Lecture 1: Definitions, History and Theoretical Perspectives Flashcards

Question

What comprises a neuron?

Answer 1

- Each neuron has: - Soma - cell body - Dendrites - extends towards other neurons - like attenae, they receive stimulation from neurotransmitters from other nerve cells - Axon - Terminals - Knobs - Receptor sites are extremely selective - When axon fires, is released through cell membrane and picked up by the dendrites of the neighbouring cell body - electrical charges jump from one node to the next in nodes of ranvier - Neurotransmitters can be taken back up again by synapse through pynocytosis - eg. SSRIs - making the neurotransmitter more available (not making more, just making it last longer) The cell body contains the nucleus of the cell and metabolizes oxygen to carry out its work. Short fibres called dendrites project from the cell body to receive messages from adjoing neurons. Each neuron has a single axon that projects trunk0like from the cell body. Axons terminate in branching structures called terminals. Swellings called knobs occupy the tips of terminals. Neurons convey messages in one direction, from the dendrites or cell body along the axon to the axon terminals.

Answer 2

The axon is wrapped in myelin sheath to insulate it from the bodily fluids surrounding the neuron and facilitate of neural impulses.

Answer 3

- Excesses and deficiencies of the neurotransmitter **norepinephrine** have been connected with mood disorders and eating disorders. - Reduced levels of neurotransmitter **acetylcholine** is associated with Alzheimer’s Disease - causes brain to shut down, digestive processes to not work anymore, stop eating - Excessive levels of neurotransmitter **dopamine** appear to be involved in schizophrenia. - **Serotonin**, another neurotransmitter, is linked to anxiety disorders, mood disorders, sleep disorders and eating disorders.

Answer 4

- PERSONALITY - Id (Pleasure Principle and Primary Process Thinking) - born with - seething cauldron of want and desire - makes us feel good and happy - but as we grow up, we repress this bc we know it’s bad - if this comes into consciousness we start to experience distress which is why we activate these defense mechanisms - Ego (Reality Principle and Secondary Process Thinking) - sense of identity - physical and psychological needs but also emphasis on what we learn and need socially - Superego (Moral Principle) - representative of society: you can’t do this, you can’t do that - Identification and the Ego Ideal - best outcome - ego ideal won’t be in the way or interfere with social functioning - Identification → usually the finding of a role model → eg dad’s value system which makes the ego ideal

Answer 5

According to Freud’s structural hypothesis, the personality is divided into three mental entities or psychic structures: the id, ego, and superego.

Answer 6

- The **id** is the only psychic feature present at birth. - *It is the repository of our baser drives and instinctual impulses, including hunger, thirst, sex and aggression*. - It operates completely in the unconscious, was described by Freud as “a chaos, a cauldron of seething excitations”/ - The id follows the **pleasure principle** - in psychodynamic theory, the governing principle of the id, involving the demands for immediate gratification of instinctual needs. - It demands instant gratification of instincts without consideration of social rules or customs or the needs of others. - It operates by **primary process thinking** - the mental process in infancy by which the id seeks gratification of primitive impulses by means of imagining it possess what it desires. - Thinking that is illogical and magical and fails to discriminative between reality and fantasy.

Answer 7

- The **ego** develops during this first year to organize reasonable ways of coping with frustration. - **ego** - the psychic structure corresponding to the concept of the self. The ego is governed by the reality principle and is responsible for finding socially acceptable outlets for the urgings of the id. The ego is characterized by the capacity to tolerate frustration and delay gratification. - Standing for “reason and good sense”, the ego seeks to curb the demands of the id and to direct behaviour in keeping with social customs and expectations. - Gratification can thus be achieved but at the expense of social disapproval. - The id floods your consciousness with hunger pangs. Were it to have its ways, the id might also prompt you to wolf down any food at hand or even to swipe someone else’s plate. But the EGO creates the ideas of walking to the refrigerator, making yourself a sandwich, and pouring a glass of milk. - The ego is governed by the **reality principle** - the governing principle of the ego that involves consideration of what is socially acceptable and practical in gratifying needs. - It considers what is practical and possible, as well as the urgings of the id. - The ego engages in **secondary process thinking** — the reality-based thinking processes and problem-solving activities of the ego. - eg. the remebering, planning, and weighing of circumstances that permit a compromise between the fantasies of the id and the realities of the world outside. - Ego stands between the id and superego. It endeavours to satisfy the cravings of the id without offering the moral standards of the superego.

Answer 8

- During middle childhood, the **superego** develops. - Superego - in psychodynamic theory, the psychic structure that represents the incorporation of the moral values of parents and important others and floods the ego with guilt and shame when it falls short of meeting those standards. The superego is governed by the moral principle and consists of two parts: the conscience and the ego ideal. - The moral standards and values of parents and other key people become internalized through a process of **identification.** - The superego operates according to the **moral principle**—it demands strict adherence to moral standards. - The superego represents the moral values of an ideal self, called the **ego ideal**. - It also serves as a conscience or internal moral guardian that monitors the ego and passes judgement on right and wrong. - It metes out punishment in the form of guilt and shame when it finds that the ego has failed to adhere to the superego’s moral standards.

Answer 9

- Freud believed there is a thin line between normal and abnromal. - Both behaviours are motivated or driven by irrational drives of the id. - The difference may be largely a matter of degree. - Normality is matter of the balance of energy among the psychic structures of id, ego, and superego. - In normal people, the ego has the strength to control the instincts of the id and to withstand the condemnation of the superego. - The presence of acceptable outlets for the expression of some primitive impulses, such as the expression of mature sexuality in marriage, decreases the pressures within the id and at the same time lessens the burdens of the ego in repressing the remaining impulses. - Although part of the ego rises to consciousness, some of its activity is carried out unconsciously. - In the unconscious, the ego serves as a kind of gatekeeper or censor that screens impulses from the id. - It uses **defence mechanisms** - the reality-distorting strategies used by the ego to shield itself from conscious awareness of anxiety-evoking or troubling material - to prevent socially unacceptable impulses from rising into consciousness. - If it were not for these defence mechanisms, the darkest sins of our childhoods, the primitive demands of our ids, and the censures of our superegos might disable us psychologically. - **Repression** - a type of defence mechanisms involving the ejection from awareness of anxiety-provoking ideas, images or impulses without the conscious awareness that one has done so. (motivated forgetting) - the most basic of the defence mechanisms. - Defence mechanisms also give rise to abnormal behaviour, however. The person who regresses to an infantile state under pressures of enormous stress is clearly not acting adaptively to the situation. - Perceptual vigilance and defence take their toll. - The ego can weaken and, in extreme cases, lose the ability to keep a lid on the id. - **Psychosis** - a severe form of disturbed behaviour in which people show impaired to interpret reality and difficulties in meeting the demands of daily life. Schizophrenia results when the urges of the id spill forth into consciousness, untempered by an ego that either has been weakened or is underdeveloped. - the fortress of the ego is overrun, and the person loses the ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality. - Behaviour becomes detached from reality. - Psychoses are characterized, in general, but more severe distrubances of functioning than neuroses, by the appearance of bizarre behaviour and thoughts, and by faulty perceptions of reality, such as hallucinations. Speech may become incoherent and there may be bizarre posturing and gestures. - Freud equated psychological health with the abilities to love and to work. - The normal person can care deeply for other people, find sexual gratification in an intimate relationship, engage in productive work. - Other impulses must be chanenelled into socially productive pursuits, such as work, enjoyment of art or music, or creative expression. - When some impulses are expressed directly and others are sublimated, the ego has a relatively easy time repressing those that remain.

Answer 10

Freud labelled the region that corresponds to our present awareness the conscious part of the mind.

Answer 11

The regions that lie below the surface of awareness were labelled the preconscious (descriptive of material that lies outside of present awareness but can be brought into awareness by focusing attention) - in the preconscious mind, memories of experience can be found that are not in awareness but can be brought into awareness with focus. - Your telephone number, for example, remains in the preconscious until you focus on it.

Answer 12

- **Unconscious** - (1) in psychodynamic theory, pertaining to impulses or ideas that are not readily available to awareness, in many instances because they are kept from awareness by means of *repression*. (2) Also in psychodynamic theory, the part of the mind that contains repressed material and primitive urges of the id. (3) More generally, a state of unawareness or loss of conscious. - its contents can be brought to awareness only with great difficulty, if at all. - Freud believed the unconscious in the repository of biological drives or instincts such as sex and aggression. -> when unconscious thoughts come into conscious awareness -> can cause anxiety

Answer 13

1. Oral Stage 1. Oral fixation - young infant interacts with the world and gets its needs met through its mouth → explore the world through their mouth - if a person gets traumatized or encounters a series of events that prevents them from moving to the anal stage → leads to an oral adult → may be a shopping addict (trying to soothe themselves by consuming) → may become alcoholics, overeat, smoke - get their pleasure by consuming 2. Anal Stage 1. Retentive and expulsive traits - Freud’s understanding of how important toilet training is - some children refuse toilet training → want to poop in diapers or not at all - anal retaining adult → super contorlling - anal expulsive adult → literally is sb who is constantly gushing out their sentiments, immature in meeting their own needs, bad emotional regulation 3. Phallic Stage 1. Oedipus/Electra Complex - Freud phenomenal student of Greek mythologu - male kids are getting used to handling their genitals → start looking for a sexual partner → closest woman they know is mom → father is threatened → leads to kid’s castration anxiety 1. Castration anxiety - adopts dad’s value system → a sexual partner who contains some of the qualities mom does - If development in stunted in any of this, mental disorders can form 4. Latency Stage 5. Genital Stage

Answer 14

anxiety, neurosis, fixations. - odepius complex, sexual perversion

Answer 15

- In the unconscious, the ego serves as a kind of gatekeeper or censor that screens impulses from the id. - It uses **defence mechanisms** - the reality-distorting strategies used by the ego to shield itself from conscious awareness of anxiety-evoking or troubling material - to prevent socially unacceptable impulses from rising into consciousness. - If it were not for these defence mechanisms, the darkest sins of our childhoods, the primitive demands of our ids, and the censures of our superegos might disable us psychologically. - **Repression** - a type of defence mechanisms involving the ejection from awareness of anxiety-provoking ideas, images or impulses without the conscious awareness that one has done so. (motivated forgetting) - the most basic of the defence mechanisms.

Answer 16

- Archetypes - kind of analogous to ego and superego - we all have them - 3: - 1: persona - how a person presents themselves publicly 1. shadow: sexual interest, basic life instincts, weaknesses, unconscious desires 2. enema/enemous: gender opposite to what we identify as - male or female - if you ever meet your enema or enemous it is love at first sight - Collective Unconscious - did not agree with Freud’s born as empty slates theory - said there are some collective unconscious memories, fears, conditioning that we are born with - explains how there are social shifts of large groups of ppl and why some groups are different from others - problem: if it is genetically inherited how can it be collective? - branch from Freud himself (Neo-Freudian) → inspired from his 3 things On the whole, neo-Freudians (such as Jung, Adler, Horney and Sullivan) placed greater emphasis on the importance of cultural and social influences on behaviour and lesser importance on sexual impulses and the functioning of the id. They tended to de-emphasize the roles of basic instincts such as sex and aggression, however, and placed greater emphasis on roles for conscious choice, self-direction and creativity.

Answer 17

- Inferiority complex - “organ inferiority” → physical inferiority - despite the fact we most of us appear at a young age to be physically healthy, it is inevitable that we all will have some organ inferiority that translates as a social inferiority - Drive to superiority - of overcoming 1st the physical inferiority (from above) and the subsequent social inferiority - Creative self - motivates us to improve upon and overcome these inferiorities - branch form Freud himself (neo-Freudian) On the whole, neo-Freudians (such as Jung, Adler, Horney and Sullivan) placed greater emphasis on the importance of cultural and social influences on behaviour and lesser importance on sexual impulses and the functioning of the id. They tended to de-emphasize the roles of basic instincts such as sex and aggression, however, and placed greater emphasis on roles for conscious choice, self-direction and creativity.

Answer 18

- Self Theory - there is a sense of self which is core to your being - and you’re free to expand upon that - founder of feminist psychology - womb envy → men will be naturally envious of women bc their role in the reproductive process is much shorter - On the whole, neo-Freudians (such as Jung, Adler, Horney and Sullivan) placed greater emphasis on the importance of cultural and social influences on behaviour and lesser importance on sexual impulses and the functioning of the id. - shared the belief with Freud that behaviour reflects unconscious motivation, inner conflict, and the operation of defensive responses to anxiety. - They tended to de-emphasize the roles of basic instincts such as sex and aggression, however, and placed greater emphasis on roles for conscious choice, self-direction and creativity.

Answer 19

- On the whole, neo-Freudians (such as Jung, Adler, Horney and Sullivan) placed greater emphasis on the importance of cultural and social influences on behaviour and lesser importance on sexual impulses and the functioning of the id. - shared the belief with Freud that behaviour reflects unconscious motivation, inner conflict, and the operation of defensive responses to anxiety. - They tended to de-emphasize the roles of basic instincts such as sex and aggression, however, and placed greater emphasis on roles for conscious choice, self-direction and creativity. - Harry Stack Sullivan - Self-System - individuals have a bunch of self-perceptions that effect the way or model you have of yourself - eg. if people continue being mean to you or you don’t get a lot of praise, you might think you suck - eg. people praise you and it gives you a snapshot of yourself - problem: come up with data sometimes that goes against our self-perception - selective inattention → ignore the things that don’t fit our self-perception - ignoring data - if 99 people are telling you one thing and 1 person is telling you another negative thing, you don’t want to pay attention to that so it’s good to have selective inattention - if you are Donald Trump and you are using selective inattention when people are telling you you are making mistakes, it can hinder your self-process and can lead to narcissism?

Answer 20

- Pavlov: reward is given regardless of behaviour - Skinner: reward or punishment is dependant on behaviour.

Answer 21

- We are potentially born with some predispositions but more importantly we are products of our environment - what is most important to understand is learning history in terms of behaviour - Basis of social learning theory especially with Skinner and Watson. - I.P. Pavlov - studying the salivation process of dogs - conditioned vs unconditioned stimulus - J.B Watson - liked idea of learning process - have to pay attention to social processes as processes of reinforcement - reciprocal influence ppl have on each other - mirroring each other’s behaviour - eg. at a hardware store, asking for advice from a wood varnish → worker was grimacing → prof started grimacing too bc he thought he was being polite, didn’t realize the other guy was wearing dentures and that’s why - the worker shaped his hehaviour and he shaped the worker’s behaviour (who had become offended) - E.L. Thorndike - trial and error kind of conditioning - behavioural, but did not describe - B.F Skinner - reward vs punishment - how you react to this is one situation, should estimate how you act in a future similar situation - discriminative stimuli → things present in the environment at times of conditioning that predispose an organism to be more likely or less likely to exhibit a behaviour - thoughts are mini behaviours → they are symptoms, not signs and do not cause or influence our behaviour → they are side effects, a byproduct of conditioning we have been through in the past.

Answer 22

- **Classical Conditioning** - Conditioned response (CR) - trained response → response would not naturally occur on its own - Unconditioned stimulus (US) - sth we have a biological reaction to → eg. food is presented and you start to salivate - Conditioned Stimulus (CS) - eg. bell - sth that does not normally produce the response is trained with the unconditioned stimulus to produce the response - Unconditioned Response (UR) - the biological reaction to sth that doesn’t need to be trained - Compensatory conditioning → when body reacts to sth that is not the conditioned sitmulus but produces conditioned response - Prior to conditioning, if you sounded the bell the dog would not salivate but food does that (which doesn’t require training) - In the conditioning process you sound the bell and a few minutes later deliver the food (the learning experience) - After conditioning has occurred and the associate between the bel land food is made, then the bell alone will produce the conditioned response until it happens enough without the food, in which extinction will occur. - Being given food was not at all dependant on the dog’s behaviour.

Answer 23

- **Operant Conditioning** - B.F Skinner - Reinforcement and Reward - a kind of learning that takes place if the organism produces a response or not (dependant on their behaviour) - Reinforcement reinforces a relationships - Appetitive reinforcement - Reward is what is given when we want to increase a behaviour - Positive and Negative Reinforcers - Primary and Secondary Reinforcers - Primary: water, food, things that cause pain/discomfort - Secondary: money, tokens → things we know we can exchange in order to get primary reiforcers - Punishment: Positive Punishment and Negative Punishment - positive punishment: given sth negative that decreases behaviour (eg an electric shock) - negative punishment: sth appetitive is taken away to decrease behaviour - Operant conditioning container - eg. a vending machine - eg. when your thirsty and see a vending machine and you know if you press the button and insert your cash, you’ll get a nice cold drink

Answer 24

- Bc dogs don’t normally salivate to the sound of bells, Pavlov reasoned they had acquired this response called a **conditioned response (CR)** or a conditioned reflex, bc it had been paired with a stimulus, an **unconditioned stimulus (US)**—food—which naturally elicits salivation. - **conditioned response** - in cc, a learned or acquired response to a previously neutral stimulus (2) a response to a conditioned stimulus. - **unconditioned stimulus** - stimulus that elicits an instinctive or unlearned response from an organism. - The salivation to food, an unlearned response, is called the **unconditioned response (UR)**, and the bell, a previously neutral stimulus, called the **conditioned stimulus.** - **Unconditioned response** - unlearned response or a response to an unconditioned stimulus. - **Conditioned stimulus** - previously neutral stimulus that comes to evoke a conditioned response following repeated pairings with a stimulus (unconditioned stimulus) that had already evoked a response.

Answer 25

It increases the frequency of the behaviour/response that the reinforcement follows. - **Positive reinforcers** - types of reinforcers that increase the frequency of a behaviour when they are presented. Food and social approval are generally, but not always, positive reinforcers. - eg. the opportunity to mate - **Negative reinforcers** - reinforcers whose removal increases the frequency of an operant behaviour. Anxiety, pain, and social disapproval often function as negative reinforcers; that is, their removal tends to increase the rate of the immediately preceding behaviour. - increase the frequency of a behaviour when they are removed. - we learn responses that lead to their removal (eg. learning to turn on the air conditioner to remove unpleasant heat and humidity from a room).

Answer 26

- **Punishments** - unpleasant stimuli that suppress/decrease the frequency of the behaviours that follow. - decrease the frequency of the preceding behaviour when they are applied. - a loud noise can be either a punishment (if by its introduction the probability of the preceding behaviour decreases) or a negative reinforcers (if by its removal the probability of the preceding behaviour increases). - Reinforcing desirable behaviour is generally preferable to punishing misbehaviour.

Answer 27

- **Social Cognitive Theory** - Albert Bandura - social contract - Modelling and Expectancy - modelling → providing examples on how to do sth - **Observational Learning** - *a process in which an organism learns by watching the actions of others.* - In all societies, appropriate social behaviour is passed on from generation to generation largely through observation. - Eg. even complex motor tasks, such as performing surgery, are learned in part through extensive observation and imitation of models. - Eg. Albert Bandura’s Bobo Doll Experiments - When children who observed the aggressive actions of the adult models were later allowed to play with a variety of toys, including a child-size Bobo doll, they were more than twice as likely to interact with it in an aggressive manner as a group of children who hadn’t observed the aggressive model. - Children in these studies showed they were sensitive to the consequences of the actions they observed. - When they saw the adult models being punished for behaving aggressively, the children showed considerably less aggression. - When the children observed a model being rewarded and praised for aggressive behaviour, they displayed an increase in aggressive behaviour. - The observational learning seen in Bandura’s studies has implications for social learning and cultural transmission of behaviours, norms and values. - eg. research conducted across several decades has revealed exposure to media violence is linked with an increased likelihood of aggressive or hostile thoughts and behaviour among youth and observational learning has been implicated as one of the mechanisms responsible for this association. - A school-based intervention produced less use of violent media (compared with a no-intervention control group) that persisted for 2 years after the intervention concluded, and this effect was associated with a reduction in self-reported aggressive behaviour. - Research with children has also shown that observational learning is well suited to seeing behaviours that can spread widely across a culture

Answer 28

- emerged during the mid-20th c and departed from both the psychodynamic aand behavioural (learning-based), models by emphasizing the personal freedom human beings have in making conscious choices that imbue their lives with a sense of meaning and purpose. - Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, two principal figures in humanistic psychology, believed that people have an inborn tendency toward **self-actualization**—to strive to become all they are capable of being. - Each of us possess a singular cluster of traits and talents that gives us our own set of feelings and needs and our own perspective on life. - By recognizing and accpeting our genuine needs and feelings—by being true to ourselves—we live *authentically*, with meaning and purpose. - To understand abnormal behaviour in the humanist’s view, we need to understand the roadblocks that people encounter in striving for self-actualization and authenticity. - Psychologist must learn to view the world from clients’ own perspectives - The humanistic viewpoint involves the attempt to understand the subjective experience of others, the stream of conscious experiences people have of “being in the world”. Humanistic Concepts of Abnormal Behaviour - Rogers held that abnormal behaviour results from a distorted concept of the self. - Parents can help children develop a positive self-concept by showing them **unconditional positive regard**—by prizing them and showing them that they are worthy of love irrespective of their behaviour at any given time. - Parents may disapprove of a certain behaviour, but they need to convey to their children that the behaviour is undesirable, not the child. - When parents show children **conditional positive regard**—accepting them only when they behave in the way that parents want them to behave—the children may learn to disown all the thoughts, feelings and behaviours their parents have rejected. - Children will learn to develop *conditions of worth* → they will think of themselves as worthwhile only if they behave in certain approved ways. - eg. children whose parents seem to value them only when they are compliant may deny to themselves that they ever feel angry. - Children in some families learn that it is unacceptable to hold their own ideas, lest they depart from their parents’ views. - To maintain their self-esteem, they may have to deny their genuine feelings or disown parts of themselves. - The reuslt can be a distorted *self-concept:* the children become strangers to their true selves. - Rogers believed that we become anxious when we sense that our feelings and ideas are inconsistent with the distorted concept we have of ourselves that mirrors what others expect us to be—for example, if our parents, expect us to be docile and obedient but we sense ourselves becoming angry or defiant. - We channel our psychological energy toward not toward growth, but toward continued denial and self-defence. - Under such conditions, we cannot hope to perceive our genuine values or personal talents. The results are frustration and dissatisfaction, which set the stage for abnormal behaviour. - According to the humanists, we cannot fulfill all the wishes of others and remain true to ourselves. - This does not mean that self-actualization invariably leads to conflict. - Rogers believed that people hurt one another or become antisocial in their behaviour only when they are frustrated in their endeavours to reach their unique potentials. - When parents and others treat children with love and tolerance for their differences, children too grow up to be loving and tolerant—even if some of their values and preferences differ from their parents’ choices. - In Rogers’s view, the pathway to self-actualization involves a process of self-discovery and self-acceptance, of getting in touch with out true feelings, accepting them as our own, and acting in ways that genuinely reflect them. - → Rogers’s *client-centred therapy* or *person-centred therapy.*

Answer 29

Cognitive Perspectives - Information Processing Approaches - Interpretive biases - a person’s tendency to take demands and either see them very positively or very negatively - there is a bias ppl have in taking otherwise neutral information and spinning it in a certain way - if you have really negative thoughts it will influence the way you feel and behave - Albert Ellis - Activating events → Beliefs (kind of like interpretive bias) → Consequences - beliefs influence how we feel - Aaron Beck - Tripartite model - triangle - was scientific in believing in collaborative empiricism → gathering objective data and learning that sb’s experience is limited - get ppl to go to 3 places they’ve never been, and report what they thought about it → makes you realize you might have jumped the gun at there being no fast food places on campus - eg. saying you can’t date anyone → training and scripting → talk about situations where it might be appropriate to ask sb for a date → then see what the data says - rational discourse - Look at the logic of what you’re saying → how likely is it that it is correct - let’s see if you behaved in a way that predisposed how you were going to view or react or feel about sth - Donald Meichenbaum - Cognitive Perspectives - Cognitive distortions - Selective abstraction (drawing conclusions from sth that is not accurate to what happened/what you saw); overgeneralization; magnification; absolutist thinking - Donald Meichenbaum - Cognitive-behavioural modification - relaxation therapy - counter-conditioning - evidence that both behavioural and cognitive therpay is effective so combine them

Answer 30

- The Diathesis-Stress Model - We have a certain level of predisposition in terms of how likely we are to react to sth under a stressful condition - eg. like an immune system - some ppl will be very resilient to mental illness no matter how high the predisposition, and vice versa. - there is a psychological diathesis as well - holds that psychological disorders result from the combination or interaction of a diathesis (vulnerability or predisposition) with stress. - the model proposes that some people possess a vulnerability, or diathesis, possibly genetic in nature, that increases their risk of developing a particular disorder. Yet whether they develop the disorder depends on the kinds and level of stress they experience. - stress may take the form of biological events, such as prenatal trauma, birth complications, or physical illness; psychosocial factors, such as childhood sexual or physical abuse or family conflict; and negative life events, such as prolonged unemployment or loss of loved ones. - **diathesis-stress model** - model of abnormal behaviour positing that abnormal behaviour patterns, such as schizophrenia, involve the interaction of genetic and environmental influences. IN this model, a genetic or acquired predisposition, of *diathesis*, increases an individual’s vulnerability to developing the disorder in response to stressful life circumstances. If, however, the level of stress is kept under the person’s particular threshold, the disorder may never develop, even among people with the predisposition. - **diathesis** - a predisposition or vulnerability. - generally refers to an inherited predisposition, but may involve psychological factors such as dysfunctional thinking patterns or personality traits. - People with a diathesis for a particular disorder may remain free of the disorder or develop a milder form of the disorder if the level of stress in their lives remains low or they develop effective coping responses for handling the stress they encounter. - however, the stronger the diathesis, the less stress is generally needed to produce the disorder. - in some cases the diathesis may be so strong that the disorder develops even under the most benign life circumstances.

Answer 31

- Another prominent interdisciplinary approach is the **biospsychosocial model**, which compared to the diathesis-stress model, expands and more clearly delineates the number of factors and dynamic interactions between a person and their environment. - Encompasses the dynamic interplay of 3 major systems of domains. - 2 systems can be thought of as being INTERNAL: the biological (which includes genetic, epigenetic, and neurophysiologic factors); and the psychological (which includes psychoanalytic, behavioural, humanistic-existential, and cognitive-behavioural factors). - The 3rd system consists of what is considered to be EXTERNAL or OUTSIDE of us: the sociocultural and environmental factors. - Together, these biopsychosocial systems determine the range of known variables involved in the development of abnormal behaviour - Dynamic interplay of three major systems or domains: - Two INTERNAL systems: biological, psychological - One EXTERNAL system: sociocultural and environmental factors - Is there a potential danger/pitfall with this? - Yes you assume they exhibit individual.

Lecture 1: Definitions, History and Theoretical Perspectives Flashcards

(55 cards)