Psych Unit 17 and 11 (communication section only) Flashcards

Question

Alcohol Effects on Sexual Disorders

Answer 1

3 categories: short-term pharmacological effects, expectancy effects, and long term effects - many people think alcohol will loosen them up - expectancy and pharmacological effects interact with each other - at high doses, alcohol can be a depressant and sexual arousal is suppressed

Answer 2

- some people think weed is an aphrodisiac - small amount of weed can increase sexual desire and make sexual intercations better (large amounts inhibit sexual functioning) - weed can cause risky sexual behavior - CBD can reduce the size of testes and hormones Cannabinoids: active drug in weed - effects depend on gender women: low doses increase sexual desire and sexual pleasure men: moderate doses increase sexual desire but can also cause erectile dysfunction

Answer 3

- enhances sexual experiences - delays orgasm chronic cocaine users: - loss of sexual desire, orgasmic disorder, and erectile disorder - the effects depend on how you ingest the cocaine - regularly injecting cocaine has the worst sexual effects

Answer 4

amphetamines: increase sexual desire (stimulants) crystal meth: people do risky behaviors - can lead to paranoia, hallucinations, and violence Opiods: suppress sexual desire and response - long-term use of heroin can decrease testosterone levels in men

Answer 5

- drugs to treat schizophrenia can cause dry orgasm in men (orgasm but no ejaculation) - antidepressants can improve sexual repsonse - SSRIs can delay orgasm and decrease sexual arousal in men and women

Answer 6

Prior Learning = the things that people learned earlier ex: learned things in childhood that inhibit your sexual response

Answer 7

anxieties: anxiety during a sexual interaction can cause sexual disorders - fear of being unable to preform strongly effects men cognitive interference: thoughts that distract the person from focusing on sexual experience - the problem = attention - ex: thinking about if their techique is good spectatoring= the person behaves like a judge of their own sexual performance cognitive interference and anxiety: - Barlow found that the fucntional and dysfunctional group respond very differently to sexual stimuli ex: anxiety increase the arousal of functional men but decreases the arousal of dysfunctional men - dysfunctional men underestimate their physical arousal but functional men report an accurate report

Answer 8

failure to communicate with partner can cause problems ex: a woman who needs a lot of clitoral stimulation to have an orgasm doesn’t tell her partner this so she doesn’t get the stimulation she needs to have an orgasm

Answer 9

- this happens because of ignorance ex: some couples go to sex therapy because the wife can't orgasm - the therapist learns the wife and husband don't know where the clitoris is **this problem can be fixed by education

Answer 10

in some sexual disorders, people's sexual experience were traumatic, which affects them behaviors causing sexual disorders: - kids with parents who had seductive behavior - victims of child sexual abuse - kids who grew up with strict, religious families (taught that sex is bad) - when parents punish kid for sexual behavior (ex: masturbating) - parents teaching kids about the double standard

Answer 11

- depression is associated with erectile disorder - anger and sadness can cause sexual responding issues - disgust can inhibit arousal

Answer 12

- smoking, drinking, and obesity all can cause sexual disorders ex: a study of obese men showed that regular exercise reduced their BMI which reduced their frequency of erectile disorder

Answer 13

part 1: excitation - responding with arousal to sexual stimuli part 2: inhibition - not responding to sexual stimuli **The idea is that people who are low on sexual excitation and high on sexual inhibition are likely to get sexual disorders

Answer 14

- the idea is that we function well sexually when we are physiologically aroused and intepret that as sexual arousal - Barlow thinks that people with sexual disorder think that their anxiety causes it study of women: - the women who were exposed to a scary movie and told that they were sexually aroused, were aroused more in following sessions

Answer 15

- anger or resentment towards your partner - sex can be used as a weapon to hurt ur partner (witholding it) - being afraid of intimacy

Answer 16

this new view is developed by therapists - they critique the DSM argues that it has 3 flaws: - they treat male and female sexuality as the same - they ignore the relational context - they ignore the differences between women and variations in women's sexuality

Answer 17

- ignorance and anxiety due to bad sex education - lack of access to health services - sexual avoidance or distress bc of inability to preform - inhibitions between the person's cultural norms and the dominant culture

Answer 18

- sexual inhibition or distress bc of fear and distrust - different preferences in sexual activity - poor sexual communication - loss of interest bc of conflict over money or infertility - loss of arousal bc of sexual problems or bad health

Answer 19

- has roots in behavioritism and learning theory - thinks sex problems happen bc of prior learning and keep happening bc of ongoing reinforcements or punishments - thinks the sexual problem can be unlearned by new conditioning - they use systematic desensitization (client led thru excerises that reduce anxiety)

Answer 20

- thought sexual disorders were learned and not an illness - had a 2 week program of intense therapy - wanted to eliminate goal-oriented sexual performance - didn't want people to think they could fail at sex

Answer 21

- couple can't have sex unless the therapist allows them to - the couple does the exercises given gradually, and eventually they can have sex and the disorder is gone - idea is based on that touching is important

Answer 22

a system of training people in mindfulness practices: their goal is to help people regulate their own negative emotions - can also do mindfulness therapy online (a lot of ppl did this during COVID)

Answer 23

used when they think the sex problem comes from a problem in the relationship - sex problems can cause conflict and conflicts can cause sex problems they use a 5 part model

Answer 24

this is used to treat premature ejaculation - the woman uses her hand to get the man to have an erection - when she stops touching him, he loses the erection - she starts stimulating him again, and gets an erection (this goes on and on) - the man eventually learns that he can have an erection without having an orgasm

Answer 25

masturabtion, kegal excerises, bibliotherapy (self-help book)

Answer 26

can treat erectile disorder - doesn't produce an erection but helps men get an erection once sexually stimulated - not many side effects - allows blood flow by relaxing the corpora cavernosa - it works by blocking an enzyme which relaxes the muscles in the arteries of the penis to allow blood flow

Answer 27

treatment for erectile disorder - injects drug into corpora cavernosa - they are vasodilators --- they open the blood vessels in the penis so more blood can get to it, producing an erection

Answer 28

- primary orgasmic disorder in women is treated with masturbation - treatments for acquired orgasmic dysfunction are less successful - premature ejaculation can be treated with antidepressants and CBT - vaginismus can be treated with vaginal dialators, relaxation, PT, and kegal excercises

Answer 29

"prevention is better than cure" - communicate with partner about what you want - don't be a spectator (don't feel like you're putting on a performance) - be choosy about the sitations for when u have sex - failures will happen and that's okay

Answer 30

- when people seek therapy for sex problems, the distressed couple usually don't communicate as well as the non-distressed couples

Answer 31

a lot of research about relationships is from John Gottman (Dr. In clinical psych) - him and his wife are very famous - they established the Gottman Institute for research on romantic relationships and communication

Answer 32

measure something at one time point, and measure something else at another time point - there are many studies that look at communication over time self-report: ask couples how negative they think their communication style is - might videotape them and ask them to make a list of their problems (code the video for negative and positive emotion) study: followed couples until their 5th anniversay - the people who divorced during the time reported more negative communication patterns before marriage and their videos were coded more negatively

Answer 33

predicts divorce by 4 things: 1. critisim -- verbally attacking 2. contempt -- intentionally insulting or verbally abusing the other person 3. defensiveness -- not taking ownership of your mistakes and deflecting onto the other person 4. withdrawl (stonewalling) - refuse to discuss with them

Answer 34

created the longtitudinal method method: brought in couples to talk about their source of conflict while being videotaped - said it was possible to predict the likliehood of the marriage ending in divorce within a 6 year period (he said he could predict this by looking at the first 3 mins of the video) for straight couples: the husband's change in emotional expression was the key predictor of couple longevity (the wife's expression didn't predict anything) - husbands who show a fast escalation of negative emotion and fast decline of positive emotions during the first few mins of the conflict discussion later divorced VS. husbands who maintained non-verbal joy, affection and humor during conflict discussion stayed together

Answer 35

pattern - predictive if couples will stay together - when one partner critisizes or demands and the other partner responds by shutting down (withdrawing) - it's predictive of divorce if the wife demands and the husband withdraws - queer couples tend to display more positive emotions and fewer negative emotions - this is probably related to the fact that there's more equality in their relationship which promotes better communication

Answer 36

this is important - telling your partner personal things about yourself - this is associated with sexual satisfaction - stimulates reciprocity (the partner is likley to self-disclose if you self-disclose first)

Answer 37

intent = what you mean to say impact = what the listener thinks you mean - when the intent and impact match, the communication is more effective

Answer 38

speak for yourself and avoid mind-reading - "I" language is less likley to make your partner defensive ex: Samantha says: "I feel sad when you.."

Answer 39

giving specific examples (Samantha giving an example of when she didn’t orgasm) - helpful to give a specific action after giving the example

Answer 40

telling your partner what you’re feelings are by stating your thoughts clearly and honestly - this is usually the hardest part in communication

Answer 41

censoring or not saying things that would be deliberately hurtful or irrelevant - Need to balance leveling and editing

Answer 42

what you do when listening - ex: nodding head

Answer 43

actively trying to hear and understand what the other is saying - a partner's responsiveness to sexual talk during sexual interaction is strongly associated with sexual satisfaction - maintain eye contact and nod head - Be a nondefensive listener – focus on what your partner is saying and feeling, and don’t immediately become defensive - Give feedback after you listen nondefensively -- Facial movements or sounds that show you are listening

Answer 44

saying in your own words what you thought your partner said

Answer 45

Validating: telling your partner that, given their POV, you understand why they might feel a certain way - you don't have to agree with them, just validate -

Answer 46

Drawing your partner out: what can we do to make things better

Answer 47

not only the words, but how we say them (our body language, expression, tone of voice) - Distressed couples are more likely to be negative listeners

Answer 48

there's different norms for communication in different culture - ex: eye contact is a sign of respect in some cultures but in others it's disrespectful - men of color are less likely to hold eye contact so they seem less threatneing

Answer 49

You will always have an argument in a relationship, even if you have amazing communication

Answer 50

- no sarcastic or insulting remarks - don't bring up former partners - don't play a psychologist - don't bring kids into the argument - no dumping (don't store things you dislike and then unload them) - don't hit and run - don't focus on blame

Answer 51

gottman came up with this rule for positive communication in stable marriages: positive to negative ratio is 5 positive for every 1 negative - it's good to bring up positives - there has to be a lot more positivity than negativity for a marriage to feel good - nondistressed couples make more positive and few negative comments than distressed couples

Answer 52

- we have different gender roles for boys and girls (boys and girls are socialized so differently that they may as well come from different cultures) - stems from different communication goals - people think this leads to a lot of miscommunication other side of argument: - they think that the genders communicate similarily and there's little evidence in difference between men and women communication - the data supports the view that the genders are similar

Answer 53

making certain assumptions about what the other is thinking Ex: Samantha assumes that Jose doesn’t know anything about women having orgasms

Answer 54

a technique of good messages - Offering a set of acceptable options (would you like to talk about it now or later?)

Answer 55

- some messages are very direct (ex: I want to have sex with you after lunch) - most people use indirect signals for sexual interest - ambigious messages can lead to feelings of hurt or rejection - don't make assumptions about the meaning of ambigious messages

Answer 56

- in the 1980s, relationship programs were established in education - most of the focus was on developing better communication and problem solving skills Randomized Control Trials showed: - couple relationship education is effective in improving relationship satisfaction and communication skills compared to the control group

Psych Unit 17 and 11 (communication section only) Flashcards

(80 cards)