Dutch Hunger Winter

Stress damages us long before we are aware.

The Dutch Hunger Winter was a famine that took place in the German-occupied part of the Netherlands, especially in the densely populated western provinces above the great rivers, during the winter of 1944-1945, near the end of World War II. A German blockade cut off food and fuel shipments from farm areas to punish the reluctance of the Dutch to aid the Nazi war effort. Some 4.5 million were affected. It was one of those rare events to which psychologists pay attention to. It would be unethical to intentionally starve people for a long period of time, but since it happened naturally, it have psychologists the opportunity to perform a case study that helped us understand humans better, in the means of stress and its long-term effects. 

Because of excellent health care infrastructure and record keeping in the Netherlands, epidemiologists have been able to follow the long term effects of the famine. The Dutch survivors were a group of individuals all of whom suffered for the same exact period of time of malnutrition.

The first aspect studied was the effect of the famine on the birth weights of children who had been in the womb during that period.  "If a mother was well fed around the time of conception and malnourished only for the last few months of the pregnancy, her baby was likely to be born small. If, on the other hand, the mother suffered malnutrition only for the first three months of the pregnancy (because the baby was conceived toward the end of the terrible episode), but then was well fed, she was likely to have abnormal-size baby."  Epi­demiologists were able to study these groups of babies for decades, and what they found was really surprising.

The babies who were born small stayed small all their lives, which showed in lower obesity rates and lower average weight of the people.  For forty or more years, those people had access to as much food as they wanted, and yet their bodies never got over the early period of malnutrition. More unexpectedly, the children whose mothers had been malnourished only early in pregnancy had higher obesity rates than normal. Recent reports have shown a greater incidence of other health problems as well, including effects on certain measures of mental health. Even though those individuals had seemed perfectly healthy at birth, something had happened to their devel­opment in the womb that affected them for decades after. And it wasn't just the fact that something had happened that mattered, it was when it happened. Events that take place in the first three months of gestation, a stage when the fetus is really very small and developing very rapidly, can affect an individual for the rest of their life.

Event the grandchildren of the women who were malnourished during the first three months of their pregnancy, seem to be affected. So something that happened in one pregnant population affected their children’s children.

Epigenetics is the new discipline that is revolutionizing biol­ogy. Whenever two genetically identical individuals are nonidentical in some way we can measure, this is called epigenetics. When a change in environment has biological consequences that last long after the event itself has vanished into distant memory, we are seeing an epigenetic effect in action. And can take prime example in victims of the Hunger Winter. Their DNA didn’t change (mutate), and yet their life histories altered irrevocably in response to their environments.

Our bodies respond to famine like they do to other stressors. This leads to the conclusion that stress hormones in the mother’s blood, triggered a change in the nervous system of the fetus. The stress they went through even before their life began, left scars for the rest of their life. Not only with the way their body stores fat, but also with the way they respond to everyday stress. Many children were found to be highly susceptible to mental disorder, with higher risks for cardiovascular disease, and lowered immunity. 

Types of Experiments.

In Psychology, there are many ways to obtain data. The big three are:

Field 

They are conducted in the everyday, or natural environment of the participants, but situations are artificially set up.

The experimenter manipulates the IV, but in a real life setting, so hence he has no control over extraneous variables.

Strengths:

• High in ecological validity
• Participants are unaware of the experiment - avoid demand characteristics

Limitations:

• Experiments are much harder to control confounding variables
• Time consuming experiments, and expensive 

In field experiments it is not usually possible to gain informed consent from the participants and it is difficult to debrief the participants.

Laboratory Experiments

The features of this kind of experiment is that it takes place in an environment designed to maximize control over extraneous variables to help ensure the validity of the study. The environment is  well-controlled, and accurate measurements are possible.

The researcher decides where the experiment will take place, at what time, with which participants, in what circumstances and using what procedures. You can more easily eliminate confounding variables, and get clear results.

Strengths:

• It is usually the method with the highest level of reliability
• It allows valid cause-effect conclusions in terms of the variables measured because of the certainty gained by control over extraneous variables.

This precision then allows for easy replication of the experiment, which makes it more likely to be checked and confirmed by other researchers.

Limitations:

• Too high level of control over variables, which means that the whole situation become artificial or unrealistic.
• Ecological validity is low, and results cannot be generalized beyond the experimental situation.

 

Natural (quasi)

A quasi experiment is where the independent variable is not manipulated by the researcher but occurs naturally.

 

In a true experiment participants are allocated to the conditions of an experiment, usually through random assignment, however this is not always possible for practical or ethical reasons.

In a quasi experiment the researcher takes advantage of pre-existing conditions such as age, sex or an event that the researcher has no control over such as a participants’ occupation.

 

Strengths:

• A strength of quasi experiments is that that they are taking part in an investigation
•  May not be as artificial as laboratory experiments.

Limitations:

•  harder to establish causal relationships (because the independent variable is not being directly manipulated by the researcher.)

It is worth noting that quasi experiments are very common in psychology because ethically and practically they are the only design that can be used.

Ethics in Psychology

        Ethics are very important when carrying out any type of psychological research. Researchers have a moral responsibility to protect research participants from harm. The code of ethics in psychology provides guidelines for the conduct of research. Some of the more important ethical issues that it addresses are as follows:

• Informed Consent, as in,before the study begins the researcher must outline to the participants what the research is about, and then ask their consent (i.e. permission) to take part.
• Honesty, meaning that participants must be given information relating to the purpose of the research, procedures involved, all possible risks and discomforts to the subject, benefits of the research to society and possibly to the individual human subject, as well as length of time the subject is expected to participate and a person to contact for answers to questions or in the event of injury or emergency.
• Debriefing, as the subjects must be given a general idea of what the researcher was investigating and why, and their part in the research should be explained. They must be told if they have been previously deceived and given reasons why. They must be asked if they have any questions and those questions should be answered honestly and as fully as possible.

          However, ethics in psychology research have been disregarded until relatively recently. Many studies were conducted that lacked ethics, leading to psychological or physical harm to the participants. Due to the fact that it was not thought of as wrong to simply test on people to see what happens, there are many studies  that violate even a higher level of ethical misconduct then described before. The following two violate ethics in the whole sense of the world, not just psychology.

The Monster Study of 1939

The Monster Study was a horrid experiment done on 22 orphan children in Davenport, conducted by Wendell Johnson at the University of Iowa. Johnson supervised the experiment of his graduate student, Mary Tudor. They choose to experiment on children at a nearby orphanage, and placed them in either control or experimental groups. Tudor gave positive speech therapy to half of the children, praising the fluency of their speech, and negative speech therapy to the other half, belittling the children for every speech imperfection and telling them they were stutterers. Many of the normal speaking orphan children who received negative therapy in the experiment suffered negative psychological effects and some retained speech problems during the course of their life. This experiment seems highly unethical to me, because you are experimenting with human beings to prove a theory. Other then the fact that they are orphans, and have no one to take care of them and protect them, the subjects were also children, who cannot have much control or say in situations. It is unethical to give them no say, and not care if their lives are marked with trauma, or actual speech impairment as a result. I could bet that nobody was informed of their rights during the experiment, and no care was taken care of them. Ethically speaking, this study can be compared to bulling or child abuse.

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The Aversion Project of the 1970s and 1980s

South Africa’s apartheid army forced white lesbian and gay soldiers to undergo ‘sex-change’ operations in the 1970′s and the 1980′s, and submitted many to chemical castration, electric shock, and other unethical medical experiments. Although the exact number is not known, former apartheid army surgeons estimate that as many as 900 forced ‘sexual reassignment’ operations may have been performed between 1971 and 1989 at military hospitals, as part of a top-secret program to root out homosexuality from the service.
Army psychiatrists aided by chaplains aggressively ferreted out suspected homosexuals from the armed forces, sending them discretely to military psychiatric units. Those who could not be ‘cured’ with drugs, aversion shock therapy, hormone treatment, and other radical ‘psychiatric’ means were chemically castrated or given sex-change operations. Although several cases of lesbian soldiers abused have been documented so far—including one botched sex-change operation—most of the victims appear to have been young, 16 to 24-year-old white males drafted into the apartheid army.
In my eyes, this is wrong beyond limits. This study completely disregarded ethics, and used soldiers as guinea pigs to see if homosexuality can be cured. Other then the fact that most of them were drugged, shocked and psychologically traumatized beyond respectful human behavior, the soldiers that were refusing to submit themselves, had physical operations done to them, in the means of a sex change, without their approval. Imagine a young man, in his 20's, signing up for the army to help his country and make his family proud. Not only is the army a stressful enough, and psychologically challenging situation, they accused men of being gay, and in my eyes tortured them, without any reason. If you didn't want gays in the army, let them go home.
 

Anything about Aaron Beck.

Who is Aaron Beck ?
Aron Temkin Beck (born July 18, 1921) is an American psychiatrist and a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He is widely regarded as the father of cognitive therapy, and his pioneering theories are widely used in the treatment of clinical depression.

In 1997 Beck discovered key idea's in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, he explains different disorders were associated with different types of distorted thinking.Distorted thinking has a negative effect on our behavior no matter what type of disorder, he explains that successful interventions will educate a person to understand and become aware of their distorted thinking and how to challenge its effects. Beck discovered that frequent negative automatic thoughts reveal a persons core beliefs. He explains core beliefs are formed over lifelong experiences; we “feel” these beliefs to be true.


His Cognitive Triad Theory consists of; negative views of yourself, negative views of the future and negative views of the world. These views come from negative schema that have built up throughout childhood consisting of past experiences in practical and emotional events. This may include parental criticism, criticism from teachers and family members and peer rejection. This theory links with the social learning / behavioral approach.For example, a person fails an exam, his negative views would be the following:
                              Negative view of self - "I'm a failure"
                              Negative view of the world - "Everyone is against me"
                              Negative view of the future - "I'll never be good at anything"
The view of the self in this case could affect the view of the future as they don't believe they can change. Alternatively they may believe that because everyone is against them (negative view of the world) that makes them a failure.

His Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a form of psychotherapy in which the therapist and the client work together as a team to identify and solve problems. Therapists use the Cognitive Model to help clients overcome their difficulties by changing their thinking, behavior, and emotional responses. It has found to be useful in many fields of psychology, such as depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and substance abuse, among others, and it is currently being tested for personality disorders. It has also been demonstrated to be effective as an adjunctive treatment to medication for serious mental disorders such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

CBT is one of the most effective treatments for depression and is a way of talking about how you think about yourself, your environment and the people within it. Using CBT you can also discuss what it is that affects your thoughts and feelings. Once you understand the factors that are causing your depression, CBT can help you make positive changes to overcome it. As a treatment for depression, the CBT helps you to change how you think ('Cognitive') and what you do ('Behaviour'). These changes can help you to feel better. Unlike some of the other talking treatments, it focuses on the 'here and now' problems and difficulties. Instead of focusing on the causes of your distress or symptoms in the past, it looks for ways to improve your state of mind now.

Trait Theory of Personality

The Trait Theory of Personality suggests that individual personalities are composed of broad dispositions. The primary focus of the trait theory of personality is to identify and measure individual personality characteristics. A trait is thought of a stable characteristic that causes individuals to behave in a certain manner.

Cardinal Traits are traits that hold significant dominance over a person's personality, to the point that the individual becomes known for these traits. They are rare and develop later in life, and take over the individual's personality. Central Traits are general characteristics that form the base of one's personality. Although they are not as dominant as Cardinal Traits, they are a mayor characteristic for a person. They are the characteristics you might use to describe an individual with, such as intelligent, frank, serious or honest. Secondary Traits are related to the attitudes and preferences of an individual. They usually appear in certain situations and under specific circumstances. The differences between these traits implies how much power a trait holds over an individual. The most common criticisms to the trait theory are that we cannot use it to predict one's future behavior, and its role holds no explanation of a personality's development, and does not consider the change of negative aspects of a trait. Hence, without understanding how a trait develops, we cannot possibly know how to change it, and change our behavior.

On the other hand we have the Five Factor Model of Personality. It claims that much of what we need to know about an individual's personality can be captured by their standing on the five measurable personality factors or traits. The five factors of this model are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Openness to experience is considered in the means of intuitive and curious vs. consistent and cautious. Typically individuals that score low on the scale are considered  to be down to earth and practical. They hold traditional beliefs and are sometimes described as "plain and straight forward". On the other hand, high scorers are considered to be imaginative and creative, open to experience and sensitive to beauty.

Conscientiousness is considered to hold efficient and organized vs. easygoing and careless. Low scorers are said to be easygoing, unreliable and sloppy. They are described as spontaneous and care free. High scorers are considered organized, tidy and striving. They are self disciplined, dutiful and aim for achievement. Extroversion is the scale between people who are outgoing and energetic, compared to those who are solitary and reserved. People that score low on this scale are reserved, serious and passive. They are often described as "low-key" and deliberate. On the other end, high scorers are usually outgoing, active and sociable. They are engaged in the external world and enthusiastic. Agreeableness considers the tendency to be compassionate and cooperative. Low scorers are hostile, selfish and cold. They are considered to hold self interest over getting along with others, and are less likely to extend themselves to other people. Individuals with high scores are said to be kind, trusting, warm and altruistic. They value getting along with others and hold an optimistic view on human nature. The last trait is neuroticism, which measures how likely you are to experience negative emotions. People who score low  are relaxed and even tempered. They are said to be less likely to get upset, calm and emotionally stable. High scorers are considered emotional, moody and impulsive. They are more susceptible to stress, and their negative mood lasts for a longer time. This scale represents two extremes, and most people fall somewhere in between the two polar ends of each dimension.  Two strengths of McCrae and Costa's five factor model of personality is their objectivity and easy use and understanding. McCrae and his colleagues have also found that the big five traits are remarkably universal. One study that looked at people from more then fifty different cultures found that the theories dimensions could be accurately used to describe the participant's personality. Another food trail of the big five is that it provides an easy continuum with a great deal of information with regards to one's personality, interactions, and beliefs about their self as well as the world.

Stereotyping

The "stereotype threat" is a negative stereotype, and its effects on performance. This is an example of the performance impairment that results when individuals asked to carry out an task are made aware of a negative stereotype held against them regarding their group's ability to preform well in that task. It is scary how even with the slightest manipulation we can find proof for this theory. For example, if you simply tell female participants, before they take a math test, that males usually do better in math, then this will lead to deterioration of female performance in the test. Or if you make older participants aware of their age, they will perform significantly worse on their memory tests, then members of the same age who haven't been reminded of this internal stereotype. Any strong stereotype category that a person belongs to, such as sex, age, or race is susceptible to negative, but also positive stereotype influence. It was shown that positive stereotype reinforcement may be just as powerful as any negative threat. If you invoke a positive stereotype, such as college students are good at math, or older people have more experience, the targeted groups mentioned above can actually better scores then they normally would.  Researchers have determined that stereotypes can have an huge impact on those that they target. It is not anymore about the feeling, not just harmless words. The power of a stereotype is so strong that it can overwhelm many of our traits,  which then results in the saying: you're only as good as you expect to be.

Social Identity Theory

The videos we watched in class showed how in 1968, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small, all-white Iowa town, divided her third-grade class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups and gave them a daring lesson in discrimination. Most of the children in the Class Divided exercise have been friends, playing around on the playground and getting along well.  The children accepted the views that their teacher gave them, that blue eyed people were superior then brown eyed people. This way, groups of power differences were created, and the class was split in half. Within minutes, the blue eyed kids started to work with this new fact, and discriminate. The children started calling the out-group "brown eyes" as an insult. They were teasing them, separating from them, and suggesting that if the brown eyed people get out of hand, to use a ruler to tame them. The effect was real. During recces, one of the brown eyed children felt so much hurt, and so put down by being in the worse group, that he hit one of his classmates - a kid he was probably a best friend with the day before. This exercise teaches us many lessons. It shows how hurtful, and real life prejudice and discrimination are, but it also shows many interesting psychological aspects of our behavior. The social identity theory as well as minimal group paradigm help explain what actually happened. The children were very easily convinced of their status. Their in-group - "we"- and their out-group - "them"- were clearly stated, and reacted upon. The blue eyed kids were the in-group, believing that they are similar to each-other, but that the out-group, the brown are kids, are all the same, and completely different form them. After all, they were told that blue eyed people were smarter, and better. After a while, the kids were pointing out these differences too. This resulted from their social comparison, and resulted in the outbursts that were clearly their way of showing positive distinctiveness. They pointed out the inter-group differentiation, and after a while, would clearly in-group favoritism. Everything the brown eyes did was because they were "stupid", and the brown eyes weren't fighting at all, they accepted their group and role. 

*This takes you through only one of the days of the experiment, the day when blue eyed people were on the top.