Psychology is the deliberation of the mind and behavior and it pursues to assimilate people by comprehending mental function and social behavior. It reconnoiters the neurobiological and physiological developments that can initiative cognitive functions and behaviors. However, which motivates to apprehend mental procedures that thrusts psychologists to learn about the normal and abnormal behavior. And how we people adapt to these behaviors. Which bring us to question how we differentiate between adaptive and abnormal behavior? Both behaviors are completely different from each other because every society and culture has different understanding and perspective of adaptive and abnormal behaviors. What we believe as being adaptive and …show more content…
Abnormal behavior is behavior that is dissimilar from what we call normal or a behavior that is not united by the preponderance of the population. Mental illness such as bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia are form of abnormal behavior. Abnormal behavior is of doing things differently from others in which other might think of as “weird”. For example, if someone tries to act in certain way like being funny some people would think of it as being abnormal. It’s the societies that have drawn a line between what is normal and what is abnormal? Even though some behaviors aren’t abnormal but people would still consider it on abnormal behavior. According the people some behaviors they perform might not see as abnormal but for some people the same behavior might seen as abnormal behavior. There was a student in one of my class whenever he would come to class he would properly clean his desk before he sit on it. For some people this kind of behavior would be normal and for some people it might be abnormal behavior. However, due to that sometimes it gets hard to describe what is abnormal behavior? The same way people think about abnormal behavior due to the way some people are behaving however, if we put our attention toward culture. There are different cultures presenting all around the world. Some people would find other people culture odd or the way it being performed are not accepted by different
According to our text because of the difficult distinguishing normal from abnormal behavior, psychologists have struggled to devise a precise, scientific definition of “abnormal behavior” (Psychology and Your Life Feldam 2017). What is considered abnormal for some can be considered normal for others. The lifestyle practice that one chooses or the way an individual copes with life can differ amongst individuals. Deciding which coping style or preference is normal is or abnormal is generally is based off an individual's personal perception according to their own beliefs and practices.
Psychology can be broadly defined as the scientific and systematic study of people’s behavior and mental processes.
Societies are founded on various social norms. Norms can best be defined as a set of acceptable attitudes and practices by a given society. These norms however are found to vary from one society or cultural setting o the other. Deviance on the other hand is simply when one does something that goes against the set societal norms. Deviance is gauged on a scale of attitudes and behavior contradicting to acceptable social standards (Samuels, 2012).
Rosenhan (1973) states that in psychology, abnormality plays a key role in diagnosing a person as mentally ill. However, the line that divides normal from abnormal is not clear. All behaviour lies on a continuum with normal, also called effective psychological functioning, and at the other end abnormal indicating mental illness. Mental health professionals look for bizarreness and persistence of the behaviour with a certain pattern over time. Social deviance, when a person 's behaviour violates expectations and norms. Subjective distress which involves a specific situation that makes us feel uncomfortable. Psychological handicap, when a person finds it impossible to be satisfied with life due to psychological problems. Effect on functioning,
Psychology is the study of the behavior of living organisms. The people that study the behaviors are called psychologists. There have been many studies done by these people to try and figure out why people or animal do the things they do. Psychology's four main goals are to describe what occurred, explain why it occurred, predict what event is likely to occur next, and to change to prevent unwanted outcomes. Psychologists study the process of thinking, learning, cognition, emotions, motivations, and personalities. An example of one study that has been done would be why a dog salivates to the sound of a bell and show. This behavior is due to a conditioned stimulus becoming a conditioned response. Another experiment done was with a baby and a white mouse to see if the baby would be scared if something happened while grabbing for the mouse.
Behaviorism is a branch of psychology that has a theoretical approach that gives emphasis to the study of behavior in place of the subject of the mind or the physiological correlates of one's behavior. Behavior is the externally visible response to a stimulus of an animal or human (Weidman). B.F. Skinner is one of the most prominent psychologists of the study of behaviorism. Skinner was on the advance of behaviorism. B.F. Skinner created a group of theories that set out to prove that subjective impetus is not what behavior in humans and animals is so much based on but that behavior is more based on possible reward received and chastisement applied to the animal or human (Newsmakers). Skinner entered into the branch of behaviorism in the 1920s. Behaviorism was still a fairly new branch to psychology at this time. However, Skinner's experiments in his libratory were broadly consideration to be electrifying and ground-breaking, illuminating an knowledge of human behavior and logistics (Newsmakers). Skinner called such behavior based on possible reward received and chastisement that was followed by the repetition of that behavior operant.
This assignment is to discuss abnormality in mental health and the medical models used to diagnose mental disorders namely depression and eating disorders, why these models can be unreliable and theories behind what causes these disorders, whether it be environmental (nurture) or hereditary (nature) and how different cultures and societies can have an impact on diagnosing these disorders.
When I think of abnormal behavior, the first thing that comes to mind is one of my aunt’s. She committed suicide when I very young, so early 1970’s. As I got older, inevitably stories of her would arise during holiday get togethers. She was married with three children and in her early thirties, residing in Florida, when she walked out and away from her husband and small children. For over a year, no one knew what happened to her, she made no effort to contact anyone. Eventually, the Salvation Army somewhere in Michigan called my grandmother and they sent her home on a bus. She never returned to her husband or children. The doctors diagnosed her as a paranoid schizophrenic. My mother told me that when she was on her medication she was fine, but once she felt “fine”, she would stop her medication. When the medication left her system, she became anxious and afraid. She once chased my grandmother, who was in her late sixties down the driveway with an ax, because she thought her mother was trying to kill her. After several inpatient stays in mental hospitals, she came back home again and she was doing good. She left my grandmother’s one night while everyone was sleeping, made it approximately fifteen miles away to a lake.
According to Psychology in Action, “[r]ather than being fixed categories, both “abnormal” and “normal” behaviors exist along a continuum, and no single criterion is adequate for [i]dentifying all forms of abnormal behavior” (Huffman). There are four criteria used to determine whether behavior is abnormal. These are known as the four D’s. The first is deviance, this means that someones thoughts are different than those in the their culture and/or society. The second is dysfunction, this is when a person’s behavior is interfering with their everyday life and functions. The third is distress, this means that the person has a substantial amount of distress and unhappiness which can lead to risky or immoral actions. The fourth and final D is danger, this is when the person’s actions indicate that they are a danger to themselves and others.
This is a difficult question to answer because there is not a right answer. The research of abnormal behavior supports both the universal and the cultural relativist approach.
Within any given society, individuals are expected to behave and or conduct themselves in a given acceptable manner. However, there are instances when particular individuals act contrary to the set standards and violate the cultural norms. Such acts may include acts of crime, theft, defiance, breaking of rules, and truancy just to mention a few. Deviance could thus be viewed as the intentional or accidental violation of the particular behavioral aspects and ways that people are expected to act within a society (Hardy).
Creating ways to handle problems with guidance approach are very much like a journey to me. Teachers practice guidance when they help children to learn from their mistakes, rather than punish them for mistake they make, and it should not be considered as misbehaviour, but as mistaken behaviour. This reminds us that Child is just at the beginning of a lifelong learning process. At this stage we all make mistakes. Mistaken behaviour is made up of three different levels which in themselves explain each level in the learning process as they lack the experience and interaction to know the difference and therefore make errors in judgement in their actions. The three levels
According to the video entitled Behaviorism: A general overview of behaviorist learning theory, this approach to learning rejects the emphasis on the conscious and unconscious mind and focuses on the observable behavior of the subject. The principle of the behaviorism theory is that there is a direct association between a stimulus and the response an individual makes, the change in an individual’s behavior indicates that learning has occurred, and that individuals are not born with disposition to act in particular ways (Ormrod, 2012). In classrooms where the behavioral technique is used, there are often behavior modification and token reward systems in place (Campana, 2011).
Psychology is the scientific study of the mind, brain, and behavior. In psychology, and all of the other sciences, relying on opinions is abandoned in order to find out which explanations best fit the evidence or data given. Science continually forces us to question our findings and conclusions. Over time, psychology has advanced greatly and a main reason for such progressiveness is because of the change in the research model used.
One of the most obvious things that we are noticing in our everyday lives is that people are distinctly different. There are 7 billion people sharing the earth. But how many are considered “normal”? When are people considered abnormal? To be normal is to adhere to a standard or norm, but unfortunately, normality is an impossible and unlikely dream that we will continue to strive for all our lives. We strive for it because it gives us that sense of self that we need to reassure us that we fit in. While undefined, depending on your upbringing, generation and culture, what you consider normal may not be normal for someone else because other countries and cultures have different traditions and practices that they view to be routine; and what in the past has been viewed as normal has evolved throughout the course of time.