Exam 4 Terms and Names to Know Flashcards
mental disorder in which a person does not have signs of brain abnormalities and does not display grossly irrational thinking or violate basic norms but does experience subjective distress; a category dropped from DSM-III.
Neurotic disorder
the use of electroconvulsive shock as an effective treatment for severe depression.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)
the part of an individual’s unconscious that is inherited, evolutionarily developed, and common to all members of the species.
Collective unconscious
a therapeutic approach that combines the cognitive emphasis on thoughts and attitudes with the behavioral emphasis on changing performance.
Cognitive behavioral therapy
this type of therapy is typically free, especially when they are not directed by a health-care professional, and they give people a chance to meet others with the same problems who are surviving and sometimes thriving.
Support group
episodes of depression or mania tend to occur at the same time each year; depression is more common in the winter
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
derived just three broad dimensions from personality test data: extraversion (internally versus externally oriented), neuroticism (emotionally stable versus emotionally unstable), and psychoticism (kind and considerate versus aggressive and antisocial)
Hans Eyesnck
a dissociative mental disorder in which two or more distinct personalities exist within the same individual; formerly known as multiple personality disorder.
Dissociative identity disorder (DID)
the pattern of specific and nonspecific responses an organism makes to stimulus events that disturb its equilibrium and tax or exceed its ability to cope.
Stress
designed to assess personality characteristics in nonclinical adult populations, it measures the five-factor model of personality.
NEO-PI
the negative reaction of people to an individual or group because of some assumed inferiority or source of difference that is degraded.
Stigma
this approach is useful for managing the impact of more uncontrollable stressors.
Emotion-focused coping
the movement to treat people with psychological disorders in the community rather than in psychiatric hospitals.
Deinstitutionalization
the experience of more than one disorder at the same time.
Comorbidity
the improvement of some mental patients and clients in psychotherapy without any professional intervention; a baseline criterion against which the effectiveness of therapies must be assessed.
Spontaneous remission
the components that psychotherapies share that contribute to therapeutic effectiveness.
Common factors
distress or disability; maladaptiveness; irrationality; unpredictability; unconventionality or statistical rarity; observer discomfort; violation of moral and ideal standards.
Abnormal criteria
therapy that focuses on ways to unite mind and body to make a person whole.
Gestalt therapy
in this type of therapy the client is a whole nuclear family, and each family member is treated as a member of a system of relationships.
Family therapy
a comprehensive descriptive personality system that maps out the relationships among common traits, theoretical concepts, and personality scales; informally called the Big Five.
Five-factor model/Big Five
a leading researcher on depression, he developed the theory of cognitive sets. He argued that depressed people have three types of negative cognitions, which he calls the cognitive triad: negative views of themselves, negative views of ongoing experiences, and negative views of the future.
Aaron Beck
an anxiety disorder that is characterized by the persistent re-experience of those traumatic events through distressing recollections, dreams, hallucinations, or flashbacks.
PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder)
a hypothesis about the cause of certain disorders, such as schizophrenia, that suggests that genetic factors predispose an individual to a certain disorder but that environmental stress factors must impinge in order for the potential risk to manifest itself.
Diathesis stress hypothesis
a type of behavioral therapy used to treat individuals attracted to harmful stimuli; an attractive stimulus is paired with a noxious stimulus in order to elicit a negative reaction to the target stimulus.
Aversion therapy
a generalized evaluative attitude toward the self that influences both moods and behavior and that exerts a powerful effect on a range of personal and social behaviors.
Self-esteem
a general pattern of non-responding in the presence of noxious stimuli that often follows after an organism has previously experienced non-contingent, inescapable aversive stimuli.
Learned helplessness
complete love and acceptance of an individual by another person, such as a parent for a child, with no conditions attached.
Unconditional positive regard
severe form of psychopathology characterized by the breakdown of integrated personality functioning, withdrawal from reality, emotional distortions, and disturbed thought processes.
Schizophrenic disorder
the major feature of this subtype of schizophrenia is a disruption in motor activity. Sometimes people with this disorder seem frozen in a stupor.
Catatonic type
people who believe more strongly that outcomes of their actions are contingent on what they do
Internals
an anxiety disorder in which an individual feels anxious and worried most of the time for at least six months when not threatened by any specific danger or object.
Generalized anxiety disorder
a person’s mental model of his or her typical behaviors.
Self-concept
focused his theory on expectancy, which is the extent to which people believe that their behaviors in particular situations will bring about rewards.
Julian Rotter
disruptions in emotional, behavioral, or though processes that lead to personal distress or block one’s ability to achieve important goals.
Psychopathological functioning
conceptualization of the self as part of an encompassing social relationship; recognizing that one’s behavior is determined, contingent on, and, to a large extent, organized by what the actor perceived to be the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others.
Interdependent construal of self
a type of psychotherapeutic treatment that attempts to change feelings and behaviors by changing the way a client thinks about or perceives significant life experiences.
Cognitive therapy
he developed the rational-emotional therapy.
Albert Ellis
a concept of Albert Bandura’s social-learning theory that refers to the notion that a complex reciprocal interaction exists among the individual, his or her behavior, and environmental stimuli and that each of these components affects the others.
Reciprocal determinism
a developmental disorder characterized by severe disruption of children’s ability to form social bonds and use language.
Autistic disorder
a transient state of arousal with typically clear onset and offset patterns.
Acute stress
a comprehensive system of personality change based on changing irrational beliefs that cause undesirable, highly charged emotional reactions such as severe anxiety.
Rational emotive therapy (RET)
an intense emotional response caused by the preconscious recognition that a repressed conflict is about to emerge into consciousness.
Anxiety
he observed that the nervous system cannot be relaxed and agitated at the same time because incompatible processes cannot be activated simultaneously.
Joseph Wolpe
a component of bipolar disorder characterized by periods of extreme elation, unbounded euphoria without sufficient reason, and grandiose thoughts or feelings about personal abilities.
Manic episode (mania)
he and his colleagues demonstrated that it may be impossible to be judged “sane” in an “insane place”.
David Rosenhan
desired behaviors are explicitly defined, and token payoffs are given by institutional staff when the behaviors are performed. These tokens can later be exchanged for an array of rewards and privileges.
Token economies
the pattern of nonspecific adaptational physiological mechanisms that occurs in response to continuing threat by almost any serious stressor.
General adaptation syndrome (GAS)
mental disorder marked by psychological arousal, feeling of tension, and intense apprehension without apparent reason.
Anxiety disorder
individuals suffering from this form of schizophrenia experience complex and systemized delusions focused around specific themes: delusions of persecution; delusions of grandeur; delusional jealousy.
Paranoid type
a humanistic approach to treatment that emphasizes the healthy psychological growth of the individual based on the assumption that all people share the basic tendency of human nature toward self-actualization.
Client-centered therapy
a cognitive therapist who proposed a three-phase process that allows for such stress inoculation. In phase 1, people work to develop a greater awareness of their actual behavior, what instigates it, and what its results are. In phase 2, people begin to identify new behaviors that negate the maladaptive, self-defeating behaviors. In phase 3, after adaptive behaviors are being emitted, avoiding the former internal dialogue of put-downs.
Donald Meichenbaum
the process of developing, in anticipation of failure, behavioral reactions and explanations that minimize ability deficits as possible attributions for the failure.
Self-handicapping
a psychiatrist who viewed that mental illness does not even exist—it is a “myth”. He argues that the symptoms used as evidence of mental illness are merely medical labels that sanction professional intervention into what are social problems.
Thomas Szasz
the systematic use of principles of learning to increase the frequency of desired behaviors and/or decrease the frequency of problem behaviors.
Behavior therapy
a mental disorder characterized by obsessions—recurrent thoughts, images, or impulses that recur or persist despite efforts to suppress them—and compulsions—repetitive, purposeful acts performed according to certain rules or in a ritualized manner.
Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
the first modern researcher to investigate the effects of continued severe stress on the body. He reported on the complex response of laboratory animals to damaging agents such as bacterial infections, toxins, etc. According to his theory of stress, many kinds of stressors can trigger the same reaction or general bodily response (GAS stress theory).
Hans Selye
the psychological qualities of an individual that influence a variety of characteristic behavior patterns across different situations and over time.
Personality
a persistent and irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that is excessive and unreasonable, given the reality of the threat.
Phobia
a disorder of childhood characterized by inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
developed an influential theory of the cognitive basis of personality. He emphasizes that people actively participate in cognitive organization of their interactions with the environment. His approach emphasizes the importance of understanding how behavior arises as a function of interactions between people and situations.
Walter Mischel
a technique by which the therapist guides a patient toward discovering insights between present symptoms and past origins.
Insight therapy
a self-report questionnaire used for personality assessment that includes a series of items about personal thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Personality inventory
a technique used in therapy to substitute a new response for a maladaptive one by means of conditioning procedures.
Counterconditioning
the process of dealing with internal or external demands that are perceived to be threatening or overwhelming.
Coping
an extreme fear of being in public places or open spaces from which escape may be difficult or embarrassing.
Agoraphobia
a behavioral therapy technique in which a client is taught to prevent the arousal of anxiety by confronting the feared stimulus while relaxed.
Systematic desensitization
the current diagnostic and statistical manual of the American Psychological Association that classifies, defines, and describes mental disorders.
DSM IV TR
this type of therapy has at its core the concept of a whole person in the continual process of changing and of becoming. Although environment and heredity place certain restrictions, people always remain free to choose what they will become by creating their own values and committing to them through their own decisions.
Humanistic therapies
the basic defense mechanism by which painful or guilt-producing thoughts, feelings, or memories are excluded from conscious awareness.
Repression
a technique where clients agree to be put directly into the phobic situation.
Flooding
enduring personal quality or attribute that influences behavior across situations.
Traits
beliefs about setbacks (self* vs, outside self; affects everything* vs. one situation; lasts forever* vs. temporary)
Pessimistic explanatory style
a persistent, irrational fear that arises in anticipation of a public situation in which an individual can be observed by others.
Social phobia
the extent to which people believe that their behaviors in particular situations will bring about rewards.
Expectancy
the cognitive interpretation and evaluation of a stressor; plays a central role in defining the situation.
Appraisal of stress
a concept in personality psychology referring to a person’s constant striving to realize his or her potential and to develop inherent talents and capabilities.
Self-actualization
beliefs about causes of events (self vs. outside self; affects everything vs. one situation; lasts forever vs. temporary)
Explanatory style
social support; money; coping skills; relaxed personality; defense mechanisms.
Protective factors
an emotional disturbance such as severe depression or depression alternating with mania.
Mood disorder
the label given to psychological abnormality by classifying and categorizing the observed behavior pattern into an approved diagnostic system.
Psychological diagnosis
the observation that personality ratings across time and among different observers are consistent while behavior ratings across situations are not consistent.
Consistency paradox
resources, including material aid, socio-emotional support, and informational aid, provided by others to help a person cope with stress.
Social support
a mood disorder characterized by alternating periods of depression and mania.
Bipolar disorder
recurring day-to-day stressors that confront most people, most of the time. These have a considerable impact on people’s sense of well-being.
Daily hassles
a behavioral technique in which clients are exposed to the objects or situations that cause them anxiety.
Exposure therapy
developed at the University of Minnesota during the 1930s, its basic purpose is to diagnose individuals according toa set of psychiatric labels. The first test consisted of 550 items, which individuals determined to be either true or false for them or to which they responded, “cannot say”. From that item pool, scales were developed that were relevant to the kinds of problems patients showed in psychiatric settings.
MMPI
described the self as a central concept for personality. He suggested that we develop a self-concept, a mental model of our typical behaviors and unique qualities. He believed that, as we go through life, we strive to experience congruence between our self-concept and our actual life experiences.
Carl Rodgers
the stage where the stressor is sufficiently long lasting or intense and the body’s resources become depleted.
Exhaustion
He has been an eloquent champion of a social-learning approach in understanding personality (performed studies of aggressive behavior in children)
Albert Bandura
the domain of the psyche that stores repressed urges and primitive impulses.
Unconscious
people’s general expectancy about the extent to which the rewards they obtain are contingent on their own actions or on environmental factors.
Locus of control
he first said that the mentally ill need help.
Pinel
brief periods of bodily arousal that prepare the body for vigorous activity.
Alarm reactions
in this subtype of schizophrenia, a person displays incoherent patterns of thinking and grossly bizarre and disorganized behavior.
Disorganized type
theory of personality that shares the assumption that personality is shaped by and behavior is motivated by inner forces.
Psychodynamic personality theories
a mood disorder characterized by intense feelings of depression over an extended time, without the manic high phase of bipolar depression.
Major depressive disorder
an anxiety disorder in which sufferers experience unexpected, severe panic attacks that begin with a feeling of intense apprehension, fear, or terror.
Panic disorder
people who believe that the outcomes of their actions are contingent on environmental factors.
Externals
the “taking the bulls by the horns” strategy; this approach includes all strategies designed to deal directly with the stressor.
Problem-directed coping
an organism can endure and resist further debilitating effects of prolonged stressors.
Resistance
conceptualization of the self as an individual whose behavior is organized primarily by reference to one’s own thoughts, feelings, and actions, rather than by reference to the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others.
Independent construal of self
a response to stressors that is hypothesized to be typical for females; stressors prompt females to protect their offspring and join social groups to reduce vulnerability.
Tend and befriend
severe mental disorder in which a person experiences impairments in reality testing manifested through thought, emotional, or perceptual difficulties; no longer used as a diagnostic category after DSM-III.
Psychotic disorder
any of a group of therapies, used to treat psychological disorders, that focus on changing faulty behaviors, thoughts, perceptions, and emotions that may be associated with specific disorders.
Psychotherapy
a belief that one can perform adequately in a particular situation.
Self-efficacy
treatment for a psychological disorder that alters brain functioning with chemical or physical interventions such as drug therapy, surgery, or electroconvulsive therapy.
Biomedical therapy
a continuous state of arousal in which an individual perceives demands as greater than the inner and outer resources available for dealing with them.
Chronic stress
a method of personality assessment in which an individual is presented with a standardized set of ambiguous abstract stimuli and asked to interpret their meanings; the individual’s responses are assumed to reveal inner feelings, motives, and conflicts.
Projective test
a sequence of internal activities triggered when an organism is faced with a threat; prepares the body for combat and struggle or for running away to safety; recent evidence suggests that the response is characteristic only of males.
Fight or flight
he pioneered the explanatory style view, which stated that individuals believe, correctly or not, that they cannot control future outcomes that are important to them.
Martin Seligman
an internal or external event or stimulus that induces stress.
Stressor
