1. Discuss the issues that arise in determining whether a person suffers a mental disorder. What are the criteria for judging whether a person has a mental disorder? What measures can provide evidence of disorder? Can disorders be faked?
Not all patients with mental disorders suffer from the same disorder. Emil Kraepelin was the first psychologist to attempt to categorize mental disorders in his book DSM. The IV version disorders cannot be diagnosed without the patient meeting a certain criteria of symptoms. It uses a multiaxial system that evaluates the five axes: clinical disorders, mental retardation and personality disorders, medical conditions, psychosocial problems, and global functioning. Patients may be given a mental status exam, undergo a clinical interview, or take the MMPI. Disorders can be faked which is why validity scales are used in tests to assess how truthful a patient is about their answers.
2. Discuss the possible causes of mental disorders. What is the diathesis-stress model? List the possible biological, psychological , and cultural causes?
Causes of mental disorders can be biological or environmental. The diathesis-stress model is a diagnostic model that proposes that a disorder may develop when an underlying vulnerability is coupled with a precipitating event. Basically it assesses the factors that would make someone more liable to develop a mental disorder and what might trigger it. Biological causes include prenatal problems such as malnutrition, exposure to toxins, and maternal illness. Psychological causes include traumatic events, belittlement, and unconscious factors. Cultural causes focus on lifestyles, expectations, and opportunities.
3. What is anxiety? What are anxiety disorders? List at least three such disorders and discuss one of them, including evidence about its possible causes.
Anxiety is the stress or uneasiness of the mind caused by fear of danger or misfortune. Anxiety disorders are those where individuals feel anxious in the absence of true danger. Chronic anxiety causes sweating, dry mouth, rapid pulse, shallow breathing, increased blood pressure, and increases muscle tension. It can lead to nervous habits, headaches, intestinal problems, and illness. Examples of anxiety disorders include phobic disorder, panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Phobias are fear of a particular object or situation, such as hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia: fear of long words. Phobias can be specific or social. Specific phobias affect about 1 in 8 people and involve particular objects and situations such as heights, spiders, snakes, enclosed spaces,etc. Social phobias, also known as social anxiety disorder, is a fear of being negatively evaluated by others and includes public speaking, meeting new people, eating in front of people, etc.
4. Discuss and distinguish major depression and bipolar disorder. What evidence indicates genetic causes for these disorders? What evidence indicates cognitive cause for depression?
Major depression is a long-lasting episode of depression, characterized by appetite and weight changes, loss of focus and feeling, etc. Bipolar disorder is when a person experiences extreme fluctuations in mood. People with bipolar disorder have periods of major depression and mania, and is equally common amongst men and women but usually emerges in late adolescence and early adulthood. Mood disorders involve a deficiency of one or more monoamines (neurotransmitter that regulate emotion, arousal, and motivation) in the brain. Cognitive causes involved in mood disorders, as proposed by Arron Beck are shown in his Cognitive triad. The cognitive triad states that depressed people view themselves, situations, and the future negatively. The learned helplessness model focuses on how depressed people feel unable to control events around them.
5. What are negative and positive symptoms in schizophrenia? List and discuss several examples of symptoms in each category.
Positive symptoms in schizophrenia are those in excess (not in the sense of being good). Such symptoms include delusions, false personal beliefs based on incorrect inferences about reality, and hallucinations, false sensory perceptions that are experienced without an external source. Negative symptoms of schizophrenia are deficits in functioning. These deficits are caused by isolation and withdrawl and include antisocial behavior, apathy, and slowed reaction.
6. What is autism? Discuss the evidence that we are currently experiencing an epidemic in autism.
Autism is characterized by deficits in social interaction, by impaired communication, and by restricted interests. People with autism suffer social retardation, but may not be intellectually impaired. Those with autism have trouble understanding and predicting the behavior of other people. Signs of autism are apparent at a young age and are characterized by children seemingly unaware of others and typically have odd speech patterns. Biological factors that affect autism is the lack of oxytocin and prenatal and neonatal conditions that affect brain functioning. There was a 556% increase of children diagnosed with autism from 1991 to 1997, likely due to the greater awareness of symptoms by parents and physicians.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Ch. 14 Topics
1. The DSM IV.
The DSM is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It is a standard in psychology and psychiatry that categorizes mental disorders systematically. In the IV version, disorders are assessed using five axes: clinical disorders, mental retardation or personal disorders, medical conditions, psychosocial problems, and global assessment of functioning. By considering all five axes, a person can better picture a patient's specific symptoms and conditions. The DSM was developed by Emil Kraepelin.
2. The MMPI.
The MMPI is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. The MMPI is a psychological assessment that uses 567 true/false questions to assess emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, and uses ten clinical scales to indicate if someone has a specific mental disorder. The test also includes validity scales to weed out patients who might bias their responses to either avoid detection or look especially troubled.
4. Concordance rates.
Concordance rates are the chance that two similar trials have the same result. Typically it deals with studies involving fraternal and identical twins. Concordance rates are higher concerning identical twins; usually around four times higher.
5. Antisocial personality disorder.
Antisocial personality disorder or APD is a personality disorder marked by the lack of empathy and remorse. Typical behavior of someone with APD is socially undesirable and feeling a lack of remorse for their behavior. This mental disorder is common amongst criminals.
6. Anorexia nervosa.
People with anorexia nervosa have an excessive fear of becoming fat. It is ten times more common in women than men. It is most common in upper-middle and upper-class white females. People with this disorder will become obsessed with food and body weight and may even force themselves to vomit after eating to satisfy hunger.
The DSM is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It is a standard in psychology and psychiatry that categorizes mental disorders systematically. In the IV version, disorders are assessed using five axes: clinical disorders, mental retardation or personal disorders, medical conditions, psychosocial problems, and global assessment of functioning. By considering all five axes, a person can better picture a patient's specific symptoms and conditions. The DSM was developed by Emil Kraepelin.
2. The MMPI.
The MMPI is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. The MMPI is a psychological assessment that uses 567 true/false questions to assess emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, and uses ten clinical scales to indicate if someone has a specific mental disorder. The test also includes validity scales to weed out patients who might bias their responses to either avoid detection or look especially troubled.
4. Concordance rates.
Concordance rates are the chance that two similar trials have the same result. Typically it deals with studies involving fraternal and identical twins. Concordance rates are higher concerning identical twins; usually around four times higher.
5. Antisocial personality disorder.
Antisocial personality disorder or APD is a personality disorder marked by the lack of empathy and remorse. Typical behavior of someone with APD is socially undesirable and feeling a lack of remorse for their behavior. This mental disorder is common amongst criminals.
6. Anorexia nervosa.
People with anorexia nervosa have an excessive fear of becoming fat. It is ten times more common in women than men. It is most common in upper-middle and upper-class white females. People with this disorder will become obsessed with food and body weight and may even force themselves to vomit after eating to satisfy hunger.
Life Stress and Major Depression Article
1. How do we use stress in understanding psychological disorders and medical conditions? What are the authors arguing that we should do?
I has long since been a commonly accepted theory that excessive amounts of stress leads to psychological disorders, and specifically depression. There has also a substantial amount of proof that there is some association between stressful major life events and depression. Stress has been overly accepted as the explanatory factor for many disorders of unknown origins. Most individuals that are under stress are not clinically depressed so psychologists are trying to distinguish stress from major depression.
2. How common is depression? How long has it been known? How well known is it?
Major Depression Disorder (MDD) is one of the most common psychological disorders and the fifth leading cause of disability. Approximately 16% of the population of the United States will suffer MDD at some point in their lives. It is twice as common in women as it is in men. Clear clinical conditions have been mentioned in ancient religious texts and medical journals; however, depression was not popularized until the 1980s by the FDA and in 1997 by the pharmaceutical industry.
3. What have researchers claimed about stress and depression? What do recent findings show? What problems are present in earlier evidence? What kind of stress causes depression (or is it actually a cause)?
Using interview-based testing, researchers have found that stress casually precedes depression and is related to independent life events that are beyond a n individual's control. In the late 1960s the modern stress theory and the life-event-checklist were the major measuring factors of depression; however, these associations were refuted due to poor research design and faulty practices. Early findings confounded live events with actual symptoms (meaning they thought that losing your job was a cause of depression instead of a symptom). Approximately 50-80% of people diagnosed with depression reported recent severely stressful life events prior to onset.
4. What proportion of people who suffer major life stress become depressed? Why is the proportion so small? What factors come together to produce depression?
Only about 1 in 5 people exposed to sever life events actually develop depression. The proportion can be higher, depending on circumstances. Early trauma, social support, and genetic predisposition are all factors believed to influence the vulnerability of depression.
5. Why does depression occur without stress? What forms of depression might not depend on stressors?
It has been found that major life events may initiate someone's first episode of depression, but are not necessarily needed to precede or provoke subsequent recurrences. Depression caused by biological factors or from an escalating susceptibility may not require major stressors.
6. How should research in the future be designed to clarify the stress-depression issue? Why is there a lot of variability in the depression category as it is currently diagnosed? How can we tell normal from abnormal reactions?
Future research should recognize that MDD has a heterogeneous assortment of conditions and syndromes. It needs to distinguish between situational crises, short-term adjustments, and long-term clinical depression. It should also use community samples to predict and account for normal distress responses to acute life stress. More extensive interviewing that more extensively examines one's individual life, and that monitors mood patterns, may more accurately judge whether a patient truly has major depression.
I has long since been a commonly accepted theory that excessive amounts of stress leads to psychological disorders, and specifically depression. There has also a substantial amount of proof that there is some association between stressful major life events and depression. Stress has been overly accepted as the explanatory factor for many disorders of unknown origins. Most individuals that are under stress are not clinically depressed so psychologists are trying to distinguish stress from major depression.
2. How common is depression? How long has it been known? How well known is it?
Major Depression Disorder (MDD) is one of the most common psychological disorders and the fifth leading cause of disability. Approximately 16% of the population of the United States will suffer MDD at some point in their lives. It is twice as common in women as it is in men. Clear clinical conditions have been mentioned in ancient religious texts and medical journals; however, depression was not popularized until the 1980s by the FDA and in 1997 by the pharmaceutical industry.
3. What have researchers claimed about stress and depression? What do recent findings show? What problems are present in earlier evidence? What kind of stress causes depression (or is it actually a cause)?
Using interview-based testing, researchers have found that stress casually precedes depression and is related to independent life events that are beyond a n individual's control. In the late 1960s the modern stress theory and the life-event-checklist were the major measuring factors of depression; however, these associations were refuted due to poor research design and faulty practices. Early findings confounded live events with actual symptoms (meaning they thought that losing your job was a cause of depression instead of a symptom). Approximately 50-80% of people diagnosed with depression reported recent severely stressful life events prior to onset.
4. What proportion of people who suffer major life stress become depressed? Why is the proportion so small? What factors come together to produce depression?
Only about 1 in 5 people exposed to sever life events actually develop depression. The proportion can be higher, depending on circumstances. Early trauma, social support, and genetic predisposition are all factors believed to influence the vulnerability of depression.
5. Why does depression occur without stress? What forms of depression might not depend on stressors?
It has been found that major life events may initiate someone's first episode of depression, but are not necessarily needed to precede or provoke subsequent recurrences. Depression caused by biological factors or from an escalating susceptibility may not require major stressors.
6. How should research in the future be designed to clarify the stress-depression issue? Why is there a lot of variability in the depression category as it is currently diagnosed? How can we tell normal from abnormal reactions?
Future research should recognize that MDD has a heterogeneous assortment of conditions and syndromes. It needs to distinguish between situational crises, short-term adjustments, and long-term clinical depression. It should also use community samples to predict and account for normal distress responses to acute life stress. More extensive interviewing that more extensively examines one's individual life, and that monitors mood patterns, may more accurately judge whether a patient truly has major depression.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Personality and National Character Article
1. What is national character? How does it differ from a national stereotype? What is included and not included in each of these?
National character is the shared perception of personality characteristics typical of citizens of a particular nation (very similar to national stereotype). The difference being that national stereotypes are shared perceptions across groups. National character is more narrow in that it excludes abilities, physical characteristics, and other features, such as Italians and their pasta. National Character is broader in perception than national stereotypes in that they include obvious, distinctive characteristics, but also personality-related characteristics about which people have a shared opinion.
2. Judgments of national character can come from people within or outside a particular nation. Do these two groups of people agree?
According to Peabody's research on 20 different countries, he found that, despite ethnocentric biases, in-group and out-group stereotypes generally agree when characterizing personality traits. He found that people hold shared beliefs about national character and that it is the same across cultures.
3. What is the National Character Survey? How is it related to the Five-Factor Model of personality? Can reliable differences between nations be obtained with this survey? If so, what are some of them?
The National Character Survey (NCS) is a test using 30 scales that measure the facets included on the NEO-PI-R. The facets, or traits were those apart of the Five-Factor Model that is used in the NEO-PI-R. Using the NCS, nearly 4,000 participants in 49 different cultures were asked to describe the national character of their country and subsequently asking them to describe an American. Reliable data was gathered from not only people of different nationalities, but also different age groups. The 30 facets were interrelated in many of the same ways and many people's judgments of other cultures matched what the people of those cultures believed.
4. What do the authors mean in saying "reliability is not validity?" How are personality ratings different from national character ratings? Can we compare the two for various countries? What are the problems that we encounter when we make such comparisons?
By "reliability is not validity," the author means that although the data proved to be unquestionably similar, should the test be measuring the wrong thing, the data would be wrong. Personality ratings are different from national character ratings in that they use different traits. Research done on the NEO-PI-R has replicable organization of traits across a wide range of cultures despite the differences in cultures.
5. As you can gather from the article, the authors conclude that the problems in measuring personality across cultures can be solved and that they have solved them, at least partially. So what evidence of reliable personality differences across cultures did they find? Do people in neighboring countries tend to have similar average (aggregate) personalities?
They found that aggregate personality scores were generalizable among the different groups. They found that there were also patterns with countries in a particular geographical area.
6. How similar are the personalities of Americans and Canadians, on average? How similar are the national character stereotypes of Americans and Canadians?
The personalities resulting from the NEO-PI-R and NCS found that Canadians see themselves as less neurotic than they really are and more agreeable than they really are. Americans considered themselves less agreeable than they really are and more neurotic than they actually are. The national character stereotypes are somewhat similar being countries with common languages, culture, climate, etc. There were 12 of the 30 facets that were significantly compatible, and six of them were negative.
7. In general, how well do stereotypes about national character agree with ratings of the personalities of individuals from those nations? Are there correlations at the level of the Big Five? Are there correlations at the level of facets within the Big Five? Are national-character stereotypes based upon a kernel of truth about the personalities of people in each nation?
Objective assessments show Canada and America have similar personality profiles, but different perceived national character. There are few dramatic differences; however, "agreeableness" was negatively correlated. The data shown by fig.1 showed that as far as the NEO-PI-R goes, The U.S. and Canada are fairly similar. When matching the NEO-PI-R with the results from the NCS in fig.2 There is very little correlation between the two within the Big Five or the facets. The national-character stereotypes did not accurately represent the same average of the personality tests, as was expected.
8. How may national-character stereotypes arise? What purposes might they have? What can be their consequences?
National-character stereotypes are related to economic, geographic, and historical factors. They arise by generalizations and cultural dominance. National-character stereotypes can lead to misleading assumptions and unnecessary prejudices.
National character is the shared perception of personality characteristics typical of citizens of a particular nation (very similar to national stereotype). The difference being that national stereotypes are shared perceptions across groups. National character is more narrow in that it excludes abilities, physical characteristics, and other features, such as Italians and their pasta. National Character is broader in perception than national stereotypes in that they include obvious, distinctive characteristics, but also personality-related characteristics about which people have a shared opinion.
2. Judgments of national character can come from people within or outside a particular nation. Do these two groups of people agree?
According to Peabody's research on 20 different countries, he found that, despite ethnocentric biases, in-group and out-group stereotypes generally agree when characterizing personality traits. He found that people hold shared beliefs about national character and that it is the same across cultures.
3. What is the National Character Survey? How is it related to the Five-Factor Model of personality? Can reliable differences between nations be obtained with this survey? If so, what are some of them?
The National Character Survey (NCS) is a test using 30 scales that measure the facets included on the NEO-PI-R. The facets, or traits were those apart of the Five-Factor Model that is used in the NEO-PI-R. Using the NCS, nearly 4,000 participants in 49 different cultures were asked to describe the national character of their country and subsequently asking them to describe an American. Reliable data was gathered from not only people of different nationalities, but also different age groups. The 30 facets were interrelated in many of the same ways and many people's judgments of other cultures matched what the people of those cultures believed.
4. What do the authors mean in saying "reliability is not validity?" How are personality ratings different from national character ratings? Can we compare the two for various countries? What are the problems that we encounter when we make such comparisons?
By "reliability is not validity," the author means that although the data proved to be unquestionably similar, should the test be measuring the wrong thing, the data would be wrong. Personality ratings are different from national character ratings in that they use different traits. Research done on the NEO-PI-R has replicable organization of traits across a wide range of cultures despite the differences in cultures.
5. As you can gather from the article, the authors conclude that the problems in measuring personality across cultures can be solved and that they have solved them, at least partially. So what evidence of reliable personality differences across cultures did they find? Do people in neighboring countries tend to have similar average (aggregate) personalities?
They found that aggregate personality scores were generalizable among the different groups. They found that there were also patterns with countries in a particular geographical area.
6. How similar are the personalities of Americans and Canadians, on average? How similar are the national character stereotypes of Americans and Canadians?
The personalities resulting from the NEO-PI-R and NCS found that Canadians see themselves as less neurotic than they really are and more agreeable than they really are. Americans considered themselves less agreeable than they really are and more neurotic than they actually are. The national character stereotypes are somewhat similar being countries with common languages, culture, climate, etc. There were 12 of the 30 facets that were significantly compatible, and six of them were negative.
7. In general, how well do stereotypes about national character agree with ratings of the personalities of individuals from those nations? Are there correlations at the level of the Big Five? Are there correlations at the level of facets within the Big Five? Are national-character stereotypes based upon a kernel of truth about the personalities of people in each nation?
Objective assessments show Canada and America have similar personality profiles, but different perceived national character. There are few dramatic differences; however, "agreeableness" was negatively correlated. The data shown by fig.1 showed that as far as the NEO-PI-R goes, The U.S. and Canada are fairly similar. When matching the NEO-PI-R with the results from the NCS in fig.2 There is very little correlation between the two within the Big Five or the facets. The national-character stereotypes did not accurately represent the same average of the personality tests, as was expected.
8. How may national-character stereotypes arise? What purposes might they have? What can be their consequences?
National-character stereotypes are related to economic, geographic, and historical factors. They arise by generalizations and cultural dominance. National-character stereotypes can lead to misleading assumptions and unnecessary prejudices.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)