Perspective for Scientific Investigation of Sleep Deprivation - Coursework Example

Perspective for Scientific Investigation of Sleep Deprivation: Abstract: Sleep makes a significant contribution to the healthy mind and body of an individual and can not be ignored. People need to take it seriously and change their perceptions in order to improve the quality of their lives. This is because studies indicate that sleep deprivation can cause a number of negative effects to the individual including both physical and mental, and can also negatively affect society both socially and economically. To help people change perceptions, a scientific investigation on sleep deprivation is necessary to enhance people’s understanding of the sleep deprivation concept, (Nature.com, 2005). This paper evaluates five psychological perspectives including; the Psychodynamic, Behavioural, Cognitive, Evolutionary, and Hierarchy of Needs perspectives. After considering the strengths and weaknesses for each, this paper recommends the Behavioural perspective as most suitable for a scientific investigation of sleep as a motivated behaviour. Introduction: Sleep deprivation refers to condition where one’s body lacks enough sleep. This may be as a result of among other causes; psychiatric imbalance, anxiety, physical illness, torture and psychological problems such as illusions. Studies indicate that between 1910 and 2002, the average nightly sleep hours were estimated to have dropped from 9 to 7. It has also been estimated that of the total population, those who find themselves uncontrollably sleepy during daytime are 20%, (Wilson, 2005). Sleep deprivation can be characterized by a general feeling of fatigue and may cause many negative effects including slowing down a victim’s mental responsiveness and causing memory loss. Many perspectives have been advanced for studying sleep deprivation. This essay evaluates five such perspectives and recommends the most suitable one for scientific investigation of sleep deprivation. These are; the Psychodynamic, Behavioural, Cognitive, Evolutionary, and Hierarchy of Needs perspectives. Psychological Perspectives of Motivation: Sleep deprivation attracts emotional responses. Behaviour is influenced by the combined working of motivation and emotion. An emotion for this purpose describes an evaluative reaction which may comprise of “physiological stimulation, subjective occurrence and behavioural or emotional expression”. Motivation simply refers to things people do what persuades them to pursue some things and not others. Psychology can be defined to refer to the scientific investigation of peoples’ motivation and emotions in relation to their biology, culture and psychological experience, (Westen, 2002). A scientific investigation of sleep deprivation therefore has to be based on a psychological perspective. In the next section, this paper evaluates the five psychological perspectives in turn. The first to consider is the Psychodynamic perspective. This school of thought (led by Sigmund Freud) posits that connection of feelings and wishes of individuals in their minds determine their behaviour and actions. Most of such occurrences happen without the individual with possibility of compromises among rival motives arising out of a divergence in the psychological processes. This implies that individuals rarely know precisely the sequence of occurrences which result into their actions, feelings or intentions. Before being introduced into the laboratory by Modern researchers, the psychodynamic hypothesis as advanced by Freud and his team stayed out of typical psychology for lack of scientific testing thoughts to support it, (Westen et al, 2009). The psychodynamic school of thought came up as a result of Freud’s response to patients whose symptoms were true but not related to mental disorders. During that time, irrational guilt displayed by patients for example as a result of loosing a beloved one did not have scientific explanation. This prompted Freud to make simple unreliable conclusion which went along way to influence intellectual historical configuration. According to Freud, the fact that the symptoms displayed by patients were not physically founded and that they were not consciously developed could only mean that the symptoms must have been unconsciously created. Freud argued that people’s conscious intentions are driven by their own strong unconscious motives in the same way people possess conscious motives and desires. Freud further argued that individuals get excited and derive morbid curiosity satisfaction from looking at shocking scenes such as accidents on the road yet they don’t accept such feelings to be moral, (Westen et al, 2006). The psychodynamic perspective advances a biological foundation of motivation. Freud maintains that motives of human beings reflect their animal heritage because people are animals. As a motivated behaviour, Freud would explain sleep deprivation under unconscious motivation. For example, a highly competitive student may argue that he is only competitive with oneself. Today, laboratory facts sustain difference between the conscious and unconscious motives based on self-reports by individuals. Thematic Appreciation Test (TAT) has been used by researchers to in the study unconscious motives. Using TAT, participants come up with a story based on a series of ambiguous pictures. These stories are then coded by researchers to generate motivational themes. These coded motives highly predict the peoples’ behaviour over time. For instance, research shows that the frequency of achievement themes featuring in an individual’s story predicts his business success over several years, (Westen et al, 2006). The alternative formula to determine motivation would be to ask individuals whether success is important to them or not. There is a zero correlation between TAT’s inferred motives, conscious and unconscious motives. This would be perceived to mean that one of the assessment criteria is invalid. However it may only be because individual measures predict specific behaviour. The question to address would be why the two measures can not predict each other, yet are able to predict the specified behaviour. According to McCllelland, it is so because the unconscious (implicit) motives are predicted by the TAT whereas the conscious (explicit) motives are predicted by self-reports, (Westen, 2002). I do not recommend psychodynamic perspective for scientific investigation of sleep deprivation because the measurement approach is not really convincing and is full of discrepancies. Another approach to motivation is the Humanistic perspective (also known as the hierarchy of needs perspective) which was advanced by Abraham Maslow. Proponents of this school of thought argue on the basis of individual choice, self-worth and dignity as the vital aspects upon which behaviour should be explained. According to Maslow, the person’s desire to prosper motivates him to conquer all obstacles so as to attain personal fulfilment. To this end, argued Maslow, the hierarchy of needs plays the role of guiding individual behaviour. The principle is that needs on the lower level of the hierarchy must be satisfied first before the higher level ones, (Wilson, 2005). The origin of the Humanistic perspective can be traced back to the period 1950-1960s when there emerged an approach to personality other than behaviourism and psychoanalysis approaches. Contrary to Maslow’s belief that individuals may live and focus on a single level of motives without going beyond it, in real life situation, several behaviours can be seen to exhibit more than one need. For instance, participating into a contest can enrich an individual apart from esteem fulfilment and self actualisation derived, (Westen et al, 2009). The Humanistic perspective primarily focuses on the uniqueness of the individual and heavily borrows from the metaphoric expression “life is like a bottle----the cream always rises to the top”. The approach thus relies on empathy. The only data available for this perspective include individual actions, motives and thoughts upon which the individual experiences reflect, (Westen, 2002). Other than Clayton Aldarfer’s Existence, Relatedness, and Growth (ERG) theory which attempted to provide a testable hypothesis of the Humanistic perspective without substantive empirical evidence, the humanistic approach has not made it any easier to test. For this reason, I do not recommend the Humanistic perspective for a scientific investigation of sleep deprivation as a motivated behaviour. Next to consider is the cognitive perspective of psychology. It is mainly concerned with the manner in which information is perceived, developed and retrieved by individuals. It originated from experimental research done By Wundt and his colleagues to analyse how attention affects perception and memory ability. Later, the computer technology development became the basic root of cognitive perspective. The computer model is utilized as a metaphor to help create the understanding of the functioning of the human mind. Thus thinking is synonymous with processing information. The argument is that the inputs are environmentally stimulated; they are transformed into mental programs triggering reactions which are the outputs, (Westen et al, 2006). Testing of hypothesis in this approach can be done either by observing how quickly people respond to some issues or by asking direct questions to determine individuals’ memory abilities. Although the primary method of cognitive perspective has been said to be experimental, I do not recommend this perspective for a scientific investigation of sleep deprivation as a motivated behaviour because the perspective is by its nature focused on processes of information perception, processing and Retrieval. It can not be relied upon to explain sleep deprivation as a motivated behaviour. Next to consider is the evolutionary perspective. It explains argues that most human behaviour has a biological basis. Proponents of this perspective argue that various behavioural inclinations in humans evolve from ancestral background. Thus impulses such as; eating impulse, sex and offspring rearing impulses all have a biological basis. Naturally, a child will feel bad to be isolated from parents. The evolutionary perspective originated from works of Charles Darwin who put forward the concept of natural selection. Darwin maintained that through natural mechanisms, adaptive traits are selected in organisms and are capable of being transmitted to offspring, (Westen, 2002). The basic metaphor for the Evolutionary perspective is one borrowed from Thomas Hobbes who argued that “wittingly or unwittingly, we are all runners in a race, competing for survival, sexual access to partners and resources for our kin and ourselves”. This simply means that evolutionary methods are often deductive as they start with observation of existing phenomena and proceed to find logical explanations for its existence, (Wilson, 2005). I do not recommend Evolutionary perspective for a scientific investigation of sleep deprivation as a motivated behaviour because the perspective can not convincingly provide a link between sleep deprivation and natural trait selection process. The final perspective of psychology to consider is the Behaviourist perspective. This perspective addresses how environmental stimuli influences behaviour by way of learning. This means that the relationship between observable behaviour and the external environment is the main focus of the study. Behaviourism was advanced by a Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov when he did a study an experimental study on a dog’s digestive system. In the course of the study, Pavlov accidentally discovered his dogs would start salivating on hearing a particular sound played regularly before mealtime, the same way they do when meals. Development such responses, Pavlov associated it with learning. Today’s psychologists have established that there are some biochemical transformations associated with learning which occur in brain cells and neural paths, (Westen, 2002). Behaviourism thus suggests that just like other animals, human beings would be motivated to display behaviours that are environmentally friendly (i.e. those that can be rewarded by environment) while avoiding those that are likely to be punished by the environment. According to Clark Hull, behaviourism can be explained through the Drive-reduction concept which holds that needs that are not fulfilled generate drives which then motivate behaviour. This theory holds that individuals deprived of their basic needs develop unpleasant tension which stimulated them to exhibit some behaviour. A reaction which follows aimed at tension reduction will be said to have been caused by Drive reduction. Drive reduction theories explain a wide range of behaviour patterns but falls short of explanation for some actions particularly those motivated by external stimuli. For instance, they can not explain why some individuals even when tired, may read novels all night long. Furthermore, stimuli sometimes stimulate drive states instead of purging them. These theories also fail to account for motives for stimulation formation, deal with innovation or shun boredom, which vary from one person to the other, (Westen et al, 2006). Behaviourism is likened to the metaphor; “human beings are like machines”. The machine movement must be triggered by some pushing (e.g. of a button). To experiment with this perspective, one must start by hypothesis formulation (prediction) of what would be the likely effect of some environmental occurrences to behaviour. The hypothesis can then be put to test in laboratory and results can be quantified by repeated controlled tests to make accurate deductions. For this reason, most psychologists agree with this approach to explain behaviour since thoughts associated with environment significantly control behaviour in the same way the environment does. I would recommend this perspective for the scientific investigation of sleep deprivation as a motivated behaviour because sleep deprivation is actually same as drive-reduction and this perspective can scientifically test sleep deprivation causes and effects by quantifiable data, (Westen et al, 2006). In summary, sleep deprivation is common in contemporary society and may look such unimportant issue of discussion to many. However, the consequences that come with it are substantial and significantly impact on an individual’s life quality. This will have multiplier and spill-over effects to the general society in as far as social-economic welfare and productivity are concerned. Alongside associated health problems, lack of enough sleep can also expose one to high accident risk. Studies indicate that between 1910 and 2002, the average nightly sleep hours were estimated to have dropped from 9 to 7, (Westen, 2002). It is necessary that society understand the impact of sleep deprivation in order to effectively deal with possible effects. An important way to start is by a scientific investigation of sleep deprivation through the Behavioural perspective recommended above which can provide for scientific experimenting of sleep as a motivated behaviour. References: Westen D, Burton L, & Kowalski R. (2006). Psychology: Australian and New Zealand edition, John Wiley & Sons. Westen D, Burton L, & Kowalski R. (2009). Psychology: Australian and New Zealand edition, John Wiley & Sons. Westen D. (2002). Psychology : mind, brain, and culture, Wiley. Wilson J.f (2005). Is Sleep The New Vital Sign. Annals of internal medicine, Volume 142-10 Nature.com. (2005). Waking up to the importance of sleep. Nature, vol .437/issue no.7063. Glossary: Sleep Deprivation- The lack of enough sleep Psychology- Describes the scientific way of inquiry into mental processes. Motivation- Refers to the force that persuades individual to behave in a given way; it is a force that directs behaviour. Behavaviourism- The perspective of motivation which argues that human beings pursue reinforcing behaviour and reject punishment associated behaviour. Cognitive perspective- A perspective of motivation which maintains that people pursue what they feel is of value and attainable. Evolutionary perspective- Theory that natural selection of animals for fitness optimization is evolution based. Humanistic perspective- Also known as the hierarchy of needs perspective maintains that behaviour is influenced by needs and the fulfilment of these needs starts from basic towards self actualisation needs. Psychodynamic perspective- Makes a distinction between conscious and unconscious motives which influence behaviour. Read More

The psychodynamic school of thought came up as a result of Freud’s response to patients whose symptoms were true but not related to mental disorders. During that time, irrational guilt displayed by patients for example as a result of loosing a beloved one did not have scientific explanation. This prompted Freud to make simple unreliable conclusion which went along way to influence intellectual historical configuration. According to Freud, the fact that the symptoms displayed by patients were not physically founded and that they were not consciously developed could only mean that the symptoms must have been unconsciously created.

Freud argued that people’s conscious intentions are driven by their own strong unconscious motives in the same way people possess conscious motives and desires. Freud further argued that individuals get excited and derive morbid curiosity satisfaction from looking at shocking scenes such as accidents on the road yet they don’t accept such feelings to be moral, (Westen et al, 2006). The psychodynamic perspective advances a biological foundation of motivation. Freud maintains that motives of human beings reflect their animal heritage because people are animals.

As a motivated behaviour, Freud would explain sleep deprivation under unconscious motivation. For example, a highly competitive student may argue that he is only competitive with oneself. Today, laboratory facts sustain difference between the conscious and unconscious motives based on self-reports by individuals. Thematic Appreciation Test (TAT) has been used by researchers to in the study unconscious motives. Using TAT, participants come up with a story based on a series of ambiguous pictures.

These stories are then coded by researchers to generate motivational themes. These coded motives highly predict the peoples’ behaviour over time. For instance, research shows that the frequency of achievement themes featuring in an individual’s story predicts his business success over several years, (Westen et al, 2006). The alternative formula to determine motivation would be to ask individuals whether success is important to them or not. There is a zero correlation between TAT’s inferred motives, conscious and unconscious motives.

This would be perceived to mean that one of the assessment criteria is invalid. However it may only be because individual measures predict specific behaviour. The question to address would be why the two measures can not predict each other, yet are able to predict the specified behaviour. According to McCllelland, it is so because the unconscious (implicit) motives are predicted by the TAT whereas the conscious (explicit) motives are predicted by self-reports, (Westen, 2002). I do not recommend psychodynamic perspective for scientific investigation of sleep deprivation because the measurement approach is not really convincing and is full of discrepancies.

Another approach to motivation is the Humanistic perspective (also known as the hierarchy of needs perspective) which was advanced by Abraham Maslow. Proponents of this school of thought argue on the basis of individual choice, self-worth and dignity as the vital aspects upon which behaviour should be explained. According to Maslow, the person’s desire to prosper motivates him to conquer all obstacles so as to attain personal fulfilment. To this end, argued Maslow, the hierarchy of needs plays the role of guiding individual behaviour.

The principle is that needs on the lower level of the hierarchy must be satisfied first before the higher level ones, (Wilson, 2005). The origin of the Humanistic perspective can be traced back to the period 1950-1960s when there emerged an approach to personality other than behaviourism and psychoanalysis approaches. Contrary to Maslow’s belief that individuals may live and focus on a single level of motives without going beyond it, in real life situation, several behaviours can be seen to exhibit more than one need.

For instance, participating into a contest can enrich an individual apart from esteem fulfilment and self actualisation derived, (Westen et al, 2009).

Read More