Approaches

Question 1

Wihelm Wundt

Answer 1

Established the first psychology lab in Germany.
Aimed to measure the nature of human consciousness in a carefully controlled, scientific environment.
Method of introspection - first systematic experimental attempt to study the mind.
Conscious awareness is broken up into thoughts, images and sensations.

Question 2

Evaluation of Wundt’s work

Answer 2

✓ He issued the same standardised procedures to all participants - can be replicated.
✓ Wundt’s work is significant as it marked the separation of modern scientific psychology from its philosophical roots (lab experiment)
✗ Some aspects of research aren’t scientific - they self-reported their ‘private’ mental processes = subjective data.
✗ Wundt made general laws that may not apply to everyone.

Question 3

Emergence of psychology as a science

Answer 3

1900 - behaviourists rejected introspection (Watson) - data was subjective, scientific psychology should be observable and measurable.
1930 - behaviourist scientific approach dominated psychology (Skinner)
1950 - cognitive approach used scientific procedures to study mental processes
1990 - biological approach introduced technological advances - fMRI, EEG, advanced genetic techniques.

Question 4

The Learning Approach: Behaviourism

Answer 4

Focus on observable behaviour - rely on lab studies, use of animals.

Question 5

The Learning Approach: Behaviourism

Classical conditioning = PAVLOV

Answer 5

Learning through association, conditioned dogs to salivate when bell rings.
Before conditioning: UCS (food) - UCR (salivation) = NS - no response (bell)
During conditioning: NS + UCS occur at same time
After conditioning: CS (bell) - CR (salivation)

A neutral stimulus can come to elicit a new learned response through association.

Question 6

The Learning Approach: Behaviourism

Operant conditioning: SKINNER

Answer 6

Learning is an active process where humans and animals operate on their environment. Behaviour is shaped and maintained by its consequences.
When a rat activated a lever/ a pigeon pecked a disc - rewarded with food pellet. A desirable consequence led to a behaviour being repeated.

Increase the likelihood of repeating a behaviour:
Positive Reinforcement: receiving a reward when behaviour is performed.
Negative Reinforcement: animal/human produces behaviour that avoids something unpleasant.
Punishment: unpleasant consequence of behaviour.

Question 7

Evaluation of the Learning Approach: Behaviourism

Answer 7

✓ Behaviourism gave psychology scientific credibility - objectivity, replication, controlled lab settings.
✓ Laws developed by behaviourists have real life application - token economy systems use operant conditioning, used in prisons and psychiatric wards.

✗ Mechanist view - animals and humans are seen as passive and machine-like respondents to environment.
✗ Environmental determinism - ignores free will, Skinner suggested free will was an illusion. Ignores the influence of conscious decision-making processes.
✗ Animal research has ethical issues - validity can be questioned as their behaviour wasn’t normal.

Question 8

The Learning Approach: Social Learning Theory = BANDURA

Answer 8

Learning occurs through experience - observation and imitation.

Vicarious Reinforcement: reinforcement that isn’t directly experienced, occurs through observing someone else being reinforced for a behaviour.

Mediational Processes: play a crucial role in learning
Attention - noticing behaviour
Retention - behaviour remembered
Motor Reproduction - being able to do it
Motivation - the will to perform the behaviour.

Identification with role models - children are more likely to imitate behaviour with who they identify with.

Question 9

Social Learning Theory: Bandura’s Study

Answer 9

Imitation of aggression study:

1) Children watched an adult behaving either aggressively towards a bobo doll, or non aggressively
- children who had seen aggression were also aggressive towards doll.
2) Children saw an adult who was either rewarded/ punished/ neither
- children who saw aggression rewarded were more aggressive.

Question 10

Evaluation of the Learning Approach: Social Learning Theory

Answer 10

✓ SLT - emphasises the importance of cognitive factors in learning, more complete explanation of human learning than behaviourist approach.
✓ Can account for cultural differences in behaviour - children learn from other people around them, as well as through the media and this explains how cultural norms are transmitted.
✓ Less determinist than behaviourist approach

✗ Relies too heavily on research from lab studies - demand characteristics, children may have been behaving as they thought was expected. May tell us little about aggression in everyday life.
✗ Underestimated the influence of biological factors - boys showed more aggression than girls. May be explained by the differences in levels of testosterone (linked to aggression).

Question 11

The Cognitive Approach

Answer 11

The study of mental processes.
Processes are ‘private’ and cannot be observed, psychologists make inferences.
The use of theoretical models when describing and explaining mental processes. e.g. MSM, computer processes.
Schema - packages of information developed through experience. Act as a ‘mental framework’ for the interpretation of incoming information.
Babies are born with simple motor schema for innate behaviours such as sucking and grasping, they become more developed as we age.

Cognitive neuroscience - study of the influence of brain structures on mental processes.

Question 12

Evaluation of the Cognitive Approach

Answer 12

✓ Scientific and objective - lab studies, enabled two fields of cognitive and biological psychology to come together, psychology is more credible and scientific.
✓ Application to everyday life - advances in brain-scanning techniques: scientists are able to describe the neurological basis of mental processes, including memory, disorders (OCD. Development of robots.
✓ Less determinist (soft determinism).

✗ Machine Reductionism - input - process - output computer analogy has been criticised. Human emotion and motivation have been shown to influence accuracy of recall e.g. EWT. The approach oversimplifies human cognitive processing.
✗ Lacks external validity - psychologists can only infer mental processes from behaviour they observe. Approach is too abstract. Often carried out using artificial research (learning lists of words).

Question 13

The Biological Approach

Answer 13

Everything psychological is, at first, biological.
Behaviour has a genetic and neurochemical basis (low levels of serotonin in OCD)
All thoughts, feelings, behaviour ultimately have a physical basis (contrasts with cognitive which separates the mind and the brain)
Twin studies - concordance rates between twins: higher concordance rates among monozygotic twins than dizygotic twins.
68% of MZ twins have OCD, 31% of DZ twins.

Genotype: particular genes a person possesses.
Phenotype: characteristics determined by both genes and the environment.

Theory of evolution - Darwin, Natural Selection: any genetically determined behaviour that enhances survival and reproduction are passed on (adaptive genes). E.G. attachment in newborns promotes survival.

Question 14

Evaluation of the Biological Approach

Answer 14

✓ Scientific methods - scanning techniques (fMRI) and drug trials. Reliable data.
✓ Real-life application - increased understanding of biochemical processes in the brain, led to the development of psychoactive drugs that treat depression: revolutionised treatment for many as sufferers are able to live relatively normal lives.

✗ Based on determinist view of behaviour - governed by internal biological causes which we have no control of. This challenges the legal system which sees offenders as responsible for their actions. The ‘criminal gene’ may complicate this principle - may excuse their behaviour.

Question 15

The Psychodynamic Approach: FREUD

Answer 15

Unconscious mind has an important influence on behaviour. It is a vast storehouse of biological drives and instincts that influence our behaviour.
Conscious (what we’re aware of) and pre-conscious (memories and thoughts we are not currently aware of, but can be accessed.

Question 16

The Psychodynamic Approach: Tripartite Structure

Answer 16

Dynamic interaction between the three determines behaviour:

• Id = primitive part, operates on pleasure principle, demands instant gratification.
• Ego = works on reality principle, mediator between id and superego.
• Superego = internalised sense of right and wrong based on the morality principle. Punishes ego through guilt.

Defence mechanisms (displacement, denial, repression) keep the id in check and reduce anxiety (used by the ego)

Question 17

The Psychodynamic Approach Stages

Answer 17

Any conflict unresolved leads to fixation - carrying behaviours associated with that stage throughout life:

• (0-1 yrs) Oral Stage: pleasure focus = mouth and mother’s breast.
• (1-3 yrs) Anal Stage: pleasure focus = anus, withholding and eliminating faeces.
• (3-5 yrs) Phallic Stage: pleasure focus = genital area. Oedipus complex takes place.
• Latency Stage: earlier conflicts are repressed.
• (puberty) Genital stage: genital desires become conscious.

Question 18

Evaluation of the Psychodynamic Approach

Answer 18

✓ Huge influence on contemporary thought: drew attention to influence of childhood on adult personality and was dominant approach for first half of 20th century.
✓ Practical applications to real world - psychoanalysis: designed to access unconscious mind using techniques such as dream analysis. Forerunner for many psychotherapies and talking cures.

✗ Case study method has been criticised - e.g. Little Hans. Not possible to make universal claims from limited sample. Interpretations were subjective.
✗ Untestable concepts - Popper argues it doesn’t meet scientific criterion of falsification. id/ oedipus complex occur at an unconscious level, difficult to test.
✗ Psychic determinism - free will ignored.

Question 19

Freud: Little Hans Case Study

Answer 19

Developed a phobia of horses after seeing one collapse in the street.
Suggested Hans’ phobia was a form of displacement in which his repressed fear of his father was displaced onto horses.
Horses were merely a symbolic representation of Hans’ real unconscious fear: the fear of castration experienced during the Oedipus complex.

Question 20

The Humanistic Approach

Answer 20

Rejects scientific principles.
Free will = subjective experience, person-centred approach.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - self-actualisation: innate tendency that each of us has to want to achieve our full potential to become the best we can.
Focus on the self - Rogers: for personal growth to be achieved, an individual’s concept of the self has to be congruent with their ideal self.
Parents who impose conditions of worth may prevent personal growth.

Question 21

The Humanistic Approach: Counselling Psychology

Answer 21

Rogers’ client centred therapy = an effective therapist should provide the client with genuineness, empathy, unconditional positive regard.
Aim is to increase feelings of self-worth, and reduce incongruence between the self-concept and ideal self.
Transformed psychotherapy: ‘non-directive’ counselling techniques are practised in clinical settings, education, health, social work.

Question 22

Evaluation of the Humanistic Approach

Answer 22

✓ Anti-reductionist: advocate holism, may have more validity by considering meaningful human behaviour within its real life context.
✓ Positive approach - promotes a positive image of the human condition. Refreshing and optimistic alternative to Freud’s belief that humans are slaves to their pasts.

✗ Untestable concepts - self-actualisation and congruence are short on empirical evidence.
✗ Limited application to the real world - loose set of abstract concepts, no studies.
✗ Western culture bias - individual freedom, autonomy, personal growth are associated with individualist cultures. Collectivist cultures (India) emphasise interdependence.