Portal:Psychology/Selected article
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Usage
Feel free to add featured, good, and a-class articles, that are also top or high importance articles, to the list. Other articles may be nominated at Portal talk:Psychology. The layout design for these subpages is at Portal talk:Psychology/Selected article.
- Add a new selected article to the next available subpage.
- Update "max=" to new total for its {{Random portal component}} on the main page.
Selected articles list
Selected article 1
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/1
![Young boy stacking a seventh can atop a column of six food cans on the kitchen floor. Repetitively stacking or lining up objects is a behavior sometimes associated with individuals with autism.](http://up.wiki.x.io/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/Autism-stacking-cans_2nd_edit.jpg/120px-Autism-stacking-cans_2nd_edit.jpg)
Selected article 2
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/2
![Sorrowing old man ('At Eternity's Gate'), by Vincent van Gogh, 1890](http://up.wiki.x.io/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Van_Gogh_-_Trauernder_alter_Mann.jpeg/120px-Van_Gogh_-_Trauernder_alter_Mann.jpeg)
The diagnosis of major depressive disorder is based on the patient's self-reported experiences, behavior reported by relatives or friends, and a mental status examination. There is no laboratory test for major depression, although physicians generally request tests for physical conditions that may cause similar symptoms. The most common time of onset is between the ages of 20 and 30 years, with a later peak between 30 and 40 years. (Full article...)
Selected article 3
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/3
![Cloth embroidered by a person diagnosed with schizophrenia](http://up.wiki.x.io/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b2/Cloth_embroidered_by_a_schizophrenia_sufferer.jpg/200px-Cloth_embroidered_by_a_schizophrenia_sufferer.jpg)
Genetics and early environment, as well as psychological and social processes, appear to be important contributory factors. Some recreational and prescription drugs appear to cause or worsen symptoms. The many possible combinations of symptoms have triggered debate about whether the diagnosis represents a single disorder or a number of separate syndromes. Despite the origin of the term from the Greek roots skhizein ("to split") and phrēn ("mind"), schizophrenia does not imply a "split personality", or "multiple personality disorder"—a condition with which it is often confused in public perception. Rather, the term means a "splitting of mental functions", reflecting the presentation of the illness.
The mainstay of treatment is antipsychotic medication, which primarily suppresses dopamine receptor activity. Counseling, job training and social rehabilitation are also important in treatment. In more serious cases—where there is risk to self or others—involuntary hospitalization may be necessary, although hospital stays are now shorter and less frequent than they once were. (Full article...)
Selected article 4
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/4
![Those with AS often display intense interests, such as this boy's fascination with molecular structure.](http://up.wiki.x.io/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Riboflavin_penicillinamide.jpg/200px-Riboflavin_penicillinamide.jpg)
The syndrome is named after the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger who, in 1944, studied and described children in his practice who lacked nonverbal communication skills, demonstrated limited empathy with their peers, and were physically clumsy. The modern conception of Asperger syndrome came into existence in 1981 and went through a period of popularization, becoming standardized as a diagnosis in the early 1990s. Many questions and controversies remain about aspects of the disorder. There is doubt about whether it is distinct from high-functioning autism (HFA); partly because of this, its prevalence is not firmly established. (Full article...)
Selected article 5
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/5
![The experimenter (E) orders the teacher (T), the subject of the experiment, to give what the latter believes are painful electric shocks to a learner (L), who is actually an actor and confederate. The subject believes that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual electric shocks, though in reality there were no such punishments. Being separated from the subject, the confederate set up a tape recorder integrated with the electro-shock generator, which played pre-recorded sounds for each shock level.](http://up.wiki.x.io/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bf/Milgram_Experiment.png/120px-Milgram_Experiment.png)
The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of German Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised his psychological study to answer the popular question at that particular time: "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?" The experiments have been repeated many times in the following years with consistent results within differing societies, although not with the same percentages around the globe. The experiments were also controversial and considered by some scientists to be unethical and physically or psychologically abusive. (Full article...)
Selected article 6
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/6 Confirmation bias, also called myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions or working hypotheses. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).
A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. In certain situations, this tendency can bias people's conclusions. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Another explanation is that people show confirmation bias because they are weighing up the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way.
Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Poor decisions due to these biases have been found in political and organizational contexts. (Full article...)
Selected article 7
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/7
![An image of neural pathways in the brain taken using diffusion tensor imaging](http://up.wiki.x.io/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/DTI-sagittal-fibers.jpg/150px-DTI-sagittal-fibers.jpg)
Selected article 8
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/8
![An Inuit family is sitting on a log outside their tent. The parents are engaged in domestic tasks. Between them sits a toddler. On the mother's back is a baby in a papoose. For infants and toddlers, the "set-goal" of the attachment behavioural system is to maintain or achieve proximity to attachment figures, usually the parents.](http://up.wiki.x.io/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Eskimo_Family_NGM-v31-p564-2.jpg/200px-Eskimo_Family_NGM-v31-p564-2.jpg)
Selected article 9
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/9
![Georges Gilles de la Tourette (1857–1904), namesake of Tourette syndrome](http://up.wiki.x.io/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Georges_Gilles_de_la_Tourette.png/200px-Georges_Gilles_de_la_Tourette.png)
Tourette's was once considered a rare and bizarre syndrome, most often associated with the exclamation of obscene words or socially inappropriate and derogatory remarks (coprolalia), but this symptom is present in only a small minority of people with Tourette's. Tourette's is no longer considered a rare condition, but it is not always correctly identified because most cases are mild and the severity of tics decreases for most children as they pass through adolescence. Between 0.4% and 3.8% of children ages 5 to 18 may have Tourette's; the prevalence of other tic disorders in school-age children is higher, with the more common tics of eye blinking, coughing, throat clearing, sniffing, and facial movements. Extreme Tourette's in adulthood is a rarity, and Tourette's does not adversely affect intelligence or life expectancy. (Full article...)
Selected article 10
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/10
![The Suicide by Édouard Manet (1877–1881)](http://up.wiki.x.io/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Edouard_Manet_-_Le_Suicid%C3%A9.jpg/150px-Edouard_Manet_-_Le_Suicid%C3%A9.jpg)
Selected article 11
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/11
![Representation of consciousness, from the seventeenth century](http://up.wiki.x.io/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0c/RobertFuddBewusstsein17Jh.png/120px-RobertFuddBewusstsein17Jh.png)
Selected article 12
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/12
![A phrenological mapping of the brain – phrenology was among the first attempts to correlate mental functions with specific parts of the brain](http://up.wiki.x.io/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Phrenology1.jpg/150px-Phrenology1.jpg)
Dualism and monism are the two major schools of thought that attempt to resolve the mind–body problem. Dualism can be traced back to Plato, and the Sankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy, but it was most precisely formulated by René Descartes in the 17th century. Substance dualists argue that the mind is an independently existing substance, whereas property dualists maintain that the mind is a group of independent properties that emerge from and cannot be reduced to the brain, but that it is not a distinct substance. (Full article...)
Selected article 13
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/13
The most common form of self-harm is skin-cutting but self-harm also covers a wide range of behaviors including, but not limited to, burning, scratching, banging or hitting body parts, interfering with wound healing (dermatillomania), hair-pulling (trichotillomania) and the ingestion of toxic substances or objects. Behaviours associated with substance abuse and eating disorders are usually not considered self-harm because the resulting tissue damage is ordinarily an unintentional side effect. However, the boundaries are not always clearly defined and in some cases behaviours that usually fall outside the boundaries of self-harm may indeed represent self-harm if performed with explicit intent to cause tissue damage. Although suicide is not the intention of self-harm, the relationship between self-harm and suicide is complex, as self-harming behaviour may be potentially life-threatening. There is also an increased risk of suicide in individuals who self-harm to the extent that self-harm is found in 40–60% of suicides. However, generalising self-harmers to be suicidal is, in the majority of cases, inaccurate. (Full article...)
Selected article 14
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/14 Clinical psychology is an integration of the science, theory and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective and behavioural well-being and personal development. Central to its practice are psychological assessment and psychotherapy, although clinical psychologists also engage in research, teaching, consultation, forensic testimony, and program development and administration. In many countries, clinical psychology is regulated as a health care profession.
The field is often considered to have begun in 1896 with the opening of the first psychological clinic at the University of Pennsylvania by Lightner Witmer. In the first half of the 20th century, clinical psychology was focused on psychological assessment, with little attention given to treatment. This changed after the 1940s when World War II resulted in the need for a large increase in the number of trained clinicians. Since that time, two main educational models have developed—the Ph.D. scientist–practitioner model (requiring a doctoral dissertation and therefore research as well as clinical expertise) and, in the U.S. the Psy.D. practitioner–scholar model. (Full article...)
Selected article 15
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/15 Educational psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of human learning. The study of learning processes, from both cognitive and behavioral perspectives, allows researchers to understand individual differences in intelligence, cognitive development, affect, motivation, self-regulation, and self-concept, as well as their role in learning. The field of educational psychology relies heavily on quantitative methods, including testing and measurement, to enhance educational activities related to instructional design, classroom management, and assessment, which serve to facilitate learning processes in various educational settings across the lifespan. (Full article...)
Selected article 16
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/16 Evolutionary psychology (EP) is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations – that is, the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection. Adaptationist thinking about physiological mechanisms, such as the heart, lungs, and immune system, is common in evolutionary biology. Some evolutionary psychologists apply the same thinking to psychology, arguing that the mind has a modular structure similar to that of the body, with different modular adaptations serving different functions. Evolutionary psychologists argue that much of human behavior is the output of psychological adaptations that evolved to solve recurrent problems in human ancestral environments. (Full article...)
Selected article 17
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/17 Humanistic psychology is a psychological perspective which rose to prominence in the mid-20th century in response to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory and B.F. Skinner's Behaviorism. With its roots running from Socrates through the Renaissance, this approach emphasizes an individual's inherent drive towards self-actualization and creativity.
It typically holds that people are inherently good. It adopts a holistic approach to human existence and pays special attention to such phenomena as creativity, free will, and human potential. It encourages viewing ourselves as a "whole person" greater than the sum of our parts and encourages self exploration rather than the study of behavior in other people. Humanistic psychology acknowledges spiritual aspiration as an integral part of the human psyche. It is linked to the emerging field of transpersonal psychology. (Full article...)
Selected article 18
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/18 Psychotherapy is therapeutic interaction or treatment contracted between a trained professional and a client, patient, family, couple, or group. Simply, psychotherapy is a general term for treating mental health problems by talking with a psychiatrist, psychologist or other mental health provider. During psychotherapy, one hopes to learn about their condition and moods, feelings, thoughts and behaviors, how to take control of one's life and respond to challenging situations with healthy coping skills. The problems addressed are psychological in nature and can vary in terms of their causes, influences, triggers, and potential resolutions. Accurate assessment of these and other variables depends on the practitioner's capability and can change or evolve as the practitioner acquires experience, knowledge, and insight.
Psychotherapy includes interactive processes between a person or group and a qualified mental health professional (psychiatrist, psychologist, clinical social worker, licensed counselor, or other trained practitioner). Its purpose is the exploration of thoughts, feelings and behavior for the purpose of problem solving or achieving higher levels of functioning. Psychotherapy aims to increase the individual's sense of his/her own well-being. Psychotherapists employ a range of techniques based on experiential relationship building, dialogue, communication and behavior change that are designed to improve the mental health of a client or patient, or to improve group relationships (such as in a family). (Full article...)
Selected article 19
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/19 Transpersonal psychology is a school of psychology that integrates the spiritual and transcendent aspects of the human experience with the framework of modern psychology. It is also possible to define it as "spiritual psychology". The transpersonal is defined as "experiences in which the sense of identity or self extends beyond (trans) the individual or personal to encompass wider aspects of humankind, life, psyche or cosmos". It has also been defined as "development beyond conventional, personal or individual levels".
Issues considered in transpersonal psychology include spiritual self-development, self beyond the ego, peak experiences, mystical experiences, systemic trance, spiritual crises, spiritual evolution, religious conversion, altered states of consciousness, spiritual practices, and other sublime and/or unusually expanded experiences of living. The discipline attempts to describe and integrate spiritual experience within modern psychological theory and to formulate new theory to encompass such experience. (Full article...)
Selected article 20
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/20 Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a psychotherapeutic approach that addresses dysfunctional emotions, maladaptive behaviors and cognitive processes and contents through a number of goal-oriented, explicit systematic procedures. The name refers to behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, and to therapy based upon a combination of basic behavioral and cognitive principles and research. Most therapists working with patients dealing with anxiety and depression use a blend of cognitive and behavioral therapy. This technique acknowledges that there may be behaviors that cannot be controlled through rational thought. CBT is "problem focused" (undertaken for specific problems) and "action-oriented" (therapist tries to assist the client in selecting specific strategies to help address those problems).
CBT has been demonstrated to be effective for the treatment of a variety of conditions, including mood, anxiety, personality, eating, substance abuse, tic, and psychotic disorders. Many CBT treatment programs for specific disorders have been evaluated for efficacy; the health-care trend of evidence-based treatment, where specific treatments for symptom-based diagnoses are recommended, has favored CBT over other approaches such as psychodynamic treatments. (Full article...)
Selected article 21
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/21
![Human brain and skull](http://up.wiki.x.io/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ec/Skull_and_brain_normal_human.svg/120px-Skull_and_brain_normal_human.svg.png)
The human cerebral cortex is a thick layer of neural tissue that covers most of the brain. This layer is folded in a way that increases the amount of surface that can fit into the volume available. The pattern of folds is similar across individuals, although there are many small variations. The cortex is divided into four "lobes", called the frontal lobe, parietal lobe, temporal lobe, and occipital lobe. (Some classification systems also include a limbic lobe and treat the insular cortex as a lobe.) Within each lobe are numerous cortical areas, each associated with a particular function, including vision, motor control, and language. The left and right sides of the cortex are broadly similar in shape, and most cortical areas are replicated on both sides. Some areas, though, show strong lateralization, particularly areas that are involved in language. In most people, the left hemisphere is "dominant" for language, with the right hemisphere playing only a minor role. There are other functions, such as spatiotemporal reasoning, for which the right hemisphere is usually dominant. (Full article...)
Selected article 22
Portal:Psychology/Selected article/22 Gender identity disorder (GID) or gender dysphoria is the formal diagnosis used by [nurse practitioner]]s,[psychologist]]s and physicians to describe people who experience significant dysphoria (discontent) with the sex they were assigned at birth and/or the gender roles associated with that sex. Evidence suggests that people who identify with a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth may do so not just due to psychological or behavioral causes, but also biological ones related to their genetics, the makeup of their brains, or prenatal exposure to hormones.
Estimates of the prevalence of gender identity disorder range from a lower bound of 1:2000 (or about 0.05%) in the Netherlands and Belgium to 1.2% in New Zealand. Research indicates people who transition in adulthood are up to three times more likely to be male assigned at birth, but that among people transitioning in childhood the sex ratio is close to 1:1.
Gender identity disorder is classified as a medical disorder by the ICD-10 CM and DSM-5 (called gender dysphoria). Many transgender people and researchers support declassification of GID because they say the diagnosis pathologizes gender variance, reinforces the binary model of gender, and can result in stigmatization of transgender individuals. The official classification of gender dysphoria as a disorder in the DSM-5 may help resolve some of these issues, because the term "gender dysphoria" applies only to the discontent experienced by some persons resulting from gender identity issues.
The current medical approach to treatment for persons diagnosed with gender identity disorder is to support the individual in physically modifying the body to better match the psychological gender identity. This approach is based on the concept that their experience is based in a medical problem correctable by various forms of medical intervention. (Full article...)
- ^ Pinel, J. P. J. (2011). Biopsychology, 8th Edition. Boston: Pearson Education.