Lecture 17 - Individual differences

Question 1

List 5 things that define normal behaviour.

Answer 1

➢ Statistically frequent
➢ Positive bias to society/personally
➢ Socially normal
➢ Does not lead to personal distress or harmful dysfunction
➢ Expected and appropriate

Definitions change with social norms, new advances, most are subjective…

Question 2

List 5 things that define abnormal behaviour.

Answer 2

➢ Statistically infrequent
➢ Negative bias to society/personally
➢ Socially deviant
➢ Leads to personal distress and harmful dysfunction
➢ Unexpected and inappropriate

Definitions change with social norms, new advances, most are subjective…

CAN BE VERY DIFFICULT TO DEFINE AND SPOT.

Question 3

Describe the coloured marbles task and what it has to conclude or suggest about individuals with delusions.

Answer 3

(the task where you have 80% red marbles and 20% blue and one marble gets shown at a time and it measures how many marbles it takes to be sure that it is the 80% red jar or vise versa)

Delusional people more likely to jump to conclusion, 50% certain after 2 marbles.

Question 4

What is a mental health disorder?

Answer 4

DSM5 definition

❑ A mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behaviour that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning.

❑ Mental disorders are usually associated with significant distress in social, occupational, or other important activities.

❑ An expectable or culturally approved response to a common stressor or loss, such as the death of a loved one, is not a mental disorder.

❑ Socially deviant behaviour (e.g., political, religious, or sexual) and conflicts that are primarily between the individual and society are not mental disorders unless the deviance or conflict results from a dysfunction in the individual, as described above.

Question 5

Describe Rosenhan’s experiment (1973) briefly.

Answer 5

12 pseudo-patients

Faked symptoms

All admitted to hospital

Acted normal on ward – hmmm…..

Not detected by staff – but found out by patients

Treated poorly – not listened too

because pseudo-patients were seen in the context of a mental ward – and
because they had been labelled schizophrenic – anything they did was seen as a symptom of their “illness.”

Question 6

READ START OF CHAPT 1

Answer 6

(make notes if you want or just teach yourself on whiteboard)

Question 7

READ START OF CHAPT 18

Answer 7

(make notes if you want or just teach yourself on whiteboard)