ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY- Normality and abnormality and validity and reliability of diagnosis | Quizlet

Abnormal Behaviour

- Violates a norm in society

- maladaptive

- rare given the context of the culture and enviroment

- causing the individual distress.

The Four D's

Danger: The state in which an individual might harm themselves or others.

Deviance: Behaviour that significantly differs from what is common within a cultural group.

Distress: Unpleasant feelings and emotions that impact level of functioning.

Dysfunction: Behaviours or cognitive patterns that interfere in an individual's ability to carry out daily activities.

Li-Repac aim

Study the role of stereotyping in diagnosis.

Li-Repac procedure

- ten patients used in the study - 5 white and 5 Chinese - all of whom had been diagnosed with similar mental illness.

- Semi-structured interviews with each of the patients. These interviews were videotaped

- The clinicians where first asked to describe an ideal, functioning individual using a 112-item test.

- Then they were randomly assigned videos to rate for normality.

- Each rater would rate 4 videos - 2 of white patients and 2 of Chinese patients.

Li-Repac results

In the first test, there was no significant difference in the scores, showing that their training had led to a similar understanding of what constituted normality.

When looking at personal traits:

- White raters saw signs of lower self-esteem in the Chinese patients, seeing them as more depressed, less socially competent, and inhibited than the Chinese-American raters.

- Chinese-American raters reported more severe pathology than white raters when judging quiet patients.

Li-Repac implications

NORMALITY AND ABNORMALITY:

- highlights how cultural perspectives influence definitions of normal and abnormal behavior.

- Western and Chinese-American clinicians showed differing evaluations of the same behavior, demonstrating that cultural norms shape what is considered "normal."

- illustrates that normality and abnormality are culturally relative rather than universal.

CLINICAL BIASES:

- shows that cultural stereotypes influence diagnostic judgments

- differences in diagnosis and observations show the influence cultural biases and stereotypes can have on a clinicians judgement

VALIDITY/RELIABILITY OF DIAGNOSIS

- findings raise concerns about the validity and reliability of cross-cultural diagnoses.

- differences demonstrate a lack of consistency (low reliability) and suggest that cultural biases may distort the accurate identification of disorders (low validity)

Li-Repac evaluation

Strength:

- Control of external factors like age, pathology and wage, ensuring these didn't influence diagnosis

- Testing the rater's definitions of normality helped rule out training as an influence, providing a more accurte understanding of culture's influence on diagnosis.

Limitations:

- Lack of experience: white therapsists had no prior experience with asian patients, implying that their diagnosis was also influenced by lack of experience with other cultures and patients.

- Small sample size limits the ability to generalize the findings.

Rosenhan (AIM)

investigate how doctors in hospitals diagnose people as "sane" or "insane"

Rosenhan (PROCEDURE)

- 8 confederates who would act the part of someone seeking help in a hospital. The participants were the staff of 12 hospitals in five different states across the USA.

- The pseudo-patients told the doctor at the hospital that they were hearing voices, a clear sign of schizophrenia for the time.

- After being admitted to the hospital, they acted completely normal. They spent time talking with other patients and the staff, taking notes on their experiences.

Rosenhan (RESULTS)

- All of the confederates were admitted, and all but one was given a diagnosis of "schizophrenia in remission".

- The nurse's notes showed that they observed no signs of abnormality during their stay.

- Once the initial diagnosis was made, the label of schizophrenia remained, even though the pseudo-patients showed no signs of abnormality.

Rosenhan (SECOND STUDY)

A second, study was proposed

The hospitals were told that one or more pseudo-patients would try to be admitted to their hospital over three months.

Each member of staff was asked to rate all patients who came in on a 1 - 10 scale for "likelihood of being a pseudo-patient."

41 people were judged to be pseudo-patients by at least one staff member and one psychiatrist suspected 23.

None of the patients where confederates.

Rosenhan (IMPLICATIONS)

NORMALITY AND ABNORMALITY

- challenges the boundaries of what is considered normal versus abnormal behavior

- revealed how labels of abnormality persist even when individuals exhibit normal behavior after admission to psychiatric hospitals

- demonstrates that perceptions of abnormality may be more influenced by the context and labels applied to individuals than their actual behavior

VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY

- Validity: The fact that people seeking support were suspected to be pseudo-patients demonstrates a lack of diagnostic accuracy.

- This shows that validity can be affected when a doctor's credibility is at risk.

- Suggests that methods of diagnosis are not reliable or accurate.

Rosenhan (EVALUATION)

Strengths:

- Ecological validty

Limitations:

- Different hospitals are run in different ways which makes replication in another hospital difficult

- Hard to control confounding variables

- unethical: deception, right for pseoudopatients to withdraw, protection from physical and psychological harm