Subjects: Psychology >> History of Psychology submitted time 2023-06-02
Abstract： The flourish development of scientific psychology in America was often understood as the necessary subsequence of the evolution of intellectual history in psychology, in which psychology separated itself from philosophy and gradually found its own scientific methods during the past centuries. However, as one of categories of culture, the history of psychology could not be understood without the considering of societies and people who live in it. According to Fromm’s social psychological studies, social change may form the social character of a given society, and the social character will initiate new thoughts or ideas which constitutes new culture and ideology. This new kind of culture and ideology will be easy to be accepted by the society, and solidify its social character in turn. So it will be interesting if we explore the process in which psychology in America committed to scientism from the perspective of social change and social character after World War Ⅱ. There ware a lot of changes after World War Ⅱ in America society in terms of politics, economics, industrial structure, population, education, and belief. On the material level, America reached the so-called advanced industrial society and consumer society. On the mental level, the worship of knowledge gradually replaced the worship of god in America society. These changes formed the social character of America after World War Ⅱ through pragmatism and individualism that were parts of American culture. The key trait of this kind of social character are onedimensionalization, pursuing of instrumental rationality, and individual priority. What this kind of social character looking forward in terms of psychology as a part of culture and ideology is the disenchantment of innerworld, or we can say the secularization of mind, which will offer some kind of certainty for the working of American society. World War Ⅱ promoted the development of psychology on general, and also left abundant of problems for America society, such as psychic trauma of veteran, the need for mental health, how to avoid the reviving of totalitarianism, how the collective affect the behavior of individual, and how to train more scientists, professors, and engineers for America and finally win the competition with Soviet Union. All these needs from society led to the boom of clinical psychology, social psychology, developmental and educational psychology, and psychometrics in America. Not only the numbers of APA members and journals, but also the number of PHD in American psychology surged during three decades after World War Ⅱ. The schools of psychology in America also changed during that time. New behavioralism declined after Hull and Skinner’s time due to its neglect of psyche. Psychoanalysis used to affect American psychology and evolved to ego psychology which could be seen as the product of Americanization. However, psychoanalysis was finally marginalized by scientific psychology in America because of the rise of evidence based medicine. The Third Force Psychology once made a noise in America, but it finally faded due to its attempt to connect psychology and philosophy again, and its complicated methods. It was cognitive psychology that became most popular and the main paradigm of American psychology. In a nutshell, the history of American psychology expressed its social character after World War Ⅱ, which called for the secularization of mind. The scientific psychology in America also plays its ideological role in maintaining the efficient work of American society in turn.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Drug addicts have decision-making defects, and show the characteristics of impulsivity, risk-taking, dysfunctional reward processing, and lack of signals in bodies. Neuroimaging studies have shown that abuse of addictive drugs may cause damage to some brain areas such as DLPFC, ACC, OFC, VMPFC, Amygdala, Insula, etc, that may be incur addicts' decision-making defects. Cognitive training is beneficial to improve individuals' decision-making ability, for instance, goal management training and mindfulness meditation can improve working memory, promote self-awareness and goal oriented behavior; while, noninvasive brain stimulation can directly change the active state of addicts' brain regions that related to decision-making, hence, the cognitive function related to decision-making is improved. All in all, in the future cognitive training and noninvasive brain stimulation still have a broad space to expand in the aspect of addiction intervention.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Deficiency in inter-temporal decision making of substance addicts has been consistently confirmed by a vast array of studies using monetary Delay Discounting Task. Substance addicts showed a myopia tendency towards the immediate reward during the process of inter-temporal decision making. This myopia tendency corresponds well with the substance-use behavior in their real life. However, the recently emerging evidence from new variants of the monetary Delay Discounting Task (the addictive substance Delay Discounting Task, the Sexual Delay Discounting Task, and the Cross-Commodity Delay Discounting Task) highlighted some limitations in the single use of this paradigm in the delay discounting study of substance addiction, which need to be considered in terms of external validity. First of all, the results from monetary Delay Discounting Task may not fully reflect and represent the overall patterns of delay discounting in substance addictive population, the delay discounting level of addictive substance as cigarette, alcohol and heroin, of sex and of other natural rewards were significantly different from the delay discounting level of money. This further confirmed the hypothesis that delay discounting has domain specificity. That is to say, there may not be a general level of delay discounting despite different types of rewards. We need to be cautious when explain the results from monetary Delay Discounting Task in the study of substance addiction, and the additional employing of addictive substance Delay Discounting Task may improve the external validity of studies in this area. Secondly, by employing Single Delay Discounting task alone may over simplify the intertemporal decision-making process of substance addicts. The intertemporal decision-making process faced by this group in real life may be more complex than the one simulated by Single Delay Discounting Task. In real life, substance addicts often face intertemporal choices between different types of rewards including but not limited to money, for example, choice between immediate drug using VS. delayed financial benefits in future. According to the specific position of reward in intertemporal decision-making (the immediate one or the delayed one), the relative value between different types of rewards may change. It is of great significance for the purpose of description, explanation, prediction and intervention in the study of intertemporal decision-making in substance addicts to employ the Cross-Commodity Delay Discounting Task more frequently in future studies. Finally, compared with its variants, the monetary Delay Discounting Task was not sensitive to the withdrawal status, addiction severity and clinical characteristics related to risky sexual behaviors of substance addicts, hence the monetary Delay Discounting Task showed poor ecological validity compared with Cross-Commodity Delay Discounting Task and Sexual Delay Discounting Task. Whether the monetary Delay Discounting Task is the most ideal task to capture the dynamic changes of intertemporal decision-making in substance addicts after withdrawal and intervention remains to be determined. And here is reason to suspect the results from monetary Delay Discounting Task in the perspective of external validity. Considering the external validity of studies on intertemporal decision-making of substance addicts, future research should further enrich and expand the research which employs the Cross-Commodity Delay Discounting Task in the field of substance addiction. Besides, there emerged some evidence which have showed that the authenticity of waiting time between immediate choice and delayed choice would also affect the process of intertemporal decision-making, and the subjective time perception of the waiting duration may also play a nonnegligible role in intertemporal decision-making of substance addicts. So it may be valuable to further elucidate the time factors that may affect intertemporal decision-making. At the same time, researchers also need to consider the question of how to equate non-material rewards with money. The development of effective quantitative methods for non-material rewards such as health, sex and freedom is necessary. In addition, questionnaires and interviews can be introduced to future studies of delay discounting to explore the real motivation of substance addicts to obtain money reward in Delay Discounting Tasks.
Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology submitted time 2020-09-15
Abstract： Abstract: Deficiency in inter-temporal decision making of substance addicts has been consistently confirmed by a lot of studies using monetary Delay Discounting Task. However, the recently emerging evidence from new variants of the monetary Delay Discounting Task (the addictive substance Delay Discounting Task, the Sexual Delay Discounting Task, and the Cross-Commodity Delay Discounting Task) highlighted some limitations in the single use of this paradigm in the delay discounting study of substance addiction, which need to be considered in terms of external validity. In the first place, delay discounting may be a domain-specific concept and the degree of delay discounting towards money may not equal to delay discounting in other aspects of addicts’ real life, as a drug, sex, and other natural rewards. Besides this, using Single-Commodity Delay Discounting Tasks may oversimplify the complicated process of inter-temporal decision making, while using paradigms like Cross-Commodity Delay Discounting Tasks may ecologically simulate dilemmas in addicts’ daily life. Last but not least, the monetary Delay Discounting Task is less sensitive to some clinical traits of addicts than its variant paradigms, it seems that specific tasks definitely have a better predictive effect on specific facets of inter-temporal decision making cared by different researchers from multiple perspectives. Future studies should further enrich and expand the research of Cross-Commodity Delay Discounting Task in the field of substance addiction to improve external validity, and further, explore the time factors that may affect the process of inter-temporal decision making. "
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology submitted time 2018-12-06
Abstract： Today, drug abuse is closely being watched by most of society. It has been found that risky decision-making deficit is one of the main characteristics of drug abuse. Drug abusers are facing increasingly negative consequences in their personal, emotional, professional, and social lives. However, they still prefer to choose immediate reward, and it is difficult for them to make adaptive decisions. Several studies have shown that risky decision-making abilities of heroin addicts are impaired, but few studies have focused on the impact of different levels of monetary reward on risky decision-making for heroin addicts during abstinence and whether such effects are regulated by type of monetary reward. Therefore, this study used the balloon analogue risk task to examine the effects of different levels of hypothetical and real money rewards on risky decision-making in the abstinent heroin user. Two experiments were included in the study. In Experiment 1, a hypothetical reward was used. however, the participants were asked to imagine the money prizes obtained in the experiment as real money rewards and to obtain as much profit as possible. The results showed that the main effect of the reward magnitude was significant. Post-hoc testing showed the average adjusted pumps (the mean number of pumps for balloons that did not pop) and the total number of popped balloons were significantly less under the 1-cent reward condition compared with the 25-cent reward condition. The main effects of the group were significant, and post-hoc testing showed that the average adjusted pumps and the total number of popped balloons were significantly higher for the abstinent heroin users compared with the non-heroin users. The interaction between the reward magnitude and the group was not significant. Experiment 2 used real rewards. The final rewards of the participants were converted according to their performance in the experimental task. The results showed that the main effect of reward magnitude was marginal significant for the average adjusted pumps and the main effect of the reward magnitude was significant for the total number of popped balloons. Post-hoc testing showed the average adjusted pumps and the total number of popped balloons were significantly higher under the 1-cent reward condition compared with the 25-cent reward condition. The main effects of the group were significant, and post-hoc testing showed that the average adjusted pumps and the total number of popped balloons for the abstinent heroin users were significantly smaller compared with non-heroin users.The interaction between the reward magnitude and the group was not significant. The results of the study indicate that monetary reward magnitude has the same effect on risky decision-making of the abstinent heroin user as it does on the non-heroin user. The impact of money magnitude on risky decision-making is regulated by type of money reward.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2018-11-19
Abstract： " Addictive behaviors have brought serious harms to the individual and the society. The study on the time perspective of groups with addictive behaviors has become a new perspective to explore the emergence and development of addictive behaviors. The people who have past negative perspective orientation, present hedonistic and present fatalistic are more likely to have addictive behaviors while the orientation of future time perspective is a protective factor for addictive behaviors. It will not only reduce the occurrence of addictive behaviors but also benefit the recovery of the addictive behaviors. The behavioral mechanisms such as self-regulation, impulsive decision, and the neural mechanisms of the prefrontal cortex can help us understand the addictive behaviors deeply from the time perspective. Future researches can further explore the consistency and specificity of time perspective among different addictive behaviors, use longitudinal research methods to explore the dynamic process of addicts' time perspective, and Intervention in the time perspective of addicts, help addicts achieve a balance of time perspective by improving their future time perspective and reducing their orientations of past negative and present time perspective, which therefore, can help the addicts increase their abstinence.
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