CBSE Class 12 Psychology
Chapters: 7
1. Variations in Psychological Attributes
Individual differences and assessment · Intelligence · Aptitude and creativity
- Individual Differences and Assessment – No two people are the same. Individual differences are the special ways people differ in body, mind and behaviour. Behaviour comes from both the person (traits) and the situation. Psychologists study five main attributes: intelligence, aptitude, interests, personality and values. Assessment means measuring these attributes with fair, standard methods: tests, interviews, case studies, observation and self-report. Most scores gather near the middle, forming a bell-shaped curve.
- Intelligence: Theories, IQ and Emotional Intelligence – Intelligence is the ability to understand the world, think clearly and use resources well to meet challenges. Psychometric theories break it into factors: Spearman's g and s, Thurstone's seven primary abilities, Guilford's many abilities. Gardner lists eight separate intelligences. Sternberg's triarchic theory has componential, experiential and contextual parts. The PASS model sees intelligence as planning, attention-arousal and simultaneous-successive processing. IQ = mental age ÷ chronological age × 100; most people score 90-110. Culture shapes what counts as intelligent. Emotional intelligence is the skill of knowing and handling feelings.
- Aptitude and Creativity – Aptitude is a person's hidden ability to learn a special skill with training. Aptitude plus interest predicts success in a field. Aptitude is measured by single aptitude tests or by batteries such as the Differential Aptitude Tests, which give a profile of many abilities. Creativity is the ability to produce ideas or things that are new and useful. It shows through divergent thinking: fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration. Some intelligence is needed for creativity, but high intelligence does not make a person creative on its own.
2. Self and Personality
Self · Personality
- The Self: Concept, Esteem and Culture – The self is the total of our experiences, ideas, thoughts and feelings about ourselves. It has a personal identity (what makes me unique) and a social identity (the groups I belong to). The self is both the knower (subject) and the known (object). Self-concept is how we see ourselves; self-esteem is how we value ourselves across areas like studies, friends, body and family. Self-efficacy is belief that we can succeed; self-regulation is managing our own behaviour, helped by self-observation, self-instruction and self-reinforcement. Indian culture sees the self with flexible borders that include family and community; Western culture draws a firmer border around the individual.
- Personality: Approaches and Assessment – Personality is a person's steady, typical way of thinking, feeling and acting across situations. Type approaches sort people into groups (Type A and B, introvert and extravert). Trait approaches describe people on many dimensions (Allport, Cattell, Eysenck, Big Five). Freud's psychodynamic approach looks at the unconscious, id, ego, superego and defence mechanisms; post-Freudians (Jung, Horney, Adler, Fromm, Erikson) stress social and goal-seeking forces. The behavioural approach says personality is learned. The cultural approach links it to ecology and way of life. Humanistic approaches (Rogers, Maslow) stress growth and self-actualisation. Personality is assessed through self-report tests, projective techniques and behavioural methods.
3. Meeting Life Challenges
Stress · Coping and well-being
- Stress: Nature, Sources and Effects on Health – Stress is the pattern of body and mind responses to events that disturb our balance and seem to exceed our ability to cope. Events that cause stress are stressors. Stress can be helpful (eustress) or harmful (distress). Lazarus showed that stress depends on appraisal: is it a threat, and can I cope? Stress can be physical and environmental, psychological (frustration, conflict, inner and social pressure) or social. Its sources include major life events, daily hassles and traumatic events. It affects emotions, body, thinking and behaviour, and long-term stress can lead to burnout. Selye's general adaptation syndrome has three stages: alarm, resistance and exhaustion. Long stress weakens the immune system. A healthy lifestyle protects against stress.
- Coping, Life Skills and Positive Health – Coping is what we do, in thought and action, to handle stress. Coping can be task-oriented (solve the problem), emotion-oriented (manage feelings) or avoidance-oriented (deny or escape). Lazarus and Folkman speak of problem-focused and emotion-focused coping. Stress management techniques include relaxation, meditation, biofeedback, creative visualisation, cognitive behavioural methods like stress inoculation, and exercise. Life skills such as assertiveness, time management, rational thinking, good relationships, self-care and overcoming unhelpful habits help us meet life's challenges. Positive health rests on diet, exercise, a positive attitude, positive thinking and social support. Hardy, resilient people bounce back from stress.
4. Psychological Disorders
Abnormality and classification · Major disorders
- Abnormality and Classification of Psychological Disorders – Behaviour is called abnormal when it shows the 4 Ds: deviance (very unusual), distress (it hurts the person), dysfunction (daily life breaks down) and sometimes danger. Long ago people blamed spirits; the Greeks blamed the body; later reformers brought kind care; today we use the biopsychosocial view. Experts classify disorders with two manuals: DSM-5-TR (American Psychiatric Association) and ICD-11 (World Health Organization). Disorders come from biological, psychological and sociocultural factors together. The diathesis-stress model says an inborn weakness plus enough stress can trigger a disorder.
- Major Psychological Disorders: Types, Signs and Examples – Psychological disorders fall into families. Anxiety disorders bring too much fear (generalised anxiety, panic, phobias, separation anxiety). OCD traps a person in unwanted thoughts and repeated acts. Trauma disorders like PTSD follow a shocking event. Somatic disorders show as body complaints; dissociative disorders split memory or identity. Depressive disorder lowers mood for weeks; bipolar disorder swings between mania and depression. Schizophrenia adds experiences (hallucinations, delusions) and takes others away (emotion, drive). Neurodevelopmental disorders (ADHD, autism, intellectual disability, learning disorder) start in childhood, as do conduct problems. Eating disorders and substance-related disorders harm the body and life.
5. Therapeutic Approaches
Psychotherapy · Rehabilitation
- Psychotherapy: Process, Types, Healing Factors and Ethics – Psychotherapy is a voluntary, trusting relationship between a client and a trained therapist that helps the client change feelings, thoughts and behaviour. It moves in stages and rests on the therapeutic alliance: trust, respect, empathy and confidentiality. Psychodynamic therapy digs out hidden conflicts. Behaviour therapy unlearns faulty habits (relaxation, systematic desensitisation, token economy, modelling). Cognitive therapy changes irrational beliefs (Ellis's ABC, Beck's CBT). Humanistic-existential therapies help growth and meaning (Rogers, Frankl, Gestalt). Alternative therapies use yoga, breathing and meditation. Healing comes from the technique, the alliance, catharsis, and client and therapist qualities. Ethics keep therapy safe.
- Rehabilitation of People with Mental Illness – Treatment (medicines and therapy) reduces symptoms, but a person with a severe mental illness such as schizophrenia may still find it hard to work, make friends or look after themselves. Rehabilitation helps them become productive and independent. It uses occupational therapy (simple work tasks that build routine), social skills training (role-play of daily social situations), cognitive retraining (exercises for attention, memory and planning), and vocational training (job skills and job support). Family education, day-care, self-help groups and fighting stigma help the person live an included life in the community.
6. Attitude and Social Cognition
Attitudes · Prejudice and discrimination
- Attitudes and Social Cognition: Parts, Formation and Change – Social psychology explains how other people affect our thoughts, feelings and actions. Social cognition is how we make sense of people: we use schemas (mental folders), form impressions and give causes (attributions) for behaviour. An attitude is a state of mind about a topic, with three parts: Affective (feeling), Behavioural (action tendency) and Cognitive (belief). Attitudes vary in valence, extremeness, simplicity/complexity and centrality. They are learned through association, reward and punishment, modelling, group norms and information. They change to restore balance (Heider), to remove dissonance (Festinger) or in two steps via a liked source (Mohsin), and source, message and target all matter. Attitudes predict behaviour only under some conditions.
- Prejudice and Discrimination: Sources and How to Reduce Them – A stereotype is a fixed, over-simple belief about a whole group (the cognitive part). Prejudice is a negative attitude or feeling towards a group, often built on a stereotype (the affective part). Discrimination is unfair action against members of the group (the behavioural part). Prejudice comes from learning (family, peers, media), a strong social identity and in-group bias, scapegoating, the kernel-of-truth belief and the self-fulfilling prophecy. It can be reduced by education, intergroup contact under the right conditions (equal status, shared goals, cooperation, support from leaders), highlighting individual identity over group identity, and building a wider shared identity.
7. Social Influence and Group Processes
Groups
- Groups: How They Form and How They Change Us – A group is two or more people who interact, share a goal, follow norms and feel 'we'. People join groups for security, status, self-esteem, needs and goals. Groups grow through stages: forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning. Their structure has roles, norms, status and cohesiveness. Types: primary/secondary, formal/informal, in-group/out-group. Groups also change our behaviour: in social loafing each person tries less in a shared task; in group polarisation the group's view becomes more extreme after discussion.