Approaches In Psychology - Paper 2 Flashcards
In the origins of psychology, what was psychology once known as?
Experimental philosophy
In the origins of psychology, who were the early influences? (3)
Descartes, John locke’s theory of empiricism meaning all knowledge is derived from sensory experience and can be studied using the scientific method which had influence on behavioural approach, Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theories which influenced biological approach.
What was Wilhelm Wundt known as and for?
He was known as the father of psychology. He published the first psychology book called ‘Principles of physiological psychology’. And opened the first psychology lab in Leipzig, Germany. His approach was known as structuralism.
What does structuralism mean?
Breaking down your interaction with a simple stimulus into isolated structures like feelings and emotions.
What did Wundt believe about introspection?
He believed that sensations and feelings make up the human mind so it is essential to look at processes and activities that occur as people experience the world around them.
How did Wundt study introspection?
- Highly trained observers were presented with controlled sensory events and emotions and sensations were isolated.
- Respondents were asked to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or were given a telegraph key to press for their answers.
- This was to make introspections as scientific as possible.
- Observations were repeated and people were trained to do the analysis so that it was objective rather than subjective.
What is the supporting evaluation of Wundt’s work being scientific?
One strength of Wundt’s work is that some of his methods were systematic and controlled.
All introspections were recorded in a controlled environment in the lab. Procedures and instructions were all standardised so that participants would receive the same information and would be tested in the same way. Therefore, Wundt’s work can be considered a forerunner of later scientific approaches in psychology such as behaviourism.
What is the double evaluation for Wundt’s work not being reliable?
However, some behaviourists argue that Wundt’s work is unreliable due to non-observable responses.
Although participants could report their conscious experiences, this data is subjective and they may not have wanted to reveal some of the thoughts they were having due to desirability bias. The processes themselves such as memory and perception were also considered unobservable and unreliable constructions so they had no way of proving if their responses were true or accurate. Participants would also not have had exactly the same thoughts so results were unable to be reliably reproduced by other researchers.
Meaning that although more recent behaviourists like Thorndike and Pavlov were able to produce reliable results and explanatory principles that were easily generalisable, most early, more idiographic efforts to study the mind found it impossible to establish general principles and laws.
What is the evaluation about unconscious behaviours and attitudes relating to Wundt’s work?
Furthermore, behaviours and attitudes that exist outside of the conscious awareness may not be able to be uncovered by self reports of introspection.
Nisbett and Wilson (1977) claim we have little knowledge about the causes, and processes underlying our behaviour and attitudes. They found that this was particularly acute in studies of implicit attitudes. For example, some people may be inherently racist or sexist which may influence the way they react to certain members of society.
Therefore, introspection isn’t particularly reliable in uncovering and exploring the roots of human behaviour.
What are the 2 learning approaches?
Behaviourism and social learning theory.
What are the characteristics of the learning approach? (3)
They focus on observable behaviours. This means that researchers only use experiments and observations. As they believe that all behaviour is determined, they use scientific methodologies to establish cause and effect. Animal research is common as they believe that humans and animals can be trained in the same way.
What are the 2 types of conditioning used in behaviourism?
Classical and operant.
Who discovered classical conditioning?
Pavlov (1927)
What is classical conditioning?
Learning through association where 2 stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned response in a person/animal. It is known as stimulus-response learning.
What is the diagram of classical conditioning?
UCS ———-> UCR
UCS + NS ——> UCR
CS ————> CR
What are the 4 key aspects of classical conditioning?
Extinction, spontaneous recovery, timing and stimulus generalisation.
What is the negative evaluation of classical conditioning?
A weakness of CC is that it can only explain some types of learning.
Seligman (1970) proposed the concept of preparedness to explain this. Animals are prepared to learn associations that are significant to their survival needs. For example, associating the smell of meat with the presence of food. But they are unprepared to learn associations that aren’t significant.
This suggests that CC may be more appropriate in the learning of specific types of association like those with a higher survival advantage that are linked to the evolutionary history of the species.
What is the positive evaluation of classical conditioning?
However, classical conditioning has been applied in the development of treatments for anxiety associated with various phobias and OCD.
Systematic desensitisation is a therapy based on CC. It works by eliminating a learned anxiety response (CR) that is associated with a feared object or situation (CS). It is possible to eliminate one learned response (anxiety) by replacing it with another learned response (relaxation) so the patient no longer experiences anxiety in the presence of the feared object or situation.
This classical conditioning based approach has been found to be effective with a range of phobias like arachnophobia and aerophobia.
What is extinction in terms of CC?
The gradual weakening of a conditioned response by breaking the association between the conditioned and unconditioned stimulus. For example, when the bell continuously rang but no food was presented, Pavlov’s dogs gradually stopped salivating at the sound of the bell
What is spontaneous recovery in terms of CC?
After extinction, the pairing of the UCS and the CS causes learning to happen very quickly.
