Course Reflection Paper----social science

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Power and Psychology

Chapter 9

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Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, students will be able to:

Explain the nature-versus-nurture controversy over the determination of personality.

List the different approaches to explaining and understanding personality.

Describe how power is related to the study of personality.

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Psychology and the Study of Personality

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Psychology and the Study of Personality

What is Personality?

Personality is all the characteristic ways of behaving that an individual exhibits; the characteristic, enduring and organized patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior.

Psychology is the social science discipline which analyzes personality.

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Personality and Individual Responses to Power

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Nature versus Nurture

Personality and Individual Responses to Power

Personality is linked to our examination of power because individual responses to authority are a product of personality.

The nature of authority is a product of the personality of the authority figure.

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Personality and Individual Responses to Power

Nature versus Nurture

Is the similarity of a child to his or her parents a result of what is learned in the home or do children inherit personality characteristics of their parents?

What is the relative influence of these factors on personality?

Part of a larger controversy about the influence of genetics on behavior

Some studies of twins have suggested that heredity plays an important role in personality.

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Personality and Individual Responses to Power

Thomas Wanstall/The Image Works

Research on the

behavior of identical twins suggests the

importance of genetic influences. Identical twins Gerald Levey

and Mark Newman,

for example, were

separated at birth and raised in different homes. When reunited

at age 31, they

discovered that they had both become firefighters.

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Our Genetic Code

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Genes and Sexuality

Genes and Intelligence

Our Genetic Code

Genes and Sexuality

The genetic differences between males and females essentially are the product of the level of the hormone androgen, which determines whether an embryo will develop male or female genitalia.

Increased levels of testosterone in the embryo’s sex glands produce male genitalia; lower levels result in the development of female genitalia.

Hormones decide the sex of a child; the social environment treats that child in a manner consistent with society’s gender expectations.

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Our Genetic Code

Genes and Intelligence

Research suggests that genetics contributes heavily to intelligence.

Early experiences of newborns and unborn fetuses can have profound effects on mental abilities.

Malnutrition, sensory deprivation, and social isolation have profound effect on brain development.

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Nurture and Human Development

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Newborn Instincts

Nurture and Brain Activity

Nurture and Human Development

Newborn Instincts

Newborns possess five instinctual responses:

Sucking, crying, smiling, clinging, and following

These responses foster attachment of the child to the mother and the mother to the child.

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Nurture and Human Development

Nurture and Brain Activity

Simple activities like cuddling, rocking, singing, and talking to babies stimulate electrical activity in the brain and build connections between neurons.

An infant’s earliest experiences exert a dramatic impact on the brain’s growth, physically determining the number and strength of neuronal connections.

Early traumas elevate stress hormones in an infant’s brain that reduce electrical activity.

Neglected and abused children have smaller brains and fewer neural connections.

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Nurture and Human Development

Figure 9-1 INSIDE THE BRAIN

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Nurture and Human Development

Figure 9-2 PET Scans of (A) Nurtured and (B) Neglected Brains

Children’s Hospital of Michigan, Detroit

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Approaches to Psychology and Personality

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The Cognitive Approach

Psychoanalytic (Freudian) Psychology

Biological Psychology

Humanistic Psychology

Social Psychology

Behavioral Psychology

Approaches to Psychology and Personality

The Cognitive Approach

Cognitive Approach: A methodology that emphasizes how people learn about themselves and society

Social-learning theory—behavior is shaped by internal cognitive processes and observing the behavior of others as well as the environment that behavior occurs in (Albert Bandura).

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Approaches to Psychology and Personality

Figure 9-3 Approaches to Psychology

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Approaches to Psychology and Personality

Biological Psychology

Explains behavior as the results of electrical and chemical events taking place within the brain and nervous system.

Interested in the impact of genetics on personality and the hereditability of traits.

Evolutionary psychology describes relationships between biological needs, genetic coding, and psychological traits of humans.

Assumes that psychological traits have evolved over millions of years through natural selection.

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Approaches to Psychology and Personality

Figure 9-3 Synapses at the Cell Body of a Neuron

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Approaches to Psychology and Personality

Psychoanalytic (Freudian) Psychology

Views behavior as a product of the interaction between biologically based instincts and our efforts to satisfy these instincts in socially acceptable ways.

Psychoanalysis—a type of insight-oriented therapy that encourages patients to think about themselves to gain insight into causes of their own difficulties.

The Authoritarian Personality an early influential study of power, authority, and personality that was conducted mainly within the framework of Freudian theory.

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Fig 8-2

Approaches to Psychology and Personality

Social Psychology

Social Psychology: concerned with the individual’s relationship with other individuals and groups as they impact individual behavior.

Emphasizes individual’s socialization—the development of individual identity through interpersonal experiences and the internalizing of expectations of significant others.

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Approaches to Psychology and Personality

Humanistic Psychology

Humanistic psychology focuses on human experience and human fulfillment; emphasizes individual’s innate potential to grow and develop.

Views personality development as a continuous process of positive growth.

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Approaches to Psychology and Personality

Behavioral Psychology

Behavioral Psychology: the study of how people and animals learn to respond to different stimuli.

Focuses on observed behavior, quantitative data and statistical methods. Behavioral psychologists rely heavily on learning theory, which views all behavior as a product of learning or conditioning.

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Behaviorism and Learning Theory

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The Learning Process

Reinforcement

Conditioned Responses

Behavioral Therapy

Social Psychology: The Self in Relation to Others

The Study of Psychology and Power

Humanistic Psychology: The Innate Human Potential

Behaviorism and Learning Theory

Behaviorism is rooted in the classical stimulus-response (SR) theory.

Behaviorists emphasize the role that an individual’s environment or situation plays in determining that individual’s behavior.

Operant conditioning

Observational learning

Classical conditioning

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Behaviorism and Learning Theory

The Learning Process

To establish a conditioned stimulus-response linkage, a drive, a cue, a response, and reinforcement must be present.

Conditioned Responses

Found of modern SR theory was Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov.

Pavlov’s early experiments established the notion of conditioning.

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Behaviorism and Learning Theory

Reinforcement

Reinforcement is repeating conditioned stimulus and response.

Reinforcement occurs each time the behavior is accompanied by reduction in the drive.

The cue itself will eventually elicit the same response as the original drive.

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Behaviorism and Learning Theory

Behavioral Therapy

Behavioral therapy is based on learning or unlearning behavior.

Undesirable behaviors can be extinguished—or desirable ones encouraged—by withholding rewards or administering punishment.

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Behaviorism and Learning Theory

Social Psychology: The Self in Relation to Others

Social Psychology is concerned primarily with interpersonal interactions—how the individual interacts with others.

Studies the individual as a whole person interacting with the environment rather than studying particular responses, behaviors, or reflexes

Strongly influenced by Gestalt psychologists who argued that the whole person is an entity that cannot be understood by breaking it into sensory elements

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Behaviorism and Learning Theory

Young children often engage in role playing, a process that increases

self-realization. Role playing also enables children to internalize the expectations of

others that accompany

different roles.

Janice Richard/iStockphoto.com

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Behaviorism and Learning Theory

Social Psychology (cont’d)

Self-Awareness

An individual develops an awareness of self only by interacting with the environment.

Socialization

The process by which an individual internalizes the values, attitudes, and judgments of others

Personality as Interpersonal Response Traits

An individual acquires a distinctive pattern of relatively consistent and stable dispositions to respond in a distinctive way toward others.

These constitute the personality.

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Behaviorism and Learning Theory

Humanistic Psychology: The Innate Human Potential

Humanistic psychology focuses on the whole person rather than particular defensive structures or behavioral responses.

It emphasizes the individual’s innate potential for development, the human need for self-fulfillment.

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Behaviorism and Learning Theory

Humanistic Psychology: (cont’d)

The Need to Self-Actualize

Needs include safety and security first, then friendships and intimacies, and then for self-esteem and self-expression

The highest psychological need is self-actualization.

Personality development is the continuous process of positive growth in search of fulfilling ever-higher needs and ultimate goal of self-actualization.

Hierarchy of Needs

Highest need is self-actualization; at the base are psychological needs (food, clothing, and shelter).

Implications regarding who can become self-actualized.

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Behaviorism and Learning Theory

The Study of Psychology and Power

Numerous and competing explanations as to how personality develops and the causes of human behavior exist.

Each perspective sheds light on power relations between individuals.

Mental illness also factors in as a determinant of the structure of power relations.

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Powerlessness and Mental Health

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Powerlessness and Mental Health

Rollo May’s five functional forms:

Power to be

Power as self-affirmation

Power as self-assertion

Aggression

Violence

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Treating Mental Illness

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Clinical Psychology

Psychoanalysis

Professional Care

Behavioral Therapies

Drug Therapies

Humanistic Therapies

Sociology of Psychological Disorders

Treating Mental Illness

Clinical Psychology

Clinical psychology focuses on treatment of psychological disorders.

Professional Care

Psychiatrist: a medical doctor who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders.

Clinical psychologist: a therapist with graduate training, usually PhD in psychological testing and treatment.

Psychological counselor: a therapist with graduate training in psychology, marriage and family life, alcohol and drug-abuse treatment, social work, or related fields.

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Treating Mental Illness

Treatment Modalities

Treatment may be psychotherapy, drug therapy, or a combination.

Psychotherapy involves communication between patient and therapist designed to help the patient better understand and deal effectively with troubling feelings and behaviors.

Psychoanalysis

Behavioral Therapies

Humanistic Therapies

Drug Therapies

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Treating Mental Illness

Psychoanalysis

Therapy based on Freudian notion that mental illness is product of unconscious conflicts.

Time consuming and expensive

Behavioral Therapies

Assumes that disturbed behavior has been learned and can be unlearned or modified using conditioning.

Types include desensitization, assertiveness training, positive/negative reinforcement.

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Treating Mental Illness

Humanistic Therapies

Emphasizes client-centered solutions to individual problems

Goal is to let patient clarify feelings, such as in group therapy.

Drug Therapies

Strong impact on mental health care beginning in 1950s. Hospital stays now relatively brief when drug therapies are initiated.

Patient compliance is mandatory for effectiveness.

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Treating Mental Illness

The Sociology of Psychological Disorders

Psychological disorders appear to vary by ethnicity and gender:

Men are more likely to suffer alcohol abuse.

Women are more likely to report mood disorders.

Men are more likely to develop antisocial personalities.

Various psychological disorders are somewhat more prevalent among minorities in America.

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