Psychology: The Key Concepts

Graham Richards

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780415432009
• eBook ISBN: 9781134082636
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Psychology: The Key Concepts is a comprehensive overview of 200 concepts central to a solid understanding of Psychology and includes the latest recommendations from the British Psychology Society (BPS). The focus is on practical uses of Psychology in settings such as nursing, education and human resources, with topics ranging from Gender to Psychometrics and Perception.

PSYCHOLOGY

The Key Concepts

ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION (N-ACH)

American personality theorist Henry Murray, writing in the late 1930s, identified a large number of ‘needs’, among them need for achievement usually referred to as N-Ach. This particular ‘need’ soon attracted more attention than most of the others, leading to an extensive literature on ‘Achievement Motivation’ from the late 1950s into the early 1960s and including the creation of methods of assessing or measuring ‘N-Ach’ (‘n.Ach’ and ‘N.ach’ being occasional slight variations) beyond Murray’s own thematic apperception test method. This research genre became, for a while, a significant strand in US Social Psychology with attempts made to apply it to ancient and non-European cultures, using e.g. decorative design motifs as indices of level of N-Ach on the basis that certain design features such as strong ascending lines signified higher levels than others, such as circles or descending lines. This particular project was highly speculative and short-lived. A more enduring consequence was the devising of a number of psychometric techniques for assessing not only N-Ach itself but related issues such as fear of failure and, indeed, fear of success. These tests often took the form of tests of Level of Aspiration (LoA), requiring those taking them to estimate, for example, the number of simple faces they would be able to draw in a minute (filling in a sheet of circles). This led to the identification of phenomena such as under-achievement. A series, Advances in Motivation and Achievement, continued to be issued into the 1990s (see Urdan, 1999).

References and further reading

Atkinson, J.W. and Feather, N.T. (eds) (1966) A Theory of Achievement Motivation, New York: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Eccles, J. (2002) Development of Achievement Motivation, New York: Elsevier.

McClelland, D.C. (1955) Studies in Motivation, NewYork: AppletonCentury-Crofts.

Smith, C.P. (ed.) (1992) Motivation and Personality: Handbook of Thematic Content Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Urdan, T.C. (ed.) (1999) The Role of Context, Advances in Motivation and Achievement, New York: Elsevier.

ACQUIESCENCE RESPONSE SET (OR ACQUIESCENCE BIAS)

The tendency of people to answer in the affirmative or agree with statements presented in questionnaires. Thus someone might agree with both ‘Sexual immorality is very widespread these days’ and ‘The level of sexual immorality today is often greatly exaggerated’. This means that questionnaire items should be carefully counterbalanced in the direction in which they are scored. Hence, in a questionnaire about attitudes towards green issues, items such as ‘I always try to buy organic food’ (agree scoring positive) and ‘Global warming has been greatly exaggerated’ (disagree scoring positive) should be equally represented. The problem began receiving wide attention in the early 1960s in critiques of the F-scale devised to assess authoritarianism, such as N.H. Berkowitz and G.H. Wolkon (1964). In the 1970s and 1980s, it was the focus of an extensive research programme by Australian psychologist J.J. Ray (see jonjayray.fortunecity.com/acquies.html) and continues to concern psychometricians.

Reference

Berkowitz, N.H. and Wolkon, G.H. (1964) ‘A Forced Choice Form of the “F” Scale-free of Acquiescent Response Set’, Sociometry, 27: 54–65.

ADHD (ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER)

Syndrome characterised by inability to sustain attention, high levels of impulsive physical activity and difficulty in remaining seated or still for any length of time. The term ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) is used in cases where hyperactivity is absent. Usually diagnosed in young children, since it affects school performance and can be disruptive in the classroom, it may persist into adulthood. The term only became widely used during the 1980s but case descriptions corresponding to the condition can be found in psychiatric, educational and other writings since the ancient Greeks. Previous, apparently synonymous, terms included ‘hyperkinetic reaction of childhood’ and ‘hyperactive child syndrome’. In the past two decades, diagnosis of ADHD has risen dramatically, but how far this signifies a real increase in prevalence is unclear. The most popular treatment is the drug Ritalin, with Dexedrine sometimes being used as an alternative. ADHD is a controversial category. The respective roles of genetic causes, social environment and diet remain unclear, and it is widely considered to refer to the extreme end of the normal range of temperamental variability rather than to a genuinely distinct medical condition. Diagnosis can also be affected by other factors, such as being used by mental health professionals in borderline cases to ensure family access to child and family mental health services when this is felt desirable on broader grounds. Levels of caretaker and teacher tolerance of, and skill in dealing with, ADHD symptoms also vary widely and will affect the likelihood of the ADHD label being bestowed. There are indeed parents who, believing Ritalin to be a panacea for their child-management difficulties, pressurise professionals into diagnosing their child as ADHD. Some critics argue that the apparent rise in ADHD partly at least reflects the highly arousing and fast-moving entertainment stimuli (such as TV cartoons and computer games) to which children now have high exposure levels, while dietary factors, in particular, food additives, have also been blamed. While ADHD symptoms can clearly reach genuinely pathological levels, the ever-widening use of the label may be an instance of ‘medicalisation’ or ‘pathologising’ of behaviour hitherto considered unremarkable – a kind of technical-sounding way of describing children who fidget and will not concentrate on the adult-determined matter at hand.

References and further reading

Gill, M., Bellgrove, M. and Fitzgerald, M. (2007) Handbook of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Stead, J., Cohen, D. and Lloyd, G. (2006) Critical New Perspectives on ADHD, London: Routledge.

ADOLESCENCE

The period between the onset of puberty and attainment of adulthood, i.e. approximately 13–19 years of age. The word itself is surprisingly old, dating to the fifteenth century. While this now seems to us a natural period of both physiological and psychological transition, rarely endured without some anxiety and confusion, its psychological importance only began receiving serious attention in the late nineteenth century with the general extension of education into the early teens. Previous discourse on the topic (which was extensive) usually refered to ‘youth’. The term ‘teenage’ was coined in the USA in 1921 and ‘teenager’ as late as 1941. It was only in the late twentieth century that adolescent sub-cultures emerged and acquired their current commercial significance. There is a clear sense then in which, as currently understood, adolescence could be considered to be a socially constructed (social constructionism) phenomenon. The literature on the role of adolescence in psychological development and associated psychological problems is now huge. For Erik H. Erikson (1950, 1964) it was the sixth of eight developmental stages, marked by ego-confusion, the felt need to become socially competent and general emotional upheaval. Adolescents obviously experience considerable role conflict (see role theory) being required to act as both adults and children, or be both independent and dependent, in ways which can seem quite arbitrary. The upper age-limit for adolescence has, for some sociological purposes, risen to 21 or even 25 due to the growth of higher education. This would have greatly baffled our ancestors, for whom adolescence, or ‘youth’...

Table of contents

• ALSO AVAILABLE FROM ROUTLEDGE
• CONTENTS
• LIST OF CONCEPTS
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• PSYCHOLOGY
• Index