applying psychologicalprinciples In the Community
How Emotions Are Made
Do you want to learn more about emotions and how they are made? The more you understand emotions, the more you may be able to further develop your regulation skills. The video below is a TED talk by Lisa Feldman Barrett, a psychologist and emotions researcher at Northeastern University who studies how the human brain, in conversation with the body and the world, regulates the body and creates mental events, such as episodes of emotion.
“Emotions are not made FOR you, they are made BY you.”
– Lisa Feldman Barrett
Dr. Barrett describes how understanding how emotions are created and experienced can help people regulate emotions like test anxiety – something that prevents some people from succeeding in college. Anxiety is an emotion that can often be refrained or appraised into another emotion, such as determination or excitement, and it is a learned skill. This understanding of how to reframe the interpretations of difficult emotions such as anxiety or nervousness, is another example of how we can change our lives using psychological science.
LINK TO LEARNING
The video linked here comes with a warning: Once we understand that we have some control over our emotions, we then have more responsibility for how we feel and behave. You might need to give up some long-held assumptions about emotions, such as allowing other people to “make you feel” certain ways.
TED talk[1]: You Aren’t at the Mercy of your Emotions, Your Brain Creates Them
Did anything in this talk change how you might think about your emotions? How hard or easy do you think it is to regulate emotion?
Words Matter
Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett also studies how words impact our brains and our bodies. Many species regulate each others’ nervous systems through sensory channels. For example, chemicals (such as pheromones), vocalizations, touch, smell, and vision are used by insects, mammals, and primates for communication that regulates nervous systems. Humans are unique in that they can use words as well as hugs, scents, and visuals. Our words can have a powerful impact on others – they can be a calming influence, then can trigger stress or fear, or they can affect trust and distrust. This is reflected in our nervous system, and can even be seen through brain scans. Words alone can influence activity in brain regions associated with movement, vision, and other bodily functions such as heart-rate, breathing, and the immune system.
LINK TO LEARNING
Listen to Dr. Feldman Barrett[2] describe this phenomenon in this short video.
Now that we understand the effect our words can have on other people’s nervous systems, we can reflect on the power we have to impact others’ experiences[3]. We don’t need a lot of money or expertise to use our words in an influential way in our communities daily.
For example, have you been told to always use “person-first language?” This is different from “first person.” For example, instead of referring to someone as “a homeless person,” (and thus centering homelessness), you would center the person by saying “a person experiencing homelessness.” The general recommendation is to center the humanity of a person rather than a characteristic, condition, or disability. However, it turns out that many people in the disability community, especially disability rights advocates, prefer identity first language. This is also true of many in the autistic community. Many people refer to themselves as “deaf” or “autistic,” rather than “a deaf person” or “a person with autism.”
There is no true consensus among these communities regarding person-first language, but the use of euphemisms such as “differently abled” or “special needs” that were created primarily by non-disabled people are often viewed as infantilizing or patronizing by disabled people. This is important information, because if someone insists on calling someone “special needs” and those words feel infantilizing to the person they are talking about, then that person’s nervous system will be stressed more than necessary. We can unknowingly cause distress in others with the words we choose to use. In fact, researchers have found that a positive identification with disability, across studies and populations, has been associated with better adaptation to disability (such as hope, optimism, quality of life), better engagement in care, lessened impact of ableism, and even lower depression and anxiety symptoms[4].
How can people outside of the disability community, such as teachers, classmates, neighbors, encourage positive identification with disability?
DEEPER DIVE: What is Disability?
The Center for Disease Control (CDC, www.cdc.gov)[5] defines disability as “ any condition of the body or mind that makes it more difficult for the person with the condition to do certain activities and interact with the world around them.”
The World Health Organization (WHO, www.who.int)[6] defines disability as resulting “from the interaction between individuals with a health condition, such as cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and depression, with personal and environmental factors including negative attitudes, inaccessible transportation and public buildings, and limited social support.”
Both definitions include three areas:
- Impairment
- Activity limitation
- Participation restrictions
This encompasses conditions that are both acquired (by accident or injury) or congenital (at birth) and can vary among several dimensions such as visibility, modality (physical, mental, sensory), and chronicity (temporary, chronic). Depending on who is included in the definition, estimates vary regarding the number of disabled people. The CDC estimates that 27% of adults in the U.S. have some type of disability, and the WHO estimates that 16% of the world’s population experiences disability.
Models of Disability
Disability has been and still is viewed in different ways – and this impacts the frequency and strength of barriers and opportunities to education, meaningful work, healthy relationships, and more. Several models, or ways of thinking about disability are described below.
Moral model: This model recognizes that disability has meaning (often, but not always negative) about the person’s character or actions.
Medical Model: In this model, disability is seen as inherently pathological (the “problem” is in the disabled person).
Social Model: In this model, disability reflects a mismatch between the person and environment – the environment and society create disability, not disabled people.
Cultural Model: This model, in which disability represents a valued social identity, is more recent and is getting more attention. Here, disability is included in the definition of “diversity.”
Are any of these models more familiar to you than others? How could each of them benefit or cause harm for a disabled person?
Language and Disability: Relevance for the Psychology Student
So what do we do to avoid unknowingly stressing other people’s nervous systems? The best thing to do is to just ask a person how they want to be addressed and to be mindful of common phrases that are rooted in ableism and negative attitudes about disability. Language is important when it comes to attitude, and the avoidance of the word “disabled” has been seen as having negative consequences. In fact, there is a movement called #Saytheword that encourages people to add the word “disability” back into their language[7].
Adding the word “disability” back into our language as a valued social identity can improve our communities for disabled people. We know that the extent of disability experienced by an individual is significantly influenced by their environment. Inaccessible spaces can create obstacles that make engaging in basic activities such as healthcare, education, and employment difficult. In communities where spaces and experiences are built with accessibility in mind, disabled people will both have more opportunities and feel more like they belong in that community[8]. Accessibility ranges from physical access to spaces, (steps, ramps, elevators, wide enough doorways and walkways, seating) to digital access (text to speech, visibility of text and images, reading level, usability of websites and digital forms) and more. These considerations can change th environment so that the disability is not as much of a barrier.
Traditional education spaces are environments that are often experienced as inaccessible. Recent estimates show that at least 12-13% of college students have a disability that impacts their learning. And yet, only about 6% of students access accommodations in the college classroom. Some students say they don’t access accommodations just as extended time on tests because they feel it is cheating – as do many non-disabled students. The reasoning behind classroom accommodations, however, is to level the playing field. If it takes me an hour to do something it only takes you a half hour to do, and I am only given half an hour, then I cannot demonstrate my knowledge or learn to my full capacity. You don’t need more than 30 minutes – in fact, providing more time for students who don’t need it does not improve test scores. Next time you hear someone saying that it’s not okay to access extended time accommodations, could you speak up and try to change their mind?
If you, your family or friends, or your classmates are disabled, this conversation might seem relevant. But even if none of the above are true, the psychology student needs to pay attention to language and accessibility. The American Psychological Association has guidelines on inclusive language to be used in writing and other forms of communication in psychology, and there are basic accessibility considerations for anything you create that will be “consumed” by the general public. These should be consulted when completing assignments and projects in your classes. For example, the following list from the APA guidelines suggests terms to avoid and alternatives. Note that many of these options use person-first language; the distinction between person-first and identity-first is less important here. The focus is on traditionally used terms that should be avoided and what to use instead.
| Terms to avoid |
Suggested alternative |
| special needs, handi-capable, differently abled | person with a disability, disabled person |
| physically/mentally challenged | person with intellectual disabilities, physically disabled |
| visually challenged | blind |
| person who is deaf | Deaf person or Deaf-Blind |
| wheelchair-bound, confined to a wheelchair | person who uses a wheelchair, wheelchair user |
| mentally ill, crazy, insane, mental defect, suffers from or is afflicted with [condition] | person living with a mental illness or with a mental health disorder; person with a diagnosis of a mental illness/mental health disorder/behavioral health disorder |
| drug user/abuser, addict | person who uses drugs, person with substance use disorder |
| alcoholic, alcohol abuser | person with alcohol use disorder
person in recovery from substance use/alcohol disorder |
| relapsed | returned to use |
| homeless people, the homeless, transient populations | people who are not securely housed, or experiencing homelessness or food/housing insecurity; people experiencing unsheltered homelessness; guests who are accessing homeless services |
| prostitute | person who engages in sex work; sex worker (abbreviated as SWer) |
| prisoner, convict | person who is/has been incarcerated |
| slave | person who is/was enslaved |
For more information on person-first and identity-first language, please refer to the APA bias-free language guidelines for writing about disability
DID YOU KNOW?
- Barrett, Lisa Feldman. “You Aren’t at the Mercy of Your Emotions -- Your Brain Creates Them.” Www.ted.com, 2 Jan. 2018 ↵
- Next Big Idea Club. “The Power of Words: How They Shape Your Mind and Body.” YouTube, 1 Dec. 2020, youtu.be/XKgLvSXTL9U?si=4qSY8meimmh8RqqT. Accessed 1 Aug. 2024. ↵
- Martin H. Teicher, M.D., Ph.D., Jacqueline A. Samson, Ph.D., Yi-Shin Sheu, M.A., Ann Polcari, R.N., Ph.D., and Cynthia E. McGreenery. Hurtful Words: Association of Exposure to Peer Verbal Abuse With Elevated Psychiatric Symptom Scores and Corpus Callosum Abnormalities Published Online:1 Dec 2010 https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2010.10010030 ↵
- Dunn & Burcaw 2013, Forber-Pratt, Lyew, Mueller & Samples, 2017 ↵
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Disability and Health Data System (DHDS) [Internet]. Available from: http://dhds.cdc.gov ↵
- World Health Organization, International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) Geneva: 2001, WHO. ↵
- Andrews, E. E., Forber-Pratt, A. J., Mona, L. R., Lund, E. M., Pilarski, C. R., & Balter, R. (2019). #SaytheWord: A disability culture commentary on the erasure of “disability”. Rehabilitation Psychology, 64(2), 111–118. https://doi.org/10.1037/rep0000258 ↵
- Dunn & Burcaw 2013, Forber-Pratt, Lyew, Mueller & Samples, 2017 ↵
- Telhan, R., McNeil Ba, K. M., Lipscomb-Hudson, A. R., Guobadia, E. L., & Landry, M. D. (2020). Reckoning With Racial Trauma in Rehabilitation Medicine. Archives of physical medicine and rehabilitation, 101(10), 1842–1844. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apmr.2020.07.001 ↵
This is a specialty area focused on the study and application of psychological knowledge and skills on behalf of people with chronic health conditions and disabilities. The goal is to maximize health, independence, functional abilities, and social roles - such as relationships, parenting, and employees - across the lifespan. Training in this area is in clinical, developmental, or social psychology, and sometimes other domains as well. Read more about this important area at the APA Division 22 Website.