Psyconcepts 1
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the human mind.
Motivation, memory and obsession are three key concepts if you're waywardly motivated with a fragmentary memory and a collection of obsessions. Like me.
There's no escaping other people so you also need to know something about social psychology, which is the fourth and last big section on this page.
Positive psychology is useful if you want to be happy or wonder if you could be happier, and has its own page.
A selection of the hundreds of other psychology concepts is presented on the Psyconcepts 2 page.
Motivation
Motivation is what gets us to do anything.
Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
Intrinsic motivation is motivation that comes from within us; extrinsic motivation is motivation that comes from elsewhere.
Visualisation
Visualisation is an effective motivator if you visualise both the benefits of achievement and the setbacks you could encounter on the way.
Yerkes-Dodson law of arousal
Some arousal improves performance, more arousal hinders it.
Be neither too casual nor too stressed before you undertake an unfamiliar activity. Easy that one.
Zeigarnik effect
Unfinished tasks stick in the mind. Starting an activity creates a psychic anxiety that nags at you until the activity is done; once the activity is done, your mind relaxes and forgets the details.
Procrastinators put off starting if the size of a task overwhelms them. Doing "just a few minutes" may trigger the Zeigarnik effect.
Memory
Memory is an active mental process not a simple recording of what happened.
When we remember, we fit new information into our existing schemas, which often means that we adjust the information so that it will fit, and we change and adjust our memories over time.
Types of memory
There are two lengths of memory and three types of memory:
- Long term memory has unlimited capacity and indefinite duration, and is stored and retrieved by association.
- Short term memory has seven (plus or minus two) slots for pieces or chunks of information, lasts up to thirty seconds, and is stored and retrieved sequentially.
- Procedural memory is knowing how to do things.
- Semantic memory is information about the world.
- Episodic memory is about events that we have experienced.
Amnesiacs retain new procedural memories but not new semantic or procedural memories.
Memory is an active mental process
Good memory? Memory is an active mental process. The greater the processing, the better the memory. Processing means following up on details and thinking about implications and the like. Being interested helps: everyone remembers the status of their friendships. So, to remember more, process information more, which may also make the information more interesting.
Obsession
Obsession and compulsion
An obsession is an intrusive, irrational, non-health-hazardous impulse that a person can look after uneasily all of their life; a compulsion is an act that appeases the obsession.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder is the severe extension that affects two percent of the population.
For simplicity sometimes we can wrap obsession and compulsion together under the term obsession.
Classic examples of obsession:
- Checking the door is locked many times.
- Washing hands too often and/or too long.
- Hanging clothes a set distance apart.
- Making the labels of the cans in the cupboard all face outwards.
Addiction
Addiction has similarities with obsession but is different.
Addiction is dependence on a substance (e.g. alcohol or tea) or a behaviour (e.g. gambling or sex) and persists even while the activity harms their health, their livelihood and their relationships.
One obsession or two
While you can have only one obsession, it's usual to have several vying for your attention.
The background or underlying obsession is the one from which other obsessions flow. For example, the desire to have clean things may manifest as the desire to have clean hands, clean air, and so on.
The dominant obsession is the one that takes precedence when two or more obsessions apply at once.
Are obsessions really all irrational?
No, not to an obsessive. Many obsessions make sense although a rational person would say they're not worth the effort. For example, if it takes ten minutes to make all of the clothes in your drawer lie neatly on top of each other, they look great, but they'll be disrupted when you rummage to get something unless you neaten them all up again.
Helpful obsession
A helpful obsession is one that motivates us to do good actions with helpful outcomes. Examples:
- Obsessive healthy dieters eat well.
- Obsessive exercisers keep fit.
- Obsessive recyclers recycle everything no matter how small. Non-obsessives who do not do this are not recycling as much.
Ritualised compulsion
Ritualised compulsion is when, if a compulsion is impractical or time consuming, you are lucky enough to find a substitute that defies rational scrutiny but appeases your irrational mind. For example, there isn't always water in the room but you may find that flicking your hands in the air makes them clean again.
Substitute compulsion
Substitute compulsion is the unconscious parallel version when, once you talk yourself out of one compulsion, your mind finds another one for the same obsession.
Perfectionism
Perfectionism is akin to obsession. Nothing in life is perfect.
Hoarder
A hoarder keeps everything. The real reason they do this is that they have to; the sort of reason they give if asked is "could be useful".
Collector
A collector is a kind of hoarder.
Social Psychology
The world is full of other people. Social psychology is the study of the self in relation to others. No matter how individual we think we are, social psychology affects and influences us.
Personal constructs are what we think other people are like from the way people interacted with us in the past: we use them when we meet new people.
Being able to imagine ourselves as someone else is the basis for most social interactions.
Theory of mind is the awareness that other people think and see the world differently. Until the age of three or four, we don't have this.
Attribution
Attribution is the process of ascribing reasons for why things happened and why people acted in certain ways.
We explain ourselves and other people differently.
- Situational attributions are reasons to do with the situation, and are how we explain ourselves.
- Dispositional attributions are reasons to do with personality or character, and are how we explain other people.
The fundamental attribution error is our tendency to make dispositional attributions about other people.
Self concept
This is our idea of ourself: what we are like and what we can do. We work out what we are like by the way that other people respond to us, and what we think they think.
Self concept has two parts:
- Self-image: the descriptive part: tall, etc.
- Self-esteem: the evaluative part: worthwhile, etc.
Self-efficacy beliefs are beliefs about how effective we are at doing things. High self-efficacy beliefs -> more self-confidence -> try harder, often with good results.
Self esteem
Self esteem depends on two psychological needs:
- Positive regard from other people, some of which is unconditional.
- Self-actualization or doing a thing well and getting a sense of achievement or satisfaction.
We like to be recognised; we like to be noticed; we don't like to be ignored.
Social group
A social group is a set of people who interact with one another and share a common identity.
Everyone has a social group that is important to them; most people have many more than one. Belonging to social groups was part of human evolution, and is embedded in our psychology.
For positive self-esteem, we need to feel good about our social groups. If we are in a low-status group, we are motivated to distance ourselves from the group or to change its status.
Social representations
Social representations are shared explanations about why things happen held by our social groups or by society.
Each of us adopts a set of social representations. The sources are other people and the media, and the destination is our personal construct system.
Social roles
Social roles are the parts people play as members of a social group. With each social role you adopt, your behaviour changes to fit the expectations both you and others have of that role.
Social scripts tell us what is expected in a given situation.
© Stephen Balmer