How did psychology affect everyday life? - summary of chapter 8 of Historical and conceptual issues in psychology, by Brysbaert, M and Rastle, K (second edition)

Foundation of psychology
Chapter 8
How did psychology affect everyday life?

Introduction

Over the course of the twentieth century, the discipline of psychology grew from a marginal academic field to a discipline that has done more than any other to transform the routines and experiences of everyday life.
Applied psychology: the application of psychological knowledge and research methods to solve practical problems.

Changes in the treatment of mental health problems

Evolutions before World War II

Mental health problems must be treated by partitioners with a medical degree

Psychologists were not allowed to provide unsupervised therapies in official settings and their private practices were not covered by health insurance.

The first clinical psychology centres

Treatment centres run by psychologists started in the USA and were university-related.
Lightner Witmer
Opened the faculty that was the first psychology health centre in 1896.
Aimed at helping behavioural and learning problems in school children.

The founding of clinical psychology centres was impeded by the lack of support from academic psychologists.

• The psychology departments were dominated by experimental psychologists, who wanted to promote psychology as a science
• The academics did not want to upset their medical colleagues, whose help they needed for the expansion of their departments.

In the meantime mental health problems and psychoanalysis became popular courses in psychology.
Clinical psychology: branch of psychology applying psychological knowledge to the assessment and treatment of mental disorders.

The first clinical psychology centre in the UK was set up in 1920 in a private house in London.

The impact of World War II

An urgent need for psychological advice and treatment

Shell-shock: anxiety response of battlefield that prevents soldiers from functioning properly; was one of the first topics addressed by applied psychology.
The finding of shell-shock in World War I gave rise tow two developments

• There was a need for increased psychological testing to predict who would be prone to shell-shock and hence should not be employed by the paid armed forces
• There was an increased pressure to treat personnel who suffered from shell-shock.

When the USA decided to join World War II they also decided to properly staff the military psychiatric service.
A crash course in the treatment of mental disorders was offered to all medical officers, and clinical psychologists were taken on broad, both for testing and treatment.

The beginning of client-centred therapy

The rising demand for psychological help provided a rich environment for new developments in therapy.
Psychoanalysis required a long series of treatment sessions and was not experienced by all therapists as effective.

Carl Rogers
Proposed client-centred therapy as an alternative in 1942.
In this therapy, the client searched for solutions to their current problems by talking them through with a listening, understanding and supporting therapist.
A good counsellor in Rodger’s eyes was characterised by:

• Unconditional positive regard
  The counsellor supports the client unconditionally and is non-judgmental
• Emphatic understanding
  The counsellor ensures that he/she understands the client’s thoughts, feelings and meaning from the client’s point of view
• Congruence
  The counsellor is genuine in his/her support and understanding, it is not a mere implementation of a therapeutic technique

After World War II: antipsychiatry, scientific input and psychoactive drugs

Three major developments after World War II further strengthened the status of clinical psychologists

• Unease with the way in which patients were treated by psychiatrists in asylums
• Input from scientific research into psychotherapy
• Psychiatrists increasingly turned to medicines for the treatment of mental disorders

Antipsychiatry

As part of a wider cultural movement against the establishment in the 1960-1970s, the treatment of patients in mental hospitals began to be questioned.
It was seen as ineffective and dangerous and demeaning for the patients.

• Lobotomy
  Cutting the nerve tracts between the frontal lobes and the thalamus.
  Seen as an efficient treatment of violent behaviour and applied on a massive scale in the USA
  Gradually, it became clear that the procedure resulted in massive side-effects
• Electric shocks
  Applying electrical shocks to the brain, resulting in a massive discharge of neurons
  Is effective for the treatment of otherwise incurable depression
  • Its use in mental hospitals for a long time was much wider and without empirical support

The use of electric shocks and lobotomy to subdue unruly psychiatric patients became known to the public after the publication of the cult novel ‘One flew over the cuckoo’s nest’ in 1962.

Lobotomy, electric shocks and other demeaning treatments exposed psychiatry to anti-establishment protests in the 1960s-1970s.
Antipsychiatry movement: a pressure group started in the 1960s that called into question the usefulness of the prevailing psychiatric treatments.
Psychiatry was not seen as a profession helping patients with mental health problems, but as a way of controlling patients and expelling them form society.
This criticism did not only come form outside universities.

The anitpsychiatry movement contended that the treatment of mental disorders had to change.

• There had to be much more respect for the rights and dignity of the patients
• Hospitalisation had to be as short as possible and geared towards reintegration in society
• Many more initiatives had to be taken to prevent hospitalisation and the treat people with mental problems outside clinics

All of these recommendations went in the direction of the positions defended by clinical psychologists and improved the standing of clinical psychologists within mental health organisations.

Input from science

Researchers started to evaluate the efficacy of therapies.
Efficacy of therapies: measure to indicate how much improvement a therapy brings to patients.
It was no longer enough to believe the founder’s claims about the usefulness of their therapies. Value had to be shown empirically.

Eysenck
Argued that the therapies in the 1950s were ineffective, because they were not based on scientific research.
If therapists wanted their therapies to be helpful, they had to systematically examine which techniques worked and which did not, and adapt their approach as a function of the feedback.

The availability of medicines for mental disorders

Psychiatrists lowered their resistance to treatment by non-medical practitioners.
Partly because of the influence of psychology pressure groups, and because psychiatrists increasingly turned toward medicines as the preferred treatment for mental health problems.
Given that only medical parctitioners were allowed to prescribe medicines, this gave psychiatrists a new edge over psychologists.

Psychoactive drugs: medicines prescribed for mental disorders.
Together with the altered views of society, the psychoactive drugs radically changed the treatment of mental disorders

• They contributed to non-residential therapies, greatly reducing the number of patients who had to be hospitalised for long periods
• They lowered the threshold for treatment of mental health problems

Social management and individualisation

The growing impact of clinical psychology over the twentieth century was also linked to the enhanced role of social management in society.
Social management: management and control of deviant individuals and individuals in need by official social services
Welfare state: socio-political system in which individuals insure themselves against setbacks via taxes, which are used by the state to provide welfare services.

The reliance on public services grew not only because people wanted to have professional help, but also because social structures became looser.

Increased knowledge about psychology in the population

Clinical psycholgy had become integrated into mainstream education and became part of everyday interactions.
An increasing number of degree programmes involving communication with clients started to pay attention to psychological ideas and findings.

Interim summary

Twentieth-century changes in the treatment of mental health problems

• Before World War I psychologists were largely excluded from treatment; their main task was administering psychological tests; there were a few university-related centres
• Because of the increased need for advice and treatment during World War II, psychologists because involved in treatment
• After World War II, the position of psychologists in the treatment of mental disorders was further strengthened by:
  • The antipsychiatry movement
  • Scientific research on the efficacy of psychotherapies
  • The fact that psychiatrists became more involved with the prescription of psychoactive drugs
  • The increase of social management and individualisation in society
• Knowledge of psychology also became of public interest

Psychological testing

The need for tests in society

Throughout recorded history, people have used tests in three types of situations:

• To establish a person’s honesty
• To select the best person
• To diagnose illness

Authenticity tests to expose dishonesty

Authenticity tests: test to determine whether a person is who he/she pretends to be and to ascertain guilt or innocence.

Qualifying tests to measure aptitude and competence

Qualifying tests: test to find the best person for a task.

Tests to diagnose disease

Diagnostic tests: tests to determine which condition a person has.

What is a test?

Alan Hanson
Tests involve three basic conditions

• The condition of intent
  They are planned, arranged and given by someone with a purpose in mind
• A test is administered as an indication of some other condition
• A test involves a difference in status between the test giver and the test taker
  The test giver draws conclusions on the basis of the test which the test taker has to undergo
  Usually test givers represent organisations, whereas the test takers are individuals

Psychologists and tests

From the outset psychologists were adamant that they could provide society with good tests about mental functioning.
Psychology would do for mental functioning what medical science was doing for physical functioning, provide practitioners with scientifically validated tests they could rely on.

The need for reliable and valid assessment

Reliability

Reliability: in test research, the degree to which the outcome of a test is the same if the test is repeated under unchanged circumstances or if an equivalent test is used.

The reliability of a test can be measured by calculating the correlation between two different measurements.

Validity

Validity: in test research, the degree to which a test measures what it claims to measure; determined by correlating the test results with an external criterion.

Clinical impressions and unstructured interviews do not score high on reliability and validity

A face-to-face interview did not score high on reliability and validity.

Differences between raters

There are big differences between raters

First impression and the implicit personality theory

Implicit personality theory: mixture of stereotypes and individuating information about the associations of personal characteristics that people use to make predictions about how others will behave in social relations.

Psychological tests as the alternative

Structured vs. unstructured interviews

Structured interview: interview in which all interviewees receive the same set of questions.
Unstructured interview: interview in which the questions depended on the answers the applicants gave.
Structured interviews are more reliable and valid.

Standardised tests

Standardised psychological tests: test that psychologists have examined for reliability and validity, for which they have information about the expected performance, and which is administered in a uniform way.

Intelligence and achievement tests

IQ tests

IQ test: test which is supposed to measure the intelligence of a person; focuses on learning potential; results correlate with school performance and suitability for intellectually demanding occupations.
It was found that intelligence did not consists of a single ability, but of a group of abilities.

Achievement tests

Achievement tests: standardised tests which measures the knowledge of a particular topic or set of topics.
Achievement tests rapidly conquered the educational system.

Achievement test in China

Some 2000 years ago the Chinese Han Dynasty used a standardised test battery to select and promote civil servants in an objective way.
There is good evidence that the western world learned about achievement tests through the Chinese.

Personality tests

Personality tests: test to measure relatively stable and distinctive patterns of behaviour that characterise individuals and their reactions to the environment.

The Woodworth Personal Data Sheet

The Woodworth Personal Data Sheet, published by Woodworth in 1920 was one of the first personality tests.
Used to identify soldiers who would be susceptible to shell-shock.

Going beyond face validity

Woodworth’s approach of using his own judgment to decide which questions were informative rapidly turned out to be insufficient.
Face validity: estimating the validity of a test by estimating to what extent the items of a test agree with one’s own beliefs; is not evidence-based.

Evidence-based validation rapidly became the norm for psychology tests.

The problem of social desirability

Social desirability: bias people have to present themselves in a manner they think will be viewed favourably by others.
Psychologists have explored various ways to circumvent the problem of social desirability.

• Making the questions subtler
• Including a scale to measure the bias in the test-taker
• Using formats other than self-report questionnaires

Measuring personality differences in the non-pathological range

Personality tests became used to distinguish between people in the normal range.

Personality traits: basic dimension used to describe differences in personality between people; is often bipolar with opposites at the extremes

Tests have become increasingly popular due to he individualisation of society

Since their inception the number of psychological tests administered has steadily increased.

• Psychological tests are the best way to make assessments and predictions about human functioning, even if they are not infallible
• Society increasingly turned to science-based evidence to make decisions
• Growing individualisation of society enhanced the need for information about individuals

Growing individualisation

With an individualised society, members are more interested in what distinguishes them from others than in what they have in common.
Personality researched followed this shift.

Interim summary

Psychological testing

• Psychologists needed reliable and valid assessments. These were not provided by unstructured interviews, due to problems with first impressions and the implicit personality theories people have
• Standardised tests were proposed as an alternative. These tests were administered to a test group in a uniform way, so that the users know how new test-takers scored relative to the test group. In addition, the reliability and validity became empirically verified
• IQ tests allowed psychologists to assess an individual’s intellectual potential. Achievement tests allowed them to test the acquired knowledge about a particular topic in a reliable van valid way
• Good personality tests required empirical validation and measures to tackle the problem of social desirability
• In the non-pathological range, most personality tests are self-report questionnaires that measure traits. At the moment most researchers believe that the personality can be described accurately on the basis of five traits (the Big Five). Previously, Cattell defended a minimum of 16 and Eysenck an minimum of 3.
• Tests have become popular partly because of the increased individualisation of society

The psychology of work and organisation

Industrial psychology at the beginning of the twentieth century

The industrial revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries introduced a separation between work and family.
Industrial psychology: first theory about how work should be organised; strongly influenced by Taylors’s scientific management: employees were the hands of the company that would accept any work if remunerated enough; tasks had to be made simple so that everyone could do them without much practice.

The Hawthorne studies and the human relations movement

Between 1924 and 1932 a number of studies were run at the Hawthorne plant, which would have a profound influence on the psychology of work and organisation.
On the basis of the studies, Mayo decided that it was not so much the physical circumstances or the pay that determined productivity, but the extent to which the workers found themselves valued and esteemed.

Human relations movement: second main theory of how work should be organised; stressed the humanity of the employees and the importance of social relations.

Lewin looked at three types of leadership

• Autocratic
  Imposing commands
• Democratic
  Leading through negotiations
• Laissez-faire
  Giving no leadership

There was more originality, group-mindedness and friendliness in democratic groups, and more aggression, hostility, scapegoating and discontent in the laissez-faire and autocratic groups.

Human resource management

Human resource management: third main theory of how work should be organised; stressed the desire for self-actualisation in employees; employees will perform best if given autonomy and authority.

Interim summary

The psychology of work and organisation

• At the beginning of the twentieth century, industrial psychology was under the influence of scientific management which considered workers as dispensable ‘hands of the factory’, motivated solely by money to address physiological needs
• Based on the Hawthorne studies, Mayo pointed to the importance of social and psychological factors for the well-being and motivation of employees. This was the start of the human relations movement
• In the 1980s, human resource management stressed that the employees were the central asset of a company. Workers should not be controlled but given autonomy and responsibility so that they come to self-discipline. Works is no longer a chore, but an opportunity that can help self-actualisation

Focus on: the lure of idealising classic studies

Interim summary

The weak methodology of the Hawthorne studies

• The Hawthorne studies were not well done, because many aspects were changed simultaneously, so tat the authors could not conclude for sure which factor was the origin of the effects they observed
• Still, strong conclusions were drawn on the basis of these findings
• These conclusions have been perpetuated in textbooks because:
  • Writers do not read the original sources
  • The story is too good not to be true
  • The basic message of the human relations movement was correct
  • The story strengthened the positions of psychologists and managers
• The idealised depiction of the Hawthorne studies is an example of the pseudohistory of science, an attempt to excite enthusiasm for science by narrating simplified and heroic stories that promote false ideas of how science works