Ch. 12 Paragraphs

1. What are attitudes and where do they come from? Discuss the following sources of attitudes:

• Familiarity and the mere exposure effect.
• Classical conditioning
• Operant Conditioning
• Socialization

      Attitudes are our evaluations of objects, events, or ideas. They are shaped by social context and play an important role in interaction and evaluation. In cases where we are more familiar to an item, they will generally have more positive attitudes toward it, because of the mere exposure effect. Attitudes can be conditioned classically by using positive stimuli to associate a neutral object with a positive attitude. By rewarding certain events or actions can create a positive attitude towards them through operant conditioning. Socialization also affects our attitudes by common practice and the bandwagon effect. So teachers, doctors, media, etc. affects our attitudes toward things.
2. How can attitudes be changed? Consider discrepancies between attitudes and behavior, as well as persuasion.
        Research gathered in dissonance studies have shown that one way to get people to change their attitudes is to change their behavior. By justifying effort, it is shown that it is harder to absolve oneself from something that initially caused great dissonance therefore inflating importance and influencing attitude. In persuasion, a message is transmitted in order to change attitude. Further studies of persuasion have also found that more memorable and simplistic messages are often the most persuasive.
3. What are attributions, in general? How do attributions affect our impressions of others and of ourselves? Are our attributions accurate?
        Attributions are people's explanations for events or actions. People make attributions to satisfy our basic need for order and predictability. The just world hypothesis is when we make attributions about a victim of a senseless crime. There are two main types of attributions, personal and situational. Personal attributions are explanations that refer to things within people, such as ability, mood, etc. Situational attributions are external factors, such as weather, accidents, other people, etc. Our explanations of other peoples' behavior overemphasizes their personality traits and underestimates the importance of the situation; this is called the fundamental attribution error. Because of the correspondence bias, people expect others' behaviors to correspond with their own beliefs and personalities.
4. What are stereotypes? How may they be self-fulfilling? How do they affect our behavior?
         Stereotypes are cognitive schemas that help us organize information about people on the basis of their membership in certain groups. Initially untrue stereotypes can become true through self-fulfilling prophecy, in which people come to behave in ways that confirm their own or others' expectations. Negative stereotypes can lead to prejudice and discrimination, whereas positive stereotypes may lead to pleasantness.
5. How can stereotypes and the associated prejudices be changed? what evidence do we have for effectiveness of various methods?
           When people are prejudice, they have negative judgments about people based on their stereotypes. Shared subordinate goals reduce hostility between groups, because they require cooperation. Muzafer Sherif did a study where he took two groups of all white, 5th-grade boys to a camp. After the two groups had spent time getting to know the members within their respective groups, they then competed against each other in high-stakes athletics. This caused prejudice and mistreatment between the groups. However, after the two groups were given subordinate goals, they became friends.

Emotion and Decision Making

1. How important is decision making in everyday life? What body of research has pointed to an important role for emotions in these decisions? According to the somatic-marker hypothesis, how are emotions involved in decision making?
       Decision making occurs on a regular, day-to-day basis and precedes many of life's most important events. Not only do people use expected utility upon explicit knowledge of outcomes, but neuroscientists have also concluded that emotion plays a critical role in biasing decision making. According to the somatic-marker hypothesis, emotion biases decision making toward choices that maximize reward and minimize punishment.
2. What are the effects on decision making of damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)? What intellectual and problem-solving abilities do such patients have? What emotional impairments do they have? How are these impairments related to the somatic-marker hypothesis?
        Patients with damage to the vmPFC, located above the eye sockets, often engaged in activities that were detrimental to their well-being and appeared unable to learn from their previous mistakes due to their repetition of these patterns. In contrast, their intellects and problem-solving abilities were normal. However, their ability to react to emotional situations was impaired, meaning that damage to the vmPFC affected their ability to use emotions to aid in their decision making. This supported the somatic-marker hypothesis in that emotions play a role in decision making, especially where the outcome is uncertain.
3. What is the Iowa Gambling Task? How do intact people differ from those with vmPFC damage on this task? How are skin conductance responses (SCRs) different for these two groups of participants? How are these patterns of response on the task different for patients with damage to the amygdala?
        The Iowa Gambling Task used four decks of cards (two advantageous and two disadvantageous) and had people choose from all four decks. The two advantageous decks, which provided low reward and low punishment would eventually lead to a net gain. the two disadvantageous decks provided high reward and punishment and would lead to a net loss. "Normal individuals" after sampling all four decks equally, typically shifted their choices to the advantageous deck. Subjects with vmPFC continued to choose from the disadvantageous deck. Normal subjects also elicited higher SCRs before choosing from the disadvantageous decks whereas the subjects with vmPFC showed very little SCRs. Patients with damage to the amygdala showed similar results as those with vmPFC damage however those with amygdala damage had impaired SCRs to receiving rewards and punishments and registering the impact.
4. In what two ways may our bodily states affect our decision making? What brain areas are involved in these effects? What are "gut feelings?"
         After our bodies have been feed palatable food to satiety, our responses to specific primary reinforcers are reduced by manipulations that diminished their value. This way, vmPFC neurons respond to conditioned stimuli that predict the delivery of primary reinforcers. The insular cortex, as well as the vmPFC and amygdala are involved in predicting reward and decision making. Gut feelings come from the mapping of visceral states within the insular cortex, which cause an unconscious reinforcement that is delivered in an unpredictable way.
5. Do neurons in the various brain areas mentioned above respond in ways that are consistent with the somatic-marker hypothesis?
         The mesolimbic dopamine system is an area that contributes to decision making and reward processing. The activity of single neurons within the mesolimbic dopamine system is increased by primary reinforcers. These neurons also respond to stimuli that predict and the neurons shift over time. This is consistent with the role of the mesolimbic dopamine system proposed by the somatic-marker hypothesis.
6. How may the processes discussed in this article be involved in moral decisions? How may they be important in drug abuse?
         Studies have found that there is a greater activation of the vmPFC when the moral decision involves negative consequence for another person. Moral decisions engage emotions, especially when one is required to consider another's well-being. Drug addiction has been found to elicit the same impairments as people with vmPFC damage, which suggests that drug addiction is promoted in part by the dysfunction of the vmPFC which would normally steer people away from harmful or negative consequences.
7. How does the somatic-marker hypothesis provide a bridge linking complex human abilities with fundamental motivations and physiological processes?
          The somatic-marker hypothesis is a good base for understanding the connection with the mesolimbic dopamine system and insular cortex and how they work together to facilitate decision making through gut feelings and unconscious biasing of behavior. Because of this we can use the somatic-marker hypothesis to compare the most complex human abilities to motivational and homeostatic processes.

Ch. 9 Paragraphs

1. Discuss the characteristics of motivation. How are motives related to needs, arousal, drives, homeostasis, and incentives?
        Motivation is the area of psychological science concerned with the factors that energize, or stimulate, behavior. Maslow's hierarchy of needs categorizes needs from those most essential to sustain life, which we are the most motivated to fulfill, to humanistic psychological needs that give someone fulfillment and happiness. Needs create arousal, which is our physiological activation, and drives, which encourage behavior that satisfies needs. Basic biological and animal drives like hunger and thirst help maintain homeostasis, the equilibrium of the body. Incentives are external objects or goals, rather than internal drives, that motivate behaviors.
2. Discuss intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and how the latter can replace the former.
         Extrinsic motivation are the external goals an activity is directed toward, such as working to earn a paycheck or running for a charity. Intrinsic motivation refers to the pleasure associated with an activity, such as gratification or the feeling of self-fulfillment from volunteering, or listening to music. People have a natural exploratory drive and creativity which promotes learning, solving problems, and art without reward. studies show that rewarding intrinsically motivated behaviors undermined intrinsic motivation and reduced the amount of time spent doing the intrinsic activity because of their developed expectation of a reward.
3. Discuss at least two major adaptive roles of emotions.
        Emotions are adaptive because they prepare and guide behaviors. Emotional expressions change to exhibit how we reacts to environmental stimuli, and so that we can accurately perceive others' behavior. Negative and positive experiences guide behavior that will increase the probability of survival and reproduction. Expressions and moods give us information about what other people are feeling because we are social animals.
4. Discuss the major types of emotion that people feel and how these types are related to each other.
         Primary emotions are evolutionarily adaptive, shared across cultures, and associated with specific biological and physical states. They include anger, fear, sadness, disgust, and happiness. Secondary emotions are blends of primary emotions and include remorse, guilt, submission, and anticipation. In the circumplex model emotions are mapped according to their valence (negative or positive) and activation (level of arousal).
5. Discuss the role in emotion of the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex.
         The amygdala processes the emotional significance of stimuli and generates immediate emotional and behavioral responses. Because of the amygdala, people might only jump from the sight of a spider, but will run at full speed from an activated grenade. Sensory information that is passed through the thalamus will either go directly to the amygdala quickly for priority processing, or to the sensory cortex to be further scrutinized before going to the amygdala.
         The right and left frontal lobes are affected by different emotions and it is believed that the variable amount of activation on either side of the prefrontal cortex is associated with specific emotional states in what is known as cerebral asymmetry. The right prefrontal cortex is more active with negative emotions and the left more so with positive emotions. It has also been theorized that people who are dominant in one hemisphere can bias emotion.

Ch. 9 Topics

1. Negative feedback in motivation.
       In the brain, the hypothalamus regulates the body in order to create a state of homeostasis. When a person is cold their brain will send signals to the skeletal muscles to shiver in an attempt to warm the body and the person will be motivated to put on a sweater.
2. Evidence for an optimal level of arousal.
       According to the Yerkes-Dodson law, people operate best with some arousal. People are motivated to seek an optimal level of arousal which is demonstrated by a parabola (inverted U). Too little arousal causes us to become bored and too much arousal can lead to anxiety.
3. How can we set goals that we are able to attain?
       Good goals are those that are challenging, because they encourage effort, persistence, and concentration. Being specific when making your goals also helps. Knowing exactly what is desired to achieve may help breaking large goals into smaller steps that help build up toward reaching a goal.
4. How and why flavor variety motivates eating.
       By having a variety of flavors and larger quantities of these varieties cause rats and humans to eat more, which typically leads to obesity. Because of sensory-specific satiety, animals will stop eating quickly when they have just one type of food to eat. The part of the frontal lobe that assesses reward value of food increases activity when new foods are presented.
5. The hormones that affect sexual motivation.
        Females and males have all the sexual hormones. Males have a higher level of androgen and females have more estrogen and progesterone. Testosterone is an androgen that drives sexual behavior. Oxytocin is another important hormone that is released during sexual arousal and orgasm, and is believed to promote feelings of love and attachment between partners.

Cues and Heuristics Article

1. What are heuristics? What three classical examples of heuristics do the authors mention? What common theme may underlie many heuristics?
      Heuristics are mental shortcuts or thinking aids. Tversky and Kahneman first identified three canonical heuristics; availability, representativeness, and anchoring and adjustment. Findings in the various fields from social persuasion through metacognition suggest the common themes of how familiarity, context, experience, and evaluability can make cues easy to access.
2. How may effort be reduced in common heuristics? What is the main question that the authors are trying to address in this article? How does this question relate to the availability heuristic?
      Effort my be reduced by using heuristics such as considering fewer alternatives, identifying only brand names, and using information that is easier to access. The article is about finding ways in which information can be accessed the easiest. Availability integrates the common heuristics which reduce effort in finding cues.
3. What are cues, and what are their main parts?
       Cues are pieces of relevant information, that are easy to access when making decisions. Cues have two separate parts: a type and value. The type involves brand names and other labels. The value considers what it is made up of and how efficient it is.
4. The authors discuss two ways that cues can be acquired, and also how these cues can be evaluated. What are the possible ways that cue acquisition can occur? How can cue acquisition and cue evaluation be made easier?
       Cue acquisition can occur by cue perception and cue production. In cue perception, people use task environments and perceive only information that they have already accumulated. Cue production is when people retrieve previously seen cues from memory or assess new cues. Cue evaluation is how people use cues to make a judgment or decision by evaluating the importance of cue types and values. Cue evaluation and acquisition can be made easier if they are more common across many alternatives.
5. How can perception of cue types be made easier? What is phonetic fluency, and how might it work? If people are deciding which stocks to buy, does it matter if the name of a company is easy or hard to pronounce? Does the font in which the cue value is printed matter when one judges what the quality of a product is? Do backgrounds of Web sites affect how easily we can perceive cues for a decision?
      The perception of cue types can be made easier by phonetic fluency and conceptual priming. Phonetic fluency is the sound or flow of words. When choosing from foods from a menu of a foreign language, people are likely to pick the one that sounds the most pleasant. When people are buying stocks they weighed those with easier-to-pronounce names heavier. Because of priming, people will consider web sites that have backgrounds that have images to associate with different cues and font that is easier to read.
6. Sometimes the cues are not present to be perceived but rather have to be remembered by us (cue production). Might positive audience responses make cues easier to remember? Are cues that are used repeatedly easier to remember? Will they then have a greater effect on our decisions than other cues might? Do contexts affect how easily we remember different cues?
       Repeated studies have shown that there is an association between "audience response" and "message quality." If an audience responds enthusiastically, it's usually because the speech was well-phrased with convincing messages. The repeated use of a cue can increase how easily it is retrieved. In context, psychological distance makes higher-level information easier to access.
7. Are some values of cues easier to remember than others are? If so why?
       Cue values can be more accessible during cue production if they stem from natural assessments, or things seen on a regular basis. Because of attribute substitution, easy cues in place of hard, cues are easier to reach the more they've been used.
8. What makes different cues easy to evaluate? How might we simplify information that we are using to evaluate different choices?
       Different cues are easy to evaluate because you're only comparing two objects without using numerical values by just remembering which one had the better of  which qualities. When comparing two cars, instead of remembering the numeric values and different units of things like mpg, hp, age, engine size, etc. just know if one was better, worse, or equal.
9. Why is ease of access to information so important for decision making and judgment?
       Heuristics that use cue types are more common than those using cue values. The ease and efficiency of information access is important because it requires the least amount of effort of people and can allow for decisions and judgments to be made faster and still attain the most desirable outcome. It also allows us to reach a decision without having to consider and access every characteristic and attribute of every alternative, because that would make ordering a meal from a menu take days if not longer, and our brains would overload.

Ch. 8 Paragraphs

1. Discuss representations and how they are used in thought. what kinds are there in general? How do they differ from each other? What evidence indicates their use in thought?
     The field of cognitive psychology was originally based on the notions that the brain represents information and that cognition (the act of thinking) is directly associated with manipulating these representations. We use two basic types of representation; analogical, which have some characteristics of actual objects, and symbolic, usually words, ideas, or other abstract things. Analogical representations are mental images of an item. Studies of how long it took to identify a rotated picture of a letter and its mirror image proved that we take the longest to process an object that is inverted. In symbolic representation, we use previous knowledge of something with words and ideas. With concepts, we categorize objects with similar qualities, as is shown in the defining attribute model.
2. Discuss expected utility theory and how its limitation are shown by the evidence that people use heuristic in decision making and are influenced by framing effects.
      Expected utility theory is a normative model of how humans should make decisions. This theory views decision making as a computation of utility, the overall value for each possible outcome. We then compare all the possible alternatives and rank by preference, and then choose the most desirable one. By using heuristics and algorithms, people's decision making process is influenced. With algorithms, the desired outcome is always reached. Heuristics are mental shortcuts, or "rules of thumb." With heuristics, we can decide quickly without having to weigh all of our options. When the framing effect emphasizes either the positive gains or the negative losses, we can be persuaded in our decision making.
3. Discuss how goals are involved in problem solving and at least two strategies people use for researching those goals.
     When a person has goals, they use their knowledge and problem solving abilities in order to move from their current location to the desired outcome. One strategy is to use subgoals. In this we break down goals into progressive steps, where each subgoal brings us closer to our actual goals. A common heuristic strategy for overcoming problems is working backwards. Proceeding from the goal state to the initial state can generate helpful strategies. Two other strategies include restructuring a problem by representing it in a novel way that you may not have considered, and changing your mental set by using an alternative means to find a solution.
4. Distinguish the three major approaches to intelligence and one major finding from each.
     General intelligence is a cumulative measurement of several intellectual abilities. Raymond Cattell proposed that intelligence consisted of fluid intelligence, which involves processing information, and crystallized intelligence, where we acquire knowledge through experience. Studies found that people who had a high fluid intelligence also had a high crystallized intelligence.
     Howard Gardner proposed multiple intelligences. The three intelligences included: analytical, which involved problem solving ability, creative, which involved finding novel solution processes, and practical, which included everyday judgments. Studies found that many phenomenally successful public figures did not excel academically.
     Salovey, Mayor, and Goleman popularized emotional intelligence. This form of social intelligence utilized the perception, management, and understanding of emotions to guide thoughts and actions. Mood regulation and controlling behavior is an important concept of EQ.
5. Discuss the concepts of general intelligence, fluid intelligence, and crystallized intelligence and how they are studied.
      General intelligence deals with the performance of intellectual tasks. Scientist agree that IQ reflects various forms of intelligence. Studies with factor analysis that clustered similar items correlated with general intelligence. Raymond Cattell proposed that intelligence consisted of fluid intelligence, which involves processing information, and crystallized intelligence, where we acquire knowledge through experience. Studies found that people who had a high fluid intelligence also had a high crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence is assessed in nonverbal, more culture-fair tests, such as identifying matching, colored shapes. Crystallized intelligence was tested by having people use the knowledge they gained through an experience to solve a problem.

Ch. 8 Topics

1. Prototype model of the nature of concepts.
      In a prototype model of concepts is thinking of the most generally known examples of a given category. The less commonly known something is, even in the correct category, the more nonprototypical it is. A particular example or prototype can be chosen for several reasons; either it is the most widely known, it might resemble the most members, or it might mean something personal.
2. Use the scripts in thinking about people.
      Schemas about the sequence of events in a certain situation are called scripts. Schemas help us process and organize information that we receive by using previous knowledge. A person's schema varies when considering a person, depending on the type of behavior and appearance they're used to. When you talk about famous people you think of people you've seen on television. When you think of a homeless person, you think of an unshaven man typically with very dirty, worn clothing.
3. The difference between decision making and problem solving.
        Decision making you select among alternatives, usually by identifying important criteria and determining how well each alternative satisfies these criteria. In problem solving, you overcome obstacles to reach a desired outcome.
4. How well we do in forecasting how we feel after various events occur.
        People overestimate the extent to which negative events will affect them in the future. A good example of this would be how I got 4th place last year at state in tennis. Many people would consider that an admirable feat, however loosing after winning the first set 1-0, and being the last match of my high school career, was bittersweet. According to loss aversion, losing is much worse than gaining is good.
5. Validity and how it differs from reliability.
       The validity of something is how true or supported by factual proof something is. In tests, it is knowing that you're measuring what you intend to be measuring. Reliability is the quality of being accurate and dependable in achievement. Reliable data is that which gives you nearly the same result from multiple tests. Experiments can be reliable and not valid if you get similar data but are not measuring the right variable.