Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Chapter 13 & 14Therapies & Social Behaviors

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

What Is Psychotherapy?

• Any psychological technique used to facilitate positive changes in personality, behavior, or adjustment; some types of psychotherapy:– Individual: Involves only one client and one therapist

• Client: Patient; the one who participates in psychotherapy

• Rogers used “client” to equalize therapist-client relationship and de-emphasize doctor-patient concept

– Group: Several clients participate at the same time

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

More Types of Psychotherapy

• Directive: Therapist provides strong guidance• Insight: Goal is for clients to gain deeper understanding

of their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors• Time-Limited: Any therapy that limits number of sessions

– Partial response to managed care and to ever-increasing caseloads

• Caseload: Number of clients a therapist actively sees

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Family Therapy

• Family Therapy: All family members work as a group to resolve the problems of each family member– Tends to be brief and focuses on specific problems

(e.g., specific fights)

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Origins of Therapy

• Trepanning: For primitive “therapists,” refers to boring, chipping, or bashing holes into a patient’s head; for modern usage, refers to any surgical procedure in which a hole is bored into the skull– In primitive times it was unlikely the patient would

survive; this may have been a goal– Goal presumably to relieve pressure or rid the person

of evil spirits

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Demonology

• Study of demons and people beset by spirits– People were possessed, and they needed an

exorcism to be cured• Exorcism: Practice of driving off an “evil spirit”; still

practiced today!

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Origins of Therapy (cont'd)

• Ergotism: Psychotic-like symptoms that come from ergot poisoning– Ergot is a natural source of LSD – Ergot occurs with rye

• Phillippe Pinel: French physician who initiated humane treatment of mental patients in 1793– Created the first mental hospital

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Existential Therapy

• An insight therapy that focuses on problems of existence, such as meaning, choice, and responsibility; emphasizes making difficult choices in life– Therapy focuses on death, freedom, isolation, and

meaninglessness• Free Will: Human ability to make choices

– You can choose to be the person you want to be• Confrontation: Clients are challenged to examine their

values and choices

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Behavior Therapy

• Use of learning principles to make constructive changes in behavior

• Behavior Modification: Using any classical or operant conditioning principles to directly change human behavior – Deep insight is often not necessary– Focus on the present; cannot change the past, and no

reason to alter that which has yet to occur

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Aversion Therapy • Conditioned Aversion: Learned dislike or negative

emotional response to a stimulus• Aversion Therapy: Associate a strong aversion to an

undesirable habit like smoking, overeating, drinking alcohol

• Response-Contingent Consequences: Reinforcement, punishment, or other consequences that are applied only when a certain response is made

• Rapid Smoking: Prolonged smoking at a rapid pace – Designed to cause aversion to smoking

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Desensitization

• Systematic Desensitization: Guided reduction in fear, anxiety, or aversion; attained by approaching a feared stimulus gradually while maintaining relaxation– Best used to treat phobias: intense, unrealistic fear

• Model: Live or filmed person who serves as an example for observational learning

• Vicarious Desensitization: Reduction in fear that takes place secondhand when a client watches models perform the feared behavior

• Virtual Reality Exposure: Presents computerized fear stimuli to patients in a controlled fashion

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Operant Conditioning

• Positive Reinforcement: Responses that are followed by a reward tend to occur more frequently

• Nonreinforcement: A response that is not followed by a reward will occur less frequently

• Extinction: If response is NOT followed by reward after it has been repeated many times, it will go away

• Punishment: If a response is followed by discomfort or an undesirable effect, the response will decrease/be suppressed (but not necessarily extinguished)

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Cognitive Therapy

• Therapy that helps clients change thinking patterns that lead to problematic behaviors or emotions

• Selective Perception: Perceiving only certain stimuli in a larger group of possibilities

• Overgeneralization: Allowing upsetting events to affect unrelated situations

• All-or-Nothing Thinking: Seeing objects and events as absolutely right or wrong, good or bad, and so on

• Cognitive therapy is VERY effective in treating depression, shyness, and stress

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Key Features of Psychotherapy

• Therapeutic Alliance: Caring relationship between the client and therapist; work to “solve” client’s problems

• Therapy offers a protected setting where emotional catharsis (release) can occur

• All the therapies offer some explanation or rationale for the client’s suffering

• Provides clients with a new perspective about themselves or their situations and a chance to practice new behaviors

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Basic Counseling Skills

• Active listening• Clarify the problem• Focus on feelings• Avoid giving advice• Accept the client’s frame of reference• Reflect thoughts and feelings• Silence: Know when to use• Questions

– Open: Open-ended reply– Closed: Can be answered “Yes” or “No”

• Maintain confidentiality

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Medical (Somatic) Therapies

• Pharmacotherapy: Use of drugs to alleviate emotional disturbance; three classes:– Anxiolytics: Like Valium; produce relaxation or reduce

anxiety– Antidepressants: Elevate mood and combat

depression– Antipsychotics: Tranquilize and also reduce

hallucinations and delusions in larger dosages

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Shock

• Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT): 150 volt electric shock is passed through the brain for about one second, inducing a convulsion – Based on belief that seizure alleviates depression by

altering brain chemistry• ECT Views

- Causes memory loss in many patients– Should only be used as a last resort

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Psychosurgery

• Any surgical alteration of the brain• Prefrontal Lobotomy: Frontal lobes in brain are surgically

cut from other brain areas– Supposed to calm people who did not respond to

other forms of treatment– Was not very successful

• Deep Lesioning: Small target areas in the brain are destroyed by using an electrode

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Hospitalization• Mental Hospitalization: Involves placing a person in a

protected, therapeutic environment staffed by mental health professionals

• Deinstitutionalization: Reduced use of full-time commitment to mental institutions

• Half-way Houses: Short-term group living facilities for individuals making the transition from an institution (mental hospital, prison, etc.) to independent living

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Community Mental Health Centers

• Offer many health services like prevention, education, therapy, and crisis intervention– Crisis Intervention: Skilled management of a

psychological emergency• Paraprofessional: Individual who works in a near-

professional capacity under supervision of a more highly trained person

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

What Is Social Psychology?

• Social Psychology: Scientific studies of how individuals behave, think, and feel in social situations; how people act in the presence (actual or implied) of others

• Great Lesson - The POWER of the ________________.

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Groups

• Group Structure: Network of roles, communication, pathways, and power in a group

• Group Cohesiveness: Degree of attraction among group members or their commitment to remain in the group

• In Group: A group with which a person identifies• Out Group: Group with which a person does not identify

– Cohesive groups work better together– What kind of groups did you see on “Survivor,” “Road

Rules,” and “Real World”?

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Social Perception

• Attribution: Making inferences about the causes of one’s own behavior and others’ behavior– External Cause of Behavior: Assumed to lie

outside a person– Internal Cause of Behavior: Assumed to lie within

the person

• Fundamental Attribution Error: Tendency to attribute behavior of others to internal causes (personality, likes, etc.). We believe this even if they really have external causes!

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Conformity

• Bringing one’s behavior into agreement with norms or the behavior of others.– Solomon Asch’s Experiment: You must select (from a

group of three) the line that most closely matches the standard line. All lines are shown to a group of seven people (including you).

– Other six were accomplices, and at times all would select the wrong line.

– In 33% of the trials, the real subject conformed to group pressure even when the group’s answers were obviously incorrect!

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13Figure 14.4

FIGURE 14.4 Stimuli used in Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments.

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Obedience (Milgram)

• Conformity to the demands of an authority.• Would you shock a man with a known heart condition

who is screaming and asking to be released? • Milgram studied this; the man with a heart condition was

an accomplice and the “teacher” was a real volunteer. The goal was to teach the learner word pairs.

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Milgram’s Conclusions

• 65% obeyed by going all the way to 450 volts on the “shock machine,” even though the learner eventually could not answer any more questions

• Group support can reduce destructive obedience

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13Figure 14.6

FIGURE 14.6 Results of Milgram’s obedience experiment. Only a minority of subjects refused to provide shocks, even at the most extreme intensities. The first substantial drop in obedience occurred at the 300-volt level (Milgram, 1963).

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Brainwashing

• Engineered or forced attitude change requiring a captive audience; three steps:– Unfreezing: Loosening of former values and

convictions– Change: When the brainwashed person abandons

former beliefs– Refreezing: Rewarding and solidifying new attitudes

and beliefs

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Cults

• Groups that profess great devotion to a person and follow that person almost without question– Leader’s personality is usually more important than

the issues he/she preaches– Members usually victimized by the leader(s)– Recruit potential converts at a time of need, especially

when a sense of belonging is most attractive to potential converts

• Look for college students and young adults

• Some examples: People’s Temple and Jim Jones; Heaven’s Gate; Branch Davidians

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Prejudice

• Negative emotional attitude held toward members of a specific social group

• Discrimination: Unequal treatment of people who should have the same rights as others

• Personal Prejudice: When members of another racial or ethnic group are perceived as a threat to one’s own interests

• Group Prejudice: When a person conforms to group norms

Introduction to Psychology: Kellogg Community College, TalbotChapter 13

Prosocial Behavior and Bystander Apathy

• Prosocial Behavior: Behavior toward others that is helpful, constructive, or altruistic

• Bystander Apathy: Unwillingness of bystanders to offer help during emergencies– Related to number of people present

• The more potential helpers present, the lower the chances help will be given