Community psychology

Posted by Winnie Melda on October 8th, 2018

Applied psychology study has various applications in the real world, both in the community and the entire world. The main focus is the relevance of community psychology topic of study. Community psychologists perform their work in the natural environment rather than sticking to laboratory experiments. The popularity of community psychology has increased greatly as new people tend to take the course. For example, the field has extended to produce professional testing and clinical psychologists who work in the hospital setting. Community psychology focuses on establishing relationships between individuals and the social systems within the community. As a result, the community psychologists have to grapple social and mental health issues by conducting extensive research within the community settings (Zwan, 2012).

Community psychology is a form of applied psychology studies that focuses on the provision of service to the community and conducting research that relates to environmental, social science. Not only does the psychologist majors in scientific and professional discipline but also gains an intellectual orientation. Just like community mental health studies and clinical psychology, community psychology study focuses on promoting human welfare. However, the study of community psychology was brought up because they were dissatisfied with the services of clinicians of identifying mental health problems in an individual. The community psychologists can easily locate mental health threat within the social environments or even identify the situations that may not make humans fit in a given social environment (Russell & Jarvis, 2003).

Community psychology topic is highly relevant in the social setting as a scholar is able to locate the issues before they begin, instead of waiting for the issues to increase and grow bigger. By having the applied understanding of the social environment, a psychologist is capable of improving the social situations and the social way of living. By learning the topic, psychologists can achieve three key goals. Firstly, they can develop and analyze the policies and programs that help individuals manage the stress and problems within the environment. Secondly, they can analyze the situations and teach individuals within the community on how to solve issues before they grow huge. Finally, they can research and implement the strategies that enable the people in the community to be productive in their undertakings (Sanetti & Kratochwill, 2014).

Analysis and Summary

The following is a discussion of five scholarly articles (journals) that base their arguments on applied psychology.

Intervention Effects on Safety Compliance and Citizenship Behaviors: Evidence from the Work, Family, and Health Study

The study was conducted so as to find the possible ways of managing stress in the workplace, homes and at the individual level. The management of work-home responsibilities has been found a challenging task especially for those who have minimum wages and those who work for hours before getting back home. The policies and programs are known to be available to those who work with major companies and those who work professionally. As a result of such issues, the research was conducted to determine the best interventions that would impact on the business outcomes of employees and their workplace. The researchers analyzed the conditions that would favor the intervention procedures especially among those who received low wages and salaries in the organizations they worked. The study considers safety as a primary concern in the health care environment since transmission of diseases, and related injuries could easily get transferred to employees (Nauriyal, Drummond & Lal, 2005).

Rewards and Creativity: Past, Present, and Future

Muhammad and Arif write the article while researching the impacts of rewards in the creativity if individuals. The paper shows that rewards are key factors that improve upon the creativity of individuals. Those who are less likely going to be rewarded face difficulties in developing their careers or even improving their creativity. Both authors term creativity as a multidimensional construct that steers up organization’s growth and productivity. An organization with highly creative individuals can see the past, future and present situation and determine the best way to move forward (Martin, 2011).

The Psychological and Neurological Bases of Leader Self-Complexity and Effects on Adaptive Decision-Making

This article discusses the complexity of a leader as a key enabler to adaptation. The article explains adaptation as a process whereby a person gains some fit in behaviors and work demands that are created by novel problems that result from changes and uncertainty of work situations. Leader adaptability gets defined as the ability of leaders to improve their thoughts to perform required response to ill-defined, novel and changing decision-making situation. The paper claims that the greater complexity levels improve on a leader’s ability to differentiate different input and stimuli sources of the environment and to take the necessary actions and responses. Additionally, it shows that a leader achieves more complexities with time and therefore they can successfully adapt to the ever-changing environment more easily with sufficient experience. LSC gets based on personal role in the management of the connection between the leader’s interaction with the social environment and his or her internal processes. With greater complexity levels, a leader’s ability to react and comprehend dynamically to decision-making circumstances (Weiner, 2003).

Social Media: A Contextual Framework to Guide Research and Practice

Lynn and Robert show that humans as social beings, a behavior that is developed and arises deeply from our DNA. There are many critical changes that have occurred in human lives since the beginning of time. Such changes include the use of emails, printing presses, airplanes and use of alphabets to communicate. All these transition processes have been there for the main purpose of fulfilling the human desire of interacting and communicating with others. The social context of the interaction and communication between people highly changed. Social media has been a major facilitator of user-content creation, information sharing, and collaboration. The article lists some of the major website platforms that are very popular for social networking such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. These platforms have changed our social interactions, thinking, and connection in unique ways. Even as the social media platforms are developed, there are risks and benefits that are faced when adopting the technology in businesses. The article develops new theoretical arguments that describe the situation and impacts of social media within an organization. The arguments show that the social platform is not different from the traditional organization but what changes is only the context (Weatherington & Cunningham, 2011).

 Case study

Jane, our class representative, has been a motivating and outgoing person who has developed her academic program within the university. Her major character traits on commitment, developing others, team leadership, and coaching, relationship building and result orientation are what have made her excel in providing leadership at Ashford University. She has been encouraging, and her ability to solve issues of students such that they can leave her office while fully satisfied has made many of us proud. Jane has been a motivator to students who have gone wrong, those who seek support and those who feel insecure. While Ashford University is built upon core values that ensure that peace and good social interaction is maintained, she has been a driving agent to see to it that people leave harmoniously and responsibly within the university environment. Jane has been a key leader in leading events that focuses on developing the community within and beyond the school.

Jane’s learning process is characterized by teamwork, cooperation, living responsibly and being kind and loving to others. As the institution focuses on ensuring that healthy social life is developed, and all students live together harmoniously, Jane’s behavior and attitude demonstrate it all (Carson & Wiley InterScience (Online service), 2007).

In personal life, some of the competencies that are applicable include problem-solving and self-knowledge. There are many data to day problems that occur in our lives that require us to utilize problem-solving skills when identifying solutions. Problem-solving skills enable one to ask a good question, identify the best sources of answers to problems, identify underlying patterns or problems and analyze honesty. By understanding ourselves and understanding our strengths and weaknesses, we can easily seek feedback, identify positives from mistakes and criticize. In the workplace, we can easily deploy our strengths when we know them. Similarly, if we know our weaknesses, we can understand how we can use them to work and neutralize on others. We can be dynamic whenever there are changes to situations and know the best skills to utilize to approach the environment or phenomenon.

The common scenario is when there exists a conflict between the professional and personal values. When a person enters the professional social work, he/she learns many values. Firstly, one understands that personal opinions should be placed aside, and room for professional one is introduced. Therefore, some things that people believe as inferior  or wrong, for example, abortion, difference in religion, love for person of similar sex, difference in the color of skin and other personal values or ideas need to be set aside so as to be able to work with an employee or treat a clients (London, & Poltorat︠s︡kiĭ, 1958). This scenario could be very hard part of becoming a social worker. Our values need to be kept to ourselves whenever we work. The workplace does not deny expressing such values but rather it enables us to be aware of others so that we do not interfere with the way we treat others (Alfredson, Nählinder, Castor & Totalförsvarets forskningsinstitut, 2004).

When dealing with other relationships, for example, supervisor-employee relationship, the issues changes to some extent. The manager gets held accountable for determining the way of action of the work group. By being accountable and professional, it may be limited. If a person is not concerned in his or her behaviors when working, anything could be allowed. There are legal issues and policies that regard behavior in this field (Kiefer, 2008). Otherwise, if managers tolerate racism or other conflicting comments within a social setting, do they mean that they are not valued, or not valued? Do the minor personnel become comfortable when vocalizing complaints in the area? Surely, it is not the case (Costanzo, 2004).

 References

Alfredson, J., Nählinder, S., Castor, M., & Totalförsvarets forskningsinstitut. (2004).Measuring Eye Movements in Applied Psychological Research: Five Different Techniques - Five Different Approaches. Swedish Defence Research Agency.

Carson, D., & Wiley InterScience (Online service). (2007). Applying psychology to criminal justice. Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons.

Costanzo, M. (2004). Psychology applied to law. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth.

Kiefer, K. H. (2008). Applied psychology research trends. New York: Nova Science Publishers.

London, I. D., & Poltorat︠s︡kiĭ, N. P. (1958). A case study of historical analysis applied to social psychological research. Louisville, Ky.: Southern Universites Press.

Martin, P. R. (2011). IAAP handbook of applied psychology. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Nauriyal, K., Drummond, M. S., & Lal, Y. B. (2005). Buddhist Thought and Applied Psychological Research. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis Ltd.

Russell, J., & Jarvis, M. (2003). Angles on applied psychology. Cheltenham, UK: Nelson Thornes.

Sanetti, L. M. H., & Kratochwill, T. R. (2014). Treatment integrity: A foundation for evidence-based practice in applied psychology.

Weatherington, B., & Cunningham, C. J. L. (2011). Applied Psychology in Everyday Life. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Weiner, I. B. (2003). Handbook of psychology: 2. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Zwan, R. . (2012). Current trends in experimental and applied psychology: Volume 1. Brisbane, Qld: Primrose Hall.

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Winnie Melda

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Winnie Melda
Joined: December 7th, 2017
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