MIDTERM 1 Flashcards
What are the 4 D’s in Psychology?
• Deviant: recurring behaviours, thoughts, or emotions that deviate from the typical expectations of society.
• Distress: behaviour/ thoughts/ emotions cause distress to oneself or others.
• Dysfunction: interferes with daily functioning.
• Danger: the behaviour is harmful to oneself or others.
◦ no single D is sufficient
What is a psychological disorder?
A Psychological dysfunction within an individual associated with distress or impairment in functioning and a response that is not typical or culturally expected.
◦ Breakdown in cognitive, emotional, or behavioural functioning.
◦ Significant distress/ impairment.
When describing clinical problems, what are 4 things to consider?
• Presenting Problem: presents to a practitioner with a set of problems.
• Prevelence: number of people in a population who have the disorder
• Incidence: number of new cases occurring per year
• Ange of Onset: typical age to begin experiencing symptoms
How do clinical psychologist proceed with new patients? What are the 5 steps to consider?
• 1) Presenting Problem: concerns that clients find difficult to manage.
• 2) Predisposing Factors: biological, environmental, or personality considerations that may put clients at risk.
• 3) Precipitating Factors: significant event preceding the onset of the disorder.
• 4) Perpetuating factors: possible coping mechanisms that can reinforce clients’ problems.
• 5) Protective factors: things that help to moderate or diffuse the problem.
What is the Supernatural Model of Behaviour?
◦ Deviant, bad and undesirable behaviour was viewed as a battle of good and evil.
◦ Psychological disorders were understood as being possessed.
◦ Treatments included exorcism, witch hunts, or shackling people to a church.
◦ Stress was seen as curable (e.g., rest, ointments etc.)
What is the Psychological Model of Behaviour
‣ Plato - believed that maladaptive behaviour stemmed from social and cultural influences (similar to modern-day psychological approaches)
‣ Asylums for the insane and moral therapy - 16th century (Asylums went downhill fast)
What is the Psychoanalytic Theory?
• Sigmaund Freud was the first to suggest an “unconscious mind” (very important discovery for the field of PSYC)
◦ Suggests structure of the mind:
‣ Id - is the primates instinct (sex driven and food driven)
‣ Ego - the moderator
‣ Superego - maintains values and morals
• Freud suggests that psychological disorders derive from a malfunctioning ego.
What are the aspects to Psychotherapy?
◦ Its purpose was to uncover unconscious mental processes.
◦ Free association
◦ Dream analysis (Freud) was not reliable since it’s very subjective.
◦ Transference: feelings about past relationship redirected unconsciously to the therapist.
◦ Countertransference: therapists project own personal issues or feelings onto the patient.
What is the Humanistic Theory?
• Suggests that there is good in all humans and that positive regard is essential.
• Maslow introduced hierarchy of needs which established levels that had to be met before moving on to the next. If needs were met = happiness and capacity for normality.
EXAMPLE of needs: Physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem and self-actualisation.
Who was the best humanist and what were his 3 important conditions?
◦ Carl Rogers = best humanist
- Unconditional positive regard - almost unqualified acceptance of most of the client’s feelings and actions.
- Genuineness
- Empathy vs. Sympathy
Psychology has a multidimensional integrative approach, what are the 5 things that contribute to this approach?
• Biological: genetics and neuroscience
• Psychological: behavioural and cognitive processes
• Emotional: emotional responses
• Social and interpersonal: interactions with others and within society
• Behavioural: conditioned response to situations
◦ *these factors do not work independently but can have and effect on the other
What is the Diathesis-Stress model?
Genetic condition that we inherit that may be activated after specific cue/ stressor.
◦ Diathesis: inherited tendency for vulnerability to a disorder.
◦ Stressor: circumstance that creates stress and elicits development of a disorder.
◦ Without stressor occurring in the environement, the disorder may have never developed.
What are epigenetics?
• Non-genetic factors that can impact your genome. i.e., unable to reach maximum height due to mal nutrition.
◦ Changes can be reversible!
What is the Genotype and what is the Phenotype?
◦ Genotype = unique sequence of DNA
◦ Phenotype = expression of the genotype
What is the Gene-Environment Correlation Model?
• Genes may increase probability of experiencing stressful events.
• People impact their environment through their genes. i.e., someone with depression may be genetically predisposed to seek out situations/ relationships that lead to depression.
