ap psych help

[marvin-martian]

i need some ideas for a question i need to answer for ap psych. the question is:

"Andy, a high school sophmore, lacks self-decipline, fails to plan ahead, and is excessively anxious. He is quickly frusterated by challenging tasks and frequently becomes overly critical of others. Use the psychoanalytic, humanistic, and social cognitive perspectives to give three contrasting explainations of Andy's behavior."

any help would be useful. thanks.

[thechubbss12]

Phyco- His parents lacked in discipline when he was younger causeing a more defiant lazy and undisiplined personality.

Humanistic- He has unfortunatly not played any athletic sports casuing a lazy non motovated personality.

Social Cognitive- Probibly listens to friends more then those who pertain more wisdom then him self or friends.

Sorry man i dont totaly understand the vocab in you question but i hope that his may help you some.... sorry

[claustrophobia9]

he probibaly feels that their is no point to whatever activity he fails to try at because he has expirienced a change that brought about a hard time in his life or has already expirienced a failure that caused him to loose hope, i wouldnt blame it too much on the parents, adults hate hearing that cover-all excuse.

[marvin-martian]

thanks chubbss, thats a good start.

and keep in mind that i have to answer through all 3 perspectives, so specify which youre talking about. and i cant express my views on his situation.

[marvin-martian]

i also have to throw in alot of terms. so far i have
psycho- displacement
humanistic- self concept
unconditional positive regard
social cog- personal control
learned helplessness
probable low self esteem and self serving bias

[FredPo]

Originally Posted by marvin-martian

i need some ideas for a question i need to answer for ap psych. the question is:

"Andy, a high school sophmore, lacks self-decipline, fails to plan ahead, and is excessively anxious. He is quickly frusterated by challenging tasks and frequently becomes overly critical of others. Use the psychoanalytic, humanistic, and social cognitive perspectives to give three contrasting explainations of Andy's behavior."

any help would be useful. thanks.

I'm pretty knowledgeable in the social/cognitive perspective. As for being overly critical of others, this is most likely due to the fundamental attribution error (thinking that others have faults because of dispositions and his faults are due to contextual or environmental factors. Self-Serving bias is another way of saying what I just said, having a positive bias towards yourself (doing good things because you are disposed to). As for failing to plan ahead, he's probaly been a victim of the planning fallacy in the past. Planning fallacy is when we bite off more than we can chew. Because of this, he's become conditioned to not attempting anything challenging because he fails.

The Humanistic perspective proposes that humans mainly focus on issues like self-awareness, values, and meaning; therefore Andy is hiding from his responsibilities in life and his self-efficacy (belief that he can perform a task) is hindered because of this "hiding." The humanists would also say that Andy is not living with meaning and this absence of meaning is resulting in abnormal behavior.
I"m sure I missed a few points in this explanation but this is what I know about social/cognitive and humanistic perspective. As for psychoanalytical, I'm not too knowledgable about that perspective so I do'nt want to even attempt to go there.
It's good to be a psychology major though

Fred

[marvin-martian]

i knew i could count on your fred