Contribution of Psychology and Social Psychology to the Study of Health and Welfare Issues

Contribution of Psychology and Social Psychology to the Study of Health and Welfare Issues

In this assignment I will be comparing and contrasting two

psychological

approaches demonstrating their relevance to understanding a health

issue.

The issue that I will be applying the two psychological approaches to

is

Smoking.

The psycho dynamic approach denotes the active forces within the

personality that motivate behaviour, and the inner causes of

behaviour, in

particular the unconscious conflict between the different structures

that

compose the whole personality.

There are a lot of factors that contribute to why people behave in a

certain

way and why people do things that has an adverse affect on health.

Anxiety is a state of apprehension, tension and worry this is

associated with

the Freudian theory. Freud believes that anxiety arises when the ego

which

is the executive of the personality is faced with an influx of stimuli

with

which it cannot cope. People use a number of techniques to help cope

with

anxiety and stress one of these is smoking. People use smoking as a

way of

coping with anxiety due to the rush of nicotine which gets released in

the

brain which can give a quick sensation of pleasure and helps calm the

smoker

down. With the quick sensation of pleasure from the cigarette the

brain

craves more nicotine; smoking is used as a stimulant and a depressant

some

smokers do say that smoking helps them relax. Smoking can be seen as

defence mechanism because people smoke to deal with everyday problems

such as anxiety or stress. Repression ca...

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...our

change rely on two strategies, health education and modification to

the

incentive structure which refers to strategies of behaviour changes

that

influence behaviour by increasing costs for example of cigarettes and

decreasing the costs of health promoting behaviour. The government use

this the fiscal method and increase taxes on cigarettes and alcohol to

influence behaviour.

References

Strobe.W. & Jonas.K. (2001)in Introduction to social psychology. Third

Edition. Blackwell Publishing. Oxford.

Gross.R. (2001) Psychology the science of mind and behaviour. Fourth

Edition. Greengate Publishing services. Kent

Atkinson.R., Atkinson R.C., Smilth.E., Bem.D., Nolen –

Hoeksema.S.(2000) Hilgard’s Introduction to Psychology Thirteenth

Edition. Harcourt Place College Publishers. Orlando.