source
anger.

A man with powerful unconscious

Disguising threatening impulses by
Projection sexual desires for women claims that
attributing them to others
women use him as a sex object.

Generating self-justifying A drama student convinces herself that

Rationalization explanations for our negative getting the part in the play wasn’t that
behaviors important after all.

Jane is sexually attracted to friend Jake,

Reaction Making unacceptable motivations
but she claims in public that she
formation appear as their exact opposite
intensely dislikes him.

Retreating to an earlier, more A college student who is worried about

Regression childlike, and safer stage of an important test begins to suck on his
development finger.

A person who witnesses his parents

Repression (or Pushing anxiety-arousing thoughts
having sex is later unable to remember
denial) into the unconscious
anything about the event.

A person participates in sports to

Channeling unacceptable sexual or
sublimate aggressive drives. A person
Sublimation aggressive desires into acceptable
creates music or art to sublimate sexual
activities
drives.

The most controversial, and least scientifically valid, part of Freudian theory
is its explanations of personality development. Freud argued that personality
is developed through a series of psychosexual stages, each focusing on
pleasure from a different part of the body (Table 11.5 “Freud’s Stages of
Psychosexual Development”). Freud believed that sexuality begins in
infancy, and that the appropriate resolution of each stage has implications
for later personality development.

Table 11.5 Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development

Approximate
Stage Description
ages

Birth to 18 Pleasure comes from the mouth in the form of sucking, biting, and
Oral
months chewing.

18 months to 3 Pleasure comes from bowel and bladder elimination and the
Anal
years constraints of toilet training.

Pleasure comes from the genitals, and the conflict is with sexual
Phallic 3 years to 6 years
desires for the opposite-sex parent.

Latency 6 years to puberty Sexual feelings are less important.

If prior stages have been properly reached, mature sexual

Genital Puberty and older
orientation develops.

In the first of Freud’s proposed stages of psychosexual development, which

begins at birth and lasts until about 18 months of age, the focus is on the
mouth. During this oral stage, the infant obtains sexual pleasure by sucking
and drinking. Infants who receive either too little or too much gratification
become fixated or “locked” in the oral stage, and are likely to regress to
these points of fixation under stress, even as adults. According to Freud, a
child who receives too little oral gratification (e.g., who was underfed or
neglected) will become orally dependent as an adult and be likely to
manipulate others to fulfill his or her needs rather than becoming
independent. On the other hand, the child who was overfed or overly
gratified will resist growing up and try to return to the prior state of
dependency by acting helpless, demanding satisfaction from others, and
acting in a needy way.

The anal stage, lasting from about 18 months to 3 years of age is when
children first experience psychological conflict. During this stage children
desire to experience pleasure through bowel movements, but they are also
being toilet trained to delay this gratification. Freud believed that if this
toilet training was either too harsh or too lenient, children would become
fixated in the anal stage and become likely to regress to this stage under
stress as adults. If the child received too little anal gratification (i.e., if the
parents had been very harsh about toilet training), the adult personality will
be anal retentive—stingy, with a compulsive seeking of order and tidiness.
On the other hand, if the parents had been too lenient, the anal expulsive
personality results, characterized by a lack of self-control and a tendency
toward messiness and carelessness.

The phallic stage, which lasts from age 3 to age 6 is when the penis (for
boys) and clitoris (for girls) become the primary erogenous zone for sexual
pleasure. During this stage, Freud believed that children develop a powerful
but unconscious attraction for the opposite-sex parent, as well as a desire to
eliminate the same-sex parent as a rival. Freud based his theory of sexual
development in boys (the “Oedipus complex”) on the Greek mythological
character Oedipus, who unknowingly killed his father and married his
mother, and then put his own eyes out when he learned what he had done.
Freud argued that boys will normally eventually abandon their love of the
mother, and instead identify with the father, also taking on the father’s
personality characteristics, but that boys who do not successfully resolve the
Oedipus complex will experience psychological problems later in life.
Although it was not as important in Freud’s theorizing, in girls the phallic
stage is often termed the “Electra complex,” after the Greek character who
avenged her father’s murder by killing her mother. Freud believed that girls
frequently experienced penis envy, the sense of deprivation supposedly
experienced by girls because they do not have a penis.

The latency stage is a period of relative calm that lasts from about 6 years to
12 years. During this time, Freud believed that sexual impulses were
repressed, leading boys and girls to have little or no interest in members of
the opposite sex.

The fifth and last stage, the genital stage, begins about 12 years of age and
lasts into adulthood. According to Freud, sexual impulses return during this
time frame, and if development has proceeded normally to this point, the
child is able to move into the development of mature romantic relationships.
But if earlier problems have not been appropriately resolved, difficulties
with establishing intimate love attachments are likely.

Freud’s Followers: The Neo-Freudians

Freudian theory was so popular that it led to a number of followers,

including many of Freud’s own students, who developed, modified, and
expanded his theories. Taken together, these approaches are known as neo-
Freudian theories. The neo-Freudian theories are theories based on
Freudian principles that emphasize the role of the unconscious and early
experience in shaping personality but place less evidence on sexuality as the
primary motivating force in personality and are more optimistic concerning
the prospects for personality growth and change in personality in adults.

Alfred Adler (1870–1937) was a follower of Freud who developed his own
interpretation of Freudian theory. Adler proposed that the primary
motivation in human personality was not sex or aggression, but rather the
striving for superiority. According to Adler, we desire to be better than
others and we accomplish this goal by creating a unique and valuable life.
We may attempt to satisfy our need for superiority through our school or
professional accomplishments, or by our enjoyment of music, athletics, or
other activities that seem important to us.

Adler believed that psychological disorders begin in early childhood. He

argued that children who are either overly nurtured or overly neglected by
their parents are later likely to develop an inferiority complex—a
psychological state in which people feel that they are not living up to
expectations, leading them to have low self-esteem, with a tendency to try to
overcompensate for the negative feelings. People with an inferiority
complex often attempt to demonstrate their superiority to others at all costs,
even if it means humiliating, dominating, or alienating them. According to
Adler, most psychological disorders result from misguided attempts to
compensate for the inferiority complex in order meet the goal of superiority.

Carl Jung (1875–1961) was another student of Freud who developed his
own theories about personality. Jung agreed with Freud about the power of
the unconscious but felt that Freud overemphasized the importance of
sexuality. Jung argued that in addition to the personal unconscious, there
was also a collective unconscious, or a collection of shared ancestral
memories. Jung believed that the collective unconscious contains a variety
of archetypes, or cross-culturally universal symbols, which explain the
similarities among people in their emotional reactions to many stimuli.
Important archetypes include the mother, the goddess, the hero, and the
mandala or circle, which Jung believed symbolized a desire for wholeness
or unity. For Jung, the underlying motivation that guides successful
personality is self-realization, or learning about and developing the self to
the fullest possible extent.

Karen Horney (the last syllable of her last name rhymes with “eye”; 1855–
1952), was a German physician who applied Freudian theories to create a
personality theory that she thought was more balanced between men and
women. Horney believed that parts of Freudian theory, and particularly the
ideas of the Oedipus complex and penis envy, were biased against women.
Horney argued that women’s sense of inferiority was not due to their lack of
a penis but rather to their dependency on men, an approach that the culture
made it difficult for them to break from. For Horney, the underlying
motivation that guides personality development is the desire for security, the
ability to develop appropriate and supportive relationships with others.

Another important neo-Freudian was Erich Fromm (1900–1980). Fromm’s

focus was on the negative impact of technology, arguing that the increases
in its use have led people to feel increasingly isolated from others. Fromm
believed that the independence that technology brings us also creates the
need “escape from freedom,” that is, to become closer to others.

Research Focus: How the Fear of Death Causes Aggressive Behavior

Fromm believed that the primary human motivation was to escape the fear of death, and
contemporary research has shown how our concerns about dying can influence our behavior. In
this research, people have been made to confront their death by writing about it or otherwise
being reminded of it, and effects on their behavior are then observed. In one relevant study,
McGregor et al. (1998) demonstrated that people who are provoked may be particularly
aggressive after they have been reminded of the possibility of their own death. The participants
in the study had been selected, on the basis of prior reporting, to have either politically liberal or
politically conservative views. When they arrived at the lab they were asked to write a short
paragraph describing their opinion of politics in the United States. In addition, half of the
participants (the mortality salient condition) were asked to “briefly describe the emotions that
the thought of your own death arouses in you” and to “jot down as specifically as you can, what
you think will happen to you as you physically die, and once you are physically dead.”
Participants in the exam control condition also thought about a negative event, but not one
associated with a fear of death. They were instructed to “please briefly describe the emotions that
the thought of your next important exam arouses in you” and to “jot down as specifically as you
can, what you think will happen to you as you physically take your next exam, and once you are
physically taking your next exam.”

Then the participants read the essay that had supposedly just been written by another person.
(The other person did not exist, but the participants didn’t know this until the end of the
experiment.) The essay that they read had been prepared by the experimenters to be very
negative toward politically liberal views or to be very negative toward politically conservative
views. Thus one-half of the participants were provoked by the other person by reading a
statement that strongly conflicted with their own political beliefs, whereas the other half read an
essay in which the other person’s views supported their own (liberal or conservative) beliefs.

At this point the participants moved on to what they thought was a completely separate study in
which they were to be tasting and giving their impression of some foods. Furthermore, they were
told that it was necessary for the participants in the research to administer the food samples to
each other. At this point, the participants found out that the food they were going to be sampling
was spicy hot sauce and that they were going to be administering the sauce to the very person
whose essay they had just read. In addition, the participants read some information about the
other person that indicated that he very much disliked eating spicy food. Participants were given
a taste of the hot sauce (it was really hot!) and then instructed to place a quantity of it into a cup
for the other person to sample. Furthermore, they were told that the other person would have to
eat all the sauce.

As you can see in Figure 11.10 “Aggression as a Function of Mortality Salience and
Provocation”, McGregor et al. found that the participants who had not been reminded of their
own death, even if they had been insulted by the partner, did not retaliate by giving him a lot of
hot sauce to eat. On the other hand, the participants who were both provoked by the other person
and who had also been reminded of their own death administered significantly more hot sauce
 than did the participants in the other three conditions. McGregor et al. (1998) argued that
thinking about one’s own death creates a strong concern with maintaining one’s one cherished
worldviews (in this case our political beliefs). When we are concerned about dying we become
more motivated to defend these important beliefs from the challenges made by others, in this
case by aggressing through the hot sauce.

Figure 11.10 Aggression as a Function of Mortality Salience and Provocation

Participants who had been provoked by a stranger who disagreed with them on important opinions, and

who had also been reminded of their own death, administered significantly more unpleasant hot sauce to

the partner than did the participants in the other three conditions.

Adapted from McGregor, H. A., Lieberman, J. D., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Arndt, J., Simon, L.,…

Pyszczynski, T. (1998). Terror management and aggression: Evidence that mortality salience motivates

aggression against worldview-threatening others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(3),

590–605.

Strengths and Limitations of Freudian and

Neo-Freudian Approaches

Freud has probably exerted a greater impact on the public’s understanding

of personality than any other thinker, and he has also in large part defined
the field of psychology. Although Freudian psychologists no longer talk
about oral, anal, or genital “fixations,” they do continue to believe that our
childhood experiences and unconscious motivations shape our personalities
and our attachments with others, and they still make use of psychodynamic
concepts when they conduct psychological therapy.

Nevertheless, Freud’s theories, as well as those of the neo-Freudians, have

in many cases failed to pass the test of empiricism, and as a result they are
less influential now than they have been in the past (Crews, 1998). The
problems are first, that it has proved to be difficult to rigorously test
Freudian theory because the predictions that it makes (particularly those
regarding defense mechanisms) are often vague and unfalsifiable, and
second, that the aspects of the theory that can be tested often have not
received much empirical support.

As examples, although Freud claimed that children exposed to overly harsh

toilet training would become fixated in the anal stage and thus be prone to
excessive neatness, stinginess, and stubbornness in adulthood, research has
found few reliable associations between toilet training practices and adult
personality (Fisher & Greenberg, 1996). And since the time of Freud, the
need to repress sexual desires would seem to have become much less
necessary as societies have tolerated a wider variety of sexual practices. And
yet the psychological disorders that Freud thought we caused by this
repression have not decreased.

There is also little scientific support for most of the Freudian defense
mechanisms. For example, studies have failed to yield evidence for the
existence of repression. People who are exposed to traumatic experiences in
war have been found to remember their traumas only too well (Kihlstrom,
1997). Although we may attempt to push information that is anxiety-
arousing into our unconscious, this often has the ironic effect of making us
think about the information even more strongly than if we hadn’t tried to
repress it (Newman, Duff, & Baumeister, 1997). It is true that children
remember little of their childhood experiences, but this seems to be true of
both negative as well as positive experiences, is true for animals as well, and
probably is better explained in terms of the brain’s inability to form long-
term memories than in terms of repression. On the other hand, Freud’s
important idea that expressing or talking through one’s difficulties can be
psychologically helpful has been supported in current research (Baddeley &
Pennebaker, 2009) and has become a mainstay of psychological therapy.

A particular problem for testing Freudian theories is that almost anything

that conflicts with a prediction based in Freudian theory can be explained
away in terms of the use of a defense mechanism. A man who expresses a
lot of anger toward his father may be seen via Freudian theory to be
experiencing the Oedipus complex, which includes conflict with the father.
But a man who expresses no anger at all toward the father also may be seen
as experiencing the Oedipus complex by repressing the anger. Because
Freud hypothesized that either was possible, but did not specify when
repression would or would not occur, the theory is difficult to falsify.

In terms of the important role of the unconscious, Freud seems to have been
at least in part correct. More and more research demonstrates that a large
part of everyday behavior is driven by processes that are outside our
conscious awareness (Kihlstrom, 1987). And yet, although our unconscious
motivations influence every aspect of our learning and behavior Freud
probably overestimated the extent to which these unconscious motivations
are primarily sexual and aggressive.

Taken together, it is fair to say that Freudian theory, like most psychological
theories, was not entirely correct and that it has had to be modified over
time as the results of new studies have become available. But the
fundamental ideas about personality that Freud proposed, as well as the use
of talk therapy as an essential component of therapy, are nevertheless still a
major part of psychology and are used by clinical psychologists every day.

Focusing on the Self: Humanism and Self-

Actualization

Psychoanalytic models of personality were complemented during the 1950s

and 1960s by the theories of humanistic psychologists. In contrast to the
proponents of psychoanalysis, humanists embraced the notion of free will.
Arguing that people are free to choose their own lives and make their own
decisions, humanistic psychologists focused on the underlying motivations
that they believed drove personality, focusing on the nature of the self-
concept, the set of beliefs about who we are, and self-esteem, our positive
feelings about the self.

One of the most important humanists, Abraham Maslow (1908–1970),

conceptualized personality in terms of a pyramid-shaped hierarchy of
motives (Figure 11.11 “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs”). At the base of the
pyramid are the lowest-level motivations, including hunger and thirst, and
safety and belongingness. Maslow argued that only when people are able to
meet the lower-level needs are they able to move on to achieve the higher-
level needs of self-esteem, and eventually self-actualization, which is the
motivation to develop our innate potential to the fullest possible extent.

Maslow studied how successful people, including Albert Einstein, Abraham

Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Helen Keller, and Mahatma Gandhi had
been able to lead such successful and productive lives. Maslow (1970)
believed that self-actualized people are creative, spontaneous, and loving of
themselves and others. They tend to have a few deep friendships rather than
many superficial ones, and are generally private. He felt that these
individuals do not need to conform to the opinions of others because they
are very confident and thus free to express unpopular opinions. Self-
actualized people are also likely to have peak experiences, or transcendent
moments of tranquility accompanied by a strong sense of connection with
others.

Figure 11.11 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Abraham Maslow conceptualized personality in terms of a hierarchy of needs. The highest of these

motivations is self-actualization.

Perhaps the best-known humanistic theorist is Carl Rogers (1902–1987).

Rogers was positive about human nature, viewing people as primarily moral
and helpful to others, and believed that we can achieve our full potential for
emotional fulfillment if the self-concept is characterized by unconditional
positive regard—a set of behaviors including being genuine, open to
experience, transparent, able to listen to others, and self-disclosing and
empathic. When we treat ourselves or others with unconditional positive
regard, we express understanding and support, even while we may
acknowledge failings. Unconditional positive regard allows us to admit our
fears and failures, to drop our pretenses, and yet at the same time to feel
completely accepted for what we are. The principle of unconditional
positive regard has become a foundation of psychological therapy; therapists
who use it in their practice are more effective than those who do not
(Prochaska & Norcross, 2007; Yalom, 1995).

Although there are critiques of the humanistic psychologists (e.g., that

Maslow focused on historically productive rather than destructive
personalities in his research and thus drew overly optimistic conclusions
about the capacity of people to do good), the ideas of humanism are so
powerful and optimistic that they have continued to influence both everyday
experiences as well as psychology. Today the positive psychology movement
argues for many of these ideas, and research has documented the extent to
which thinking positively and openly has important positive consequences
for our relationships, our life satisfaction, and our psychological and
physical health (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).

Research Focus: Self-Discrepancies, Anxiety, and Depression

Tory Higgins and his colleagues (Higgins, Bond, Klein, & Strauman, 1986; Strauman &
Higgins, 1988) have studied how different aspects of the self-concept relate to personality
characteristics. These researchers focused on the types of emotional distress that we might
experience as a result of how we are currently evaluating our self-concept. Higgins proposes that
the emotions we experience are determined both by our perceptions of how well our own
behaviors meet up to the standards and goals we have provided ourselves (our internal
standards) and by our perceptions of how others think about us (our external standards).
Furthermore, Higgins argues that different types of self-discrepancies lead to different types of
negative emotions.

In one of Higgins’s experiments (Higgins, Bond, Klein, & Strauman., 1986), participants were
first asked to describe themselves using a self-report measure. The participants listed 10 thoughts
that they thought described the kind of person they actually are; this is the actual self-concept.
Then, participants also listed 10 thoughts that they thought described the type of person they
would “ideally like to be” (the ideal self-concept) as well as 10 thoughts describing the way that
someone else—for instance, a parent—thinks they “ought to be” (the ought self-concept).

Higgins then divided his participants into two groups. Those with low self-concept discrepancies
were those who listed similar traits on all three lists. Their ideal, ought, and actual self-concepts
were all pretty similar and so they were not considered to be vulnerable to threats to their self-
concept. The other half of the participants, those with high self-concept discrepancies, were
those for whom the traits listed on the ideal and ought lists were very different from those listed
on the actual self list. These participants were expected to be vulnerable to threats to the self-
concept.

Then, at a later research session, Higgins first asked people to express their current emotions,
including those related to sadness and anxiety. After obtaining this baseline measure Higgins
activated either ideal or ought discrepancies for the participants. Participants in the ideal self-
discrepancy priming condition were asked to think about and discuss their own and their parents’
hopes and goals for them. Participants in the ought self-priming condition listed their own and
their parents’ beliefs concerning their duty and obligations. Then all participants again indicated
their current emotions.

As you can see in Figure 11.12 “Results From Higgins, Bond, Klein, and Strauman, 1986”, for
low self-concept discrepancy participants, thinking about their ideal or ought selves did not
much change their emotions. For high self-concept discrepancy participants, however, priming
the ideal self-concept increased their sadness and dejection, whereas priming the ought self-
concept increased their anxiety and agitation. These results are consistent with the idea that
discrepancies between the ideal and the actual self lead us to experience sadness, dissatisfaction,
and other depression-related emotions, whereas discrepancies between the actual and ought self
are more likely to lead to fear, worry, tension, and other anxiety-related emotions.

Figure 11.12 Results From Higgins, Bond, Klein, and Strauman, 1986

Higgins and his colleagues documented the impact of self-concept discrepancies on emotion. For

participants with low self-concept discrepancies (right bars), seeing words that related to the self had little

influence on emotions. For those with high self-concept discrepancies (left bars), priming the ideal self

increased dejection whereas priming the ought self increased agitation.

Adapted from Higgins, E. T., Bond, R. N., Klein, R., & Strauman, T. (1986). Self-discrepancies and

emotional vulnerability: How magnitude, accessibility, and type of discrepancy influence affect. Journal

of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(1), 5–15.

One of the critical aspects of Higgins’s approach is that, as is our personality, our feelings are
also influenced both by our own behavior and by our expectations of how other people view us.
This makes it clear that even though you might not care that much about achieving in school,
your failure to do well may still produce negative emotions because you realize that your parents
do think it is important.

Key Takeaways

One of the most important psychological approaches to understanding personality is

based on the psychodynamic approach to personality developed by Sigmund Freud.

For Freud the mind was like an iceberg, with the many motivations of the
unconscious being much larger, but also out of sight, in comparison to the
consciousness of which we are aware.

Freud proposed that the mind is divided into three components: id, ego, and
superego, and that the interactions and conflicts among the components create
personality.

Freud proposed that we use defense mechanisms to cope with anxiety and to
maintain a positive self-image.

Freud argued that personality is developed through a series of psychosexual stages,

each focusing on pleasure from a different part of the body.

The neo-Freudian theorists, including Adler, Jung, Horney, and Fromm, emphasized
the role of the unconscious and early experience in shaping personality, but placed
less evidence on sexuality as the primary motivating force in personality.

Psychoanalytic and behavioral models of personality were complemented during the

1950s and 1960s by the theories of humanistic psychologists, including Maslow and
Rogers.
 Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Based on your understanding of psychodynamic theories, how would you analyze

your own personality? Are there aspects of the theory that might help you explain
your own strengths and weaknesses?

2. Based on your understanding of humanistic theories, how would you try to change
your behavior to better meet the underlying motivations of security, acceptance, and
self-realization?

3. Consider your own self-concept discrepancies. Do you have an actual-ideal or

actual-ought discrepancy? Which one is more important for you, and why?

References

Baddeley, J. L., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2009). Expressive writing. In W. T.

O’Donohue & J. E. Fisher (Eds.), General principles and empirically
supported techniques of cognitive behavior therapy (pp. 295–299).
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Crews, F. C. (1998). Unauthorized Freud: Doubters confront a legend. New

York, NY: Viking Press.

Dolnick, E. (1998). Madness on the couch: Blaming the victim in the heyday
of psychoanalysis. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

Fisher, S., & Greenberg, R. P. (1996). Freud scientifically reappraised:

Testing the theories and therapy. Oxford, England: John Wiley & Sons.

Freud, S. (1923/1949). The ego and the id. London, England: Hogarth Press.
(Original work published 1923)

Higgins, E. T., Bond, R. N., Klein, R., & Strauman, T. (1986). Self-
discrepancies and emotional vulnerability: How magnitude, accessibility,
and type of discrepancy influence affect. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 51(1), 5–15.

Kihlstrom, J. F. (1987). The cognitive unconscious. Science, 237(4821),

1445–1452.

Kihlstrom, J. F. (1997). Memory, abuse, and science. American

Psychologist, 52(9), 994–995.

Maslow, Abraham (1970). Motivation and personality (2nd ed.). New York,
NY: Harper.

McGregor, H. A., Lieberman, J. D., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Arndt, J.,
Simon, L.,…Pyszczynski, T. (1998). Terror management and aggression:
Evidence that mortality salience motivates aggression against worldview-
threatening others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(3),
590–605.

Newman, L. S., Duff, K. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (1997). A new look at

defensive projection: Thought suppression, accessibility, and biased person
perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72(5), 980–1001.

Prochaska, J. O., & Norcross, J. C. (2007). Systems of psychotherapy: A

transtheoretical analysis (6th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole; Yalom,
I. (1995). Introduction. In C. Rogers, A way of being. (1980). New York,
NY: Houghton Mifflin.

Roudinesco, E. (2003). Why psychoanalysis? New York, NY: Columbia

University Press.
Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology:
An introduction. American Psychologist, 55(1), 5–14.

Strauman, T. J., & Higgins, E. T. (1988). Self-discrepancies as predictors of

vulnerability to distinct syndromes of chronic emotional distress. Journal of
Personality, 56(4), 685–707.

Taylor, E. (2009). The mystery of personality: A history of psychodynamic

theories. New York, NY: Springer Science + Business Media.
11.3 Is Personality More Nature or More
Nurture? Behavioral and Molecular Genetics

Learning Objectives

1. Explain how genes transmit personality from one generation to the next.

2. Outline the methods of behavioral genetics studies and the conclusions that we can draw
from them about the determinants of personality.

3. Explain how molecular genetics research helps us understand the role of genetics in
personality.

One question that is exceedingly important for the study of personality concerns
the extent to which it is the result of nature or nurture. If nature is more
important, then our personalities will form early in our lives and will be difficult
to change later. If nurture is more important, however, then our experiences are
likely to be particularly important, and we may be able to flexibly alter our
personalities over time. In this section we will see that the personality traits of
humans and animals are determined in large part by their genetic makeup, and
thus it is no surprise that identical twins Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein turned
out to be very similar even though they had been raised separately. But we will
also see that genetics does not determine everything.

In the nucleus of each cell in your body are 23 pairs of chromosomes. One of
each pair comes from your father, and the other comes from your mother. The
chromosomes are made up of strands of the molecule DNA (deoxyribonucleic
acid), and the DNA is grouped into segments known as genes. A gene is the
basic biological unit that transmits characteristics from one generation to the
next. Human cells have about 25,000 genes.
The genes of different members of the same species are almost identical. The
DNA in your genes, for instance, is about 99.9% the same as the DNA in my
genes and in the DNA of every other human being. These common genetic
structures lead members of the same species to be born with a variety of
behaviors that come naturally to them and that define the characteristics of the
species. These abilities and characteristics are known as instincts—complex
inborn patterns of behaviors that help ensure survival and reproduction
(Tinbergen, 1951). Different animals have different instincts. Birds naturally
build nests, dogs are naturally loyal to their human caretakers, and humans
instinctively learn to walk and to speak and understand language.

But the strength of different traits and behaviors also varies within species.
Rabbits are naturally fearful, but some are more fearful than others; some dogs
are more loyal than others to their caretakers; and some humans learn to speak
and write better than others do. These differences are determined in part by the
small amount (in humans, the 0.1%) of the differences in genes among the
members of the species.

Personality is not determined by any single gene, but rather by the actions of
many genes working together. There is no “IQ gene” that determines intelligence
and there is no “good marriage partner gene” that makes a person a particularly
good marriage bet. Furthermore, even working together, genes are not so
powerful that they can control or create our personality. Some genes tend to
increase a given characteristic and others work to decrease that same
characteristic—the complex relationship among the various genes, as well as a
variety of random factors, produces the final outcome. Furthermore, genetic
factors always work with environmental factors to create personality. Having a
given pattern of genes doesn’t necessarily mean that a particular trait will
develop, because some traits might occur only in some environments. For
example, a person may have a genetic variant that is known to increase his or her
risk for developing emphysema from smoking. But if that person never smokes,
then emphysema most likely will not develop.
Studying Personality Using Behavioral Genetics

Perhaps the most direct way to study the role of genetics in personality is to
selectively breed animals for the trait of interest. In this approach the scientist
chooses the animals that most strongly express the personality characteristics of
interest and breeds these animals with each other. If the selective breeding
creates offspring with even stronger traits, then we can assume that the trait has
genetic origins. In this manner, scientists have studied the role of genetics in how
worms respond to stimuli, how fish develop courtship rituals, how rats differ in
play, and how pigs differ in their responses to stress.

Although selective breeding studies can be informative, they are clearly not
useful for studying humans. For this psychologists rely on behavioral genetics
—a variety of research techniques that scientists use to learn about the genetic
and environmental influences on human behavior by comparing the traits of
biologically and nonbiologically related family members (Baker, 2010).
Behavioral genetics is based on the results of family studies, twin studies, and
adoptive studies.

A family studystarts with one person who has a trait of interest—for instance, a
developmental disorder such as autism—and examines the individual’s family
tree to determine the extent to which other members of the family also have the
trait. The presence of the trait in first-degree relatives (parents, siblings, and
children) is compared to the prevalence of the trait in second-degree relatives
(aunts, uncles, grandchildren, grandparents, and nephews or nieces) and in more
distant family members. The scientists then analyze the patterns of the trait in the
family members to see the extent to which it is shared by closer and more distant
relatives.

Although family studies can reveal whether a trait runs in a family, it cannot
explain why. In a twin study, researchers study the personality characteristics of
twins. Twin studies rely on the fact that identical (or monozygotic) twins have
essentially the same set of genes, while fraternal (or dizygotic) twins have, on
average, a half-identical set. The idea is that if the twins are raised in the same
household, then the twins will be influenced by their environments to an equal
degree, and this influence will be pretty much equal for identical and fraternal
twins. In other words, if environmental factors are the same, then the only factor
that can make identical twins more similar than fraternal twins is their greater
genetic similarity.

In a twin study, the data from many pairs of twins are collected and the rates of
similarity for identical and fraternal pairs are compared. A correlation
coefficient is calculated that assesses the extent to which the trait for one twin is
associated with the trait in the other twin. Twin studies divide the influence of
nature and nurture into three parts:

Heritability (i.e., genetic influence) is indicated when the correlation

coefficient for identical twins exceeds that for fraternal twins,
indicating that shared DNA is an important determinant of personality.
Shared environment determinants are indicated when the correlation
coefficients for identical and fraternal twins are greater than zero and
also very similar. These correlations indicate that both twins are having
experiences in the family that make them alike.
Nonshared environment is indicated when identical twins do not have
similar traits. These influences refer to experiences that are not
accounted for either by heritability or by shared environmental factors.
Nonshared environmental factors are the experiences that make
individuals within the same family less alike. If a parent treats one
child more affectionately than another, and as a consequence this child
ends up with higher self-esteem, the parenting in this case is a
nonshared environmental factor.

In the typical twin study, all three sources of influence are operating
simultaneously, and it is possible to determine the relative importance of each
type.
An adoption studycompares biologically related people, including twins, who
have been reared either separately or apart. Evidence for genetic influence on a
trait is found when children who have been adopted show traits that are more
similar to those of their biological parents than to those of their adoptive parents.
Evidence for environmental influence is found when the adoptee is more like his
or her adoptive parents than the biological parents.

The results of family, twin, and adoption studies are combined to get a better idea
of the influence of genetics and environment on traits of interest. Table 11.6
“Data From Twin and Adoption Studies on the Heritability of Various
Characteristics” presents data on the correlations and heritability estimates for a
variety of traits based on the results of behavioral genetics studies (Bouchard,
Lykken, McGue, Segal, & Tellegen, 1990).

Table 11.6 Data From Twin and Adoption Studies on the Heritability of Various Characteristics
 Correlation between Correlation between
children raised children raised Estimated percent of total due to
together apart

Shared Nonshared
Identical Fraternal Identical Fraternal Heritability
environment environment
twins twins twins twins (%)
(%) (%)

Age of
45 5 50
puberty

Aggression 0.43 0.14 0.46 0.06

Alzheimer
0.54 0.16
disease

Fingerprint
0.96 0.47 0.96 0.47 100 0 0
patterns

General
cognitive 56 0 44
ability

Likelihood
0.52 0.22
of divorce

Sexual
0.52 0.22 18–39 0–17 61–66
orientation

Big Five
40–50
dimensions

This table presents some of the observed correlations and heritability estimates for various
characteristics.

Sources: Långström, N., Rahman, Q., Carlström, E., & Lichtenstein, P. (2008). Genetic and environmental
effects on same-sex sexual behavior: A population study of twins in Sweden. Archives of Sexual Behavior,
doi:10.1007/s10508-008-9386-1; Loehlin, J. C. (1992). Genes and environment in personality development.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc; McGue, M., & Lykken, D. T. (1992). Genetic influence on risk
of divorce. Psychological Science, 3(6), 368–373; Plomin, R., Fulker, D. W., Corley, R., & DeFries, J. C.
(1997). Nature, nurture, and cognitive development from 1 to 16 years: A parent-offspring adoption study.
Psychological Science, 8(6), 442–447; Tellegen, A., Lykken, D. T., Bouchard, T. J., Wilcox, K. J., Segal, N.
L., & Rich, S. (1988). Personality similarity in twins reared apart and together. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 54(6), 1031–1039.

If you look in the second column of Table 11.6 “Data From Twin and Adoption
Studies on the Heritability of Various Characteristics”, you will see the observed
correlations for the traits between identical twins who have been raised together
in the same house by the same parents. This column represents the pure effects of
genetics, in the sense that environmental differences have been controlled to be a
small as possible. You can see that these correlations are higher for some traits
than for others. Fingerprint patterns are very highly determined by our genetics (r
= .96), whereas the Big Five trait dimensions have a heritability of 40–50%.

You can also see from the table that, overall, there is more influence of nature
than of parents. Identical twins, even when they are raised in separate households
by different parents (column 4), turn out to be quite similar in personality, and
are more similar than fraternal twins who are raised in separate households
(column 5). These results show that genetics has a strong influence on
personality, and helps explain why Elyse and Paula were so similar when they
finally met.

Despite the overall role of genetics, you can see in Table 11.6 “Data From Twin
and Adoption Studies on the Heritability of Various Characteristics” that the
correlations between identical twins (column 2) and heritability estimates for
most traits (column 6) are substantially less than 1.00, showing that the
environment also plays an important role in personality (Turkheimer & Waldron,
2000). For instance, for sexual orientation the estimates of heritability vary from
18% to 39% of the total across studies, suggesting that 61% to 82% of the total
influence is due to environment.
You might at first think that parents would have a strong influence on the
personalities of their children, but this would be incorrect. As you can see by
looking in column 7 of Table 11.6 “Data From Twin and Adoption Studies on the
Heritability of Various Characteristics”, research finds that the influence of
shared environment (i.e., the effects of parents or other caretakers) plays little or
no role in adult personality (Harris, 2006). Shared environment does influence
the personality and behavior of young children, but this influence decreases
rapidly as the child grows older. By the time we reach adulthood, the impact of
shared environment on our personalities is weak at best (Roberts & DelVecchio,
2000). What this means is that, although parents must provide a nourishing and
stimulating environment for children, no matter how hard they try they are not
likely to be able to turn their children into geniuses or into professional athletes,
nor will they be able to turn them into criminals.

If parents are not providing the environmental influences on the child, then what
is? The last column in Table 11.6 “Data From Twin and Adoption Studies on the
Heritability of Various Characteristics”, the influence of nonshared environment,
represents whatever is “left over” after removing the effects of genetics and
parents. You can see that these factors—the largely unknown things that happen
to us that make us different from other people—often have the largest influence
on personality.

Studying Personality Using Molecular Genetics

In addition to the use of behavioral genetics, our understanding of the role of

biology in personality recently has been dramatically increased through the use
of molecular genetics, which is the study of which genes are associated with
which personality traits (Goldsmith et al., 2003 Strachan & Read, 1999). These
advances have occured as a result of new knowledge about the structure of
human DNA made possible through the Human Genome Project and related
work that has identified the genes in the human body (Human Genome Project,
2010)1. Molecular genetics researchers have also developed new techniques that
allow them to find the locations of genes within chromosomes and to identify the
effects those genes have when activated or deactivated.

Figure 11.13

These “knockout” mice are participating in studies

in which some of their genes have been

deactivated to determine the influence of the genes

on behavior.

Tatiana Bulyonkova – New rats – CC BY-SA 2.0.

One approach that can be used in animals, usually in laboratory mice, is the
knockout study. In this approach the researchers use specialized techniques to
remove or modify the influence of a gene in a line of “knockout” mice (Crusio,
Goldowitz, Holmes, & Wolfer, 2009). The researchers harvest embryonic stem
cells from mouse embryos and then modify the DNA of the cells. The DNA is
created such that the action of certain genes will be eliminated or “knocked out.”
The cells are then injected into the embryos of other mice that are implanted into
the uteruses of living female mice. When these animals are born, they are studied
to see whether their behavior differs from a control group of normal animals.
Research has found that removing or changing genes in mice can affect their
anxiety, aggression, learning, and socialization patterns.

In humans, a molecular genetics study normally begins with the collection of a

DNA sample from the participants in the study, usually by taking some cells
from the inner surface of the cheek. In the lab, the DNA is extracted from the
sampled cells and is combined with a solution containing a marker for the
particular genes of interest as well as a fluorescent dye. If the gene is present in
the DNA of the individual, then the solution will bind to that gene and activate
the dye. The more the gene is expressed, the stronger the reaction.

Figure 11.14

Researchers use dyes, such as these in a sample of stem cells, to

determine the action of genes from DNA samples.

UCL News – A nascent retina, generated from a 3D embryonic

stem cell culture – CC BY-NC 2.0.

In one common approach, DNA is collected from people who have a particular
personality characteristic and also from people who do not. The DNA of the two
groups is compared to see which genes differ between them. These studies are
now able to compare thousands of genes at the same time. Research using
molecular genetics has found genes associated with a variety of personality traits
including novelty-seeking (Ekelund, Lichtermann, Järvelin, & Peltonen, 1999),
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (Waldman & Gizer, 2006), and smoking
behavior (Thorgeirsson et al., 2008).
Reviewing the Literature: Is Our Genetics Our
Destiny?

Over the past two decades scientists have made substantial progress in
understanding the important role of genetics in behavior. Behavioral genetics
studies have found that, for most traits, genetics is more important than parental
influence. And molecular genetics studies have begun to pinpoint the particular
genes that are causing these differences. The results of these studies might lead
you to believe that your destiny is determined by your genes, but this would be a
mistaken assumption.

For one, the results of all research must be interpreted carefully. Over time we
will learn even more about the role of genetics, and our conclusions about its
influence will likely change. Current research in the area of behavioral genetics
is often criticized for making assumptions about how researchers categorize
identical and fraternal twins, about whether twins are in fact treated in the same
way by their parents, about whether twins are representative of children more
generally, and about many other issues. Although these critiques may not change
the overall conclusions, it must be kept in mind that these findings are relatively
new and will certainly be updated with time (Plomin, 2000).

Furthermore, it is important to reiterate that although genetics is important, and

although we are learning more every day about its role in many personality
variables, genetics does not determine everything. In fact, the major influence on
personality is nonshared environmental influences, which include all the things
that occur to us that make us unique individuals. These differences include
variability in brain structure, nutrition, education, upbringing, and even
interactions among the genes themselves.

The genetic differences that exist at birth may be either amplified or diminished
over time through environmental factors. The brains and bodies of identical
twins are not exactly the same, and they become even more different as they
grow up. As a result, even genetically identical twins have distinct personalities,
resulting in large part from environmental effects.

Because these nonshared environmental differences are nonsystematic and

largely accidental or random, it will be difficult to ever determine exactly what
will happen to a child as he or she grows up. Although we do inherit our genes,
we do not inherit personality in any fixed sense. The effect of our genes on our
behavior is entirely dependent upon the context of our life as it unfolds day to
day. Based on your genes, no one can say what kind of human being you will
turn out to be or what you will do in life.

Key Takeaways

Genes are the basic biological units that transmit characteristics from one generation to the
next.

Personality is not determined by any single gene, but rather by the actions of many genes
working together.

Behavioral genetics refers to a variety of research techniques that scientists use to learn
about the genetic and environmental influences on human behavior.

Behavioral genetics is based on the results of family studies, twin studies, and adoptive
studies.

Overall, genetics has more influence than do parents on shaping our personality.

Molecular genetics is the study of which genes are associated with which personality traits.

The largely unknown environmental influences, known as the nonshared environmental

effects, have the largest impact on personality. Because these differences are nonsystematic
and largely accidental or random, we do not inherit our personality in any fixed sense.
 Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Think about the twins you know. Do they seem to be very similar to each other, or does it
seem that their differences outweigh their similarities?

2. Describe the implications of the effects of genetics on personality, overall. What does it
mean to say that genetics “determines” or “does not determine” our personality?

1
Human Genome Project. (2010). Information. Retrieved from
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/home.shtml

References

Baker, C. (2004). Behavioral genetics: An introduction to how genes and

environments interact through development to shape differences in mood,
personality, and intelligence. Retrieved from
http://www.aaas.org/spp/bgenes/Intro.pdf

Bouchard, T. J., Lykken, D. T., McGue, M., Segal, N. L., & Tellegen, A. (1990).
Sources of human psychological differences: The Minnesota study of twins
reared apart. Science, 250(4978), 223–228. Retrieved from
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/250/4978/223

Crusio, W. E., Goldowitz, D., Holmes, A., & Wolfer, D. (2009). Standards for the
publication of mouse mutant studies. Genes, Brain & Behavior, 8(1), 1–4.

Ekelund, J., Lichtermann, D., Järvelin, M. R., & Peltonen, L. (1999). Association
between novelty seeking and the type 4 dopamine receptor gene in a large
Finnish cohort sample. American Journal of Psychiatry, 156, 1453–1455.

Goldsmith, H., Gernsbacher, M. A., Crabbe, J., Dawson, G., Gottesman, I. I.,
Hewitt, J.,…Swanson, J. (2003). Research psychologists’ roles in the genetic
revolution. American Psychologist, 58(4), 318–319.

Harris, J. R. (2006). No two alike: Human nature and human individuality. New
York, NY: Norton.

Plomin, R. (2000). Behavioural genetics in the 21st century. International

Journal of Behavioral Development, 24(1), 30–34.

Roberts, B. W., & DelVecchio, W. F. (2000). The rank-order consistency of

personality traits from childhood to old age: A quantitative review of longitudinal
studies. Psychological Bulletin, 126(1), 3–25.

Strachan, T., & Read, A. P. (1999). Human molecular genetics (2nd ed.).
Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bookshelf/br.fcgi?
book=hmg&part=A2858

Thorgeirsson, T. E., Geller, F., Sulem, P., Rafnar, T., Wiste, A., Magnusson, K.
P.,…Stefansson, K. (2008). A variant associated with nicotine dependence, lung
cancer and peripheral arterial disease. Nature, 452(7187), 638–641.

Tinbergen, N. (1951). The study of instinct (1st ed.). Oxford, England: Clarendon
Press.

Turkheimer, E., & Waldron, M. (2000). Nonshared environment: A theoretical,

methodological, and quantitative review. Psychological Bulletin, 126(1), 78–108.

Waldman, I. D., & Gizer, I. R. (2006). The genetics of attention deficit

hyperactivity disorder. Clinical Psychology Review, 26(4), 396–432.
11.4 Chapter Summary

Personality is defined as an individual’s consistent patterns of feeling,

thinking, and behaving. Early theories of personality, including phrenology
and somatology, are now discredited, but there is at least some research
evidence for physiognomy—the idea that it is possible to assess personality
from facial characteristics.

Personalities are characterized in terms of traits, which are relatively

enduring characteristics that influence our behavior across many situations.
Psychologists have investigated hundreds of traits using the self-report
approach.

The utility of self-report measures of personality depends on their reliability

and construct validity. Some popular measures of personality, such as the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), do not have reliability or construct
validity and therefore are not useful measures of personality.

The trait approach to personality was pioneered by early psychologists,

including Allport, Cattell, and Eysenck, and their research helped produce
the Five-Factor (Big Five) Model of Personality. The Big Five dimensions
are cross-culturally valid and accurately predict behavior. The Big Five
factors are also increasingly being used to help researchers understand the
dimensions of psychological disorders.

A difficulty of the trait approach to personality is that there is often only a

low correlation between the traits that a person expresses in one situation
and those that he or she expresses in other situations. However,
psychologists have also found that personality predicts behavior better
when the behaviors are averaged across different situations.
People may believe in the existence of traits because they use their schemas
to judge other people, leading them to believe that traits are more stable
than they really are. An example is the Barnum effect—the observation that
people tend to believe in descriptions of their personality that supposedly
are descriptive of them but could in fact describe almost anyone.

An important personality test is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality

Inventory (MMPI) used to detect personality and psychological disorders.
Another approach to measuring personality is to use projective measures,
such as the Rorschach Inkblot Test and the Thematic Apperception Test
(TAT). The advantage of projective tests is that they are less direct, but
empirical evidence supporting their reliability and construct validity is
mixed.

There are behaviorist, social-cognitive, psychodynamic, and humanist

theories of personality.

The psychodynamic approach to understanding personality, begun by

Sigmund Freud, is based on the idea that all behaviors are predetermined by
motivations that lie outside our awareness, in the unconscious. Freud
proposed that the mind is divided into three components: id, ego, and
superego, and that the interactions and conflicts among the components
create personality. Freud also believed that psychological disorders, and
particularly the experience of anxiety, occur when there is conflict or
imbalance among the motivations of the id, ego, and superego and that
people use defense mechanisms to cope with this anxiety.

Freud argued that personality is developed through a series of psychosexual

stages, each focusing on pleasure from a different part of the body, and that
the appropriate resolution of each stage has implications for later
personality development.
Freud has probably exerted a greater impact on the public’s understanding
of personality than any other thinker, but his theories have in many cases
failed to pass the test of empiricism.

Freudian theory led to a number of followers known as the neo-Freudians,

including Adler, Jung, Horney, and Fromm.

Humanistic theories of personality focus on the underlying motivations that

they believed drive personality, focusing on the nature of the self-concept
and the development of self-esteem. The idea of unconditional positive
regard championed by Carl Rogers has led in part to the positive
psychology movement, and it is a basis for almost all contemporary
psychological therapy.

Personality traits of humans and animals are determined in large part by

their genetic makeup. Personality is not determined by any single gene, but
rather by the actions of many genes working together.

The role of nature and nurture in personality is studied by means of

behavioral genetics studies including family studies, twin studies, and
adoption studies. These studies partition variability in personality into the
influence of genetics (known as heritability), shared environment, and
nonshared environment. Although these studies find that many personality
traits are highly heritable, genetics does not determine everything. The
major influence on personality is nonshared environmental influences.

In addition to the use of behavioral genetics, our understanding of the role

of biology in personality recently has been dramatically increased through
the use of molecular genetics, the study of which genes are associated with
which personality traits in animals and humans.
Chapter 12: Defining
Psychological Disorders

When Minor Body Imperfections Lead to Suicide

“I think we probably noticed in his early teens that he became very conscious about aspects of
his appearance…he began to brood over it quite a lot,” said Maria as she called in to the talk
radio program to describe her son Robert.

Maria described how Robert had begun to worry about his weight. A friend had commented that
he had a “fat” stomach, and Robert began to cut down on eating. Then he began to worry that he
wasn’t growing enough and devised an elaborate series of stretching techniques to help him get
taller.

Robert scrutinized his face and body in the mirror for hours, finding a variety of imagined
defects. He believed that his nose was crooked, and he was particularly concerned about a lump
that he saw on it: “A small lump,” said his mother. “I should say it wasn’t very significant, but it
was significant to him.”

Robert insisted that all his misery stemmed from this lump on his nose, that everybody noticed
it. In his sophomore year of high school, he had cosmetic surgery to remove it.

Around this time, Robert had his first panic attack and began to worry that everybody could
notice him sweating and blushing in public. He asked his parents for a $10,000 loan, which he
said was for overseas study. He used the money for a procedure designed to reduce sweating and
blushing. Then, dissatisfied with the results, he had the procedure reversed.

Robert was diagnosed with body dysmorphic disorder. His mother told the radio host,

At the time we were really happy because we thought that finally we actually
knew what we were trying to fight and to be quite honest, I must admit I thought
well it sounds pretty trivial.…
…Things seemed to go quite well and he got a new girlfriend and he was getting
 excellent marks in his clinical work in hospital and he promised us that he wasn’t
going to have any more surgery.
However, a lighthearted comment from a friend about a noticeable vein in his
forehead prompted a relapse. Robert had surgery to tie off the vein. When that
didn’t solve all his problems as he had hoped, he attempted to have the procedure
reversed but learned that it would require complicated microsurgery. He then used
injections on himself to try opening the vein again, but he could never completely
reverse the first surgery.
Robert committed suicide shortly afterward, in 2001 (Mitchell, 2002).

References

Mitchell, N. (Producer). (2002, April 28). Body dysmorphic disorder and

cosmetic “surgery of the psyche.” All in the mind. ABC Radio National.
Retrieved from
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2003/746058.htm
12.1 Psychological Disorder: What Makes a
Behavior “Abnormal”?

Learning Objectives

1. Define “psychological disorder” and summarize the general causes of disorder.

2. Explain why it is so difficult to define disorder, and how the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is used to make diagnoses.

3. Describe the stigma of psychological disorders and their impact on those who suffer
from them.

The focus of the next two chapters is to many people the heart of
psychology. This emphasis on abnormal psychology—the application of
psychological science to understanding and treating mental disorders—is
appropriate, as more psychologists are involved in the diagnosis and
treatment of psychological disorder than in any other endeavor, and these
are probably the most important tasks psychologists face. About 1 in every 4
Americans (or over 78 million people) are affected by a psychological
disorder during any one year (Kessler, Chiu, Demler, & Walters, 2005), and
at least a half billion people are affected worldwide. The impact of mental
illness is particularly strong on people who are poorer, of lower
socioeconomic class, and from disadvantaged ethnic groups.

People with psychological disorders are also stigmatized by the people

around them, resulting in shame and embarrassment, as well as prejudice
and discrimination against them. Thus the understanding and treatment of
psychological disorder has broad implications for the everyday life of many
people. Table 12.1 “One-Year Prevalence Rates for Psychological Disorders
in the United States, 2001–2003” shows the prevalence (i.e., the frequency
of occurrence of a given condition in a population at a given time) of some
of the major psychological disorders in the United States.

Table 12.1 One-Year Prevalence Rates for Psychological Disorders in the United States, 2001–2003
Disease Percentage affected Number affected

Any mental disorder 26.2 81,744,000

Any anxiety disorder 18.1 56,472,000

Specific phobia 8.7 27,144,000

Social phobia 6.8 21,216,000

Agoraphobia 0.8 2,496,000

Generalized anxiety disorder 3.1 9,672,000

Panic disorder 2.7 8,424,000

Obsessive-compulsive disorder 1.0 3,120,000

Posttraumatic stress disorder 3.5 10,920,000

Any mood disorder 9.5 29,640,000

Major depressive disorder 6.7 20,904,000

Bipolar disorder 2.6 8,112,000

Schizophrenia 1.0 3,120,000

Personality disorders

Antisocial personality disorder 1.5 4,680,000

Borderline personality disorder 1.5 4,680,000

Anorexia nervosa 0.1 312,000

Any substance abuse disorder 3.8 11,856,000

* These nonpsychological conditions are included for comparison.

 Disease Percentage affected Number affected

Alcohol use disorder 4.4 13,728,000

Drug use disorder 1.8 5,616,000

All cancers* 5.4 16,848,000

Diabetes* 10.7 33,348,000

* These nonpsychological conditions are included for comparison.

Sources: Kessler, R. C., Chiu, W. T., Demler, O., & Walters, E. E. (2005). Prevalence, severity, and
comorbidity of 12-month DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication.
Archives of General Psychiatry, 62(6), 617–627; Narrow, W. E., Rae, D. S., Robins, L. N., & Regier,
D. A. (2002). Revised prevalence based estimates of mental disorders in the United States: Using a
clinical significance criterion to reconcile 2 surveys’ estimates. Archives of General Psychiatry, 59(2),
115–123.

In this chapter our focus is on the disorders themselves. We will review the
major psychological disorders and consider their causes and their impact on
the people who suffer from them. Then in Chapter 13 “Treating
Psychological Disorders”, we will turn to consider the treatment of these
disorders through psychotherapy and drug therapy.

Defining Disorder

A psychological disorder is an ongoing dysfunctional pattern of thought,

emotion, and behavior that causes significant distress, and that is
considered deviant in that person’s culture or society (Butcher, Mineka, &
Hooley, 2007). Psychological disorders have much in common with other
medical disorders. They are out of the patient’s control, they may in some
cases be treated by drugs, and their treatment is often covered by medical
insurance. Like medical problems, psychological disorders have both
biological (nature) as well as environmental (nurture) influences. These
causal influences are reflected in the bio-psycho-social model of illness
(Engel, 1977).

The bio-psycho-social model of illness is a way of understanding disorder

that assumes that disorder is caused by biological, psychological, and social
factors (Figure 12.1 “The Bio-Psycho-Social Model”). The biological
component of the bio-psycho-social model refers to the influences on
disorder that come from the functioning of the individual’s body.
Particularly important are genetic characteristics that make some people
more vulnerable to a disorder than others and the influence of
neurotransmitters. The psychological component of the bio-psycho-social
model refers to the influences that come from the individual, such as
patterns of negative thinking and stress responses. The social component of
the bio-psycho-social model refers to the influences on disorder due to
social and cultural factors such as socioeconomic status, homelessness,
abuse, and discrimination.

Figure 12.1 The Bio-Psycho-Social Model

The bio-psycho-social model of disorder proposes that disorders are caused by biological, psychological,

and social-cultural factors.

To consider one example, the psychological disorder of schizophrenia has a

biological cause because it is known that there are patterns of genes that
make a person vulnerable to the disorder (Gejman, Sanders, & Duan, 2010).
But whether or not the person with a biological vulnerability experiences
the disorder depends in large part on psychological factors such as how the
individual responds to the stress he experiences, as well as social factors
such as whether or not he is exposed to stressful environments in
adolescence and whether or not he has support from people who care about
him (Sawa & Snyder, 2002; Walker, Kestler, Bollini, & Hochman, 2004).
Similarly, mood and anxiety disorders are caused in part by genetic factors
such as hormones and neurotransmitters, in part by the individual’s
particular thought patterns, and in part by the ways that other people in the
social environment treat the person with the disorder. We will use the bio-
psycho-social model as a framework for considering the causes and
treatments of disorder.

Although they share many characteristics with them, psychological

disorders are nevertheless different from medical conditions in important
ways. For one, diagnosis of psychological disorders can be more difficult.
Although a medical doctor can see cancer in the lungs using an MRI scan or
see blocked arteries in the heart using cardiac catheterization, there is no
corresponding test for psychological disorder. Current research is beginning
to provide more evidence about the role of brain structures in psychological
disorder, but for now the brains of people with severe mental disturbances
often look identical to those of people without such disturbances.

Because there are no clear biological diagnoses, psychological disorders are

instead diagnosed on the basis of clinical observations of the behaviors that
the individual engages in. These observations find that emotional states and
behaviors operate on a continuum, ranging from more “normal” and
“accepted” to more “deviant,” “abnormal,” and “unaccepted.” The
behaviors that are associated with disorder are in many cases the same
behaviors we that engage in our “normal” everyday life. Washing one’s
hands is a normal healthy activity, but it can be overdone by those with an
obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). It is not unusual to worry about and
try to improve one’s body image, but Robert’s struggle with his personal
appearance, as discussed at the beginning of this chapter, was clearly
unusual, unhealthy, and distressing to him.

Figure 12.2 How Thin Is Too Thin?

This dancer needs to be thin for her career, but

when does her dieting turn into a psychological

disorder? Psychologists believe this happens when

the behavior becomes distressing and

dysfunctional to the person.

Jean-François Chénier – Trust – CC BY-NC 2.0.

Whether a given behavior is considered a psychological disorder is

determined not only by whether a behavior is unusual (e.g., whether it is
“mild” anxiety versus “extreme” anxiety) but also by whether a behavior is
maladaptive—that is, the extent to which it causes distress (e.g., pain and
suffering) and dysfunction (impairment in one or more important areas of
functioning) to the individual (American Psychiatric Association, 2000)1.
An intense fear of spiders, for example, would not be considered a
psychological disorder unless it has a significant negative impact on the
sufferer’s life, for instance by causing him or her to be unable to step
outside the house. The focus on distress and dysfunction means that
behaviors that are simply unusual (such as some political, religious, or
sexual practices) are not classified as disorders.

Put your psychology hat on for a moment and consider the behaviors of the
people listed in Table 12.2 “Diagnosing Disorder”. For each, indicate
whether you think the behavior is or is not a psychological disorder. If
you’re not sure, what other information would you need to know to be more
certain of your diagnosis?

Table 12.2 Diagnosing Disorder

Need more
Yes No Description
information

Jackie frequently talks to herself while she is working out her

math homework. Her roommate sometimes hears her and
wonders if she is OK.

Charlie believes that the noises made by cars and planes

going by outside his house have secret meanings. He is
convinced that he was involved in the start of a nuclear war
and that the only way for him to survive is to find the answer
to a difficult riddle.

Harriet gets very depressed during the winter months when

the light is low. She sometimes stays in her pajamas for the
whole weekend, eating chocolate and watching TV.

Frank seems to be afraid of a lot of things. He worries about

driving on the highway and about severe weather that may
come through his neighborhood. But mostly he fears mice,
checking under his bed frequently to see if any are present.

A worshipper speaking in “tongues” at an Evangelical church

views himself as “filled” with the Holy Spirit and is
considered blessed with the gift to speak the “language of
angels.”

A trained clinical psychologist would have checked off “need more

information” for each of the examples in Table 12.2 “Diagnosing Disorder”
because although the behaviors may seem unusual, there is no clear
evidence that they are distressing or dysfunctional for the person. Talking to
ourselves out loud is unusual and can be a symptom of schizophrenia, but
just because we do it once in a while does not mean that there is anything
wrong with us. It is natural to be depressed, particularly in the long winter
nights, but how severe should this depression be, and how long should it
last? If the negative feelings last for an extended time and begin to lead the
person to miss work or classes, then they may become symptoms of a mood
disorder. It is normal to worry about things, but when does worry turn into a
debilitating anxiety disorder? And what about thoughts that seem to be
irrational, such as being able to “speak the language of angels”? Are they
indicators of a severe psychological disorder, or part of a normal religious
experience? Again, the answer lies in the extent to which they are (or are
not) interfering with the individual’s functioning in society.

Another difficulty in diagnosing psychological disorders is that they

frequently occur together. For instance, people diagnosed with anxiety
disorders also often have mood disorders (Hunt, Slade, & Andrews, 2004),
and people diagnosed with one personality disorder frequently suffer from
other personality disorders as well. Comorbidityoccurs when people who
suffer from one disorder also suffer at the same time from other disorders.
Because many psychological disorders are comorbid, most severe mental
disorders are concentrated in a small group of people (about 6% of the
population) who have more than three of them (Kessler, Chiu, Demler, &
Walters, 2005).

Psychology in Everyday Life: Combating the Stigma of Abnormal Behavior

Every culture and society has its own views on what constitutes abnormal behavior and what
causes it (Brothwell, 1981). The Old Testament Book of Samuel tells us that as a consequence of
his sins, God sent King Saul an evil spirit to torment him (1 Samuel 16:14). Ancient Hindu
tradition attributed psychological disorder to sorcery and witchcraft. During the Middle Ages it
was believed that mental illness occurred when the body was infected by evil spirits, particularly
the devil. Remedies included whipping, bloodletting, purges, and trepanation (cutting a hole in
the skull) to release the demons.

Figure 12.3

Trepanation (drilling holes in the skull) has been used since prehistoric times in attempts to cure epilepsy,

schizophrenia, and other psychological disorders.

Peter Treveris – Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

Until the 18th century, the most common treatment for the mentally ill was to incarcerate them in
asylums or “madhouses.” During the 18th century, however, some reformers began to oppose
this brutal treatment of the mentally ill, arguing that mental illness was a medical problem that
had nothing to do with evil spirits or demons. In France, one of the key reformers was Philippe
Pinel (1745–1826), who believed that mental illness was caused by a combination of physical
and psychological stressors, exacerbated by inhumane conditions. Pinel advocated the
introduction of exercise, fresh air, and daylight for the inmates, as well as treating them gently
and talking with them. In America, the reformers Benjamin Rush (1745–1813) and Dorothea Dix
(1802–1887) were instrumental in creating mental hospitals that treated patients humanely and
attempted to cure them if possible. These reformers saw mental illness as an underlying
psychological disorder, which was diagnosed according to its symptoms and which could be
cured through treatment.

Figure 12.4

Until the early 1900s people with mental disorders were often imprisoned in asylums such as these.

U.S. Library of Congress – Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

Figure 12.5
The reformers Philippe Pinel, Benjamin Rush, and Dorothea Dix fought the often brutal treatment of the

mentally ill and were instrumental in changing perceptions and treatment of them.

Anna Mérimée – Pinel – public domain; Charles Wilson Peale – Rush – public domain; U.S. Library of

Congress – Dix – public domain.

Despite the progress made since the 1800s in public attitudes about those who suffer from
psychological disorders, people, including police, coworkers, and even friends and family
members, still stigmatize people with psychological disorders. A stigma refers to a disgrace or
defect that indicates that person belongs to a culturally devalued social group. In some cases the
stigma of mental illness is accompanied by the use of disrespectful and dehumanizing labels,
including names such as “crazy,” “nuts,” “mental,” “schizo,” and “retard.”

The stigma of mental disorder affects people while they are ill, while they are healing, and even
after they have healed (Schefer, 2003). On a community level, stigma can affect the kinds of
services social service agencies give to people with mental illness, and the treatment provided to
them and their families by schools, workplaces, places of worship, and health-care providers.
Stigma about mental illness also leads to employment discrimination, despite the fact that with
appropriate support, even people with severe psychological disorders are able to hold a job
(Boardman, Grove, Perkins, & Shepherd, 2003; Leff & Warner, 2006; Ozawa & Yaeda, 2007;
Pulido, Diaz, & Ramirez, 2004).

The mass media has a significant influence on society’s attitude toward mental illness (Francis,
Pirkis, Dunt, & Blood, 2001). While media portrayal of mental illness is often sympathetic,
 negative stereotypes still remain in newspapers, magazines, film, and television. (See the
following video for an example.)

(click to see video)

Television advertisements may perpetuate negative stereotypes about the mentally ill. Burger
King recently ran an ad called “The King’s Gone Crazy,” in which the company’s mascot runs
around an office complex carrying out acts of violence and wreaking havoc.

The most significant problem of the stigmatization of those with psychological disorder is that it
slows their recovery. People with mental problems internalize societal attitudes about mental
illness, often becoming so embarrassed or ashamed that they conceal their difficulties and fail to
seek treatment. Stigma leads to lowered self-esteem, increased isolation, and hopelessness, and it
may negatively influence the individual’s family and professional life (Hayward & Bright,
1997).

Despite all of these challenges, however, many people overcome psychological disorders and go
on to lead productive lives. It is up to all of us who are informed about the causes of
psychological disorder and the impact of these conditions on people to understand, first, that
mental illness is not a “fault” any more than is cancer. People do not choose to have a mental
illness. Second, we must all work to help overcome the stigma associated with disorder.

Organizations such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI; n.d.)2, for example, work
to reduce the negative impact of stigma through education, community action, individual
support, and other techniques.

Diagnosing Disorder: The DSM

Psychologists have developed criteria that help them determine whether

behavior should be considered a psychological disorder and which of the
many disorders particular behaviors indicate. These criteria are laid out in a
1,000-page manual known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders (DSM), a document that provides a common language
and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders (American
Psychiatric Association, 2000)1. The DSM is used by therapists, researchers,
drug companies, health insurance companies, and policymakers in the
United States to determine what services are appropriately provided for
treating patients with given symptoms.

Figure 12.6

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental

Disorders (DSM) is used to classify psychological

disorders in the United States.

Richard Masoner / Cyclelicious – Light bedtime

reading – CC BY-SA 2.0.

The first edition of the DSM was published in 1952 on the basis of census
data and psychiatric hospital statistics. Since then, the DSM has been
revised five times. The last major revision was the fourth edition (DSM-IV),
published in 1994, and an update of that document was produced in 2000
(DSM-IV-TR). The fifth edition (DSM-V) is currently undergoing review,
planning, and preparation and is scheduled to be published in 2013. The
DSM-IV-TR was designed in conjunction with the World Health
Organization’s 10th version of the International Classification of Diseases
(ICD-10), which is used as a guide for mental disorders in Europe and other
parts of the world.

As you can see in Figure 12.7, the DSM organizes the diagnosis of disorder
according to five dimensions (or axes) relating to different aspects of
disorder or disability. The axes are important to remember when we think
about psychological disorder, because they make it clear not only that there
are different types of disorder, but that those disorders have a variety of
different causes. Axis I includes the most usual clinical disorders, including
mood disorders and anxiety disorders; Axis II includes the less severe but
long-lasting personality disorders as well as mental retardation; Axis III and
Axis IV relate to physical symptoms and social-cultural factors, respectively.
The axes remind us that when making a diagnosis we must look at the
complete picture, including biological, personal, and social-cultural factors.

Figure 12.7

DSM organizes psychological disorders into five dimensions (known as axes) that concern the different

aspects of disorder.” style=”max-width: 497px;”/>

The DSM organizes psychological disorders into five dimensions (known as axes) that concern the

different aspects of disorder.

Adapted from American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental
disorders (4th ed., text rev.). Washington, DC: Author.

The DSM does not attempt to specify the exact symptoms that are required
for a diagnosis. Rather, the DSM uses categories, and patients whose
symptoms are similar to the description of the category are said to have that
disorder. The DSM frequently uses qualifiers to indicate different levels of
severity within a category. For instance, the disorder of mental retardation
can be classified as mild, moderate, or severe.

Each revision of the DSM takes into consideration new knowledge as well
as changes in cultural norms about disorder. Homosexuality, for example,
was listed as a mental disorder in the DSM until 1973, when it was removed
in response to advocacy by politically active gay rights groups and changing
social norms. The current version of the DSM lists about 400 disorders.
Some of the major categories are shown in Table 12.3 “Categories of
Psychological Disorders Based on the “, and you may go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-IV_Codes_(alphabetical) and browse the
complete list.

Table 12.3 Categories of Psychological Disorders Based on the DSM

Category and description Examples

Mental retardation

Communication, conduct, elimination, feeding,

learning, and motor skills disorders

Disorders diagnosed in infancy and Autism spectrum disorders

childhood
Attention-deficit and disruptive behavior disorders
including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
(ADHD)

Separation anxiety disorder

Delirium, dementia, and amnesia (forgetting Delirium

or memory distortions caused by physical
factors) Dementia and Alzheimer disease

Dissociative amnesia
Dissociative disorders (forgetting or memory
Dissociative fugue
distortions that do not involve physical
factors) Dissociative identity disorder (“multiple
personality”)

Alcohol abuse

Substance abuse disorders Drug abuse

Caffeine abuse

Schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders

Category and description Examples

Mood disorder

Mood disorders Major depressive disorder

Bipolar disorder

Generalized anxiety disorder

Panic disorder

Anxiety disorders Specific phobia including agoraphobia

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Conversion disorder

Somatoform disorders (physical symptoms Pain disorder

that do not have a clear physical cause and
thus must be psychological in origin) Hypochondriasis

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD)

Factitious disorders (conditions in which a

person acts as if he or she has an illness by
deliberately producing, feigning, or
exaggerating symptoms)
Category and description Examples

Sexual dysfunctions including erectile and

orgasmic disorders

Sexual disorders Paraphilias

Gender identity disorders

Sexual abuse

Anorexia nervosa
Eating disorders
Bulimia nervosa

Narcolepsy
Sleep disorders
Sleep apnea

Kleptomania (stealing)

Impulse-control disorders Pyromania (fire lighting)

Pathological gambling (addiction)

Personality disorders

Paranoid personality disorder

Cluster A (odd or eccentric behaviors) Schizoid personality disorder

Schizotypal personality disorder

 Category and description Examples

Antisocial personality disorder

Cluster B (dramatic, emotional, or erratic Borderline personality disorder

behaviors) Histrionic personality disorder

Narcissistic personality disorder

Avoidant personality disorder

Cluster C (anxious or fearful behaviors) Dependent personality disorder

Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder

Includes academic problems, antisocial behavior,

bereavement, child neglect, occupational problems,
Other disorders
relational problems, physical abuse, and
malingering

Although the DSM has been criticized regarding the nature of its
categorization system (and it is frequently revised to attempt to address
these criticisms), for the fact that it tends to classify more behaviors as
disorders with every revision (even “academic problems” are now listed as a
potential psychological disorder), and for the fact that it is primarily focused
on Western illness, it is nevertheless a comprehensive, practical, and
necessary tool that provides a common language to describe disorder. Most
U.S. insurance companies will not pay for therapy unless the patient has a
DSM diagnosis. The DSM approach allows a systematic assessment of the
patient, taking into account the mental disorder in question, the patient’s
medical condition, psychological and cultural factors, and the way the
patient functions in everyday life.
Diagnosis or Overdiagnosis? ADHD, Autistic
Disorder, and Asperger’s Disorder

Two common critiques of the DSM are that the categorization system leaves
quite a bit of ambiguity in diagnosis and that it covers such a wide variety of
behaviors. Let’s take a closer look at three common disorders—attention-
deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autistic disorder, and Asperger’s
disorder—that have recently raised controversy because they are being
diagnosed significantly more frequently than they were in the past.

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
(ADHD)
Zack, aged 7 years, has always had trouble settling down. He is easily bored and
distracted. In school, he cannot stay in his seat for very long and he frequently does not
follow instructions. He is constantly fidgeting or staring into space. Zack has poor
social skills and may overreact when someone accidentally bumps into him or uses one
of his toys. At home, he chatters constantly and rarely settles down to do a quiet
activity, such as reading a book.

Symptoms such as Zack’s are common among 7-year-olds, and particularly

among boys. But what do the symptoms mean? Does Zack simply have a lot
of energy and a short attention span? Boys mature more slowly than girls at
this age, and perhaps Zack will catch up in the next few years. One
possibility is for the parents and teachers to work with Zack to help him be
more attentive, to put up with the behavior, and to wait it out.

But many parents, often on the advice of the child’s teacher, take their
children to a psychologist for diagnosis. If Zack were taken for testing
today, it is very likely that he would be diagnosed with a psychological
disorder known as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
ADHD is a developmental behavior disorder characterized by problems
with focus, difficulty maintaining attention, and inability to concentrate, in
which symptoms start before 7 years of age (American Psychiatric
Association, 2000; National Institute of Mental Health, 2010)1. Although it
is usually first diagnosed in childhood, ADHD can remain problematic in
adults, and up to 7% of college students are diagnosed with it (Weyandt &
DuPaul, 2006). In adults the symptoms of ADHD include forgetfulness,
difficulty paying attention to details, procrastination, disorganized work
habits, and not listening to others. ADHD is about 70% more likely to occur
in males than in females (Kessler, Chiu, Demler, & Walters, 2005), and is
often comorbid with other behavioral and conduct disorders.

The diagnosis of ADHD has quadrupled over the past 20 years such that it is
now diagnosed in about 1 out of every 20 American children and is the most
common psychological disorder among children in the world (Olfson,
Gameroff, Marcus, & Jensen, 2003). ADHD is also being diagnosed much
more frequently in adolescents and adults (Barkley, 1998). You might
wonder what this all means. Are the increases in the diagnosis of ADHD due
to the fact that today’s children and adolescents are actually more distracted
and hyperactive than their parents were, due to a greater awareness of
ADHD among teachers and parents, or due to psychologists and
psychiatrists’ tendency to overdiagnose the problem? Perhaps drug
companies are also involved, because ADHD is often treated with
prescription medications, including stimulants such as Ritalin.

Although skeptics argue that ADHD is overdiagnosed and is a handy excuse

for behavioral problems, most psychologists believe that ADHD is a real
disorder that is caused by a combination of genetic and environmental
factors. Twin studies have found that ADHD is heritable (National Institute
of Mental Health, 2008)3, and neuroimaging studies have found that people
with ADHD may have structural differences in areas of the brain that
influence self-control and attention (Seidman, Valera, & Makris, 2005).
Other studies have also pointed to environmental factors, such as mothers’
smoking and drinking alcohol during pregnancy and the consumption of
lead and food additives by those who are affected (Braun, Kahn, Froehlich,
Auinger, & Lanphear, 2006; Linnet et al., 2003; McCann et al., 2007).
Social factors, such as family stress and poverty, also contribute to ADHD
(Burt, Krueger, McGue, & Iacono, 2001).

Autistic Disorder and Asperger’s Disorder

Jared’s kindergarten teacher has voiced her concern to Jared’s parents about his difficulties with
interacting with other children and his delay in developing normal language. Jared is able to maintain
eye contact and enjoys mixing with other children, but he cannot communicate with them very well.
He often responds to questions or comments with long-winded speeches about trucks or some other
topic that interests him, and he seems to lack awareness of other children’s wishes and needs.

Jared’s concerned parents took him to a multidisciplinary child development

center for consultation. Here he was tested by a pediatric neurologist, a
psychologist, and a child psychiatrist.

The pediatric neurologist found that Jared’s hearing was normal, and there
were no signs of any neurological disorder. He diagnosed Jared with a
pervasive developmental disorder, because while his comprehension and
expressive language was poor, he was still able to carry out nonverbal tasks,
such as drawing a picture or doing a puzzle.

Based on her observation of Jared’s difficulty interacting with his peers, and
the fact that he did not respond warmly to his parents, the psychologist
diagnosed Jared with autistic disorder (autism), a disorder of neural
development characterized by impaired social interaction and
communication and by restricted and repetitive behavior, and in which
symptoms begin before 7 years of age. The psychologist believed that the
autism diagnosis was correct because, like other children with autism, Jared,
has a poorly developed ability to see the world from the perspective of
others; engages in unusual behaviors such as talking about trucks for hours;
and responds to stimuli, such as the sound of a car or an airplane, in unusual
ways.

The child psychiatrist believed that Jared’s language problems and social
skills were not severe enough to warrant a diagnosis of autistic disorder and
instead proposed a diagnosis of Asperger’s disorder, a developmental
disorder that affects a child’s ability to socialize and communicate
effectively with others and in which symptoms begin before 7 years of age.
The symptoms of Asperger’s are almost identical to that of autism (with the
exception of a delay in language development), and the child psychiatrist
simply saw these problems as less extreme.

Imagine how Jared’s parents must have felt at this point. Clearly there is
something wrong with their child, but even the experts cannot agree on
exactly what the problem is. Diagnosing problems such as Jared’s is
difficult, yet the number of children like him is increasing dramatically.
Disorders related to autism and Asperger’s disorder now affect almost 1% of
American children (Kogan et al., 2007). The milder forms of autism, and
particularly Asperger’s, have accounted for most of this increase in
diagnosis.

Although for many years autism was thought to be primarily a socially

determined disorder, in which parents who were cold, distant, and rejecting
created the problem, current research suggests that biological factors are
most important. The heritability of autism has been estimated to be as high
as 90% (Freitag, 2007). Scientists speculate that autism is caused by an
unknown genetically determined brain abnormality that occurs early in
development. It is likely that several different brain sites are affected
(Moldin, 2003), and the search for these areas is being conducted in many
scientific laboratories.

But does Jared have autism or Asperger’s? The problem is that diagnosis is
not exact (remember the idea of “categories”), and the experts themselves
are often unsure how to classify behavior. Furthermore, the appropriate
classifications change with time and new knowledge. The American
Psychiatric Association has recently posted on its website a proposal to
eliminate the term Asperger’s syndrome from the upcoming DSM-V.
Whether or not Asperger’s will remain a separate disorder will be made
known when the next DSM-V is published in 2013.

Key Takeaways

More psychologists are involved in the diagnosis and treatment of psychological

disorder than in any other endeavor, and those tasks are probably the most important
psychologists face.

The impact on people with a psychological disorder comes both from the disease
itself and from the stigma associated with disorder.

A psychological disorder is an ongoing dysfunctional pattern of thought, emotion,

and behavior that causes significant distress and that is considered deviant in that
person’s culture or society.

According to the bio-psycho-social model, psychological disorders have biological,

psychological, and social causes.

It is difficult to diagnose psychological disorders, although the DSM provides

guidelines that are based on a category system. The DSM is frequently revised,
taking into consideration new knowledge as well as changes in cultural norms about
disorder.
 There is controversy about the diagnosis of disorders such as ADHD, autistic
disorder, and Asperger’s disorder.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Do you or your friends hold stereotypes about the mentally ill? Can you think of or
find clips from any films or other popular media that portray mental illness
positively or negatively? Is it more or less acceptable to stereotype the mentally ill
than to stereotype other social groups?

2. Consider the psychological disorders listed in Table 12.3 “Categories of

Psychological Disorders Based on the “. Do you know people who may suffer from
any of them? Can you or have you talked to them about their experiences? If so, how
do they experience the illness?

3. Consider the diagnosis of ADHD, autism, and Asperger’s disorder from the
biological, personal, and social-cultural perspectives. Do you think that these
disorders are overdiagnosed? How might clinicians determine if ADHD is
dysfunctional or distressing to the individual?

1
American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical
manual of mental disorders (4th ed., text rev.). Washington, DC: Author.

2
National Alliance on Mental Illness. (n.d.). Fight stigma. Retrieved from
http://www.nami.org/template.cfm?section=fight_stigma

3
National Institute of Mental Health. (2010). Attention-deficit hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD). Retrieved from
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-
disorder-adhd/index.shtml

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Braun, J., Kahn, R., Froehlich, T., Auinger, P., & Lanphear, B. (2006).
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Butcher, J., Mineka, S., & Hooley, J. (2007). Abnormal psychology and
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van Dyck, P. (2009). Prevalence of parent-reported diagnosis of autism
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A.,…Jarvelin, M. (2003). Maternal lifestyle factors in pregnancy risk of
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K.,…Stevenson, J. (2007). Food additives and hyperactive behaviour in 3-
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12.2 Anxiety and Dissociative Disorders:
Fearing the World Around Us

Learning Objectives

1. Outline and describe the different types of anxiety disorders.

2. Outline and describe the different types of dissociative disorders.

3. Explain the biological and environmental causes of anxiety and dissociative

disorders.

Anxiety, the nervousness or agitation that we sometimes experience, often

about something that is going to happen, is a natural part of life. We all feel
anxious at times, maybe when we think about our upcoming visit to the
dentist or the presentation we have to give to our class next week. Anxiety is
an important and useful human emotion; it is associated with the activation
of the sympathetic nervous system and the physiological and behavioral
responses that help protect us from danger. But too much anxiety can be
debilitating, and every year millions of people suffer from anxiety
disorders, which are psychological disturbances marked by irrational fears,
often of everyday objects and situations (Kessler, Chiu, Demler, & Walters,
2005).

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Consider the following, in which “Chase” describes her feelings of a

persistent and exaggerated sense of anxiety, even when there is little or
nothing in her life to provoke it:
For a few months now I’ve had a really bad feeling inside of me. The best way to
describe it is like a really bad feeling of negative inevitability, like something really bad
is impending, but I don’t know what. It’s like I’m on trial for murder or I’m just waiting
to be sent down for something. I have it all of the time but it gets worse in waves that
come from nowhere with no apparent triggers. I used to get it before going out for
nights out with friends, and it kinda stopped me from doing it as I’d rather not go out
and stress about the feeling, but now I have it all the time so it doesn’t really make a
difference anymore. (Chase, 2010)

Chase is probably suffering from a generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), a

psychological disorder diagnosed in situations in which a person has been
excessively worrying about money, health, work, family life, or relationships
for at least 6 months, even though he or she knows that the concerns are
exaggerated, and when the anxiety causes significant distress and
dysfunction.

In addition to their feelings of anxiety, people who suffer from GAD may
also experience a variety of physical symptoms, including irritability, sleep
troubles, difficulty concentrating, muscle aches, trembling, perspiration, and
hot flashes. The sufferer cannot deal with what is causing the anxiety, nor
avoid it, because there is no clear cause for anxiety. In fact, the sufferer
frequently knows, at least cognitively, that there is really nothing to worry
about.

About 10 million Americans suffer from GAD, and about two thirds are
women (Kessler, Chiu, Demler, & Walters, 2005; Robins & Regier, 1991).
Generalized anxiety disorder is most likely to develop between the ages of 7
and 40 years, but its influence may in some cases lessen with age (Rubio &
Lopez-Ibor, 2007).
Panic Disorder
When I was about 30 I had my first panic attack. I was driving home, my three little
girls were in their car seats in the back, and all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe, I broke
out into a sweat, and my heart began racing and literally beating against my ribs! I
thought I was going to die. I pulled off the road and put my head on the wheel. I
remember songs playing on the CD for about 15 minutes and my kids’ voices singing
along. I was sure I’d never see them again. And then, it passed. I slowly got back on the
road and drove home. I had no idea what it was. (Ceejay, 2006)

Ceejay is experiencing panic disorder, a psychological disorder

characterized by sudden attacks of anxiety and terror that have led to
significant behavioral changes in the person’s life. Symptoms of a panic
attack include shortness of breath, heart palpitations, trembling, dizziness,
choking sensations, nausea, and an intense feeling of dread or impending
doom. Panic attacks can often be mistaken for heart attacks or other serious
physical illnesses, and they may lead the person experiencing them to go to
a hospital emergency room. Panic attacks may last as little as one or as
much as 20 minutes, but they often peak and subside within about 10
minutes.

Sufferers are often anxious because they fear that they will have another
attack. They focus their attention on the thoughts and images of their fears,
becoming excessively sensitive to cues that signal the possibility of threat
(MacLeod, Rutherford, Campbell, Ebsworthy, & Holker, 2002). They may
also become unsure of the source of their arousal, misattributing it to
situations that are not actually the cause. As a result, they may begin to
avoid places where attacks have occurred in the past, such as driving, using
an elevator, or being in public places. Panic disorder affects about 3% of the
American population in a given year.
Phobias

A phobia (from the Greek word phobos, which means “fear”) is a specific
fear of a certain object, situation, or activity. The fear experience can range
from a sense of unease to a full-blown panic attack. Most people learn to
live with their phobias, but for others the fear can be so debilitating that they
go to extremes to avoid the fearful situation. A sufferer of arachnophobia
(fear of spiders), for example, may refuse to enter a room until it has been
checked thoroughly for spiders, or may refuse to vacation in the countryside
because spiders may be there. Phobias are characterized by their specificity
and their irrationality. A person with acrophobia (a fear of height) could
fearlessly sail around the world on a sailboat with no concerns yet refuse to
go out onto the balcony on the fifth floor of a building.

A common phobia is social phobia, extreme shyness around people or

discomfort in social situations. Social phobia may be specific to a certain
event, such as speaking in public or using a public restroom, or it can be a
more generalized anxiety toward almost all people outside of close family
and friends. People with social phobia will often experience physical
symptoms in public, such as sweating profusely, blushing, stuttering,
nausea, and dizziness. They are convinced that everybody around them
notices these symptoms as they are occurring. Women are somewhat more
likely than men to suffer from social phobia.

The most incapacitating phobia is agoraphobia, defined as anxiety about

being in places or situations from which escape might be difficult or
embarrassing, or in which help may not be available (American Psychiatric
Association, 2000)1. Typical places that provoke the panic attacks are
parking lots; crowded streets or shops; and bridges, tunnels, or expressways.
People (mostly women) who suffer from agoraphobia may have great
difficulty leaving their homes and interacting with other people.
Phobias affect about 9% of American adults, and they are about twice as
prevalent in women as in men (Fredrikson, Annas, Fischer, & Wik, 1996;
Kessler, Meron-Ruscio, Shear, & Wittchen, 2009). In most cases phobias
first appear in childhood and adolescence, and usually persist into
adulthood. Table 12.4 “The Most Common Phobias” presents a list of the
common phobias that are diagnosed by psychologists.

Table 12.4 The Most Common Phobias

Name Description

Acrophobia Fear of heights

Agoraphobia Fear of situations in which escape is difficult

Arachnophobia Fear of spiders

Astraphobia Fear of thunder and lightning

Claustrophobia Fear of closed-in spaces

Cynophobia Fear of dogs

Mysophobia Fear of germs or dirt

Ophidiophobia Fear of snakes

Pteromerhanophobia Fear of flying

Social phobia Fear of social situations

Trypanophobia Fear of injections

Zoophobia Fear of small animals

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders

Although he is best known his perfect shots on the field, the soccer star
David Beckham also suffers from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
As he describes it,
I have got this obsessive-compulsive disorder where I have to have everything in a
straight line or everything has to be in pairs. I’ll put my Pepsi cans in the fridge and if
there’s one too many then I’ll put it in another cupboard somewhere. I’ve got that
problem. I’ll go into a hotel room. Before I can relax, I have to move all the leaflets and
all the books and put them in a drawer. Everything has to be perfect. (Dolan, 2006)

David Beckham’s experience with obsessive behavior is not unusual. We all

get a little obsessive at times. We may continuously replay a favorite song in
our heads, worry about getting the right outfit for an upcoming party, or find
ourselves analyzing a series of numbers that seem to have a certain pattern.
And our everyday compulsions can be useful. Going back inside the house
once more to be sure that we really did turn off the sink faucet or checking
the mirror a couple of times to be sure that our hair is combed are not
necessarily bad ideas.

Figure 12.8
The soccer star David Beckham suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Raj Patel – Beckham LA Galaxy – CC BY 2.0.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a psychological disorder that is

diagnosed when an individual continuously experiences distressing or
frightening thoughts, and engages in obsessions (repetitive thoughts) or
compulsions (repetitive behaviors) in an attempt to calm these thoughts.
OCD is diagnosed when the obsessive thoughts are so disturbing and the
compulsive behaviors are so time consuming that they cause distress and
significant dysfunction in a person’s everyday life. Washing your hands
once or even twice to make sure that they are clean is normal; washing them
20 times is not. Keeping your fridge neat is a good idea; spending hours a
day on it is not. The sufferers know that these rituals are senseless, but they
cannot bring themselves to stop them, in part because the relief that they
feel after they perform them acts as a reinforcer, making the behavior more
likely to occur again.

Sufferers of OCD may avoid certain places that trigger the obsessive
thoughts, or use alcohol or drugs to try to calm themselves down. OCD has
a low prevalence rate (about 1% of the population in a given year) in
relation to other anxiety disorders, and usually develops in adolescence or
early adulthood (Horwath & Weissman, 2000; Samuels & Nestadt, 1997).
The course of OCD varies from person to person. Symptoms can come and
go, decrease, or worsen over time.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

“If you imagine burnt pork and plastic; I can still taste it,” says Chris Duggan, on his
experiences as a soldier in the Falklands War in 1982. “These helicopters were coming
in and we were asked to help get the boys off…when they opened the doors the stench
was horrendous.”
When he left the army in 1986, he suffered from PTSD. “I was a bit psycho,” he says.
“I was verbally aggressive, very uncooperative. I was arguing with my wife, and
eventually we divorced. I decided to change the kitchen around one day, get all new
stuff, so I threw everything out of the window. I was 10 stories up in a flat. I poured
brandy all over the video and it melted. I flooded the bathroom.” (Gould, 2007)

People who have survived a terrible ordeal, such as combat, torture, sexual
assault, imprisonment, abuse, natural disasters, or the death of someone
close to them may develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The
anxiety may begin months or even years after the event. People with PTSD
experience high levels of anxiety along with reexperiencing the trauma
(flashbacks), and a strong desire to avoid any reminders of the event. They
may lose interest in things they used to enjoy; startle easily; have difficulty
feeling affection; and may experience terror, rage, depression, or insomnia.
The symptoms may be felt especially when approaching the area where the
event took place or when the anniversary of that event is near.

PTSD affects about 5 million Americans, including victims of the 9/11

terrorist attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Hurricane Katrina.
Sixteen percent of Iraq war veterans, for example, reported experiencing
symptoms of PTSD (Hoge & Castro, 2006). PTSD is a frequent outcome of
childhood or adult sexual abuse, a disorder that has its own Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) diagnosis. Women are more
likely to develop PTSD than men (Davidson, 2000).

Risk factors for PTSD include the degree of the trauma’s severity, the lack
of family and community support, and additional life stressors (Brewin,
Andrews, & Valentine, 2000). Many people with PTSD also suffer from
another mental disorder, particularly depression, other anxiety disorders,
and substance abuse (Brady, Back, & Coffey, 2004).

Dissociative Disorders: Losing the Self to

Avoid Anxiety
On October 23, 2006, a man appeared on the television show Weekend Today and asked
America to help him rediscover his identity. The man, who was later identified as
Jeffrey Alan Ingram, had left his home in Seattle on September 9, 2006, and found
himself in Denver a few days later, without being able to recall who he was or where he
lived. He was reunited with family after being recognized on the show. According to a
coworker of Ingram’s fiancée, even after Ingram was reunited with his fiancée, his
memory did not fully return. “He said that while her face wasn’t familiar to him, her
 heart was familiar to him…He can’t remember his home, but he said their home felt
like home to him.”

People who experience anxiety are haunted by their memories and

experiences, and although they desperately wish to get past them, they
normally cannot. In some cases, however, such as with Jeffrey Ingram,
people who become overwhelmed by stress experience an altered state of
consciousness in which they become detached from the reality of what is
happening to them. A dissociative disorder is a condition that involves
disruptions or breakdowns of memory, awareness, and identity. The
dissociation is used as a defense against the trauma.

Dissociative Amnesia and Fugue

Dissociative amnesia is a psychological disorder that involves extensive,

but selective, memory loss, but in which there is no physiological
explanation for the forgetting (van der Hart & Nijenhuis, 2009). The
amnesia is normally brought on by a trauma—a situation that causes such
painful anxiety that the individual “forgets” in order to escape. These kinds
of trauma include disasters, accidents, physical abuse, rape, and other forms
of severe stress (Cloninger & Dokucu, 2008). Although the personality of
people who are experiencing dissociative amnesia remains fundamentally
unchanged—and they recall how to carry out daily tasks such as reading,
writing, and problem solving—they tend to forget things about their
personal lives—for instance, their name, age, and occupation—and may fail
to recognize family and friends (van der Hart & Nijenhuis, 2009).

A related disorder, dissociative fugue, is a psychological disorder in which

an individual loses complete memory of his or her identity and may even
assume a new one, often far from home. The individual with dissociative
fugue experiences all the symptoms of dissociative amnesia but also leaves
the situation entirely. The fugue state may last for just a matter of hours or
may continue for months, as it did with Jeffrey Ingram. Recovery from the
fugue state tends to be rapid, but when people recover they commonly have
no memory of the stressful event that triggered the fugue or of events that
occurred during their fugue state (Cardeña & Gleaves, 2007).

Dissociative Identity Disorder

You may remember the story of Sybil (a pseudonym for Shirley Ardell
Mason, who was born in 1923), a person who, over a period of 40 years,
claimed to possess 16 distinct personalities. Mason was in therapy for many
years trying to integrate these personalities into one complete self. A TV
movie about Mason’s life, starring Sally Field as Sybil, appeared in 1976.

Sybil suffered from the most severe of the dissociative disorders,

dissociative identity disorder. Dissociative identity disorder is a
psychological disorder in which two or more distinct and individual
personalities exist in the same person, and there is an extreme memory
disruption regarding personal information about the other personalities
(van der Hart & Nijenhuis, 2009). Dissociative identity disorder was once
known as “multiple personality disorder,” and this label is still sometimes
used. This disorder is sometimes mistakenly referred to as schizophrenia.

In some cases of dissociative identity disorder, there can be more than 10

different personalities in one individual. Switches from one personality to
another tend to occur suddenly, often triggered by a stressful situation
(Gillig, 2009). The host personality is the personality in control of the body
most of the time, and the alter personalities tend to differ from each other in
terms of age, race, gender, language, manners, and even sexual orientation
(Kluft, 1996). A shy, introverted individual may develop a boisterous,
extroverted alter personality. Each personality has unique memories and
social relationships (Dawson, 1990). Women are more frequently diagnosed
with dissociative identity disorder than are men, and when they are
diagnosed also tend to have more “personalities” (American Psychiatric
Association, 2000)1.

The dissociative disorders are relatively rare conditions and are most
frequently observed in adolescents and young adults. In part because they
are so unusual and difficult to diagnose, clinicians and researchers disagree
about the legitimacy of the disorders, and particularly about dissociative
identity disorder. Some clinicians argue that the descriptions in the DSM
accurately reflect the symptoms of these patients, whereas others believe
that patients are faking, role-playing, or using the disorder as a way to
justify behavior (Barry-Walsh, 2005; Kihlstrom, 2004; Lilienfeld & Lynn,
2003; Lipsanen et al., 2004). Even the diagnosis of Shirley Ardell Mason
(Sybil) is disputed. Some experts claim that Mason was highly hypnotizable
and that her therapist unintentionally “suggested” the existence of her
multiple personalities (Miller & Kantrowitz, 1999).

Explaining Anxiety and Dissociation

Disorders

Both nature and nurture contribute to the development of anxiety disorders.

In terms of our evolutionary experiences, humans have evolved to fear
dangerous situations. Those of us who had a healthy fear of the dark, of
storms, of high places, of closed spaces, and of spiders and snakes were
more likely to survive and have descendants. Our evolutionary experience
can account for some modern fears as well. A fear of elevators may be a
modern version of our fear of closed spaces, while a fear of flying may be
related to a fear of heights.
Also supporting the role of biology, anxiety disorders, including PTSD, are
heritable (Hettema, Neale, & Kendler, 2001), and molecular genetics studies
have found a variety of genes that are important in the expression of such
disorders (Smoller et al., 2008; Thoeringer et al., 2009). Neuroimaging
studies have found that anxiety disorders are linked to areas of the brain that
are associated with emotion, blood pressure and heart rate, decision making,
and action monitoring (Brown & McNiff, 2009; Damsa, Kosel, &
Moussally, 2009). People who experience PTSD also have a somewhat
smaller hippocampus in comparison with those who do not, and this
difference leads them to have a very strong sensitivity to traumatic events
(Gilbertson et al., 2002).

Whether the genetic predisposition to anxiety becomes expressed as a

disorder depends on environmental factors. People who were abused in
childhood are more likely to be anxious than those who had normal
childhoods, even with the same genetic disposition to anxiety sensitivity
(Stein, Schork, & Gelernter, 2008). And the most severe anxiety and
dissociative disorders, such as PTSD, are usually triggered by the
experience of a major stressful event. One problem is that modern life
creates a lot of anxiety. Although our life expectancy and quality of life have
improved over the past 50 years, the same period has also created a sharp
increase in anxiety levels (Twenge, 2006). These changes suggest that most
anxiety disorders stem from perceived, rather than actual, threats to our
well-being.

Anxieties are also learned through classical and operant conditioning. Just
as rats that are shocked in their cages develop a chronic anxiety toward their
laboratory environment (which has become a conditioned stimulus for fear),
rape victims may feel anxiety when passing by the scene of the crime, and
victims of PTSD may react to memories or reminders of the stressful event.
Classical conditioning may also be accompanied by stimulus generalization.
A single dog bite can lead to generalized fear of all dogs; a panic attack that
follows an embarrassing moment in one place may be generalized to a fear
of all public places. People’s responses to their anxieties are often
reinforced. Behaviors become compulsive because they provide relief from
the torment of anxious thoughts. Similarly, leaving or avoiding fear-
inducing stimuli leads to feelings of calmness or relief, which reinforces
phobic behavior.

In contrast to the anxiety disorders, the causes of the dissociative orders are
less clear, which is part of the reason that there is disagreement about their
existence. Unlike most psychological orders, there is little evidence of a
genetic predisposition; they seem to be almost entirely environmentally
determined. Severe emotional trauma during childhood, such as physical or
sexual abuse, coupled with a strong stressor, is typically cited as the
underlying cause (Alpher, 1992; Cardeña & Gleaves, 2007). Kihlstrom,
Glisky, and Angiulo (1994) suggest that people with personalities that lead
them to fantasize and become intensely absorbed in their own personal
experiences are more susceptible to developing dissociative disorders under
stress. Dissociative disorders can in many cases be successfully treated,
usually by psychotherapy (Lilienfeld & Lynn, 2003).

Key Takeaways

Anxiety is a natural part of life, but too much anxiety can be debilitating. Every year
millions of people suffer from anxiety disorders.

People who suffer from generalized anxiety disorder experience anxiety, as well as a
variety of physical symptoms.

Panic disorder involves the experience of panic attacks, including shortness of

breath, heart palpitations, trembling, and dizziness.
 Phobias are specific fears of a certain object, situation, or activity. Phobias are
characterized by their specificity and their irrationality.

A common phobia is social phobia, extreme shyness around people or discomfort in

social situations.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is diagnosed when a person’s repetitive thoughts are

so disturbing and their compulsive behaviors so time consuming that they cause
distress and significant disruption in a person’s everyday life.

People who have survived a terrible ordeal, such as combat, torture, rape,
imprisonment, abuse, natural disasters, or the death of someone close to them, may
develop PTSD.

Dissociative disorders, including dissociative amnesia and dissociative fugue, are

conditions that involve disruptions or breakdowns of memory, awareness, and
identity. The dissociation is used as a defense against the trauma.

Dissociative identity disorder, in which two or more distinct and individual

personalities exist in the same person, is relatively rare and difficult to diagnose.

Both nature and nurture contribute to the development of anxiety disorders.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Under what situations do you experience anxiety? Are these experiences rational or
irrational? Does the anxiety keep you from doing some things that you would like to
be able to do?

2. Do you or people you know suffer from phobias? If so, what are the phobias and
how do you think the phobias began? Do they seem more genetic or more
environmental in origin?
1
American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical
manual of mental disorders (4th ed., text rev.). Washington, DC: Author.

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12.3 Mood Disorders: Emotions as Illness

Learning Objectives

1. Summarize and differentiate the various forms of mood disorders, in particular

dysthymia, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder.

2. Explain the genetic and environmental factors that increase the likelihood that a
person will develop a mood disorder.

The everyday variations in our feelings of happiness and sadness reflect our
mood, which can be defined as the positive or negative feelings that are in
the background of our everyday experiences. In most cases we are in a
relatively good mood, and this positive mood has some positive
consequences—it encourages us to do what needs to be done and to make
the most of the situations we are in (Isen, 2003). When we are in a good
mood our thought processes open up, and we are more likely to approach
others. We are more friendly and helpful to others when we are in a good
mood than we are when we are in a bad mood, and we may think more
creatively (De Dreu, Baas, & Nijstad, 2008). On the other hand, when we
are in a bad mood we are more likely to prefer to be alone rather than
interact with others, we focus on the negative things around us, and our
creativity suffers.

It is not unusual to feel “down” or “low” at times, particularly after a painful

event such as the death of someone close to us, a disappointment at work, or
an argument with a partner. We often get depressed when we are tired, and
many people report being particularly sad during the winter when the days
are shorter. Mood (or affective) disorders are psychological disorders in
which the person’s mood negatively influences his or her physical,
perceptual, social, and cognitive processes. People who suffer from mood
disorders tend to experience more intense—and particularly more intense
negative—moods. About 10% of the U.S. population suffers from a mood
disorder in a given year.

The most common symptom of mood disorders is negative mood, also

known as sadness or depression. Consider the feelings of this person, who
was struggling with depression and was diagnosed with major depressive
disorder:
I didn’t want to face anyone; I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t really want to do
anything for myself…I couldn’t sit down for a minute really to do anything that took
deep concentration…It was like I had big huge weights on my legs and I was trying to
swim and just kept sinking. And I’d get a little bit of air, just enough to survive and then
I’d go back down again. It was just constantly, constantly just fighting, fighting,
fighting, fighting, fighting. (National Institute of Mental Health, 2010)1

Figure 12.10

It is not unusual to feel “down” or “low” at times, but about

10% of the population suffers from dysfunctional and

distressing mood disorders.

Luis Sarabia – Light at the end of the tunnel – CC BY-NC 2.0.

Mood disorders can occur at any age, and the median age of onset is 32
years (Kessler, Berglund, Demler, Jin, & Walters, 2005). Recurrence of
depressive episodes is fairly common and is greatest for those who first
experience depression before the age of 15 years. About twice as many
women suffer from depression than do men (Culbertson, 1997). This gender
difference is consistent across many countries and cannot be explained
entirely by the fact that women are more likely to seek treatment for their
depression. Rates of depression have been increasing over the past years,
although the reasons for this increase are not known (Kessler et al., 2003).

As you can see below, the experience of depression has a variety of negative
effects on our behaviors. In addition to the loss of interest, productivity, and
social contact that accompanies depression, the person’s sense of
hopelessness and sadness may become so severe that he or she considers or
even succeeds in committing suicide. Suicide is the 11th leading cause of
death in the United States, and a suicide occurs approximately every 16
minutes. Almost all the people who commit suicide have a diagnosable
psychiatric disorder at the time of their death (American Association of
Suicidology, 20102; American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, 20073;
Sudak, 2005).

Behaviors Associated with Depression

Changes in appetite; weight loss or gain

Difficulty concentrating, remembering details, and making decisions

Fatigue and decreased energy

Feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and pessimism

Increased use of alcohol or drugs

Irritability, restlessness
 Loss of interest in activities or hobbies once pleasurable, including sex

Loss of interest in personal appearance

Persistent aches or pains, headaches, cramps, or digestive problems that do not

improve with treatment

Sleep disorders, either trouble sleeping or excessive sleeping

Thoughts of suicide or attempts at suicide

Dysthymia and Major Depressive Disorder

The level of depression observed in people with mood disorders varies

widely. People who experience depression for many years, such that it
becomes to seem normal and part of their everyday life, and who feel that
they are rarely or never happy, will likely be diagnosed with a mood
disorder. If the depression is mild but long-lasting, they will be diagnosed
with dysthymia, a condition characterized by mild, but chronic, depressive
symptoms that last for at least 2 years.

If the depression continues and becomes even more severe, the diagnosis
may become that of major depressive disorder. Major depressive disorder
(clinical depression) is a mental disorder characterized by an all-
encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem and by loss of
interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities. Those who suffer from
major depressive disorder feel an intense sadness, despair, and loss of
interest in pursuits that once gave them pleasure. These negative feelings
profoundly limit the individual’s day-to-day functioning and ability to
maintain and develop interests in life (Fairchild & Scogin, 2008).

About 21 million American adults suffer from a major depressive disorder

in any given year; this is approximately 7% of the American population.
Major depressive disorder occurs about twice as often in women as it does
in men (Kessler, Chiu, Demler, & Walters, 2005; Kessler et al., 2003). In
some cases clinically depressed people lose contact with reality and may
receive a diagnosis of major depressive episode with psychotic features. In
these cases the depression includes delusions and hallucinations.

Bipolar Disorder
Juliana is a 21-year-old single woman. Over the past several years she had been treated
by a psychologist for depression, but for the past few months she had been feeling a lot
better. Juliana had landed a good job in a law office and found a steady boyfriend. She
told her friends and parents that she had been feeling particularly good—her energy
level was high and she was confident in herself and her life.
One day Juliana was feeling so good that she impulsively quit her new job and left
town with her boyfriend on a road trip. But the trip didn’t turn out well because Juliana
became impulsive, impatient, and easily angered. Her euphoria continued, and in one of
the towns that they visited she left her boyfriend and went to a party with some
strangers that she had met. She danced into the early morning and ended up having sex
with several of the men.
Eventually Juliana returned home to ask for money, but when her parents found out
about her recent behavior, and when she acted aggressively and abusively to them when
they confronted her about it, they referred her to a social worker. Juliana was
hospitalized, where she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

While dysthymia and major depressive disorder are characterized by

overwhelming negative moods, bipolar disorder is a psychological
disorder characterized by swings in mood from overly “high” to sad and
hopeless, and back again, with periods of near-normal mood in between.
Bipolar disorder is diagnosed in cases such as Juliana’s, where experiences
with depression are followed by a more normal period and then a period of
mania or euphoria in which the person feels particularly awake, alive,
excited, and involved in everyday activities but is also impulsive, agitated,
and distracted. Without treatment, it is likely that Juliana would cycle back
into depression and then eventually into mania again, with the likelihood
that she would harm herself or others in the process.

Figure 12.11 Vincent van Gogh

Based on his intense bursts of artistic productivity (in one 2-

month period in 1889 he produced 60 paintings), personal

writings, and behavior (including cutting off his own ear), it is

commonly thought that van Gogh suffered from bipolar

disorder. He committed suicide at age 37 (Thomas & Bracken,

2001).

Dhilung Kirat – Van Gogh Strokes – CC BY 2.0.

Bipolar disorder is an often chronic and lifelong condition that may begin in
childhood. Although the normal pattern involves swings from high to low, in
some cases the person may experience both highs and lows at the same
time. Determining whether a person has bipolar disorder is difficult due to
the frequent presence of comorbidity with both depression and anxiety
disorders. Bipolar disorder is more likely to be diagnosed when it is initially
observed at an early age, when the frequency of depressive episodes is high,
and when there is a sudden onset of the symptoms (Bowden, 2001).
Explaining Mood Disorders

Mood disorders are known to be at least in part genetic, because they are
heritable. (Berrettini, 2006; Merikangas et al., 2002). Neurotransmitters also
play an important role in mood disorders. Serotonin, dopamine, and
norepinephrine are all known to influence mood (Sher & Mann, 2003), and
drugs that influence the actions of these chemicals are often used to treat
mood disorders.

The brains of those with mood disorders may in some cases show structural
differences from those without them. Videbech and Ravnkilde (2004) found
that the hippocampus was smaller in depressed subjects than in normal
subjects, and this may be the result of reduced neurogenesis (the process of
generating new neurons) in depressed people (Warner-Schmidt & Duman,
2006). Antidepressant drugs may alleviate depression in part by increasing
neurogenesis (Duman & Monteggia, 2006).

Research Focus: Using Molecular Genetics to Unravel the Causes of Depression

Avshalom Caspi and his colleagues (Caspi et al., 2003) used a longitudinal study to test whether
genetic predispositions might lead some people, but not others, to suffer from depression as a
result of environmental stress. Their research focused on a particular gene, the 5-HTT gene,
which is known to be important in the production and use of the neurotransmitter serotonin. The
researchers focused on this gene because serotonin is known to be important in depression, and
because selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have been shown to be effective in
treating depression.

People who experience stressful life events, for instance involving threat, loss, humiliation, or
defeat, are likely to experience depression. But biological-situational models suggest that a
person’s sensitivity to stressful events depends on his or her genetic makeup. The researchers
therefore expected that people with one type of genetic pattern would show depression following
stress to a greater extent than people with a different type of genetic pattern.

The research included a sample of 1,037 adults from Dunedin, New Zealand. Genetic analysis on
the basis of DNA samples allowed the researchers to divide the sample into two groups on the
basis of the characteristics of their 5-HTT gene. One group had a short version (or allele) of the
gene, whereas the other group did not have the short allele of the gene.

The participants also completed a measure where they indicated the number and severity of
stressful life events that they had experienced over the past 5 years. The events included
employment, financial, housing, health, and relationship stressors. The dependent measure in the
study was the level of depression reported by the participant, as assessed using a structured
interview test (Robins, Cottler, Bucholtz, & Compton, 1995).

As you can see in Figure 12.12 “Results From Caspi et al., 2003”, as the number of stressful
experiences the participants reported increased from 0 to 4, depression also significantly
increased for the participants with the short version of the gene (top panel). But for the
participants who did not have a short allele, increasing stress did not increase depression (bottom
panel). Furthermore, for the participants who experienced 4 stressors over the past 5 years, 33%
of the participants who carried the short version of the gene became depressed, whereas only
17% of participants who did not have the short version did.

Figure 12.12 Results From Caspi et al., 2003

 Caspi et al. (2003) found that the number of stressful life experiences was associated with increased

depression for people with the short allele of the 5-HTT gene (top panel) but not for people who did not

have the short allele (bottom panel).

Adapted from Caspi, A., Sugden, K., Moffitt, T. E., Taylor, A., Craig, I. W., Harrington, H.,…Poulton, R.

(2003). Influence of life stress on depression: Moderation by a polymorphism in the 5-HTT gene. Science,

301(5631), 386–389.

This important study provides an excellent example of how genes and environment work
together: An individual’s response to environmental stress was influenced by his or her genetic
makeup.

But psychological and social determinants are also important in creating

mood disorders and depression. In terms of psychological characteristics,
mood states are influenced in large part by our cognitions. Negative
thoughts about ourselves and our relationships to others create negative
moods, and a goal of cognitive therapy for mood disorders is to attempt to
change people’s cognitions to be more positive. Negative moods also create
negative behaviors toward others, such as acting sad, slouching, and
avoiding others, which may lead those others to respond negatively to the
person, for instance by isolating that person, which then creates even more
depression (Figure 12.13 “Cycle of Depression”). You can see how it might
become difficult for people to break out of this “cycle of depression.”

Figure 12.13 Cycle of Depression

Negative emotions create negative behaviors, which lead people to respond negatively to the individual,

creating even more depression.

Weissman et al. (1996) found that rates of depression varied greatly among
countries, with the highest rates in European and American countries and
the lowest rates in Asian countries. These differences seem to be due to
discrepancies between individual feelings and cultural expectations about
what one should feel. People from European and American cultures report
that it is important to experience emotions such as happiness and
excitement, whereas the Chinese report that it is more important to be stable
and calm. Because Americans may feel that they are not happy or excited
but that they are supposed to be, this may increase their depression (Tsai,
Knutson, & Fung, 2006).

Key Takeaways

Mood is the positive or negative feelings that are in the background of our everyday
experiences.

We all may get depressed in our daily lives, but people who suffer from mood
disorders tend to experience more intense—and particularly more intense negative—
moods.

The most common symptom of mood disorders is negative mood.

If a person experiences mild but long-lasting depression, she will be diagnosed with
dysthymia. If the depression continues and becomes even more severe, the diagnosis
may become that of major depressive disorder.

Bipolar disorder is characterized by swings in mood from overly “high” to sad and
hopeless, and back again, with periods of near-normal mood in between.

Mood disorders are caused by the interplay among biological, psychological, and
social variables.
 Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Give a specific example of the negative cognitions, behaviors, and responses of

others that might contribute to a cycle of depression like that shown in Figure 12.13
“Cycle of Depression”.

2. Given the discussion about the causes of negative moods and depression, what might
people do to try to feel better on days that they are experiencing negative moods?

1
National Institute of Mental Health. (2010, April 8). People with depression
discuss their illness. Retrieved from
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/media/video/health/depression.shtml

2
American Association of Suicidology. (2010, June 29). Some facts about
suicide and depression. Retrieved from
http://www.suicidology.org/c/document_library/get_file?
folderId=232&name=DLFE-246.pdf.

3
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. (2007). About suicide: Facts
and figures. National statistics. Retrieved from
http://www.afsp.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.viewpage&page_id=
050FEA9F-B064-4092-B1135C3A70DE1FDA.

References

Caspi, A., Sugden, K., Moffitt, T. E., Taylor, A., Craig, I. W., Harrington,
H.,…Poulton, R. (2003). Influence of life stress on depression: Moderation
by a polymorphism in the 5-HTT gene. Science, 301(5631), 386–389.
Berrettini, W. (2006). Genetics of bipolar and unipolar disorders. In D. J.
Stein, D. J. Kupfer, & A. F. Schatzberg (Eds.), Textbook of mood disorders.
Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing.

Bowden, C. L. (2001). Strategies to reduce misdiagnosis of bipolar

depression. Psychiatric Services, 52(1), 51–55.

Culbertson, F. M. (1997). Depression and gender: An international review.

American Psychologist, 52, 25–31.

De Dreu, C. K. W., Baas, M., & Nijstad, B. A. (2008). Hedonic tone and
activation level in the mood-creativity link: Toward a dual pathway to
creativity model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(5), 739–
756.

Duman, R. S., & Monteggia, L. M. (2006). A neurotrophic model for stress-

related mood disorders. Biological Psychiatry, 59, 1116–1127.

Fairchild, K., & Scogin, F. (2008). Assessment and treatment of depression.

In K. Laidlow & B. Knight (Eds.), Handbook of emotional disorders in later
life: Assessment and treatment. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Isen, A. M. (2003). Positive affect as a source of human strength. In J.

Aspinall, A psychology of human strengths: Fundamental questions and
future directions for a positive psychology (pp. 179–195). Washington, DC:
American Psychological Association.

Kessler, R. C., Berglund, P., Demler, O, Jin, R., Koretz, D., Merikangas, K.
R.,…Wang, P. S. (2003). The epidemiology of major depressive disorder:
Results from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R).
Journal of the American Medical Association, 289(23), 3095–3105.

Kessler, R. C., Berglund, P. A., Demler, O., Jin, R., & Walters, E. E. (2005).
Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in
the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R). Archives of General
Psychiatry, 62(6), 593–602.

Kessler, R. C., Chiu, W. T., Demler, O., & Walters, E. E. (2005). Prevalence,
severity, and comorbidity of 12-month DSM-IV disorders in the National
Comorbidity Survey Replication. Archives of General Psychiatry, 62(6),
617–27.

Merikangas, K., Chakravarti, A., Moldin, S., Araj, H., Blangero, J.,
Burmeister, M,…Takahashi, A. S. (2002). Future of genetics of mood
disorders research. Biological Psychiatry, 52(6), 457–477.

Robins, L. N., Cottler, L., Bucholtz, K., & Compton, W. (1995). Diagnostic
interview schedule for DSM-1V. St. Louis, MO: Washington University.

Sher, L., & Mann, J. J. (2003). Psychiatric pathophysiology: Mood

disorders. In A. Tasman, J. Kay, & J. A. Lieberman (Eds.), Psychiatry. New
York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.

Sudak, H. S. (2005). Suicide. In B. J. Sadock & V. A. Sadock (Eds.), Kaplan

& Sadock’s comprehensive textbook of psychiatry. Philadelphia, PA:
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Thomas, P., & Bracken, P. (2001). Vincent’s bandage: The art of selling a
drug for bipolar disorder. British Medical Journal, 323, 1434.

Tsai, J. L., Knutson, B., & Fung, H. H. (2006). Cultural variation in affect
valuation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 288–307.

Videbech, P., & Ravnkilde, B. (2004). Hippocampal volume and depression:

A meta-analysis of MRI studies. American Journal of Psychiatry, 161,
1957–1966.
Warner-Schmidt, J. L., & Duman, R. S. (2006). Hippocampal neurogenesis:
Opposing effects of stress and antidepressant treatment. Hippocampus, 16,
239–249.

Weissman, M. M., Bland, R. C., Canino, G. J., Greenwald, S., Hwu, H-G.,
Joyce, P. R.,…Yeh, E-K. (1996). Cross-national epidemiology of major
depression and bipolar disorder. Journal of the American Medical
Association, 276, 293–299.
12.4 Schizophrenia: The Edge of Reality and
Consciousness

Learning Objectives

1. Categorize and describe the three major symptoms of schizophrenia.

2. Differentiate the five types of schizophrenia and their characteristics.

3. Identify the biological and social factors that increase the likelihood that a person
will develop schizophrenia.

The term schizophrenia, which in Greek means “split mind,” was first used
to describe a psychological disorder by Eugen Bleuler (1857–1939), a Swiss
psychiatrist who was studying patients who had very severe thought
disorders. Schizophrenia is a serious psychological disorder marked by
delusions, hallucinations, loss of contact with reality, inappropriate affect,
disorganized speech, social withdrawal, and deterioration of adaptive
behavior.

Figure 12.14
People with schizophrenia may exhibit disorganized behavior, as this person does.

Mark Turnauckas – Got Schizophrenia? – CC BY 2.0.

Schizophrenia is the most chronic and debilitating of all psychological

disorders. It affects men and women equally, occurs in similar rates across
ethnicities and across cultures, and affects at any one time approximately 3
million people in the United States (National Institute of Mental Health,
2010)1. Onset of schizophrenia is usually between the ages of 16 and 30 and
rarely after the age of 45 or in children (Mueser & McGurk, 2004;
Nicholson, Lenane, Hamburger, Fernandez, Bedwell, & Rapoport, 2000).

Symptoms of Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is accompanied by a variety of symptoms, but not all patients

have all of them (Lindenmayer & Khan, 2006). As you can see in Table 12.5
“Positive, Negative, and Cognitive Symptoms of Schizophrenia”, the
symptoms are divided into positive symptoms, negative symptoms, and
cognitive symptoms (American Psychiatric Association, 2008; National
Institute of Mental Health, 2010)2. Positive symptoms refer to the presence
of abnormal behaviors or experiences (such as hallucinations) that are not
observed in normal people, whereas negative symptoms (such as lack of
affect and an inability to socialize with others) refer to the loss or
deterioration of thoughts and behaviors that are typical of normal
functioning. Finally, cognitive symptoms are the changes in cognitive
processes that accompany schizophrenia (Skrabalo, 2000). Because the
patient has lost contact with reality, we say that he or she is experiencing
psychosis, which is a psychological condition characterized by a loss of
contact with reality.

Table 12.5 Positive, Negative, and Cognitive Symptoms of Schizophrenia

Positive symptoms Negative symptoms Cognitive symptoms

Hallucinations Social withdrawal Poor executive control

Delusions (of grandeur or Flat affect and lack of pleasure in

Trouble focusing
persecution) everyday life

Working memory
Derailment Apathy and loss of motivation
problems

Poor problem-solving
Grossly disorganized behavior Distorted sense of time
abilities

Inappropriate affect Lack of goal-oriented activity

Movement disorders Limited speech

Poor hygiene and grooming

People with schizophrenia almost always suffer from hallucinations—
imaginary sensations that occur in the absence of a real stimulus or which
are gross distortions of a real stimulus. Auditory hallucinations are the most
common and are reported by approximately three quarters of patients
(Nicolson, Mayberg, Pennell, & Nemeroff, 2006). Schizophrenic patients
frequently report hearing imaginary voices that curse them, comment on
their behavior, order them to do things, or warn them of danger (National
Institute of Mental Health, 2009). Visual hallucinations are less common
and frequently involve seeing God or the devil (De Sousa, 2007).

Schizophrenic people also commonly experience delusions, which are false

beliefs not commonly shared by others within one’s culture, and maintained
even though they are obviously out of touch with reality. People with
delusions of grandeur believe that they are important, famous, or powerful.
They often become convinced that they are someone else, such as the
president or God, or that they have some special talent or ability. Some
claim to have been assigned to a special covert mission (Buchanan &
Carpenter, 2005). People with delusions of persecution believe that a person
or group seeks to harm them. They may think that people are able to read
their minds and control their thoughts (Maher, 2001). If a person suffers
from delusions of persecution, there is a good chance that he or she will
become violent, and this violence is typically directed at family members
(Buchanan & Carpenter, 2005).

People suffering from schizophrenia also often suffer from the positive
symptom of derailment—the shifting from one subject to another, without
following any one line of thought to conclusion—and may exhibit grossly
disorganized behavior including inappropriate sexual behavior, peculiar
appearance and dress, unusual agitation (e.g., shouting and swearing),
strange body movements, and awkward facial expressions. It is also
common for schizophrenia sufferers to experience inappropriate affect. For
example, a patient may laugh uncontrollably when hearing sad news.
Movement disorders typically appear as agitated movements, such as
repeating a certain motion again and again, but can in some cases include
catatonia, a state in which a person does not move and is unresponsive to
others (Janno, Holi, Tuisku, & Wahlbeck, 2004; Rosebush & Mazurek,
2010).

Negative symptoms of schizophrenia include social withdrawal, poor

hygiene and grooming, poor problem-solving abilities, and a distorted sense
of time (Skrabalo, 2000). Patients often suffer from flat affect, which means
that they express almost no emotional response (e.g., they speak in a
monotone and have a blank facial expression) even though they may report
feeling emotions (Kring, 1999). Another negative symptom is the tendency
toward incoherent language, for instance, to repeat the speech of others
(“echo speech”). Some schizophrenics experience motor disturbances,
ranging from complete catatonia and apparent obliviousness to their
environment to random and frenzied motor activity during which they
become hyperactive and incoherent (Kirkpatrick & Tek, 2005).

Not all schizophrenic patients exhibit negative symptoms, but those who do
also tend to have the poorest outcomes (Fenton & McGlashan, 1994).
Negative symptoms are predictors of deteriorated functioning in everyday
life and often make it impossible for sufferers to work or to care for
themselves.

Cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia are typically difficult for outsiders to

recognize but make it extremely difficult for the sufferer to lead a normal
life. These symptoms include difficulty comprehending information and
using it to make decisions (the lack of executive control), difficulty
maintaining focus and attention, and problems with working memory (the
ability to use information immediately after it is learned).
Explaining Schizophrenia

There is no single cause of schizophrenia. Rather, a variety of biological and

environmental risk factors interact in a complex way to increase the
likelihood that someone might develop schizophrenia (Walker, Kestler,
Bollini, & Hochman, 2004).

Studies in molecular genetics have not yet identified the particular genes
responsible for schizophrenia, but it is evident from research using family,
twin, and adoption studies that genetics are important (Walker & Tessner,
2008). As you can see in Figure 12.15 “Genetic Disposition to Develop
Schizophrenia”, the likelihood of developing schizophrenia increases
dramatically if a close relative also has the disease.

Figure 12.15 Genetic Disposition to Develop Schizophrenia

The risk of developing schizophrenia increases substantially if a person has a relative with the disease.

Adapted from Gottesman, I. I. (1991). Schizophrenia genesis: The origins of madness. New York, NY: W.
H. Freeman.

Neuroimaging studies have found some differences in brain structure

between schizophrenic and normal patients. In some people with
schizophrenia, the cerebral ventricles (fluid-filled spaces in the brain) are
enlarged (Suddath, Christison, Torrey, Casanova, & Weinberger, 1990).
People with schizophrenia also frequently show an overall loss of neurons
in the cerebral cortex, and some show less activity in the frontal and
temporal lobes, which are the areas of the brain involved in language,
attention, and memory. This would explain the deterioration of functioning
in language and thought processing that is commonly experienced by
schizophrenic patients (Galderisi et al., 2008).

Many researchers believe that schizophrenia is caused in part by excess

dopamine, and this theory is supported by the fact that most of the drugs
useful in treating schizophrenia inhibit dopamine activity in the brain (Javitt
& Laruelle, 2006). Levels of serotonin may also play a part (Inayama et al.,
1996). But recent evidence suggests that the role of neurotransmitters in
schizophrenia is more complicated than was once believed. It also remains
unclear whether observed differences in the neurotransmitter systems of
people with schizophrenia cause the disease, or if they are the result of the
disease itself or its treatment (Csernansky & Grace, 1998).

A genetic predisposition to developing schizophrenia does not always

develop into the actual disorder. Even if a person has an identical twin with
schizophrenia, he still has less than a 50% chance of getting it himself, and
over 60% of all schizophrenic people have no first- or second-degree
relatives with schizophrenia (Gottesman & Erlenmeyer-Kimling, 2001;
Riley & Kendler, 2005). This suggests that there are important
environmental causes as well.

One hypothesis is that schizophrenia is caused in part by disruptions to

normal brain development in infancy that may be caused by poverty,
malnutrition, and disease (Brown et al., 2004; Murray & Bramon, 2005;
Susser et al., 1996; Waddington, Lane, Larkin, O’Callaghan, 1999). Stress
also increases the likelihood that a person will develop schizophrenic
symptoms; onset and relapse of schizophrenia typically occur during
periods of increased stress (Walker, Mittal, & Tessner, 2008). However, it
may be that people who develop schizophrenia are more vulnerable to stress
than others and not necessarily that they experience more stress than others
(Walker, Mittal, & Tessner, 2008). Many homeless people are likely to be
suffering from undiagnosed schizophrenia.

Another social factor that has been found to be important in schizophrenia is

the degree to which one or more of the patient’s relatives is highly critical or
highly emotional in their attitude toward the patient. Hooley and Hiller
(1998) found that schizophrenic patients who ended a stay in a hospital and
returned to a family with high expressed emotion were three times more
likely to relapse than patients who returned to a family with low expressed
emotion. It may be that the families with high expressed emotion are a
source of stress to the patient.

Key Takeaways

Schizophrenia is a serious psychological disorder marked by delusions,

hallucinations, and loss of contact with reality.

Schizophrenia is accompanied by a variety of symptoms, but not all patients have all
of them.

Because the schizophrenic patient has lost contact with reality, we say that he or she
is experiencing psychosis.
 Positive symptoms of schizophrenia include hallucinations, delusions, derailment,
disorganized behavior, inappropriate affect, and catatonia.

Negative symptoms of schizophrenia include social withdrawal, poor hygiene and

grooming, poor problem-solving abilities, and a distorted sense of time.

Cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia include difficulty comprehending and using

information and problems maintaining focus.

There is no single cause of schizophrenia. Rather, there are a variety of biological

and environmental risk factors that interact in a complex way to increase the
likelihood that someone might develop schizophrenia.

Exercise and Critical Thinking

1. How should society deal with people with schizophrenia? Is it better to keep patients
in psychiatric facilities against their will, but where they can be observed and
supported, or to allow them to live in the community, where they may commit
violent crimes against themselves or others? What factors influence your opinion?

1
National Institute of Mental Health. (2010, April 26). What is
schizophrenia? Retrieved from
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/schizophrenia/index.shtml

2
American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical
manual of mental disorders (4th ed., text rev.). Washington, DC: Author;
National Institute of Mental Health. (2010, April 26). What is
schizophrenia? Retrieved from
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/schizophrenia/index.shtml
References

Brown, A. S., Begg, M. D., Gravenstein, S., Schaefer, C. S., Wyatt, R. J.,
Bresnahan, M.,…Susser, E. S. (2004). Serologic evidence of prenatal
influenza in the etiology of schizophrenia. Archives of General Psychiatry,
61, 774–780.

Buchanan, R. W., & Carpenter, W. T. (2005). Concept of schizophrenia. In

B. J. Sadock & V. A. Sadock (Eds.), Kaplan & Sadock’s comprehensive
textbook of psychiatry. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Csernansky, J. G., & Grace, A. A. (1998). New models of the

pathophysiology of schizophrenia: Editors’ introduction. Schizophrenia
Bulletin, 24(2), 185–187.

De Sousa, A. (2007). Types and contents of hallucinations in schizophrenia.

Journal of Pakistan Psychiatric Society, 4(1), 29.

Fenton, W. S., & McGlashan, T. H. (1994). Antecedents, symptom

progression, and long-term outcome of the deficit syndrome in
schizophrenia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 151, 351–356.

Galderisi, S., Quarantelli, M., Volper, U., Mucci, A., Cassano, G. B.,
Invernizzi, G.,…Maj, M. (2008). Patterns of structural MRI abnormalities in
deficit and nondeficit schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 34, 393–401.

Gottesman, I. I., & Erlenmeyer-Kimling, L. (2001). Family and twin studies

as a head start in defining prodomes and endophenotypes for hypothetical
early interventions in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research, 5(1), 93–102.

Janno, S., Holi, M., Tuisku, K., & Wahlbeck, K. (2004). Prevalence of
neuroleptic-induced movement disorders in chronic schizophrenia patients.
American Journal of Psychiatry, 161, 160–163.

Javitt, D. C., & Laruelle, M. (2006). Neurochemical theories. In J. A.

Lieberman, T. S. Stroup, & D. O. Perkins (Eds.), Textbook of schizophrenia
(pp. 85–116). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing.

Hooley, J. M., & Hiller, J. B. (1998). Expressed emotion and the

pathogenesis of relapse in schizophrenia. In M. F. Lenzenweger & R. H.
Dworkin (Eds.), Origins and development of schizophrenia: Advances in
experimental psychopathology (pp. 447–468). Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association.

Inayama, Y., Yoneda, H., Sakai, T., Ishida, T., Nonomura, Y., Kono, Y.,…
Asaba, H. (1996). Positive association between a DNA sequence variant in
the serotonin 2A receptor gene and schizophrenia. American Journal of
Medical Genetics, 67(1), 103–105.

Kirkpatrick, B., & Tek, C. (2005). Schizophrenia: Clinical features and

psychological disorder concepts. In B. J. Sadock & S. V. Sadock (Eds.),
Kaplan & Sadock’s comprehensive textbook of psychiatry (pp. 1416–1435).
Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Kring, A. M. (1999). Emotion in schizophrenia: Old mystery, new

understanding. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 8, 160–163.

Lindenmayer, J. P., & Khan, A. (2006). Psychological disorder. In J. A.

Lieberman, T. S. Stroup, & D. O. Perkins (Eds.), Textbook of schizophrenia
(pp. 187–222). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing.

Maher, B. A. (2001). Delusions. In P. B. Sutker & H. E. Adams (Eds.),

Comprehensive handbook of psychological disorder (3rd ed., pp. 309–370).
New York, NY: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Mueser, K. T., & McGurk, S. R. (2004). Schizophrenia. Lancet, 363(9426),
2063–2072; Nicolson, R., Lenane, M., Hamburger, S. D., Fernandez, T.,
Bedwell, J., & Rapoport, J. L. (2000). Lessons from childhood-onset
schizophrenia. Brain Research Review, 31(2–3), 147–156.

Murray, R. M., & Bramon, E. (2005). Developmental model of

schizophrenia. In B. J. Sadock & V. A. Sadock (Eds.), Kaplan & Sadock’s
comprehensive textbook of psychiatry (pp. 1381–1395). Philadelphia, PA:
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Nicolson, S. E., Mayberg, H. S., Pennell, P. B., & Nemeroff, C. B. (2006).

Persistent auditory hallucinations that are unresponsive to antipsychotic
drugs. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 163, 1153–1159.
doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.163.7.1153

Riley, B. P., & Kendler, K. S. (2005). Schizophrenia: Genetics. In B. J.

Sadock & V. A. Sadock (Eds.), Kaplan & Sadock’s comprehensive textbook
of psychiatry (pp.1354–1370). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams &
Wilkins.

Rosebush, P. I., & Mazurek, M. F. (2010). Catatonia and its treatment.

Schizophrenia Bulleting, 36(2), 239–242. doi:10.1093/schbul/sbp141

Skrabalo, A. (2000). Negative symptoms in schizophrenia(s): The

conceptual basis. Harvard Brain, 7, 7–10.

Suddath, R. L., Christison, G. W., Torrey, E. F., Casanova, M. F., &

Weinberger, D. R. (1990). Anatomical abnormalities in the brains of
monozygotic twins discordant for schizophrenia. New England Journal of
Medicine, 322(12), 789–794.

Susser, E. B., Neugebauer, R., Hock, H.W., Brown, A. S., Lin, S., Labowitz,
D., & Gorman, J. M. (1996). Schizophrenia after prenatal famine: Further
evidence. Archives of general psychiatry, 53, 25–31.

Waddington J. L., Lane, A., Larkin, C., & O’Callaghan, E. (1999). The
neurodevelopmental basis of schizophrenia: Clinical clues from cerebro-
craniofacial dysmorphogenesis, and the roots of a lifetime trajectory of
disease. Biological Psychiatry, 46(1), 31–9.

Walker, E., & Tessner, K. (2008). Schizophrenia. Perspectives on

Psychological Science, 3(1), 30–37.

Walker, E., Kesler, L., Bollini, A., & Hochman, K. (2004). Schizophrenia:
Etiology and course. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 401–430.

Walker, E., Mittal, V., & Tessner, K. (2008). Stress and the hypothalamic
pituitary adrenal axis in the developmental course of schizophrenia. Annual
Review of Clinical Psychology, 4, 189–216.
12.5 Personality Disorders

Learning Objectives

1. Categorize the different types of personality disorders and differentiate antisocial

personality disorder from borderline personality disorder.

2. Outline the biological and environmental factors that may contribute to a person
developing a personality disorder.

To this point in the chapter we have considered the psychological disorders

that fall on Axis I of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM) categorization system. In comparison to the Axis I
disorders, which may frequently be severe and dysfunctional and are often
brought on by stress, the disorders that fall on Axis II are longer-term
disorders that are less likely to be severely incapacitating. Axis II consists
primarily of personality disorders. A personality disorder is a disorder
characterized by inflexible patterns of thinking, feeling, or relating to others
that cause problems in personal, social, and work situations. Personality
disorders tend to emerge during late childhood or adolescence and usually
continue throughout adulthood (Widiger, 2006). The disorders can be
problematic for the people who have them, but they are less likely to bring
people to a therapist for treatment than are Axis I disorders.

The personality disorders are summarized in Table 12.6 “Descriptions of the

Personality Disorders (Axis II)”. They are categorized into three types:
those characterized by odd or eccentric behavior, those characterized by
dramatic or erratic behavior, and those characterized by anxious or
inhibited behavior. As you consider the personality types described in Table
12.6 “Descriptions of the Personality Disorders (Axis II)”, I’m sure you’ll
think of people that you know who have each of these traits, at least to some
degree. Probably you know someone who seems a bit suspicious and
paranoid, who feels that other people are always “ganging up on him,” and
who really doesn’t trust other people very much. Perhaps you know
someone who fits the bill of being overly dramatic—the “drama queen” who
is always raising a stir and whose emotions seem to turn everything into a
big deal. Or you might have a friend who is overly dependent on others and
can’t seem to get a life of her own.

The personality traits that make up the personality disorders are common—
we see them in the people whom we interact with every day—yet they may
become problematic when they are rigid, overused, or interfere with
everyday behavior (Lynam & Widiger, 2001). What is perhaps common to
all the disorders is the person’s inability to accurately understand and be
sensitive to the motives and needs of the people around them.

Table 12.6 Descriptions of the Personality Disorders (Axis II)

 Personality
Cluster Characteristics
disorder

Peculiar or eccentric manners of speaking or dressing.

Strange beliefs. “Magical thinking” such as belief in ESP or
telepathy. Difficulty forming relationships. May react oddly
Schizotypal
in conversation, not respond, or talk to self. Speech elaborate
or difficult to follow. (Possibly a mild form of
schizophrenia.)

Distrust in others, suspicion that people have sinister

motives. Apt to challenge the loyalties of friends and read
A. Odd/eccentric
Paranoid hostile intentions into others’ actions. Prone to anger and
aggressive outbursts but otherwise emotionally cold. Often
jealous, guarded, secretive, overly serious.

Extreme introversion and withdrawal from relationships.

Prefers to be alone, little interest in others. Humorless,
Schizoid distant, often absorbed with own thoughts and feelings, a
daydreamer. Fearful of closeness, with poor social skills,
often seen as a “loner.”
 Personality
Cluster Characteristics
disorder

Impoverished moral sense or “conscience.” History of

deception, crime, legal problems, impulsive and aggressive
Antisocial or violent behavior. Little emotional empathy or remorse for
hurting others. Manipulative, careless, callous. At high risk
for substance abuse and alcoholism.

Unstable moods and intense, stormy personal relationships.

Frequent mood changes and anger, unpredictable impulses.
Borderline Self-mutilation or suicidal threats or gestures to get attention
or manipulate others. Self-image fluctuation and a tendency
B. to see others as “all good” or “all bad.”
Dramatic/erratic
Constant attention seeking. Grandiose language, provocative
dress, exaggerated illnesses, all to gain attention. Believes
Histrionic
that everyone loves him. Emotional, lively, overly dramatic,
enthusiastic, and excessively flirtatious.

Inflated sense of self-importance, absorbed by fantasies of

self and success. Exaggerates own achievement, assumes
Narcissistic others will recognize they are superior. Good first
impressions but poor longer-term relationships. Exploitative
of others.
 Personality
Cluster Characteristics
disorder

Socially anxious and uncomfortable unless he or she is

confident of being liked. In contrast with schizoid person,
Avoidant yearns for social contact. Fears criticism and worries about
being embarrassed in front of others. Avoids social situations
due to fear of rejection.

Submissive, dependent, requiring excessive approval,

reassurance, and advice. Clings to people and fears losing
C.
Dependent them. Lacking self-confidence. Uncomfortable when alone.
Anxious/inhibited
May be devastated by end of close relationship or suicidal if
breakup is threatened.

Conscientious, orderly, perfectionist. Excessive need to do

everything “right.” Inflexibly high standards and caution can
Obsessive-
interfere with his or her productivity. Fear of errors can make
compulsive
this person strict and controlling. Poor expression of
emotions. (Not the same as obsessive-compulsive disorder.)

Source: American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental
disorders (4th ed., text rev.). Washington, DC: Author.

The personality disorders create a bit of a problem for diagnosis. For one, it
is frequently difficult for the clinician to accurately diagnose which of the
many personality disorders a person has, although the friends and
colleagues of the person can generally do a good job of it (Oltmanns &
Turkheimer, 2006). And the personality disorders are highly comorbid; if a
person has one, it’s likely that he or she has others as well. Also, the number
of people with personality disorders is estimated to be as high as 15% of the
population (Grant et al., 2004), which might make us wonder if these are
really “disorders” in any real sense of the word.

Although they are considered as separate disorders, the personality disorders

are essentially milder versions of more severe Axis I disorders (Huang et al.,
2009). For example, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is a milder
version of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and schizoid and
schizotypal personality disorders are characterized by symptoms similar to
those of schizophrenia. This overlap in classification causes some
confusion, and some theorists have argued that the personality disorders
should be eliminated from the DSM. But clinicians normally differentiate
Axis I and Axis II disorders, and thus the distinction is useful for them
(Krueger, 2005; Phillips, Yen, & Gunderson, 2003; Verheul, 2005).

Although it is not possible to consider the characteristics of each of the

personality disorders in this book, let’s focus on two that have important
implications for behavior. The first, borderline personality disorder (BPD),
is important because it is so often associated with suicide, and the second,
antisocial personality disorder (APD), because it is the foundation of
criminal behavior. Borderline and antisocial personality disorders are also
good examples to consider because they are so clearly differentiated in
terms of their focus. BPD (more frequently found in women than men) is
known as an internalizing disorder because the behaviors that it entails (e.g.,
suicide and self-mutilation) are mostly directed toward the self. APD
(mostly found in men), on the other hand, is a type of externalizing disorder
in which the problem behaviors (e.g., lying, fighting, vandalism, and other
criminal activity) focus primarily on harm to others.
Borderline Personality Disorder

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a psychological disorder

characterized by a prolonged disturbance of personality accompanied by
mood swings, unstable personal relationships, identity problems, threats of
self-destructive behavior, fears of abandonment, and impulsivity. BPD is
widely diagnosed—up to 20% of psychiatric patients are given the
diagnosis, and it may occur in up to 2% of the general population (Hyman,
2002). About three quarters of diagnosed cases of BDP are women.

People with BPD fear being abandoned by others. They often show a
clinging dependency on the other person and engage in manipulation to try
to maintain the relationship. They become angry if the other person limits
the relationship, but also deny that they care about the person. As a defense
against fear of abandonment, borderline people are compulsively social. But
their behaviors, including their intense anger, demands, and suspiciousness,
repel people.

People with BPD often deal with stress by engaging in self-destructive

behaviors, for instance by being sexually promiscuous, getting into fights,
binge eating and purging, engaging in self-mutilation or drug abuse, and
threatening suicide. These behaviors are designed to call forth a “saving”
response from the other person. People with BPD are a continuing burden
for police, hospitals, and therapists. Borderline individuals also show
disturbance in their concepts of identity: They are uncertain about self-
image, gender identity, values, loyalties, and goals. They may have chronic
feelings of emptiness or boredom and be unable to tolerate being alone.

BPD has both genetic as well as environmental roots. In terms of genetics,

research has found that those with BPD frequently have neurotransmitter
imbalances (Zweig-Frank et al., 2006), and the disorder is heritable
(Minzenberg, Poole, & Vinogradov, 2008). In terms of environment, many
theories about the causes of BPD focus on a disturbed early relationship
between the child and his or her parents. Some theories focus on the
development of attachment in early childhood, while others point to parents
who fail to provide adequate attention to the child’s feelings. Others focus
on parental abuse (both sexual and physical) in adolescence, as well as on
divorce, alcoholism, and other stressors (Lobbestael & Arntz, 2009). The
dangers of BPD are greater when they are associated with childhood sexual
abuse, early age of onset, substance abuse, and aggressive behaviors. The
problems are amplified when the diagnosis is comorbid (as it often is) with
other disorders, such as substance abuse disorder, major depressive disorder,
and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; Skodol et al., 2002).

Research Focus: Affective and Cognitive Deficits in BPD

Posner et al. (2003) hypothesized that the difficulty that individuals with BPD have in regulating
their lives (e.g., in developing meaningful relationships with other people) may be due to
imbalances in the fast and slow emotional pathways in the brain. Specifically, they hypothesized
that the fast emotional pathway through the amygdala is too active, and the slow cognitive-
emotional pathway through the prefrontal cortex is not active enough in those with BPD.

The participants in their research were 16 patients with BPD and 14 healthy comparison
participants. All participants were tested in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
machine while they performed a task that required them to read emotional and nonemotional
words, and then press a button as quickly as possible whenever a word appeared in a normal font
and not press the button whenever the word appeared in an italicized font.

The researchers found that while all participants performed the task well, the patients with BPD
had more errors than the controls (both in terms of pressing the button when they should not
have and not pressing it when they should have). These errors primarily occurred on the negative
emotional words.
Figure 12.16 “Results From Posner et al., 2003” shows the comparison of the level of brain
activity in the emotional centers in the amygdala (left panel) and the prefrontal cortex (right
panel). In comparison to the controls, the borderline patients showed relatively larger affective
responses when they were attempting to quickly respond to the negative emotions, and showed
less cognitive activity in the prefrontal cortex in the same conditions. This research suggests that
excessive affective reactions and lessened cognitive reactions to emotional stimuli may
contribute to the emotional and behavioral volatility of borderline patients.

Figure 12.16 Results From Posner et al., 2003

Individuals with BPD showed less cognitive and greater emotional brain activity in response to negative

emotional words.

Adapted from Posner, M., Rothbart, M., Vizueta, N., Thomas, K., Levy, K., Fossella, J.,…Kernberg, O.

(2003). An approach to the psychobiology of personality disorders. Development and Psychopathology,

15(4), 1093–1106. doi:10.1017/S0954579403000506.

Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD)

In contrast to borderline personality disorder, which involves primarily

feelings of inadequacy and a fear of abandonment, antisocial personality
disorder (APD) is characterized by a disregard of the rights of others, and a
tendency to violate those rights without being concerned about doing so.
APD is a pervasive pattern of violation of the rights of others that begins in
childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood. APD is about
three times more likely to be diagnosed in men than in women. To be
diagnosed with APD the person must be 18 years of age or older and have a
documented history of conduct disorder before the age of 15. People having
antisocial personality disorder are sometimes referred to as “sociopaths” or
“psychopaths.”

People with APD feel little distress for the pain they cause others. They lie,
engage in violence against animals and people, and frequently have drug
and alcohol abuse problems. They are egocentric and frequently impulsive,
for instance suddenly changing jobs or relationships. People with APD soon
end up with a criminal record and often spend time incarcerated. The
intensity of antisocial symptoms tends to peak during the 20s and then may
decrease over time.

Biological and environmental factors are both implicated in the

development of antisocial personality disorder (Rhee & Waldman, 2002).
Twin and adoption studies suggest a genetic predisposition (Rhee &
Waldman, 2002), and biological abnormalities include low autonomic
activity during stress, biochemical imbalances, right hemisphere
abnormalities, and reduced gray matter in the frontal lobes (Lyons-Ruth et
al., 2007; Raine, Lencz, Bihrle, LaCasse, & Colletti, 2000). Environmental
factors include neglectful and abusive parenting styles, such as the use of
harsh and inconsistent discipline and inappropriate modeling (Huesmann &
Kirwil, 2007).

Key Takeaways

A personality disorder is a disorder characterized by inflexible patterns of thinking,

feeling, or relating to others that causes problems in personal, social, and work
situations.

Personality disorders are categorized into three clusters: those characterized by odd
or eccentric behavior, dramatic or erratic behavior, and anxious or inhibited behavior.

Although they are considered as separate disorders, the personality disorders are
essentially milder versions of more severe Axis I disorders.

Borderline personality disorder is a prolonged disturbance of personality

accompanied by mood swings, unstable personal relationships, and identity
problems, and it is often associated with suicide.

Antisocial personality disorder is characterized by a disregard of others’ rights and a

tendency to violate those rights without being concerned about doing so.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. What characteristics of men and women do you think make them more likely to have
APD and BDP, respectively? Do these differences seem to you to be more genetic or
more environmental?
 2. Do you know people who suffer from antisocial personality disorder? What
behaviors do they engage in, and why are these behaviors so harmful to them and
others?

References

Grant, B., Hasin, D., Stinson, F., Dawson, D., Chou, S., Ruan, W., &
Pickering, R. P. (2004). Prevalence, correlates, and disability of personality
disorders in the United States: Results from the national epidemiologic
survey on alcohol and related conditions. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry,
65(7), 948–958.

Huang, Y., Kotov, R., de Girolamo, G., Preti, A., Angermeyer, M., Benjet,
C.,…Kessler, R. C. (2009). DSM-IV personality disorders in the WHO
World Mental Health Surveys. British Journal of Psychiatry, 195(1), 46–53.
doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.108.058552

Huesmann, L. R., & Kirwil, L. (2007). Why observing violence increases

the risk of violent behavior by the observer. In D. J. Flannery, A. T.
Vazsonyi, & I. D. Waldman (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of violent
behavior and aggression (pp. 545–570). New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.

Hyman, S. E. (2002). A new beginning for research on borderline

personality disorder. Biological Psychiatry, 51(12), 933–935.

Krueger, R. F. (2005). Continuity of Axes I and II: Towards a unified model

of personality, personality disorders, and clinical disorders. Journal of
Personality Disorders, 19, 233–261.
Lobbestael, J., & Arntz, A. (2009). Emotional, cognitive and physiological
correlates of abuse-related stress in borderline and antisocial personality
disorder. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 48(2), 116–124.
doi:10.1016/j.brat.2009.09.015

Lynam, D., & Widiger, T. (2001). Using the five-factor model to represent
the DSM-IV personality disorders: An expert consensus approach. Journal
of Abnormal Psychology, 110(3), 401–412.

Lyons-Ruth, K., Holmes, B. M., Sasvari-Szekely, M., Ronai, Z., Nemoda,

Z., & Pauls, D. (2007). Serotonin transporter polymorphism and borderline
or antisocial traits among low-income young adults. Psychiatric Genetics,
17, 339–343.

Minzenberg, M. J., Poole, J. H., & Vinogradov, S. (2008). A neurocognitive

model of borderline personality disorder: Effects of childhood sexual abuse
and relationship to adult social attachment disturbance. Development and
Psychological disorder. 20(1), 341–368. doi:10.1017/S0954579408000163

Oltmanns, T. F., & Turkheimer, E. (2006). Perceptions of self and others

regarding pathological personality traits. In R. F. Krueger & J. L. Tackett
(Eds.), Personality and psychopathology (pp. 71–111). New York, NY:
Guilford Press.

Phillips, K. A., Yen, S., & Gunderson, J. G. (2003). Personality disorders. In

R. E. Hales & S. C. Yudofsky (Eds.), Textbook of clinical psychiatry.
Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing.

Posner, M., Rothbart, M., Vizueta, N., Thomas, K., Levy, K., Fossella, J.,…
Kernberg, O. (2003). An approach to the psychobiology of personality
disorders. Development and Psychopathology, 15(4), 1093–1106.
doi:10.1017/S0954579403000506
Raine, A., Lencz, T., Bihrle, S., LaCasse, L., & Colletti, P. (2000). Reduced
prefrontal gray matter volume and reduced autonomic activity in antisocial
personality disorder. Archive of General Psychiatry, 57, 119–127.

Rhee, S. H., & Waldman, I. D. (2002). Genetic and environmental

influences on anti-social behavior: A meta-analysis of twin and adoptions
studies. Psychological Bulletin, 128(3), 490–529.

Skodol, A. E., Gunderson, J. G., Pfohl, B., Widiger, T. A., Livesley, W. J., &
Siever, L. J. (2002). The borderline diagnosis I: Psychopathology,
comorbidity, and personality structure. Biological Psychiatry, 51(12), 936–
950.

Verheul, R. (2005). Clinical utility for dimensional models of personality

pathology. Journal of Personality Disorders, 19, 283–302.

Widiger, T.A. (2006). Understanding personality disorders. In S. K. Huprich

(Ed.), Rorschach assessment to the personality disorders. The LEA series in
personality and clinical psychology (pp. 3–25). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.

Zweig-Frank, H., Paris, J., Kin, N. M. N. Y., Schwartz, G., Steiger, H., &
Nair, N. P. V. (2006). Childhood sexual abuse in relation to neurobiological
challenge tests in patients with borderline personality disorder and normal
controls. Psychiatry Research, 141(3), 337–341.
12.6 Somatoform, Factitious, and Sexual
Disorders

Learning Objectives

1. Differentiate the symptoms of somatoform and factitious disorders.

2. Summarize the sexual disorders and paraphilias.

Although mood, anxiety, and personality disorders represent the most

prevalent psychological disorders, as you saw in Table 12.3 “Categories of
Psychological Disorders Based on the “ there are a variety of other disorders
that affect people. This complexity of symptoms and classifications helps
make it clear how difficult it is to accurately and consistently diagnose and
treat psychological disorders. In this section we will review three other
disorders that are of interest to psychologists and that affect millions of
people: somatoform disorder, factitious disorder, and sexual disorder.

Somatoform and Factitious Disorders

Somatoform and factitious disorders both occur in cases where

psychological disorders are related to the experience or expression of
physical symptoms. The important difference between them is that in
somatoform disorders the physical symptoms are real, whereas in factitious
disorders they are not.

One case in which psychological problems create real physical impairments

is in the somatoform disorder known as somatization disorder (also called
Briquet’s syndrome or Brissaud-Marie syndrome). Somatization disorder
is a psychological disorder in which a person experiences numerous long-
lasting but seemingly unrelated physical ailments that have no identifiable
physical cause. A person with somatization disorder might complain of joint
aches, vomiting, nausea, muscle weakness, as well as sexual dysfunction.
The symptoms that result from a somatoform disorder are real and cause
distress to the individual, but they are due entirely to psychological factors.
The somatoform disorder is more likely to occur when the person is under
stress, and it may disappear naturally over time. Somatoform disorder is
more common in women than in men, and usually first appears in
adolescents or those in their early 20s.

Another type of somatoform disorder is conversion disorder, a

psychological disorder in which patients experience specific neurological
symptoms such as numbness, blindness, or paralysis, but where no
neurological explanation is observed or possible (Agaki & House, 2001).
The difference between conversion and somatoform disorders is in terms of
the location of the physical complaint. In somatoform disorder the malaise
is general, whereas in conversion disorder there are one or several specific
neurological symptoms.

Conversion disorder gets its name from the idea that the existing
psychological disorder is “converted” into the physical symptoms. It was
the observation of conversion disorder (then known as “hysteria”) that first
led Sigmund Freud to become interested in the psychological aspects of
illness in his work with Jean-Martin Charcot. Conversion disorder is not
common (a prevalence of less than 1%), but it may in many cases be
undiagnosed. Conversion disorder occurs twice or more frequently in
women than in men.
There are two somatoform disorders that involve preoccupations. We have
seen an example of one of them, body dysmorphic disorder, in the Chapter
12 “Defining Psychological Disorders” opener. Body dysmorphic disorder
(BDD) is a psychological disorder accompanied by an imagined or
exaggerated defect in body parts or body odor. There are no sex differences
in prevalence, but men are most often obsessed with their body build, their
genitals, and hair loss, whereas women are more often obsessed with their
breasts and body shape. BDD usually begins in adolescence.

Hypochondriasis (hypochondria) is another psychological disorder that is

focused on preoccupation, accompanied by excessive worry about having a
serious illness. The patient often misinterprets normal body symptoms such
as coughing, perspiring, headaches, or a rapid heartbeat as signs of serious
illness, and the patient’s concerns remain even after he or she has been
medically evaluated and assured that the health concerns are unfounded.
Many people with hypochondriasis focus on a particular symptom such as
stomach problems or heart palpitations.

Two other psychological disorders relate to the experience of physical

problems that are not real. Patients with factitious disorder fake physical
symptoms in large part because they enjoy the attention and treatment that
they receive in the hospital. They may lie about symptoms, alter diagnostic
tests such as urine samples to mimic disease, or even injure themselves to
bring on more symptoms. In the more severe form of factitious disorder
known as Münchausen syndrome, the patient has a lifelong pattern of a
series of successive hospitalizations for faked symptoms.

Factitious disorder is distinguished from another related disorder known as

malingering, which also involves fabricating the symptoms of mental or
physical disorders, but where the motivation for doing so is to gain financial
reward; to avoid school, work, or military service; to obtain drugs; or to
avoid prosecution.

The somatoform disorders are almost always comorbid with other

psychological disorders, including anxiety and depression and dissociative
states (Smith et al., 2005). People with BDD, for instance, are often unable
to leave their house, are severely depressed or anxious, and may also suffer
from other personality disorders.

Somatoform and factitious disorders are problematic not only for the
patient, but they also have societal costs. People with these disorders
frequently follow through with potentially dangerous medical tests and are
at risk for drug addiction from the drugs they are given and for injury from
the complications of the operations they submit to (Bass, Peveler, & House,
2001; Looper & Kirmayer, 2002). In addition, people with these disorders
may take up hospital space that is needed for people who are really ill. To
help combat these costs, emergency room and hospital workers use a variety
of tests for detecting these disorders.

Sexual Disorders

Sexual disorders refer to a variety of problems revolving around performing

or enjoying sex. These include disorders related to sexual function, gender
identity, and sexual preference.

Disorders of Sexual Function

Sexual dysfunction is a psychological disorder that occurs when the

physical sexual response cycle is inadequate for reproduction or for sexual
enjoyment. There are a variety of potential problems (Table 12.7 “Sexual
Dysfunctions as Described in the “), and their nature varies for men and
women (Figure 12.17 “Prevalence of Sexual Dysfunction in Men and
Women”). Sexual disorders affect up to 43% of women and 31% of men
(Laumann, Paik, & Rosen, 1999). Sexual disorders are often difficult to
diagnose because in many cases the dysfunction occurs at the partner level
(one or both of the partners are disappointed with the sexual experience)
rather than at the individual level.

Table 12.7 Sexual Dysfunctions as Described in the DSM

 Disorder Description

Hypoactive sexual Persistently or recurrently deficient (or absent) sexual fantasies and desire
desire disorder for sexual activity

Sexual aversion Persistent or recurrent extreme aversion to, and avoidance of, all (or almost
disorder all) genital sexual contact with a sexual partner

Persistent or recurrent inability to attain, or to maintain until completion of

Female sexual
the sexual activity, an adequate lubrication-swelling response of sexual
arousal disorder
excitement

Male erectile Persistent or recurrent inability to attain or maintain an adequate erection

disorder until completion of the sexual activity

Female orgasmic Persistent or recurrent delay in, or absence of, orgasm following a normal
disorder sexual excitement phase

Male orgasmic Persistent or recurrent delay in, or absence of, orgasm following a normal
disorder sexual excitement phase during sexual activity

Premature Persistent or recurrent ejaculation with minimal sexual stimulation before,

ejaculation on, or shortly after penetration and before the person wishes it

Recurrent or persistent genital pain associated with sexual intercourse in

Dyspareunia
either a male or a female

Recurrent or persistent involuntary spasm of the musculature of the outer

Vaginismus
third of the vagina that interferes with sexual intercourse

Source: American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental
disorders (4th ed., text rev.). Washington, DC: Author.

Figure 12.17 Prevalence of Sexual Dysfunction in Men and Women

This chart shows the percentage of respondents who reported each type of sexual difficulty over the

previous 12 months.

Adapted from Laumann, E. O., Paik, A., & Rosen, R. C. (1999). Sexual dysfunction in the United States:

Prevalence and predictors. Journal of the American Medical Association, 281(6), 537–544.

Hypoactive sexual desire disorder, one of the most common sexual

dysfunctions, refers to a persistently low or nonexistent sexual desire. How
“low sexual desire” is defined, however, is problematic because it depends
on the person’s sex and age, on cultural norms, as well as on the relative
desires of the individual and the partner. Again, the importance of
dysfunction and distress is critical. If neither partner is much interested in
sex, for instance, the lack of interest may not cause a problem. Hypoactive
sexual desire disorder is often comorbid with other psychological disorders,
including mood disorders and problems with sexual arousal or sexual pain
(Donahey & Carroll, 1993).

Sexual aversion disorder refers to an avoidance of sexual behavior caused

by disgust or aversion to genital contact. The aversion may be a phobic
reaction to an early sexual experience or sexual abuse, a misattribution of
negative emotions to sex that are actually caused by something else, or a
reaction to a sexual problem such as erectile dysfunction (Kingsberg &
Janata, 2003).
Female sexual arousal disorder refers to persistent difficulties becoming
sexually aroused or sufficiently lubricated in response to sexual stimulation
in women. The disorder may be comorbid with hypoactive sexual desire or
orgasmic disorder, or mood or anxiety disorders.

Male erectile disorder (sometimes referred to as “impotence”) refers to

persistent and dysfunctional difficulty in achieving or maintaining an
erection sufficient to complete sexual activity. Prevalence rates vary by age,
from about 6% of college-aged males to 35% of men in their 70s. About
half the men aged 40 to 70 report having problems getting or maintaining an
erection “now and then.”

Most erectile dysfunction occurs as a result of physiological factors,

including illness, and the use of medications, alcohol, or other recreational
drugs. Erectile dysfunction is also related to anxiety, low self-esteem, and
general problems in the particular relationship. Assessment for
physiological causes of erectile dysfunction is made using a test in which a
device is attached to the man’s penis before he goes to sleep. During the
night the man may have an erection, and if he does the device records its
occurrence. If the man has erections while sleeping, this provides assurance
that the problem is not physiological.

One of the most common sexual dysfunctions in men is premature

ejaculation. It is not possible to exactly specify what defines “premature,”
but if the man ejaculates before or immediately upon insertion of the penis
into the vagina, most clinicians will identify the response as premature.
Most men diagnosed with premature ejaculation ejaculate within one minute
after insertion (Waldinger, 2003). Premature ejaculation is one of the most
prevalent sexual disorders and causes much anxiety in many men.

Female orgasmic disorder refers to the inability to obtain orgasm in women.

The woman enjoys sex and foreplay and shows normal signs of sexual
arousal but cannot reach the peak experience of orgasm. Male orgasmic
disorder includes a delayed or retarded ejaculation (very rare) or (more
commonly) premature ejaculation.

Finally, dyspareunia and vaginismus refer to sexual pain disorders that

create pain and involuntary spasms, respectively, in women, and thus make
it painful to have sex. In most cases these problems are biological and can
be treated with hormones, creams, or surgery.

Sexual dysfunctions have a variety of causes. In some cases the primary

problem is biological, and the disorder may be treated with medication.
Other causes include a repressive upbringing in which the parents have
taught the person that sex is dirty or sinful, or the experience of sexual
abuse (Beitchman, Zucker, Hood, & DaCosta, 1992). In some cases the sex
problem may be due to the fact that the person has a different sexual
orientation than he or she is engaging in. Other problems include poor
communication between the partners, a lack of sexual skills, and
(particularly for men) performance anxiety.

It is important to remember that most sexual disorders are temporary—they

are experienced for a period of time, in certain situations or with certain
partners, and then (without, or if necessary with, the help of therapy) go
away. It is also important to remember that there are a wide variety of sex
acts that are enjoyable. Couples with happy sex lives work together to find
ways that work best for their own styles. Sexual problems often develop
when the partners do not communicate well with each other, and are
reduced when they do.

Gender Identity Disorder

Gender identity refers to the identification with a sex. Most children

develop an appropriate attachment to their own sex. In some cases, however,
children or adolescents—sometimes even those as young as 3 or 4 years old
—believe that they have been trapped in a body of the wrong sex. Gender
identity disorder (GID, or transsexualism) is diagnosed when the
individual displays a repeated and strong desire to be the other sex, a
persistent discomfort with one’s sex, and a belief that one was born the
wrong sex, accompanied by significant dysfunction and distress. GID
usually appears in adolescence or adulthood and may intensify over time
(Bower, 2001). Since many cultures strongly disapprove of cross-gender
behavior, it often results in significant problems for affected persons and
those in close relationships with them.

Gender identity disorder is rare, occurring only in about 1 in every 12,000

males and 1 in every 30,000 females (Olsson & Möller, 2003). The causes
of GID are as of yet unknown, although they seem to be related in part to
the amount of testosterone and other hormones in the uterus (Kraemer, Noll,
Delsignore, Milos, Schnyder, & Hepp, 2009).

Figure 12.18
Cultural norms about the categorization of

transsexuality as a psychological disorder are

changing, and the upcoming revision of the DSM

may take this into consideration.

David Shankbone – Jenna Skyy 2 Shankbone 2010

NYC – CC BY 2.0.

The classification of GID as a mental disorder has been challenged because

people who suffer from GID do not regard their own cross-gender feelings
and behaviors as a disorder and do not feel that they are distressed or
dysfunctional. People suffering from GID often argue that a “normal”
gender identity may not necessarily involve an identification with one’s own
biological sex. GID represents another example, then, of how culture
defines disorder, and the next edition of the DSM may change the
categorizations used in this domain accordingly.

Paraphilias

A third class of sexual disorders relates to sexual practices and interest. In

some cases sexual interest is so unusual that it is known as a paraphilia—a
sexual deviation where sexual arousal is obtained from a consistent pattern
of inappropriate responses to objects or people, and in which the behaviors
associated with the feelings are distressing and dysfunctional. Paraphilias
may sometimes be only fantasies, and in other cases may result in actual
sexual behavior (Table 12.8 “Some Paraphilias”).

Table 12.8 Some Paraphilias

Paraphilia Behavior or fantasy that creates arousal

Bestiality Sex with animals

Exhibitionism Exposing genitals to an unsuspecting person

Fetishism Nonliving or unusual objects or clothing of the opposite sex

Frotteurism Rubbing up against unsuspecting persons

Masochism Being beaten, humiliated, bound, or otherwise made to suffer

Pedophilia Sexual activity with a prepubescent child

Sadism Witnessing suffering of another person

Observing an unsuspecting person who is naked, disrobing, or engaged in intimate

Voyeurism
behavior

People with paraphilias are usually rejected by society but for two different
reasons. In some cases, such as voyeurism and pedophilia, the behavior is
unacceptable (and illegal) because it involves a lack of consent on the part
of the recipient of the sexual advance. But other paraphilias are rejected
simply because they are unusual, even though they are consensual and do
not cause distress or dysfunction to the partners. Sexual sadism and sexual
masochism, for instance, are usually practiced consensually, and thus may
not be harmful to the partners or to society. A recent survey found that
individuals who engage in sadism and masochism are as psychologically
healthy as those who do not (Connolly, 2006). Again, as cultural norms
about the appropriateness of behaviors change, the new revision of the
DSM, due in 2013, will likely change its classification system of these
behaviors.
 Key Takeaways

Somatoform disorders, including body dysmorphic disorder and hypochondriasis,

occur when people become excessively and inaccurately preoccupied with the
potential that they have an illness or stigma.

Patients with factitious disorder fake physical symptoms in large part because they
enjoy the attention and treatment that they receive in the hospital. In the more severe
form of factitious disorder known as Münchhausen syndrome, the patient has a
lifelong pattern with a series of successive hospitalizations for faked symptoms.

Sexual dysfunction is a psychological disorder that occurs when the physical sexual
response cycle is inadequate for reproduction or for sexual enjoyment. The types of
problems experienced are different for men and women. Many sexual dysfunctions
are only temporary or can be treated with therapy or medication.

Gender identity disorder (GID, also called transsexualism) is a rare disorder that is
diagnosed when the individual displays a repeated and strong desire to be the other
sex, a persistent discomfort with one’s sex, and a belief that one was born the wrong
sex, accompanied by significant dysfunction and distress.

The classification of GID as a mental disorder has been challenged because people
who suffer from it do not regard their own cross-gender feelings and behaviors as a
disorder and do not feel that they are distressed or dysfunctional.

A paraphilia is a sexual deviation where sexual arousal is obtained from a consistent

pattern of inappropriate responses to objects or people, and in which the behaviors
associated with the feelings are distressing and dysfunctional. Some paraphilias are
illegal because they involve a lack of consent on the part of the recipient of the
sexual advance, but other paraphilias are simply unusual, even though they may not
cause distress or dysfunction.
 Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Consider the biological, personal, and social-cultural aspects of gender identity

disorder. Do you think that this disorder is really a “disorder,” or is it simply defined
by social-cultural norms and beliefs?

2. Consider the paraphilias in Table 12.8 “Some Paraphilias”. Do they seem like
disorders to you, and how would one determine if they were or were not?

3. View one of the following films and consider the diagnosis that might be given to the
characters in it: Antwone Fisher, Ordinary People, Girl Interrupted, Grosse Pointe
Blank, A Beautiful Mind, What About Bob?, Sybil, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

References

Akagi, H., & House, A. O. (2001). The epidemiology of hysterical

conversion. In P. Halligan, C. Bass, & J. Marshall (Eds.), Hysterical
conversion: Clinical and theoretical perspectives (pp. 73–87). Oxford,
England: Oxford University Press.

Bass, C., Peveler, R., & House, A. (2001). Somatoform disorders: Severe
psychiatric illnesses neglected by psychiatrists. British Journal of
Psychiatry, 179, 11–14.

Beitchman, J. H., Zucker, K. J., Hood, J. E., & DaCosta, G. A. (1992). A

review of the long-term effects of child sexual abuse. Child Abuse &
Neglect, 16(1), 101–118.

Bower, H. (2001). The gender identity disorder in the DSM-IV

classification: A critical evaluation. Australian and New Zealand Journal of
Psychiatry, 35(1), 1–8.

Connolly, P. (2006). Psychological functioning of

bondage/domination/sado-masochism (BDSM) practitioners. Journal of
Psychology & Human Sexuality, 18(1), 79–120.
doi:10.1300/j056v18n01_05

Donahey, K. M., & Carroll, R. A. (1993). Gender differences in factors

associated with hypoactive sexual desire. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy,
19(1), 25–40.

Kingsberg, S. A., & Janata, J. W. (2003). The sexual aversions. In S. B.

Levine, C. B. Risen, & S. E. Althof (Eds.), Handbook of clinical sexuality
for mental health professionals (pp. 153–165). New York, NY: Brunner-
Routledge.

Kraemer, B., Noll, T., Delsignore, A., Milos, G., Schnyder, U., & Hepp, U.
(2009). Finger length ratio (2D:4D) in adults with gender identity disorder.
Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38(3), 359–363.

Laumann, E. O., Paik, A., Rosen, R. (1999). Sexual dysfunction in the

United States. Journal of the American Medical Association, 281(6), 537–
544.

Looper, K. J., & Kirmayer, L. J. (2002). Behavioral medicine approaches to

somatoform disorders. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology,
70(3), 810–827.

Olsson, S.-E., & Möller, A. R. (2003). On the incidence and sex ratio of
transsexualism in Sweden, 1972–2002. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 32(4),
381–386.
Smith, R. C., Gardiner, J. C., Lyles, J. S., Sirbu, C., Dwamena, F. C.,
Hodges, A.,…Goddeeris, J. (2005). Exploration of DSM-IV criteria in
primary care patients with medically unexplained symptoms. Psychosomatic
Medicine, 67(1), 123–129.

Waldinger, M. D. (2003). Rapid ejaculation. In S. B. Levine, C. B. Risen, &

S. E. Althof (Eds.), Handbook of clinical sexuality for mental health
professionals (pp. 257–274). New York, NY: Brunner-Routledge.
12.7 Chapter Summary

More psychologists are involved in the diagnosis and treatment of

psychological disorder than in any other aspect of psychology.

About 1 in every 4 Americans (over 78 million people) are estimated to be

affected by a psychological disorder during any one year. The impact of
mental illness is particularly strong on people who are poorer, of lower
socioeconomic class, and from disadvantaged ethnic groups.

A psychological disorder is an unusual, distressing, and dysfunctional

pattern of thought, emotion, or behavior. Psychological disorders are often
comorbid, meaning that a given person suffers from more than one disorder.

The stigma of mental disorder affects people while they are ill, while they
are healing, and even after they have healed. But mental illness is not a
“fault,” and it is important to work to help overcome the stigma associated
with disorder.

All psychological disorders are multiply determined by biological,

psychological, and social factors.

Psychologists diagnose disorder using the Diagnostic and Statistical

Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The DSM organizes the diagnosis of
disorder according to five dimensions (or axes) relating to different aspects
of disorder or disability. The DSM uses categories, and patients with close
approximations to the prototype are said to have that disorder.

One critique of the DSM is that many disorders—for instance, attention-

deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autistic disorder, and Asperger’s
disorder—are being diagnosed significantly more frequently than they were
in the past.

Anxiety disorders are psychological disturbances marked by irrational fears,

often of everyday objects and situations. They include generalized anxiety
disorder (GAD), panic disorder, phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder
(OCD), and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Anxiety disorders affect
about 57 million Americans every year.

Dissociative disorders are conditions that involve disruptions or

breakdowns of memory, awareness, and identity. They include dissociative
amnesia, dissociative fugue, and dissociative identity disorder.

Mood disorders are psychological disorders in which the person’s mood

negatively influences his or her physical, perceptual, social, and cognitive
processes. They include dysthymia, major depressive disorder, and bipolar
disorder. Mood disorders affect about 30 million Americans every year.

Schizophrenia is a serious psychological disorder marked by delusions,

hallucinations, loss of contact with reality, inappropriate affect,
disorganized speech, social withdrawal, and deterioration of adaptive
behavior. About 3 million Americans have schizophrenia.

A personality disorder is a long-lasting but frequently less severe disorder

characterized by inflexible patterns of thinking, feeling, or relating to others
that causes problems in personal, social, and work situations. They are
characterized by odd or eccentric behavior, by dramatic or erratic behavior,
or by anxious or inhibited behavior. Two of the most important personality
disorders are borderline personality disorder (BPD) and antisocial
personality disorder (APD).

Somatization disorder is a psychological disorder in which a person

experiences numerous long-lasting but seemingly unrelated physical
ailments that have no identifiable physical cause. Somatization disorders
include conversion disorder, body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), and
hypochondriasis.

Patients with factitious disorder fake physical symptoms in large part

because they enjoy the attention and treatment that they receive in the
hospital.

Sexual disorders refer to a variety of problems revolving around performing

or enjoying sex. Sexual dysfunctions include problems relating to loss of
sexual desire, sexual response or orgasm, and pain during sex.

Gender identity disorder (GID, also called transsexualism) is diagnosed

when the individual displays a repeated and strong desire to be the other
sex, a persistent discomfort with one’s sex, and a belief that one was born
the wrong sex, accompanied by significant dysfunction and distress. The
classification of GID as a mental disorder has been challenged because
people who suffer from GID do not regard their own cross-gender feelings
and behaviors as a disorder and do not feel that they are distressed or
dysfunctional.

A paraphilia is a sexual deviation where sexual arousal is obtained from a

consistent pattern of inappropriate responses to objects or people, and in
which the behaviors associated with the feelings are distressing and
dysfunctional.
Chapter 13: Treating
Psychological Disorders

Therapy on Four Legs

Lucien Masson, a 60-year-old Vietnam veteran from Arizona, put it simply: “Sascha is the best
medicine I’ve ever had.”

Lucien is speaking about his friend, companion, and perhaps even his therapist, a Russian
wolfhound named Sascha. Lucien suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a disorder
that has had a profoundly negative impact on his life for many years. His symptoms include
panic attacks, nightmares, and road rage. Lucien has tried many solutions, consulting with
doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists, and using a combination of drugs, group therapy, and
anger-management classes.

But Sascha seems to be the best therapist of all. He helps out in many ways. If a stranger gets
too close to Lucien in public, Sascha will block the stranger with his body. Sascha is trained to
sense when Lucien is about to have a nightmare, waking him before it starts. Before road rage
can set in, Sascha gently whimpers, reminding his owner that it doesn’t pay to get upset about
nutty drivers.

In the same way, former Army medic Jo Hanna Schaffer speaks of her Chihuahua, Cody: “I
never took a pill for PTSD that did as much for me as Cody has done.” Persian Gulf War veteran
Karen Alexander feels the same way about her Bernese mountain dog, Cindy:

She’ll come up and touch me, and that is enough of a stimulus to break the loop,
bring me back to reality. Sometimes I’ll scratch my hand until it’s raw and won’t
realize until she comes up to me and brings me out. She’s such a grounding
influence for me.
Figure 13.1
 Can psychiatric therapy dogs help people who suffer from PTSD?

The U.S. Army – Therapy dog – CC BY 2.0.

These dramatic stories of improvement from debilitating disorders can be
attributed to an alternative psychological therapy, based on established behavioral
principles, provided by “psychiatric service dogs.” The dogs are trained to help
people with a variety of mental disorders, including panic attacks, anxiety
disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and bipolar disorder. They help veterans
of Iraq and Afghanistan cope with their traumatic brain injuries as well as with
PTSD.
The dogs are trained to perform specific behaviors that are helpful to their owners.
If the dog’s owner is depressed, the dog will snuggle up and offer physical
comfort; if the owner is having a panic attack, the owner can calm himself by
massaging the dog’s body. The serenity shown by the dogs in all situations seems
to reassure the PTSD sufferer that all must be well. Service dogs are constant,
loving companions who provide emotional support and companionship to their
embattled, often isolated owners (Shim, 2008; Lorber, 2010; Alaimo, 2010;
Schwartz, 2008).
Despite the reports of success from many users, it is important to keep in mind
that the utility of psychiatric service dogs has not yet been tested, and thus would
never be offered as a therapy by a trained clinician or paid for by an insurance
company. Although interaction between humans and dogs can create positive
physiological responses (Odendaal, 2000), whether the dogs actually help people
recover from PTSD is not yet known.

Psychological disorders create a tremendous individual, social, and economic drain on society.
Disorders make it difficult for people to engage in productive lives and effectively contribute to
their family and to society. Disorders lead to disability and absenteeism in the workplace, as
well as physical problems, premature death, and suicide. At a societal level the costs are
staggering. It has been estimated that the annual financial burden of each case of anxiety
 disorder is over $3,000 per year, meaning that the annual cost of anxiety disorders alone in the
United States runs into the trillions of dollars (Konnopka, Leichsenring, Leibing, & König,
2009; Smit et al., 2006).

The goal of this chapter is to review the techniques that are used to treat psychological disorder.
Just as psychologists consider the causes of disorder in terms of the bio-psycho-social model of
illness, treatment is also based on psychological, biological, and social approaches.

The psychological approach to reducing disorder involves providing help to

individuals or families through psychological therapy, including psychoanalysis,
humanistic-oriented therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), and other
approaches.

The biomedical approach to reducing disorder is based on the use of medications to

treat mental disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety, as well as the
employment of brain intervention techniques, including electroconvulsive therapy
(ECT), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and psychosurgery.

The social approach to reducing disorder focuses on changing the social

environment in which individuals live to reduce the underlying causes of disorder.
These approaches include group, couples, and family therapy, as well as community
outreach programs. The community approach is likely to be the most effective of
the three approaches because it focuses not only on treatment, but also on prevention

of disorders (World Health Organization, 2004)1.

A clinician may focus on any or all of the three approaches to treatment, but in making a
decision about which to use, he or she will always rely on his or her knowledge about existing
empirical tests of the effectiveness of different treatments. These tests, known as outcome
studies, carefully compare people who receive a given treatment with people who do not receive
a treatment, or with people who receive a different type of treatment. Taken together, these
studies have confirmed that many types of therapies are effective in treating disorder.

1
World Health Organization. (2004). Prevention of mental disorders:
Effective interventions and policy options: Summary report. Retrieved from
http://www.who.int/mental_health/evidence/en/Prevention_of_Mental_Diso
rders.pdf

References

Alaimo, C. A. (2010, April 11). Psychiatric service dogs use senses to aid
owners. Arizona Daily Star. Retrieved from
http://azstarnet.com/news/local/article_d24b5799-9b31-548c-afec-
c0160e45f49c.html.

Konnopka, A., Leichsenring, F., Leibing, E., & König, H.-H. (2009). Cost-
of-illness studies and cost-effectiveness analyses in anxiety disorders: A
systematic review. Journal of Affective Disorders, 114(1–3), 14–31.

Odendaal, J. S. J. (2000). Animal-assisted therapy—Magic or medicine?

Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 49(4), 275–280.

Schwartz, A. N. (2008, March 16). Psychiatric service dogs, very special

dogs, indeed. Dr. Schwartz’s Weblog. Retrieved from
http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=14844

Shim, J. (2008, January 29). Dogs chase nightmares of war away. CNN.
Retrieved from
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/01/29/dogs.veterans; Lorber,
J. (2010, April 3). For the battle-scarred, comfort at leash’s end. The New
York Times. Retrieved from
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/us/04dogs.html.

Smit, F., Cuijpers, P., Oostenbrink, J., Batelaan, N., de Graaf, R., &
Beekman, A. (2006). Costs of nine common mental disorders: Implications
for curative and preventive psychiatry. Journal of Mental Health Policy and
Economics, 9(4), 193–200.
13.1 Reducing Disorder by Confronting It:
Psychotherapy

Learning Objectives

1. Outline and differentiate the psychodynamic, humanistic, behavioral, and cognitive

approaches to psychotherapy.

2. Explain the behavioral and cognitive aspects of cognitive-behavioral therapy and

how CBT is used to reduce psychological disorders.

Treatment for psychological disorder begins when the individual who is

experiencing distress visits a counselor or therapist, perhaps in a church, a
community center, a hospital, or a private practice. The therapist will begin
by systematically learning about the patient’s needs through a formal
psychological assessment, which is an evaluation of the patient’s
psychological and mental health. During the assessment the psychologist
may give personality tests such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personal
Inventory (MMPI-2) or projective tests, and will conduct a thorough
interview with the patient. The therapist may get more information from
family members or school personnel.

In addition to the psychological assessment, the patient is usually seen by a

physician to gain information about potential Axis III (physical) problems.
In some cases of psychological disorder—and particularly for sexual
problems—medical treatment is the preferred course of action. For instance,
men who are experiencing erectile dysfunction disorder may need surgery to
increase blood flow or local injections of muscle relaxants. Or they may be
prescribed medications (Viagra, Cialis, or Levitra) that provide an increased
blood supply to the penis, which are successful in increasing performance in
about 70% of men who take them.

After the medical and psychological assessments are completed, the

therapist will make a formal diagnosis using the detailed descriptions of the
disorder provided in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM; see below). The therapist will summarize the information
about the patient on each of the five DSM axes, and the diagnosis will likely
be sent to an insurance company to justify payment for the treatment.

DSM-IV-TR Criteria for Diagnosing Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

(ADHD)

To be diagnosed with ADHD the individual must display either A or B below (American

Psychiatric Association, 2000)1:

A. Six or more of the following symptoms of inattention have been present for at least 6
months to a point that is disruptive and inappropriate for developmental level:

Often does not give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in
schoolwork, work, or other activities

Often has trouble keeping attention on tasks or play activities

Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly

Often does not follow instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in
the workplace (not due to oppositional behavior or failure to understand instructions)

Often has trouble organizing activities

Often avoids, dislikes, or doesn’t want to do things that take a lot of mental effort for
a long period of time (such as schoolwork or homework)
 Often loses things needed for tasks and activities (e.g., toys, school assignments,
pencils, books, or tools)

Is often easily distracted

Is often forgetful in daily activities

B. Six or more of the following symptoms of hyperactivity-impulsivity have been present

for at least 6 months to an extent that is disruptive and inappropriate for developmental
level:

Often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat

Often gets up from seat when remaining in seat is expected

Often runs about or climbs when and where it is not appropriate (adolescents or
adults may feel very restless)

Often has trouble playing or enjoying leisure activities quietly

Is often “on the go” or often acts as if “driven by a motor”

Often talks excessively

Often blurts out answers before questions have been finished

Often has trouble waiting one’s turn

Often interrupts or intrudes on others (e.g., butts into conversations or games)

If a diagnosis is made, the therapist will select a course of therapy that he or

she feels will be most effective. One approach to treatment is
psychotherapy, the professional treatment for psychological disorder
through techniques designed to encourage communication of conflicts and
insight. The fundamental aspect of psychotherapy is that the patient directly
confronts the disorder and works with the therapist to help reduce it.
Therapy includes assessing the patient’s issues and problems, planning a
course of treatment, setting goals for change, the treatment itself, and an
evaluation of the patient’s progress. Therapy is practiced by thousands of
psychologists and other trained practitioners in the United States and around
the world, and is responsible for billions of dollars of the health budget.

To many people therapy involves a patient lying on a couch with a therapist

sitting behind and nodding sagely as the patient speaks. Though this
approach to therapy (known as psychoanalysis) is still practiced, it is in the
minority. It is estimated that there are over 400 different kinds of therapy
practiced by people in many fields, and the most important of these are
shown in Figure 13.2 “The Many Types of Therapy Practiced in the United
States”. The therapists who provide these treatments include psychiatrists
(who have a medical degree and can prescribe drugs) and clinical
psychologists, as well as social workers, psychiatric nurses, and couples,
marriage, and family therapists.

Figure 13.2 The Many Types of Therapy Practiced in the United States
These data show the proportion of psychotherapists who reported practicing each type of therapy.

Adapted from Norcross, J. C., Hedges, M., & Castle, P. H. (2002). Psychologists conducting

psychotherapy in 2001: A study of the Division 29 membership. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research,

Practice, Training, 39(1), 97–102.

Psychology in Everyday Life: Seeking Treatment for Psychological Difficulties

Many people who would benefit from psychotherapy do not get it, either because they do not
know how to find it or because they feel that they will be stigmatized and embarrassed if they
seek help. The decision to not seek help is a very poor choice because the effectiveness of mental
health treatments is well documented and, no matter where a person lives, there are treatments

available (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999)2.

The first step in seeking help for psychological problems is to accept the stigma. It is possible
that some of your colleagues, friends, and family members will know that you are seeking help
and some may at first think more negatively of you for it. But you must get past these unfair and
close-minded responses. Feeling good about yourself is the most important thing you can do, and
seeking help may be the first step in doing so.

One question is how to determine if someone needs help. This question is not always easy to
answer because there is no clear demarcation between “normal” and “abnormal” behavior. Most
generally, you will know that you or others need help when the person’s psychological state is
negatively influencing his or her everyday behavior, when the behavior is adversely affecting
those around the person, and when the problems continue over a period of time. Often people
seek therapy as a result of a life-changing event such as diagnosis of a fatal illness, an upcoming
marriage or divorce, or the death of a loved one. But therapy is also effective for general
depression and anxiety, as well as for specific everyday problems.

There are a wide variety of therapy choices, many of which are free. Begin in your school,
community, or church, asking about community health or counseling centers and pastoral
counseling. You may want to ask friends and family members for recommendations. You’ll
probably be surprised at how many people have been to counseling, and how many recommend
it.

There are many therapists who offer a variety of treatment options. Be sure to ask about the
degrees that the therapist has earned, and about the reputation of the center in which the therapy
occurs. If you have choices, try to find a person or location that you like, respect, and trust. This
will allow you to be more open, and you will get more out of the experience. Your sessions with
the help provider will require discussing your family history, personality, and relationships, and
you should feel comfortable sharing this information.

Remember also that confronting issues requires time to reflect, energy to get to the appointments
and deal with consequential feelings, and discipline to explore your issues on your own. Success
at therapy is difficult, and it takes effort.

The bottom line is that going for therapy should not be a difficult decision for you. All people
have the right to appropriate mental health care just as they have a right to general health care.
Just as you go to a dentist for a toothache, you may go to therapy for psychological difficulties.
Furthermore, you can be confident that you will be treated with respect and that your privacy
will be protected, because therapists follow ethical principles in their practices. The following
provides a summary of these principles as developed by the American Psychological Association

(2010)3.

Psychologists inform their clients/patients as early as possible in the therapeutic

relationship about the nature and anticipated course of therapy, fees, involvement of
third parties, and limits of confidentiality, and provide sufficient opportunity for the
client/patient to ask questions and receive answers.

Psychologists inform their clients/patients of the developing nature of the treatment,

the potential risks involved, alternative treatments that may be available, and about
the voluntary nature of their participation.

When the therapist is a trainee, the client/patient is informed that the therapist is in
training and is being supervised, and is given the name of the supervisor.

When psychologists agree to provide services to several persons who have a

relationship (such as spouses, significant others, or parents and children), they take
reasonable steps to clarify at the outset which of the individuals are clients/patients
and the relationship the psychologist will have with each person.

If it becomes apparent that a psychologist may be called on to perform potentially

conflicting roles (such as family therapist and then witness for one party in divorce
proceedings), the psychologist takes reasonable steps to clarify and modify, or
withdraw from, roles appropriately.

When psychologists provide services to several persons in a group setting, they

describe at the outset the roles and responsibilities of all parties and the limits of
confidentiality.

Psychologists do not engage in sexual intimacies with current therapy

clients/patients, or with individuals they know to be close relatives, guardians, or
significant others of current clients/patients. Psychologists do not terminate therapy
to circumvent this standard. Psychologists do not accept as therapy clients/patients
 persons with whom they have engaged in sexual intimacies, nor do they have sexual
intimacies with former clients/patients for at least 2 years after cessation or
termination of therapy.

Psychologists terminate therapy when it becomes reasonably clear that the

client/patient no longer needs the service, is not likely to benefit, or is being harmed
by continued service.

Psychodynamic Therapy

Psychodynamic therapy (psychoanalysis) is a psychological treatment

based on Freudian and neo-Freudian personality theories in which the
therapist helps the patient explore the unconscious dynamics of personality.
The analyst engages with the patient, usually in one-on-one sessions, often
with the patient lying on a couch and facing away. The goal of the
psychotherapy is for the patient to talk about his or her personal concerns
and anxieties, allowing the therapist to try to understand the underlying
unconscious problems that are causing the symptoms (the process of
interpretation). The analyst may try out some interpretations on the patient
and observe how he or she responds to them.

The patient may be asked to verbalize his or her thoughts through free
association, in which the therapist listens while the client talks about
whatever comes to mind, without any censorship or filtering. The client may
also be asked to report on his or her dreams, and the therapist will use
dream analysis to analyze the symbolism of the dreams in an effort to probe
the unconscious thoughts of the client and interpret their significance. On
the basis of the thoughts expressed by the patient, the analyst discovers the
unconscious conflicts causing the patient’s symptoms and interprets them
for the patient.
The goal of psychotherapy is to help the patient develop insight—that is, an
understanding of the unconscious causes of the disorder (Epstein, Stern, &
Silbersweig, 2001; Lubarsky & Barrett, 2006), but the patient often shows
resistance to these new understandings, using defense mechanisms to avoid
the painful feelings in his or her unconscious. The patient might forget or
miss appointments, or act out with hostile feelings toward the therapist. The
therapist attempts to help the patient develop insight into the causes of the
resistance. The sessions may also lead to transference, in which the patient
unconsciously redirects feelings experienced in an important personal
relationship toward the therapist. For instance, the patient may transfer
feelings of guilt that come from the father or mother to the therapist. Some
therapists believe that transference should be encouraged, as it allows the
client to resolve hidden conflicts and work through feelings that are present
in the relationships.

Important Characteristics and Experiences in Psychoanalysis

Free association. The therapist listens while the client talks about whatever comes to
mind, without any censorship or filtering. The therapist then tries to interpret these
free associations, looking for unconscious causes of symptoms.

Dream analysis. The therapist listens while the client describes his or her dreams
and then analyzes the symbolism of the dreams in an effort to probe the unconscious
thoughts of the client and interpret their significance.

Insight. An understanding by the patient of the unconscious causes of his or her

symptoms.

Interpretation. The therapist uses the patient’s expressed thoughts to try to

understand the underlying unconscious problems. The analyst may try out some
interpretations on the patient and observe how he or she responds to them.
 Resistance. The patient’s use of defense mechanisms to avoid the painful feelings in
his or her unconscious. The patient might forget or miss appointments, or act out
with hostile feelings toward the therapist. The therapist attempts to help the patient
develop insight into the causes of the resistance.

Transference. The unconscious redirection of the feelings experienced in an

important personal relationship toward the therapist. For instance, the patient may
transfer feelings of guilt that come from the father or mother to the therapist.

One problem with traditional psychoanalysis is that the sessions may take
place several times a week, go on for many years, and cost thousands of
dollars. To help more people benefit, modern psychodynamic approaches
frequently use shorter-term, focused, and goal-oriented approaches. In these
“brief psychodynamic therapies,” the therapist helps the client determine the
important issues to be discussed at the beginning of treatment and usually
takes a more active role than in classic psychoanalysis (Levenson, 2010).

Humanistic Therapies

Just as psychoanalysis is based on the personality theories of Freud and the

neo-Freudians, humanistic therapy is a psychological treatment based on
the personality theories of Carl Rogers and other humanistic psychologists.
Humanistic therapy is based on the idea that people develop psychological
problems when they are burdened by limits and expectations placed on them
by themselves and others, and the treatment emphasizes the person’s
capacity for self-realization and fulfillment. Humanistic therapies attempt to
promote growth and responsibility by helping clients consider their own
situations and the world around them and how they can work to achieve
their life goals.
Carl Rogers developed person-centered therapy (or client-centered
therapy), an approach to treatment in which the client is helped to grow
and develop as the therapist provides a comfortable, nonjudgmental
environment. In his book, A Way of Being (1980), Rogers argued that
therapy was most productive when the therapist created a positive
relationship with the client—a therapeutic alliance. The therapeutic
alliance is a relationship between the client and the therapist that is
facilitated when the therapist is genuine (i.e., he or she creates no barriers
to free-flowing thoughts and feelings), when the therapist treats the client
with unconditional positive regard (i.e., values the client without any
qualifications, displaying an accepting attitude toward whatever the client is
feeling at the moment), and when the therapist develops empathy with the
client (i.e., that he or she actively listens to and accurately perceives the
personal feelings that the client experiences).

Figure 13.3
Carl Rogers was among the founders of the humanistic approach to therapy and developed the

fundamentals of person-centered therapy.

Didius – Carl Ransom Rogers – CC BY 2.5.

The development of a positive therapeutic alliance has been found to be

exceedingly important to successful therapy. The ideas of genuineness,
empathy, and unconditional positive regard in a nurturing relationship in
which the therapist actively listens to and reflects the feelings of the client is
probably the most fundamental part of contemporary psychotherapy
(Prochaska & Norcross, 2007).

Psychodynamic and humanistic therapies are recommended primarily for

people suffering from generalized anxiety or mood disorders, and who
desire to feel better about themselves overall. But the goals of people with
other psychological disorders, such as phobias, sexual problems, and
obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), are more specific. A person with a
social phobia may want to be able to leave his or her house, a person with a
sexual dysfunction may want to improve his or her sex life, and a person
with OCD may want to learn to stop letting his obsessions or compulsions
interfere with everyday activities. In these cases it is not necessary to revisit
childhood experiences or consider our capacities for self-realization—we
simply want to deal with what is happening in the present.

Cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) is a structured approach to treatment

that attempts to reduce psychological disorders through systematic
procedures based on cognitive and behavioral principles. As you can see in
Figure 13.4 “Cognitive-Behavior Therapy”, CBT is based on the idea that
there is a recursive link among our thoughts, our feelings, and our behavior.
For instance, if we are feeling depressed, our negative thoughts (“I am doing
poorly in my chemistry class”) lead to negative feelings (“I feel hopeless
and sad”), which then contribute to negative behaviors (lethargy, disinterest,
lack of studying). When we or other people look at the negative behavior,
the negative thoughts are reinforced and the cycle repeats itself (Beck,
1976). Similarly, in panic disorder a patient may misinterpret his or her
feelings of anxiety as a sign of an impending physical or mental catastrophe
(such as a heart attack), leading to an avoidance of a particular place or
social situation. The fact that the patient is avoiding the situation reinforces
the negative thoughts. Again, the thoughts, feelings, and behavior amplify
and distort each other.

Figure 13.4 Cognitive-Behavior Therapy

Cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) is based on the idea that our thoughts, feelings, and behavior reinforce

each other and that changing our thoughts or behavior can make us feel better.

CBT is a very broad approach that is used for the treatment of a variety of
problems, including mood, anxiety, personality, eating, substance abuse,
attention-deficit, and psychotic disorders. CBT treats the symptoms of the
disorder (the behaviors or the cognitions) and does not attempt to address
the underlying issues that cause the problem. The goal is simply to stop the
negative cycle by intervening to change cognition or behavior. The client
and the therapist work together to develop the goals of the therapy, the
particular ways that the goals will be reached, and the timeline for reaching
them. The procedures are problem-solving and action-oriented, and the
client is forced to take responsibility for his or her own treatment. The client
is assigned tasks to complete that will help improve the disorder and takes
an active part in the therapy. The treatment usually lasts between 10 and 20
sessions.

Depending on the particular disorder, some CBT treatments may be

primarily behavioral in orientation, focusing on the principles of classical,
operant, and observational learning, whereas other treatments are more
cognitive, focused on changing negative thoughts related to the disorder.
But almost all CBT treatments use a combination of behavioral and
cognitive approaches.

Behavioral Aspects of CBT

In some cases the primary changes that need to be made are behavioral.
Behavioral therapy is psychological treatment that is based on principles
of learning. The most direct approach is through operant conditioning using
reward or punishment. Reinforcement may be used to teach new skills to
people, for instance, those with autism or schizophrenia (Granholm et al.,
2008; Herbert et al., 2005; Scattone, 2007). If the patient has trouble
dressing or grooming, then reinforcement techniques, such as providing
tokens that can be exchanged for snacks, are used to reinforce appropriate
behaviors such as putting on one’s clothes in the morning or taking a shower
at night. If the patient has trouble interacting with others, reinforcement will
be used to teach the client how to more appropriately respond in public, for
instance, by maintaining eye contact, smiling when appropriate, and
modulating tone of voice.
As the patient practices the different techniques, the appropriate behaviors
are shaped through reinforcement to allow the client to manage more
complex social situations. In some cases observational learning may also be
used; the client may be asked to observe the behavior of others who are
more socially skilled to acquire appropriate behaviors. People who learn to
improve their interpersonal skills through skills training may be more
accepted by others and this social support may have substantial positive
effects on their emotions.

When the disorder is anxiety or phobia, then the goal of the CBT is to
reduce the negative affective responses to the feared stimulus. Exposure
therapy is a behavioral therapy based on the classical conditioning
principle of extinction, in which people are confronted with a feared
stimulus with the goal of decreasing their negative emotional responses to it
(Wolpe, 1973). Exposure treatment can be carried out in real situations or
through imagination, and it is used in the treatment of panic disorder,
agoraphobia, social phobia, OCD, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In flooding, a client is exposed to the source of his fear all at once. An

agoraphobic might be taken to a crowded shopping mall or someone with an
extreme fear of heights to the top of a tall building. The assumption is that
the fear will subside as the client habituates to the situation while receiving
emotional support from the therapist during the stressful experience. An
advantage of the flooding technique is that it is quick and often effective,
but a disadvantage is that the patient may relapse after a short period of
time.

More frequently, the exposure is done more gradually. Systematic

desensitization is a behavioral treatment that combines imagining or
experiencing the feared object or situation with relaxation exercises (Wolpe,
1973). The client and the therapist work together to prepare a hierarchy of
fears, starting with the least frightening, and moving to the most frightening
scenario surrounding the object (Table 13.1 “Hierarchy of Fears Used in
Systematic Desensitization”). The patient then confronts her fears in a
systematic manner, sometimes using her imagination but usually, when
possible, in real life.

Table 13.1 Hierarchy of Fears Used in Systematic Desensitization

Behavior Fear rating

Think about a spider. 10

Look at a photo of a spider. 25

Look at a real spider in a closed box. 50

Hold the box with the spider. 60

Let a spider crawl on your desk. 70

Let a spider crawl on your shoe. 80

Let a spider crawl on your pants leg. 90

Let a spider crawl on your sleeve. 95

Let a spider crawl on your bare arm. 100

Desensitization techniques use the principle of counterconditioning, in

which a second incompatible response (relaxation, e.g., through deep
breathing) is conditioned to an already conditioned response (the fear
response). The continued pairing of the relaxation responses with the feared
stimulus as the patient works up the hierarchy gradually leads the fear
response to be extinguished and the relaxation response to take its place.
Behavioral therapy works best when people directly experience the feared
object. Fears of spiders are more directly habituated when the patient
interacts with a real spider, and fears of flying are best extinguished when
the patient gets on a real plane. But it is often difficult and expensive to
create these experiences for the patient. Recent advances in virtual reality
have allowed clinicians to provide CBT in what seem like real situations to
the patient. In virtual reality CBT, the therapist uses computer-generated,
three-dimensional, lifelike images of the feared stimulus in a systematic
desensitization program. Specially designed computer equipment, often
with a head-mount display, is used to create a simulated environment. A
common use is in helping soldiers who are experiencing PTSD return to the
scene of the trauma and learn how to cope with the stress it invokes.

Some of the advantages of the virtual reality treatment approach are that it is
economical, the treatment session can be held in the therapist’s office with
no loss of time or confidentiality, the session can easily be terminated as
soon as a patient feels uncomfortable, and many patients who have resisted
live exposure to the object of their fears are willing to try the new virtual
reality option first.

Aversion therapy is a type of behavior therapy in which positive

punishment is used to reduce the frequency of an undesirable behavior. An
unpleasant stimulus is intentionally paired with a harmful or socially
unacceptable behavior until the behavior becomes associated with
unpleasant sensations and is hopefully reduced. A child who wets his bed
may be required to sleep on a pad that sounds an alarm when it senses
moisture. Over time, the positive punishment produced by the alarm reduces
the bedwetting behavior (Houts, Berman, & Abramson, 1994). Aversion
therapy is also used to stop other specific behaviors such as nail biting
(Allen, 1996).
Alcoholism has long been treated with aversion therapy (Baker & Cannon,
1988). In a standard approach, patients are treated at a hospital where they
are administered a drug, antabuse, that makes them nauseous if they
consume any alcohol. The technique works very well if the user keeps
taking the drug (Krampe et al., 2006), but unless it is combined with other
approaches the patients are likely to relapse after they stop the drug.

Cognitive Aspects of CBT

While behavioral approaches focus on the actions of the patient, cognitive

therapy is a psychological treatment that helps clients identify incorrect or
distorted beliefs that are contributing to disorder. In cognitive therapy the
therapist helps the patient develop new, healthier ways of thinking about
themselves and about the others around them. The idea of cognitive therapy
is that changing thoughts will change emotions, and that the new emotions
will then influence behavior (see Figure 13.4 “Cognitive-Behavior
Therapy”).

The goal of cognitive therapy is not necessarily to get people to think more
positively but rather to think more accurately. For instance, a person who
thinks “no one cares about me” is likely to feel rejected, isolated, and lonely.
If the therapist can remind the person that she has a mother or daughter who
does care about her, more positive feelings will likely follow. Similarly,
changing beliefs from “I have to be perfect” to “No one is always perfect—
I’m doing pretty good,” from “I am a terrible student” to “I am doing well in
some of my courses,” or from “She did that on purpose to hurt me” to
“Maybe she didn’t realize how important it was to me” may all be helpful.

The psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck and the psychologist Albert Ellis (1913–
2007) together provided the basic principles of cognitive therapy. Ellis
(2004) called his approach rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) or
rational emotive therapy (RET), and he focused on pointing out the flaws in
the patient’s thinking. Ellis noticed that people experiencing strong negative
emotions tend to personalize and overgeneralize their beliefs, leading to an
inability to see situations accurately (Leahy, 2003). In REBT, the therapist’s
goal is to challenge these irrational thought patterns, helping the patient
replace the irrational thoughts with more rational ones, leading to the
development of more appropriate emotional reactions and behaviors.

Beck’s (Beck, 1995; Beck, Freeman, & Davis, 2004)) cognitive therapy was
based on his observation that people who were depressed generally had a
large number of highly accessible negative thoughts that influenced their
thinking. His goal was to develop a short-term therapy for depression that
would modify these unproductive thoughts. Beck’s approach challenges the
client to test his beliefs against concrete evidence. If a client claims that
“everybody at work is out to get me,” the therapist might ask him to provide
instances to corroborate the claim. At the same time the therapist might
point out contrary evidence, such as the fact that a certain coworker is
actually a loyal friend or that the patient’s boss had recently praised him.

Combination (Eclectic) Approaches to

Therapy

To this point we have considered the different approaches to psychotherapy

under the assumption that a therapist will use only one approach with a
given patient. But this is not the case; as you saw in Figure 13.2 “The Many
Types of Therapy Practiced in the United States”, the most commonly
practiced approach to therapy is an eclectic therapy, an approach to
treatment in which the therapist uses whichever techniques seem most useful
and relevant for a given patient. For bipolar disorder, for instance, the
therapist may use both psychological skills training to help the patient cope
with the severe highs and lows, but may also suggest that the patient
consider biomedical drug therapies (Newman, Leahy, Beck, Reilly-
Harrington, & Gyulai, 2002). Treatment for major depressive disorder
usually involves antidepressant drugs as well as CBT to help the patient deal
with particular problems (McBride, Farvolden, & Swallow, 2007).

As we have seen in Chapter 12 “Defining Psychological Disorders”, one of

the most commonly diagnosed disorders is borderline personality disorder
(BPD). Consider this description, typical of the type of borderline patient
who arrives at a therapist’s office:

Even as an infant, it seemed that there was something different about Bethany. She was an intense
baby, easily upset and difficult to comfort. She had very severe separation anxiety—if her mother left
the room, Bethany would scream until she returned. In her early teens, Bethany became increasingly
sullen and angry. She started acting out more and more—yelling at her parents and teachers and
engaging in impulsive behavior such as promiscuity and running away from home. At times Bethany
would have a close friend at school, but some conflict always developed and the friendship would
end.
By the time Bethany turned 17, her mood changes were totally unpredictable. She was fighting with
her parents almost daily, and the fights often included violent behavior on Bethany’s part. At times
she seemed terrified to be without her mother, but at other times she would leave the house in a fit of
rage and not return for a few days. One day, Bethany’s mother noticed scars on Bethany’s arms. When
confronted about them, Bethany said that one night she just got more and more lonely and nervous
about a recent breakup until she finally stuck a lit cigarette into her arm. She said “I didn’t really care
for him that much, but I had to do something dramatic.”
When she was 18 Bethany rented a motel room where she took an overdose of sleeping pills. Her
suicide attempt was not successful, but the authorities required that she seek psychological help.

Most therapists will deal with a case such as Bethany’s using an eclectic
approach. First, because her negative mood states are so severe, they will
likely recommend that she start taking antidepressant medications. These
drugs are likely to help her feel better and will reduce the possibility of
another suicide attempt, but they will not change the underlying
psychological problems. Therefore, the therapist will also provide
psychotherapy.

The first sessions of the therapy will likely be based primarily on creating
trust. Person-centered approaches will be used in which the therapist
attempts to create a therapeutic alliance conducive to a frank and open
exchange of information.

If the therapist is trained in a psychodynamic approach, he or she will

probably begin intensive face-to-face psychotherapy sessions at least three
times a week. The therapist may focus on childhood experiences related to
Bethany’s attachment difficulties but will also focus in large part on the
causes of the present behavior. The therapist will understand that because
Bethany does not have good relationships with other people, she will likely
seek a close bond with the therapist, but the therapist will probably not
allow the transference relationship to develop fully. The therapist will also
realize that Bethany will probably try to resist the work of the therapist.

Most likely the therapist will also use principles of CBT. For one, cognitive
therapy will likely be used in an attempt to change Bethany’s distortions of
reality. She feels that people are rejecting her, but she is probably bringing
these rejections on herself. If she can learn to better understand the meaning
of other people’s actions, she may feel better. And the therapist will likely
begin using some techniques of behavior therapy, for instance, by rewarding
Bethany for successful social interactions and progress toward meeting her
important goals.

The eclectic therapist will continue to monitor Bethany’s behavior as the

therapy continues, bringing into play whatever therapeutic tools seem most
beneficial. Hopefully, Bethany will stay in treatment long enough to make
some real progress in repairing her broken life.

One example of an eclectic treatment approach that has been shown to be

successful in treating BPD is dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT; Linehan
& Dimeff, 2001). DBT is essentially a cognitive therapy, but it includes a
particular emphasis on attempting to enlist the help of the patient in his or
her own treatment. A dialectical behavioral therapist begins by attempting to
develop a positive therapeutic alliance with the client, and then tries to
encourage the patient to become part of the treament process. In DBT the
therapist aims to accept and validate the client’s feelings at any given time
while nonetheless informing the client that some feelings and behaviors are
maladaptive, and showing the client better alternatives. The therapist will
use both individual and group therapy, helping the patient work toward
improving interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation, and distress
tolerance skills.

Key Takeaways

Psychoanalysis is based on the principles of Freudian and neo-Freudian personality

theories. The goal is to explore the unconscious dynamics of personality.

Humanist therapy, derived from the personality theory of Carl Rogers, is based on
the idea that people experience psychological problems when they are burdened by
limits and expectations placed on them by themselves and others. Its focus is on
helping people reach their life goals.

Behavior therapy applies the principles of classical and operant conditioning, as well
as observational learning, to the elimination of maladaptive behaviors and their
replacement with more adaptive responses.
 Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck developed cognitive-based therapies to help clients stop
negative thoughts and replace them with more objective thoughts.

Eclectic therapy is the most common approach to treatment. In eclectic therapy, the
therapist uses whatever treatment approaches seem most likely to be effective for the
client.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Imagine that your friend has been feeling depressed for several months but refuses to
consider therapy as an option. What might you tell her that might help her feel more
comfortable about seeking treatment?

2. Imagine that you have developed a debilitating fear of bees after recently being
attacked by a swarm of them. What type of therapy do you think would be best for
your disorder?

3. Imagine that your friend has a serious drug abuse problem. Based on what you’ve
learned in this section, what treatment options would you explore in your attempt to
provide him with the best help available? Which combination of therapies might
work best?

1
American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical
manual of mental disorders (4th ed., text rev.). Washington, DC: Author.

2
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (1999). Mental health: A
report of the surgeon general. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing
Office.

3
American Psychological Association. (2010). Ethical principles of
psychologists and code of conduct. Retrieved from
http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx?item=7#402

References

Allen K. W. (1996). Chronic nailbiting: A controlled comparison of

competing response and mild aversion treatments. Behaviour Research and
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Baker, T. B., & Cannon, D. S. (1988). Assessment and treatment of addictive

disorders. New York, NY: Praeger.

Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders. New

York, NY: New American Library.

Beck, A. T., Freeman, A., & Davis, D. D. (2004). Cognitive therapy of

personality disorders (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Beck, J. S. (1995). Cognitive therapy: Basics and beyond. New York, NY:
Guilford Press

Ellis, A. (2004). Why rational emotive behavior therapy is the most

comprehensive and effective form of behavior therapy. Journal of Rational-
Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 22, 85–92.

Epstein J., Stern E., & Silbersweig, D. (2001). Neuropsychiatry at the

millennium: The potential for mind/brain integration through emerging
interdisciplinary research strategies. Clinical Neuroscience Research, 1, 10–
18.

Granholm, E., McQuaid, J. R., Link, P. C., Fish, S., Patterson, T., & Jeste,
D. V. (2008). Neuropsychological predictors of functional outcome in
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schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research, 100, 133–143.
doi:10.1016/j.schres.2007.11.032.

Herbert, J. D., Gaudini, B. A., Rheingold, A. A., Myers, V. H., Dalrymple,

K., & Nolan, E. M. (2005). Social skills training augments the effectiveness
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Therapy, 36, 125–138.

Houts, A. C., Berman, J. S., & Abramson, H. (1994). Effectiveness of

psychological and pharmacological treatments for nocturnal enuresis.
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Krampe, H., Stawicki, S., Wagner, T., Bartels, C., Aust, C., Rüther, E.,…
Ehrenreich, H. (2006). Follow-up of 180 alcoholic patients for up to 7 years
after outpatient treatment: Impact of alcohol deterrents on outcome.
Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 30(1), 86–95.

Leahy, R. L. (2003). Cognitive therapy techniques: A practitioner’s guide.

New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Levenson, H. (2010). Brief dynamic therapy. Washington, DC: American

Psychological Association.

Linehan, M. M., & Dimeff, L. (2001). Dialectical behavior therapy in a

nutshell. The California Psychologist, 34, 10–13.

Lubarsky, L., & Barrett, M. S. (2006). The history and empirical status of
key psychoanalytic concepts. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 2, 1–
19.

McBride, C., Farvolden, P., & Swallow, S. R. (2007). Major depressive

disorder and cognitive schemas. In L. P. Riso, P. L. du Toit, D. J. Stein, & J.
E. Young (Eds.), Cognitive schemas and core beliefs in psychological
problems: A scientist-practitioner guide (pp. 11–39). Washington, DC:
American Psychological Association.

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Gyulai, L. (2002). Clinical management of depression, hopelessness, and
suicidality in patients with bipolar disorder. In C. F. Newman, R. L. Leahy,
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A cognitive therapy approach (pp. 79–100). Washington, DC: American
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Pergamon.
13.2 Reducing Disorder Biologically: Drug
and Brain Therapy

Learning Objectives

1. Classify the different types of drugs used in the treatment of mental disorders and
explain how they each work to reduce disorder.

2. Critically evaluate direct brain intervention methods that may be used by doctors to
treat patients who do not respond to drug or other therapy.

Like other medical problems, psychological disorders may in some cases be

treated biologically. Biomedical therapies are treatments designed to
reduce psychological disorder by influencing the action of the central
nervous system. These therapies primarily involve the use of medications
but also include direct methods of brain intervention, including
electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS),
and psychosurgery.

Drug Therapies

Psychologists understand that an appropriate balance of neurotransmitters in

the brain is necessary for mental health. If there is a proper balance of
chemicals, then the person’s mental health will be acceptable, but
psychological disorder will result if there is a chemical imbalance. The most
frequently used biological treatments provide the patient with medication
that influences the production and reuptake of neurotransmitters in the
central nervous system (CNS). The use of these drugs is rapidly increasing,
and drug therapy is now the most common approach to treatment of most
psychological disorders.

Unlike some medical therapies that can be targeted toward specific

symptoms, current psychological drug therapies are not so specific; they
don’t change particular behaviors or thought processes, and they don’t really
solve psychological disorders. However, although they cannot “cure”
disorder, drug therapies are nevertheless useful therapeutic approaches,
particularly when combined with psychological therapy, in treating a variety
of psychological disorders. The best drug combination for the individual
patient is usually found through trial and error (Biedermann &
Fleischhacker, 2009).

The major classes and brand names of drugs used to treat psychological
disorders are shown in Table 13.2 “Common Medications Used to Treat
Psychological Disorders”.

Table 13.2 Common Medications Used to Treat Psychological Disorders

 Brand
Class Type Disorder Notes
names

Very effective in
most cases, at least
Ritalin, Attention-
in the short term, at
Psychostimulants Adderall, deficit/hyperactivity
reducing
Dexedrine disorder (ADHD)
hyperactivity and
inattention
 Brand
Class Type Disorder Notes
names

Less frequently
prescribed today
Elavil, Depression and
Tricyclics than are the
Tofranil anxiety disorders
serotonin reuptake
inhibitors (SSRIs)

Ensam,
Monamine Less frequently
Nardil, Depression and
oxidase inhibitors prescribed today
Parnate, anxiety disorders
(MAOIs) than are the SSRIs
Marpaln

The most frequently

prescribed
Antidepressants Prozac, antidepressant
Depression and
SSRIs Paxil, medications; work
anxiety disorders
Zoloft by blocking the
reuptake of
serotonin

Prescribed in some
cases; work by
Effexor, blocking the
Other reuptake Depression and
Celexa, reuptake of
inhibitors anxiety disorders
Wellbutrin serotonin,
norepinephrine, and
dopamine
 Brand
Class Type Disorder Notes
names

Effective in
Eskalith, reducing the mood
Mood stabilizers Lithobid, Bipolar disorder swings associated
Depakene with bipolar
disorder

Work by increasing
the action of the
Antianxiety Tranquilizers Valium, Anxiety, panic, and
neurotransmitter
drugs (benzodiazepines) Xanax mood disorders
GABA (gamma-
aminobutyric acid)

Treat the positive

and, to some extent,
the negative
Thorazine, symptoms of
Haldol, schizophrenia by
Antipsychotics
Clozaril, Schizophrenia reducing the
(Neuroleptics)
Risperdal, transmission of
Zyprexa dopamine and
increasing the
transmission of
serotonin

Using Stimulants to Treat ADHD

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is frequently treated with

biomedical therapy, usually along with cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT).
The most commonly prescribed drugs for ADHD are psychostimulants,
including Ritalin, Adderall, and Dexedrine. Short-acting forms of the drugs
are taken as pills and last between 4 and 12 hours, but some of the drugs are
also available in long-acting forms (skin patches) that can be worn on the
hip and last up to 12 hours. The patch is placed on the child early in the
morning and worn all day.

Stimulants improve the major symptoms of ADHD, including inattention,

impulsivity, and hyperactivity, often dramatically, in about 75% of the
children who take them (Greenhill, Halperin, & Abikof, 1999). But the
effects of the drugs wear off quickly. Additionally, the best drug and best
dosage varies from child to child, so it may take some time to find the
correct combination.

It may seem surprising to you that a disorder that involves hyperactivity is

treated with a psychostimulant, a drug that normally increases activity. The
answer lies in the dosage. When large doses of stimulants are taken, they
increase activity, but in smaller doses the same stimulants improve attention
and decrease motor activity (Zahn, Rapoport, & Thompson, 1980).

The most common side effects of psychostimulants in children include

decreased appetite, weight loss, sleeping problems, and irritability as the
effect of the medication tapers off. Stimulant medications may also be
associated with a slightly reduced growth rate in children, although in most
cases growth isn’t permanently affected (Spencer, Biederman, Harding, &
O’Donnell, 1996).

Antidepressant Medications

Antidepressant medications are drugs designed to improve moods.

Although they are used primarily in the treatment of depression, they are
also effective for patients who suffer from anxiety, phobias, and obsessive-
compulsive disorders. Antidepressants work by influencing the production
and reuptake of neurotransmitters that relate to emotion, including
serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine. Although exactly why they work
is not yet known, as the amount of the neurotransmitters in the CNS is
increased through the action of the drugs, the person often experiences less
depression.

The original antidepressants were the tricyclic antidepressants, with the

brand names of Tofranil and Elavil, and the monamine oxidase inhibitors
(MAOIs). These medications work by increasing the amount of serotonin,
norepinephrine, and dopamine at the synapses, but they also have severe
side effects including potential increases in blood pressure and the need to
follow particular diets.

The antidepressants most prescribed today are the selective serotonin

reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), including Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft, which are
designed to selectively block the reuptake of serotonin at the synapse,
thereby leaving more serotonin available in the CNS. SSRIs are safer and
have fewer side effects than the tricyclics or the MAOIs (Fraser, 2000;
Hollon, Thase, & Markowitz, 2002). SSRIs are effective, but patients taking
them often suffer a variety of sometimes unpleasant side effects, including
dry mouth, constipation, blurred vision, headache, agitation, drowsiness, as
well as a reduction in sexual enjoyment.

Recently, there has been concern that SSRIs may increase the risk of suicide
among teens and young adults, probably because when the medications
begin working they give patients more energy, which may lead them to
commit the suicide that they had been planning but lacked the energy to go
through with. This concern has led the FDA to put a warning label on SSRI
medications and has led doctors to be more selective about prescribing
antidepressants to this age group (Healy & Whitaker, 2003; Simon, 2006;
Simon, Savarino, Operskalski, & Wang, 2006).

Because the effects of antidepressants may take weeks or even months to

develop, doctors usually work with each patient to determine which
medications are most effective, and may frequently change medications
over the course of therapy. In some cases other types of antidepressants may
be used instead of or in addition to the SSRIs. These medications also work
by blocking the reuptake of neurotransmitters, including serotonin,
norepinephrine, and dopamine. Brand names of these medications include
Effexor and Wellbutrin.

Patients who are suffering from bipolar disorder are not helped by the SSRIs
or other antidepressants because their disorder also involves the experience
of overly positive moods. Treatment is more complicated for these patients,
often involving a combination of antipsychotics and antidepressants along
with mood stabilizing medications (McElroy & Keck, 2000). The most well-
known mood stabilizer, lithium carbonate (or “lithium”), was approved by
the FDA in the 1970s for treating both manic and depressive episodes, and it
has proven very effective. Anticonvulsant medications can also be used as
mood stabilizers. Another drug, Depakote, has also proven very effective,
and some bipolar patients may do better with it than with lithium (Kowatch
et al., 2000).

People who take lithium must have regular blood tests to be sure that the
levels of the drug are in the appropriate range. Potential negative side effects
of lithium are loss of coordination, slurred speech, frequent urination, and
excessive thirst. Though side effects often cause patients to stop taking their
medication, it is important that treatment be continuous, rather than
intermittent. There is no cure for bipolar disorder, but drug therapy does
help many people.
Antianxiety Medications

Antianxiety medications are drugs that help relieve fear or anxiety. They
work by increasing the action of the neurotransmitter GABA. The increased
level of GABA helps inhibit the action of the sympathetic division of the
autonomic nervous system, creating a calming experience.

The most common class of antianxiety medications is the tranquilizers,

known as benzodiazepines. These drugs, which are prescribed millions of
times a year, include Ativan, Valium, and Xanax. The benzodiazepines act
within a few minutes to treat mild anxiety disorders but also have major side
effects. They are addictive, frequently leading to tolerance, and they can
cause drowsiness, dizziness, and unpleasant withdrawal symptoms
including relapses into increased anxiety (Otto et al., 1993). Furthermore,
because the effects of the benzodiazepines are very similar to those of
alcohol, they are very dangerous when combined with it.

Antipsychotic Medications

Until the middle of the 20th century, schizophrenia was inevitably

accompanied by the presence of positive symptoms, including bizarre,
disruptive, and potentially dangerous behavior. As a result, schizophrenics
were locked in asylums to protect them from themselves and to protect
society from them. In the 1950s, a drug called chlorpromazine (Thorazine)
was discovered that could reduce many of the positive symptoms of
schizophrenia. Chlorpromazine was the first of many antipsychotic drugs.

Antipsychotic drugs (neuroleptics) are drugs that treat the symptoms of

schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders. Today there are many
antipsychotics, including Thorazine, Haldol, Clozaril, Risperdal, and
Zyprexa. Some of these drugs treat the positive symptoms of schizophrenia,
and some treat both the positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms.

The discovery of chlorpromazine and its use in clinics has been described as
the single greatest advance in psychiatric care, because it has dramatically
improved the prognosis of patients in psychiatric hospitals worldwide.
Using antipsychotic medications has allowed hundreds of thousands of
people to move out of asylums into individual households or community
mental health centers, and in many cases to live near-normal lives.

Antipsychotics reduce the positive symptoms of schizophrenia by reducing

the transmission of dopamine at the synapses in the limbic system, and they
improve negative symptoms by influencing levels of serotonin (Marangell,
Silver, Goff, & Yudofsky, 2003). Despite their effectiveness, antipsychotics
have some negative side effects, including restlessness, muscle spasms,
dizziness, and blurred vision. In addition, their long-term use can cause
permanent neurological damage, a condition called tardive dyskinesia that
causes uncontrollable muscle movements, usually in the mouth area
(National Institute of Mental Health, 2008)1. Newer antipsychotics treat
more symptoms with fewer side effects than older medications do (Casey,
1996).

Direct Brain Intervention Therapies

In cases of severe disorder it may be desirable to directly influence brain

activity through electrical activation of the brain or through brain surgery.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a medical procedure designed to
alleviate psychological disorder in which electric currents are passed
through the brain, deliberately triggering a brief seizure (Figure 13.7
“Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)”). ECT has been used since the 1930s to
treat severe depression.

When it was first developed, the procedure involved strapping the patient to
a table before the electricity was administered. The patient was knocked out
by the shock, went into severe convulsions, and awoke later, usually without
any memory of what had happened. Today ECT is used only in the most
severe cases when all other treatments have failed, and the practice is more
humane. The patient is first given muscle relaxants and a general anesthesia,
and precisely calculated electrical currents are used to achieve the most
benefit with the fewest possible risks.

ECT is very effective; about 80% of people who undergo three sessions of
ECT report dramatic relief from their depression. ECT reduces suicidal
thoughts and is assumed to have prevented many suicides (Kellner et al.,
2005). On the other hand, the positive effects of ECT do not always last;
over one-half of patients who undergo ECT experience relapse within one
year, although antidepressant medication can help reduce this outcome
(Sackheim et al., 2001). ECT may also cause short-term memory loss or
cognitive impairment (Abrams, 1997; Sackheim et al., 2007).

Figure 13.7 Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)

Today’s ECT uses precisely calculated electrical currents to achieve the most benefit with the fewest

possible risks.

Although ECT continues to be used, newer approaches to treating chronic

depression are also being developed. A newer and gentler method of brain
stimulation is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a medical
procedure designed to reduce psychological disorder that uses a pulsing
magnetic coil to electrically stimulate the brain (Figure 13.8 “Transcranial
Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)”). TMS seems to work by activating neural
circuits in the prefrontal cortex, which is less active in people with
depression, causing an elevation of mood. TMS can be performed without
sedation, does not cause seizures or memory loss, and may be as effective as
ECT (Loo, Schweitzer, & Pratt, 2006; Rado, Dowd, & Janicak, 2008). TMS
has also been used in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and
schizophrenia.

Figure 13.8 Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

TMS is a noninvasive procedure that uses a pulsing magnetic coil to electrically stimulate the brain.

Recently, TMS has been used in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

Still other biomedical therapies are being developed for people with severe
depression that persists over years. One approach involves implanting a
device in the chest that stimulates the vagus nerve, a major nerve that
descends from the brain stem toward the heart (Corcoran, Thomas, Phillips,
& O’Keane, 2006; Nemeroff et al., 2006). When the vagus nerve is
stimulated by the device, it activates brain structures that are less active in
severely depressed people.

Psychosurgery, that is, surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in the
hope of improving disorder, is reserved for the most severe cases. The most
well-known psychosurgery is the prefrontal lobotomy. Developed in 1935
by Nobel Prize winner Egas Moniz to treat severe phobias and anxiety, the
procedure destroys the connections between the prefrontal cortex and the
rest of the brain. Lobotomies were performed on thousands of patients. The
procedure—which was never validated scientifically—left many patients in
worse condition than before, subjecting the already suffering patients and
their families to further heartbreak (Valenstein, 1986). Perhaps the most
notable failure was the lobotomy performed on Rosemary Kennedy, the
sister of President John F. Kennedy, which left her severely incapacitated.

There are very few centers that still conduct psychosurgery today, and when
such surgeries are performed they are much more limited in nature and
called cingulotomy (Dougherty et al., 2002). The ability to more accurately
image and localize brain structures using modern neuroimaging techniques
suggests that new, more accurate, and more beneficial developments in
psychosurgery may soon be available (Sachdev & Chen, 2009).

Key Takeaways

Psychostimulants are commonly prescribed to reduce the symptoms of ADHD.

Antipsychotic drugs play a crucial role in the treatment of schizophrenia. They do

not cure schizophrenia, but they help reduce the positive, negative, and cognitive
symptoms, making it easier to live with the disease.
 Antidepressant drugs are used in the treatment of depression, anxiety, phobias, and
obsessive-compulsive disorder. They gradually elevate mood by working to balance
neurotransmitters in the CNS. The most commonly prescribed antidepressants are
the SSRIs.

Antianxiety drugs (tranquilizers) relieve apprehension, tension, and nervousness and

are prescribed for people with diagnoses of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD),
obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and
panic disorder. The drugs are effective but have severe side effects including
dependence and withdrawal symptoms.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a controversial procedure used to treat severe

depression, in which electric currents are passed through the brain, deliberately
triggering a brief seizure.

A newer method of brain stimulation is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a

noninvasive procedure that employs a pulsing magnetic coil to electrically stimulate
the brain.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. What are your opinions about taking drugs to improve psychological disorders?
Would you take an antidepressant or antianxiety medication if you were feeling
depressed or anxious? Do you think children with ADHD should be given
stimulants? Why or why not?

2. Based on what you have just read, would you be willing to undergo ECT or TMS if
you were chronically depressed and drug therapy had failed? Why or why not?

1
National Institute of Mental Health. (2008). Mental health medications
(NIH Publication No. 08-3929). Retrieved from
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/mental-health-
medications/complete-index.shtml#pub4

References

Abrams, R. (1997). Electroconvulsive therapy (3rd ed.). Oxford, England:

Oxford University Press.

Biedermann, F., & Fleischhacker, W. W. (2009). Antipsychotics in the early

stage of development. Current Opinion Psychiatry, 22, 326–330.

Casey, D. E. (1996). Side effect profiles of new antipsychotic agents.

Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 57(Suppl. 11), 40–45.

Corcoran, C. D., Thomas, P., Phillips, J., & O’Keane, V. (2006). Vagus
nerve stimulation in chronic treatment-resistant depression: Preliminary
findings of an open-label study. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 189,
282–283.

Dougherty, D., Baer, L., Cosgrove, G., Cassem, E., Price, B., Nierenberg,
A.,…Rauch, S. L. (2002). Prospective long-term follow-up of 44 patients
who received cingulotomy for treatment-refractory obsessive-compulsive
disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry, 159(2), 269.

Fraser, A. R. (2000). Antidepressant choice to minimize treatment

resistance. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 176, 493.

Greenhill, L. L., Halperin, J. M., & Abikof, H. (1999). Stimulant

medications. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent
Psychiatry, 38(5), 503–512.

Healy, D., & Whitaker, C. J. (2003). Antidepressants and suicide: Risk-

benefit conundrums. Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience, 28, 331–339.

Hollon, S. D., Thase, M. E., & Markowitz, J. C. (2002). Treatment and

prevention of depression. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 3,
39–77.

Kellner, C. H., Fink, M., Knapp, R., Petrides, G., Husain, M., Rummans,
T.,…Malur, C. (2005). Relief of expressed suicidal intent by ECT: A
consortium for research in ECT study. The American Journal of Psychiatry,
162(5), 977–982.

Kowatch, R. A., Suppes, T., Carmody, T. J., Bucci, J. P., Hume, J. H.,
Kromelis, M.,…Rush, A. J. (2000). Effect size of lithium, divalproex
sodium, and carbamazepine in children and adolescents with bipolar
disorder. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent
Psychiatry, 39, 713–20.

Loo, C. K., Schweitzer, I., & Pratt, C. (2006). Recent advances in

optimizing electroconvulsive therapy. Australian and New Zealand Journal
of Psychiatry, 40, 632–638.

Marangell, L. B., Silver, J. M., Goff, D. C., & Yudofsky, S. C. (2003).

Psychopharmacology and electroconvulsive therapy. In R. E. Hales & S. C.
Yudofsky (Eds.), The American Psychiatric Publishing textbook of clinical
psychiatry (4th ed., pp. 1047–1149). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric
Publishing.

McElroy, S. L., & Keck, P. E. (2000). Pharmacologic agents for the

treatment of acute bipolar mania. Biological Psychiatry, 48, 539–557.

Nemeroff, C., Mayberg, H., Krahl, S., McNamara, J., Frazer, A., Henry,
T.,…Brannan, S. (2006). VNS therapy in treatment-resistant depression:
Clinical evidence and putative neurobiological mechanisms.
Neuropsychopharmacology, 31(7), 1345–1355.

Otto, M. W., Pollack, M. H., Sachs, G. S., Reiter, S. R., Meltzer-Brody, S.,
& Rosenbaum, J. F. (1993). Discontinuation of benzodiazepine treatment:
Efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapy for patients with panic disorder.
American Journal of Psychiatry, 150, 1485–1490.

Rado, J., Dowd, S. M., & Janicak, P. G. (2008). The emerging role of
transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for treatment of psychiatric
disorders. Directions in Psychiatry, 28(4), 315–332.

Sachdev, P. S., & Chen, X. (2009). Neurosurgical treatment of mood

disorders: Traditional psychosurgery and the advent of deep brain
stimulation. Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 22(1), 25–31.

Sackeim, H. A., Prudic, J., Fuller, R., Keilp, J., Philip, W., Lavori, P. W., &
Olfson, M. (2007). The cognitive effects of electroconvulsive therapy in
community settings. Neuropsychopharmacology, 32, 244–254.
doi:10.1038/sj.npp.1301180

Sackheim, H. A., Haskett, R. F., Mulsant, B. H., Thase, M. E., Mann, J. J.,
Pettinati, H.,…Prudic, J. (2001). Continuation pharmacotherapy in the
prevention of relapse following electroconvulsive therapy: A randomized
controlled trial. Journal of the American Medical Association, 285, 1299–
1307.

Simon, G. E. (2006). The antidepressant quandary—Considering suicide

risk when treating adolescent depression. The New England Journal of
Medicine, 355, 2722–2723.

Simon, G. E., Savarino, J., Operskalski, B., & Wang, P. S. (2006). Suicide
risk during antidepressant treatment. American Journal of Psychiatry, 163,
41–47. doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.163.1.41

Spencer, T. J., Biederman, J., Harding, M., & O’Donnell, D. (1996). Growth
deficits in ADHD children revisited: Evidence for disorder-associated
growth delays? Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent
Psychiatry, 35(11), 1460–1469.

Valenstein, E. (1986). Great and desperate cures: The rise and decline of
psychosurgery and other radical treatments for mental illness. New York,
NY: Basic Books.

Zahn, T. P., Rapoport, J. L., & Thompson, C. L. (1980). Autonomic and

behavioral effects of dextroamphetamine and placebo in normal and
hyperactive prepubertal boys. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 8(2),
145–160.
13.3 Reducing Disorder by Changing the
Social Situation

Learning Objectives

1. Explain the advantages of group therapy and self-help groups for treating disorder.

2. Evaluate the procedures and goals of community mental health services.

Although the individual therapies that we have discussed so far in this

chapter focus primarily on the psychological and biological aspects of the
bio-psycho-social model of disorder, the social dimension is never out of the
picture. Therapists understand that disorder is caused, and potentially
prevented, in large part by the people with whom we interact. A person with
schizophrenia does not live in a vacuum. He interacts with his family
members and with the other members of the community, and the behavior of
those people may influence his disease. And depression and anxiety are
created primarily by the affected individual’s perceptions (and
misperceptions) of the important people around them. Thus prevention and
treatment are influenced in large part by the social context in which the
person is living.

Group, Couples, and Family Therapy

Practitioners sometimes incorporate the social setting in which disorder

occurs by conducting therapy in groups. Group therapy is psychotherapy
in which clients receive psychological treatment together with others. A
professionally trained therapist guides the group, usually between 6 and 10
participants, to create an atmosphere of support and emotional safety for the
participants (Yalom & Leszcz, 2005).

Group therapy provides a safe place where people come together to share
problems or concerns, to better understand their own situations, and to learn
from and with each other. Group therapy is often cheaper than individual
therapy, as the therapist can treat more people at the same time, but
economy is only one part of its attraction. Group therapy allows people to
help each other, by sharing ideas, problems, and solutions. It provides social
support, offers the knowledge that other people are facing and successfully
coping with similar situations, and allows group members to model the
successful behaviors of other group members. Group therapy makes explicit
the idea that our interactions with others may create, intensify, and
potentially alleviate disorders.

Group therapy has met with much success in the more than 50 years it has
been in use, and it has generally been found to be as or more effective than
individual therapy (McDermut, Miller, & Brown, 2001). Group therapy is
particularly effective for people who have life-altering illness, as it helps
them cope better with their disease, enhances the quality of their lives, and
in some cases has even been shown to help them live longer (American
Group Psychotherapy Association, 2000)1.

Figure 13.9
Group therapy provides a therapeutic setting where people meet

with others to share problems or concerns, to better understand their

own situation, and to learn from and with each other.

Rose Physical Therapy Group – strider -_-10 – CC BY 2.0l.

Sometimes group therapy is conducted with people who are in close

relationships. Couples therapy is treatment in which two people who are
cohabitating, married, or dating meet together with the practitioner to
discuss their concerns and issues about their relationship. These therapies
are in some cases educational, providing the couple with information about
what is to be expected in a relationship. The therapy may focus on such
topics as sexual enjoyment, communication, or the symptoms of one of the
partners (e.g., depression).

Family therapy involves families meeting together with a therapist. In some

cases the meeting is precipitated by a particular problem with one family
member, such as a diagnosis of bipolar disorder in a child. Family therapy is
based on the assumption that the problem, even if it is primarily affecting
one person, is the result of an interaction among the people in the family.
Self-Help Groups

Group therapy is based on the idea that people can be helped by the positive
social relationships that others provide. One way for people to gain this
social support is by joining a self-help group, which is a voluntary
association of people who share a common desire to overcome
psychological disorder or improve their well-being (Humphreys &
Rappaport, 1994). Self-help groups have been used to help individuals cope
with many types of addictive behaviors. Three of the best-known self-help
groups are Alcoholics Anonymous, of which there are more than two
million members in the United States, Gamblers Anonymous, and
Overeaters Anonymous.

The idea behind self-groups is very similar to that of group therapy, but the
groups are open to a broader spectrum of people. As in group therapy, the
benefits include social support, education, and observational learning.
Religion and spirituality are often emphasized, and self-blame is
discouraged. Regular group meetings are held with the supervision of a
trained leader.

Community Mental Health: Service and

Prevention

The social aspect of disorder is also understood and treated at the

community level. Community mental health services are psychological
treatments and interventions that are distributed at the community level.
Community mental health services are provided by nurses, psychologists,
social workers, and other professionals in sites such as schools, hospitals,
police stations, drug treatment clinics, and residential homes. The goal is to
establish programs that will help people get the mental health services that
they need (Gonzales, Kelly, Mowbray, Hays, & Snowden, 1991).

Unlike traditional therapy, the primary goal of community mental health

services is prevention. Just as widespread vaccination of children has
eliminated diseases such as polio and smallpox, mental health services are
designed to prevent psychological disorder (Institute of Medicine, 1994)2.
Community prevention can be focused on one more of three levels: primary
prevention, secondary prevention, and tertiary prevention.

Primary prevention is prevention in which all members of the community

receive the treatment. Examples of primary prevention are programs
designed to encourage all pregnant women to avoid cigarettes and alcohol
because of the risk of health problems for the fetus, and programs designed
to remove dangerous lead paint from homes.

Secondary prevention is more limited and focuses on people who are most
likely to need it—those who display risk factors for a given disorder. Risk
factors are the social, environmental, and economic vulnerabilities that
make it more likely than average that a given individual will develop a
disorder (Werner & Smith, 1992). The following presents a list of potential
risk factors for psychological disorders.

Some Risk Factors for Psychological Disorders

Community mental health workers practicing secondary prevention will focus on youths with
these markers of future problems.

Academic difficulties

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

Child abuse and neglect

 Developmental disorders

Drug and alcohol abuse

Dysfunctional family

Early pregnancy

Emotional immaturity

Homelessness

Learning disorder

Low birth weight

Parental mental illness

Poor nutrition

Poverty

Finally, tertiary prevention is treatment, such as psychotherapy or

biomedical therapy, that focuses on people who are already diagnosed with
disorder.

Community prevention programs are designed to provide support during

childhood or early adolescence with the hope that the interventions will
prevent disorders from appearing or will keep existing disorders from
expanding. Interventions include such things as help with housing,
counseling, group therapy, emotional regulation, job and skills training,
literacy training, social responsibility training, exercise, stress management,
rehabilitation, family therapy, or removing a child from a stressful or
dangerous home situation.

The goal of community interventions is to make it easier for individuals to

continue to live a normal life in the face of their problems. Community
mental health services are designed to make it less likely that vulnerable
populations will end up in institutions or on the streets. In summary, their
goal is to allow at-risk individuals to continue to participate in community
life by assisting them within their own communities.

Research Focus: The Implicit Association Test as a Behavioral Marker for Suicide

Secondary prevention focuses on people who are at risk for disorder or for harmful behaviors.
Suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide, and prevention efforts can help people consider
other alternatives, particularly if it can be determined who is most at risk. Determining whether a
person is at risk of suicide is difficult, however, because people are motivated to deny or conceal
such thoughts to avoid intervention or hospitalization. One recent study found that 78% of
patients who die by suicide explicitly deny suicidal thoughts in their last verbal communications
before killing themselves (Busch, Fawcett, & Jacobs, 2003).

Nock et al. (2010) tested the possibility that implicit measures of the association between the
self-concept and death might provide a more direct behavioral marker of suicide risk that would
allow professionals to more accurately determine whether a person is likely to commit suicide in
comparison to existing self-report measures. They measured implicit associations about death
and suicide in 157 people seeking treatment at a psychiatric emergency department.

The participants all completed a version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which was
designed to assess the strength of a person’s mental associations between death and the self
(Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Using a notebook computer, participants classified
stimuli representing the constructs of “death” (i.e., die, dead, deceased, lifeless, and suicide) and
“life” (i.e., alive, survive, live, thrive, and breathing) and the attributes of “me” (i.e., I, myself,
my, mine, and self) and “not me” (i.e., they, them, their, theirs, and other). Response latencies for
all trials were recorded and analyzed, and the strength of each participant’s association between
“death” and “me” was calculated.

The researchers then followed participants over the next 6 months to test whether the measured
implicit association of death with self could be used to predict future suicide attempts. The
authors also tested whether scores on the IAT would add to prediction of risk above and beyond
other measures of risk, including questionnaire and interview measures of suicide risk. Scores on
the IAT predicted suicide attempts in the next 6 months above all the other risk factors that were
collected by the hospital staff, including past history of suicide attempts. These results suggest
that measures of implicit cognition may be useful for determining risk factors for clinical
behaviors such as suicide.

Key Takeaways

Group therapy is psychotherapy in which clients receive psychological treatment

together with others. A professionally trained therapist guides the group. Types of
group therapy include couples therapy and family therapy.

Self-help groups have been used to help individuals cope with many types of
disorder.

The goal of community health service programs is to act during childhood or early
adolescence with the hope that interventions might prevent disorders from appearing
or keep existing disorders from expanding. The prevention provided can be primary,
secondary, or tertiary.

Exercise and Critical Thinking

1. Imagine the impact of a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina on the population of
the city of New Orleans. How would you expect such an event to affect the
prevalence of psychological disorders in the community? What recommendations
would you make in terms of setting up community support centers to help the people
in the city?
1
American Group Psychotherapy Association. (2000). About group
psychotherapy. Retrieved from
http://www.groupsinc.org/group/consumersguide2000.html

2
Institute of Medicine. (1994). Reducing risks for mental disorders:
Frontiers for preventive intervention research. Washington, DC: National
Academy Press.

References

Busch, K. A., Fawcett, J., & Jacobs, D. G. (2003). Clinical correlates of

inpatient suicide. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 64(1), 14–19.

Gonzales, L. R., Kelly, J. G., Mowbray, C. T., Hays, R. B., & Snowden, L.
R. (1991). Community mental health. In M. Hersen, A. E. Kazdin, & A. S.
Bellack (Eds.), The clinical psychology handbook (2nd ed., pp. 762–779).
Elmsford, NY: Pergamon Press.

Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring

individual differences in implicit cognition: The Implicit Association Test.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464–1480.

Humphreys, K., & Rappaport, J. (1994). Researching self-help/mutual aid

groups and organizations: Many roads, one journey. Applied and
Preventative Psychology, 3(4), 217–231.

McDermut, W., Miller, I. W., & Brown, R. A. (2001). The efficacy of group
psychotherapy for depression: A meta-analysis and review of the empirical
research. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 8(1), 98–116.

Nock, M. K., Park, J. M., Finn, C. T., Deliberto, T. L., Dour, H. J., & Banaji,
M. R. (2010). Measuring the suicidal mind: Implicit cognition predicts
suicidal behavior. Psychological Science, 21(4), 511–517.

Werner, E. E., & Smith, R. S. (1992). Overcoming the odds: High risk
children from birth to adulthood. New York, NY: Cornell University Press.

Yalom, I., & Leszcz, M. (2005). The theory and practice of group
psychotherapy (5th ed.). New York, NY: Basic Books.
13.4 Evaluating Treatment and Prevention:
What Works?

Learning Objectives

1. Summarize the ways that scientists evaluate the effectiveness of psychological,

behavioral, and community service approaches to preventing and reducing disorders.

2. Summarize which types of therapy are most effective for which disorders.

We have seen that psychologists and other practitioners employ a variety of

treatments in their attempts to reduce the negative outcomes of
psychological disorders. But we have not yet considered the important
question of whether these treatments are effective, and if they are, which
approaches are most effective for which people and for which disorders.
Accurate empirical answers to these questions are important as they help
practitioners focus their efforts on the techniques that have been proven to
be most promising, and will guide societies as they make decisions about
how to spend public money to improve the quality of life of their citizens
(Hunsley & Di Giulio, 2002).

Psychologists use outcome research, that is, studies that assess the
effectiveness of medical treatments, to determine the effectiveness of
different therapies. As you can see in Figure 13.10 “Outcome Research”, in
these studies the independent variable is the type of the treatment—for
instance, whether it was psychological or biological in orientation or how
long it lasted. In most cases characteristics of the client (e.g., his or her
gender, age, disease severity, and prior psychological histories) are also
collected as control variables. The dependent measure is an assessment of
the benefit received by the client. In some cases we might simply ask the
client if she feels better, and in other cases we may directly measure
behavior: Can the client now get in the airplane and take a flight? Has the
client remained out of juvenile detention?

Figure 13.10 Outcome Research

The design of an outcome study includes a dependent measure of benefit received by the client, as

predicted by independent variables including type of treatment and characteristics of the individual.

In every case the scientists evaluating the therapy must keep in mind the
potential that other effects rather than the treatment itself might be
important, that some treatments that seem effective might not be, and that
some treatments might actually be harmful, at least in the sense that money
and time are spent on programs or drugs that do not work.

One threat to the validity of outcome research studies is natural

improvement—the possibility that people might get better over time, even
without treatment. People who begin therapy or join a self-help group do so
because they are feeling bad or engaging in unhealthy behaviors. After
being in a program over a period of time, people frequently feel that they are
getting better. But it is possible that they would have improved even if they
had not attended the program, and that the program is not actually making a
difference. To demonstrate that the treatment is effective, the people who
participate in it must be compared with another group of people who do not
get treatment.

Another possibility is that therapy works, but that it doesn’t really matter
which type of therapy it is. Nonspecific treatment effects occur when the
patient gets better over time simply by coming to therapy, even though it
doesn’t matter what actually happens at the therapy sessions. The idea is
that therapy works, in the sense that it is better than doing nothing, but that
all therapies are pretty much equal in what they are able to accomplish.
Finally, placebo effects are improvements that occur as a result of the
expectation that one will get better rather than from the actual effects of a
treatment.

Effectiveness of Psychological Therapy

Thousands of studies have been conducted to test the effectiveness of

psychotherapy, and by and large they find evidence that it works. Some
outcome studies compare a group that gets treatment with another (control)
group that gets no treatment. For instance, Ruwaard, Broeksteeg, Schrieken,
Emmelkamp, and Lange (2010) found that patients who interacted with a
therapist over a website showed more reduction in symptoms of panic
disorder than did a similar group of patients who were on a waiting list but
did not get therapy. Although studies such as this one control for the
possibility of natural improvement (the treatment group improved more than
the control group, which would not have happened if both groups had only
been improving naturally over time), they do not control for either
nonspecific treatment effects or for placebo effects. The people in the
treatment group might have improved simply by being in the therapy
(nonspecific effects), or they may have improved because they expected the
treatment to help them (placebo effects).

An alternative is to compare a group that gets “real” therapy with a group

that gets only a placebo. For instance, Keller et al. (2001) had adolescents
who were experiencing anxiety disorders take pills that they thought would
reduce anxiety for 8 weeks. However, one-half of the patients were
randomly assigned to actually receive the antianxiety drug Paxil, while the
other half received a placebo drug that did not have any medical properties.
The researchers ruled out the possibility that only placebo effects were
occurring because they found that both groups improved over the 8 weeks,
but the group that received Paxil improved significantly more than the
placebo group did.

Studies that use a control group that gets no treatment or a group that gets
only a placebo are informative, but they also raise ethical questions. If the
researchers believe that their treatment is going to work, why would they
deprive some of their participants, who are in need of help, of the possibility
for improvement by putting them in a control group?

Another type of outcome study compares different approaches with each

other. For instance, Herbert et al. (2005) tested whether social skills training
could boost the results received for the treatment of social anxiety disorder
with cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) alone. As you can see in Figure
13.11, they found that people in both groups improved, but CBT coupled
with social skills training showed significantly greater gains than CBT
alone.

Figure 13.11
Herbert et al. (2005) compared the effectiveness of CBT alone with CBT along with social skills training.

Both groups improved, but the group that received both therapies had significantly greater gains than the

group that received CBT alone.

Adapted from Herbert, J. D., Gaudiano, B. A., Rheingold, A. A., Myers, V. H., Dalrymple, K., & Nolan,

E. M. (2005). Social skills training augments the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral group therapy for

social anxiety disorder. Behavior Therapy, 36(2), 125–138.

Other studies (Crits-Christoph, 1992; Crits-Christoph et al., 2004) have

compared brief sessions of psychoanalysis with longer-term psychoanalysis
in the treatment of anxiety disorder, humanistic therapy with
psychodynamic therapy in treating depression, and cognitive therapy with
drug therapy in treating anxiety (Dalgleish, 2004; Hollon, Thase, &
Markowitz, 2002). These studies are advantageous because they compare
the specific effects of one type of treatment with another, while allowing all
patients to get treatment.

Research Focus: Meta-Analyzing Clinical Outcomes

Because there are thousands of studies testing the effectiveness of psychotherapy, and the
independent and dependent variables in the studies vary widely, the results are often combined
using a meta-analysis. A meta-analysis is a statistical technique that uses the results of existing
studies to integrate and draw conclusions about those studies. In one important meta-analysis
analyzing the effect of psychotherapy, Smith, Glass, and Miller (1980) summarized studies that
compared different types of therapy or that compared the effectiveness of therapy against a
control group. To find the studies, the researchers systematically searched computer databases
and the reference sections of previous research reports to locate every study that met the
inclusion criteria. Over 475 studies were located, and these studies used over 10,000 research
participants.

The results of each of these studies were systematically coded, and a measure of the
effectiveness of treatment known as the effect size was created for each study. Smith and her
colleagues found that the average effect size for the influence of therapy was 0.85, indicating
that psychotherapy had a relatively large positive effect on recovery. What this means is that,
overall, receiving psychotherapy for behavioral problems is substantially better for the individual
than not receiving therapy (Figure 13.12 “Normal Curves of Those Who Do and Do Not Get
Treatment”). Although they did not measure it, psychotherapy presumably has large societal
benefits as well—the cost of the therapy is likely more than made up for by the increased
productivity of those who receive it.

Figure 13.12 Normal Curves of Those Who Do and Do Not Get Treatment

Meta-analyses of the outcomes of psychotherapy have found that, on average, the distribution for people

who get treatment is higher than for those who do not get treatment.

Other meta-analyses have also found substantial support for the effectiveness of specific
therapies, including cognitive therapy, CBT (Butler, Chapman, Forman, & Beck, 2006; Deacon
& Abramowitz, 2004), couples and family therapy (Shadish & Baldwin, 2002), and
 psychoanalysis (Shedler, 2010). On the basis of these and other meta-analyses, a list of
empirically supported therapies—that is, therapies that are known to be effective—has been
developed (Chambless & Hollon, 1998; Hollon, Stewart, & Strunk (2006). These therapies
include cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy for depression; cognitive therapy, exposure
therapy, and stress inoculation training for anxiety; CBT for bulimia; and behavior modification
for bed-wetting.

Smith, Glass, and Miller (1980) did not find much evidence that any one
type of therapy was more effective than any other type, and more recent
meta-analyses have not tended to find many differences either (Cuijpers,
van Straten, Andersson, & van Oppen, 2008). What this means is that a
good part of the effect of therapy is nonspecific, in the sense that simply
coming to any type of therapy is helpful in comparison to not coming. This
is true partly because there are fewer distinctions among the ways that
different therapies are practiced than the theoretical differences among them
would suggest. What a good therapist practicing psychodynamic approaches
does in therapy is often not much different from what a humanist or a
cognitive-behavioral therapist does, and so no one approach is really likely
to be better than the other.

What all good therapies have in common is that they give people hope; help
them think more carefully about themselves and about their relationships
with others; and provide a positive, empathic, and trusting relationship with
the therapist—the therapeutic alliance (Ahn & Wampold, 2001). This is why
many self-help groups are also likely to be effective and perhaps why
having a psychiatric service dog may also make us feel better.
Effectiveness of Biomedical Therapies

Although there are fewer of them because fewer studies have been
conducted, meta-analyses also support the effectiveness of drug therapies
for psychological disorder. For instance, the use of psychostimulants to
reduce the symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is
well known to be successful, and many studies find that the positive and
negative symptoms of schizophrenia are substantially reduced by the use of
antipsychotic medications (Lieberman et al., 2005).

People who take antidepressants for mood disorders or antianxiety

medications for anxiety disorders almost always report feeling better,
although drugs are less helpful for phobic disorder and obsessive-
compulsive disorder. Some of these improvements are almost certainly the
result of placebo effects (Cardeña & Kirsch, 2000), but the medications do
work, at least in the short term. An analysis of U.S. Food and Drug
Administration databases found effect sizes of 0.26 for Prozac, 0.26 for
Zoloft, 0.24 for Celexa, 0.31 for Lexapro, and 0.30 for Cymbalta. The
overall average effect size for antidepressant medications approved by the
FDA between 1987 and 2004 was 0.31 (Deshauer et al., 2008; Turner,
Matthews, Linardatos, Tell, & Rosenthal, 2008).

One problem with drug therapies is that although they provide temporary
relief, they don’t treat the underlying cause of the disorder. Once the patient
stops taking the drug, the symptoms often return in full force. In addition
many drugs have negative side effects, and some also have the potential for
addiction and abuse. Different people have different reactions, and all drugs
carry warning labels. As a result, although these drugs are frequently
prescribed, doctors attempt to prescribe the lowest doses possible for the
shortest possible periods of time.
Older patients face special difficulties when they take medications for
mental illness. Older people are more sensitive to drugs, and drug
interactions are more likely because older patients tend to take a variety of
different drugs every day. They are more likely to forget to take their pills,
to take too many or too few, or to mix them up due to poor eyesight or
faulty memory.

Like all types of drugs, medications used in the treatment of mental illnesses
can carry risks to an unborn infant. Tranquilizers should not be taken by
women who are pregnant or expecting to become pregnant, because they
may cause birth defects or other infant problems, especially if taken during
the first trimester. Some selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) may
also increase risks to the fetus (Louik, Lin, Werler, Hernandez, & Mitchell,
2007; U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2004)1, as do antipsychotics
(Diav-Citrin et al., 2005).

Decisions on medication should be carefully weighed and based on each

person’s needs and circumstances. Medications should be selected based on
available scientific research, and they should be prescribed at the lowest
possible dose. All people must be monitored closely while they are on
medications.

Effectiveness of Social-Community
Approaches

Measuring the effectiveness of community action approaches to mental

health is difficult because they occur in community settings and impact a
wide variety of people, and it is difficult to find and assess valid outcome
measures. Nevertheless, research has found that a variety of community
interventions can be effective in preventing a variety of psychological
disorders (Price, Cowen, Lorion, & Ramos-McKay,1988).

Data suggest that federally funded prevention programs such as the Special
Supplemental Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), which
provides federal grants to states for supplemental foods, health-care referral,
and nutrition education for low-income women and their children, are
successful. WIC mothers have higher birth weight babies and lower infant
mortality than other low-income mothers (Ripple & Zigler, 2003). And the
average blood-lead levels among children have fallen approximately 80%
since the late 1970s as a result of federal legislation designed to remove lead
paint from housing (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2000)2.

Although some of the many community-based programs designed to reduce

alcohol, tobacco, and drug abuse; violence and delinquency; and mental
illness have been successful, the changes brought about by even the best of
these programs are, on average, modest (Wandersman & Florin, 2003;
Wilson, Gottfredson, & Najaka, 2001). This does not necessarily mean that
the programs are not useful. What is important is that community members
continue to work with researchers to help determine which aspects of which
programs are most effective, and to concentrate efforts on the most
productive approaches (Weissberg, Kumpfer, & Seligman, 2003). The most
beneficial preventive interventions for young people involve coordinated,
systemic efforts to enhance their social and emotional competence and
health. Many psychologists continue to work to promote policies that
support community prevention as a model of preventing disorder.
 Key Takeaways

Outcome research is designed to differentiate the effects of a treatment from natural

improvement, nonspecific treatment effects, and placebo effects.

Meta-analysis is used to integrate and draw conclusions about studies.

Research shows that getting psychological therapy is better at reducing disorder than
not getting it, but many of the results are due to nonspecific effects. All good
therapies give people hope and help them think more carefully about themselves and
about their relationships with others.

Biomedical treatments are effective, at least in the short term, but overall they are
less effective than psychotherapy.

One problem with drug therapies is that although they provide temporary relief, they
do not treat the underlying cause of the disorder.

Federally funded community mental health service programs are effective, but their
preventive effects may in many cases be minor.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Revisit the chapter opener that focuses on the use of “psychiatric service dogs.”
What factors might lead you to believe that such “therapy” would or would not be
effective? How would you propose to empirically test the effectiveness of the
therapy?

2. Given your knowledge about the effectiveness of therapies, what approaches would
you take if you were making recommendations for a person who is seeking treatment
for severe depression?
1
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (2004). FDA Medwatch drug alert on
Effexor and SSRIs. Retrieved from
http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/safety/2004/safety04.htm#effexor

2
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2000). Blood lead levels in
young children: United States and selected states, 1996–1999. Morbidity
and Mortality Weekly Report, 49, 1133–1137.

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ingredients? A meta-analysis of component studies in counseling and
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Butler A. C., Chapman, J. E., Forman, E. M., Beck, A. T. (2006). The

empirical status of cognitive-behavioral therapy: A review of meta-analyses.
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Cardeña, E., & Kirsch, I. (2000). True or false: The placebo effect as seen in
drug studies is definitive proof that the mind can bring about clinically
relevant changes in the body: What is so special about the placebo effect?
Advances in Mind-Body Medicine, 16(1), 16–18.

Chambless, D. L., & Hollon, S. D. (1998). Defining empirically supported

therapies. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 66(1), 7–18.

Crits-Christoph, P. (1992). The efficacy of brief dynamic psychotherapy: A

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Crits-Christoph, P., Gibbons, M. B., Losardo, D., Narducci, J., Schamberger,

M., & Gallop, R. (2004). Who benefits from brief psychodynamic therapy
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Cuijpers, P., van Straten, A., Andersson, G., & van Oppen, P. (2008).
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Dalgleish, T. (2004). Cognitive approaches to posttraumatic stress disorder:

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Deacon, B. J., & Abramowitz, J. S. (2004). Cognitive and behavioral

treatments for anxiety disorders: A review of meta-analytic findings.
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Deshauer, D., Moher, D., Fergusson, D., Moher, E., Sampson, M., &
Grimshaw, J. (2008). Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors for unipolar
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Hollon, S., Stewart, M., & Strunk, D. (2006). Enduring effects for cognitive
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13.5 Chapter Summary

Psychological disorders create a tremendous individual, social, and

economic drain on society. Psychologists work to reduce this burden by
preventing and treating disorder. Psychologists base this treatment and
prevention of disorder on the bio-psycho-social model, which proposes that
disorder has biological, psychological, and social causes, and that each of
these aspects can be the focus of reducing disorder.

Treatment for psychological disorder begins with a formal psychological

assessment. In addition to the psychological assessment, the patient is
usually seen by a physician to gain information about potential Axis III
(physical) problems.

One approach to treatment is psychotherapy. The fundamental aspect of

psychotherapy is that the patient directly confronts the disorder and works
with the therapist to help reduce it.

Psychodynamic therapy (also known as psychoanalysis) is a psychological

treatment based on Freudian and neo-Freudian personality theories. The
analyst engages with the patient in one-on-one sessions during which the
patient verbalizes his or her thoughts through free associations and by
reporting on his or her dreams. The goal of the therapy is to help the patient
develop insight—that is, an understanding of the unconscious causes of the
disorder.

Humanistic therapy is a psychological treatment based on the personality

theories of Carl Rogers and other humanistic psychologists. Humanistic
therapies attempt to promote growth and responsibility by helping clients
consider their own situations and the world around them and how they can
work to achieve their life goals.

The humanistic therapy promotes the ideas of genuineness, empathy, and

unconditional positive regard in a nurturing relationship in which the
therapist actively listens to and reflects the feelings of the client; this
relationship is probably the most fundamental part of contemporary
psychotherapy

Cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) is a structured approach to treatment that

attempts to reduce psychological disorders through systematic procedures
based on cognitive and behavioral principles. CBT is a very broad approach
used for the treatment of a variety of problems.

Behavioral aspects of CBT may include operant conditioning using reward

or punishment. When the disorder is anxiety or phobia, then the goal of the
CBT is to reduce the negative affective responses to the feared stimulus
through exposure therapy, flooding, or systematic desensitization. Aversion
therapy is a type of behavior therapy in which positive punishment is used
to reduce the frequency of an undesirable behavior.

Cognitive aspects of CBT include treatment that helps clients identify

incorrect or distorted beliefs that are contributing to disorder.

The most commonly used approaches to therapy are eclectic, such that the
therapist uses whichever techniques seem most useful and relevant for a
given patient.

Biomedical therapies are treatments designed to reduce psychological

disorder by influencing the action of the central nervous system. These
therapies primarily involve the use of medications but also include direct
methods of brain intervention, including electroconvulsive therapy (ECT),
transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and psychosurgery.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is treated using low doses

of psychostimulants, including Ritalin, Adderall, and Dexedrine.

Mood disorders are most commonly treated with the antidepressant

medications known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs),
including Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft. The SSRIs selectively block the
reuptake of serotonin at the synapse. Bipolar disorder is treated with mood
stabilizing medications.

Antianxiety medications, including the tranquilizers Ativan, Valium, and

Xanax, are used to treat anxiety disorders.

Schizophrenia is treated with antipsychotic drugs, including Thorazine,

Haldol, Clozaril, Risperdal, and Zyprexa. Some of these drugs treat the
positive symptoms of schizophrenia, and some treat both the positive,
negative, and cognitive symptoms.

Practitioners frequently incorporate the social setting in which disorder

occurs by conducting therapy in groups, with couples, or with families. One
way for people to gain this social support is by joining a self-help group.

Community mental health services refer to psychological treatments and

interventions that are distributed at the community level. These centers
provide primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention.

Psychologists use outcome research to determine the effectiveness of

different therapies. These studies help determine if improvement is due to
natural improvement, nonspecific treatment effects, or placebo effects.
Research finds that psychotherapy and biomedical therapies are both
effective in treating disorder, but there is not much evidence that any one
type of therapy is more effective than any other type. What all good
therapies have in common is that they give people hope; help them think
more carefully about themselves and about their relationships with others;
and provide a positive, empathic, and trusting relationship with the therapist
—the therapeutic alliance.

One problem with drug therapies is that although they provide temporary
relief, they don’t treat the underlying cause of the disorder. Once the patient
stops taking the drug, the symptoms often return in full force.

Data suggest that although some community prevention programs are

successful, the changes brought about by even the best of these programs
are, on average, modest.
Chapter 14: Psychology in Our
Social Lives

Binge Drinking and the Death of a Homecoming Queen

Sam Spady, a 19-year-old student at Colorado State University, had been a homecoming queen,
a class president, a captain of the cheerleading team, and an honor student in high school. But
despite her outstanding credentials and her hopes and plans for the future, Sam Spady died on
September 5, 2004, after a night of binge drinking with her friends.

Sam had attended a number of different parties on the Saturday night that she died, celebrating
the CSU football game against the University of Colorado–Boulder. When she passed out, after
consuming 30 to 40 beers and shots over the evening, her friends left her alone in an empty
room in a fraternity house to sleep it off. The next morning a member of the fraternity found her
dead (Sidman, 2006).

Sam is one of an estimated 1,700 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 who die from
alcohol-related injuries each year. These deaths come from motor vehicle crashes, assaults, and
overdosing as a result of binge drinking (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism,

2010)1.

“Nobody is immune,” said Sam’s father. “She was a smart kid, and she was a good kid. And if it
could happen to her, it could happen to anybody.”

Despite efforts at alcohol education, Pastor Reza Zadeh, a former CSU student, says little has
changed in the drinking culture since Sam’s death: “People still feel invincible. The bars still
have 25-cent shot night and two-for-ones and no cover for girls”(Sidman, 2006).

Sam’s parents have created a foundation in her memory, dedicated to informing people,
particularly college students, about the dangers of binge drinking, and to helping them resist the
 peer pressure that brings it on. You can learn more at http://samspadyfoundation.org about the
foundation.

We have now reached the last chapter of our journey through the field of
psychology. The subdiscipline of psychology discussed in this chapter
reflects the highest level of explanation that we will consider. This topic,
known as social psychology, is defined as the scientific study of how we
feel about, think about, and behave toward the other people around us, and
how those people influence our thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

The subject matter of social psychology is our everyday interactions with

people, including the social groups to which we belong. Questions these
psychologists ask include why we are often helpful to other people but at
other times are unfriendly or aggressive; why we sometimes conform to the
behaviors of others but at other times are able to assert our independence;
and what factors help groups work together in effective and productive,
rather than in ineffective and unproductive, ways. A fundamental principle
of social psychology is that, although we may not always be aware of it, our
cognitions, emotions, and behaviors are substantially influenced by the
social situation, or the people with whom we are interacting.

In this chapter we will introduce the principles of social cognition—the

part of human thinking that helps us understand and predict the behavior of
ourselves and others—and consider the ways that our judgments about
other people guide our behaviors toward them. We’ll explore how we form
impressions of other people, and what makes us like or dislike them. We’ll
also see how our attitudes—our enduring evaluations of people or things
—influence, and are influenced by, our behavior.

Then we will consider the social psychology of interpersonal relationships,

including the behaviors of altruism, aggression, and conformity. We will
see that humans have a natural tendency to help each other, but that we may
also become aggressive if we feel that we are being threatened. And we will
see how social norms, the accepted beliefs about what we do or what we
should do in particular social situations (such as the norm of binge
drinking common on many college campuses), influence our behavior.
Finally, we will consider the social psychology of social groups, with a
particular focus on the conditions that limit and potentially increase
productive group performance and decision-making.

The principles of social psychology can help us understand tragic events

such as the death of Sam Spady. Many people might blame the tragedy on
Sam herself, asking, for instance, “Why did she drink so much?” or “Why
didn’t she say no?” As we will see in this chapter, research conducted by
social psychologists shows that the poor decisions Sam made on the night
she died may have been due less to her own personal weaknesses or deficits
than to her desires to fit in with and be accepted by the others around her—
desires that in her case led to a disastrous outcome.

1
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. (2010). Statistical
snapshot of college drinking. Retrieved from
http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/AboutNIAAA/NIAAASponsoredPrograms
/StatisticalSnapshotCollegeDrinking.htm

References

Sidman, J. (2006, June 26). A college student’s death may help save lives.
USA Today. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-06-
26-spady -binge-drinking_x.htm
14.1 Social Cognition: Making Sense of
Ourselves and Others

Learning Objectives

1. Review the principles of social cognition, including the fundamentals of how we

form judgments about other people.

2. Define the concept of attitude and review the ways that attitudes are developed and
changed, and how attitudes relate to behavior.

One important aspect of social cognition involves forming impressions of

other people. Making these judgments quickly and accurately helps us guide
our behavior to interact appropriately with the people we know. If we can
figure out why our roommate is angry at us, we can react to resolve the
problem; if we can determine how to motivate the people in our group to
work harder on a project, then the project might be better.

Perceiving Others

Our initial judgments of others are based in large part on what we see. The
physical features of other people, particularly their sex, race, age, and
physical attractiveness, are very salient, and we often focus our attention on
these dimensions (Schneider, 2003; Zebrowitz & Montepare, 2006).

Although it may seem inappropriate or shallow to admit it, we are strongly

influenced by the physical attractiveness of others, and many cases physical
attractiveness is the most important determinant of our initial liking for
other people (Walster, Aronson, Abrahams, & Rottmann, 1966). Infants who
are only a year old prefer to look at faces that adults consider to be attractive
than at unattractive faces (Langlois, Ritter, Roggman, & Vaughn, 1991).
Evolutionary psychologists have argued that our belief that “what is
beautiful is also good” may be because we use attractiveness as a cue for
health; people whom we find more attractive may also, evolutionarily, have
been healthier (Zebrowitz, Fellous, Mignault, & Andreoletti, 2003).

Figure 14.1

Can you read a book by its cover? Which of these people do you think is more fun and friendly? Who is

smarter or more competent? Do you think your judgments are accurate?

J.K. Califf – -19 – CC BY-SA 2.0; Sascha Kohlmann – Man, Tram – CC BY-SA 2.0; DFID – Sadia, a

teacher in Abbottabad, Pakistan – CC BY-SA 2.0; Ben Raynal – Stranger #61 – CC BY-NC 2.0.

One indicator of health is youth. Leslie Zebrowitz and her colleagues

(Zebrowitz, 1996; Zebrowitz, Luevano, Bronstad, & Aharon, 2009) have
extensively studied the tendency for both men and women to prefer people
whose faces have characteristics similar to those of babies. These features
include large, round, and widely spaced eyes, a small nose and chin,
prominent cheekbones, and a large forehead. People who have baby faces
(both men and women) are seen as more attractive than people who are not
baby-faced.

Figure 14.2
People with baby faces are perceived as attractive.

johanferreira15 – zac efron in 2008 – CC BY 2.0; friskytuna – Rachel Bilson – CC BY 2.0.

Another indicator of health is symmetry. People are more attracted to faces

that are more symmetrical than they are to those that are less symmetrical,
and this may be due in part to the perception that symmetrical faces are
perceived as healthier (Rhodes et al., 2001).

Although you might think that we would prefer faces that are unusual or
unique, in fact the opposite is true. Langlois and Roggman (1990) showed
college students the faces of men and women. The faces were composites
made up of the average of 2, 4, 8, 16, or 32 faces. The researchers found that
the more faces that were averaged into the stimulus, the more attractive it
was judged. Again, our liking for average faces may be because they appear
healthier.

Although preferences for youthful, symmetrical, and average faces have

been observed cross-culturally, and thus appear to be common human
preferences, different cultures may also have unique beliefs about what is
attractive. In modern Western cultures, “thin is in,” and people prefer those
who have little excess fat (Crandall, Merman, & Hebl, 2009). The need to
be thin to be attractive is particularly strong for women in contemporary
society, and the desire to maintain a low body weight can lead to low self-
esteem, eating disorders, and other unhealthy behaviors. However, the norm
of thinness has not always been in place; the preference for women with
slender, masculine, and athletic looks has become stronger over the past 50
years. In contrast to the relatively universal preferences for youth,
symmetry, and averageness, other cultures do not show such a strong
propensity for thinness (Sugiyama, 2005).

Forming Judgments on the Basis of

Appearance: Stereotyping, Prejudice, and
Discrimination

We frequently use people’s appearances to form our judgments about them

and to determine our responses to them. The tendency to attribute
personality characteristics to people on the basis of their external
appearance or their social group memberships is known as stereotyping.
Our stereotypes about physically attractive people lead us to see them as
more dominant, sexually warm, mentally healthy, intelligent, and socially
skilled than we perceive physically unattractive people (Langlois et al.,
2000). And our stereotypes lead us to treat people differently—the
physically attractive are given better grades on essay exams, are more
successful on job interviews, and receive lighter sentences in court
judgments than their less attractive counterparts (Hosoda, Stone-Romero, &
Coats, 2003; Zebrowitz & McDonald, 1991).

In addition to stereotypes about physical attractiveness, we also regularly

stereotype people on the basis of their sex, race, age, religion, and many
other characteristics, and these stereotypes are frequently negative
(Schneider, 2004). Stereotyping is unfair to the people we judge because
stereotypes are based on our preconceptions and negative emotions about
the members of the group. Stereotyping is closely related to prejudice, the
tendency to dislike people because of their appearance or group
memberships, and discrimination, negative behaviors toward others based
on prejudice. Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination work together. We
may not vote for a gay person for public office because of our negative
stereotypes about gays, and we may avoid people from other religions or
those with mental illness because of our prejudices.

Some stereotypes may be accurate in part. Research has found, for instance,
that attractive people are actually more sociable, more popular, and less
lonely than less attractive individuals (Langlois et al., 2000). And, consistent
with the stereotype that women are “emotional,” women are, on average,
more empathic and attuned to the emotions of others than are men (Hall &
Schmid Mast, 2008). Group differences in personality traits may occur in
part because people act toward others on the basis of their stereotypes,
creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when
our expectations about the personality characteristics of others lead us to
behave toward those others in ways that make those beliefs come true. If I
have a stereotype that attractive people are friendly, then I may act in a
friendly way toward people who are attractive. This friendly behavior may
be reciprocated by the attractive person, and if many other people also
engage in the same positive behaviors with the person, in the long run he or
she may actually become friendlier.

But even if attractive people are on average friendlier than unattractive

people, not all attractive people are friendlier than all unattractive people.
And even if women are, on average, more emotional than men, not all men
are less emotional than all women. Social psychologists believe that it is
better to treat people as individuals rather than rely on our stereotypes and
prejudices, because stereotyping and prejudice are always unfair and often
inaccurate (Fiske, 1989; Stangor, 1995). Furthermore, many of our
stereotypes and prejudices occur out of our awareness, such that we do not
even know that we are using them.

Implicit Association Test

You might want to test your own stereotypes and prejudices by completing the Implicit
Association Test, a measure of unconscious stereotyping.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo

We use our stereotypes and prejudices in part because they are easy; if we
can quickly size up people on the basis of their physical appearance, that
can save us a lot of time and effort. We may be evolutionarily disposed to
stereotyping. Because our primitive ancestors needed to accurately separate
members of their own kin group from those of others, categorizing people
into “us” (the ingroup) and “them” (the outgroup) was useful and even
necessary (Neuberg, Kenrick, & Schaller, 2010). And the positive emotions
that we experience as a result of our group memberships—known as social
identity—can be an important and positive part of our everyday experiences
(Hogg, 2003). We may gain social identity as members of our university,
our sports teams, our religious and racial groups, and many other groups.
Figure 14.3

Social identity is the positive emotions that we experience as a member of an important social group.

Caitlin Regan – Who is number 14? – CC BY 2.0

But the fact that we may use our stereotypes does not mean that we should
use them. Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination, whether they are
consciously or unconsciously applied, make it difficult for some people to
effectively contribute to society and may create both mental and physical
health problems for them (Swim & Stangor, 1998). In some cases getting
beyond our prejudices is required by law, as detailed in the U.S. Civil Rights
Act of 1964, the Equal Opportunity Employment Act of 1972, and the Fair
Housing Act of 1978.

There are individual differences in prejudice, such that some people are
more likely to try to control and confront their stereotypes and prejudices
whereas others apply them more freely (Czopp, Monteith, & Mark, 2006;
Plant & Devine, 1998). For instance, some people believe in group
hierarchies—that some groups are naturally better than others—whereas
other people are more egalitarian and hold fewer prejudices (Sidanius &
Pratto, 1999; Stangor & Leary, 2006).

Social psychologists believe that we should work to get past our prejudices.
The tendency to hold stereotypes and prejudices and to act on them can be
reduced, for instance, through positive interactions and friendships with
members of other groups, through practice in avoiding using them, and
through education (Hewstone, 1996).

Research Focus: Forming Judgments of People in Seconds

Research has demonstrated that people can draw very accurate conclusions about others on the
basis of very limited data. Ambady and Rosenthal (1993) made videotapes of six female and
seven male graduate students while they were teaching an undergraduate course. The courses
covered diverse areas of the college curriculum, including humanities, social sciences, and
natural sciences. For each teacher, three 10-second video clips were taken: 10 seconds from the
first 10 minutes of the class, 10 seconds from the middle of the class, and 10 seconds from the
last 10 minutes of the class.
The researchers then asked nine female undergraduates to rate the clips of the teachers on 15
dimensions including optimistic, confident, active, enthusiastic, dominant, likable, warm,
competent, and supportive. Ambady and her colleagues then compared the ratings of the
participants who had seen the teacher for only 30 seconds with the ratings of the same instructors
that had been made by students who had spent a whole semester with the teacher, and who had
rated her at the end of the semester on scales such as “Rate the quality of the section overall” and
“Rate section leader’s performance overall.” As you can see in Table 14.1 “Accurate Perceptions
in 30 Seconds”, the ratings of the participants and the ratings of the students were highly
positively correlated.

Table 14.1 Accurate Perceptions in 30 Seconds

Variable Pearson Correlation Coefficient (r)

Accepting 0.50

Active 0.77

Attentive 0.48

Competent 0.56

Confident 0.82

Dominant 0.79

Empathic 0.45

Enthusiastic 0.76

Honest 0.32

Likable 0.73

(Not) anxious 0.26

Optimistic 0.84

Professional 0.53

Supportive 0.55

Warm 0.67

This table shows the Pearson correlation coefficients between the impressions that a
group of students made after they had seen a video of instructors teaching for only 30
seconds and the teaching ratings of the same instructors made by students who had
spent a whole semester in the class. You can see that the correlations are all positive, and
that many of them are quite large. The conclusion is that people are sometimes able to
draw accurate impressions about other people very quickly.
 Variable Pearson Correlation Coefficient (r)

Overall, across all traits 0.76

This table shows the Pearson correlation coefficients between the impressions that a
group of students made after they had seen a video of instructors teaching for only 30
seconds and the teaching ratings of the same instructors made by students who had
spent a whole semester in the class. You can see that the correlations are all positive, and
that many of them are quite large. The conclusion is that people are sometimes able to
draw accurate impressions about other people very quickly.

Source: Ambady, N., & Rosenthal, R. (1993). Half a minute: Predicting teacher evaluations from
thin slices of nonverbal behavior and physical attractiveness. Journal of Personality & Social
Psychology, 64(3), 431–441.
If the finding that judgments made about people in 30 seconds correlate highly with judgments
made about the same people after a whole semester surprises you, then perhaps you may be even
more surprised to hear that we do not even need that much time. Indeed, Willis and Todorov
(2006) found that even a tenth of a second was enough to make judgments that correlated highly
with those same judgments made by other people who were given several minutes to make the
judgments. Other research has found that we can make accurate judgments, for instance, about
our perceptions of salespersons (Ambady, Krabbenhoft, & Hogan, 2006) and about the sexual
orientation of other people (Ambady, Hallahan, & Conner, 1999), in just a few seconds. Todorov,
Mandisodza, Goren, and Hall (2005) found that people voted for political candidates in large
part on the basis of whether or not their faces, seen only for one second, looked like faces of
competent people. Taken together, this research shows that we are well able to form initial
impressions of others quickly and often quite accurately.

Close Relationships

One of the most important tasks faced by humans is to develop successful

relationships with others. These relationships include acquaintanceships and
friendships but also the more important close relationships, which are the
long-term intimate and romantic relationships that we develop with another
person—for instance, in a marriage (Hendrick & Hendrick, 2000). Because
most of us will want to enter into a close relationship at some point, and
because close relationships are evolutionarily important as they form the
basis for effective child rearing, it is useful to know what psychologists have
learned about the principles of liking and loving within them.

A major interest of social psychologists is the study of interpersonal

attraction, or what makes people like, and even love, each other. One
important factor is a perceived similarity in values and beliefs between the
partners (Davis & Rusbult, 2001). Similarity is important for relationships
both because it is more convenient (it’s easier if both partners like to ski or
go to the movies than if only one does), but also because similarity supports
our values—I can feel better about myself and my choice of activities if I
see that you also enjoy doing the same things that I do.

Figure 14.4
Close relationships are characterized by responsiveness, disclosure, intimacy, equity, and passion.

Vladimir Pustovit – Couple – CC BY 2.0; Pedro Ribeiro Simões – Couple in love – CC BY 2.0; Ben – Couple – CC BY 2.0.

Liking is also enhanced by self-disclosure, the tendency to communicate

frequently, without fear of reprisal, and in an accepting and empathetic
manner. Friends are friends because we can talk to them openly about our
needs and goals, and because they listen to and respond to our needs (Reis
& Aron, 2008). But self-disclosure must be balanced. If I open up to you
about the concerns that are important to me, I expect you to do the same in
return. If the self-disclosure is not reciprocal, the relationship may not last.

Another important determinant of liking is proximity, or the extent to which

people are physically near us. Research has found that we are more likely to
develop friendships with people who are nearby, for instance, those who live
in the same dorm that we do, and even with people who just happen to sit
nearer to us in our classes (Back, Schmukle, & Egloff, 2008).

Proximity has its effect on liking through the principle of mere exposure,
which is the tendency to prefer stimuli (including but not limited to people)
that we have seen more frequently. Moreland and Beach (1992) studied
mere exposure by having female confederates attend a large lecture class of
over 100 students 0, 5, 10, or 15 times during a semester. At the end of the
term, the other students in the class were shown pictures of the confederates
and asked to indicate both if they recognized them and also how much they
liked them. The number of times the confederates had attended class didn’t
influence the other students’ ability to recognize them, but it did influence
their liking for them. As predicted by the mere exposure hypothesis,
students who had attended class more often were liked more (Figure 14.5
“Mere Exposure in the Classroom”).

Figure 14.5 Mere Exposure in the Classroom

Richard Moreland and Scott Beach (1992) had female confederates visit classrooms 0, 5, 10, or 15 times

over the course of a semester. Then the students rated their liking of the confederates. As predicted by the

principles of mere exposure, confederates who had attended class more often were also liked more.

Adapted from Moreland, R. L., & Beach, S. R. (1992). Exposure effects in the classroom: The

development of affinity among students. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 28(3), 255–276.

The effect of mere exposure is powerful and occurs in a wide variety of

situations. Infants tend to smile at a photograph of someone they have seen
before more than they smile at a photograph of someone they are seeing for
the first time (Brooks-Gunn & Lewis, 1981), and people prefer side-to-side
reversed images of their own faces over their normal (nonreversed) face,
whereas their friends prefer their normal face over the reversed one (Mita,
Dermer, & Knight, 1977). This is expected on the basis of mere exposure,
since people see their own faces primarily in mirrors and thus are exposed to
the reversed face more often.

Mere exposure may well have an evolutionary basis. We have an initial fear
of the unknown, but as things become more familiar they seem more similar
and safe, and thus produce more positive affect and seem less threatening
and dangerous (Freitas, Azizian, Travers, & Berry, 2005). In fact, research
has found that stimuli tend to produce more positive affect as they become
more familiar (Harmon-Jones & Allen, 2001). When the stimuli are people,
there may well be an added effect. Familiar people become more likely to
be seen as part of the ingroup rather than the outgroup, and this may lead us
to like them more. Leslie Zebrowitz and her colleagues found that we like
people of our own race in part because they are perceived as similar to us
(Zebrowitz, Bornstad, & Lee, 2007).

In the most successful relationships the two people begin to see themselves
as a single unit. Arthur Aron and his colleagues (Aron, Aron, & Smollan,
1992) assessed the role of closeness in relationships using the Inclusion of
Other in the Self Scale as shown in Figure 14.6 “The Inclusion of Other in
the Self Scale”. You might try completing the measure yourself for some
different people that you know—for instance, your family members, friends,
spouse, or girlfriend or boyfriend. The measure is simple to use and to
interpret; if people see the circles representing the self and the other as more
overlapping, this means that the relationship is close. But if they choose the
circles that are less overlapping, then the relationship is less so.

Figure 14.6 The Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale

This scale is used to determine how close two partners feel to each other. The respondent simply circles

which of the seven figures he or she feels best characterizes the relationship.

Adapted from Aron, A., Aron, E. N., & Smollan, D. (1992). Inclusion of other in the self scale and the

structure of interpersonal closeness. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 63(4), 596–612.

Although the closeness measure is very simple, it has been found to be

predictive of people’s satisfaction with their close relationships, and of the
tendency for couples to stay together (Aron, Aron, Tudor, & Nelson, 1991;
Aron, Paris, & Aron, 1995). When the partners in a relationship feel that
they are close, and when they indicate that the relationship is based on
caring, warmth, acceptance and social support, we can say that the
relationship is intimate (Reis & Aron, 2008).

When a couple begins to take care of a household together, has children, and
perhaps has to care for elderly parents, the requirements of the relationship
become correspondingly bigger. As a result of this complexity, the partners
in close relationships increasingly turn to each other for help in coordinating
activities, remembering dates and appointments, and accomplishing tasks.
Relationships are close in part because the couple becomes highly
interdependent, relying on each other to meet important goals (Berscheid &
Reis, 1998).

In relationships in which a positive rapport between the partners is

developed and maintained over a period of time, the partners are naturally
happy with the relationship and they become committed to it. Commitment
refers to the feelings and actions that keep partners working together to
maintain the relationship (Rusbult, Olsen, Davis, Hannon, 2001) and is
characterized by mutual expectations that the self and the partner will be
responsive to each other’s needs (Clark & Mills, 2004). Partners who are
committed to the relationship see their mates as more attractive, are less able
to imagine themselves with another partner, express less interest in other
potential mates, and are less likely to break up (Simpson & Harris, 1994).

People also find relationships more satisfactory, and stay in them longer,
when they feel that they are being rewarded by them. When the needs of
either or both of the partners are not being met, the relationship is in trouble.
This is not to say that people only think about the benefits they are getting;
they will also consider the needs of the other. But over the long term, both
partners must benefit from the relationship.

Although sexual arousal and excitement are more important early on in

relationships, intimacy is also determined by sexual and romantic attraction.
Indeed, intimacy is also dependent on passion—the partners must display
positive affect toward each other. Happy couples are in positive moods
when they are around each other; they laugh with each other, express
approval rather than criticism of each other’s behaviors, and enjoy physical
contact. People are happier in their relationships when they view the other
person in a positive or even an “idealized” sense, rather than a more realistic
and perhaps more negative one (Murray, Holmes, & Griffin, 1996).

Margaret Clark and Edward Lemay (2010) recently reviewed the literature
on close relationships and argued that their most important characteristic is a
sense of responsiveness. People are happy, healthy, and likely to stay in
relationships in which they are sure that they can trust the other person to
understand, validate, and care for them. It is this unconditional giving and
receiving of love that promotes the welfare of both partners and provides the
secure base that allows both partners to thrive.

Causal Attribution: Forming Judgments by

Observing Behavior

When we observe people’s behavior we may attempt to determine if the

behavior really reflects their underlying personality. If Frank hits Joe, we
might wonder if Frank is naturally aggressive or if perhaps Joe had
provoked him. If Leslie leaves a big tip for the waitress, we might wonder if
she is a generous person or if the service was particularly excellent. The
process of trying to determine the causes of people’s behavior, with the goal
of learning about their personalities, is known as causal attribution (Jones
et al., 1987).

Making causal attributions is a bit like conducting an experiment. We

carefully observe the people we are interested in and note how they behave
in different social situations. After we have made our observations, we draw
our conclusions. Sometimes we may decide that the behavior was caused
primarily by the person; this is called making a person attribution. At other
times, we may determine that the behavior was caused primarily by the
situation; this is called making a situation attribution. And at other times we
may decide that the behavior was caused by both the person and the
situation.

It is easier to make personal attributions when behavior is more unusual or

unexpected. Imagine that you go to a party and you are introduced to Tess.
Tess shakes your hand and says “Nice to meet you!” Can you readily
conclude, on the basis of this behavior, that Tess is a friendly person?
Probably not. Because the social situation demands that people act in a
friendly way (shaking your hand and saying “nice to meet you”), it is
difficult to know whether Tess acted friendly because of the situation or
because she is really friendly. Imagine, however, that instead of shaking
your hand, Tess sticks out her tongue at you and walks away. I think you
would agree that it is easier in this case to infer that Tess is unfriendly
because her behavior is so contrary to what one would expect (Jones, Davis,
& Gergen, 1961).

Although people are reasonably accurate in their attributions (we could say,
perhaps, that they are “good enough”; Fiske, 2003), they are far from
perfect. One error that we frequently make when making judgments about
ourselves is to make self-serving attributions by judging the causes of our
own behaviors in overly positive ways. If you did well on a test, you will
probably attribute that success to person causes (“I’m smart,” “I studied
really hard”), but if you do poorly on the test you are more likely to make
situation attributions (“The test was hard,” “I had bad luck”). Although
making causal attributions is expected to be logical and scientific, our
emotions are not irrelevant.

Another way that our attributions are often inaccurate is that we are, by and
large, too quick to attribute the behavior of other people to something
personal about them rather than to something about their situation. We are
more likely to say, “Leslie left a big tip, so she must be generous” than
“Leslie left a big tip, but perhaps that was because the service was really
excellent.” The common tendency to overestimate the role of person factors
and overlook the impact of situations in judging others is known as the
fundamental attribution error (or correspondence bias).

The fundamental attribution error occurs in part because other people are so
salient in our social environments. When I look at you, I see you as my
focus, and so I am likely to make personal attributions about you. If the
situation is reversed such that people see situations from the perspectives of
others, the fundamental attribution error is reduced (Storms, 1973). And
when we judge people, we often see them in only one situation. It’s easy for
you to think that your math professor is “picky and detail-oriented” because
that describes her behavior in class, but you don’t know how she acts with
her friends and family, which might be completely different. And we also
tend to make person attributions because they are easy. We are more likely
to commit the fundamental attribution error—quickly jumping to the
conclusion that behavior is caused by underlying personality—when we are
tired, distracted, or busy doing other things (Trope & Alfieri, 1997).

Figure 14.7

The tendency to make person attributions (such as poor people are

lazy) for the behaviors of others, even where situational factors such

as poor education and growing up in poverty might be better

explanations, is caused by the fundamental attribution error.

Franco Folini – Homeless woman with dogs – CC BY-SA 2.0.

An important moral about perceiving others applies here: We should not be

too quick to judge other people. It is easy to think that poor people are lazy,
that people who say something harsh are rude or unfriendly, and that all
terrorists are insane madmen. But these attributions may frequently
overemphasize the role of the person, resulting in an inappropriate and
inaccurate tendency to blame the victim (Lerner, 1980; Tennen & Affleck,
1990). Sometimes people are lazy and rude, and some terrorists are probably
insane, but these people may also be influenced by the situation in which
they find themselves. Poor people may find it more difficult to get work and
education because of the environment they grow up in, people may say rude
things because they are feeling threatened or are in pain, and terrorists may
have learned in their family and school that committing violence in the
service of their beliefs is justified. When you find yourself making strong
person attributions for the behaviors of others, I hope you will stop and
think more carefully. Would you want other people to make person
attributions for your behavior in the same situation, or would you prefer that
they more fully consider the situation surrounding your behavior? Are you
perhaps making the fundamental attribution error?

Attitudes and Behavior

Attitude refer to our relatively enduring evaluations of people and things

(Albarracín, Johnson, & Zanna, 2005). We each hold many thousands of
attitudes, including those about family and friends, political parties and
political figures, abortion rights, preferences for music, and much more.
Some of our attitudes, including those about sports, roller coaster rides, and
capital punishment, are heritable, which explains in part why we are similar
to our parents on many dimensions (Olson, Vernon, Harris, & Jang, 2001).
Other attitudes are learned through direct and indirect experiences with the
attitude objects (De Houwer, Thomas, & Baeyens, 2001).

Attitudes are important because they frequently (but not always) predict
behavior. If we know that a person has a more positive attitude toward
Frosted Flakes than toward Cheerios, then we will naturally predict that she
will buy more of the former when she gets to the market. If we know that
Charlie is madly in love with Charlene, then we will not be surprised when
he proposes marriage. Because attitudes often predict behavior, people who
wish to change behavior frequently try to change attitudes through the use
of persuasive communications. Table 14.2 “Techniques That Can Be
Effective in Persuading Others” presents some of the many techniques that
can be used to change people’s attitudes (Cialdini, 2001).

Table 14.2 Techniques That Can Be Effective in Persuading Others

Technique Examples

Choose effective Communicators who are attractive, expert, trustworthy, and

communicators. similar to the listener are most persuasive.

If the listener wants to be entertained, then it is better to use a

Consider the goals of the
humorous ad; if the listener is processing the ad more carefully,
listener.
use a more thoughtful one.

Use humor. People are more easily persuaded when they are in a good mood.

Try to associate your product with positive stimuli such as funny

Use classical conditioning.
jokes or attractive models.

Make use of the listener’s Humorous and fear-arousing ads can be effective because they
emotions. arouse the listener’s emotions.

One approach is the foot-in-the-door technique. First ask for a

Use the listener’s behavior to
minor request, and then ask for a larger request after the smaller
modify his or her attitude.
request has been accepted.

Attitudes predict behavior better for some people than for others. People
who are high in self-monitoring—the tendency to regulate behavior to meet
the demands of social situations—tend to change their behaviors to match
the social situation and thus do not always act on their attitudes (Gangestad
& Snyder, 2000). High self-monitors agree with statements such as, “In
different situations and with different people, I often act like very different
persons” and “I guess I put on a show to impress or entertain people.”
Attitudes are more likely to predict behavior for low self-monitors, who are
more likely to act on their own attitudes even when the social situation
suggests that they should behave otherwise. Low self-monitors are more
likely to agree with statements such as “At parties and social gatherings, I
do not attempt to do or say things that others will like” and “I can only
argue for ideas that I already believe.”

The match between the social situations in which the attitudes are expressed
and the behaviors are engaged in also matters, such that there is a greater
attitude-behavior correlation when the social situations match. Imagine for a
minute the case of Magritte, a 16-year-old high school student. Magritte
tells her parents that she hates the idea of smoking cigarettes. But how sure
are you that Magritte’s attitude will predict her behavior? Would you be
willing to bet that she’d never try smoking when she’s out with her friends?

The problem here is that Magritte’s attitude is being expressed in one social
situation (when she is with her parents) whereas the behavior (trying a
cigarette) is going to occur in a very different social situation (when she is
out with her friends). The relevant social norms are, of course, much
different in the two situations. Magritte’s friends might be able to convince
her to try smoking, despite her initial negative attitude, by enticing her with
peer pressure. Behaviors are more likely to be consistent with attitudes
when the social situation in which the behavior occurs is similar to the
situation in which the attitude is expressed (Ajzen, 1991).

Although it might not have surprised you to hear that our attitudes predict
our behaviors, you might be more surprised to learn that our behaviors also
have an influence on our attitudes. It makes sense that if I like Frosted
Flakes I’ll buy them, because my positive attitude toward the product
influences my behavior. But my attitudes toward Frosted Flakes may also
become more positive if I decide—for whatever reason—to buy some. It
makes sense that Charlie’s love for Charlene will lead him to propose
marriage, but it is also the case that he will likely love Charlene even more
after he does so.

Behaviors influence attitudes in part through the process of self-

perception.Self-perception occurs when we use our own behavior as a
guide to help us determine our own thoughts and feelings (Bem, 1972;
Olson & Stone, 2005). In one demonstration of the power of self-perception,
Wells and Petty (1980) assigned their research participants to shake their
heads either up and down or side to side as they read newspaper editorials.
The participants who had shaken their heads up and down later agreed with
the content of the editorials more than the people who had shaken them side
to side. Wells and Petty argued that this occurred because the participants
used their own head-shaking behaviors to determine their attitudes about the
editorials.

Persuaders may use the principles of self-perception to change attitudes. The

foot-in-the-door technique is a method of persuasion in which the person is
first persuaded to accept a rather minor request and then asked for a larger
one after that. In one demonstration, Guéguen and Jacob (2002) found that
students in a computer discussion group were more likely to volunteer to
complete a 40-question survey on their food habits (which required 15 to 20
minutes of their time) if they had already, a few minutes earlier, agreed to
help the same requestor with a simple computer-related question (about how
to convert a file type) than if they had not first been given the smaller
opportunity to help. The idea is that when asked the second time, the people
looked at their past behavior (having agreed to the small request) and
inferred that they are helpful people.

Behavior also influences our attitudes through a more emotional process

known as cognitive dissonance.Cognitive dissonance refers to the
discomfort we experience when we choose to behave in ways that we see as
inappropriate (Festinger, 1957; Harmon-Jones & Mills, 1999). If we feel
that we have wasted our time or acted against our own moral principles, we
experience negative emotions (dissonance) and may change our attitudes
about the behavior to reduce the negative feelings.

Elliot Aronson and Judson Mills (1959) studied whether the cognitive
dissonance created by an initiation process could explain how much
commitment students felt to a group that they were part of. In their
experiment, female college students volunteered to join a group that would
be meeting regularly to discuss various aspects of the psychology of sex.
According to random assignment, some of the women were told that they
would be required to perform an embarrassing procedure (they were asked
to read some obscene words and some sexually oriented passages from a
novel in public) before they could join the group, whereas other women did
not have to go through this initiation. Then all the women got a chance to
listen to the group’s conversation, which turned out to be very boring.

Aronson and Mills found that the women who had gone through the
embarrassing experience subsequently reported more liking for the group
than those who had not. They argued that the more effort an individual
expends to become a member of the group (e.g., a severe initiation), the
more they will become committed to the group, to justify the effort they
have put in during the initiation. The idea is that the effort creates dissonant
cognitions (“I did all this work to join the group”), which are then justified
by creating more consonant ones (“OK, this group is really pretty fun”).
Thus the women who spent little effort to get into the group were able to see
the group as the dull and boring conversation that it was. The women who
went through the more severe initiation, however, succeeded in convincing
themselves that the same discussion was a worthwhile experience.

When we put in effort for something—an initiation, a big purchase price, or

even some of our precious time—we will likely end up liking the activity
more than we would have if the effort had been less; not doing so would
lead us to experience the unpleasant feelings of dissonance. After we buy a
product, we convince ourselves that we made the right choice because the
product is excellent. If we fail to lose the weight we wanted to, we decide
that we look good anyway. If we hurt someone else’s feelings, we may even
decide that he or she is a bad person who deserves our negative behavior. To
escape from feeling poorly about themselves, people will engage in quite
extraordinary rationalizing. No wonder that most of us believe that “If I had
it all to do over again, I would not change anything important.”

Key Takeaways

Social psychology is the scientific study of how we influence, and are influenced by,
the people around us.

Social cognition involves forming impressions of ourselves and other people. Doing
so quickly and accurately is functional for social life.

Our initial judgments of others are based in large part on what we see. The physical
features of other people—and particularly their sex, race, age, and physical
attractiveness—are very salient, and we often focus our attention on these
dimensions.

We are attracted to people who appear to be healthy. Indicators of health include

youth, symmetry, and averageness.
 We frequently use people’s appearances to form our judgments about them, and to
determine our responses to them. These responses include stereotyping, prejudice,
and discrimination. Social psychologists believe that people should get past their
prejudices and judge people as individuals.

Close relationships are based on intimacy. Intimacy is determined by similarity, self-

disclosure, interdependence, commitment, rewards, and passion.

Causal attribution is the process of trying to determine the causes of people’s

behavior with the goal of learning about their personalities. Although people are
reasonably accurate in their attributions, they also succumb to biases such as the
fundamental attribution error.

Attitudes refer to our relatively enduring evaluations of people and things. Attitudes
are determined in part by genetic transmission from our parents and in part through
direct and indirect experiences.

Although attitudes predict behaviors, behaviors also predict attitudes. This occurs
through the processes of self-perception and cognitive dissonance.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. What kinds of people are you attracted to? Do your preferences match the factors
that we have just discussed?

2. What stereotypes and prejudices do you hold? Are you able to get past them and
judge people as individuals? Do you think that your stereotypes influence your
behavior without your being aware of them?

3. Consider a time when your behavior influenced your attitudes. Did this occur as a
result of self-perception or cognitive dissonance?
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14.2 Interacting With Others: Helping,
Hurting, and Conforming

Learning Objectives

1. Summarize the genetic and environmental factors that contribute to human altruism.

2. Provide an overview of the causes of human aggression.

3. Explain the situations under which people conform to others and their motivations
for doing so.

Humans have developed a variety of social skills that enhance our ability to
successfully interact with others. We are often helpful, even when that
helping comes at some cost to ourselves, and we often change our opinions
and beliefs to fit in with the opinions of those whom we care about. Yet we
also are able to be aggressive if we feel the situation warrants it.

Helping Others: Altruism Helps Create

Harmonious Relationships

Altruism refers to any behavior that is designed to increase another

person’s welfare, and particularly those actions that do not seem to provide
a direct reward to the person who performs them (Dovidio, Piliavin,
Schroeder, & Penner, 2006). Altruism occurs when we stop to help a
stranger who has been stranded on the highway, when we volunteer at a
homeless shelter, or when we donate to a charity. According to a survey
given by an established coalition that studies and encourages volunteering
(http://www.independentsector.org), in 2001 over 83 million American
adults reported that they helped others by volunteering, and did so an
average of 3.6 hours per week. The survey estimated that the value of the
volunteer time that was given was over 239 billion dollars.

Why Are We Altruistic?

Because altruism is costly, you might wonder why we engage in it at all.

There are a variety of explanations for the occurrence of altruism, and Table
14.3 “Some of the Variables Known to Increase Helping” summarizes some
of the variables that are known to increase helping.

Table 14.3 Some of the Variables Known to Increase Helping

Positive moods We help more when we are in a good mood (Guéguen & De Gail, 2003).

We help people who we see as similar to us, for instance, those who mimic our
Similarity
behaviors (van Baaren, Holland, Kawakami, & van Knippenberg, 2004).

Guilt If we are experiencing guilt, we may help relieve those negative feelings.

We help more when we feel empathy for the other person (Batson, O’Quin,
Empathy
Fultz, Varnderplas, & Isen, 1983).

We are more likely to help if we can feel good about ourselves by doing so
Benefits
(Snyder, Omoto, & Lindsay, 2004).

Personal
We are more likely to help if it is clear that others are not helping.
responsibility

We may help in order to show others that we are good people (Hardy & Van
Self-presentation
Vugt, 2006).
Guéguen, N., & De Gail, M.-A. (2003). The effect of smiling on helping behavior: Smiling and Good
Samaritan behavior. Communication Reports, 16(2), 133–140; van Baaren, R. B., Holland, R. W.,
Kawakami, K., & van Knippenberg, A. (2004). Mimicry and prosocial behavior. Psychological
Science, 15(1), 71–74; Batson, C. D., O’Quin, K., Fultz, J., Varnderplas, M., & Isen, A. M. (1983).
Influence of self-reported distress and empathy on egoistic versus altruistic motivation to help.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(3), 706–718; Snyder, M., Omoto, A. M., &
Lindsay, J. J. (Eds.). (2004). Sacrificing time and effort for the good of others: The benefits and costs
of volunteerism. New York, NY: Guilford Press; Hardy, C. L., & Van Vugt, M. (2006). Nice guys
finish first: The competitive altruism hypothesis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(10),
1402–1413.

The tendency to help others in need is in part a functional evolutionary

adaptation. Although helping others can be costly to us as individuals,
helping people who are related to us can perpetuate our own genes (Madsen
et al., 2007; McAndrew, 2002; Stewart-Williams, 2007). Burnstein,
Crandall, and Kitayama (1994) found that students indicated they would be
more likely to help a person who was closely related to them (e.g., a sibling,
parent, or child) than they would be to help a person who was more
distantly related (e.g., a niece, nephew, uncle, or grandmother). People are
more likely to donate kidneys to relatives than to strangers (Borgida,
Conner, & Manteufel, 1992), and even children indicate that they are more
likely to help their siblings than they are to help a friend (Tisak & Tisak,
1996).

Figure 14.8
We help in part to make ourselves feel good, but also because we

care about the welfare of others.

Harsha K R – Friend In Need – CC BY-SA 2.0.

Although it makes evolutionary sense that we would help people who we

are related to, why would we help people to whom we not related? One
explanation for such behavior is based on the principle of reciprocal
altruism (Krebs & Davies, 1987; Trivers, 1971). Reciprocal altruism is the
principle that, if we help other people now, those others will return the favor
should we need their help in the future. By helping others, we both increase
our chances of survival and reproductive success and help others increase
their survival too. Over the course of evolution, those who engage in
reciprocal altruism should be able to reproduce more often than those who
do not, thus enabling this kind of altruism to continue.

We also learn to help by modeling the helpful behavior of others. Although

people frequently worry about the negative impact of the violence that is
seen on TV, there is also a great deal of helping behavior shown on
television. Smith et al. (2006) found that 73% of TV shows had some
altruism, and that about three altruistic behaviors were shown every hour.
Furthermore, the prevalence of altruism was particularly high in children’s
shows. But just as viewing altruism can increase helping, modeling of
behavior that is not altruistic can decrease altruism. For instance, Anderson
and Bushman (2001) found that playing violent video games led to a
decrease in helping.

We are more likely to help when we receive rewards for doing so and less
likely to help when helping is costly. Parents praise their children who share
their toys with others, and may reprimand children who are selfish. We are
more likely to help when we have plenty of time than when we are in a
hurry (Darley and Batson 1973). Another potential reward is the status we
gain as a result of helping. When we act altruistically, we gain a reputation
as a person with high status who is able and willing to help others, and this
status makes us more desirable in the eyes of others (Hardy & Van Vugt,
2006).

The outcome of the reinforcement and modeling of altruism is the

development of social norms about helping—standards of behavior that we
see as appropriate and desirable regarding helping. The reciprocity norm
reminds us that we should follow the principles of reciprocal altruism. If
someone helps us, then we should help them in the future, and we should
help people now with the expectation that they will help us later if we need
it. The reciprocity norm is found in everyday adages such as “Scratch my
back and I’ll scratch yours” and in religious and philosophical teachings
such as the “Golden Rule”: “Do unto other as you would have them do unto
you.”

Because helping based on the reciprocity norm is based on the return of

earlier help and the expectation of a future return from others, it might not
seem like true altruism. We might hope that our children internalize another
relevant social norm that seems more altruistic: the social responsibility
norm. The social responsibility norm tells us that we should try to help
others who need assistance, even without any expectation of future
paybacks. The teachings of many religions are based on the social
responsibility norm; that we should, as good human beings, reach out and
help other people whenever we can.

How the Presence of Others Can Reduce

Helping

Late at night on March 13, 1964, 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was murdered
within a few yards of her apartment building in New York City after a
violent fight with her killer in which she struggled and screamed. When the
police interviewed Kitty’s neighbors about the crime, they discovered that
38 of the neighbors indicated that they had seen or heard the fight occurring
but not one of them had bothered to intervene, and only one person had
called the police.

Video Clip: The Case of Kitty Genovese

(click to see video)

Was Kitty Genovese murdered because there were too many people who
heard her cries? Watch this video for an analysis.

Two social psychologists, Bibb Latané and John Darley, were interested in
the factors that influenced people to help (or to not help) in such situations
(Latané & Darley, 1968). They developed a model (see Figure 14.9) that
took into consideration the important role of the social situation in
determining helping. The model has been extensively tested in many
studies, and there is substantial support for it. Social psychologists have
discovered that it was the 38 people themselves that contributed to the
tragedy, because people are less likely to notice, interpret, and respond to
the needs of others when they are with others than they are when they are
alone.

Figure 14.9

The Latané and Darley model of helping is based on the idea that a variety of situational factors can

influence whether or not we help.

The first step in the model is noticing the event. Latané and Darley (1968)
demonstrated the important role of the social situation in noticing by asking
research participants to complete a questionnaire in a small room. Some of
the participants completed the questionnaire alone, whereas others
completed the questionnaire in small groups in which two other participants
were also working on questionnaires. A few minutes after the participants
had begun the questionnaires, the experimenters started to let some white
smoke come into the room through a vent in the wall. The experimenters
timed how long it took before the first person in the room looked up and
noticed the smoke.

The people who were working alone noticed the smoke in about 5 seconds,
and within 4 minutes most of the participants who were working alone had
taken some action. On the other hand, on average, the first person in the
group conditions did not notice the smoke until over 20 seconds had
elapsed. And, although 75% of the participants who were working alone
reported the smoke within 4 minutes, the smoke was reported in only 12%
of the groups by that time. In fact, in only 3 of the 8 groups did anyone
report the smoke, even after it had filled the room. You can see that the
social situation has a powerful influence on noticing; we simply don’t see
emergencies when other people are with us.

Even if we notice an emergency, we might not interpret it as one. Were the

cries of Kitty Genovese really calls for help, or were they simply an
argument with a boyfriend? The problem is compounded when others are
present, because when we are unsure how to interpret events we normally
look to others to help us understand them, and at the same time they are
looking to us for information. The problem is that each bystander thinks that
other people aren’t acting because they don’t see an emergency. Believing
that the others know something that they don’t, each observer concludes that
help is not required.

Even if we have noticed the emergency and interpret it as being one, this
does not necessarily mean that we will come to the rescue of the other
person. We still need to decide that it is our responsibility to do something.
The problem is that when we see others around, it is easy to assume that
they are going to do something, and that we don’t need to do anything
ourselves. Diffusion of responsibility occurs when we assume that others
will take action and therefore we do not take action ourselves. The irony
again, of course, is that people are more likely to help when they are the
only ones in the situation than when there are others around.

Perhaps you have noticed diffusion of responsibility if you participated in an

Internet users group where people asked questions of the other users. Did
you find that it was easier to get help if you directed your request to a
smaller set of users than when you directed it to a larger number of people?
Markey (2000) found that people received help more quickly (in about 37
seconds) when they asked for help by specifying a participant’s name than
when no name was specified (51 seconds).

The final step in the helping model is knowing how to help. Of course, for
many of us the ways to best help another person in an emergency are not
that clear; we are not professionals and we have little training in how to help
in emergencies. People who do have training in how to act in emergencies
are more likely to help, whereas the rest of us just don’t know what to do,
and therefore we may simply walk by. On the other hand, today many
people have cell phones, and we can do a lot with a quick call; in fact, a
phone call made in time might have saved Kitty Genovese’s life.

Human Aggression: An Adaptive yet

Potentially Damaging Behavior

Aggression is behavior that is intended to harm another individual.

Aggression may occur in the heat of the moment, for instance, when a
jealous lover strikes out in rage or the sports fans at a university light fires
and destroy cars after an important basketball game. Or it may occur in a
more cognitive, deliberate, and planned way, such as the aggression of a
bully who steals another child’s toys, a terrorist who kills civilians to gain
political exposure, or a hired assassin who kills for money.

Not all aggression is physical. Aggression also occurs in nonphysical ways,

as when children exclude others from activities, call them names, or spread
rumors about them. Paquette and Underwood (1999) found that both boys
and girls rated nonphysical aggression such as name-calling as making them
feel more “sad and bad” than did physical aggression.
The Ability to Aggress Is Part of Human
Nature

We may aggress against others in part because it allows us to gain access to

valuable resources such as food, territory, and desirable mates, or to protect
ourselves from direct attack by others. If aggression helps in the survival of
our genes, then the process of natural selection may well have caused
humans, as it would any other animal, to be aggressive (Buss & Duntley,
2006).

There is evidence for the genetics of aggression. Aggression is controlled in

large part by the amygdala. One of the primary functions of the amygdala is
to help us learn to associate stimuli with the rewards and the punishment
that they may provide. The amygdala is particularly activated in our
responses to stimuli that we see as threatening and fear-arousing. When the
amygdala is stimulated, in either humans or in animals, the organism
becomes more aggressive.

But just because we can aggress does not mean that we will aggress. It is not
necessarily evolutionarily adaptive to aggress in all situations. Neither
people nor animals are always aggressive; they rely on aggression only
when they feel that they absolutely need to (Berkowitz, 1993). The
prefrontal cortex serves as a control center on aggression; when it is more
highly activated, we are more able to control our aggressive impulses.
Research has found that the cerebral cortex is less active in murderers and
death row inmates, suggesting that violent crime may be caused at least in
part by a failure or reduced ability to regulate aggression (Davidson,
Putnam, & Larson, 2000).

Hormones are also important in regulating aggression. Most important in

this regard is the male sex hormone testosterone, which is associated with
increased aggression in both males and females. Research conducted on a
variety of animals has found a positive correlation between levels of
testosterone and aggression. This relationship seems to be weaker among
humans than among animals, yet it is still significant (Dabbs, Hargrove, &
Heusel, 1996).

Consuming alcohol increases the likelihood that people will respond

aggressively to provocations, and even people who are not normally
aggressive may react with aggression when they are intoxicated (Graham,
Osgood, Wells, & Stockwell, 2006). Alcohol reduces the ability of people
who have consumed it to inhibit their aggression because when people are
intoxicated, they become more self-focused and less aware of the social
constraints that normally prevent them from engaging aggressively
(Bushman & Cooper, 1990; Steele & Southwick, 1985).

Negative Experiences Increase Aggression

If I were to ask you about the times that you have been aggressive, I bet that
you would tell me that many of them occurred when you were angry, in a
bad mood, tired, in pain, sick, or frustrated. And you would be right—we
are much more likely to aggress when we are experiencing negative
emotions. One important determinant of aggression is frustration. When we
are frustrated we may lash out at others, even at people who did not cause
the frustration. In some cases the aggression is displaced aggression, which
is aggression that is directed at an object or person other than the person
who caused the frustration.

Other negative emotions also increase aggression. Griffit and Veitch (1971)
had students complete questionnaires in rooms in which the heat was at a
normal temperature or in which the temperature was over 90 degrees
Fahrenheit. The students in the latter conditions expressed significantly
more hostility. Aggression is greater on hot days than it is on cooler days
and during hot years than during cooler years, and most violent riots occur
during the hottest days of the year (Bushman, Wang, & Anderson, 2005).
Pain also increases aggression (Berkowitz, 1993).

If we are aware that we are feeling negative emotions, we might think that
we could release those emotions in a relatively harmless way, such as by
punching a pillow or kicking something, with the hopes that doing so will
release our aggressive tendencies. Catharsis—the idea that observing or
engaging in less harmful aggressive actions will reduce the tendency to
aggress later in a more harmful way—has been considered by many as a
way of decreasing violence, and it was an important part of the theories of
Sigmund Freud.

As far as social psychologists have been able to determine, however,

catharsis simply does not work. Rather than decreasing aggression,
engaging in aggressive behaviors of any type increases the likelihood of
later aggression. Bushman, Baumeister, and Stack (1999) first angered their
research participants by having another student insult them. Then half of the
participants were allowed to engage in a cathartic behavior: They were
given boxing gloves and then got a chance to hit a punching bag for 2
minutes. Then all the participants played a game with the person who had
insulted them earlier in which they had a chance to blast the other person
with a painful blast of white noise. Contrary to the catharsis hypothesis, the
students who had punched the punching bag set a higher noise level and
delivered longer bursts of noise than the participants who did not get a
chance to hit the punching bag. It seems that if we hit a punching bag,
punch a pillow, or scream as loud as we can to release our frustration, the
opposite may occur—rather than decreasing aggression, these behaviors in
fact increase it.

Viewing Violent Media Increases Aggression

The average American watches over 4 hours of television every day, and
these programs contain a substantial amount of aggression. At the same
time, children are also exposed to violence in movies and video games, as
well as in popular music and music videos that include violent lyrics and
imagery. Research evidence makes it very clear that, on average, people
who watch violent behavior become more aggressive. The evidence
supporting this relationship comes from many studies conducted over many
years using both correlational designs as well as laboratory studies in which
people have been randomly assigned to view either violent or nonviolent
material (Anderson et al., 2003). Viewing violent behavior also increases
aggression in part through observational learning. Children who witness
violence are more likely to be aggressive. One example is in the studies of
Albert Bandura, as shown in below.

Video Clip

(click to see video)

This video shows Professor Albert Bandura describing his studies on the
observational learning of aggression in children.

Another outcome of viewing large amounts of violent material is

desensitization, which is the tendency over time to show weaker emotional
responses to emotional stimuli. When we first see violence, we are likely to
be shocked, aroused, and even repulsed by it. However, over time, as we see
more and more violence, we become habituated to it, such that the
subsequent exposures produce fewer and fewer negative emotional
responses. Continually viewing violence also makes us more distrustful and
more likely to behave aggressively (Bartholow, Bushman, & Sestir, 2006;
Nabi & Sullivan, 2001).

Of course, not everyone who views violent material becomes aggressive;

individual differences also matter. People who experience a lot of negative
affect and who feel that they are frequently rejected by others whom they
care about are more aggressive (Downey, Irwin, Ramsay, & Ayduk, 2004).
People with inflated or unstable self-esteem are more prone to anger and are
highly aggressive when their high self-image is threatened (Baumeister,
Smart, & Boden, 1996). For instance, classroom bullies are those children
who always want to be the center of attention, who think a lot of
themselves, and who cannot take criticism (Salmivalli & Nieminen, 2002).
Bullies are highly motivated to protect their inflated self-concepts, and they
react with anger and aggression when it is threatened.

There is a culturally universal tendency for men to be more physically

violent than women (Archer & Coyne, 2005; Crick & Nelson, 2002).
Worldwide, about 99% of rapes and about 90% of robberies, assaults, and
murders are committed by men (Graham & Wells, 2001). These sex
differences do not imply that women are never aggressive. Both men and
women respond to insults and provocation with aggression; the differences
between men and women are smaller after they have been frustrated,
insulted, or threatened (Bettencourt & Miller, 1996).

Research Focus: The Culture of Honor

In addition to differences across cultures, there are also regional differences in the incidence of
violence in different parts of the United States. As one example, the homicide rate is
significantly higher in the southern and the western states but lower in the eastern and northern
states. One explanation for these differences is variation in cultural norms about the appropriate
reactions to threats against one’s social status. These cultural differences apply primarily to men.
In short, some men react more violently than others when they believe that others are threatening
them.

The social norm that condones and even encourages responding to insults with aggression is
known as the culture of honor. The culture of honor leads people to view even relatively minor
conflicts or disputes as challenges to one’s social status and reputation and can therefore trigger
aggressive responses. Beliefs in culture of honor norms are stronger among men who live or who
were raised in the South and West than among men who are from or living in the North and East.

In one series of experiments, Cohen, Nisbett, Bosdle, and Schwarz (1996) investigated how
white male students who had grown up either in the northern or in the southern regions of the
United States responded to insults. The experiments, which were conducted at the University of
Michigan, involved an encounter in which the research participant was walking down a narrow
hallway. The experimenters enlisted the help of a confederate who did not give way to the
participant but rather bumped into him and insulted him. Compared with Northerners, students
from the South who had been bumped were more likely to think that their masculine reputations
had been threatened, exhibited greater physiological signs of being upset, had higher testosterone
levels, engaged in more aggressive and dominant behavior (gave firmer handshakes), and were
less willing to yield to a subsequent confederate (Figure 14.10 “Results From Cohen, Nisbett,
Bosdle, and Schwarz, 1996”).

Figure 14.10 Results From Cohen, Nisbett, Bosdle, and Schwarz, 1996

Students from southern U.S. states expressed more anger and had greater levels of testosterone after being
 insulted than did students from northern states.

Adapted from Cohen, D., Nisbett, R. E., Bosdle, B., & Schwarz, N. (1996). Insult, aggression, and the

southern culture of honor: An “experimental ethnography.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,

70, 945–960.

In another test of the impact of culture of honor, Cohen and Nisbett (1997) sent letters to
employers across the United States from a fictitious job applicant who admitted having been
convicted of a felony. To half the employers, the applicant reported that he had impulsively
killed a man who had been having an affair with his fiancée and then taunted him about it in a
crowded bar. To the other half, the applicant reported that he had stolen a car because he needed
the money to pay off debts. Employers from the South and the West, places in which the culture
of honor is strong, were more likely than employers in the North and East to respond in an
understanding and cooperative way to the letter from the convicted killer, but there were no
cultural differences for the letter from the auto thief.

One possible explanation for regional differences in the culture of honor involves the kind of
activities typically engaged in by men in the different regions. While people in the northern parts
of the United States were usually farmers who grew crops, people from southern climates were
more likely to raise livestock. Unlike the crops grown by the northerners, the herds were mobile
and vulnerable to theft, and it was difficult for law enforcement officials to protect them. To be
successful in an environment where theft was common, a man had to build a reputation for
strength and toughness, and this was accomplished by a willingness to use swift, and sometimes
violent, punishment against thieves.

Conformity and Obedience: How Social

Influence Creates Social Norms

When we decide on what courses to enroll in by asking for advice from our
friends, change our beliefs or behaviors as a result of the ideas that we hear
from others, or binge drink because our friends are doing it, we are engaging
in conformity, a change in beliefs or behavior that occurs as the result of
the presence of the other people around us. We conform not only because
we believe that other people have accurate information and we want to have
knowledge (informational conformity) but also because we want to be liked
by others (normative conformity).

The typical outcome of conformity is that our beliefs and behaviors become
more similar to those of others around us. But some situations create more
conformity than others, and some of the factors that contribute to
conformity are shown in Table 14.4 “Variables That Increase Conformity”.

Table 14.4 Variables That Increase Conformity

Variable Description Example

As the number of people who are People are more likely to stop and look up in the
Number in engaging in a behavior increases, air when many, rather than few, people are also
majority the tendency to conform to those looking up (Milgram, Bickman, & Berkowitz,
people also increases. 1969).

Conformity reduces sharply In Solomon Asch’s line-matching research,

Unanimity when any one person deviates when any one person gave a different answer,
from the norm. conformity was eliminated.

Milgram (1974) found that conformity in his

People who have higher status, obedience studies was greatly reduced when the
Status and
such as those in authority, create person giving the command to shock was
authority
more conformity. described as an “ordinary man” rather than a
scientist at Yale University.

Milgram, S., Bickman, L., & Berkowitz, L. (1969). Note on the drawing power of crowds of different
size. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13, 79–82; Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to
authority: An experimental view. New York, NY: Harper and Row.
At times conformity occurs in a relatively spontaneous and unconscious
way, without any obvious intent of one person to change the other, or an
awareness that the conformity is occurring. Robert Cialdini and his
colleagues (Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren, 1990) found that college students
were more likely to throw litter on the ground themselves when they had
just seen another person throw some paper on the ground, and Cheng and
Chartrand (2003) found that people unconsciously mimicked the behaviors
of others, such as by rubbing their face or shaking their foot, and that that
mimicry was greater when the other person was of high versus low social
status.

Muzafer Sherif (1936) studied how norms develop in ambiguous situations.

In his studies, college students were placed in a dark room with a single
point of light and were asked to indicate, each time the light was turned on,
how much it appeared to move. (The movement, which is not actually real,
occurs because of the saccadic movement of the eyes.) Each group member
gave his or her response on each trial aloud and each time in a different
random order. As you can see in Figure 14.11 “Sherif’s (1936) Studies on
Conformity”, Sherif found a conformity effect: Over time, the responses of
the group members became more and more similar to each other such that
after four days they converged on a common norm. When the participants
were interviewed after the study, they indicated that they had not realized
that they were conforming.

Figure 14.11 Sherif’s (1936) Studies on Conformity

The participants in the studies by Muzafer Sherif initially had different beliefs about the degree to which a

point of light appeared to be moving. (You can see these differences as expressed on Day 1.) However, as

they shared their beliefs with other group members over several days, a common group norm developed.

Shown here are the estimates made by a group of three participants who met together on four different

days.

Adapted from Sherif, M. (1936). The psychology of social norms. New York, NY: Harper and Row.

Not all conformity is passive. In the research of Solomon Asch (1955) the
judgments that group members were asked to make were entirely
unambiguous, and the influence of the other people on judgments was
apparent. The research participants were male college students who were
told that they were to be participating in a test of visual abilities. The men
were seated in front of a board that displayed the visual stimuli that they
were going to judge. The men were told that there would be 18 trials during
the experiment, and on each trial they would see two cards. The standard
card had a single line that was to be judged, and the test card had three lines
that varied in length between about 2 and 10 inches.

Figure 14.12
On each trial, each person in the group answered out loud, beginning with
one end of the group and moving toward the other end. Although the real
research participant did not know it, the other group members were actually
not participants but experimental confederates who gave predetermined
answers on each trial. Because the real participant was seated next to last in
the row, he always made his judgment following most of the other group
members. Although on the first two trials the confederates each gave the
correct answer, on the third trial, and on 11 of the subsequent trials, they all
had been instructed to give the same wrong choice. For instance, even
though the correct answer was Line 1, they would all say it was Line 2.
Thus when it became the participant’s turn to answer, he could either give
the clearly correct answer or conform to the incorrect responses of the
confederates.

Remarkably, in this study about 76% of the 123 men who were tested gave
at least one incorrect response when it was their turn, and 37% of the
responses, overall, were conforming. This is indeed evidence for the power
of conformity because the participants were making clearly incorrect
responses in public. However, conformity was not absolute; in addition to
the 24% of the men who never conformed, only 5% of the men conformed
on all 12 of the critical trials.

Video Clip

Asch’s Line Matching Studies

(click to see video)

Watch this video to see a demonstration of Asch’s line studies.

The tendency to conform to those in authority, known as obedience, was

demonstrated in a remarkable set of studies performed by Stanley Milgram
(1974). Milgram designed a study in which he could observe the extent to
which a person who presented himself as an authority would be able to
produce obedience, even to the extent of leading people to cause harm to
others. Like many other researchers who were interested in conformity,
Milgram’s interest stemmed in part from his desire to understand how the
presence of a powerful social situation—in this case the directives of
Adolph Hitler, the German dictator who ordered the killing of millions of
Jews and other “undesirable” people during World War II—could produce
obedience.

Milgram used newspaper ads to recruit men (and in one study, women) from
a wide variety of backgrounds to participate in his research. When the
research participant arrived at the lab, he or she was introduced to a man
who was ostensibly another research participant but who actually was a
confederate working with the experimenter as part of the experimental team.
The experimenter explained that the goal of the research was to study the
effects of punishment on learning. After the participant and the confederate
both consented to be in the study, the researcher explained that one of them
would be the teacher, and the other the learner. They were each given a slip
of paper and asked to open it and indicate what it said. In fact both papers
read “teacher,” which allowed the confederate to pretend that he had been
assigned to be the learner and thus to assure that the actual participant was
always the teacher.

While the research participant (now the teacher) looked on, the learner was
taken into the adjoining shock room and strapped to an electrode that was to
deliver the punishment. The experimenter explained that the teacher’s job
would be to sit in the control room and read a list of word pairs to the
learner. After the teacher read the list once, it would be the learner’s job to
remember which words went together. For instance, if the word pair was
“blue sofa,” the teacher would say the word “blue” on the testing trials, and
the learner would have to indicate which of four possible words (“house,”
“sofa,” “cat,” or “carpet”) was the correct answer by pressing one of four
buttons in front of him.

After the experimenter gave the “teacher” a mild shock to demonstrate that
the shocks really were painful, the experiment began. The research
participant first read the list of words to the learner and then began testing
him on his learning. The shock apparatus (Figure 14.13 “Materials Used in
Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience”) was in front of the teacher, and the
learner was not visible in the shock room. The experimenter sat behind the
teacher and explained to him that each time the learner made a mistake he
was to press one of the shock switches to administer the shock. Moreover,
the switch that was to be pressed increased by one level with each mistake,
so that each mistake required a stronger shock.
Once the learner (who was, of course, actually the experimental
confederate) was alone in the shock room, he unstrapped himself from the
shock machine and brought out a tape recorder that he used to play a
prerecorded series of responses that the teacher could hear through the wall
of the room.

The teacher heard the learner say “ugh!” after the first few shocks. After the
next few mistakes, when the shock level reached 150 V, the learner was
heard to exclaim, “Let me out of here. I have heart trouble!” As the shock
reached about 270 V, the protests of the learner became more vehement, and
after 300 V the learner proclaimed that he was not going to answer any more
questions. From 330 V and up, the learner was silent. At this point the
experimenter responded to participants’ questions, if any, with a scripted
response indicating that they should continue reading the questions and
applying increasing shock when the learner did not respond.

The results of Milgram’s research were themselves quite shocking.

Although all the participants gave the initial mild levels of shock, responses
varied after that. Some refused to continue after about 150 V, despite the
insistence of the experimenter to continue to increase the shock level. Still
others, however, continued to present the questions and to administer the
shocks, under the pressure of the experimenter, who demanded that they
continue. In the end, 65% of the participants continued giving the shock to
the learner all the way up to the 450 V maximum, even though that shock
was marked as “danger: severe shock” and no response had been heard from
the participant for several trials. In other words, well over half of the men
who participated had, as far as they knew, shocked another person to death,
all as part of a supposed experiment on learning.

In case you are thinking that such high levels of obedience would not be
observed in today’s modern culture, there is fact evidence that they would.
Milgram’s findings were almost exactly replicated, using men and women
from a wide variety of ethnic groups, in a study conducted this decade at
Santa Clara University (Burger, 2009). In this replication of the Milgram
experiment, 67% of the men and 73% of the women agreed to administer
increasingly painful electric shocks when an authority figure ordered them
to. The participants in this study were not, however, allowed to go beyond
the 150 V shock switch.

Although it might be tempting to conclude that Burger’s and Milgram’s

experiments demonstrate that people are innately bad creatures who are
ready to shock others to death, this is not in fact the case. Rather it is the
social situation, and not the people themselves, that is responsible for the
behavior. When Milgram created variations on his original procedure, he
found that changes in the situation dramatically influenced the amount of
conformity. Conformity was significantly reduced when people were
allowed to choose their own shock level rather than being ordered to use the
level required by the experimenter, when the experimenter communicated
by phone rather than from within the experimental room, and when other
research participants refused to give the shock. These findings are consistent
with a basic principle of social psychology: The situation in which people
find themselves has a major influence on their behavior.

Do We Always Conform?

The research that we have discussed to this point suggests that most people
conform to the opinions and desires of others. But it is not always the case
that we blindly conform. For one, there are individual differences in
conformity. People with lower self-esteem are more likely to conform than
are those with higher self-esteem, and people who are dependent on and
who have a strong need for approval from others are also more conforming
(Bornstein, 1993). People who highly identify with or who have a high
degree of commitment to a group are also more likely to conform to group
norms than those who care less about the group (Jetten, Spears, &
Manstead, 1997). Despite these individual differences among people in
terms of their tendency to conform, however, research has generally found
that the impact of individual difference variables on conformity is smaller
than the influence of situational variables, such as the number and
unanimity of the majority.

We have seen that conformity usually occurs such that the opinions and
behaviors of individuals become more similar to the opinions and behaviors
of the majority of the people in the group. However, and although it is much
more unusual, there are cases in which a smaller number of individuals is
able to influence the opinions or behaviors of the larger group—a
phenomenon known as minority influence. Minorities who are consistent
and confident in their opinions may in some cases be able to be persuasive
(Moscovici, Mugny, & Van Avermaet, 1985).

Persuasion that comes from minorities has another, and potentially even
more important, effect on the opinions of majority group members: It can
lead majorities to engage in fuller, as well as more divergent, innovative,
and creative thinking about the topics being discussed (Martin, Hewstone,
Martin, & Gardikiotis, 2008). Nemeth and Kwan (1987) found that
participants working together in groups solved problems more creatively
when only one person gave a different and unusual response than the other
members did (minority influence) in comparison to when three people gave
the same unusual response.

It is a good thing that minorities can be influential; otherwise, the world

would be pretty boring indeed. When we look back on history, we find that
it is the unusual, divergent, innovative minority groups or individuals, who
—although frequently ridiculed at the time for their unusual ideas—end up
being respected for producing positive changes.

Another case where conformity does not occur is when people feel that their
freedom is being threatened by influence attempts, yet they also have the
ability to resist that persuasion. In these cases they may develop a strong
emotional reaction that leads people to resist pressures to conform known
as psychological reactance (Miron & Brehm, 2006). Reactance is aroused
when our ability to choose which behaviors to engage in is eliminated or
threatened with elimination. The outcome of the experience of reactance is
that people may not conform at all, in fact moving their opinions or
behaviors away from the desires of the influencer. Consider an experiment
conducted by Pennebaker and Sanders (1976), who attempted to get people
to stop writing graffiti on the walls of campus restrooms. In the first group
of restrooms they put a sign that read “Do not write on these walls under
any circumstances!” whereas in the second group they placed a sign that
simply said “Please don’t write on these walls.” Two weeks later, the
researchers returned to the restrooms to see if the signs had made a
difference. They found that there was significantly less graffiti in the second
group of restrooms than in the first one. It seems as if people who were
given strong pressures to not engage in the behavior were more likely to
react against those directives than were people who were given a weaker
message.

Reactance represents a desire to restore freedom that is being threatened. A

child who feels that his or her parents are forcing him to eat his asparagus
may react quite vehemently with a strong refusal to touch the plate. And an
adult who feels that she is being pressured by a car salesman might feel the
same way and leave the showroom entirely, resulting in the opposite of the
salesman’s intended outcome.
 Key Takeaways

Altruism is behavior that is designed to increase another person’s welfare, and

particularly those actions that do not seem to provide a direct reward to the person
who performs them. The tendency to help others in need is in part a functional
evolutionary adaptation and in part determined by environmental factors.

Although helping others can be costly to us as individuals, helping people who are
related to us can perpetuate our own genes. Some helping is based on reciprocal
altruism, the principle that if we help other people now, those others will return the
favor should we need their help in the future.

We also learn to help through modeling and reinforcement. The result of this
learning is norms about helping, including the reciprocity norm and the social
responsibility norm.

Research testing the Latané and Darley model of helping has shown the importance
of the social situation in noticing, interpreting, and acting in emergency situations.

Aggression is physical or nonphysical behavior that is intended to harm another

individual. Aggression has both genetic and environmental causes. The experience of
negative emotions tends to increase aggression.

Viewing violence tends to increase aggression.

The social norm that condones and even encourages responding to insults with
aggression is known as the culture of honor.

Conformity, the change in beliefs or behavior that occurs as the result of the presence
of the other people around us, can occur in both active and passive ways. The typical
outcome of conformity is that our beliefs and behaviors become more similar to
those of others around us.

The situation is the most powerful determinant of conformity, but individual

differences may also matter. The important influence of the social situation on
 conformity was demonstrated in the research by Sherif, Asch, Milgram, and others.

Minority influence can change attitudes and change how majorities process
information.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Consider a time when you were helpful. Was the behavior truly altruistic, or did you
help for selfish reasons?

2. Consider a time when you or someone you know was aggressive. What do you think
caused the aggression?

3. Should parents limit the amount of violent TV shows and video games that their
children are exposed to? Why or why not?

4. Is conformity a “good thing” or a “bad thing” for society? What determines whether
it is good or bad? What role do you think conformity played in Sam Spady’s death?

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14.3 Working With Others: The Costs and
Benefits of Social Groups

Learning Objectives

1. Summarize the advantages and disadvantages of working together in groups to

perform tasks and make decisions.

2. Review the factors that can increase group productivity.

Just as our primitive ancestors lived together in small social groups,

including families, tribes, and clans, people today still spend a great deal of
time in groups. We study together in study groups, we work together on
production lines, and we decide the fates of others in courtroom juries. We
work in groups because groups can be beneficial. A rock band that is writing
a new song or a surgical team in the middle of a complex operation may
coordinate their efforts so well that it is clear that the same outcome could
never have occurred if the individuals had worked alone. But group
performance will only be better than individual performance to the extent
that the group members are motivated to meet the group goals, effectively
share information, and efficiently coordinate their efforts. Because these
things do not always happen, group performance is almost never as good as
we would expect, given the number of individuals in the group, and may
even in some cases be inferior to that which could have been made by one
or more members of the group working alone.

Figure 14.14
Working groups are used to perform tasks and make decisions, but are they effective?

ResoluteSupportMedia – CC BY 2.0; Timothy Vollmer – CopyNight Washington DC at ALA office – CC BY 2.0.

Working in Front of Others: Social

Facilitation and Social Inhibition

In an early social psychological study, Norman Triplett (1898) found that

bicycle racers who were competing with other bicyclers on the same track
rode significantly faster than bicyclers who were racing alone, against the
clock. This led Triplett to hypothesize that people perform tasks better when
there are other people present than they do when they are alone. Subsequent
findings validated Triplett’s results, and experiments have shown that the
presence of others can increase performance on many types of tasks,
including jogging, shooting pool, lifting weights, and solving problems
(Bond & Titus, 1983). The tendency to perform tasks better or faster in the
presence of others is known as social facilitation.

However, although people sometimes perform better when they are in

groups than they do alone, the situation is not that simple. Perhaps you
remember an experience when you performed a task (playing the piano,
shooting basketball free throws, giving a public presentation) very well
alone but poorly with, or in front of, others. Thus it seems that the
conclusion that being with others increases performance cannot be entirely
true. The tendency to perform tasks more poorly or more slowly in the
presence of others is known as social inhibition.

Robert Zajonc (1965) explained the observed influence of others on task

performance using the concept of physiological arousal. According to
Zajonc, when we are with others we experience more arousal than we do
when we are alone, and this arousal increases the likelihood that we will
perform the dominant response, the action that we are most likely to emit in
any given situation (Figure 14.15 “Drive-Arousal Model of Social
Facilitation”).

Figure 14.15 Drive-Arousal Model of Social Facilitation

The most important aspect of Zajonc’s theory was that the experience of
arousal and the resulting increase in the occurrence of the dominant
response could be used to predict whether the presence of others would
produce social facilitation or social inhibition. Zajonc argued that when the
task to be performed was relatively easy, or if the individual had learned to
perform the task very well (a task such as pedaling a bicycle), the dominant
response was likely to be the correct response, and the increase in arousal
caused by the presence of others would create social facilitation. On the
other hand, when the task was difficult or not well learned (a task such as
giving a speech in front of others), the dominant response is likely to be the
incorrect one, and thus, because the increase in arousal increases the
occurrence of the (incorrect) dominant response, performance is hindered.

A great deal of experimental research has now confirmed these predictions.

A meta-analysis by Bond and Titus (1983), which looked at the results of
over 200 studies using over 20,000 research participants, found that the
presence of others significantly increased the rate of performing on simple
tasks, and also decreased both rate and quality of performance on complex
tasks.

Although the arousal model proposed by Zajonc is perhaps the most elegant,
other explanations have also been proposed to account for social facilitation
and social inhibition. One modification argues that we are particularly
influenced by others when we perceive that the others are evaluating us or
competing with us (Baron, 1986). In one study supporting this idea, Strube,
Miles, and Finch (1981) found that the presence of spectators increased
joggers’ speed only when the spectators were facing the joggers, so that the
spectators could see the joggers and assess their performance. The presence
of others did not influence joggers’ performance when the joggers were
facing in the other direction and thus could not see them.
Working Together in Groups

The ability of a group to perform well is determined by the characteristics of

the group members (e.g., are they knowledgeable and skilled?) as well as by
the group process—that is, the events that occur while the group is working
on the task. When the outcome of group performance is better than we
would expect given the individuals who form the group, we call the
outcome a group process gain, and when the group outcome is worse than
we would have expected given the individuals who form the group, we call
the outcome a group process loss.

One group process loss that may occur in groups is that the group members
may engage in social loafing, a group process loss that occurs when people
do not work as hard in a group as they do when they are working alone. In
one of the earliest social psychology experiments, Ringelmann (1913;
reported in Kravitz & Martin, 1986) had individual men, as well as groups
of various numbers of men, pull as hard as they could on ropes while he
measured the maximum amount that they were able to pull. As you can see
in Figure 14.16 “Group Process Loss”, although larger groups pulled harder
than any one individual, Ringelmann also found a substantial process loss.
In fact, the loss was so large that groups of three men pulled at only 85% of
their expected capability, whereas groups of eight pulled at only 37% of
their expected capability. This type of process loss, in which group
productivity decreases as the size of the group increases, has been found to
occur on a wide variety of tasks.

Figure 14.16 Group Process Loss

Ringlemann found that although more men pulled harder on a rope than fewer men did, there was a

substantial process loss in comparison to what would have been expected on the basis of their individual

performances.

Group process losses can also occur when group members conform to each
other rather than expressing their own divergent ideas. Groupthink is a
phenomenon that occurs when a group made up of members who may be
very competent and thus quite capable of making excellent decisions
nevertheless ends up, as a result of a flawed group process and strong
conformity pressures, making a poor decision (Baron, 2005; Janis, 2007).
Groupthink is more likely to occur in groups whose members feel a strong
group identity, when there is a strong and directive leader, and when the
group needs to make an important decision quickly. The problem is that
groups suffering from groupthink become unwilling to seek out or discuss
discrepant or unsettling information about the topic at hand, and the group
members do not express contradictory opinions. Because the group
members are afraid to express opinions that contradict those of the leader, or
to bring in outsiders who have other information, the group is prevented
from making a fully informed decision. Figure 14.17 “Causes and Outcomes
of Groupthink” summarizes the basic causes and outcomes of groupthink.

Figure 14.17 Causes and Outcomes of Groupthink

It has been suggested that groupthink was involved in a number of well-
known and important, but very poor, decisions made by government and
business groups, including the decision to invade Iraq made by President
Bush and his advisors in 2002, the crashes of two Space Shuttle missions in
1986 and 2003, and the decision of President John Kennedy and his
advisors to commit U.S. forces to help invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel
Castro in 1962. Analyses of the decision-making processes in these cases
have documented the role of conformity pressures.

As a result of the high levels of conformity in these groups, the group

begins to see itself as extremely valuable and important, highly capable of
making high-quality decisions, and invulnerable. The group members begin
to feel that they are superior and do not need to seek outside information.
Such a situation is conducive to terrible decision-making and resulting
fiascoes.

Psychology in Everyday Life: Do Juries Make Good Decisions?

Although many other countries rely on judges to make judgments in civil and criminal trials, the
jury is the foundation of the legal system in the United States. The notion of a “trial by one’s
peers” is based on the assumption that average individuals can make informed and fair decisions
when they work together in groups. But given the potential for group process losses, are juries
really the best way to approach these important decisions?

As a small working group, juries have the potential to produce either good or poor decisions,
depending on the outcome of the characteristics of the individual members as well as the group
process. In terms of individual group characteristics, people who have already served on juries
are more likely to be seen as experts, are more likely to be chosen to be the jury foreman, and
give more input during the deliberation. It has also been found that status matters; jury members
with higher status occupations and education, males rather than females, and those who talk first
are more likely be chosen as the foreman, and these individuals also contribute more to the jury
discussion (Stasser, Kerr, & Bray, 1982).

However, although at least some member characteristics have an influence on jury decision
making, group process plays a more important role in the outcome of jury decisions than do
member characteristics. Like any group, juries develop their own individual norms, and these
norms can have a profound impact on how they reach their decision. Analysis of group process
within juries shows that different juries take very different approaches to reaching a verdict.
Some spend a lot of time in initial planning, whereas others immediately jump into the
deliberation. Some juries base their discussion around a review and reorganization of the
evidence, waiting to make a vote until it has all been considered, whereas other juries first
determine which decision is preferred in the group by taking a poll and then (if the first vote
does not lead to a final verdict) organize their discussion around these opinions. These two
approaches are used quite equally but may in some cases lead to different decisions (Davis,
Stasson, Ono, & Zimmerman, 1988).

Perhaps most importantly, conformity pressures have a strong impact on jury decision making.
As you can see in Figure 14.18 “Results From Stasser, Kerr, and Bray, 1982”, when there are a
greater number of jury members who hold the majority position, it becomes more and more
certain that their opinion will prevail during the discussion. This does not mean that minorities
can never be persuasive, but it is very difficult for them to do so. The strong influence of the
majority is probably due to both informational conformity (i.e., that there are more arguments
supporting the favored position) and normative conformity (the people on the majority side have
greater social influence).

Figure 14.18 Results From Stasser, Kerr, and Bray, 1982

 This figure shows the decisions of 6-member mock juries that made “majority rules” decisions. When the

majority of the 6 initially favored voting guilty, the jury almost always voted guilty; when the majority of

the 6 initially favored voting innocent, the jury almost always voted innocent. The juries were frequently

hung (could not make a decision) when the initial split was 3–3.

Adapted from Stasser, G., Kerr, N. L., & Bray, R. M. (1982). The social psychology of jury deliberations:

Structure, process and product. In N. L. Kerr & R. M. Bray (Eds.), The psychology of the courtroom (pp.

221–256). New York, NY: Academic Press.

Given the potential difficulties that groups face in making good decisions, you might be worried
that the verdicts rendered by juries may not be particularly effective, accurate, or fair. However,
despite these concerns, the evidence suggests that juries may not do as badly as we would
expect. The deliberation process seems to cancel out many individual juror biases, and the
importance of the decision leads the jury members to carefully consider the evidence itself.

Using Groups Effectively

Taken together, working in groups has both positive and negative outcomes.
On the positive side, it makes sense to use groups to make decisions because
people can create outcomes working together that any one individual could
not hope to accomplish alone. In addition, once a group makes a decision,
the group will normally find it easier to get other people to implement it,
because many people feel that decisions made by groups are fairer than are
those made by individuals.

Yet groups frequently succumb to process losses, leading them to be less

effective than they should be. Furthermore, group members often don’t
realize that the process losses are occurring around them. For instance,
people who participate in brainstorming groups report that they have been
more productive than those who work alone, even if the group has actually
not done that well (Nijstad, Stroebe, Lodewijkx, 2006; Stroebe, Diehl, &
Abakoumkin, 1992). The tendency for group members to overvalue the
productivity of the groups they work in is known as the illusion of group
productivity, and it seems to occur for several reasons. For one, the
productivity of the group as a whole is highly accessible, and this
productivity generally seems quite good, at least in comparison to the
contributions of single individuals. The group members hear many ideas
expressed by themselves and the other group members, and this gives the
impression that the group is doing very well, even if objectively it is not.
And, on the affective side, group members receive a lot of positive social
identity from their group memberships. These positive feelings naturally
lead them to believe that the group is strong and performing well.

What we need to do, then, is to recognize both the strengths and limitations
of group performance and use whatever techniques we can to increase
process gains and reduce process losses. Table 14.5 “Techniques That Can
Be Used to Improve Group Performance” presents some of the techniques
that are known to help groups achieve their goals.

Table 14.5 Techniques That Can Be Used to Improve Group Performance

Technique Example

Rewarding employees and team members with bonuses will increase their
Provide rewards for effort toward the group goal. People will also work harder in groups when
performance. they feel that they are contributing to the group goal than when they feel
that their contributions are not important.

Group members will work harder if they feel that their contributions to the
Keep group member
group are known and potentially seen positively by the other group
contributions
members than they will if their contributions are summed into the group
identifiable.
total and thus unknown (Szymanski & Harkins, 1987).

Maintain Workers who feel that their rewards are proportional to their efforts in the
distributive justice group will be happier and work harder than will workers who feel that they
(equity). are underpaid (Geurts, Buunk, & Schaufeli, 1994).

Larger groups are more likely to suffer from coordination problems and
Keep groups small. social loafing. The most effective working groups are of relatively small
size—about four or five members.

Group performance is increased when the group members care about the
Create positive ability of the group to do a good job (e.g., a cohesive sports or military
group norms. team). On the other hand, some groups develop norms that prohibit
members from working to their full potential and thus encourage loafing.

Leaders must work to be sure that each member of the group is encouraged
Improve to present the information that he or she has in group discussions. One
information sharing. approach to increasing full discussion of the issues is to have the group
break up into smaller subgroups for discussion.
 Technique Example

Groups take longer to reach consensus, and allowing plenty of time will
help keep the group from coming to premature consensus and making an
Allow plenty of
unwise choice. Time to consider the issues fully also allows the group to
time.
gain new knowledge by seeking information and analysis from outside
experts.

Groups that set specific, difficult, yet attainable goals (e.g., “improve sales
Set specific and by 10% over the next 6 months”) are more effective than groups that are
attainable goals. given goals that are not very clear (e.g., “let’s sell as much as we can!”;
Locke & Latham, 2006).

Sources: Szymanski, K., & Harkins, S. G. (1987). Social loafing and self-evaluation with a social
standard. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 53(5), 891–897; Geurts, S. A., Buunk, B. P., &
Schaufeli, W. B. (1994). Social comparisons and absenteeism: A structural modeling approach.
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24(21), 1871–1890; Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2006).
New directions in goal-setting theory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15(5), 265–268.

Key Takeaways

The performance of working groups is almost never as good as we would expect,

given the number of individuals in the group, and in some cases may even be inferior
to the performance of one or more members of the group working alone.

The tendency to perform tasks better or faster in the presence of others is known as
social facilitation. The tendency to perform tasks more poorly or more slowly in the
presence of others is known as social inhibition.

The ability of a group to perform well is determined by the characteristics of the

group members as well as by the events that occur in the group itself—the group
process.
 One group process loss that may occur in groups is that the group members may
engage in social loafing. Group process losses can also occur as a result of
groupthink, when group members conform to each other rather than expressing their
own divergent ideas.

Taken together, working in groups has both positive and negative outcomes. It is
important to recognize both the strengths and limitations of group performance and
use whatever techniques we can to increase process gains and reduce process losses.

Exercise and Critical Thinking

1. Consider a time when you worked together with others in a group. Do you think the
group experienced group process gains or group process losses? If the latter, what
might you do now in a group to encourage effective group performance?

References

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Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 19).
New York, NY: Academic Press.

Baron, R. S. (2005). So right it’s wrong: Groupthink and the ubiquitous

nature of polarized group decision making. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances
in experimental social psychology (Vol. 37, pp. 219–253). San Diego, CA:
Elsevier Academic Press

Bond, C. F., & Titus, L. J. (1983). Social facilitation: A meta-analysis of 241

studies. Psychological Bulletin, 94(2), 265–292.
Davis, J. H., Stasson, M. F., Ono, K., & Zimmerman, S. (1988). Effects of
straw polls on group decision making: Sequential voting pattern, timing, and
local majorities. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 55(6), 918–
926.

Janis, I. L. (2007). Groupthink. In R. P. Vecchio (Ed.), Leadership:

Understanding the dynamics of power and influence in organizations (2nd
ed., pp. 157–169). Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Kravitz, D. A., & Martin, B. (1986). Ringelmann rediscovered: The original

article. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 936–941.

Nijstad, B. A., Stroebe, W., & Lodewijkx, H. F. M. (2006). The illusion of

group productivity: A reduction of failures explanation. European Journal of
Social Psychology, 36(1), 31–48.

Stasser, G., Kerr, N. L., & Bray, R. M. (1982). The social psychology of
jury deliberations: Structure, process and product. In N. L. Kerr & R. M.
Bray (Eds.), The psychology of the courtroom (pp. 221–256). New York,
NY: Academic Press.

Stroebe, W., Diehl, M., & Abakoumkin, G. (1992). The illusion of group
effectivity. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 18(5), 643–650.

Strube, M. J., Miles, M. E., & Finch, W. H. (1981). The social facilitation of
a simple task: Field tests of alternative explanations. Personality & Social
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Triplett, N. (1898). The dynamogenic factors in pacemaking and

competition. American Journal of Psychology, 9(4), 507–533.

Zajonc, R. B. (1965). Social facilitation. Science, 149, 269–274.

14.4 Chapter Summary

Social psychology is the scientific study of how we feel about, think about,
and behave toward the other people around us, and how those people
influence our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. A fundamental principle of
social psychology is that although we may not always be aware of it, our
cognitions, emotions, and behaviors are substantially influenced by the
people with whom we are interacting.

Our initial judgments of others are based in large part on what we see. The
physical features of other people—particularly their sex, race, age, and
physical attractiveness—are very salient, and we often focus our attention
on these dimensions. At least in some cases, people can draw accurate
conclusions about others on the basis of physical appearance.

Youth, symmetry, and averageness have been found to be cross-culturally

consistent determinants of perceived attractiveness, although different
cultures may also have unique beliefs about what is attractive.

We frequently use people’s appearances to form our judgments about them,

and these judgments may lead to stereotyping, prejudice, and
discrimination. We use our stereotypes and prejudices in part because they
are easy and we may be evolutionarily disposed to stereotyping. We can
change and learn to avoid using them through positive interaction with
members of other groups, practice, and education.

Liking and loving in friendships and close relationships are determined by

variables including similarity, disclosure, proximity, intimacy,
interdependence, commitment, passion, and responsiveness.
Causal attribution is the process of trying to determine the causes of
people’s behavior. Attributions may be made to the person, to the situation,
or to a combination of both. Although people are reasonably accurate in
their attributions, they may make self-serving attributions and fall victim to
the fundamental attribution error.

Attitudes refer to our relatively enduring evaluations of people and things.

Attitudes are important because they frequently (but not always) predict
behavior. Attitudes can be changed through persuasive communications.
Attitudes predict behavior better for some people than for others, and in
some situations more than others.

Our behaviors also influence our attitudes through the cognitive processes
of self-perception and the more emotional process of cognitive dissonance.

The tendency to help others in need is in part a functional evolutionary

adaptation. We help others to benefit ourselves and to benefit the others.
Reciprocal altruism leads us to help others now with the expectation those
others will return the favor should we need their help in the future. The
outcome of the reinforcement and modeling of altruism is the development
of social norms about helping, including the reciprocity norm and the social
responsibility norm. Latané and Darley’s model of helping proposes that the
presence of others can reduce noticing, interpreting, and responding to
emergencies.

Aggression may be physical or nonphysical. Aggression is activated in large

part by the amygdala and regulated by the prefrontal cortex. Testosterone is
associated with increased aggression in both males and females. Aggression
is also caused by negative experiences and emotions, including frustration,
pain, and heat. As predicted by principles of observational learning,
research evidence makes it very clear that, on average, people who watch
violent behavior become more aggressive.
The social norm that condones and even encourages responding to insults
with aggression, known as the culture of honor, is stronger among men who
live or were raised in the South and West than among men who are from or
living in the North and East.

We conform not only because we believe that other people have accurate
information and we want to have knowledge (informational conformity) but
also because we want to be liked by others (normative conformity). The
typical outcome of conformity is that our beliefs and behaviors become
more similar to those of others around us. Studies demonstrating the power
of conformity include those by Sherif and Asch, and Milgram’s work on
obedience.

Although majorities are most persuasive, numerical minorities that are

consistent and confident in their opinions may in some cases be able to be
persuasive.

The tendency to perform tasks better or faster in the presence of others is

known as social facilitation, whereas the tendency to perform tasks more
poorly or more slowly in the presence of others is known as social
inhibition. Zajonc explained the influence of others on task performance
using the concept of physiological arousal.

Working in groups involves both costs and benefits. When the outcome of
group performance is better than we would expect given the individuals
who form the group, we call the outcome a group process gain, and when
the group outcome is worse that we would have expected given the
individuals who form the group, we call the outcome a group process loss.

Process losses are observed in phenomena such as social loafing,

groupthink. Process losses can be reduced by better motivation and
coordination among the group members, by keeping contributions
identifiable, and by providing difficult but attainable goals.