Inhibition (psychology)
In psychology, inhibition refers to the conscious or unconscious self-restraint of behavior, where individuals resist responding to specific stimuli or triggers. This concept can have both positive and negative implications: it can prevent harmful actions, such as aggression or poor decision-making, or it can inhibit constructive behavior, leading to anxiety or missed opportunities. The term "inhibition" has historical roots in Latin, where it originally denoted prohibition by authority figures, reflecting how societal norms can influence individual behavior. Notable psychologists, including Sigmund Freud, Ivan Pavlov, and Charles S. Sherrington, explored inhibition in different contexts. Freud viewed it as a conflict within the mind, while Pavlov's experiments illustrated how conditioned responses could be inhibited. Sherrington introduced a more physiological perspective, discussing how nerve activity could either enable or restrict actions. Inhibition is also linked to anxiety, as individuals may feel pressured to conform to social norms, which can lead to discomfort in situations like eating or expressing emotions. Ultimately, while inhibitions can protect against negative behaviors, they can also hinder personal expression and lead to psychological challenges.
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Inhibition (psychology)
Inhibition is a psychological term that generally refers to the conscious or unconscious self-restriction of behavior. It usually refers to a person's tendency to resist responding to a stimulus or trigger for a certain behavior. Inhibitions can be good, when they prevent acting in an unacceptable way, or bad, when they prevent a person from responding in a way that would be seen as appropriate or beneficial. There are also several different and more specific definitions of inhibition used in different branches of psychology.
Background
The word inhibition comes from the Latin verb inhibere, which became ihibitio in the noun form, meaning "to hold back" or "to hold in" in the sense that something was forbidden or prohibited. This became inhibition in Middle English around the fourteenth century. It originally referred to a legal prohibition by a political or ecclesiastical (church related) authority.
The idea of holding back or inhibiting behaviors is a very old one. Countless legal, political, moral, or religious authorities have issued guidelines, rules, and other proscriptions for how people should and should not act. Aside from these, it is likely that even the earliest humans restricted or inhibited their behavior in some way. This could have been as simple as not taking the last piece of food to allow a companion to have some, even when the self-preservation instinct would direct one to eat.
While these inhibitions or restrictions—voluntary or not—existed as long as humankind, the use of the word inhibition to describe them came about in the nineteenth century. This was a time of intense scientific study of the human mind and behavior. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, various scientists with different approaches to psychology found diverse applications for the concept of self-restricted behavior. These researchers included Austrian Sigmund Freud, Russian Ivan Pavlov, and Englishman Charles S. Sherrington.
Overview
In its most general usage, an inhibition refers to a restriction a person places on himself or herself to not act, speak, or function in a certain way. The word's early connection to the idea of an authority prohibiting an action under pain of punishment provides some insight into how psychologists initially tied the word to behaviors that a person does not do out of fear or self-consciousness. For example, an employee with a loud and aggressive boss might not speak up when the boss blames the employee for something the boss did out of fear of the boss's reaction, or someone asked to sing a song might be unable to do so out of concern for the reaction of others.
Freud saw inhibition as resulting from a conflict between the ego and the id. He defined the ego as the rational part of the human mind and the id as the more primitive part of the mind where impulses and desires originate. According to Freud, an inhibition is the id's attempt to exert control over the ego. He saw inhibitions mostly in the negative sense of preventing someone from doing something they should do or wanted to do out of fear or self-consciousness, or some other internal mental conflict.
Pavlov's study of behavior is best known for his experiments that conditioned dogs to respond to a nontraditional stimulus (a light or sound) to trigger an unrelated response (salivating in anticipation of food). This became known as classical conditioning. During his experiments with classical conditioning, Pavlov noted that when an animal or person was trained to produce a response to a stimulus other than the usual one, the usual stimulus often stopped producing the response. For instance, if a dog that normally barked when the doorbell rang was ignored when barking but it was given a treat when it stopped barking and sat down, the dog could be trained to not bark and sit down when the doorbell rang. Pavlov said that in this form of conditioning, the dog's behavior of barking at the doorbell ringing was extinguished. However, he said that the dog did not forget to bark when the doorbell rang. Instead, the dog was inhibiting or resisting its impulse to bark to get the treat. The dog intentionally self-restricted its instinctive behavior to gain a reward.
Sherrington took a more physiological approach to the concept of inhibition. It was he who coined the word synapse in relation to the activity of nerves. Sherrington also introduced the idea that the activity of nerves could be inhibited and that the way muscles could either contract or flex happened because of nerve responses that were either excitatory (causing action) or inhibitory (restricting action). While this was a more physiological use of the term than a psychological one, it involved the idea of something (a reaction) being restricted either intentionally or unintentionally.
The study of inhibition was important to psychologists in the early part of the twentieth century. Some attributed anxiety to the effort required to inhibit certain behaviors. It was thought that anxiety was the body's response to the fears evoked of trying to maintain inhibitions. For example, if a child who was afraid that she would get in trouble if she got her clothes dirty might begin to inhibit her activities, such as playing and possibly even eating, in an effort to avoid situations that might cause her to dirty her clothes. Since not all of these situations are avoidable—eating is necessary for survival—the child might become anxious when she had to eat because she could not honor the inhibition.
Some studies have found a connection between thwarted inhibitions and addiction. Psychologists believe addictive behaviors are sometimes a result of an inability to control some aspect of a person's life. If an addiction is under control but the person's ability to control another aspect of life is taken away, the person's addictive behavior may return. For example, someone with an eating disorder that is under control finds herself taking care of an elderly relative who is difficult to handle and verbally abusive. The person's inclination is to stand up for herself and tell the relative to stop the verbal abuse, but she feels she must stop herself because the relative is elderly and ill. Psychologists say the lack of control brought on by the inhibition could trigger the return of the eating disorder.
While many psychologists studied the effects of negative inhibitions, the ability to restrict impulses can be good. Inhibitions prevent people from engaging in behaviors that could be destructive, such as eating or drinking too much. They can also keep people from saying things that hurt others' feelings or are inappropriate.
Bibliography
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Erdelyi, Matthew Hugh. "The Unified Theory of Repression." Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 29, 2006, pp. 499–551, www.memorycontrol.net/Erdelyi(2006).pdf. Accessed 8 June 2017.
Frohlich, Joel. "Excitation and Inhibition: The Yin and Yang of the Brain." Psychology Today,19 Jan. 2017, www.psychologytoday.com/blog/consciousness-self-organization-and-neuroscience/201701/excitation-and-inhibition-the-yin-and. Accessed 8 June 2017.
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"Inhibitory Control Abilities among Young Children in the Child Welfare System." National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being, www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/inhibitory‗control.pdf. Accessed 8 June 2017.
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