Week2

Our Lady of Fatima University

College of Nursing

NCM101 – Human Behavior

Interpersonal Theory

Karen Horney - investigated these neurotic needs, she began to recognize that they can be clustered into three broad coping strategies:

I. Compliance, which includes needs one, two, and three. She referred as the moving-toward strategy and the self-effacing solution.

II. Aggression, including needs four through eight. Referred to as moving-against and the expansive solution.

III. Withdrawal, including needs nine, ten, and three. called the third moving-away-from and the resigning solution.

The neurotic needs are as follows:

I. Compliance

1. The neurotic need for affection and approval, the indiscriminate need to please others and be liked by them.

2. The neurotic need for a partner, for someone who will take over one's life. This includes the idea that love will solve all of one's problems. Again, we all would like a partner to share life with, but the neurotic goes a step or two too far.

3. The neurotic need to restrict one's life to narrow borders, to be undemanding, satisfied with little, to be inconspicuous. Even this has its normal counterpart. Who hasn't felt the need to simplify life when it gets too stressful, to join a monastic order, disappear into routine, or to return to the womb?

II. Aggression

4. The neurotic need for power, for control over others, for a facade of omnipotence. We all seek strength, but the neurotic may be desperate for it. This is dominance for its own sake, often accompanied by a contempt for the weak and a strong belief in one's own rational powers.

5. The neurotic need to exploit others and get the better of them. In the ordinary person, this might be the need to have an effect, to have impact, to be heard. In the neurotic, it can become manipulation and the belief that people are there to be used. It may also involve a fear of being used, of looking stupid. You may have noticed that the people who love practical jokes more often than not cannot take being the butt of such a joke themselves!

6. The neurotic need for social recognition or prestige. We are social creatures, and sexual ones, and like to be appreciated. But these people are overwhelmingly concerned with appearances and popularity. They fear being ignored, be thought plain, "uncool," or "out of it."

7. The neurotic need for personal admiration. We need to be admired for inner qualities as well as outer ones. We need to feel important and valued. But some people are more desperate, and need to remind everyone of their importance -- "Nobody recognizes genius," "I'm the real power behind the scenes, you know," and so on. Their fear is of being thought nobodies, unimportant and meaningless.

8. The neurotic need for personal achievement. Again, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with achievement -- far from it! But some people are obsessed with it. They have to be number one at everything they do. Since this is, of course, quite a difficult task, you will find these people devaluing anything they cannot be number one in! If they are good runners, then the discus and the hammer are "side shows." If academic abilities are their strength, physical abilities are of no importance, and so on.

III. Withdrawal

9. The neurotic need for self-sufficiency and independence. We should all cultivate some autonomy, but some people feel that they shouldn't ever need anybody. They tend to refuse help and are often reluctant to commit to a relationship.

10. The neurotic need for perfection and unassailability. To become better and better at life and our special interests is hardly neurotic, but some people are driven to be perfect and scared of being flawed. They can't be caught making a mistake and need to be in control at all times.

It is true that some people who are abused or neglected as children suffer from neuroses as adults. What we often forget is that most do not. If you have a violent father, or a schizophrenic mother, or are sexually molested by a strange uncle, you may nevertheless have other family members that love you, take care of you, and work to protect you from further injury, and you will grow up to be a healthy, happy adult. It is even more true that the great majority of adult neurotics did not in fact suffer from childhood neglect or abuse! So the question becomes, if it is not neglect or abuse that causes neurosis, what does?

Horney's answer, which she called the "basic evil," is parental indifference, a lack of warmth and affection in childhood. Even occasional beatings or an early sexual experience can be overcome, if the child feels wanted and loved.

Self theory

3 Concepts of the Self:

1. actual self – consist of the sum total of experience

2. real self – is the harmonious healthy person

3. idealized self – neurotic expectation or glorified image of what the person feels he or she should be

Horney had one more way of looking at neurosis -- in terms of self images. For Horney, the self is the core of your being, your potential. If you were healthy, you would have an accurate conception of who you are, and you would then be free to realize that potential (self-realization).

The neurotic has a different view of things. The neurotics self is "split" into a despised self and an ideal self. Other theorists postulate a "looking-glass" self, the you think others see. If you look around and see (accurately or not) others despising you, then you take that inside you as what you assume is the real you. On the other hand, if you are lacking in some way, that implies there are certain ideals you should be living up to. You create an ideal self out of these "shoulds." Understand that the ideal self is not a positive goal; it is unrealistic and ultimately impossible. So the neurotic swings back and forth between hating themselves and pretending to be perfect.

Horney described this stretching between the despised and ideal selves as "the tyranny of the shoulds" and neurotic "striving for glory:"

The compliant person believes "I should be sweet, self-sacrificing, saintly."
The aggressive person says "I should be powerful, recognized, a winner."
The withdrawing person believes "I should be independent, aloof, perfect."

And while vacillating between these two impossible selves, the neurotic is alienated from their true core and prevented from actualizing their potentials.

Cognitive Theory:

Jean Piaget

Genetic Epistomology – development of knowledge

- study of the acquisition, modification and growth of abstract ideas & abilities on the basis of an inherited or biological substrate

Epigenesis – growth and development occur in series of stages

Adaptation – major process involved in cognitive organization.

- ability of the person to adjust to environment and adjust with it.

2 Complementary Process of Adaptation:

1. assimilation – taking new experiences through one’s own system or knowledge

2. accommodation – adjustment of owns system knowledge to the reality demands of the environment

Together they are in dynamic equilibrium, create schemata.

Schema – specific cognitive structure that has a behavior pattern. Early schema, sucking, grasping, seeing – becomes more complex as a person grows.

Stages of Cognitive Development:

1. Sensorimotor – birth to 2 yrs; uses senses and motor to understand the world

Stages of sensorimotor:

a. primary circular reaction – 1 – 4 mo; coordinates activities of own body and 5 senses (ex. Sucking thumb); displays curiosity; does not seek stimuli outside of its visual field or environment.

b. Secondary circular reaction – 4 – 12 mo; acts that extends out to the environment; starts both to anticipate consequences of own behavior and to act purposefully to change the environment; beginning of intentional behavior (ex. Squeeze rubber ducky)

c. Tertiary circular reaction – 12 – 24 mo; seeks out new experience or making interesting things last (ex. Using drumstick and stomp on different objects)

Object permanence – child’s ability to understand that the object have existed independent of the child’s involvement with them. Infants learn to differentiate themselves from the world and maintain mental image of the world.

Symbolization – develop about 18 months; begin to develop mental symbols and use of words.

Attainment of object permanence marks the transition from sensorimotor to pre operational stage.

2. Pre operational thought – 2 – 7 years; uses symbols and language more expensively; unable to deal with moral dilemma

Characteristic of children

Immanent justice – the belief that punishment for bad deeds is inevitable

Egocentric behavior/centrism – sees things from his point of view

Semiotic function – child represents something, object or event with a signifier which serves a representative function. Ex. Drawing.

Magical thinking:

Phenomalistic causality – events occur together are thought to cause one another (bad thoughts cause accidents)

Animistic thinking – tendency to endow physical events and objects with lifelike psychological attributes, such as feelings and intentions

3. stage of concrete operations – 7 – 11 years; child operates and act concrete, real, perceivable world of objects and events; egocentric thoughts is now replaced by operational thought which involves attending & dealing with wide array of information outside the child. Ergo a child can see someone else’s perspective.

Characteristics:

Syllogistic reasoning – logical conclusion is formed from 2 premises

Conservation – ability to recognize that even though the shape and form of objects may change, the object still maintain or conserve other characteristics that enable them to be recognized as the same.

Reversibility – capacity to understand the relation between things, to understand that one thing can turn into another and back again. Ex. Water and ice.

The most important sign that children are still in the pre operational stage is that they have not achieved conservation or reversibility.

4. stage of formal operation – 11 – end of adolescence; person’s thinking operates in formal, highly logical, systematic and symbolic manner; characterized by skills dealing with premonitions and combinations; language use is complex, follows formal rules of logic and grammatically correct.

Abstract thinking – interest in variety of issue such as philosophy, religion, ethics, politics

Hypothetico-deductive thinking – highest organization in cognition

Hypothesis – proposition and test it against reality

Deductive reasoning – going from general to particular

Inductive reasoning – particular to general

Behavior and Learning Theory:

Classical conditioning – Ivan Pavlov; it is passive or restrained

Before conditioning

Food(UCS) salivation(UCR)

Bell(CS) with Food(UCS) salivation(UCR)

After conditioning

Bell(CS) salivation(CR)

Extinction – occurs when the conditioned stimulus is constantly repeated without the unconditioned stimulus until the response evoked by the conditioned stimulus gradually weakens and eventually disappear.

Operant conditioning – B.F. Skinner; instrumental conditioning; related to trial and error learning as described by Thorndike

4 kinds of operant or instrumental conditioning.

1. primary reward conditioning – simplest kind of conditioning. The learned response is instrumental in obtaining a biologically significant reward, such as pellet of food or drink of water.

2. escape conditioning – the organism learns a response that is instrumental in getting out of some place it prefers not to be.

3. avoidance conditioning – the kind of learning I which response to a cue is instrumental in avoiding a painful experience, may avoid a shock if it quickly pushes the lever when the light signal goes on.

4. secondary reward conditioning – the kind of learning in which instrumental behavior to get a stimulus has no biological usefulness itself but has in the past been associated with biologically significant stimulus. For example, chimpanzees learn to press a lever to obtain poker chips, which may insert into a slot to secure grapes. Later they work to accumulate poker chips even when they are not interested in grapes.

2 types of behavior:

1. respondent behavior – results from known stimuli (ex. Knee jerk reflex to patellar stimulation, pupillary constriction to light)

2. operant behavior – independent of stimulus (ex. Random movements of an infant or aimless movements of laboratory rat in a cage)

Aversive control – the organism changes its behavior to avoid painful, noxious, or aversive stimulus.

Shaping Behavior – involves changing behavior in a deliberate and predetermined way.

Course Outline: prelims | midterm | finals