Definition: Psychology is the science that studies behavior and mental processes.
Acknowledges the overt (observable) study of activities.
Values covert (unobservable) underlying mental processes inferred from behavioral and physiological data (emotions, thoughts, dreams).
Behavior: Any activity of a person including physical actions that can be observed directly, and mental activity which is inferred and interpreted.
Approaches Introduction
Approach: A perspective that involves certain assumptions about human behavior.
Includes beliefs about how humans function.
What aspects are worthy of study.
What research methods are appropriate for studying this.
Multiple approaches exist in contemporary psychology.
No single approach is universally correct; each has strengths and weaknesses.
Different approaches bring different things to the understanding of human behavior.
The main psychological approaches:
Behaviorism
Psychodynamic
Cognitive Psychology
Humanism
Biological Psychology
Behaviorist Approach
Views people and animals are controlled by their environment.
Behavior is a result of learning from the environment.
Concerned with how environmental factors (stimuli) affect observable behavior (response).
Proposes that people learn from their environment through:
Classical conditioning: learning by association.
Operant conditioning: learning from the consequences of behavior.
Believes in scientific methodology.
Only observable behavior should be studied.
Rejects the idea of free will.
Environment determines all behavior.
Behavior is reduced to learned Stimulus-Response units.
Classical Conditioning:
Studied by Ivan Pavlov.
Conditioned dogs to salivate to the sound of a bell through repeated association of the bell and food.
Applied in therapies such as systematic desensitization for phobias and aversion therapy for undesirable behaviors.
Operant conditioning tackles voluntary behavior.
B.F. Skinner investigated operant conditioning of voluntary and involuntary behavior.
Three main behavior shaping techniques:
Positive reinforcement.
Negative reinforcement.
Punishment.
Criticisms:
Underestimates the complexity of human behavior.
Many studies used animals, which are hard to generalize to humans.
Cannot explain the speed at which we pick up language.
Must be biological factors involved.
Psychodynamic Approach
Founded by Sigmund Freud.
Events in childhood can have a significant impact on behavior as adults.
People have little free will to make choices in life.
Behavior is determined by the unconscious mind and childhood experiences.
Freud's psychoanalysis is both a theory and a therapy.
Inspired psychologists such as Jung and Erikson to develop their own psychodynamic theories.
Freud's explanation of the human mind:
Like an iceberg, with only a small amount of it being visible.
Observable behavior is a small part.
The unconscious, submerged mind has the most underlying influence on our behavior.
Freud used three main methods of accessing the unconscious mind:
Free association.
Dream analysis.
Slips of the tongue.
Believed that the unconscious mind consisted of three components:
'Id'
Contains two main instincts: 'Eros' and 'Thanatos'.
'Eros': Life instinct, involves self-preservation and sex, fueled by the 'libido' energy force. Libido
'Thanatos': Death instinct, energies are channeled away from ourselves and into aggression towards others
'Ego'
'Superego'
The 'id' and the 'superego' are constantly in conflict with each other, and the 'ego' tries to resolve the discord.
If this conflict is not resolved, we tend to use defense mechanisms to reduce our anxieties.
Psychoanalysis attempts to help patients resolve their inner conflicts.
Freud's theory of Psychosexual Development shows how early experiences affect adult personality.
Stimulation of different areas of the body is important as the child progresses through the important developmental stages.
The most important stage is the phallic stage, where the focus of the libido is on the genitals.
During this stage little boys experience the 'Oedipus complex', and little girls experience the 'Electra complex'.
These complexes result in children identifying with their same-sex parent, which enables them to learn sex-appropriate behavior and a morale code of conduct.
Criticisms:
Overemphasizes the importance of sexuality and underemphasizes the role of social relationships.
The theory is not scientific.
The sample was biased, consisting of middle-class, middle-aged neurotic women.
Humanistic Approach
Emphasizes the study of the whole person.
Looks at human behavior through the eyes of the person doing the behaving.
An individual's behavior is connected to his inner feelings and self-image.
Developed as a rebellion against the limitations of the behaviorist and psychodynamic psychology.
Called the "third force" in psychology after psychoanalysis and behaviorism.
Rejected the assumption of the behaviorist approach which is characterized as deterministic, focused on reinforcement of stimulus-response behavior and heavily dependent on animal research.
Also rejected the psychodynamic approach because it also is deterministic, with unconscious, irrational and instinctive forces determining human thought and behavior.
Both Behaviorism and psychoanalysis are regarded as dehumanizing by humanistic psychologists.
Humanistic Psychology Assumptions:
Phenomenology is central and that people have free will.
Personal agency is the humanistic term for the exercise of free will.
Personal agency refers to the choices we make in life, the paths we go down and their consequences.
People are basically good, and have an innate need to make themselves and the world better.
Emphasizes the personal worth of the individual, the centrality of human values, and the creative, active nature of human beings.
Optimistic and focuses on noble human capacity to overcome hardship, pain and despair.
Rogers and Maslow regarded personal growth and fulfillment in life as a basic human motive.
Each person seeks to grow psychologically and continuously enhance themselves.
Captured by the term self-actualization which is about psychological growth, fulfillment and satisfaction in life.
Rogers and Maslow describe different ways of how self-actualization can be achieved.
Central to the humanist theories of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow are the subjective, conscious experiences of the individual.
Humanistic psychologists argued that objective reality is less important than a person's subjective perception and subjective understanding of the world.
Rogers and Maslow placed little value on scientific psychology especially the use of the psychology laboratory to investigate both human and other animal behavior.
Human beings are fundamentally different from other animals because humans are conscious beings capable of thought, reason and language.
Humanistic psychologists rejected a rigorous scientific approach to psychology because they saw it as dehumanizing and unable to capture the richness of conscious experience.
The rejection of scientific psychology in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was a backlash to the dominance of the behaviorist approach in North American psychology.
Basic Assumptions:
Humans have free will.
All individuals are unique and have an innate (inborn) drive to achieve their maximum potential
A proper understanding of human behaviour can only be achieved by studying humans - not animals.
Psychology should study the individual case (idiographic) rather than the average performance of groups (nomothetic).
Areas of Application:
Person Centered Therapy
Qualitative Methods
Abnormal Behaviour
Education
Gender Role Development
Strengths:
Shifted the focus of behaviour to the individual whole person rather than the unconscious mind, genes, observable behaviour etc.
Humanistic psychology satisfies most people's idea of what being human means because it values personal ideals and self-fulfillment.
Qualitative data gives genuine insight (and more holistic information) into behaviour.
Highlights the value of more individualistic and idiographic methods of study
Weaknesses:
Unscientific subjective concepts
Humanism ignores the unconscious mind
human and animal behaviour can be compared
Qualitative data is difficult to compare.
Ethnocentric (biased towards Western culture)
Their belief in free will is in opposition to the deterministic laws of science.
Cognitive Approach
Evolved from early philosophers, such as Aristotle and Plato.
Revolves around how we know what makes people tick, if we figure out what processes are actually going on in their minds.
Psychologists from this perspective study cognition which is 'the mental act or process by which knowledge is acquired.
Is concerned with "mental" functions such as memory, perception, attention etc.
Views people as being similar to computers in the way we process information (e.g. input-process-output).
Explains that memory comprises of three stages:
encoding (where information is received and attended to).
storage (where the information is retained).
retrieval (where the information is recalled).
Extremely scientific approach for studying human behavior.
Has many applications including cognitive therapy and eyewitness testimony.
The term came into use with the publication of the book Cognitive Psychology by Ulric Neisser in 1967.
They are interested in the variables that mediate between stimulus/input and response/output.
The main areas of study in cognitive psychology are: perception, attention, memory and language.
The cognitive approach applies a homothetic approach to discover human cognitive processes, but have also adopted idiographic techniques through using case studies.
Typically cognitive psychologists use the laboratory experiment to study behaviour.
The widely used lab experiment can be criticised for lacking ecological validity.
Became of great importance in the mid-1950s.
Factors important in this:
Dissatisfaction with the behaviourist approach in its simple emphasis on external behaviour rather than internal processes
The development of better experimental methods
The start of the use of computers allowed psychologists to try to understand the complexities of human cognition by comparing it with something simpler and better understood i.e. an artificial system such as a computer.
Began to revolutionise psychology in the late 1950's and early 1960's, to become the dominant approach (i.e. perspective) in psychology by the late 1970s.
Key Concepts
Mediational Processes
Information processing approach
Computer Analogy
Introspection
Nomothetic
Schema
Basic Assumptions:
Cognitive psychology is a pure science, based mainly on laboratory experiments.
Behaviour can be largely explained in terms of how the mind operates, i.e. the information processing approach.
The mind works in a way similar to a computer: inputting, storing and retrieving data.
Mediational processes occur between stimulus and response.
Areas of Application
Gender Role Development
Eyewitness Testimony / Cognitive Interview
Memory, Attention, Perception etc.
Child Development
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Learning Styles
Moral Development
Strengths:
Scientific
Highly applicable
Combines easily with approaches
Many empirical studies to support theories
Weaknesses:
Ignores biology
Experiments - low ecological validity
Humanism - rejects scientific method
Behaviourism - can't objectively study unobservable behaviour
Introspection is subjective
Machine reductionism
Cognitive Approach Evaluation
The Information Processing paradigm of cognitive psychology views the minds in terms of a computer when processing information.
However, their are important difference between humans and computers.
The mind does not process information like a computer as computers don't have emotions or get tired like humans.
Biological Psychology Introduction
Is defined as the study of life.
A biological perspective is relevant to the study of Psychology in three ways:
Comparative method: different species of animal can be studied and compared.
Physiology: how the nervous system and hormones work, how the brain functions, affect behaviour.
Investigation of inheritance: what an animal inherits from its parents, mechanisms of inheritance (genetics).
Key Concepts
Natural Selection / Evolution
Adaptation
Heredity/Genetics
Nomothetic
Reductionist
Instincts/Sociobiology
Comparative Psychology
Methodology
Lab Experiments
Correlation studies
Twin research
Naturalistic observations
Basic Assumptions
Psychology should be seen as a science.
Behaviour can be largely explained in terms of biology (e.g. genes/hormones)
Human genes have evolved over millions of years to adapt behaviour to the environment.
Therefore, most behaviour will have an adaptive / evolutionary purpose.
Areas of Application
Gender Role Development
Abnormal Behaviour
IQ
Relationships
Therapy
Stress
Strengths
Very Scientific
Highly application to other areas
Helped develop comparative psychology
Strong counter argument to the nurture side of the debate
Many empirical studies to support theories
Weaknesses
Experiments - Low Ecological Validity
Humanism: too deterministic - little room for free-will
Doesn't recognize cognitive processes
Biopsychological theories often over-simplify the huge complexity of physical systems and their interaction with the environment.
The biological approach believes that most behaviour is inherited and has an adaptive (or evolutionary) function.
For example, in the weeks immediately after the birth of a child, levels of testosterone in fathers drop by more than 30 per cent.
This has an evolutionary function
Biological psychologists explain behaviours in neurological terms, i.e. the physiology and structure of the brain and how this influences behaviour.
Many biological psychologists have concentrated on abnormal behaviour and have tried to explain it.
For example biological psychologists believe that schizophrenia is affected by levels of dopamine (a neurotransmitter).
Approaches Conclusion
There are many different approaches to psychology to explain the different types of behaviour and give different angles.
No one approach has explanatory powers over the rest.
It’s only with all the different types of psychology which sometimes contradict one another, overlap with each other or build upon one another can we understand and create effective solutions when problems arise so we have a healthy body and healthy mind.
The fact that there are different approaches represents the complexity and richness of human (and animal) behaviour.
A scientific approach, such as behaviorism or cognitive psychology, tends to ignore the subjective (i.e. personal) experiences that people have.
The humanistic approach does recognize human experience, but largely at the expense of being non-scientific in its methods and ability to provide evidence.
The psychodynamic approach concentrates too much on the unconscious mind and childhood.
As such it tends to lose sight of the role of socialization (which is different in each country) and the possibility of free will.
The biological approach reduces humans to a set of mechanisms and physical structures that are clearly essential and important (e.g. genes).
However, it fails to account for consciousness and the influence of the environment on behaviour.
Importance of psychology in nursing
It equips the nurse with necessary skills to interact well with other members of the health care team
It enables the nurse to work well with fellow nurses
It enables the nurse to understand her or his clients and treat them as unique beings
It helps the nurse to understand the learning process
It helps the nurse to anticipate behaviour from her or his clients