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AQA Psychology > Issues and Debates in Psychology > Flashcards

Issues and Debates in Psychology Flashcards

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1
Q

What is universality?

A
  • Facts about human behaviour that are objective, value-free and consistent across time and culture.
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2
Q

What is alpha bias?

A
  • Exaggeration of the differences between men and women.
  • Seen as fixed, inevitable.
  • Devalue females in relation to males often.
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3
Q

What is an example of alpha bias?

A
  • Wilson’s (1975) sociobiological theory of relationship formation.
  • Male’s interested in impregnating as many females as possible to increase chances of genes passing on to the next generation.
  • Females –> preserved genes by ensuring survival of few offspring.
    = sexual promiscuity naturally selected and genetically determined, but other females who engage this are seen as going against nature.
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4
Q

What is beta bias?

A
  • Ignoring or underestimating differences between men and women.
  • Usually takes place when females are not included in studies, assumed findings apply to both sexes.
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5
Q

What is an example of beta bias?

A
  • Fight or flight response.
  • Applied to both genders.
  • Taylor et al. (2000) –> evolution for females to inhibiit fight or flight response.
    = tending and befriending.
    = governed by oxytocin.
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6
Q

What’s a consequence of beta bias? Explain it.

A

(i) Androcentrism.
- If our understanding of normal behaviour comes from studies of all-male samples, any behaviour that deviates is abnormal.
= misunderstanding, taken as illness? E.g. PMS.

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7
Q

Give 1 evaluative strength of gender bias

A

1) Feminist psychologists propose how gender bias can be avoided:
- Criteria should be followed to avoid it.
- Women –> studied within meaningful real-life contexts, and genuinely participate in research.
- Diversity within groups should studied, instead of comparisons between men and women.
- Greater emphasis on methods that collect qualitative data.

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8
Q

How does gender bias promote sexism in the research process?

A
  • Lack of women at senior research level means their concerns may not be reflected.
  • Male researchers more likely to have work published.
  • Females in lab studies = unfair relationship with (usually male) researcher who can label them negatively
    = institutional sexism creating bias?
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9
Q

A part from gender promoting sexism in the research process, give 2 further evaluative limitations of gender bias

A

1) Problems of gender bias in psychological research:
- May create misleading assumptions about female behaviour and validate discriminatory practices.
- May provide scientific justification to exclude women, e.g. because of PMS.
= damaging consequences affecting lives of women?

2) Essentialist arguments are common in gender-based research:
- Essentalist –> gender difference is inevitable and fixed in nature.
- E.g. research in the 1930s showed women’s intellectual activity shrivelled their ovaries
= politically motivated arguments disguised as biological facts
= double standards between men and women.

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10
Q

Give of 2 examples of Western researchers that claimed to find universality, but haven’t.

A
  • Milgram

- Asch

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11
Q

What is culture bias?

A

The tendency to ignore cultural differences and interpret all behaviour through the lens of one culture.

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12
Q

What is ethnocentrism?

A

A belief in the superiority of one’s own cultural group

= e.g. any behavior that doesn’t conform to Western standards is somehow deficient.

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13
Q

Give an example of ethnocentric research in psychology

A

(i) Strange Situation.
- Ainsworth criticised for only showing American attachment types.
- Suggested secure was the ideal for all.
= misinterpreation of other child-rearing practices, e.g German mothers seen as cold and rejecting rather than encouraging independence.
= inappropriate measure

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14
Q

What is cultural relativism?

A
  • The facts psychologists discover only make sense from the perspective of the culture being studied.
    = avoids culture bias.
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15
Q

Berry (1969) found what?

A
  • Etic = looking at behaviour from outside a given culture and identifies behaviour that are universal.
  • Emic = functions from within certain cultures and identifies behaviour that are specific to that culture.
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16
Q

In terms of culture bias, why is the distinction between individualism and collectivism an evaluative limitation?

A
  • Reference by many between differences of individualism and collectivism; independence vs interdependence.
  • Takano + Osaka (1999) - 14/15 studies comparing US and Japan found no distinction of between two types of cultures.
    = culture bias? differences not an issue?
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17
Q

Give an evaluative strength in to culture bias

A

1) Cross-cultural research challenges Western assumptions:
- Challenge Western ways of thinking and viewing the world.
- Understand they’re not shared.
- Differences may promote greater sensitivity to individual differences cultural relativism.
= more validity if they recognise role of culture?

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18
Q

A part from the distinction between individualism and collectivism, give 2 further evaluative limitations of culture bias.

A

1) Cross-cultural research prone to demand characteristics:
- General aims and objectives of scientific enquiry is familiar in Western society.
- Cultures without experience of research –> more affected by demand characteristics?
= unfamiliarity –> validity threatened.

2) Difficulties with the interpretations of variables:
- Variables under review may not be experienced in the same way by all participants.
- Emotions –> different behaviours
- E.g. Invasion of personal space is normal in China, but threatening in the West.
= affect interactions between researcher and participants? challenged validity?

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19
Q

What is free will?

A

The notion that human beings are free to choose their thoughts and actions.

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20
Q

What does the humanist approach say about free will?

A

There are biological and enviornmental influences on our behaviour, but free will implies that we can reject them.

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21
Q

What is hard determinism?

A
  • All human actions have a cause, that are identifiable.

- (Like science) What we do is dictated by internal or external forces out of our control.

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22
Q

What is soft determinism?

A
  • All human action has cause but people have conscious mental control over their behaviour.
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23
Q

What is biological determinism?

A
  • Behaviour determined by physiological, genetic and hormonal processes.
Physiological = processes not under our conscious control, e.g. ANS on anxiety.
Genetic = determine our behaviour and characteristics.
Hormones = determine our behaviour, e.g. testosterone on aggression.
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24
Q

What is environmental determinism?

A
  • We are determined by conditioning.
  • ‘Choice’ is actually reinforcement contingencies that have acted upon us throughout our live.
  • Behaviour not independent, but environmental events and socialisation.
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25
Q

What is psychic determinism?

A
  • Behaviour directed by unconscious conflicts; that were repressed in childhood.
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26
Q

What did Skinner say about free will?

A
  • That it is an illusion.
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27
Q

Why is a deterministic approach used in psychology?

A

To find causal explanations, where the product is determined by another.

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28
Q

Give 2 evaluative strengths of determinism

A

1) Consistent with the aims of science:
- Human behaviour is orderly and obeys laws give psychology an equal footing with natural sciences
= increased credibility.

2) Prediction and control of human behaviour has led to treatments and therapies, e.g. drug treatments for Sz.
= Sz determined biologically as its solved by drugs?

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29
Q

Give an evaluative limitation of determinism

A

1) Not consistent with the legal system:
- Offenders = morally accountable.
- Only applies in mental illness cases
= no application?

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30
Q

Give an evaluative strength of free will

A

1) We often make choices in everyday life:
- Everyday experience gives idea that we constantly make choices in any given day
= face validity.

31
Q

Give an evaluative limitation of free will

A

1) Free will not supported by neurological evidence:
- Brain-studies oppose this.
- Soon (2008)
- Brain activity related to the decision to press a button with the hand occurs up to 10 seconds before participants report being consciously aware of making such a decision.
= determined by our brain before thought?

32
Q

In terms of the nature-nurture debate, what does nature mean?

A

Innate, genetic influences.

- Early nativists, e.g. Descartes, argued this.

33
Q

In terms of the nature-nurture debate, what does nurture mean?

A

Environmental influences, learning and experience post-natal.
- Behavioural approach.

34
Q

What is the approach that combines both nature and nurture?

A

Interactionism.

35
Q

Is it possible to split nature from nurture or vice versa?

A

No, environmental influences a child’s life as soon as it is conceived.

36
Q

Give an example of interactionism in relation to attachment.

A
  • Attachment a two-way street;
  • Child’s temperament influences how the parent behaves towards them.
  • The parent’s responses in turn affect the childs behaviour.
37
Q

In relation to interactionism, what is the diathesis-stress model

A
  • The model that suggests a mental disorder is caused by a biological vulnerability (diathesis) which is only expressed when coupled with an environmental trigger (stress).
38
Q

In relation to interactionism, what is epigenetics?

A
  • Epigenetics is a change in genetic activity without changing the genetic code.
  • Lifestyles and events leave epigenetic marks on our DNA –> tell our bodies which genes to ignore and use –> may influence child’s genetic code.
39
Q

How might our understanding the interaction between nature and nurture have real-world implications?

A
  • Saying something is either may have negative implications for how we view behaviour.
  • Saying its entirely biology –> led to racism with disastrous consequences.
    = both –> more reasonable way to approach and manage behaviour.
40
Q

Give an evaluative limitation of the nature-nurture debate

A

1) Confounding variable of unshared environments:
- Trying to find environmental influences complicated by non-identical upbringings.
- Even twins have shared and unshared environments.
- Individual differences –> experience life events differently.
= explain why MZ twins do not show perfect concordance rates.

41
Q

A part from our understanding of the interaction between nature and nurture having real-world implications, give 2 further evaluative strengths of the nature-nurture debate.

A

1) Gene-environment interactions explained by constructivism:
- People create their own nurture by actively selecting environments appropriate for their nature.
= constructivism.
- Naturally aggressive child chooses environment accordingly, e.g. aggressive friends.
–> then affects development.
= impossible to separate the two on our behaviour.

2) Understanding of nature-nurture relates to other debates:
- A strong commitment to either is hard determinism.
Nativists = biological
Empiricists = free will
= Nativists –> biological determinism.
= Empiricists –> environmental determinism.

42
Q

What approach is holistic?

A

Humanistic.

43
Q

In relation to psychology, what is holism?

A

The idea that behaviour should be studied as a whole system.

- Can’t study individual processes, as there are other influences.

44
Q

In relation to psychology, what is reductionism?

A

The breaking down of behaviour into constituent parts.

= based on parsimony, explaining using most basic, lowest level principles.

45
Q

What does ‘levels of explanation’ mean?

A
  • Suggestion that there are different ways of viewing the same phenomena in psychology.
46
Q

How might OCD be understood in different ways, i.e. differing levels of explanation.

A

1) Socio-cultural –> involves behaviour most would regard as odd.
2) Psychological level –> individuals experience of obsessive thoughts.
3) Neurochemical level –> underproduction of serotonin.

= each reductionist than one before.

47
Q

What is a hierarchy of reductionism?

A
  • Psychology can be placed in it.
  • Physics more precise, at the bottom.
  • Sociology more general, at the top.
  • Researchers who favour reductionism –> psychology being replaced by explanations lower down in hierarchy.
48
Q

What is biological reductionism?

A
  • The idea that all behaviour is at some level biological, and can be explained through neurochemical, neurophysiological, genetic influences etc.
    = applied to explanation and treatment of mental illness.
49
Q

What is environmental reductionism?

A
  • Physical level, behaviourist stimulus-response links.
  • Studying observable behaviour –> breaking it down to stimuli-response.
    = not concerned with cognitive, just physical level.
50
Q

Give 1 strength of holism

A

1) Can explain key aspects of social behaviour:
- Only emerge within a group context, can’t be understood at level of individual group members.
- E.g. de-individuation of prisoners and guards in SPE can’t be understand by looking at individuals.
= interactions.
= more complete understanding.

51
Q

Give 1 evaluative limitation of holism

A

1) It is impractical:
- Not rigorous, or scientifically testing.
- Become vague and speculative as they become more complex.
- E.g. assuming many factors contribute to depression; how do we see which one is most influential and which to use as therapy?
= reductionism more applicable for problems?

52
Q

Give 1 strength of reductionism

A

1) Scientific credibility:
- Reductionism –> basis of scientific research.
- Behaviours are reduced to parts to create operationalised variables
= conduct experiments or observation in reliable ways
= credibility, lower down hierarchy of reductionism.

53
Q

Give 1 limitation of reductionism

A

1) Reductionist approach lack validity:
- E.g. at level of genes, oversimplify complex phenomena –> lose validity.
= fail to analyse social context of the behaviour, where behaiour derives its meaning
= partial explanation

54
Q

What is the idiographic approach?

A
  • Describing the nature of the indivial.
  • Study subjective experiecences, motivation and values.
  • No attempt to compare to larger group standard
55
Q

Is the idiographic approach more associated with qualitative or quantitative methods? Explain why.

A
  • Quantitative.
  • Case studies, unstructured interviews, self-report.
  • These methods can describe human experience and ability to gain insight into someone’s way of viewing the world.
56
Q

What are the 2 most notable approaches which use idiographic methods

A

1) Humanistic:
- Rogers + Maslow –> only interested in looking at ‘self’ rather than producing general laws of behaviour.

2) Psychodynamic:
- Freud used the case study method.
- Used idiographic measures –> assumed he had identified general laws of personality development.

57
Q

What is the main aim of the nomothetic approach?

A
  • To produce general laws of behaviour.
  • Benchmark with which people can be compared, classified and measured.
  • Predict and control future behaviour.
58
Q

Why would the nomothetic approach use questionnaires or psychological tests?

A
  • These methods are reliable and scientific.

- Involve large of numbers to establish similarities and differences between them.

59
Q

Which 3 most notable approaches use the nomothetic approach

A

1) Behavioural
2) Cognitive
3) Biological.

60
Q

Give 1 strength of the idiographic approach

A

1) Provides rich data:
- Complete account of an individual, e.g. HM.
- May generate hypotheses for future study, e.g. HM study showed us that some procedural memories are more resistant to amnesia.
= provide insight into normal functioning, contributing to our overall understanding of behaviour.

61
Q

Give 1 weakness of the idiographic approach

A

1) Lack of scientific rigour:
- Subjective and restrictive nature.
- E.g. Freud’s key concepts, e.g. Oedipus complex, were developed from a detailed study of a single case.
= cannot generalise –> conclusions subjective, interpretation by researcher = researchers bias.

62
Q

Give 1 strength of the nomothetic approach

A

1) Scientific value of the research:
- Methods employed mirror the natural sciences.
= standardised procedures, assess reliability and validity and using statistical analysis.
= more credibility

63
Q

Give 1 weakness of the nomothetic approach

A

1) Loss of the whole person:
- E.g. knowing there is a 1% lifetime risk of developing Sz –> tells us little about what life is like with it.
= lab tests –> scores, not individuals.
= overlook human experience for general laws.

64
Q

In general, why do ethical issues arise?

A
  • Due to conflict between;
    (i) Psychology’s need for valid and valuable research.
    (ii) ) Preserving the rights and dignity of research.
65
Q

Why are wider ethical implications harder to predict?

A
  • Can control the methods in the research procedure, and how they treat participants.
  • Less influence how findings are presented and interpreted, e.g. effect on public policy.
66
Q

Why is research said to be socially sensitive?

A
  • Potential social implications, directly at individual or class of individuals represented.
    ; e.g. genetic basis of criminality –> far-reaching consequences for those who have participated.
    ; tackling taboo topics attract attention.
67
Q

Why should researchers not avoid socially sensitive research?

A
  • Carry importance due to the privacy and lack of knowledge into them –> social responsibility.
68
Q

What 3 concerns did Sieber + Stanley (1988) identify that could come from socially sensitive research?

A

1) Implications:
- may give scientific status to prejudice and discrimination

2) Uses/public policy:
- used for wrong purpose?
- adopted by government for political ends or to shape public policy?

3) Validity of the research:
- some in the past said to objective but turned out to be fraudulent.

69
Q

What notable example of research has had consequences?

A
  • Burt’s research on IQ for UK schoolchildren.
  • Stated intelligence was genetic and couldn’t be altered, coefficient of +.77
    = made much of data up and his research assistants, discredited –> 11+ exam remained.
70
Q

How are the benefits of socially sensitive research?

A
  • Scarr (1988).
  • Studies of under-represented groups and issues –> promote understanding, help reduce prejudice = encourage acceptance.
  • Benefited = e.g. unreliability of EWT reduced risk of miscarriages of justice.
    = valuable role in society.
71
Q

A part from the benefits of socially sensitive, give a further strength of ethical implications of research studies and theory.

A

1) Understanding potential damage from socially sensitive research:
- Used by government and institutes to shape policy –> despite dubious nature of some findings.
= research seeking to manipulate –> ethical implications.
= raises Q of who benefits from such research? difficult to manage when findings have been published.

72
Q

How might socially sensitive researched be used for social control?

A
  • 1920s + 30s, states in US enacted legislation leading to compulsory sterilisation of some citizens
  • ‘feeble minded’, drain on society = psychologists agreed they were unfit to breed.
    = socially sensitive research –> prop up discriminatory practices in past = argument against its adoption.
73
Q

A part from socially sensitive research possibly being used for social control, give a further limitation of ethical implications of research studies and theory

A

1) Costs and benefits difficult to predict?:
- Research with ethical implications is scrutinised.
- Weigh up cost and benefits.
= consequences involving vulnerable groups may be difficult to anticipate
= worth of research is subjective, the impact can only be seen once its public.

AQA Psychology (11 decks)

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