E.g. A mother tells a child they are not affectionate enough, but pushes the child away when they show affection. Or, receiving two contradictory messages from each parent. This puts the child in an impossible position where they can't act in one way without it going against one of their parent's wants.

P: There are individual differences in patients' responses to family dysfunction.

E: Just because a child grew up in a family that showed a high degree of expressed emotion, doesn't necessarily mean that this will cause them to display a stress response and develop schizophrenia. Furthermore, some schizophrenia patients are raised in families with minimal conflict, and a low degree of expressed emotion, haven't experienced any double binds, but still develop the disorder.

E: Therefore, the family dysfunction explanation can't explain all cases of schizophrenia, suggesting that there may be other explanations and family dysfunction itself may not cause schizophrenia, but could just increase the risk of developing it.

P: There is research support for the effect of double binds on the development of schizophrenia

E: Berger conducted interviews and found that people with schizophrenia were more able to recall experiences of double binds from their childhood in comparison to the control group

E: This supports the idea that double binds can influence whether a child develops symptoms of schizophrenia, strengthening the psychological explanation.

P: However, Berger's study used a self-report technique.

E: This presents issues such as people misremembering experiences from their childhood or lacking objectivity due to impaired reasoning processes. Or, if the researcher asked leading questions, they may have been responding to demand characteristics caused by investigator effects.

E: Therefore, although participants claimed to have experienced a lot of double-bind situations in their childhood, it is possible that they weren't remembering events accurately, especially considering schizophrenia patients have dysfunctional mental processes (cognitive explanation). As a result, self-report may not be a suitable method for schizophrenia patients, weakening Berger's research as support for the psychological explanation