Comparison Of Approaches

Question 1

What are the issues and debates for Wundt’s origins of psychology?

Answer 1

• produced data that was subjective
  —> however, attempted to be nomothetic as he wanted to create laws and standardised procedures. But not fully scientific

Question 2

What are the issues and debates of the psychodynamic approach?

Answer 2

• idiographic research (case studies)- the importance of unconscious factors in determining behaviour - however, did create general laws on, e.g. , psychosexual development (so a little nomothetic)
• psychic determinism - behaviour is a produce of unconscious through processes and conflict
• reductionist - reduces childhood experiences
• Interactionist - born with id and develop ego and superego through experiences
• gender bias - alpha bias
• culture bias - repressed Victorian culture
• socially sensitive - expressed reasons for behaviour linking to psychosexual development

Question 3

What are the issues and debates for the behaviourist approach?

Answer 3

• Nomothetic approach - replicable scientific research to create laws such as CC and OC
• Nuture - behaviour is learned from your environment - ‘born a blank slate’
• Environmental determinist - we learn everything from our experience
• Reductionist - reduced behaviours to learnt response (OC)
• Socially sensitive - that all behaviour learnt blames your environment

Question 4

What’s the issues and debates for the Humanist approach?

Answer 4

• Idiographic - we are all individuals and so research has to be case studies on individuals
• Nature and Nuture and more
• Holism - we need to look at individuals as a whole
• Free Will - able to have some choice in how we act and assumes that we are free to choose our behaviour - self-determined
• Culturally biased - based on Western ideals, e.g. some women do not have free will

Question 5

What is the issues and debates of the social learning theory?

Answer 5

• Nomothetic - evidence from lab studies, to generate laws of vicarious reinforcement
• Nuture - underestimates the influence of biological factors - Bandura makes little reference to biological factors on social learning. One finding that boys are more aggressive than girls - hormonal factor, such as higher testosterone in boys - this important factor is not accounted for in SLT
• Environmental determinist - learned form social environment, no free will
• Reductionist - reduced behaviour to learned from vicarious reinforcement
• Culture bias - samples of ptp have been from western, industrialised, educated, rich demographic - yet does recognise culture influencing behaviour

Question 6

What are the issues and debates for the Cognitive Approach?

Answer 6

• Nomothetic approach - Scientific and objective methods: highly controlled methods. Lab experiments -and general laws such as models of memory and schema
• Machine reductionism: Although there are similarities between the human mind and the operations of a computer
• Determinism – behaviour is determined by the schemas that have been learned and processed
• Both nature and nurture – born with the hardware (brain) and the software are our life experiences.
• Culture bias – the samples of ptp have been from western, industrialised, educated, rich demographic

Question 7

What are the issues and debates for the Biological Approach?

Answer 7

• Nomothetic highly scientific methods are used.
• Nature – behaviour is genetically predetermined, related to brain structure or biochemical changes – note that today they do acknowledge nurture can affect nature
• Determinist view of behaviour: The biological approach is seen to be determinist that is that it states that all behaviour is determined by internal processes that we have no control over.
• Reductionist – physiological reductionism to genes, biochemicals or bran structural explanations.
• Gender bias- in evolutionary explanations
• Culture bias – the samples of ptp have been from western, industrialised, educated, rich demographic.
• Socially sensitive – Lombroso led to scientific racism, IQ being genetic led to biases in education. Evolutionary theory

Question 8

What are the issues and debates for the Cognitive Neuroscience approach?

Answer 8

• Nomothetic highly scientific methods are used.
• interactionist – behaviour is genetically predetermined, related to brain structure or biochemical changes – note that today they do acknowledge nurture can affect nature - as we have brain Plasticity
• Determinist view of behaviour: The biological approach is seen to be determinist that is that it states that all behaviour is determined by internal processes and some external learning
• Reductionist – physiological reductionism to genes, biochemicals or bran structural explanations.
• Culture bias – the samples of ptp have been from western, industrialised, educated, rich demographic.