ISSUES AND DEBATES Flashcards
What is biological reductionism?
it refers to the way that biological psychologists try to reduce behaviours to a physical level and explain it in terms of neurons, neurotransmitters, hormones, brain structure.
What is environmental reductionism
It’s the belief that behaviour can be reduced to a simple relationship between behaviour and events in the environment.
What is experimental reductionism?
it’s reducing complex behaviours to isolated variables for conducting research
What is holism?
It’s the idea that human behaviour should be viewed as a whole integrated experience.
What is the reductionist approach?
The reductionist approach argues that several levels of explanation are necessary to explain a particular behaviour. Ranges from biological (low) - social + culture. (highest)
What are levels of explanation?
they explain behaviour at different levels according to the reductionist approach.
What is parsimony
the idea that complex phenomena should be explained in the simplest terms that are possible.
What are the levels of explanations?
Highest level: social + culture explanations of how social groups behave.
Mid level: psychological explanations of behaviour
Lower level: biological explanations of how are hormones and genes affect our behaviour.
What is reductionism?
An approach that breaks complex phenomena into simpler components.
What is evolution?
Adaptive pressures from natural selection behind all our characteristics.
What is Nature?
The idea that behaviour is seen to be a product of innate biological factors
What is Nurture?
The belief that behaviour is a product of environmental factors.
What is the Nature + Nurture Debate?
The argument as to whether a person’s development is mainly due to their genes or to environmental factors/influence.
What is Free Will?
The ability to make a meaningful choice between possible behaviours.
What is determinism?
The view that behaviour is controlled by external or internal factors acting upon the individual.
What is Hard Determinism?
The view that all behaviour can be predicted and there’s no free will. The two are incompatible.
What is Soft Determinism?
The view that causal factors influence behaviour however free will allows choice
What is Reciprocal Determinism?
interactive casualty. That A,B and C contribute to causing each other
What is Psychic Determinism?
The view that internal unconscious factors decide our behaviour
What is scientific determinism?
The belief that all events have a cause. An independent variable is manipulated to observe the causal effect on a dependent variable.
What is machine reductionism
It’s the view that humans work similarly to computers.
What is the idiographic approach?
focuses on individuals and emphasises uniqueness; favours qualitative methods in research
What is the nomothetic approach?
seeks to formulate general laws of behaviour based on the studies of groups and quantitative techniques.
What is Alpha bias?
A tendency to exaggerate the differences between men and women
What is Beta Bias?
The tendency to ignore the differences between men and women
What is Androcentrism?
Centred or focused on men, often to the neglect or exclusion of women
What is Universality?
The aim to develop theories that apply to all people, which may include real differences
What is socially sensitive research?
Any research that might have direct social consequences for the participants in research or the group that they represent.
What is Ethnocentrism?
Seeing things from the point of view of ourselves and our social group. Evaluating other groups of people using the standards and customs of one’s culture.
Give some strengths about the reductionist approach
studying basic units of behaviour underpins the scientific approach / adds weight to
scientific research
• more objective to consider basic components of behaviour
• leads to greater clarity of understanding, e.g. at the chemical, cellular level
• better able to isolate cause when studying basic units of behaviour, e.g. can see
which chemicals are implicated in certain behavioural disorders, then may be able to
effect treatment
• parsimonious – the simplest explanation is often the best.
Give some limitations about the reductionist approach
simplistic and ignores the complex interaction of many factors
• leads to us losing sight of behaviour in context
• less able to understand the behaviour because we do not understand its meaning -
loss of validity
• ignores emergent properties / distracts from a more appropriate level of explanation
give some limitations of the nomothetic approach.
cannot find out rich / in-depth information about single cases
• less meaningful as tends to use quantitative measures.
What are the four aspects in the research process at which ethical issues with social consequences may occur?
- research question - simply asking a research question may be damaging to members of a particular racial group or sexual orientation
- conduct of research and treatment of participants -
- the institutional context. - research may be funded and managed by private institutions who may misuse that data or may misunderstand the data that is produced
- interpretation and application of findings. - research findings may be used for purposes other than originally intended.
