Areas Of Psychology Flashcards
Cognitive psychology
How our thought processes impact our behaviour.
Includes: perception, attention, language, memory, and consciousness.
➡️Loftus & Palmer
➡️Grant et al.
Strengths and Limitations of cognitive psychology
✅ scientific, highly applicable, many empirical studies to support theory.
❎ ignores biology, low ecological validity, reductionism
Biological psychology
How our brain impacts our behaviour (chemistry and structure).
Impact of our genes on our behaviour.
Examines thoughts, feelings and behaviours from a biological and physical POV.
Believes us to be a consequence of our genetics and physiology.
Strengths and limitations of biological psychology
✅ Scientific
Strong argument against nurture debate.m
Many empirical studies to support theories.
❎ Low ecological validity
Doesn’t recognise cognitive processes
Reductionism
Social psychology
How other people affect/influence our behaviour.
Understanding individual behaviour in a social context.
Strengths and limitations of social psychology
✅ strong effect of social influences on people’s behaviour.
Scientific
Explains many phenomena.
❎. Reductionism
Unethical (convert studies)
Developmental psychology
How and why people change over time - social skills, thought process etc.
Strong focus on childhood development as that’s when most change occurs.
Strengths and limitations of developmental psychology
✅ longitudinal studies allows study of an individual overtime.
Recognises number of perspectives in development of children.
❎ unethical
Low ecological validity
Hard to replicate longitudinal studies
Individual differences psychology
How and why some people different including: culture , class , religion , sexuality etc
How these differences cause different behaviour.
Strengths and limitations of individual differences
✅ useful for improving experiences of people with mental health problems.
Developed psychrometric tests to measure differences between qualities of people e.g. personality and intelligence.
❎ only focus on certain differences during a study, hard to focus on all potential differences
Psychodynamic
Mind
Freuds iceberg theory (top of iceberg is our conscious mind; bottom is our unconscious mind).
Top- EGO
Bottom- super ego (angel) and ID (devil)
Behaviourist
Against freuds iceberg theory.
Believes you can condition humans or animals to behave in a certain way
A change in behaviour is caused by a result of experience.
Reductionism
Only tests a narrow aspect of memory. Behaviour may be caused by many over factors, not just one.
