Psychology: Learning, Memory, Motivation, Intelligence, Personality & Defence Mechanisms
Key Takeaways
Wilhelm Wundt opened the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig in 1879, which is why he is called the father of experimental psychology.
Pavlov's classical conditioning pairs a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus, while Skinner's operant conditioning shapes behaviour through reinforcement and punishment.
The classic intelligence quotient is IQ = (mental age ÷ chronological age) × 100, so a 10-year-old with a mental age of 8 has an IQ of 80.
Freud's personality structure has three parts: the id (pleasure principle), the ego (reality principle) and the superego (conscience).
Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome describes three stress stages: alarm, resistance and exhaustion.
Psychology is the scientific study of behaviour and mental processes. Nurses use it every shift: to understand why a frightened child regresses, how patients learn self-care, and how stress affects recovery. OSSSC lists Psychology as a separate Annexure-II subject.
1. Schools of Psychology
| School | Founder / key figures | Core idea |
|---|---|---|
| Structuralism | Wilhelm Wundt (first laboratory, Leipzig, 1879); Titchener | Analyse conscious experience into elements by introspection |
| Functionalism | William James | Study how the mind helps us adapt |
| Behaviourism | J. B. Watson; B. F. Skinner | Study only observable behaviour; learning by conditioning |
| Psychoanalysis | Sigmund Freud | Unconscious conflicts drive behaviour |
| Gestalt | Wertheimer, Köhler, Koffka | "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts" |
| Humanistic | Abraham Maslow; Carl Rogers | Free will, self-actualization, unconditional positive regard |
| Cognitive | Jean Piaget; Ulric Neisser | Mental processes such as thinking, memory and problem-solving |
2. Learning
Learning is a relatively permanent change in behaviour resulting from experience.
| Theory | Theorist | Key concepts | Nursing example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Classical conditioning | Ivan Pavlov (dogs and bell) | Unconditioned stimulus → unconditioned response; a neutral stimulus paired with it becomes a conditioned stimulus; extinction; spontaneous recovery; generalisation | A child who cries at the sight of a white coat after painful injections |
| Operant conditioning | B. F. Skinner (Skinner box) | Positive reinforcement (adding a reward), negative reinforcement (removing an unpleasant stimulus), punishment; schedules of reinforcement | Praising a patient for doing breathing exercises |
| Trial and error | E. L. Thorndike (cat in puzzle box) | Laws of readiness, exercise and effect | Repeated practice of insulin self-injection |
| Insight learning | Wolfgang Köhler (chimpanzee Sultan) | Sudden grasp of the whole problem ("aha" moment) | A student suddenly understanding acid-base compensation |
| Observational / social learning | Albert Bandura (Bobo doll) | Learning by watching a model; attention, retention, reproduction, motivation | Mothers learning breastfeeding positions by watching a demonstration |
Negative reinforcement is not punishment. Negative reinforcement increases a behaviour by removing something unpleasant (a patient takes an analgesic because it removes pain); punishment decreases a behaviour.
3. Memory, Attention and Perception
- Stages: encoding, storage and retrieval.
- Types: sensory memory (fractions of a second), short-term memory (about 7 ± 2 items—Miller, 1956), and long-term memory.
- Forgetting: Hermann Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve shows the steepest loss soon after learning; spaced revision slows it. Interference (proactive and retroactive) and decay also cause forgetting.
- Attention is selective; fatigue, noise and anxiety reduce it.
- Perception follows Gestalt laws: proximity, similarity, closure and continuity. Illusions (misperceiving a real stimulus) differ from hallucinations (perception without a stimulus).
4. Motivation and Emotion
Maslow's hierarchy of needs (from the base): physiological → safety and security → love and belonging → esteem → self-actualization. Lower needs must largely be met before higher needs motivate behaviour, which is why airway and breathing come before teaching.
- Motives may be biological (hunger, thirst) or social/acquired (achievement, affiliation, power).
- Theories of emotion: James-Lange (bodily change comes first, then emotion), Cannon-Bard (bodily change and emotion occur together, triggered by the thalamus), Schachter-Singer two-factor (physiological arousal plus a cognitive label).
5. Intelligence
- Intelligence Quotient (IQ): IQ = (Mental Age ÷ Chronological Age) × 100 (William Stern; popularised by Lewis Terman's Stanford-Binet test).
- Worked example: a child of 10 years with a mental age of 12 has IQ = (12 ÷ 10) × 100 = 120.
- Ranges: about 90–109 is average; an IQ below 70, together with deficits in adaptive functioning, indicates intellectual disability.
- Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon built the first practical intelligence test (1905). Howard Gardner proposed multiple intelligences (linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinaesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic).
6. Personality
Freud's structure of personality
| Part | Principle | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Id | Pleasure principle | Inborn, unconscious drives seeking immediate gratification |
| Ego | Reality principle | Mediates between the id, the superego and reality |
| Superego | Morality / conscience | Internalised parental and social standards |
Freud's psychosexual stages
Oral (birth–1 year) → anal (1–3 years) → phallic (3–6 years; Oedipus/Electra complex) → latency (6–12 years) → genital (adolescence onward).
Type and trait approaches
- Carl Jung: introvert and extrovert.
- Sheldon's body types: endomorph (round, sociable), mesomorph (muscular, assertive), ectomorph (thin, sensitive).
- Assessment: projective tests (Rorschach inkblot test, Thematic Apperception Test) and inventories such as the MMPI.
7. Defence Mechanisms
Defence mechanisms are mostly unconscious strategies the ego uses to reduce anxiety.
| Mechanism | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Denial | Refusing to accept reality | A patient with a new cancer diagnosis says the report must be wrong |
| Repression | Unconsciously pushing painful memories out of awareness | Inability to recall a traumatic accident |
| Suppression | Conscious decision to put a thought aside | "I will think about the bill after surgery" |
| Projection | Attributing one's own unacceptable feelings to others | A hostile patient claims the nurse is angry with him |
| Displacement | Redirecting feelings to a safer target | A man scolded by his boss shouts at his wife |
| Rationalization | Giving a logical-sounding excuse | "I failed because the questions were out of syllabus" |
| Regression | Returning to earlier behaviour | A toilet-trained child bed-wets after a sibling's birth |
| Reaction formation | Expressing the opposite of a true feeling | Excessive sweetness toward a disliked colleague |
| Sublimation | Channelling drives into socially acceptable activity | Aggression directed into competitive sport |
| Compensation | Making up for a weakness by excelling elsewhere | A student weak in sports excels in academics |
| Identification | Taking on the qualities of an admired person | A student nurse imitating a respected ward sister |
| Intellectualization | Using abstract reasoning to avoid emotion | Discussing one's own amputation only in technical terms |
8. Stress and Coping
- Hans Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS): alarm (fight-or-flight), resistance (adaptation), and exhaustion (resources depleted; illness).
- Eustress is positive stress; distress is harmful.
- Coping: problem-focused (tackling the cause) or emotion-focused (managing feelings). Relaxation, social support, exercise and adequate sleep help.
A patient keeps taking an analgesic because it removes his back pain. In Skinner's operant conditioning, what process strengthens this behaviour?
Positive reinforcement
Punishment
Negative reinforcement
Extinction
A child aged 8 years has a mental age of 6 years on a standard intelligence test. What is the child's IQ using the classic ratio formula?
75
80
120
133
A man who is scolded by his supervisor comes home and shouts at his children. Which defence mechanism is he using?
Sublimation
Rationalization
Projection
Displacement
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