You are on page 1of 106

Intelligence and Aptitude

• Individual differences refer to distinctiveness and variations among


people’s characteristics and behaviour patterns.
• Approaches explaining individual differences in psychological
functioning.
1. Trait Approach: Personal traits cause change in behaviours.
[INTERNAL FACTORS]
2. Situationism is a view which states that situations and circumstances in
which one is
placed to influence one’s behaviour. [EXTERNAL FACTORS]
3. The situationist perspective views human behaviour relatively more as
a result of influence of external (situational) factors than personality traits.
• Assessment:
1. Predict future behaviour intervention to affect a change in behaviour.
2. First step in understanding a psychological attribute.
• Formal Assessment: Objective, standardised, organised ‘psychologists
are trained in making formal assessment.
• Informal Assessment: It varies from case to case/one assessor to
another—open to subjective interpretation.
• Attributes:
1. Attributes chosen for assessment depend upon the purpose, e.g,
improvement of a weak student intellectual strengths and weaknesses
are measured.
2. An attribute will be said to exist in a person only if it can be measured
by using scientific procedures.

• Some Domains of Psychological Attributes


• Assessment Methods
1. Wechsler:
• Definition: The global and aggregate capacity of an individual to think
rationally, act purposefully, and to deal effectively with his/her
environment.
• Understood intelligence in terms of its functionality, i.e., its value for
adaption to the environment.
• Intelligence test most widely used.
2. Gardner and Sternberg:
• An intelligent individual not only adapts to the environment but also
actively modifies or shapes it.
• Approaches to Study Intelligence

A. Psychometric Approach:
1. Uni/One-Factor Theory (Alfred Binet):
• Definition: The ability to judge well, understand well, and reason well.
• First psychologist who formalised the concept of intelligence in terms of
mental operations.
• Differentiating more intelligent from less intelligent individuals.
• Conceptualised intelligence as consisting of one similar set of abilities
which can be used for solving any or every problem in an individual’s
environment.

2. Two-Factor Theory (Charles Spearman) [1927]:


• Employed a statistical method called factor analysis.
• Intelligence consists of a general factor (G-factor) and specific factors
(S-factor).
(i) G-Factor: It includes mental operations which are primary and common
to all performances.
(ii) S-Factor: It includes specific abilities which allow individuals to excel in
their respective domains

3. Theory of Primary Mental Abilities (Louis Thurstone):


(i) Verbal Comprehension (grasping meaning of words, concepts, and
ideas).
(ii) Numerical Abilities (speed and accuracy in numerical and
computational skills).
(iii) Spatial Relations (visualizing patterns and forms).
(iv) Perceptual Speed To speed in perceiving details).
(v) Word Fluency (using words fluently and flexibly).
(vi) Memory (accuracy in recalling information).
(vii) Inductive Reasoning (deriving general rules from presented facts).

4. Hierarchical Model of Intelligence (Arthur Jensen):


Abilities operates at two levels:
Level I – Associative learning. [output is equal to input, rote memory]
Level II – Cognitive competence. [output is more than input]

5. Structure of Intellect Model (J.P. Guilford) [1988]:


• Classifies intellectual traits among three dimensions—operations,
contents and products
(i) Operation: what the respondent does, e.g., cognition, memory
retention.
(ii) Contents: the nature of materials or information on which intellectual
• operations are performed, e.g., visual, auditory.
(iii) Products: the form in which information is processed by the
respondent, e.g., relations, systems, transformations.
• Classification includes 6x5x6 categories—the model has 180 cells.
• Each cell is expected to have at least one (can have more than one)
factor or ability and is described in terms of all three dimensions.

B. Information-Processing Approach:
1. Theory of Multiple Intelligences (Howard Gardner):
• Intelligence is not a single entity; distinct types of intelligences exist
independent of each other.
• Different types of intelligences interact and work together to find a
solution to a problem.
• Studied persons who had shown exceptional abilities in their respective
areas and described eight types of intelligence.
(i) Linguistic: The capacity to use language fluently and flexibly to express
one’s thinking and understand other. Persons high on this ‘word-smart’,
eg, poets and writers.
(ii) Logical-Mathematical: Skills in problem solving, thinking logically and
critically and abstract reasoning , eigi, scientists.
(iii) Spatial: The abilities involved in forming, using and transforming
mental images (visual images and patterns), eigi, sculptors, painters,
architects, interior decorators.
(iv) Musical: The capacity to produce, create and manipulate musical
rhythms and patterns.
(v) Bodily-Kinaesthetic: The use of the whole body or portions of it
creatively and
flexibly for display, construction of products and problem solving, eigi,
athletes, dancers, actors. .
(vi) Interpersonal: Skill of an individual to understand the needs, motives
feelings and behaviours of other people for better understanding and
relationship. High among psychologists counsellors politicians.
(vii) INTRA PERSONAL: Refers to the awareness of one’s own feelings,
motives, desires, knowledge of one’s internal strengths and limitations
and using that knowledge to effectively relate to others, eigi,
philosophers.
(viii) Naturalistic: Complete awareness of our relationship with the natural
world and sensitivity to the features of the natural world, eigi, botanists,
zoologists.

2. Triarchic Theory of Intelligence (Robert Sternberg) [1985]:


• Definition: The ability to adapt, to shape and select environment to
accomplish one’s goals and those of one’s society and culture.
• Three Basic Types of Intelligence:
(i) Componential Intelligence/Analytical Intelligence: The analysis of
informa¬tion to solve problems
Three components:
(a) Knowledge Acquisition—responsible for learning and acquisition of the
ways of doing things.
(b) Meta or Higher Order Component—planning concerning what to do
and how to do it.
(c) Performance Component—actually doing things .
(ii) Experiential/Creative Intelligence: Using past experiences creatively to
solve novel problems.
— Ability to integrate different experiences in an original way to make
new discoveries and inventions.
— Quickly find out what information is crucial in a given situation.
(iii) Contextual/Practical Intelligence: The ability to deal with
environmental demands encountered on a daily basis—
— may be called ‘street smartness’ or ‘business sense’
— easily adapt to their present environment/select a more favourable
environment, modify the environment to fit their needs.

3. Planning, Attention-arousal and Simultaneous-Successive (PASS)


Model of Intelligence (J.P. Das, Jack Nagliery, Kirby) [1994]
• Intellectual activity involves the interdependent functioning of three
neurological systems, called the functional units of brain
• These units are responsible for—
(i) Arousal/Attention:
— Arousal and attention enable a person to process information.
— An optimal level of arousal focuses our attention to the relevant
aspects of a problem.
— Too much or too little arousal would interfere with attention and attend
to stimuli.
(ii) Simultaneous and Successive Processing:
— Simultaneous: Perceive the relations among various concepts and
integrate – them into a meaningful pattern for comprehension, e.g.,
RSPM.
— Successive: Remember all the information serially so that the recall of
one leads to the recall of another, e.g., learning of digits, letters. .
(iii) Planning:
— Allows us to think of the possible courses of action, implement them to
reach a target, and evaluate their effectiveness.
— If a plan does not work, it is modified to suit the requirements of the
task or situation.
• These PASS processes operate on a knowledge base developed either
formally (by reading, writing, and experimenting) or informally from the
environment.
• These processes are interactive and dynamic in nature, yet each has its
own distinctive function.
Cognitive Assessment System (CAS) (Das and Nagliery):
• Battery of tests meant for individuals between 5-18 years of age.
• Consists of verbal as well as non-verbal tasks that measure basic
cognitive functions presumed to be independent of schooling.
• Results of assessment can be used to remedy cognitive deficits of
children with learning problems.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN INTELLIGENCE:


The evidence for hereditary influences on intelligence comes mainly from
studies on twins and adopted children.

CORRELATION OF INTELLIGENCE
• Separated early in childhood-—show considerable similarity in their
intellectual, personality and behavioural characteristics.
• Adopted Children—children’s intelligence is more similar to their
biological rather than adoptive parents.
• Role of Environment—as children grow in age, their intelligence level
tends to move closer to that of their adoptive parents.
• Disadvantaged Children—adopted into families with higher socio-
economic status exhibit a large increase in their intelligence scores.
1. Environmental deprivation lowers intelligence while rich nutrition, good
family background, and quality schooling increases intelligence.
2. There is a general consensus among psychologists that intelligence is
a product of complex interaction of heredity (nature) and environment
(nurture).
3. Heredity sets a range within which an individual’s development is
actually shaped by the support and opportunities of the environment.
• Assessment of Intelligence
1905: Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon made the first successful attempt
to formally measure intelligence.
1908: Gave the concepts of Mental Age (MA) is the measure of a
person’s intellectual development relative to people of her/his age-group.
Chronological Age (CA) is the biological age from birth.
Retardation was being two mental age years below the chronological age.
1912: William Stern, a German psychologist, devised the concept of
Intelligence Quotient (IQ). IQ refers to ratio between MA and CA.
Formula—mental age divided by chronological age, and multiplied by 100
(to avoid the decimal point).
• Average IQ in the population is 100, irrespective of age.
• Frequency distribution for the IQ scores tends to approximate a bell-
shaped curve, called the normal curve—symmetrical around the central
value, called the mean.

VARIATIONS IN INTELLIGENCE

1. Intelligence Deficiency (Mentally Retarded/Challenged):


The American Association on Mental Deficiency (AAMD) views mental
retardation as significantly sub-average general intellectual functioning
existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behaviour and manifested
during the developmental period.
In order to be judged as mentally retarded, a person must show:
(i) Significantly sub average intellectual functioning, e.g., IQ below 70.
(ii) Deficits in adaptive behaviour or the capacity to be independent and
deal effectively with one’s environment.
Deficits must be observed during the developmental period, i.e., between
0-18 years.
Mild retardation—development is typically slower than that of their peers
but they can function quite independently, hold jobs and families. Level of
retardation increases—lag behind their peers in language and motor
skills, need to be trained in self-care skills and simple social and
communication skills.
2. Intellectual Giftedness:
Lewis Term an (1925): Study to show how intelligence was related to
occupational success and life adjustment. These individual show higher
performance because of their outstanding potentialities.
Giftedness is exceptional general ability shown in superior performance in
a wide variety of areas.
• Teacher’s perspective: depends on a combination of high ability, high
creativity and high commitment.
• Early signs of intellectual superiority: during infancy show larger
attention span, good memory, sensitivity to environmental changes, early
appearance of language skills.
• Other characteristics are advanced logical thinking and problem solving,
high speed in processing information, high-level creative thinking, high
self-esteem, independence.
• Incorrect to equate with brilliant academic performance: each gifted
student possesses different strengths, personalities and characteristics,
e.g., athletes.
Talent refers to remarkable ability in a specific field, e.g., social, and are
often called prodigies.
Types of Intelligence Tests,
Individual or Group Test
Culture-Fair or Culture-Biased Tests

Verbal, Non-verbal or performance Tests

CULTURE AND INTELLIGENCE


A major characteristic of intelligence is that it helps individuals to adapt to
their environment. The cultural environment provides a context for
intelligence to develop. ‘
Culture is a collective system of customs, beliefs, attitudes and
achievements in art and literature.
Sternberg:
• Notion of contextual or practical intelligence implies that intelligence is a
product of culture.
Vygotsky (Russian psychologist):
• Culture provides a social context in which people live, grow and
understand the world around them.
• Elementary mental functions (e.g., walking, crying) are Universal; the
manner in which higher mental functions such as problem-solving and
thinking operate are largely culture produced.

• Equal attention given to cognitive and non-cognitive processes


and their integration:
(i) Cognitive capacity (sensitivity to context, understanding, discrimination,
problem-solving and effective communication).
(ii) Social competence (respect for social order, commitment to elders, the
young and the needy, concern about others and recognising others
perspectives).
(iii) Emotional competence (self-regulation and self-monitoring of
emotions, honesty, politeness, good conduct and self-evaluation).
(iv) Entrepreneurial competence (commitment, persistence, patience,
hard work, vigilance and goal-directed behaviour).

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Emotional intelligence is a set of skills that underlie accurate appraisal,
expression and regulation of emotions. It is the feeling side of intelligence.
(i) Emotional Quotient (EQ) is used to express emotional intelligence in
the same way as IQ is used to express intelligence.
(ii) Salovey and Mayer: The ability to monitor one’s own and other’s
emotions, to discriminate among them and to use the information to guide
one’s thinking and actions.

SPECIAL ABILITIES
Aptitude indicates an individual’s capacity to acquire some specific
knowledge or skill after training.
(i) People with similar intelligence differed widely in acquiring certain
knowledge or skills, called aptitudes.
(ii) With proper training, these abilities can be considerably enhanced.
Interest is a preference for a particular activity; aptitude is the potentiality
to perform that activity.
(i) In order to be successful in a particular field, a person must have both
aptitude and interest.
Aptitude Tests

• Creativity refers to the ability to produce ideas, objects and problem


solutions that are novel and appropriate.
• It refers to the ability to think in novel and unusual ways and to came up
with unique solutions to problems.
• Creativity involves the production of same thing new and original it may
be an idea, object or solution to a problem.
• Creativity can get manifested in different levels and in different areas.
• Everyday creativity/Day to day creativity. It could be reflected in day to
day activities like writing, teaching, storytelling, flower arrangement,
dance etc.
• Special talent creativity/Higher order creativity. It is related to
outstanding creative achievements e.g. inventions and discoveries.
• Creativity is always reality oriented, appropriate, constructive and
socially desirable.
• Everyday creativity could be seen in terms of the level and the areas in
which they exhibit creativity and that all may not be operating at the same
level.
• Researches suggest that children mostly express their imagination
through physical activities and in non-verbal ways, although when
language and intellectual functions are fully developed and store of
knowledge is adequately available then creativity is expressed through
verbal modes too.
• There is no disagreement that creativity in determined by both heredity
and environment.
• Limits of the creative potential are set by heredity.
• Environmental factors stimulate the development of creativity.
• No amount of training can transform an average person to develop
special talent creativity or higher order creativity like Tagore, Einstein or
Shakespeare.

CREATIVITY AND INTELLIGENCE:


• Certain level of intelligence in necessary to be creative, but a high level
of intelligence, however does not ensure that a person would certainly be
creative.
• Researchers have found that both high and law level of creativity can be
formed in highly intelligent children and also children of average
intelligence.
• Relation between creativity and intelligence is positive.

• Aptitude: A combination of characteristics indicative of individual’s


potential to acquire some specific skills with training.
• Aptitude Tests: Tests meant to measure individual’s potential to predict
future performance.
• Beliefs: The cognitive component of the thoughts or ideas regarding a
topic.
• Case Study: An intensive study of an individual or a situation to develop
general principles about behaviour.
• Cognition: The process of knowing. The mental activities association
with thought, decision making, language, and other higher mental
processes.
• Cognitive Assessment System: A battery of tests designed to
measure the four PASS (Planning-Attention-Simultaneous-Successive)
process.
• Componential Intelligence: In Sternberg’s triarchic theory, it refers to
ability to think critically and analytically.
• Contextual Intelligence: In Sternberg’s triarchic theory, it is the
practical intelligence
used in solving everyday problems.
• Creativity: The ability to produce ideas, objects, and problem solutions
that are novel and appropriate.
• Culture-fair Test: A test that does not discriminate examinees on the
basis of their culture
experiences.
• Emotional Intelligence: A cluster of traits or abilities relating to the
emotional side of life abilities such as recognising and managing one’s
own emotions, being able to motivate oneself and restrain one’s
impulses, recognising and managing others’ emotions, and handling
interpersonal relationship in an effective manner. It is expressed in the
form of an emotional quotient (EQ) score.
• Experiential Intelligence: In Sternberg’s triarchic theory, it is the ability
to use past experiences creatively to solve novel problems.
• Factor Analysis: Mathematical procedure, involving correlations, for
sorting trait terms or test responses into clusters or factors; used in the
development of test designed to discover basic personality traits. It
identifies items that are homogeneous or internally consistent and
independent of others.
• Fluid Intelligence: Ability to perceive complex relationship, reason
abstractly, and solve
problems.
• Genetics: The study of how the qualities of living things are passed on
in their genes.
• Group Test: A test designed to be administered to more than one
individual at the same time, in contrast to individual test.
• Individual Differences: Distinctiveness and unique variations among
people’s characteristics and behaviour patterns.
• Individual Test: A test that must be given to a single individual at a
time, typically by a specially trained person. The Binet and Wechsler
intelligence tests are examples of individual test.
• Intellectual Giftedness: Exceptional general intellectual efficiency
shown in superior performance in a wide range of tasks.
• Intelligence: The capacity to understand the world, to think rationally,
and to use resources efficiency when faced with challenges.
• Intelligence Quotient (IQ): An index derived from standardised
intelligence tests
indicating a ratio of mental age to chronological age.
• Intelligence Test: Test designed to. Measure person’s level of
intelligence.
• Interest: An individual’s preference for one or more specific activities.
• Interview: Purposeful conversation through face to face interaction.
• Mental Age (MA): A measure of intellectual functioning combined with
varying degrees of deficits in adaptive behaviour.
• Mental Retardation: Sub-average intellectual functioning combined
with varying degrees
of deficits in adaptive behaviour.
• Normal Probability Curve: A symmetrical, bell-shaped frequency
distribution. Most scores are found near the middle and fewer and fewer
6ccur towards the extremes. Many psychological characteristics are
distributed in this manner.
• Norms: Standards of test performance that permit the comparison of
one person’s score on the test to the scores of others who have taken the
same test.
• Observational Method: Employing systematic, organised and objective
procedures to record behavioural phenomena occurring naturally in real
time.
• Observation method: Employing systematic organised and objective
procedures to record behavioural phenomena occurring naturally.
• Performance Test: A test in which the role of language is minimised,
the task requiring overt motor responses other than verbal.
• Planning: In Das PASS model of intelligence, it involves goal setting,
strategy selection, and monitoring of goal-oriented.
• Problem-solving Behaviour: The activity and mental processes
involved in overcoming the obstacles, physical or conceptual, which lie
between an animal and its goal.
• Psychological Test: An objective and standardised in instrument for
measuring an individual’s mental and behavioural traits; used by
psychologists to help people make decisions about their lives and
understand more about themselves.
• Self-awareness: Insight into one’s own motives, potential and limitation.
• Sensitivity: Tendency to respond to very low levels of physical
stimulation. –
• Simultaneous Processing: Cognitive processing in the PASS model
that involves integrating elements of the stimulus situation into composite
and meaningful patterns.
• Situationism: A principle which states that situations and
circumstances outside oneself have the power to influence behaviour.
• Successive Processing: Cognitive processing in the PASS model
where elements of the stimulus situation are responded to sequentially.
• Values: Refers to the enduring beliefs about an ideal made of
behaviour.
• Verbal Test: Test in which a subject’s ability understand in making and
use words and concepts is important in paking the required responses.

Self and Personality


FACTS THAT MATTER
• Self refers to the totality of an individual’s conscious experiences, ideas
thoughts and feelings with regard to herself or himself.
• The study of self and personality help us to understand ourselves as
well as others.
• The structure of self can be understood in terms of identity of the
intended and the development of personal and social self.
• Personal identity refers to those attributes of a person that make him/her
different from others.
• Social identity refers to those aspects of a person that link him/her to a
social or cultural group or are derived from it.
Self refers to the totality of an individual’s conscious experiences, ideas,
thoughts and feelings with regard to himself or herself.
• Subject:
Who does something (actor).
Self actively engages in the process of knowing itself.
• Object:
Which gets affected (consequence).
Self gets observed and comes to be known.
• Kinds of Self:
(i) Formed as a result of the interaction of the biological self with the
physical and sociocultural environment.
(ii) Biological self-developed |is a result of our biological needs.
• Personal Self:
Primarily concerned with oneself.
Emphasis comes to be laid on those aspects of life that relate only to the
concern the person, such as personal freedom, personal responsibility,
personal achievement, or personal comforts.
• Social/Familial/Relational Self
Emerges in relation with others.
Emphasises such aspects of life as co-operation, unity, affiliation,
sacrifice, support or sharing. This self-values family and social
relationship.
• Self-concept is the way perceive ourselves and the ideas we hold about
our competencies and attributes. A person’s self-concept can be found
out by asking the person about himself herself.
• Self-esteem is the value judgement of a person about himself/herself.
1. Assessment present a variety of statements to a person and ask
him/her to indicate the extent to which those statements are true for him
or her.
2. By 6 to 7 years, children have formed self-esteem in four areas—
academic, social and physical/athletic competence, and physical
appearance become more refined with age.
3. Overall self-esteem: It is the capacity to view oneself in terms of stable
disposition and combine separate self-evaluations into a general
psychological image of oneself.
4. Self-esteem has a strong relationship with our everyday behaviour.
Children with low self-esteem in all areas often display anxiety,
depression, and increasing anti-social behaviour.
5. Warm and positive parenting helps in development of high self-esteem
among children- allows them to know they are accepted as competent
and worthwhile.
• Self-efficacy is the extent to which a person believes they themselves
control their life outcomes or the outcomes are controlled by luck or fate
or other situational factors.
1. A person who believes that he/she has the ability or behaviour required
by a particular situation demonstrates high self-efficacy.
2. The notion of self-efficacy is based on Bandura’s social learning theory.
He showed that children and adults learned behaviour by observing and
imitating others.
3. People’s expectations of achievement also determine the type of
behaviour in which they would engage, as also the amount of risk they
would undertake.
4. Strong sense of self-efficacy allows people to select, influence, and
even construct the circumstances of their own life; also feel less fearful.
5. Society, parents and own positive experiences can help in the
development of a strong sense of self-efficacy by presenting positive
models during the formative years of children.
• Self-regulation refers to the ability to organize and monitor one’s own
behaviour.
1. People who are able to change their behaviour according to the
demands of. the environment are high on self-monitoring.
2. Self-control is learning to delay or refer the gratification of needs.
3. Will-power is the ability to respond to situational pressure with
resistance and control over ourselves.
4. Self-control plays a key role in the fulfilment of a long-term goal.
5. Indian culture tradition provides certain effective mechanisms (fasting
in vrata or roza and non-attachment with worldly things) for developing
self-control.
• Techniques of self-control:
1. Observation of own behaviour: provides necessary information that
may be used to change, modify or strengthen certain aspects of self.
2. Self-instruction: instructs ourselves to do something and behave the
way we want to.
3. Self-reinforcement: rewards behaviours that have pleasant outcomes.
CULTURE AND SELF:
• Indian
Shifting nature of boundary between self and other (individual self and
social self).
Does not clear dichotomies.
Collectivistic culture: Self is generally not separated from one’s own
group; rather both remain in a state of harmonious co-existence.
• Western
Boundary is relatively fixed.
Holds clear dichotomies between self and other, man and nature,
subjective and objective.
Individualistic Culture: Self and the group exist as two different entities
with clearly defined boundaries; individual members of the group maintain
their individuality.

CONCEPT OF PERSONALITY
• Personality refers to unique and relatively stable qualities that
characterized an individual’s behaviour across different situation over a
period of time.
1. Derived from persona (Latin), the mask used by actors in Roman
theatre for changing their facial make-up.
2. Once we are able to characterize someone’s personality, we can
predict how that person will probably behave in a variety of
circumstances.
3. An understanding of personality allows us to deal with people in
realistic and acceptable ways.
Features of Personality:
1. Personality has both physical and psychological components.
2. Its expression in terms of behaviour is fairly unique in a given
individual.
3. Its main features do not easily change with time.
4. It is dynamic in the sense that some of its features may change due to
internal or external situational demands; adaptive to situations.

APPROACHES TO STUDY PERSONALITY


• TYPE APPROACHES
1. Hippocrates (Greek Physician)
(i) Proposed a typology of personality based on fluid or humour.
(ii) Classified people into four types (i.e., sanguine, phlegmatic,
melancholic and choleric); characterised by specific behavioural features.

2. Charak Samhita (Treatise on Ayurveda)


(i) Classifies people into the categories of vata, pitta and kapha on the
basis of three humoural elements called tridosha.
(ii) Each refers to a type of temperament, called prakriti (basic nature) of a
person.
3. Typology of personality based on the trigunas, i.e. , sattva, rajas, and
tamas.
— Sattva guna—cleaniness, truthfulness, dutifulness, detachment,
discipline.
— Rajas guna—intensive activity, desire for sense gratification,
dissatisfaction,envy, materialism.
— Tamas guna—anger, arrogance, depression, laziness, helplessness
All the three gunas are present in every person in different degrees—the
dominance of . any guna leads to a particular type of behaviour.

4. Sheldon
Using body built and temperament as the main basis for classification:
(i) Endomorphic (fat, soft and round)—relaxed and sociable.
(ii) Mesomorphic (strong musculature, rectangular, strong body build)—
energetic and courageous.
(iii) Ectomorphic (thin, long, fragile)—brainy, artistic and introverted.
— Limited use in predicting behaviour—simple and similar to stereotypes.

5. Jung
Grouped people into two types, widely recognized.
(i) Introverts: People who prefer to be alone, tend to avoid others,
withdraw themselves in the face of emotional conflicts, and are shy.
(ii) Extraverts: Sociable, outgoing, drawn to occupations that allow dealing
directly with people, and react to stress by trying to lose themselves
among people and social activity.

6. Friedman and Roesenman


Tried to identify psycho-social risk factors and discovered types.
(i) Type-A (susceptible to hypertension and coronary heart disease):
Highly motivated, impatience, feel short of time, be in a great hurry, and
feel like being always burdened with work. Such people find it difficult to
slow down and relax,
(ii) Type-B The absence of Type-A traits.
Moris continued this research and identified:
(iii) Type-C (prone to cancer): Co-operative, unassertive patient, suppress
negative emotion, show compliance to authority.
(iv) Type-D (prone to depression).
Personality typologies are usually too simplistic as human behaviour is
highly complex and variable. Assigning people to a particular personality
type is difficult. People do not fit into such simple categorization schemes
so neatly.
TRAIT APPROACHES
A trait is considered as a relatively enduring attribute or quality on which
one individual differ another. They are:
Relatively Stable over Time
— Generally consistent across situations.
— Their strengths and combination vary across individuals leading to
individual differences in personality.

1. Allport’s Trait Theory (Gordon Allport)


(i) Individuals possess a number of traits—dynamic in nature and
determine behaviour.
(ii) Analysed words people use to describe themselves—provided a basic
for understanding human personality—and categorized them into—
— Cardinal Traits: highly generalized disposition, indicates the goal
around . which a person’s entire life revolves, e.g., Hitler’s Nazism.
— Central Traits: less pervasive in effect, but still quite generalized
disposition. e.g., sincere.
— Secondary trai least generalized characteristics of a person, e.g., likes
mangoes.
(iii) The way an individual reacts to a situation depends on his/her traits.
(iv) People sharing the same traits might express them in different ways.

2. Personality Factors (Raymond Cattell)


(i) Identified primary traits from descriptive adjectives found in language.
(ii) Applied factor analysis, a statistical technique to discover the common
structure on which people differ from each other.
— Source or Primary Traits (16): stable, building blocks of personality—
described in terms of opposing tendencies.
— Surface Traits: result out of the interaction of source traits.
(iii) Developed Sixteen Personality Factor (16PF) Questionnaire for the
assessment of personality.

3. Eysenck’s Theory (H.J. Eysenck)


(i) Reduced personality into, two broad dimensions which are biologically
and genetically based and subsume a number of specific traits.
— Neuroticism (anxious, moody, touchy, restless) us. Emotional stability
(calm, even tempered, reliable)—the degree to which people have control
over their feelings.
— Extraversion (active, gregarious, impulsive, thrill seeking) vs.
Introversion (passive, quiet, caution, reserved)—the degree to which
people are socially outgoing or socially withdrawn.
(ii) Later proposed a third dimension, Psychoticism (hostile, electric, and
antisocial) vs. Sociability, considered to interact with the other two
dimensions.
(iii) Developed Eysenck Personality Questionnaires to study dimensions
of personality.

(iv) Useful in understanding the personality profile of people across


cultures
(v) Consistent with the analysis of personality traits found in different
languages and methods
• Psycho-dynamic Approach (Sigmund Freud)

A Levels of Consciousness
1. Conscious—thoughts, feelings and action of which people are aware.
2. Preconscious-—mental activity which people may become aware only
if they attend to it closely.
3. Unconscious—mental activity that people are aware of.
(i) A reservoir of instinctive or animal drives—stores all ideas and .wishes
that arise from sexual desires.
(ii) Cannot be expressed openly and therefore are repressed or
concealed from conscious awareness.
(iii) Constant struggle to find a socially acceptable way to express
unconscious awareness.
(iv) Unsuccessful resolution of conflicts results in abnormal behaviour
Approaches to the Unconscious

1. Free Association—a method in which a person is asked to openly


share all the thoughts, feelings and ideas that come to his/her mind.
2. Dream Analysis.
3. Analysis of Errors—mispronunciations, forgetting.
Psycho-analysis is a therapeutic procedure, the basic goal which is to
bring repressed unconscious material to consciousness, thereby helping
people to live in a more self-aware and integrated manner.

B Structure of Personality
1. Freud gave an imaginary division of mind it believed in internal
dynamics which can be inferred from the ways people behave.
2. Three competing forces—i.e. id, ego and superego influence behaviour
relative strength of each structure determines a person’s stability.

• Id:
1. Source of a person’s instinctual energy—deals with immediate
gratification of primitive needs, sexual desires and aggressive impulses.
2. Works on the pleasure principle, which assumes that people seek
pleasure and try to avoid pain.
3. Demanding, unrealistic and does not care for moral values, society, or
other individuals.
4. Energised by instinctual forces, life (sexual) instinct (libido) and death
instinct.

• Ego:
1. Seeks to satisfy an individual’s instinctual needs in accordance with
reality.
2. Works on the reality principle, and directs the id towards more
appropriate ways of behaving.
3. Patient and reasonable.

• Superego:
1. Moral branch of mental functioning.
2. Tells the id and ego whether gratification in a particular instance is
ethical
3. Controls the id by internalising the parental authority the process of
socialisation. According to Freud personality is Biological determined. It is
instinctive. Life instinct and death instinct determine behaviour.
• Life instinct is dominant in human behaviour.

C Ego Defence Mechanisms


1. A defence mechanism is a way of reducing anxiety by distorting reality
unconsciously.
2. It defends the ego against the awareness of the instinctual reality.
3. It is normal and adaptive; people who use mechanism are often
unaware of doing so.
(i) Repression: Anxiety provoking behaviours or thoughts are totally
dismissed by the unconscious. ‘
(ii) Projection: People attributes their own traits to others.
(iii) Denial: A person totally refuses to accept reality.
(iv) Reaction Formation: A person defends against anxiety by adopting
behaviours opposite to his/her true feelings.
(v) Rationalisation: A person tries to make unreasonable feelings or
behaviour seem reasonable and acceptable.
D Stages of Personality/Psychosexual Development (Five Stage
Theory of Personality)
1. The core aspects of personality are established early, remain stable
throughout life, and can be changed only with great difficulty.
2. Problems encountered at any stage may arrest development, and have
long-term effect on a person’s life.

• Oedipus Complex (Male)


Love for mother, hostility towards the father, and fear of punishment or
castration by the father.
Accepts his father’s relationship with his mother and models his own
behaviour after his father.
• Electra Complex (Female)
Attaches her love to the father and tries to symbolically marry him and
raise a family.
Identifies with her mother and copies her behaviour as a means of getting
(or sharing in) her father’s affection.

Resolution of Complex
1. Identification with same sex parent.
2. Giving up sexual feeling for sex parent.
Failure of a child to pass successfully through a stage leads to fixation to
that stage. The child’s development gets arrested at an earlier stage.
Regression occurs when a person’s resolution of problems at any stage
of development is less than adequate. People display behaviours typing
of a less mature stage of development.
• Post-Freudian Approach Neo-analytic or Post-Freudian View
(i) Less prominent role to sexual and aggressive tendencies of the Id.
(ii) Expansion of the concept ego.
(iii) Emphasis on human qualities of creativity, competence, and problem-
solving.

1. Carl Jung: Aims and Aspirations are the source of energy


(i) Saw human being as guided by aims and aspirations.
(ii) Analytical Psychology; personality consists of competing forces and
structures within the individual (that must be balanced) rather than
between the individual and the demand of society, or between the
individual and reality.
(iii) Collective unconscious consisting of archetypes or primordial images;
not individually acquired, but are inherited—found in myths, dreams and
arts of all mankind.
(iv) The self-strive for unity and oneness; for achieving which, a person
must become increasingly aware of the wisdom available in one’s
personal and collective unconscious, and must learn to live harmony with
it.

2. Karen Horney: Optimism


(i) Optimistic view of human life with emphasis on human growth and self-
actualisation
(ii) Challenge to Freud’s treatment of women as inferior—each sex has
attributes to be admire by the other, and neither sex can be viewed as
superior or inferior; countered that women were more likely to be affected
by social and cultural factors than by biological factors.
(iii) Psychological disorders were caused by disturbed interpersonal
relationship during childhood.
(iv) When parent’s behaviour toward a child is indifferent, discouraging
and erratic, the child feels insecure and a feeling called basic anxiety
results—deep resentment toward parents or basic hostility occur due to
this anxiety.

3. Alfred Adler: Lifestyle and Social Interest source of energy-


attainment of personal goals.
(i) Individual Psychology: human behaviour is purposeful and goal
directed.
(ii) Each one of us has the capacity to choose and create.
(iii) Personal goals, goals that provide us with security and help us in
overcoming the feelings of inadequacy, are the sources of our motivation.
(iv) Every individual suffers from the feeling of inadequacy and guilt, i.e.,
inferiority complex, which arise from childhood.

4. Erich Fromm: The Human Concerns


(i) Social orientation viewed human beings as social beings who could be
understood in terms of their relationship with others.
(ii) Character traits (personality) develop from our experiences with their
individuals.
(iii) Psychological qualities such as growth from our experiences of
potentials resulted from A desire for freedom. And striving for justice and
truth.
(iv) People’s dominant character traits in a given work as forces in
shaping the social processes and the culture itself

5. Erik Erikson: Search for Identity


(i) Rational, conscious ego processes in personality development.
(ii) Development is viewed as a lifelong process, and ego identity is
granted a central place in this process.
(iii) Identity crisis at the adolescent age—young people must generate for
themselves a central perspective and a direction that can give them a
meaningful sense of unity and purpose.

• Criticism to Psychodynamic Theories


1. The theories are largely based on case studies; they lack a rigorous
scientific basis.
2. They use small and a typical individual as samples for advancing
generalisations.
3. The concepts are not properly defined, and it is difficult to submit them
to scientific testing.
4. Freud has used males as the prototype of all human personality
development and overlooked female experiences and perspectives.

• Behavioural Approach
1. Focus on learning of stimulus—response connection and their
reinforcement.
2. Personality is the response of an individual as sample for advancing
generalization.
3. The concepts are not properly defined, and it is difficult to submit them
to scientific testing.
4. Freud has used males as the prototype of all human personality
development and overlooked females experiences and perspective.

• Cultural Approach
1. Considers personality as an adaptation of individuals or group to the
demand of their ecology and culture.
2. A group’s economic maintenance system plays a vital role in the origin
of cultural and behavioural variations.
3. The climatic conditions, the nature of terrain of the habitat and the
availability of food determine people’s settlement patterns, social
structures, division of labour, and other features such as child-rearing
practices. Economic maintenance system.
4. These elements constitute a child’s overall learning environment—
skills, abilities, behavioural styles, and value priorities are viewed as
strongly linked to these features.

• Humanistic Approach Carl Rogers


1. Fully functioning individual—fulfilment is the motivating force for
personality development (people try to express their capabilities,
potentials and talents to the fullest extent possible).
2. Assumptions about human behaviour:
(i) It is goal-oriented and worthwhile.
(ii) People (who are innately good) will almost always choose adaptive,
self-actualising behaviour.
3. People are constantly engaged in the process of actualising their true
self.
4. Ideal self is the self that a person would like to be—correspondence
between ideal and real self = happiness, discrepancy = dissatisfaction.
5. People have tendency to maximize self-concept through self-
actualisation.
6. Personality development is a continuous process.
7. Role of social influences in the development of self-concept—positive
social conditions lead to a high self-concept and self-esteem, generally
flexible and open to new experiences.
8. An atmosphere of unconditional positive regard must be created in
order to ensure enhancement of people’s self-concept.
9. Client-centered therapy that Rogers developed basically attempts to
create this condition.

• Abraham Maslow
1. Attainment of self-actualisation, a state in which people have reached
their own fullest potential.
2. Optimistic and positive view of man who has the potentialities for love,
joy and to do creative work.
3. Human beings are considered free to shape their lives and to self-
actualisation.
4. Self-actualisation becomes possible by analysing the motivations that
govern our life.

• Characteristics of Healthy Person


1. Healthy become aware of themselves, their feelings, and their limits;
accept themselves, and what they make of their own responsibility; have
‘the courage to be’.
2. They experience the ‘here-and-now’; are not trapped.
3. They do not live in the past or dwell in the future through anxious
expectation and distorted defences.

• Assessment of Personality
A formal effort aimed at understanding personality of an individual is
termed as personality assessment.
Assessment refers to the procedures used to evaluate or differentiate
people on the basis of certain characteristics.
The goal of assessment is to understand and predict behaviour with
minimum error and maximum accuracy.
Besides promoting our understanding, assessment is also useful for
diagnosis, training, placement, counselling, and other purposes.

Self-Report Measures:
• It was Allport who suggested that the best method to assess a person is
by asking her/him about herself himself.
• Fairly structured measures, based on theory that require subjects to give
verbal responses using some kind of rating scale.
• The method requires the subject to objectively report her/his own feeling
with respect to various items. Responses are accepted at face value,
scored in quantative terms and interpreted on basis of norms for the test.
• eg. MMPI, EPQ, 16 PF —> Direct technique
Projective Techniques:
• Direct methods of personality assessment cannot uncover the
unconscious part of our behaviour.
• Techniques based on assumption that a less structured or unstructured
stimulus or situation will allow the individual to project her/his feelings,
desires and needs on to that situation. These projections are interpreted
by experts.
• E.G. RORSCHACH Inkblot test, thematic apperception test, sentence
completion test, Draw-a-person test.
—> Indirect technique
Besides promoting our understanding assessment is also useful for
diagnosis, training, placement, counselling and other purposes.
MINNESOTA MULTIPHASIC PERSONALITY INVENTORY
—> Developed by HATHAWAY and McKINLEY
—> Effective in identifying varieties of psychopathology
—> Revised version is MMPI-2
—> Consists of 567 statements. The subject has to judge each statement
as ‘true’ or ‘false’.
—> The test is divided into 10 sub scales which seek to diagnose
hypochondriasis, depression, hysteria, psychopathic deviant, masculinity-
feminity, paranoia, psychasthenia, schizophrenia, mania and social
introversion.
—>In India, Mallick and Joshi have developed Jodhpur Muitiphasic
Personality Inventory. (JMPI)
EYSENCK PERSONALITY QUESTIONNAIRE
—> Developed by Eysenck
—> Initially assessed 2 dimensions of personality: hitroversion-
Extraversion and emotionally stable-emotionally unstable. Emotional
stability instability.
—>These dimensions are characterised by 32 personality traits.
—> Later on, Eysenck added a third dimension, called psychoticism. It is
linked to psychopathology-sociability.
—> It represents a lack of feeling for others, a tough manner of
interacting with people, and a tendency to defy social conventions. A
person scoring high on this dimension tends to be hostile, egocentric and
antisocial.
WORDS THAT MATTER
• Alienation: The feeling of not being part of society or a group.
• Anal stage: The second of Freud’s psycho-sexual stages, which occurs
during the child’s second year. Pleasure is focused on the anus and on
retention and expulsion of faeces.
• Antisocial Personality: A behavioural disorder characteristics by truancy,
delinquency, promiscuity, theft, vandalism, fighting, violation of common
social rules, poor work record, impulsiveness, irrationality,
aggressiveness, reckless behaviour, and inability to plan ahead. The
particular pattern of behaviour varies from individual to individual.
• Archetypes: Jung’s term for the contents of the collective unconscious;
images or symbols
expressing the inherited patterns for the organization of experience. ”
• Cardinal Trait: According to All port, a single trait that dominates an
individual’s entire personality.
• Central Traits: The major trait considered in forming an impression of
others.
• Client centred therapy: The theraphentic approach developed by Carl
Rogers in which therapist helps clients to clarify their true feelings and
come to value who they are.
• Collective Unconscious: Inherited portion of the unconscious, as
postulated by Carl Jung. The unconscious shared by all human beings.
• Defence Mechanisms: According to Freud, ways in which the ego
unconsciously tries
to cope with unacceptable id impulses, as in repression, projection,
reaction formation, sublimation, rationalisation, etc.
• Deinstitutionalisation: The transfer of former mental patients from
institution into the community.
• Ego: The part of the personality that provides a buffer between the id
and the outside.
• Evolution apprehension: The fear of being evaluated negatively by
others who are present (an audience).
• Extraversion: One of the dimensions of personality in which interests are
directed outward to nature and other people rather than inwards to the
thoughts and feelings of self (introvert).
• Humanistic Approach: The theory that people are basically good and
tend to grow to higher levels of functioning.
• Id: According to Freud, the impulsive and unconscious part of the
psyche that operates through the pleasure principle toward the
gratification of instinctual drives. The Id is conceived as the true
unconscious, or the deepest part of the psyche.
• Ideal Self: The kind of person we would like to be. Also called ego-
ideal/idealized self-image.
• Identity: The distinguishing character of the individual—who each of us
is, what our roles are, and what we are capable of.
• Inferiority Complex: According to Adler, a complex developed by adults
who have not been able to overcome the feelings of inferiority they
developed as children, when they were small and limited in their
knowledge about the world.
• Interview: Verbal interaction between a respondent and a researcher to
gather information about the respondent.
• Introversion: One of the dimensions of personality in which interests are
directed inwards
rather than outwards (extrovert).
• Latency Period: In Freud’s theory of psycho-sexual stages, the period
between the phallic stage and the mature genital stage (period from age 4
to 5 to about 12) during which interest in sex is sublimated.
• Libido: Freud introduced this term. In Freud’s treatment, libido was quite
simply a direct or indirect sexual expression.
• Meta needs: In the hierarchy of needs, those at the top, such as self-
actualisation, self-esteem, aesthetic needs, and the like, which can only
be satisfied when lower order needs are satisfied.
• Observational Method: A method in which researcher observes
phenomenon that occurs naturally without being able to manipulate.
• Oedipus Complex: The Freudian concept in which the young child
develops an intense desire to replace the parent of the same sex and
enjoy that affection of the opposite sex parent.
• Personal Identity: Awareness of oneself as a separate, distinct being.
• Phallic Stage: Third of Freud’s psycho-sexual stages (at about age five)
when pleasure is focused on the genitals and both males and females
experience the ‘Oedipus complex’.
• Projection: A defence mechanism; the process of unwittingly attributing
one’s own traits, attitudes, or subjective processes to others.
• Projective Techniques: The utilization of vague, ambiguous,
unstructured stimulus objects or situation in order to elicit the individual’s
characteristic modes of perceiving his/ her world or of behaving in it.
• Psycho-dynamic Approach: Approach that strives for explanation in
terms of motives, or drives.
• Psycho-dynamic Therapy: First suggested by Freud; therapy based on
the premise that the primary sources of abnormal behaviour are resolved
past conflicts and the possibility that unacceptable unconscious impulses
will enter consciousness.
• Rationalisation: A defence mechanism that occurs when one attempts to
explain failure or shortcoming by attributing them to more acceptable
causes.
• Reaction Formation: A defence mechanism in which a person denies a
disapproved motive through giving strong expression to its opposite.
• Regression: A defence mechanism that involves a return to behaviours
characterized of an earlier stage in life. The term is also used in statistics,
in which with the help of correlation prediction is made.
• Repression: A defence mechanism by which people push unacceptable,
anxiety provoking thoughts and impulses into the unconscious to avoid
confronting them directly. In short it is unconscious forgetting.
• Repression: A defence mechanism by which people push unacceptable,
anxiety-provoking thoughts and impulses into the unconscious to avoid
confronting them directly. [Unconscious forgetting]
• Self-actualization: A state of self-fulfillment in which people realise their
highest potential in their own unique way.
• Self-efficacy: Bandura’s term for the individual’s beliefs about his or her
own effectiveness; the exception that one can master a situation and
produce positive outcomes.
• Self-esteem: The individual’s personal judgment of his or her own worth;
one’s attitude toward oneself along a positive-negative dimension.
• Self-regulation: It refers to our ability to organise and monitor our own
behaviour.
• Social Identity: A person’s definition of who he or she is; includes
personal attributes (self¬concept) along with membership in various
groups.
• Super Ego: According to Freud, superego is the final personality
structure to develop; it represents society’s standards of right and wrong
as handed down by person’s parents, teachers, and other important
figures.
• Surface Traits: R.B. Cattell’s term for clusters of observable trait
elements (response) that seems to go together. Factor analysis of the
correlations reveals source traits.
• Trait: A relatively persistent and consistent behaviour pattern manifested
in a wide range of circumstances.
• Trait Approach: An approach to personality that seeks to identify the
basic traits necessary to describe personality.
• Type Approach: Explanation of personality based on broad categories
which are mostly determined by body constitution and temperament.
• Typology: Ways of categorising individuals into discrete categories or
types e.g., Type-A personality.
• Unconscious: In psychoanalytic theory, characterising any activity or
mental structure which a person is not aware of.
• Values: Enduring beliefs about ideal modes of behaviour or end-state of
existence; attitudes that have a strong evaluative and ‘ought’ aspect.
Meeting Life Challenges
FACTS THAT MATTER
Basic features of stress:
Stress is a part of life. Stress is neither a stimulus nor a response but an
ongoing transactional process between the individual and the
environment.
Life is full of challenges. Such as challenges posed by examination to
students, challenges about a carrier, think of a child who loses his/her
parents, a young women who loses her husband in an accident or
children who are physically or mentally challenged and so on.
All of us try to meet these challenges in our own way.
Life challenges are not necessarily stressful. Much depends how a
challenge is viewed. Stress is like electricity which provides energy but
too high or too little energy, becomes hazardous. Similarly too much
stress or too little stress have adverse effect for our well-being, optimum
stress is healthy.
Stress have two levels: Eustress-that is good, healthy, positive inspiring
and motivating. Distress: It is negative, unhealthy demotivating and
causes our body’s wear and tear.

• Nature of stress: The word stress has its origin in the latin word ‘strictus’,
meaning tight or narrow and stringer, the verb meaning to tighten.
These root words reflect the internal feelings of tightness and constriction
of muscles and breathing, a common sign of stress.
The reaction of external stressor is called strain.
Stress functions as a causes as well as effects.
Hans seyle, the father of modem stress researches, defined stress as the
non specific response of the body to any demand.
Many researchers do not agree with sayle on his concept of general and
non specific responses. They believe that different individuals may have
different characteristic modes of responses.

• Signs and symptoms of stress: There are individual differences in


coping pattern of stress response and therefore the warning signals or
signs also vary in its intensity.
The signs of stress are very much dependent on how individual views
them or its dimension
i. e. Intensity duration, predictability or complexity.
The warning signs and its manifestation as symptoms of stress can be
physical, emotional, cognitive and behavioural.
• Life Challenges and adjustment: Life is a big challenge. It presents a
continuous chain of struggle for existence and survival for example if one
aspires to join civil services, one works very hard but is not selected one
may change one’s goal and feel inclined to join lecturership in any
university.
By restoring to such means one protects ones self from the possible
injury to ones ego, failure or frustration. It is sort of shifting to more
defensive position in order to face the challenge of circumstances after
getting failure in earlier attempt or attempts.
This special virtue and strength of the living organism is termed as
adjustment.
“Adjustment is a process by which living organism maintains a balance
between its need and the circumstances that influence the satisfaction of
these needs.”
• Different stressors may produce different patterns of stress reaction.
• Stress is embedded in the ongoing process that involves individuals
interacting with
their social and cultural environment. Stress is a dynamic
mental/cognitive state. It is a disruption in homeostasis/imbalance that
gives rise to resolution of the imbalance/ restoration of homeostasis.

• Perception of stress is dependent on an individual’s cognitive appraisal


of events and the resources available to deal with them.
Primary Appraisal: Primary appraisal refers to the perception of a new or
changing environment as positive, neutral or negative in its
consequences. Negative events are appraised for their possible harm,
threat or challenge.
(i) Harm appraisals is the assessment of the damage that has already
been done by an event.
(ii) Threat appraisals is the assessment of possible future damage that
may be brought about by the event.
(iii) Challenge appraisals are associated with more confident expectations
of the ability to cope with the stressful event, the potential to overcome
and even profit from the event.
Secondary Appraisal: Secondary appraisal refers to that assessment of
one’s coping abilities resources and whether they will be sufficient to
meet the harm, threat or challenge of the event. These resources may be
mental, physical, personal or social. If he/she thinks one has a positive
attitude, health, skills and social support to deal with the crises, he/she
will feel less stressed.
Appraisals are very subjective and will depend on many factors:
(i) Past experience of dealing with such a stressful condition: If one has
handled similar situations very successfully in the past, they would be
less threatening for him/her.
(ii) Whether the stressful event is perceived as controllable, i.e., whether
one has mastery
or control over a situation.

REACTIONS OF STRESS

1. Physiological: Arousal plays a key role in stress related behaviours.


The hypothalamus initiates action along two pathways:
(i) The first pathway involves the autonomic nervous system. The adrenal
gland releases large amount of catecholamines (epinephrine and
norepinephrine) into the blood stream. This leads to physiological
changes seen in fight-or-flight response.
(ii) The second pathway involves the pituitary gland which secrets the
corticosteroid (cortisol) which provides energy.

2. Emotional reaction of Stress: Negative emotions such as fear, anxiety,


embarrassment, anger, depression or even denial.

3. Behavioural reaction of Stress: Depending on the nature of the


stressful event; confrontative action against the stress or (fight) or
withdrawal from the threatening event (flight).

4. Cognitive reaction of Stress: Beliefs about the harm or threat an event


poses, its causes or controllability. These include responses such as
inability to concentrate, and intrusive, repetitive or morbid thoughts.
Stresses which people experience also vary in terms of intensity (low
intensity vs. high intensity), duration (short term vs. long term), complexity
(less complex vs. more complex) and predictability (unexpected vs.
predictable).

Types of Stress

A. Physical and Environmental Stress: Demands that change the state of


our body
(overexert ourselves physically, lack a nutritious diet, suffer an injury, or
fail to get enough sleep).
Environmental stresses are aspects of our surroundings that are often
unavoidable such as air pollution, crowding, noise, heat of the summer,
winter cold, disasters.
B. Psychological Stress: These are stresses that we generate ourselves
in our minds. These are personal and unique to the person experiencing
them and are internal sources of stress. We worry about problems, feel
anxiety, or become depressed.
(i) Frustration results from the blocking of needs and motives by
something or someone that hinders us from achieving a desired goal
(social discrimination, low grades).
(ii) Conflicts may occur between two or more incompatible need and
motives.
Pressure (Expectations)
(a) Internal pressure stem from beliefs based upon expectations from
inside us to ourselves
(b) Social pressure may be brought about from people who make
excessive demands on us. Also, there are people with whom we face
interpersonal difficulties.

C. Social stress: Social stress is caused due to social interaction.


Social events like death or illness in the family, strained relationships,
trouble with neighbours, rapid social change, poverty, discrimination, poor
societal conditions are example of social stress.
SOURCES OF STRESS There vary widely from person to person.
1. Life Events: Major life events can be stressful, because they disturb our
routine and cause upheaval. If several of these life events that are
planned (e.g., moving into a new house) or unpredicted (e.g., break-up of
a long-term relationship) occur within a short period of time, we find if
difficult to cope with them and will be more prone to the symptoms of
stress.
2. Hassles: Personal stresses we endure as individuals, due to the
happenings in our daily life. These daily hassles may sometimes have
devastating consequences for the individual who is often the one coping
alone with them as others may not even be aware of them as outsiders.
3. Traumatic Events: Variety of extreme events (fire, train or road
accident, robbery, earthquake, tsunami). The effects of these events may
occur after some lapse of time and sometimes persist as symptoms of
anxiety, flashbacks, dreams and intrusive thoughts, etc. Severe trauma
can also strain relationships. Professional help will be needed to cope
with them.
Effects of Stress on Psychological Functioning and Health

1. Emotional Effects: Experience mood swings, show erratic behaviour


that may alienate them from family and friends, start a vicious circle of
decreasing confidence, leading to more serious emotional problems.
2. Physiological Effects: Increases the production of certain hormones,
such as adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones produce marked
changes in heart-rate, blood-pressure levels, metabolism and physical
activity. Helps us function more effectively when we are under pressure
for short periods of time, it can be extremely damaging to the body in the
long-term effects.
3. Cognitive Effects: If pressures due to stress continue, one may suffer
from mental overload. This suffering from high level of stress can rapidly
cause individuals to lose their ability to make sound decisions, poor
concentration, and reduced short-term memory capacity.
4. Behavioural Effects: Disrupted sleep patterns, increased absenteeism ,
reduced work performance.

Burn out: State of physical, emotional and psychological exhaustion.


Stress and health: Stress nfay play a role in 50 to 70% of all physical
illness, primarily through its effect on the immense system.
By draining out resources and keeping us off balance physiological,
stress upsets our complex internal chemistry.
It may interfere with efficient operation of our immune system-the
mechanism through which our body recognised and destroy potentially
harmful substances and intruders such as bacteria, virus and fungi known
as antigens. When stress is prolonged, it affects physical health and
impairs psychological functioning.
The physical exhaustion fatigue, in the signs of chromic fatigue weakness
and low energy. The mental exhaustion appears in the form of irritability,
anxiety, feeling of helplessness and hopelessness.
This state of physical emotional and psychological exhaustion is known
as burnout which leads to poor health.

General Adaptation Syndrome gave by Hans Seyle:


1. Alarm Reaction Stage: The presence of a noxious stimulus or stressor
leads to activation of the adrenal-pituitary-cortex system. This triggers the
release of hormones producing the stress response. Now the individual is
ready for fight or flight.
2. Resistance Stage: If stress is prolonged, the resistance stage begins.
The parasympathetic nervous system calls for more cautious use of the
body’s resources. The organism makes efforts to cope with the threat, as
through confrontation.
3. Exhaustion stage: Continued exposure to the same stressor or
additional stressors drains the body of its resources and leads to the third
stage of exhaustion. The physiological systems involved in alarm reaction
and resistance become ineffective and susceptibility to stress-related
diseases such as high blood-pressure becomes more likely.

Criticisms of GAS: Assigning a very limited role to psychological factors


in stress.
Psychoneuroimmunology focuses on the links between the mind, the
brain, the immune system.
How does the immune system work? The white blood cells (leckocytes)
within the immune (antigens) such as viruses leads to the production of
antibodies.
(i) T cells: destroy invaders, T-helper cells increase immunological activity
(attacked by HIV).
(ii) B cell: produce antibodies.
(iii) Natural killer cells: involve in the fight against both viruses and
tumours.

Stress can affect natural killer cell cytotoxicity, which is of major


importance in the defence against various infections and cancer.
Reduced levels of natural killer cell cytotoxicity have been found in people
who are highly stressed. Stressed individuals may be more likely to
expose themselves to pathogens, which are agents causing physical
illness.

Stress and life style: Researches are indicating that the current leading
causes of premature deaths are attributable to a significant degree to
characteristics that make-up each person’s lifestyle.
Life style refers to the overall patterns of decision and behaviours that
determine health and quality of life.
Stressed individuals may be more likely to expose themselves to
pathogens which are agents causing illness. Stressed people have poor
nutritional habits, steep less and are likely to engage in smoking and
alcoholic abuse.
Researches revealed that health promoting behaviour like balanced diet,
regular exercise,family support etc play important role in good health.
Coping is a dynamic situation-specific reaction to stress. It is a set of
concrete responses to stressful situations or events that are intended to
resolve the problem and reduce stress.
Endler and Parker:
1. Task-oriented Strategy: Obtaining information about the stressful
situation and about alternative courses of action and their probable
outcome; deciding priorities and acting so as to deal directly with the
stressful situation.
2. Emotion-oriented Strategy: Efforts to maintain hope and to control
one’s emotion; \
venting feelings of anger and frustration, or deciding that nothing can be
done to change
things.
3. Avoidance-oriented Strategy: Denying or minimizing the seriousness of
the situation;
conscious suppression of stressful thoughts and their replacement by self
protective ‘thoughts.

Lazarus and Folkman:


1. Problem-focused strategies attack the problem itself, with behaviours
designed to gain information, to alter the event, and to alter belief and
commitments. They increase the person’s awareness, level of knowledge,
and range of behavioural and cognitive coping options. They can act to
reduce the threat value of the event.
2. Emotion-focused strategics call for psychological changes designed
primarily to limit the degree of emotional disruption caused by an event,
with minimal effort to alter the event itself.

Stress Management Techniques:


1. Relaxation Techniques: Reduces symptoms of stress and decreases
the incidence of illnesses such as high blood-pressure and heart
diseases. Starts from the lower part of the body and progresses up to the
facial muscles in such a way that the whole body is relaxed.
Deep breathing is used along with muscle relaxation to calm the mind and
relax the body.

2. Meditation Procedures: A sequence of learned techniques for re


focusing of attention that brings about an altered state of consciousness.
Such a thorough concentration that the meditator becomes unaware of
any outside stimulation and reaches a different state of consciousness.

3. Bio-feedback: Monitors and reduces the physiological aspects of stress


by providing feedback about current physiological activity and is often
accompanied by relaxation training.
(i) Developing an awareness of the particular physiological response.
(ii) Learning w7ays of controlling that physiological response in quiet
conditions.
(iii) Transferring that control into the conditions of everyday life.

4. Creative Visualization: Creative visualization is a subjective experience


that uses imagery and imagination. Before visualizing one must set
oneself a realistic goal, as it helps build confidence. It is easier to
visualize if one’s mind is quiet, body relaxed and eyes are closed.

5. Cognitive Behavioural Techniques: These techniques aim to inoculate


people against stress. Stress inoculation training is one effective method
developed by Meichenbaum. Replace negative and irrational thoughts
with positive and rational ones, i.e., Follow through.
(i) Assessment involves discussing the nature of the problem and seeing
it from the view-point of the person/client.
(ii) Stress reduction involves learning the techniques of reducing stress
such as relaxation and self-instruction.

6. Exercise: can provide an active outlet for the physiological arousal


experienced in response to stress. Improves the efficiency of the heart,
enhances the function of the lungs, maintains good circulation, lowers
blood pressure, reduces fat in the blood, improves the body’s immune
system.

Promoting, Positive, Health and Well-being.


(i) Stress Resistant Personality (Kobasa):
People with high levels of stress but low levels of illness share three
characteristics, which are referred to as the personality traits of hardiness
(a set of beliefs about oneself, the world, and how they interact).
(i) Commitment (personal commitment to work, family, hobbies and social
life).
(ii) Control (control over sense of purpose and direction in life).
(iii) Challenge (changes in life as normal and positive rathr than as a
threat).

(6) Life skills are abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable
individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of
everyday life.

1. Assertiveness: Helps to communicate clearly and confidently, our


feelings, needs, wants and thoughts. It is the ability to say ‘no’ to a
request, to state an opinion without being self-conscious, or to express
emotions.
2. Time Management: Learning how to plan time and delegate can help to
relieve the pressure. The central principle of time management is to
spend your tie doing the things that you value, or that help you to achieve
your goals.

3. Rational Thinking: When we are stressed, we have an inbuilt selective


bias to attend to negative thoughts and images from the past, which affect
our perception of the present and the future. Challenging your distorted
thinking and irrational beliefs, driving out potentially intrusive negative
anxiety-provoking thoughts, and making positive statements.

4. Improving Relationships: The key to a sound lasting relationship is


communication. Listening to what the other person is saying, expressing
how you feel and what you think, and accepting the other person’s
opinions and feelings, even if they are different from your own.

5. Self-care: If we keep ourselves healthy, firm and relaxed, we are better


prepared . physically and emotionally to tackle the stresses of everyday
life. Our breathing patterns
reflect our state of mind and emotions. Rapid and shallow breathing from
high in the chest, with frequent sighs.

6. Overcoming Unhelpful Habits: Unhelpful habits such as perfectionism,


avoidance, procrastination, etc. are strategies that help to cope in the
short term hut which make one more vulnerable to stress.

(c) Health is a state of complete physical, mental, social and spiritual well-
being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Positive health
comprises the following constructs: “a healthy body; high quality of
personal relationships; a sense of purpose in life; self-regard, mastery of
life’s tasks; and resilience to stress, trauma and change.” –
1. Diet: A balanced diet can life one’s mood, give more energy, feed
muscles, improve circulation, prevent illness, strengthen the immune
system and make one feel better to cope with stresses of life.
2. Exercise: Regular exercise plays an important role in managing weight
and stress, and —¦
is shown to have a positive effect on reducing tension, anxiety and
depression.
3. Positive Attitude: Some of the factors leading to a positive attitude
are—having a fairly accurate perception of reality; a sense of purpose in
life and responsibility; acceptance and tolerance for different viewpoints of
others, taking credit for success, accepting blame for failure, being open
to new ideas, having a sense of hour with the ability to laugh at oneself.
4. Positive Thinking: Optimism, which is the inclination to expect
favourable life outcomes, has been linked to psychological and physical
well-being.
(d) Social Support: The existence and availability of people on whom we
can rely upon, people who let us know that they care about, value, and
love us. Perceived support, i.e., the quality of social support is positively
related to health and well-being, whereas social network, i.e., the quantity
of social support is unrelated to well-being, because it is very time-
consuming and demanding to maintain a large _
social network. Social support may be in the form of tangible support or
assistance involving material aid, such as money, goods, services, etc.
Family and friends also provide informational support about stressful
events.

Resilience and Health: Resilience is a dynamic developmental process


referring to the maintenance of positive adjustment under challenging life
conditions. It has been described as the capacity to ‘bounce back’ in the
face of stress and adversity. Resilience has recently been defined in
terms of three resources—I HAVE (social and interpersonal strengths), I
AM (inner strengths), I CAN (interpersonal and problem-solving skills).
Examination Anxiety (evaluative apprehension/stress) involves feelings of
tension or uneasiness that occur before, during or after an examination.
Many people find it helpful in some ways, as it can be motivating and
create the pressure that is needed to stay focused on one’s performance.
High stress can interfere with the student’s preparation, concentration and
performance. Spend enough time for study, overview and weigh one’s
strengths and weaknesses, discuss difficulties with teacher and
classmates, plan a revision timetable, condense notes, space out revision
periods, and most importantly on the examination day concentrate on
staying calm.

Adjustment and adaptation:


“Adjustment is a continuous process by which a person varies his
behaviour to produce a more harmonious relationship between himself
and his environment.”
Adjustment helps us keeping balance between our need and the capacity
to meet these needs.
Adjustment is a subjective process. It is always related to some object
and it varies from culture to culture.
Adjustment is the end product of coping.
Adaptation is structural or functional change that enhances the organisms
survival value.
• It is a biological mechanism.
• In general adaptation is a term used in biological sciences for learning
new ways for survival where as adjustment is psychological process to
cope with the demands of the self and the environment.
Contemporary Psychologists have shown increasing interest in
understanding what makes life good and meaningful.
Positive Psychology systematically investigates the positive aspects that
is the strengths and virtues of human beings such as wisdom and
knowledge [curiosity, love, emotional intelligence etc], courage [Bravery,
industry, integrity] justice [Loyalty, Equity, Leadership] Temerance [Self
control, prudence, Modesty] Transcendence [Excellence gratitude, Hope,
optimism, zest],

WORDS THAT MATTER


• Adaptation: Structural or functional change that enhances the
organism’s survival value.
• Alarm Reaction: The first stage of the general adaptation syndrome
characterized by an
emergency reaction involving the mobilization of energy through adrenal
and sympathetic activity.
• Appraisal: Refers to evaluation and interpretation.
• Arousal: The tension experienced at the thought of others being present,
and/or performance being evaluated.
• Conflict: A state of disturbance in which resulting from opposing
motivates, drives, needs or goals.
• Coping: The process of trying to manage demands that are appraised
as taxing or exceeding one’s resources.
• Exhaustion: State in which energy resources have been used up and
responsiveness is reduced to a minimum.
• General Adaptation syndrome (GAS): It consists of two phases—an
alarm phase during which the organism makes efforts to cope with the
threat, resistance phase during which the organism makes efforts to cope
with the threat as through confrontation and an exhaustion phase which
occurs if the organism fails to overcome the threat and depletes its
physiological resources.
• Hardiness: It is a set of beliefs about oneself, the world, and how they
interact. It has three characteristics, i.e., commitment, control and
challenge.
• Homoeostasis: A state of physiological balance within the body.
• Life Skills: Abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable
individuals to deal effectively with the environment.
• Lifestyle: In the context of health psychology, the overall pattern of
decision and behaviours that determine health and quality of life.
• Meditation: A technique of turning one’s concentration inward and
achieving an altered state of consciousness.
• Optimism: The tendency to seek out, remember and expect pleasurable
experiences.
• Positive Health: It includes a healthy body, good interpersonal
relationship, a sense of purpose in life, and resilience to stress, trauma
and change.
• Psychoneuroimmunology: Interaction among behavioural,
neuroendocrine and immunological processes of adaptation.
Psychological Disorders

FACTS THAT MATTER


Concept of Abnormality and Psychological disorders:
The term ‘abnormal’ with its prefix ab (away from), generally signify the
deviance or variation from the normal.
Anything not normal must, therefore, be abnormal. But acquiring insight
into what we consider normal, expected behaviour is difficult enough,
understanding human behaviour beyond the normal range is quite
challenging.
Normal and abnormal behaviour are subjective terms. These terms are
qualitative and matter of degree because drawing a sharp line between
then is not possible.
The study of Psychopathology is a search for why people behave, think
and feel in unexpected, sometimes bizzare and typically self defeating
ways.
Several characteristics are considered in evaluating whether a behaviour
is abnormal: violation of social norms, personal distress, disability or
dysfunction, dangerous behaviour (4Ds), unexpectedness and statistical
infrequency. Each characteristics tells some thing about what can be
considered abnormal, but conception change with time, making it
impossible to offer a simple definition that captures abnormality in its
totality.
Classification of Psychological factors: Classification refers to a list of
categories of specific Psychological disorders grouped into various
classes on the basis of some shared characteristics.
Main Classification.
ICD-10: Developed by WHO. This is official classification in India.
The classification is based op symptoms under one broad heading i.e.
Mental disorders. DSMIV: Developed by APA. It is multi-axial. It is very
comprehensive because classification is based on biological
Psychological social factors, cause and prognosis of disorders.
Importance: These classification provide standard vocabulary standard
vocabulary through which professionals universally can converse.
It also helps in understanding the cause and diagnosis of mental
disorders.
Recurring Theories to Study Abnormal Behaviour:
1. Ancient theory suggests some people possessed by supernatural and
magical forces such as evil spirits. Exorcism (removing the evil residing in
the individual through prayer) is still commonly used. Shaman or medicine
man has contact with supernatural forces, medium of communication
between human and spirits.
2. Biological/Organic approach links defective biological processes to
maladaptive behaviour.
3. According to psychological approach problems caused by
inadequacies in the way an individual thinks, feels and perceives.
Historical Background:
(a) Ancient Greek philosophers (Hippocrates, Socrates, Plato) developed
organismic approach—viewed disturbed behaviour arising out of conflicts
between emotion and reason.
Galen—temperament affected by imbalance in four humours, similar to
tridoshas.
(b) Middle ages, superstition and demonology—people with mental
problems, were associated to demons.
St. Augustine wrote about feelings, mental anguish and conflict—laid
groundwork for modem psychodynamic theories.
(c) Renaissance Period—increased humanism and curiosity about
behaviour.
Johann Weyer—disturbed interpersonal relationships as cause of psychic
disorders, mentally disturbed required medical not theological treatment.
(d) Age of Reason and Enlightenment (17th /18th centuries)- growth of
scientific method replaced faith and dogma, contributed to Reform
movement
Increased compassion for those suffering—reform of asylums,
deinstitutionalization, emphasized community care.
(e) Recent years—convergence of approaches, resulted in interactional
biopsycho-social approach.
Factors Underlying Abnormal Behaviour
I. Biological Factors (faulty genes, endocrine imbalances, malnutrition)
affect normal development and functioning—behaviour has a biochemical
or physiological basis. Abnormal activity by neuro-transmitters
(transmission of messages between neurons) leads to specific
psychological disorders.
(i) Anxiety disorders (Low activity of gamma amino butyric acid (GABA).
(ii) Depression (Low activity of serotonin).
(iii) Schizophrenia (excess activity of dopamine).
Scientific evidence links genetic factors to depression, anxiety, mood
disorders, schizophrenia, mental retardation—unable to identify the
specific genes, no single gene responsible for a particular behaviour—
cannot alone account for a mental disorder.
II. Psychological and interpersonal factors affect abnormal behaviour.
• Maternal deprivation (separation from mother, lack of warmth in early
years).
• Faulty parent-child relationships (rejection, overprotection, over-
permissiveness, faulty discipline)
• Maladaptive family structures (inadequate or disturbed family).
• Severe stress.
Psychological Models:
1. Psychodynamic Model (Freud):
(i) Behaviour determined by unconscious psychological forces—abnormal
symptoms, the result of conflicts between these internal, dynamic forces.
(ii) Three central forces shape personality—instinctual needs, drives and
impulses (Id), rational thinking (ego) and moral standards (super go).
(iii) Abnormal behaviour—a symbolic expression of unconscious mental
conflicts traced to early childhood or infancy.
2. Behavioural Model:
(i) Behaviours are learned through classic (temporal association between
two events), operant (behaviour followed by a reward), conditioning and
social (imitating other’s behaviour) learning.
(ii) Psychological disorders—the result of learning maladaptive ways of
behaving.
3. Cognitive Model:
(i) Abnormal functioning results from cognitive problems:
— Irrational and inaccurate assumptions and attitudes.
— Thinking in illogical ways, making over-generalisations (broad,
negative conclusions on the basis of a single insignificant event).
4. Humanistic-Existential Model:
(i) Human beings born with a natural tendency to self-actualise, i.e., fulfil
the potential for growth.
(ii) Existentialists believe that individuals from birth have total freedom to
give meaning of existence—those who shirk from responsibility live
empty, inauthentic, dysfunctional lives.
WORDS THAT MATTER
• Abnormal Psychology: Serenities study of abnormal behaviour. By
using scientific Techniques, Psychology attempts to describe, explain and
predict abnormal behaviour.
• Anti-Social Behaviour: refers to any behaviour that is considered
harmful or disruptive within a group or society. Aspects of behaviour such
as aggression or deserimination would fall into this category.
• Anorexia nervosa: Disorder involving severe loss of body weight,
accompanied by an intense fear of gaining weight or becoming ‘fat’.
• Anxiety: A state of psychic distress characterized by fear,
apprehension, and physiological arousal.
• Anxiety Disorders: Disorders in which anxiety is a central symptom.
The disorder is characterized by feelings of vulnerability, apprehension, or
fear.
• Autism: Pervasive developmental disorder beginning in infancy and
involving a wide range of abnormalities, including deficits in language,
perceptual, and motor development, defective reality testing, and social
withdrawal.
• Delusions: Irrational beliefs that are held despite overwhelming
evidence to the contrary.
• De-institutionalisation: Movement whose purpose is to remove from
care-giving institution such as large mental hospitals all those patients
who do not present a clear danger to others or to themselves and to
provide treatment sheltered living conditions for them in the community.
• Depersonalization Disorder: Dissociative disorder in which there is a
loss of the sense of self.
• Diathesis-stress Model: A view that the interaction of factors such as
biological predisposition combined with life stress may cause a specific
disorder.
• Dissociation: A split in consciousness whereby certain thoughts,
feelings, and behaviour operate independently from others.
• Exorcism: Religiously inspired treatment procedure designed to drive
out evil spirits or forces from a ‘possessed’ person.
• Eating disorders: A term which refers to a serious disruption of the
eating habits or the appetite. The main types of eating disorders are
Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa and Binge eating.
• Genetics: A branch of Biology referring or relating to genes. Inherited
genes are basic unit of inheritance.
• Hallucination: A false perception which has a compulsive sense of the
reality of objects although relevant and adequate stimuli for such
perception is lacking. It is an abnormal phenomenon.
• Hypochondriasis: A psychological disorder in which the individual is
dominated by preoccupation with bodily processes and fear of presumed
diseases despite reassurance from doctor that no physical illness exists.
• Hyperactivity: Condition characterised by overactive, poorly controlled
behaviour and lack of concentration.
• Main symptom of ADHD: Severe and frequent problems of either or
both attention to tasks or hyperactive and impulsive behaviour.
• Mental retardation: Subnormal intellectual functioning associated with
impairment in adaptive behaviour and identified at an early age.
• Mood Disorder: Disorder affecting one’s emotional state, including
depression and bipolar disorder.
• Neurotransmitter: Chemicals that carry message across the synapse
to the dendrite (and sometimes the cell body) of a receiver neurone.
• Norms: A generalised expectation shared by most members of a group
or culture that underlies views of what is appropriate within that group.
In terms of Psychological testing norms are standards of test performance
that permit the comparison of one person’s score on the test to the scores
of others who have taken the same test. This is the criteria to compare or
typical score of an average group.
• Obsessive-compulsive Disorder: A disorder characterised by
obsession or compulsions.
• Phobia: A strong, persistent. And irrational fear of some specific object
or situation that presents little or no actual danger to a person.
• Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: Patterns of symptoms involving
anxiety reactions, tension, nightmares, and depression following a
disaster such as an earthquake or a flood.
• Schizophrenia: A group of psychotic reactions characterised by the
breakdown of integrated personality functioning, withdrawal from reality,
emotion blunting and distortion, and disturbances in thought and
behaviour.
• Somatoform disorder: Condition involving physical complaints or
disabilities occurring in the absence of any identifiable organic cause.
• Substance Abuse: The use of any drug or chemical to modify mood or
behaviour that results in impairment.
• Syndrome: Group or pattern of symptoms that occur together in a
disorder and represent the typical picture of the disorder

Therapeutic Approaches And Counselling

FACTS THAT MATTER


Psychotherapy is a voluntary relationship between the one seeking
treatment or the
client and the one who treats or the therapist.
1. Purpose: To help the client to solve the psychological problems being
faced by her or him.
2. Aim: To change the maladaptive behaviours, decrease the sense of
personal distress, and help the client to adapt better to his/her
environment.
3. The relationship is conducive for building the trust of the client so that
problems may be freely discussed.
Characteristics:
1. There is systematic application of principles underlying the different
theories of therapy.
2. Only persons who have received practical training under expert
supervision can practise psychotherapy.
3. The situation involved a therapist and client who seeks and receives
help for his/her emotional problems (this person is the focus of attention
in the therapeutic process).
4. The interaction of the therapist and the client results in the
consolidation or formation of the therapeutic relationship. This is a
confidential, interpersonal, and dynamic relationship.
Goals:
(i) Reinforcing client’s resolve for betterment.
(ii) Lessening emotional pressure.
(iii) Unfolding the potential for positive growth.
(iv) Modifying habits.
(v) Changing thinking patterns.
(vi) Increasing self-awareness.
(vii) Improving interpersonal relations and communication.
(viii) Facilitating decision-making.
(ix) Becoming aware of one’s choices in life.
(x) Relating to one’s social environment in a more creative and self-aware
manner.
Therapeutic Relationship:
The special relationship between the client and the therapist is known as
the therapeutic
relationship or alliance.
Components:
1. Contractual Nature of the Relationship: Two willing individuals, the
client and the therapist, enter into a partnership which aims at helping the
client overcome his/ her problems.
2. Limited Duration of the Therapy: This alliance lasts until the client
becomes able to deal with his/her problems and take control of his/her
life.
Properties:
(i) It is a trusting and confiding relationship.
(ii) The high level of trust enables the client to unburden herself/himself to
the therapist and confide her/his psychological and personal problems to
the latter.
Classification of Psychotherapies
A. PSYCHODYNAMIC THERAPY (Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Neo-
Freudians) Methods of Eliciting the Nature of Intrapsychic Conflict:
1. Free Association:
(i) Therapeutic relationship is established, client feels comfortable—
therapist makes client lie down on the couch, close their eyes and asks
them to speak whatever comes to mind without censoring it.
(ii) Client is encouraged to freely associate one thought with another (free
association).
(iii) Censoring supere go and the watchful ego are kept in abeyance—
client speaks whatever comes to mind in a relaxed and trusting
atmosphere.
(iv) Therapist does not interrupt; the free flow of idea, desires and
conflicts of the unconscious, which had been suppressed by the ego,
emerge into the conscious mind.
2. Dream Analysis:
(i) Client is asked to write down his/her dreams upon waking up.
(ii) Drams are symbols of the unfulfilled desires of the unconscious.
(iii) Dreams use symbols which signify intrapsychic forces because they
are indirect expressions and hence would not alert the ego.
(iv) If unfulfilled desires are expressed directly, the ever-vigilant ego
would suppress them, leading to anxiety.
(v) Symbols are interpreted according to an accepted convention of
translation as the indicators of unfulfilled desires and conflicts.
Modality of Treatment:
(a) Transference: The client starts identifying the therapist with the
authority figures of the past, usually childhood.
(i) The therapist maintains a non-judgmental and permissive attitude and
allows the client to continue with this process of emotional identification.
(ii) Transference Neurosis: The therapist becomes a substitute for that
person in the present—the client acts out the frustrations, anger, fear, that
he/she harboured towards that person in the past, but could not express
at the time.
• Positive Transference: The client idolizes, or falls in love with the
therapist, and seeks the therapist’s approval.
• Negative Transference: The client has feelings of hostility, anger and
resentment*towards the therapist.
(b) Resistance: The client opposes the progress of therapy in order to
protect himself/herself from the recall of painful unconscious memories.
(i) Conscious Resistance: The client deliberately hides some information
(ii) Unconscious Resistance: The client becomes silent during the therapy
session, recalls trivial details without recalling the emotional ones, misses
appointments, and comes late for therapy sessions.
(iii) The therapist overcomes the resistance by repeatedly confronting the
patient about it and by uncovering emotions such as anxiety, fear 0’r
shame, which are causing the resistance.
(c) Interpretation: The therapist uses the unconscious material that has
bee n uncovered to make the client aware of the psychic contents and
conflicts which, have led to the occurrence of certain events, symptoms
and conflicts.
(i) Subtle process, the pinnacle of psychoanalysis.
(ii) Two analytical techniques:
• Confrontation: The therapist points out to the client an aspect of his/her
psyche that must be faced by the client.
• Clarification: The therapist brings a vague or confusing event into sharp
focus by separating and highlighting important details about the event
from unimportant ones.
Working Through: The repeated process of using confrontation,
clarification and interpretation.
(i) Helps the patient understand the source of the problem and to
integrate the uncovered material into his/her ego.
Insight: A gradual process wherein the unconscious memories are
repeatedly integrated into conscious awareness; these unconscious
events and memories are re-experienced in transference and are worked
through.
(i) End-point of psychoanalysis, client gains a new understanding on him/
herself- conflicts of the past, defence mechanisms and physical
symptoms are no longer present.
(ii) Intellectual Insight: The client starts understand herself/himself better
at an intellectual level.
(iii) Emotional Insight: The emotional understanding, acceptance of one’s
irrational reaction to the unpleasant events o the past, and the willingness
to change emotionally as well as making the change.
Duration of Treatment
• Lasts of several years with a one-hour session for 4-5 days per week.
• Intense treatment, three phases.
(i) Initial Phase: Client becomes familiar with the routines, establishes a
therapeutic relationship, and recollects the superficial material from the
consciousness about the past and present.
(ii) Middle Phase: Characterised by transference, resistance on the part
of the client, and confrontation, clarification and working through on the
therapist’s part; all these processes finally lead to insight.
(iii) Third Phase: Termination; the relationship with the analyst is
dissolved and the client prepares to leave the therapy.
B. BEHAVIOUR THERAPY
• Focused on the behaviour and thoughts of the client in the present.
• The past is relevant only to the extent of understanding the origins of the
faulty behaviour and thought patterns, not relieved.
• Behaviour therapies are clinical application of learning theories.
• Consists of a large set of specific techniques and interventions—
symptoms of the client and the clinical diagnosis are the guiding factors in
the selection of the specific techniques or interventions to be applied.
• Open therapy, i.e., the therapist shares his/her method with the client.
Method of Treatment:
(i) The client is interviewed with a view to analyse his/her behaviour
patterns.
(ii) Behavioural analysis is conducted to find:
(a) Malfunctioning Behaviours: Behaviours which cause distress to the
client.
(b) Antecedent Factors: Those causes which predispose the person to
indulge in that behaviour
(c) Maintaining Factors: Those factors which lead to the persistence of
the faulty behaviour.
(iii) Aim: To eliminate the faulty behaviours and substitute them with
adaptive behaviour patterns.
(a) Antecedent Operations: Control behaviour by changing something that
precedes such a behaviour.
(b) Establishing Operations: Induce a change in behaviour by increasing
or decreasing the reinforcing value of a particular consequence.
(c) Consequent Operation: i.e., Giving reinforcement eg. Praise.
Behavioural Techniques:
1. Negative Reinforcement: Following an undesired response with an
outcome that is painful or not liked.
2. Aversive Conditioning: Repeated association of undesired response
with an aversive consequence present reality.
3. Positive Reinforcement: Given to increase the deficit if an adaptive
behaviour occurs rarely.
4. Token Economy: Give a token as a reward every time a wanted
behaviour occurs, which can be collected and exchanged for a reward.
5. Differential Reinforcement: Unwanted behaviour can be reduced
(negative reinforcement) and wanted behaviour (positive reinforcement)
can be increased simultaneously.
The other method is to positively reinforce the wanted behaviour and
ignore the unwanted behaviour—less painful and equally effective.
6. Systematic Desensitization: A technique introduced by Wolpe for
treating phobias or irrational fears.
(i) The client is interviewed to elicit fear provoking situations.
(ii) With the client, the therapist prepares a hierarchy of anxiety—
provoking stimuli with the least anxiety-provoking stimuli at the bottom.
(iii) The therapist relaxes the client and asks the client to think about the
least anxiety-provoking situation.
(iv) The client is asked to stop thinking of the situation if tension is felt.
(v) Over sessions, the client is able to imagine more severe fear
provoking situations while maintaining the relaxation.
(vi) The client gets systematically desensitized to the fear.
Operates on the principle of reciprocal inhibition—the presence of two
mutually opposing forces (relaxation response vs. anxiety-provoking
scene) at the same time, inhibits the weaker force.
The client is able to tolerate progressively greater levels of anxiety
because of his/her relaxed state.
7. Modelling: The procedure wherein the client learns to behave in a
certain way by observing the behaviour of a role model or the therapist
who initially acts as the rok; model. Vicarious learning, learning by
observing others, is used and through a process of rewarding small
changes in the behaviour, the client gradually learns to acquire the
behaviour of the model.
C. COGNITIVE THERAPY
1. Rational Emotive Therapy (RET) (Albert Ellis):
• Irrational beliefs mediate between the antecedent events and their
consequences.
• The first step in RET is the antecedent-belief-consequence (ABC)
analysis.
Antecedent events, which caused the psychological distress, are noted.
(ii) Client is interviewed to find out irrational beliefs, which distorting the
(iii) The therapist encourages this by being accepting, empathic, genuine
and warm to the client.
(iv) The therapist conveys by his/her words and behaviours that he/she is
not judging the client and will continue to show the same positive feelings
towards the client even if the client is rude or confides all the ‘wrong’
things that he/she may have done or thought about. This is the
unconditional positive regard which the therapist has for the client.
The clinical formulation is an ongoing process. Formulations may require
reformulations as clinical insights are gained in the process of therapy.
Distorted perception of the antecedent event due to the irrational belief
leads to the consequence, i.e., negative emotions and behaviours.
• Non-directive questioning: Process by which irrational beliefs are refuted
by the therapist.
(i) Nature of questioning is gentle, without probing or being directive.
(ii) Make the client think deeper into his/her assumptions about life and
problems.
• Client changes the irrational beliefs by making a change in his/her
philosophy about life—rational belief system replaces the irrational belief
system.
2. Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy:
(i) Childhood experiences provided by the family and society develop core
schemes or systems, which include beliefs and action patterns in the
individual.
(ii) Critical events in the individual’s life trigger the core, leading to the
development of negative automatic thoughts.
(iii) Negative thoughts are persistent irrational thoughts characterised by
cognitive distortions.
(iv) Dysfunctional Cognitive Structures: Patterns of thought which are
general in nature but which distort the reality in a negative manner.
(v) Repeated occurrence of these thoughts leads to the development of
feelings of anxiety and depression.
• The therapist uses questioning, which is gentle, non-threatening
disputation of the client’s beliefs and thoughts.
• The questions make the client think in a direction opposite to that of the
negative automatic thoughts whereby she/he gains insight into the nature
of her/his dysfunctional schemas, and is able to alter her/his cognitive
structures.
3. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT):
• Short, comprehensive, effective treatment for a wide range of
psychological disorders such as anxiety, depression, panic attacks and
borderline personality.
• Adopts a biopsychosocial approach to the delineation of
psychopathology.
• Combines cognitive therapy with behavioural techniques.
• Rationate—distress has its origins in the biological, psychological, and
social realms.
• Addresses the biological (relaxation procedures), psychological
(behaviour and cognitive therapy) and social (environmental
manipulations) aspects.
D. Humanistic-Existential Therapy
Self-actualizationn is defined as an innate force that moves the person to
become more complex, balanced, and integrated; integrated means a
sense of whole, being a complete person.
1. Self-actualization requires free emotional expression:
(a) The family and society curb emotional expression, as it is feared that a
free expression of emotions can harm society by unleashing destructive
forces.
(b) When emotionally expression is curbed, destructive behaviour and
negative emotions by thwarting the process of emotional integration.
2. Healing occurs when the client is able to perceive the obstacles to self-
actualization in his/her life and is able to remove them.
3. Therapy creates a permissive, non-judgemental and accepting
atmosphere in which the client’s emotions can be freely expressed.
4. The client has the freedom and responsibility to control his/her own
behaviour; the therapist is merely a facilitator and guide. The chief aim of
the therapy is to expand the client’s awareness.
1. Existential Therapy [Logotherapy (Victor Frankl)]:
• Treatment for the soul.
• Meaning making: Process of finding meaning even in life-threatening
circumstances, the basis of which is a person’s quest for finding the
spiritual truth of one’s existence.
• Spiritual Unconscious: The storehouse of love, aesthetic awareness and
values of life.
• Existential Anxiety: Neurotic anxiety of spiritual origin (spiritual anxieties
leading to meaninglessness).
• Goal: To help the patients find meaning and responsibility in their life
irrespective of their life circumstances.
• The therapist emphasizes the unique nature of the patient’s life and is
open (shares his/her feeltngs, values and own existence).
• Emphasis is on here and now, the therapist reminds the client about the
immediacy of the present.
2. Client-centered Therapy (Carl Rogers):
• Introduced the concept of self and freedom and choice as the core of
one’s being.
• Provides a warm relationship in which the client can reconnect with
his/her disintegrated feelings.
• The therapist:
(i) Shows empathy—understands the client’s experience as if it were
his/her own—sets up an emotional resonance between client and
therapist.
(ii) Warmth—the client feels secure and can trust the therapist.
(iii) Has unconditional positive regard, i.e., total acceptance of the client
as he/she is, indicates that the positive warmth of the therapist is not
dependent on what the client reveals or does in the therapy sessions.
• Client feels secure enough to explore his/her feelings; therapist reflects
the feelings of the client in a non-judgemental manner the reflection is
achieved by rephrasing the statements of the client, i.e., seeking simple
clarifications to enhance the meaning of the client’s statements.
3. Gestalt Therapy (Frederick and Laura Pearl):
• Goal: To increase an individual’s self-awareness and self -acceptance.
• Client is taught to recognize the bodily processes and the emotions that
are being blocked out from awareness.
• Therapist encourages the client to act out fantasies about feelings and
conflicts can also be used in group settings.
E. BIOMEDICAL THERAPY
Prescription of medicines is done by psychiatrists (qualified medical
doctors who have specialized in the understanding, diagnosis and
treatment of mental disorders). The nature of medicines used depends on
the nature of the disorder:
(i) Anti-psychotic drugs—severe mental disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar
disorder).
(ii) Milder drugs—common mental disorders (generalized anxiety, reactive
depression).
Cause side-effects which need to be understood and monitored—
essential that medication is given under proper medical supervision.
ELECTRO-CONVULSIVE THERAPY (ECT)
(i) Mild electric shock given via electrodes to the brain of the patient to
induce convulsions.
(ii) The shock is given by the psychiatrist only when necessary for the
improvement of the patient.
(iii) Not a routine treatment and is given only when drugs are not effective
Factors Contributing to Healing:
1. Techniques adopted by the therapist and the implementation of the
same with the client, e.g., CBT for an anxious client—relaxation
procedures and cognitive restructuring contribute to the healing.
2. The therapeutic alliance, which is formed between the therapist and the
patient/ client, has healing properties, because of the regular availability
of the therapist, and the warmth and empathy provided by the therapist.
3. Catharsis: A process of emotional unburdening by a client when he/she
is being interviewed in the initial sessions of therapy to understand the
nature of the problem.
4. Non-specific Factors: These factors occur across different systems of
psychotherapy and across different clients/patients and different
therapists.
(i) Patient Variables (motivation for change, expectation of improvement).
(ii) Therapist Variables (positive nature, good mental health, absence of
unresolved emotional conflicts).
Ethics in Psychotherapy:
1. Informed consent needs to be taken.
2. Confidentiality of the client should be maintained.
3. Alleviating personal distress should be the goal of all attempts of the
therapist.
4. Integrity of the practitioner-client relationship is important.
5. Respect for human rights and dignity.
6. Professional competence and skills are essential.
F. ALTERNATIVE THERAPIES Yoga:
• An ancient Indian technique detailed in the Ashtanga Yoga of Patanjali’s
Yoga Sutras.
• Refers to only the asanas (body posture component) or to pranayama
(breathing practices).
• Techniques enhance well-being, mood, attention, mental focus, and
stress tolerance.
• Reduces the time to go to sleep and improves the quality of sleep.
• Proper training by a skilled teacher and 30-minute practice everyday
maximises the benefits.
Meditation refers to the practice of focusing attention on breath or on an
object or thought of a mantra.
A. Sudarshana Kriya Yoga (SKY)
(i) Rapid breathing techniques induce hyperventilation.
(ii) Beneficial, low risk, low cost.
(iii) Used as a public health intervention technique to alleviate PTSD in
survivors of mass disasters.
(iv) Reduces depression (research conducted at the National Institute of
Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS).
(v) Reduces stress levels in substance abuse patients, e.g., alcoholics.
B. Kundalini Yoga
(i) Effective in treatment of mental disorders and OCD.
(ii) Combines prandyama (breathing techniques) with chanting of
mantras.
C. Vipasana Meditation
(i) Mindfulness-based meditation; no fixed object or thought to hold to
attention.
(ii) Person passively observes the various bodily sensations and thoughts
that are passing through in his or her awareness.
(iii) Helps prevent repeated episodes of depression.
(vi) Helps patients process emotional stimuli better and prevents biases in
the processing of these stimuli.
Rehabilitation of the Mentally 111:
• Aim: to empower the patient to become a productive member of society
to the maximum extent possible.
• Many patients suffer from negative symptoms such as disinterest and
lack of motivation to do work or to interact with people—rehabilitation is
required to help such patients become self-sufficient.
• In rehabilitation, the patients are given:
(i) Occupational Therapy: teaches skills such as candle making, paper
bag making and weaving to help them to form a work discipline
(ii) Social Skills Training: Develops interpersonal skills through role play,
imitation and instruction; objective is to teach the patient to function in a
social group.
(iii) Cognitive Retraining: Improves the basic cognitive functions of
attention, memory and executive function.
(iv) Vocational Therapy: Once the patient improves sufficiently, gains
skills necessary to undertake productive employment.
WORDS THAT MATTER
• Alternative Therapy: Alternative treatment possibilities to the
conventional during treatment or Psychotherapy, e.g. yoga, Meditation
etc.
• Behaviour Therapy: Therapy based on the principles of behaviouristic
learning theories in order to change the maladaptive behaviour.
• Biomedical Therapy: Refer to medicines which are prescribed to treat
Psychological disorders.
• Client-centered (Rogerian) Therapy: The therapeutic approach
developed by Carl Rogers in which therapist helps clients to clarify their
true feeling and come to value who they are.
• Cognitive Therapies: Forms of therapy focused on changing distorted
and maladaptive patterns of thought.
• Counselling: A board name for a wide variety of procedures for helping
individuals achieve adjustments, such as the giving of advice, therapeutic
discussion, the administration and interpretation of tests, and vocational
assistance.
• Counselling Interview: An interview whose purpose is counselling or
providing guidance in the area of personality, vocational choice, etc.
• Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT): Commonly called ‘shock
treatment’. A biological treatment for unipolar depression in which
electrodes attached to a patient’s head send an electric current through
the brain, causing a convulsion. It is effective in the treatment of cases of
several depression that fail to respond to drug therapy.
• Empathy: Reacting to another’s feelings with an emotion response that
is similar to the other’s feeling.
• Free Association: A psychodynamic technique in which the patient
describes verbally any thought, feeling or image that comes to mind, even
if it seems unimportant.
• Gestalt Therapy: An approach to therapy that attempts to integrate a
client’s thoughts, feelings and behaviour into a unified whole.
• Humanistic Therapy: A therapy in which the underlying assumption is
that people have control over their behaviour, can make choices about
their lives, and are essentially responsible for solving their own problems.
• Modelling: A process of learning in which an individual acquires
responses by observing and imitating others.
• Psychodynamic Therapy: First suggested by Frend. Therapy based on
the premise that the primary sources of abnormal behaviour are
unresolved past conflicts and the possibility that unacceptable
unconscious impulses will enter consciousness.
• Psychotherapy: The use of any psychological technique in the
treatment of mental/ psychological disorder or maladjustment.
• Rational Emotive Therapy (RET): A therapeutic system developed by
Albert Ellis. It seeks to replace irrational problem-provoking outlooks with
more realistic ones.
• Rehabilitation: Restoring an individual to normal or a satisfactory a
state as possible, following an illness, criminal episode, etc.
• Resistance: In psychoanalysis, attempts by the patient to block
treatment.
• Self-actualisation: A- state of self-fulfillment in which people realise
their highest potential in their own unique way.
• Systematic Desensitisation: A form of behavioural therapy in which
phobic client learns to induce a relaxed state and then exposed to stimuli
that elicit fear or phobia.
• Therapeutic Alliance: The special relationship between the client and
the therapist; contractual nature of the relationship and limited duration of
the therapy are its two major components.
• Transference: Strong positive or negative feelings toward the therapist
on the part of individual undergoing psychoanalysis.
• Unconditional Positive Regard: An attitude of acceptance and respect
on the part of an observer, no matter what the other person says or does.

Attitude And Social Cognition

FACTS THAT MATTER


Social Psychology is a branch of Psychology which investigates how the
behaviour of individuals is affected by others and the social environment.
We form attitudes or develop ways of thinking about specific topics and
people. We form impressions about persons we meet. We are also
interested in why people behave in the ways they do-attribution.
The combination of social processes like attitude, impression formation,
attribution and pro social behaviour is called social cognition.
Social cognition refers to the mental activities related to the gathering and
interpretation of information about the social world.
Social cognition of all’ the individuals is affected by the social environment
(Societal conditions in the society peace, harmony, trust or aggression,
frustration, disharmony and distrust towards individuals, groups, peoples,
relationship and social issues.)
Because of social influences, people form attitudes or ways of thinking
about specific topics and people. Impression formation is when we make
inferences about personal qualities of people we meet. Attribution is when
we assign causes to the behaviour shown in specific social situation.
Attitude:
• Attitude is a state of the mind, a set of views or thoughts, regarding
some topic (called the ‘attitude object’), which have an evaluative feature
(positive, negative or neutral quality).
• The thought component is referred to as the cognitive aspect, the
emotional component is known as the effective aspect, and the tendency
to act is called the behavioural (or conative) aspect. A-B-Ocomponents
(Affective-Behavioural-Cognitive components) of attitude.
Beliefs refer to the cognitive component of attitudes and form the ground
on which attitudes stand, such as belief in God, or belief in democracy as
a political ideology.
Values are attitudes or beliefs that contain a ‘should’ or ‘ought’ aspect,
such as moral or ethical values. One example of a value is hard work or
honesty. Values are formed when a particular belief or attitude becomes
an inseparable part of the person’s outlook on life.
Features of Attitude:
(i) Valence (positivity or negativity).
(ii) Extremeness indicates how positive or negative an attitude is.
(iii) Simplicity or Complexity (multiplexity) refers to how many attitudes
there are within a broader attitude. An attitude system is said to be
‘simple’ if it contains only one or a few attitudes and ‘complex’ if it is made
up of many attitudes.
(iv) Centrality: This refers to the role of a particular attitude in the system
much more than non-central (or peripheral) attitudes would.
Attitude Formation:
In general, attitudes are learned through one’s own experiences, and
through interaction With others.
Process of Attitude Formation:
• Association, e.g., a positive attitude towards a subject is learned through
the positive association between a teacher and a student.
• Reward or punishment increases/decreases the further development of
that attitude.
• Modelling observing others being rewarded or punished for expressing
thoughts, or showing behaviour of a particular kind towards the attitude
object.
• Group or Cultural norms through the norms of our group or culture which
may become part of our social cognition, in the form of attitude.
• Exposure to information, e.g., positive and negative attitudes are formed
through the media.
Factors that Influence Attitude Formation:
(i) Family and School Environment particularly in the early years of life.
(ii) Reference Groups indicate the norms regarding acceptable
behaviour/ways of thinking, reflect learning of attitudes through cultural
norms, noticeable during beginning of adolescence.
(iii) Personal Experiences (direct).
(iv) Media-related Influences. Technological advances have made audio-
visual media, school level textbook and the Internet very powerful sources
of information
Attitude Change:
Attitudes that are still in the formative stage, and are more like opinions,
are much more likely to change compared to attitude that have become
firmly established and have become a part of the individual’s values.
1. Balance or P-O-X triangle (Fritz Heider) represents the relationships
between three aspects or components of attitude.
• P is the person whose attitude is being studied,
• O is another person
• X is the topic towards which the attitude is being studied (attitude
object). It is also possible that all three are persons. The basic idea is that
an attitude changes if there is a state of imbalance between the P-O
attitude, O-X attitude, and P-X attitude. This is because imbalance is
logically uncomfortable.
Imbalance is found when all three sides are negative, or two sides are
positive, and one side is negative. Balance is found when all three sides
are positive or two sides are negative, and one side is positive.
2. Cognitive Dissonance (Leon Festinger) emphasises on the cognitive
component. Cognitive components of an attitude must be ‘constant’
(opposite of‘dissonant’), i.e., they should be logically in line with each
other. If an individual finds, that two cognitions in an attitude dissonant,
then one of them will be changed in the direction of consonance.
Both balance and cognitive dissonance are examples of cognitive
consistency which means that two components or elements of the
attitude, or attitude system, must be in the same direction. If this does not
happen, then the person experiences a kind of mental discomfort, i.e. the
sense that ‘something is not quite right’ in the attitude system.
3. The Two-Step Concept (S.M. Mohsin): According to him, attitude
change takes place in the form of two steps:
(i) The target of change (person whose attitude is to be changed)
identifies with the source (person through whose influence the attitude is
to be changed). Identification means that the target and the source have
a mutual regard and attraction.
(ii) The source himself/herself shows an attitude change, by actually
changing him/her behaviour towards the attitude object. Observing the
source’s changed attitude and behaviour, the target also shows an
attitude change through behaviour. This is a kind of imitation or
observational learning.
Factors that Influence Attitude Change:
• Characteristics of the Existing Attitude: All four properties of attitudes
mentioned earlier, namely, valence (positively or negatively),
extremeness, simplicity or complexity (multiplexity), and centrality or
significance of the attitude, determine attitude, determine attitude change.
Positive, less extreme, peripheral (less significant) and simpler attitudes
are easier to change.
In addition, one must also consider the direction and extent of attitude
change. Congruent (same direction of the existing attitude) or incongruent
(direction opposite). Moreover, an attitude may change in the direction of
the information that is presented, or in a direction opposite to that of the
information presented.
• Source Characteristics: Source credibility and attractiveness. Attitudes
are more likely to change when the message comes from a highly
credible source rather than from a low- credible source.
• Message Characteristics: Attitudes will change when the amount of
information that is
given about the topic is just enough, neither too much nor too little.
Whether the message contains a rational or an emotional appeal, also
makes a difference. The motives activated by the message and the mode
of spreading the message (face-to-face transmission is more effective
than indirect transmission).
• Target Characteristics: Qualities of the target, such as persuasibility
(open and flexible personality), strong prejudices, self-esteem, more
willing because they base their attitude on more information and thinking.
Attitude-Behaviour Relationship:
Psychologists have found that there would be consistency between
attitudes and behaviour when—
(i) the attitude is strong and occupies a central place in the attitude
system.
(ii) the person is aware of his/her attitude.
(iii) there is very little or no external pressure for the person to behave in a
particular way.
Prejudice and Discrimination:
Prejudices are usually negative attitudes against a particular group, and
in many cases, may be based on stereotypes (the cognitive component)
about the specific group. A stereotype is a cluster of ideas regarding the
characteristics of a specific group. The cognitive component of prejudice
is frequently accompanied by dislike or hatred, the affective components
of prejudice are more difficult to change.
Sources of Prejudice:
• Learning: Prejudice can also be learned through association, reward
and punishment, observing others, group or cultural norms and exposure
to information that encourages prejudice. The family, reference groups,
personal experiences and the media may play a role in the learning of
prejudices. People who learn prejudiced attitudes may develop a
‘prejudiced personality’.
• A strong Social Identity and in Group Bias: Individual who have a
strong sense of social identity and have a very positive attitude towards
their own group boost this attitude by holding negative attitudes towards
other groups.
• Scapegoating: This is a phenomenon by which the majority group
places the blame on minority group for its own social, economic or
political problems. The minority is too weak or too small in number to
defend itself against such accusation.
• Kernel of Truth Concept: Sometimes people may continue to hold
stereotypes because they think that there must be some truth, or ‘Kernel
of truth’ in which everyone says about the other group.
• Self-fulfilling Prophecy: The group that is the target of prejudice is
itself responsible for continuing the prejudice by behaving in ways that
justify the prejudice or confirm the negative expectation.
Strategies for Handling Prejudice
The strategies for handling prejudice would be effective if they aim at:
(a) minimising opportunities for learning prejudices,
(b) changing such attitudes,
(c) de-emphasising a narrow social identity based on the in-group, and
(d) discouraging the tendency towards self-fulfilling prophecy among the
victims of prejudice.
These goals can be accomplished through:
• Education and information dissemination, for correcting stereotypes
related to specific target groups, and tackling the problem of a strong in-
group bias.
• Increasing intergroup contact that allows for direct communication,
removal of mistrust between the groups, and discovery context, there is
close interaction and they are not different in power or status.
• Highlighting individual identity rather than group identity, thus weakening
the importance of group (both in-group and out-group) as a basis of
evaluating the other person.
Social Cognition refers to all those psychological processes that deal with
the gathering and processing of information related to social objects
(processes that help in understanding, explaining and interpreting social
behaviour). Social cognition is guided by mental units called schemata.
SCHEMAS and Stereotypes
A schema is defined as a mental structure that provides a framework, set
of rules or guidelines for processing information about any object.
Schemata (or ‘schemas’) are the basic units stored in our memory, and
function as shorthand ways of processing information, thus reducing the
time and mental effort required in cognition.
Schemata that function in the form of categories are called prototypes,
which are the entire set of schemata or qualities that help us to define an
object completely. In social cognition, category-based schemata, that are
related to groups of people, are called stereotypes (over generalized, are
not directly verified). The inferences you have drawn are not the result of
your logical thinking or direct experience, but are based on pre-conceived
ideas about a particular group.
Impression Formation and Attribution:
The process of coming to know a person can be broadly divided into two
parts— (a) Impression formation and (b) Attribution. The person who
forms the impression is called perceiver. (Response to information about
the qualities of the target, organises this information, and draws
inferences about the target). The individual about whom the impression is
formed is called the target.
Impression Formation and attribution are influenced by:
• the nature of information available to the perceiver,
• social schemats in the perceiver (including stereotypes),
• personality characteristics of the perceiver, and
• situational factors.
Impression Formation
The process of impression formation consists of the following three sub-
processes:
(a) Selection: we take into account only some bits of information about
the target person
(b) Organisation: the selected information is combined in a systematic
way
(c) Inference: we draw a conclusion about what kind of person the target
is
• The order or sequence in which information is presented affects the kind
of impression formed.
• Primacy effect, the information presented first has a stronger effect than
the information presented at the end. In Recency effect, the perceiver
may be asked to pay attention to all the information whatever information
comes at the end may have a stronger influence. ,
• Halo effect, a tendency to think that a target person who has one set of
positive qualities must also be having other specific positive qualities that
are associated with the first set.
Attribution of Causality:
• Bernard Weiner: When we assign a cause to a person’s behaviour, we
can broadly classify the cause as being internal (something within the
person) or external (something outside the person). Stable factors are
those causes that do not change with the time, while unstable factors are
those that do.
• Fundamental Attribution Error: There is an overall tendency for people to
give greater weight age to internal or dispositional factors, than to
external or situational factors. Indians tend to make more external
(situational) attributions than Americans do.
• There is a difference between the attribution made for success, and the
attribution made for failure. In general, people attribute success to internal
factors, such as their ability or hard work. They attribute failure to external
factors, such as bad luck, the difficulty of the task, and so on.
• Actor-Observer Effect-A distinction is also found between the attribution
that a person makes for his/her own positive and negative experiences
(actor-role), and the attribution made for another person’s positive and
negative experiences (observer-role, external).
Behaviour in the Presence of Others:
In 1897, Norman Triplett observed that individuals saw better
performance in the presence of others than when they are performing the
same task alone because of the eagerness to get praise or reward is
stronger.
Social Facilitation:
(i) Zajone performance on specific tasks is influenced by the mere
presence of others because the person experience arousal, which makes
the person react in a more, intense manner.
(ii) Evaluation apprehension (Cottrell): The person will be praised if the
performance is good (reward), or criticised if it is bad (punishment). We
wish to get praise and avoid criticism, therefore we try to perform well and
avoid mistakes.
(iii) Nature of the task in the case a simple or familiar task, the person is
sure of performing well and the eagerness to get praise or reward is
stronger. In case of complex or new task, the person may be afraid of
making mistakes. The fear of criticism or punishment is stronger. So the
individual performs worse in the presence of others than he/she does
when alone.
(iv) If the others are also performing the same task, this is called a
situation of co-action. In this situation, there is social comparison and
competition.
Social Loafing: The larger the group, the less effort each member puts
in. This phenomenon is based on diffusion of responsibility.
Pro-social Behaviour: Pro-social behaviour is very similar to ‘altruism’,
which means doing something for or thinking about the welfare of others
without any self-interest.
Characteristics:
• Aim to benefit or do good to another person or other person,
• Be done without expecting anything in return,
• Be done willingly by the person, and not because of any kind of
pressure, and
• Involve some difficulty or ‘cost’ to the person giving help.
Factors influencing Pro-social Behaviour:
• Based on an inborn, natural tendency in human beings to help other
members of their own species. ”
• Influenced by Learning: Individual who are brought up in a family
environment that sets examples of helping others praises helpfulness.
• Cultural Factors: Some cultures actively encourage people to help the
needy and distressed. In cultures that encourage independence,
individual will show less pro-social behaviour, because people are
expected to take care of themselves.
• When the situation activates certain social norms that require helping
others.
(a) Social responsibility: We should help anyone who needs help, without
considering other factors.-
(b) Reciprocity: We should help those who have helped us in the past.
(c) Equity: We should help others whenever we find that it is fair to do so.
• Expected reactions of the person who is being helped. For example,
people might be unwilling to give money, to a needy person because they
feel that the person might feel insulted.
• Individuals who have a high level of empathy, that is, the capacity to feel
the distress of the person who is to be helped, such as Baba Saheb Amte
and Mother Teresa. Pro-social behaviour is also more likely in situations
that arouse empathy, such as the picture of starving children in a famine.
• Factors such as a bad mood, being busy with one’s own problems or
feeling that the person to be helped is responsible for his/her own
situation (that is when an internal attribution is made for the need state of
the other person).
• When the number of bystanders is more than one. This phenomenon is
called diffusion of responsibility. On the other hand, if there is only
bystander, this person is more likely to take the responsibility and actually
help the victim.
WORDS THAT MATTER
• Actor-observer Effect: The tendency to make different attributions for
one’s own experience or behaviour in case of another person (observer).
• Arbitration: Explaining our own or others behaviour by pointing out the
causes.
• Arousal: The tension experienced at the thought of others being
present and/or performance being evaluated.
• Attitudes: States of the mind, thoughts or ideas regarding a topic,
containing cognitive, affective and behavioural components.
• Attitude Object: The target of an attitude.
• Attribution: Explaining our own or others’ behaviour by pointing out the
cause(s).
• Balance: The state of an attitude system in which the attitudes between
a person (P) and another individual (O), the person (P) and the attitude
object (X), and between the other individual (O) and the attitude object (X)
are in the same direction, or logically consistent with each other.
• Beliefs: The cognitive component of the thoughts or ideas regarding a
topic.
• The centrality of Attitude: The extent to which a specific attitude
affects the entire attitude system.
• Cooperation: Groups work together to achieve shared goals, we refer
to it as cooperations.
• Conflict: A state of disturbance or tension resulting from opposing
motives, drives, needs or goals.
• Co-action: A situation in which many people are performing the same
task individually in the presence of others.
• Cognitive Consistency: A state in which thoughts or ideas are logically
in line with each other.
• Cognitive Dissonance: The state of an attitude system in which two
cognitive elements are logically contradictory, or inconsistent.
• Congruent Attitude Change: Attitude change in the same direction as
that of the existing attitude.
• Congruent altitude change: Altitude change in the same direction as
that of the existing attitude.
• Discrimination: Behaviour that shows a distinction between two or
more persons, often on the basis of person or person membership of a
particular group.
• Diffusion of Responsibility: The thought that when others are present,
one person alone will not be held responsible for doing or not doing
something; other members are also responsible and will, therefore, do the
task.
• Empathy: Reacting to another’s feeling with an emotional response that
is similar to the others feelings.
• Extremeness of attitude: It refers to how far an attitude is from the
neutral point.
• Evaluation Apprehension: The fear of being evaluated negatively by
others who are present.
• Fundamental Attribution Error: The tendency to attribute internal
causes more than external cause for behaviour.
• Halo Effect: The tendency to link positive qualities with other positive
qualities about which information is not available.
• Identity: The distinguishing character of the individual, who each of us
is; what our roles are, and what we are capable of.
• Identification: The process of feeling one with another person, usually
resulting from liking or extreme regard for the other person.
• Intergroup conflict: A process in which either an individual or a group
perceives that others have opposing interest and both try to contradict
each other.
• Kernel of Truth: The small element of truth that may be perceived in
over-generalised clusters of beliefs about groups (stereotypes).
• Negotiation: Reciprocal communications so as to reach an agreement
in situation in which there is a conflict.
• Norms: Standards of test performance that permit the comparison of
one person’s score on the test to the scores of others who have taken the
same test.
• Persuasibility: The degree to which people can be made to change
their attitudes.
• Prejudice: A prejudgment, usually a negative attitude that is unverified,
and is often towards a group.
• Primary Effect: The stronger role of information that comes first.
• Pro-social Behaviour: Behaviour that does good to another person, is
done without any pressure from outside, and without any exception of a
reward or return.
• Prototype: A schema in the form of a category representing all the
possible qualities of an object or a person.
• Recency Effect: The stronger role of information that comes last.
• Scapegoating: Placing the blame on a group for something that has
gone wrong, because the blamed group cannot defend itself.
• Schema: A mental structure that guides social (and other) cognition.
• Self-fulfilling Prophecy: Behaving in a way that confirms the prediction
others make.
• Simplicity or Complexity (Multiplexity) of Attitude: Whether the
whole attitude consists of a single or very few sub-attitudes (simple), or
contains many sub-attitudes (multiplex).
• Social Loafing: In a group, each additional individual puts in less effort,
thinking that
others will be putting in their effort.
• Social Cognition: The process through which we notice, interpret,
remember, and later use social information. It helps in making sense of
other people and ourselves.
• Social Facilitation: The tendency for people’s performance to improve
in the presence of others, or an audience.
• Social facilitations: The tendency for people’s performance to improve
in the presence of others, or an audience.
• Superordinate goals: A mutually beneficial to both parties, hence both
groups worl cooperatively.
• Stereotype: An over-generalised and unverified prototype about a
particular group.
• Valence of Attitude: Whether an attitude is positive or negative.
• Values: Enduring beliefs about ideal modes of behaviour or end-state of
existence. Attitudes that have a strong evaluative and ought aspect.

Social Influence And Group Processes

FACTS THAT MATTER


NATURE AND FORMATION OF GROUPS
Group: Organised system of two or more people who interact and are
interdependent, have common motives, have a set of role relationships
among members and have norms that regulate the behaviour of its
members.
Features:
1. Collection of people with common goals and motives.
2. Two or more people: perceive themselves as belonging to the group—
each group is unique.
3. Members are interdependent.
4. Members interact with each other directly or indirectly.
5. Members satisfy needs through joint association—influence each
other.
6. Set of norms and roles—specific functions for each member, adhere to
norms on how one must behave, expected behaviour, etc.
Advantages:
We are simultaneously members of different groups; different groups
satisfy different needs but could create pressures due to competing
demands and expectations.
1. Security: Groups reduce insecurity
• being with people—sense of comfort/protection.
• people feel stronger—less vulnerable to threats.
2. Status: Recognised group gives feeling of power and importance.
3. Self-esteem: Feeling of self-worth and positive social identity.
• member of prestigious group enhances* self-concept.
4. Goal Achievement: Group helps to attain some goals which can’t be
attained alone (power in the majority).
5. Provides Knowledge and Information: Broadens views, helps
supplement information.
6. Satisfaction of Psychological and Social Needs: Like sense of
belongingness—giving and receiving attention, love and power.
Group Formation:
Some form of contact and interaction between people is needed.
1. Proximity: Closeness and repeated interactions with the same people
(get to know their interests, attitudes and background).
2. Similarity: People prefer consistency—consistent relationship
(reinforces and validates opinions and values; feel we’re right).
3. Common Motives and Goals: Groups facilitate goal attainment.
Stages of group formation (Tuck man):
1. Forming: Member’s first meet—there is uncertainty about group and
goal and how it will be achieved. they try to get to know each other—there
is excitement and apprehension.
2. Storming: Intra-group conflict—about how the goal is to be achieved,
who’s the leader and who will perform what task (hierarchy of leadership
and how to achieve goal is developed.
3. Norming: Develop norms related to group behaviour (development of a
positive group identity).
4. Performing: Structure of the group has evolved and is accepted
(towards goal achievement); at this is the last stage of group
development.
5. Adjourning: Once the function is over the group may be disbanded.
Notes:
— Groups do not always proceed in a systematic manner.
— Stages could even take place simultaneously.
— Groups can go back and forth between stages or skip a few stages.
Group Structure: Over time there are regularities in distribution of tasks,
responsibilities assigned to members and status of members.
Elements:
1. Roles: Socially defined expectation that individuals in given situations
are expected to fulfil, i.e., typical behaviour that depicts a person in a
given social context.
(i) Role Expectations: Behaviour expected of someone in a particular role.
2. Norms (unspoken rules): Expected standards of behaviour and
beliefs established, agreed upon and enforced by group members.
3. Status: Relative social position given to group members by others.
(i) Ascribed (given due to one’s seniority) or achieved (because of
expertise or hard work).
(ii) Members of a group—enjoy status, and want to be members of
prestigious groups.
(iii) Within groups, different members have different prestige and status.
4. Cohesiveness: Togetherness, binding or mutual attraction among
members
(i) More Cohesiveness: Members start thinking, feeling and acting as a
social unit (no isolated individuals); there is an increased desire to remain
in group (we feeling- sense of belongingness).
(iii) Extreme cohesiveness leads to group think and is negative.
Types of Groups:
Primary Group:
Pre-existing formation that are usually given to a person. People usually
remain a part of it through their lifetime.
Includes face-to-face interaction and close physical proximity. Member
share warm, emotional bonds.
Central to person’s functioning; major role in developing values and
ideals.
Boundaries are less permeable—can’t choose membership, join or leave
easily.
Example: Family, religion, caste.
Secondary Group:
Groups which individuals join by choice.
Relationships among members are more impersonal, indirect and less
frequent.
These may or may not be short-lived.
It is easy to leave and join another group.
Example: Political party.
Formal Group:
Functions, based to be performed are explicitly stated.
Formation based on specific rules or laws and members have defined
roles. Set of norms help establish order.
Example: Office, university.
Informal Group:
Roles of each member not so definite and specified. Close relationship
among members exist.
Formation not based on rules and laws.
Example: peer group.
In group:
One’s own group—‘we’ (e.g., India).
Members in the group—similar, viewed favourably, have desired traits.
Out group:
Another group—‘they’ (e.g., Pakistan).
Member of out-group—viewed
differently, negatively in comparison to in group.
Influence of Group on Individual Behaviour:
1. Social Loafing: This is the reduction in individual effort when working
on a collective task.
— Individual performing an activity with the others as part of a larger
group.
— Individuals work less hard in a group than alone.
— Don’t know much effort each one is putting in.
— Presence of others leads to arousal; motivates individuals to enhance
their performance (only when a person’s efforts are individually
evaluated).
Causes of Social Loafing:
(a) Members feel less responsible for the overall task and thus exert less
effort.
(b) Performance of the group isn’t compared with other groups.
(c) Motivation decreases as contributions are not individually evaluated.
(d) No/improper co-ordination between members.
(e) Belonging to the same group is not important for members (it is only
aggregate of individuals).
Can be reduced by:
(a) Making effort of each person identifiable.
(b) Increasing pressure to work hard—make members committed,
motivated.
(c) Increase apparent importance and value of task.
(d) Make them feel their Individual contribution is important.
(e) Strengthen group cohesiveness—increase motivation for successful
group outcome.
2. Group Polarisation: Groups are likely to take more extreme decisions
than individuals would take alone
• strengthening of group’s initial position because of groups interaction.
• dangerous repercussions—groups may take extreme position (very
weak to very strong decisions).
Causes of group Polarization:
(a) In the company of like-minded people, you’re likely to hear newer
arguments favouring your view-points.
(b) Bandwagon effect—when you find others sharing your view-point, you
feel your view is validated by the public.
(c) When people have similar views as you, you’re likely to perceive them
as in-group (start identifying with them, show conformity—views become
strengthened).
Social Influences: Those processes whereby our attitudes and behaviours
are influences by the real or imagined presence of other people.
Kelman.
Identification: Influence process based on agreement or identity seeking.
Internalisation: Process based on information seeking.
1. Conformity:
— Most indirect form of social influence.
— Tendency to follow norms is natural and spontaneous (norms are
unwritten informal rules: provide information about what is expected from
people in a situation; allows the group of function smoothly).
— People feel uncomfortable if they’re ‘different’ (could lead to
dislike/disapproval or some form of social punishment) (deviants/non-
conformists).
— Following norms is the easiest way to avoid disapproval.
— Norms reflect the views and beliefs of the majority (feel majority is
likely to be right). — Experiments on conformity by Sherif (Autokinetic
effect) and Asch (Asch technique)
(condition determining the extent of conformity—degrees of conformity
determined by situation-specific factors).
Determinants of Conformity:
(a) Size of Group: More conformity when group is small.
(b) Size of Minority: Larger the minority, lesser the conformity (more is the
deviance).
(c) Nature of the Task: more conformity when there are objective
questions.
(d) Public/Private Expression of Behaviour: More conformity in public and
less conformity in private expression.
(e) Personality: Conforming personality—tendency to change behaviour
according to what others do (others are independent, don’t look for norms
to decide how to behave in a situation—highly intelligent people are
confident).
Conformity occurs because of:
(a) Informational influence (that results from accepting evidence, not
reality. Rational conformity- learn through observing other’s actions)
(b) Normative influence (based on desire to be accepted and admired—
conform because deviation could lead to rejection/non-acceptance.
Majority determines final decision but at times ifTniriority is firm and
uncompromising it doubts on the majority’s minds).
2. Compliance: Extreme condition forcing the person to accept influence
(of a significant other) and behave in a particular way in response to a
request from another person/group even in the absence of a norm. Why
do we comply—easier way out of the situation more polite.
Factors used to make others comply:
(i) ‘Foot in the Door’ Technique: Being by making small request that one
can’t refuse move on to bigger ones-once you comply with the first
request, feel uncomfortable refusing the second one.
(ii) ‘Deadline* Technique: A ‘last date’ is announced until an offer is
available—make people hurry so they can’t miss the opportunity. More
(the one actually required), usually granted.
(iii) ‘Door in the Face Technique: Being with a large request and when
this is refused move onto making a smaller request (the one actually
required), usually granted.
3. Obedience
— Response to a person in authority.
— Direct and explicit form of social influence (someone has requested
and you comply).
— If disobeyed, one is likely to get punished from people in authority;
thus, one to obey as people in authority have effective means for
enforcing order.
— Milgram’s experiment: Even ordinary people are willing to harm
innocent people if ordered by someone in authority.
Why do people obey (after knowing the effects)?
(a) Feel they are not responsible for their own action and that they are
simply carrying out orders from an authority.
(b) Authority is powerful and possesses symbol of status, and thus
difficult to resist.
(c) Authority increases commands from lesser to greater levels (initial
obedience binds followers for commitment and once you obey small
orders you start obeying bigger orders as you feel committed to the
authority).
(d) Events move at such a fast speed that there is no time to think, one
just obeys orders, e.g., riots
Co-operation and Competition:
Co-operation:
When groups work together to achieve shared goals.
No individual rewards. Only group rewards exist.
Co-operative goals—each attains his/ her goal only if other members
attain their.
There is respect for one another’s ideas and members are more friendly.
There is more co-ordination.
Competition:
When group-members try to maximize their own benefits.
They work for self-interest and individual reward.
Competitive goals—each gets his/her goal only if others don’t attain their.
Leads to conflict and disharmony. More group cohesion and solidarity
within ones group.
Determinants of Co-operation and Competition:
(a) Reward Structure:
Co-operative reward structure promotes interdependence; reward
possible only if all contribute.
Competitive reward structure—only one gets the award.
(b) Interpersonal Communication: Good interpersonal communication
increases co-operation (facilitates interaction, discussion, convinces each
other and increases learning about each other).
(c) Reciprocity: People feel obligated to return the behaviour they get
(initial co¬operation leads to increased co-operation and initial
competitiveness leads to competition).
Social Identity: Aspect of our self-concept which is based on our group
membership (tells us about one’s position in the larger social contact and
helps us located ourselves in society)
— derives from groups we are a part of.
— includes personal attributes and attributes we share with others.
— acquires certain attributes from interaction with others in society.
— identification with social groups is important for self-concept.
— provides members with a shared set of values, beliefs and goal about
ourselves and others
— in-group—group with which you identify yourself (start showing
favouritism towards it. Rate it above out-group and devaluate out group—
basis of intergroup conflicts).
Intergroup Conflicts:
Conflict: This is process in which either an individual or a group perceives
others as having opposing interest and both try to contradict each other
(‘we’ and ‘they’ feeling-are strong)
— belief that ‘others’ will protect only its own interests.
— both try to exert power on one another.
— when groups are more aggressive than individuals, it leads to
escalation of conflict.
— costly human price in conflicts.
Causes:
(a) Lack of communication or Faulty Communication: It leads to suspicion
and lack of trust.
(b) Relative Deprivation: Compare oneself to members of the other group:
— don’t have what you desire: others have it.
— not doing well in comparison to others: deprivation depression.
(c) Belief that one is better than the other: What one partly believes
should be done (if it does not happen—then members accuse one
another and small differences are magnified. This leads to increased
conflict).
(d) Desire for Retaliation: For harm done in the past.
(e) No Respect for Others Norms: Feeling that other group does not
respect norms of my group and violates them because of malevolent
intent.
(f) Biased Perception: Feeling of ‘the/ and ‘we’.
(g) People are more aggressive and competitive in groups than on their
own (due to competition over scarce resources).
(h) Perceived Inequity: Equity—distribution of rewards in proportion to
individual’s contributions (you feel irritated and exploited if you contribute
more and are rewarded less).
Notes:
— Conflicts between groups leads to series of social and cognitive
processes—hardens the stand of each side (ingroup polarization).
— Coalition of like-minded parties increases apprehension. .
— Misperceptions and biased interpretations increase conflicts.
Murphy—Conflicts begin in the minds of men.
Structural Level: Increase in poverty rates, inequality, limited political and
social opportunity, economic and social stratification.
Group Level: Social identity, unequal power relations, resources.
Individual Level: Beliefs, biased attitudes, personality characteristics
(there is progression along a continuum of violence—butterfly effect).
Consequences (Deutsch):
(a) Communication becomes poor between groups (lack of trust—
breakdown in communication leads to suspicion).
(b) Groups start magnifying their differences and perceive their behaviour
as fair and others as unfair.
(c) Each side tries to increase its own power and legitimacy, thus the
conflict shifts from smaller to larger ones.
(d) Once conflict starts, other factors lead to escalation of conflict (in-
group opinion is hardened, out-group is threatened and when other
parties choose sides, the conflict is further escalated).
Conflict Resolution Strategies:
1. Introduction of Superordinate Goals: Superordinate goals reduce
conflict and are mutually beneficial to both sides, thus sides work co-
operatively.
2. Altering Perceptions: Through persuasion, educational and media
appeal portrayal of groups differently. Also promoting empathy for others
should be taught.
3. Increasing Intergroup Contact: By involving groups on neutral grounds
through community projects and events they become more appreciative
of each other’s stand. Contacts need to be maintained, supported over a
period of time to be successful.
4. Redrawing Group Boundaries: Group boundaries create condition
where boundaries are redefined; perceive themselves as belonging to a
common group.
5. Negotiations: Reciprocal communication so as to reach an agreement
in situation where there is a conflict.
(i) Conflict can be resolved through negotiations and third party
interventions.
(ii) Groups try finding mutually acceptable solutions.
(iii) When negotiation doesn’t work then mediation (both parties reach a
voluntary agreement and focus discussions on relevant issues) or
arbitration (third party has the authority to give a decision after hearing
both parties) by a is used.
6. Structural Solutions: Redistributing societal resources according to
principles based on justice.
Principles of justice—equality (allocating equally to everyone), need
(allocating on the basis of one’s need) and equity (allocating on the basis
of contribution).
7. Respect for other Group’s Norms: To respect and be sensitive to the
strong norms of various social and ethnic groups, especially in India
where many communal riots have occurred due to insensitivity of one
religious group towards another.
Group think (Irving Janis)
(i) Cohesion can lead to a tendency to make irrational and uncritical
decision—group allows -its concerns for unanimity.
(ii) Appearance of consensus or unanimous agreement—each member
believes that all members agree upon a particular decision, no one
expresses dissenting opinion (undermine cohesion of group, makes
him/her unpopular).
(iii) Exaggerated sense of its own power, ignores real world cues, out of
touch with reality— occurs in socially homogenous, cohesive, isolated, do
not consider alternatives, decision have high cost.
(iv) Prevention-encouraging and rewarding critical thinking and
disagreement, encouraging groups to present alternative courses of
action, inviting outside experts to evaluate group decision, encouraging
seeking feedback from trusted others.
WORDS THAT MATTER
• Authority: The right inherent in a position (e.g., managerial) to give
orders and to except the orders to be obeyed.
• Cohesiveness: All forces (factors) that cause group-members to remain
in the group.
• Competition: Mutual striving between two individuals or groups for the
same objective.
• Compliance: A form of social influence in which one er more persons,
not holding authority, accept direct requests from one or more others.
• Conformity: A type of social influence in which individuals change their
attitudes or behaviours in order to adhere to existing social norms.
• Group: Two or more persons who interact with one another, have
shared goals, are interdependent, and consider themselves as members
of group.
• Groupthink: A mode of thinking in which the group members desire to
reach unanimous agreement overrides the wish to adopt proper, rational,
decision-making procedures; an example of group polarisation.
• In-group: The social group to which an individual perceives himself or
herself as belonging (‘us’). The group with which one identifies. The other
groups are out-groups.
• Obedience: Confirming behaviour in reaction to the commands of
others.
• Out-group: Any group of which an individual is not a member.
• Primary Group: Group in which each member is personally known to
each of the other members, and in which the members, at least on
occasion, meet face-to-face.
• Proximity: The principle of Gestalt psychology that stimuli close
together tend to be perceived as a group.
• Roles: An important concept in social psychology which refers to the
behaviour expected of an individual in accordance with the position
he/she holds in a particular society.
• Social Influence: The process by which the actions of an individual or
group affect the behaviours of others.
• Social Inhibition: Social restraint on conduct.
• Social Loafing: In a group, each additional individual puts in less effort,
thinking that others will be putting in their effort.
• Social Support: Information from other people that one is loved and
cared for, esteemed and valued, and part of a network of communication
and mutual obligation.
• Status: Social rank within a group.
• Structure: The enduring form and composition of a complex system or
phenomenon. Contrast with function, which is a process of a relatively
brief duration, arising out of structure.

Psychology And Life

FACTS THAT MATTER


The environment influences individuals Physical health, Psychological
processes and behaviour, and some of these effects are demonstrated in
stress producing environmental conditions such as noise pollution and
crowding.
Social problems like aggression, violence health and poverty are also
major concern for present-day Psychologists.
The Psychological understanding of these issues can be applied
practically to aspects such as pro-environment behaviour, reduction of
violence and discrimination and promotion of positive, health, positive
attitudes and well-being of people.
Human-Environment Relationship:
1. There is a growing awareness that environmental problems such as
sound, air, water and soil pollution, and unsatisfactory ways of garbage
disposal have damaging effects on physical health.
2. Less known is the fact that these forms of pollution influence
psychological health and functioning as well.
3. A branch of psychology called environmental psychology deals with
various psychological issues pertaining to the human-environment
interaction in a very broad sense of the term.
4. The word ‘environment’ refers to all that is around us, including the
physical, social, work, and cultural environment.
5. ‘Ecology’ is the study of the relationship between living beings and their
environment.
6. In psychology, the focus is on the interdependence between the
environment and people, as the environment becomes meaningful with
reference to the human beings who live in it.
(a) Natural environment: That part of nature which remains untouched by
human hand is the ‘natural environment’.
(b) On the other hand, whatever has been created by human beings
within the natural environment is the built environment. Cities, houses,
offices, factories, bridges, shopping malls, railway tracks, road, dams, and
even artificial created parks and ponds are some examples of the built
environment which show how human beings have made changes in the
environment given by nature.
The built environment usually involves the concept of environment
design. The idea of‘design’ contains some psychological features, such
as:
• The creativity of the human mind, as expressed in the work of architects,
town planners and civil engineers.
• The sense of human control over the natural environment, as shown in
the building of dams to regulate the natural flows of rivers.
• The influence on the kind of social interaction that takes place in the
designed environment.
Different Views of the Human-Environment Relationship:
1. A psychologist named Stokols (1990) describes three approaches that
may be adopted to describe the human-environment relationship.
(a) The minimalist perspective assumes that the physical environment
has minimal or negligible influence on human behaviour, health and well-
being. The physical environment and human being exist as parallel
components.
(b) The instrumental perspective suggests that the physical environment
exists mainly for use by human beings for their comfort and well-being.
Most of the human influences on the environment reflect the instrumental
perspective.
(c) The spiritual perspective refers to the view of the environment as
something to be respected and valued rather than exploited. It implies
that human beings will exist and will be happy only as long as the
environment is kept healthy and natural.
2. Traditional Indian view about the environment supports the spiritual
perspective, e.g.; the customs of the Bishnoi community of Rajasthan,
and the Chipko movement in the Uttarakhand region. By contrast, we also
find examples of people damaging or destroying the environment, which
is a negative instance of the instrumental, which is a negative instance of
the instrumental perspective.
Environmental Effects of Human Behaviour:
Some of the effects pointed out by psychologists are described below:
1. Perception: For example, a tribal society of Africa lives in circular huts,
that is, in houses without angular walls. They show less error in a
geometric illusion (the Muller-Lyer illusion) than people from cities, who
lives in houses with angular walls.
2. Emotions: The environment affects our emotional reactions as well.
Watching nature in any form provides a kind of joy that cannot be
matched by any other experience. In natural disasters, They experience
deep depression and sorrow, a sense of complete helplessness and lack
of control over their lives. They can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD).
3. Ecological Influences in Occupation, Living Style and Attitudes: The
occupation determines the life-style and attitudes of the residents of a co-
operativeness. They are also closer to nature, more Dependent on
natural events and limited supply. On the other hand, highly industrialized
societies feel less close to and less dependent on nature. Members of
industrialized societies may value independent thinking, develop an
attitude of competitiveness, and cultivate a valued personal control over
what happens to them.
Human Influence on the Environment:
• Human beings also exert their influence on the natural environment for
fulfilling their physical needs and other purposes.
• Some of these human actions harm and damage the environment, and
ultimately harm themselves, in numerous ways.
Examples:
-> Refrigerators and air-conditioners that generate CFS that pollute the
air.
-> Smoking is known to pollute the air around us, and the carbon-cycle
and the water- cycle.
-> Industries that discharge effluents, and pump this untreated sewage
into rivers, seem to be unconcerned about the dangerous physical and
psychological consequences of this kind of pollution.
• Noise, pollution, crowding and natural disasters are some examples of
environmental stressors, which are stimuli or conditions in the
environment that create a stress for human beings.
Noise:
(a) Any sound that is annoying or irritating, and felt to be unpleasant is
said to be noise.
(b) Noise, especially for long periods of time, is uncomfortable and puts
people in an unpleasant mood.
(c) It may lead to hearing loss.
(d) It reduces concentration.
Three characteristics of noise have been found to determine its effect on
task performance, namely, intensity, predictability, and controllability of
noise.
Effects of Noise: Systematic research on the effects of noise on human
beings shows the following:
• When the task being performed is a simple mental task, such as
addition to numbers, noise does not affect overall performance, whatever
it is loud or soft.
• If the task being performed is very interesting, then, too, the presence of
noise does not affect performance.
• When the noise comes at intervals, and in an unpredictable way, it is
experienced as more disturbing than if the noise is continuously present.
• When the task being performed is difficult or requires full concentration,
then intense, unpredictable, and uncontrollable noise reduces the level of
task performance. –
• When tolerating or switching off the noise is within the control of the
person, the number of errors in task performance decreases.
• In terms of emotional effects, noise above a certain level causes
annoyance, and can also lead to sleep disturbance.
Pollution:
1. In the form of air, water and soil pollution.
2. Waste or garbage that contes from household or from industries are a
big source of air, water and soil pollution.
There are some researches or studies that have shown direct or indirect
psychological effects of these forms of pollution as well.
Effects of Air pollution: Specific psychological effects of air-pollution
have been reported by some researchers. For example,
(i) In one part of Kolkata, the psychological reactions to air-pollution.
Those living in the industrial area reported greater tension and anxiety
than those living in a non-industrial residential area.
(ii) In study conducted in Germany, the presence of pollution such as
sulphur dioxide in the air was found to decrease the ability to concentrate
on a task, and lowering performance efficiency.
(iii) Pollution caused by leaks of dangerous chemical substances can
cause other kinds of harm. For example, Bhopal gas tragedy of
December 1984, also left behind psychological effects because of the gas
disturbances in memory, attention and alertness.
(iv) Tobacco smoke pollution, that is, pollution through cigarette, cigar or
beedi-smoking, can also cause psychological effects e.g., increase the
aggression level of individuals.
(v) The presence of specific chemicals such as lead can cause mental
retardation by affecting brain development.
(vi) Waste are plastics, tin or any metal container. This kind of waste
material should be destroyed or burned through special techniques, and
the smoke should not be allowed to escape into the air that people
breathe.
Crowding:
1. Crowding refers to a feeling of discomfort because there are too many
people or things around us, giving us the experiences of physical
restriction, and something the lack of privacy.
2. Crowding is the person’s reaction to the presence of a large number of
persons within a
” particular area or space. When this number goes beyond a certain level,
it causes stress to individuals caught in that situation.
Features of crowding: The experience of crowding has the following
features:
• Feeling of discomfort,
• Loss or decrease in privacy,
• Negative view of the space around the person, and
• Feeling of loss of control over social interaction.
It should be understood that the experience of crowding is brought about
not merely because
of a large number of persons as such, nor merely because of the
shortage of space. It is related to density, that is, the number of persons
within the available space.
• Crowding and high density may lead to abnormal behaviour and
aggression, e.g., study of rats. These animals were placed in an
enclosure, initially in small numbers. As their population increased within
this enclosed space, they started showing aggressive and unusual
behaviour, such as biting the tails of other rats. This aggressive behaviour
increased to such an extent that ultimately the animals died in large
numbers, thus decreasing the population in the enclosure.
• Crowding leads to lowered performance on difficult tasks that involve
cognitive processes, and has adverse effects on memory and the
emotional state.
• Children growing up in very crowded household show lower academic
performance. They also show weaker tendency to continue working on a
task if they are unsuccessful at it, compared to children growing up in
non-crowded households. They experience greater conflict with their
parents, and get less support from their family members.
• The nature of social interaction determines the degree to which an
individual will react to crowding.
• Crowding tolerance refers to the ability to mentally deal with a high
density or crowded environment, such as a crowded residence (a large
numbers of persons within a small room). Competition tolerance is the
ability to put up with a situation in which individuals would have to
compete with many others for even basic resources, including physical
space. Cultural characteristics may determine the extent to which a
particular environment is judged to be subjectively more crowded or less
crowded.
Personal space or the comfortable physical space one generally likes to
maintain around oneself is affected by a high-density environment. In a
crowded context, there is a restriction on a personal space, and this can
also be a cause of negative reactions to crowding.
We find many examples of people responding to the physical
environment in terms of space. In social situations, human beings like to
maintain a certain physical distance from the person with whom they are
interacting.
This is called interpersonal physical distance and is a part of a broader
concept called personal space, i.e., the physical space we like to have all
around us. One reason for the negative reactions to crowding, as
described earlier, is the decrease in personal space.
1. Intimate Distance (up to 18 inches): The distance you maintain when
you are talking privately to someone or interacting with a very close friend
relative.
2. Personal Distance (18 inches to 4 feet): The distance you maintain
when you are interacting one-to-one with a close friend, relative, or even
with someone not very close to you in a work setting or other social
situation.
3. Social Distance (4 to 10 feet): The distance you maintain when the
interaction is formal, and not close.
4. Public Distance (10 feet to infinity): The distance you maintain in a
formal setting, where there is a large number of persons. For example,
the distance of an audience from a public speaker, or a teacher in a
classroom.
It may be noted that these distances are maintained voluntarily, keeping
in mind the comfort experienced by the persons involved in the
interaction.
The concept of personal space is important for the following reasons:
• First, it explains many of the negative effects of crowding as an
environmental stressor.
• Second, it tells us about social relationships.
• Third, it gives us some idea about how physical space can be modified
in order to reduce stress or discomfort in social situations or to make
social interaction more enjoyable and fruitful.
Natural Disasters:
• Environmental stressors such as noise, various forms of pollution and
crowding are the result of human behaviour.
• By contrast, natural disasters are stressful experiences that are the
result of disturbances in the natural environment, e.g., earthquakes,
tsunamis, floods, cyclones and volcanic eruptions.
• These events are called ‘disasters’ because they cannot be prevented,
usually come without any warning, and result in immense damage to
human lives and property.
• Sadly, they also lead to a psychological disorder, called post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD).
• Science and technology have now progressed sufficiency to make it
possible for human beings to predict these events, to some extent. Yet
the psychological effects of natural disasters need to be understood and
remedied.
What are the effects of natural disasters?
First, they leave people poverty-stricken, homeless, without any
resources, usually along with a loss of everything they owned.
Second, the sudden loss of all their belongings as well as their dear ones
leaves people shocked and stunned.
This is sufficient to create a deep-seated psychological disorder. Post-
traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a severe psychological problem that
results from traumatic events such as natural disasters.
Features of Natural Disasters: This disorder has the following features:
The immediate reaction to a disaster is commonly one of disorientation.
People take some time to understand the full meaning of what the
disaster has done to them. They may actually deny to themselves that
something terrible has happened. Following the immediate reaction are
the physical reactions.
Physical reactions, such as bodily exhaustion even without physical
activity, difficulty in sleeping, change in the eating pattern, increased
heartbeat and blood pressure.
Emotional reactions, such as grief and fear, irritability, anger,
helplessness, hopelessness, depression, something absolute lack of
emotion.
Cognitive reactions, such as worry, difficulty in concentration, reduced
span of attention, confusion, loss of memory, or vivid memories, that are
unwanted (or nightmares of the event). Social reactions, such as
withdrawal from others, getting into conflict with others, having frequent
arguments with even loved ones, and feeling rejected or left out.
These reactions may last for a long time, in some cases throughout life,
with proper counselling and psychiatric treatment, PTSD can be remedied
at least up to level where the victims can be motivated, and helped to
start life afresh.
In general, the intensity, if reaction, is affected by:
• The severity of the disaster, and the loss incurred (both in terms of
property and life),
• The individual’s general coping ability, and
• Other stressful experiences before the disaster.
Although we are aware ,that most natural disasters can be predicted only
in a limited way, there are ways of being prepared to minimize their
devastating consequences in the form of. Warnings: If you have been
listening to the radio in the recent past, you might have heard ‘
advertisements that mention what people should do when it is announced
that some natural disaster, such as a flood, is likely. When cyclones of
high tides are predicted, fishermen are asked not to venture into the sea. .
Safety measures that can be taken immediately after the event. Even if
prediction is possible, the events come to suddenly for people to be
warned or to be mentally prepared. Therefore, tips are given beforehand
about what to do when there is an earthquake.
Treatment of psychological disorders: This includes self-help approaches
as well as professional treatment. Counselling at the individual and group
level is the next step.
Pro-environmental behaviour:
(i) Includes both actions that are meant to protect the environment from
problems, and to promote a healthy environment.
Some promotive actions to protect the environment from pollution are:
Reducing air pollution by keeping vehicles in good condition, or changing
to non-fuel driven vehicles, stopping the practice of smoking.
Reducing noise pollution (noise) by ensuring that noise levels are now.
For example, discouraging needless honking on the road, or making rules
regarding noisy music at certain hours.
Managing disposal of garbage sensible. For example, by encouraging
separation of biodegradable garbage from non-biodegradable waste, or
composting of kitchen waste. Planting trees and ensuring their care,
keeping in mind that those plants and trees should not be planted that
have adverse health effects.
Saying ‘no’ to plastic in any form, thus reducing toxic wastes that pollute
water, air and the soil.
Reducing the non-biodegradable packaging of consumer goods.
Laws related to construction (especially in urban areas) that violates
optimal environment design.
Poverty and violence are two main problems in our society. Both of these
phenomena have noticeable effects on the physical as well psychological
health of people.
Poverty is not nearly an economic problem. It has social, emotional,
Psychological perspectives also.
Violence is also not simply a question of breaking the law. It is related to
societal conditions Psychological perspective and economic conditions
also. Psychologists have actively exploring these issue to explain causes,
consequences and strategies to deal with these phenomena effectively.
Poverty and Discrimination:
Some experts define poverty mainly in economic terms and measure it in
terms of incomes, nutrition (the daily caloric intake per person), and the
amount spent on basic necessities of life such as food, clothing and
shelter.
From the socio-psychological point of view, the most commonly accepted
definition of poverty is that it is a condition in which there is a lack of
necessities of life in the context of : unequal distribution of wealth in
society. <
A distinction between deprivation and poverty is that deprivation refers to
the state in which a person feels that he/she has lost something valuable,
and is not getting something what he/she deserves. In deprivation, it is
more a question of perceiving or thinking that one has less than what one
should have got.
Poverty refers to an actual shortage of the resources necessary for living,
and thus can be somewhat objectively defined. .
Thus, a poor person may experience deprivation, but poverty is not a
necessary condition for experiencing deprivation.
Both poverty and deprivation are linked to social disadvantage. In our
society, the caste system has been largely the source of social
disadvantages, but poverty, irrespective of cast, has also played a role in
creating social disadvantage.
In the context of poverty, discrimination refers to the behaviour that
makes a distinction between the rich and the poor, favouring the rich and
the advantaged over the poor and the disadvantaged, e.g., matters of
social interaction, education and employment.
Thus, even if the poor or disadvantaged have the capability, they are kept
away from opportunities that are enjoyed by the rest of society.
The children of the poor do not get a chance to study in good school, or
get good health facilities, and employment.
Disadvantage and discrimination prevent the poor from improving their
socio-economic condition through their own efforts, and this makes the
poor even poorer.
Psychological Characteristics and Effects of Poverty and Deprivation.
In terms of motivation, the poor have law aspirations and low
achievement motivation, and high need for dependence. Eth explain their
successes in terms of luck or fate rather than ability of hard work. In
general, they believe that events in their lives are controlled by factors
outside them, rather than within them.
With regard to personality, the poor and deprived have low self-esteem,
high anxiety and introversion, and dwell on the immediate present rather
than being future-oriented. They prefer smaller immediate rewards to
larger rewards in the long run, because in their perception,
the future is too uncertain. They live with a sense of hopelessness,
powerlessness, felt injustice, and experience a loss of identity.
With respect to social behaviour, the poor and deprived sections exhibit
and attitude of resentment towards the rest of society.
Among the effects of prolonged deprivation on cognitive functioning, it
has been found that intellectual, functioning and performance on tasks
(such as classification, verbal reasoning, time perception, and pictorial
depth perception) is lower among the highly deprived compared to those
who are less deprived. It has also been certified that the
: effect of deprivation is because the nature of the environment is
cognitive task performance.
With regard to mental health, there is an unquestionable relationship
between mental 1 disorders and poverty or deprivation. The poor are
more likely to suffer from specific mental
1 illness compared to the rich, possible due to constant worry about basic
necessities, feelings of
insecurity, or inability to get medical facilities, especially for mental illness.
In fact, it has been suggested that depression may be a mental disorder
largely of the poor.
Major Causes of Poverty:
Poverty is sometimes caused by natural disasters such as earthquakes,
floods and cyclones,
or man-made disasters such as poisonous gas leaks. When such events
take place, people
suddenly lose all their possessions and have to face poverty.
Similarly, one generation of.the poor may be unable to eradicate their
poverty, and the next generation continues to remain in poverty. Apart
from these causes, other factors responsible for poverty have been
mentioned below:
1. The poor themselves are responsible for their poverty. According to
this view, the poor lack the ability and motivation to put in effort, and
make use of available opportunities, r In general, such a view about the
poor is rather negative, and does not help at all in
making them better.
2. It is not the individual, but a belief system, a way of life, and values, in
which he/ she is brought up, that is the cause of poverty. This belief
system, called the ‘culture of, poverty’, convinces the person that he/she
will continue to remain poor, and the belief is
carried over from one generation of the poor to the next.
3. Economic, social and political factors together account for poverty.
Because of discrimination, certain sections of society are denied the
opportunities needed for getting even the basic necessities of life.
4. The geographic region in which one lives is said to be a significant
cause of poverty.
This factor cannot be controlled by human beings.
5. The poverty cycle is another important cause of poverty that explains
why poverty tends to continue among the same sections of society.
Poverty begets poverty.
The only way to tackle the problems associated with poverty and
deprivation is to work actively as well as earnestly towards the removal or
reduction of poverty.
Measures for Poverty Alleviation
Several steps are being taken by the government and other groups to
work towards alleviation or reduction of poverty and its negative
consequences.
1. Breaking the poverty cycle, and helping the poor to attain self-
sufficiency—initially, financial relief, medical and other facilities may have
to be provided to the poor.
2. Creating a context for making the poor take responsibility instead of
blame for their poverty.
3. Providing educational and employment opportunities, following the
principles of social justice—this step may help the poor to discover their
own abilities and skills, thus enabling them to come up to the level of
other sections of society.
4. Measures for improved mental health—many of the poverty-reduction
measures help to improve the physical health of the poor, but their mental
health still remains a problem to be tackled effectively.
5. Steps for empowering the poor—through the measures mentioned
above, the poor should be made more powerful, capable of living
independently and with dignity, without depending on the help given by
the government or by other groups.
6. The concept of ‘Antyodaya’, or the rise of the ‘last person’ in society,
i.e., the poorest or the most disadvantaged, has helped a large section of
the poor to get uplifted to a better economic condition than they have
experienced earlier. Under Antyodaya programmes, there is provision for
health facilities, nutrition.
Another way is through small loans or micro-credit facilities. The facility is
similar to the idea of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.
Following the 73rd amendment of the Constitution, the aim is to give more
power to people for their development through decentralized planning,
and through people’s participation. Action Aid, an international group. Has
goals of making the poor more sensitive to their rights, to equality and
justice, and ensuring for them adequate nutrition, health, and facilities for
education and employment.
Aggression, Violence and Peace:
Aggression and violence are among the major problems in today’s
society, and they cover a wide range of behaviours—from ragging of
newcomers in educational institutes, through child abuse ect.
Psychologists use the term ‘aggression’ to refer to any behaviour by one
person/persons that intend to cause harm to another person/persons. It
can be demonstrated in actual action or through the use of harsh words
or criticism, or even hostile feelings against others.
Forceful destructive behaviour towards another person or object is
described as ‘violence’.
Some psychologists distinguish aggression from violence by pointing out
that the aggressive behaviour involves the intention to harm or injure
another person, whereas violence may or may not involve such an
intention.
A distinction is also made between instrumental aggression and hostile
aggression.
In instrumental aggression, the act of aggression is meant to obtain a
certain goal or object.
Hostile aggression is that which is shown as an expression of ranger
towards the target, with the intention of harming him/her, even if the
aggressor does not wish to obtain anything from the victim.
Causes of Aggression:
Inborn Tendency: Aggressiveness is an tendency among human being
(as it is in animals). Biologically, this inborn tendency may be meant for
self-defense.
Physiological Mechanism: Aggression could also be indirectly triggered
by physiological mechanisms, especially by the activation of certain parts
of the brain that play a role in emotional experience. A general
physiological state of arousal, or feeling activated, might often be
expressed in the form of aggression.
Child-rearing: The way an individual is brought up often influences
him/her aggressiveness. It could also be because physical punishment
makes the child angry and resentful; as the child grows up he/she
expresses this anger through aggressive behaviour.
Frustration: Aggression is an expression, and consequence of
frustration, i.e., an emotional state that arises when a person is prevented
from reaching a goal, or attaining an object that he/she wants. The
person.may be very close to the goal, and yet does not attain it.
An American psychologist, John Dollard, along with his collaborators,
conducted research specially to examine the frustration-aggression
theory. Theory proposes that it is frustration that leads to aggression. As
expected, frustrated persons did demonstrate more aggression than non-
frustrated persons.
Moreover, such aggression was often shown towards a weaker person
who was unlikely, or unable to react to aggression. This phenomenon has
been called displacement. Observations showed that:
Being frustrated does not necessarily make a person aggressive.
Many other situational factors may lead to aggression. .
Learning: Among human beings, aggression is largely the result of
learning than an expression of an inborn tendency.
Learning of aggression can take place in more than one mode.
Individuals may exhibit aggression because they have found it rewarding
(for example, hostile aggression allows the aggressive person to get what
he/she wants). This would be case of learning through direct
reinforcement. Individuals also learn to be aggressive by observing others
showing aggression. This is case of learning through modelling.
Observing an Aggressive Model: Many research studies conducted by
psychologists such as Albert Bandura and his collaborators shows the
role of modelling in learning aggression. In studies that tested the
frustration-aggression theory, provoking the person and making him/ her
angry was one way of including frustration.
Anger provoking action by others: Insults, threats, physical
aggression, sarcasm, derogatory remarks or dishonesty by a person or
persons may provoke an individual to react aggressively.
Frustration-aggression theory by Dollard and Miller also confirm this
phenomenon. Availability of Weapons of Aggression: Some
researchers have found that observing violence leads to a greater
likelihood of aggression on the part of the observation only if weapons of
aggression are easily available.
Personality Factors: We may conclude that aggressiveness is thus a
personal quality. It has been observed that the people, who have very low
self-esteem and feel insecure, may behave aggressively in order to ‘boost
their ego’.
Cultural Factors: The culture in which one grows up can teach its
members to be aggressive or not by encouraging and praising aggressive
behaviour, or discouraging and criticizing such behaviour.
Reducing Aggression and Violence.
Parents and teachers should especially be careful not to encourage or
reward aggression in any form.
The use of punishment to bring about discipline also needs to be
changed.
Opportunities to observe and imitate the behaviour of aggressive models
should be reduced drastically.
Poverty and social injustice may be a prominent cause of aggression,
because they can cause frustration in certain section of society.
Implementing social justice and equality in society may help in reducing
frustration levels and thereby curb aggressive tendencies at least to some
extent.
Apart from these strategies, at the level of the community or society, it is
important to inculcate a positive attitude towards peace.
Health:
It is now conceded that various health outcomes are not only a function of
disease but the way we think and behave.
This definition of ‘health’ is provided by the World Health Organization
(WHO). Which includes biological, psychological and social aspects of
health.
One may be suffering from a physical disabling disease but may be quite
healthy otherwise. e.g., Baba Amte or Stephen Hawkins.
We also find that people differ across cultures in their thinking about when
and how people fall ill and, therefore, in the models which they use in
prevention of diseases and promotion of health.
There are traditional cultures like Chines, Indian, and Latin American
which hold that good health results from the harmonious balance of
various elements in the body, and ill- health results when such a balance
is lost.
On the contrary, the western cultures view health as a result of fully
functioning machine which has no blockage.’’
Diseases:
The World Health Reports by the WHO shows that in developing
countries such as Asia, Africa, and Latin America, more die due to
communicable diseases including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) malaria,
respiratory infections and nutritional deficiencies. In the developed
countries, the leading causes of death are various cardiovascular
diseases, cancers and psychiatric disorders. Such differences may be
explained in terms of how these societies are economically and socially
structured and their psychological underpinnings.
Factors associated with Well-being and Fitness:
1. Cognitions:
(a) The variations in seeking help are due to differences in mental
representations people make relating tp disease, its severity and the
causes of disease.
(b) The level of awareness or information about disease and belief about
how it is caused; and about possible ways of relieving the distress or
improving health affect help-seeking behaviour as well as sticking to a
doctor’s regimen.
(c) Another factor which influences our help-seeking from a doctor is the
perception of pain, which is a function of personality, anxiety and social
norms.
2. Behaviours:
(a) Psychologists have found strong evidence which shows that
behaviours we engage in our life, styles greatly influence health.
(b) People differ greatly in terms of such behavioural risk factors as
smoking or tobacco use, alcohol and drug abuse, and unsafe sexual
behaviour, diet and physical exercise.
(c) A new discipline called Behaviour Medicine has emerged, which seeks
to alleviate stress due to diseases through modification in behaviour.
3. Social and Cultural Factors:
(a) There is now a growing body of research which shows that social and
cultural differences may influence our psychological responses, and may
not be the same across all cultures.
(b) While interaction between culture and psychological responses
requires more
evidence, social and cultural norms associated with roles and gender, etc.
greatly influence our health behaviour.
(c) In Indian society, medical advice by or for a female is often delayed
because of various reasons—they are less valued, or because of the
belief that they are hardy, or the shame associated with the disease.
Impact of Television on Behaviour.
1. From the point of its psychological impact on human beings, both
positive and negative effects have been observed.
2. Most of the research studies have been carried out on children
because they are seen as being more vulnerable to the impact of
television than adults.
First, television provides a large amount of information in an attractive
form, and in the visual mode, for which it becomes a powerful medium of
instruction and children spend huge amounts of time watching them. This
reduces their habit of reading and writing, and also their outdoor activities
such as playing.
Second, television watching may have an effect on children’s ability to
concentrate on one target, their creativity and ability to understand, and
also their social instructions. On one hand, there .are excellent
programmes that emphasize positive interpersonal attitudes and provide
useful factual information, teaching children how to design and construct
certain objects.
Third, results of research showed that watching violence on television
was, indeed, linked to greater aggressiveness in the viewers.
3. Other research finding shows that watching violence may actually
reduce the natural aggressive tendency of the viewers: what is ‘bottled
up’ gets an outlet, and thus cleans the system, like a choked drainpipe
being cleaned. This process is called catharsis.
4. In the case of adults as well as children, it is said that a consumerist
attitude has developed, and this is due to television watching. Numerous
products are advertised, and it is very natural for the viewer to get carried
away.
WORDS THAT MATTER
• Aggression: An overt behaviour intended to hurt someone, either
physically or verbally.
• Air-pollution: Degraded quality of air is air-pollution.
• Communicable Disease: An illness due to specific infection agent
capable of being directly or indirectly transmitted from man to man,
animal to animal, or from the environment to man or animal.
• Competition Tolerance: The ability to put up with a situation in which
individuals would have to compete with many others for even basic
resources, including physical space.
• Crowding: A psychological feeling of too little space; perception of
crampedness.
• Crowding Tolerance: The ability to mentally deal with a high density or
crowded environment, such as a crowded residence.
• Disaster: A disaster is an unforeseen and often sudden event that
disrupt the normal condition within a society and cause widespread
damage, destruction, and human suffering.
• Discrimination: Behaviour that shows a distinction being made
between two or more persons, often on the basis of the person’s (or
persons’) membership of a particular group.
• Displacement: Redirecting an impulse towards a less threatening or
safer target; a key concept in psychoanalytic theory; a defence
mechanism.
• Ecology: That branch of biology which deals with the relations of
organism to their environment,
• Environment: Totality, or any aspect of physical and social set-up that
surround and affect an individual organism,
• Environmental Psychology: The branch of psychology that
concentrates on the interaction between the physical world and human
behaviour.
• Instrumental Perspective: The approach that suggests that the
physical environment exists mainly for use by human beings for their
comfort and well-being.
• Modelling: A process of learning in which an individual acquires
responses by observing and unitating others.
• Noise: An unwanted sound, one that brings about a negative affective
response.
• Peace: It is the absence of hostility and as expression of harmony with
fellow human beings and the environment.
• Personal Space: The small area around an individual considered
belonging to him/her whose invasion is experienced as threatening or
unpleasant.
• Physical Environment: It is the nature that includes climate, air, water,
temperature, flora and fauna.
• Poverty: Poverty is an economic deprivation. It is association with low
income, hunger, low caste and class status, illiteracy, poor housing,
overcrowding, lack of public amenities, mal- and under-nutrition, and
increased susceptibility to diseases.
• Poverty Alleviation: Measures/programmes taken up to reduce
poverty.
• Pro-environmental Behaviour: Willingness and activities of human
beings to protect the environment are pro-environmental behaviour.
• Self-efficacy: Bandura’s term for the individual’s beliefs about her or his
own effectiveness the expectation that one can master a situation and
produce positive outcomes.
• Spiritual Perspective: The perspective that specifies to do activities
what are desirable in accordance with the scriptures. It pleads for a
harmony between man and nature.
• Post-traumatic stress disorder: A form of Anxiety disorder in which
patterns of symptoms involving anxiety reactions, tensions, nightmares
and depression following a disaster such as an earthquake or a flood.
• Social environment: Societal conditions-Positive or negative like
peace-violence, Justice-discrimination, Warmth-hostility etc.
• Transactional Approach: It includes interaction between people and
environment. Human beings affect the environment and in turn are
affected by the environment.

Developing Psychological Skills

FACTS THAT MATTER


• Psychology is based on certain basic assumptions. It is generally
assumed that psychologists have interest in:
• People • Abilities • Temperament
• A professional psychologist exhibit a willingness to provide help by using
his/her knowledge.
He/she is actively involved in obtaining:

• A client refers to an individual/group/organisation who on his/her own


seeks help, guidance or intervention from a psychologist with respect to
any problem faced by him/her.
Skill is proficiency, facility or dexterity that is acquired or developed
through training and experience.
The Webster Dictionary defines it as “possession of the qualities required
to do something done.
• American Psychological Association (1973) identified skills essential for
professional psychologists, and recommended at least 3 sets of skills:
• Assessment of individual differences
• Behaviour modification skills
• Counselling and guidance skills
• Recognization and application of these skills and competencies have
strengthened the foundation and practices of applied psychology in a
positive way.
Basic skills or competencies which psychologists have identified for
becoming an effective psychologist are:
• General skills • Observational skills • Specific skills
• General skills include personal as well as intellectual skills.
Psychologists as researchers and practitioners do in the field is to pay
attention, watch and listen carefully.
A psychologist is like an instrument that absorbs all sources of
information from the environment.
• Observational skills:
A psychologist engages in observing various facets of surroundings
including people and varying events.
In addition to physical surrounding, a psychologist actively engages in
observing people
and their actions. This may include the demographic features (age,
gender, stature, race, etc.), ways of dealing and relating with others,
pattern of behaviours in the presence of others, etc.
• Major Approaches to Observation:
(i) Naturalistic Observation: Primary way of learning about the way people
behave in a given setting.
(ii) Participant Observation: The observer is actively involved in the
process of observing by becoming an active member of the setting where
the observation takes place.
Specific Skills:
— Core/Basic to the field of psychological service, e.g.,
— Psychologists working in clinical settings need to be trained in various
techniques of therapeutic interventions, psychological assessment and
counselling.
— Specific skills of competencies are required for a very specialized
professional functioning nonetheless, all skill sets do overlap quite a bit.
— Not exclusive to an area.
Specific Skills and Competencies
(a) Communication Skills
(b) Psychological Testing Skills .
(c) Interviewing Skills Counselling
(d) Counselling Skill.
1. It is generally assumed that psychologists have interest in people, their
abilities and temperaments.
2. A psychologist from any field is required to have interest in other
people and exhibits a willingness to provide help by using his/her
knowledge of the discipline.
3. Client is a special term, may refer to an individual/group/organization
who on his/her own seeks help, guidance or intervention from a
psychologist with respect to any problem faced by him/her.
4. The term ‘skill’ may be defined as proficiency, facility or dexterity that is
acquired or developed through training and experience.
5. Assessment of individual differences, behaviour modification skills, and
counselling and guidance skills.
6. How to differentiate between a pseudo-psychologist from a real
psychologist:
(a) Professional training
(b) Educational background
(c) Institutional affiliation
(d) Experience in providing service
(e) Training as a researcher
(f) International of certain professional values
(g) Knowledge of tools used by psychologists
7. Research psychologists and applied psychologists. Some
psychologists carry out research to propound or investigate theoretical
formulations while others are concerned with our daily life activities and
behaviour.
8. The basic skills or competencies which psychologist fall into three
broad sections, namely,
(a) General Skills, (b) Observational Skills, (c) Specific Skills.
9. Genetic in nature.
10. Specific Skills.
1. Specific skills and competencies are required for a very specialised
professional functioning.
2. They are not exclusive to an area.
3. Relevant specific skills and competencies can be classified as follows:
(a) Communication Skills
(i) Speaking
(ii) Active listening
(iii) Body language or non-verbal skills
(b) Psychological Testing Skills
(c) Interviewing Skills
(d) Counselling Skills
(i) Empathy
(ii) Positive
(iii) Authenticity
• The general and specific skills form the core competencies essential for
a psychologist to act in a more responsive and ethical manner. Before
entering any professional arena, it, therefore, becomes pertinent for a
psychologist to equip himself/herself with these indispensable
competencies.
• General skills include personal as well as intellectual skills. These skills
are essential for all professional psychologists, whether they are working
in the field of clinical and health psychology, industrial/organisational,
social, educational, or in environmental settings or are acting as
consultants.
• Specific skills are core/basic to the field of psychological service. For
example, psychologist working in clinical setting needs to be trained in
various techniques of therapeutic interventions, psychological
assessment, and counselling.
• In order to become an effective psychologist, one needs to have certain
characteristics such as competence, integrity, professional and scientific
responsibility, respect for people’s rights and dignity, etc.
• Observation skills are basic skills and are used by psychologists as a
starting point for providing insight into behaviour. The two major
approaches to observation are naturalistic observation and participant
observation.
• Interviewing is a process of face-to-face conversation between two or
more people that follows a basic guest ion and answer firm at. It proceeds
through three stages which include the warm-up (opening stage), the
question and answer (the body), and the closing stage.
• Developing the skills of psychological testing is important since tests are
important tools used for the assessment of individuals for various
purposes. Proper training is required for administration, scoring and
interpretation of tests.
• Counselling
Specific skills are core/basic to the psychological service. Psychologists
working in clinical settings need to be trained is various techniques of
therapeutic interventions, psychological assessment and counselling.
Counselling involves helping relationship, that includes some are seeking
help and some one willing to give help.
Counsellor understands the elements about counselling like responding
to all aspects of personality, acceptance of the client’s perception,
confidentiality, voluntary nature and verbal and bon-verbal
communication.
Counsellors follow the process of counselling. The qualities that are
associated with effective counsellors are
(i) Authenticity (ii) Positive regard for others (iii) Ability to empathise and
paraphrasing.
Prevention seeks to reduce the incidence or new cases of social and
emotional problems in the population.
Community Psychology and related community mental health movement
try to prevent mental disorders from developing, to seek out, troubled
people, to find the social conditions that may be causing human problems
and to make available affordable mental health services.
WORDS THAT MATTER
• Applied Psychology: The practical application of what is known about
the mind, brain and behaviour as a result of theoretical and experimental
psychology.
• Assessment skill: Specific skill of a psychologist to follow systematic
testing procedure with an attitude of objectivity, scientific orientation and
standardised interpretation.
• Client refers to an individual/group/organisation who on his/her own
seeks help, guidance or intervention from a psychologist with respect to
any problem faced by him/her.
• Cognitive skill: Ability to understand and process mental faculties.
• Competence: Capability of developing skills.
• Counselling: Counselling is a therapeutic process through which
individuals are helped to define goals, make decisions and solve
problems related to the personal-social- educational and career concerns.
• The term ‘skill’ may be defined as proficiency, facility or dexterity that is
acquired or developed through training and experience.
• General skills are generic in nature and are needed by all psychologists
irrespective of their field of specialisation.
• Ethical observation: Awareness of the ethical (Values) standards and
codes during observation i.e. respecting privacy of people.
• Naturalistic observation is one of the primary ways of- learning about the
way people behave in a given setting.
• Participant observation is the variation of the method of naturalistic
observations. Here the observer is actively involved in the process of
observing by becoming an active member of the setting where the
observation takes place.
• Communication is a conscious or unconscious, intentional or
unintentional process in which feelings and ideas are expressed as verbal
and/or non-verbal message that are sent, received and comprehended.
• Interpersonal awareness: Ability to examine and considering one’s
own motives, attitudes behaviours and ability to be sensitive to one’s own
behaviour and others.
• Intervention and consultation skills: Skill of helper to deal with the
client establishing therapeutic relationship, providing positive regard and
choosing right technique to treat the problem.
• Intrapersonal communication involves communication with yourself. It
encompasses such activities as thought processes, personal decision of
making and focusing oneself.
• Interpersonal communication refers to the communication that takes
place between two or more persons who establish a communication
relationship.
• Public communication is characterised by a speaker sending a message
to an audience.
• Speech only a biological act; the utterance of sound, possibly the use of
language.
• Paraphrasing allows you to understand how much he/she understood of
what was communicated.
• The consistency between current and past patterns of behaviour, as well
as harmony between verbal and non-verbal communication, is termed as
congruency in communication.
• Psychological assessment is a basic competency required by
psychologists. It is systematic testing procedures involving objectivity,
standardisation and systematic procedures.
• An interview refers purposeful conversation between two or more people
that follows a basic question and answer1 format.

Sent from my iPhone

You might also like