Outline
This paper examines the three psychological concepts of stress, punishment, and belief as discussed in the text. Each of the psychological concepts will be examined separately by way of their definitions, uses, and problems and then followed by the individual experiences about each of the concepts.
Stress
Stress appears to be a simple concept and most of us use the word almost daily, but what it means is a kind of psychological arousal that brings about intense anxiety, anger, and in extreme cases trauma also. It is certainly not a myth and burdens the mind as much as any workload. The first popular concept of stress was explained in 1950 by Hans Selye who theorized that “all individuals respond to all types of threatening situations in the same manner,” (Selye, 1956), which he called the General Adaption Syndrome (GAS). Walter Cannon researched in the early twentieth century and found that stress is a “fight or flight response of the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) to perceived threats to physical or emotional security” (Cannon, 1929).
In understanding the given psychology of arousal as a consequence of threats that are perceived, there is a need to know about the techniques of relaxation that reduce such arousal. A person who suddenly loses his job may react with anger instead of adopting a beneficial technique of solving the problem. The anger could be self-induced or may have just come unconsciously, but as long as the anger is present there is bound to be psychological arousal and the person will suffer from a Major Depressive Episode that may lead to Anxiety Disorder. Under such circumstances, a person is said to be under severe stress. At the same time, it can also be concluded that the person who is undergoing stress has not been able to adapt to the changed circumstances healthily. In the environment that we live in, stress has come to become a condition that can greatly damage health and reduce happiness even against the will of people.
Punishment
B. F. Skinner had devised the concept of positive and negative concepts of punishments whereby something was added or removed to make people adopt the desired behaviors (Cottrell, 2006). Positive punishment entails reducing the negative behavior which prevents or stops a person from doing things which he is not supposed to do. A typical example in this regard is the invisible fence that prevents a dog from straying away from its boundaries. A sensor in its collar plays a high-frequency sound after detecting the electric current from the buried wire whenever it attempts to cross the given boundary, and the dog learns to adapt to its surroundings. If the dog still does not adapt to the instructions it is given negative punishment that could be more disturbing and painful in making it adopt the desired behavior. Hence from the psychological perspective punishment refers to actions that aim at reducing the given behavior. Fundamentally there is nothing such as intrinsic punishment and punishment is applied with the sole aim of reducing the undesired behaviors.
When motivating techniques fail to bring desired results, an alternative is to use punishment to make people realize what is right for them or what they ought to be doing to reduce loss or to avoid harm to others. For doings that are not desirable, people cannot be rewarded and actions have to be initiated to use the legal and moral avenues to make them fall back to the desired behavioral levels. Punishment may appear to be cruel but it does appear to be the best solution to bring about a better situation. For example, if two children are fighting over a toy, the best alternative is to remove the toy, which to is a kind of punishment in making them realize that fighting over a toy is not the best way to get hold of it.
Belief
In psychology, belief is the simplest mode of representing thoughts and plays a major role in the framing of one’s conscious thought patterns. To understand the concept of belief we have to assume that there is a believer and a belief that is to be taken as the subject and object respectively. A belief necessarily implies the presence of a mental state along with intentionality which has come to occupy important an place in the study of the philosophy of the mind. The relation of the brain with mental states is a complicated matter to be examined, and psychologists continue to grapple in coming to concrete conclusions in this regard. Beliefs can be taken as core beliefs that form the foundation and enable the human mind to make decisions with confidence (Bell et al, 2006).
Belief is seen to be a debatable mental state; some philosophers argue it is epitomized in the brain with the predetermined sentences constructed subconsciously while others have gone to the extent of declaring that there is no one basis to conclude that there is a rational and consistent mental representation regarding the belief system. Nevertheless, belief is in our minds and it is not always in action. In essence, belief is the basis and main source of our thinking patterns. In our daily lives, we do not tend to question our belief system and take it as it is. Belief connotes the values that we have and how we think from our point of view. Beliefs are also referred to as paradigms and act as filters for all inputs that enter our brain. Ultimately, a person’s success and happiness are the direct results of his belief system.
References
Bell, V., Halligan, P.W. & Ellis, H.D. (2006) A Cognitive Neuroscience of Belief. In Peter W. Halligan & Mansel Aylward, The Power of Belief: Psychological Influence on Illness, Disability, and Medicine. Oxford University Press.
Cannon, W. B. (1929). Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear and rage: An account of recent research into the function of emotional excitement (2nd ed.). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Cottrell A R, An Introduction to B.F. Skinner, January 2006, Associated Content Selye, H. (1956). The Stress of Life. New York: McGraw-Hill.