Approaches Flashcards
Who is Wundt?
He is known as the father of Psychology.
What did Wundt do?
Opened the first institute for experimental psychology in Germany, 1879 where he focused on studying the mind and separated psychology from philosophy. He had views on reductionism and believed everything came down to cause and effect.
What is introspection?
The psychological method of analysing ones internal thoughts and feelings. This was done by a patient being given a stimuli and seeing how they’d react to it since there were no brain scans back then.
What are the problems with introspection?
It simply relies on subjective thoughts but doesn’t explain how the brain works. It also doesn’t provide data that can be used with certain reliability.
What are the 5 factors that need to be looked at when deciding if Psychology is a science?
-Objectivity
-Replication
-Hypothesis testing
-Control
-Predictability
Evaluate the strengths to a scientific approach in Psychology
-It’s reliance on objectivity and knowledge on scientific methods allows it to be more than just a passive acceptance of facts
-If a scientific method can no longer fit into the facts, they can easily be refined or abandoned meaning that the knowledge is self corrective
Evaluate the limitations to a scientific approach in Psychology
-Objectives in experiments tend to be unrealistic and lack insight on natural behaviour
-A lot of Psychological behaviour is unobservable so the gap between data and theories is quite large
What is behaviourism
The idea that all behaviours are learned through interactions and environment
When was behaviourism discovered?
In the early 1900’s by Watson
Outline Pavlov’s classical conditioning
The study that Pavlov did when he found dogs would salivate over their dog bowls without any food in them because they associated a bowl with food.
Following this, he decided to ring a bell every time he would feed his dogs to see if they’d eventually salivate over the sound of a bell ringing and they did.
The food is the UCS and the salivation is the UCR.
The bell become the CS and salivation the CR.
Additionally, comfort for a baby is an UCS that produces happiness, the UCR. As the baby’s mother will talk to it, feed it and change its nappies, etc. The baby will feel happy every time it hears its mother’s voice
Outline the several principles of classical conditioning
Generalisation- stimuli similar to CS produces CR
Discrimination- when stimuli similar to CS does not produce the CR
Extinction- when the CR isn’t produced after the CS spontaneous recovery- when a previously extinct CR is produced in response to the CS
High order conditioning- when a new CS produces the CR because the animal associates it with the original CS
Outline Skinners operant conditioning
The study where animals can learn the consequences of their actions.
Skinner used a “Skinner box” where he placed one rat inside at a time. Each box has a variety of different stimuli which included a speaker, lights, an electric floor and food dispenser connected to a lever. The time each rat took to learn to pull the lever. What Skinner found was the rats would mainly accidentally pull the lever while running around the box. When the lever was pulled, food was dispensed and the more each rat was put inside a box, they learnt that pressing the lever would give them a reward
Evaluate classical conditioning as a theory
Its research has led to a development in treatment of phobias and systematic desensitisation works by eliminating the learned anxious response (CR) that is associated with the feared object (CS). This process has worked for many phobias such as arachnophobia.
However, it is difficult to say that conditioning works the same or every animal as animals find it harder to form associations with certain stimuli. Therefore, Seligman proposed preparedness which means that animals are prepared to associate aspects that’ll help with their survival such as the smell of meat with food but are less ready to associate other items such as a bell with a tree.
What is CR
Conditioned response (response caused by the conditioned stimulus)
What is CS
Conditioned stimulus (elicits a response response due to being paired with an unconditioned stimulus)
What is UCS
Unconditioned stimulus
What is UCR
Unconditioned response
Evaluate operant conditioning theory
Skinner used the “Skinners Box’ method in his practice where the consequence was manipulated to see the effect on the rats behaviour. The result of this was identifying a strong cause and effect relationship.
Although, Skinner has had to rely strongly on extrapolating his findings from rats on to humans. Humans are very different from rats, especially in terms of free will so the experiment is not that reliable.
Summarise the basic idea of Classic and Operant conditioning
Classic is done in a domestic environment with the things around you whereas Operant is done in a lab through the idea of reward and punishment
Outline Bandura’s SLT (social learning theory)
Bandura agreed that through conditioning, role models play a key part in our behaviour. He said that we must focus our attention on a role model, perceive what they do and repeat it.
What are the learning processes Bandura said were effective for meditational processes
-Attention
-Retention
-Reproduction
-Meditation
Outline Bandura’s study
He setup a lab experiment of toddlers, half male and half female. There were two conditions; half of the group would observe an aggressive model playing in a room (hitting a doll) whereas the second condition, the other half observed a non-aggressive model. There was also a third condition where no observation was taken place to act as a control group. The children observed each of their conditions for 20minutes.
He found that the children that observed the aggressive models were aggressive whereas the non-aggressive group showed nearly no aggressive behaviour.
This study was evidence for social learning theory
Evaluate the Social Learning Theory (SLT)
Akers suggested that the probability of someone engaging in crime is significantly increased when they’re exposed to models that do it around them. This application can be used to benefit society as now children are kept away from parents with criminal records.
On the other hand, it only states the nurture side of the nature and nurture debate which is reductionist. We must take a wholistic approach when explaining human behaviour.
