Priming definition: In terms of psychology, priming occurs when a person is exposed to a stimulus, and it influences how they respond to another stimulus. For example, if you were to see the word “yellow,” you’d be slightly faster than other people (who hadn’t seen that word) to recognize the word “banana.” That’s because people closely associate words like “yellow” and “banana” in their memory.
When Hearing Voices Is a Good Thing
Luhrmann and her colleagues chalked up the differences in how the voices were perceived to distinct societal values. Americans desire individuality and independence, and the voices were seen as an intrusion into a self-made mind. Eastern and African cultures, meanwhile, tend to emphasize relationships and collectivism. There, a hallucination was more likely to be seen as just another point in the schizophrenic person’s already extensive social network.
.. Luhrmann says she thinks her insights might help in the development of new therapies for schizophrenia sufferers the world over. There’s no cure for schizophrenia, but some therapies urge patients to develop relationships with their hallucinated voices and to negotiate with them.
Why Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment Isn’t in My Textbook
This is a study of prisoners and guards, so their job clearly is to act like prisoners and guards—or, more accurately, to act out theirstereotyped views of what prisoners and guards do. Surely, Professor Zimbardo, who is right there watching them (as the Prison Superintendent) would be disappointed if, instead, they had just sat around chatting pleasantly and having tea. Much research has shown that participants in psychological experiments are highly motivated to do what they believe the researchers want them to do. Any characteristics of an experiment that let research participants guess how the experimenters expect or want them to behave are referred to as demand characteristics. In any valid experiment it is essential to eliminate or at least minimize demand characteristics. In this experiment, the demands were everywhere.
Nancy Andreason: How did you become a Psychiatrist
Q. HOW DID YOU BECOME A PSYCHIATRIST?
I was an English professor in the early 1960s. I’d done a book on John Donne. Then, in 1964, I gave birth to my first child and nearly died from a postpartum infection — the very thing that had killed millions of birthing women in the centuries before antibiotics. As I recovered, I realized I had been given back my life, and that caused me to rethink everything in it. I decided to quit literature studies and go back to school to become a doctor.
From the outset, I knew I wanted to do research and patient care. Because I relish complexity, I chose psychiatry — it’s more complicated than neurology. And I chose brain research because the brain is the most complicated organ in the body. I wanted to do something as important as the discovery of penicillin, the thing that had saved me.