Issues and Debates

Question 1

What is free will?

Answer 1

We are responsible for our own actions, we have a choice in life

Question 2

What is determinism?

Answer 2

We have no control over behaviour, everything in life is pre determined

Question 3

What did Libet find and what does this support?

Answer 3

Brain activity
Found that the movement of the hand came first so this support determinism

Question 4

Limitation of free will?

Answer 4

No true scientific evidence

Question 5

What is hard determinism?

Answer 5

Behaviour is all pre-determined and free-will is non existent

Question 6

What is soft determinism?

Answer 6

Where there is a cause of behaviour like environment or biological but
There is some decision making involved, doesn’t completely eliminate free-will

Question 7

What is nature?

Answer 7

Innate characteristic - genes, hormones, brain structure

Question 8

What is nurture? What did Lerner find as the contributing factors?

Answer 8

Experiences growing up
Mothers physical and psychological state during pregnancy

Question 9

How do we measure nature vs nurture?

Answer 9

Twin/adoption studies
Concordance rates

Question 10

What is the interactionist approach?

Answer 10

Nature & nurture both involved and work together

Question 11

Two examples of interactionist approach?

Answer 11

Epigenetics
Diathesis - stress model

Question 12

What is holism?

Answer 12

Human behaviour should be viewed as a whole integrated experience and not in separate parts

Question 13

What is reductionist?

Answer 13

Reducing something to its simple parts

Question 14

What is a causal explanation?

Answer 14

Where the cause and effect are clearly stated. In a test of difference

Question 15

What is a nomothetic approach?

Answer 15

Collects quantitative data from large samples to establish general laws/patterns in behaviour

Question 16

What is idiographic approach?

Answer 16

Collects qualitative data from in-depth studies of unique experiences of individuals

Question 17

What are some ways to conduct a nomothetic approach?

Answer 17

Experiments, questionnaires with closed questions (yes or no)

Question 18

What are the ways in which you can conduct a idiographic approach?

Answer 18

Case studies, questionnaire with open questions (long sentences)

Question 19

What is socially sensitivity in research?

Answer 19

Findings in research that can harm and have negative implications on a particular group

Question 20

What are the ways in which researchers can deal with social sensitivity?

Answer 20

The research question - really think about who the question can harm
Confidentiality and anonymity
Funding - how do they intend to use the findings

Question 21

What is machine reductionist?

Answer 21

Reducing individuals to a computer

Question 22

What is gender bias?

Answer 22

The differential treatment or representation of men and women based on stereotype

Question 23

What is alpha bias?

Answer 23

Tendency to exaggerate differences between men and women (suggesting there is a difference)

Question 24

What is an example of alpha bias?

Answer 24

Psychodynamic approach to offending behaviour

Question 25

What is androcentrism? Example?

Answer 25

A male-centred understanding of human behaviour Zimbardo, Asch and Milgrim. Done on all men

Question 26

What is beta bias?

Answer 26

A tendency to minimise differences between men and women

Question 27

What is ethnocentrism?

Answer 27

Emphasising the importance of the behaviour from ones own culture

Question 28

What did Heinrich find?

Answer 28

Found 68% of participants were Americans and 96% were from industrialised nations

Question 29

What is cultural bias?

Answer 29

Tendency to judge all cultures and individuals the same

Question 30

What is biological determinism?

Answer 30

Emphasis on behaviour being the result of biological factors, physiological factors (hormones and genes) and neurological (brain structure) are out of our control

Question 31

What is environmental determinism?

Answer 31

Our behaviour is shaped by our experiences/environmental effects (conditioning and socialisation from teachers)

Question 32

What is psychic determinism?

Answer 32

Free will is an illusion, our behaviour is governed by biological factors and instincts we have no control over

Question 33

What are the ways of reducing cultural bias?

Answer 33

Carry out cross cultural research Do not assume universal norms/standards

Question 34

What is an example of ethnocentrism?

Answer 34

Strange situation - western culture

Question 35

What are the strengths of the idiographic approach?

Answer 35

Focusses on the individual, can really explain behaviour and Illnesses if we look into someone

Question 36

What are the negatives to the idiographic approach?

Answer 36

Not very scientific, can’t generalise to the whole population. OCD patients, be too time consuming to conduct individual research on every person

Question 37

How has idiographic and nomothetic been used together?

Answer 37

Memory, Atkinson and shiffrin, multi-store model BUT KF (idiographic) showed us that these stores are too complicated which helped the development of baddeleys working memory model

Question 38

What is biological reductionism?

Answer 38

Psychologists try to reduce behaviour down to one aspect and explain it using neurotransmitters, brain structure etc

Question 39

What is environmental reductionism?

Answer 39

Can reduce simple behaviour down to simple stimuli - response associations