Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Psychological
Abnormality
- Biological Approach
- assumptions: Abnormalities are caused
by something being wrong with your
biology
- depression In link to low levels of
serotonin and schizophrenia with high
levels of dopamine
- Watson 1998 isolated monkeys which
lead to a lowering of their serotonin
levels and reduced them to a state
much like depression
- + It can decrease the stigma associated with
abnormality by assuming it was not the patens
fault
- Treatments = electroconvulsive therapy,
Drugs ( e.g. Depression can be treated
with tricyclic drugs)
- - the drug treatments can cause
side effects
- - It is also heavily reductionist
- The Cognitive approach
- Human behaviour is based on schemata and negative
schemata lead to negative automatic thoughts which
can lead to abnormality. faultily thought leads to abnormality
- Becks model of depression: involves three
negative schemata, called the negative triad
- Negative view of self, negative
view of world and negative view
of future- to the negative triad
there are three dimensions
- Attributions can be internal
(their fault) or external
(circumstances), specific (one
event) or global (all events)
and stable (constant) or
unstable (vary over time)
- Ellis's ABC model of depression
- A: Activating event
- B: Beliefs about A
- Rational thought
- Irrational thought
- C: Consequences of B
- Desirable emotions
- Desirable Behaviour
- Undesirable emotions
- Undesirable Behaviour
- ne treatment is Cognitive behaviour theropy
- Clear evidence for Cognitive
approach of dysfunctional thinking
leading to depression and anxiety
disorder (panic disorder) - Clark
1986 raised heart rate
- Can be the other way round =
depression leads to faultily thinking
- Idea of schemata and how they develop are very vague
- The behaviourist approach
- Assumes maladaptive
behaviour is learnt
- Classical conditioning explains
abnormality, as learning to be afraid of
something, via an early childhood
trauma
- Pavlov's Dog's
experiment, conditioning
dogs to salivate when they
hear a bell due to
repeated paring with food
- Operant Conditioning
- Learning something when repeatedly
pared with a reward Skinners rat and
pigeon experiment
- For example, if when
you are feeling 'down'
one day and everyone
was nice to you then
you may start feeling
good and associate
these things becoming
depressed
- Social learning theory
- Bandura and the Bobo
doll experiment in which in
children who watched an
adult assault a doll
repeated this behaviour
when playing
- e.g. seeing that
your parents are
afraid of something
can cause a
phobia in the child
- one treatment would be
systematic
desensitisation-
introducing something
someone has a phobia of
in small doses to
uncondition their phobia
- + treatments are usually effective
- - extremely deterministic
- The Psychodynamic approach
- Based on Freud's work
- Id (controlled by want for primary
drives), ego (conscious self, operates
on the reality principle due to the moral
rules set out by our culture) and the
super ego is the moral authority
- An unresolved conflict
between these three aspect
of out personality can cause
anxiety and an abnormality
- another cause of abnormality is fixation in
one of the psychosexual stages of
development
- The Oral stage from birth to 18
months were babies get pleasure
from feeding
- If you get fixated
(over or under fed)
during the Oral stage
can led to over
eating, smoking or
Drinking on the other
end it could led to
anorexia
- The Anal stage from 18
months to 3 years of age,
were the activities revolve
around retaining and
expelling faeces, fixation in
this stage can cause OCD
- The Phallic stage form 3
to four/ five years, were
difference in sex are
noticed and pleasure is
generally gotten from
genital stimulus
- Boys work through
the Oedipus complex
and girls the Elektra
complex, fixation in
this stage can lead to
abnormal behaviour
- One treatment
would be free
association
- + Freud was the first
psychologist to link
adult abnormality and
childhood trauma
- - Freud's theories
are almost
impossible to test
and relating a few
cause studies to
everyone dose not
take individual
differences in to
account