Within the course of a day people perform innumerable feats of memory. They are involved in remembering when they search for their keys, find their way through a city, reminisce on episodes from their past, or join in commemorations such as independence days and religious rituals. Culture plays a crucial role in all of these mnemonic activities. Memories come into being and take form through both a set of internalized cultural conventions, specific to the society in question, as well as a particular setting therein (e.g., therapy, court of law or church). Furthermore, culture has arguably shaped how memory is understood and the uses it has been put to, as can be seen in how the concept has differed across history and societies. But what is culture and how does it operate? Although culture has been variably understood throughout history and even by researchers in the early 21st century, there is consensus that it is something that is taken over from society, rather than being innate, and transmitted across generations with modifications. In psychology it is typically operationalized in two ways: In cross-cultural psychology it is something one belongs in (usually a national group) as a function of language, traditions, and geo-political borders, while in cultural psychology it is approached as a psychological tool that shapes and enables memory. Taking account of culture provides an opening to investigate memory socialization, setting specificity, and collective remembering.
101-120 of 526 Results
Article
Shahe S. Kazarian
Societies around the world are a tapestry of cultural diversity weaved in globalization to narrate the inherent value of pluralism as a panacea for good mental health, happiness, and the good life. The scientific construction of culture is also a mosaic of ethnic and racial proxies; national worldviews such as individualism and collectivism; and construals of the self as independent and interdependent. Similarly, the culture of psychological health has been informed by the ethnocentric Western paradigm of clinical psychology looking at the “dark” psychopathological side of life and positive psychology focusing on the hedonic and eudaimonic traditions of well-being. Nevertheless, cultural pluralism (multiculturalism) and globalization have contributed to unveiling the limits of the Western paradigm in which both clinical psychology and positive psychology have been embedded and the imperative for a paradigm shift beyond the Western paradigm. The revisioning of clinical psychology as cultural clinical psychology and positive psychology as cultural positive psychology has contributed to the emergence of the more inclusive cultural psychological health perspective. Cultural psychological health considers the culture and psychological health interface to bring light on an integrated approach that narrates how mental health problems are conceptualized, expressed, and ameliorated culturally and how positive mental health is understood, desired, pursued, and promoted culturally. In addition to inclusivity, cultural psychological health pursues scientific inquiry and knowledge through both quantitative and qualitative methodologies and invokes a science and practice informed by the ethical imperatives of cultural competence and cultural humility with social responsiveness to local and global suffering, happiness, and flourishing.
Article
Angela K.-y. Leung, Brandon Koh, and Sean T. H. Lee
The Complementary Model of Culture and Creativity (CMCC) puts into perspective how a culturally diverse team can become more creative than a monocultural team. The CMCC characterizes three bidimensional psychological processes that explain the effects of culture on creativity: (a) stereotyping versus destabilizing cultural norms, (b) fixating on one cultural mindset versus alternating between cultural frames, and (c) distancing from versus integrating cultures. Extant research suggested that teams with similar goals and values draw performance benefits from their ability to cooperate. However, research has also revealed that working with culturally dissimilar team members could lower tendency toward groupthink and diversify knowledge, skill sets, and social networks, which can facilitate the team’s creativity. Therefore, a question of growing importance to both researchers and practitioners alike is how to harness cultural diversity within creative teams to promote their creative performance while minimizing conflict. We examine this important question with the perspective offered by the CMCC. The processes delineated in the CMCC explain that multicultural teams offer the opportunities to broaden and diversify team members’ cultural experiences by destabilizing cultural stereotypes, switching between cultural frames, and integrating differing cultural perspectives, thereby generating discernible creative gains. It is challenging to effectively manage and maintain workforce diversity, but it is highly rewarding if these challenges are turned into opportunities to build an inclusive and equitable multicultural labor force. The CMCC illuminates the key mechanisms through which multicultural teams can trigger the knowledge creation and diffusion processes to instigate higher creativity among team members coming from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Article
Martin J. Packer and Michael Cole
There is growing appreciation of the role of culture in children’s psychological development (also called human ontogenesis). However, there are several distinct approaches to research on this matter. Cross-cultural psychology explores the causal influence of culture on differences in children’s development, treated as dependent variables. Researchers interested in the role of cultural learning in human evolution view culture as beliefs and values that are transferred from the mind of one individual to that of another.
By contrast, “cultural psychology” views culture not as a cause, but a constituent of human psychological functioning. It invites us to pay attention to the fact that humans live in societies filled with material artifacts, tools, and signs that mediate human activity; that is to say, they provide the means with which people interact with the world around them and with one another. From this perspective, culture provides constituents that are essential to human development: it has a constitutive role in development.
Although there continues to be much debate over how to define culture, it is generally agreed that different human social groups have distinct cultures, and it is common to assume that cultural differences lead to differences in the trajectories of children’s development. This is true, but it is also the case that culture is a universal requirement for development. Every child is born into a family and community with a language, customs, and conventions, and in which people occupy institutional roles with rights and responsibilities. These facts define universal requisites of human psychological development and include the acquisition of language, the development of a social identity, the understanding of community obligations, and the ability to contribute to the reproduction of the community. The interdependence of human communities—which probably had its origins in collaborative foraging and cooperative childrearing—seems to have placed species-specific demands on children’s development, selecting for the capacity to acquire a sensitivity not only to people’s goals and intentions but also to rights and responsibilities.
Article
Robert J. Sternberg
Intelligence needs to be understood in the cultural contexts in which it is displayed. For one thing, people in different cultures have different conceptions (implicit theories) of what intelligence is. Asian and African cultures tend to have broader and more encompassing views of intelligence than do Western cultures. Asians and Africans place less emphasis on mental speed and more emphasis on social and emotional aspects of behavior, as well as on wisdom. These implicit theories are important because in everyday life, people’s behavior is guided not so much by scores on standardized or other tests but rather by people’s implicit theories. For example, hiring and promotion decisions are usually based on such implicit theories, not on test scores.
Studies of performances by people, especially children, in different cultures suggest that the strengths of individuals across cultures are not necessarily well represented by conventional intelligence tests. For example, in some cultures, knowledge of herbal medications used to combat parasitic illnesses, or knowledge of hunting and gathering, or knowledge of how to effectively ice fish, can be more important to assessing intelligence than scores on a standardized test. Eskimo children may know how to navigate across the frozen tundra in the winter without obvious landmarks, yet they may not be able to attain high scores on conventional intelligence tests. Some of those who would score highly on such tests would be unable to do such navigation, to their peril.
There is no such thing as a culture-free test of intelligence, and there probably is no test that is genuinely culture-fair either. At best, tests should be culture-relevant, measuring the cognitive and other skills relevant to effectively adapt to particular cultures. These skills are likely to be partially but not fully overlapping across cultures. Thus, intelligence needs to be understood in its cultural contexts, not divorced from such contexts.
Article
Heidi Keller
Humans need other people to survive and thrive. Therefore, relatedness is a basic human need. However, relatedness can be conceived of very differently in different cultural environments, depending on the affordances and constraints of the particular context. Specifically, the level of formal education and, relatedly, the age of the mother at first birth, the number of children, and the household composition have proven to be contextual dimensions that are informative for norms and values, including the conception of relatedness. Higher formal education, late parenthood, few children, and a nuclear family drive relationships as emotional constructs between independent and self-contained individuals as adaptive in Western middle-class families. The perspective of the individual is primary and is organized by psychological autonomy. Lower formal education, early parenthood, with many children, and large multigenerational households, drive the conception of relationships as role-based networks of obligations that are adapted to non-Western rural farm life. The perspective of the social system is primary and organized by hierarchical relatedness.
Social development as developmental science in general, represented in textbooks and handbooks, is based on the Western middle-class view of the independent individual. Accordingly, developmental milestones are rooted in the separation of the individual from the social environment. The traditional rural farmer child’s development is grounded in cultural emphases of communality which stress other developmental priorities than the Western view. Cross-cultural research is mainly interpreted against the Western standard as the normal case, but serious ethical challenges are involved in this practice. The consequence is that textbooks need to be rewritten to include multiple cultural perspectives with multiple developmental pathways.
Article
Mutsumi Imai, Junko Kanero, and Takahiko Masuda
The relations among language, culture, and thought are complex. The empirical evidence from diverse domains suggests that culture affects language, language affects thought, and universally shared perception and cognition constrain the structure of language. Although neither language nor culture determines thought, both seem to highlight certain aspects of the world, with stronger influence when there are no clear perceptible categories. Research must delve into how language, culture, perception, and cognition interact with one another across different domains.
Article
Patricia M. Rodriguez Mosquera
Honor is complex, deeply relational, and important in many cultures and social groups. A definition of honor as multifaceted and consisting of a set of interrelated honor codes, i.e., the honor-as-multifaceted approach to honor, is presented and discussed by Rodriguez Mosquera. This definition provides researchers the conceptual boundaries of honor as a construct as well as methodological guidelines on how to operationalize honor in empirical research. Furthermore, the honor-as-multifaceted approach provides researchers with a definition of cultures of honor as those in which honor codes become culturally shared psychological concerns that individuals evaluate as important to their self-esteem and self-concept, thereby influencing their cognitions, motivations, emotions, and behaviors. The Honor Scale measures honor codes in line with this definition. A review of existing empirical research on honor in a wide variety of cultures and social groups is also presented and discussed. Some of the work reviewed is cross-cultural in nature, whereas other work focuses on how honor operates in particular cultures or social groups (e.g., British Muslims; Moroccan Dutch and Turkish Dutch youth; Southern Italian criminal organizations; the Canadian Army). The reviewed research provides empirical support for the honor-as-multifaceted approach and demonstrates the centrality of honor codes in a variety of psychological and social processes, including personality, the negotiation of gendered roles within the family, attitudes toward in-group members, emotions in response to threats to collective honor, intergroup conflict, the negotiation of power in intergroup relations, in-group identification processes, and prosocial motivations. Thus, the reviewed research shows that honor codes play an important role in processes at the different levels of analysis typically studied in the social sciences—individual, interpersonal, group, cultural—thereby making honor an important topic of inquiry for psychologists and other social scientists. Avenues for future research are also discussed.
Article
Shevaun D. Neupert and Jennifer A. Bellingtier
Daily diary designs allow researchers to examine processes that change together on a daily basis, often in a naturalistic setting. By studying within-person covariation between daily processes, one can more precisely establish the short-term effects and temporal ordering of concrete daily experiences. Additionally, the daily diary design reduces retrospective recall bias because participants are asked to recall events that occurred over the previous 24-hour period as opposed to a week or even a year. Therefore, a more accurate picture of individuals’ daily lives can be captured with this design. When conclusions are drawn between people about the relationship between the predictors and outcomes, the covariation that occurs within people through time is lost. In a within-person design, conclusions can be made about the simultaneous effects of within-person covariation as well as between-person differences. This is especially important when many interindividual differences (e.g., traits) may exist in within-person relationships (e.g., states).
Daily diary research can take many forms. Diary research can be conducted with printed paper questionnaires, divided into daily booklets where participants mail back each daily booklet at the end of the day or entire study period. Previous studies have called participants on the telephone to respond to interview questions each day for a series of consecutive days, allowing for quantitative as well as qualitative data collection. Online surveys that can be completed on a computer or mobile device allow the researcher to know the specific day and time that the survey was completed while minimizing direct involvement with the collection of each daily survey. There are many opportunities for lifespan developmental researchers to adopt daily diary designs across a variety of implementation platforms to address questions of important daily processes. The benefits and drawbacks of each method along with suggestions for future work are discussed, noting issues of particular importance for aging and lifespan development.
Article
Birgit Schyns, Susanne Braun, and Barbara Wisse
Dark Triad personality traits in the workplace comprise the traits narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. The Dark Triad, and its relationships with individual and organizational variables, has received increasing attention in organizational behavior research. These three traits share a lack of concern for others but also have idiosyncratic attributes. Narcissism is characterized by a sense of entitlement and self-absorption. Machiavellianism comprises a focus on instrumentality and willingness to engage in manipulation. Psychopathy, possibly the darkest of the three traits, renders individuals callous, impulsive, and displaying antisocial behavior. While Dark Triad traits may be adaptive in some regards (e.g., narcissism facilitates leadership emergence), the majority of empirical findings point to the damage that individuals high in those traits can do to other organizational members and effective organizational functioning.
Article
Glenn Adams, Annabella Osei-Tutu, and Adjeiwa Akosua Affram
Standard constructions of history pose a celebratory narrative of progress via modern individualist development. In contrast, decolonial perspectives emphasize the coloniality inherent both in Eurocentric modernity and in the individualist selfways associated with Eurocentric modernity. The coloniality of modern individualist selfways is evident not only in the racialized violence that enabled their characteristic experience of freedom from constraint, but also in the epistemic violence that results from the imposition of these ways of being as a developmental standard. Research in West African settings illuminates these forms of epistemic violence. Standard accounts tend to pathologize West African ways of being as immature or suboptimal in relation to a presumed universal developmental pathway toward psychological autonomy. A decolonial response, rooted in decolonial perspectives of Southern theory or epistemology, follows two analytic strategies that disrupt standard accounts. One strategy draws upon local understanding to illuminate the adaptive value of West African patterns. Rather than manifestations of backwardness on a trajectory of modern individualist development, these ways of being reflect developmental trajectories that emerged as an adaptation to cultural ecologies of embeddedness. The other strategy draws upon West African settings as a standpoint from which to denaturalize the modern individualist selfways that hegemonic perspectives regard as just-natural standards. Rather than naturally superior forms, the widespread promotion of modern individualist selfways has harmful consequences related to the narrow pursuit of personal fulfillment and corresponding disinvestment in broader solidarities. With the growth orientation of modern individualist development pushing the planet toward a future of ecological catastrophe, decolonial perspectives direct attention to West African and other communities in the Global South for ways of being, rooted in Other understandings of the past, as a pathway to a sustainable and just future.
Article
Tipu Aziz and Holly Roy
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a neurosurgical technology that allows the manipulation of activity within specific brain regions through delivery of electrical stimulation via implanted electrodes. The growth of DBS has led to research around the development of novel interventions for a wide range of neurological and neuropsychiatric conditions, including Parkinson’s disease, dystonia, chronic pain, Tourette’s syndrome, treatment-resistant depression, anorexia nervosa, and Alzheimer’s disease. Some of these treatment approaches have a high level of efficacy as well as an established place in the clinical armamentarium for the diseases in question, such as DBS for movement disorders, including Parkinson’s disease. Other interventions are at a more developmental stage, such as DBS for depression and Alzheimer’s disease. Success both in clinical aspects of DBS and new innovations depends on a close-knit multidisciplinary team incorporating experts in the underlying condition (often neurologists and psychiatrists); neurosurgeons; nurse specialists, who may be involved in device programming and other aspects of patient care; and researchers including neuroscientists, imaging specialists, engineers, and signal analysts. Directly linked to the growth of DBS as a specialty is allied research around neural signals analysis and device development, which feed directly back into further clinical progress. The close links between clinical DBS and basic and translational research make it an exciting and fast-moving area of neuroscience.
Article
Grace W. Lindsay and Thomas Serre
Deep learning is an approach to artificial intelligence (AI) centered on the training of deep artificial neural networks to perform complex tasks. Since the early 21st century, this approach has led to record-breaking advances in AI, allowing computers to solve complex board games, video games, natural language-processing tasks, and vision problems. Neuroscientists and psychologists have also utilized these networks as models of biological information processing to understand language, motor control, cognition, audition, and—most commonly—vision. Specifically, early feedforward network architectures were inspired by visual neuroscience and are used to model neural activity and human behavior. They also provide useful representations of the perceptual space of images. The extent to which these models match data, however, depends on the methods used to characterize and compare them. The limitations of these feedforward neural networks to account for, for example, simple visual reasoning tasks, suggests that feedback mechanisms may be necessary to solve visual recognition tasks beyond image categorization.
Article
Steve Loughnan, Mayu Koike, and Casey Bevens
The question of why people act violently is perhaps one of the most enduring and meaningful in social psychology. Among the various ways humans have mistreated one another over the millennia, intergroup violence and genocide stand as terrible monuments to our capacity for violence. It is sensible and important, then, that the psychological underpinnings of this mistreatment are examined as well as the factors that lead people to enact, sustain, and excuse violence. The major psychological theories of dehumanization are outlined, from its roots in genocide studies to a focus on everyday aggression and violence, and modern approaches are presented, which seek to explain extreme violence. The ways in which dehumanization can contribute to violence at the interpersonal level are mapped, examining evidence also from the closely related field of objectification. Finally, dehumanization and violence perpetrated at the level of groups is discussed, covering the small but growing literature focused directly on genocides. Throughout the examination of interpersonal and intergroup violence, it is worth noting that dehumanization plays many roles; it is the cause, catalyst, and consequence of violence.
Article
Shellie-Anne T. Levy and Glenn E. Smith
Dementia, also now known as major neurocognitive disorder, is a syndrome involving decline in two or more areas of cognitive function sufficient to disrupt a person’s daily function. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI), also known as minor neurocognitive disorder, represents a syndrome on the continuum of cognitive decline that is a stage prior to development of functional deficits. It involves decline in one or more areas of cognitive function with independence in instrumental activities of daily living, even though they may require greater effort or compensation on the part of the individual. Neuropsychological assessment of cognition and behavior provides the most powerful biomarkers for MCI and dementia syndromes associated with neurodegenerative diseases. Discrete cognitive and behavioral patterns that occur early in the course of cognitive decline aids in differential clinical diagnosis. Additionally, all diagnostic schemes for dementia syndromes include criteria that require the appraisal of functional status, which tests an individual’s capacity to engage in decision making and carry out activities of daily living independently. Methods for assessing functional status have historically had poor reliability and validity. Nevertheless, in a clinical setting, neuropsychologists rely on a combination of self-report, collateral informants, caregiver questionnaires, and objective performance-based measures to better assess functional status. Revisions to clinical criteria for dementia reflect the adoption of new research diagnostic criteria for neurodegenerative diseases, largely driven by the National Institutes of Aging (NIA) and the Alzheimer’s Association 2011 research criteria for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The new approach differentiates the syndromic presentations common to most neurodegenerative diseases from the etiologies (AD, LBD, VaD, etc.) based on biomarkers. In the preclinical stage, biomarker abnormalities are present years before clinical symptom manifestation. In mild cognitive impairment stage, there is a report/concern for cognitive change by the patient, informant, or clinician. There is objective cognitive decline from estimated premorbid functioning and preserved independence in functional abilities. In the dementia stage, in the context of impaired functional status, there may be prominent cognitive and behavioral symptoms that may involve impairment in memory, executive function, visuospatial functioning, and language, as well as changes in personality and behavior. The most common dementias are AD, dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), frontotemporal dementia (FTD), and vascular dementia (VaD). All can follow a trajectory of cognitive decline similar to the aforementioned stages and are associated with neuropathogenic mechanisms that may or may not be distinctive for a particular syndrome. Briefly, Alzheimer’s dementia is associated with accumulation of amyloid plaques and tau neurofibrillary tangles. Lewy body dementias (i.e., Parkinson’s disease dementia and DLB) are characterized by Lewy bodies (alpha-synuclein aggregates) and Lewy neurites in the brainstem, limbic system, and cortical regions; DLB is also associated with diffuse amyloid plaques. Frontotemporal dementia is a conglomerate of syndromes that may overlap and include behavioral variant FTD, semantic dementia, and primary progressive aphasia (PPA). FTD dementia syndromes are marked by frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) caused by pathophysiological processes involving FTLD-tau, FTLD-TDP, FTLD-FUS, or their combination, as well as beta amyloid. Lastly, vascular dementia is associated with cerebrovascular disease that can include large artery occlusions, microinfarcts, brain hemorrhages, and silent brain infarcts; comorbid AD pathology may lower the threshold for dementia conversion. There is an emerging shift in the field toward exploring prevention strategies for dementia. Given the lack of precision in our language regarding the distinction between dementia syndromes and etiologies, we can reallocate some of our efforts to preventing dementia more broadly rather than intervening on a certain pathology. Research already supports that many individuals have biomarker evidence of brain pathology without showing cognitive impairment or even sufficient levels of pathology in the brain to warrant a diagnosis without ever displaying the clinical syndrome of dementia. That said, building cognitive reserve or resilience through lifestyle and behavioral factors may slow the rate of cognitive decline and prevent the risk of a future dementia epidemic.
Article
Zella Moore, Jamie Leboff, and Kehana Bonagura
Major depressive disorder, dysthymia, and bipolar disorder are very common diagnoses seen among athletes, and they are serious conditions that can be debilitating if not properly addressed. These disorders warrant careful attention because they can adversely affect multiple domains of an athlete’s life, including athletic motivation, performance outcomes, interpersonal well-being, health, and overall daily functioning. Key foci include the prevalence of, clinical characteristics of, causes of, and risk factors for major depressive disorder, persistent depressive disorder/dysthymia, bipolar I disorder, and bipolar II disorder. Sport psychologists should integrate such important information into their overall case conceptualization and decision-making processes to ensure that athletes and performers at risk for, or struggling with, such mental health concerns receive the most effective, efficient, and timely care possible.
Article
Deborah Brown and Brian Key
Few practitioners or researchers in psychology would think of the 17th-century French philosopher, René Descartes, as the founding father of their discipline. Yet, it is difficult to see how psychology could have emerged as a discipline in its own right without the contributions of Descartes. Descartes’ theoretical and experimental contributions to our understanding of rationality, consciousness, sensation, feeling, attention, psychological self-regulation and voluntary action, and indeed the very concept of mind that lies at the heart of his philosophy, have been pivotal to the evolution of psychology since its emergence as a special science in the 19th-century. These contributions tend to get overshadowed by the unpalatable aspects of his dualism of mind and body and his denial of animal consciousness, doctrines for which he was and still is much pilloried. However, both doctrines are relevant to understanding how from its inception the subject matter and scope of psychological investigation was framed, for underlying the Cartesian concept of mind is not one dualism but two: a dualism of mind and body and a dualism of life and mind. The mind, for Descartes, could not be theorized on its own terms without conceiving of it at least to some extent independently of the physiological processes of the human body, on the one hand, and the life functions of biological organisms, on the other. Descartes’ legacy for psychology as a discipline is thus twofold. It created the conceptual space for the concept of mind to emerge as a threshold concept in its own right, distinct from the concept of matter that defined mechanics, and it demarcated those uniquely human capacities that enabled psychology to differentiate itself from the newly emerging evolutionary biology of the 19th-century, even though it would remain more closely aligned with biology than physics thenceforth. Without both dualisms of mind and body and life and mind, it is difficult to envisage how psychology as a special science distinct from anatomy and the life sciences could have emerged, and for this the discipline of psychology owes Monsieur Descartes a considerable debt.
Article
Luc J. Martin, David J. Hancock, and Jean Côté
Talent development in sport is achieved through years of preparation and requires constant interaction between personal and contextual resources. Accordingly, extensive research has been dedicated to understanding factors that contribute to sport performance. Literature suggests the factors influencing athletic development can be classified in terms of the physical environment, the social environment, and engaging learning activities. Investigations pertaining to the physical environment suggest the importance of appropriate settings, which can relate to the sport organization or the larger community. Researchers must also cogitate the activities in which athletes take part. These considerations involve the maturational status of athletes, the volume of deliberate practice and play, and early specialization versus diversification. Finally, the salience of the social environment in relation to sport performance cannot be overlooked. Not surprisingly, the relations established with social agents (i.e., coaches, peers/teammates, parents) can facilitate or impede the developmental process. Consequently, the development of athletes in the context of sport and performance psychology extends past the individual and is influenced by several factors that must be discussed.
Article
Kerstin Rosander
Gaze control involves eyes, head, and body movements and is guided by mainly three types of information: visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive. Appropriate gaze control is a basis for actions such as reaching, grasping, eating, and manipulation, all of which develop during the first year of life. The development of gaze control is about how young infants gain access to these different kinds of information, how they come to use them, and how they come to coordinate head and eyes to accomplish it. This control develops during the first few weeks of life. A major challenge for the gaze controlling system is how gaze is stabilized on a moving target to keep vision clear, including during self-motion or the compensation of other sudden movements. Furthermore, the tracking has to be timed relative to the object motion. This requires prediction, which is a part of smooth pursuit that emerges at around six weeks and is in full function at three months. The smooth eye and head movements must add up in time and space to the object motion. Then the vestibular and visual neural signals must be properly added. Catch-up saccades compensate when the smooth pursuit is insufficient. In other situations, saccades shift the gaze between objects or situations. Moreover, if a moving object temporarily disappears out of view, one or several saccades predictively recapture the object at the reappearance position (four months). The complex and fast development of gaze has inspired the design of robotic vision (iCub) through processes similar to human development, thus increasing the robot’s flexibility and learning abilities
Article
Hannah S. Decker
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III), the third diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), was mainly a response to the vehement, insistent, and often persuasive antipsychiatry movement that had developed in the 1960s and 1970s. Coming from a number of directions, sociologists, lawyers, judges, social critics, and even some psychiatrists themselves, the movement challenged the medical model of psychiatry, the involuntary commitment of patients to mental hospitals, the “warehousing” of patients in hospitals without receiving effective treatment, and even whether patients with mental disorders had any illness at all. Additionally, psychiatrists were accused by some authors of “controlling” people to accrue power over them. Psychiatry as a profession was thrown on the defensive. The publication of an article in the prestigious journal Science in 1973 charging—through seemingly inspired experiments—that psychiatrists could not even diagnosis a mentally ill patient, created a sensation. This was the last straw for the beleaguered APA. Though only five years had passed since the last revision of the DSM, and little had changed, the Board of Trustees of the APA commissioned a revision that would show that psychiatry was a legitimate medical and scientific endeavor and thus counter the attacks of the antipsychiatry movement. The irony here is that in 2019, the Science article was shown to be in large part fraudulent.
DSM-III turned out to be not a revision but a large, brand-new manual based solely on observable signs and symptoms, the “diagnostic criteria.” It upended the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders in North America and in many other places as well. The Task Force that produced the manual was led by Robert Spitzer, a talented and energetic man, with an empirical bent, who never shied away from a fight. The Task Force he led shared his empiricism, and many of its members were determinedly antipsychoanalytic. There is no doubt that DSM-III helped to dethrone psychoanalysis as a leading method of thought and treatment in North America. Analysts had relied heavily on the diagnosis of neurosis, which Spitzer removed from the manual. Spitzer and the Task Force were strongly supported in their decisions by Melvin Sabshin, the APA’s new medical director, who himself wanted to rid psychiatry of “ideology,” and promote the profession more clearly as scientific and medical.
The manual itself featured many new diagnoses because Spitzer wanted to include diagnoses that were important to clinicians. Thus, he prized reliability (psychiatrists agreeing on the same diagnosis) over validity (the accuracy of the diagnosis). A positive feature of DSM-III was its five-pronged diagnostic system, which, if used properly and completely, helped psychiatrists arrive at a deeper knowledge of their patients, as well as a more accurate prognosis. On the other hand, relying solely on diagnostic criteria encouraged some clinicians to practice a relatively quick “checklist” psychiatry instead of taking time to understand patients as human beings in all their complexity. Another shortcoming was the strict categorical approach of the diagnostic system which often led to comorbidity or “not elsewhere specified” diagnoses. Nevertheless, since the appearance of DSM-III, the DSMs have achieved an outsized influence over many key areas of life.
