Understanding Psychological Disorders: The Neuropsychosocial Approach 53
results from watching what happens to others (social factor; Bandura, Ross, &
Ross, 1961); from our observations, we develop a guide for our own behavior as
well as expectations about what is likely to occur when we behave the same way
(psychological factor). Observational learning is primarily a psychological factor:
Mental processes (who and what behaviors are paid attention to, how the informa-
tion is perceived and interpreted, how motivated the individual is to imitate the
behavior) are a primary force. However, social factors are also involved, which
include who the model is, his or her status, and his or her relationship to the ob-
server. For instance, people who have high status or are attractive are more likely
to hold our attention—so we are more likely to model their behavior (Brewer &
Wann, 1998).
Through observational learning, children can fi gure out the types of behaviorthat are acceptable in their family (Thorn & Gilbert, 1998), even if the observed
behaviors are maladaptive. For example, when children observe parents manag-
ing confl ict through violence or by drinking alcohol, they may learn to use such
coping strategies themselves. From a young age, Little Edie spent much of her
time with her mother, and during the 2 years she was kept out of school, she
was with her mother practically day and night. Thus, in her formative years,
Little Edie had ample opportunity to watch her mother’s eccentric behavior and
may have modeled her own eccentric behavior on that of her mother. Further,
observational learning and operant conditioning can work together: When Little
Edie modeled her behavior after her mother’s, she was no doubt reinforced by
her mother.
Mental Processes and Mental Contents
As Freud emphasized (see Chapter 1), both mental processes and mental contents
play important roles in the etiology of psychological disorders. Let’s take a closer
look at these two types of contributing factors.
Mental Processes
We all have biases in our mental processes; hearing the same conversation, we can
differ in what we pay attention to, how we interpret what we hear, and what we
remember. Suppose a group of friends is sitting around chatting after dinner. One
of them says, “I feel really bad.” Each friend may understand and respond to this
sentence in a different way: One friend may pay a lot of attention to it, understand
it to mean, “You’ve made me feel very bad by what you said earlier” (and then
spend the rest of the night feeling guilty for infl icting emotional pain on someone
else). Another friend may “tune out” the complaint and not even remember it later.
A third friend may pay attention to it, but infer that the person is physically unwell
and wonder whether to recommend seeing a doctor.
With some psychological disorders, mental processes involved in attention, per-ception, and memory may be biased in particular ways:
- Attention results in selecting or enhancing certain stimuli, including those that
may be related to a disorder (van den Heuvel et al., 2005). Women with an eat-
ing disorder, for instance, are more likely than women without such a disorder
to focus their attention on the parts of their bodies they consider “ugly” (Jansen,
Nederkoorn, & Mulkens, 2005).- Perception results in registering and identifying specific stimuli, such as spi-
ders or particular facial expressions of emotion (Buhlmann, Etcoff, & Wilhelm,
2006). As one example of bias in perception, depressed people are less likely than
nondepressed people to rate neutral or mildly happy faces as “happy” (Surguladze
et al., 2004).- Memory involves storing, retaining, and accessing stored information, includ-
ing that which is emotionally relevant to a particular disorder (Foa et al., 2000).P SN