Approaches Flashcards
Structuralism
Breaks down human thoughts and experiences into basic components.
Wundt 1879
Opened first psych lab in Germany. He separated psychology from philosophy and focused on studying the mind in a more structured and scientific way.
Introspection
Analysing own thoughts and feelings internally. Wundt used introspection to study sensation and perception. Ppts were asked to describe their experiences when presented with stimuli.
Problems with introspection
- it doesn’t explain how the mind works. It relies on people describing their thoughts and feelings, which isn’t objective.
- it doesn’t provide data that can be used reliably. Because people are reporting their experiences, their accounts can’t be confirmed.
Reductionism
The idea that things can be reduced to simple cause and effect processes. Wundt came from a biological background, and so believed that the underlying structure of human experience could be broken into smaller measurable parts. He used introspection to measure these parts.
The 5 features of science
ROCETF
Replication
Objectivity
Control
Empirical method
Theories
Falsifiability.
Arguments for psychology as a science
- Allport (1947) said psychology has the same aims a science - to predict, understand and control.
- behaviourist, cognitive and biological approaches to psychology all use scientific procedures to investigate theories. They are usually controlled and unbiased.
Arguments against psychology as a science
- There are other approaches in psychology that don’t use objective methods to study behaviour. They use unreliable methods - e.g. interview techniques which can be biased and interpreted by different researchers.
- it’s hard to get representative sample of the population for a study, so findings can’t reliably be generalised.
- psychological experiments are also open to extraneous variables, such as demand characteristics, which can be hard to control.
3 main assumptions of behaviourism
1) Nearly all behaviour is learnt - only exceptions are inborn reflexes and instincts
2) animals and humans learn in the same way - humans can do more complex things but the principles by which we learn are the same - stimulus-response associations.
3) the ‘mind’ is irrelevant. We can’t directly observe and measure a persons thinking, we can only obtain measurable data by studying behaviour.
Classical conditioning
the process in which an automatic, conditioned response is paired with specific stimuli.
Ivan Pavlov studied classical conditioning with dogs
When Pavlov gave his dogs some food he would also ring a bell. After repeating this procedure several times, Pavlov then tried ringing the bell without food. The bell alone caused salivation. When dogs see food they salivate - UCR. The bell becomes CS and salivation becomes a CR.
Operant conditioning
Learning from consequences of behaviour, through negative/positive reinforcement and punishment.
Skinner (1938) - ‘skinner box’
Rats were out in the box, and learnt to press the lever to release food over time = positive reinforcement
He also showed that a rat could learn to prevent an electric shock by pressing the lever when a light came on = negative reinforcement.
Evaluation of conditioning
- most research into conditioning involves animals. This makes generalising to humans difficult. Also unethical as animals weren’t well looked after.
Watson & Rayner (1920) - Little Albert
11 month boy called ‘Little Albert’ initially showed no feral to white fluffy objects (rats). A white rat was put in front of Little Albert and was paired with a loud unexpected noise. This was repeated. When Albert was shown a rat he would cry, and was also extended to other white fluffy objects.
- unethical, can’t be repeated.
- not everyone goes on to develop fear after negative situation, so learning theory can’t be full story.
- lab study, lacks ecological validity, artificial.
Social learning theory
Developed by Bandura 1960s. It agrees with the idea that people can learn by conditioning but also claims that they learnt a lot from role models. Mediational processes are also involved between stimulus and response.
Mediational processes
ARRM - Attention, retention, reproduction and motivation
Modelling
Observing and imitating another person (model). Requires identification with model.
Reinforcement
Positive and negative reinforcement makes behaviour more likely to happen again.
Vicarious reinforcement
Seeing others be rewarded for a behaviour influences someone in whether they choose to imitate the behaviour.
SLT is reductionist
Explains things through basic cause-and-effect mechanisms. E.g. it explains all behaviour as a result of learning from others, ignoring biological explanations.
Bandura (1961) - imitation of aggressive models
Matched ppts design where children were matched on ratings of aggressive behaviour. 3 conditions - children observed aggressive adult models playing with bobo doll, non-aggressive models, ignoring bobo doll, control condition with no models.
Children exposed to aggressive models imitated aggressive behaviour. Children in non aggressive and control showed barely any aggressive behaviour.
Aggressive behaviour is learnt through imitation of other behaving aggressively.
Evaluation of Bandura bobo doll study
+ strict control of variables - reliable results and study can be replicated.
- low ecological validity - ppts in artificial situation. Difficult to generalise - small, unvaried sample.
- ethics - they encouraged aggression in children.
Cognitive approach
Looks at internal workings of the mind and explain behaviour through cognitive processes. Cognitive psychologists try to explain behaviour by looking at our perception, language, attention and memory.
The cognitive approach is reductionist because…
the mind can be compared to a computer. p.g.141 CGP
Computers and computer models are often used to explain how we think and behave.
Humans are treated as information processors (computers) and behaviour is explained in terms of information processing (how computers deal with information). Computer and theoretical models are. used to explain and make inferences about the mental processes that lead to particular behaviours, since they can’t be observed directly.
Inference
The process of drawing conclusions about general patterns of behaviour from specific observations.
Theoretical models
A pictorial representation of a particular mental process such as the MSM.
The principles of the Cognitive Approach
- our mental systems have a limited capacity - amount of information that can be processed is influenced by how demanding the task it.
- there is a 2 way flow of information - we take in information from the world, process it, and react to it.
Cognitive psychologists use 3 main research methods
- laboratory experiments - scientific and reliable, low eco validity.
- field experiments - take place in a natural situation, so have more eco validity but less control of variables.
- natural experiments - observations of naturally occurring situations. High eco validity but not massively reliable as confounding variables can affect results.
There are differences between humans and computers that make computer models less useful
- Humans are often influenced by emotional and motivational factors
- Humans have an unlimited but unreliable memory, whereas computers have a limited but reliable memory
- Humans have free will which computers don’t.
Schema
Cognitive frameworks that help us to organise and interpret information. They are developed through experience and can affect our cognitive processing.
