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Issues and options in Psychology flashcards

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3.3.1 Issues and debates in Psychology

Alpha bias vs beta bias: Alpha bias exaggerates differences between the sexes (e.g. Freud's claim that girls develop a weaker superego). Beta bias ignores or minimises differences (e.g. stress research on males applied to females).
Androcentrism: Treating male behaviour as the normal standard.
Ethnocentrism vs cultural relativism: Ethnocentrism: seeing your own culture's behaviour as normal or superior. Cultural relativism: behaviour can only be understood in its own cultural context.
Imposed etic: Using a tool from one culture as if it were universal.
Hard vs soft determinism: Hard determinism: all behaviour is caused and free will is an illusion. Soft determinism: behaviour is caused, but some conscious choice remains within limits.
Biological, environmental and psychic determinism: Biological: behaviour caused by genes, hormones or the brain. Environmental: caused by learning and reinforcement. Psychic: caused by unconscious forces and early experience.
What is the interactionist approach to nature and nurture?: Nature and nurture work together to produce behaviour, e.g. the diathesis-stress model, where a vulnerability becomes a disorder only when triggered by stress.
Biological vs environmental reductionism: Biological reductionism explains behaviour at the level of physiology (e.g. neural explanations of OCD). Environmental reductionism reduces behaviour to learned stimulus-response links.
Idiographic vs nomothetic approach: Idiographic: in-depth study of the individual, usually qualitative (e.g. Freud's case studies). Nomothetic: studying groups to find general laws, usually quantitative (e.g. Milgram).
What did Sieber and Stanley (1988) say about socially sensitive research?: Research with potential social consequences for participants or the group they represent. Issues can arise at four points: the research question, the conduct of the research, the institutional context, and the interpretation and application of findings.

3.3.2 Relationships

Matching hypothesis: People seek partners of similar attractiveness to themselves, balancing desirability against the risk of rejection.
What are the three filters in filter theory (Kerckhoff and Davis, 1962)?: In order: social demography (background factors deciding who we meet), similarity in attitudes (important early) and complementarity (partners meeting each other's different needs, important later).
Comparison level (CL) vs comparison level for alternatives (CLalt): CL: the reward we expect from a relationship, based on experience. CLalt: whether another relationship, or being single, would be more profitable. Social exchange theory (Thibaut and Kelley, 1959) says we stay if profit beats both.
How does equity theory differ from social exchange theory?: Social exchange theory says partners seek the most profit. Equity theory (Walster et al., 1978) says they seek a fair ratio of inputs to outputs, so being over-benefited (guilt) is uncomfortable as well as being under-benefited (anger).
What predicts commitment in Rusbult's investment model?: Satisfaction, comparison with alternatives and investment (intrinsic and extrinsic). Rusbult and Martz (1995) found women with more investment and fewer alternatives were more likely to return to an abusive partner.
What are the phases of Duck's phase model of relationship breakdown?: Intra-psychic (brooding privately), dyadic (confronting the partner), social (telling friends and family, who take sides) and grave dressing (creating a story of the breakup that protects reputation). Each is triggered by a threshold.
Hyperpersonal model vs reduced cues theory: Reduced cues theory (Sproull and Kiesler, 1986): fewer non-verbal cues online, so less disclosure. Hyperpersonal model (Walther, 1996): selective self-presentation leads to faster, deeper disclosure online.
Name the three levels of parasocial relationship on the Celebrity Attitude Scale: Entertainment-social, intense-personal and borderline-pathological.

3.3.3 Gender

Klinefelter's syndrome vs Turner syndrome: Klinefelter's: XXY, male, lower testosterone, usually infertile. Turner syndrome: one X chromosome (XO), female, short stature, ovaries develop atypically.
Androgen insensitivity syndrome: XY; cells do not respond (fully or partly) to androgens.
How does the Bem Sex Role Inventory (Bem, 1974) measure gender?: 60 traits (20 masculine, 20 feminine, 20 neutral) rated on a 7-point scale. Masculinity and femininity are scored separately, giving four classifications: masculine, feminine, androgynous (high on both) and undifferentiated.
Gender stability vs gender constancy (Kohlberg): Gender stability: knowing gender is stable over time, but not across situations. Gender constancy: knowing gender is stable over time and situations; Kohlberg says active gender learning starts here, at about 6.
How does gender schema theory (Martin and Halverson) differ from Kohlberg?: Gender learning starts with basic gender identity (about 2 to 3), not constancy. Children build detailed in-group schemas about their own gender and largely ignore out-group schemas.
What did Slaby and Frey (1975) find?: Children who had higher gender constancy attended more to a same-sex model in a film (significant for boys only), supporting Kohlberg.
What did Williams (1986) find in the "Notel" study?: In a Canadian town studied before and after television arrived, children's gender stereotyping increased, suggesting the media influence gender roles.
Gender incongruence: The ICD-11 term for a marked, persistent mismatch between experienced gender and sex assigned at birth. ICD-11 classifies it under conditions related to sexual health, not as a mental disorder.

3.3.4 Cognition and development

Assimilation vs accommodation: Assimilation: fitting new information into an existing schema without changing it. Accommodation: changing a schema, or forming a new one, because new information does not fit. Equilibration restores balance.
Name Piaget's four stages of intellectual development: Sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operational.
Conservation vs class inclusion vs egocentrism: Conservation: knowing quantity stays the same when only appearance changes. Class inclusion: a sub-class is part of a larger class. Egocentrism: seeing the world only from your own viewpoint (e.g. the three mountains task).
What did McGarrigle and Donaldson (1974) show with Naughty Teddy?: More children conserved number when the change looked accidental (caused by Naughty Teddy), suggesting Piaget's tasks underestimated children because of how they were worded.
Zone of proximal development vs scaffolding: ZPD (Vygotsky): the gap between what a learner can do alone and with expert help. Scaffolding (term from Wood, Bruner and Ross, 1976): temporary expert support, reduced as the learner gains skill.
What is violation of expectation research (Baillargeon)?: A method using longer looking at an impossible event as a sign of surprise, e.g. 5-month-olds looked longer at an "impossible" drawbridge rotation, suggesting infants have physical knowledge earlier than Piaget claimed.
What did Baron-Cohen, Leslie and Frith (1985) find with the Sally-Anne task?: About 85% of typically developing children and 86% of children with Down syndrome passed the false belief task, compared with 20% of autistic children.
What is the mirror neuron system's proposed role in social cognition?: Mirror neurons fire both when you act and when you watch the same action, which may help us understand others' intentions (e.g. Iacoboni et al., 2005). The evidence is correlational.

3.3.5 Schizophrenia

Hallucination vs delusion: A hallucination is a sensory experience with no external stimulus (a perception). A delusion is a firmly held belief not supported by evidence (a belief).
Speech poverty vs avolition: Speech poverty: reduced amount and quality of speech, brief empty replies. Avolition: reduced ability to start and keep up goal-directed activity. Both are negative symptoms.
Co-morbidity vs symptom overlap: Co-morbidity: two conditions present in the same person at once. Symptom overlap: different conditions sharing symptoms. Both make diagnosis less reliable, for different reasons.
What did Gottesman (1991) find about genetic risk?: Risk of schizophrenia was about 48% for an identical twin, 17% for a non-identical twin, 9% for a sibling and 1% in the general population. Identical twin concordance below 100% shows it is not purely genetic.
Original vs revised dopamine hypothesis: Original: too much subcortical dopamine (hyperdopaminergia), linked to positive symptoms. Revised (Davis et al., 1991): also too little prefrontal dopamine (hypodopaminergia), linked to negative symptoms.
Expressed emotion (EE): A family's level of criticism, hostility and emotional over-involvement. Brown, Birley and Wing (1972) found more relapse in people returning to high-EE homes; it explains relapse better than onset.
What is Frith's (1992) dysfunctional thought processing explanation?: Faulty metarepresentation (not recognising one's thoughts as one's own, e.g. hearing voices) and faulty central control (failing to suppress automatic responses, e.g. derailed speech).
What did Tienari et al. (2004) show about the diathesis-stress model?: In a Finnish adoption study, genetic risk led to schizophrenia mainly when the adoptive family was dysfunctional, supporting an interaction between vulnerability and stress.

3.3.6 Eating behaviour

Neophobia vs taste aversion: Neophobia: reluctance to eat unfamiliar foods, thought to protect young children from toxins. Taste aversion: learned avoidance of a food after it has been followed by illness, which can form after one pairing.
Ghrelin vs leptin: Ghrelin: released by the stomach when empty; increases hunger ("go"). Leptin: released by fat tissue; signals satiety and reflects energy stores ("stop").
Lateral vs ventromedial hypothalamus in the dual-centre model: The lateral hypothalamus (LH) is linked to starting eating: LH damage stops eating. The ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) is linked to stopping eating: VMH damage causes overeating.
What did Holland et al. (1988) find about anorexia nervosa?: Twins showed higher concordance for anorexia nervosa in MZ than DZ pairs, supporting a genetic explanation; MZ concordance was well below 100%.
What is enmeshment in family systems theory?: Family members are over-involved with weak boundaries between them. Minuchin et al. (1978) linked enmeshment, over-protection and conflict avoidance to anorexia nervosa; Bruch (1978) stressed lack of autonomy and control.
What did Becker et al. (2002) find in Fiji?: Soon after television arrived and three years later, the share of girls with high-risk eating-attitude scores rose from about 13% to about 29%, supporting social learning and media influence.
Restraint vs disinhibition: Restraint: a deliberate attempt to limit food intake. Disinhibition: breakdown of restraint, leading to overeating. Herman and Mack (1975) found restrained eaters ate more ice cream after a milkshake preload.
What is the boundary model (Herman and Polivy, 1984)?: Intake is set by a hunger boundary and a satiety boundary. Dieters have a wider zone between them and a self-set diet boundary; once it is crossed, they overeat.

3.3.7 Stress

SAM pathway vs HPA system: SAM: fast, acute; hypothalamus → sympathetic nervous system → adrenal medulla → adrenaline. HPA: slower, chronic; hypothalamus releases CRH → pituitary releases ACTH → adrenal cortex releases cortisol.
What are the three stages of Selye's general adaptation syndrome?: Alarm, resistance and exhaustion, a response found to any prolonged stressor in rats (Selye, 1936).
What did Kiecolt-Glaser et al. (1984) find?: Medical students' natural killer cell activity was lower during exams than a month before, and lonelier students had lower immune function: evidence of immunosuppression by stress.
Life changes vs daily hassles: Life changes are rare, major events needing readjustment, measured by the SRRS (Holmes and Rahe, 1967). Daily hassles are frequent minor irritations; Kanner et al. (1981) found they predicted symptoms better than life events.
What did Marmot et al. (1997) find about workplace stress?: In over 7,000 London civil servants (Whitehall II), low job control made the largest contribution to higher coronary heart disease in lower grades.
Type A vs Type B vs Type C personality: Type A: competitive, time-urgent, hostile. Type B: relaxed, patient. Type C: emotionally suppressed, cooperative, unassertive.
What are the three Cs of hardiness (Kobasa)?: Commitment, challenge and control, said to buffer the effects of stress.
Stress inoculation therapy vs biofeedback: SIT (Meichenbaum): a cognitive-behavioural therapy in three phases (conceptualisation, skills acquisition and rehearsal, application and follow-through). Biofeedback: learning to control a body response using real-time information about it.
Instrumental vs emotional vs esteem support: Instrumental: practical help. Emotional: care and listening. Esteem: boosting belief in your own ability.

3.3.8 Aggression

What roles do the limbic system, serotonin and testosterone play in aggression?: Limbic system (e.g. the amygdala) assesses threat and triggers emotional responses. Low serotonin is linked to impulsive aggression. Testosterone is linked to dominance and male aggression.
What is the MAOA gene, and what did Caspi et al. (2002) find?: MAOA codes for an enzyme that breaks down serotonin; the low-activity variant is linked to aggression. In Dunedin, maltreated boys with high-activity MAOA were less likely to become antisocial: a gene-environment interaction.
Innate releasing mechanism vs fixed action pattern: An IRM is an inborn neural process triggered by a specific stimulus. A FAP is the universal, ballistic behaviour sequence it releases, e.g. Tinbergen's (1951) sticklebacks attacking a red underside.
Frustration-aggression hypothesis: original vs revised: Dollard et al. (1939): frustration always leads to aggression. Berkowitz: frustration makes aggression more likely, especially with aggressive cues (e.g. guns in Berkowitz and LePage, 1967).
De-individuation: Loss of personal identity and self-awareness in crowds or under anonymity, e.g. hooded participants gave longer shocks (Zimbardo, 1969).
Importation vs deprivation model of institutional aggression: Importation (dispositional): prisoners bring aggressive traits and norms into prison (Irwin and Cressey, 1962). Deprivation (situational): prison conditions cause aggression, e.g. Sykes's (1958) pains of imprisonment.
Desensitisation vs disinhibition vs cognitive priming: Desensitisation: reduced emotional and physical response to violence after repeated exposure. Disinhibition: media make violence seem normal, weakening restraints. Cognitive priming: media activate aggressive thoughts that cues later trigger.

3.3.9 Forensic Psychology

Organised vs disorganised offender: Organised: plans the crime, controls the victim, leaves few clues, socially competent. Disorganised: little planning, spontaneous scene, evidence left behind, often lives alone near the scene.
Top-down vs bottom-up offender profiling: Top-down (typology): matching a crime scene to a pre-existing type, from FBI interviews (Ressler, Burgess and Douglas, 1988). Bottom-up (data-driven, investigative psychology): building a profile from statistical patterns in past crimes (Canter).
Marauder vs commuter in geographical profiling: A marauder offends near home, inside the circle drawn through the two furthest crimes. A commuter travels away from home to offend (Canter and Larkin, 1993).
What did Raine et al. (1997) find?: PET scans of 41 murderers and 41 controls showed lower prefrontal activity in the murderers, supporting a neural explanation; the data are correlational.
What is Eysenck's theory of the criminal personality?: Offenders score high on extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism (measured by the EPQ), with an innate nervous system that conditions poorly, so they are poorly socialised.
Hostile attribution bias vs minimalisation: Hostile attribution bias: interpreting ambiguous behaviour of others as hostile. Minimalisation: downplaying the seriousness or harm of one's own offence.
What is differential association theory?: Offending is learned through attitudes and techniques from close groups such as family and friends, so the balance of pro- and anti-criminal attitudes predicts offending.
Token economy vs restorative justice: Token economy: operant conditioning, tokens for target behaviours exchanged for privileges. Restorative justice: the offender meets the victim with a mediator and takes responsibility (Sherman and Strang, 2007, found reduced reoffending for some).

3.3.10 Addiction

Physical vs psychological dependence: Physical dependence shows in withdrawal symptoms; psychological dependence shows in craving and compulsion. Gambling shows psychological dependence without a drug.
Tolerance vs withdrawal: Tolerance is about needing more while using; withdrawal is about what happens when use stops.
What did Vink, Willemsen and Boomsma (2005) find about smoking?: In 1,572 Dutch twin pairs, genes explained 44% of smoking initiation and 75% of nicotine dependence, showing genetic vulnerability.
How does dopamine explain nicotine addiction?: Nicotine binds to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, triggering dopamine release in the mesolimbic reward pathway (to the nucleus accumbens), producing pleasure; adaptation leads to tolerance and withdrawal.
Cue reactivity: Craving and arousal triggered by cues previously paired with the drug.
Partial vs variable reinforcement: Partial means not every response is rewarded; variable ratio means the number of responses before a reward keeps changing.
What did Griffiths (1994) find about fruit-machine gamblers?: Regular gamblers made more irrational verbalisations when thinking aloud than non-regular gamblers, but were not significantly more skilful, supporting cognitive bias.
Aversion therapy vs covert sensitisation: Aversion therapy pairs the addictive behaviour with a real unpleasant stimulus (e.g. a nausea-inducing drug). Covert sensitisation pairs it with an imagined unpleasant consequence.
What are the stages of Prochaska's six-stage model of behaviour change?: Precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance and termination. Support is matched to the stage a person is at.