Social Psychology

Social psychology is the scientific
study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the
actual, imagined, or implied presence of others.
The terms thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors include all of the psychological variables that are measurable in a
human being.
The reference to imagined or implied
others suggests that we are prone to social influence even when no other people
are present, such as when watching television, or following internalized
cultural norms.
The study of attitudes is a core
topic in social psychology.
Attitudes are involved in virtually
every other area of the discipline, including conformity, interpersonal
attraction, social perception, and prejudice. Social psychologists typically
explain human behavior as a result of the interaction of mental states and
immediate, social situations.
In general, social psychologists
have a preference for laboratory based, empirical findings.
Their theories tend to be specific
and focused, rather than global and general.

Long-Term Cognitive Impairment Too Common After Critical Illness

Patients treated in intensive care units across the globe are entering their medical care with no evidence of cognitive impairment but oftentimes leaving with deficits similar to those seen in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) or mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) that persists for at least a year, according to a Vanderbilt study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study, led by members of Vanderbilt's ICU Delirium and Cognitive Impairment Group, found that 74 percent of the 821 patients studied, all adults with respiratory failure, cardiogenic shock or septic shock, developed delirium while in the hospital, which the authors found is a predictor of a dementia-like brain disease even a year after discharge from the ICU.

Delirium, a form of acute brain dysfunction common during critical illness, has consistently been shown to be associated with higher mortality, but this large study of medical and surgical ICU patients demonstrates that it is associated with long-term cognitive impairment in ICU survivors as well.

At three months, 40 percent of patients in the study had global cognition scores similar to patients with moderate TBI, and 26 percent scored similar to patients with AD. Deficits occurred in both older and younger patients, irrespective of whether they had coexisting illness, and persisted to 12 months, with 34 percent and 24 percent still having scores similar to TBI and AD patients, respectively.

"As medical care is improving, patients are surviving their critical illness more often, but if they are surviving their critical illness with disabling forms of cognitive impairment then that is something that we will have to be aware of because just surviving is no longer good enough," said lead author Pratik Pandharipande, M.D., MSCI, professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care.

"Regardless of why you come in to an ICU, you have to know that, on the back end of your critical care, you are very likely to be suffering cognitively in ways similar to a TBI patient or an AD patient, except that most of the medical profession doesn't even know that this is happening and few around you suspect anything, leaving most to suffer in silence," said senior author Wes Ely, M.D., professor of Medicine.

"Delirium in critically ill, hospitalized adults is a serious yet understudied issue," said Molly Wagster, Ph.D., chief of the Behavioral & Systems Neuroscience Branch in the National Institute on Aging, part of the NIH. "These new findings provide important evidence of the extent of the problem, the imperative for greater recognition and the pressing need for solutions."

Ely said at least some component of this brain injury may be preventable through efforts to shorten the duration of delirium in the ICU by using careful delirium monitoring and management techniques, including earlier attempts at weaning from sedatives and mobility protocols that can save lives and reduce disability.

"Even after the patient leaves the hospital, we think that cognitive rehabilitation might be helpful to somebody like this, and we have some early preliminary data supporting this," he said.

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Humanistic Psychology

Humanistic psychology is a school of psychology that emerged in the 1950s in reaction to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis.

The humanistic approach has its roots in existentialist thought (see Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre).
It is also sometimes understood within the concept of the three different forces of psychology; behaviorism, psychoanalysis and humanism.
Behaviorism grew out of Ivan Pavlov's work with the conditioned reflex, and laid the foundations for academic psychology in the United States associated with the names of John B.
Watson and B.F.
Skinner.
This school was later called the science of behavior.
Abraham Maslow later gave behaviorism the name "the first force".
The "second force" came out of Freud's research of psychoanalysis, and the psychologies of Alfred Adler, Erik Erikson, Carl Jung, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, Otto Rank, Melanie Klein, Harry Stack Sullivan, and others.
These theorists focused on the depth of the human psyche, which they stressed, must be combined with those of the conscious mind in order to produce a healthy human personality. Humanistic psychology includes several approaches to counseling and therapy.
Among the earliest approaches we find the developmental theory of Abraham Maslow, emphasizing a hierarchy of needs and motivations; the existential psychology of Rollo May acknowledging human choice and the tragic aspects of human existence; and the person-centered or client-centered therapy of Carl Rogers, which is centered around the clients' capacity for self-direction and understanding of his/her own development.

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PSYCHOLOGY E

Illusion of control

Illusion of control is the tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes that they demonstrably have no influence over. The predominant paradigm in research on unrealistic perceived control has been Ellen Langer’s (1975) 'illusion of control'.

 Langer showed that people often behave as if chance events are accessible to personal control.

In a series of experiments, Langer demonstrated first the prevalence of the illusion of control and second, that people were more likely to behave as if they could exercise control in a chance situation where 'skill cues' were present.

By skill cues, Langer meant properties of the situation more normally associated with the exercise of skill, in particular the exercise of choice, competition, familiarity with the stimulus and involvement in decisions.

One simple form of this fallacy is found in casinos: when rolling dice in craps, it has been shown that people tend to throw harder for high numbers and softer for low numbers.

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PSYCHOLOGY E

Psychopathology

Psychopathology is a term which refers to either the study of mental illness or mental distress or the manifestation of behaviours and experiences which may be indicative of mental illness or psychological impairment.

The many different professions may be involved in studying mental illness or distress.
Most notably, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists are particularly interested in this area and may either be involved in clinical treatment of mental illness, or research into the origin, development and manifestations of such states, or often, both.
More widely, many different specialties may be involved in the study of psychopathology.
For example, a neuroscientist may focus on brain changes related to mental illness.
Therefore, someone who is referred to as a psychopathologist, may be one of any number of professions who have specialised in studying this area. Psychiatrists in particular are interested in descriptive psychopathology, which has the aim of describing the symptoms and syndromes of mental illness.
This is both for the diagnosis of individual patients (to see whether the patient's experience fits any pre-existing classification), or for the creation of diagnostic systems (such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) which define exactly which signs and symptoms should make up a diagnosis, and how experiences and behaviours should be grouped in particular diagnoses (e.g.clinical depression, schizophrenia). Psychopathology is not the same as psychopathy, which has to do with antisocial personality disorders and criminality.

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12410054

PSYCHOLOGY E