core studies

• The language of psychopaths: Hancock concluded that psychopaths could be identified through their use of their language.
• Individual difference: Psychopaths describe their crimes in a very different way to the non-psychopaths. This allows us to infer that psychopaths view the world in a very different way from the rest of the human species. Psychopaths in general operate on a primitive and rational level.
• Maslows hierarchy of needs: is a theory which believes that we can only move on to satisfy higher level needs, once lower ones have been fulfilled. Psychopaths tend to be concerned with only fulfilling their basic physiological needs.
• Evolutionary altruism can be applied to Levine – a biological theory which predicts that such behaviour is innate because helpfulness towards kin and others is an adaptive behaviour that enhances survival and reproduction.Simpatia countries have a concern with social social well-being of others
• Individualism – a cultural characteristic which involves seeing personal needs as more important than group needs
• Collectivism – a cultural characteristic which involves seeing the importance of group needs above individual
• Traditionalism – poor countries are governed by traditional values such as the expectation that help is given to strangers.
• Milgram – a cognitive theory: Sensory Overload Theory – the idea that when people are busy, one way to cope with it is to screen out non-essential stimuli (such as strangers) and focus on ones own goals. This may be one possible reason why countries with a fast pace of life were less helpful.
• Infant sexuality – Freud believed that we had an innate sex drive which develops in certain stages at certain ages. This implied that it was a universal and biological influence. Psychosexual stages of development- Oral: seeking pleasure through the mouth, Anal: seeking pleasure through controlling when to defecate, Phallic: Oedipus complex – boys have sexual desires for the mother and have castration anxiety (fear of the father chopping off your penis). Electra complex: girls have sexual desires for the father and suffer with penis envy (they wish they had a penis and are disappointed with ha...
• Identification – this is when the child comes to some sort of resolution with the same sex parent and then tries to identify with the them in order to be more like them.
• Ego defence mechanisms – are what Freud believed that the ego would utilise in order to protect ourselves from anxiety. Some examples include: Denial – where you chose to believe something that is not true. Repression – blocking unacceptable feelings from accessing the conscious mind. Displacement – satisfying an impulse such as aggression by taking it out on another object or person e.g. being angry with your parents and then smashing your phone.
• Freudian slip – when part of the unconscious mind is revealed through a verbal comment
• Psychic structure of the mind – Freud argues that we are born with these Id = the pleasure principle ‘I want cake now’ , ego = the reality principle ‘lets be realistic, you can’t have cake all the time, maybe go to the gym, then you’ve earned some cake’, super ego = the morality principle ‘have an apple, it’s really healthy and good for you’
• Three parts of the mind: Conscious – everything that we are aware of, Subconscious – can be accessed easily – e.g. memories, learned information, Unconscious the idea that our behaviour is driven from a part of our mind that we are not aware of, and therefore, cannot control.
• Little Hans is related to individual differences because of his unique experiences of his environment and the way he progressed through the psychosexual stages which led to the development of his phobia of horses.
• Psychoanalysis – the ‘talking cure’, which works by helping individuals to become consciously aware of their unconscious and repressed feelings.
• Baron-Cohen
• Individual differences – Autism/ Asperger’s Theory of mind
• The triad of impairments: Impairment of imagination, Impairment of social interaction, impairment of social communication
• Theory Of Mind (TOM) – the ability to understand the thoughts, perspectives and motives of others. To understand that these can also be different to that of your own.
• Mind blindness – the total absence of having TOM
• Extreme male brain – is the idea that people with autism have a tendency to ‘systemize,’ or to recognize patterns, they are logical and direct. They also lack skills typical of a female brain e.g. empathising and social intelligence. Autism tends to effect males more so than females, so this is the idea that people with autism suffer with an exaggerated personality of a male.
• Frontal lobe explanations for autism – this was not supported by the study of Baron-Cohen. As Tourettes participants (who have also been linked to frontal lobe abnormalities) had no greater difficulty than normal participants on the eyes task, this suggests otherwise.
• Gould/Yerkes
• Psychometric tests: measuring psychological abilities. Types of psychometric test include:
• Direct measurement: grip strength, reaction time, head size
• Criterion-referenced measurement: comparing the performance of an individual against an ideal performance
• Norm-referenced measurement: comparing the performance of an individual against other people’s performance (average performance) for example an IQ test
• Biological determinism: The idea that intelligence is innate
• Hereditarians: people who believed that intelligence was inherited and generally unaffected by the environment
• Eugenics: is a science that seeks to improve human genetic quality through social intervention such as selective breeding, or screening out undesirable genetic strains.
• Bandura
• Social Learning Theory: the idea that people observe role models and imitate their behaviour.
• Role model – a person that you look up to and want to be more like
• Passive learning – the child is not told to observe or do anything, but just by being in the situation where certain behaviours are displayed, they learn a set of possible responses.
• Developmental theory: Instructional learning – and external explanation where the child is clearly told what is required of them, in the hope to achieve learned, or new behaviour.
• Behaviourist theory: Classical conditioning – We are born with certain stimulus response links such as salivating when we smell food. If a noise (like a cupboard opening) becomes associated with the likelihood of food, then you will learn a new stimulus response link: cupboard opening (the stimulus) causes you to salivate (the response).
• Behaviourist theory: Vicarious reinforcement – when learning occurs indirectly through observing and imitating the behaviour of other people being rewarded.
• ARRM: Attention – Paying attention to the model. Retention – Retain the behaviour of the model that was observed. Reproduction – Replicate the behaviour of the learning model. Motivation – Learners must want to display what they have learnt from the learning model.
• Factors that contribute to the influence of Social Learning Theory: Powerfulness – Models with more power and control are more likely to be learnt from. Identification – The ability of the learner to identify with the model, e.g. age, gender. Reward – If the model was rewarded, the learner is more likely to learn from the model and repeat the behaviour