Psychology (PS101) is the more interesting of my chosen electives for this first term at WLU, which makes sense since my other elective is financial accounting.

Unlike my other posts on financial accounting and linear algebra, I’ll post my notes here for future reference, rather than treating this as an archive. After my second month in this class, I can see why Zuckerberg chose psych as his original major at Harvard.

To psychologists, people majoring in psychology, or my psychiatrist (who no doubt, has looked me up), this is by no means a comprehensive view of psychology as a science. Rather, it's a basic understanding of an evolution of philosophy with many real-world applications.

Take any number of the following questions and try your best to answer them knowing nothing about the brain or behaviour:

• How do dogs learn through rewards and punishment?
• Why does cocaine make us irritable?
• Why does caffeine withdrawal give us headaches?
• How does the gut interact with the brain?
• What are the indicators of memory loss?
• Why is taking the standard deviation of a score more important than taking the average?
• What do dreams indicate about our stages of sleep?
• What do antidepressants act on? How are they different form anti-psychotics?
• What is the difference between working memory and short-term memory?

All interesting questions; many of which affect us on a personal or interpersonal level! Even Billy Joel’s Pressure put it nicely:

🎶 Psych 1, psych 2, what do you know?

Unsurprisingly, we can learn a lot. That answers why you clicked on this post.

WLU Introduction to Psychology - PS101

The following is a general outline of the course:

1. Midterm 1 covers chapters 1, 2, and 3
2. Midterm 2 covers chapters 6, 7, and 12
3. The Final covers all chapters + 15 and 16

⏳️ 1: The History of Psychology

❗️ Backfill required

🧪 2: Psychology as a Science

❗️ Backfill required

🧠 3: Neuroscience

❗️ Backfill required

👁️ 6: Consciousness

Awakeness while Conscious

• To be conscious ≠ being awake. Being awake is only the state of consciousness, but we’re missing a second component which is the content of consciousness.
• Consciousness is being attentive and aware of your surroundings. People having seizures are awake but not fully aware of the world around them.
• We use the reticular formation, thalamus, hypothalamus, and the cerebral cortex to regulate our attention
• Self-consciousness or self-awareness, is a fundamental intelligent trait that is usually seen in children at 18 months old using the marker and mirror experiment

Awakeness while Preconscious and Unconscious

• Preconsciousness is a state that readily makes information, like what you had for lunch last Tuesday, readily available to the conscious
• Unconsciousness (which DOES NOT mean you are knocked out) is a state that cannot make information readily available to the conscious mind

These states of our subconscious are just tied to memory. They have nothing to do with out state of awakeness, only the contents of our consciousness

Sleeping

• Nobody knows why we sleep so much, but there are theories:
  • Adaptive theory which says that we sleep to keep ourselves away from predators that are active during the night
  • Restorative theory which says that the body can restore depleted chemical resources and eliminate built-up wastes accumulated during the day
• People follow a circadian rhythm which dictates when they rise and fall
  • The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) directs the pineal gland to secrete the hormone melatonin, which causes sleepiness
  • If we reset the biological clock by trapping people in a dark room with no reference for day or night, their circadian rhythm usually extends to 25 hours
• A hypnagogic state is a pre-sleep state where we can experience hypnagogic hallucinations/sensations or myoclonic jerks (like the sensation of falling)
• Stages of Sleep
  • Non-REM (NREM) Stages
    1. Stage 1: nonsensical ideas that last a few minutes
    2. Stage 2: consists of sleep spindles: bursts of brain activity lasting a 1-2 seconds, and our muscles relax
    3. Stage 3: deep sleep
    4. Stage 4: deepest sleep, prone to sleepwalking
  • REM Sleep: the ideal dream state with rapid heartbeats and irregular breathing. Our brain behaves like it is awake and active
• Nobody knows why we dream but there are theories:
  • Information Processing Theory surmises that we dream to rationalize and memorize events that occurred throughout the day
  • Activation Synthesis Theory surmises that the brain attempts to rationalize random internal signals and give them meaning in the form of dreams
  • Freud thinks its just our repressed emotions from the unconscious states we covered above. The guy is high or something
• As we age, the amount we sleep decreases and our REM sleep decreases more
• There are many forms of deprived or partially deprived sleep:
  • Insomnia means someone cannot fall or stay asleep. This doesn’t just mean they can never sleep, but if they wake up at an irregular time, they cannot fall back to sleep
  • Sleep apnea makes the person wake up when their body suddenly decides to stop breathing. The awakening is caused by the brain responding to a lack of oxygen
  • Narcolepsy is an uncurable condition where a person experiences the uncontrollable sensation to fall asleep during the day

Hypnosis

• Hypnosis is where people, in an altered state of consciousness, can be directed to act or experience the world in unusual ways (but not do anything against their will)
• A person experiencing hypnosis simultaneously experiences amnesia
• A hypnotized individual can ignore pain for some reason, and there are two theories:
  • The individual disassociates (splits the conscious mind in 2 dimensions), and surfaces only the mind the hypnotist's suggestions
  • The person actively avoids thinking about the pain to go along with the relaxing state of hypnosis
  • The brain’s anterior cingulate cortex may be particularly involved when hypnosis is used to anesthetize or reduce pain

Psychoactive Drugs

• People get addicted to, and build a tolerance to drugs because of the reward learning pathway: circuity important for learning about rewarding stimuli
• After using drugs, their reward learning pathway responds to the dopamine rush from the drugs and no longer to the dopamine people experience otherwise. This lack of happiness from usual life events is called reward deficiency syndrome

There are 3 classes of psychoactive drugs:

Depressants

Depressants excite and depress neural activity in the CNS. Overdosing on depressants can cause anxiety, nausea, vomiting, constipation, disorientation, impaired reflexes and motor functioning, amnesia, loss of consciousness, shallow respiration, convulsions, coma, or death.

Name	Action in the Brain	Effects
Alcohol	Influences GABA neurotransmitter receptors	Slows down behaviour and neural processing
Sedatives like Benzo	Same as alcohol, except the depressive effects spread throughout the brain.	Relaxes people and reduces inhibition/anxiety
Opioids (heroin, opium, morphine, codeine)	Activates opioid receptors	Pleasure and pain reduction

Stimulants

Stimulants increase activity in the CNS. Overdosing on these can cause insomnia, restlessness, increased pulse rate, mild delirium, ringing in the ears, rapid heartbeat, irritability, stomach pains, vomiting, dizziness, cancer, heart disease, emphysema, anxiety, paranoia, hallucinations, psychosis, elevated blood pressure and body temperature, convulsions, or once again, death.

Name	Action in the Brain	Effects
Caffeine	Blocks the ability of adenosine to bind to its receptors	Obviously: alertness
Nicotine	Binds to acetylcholine nicotinic receptors	Caffeine with arousal and stress reduction
Cocaine	Dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin re-uptake blocker (as covered in Chapter 3)	Caffeine with confidence and pleasure
Amphetamines (Meth)	Increases release of dopamine norepinephrine	Caffeine with euphoria and appetite reduction

Hallucinogens

Hallucinogens enhance normal perceptions in the CNS. Overdosing on these can cause panic, nausea, headaches, longer and more extreme delusions, hallucinations, perceptual distortions (“bad trips”), psychosis, perceptual and sensory distortions, fatigue, lack of motivation, or impaired memory (but thankfully, not death).

Name	Action in the Brain	Effects
LSD	Stimulates dopamine and serotonin receptors	Strengthens visual perceptions
THC (Weed)	Stimulates cannabinoid receptors	A mix of hallucinations, depressive effects, and stimulation
MDMA (Ecstacy)	Same as cocaine and LSD	Basically cocaine mixed with LSD

🤓 7: Learning

Learning is a lasting change caused by experience.

There are rare-cases, like following someone’s advice blindly (non-associative learning), where learning can be caused without experience at all. However, we don’t cover this case, since an animal or baby would never do that.

Non-Associative Learning

Non-associative, where no stimuli is involved, and repeated exposure to an event causes a change in behaviour.

• We can become habituated to stimuli by repeatedly being presented it. For example, the 100th game of peek-a-boo isn’t as exciting as the first

• After not playing peek-a-boo for a month, the 101th game will be just as exciting as the first! This phenomenon is called dishabituation

• If you become startled by some stimulus, than a less significant stimulus happens, you’ll get startled even more! You have become sensitized by having an increase sensitivity to the stimulus. For example, a loud sound while you’re home alone.

Associative Learning: Classical Conditioning

Associative learning, is where one learns by forming association between stimuli. Similarly, conditioning involves associating events with other events in your environment. The smell of smoke with burning, the banging of a drum with danger (gunshot), yelling with anger, etc.

There are some responses that are inherit, like a child screaming when frightened, or a dog salivating at the sight/smell of food. These are considered natural reflexes. Nobody has to teach us to yell when we’re hurt.

Classical conditioning is the connection between 2 unrelated stimuli that results in a learned response.

There are 4 variables in classical conditioning experiments:

1. Unconditioned Stimulus (US): the stimulus that illicits a response on its own
2. Unconditioned Response (UR): the response to said stimulus (natural reflex
3. Conditioned Stimulus (CS): a stimulus that eventually illicits the same response as the US after being presented/paired with it
4. Conditioned Response (CR): the response to the CS, usually equal to the UR

Take for example, the following experiment with Pavlov’s dog:

Every time, the researcher opened the door, the dog knew that food was coming, and it prematurely salivated. It associated the door with food!

The dog could also generalize the door handle with the opening of a cabinet or automatic doors, which would be called stimulus generalization.

However, the dog would eventually understand, that only that specific door gave them food. The dog eventually ignoring the other types of door handles would be called stimulus discrimination, a process where the subject narrows down the general stimuli.

If a bell was rung every time the dog was given food, the door and the bell would trigger it to salivate. In this case, the door has become the US, and the bell the CS. This association with association is called higher-order stimuli.

If a bell was rung or door was opened over and over again, but the dog was never given food, the CR would stop occurring. This is known as extinction. However, if suddenly, the dog were to be given food at the ring of the bell, the CS and CR would spontaneously recover!

One can also classically condition a child to fear, like taking a US like an air horn and a CS like a bunny and pairing them together. The child would eventually associate the bunny with the air horn and fear the bunny.

We condition phobias subconsciously by seeing how others react to situations, and reacting accordingly (this would be the same type of fear conditioning). We can trigger extinction of the phobias through gradual exposure, called system desensitization.

Another type of classical conditioning is taste aversion which is acquired after smelling/tasting something and then getting sick. The brain is turned off from that substance as it has been conditioned to believe it leads to sickness.

Operant Conditioning

Operant or Instrumental conditioning is another form of associative learning where behaviour is modified depending on its consequences. Operant conditioning is associated with the law of effect which (incorrectly) states that behaviours leading to are more likely to repeat themselves, and the the opposite is true for behaviours that are unpleasent.

For example, a cat can be conditioned to repeatedly click a button upon entering a box if the button gives it a treat. Every time it enters the box, it will hit the button faster every time!

The experiment above is an example of behaviourism: the study and manipulation of observable behaviour

Within behaviourism, you have reinforcement and punishment. As the words suggest, reinforcement will increase the desired behaviour and punishment will decrease a particular behaviour.

Type of Behaviourism	(+) Positive	(-) Negative
Reinforcement	Giving a gift something to increase behaviour	Revoking/taking something to decrease behaviour
Punishment	Presenting a consequence to decrease behaviour	Revoking/taking away a gift to decrease behaviour

Reinforcement/Punishment Stimuli

There are 2 types of reinforcers and punishers in all living organisms.

Type of Enforcer	☠️ Primary	🎁 Secondary
Reinforcer	A stimulus that has survival value (working for food or water)	A neutral stimulus that becomes rewarding when associated with a primary stimulus (working for money or fame)
Punisher	A stimulus that we’re naturally aversion of (pain, loud sounds, fear, etc.)	The same as above, like bad grades, dissaproval, isolation, etc.

Schedules of Intermittent/Partial Reinforcement

Type	Ratio Schedule (based on # of responses)	Interval Schedule (based on the passage of time)
Fixed	A behaviour is reinforced every x times. If a behaviour is reinforced every time, we call this continuous reinforcement instead of intermittent/partial	A behaviour is reinforced/rewarded after a certain amount of x time has passed
Variable	A behaviour is reinforced randomly, like a slot machine or lottery ticket	A behaviour is reinforced over random periods of time, but the same amount of rewards will still come eventually

Another kind of behaviour modification technique is similar to gradient descent of AI models: precisely shaping an agent’s actions into the desired behaviour.

We can teach a dog to roll over by first treating it only when it lies on its back, and then stop until it rolls over even more. Eventually, we will only give it a treat after rolling over.

An incident of punishment is learned helplessness, where an agent stops trying to escape all situations just because it was put in a previously inescapable one. Kind of like torturing someone initially: they’ll try to escape, but not the next time.

Observational Learning

Observational learning/imitation, like a baby screaming when their mother screams, is a learned response tied to a model stimulus. In other words, the agent models their action(s) from someone else.

If we witness our friend get grounded after yelling at his Mom, we become afraid of experiencing the same consequences. The want to avoid a similar result makes the agent not yell at their mom. This is known as vicarious learning.

Mirror neurons are fired every time someone imitates another’s actions.

Cognition

Type	Definition
Implicit Learning	When we acquire knowledge unknowingly. Like learning to speak.
Spatial Navigation Learning	When we form associations with the space around us by being rewarded along the path. Like cheese littered throughout a rat maze.
Latent Learning	When someone only attempts to learn something when a reward is presented.
Insight Learning	An ah-ha! moment where we suddenly realize the solution to a problem

A learning disorder is an interference with the acquisition and use of speaking, reading, writing, and maths.

💄 12: Personality

Personality is a set of characteristics accounting for persistent patterns of behaviour and thought.

Psychodynamic Perspective

Remember how Freud thought most of the contents of our mind was repressed in the unconscious? Using psychoanalytical theory, he attempted to “bubble up” repressed feelings in the unconscious in order to treat his patients.

He expanded on his ideas with three concepts:

1. The unconscious Id or Pleasure Principle: basic instinctual drives to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Defense mechanisms are unconscious tactics of avoiding pain like denial, projection, repression, etc.
2. The unconscious Ego or Reality Princple: rational, logical, and realistic thoughts and behaviours
3. The unconscious Superego: moral limits that are internalized/adopted by the values/norms of others

Psychosexual stages are pleasure seeking/sexual and violent tendencies that youth pass through. When passing through these stages, they resolve conflicts between the three. Trauma (or as Freud calls it: Neurosis) is what remains when conflicts remain unresolved.

Stage	Description	Symptoms
Oral	Waning	Pleasures of the mouth (breast-feeding included)
Anal	Toilet Training	Being anal (orderly) and controlling
Phallic	The Oedipus Complex	Sexual rigidity or confusion
Latency	Sexual impulse repression
Genetial	Mature sexual relations	Sexual dysfunction

Freud in the Modern Day

Freud’s ideas are stupid because:

• Inadequate evidence with a specific sample of upper-class women who were abused in childhood.
• No notes kept during his therapy sesisions
• Fabricated evidence to save his own reputation and fear of persecution
• Untestable observations
• No theories that can predict anything

Some of his ideas have merit like the unconscious mind’s influence, parental influence on relationships, and defence mechanisms. Neo-Freudians carry over some of these merits in contemporary psychotherapy.

Non-Freudian Theories

Adler said that instead of sexual/violent desires powering personality development, it is social needs like building superiority and influence over their own lives (hence, the need for independence).

Jung suggested that we had two kinds of unconscious states, the:

1. Personal unconscious: formed through individual experiences
2. Collective unconscious: inherited memories shared by mankind (he called them archetypes, like character archetypes of the hero, or wizard)

Horney suggested that basic anxiety and neurosis develops in children experiencing extreme isolation. She also rejected Freud’s ideas of culture’s effects on mental health, saying that women look up to men not because they are women, but because power is inherently culturally segregated.

Humanistic Perspective

The humanistic perspective emphasized people’s basic goodness from birth.

Maslow proposed that personality arises from people attempting to meet their needs and eventually, their full potential. Full potential or self-actualization, means to recognize the needs of others.

Rogers proposed that personality is developed from a kid’s perception of themselves, or their self-concept. This happens from accepting people for who they are (recall that unconditional love is rare in families).

Trait Perspective

Personality traits are consistent behaviours across certain situations.

Allport was the first trait theorist

Eysenck use factor analysis to create superfactors, major categories we can put people under like:

1. Extraversion
2. Neuroticism (pessimism)
3. Psychoticism (vulnerability with reality)

Personality Assessments

A popular personality test is the five-factor model (FFM):

Personality Trait	Assessment of Behaviour
Openness	creativeness, curiosity
Conscientiousness	discipline, punctuality, carefulness
Extroversion	sociability, activeness
Agreeableness	reliability, helpfulness
Neuroticism	anxious, emotional

The FFM says that traits - will become increasingly stable over time - will remain stable across circumstances - predict attributes and behaviours - are inherently genetic

Unfortunately, it oversimplifies personality with only five superfactors

Personality inventories are paper questionnaires, like the MMPI-2 to evaluate abnormal personality traits, or the NEO PI which doesn’t evaluate abnormal personality traits, only evaluating Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Openness.

Projective tests are invalid tests that use ambiguous stimulation to attempt to access a person’s unconscious (aka. hidden, repressed conflicts):

• The Rorschach Inkblot Test forces patients to project meaning from inkblots.
• The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) similarly gets patients to create stories with black and white drawings

Situationist and Interactionist

Situationism says that behaviour is governed by situations rather than internal traits.

Interactionism says that inherit personality combined with situations is what forms behaviour.

Biological Foundations

Genetics like personality traits, addictions, tendencies, and reaction to psychoactive drugs.

Gall studied phrenology, an inaccurate method of assessing moral qualities/personality by lumps in the skull. The only useful thing we learned from his work is that some brain functions are localized to certain regions.

Brain Region	Effect When Active
Left hemisphere	Experience more positive emotions
Right hemisphere	Experience more negative emotions
Amygdala	Experience fear (damage to it makes people fearless)

⚠️ NOTE: Brain activity has no causal impact on personality traits

Clark and Watson synthesized personality into three degrees of temperament:

1. Positive emotionality: an active, enthusiatic life
2. Negative emotionality: a distressing, negative life
3. Disinhibition vs. Restraint: whether the person is impulsive or anal

Personality Differences

There are little personality differences across genders and more personality differences in individuals of the same gender. For example

• Men are more individual because women focus more on relational concerns
• Since women have been lower in power for most of history, they are better at reading emotions than men out of necessity
• Social role theory says that gender differences occur because of adaptation to an individual's circumstances/gender role expectations. For example, taking the “protector” role will naturally have more aggression than women.

Between cultures, there is usually a split between: - Individualist cultures like American shape personalities towards autonomy, individual achievement, and self-esteem - Collectivist cultures like Japanese shape personality towards community and cooperation

Of course, we can’t ignore class differences. Wealthy impulsive boys will be less likely to commit crimes than poor impulsive boys.

Personality Disorders

A personality disorder consists of rigid thought patterns and behaviours that cause distress daily. All disorders usually consist of problems with emotional responses, distorted thinking, impulsiveness, and sociability.

Disorder	Description
Borderline	Severe instability in mood and self-concept
Antisocial	A callous disregard for the feelings of rights and others, usually manipulative and criminal
Paranoia	Suspicion
Schizoid	Asociability
Schizotypal	Odd behaviour and thought patterns
Histrionic	Attention-whores with shallow emotions
Narcissism	Self-interested
Avoidant	Low self-regard and hides themselves from others
Dependent	Clingy
OC	Perfectionist, rigid, workaholics

😵‍💫 15: Disorders

The opposite of positive psychology is abnormal psychology: the study of disordered/abnormal behaviour rather than “normal” behaviour. There is no clear definition of abnormal behaviour.

However, we can operationalize a disorder:

• People deviate from typical behaviours
• They are distressed on a daily basis
• They are dysfunctional or impairment in menial tasks
• They are dangerous to themselves, and sometimes, others

Classification and Diagnosis

To classify disorders, we use the WHO published disorders international classification of diseases (ICD-10). The one that north america like is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as it turns on insurance companies for covering illnesses.

You’re all too familiar with comorbidity, an overlap of symptoms across disorders that can lead to multiple diagnoses.

Models of Abnormality

A “model” is another word for perspective.

1. The neuroscience perspective says that brain malfunctions cause abnormal behaviour

2. The psychodynamic perspective is the all-to-familiar Freudian justification: unresolved conflicts in childhood causing abnormal behaviour

   • Similarly, the development psychopathology perspective justifies abnormal behaviour with risk factors/environmental factors in childhood and genes. Sometimes, children build resilence to such risk factors and are less likely to succumb to PTSD.
   • Equi-finality is the idea that children born in different situations can achieve the same outcome. Multi-finality says that children born in the same situation can go to very different circumstances

3. The cognitive behavioural perspective says that conditioning results in abnormal behaviour

   • Being overly negative (not being able to see the positive)
   • Over generalization (can lead to learned helplessness)
   • Catastophizing (finding the worst possible conclusion)

4. The humanistic perspective says that a weak self-concept results in abnormal behaviour

5. The socio-cultural perspective is self-explanatory

   • Things like your working or social class (burgeousie vs nobility)
   • A lack of support networks
   • The family systems theory says that the rules and relationships in families shape the behaviour of its members (similar to cults)

Mood Disorders: They’re Persistent

Depression

Depression is a persistent sad state. The opposite, mania, is a persistent euphoria and high-state of energy.

Major depressive disorder is more severe than dysthymic disorder

There are two models for depression: 1. The neuroscience model believe that it might be a serotonin or norepinephrine or cortisol chemical imbalance combined with genetics (if one twin becomes depressed, the other might be depressed)

1. The cognitive behavioural model believes that it might be

   • learned helpnessness such as attributing experiences into fundamental traits (like someone believing a breakup is about their shortcomings)
   • the cognitive triad (or more generally: negative thinking), where the individuals interpret their experiences, themselves, and their futures negatively. The thoughts are often automatic.

2. The social-cultural model attributes environmental factors to causing depression

Bipolar

Bipolar, sometimes known as “manic-depression”, is swings between persistent and intense depressive and manic episodes.

Bipolar I or II is more severe than cyclothymic disorder

Anxiety Disorders

Generalized Anxiety (GAD)

Social Anxiety

Phobias

Panic

Obsessive-Compulsive (OCD)

Post Traumatic Stress (PTSD)

Schizophrenia

Other Disorders

Somatoform

Dissociative

Personality Disorders (continued)

⛑️ 16: Treatment of Disorders

🔃 In Progress