Given the opportunity to study an area of psychology I would choose clinical psychology. Helping people with psychological disorders and helping them understand themselves would be a great achievement and the wealth of knowledge can go both ways for the subject and doctor. There are many areas of study when reading about physiological disorders, one stick’s out like a sore thumb and that would be social anxiety disorder. Social anxiety is the fear of interaction with other people that brings on self-consciousness, feelings of being negatively judged and evaluated, and as a result, leads to avoidance. Just the task of public speaking can cause a waterfall of symptoms that can ruin somebody mentally and physically.
Social anxiety causes three sets of symptoms which burden the person experiencing the symptoms in terrible ways. The first is emotional symptoms which lead to intense worry for days, weeks, months, and prior to presentation. Extreme fear of being watched or judged by others, especially by people you do not know. And the fear others will know you are nervous. These are just one set of symptoms that can occur naturally and a large hurtle one must overcome.
Physical symptoms can also arise along with the emotional playing a big part in feeling distressed. Certain things may occur such as a red face or blushing, shortness of breath, upset stomach, shaking including a shaky voice, racing heart beat and tightness in your chest. Basically you feel like you are having a heart attack and you actually can put your body at harm with these symptoms and even pass out from lack of oxygen to your brain. Sweating and hot flashes also add to the mix and then you might feel out of control and just run away. What does one do when this happens? It is amazing how our brain can make physical symptoms so realistic to the point we are feeling like we are going to die.
Behavioral symptoms include, staying quite or hiding in the background of a social setting such as a classroom in order to escape embarrassment and notice, a need to always bring a buddy along wherever you go, and drinking alcohol before an event in order to calm nerves. These are all common factors in anxiety in adults and children can form them as well if not taught how to communicate within large groups. Symptoms can be treated with long term medicine being an anti-depressant or medicine to treat acute episodes, which would be medication only taken when symptoms occur or an early sign of symptoms arise.
My hypothesis would state “This study is designed to assess the hypotheses that students exposed to different peer groups and settings would suffer less social anxiety when having to speak publicly.” And the research question at hand would state “Why do people feel threatened when presenting to a group of peers, which cause them to experience emotional and physical distress.” These symptoms or should we say side effects can crumble somebody’s world if not dealt with properly. Symptoms experienced of distress can have long term effects that can cause health problems and even lead to death. It is important to seek and get help immediately so you can learn how to deal with your anxiety through non medicinal methods or through medicinal methods.
If I had to choose a form of research and methodology, I would entertain the experimental and control groups. The findings in our answers would be more accurate than other methodologies by two factors, the control group would be composed of people who do not receive the experimental treatment/drug, also when conducting the experiment these people would be randomly selected to be in this group. They would closely resemble the precipitants that are in the experimental group, or those receiving treatment. While they do not receive treatment, they do play a vital role in the research process. We would compare the experimental group to the control group to determine if the treatment had an effect. By conducting this type of experiment with actual people will show us how effective medicines can be in slowing down the physical and mental effects of anxiety.
In the study I have selected to conduct, ethically I would be honest with both sets of participants to an extent. With the experimental group I would explain the drug that would be given and why it’s being given. Also I would tell them about the study in whole and explain that we are giving the control group a placebo to see how they act as well. Now when speaking to the control group I would not tell them they are taking a placebo pill. I would debrief them at the end of the study as to why we had to give them a placebo, hoping that if they were successful they can have faith that the symptoms of anxiety cause by public speaking can be tamed from within. This would of course have to be approved by the board so I would be allowed to do so.
Research psychologists come up with conclusions by evaluating the data they gathered and determining whether or not their research hypotheses were supported. Not only would I give a questionnaire at the end of each experiment to my participants, but I would also examine past case studies. Examining past case studies would allow me to look for strong comparisons that went along with my own findings so that the information could be validated and used to treat social anxiety disorder.