maladaptive
(adjective)
Showing inadequate or faulty adaptation to a new situation.
(adjective)
Showing inadequate response to a new situation.
Examples of maladaptive in the following topics:
-
Coping with Stress
- All coping strategies have the adaptive goal of reducing or dealing with stress, but some strategies can actually be maladaptive (unhealthy) or merely ineffective.
- Maladaptive behaviors are those that inhibit a person’s ability to adjust to particular situations.
- Coping strategies can also be positive (adaptive) or negative (maladaptive).
- Maladaptive strategies include dissociation, sensitization, numbing out, anxious avoidance of a problem, and escape.
- Give examples of adaptive and maladaptive strategies for coping with stress
-
Cognitive and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies
- Cognitive and cognitive-behavioral therapies address the interplay between dysfunctional emotions, maladaptive behaviors, and biased cognitions.
- The basic tenet of CBT is that emotions (both adaptive and maladaptive) occur because of our interpretation of an event, not because of the event itself.
- CBT assumes that changing maladaptive thinking leads to change in affect and behavior.
- Consequently, helping clients to develop more adaptive strategies to cope with their emotions should help patients improve their maladaptive behaviors.
- Cognitive biases are maladaptive patterns of judgment, whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion.
-
Behavior Therapy and Applied Behavioral Analysis
- Behavior therapy is based on the idea that maladaptive behavior is learned, and thus adaptive behavior can also be learned.
- It applies the principles of operant conditioning, classical conditioning, and observational learning to eliminate inappropriate or maladaptive behaviors and replace them with more adaptive responses.
- The basic premise is that the individual has learned behaviors that are problematic and maladaptive, and so he or she must learn new behaviors that are adaptive.
-
Introduction to Psychotherapy
- Cognitive therapy seeks to identify maladaptive cognitions (thoughts), appraisals, beliefs, and reactions, with the aim of influencing destructive negative emotions.
- CBT combines cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy to address maladaptive cognitions as well as dysfunctional behaviors.
-
Evaluating the Psychodynamic Approach to Personality
- The psychodynamic model states that psychological disorders stemmed from maladaptive defenses against unconscious, internal conflicts.
-
Behavioral Psychology
- In his theory, mental disorders represented maladaptive behaviors that were learned and could be unlearned through behavior modification.
-
Evaluation of Psychological Therapy Options
- Behavior therapy focuses on behavior and uses the scientific method as a means of approaching maladaptive behaviors.
-
Cluster A: Paranoid, Schizoid, and Schizotypal Personality Disorders
- People with STPD usually underestimate the maladaptiveness of their social isolation and perceptual distortions; they tend to consider themselves to be simply eccentric, creative, or nonconformist.
-
Attitudes
- Leon Festinger proposed the cognitive-dissonance theory (1957), which states that a powerful motive to maintain cognitive consistency can give rise to irrational and sometimes maladaptive behavior.
-
Classifying Abnormal Behavior: The DSM
- Symptoms were not specified in detail for specific disorders, and many were seen as reflections of broad underlying conflicts or maladaptive reactions to life problems, rooted in a distinction between neurosis and psychosis.