PSYC 105 Study Guide: Human Development, Stress, Social Psychology

Chapter 10: Human Development

10.1 Special Considerations in Human Development

Human development is a complex process influenced by biological, psychological, and social factors. Understanding these influences helps explain how individuals change over time.

• Post hoc fallacy: Mistakenly assuming that because one event precedes another, the first caused the second.

• Cross-sectional design: Compares people of different ages at one time. Strengths: Quick, inexpensive. Weaknesses: Cohort effects (generational differences).

• Longitudinal design: Follows same participants over time. Strengths: Avoids cohort effects. Weaknesses: Expensive, time-consuming, attrition.

• Nature vs. nurture debate: How much development is influenced by genetics vs. environment.

• Gene-environment interaction: Genes influence susceptibility to environmental effects.

10.2 Physical and Motor Development

Physical and motor development occurs in predictable stages, influenced by genetics and environment.

• Major milestones: Embryonic stage (2-8 weeks), fetal stage, birth.

• Teratogens: Environmental factors causing birth defects (e.g., alcohol → Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder).

• Motor development: Skills like crawling, walking, grasping.

• Sexual development: Puberty, menarche (first menstruation), spermarche (first ejaculation).

• Physical peak: Early 20s–30s (strength, speed, coordination).

10.3 Cognitive Development

Cognitive development refers to changes in thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving abilities across the lifespan.

• Jean Piaget's Four Stages:

  1. Sensorimotor: Birth–2 years. Experience world through senses and actions.

  2. Preoperational: 2–7 years. Symbolic thinking, egocentrism.

  3. Concrete Operational: 7–11 years. Logical thinking about concrete events.

  4. Formal Operational: 11+ years. Abstract reasoning.

• Assimilation: Fitting new info into existing schemas.

• Accommodation: Altering schemas for new info.

• Object permanence: Awareness objects exist even when unseen (around 12–18 months).

• Zone of proximal development: Gap between what can be done alone & with guidance (Vygotsky).

10.4 Social and Moral Development

Social and moral development involves changes in emotional regulation, relationships, and understanding of right and wrong.

• Temperament: Basic emotional style (easy, difficult, slow-to-warm-up).

• Attachment styles: Secure, insecure, avoidant, ambivalent.

• Parenting styles: Authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, uninvolved.

• Erikson's eight psychosocial stages: Trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs. shame, etc.

• Kohlberg's stages of moral development: Preconventional, conventional, postconventional moral reasoning.

Chapter 12: Stress, Coping, and Health

12.1 What is Stress?

Stress is a response to perceived threats or challenges, affecting both mind and body.

• Definition: Tension/discomfort in response to a stressor.

• Types: Trauma, severe, long-lasting stress.

• Three approaches:

  1. Stress as stimulus (events).

  2. Stress as response (physiological).

  3. Stress as transaction (interaction between individual and environment).

• Primary appraisal: Is it threatening? Secondary appraisal: Can I cope?

• Physiological stress model: Focuses on physical/emotional reactions (e.g., heart rate, cortisol).

12.2 How We Adapt to Stress

Humans have evolved mechanisms to cope with stress, including physiological and social strategies.

• Tend-and-befriend model: Evolutionary adaptation for protecting offspring and seeking social support.

• General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS): Alarm → resistance → exhaustion.

• PTSD: Prolonged anxiety and distress after trauma exposure.

12.3 Coping with Stress

Coping strategies help individuals manage stress and its effects.

• Emotion-focused coping: Reduces emotional impact (e.g., distraction, venting).

• Problem-focused coping: Tackles problem directly (e.g., time management, planning).

• Resilience: Ability to adapt and recover from stress.

• Rumination: Focusing on negatives—heightens stress.

12.4 Stress and Health

Chronic stress can negatively affect physical and mental health.

• Psychoneuroimmunology: Study of how stress affects immunity.

• Health risks: Heart disease, high cholesterol, hypertension, Type A personality.

• Exercise: Reduces stress, improves mood, increases resilience.

• Mind-body medicine: Meditation, yoga, alternative therapies.

Chapter 13: Social Psychology

13.1 What is Social Psychology?

Social psychology studies how humans interact and influence each other.

• Social need: Belonging, forming relationships for survival.

• Social contagion: Spread of behaviors or beliefs (e.g., mass hysteria, rumors).

• Fundamental attribution error: Overestimating personal traits, underestimating situational factors.

13.2 Social Influence

Social influence refers to how individuals change their behavior to meet group norms or expectations.

• Conformity: Adjusting behavior to group norms (Asch's line studies).

• Obedience: Following authority (Milgram's shock experiments).

• Groupthink: Group decisions driven by harmony, not logic; can be prevented with open discussion.

13.3 Helping and Harming Others

Social psychology examines why people help or harm others, including the influence of group dynamics.

• Prosocial behavior: Helping others; Antisocial: Harming.

• Bystander intervention: Failure to act due to diffusion of responsibility (Kitty Genovese).

• Social loafing: Less effort in groups.

• Enlightenment effect: Learning about bystander effect increases helping.

• Aggression: Linked to frustration, alcohol, heat, testosterone; males more physically aggressive.

13.4 Attitudes and Persuasion

Attitudes influence behavior and can be changed through persuasion techniques.

• Attitude: Belief with emotional component; modestly predicts behavior.

• Cognitive dissonance: Tension from inconsistent beliefs/actions (e.g., smoking but valuing health).

• Self-perception theory: Infer attitudes from behavior.

• Persuasion techniques:

  1. Foot-in-the-door (small → large request)

  2. Door-in-the-face (large → small request)

  3. Low-ball (add costs)

  4. "But you are free" (emphasizing choice)

13.5 Prejudice and Discrimination

Prejudice and discrimination involve negative attitudes and behaviors toward groups.

• Prejudice: Negative attitude; Stereotype: Belief; Discrimination: Behavior.

• Causes: Scapegoating, in-group favoritism, out-group homogeneity, viewing outsiders as "all the same."

• Implicit prejudice: Unconscious bias.

• Combating prejudice: Intergroup contact, cooperation, education, empathy.