Chapter 1
Main ideas
The main reason to study psychology is to discover insight into human thoughts
and behaviors. One of the questions that psychology poses is: Does one’s
common sense and intuition really lead one to the correct judgment in every
situation? Often, our intuitions can assist us in the execution of commonplace
judgments that pertain to our everyday lives; but if the discipline of psychology
were solely directed toward our common sense, we would not ascertain any new
knowledge. Rather, psychology’s goal is to uncover how we come to make
these “common sense” judgments in the first place. Further, if we error in our
judgments, it’s the objective of psychology to understand why we make these
errors. In other words, psychology is not simply focused on explaining that
which we already knowpsychology is actually discovering the underlying
mechanisms as to why we truly think and behave the way we do as human
beings.
One of the mentioned phenomena, the hindsight bias, refers to the way that
human beings regularly make judgments regarding past events as if they had
foreseen them coming all along. The hindsight bias is also referred to as the “I-
knew-it-all-along” phenomenon. Scientists believe that because our common
sense can more easily describe an event that has already happened, we find it
easy to subscribe to the belief that we saw the event coming all along.
Answer Key:
1. Correlation method.
2. The underlying mechanisms behind why we think and behave the way we do
as human beings.
Chapter 2
The nervous system can be broken down into two parts: the central nervous
system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The central nervous
system is comprised of our brain and spinal chord, whereas the peripheral
nervous system can be broken down into two more components: the autonomic
nervous system (ANS) and the somatic nervous system (SoNS).
The function of the somatic nervous system appertains to our motor skills.
When moving any one of our skeletal muscles, we are activating our somatic
nervous system. The autonomic nervous system serves to regulate more
involuntary and autonomous processes, including glandular activity and the
movement of muscles surrounding internal organs.
Moreover, the ANS can be broken down into components corresponding to its
two main functions. First, the sympathetic nervous system serves to arouse us to
respond to impending danger. Most psychologists refer to this as being in the
state of “fight-or-flight.” Second, the parasympathetic nervous system functions
as the antithesis to the sympathetic nervous system. This system primarily
causes a calming effect on the body, putting a person into a state referred to as
the “rest-and-digest” state.
The Brain
The study of the brain is paramount in the study of the human mind. The two
are deeply interwoven entities that encompass almost every question that
psychology is interested in answering.
With the technological leaps of the past century, many neuroimaging techniques
have been inventedincluding the electroencephalogram (EEG), positron
emission tomography (PET), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). For example, MRIs are extremely
technical machines that have served to produce some of the most detailed
mappings of the brain ever created.
Chapter 3 Counciousness
world”—to recognize things and to plan future actions. A visual action track
On rare occasions, the two conflict. Shown the hollow face illusion people
REM Sleep Rapid eye movement, a recurring sleep stage which vivid dreams
commonly occur. Also known as Paradoxical Sleep because the muscles are
relaxed except for minor twitches but other body systems are active.
Alpha Waves The relatively slow brain waves of a relaxed awake state.
Delta Waves The large slow brain waves associated with deep sleep.
Tolerance The diminishing effect with regular use of the same dose of a drug,
requiring the user t take larger and larger doses before experiencing the drug's
effect.
Opiates Opium and its derivatives, such as morphine and heroin; they
depress neural activity, temporarily lessening pain and anxiety.
Stimulants Drugs that excite neural activity and speed up body functions.
Sleep deprivation slows reactions and increases errors on visual attention tasks.
-Sleep disorders are a group of conditions that affect the ability to sleep well.
Insomnia – Difficulty falling or staying asleep. REM sleep deprived one day,
makes REM sleep longer on the next
(REM Rebound).
Dreams
Using Freudian terms (depicted by Sigmund Freud), Manifest content –
what we remembered the dream to be. This is only the “cover up”;
underlying every dream is its true meaning called Latent content – our
unaccepting subconscious thoughts and drives.
Seligman and Yellen (1987) proposed another theory that says dreams are
random bursts of activity from the brainstem and the brain tries to make
sense of it; thus hallucination images are produced in dreams.
When we dream the amygdala in the limbic system of the brain is most
active (producing emotions).