Approaches Flashcards

Question

Social learning theory A03- ethics

Answer 1

- ethical concerns - baduras study was conducted in the 1960s and raised numerous ethical concerns which wouldn’t be allowed today -e.h children in the study were not given the right to withdraw, not protected from harm and there was no effort to debrief ps - means its difficult to test experimental hypothesises about the social learning of aggressive behaviour in children and consequently difficult to establish the scientific credibility to theory

Answer 2

Is a wave explaining behaviour in the terms of what is observable and in terms of learning - He is not concerned with investigating mental processes of the mind -They rely on highly controlled lab experiments -And believe we are all born blank slates and that all our behaviours are learnt -One way the behaviourist approach state behaviour can be is classical conditioning -This is learning through association almost proposed by Pavlov -He demonstrated that dogs could be conditioned to salivate to the sound of a bell -This would be done by repeatedly pairing together unconditioned stimulus (food) - And a neutral stimulus (the bell) -Repeatedly put them together -Eventually, the neutral stimulus would produce the same response that would be produced by the unconditioned stimulus -and the neutral stimulus would become the conditioned stimulus which prevents a conditioned response of salivating to the sound of the bell

Answer 3

-secondly there is operant conditioning -This is learning through consequences -There is positive and negative reinforcement -And punishment -Opera and conditioning was proposed by Skinner -He suggested that learning is an active process where humans and animals operate on their environment -Positive reinforcement is receiving a reward when a certain behaviour is performed -For example in skinner box research mice received a food pellet for pressing the button in the box -Negative reinforcement occurs on an animal or human avoid something unpleasant -It is an avoidance of a negative emotion/consequence -The rat skinner box may have learned through negative reinforcement and pressing a lever allows them to avoid an electric shock -Punishment is the unpleasant consequence of behaviour -Positive and negative reinforcement increase the likelihood of behaviour will be repeated -whereas punishment decreases the likelihood that a behaviour will be repeated

Answer 4

One strength of this approach is it is very scientific -The theories are testable and it is supported by rigourous experimental research like Pavlovs dogs and skinnets rats - By using experimental methods it helps to establish cause an effect -And due to the highly controlled experiments it allows them to be replicable allowing the research to have high reliability

Answer 5

Additionally, it has real life applications -The principles of conditioning have been applied to real world behaviour and problems -For example, phobias have been understood that they are required by classical conditioning as it demonstrated in a little Albert study - And are maintained by operating conditioning - this has led to the development of my treatments like systematic desensitisation which has proven to be very effective in treating phobias -additionally operant conditioning is also the basis of token economy systems that I’ve been used successfully in places like prisons and hospitals to help sufferers and felons

Answer 6

One limitation is that many of the research done in this area is based from animal studies -There are many ethical and practical issues using animals in experiments -Even though in experiments like skinner box had a really high degree of control there are many criticisms questioning the ethics -The rats involved were exposed to very stressful and adverse conditions. -The rats were left starving and shocked -This may affect affected of how they reacted to the experimental situation -Therefore, undermining the credibility of the research -Additionally, a it is very hard to apply these findings to humans as animals and humans have very different physiology so the generalisability to humans is very limited

Answer 7

Another limitation of the approach is that it is deterministic -It sees all behaviour as determined by experiences that have been conditioned -this ignores any possible influence of freewill on behaviour Skinner suggested that everything we do is the same total of our reinforcement history and any sense of Freewill is simply an illusion and our pass conditioning history controls our behaviour -This is a weakness as the approach is suggesting that people are not responsible for their behaviour if our past experiences control our behaviour then it means we cannot choose how to behave -so if someone behaves immorally the approach which suggest that it is not their fault

Answer 8

-this approach was founded by Sigmund Freud -Who suggested that the unconscious drive is operate on the conscious human mind by directing our behaviour and mediated by defence mechanism -Such as repression denial and displacement Denial: a thought is ignored or treated as if it were not true Displacement: emotions are directed away from their source or target towards other things -These prevent anxiety and memories from surfacing -Additionally our personality has three structure -The IID the ego and the super ego -The IT operates on our unconscious act and to our selfish aggressive instincts on the pleasure principle -The super ego acts on the morality principle -And the ego mediate between the demands of the super ego and the aid working on the reality principle

Answer 9

-Freud also believes that personality developed through stages called psychosexual stages -Oral anal phallic latent and genital - In each stage tension would build up due to sexual desires that must be resolved in order to progress to the next stage -if they aren’t resolved then a fixation will occur whether a child becomes stuck in the stage and carries on certain behaviours associated with this stage through their adult life Additionally, it would restrict full development -An example would be anally retentive, he proposed that when a conflict because of a potty training a person could be fixated on cleanliness and orderliness to an extreme Freud also suggested the Oedipus and Electra complexes in his theory of psychosexual stages of development -oedipus; for a proposed that boys desire their mother unconscious -They see the father as arrival and as a result developed a murderers hatred for him as he stands in the way of possessing the mother -However he recognises the father is stronger and develops castration anxiety as a result of him finding out -To resolve this that will give up his love for his mother and begins to identify with his father -Through this identification, he internalises his father’s gender identity Electra : -upon discovering she doesn’t have a penis she develops penis envy and blames the mother for lack of this believing that she was castrated by her -The girl also sees the mother as a love rival standing in the way of her father -Over time she accepts she will never have a penis and sub substitute this penis envy for the desire to have children -The anger towards other reduces causing her to identify with her mother and internal feminine gender behaviours

Answer 10

-One strength is the practical applications this study has provided -It has introduced the idea of psychotherapy treating mental illnesses psychologically -He brought psychoanalysis which used techniques designed to access the unconscious so just dream analysis -Psychoanalysis claims to help patients by bringing refreshed emotions into their conscious mind so they could be dealt with -showing the value of the psychodynamic approach in increasing a new approach to treatment

Answer 11

-It’s one scientific and lacks falsifiability -Since it’s difficult to check the validity of Friday’s explanation in the development as his theory is considered untestable he also relies on the subjective interpretations of for example little hands -The conclusions are basically his own opinions are not backed up with objective evidence -It is not possible to imperially validate the unconscious incestuous feelings, children harbour towards their same-sex parent or all the aspects of the theory such as castration anxiety and penis envy -Especially when testing young children who are unable to express themselves correctly -Any disagreement with this theory can be attributed to the repression of such thoughts into the unconscious -As a consequence, Freud theory of gender development appears pseudoscientific -without the means to empirically measure the assumptions of gender development -This is limitation for the psycho explanation for ginger development as a lack of objective false ability and empirical measures reduce the scientific credibility of the theory so by using it to explain gender development, maybe discrediting psychology as a scientific discipline.

Answer 12

-The series was developed using the case of little hands in 1909 -explanation of gender development was then applied to females after this study -The concept has been deemed as sexist as well as androcentric (focused on men) Feminist psychoanalysts believe that Freud‘s ideas lack temporal validity as they are rooted in 19 century views on women as the inferior sex -Karen Horney argues that based on this floor logic it’s possible to assume that males may also suffer from womb envy, jealousy over females ability to create new life As a consequence, horny argues both womb and penis and we are not in each traits in children but rather influenced by cultural norms and values of society at a given time -Freud theory may therefore be considered invalid since it involves the application of 19th century views to 21st century Society

Answer 13

The psychodynamic approach takes an interaction approach of both nature and nurture therefore is not considered reductionist -Explains human behaviour as a result of the interaction between nature and nurture -Freud said that we must all pass through fixed developmental stages (nature) -And the environment we experience (nurture) as we pass through these stages affect the outcomes -Are in eight drives and the speed force us through psychosexual stages -A child who is fixated in the oral aggressive stage because of a lack of oral simulation will become envious and pessimistic -Where is a child who is fixated on the oral receptive stage through too much stimulation will be trusting an optimistic -So the environmental conditions interact with the NA drives and lead to the uniqueness of personality -Therefore it helps to explain why personality can be so varied and how individuals experience needs to be understood in order to explain a person’s behaviour -therefore recognise the complexity of human behaviour the way that some approaches do not like the biological approach as it focuses on only innate characteristics

Answer 14

-introspection means looking into and refer to the process of observing and examining your own conscious thoughts or emotions -in wunts introspection he strictly controlled the environment with introspection took place -He controlled the stimuli and tasks that the participants were asked to think about -Limiting the range of responses they might give and trained his participants so that they could give the most detailed observation possible -His use of introspection inspired others to apply it to more complex mental processes like learning language and emotion — He opened A Institute for experimental psychology in Leipzig, Germany and this was the first dedicated to psychology

Answer 15

He wanted to study the structure of the human mind -He argued that conscious mental states could be significantly studied using introspection -He a trained assistance which will be given a stimulus which is a metronome and they would reflect on the experience -They would report with the stimulus made them think and feel -and the same stimulus physical surroundings and instructions were given to each person -he wanted to separate psychology from philosophy so focused on studying the mind in a very structured scientific way -The method was seen a scientific for many reasons they were recorded under strictly contorted conditions and they were given standardised instructions therefore allowing procedure to be repeated -The aim was to analyse the mind by breaking it down to its simplest most basic elements -And then piecing these basic elements together to help understand how they form more complex experiences -He then went onto Create general theories about human mental processes

Answer 16

One weakness is his approach has a lack of reliability in his methods -When he replicated his participants would not have exactly the same thoughts every time they engaged in introspection -Similarly although the psychologist failed to get similar results when they try to replicate his introspection method -Therefore this is a weakness because it means that we could not establish general theories about the workings of the mind and there was no consistency in his methods

Answer 17

However, a strength is his methods have often been seen to start cognitive psychology -Cognitive psychology is a modern date psychological approach and attempts to measure what is happening inside the mind using scientific methods -Without him some may have questioned if cognitive psychology would even exist today -Therefore a strength as his methods have been incredibly influential to cognitive psychologists

Answer 18

-another strength is he applied a scientific method to study the minds means that in modern times psychology is considered scientific discipline by many academics -If you had not set up the first psychology lab, it is possible that the study of the mind would still be tied to it’s philosophical roots and psychology may have never gained the status that it has today -Therefore this is a strength as his influential work has paved the way for study of psychology as a whole and a respected discipline

Answer 19

-by the beginning of the 20th century the value of introspection and scientific status of introspection was being questioned by many -Behaviourist like Skinner believed that true scientific psychology should just study things that can be observed and measured instead of private mental processes and began to focus on scientific processes to understand how behaviour is learned -The scientific method refers to the use of investigation the methods like objective replicable controlled and predictable

Answer 20

-by the 1950s cognitive psychology did emerge -They see the study of the mental processes as highly scientific with psychology and like in the mind to a computer -Although these processes cannot be observed directly, cognitive psychologists are able to make inferences on how these work by conducting scientific lab experiments on participants -The biological approach has taken scientific psychology to new level levels -Research is in this area have taken advantage of technology to investigate physiological processes as they happen -For example, scanning techniques are used to investigate the activity in the brain -additionally new methods like genetic testing can also allow us to better understand the relationship between genes and behaviour

Answer 21

-One strength is that research in modern psychology can claim to be scientific -Psychology has the same aims as natural sciences to describe understand predict and control behaviour -The learning approaches like cognitive approach and the biological approach rely on the use of scientific methods -Like lob studies which investigate theories in a controlled and unbiased way -This is a strength as it suggests that throughout the 20th century and beyond psychology has established itself as a scientific discipline

Answer 22

-however one limitation of the emergence of psychology is that not all approaches use objective measures -For example, the humanistic approach rejects science and focuses on individual and subjective experiences -Additionally studying human participants in research means they often respond to demand characteristics -therefore this is a weakness because a scientific approach to studying humans thought and experiences may not always be desirable or possible

Approaches Flashcards

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