60 CHAPTER 2
Key Concepts and Facts About Psychological Factors in Psychological Disorders
- Three types of learning can contribute to psychological
disorders:- Classical conditioning of emotional responses such as
fear and anxiety. Conditioned emotional responses can
generalize from the original conditioned stimulus to
other, similar stimuli. - Operant conditioning of voluntary behaviors through posi-
tive and negative reinforcement and punishment. Certain
types of depression in humans can be thought of as similar
to learned helplessness in animals. - Observational learning, which can guide the observer’s be-
haviors and expectations, leading to maladaptive behaviors.
- Classical conditioning of emotional responses such as
- Mental processes and mental contents play important roles in
the etiology and maintenance of psychological disorders.- Mental processes influence what people pay attention
to, how they perceive and interpret various situations and
events, and what they remember. - Mental contents can be associated with various psycho-
logical disorders in the form of irrational thoughts that are
cognitive distortions of reality, creating cognitive vulner-
abilities. Once someone has a psychological disorder, these
biases and distortions can become self-perpetuating.
- Mental processes influence what people pay attention
- Emotional disturbances contribute to some psychological disor-
ders. Such disturbances include:- not feeling or expressing emotions to a normal degree;
Social Factors in Psychological Disorders
We exist in a world fi lled with social forces: our relationships with family, friends,
colleagues, and neighbors; the messages we receive through the media; the norms
of our culture. These social forces help to shape who we become; they can help to
protect us from developing psychological disorders, or they can make us more vul-
nerable to or exacerbate psychological disorders. Social forces begin to exert their
infl uence before adulthood, and they can affect each generation differently, as a
culture changes over time: For instance, the more recently an American is born, the
more likely he or she is to develop a psychological disorder (Kessler et al., 2005),
perhaps because of social trends such as the increased divorce rate, an increased
sense of danger, and a diminished sense of local community (Twenge, 2000).
Consider Big Edie and Little Edie. The social factors that infl uenced them include
their relationships with other members of their family, their fi nancial circumstances, the
prevailing community and cultural standards of appropriate behavior for women—and
the discrimination they encountered. Let’s examine each type of social factor—family,
community, and culture—as well as the stress they can create, in more detail.Family Matters
Certain aspects of family life form the basis for the type of attachment a child has to
the primary caregiver, which infl uences how a child comes to view himself or herself
and learns what to expect from other people. Other family-related social factors- expressing emotions that are inappropriate or inappropri-
ately excessive for the situation; and - having diffi culty regulating emotions.
- Emotions, behaviors, mental contents, and mental processes
are often intertwined, and so disturbances in one will affect
the others. For instance, emotional and mood disturbances can
lead to biases in mental processes, and mental processes can
affect emotions. Moreover, a person’s attributions and mood
can affect each other. - Emotions involve both a psychological and a neurological response
to a stimulus. Researchers distinguish between two basic types of
emotions—approach (positive) and withdrawal (negative)—each
of which relies on different brain systems. Some people are temper-
amentally more likely to experience approach emotions, whereas
others are more likely to experience withdrawal emotions. - Having a particular temperament may make a person especially
vulnerable to certain psychological disorders, even at an early age.
In some cases, a psychological disorder may be an extreme form of
a normal variation in temperament. Evidence indicates that genes
contribute strongly to temperament; however, the effects of genes
need to be considered within the context of specifi c environments. - Temperament is conceived of as having four dimensions: nov-
elty seeking, harm avoidance, reward dependence, and per-
sistence. Cloninger proposed that each of these dimensions is
associated with the action of a particular neurotransmitter and
is infl uenced by complex inheritance and other factors.