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Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Philosophy & theory of psychology > Behavioural theory (Behaviourism)
Do you know what makes boys tick? In recent years suicide has
drastically escalated among young males and academic
underachievement is common, so it is of vital importance that our
understanding of the young male psyche is well informed and not
merely 'received wisdom'. John Head gets to the heart - and mind -
of the matter, by tackling difficult, pertinent questions. Has male
behaviour in school worsened, or has media hype inflated the
proportions of a 'good story'? What is at the root of male
violence? Are biological or social explanations telling the whole
story? Head shows that it is only by engaging boys in new arenas of
thought and feeling that we can hope to understand and help
overcome the difficulties faced by boys today.
Obtaining accurate information about behaviors, symptoms, and experiences is critical in many areas of behavioral and biomedical research and in clinical practice. Rigorous methodological techniques have been developed in the last decade to improve the reliability and accuracy of these self reports from research volunteers and patients about their pain, mood, substance abuse history, or dietary habits. This book presents cutting-edge research on optimal methods for obtaining self-reported information for use in the evaluation of scientific hypothesis, in therapeutic interventions, and in the development of prognostic indicators. ALTERNATE BLURB: Self-reports constitute critically important data for research and practice in many fields. As the chapters in this volume document, psychological and social processes influence the storage and recall of self-report information. There are conditions under which self-reports should be readily accepted by the clinician or researcher, and other conditions where healthy scepticism is required. The chapters demonstrate methods for improving the accuracy of self-reports, ranging from fine-tuning interviews and questionnaires to employing emerging technologies to collect data in ways that minimize bias and encourage accurate reporting. Representing a diverse group of disciplines including sociology, law, psychology, and medicine, the distinguished authors offer crucial food for thought to all those whose work depends on the accurate self-reports of others.
A comprehensive resource for analyzing a variety of categorical
data, this book emphasizes the application of many recent advances
of longitudinal categorical statistical methods. Each chapter
provides basic methodology, helpful applications, examples using
data from all fields of the social sciences, computer tutorials,
and exercises. Written for social scientists and students, no
advanced mathematical training is required. Step-by-step command
files are given for both the CDAS and the SPSS software
programs.
Process safety management seeks to establish a multi-level system to assess, document, maintain, and inspect equipment and work practices integral in controlling highly toxic and/or reactive materials. In a highly engineered environment, any variance can set off a chain of events that increases the probability of a process safety incident as violent as an explosion. Human behavior is often the biggest source of this variance, but it can also be the biggest asset for process safety management. Process industries are looking to understand sources of behavioral variance and build better processes based on sound behavioral science. Because of this clear link between behavior and process safety performance, the behavior science community has been challenged to research the behavioral root causes leading to variation that threaten process safety; create and evaluate behavioral interventions to mitigate this variation; and identify the system factors that would influence the behaviors necessary to promote process safety. This book seeks to translate behavior analysis into practical systems that can help reduce human suffering from catastrophic process safety events. All of the chapters in this book were originally published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management.
The increasing frequency with which issues of childhood sexual abuse come up in therapy highlights the need for an effective short-term treatment for these patients. Imagery rescripting and reprocessing therapy, the treatment program described in this book, is an information-processing, schema-focused model in which the recurring traumatic abuse memories are treated with a combination of prolonged imaginal exposure and imaginal rescripting. With the use of both imagery and verbal interventions to activate the entire fear memory and to identify, challenge, modify, and reprocess the recurring traumatic imagery and abuse-related beliefs, a more adaptive schema is created. The authors compre-hensively describe this treatment program, offering step-by-step procedures for each session. Models of all verbal instructions and written materials given to the patient are included for easy use or adaptation. Three treatment formats are demonstrated with detailed extended excerpts from actual sessions. This readable and informative book is a significant advance in the treatment of post-traumatic stress syndrome resulting from early childhood abuse.
How does the sense of basic fairness--or selflessness versus selfishness--arise? How is it exhibited behaviorally? How is it maintained? Few topics hold more contemporary significance or have proved more elusive to specification in precise scientific terms. Current research perspectives on altruism, narcissism, and comity by distinguished behavioral scientists from around the world were brought together in a special issue of Current Psychology (Summer 1998) and are offered here in a useful compendium. Chapters and contributors include: "Equity, Justice, and Altruism" by Graham F. Wagstaff; "Reactions to the Fate of One's Brainchild After Its Disclosure" by Sidney Rosen and Shannon Wheatman; "Need Norm, Demographic Influence, Social Role, and Justice Judgment" by Helen E. Linkey and Sheldon Alexander; "Adaptive and Maladaptive Narcissism" by Robert W. Hill and Greg Yousey; "Perceptions of Self-Oriented and Other-Oriented Help-Providers" by Mark A. Barnett, Guy D. Vitaglione, Jeffrey S. Bartel, Birgit S. Valdez, Lee Ann Steadman, and Kimberly K. G. Harper; and "Pathological Narcissism and Serial Homicide" by Louis B. Schlesinger. Altruism, Narcissism, Comity will benefit students, researchers, and practitioners in the psychological sciences, sociology, political science, philosophy, law, and other disciplines concerned with the nature of selflessness, heroism, justice, and their variants.
Social trust is a crucial issue to many aspects of modern society. Policy makers continually aspire to winning it and corporations frequently run the risk of losing it. The 'trust deficit' raises vital questions and problems to which until recently there have been few answers or solutions. Experts from both sides of the Atlantic explore the importance for trust of various influences, from individual perceptions to organizational systems, and consider the conditions involved in building or undermining trust. Several authors examine practical hazard management issues, including medical vaccination programmes and popular participation in pollution control and waste management as strategies for enhancing social trust. This book provides insightful analysis for researchers and students of environmental and social sciences and is essential reading for those engaged in risk management in both the public and private sectors.
*Sibling relationships and sibling rivalry are as old as recorded history. This book arises from work with children exploring that ambivalance between siblings, which casts its shadow throughout people's lifetimes and affects their choices of mates, relationships with their children and aversions to other persons.
During the past decade a diverse group of disciplines have simultaneously intensified their attention upon the scientific study of emotion. This proliferation of research on affective phenomena has been paralleled by an acceleration of investigations of early human structural and functional development. Developmental neuroscience is now delving into the ontogeny of brain systems that evolve to support the psychobiological underpinnings of socioemotional functioning. Studies of the infant brain demonstrate that its maturation is influenced by the environment and is experience-dependent. Developmental psychological research emphasizes that the infant's expanding socioaffective functions are critically influenced by the affect-transacting experiences it has with the primary caregiver. Concurrent developmental psychoanalytic research suggests that the mother's affect regulatory functions permanently shape the emerging self's capacity for self-organization. Studies of incipient relational processes and their effects on developing structure are thus an excellent paradigm for the deeper apprehension of the organization and dynamics of affective phenomena. This book brings together and presents the latest findings of socioemotional studies emerging from the developmental branches of various disciplines. It supplies psychological researchers and clinicians with relevant, up-to-date developmental neurobiological findings and insights, and exposes neuroscientists to recent developmental psychological and psychoanalytic studies of infants. The methodology of this theoretical research involves the integration of information that is being generated by the different fields that are studying the problem of socioaffective development--neurobiology, behavioral neurology, behavioral biology, sociobiology, social psychology, developmental psychology, developmental psychoanalysis, and infant psychiatry. A special emphasis is placed upon the application and incorporation of current developmental data from neurochemistry, neuroanatomy, neuropsychology, and neuroendocrinology into the main body of developmental theory. More than just a review of several literatures, the studies cited in this work are used as a multidisciplinary source pool of experimental data, theoretical concepts, and clinical observations that form the base and scaffolding of an overarching heuristic model of socioemotional development that is grounded in contemporary neuroscience. This psychoneurobiological model is then used to generate a number of heuristic hypotheses regarding the proximal causes of a wide array of affect-related phenomena--from the motive force that drives human attachment to the proximal causes of psychiatric disturbances and psychosomatic disorders, and indeed to the origin of the self.
In an era where students suffer more than ever from fatigue and tension, and when, because of television and other factors, their concentration is in serious need of improvement, the subject of Suggestopedia is more relevant than ever. Studies consistently show that Suggestopedia and its adaptations alleviate stress and improve focusing and memorization. Suggestopedia and Language Acquisition examines methods for unconscious assimilation, and in particular, Suggestopedia, its variants, its adaptations, and its background elements.
Humor permeates every aspect of society and has done so for thousands of years. People experience it daily through television, newspapers, literature, and contact with others. Rarely do social researchers analyze humor or try to determine what makes it such a dominating force in our lives. The types of jokes a person enjoys contribute significantly to the definition of that person as well as to the character of a given society. Arthur Asa Berger explores these and other related topics in An Anatomy of Humor. He shows how humor can range from the simple pun to complex plots in Elizabethan plays. Berger examines a number of topics--ethnicity, race, gender, politics--each with its own comic dimension. Laughter is beneficial to both our physical and mental health, according to Berger. He discerns a multiplicity of ironies that are intrinsic to the analysis of humor. He discovers as much complexity and ambiguity in a cartoon, such as Mickey Mouse, as he finds in an important piece of literature, such as Huckleberry Finn. An Anatomy of Humor is an intriguing and enjoyable read for people interested in humor and the impact of popular and mass culture on society. It will also be of interest to professionals in communication and psychologists concerned with the creative process.
Presently, doctors and psychiatrists are professing their inability to develop theoretical approaches that lead to effective clinical methods to help women suffering from eating disorders. Michelle Lelwica puts forward a hypothesis that has both theoritical and clinical implications. She identifies eating disorders as a specifically religious problem and contends that it can be addressed with religious resources. She argues that the remnants of religious legacies that have historically effaced the diversity and complexity of women's spiritual yearnings and struggles are alive and well under the guise of a host of "secular" practices, pictures and promises. Until these legacies are recognized, contested, and changed, she predicts, many girls and women will continue to turn to the symbolic and ritual resources most readily available to them --- food and their bodies --- in a passionate but precarious quest for freedom and fulfilment.
Human behavior often violates the predictions of rational choice
theory. This realization has caused many social psychologists and
experimental economists to attempt to develop an
experimentally-based variant of game theory as an alternative
descriptive model. The impetus for this book is the interest in the
development of such a theory that combines elements from both
disciplines and appeals to both.
In writing The Psychology of Politics, Hans Eysenck had two aims in mind: to write a book about modern developments in the field of attitude studies which would be intelligible to the layman; and one that would integrate into one consistent theoretical system a large number of contributions on the topic from different fields. Eysenck believes that science has something to say about such problems as anti-Semitism, the origin and growth of fascist and communist ideologies, the causal determinants of voting behavior, the structure of opinions and attitudes, and the relationship between politics and personality. He seeks to rescue these factual findings from the obscurity of technical journals and present them in a more accessible form. The research presented in this book outlines the main principles of organization and structure in the field of attitudes. These principles account in a remarkably complete and detailed manner for the systems of political organization found in Great Britain, that is, the Conservative, Liberal, and Socialist parties, and the communist and fascist groups. Next, Eysenck relates these principles to the system of personality structure which for many years formed the main focus of research activity at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. The Psychology of Politics integrates attitude research with modern learning theory. In his new introduction, Eysenck writes that his research and personal experiences in Germany led him to believe that authoritarianism could appear equally well on the left as on the right. He saw Stalin as equally authoritarian as Hitler, and communism as equally totalitarian as Nazism. The Psychology of Politics contains the evidence and arguments Eysenck used to demonstrate his approach. This volume is of enduring significance for psychologists, political theorists, and historians. It is by indirection a major statement in modern liberalism.
Epidemiological surveys have provided key information about the prevalence and degree of seriousness at different ages of a wide array of problem behaviors such as delinquency, substance use, early sexual involvement, and mental health disorders. Knowledge of the extent of these problems and changes in their course over time is important. In its absence, interventions and health planning in general can be difficult. Understanding which risk and protective factors are relevant to which problem behaviors is also essential for the formulation of theories that constitute the basis of intervention. This book draws on the results of the major Pittsburgh Youth Study complemented by follow-up tracking of juvenile court records for more than six years, to address the following questions: *What is the prevalence and age of onset of delinquency, substance use, and early sexual behavior for three samples of boys age 8, 11, and 14? What are the average mental health problems for these ages? How strong are the relationships among these problem behaviors in each of the samples? *Which variables best explain individual differences among the boys in their manifestations of delinquency, substance use, early sexual behavior, and mental health problems? To what extent do explanatory factors vary with age? How accurately can boys with different outcomes be identified by risk scores based on hierarchical multiple regressions? *To what extent are explanatory factors associated with one outcome that are also associated with other outcomes? Are explanatory factors that are especially characteristic of a multiproblem group of boys--who display many different problem behaviors--different from explanatory factors associated with boys with few problems? *Do the results fit a general theory of juvenile problem behaviors, or is a differentiated theory more applicable?
This is the only available comprehensive monograph on
interrelations and interdependencies between agonistic and sexual
behaviors. Integrating theory and research from biology,
anthropology, neurophysiology, endocrinology, psychophysiology, and
psychology, this book focuses on the mechanisms that govern the
mutual influences between sexuality and aggression in behavior
sequences and especially in admixtures of aggressive-sexual
behaviors.
How do customers decide what products and brands to buy? With the rise of sophisticated advertising and marketing research methods in this century, business leaders have spent billions of dollars attempting to answer this perplexing question. Occasionally, analysts emerge with suggestive trends, but ultimately with little hard evidence to support any definitive "laws" of customer choice. Now, in this much-anticipated major work, Eric Marder reveals how universal patterns in survey responses lead not only to general principles in marketing but to empirically verifiable laws of human nature itself. Drawing on forty years of applying his pioneering experimental design techniques to marketing research surveys, Marder presents a global theory of choice behavior, supported by original data reported here for the first time from thousands of massive real-life experiments based on millions of interviews. His dramatic findings about pricing, optimal marketing tactics, product evaluation, the relative role of product and image, and advertising effectiveness will make this book required reading for the entire marketing community. Of special interest to social scientists and survey research practitioners will be Marder's powerful research designs and techniques, including the unbounded write-in scale for measuring desirability (attitude) and his methodological analyses of the relationships among beliefs (perceptions), desires, choice, and behavior. In the Preface, he writes: "At the core of the theory are three laws of choice behavior the Law of Congruence, the Law of Primacy, and the Law of Persistence. These laws are both general and self-evident. At first glance, they are so self-evident that you might say: 'I have known this all along.' My reply is: 'Of course you have known it all along. But there is a difference between knowing and knowing, between the passive knowing that allows us to persist in actions that are inconsistent with what we know, and the active knowing that helps us change the way we do things.' I believe that knowing the laws of choice behavior-really knowing them -- changes the way we do things. My crass but stringent criterion has been that a good theory should enable someone equipped with it to make more money than someone who isn't. I believe my theory has passed this test."
In arguably the finest text ever written in the philosophy of social science, Abraham Kaplan emphasizes what unites the behavioral sciences more than what distinguishes them from one another. Kaplan avoids the bitter disputes among people doing methodology, claiming instead that what is important are those qualities intrinsic to the overall aspirations of the social sciences. He deals with special problems of various disciplines only so far as may be helpful in clarifying the general method of inquiry. "The Conduct of Inquiry "is a systematic, rounded, and wide-ranging inquiry into behavioral science. Kaplan is guided by the experience of sciences with longer histories, but he is bound neither to their problems nor to their solutions. Instead, he addresses the methodology of behavioral science in the broad sense of both method and science. The work is not a formal exercise in the philosophy of science but rather a critical and constructive assessment of the developing standards and strategies of contemporary social inquiry. He emphasizes the tasks, achievements, limitations, and dilemmas of the newer disciplines. Philosophers of science usually choose to write about the most fully developed sciences because problems are clearer there. The result is ordinarily of little benefit to the behavioral scientist, whose task is clarification of method; here the precedents and analogies of physical science are obscure or inappropriate. "The Conduct of Inquiry "goes a long way in drawing upon the strengths of social research insights without simplifying the common concerns of the scientific enterprise as a whole. As Leonard Broom noted when the book initially appeared: "Kaplan fills a gap and does so with admirable clarity and often engaging wit. It lacks pomposity, pedantry, and pretension, and it is bound to make an impact on the teaching of and, with luck, research in the behavioral sciences."
Social fears are among the most common forms of anxiety in our society. Social phobia, the clinical syndrome, can seriously impact a person's life, increasing the risk of depression, substance abuse, and suicide, and reducing opportunities for social interaction, sustained relationships, and careers. The good news is that empirical evidence shows treatment for social phobia can be highly effective in producing change, and treatment that emphasizes the learning of new skills produces more change than simple education and/or medication. Rapee and Sanderson furnish a practical treatment program whose components are based on empirically validated techniques.
Cognitive style may well turn out to be the missing element in the study of individual differences. This book reviews and integrates research on style differences in learning and behavior and describes the Cognitive Styles Analysis, which provides a simple and effective method of assessing style in children and adults. As both a textbook and a source of reference for professionals working in a range of contexts, it will help teachers and trainers reflect on and assess their effectiveness. The authors provide insights into personal and professional behavior for counselors and personnel professionals and offer a framework for future research for psychologists.
Interactional dilemmas occur when participants are required to
engage in two contradictory activities at the same time or orient
to two conflicting goals. The existence of such dilemmas provides a
context for interactants to be creative, pro-active, and indeed
strategic as they maneuver between the numerous demands placed on
them and produce behavior that fits the ongoing communication
episode. Trials are one such episode in which the various
participants -- in this case, the judge, the defendant, and lawyers
-- experience interactional dilemmas and work to resolve these
through their behavior. |
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