Unit 2: Approaches in Psychology Flashcards
What is a schema?
a mental framework of beliefs and expectations that influence cognitive processing. They are developed through experience
What is the cognitive approach?
This approach focuses on how our mental processes affect our behaviour
What is the Bobo doll experiment (1963)?
Bandura and Walters (1963) showed videos to children where an adult behaved aggressively towards the doll. Group 1 saw the adult being praised. 2nd group saw the adult being punished and the 3rd group saw no consequence ( control group )
When given their own doll the 1st group acted the most aggressively followed by the 3rd and then 2nd. telling us the 3rd group had been vicariously reinforced.
What is modelling in SLT?
imitating the behaviour of a role model
What is social learning theory (SLT)?
A way of explaining behaviour that includes both direct and indirect reinforcement. Combining learning theory with the role of cognitive factors.
What is identification?
When an observer associates themselves with a role model and wants to be like them.
People are more likely to imitate the behaviour of a person they identify with (role models)
Who is Wilhelm Wundt?
- He created the first ever lab in Leipzig, Germany in 1879.
- He set himself to document and describe the nature of human consciousness.
-Known for introspection ( process of observing and examining your own conscious thoughts or emotions ) - Recording conscious thoughts and breaking the structure of these down is called structuralism.
Biological approach: The genetic basis of behaviour?
Studies whether behavioural characteristics are inherited in the same way as physical characteristics.
- This is studies through twin studies using monozygotic ( 100% ) and dizygotic ( 50% ) twins
Assumptions about the Biological approach?
- Suggests everything psychological is at first biological so to understand human behaviour we must look at the biological structures such as genes, neurochemistry and, the nervous system.
- Suggests the mind lives in the brain.
- And that all thoughts and feelings have a physical basis.
Computer model in the cognitive approach?
- Based on the way that computers function suggesting that similar processes are going on in the human mind.
What is the theoretical model in the cognitive approach?
- The info processing approach
- Suggests that the info flows through the cognitive system in a sequence of stages input , storage and retrieval like the multi- store memory model.
Who is John Locke?
-Proposed empiricism - the idea that all experience/ knowledge/ instinct can be obtained through senses and humans inherit none of these things.
Who is Rene Descartes?
- French philosopher
- Mind and body are independent - cartesian dualism.
- It suggests that the mind could be an object of study in its own right
- ” I think therefore I am”
What are the meditational process in learning?
Cognitive factors that influence learning and come between stimulus and response. Identified by Bandura as :
- Attention
- Retention
- Motor reproduction
- Motivation
first two outline the learning of behaviour and the next two the performance of it.
What is vicarious reinforcement?
Reinforcement which is not directly experienced but occurs through observing someone else’s ( usually a role models) behaviour being reinforced or punished. key factor in imitation.
Assumptions about social learning theory ( SLT )?
- Bandura agreed with the behaviourists that much of behaviour is learned from experience
- However SLT proposed a different way in which people learn through observation, imitation of others but also operant, classical and indirectly.
Behaviourism: Operant conditioning - Skinner?
Suggests learning is an active process . There are 3 types of consequences of behaviour:
- positive reinforcement
- negative reinforcement
- punishment
increases/ decreases the likelihood of the behaviour being repeated.
He tested this by conducted experiments with rats where every time the rat activated a lever it was rewarded with a food pellet. This positive reinforcement of the action of hitting the lever resulted in the rat continuing this behaviour.
Behaviourism: Classical conditioning - Pavlov?
- Learning through association
- Pavlov realised that dogs could be conditioned to salivate to the sound of a bell if that sound was repeatedly presented at the same time as they were given food.
- Gradually pavlov’s dogs learned to associate the sound of the bell ( a stimulus ) with the food ( stimulus ) to produce the salivation response every time they heard the bell
- Pavlov was able to show how a neutral stimulus can come to elicit a new learned response ( conditioned response ) through association with the unconditioned response of food.
Assumptions of the behaviourist approach?
- Only interested in studying behaviour that can be observed and measured.
- lab experiments
-Darwinism suggests that the basic processes that govern learning are the same in all species meaning in behaviourist research animals could replace humans as experimental subjects. - uses classical and operant conditioning as forms of learning.
The difference explanations and treatments of abnormal behaviour in the approaches:
- behaviourism - raised from faulty learning - destructive behaviour being reinforced - treated using systematic desensitisation ( phobias )
- SLT - modelling + observational learning have been used to explain the learning of negative behaviours. ( has little application to treatment )
- Psychodynamic - anxiety disorders seemed from unconscious conflicts - childhood trauma causing all the psychosexual stages not being achieved ( psychoanalysis has some success as a therapy )
- Cognitive - identifies and eradicates faulty thinking ( through CBT )
- Humanistic - Rogers philosophy of closing gap between self-concept and ideal self ( client-centred therapy )
- Biological - development of drug therapies to regulate chemical imbalance ( SSRI’s ectra )
Reductionism in the different approaches:
- Behaviourism is reductionist as it breaks down the stimulus + response. and reduces learning into key processes like SLT
- Psychodynamic reduces our behaviour into the influence of sexual drives and biological influences.
-Cognitive - uses machine reductionism by presenting people as info processors ignoring influences of emotions
- Humanistic approach doesn’t reduce behaviour and instead uses a holistic approach to behaviour.
- Biological approach is reductionist as it explains human behaviour as only being due to genes or neurons.
Soft determinist approaches:
- cognitive - chooser of own thoughts/behaviours
- SLT - Bandura puts forward reciprocal determinism ( behaviour determined by environment but personal differences also have influence ).
- humanists - free will our behaviour is not determined
Hard determinist approaches:
- behaviourists - see all behaviour as environmentally determined by uncontrollable external forces
- biological - genetic determinism and innate influences
- psychodynamic - psychic determinism - we cannot know the unconscious forces that drive and determine our behaviour.
What does determinism propose?
That all behaviour has an internal or external cause therefore is predictable.
Nature vs Nurture debate: the approaches views?
- behaviourists ( nurture )
- biological ( nature )
- humanists ( nurture as people have a big impact on the creation of people self-concepts)
-psychodynamic ( both freud saw innate and biological drives influencing behaviour and our relationship with parents having a big role in future development ) - cognitive ( nature as schemas and cognitive processes are innate but nurture as these are refined through experience )
What is holism?
An approach to understanding the human mind by looking at things as a whole. It is often contrasted with reductionism.
The different approaches views on development:
- Psychodynamic - psychosexual stages determined by age
- Cognitive - children form complex schemas as they age.
- Biological - genetically determined changes influence behaviour
-Humanist - development of the self is ongoing
-Behaviourists + SLT - don’t offer stages of development but see learning as continuous.
What is the Psychodynamic approach?
A perspective that describes the unconscious forces that operate on the mid and direct human behaviour and experience.
What are the psychosexual stages:
- Oral ( 0-1 years )
- Anal ( 1-3 years )
- Phallic ( 3-5 years )
- Latency
- Genital
Freud claimed child development occurred in five stages and any unresolved psychosexual conflict leads to fixation in adult life.
What did Freud state were the 3 parts of the structure of personality?
- ID ( pleasure principle )
- The ego ( reality principle )
- The superego ( morality principle )
What is the Humanistic psychology approach?
An approach to understanding the behaviour that emphasis the importance of subjective experience and each person’s capacity for self-determination or free will
What is self actualisation?
- Part of the humanist approach
- The desire to grow psychologically and fulfil one’s full potential.
Hierarchy of needs:
- Created by Maslow
- A five levelled hierarchal system in which basic needs such as food must be met in order to achieve higher psychological needs.
1st level - Physiological needs
2nd level - safe + security
3rd level - love
4th level - self esteem
5th level - self actualisation
What is cognitive neuroscience?
Study of biological structures that underpin cognitive processes
What are the assumptions of the cognitive approach?
- It argues that internal mental processes should be studied scientifically
- Investigates memory, perception + thinking
-Psychologists study them indirectly by making inferences about what is going on inside peoples minds on the basis of their behaviour.
What do schema’s allow us to do?
- enable us to process lots of info quickly and this is useful as a mental shortcut to prevent us from being overwhelmed by environmental stimuli.
-however they may also distort our interpretations of sensory info.
Wundt’s controlled methods:
All introspections were recorded in controlled conditions using standardised procedures allowing for replication. His work marked the separation of modern scientific psychology and its philosophical roots
What behaviourist psychologist questioned introspection?
John B Watson (1913 ) he suggested it produced data that was subjective making it difficult to establish general principles. He also criticised introspections focus on ‘private’ mental processes stating his belief that scientific psychology should only investigate ideas that could be observed and measured. These ideas formed the behaviourist approach.
Timeline of approaches
17th - 19th century - experimental philosophy
1879 - Wilhem Wundt ( first lab )
1900s - psychodynamic approach
1913 - behaviourist approach
1950s - humanist approach
1960s cognitive approach and SLT
1980s onwards - biological approach
Eve of 21st century - cognitive neuroscience
Evaluations of the behaviourist approach:
+ Real life application ( operant conditioning is the basis of the token economy system which has been used successfully in institutions such as prisons or psychiatric hospitals also classical conditioning has been applied to treatment of phobias by association.
treatments like these also require less effort from patients as they don’t have to talk about issues. )
- Ethical and practical issues in animal experiments ( despite in procedures such as Skinners this allowed for a high degree of control over the ‘subjects’ you can question the ethics as the animals were exposed to stressful conditions which many have also effected how they reacted to the experimental conditions. )
- Environmental determinism ( behaviourists believe behaviour are determined by past experience and our reinforcement history ignoring any possible influence of free will on behaviour. Skinner suggesting that free will is an illusion.
Evaluations of social learning theory:
+Explains cultural differences in behaviour ( SLT principles can account for how children learn from other individuals around them as well as the media they consume. explaining how cultural norms are transmitted through particular cultures. useful in being able to understand behaviours. )
- Underestimates the influence of biological factors ( Bandura makes little reference to this. Bobo doll experiment showed that consistently boys were more aggressive than girls . which could be explained through hormonal differences such as levels of testosterone. Meaning an important influence on behaviour is not accounted for in SLT. )
- Over-reliance on evidence from lab studies ( Many of Bandura’s research was developed through lab settings a contrived setting in which p/pants might respond to demand characteristics. in relation to Bobo dolls its suggested that the children were just behaving in a way they thought was expected. )
Evaluations of the cognitive approach:
- Machine reductionism ( it ignores the influence of human emotion and motivation on the cognitive system, and how this many effect our ability to process info - influence of anxiety on eyewitness testimony for example - .)
- Application to everyday life ( cognitive psychologists are only able to infer mental processes from the behaviour they observe in research and suffers from being to abstract and theoretical in nature. Experiments are also often carried out with artificial stimuli - word lists -which may not represent everyday memory experience - lacks external validity. )
+ Real life application ( cognitive psychology has made contributions to fields such as AI or the development of robots advances that may change the way we live in the future. )
Evaluations of the biological approach:
+ Scientific methods of investigation ( in order to investigate behaviour the approach uses precise and highly scientific methods which are not open to bias such as fMRI’s, EEG’s, drug trials and twin studies. meaning it is based on reliable data )
+ Real life application ( increased understanding of biochemicals in the brain led to development of psychoactive drugs which allow sufferers of conditions such as depression to manage their condition. )
- Cannot separate nature and nurture ( biological approach argues twin similarities are due to genetic factors not environmental factors the confounding variable. Meaning findings could just as easily be interpreted as nurture not nature. It also has difficulty why DZ twins often have higher concordance rates that ordinary siblings when both share about 50% of same genes. explained by influence of nurture as twins are often treated the same. )
Evaluations of the psychodynamic approach:
- Untestable concepts ( Karl Popper argued the approach does not meet the scientific criterion of falsification - cannot be tested empirically so cannot be proved false - as many of the concepts occur of an unconscious level. Popper states that this makes the psychodynamic a pseudoscience - fake science - rather than a real science.
- Practical application ( it produced a new form of therapy psychoanalysis which used hypnosis and dream analysis. Many Freudian therapists claimed success with mild neurosis however it proved dangerous for people suffering from more serious disorders like schizophrenia. )
- The case study method ( Little Hans - Freuds interpretations were highly subjective as in the case of little Hans no other researcher would have come to the same conclusions making Freuds methods lack reliability and scientific rigour. )
Evaluations of humanist approach:
- Cultural bias ( many of its ideas are associated with individualist cultures in the western world. collectivist cultures emphasis community more meaning they might not identify with the humanist ideologies . therefore it’s possible this approach would not travel well and is a product of the cultural context in which it was developed. )
+ Positive approach ( promotes a positive image of the human condition and not slaves to our past. offering an optimistic view seeing people as good and free to achieve their potential and be in control of their life. )
+ Not reductionist ( advocates holism. this approach may have more validity than alternatives as it considers meaningful human behaviour in a real world context. )
What is a genotype ?
The particular set of genes a person possesses
What is a phenotype?
The characteristics of an individual determined by both genes and environment
The role of the unconscious in the psychodynamic approach ?
a store house of biological drives and instincts . Also contains repressed memories which can be accessed through dreams or slips of the tongue ( parapraxes ). Just under our conscious mind is our preconscious which contains thoughts and memories that we can access if we desire.
What is the Oedipus complex?
It states that in the phallic stage boys develop feelings towards their mothers and resent their fathers. But in fear that their father will castrate them boys repress these feelings and start identifying with their father taking on their gender roles and moral values
What is the Electra complex ?
It also suggests girls of the same age develop penis envy - they desire their fathers as the penis is the primary love object - and hate their mothers. Freud was less clear in the process in girls but they are thought to give up their desire for their father over time and replace this with the desire for a baby ( identifying with their mothers in the process )
Support for the Oedipus complex?
Little Hans - he was a 5 year old boy who developed a phobia of horses after seeing one collapse in the street . Freud suggested that his phobia was a form of displacement in which he repressed fear of his father was transferred onto horses . Thus horses were merely a symbolic representation of Han’s real unconscious fear of castration experienced in the Oedipus complex.
What is congruence ?
The aim of Rogerian therapy a persons self and ideal self are similar
What are conditions of love?
When parents place limits or boundaries on their love for their children “ I will only love you if ….”
An example of a twins study in the biological approach:
A researcher looked into the genetic basis of depression in twins by comparing concordance rates (which express the likelihood of the trait being present in both) of monozygotic ( identical ) and dizygotic ( non- identical ) twins
findings -
- monozygotic - 49% likelihood
- dizygotic - 17% likelihood
- ordinary siblings ( control group ) - 9%
Showing mental disorders do have a genetic basis supporting the biological approach.
