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General introduction to psychologie samenvatting
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I took the minor course in 2023/2024. This is my summary of the lectures and literature in 1!
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Summary Introduction to Psychological theories
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Gehele samenvatting Introduction Psychology (P_BINLPSY)- Psychologie periode 1
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Krause, Corts, Dolderman, Smith, Psychological Science, Canadian Edition, Complete Test Bank.
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General Introduction To PsychologyCollege 1 what is psychology?
Psychology is a study of mind, brain and behavior
William James developed the idea of functionalism → it is a theory of mental states → the way that
we act and feel must be useful
How meaningful is information for your brain? New information is always rewarding, sometimes you
can process it deeper. you always have to be attended to process something.
• If it's not rewarding anymore, you are attended to something else
• It has to be meaningful for your mind
Mind, Brain and Behavior
• Mind: the part of a person that thinks, reasons, feels and remembers → feelings are very important
for your mind
• Brain: mental activity results from psychological processed within the brain - MRI scan
• Behavior: what you see on the outside, the actions, we see the cheering, but we don’t know what
is happening in the mind
Nature or Nurture
• Nature: born the way that we are, it is genetic
• Nurture: the environment who makes who we are → the psychology will stress the importance of
nurture (de nadruk op nurture)
The biopsychosocial model of behavior: there is always overlap between the biological,
psychological and social/cultural element → together they de ne the experience
We have 4 di erent levels: biological (genetics), individual (personality), social (do you feel safe in a
group), cultural (the eastern culture nd relationship more important, then our western society)
Challenges of psychology as a science
1. The mind-body problem, René Descartes’ dualism: there is no place for the mind or the brain in
thinking. Our behavior is not caused by the things in your brain. How can we ever know what
somebody is thinking
2. Everybody is a psychologist: all the time we make assumptions about human behavior, without
knowing whether its true
3. Human perception is subjective: we don’t perceive the world in the same way, we look at the
world in our own way -Con rmation bias: we
pick up the information that ts our theory and we neglect the information that does not match
our theory
4. Objectivity and validity: the context is so important for our behavior
Stanford Prison Experiment shows that everyone, regardless of personality, is capable of the most
horrible things
1. Theory: explanation based on observations
2. Hypothesis: prediction based on the theory
3. Research: test of the hypothesis, then you have data
- the data support or fail to support the theory
- Support? You are going to revise it to make it more speci c or comprehensive (allesomvattend)
ff fi fi fi fi fi
, - Fail to support? You are going to discard the theory or revise it
If you do a experiment, you manipulate something, that is the independent variable and you measure
the dependent variable
You have 3 types of research methods:
1. Descriptive methods: you describe what you observe
2. Correlational methods: you are going to test the relationship between factors
3. Experimental methods: you control and predict the outcome; you can manipulate something
Correlations are not causal, because you need as third variable
Example: we eat more ice creams, so more people are drowning is not something causal
Before you start your experiment you have to say that this is seen as a hit and this is seen as a error
→ if you don't do that you can hypothesizing after the results are known → HARKing
You don’t need to measure a very small size, because then you can’t make conclusions, because it is
not representative for the whole world
College 2 biology, behavior and consciousness
What does the brain have to do with psychology? The brain is responsible for our thinking, allows all
of our behavior and let us feel emotions.
How does the nervous system operate? You have the basic division:
1. Central nervous system: spinal cord and brain
2. Peripheral nervous system: everything that has to do with our body
- Autonomic nervous system (blood pressure, heart rate)
- Somatic nervous system (to move and control muscles throughout your body)
Neurons are the basic units of the nervous system, they receive, integrate and transmit information.
You have 4 di erent types:
1. Sensory: detect information from the physical world and pass that information along the brain
2. Somatosensory: sensory related to your body, they make sure that the brains know what the
body is doing. The sensory nerves that provide information from the skin and muscles
3. Motor: signals coming to the brain, going to the spinal cord and then to your muscles. They are
producing movement
4. Interneurons: facilitating communication between sensory and motor neurons
Our re exes, automatic motor responses, occur before we even think about those responses.
Neuron structure
• Dendrites: trees who can detect information from 10.000 neurons
• Axon: a long, narrow outgrowth of a neuron by which information is conducted from the cell body
to the terminal buttons
• Cell body: every neuron had one cell body, it is the site in the neuron where information from
thousands of other neurons is collected and integrated
fl ff
, • Myelin sheath: the action potential jumps between breaks in the myelin (called nodes of Ranvier),
this is resulting in faster neural transmission
• Neurotransmitters: here are the messages, they help to communicate, but they don’t receive
information
• Terminal buttons: at the ends of axons, small modules that release chemical signals from the
neuron into the synapse
• Synapse: the gap between the terminal buttons of a sending neuron and the dendrites of a
receiving neuron, where chemical communication occurs between the neurons.
• Firing: communication within networks of neurons
Resting membrane potential: the electrical charge of a neuron when it is not active
• A neuron at rest is polarized → it has a more negative electrical charge inside than outside
• Is something happen, the membrane potential is going up
• The passage of negative and positive ions inside and outside the neuron is regulated by ion
channels in the membrane, such as located at the nodes of renvier
• An action potential is the electrical signal that passes along the axon.
Neurotransmitters are chemical substances that transmit signals from one neuron to another.
- Glutamate: enhancement of action potentials, it is about learning and memory
- GABA: inhibition of action potentials, it is about anxiety reduction
- Dopamine: reward and motivation, motor control over movement
Agonists and antagonists
1. Agonist drugs (ritalin): it is increasing the amount of the neurotransmitter, so there is more inside
each vehicle
2. Antagonist drugs (alcohol): decrease the amount of the neurotransmitter, they destroy
neurotransmitters in the synapse.
- Parkinsons’s disease: movement and thinking are very connecting, but people with parkinson don’t
have enough dopamine, that is a rewarding thing who can help you move → patients are getting L-
DOPA. It helps the surviving neurons produce more dopamine
A lot of the knowledge that we have come from patients → example: post mortem autopsy: your
Broca’s area isn’t working, so you can’t understand and hear
You brain is divided into the primary motor cortex (the left side) and the primaire somatosensory
cortex (the right side). Each cerebral hemisphere has four lobes:
1. Frontal lobe: thought, planning and movement (it takes time before this area is matured, but that
doesn’t mean you can’t do it). It is important for higher-level psychological processes associated
with the prefrontal cortex
2. Parietal lobe: to know where your body and space is around you. It is important for the sense of
touch and for attention to the environment
3. Occipital lobe: regions of the cerebral cortex at he back of the brain, important for vision.
4. Temporal lobe: it is important for processing auditory information, memory and for object and
face perception.
Prefrontal cortex: the frontmost portion of the frontal lobes, especially prominent in humans. It is
important for attention, working memory, decision making, social behavior and personality.
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