Debates Flashcards
3x strengths of reductionism
- psychological research is more scientific as it allows the researchers to test the impact on behaviour of one factor at a time
- highly controlled, therefore possible to draw more accurate conclusions
- highly controlled, more replicable (good as it enables us to establish a consistent effect)
2x weaknesses of reductionism
- human behaviour often too complex to be reduced down to one explanation
- focusing on one variable means others may be left out
- highly controlled, therefore can lack ecological validity
2x strengths of holism
- more complex understanding of behaviours
- research not limited to a single area or perspective within psychology so can consider different explanations for the behaviour being investigated
2x weaknesses of holism
- can be difficult to pin down the factor that is having the biggest effect
- holistic explanations can only be verified by separating the different elements within them and testing them one by one to confirm that the factors they claim play a part actually do so; holism can then collapse back into reductionism
Reductionist studies
Freud - explained Little Hans’ phobias and fantasies in relation to his theory of psychosexual development only
Holistic studies
Piliavin et al. - draws on a range of different approaches to explain the helping behaviour of the Subway users; physiological and cognitive reasons
3x strengths of ethical considerations
- participants treated with respect
- enhances the reputation of psychology as an academic discipline
- makes it easier for researchers to obtain participants for future studies if they know the previous ones were treated well
2x weaknesses of ethical considerations
- can place limits on research - e.g. cannot use deception to increase the validity, cannot subject participants to harm for psychological purposes, must reveal true aim of study (unhelpful in situations such as Milgram’s study) by gaining informed consent
- can reduce the validity of a study if they know the aim - may lead them to behave differently to how they might have done if they were deceived
Studies that were conducted ethically
Sperry - participants consented to be studied, were not deceived, harmed or unduly stressed by the experimental tests
Studies that were conducted unethically
Milgram - participants did not give informed consent, were deceived as to the true aim of the study and deceived as they thought they were really shocking someone, put under enormous stress (14 displayed ‘definite signs of nervous laughter’ and 3 had ‘full-blown, uncontrollable seizures’, and were told in 4 different ways (prods) that they could not withdraw
2x strengths of nature
- useful - be it only pointing towards genetic modification of biological interventions
- not ethnocentric - biological factors affect people anywhere
3x weaknesses of nature
- limited usefulness - may not be possible to change a person’s nature
- reductionist - can mean missing out on the impact of nurture
- socially sensitive - identifying a problem about someone that they cannot change
1x strength of nurture
- can be useful - e.g. in education or in changing the way a child is brought up
3x weaknesses of nurture
- reductionist - can mean missing out on the impact of nature
- could be ethnocentric as nurture varies across cultures
- socially sensitive - leading children to blame their parents for the way they were brought up
Studies relating to nature
Kohlberg - theory of moral development suggested that any individual is within a set of predetermined, innate stages, which, no matter what environment the child was brought up in, will remain invariant
Studies relating to nurture
Blakemore and Cooper - research suggests that the physical environment a cat is brought up in will affect not only their behaviour but how their brains develop - shows how the orientation of visual neurons can be shaped by whether a cat is reared in an environment with vertical or horizontal stripes
2x strengths of conducting socially sensitive research
- can answer important questions that improve our understanding of human behaviour
- can lead to practical applications that improve the quality of people’s lives
3x weaknesses of conducting socially sensitive research
- can involve potential harm to participants
- can lead to people beyond the study being stigmatised
- insights the research provides can be used for negative purposes
Studies that were socially sensitive
Milgram - study of obedience very socially sensitive, many participants sweated and laughed nervously, three had ‘full-blown seizures’ due to stress of experiment
Yerkes - research gave the idea that ethnicity is related to intelligence; socially sensitive claim to make. Suggests the idea that Yerkes did not approach the question with the care it required
Studies that were not socially sensitive
Moray - very little in the study that could have had negative implications; participants not put under any undue stress or discomfort during the research
2x strengths of free will
- not socially sensitive - people are able to control how they act, many like this
- useful - people can be held to account for the behaviours they carry out
2x weaknesses of free will
- unscientific - is free will a way of explaining behaviour we can’t explain any other way?
- socially sensitive - people may find it uncomfortable being told they are responsible for how they choose to act
2x strengths of determinism
- open to positive uses - if we know what causes a certain behaviour, we can make the behaviour occur again
- scientific - determinist explanations often arise from controlled experiments in which cause and effect has been established
3x weaknesses of determinism
- open to negative uses - lawyers could use determinist explanations to get guilty people acquitted
- reductionist - may be that behaviour is not so easily explained
- socially sensitive - people may find it uncomfortable being told they are not in control of how they behave
Determinist studies
Bandura et al. - suggests children are likely to be influenced by the ways in which the adults behave via a process of socially learned imitation
Loftus and Palmer - something as minor as the verbs used in questions about events we have witnessed can have a determining influence on what we remember
Both determinist and free will studies
Milgram - saw normal people commit atrocious acts even though it was highly immoral - deterministic
However lends itself to the free will position as 35% of people did stop and refuse to continue with the experiment, showing we have control over our behaviours
4x strengths of conducting scientific psychological research
- quantitative data is often gathered with can be analysed to see significant effects
- scientific research is less vulnerable to being affected by researcher bias
- controlled lab experiments can be conducted to see if findings are reliable
- scientific research typically involves the use of laboratory experiments that enable cause and effect to be inferred
3x weaknesses of conducting scientific psychological research
- scientific research often lacks qualitative data which reduces its explanatory power
- scientific studies are often conducted in tightly controlled laboratory settings which can reduce the ecological validity of the findings
- research is often reductionist as it tries to test the impact of a single factor; as such, it can miss out other factors that might be involved
Scientifically conducted psychological studies
Loftus & Palmer and Moray - controlled laboratory experiments which fulfil the scientific criteria of theory, control, evidence and replicability, which supports the claim that psychology is an academic discipline
Unscientifically conducted psychological studies
Freud - no situation which could make it false (therefore not falsifiable), theories highly subjective, this is a case study so it cannot be replicated; has failed three criteria that would make it scientific
2x strengths of situational
- helps us understand why people behave the way they do
- useful as we can alter behaviour by altering the situations that create it
2x weaknesses of situational
- socially sensitive - could be used as a way of explaining away bad behaviour
- reductionist - misses out individual factors as an explanation
2x strengths of individual
- helps us understand why people behave the way they do
- useful - could try placing people in certain jobs on the basis of their characteristics
2x weaknesses of individual
- limited usefulness - cannot necessarily change their personality if this is the reason for something
- reductionist - misses out situational factors as an explanation
Situational and individual studies
Milgram - situational: emotional stress and tension of situation and experimenter that made them obey. Individual: 35% still refused to continue despite pressure and stress to continue
PIliavin et al. - situational: people weren’t able to escape the setting, which could have caused them to act the way they did. Individual: people helped at different speeds, or didn’t help at all - differences in behaviour due to individual personalities
