approaches

Psychosexual phases

Stages of childhood development proposed by Freud, including oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital phases

what is the main idea of the psychodynamic approach

that most of our mind is unconscious

What are defence mechanisms?

Strategies employed by the ego to protect the mind from overwhelming feelings. They are denial, repression and displacement

What is denial?

A complete refusal to acknowledge the occurrence of an event to prevent harm.

what is displacement?

substituting the real target of overwhelming emotions onto a defenceless target

What is repression?

Forcing a distressing memory out of our concous mind

explain the Oedipus complex

A boys sexual desires for his mother and jealousy of his father, identification is the egos' decision to copy traits of father to attract a woman like his mother in later life (electra complex for girls)

What is the role of the ego in the tripartite personality?

The ego mediates between the desires of the Id and what is realistic, acting as the decision-making component.

What is the role of the super ego in the tripartite personality?

Morality principle that developes with parenting

Describe the Id in the context of personality in the tripartite personality

The most selfish part of the personality, present at birth and concerned only with desires so has no sense of morality.

Strengths of the psychodynamic approach

Has good explamitory power fro gender development and OCD

Limitations of the psychodynamic approach

Low scientific status as the ideas are unflasifiable, case study for oedupus complex isn't genrralisable and was biased

What does the Behaviourist approach suggest about children at birth?

Children are born as 'tabulae rasae' (blank slates) and learn through interactions with their environment.

Define classical conditioning.

learning by associating an object that produces a response to a neutral stimulus

explain pavlov’s dogs experiment findings

dogs learnt from a neutral stimulus (the sound of a bell ringing when given food) that they would get food because their body responded to the stimulus by salivating

Define operant conditioning

A form of learning by direct consequences for behaviour, including rewards and punishment leading to positive and negative reinforcement

What is negative reinforcement?

avoiding something negative or unpleasant

What is positive reinforcement?

receiving reward when a behavior is performed

explain skinners box experiment for operant conditioning

showed how animals can learn and respond to stimuli as they realised their behaviour resulted in ether punishment (electric shock) or reward (treat)

Primary reinforcer

A reward in itself

Secondary reinforcer

A token that can be exchanged in for rewards or goods

Real world application of behaviourist approach

Token economies habe been sucessful in instituions, encouraging operant conditioning

Psychic determinism

Behavior is determined by unconscious thoughts in our psyche (psychodynamic)

Environmental determinism

Behaviour is determined by our environment (behaviorists)

strengths of the behaviourist approach

Uses scientific methods of research because the experiments are objective, measurable and observable

limitations of the behavioural approach

Focuses too much on the 'nurture' side of the nature/nurture debate

Ethical issues raised by using animals in experiments

What analogy does the Cognitive approach use to explain the human mind?

The human mind is like a computer, with internal mental processes converting input to output.

What is congruence in psychology?

When a person’s ideal self and actual self are aligned.

What is incongruence in psychology?

When someone’s ideal self and perceived self are very different

Define free will in psychological terms.

The idea that we are in full control of our behaviour and decisions.

What is the core belief of the Humanistic approach?

It is a person-cemtered approach because it sees all humans as individuals

Who are the psychologists for the humanistic approach

Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow

Conditions we need to grow according to Maslow

Empathy, genuineness, acceptance (unconditional love)

Strengths of humanistic approach

Good explanatory power for our needs and narcissists, affirms free will

Limitations of the humanistic approach

Poor scientific status because concepts are unfalsifiable and the approach is idiographic

Real world application of the humanistic approach

Client-centred therapy, assumes people have what they need to reach their full potential if given the right conditions to grow. Includes techniques such as active listening and reflection.

What is identification in social learning theory?

A form of learning where humans learn by observing role models they perceive as similar to themselves.

How does imitation occur according to social learning theory?

People learn through copying the behaviour of a role model with whom they identify.

What does Maslow’s hierarchy of needs propose?

Humans have multiple needs that must be achieved in a specific order to fully achieve their potential.

What is modelling in the context of learning?

When a role model enacts behaviour that can be imitated by an observer.

Explain mediational processes in social learning theory.

Internal processes that contribute to producing certain behaviours, acting as 'mediators' between observation and imitation.

What is a schema?

A package of related information on a topic from our experiences

3 types of schema

Role - expected behavior for specific roles

Event - expected events in situations

Self - ideas of the kind of person you are

Pros and cons of schemas

Enables us to process lots of information quickly without getting overwhelmed and helps us in new situations but can distort our perceptions causing us to not remember things correctly

Cognitive neuroscience

The coming together of cognitive psychology and the field of neuroscience. May become the new paradigm in psychology

What does self-actualisation signify?

A person’s full potential, achievable after primary needs have been met.

What does the Social learning theory combine?

The ideas of learning through the environment with cognitive ideas of internal mental processes.

What is vicarious reinforcement?

Indirect encouragement of behaviour through observation of consequences for other people's behaviour.

Strengths of the social learning theory

High control in lab studies, high correlation coefficient, good explanatory power for human behaviour, more comprehensive than behaviorist and the research is done on humans rather than animals

Limitations of the social learning theory

Very young sample of children so not generalisable, artifical task means low ecological validity, exclusively on the nurture side of the debate, limeted understanding of biological factors

Why do cognitive psychologists see humans similar to computers

Human minds have limited processing capacity, is controlled by a central control mechanism and has information flowing through different stores

Real world application of cognitive approach

Cognitive behavioural therapy gets rid of distortions such as utopionism

Strengths of cognitive approch

Good explanatory power for people reacting differently to the same situations and for people with low self esteem

Good scientific status from lab experiments and neuroscience

Limitations of the cognitive approach

Research may lack external validity

Machine reductionism

who is the main psychologist for social learning theory?

Albert Bandura

3 assumptions of the biological approach

humans are evolved animals and purely physical

behaviour is driven by biological structures in our bodies such as DNA, hormones and neurotransmitters

this means that just as physical illnesses have biological causes, so does psychological ones

research methods in the biological approach

twin studies, adoption studies, brain scans

What does genotype refer to?

the genetic makeup of an individual coded in chromosomes

What does phenotype refer to?

the physical manifestation of a persons genotype

monozygotic twins

identical twins, 100% shared genes

dizygotic genes

non-identical twins, 50% shared genes (same as any brother or sister)

concordance rate

the percentage of pairs of twins or other blood relatives who both exhibit a particular trait or disorder

natural selection

Organisms that are more adapted to their environment are more likely to survive and pass on those adapted genes to their offspring

sexual selection

species competing for mates by fighting or looking impressive e.g. peacocks tails

Strengths of biological approach

High scientific status

Good explanatory power for sexual selection and depression

Limitations of biological approach

Reductionist

Biological determinist

Real world application of biological approach

Gene therapy - manipulating genes to fix illnesses

Drug therapy - antidepressants increase seratonin