Lecture 2 - Research Ethics Flashcards
Why do different approaches exist?
There are different ways of explaining phenomena
What can emotions be explained in terms of?
Thoughts associated with them or the physiological changes they produce
What is the Biological Approach?
Behaviour understood by describing underlying biochemical and neurological causes
What is Biological Approach based on?
Organisms functioning can be explained in terms of bodily structures and biochemical processes that underlie behaviour
What is reductionist?
Observable behaviours reduced to physiological explanations
What did Roger Sperry Win?
Nobel prize for his split brain research
Who are the principal contributors to Biological Approach?
James Old David Hubel Torsten Wiesel
What is Cognitive Approach?
Study thoughts and mental processes
What is Cognitive approach based on?
Human behaviour can not be fully understood without examining how people acquire, store and process information
What are the significant contributions made in the Cognitive Approach?
Area of language, thought and memory
What are the prominent figures of Cognitive Psychology?
Jerome Bruner Jean Piaget Herbert Simon Noam Chomsky
What is psychoanalytic approach based on?
Unconscious motives and experiences in early childhood govern personality and mental disorders
Who are the contributors or Psychoanalytic Approach?
Sigmund Freud Carl Jung Alfred Adler
What is the downside of theory of psychoanalytic theory?
Not based on experimental evidence Many aspect of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory are untestable
What are the 3 parts of mind?
Conscious, unconscious and preconscious
What is conscious?
Thoughts and perceptions
Consist of all mental processes which we are aware
What is preconscious?
Available to consciousness e.g. memories and stored knowledge
Contains thoughts and feelings that a person is not currently aware of
Mild emotional experiences
What is unconscious?
Wishes and desires formed in childhood, Biological urges. Determines most behaviour
Influence judgement, feelings or behaviour
Primary source of human behaviour
What are he 3 personality components?
Id, ego and superego
What is Id?
Unconscious, urges needing instant gratification
What is ego?
Develops in childhood, rational. Chooses between id and external demand
What is superego?
Conscience, places restriction on behaviour
What is Freud’s ‘mental iceberg’ view of mind?
Conscious mind: ego Preconscious: executive mediator, superego (internalised ideals) Unconscious mind: ID (unconscious psychic energy)
What does Ego mediate conflict between?
Id, ego and superego
What does defence mechanism include?
Repression, displacement, denial, reaction formation
What does repression do?
Push stuff into unconscious, but it exerts influence from here, may cause problems
What is cute neuroses?
Bring material from unconscious to conscious Free association and dream analysis
What is the evaluate of Psychodynamic Approach?
Theories of personality, motivation and development Therapeutic techniques in clinical and counselling psychology Captures the popular imagination, providing an accessible framework for everyday understanding
Why is psychodynamic unscientific?
Methodologically poor Untestable (e.g. concept of denial) Limited impact on scientific psychology
What is the behavioural Approach based on?
Only observable events (stimulus-response relations) can be studied scientifically. emphasises the importance of environment
What does the behavioural approach reject?
The investigation of internal mental processes
What is behaviour a result of?
Learned associations between stimuli and responses to them
What are the main theories of Behavioural approach?
Classical (Pavlov) and operant (Skinner) conditioning
What is Behavioural Approach?
Emphasised environmental determinants of behaviour
How is behaviour explained?
Assessing the effects of external stimuli Behaviour is determined by the occurrence of external events
What is the evaluation of Behaviorist Approach?
It’s practical focus has led to useful applications Influenced theory development e.g. in the area of learning Developed a standard scientific methodology, through the hypothesis testing and experimental control
Why is Behaviorist Approach criticized?
Mechanistic (ignoring mental processes) Overly environmentally determinist (it ignores biology)
What is the Humanisitic Approaxh based on?
Humans are free, rational beings with the potential for personal growth and they are fundamentally different from animals
Why did the humanistic approach oppose the determinism of behaviousm and psychoanalysis?
Too much emphasis placed on ‘rat studies’ in understanding of human behaviour
What did they develop in the humanistic approach?
Methods of psychotherapy
Who are the prominent figures of humanistic approach?
Carl Rogers Abraham Maslow Gordon Allport
What are the key features of Humanistic Approach?
Rejects determinism, and emphasises free will Rejects the positivism of science (investigating others as detached objective observers) Investigates phenomena from the subjective experience of individuals
Emphasis on holism
What is holism?
The need to study the whole person
Rogers
Self concept constitute of a perceived self and ideal self. Psychological health is achieved when the two match
Maslow
People have a hierarchy of needs. The goal of psychological growth it to meet the need to achieve self-actualisation
What are the evaluation of Humanistic Approach?
Considerable influence on counselling Development of client-centred therapy Helped establish counselling as an independent profession Development of research techniques to evaluate the effectiveness of treatment
What are the disadvantages of Humanistic Approach?
Unscientific Limited impact on mainstream psychology Limited evidence for theories
What is the procedure of Milgram?
40 male participant are told that study is about memory and learning Goal: help another person learn word pairs How: shock the learner Learner: confederate Teacher is put in front of an electric shock generator with a range of voltage levels (15-450 volts Labels: slight shock to danger: severe shock At 300 volts the learner pounds on the wall
How many obeyed the orders of experience to the end?
26 out of 40 subjects
Results
Mean: 13.42 Mode: 14
Participants were distressed
Subjects were observed to sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lip, groan and dig their fingernail into their flesh Regular occurrence of nervous laughing Full-blown uncontrollable seizures
Why was the emotional disturbance described by Milgram potentially harmful?
Effect an alternation in the subject’s self image or ability to trust adult authorities in the future
Why were the participants distressed?
Trusted the experimenter Concerned about their victims
What do the experimenter need to prevent?
Participant from leaving the lab more humiliated, insecure, alienated or hostile than when she/he arrived
What is defence mechanisms?
Psychological strategies that are unconsciously used to protect a person from anxiety arising from unacceptable thoughts or feelings
What are examples of neuroses?
Anxiety states
Phobias
Obsessions
Hysteria
What is Repression?
Unconscious mechanism employed by the ego to keep disturbing or threatening thoughts from becoming conscious
What is Denial?
Blocking external events from awareness
If some situation is just too much to handle, the person just refused to experience it
What is an example of denial?
smokers may refuse to admit to themselves that smoking is bad for their health
What is displacement?
Satisfying an impulse (e.g. aggression) with a substitute object
What is an example of displacement?
Someone who is frustrated by his/her boss at work may go home and kick the dog
Beat up a family member
What is the problem of Repression?
Involved forcing disturbing wishes, ideas, or memories into unconscious , where they will create anxiety
What is reaction formation?
A person goes beyond denial and behaves in the opposite way to which he or she thinks or feels
What is the strength of biological Approach?
Very scientific
Experiments are measurable, objective and can be repeated to test for reliability
Researcher has more control over variables
Deterministic: increases the likelihood of being able to treat people with abnormal behaviour and provide explanation about causes of behaviour
What is weaknesses to biological approach?
Focuses too much on nature side of nature/nurture debate
It argues that behaviour is caused by hormones, neurotransmitters and genetics
Nomothetic - develops theories about disorders and generalise them to apply to everyone
What is the strength of cognitive Approach?
Looks at thought processes which were ignored by other psychologist, especially behaviourist
Applied to cognitive therapies - rational emotive therapy
Change irrational thoughts into rational thought so behaviour improves
What is the cognitive weaknesses?
Reductionist
It reduces human behaviour down to individual processes such as memory and attention
Human is a product of all the processes working together and not just individual parts
Too mechanical - compares human to computers in that they have similar processes
Human are more complex than computers
What are the positives to milgram experiment?
Showed how people behave and the power influence of authority figure - give valuable insight
Controlled experiment - high internal validity so cause and effect can be established
He debriefed all participants fully and did check jk to ensure there was no lasting psychological harm
What was the evaluation of milgram experiment?
- Milgrams sample was biased - only men were used
- Deception - the participant actually believed they were shocking a real person , unaware the learner was a confederate of Milgrams
- Protection of participants - participant were exposed to stressful situation that have the potential to psychological harm
- Right to withdrawal - told continually to please continue
