Biopsychosocial Psychology

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Biopsychosocial psychology is a field that investigates the relationships between different aspects of our behaviors and mental processes and the connections between them. The biopsychosocial model is thought of as a progressive reaction to the bio-reductionism that was existent in psychiatry, though George Engel formally announced the model in 1977 (Kinderman, Pilgram, & Tai, 2008, p. 1). Biopsychosocial psychology, as the name indicates, is an interdisciplinary field with theoretical influences of psychiatry, biology, and sociology (Kinderman et al. p.1). This field of study serves as a bridge between the disciplines of psychology and medicine (Kinderman et al. p. 8). This path of combining biological and social realms of study creates a …show more content…
The goal of this experiment was to see if the number of witnesses of an emergency influences people’s helping ("Latané And Darley (1968)," n.d.). The procedure of this experiment involved uninformed consent by telling the students they were discussing personal problems of new college students in an urban area ("Latané And Darley (1968)"). The purpose of not informing the participants was to ensure they would not have an experimental bias regarding their expected behavior when faced with the challenge of intervening. The participants sat in a booth alone with a pair of headphones, until at one point a seizure would be staged over the intercom ("Latané And Darley (1968)"). The independent variable of the procedure was the number of people the bystander thought listened in the same discussion, and the dependent variable was the time it took for the participant to react from the start of the victims fit until the participant contacted the experimenter ("Latané And Darley (1968)"). The results of this experiment show that the number of bystanders had a major effect on the participant’s reaction (“Latané And Darley (1968)”). When the participant believed they were alone, 85% reported the seizure, while only 31% of participants reported the seizure when they believed there were four bystanders (“Latané And Darley (1968)”). This experiment was the first of many to …show more content…
My hypothesis is that onlookers with an anxiety disorder will be quicker to help someone in need. I believe this is true because a person with an anxiety disorder is more likely to attend to a threat cue sooner, and act on it. However, there may be reasons why someone is stunned, and does not help as quickly. This may be because of a certain type of anxiety disorder. For example, someone with PTSD from child abuse may not be quick to help a child being abused because they are shocked and have flashbacks instead of a quick reaction. Or this momentum may push the bystander to react faster, as they would not want the child to go through what they went through. In fear that these variables would affect my results, I would want to set up many experiments to obtain data on the effects of anxiety disorders on reaction time. This would have to be done in many sections to account for all different types of anxiety disorders, along with the severity and reason for
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