Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Dr. M. Clark
TOPIC A – THE NATURE OF ADJUSTMENT
Feldman identifies 4:
1. the challenge of defining and maintaining one’s individuality in
the world
2. the challenge of maintaining physical and mental health
3. the challenge of forming relationships with others
4. the challenge of living with others in a complex society
Adjustment =
1. meeting the challenges;
2. Developing resilience/ strengths to cope with them
THE ADJUSTMENT PROCESS
no matter how dismal the circumstances people have possibilities, resiliencies and
capacities for change and even transformation
strength based practictioners look for and try to nurture the ‘gleam’ that is often hidden
continue to focus on strengths rather than liabilities
helps clients find the self efficacy to make changes
Seleebey (2002) ‘a versatile practice approach, relying heavily on ingenuity and
creativity….rather than focusing on problems, your eye turns towards possibility’ (p.1)
key concepts in the strengths lexicon: empowerment of individuals and communities;
membership/ belongingness; resilience, healing and wholeness; dialogue; suspension of
disbelief in what the client says
Choice
Providing options
Allowing clients to manage their own destiny
Pay attention to the readiness of clients to make changes in the area they have chosen
Change is seen as a process on a continuum
Interventions
Harm reduction
– Transtheroetical model of change Prochaska and
DiClemente (1986)
– Attending to readiness to change
Motivational interviewing
Narrative therapy
All view participants as expert with
knowledge, skills and resources in their own
lived experience
TOPIC B - TRANSITIONS
Key task – identify and let go of hopes and beliefs that are no longer
appropriate
Breaking out of transition crisis is cathartic
Calm, well being and energy
The transition cycle - a template for human responses to
change (Williams, 1999)
Multiple transitions
Leaving school
transition may be gradual or abrupt
working often nothing in common with school life
different set of attitudes needed – e.g. discipline and authority – consequences of norm violation
financial independence imp source of self esteem
cultural influences on transition to adulthood
unemployment/redundancy
feelings of loss of control
Brown (1954) people have a strong need for status and useful function
Two stage reaction to unemployment
active
depression and demoralisation
marriage
adjustment to marriage often means an adjustment to every area of ones life (Holmes and Rahe, 1967)
first year more difficult – after first year able to express differences
ore sensitive to emotional needs of partner
Life changes
Parenthood
marital breakdown less likely to occur if parenthood is not immediate
conflict between expectations and reality
Bereavement
Parkes (1972) 3 stages of grief
numbness
‘pining’ strong sense of person’s absence
depressed and listless – peaks 5 to 14 days after bereavement – often accompanied by
guilt – irritable and quarrelsome
delayed reactions to bereavement = psychiatric symptoms
normally readjustment and coping by the end of the year
different reactions depend on
1. being able to express emotion
being prepared for the event
Adjustment depends on the severity of stress caused by the event
The Holmes and Rahe Stressful Life Events Scale
Holmes and Rahe
Life Events Death of spouse100 Divorce73 Martial
separation65 Jail term63 Death of close family member63
Personal injury or illness53 Marriage50 Fired at work47 Marital
reconciliation45 Retirement45 Change in health of a family
member44 Pregnancy40 Sex Difficulties39 Gain of new family
member39 Business readjustment39 Change in financial
state38 Death of close friend37 Change to different line of
work36 Change in number of arguments with spouse35
Mortgage over $100,00031 Foreclosure of mortgage or loan30
Change in responsibilities at work29
Holmes & Rahe (1967). Holmes-Rahe life changes scale. Journal of
Psychosomatic Research, Vol. 11, pp. 213-218.
–
how often
2. social comparison – social comparison theory
(Festinger, 1954)
two factor theory of emotion (Schachter and Singer
(1962)
3. introspection/autobiographical memory
4. perception of our own behaviour
Schema
Activity 3
You should allow 0 hour(s), 20 minute(s). How would you describe your identity or
identities? What kind of words would you use to describe yourself in terms of:
gender
ethnicity
age
class?
You may also want to describe other aspects of your identity that are important to you,
such as nationality or regional identity, sexuality, religious or political beliefs, occupation or
voluntary roles, family roles, interests and abilities, and so on. Use as many or as few
terms as you like.When you have made some notes in answer to this question, think about
the following questions.
Which of these identities (one or more) is / are the most important to you at this point in
your life – and has this changed overtime?
Would you have described your identity / identities differently 10 or 20 years ago? In what
way?
Possible Selves
4 main methods
1. biased self serving cognitions
– take credit for success and distance themselves from failure
(Schlenker et al, 1990)
- Unrealistically optimistic (Kunda, 1987)
2. Self handicapping – behaviour designed to sabotage one’s own
performance in order to provide a subsequent excuse for failure
(Berglas and Jones, 1978)
Two benefits (a) a defensive excuse in case you fail
(b) Enhanced credit of you succeed
3. Reflection – BIRGing
4. Downward comparison
SELF PRESENTATION
multiple identities
collaborative
deliberate or unconscious
individual differences – high or low self
monitors (Snyder, 1979)
high self monitors
Social rules
to accomplish personal goals
DISCUSSION:
mastery experiences
vicarious experiences provided by social
models
social persuasion
somatic and emotional states
Enactive Mastery Experiences
people also rely on their somatic and emotional states in jugging their
capabilities
interpret their stress reactions and tension as signs of vulnerability to
poor performance
in activities involving strength and stamina people judge their fatigue
aches and pains as signs of physical debility
mood states can bias attention and affect how events are interpreted,
cognitively organized and retrieved from memory
intense moods exert stronger influence than weak ones
negative mood activates thoughts of past failings
positive mood activates thoughts of past accomplishments
mood can bias how much efficacy is derived from experiences
success under positive mood spawns high levels
Failures under negative moods breeds low sense of efficacy.
Strategies to enhance self efficacy
cognition is automatic
categorisation as a basic cognitive process
schemata – a cognitive structure that represents knowledge about
a concept or type of stimulus, including its attributes (Fiske ad Taylor,
1991)
simple and holistic cognitive representations of the social world acts
relatively enduring templates for interpretation of stimuli
physical constructs
role constructs
interaction constructs
psychological constructs – person schemata
self schemata – actual, ideal and ought selves
content free schemata
Consequences of schemata
illusory correlations
sub categorisations
contrast effect – the tendency to perceive
stimuli that differ from expectations as being
even more different than they really are
Conclusion
4 main approaches
1. Prejudice as errors in thinking: social
cognitive approaches
Prejudice as errors in thinking:
Analogy of computer – the individual makes sense of a multitude of social information
encountered
Simplifying the task
Complexity of information and limited cognitive capacities
Generate ‘general categories’ relating to self and other
Overload is prevented
Categorization – advantageous cognitive process
‘Faulty categorizations’ = stereotypes
Stereotypic schemata/scripts bias encoding of new knowledge about individual or
group member – people pay more attention to activities that confirm their preformed
beliefs
Within the social cognitive tradition, prejudiced activities are viewed as the unfortunate
by product of limitations on our rational mental organization
Remediation strategies = book keeping effect
People gradually change their accounts of certain groups
Contact hypothesis
Criticisms
Individualistic orientation
Does not explain why 1. Only some people
are prejudiced and 2. Why against some
social groups
Decontextualised accounts
Remediation strategies (Wetherell and
Potter, 1992)
2. Prejudice as personality traits: psychodynamic approaches (Adorno et al,
1950)
self recognition
reactions of others
STIGMATISATION
– Master status
– Social position
– Official versus informal labelling
Felt stigma
:
Adverse comments
Inhibited or oversympathetic reactions
May be rare or continuous
Reactions to stigma
Embarrassment
Shame
Response – 1. accept 2. reject
Stigma management
Passing
Covering
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Employment
IQ by itself not very good predictor of job performance
Hunter and Hunter (1984) IQ accounts for about 25% of the performance
Being able to handle frustration, control emotions and get along with other people
Bachman (1991) – most effective leaders in the US navy were warmer, more outgoing,
emotionally expressive and sociable
Age
Gets better with age (Stein, 1996)
Peaks in late 40’s and early 50’s Using Bar-on-Eq-i
Accounted for most of the variance
Independence
Social responsibility
Reality testing
Problem solving
optimism
Gender
Situational influences
Context theories
Social comparison
Adaptation
Structure:
What are the major components under the umbrella
of SWB, and how do they relate to one another?
Four components
– positive affect
– negative affect
– satisfaction
– domain satisfaction
Figure 1: a hierarchical model of happiness
Frequency vs intensity:
Is it the frequency, duration or intensity of good
feelings and cognitions that compose SWB?
Discussion: Is the person who emperiences intense
positive emotios better off than the person who is
only mildly happy most of the time, or is the
frequency with which an individual experiences
positive emotions the most important factor in
determining overall affective well being.
Temporal sequence and stages:
Weakly correlated
Some do consistently predict SWB
Married people more SWB then never been
married, divorced or separated (Lee et al,
1991)
Income seems to influence SWB at lower
levels where physical needs are at stake
Affect vs Cognition
: SWB includes both affecyive evaluations of one’s life (eg pleasant
feelings, enjoyment etc) but also a cognitive evaluation (eg
satisfaction, meaning etc) Which is most important?
How we perceive and think about the world determines our SWB
Cognitive theories of well being
– Attributional theory of depression (Beck 1967)
– Dampen or amplify ones emotions (Larsen, Deiner and Croponzano, 1987)
– Optimism
– Coping styles (McCrae and Costa (1986)
– Religion (Ellison 1991)
– Goal orientation (Emmons 1992)
The functioning mood system:
Even happy people experience unpleasant emotions and
happiness is not equated with uninterrupted joy. Adaptive
emotions include being able to react to events and not being
stuck in happy or sad moods
The functionality of negative emotions
Happiness is not to be equated with mania or uninterrupted
ecstacuy
Very rare for people to be happy all the time
Even happy people have pleasant and unpleasant moods
chronic unrelieved negative emotion is undesirable and
unhealthy
TRADEOFFS