Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Psychology: The study of mental processes and behaviour………………………. 2
Chapter 12: Physical and cognitive development…………………………………………….. 5
Chapter 13: Social development…………………………………………………………….. 13
Chapter 9: Intelligence………………………………………………………………………. 21
Chapter 11: Personality……………………………………………………………………… 27
Chapter 17: Attitudes and Social Cognition………………………………………………… 35
Chapter 18: Interpersonal processes………………………………………………………… 43
Chapter 19: Cross-Cultural and Indigenous psychology……………………………………. 51
Chapter 14: Health, stress and coping……………………………………………………….. 60
Chapter 15: Psychological disorders………………………………………………………… 71
1 Chapter 1: Psychology: the study of mental processes and behaviour
Key Terms:
• Psychology; The scientific investigation of mental processes and behaviour. Understanding
a person requires attention to the individuals biology, psychological experience and cultural
context.
• Biopsychology; examines the physical basis of psychological phenomena such as
motivation, emotion and stress
• Cross-cultural psychology; tries to distinguish universal psychological processes from
those that are specific to particular cultures.
• Psychodynamic perspective; proposes that people's actions reflect the way thoughts,
feelings, and wishes are associated in their minds
• Behaviourist perspective; focuses on the way objects or events in the environment come to
control behaviour through learning
• Cognitive perspective; focuses on the way people perceive, process and retrieve
information
• Evolutionary perspective; argues that many behavioural tendencies in humans, from the
need to eat to concern for our children, evolved because they helped our ancestors survive
and rear healthy offspring
• Positive psychology; focuses on understanding and harnessing positive emotions and
actively stimulating conditions that produce valued, subjective experiences that help people
flourish
• Paradigm; a broad system of theoretical assumptions employed by a scientific community
that includes shared models, metaphors and methods
• Empiricism; the belief that the path to scientific knowledge is systematic observation and,
ideally, experimental observation
• Ethology; studies animal behaviour from a biological and evolutionary perspective
• Sociobiology; explores possible evolutionary and biological bases of human social
behaviour
• Behavioural genetics; a field that examines the genetic and environmental bases of
differences among individuals on psychological traits
History of psychology:
• Psychology grew out of philosophy
2 Whether human action is the product of free will or determinism?
- René Descartes - human action follows from human intention, that people choose a course of
action and act on it
- Democritus - behaviour follows lawful patterns like everything else in the universe
Philosophical issues
- Free will versus determinism - do people make free choices or are their actions determined by
forces outside of their control?
- Nature versus nurture - to what extent do psychological processes reflect biological or
environmental influences?
- Rationalism versus empiricism - to what extent does knowledge about the world come from
observation and experience or from logic and reasoning?
- Reason versus emotion - to what extent are people guided by their knowledge or by their
feelings?
- Continuity versus discontinuity with other animals - to what extent are humans similar to
other animals?
- Individualism versus relationality - to what extent are humans fundamentally self-interested or
oriented towards relating to and helping others people?
- Conscious versus unconscious - to what extent are people conscious of the contents of their
mind and the causes of their behaviour?
- Mental versus physical - to what extent can we understand psychological events independent
of their neural basis?
Wudnt's scientific psychology
- Hoped to use scientific methods to uncover the elementary units of human consciousness that
combine to form more complex ideas
- Introspection - the process of looking inward and reporting on ones conscious experience
- Structuralism attempted to uncover the basic elements of consciousness through introspection.
Functionalism attempted to explain psychological processes in terms of the role, or function,
they serve
Perspectives in psychology
• Psychology lacks a unified paradigm but has a number of perspectives that can be used to
understand psychological events
The psychodynamic perspective
- Sigmund Freud - developed a theory of mental life and behaviour and an approach to treating
psychological disorders known as psychoanalysis
3 - Rests on three key premises - First, peoples actions are determined by the way thoughts,
feelings and wishes are connected in their mind. Second, many of these mental events occur
outside of conscious awareness. And third, these mental processes may conflict with one
another, leading to compromises among competing motives.
- Psychodynamic understanding seeks to interpret meanings - to infer underlying wishes, fears
and patterns of thought from an individuals conscious, verbalised thought and behaviour
- Although their primary method has been the analysis of case studies , psychodynamic
psychologists are increasingly using experimental methods to integrate psychodynamic
thinking with scientific psychology
- Psychodynamic theory's lack of scientific grounding, its violation of the falsifiability
criterion, and its reliance on retrospective accounts are just a few of its criticisms
The behavioural perspective
- Behaviourists asserted that the behaviour of humans, like other animals, can be understood
entirely without reference to internal states such as thoughts and feelings
- The primary method of behaviourism is experimental
- Behaviourists offer a fundamental insight into the psychology of humans and other animals
that can be summarised in a simple but remarkably important formula; behaviour follows its
consequences
The humanistic perspective
- Focus on the uniqueness of the individual
- Focuses on aspects of personality that are directly human, not shared by other animals
- Humanistic methods typically centre on helping individuals to understand their unique frame
of reference and work towards achieving their desire of being the 'best' that they can be
- Humanistic theorists believe that people experience problem when there is a discrepancy
between our self-concept and the ideal self
The cognitive perspective
- Response time is a useful measure or memory
- The cognitive perspective is useful not only in examining memory but also in understanding
processes such as decision making
- The philosophical roots of the cognitive perspective lie in a series of questions about where
knowledge came from
- Cognitive psychologists use experimental procedures to infer mental processes at work
- The primary metaphor originally underlying the cognitive perspective was the mind as a
computer
4 The evolutionary perspective
- Nature vs. nurture - Advocates of the nurture position maintain that behaviour is learned and
not biologically ordained
- Evolutionary perspective is rooted in the writings of Charles Darwin - natural selection argued that natural forces select traits in organisms that are adaptive and are likely to be passed
on to their off springs
- Evolution selects organisms that maximise their reproductive success, defined as the capacity
to survive and reproduce as well as to maximise the reproductive success of genetically related
individuals
- Although the methods of evolutionary theorists have traditionally been deductive and
comparative, evolutionary psychologists are increasingly using experimental methods
- Although the different perspectives offer radically different ways of approaching psychology,
each has made distinctive contributions. These perspectives have often developed in mutual
isolation, but efforts to integrate them are likely to continue to be fruitful, particularly in
clinical psychology
Psychology in Australia and New Zealand
- Biopsychology; investigates the physical basis of psychological phenomena such as thought,
emotion and stress
- Developmental psychology; studies the way thought, feelings and behaviour develop through
the lifespan, from infancy to death
- Social psychology; examines interactions of individual psychology and group phenomena;
examines the influence of real or imagined others on the way people behave
- Clinical psychology; focuses on the nature and treatment of psychological processes that lead
to emotional distress
- Cognitive psychology; examines the nature of thought, memory, sensation perception and
language
- Personality psychology; examines peoples enduring ways of responding in different kinds of
situations and how individuals differ in the way they tend to think, feel and behave
- Industrial/organisational psychology; examines the behaviour of people in organisations and
attempts to help solve organisational problems
- Educational psychology; examines psychological processes in learning and applies
psychological knowledge in educational settings
- Health psychology; examines psychological factors involved in health and disease
5 - Counselling psychology; provides diagnosis and assessment; short and long term counselling
and therapy to individuals, couples, families, groups and organisations
- Sport psychology; focuses on ways to enhance performance in individual athletes
- Forensic psychology; provides services in criminal, civil and family legal contexts relevant to
the prevention and treatment of criminal behaviour
- Positive psychology; examines the strengths and virtues that make individuals, organisations
and communities flourish and applies this knowledge to help people thrive
- Conservation psychology; studying the reciprocal relationships between humans and nature,
with a focus on changing attitudes and behaviours to encourage conservation of the
environment
Chapter 12: Physical and cognitive development
Key terms:
• Developmental psychology; studies the way humans develop and change over time
• Cross-sectional studies; compare groups of participants of different ages at a single time to
provide a picture of age differences
• Longitudinal studies; assess the same individuals over time, providing the opportunity to
assess age changes
• Sequential studies; minimise cohort effects by studying multiple cohorts longitudinally
• Sensorimotor; thought and action are virtually identical, as the infant explores the world
with its senses and behaviours; child is egocentric
• Preoperational; symbolic thought develops; object permanence is firmly established; the
child cannot coordinate different physical attributes of objects or consider different
perspectives
• Concrete operational; the child is able to perform reversible mental operations on
representations of objects; understanding of conservation develops; the child can apply logic
to concrete situations
• Formal operational; the adolescent (or adult) can apply logic more abstractly; hypothetical
thinking develops
• Neo-Piagetian theorists; attempt to integrate an understanding of the broad stages of
Piaget's theory with an information processing approach; an important factor in qualitative
changes in development is an increasing capacity for working memory
6 Issues in developmental psychology
Nature and nurture
- Psychologists interested in development, have wrestled with the extent to which changes in
individuals over time reflect the influence of genetically programmed maturation (nature) or of
learning and experience (nurture)
- Maturation refers to biologically based changes that follow an orderly based sequence, each
step setting the stage for the next step according to an age-related timetable
- Interaction and correlation - their roles are not easily separated
The importance of early experience
• Evidence for critical periods
- Initially came from embryology, as researchers discovered that toxic substances could affect
the developing foetus but only if the foetus were exposed at very specific points in
development
- Pruning of neurons; infants are born with an abundance of neural connections, and those that
are not used or activated by the environment are gradually lost
• The impact of early abuse or deprivation
- The longer someone experiences severe deprivation, the more severe their cognitive
impairments remain four to six years later
- Other researchers have found that the consequences of chronic emotional neglect or physical
abuse experienced in early childhood may be wise-ranging and adverse
- Factors affecting the impact of recurrent neglect/abuse include the child's age and stage of
development; the type, severity, frequency and duration of abuse/neglect ; and the relationship
between child and abuser
- Psychologists continue to debate whether human development is characterised by critical
periods (periods central to specific types of learning that modify future development) or
sensitive periods (times that are particularly important but not definite for subsequent
development)
Stages or continuous change?
- According to one view, development occurs in stages, relatively discrete steps through which
everyone progresses in the same sequence
- An alternative perspective, sees development as continuous, characterised less by major
transformations than by steady and gradual change
- Many theorists suggest that development involves both stages and continuous processes
7 Studying development
Cross-sectional studies
- Compare groups of participants of different ages at a single time to see whether differences
exist among them
- Useful for providing a snapshot of ages differences, or variations among people of different
ages
- Do not directly asses age changes
- Most useful when cohort effects - differences among age groups associated with differences
among culture - are minimal
Longitudinal studies
- Advantage is their ability to reveal differences among individuals as well as changes within
individuals over time
- Vulnerable to cohort effects
Sequential studies
- Combines cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons, allowing researchers to distinguish
between age effects and cohort effects
- Sequential designs solve most of the problems of both cross-sectional and longitudinal
designs, but take years or decades to complete
Physical development and its psychological consequences
Prenatal/gestational development - before birth
• Three stages
- Germinal period- first two weeks after conception - fertilised egg becomes implanted in the
uterus
- Embryonic period - third week to eighth week - most important period in the development of
the central nervous system and the organs
- Foetal period - nine weeks to birth - muscular development is rapid - by about 28 weeks the
foetus is capable of sustaining life on its own
• Environmental influences on prenatal development
- Teratogens - environmental agents that harm the embryo or foetus - drugs, radiation, viruses
and toxic chemicals
- Foetal alcoholic syndrome - serious condition affecting up to half the babies born to alcoholic
mothers - babies are born with numerous physical deformities and a wide range of mental
abnormalities
8 - Cocaine - carries risk of premature birth, malformed internal organs, withdrawal symptoms,
respiratory problems, delayed motor development and death
- Maternal stress - babies tend to have more problems with attention and motor development
Infancy
- At birth, an infant possesses many adaptive reflexes - motor skills progress from head to toe
- Motor development in infancy follows a universal sequence - influenced by a child's ethnic
background
Childhood and adolescence
- Some of the most important maturational changes that influence psychological development
involve changes in the size and shape of the body
- Growth rates for boys and girls are roughly equal until age 10
- Early maturation in girls may not only be a cause of stress in their families but also a
consequence of it
Adulthood and ageing
- By the end of adolescence, physical growth is virtually complete, and the changes that occur
thereafter tend to be gradual and less dramatic
• Midlife changes
- Menopause for women - can be traumatic for some
- Male reproductive ability does not undergo any specific or dramatic period of physical
changes
• Later life
- Some of the most apparent signs of ageing are in physical appearance, such as wrinkled skin
and grey hair. Sensory changes are also substantial
- Many older people experience presbycusis - the inability to hear nigh-frequency sounds,
which can make hearing the telephone ring or understanding high pitched voices more difficult
- Deterioration in certain areas of functioning is an inevitable part of ageing, but the extent of
deterioration in part reflects internalisation of ageist stereotypes
Cognitive development in infancy, childhood and adolescence
Perceptual and cognitive development in infancy
- For many years, psychologists underestimated the cognitive capacity of infants
• New methods, new discoveries
- Three decades ago, psychologists discovered they could learn about infant perception and
cognition by taking advantage of the orienting reflex, the tendency of humans, even from birth,
9 to pay more attention to novel stimuli than to stimuli to which they have become habituated, or
grown accustomed
- Infants are also capable of discriminating between different categories of facial expressions the result suggests that the neural systems responsible for identifying categories of facial
expressions emerge before language acquisition
• What can infants sense and perceive?
- Infants are born with many sensory capabilities, such as hearing
- Vision is not well developed at birth
- Intermodal understanding - sensory processing occurs in anatomically discrete neural modules
- Intermodal processing - the ability to associate sensations of an object from different
senses or to match their own actions to behaviours they have observed visually
- Younger infants cannot perceive the human body as an integrated shape with determined
features - babies are born with an innate predisposition to attend to faces, but must learn
about bodies through experience
- Perceiving meaning - ecological theorists argue that the nervous system is wired to recognise
certain dangers, and to recognise the potential 'value' of some stimuli, without prior learning
• What can infants remember?
- Infantile amnesia - Hayne (2004) has found that the retention interval over which infants
memories remain accessible to retrieval increases dramatically as a function of age
- Representation flexibility - the ability to retrieve memories despite changes in the cues that
were present at encoding - while young infants appear to be capable of remembering their
experiences, the ability to retrieve these memories depends on whether the cues present when
the memory was encoded are again present in a given situation
- Various forms of implicit memory are present from birth.
- Working memory appears to be the slowest developing memory system, relying on the
maturation of the prefrontal cortex
Piaget's theory of cognitive development
- The first psychologist to trace development systematically was Jean Piaget
• A philosophical question and a psychological answer
- Piaget proposed that children develop knowledge by inventing, or constructing reality out of
their own experience, mixing what they observe with their own ideas about how the world
works
• Assimilation and accommodation
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