Availability heuristic or availability bias in psychology

The availability heuristic refers to a mental process of forming a judgment or making a decision based on information that readily comes to mind rather than a careful analysis of all relevant information.

Psychological scientists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman are credited with the research supporting the existence of the availability heuristic or bias.

People tend to give more weight to recent or easily recalled information instead of searching for all the relevant information when making a decision.

Factors contributing to "availability."

Recency bias- Recent information gets more weight because it is more easily recalled. Obviously, in serious matters, older information may be more or equally relevant.

Consequences- When the consequences or outcomes of an event are easy to remember, those consequences appear greater than do others.

Frequency and probability- When people easily recall information about an event, they are apt to overestimate its frequency or the probability of the event occurring. Airline accidents in the news can lead to seriously overestimating the risk of flying.

Problems with the availability heuristic- When people make a quick decision based on easily available information, they may make a serious mistake. The process of thinking about all the relevant evidence can be too slow and effortful for many people, but in some cases, a careful analysis is critical to health and wellbeing.

Another term: Availability bias

Learn more about heuristics in Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman

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Microfriendships

Microfriendships are brief friendly interactions with others characterized by kindness and resulting in happy feelings. Examples include pleasant conversations with a stranger in a subway, a taxi driver, a store clerk, or restaurant waitstaff.

Learn more in an essay on this topic by David Myers "The Happy Science of Micro-Friendships."

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Negative Reinforcer, Reinforcement

 A negative reinforcer is a stimulus that results in an increase in behavior when it is removed following a specific behavior.

The procedure of removing the stimulus and the resulting increase in behavior is called negative reinforcement. Reinforcement means to strengthen. The connection between the behavior and the reinforcer is strengthened when the behavior regularly increases contingent on the removal of the stimulus. 

Negative Reinforcement is often confused with punishment even among graduate students. The term negative in the phrase negative reinforcement is used in a mathematical sense of subtracting a stimulus form a situation. The removal of the negative reinforcer is symbolized as S- or Sav where S = stimulus and - means subtraction. The av = aversive. 

Negative reinforcement is contrasted with positive reinforcement.

Key words: negative reinforcer, negative reinforcement, aversive stimulus, behavioral psychology

Example:

A child has a habit of screaming when they do not get their way. A parent gives in to the child to end the aversive screaming behavior. If the removal of screaming behavior is routinely followed by getting parent permission then the aversive stimulus of screaming functions as a negative reinforcer for the parent's permission giving behavior.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease is a proverb illustrating an observation that an aversive situation results in desirable behavior. An employee who routinely complains about a work situation may activate administrative behavior to rectify a problem in order to end the aversive stimulus of complaining. Of course, an administrator could choose to fire the employee so, what works in a lab won't always work in real life settings.

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Positive Reinforcer and Reinforcement

A positive reinforcer is a stimulus that follows a behavior and results in the probability that the behavior will increase in the future.

The procedure of presenting a positive reinforcer following a behavior is called positive reinforcement. The psychological concept of reinforcement means the word in general use, that is, reinforcement means to strengthen. Thus, positive reinforcement strengthens the behavior-reinforcer connection.

The concept of positive is derived from mathematics and is not necessarily linked to feelings. That is, positive means a stimulus has been added as a contingency such that when a specific behavior occurs, the organism experiences the positive reinforcer and is likely to emit the same behavior again.

In symbols, a positive reinforcer is a stimulus with a plus sign thus, S+.

Positive reinforcers may be primary or secondary. A primary reinforcer is close to a natural reinforcer such as food and sleep. A secondary reinforcer may be points or money, which may be used to obtain a primary reinforcer.

Positive reinforcement is contrasted with negative reinforcement.

Key words: Positive reinforcer, positive reinforcement, reinforcing stimulus, behavioral psychology, behavioral counseling, cognitive behavioral psychology

Example:

A child completes cleaning their room. A parent observes the activity and on completion adds a point to a weekly chart. After an agreed upon number of points, the child can exchange points for preferred activities. If cleaning behavior increases when points are earned then the points are positive reinforcers.

If the points do not work, they may be called neutral reinforcers. If the points result in a decrease in cleaning up behavior then the cleaning behavior has been punished by definition.

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Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)

 

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is a model of psychotherapy developed by Albert Ellis in the 1950s and revised during his lifetime. REBT focuses on identifying and changing dysfunctional beliefs linked to unpleasant feelings and self-defeating behavior. 

Ordinary desires for success and happiness can become distorted into demands about what people must do. The focus on "musts" is what Ellis calls musturbation. In REBT, therapists use a variety of techniques dealing with changing cognitions, emotions, and behavior, which are seen as a dynamic triad commonly referred to as CAB or ABC (cognitions, affect and behavior) in CBT and REBT literature.

In older formulations of the theory, REBT was known as Rational Therapy (RT) and Rational Emotive Therapy (RET).

The core CAB (cognition, affect, behavior) are expanded to include physiology in the SCOPES model.

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Musturbation in Psychology

 

Musturbation is a belief that a person must be perfect, according to their standards, to enjoy a successful life, approval, or comfort. The belief is one of the maladaptive cognitions that may be addressed in Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapies (CBT).

The concept of musturbation is attributed to psychologist, Albert Ellis.

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Journal Abstracts in Psychology

 

Abstract. 

The abstract is a brief summary of the contents of a journal article. Abstracts for research studies include the context of the study, purpose, procedures, and key results. Different journals have different word limits for the abstract. Abstracts for other types of articles should clearly communicate a few major points about the concepts, principles, or variables in the article.

Some professors require students to include an abstract with their papers. Guidelines for writing abstracts can be found in the APA Style Manual.

Word limits can range from 120 to 250.

After the title, the abstract is the key to element of an article to help researchers decide on reading an article or not. The best abstracts draw attention to a few major concepts, principles, or variables covered in the article.

Affect, Emotions, Mood in Psychology

 

Psychologists have used the term affect to refer to the present experience of emotion or feeling. Affect is often contrasted with mood, which refers to an emotional state over a longer period of time, such as feeling happy or sad or angry most days.

Affect, emotions, and mood are the "E" dimension in the four functional components (COPE) of the SCOPES model of human functioning used in organizing assessment and psychotherapy planning. Emotions are complex feeling states linked to physiological (P) responses, thoughts or cognitions (C), and usually represented in Observable Behaviour (O). Our Self (S) varies in awareness of our emotions. And our emotions vary with our Social context (S), especially the people present in the context.

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Organizational Trust

Organizational trust depends on the relationship between at least two entities one of which is an organization. The other entity may be another organization, employees, customers, contractors, or anyone interacting with the organization.

Writing in Forbes, Kohler (2021) described trust this way:

"Organizational trust is a complicated relationship. It's the willingness of employees to be vulnerable to the actions of their leaders. When we decide if we trust a leader, we're assessing his or her competency, benevolence, and integrity."

For data on trust see the Edelman Trust Barometer.

For a measure of trust, See the Organizational Trust Index.

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