Transcript AP Psych Chpt 5 Sct 2

It’s like Costner’s Field of Dreams, except much, much
larger
WHAT IS A DREAM?
 Conventional view: mental experiences during REM
 This is going under numerous revisions due to new
research
CONTENTS OF DREAMS
 Most dreams are mundane
 Familiar settings, familiar people
 Dreams tend to center on internal conflicts
 Usually self-centered
 Gender roles effect dreams
LINKS BETWEEN DREAMS AND
WAKING LIFE
 Freud noticed that waking life is in dreams (daily
residue)
 Stimuli are perceived in dreams while subjects are still
asleep
CULTURE AND DREAMS
 Western civs don’t take dreams seriously
 Other civs see dreams as insight into self, prophecy, or
the spirit world
 Some dream themes are universal
 Interpreting dreams varies from culture to culture
THEORIES OF DREAMING
 Freud: wish fulfillment
 Cartwright: problem-solving
 Hobson, McCarley: activation-synthesis model; by-
product of bursts of activity from the subcortical areas
in the brain
Franz Anton Mesmer stumbled onto the power of
suggestion. James Braid coined the term hypnotism in
1843
HYPNOTIC INDUCTION AND
SUSCEPTIBILITY
 Hypnosis: a systematic procedure that typically
produces a heightened state of suggestibility
 10% of population do not react to hypnotic suggestion
 Susceptibility depends on attitude and expectations of
subject
HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA
 Anesthesia: sometimes used in medical procedures
instead of drugs
 Sensory distortions and hallucinations: can be used to
create or block senses
 Disinhibition: make someone do something they
normally would not
 Posthypnotic suggestions and amnesia: influence
behavior; make people forget what they did while
under hypnosis
THEORIES OF HYPNOSIS
 Barber/Spanos: hypnosis as role playing
 People behave the way they believe a hypnotized
person would behave
 Non-hypnotized subjects can duplicate results
 Memory of “hypnotized” is more fantasy than reality
THEORIES CONTINUED
 Beahrs, Fromm, Hilgard
 Role-playing theory does not explain all phenomena
 Hilgard: hypnosis creates an “altered state of
consciousness” called dissociation---splitting off of
mental processes into two separate, simultaneous
streams of awareness