Issues and Debates

Question 1

Cultural biased

What is alpha bias

Answer 1

Exaggerates the difference between cultures

Question 2

Cultural bias

What is beta bias?

Answer 2

This ignores the difference between cultures

Question 3

Cultural bias

What is emic construct?

Answer 3

An idea or approach that applies to only one culture

Question 4

Cultural bias

What is Etic construct?

Answer 4

An idea of approach that is not culturally specific and can apply universally.

Question 5

What is an example of a study with Beta biased.

Answer 5

May Ainsworth’s strange situation method assumes that source attachment is the ideal, whereas insecure attachments are deviants from this one.

Question 6

What is an example of a study which shows Alpha bias

Answer 6

Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg carried out a meta-analysis of strange situation studies across 32 different samples around the world and found significant differences between and within cultures.

Question 7

Give an example of a study that shows no bias

Answer 7

Buss (1989) carried out surveys across cultures to discover mate preferences. Rather than hand out the same survey, he employed people in each of these cultures to translate the words and ideas in the survey for their home cultures.

Question 8

What is biological determinism?

Answer 8

The idea that your behaviour is determined solely by your biology. For example, through your genes and neurotransmitter levels.

Question 9

What is environmental determinism?

Answer 9

The idea that your behaviour is determined by learning and what has happened to you. For example, through exposure to violent role models.

Question 10

What is psychic determinism?

Answer 10

The idea that your behaviour is caused through a mixture of your innate drives (ID) and the effects of your early experiences (ego and superego development). For example, developing an oral fixation due to issues during the oral psychosexual stage.

Question 11

What is scientific determinism?

Answer 11

The idea that each behaviour and though has a direct cause. Focus her on casual explanations between a stimulus and a response.

Question 12

What is the humanistic approach?

Answer 12

Believe in the idea of ‘self-determination’ where you are in charge of your actions and behaviour. Furthermore, it is possible for somebody not to have self-determination, if they are allowing themselves to be controlled by other people or things. People need to take control in order to take control in order to gain self-determination.

Question 13

What is moral responsibility?

Answer 13

In society it is assumed that we are in control of our actions. In law, if you commit a crime, you are held responsible for it. For that reason, young children and the severely mentally ill are not tried in the same way because it is assumed that they were not ‘in control’. We also blame people who do bad things in everyday life rather than excusing hem for their difficult upbringing.

Question 14

What is reductionism?

Answer 14

This aims to explain human behaviour by breaking it down into manageable chunks by studying them separately.

Question 15

What is holism?

Answer 15

This aims to explain behaviour through processes and systems rather than combination of parts.

Question 16

What is biological reductionism?

Answer 16

Any explanation that assumes that all human behaviour can be explained through basic biological means (e.g. Genes, neural/hormonal levels)

Question 17

What is environmental reductionism?

Answer 17

Any explanation that assumes that all human behaviour can be explained through stimulus-response links and learning (e.g. Developing aggression through watching an aggressive role model)

Question 18

What is experimental reductionism?

Answer 18

There is an assumption when carrying out an experiment with more that one level of the IV that everything else about the participant will remain constant from one condition to the next. Therefore, any change in the DV must come from the IV change, rather than a more complex participant change.

Question 19

What is Gestalt psychology?

Answer 19

‘Gestalten’ means ‘the whole’ in German. This is the view that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In human behaviour, this means that our processes are more complex than the constituent parts that reductionists would choose to investigate separately.

Question 20

What are the the three basic levels at which we can explain human behaviour?

Answer 20

MOST COMPLICATED

• Higher level: cultural and social expectations of how our social groups affect our behaviour.
• Middle level: psychological explanations of behaviour.
• Lower level: biological explanations of our behaviour (e.g. Genes and hormones)

MOST BASIC (REDUCTIONIST)

Question 21

Nomothetic approach

Answer 21

Uses large samples of participants and makes general ‘laws’ and principals to apply to all people.

Question 22

Idiographic approach

Answer 22

Focuses on individuals (e.g. Case studies) to fine out more in depth. Then tries to apply to all people.