M4. Lesson 1: Understanding Abnormal Behavior Flashcards
What do you need to understand first before you can understand what “abnormality” is?
To understand what abnormal behavior is, we first have to understand what normal behavior is.
Normal really is in the eye of the beholder, and most psychologists have found it easier to explain what is wrong with people than what is right. How so?
Through the disease model
For how many years did psychology work on the disease model?
Psychology worked with the disease model for over 60 years, from about the late 1800s into the middle part of the 19th century.
What was the focus of the disease model?
The focus was simple—curing mental disorders—and included such pioneers as Freud, Adler, Klein, Jung, and Erickson.
From what school of thought did Freud, Adler, Klein, Jung, and Erickson specialize in?
These names are synonymous with the psychoanalytical school of thought.
What branch of psychology helped present a new view for human behavior?
In the 1930s, behaviorism, under B.F. Skinner, presented a new view of human behavior.
What is behaviorism’s main viewpoint?
Simply, human behavior could be modified if the correct combination of reinforcements and punishments were used.
What did behaviorism’s viewpoint espouse?
This viewpoint espoused the dominant worldview of the time—mechanism—which presented the world as a great machine explained through the principles of physics and chemistry. In it, human beings serve as smaller machines in the larger machine of the universe.
What did we develop into the mid to late 1900s?
Moving into the mid to late 1900s, we developed a more scientific investigation of mental illness, which allowed us to examine the roles of both nature and nurture and to develop drug and psychological treatments to “make miserable people less miserable.”
How many consequences were there when it came to the newly developed scientific investigation and who pointed it out?
Though this was an improvement, there were three consequences as pointed out by Martin Seligman in his 2008 TED Talk entitled, “The new era of positive psychology.
What were the three consequences that Martin Seligman pointed out?
- “The first was moral; that psychologists and psychiatrists became victimologists, pathologizers; that our view of human nature was that if you were in trouble, bricks fell on you. And we forgot that people made choices and decisions. We forgot responsibility. That was the first cost.”
- “The second cost was that we forgot about you people. We forgot about improving normal lives. We forgot about a mission to make relatively untroubled people happier, more fulfilled, more productive. And “genius,” “high-talent,” became a dirty word. No one works on that.”
- “And the third problem about the disease model is, in our rush to do something about people in trouble, in our rush to do something about repairing damage, it never occurred to us to develop interventions to make people happier – positive interventions.”
What happened in the 1960s in terms of the development of psychology?
Starting in the 1960s, figures such as Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers sought to overcome the limitations of psychoanalysis and behaviorism by establishing a “third force” psychology, also known as humanistic psychology.
Third force psychology is also known as what?
Humanistic psychology
What did Maslow state about psychology?
“The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side; it has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his full psychological height. It is as if psychology had voluntarily restricted itself to only half its rightful jurisdiction, and that the darker, meaner half.” (Maslow, 1954, p. 354).
What did Humanistic psychology mainly address?
Humanistic psychology instead addressed the full range of human functioning and focused on personal fulfillment, valuing feelings over intellect, hedonism, a belief in human perfectibility, emphasis on the present, self-disclosure, self-actualization, positive regard, client centered therapy, and the hierarchy of needs.
Who became the president of the APA in 1996?
In 1996, Martin Seligman became the president of the American Psychological Association (APA)
What did Martin Seligman do in 1996?
He called for a positive psychology or one that had a more positive conception of human potential and nature.
What did positive psychology build and focus on?
Building on Maslow and Roger’s work, he ushered in the scientific study of such topics as happiness, love, hope, optimism, life satisfaction, goal setting, leisure, and subjective well-being.
Positive and Humanistic psychology is the same. True or False.
False. Though positive and humanistic psychology have similarities, their methodology was much different.
What kind of approach does positive psychology utilize?
While humanistic psychology generally relied on qualitative methods, positive psychology utilizes a quantitative approach and aims to help people make the most out of life’s setbacks, relate well to others, find fulfillment in creativity, and find lasting meaning and satisfaction
How do we determine what abnormal behavior is?
Through the following aspects:
- Dysfunction
- Distress
- Deviance
What does the APA say about determining what abnormal behavior is?
The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th edition (DSM-5), states that though “no definition can capture all aspects of all disorders in the range contained in the DSM-5” certain aspects are required.
What is dysfunction?
Includes “clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning”. Abnormal behavior, therefore, has the capacity to make well-being difficult to obtain and can be assessed by looking at an individual’s current performance and comparing it to what is expected in general or how the person has performed in the past.
What is an example wherein the principle of dysfunction is applied?
For example, as such, a good employee who suddenly demonstrates poor performance may be experiencing an environmental demand leading to stress and ineffective coping mechanisms. Once the demand resolves itself, the person’s performance should return to normal according to this principle.
