Debates Flashcards
What is the individual/situational debate?
Individual: suggest that behaviour is best explained as arising from a person’s own personality or characteristics.
Situational: suggest that behaviour is best
explained by reference to the situation or circumstances a person is in.
What are the strength and weaknesses of claiming that behaviour is due to individual?
Strengths:
-Useful in placing people into jobs
-Can mean people are held accountable for their actions
-Supported by evidence of individual differences between people.
Weaknesses:
-Makes it difficult to predict how people will behave in a given situation.
-Makes it difficult to generalise behaviour
What are the strength and weaknesses of claiming that behaviour is due to situational?
Strengths:
-It is supported by evidence of people being influenced by situations in the same way
-Useful – it suggests we can change behaviour by altering the situations that create it
Weaknesses:
-It could be used as an excuse to explain away bad behaviour
-It underplays individual differences in response
What is the nature/nurture debate?
Nature position suggests that we are the product of our genetic inheritance, such that how we behave is due to factors innate within us
Nurture position suggests that we are the products of our upbringings, such that how we behave is due to our personal encounters and
experiences.
What are the strength and weaknesses of claiming that behaviour is due to nature?
Strengths:
Could potentially be useful in suggesting genetic modification and other biological treatment
Probably not ethnocentric
as biological factors will affect
people the same way anywhere
Weaknesses:
Too reductionist to explain behaviour as resulting from simple biological processes
Could be socially sensitive
if identifying a problem that
someone can’t change
What are the strength and weaknesses of claiming that behaviour is due to nurture?
Strengths:
It is supported by evidence of
behaviour being open to
change (e.g. via operant
conditioning or social learning)
Can have practical applications, suggesting
ways to change behaviour by
changing how a child is brought
up
Weaknesses:
Might be ethnocentric as
cultures will vary in how people are
brought up within them
Could be socially sensitive, leading
children to blame their parents for
how they were brought up
What is reductionism/holism?
Reductionism searches for the most basic underlying reasons behind human
behaviour
Holism focuses on multiple factors at
lots of different levels that all
interact
What are the strength and weaknesses of claiming that behaviour is reductionist?
Strengths:
Tends to involve scientific experimental methods to investigate the impact of one factor at a time.
highly controlled lab experiments tend to be used which allow cause and effect to be established increasing construct validity
Weakness:
Human behaviour is too complex to be reduced down to single factor explanations reducing validity of conclusions drawn
May be of limited use as it makes harder to make precautions about how people would behave
What are the strength and weaknesses of claiming that behaviour is holistic?
Strengths:
-Taking a holistic approach can lead
to explanations of behaviour that
are high in face validity because all factors are considered.
Allows us to see behaviours which are the result of interacting factors but would not be seen if a single factor was investigated on its own.
Weaknesses:
-It can be difficult for researchers to
pin down which, out of many
different factors, is having
the greatest effect
May be of limited use as it
means it will be difficult to make
predictions.
What is the freewill/determinism debate?
Freewill position proposes that our behaviour is the product of our own choice such that we are able to choose (freely will) how we behave
Determinist position suggests that our behaviour is caused (or determined)
by factors outside our control.
What are the strength and weaknesses of claiming that behaviour is freewill?
Strengths:
Not socially sensitive –
people will often like to feel
that they have control over
their behaviour
Useful – people can be held
to account for the
behaviours they carry out
Has face validity in
the sense that people often
feel that their behaviours are
their choices.
Weaknesses:
It suggests no predictability or pattern behaviour, reducing the usefulness of psychological research
Socially sensitive:
people may find it
uncomfortable being told
that they are responsible for
how they choose to act
What are the strength and weaknesses of claiming that behaviour is deterministic?
Open to positive uses – if we
know what causes a wanted
behaviour, we can make the
behaviour occur again
It is scientific as determinist
explanations often arise from
controlled experiments in
which cause and effec
has been established
Weaknesses:
Open to negative uses:
for example, lawyers could
use determinist explanations
to get guilty people
acquitted
Socially sensitive:
people may find it
uncomfortable being told
that they are not in control of
how they behave (i.e. that
they are essentially like
machines).
What are all the ethical considerations?
Respect:
-Informed Consent
-Right to withdraw
-Confidentiality
Responsibility:
-Protection from harm
-Debrief
Integrity:
-Deception
Strengths of study being ethical?
It avoids participants leaving the study in a
different (worse) state than
when they entered it
-It makes replication of the
study possible, in order to
see if the same results
would be obtained again
(demonstrating that a
consistent effect has
been observed).
-It enhances the
integrity of Psychology as an
academic discipline
Researchers are likely to
get other participants
for psychological research
in the future if they can see
that participants are
treated well
Weaknesses of study being ethical?
It can place limits on the sort
of research carried out
(preventing research that
might be really worthwhile
from being done)
-Insisting on participants being
confidential could
silence them and prevent
them from having people
know that a particular result in
a study related to them.
