#ap psych

i’ll be making a post on things i wish i knew about ap psych eventually stay tuned

i’m so happy psych is over

the ap psychology exam is in almost a week can i use what they taught me to cure my junior-year-induced depression

thepoisonivyleague:

AP exam season is coming up real soon…
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Part 1 is here and part 2 is here. Like last time, I recommend combining them for a more thorough understanding. 

The Humanistic Perspective

Abraham Maslow’s Self-Actualizing Person

• Maslow proposed that a hierarchy of needs motivates us as individuals. Beginning with physiological needs, we try to reach the state of self-actualization.
• Self-Actualization: according to Maslow, the ultimate psychological need that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one’s potential.

Carl Rogers

• Carl Rogers also believed in an individual’s self-actualization tendencies.
  
• Unconditional Positive Regard: according to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person
  
• Self-Concept: all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, “Who am I?”
  
• We can promote others’ growth toward a deeper self-awareness and a more realistic and positive self-concept by being genuine, accepting, and empathic.
  

The Trait Perspective

• Trait: a characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports
  
• Allport & Odbert, identified 18,000 words representing traits
  
• Personality types, assessed by measures like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, consist of a number of traits
  
• For example, a feeling type personality is sympathetic, appreciative, and tactful.
• Factor analysis is a statistical approach used to describe and relate personality traits.
  
• Cattell used this approach to develop a 16 Personality Factor (16PF) inventory.
  
• Cattell found that large groups of traits could be reduced down to 16 core personality traits based on statistical correlations.
  
• Hans and Sybil Eysenck suggested that personality could be reduced down to two polar dimensions, extraversion-introversion and emotional stability-instability.

The Big Five

• Today’s trait researchers believe that Eysencks’ personality dimensions are too narrow and Cattell’s 16PF too large. So, a middle range (five factors) of traits does a better job of assessment.
• These traits are quite stable in adulthood. However, they change over development.
  
• They are fifty percent or so heritable for each trait.
  
• These traits are common across cultures.
  
• They can predict other personal attributes. Conscientious people are morning type and extroverted are evening type.
  

Evaluating the Trait Perspective

• Walter Mischel points out that traits may be enduring, but the resulting behavior in various situations is different. Therefore, traits are not good predictors of behavior.
  
• People can fake desirable responses on self-report measures of personality
  
• Trait theorists argue that behaviors from a situation may be different, but the average behavior remains the same. Therefore, traits matter.
  
• Traits are socially significant and influence our health, thinking, and performance
  

The Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Social-Cognitive Perspective: views behavior as influenced by the interaction between persons (and their thinking) and their social context.
  
• Bandura believes that personality is the result of an interaction that takes place between a person and their social context.
  
• Social-cognitive theorists believe we learn many behaviors through conditioning, observing, or modeling (social part)
  
• They also stress that what we “think” about our situations affect behavior (mental part)

Reciprocal Influences

• Reciprocal Determinism: the interacting influences between personality and environmental factors
  
• The three factors, behavior, cognition, and environment, are interlocking determinants of each other.
• Different people choose different environments.
• Our personalities shape how we react to events.
• Our personalities shape situations.
• Behavior emerges from interplay of external and internal influences.

Personal Control

• Personal Control: our sense of controlling our environment rather than feeling helpless
  
• Self control is the ability to control impulses and delay gratification (predicts good adjustment, social success, good grades)
  
• External locus of control refers to the perception that chance or outside forces beyond our personal control determine our fate.
  
• Internal locus of control refers to the perception that we can control our own fate.
  
• Learned Helplessness: the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events
  
• An optimistic or pessimistic attribution style is your way of explaining positive or negative events.
  
• Critics say that social-cognitive psychologists pay a lot of attention to the situation and pay less attention to the individual, his unconscious mind, his emotions, and his genetics.
  
• Positive psychology, such as humanistic psychology, attempts to foster human fulfillment. Positive psychology, in addition, seeks positive subjective well-being, positive character, and positive social groups.
  

Exploring the Self

• Research focuses on the different selves we possess. Some we dream and others we dread.
  
• Research studies how we overestimate our concern that others evaluate our appearance, performance, and blunders (spotlight effect).
  
• Research studies the self-reference effect in recall.
  

Self-Esteem

• Self-Esteem: one’s feelings of high or low self-worth
  
• Maslow and Rogers argued that a successful life results from a healthy self-image (self-esteem).
  
• When self-esteem is deflated, we view others and ourselves critically.
  
• Low self-esteem reflects reality, our failure in meeting challenges or surmounting difficulties.
  
• People maintain their self-esteem even with a low status by valuing things they achieve and comparing themselves to people in similar positions.
  
• We accept responsibility for good deeds and successes more than for bad deeds and failures. Defensive self-esteem is fragile and egotistic whereas secure self-esteem is less fragile and less dependent on external evaluation.
  
• Self-Serving Bias: A readiness to perceive oneself favorably
  

Part 1 is here. These are a bit more detailed notes. What’s not here is in part 1 and vice versa. I recommend combining them :)

The Psychoanalytic Perspective

The Unconscious

• Freud believed free association led patients to retrace thoughts and bring about the reasoning of the feelings
• Freud compared the human mind to an iceberg because he believed that most of the mind (the unconscious) is hidden from view because we repress the thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories that create feelings and anxiety.

Personality Structure

• Freud saw personality as the product of a conflict between our biological impulses.
  
• The players in this conflict are three interacting systems: the id, the ego, and the superego.
  
• Id
  
• Examples: infants crying for a need; those addicted for tobacco or alcohol
• Ego
• The ego contains our partly conscious perceptions, thoughts, judgments, and memories
• Superego
• The part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations
• Develops at age 5
• Strives for perfection

Personality Development

• Freud believed that personality formed during the first few years of life divided into 5 psychosexual stages
  
• Psychosexual Stages: the childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones
  
• Oral (0-18 months): pleasure centers on the mouth- sucking, biting, chewing
• Anal (18-36 months): pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination, coping with demands for control
• Phallic (3-6 years): pleasure zone is in the genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feelings
• Latency (6 to puberty): Dormant sexual feelings
• Genital (puberty on): maturation of sexual interests
• Oedipus Complex: according to Freud, a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father
  
• Identification: the process by which children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos
  
• Fixation: lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved
  

Defense Mechanisms

• Defense Mechanisms: the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality
• Reaction Formation: causes the ego to unconsciously switch unacceptable impulses into their opposites. People may express feelings of purity when they may be suffering anxiety from unconscious feelings about sex.
  
• Projection leads people to disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others.
• Displacement shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, redirecting anger toward a safer outlet.

Neo-Freudian and Psychodynamic Theorists

• Collective Unconscious: Carl Jung’s concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ past.
  
• This is why many cultures share certain myths and images such as the mother being a symbol of nurturance.
  
• Alfred Adler believed in social childhood tensions. A child struggles with an inferiority complex during growth and strives for superiority and power.
  
• Horney also believed in the social aspects of childhood growth and development. She countered Freud’s assumption that women have weak superegos and suffer from “penis envy.
  

Assessing Unconscious Processes

• Critics argue that projective tests lack both reliability (consistency of results) and validity (predicting what it is supposed to).
  
• When evaluating the same patient, even trained raters come up with different interpretations (reliability).
  
• Projective tests may misdiagnose a normal individual as pathological (validity).
  

Evaluating the Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Personality develops throughout life and is not fixed in childhood.
  
• Freud underemphasized peer influence on the individual, which may be as powerful as parental influence.
  
• Gender identity may develop before 5-6 years of age.
  
• There may be other reasons for dreams besides wish fulfillment.
  
• Verbal slips can be explained on the basis of cognitive processing of verbal choices.
  
• Suppressed sexuality leads to psychological disorders. Sexual inhibition has decreased, but psychological disorders have not.
  
• Terror-Management Theory: proposes that faith in one’s worldview and the pursuit of self-esteem provide protection against a deeply rooted fear of death.
  

Attribution

• Attribution Theory: Fritz Heider (1958) suggested that we have a tendency to give casual explanations for someone’s behavior, often by crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition.
• The tendency to overestimate the impact of personal disposition and underestimate the impact of the situations in analyzing the behaviors of others leads to the fundamental attribution error.

Attitude

• A belief and feeling that predisposes a person to respond in a particular way to objects, other people, and events.
• Our attitudes predict our behaviors imperfectly because other factors, including the external situation, also influence behavior.
• Foot-in-the-door Phenomenon: The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request.

Role Playing Affects Attitude

• Zimbardo (1972) assigned the roles of guards and prisoners to random students and found that guards and prisoners developed role-appropriate attitudes.
• One explanation is that when our attitudes and actions are opposed, we experience tension. To relieve ourselves of this tension we bring our attitude closer to our actions (Festinger). This is called Cognitive Dissonance.
• Behavior is contagious, modeled by one followed by another. We follow behavior of others to conform.
• Asch’s Experiment: Showed participants lines od various lengths and when asked a question the participant conformed and agreed with the group even though the answer was wrong.
• Other behaviors may be an oppression of compliance (obedience) toward authority.
• Suggestibility is a subtle type of conformity adjusting out behavior or thinking toward some group standard.

Conditions That Strengthen Conformity

• One is made to feel incompetent or insecure
• The group has at least 3 people
• The group is unanimous
• One admires the group’s status and attractiveness
• One has no prior commitment or response
• The group observes one’s behavior
• One’s culture strongly encourages respect for a social standard

Social Influences

• Normative Social Influence: influence resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid rejection. A person may respect normative behavior because there may be a severe price to pay if not respected.
• Informative Social Influence: The group may provide valuable information, but stubborn people will never listen to others.

• Intuition and common sense – unreliable
  
• Hindsight Bias is the “I-knew-it-all-along” phenomenon
  
• The scientific attitude is composed of curiosity, skepticism, and humility
  
• Critical thinking does not accept arguments and conclusions blindly. It examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence and assesses conclusions.
  
• Scientific method

Types of Research

• Case Study: a technique in which one person is studied in depth to reveal underlying behavioral principles.
  
• Clinical Study: a form of case study in which the therapist investigates the problems associated with a client.
  
• Surveys:
• Wording can change the result
• False Consensus Effect: a tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors
• Random Sampling
• Naturalistic Observation
  

Correlation

• When one trait or behavior accompanies another, we say the two correlate
• Scatterplot
• Correlation does not cause causation, it can only suggest a relationship
• Illusory Correlation: the perception of a relationship actually exists

Experimentation

• Experimental Condition: the condition of an experiment that exposes participants to the independent variable
  
• Control Condition: serves as a comparison for evaluating the effects (you only observe)
  
• Independent Variable: the factor that is being manipulated and studied
  
• Dependent Variable: a factor that may change in response to an independent variable
  
• In psychology, it is usually a behavior or a mental process
  
• Confounding Variable: an extraneous variable (factor) whose presence affects the variables being studied so that the results you get don’t reflect the actual relationship between the variables under investigation
  

Evaluating Therapies

• Double-Blind Procedure: in evaluating drug therapies, patients and experimenter’s assistants should remain unaware of which patients had the placebo treatment
  
• Assigning participants to experimental and control conditions by random assignment minimizes pre-existing different between two groups

Statistics

• Statistics help us see and interpret data
  
• Visualize data in a histogram (bar graph)
  
• Summarize data using a measure of central tendency = one score that represents a whole set of scores
  
• Mode: most frequently occurring score
  
• Mean: average score
  
• Median: score in the middle
  
• Measures of Variation: tells us how similar or diverse the scores are
• Low variation -> more reliable
• High variation -> less reliable
• Range: gap between highest and lowest score
• Crude estimate of variation
• Standard Variation: better measure of how much scores vary around the mean

What is Intelligence?

• Intelligence: mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations
• It’s a socially constructed concept that differs from culture to culture.
• Controversies on intelligence: 1. Whether it is one overall ability or many, and 2. Whether neuroscientists can locate and measure intelligence within the brain.
• Toreify intelligence is to treat it as though it were a real object, not an abstract concept.
• Most psychologists now define intelligence as the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and adapt to new situations.

General Intelligence

• Factor Analysis: a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie one’s total score
• Enables researchers to identify clusters of test items that measure a common ability
• Charles Spearman, who helped develop factor analysis, believed there is also a general intelligence, or, g.
• General intelligence (g): a general intelligence factor that according to Spearman and others underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test
• He proposed that general intelligence is linked to many clusters that can be analyzed by factor analysis

Contemporary Intelligence Theories

• Howard Gardner disputes the idea of one general intelligence

• He proposes 8 independent intelligences: and speculates about a ninth one- existential intelligence which is the ability to think about the question of life, death, and existence.
• Brain damage may diminish one type of ability but not others.
• Savant syndrome: a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing.
• Robert Sternberg’s triarchic theory proposes only 3 intelligences: analytical, creative, and practical intelligences.
  

Emotional Intelligence

• Emotional intelligence: the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions
• Emotionally intelligent people are self-aware
• Four components:

• Gardner and others criticize the idea of emotional intelligence and question whether we stretch this idea of intelligence too far when we apply it to our emotions.
  

Intelligence and Creativity

• Creativity: the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.
  
• It correlates somewhat with intelligence, but beyond a score of 120, that correlation dwindles.
  
• Expertise: A well-developed knowledge base.
  
• Imaginative Thinking: The ability to see things in novel ways.
  
• Adventuresome Personality: A personality that seeks new experiences rather than following the pack.
  
• Intrinsic Motivation: A motivation to be creative from within.
  
• A Creative Environment: A creative and supportive environment allows creativity to bloom.
  

Is Intelligence Neurologically Measurable?

• Recent Studies indicate some correlation (about +.40) between brain size and intelligence.
  
• As brain size decreases with age, scores on verbal intelligence tests also decrease.
  
• Studies of brain functions show that people who score high on intelligence tests perceive stimuli faster, retrieve information from memory quicker, and show faster brain response times.
  

The Origins of Intelligence Testing

• Intelligence testing: a measure for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores
  
• Alfred Binet and his colleague Théodore Simon practiced a more modern form of intelligence testing by developing questions that would predict children’s future progress in the Paris school system.
  
• Binet and Simon, set out to recognize a child’s mental age
  
• Mental age: the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance
  
• Example: a child who does well as the average 8 year old, is said to have a mental age of 8
  
• In the US, Lewis Terman adapted Binet’s test for American school children and named the test the Stanford-Binet Test.
  
• Extended the test’s range from teenagers to “superior adults”
  
• German psychologist William Stern created the “Intelligence quotient” or IQ
  

Modern Tests of Mental Abilities

• Aptitude tests are intended to predict your ability to learn a new skill
  
• Achievement tests are intended to reflect what you have already learned.
  
• Wechsler developed the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and later the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), an intelligence test for preschoolers.
  
• WAIS measures overall intelligence and 11 other aspects related to intelligence that are designed to assess clinical and educational problems.
  
• Separate scored for verbal comprehension, perceptual organization, working memory, and processing speed
  
• Differences in scores can alert for possible learning problems or brain disorders
  

Principles of Test Construction

• For a psychological test to be acceptable it must fulfill the following three criteria: Standardization, Reliability, and Validity
  

Standardization

• Standardizing a test involves administering the test to a representative sample of future test takers in order to establish a basis for meaningful comparison.
  
• Standardized tests establish a normal distribution of scores on a tested population in a bell-shaped pattern called the normal curve. (bell curve)
  
• Normal curve: the symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes. Most scores fall near the average, and fewer scores lie near the extremes
  
• In the past 60 years, intelligence scores have risen steadily by an average of 27 points.  This phenomenon is known as the Flynn effect.
  

Reliability

• A test is reliable when it yields consistent results. To establish reliability researchers establish different procedures:
  
• To establish reliability researchers establish different procedures:
  
• Split-half Reliability: Dividing the test into two equal halves and assessing how consistent the scores are.
  
• Reliability using different tests: Using different forms of the test to measure consistency between them.
  
• Test-Retest Reliability: Using the same test on two occasions to measure consistency.

Validity

• Reliability of a test does not ensure validity.
  
• Validity of a test refers to what the test is supposed to measure or predict.
  
• Content Validity: Refers to the extent a test measures a particular behavior or trait.
  
• Predictive Validity: Refers to the function of a test in predicting a particular behavior or trait.
  

The Dynamics of Intelligence

• Intelligence scores become stable after about seven years of age
  
• A valid intelligence test divides two groups of people into two extremes: the mentally retarded (IQ 70) and individuals with high intelligence (IQ 135).
  
• Mentally retarded individuals required constant supervision a few decades ago, but with a supportive family environment and special education they can now care for themselves.
  
• Mental retardation: a condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence score of 70 or below and difficulty in adapting to the demands of life; varies from mild to profound
  
• Down syndrome: a condition of retardation and associated physical disorders caused by an extra chromosome in one’s genetic makeup
  

Genetic Influences

• Studies of twins, family members, and adopted children together support the idea that there is a significant genetic contribution to intelligence.
  
• Adopted children show a marginal correlation in verbal ability to their adopted parents.
  
• Fraternal twins raised together tend to show similarity in intelligence scores
  
• Identical twins raised apart show slightly less similarity in their intelligence scores
  
• Heritability of intelligence refers to the extent to which variation in intelligence test scores in a group of people being studied is attributable to genetic factors.
  
• Heritability never applies to an individual’s intelligence, but only to differences among people
  

Environmental Influences

• Early neglect from caregivers leads children to develop a lack of personal control over the environment, and it impoverishes their intelligence.
  
• Siblings within impoverished families have more similar intelligence scores which means that among the poor, environmental conditions can override genetic differences. 
  
• Schooling is an experience that pays dividends, which is reflected in intelligence scores.
  
• High-quality preschool programs can provide at least a small boost to emotional intelligence, which leads to a better attitude towards learning and reduces school dropouts and criminality.
  
• Increased schooling correlates with higher intelligence scores.
  

Ethnic Similarities/Differences

• There is a test score gap between races
  
• However, these group differences are most likely due to environmental differences
  
• Asian students outperform North American students on math achievement and aptitude tests. But this may reflect conscientiousness more than competence as well as Asian students attending school 30% more days
  
• Today’s better prepared populations would outperform populations of the 1930s on intelligence tests
  
• White and black infants tend to score equally well on tests predicting future intelligence
  
• Different ethnic groups have experienced periods of remarkable achievement in different eras
  

Gender Similarities/Differences

• Females are better spellers; at the end of high school, only 30% of males spell better than the average female
  
• Females are verbally fluent and have large vocabularies 
  
• Females are better at locating objects
  
• Females are more sensitive to touch, taste, and color
  
• Males outnumber females in counts of underachievement
  
• Males tend to talk later and stutter more often
  
• Males outperform females at math problem solving, but underperform at math computation. However, girls are less likely to be encouraged to pursue STEM fields, but as more girls get encouraged this gap is decreasing 
  
• Females detect emotions more easily than men do
  

The Question of Bias

• Aptitude tests are necessarily biased in the sense that they are sensitive to performance differences caused by cultural differences.
  
• However, aptitude tests are not biased in the sense that they accurately predict performance of one group over the other.
  
• A stereotype threat is a self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype.
  
• Stereotype threat explains why women do better in math tests when men aren’t in the room

Need help with a certain lesson, assignment, or just want resources? Let me know :) ask box is always open for a reason and is mostly what I’m posting nowadays since that way I help you guys exactly with what you need. Also faster to post than my notes (I have a really big school load this sem).

Y’know. If there was one thing I was expecting to happen today, it was definitely not finding out that I am ambidextrous.

I am losing my shit over the fact that my AP Psych textbook quotes MCR.