The Why and How of Behavior

I think everyone reading this blog would agree that human behavior is both complex and fascinating. The “why” of behavior is, in fact, one of the four goals of psychology.  Is there some specific behavior that’s baffling to you? Does your significant other “drive you nuts?” Do your children act in an unruly and disobedient way? Do you find yourself pouting or sulking for no obvious reason? These are just a few of the questions that psychologists seek to answer.

Psychologists are so interested in behavior that they have designated this decade as the Decade of Behavior, and the APA has launched an “initiative to focus attention on how the behavioral and social sciences can help address many of society’s daunting challenges.” (Psychology,  Lefton and Brannon, 2008,  27).  In this endeavor, they hope to educate people to think more critically, become more effective employees, gain sensitivity to cultural diversity, and become healthier and better educated.

Think about this Decade of Behavior and some of the questions you’d like to see researched and share them with us. To get you started, below are a few I’ve been thinking about as they relate to students that I know. Please add your own, and let’s get a discussion going.

How can you get along with an impossible boss?
How can you get on a health plan (stop smoking, exercise more, lose weight, etc.) and stick to it?
What attracts people to each other?
What are some ways of handling stress?
What’s the best way to resolve conflict?
Is there a tried and proven way to toilet train an infant?
What are some ways to get people to overcome their fear of change?

Overcoming Odds

In both the intro and the development courses, the topic  of abuse rears its ugly head. Although unpleasant to think about, this social ill and its twin sister neglect certainly exist. Daily, children are burned, slapped, battered, shaken, belittled, debased, and criticized beyond belief. Many are neglected emotionally and physically. They’re starving for love and sustenance, for hugs and hamburgers and kind words and milk.  And then there are those who suffer sexual abuse by those whom they trust to care for and protect them.

Yet somehow there are children who overcome all odds, the ones with resilience. Resilience, the ability to overcome circumstances that place a child at high risk for psychological or physical damage, includes several factors. Their easygoing, good-natured, and affectionate dispositions work to endear them to others. Somehow they’re successful in eliciting behavior in others that’s essential for their development. Resilient children are also usually intelligent, independent, and have good communication skills. I’ve also read that many have at least one person “in their corner” on whom they can rely for support.

What do you think? Do you know someone who has survived abuse and/or neglect? What was his or her “secret?” Do you think it was resilience? Be as specific as possible. I’ve got a great example, but you go first.

First Memory

Last week we talked about memory, and one topic was infantile amnesia. For some reason, most people don’t remember anything that happened before they were 2 or 3 years old. Why we don’t know. It could be that the hippocampus, a brain structure instrumental in episodic memories, isn’t developed until then. Then again, the fact that infants aren’t yet proficient in language could be a factor.  

Some psychologists feel that the first memory is significant in telling us something about ourselves and our current relationships, lifestyle, and perhaps even self image. Who was in your first memory? Perhaps more importantly, who was not? What was your role? Were you the center of attention, the pampered baby, the caretaker, or what? And how did you feel? Were you mad, glad, scared, or sad? Of all the things that happened to you in infancy and early childhood, why do you think this one memory stands out? Do you think it has significance for you life today?

Here’s my first memory. I was probably around 3 years old, and I was sitting in the back seat of a car listening to my mother and her mother exchange small talk as my mother parked the car. She said something to my grandmother and then got out of the car. I’m not sure where she was going, but I wasn’t alarmed because I knew she’d be back. My brother Mike, however, became extremely distressed. He began to cry as if his little heart was broken, and I reached over and put my arm around his shoulder, whispering that everything would be fine…that our sweet mama would be right back. My grandmother was a great gal, but she didn’t seem to be involved (in my memory at least) in comforting Mike.

Even today, if he’s upset, I’m upset. I’m also protective. If one of my own children were to say something like, “I saw Uncle Mike wearing yellow polka dot running shorts and an orange hat,” I’d say, “So? What’s wrong with that?” Oh, and about our grandmother. She was cool lady, always loving but never cloying, intrusive, smothering, or demanding.

First memory. Mine’s of my brother, and it has significance to my life today. What’s yours? Come on and share. Maybe we can figure out what it means.

P.S. to Nature/Nurture

A little online reading unearthed an interesting statement by Lewis Terman to Harry Harlow when he learned of the latter’s  upcoming marriage to Clara Mears. Having a tested IQ of 155, Clara was a young woman who had been  part of Terman’s classic study of gifted children. Yes, 155. That’s extraordinarily high when you consider that the average American IQ is 100.

 So is intelligence more related to genes and chromosomes or to one’s environment? Read Terman’s statement and tell how you think it relates to the nature/nurture issue mentioned in yesterday’s post: “I am happy to see the joining of Clara’s extraordinary hereditary material with Harry’s productivity as a psychologist.”

As a postscript, I know that Mears and Harlow had two children, but I don’t know anything about their intellectual capacity or productivity. What’s your guess?

Stop the Pain

It comes up in frequent class discussions: bullying. Lately we’ve been discussing different types of bullying and have come to the conclusion that it can be literally punching, kicking, or slapping, but it can also take the form of teasing and taunting. While any type of “abusing” another can be harmful, the ugliness of deliberate insults seems especially cruel.

I know what the research says, but now I want to know what you see as some of the causes and “cures” for bullying. Why would children tease someone so unmercifully about his freckles that he tried to shave them off and ended up injuring himself? Why would children tease someone about being overweight, poor, ugly, skinny, short, or “different” in some way? According to our text (Feldman), 160,000 children in the United States stay home from school each day because they’re afraid of being bullied.

Have you ever been a bully? Have you been bullied? If so, share the experience and/or feelings.

The second part of this post has to do with how to stop it, and the answer is somehow connected to the “why” aspect. If we could figure out why a person hurts another, then perhaps we could change things. After all, the goals of psychology are to describe, explain, predict, and influence (or control) behavior.

What causes it, and what can we do to prevent it?

Nature or Nurture?

One of the most important issues in psychology is the nature/nurture one. Am I who I am because of my unique combination of genes and chromosomes, or is it more because of my environment? Is it DNA, or is it life in the USA as compared to life in Cambodia? While pondering this question for the umpteenth time, I came across two cute examples in Pierce Howard’s The Owner’s Manual to the Brain:

 

1. Two monozygotic twin girls were separated at birth and placed in homes far apart. About four years later, researchers interviewed the adoptive parents of each girl. Shauna’s parents said, “She is a terrible eater—won’t cooperate, stubborn, strong-willed. I can’t get her to eat anything unless I put cinnamon on it.” The parents of Ellen said, “Ellen is a lovely child—cooperative and outgoing.” When the researcher asked about her eating habits, they said, “Fantastic—she eats anything I put before her, as long as I put cinnamon on it!”

 

1. Two monozygotic twin boys were separated at birth and placed in homes far apart. They were interviewed 27 years later. Both had turned out to be obsessive-compulsive neatniks, scrubbing their separate homes frequently and constantly picking up and making things neat and clean. When they were asked to explain their compulsion for neatness, on attributed it to his reaction to an adoptive parent who was a slob, while the other attributed it to his upbringing by an adoptive parents who was a neatnik!

 What do you think about this issue? For starters, look at yourself and share some of your behaviors or predispositions that you might have inherited. Then again, you might have picked them up from a parent, a peer, or a television show.

Issues of Childhood

There are so many topics to consider posting in the area of human development that it’s difficult to narrow the field. However, at the moment we’re covering middle childhood in the mini-mester, and several issues have generated classroom discussion: childhood obesity, bullying, and homeschooling. All of these topics affect elementary and secondary school children, and our discussions spotlighted these questions and more:

1. Why is obesity such an issue? In other words, why are there so many obese children? One person even mentioned the term globesity, a term that she picked up from www.urbandictionary.com that refers to obesity around the globe (more specifically in the Western world, however). What can be done to help children and their parents with this problem?
2. What is bullying, and why does it exist? Why can’t teachers always spot it? What can be done to help the bullied children? I read recently that one of the reasons more school psychologists will be needed in the coming years (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) is because of the increase in bullying. Evidently it’s not just the “big bad boys” who torment others.
3. Why do parents homeschool their children? Is it effective? Are there drawbacks as well as advantages? Are parents who homeschool different somehow from those who don’t?

Choose one or all of the above and toss in your two cents’ worth.