Final Flashcards
BPD
inconsistent and unstable behaviours and emotions
Impacts all areas of life (sleep. relationships, work)
Doesnt fit with trait psychology
Medicalization
Interpret behaviour in medical terms
Treat personality medically
Historical and contemporary
People with mental illness suffered stigma and degradation - viewed as less than human
More likely to be victims of abuse
Behavioural functional analysis
How consistent are abnormal behaviours - are there specific triggers?
Has inter rater reliability
MMPI and validity scales
identifies psychological distortions
Comparing likes of patients to like of visitors at institution
Validity scale: lie scale - is there social desirability
F scale: rating self as different from others (frequency)
K scale: defensiveness
Impulsive rage cases
mania w/o delirium
Erotomania
obsession with another person
stalking
Feelings of inadequacy = avoidant behaviour = passive aggressiveness
What causes personality disorder according to domains
Psychoanalysis: unconscious mechanisms and social maladjustments
Behaviourism: personal interactions
Cognitive: cognition and emotional responses, maladaptive info processing
Trait: too much personality
Cross cultural: tolerance threshold differs
Trait excess
too much on either end of major trait
Types of stress
Eustress = good stress
Positive event
Motivating at optimal level of arousal
Distress: bad stress
Strain: effects of bad stress
Residual stress: stress from one situation carrying over to others
Physical stressors
Noise: any unwanted sound
Temperature: hot people are angry
Light: too much or too little can be stressful
Vibrations: cause stress, ex. swaying on boats
Responses to stress
Physiological: blood pressure goes up, ulcers, cortisol
Psychological: affect: anger, hostility, depression
behavioural: accidents, quitting job/ school, drugs, theft, abusing partner
Stress mediators
Social support
Predictability of stress
Understandability of tasks/ work
Controllability of stressors
Personality factors that reduce stress
low neuroticism/ high emotional stability
Reflector
fairly accurate representation of themselves on the internet, uses online spaces for communication
Enhanced or amplifier
not happy with real life so puts a better version of themselves online
Provides opportunity for grandstanding: presenting self in exaggerated, flamboyant way
Used to impress others
Tend to dislike these people when you know they’re not
Use the online world to improve the self
Transformer
change self in how they appear online
Use of completely different persona
Separator
limiting reflectors, online self discloses online and not in person
People open with online community but not with real people
Maybe open about sexuality in group online, but aren’t out to their real life friends and family
Dimension of personality
Live in two different psychological realities - digital vs physical
May include use of AI and fake people/ personalities
Use of avatars and fake names, also talking openly about problems online, come across as shy - transformer + separator
Privacy barriers
Breach of privacy: others discover what you do online
Invasion of privacy: inability to keep some information to self
Everyone is hackable
Women are more worried about privacy then men especially with postings
Reputation
“sum of images” (any digital footprint) of another individual
Positive opinion of sum of images means you like the person
Reputation only makes sense if there’s another person, not talking about self satisfaction, but how you think people perceive you
Three premises of evolutionary psych
Domain-specificity: adaptations are designed by evolutionary process to solve specialized adaptive problems
Numerousness: expectation is that there are many psychological adaptations, different adaptations are required to solve different problems
Functionality: psychological adaptations are designed to accomplish particular “adaptive” goals
Hierarchy levels of analysis
General evolutionary theory (top)
Middle level evolutionary theories
Specific hypotheses
Specific, testable, falsifiable predictions (bottom)
Two ways of generating theories
Deductive: top down, start with theory, theory drives how you think people will react
Inductive: bottom up, generating theory based on observations/ data
Exploratory analysis at human nature level
The need to belong (may lead to social anxiety)
Helping altruism
Universal emotions
Need to belong:
Humans evolved to live in groups
Consequently an individual who is shunned by a group will feel anxious
Altruism and helping:
Tendency to help kin under life or death versus everyday conditions
Genetic overlap predicts the tendency to help, especially under life or death conditions
More likely to help a direct relative then a distant relative
Altruism is heritable approx 50% and linked to other personality dimensions
Altruism predictions/ big 5
heritable 50%
Positive correlations with agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness
Four dimensions of altruism:
General helping
Helping family
Helping friends
Helping strangers
General helping predicted by:
Being older - could be due to more resources
Integrity
Risk-taking
Helping family predicted by:
Having good sense of humour
Helping friends:
Being younger
Helping strangers:
Being masculine
Being religious