Approaches and Perspectives G544

Overviews/defintions of the different approaches and perspectives, does include strengths and weaknesses, does include studies (A2 studies taken from Health and Clinical, Crime).

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  • Created by: jekyll
  • Created on: 17-06-12 12:27

Social Approach

This approach is concerned with how humans interact with each other. Areas of particular interest include interpersonal attraction and relationships, prejudice and discrimination, and group dynamics (conformity, obedience and minority influence).

It focuses in particular on how the individual behaves in these social situations. When we are looking for an explanation of why someone behaved the way they did, the social approach would say to look at the individiual in terms of the the social context and their interactions and perceptions of others. Rather than as an isolated individual.

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Social Approach Strengths

Strengths

This approach helps us to focus on the situation in which behaviour is being observed, rather than just looking at the characteristics of the person.

This approach recognises that much behaviour takes place in a social context and helps us understand how people behave in groups.

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Social Approach Weaknesses

Weaknesses

If experimental methods are used, especially in laboratory experiments, it is difficult to create an everyday social setting, so research may lack ecological validity.

Research may be deterministic and may overestimate situational factors and underemphasise the individual differences and the role of 'free will'

Counter argument: Milgram argued that all his participants could have refused to administer electronic shocks.

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Social Approach Studies

AS Level

  • Pilliavin
    • Helping Behaviour
  •  Reicher and Haslam
    • BBC Prison Study
  • Milgram
    • Obedience
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Social Approach Studies

A2 Level; Health & Clinical and Crime

  • Nemeth and Wachtler (Reaching a Verdict)
    • Minority Influence
  • Asch (Reaching a Verdict)
    • Minority Influence
  • Gudjonsson and Bownes (Turning to Crime)
    • Social Cognition
  • Waxler-Morrison (Stress)
    • Social relationships and cancer survival
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Individual Differences Approach

This approach is concerned with the differences between people (rather than the things we might have in common), particulrly in terms of personality and abnormality.

One of the assumptions of this approach is that there are differences between people of any group, in terms of their personal qualities, the ways in which they respond to situations, their behaviour and so on, and that it is examining these differences that is the most revealing.

Continued on next card.

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Individual Differences Approach Continued

Some research within the approach has focused on trying to measure these differences, for example, through the use of psychometric tests such as IQ tests or personality tests. Some research has tried to categorise and identify the different types of abnormality.

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Individual Differences Strengths

Strengths

Has useful applications especially in therapy for treating dysfunctional behaviour.

Thigpen and Cleckley > MPD, Griffiths > Gambling, Sensky > Gambling addictions, Watons and Raynor > Phobias

Case studies give a detailed picture of an individual and help to discover how a persons past may be related to their present behaviour.

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Individual Differences Weaknesses

Weaknesses
The approach may be reductionist because it may overestimate the role of dispositional factors and ignore social and situational influences on behaviour.

If case study methods are used, the findings can only be applied to the person being studied and can not be generalised to explain the behaviour of others. (Eve, Little Albert)

Retrospective studies may rely on memory, which may be biased, faulty or incomplete, and on past records which may be incomplete.

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Individual Differences Approach Studies

AS Level

  • Rosenhan
    • Sane in insane places
  • Griffiths
    • Gambling
  • Thigpen and Cleckley
    • Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)
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Individual Differences Approach Studies

A2 Level; Health & Clinical and Crime

  • Gottesmand and Shields (Explanations)
    • Twins and schizophrenia
  • Sensky et al (Treatmeants)
    • CBT and non-specific befriending in treating schizophrenia
  • Watson and Raynor (Explanations)
    • Little Albert/Classical conditioning
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Developmental Approach

This approach is concerned with how we change as we age and mature - in particular, how we change cognitively and socially. Much of the research has focused on the change within childhood, as this is the fastest period of change in a person's life.

Increasingly, however, over the last two decades, psychology has recognised the life-span approach and acknowledged the changes (social and cognitive) that continue to take place throughout all stages of adulthood.

Continued on next card.

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Developmental Approach Continued

One key assumption of this approach is that events that happen to us early in life have a long-term effect on the course of our development.

Another assumption is that people of the same age share much in common, in terms of cognitive abilities, issues they face and so on.

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Developmental Approach Strengths

Strengths
This approach helps identify changes that are common to most people and predict age-related changes in aspects of behaviour. For example, theories of cognitive development can be applied to improve teaching and learning situations in schools.

By understanding changes that take place in most people, we can recognise abnormal or dysfunctional behaviour.

Longitudinal methods can be used to monitor the long-term effect of an experience.

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Developmental Weaknesses

Weakneses
If longitudinal research methods are used, it is difficult to control other factors that can also affect what we are measuring, reducing the validity of research conclusions.

Whether longitudinal or cross-sectional methods are used, large samples are required, because of participant attrition and in order to be able to generalise findings to the research population. Usually need long-term funding.

The developmental approach may be reductionist because it may overestimate the influence of age as a cause of behaviour change and ignore other factors such as social or situational influences on behaviour.

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Developmental Approach Studies

AS Level

  • Freud
    • Little Hans
  • Samuel and Bryant
    • Conservation
  • Bandura
    • Aggression
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Physiological Approach

The physiological approach studies the biological basis of human behaviour.

This may include discovering localised functions in the brain. This can be done by working with brain-damaged patients, but more recently involves neuro-imaging techniques and often focuses on the chemical basis of human behaviour, e.g, serotonin on depression.

May also consider the genetic basis for behaviour.

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Physiological Approach Strengths

Strengths
The objective, reductionist nature of physiological explanations facilitates experimental research.

Physiological explanations can be used to treat dysfunctional behaviour, for example, drug therapies are widely used to treat mental illnesses, often with a reasonable amount of succes. (Kane)

Physiological explanations are scientific because they do not need us ot infer metaphysical constructs such as 'mind' to explain behaviour.

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Physiological Approach Weaknesses

Weaknesses

The physiological approach offers an objective, reductionist and mechanist explanation of behaviour, which is oversimplistic.

It overlooks the environmental aspect of behaviour. It ignores past expierence in our environment as an influence on behaviour.

Continued on next card.

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Physiological Approach Weaknesses Continued

Weaknesses

Physiological explanations are more appropriate for some kinds of behaviour (such as the physiology of stress) but whether a person feels stressed involves social and physiological factors, so physiological explanations alone are usually inadequate.

Physiological explanations are deterministic, suggesting that all behaviour is entirely predictable.

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Physiological Approach Studies

AS Level

  • Maguire
    • Hippocampus
  • Dement and Kleitman
    • Dreamining and REM
  • Sperry
    • Split-brain patients
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Physiological Approach Studies

A2 Level; Health & Clinical and Crime

  • Gottesman and Shields (Explanations)
    • Twins and schizophrenia
  • Kane et al (Treatments)
    • Fluphenazine and placebos on schizophrenia
  • Raine et al (Turning to Crime)
    • Brain abnormalities in murderers/PET scans
  • Brunner et al (Turning to Crime)
    • MAOA/genetic abnormality in a family
  • Daly and Wilson (Turning to Crime)
    • Evolution/Gender
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Cognitive Approach

Concerns the mind and mental processes - how we think (rationally and irrationally), solve problems, perceive, make sense and understand the world, how and why we remember and forget.

The main assumption of the cognitive approach is that how we think is central in explaining how we behave and how we respond in different situations.

The approach sees the human mind rather like a computer; information enters (input), is processed and stored, and is sometimes used again (output).

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Cognitive Approach Strengths

Strengths

The approach has useful applications, ranging from advice about validity of eyewitness testimony and how to improve performance in situations requiring close attention (such as traffic control) to successful therapies for psychological problems such as stress (SIT Meichenbaum).

The cognitive approach is not deterministic and it allows that humans have free will to make decisions about behaviour.

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Cognitive Approach Weaknesses

Weaknesses

The congitive approach tends to ignore social, motivational and emotional facotrs and assumes that humans are rational. It underemphasises the role of human emotion.

Much research by cognitive psychologists is experimental and based in laboratories, in situations that lack ecological validity.

For example: many memory experiments measure 'memory for facts' but there are many different kinds of memory.

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Cognitive Approach Studies

AS Level

  • Loftus and Palmer
    • Eye-witness testimony and leading questions
  • Baron-Cohen
    • Autism
  • Savage-Rumbaugh
    • Kanzi
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Cognitive Approach Studies

A2 Level

  • Beck et al (Explanations)
    • Depression and faulty thinking
  • Sensky (Treatments)
    • CBT and Non-Specific Befriending
  • Loftus (Making a Case)
    • Weapons Effect
  • Fisher (Making a Case)
    • Cognitive Interview Technique
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Psychodynamic Perspective

Human behaviour is explained in terms of an interaction between innate drives and early experiences. Freud wrote that there are three parts to the human psyche.

  • The id (the primitive, innate part of personality)
  • The ego (the conscious and intellectual part of personality that regulates the id)
  • The superego (the moral part that is from parents and society)

Freud also devised a theory of psychosexual development; oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital.

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Psychodynamic Perspective Strengths

Strengths

Freud recognised that childhood is a critical period of development.

Has useful applications in the form of therapy.

Case studies provide rich, in-depth detailed data and allow for changes to be tracked over time.

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Psychodynamic Approach Weaknesses

Weaknesess

Data is often collected retrospectively, and because it was interpreted there is a potential for investigator bias.

It is deterministic because it implies that people have little free will, and it suggests that adult behaviour is determined by childhood experiences.

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Psychodynamic Perspective Studies

AS Level

  • Freud
    • Little Hans
  • Thigpen and Cleckley
    • Three Faces of Eve/Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)
      • Focus on how Eve's MPD came about due to inner conflicts and childhood experiences, therefore having an innate cause.
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Psychodynamic Perspective Studies

A2 Level; Crime

  • Yochelson and Samenow (Turning to Crime)
    • Criminal thinking patterns
      • The interviews by Y+S were Freudian in nature and attempted to find the root cause of their criminality.
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Behaviourist Perspective

Behaviourist psychology assumes that all behaviour is learned, and that experience and interaction with the environment make us what we are because we learn stimulus-response units of behaviour in reaction to the environment.

All behaviour can be explained in terms of conditioning theory through classical and/or operant conditioning to produce stimulus and response links, which build up to produce complex behaviours.

Continued on next card.

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Behaviourist Perspective Continued

All behaviour is determined by environmental influences, e.g, learning. We are born as a blank slate (Tabula rasa) upon which stimulus-response units are built.

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Behaviourist Perspective Strengths

Strengths

Classic learning theory has had a major influence on all branches of psychology.

Behaviourism has given rise to many practical applications, such as treatments for dysfunctional behaviour (systematic desensitation), where desirable behaviours are rewarded. The principle is that if a dysfunctional behaviour (such as phobia) is learnt than it can be unlearnt.

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Behaviourist Approach Weaknesses

Weaknesses

It is reductionist - it reduces complex behaviour down to stimulus-response links.

It is deterministic - behaviour is determined by the environment and past experience. It implies that humans are passive in response to their environment.

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Behaviourist Perspective Studies

AS Level

  • Bandura
    • Aggression

A2 Level

  • Watson and Raynor
    • Little Albert/Classical Conditioning
  • McGrath
    • Lucy/Systematic Desensitisation
  • Budzynski
    • Biofeedback
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Comments

Zara

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Thank you so much.

Juliette

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This is great, thank you :)

Emilie Cross

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Thanks!  

MrsMacLean

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A set of 37 revision cards which are clearly very useful!

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