Paper+2+Dysfunction+&+Methodology

(a) **__Describe //one// empirical study related to dysfunctional behaviour.__** //[8 marks]//  One empirical study that is related to dysfunctional behaviour would be the study conducted by Rosenhan in 1973. For long periods of time, people have been trying to classify what exactly abnormal behaviour is. A commonly used and accepted approach to understanding and classifying abnormal behaviour was through the medical model. However, psychiatrist Rosenhan was against this medical model and was out to prove it wrong. The study was an example of a field experiment to test the hypothesis that psychiatrists cannot reliably tell the difference between people who are sane and insane.

The study was split into two parts. The first part involved eight sane people (3 women and 5 men), in which the independent variable (IV) was the made up symptoms of the pseudo patients, who called into the hospital for an appointment and stated that they had been hearing voices. Voices that said words like "hollow” "thud" and "empty". The dependent variable (DV) was the psychiatrists’ admission and diagnostic label of the pseudo patient, as the IV were constantly sent to the same psychiatric hospitals (it was repeated across the United States and in 12 different hospitals). The results showed that none of pseudo patients were detected and all but one of them were admitted with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and were essentially discharged with a diagnosis of ‘schizophrenia in remission’. Also, interestingly they weren’t detected by the staff but were suspected by other patients.

In the secondary study, the staff (who was aware of the first study) was falsely informed that during the next three months one or more pseudo patients would attempt to be admitted into thier hospital. They were asked to rate (1 to 10) each new patient the likelihood of them being pseudo patients. The results showed that many patients of the hospitals regular intake were judged to be pseudo patients. For instance, in each patient, 10% of their regular intake was judged by one psychiatrist and another staff to be pseudo patients. Ultimately, this empirical study would relate to dysfunctional psychology as it is challenging the medical model or just the classification process of dysfunctional behaviour in general. If successful in proving this then it would prove that the classifying system for abnormality is wrong, and therefore the question can be asked of 'What actually is abnormality?’.   (b) **__Discuss methodological considerations that may affect the interpretation of findings from the empirical study described in part (a).__** //[12 marks]//   Rosenhan claims  that the study shows  that psychiatrists cannot reliably tell the difference between people who are sane and  insane. The first  <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">study <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"> illustrated a failure to detect sanity, <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">whilst <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"> the secondary study <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">showed <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"> a failure to detect insanity. <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';"> <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Rosenhan explains that psychiatric labels tend to stick in a way that medical labels do not and that everything a patient does is interpreted in accordance with the diagnostic <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';"> label once it has been applied – he <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">suggested that instead of labelling a person as insane we should focus on the individual’s specific problems and behaviours. <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">The main strength of this study was that the pseudo patients could experience the ward from the patient’s observation while maintaining their objectivity. The face that it was a field experiment suggested that the study was ecologically valid whilst still managing to control many variables such as the pseudo patients’ behaviour. As well as this, the fact that Rosenhan used a range of hospitals allowed the results to be able to generalised – the hospitals were located in different States, thus on both coasts, old and new, research-oriented and not, well staffed and poorly staffed, and one private, federal or university funded. <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">However, ethical issue was probably the main weakness in this study. This is because the hospital staff may have been deceived, hence unethical. Although Rosenhan did not conceal the names of hospitals and attempted to eliminate any clues which might have reveal their identification, he noted that the experiences of these pseudo patients may differed from that of real patients (who did not know that the diagnosis was false). Also, he could be too hard on the psychiatric hospitals, especially their diagnosis of abnormality because there was always an outcry when a patient is let out of psychiatric care. Moreover, when Rosenhan did his study, the classification he used was DSM-II. It was argued that perhaps the newer classification, such as DSM-III and DSM-IV, would help the psychiatrists to make less errors in interpretation of results of their experiments.