Family therapy (also referred to as family counseling , family systems therapy, marriage and family therapy, couple and family therapy) is a branch of psychotherapy focused on families and couples in intimate relationships to nurture change and development. It tends to view change in terms of the systems of interaction between family members.
109-407: The different schools of family therapy have in common a belief that, regardless of the origin of the problem, and regardless of whether the clients consider it an "individual" or "family" issue, involving families in solutions often benefits clients. This involvement of families is commonly accomplished by their direct participation in the therapy session. The skills of the family therapist thus include
218-518: A diploma or an M.Sc. In the United States there is a specific degree and license as a marriage and family therapist; however, psychologists , nurses , psychotherapists , social workers , or counselors , and other licensed mental health professionals may practice family therapy. In the UK, family therapists who have completed a four-year qualifying programme of study (MSc) are eligible to register with
327-415: A bioethicist asked basic questions about whether strategic interventions "mean what they say" and if it is ethical to invent opinions offered to families about the treatment process, such as statements saying that half of the treatment team believes one thing and half believes another. Specific issues that have emerged have included an increasing questioning of the longstanding notion of therapeutic neutrality,
436-675: A change in attitudes or behavior. Research on attitudes has examined the distinction between traditional, self-reported attitudes and implicit, unconscious attitudes . Experiments using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) , for instance, have found that people often demonstrate implicit bias against other races, even when their explicit responses profess impartiality. Likewise, one study found that in interracial interactions, explicit attitudes correlate with verbal behavior, while implicit attitudes correlate with nonverbal behavior. Attitudes are also involved in several other areas of
545-419: A common identity. They have a number of emergent qualities that distinguish them from coincidental, temporary gatherings, which are termed social aggregates: The shared social identity of individuals within a group influences intergroup behavior , which denotes the way in which groups behave towards and perceive each other. These perceptions and behaviors in turn define the social identity of individuals within
654-422: A concern with questions of justice and self-determination , connectedness and independence, functioning versus authenticity, and questions about the degree of the therapist's pro-marriage/family versus pro-individual commitment. The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy requires members to adhere to a code of ethics , including a commitment to "continue therapeutic relationships only so long as it
763-474: A control hierarchy is set from within the system (the organism), rather than by an external agent changing the setpoint of the controller . PCT also applies to nonliving autonomic systems . Social psychology Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts , feelings , and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as
872-461: A cultural context. It was also in this period where situationism , the theory that human behavior changes based on situational factors, emerged and challenged the relevance of self and personality in psychology. By the 1980s and 1990s, social psychology had developed a number of solutions to these issues with regard to theory and methodology . At present, ethical standards regulate research, and pluralistic and multicultural perspectives to
981-574: A hundred secondary studies to find some level of effectiveness that was either "proven" or "presumed" to exist. Of the treatments studied, family therapy was presumed or proven effective at treating schizophrenia , bipolar disorder , anorexia and alcohol dependency . In a 1999 address to the Coalition of Marriage, Family and Couples Education conference in Washington, D.C., University of Minnesota Professor William Doherty said: I take no joy in being
1090-416: A more abstract level, as by pointing out patterns of interaction that the family might have not noticed. Family therapists tend to be more interested in the maintenance and/or solving of problems rather than in trying to identify a single cause. Some families may perceive cause-effect analyses as attempts to allocate blame to one or more individuals, with the effect that for many families a focus on causation
1199-602: A particular interest in the possible psychosocial causes and treatment of schizophrenia , especially in terms of the putative "meaning" and "function" of signs and symptoms within the family system. The research of psychiatrists and psychoanalysts Lyman Wynne and Theodore Lidz on communication deviance and roles (e.g., pseudo-mutuality, pseudo-hostility, schism and skew) in families of people with schizophrenia also became influential with systems-communications-oriented theorists and therapists. A related theme, applying to dysfunction and psychopathology more generally,
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#17328698391361308-410: A person may generally value the environment but may not recycle a plastic bottle because of specific factors on a given day. One of the most influential 20th century attitude theories was Cognitive dissonance theory . According to this theory, attitudes must be logically consistent with each other. Noticing incongruence among one’s attitudes leads to an uncomfortable state of tension, which may motivate
1417-497: A population. This type of research is usually descriptive or correlational because there is no experimental control over variables. Some psychologists have raised concerns for social psychological research relying too heavily on studies conducted on university undergraduates in academic settings, or participants from crowdsourcing labor markets such as Amazon Mechanical Turk . In a 1986 study by David O. Sears , over 70% of experiments used North American undergraduates as subjects,
1526-464: A range of cognitive and behavioral approaches, psychodynamic and object relations approaches, attachment and emotionally focused therapy , intergenerational approaches, network therapy, and multisystemic therapy (MST). Multicultural , intercultural , and integrative approaches are being developed, with Vincenzo Di Nicola weaving a synthesis of family therapy and transcultural psychiatry in his model of cultural family therapy, A Stranger in
1635-440: A restaurant, doing laundry) are known as scripts . Self-concept is the whole sum of beliefs that people have about themselves. The self-concept is made up of cognitive aspects called self-schemas —beliefs that people have about themselves and that guide the processing of self-referential information. For example, an athlete at a university would have multiple selves that would process different information pertinent to each self:
1744-402: A result of the relationship between mental states and social situations, studying the social conditions under which thoughts, feelings, and behaviors occur, and how these variables influence social interactions . In the 19th century, social psychology began to emerge from the larger field of psychology . At the time, many psychologists were concerned with developing concrete explanations for
1853-407: A significant number of therapists who adhere more or less strictly to a particular, or limited number of, approach(es). The Liberation Based Healing framework for family therapy offers a complete paradigm shift for working with families while addressing the intersections of race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation and other socio-political identity markers. This theoretical approach and praxis
1962-447: A simulated exercise involving students playing at being prison guards and inmates, attempted to show how far people would go in role playing. In just a few days, the guards became brutal and cruel, and the prisoners became miserable and compliant. This was initially argued to be an important demonstration of the power of the immediate social situation and its capacity to overwhelm normal personality traits. Subsequent research has contested
2071-497: A state of consummate love. According to social exchange theory , relationships are based on rational choice and cost-benefit analysis. A person may leave a relationship if their partner's "costs" begin to outweigh their benefits, especially if there are good alternatives available. This theory is similar to the minimax principle proposed by mathematicians and economists. With time, long-term relationships tend to become communal rather than simply based on exchange. Social psychology
2180-439: A subset of the population that is unrepresentative of the population as a whole. Regardless of which method has been chosen, social psychologists statistically review the significance of their results before accepting them in evaluating an underlying hypothesis. Statistics and probability testing define what constitutes a significant finding, which can be as low as 5% or less, and is unlikely due to chance. Replication testing
2289-401: A survey of over 2,500 US therapists in 2006 revealed that of the 10 most influential therapists of the previous quarter-century, three were prominent family therapists and that the marital and family systems model was the second most utilized model after cognitive behavioral therapy . Family therapy uses a range of counseling and other techniques including: The number of sessions depends on
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#17328698391362398-589: A therapist before beginning treatment: Family therapy practitioners come from a range of professional backgrounds, and some are specifically qualified or licensed/registered in family therapy (licensing is not required in some jurisdictions and requirements vary from place to place). In the United Kingdom , family therapists will have a prior relevant professional training in one of the helping professions usually psychologists , psychotherapists , or counselors who have done further training in family therapy, either
2507-455: A whistle blower, but it's time. I am a committed marriage and family therapist, having practiced this form of therapy since 1977. I train marriage and family therapists. I believe that marriage therapy can be very helpful in the hands of therapists who are committed to the profession and the practice. But there are a lot of problems out there with the practice of therapy – a lot of problems. Doherty suggested questions prospective clients should ask
2616-417: A wide range of human behavior, including organisational dynamics and the study of greatness . Formal interventions with families to help individuals and families experiencing various kinds of problems have been a part of many cultures, probably throughout history. These interventions have sometimes involved formal procedures or rituals, and often included the extended family as well as non- kin members of
2725-510: Is obedience ; this is a change in behavior that is the result of a direct order or command from another person. Obedience as a form of compliance was dramatically highlighted by the Milgram study , wherein people were ready to administer shocks to a person in distress on a researcher's command. An unusual kind of social influence is the self-fulfilling prophecy . This is a prediction that, by being made, causes itself to become true. For example, in
2834-607: Is a false memory of having predicted events, or an exaggeration of actual predictions, after becoming aware of the outcome. The confirmation bias is a type of bias leading to the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions. Schemas are generalized mental representations that organize knowledge and guide information processing. They organize social information and experiences. Schemas often operate automatically and unconsciously. This leads to biases in perception and memory. Schemas may induce expectations that lead us to see something that
2943-450: Is a compliance method in which the persuader requests a small favor and then follows up with a larger favor (e.g., asking for the time and then asking for ten dollars). A related trick is the bait and switch , which is a disingenuous sales strategy that involves enticing potential customers with advertisements of low-priced items which turn out to be unavailable in order to sell a more expensive item. The third major form of social influence
3052-462: Is a psychological theory of animal and human behavior originated by William T. Powers . In contrast with other theories of psychology and behavior, which assume that behavior is a function of perception – that perceptual inputs determine or cause behavior – PCT postulates that an organism's behavior is a means of controlling its perceptions. In contrast with engineering control theory , the reference variable for each negative feedback control loop in
3161-487: Is a tendency to work harder and faster in the presence of others. Another important concept in this area is deindividuation , a reduced state of self-awareness that can be caused by feelings of anonymity. Deindividuation is associated with uninhibited and sometimes dangerous behavior. It is common in crowds and mobs, but it can also be caused by a disguise, a uniform, alcohol, dark environments, or online anonymity. A major area of study of people's relations to each other
3270-399: Is also important in ensuring that the results are valid and not due to chance. False positive conclusions, often resulting from the pressure to publish or the author's own confirmation bias , are a hazard in the field. The Asch conformity experiments used a line-length estimation task to demonstrate the power of people's impulses to conform with other members in a small group. The task
3379-544: Is an empirical science that attempts to answer questions about human behavior by testing hypotheses. Careful attention to research design, sampling, and statistical analysis is important in social psychology. Whenever possible, social psychologists rely on controlled experimentation , which requires the manipulation of one or more independent variables in order to examine the effect on a dependent variable . Experiments are useful in social psychology because they are high in internal validity , meaning that they are free from
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3488-607: Is an extension of the theory, positing that tendency exists to make dispositional attributions for other people's behavior and situational attributions for one's own. The self-serving bias is the tendency to attribute dispositional causes for successes, and situational causes for failure, particularly when self-esteem is threatened. This leads to assuming one's successes are from innate traits, and one's failures are due to situations. Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts which are used to make decisions in lieu of conscious reasoning. The availability heuristic occurs when people estimate
3597-517: Is an overarching term that denotes the persuasive effects people have on each other. It is seen as a fundamental concept in social psychology. The study of it overlaps considerably with research on attitudes and persuasion. The three main areas of social influence include conformity , compliance , and obedience . Social influence is also closely related to the study of group dynamics, as most effects of influence are strongest when they take place in social groups. The first major area of social influence
3706-543: Is conformity. Conformity is defined as the tendency to act or think like other members of a group. The identity of members within a group (i.e., status), similarity, expertise, as well as cohesion, prior commitment, and accountability to the group help to determine the level of conformity of an individual. Conformity is often driven by two types of social influences: informational social influence, which involves conforming to gain accurate information, and normative social influence, which involves conforming to be accepted or liked by
3815-415: Is due to a request or suggestion from another person. Two common compliance strategies are 'foot-in-the-door,' which involves getting a person to agree to a small request to increase the likelihood of agreeing to a larger one, and 'door-in-the-face,' which involves making a large request that is likely to be refused to make a subsequent smaller request more likely to be accepted. The foot-in-the-door technique
3924-570: Is informed by critical pedagogy , feminism, critical race theory , and decolonizing theory. This framework necessitates an understanding of the ways colonization, cis-heteronormativity, patriarchy , white supremacy and other systems of domination impact individuals, families and communities and centers the need to disrupt the status quo in how power operates. Traditional Western models of family therapy have historically ignored these dimensions and when white, male privilege has been critiqued, largely by feminist theory practitioners, it has often been to
4033-469: Is inspired by systems theory and systems thinking , and based on the theoretical work of Roger Barker , Gregory Bateson , Humberto Maturana and others. Groups and individuals are considered as systems in homeostasis . Alternative terms here are "systemic psychology", "systems behavior", and "systems-based psychology". In the scientific literature, different kinds of systems psychology have been mentioned: Ergonomics, also called " human factors ",
4142-449: Is intended to maximize productivity by reducing operator fatigue and discomfort. The field is also called human engineering and human factors engineering . Ergonomic research is primarily performed by ergonomists who study human capabilities in relationship to their work demands. Information derived from ergonomists contributes to the design and evaluation of tasks, jobs, products, environments and systems in order to make them compatible with
4251-452: Is interpersonal attraction, which refers to all factors that lead people to like each other, establish relationships, and in some cases fall in love. Several general principles of attraction have been discovered by social psychologists. One of the most important factors in interpersonal attraction is how similar two particular people are. The more similar two people are in general attitudes, backgrounds, environments, worldviews, and other traits,
4360-407: Is not there. One experiment found that people are more likely to misperceive a weapon in the hands of a black man than a white man. This type of schema is a stereotype , a generalized set of beliefs about a particular group of people (when incorrect, an ultimate attribution error ). Stereotypes are often related to negative or preferential attitudes and behavior. Schemas for behaviors (e.g., going to
4469-472: Is of little or no clinical utility. It is important to note that a circular way of problem evaluation is used as opposed to a linear route. Using this method, families can be helped by finding patterns of behaviour, what the causes are, and what can be done to better their situation. Family therapy has an evolving evidence base. A summary of current evidence is available via the UK's Association of Family Therapy. Evaluation and outcome studies can also be found on
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4578-547: Is reasonably clear that clients are benefiting from the relationship." Some key developers of family therapy are: ( references: ) Key influences: Celia Falicov, Antonio Ferreira, James Framo , Edwin Friedman , Mara Selvini Palazzoli , Carlos Sluzki, Victor Turner , Michael White Systems psychology Systems psychology is a branch of both theoretical psychology and applied psychology that studies human behaviour and experience as complex systems . It
4687-598: Is the application of scientific information concerning objects, systems and environment for human use (definition adopted by the International Ergonomics Association in 2007). Ergonomics is commonly described as the way companies design tasks and work areas to maximize the efficiency and quality of their employees' work. However, ergonomics comes into everything which involves people. Work systems, sports and leisure, health and safety should all embody ergonomics principles if well designed. Equipment design
4796-796: The AAMFT ), and through the work of various independent clinicians and groups – in the United Kingdom ( John Bowlby at the Tavistock Clinic ), the United States ( Donald deAvila Jackson , John Elderkin Bell, Nathan Ackerman , Christian Midelfort, Theodore Lidz , Lyman Wynne , Murray Bowen , Carl Whitaker , Virginia Satir , Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy ), and in Hungary , D.L.P. Liebermann – who began seeing family members together for observation or therapy sessions. There
4905-446: The Milan systems model. Partly in reaction to some aspects of these systemic models, came the experiential approaches of Virginia Satir and Carl Whitaker , which downplayed theoretical constructs, and emphasized subjective experience and unexpressed feelings (including the subconscious ), authentic communication, spontaneity, creativity, total therapist engagement, and often included
5014-537: The United States and Canada often seek degrees from accredited Masters or Doctoral programs recognized by the Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education (COAMFTE), a division of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy . Requirements vary, but in most states about 3000 hours of supervised work as an intern are needed to sit for a licensing exam. MFTs must be licensed by
5123-456: The community (see for example Ho'oponopono ). Following the emergence of specialization in various societies, these interventions were often conducted by particular members of a community – for example, a chief , priest , physician , and so on – usually as an ancillary function. Family therapy as a distinct professional practice within Western cultures can be argued to have had its origins in
5232-548: The elaboration likelihood model ) maintain that persuasion is mediated by two separate routes: central and peripheral. The central route of persuasion is influenced by facts and results in longer-lasting change, but requires motivation to process. The peripheral route is influenced by superficial factors (e.g. smiling, clothing) and results in shorter-lasting change, but does not require as much motivation to process. Social cognition studies how people perceive, recognize, and remember information about others. Much research rests on
5341-604: The extended family . Concurrently and somewhat independently, there emerged the various intergenerational therapies of Murray Bowen , Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy , James Framo , and Norman Paul, which present different theories about the intergenerational transmission of health and dysfunction , but which all deal usually with at least three generations of a family (in person or conceptually), either directly in therapy sessions, or via "homework", "journeys home", etc. Psychodynamic family therapy – which, more than any other school of family therapy, deals directly with individual psychology and
5450-630: The genogram to help to elucidate the patterns of relationship across generations. The distinctive feature of family therapy is its perspective and analytical framework rather than the number of people present at a therapy session. Specifically, family therapists are relational therapists: They are generally more interested in what goes on between individuals rather than within one or more individuals, although some family therapists – in particular those who identify as psychodynamic , object relations , intergenerational, or experiential family therapists (EFTs) – tend to be as interested in individuals as in
5559-455: The probability of an outcome based on how easy that outcome is to imagine. As such, vivid or highly memorable possibilities will be perceived as more likely than those that are harder to picture or difficult to understand. The representativeness heuristic is a shortcut people use to categorize something based on how similar it is to a prototype they know of. Several other biases have been found by social cognition researchers. The hindsight bias
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#17328698391365668-412: The systems those individuals and their relationships constitute. Depending on the conflicts at issue and the progress of therapy to date, a therapist may focus on analyzing specific previous instances of conflict, as by reviewing a past incident and suggesting alternative ways family members might have responded to one another during it, or instead proceed directly to addressing the sources of conflict at
5777-514: The unconscious in the context of current relationships – continued to develop through a number of groups that were influenced by the ideas and methods of Nathan Ackerman , and also by the British School of Object Relations and John Bowlby 's work on attachment . Multiple-family group therapy , a precursor of psychoeducational family intervention, emerged, in part, as a pragmatic alternative form of intervention – especially as an adjunct to
5886-539: The 1960s, there was growing interest in topics such as cognitive dissonance , bystander intervention , and aggression . These developments were part of a trend of increasingly sophisticated laboratory experiments using college students as participants and analysis of variance designs. In the 1970s, a number of conceptual challenges to social psychology emerged over issues such as ethical concerns about laboratory experimentation, whether attitudes could accurately predict behavior, and to what extent science could be done in
5995-472: The Family Therapy and Systemic Research Centre website. The website also includes quantitative and qualitative research studies of many aspects of family therapy. According to a 2004 French government study conducted by French Institute of Health and Medical Research , family and couples therapy was the second most effective therapy after Cognitive behavioral therapy . The study used meta-analysis of over
6104-484: The Family: Culture, Families, and Therapy . Many practitioners claim to be eclectic , using techniques from several areas, depending upon their own inclinations and/or the needs of the client(s), and there is a growing movement toward a single "generic" family therapy that seeks to incorporate the best of the accumulated knowledge in the field and which can be adapted to many different contexts; however, there are still
6213-404: The U.S. military (see also psychological warfare ). Following the war, researchers became interested in a variety of social problems, including issues of gender and racial prejudice . Social stigma , which refers to the disapproval or discrimination against individuals based on perceived differences, became increasingly prevalent as societies sought to redefine norms and group boundaries after
6322-595: The ability to influence conversations in a way that catalyses the strengths, wisdom, and support of the wider system. In the field's early years, many clinicians defined the family in a narrow, traditional manner usually including parents and children. As the field has evolved, the concept of the family is more commonly defined in terms of strongly supportive, long-term roles and relationships between people who may or may not be related by blood or marriage. The conceptual frameworks developed by family therapists, especially those of family systems theorists , have been applied to
6431-432: The assertion that people think about other people differently than they do non-social, or non-human, targets. This assertion is supported by the social-cognitive deficits exhibited by people with Williams syndrome and autism . A major research topic in social cognition is attribution . Attributions are explanations of behavior, either one's own behavior or the behavior of others. One element of attribution ascribes
6540-415: The beginnings of a general softening of the strict demarcations between schools, with moves toward rapprochement , integration, and eclecticism – although there was, nevertheless, some hardening of positions within some schools. These trends were reflected in and influenced by lively debates within the field and critiques from various sources, including feminism and post-modernism , that reflected in part
6649-445: The behavior will be repeated or changed under similar circumstances). Individuals also attribute causes of behavior to controllable and uncontrollable factors (i.e., how much control one has over the situation at hand). Numerous biases in the attribution process have been discovered. For instance, the fundamental attribution error is the bias towards making dispositional attributions for other people's behavior. The actor-observer bias
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#17328698391366758-427: The benefit of middle-class, white women's experiences. While an understanding of intersectionality is of particular significance in working with families with violence, a liberatory framework examines how power, privilege and oppression operate within and across all relationships. Liberatory practices are based on the principles of critical consciousness , Accountability and Empowerment. These principles guide not only
6867-436: The cause of behavior to internal and external factors. An internal, or dispositional, attribution reasons that a behavior is caused by inner traits such as personality, disposition, character, and ability. An external, or situational, attribution reasons that a behavior is caused by situational elements such as the weather. A second element of attribution ascribes the cause of behavior to stable and unstable factors (i.e., whether
6976-424: The content of the therapeutic work with clients but also the supervisory and training process of therapists. Dr. Rhea Almeida developed the cultural context model as a way to operationalize these concepts into practice through the integration of culture circles, sponsors, and a socio-educational process within the therapeutic work. Ideas and methods from family therapy have been influential in psychotherapy generally:
7085-444: The cultural and political tenor of the times, and which foreshadowed the emergence (in the 1980s and 1990s) of the various post-systems constructivist and social constructionist approaches. While there was still debate within the field about whether, or to what degree, the systemic-constructivist and medical-biological paradigms were necessarily antithetical to each other (see also Anti-psychiatry ; Biopsychosocial model ) , there
7194-406: The different aspects of human nature . They attempted to discover concrete cause-and-effect relationships that explained social interactions. In order to do so, they applied the scientific method to human behavior. One of the first published studies in the field was Norman Triplett 's 1898 experiment on the phenomenon of social facilitation . These psychological experiments later went on to form
7303-521: The discipline, such as conformity , interpersonal attraction , social perception, and prejudice . Persuasion is an active method of influencing that attempts to guide people toward the adoption of an attitude, idea, or behavior by rational or emotive means. Persuasion relies on appeals rather than strong pressure or coercion . The process of persuasion has been found to be influenced by numerous variables that generally fall into one of five major categories: Dual-process theories of persuasion (such as
7412-412: The early 1950s through the work of anthropologist Gregory Bateson and colleagues – Jay Haley , Donald D. Jackson , John Weakland , William Fry, and later, Virginia Satir , Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy , Paul Watzlawick and others – at Palo Alto in the United States, who introduced ideas from cybernetics and general systems theory into social psychology and psychotherapy , focusing in particular on
7521-429: The emergence of behavioral marital therapy (renamed behavioral couples therapy in the 1990s) and behavioral family therapy as models in their own right. By the late 1970s, the weight of clinical experience – especially in relation to the treatment of serious mental disorders – had led to some revision of a number of the original models and a moderation of some of the earlier stridency and theoretical purism . There were
7630-438: The financial field, if it is widely believed that a crash is imminent, investors may lose confidence, sell most of their stock, and thus cause a crash. Similarly, people may expect hostility in others and induce this hostility by their own behavior. Psychologists have spent decades studying the power of social influence, and the way in which it manipulates people's opinions and behavior. Specifically, social influence refers to
7739-506: The foundation of much of 20th century social psychological findings. According to Wolfgang Stroebe , modern social psychology began in 1924 with the publication of a classic textbook by Floyd Allport , which defined the field as the experimental study of social behavior. An early, influential research program in social psychology was established by Kurt Lewin and his students. During World War II , social psychologists were mostly concerned with studies of persuasion and propaganda for
7848-476: The group. Individual variations among group members play a key role in the dynamic of how willing people will be to conform. Conformity is usually viewed as a negative tendency in American culture, but a certain amount of conformity is adaptive in some situations, as is nonconformity in other situations. The second major area of social influence research is compliance , which refers to any change in behavior that
7957-413: The individual began conforming or withdrew from the experiment. Also, participant conformity increased substantially as the number of "incorrect" individuals increased from one to three, and remained high as the incorrect majority grew. Participants with three other, incorrect participants made mistakes 31.8% of the time, while those with one or two incorrect participants made mistakes only 3.6% and 13.6% of
8066-414: The influence of confounding or extraneous variables, and so are more likely to accurately indicate a causal relationship. However, the small samples used in controlled experiments are typically low in external validity , or the degree to which the results can be generalized to the larger population. There is usually a trade-off between experimental control (internal validity) and being able to generalize to
8175-495: The initial conclusions of the study. For example, it has been pointed out that participant self-selection may have affected the participants' behavior, and that the participants' personalities influenced their reactions in a variety of ways, including how long they chose to remain in the study. The 2002 BBC prison study , designed to replicate the conditions in the Stanford study, produced conclusions that were drastically different from
8284-416: The initial findings. Albert Bandura 's Bobo doll experiment attempted to demonstrate how aggression is learned by imitation . In the experiment, 72 children, grouped based on similar levels of pre-tested aggressivity, either witnessed an aggressive or a non-aggressive actor interact with a "bobo doll." The children were then placed alone in the room with the doll and observed to see if they would imitate
8393-500: The interacting groups. The tendency to define oneself by membership in a group may lead to intergroup discrimination, which involves favorable perceptions and behaviors directed towards the in-group, but negative perceptions and behaviors directed towards the out-group. Groups often moderate and improve decision making , and are frequently relied upon for these benefits, such as in committees and juries. Groups also affect performance and productivity . Social facilitation, for example,
8502-559: The more likely they will be attracted to each other. Physical attractiveness is an important element of romantic relationships, particularly in the early stages characterized by high levels of passion . Later on, similarity and other compatibility factors become more important, and the type of love people experience shifts from passionate to companionate. In 1986, Robert Sternberg suggested that there are actually three components of love: intimacy, passion, and commitment. When two (or more) people experience all three, they are said to be in
8611-751: The most specifically trained in this type of psychotherapy. Industrial and organizational psychology also known as "work psychology", "occupational psychology" or "personnel psychology" concerns the application of psychological theories, research methods, and intervention strategies to workplace issues. Industrial and organizational psychologists are interested in making organizations more productive while ensuring workers are able to lead physically and psychologically healthy lives. Relevant topics include personnel psychology, motivation and leadership , employee selection, training and development, organization development and guided change, organizational behavior , and job and family issues. Perceptual control theory (PCT)
8720-615: The needs, abilities and limitations of people. Family system therapy, also referred to as "family therapy" and "couple and family therapy", is a branch of psychotherapy related to relationship counseling that works with families and couples in intimate relationships to nurture change and development. It tends to view the family as a system, family relationships as an important factor in psychological health. As such, family problems have been seen to arise as an emergent property of systemic interactions, rather than to be blamed on individual members. Marriage and Family Therapists (MFTs) are
8829-549: The original cause(s). (See also systems psychology and systemic therapy .) This group was also influenced significantly by the work of US psychiatrist , hypnotherapist , and brief therapist Milton H. Erickson – especially his innovative use of strategies for change, such as paradoxical directives The members of the Bateson Project (like the founders of a number of other schools of family therapy, including Carl Whitaker , Murray Bowen , and Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy ) had
8938-423: The perception of our own behavior. Leon Festinger 's 1954 social comparison theory posits that people evaluate their own abilities and opinions by comparing themselves to others when they are uncertain of their own ability or opinions. Daryl Bem 's 1972 self-perception theory claims that when internal cues are difficult to interpret, people gain self-insight by observing their own behavior. Social influence
9047-406: The population (external validity). Because it is usually impossible to test everyone, research tends to be conducted on a sample of persons from the wider population . Social psychologists frequently use survey research when they are interested in results that are high in external validity. Surveys use various forms of random sampling to obtain a sample of respondents that is representative of
9156-404: The profession about the different values that are implicit in the various theoretical models of therapy and the role of the therapist's own values in the therapeutic process, and how prospective clients should best go about finding a therapist whose values and objectives are most consistent with their own. An early paper on ethics in family therapy written by Vincenzo Di Nicola in consultation with
9265-410: The profession about the fact that specialist training in couples therapy – as distinct from family therapy in general – is not required to gain a license as an MFT or membership of the main professional body, the AAMFT . Since issues of interpersonal conflict, power, control, values, and ethics are often more pronounced in relationship therapy than in individual therapy, there has been debate within
9374-538: The professional body the Association of Family Therapy (AFT), and with the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). A master's degree is required to work as a Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT) in some American states. Most commonly, MFTs will first earn a M.S. or M.A. degree in marriage and family therapy, counseling , psychology , family studies , or social work . After graduation, prospective MFTs work as interns under
9483-413: The role of communication (see Bateson Project ). This approach eschewed the traditional focus on individual psychology and historical factors – that involve so-called linear causation and content – and emphasized instead feedback and homeostatic mechanisms and "rules" in here-and-now interactions – so-called circular causation and process – that were thought to maintain or exacerbate problems, whatever
9592-417: The same behavior of the actor they had observed. As hypothesized, the children who had witnessed the aggressive actor, imitated the behavior and proceeded to act aggressively towards the doll. Both male and female children who witnessed the non-aggressive actor behaved less aggressively towards the doll. However, boys were more likely to exhibit aggression, especially after observing the behavior from an actor of
9701-435: The same gender. In addition, boys were found to imitate more physical aggression, while girls displayed more verbal aggression. The goal of social psychology is to understand cognition and behavior as they naturally occur in a social context, but the very act of observing people can influence and alter their behavior. For this reason, many social psychology experiments utilize deception to conceal or distort certain aspects of
9810-429: The same lie. The first group ($ 1) later reported liking the task better than the second group ($ 20). Festinger's explanation was that for people in the first group, being paid only $ 1 was not sufficient incentive. This led them to experience dissonance, or discomfort and internal conflict. They could only overcome that dissonance by justifying their lies. They did this by changing their previously unfavorable attitudes about
9919-457: The same results as deception studies, and this has cast doubt on their validity. In addition to deception, experimenters have at times put people in potentially uncomfortable or embarrassing situations (e.g., the Milgram experiment and Stanford prison experiment ), and this has also been criticized for ethical reasons. Virtually all social psychology research in the modern day must pass an ethical review. At most colleges and universities, this
10028-411: The situation, but the average is 5–20 sessions. A family therapist usually meets several members of the family at the same time. This has the advantage of making differences between the ways family members perceive mutual relations as well as interaction patterns in the session apparent both for the therapist and the family. These patterns frequently mirror habitual interaction patterns at home, even though
10137-621: The social sciences have emerged. Most modern researchers in the 21st century are interested in phenomena such as attribution , social cognition , and self-concept . During the COVID-19 pandemic, social psychologists examined the effects of social isolation, fear, and misinformation on collective behavior. Research also focused on how pandemic-related stress affected mental health and social cohesion. Social psychologists are, in addition, concerned with applied psychology , contributing towards applications of social psychology in health, education, law, and
10246-445: The social work movements of the 19th century in the United Kingdom and the United States . As a branch of psychotherapy , its roots can be traced somewhat later to the early 20th century with the emergence of the child guidance movement and marriage counseling . The formal development of family therapy dates from the 1940s and early 1950s with the founding in 1942 of the American Association of Marriage Counselors (the precursor of
10355-440: The state to practice. Only after completing their education and internship and passing the state licensing exam can a person call themselves a Marital and Family Therapist and work unsupervised. License restrictions can vary considerably from state to state. Contact information about licensing boards in the United States are provided by the Association of Marital and Family Regulatory Boards. There have been concerns raised within
10464-424: The student would be oneself, who would process information pertinent to a student (taking notes in class, completing a homework assignment, etc.); the athlete would be the self who processes information about things related to being an athlete. These selves are part of one's identity and the self-referential information is that which relies on the appropriate self to process and react to it. There are many theories on
10573-500: The study. Deception may include false cover stories, false participants (known as confederates or stooges), false feedback given to the participants, and other techniques that help remove potential obstacles to participation. The practice of deception has been challenged by psychologists who maintain that deception under any circumstances is unethical and that other research strategies (e.g., role-playing ) should be used instead. Research has shown that role-playing studies do not produce
10682-472: The supervision of a licensed professional and are referred to as an MFTi. Prior to 1999 in California , counselors who specialized in this area were called Marriage, Family and Child Counselors. Today, they are known as Marriage and Family Therapists (MFT), and work variously in private practice, in clinical settings such as hospitals, institutions, or counseling organizations. Marriage and family therapists in
10791-426: The task. Being paid $ 20 provided a reason for doing the boring task, which resulted in no dissonance. The Milgram experiment was designed to study how far people would go in obeying an authority figure. The experiment showed that normal American citizens would follow orders even when they believed they were causing an innocent person to suffer or even apparently die. Philip Zimbardo 's Stanford prison study ,
10900-490: The therapist is now incorporated into the family system. Therapy interventions usually focus on relationship patterns rather than on analyzing impulses of the unconscious mind or early childhood trauma of individuals as a Freudian therapist would do – although some schools of family therapy, for example psychodynamic and intergenerational, do consider such individual and historical factors (thus embracing both linear and circular causation) and they may use instruments such as
11009-444: The time, respectively. In Leon Festinger 's cognitive dissonance experiment, participants were divided into two groups and were asked to perform a boring task. Both groups were later asked to dishonestly give their opinion of the task, but were rewarded according to two different pay scales. At the end of the study, some participants were paid $ 1 to say that they enjoyed the task, while the group of participants were paid $ 20 to tell
11118-512: The treatment of serious mental disorders with a significant biological basis, such as schizophrenia – and represented something of a conceptual challenge to some of the systemic (and thus potentially "family-blaming") paradigms of pathogenesis that were implicit in many of the dominant models of family therapy. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw the development of network therapy (which bears some resemblance to traditional practices such as Ho'oponopono ) by Ross Speck and Carolyn Attneave, and
11227-451: The war. During the years immediately following World War II , there were frequent collaborations between psychologists and sociologists . The two disciplines, however, have become increasingly specialized and isolated from each other in recent years, with sociologists generally focusing on high-level, large-scale examinations of society, and psychologists generally focusing on more small-scale studies of individual human behaviors. During
11336-455: The way in which individuals change their ideas and actions to meet the demands of a social group, received authority, social role, or a minority within a group wielding influence over the majority. Social psychologists study group-related phenomena such as the behavior of crowds . A group can be defined as two or more individuals who are connected to each other by social relationships . Groups tend to interact, influence each other, and share
11445-488: The workplace . In social psychology, an attitude is a learned, global evaluation that influences thought and action. Attitudes are basic expressions of approval and disapproval or likes and dislikes. For example, enjoying chocolate ice cream or endorsing the values of a particular political party are examples of attitudes. Because people are influenced by multiple factors in any given situation, general attitudes are not always good predictors of specific behavior. For example,
11554-733: Was a growing willingness and tendency on the part of family therapists to work in multi-modal clinical partnerships with other members of the helping and medical professions. From the mid-1980s to the present, the field has been marked by a diversity of approaches that partly reflect the original schools, but which also draw on other theories and methods from individual psychotherapy and elsewhere – these approaches and sources include: brief therapy , structural therapy , constructivist approaches (e.g., Milan systems, post-Milan/collaborative/conversational, reflective), Bring forthism approach (e.g. Dr. Karl Tomm's IPscope model and Interventive interviewing), solution-focused therapy , narrative therapy ,
11663-515: Was designed to be easy to assess but wrong answers were deliberately given by at least some, oftentimes most, of the other participants. In well over a third of the trials, participants conformed to the majority, even though the majority judgment was clearly wrong. Seventy-five percent of the participants conformed at least once during the experiment. Additional manipulations of the experiment showed that participant conformity decreased when at least one other individual failed to conform but increased when
11772-452: Was initially a strong influence from psychoanalysis (most of the early founders of the field had psychoanalytic backgrounds) and social psychiatry , and later from learning theory and behavior therapy – and significantly, these clinicians began to articulate various theories about the nature and functioning of the family as an entity that was more than a mere aggregation of individuals. The movement received an important boost starting in
11881-487: Was that of the " identified patient " or "presenting problem" as a manifestation of or surrogate for the family's, or even society's, problems. (See also double bind ; family nexus .) By the mid-1960s, a number of distinct schools of family therapy had emerged. From those groups that were most strongly influenced by cybernetics and systems theory , there came MRI Brief Therapy , and slightly later, strategic therapy , Salvador Minuchin 's structural family therapy and
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