Reframing in psychology

Reframing refers to the act of changing one's perspective on an interpretation of an event.

In reframing, the facts of an event do not change, but the way people understand the event changes. As in framing pictures and photos, some frames enhance the art object and other frames lessen the appeal. We may also think about window frames as affording different perspectives on the world.

Our life experiences and the traditions within our culture guide us in interpreting life events. Sometimes our perspectives do not make sense or they leave us feeling anxious or depressed. Reframing events can sometimes offer a better way to cope with difficult situations. Reframing can promote optimism or pessimism. Thus we can speak of positive frames and negative frames.

Reframing may be illustrated by the common question, "Is the glass half empty or half full?"

In psychotherapy, psychologists sometimes help patients think of other ways that they can reframe distressing life events as an aide in alleviating anxiety or depression.

Examples of reframing

A problem becomes a challenge.
A struggle becomes an opportunity for personal growth.
A mistake becomes a learning experience.
A fall becomes an opportunity to get up and try again.
A rejected manuscript becomes an opportunity to revise and submit somewhere else.

Connections

   My Page    www.suttong.com

   My Books   AMAZON     GOOGLE PLAY STORE

   FACEBOOK   Geoff W. Sutton

   TWITTER  @Geoff.W.Sutton

   PINTEREST  www.pinterest.com/GeoffWSutton

Publications (many free downloads)

  Academia   Geoff W Sutton   (PhD)     

  ResearchGate   Geoffrey W Sutton   (PhD)

Lifespan vs Life expectancy in psychological science

bing images- free to use

Lifespan is the longest period of time a species can live. The human lifespan is measured in years. At the time of this post, the human life span is 122 years based on documented records of Jeanne Calment (1875-1997).

Life expectancy is different from lifespan. Life expectancy is the average time a species lives under certain conditions. In human studies, life expectancy is reported in years. Factors influencing life expectancy include diseases, sex, environmental variables such as pollution, and access to medical care.

On average, women live longer than men so life expectancy tables are reported by sex. Life expectancy changes for groups of people based on when it is measured. For example, the life expectancy at birth is different from the life expectancy of people alive at age 60.

See Assessment

Reactive Approach Motivation RAM a psychological science concept

Reactive Approach Motivation (RAM ; McGregor, 2006) refers to the way people deal with anxiety producing threats by becoming extremely zealous, which reduces the anxiety caused by the threat.

The zealous pursuit focuses on an ideal that offers hope and strength, bolsters values and convictions. People are motivated to become closed minded. They may increase religious fervor or political extremism depending on their value system.

RAM is based on the neuropsychology of anxiety. Anxiety rises in situations of uncertainty. RAM proposes that people deal with anxious uncertainty by ardently pursuing meaningful goals. When anxious, people become more vigilant and prepare for fight or flight responses.

Example

People with travel plans during the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic anxiously searched online for information about the virus, government announcements, and travel news. Many zealously warned of the growing extent of the flu. Others tried to encourage people with religious messages. Some sought financial safety by selling their shares in businesses. Others focused on repeating messages about washing hands and avoiding social contact. Even the hand washing was couched in religious language as "Holy Hygiene."

Related concepts /  posts

Terror Management Theory

Meaning Maintenance Model



Reference

McGregor, I. (2006). Offensive defensiveness: Toward an integrative neuroscience of compensatory zeal after mortality salience, personal uncertainty, and other poignant self-threats. Psychological Inquiry, 17(4), 299–308. https://doi.org/10.1080/10478400701366977

Connections

   My Page    www.suttong.com

   My Books   AMAZON     GOOGLE PLAY STORE

   FACEBOOK   Geoff W. Sutton

   TWITTER  @Geoff.W.Sutton

   PINTEREST  www.pinterest.com/GeoffWSutton

Publications (many free downloads)

  Academia   Geoff W Sutton   (PhD)     

  ResearchGate   Geoffrey W Sutton   (PhD)

Meaning Maintenance Model MMM Psychological Science

The Meaning Maintenance Model (MMM) hypothesizes that people are motivated to respond to experiences that violate their expectations by restoring meaning. MMM is associated with Heine, Proulx, and Vohs (2006).

Meaning occurs when people connect their experiences in memory. We understand the concept of a healthy meal when we mentally connect the various foods that our culture teaches us belong together to form a healthy meal. We may laugh when a cartoonist violates the concept of a healthy meal by picturing different kinds of chocolates. The concept, healthy meal, is a unit of meaning. Psychologists have referred to these mental concepts as schema.

The concept of meaning may be traced to existential philosophers such as Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Albert Camus. Psychological scientists examine meaning by looking at the way people link experiences.  Frederic Bartlett (1886-1969) was an English psychologist at Cambridge University who developed schema theory. Schema are mental organizations of knowledge gained from experience within one's culture. 

Larger organizational sets are called worldviews. Worldviews organize many schema into an orientation to life. Some writers refer to worldviews as meaning frameworks. Outside of psychology, some disciplines write about seeing the world through different lenses.

Meaning can be violated when a new experience cannot be explained or understood as a part of a person's existing schema. On a larger scale, the experience does not make sense in terms of a person's worldview. When faced with experiences that do not "make sense," people work to restore meaning. Sometimes this work can impact other aspects of thinking, which seem unrelated to the experience.

Examples

For years, Europeans only saw white swans, but black swans exist. An easy modification of a schema for "swan" adds the knowledge that swans can be either black or white. 

Some cultures have schema for the way women and men ought to dress and behave. When people violate the expectations, those with traditional schema work to make sense of the new experience. 

A common example of a worldview is a person's religion, which includes a large set of schema about God or supernatural beings and how the supernatural and natural worlds interact. When significant experiences violate one's understanding of the way the world works, people seek answers from their religious leaders, modify their beliefs, change their religion, or give up on religion altogether.

Following is a quote from the abstract by Heine and his colleagues (2006). See their article for details on the model.

"The meaning maintenance model (MMM) proposes that people have a need for meaning; that is, a need to perceive events through a prism of mental representations of expected relations that organizes their perceptions of the world. When people's sense of meaning is threatened, they reaffirm alternative representations as a way to regain meaning-a process termed fluid compensation. According to the model, people can reaffirm meaning in domains that are different from the domain in which the threat occurred. Evidence for fluid compensation can be observed following a variety of psychological threats, including most especially threats to the self, such as self-esteem threats, feelings of uncertainty, interpersonal rejection, and mortality salience. People respond to these diverse threats in highly similar ways, which suggests that a range of psychological motivations are expressions of a singular impulse to generate and maintain a sense of meaning."

The Meaning Maintenance Model has been proposed as an alternative to Terror Management Theory.

Heine, S., Proulx, T., & Vohs, K. (2006). The Meaning Maintenance Model: On the coherence of social motivation. Personality and Social Psychological Review, 10, 88-111.

Connections

   My Page    www.suttong.com

   My Books   AMAZON     GOOGLE PLAY STORE

   FACEBOOK   Geoff W. Sutton

   TWITTER  @Geoff.W.Sutton

   PINTEREST  www.pinterest.com/GeoffWSutton

Publications (many free downloads)

  Academia   Geoff W Sutton   (PhD)     

  ResearchGate   Geoffrey W Sutton   (PhD)

Mortality Salience

Mortality salience (MS) is a concept in Terror Management Theory (TMT). Mortality salience refers to a person's awareness that their death is inevitable. Mortality Salience occurs when something reminds a person of their mortality--the fact that their life will end. In response to MS, people use or create anxiety buffers.

See also
Terror Management Theory 

Anxiety Buffer

Connections

   My Page    www.suttong.com

   My Books   AMAZON     GOOGLE PLAY STORE

   FACEBOOK   Geoff W. Sutton

   TWITTER  @Geoff.W.Sutton

   PINTEREST  www.pinterest.com/GeoffWSutton

Publications (many free downloads)

  Academia   Geoff W Sutton   (PhD)     

  ResearchGate   Geoffrey W Sutton   (PhD)

Anxiety Buffer

An anxiety buffer is a concept in Terror Management Theory. When faced with reminders of death (mortality salience), people develop ways to manage the resulting anxiety. People buffer themselves in different ways according to those values that are highly meaningful to them and those available when under threat. 

Religion is one of the most common and nearly universal ways people buffer themselves against this type of anxiety.

See also

Terror Management Theory (TMT)

Meaning Maintenance Model (MMM)

Reactive Approach Motivation (RAM)

Connections

   My Page    www.suttong.com

   My Books   AMAZON     GOOGLE PLAY STORE

   FACEBOOK   Geoff W. Sutton

   TWITTER  @Geoff.W.Sutton

   PINTEREST  www.pinterest.com/GeoffWSutton

Publications (many free downloads)

  Academia   Geoff W Sutton   (PhD)     

  ResearchGate   Geoffrey W Sutton   (PhD)

Terror Management Theory

Terror Management Theory (TMT) was proposed by psychological scientists Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski. 

The theory posits that people manage the terror inherent in their awareness of their own death by investing in that which is more durable. They experience conflict between the instinctual urge to live and the reality of death.

Research findings indicate that when people are reminded of their mortality (Mortality Salience, MS), they create or use an anxiety buffer. Becoming a part of a meaningful group helps cope with death awareness.

Many religious teachings guide people to "life after life," which in itself is a phrase that omits the more common, "life after death." Others find meaning in their children and grandchildren, the possessions they leave behind, and contributions to their nations.

Terror Management Theory is related to self-esteem. Many people assess their self-esteem or self-worth by a comparison to their culture's way of defining worth.

Here is a quote from the theorists' 2015 summary of research.


Terror management theory posits that human awareness of the inevitability of death exerts a profound influence on diverse aspects of human thought, emotion, motivation, and behavior. People manage the potential for anxiety that results from this awareness by maintaining: (1) faith in the absolute validity of their cultural worldviews and (2) self-esteem by living up to the standards of value that are part of their worldviews. In this chapter, we take stock of the past 30 years of research and conceptual development inspired by this theory. After a brief review of evidence supporting the theory's fundamental propositions, we discuss extensions of the theory to shed light on: (1) the psychological mechanisms through which thoughts of death affect subsequent thought and behavior; (2) how the anxiety-buffering systems develop over childhood and beyond; (3) how awareness of death influenced the evolution of mind, culture, morality, and religion; (4) how death concerns lead people to distance from their physical bodies and seek solace in concepts of mind and spirit; and (5) the role of death concerns in maladaptive and pathological behavior. (Abstract)


One recent root of TMT can be found in the book, The Denial of Death by cultural anthropologist, Ernest Becker. Becker draws on earlier work about death anxiety. See my review (Sutton, 2015) for quotes from Becker's book and applications to religion.

References

Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Arndt, J., & Schimel, J. (2004). Why Do People Need Self-Esteem? A Theoretical and Empirical Review. Psychological Bulletin, 130(3), 435–468. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.130.3.435

Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S. & Greenberg, J. (2015). Thirty Years of Terror

Management Theory: From Genesis to Revelation. In J. M. Olson & M. P. Zarna (Eds). Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 52, 1-70. 

Ad See my books on AMAZON

Connections

   My Page    www.suttong.com

   My Books   AMAZON     GOOGLE PLAY STORE

   FACEBOOK   Geoff W. Sutton

   TWITTER  @Geoff.W.Sutton

   PINTEREST  www.pinterest.com/GeoffWSutton

Publications (many free downloads)

  Academia   Geoff W Sutton   (PhD)     

  ResearchGate   Geoffrey W Sutton   (PhD)

Psychology of crisscrossing

Crisscrossing refers to people who are viewed as being members of more than one group. The group may be a recognized social group (e.g., religious, political) or a social category of people (e.g., ethnic, age, gender categories).

Crisscrossing helps reduce some forms of discrimination aimed at people who are members of an outgroup or low prestige category.

A member of a disparaged outgroup may become appreciated if the person is also a member of a socially valued group such as medical doctors or military heroes.

Connections

   My Page    www.suttong.com

   My Books   AMAZON     GOOGLE PLAY STORE

   FACEBOOK   Geoff W. Sutton

   TWITTER  @Geoff.W.Sutton

   PINTEREST  www.pinterest.com/GeoffWSutton

Publications (many free downloads)

  Academia   Geoff W Sutton   (PhD)     

  ResearchGate   Geoffrey W Sutton   (PhD)

Psychology of Stereotypes

A stereotype is a cognition composed of generalized images, beliefs, and feelings about the characteristics of members of a group or a socially constructed category.

Stereotypes typically rely on salient features based on experience with group members or shared by those in one's culture. Stereotypes usually ignore the variety of features true of people in a group.

Stereotypes are usually negative but positive stereotypes exist. It is very difficult to change a stereotype.

Group stereotypes
Group stereotypes are those cognitions that consider all members of a recognized group to have the same characteristics. Commonly recognized groups can include religions (e.g., Christians, Jews, Muslims), political parties (e.g., Republicans, Democrats), organizations (e.g., Red Cross, ACLU), businesses, and nations (e.g., Americans, Germans), Race (e.g., Blacks, Whites), Ethnicity (e.g., Mexican American, Native American).

People may hold separate stereotypes about the people in various subgroups (e.g., Catholics, Methodists).

Socially constructed category stereotypes
Socially constructed category stereotypes are stereotypes that people apply to categories of people, which may be based on one or a few features. Social categories often include demographic characteristics like age categories (seniors, adolescents), gender categories (women, men, gays, lesbians), ethnic categories (e.g, Whites, Blacks, Caucasians, Native Americans), social values (liberals, conservatives).

Research on stereotypes

Research on stereotypes is relevant to understanding intergroup behavior. Tajfel (1982) adopts the definition of stereotype offered by Stallybrass (1977).

"…an over-simplified mental image of (usually) some category of person, institution or event which is shared, in essential features, by large numbers of people... Stereotypes are commonly, but not necessarily, accompanied by prejudice, i.e. by a favorable or unfavorable predisposition toward any member of the category in question ("p .601).

Stereotypes develop from salient characteristics, which then become an available heuristic assumed to apply to a group as a whole. People can become category prototypes. Leaders in politics, organizations, or religion are seen as holding representative views and traits of their groups.

A solo status phenomenon occurs when a person or a few people stand out as different from the rest of the group. Their characteristics then become exaggerated in both positive and negative ways. For example, a black worker in a group of white workers or a woman in a men’s work group.

Research on illusory correlations is also relevant to stereotyping. When a minority perform a behavior, there is an assumption that all members of the minority perform the same behavior.

Books on Stereotypes

Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do 

Books on Social Psychology

Social Psychology by Sommers

References

Stallybrass, O. (1977). Stereotype. In The Fontana dictionary of modern thought, A. Bullock, O. Stallybrass (Eds.)., p. 601. London: Fontana/Collins.

See the 2000 edition of  The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought

Tajfel, H. (1982). Social psychology of intergroup relations. Annual Review of Psychology, 33, 1-39.

Connections

My Page    www.suttong.com

  

My Books  AMAZON                       GOOGLE STORE

FACEBOOK   Geoff W. Sutton

TWITTER  @Geoff.W.Sutton

PINTEREST  www.pinterest.com/GeoffWSutton

Publications (many free downloads)

 

Academia   Geoff W Sutton   (PhD)     

  ResearchGate   Geoffrey W Sutton   (PhD)