Unit 24: Treatment and Its Evidence Base
Which treatments for psychological disorders actually hold up when tested the same rigorous way a new drug would be, and which don't.
4 topics · 14 questions
Each topic is a path, not a menu: work down it in order and every question builds on the one above. Click any of them to watch the answer draw itself.
Psychodynamic Therapy vs. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
- How it worksHow does psychodynamic therapy target unconscious conflict while cognitive behavioral therapy directly targets distorted thoughts and behaviors?
- Going furtherWhat happens to treatment outcomes when cognitive behavioral therapy is compared head-to-head with psychodynamic therapy across many disorders?
- Common mistakeWhy isn't one single type of therapy proven to work best for every disorder and every patient?
Your turn1 of 2
One therapist treats a patient's anxiety by exploring early childhood relationships and unresolved unconscious conflicts, while another therapist treats the exact same anxiety by directly targeting the patient's current distorted thoughts and avoidance behaviors. A student assumes both approaches must ultimately be doing the same thing, just described with different vocabulary. How does psychodynamic therapy target unconscious conflict while cognitive behavioral therapy directly targets distorted thoughts and behaviors?Exposure Therapy and Extinguishing Fear
- How it worksHow does repeated, safe exposure to a feared stimulus extinguish the conditioned fear response that classical conditioning built?
- Worked exampleFind why gradual exposure therapy for a fear of flying starts with looking at pictures of planes before ever boarding one.
- Ties togetherHow does exposure therapy's logic connect directly back to classical conditioning's extinction process?
Your turn1 of 2
Someone with a severe fear of dogs is treated by being gradually and repeatedly exposed to dogs in a safe, controlled setting, the exact thing that feels most unbearable to them at first. A student assumes deliberately confronting a feared object should logically make the fear worse, not better. How does repeated, safe exposure to a feared stimulus extinguish the conditioned fear response that classical conditioning built?How a Randomized Controlled Trial Tests a Treatment
- How it worksHow does randomly assigning patients to a treatment group and a control group rule out the same confounds that any other experiment has to rule out?
- Worked exampleFind why a treatment showing an effect size of 0.8 in a randomized trial is considered a strong result, while 0.1 is considered weak.
- Common mistakeWhy isn't a patient's improvement after treatment enough, by itself, to prove the treatment caused it?
- Going furtherWhat happens to a treatment's apparent effectiveness once you compare a randomized trial's results to a study using only volunteers who chose the treatment themselves?
- Ties togetherHow does testing a therapy's evidence base connect back to the same logic of controlled experiments used everywhere else in psychology?
Your turn1 of 2
A treatment shows an effect size of 0.927. Using the rough benchmark that an effect size of 0.1 is considered weak, find how many times larger this treatment's effect is than that weak benchmark.Antidepressants and the Placebo Response
- How it worksHow does a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial isolate an antidepressant's true chemical effect from the act of simply receiving treatment?
- Worked exampleFind what a modest average effect size for antidepressants over placebo actually implies about how many patients benefit specifically from the drug's chemistry.
- Common mistakeWhy doesn't a strong placebo response mean depression is not a real, biologically grounded illness?
Your turn1 of 2
In clinical trials, sugar pills lift depression by about two-thirds as much as real antidepressants do. If a real antidepressant produces a 16 point improvement on a standard depression scale, find how many points the placebo alone would be expected to produce.