issues and debates in psychology

Question 1

define issue

Answer 1

an area of consideration/concern for psychologists

Question 2

define debate

Answer 2

an area of ongoing discussion that has more than one side

Question 3

define bias

Answer 3

tendency to treat one individual or group in a. different way from others, which creates a distorted view of the world

Question 4

define universality

Answer 4

the idea that a theory can apply to all people, irrespective of gender and culture

Question 5

define gender bias

Answer 5

a type of bias where psychological research or theory may offer a view that does not justifiably represent the experience of men and women

Question 6

define andocentrism

Answer 6

research focuses on and revolve around men, often to the neglect of women

Question 7

examples of androcentrism

Answer 7

• bowlby suggested women should stay at home and look after children
• freud said women suffer from “penis envy”
• PMS is a social construction to use female biology against them

Question 8

define alpha bias

Answer 8

psychological research that over exaggerates or overestimates between the senses, which may enhance or undervalue members of either sex

Question 9

example of alpha bias

Answer 9

freud argues women develop weaker superegos

Question 10

define beta bias

Answer 10

psychological research that ignores or minimises differences between the sexes, usually where females are not part of the research process and findings are assumes to apply to both sexes

Question 11

examples of beta bias

Answer 11

• bem’s theory of androgyny as she views all characteristics in the same level field
• fight or flight research ignores women’s response “tend and befriend”

Question 12

why can you not eradicate gender differences

Answer 12

example of beta bias as we need to recognise differences but not superiority of genders

Question 13

evaluation of gender bias strengths

Answer 13

+ feminist psychology helps to redress the imbalances in psychology by recognising the biological differences between the genders and help to reduce the bias by having real world application, e.g creating training programmes to help women become leaders
+ reverse alpha bias helps to highlight where women are better, where Cornwell et al found women are better at learning, which helps to counter stereotypes

Question 14

evaluation of gender bias weaknesses

Answer 14

• arguing for equality takes away women’s special needs, e.g childbirth and breastfeeding, and doesn’t help achieve equality
  -methodology is flawed as Rosenthal found male experiments were more friendly to female participants which led to males not performing as well
• lab experiments to may be an example of institutionalised sexism as studies in real settings found women and men’s leadership qualities were similar
• gender bias remains unchallenged, as seen in Darwin’s theory where women are choosy

Question 15

define culture bias

Answer 15

a tendency to ignore cultural differences and interpret all phenomena through the lens of one’s own culture

Question 16

define culture

Answer 16

• the ideas, cultures and social behaviours of a particular group or society
• Gross argues objective aspects are things that can be seen like buildings, music and food and subjective aspects are beliefs and values

Question 17

define western bias

Answer 17

• psychologists are trained in the West and conduct research based on Western culture and norms
• Rozenzweig found 64% of world’s psychologists are American

Question 18

define universality (culture)

Answer 18

assumption that research findings can be applied to everyone

Question 19

define ethnocentrism

Answer 19

use of our own cultural group as a basis for judgements about other groups

Question 20

define alpha bias in culture and example

Answer 20

• theories that assume there are real differences between cultures
• Takano and Osaka reviewed 15 studies that compared individualist and collectivist cultures in Japan and US and found 14/15 did not find difference in conformity

Question 21

define beta bias in culture and example

Answer 21

• theories that ignore cultural differences
• IQ tests like US military one focus on American ideals and thus would determine people to have a low IQ

Question 22

define imposed etic and example

Answer 22

• an approach that looks at behaviour from the outside of a given culture and attempts to decide behaviours that are universal
• Asch as he only studied Americans
• Milgram tried to explain obedience of German soldiers, but used American partisans to generalise the findings

Question 23

define emic approach

Answer 23

approach that looks within cultures to identify behaviours that are specific to that culture

Question 24

define cultural relativism

Answer 24

• ideas that things are observed in research only make sense from the perspective of the culture being observed and all cultures are of equal value
• behaviours seen as statistical,t, infrequency may be seen as abnormal in some cultures more than others like hearing voices

Question 25

evaluation of culture bias strengths

Answer 25

+ can be reduced now as psychologists can travel and go to international conferences to understand other cultures
+ can encourage indigenous psychologists like afrocentrism movement, which aimed to look into the culture and how it is relevant to their behaviour

Question 26

evaluation of culture bias weaknesses

Answer 26

• can create or reinforce stereotypes
• bias in research methods as Baron and Byme found 94% of studies on social psychology were conducted in North America
• emic approaches can only be applied within that culture so it is hard and time consuming to get universal data
• cross cultural research is difficult as it requires translators and may not be carried out exactly the same

Question 27

define determinism

Answer 27

the view that an individuals behaviour is controlled by external and/or internal forces that act upon them and they have no control over it

Question 28

define hard determinism

Answer 28

view that forces outside of our control shape our behaviour, which is incompatible with free will

Question 29

define soft determinism

Answer 29

behaviour is constrained by the environment or biology, but only to a certain extent
- cognitive approach- people are not bound by their meditational processes and can choose what information they attend to

Question 30

types of determinism

Answer 30

• biological determinism- caused by biological influences like genes and hormones (biological approach)
• environmental determinism- caused by features of the environment and other aspects of socialisation- behaviourist approach
• scientific determinism- ability to show causation
• psychic determinism- all mental processes are determined by the unconscious or pre existing mental complexes (psychodynamic approach)

Question 31

define free will

Answer 31

ability to behave in the way we want and out actions are voluntary (humanistic approach)

Question 32

evaluation of free will and determinism debate strengths

Answer 32

+ helped with biological treatments like use of SSRIs to treat OCD
+ has face validity, and those with an internal locus of control tend to be more mentally healthy

Question 33

evaluation of free will and determinism debate weaknesses

Answer 33

• complex with legal responsibility, especially in the US where Mobley claimed he was “born to kill” in order to avoid the death penalty
• hard to know whether the problem is genetic or environmental, where twins with 100% concordance only had 80% similarity in intelligence or 40% for depression
• Libet and Siong Soon demonstrated that brain activity that determines the outcome of choices predates our knowledge of having such a choice, up to 10s
• Skinner argues free will is an illusion as they believe they are making their own choices but it is all predetermined depending on reinforcement
• unfalsifiable

Question 34

explain nature side of the nature nurture debate

Answer 34

• nativism - behaviour is determined by biology and genetics
• characteristics of humans are a product of evolution
• biological approach

Question 35

explain nurture side of nature nurture debate

Answer 35

• empiricism or environmentalism believes we are born without innate mechanisms and our behaviour is due to our experiences
• locke believes we are born a “tabula rasa”
• behaviourist approach

Question 36

what is the interactionist approach

Answer 36

• genetics and the environment play a role in our behaviour
• genetics give a predisposition to certain behaviour but it is moderated by the environment
• cognitive, psychodynamic and humanistic approach

Question 37

examples of nature nurture debate

Answer 37

• gender can be nature due to effect of genes and hormones, or nurture due to slt
• attachment can be nature due to hormones and bowlby’s monotropic theory or due to learning explanations
• schizophrenia can be nature due to genetic explanations or nurture due to family dysfunction theory
• addiction can be nature due to genetic vulnerability or nurture due to other risk factors like stress and family

Question 38

evaluation of nature nurture debate weaknesses

Answer 38

• hard to separate influence on nature and nurture as genetic disorder PKU can be caused by inheritance of two recessive genes, but can also be treated by going on a low protein diet diet
• its nature and nurture needed for psychological disorder to develop due to diathesis stress model- finnish adoption study compared adopted children whose mother had schizophrenia with children with no history
  => group with schizophrenic mothers had 10% rate, but when family environment was healthy risk was minimal
• gene environment interaction suggested by Plomin et al
• u terracotta through neural plasticity (maguire et al)
• hard to use twin studies as concordance rate is not 100%

Question 39

what are the gene environment interactions as suggested by Plomin et al

Answer 39

• passive- parents pass on genes and also provide environment
• reactive- heritable traits influence the reaction of others and hence the environment they are in
• active- heritable traits influence their choice of environment, nice picking

Question 40

levels of explanation for behaviour and example of OCD

Answer 40

• physiological/biological (SERT gene leads to lower serotonin)
• psychological (positive reinforcement)
• social and cultural (societal expectations to wash your hands)

Question 41

define reductionism

Answer 41

belief that human behaviour can be explained by breaking it down into simpler component parts

Question 42

define parsimony

Answer 42

idea that complex phenomena should be explained in the simplest terms possible

Question 43

define experimental reductionism

Answer 43

human behaviour can be studied effectively in relatively simple experiments so researchers can study different factors in a controlled manner

Question 44

define holism

Answer 44

study an invisible system and can only be understood by analysing the person as a whole

Question 45

evaluation of reductionism

Answer 45

+ real world application in developing drug therapies like SSRIs for OCD
+ can be broke down to experiment on the variables and lends itself to becoming a science
- ignored complexity of human behaviour and other factors, like ADHD may be as a result of family or emotional problems

Question 46

evaluation of holism

Answer 46

+ provides more complete understanding of behaviour, especially in terms of collective behaviour like conformity
- tends to be difficult to rigorously test scientifically and lacks empirical evidence

Question 47

features of nomothetic approach

Answer 47

• draw conclusions about populations of people and generalise to a wider group
• qualitative methods and objective laboratory experiments
• biological, behavioural, cognitive

Question 48

three types of general laws by Redford and Kirby

Answer 48

• classification- people can be classified into certain groups according to characteristics, attitudes or behaviours
• establishing principles- establish laws and principles that can applied to human behaviour
• establishing dimensions- document continuums upon which an individual can be placed following comparison from others, personality reseatch

Question 49

features of idiographic approach

Answer 49

• research into the individual
• emphasis on the self and the uniqueness of the individual
• cannot generalise
• use case studies, not large group studies
• qualitative studies
• psychodynamic, humanistic