issues and debates

Idiographic

An approach to research aiming to understand the individual and their experience. Theory prefers qualitative methods like case studies

Nomothetic

An approach to research aiming to identify general laws of behaviour. Theory prefers quantitative methods like experiments

Idiographic Examples

• Humanistic psychology - Rogers and Maslow took a phenomenological approach to studying people and were only concerned with their conscious experience

  • Psychodynamic psychology - Uses idiographic methods such as case studies

Nomothetic Examples

• Behaviourism

• Cognitive approach

  • Biological approach I

Idiographic Evaluation

• Global account of the individual

• Narrow and restrictive, limiting generalisability

• Less scientific and objective

Nomothetic evaluation

• Highly scientific

• Establishing laws of behaviour can allow for the development of treatments

  • Fails to account for the whole person

Complementary rather than contradictory

The approaches can actually complement one another to allow for both understanding of the individual experience and a wider understanding of general laws of behaviour

Holism

Theory which suggest that it’s more logical to study an entire system rather than its individual parts

Reductionism

Belief that human behaviour is best explained by breaking it down

Biological reductionism

Theory which argues that human behaviour is caused purely by biology

Environmental reductionism

Theory which suggest that human behaviour is caused purely by stimulus-response links

Levels of explanation in psychology

• Sociocultural

• Psychological

• Physical

• Physiological

  • Neurochemical

Holism Evaluation

• Holism provides a more global and complete understanding of behaviour, especially social behaviours

• Hard to scientifically test holistic theories e.g. humanism

  • Do not identify what in particular may cause a behaviour, limiting treatment options

Reductionism evaluation

• In order to conduct experiments, behaviour must be broken down and attributed to a certain cause

• Highly scientific

• Oversimplifies complex phenomena

Nature

Innate biological factors e.g. genetics

Nurture

Upbringing or life experience

Heritability coefficient

A numerical value from 0 to 1 indicating the extent to which behaviour is genetic

Plamin

IQ has a hertiability coefficient of 0.5

Lerner

Estabilished a distribution between two different levels of the environment:

• Pre-natal

  • Post-natal

Interactionism

Behaviour is the result of interaction between nature and nurture

Dunn and Plomin

Individual differences may mean that two people in the same environment experience events differently

Plomin

Developed the theory of niche-picking where people select environments that suit their temperment

Scar and McCartney

Put forward 3 types of gene environment interaction:

• Passive interaction - Parents’ genes influence the way they treat their children

• Evocative Interaction - Child’s genes influence their environment

• Active interaction - Child selects their environment

Free will

Humans are self determining and free to choose our behaviour

Determinism

Humans are controlled by external factors

Hard determinism

All behaviour has an external cause

James

Put forward soft determinism suggesting that behaviour has a cause but individuals also have some power to control their behaviours

Biological determinism

Biology and biological factors determine behaviour

Environmental determinism

Behaviour is caused by environmental factors

Psychic determinism

Behaviour is caused by unconscious conflict in the mind caused in childhood

Determinism Evaluation

• Supports the scientific aim of studying behaviour

• Mental illness suggests that there’s a level of determinism involved in human behaviour

• Determinism is unfalsifiable

• Determinism has negative real world consequences

Free will evaluation

• High face validity - we make conscious choices

• People with internal loci of control are more mentally healthy

• Roberts et al - Adolescents with a strong sense of fatalism are more at risk of depression

• Liber - Brain activity that determines our choices is detectable up to 10 seconds before we’re aware we’ve made a choice

Cultural Bias

A tendency to view all behaviours through the lens of our cultural biases

Emic

Emic constructs argue that certain behaviours are culturally exclusive to the cultures being studied when they may not be

Etic

Etic constructs argue that certain behaviours are culturally universal when they may not actually be

Imposed etic

Researchers imposing western cultural values on other cultures and belief systems

Ethnocentrism

Belief that one’s ethnic group is superior to others

Gielen

Studied conversation habits and found racial differences in communication styles. Black women made significantly less eye contact that white women

Cole and Scribner

Aimed to investigate the memories of tribal people. Studied Liberian children who went to school vs those who didn’t go to school and found significantly worse ability to memorise a standardised list of words

Western Medicine

Western medicine assumes that all illness is purely biological and ignores the psychological effects on health e.g. placebos

Medical bias

Black Caribbean individuals are 6x more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia in the West despite no significant difference in no. of diagnoses existing in the Caribbean

Takano and Osaka

Metaanalysis of USA/Japan studies and found no evidence of a collectivist/individualist split in behaviour

Ekman

Some human facial expressions are universal

Bond and Smith

Demand characteristics are amplified in non-Western cultures because it’s assumed they have no knowledge of how research is conducted

Androcentrism

A consequence of beta bias leading to all behaviour being judged by male standards

Universality

Applicable to all people irrespective of gender or culture

Alpha Bias

Exaggerates the differences between male and female behaviour, often devaluing women and presenting female behaviour as abnormal

Beta

Minimises the difference between male and female behaviour which is often caused by a failure to include a certain gender. Research is carried out then generalised and assumed to be universal

Brescoll and Uhlman

Male anger is seen as a rational response to external pressure while female anger is seen as irrational

Tavris

Due to gender bias in research, it becomes normal for women to feel abnormal within society

Real life implications

Gender bias in research may lead to women being denied opportunities in their careers or in their lives due to being seen as abnormal e.g. women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression

Nicolson

Female participants within lab studies are put in highly unfair situations due to the power imbalance between men and women and psychological research legitimises gender inequality

Reflexivity

Researchers are now more aware of how their life experiences and biases have affected their research

Dambrin and Lambert

Included a section in their research exploring how their experiences as women affected their readings of their data

Essentialism

Research in the past has been highly alpha biased and argued that gender differences are immutable and fixed

Walkerdine

Found evidence of research in the 1930s which suggested that women’s ovaries would shrivel up if they pursued higher education

Worrell and Remer

Developed a criteria for how to conduct research without gender bias:

• Women should be involved in the research process and not just objects of study

• Diversity between groups of women should be studied

• Greater emphasis of qualitative, collaborative approaches which give the female participants more input