Individual Differences

Individual Differences

People who behave in a socially deviant and apparently unintelligible

way should be regarded as abnormal because they do not agree with

social conventions and don’t do what is normally expected in society.

The ‘deviation from social norms’ definition of abnormality determines

the mental state of an individual by studying how closely they follow

the ‘unspoken’ rules of society.

However, there are a few limitations to this approach. One problem is

based on the idea that social norms change over time. What is

acceptable in society now, may have been incomprehensible in the past.

For example, single women who became pregnant (I.e. out of marriage),

were seen as social deviants and some were hospitalised in psychiatric

institutions. Nowadays, it is much more common for single women to

have children outside of wedlock.

The ‘statistical infrequency’ approach is based on the idea that

certain behaviours are statistically rare in the larger population. If

very few people (2.145% of population) show the rare behaviour or way

of thinking, then they are described as abnormal. Again, this approach

has limitations as well.

The concept of statistical abnormality does not allow us to identify

what rare behaviours require treatment. The approach fails to make

reference to desirability. Some rare behaviours are undesirable such

as anorexia, high trait anxiety, and many others. Yet, other rare

behaviours are much desired such as low anxiety and genius. The

‘statistical infrequency’ approach doesn’t succeeds in giving a

definition that shows the rare behaviour to be undesirable and

potentially damaging to the individual.

The Behavioural Model indicates that individuals with mental disorders

possess maladaptive forms of behaviour , which have been learned.

Maladaptive behaviour prevents an individual from achieving major life

goals such as enjoying a good relationships with other people or

working effectively. Most of the learning takes the form of classical

conditioning or operant conditioning. Therefore, an appropriate form

of treatment involves further conditioning or observational learning

which will help to remove the maladaptive behaviours that have been