Full Approaches Notes
The Origins of Psychology
Descartes and Dualism:
In the 17th century, Descartes proposed a dualism between the mind and body. He suggested they interact to produce behaviours and thoughts, forming the basis for the nature versus nurture debate.
Psychology Definition:
Psychology is defined as "The scientific study of behaviour and mental processes and how these are affected by internal and external factors".
Science Definition:
Science is defined as "The pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world, following a systematic methodology based on evidence".
Features of science include a universal paradigm, theory construction, hypothesis testing, deduction, falsification, replicability, objectivity, and the empirical method.
Wundt and Introspection:
In 1879, Wundt established the first psychology laboratory and used introspection.
Introspection is defined as "a means of learning about one’s own currently ongoing mental states or processes. Introspective knowledge is often held to be more immediate or direct than sensory knowledge".
It involves three conditions: the mentality condition (generating beliefs about mental states), the first-person condition (generating beliefs about one's own mind), and the temporal proximity condition (describing the individual’s current mental life).
Wundt isolated conscious thoughts into basic structures of thoughts, processes, and images, in structuralism.
Data recording was scientific, using the same stimulus each time to allow replication under standardised conditions for reliable data.
Skinner, Watson, and Behaviourism:
Skinner disagreed with the subjective nature of introspection, where findings varied greatly, making it hard to establish general laws.
In the 1930s, Skinner tested radical behaviourism (that private events could be measured like observable behaviour) using laboratory experiments.
This allowed objective measurement of observable behaviour, providing reliable data by controlling extraneous variables.
This marked the start of psychology as a scientific discipline.
Further Progress with Other Approaches:
Cognitive Approach: The invention of the computer in the 1960s allowed cognitive psychology to flourish, using the 'computer analogy' as a metaphor for the mind’s functions.
Social Learning Theory: Bandura agreed with behaviourist principles but applied them to a social context.
Biological Approach: Advances in brain scanning techniques in the 1970s allowed psychologists to objectively observe and measure the biological basis of behaviour.
The Learning Approach: Behaviourism
Introduction and Assumptions:
The behaviourist approach explains behaviour as acquired and maintained through classical and operant conditioning.
Only objectively measured and observed behaviour is studied, as demonstrated by Skinner’s Box.
Watson and Skinner disagreed with the subjective nature of Wundt’s introspection.
The basic laws governing learning are the same across both non-humans and humans, so animals stand in for humans in experimental research.
Classical Conditioning and Examples:
Classical conditioning occurs through associations between the unconditioned stimulus and the neutral stimulus.
Before conditioning, the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) produces the unconditioned response (UCR).
During conditioning, the neutral stimulus (NS) is paired with the UCS, producing a UCR.
After conditioning, the neutral stimulus becomes the conditioned stimulus, producing the conditioned response.
Pavlov demonstrated that dogs could be conditioned to salivate upon hearing a bell:
Before conditioning, food (UCS) produced salivation (UCR).
During conditioning, the UCS was paired with a bell (NS) to produce salivation (UCR).
An association was made between the UCS and the NS.
After conditioning, the bell (CS) produced salivation (CR).
Extinction occurs when the conditioned stimulus is no longer paired with the unconditioned stimulus, so the conditioned response disappears.
Spontaneous recovery occurs when carrying out the conditioned response some time after extinction has occurred.
Generalisation occurs when slight changes in the conditioned stimulus still produce the same conditioned response.
Operant Conditioning and Examples:
Operant conditioning involves acquiring and maintaining behaviour based on its consequences. Reinforcement increases the likelihood of a behaviour being repeated, whilst punishment decreases this likelihood.
Positive reinforcement occurs when we carry out a behaviour to receive a reward.
Negative reinforcement occurs when we carry out a behaviour to avoid negative consequences.
Skinner’s Box demonstrated positive and negative reinforcement using a rat.
Positive reinforcement was shown when the rats pressed a lever to receive food.
Negative reinforcement was shown when the rat pressed a lever to avoid an electric shock.
Potential Application Questions
Understanding the role of classical conditioning in acquiring Little Albert’s phobia of white rats, including the extinction of the phobia and generalisations of the phobia.
Being able to differentiate between classical and operant conditioning.
Evaluation
Scientific Rigour:
The behaviourist approach uses scientific research methods, especially laboratory experiments, for reliable data.
Controlled conditions reduce confounding variables, increasing reliability and internal validity.
Focusing on observable behaviour increases the scientific credibility of psychology.
Real-Life Applications:
Understanding conditioning has led to treatments for mental disorders.
Token economies have been used to manage behaviour, such as rewarding inmates for socially desirable behaviour.
Environmental Determinism:
The behaviourist approach views all behaviour as a product of past reinforcement contingencies, ignoring free will.
This is a limited explanation for human behaviour, which should account for emotions and reasoning.
Cost-benefit analyses with the use of animals in experimental research
Studies such as Skinner's box may cause physical and psychological harm to animals and participants, breaching ethical guidelines; a cost-benefit analysis may show that the increased understanding outweighs ethical costs.
The Learning Approach: Social Learning Theory
Introduction and Assumptions:
Social learning theory (SLT) suggests that learning occurs directly (through classical & operant conditioning) and indirectly (through vicarious reinforcement).
Learning occurs through these stages: The Observer identifies with a role model, the role model displays a behaviour, and the observer imitates the behaviour. Imitation is more likely when the role model is rewarded.
Role Model:
A person the observer identifies with, often attractive, of high social status, similar in age and gender.
They can exert influence indirectly, such as through the media.
Identification:
The process by which an observer relates to a role model and aspires to be like them
Vicarious Reinforcement:
Indirect learning where an observer sees a role model being rewarded for a behaviour, motivating the observer to imitate the behaviour.
Mediational Processes:
Cognitive processes that intervene between stimulus and response: attention, retention, motor reproduction, and motivation.
The first two relate to observation; the latter two to imitation. Observed behaviours don't always need to be reproduced immediately.
Potential Applications
Bandura’s Bobo Doll Study: Children who observed an aggressive role model behaved more aggressively towards a Bobo doll.
Questions may concern individual differences in mediational processes and the influence of media on behaviour.
Comparisons with other approaches, about SLT's explanation for human, rather than animal, behaviour.
Evaluation:
Bandura’s Bobo Doll experiment ignores the biological differences between boys and girls:
Bandura did not account for the biological and hormonal differences between the sexes: boys exhibited more imitative aggression, more aggressive gun play, and more nonimitative aggressive behaviour.
Demand characteristics in Bandura’s Bobo Doll experiment:
The study may lack mundane realism because it may not represent or measure how children would be aggressive in day-to-day situations.
Participants may have deliberately acted more aggressively towards the doll in order to please the experimenter (the ‘Please-U effect’),
Acknowledges the role of human cognition:
Recognises the role of mediational processes, allowing humans to have some conscious insight into their behaviour.
The Cognitive Approach
Introduction and Assumptions:
The scientific and objective study of internal mental processes is possible.
Conclusions of workings are formulated through making inferences, based upon observable behaviours.
The ‘Computer Analogy’ and Theoretical Models:
Theoretical Model: the working memory model, which is a diagrammatic representation of short-term memory, made up of the following cognitive components, through which information flows: Central executive, phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad and the episodic buffer.
Computer Model: Analogies can also be made between the workings of a computer and the functions of the human brain.
Schemas:
Schemas are ‘packages’ of ideas and knowledge about a certain person, place, object or time. They are generated through experience, becoming more sophisticated through time.
However, schemas may lead to perceptual distortions due to having an already established mental framework.
The Emergence of Cognitive Neuroscience:
Cognitive neuroscience is defined as ‘the scientific field concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental processes’.
Brain Mapping in the 1870s = Carl Wernicke, based on case studies of patients who all had damage to a specific area of the brain and all suffered from the same type of aphasia (Wernicke’s), inferred that Brodmann’s area 22 must be involved in language comprehension.
Objectively Investigating Brain Localisation Theory in the 1970s = Advances in technology meant that it was possible to systematically measure and observe the neural processes which coincide with specific brain functions.
Current Focuses of Cognitive Neuroscience = model-based planning, the neurological basis of autism, and the neural basis of moral reasoning.
Potential Application Questions
The current, modern applications of cognitive neuroscience.
The use of theoretical and computer models to understand cognition.
Explanations of perceptual errors, using knowledge of schemas.
Evaluation
Scientific Methods and Rigour: The emergence of cognitive neuroscience has substantially increased the scientific credibility of psychology.
Overly-Abstract Concepts: Cognitive psychology makes extensive use of schemas and analogies as ways of indirectly studying and inferring the cognitive basis of behaviour.
Practical Applications of Cognitive Neuroscience: An increased understanding of the neural processes underlying cognition have proven to be useful in many areas.
Soft Determinism: The cognitive approach sees humans as being able to reason and make conscious decisions within the limits of what they know or their ‘cognitive system’, and so adopts a soft deterministic approach
The Biological Approach
Introduction and Assumptions:
According to the biological approach, humans are biological organisms made up of physiological processes.
Therefore, all thoughts, ideas and cognitive processes must be biological in origin.
The actions of genes, hormones, neurotransmitters and neurochemical mechanisms must be understood in order to explain behaviour fully.
The Biological Basis of Behaviour:
Heritability coefficients can be used to quantify the genetic or biological basis of a certain characteristic.
Behaviour genetics is defined as “the study of the influence of an organism’s genetic composition on its behaviour and the interaction of heredity and environment insofar as they affect behaviour”.
An individual’s genotype is their genetic make-up, where a gene is a short section of DNA coding for specific proteins.
An individual’s phenotype is the physical expression of their genotype.
Therefore, the interaction between the phenotype and the environment results in individual behaviour.
Epigenetics is a change in gene expression, without altering an individual’s genetic make-up.
Natural Selection and Evolution:
Natural Selection: Suggests that any genetically-determined behaviour, which gives the individual a selective advantage (increasing their chances of surviving, reproducing and passing down this beneficial allele onto their offspring), will be present in future generations.
Evolution = “The process by which organisms change over time as a result of changes in heritable physical or behavioural traits”.
Potential Application Questions
How certain genetic and psychological disorders demonstrate the interaction between genotype and phenotype.
An explanation of why two individuals can have the same genotype, but different phenotypes.
Examples of behaviours which have a ‘selective advantage’.
Comparative points between the biological approach and the cognitive approach.
Evaluation
Practical application in the development of drugs: An increased understanding of the biological processes which underpin mental health diseases has led to the development of psychoactive drugs.
Biological Determinism: The biological approach suggests that all behaviour is caused by internal biological forces over which we have no control i.e. the influence of genes, hormones, neurochemistry, etc.
Twin studies cannot differentiate between the effects of nature and nurture
MZ twins are more likely to grow up in the same household, be exposed to similar experiences and be raised using parenting styles. This may explain the differences in concordance rates between MZ and DZ twins, as opposed to only genetic differences.
Scientific Rigour and Methods: The biological approach uses EEG, PET, and fMRI scans to objectively and systematically measure the biological or neural basis of behaviour.
The Psychodynamic Approach
Introduction and Assumptions:
Freud adopted the use of psychic determinism = This is the idea that all behaviour is caused by unconscious internal conflicts, over which we have no control.
There are 3 levels of consciousness: The conscious, preconscious and unconscious.
The unconscious stores our biological drives and instincts (e.g. hunger, thirst and sex) as well as upsetting and disturbing thoughts repressed from the conscious.
Freud’s Tripartite Personality:
Freud viewed the personality as made up of three components, i.e., ‘tripartite’. These are the Id, ego and superego.
Id = This is the innate part of the personality, and operates on the pleasure principleTherefore, the Id constantly demands instant gratification (e.g. to fulfill innate, biological instincts, such as hunger and thirst) and so is in conflict with the superego.
Ego = Formed during the first 3 years of life, and operates on the reality principle. The ego helps to resolve the conflict between the id and the superego through the use of defence mechanisms (repression, denial and displacement). The strength of the unconscious depends upon how efficiently the ego resolves this conflict.
Superego = Formed at the end of the phallic stage, and operates on the morality principle. This contains the child’s internalised sense of right and wrong, based upon their same-sex parent. The superego is in constant conflict with the Id.
The Psychosexual Stages:
Freud adopted a nomothetic approach by suggesting that there is a series of developmental stages through which all children progress, and in the same order.
The ideas of the Oedipus and Electra Complexes were developed on the basis of case studies conducted on Little Hans, where Freud suggested that Little Hans’ phobia of horses stemmed from a fear towards his father, due to having sexual desires for his mother.
Potential Application Questions
Comparisons between the psychodynamic approach and humanism.
Explanation of the case of Little Hans, using the psychosexual stages.
Links between the psychodynamic approach and the current scientific status of Psychology (synoptic with Research Methods).
Psychodynamic explanations of mental disorders make links with the tripartite personality and the role of the unconscious.
Evaluation
Unconscious Concepts:
Then it is not possible to objectively and systematically measure it
According to Karl Popper, the psychodynamic approach does not meet the scientific criterion of falsification, leaving it unfalsifiable and a pseudoscience.
*The use of an idiographic approach / Case studies:
Mainly qualitative data is collected, which means that the researcher draws their own subjective conclusions
Freud’s data and theories suffer from limited applications and generalisability.
Psychic Determinism:
Freud suggested that all behaviour is the product of unconscious, internal conflicts (between the Id and the superego, whilst being mediated by the ego) over which we have no control.
Practical Applications:
Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis are both rooted in the psychodynamic approach and still have modern uses.
The Humanistic Approach
Introduction and Assumptions:
Assumes that we all have free will and are ‘mistresses’ and ‘masters’ of our own development.
Sees self-actualisation, as achieved by being the top level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, as a crucial part of being human.
Incongruence and Self-Actualisation:
The ‘self’ is a term to describe all the ideas and values we have about ourselves, including perceptions of our abilities.
The ‘ideal self’ describes our perception of the best version of ourselves.
When there is too large a gap between the self and the ideal self, we experience incongruence.
Self-actualisation refers to the innate desire we all have to become the best version of ourselves, through personal and psychological growth, i.e. “achieving one’s full potential”.
Rogerian Therapy, Conditions of Worth and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
Rogerian therapy aims to reduce the gap between the self and the ideal self, thus increasing the likelihood of achieving congruence and subsequently, self-actualisation.
Rogerian therapy views a good therapist as being open, genuine, empathic and most importantly, providing the unconditional positive regard which the patient most likely lacked during childhood.
Potential Application Questions
The impact of humanism on counselling psychology.
Comparisons with other, reductionist approaches.
Explanation of mental disorders using Maslow’s idea of a hierarchy of needs, conditions of worth, a lack of unconditional positive regard in childhood and subsequent incongruence.
Evaluation
Practical Application to Therapy:
Roger’s client-centred approach is not suitable for treating serious mental disorders, such as schizophrenia or depression.
Holistic Approach:
The humanistic approach is unique in that it adopts holism, therefore focusing on the individual’s subjective experiences as a whole, as a method of investigating behaviour.
Untestable and subjective concepts:
As with Freud’s psychodynamic approach, humanism suffers from a lack of empirical evidence and no possibility of systematically observing and measuring the processes which it describes.
A culture-bound explanation of behaviour:
Maslow’s ideas of self-actualisation, the need to improve oneself, and congruence can be mostly viewed as attitudes typical of Western, individualist cultures, where the needs of the individual are greater than the needs of the group.
Comparison of Approaches
Approaches compared on dimensions like nature vs nurture, holism vs reductionism, free will vs determinism, and explanation of mental disorders for Behaviourism, SLT, Cognitive, Biological, and Humanistic approaches.