The Psychology Thread

According to their website it's the Royal Society of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce.

Things I discovered today: there are a lot of RSAs. May need to avoid those initials.

Have you guys heard of Jane Elliot and her infamous discrimination awareness experiments? To be honest, it is really soul crushing and enlightening as it reveals hard truths about what we face in our lives. She is a pretty controversial figure with her experiments psychologically scarring the people who participate in it but they usually end up being wiser albeit with long therapy sessions. I am sure if I should post in this thread considering the content and controversy but what do you make of her experiments? Are they ethical?

edited 3rd Mar '17 7:54:01 PM by GAP

Short answer? Nope. Don't care if it advances things dead fast.

Longer answer: sure, aftercare is provided, but... and, it's a big but... you're not supposed to hand subjects a good fifteen years of therapy for them to mainly pay for (in more than a few cases).

Nobody should fork out for what you deliberately do to them, or risk a reduced standard of living thanks to a fucking experiment.

Still, she does have a point even if her experiments are unethical and mentally scarring.

Stanley Milgram had a point when he made his obedience experiments. Didn't stop it from being unethical.

I don't care about potential results, if you subject people to psychological abuse and inflict actual, long-term psychological damage on them, even if it gets better later, stop.

Assuming we’re talking about the Jane Elliott I assume we're talking about, I very much put it in the same category as Milgram or The Third Wave - damaging but powerfully reflective. Still nothing I would perform as a researcher.

edited 4th Mar '17 3:08:36 AM by math792d

I guess. Those were controversial experiments that was a "necessary" evil but I wouldn't recommend it for anyone.

The word you've looking at is "anyone". Seriously: the field doesn't need a new Milgram. We've barely recovered from the bodge jobs of the 20s-70s as it is.

Why are people afraid of shrinks, and are too scared to come forward to get proper diagnosis and treatment? TAKE A WILD GUESS! Rumours about what happened in asylums, institutes, orphanages and workhouses across the world got out.

Unit 731 produced useful data on transplantation, skin grafts and the bends, as did Nazi camps (not to mention lovely anatomical drawings)... taken from vivisections of and deadly experimentation on political prisoners. Still unethical and not a way anybody should go about getting data, however useful you think it's going to get. Torture is bloody torture — body or mind. End. Of.

Short: "enhanced interrogation" may be less useful than what she does, but it's just as bad.

edited 4th Mar '17 7:20:37 AM by Euodiachloris

Also, we still haven't recovered from the damage of the last deeply unethical Humans-are-the-real-monsters experiment in the field (Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment, in which he manipulated the results to get a more exciting study.)

Let's put it this way: mental health professionals really shouldn't be doing anything that convinces people that Psycho Psychologist is common in real life.

I humbly request feedback for this Writer's Block thread, given that psychology is a major element in the topic.

"Academic research into Elliott's exercise shows moderate results in reducing long-term prejudice[16][17] but is inconclusive on the question of whether the possible psychological harm outweighs the potential benefits.[18][19] Measured results of the diversity training for adults are moderate. The outcomes of a 1990 research study by the Utah State University were that virtually all the subjects reported that the experience was meaningful for them. However, the statistical evidence supporting the effectiveness of the activity for prejudice reduction was moderate; and virtually all the participants, as well as the simulation facilitator, reported stress from the simulation."

Like the Obedience experiment and the Prison Simulation study, useful in it's day but not something we would do now.

I would contest Zimbardo's experiment being useful at all considering the metric truckload of fuckery he pulled to get a more exciting experiment conclusion.

Milgram at least kept out of the process

Cites?

Unfortunately locked behind a university paywall.

Google Scholar is your friend.

The "Its ok for just a bit of torture for the greater good" is a bit of a machiavellian line of thinking.

Argue philosophically all you desire about if it is worth it or not, but ethical committees of science have cast their judgment on it: And it is a nono. If you are arguing from a point of view that it might be worth it, it is not a scientific point of view, merely a philosophical one and to that I say 1v1 me scrub ill have you know i graduated top of my class in the Freudian Seals and I have over 300 confirmed diagnosed Oedipus Complexes I am trained in Jungian Warfare and im the top psychologist in the entire forum

I have a question involving learning and high stress environments. Lets say it was your dream to become a chef, doctor, or soldier but you underestimated the amount of work and traing that it acutally involes and slowly built up some regret for having takng that path and you may want to leave it. What is phenomenon called? What do you do when that happens?

"Realisation" is a good word. And, if the track you're on is giving you grief, there are a few ways you can deal with it. 1) Getting some stress-management counselling is always good, for starters. 2) Job counselling wouldn't go amiss, either (yes, you can find job councillors who don't just target high schools and colleges). 3) Getting more physical exercise (it can help burn up the heartburn) 4) Looking after your own diet. 5) Quitting if you feel it's the better option after exploring other ways with people who know the field.

edited 24th Jun '17 4:27:35 AM by Euodiachloris

You are the second ranked psych in this forum, Aszur. I laugh at Freud, I laugh.

As for regretting career choices, that's called "life", as in it happens all the time. I would say that, rather than being too hard, the career you chose doesn't generate enough passion on your part, since if it did, you would enjoy the work involved. Keep trying new things.

Can sadism actually be treated? How?

There are a few schools of thought on that one. The long term prognosis for most types of therapy is either pretty poor or sodding horrendous, though.

However, positive reinforcement in combination with cognitive behavioural therapy has some of the best outcomes available (but, we're not talking impressive figures in the 80% range or anything — think more 45% at best).

The problem is... Well... It's not generally used as a treatment, requires long term commitment from patients, their support chain and practitioners. Which generally is not going to happen, because expensive. :/

Same goes for antisocial personality disorders in general. It's considered far easier and cheaper to lock those we catch up and then to throw away the keys. Although, that's not actually cheaper. <_<

edited 21st Jul '17 12:31:11 PM by Euodiachloris

You don't wanna mess with me and my ample repertoire of yo momma takedowns

Personally I would wanna ask “define sadism” in here, because you know, there’s sadism in the DSM sense, and sadism in the BDSM sense.

And, then there's the "right amount of sadism to keep you alive if you need to hunt or defend yourself to survive" issue, too. <shrugs>

I assumed "pathological sadism" or the mostly defunct "sadistic personality disorder" were meant, because most people are a teensy bit uncomfortable with the whole "it's a set of interlocking personality traits endemic within the entire population: see bell curves to get an idea how it works" reality.

True. I am more in the side of peeps like Robert Hare when going to the psychopathic extremes as basically "Nothin to do here lock'em up like Hannibal"