Approaches - Paper 2 Flashcards
What is psychology?
The scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those functions affecting behaviour in a given context.
What is a science?
A means of acquiring knowledge through systematic and objective investigation. The aim is to discover general laws.
What is introspection?
The first systematic experimental attempt to study the mind by breaking up conscious awareness into basic structures of thoughts, images and sensations.
Describe Wundt’s role in the development of psychology (6 marks)
Wundt known as ‘the father of psychology’ - moved from philosophical roots to controlled research
Set up the first psychology laboratory in Liepzig, Germany in 1870s
Promoted the use of introspection as a way of studying mental processes
Introspection - systematic analysis of own conscious experience of a stimulus
An experience was analysed in terms of its components parts eg sensations, emotional reaction etc.
His work paved the way for later controlled research and the study of mental processes eg. by cognitive psychologists.
What are the four goals of psychology?
Description - tells us what occurred
Explanation - tells us why a behaviour or mental process occurred
Prediction - identify conditions under which a future behaviour or mental process is likely to occur
Change - apply psychological knowledge to prevent unwanted behaviour and to bring about desired change
What is a strength of Wundt’s work? Scientific methods
His methods were scientific
Recorded introspection within controlled lab, standardised procedures (everyone received same info, tested in same way)
Research considered forerunner to later scientific approaches
What is a strength of Wundt’s work? Important contributions
Work paved way for later controlled research
Introspection lead to study of mental processes by cognitive psychologists + cognitive neuroscience, one of worlds leading disciplines in psychology
Shows great contribution to what we know as psychology now
What is a limitation of Wundt’s work? Subjective nature
Some aspects weren’t scientific
Relied on participants self-reporting their private mental processes
Subjective data, may not have revealed true thoughts or some thoughts
Early efforts to study the mind wouldn’t meet criteria of scientific enquiry
What is a limitation of Wundt’s work? Lacks reliability, not observable
Introspection focuses on non observable behaviour
Approach required participants to recall conscious thoughts
Processes like memory and perception are impossible to observe
Lacks reliability, results haven’t been reproduced
What is a limitation of Wundt’s work? Lack of understanding, not accurate.
Lacks accuracy
Nisbett + Wilson (1977) claim we have little knowledge of what caused or contributes to our behaviours + beliefs. Unaware of different factors that influence our choices
Suggests we’re unable to observe our own thoughts and feelings
Some of our behaviour/attitudes exist outside of conscious awareness, introspection wouldn’t uncover them
What does psychodynamic mean and who came up with it?
Any theory that emphasises individual change and development Freud argued, behaviour is due to psychological factors Developed psychoanalysis (talking therapy) to deal with conflicts of the mind, once resolved, individual is "mentally healthy" again
What are the basic assumptions of the psychodynamic approach?
Unconscious mind thought to drive behaviour
Instincts thought to motivate behaviour
Early childhood experiences important in making us who we are
What is the role of the unconscious? (iceberg model)
Conscious mind - tip of iceberg that we can see, we are aware of this
Preconscious mind - into water, you can see some of the iceberg
Unconscious mind - unable to see unless submerged into water
The unconscious mind
Our mind is made up of this
We are unaware of it but our actions are thought to be controlled by this
Behaviour is shown through Freudian slips, creativity, neurotic symptoms (anxiety, jealousy), dreams
It also contains any threatening and disturbing memories that have been repressed
What is a Freudian slip?
an unintentional error regarded as revealing subconscious feelings, such as calling a teacher “mum”
The structure of the personality
Three parts (tripartite system) - id, superego, ego
Early experiences vital in shaping personality and effects our behaviour
They demand gratification and are in contact with each other
The id
Operates on the pleasure principle
Present at birth, forms up to 18 months
Gets what it wants, entirely selfish, demands instant gratification
The ego
Operates on reality principle
Develops between 18 months- 3 years
Mediator between id and superego
Role to reduce conflict between demands of id + superego
Done through defence mechanisms which offer the ego protection so neither “force” is dominant
The superego
Operates on morality principle
Develops between 3-6 years, formed at end of phallic stage
Internalised sense of right and wrong, represents moral standards of child’s same sex parent + punishes ego for wrong doings
Strives for ego ideal (best version of yourself), determined by strict parenting
What is the role of defence mechanisms? (Ego defence mechanisms)
Distorts realists to reduce anxiety
Anxiety weakens ego so it cannot mediate between id and superego
What are the 3 defence mechanisms and what do they mean?
Repression - blocking of an unpleasant memory
Denial - refusal to accept reality
Displacement - redirecting of emotions onto other objects or people
What are psychosexual stages?
Instincts drive our conscious minds
Underlying drive is sexual so pleasure comes from release of tension build up from sexual energy. How this pleasure manifests itself depends on the stage a child is in
What is fixation in the psychosexual stages?
Each stage marked with conflict child must resolve to progress onto next stage
Strict parenting/overindulgence in a stage can cause fixation, psychosexual conflict is unresolved so child becomes “stuck”
Carry certain behaviours + conflict from stages onto adult life
What is the oral stage?
0 to 1 years
Pleasure from putting things in mouth
Mothers breast object of desire
What does oral fixation lead to?
Smoking, biting nails, sarcasm, critical
What is the anal stage?
(1-3 years)
Focus of pleasure is the anus
Child gains pleasure from withholding and expelling faeces (around time of potty training)
What does anal fixation lead to?
Anal retentive - perfectionist, obsessive
Anal expulsive - thoughtless, messy
What is the phallic stage?
3-5 years
Focus of pleasure is on genital area
Oedipus and Electra complex
What does fixation in the phallic stage lead to?
Narcissistic, reckless, possibly homosexual
What is the latency stage?
5-teen years
Earlier conflicts are repressed/resolved, no particular area focused on
What is the genital stage?
Teen-whole life
Sexual desire becomes conscious alongside onset of puberty
What does fixation in the genital stage lead to?
Difficulty forming heterosexual relationships
What is the Oedipus complex in the phallic stage?
A child’s unconscious sexual desires for their mother and hatred to their father as he’s their rival
Out of fear of castration, boy represses feelings for mother + identifies with father by taking on gender roles + moral values
What is the Electra complex in the phallic stage?
Girls experience penis envy - desire fathers penis as primary love object, hatred towards their mother
Girls thought to give up desire for their father overtime + replace desire with one for a baby - therefore identifying with mother in the process
What is a limitation of the psychodynamic approach? Case study limitations
Research methods that have been used have been criticised
Theory based on intensive study of single individuals such as Little Hans who were often in therapy
Questions accuracy of theory and approach as findings from case study may not be true for everyone.
Limits how useful the approach is when trying to explain human behaviour
What is a limitation of the psychodynamic approach? Unfalsifiable
Approach cannot be falsified, doesn’t have potential to be disapproved
Eg. Id and Oedipus complex said to occur unconsciously meaning they are difficult/impossible to test
Approach classed as pseudoscience (fake)
Reduces credibility in explaining human behaviour.
What is a limitation of the psychodynamic approach? Psychic determinism
Approach is deterministic (no control over it)
Suggests all behaviour is caused by unconscious conflicts that we cannot control.
Removes notion of free will, suggests we have no choice over our behaviour
Goes against belief that a lot of us hold about the decisions that we make and may mean people are not as accountable for their behaviour as society would like them to be.
What is a strength of the psychodynamic approach? Influential approach
Has had huge influence on psychology
Been used to explain a huge range of phenomena - abnormal behaviour, personality development
Shows how important Freud’s ideas have been in the development of psychology as a discipline
Suggests approach has place in explaining human behaviour
What is a strength of psychodynamic approach? Practical application
Has practical application
Freud developed psychoanalysis which involves a range of techniques designed to access the unconscious
Psychoanalysis used to treat many patients with mental health problems
Fact that approach led to development of a therapy which is effective for most individuals suggests the unconscious is involved in our thoughts, feelings and behaviour
What is the cognitive approach?
Cognitive means mental processes
Approach focused on how our mental processes such as thoughts, perceptions and attention impact behaviour
Investigates areas that were neglected by learning theories such as memory, perception and thinking
What are internal mental processes?
Private operations of the mind such as perception and attention that mediate between stimulus and response
What are the assumptions of the cognitive approach?
- mind actively processes info from our senses eg. touch, tastes etc
- argues that internal mental processes can and should be studied scientifically
- meditational processes occur between stimulus and response - what is happening between input into mind and output of human behaviour
- humans are information processors, therefore resemble computers - info transformed, stored and retrieved from memory
What is the role of the schema?
- Cognitive framework that helps organise and interpret info in the brain
- Developed from experience and help individuals to respond to objects appropriately
- Cognitive processes can be influenced by a person’s expectations and beliefs (schema)
- Babies born with simple motor schema for innate behaviours such as sucking or grasping
- Schemas become more detailed and sophisticated with age - adults have mental representations for everything they have experienced
- Allow us to take shortcuts when interpreting large amounts of info
- Prevents us from becoming overwhelmed from environmental stimuli
- However, can lead to perceptual errors and stereotypes, make assumptions about people based on incomplete info as schema can distort our interpretations of sensory info
How are models used to understand cognitive processing?
Cognitive psychologists often develop models to study internal processes
Suggests info flows through a sequence of stages that include input, storage and retrieval eg. MSM
How do computer models link to cognitive processing?
Refer to programmes that can be run on a computer to imitate the human mind - mind compared to human
Programmes such as these allow psychologists to test whether their ideas about info processing are correct
Proved useful in development of artificial intelligence
Eg - computer uses ‘coding’ to store info, humans use ‘coding’ to store memories in different formats (acoustic or semantic)
The emergence of cognitive neuroscience
Fusion of cognitive approach and biology - influence of brain structures (neuro) on mental processes (cognition)
Neuroscientists able to study living brain using PET scans, fMRI - help understand neurological basis of mental processes
Eg - research shown episodic and semantic memories stored in opposite sides of prefrontal cortex
Eg - evidence to suggest link between parahippocampal gyrus and OCD
Expanded recently to include use of computer-generate models that are designed to read the brain, led to development of ‘brain fingerprinting’ a mind mapping technique
Could be used in future to analyse brain wave patterns of eyewitnesses to determine whether or not they’re lying
Cognitive approach evaluation - strength
Scientific methods
Cognitive approach employs highly scientific and objective methods.
For example, lab experiments used to produce reliable and objective data such as Peterson and Peterson’s research into the duration of memory.
High control of variables in experiments such as these mean that cause and effect can be easily established.
This increases the validity of the results, which in turn increases the support for the cognitive approach.
Cognitive approach evaluation - strength
Treatment application
Cognitive approach has been used in the treatment of psychological disorders.
The cognitive approach has been used to explain how faulty thinking processes can cause illnesses such a depression.
The cognitive approach has therefore led to the development of successful treatments, including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
This shows that the cognitive approach has improved the lives of many individuals suffering from illnesses like depression.
Cognitive approach evaluation - strength
Less deterministic
The cognitive approach is less deterministic than other approaches.
The cognitive approach is founded on soft determinism as it recognises that our cognitive system can only operate within the limits of what we know, but that we are free to think before responding to a stimulus.
This is a more reasonable position than the hard determinism suggested by some other approaches where our behaviour is controlled by other things such as the unconscious mind, our environment or biology.
Cognitive approach evaluation - limitation
Machine reductionism
This approach has been criticised by many for being reductionist.
Although there are similarities between the human mind and a computer, this machine reductionism ignores other influences on human cognition and how these affect processing such as the effect anxiety has an impact on accuracy of EWT.
This shows that the human mind is more complex than a machine.
Cognitive approach evaluation - limitation
Application to everyday life
It is difficult to apply the research from this approach to everyday life.
Making inferences about cognitive processes still involves some degree of subjective judgement about an abstract concept and experiments often use artificial stimuli such as word lists to test memory.
The research from this approach may lack external validity.
This in turn limits the usefulness of the cognitive approach as a whole
What is determinism?
View that an individuals behaviour is shaped or controlled by internal or external forces rather than an individual’s will to do something
Comparing approaches in terms of determinism:
Psychodynamic
Learning approach
Cognitive approach
- Psychodynamic criticised for psychic determinism, behaviour caused by unconscious conflicts we cannot control
- Learning approach criticised for environmental determinism, behaviour caused by features of environment we cannot control
- Cognitive approach founded on soft determinism, constraints in our behaviour but within these limitations we are free to make choices
What is the biological approach?
Perspective that emphasises importance of physical processes in the body such as genetic inheritance and neural function
What are genes?
Make up chromosomes and consist of DNA which codes physical features of an organism and psychological features
Transmitted from parents to offsprings, inherited - carry instructions for a particular characteristic such as intelligence
How these characteristics develop is partly due to the gene and partly due to environment
What is a biological structure?
Arrangement or organisation of parts to form an organ, system or living thing
What is neuro-chemistry?
Relating to chemicals in the brain to regulate psychological functioning
What is the genotype?
Particular set of genes that a person possesses, genetic code of DNA
What is the phenotype?
Characteristics of an individual determined by both genes and the environment
Physical appearance that results from inherited info (genotype + environmental influence)
Demonstrates how much of human behaviour depends upon interaction between inherited factors and environment (nature vs nurture)
What is evolution?
Changes in inherited characteristics in a biological population over successive generations
How does evolution link to behaviour and the biological approach?
Biological psychologists interested in human behaviours that are innate and why they have evolved in humans
Assumptions of the biological approach
- Everything psychological is at first biological, to fully understand human behaviour we must look at biological structures and processes in body such as genes, neurotransmitters and nervous system - biological basis behind any trait
- Mind lives in brain, all thoughts, feelings and behaviours ultimately have physical basis
Direct contrast to cognitive approach - sees mind and brain as separate
What are concordance rates?
Extent to which both twins share same characteristic
Biological approach evaluation - strength - scientific methods used
Uses scientific methods, experimental methods as its main method of investigation
Involves controlled and sophisticated imaging and recording techniques - PET scans and fMRI
Experimental studies easy to replicate, increases validity of original findings as well as reliability if they can be reproduced
Biological approach evaluation - strength - successful for developing treatments (SSRIs, depression)
Approach has been successful in developing treatments for psychological disorders
Eg - SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) stop reuptake of serotonin in synapse and increase level of serotonin being absorbed by post-synaptic neuron, alleviating symptoms of OCD
Eg - research into role of neurotransmitter imbalances in depression has led to development of drug treatments which correct this imbalance
Approach has therefore helped improve the lives of many sufferers of a range of disorders by providing suitable drug treatments
Biological approach evaluation - limitation - reductionist approach
Criticism of approach is that it is reductionist
Explains behaviours by breaking it down into genes, hormones and neurotransmitters but ignores cognitive and environmental factors
Eg - approach explains OCD through low level of serotonin but there are other factors that can contribute to OCD which the approach ignores and doesn’t consider
(This reduces the validity of the approach as it cannot explain all reasons for a behaviour)
Biological approach evaluation- limitation - findings based on correlations
Approach often implies causal conclusions when their findings are based on correlations
Approach often explains causes of mental illnesses such as OCD through a deficiency in certain neurotransmitters in the brain
This is concluded because drugs that increase/decrease a neurotransmitter reduce symptom in the sufferer
However discovering association between 2 factors doesn’t mean one causes another
Biological approach evaluation - limitation - deterministic approach
Deterministic - sees hum,an behaviour as governed by internal, biological causes which we have no control over
Individual has no control over behaviour, have no free will to make any decisions
Implications on legal system as one of the rules of law is that offenders are seen as legally and morally responsible for their actions
Discover of a ‘criminal gene’, if it existed, would complicate this principle
What biological structures does the biological approach believe that we should be focusing on?
Genes, neurotransmitters and the nervous system
What are twin studies? Biological approach
Behaviour geneticists study inheritance with twin studies
Comparison of MZ (identical) and DZ (non-identical) twins in terms of characteristics
What percentage of DNA do MZ (identical) twins share?
100%
What percentage of DNA do DZ (non-identical) twins share?
50%
If MZ twins have a higher concordance rate than DZ twins, what does it suggest?
Characteristic being investigated has genetic basis/base
What is natural selection?
Genetically determined behaviour that enhances an individual’s survival and reproduction will continue on in further generations
‘Natural’ so no one decides the traits, selection occurs simply because some traits give the possessor certain advantage
Emergence of psychology as a science - 4 points (Watson, scientific discipline, cognitive revolution, biological approach)
1- Watson criticised introspection, thought it was too subjective, difficult to establish general principles
- proposed truly scientific psychology should restrict itself only to studying phenomenon that can be observed and measured - birth of behaviourist approach, focused on scientific process involving lab experiments with control, reliability, validity etc
2- Psychology seen as scientific discipline due to empirical methodologies it uses, hypotheses created & tested through objective methods - data collected helps build, refine, falsify info which can be used to produce scientific theories
3 - Scope of research broadened, cognitive revolution in 1960s, study of mental processes seen as legitimate and highly scientific area - cognitive psychologists can make inferences about how they work on basis of lab tests
4- Biological approach also made use of experimental data, recent advances in tech to investigate psychological processes as they happen - fMRI and EEG
Limitation of psychodynamic approach - lacks reliability, non observable behaviour
Introspection focuses on non-observable behaviour
Wundt’s approach require participants to report their conscious experiences which are un-obeservable constructs (memory and perception) impossible to observe
Wundt’s approach lacks reliability as results not been reproduced by other researchers
Limitation of psychodynamic approach - lack of accuracy, unable to observe own feelings
Criticism is its lack of accuracy
Nisbett and Wilson (1977) claim we have little knowledge of what causes or contributes to behaviours and beliefs
Found participants were unaware of different factors that influenced their choice of consumer items
Suggests we are unable to observe our own feelings and thoughts
Means that some of our behaviour and attitudes exist outside of conscious awareness and that introspection wouldn’t uncover them
(Emergence of psychology as a science timeline -
17th to 19th century - psychology branch of broader discipline of philosophy
1879 - Wundt opens experimental psych lab in Germany, psych emerges as discipline in its own right
1900s - Freud establishes psychodynamic approach “father of psych”, emphasises influence of unconscious mind on behaviour alongside development of psychoanalysis (person-centred therapy) - physical problems could be explained through conflicts of the mind
1913 - John B Watson writes ‘psychology as the behaviourist views it’, Skinner establishes behaviourist approach - psychodynamic and behaviourist dominate psych for next 50 years
1950s - Rogers and Maslow develop humanistic approach, rejects views of behaviourism and psychodynamic, anti-scientific - importance of self determinism and free will
1960s - Cognitive revolution, intro of digital computer, metaphor for operations of human mind - reintroduces study of mental processes but more scientific than Wundt
1960s - Around same time, Bandaranaike proposes SLT, draws cognitive factors in learning, bridge between newly established cognitive approach and traditional behaviourism
1980s onwards - biological approach begins to establish as dominant scientific perspective, due to advances in tech that led to increased understanding of brain and biological processes
Eve of 21st century - cognitive neuroscience emerges as distinct discipline, brings together cognitive and biological approach - built on earlier computer models and investigates how biological structures influence mental states
