Outline and evaluate psychological explanations for OCD Essay Example for Free

Outline and evaluate psychological explanations for OCD Essay The cognitive approach assumes that OCD is a consequence of faulty and irrational ways of thinking taken to an extreme. Patients with OCD have different thinking patterns and more intrusive thoughts. The cognitive explanation stresses that everyone has unwanted thoughts from time to time, but OCD sufferers cannot ignore these thoughts and they are often misinterpreted, leading to self-blame and the obsessive symptoms of OCD. So that the negative thoughts and concerns associated with a particular anxiety do not come to pass, compulsions arise in an attempt to ‘neutralise’ the anxiety. The sufferer becomes more wary of having intrusive thoughts and their fear of them increases. As these ideas are constantly thought about, they become obsessive and a pattern of ritualistic, repetitive behaviour begins. A strength of this theory is that there is supporting evidence. For example, Wegner found that a group of students asked not to think of a white bear were more likely to do so than a group allowed to think about it. Salkoius found that when asking participants to suppress thoughts and on other days not to, the participants kept a diary of more intrusive thoughts when they had to be suppressed these findings support the idea that a deliberate attempt to suppress thoughts leads to an increase in these thoughts; supporting the main ideas of the approach. This is a strength because the two studies have found similar findings and are therefore externally reliable. This makes the cognitive approach reliable as a whole because it can be checked and verified and the theory has sound foundations for further research. However, a weakness of this theory is that there are problems with the evidence. For example, Salkoius used self-report methodologies in order to measure the thoughts of the participants. This means that the results may have been subjected to social desirability bias. For example, the amount of intrusive thoughts may not have all been recorded in the diaries in order to please the experimenter; they may not want them to know how bad their symptoms are due to feelings of embarrassment. This is an issue because it means the study lacks internal validity; the intrusive thoughts in the diary are not caused solely by supressing them, but there are other extraneous variables such as embarrassment. We therefore cannot prove cause and effect to show that suppressing thoughts lead to symptoms in OCD, so there are other factors the cognitive approach needs to consider in order to offer a causal explanation. However, although there are issues with self-report methodologies, they can provide a greater insight into the participant’s thoughts and a greater level of detail. They are allowing the participants to describe their own experiences rather than inferring this from observing participants. It therefore provides access to a high level of quantitative data.

The Hypodermic-Syringe Model Essay -- science

The Hypodermic-Syringe Model The hypodermic syringe model suggest that the media is alike a magic bullet and when an audience is targeted it will immediately be knocked down when they are hit. The hypodermic-syringe model also suggests that society is passive and the media â€Å"inject† their media influence into society and manipulates it. The Frankfurt school envisioned the media as a hypodermic syringe, and the contents of the media were injected into the thoughts of the audience, who accepted the attitudes, opinions and beliefs expressed by the media without question. This model was a response to the German fascist’s use of film and radio for propaganda, and later applied to American capitalist society. The followers of the hypodermic model of Effects adopted a variant of Marxism, emphasizing the dangers of the power of capitalism, which owned and controlled new forms of media. Researchers in the fifties also supported the Effects model when exploring the potential of the new medium of television. Researchers were particularly concerned over increases in the representation of violent acts on television, which related with increases in violent acts in society. In the nineties, there was considerable concern over what were called "video nasties". The tabloid papers created a moral panic over whether particular violet films could influence child behavior – and whether Childs Play 3 influenced the child killers of Jamie Bulger, but there was no proof that they had watched it....

Life †Religion Essay

In my opinion, there is no specific meaning of life. There also is a part of me that thinks that life really doesn’t have a meaning at all. But, since I have to try to define life, I would have to say it’s a combination of things in your life that you are living for, or the purpose of you being on this earth. Everyone most likely has a different purpose for being alive. Whether it is family, school, or your career; those things have a lot of impact on your life and also decisions that you make throughout life. In our society, many families instill faith and morals early into their children’s lives by continuing traditions or practices of religious faith. The idea of faith and moral beliefs are instilled in a person by attending or participating in church activities and reading the Bible or other religious texts. When there is a sound moral foundation in a person’s life it may give them the motivation through faith to build a sound structure for their life or to achieve personal goals. Simply put, a person may believe through faith that it is possible to achieve an education, start a family, or to have a successful business or career because of their foundation in faith. The reason why I somewhat think that life really doesn’t have a meaning, is because no matter what anyone does or how well or righteous someone lives their life, in the end they still die. What happens after that? Nothing, you never come back nor will you have any recollection of what went on during your lifetime here on earth. A person can bust their behind in working doing good for the community and everything else and in the end you still end up in the same place as everyone else, good people or bad people, you die. Another reason why I believe life doesn’t have a meaning is because all of the people in this world have to suffer, they still go through pain, they have to watch loved ones die, they still have to go through heartache, and rough times. Being poor, homeless, and not having food for as single meal in the day. Where is the meaning in life when people have to wake up hungry or worry about where they will lay their head that night? I’d say there is none when you look at it from that perspective. In my opinion, the meaning of life is too complex for the human brain to comprehend. People tend to say that they know what the meaning of life is, but who really knows the answer. There are various opinions and schools of thought, however, most people can never and will never reach a clear understanding of what the meaning of life is. If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering. †? Viktor E. Frankl. Frankl could not have said this quote any better, most people can say that they have found meaning in their life but at the same time, there are some people wondering if the only reason they are on this earth is to suffer on a daily basis throughout their entire lives.

The United States - 1326 Words

On February 12, 2015 president Obama signed an executive order with the intention to expand the Cybersecurity of the U.S. and to promote principles of collaboration not just in America but around the globe. Cybersecurity has been identified as one of the most challenging subjects of the 21st-century; moreover, cyber-attacks can further compromise the future of our economic development as much as our national security and the decrement of our civil rights and privacy. Since Obama initiate his administration, he has been working on establishing the framework to better balance the interaction between, government agencies, private sector, and the general public. The objective in this essay is to better understand the connotations from several†¦show more content†¦On the contrary, government agencies such as the FBI, the CIA, and the DHS amongst others identify this initiative of stronger data encryption as a disadvantage to collect important information for the sake of our natio nal security. Since the governmental agencies that protect the American people are going dark by the inability to collect important data, could this be the real reason why the government is promoting collaboration like never before? We like to believe that the government is always working on the behalf of its citizen’s, however, is not always the case. If stronger data encryption is one of the answers to better protect our intellectual property as much as the consumer information, can the government require companies to have a backdoor that could enable further espionage on terrorist organizations, other countries, consumers communications, and/or corporate’s technological innovation development with the excuse to protect our national security, our civil rights, and our privacy? A few of the most noticeable silent moral dilemmas are the real government objectives for this new legislation. The government undoubtedly disrupts in our privacy with many hidden agendas and masks them within the national security framework. Furthermore, the executive order does not contain even one indication and lack information on how the executive order plans to guarantee our civil liberties and as the president mention the student’s privacy. On the other hand, the