Issues and Debates Alevel YR13

Question 1

Universality (Gender)

Answer 1

The aim to develop theories that apply to all people despite gender.

Question 2

Androcentrism

Answer 2

The tendency to be centered or focused on men, often to the neglect or exclusion of women. Most of psychological research has been male dominated.

Question 3

Alpha bias (Gender)

Answer 3

A tendency to exaggerate the differences between men and women.

Question 4

Example of alpha bias (Gender)

Answer 4

Freudian theory - Freud argued that because girls do not suffer the same oedipal conflict as boys, they do not identify with their mothers as strongly as boys identify with their fathers, so develop weaker superegos.

Question 5

Beta bias (Gender)

Answer 5

A tendency to ignore or downplay the differences between men and women.

Question 6

Example of beta bias (Gender)

Answer 6

Fight or flight response - Taylor et al… females adopt a ‘tend and befriend’ response in stressful/dangerous situations. More likely to protect offspring and and form allies.

Question 7

Evaluation of gender bias (Gender)

Answer 7

For - Recognising that there may be bias helps ensure research is valid. Research works hard to redress balance in research.
Againist - Difficult to remain objective.

Question 8

Cultural bias

Answer 8

The tendency to judge all people in terms of your own cultural assumptopns. This distorts your judgement.

Question 9

Bronfrenbrenner (1970)

Answer 9

Ecological model highlights the different levels in which an individual can be affected by their cultures.

Question 10

Universality (Culture)

Answer 10

The findings from research will generalise globally.

Question 11

Alpha bias (Culture)

Answer 11

Theories assume that there are real and enduring differnces between cultural groups. EXAMPLE - individualist/collectivist cultures.

Question 12

Beta bias (Culture)

Answer 12

Theories that ignore or minimise cultural differences.

Question 13

Ethnocentrism

Answer 13

Seeing things from the point of view of ourselves and our social group and evaluating other peoples culture using your own standards and customs.

Question 14

Example of Ethnocentrism

Answer 14

Ainsworth’s strange situation + the variations. The behaviours that the experiment was based on were done on middle-class americian children. How is that able to apply to every culture when they are all different.

Question 15

Cultural relativism

Answer 15

The view that behaviour cant be judged properly unless it is viewed in the context of the culture in which it originates.

Question 16

Example of Cultural relativism

Answer 16

The meaning of intelligence in every culture. Sternberg (1985) IQ tests on black carribean individuals being tested on white american knowledge.

Question 17

evaluation of culture bias

Answer 17

For - Acknowledging that ethnic indentity can influence the participants has been important for diagnosis.

Against - All humans have culture and this is difficult to seperate when completing research. This makes bias hard to avoid.

Question 18

Free will

Answer 18

The view that each individual has the power to make choices about their behaviour. There are no restraints on choice from the options avaliable.

Question 19

Determinism

Answer 19

The view that external or internal factors act upon the individual. No control or choice of action.

Question 20

Soft determinism

Answer 20

Behaviour is determined, but humans can exercise free will if needs be. You can choose some circumstances.

Question 21

Hard determinism

Answer 21

All behaviour is determined by outside forces, no free will

Question 22

Biological determinism

Answer 22

Our behaviour is determined by biological causes i.e. genes, brain structures and biochemistry. Example - Localisation of function, Broca’s area

Question 23

Enviromental determinism

Answer 23

Our behaviour is determined by enviromental influences i.e. social psychology.

Question 24

Psychic determinism

Answer 24

Our behaviour is determined by the role of the unconscious on conscious thought - Freud

Question 25

Free will + Determinism Eval

Answer 25

For - The idea of free will feel correct, people like to feel like they have a choice. The humanistic approach would argue that we do have free will.

Against - Free will = impossible to test + unfalsifiable. This means it is against the principle of approach and means the debate can’t be fully resolved at this time - is the debate even worth while? Libet et al - finger flexing experiement, no free will?

Question 26

Nature definition

Answer 26

Behaviour is a product of innate (genetic and biological) factors. Also referred to as nativism which is the idea that we are born with predispositions and pre-programmed behaviours.

Question 27

Nurture definition

Answer 27

Behaviour is a product of enviromental influences. This side of the debate can also be called empiricism, the idea that we are born without any innate mechanisms and all that we become is due to our experiences.

Question 28

Twin studies (nature vs nurture)

Answer 28

Herdity can be established by comparing monozygotic and dizygotic twins in terms of differing characteristics and behaviours. This is good as MZ twins are 100% genetically indentical, so act as a good way of determining if a characteristic is biological. MZ twins are also treated very similarly, so this may influence the similarity.

Question 29

Interactionalist

Answer 29

This is the stance between nature and nurture intead of focusing that both play a role in behaviours and the environment moderates that predispositon.

Question 30

Evaluation - Nature vs Nurture

Answer 30

Biological therapies such as SSRI’s have been developed through the nature approach. The relative contribution of both is valyed and instead of being an extreme argument, it now focuses on the relative contributions of behaviour is influenced by the enviroment + It is difficult to ascertain how much influence nature vs. nurture have due to the high levels of interaction.

PKU - condition, if low protein diet is kept up until 12 then the child can live a normal life.

Question 31

Holism + reductionism, levels of explanation

Answer 31

Different ways of explaining the same thing.
Higher level - Cultural + social explainations
Middle level - Cognition and emotion
Lowest level - Biological, genetics and cellular levels.

Question 32

Biological reductionism

Answer 32

Behaviour can be explained using biological systems.
Miller (1956) short term memory experiment 7 + or - 2
Peterson + Peterson - duration of stm (18 seconds)
Magquire (2002) studied hippocami of taxi drivers, they memorised routes of driving in london.

Question 33

Eval of biological reductionism

Answer 33

+ more procise and simple
+ more scientific and easy to test
+ can generate treatments e.g. schizophrenia and dopamine hyp
- too simplistic and incomplete

Question 34

Enviromental reductionism

Answer 34

Behaviour can be learned in terms of simple stimulus-response links (behaviourism)

Question 35

Eval of enviromental reductionism

Answer 35

+ easy to test
- too simplistic
- inadequate for the complexities of human behaviour

Question 36

Holism

Answer 36

Focuses on systems as a whole rather than the individual components which only offer a limited role in understanding behaviour. The whole must be considered to understand behaviour. Gestalt psychology is a good example.

Question 37

Eval of holism

Answer 37

+ Uses social explanations as reasons for behaviour
+ Takes the complexities of human behaviour into account
- less scientific
- unable to predict behaviours

Question 38

Interactionalist - Holism + reductionism

Answer 38

The idea that several levels of explanation are neccesary to understand behaviour. All explanations have relevence and it is difficult to say which has the best explanatory power. Seems to depend on the situation as to which level of explanation is best.

Question 39

Idiographic

Answer 39

Study of individuals and the unique insights that this gives us into human behaviour. Qualitative data should be discussed as part of this approach with examples of how qualitative data has furthered our understanding of behaviour.
EXAMPLE - Shallice + Warrington (1970) KF, patient who had a motorcycle crash - damaged his short-term memory. KF struggled to process verbal information but his visual memory was unaffected.
PLUS LITTLE HANS FREUD.

Question 40

Nomothetic

Answer 40

People can be regarded as groups and theories/explanations can be generated in order to explain behaviour. This fits in with the ideals of the scientific approach.

Question 40

Nomothetic

Answer 40

People can be regarded as groups and theories/explanations can be generated in order to explain behaviour. This fits in with the ideals of the scientific approach.

Question 41

3 types of general laws -

Answer 41

Classification - People can be classified into certain groups according to characteristics - DSMV

Establishing principles - The focus to establish laws and principles that can be applied to human behaviour e.g. behaviourism

Establishing dimensions - The attempt to use continnums to place individuals upon like Eysenck’s theory of personality.

Question 42

Social sensitivity

Answer 42

Any psychological research that has wider ethical implications that impact outside of research context. This could involve; participants, researchers or entire groups affected by the outcome if research.

EXAMPLE Cyril Burt - effect on generations of children taking 11+ exam following his falsified data

Question 43

Evaluation of ethics

Answer 43

• Research can cause great distress to participants and havr far reachiing consequences
• Deception is often ussed in socially sensitive research which is unethical
  + Benefits of research must be considered in the benefit-cost analysis
  +Research that is unethical can be justified due to the knowledge gained
  + Ethical committees now exist to consider the potential pros and cons of research and can adivse to make the research more ethical for those involved.

EX- Yerkes - biased socially sensitive research. IQ test on black americians ‘have lowe IQ’ resulted in facist and racist laws that hurt black women (sterlisation)