Defining Abnormality Essay

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Defining Abnormality Defining Abnormality Psychology has many challenges when defining and classifying normal and abnormal behavior because of cultural differences, gender or sexual preferences, and age of the person. A psychologist or doctor should be aware that these three factors and others can and do have an effect on defining a behavior as normal or abnormal. Behavior should be carefully classified as well because one of these factors could make a behavior seem difference and thus make the behavior be defined or classified wrongly. Culture To most it may seem easy to identify normal and abnormal behavior because people live in societies where the culture is the “norm” of everyday life. The fact is that normal and abnormal behavior is different between cultures and this difference makes it challenging to classify what exactly is normal and abnormal. Hansell & Damour (2008) describe it best “definitions and classifications of abnormal behavior vary considerably across different cultures and across different historical periods. As a result, we cannot make absolute, universal statements about what constitutes abnormal behavior, and we always need to be mindful of the cultural and historical lenses through which we view the concept of abnormality” (p.3). Different cultures have different practices in not only holidays but also in everyday life. Most people in the United States extend their hand to shake the hand as a friendly greeting while people in an Asian country prefer to bow as a greeting. It is these reasons that when defining normal and abnormal, culture has to be taken into consideration. There are many differences in cultures that one has to tread carefully when assessing a behavior as abnormal; a person could become offended. The writer of this text has been deployed to countries where the Arabic culture was encountered.
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