Cultural dimensions of behaviour

Power Distance (PDI): The degree to which the less powerful members of a society accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.

Individualism versus collectivism (IDV)

a preference for a loosely-knit social framework in which individuals are expected to take care of themselves and their immediate families only.

1. What is the difference between dispositional factors and situational factors?
Dispositional factor is the assumption that a person's behavior reflects his internal dispositions like his personality, beliefs, attitude etc. Situational factor is the assumption that a person's behavior is influenced by an external influence from the environment or culture.

2. Explain and give an example of the fundamental error of attribution.
When you observe that there is a student in the class that has been very quiet during the entire term. You conclude that the student is a very quiet and shy person.  In this example, it is possible that we may wrongly assume that the student's quiet behavior reflects his or her personality, and we may fail to adequately consider some situational factors that could explain the student's behavior.  For example, we may not consider that the person may find the course very boring, or the person is experiencing difficulty and does not feel like talking in class.
3. Explain and give an example of the self-serving-bias error of attribution.
A self-serving bias occurs when people attribute their successes to internal or personal factors but attribute their failures to situational factors beyond their control. For example, a student attribute the reason to get a high score of test is that he/ she is clever and talented. However, when he/she fail the test, he/she maybe think it's that the test room is clond or teacher did not teach well.

4. Explain two possible explanations for these errors.
Salience of the actor. We tend to attribute an observed effect to potential causes that capture our attention. When we observe other people, the person is the primary reference point while the situation is overlooked as if it is nothing but mere background. So, attributions for others' behavior are more likely to focus on the person we see, not the situational forces acting upon that person that we may not be aware of.(When we observe ourselves, we are more aware of the forces acting upon us. Such a differential inward vs. outward orientation accounts for the actor-observer bias.)

Lack of effortful adjustment. Sometimes, even though we are aware that the person's behavior is constrained by situational factors, we still commit the fundamental attribution error. This is because we do not take into account behavioral and situational information simultaneously to characterize the dispositions of the actor. Initially, we use the observed behavior to characterize the person by automaticity.We need to make deliberate and conscious effort to adjust our inference by considering the situational constraints. Therefore, when situational information is not sufficiently taken into account for adjustment, the uncorrected dispositional inference creates the fundamental attribution error. It also explains that people commit to fundamental attribution error more when they have no motivation or energy (i.e. under cognitive load) to process the situational information.

Treatment of PDST

 Medication:A type of drug known as Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are a type of antidepressant medicine. These can help you feel less sad and worried. They appear to be helpful, and for some people they are very effective. SSRIs include citalopram (Celexa), fluoxetine (such as Prozac), paroxetine (Paxil), and sertraline (Zoloft).
Stop a crisis from escalating, for example, medications can help you regain control when you are suicidal, unable to workk, or in danger of hurting other people.
Work fast,  reduce your anxiety
Help tide you over if you can't get a therapist right away,if you are in the outside of a country, medication may help you stay the course until you can figure out a therapy plan.
Treat coexisting disorders, for instance, you may be battling both PTSD and depression, since you need your medication to get your other issues under control so you can focus on your PTSD symptoms.
Medication works when therapy doesn't, if therapy doesn't do the trick for you, medication could be just the ticket.

Cognitive behavioral therapy(CBT) is based on the idea that psychological problems arise as a result of the way in which we interpret or evaluate situations, thoughts, and feelings, as well as our behaviors.
Understand and change how you think about your trauma, to know the certain thoughts about your trauma cause you stress.
Identify thoughts about the world and yourself that are making you feel afraid or upset. learn to replace these thoughts with more accurate and less distressing thoughts.
understand the traumatic event you lived through was not your fault.

Combaination CBT and Medicine: 
CBT helps the patient discontinue medications and to ensure skill generalazation after medication treatmenr. Combined treatment may be more effective acutely.

What is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

What is PTSD?
Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an emotional illness that that is classified as an anxiety disorder and usually develops as a result of a terribly frightening, life-threatening, or otherwise highly unsafe experience.

What are the symptoms?
A symptom is a departure from normal function or feeling which is noticed by a patient, indicating the presence of disease or abnormality. A symptom is subjective,observed by the patient, and not measured.
What causes PTSD?
Complex post traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) usually results from prolonged exposure to a traumatic event or series thereof and is characterized by long-lasting problems with many aspects of emotional and social functioning.
Briefly explain how memory and emotion relate to PTSD.
 PTSD is an emotional illness when people suffer a terribly frightening, life-threatening, or otherwise highly unsafe, they feel sad, then this becomes a bad memory influences his life later on. As time goes, this problem always reminds him of the sad events. Therefore, he has an emotion illness.

Flashbulb Memory: Brown & Kulik

Aim: Investigate whether dramatic, or personally signifivant events can cause "flashbulb" mempries.

Procedure: Using a retrospective questionnaire assessed the memories of 80 US Ps for the circumstances in which they learned of public events.

Findings: FM more likely for unexpected and personally relevant shocking events.

Conclusion: Dramatic events can cause a physiological imprinting of a memory of the event.

Weakness: It could be that dramatic events are rehearsed more than usual, making memories more durable, rather than any "imprinting" process causing FMs

Flashbulb Memory---Neisser & Harsch

Neisser

Aims:  The flashbulb memory is not always accurate.

Procedure: A questionnaire was administered to 106 participants on the day after the space-shuttle exploded (Jan 1996). Among the questions asked were 5 about how they heard the news: where they were, what they were doing, who told them, what time it occurred etc. Thirty-two months later the participants were asked to complete the questionnaire again and their results compared to the original.

Findings:The findings showed that memories had in fact dimmed. Of a potential 220 ‘facts’ produced in the original questionnaire, they were partially or completely wrong on 150 of them. Interestingly participants were not aware of this fall off in performance, being highly confident in their ability to recall accurately.

 

Conclusions: A conclusion of the study is that so-called ‘flash-bulb memories are no more accurate than other memories. The results suggest that what is different is the confidence that people have in their memories associated with significant events.

Weakness: The space-shuttle exploded is interesting for every participants, since maybe some participants who have less interesting remember less than others.

Alzheimer's Disease

       Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a serious degenerative brain disease. People who suffer from this disease will lose memory, difficultly speak and understand languages, also has problems with focusing attention, impaired movement or altered personality. 

From the video The Forgetting we watched in the class, the patents suffer that losing ability to take care of themselves and the always confuse ordinary things, even forget their nearest family. Since their family members have to give up their jobs in order to take care of the patients. All the medical costs with the disease are over 100 billion dollars annually. Since AD is not only a social tragedy but also economic tragedy. In addition, the percentage of people with Alzheimer’s disease increases as age pasts 65. In America the number increases 10 times compare to 15 years ago. When the baby boomers star to get this disease, these numbers are going to explode.

 

It seems we have to take step to control the rising diseases rate. However, it is despair that there is no cure for this disease. The only way is using medicine to slow down the illness. Many people will curious that what causes Alzheimer’s disease? There are two main effects: plaques and tangles. Scientists think they block nerve cells’ ability to communicate with each other, making it difficult for the cells to survive.

At last, I hope the scientists can find out a way to cure Alzheimer’s disease patients. Since patients don’t suffer losing memory any more and their family can take an easier life.