Errors of Attribution

1. What is the difference between dispositional factors and situational factors?

• Dispositional attribution is that you think that there is something wrong with person who did something wrong. It's his/her fault.
• Situational attribution is when you are finding the reasons why the person did it wrong, but it's not his/her fault.
• For example.: You are standing in a line to buy tickets for a movie, when someone pushes you and goes ahead. Dispositional Attribution: He is thoughtless, rude and uncivilized. Situational Attribution: He was pushed by someone else; he did not intend to cut the line

2. Explain and give an example of the fundamental error of attribution.

• The fundamental attribution error describes the tendency to over-value dispositional or personality-based explanations for behavior while under-valuing situational explanations. The fundamental attribution error is most visible when people explain the behavior of others.
• For example, when a student fails to turn in a homework assignment, a teacher is too ready to assume that the student was too lazy to finish the homework, without sufficiently taking into account the situation that the student could have some trouble with something.

3. Explain and give an example of the self-serving-bias error of attribution.

• attributing dispositional and internal factor for success and external, uncontrollable factors for failure. 
• For Example: Chad wins a poetry competition but fails to get the poem published in a magazine he sent it to. He attributes his success in the competition to his talent. He attributes his failure to get it published to bad luck.

5. What does the study by Miyamoto and Kitayama tell us about cultural differences in attribution errors?

• People from individualist cultures are more inclined to make fundamental-attribution error than people from collectivist cultures. Individualist cultures tend to attribute a person’s behavior to his internal factors whereas collectivist cultures tend to attribute a person’s behavior to his external factors.

Trait theory of personality

1. What is the primary focus of trait theory of personality?

• Trait theory is focused on identifying and measuring  individual personality characteristics and the link to anti-social behavior, i.e., aggression, violence, and criminality 

2. Explain the differences between cardinal traits, central traits and secondary traits.

• Central Traits: The general characteristics that form the basic foundations of personality. These central traits, while not as dominating as cardinal traits, are the major characteristics you might use to describe another person. Terms such as intelligent, honest,shy and anxious are considered central traits.
• Secondary Traits: The traits that are sometimes related to attitudes or preferences and often appear only in certain situations or under specific circumstances. Some examples would be getting anxious when speaking to a group or impatient while waiting in line.
• Cardinal Traits: Traits that dominate an individual’s whole life. The peple consider the origin and meaning of the following descriptive terms: Freudian, Machiavellian, narcissism, Don Juan, Christ-like, etc.

3. What are two common criticisms of trait theory?

• Poor Predictor of Future Behavior: While a person falls on the high end or low end of a specific trait, trait theory fails to address a person's state. A state is a temporary way of interacting and dealing with the self and others.

• No Means of Change: Perhaps because trait theory does little to offer ideas about trait development, it also provides little or no guidance in the changing of negative aspects of a trait. Without understanding how a trait develops, how do we then change that trait? Many argue that the application of trait theory is significantly reduced because it lacks a means for change. What good is to measure something or to know something if we can do nothing about it?

4. Identify and briefly explain each of the five dimensions of personality according to McCrae and Costa.

• Openness to experience – Appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, curiosity, and variety of experience.
• Conscientiousness –  A tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement; planned rather than spontaneous behavior.
• Extraversion – Energy, positive emotions, surgency, and the tendency to seek stimulation in the company of others.
• Agreeableness –  A tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others.
• Neuroticism –  A tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability.

Placebo effect

   A placebo is a substance or procedure used as a control in an experiment. The placebo effect is the measurable, observable, or felt improvement in health not attributable to an actual treatment.
   When a treatment is based on a known inactive substance like a sugar pill, distilled water, or saline solution rather than having real medical value, a patient may still improve merely because their expectation to do so is so strong.


      It is important to understand that not all placebo effects are good. Just as some patients improve with the power of positive thinking, some get worse and drop out of research studies because of the side effects caused by the placebo. In a recent, well-publicized and fascinating study of Parkinson disease, it was discovered that the patients who improved with placebo had changes in their brain that were identical to the changes caused by the actual medication. Levodopa causes an increase in brain dopamine, and the placebo should not. However, the patients who got better with placebo had a similar increase in dopamine, identical to what happened in those who were given the drug.

      

PTSD Cognitive Behavioral Treatment and medical or drug treatment

1. Explain briefly how each treatment is conducted 

• Cognitive-behavioral treatments describe any kind of treatment that is based on the idea that psychological problems arise as a result of the way in which people interpret or evaluate situations, thoughts, and feelings, as well as the behaviors that stem from these evaluations. Several different therapies would be considered "cognitive-behavioral" that are regularly used to treat PTSD: Exposure Therapy, Stress-Inoculation Training, and Cognitive Processing Therapy.
• There is a definite need for treatments for substance abuse and PTSD. This is because it is common for individuals with PTSD to also develop problems with alcohol and drug use. In fact, these problems co-occur quite frequently. Alcohol and drug use can interfere with standard treatments for PTSD. Therefore, people have developed specialized cognitive-behavioral treatments for substance abuse and PTSD. One such treatment is called Seeking Safety.

2. Explain briefly how each treatment works (be specific)

• CBT - writing about the trauma. The patient is asked to write about his traumatic event in detail. The patient is then instructed to read the story aloud repeatedly in and outside of session. The therapist helps the client identify and address stuck points and errors in thinking, sometimes called "cognitive restructuring." Errors in thinking may include, for example, "I am bad person" or "I did something to deserve this." The therapist may help the patient address these errors or stuck points by having the client gather evidence for and against those thoughts.

3. Explain how these two treatments can be used in combination with each other

• CBT and medication are each effective alone but many studies have shown that a combination of CBT and medication is the best approach for treating anxiety disorders. Combination CBT and medication is particularly effective for children and adolescents. Evidence clearly supports the combination approach is benefits for treating pediatric cases of generalized anxiety disorder, separation anxiety, social phobia, and obsessive compulsive disorder. Studies suggest that CBT is also helpful for patients who have additional conditions, such as depression, a second anxiety disorder, or alcohol dependency. CBT is often given along with drug treatment. Both individual and group treatments work well.  

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

What is PTSD?
How the name of this disorder sais, it's disorder which has some people after some traumatic event. It can comes from rape, car crash, fire.....

What are the symptoms?

• re-experiencing of the trauma (for example in dreams like nightmare)
• evading the place and situations which can remind the event
• the person can be aggressive, anxious, can have a sleeping problems, poor concentration,...

What causes PTSD? 

In essence, anything that the individual concerned is considered as extremely negative andsignificant. PTSD occurs in about one third of people who were part of any such event.

emotional differences

Differences between male and female:




Condry & Condry (1976) - their study sais, that when we see some picture with baby which has some emotional in his face and somebody sais us that this is a girl,  we identified this emotion as a fear. But when they said that this is a boy, we identified this emotion as a anger.

Timmers, Fischer & Manstead (1993) - their study sais that women crying when they are angry, faerful, sad and dissapointed, but men crying when they are confronted with death of someone close.

(women crying more than man)

HM - Henry Gustav Molaison

He knew his name. That much he could remember.



Henry Gustav Molaison, born on Feb. 26, 1926 and he knew his name. That much he could remembee know everything from his early life, for example that his father is from from Thibodaux, and his mother was from Ireland. He remembered World War II and life in the 1940s. But he doesn't remeber nothing after that. Because in 1953 he underwent experimantal brain operation in Hartford to correct a seizure disorder. But the operation failed. So he developed a syndrome neurologists call profound amnesia. He had lost the ability to form new memories. And next 55 years everything like meeting friends and etc was new for him. And during this 55 years, the scientists discovered that he was the most important patient in the history of brain science.


He helped scientists understand the biology of learning, memory and physical dexterity, as well as the fragile nature of human identity.

Because today, when existing modern powerful brain-imaging technology and etc it's easy forgot how was it hard everything when they didn't have this technologies. In 20 century they believed that memory is not dependent on any one neural organ or region. But when they studiet HM, theyz discovered that this is fault. Because study demonstrate that part his memory is intact. The implications were enormous. Scientists saw that there were at least two systems in the brain for creating new memories. One records names, faces and new experiences and stores them until they are consciously retrieved. Another system, is subconscious and depends on other brain systems.

The hippocampus of the human brai

They saw that H. M.’s short-term memory was fine; he could hold thoughts in his head for about 20 seconds. It was holding onto them without the hippocampus that was impossible.