Applications Of Social Psychology Goals & Objectives

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1 Applications Of Social Psychology Goals & Objectives 1) An understanding of the effects of social support on health 2) An understanding of risk factors like Type A personalities and how negative emotions lead to stress and disease 4) An understanding of the influences upon health-seeking behaviours 5) An understanding of how social psychology can be applied to the legal system 6) An exploration of factors of the defendant and the witness 7) An examination of the process of detecting deceptions and lies 1

2 Overall Outline - Applications Part 1 - Health Psychology Health-risks: Taking care of yourself Vulnerability to illness Lack of social support Perceived lack of social control Personality and Health Type A personality Hardiness Part 2 - Law and Justice The Defendant The Witness Eyewitness accuracy Detecting Deception Lie Detection The polygraph 2

3 Outline Part 1 - Health Psychology Health-risks: Taking care of yourself Vulnerability to illness Lack of social support Perceived lack of social control Personality and Health Type A personality Hardiness 3

4 Behavioural Medicine: An interdisciplinary field that integrates and applies behavioural and medical knowledge about health and disease Health Psychology: A subfield of psychology that provides psychology s contribution to behavioral medicine. 4

5 Health-risks among adolescents, behaviours which constitute a risk to health include: alcohol and drug abuse smoking sexual promiscuity These behaviours form part of a pattern or syndrome of problem behaviour related to nonconventional characteristics of personality and perceived environment. Vulnerability to illness is increased by an absence of social support and a perception that life cannot be controlled in the case of coronary disease, people at risk tend to be competitive, achievement oriented, rather impatient, and somewhat hostile 5

6 Health-risks continued personality variables have also been found to be related to risk for some other diseases (e.g. asthma, arthritis) Vulnerability to illness Lack of social support Social support = feeling close to others Research has shown that people who lack supportive bonds with others are more likely to suffer illnesses and less likely to recover quickly Many studies have shown relations between an absence of social support and heart disease 6

7 Social Support is not always good Family and friends may reinforce maladaptive behaviours such as overeating, alcohol, and depression by protecting individuals from the consequences of their actions Perceived lack of control when people feel that they are not in control of their lives, there can be adverse consequences for their health for example, institutionalized people when decisions are made for them (e.g. elderly) versus those allowed the independence to make their own decisions own decisions = less health problems 7

8 Stress and Illness a temporary stress magnified the severity of symptoms experienced by volunteers who were knowingly infected with a cold virus newlywed couples who became angry while discussing problems suffered more immune system suppression the next day a large Swedish study found that, compared with unstressed workers, those with a history of workplace stress had 5.5 times greater risks of colon cancer. The cancer difference was not attributable to differences in age, smoking, drinking, or physical traits 8

9 Type A personality and Health under stress, reactive, anger-prone Type A people secret more of the stress hormones believed to accelerate the build-up of plaque on the walls of the heart s arteries Sustained stress suppresses the disease-fighting immune system, leaving us more vulnerable to infections and malignancy Experiments reveal that the immune system s activity can also be influenced by conditioning 9

10 Heart Disease Stress Hormones Immune Suppression Autonomous nervous system (ANS) effects (ulcers, headaches, hypertension) Model of the effects of Negative Emotions on Stress and Health Negative Emotions 10

11 1) do characteristic emotions, and ways of responding to stressful events, predict susceptibility to hearth disease, stroke, cancer, and other ailments Stress-cause negative emotions may have various effects of health. This is especially so for depressed or anger-prone people. Heart disease has been linked with competitive, impatient and - the aspect that matters most - angerprone or hostile personality 11

12 2) How can we control or even reduce stress? Health psychologists are exploring the benefits of: aerobic exercise (an effective antidote to mild depression and anxiety) relaxation training (to help control such tension-related ailments as headaches and high blood pressure) and supportive close relationships (which can help buffer the impact of 12 stress)

13 3) How do people decide whether they are ill, and what can be done to ensure that they seek medical help and follow a treatment regimen? We decide we are sick when symptoms fit one of our existing schemas for disease. E.g. does the small cyst match our idea of a malignant, cancerous lump? Is the stomachache bad enough to be appendicitis? Is the chest pain merely - as many heart attack victims suppose - a muscle spasm? 13

14 4) What lifestyle changes would prevent illness and promote health, and how might such changes be encouraged? Psychologists are now exploring the social influences that motivate adolescents to start smoking, and have pioneered effective anti-smoking techniques New explorations of internal and external influences on body weight explain why the obese have difficulty losing weight permanently and also how they can best modify eating and exercise 14

15 What is hardiness? Interesting psychological concept of people more resistant to illness. Includes a strong sense of self a belief in an internal locus of control a sense of life as being personally meaningful Limitations of hardiness research 1) little evidence that hardiness does in fact have a buffering effect 2) frequent use of inappropriate statistical techniques 3) hardiness scale may not actually tap hardiness, may in fact tap general maladjustment or psychopathology 15

16 Decisions and actions about health Health Beliefs model People become ready to do something to promote health, if they perceive a serious health threat and if they evaluate the benefits of their proposed actions to exceed their costs. Protection motivation theory People are motivated to engage in effective health behaviour is they perceive that they are susceptible to a severe health threat and that they are capable of carrying out the specific behaviour. 16

17 What about the effects of the doctor-patient relationship? Patients are more willing to follow treatment instructions when they have a warm relationship with their doctor, when they help plan their own treatment, and when the options presented to them are framed in a positive way rather than a negative way. E.g. people are more likely to elect an operation when told they have a 40% chance of surviving than if told they have a 60% chance of mortality (dying) x 17

18 Outline Part 2 - Law and Justice The Defendant The Witness eyewitness accuracy Detecting Deception Lie Detection The polygraph 18

19 The Defendant The gender of the defendant may be of some importance in certain crimes but the evidence is not clear at present no consistent influence of socioeconomic status has been found a defendant that the jurors perceive to have committed prior offenses or who seems to be unrepentant is more likely to be convicted attractive defendants are treated more leniently, unless the attractiveness was used to facilitate a crime defendants of the same race as the jurors are less likely to be convicted (positive prejudice) jurors tend to be more lenient toward defendants with attitudes perceived as similar to their own 19

20 The Witness U.S. Supreme court in 1972 suggested 5 criteria for judging the reliability of eyewitness testimony: 1) the opportunity of the witness to view the criminal clearly at the time and place of the crime; 2) the extent to which the witness was paying attention to the incident at the time 3) the accuracy of the witness s description of the criminal BEFORE seeing the accused 4) the extent to which the witness is confident what he or she saw 5) the time elapsed between the crime and the identification of the accused 20

21 Detecting Deception deception clues = behaviour that suggests an individual is lying In general, when lying: speech has a higher pitch more nervous and less fluent less plausible and shorter answers with longer hesitations before responding lack of, or extreme, eye contact 21

22 Lie Detection Polygraph measures physiological changes, particularly skin conductance (which indicates perspiration) often blood pressure and respiratory rate also measured polygraph can indicate changes in level of physiological arousal from some previously measured baseline as the person responds to various questions 22

23 Limitations of the polygraph cannot conclude that a person is lying just if he/she shows increased arousal to critical questions e.g. Did you murder your wife? Many possible reasons for arousal: fear of being falsely accused grief over his dead wife shame at not being able to help her ways to offset the polygraph: increasing baseline arousal by being agitated even to simple questions decreasing arousal at critical questions by forcefully relaxing Can supplement polygraph with voice stress analyzer or guilty knowledge test 23