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The adaptive function of mood change
Author(s) -
Price John
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
british journal of medical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.102
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 2044-8341
pISSN - 0007-1129
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8341.1998.tb01003.x
Subject(s) - agonistic behaviour , psychology , set (abstract data type) , mood , unison , psychopathology , function (biology) , ranking (information retrieval) , de escalation , social psychology , adaptive strategies , cognitive psychology , aggression , clinical psychology , artificial intelligence , computer science , medicine , history , physics , archaeology , evolutionary biology , acoustics , biology , programming language , intensive care medicine
It is useful to imagine an ‘agonistic strategy set’, containing the two alternative and mutually incompatible strategies of escalation and de‐escalation. The strategy set is accessed by loss, threat or some other form of ‘ranking stress’. It is further suggested that ranking stress is dealt with relatively independently at three levels of the brain/mind, so that an agonistic strategy set is deployed at each of the three levels. Normally, all three levels escalate or de‐escalate in unison, but sometimes lower level de‐escalation is associated with middle or higher level escalation, and then the resolution of agonistic situations is delayed and psychopathology may be recognized.