Professional Requirements in Psychology

Resources

·         Attributes and Evaluation of Discussion Contributions.

·         Professional Communications and Writing Guide.

·         Graduate Psychology Discussion Rubric.

As you probably gathered from your exploration in the unit studies, professions in psychology carry a wide range of requirements and responsibilities ranging from professional credentialing, academic preparation, training, licensure, and more. Understanding the full range of requirements for your specialized interests and particular career is essential to ensuring you achieve your vision for contributing to the field of psychology. Use this discussion to clarify the requirements for your particular career path.

In your post, respond to the following questions:

·         Do your plans involve any particular license, certification, or other requirements? If so, are there restrictions to that license? For example, do you need to be supervised by a doctoral-level person or by someone with an advanced license?

·         Are there particular professional organizations that govern your specialized field?

·         What professionals and individuals would be helpful in your professional network to help you clarify these requirements and move forward in your career?

·         Explain how the readings in the Sternberg text, Career Paths in Psychology, and information from other sources were helpful for finding out about requirements.

·         What remaining questions do you have about the requirements for your career in psychology?

 

 

Discussion—Typical Reasoning

People often take shortcuts in problem solving and quickly arrive at answers. Known as heuristics, these shortcuts may increase the speed of decisions but may also decrease the accuracy of those decisions. The experiment used in this assignment deals with inaccurate decisions based on the conjunction fallacy, where people think the chance of two events happening at the same time is greater than just one event occurring. However, the chance of one event occurring is greater than two events occurring; hence, the fallacy.

Access the CogLab demonstration Typical Reasoning. Follow the instructions to complete the demonstration. Next, answer the following questions:

• For this demonstration, on average, do participants give higher ratings for single events or conjunctions of events? Based on the demonstration results, did you make your judgments by using objective probabilities? Why or why not?
• What is a stereotype? How do stereotypes relate to the findings of this demonstration?
• Respond to the following two situations:
  • You and two of your coworkers have just interviewed a candidate for a job opening at your law firm. Your boss asks you what inferences you made about the candidate during the interview. What can you do to maximize your likelihood of making a correct inference?
  • John is a young, energetic, muscular, and outgoing individual. Estimate the following for him:
    • He is tall and likes sports
    • He is tall, likes sports, and has lots of friends

Write your initial response in 4–5 paragraphs. Apply APA standards to citation of sources.  

By Sunday, November 27, 2016, post your response to the appropriate .

Discussion Grading Criteria and Rubric

This discussion assignment is worth 40 points and will be graded using the discussion rubric

Part 1

 

As an individual moves through adulthood, stability and change usually results from their personality. Psychologists Robert McCrae and Paul Costa held studies to help understand stability and change, they then came up with the five factors of personality. The five factors, recognized as O.C.E.A.N., involve openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (emotional stability). The factors and their traits are listed as followed:

 

Openness- imaginative or practical, interested in variety or routine, and independent or conforming

 

Conscientiousness-organized or disorganized, careful or careless, and disciplined or impulsive

 

Extraversion-social able or retiring, fun-loving or somber, and affectionate or reserved

 

Agreeableness- soft-hearted or ruthless,  trusting or suspicious, and helpful or uncooperative

 

Neuroticism-calm or anxious, secure or insecure, and self-satisfied or self-pitying.

 

Each factor has three important traits that coincide with a person’s well-being, health, intelligence, their achievements and even their relationships. Depending on the personality factor, the higher level of the trait, the more improved or corrupt life will pan out. For example, in a decade, four out of five of the factors can predict health outcomes such as high levels of neuroticism being linked to more health concerns. Openness also contributes to cognitive function, increasing IQs and the ability to chase entrepreneurial objectives. I believe this is because once you start to gain knowledge about something new, it expands your crystalized or fluid intelligence. Studies also show that conscientiousness relates to GPA in college students. Lastly, those high on the trait of agreeableness were more likely to have a satisfying romantic relationship (Santrock, 2012).

 

Many lifestyle issues can effect a person’s development whether it’s physical or cognitive. Physically, skin begins to sag and obtain wrinkles, age spots appears and hair becomes thinner and may start to turn gray. Cosmetic surgery, dyeing ones hair and vitamins can help slow down the aging process. Another example includes reducing strength due to loss of muscle mass and degenerating bones. Studies show that keeping off the excess weight by being active and eating healthy can reduce these risks along with reducing dangers of cardiovascular disease. Although cognitively, our memory will start to decline during middle age and to avoid that we should use effective memory strategies like organization and imagery. Simple tasks like organizing lists of phone numbers into different categories or imagining the numbers as representation of object around the house can help improve memory as well (Santrok, 2012). During this time in development it’s mostly about being in control of your health and wellness.

 

According to Levinson, a midlife crisis can be explained as when an adult is reflecting on the past as well as preparing for the future; seeing midlife as an actual crisis. Valliant sees it differently, he believes not everyone has a midlife crisis because they are at their peak of success during this time. It’s viewed as an individual experiencing a crisis event during this time, but they will see to get over it; such as a bad week at work but home life is just fine. Therefore, life itself doesn’t become a crisis just because of the aging process.

 

 

 

Part 2

 

Erikson’s theory- Erikson believes that his seventh stage of development which is Generativity vs. Stagnation is a major issue in middle adulthood. This occurrence is when adults have or have not achieved to pass on their skills, knowledge, and legacies to the next generation.  Generativity incorporates aspiration while stagnation incorporates with “self-absorption”.

 

Helson’s theory-In Helson’s Mills College Study, she examined more than 100 women at different ages from the time they were seniors in college to their thirties, forties and fifties. The study concluded that women don’t go through midlife crisis, but through midlife consciousness. These women had to learn and control their impulses, learn not to be dependent on anyone else, mature their social skills and just work hard to achieve their future goals. If this was not achieved, they would not progress entirely as other women would.

 

Levinson’s theory-As said before, Levinson had the theory that men go through a midlife crisis. He believed if the transition from adolescence didn’t go well, then it will affect the future of adulthood. His theory only occurred men and the conflicts that were possible in adolescents such as: being young vs. being old, being destructive vs. being constructive, being masculine vs. beung feminie, and attatchment vs. separation. A good or bad reflect upon these would determine the midlife crisis for the male.

 

I personally believe that Erikson’s theory is a better explanation of middle adulthood mainly because it’s not biased and can involve both men and women. Unlike Helson whose theory revolved around women and Levinson whose study was all men, Erikson’s idea is general so it can concern normative life events meaning it can occur to anyone. A fine example would be two middle aged adults reflecting on their parenting skills; they may think “have I taught my children the best way I could in order for them to survive on their own?”. Appreciating their job as a parent or regretting their decision to pass more onto the next generation.

 

  

1). When do you feel or have you felt flow?  Write a paragraph or two (150 words) about a time when you were completely engaged in an activity, to the point that time fell away.  While this isn’t formal writing, be sure to review your work for grammar, spelling, and full sentences before you upload it to the assignment folder.

2). Flow Strategies:  Which of the strategies to achieve flow would you like to pursue?  Which do you think would be challenging and why?  Write a paragraph or two (150 words) about the strategy that most interests you and the strategy that seems most difficult.  While this isn’t formal writing, be sure to review your work for grammar, spelling, and full sentences before you upload it to the assignment folder.

Strategies (this is for examples to read)

So how do you achieve this mystical state of being? Do you need to meditate or chant anything? No, you don’t (although meditation can improve your ability to concentrate). And Flow is anything but mystical — it’s very practical, and achieving it isn’t mysterious.

It can take practice, but you’ll get better at it. Here are the key steps to achieving and benefiting from Flow:

1. Choose work you love. If you dread a task, you’ll have a hard time losing yourself in it. If your job is made up of stuff you hate, you might want to consider finding another job. Or consider seeking projects you love to do within your current job. At any rate, be sure that whatever task you choose is something you can be passionate about.
2. Choose an important task. There’s work you love that’s easy and unimportant, and then there’s work you love that will make a long-term impact on your career and life. Choose the latter, as it will be a much better use of your time, and of Flow.
3. Make sure it’s challenging, but not too hard. If a task is too easy, you will be able to complete it without much thought or effort. A task should be challenging enough to require your full concentration. However, if it is too hard, you will find it difficult to lose yourself in it, as you will spend most of your concentration just trying to figure out how to do it — either that, or you’ll end up discouraged. It may take some trial and error to find tasks of the appropriate level of difficulty.
4. Find your quiet, peak time. This is actually two steps grouped into one. First, you’ll want to find a time that’s quiet, or you’ll never be able to focus. For me, that’s mornings, before the hustle of everyday life builds to a dull roar. That might be early morning, when you just wake, or early in the work day, when most people haven’t arrived yet or are still getting their coffee and settling down. Or you might try the lunch hour, when people are usually out of the office. Evenings work well too for many people. Or, if you’re lucky, you can do it at any time of the day if you can find a quiet spot to work in. Whatever time you choose, it should also be a peak energy time for you. Some people get tired after lunch — that’s not a good time to go for Flow. Find a time when you have lots of energy and can concentrate.
5. Clear away distractions. Aside from finding a quiet time and place to work, you’ll want to clear away all other distractions. That means turning off distracting music (unless you find music that helps you focus), turning off phones, email and IM notifications, Twitter and Growl, and anything else that might pop up or make noise to interrupt your thoughts. I also find it helpful to clear my desk, even if that means sweeping miscellaneous papers into a folder to be sorted through later. Of course, these days there isn’t anything on my desk, but I didn’t always work like this. A clear desk helps immensely.
6. Learn to focus on that task for as long as possible. This takes practice. You need to start on your chosen task and keep your focus on it for as long as you can. At first, many people will have difficulty, if they’re used to constantly switching between tasks. But keep trying, and keep bringing your focus back to your task. You’ll get better. And if you can keep your focus on that task, with no distractions, and if your task has been chosen well (something you love, something important, and something challenging), you should lose yourself in Flow.
7. Enjoy yourself. Losing yourself in Flow is an amazing thing, in my experience. It feels great to be able to really pour yourself into something worthwhile, to make great progress on a project or important task, to do something you’re passionate about. Take the time to appreciate this feeling (perhaps after the fact — it’s hard to appreciate it while you’re in Flow).
8. Keep practicing. Again, this takes practice. Each step will take some practice, from finding a quiet, peak time for yourself, to clearing distractions, to choosing the right task. And especially keeping your focus on a task for a long time. But each time you fail, try to learn from it. Each time you succeed, you should also learn from it — what did you do right? And the more you practice, the better you’ll get.
9. Reap the rewards. Aside from the pleasure of getting into Flow, you’ll also be happier with your work overall. You’ll get important stuff done. You’ll complete stuff more often, rather than starting and stopping frequently. All of this is hugely satisfying and rewarding. Take the time to appreciate this, and to continue to practice it every day.