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The American Psychologist Oct 2019The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) is one of psychology's most famous studies. It has been criticized on many grounds, and yet a majority of textbook authors have...
The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) is one of psychology's most famous studies. It has been criticized on many grounds, and yet a majority of textbook authors have ignored these criticisms in their discussions of the SPE, thereby misleading both students and the general public about the study's questionable scientific validity. Data collected from a thorough investigation of the SPE archives and interviews with 15 of the participants in the experiment further question the study's scientific merit. These data are not only supportive of previous criticisms of the SPE, such as the presence of demand characteristics, but provide new criticisms of the SPE based on heretofore unknown information. These new criticisms include the biased and incomplete collection of data, the extent to which the SPE drew on a prison experiment devised and conducted by students in one of Zimbardo's classes 3 months earlier, the fact that the guards received precise instructions regarding the treatment of the prisoners, the fact that the guards were not told they were subjects, and the fact that participants were almost never completely immersed by the situation. Possible explanations of the inaccurate textbook portrayal and general misperception of the SPE's scientific validity over the past 5 decades, in spite of its flaws and shortcomings, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Topics: Adult; Data Collection; History, 20th Century; Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Prisons; Psychology, Social; Reproducibility of Results; Research; Social Behavior; Young Adult
PubMed: 31380664
DOI: 10.1037/amp0000401 -
International Review of Psychiatry... May 2020Paediatric medical psychology is a specialised field within clinical health psychology focussed on the behavioural, developmental, and psychological needs of children,... (Review)
Review
Paediatric medical psychology is a specialised field within clinical health psychology focussed on the behavioural, developmental, and psychological needs of children, adolescents, and families in healthcare contexts. Paediatric medical psychologists address a myriad of problems by employing evidence-based evaluations and interventions in order to support the well-being of paediatric patients and their families. In this paper, we provide an overview of paediatric medical psychology including the education and training required to be a paediatric psychologist followed by common problems addressed by paediatric psychology, the settings paediatric psychologists work in, and the services they provide. Discussion concludes with future application of integrating paediatric psychology throughout the continuum of care to optimise adjustment and health of paediatric patients.
Topics: Adolescent; Behavioral Medicine; Child; Humans; Mental Disorders; Psychology, Child; Psychology, Medical
PubMed: 32091271
DOI: 10.1080/09540261.2019.1705258 -
European Journal of Cancer Care Jul 2019
Topics: Humans; Neoplasms; Psycho-Oncology
PubMed: 31318133
DOI: 10.1111/ecc.13136 -
Depression and Anxiety Jan 2020In the United States alone, about 10 million persons are newly bereaved each year. Most do not require professional intervention or treatment, but many can benefit from...
In the United States alone, about 10 million persons are newly bereaved each year. Most do not require professional intervention or treatment, but many can benefit from targeted support. However, a significant minority of bereaved persons experience intense, prolonged and disabling grief symptoms associated with considerable morbidity and mortality (aka, "Complicated Grief"). Individuals with Complicated Grief require more formal interventions. In this article, we describe a compassionate and evidence-based approach to bereavement-care that can be provided in varied mental health settings. For individuals struggling with acute grief, clinicians can help by providing recognition and acceptance of the grief, eliciting and compassionately listening to their narratives of their relationship with the deceased and the death, and regularly "checking in" regarding their grief experiences. For bereaved persons who are experiencing Complicated Grief, we recommend an evidence-based approach to bereavement-care, complicated grief therapy (CGT), that involves helping the individual accept and cope with the loss while simultaneously assisting them with adaptation to life without the deceased. We describe ways of implementing CGT's seven core themes: (1) understanding and accepting grief, (2) managing painful emotions, (3) planning for a meaningful future, (4) strengthening ongoing relationships, (5) telling the story of the death, (6) learning to live with reminders, and (7) establishing an enduring connection with memories of the person who died. This work can be done in a variety of settings, taking into consideration the needs of the patient, the limitations of the setting, and the skills and experiences of each clinician.
Topics: Adaptation, Psychological; Bereavement; Depression; Evidence-Based Practice; Grief; Humans; Mental Health; Psychology
PubMed: 31622522
DOI: 10.1002/da.22965 -
Integrative Psychological & Behavioral... Dec 2022When they discuss the Danish academic situation, Szulevicz, Lund and Lund (2021) address three questions about the academic training of psychology researchers: (a) why...
When they discuss the Danish academic situation, Szulevicz, Lund and Lund (2021) address three questions about the academic training of psychology researchers: (a) why do Danish master's students in psychology more frequently choose the qualitative method for their research?; (b) what are psychology students working on?; and (c) what are they interested in? These three questions have led us to reflect on researcher training and the political and educational model universities adopt for psychology master's courses, not only in the Danish context, but also in other general contexts. In this commentary, we will discuss one strictly normative issue: what should the scientific ideal be for training researchers in psychology? Or more accurately: how can psychology contribute to discussions about the scientific ideal of researcher training in this knowledge area?
Topics: Humans; Universities; Psychology; Biomedical Research; Denmark; Education, Graduate; Students, Health Occupations; Psychology, Educational; Models, Educational; Politics
PubMed: 36284070
DOI: 10.1007/s12124-022-09715-2 -
American Journal of Community Psychology Sep 2019
Topics: Humans; Indigenous Peoples; Psychology, Social
PubMed: 31489636
DOI: 10.1002/ajcp.12383 -
The Behavioral and Brain Sciences Dec 2020Most theories and hypotheses in psychology are verbal in nature, yet their evaluation overwhelmingly relies on inferential statistical procedures. The validity of the...
Most theories and hypotheses in psychology are verbal in nature, yet their evaluation overwhelmingly relies on inferential statistical procedures. The validity of the move from qualitative to quantitative analysis depends on the verbal and statistical expressions of a hypothesis being closely aligned - that is, that the two must refer to roughly the same set of hypothetical observations. Here, I argue that many applications of statistical inference in psychology fail to meet this basic condition. Focusing on the most widely used class of model in psychology - the linear mixed model - I explore the consequences of failing to statistically operationalize verbal hypotheses in a way that respects researchers' actual generalization intentions. I demonstrate that although the "random effect" formalism is used pervasively in psychology to model intersubject variability, few researchers accord the same treatment to other variables they clearly intend to generalize over (e.g., stimuli, tasks, or research sites). The under-specification of random effects imposes far stronger constraints on the generalizability of results than most researchers appreciate. Ignoring these constraints can dramatically inflate false-positive rates, and often leads researchers to draw sweeping verbal generalizations that lack a meaningful connection to the statistical quantities they are putatively based on. I argue that failure to take the alignment between verbal and statistical expressions seriously lies at the heart of many of psychology's ongoing problems (e.g., the replication crisis), and conclude with a discussion of several potential avenues for improvement.
Topics: Humans; Intention; Psychology
PubMed: 33342451
DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X20001685 -
The American Psychologist Nov 2022Field social psychology is a conceptual and methodological approach to describe, examine, and explain psychological phenomena at multiple levels of analysis with...
Field social psychology is a conceptual and methodological approach to describe, examine, and explain psychological phenomena at multiple levels of analysis with emphasis on the sociocultural environments in which people are embedded, the unfolding of psychological processes over time, and the use of ecologically valid multiple methods in conjunction. In this essay, we first define a contemporary form of field social psychology from its roots in the history of psychological study. Second, we argue for the necessity of the reemergence of this approach given the limitations of the dominant current social psychological paradigm exposed by the replication crisis. Third, we outline an integrative and actionable model of field social psychological research. We describe two contemporary examples of field social psychological research concerning climate change protests in Norway and restorative justice in the U.S.A. to illustrate this framework. We end with implications of field social psychology for developing psychological science. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
Topics: Humans; Psychology, Social; Social Justice; Psychology
PubMed: 34807631
DOI: 10.1037/amp0000931 -
Personality and Social Psychology... Nov 2023Social psychology's disconnect from the vital and urgent questions of people's lived experiences reveals limitations in the current paradigm. We draw on a related...
ACADEMIC ABSTRACT
Social psychology's disconnect from the vital and urgent questions of people's lived experiences reveals limitations in the current paradigm. We draw on a related perspective in social psychology-the sociocultural approach-and argue how this perspective can be elaborated to consider not only social psychology as a historical science but also social psychology of and for world-making. This conceptualization can make sense of key theoretical and methodological challenges faced by contemporary social psychology. As such, we describe the ontology, epistemology, ethics, and methods of social psychology of and for world-making. We illustrate our framework with concrete examples from social psychology. We argue that reconceptualizing social psychology in terms of world-making can make it more humble yet also more relevant, reconnecting it with the pressing issues of our time.
PUBLIC ABSTRACT
We propose that social psychology should focus on "world-making" in two senses. First, people are future-oriented and often are guided more by what could be than what is. Second, social psychology can contribute to this future orientation by supporting people's world-making and also critically reflecting on the role of social psychological research in world-making. We unpack the philosophical assumptions, methodological procedures, and ethical considerations that underpin a social psychology of and for world-making. Social psychological research, whether it is intended or not, contributes to the societies and cultures in which we live, and thus it cannot be a passive bystander of world-making. By embracing social psychology of and for world-making and facing up to the contemporary societal challenges upon which our collective future depends will make social psychology more humble but also more relevant.
Topics: Humans; Psychology, Social; Psychology
PubMed: 36628932
DOI: 10.1177/10888683221145756 -
American Journal of Community Psychology Sep 2023This paper provides a review of empirical studies published with a decolonial epistemic approach in psychology. Our goal was to better understand how decolonial... (Review)
Review
This paper provides a review of empirical studies published with a decolonial epistemic approach in psychology. Our goal was to better understand how decolonial approaches are being practiced empirically in psychology, with an emphasis on community-social psychology. We first discuss the context of colonization and coloniality in the research process as orienting information. We identified 17 peer-reviewed empirical articles with a decolonial approach to psychology scholarship and discerned four waves that characterize the articles: relationally-based research to transgress fixed hierarchies and unsettle power, research from the heart, sociohistorical intersectional consciousness, and desire-based future-oriented research to rehumanize and seek utopia. Community-social psychology research with a decolonial approach has the potential to remember grassroots efforts, decolonizing our world.
Topics: Humans; Utopias; Colonialism; Psychology, Social; Empirical Research; Fellowships and Scholarships
PubMed: 37469166
DOI: 10.1002/ajcp.12695