Debates

Question 1

Reductionism

Answer 1

• Behaviour arises from very basic causes
• These are isolated into simple components and tested in carefully controlled experiments
• E.g. hormones

Question 2

Reductionism Strengths

Answer 2

• Consistent with scientific approach
• Breaking phenomena down into smaller components uses the empirical method
• High level of predictive power for others’ behaviours

Question 3

Reductionism Weaknesses

Answer 3

• Ignores complexity of behaviour and is oversimplified
• Context is important in understanding the meaning of behaviour
• Leaves out other explanations of behaviour

Question 4

Reductionism Studies

Answer 4

• Freud: in the way that he explained Little Hans’ phobias and fantasies in relation to his theory of psychosexual development; he reduced the explanation for them down to this and this alone
• Baron-Cohen: is very reductionist as the approach taken focuses on understanding a disorder by isolating one variable (theory of mind) and testing this in an experimental way
• Bandura: shows that boys were more aggressive towards the Bobo doll than girls and the biological reductionist view suggests that this is due to the higher testosterone level in boys than girls as this can be scientifically shown

Question 5

Holism

Answer 5

• Behaviour is caused by many different factors interacting with each other
• Complex human behaviour is best understood by looking at the system as a whole

Question 6

Holism Strengths

Answer 6

• Provides a more complete picture
• Accepts and deals with the complex nature of behaviour
• Behaviour is influenced by many factors so a holistic explanation is more useful

Question 7

Holism Weaknesses

Answer 7

• It is difficult to investigate the many differing types and levels of explanation
• More hypothetical as it is not based on empirical evidence
• Lacks predictive power of more scientific explanations

Question 8

Holism Studies

Answer 8

• Freud carried out an in-depth case study collecting data on Little Hans over a long period of time e.g. two years in an unstructured way, this was a holistic way of conducting the research as little Hans wasn’t restricted in the differing aspects of his experience that he could reveal
• Lee: suggests that our moral development is not simply a series of predetermined cognitive stages which we will pass through all at the same time with the same outcome but instead is holistic by acknowledging the influence of society on behaviour and social cognitions
• Piliavin: the model of response to emergency situations that was developed to explain behaviour can be seen as holistic; it takes into account a range of different factors (physiological and cognitive)

Question 9

Nature

Answer 9

• Behaviour is determined by hereditary factors i.e. genetic inheritance

Question 10

Nature Studies

Answer 10

• Bandura: study showed that boys showed more aggression towards the Bobo doll than girls and this could be due to the fact that boys are naturally more aggressive as they have higher levels of testosterone
• Casey: identified ‘low delayers’ and ‘high delayers’ at the age of four through a Marshmallow Test and the stability of the lack of self control was shown over time suggesting that the ability to delay gratification is innate
• Kohlberg: his theory of moral development suggests that every individual has an innate pre-determined sequence of stages that they progress through regardless of how they are brought up; moral development is innate as it is invariant

Question 11

Nurture

Answer 11

• Behaviour is acquired through the influence of the environment and interactions with the environment

Question 12

Nurture Studies

Answer 12

• Bandura: showed that boys showed more aggression towards the Bobo doll, physical than girls. This maybe is due to the way that parents reinforce stereotypical behaviour; society is more accepting of aggression from boys. Qualitative data from the study shows that phrases like “That isn’t no way for a lady to behave” were said
• Casey: shows consistency within people being ‘low delayers’ or ‘high delayers’ from the age of four onwards, but by the age of four children have learned or not learned about resisting temptation through observing others, showing that nurture could influence the behaviour
• Maguire: nurture in the form of environmental demands placed on the spatial memory of black cab London taxi drivers led to brain plasticity in their hippocampi, their spatial knowledge improved with experience as their hippocampi changed to accommodate the demands placed on their spatial memory

Question 13

Nature-Nurture Strengths

Answer 13

• Distinguishes between behaviours that are inherited and those that are learned
• Leads to appropriate or useful interventions when knowing what behaviours are due to

Question 14

Nature-Nurture Weaknesses

Answer 14

• Too simplistic to divide behaviour into either nature or nurture as often the two combine in complex ways to influence behaviour
• Accepting one and rejecting the other may lead to people believing that their behaviours are all due to that one e.g. people may blame their nature for everything and ignore the effects of the environment

Question 15

Determinism

Answer 15

• How we behave is out of our control; it is all determined beforehand
• E.g. we don’t choose our personality, motivation, morality or intelligence

Question 16

Determinism Strengths

Answer 16

• More scientific as it isolates variables, examines them in scientific conditions
• Emphasis on cause and effect helps us understand the world easier and make changes with positive effect which society are more likely to accept

Question 17

Determinism Weaknesses

Answer 17

• Explanations are often reductionist
• Mechanistic view and doesn’t apply to normal life
• Implies behaviour can be predicted and doesn’t account for anomalies or individual differences
• Leaves no responsibility for actions

Question 18

Determinism Studies

Answer 18

• Milgram: the 65% of participants that administered electric shocks all the way up to the maximum 450V can be seen as having their behaviour determined by the situation that they were in
• Bandura: showed that boys showed more aggression towards the Bobo doll than girls and biological determinism proves that this was likely to happen due to the boys having higher levels of testosterone which is a hormone linked to aggression
• Sperry: showed that undergoing a procedure to severe the corpus callosum meant that split-bran patients are, for example, no longer able to name objects they touch with their left hands out of sight, and their ability to do this is determined by physiological/biological factors
• Simons & Chabris: our cognitive processes have an influence on us which we have no conscious control over, this study demonstrates our attentional processes can influence us so much that we fail to see an object in the centre of our vision for five seconds, suggesting this is not freely chosen behaviour
• Kohlberg: the stages of moral development happen at distinct chronological ages and this can be considered deterministic as you cannot choose to avoid any of the stages as your cognitive development ensures you pass through each stage

Question 19

Free Will

Answer 19

• Everything happens by choice, as no human behaviour is predetermined

Question 20

Free Will Strengths

Answer 20

• Emphasis on the individual
• Fits in with societies view of individual responsibility
• Suggests behaviour is free and undetermined by our past

Question 21

Free Will Weaknesses

Answer 21

• The concept of free will may be culturally relative to individualistic cultures
• Cannot be tested as free will is not situational
• Unscientific
• No clear definition of the term ‘free will’

Question 22

Free Will Studies

Answer 22

• Milgram: 35% of participants walked away from the experiment before reaching the maximum 450V when giving out electric shocks, this can be seen as them exercising free will and choosing how they act
• Bandura: shows that physical aggression shown by female role models was not imitated to the extent that aggression shown by made models was. This indicates that there were choices made by the children about what was an acceptable way to behave
• Piliavin: in a situation where a person collapses due to being drunk witnesses have control over their behaviour in making the decision to help or not as only 50% helped the drunk man

Question 23

Individual

Answer 23

• Something about the person is used to explain the behaviour
• E.g. biology/innate

Question 24

Individual Strengths

Answer 24

• Holistic; it gives a more complete and global understanding of an individual
• Good for counseling
• Balances the neglect of uniqueness in psychology

Question 25

Individual Weaknesses

Answer 25

• Can replicate and predict but can’t legitimately generalize to other people – it has limited usefulness
• The idea that people are so unique that they cannot be compared in any ways is contradicted by psychological research

Question 26

Individual Studies

Answer 26

• Milgram: the fact that 35% of participants were able to resist the pressure of the situation and walk away before administering the maximum electric shocks of 450V proves that people’s personalities can be an even greater influence than the situational pressures around them
• Bocchiaro: 23.5% either disobeyed or whistle blew the unethical sensory deprivation study showing that there are individual factors that enabled some people to resist the situation
• Simons & Chabris: the overall level of in-attentional blindness was 46% meaning that more than half of the participants did see the unexpected event and did not inexperience any in-attentional blindness suggesting that there are individual differences in attention

Question 27

Situational

Answer 27

• Something about the situation is used to explain behaviour

- The approach is concerned with developing general laws of behaviour that apply to all people e.g. social

Question 28

Situational Strengths

Answer 28

• Links to science and determinism

- Ability to generalize laws and compare groups of people is useful in predicting and controlling behaviour

Question 29

Situational Studies

Answer 29

• Bocchiaro: 3.6% of similar students in the comparison group said they would obey and not whistle blow the unethical sensory deprivation study but 76.5% in the actual study were actually obedient showing the power of the situation in shaping behaviour
• Milgram: 65% of participants administered electric shocks all the way to the maximum 450V shows the power of the situation on influencing behaviour
• Grant: learning is context-dependent (learn in silence/ recall in silence scored 6.7 while learn in silence/recall in noise scored 4.6), therefore performance of students is affected by situational factors e.g. the environment they learn in as opposed to individual factors such as innate ability
• Levine: levels of helping behaviour varied greatly in different cities around the world and this suggest that culture is one aspect of the situation that can influence the chances of people engaging in helping behaviour
• Lee: the situation/culture that a child is brought up in will significantly change their moral thinking, this suggests that the levels of pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional moral thinking which reflect the moral values of honesty and integrity are not universal across all cultures

Question 30

Psychology As A Science

Answer 30

• Science is a way of collecting information about the world we live in using objective, verifiable methods to build up coherent theories
• Objective: findings are a matter of fact rather than opinion
• Replicable: if the study is repeated, the same results are obtained
• Falsifiable: can be proven wrong by observation or experiment

Question 31

Pseudoscience

Answer 31

• Appears to use the techniques of science but doesn’t produce verifiable evidence e.g. an online personality test labeled as scientifically valid
• It makes claims that can’t be verified
• The claims aren’t connected to previous research
• The data isn’t submitted for review by other scientists

Question 32

Science Requirements

Answer 32

• Provide a precise operationalised hypothesis which can be tested
• Provide general laws/principles which should make predictions for future events
• Laws/principles are internally consistent as parts of the same theory shouldn’t contradict
• Should be nomothetic, apply to the whole population

Question 33

Science Improvements

Answer 33

• Use larger representative samples
• Use independent groups designs to reduce order effects
• Deceive participants to avoid demand characteristics
• Use statistical tests of reliability to ensure results aren’t due to chance

Question 34

Psychology As A Science Evaluation

Answer 34

+ Psychology is a research-based subject with investigation at it’s core
+ Psychology uses scientific methods in it’s investigations carried through genuine experimentation
+ Psychology has theories like other sciences and these theories generate hypotheses which can be tested empirically

• Psychology’s subject matter is humans and they cannot all be investigated in the same way

Question 35

Ethical Guidelines

Answer 35

• Protection Of Participants: they shouldn’t be harmed in any way mentally or physically, even in self report they shouldn’t be asked sensitive questions
• Informed Consent: ppts should be asked if they want to take part in the study and made aware of the aims, however observation doesn’t require this
• Right To Withdraw: ppts should be aware that they can withdraw completely from the study at any time
• Deception: ppts shouldn’t be deliberately misled about the aims of the study e.g. using a confederate/stooge is deception
• Debrief: at the end ppts should be told what was happening and give any explanations they require; they should leave the study in the same state that they arrived
• Confidentiality: ppts data/info about them should not be passed on to people not directly involved in the research and it shouldn’t be published in any way that reveals their identity

Question 36

Cost Benefit Analysis

Answer 36

• It can be argued that if participants aren’t deceived about the true aims of a study their behaviour may be affected to show demand characteristics
• Researchers solve this by doing a cost-benefit analysis
• They try to calculate the benefit of the research to psychology and society and try to assess the cost, in terms of potential harm to their participants

Question 37

Socially Sensitive Research

Answer 37

• Involves studies that have the potential to have a negative impact on specific groups of people or society in general

Question 38

Socially Sensitive Research Evaluation

Answer 38

+ It is important as the research may have major positive impacts e.g. challenging stereotypes or ‘scientific justifications for discriminations’

• Although there is the concept of the cost-benefit analysis, this could have negative impacts on the groups of people being studied especially if the topics are sensitive

Question 39

Psychology As A Science Studies

Answer 39

• Simons and Chabris: carried out controlled laboratory experiments and these fulfil the scientific criteria of theory, control, evidence and replication
• Moray: carried out controlled laboratory experiments and these fulfil the scientific criteria of theory, control, evidence and replication
• Piliavin: an example of inductive research where the theory/model of response to emergency situations was developed from the data they had collected
• Blakemore and cooper: it would be possible to prove false what they suggested about the impact of the visual environment on the visual neurones of kittens by replicating their study with a fresh sample of kittens, this makes their work falsifiable

Question 40

Usefulness Studies

Answer 40

• Moray: this study contributes to psychology as an academic discipline as it provided rigorous/empirical evidence for Cherry’s cocktail party phenomenon and contributes to our understanding of auditory selective attention
• Maguire: furthers our understanding of how the brain works and provides evidence about the plasticity of the brain and this is apart of new advances in science that enable researchers to map the functions and observe the structure of the human brain
• Hancock: findings on speech begin to open the window into the mind of psychopaths and can be useful in a prison context and is needed when trying to work out the best rehabilitation schemes to give to inmates

Question 41

Socially Sensitive Studies

Answer 41

• Gould: although psychologists shouldn’t be restricted in the areas they are allowed to research but they should be mindful of the socially sensitive nature of certain topics, especially the question of whether ethnicity is related to intelligence without taking into account unequal educational opportunities
• Hancock: it is vital that findings must not be misapplied, e.g. people who are disfluent in their language or have a tendency to use past tense when describing their actions and who use a lot of subordinating conjunctions could find themselves being labelled as psychopaths