Self Improvement Blog

Stress Can Be External And Internal

2008-08-10T12:02:00.000-07:00

Stress seems to be catch all term for almost anything that makes us feel enough pressure to be anxious, from truly serious to be seemingly trivial. Strictly speaking stress is defined as reaction to a physical, mental or mental or emotional stimulus that upset the body’s natural balance this could apply to most of us some of the time, or even all of the time.

Our body must have evolved to cope with stress, but the peculiar, possibly unprecedented, kinds of stress that modern life inflicts on us do seems to have adverse consequences on the body, in both the short and the long term. Most people recognize some things that cause stress in their life, such as work load, overdue bills, traffic, traffic wardens ect... But some of the things people don’t recognize as inducers are:

Lack of sleep

Excessive alcohol

Smoking

Blood sugar imbalance

Nutrient deficiencies

Food allergies and intolerance

Medicines and hormones imbalance

A poorly function bowel leading to toxic waste build up

Work Related Stress

Depression, anxiety, drug or alcohol abuse can be symptoms of stress.
Stress is good up to a point . It motivates and keeps people attentive. But clearly, when the economy is down . . . it is something to which people react to."

Layne Prest, director of behavioral medicine and the medical family therapy program at the Nebraska Medical Center, said he, too, has seen an increase in the number of people seeking help for symptoms of stress. Forty percent of his clients at the One World Medical Clinic, who are primarily Latino, have stress-related symptoms. A declining economy hits blue-collar workers especially hard, he said. "They have to work two to three jobs to make ends meet."

Also is seeing more Caucasians at One World Medical Clinic who are seeking free or reduced-price health care because they have lost or don't have insurance coverage. Sometimes work-related stress is more subtle than losing a job or fearing the loss of a job. Or the fear and worry about family situations that keep them from performing up to what they perceive as higher standards at work.

Tips For Stress

"Take a step back and be as realistic as they can.

"People should consider if their fears are realistic," "Do they feel things are out of control, are they overwhelmed? Where can they make changes? Generally, don't try to control things you can't."

In addition to the economic downturn, there always are people who feel trapped in a job or with a manager they don't like. Whether it's a job or a bad marriage, relationships can be "extraordinarily stressful, too," he said. "People recommend finding another job, but that is not always easy to do, and moving is stressful, too. It is still putting someone out of a routine."

Friends and family members can be helpful sounding boards, but sometimes the situation calls for professional help from an independent, trained observer. "If people are ruminating about it (their situation) over and over and don't have an opportunity to get away from it, they should seek some professional evaluation," including using employee assistance programs at work.

"They should keep their resume up-to-date and keep their employment network in the picture," Meanwhile, people should keep focused on their lives and careers.
In a situation were a company is considering downsizing, if workers start looking at each other as competitors, relationships can break down. That can actually hurt a person's performance and his or her chances of success. The unknown can cause a lot of worry, and workers aren't always knowledgeable about things going on in a company.
Workers should find out as much as they can about their companies, to know whether fears about their and their companies' futures are warranted. Publicly held companies are required by law to provide substantial information,

Stress is an external and internal experience. You can reduce your external stimuli by changing certain elements in your lives such as changing jobs or not driving to work. However, a lot of stress is actually how you perceive things internally. Do you let things get to you? Or do you let things do? This is something that can change your relationship with stress significantly. For those who are not able to do this themselves, consider contacting a cognitive behavioral therapist. You may also consider 300 breakthrough stress relief tips!

Set aside 15 minutes every day for yourself to think, dream and not be pressurized by anything with in your daily plans. Note: watching television is not relaxing as it is designed to keep you alert and awake.

Avoid a diet that puts further stress on your adrenals. This include limiting alcohol to seven unit’s a week, stopping caffeine intake- this put quite a strain on the adrenals-and all diet and soft drinks

Stop consuming all fast releasing sugars as they create a state of stress in the body, stimulating the release of cortical. This means avoiding white bread and pasta, sweat breakfast cereals, and anything else that added sugar to it. Substitute these with complex carbohydrates that help to stabilize blood sugar levels, e.g. brown rice, wholemeal bread and pasta, oats, and quinoa.

Avoid processed foods, food products that contain chemical additives, and all fried foods as they put and additional stress on the body.

Eat a well- balanced diet with lots of fruit and vegetables. If you are in a stresses state, you may need extra protein so go for protein-rich foods such as oily fish and eggs( or vegetable proteins if you don’t eat animal products)

Avoid eating under stressful conditions. If you eat too quickly or under stress, you will not absorb your nutrients and your digestive system will not work well. Eat in a relaxed environment to ensure there is sufficient blood flow and effective digestion.

Exercise three times a week for 20 or 30 minutes. It is great for reducing anxiety and nervousness and for elevating your brain chemicals to make you feel good

Alienation Test

2008-08-08T06:32:00.000-07:00

Early Theories

There are two early cognitive social theories, those of Bandura and Mischel. Bandura pioneered
the study of observational learning (or vicarious conditioning). He believed that, rather than operating in a mechanistic way, reinforcement provides information about future reinforcement. Such information can be gleaned by watching models' behavior rather than by behaving in a particular way and experiencing the consequences oneself. Note how this definition of reinforcement differs from that of Skinner, for whom one had to experience reinforcement personally to increase a target behavior. Note also that for Bandura, thinking is not an irrelevant activity that occurs within a "black box," but rather is an important object of study in its own right.

A number of points distinguish the cognitive social approach from other approaches, including the following.

Cognitive Focus--Remember Skinner and the "black box"? This approach is nothing like that. For example, memory of past reinforcements is an important variable mediating stimulus and response.

Social-Interpersonal Focus--Remember Skinner and the generalization from pigeons and rats to all organisms (including humans)? This approach is nothing like that. Instead, the focus is on human behavior in particular situations, and the most important situational variable is other people.

Belief in Human Freedom and Choice--Remember Skinner and the call to go "beyond freedom and dignity" to scientific understanding and control of human behavior? This approach is nothing like that. Instead, there is a belief in human choice from a number of possible behaviors. The environment does not only influence the person--the person also influences the environment. (This is called reciprocal determination.)

Five kinds of cognitive social learning variables can be distinguished (Mischel, 1993):

Encoding Strategies: How do you see it?
Expectancies: What will happen?
Values: What is it worth? What are your goals?
Plans: How can you achieve it?
Competencies: What can you do?

Although these cognitive variables obviously have an impact on social relations, a question of keen interest is whether they can be reduced to general intelligence. For example, are competencies part of the "positive manifold"--that is, are they positively correlated with all other cognitive abilities? If so, then perhaps theorists would be better off focusing on general intelligence rather than on each individual cognitive social learning variable.

Cognition and Emotion

Higgins' Theory

Higgins (1987) proposed that each person has multiple mental representations of the self, and that a discrepancy between any pair of these representations has emotional consequences. The three big categories of representations are actual, ideal, and ought self. The actual self is who one really is. The ideal self is who one would like to be. The ought self is who one feels it is one's duty to be.

The actual, ideal, and ought selves can be further divided according to whether they are held by oneself or by others. For example, there is an actual/own self, an ideal/own self, and an ideal/other self. An actual/own:ideal/own discrepancy (for example) results in dejection, whereas an actual/own:ideal/other discrepancy results in shame.

Higgins' (1987) theory is an elaborate way of subdividing personality. Higgins' division of personality into six components might be compared to Freud's division into three (id, ego, and superego).

Seligman's Theory

Seligman's theory of learned helplessness was originally applied to dogs tested in a shuttle box with a divider separating two sides. Dogs who were shocked on one side eventually jumped over to the other, and, finding that they were not shocked there, learned the jumping response. However, dogs who were initially shocked uncontrollably failed to learn the jumping response, even if they did happen to jump over randomly once or twice.

The phenomenon of learned helplessness bears much in common with depression in humans. The theory was reformulated (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978) in order to take account of explanatory style--that is, the way people explain negative events to themselves. People who have a pessimistic explanatory style explain negative events as stable, global, and internal. Such people are hypothesized to be more predisposed to depression than people with an optimistic explanatory style, who explain negative events as unstable, specific, and external.

The reformulated learned helplessness model (Abramson et al., 1978) bears a striking similarity to the negative cognitive triad in Beck's cognitive theory of depression (Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979).

Abramson, Seligman, and Teasdale (1978)	Beck, Rush, Shaw, and Emery (1979)
internal attributions	negative thoughts about the self
global attributions	negative thoughts about the world
stable attributions	negative thoughts about the future

Alienation Test

"The statements below concern how you feel in emotionally intimate relationships. We are interested in how you generally experience relationships, not just in what is happening in a current relationship.... When you have answered all the questions, the web page will determine your attachment style." By R. Chris Fraley.

Please record how you feel about each sentence as follows:

5 -- I agree strongly
4 -- I agree
3 -- I am neutral, or I don't know
2 -- I disagree
1 -- I disagree strongly

[For a printable, self-scoring version of this test, click here]

1. I don't understand the way people behave nowadays.
2. I don't want what most people seem to want.
3. The future of mankind looks pretty hopeless.
4. Most people act as if the end justifies the means.
5. I don't get much satisfaction from my work (or school work).
6. It's a lonely life for more and more people nowadays.
7. Things don't make much sense to me anymore.
8. My values are different from society's values.
9. There is little room for personal choice anymore.
10. There just aren't any definite rules to live by today.
11. I wish I could feel more involved in my job (or school work).
12. I wish people would be a lot kinder than they are.
13. I feel confused about the world a lot.
14. Most people don't have the same priorities that I do.
15. You can only get ahead if you get some lucky breaks.
16. It seems that right and wrong are pretty ambivalent nowadays.
17. Sometimes I just feel like a robot at work (or school).
18. Sometimes I feel all alone in the world.
19. I don't know what the purpose of life is anymore.
20. I don't identify with my culture's values.
21. There are so many decisions to make that I could just scream.
22. It seems as if you have to play dirty to win.
23. I don't have much opportunity to be creative.
24. I don't get to go out with friends much anymore.
25. Life has become less and less meaningful to me.
26. Everybody seems to have a different idea of success than I have.
27. It is (or would be) scary to be responsible for a child nowadays.
28. It often seems that it's the nice people who lose.
29. It's frustrating if you really care about the quality of your work.
30. I don't see my family as much as I'd like to.

Household frictions

2008-08-05T05:27:00.000-07:00

Exploring Contemporary Psychology: Social Egocentrism

In understanding how relationships are formed and maintained, one important issue concerns the frictions that can develop in a relationship, including the frictions that emerge as part of day-to-day living: "Why don't you ever do the dishes — why is it always me?" "Why is it that I'm usually the one who takes out the garbage; why can't you do your fair share?" Or: "Why is it that I'm always the one who reaches out to end our disagreements? Don't you know the words, ‘I'm sorry'?"

These frictions can arise because sometimes responsibilities are inequitably distributed in a relationship, and this can, of course, be a source of stress. Other factors can also contribute to these frictions: Sometimes, people in a relationship have a view of who-does-what that's shaped by self-flattery or self-service. These forces can lead someone to inflate their estimates of how much they contribute to the maintenance of the household, or the relationship itself. This inflated sense of their own contribution then leads to a perceived imbalance, and, of course, to stresses in the relationship.

But another effect also contributes to these frictions: Thinking, they argued that people often judge frequency by trying to think of relevant cases, and gauging how easily these come to mind. Are more of your friends male or female? To find out, you might try to think of male friends and female friends. If a list of men comes quickly to mind, this is an indication that most of your friends are males; if a list of women comes to your thoughts more easily, this would suggest the opposite conclusion.

How does this apply to the frictions we have described? When you take out the garbage, you obviously are aware of this event; when your house mate takes out the garbage, you may not even be around. Likewise, when you reach out to end an argument, this is often a difficult step as you swallow your anger and struggle to submerge your own feelings for the good of the relationship. That sort of thing should be well-remembered, and will probably be better remembered than the occasions in which it's your partner who backs down (because in those cases, you do see their conciliatory gesture, but don't see the thought process that led up to it). For all these reasons, you'll end up with a better memory for your own actions than your housemate's. This will lead to a bias in the sorts of cases that come to mind when you think about taking out the garbage, or settling fights, and this in turn will produce a bias in assessed frequency. Because each of us is better able to remember our own actions, we are likely to overestimate the frequency of our own actions, relative to others.

Evidence for these claims comes from a study comparing the "egocentric bias" (claiming more than your share of the credit) for good deeds like taking out the garbage, and for bad deeds like provoking fights, or leaving the kitchen a mess. It turns out that degree of egocentric bias is the same for the good deeds and the bad (Ross & Siccoly, 1979). This is what we might expect on grounds of memory bias, but not what we'd expect if the bias comes out of vain self-flattery. (In that case, people would take too much credit for the good deeds, but too little credit for the bad!) Such evidence argues that memory availability does play a role in producing frictions, and reminds us that our account of social relationships must include the perceptions and memories that influence us as we participate in those relationships!

Bowlby Attachment

2008-08-03T07:12:00.000-07:00

The theory of attachment was originally developed by John Bowlby (1907 - 1990), a British psychoanalyst who was attempting to understand the intense distress experienced by infants who had been separated from their parents. Bowlby observed that separated infants would go to extraordinary lengths (e.g., crying, clinging, frantically searching) to either prevent separation from their parents or to reestablish proximity to a missing parent. At the time, psychoanalytic writers held that these expressions were manifestations of immature defense mechanisms that were operating to repress emotional pain, but Bowlby noted that such expressions are common to a wide variety of mammalian species, and speculated that these behaviors may serve an evolutionary function.

Drawing on ethological theory, Bowlby postulated that these attachment behaviors, such as crying and searching, were adaptive responses to separation from with a primary attachment figure--someone who provides support, protection, and care. Because human infants, like other mammalian infants, cannot feed or protect themselves, they are dependent upon the care and protection of "older and wiser" adults. Bowlby argued that, over the course of evolutionary history, infants who were able to maintain proximity to an attachment figure (i.e., by looking cute or by expressing in attachment behaviors) would be more likely to survive to a reproductive age. According to Bowlby attachment, a motivational-control system, what he called the attachment behavioral system, was gradually "designed" by natural selection to regulate proximity to an attachment figure.

Background: Bowlby Attachment theories

The attachment behavior system is an important concept in attachment theory because it provides the conceptual linkage between ethological models of human development and modern theories on emotion regulation and personality. According to Bowlby, the attachment system essentially "asks" the following fundamental question: Is the attachment figure nearby, accessible, and attentive? If the child perceives the answer to this question to be "yes," he or she feels loved, secure, and confident, and, behaviorally, is likely to explore his or her environment, play with others, and be sociable. If, however, the child perceives the answer to this question to be "no," the child experiences anxiety and, behaviorally, is likely to exhibit attachment behaviors ranging from simple visual searching on the low extreme to active following and vocal signaling on the other (see Figure 1). These behaviors continue until either the child is able to reestablish a desirable level of physical or psychological proximity to the attachment figure, or until the child "wears down," as may happen in the context of a prolonged separation or loss. In such cases or helplessness, Bowlby believed the child experiences despair and depression.

Individual Differences in Infant Attachment Patterns

Although Bowlby believed that the basic dynamics described above captured the normative dynamics of the attachment behavioral system, he recognized that there are individual differences in the way children appraise the accessibility of the attachment figure and how they regulate their attachment behavior in response to a threat. However, it wasn't until his colleague, Mary Ainsworth, began to systematically study infant-parent separations that a formal understanding of these individual differences was articulated. Ainsworth and her students developed a technique called the strange situation--a laboratory paradigm for studying infant-parent attachment. In the strange situation, 12-month-old infants and their parents are brought to the laboratory and, systematically, separated and reunited. In the strange situation, most children (i.e., about 60%) behave in the way implied by Bowlby's "normative" theory. They become upset when the parent leaves the room, but, when he or she returns, they actively seek the parent and are easily comforted by him or her. Children who exhibit this pattern of behavior are often called secure. Other children (about 20% or less) are ill-at-ease initially, and, upon separation, become extremely distressed. Importantly, when reunited with their parents, these children have a difficult time being soothed, and often exhibit conflicting behaviors that suggest they want to be comforted, but that they also want to "punish" the parent for leaving. These children are often called anxious-resistant. The third pattern of attachment that Ainsworth and her colleagues documented is called avoidant. Avoidant children (about 20%) don't appear too distressed by the separation, and, upon reunion, actively avoid seeking contact with their parent, sometimes turning their attention to play objects on

the laboratory floor. Ainsworth's work was important for at least three reasons. First, she provided one of the first empirical demonstrations of how attachment behavior is patterned in both safe and frightening contexts. Second, she provided the first empirical taxonomy of individual differences in infant attachment patterns. According to her research, at least three types of children exist: those who are secure in their relationship with their parents, those who are anxious-resistant, and those who are anxious-avoidant. Finally, she demonstrated that these individual differences were correlated with infant-parent interactions in the home during the first year of life. Children who appear secure in the strange situation, for example, tend to have parents who are responsive to their needs. Children who appear insecure in the strange situation (i.e., anxious-resistant or avoidant) often have parents who are insensitive to their needs, or inconsistent or rejecting in the care they provide.

Adult Romantic Relationships

Although Bowlby was primarily focused on understanding the nature of the infant-caregiver relationship, he believed that attachment characterized human experience from "the cradle to the grave." It was not until the mid-1980's, however, that researchers began to take seriously the possibility that attachment processes may play out in adulthood. Hazan and Shaver (1987) were two of the first researchers to explore Bowlby's ideas in the context of romantic relationships. According to Hazan and Shaver, the emotional bond that develops between adult romantic partners is partly a function of the same motivational system--the attachment behavioral system--that gives rise to the emotional bond between infants and their caregivers. Hazan and Shaver noted that infants and caregivers and adult romantic partners share the following features:

both feel safe when the other is nearby and responsive
both engage in close, intimate, bodily contact
both feel insecure when the other is inaccessible
both share discoveries with one another
both play with one another's facial features and exhibit a mutual fascination and preoccupation with one another
both engage in "baby talk"

On the basis of these parallels, Hazan and Shaver argued that adult romantic relationships, like infant-caregiver relationships, are attachments, and that romantic love is a property of the attachment behavioral system, as well as the motivational systems that give rise to caregiving and sexuality.

Three Implications of Adult Attachment Theory

The idea that romantic relationships may be attachment relationships has had a profound influence on modern research on close relationships. There are at least three critical implications of this idea. First, if adult romantic relationships are attachment relationships, then we should observe the same kinds of individual differences in adult relationships that Ainsworth observed in infant-caregiver relationships. We may expect some adults, for example, to be secure in their relationships--to feel confident that their partners will be there for them when needed, and open to depending on others and having others depend on them. We should expect other adults, in contrast, to be insecure in their relationships. For example, some insecure adults may be anxious-resistant: they worry that others may not love them completely, and be easily frustrated or angered when their attachment needs go unmet. Others may be avoidant: they may appear not to care too much about close relationships, and may prefer not to be too dependent upon other people or to have others be too dependent upon them.

Second, if adult romantic relationships are attachment relationships, then the way adult relationships "work" should be similar to the way infant-caregiver relationships work. In other words, the same kinds of factors that facilitate exploration in children (i.e., having a responsive caregiver) should facilitate exploration among adults (i.e., having a responsive partner). The kinds of things that make an attachment figure "desirable" for infants (i.e., responsiveness, availability) are the kinds of factors we should find desirable in adult romantic partners. Importantly, individual differences in attachment should influence relational and personal functioning in adulthood in the same way they do in childhood.

Third, whether an adult is secure or insecure in his or her adult relationships may be a partial reflection of his or her attachment experiences in early childhood. Bowlby believed that the mental representations or working models (i.e., expectations, beliefs, "rules" or "scripts" for behaving and thinking) that a child holds regarding relationships are a function of his or her caregiving experiences. For example, a secure child tends to believe that others will be there for him or her because previous experiences have led him or her to this conclusion. Once a child has developed such expectations, he or she will tend to seek out relational experiences that are consistent with those expectations and perceive others in a way that is colored by those beliefs. According to Bowlby, this kind of process should promote continuity in attachment patterns over the life course, although it is possible that a person's attachment pattern will change if his or her relational experiences are inconsistent with his or her expectations. In short, if we assume that adult relationships are attachment relationships, it is possible that children who are secure as children will grow up to be secure in their romantic relationships.

In the sections below I briefly address these three implications in light of early and contemporary research on adult attachment.

Do We Observe the Same Kinds of Attachment Patterns Among Adults that We Observe Among Children?

The earliest research on adult attachment involved studying the association between individual differences in adult attachment and the way people think about their relationships and their memories for what their relationships with their parents are like. Hazan and Shaver (1987) developed a simple questionnaire to measure these individual differences. (These individual differences are often referred to as attachment styles, attachment patterns, attachment orientations, or differences in the organization of the attachment system.) In short, Hazan and Shaver asked research subjects to read the three paragraphs listed below, and indicate which paragraph best characterized the way they think, feel, and behave in close relationships:

A. I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others; I find it difficult to trust them completely, difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close, and often, others want me to be more intimate than I feel comfortable being.

B. I find it relatively easy to get close to others and

am comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me. I don't worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me.

C. I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn't really love me or won't want to stay with me. I want to get very close to my partner, and this sometimes scares people away.

Based on this three category measure, Hazan and Shaver found that the distribution of categories was similar to that observed in infancy. In other words, about 60% of adults classified themselves as secure (paragraph B), about 20% described

themselves as avoidant (paragraph A), and about 20% described themselves as anxious-resistant (paragraph C). Although this measure served as a useful way to study the association between attachment styles and relationship functioning, it didn't allow a full test of the hypothesis that the same kinds of individual differences observed in infants might be manifest among adults. (In many ways, the Hazan and Shaver measure assumed this to be true.) Subsequent research has explored this hypothesis in a variety of ways. For example, Kelly Brennan and her colleagues collected a number of statements (e.g., "I believe that others will be there for me when I need them") and studied the way these statements "hang together" statistically (Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998). Brennan's findings suggested that there are two fundamental dimensions with respect to adult attachment patterns (see Figure 2). One critical variable has been labeled attachment-related anxiety. People who score high on this variable tend to worry whether their partner is available, responsive, attentive, etc. People who score on the low end of this variable are more secure in the perceived responsiveness of their partners. The other critical variable is called attachment-related avoidance. People on the high end of this dimension prefer not to rely on others or open up to others.

People on the high end of this dimension prefer not to rely on others or open up to others. People on the low end of this dimension are more comfortable being intimate with others and are more secure depending upon and having others depend upon them. A prototypical secure adult is low on both of these dimensions.

Brennan's findings are critical because recent analyses of the statistical patterning of behavior among infants in the strange situation reveal two functionally similar dimensions: one that captures variability in the anxiety and resistance of the child and another that captures variability in the child's willingness to use the parent as a safe haven for support (see Fraley & Spieker, 2003a, 2003b). Functionally, these dimensions are similar to the two-dimensions uncovered among adults, suggesting that similar patterns of attachment exist at different points in the life span.

In light of Brennan's findings, as well as taxometric research published by Fraley and Waller (1998), most researchers currently conceptualize and measure individual differences in attachment dimensionally rather than categorically. The most popular measures of adult attachment style are Brennan, Clark, and Shaver's (1998) ECR and Fraley, Waller, and Brennan's (2000) ECR-R--a revised version of the ECR. [Click here to take an on-line quiz designed to determine your attachment style based on these two dimensions.] Both of these self-report instruments provide continuous scores on the two dimensions of attachment-related anxiety and avoidance.

Do Adult Romantic Relationships "Work" in the Same Way that Infant-Caregiver Relationships Work?

There is now an increasing amount of research that suggests that adult romantic relationships function in the same ways as infant-caregiver relationships, with some noteworthy exceptions, of course. Naturalistic research on adults separating from their partners at an airport demonstrated that behaviors indicative of attachment-related protest and caregiving were evident, and that the regulation of these behaviors was associated with attachment style (Fraley & Shaver, 1998). For example, while separating couples generally showed more attachment behavior than nonseparating couples, highly avoidant adults showed much less attachment behavior than less avoidant adults. In the sections below I discuss some of the parallels that have been discovered between the way that infant-caregiver relationships and adult romantic relationships function.

Partner selection

Cross-cultural studies suggest that the secure pattern of attachment in infancy is universally considered the most desirable pattern by mothers (see van IJzendoorn & Sagi, 1999). For obvious reasons there is no similar study asking infants if they would prefer a security-inducing attachment figure. Adults seeking long-term relationships identify responsive caregiving qualities, such as attentiveness, warmth, and sensitivity, as most "attractive" in potential dating partners (Zeifman & Hazan, 1997). Despite the attractiveness of secure qualities, however, not all adults are paired with secure partners. Some evidence suggests that people end up in relationships with partners who confirm their existing beliefs about attachment relationships (Frazier et al., 1997).

Secure base and safe haven behavior

In infancy, secure infants tend to be the most well adjusted, in the sense that they are relatively resilient, they get along with their peers and are well liked. Similar kinds of patterns have emerged in research on adult attachment. Overall, secure adults tend to be more satisfied in their relationships than insecure adults. Their relationships are characterized by greater longevity, trust, commitment, and interdependence (e.g., Feeney, Noller, & Callan, 1994), and they are more likely to use romantic partners as a secure base from which to explore the world (e.g., Fraley & Davis, 1997). A large proportion of research on adult attachment has been devoted to uncovering the behavioral and psychological mechanisms that promote security and secure base behavior in adults. There have been two major discoveries thus far. First and in accordance with attachment theory, secure adults are more likely than insecure adults to seek support from their partners when distressed. Furthermore, they are more likely to provide support to their distressed partners (e.g., Simpson et al., 1992). Second, the attributions that insecure individuals make concerning their partner's behavior during and following relational conflicts exacerbate, rather than alleviate, their insecurities (e.g., Simpson et al., 1996).

Avoidant Attachment and Defense Mechanisms

According to attachment theory, children differ in the kinds of strategies they adopt to regulate attachment-related anxiety. Following a separation and reunion, for example, some insecure children approach their parents, but with ambivalence and resistance, whereas others withdraw from their parents, apparently minimizing attachment-related feelings and behavior. One of the big questions in the study of infant attachment is whether children who withdraw from their parents--avoidant children--are truly less distressed or whether their defensive behavior is a cover-up for their true feelings of vulnerability. Research that has measured the attentional capacity of children, heart rate, or stress hormone levels suggests that avoidant children are distressed by the separation despite the fact that they come across in a cool, defensive manner.

Recent research on adult attachment has revealed some interesting complexities concerning the relationships between avoidance and defense. Although some avoidant adults, often called fearfully-avoidant adults, are poorly adjusted despite their defensive nature, others, often called dismissing-avoidant adults, are able to use defensive strategies in an adaptive way. For example, in an experimental task in which adults were instructed to discuss losing their partner, Fraley and Shaver (1997) found that dismissing individuals (i.e., individuals who are high on the dimension of attachment-related avoidance but low on the dimension of attachment-related anxiety) were just as physiologically distressed (as assessed by skin conductance measures) as other individuals. When instructed to suppress their thoughts and feelings, however, dismissing individuals were able to do so effectively. That is, they could deactivate their physiological arousal to some degree and minimize the attention they paid to attachment-related thoughts. Fearfully-avoidant individuals were not as successful in suppressing their emotions.

Are Attachment Patterns Stable from Infancy to Adulthood?

Perhaps the most provocative and controversial implication of adult attachment theory is that a person's attachment style as an adult is shaped by his or her interactions with parental attachment figures. Although the idea that early attachment experiences might have an influence on attachment style in romantic relationships is relatively uncontroversial, hypotheses about the source and degree of overlap between the two kinds of attachment orientations have been controversial.

There are at least two issues involved in considering the question of stability: (a) How much similarity is there between the security people experience with different people in their lives (e.g., mothers, fathers, romantic partners)? and (b) With respect to any one of these relationships, how stable is security over time?

With respect to this first issue, it appears that there is a modest degree of overlap between how secure people feel with their mothers, for example, and how secure they feel with their romantic partners. Fraley, for example, collected self-report measures of one's current attachment style with a significant parental figure and a current romantic partner and found correlations ranging between approximately .20 to .50 (i.e., small to moderate) between the two kinds of attachment relationships. [Click here to take an on-line quiz designed to assess the similarity between your attachment styles with different people in your life.]

With respect to the second issue, the stability of one's attachment to one's parents appears to be equal to a correlation of about .25 to .39 (Fraley, 2002). There is only one longitudinal study of which we are aware that assessed the link between security at age 1 in the strange situation and security of the same people 20 years later in their adult romantic relationships. This unpublished study uncovered a correlation of .17 between these two variables (Steele, Waters, Crowell, & Treboux, 1998).

The association between early attachment experiences and adult attachment styles has also been examined in retrospective studies. Hazan and Shaver (1987) found that adults who were secure in their romantic relationships were more likely to recall their childhood relationships with parents as being affectionate, caring, and accepting (see also Feeney & Noller, 1990).

Based on these kinds of studies, it seems likely that attachment styles in the child-parent domain and attachment styles in the romantic relationship domain are only moderately related at best. What are the implications of such findings for adult attachment theory? According to some writers, the most important proposition of the theory is that the attachment system, a system originally adapted for the ecology of infancy, continues to influence behavior, thought, and feeling in adulthood (see Fraley & Shaver, 2000). This proposition may hold regardless of whether individual differences in the way the system is organized remain stable over a decade or more, and stable across different kinds of intimate relationships.

Although the social and cognitive mechanisms invoked by attachment theorists imply that stability in attachment style may be the rule rather than the exception, these basic mechanisms can predict either long-run continuity or discontinuity, depending on the precise ways in which they are conceptualized (Fraley, 2002). Fraley (2002) discussed two models of continuity derived from attachment theory that make different predictions about long-term continuity even though they were derived from the same basic theoretical principles. Each model assumes that individual differences in attachment representations are shaped by variation in experiences with caregivers in early childhood, and that, in turn, these early representations shape the quality of the individual's subsequent attachment experiences. However, one model assumes that existing representations are updated and revised in light of new experiences such that older representations are eventually "overwritten." Mathematical analyses revealed that this model predicts that the long-term stability of individual differences will approach zero. The second model is similar to the first, but makes the additional assumption that representational models developed in the first year of life are preserved (i.e., they are not overwritten) and continue to influence relational behavior throughout the life course. Analyses of this model revealed that long-term stability can approach a non-zero limiting value. The important point here is that the principles of attachment theory can be used to derive developmental models that make strikingly different predictions about the long-term stability of individual differences. In light of this finding, the existence of long-term stability of individual differences should be considered an empirical question rather than an assumption of the theory.

How People

2008-08-02T12:17:00.000-07:00

Perceive Oneself

We have a concept of our own selves. What we are really like and why we do what we do? And how people form self concept? ‘’ I am a certain kind of person with such capacities, value beliefs, and attitudes behavior’’, even if we sometimes sugar coat those capacities with a layer of self-serving bias. But how do such human concept arise in the first place.

Human concept

One crucial element is some reference to other people. It is obvious that there can be no full-fledged ‘’I’’ without a ‘’you’’ or a ‘’they’’, for the human concept is a undoubtedly social concept. According to many authors, the child begins to see herself through the eyes of the important figures in her world and thus acquires the idea that she is a person. As the social interactions become more complex, more and more details are added to the self picture. In effect, the child sees herself through the mirror of the opinions and expectations of those others (mothers, fathers, siblings, friends) who matter to her. Her later behavior cannot help but be shaped by this early self theory‘’looking glass self’’. example of such birth, roles defined by race, gender, ethnicity, and so on.

Self perception and attribution

According to the self theory ‘’looking glass theory’’. we learn who we are by finding out through others, by noting how they treat us, how they react to us, and what they expect from us. But isn’t there a more direct methods? Can’t we discover who we are and what we feel simply by observing ourselves? According to some authors the answer is no. In their view, our self concept are attained through an attribution process no different from the one we use to form conception of other people. The advocates of this self perception theory maintain that, contrary to common sense belief, we do no know our own self directly. In their view, self concept ( self knowledge) can only be achieved indirectly, through the same attempts to find consistencies, discount irrelevancies, and interpret observations that help us to understand other people.

In the movie Donnie Brasco, an undercover FBI agent infiltrate the mob. As his involvement deepens, he grows uncertain of his own allegiance

One line of evidence concerns the relation between attitudes and behavior. Common sense argues that attitudes cause behavior, that our own attitudes behavior actions stem from our feeling and our values beliefs. To some extends, this is undoubtedly true. Those in favor of a strong military are likely to join a rally demanding cuts in the defense budget. But under some circumstances, the cause and effect relation is reverse. Some times our feelings or value beliefs are the results of our actions.

A demonstration comes from foot-in-the-door technique, originally perfected by traveling sale men. In one study, suburban homeowners were asked to comply with an innocuous request, to put a three inch square sign advocating auto safety in a window of their homes. Two weeks later, another experimenter came to visit those homeowners who had agreed to display the small sign. This time they were asked to grant a much greater request, to permit the installation of an enormous billboard on their front lawns, proclaiming ‘’Drive Carefully’’ in huge letters while obstructing most of the house. The results showed that agreement depended upon prior agreement. Once having complied with the first, small request, the homeowners were much more likely to give in to the greater one.

The foot-in-the-door and the environment
The foot-in-the-door effect can start at an early age. The photo shows young children induced to do their bit for environment. Whether the cans they collect now make much of a difference matters less than that those acts are likely to lead to greater efforts in the future, as the children come to think of themselves as environmentalist.

One interpretation of this and similar findings is a change in self perception. Having agreed to put small sign, the homeowners now thought of themselves as active citizens involved in a public issue. Since no one forced them to put up the sign, they attributed their action to their own convictions. Given that they now thought of themselves as active, convinced, and involved, they were ready to play the part on a larger scale. Fortunately for their less involved neighbors, the billboard was in fact never installed after all, the request was only part of an experiment. But in real life we may not be let off so easily. The foot-in-the-door approach is a common device for persuading the initial uncommitted; it can be used to peddle encyclopedias or harden political convictions. Extremist political movements generally do not demand violent actions from newcomers. They begin with small request like signing a petition or giving a distinctive salute. But these may lead to a change self perception that ultimately may ready the person for more drastic acts

This line of argument may have some bearing on our understanding of how social systems function. The social world cast people in different roles that prescribe particular sets of behaviors; representatives of labor and management will obviously take different positions at the bargaining table. But the roles determine attitudes behavior. If one acts like a union representative, one starts to feel like one. The same holds for the corporate executive. This point has been verified in a study of factory workers both before and after they were elected union steward or promoted to foreman. As one might have expected, the newly elected union stewards become more pro-union; the newly promoted foreman become more pro-management.

What is Today

2008-07-30T16:54:00.000-07:00

Problems

The pressure of having to solve a problem may be overwhelming. Because we must search for a solution to a problem we have solved before. This search is far from random; it proceeds with constant reference to two anchors: the current situation on the one hand, and the goal on the other hand. Consider a taxi driver who is trying to choose the best route to the airport. His thoughts are guided both by his current location and by thoughts about his destination. Perhaps the taxi is close to the freeway, but this isn’t enough to direct the driver toward the highway’s on ramp. Instead, he is likely to ask ‘’ will this path bring me where I want to go? If the highway heads in the wrong direction, or if the driver remembers some road construction along that route, he is likely to seek an alternative path. This process of checking current options against one’s goal is a central part of problem solving. In fact, some researchers argue that a crucial strategy for problem solving is a means-end analysis in which one ask over and over as the problem solving proceeds, ‘’how can I use the means now available to me to get closer to my goals?

Hierarchical Organization

Problem solving is not merely goal directed, it is also hierarchical: the effort to solve one problem often creates sub problems, so that one needs to reach certain subgoals on the way towards achieving the main goal, and here too, means-end analysis is helpful:

For example: I want to get to the store. What is the difference between my current state and my goal? One of distance. What changes distance? My auto, my auto won’t work. What is needed to make it work? A new battery…….. In this case, the initial problem (getting to the store) is replaced by a series of sub problems (e.g. getting the car to work). By solving these, one at a time, the large problem gets dealt with.

Working Backward

One useful method for solving problem is to work backward, starting with the goal or final state and seeking a path toward the starting pint.

Finding An Appropriate Analogy

Another suggestion for solving difficult problems is to work by analogy, since many problems are similar to each other. For example: a school counselor is likely to find that the problem he hears about today reminds him of one he heard a few months back, and his experience with the first can help with the second.

Creative thinking

The restructuring of a problem also plays an important role in those special discoveries we consider creative. In general, scholars call the solution to a problem creative if that solution is both new and valuable or useful. Creative is of course evidence in the scientific of Marie Curie, the artistic innovation of Martha Graham, or the literary achievements of Toni Morrison. What leads to those creative achievements? Many factors contribute, but one pattern figure prominently in reports by the creators themselves when they describe how their insight or discoveries arose. In case after case, these accounts indicate that critical insights arrive rather abruptly, typically at unexpected times and place. Often, the thinker has been working steadily on the problem for some tie but making relatively little progress. She then set the problem aside in order to rest or to engage in some other activity. It is during this other activity that the insight emerges. This pattern has often been attributed to a process of incubation. The idea here is that the thinker believes she has set the problem aside but is actually continuing to think about it unconsciously. Some authors have suggested that this unconscious incubation is usually more creative and less constrained than conscious thought, and this is why solution to vexing problems so often appears during the periods when, on the surface, the thinker is paying attention to some altogether different matter.

How To Solve It

2008-07-30T09:15:00.000-07:00

Problem Of Obesity And Its Treatment

The seriousness of the problem has led to several attempts at remedying it. No year goes by without some faddist dietary regime topping the bestseller list recommending the adoption of eccentric eating habit. However, there are some psychological intervention that have successfully helped the weight management of the obese, although, the drawback of the psychological interventions is that obese people do not maintain their reduction regime.

Interventions are recommended when a person has a serious BMI statistic and a risk of developing ill health. For people with a BMI of below 27kg/m2, clinicians recommend an increase in physical activity and a decrease in fact and sugar intake, coupled self-directed efforts to maintain weight loss and the taking of a doctor’s advice. For people with higher BMIs, the same intervention may be implemented but if this does not work, more dramatic measures may be adopted such as drugs or, for those with a BMI in excess of 40kg/m2, surgery ( this is called bariatric surgery). The side affects of surgery are considerable, but weight loss is produced more efficiently.

Initial success at weight loss depends on the goals of the person losing weight. First, people need to be motivated to lose weight. Secondly, they need to realise that weight reduction programs are designed for health rather than aesthetic reasons. For example, until recently, interventions were guided towards helping people achieve their ideal weight ( rather than a weight which would reduce the risk of ill health), current emphasis, however, is on reducing health complication and so a loss of 5-15% can be effective in producing this reduction, even though the patient/client may not be happy with having lost so little weight and expect a weight loss of 20-35%. One study which reported that weight reduction of 7kg/m2 combined with 150 minutes exercise a week reduced the likelihood of developing diabetes by 58%.

Psychological interventions

Obese people clearly have difficult in restricting their food intake. This difficulty is decreased during holiday periods which the overweight regard as high risk period because of family celebrations or national holiday celebrations. One way in which this difficulty could be relieved is by self monitoring, the act of closely observing what is eaten and when and in which contexts. Boutelle et.al (1999) examined the effect of self monitoring during this high risk holiday period in group of overweight individuals on a weight loss program. Forty-nine obese people who had been on the program for at least a month, were know to self monitor rarely and who were willing to be contacted in a two eek holiday period (Xmas and New Year) took part in the study. Self monitoring took form of examining food intake and taking weight measurements daily.

Two groups (intervention group and non intervention group) were observed and both groups were encouraged to do this basic level of self monitoring. However, the intervention group also received daily mailing from the researchers as well as one or two phone calls in each week in two week period reminding them to self monitor. Those in the intervention group not only self monitored more frequently but also managed their weight more effectively than did those in the non intervention group. Both group had difficult in managing their weight. However, those in the self monitoring group lost more weight and there was a strong associate between self monitoring and weight loss. The difficulty is maintaining weight loss is one of the most serious problems obese people face. Studies of 20 week intervention programs, such as the one described, have found that people can lose up to 9kg( around 9% of body weight) but when the intervention stops, people can regain as much one third of their weight in the following 12 months.

Clinicians, therefore, have focused their attention on how to achieve the maintenance of weight loss. This can be done by creative detailed behavioural plan for the client to follow, as well as by controlling the portions of food that client eats. Replacing normal meals and snacks with portion controlled meals, for example, can lead 8% reduction in weight over a sustained period of dietary regime control. The longer the intervention, the greater the weight loss, but most of the loss is seen in the first six month. The greater predictor of whether people maintain their loss is their ability to engage in physical activity. Those who do, tend to maintain their weight loss programs. Those who exercise at home are more successful at maintenance that is those who attend gyms or leisure center.

How To Do Things

2008-07-29T09:21:00.000-07:00

Behavior does not occur in a vacuum. Sometimes a response will have certain consequences; sometimes it will not. Our daily behavior is guided by many different kinds of discriminative stimuli, which indicate that behavior will have certain consequences and thus set the occasion for responding.

For example, consider answering the telephone. The phone rings, you pick it up and say hello into the receiver. Most of the time, someone on the other end of the line begins to speak.

Have you ever picked up a telephone when it was not ringing and said ‘’hallo’’? Doing so would be absurd, because there would be no one on the other end of the line. We answer the phone (make response) only when the phone rings (the preceding event) because, in the past, someone with whom we enjoy talking has been at the other end of the line (the following event). Skinner referred formally to the relationship among these three items: the preceding event, the response, and the following event.

The preceding event, the discriminative stimulus sets the occasion for respond for responding because, in the past, when that stimulus occurred, the response was followed by certain consequences. If the phone rings we are likely to answer it because we have learned that doing so has particular (and generally favourable) consequences. The response we make in this case, ‘’picking up the phone when the phone ring and saying hallo’’ is called an operant behavior. The following event- the voice on the other end of the line is the consequence of the operant behavior

Operant behavior, therefore, occurs in the presence of discriminative stimuli and is followed by certain consequences. These consequences are contingent upon behavior that is they are produced by that behavior. In the presence of discriminative stimuli, a consequence will occur if and only if an operant behavior occurs. In the absence of a discriminative stimulus, the operant behavior will have no effect. Once an aperant behavior is established, it tends to persist whenever the discriminative stimulus occurs, even if other aspects of the environment change. Of course, motivational factors can affect a response. For example, you might not bother to answer the telephone if you are doing something you do not want to interrupt.

Normally, we learn about the consequences of our behavior or about stimuli that direct affect us. We can also learn by a less direct method: observing the behavior of others. Evidence suggests that imitation does seem to be an innate tendency. Classically conditioned behavior, as well as operantly conditioned behaviors, can be acquired through observation, suppose that a young girl sees her mother show sign of fear whenever she encounters a dog. The girl herself will likely develop a fear of dogs, even if she never sees another one. In fact, Bandura and Menlove (1968) reported that children who were afraid of animals, in this case dogs could not remember having had unpleasant direct experiences with them. We tend to imitate, and feel the emotional responses of people we observe. In fact, there is strong evidence that imitating the behavior of other people may be reinforcing itself.

Let’s take another example bullies

We know that bullies are aware of the power of manipulation, because in the past he bullied someone and go response (power against his victim) usually repeated act against their victims.

As a nation

Do we encourage bullies? Yes or No

Who To

2008-07-28T11:16:00.000-07:00

Avoid & Love?

Understand the nature of attachment between infants and carers

Normally, the first adults with whom infants interact are their parents. In most cases, one parent serves as the primary carer. As many studies have shown, a close relationship called attachment is important for infant’s social development. Attachment is a social and emotional bond between infant and carer that spans both time and space. It involves both the warm feelings that the parent and child have for each other and the comfort and support they provide for each other, which becomes especially important during times of fear or stress. This interaction must work both ways, with each participant fulfilling certain needs of each other. Formation of a strong and durable bond depends on the behavior of both people in the relationship. According to theorist John Bowlby(1969), attachment is a part of many organisms’ native endowment. He and Mary Ainsworth have developed an approach that has succeeded in discovering some of the variables that influence attachment in humans.

Infant attachment

Newborn infants rely completely on their parents (or other carers) to supply them with nourishment, keep them warm and clean, and protect them from harm. To most parents, the role of primary carer is much more than a duty; it is a source of joy and satisfaction. Nearly all parents anticipate the birth of their children with expectation that they will love and cherish them. And when a child born, most of them do exactly that. As time goes on, and as parent and child interact, they become strongly attached to each other. What factors cause this attachment to occur? Evidence suggested that human infants are innately able to produce special behaviors that shape and control the behavior of their carers. As Bowlby( 1969) noted, the most important of these behaviors are sucking, cuddling, looking and crying.

Stranger anxiety and separation anxiety

For an infant, the world can be a frightening place. The presence of a primary caregiver provides a baby with considerable reassurance when they first become able to explore the environment. Although the unfamiliar environment produces fear, the caregiver provides a secure base that the infant can leave from time to time to see what the world is like.

Babies are born prepared to become attached to their primary caregiver, who is most cases is their mother. Attachment appears to be a behavior pattern that is necessary for normal development. However, although attachment appears to be an inherited disposition, infants do not have a natural inclination to become attached to any one specific adult. Rather, the person to whom the baby becomes attached is determined through learning; the individual who serves as the infant’s primary caregiver. Attachment partially reveals itself in two specific forms of infant behavior: stranger anxiety and separation anxiety.

Stranger anxiety, which is usually appears in infants between the ages 6 and 12 months, consists of wariness and sometimes fearful responses, such as crying and clinging to their carers, that infants exhibit in the presence of strangers. Male strangers generate the most anxiety in infants. Child strangers generate the least anxiety in infants, while female strangers generate an intermediate amount of anxiety. Stranger anxiety can be reduce and even eliminated under certain conditions. For example, if the infant is in familiar surroundings with its mother, and the mother acts in friendly manners towards the stranger, the infant is likely to be less anxious in the presence of the stranger than it would if the surroundings were unfamiliar or if the mother was unfriendly towards the strangers.

Separation anxiety is set of fearful responses, such as crying, arousal and clinging to the carer, which an infant exhibits when the carer attempts to leave the infant. Separation anxiety differs from stranger anxiety in two ways: time of emergence and the conditions under which the fear response occur. It first appears in infants when they are about 6 months old and generally peaks at about 15 months, a finding consistent among many cultures. Like stranger anxiety, separation anxiety can occur under different conditions with different degrees of intensity. For example, if an infant is used to being left in a certain environment, say a day-care centre, it may show little or no separation anxiety. The same holds true for situations in which the infant is left with sibling or other familiar person. However, if the same infant is left in an unfamiliar setting, it shows signs of distress. Some infants show ‘’disorganised’’ attachment behavior, that is they show conflicting behavior towards the carer. They may rush to the sounds of an opening door when hearing the carer about to enters a room and then run away when the carer enters; they may also adopt a ‘’frozen’’ or still posture when the carer is in the room. A longitudinal study of disorganized attachment behavior in 157 children ( studied from 24 months to 19 years), found that disorganized behavioral correlated with insensitive caring, living alone with infant, neglect, physical and psychological neglect and an intrusive caring lifestyle.

One measure of separation anxiety was devised by Ainsworth and her colleagues. They developed a test of attachment called the strange situation that consists of a series of eight episodes, during which baby is exposed of a various events that might cause some distress. The episodes involve the experimenter introducing the infant and the parent to a playroom and then leaving, the parent leaving and being reunited with the infant, or a stranger entering the playroom with and without the parent present. Each episode lasts for approximately three minutes. The strange situation test is based on the idea that if the attachment process has been successful, an infant should use its mother as a secure base from which to explore an unfamiliar environment. By noting the infant’s reactions to the stranger situation. Researchers can evaluate the nature of the attachment. The use of the stranger situation test has led Ainsworth and her colleagues to identify three patterns of attachment.

Secure attachment us the idea pattern: infant show a distinct preference for their mothers over strangers. Infants may cry when their carers leave, but stop as soon as they return.

Babies may also form two type of insecure attachment, which are resistance attachment and avoidance attachment

Resistance attachment shows tension in their relations with their carers. Infants stay close to their mother before the mother leaves but show both approach and avoidance behavior when the mother returns. Infants continue to cry for a while after their mother returns and may even push her away.

Infants also display avoidance attachment generally do not cry when they are left alone. When their mother returns, the infant are likely to avoid or ignore them. Those infants tend not to cling or cuddle when they are picked up.

Although infant’s personalities certainly affect the nature of their carers and hence the nature of their attachment, mother’s behavior appears to be the most important factor in establishing a secure or insecure attachment.

Mothers of securely attached infants tend to be those who respond promptly to their crying and who are adept at handling them and responding to their needs. The babies apparently learn that their mothers can be trusted to react sensitively and appropriately.

Mothers who do not modulate their responses according to their infant’s own behavior, who appear insensitive to their infant’s changing needs are most likely to foster avoidance attachment.

Mothers who are impatient with their infants and who seem more interested in their own activities than in interacting with their offspring tend to foster resistant attachment.

The nature of attachment between infants and carers appears to be related to children’s later social behavior. For example, Walter et al (1979) found that children who were securely attached at 15 months were among the most popular and the most sociable children in their nursery school 3 and half year of age. In contrast, insecure attached infants had difficulties with social adjustment later in childhood; they had poor social skills and tended to be hostile, impulsive and withdrawn

Attention: To all future parents

Announcing breakthrough sex selection discoveries that allow you to choose whether you have a boy or girl find out more

Autism

2008-07-27T05:38:00.000-07:00

Exploring Contemporary Psychology: Autism

Many psychologists have argued that young children must develop a "theory of mind," a set of interrelated concepts and beliefs that the child employs in order to make sense of her own behavior and that of others. This set of beliefs allows the child to understand the behavior of other people, and, to some extent, to predict how they'll act in the future.

What would happen, though, if a child failed to develop a theory of mind? Given the functions attributed to this theory, one might expect severe disruption in the child's capacity to communicate with others, to develop friendships, to respond appropriately to others' actions. This line of thinking leads directly to a prominent hypothesis about the nature of autism.

The specific symptoms of autism vary from case to case, but someone with autism will typically have difficulties in their social relations, their ability to communicate, and their pattern of imagination and play. In the social sphere, autistic children show a diverse array of difficulties, but it is common for a child with autism to seem entirely oblivious to others. In some cases, an autistic child actively seeks to avoid social contact. If they notice others at all, they seem completely disinterested in what those others might be doing or thinking.

Some autistic children are completely mute. Others speak, but in a flat monotone, with no accompanying gestures. Some simply echo what others say.

Children with autism also seem to have problems in imagination. They often show an inability to engage in pretend play — and so there are no dolls, no pretend parties, no stories. If an autistic child plays with toys at all, the play is often repetitive and unconventional — simply spinning one of the wheels on a toy car, for example, rather than driving it around the room.

Autism is also associated with mental retardation. Most individuals with autism have IQ scores below 80, but 25 percent have near-normal intelligence, and a small percentage actually seems gifted in specific areas.

In explanation of these symptoms, one proposal is that autistic children suffer from a particular form of brain damage, the result of which is that they do not develop the set of beliefs that we call a theory of mind. This leads directly to their inability to relate to others — since, without a theory of mind, they find the behavior of other people to be inexplicable, unpredictable, and constantly bewildering. This produces enormous difficulties in interacting with others, and the frustration that results may be what leads many autistic individuals simply to withdraw from the social world. In addition, with no capacity to understand others, it is unsurprising that the autistic individual has communication problems — and, with few interactions, little opportunity to develop language skills. Likewise, the imagination difficulties may also derive from the inability of children with autism to think about the thoughts or feelings of others — this is why they can't project thoughts onto a doll, as part of the normal process of pretend play.

Debate continues over whether this is the full account of autism. Autistic children do have severe difficulties with tasks specifically designed to assess the child's theory of mind, but further evidence suggests these children may have other problems as well. Hence we cannot regard the theory of mind explanation as a firmly-established claim. In the meantime, though, this account provides us with a powerful reminder of what can go wrong if a child lacks an adequate theory of mind, and with that, just how important a theory of mind is.

Early signs of the disorder include a failure to maintain eye-to-eye contact, to reach out the familiar persons, and to imitate. There are checklists available which enable parents to determined whether their child is exhibiting autistic tendencies and such checklist include Baron-Cohen checklist for autism in Toddlers (CHAT)

The CHAT
Checklist for parents to determine their child is exhibiting autism during the 18-month developmental check-up. Also consulate your General Practitioners or Health Visitors

Section A: Ask Yourself:

1. Does your child enjoy being swung, bounced on your knee, etc?
YES/NO

2. Does your child take an interest in other children?
YES/NO

3. Does your child like climbing on things, such as up stairs?
YES/NO

4. Does your child enjoy playing peek-a-boo/hide-and-seek?
YES/NO

5. Does your child ever PRETEND, for example, to make a cup of tea using a toy cup and teapot, or pretend other things?
YES/NO

6. Does your child ever use his/her index finger to point, to ASK for something?
YES/NO

7. Does your child ever use his/her index finger to point, to indicate INTEREST in something?
YES/NO

8. Can your child play properly with small toys (egg cars or bricks) without just mouthing, fiddling or dropping them?
YES/NO

9. Does your child ever bring objects over to you (parent) to SHOW you something?
YES/NO

Section B: GP or HV Observation:
I. During the appointment, has the child made eye contact with you?
YES/NO

ii. Get child's attention, then point across the room at an interesting object and say 'Oh look! There's a (name of toy!)' Watch child's face. Does the child look across to see what you are pointing at?
YES/NO*

iii. Get the child's attention, then give child a miniature toy cup and teapot and say 'Can you make a cup of tea? 'Does the child pretend to pour out tea, drink it, etc.?
YES/NO**

iv. Say to the child 'Where's the light?', or 'Show me the light'. Does the child point with his/her index finger at the light?
YES/NO***

v. Can the child build a tower of bricks? (If so how many?)
(Number of bricks:.............)
YES/NO

* (To record YES on this item, ensure the child has not simply looked at your hand, but has actually looked at the object you are pointing at.)

** (If you can elicit an example of pretending in some other game, score a YES on this item.)

*** (Repeat this with 'Where's the teddy?' or some other unreachable object, if child does not understand the word 'light'. To record YES on this item, the child must have looked up at your face around the time of pointing.) Copyright of MRC/SBC 1995

This test is is aim to identify those at risk of developing the disorder. Some researchers have also suggested that autism may be an inherited disorder because there is a high incidence of fragile X disorder in autistic children. Twin studies suggested higher concordance rate in identical than fraternal twins. Currently, however, there is no evidence that autism is a simple inherited disorder and there is no clear cut evidence. The outcome for autism is varied, some individuals develop little language whereas others are able to go on to full time education, get married and start family. The most important therapeutic intervention appears to involve intensive education aimed at changing the behavioural and communication problems. As such, most interventions are designed for use by parents and teachers who have greatest contact with
children. Medical interventions have also developed but these appears to be more effective in improving attention than eliminating all the characteristic of the disorder.

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How to diet: Help for dieters

2008-07-25T07:49:00.000-07:00

Dieting isn't easy. You need some help? We're here to help you with your weight loss. One reason that many people have so much difficulty losing weight is that metabolic factors appear to play an important role in obesity. In fact, a good case can be made that obesity is most often not an eating disorder but rather a metabolic disorder. Metabolism refers to the physiological process, including the production of energy from nutrients that take place within an organism. Just as cars differ in their fuel efficiency, so do people. Rose and William studied pairs of people who were matched for weight, height, age and activity. Some of these matched pairs differed by a factor of two in the number of calories they eat each day. People with an efficient metabolism have calories left over to deposit in the long term nutrient reservoir; thus, they have difficulty keeping the reservoir from growing. In contract, people with an inefficient metabolism can eat large meals without getting fat. Thus, a fuel efficient automobile is desirable; a fuel efficient body runs the risk of becoming obese.

Many people don’t know how to diet, they diet and then they relapse, thus undergoing large changes in body weight. Some investigators have suggested that starvation causes the body’s metabolism to become more efficient. For example:

Browel research on how to diet

He fed rats a diet that made them become obese and then restricted their food intake until their body weights returned to normal. Then they made the rats fat again and reduced their intake again. The second time, the rats become fat much faster and lost their weight much more slowly. Clearly, the experience of gaining and losing large amounts of body weight altered the animal’s metabolic efficiency. They also obtained evidence that the same phenomenon (called the yo-yo effect) take place in human. They measure the resting metabolic rate in two groups of adolescent wrestlers: those who fasted just before a competition and binged afterwards and those who did not. The investigators found that wrestlers who fasted and binged developed more efficient metabolism. Possibly, those people will have difficulty maintaining body weight as they get older

Gaol setting

Goal setting theories argue that goals ( e.g losing weight) must be specific, challenging and attainable. These are the most probable results that you will get if you will start to pursue a weight loss program. So, can you lose 10 pounds in a week’s time? Chances are, you won’t be able to … at least not in a healthy way. Do you think you can shed 3 pounds in a matter of 7 days? Commit most of your day to weight loss activities and this is very much possible.

Most weight loss programs can guarantee this much of a result. However, we’re talking about sustainable weight loss not quick fixes to the problem of being overweight. Very difficult or impossible tasks have demotivating affects, even when the reward is high. For example; Most quick loss diets will promise up to 10lb in the first week, which is more often that not merely loss of fluid rather than fat. But then next week will be losing 0.8kg per week. Indeed, excessive rewards may over arouse individuals, increasing their sense of responsibility and making them choke under pressure.

Intergrating expectancy and goals theories, social cognitve approaches to motivation, such as Dweck have examined the self fulfilling and self defeating effects of overconfident or under confident cognitions in educational setting. For example, believing that intelligent is fixed or entity will lead to lower motivation and efforts, whereas believing it is malleable or incremental have motivating effects, and in turn improve performance, same applies to losing weight

Long-term steady weight loss is safer, and likely to be more permanent. It has been found that an average of 2lb or 0.8kg per week is the optimum weight loss that will encourage changes in metabolic rate that, crucial, can be sustained. And don’t forget losing large amount of body weight alter the metabolic efficiency.

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For almost a month I was looking for a better weight loss program until I come across ‘’ better health and fitness’’ I was investigating the better health for 1 month, and I loved it some much that I suggested to friends and family. What I loved this program for what they offered me, customized exercise programs, dietary education, I loved this the most of all. Dieting didn’t felt like a chore, more like natural enjoyment. Lose weight safely and naturaly, no supplements, no pills, boost your ant-aging enzymes, secret to staying motivated, training and aerobic workout samples, how to avoid excess pounds, body fat percentage tabulator, tips, tricks and techniques, nutrition and healthy lifestyle practices, live 24/7 technical support. For everyone who want to lose weight safely and permanently, I would suggest the better health & fitness programs

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Csikszentmihalyi electronic beepers sound research

2008-07-24T09:24:00.000-07:00

Relations with parents Philip Larkin, in his poem ‘’this be the verse’’, one famously remarked, ‘’they fuck you up your mum and dad/ they mean to but they do/they fill you with faults they had/ And add some extra just for you’’. The relationship between adolescents and their parents can appear fractious. As adolescents and their begin to define their new roles and to assert them, they almost inevitably come into conflict with their parents. Adolescents and their parents tend to have similar values and attitudes towards important issues. Unless serious problems occur, family conflicts tend to be provoked by minor issues, such as messy rooms, loud music, clothes, curfews and household chores. These problems tend to Begin around the time of puberty; if puberty occurs particularly early or late, so does the conflicts.

Adolescence is said to be a time of turmoil, a period characterised by unhappiness, stress and confusion. Whereas a few adolescents are unhappy most of the time( and most are unhappy some of the time), studies have found that the vast majority of teenagers generally feel happy and self confident. But mood states do seem to be more variable during the teenage years that during other times of life. Csikszentmihalyi electronic beepers sound research randomly sampled the mood states of a group of teenage students. They gave them electronic beepers that sounded at random intervals that were, on average, two hours apart. Each time the beepers sounded, the students stopped what they were doing and filled out a questionnaire that asked what they were doing, how they felt, what they were thinking about, and so on. The investigators found that the students moods could swing from high to low and back again in the course of a few hours. The questionnaires also revealed conflicts between the participants and other family members. Although the subjects of the conflicts were usually trivial, they nevertheless concerned the teenagers deeply. As the authors noted:

Asking a boy who has spent many days practising a song on the guitar ‘ why are you playing that trash?’ might not mean much to the father, but it can be a great blow to the son. The so-called ‘growth pains’ of adolescence are no less real just because their causes appear to be without much substance to adults. In fact, this is exactly what the conflict is all about: what is to be taking seriously?

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Anorexia - Bulimia Home Treatment Program

When Karen Phillips daughter nearly died in hospital from Anorexia-Bulimia she was absolutely determined to find a cure for this dreadful disease. Now a few years later she is completely healthy - physically and emotionally

Understanding school violence: The relationship between the bully and the victim of a bully

2008-07-22T14:18:00.000-07:00

Until relatively recent, the topic of bullying of school children by other school children featured briefly, if at all, social or developmental psychology. Aggression by children has always been a topic mined by psychology, but within time the context of schooling it was largely ignored. In part of Europe, however, there has been considerable research on bullying in the workplace: why bullies do it and how they get away with it. This research promoted others to explore the incidence, cause and prevention of bullying in school and an extensive research now exists in countries such as Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden, the UK, and the USA.

How common is bullying?

The evidence of bullying in secondary schools is high and is regarded by children themselves as a common problem. According to nicolaides et.al(2002), bullying is a form of aggressive behavior that causes injury or distress to the individual to whom it is directed. This aggression can be physical ( actual bodily violence), verbal or psychological ( such as social exclusion). The relationship between the bully and the victim of a bully is also unequal: perceived power tends to reside with the bully and bullies usually repeated act against their victims. The victim of a bully, therefore, is likely to be bullied on more than one occasion.

In a survey of bullying in English schools, Whitney and smith (1993) reported the general incidence of bullying, who does the bullying and who become the victim. The study found that :

10-27% of children reported being the victim of bullying at some time during the school time

6-12% reported taking part in bullying at least once

Self reports of bullying and being bullied declined as the children grew older (from 8 to 16)

Boys were twice, and sometimes three, times as likely to be bullied as were girls.

35 % of bullies were spoken to by their teachers about their conduct

30-35 % of victim spoke to teachers about their being bullied

60% of children reported disliked bullying

20% of children indicated that they would be willing to join in with bullying

Transitional life events, social dominance and bullying
Some psychologist have suggested that bullying becomes more prevalent during early adolescence and during transitional periods in the children’s lives, for specific reasons. For example, aggression in early adolescence is viewed more positively by children’s peer than it is later in adolescent. According to Pellegrinin and long( 2002), certain factors promote an increase in aggression at this time. They point to the obvious physical changes that occur, especially in boys. Hormonal changes lead to body size increase, the beginning of a sexual interest in the opposite sex and the visible expression of secondary sexual characteristics which mark the onset of young adulthood,

The increase in body size, some researchers argue, leads to boys reviewing their position in their social group. One way of expressing this dominance is to use aggression, usually with the approval of peers. Also note that, in addiction to establishing social dominance, young adolescents also undergo a physical transition in their lives: moving school, this move appears to coincide with an increase in antisocial behaviour. In primary school, children are taught in well established, close, friendly group. The move to secondary school usually leads to the break-up of this close group and the child has to find new friends in a much bigger environment. Pellegrini and Long argue that if bullying is a way of establishing social dominance, the aggression should increase during this transition from primary to secondary school. Once the social group are established, the incidence of bullying should decrease.

To see if the patterns of bullying did change during this transition, the researchers followed 129 North American boys and girls from the final year in primary to the second year in secondary school. The researcher asked them about their bullying experiences, experiences of being the victim of bullying, and asked them to keep daily dairies in which they would record any example of bullying/being bullied. The teachers measured the degree of dominance and aggression they absorbed in the children and the children were also asked to record instances of bullying and cooperation they observe in their peers. Measures were taken at three points: the final year of primary and the first and second years of secondary school.

Bullying and aggression increased in the initial period but then decreased. Boys were more likely than girls to be bullied and more likely to view bullying and aggression positively in the early stage of adolescence. After the transition to middle school, aggression decreased and dominance in social groups increased, providing some indirect evidence for the hypothesis that aggression is used to establish dominance but once dominance is established aggression is unnecessary.

What makes a bully?

Are there personality characteristics that are specific to bullies? In an early study of teacher’s views of bullies and victims, the personalities of victims were well described but the characters of bullies less well described. The school bully is likely to cold, manipulative and very social adept. This is one reason why they are able to convince others to condone, endorse or join in with the bullying. To test whether bullies are sensitive to emotional and social events, Sutton et.al (1999) first administered a questionnaire to 193 English school children aged between 7 and 11 years to determined who were bullies, followers, defenders of the victim, victims, and who did not get involved in bullying. The children then participated in an experience in which they were read elven short stories and asked questions about these stories and asked question about these stories which relied on an awareness of social cognition and manipulation. For example, in one of the studies. Mike has stomach ache but knows that if his mother sees him in pain, he will not be allowed out to play. He asked his mother if he can. The participants were shown four pictures of mike’s face and asked:

1) which facial expression represents how he really feels ( the control question)

2) which facial expression he shows to his mother when he asked her if he can go out ( the experimental question)

The researchers found that bullies who initiated aggression were more accurate in answering social manipulation questions than were bullies who helped or supported the ringleader bullies, the victim, or the defenders. This finding suggests that the bully is not a social inept individual but one who is aware of the power of manipulation.

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Pro anorexic

2008-07-21T08:11:00.000-07:00

Eating disorders, which include pro anorexic and bulimia nervosa, are a common psychological illness characterized by exacerbated worry about food, body shape, and weight, and related physical symptoms. More that any other illness, pro anorexia is related to culture, economic, and social factors, being much more common in western industrialized countries that others. This is probably due to the current western stereotype of beauty. Which encourage women (and increasingly also men) to stay thin. Thus gender differences in eating disorders, a mental illness symptoms traditionally associated with women, have been reduced in the past 50 years or so.

The three major characteristic of pro anorexic are:

1) A serious and permanent concern about one’s body shape, weight, and thinness.

2) An active pursuit and maintenance (through vomiting, dieting, or laxatives) of low body weight

3) The absence of menstrual periods in females, indicating a disturbance of hormonal status.

Most pro anorexic individual started by dieting and can be objectively overweight initially, though their dieting efforts will persist after they have lost weight. Another common aspect is the experience low self-esteem. For instance after being bullied at school or breaking up with partners. In later phases of the illness, negative effects on relationships are typical, mostly driven by arguments about not eating.

Like anxiety disorders, pro anorexic may be associated with the experience of anxiety, in particular when pro anorexic individual fail to stop themselves from eating. Conversely, excessive concerns with food that successfully lead to a reduction of food intake will generate personal satisfaction and reduce anxiety. Pro anorexic individuals have been described as quiet, unassertive, anxious, and sexually inexperienced. They also tend to be ambitious and achievement-oriented, but have low self-estem. In any case this mere combination of personality attributes is not enough to predict illness.

Approximately 25% of pro anorexic individual will have long term difficulties, whilst the rest normally recover after one year of treatment. Long term symptoms may range from menstruation disorders in woman to infertility, starvation, and even suicide. It is also not uncommon for anorexic individual to develop bulimia nervosa before fully recovering. Unlike anorexia, bulimia is not associated with actual weight loss and abnormal body weight, but bulimic individuals are significantly more likely than the average person to indulge alcohol and drugs consumption. Again, a combination of both psychotherapy and psychopharmacological drugs constitutes the best treatment for eating disorders

Anorexia - Bulimia Home Treatment Program

The best way to treat Anorexia - Bulimia is at home with an individual program. This gives people a chance to control their behavior by themselves and not be dependent on a group or a therapist. When we realized this fact, pro anorexic individual start to improve.

Group therapy gives people a dependency on being in the group. They feel OK while they are in the group but loose all sense of self-control when they are at home.

Group therapy provides sufferers with a lot of friends who are also anorexic or bulimic. They get to understand each other very well and develop a "team spirit" attitude. If they get better they need to leave the group and stay on their own. Often they don't want to leave their friends so they stay the same.

Being in the group patients get too many negative ideas from each other. If a young woman has never heard of drinking ipecac to induce vomiting and learns this technique in group therapy, she may try the technique out herself, leaving the group leader or member feeling responsible.

In the group patients often deliberately get worse or engage in more symptoms just to get extra attention from each other or the therapist. This kind of competition always exists in eating disorder groups but on many different levels. Sometimes it can get out of control and cause a lot of harm to some members of the group, the most venerable ones.

Parents of sufferers often think that the doctors or the therapist know the best way to help. But the truth is that parents should be the first and most important people who can really truly help.

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Bowlby Attachment
According to Bowlby attachment earliest research on adult attachment involved studying the association between individual differences in adult attachment and the way people think about their relationships and their memories for what their relationships with their parents are like.

Stereotype:How parent explain science to boys more than they do to girls

2008-07-20T16:47:00.000-07:00

Where do children learn stereotype? Although a child’s peer group and teachers are important, parents play an especially important role in the development of sex stereotypes. For example, parent tend to encourage and reward their sons for playing with ‘’masculine’’ toys such as cars ans strucks and objects such as baseballs and footballs. Parents encourage boys to generate gross motor activity whereas they are more soothing and calming with baby girls.

Parents also tend to encourage and reward their daughters for engaging in ‘’feminine’’ activities that promote dependence, warmth and sensitive, such as playing house or hosting a make believe tea party. Parents who do not encourage or reward these kinds of stereotypical activity tend to have children whose attitudes and behaviour reflect fewer sex stereotypes

In supposedly ‘’ masculine’’ academic subjects, girls are perceived as performing less well than boys. Many reasons have been suggested for the discrepancy but one of the most frequently cited is socialization: that is, parents and teachers are more likely to engage boys in science and scientific explanations than they are girls.

In an ingenious experiment to test this hypothesis, Crowley et.al(2001) sought the permission of parents visiting a Californian children’s museum to film and record their interactions with their children as they made their way around the exhibitions. Data were collected from 298 interactions between mothers and fathers and their daughters and sons on 26 days over 30 months period. Conversations were rated according to whether they involved explanations, descriptions of or directions for exhibitions.

The researchers found that parents were more likely to explain exhibits to their sons than to their daughters. If the behavior of parents helps shape the behavior of their children, the researchers suggest that this disparity could have a significant effect on the child’s interest in and knowledge of science

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Self Actualized Part 3

2008-07-20T16:08:00.000-07:00

Self actualization means realizing one’s full potential.

The three key to self- actualization are: self and identity(part 1), self awareness( part 2) and self motives (part 3)

C) Self motives

What motivates the different ways that we may want to conceptualise ourselves? Research suggested that there are three general classes of motivations.

One motive is self-assessment

a desire to find out the truth about ourselves however disappointing or unfavourable the truth may be.

Another motive is self- verification

a desire to confirm what we already know about our self, by looking for self-consistent information.

The third motive us self-enhancement

a desire to find our favorable things about ourselves.

Between all of those general classes of motivations self- enhancement is the most important. Why? Because people have a formidable repertoire of strategies and techniques to construct or maintain a favourable self-concept.

* For example, they take credit for success but denial blame for failure,

* They forget failure feedback more readily than success feedback,

* They accept praise uncritically but receive criticism sceptically and dismiss it as being based on prejudice.

REMEMBER

* Most of the thoughts, feeling, and motives underlying behavior are unconscious or unknown to the individual. This means people are rarely aware of the true reasons they choose to behave as they do, and that there is often no choice at all. Instead, people are ''fooled'' by apparent motives.

* Unconscious and conscious motives operate in parallel, so that, in the same situation, an individual can be consciously motivated to do X( e.g hate, hit,remember) but unconsciously motivated to do Y (e.g love, kiss, forget)

* Individual, just like opening flower, have a naturall tendency toward personal improvement and self-actualization or self-realization.

* Actualization is the capacity to enhance the organism, gain autonomy and be self-sufficient. In simple term, to actualize oneself means to grow.

* If individual are unaware of their potential for self-actualization or find obstacles that stop them from unleashing this potential, psychologists can guide them and help them overcome obstacles.

* Self- actualized people tend to enjoy life and be happy, whereas failure to unleash one's potential for growth can lead to mental health problems

*Failure to self-actualize may also lead to state of reactance, which is the feeling that our freedom of choice has been taken away.

* Self-actualize leads to congruence between one's ideal self and one's actual self. Conversely, incongruity between one's aspirations and reality cause anxiety

Once we stop believing in our self, and become afraid of every circumstances. Then every affliction become a self fulfilling prophecy. The sooner you understand this concept and the self-discrepany theory concept. The closer you get to your way to better self improvement.

Self Actualized Part 2

2008-07-20T16:03:00.000-07:00

Self actualization means realizing one’s full potential.

The three key to self- actualization are: self and identity(part 1), self awarness( part 2) ans self motives (part 3)

B) Self-awareness

All this talk of self-concept may give the impression that people spend all their thinking about themselves. This is not the case. People are not consciously aware of themselves all the time. Self-awareness comes and goes for different reasons and with different consequences. Often we just get on with life without being particularly aware of ourselves, whereas at other times we can be totally self- absorbed or absolutely mortified about how other view us. Two psychologist believe that self-awareness is a state in which one is aware of oneself as an object.

Psychologist argues that self-awareness can have at least two foci:

The private self ( one’s private thoughts, feeling and attitudes)

The public self ( how others see you, your public image).

Hence, self-awareness can also be raised simply by being in the presence of other people, for example , going something that you hate doing, just to be part of social group.

Private self-awareness directs behavior at matching internal standard, whereas public self-awareness directs behavior at promoting an good impression. Being self-aware causes one’s to exert effort to try to adress any discrepany between one’s actual self and how one feels one would like to be or ought to be. According to self -discrepancy theory described above,

failure to resolve a discrepancy between the actual self and
the ideal self produces dejection-related emotions

Disappointment,

Dissatisfaction,

Sadness

whereas failure to resolve an actual ought discrepancy produce agitation-related emotions

anxiety

fear

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Self actualized

2008-07-20T15:52:00.001-07:00

Self actualization means realizing one’s full potential.

The three key to self- actualization are: self and identity(part 1), self awarness( part 2) ans self motives (part 3)

A) Self and Identity

Some of the most significant and influential schema (schema is a knowledge structure that guides individual expactations and beliefs, helps make sense of familiar situations) are those we have about ourselves. Knowlegde about ourself is very much like knowledge about other people.

If I asked who you are, how would you respond? You might tell me your name, that you are a student, or accountant, and perhaps that you are also athlete or have a part-time job. Alternative, you would tell me about your family, ethnic or religion.

There is many way you could describe yourself, all of which reflect your:

Self-concept,

Your knowledge,

Feelings,

Ideas about yourself.

In its totality, the self is a person’s distinct individuality. At the core of the self-concept is the self-schema. Social psychology believe that we have many different selves that can be more or less discrete and come into play in different contexts. The subjective experience of self is highly context dependant.Self not only decribe how we are, but also how we would like to be called possible selve. In 1987 two psychology took this idea further in their self-discrepany theory.

They distinguished between:

actual self ( how one really is)

idea self ( how one thinks one might to be),

ought self ( how one thinks one ought to be).

The latter two are self-guides which mobilise different types of self-related behavior.

* The ideal self engages ‘’promotional goals’’ - we strive towards achieving the ideal,

* whereas ought self engages ‘’prevent goals’’- we strive to avoid doing what we ought not to do.

How do we learn who we are- how do we form self-schemas?

Introspection is one way, but the overwhelmingly social nature of human existence means that we learn much more about ourself from how other treat us, and from how we think others view us.Research on self-fulfilling prophecies shows that

others’ expectation about us can change the way we behave.

Social impact can affect self-conception because, according to self-conception theory,

we often learn most about ourself by simply observing how we behave

If there is no obivious coercion to behave as we do, then we assume that the behaviour reflects the type of person we are.

Self Psychology

2008-07-20T15:38:00.000-07:00

We should always remember that there’s no such thing as ‘over night success’. Its always a wonderful feeling to hold on to the things that you already have now, realizing that those are just one of the things you once wished for.

A very nice quote says : “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

We are all here to learn our lessons. Our parents, school teachers, friends, colleagues, officemates, neighbors… they are our teachers. When we open our doors for self improvement, we increase our chances to head to the road of success.

NOW

How do you know if a person is willing to attain self improvement? This is a question with no definite answer. It will all depend on the individual.Many people have goals, dreams or ambitions but do not know how to go about achieving them. They may have thought about what would make up self improvement and their ideal life, but have no idea how to even begin to make the plans and take the actions required to make them a reality.

Some people have a vague idea on how to go about self improvement. These are the ones that believe that if only they had a better job, or had been given better opportunities, or met the love of their life, or whatever else, everything would be fine and they would be happy. They feel that their happiness or lack of happiness is decided by external factors and their thoughts and actions are of little consequence.

Some believe that if only they had more money they could have whatever they want and be on their way to self improvement. They may have spent little time thinking about what they actually want from life, and do not really believe there is anything they can do to create their fuzzy version of utopia anyway, apart from buying more lottery tickets.Other people do not even know what they actually want from their lives and may even have little idea what would really makes them happy. They seem to just drift from day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year, and do little more than just about get by.

They may have seemingly secure jobs and be earning enough to live relatively comfortable lives. They seem happy enough and have no great ambition to achieve anything more from their lives than they currently have.

Is attain self improvement important?

The reality is that throughout our lives we are all constantly growing and developing. Circumstances make us grow and develop, even if we do not make the conscious decision to do so.

Up to a certain age, we learn through formal education and we continue to learn through our experiences for the rest of our lives. We have to learn and grow to deal with everything that life throws at us. We all have to go through self improvement.
Modern life moves at a dramatically faster pace than at anytime in history. For anyone living in modern society there are more opportunities to do anything that you want to do with your life than ever before. A commitment to self improvement and personal growth may well be the deciding factor in how anyone’s future will turn out.

Religion and science have differing views on matters of the human spirit. Religion views people as spiritual beings temporarily living on Earth, while science views the spirit as just one dimension of an individual. Mastery of the self is a recurring theme in both Christian (Western) and Islamic (Eastern) teachings. The needs of the body are recognized but placed under the needs of the spirit. Beliefs, values, morality, rules, experiences, and good works provide the blueprint to ensure the growth of the spiritual being. In Psychology, realizing one’s full potential is to self-actualize. Maslow identified several human needs: physiological, security, belongingness, esteem, cognitive, aesthetic, self-actualization, and self-transcendence. James earlier categorized these needs into three: material, emotional, and spiritual. When you have satisfied the basic physiological and emotional needs, spiritual or existential needs come next. Achieving each need leads to the total development of the individual. Perhaps the difference between these two religions and psychology is the end of self-development: Christianity and Islam see that self-development is a means toward serving God, while psychology view that self-development is an end by itself.

In psychology, connectedness is a characteristic of self-transcendence, the highest human need according to Maslow. Recognizing your connection to all things makes you more humble and respectful of people, animals, plants, and things in nature. It makes you appreciate everything around you. It moves you to go beyond your comfort zone and reach out to other people, and become stewards of all other things around you. self psychology is a process thus to grow in spirit is a day-to-day encounter. We win some, we lose some, but the important thing is that we learn, and from this knowledge, further spiritual growth is made possible.

Self Improving

2008-07-20T15:31:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when all our doubts, fears and insecurities wrap ourselves up, we always come up with the idea of “I wish I was somebody else.” More often than not, we think and believe that someone or rather, most people are better than us.- when in reality,the fact is, most people are more scared than us.You spot a totally eye-catching girl sitting by herself at a party,casually sipping on a glass of Asti Spumanti. You think to yourself “she looks so perfectly calm and confident.”

But if you could read throught her transparent mind, you would see a bunch of clouds of thoughts and you might just be amazed that she’s thinking “are people talking about why I am seated here alone?... Why don’t guys find me attractive? …I don’t like my ankles, they look too skinny… I wish I was as intelligent as my best friend.” We look at a young business entrepreneur and say “Wooh… what else could he ask for?” He stares at himself at the mirror and murmur to himself, “I hate my big eyes… I wonder why my friends won’t talk to me… I hope mom and dad would still work things out.” Isn’t it funny? We look at other people, envy them for looking so outrageously perfect and wish we could trade places with them, while they look at us and thinks of the same thing.

We are insecure of other people who themselves are insecure of us. We suffer from low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence and lose hope in self improvement because we are enveloped in quiet desperation. So many people engage in self destructive behaviour, the people are not simple picking the wrong people, but they have self hatred, which could lead to being self-critical, sexual actiong out, eating disorder, talking negative about oneself and others, excessive shopping, and rejecting compliments.

Sometimes, you notice that you have an irritating habit like biting off your finger nails, having a foul mouth, and you – of all people, is the last to know. We all have our insecurities. Nobody is perfect. We always wish we had better things, better features, better body parts, etc. But life does not need to be perfect for people to be happy about themselves. Self improvement and loving yourself is not a matter of shouting to the whole world that you are perfect and you are the best. It’s the virtue of acceptance and contentment. When we begin to improve ourselves, we then begin to feel contented and happy.

But we are all terrified of changes, what ever those changes may be, why? Because we are afraid of doing something different, because it may get worse. Although we not satisfy with our current lifes, at least we knows how to cope with it.Imaging a woman married to a violent alcoholic man. Over time, this woman has learned how to cope with his violence.Everything that happens to us happens in purpose. And sometimes, one thing leads to another. Instead of locking yourself up in your cage of fears and crying over past heartaches, embarrassment and failures, treat them as your teachers and they will become your tools in both self improvement and success.

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Alienation Test

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Seligman's Theory

Abramson, Seligman, and Teasdale (1978)

Beck, Rush, Shaw, and Emery (1979)

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Background: Bowlby Attachment theories

Three Implications of Adult Attachment Theory

Do We Observe the Same Kinds of Attachment Patterns Among Adults that We Observe Among Children?

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How People

What is Today

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Attention: To all future parents

Announcing breakthrough sex selection discoveries that allow you to choose whether you have a boy or girl find out more

Autism

How to diet: Help for dieters

Csikszentmihalyi electronic beepers sound research

Anorexia - Bulimia Home Treatment Program

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