Case Studies Essay

Case Study Number One: The Case of Confusion 1. The subfield of psychology that will be of greatest relevance is the behavioral perspective. This perspective has made contributions in diverse areas such as: treating mental disorders, curbing aggression, resolving sexual problems, and ending drug addiction. 2. The cognitive perspective would be most helpful. The focus of this perspective is how people think, understand, and know about the world. 3. Personally, I think Alexis surfing the web and looking at self-help books is a bad idea, she could be looking into all the wrong things and make herself believe she’s worse than she really is, she could end up self-diagnosing. The dangers of this approach are making herself believe she’s worse than she really is. 4. The advice I’d give to Alexis is that she needs to see a therapist and talking things out so she doesn’t get angry anymore. If she saw a therapist, she could be put on medicine and it would control he r moods. Case Study Number Two: The Case of the Cautious Pilot 1. Captain Mueller and his co-pilot sat in the dark cockpit to get their eyes adjusted to the night time before they took off for flight to Dallas from Boston. Case Study Number Three: The Case of the Manager Who Doubled Productivity 1. He gave them positive reinforcements when they met their goals at the end of the week, and when he saw them being busy he gave them extra break time. 2. When you punish undesirable behavior, that’s all you’ll get because negative reinforcement ruins a person’s moral and will ruin their confidence to do something good. If you use punishment and positive reinforcements will effectively control behavior. 3. He complimented them frequently whenever he saw that they did a good job, Friday afternoons, if they met their daily and weekly goals he bought them lunch. If he found them hard at work they got extra break time. He set daily and weekly production goals and over the next three months his staffs’ production nearly doubled. 4. He could use a lot of positive reinforcement and encouragement to get them to learn the new complex task. 5. Cliff could focus on the internal thoughts and ex pectations of his staff, that would help improve the productivity. Case Study Number Four: The Case of Rob Steere, the Man Who Knew Too Much 1. Yes, because it’s a newer computer based system and it’s eliminated the need to sort things topically. 2. The earlier filing system and the location of various archived records are organized in his memory because of his declarative memory which stores factual information like names, faces and dates. 3. Yes, because they are used to bottom-up processing which consists of the progression of recognizing and processing information from individual parts of a stimulus. The new computer system would require them to think using top-down processing. 4. He’s having so much difficulty finding those records because he’s used to filing them topically and not having a computer to do it for him. He developed this problem because he’s used to using his memory to place every file. 5. The advice I would give Rob for making the adjustment would be to go slow and understand the way the filing system worked, it might take a while but it would pay off in the end, unless he found a new job somewhere else. Case Study Number Five: The Case of Mike and Marty Scanlon, the Unlikely Twins 1. A rational personality bases actions on logic and experience. Not on sentiments or things not amenable to reason. Rational personalities are largely dependent on evidence and proof. 2. Mike is very open to experiences, but he’s very unfriendly and boisterous and unruly. While on the other hand, Marty is very quiet, organized and would rather keep to himself. 3. The differences in their personalities are very noticeable, Marty is quiet and well-behaved when Mike is unruly, and indifferent to authority. Temperament is defiantly a key in these brothers different behaviors, Mike didn’t get the basic, innate disposition that comes about in early life, while Marty did. 4. Marty is the brother achieving self-actualization, because he’s reaching his own highest potential by having a great job and having two children. 5. They do have different levels of intelligence, Marty finished high scho ol and went to college to get where he is today. While Mike dropped out of high school to become an oil-change technician.