The Psychology Thread

"Because succeeding in business is... to be detrimentally affected in your personal social life." Cool: it's official. <_<

Question: was there even a slight pause to step back and access what that actually says about general workplace cultures? -_-

edited 4th Jun '14 5:02:03 PM by Euodiachloris

A lot of us here must be mentally unbalanced, we probably try to masquerade it behind a normal attitude without even knowing about it.

You know, I hope I can go into experimental psychology once I finish college.

Not really. It was just a lot of stupid generalization and whitewashing. Like. Of bipolar people it said "They were usually smart enough to be able to hide their hyperdepressive moments and more than make up for it in their hypermanic phases" (paraphrasing, not quoting). And imagine putting a Narcissist as the head of a bunch of people! Sure. he or she will be extremely motivated to do his job well. But those "underlings" onder him will probbaly live a miserable life.

It was stupid and it ignores the most basic of criteria for disorders: it has a detrimental effect on social, work, and family life. I cannot lie...kinda ticked me off to see that article, promoting that sort of thing...

Yeah you'd have a much simpler time with something like AD(H)D and saying "A job where you need to focus on lots of things at once, perfect!" "A job where you need to stay focused on one boring thing all the time, horrible!".

edited 5th Jun '14 10:27:33 PM by Silasw

Ha, damn.

There is few Internet activity I find more exhausting than discussing PTSD with weaboos hardcore anime fans.

There are some group of people who think those who suffer from PTSD are incapable of being any kind of a hero, and they (those kind of anime fans) are just the worst.

Apparently Audie Murphy was no hero, and Saving Private Ryan was a boring movie.

Yeah...fiction is generally not the healthiest way to learn about disorders...

Yeah, but subculture seems to have it much worse than the mainstreams.

I mean, let's take PTSD. There are plenty of great war movies that both portray PTSD very well (but not always accurately, but who expects that anyway?) and still manage to be very poignant and entertaining.

True. Movies and works of fiction can often be used to help depict or show serious subjects.

I remember on my studies we saw Sybil, the movie of The Beach, and Pink Floyd The Wall and I am fully aware there are plenty of other examples others saw. In the specific case of PTSD, you mentioned some. War movies and war depictions in general are effective at delivering the idea of the "horrors of war".

In the case of anime (and other genre) there might be some Executive Meddling that gets in the way of the story, so Crowning Moment Of Awesome might be given more relevance than to actually portraying a disorder accurately. Could also be Rule of Funny, or Rule of Scary etc etc

edited 11th Jun '14 8:56:30 AM by Aszur

What stories have you read/seen that actually portray (people with) mental disorders fairly accurately? (Not just PTSD - I'm curious in general.)

A Beautiful Mind (Schizophrenia)

Pink Floyd The Wall

As Good as It Gets

Heard good things about Little Miss Sunshine and Butterfly effect for depression but havent seen them myself

Gah. There are so many small documentaries and others we saw that I cannot fathom what their names might have possibly even been...one was a heart rending one about a child with hemophilia, who caught AIDS from a faulty transfusion and the way it was handled was great...another was one with Robbin Williams I think?

Those ones, and The Beach and Sybil, we covered in class...

I did not like Sybil. Or Psychonauts.

I have no mouth, and I must scream takes again, on guilt and depression. The series House, M.D of course is yet another take on depression.

Fallout New Vegas has Boone, a character well represented with Survivor´s guilt, a facet of PTSD

The Kings Speech Small Apartments

Which ones have OTHER people seen? Or read?

edited 11th Jun '14 11:18:45 AM by Aszur

I've seen A Beautiful Mind and As Good As It Gets! :D They were both fantastic, though I was kind of disappointed when I realised how abstractly A Beautiful Mind dealt with Nash's mathematical talents and how they were affected by his medication.

I'm barely an amateur in psychology, but a couple I can think of -

• Broodhollow has psychology and psychotherapy as a very prominent element. It's made pretty clear that Wadsworth would be diagnosed with OCD by a modern psychiatrist, and it's the only story I know that makes the connection to relieving anxiety. (It is also a great story, so I recommend it without second thought. :P )
• I thought the Dark Knight trilogy did pretty well at portraying Bruce Wayne as clinically depressed and using Batman as a mechanism for self-harm (especially The Dark Knight Rises).

edited 11th Jun '14 12:16:26 PM by Noaqiyeum

Memento is a fairly accurate depiction of anterograde amnesia.

Muv Luv Alternative is known for portraying PTSD very well.

The Pacific has THE most vivid portrayal of PTSD in any work of fiction I've seen.

How much of an effect does one's experiences have on one's personality? While most studies seem to suggest that it's effectively preset from birth, we still have things like the Cynicism Catalyst.

There is a feedback loop. However, what you take away from any experience you get may well depend on what networks you have already got in place... and, which connections you were tilted towards at birth.

Somebody with an antisocial personality disorder is not likely to receive "being part of a relationship is warm and awesome!" as a message from any close relationships they do have, after all, thanks to not being particularly well wired to receive that one. They might get "being part of a close relationship makes me look epic and rewards me with the stuff I don't have to do because the other side is — and this is awesome", though.

edited 16th Jun '14 11:27:39 AM by Euodiachloris

People learn. Most of them. That is as far as I dare to say things go regarding personality.

There have been so many theories and hypothesis trying to pin down a way to classify human personality, and none have, and I do not think any will ever, manage to classify humans effectively. There are just way too many variables that determine how a person will end up behaving, or thinking, in the end. In fact, if we did indeed understand human behavior perfectly, to the point of infallibly being able to predict it, we would have "won the game", since the definition of psychology (At least according to APA) is that of "The study of human mind and behavior".

For the subject "How many years can a mountain exist, before it is washed to the sea?" I think you are looking at the subject of "Resilience", which generally tends to be different for all of us. Other related subjects are "Tolerance to frustration" and I HAVE SEEN INTO THE ABYSS AND IT STARED BACK!!!.

Some of those studies say that children who are never challenged have more difficulty adapting in the future to any source of frustration. Whereas those who are beset with lots of responsibilities very early, can grow with a more calloused, closed, inflexible view on life (as well as a bevy of painful sequels biologically). Yes, it does seem cliched, but those are just some studies.

edited 16th Jun '14 8:29:54 AM by Aszur

Personality is not preset from birth, but determining precisely to what extent biological factors influence it is extremely difficult to determine scientifically, and the subject is controversial. Twin studies have revealed that some traits, like IQ, could be as much as 50% biologically determined. However, the important point to remember is that biological factors and experential factors interact to jointly determine development- the height of a plant is very strongly pre-determined, but it is still very sensitive to the amount of light the plant receives. If you think of the biological influences on behavior as opening up a wide spectrum of possibilities, and experience as guiding a person through those possibilities toward the eventual outcome, you wont be too far off.

Can someone explain this to me? Lets say you and someone get into a fight but you were the one who got beaten up, you try to challenge that person but you get beaten up again. The next time you try to challenge that person, you hold your hands instinctively to avoid getting hurt. What is this phenomenon called? What form of learning is this?

Half-arsed avoidance behaviour thanks to negative reinforcement? (Positive reinforcement generally works better, and, if provided in a situation with enough in the way of learning support, is unlikely to produce half-measures in the resulting behaviour patterns. For best results: see "carrot and stick". If the stick is not brutal and is consistently applied.)

Here: have a(n overly pastel) webpage in friendly bullet points that illustrates the differences between the basic learning strategies.

So... next time something like that starts up... Reward yourself with a little something nice if you intentionally avoid the whole mess without having to even start protecting your hands. Get positive reinforcement working for you by telling yourself you did wonders by getting out of that with the little present to yourself.

edited 17th Jun '14 4:00:19 AM by Euodiachloris

That's called Classical Conditioning.

Yup. Still has uses.

Drool for me, bitches. Drool for my meat!

edited 17th Jun '14 10:30:12 AM by Aszur

I remember reading, in the context of nature versus nurture, about studies that suggested mild mental retardation was genetic, but severe retardation was environmental (e.g. due to malnourishment or other such factors). Or, in other words, good nurturing raises intelligence (and presumably other qualities) across the population, but also increases the standard deviation.

Heh: screw the meat, give me Pavlova!

Nutrition is one factor, yes. But, do not underestimate lead in those studies. Insidious stuff when it comes to cognitive impairment. <_< And, some of those twin studies only belatedly checked for lead-based household goods (and proximity to heavy traffic) as a factor.

edited 17th Jun '14 12:39:10 PM by Euodiachloris