Psychologists have long studied religion and religious practices. Using principles of traditional psychology, researchers try to understand religious experience, including prayer, cults, and mystical experiences. The study of religion and psychology began in the early twentieth century, but faded before it was revived in the 1980s, when the American Psychological Association began to formally inve…
Psychologists use a wide variety of techniques to answer research questions. The most commonly used techniques include experiments, correlational studies, observational studies, case studies, and archival research. Each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses. Psychologists have developed a diversity of research strategies because a single approach cannot answer all types of questions that p…
RNA consists of a five-carbon sugar (ribose), phosphate, and four nitrogenous bases (adenine, guanine, cytosine, and uracil). In an RNA molecule, the sugar and phosphate combine to form a structure to Computer-generated image of ribonucleic acid. (Photo by Ken Eward. National Audubon Society Collection/Photo Researchers, Inc. Reproduced by permission.) which the nitrogenous bases are attach…
In normal human adults, each hemisphere of the brain, working in concert with the other, performs certain types of functions more efficiently than the other. While the left-brain hemisphere is dominant in the areas of language and logic, the right-brain hemisphere is the center of nonverbal, intuitive, holistic modes of thinking. Each hemisphere mostly receives perceptions from and controls the ac…
Carl Rogers was born in Oak Park, Illinois. Raised in a fundamentalist Christian home, Rogers attended the University of Wisconsin and studied for the ministry at Union Theological Seminary before deciding to pursue a doctorate in education and clinical psychology at Columbia University. Between 1928 and 1939, Rogers worked as a counselor at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in…
Role playing was developed by Jacob Moreno, a Viennese psychologist who contended that people could gain more from acting out their problems than from talking about them. This method requires a protagonist (the client whose problems are being acted out); auxiliary egos (group members who assume the roles of other people in the protagonist's life); an audience (other group members who observ…
Popularly known as the "Inkblot" test, the Rorschach technique, or Rorschach Psychodiagnostic Test is the most widely used projective psychological test. The Rorschach is used to help assess personality structure and identify emotional problems. Like other projective techniques, it is based on the principle that subjects viewing neutral, ambiguous stimuli will project their own perso…
The Rosenzweig Picture Frustration test consists of 24 cartoon pictures, each portraying two persons in a frustrating situation. Each picture contains two "speech balloons," a filled one for the "frustrator" or antagonist, and a blank one for the frustrated person, or protagonist. The subject is asked to fill in the blank balloon with his or her response to the situatio…
Julian B. Rotter was born in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Jewish immigrants, and he was their third son. His father operated a profitable business until it ran into trouble during the Great Depression. The economic downturn greatly affected Rotter and his family, and made him realize how strongly people are affected by their environments. In high school, Rotter's interest in psychol…
Benjamin Rush was born near Philadelphia. He attended the College of New Jersey (the future Princeton University), intending to enter the ministry. Finally deciding in favor of medicine, Rush began his medical studies in Philadelphia, serving a six-year apprenticeship to a local physician. He then enrolled in the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where many American physicians received their trai…
In 1984, Newsweek printed a feature article on an "epidemic" of child abuse in day-care settings. During the next 10 years or so, numerous newspaper and magazine articles described criminal trials in which reference was made to sexual abuse, torture, and ritual worship of one kind or another. For example, in 1988 Kelly Michaels was charged with sexually abusing children in her care a…
Although Virginia Satir devoted her career to family therapy, she believed strongly in focusing on the self-worth of individuals. The family unit might be critically important, she felt, but the self-esteem of each member of the family had to come from within each person. Because of her studies, her experience based on working with thousands of families, and her instinctive understanding of family…
Persons who display savant syndrome have traditionally been called idiot savants, a term that many currently avoid because of its negative connotations. Alternate terms include retarded savant and autistic savant, the latter referring to the fact that savant syndrome is often associated with autism. It is difficult to arrive at an exact figure for the incidence of savant syndrome. A 1977 study fou…
In ancient times, there were rituals of scapegoating. A tribe or person would literally sacrifice an animal to the gods, or send an animal into the desert declaring that that animal was carrying away the tribe's sins. In today's culture, psychology uses the term to discuss certain forms of victimization. A particular child of an alcoholic family can be deemed the scapegoat, for insta…
Some experts view schizophrenia as a group of related illnesses with similar characteristics. The condition affects between one-half and one percent of the world's population, occurring with equal frequency in males and females (although the onset of symptoms is usually earlier in males). Between 1 and 2% of Americans are thought to be afflicted with schizophrenia—at least 2.5 millio…
In March 1994, the test formerly known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test became the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT). The name change reflects the test's objectives more accurately, that is, to measure a student's scholastic ability and achievement rather than his or her aptitude. The format of the SAT remains basically the same, however; it is a series of tests, given to groups of stu…
School phobia is an imprecise, general term used to describe a situation in which a child is reluctant to go to school. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, refusal to go to school is most common in the period from preschool through second grade. In most cases, school phobia is a symptom of an educational, social, or emotional problem the child is experiencing. The…
Developed in 1896 at the University of Pennsylvania in a clinic that studied and treated children considered morally or mentally defective, the field of school psychology today includes 30,000 psychologists, most of whom work in educational systems throughout the United States. School psychologists, in various roles within the school systems they serve, focus on the development and adjustment of t…
The scientific method involves a wide array of approaches and is better seen as an overall perspective rather than a single, specific method. The scientific method that has been adopted was initially based on the concept of positivism, which involved the search for general descriptive laws that could be used to predict natural phenomena. Once predictions were possible, scientists could attempt to …
Security objects are items, usually soft and easily held or carried, that offer a young child comfort. Security objects are also referred to as attachment objects, inanimate attachment agents, nonsocial attachments, comfort habits, transitional objects, not-me possessions, substitute objects, cuddlies, treasured possessions, soothers, pacifiers, special soft objects, Linus phenomenon, and security…
The term self-actualization was used most extensively by Abraham Maslow, who placed it at the apex of his hierarchy of human motives, which is conceived as a pyramid ascending from the most basic biological needs, such as hunger and thirst, to increasingly complex ones, such as belongingness and self-esteem. The needs at each level must be at least partially satisfied before those at the next can …
Self-concept—the way in which one perceives oneself—can be divided into categories, such as personal self-concept (facts or one's own opinions about oneself, such as "I have brown eyes" or "I am attractive"); social self-concept (one's perceptions about how one is regarded by others: "people think I have a great sense of humor")…
Succeeding or failing to meet the standards, rules, and goals of one's group or society determines how well an individual forms relationships with other members of the group. Living up to one's own internalized set of standards—or failing to live up to them—is the basis of complex emotions. The so-called self-conscious emotions, such as guilt, pride, shame, and hubris, …
Psychologists who write about self-esteem generally discuss it in terms of two key components: the feeling of being loved and accepted by others and a sense of competence and mastery in performing tasks and solving problems independently. Much research has been conducted in the area of developing self-esteem in children. Martin Seligman claims that in order for children to feel good about themselv…
One's beliefs about other people determine how one acts towards them, and thus play a role in determining the behavior that results. Experiments have demonstrated this process in a variety of settings. In one of the best-known examples, teachers were told (falsely) that certain students in their class were "bloomers" on the verge of dramatic intellectual development. When the …
Since the advent of managed health care and the cost-controls that have accompanied it, self-help groups have grown in popularity. Individuals who are offered limited mental health coverage through their healthcare plan often find self-help a positive and economical way to gain emotional support. Twelve-step groups, one of the most popular types of self-help organizations, have been active in the …
Semantic memory allows humans to communicate with language. In semantic memory, the brain stores information about words, what they look like and represent, and how they are used in an organized way. It is unusual for a person to forget the meaning of the word "dictionary," or to be unable to conjure up a visual image of a refrigerator when the word is heard or read. Semantic memory …
Sensitivity training began in the 1940s and 1950s with experimental studies of groups carried out by psychologist Kurt Lewin at the National Training Laboratories in Maine. Although the groups (called training or T-groups) were originally intended only to provide research data, their members requested a more active role in the project. The researchers agreed, and T-group experiments also became le…
Sensory deprivation experiments of the 1950s have shown that human beings need environmental stimulation to function normally. In a classic early experiment, college students lay on a cot in a small, empty cubicle nearly 24 hours a day, leaving only to eat and use the bathroom. They wore translucent goggles that let in light but prevented them from seeing any shapes or patterns, and they were fitt…
Separation anxiety emerges according to a developmental timetable during the second half year in human infants. This development reflects advancing cognitive maturation, rather than the onset of problem behaviors. As illustrated in the accompanying figure, infants from cultures as diverse as Kalahari bushmen, Israeli kibbutzim, and Guatemalan Indians display quite similar patterns in their respons…