Approaches Flashcards
biological approach
this approach emphasises the imporance of physical process in the body such as genetic inheritence and brain function
this process places alot of focus on the chemicals in the brain
congnitive approaches
- mental processes
- how our mental processes e.g. thoughts and processes are tested over many laboratory based trials
humanistic approaches
positive, subjective
- subjective experience and ach person capacity for self determination
- therapies are used to promote individual quality of life
what are approaches
ways differnect psychologics and scientists have trried to explain human behaviour
- some are more polular than others
phycodynamic aproach
- negative
- this process forces most of which are unconsious that opperate on the mind and direct human behaviour and experience
learning aproach
focuses on the importance of external enviroment
- interested in how humans respond to things and perople (stimuli) around them
rough timeline of aprocahes over time
- phycodynamic (sigmund frued)
- learning approach (experiments done)
- humanistic aproach (best version of yourself, american dream)
- cognative aproach ( understnding what you are mesuring)
- biological aproach ( advancments in technology)
- modern: cognitive neuroscience 2010 onwards
what is science
- objective
- factal
- proven
- physical evidence
meaning
objective
not under influence of feelings or opinons
meaning
standerdisation
keeping eveyrthing reglar and consistent
meaning
emerical
- based off physical tangible evidenince
- unconsoius is not emperical
origins of phycology
Wilhelm Wundt
- founder of modern psychology
- father of experminental phycology
- belived that the consiousness was the way to understanding and can be studied and broken down in a structured way
- 1st psychologist
- opened first lab in germnay 1879
- studied teh structure of the human mind by breaking it down into 3 parts, thoughts, imagies and sences ((structualism)
- seperted psyc from philosophy by proposing the first scientific method (introspection)
Wilhelm Wundt
aim
- to document the nature of HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS
- he tranied himself and his collegues to analyse their thoughts as objectively as possible
- they were presented carefully with controlled sensory events such as a metronome or burning candle
- they were asked to describe their mental experiences of those events
- ## this was repeated multiple times
behavioirism assumptions
- behaviour comes from enviromental factors with a clean slate at birth
- phsch should been seen as an objective science (emperical measures only)
- not concerned with studying mental processes/ internal events
- theres little difference in learning between animals and humans
- behaviour is the result of stimulus to responce - most studies done on aminal as can be extrapolated
how do we learn behaviour?
its “conditioned”
- classical conditioning (learning by association)
- operant conditioning (leaning from consequence/ reinforment)
classical conditing
e.g.
dog is neutratl stimulus - no respone
bite - unconditioned fear
after being bitten the fera is now acosiacted with teh dog, conditioned to fera the dog
imitation
copying behaviour from others
modeling
precice demonstration of a spesific behaviour that may be imitated by an observer
identification
when observer assiciated themselves with a role model and wants to be like them
mediational processes
cognitive processes (thinking) that come betweeen a stimulus and a responce
vicarious reinforcment
indirect reienforcment that occurs when observing somone else being reinforced for a behaviour
main behaviorists
B.F. skinner
Ivan Pavlov
John Watson
assumptions in approaches
tell you where behaviour comes from/ how it should be measured
example of classical conditioning
pavlovs dogs
The unconditioned responce is salivation when seeing the food (unconditioned stimlus). The bell is neuteral stimulus, no conditioned responce. When the bell is rang with the food, the bell becomes a conditioned stimulus. Now, the dog associates the bell with food so savated (conditioned responce)
How reliable was wunt’s introspection method?
not very relaible
- subjective, people will use subjective opinions which are likely to vary each time
evidence - even wunts best friends and colleges whom he had trained reported different things to the same stimulus across trials
counter - despite this, wundt clearly understoof the importance of removing subjectivity as he did atempt to train his colleagues in the same way to increase objectivity
(although it wasnt objective he aimed for it to be)
How reliable was wunt’s introspection method?
- was he really studying their consiousness?
- wundt’s collegues were trained by him so knew exactly what results he was looking for so it was likely that they told him what he wanted to hear (demand characteristics)
- their actaul answers could have been too embarassing/ taboo/ offensive to share so they may have lied (social desirability)
- if social desirability and demand characteristics are being mesured instad of real human consiousness, it is not valid.
demand charecteristics
when a person changes their ancwer/ behaviour due to guessing/ knowing the aim of the experiment
social desirability
changing behaviour/ answer due to fear of judgemnt/ lack of sical acepptamce)
how controlled was wundts experiment
setting- lab, he ensured there were no distractions, noises or stimuli during trails
standerasation - kept everything the same for each trial e.g. the stimulus/ instructions
replication - due to standerdised procedure it would have been replicated to encourage reliability
eventhough he made mistakes, he showed the importance of objectivity, standerdisation, and contorl as things we shouldavoid in psychology (subjectivity, demand charectaristics, social desirability)
suggests he had an imporatnd contribution to phychologies emergence in science
evalating the behaviourist approach
determinism
weakness
- when a behaviour is caused by any interal/ external factor, oposite of having free will
main assumtion: all behavior is caused by the enviroment (stimuli - responce) skinner even went as far as to say that free will is an illusion
negative implications on society:
- social sensitivety (when reasearch has an impact on wider comunity)
- ideas: mental health, religion (prevents free will?), criminal behaviour ( allows people to get away with things)
evalating the behaviourist approach
mechanistic view of behaviour
weakness
- the behaviousist approach describes humans as passive responders to the enviroment (stimulus -> responce)
- belived that people were born with a blank slate (tabla rasa) we only become who we are by responding to stimulus around us
points agaisnt: genetic vlnerability e.g. serial killer gene? individal differences e.g. even twins act differenly and have differnet menatl processes
wealnes: this approach fails to consider the influence of other factors that make us who we are liek emotions, mental processes and biology
low explanoratory power
anything that deonst have a good explanation
order of mediaional processes
- attention
- retention
- motor reproduction
- motivation
e.g. german
attention
to what extent they notice behaviour
retention
how well the behaviour is remembered
motor reproduction
the ability to reproduce behaviour
motivation
the will to perform the behaviour depending on weather behaviour was punished or rewarded
SLT
stimulus + mediational processes -> responce
low generalisability
- use of aniamls: extrapolation
- pavlov & skinner only tested animals and dogs and rats
- can this be extrapolated to humans
why cant you? - different condition
- more mental process e.g. emotions, consiousness, logic
- different habits
therefore good for explaining animals behaviour but not huaman
negative reinforcments
- electrical shocks
- in other trails, the floor of skinner box would admit electric shocks at rondom
- the rat presses the lever by chance it would stop the electrical shcoks
- the rats then learned to press the lever to avoid teh electrical shock
GRAVE
generalisation
relibility
application/ real life/ practice
validity
ethics
negative reinforcments
- electrical shocks
- in other trails, the floor of skinner box would admit electric shocks at rondom
- the rat presses the lever by chance it would stop the electrical shcoks
- the rats then learned to press the lever to avoid teh electrical shock
scientific credibility
behaviourists were only concered with measuring observable behaviour, empirical evidence & objectivity
experiments conducted in high controlled conditions (lab settings, lack of stimulus in skinner box)
validity is the strength of having an explanation for behaviour that relies on science
behaviousism evaluation
+ scientific credibility
- low generalisibility
- deterministic
- mechanistic view of behaviourism
behaviourism
how is behaviour learnt
conditioning
operant conditioning
- proposed by skinner (1953)
- learning thorgh consequences (reinforcment)
- when our behaviour is followed by desirable cosequences we are more likely to repeat it and learn to continue the bahaviour
- when our behaviour is followed by undesirable consequences we will not repeat it
positive R
- food pelets when rat pressed lever by chnace
- from this experience the rat learned that it would recieve food every time the lever was pressed it then continued to press the leaver to eat
- behaviour rewarded
- will be repeated
skinner box
1948
- kept an isolated rat/ pigion in a skinner box
- this box had very little stimuli and was the same for every rat in every experiment (reliable & standerised) + control
- demonstrated both positive and negative reimforment
effectivness?
negative reinforcment
more realistic/ life
effectivness?
positive reinforcments
may work for little children buut not long term
punishment
behaviour is weakned when followed by an unpleasant consequence this decreases the likelehood of the behavior occoring again
negative reinforcment
behaviour is strengthened when an upleatent stimulus is removed/ avoided increaseing chances of repeted behviour
e.g. pain killer
Behaviourism dates
1913-1960s
social learning theory
1960s onwards
bridge concept
SLT is a development of behaviourism
desicribed as the bridge between behaviourism and coginitive approach
SLT experiment
Slbert Bandura
Bobo dolls (1961)
description
Bobo dolls
aim: to investigate if social behaviours can be aquired by observation and imitation
method: 36 boys and 26 girls (children) were the subjecs, observing a male or female bahaving agressively towards a bobo doll
data: - it was fond that boys were more likely to imitate same sex models than girls
- boys acted more agressively than girls
- little difference in verbal agression
Conclsion: therefore people learn through observation and learning
RM: lab experiment
issues: fail to protect from physical harm, generalisation
bobo dolls variation
bandura & walters (1963)
- rather than children watching an adult in the room they watched it on videos instaed
schema
a mental framework of belifs and expectations that inflence cognitive processing
they are developed from experience
inference
the process where by cognitive psychologists draw conclcions abot that way menatl processes operate on the basis of observed behaviour.
computer model
meodels that can explain cognitive processes based on the idea that the human mind can be compared to a computer
internal mental processes
‘private’ operations of the mind such as perception and attention that mediate between a stimulus and a repsonce
cognitive approach
assumptions
- internal mental processes direct and shape out behaviour
- mental processes are stuies indirectly by making inferences on the basis of behaviour
- individuals use shema to help interpret incoming information
- the mind works in the same way as a computer (computer and theorteical models are used to explain human mental processes)
examples
internal mental processes
- emotions
- memory
- atteniton
- thoughts/ belifs
- motivation
- perception
concordance rates
a percentage that shows the probability of a characteristic being genetic e.g. the no. of pairs of twins that share a characteristic
the higher the concordance rate the higher the likelehood that the behaviour is genetic
neurochemistry
the biochemistry of the centeral nervos system (brain/ spinal chord)
- hormones are chemicals that travel within the body through the blood
- however brain uses chemicals called nerotrsasnittersbiological psychologists belive that neurotransmitters can directly influence our behaviour
dopamine
pleasure
seretonin
mood
