M4. Lesson 1: Understanding Abnormal Behavior

Question 1

What do you need to understand first before you can understand what “abnormality” is?

Answer 1

To understand what abnormal behavior is, we first have to understand what normal behavior is.

Question 2

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?

Answer 2

Through the disease model

Question 3

For how many years did psychology work on the disease model?

Answer 3

Psychology worked with the disease model for over 60 years, from about the late 1800s into the middle part of the 19th century.

Question 4

What was the focus of the disease model?

Answer 4

The focus was simple—curing mental disorders—and included such pioneers as Freud, Adler, Klein, Jung, and Erickson.

Question 5

From what school of thought did Freud, Adler, Klein, Jung, and Erickson specialize in?

Answer 5

These names are synonymous with the psychoanalytical school of thought.

Question 6

What branch of psychology helped present a new view for human behavior?

Answer 6

In the 1930s, behaviorism, under B.F. Skinner, presented a new view of human behavior.

Question 7

What is behaviorism’s main viewpoint?

Answer 7

Simply, human behavior could be modified if the correct combination of reinforcements and punishments were used.

Question 8

What did behaviorism’s viewpoint espouse?

Answer 8

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.

Question 9

What did we develop into the mid to late 1900s?

Answer 9

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.”

Question 10

How many consequences were there when it came to the newly developed scientific investigation and who pointed it out?

Answer 10

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.

Question 11

What were the three consequences that Martin Seligman pointed out?

Answer 11

1. “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.”
2. “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.”
3. “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.”

Question 12

What happened in the 1960s in terms of the development of psychology?

Answer 12

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.

Question 13

Third force psychology is also known as what?

Answer 13

Humanistic psychology

Question 14

What did Maslow state about psychology?

Answer 14

“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).

Question 15

What did Humanistic psychology mainly address?

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

Who became the president of the APA in 1996?

Answer 16

In 1996, Martin Seligman became the president of the American Psychological Association (APA)

Question 17

What did Martin Seligman do in 1996?

Answer 17

He called for a positive psychology or one that had a more positive conception of human potential and nature.

Question 18

What did positive psychology build and focus on?

Answer 18

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.

Question 19

Positive and Humanistic psychology is the same. True or False.

Answer 19

False. Though positive and humanistic psychology have similarities, their methodology was much different.

Question 20

What kind of approach does positive psychology utilize?

Answer 20

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

Question 21

How do we determine what abnormal behavior is?

Answer 21

Through the following aspects:

1. Dysfunction
2. Distress
3. Deviance

Question 22

What does the APA say about determining what abnormal behavior is?

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

What is dysfunction?

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

What is an example wherein the principle of dysfunction is applied?

Answer 24

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.

Question 25

What is distress?

Answer 25

When the person experiences a disabling condition “in social, occupational, or other important activities”. Distress can take the form of psychological or physical pain, or both concurrently. Alone though, distress is not sufficient enough to describe behavior as abnormal.

Question 26

Why is distress not sufficient enough to describe that the behavior is abnormal?

Answer 26

The loss of a loved one would cause even the most “normally” functioning individual pain. An athlete who experiences a career-ending injury would display distress as well. Suffering is part of life and cannot be avoided. And some people who exhibit abnormal behavior are generally positive while doing so.

Question 27

What is deviance?

Answer 27

Closer examination of the word abnormal indicates a move away from what is normal, or the mean (i.e., what would be considered average and in this case in relation to behavior), and so is behavior that infrequently occurs (sort of an outlier in our data). Our culture, or the totality of socially transmitted behaviors, customs, values, technology, attitudes, beliefs, art, and other products that are particular to a group, determines what is normal. Thus, a person is said to be deviant when he or she fails to follow the stated and unstated rules of society, called social norms.

Question 28

How are social norms defined in the context of deviance?

Answer 28

Social norms changes over time due to shifts in accepted values and expectations. For instance, homosexuality was taboo in the U.S. just a few decades ago, but today, it is generally accepted. Likewise, PDAs, or public displays of affection, do not cause a second look by most people unlike the past when these outward expressions of love were restricted to the privacy of one’s own house or bedroom. In the U.S., crying is generally seen as a weakness for males. However, if the behavior occurs in the context of a tragedy such as the Vegas mass shooting on October 1, 2017, in which 58 people were killed and about 500 were wounded while attending the Route 91 Harvest Festival, then it is appropriate and understandable. Finally, consider that statistically deviant behavior is not necessarily negative. Genius is an example of behavior that is not the norm.

Question 29

What other criterion do many clinicians add to determine abnormal behavior?

Answer 29

Though not part of the DSM conceptualization of what abnormal behavior is, many clinicians add dangerousness to this list when behavior represents a threat to the safety of the person or others.

Question 30

What about dangerousness is important to note?

Answer 30

It is important to note that having a mental disorder does not imply a person is automatically dangerous. The depressed or anxious individual is often no more a threat than someone who is not depressed, and as Hiday and Burns (2010) showed, dangerousness is more the exception than the rule. Still, mental health professionals have a duty to report to law enforcement when a mentally disordered individual expresses intent to harm another person or themselves. It is important to point out that people seen as dangerous are also not automatically mentally ill.

Question 31

What is abnormal psychology?

Answer 31

The scientific study of abnormal behavior, with the intent to be able to predict reliably, explain, diagnose, identify the causes of, and treat maladaptive behavior, is what we refer to as abnormal psychology.

Question 32

What does abnormal behavior lead to?

Answer 32

Abnormal behavior can become pathological and has led to the scientific study of psychological disorders, or psychopathology.

Question 33

How can mental disorder be defined?

Answer 33

From our previous discussion we can fashion the following definition of a psychological or mental disorder: mental disorders are characterized by psychological dysfunction, which causes physical and/or psychological distress or impaired functioning, and is not an expected behavior according to societal or cultural standards.