Everything I need to know, I learned in Intro to Psych

Ok, the heading is a bit of an exaggeration. I didn't learn everything I need to know in my freshman year Intro to Psychology course. However, I learned many important things in that course that many M.S./Ph.D/Psy.D wielding psychologists seemed to have forgotten.

1) To be able to make inferences about cause and effect, you need to perform a controlled experiment with a representative sample of the population.
In the Dawes, Faust, and Meehl article, the superiority of actuarial method of judgment is discussed (1989). Apparently, clinicians who use the clinical method as opposed to the actuarial method believe that they have special intuitive powers from their experience that allow them to predict outcomes of their patients. However, clinicians base their predictions on the "skewed sample of humanity" that they see, which is not a "truly representative sample" (p. 1671). As a result, "it may be difficult, if not impossible, to determine relations among variables" (p. 1671). To make accurate predictions, it is necessary that clinicians look at both people with a disorder AND people without the disorder. If clinicians want to be able to make better predictions without relying on actuarial methods, they should perform studies (or refer to published studies) that look at a truly representative sample of the population.

2) Self-fulfilling Prophecies
As I learned in my first psychology course, self-fulfilling prophecies are when someone (Person A) expects someone else (Person B) to act in a certain way. These expectations lead to subtle changes in Person A's behavior, which elicit the expected behavior in Person B. In other words, because Person A expects Person B to act in a certain way, Person B acts in that way!
In some cases, it seems that clinical judgments result in self-fulfilling prophecies (Dawest et al, 1989). This results in clinical judgments causing outcomes instead of predicting outcomes. This can be a huge problem, especially when the outcomes will result in negative repercussions, such as predicting that a person will act violently.

3) Hindsight Bias
Hindsight bias refers to the fact that outcomes seem more predictable (and obvious) when they are known vs. when they are being predicted and that past predictions are often remembered as being in line with the correct outcomes, regardless of what the person originally predicted. Clinicians often recall their original judgments to be in line with outcomes (Dawes et al, 1989). As a result, their original predictions lose their value.

4) Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias refers to the nature of humans to look for evidence that supports their hypotheses and to reject information that is not in line with their hypotheses. Clinical judgments often result in confirmation biases, so as a result clinicians often believe they are correct in their predictions when they are not (Dawes et al, 1989)! This results in overconfidence in clinical judgment. Dawes et al point out a study "demonstrating the upper range of misappraisal, [in which] most clinicians were quite confident in their diagnosis although not one was correct" (p. 1672)!
Confirmation biases not only lead to incorrect predictions and unmerited confidence in clinicians, but it also leads to the perseverance of potentially harmful treatments (PHTs). In his 2007 article about PHTs, Lilienfeld states that "persistent beliefs concerning the efficacy of PHTs may, in turn, be mediated by attributions regarding the causes of client deterioration" (p. 64). As a result, therapies that can result in symptom worsening and sometimes even death continue to be available to an uninformed public.
Garb (1999) pointed out 8 years ago that clinicians should stop using the Rorschach inkblot test unless we are able to find solid evidence that it has good reliability, validity, and utility. Otherwise, it is likely to results in lots of wasted time on the part of clinicians and money on the part of clients. Also, it is likely that it will lead to misdiagnoses. Garb mentioned that "in many instances, the addition of the Rorshach led to a decrease in validity" (p. 315)! The confirmation bias probably plays a huge role in the continuing use of such a useless tool. Clinicians believe that the Rorshach tests work, so they point out proof that supports their claims and disregard evidence that shows the contrary.

I could keep going...the articles we read this week also showed evidence of the fundamental attribution error, such as when psychologists assume client deterioration is due to specific characteristics of an individual as opposed to the fact that a treatment is not working (Lilienfeld, 2007). They show that many clinicians do not understand base rates (Dawes et al, 1989). They also show that psychologists use tests, treatments, and predictive methods that lack empirical support (Garb, 2007; Dawes et al, 1989; Lilienfeld, 2007).

Perhaps all practicing clinicians should be required to sit in on an Introduction to Psychology course every couple of years or so. It seems like they forgot a bunch of key principles that many freshman could recite by heart. If the clinicians remembered these principles, a lot of undue suffering could probably be avoided.

Week 12: Is Dexter a Life-Course-Persistent Antisocial Guy?

I found the Moffitt (1993) article to be very fascinating. Her arguments for the two different types of antisocial people makes sense to me intuitively. However, intuition is not always a good thing to base scientific theories on. I am craving to know if her theories were ever supported empirically.

Moffitt's new taxonomy for antisocial behavior has HUGE implications for data collection. If Moffitt is correct and there are actually two different types of people who present with antisocial behaviors, who can easily be distinguished by when antisocial behaviors begin and whether or not they ever desist, cross-sectional data collection will never be able to distinguish between the two groups successfully! It is integral that researchers use longitudinal research methods if they want to distinguish adolescence limited from life-course persistent antisocial people. I kind of wish the second article we read this week was a follow-up on this article so we could see how Moffitt's new taxonomy faired when people attempted to back it up with empirical support. Has it been supported yet?

Moffitt said that delinquents have lower than average cognitive abilities. She stated that "this relation is not an artifact of slow-witted delinquents' greater susceptibility to detection by police; undetected delinquents have weak cogntive skills too" (p. 680). I really want to know how she knows this! If these people have not been caught, how do we know that they are engaging in delinquent behavior? Are they just very honest and frank when they self-report? I would like to know more about how she came to this conclusion. She cited a past article she wrote, but I wish she added a sentence into THIS article about how it is possible to find out information like this.

Have any of you ever seen the TV show Dexter? Well, I'm kind of obsessed with it. It's pretty amazing. Anyway, it is about a guy who works for the Miami police doing forensics. He helps the cops catch some pretty awful killers. The twist is that Dexter himself is actually a serial killer. And the other twist is that he only kills other killers. He's kind of like a "Dark Avenger"...like Batman, except much creepier. Anyway, I amuse myself by attempting to diagnose Dexter with different DSM disorders... for a while, I thought he was schizoid, because he used to seem as if he didn't need or want any human interaction and he has very flat affect. However, he has murdered close to 40 people, which leads me to believe he has a few antisocial tendencies. (haha...a few...) Anyway, Dexter would definitely be a life-course-persistent. He started off killing animals when he was young (just as many people who end up antisocial do) and he had urges to kill people since he was in elementary school. However, his delinquency is not stable across situations. He doesn't steal/cheat/pick fights or anything like that. All he does is kill people. Does that mean he isn't a life-course persistent antisocial? Dexter has lately been comparing himself to a drug addict--hinting that killing people is an addiction for him. Can you be addicted to killing people? What kind of diagnost would that warrent? If anyone watches the show, please give me your input!! And if you don't watch the show, go rent the first season right now. Stop what you are doing and go to Blockbuster. Seriously. It's by far one of the best shows on television and so fascinating to pick apart and analyze.

Interesting side note: I had no idea if Terrie Moffitt was a male or female, but for some reason, I assumed male. However, I just googled Moffitt and found that she is in fact, a woman! There is a higher prevalence rate for antisocial male behavior--do you think this is why I assumed Moffitt was a male?

Week 11: How an article both made me really happy and really angry

I really enjoyed this week's reading, probably because it was relevant to my research. I like when my homework doubles as being possible sources for future papers. :)

In the Mineka and Zinbarg (2006) article, one point really stood out to me. While discussing the trauma phase of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, they state that "survivors with PTSD were more likely than those without PTSD to retrospectively report having experienced mental defeat during their trauamatization" (p. 18). After reading this, I noted in the margin "good to know". In my opinion, this one sentence was one of the most important sentences I've read all year. I know that this statement was not supposed to be the part of the article that people walked away thinking about, but after reading this article, I couldn't stop thinking about how incredibly important this fact is. Mineka and Zinbarg are basically pointing out that not admitting defeat during a crisis can have serious psychological benefits. They are telling you, if you are in a crisis, DON'T GIVE UP. Do people know this??? If I am ever assaulted or in another traumatic situation, I now know what I should be thinking about in order to protect my psychological well being. I feel that I now have the power to help immunize myself from incapacitating psychological problems that I didn't have last week. This is amazing to me. I can't believe reading an article for class could empower me in such a way.

I found the Mineka and Zinbarg article to be extremely interesting and enlightening. I feel that I now have a good grasp on contemporary learning models, which I knew next to nothing about before I started reading this article. As a anxiety researcher with a cognitive background, I feel that I can incorporate what I learned from this article into my own person theories and ideas about anxiety. I do not feel like cognitive and learning models are incompatible. However, Mineka and Zinbarg do not seem to agree with me...

Now on to some complaining...
In the Conclusion of their article, Mineka and Zinbarg discussed why they felt contemporary learning theory models are better than other models (such as psychodynamic and cognitive). I give these guys full range to diss psychodynamic theories, but cognitive theories?? That's not okay with me. Why does the learning model have to be BETTER? Why can't the multiple models complement each other? I think it is very close minded of the authors to simply brush aside cognitive models (and okay...I suppose psychodynamic models probably have some good points too).

And also, if Mineka and Zinbarg are going to say that cognitive models are less comprehensive than contemporary learning models, I think they should get their facts straight. They stated that "the cognitive model is silent about the variety of different vulnerability factors that the learning theory approach explicitly addresses affecting which individuals with panic attacks are most likely to develop PD or PDA" (p. 22). This is simply not true. Cognitive researchers use questionnaire called the Anxiety Sensitivity Index to look at people's cognitions related to panic-related symptoms (it measures their fear of these symptoms). This questionnaire is a very helpful measure in identifying people who will develop PD. Nice try, Mineka and Zinbarg. Nice try.

Ok, see you all on Wednesday!