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Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

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Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#301

Post by phs318u »

johannbok wrote: post #282
lofatdairy wrote: post #226

Honestly, I'm a bit disappointed by the level of discourse this post has generated. I'm also an outspoken skeptic of findings in the field of psychology, but the article is quite well formed and well argued. If anything, accepting the nitpicking from a lot of these comments would result in psychology being _less_ rigorous and precise. A lot of psychology's problems comes from how readily available it seems to be to e…

As a psychiatrist, I'm just going to tip my toe into this conversation: I have not read the entire list. I read a good chunk of it. Almost everything on it is -not- stuff I see among my colleagues, and appears to be how psych stuff is presented /in popular media/ rather than in the profession. Which is fine if one targets this for the science media/science communication types, but it seems very odd to apparently have…

Perhaps it's targeted at psych professionals in respect of their discussions with non-psych professionals e.g. patients and their families.

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#302

Post by xmddmx »

0xedd wrote: post #280
lofatdairy wrote: post #226

Honestly, I'm a bit disappointed by the level of discourse this post has generated. I'm also an outspoken skeptic of findings in the field of psychology, but the article is quite well formed and well argued. If anything, accepting the nitpicking from a lot of these comments would result in psychology being _less_ rigorous and precise. A lot of psychology's problems comes from how readily available it seems to be to e…

What a load of nonsense. If one reads the article, one would find the absolute majority of the arguments are plain empty claims with little supporting evidence. Citing a single paper, usually over a decade old, is simply proving the opposite; as what they're saying is "out of the thousands of researches done on X (especially medicine), we only found one paper supporting our modern and liberal claim". And your example…

"modern and liberal claim"

It feels like you didn't read or understand the article.

Techincal fields (other than yours) also have rules for how to use techincal terms.

Arguing for clarity is not a "liberal" point of view (it's actually rather prescriptive, which is associated with more "convervative" viewpoints, but whatever).

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#303

Post by xmddmx »

runarberg wrote: post #129
MichaelCollins wrote: post #45

> Nevertheless, the attitude-change techniques used by so-called “brainwashers” are no different than standard persuasive methods identified by social psychologists, such as encouraging commitment to goals, manufacturing source credibility, forging an illusion of group consensus, and vivid testimonials The brainwashing techniques used by various cults, criminal gangs and regimes go far beyond these gentle methods. Pa…

> I sure hope social psychologists don't use torture. Read up on psychologist’s participation in the Guantanamo prison camp torture program. Indeed many psychologists did use torture, and it is something of a really dark spot in the history of the American Psychology Association.

I canceled my APA membership over this. People asked APA to condemn it and they did not. Weak sauce on my part (to just cancel) but yeah, that was not cool.

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#304

Post by astura »

thyrsus wrote: post #296
vvpan wrote: post #168

For the sake of the Hacker News audience I wish "introvert" was its own category and not under "Personality Type". It is baseless pseudo-science but comes up in tech-related circles all too often.

As (43) states, introversion is on a scale (a matter of degree) rather than a type (i.e. not like char vs. float). That it is persistent in a probabilistic sense is well established.

Well established by who?

A persistent is always claimed but my experience is very much to the contrary, both personal and observed in others.

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#305

Post by xmddmx »

stared wrote: post #277
NickM wrote: post #167

Glad to see "chemical imbalance" make the list. It is very common to see people use terms like "dopamine hit", "endorphin rush", "low serotonin", etc. in ways that don't make scientific sense. I assume people do it to sound knowledgeable or to make it sound like their ideas are backed by science, but neurotransmitters are vastly more complicated and subtle in their effects than is implied by these kinds of usages, an…

While I agree that the term should be on the list (as it is a catch-all term unlikely to describe a given phenomenon), it is not that "chemical imbalance" does not exist. For example, dopamine-related drugs relatively consistently lower ADHD symptoms. A given example that serotonin-reducing drugs can alleviate depression hardly makes the point. One common (and false) belief is that "depression is caused by low seroto…

Counterpoint: there are four families of Dopamine receptors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine_receptor

and 7 families of Serotonin receptors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-HT_receptor

and many of them have orthogonal effects.

When I teach abnormal psychology, I like to ask my students "If Prozac is an SSRI, it increases Serotonin receptor activity. However, LSD is a Sertonin agonist, so it also increases Serotonin receptor activity. Why therefore do Prozac and LSD not give the same experience?"

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#306

Post by xmddmx »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #158

I'm confused about (47). Isn't "empirical data" based on observation or experiment . Is this a typo? And non-empirical data is defined as an observation that one cannot formally measure, e.g. "I love/hate it." (47) Empirical data. “Empirical” means based on observation or experience. As a consequence, with the possible exception of information derived from archival sources, all psychological data are empirical (what…

In context, it's top-down vs. bottom-up:

Theory driven: "I think anxiety and depression are fundamentaly different, because of writings of Freud, Foo, and Bar"

Empirical: factor analysis of test data suggests anxiety and depression may actually be a single factor, perhaps there is a single biological mechanism underlying both?"

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#307

Post by xmddmx »

kensai wrote: post #185

I am surprised there is no mention of the word "histrionic" which is completely out-of-date and insulting to women.

This article was written in 2015, not 1960 is why.

Academic psychological research has been making great attempts to remove biased / inaccurate terms from the lexicon, and I encourage you to find a cite from the last 10 years that uses this term, other than in a historical sense. (Not saying it's impossible, just unlikely)

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#308

Post by andirk »

xmddmx wrote: post #299

I think the aritcle is pretty good (I have a strong disiagreement with one of the 50 terms, but otherwise I think they did a good job). I'm relatively new here at HN, but as a psychologist (who also dabbles in hacking) some of the reactions do support, sadly, the stereoytype that computer/engineer-types suffer anoagnosia (the lack of knowledge of what you do not know). Some engineers do not understand that the world…

With no definitive right answer but still a clear outcome from choices made, yeah that's a moving target compared to the solid rock of most math and CS work.

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#309

Post by astura »

yamazakiwi wrote: post #135
apienx wrote: post #80

"Passive aggressive" is another very often misused term IMHO.

Is the misuse because often people use that descriptor for someone who is aware they're expressing negative feelings indirectly?

It's misused as a descriptor for just plain aggressive behavior. I was telling someone my roommate was outside yelling at our neighbor about a car crash they caused a few days ago. He replied with "That's passive-aggressive."

I said "No it's not! Which part of what he's doing is passive?"

He agreed with me when I pointed it out.

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#310

Post by avaq »

MikePlacid wrote: post #262
l0b0 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, since they're not suggesting anything better they are not helping. It's like telling people "just don't do that if it's causing problems". Well, what's the alternative? We still have this concept we need to communicate effectively, of something that's hard but possible to learn if you spend a lot of energy on it, analogous to how you spend a lot of energy climbing a steep hill. Also, have you ever met anyone who…

> have you ever met anyone who thought "steep learning curve" was ambiguous? Yep, that’s me. When I first encountered this expression it seemed very strange to me (not exactly ambiguous since I guessed the meaning). I envisioned a plot, with a steep curve: x is time, but what’s on y? You see, there are no mountains where I’ve grown up… Eventually I’ve come to think of it: x is pleasure that you will be able to extrac…

> I envisioned a plot, with a steep curve: x is time, but what’s on y?

This question really got me thinking, because I've always envisioned a plot as well, but the phrase always made sense to me.

I realized that I think of x being "mastery" and y being "knowledge required". On such a plot, you'd see a steep curve if one needs a relatively large amount of knowledge to progress to the next level of mastery.

I've never thought of it differently, and so never realized that the phrase is ambiguous until reading the article. Upon reflection, it makes much more sense plotting time on x and mastery on y when talking about learning.

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