Clinical Psychology Key Question Flashcards
1
Q
What are the implication for society is AN is a learned disorder?
A
- Anorexia nervosa means the ‘nervous loss of appetite’
- The symptoms are refusal to eat and maintain a minimum average expected body weight, fear of gaining weight or becoming fat and distorted perception of body weight and shape
- AN is most commonly in women due to 90% cases are females between the ages of 13-18
- Most AN patients follow and episodic pattern of weight gain and relapse over again, however some AN patients have one episode and recover completely
- If AN is a learned disorder, it can be caused by images and cultural expectation that individuals are exposed in the media
2
Q
What do people like Jade cause?
A
- It was seen a girl called Jade speaks about her AN online and is part of a movement who perceive their illness as a ‘lifestyle’ and urge others to do the same as they glamorise
- Jade on her blog gives tips and tricks to hide their disorder from their family and friends by purging food, hiding food and put breadcrumbs to make people think that they have eaten
- She also tells her viewers how to cop with hairless, malnutrition and the temptation of food
- She tells people to say that they are on a diet when someone is around and they are not eating
- It is seem that 2/3 of people who were affected by AN has visited how-to sites such as Jades
3
Q
Why is this an issue for society?
A
- This is an issues for society due to hospital admission for eating disorders have seen to double, mostly teenage girls and women in their early 20s
- This has implications for society as there is a large cost burden for NHS to treat anorexia
- If most AN patients are teenagers, this may affect their education and social life due to them sacrificing their bodies to become slim
4
Q
How can Operant Conditioning explain this behaviour?
A
- When Jade posts her on blog about her journey, she could of received positive reinforcement from her followers and fan, who give her likes and positive comments telling her to continue what she is doing, making her motivation to continue this behaviour to receive more positive reinforcement such as new followers
- As Jade got thinner, she might of have negative reinforcement as when she got thinner, she got less hated for her body and people stop teasing her for being fat
- Jade may follow or inspire like specific models and when they gain weight they received hate comments and tabloids, which is a positive punishments, and due to her living in vicarious reinforcement through the celebrities, she would avoid gaining weight to avoid getting hated
5
Q
Strength of Operant Conditioning
A
- Operant Condition is supported by Jones and Crawford as they found the overweight girls and underweight boys were more likely to be teased by their peers
- This suggest that through teasing peers server to reinforce the based ideals on the ‘need’ for women to be thin, therefore AN can be learned
6
Q
How can Social Learning Theory explain this behaviour
A
- An individual may be reading a model magazine and see celebrities and models pictures and pay attention to their body and sometimes research how they obtained that thin body
- The individual will retain the unrealistic beauty expectation of their role model, and their thin body
- Leading to them to reproduce their behaviour by eating less food and losing weight by excessive exercise and restricting of specific food types, so they can achieve their unrealistic beauty expectation of their role models
- The individual becomes more motivated when they go on the celebrities page and see the all the positive comments and the fame and money they receive from being such a thin model, therefore they live through vicarious reinforcement and feel like they must do the same as well
- This theory conveys how social influences affecting AN eating behaviour
7
Q
Strength of Social Learning Theory
A
- Social Learning is supported as there is evidence to show that AN might be influenced by social factors such as replicating the behaviour of role models
- This is seen in Becker et al showed that after the introduction of western TV in Fiji, which lead to high rates of dieting and body image concerns
- Therefore suggesting that social influences of eating disorders are crucially important
