Mental Illness

The film also displayed normative influence, conformity based on a person's desire to fulfill others expectations, often to gain acceptance (Myers). During the first five minutes of voting the 12 jurors are asked to raise their hands in favor of guilty or not guilty. Only some hands were raised quickly while the rest of the jurors waited to see what the others would choose. This effect reminded me of Ash's studies of group pressure in chapter 6. In this study Asch had people listen to other's judgments of which of three comparison lines was equal to a standard line and then make the same judgment themselves. When the other unanimously gave a wrong answer, the participants conformed 37% of the time (Asch,197)

The perspective that I believe will be the most helpful in understanding mental illness would be the Behavior Genetics perspective. The reason being is because it deals with "how much of our genes and environment influences individual differences." When one deals with a mental illness it can result from someone else in the family that has been diagnosed with one making an individual more susceptible to a mental illness or the person was simply predisposed to environmental stressors like toxins, alcohol, drugs and things of that nature. One must keep in mind that a mental illness is not only labeled as being "bipolar" or schizophrenic" but it can also be phobias, fears, eating disorders, etc. With that being said I would like to go back to environmental factors and state that a mental illness can also arise from childhood problems such as child abuse or adult problems like being an alcoholic or severe drug abuser. In class we agreed that if a child is "aggressive" then it can result from watching violence on TV, watching his/her parents be aggressive, or it can be in his/her genes to behave/become an aggressive child. The same thing can result with a mental illness it can be in the person's genes to become an alcohol abuser, drug abuser, or a child molester. Another mental illness such as Anorexia can also result from environmental factors, such as living with a bunch of thin models, because it can force a woman to starve herself to fit in with

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