Issues and Debates BS Flashcards
Scientific Emphasis on Determinism
- Heavily deterministic as it seeks causal relationships, the IV (cause) leads to changes in the DV (effect)
- Controlling all variables apart from the IV allows the researcher to see effect on DV from manipulation of the IV
- A control group allows the researcher to determine cause and effect, goal is to predict and control human behaviour
Chun Siong Soon et al
- Found brain activity determines simple choices before we are aware we have made a choice
- PP’s were asked to decide whether to push a button with their left or right hand
- Brian imaging revealed they made their decision 10 seconds before they were consciously aware of making a decision
Nurture
- Rooted in the empiricist theory that knowledge derives from learning
- Environmental influences are acquired through interactions with the environment, including the physical and social world
- Pre-natal influences are part of this, e.g whether the mother smokes during pregnancy
Nature-Nurture Eval
- Interactionist Approach?
- Nature and Nurture are closely intertwined so we cannot separate them
- General Heritability figure in IQ tests is around 0.5, meaning both genetic and the environment are important in developing an individuals intelligence
- Diathesis Stress Models?
- Models of mental illnesses which emphasise the interaction between nature and nurture in development of these illnesses
- E.g depression or schizophrenia is caused by genetic vulnerability (diathesis) and environmental trigger (stress)
- Tienari et al found a group of Finnish adoptees in which those most likely to get schizophrenia had relatives with it (genes) and dysfunctional relations with their adopted family (environment)
- Epigenetics?
- Refers to change in genetic activity without changing our genetic material
- Process that happens through interaction with environment, e.g smoking, diet, pollution leave epigenetic markers on our DNA
- These marks tell our bodies which genes to ignore and what to use and can influence children’s genetics, introducing a third element to the Nature-Nurture debate
- Nurture affects Nature
- Interactionist Approach?
Holism
- Focuses on systems as a whole rather than the constituent parts
- Suggests we cannot predict how the whole system will behave from knowledge of individual components
Weaknesses of Reductionism
Too simple
- Psychologists argue biological reductionism is too simple, leads to errors in understanding as it is simplistic and ignores interaction between many factors in behaviour
- To treat conditions like ADHD with drugs means we believe nothing but a neurochemical imbalance is the cause
- Though drugs may reduce the symptoms, drug success rate varies greatly showing mere biological understanding is inadequate
Use of non-human animals
- Research supporting environmental reductionism used non-human animals, e.g Pavlov and Skinner
- Critics of reductionism argue that the social context in which humans are placed are hard to measure the influence of, e.g emotion, cognition and intentionality
- The reductionist position is inadequate at explaining human complexities
Wolpe (1973)
- Treated a woman with an insect phobia using systematic desensitisation which did not work
- She developed the phobia as her husband, who she was not getting along with, had an insect nickname
- Shows environmental reductionism, classical conditioning, is not always appropriate, in this case it was her marital issues
Ex of Culture Bias in Psych
- In 1992 64% of the worlds 54,000 psychology researchers were American
- Baron and Byrnes 1991 textbook of psychology 94% of the studies cited were conducted in North America
Culture Bias Definition
- The tendency to judge people in terms of ones own cultural assumptions
- The norm or standard for behaviour is judged from the standpoint of one culture
- This leads to cultural differences in behaviour being seen as abnormal and inferior
Weaknesses of Culture Bias
- Tokano and Osaka (1999)
- Found 14 of 15 studies which compared US and Japan found no evidence of traditional distinction between individualistic and collectivist cultures
- Shows the simplistic distinction of individualistic and collectivist is unhelpful and inaccurate, there is more to it than mere ‘western freedom’ and ‘collectivist communal goals’
- Ekman (1989)
- Facial expressions and interactional synchrony
Idiographic Approach
- Involves the study of individuals and the unique insight each individual provides
- A qualitative approach as the focus is on studying unique individuals in depth rather than numerical data from many individuals to determine average characteristics
- Focus is on quality of information over quantity and deploys qualitative methods such as unstructured interviews and case studies
Nomothetic Approach
- Approach seeks to formulate general laws of behaviour that can be applied to everyone, sharing a common goal with the scientific approach
- Involves the study of a large representative sample, ideally using random sampling to collect data to support a testable hypothesis
- Nomothetic approach uses quantitative research methods, e.g central tendency and dispersion, these require data from large groups of people rather than individuals
Eval for Ethical Implications of psychological research
- Must be conducted for inclusion (+)
- Data mishandling (+)
- Cost Benefit Analysis (+)
- Ethical Guidelines (-)
- Should be Avoided (-)
- Cannot just safeguard participants (-)
Eval for Ethical Implications of psychological research
- Must be conducted for inclusion (+)
- Data mishandling (+)
- Cost Benefit Analysis (+)
- Ethical Guidelines (-)
- Should be Avoided (-)
- Cannot just safeguard participants (-)
