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Theoretical Applications I

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Theoretical Applications I

Researches all over the world try to found out how external and internal factors can influence human thinking, feeling, and behavior. Why people do what they do and how do they differ from each other. Psychologists have come to a consensus that if due seriousness is to be anchored on their theories and ideas regarding human behavior, these theories and ideas must be rooted in data. Nevertheless, psychologists conduct researches for a broad spectrum of goals, thus prompting them to employ different approaches to their studies (Stangor & Walinga, 2014). These approaches that researchers use to collect, analyze, and interpret data are referred to as research designs, Case studies, Correlational research, and Experimental research. If personality research were to run, a correlational research design could potentially be the most right and beneficial. Let me explain why.

Personality Research

If I were to conduct a research study today, I would first have to know answers to some important questions to determine which one of the three main approaches to personality research I would choose. My first goal would be to find out what statement I intend to investigate and what hypothesis I need to come up with to verify or disprove a prediction in my study.

If I haven’t chosen a specific hypothesis yet or if I wanted to study abnormal characteristics provided and had a lot of time for my research, I would choose the case study, to supply an overview of a situation in real-time, to get extensive information for the development of a new hypothesis for my future testing and new opportunities and full and deep complexity of a person’s characteristics. But this type of research has limits. It can’t be generalized to the whole population, nor it can establish cause-effect, the relationships between and among variables being studied.

Experimental research fills this gap by establishing causal relationships between and among variables but usually, fails to provide means by which vital variables can be manipulated (Stangor & Walinga, 2014) with experimenter expectancy effects as potential limitations. To avoid that, I could use a double-blind study preventing bias due to demand characteristics.

Given that personality research is primarily based on study subject(s) character traits, these two study designs may present various challenges to the researcher. These challenges may include a lack of sufficient funds for the study, ethical issues (usually relative to descriptive studies), and long study duration.

On the other hand, correlational studies help the researcher establish the relationships as well as their strength without interfering with any of the independent variables. To comprehend this better, one would have to consider an instance where a researcher is investigating whether people who were abused during their childhoods have a higher likelihood of becoming child abusers when they grow up (Chiang et al., 2015). Experimental research design may require the researcher to subject children to abuse and observe whether they become child abusers when they grow up. A descriptive study may need the researcher to observe a group of child abusers who were abused (and not abused) when young. In these scenarios, ethical issues may occur. The feasibility of these research designs is also low. Correlation research design steps in to help by analyzing the relationship between the dependent and independent variables, as well as the strength of these relationships (University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2020). Since correlational studies do not assume any causal associations between these variables, no one interpretation of the analysis is favored over the other.

A strong identifying factor for correlation studies is that variables are not manipulated. Therefore, it does not matter where or how the variables were collected.

Whichever method used; through questionnaires, naturalistic observations, or archival data provided that the quality and reliability of the data are upheld (Chiang et al., 2015). This factor proves vital in this scenario (personality research) since it inhibits manipulation of independent variables which could be “impossible, impractical, or unethical”.

If I used questionnaires, I would use the standardized open questions, which I would convert later into quantitative data allowing statistical analysis of the responses (Smith, 1992). This could help me to improve reliability and validity, and obtain more information that are the limitations of closed questions.

Cultural Bias in Psychoanalytic Theory

Even though Grünbaum and other critics argued that psychoanalysis lacks empirical data (Colby, 1960), for example Greenberg (1986) believes that Freud’s aim was more to illustrate his theoretical points. There is no doubt, that Sigmund Freud made major contributions not only to the psychology and that his theory of psychoanalysis has influenced many others.

One concept of his theory that could become a particular target for arguments of cultural bias could be Oedipus complex and Castration anxiety and his theoretical understanding of feminine psychology. Freud concentrated on male population and male development, as he was part of a male-dominated era, where there was no place for femininity. He saw women’s sexual development as an aborted development because they are envious of the anatomically superior male penis. Even though later on C.G.Jung (1915) came up with Electra complex, a girl’s analogous experience, Freud argued against its introduction. There is a lack of detailed explanation of female development based on Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. Women’s sexuality baffled Freud. He saw women’s role in childbearing. Genitals and castration anxiety was a model for both sexes, but he ignored the female genitals as well as having a fear of seeing women as sexually active (Slipp, 1993).

Feminists have been highly critical of many of Freud’s concepts. But why is he judged so much? It was common in the society in which he lived to consider women as the weaker sex or having more problems. He may not thought about the possibility, that men might be avoiding help for psychological problems because of the era and that women might seek help especially because of suffering from oppression by men. So no, I wouldn’t say he was sexist. He was just working with people who came into his office, mostly women and he may not understood women as much as he understood men. But he tried as much and as best as he could, to study women and to find out and explain the new phenomena.

His ideas were new, startling, at that time disrupted commonly accepted views of human nature (Pervin, Cervone, & John, 2005). Freud, as a first psychologist who believed patient’s stories, was uncovering hidden, controversial, extremely difficult, and confusing phenomena, some of them misunderstood, taken literally. Considering the era he lived in, makes me think how much he abandoned his initial claims to salvage his career and to protect himself, his own family – father and siblings, friends,  and respectable men in society?

Positive Aspects of Freudian Theory

There is a lot I admire about Freud. The main aspects of the Freudian theory I would least personally want to lose would be the importance of the richness of his observations and the attention to detail, early childhood events, the influence of the unconscious, defense mechanisms, meaning of the dreams, free association and role of the psychologist.

Why those? I was always thinking about some of these phenomena. Why are some of our dreams so much driven by our conscious and subconscious desires and fears? Why when people hear a person yelling and screaming and their heart starts pumping faster, realizing years later, that is what was their mom doing while they were kids, but they forgot it. Why when people start talking about some topics with friends, they end up talking about something completely different. That is why I admire Freud, that he invested his desire to know, “stopped” the time, and listened. Listened, asked questions, and revealed the hidden. Freud’s idea that talking through one’s difficulties can be psychologically helpful has been supported in current research (Baddeley & Pennebaker, 2009) and has become the main goal of psychological therapy. Of course there are still critics who suggest that Freud often biased his observations using suggestive procedures (Esterson, 1993; Crews, 1993) but what researchers don’t want to confirm his hypothesis?

Even though there is little scientific support for defense mechanisms, Freud described them as a safe key for defending an individual’s anxiety and the ego. Modern psychologists think they are of the brain’s inability to form long-term memories. As psychologists, we should minimally consider them in our thought processes. Such as denial, when people deny the traumatic and painful internal or external reality, repression when a thought, wish, or idea is dismissed from consciousness, projection when people project their negative qualities on to others or rationalization when an acceptable reason is given for an unacceptable motive, doesn’t it sound like a possible explanation of certain behavior?

Despite the critics, even today’s researches demonstrate that a large part of people’s behavior is driven by processes,  wants, urges, that are outside our conscious awareness (Kihlstrom, 1987) and continuously shape who we are and who we will become or explains emotions and feelings we can not explain, anxiety, depression, or quilt.

And we can’t, of course, forget the importance of a free association as part of not time-limited therapy, when are clients encouraged to talk about and explore whatever is important to them and a therapist’s role as a partner in the therapeutic process.

Self-Actualization and Evil

Most theorists criticized the idea that the Rogerian theory does not effectively address the fundamental human motives. Rather, they raise the issue that in no way can people who commit atrocities such as mass murders (the likes of Hitler) be viewed to be self-actualizing. However, Rogers introduced several thoughts that highlight that such mass murderers may not actually be inconsistent with the idea of self-actualization.

First, his theory raises the idea of incongruence where an individual can have experiences that are either unacceptable or distorted by one’s self-image (Proctor, Tweed, and Morris, 2016). As Parente (2019) elaborates, most people who commit such atrocities later in life admit that they were doing wrong. This being an indicator that these people are incongruent with their actual self (Hewlin, Dumas, and Burnett, 2017). When external constraints or a poor self-concept override the important valuing process, people become destructive (Ravi, 2016).

Secondly, the theory also recognizes that people can have both positive and negative emotions. Rather than resorting to an ego defense mechanism, the theory recommends that an individual needs work on their personality. Important are also phenomena as anxiety and guilt, caused by a discrepancy between what persons are and what they are capable of being. They might have low self-esteem, and their relationships with reality might be disturbed as well.

Thirdly, to clarify on what is right or wrong, Rogers suggested trusting one’s instincts, gut reaction, and feelings (Cox, 2020).

Since I enjoy criminal psychology and murders, and since I worked as a psychologist at the prison, that made me think several times, why people can see self-actualization in situations like murder. One answer could be, that these people having antisocial or undesirable behavior, actually realize their potentialities in ways that are for the others unhuman. Based on these views, one would argue that murderers are not actually self-actualizing, but could be incongruent with their feelings and true self. Because what if it is highly self-actualizing for them?

References

Baddeley, J. L., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2009). Expressive writing. In W. T. O’Donohue & J. E. Fisher (Eds.), General principles and empirically supported techniques of cognitive behavior therapy (p. 295–299). John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Chiang, I.-C. A., Jhangiani, R. S., & Price, P. C. (2015, October 13). Correlational Research. Opentextbc.Ca; BCcampus. https://opentextbc.ca/researchmethods/chapter/correlational-research/

Colby, K. M. (1960). An introduction to psychoanalytic research. New York: Basic.

Cox, G. (2020). How to be Good: or How to Be Moral and Virtuous in a Wicked World. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Esterson, A. (1993). Seductive mirage: An exploration of the work of Sigmund Freud. New York: Open court.

Kihlstrom, J. F. (1987). The cognitive unconscious. Science, 237(4821), 1445–1452. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.3629249

Jung, C. G. (1915). The Theory of Psychoanalysis. New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co. p. 69.

Crews, F. (1993). The unkown Freud. The New York Review of books, November 18, 55.66.

Greenberg, R. P. (1986). The case against Freud’s cases. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 9, 240-241.

Hewlin, P. F., Dumas, T. L., & Burnett, M. F. (2017). To thine own self be true? Facades of conformity, values incongruence, and the moderating impact of leader integrity. Academy of Management Journal, 60(1), 178-199.

Parente, F. (2019). Past Regret, Future Fear: Compliance with International Law (Doctoral dissertation, UCLA).

Pervin, L. A., Cervone, D., & John, O. P. (2005). Personality: Theory and Research (9th ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Proctor, C., Tweed, R., & Morris, D. (2016). The Rogerian fully functioning person: A positive psychology perspective. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 56(5), 503-529.

Ravi, V. (2016). Advanced aducational psychology. Solapur: Laxami Book

Slipp, S. (1993). Psychoanalysis and Feminine Psychology. In The Freudian Mystique: Freud, Women, and Feminism (pp. 11-19). NYU Press. Retrieved May 8, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qg3mt.5

Smith, C. P. (Ed.). (1992). Motivation and personality: Handbook of thematic content analysis. Cambridge University Press.

Stangor, C., & Walinga, J. (2014, October 17). 3.2 Psychologists Use Descriptive, Correlational, and Experimental Research Designs to Understand behaviour. Opentextbc.Ca; BCcampus. https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontopsychology/chapter/2-2-psychologists-use-descriptive-correlational-and-experimental-research-designs-to-understand-behavior/

University of Wisconsin–Madison. (2020). Correlational versus experimental studies. University of Wisconsin–Madison; Department of Psychology. https://psych.wisc.edu/braun/281/Research/Research.html