evaluation points

• What is a practical application of the nature side of the debate?

  Drug therapies for behavioral problems
• How can SSRI's be used in the context of the nature vs nurture debate?

  They treat depression with a physiological basis
• What are the ethical implications of extreme nature views?

  They can affect reproductive decisions for low IQ individuals
• What is a practical application of the nurture side of the debate?

  Planning interventions for criminal behavior
• What are the implications of the nature vs nurture debate on psychological treatment?

  • Nature side supports drug therapies
  • Nurture side emphasizes environmental adaptations
  • Ethical concerns arise from extreme nature views
• to illustrate determinism and free will: 

  • Behaviourist explanations - the causal explanation of phobias as by Little Albert. 
  • SLT – Bandura’s Bobo doll
  • Biological explanations of schizophrenia or addiction. 
  • Psychodynamic explanations of gender determined by the resolution of the Phallic stage of development. Our behaviour being determined by the unconscious (psychic determinism) 
  • Bowlby’s mat dep theory - a deterministic view
  • The Humanistic Approach – the idea we are self-governing and a journey to self-actualisation.
• evaluation free will:

  • Everyday experience 'gives the impression' that we are constantly exercising free will through the choices we make on any given day. This gives face validity to the concept of free will - it makes cognitive sense. Research suggests that people who have an internal locus of believing that they have a high degree of influence over events and own behaviour, tend to be more mentally healthy. having a sense of free will is correlated to mental health. 
  • Free will forms the basis of the humanistic approach
• evaluation of determinism 1:

  • Determinism is consistent with aims of science therefore, science must take a deterministic view about behaviour as findings could not be generalised. 
  • has led to the development of treatments, therapies e.g. treatment for schizophrenia because we can make prediction based on sample of how others will respond to treatments
• evaluation of determinism 2:

  • hard determinist stance - that individual choice is not cause of behaviour - not consistent with the way in which our legal system operates. offenders are held morally accountable for their actions, has implications for moral accountability. 
  • Determinism is unfalsifiable. It's based on the idea that causes of behaviour will always exist, even though they may not yet been found. As basic principle, it's impossible to prove wrong! suggests determinist approach to human behaviour may not be as scientific as it first appears.
• evaluation of culture bias:

  • One strength is that an awareness of ethnocentrism has lead to the development of Indigenous psychology. This is the development of different groups of theories in different countries. Can be argued that using Western psychologists to study different cultures simply introduces bias in the interpretation of the behaviours, therefore, using researchers from the culture they are studying is preferable.
• evaluation of culture bias:

  • One weakness is the negative consequences of cultural bias - An example of damage done through cultural bias was the US Army IQ test used before the first world war. Tests showed that European immigrants fell slightly below white Americans in terms of IQ and African Americans were at the bottom of the scale with the lowest IQ. The data led to enduring stereotypes concerning certain ethnic groups and their IQ held by Americans (Gould, 1981).
• evaluation of holism:

  • provides a more complete and global understanding of behaviour than the reductionist approaches. The effects of conformity to social roles and the deindividuation of the prisoners and guards in the Stanford prison experiment could not be understood by studying the participants as individuals. 
  • Holistic explanations do not establish causation because they do not examine behaviour in terms of operationalised variables that can be manipulated and measured. meaning holistic explanations are unscientific.
• evaluation of reductionism:

  • Scientific discovery is reductionist. In psychology we reduce complex behaviours to simply and measurable concepts. This is when we operationalise our variables. This means that empirical work can be conducted on an explanation and this gives it academic weight. 
  • can help facilitate development of a biological therapy such as drugs. These are reductionist treatments but do give people a lot of relief from mental health conditions
  • The complexity involved in every behaviour means a purely reductionist explanation is rarely accepted as sufficient
• evaluation of idiographic:

  • The use of qualitative methods provide an in depth and arguably more complete account of an individual. 

  Offers a very narrow perspective. This means that the ideas may struggle to generalise beyond the individuals studied, thus reducing ecological validity. 

  the methods utilised (e.g. case studies) often lack scientific rigor as they rely heavily on subjective interpretation. This is a problem as this means conclusions are open to bias
• Evaluation of nomothetic approach:

  • Methods used are very scientific. Is important as it increases the internal validity. results and conclusions are not influenced by researcher bias. 
  • Enables psychologists to easily establish general law as which can be used for comparison, prediction
  • May overlook the richness of human behaviour, which many argue is crucial when trying to understand human behaviour. It could be that human behaviour is too complex to establish general laws – people have to be viewed as individuals!