Four Primary Goals of Psychology

Four primary goals of psychology are describe, explain, predict and control the behaviour and mental processes of others (Vozzola et al., 2016). Describe: The considering John’s situation, it can be described that John is suffering from workplace stress or job related stress. This is quite evident from his reporting where he says that he feels stressed and anxious under the working environment and thus would lie to have more energy after the end of his work. The possible explanation underlying with job stress might include long duty hours (8 to 10 hours of duty) in restaurant starting from Monday to Friday and hectic work schedule like he is required to stand and walk while cooking. Kale (2020) stated that the people who work as chef in restaurant often suffer from work-related stress leading to development of anxiety due to constant pressure of cooking food on time while maintaining the quality and the presentation of the food.  Job stress might be due to his job dissatisfaction and his age, John is only 23 years old. Kale (2020) stated that the young adults who are working as fresher in job often suffer from job related stress due to poor pay structure or high workload leading to development of stress. John’s however, has standard duty hours with two days fixed off during the weekends, thus, he can be predicted that John is not happy with his work profile leading to the development of stress and anxiety. From the case study, it can be predicted that John is more like a sports or adventurous person. The case study states that he enjoys swimming, skateboarding and biking during the summer. He also loves to play racquet sports with his friends and loves to go to gym. He was also involved in boxing classes in his teens. He basically feels drained out after long day of tiring work. According to the Erickson theory of the psychosocial needs, stage six deals with intimacy vs isolation (age 18 to 40 years). According to this stage, avoiding intimacy or fearing commitment and other relationships can lead to the development of isolation leading to the generation of loneliness and at times development of depression. Success at this stage of life leads to the attainment of the virtue of love (Darling-Fisher, 2019). In case of John he is avoiding commitment at work and at love relationships as he is not feeling confident enough to start dating. This is leading to isolation and thus development of stress. Under the behavioural expression and mental process, it can be stated that John is feeling energy deficient due to lack of companionship and poor level of job satisfaction and this is the reason why he feel stressed and anxious. Due to his energy deficiency, he is no longer feeling comfortable in his own skin leading to the generation of poor mental health condition.

Biological, Behavioural, and Sociocultural Perspectives

From the biological perspective, it can be stated that John is missing is sports routine and exercise habits. Moreover, lack of sedentary exposure of his work is making him feeling drained out every day. Lack of resistance training at gym or complete lack of cardio is hampering his healthy lifestyle habits and thus hampering his metal heal and well-being. From the behavioural perspective, it can be stated that John is in dearth of self-esteem needs and self-actualization needs as per the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. According to the self-esteem needs feeling of prestige and feeling of accomplishment is important for satisfying the psychological needs of a person (Fallata & Syed, 2018). However, John is not satisfied with his professional life and also lacks confidence in initiating dating with a girl and thus surfacing his behavioural issues. According to the self-actualization need, achieving one’s complete potential like creative activities is important for the fulfilment of the self needs. John is unable to fulfil his self needs as he is unable to resume his gym 2 to 3 times a week and thus leading to job stress and anxiousness. From the socio-cultural perspective, it can be stated that job is going through the phase of intimacy vs isolation where virtue is love as indicated by Erikson theory (discussed in the previous section).

Descriptive Style Research

The assignment is called case study because it deals with the case of John. It fits with the descriptive style research method as the case study provides accurate and systematic information about any specific population, here is the young adults along with a proper description of the phenomenon. Here the phenomenon is job stress and lack of companionship in life. The case study is also capable of answering the several questions like what, when, where and how (Willig & Rogers, 2017).

Pain and smell

The first senses that can be connected with John’s condition include pain.  John job role compels him to stand and cook food for 8 to 10 hours at a stretch. This might be a reason why he dislikes jogging outdoors as he complains that it puts too much of stress over his body and also experiences pain in his joints and muscles in his legs afterwards. Wixted and Serences (2018) stated that sensation of pain in joints decrease the overall quality of life of the working individuals and thus increasing the mental stress. Under the sensation of smell, it can be stated that chef are exposed to several different kind of smell while cooking their food and continuous exposure to different types of smell create stress over the olfactory neurons leading to the overall generation of mental stress in certain cases (Wixted & Serences, 2018).

Perceptual sets

Perceptual set can be defined as a tendency to perceive or to notice certain aspects of the available sensory data while ignoring others. Individual factors like motivation, personal expectations and culture influence the manner in which one interacts with the surrounding world. Alternatively it can be stated that our tendency to pay attention towards certain things while ignoring others in the front of new data can be regarded as perceptual set. In this case John is focusing on his inability to take spontaneously participation in the sports or physical exercise regime and looking at the negative aspects of his job. It would be wise for John to arrange his personal and professional schedule accordingly so that he can make good use of the weekends and design his physical regime and social participation (Tuma & Maser, 2019).

Sleep deprivation

Anxiety leads to the generation of sleeping problems and latest research highlights that deprivation of sleep can further lead to the generation of anxiety related disorder. At present, John is suffering from anxiety related disorder. Pires et al. (2016) stated that increased level of anxiety is widely recognized as one of the important consequences of sleep deprivation. Alternatively, increased level of anxiety hampers sound sleep at night leading to insomnia like condition and increasing the chance of developing stress. In case of John, it can be stated that anxiety related to work stress is causing sleep deprivation and thus hampering his mental health condition. However, it must be taken into taken into consideration that sleep deprivation and not sleep restriction leads to the development of anxiety and stress.

Classical conditioning

De Houwer (2020) stated that central to several etiological accounts of anxiety related disorders can be treated as classical fear conditioning. It can be termed as a evolutionary conserved learning process via which a neutral conditioned stimulus develops the capacity to generate fear following any co-occurrence of aversive unconditioned stimulus. In this case, it can be stated that initially John used to get depressed upon gaining weight or poor body image. However, at present inability to joining gym is making him feel depressed and this is hampering his professional role.

Operant conditioning

Operant conditioning is a method of learning the mainly occurs through rewards and punishments for the behaviours. Via operant conditioning an individual makes an direct association between any definite behaviour or other consequences. Thus operant conditioning can be used in case of John for the effective treatment of the anxiety (Tanner & Craske, 2020). In case of John it can be giving rewards and recognition to the John in his workplace. Proper distribution of rewards and recognition will help to increase job satisfaction of John and thus helping to reduce his level of anxiety and stress. The reinforcement of the operant conditioning can be implemented by the use of the cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) (Tanner & Craske, 2020). The proper use of CBT will help John to focus on the job rewards and recognition and important of having week end holidays and thus helping him to recover from stress.

Observational learning

Observational learning in case of John can be done by asking John get self-motivated by taking examples from his seniors in the workplace. Observational learning will help John to develop self-coping skills and at the same time will help to increase ability to manage his professional and personal life accordingly (Burnside, Fischer & Ullsperger, 2019).

Interference

New fitness program might increase his physical stress and this might interfere the balance between his personal and professional life. It will increase his muscle stress and thus increasing his level of pain as John is mainly loves to conduct resistance training and not cardio. Resistance training might lead to the development of muscle spasm leading unwanted absenteeism (Iversen et al., 2018).

References

Burnside, R., Fischer, A. G., & Ullsperger, M. (2019). The feedback‐related negativity indexes prediction error in active but not observational learning. Psychophysiology, 56(9), e13389. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.13389

Darling-Fisher, C. S. (2019). Application of the modified Erikson psychosocial stage inventory: 25 years in review. Western Journal of Nursing Research, 41(3), 431-458. https://doi.org/10.1177/0193945918770457

De Houwer, J. (2020). Revisiting classical conditioning as a model for anxiety disorders: A conceptual analysis and brief review. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 127, 103558. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2020.103558

Fallatah, R. H. M., & Syed, J. (2018). A critical review of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In Employee Motivation in Saudi Arabia (pp. 19-59). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67741-5_2

Iversen, V. M., Vasseljen, O., Mork, P. J., & Fimland, M. S. (2018). Resistance training vs general physical exercise in multidisciplinary rehabilitation of chronic neck pain: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of rehabilitation medicine, 50(8), 743-750. 
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Kale, E. (2020). Attachment styles and job performance in the hospitality industry: the mediating role of general self-efficacy. Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality & Tourism, 19(1), 23-42. https://doi.org/10.1080/15332845.2020.1672244

Pires, G. N., Bezerra, A. G., Tufik, S., & Andersen, M. L. (2016). Effects of acute sleep deprivation on state anxiety levels: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Sleep medicine, 24, 109-118.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2016.07.019

Tanner, A. S., & Craske, M. G. (2020). Cognitive-Behavioral Concepts of Anxiety. The American Psychiatric Association Publishing Textbook of Anxiety, Trauma, and OCD-Related Disorders, 91.

Tuma, A. H., & Maser, J. D. (Eds.). (2019). Anxiety and the anxiety disorders. Routledge.

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Willig, C., & Rogers, W. S. (Eds.). (2017). The SAGE handbook of qualitative research in psychology. Sage.

Wixted, J. T., & Serences, J. (2018). Stevens’ Handbook of Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Sensation, Perception, and Attention (Vol. 2). John Wiley & Sons.