Psychology Unit 2 Core Theories

?
  • Created by: Joe Dodd
  • Created on: 01-06-13 15:30
View mindmap
  • Psychology Unit 2 - Key Theories
    • Criminal Behaviour
      • Biological Theory
        • Criminal Personality
          • Pleasure Seeking
          • Lack of guilt
          • Over-optimism
          • Impulsiveness
          • Self-importance
        • Brain Dysfunction
          • Weak pre-frontal cortex results in less-fearful attitude towards anti-social behaviour.
          • Stronger limbic system results in more aggression in the person.
          • Weaker corpus-callosum results in more irrational thinking.
          • Weaker temporal lobe results in lack of ability to understand language, ability to learn, to be less emotional and a worse memory.
        • Criticisms
          • Brain dysfunction is not evident in all criminals.
          • Theory ignore influence of social environment.
          • It is unlikely that there is one gene that accounts for all criminal behaviour.
    • Perception
      • Constructivist Theory
        • Past Experiences
        • Top-down processing
          • Perception is led by brain, rather than eyes.
          • Perception is led by motivation and expectation.
        • Depth Cues
          • Superimpostion - When an object appears in front of another object, we perceive it as closer.
          • Relative Size - When there are two objects we believe to be of similar size and one appears larger, we perceive it to be closer.
          • Height on the Plane - If an object appears to be lower on the plane (the horizon) we perceive it to be closer than an object that is higher on the plane.
          • Linear Perspective -  All objects converge towards one point in the distance. If an object is closer to that point than another object, we perceive the object nearer to the point as further away.
          • Texture Gradient - We perceive an object to be closer than another object if the texture appears more fine than the other object, which will appear to have a coarse gradient.
      • Criticisms
        • Theory does not explain how people with different experiences perceive similarly.
        • Theory does not explain how new born babies, with essentially no past experiences, are able to perceive (Gibson & Walk, 1960).
        • Theory does not explain why illusions continue to fool us even if we've seen them before.
    • The Self
      • Humanistic Theory
        • Self Actualisation
          • Self-esteem required to self actualise.
        • Self concept
        • Ideal Self
        • Free Will
        • Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR)
          • Giving or receiving affection, no matter what.
        • Maslow's Pyramid
        • Criticisms
          • The theory is culturally-centric (based on western norms and values).
          • Theory is not very scientific. Therefore, it cannot be measured.
          • The theory's concepts are often too vague.
    • Cognitive Development
      • Piaget's theory
        • 4 fixed stages
          • Sensori Motor Stage (0 to 2 years old)
            • Motor Coordination,  Body Schema, Object Permanence
          • Pre-operational Stage (2 to 7 years old)
            • Animism, Egocentricism, Reversibility
          • Concrete Operational Stage (7 to 11 years old)
            • Linguistic Humour, Seriation, Conservation
          • Formal Operational Stage (11+ years old)
            • Hypothetical Thinking
          • 'Universal'
          • Children are 'scientists' - learn and explore by themself.
        • Criticisms
          • The stages are not as fixed and rigid as Piaget proposes.
          • Theory does not explain child prodigies.
          • Unlike the theory proposes, there is no guarantee that people develop through all of the stages.
    • Non-Verbal Communication
      • Social Learning Theory
        • Reinforcement
        • Punishment
        • Observation
        • Imitation
        • Role Models
        • Criticisms
          • Theory does not explain why people persist in Non-Verbal Communication even after getting punished.
          • Theory does not explain how children brought up in the same environment can have different Non-Verbal Communication.
          • Theory suggests that people can learn new ways of communicating non-verbally, but this isn't always true.

Comments

Khalid

Report

Are you from HWS

Similar Psychology resources:

See all Psychology resources »