Approaches in psychology

• The behaviour of individuals is influenced by their environment.
• Testosterone does not affect behaviour.
• The AQA Psychology Paper 2: Psychology in Context requires knowledge of the approaches in psychology, including the origins of Psychology, the basic assumptions of the learning approaches, the cognitive approach, the biological approach, the psychodynamic approach, and humanistic psychology.
• Understanding the terminology in psychology is crucial, including the study in psychology, theory in psychology, research in psychology, and understanding the key terms such as study, theory, research, and approach.
• The cognitive approach explains human behaviour by looking at innate developmental cognitive processes, biological structures in the brain (cognitive neuroscience) and the influence of past experiences on the way we interpret information (schemas).
• The biological approach offers an alternative explanation (nature) but critics have argued that this approach does not place enough emphasis on how past experiences shape us.
• The social learning theory can also be criticised for focusing only on how the environment (nurture) shapes human behaviour and ignoring other possible influences.
• The behaviourist approach can be criticised because it focuses only on how the environment (nurture) shapes human behaviour and ignores other possible influences.
• The Social Learning Theory provides a more comprehensive explanation of human learning by recognising the role of mediational processes.
• The Social Learning Theory fails to acknowledge the complexity of human behaviour, ignoring other factors that are known to influence behaviour.
• The results of the Bobo doll experiment show that boys are more aggressive than girls, which is a weakness because biological research does show that differences in aggression between the sexes may be explained by the hormone testosterone.
• The Social Learning Theory approach only considers factors relating to nurture (environment), making little reference to the role of biological factors such as heredity or maturational factors (nature).
• A weakness of the Social Learning Theory approach is that it is an oversimplification of human behaviour, arguing that behaviour is learned via vicarious reinforcement and the influence of role models.
• The Social Learning Theory does not explain how we learn abstract notions such as fairness and justice, which cannot be observed directly.
• The Social Learning Theory approach can be evaluated by prioritising the evaluation points from most to least important and explaining why they have been prioritised in that way.
• A weakness of the Social Learning Theory is that it argues that mediational processes (cognitive factors) are involved in human behaviour, however these cannot be measured.
• The media is often seen as a source of criminal behaviour because people imitate anti-social acts they have witnessed on screen or elsewhere, and placing restrictions or bans on what is viewed is one way of trying to reduce ‘copy-cat’ crimes.
• The Social Learning Theory can be used to explain the learning of outward behaviours such as pro and antisocial behaviour, and can be used to shape these behaviours.
• The Social Learning Theory does acknowledge the importance of cognitive factors in learning, which is an improvement on the Behaviourist approach.
• The biological approach can have an impact on the economy through treatments such as anti-depressants.
• The researcher found that monozygotic (MZ) twins had a concordance rate of 49%, dizygotic (DZ) twins had a concordance rate of 17%, and ordinary siblings had a concordance rate of 9%.
• The independent and dependent variables in the study were not specified.
• The experimental design used in the study was not specified.
• A strength of the biological approach is that it uses objective scientific methods.
• The findings of the study indicate that there is a genetic basis for depression.
• The biological approach gives psychology greater credibility and status as a science by emphasizing the importance of rigorous scientific processes and their reliance on the scientific method.
• Prescriptions of anti-depressants have increased by 15% over the last three years.
• The addiction of video games/gambling could have an impact on the economy.
• One way to treat mental illnesses such as depression is through the use of anti-depressants such as Prozac.
• When referring to ‘economic implications’, we are talking about things such as the impact on the economy, the NHS/prescriptions, benefits and tax, working and wages, education/ public services such as the police.
• The study used a lab, field, natural or quasi experiment.
• Psychologists have used Skinnerian principles to explain addiction to video games or gambling.
• Raine et al. (1997) used PET scans to compare brain activity in murderers and "normal" individuals.
• The impact of something can be positive or negative.
• Much of the supporting research for the biological approach comes from highly controlled methods such as scanning techniques, twin studies, and family studies.
• By breaking down behaviour into basic stimulus-response units, all other possible extraneous variables were removed, allowing for cause and effect relationships to be established.
• In a study of depression, a researcher investigated the genetic basis of the disorder by comparing concordance rates for identical twins (monozygotic) who have exactly the same genes with non-identical (dizygotic) twins who share about 50% of the same genes.
• The behaviourist approach has been very influential in the development of psychology as a scientific discipline, giving psychology greater credibility and status.
• A02 questions are testing your ability to apply your knowledge of the topic to a situation or the stem/person in the question.
• Much of the supporting research for the behaviourist approach comes from highly controlled scientific animal lab experiments.