Introduction to Psychology overview

Recently I wrapped Yale’s Introduction to Psychology course at Coursera. I will post my notes/overview here. The certificate can be downloaded here.

---

Foundations

Psychology relies on materialism. While the neural networks model explains a lot of stuff, the “hard problem of consciousness” (feelings, emergent properties, etc.) is still tricky. As psychology relies on materialism, it also uses the scientific method: Identify an observation -> Form a hypothesis (cause->effect) -> Make a prediction. For example, (low self-esteem or lack of connection) -> attention seeking. As this is a form of inductive argument, the cause may not always be obvious, though the effect can be mostly detected by reading signals people send. In addition, people usually send mixed signals (on purpose so as to not “reveal” too much), and this makes it tricky to identify the effect too, in some cases.

Freud explored how desires and motivations affect our actions unconsciously. He divided the mind into id (basic desires), ego (balancing desires with reality), and super-ego (internalized moral rules). Freud suggested we have hidden, unacceptable thoughts managed with defense mechanisms like blaming others or making excuses.

Skinner (behaviorism) believed everything we know and are results from our experiences. The principles of learning apply broadly across species, with only minor differences (shaped by the environment).

Behaviorists identify three main learning mechanisms:

• Habituation, we get used to things.
• Classical conditioning, associations between stimuli. A famous example involves Ivan Pavlov, who noticed dogs salivating not just when they saw food but also when they associated a bell with food. Over time, the bell alone triggered salivation. Classical conditioning involves a neutral stimulus (like the bell), an unconditioned stimulus (like food), and an unconditioned response (like salivating).
• Instrumental conditioning, figuring out what actions lead to positive outcomes and which do not (reward & punishment). Operant conditioning involves reinforcement, which can be positive (rewarding) or negative (removing aversive stimuli), and punishment, which decreases the likelihood of a behavior being repeated.

Shaping is another concept, where behaviors approximating the desired behavior are rewarded to guide the learner toward the target behavior. For example, the school system employes reward & punishment, and later kids grow up with this not being aware about it.

Learning and language

Per Piaget, children learn by either fitting new info into what they know (assimilation) or changing their thinking to fit new info (accommodation). He classified learning based on age in the following categories: senses/movements without reasoning -> basic reasoning without others’ perspectives -> abstract, complex problems.

Theories about the mind are judged based on how well they explain language. The inability to explain language effectively means being out of the scientific discussion. Every human possesses language skills, and there are specific brain areas dedicated to language.

Language as a formal system: phonemes (tiny building blocks) -> word formation -> sentence structure.

A tricky part is knowing where one word stops and another begins when people talk – it might seem easy for us because we already know the words, but for a child learning a new language, it’s not so clear. This makes learning a language tough.

Chomsky believes that language development is more like natural growth than regular learning; we have an inborn ability for language.

Perception and memory

Perception is tricky because there are many possible interpretations of the data. Most of the time we use unconscious guesses to figure out what’s really happening.

Memory involves three main processes: encoding (getting information into your memory), storage (keeping it in your memory), and retrieval (getting information out of your memory). Memory can be further categorized into sensory memory (briefly holding sensory information – things we see, hear, feel, etc.), short-term memory (temporary storage for immediate use), and long-term memory (lasting storage for information over time).

Short-term memory has a restricted capacity, often around seven items, plus or minus two. This is where “chunks” come in – experts can group information into larger chunks, making it easier to remember complex things in their field. To remember things better, it’s not enough to just repeat them; you need to understand them deeply. Understanding and organization are crucial, but because of false memories, memories may not always be trustworthy.

Emotions

Understanding evolution is crucial for comprehending psychological phenomena. Ultimate causation is “why something has evolved”, and Proximate causation is “what a creature wants”.

Emotions are dispensable is a misconception – their role is fundamental in human life and decision-making.

Ekman emphasized the importance of facial expressions in life. Faces help us recognize and differentiate people, convey age, display feelings. He explained that while emotions might not always lead to corresponding facial expressions, these expressions are social signals. Smiles, for instance, are more likely to occur when individuals are happy and want others to know it.

Richard Dawkins proposed the idea of kin selection, where genes that promote helping relatives spread through a population. The distinction between self and others becomes blurred in the context of gene propagation. This helps explain the evolution of kindness and emotions that promote altruistic behavior, especially toward kin. We’ve evolved to be kind to our kin, especially our children, because they share our genes.

An experiment with monkeys demonstrated the importance of contact comfort in attachment, supporting Bowlby’s innate theory of attachment. Baby monkeys strongly preferred a cloth mother over a wire mother, even when the wire mother provided nourishment. This experiment illustrates the significance of comfort and security in attachment relationships.

Reciprocal altruism* – help me help you through mutual cooperation for mutual benefit. Cheating/free riding can be a problem, since it creates an imbalance in the reciprocity. Punishment mechanisms are a result of it.

Ultimatum game: Player A is given a sum of money and decides how much to give to Player B. Player B can either accept and receive that amount or reject it, resulting in both players getting nothing. Rational: B should always accept as it will be extra to what they currently have. Irrational: people often reject out of spite (e.g. if someone knows B’s emotional response they may exploit). Thus, emotions can sometimes lead us to behave in ways that seem irrational from a formal perspective but can be beneficial in practical terms.

Social

Social psychology explores how individuals interact socially, think about themselves and others, behave in groups, and perceive different social groups. A few examples:

• Unconscious biases, where people may hold stereotypes based on factors like skin color, subtle influences, even implicit egoism.
• The “spotlight effect” is when we think everyone notices us, but they don’t. This can make us less worried about what others think.
• People often see themselves as better than they really are.
• We tend to give ourselves credit for good things and blame external factors for bad things. This helps protect our self-esteem.
• Cognitive dissonance is when we feel uncomfortable because our thoughts or actions don’t match. We try to fix this discomfort by seeking information that supports our beliefs and attributing good things to ourselves while blaming others for bad things.
• Fundamental attribution error is attributing others’ actions to their personality instead of the situation.
• Pygmalion effect is increasing the leader’s expectation of the follower’s performance will result in better follower performance.
• Mere exposure effect is the tendency to like something more after repeated exposure.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy is when an originally false expectation leads to its own confirmation.

We naturally make generalizations or stereotypes about social groups, which can sometimes be accurate and okay. Stereotypes can be a problem because they’re not always accurate (e.g. judging based on group characteristics rather than individuals), and we tend to exaggerate them. We look for evidence that supports our stereotypes and ignore counter-examples. Also, a lot of our information about groups comes from biased sources – we form groups easily, even when they’re arbitrary. Understanding and mitigating these biases can make us better decision-makers and avoid unfair judgments.

Stereotype levels: public stereotypes (what we openly say about groups, increasing acceptance recently), private stereotypes (beliefs we hold but don’t express), and implicit stereotypes (unconscious associations that influence our behavior, hardest to measure).

Differences

Two key criteria for evaluating personality tests are reliability (consistency) and validity (measuring what it’s supposed to). Big Five personality traits: neuroticism, extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness (abbreviated as OCEAN). Five separate dials and the pattern of the particular setting are your personality. These traits are considered relatively stable over time, agreed upon by people, and predictive of real-world behaviors.

Intelligence includes abstract reasoning, problem-solving, and the ability to acquire knowledge. Tests to measure intelligence include specific skills (s) and a general factor (g) that spans all tasks. While IQ tests have predictive power, their importance in society can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, as they become important if society values them.

The factors that make people different: heredity (genes) and environment, i.e. nature and nurture. Two main ideas in research:

1. High Heritability: Many psychological traits, including intelligence, personality, religiosity, and happiness, are strongly influenced by genetics. Though it may be influenced by environmental factors.
2. Non-Shared Environment: Most of the remaining variation in psychological traits is due to non-shared environmental factors. Shared environmental influences, such as upbringing within a family, seem to have little impact on personality or intelligence. (The good old “all we need is love” :))

Happiness

When an audience is asked to rate their happiness (1-10), people generally choose 7-8. It’s important to be skeptical about these ratings but we can still deduce things – for example, despite improvements in living conditions, people don’t seem to be getting happier. Three facts for happiness per psychology: happiness has a set point (influenced by genetics), people get used to life events, how we perceive and interpret events plays a crucial role in our happiness.

People tend to compare themselves to others and are sensitive to their social standing. Relative income and status can impact happiness.

Advice for improving the happiness of the “miserable king”: focus on long-term relationships and meaningful projects for sustained happiness.

“If you want to distribute pain and pleasure over time, it’s better to have the pleasure at the end and the pain spread out.”

Endings matter significantly in our perception of past experiences, and a good ending can override a lot of bad, while a bad ending can diminish the overall goodness of an experience. This is why positive thoughts are important; when you are in a high-pressure environment as a result of learning new things, at some point the pressure will diminish and you will have learned new things.

While psychology has made significant progress in understanding the human mind, there are still many unanswered questions and challenges. The scientific approach to psychology enhances our appreciation of the complexity, uniqueness, and beauty of the human mind.

*: The prisoner’s dilemma thought experiment is one example. The payoff matrix is such that: if they both cooperate they get R/R points; if they both defect they get P/P points; if one cooperates and another defects they get S/T points and vice-versa, T/S, with T>R>P>S. The winning strategy tit-for-tat was determined in a competition – starts with cooperation and mirrors the other’s previous action. There is no single best strategy, but on average, tit-for-tat wins. Takeaway: good to be nice (init cooperation) and good to not hold grudges (though OK to retaliate – e.g. no coop if others show no coop).