Issues and debates

• Free will

  Each individual has power to make choices over their own behaviour
• Determinism

  Behaviour is controlled by internal or external behaviour factors acting upon the individual
• Hard determinism 


  The view that all behaviour can be predicted and there is no free will
• Soft determinism 


  A version of determinism that allows for some element of free will
• Biological determinism

  Behaviour are determined by biological factors
• Environmental determinism

  Behaviour are determined by factors in the environment
• Psychic determinism

  Behaviours are determined by the effect of innate drives and early experience on the psyche/ mind
• Causal explanation

  Aim to find the root origin of a behaviour. There is a cause and effect relationship
• Idiographic

  .Focuses on individuals and emphasises uniqueness, favours qualitative methods in research.

  .Single case studies can create hypotheses which can then be studied in a more nomothetic way
• Nomothetic

  Seeks to formulate general laws of behaviour based on the study of groups and the use of quantitative techniques.
• Evaluation for Free will vs Determinism

  A soft deterministic approach may be the best method of understanding human behaviour. Heather says 'behaviour' is predictable but not inevitable'. We have some forces guiding our behaviour, but we don't need to act upon them. Soft determinism provides a good middle ground.
• Behaviourism

  Environmental/ hard determinism

  All behaviour is learnt through observation and imitation of role models
• Social learning theory

  Environmental/ soft determinism

  Vicarious reinforcement, self efficacy, mediational process all give an individual a chose to imitate the behaviour or not
• Cognitive

  Soft determinism

  CBT- an individual still has influence on how their behaviour will be acted out
• Biological 


  Biological/ hard determinism

  All based on biological factors like genetics, neural and hormones

  HOWEVER

  Plasticity is reciprocal determinism since and individual has the chose of the environment they are willing to be influenced by
• Psychodynamic

  Psychic/ hard determinism

  All behaviour are from childhood that now influence our unconscious mind
• Humanistic 


  Free will

  Maslow Hierarchy of Needs everyone has the choice to reach self actualisation or not
• Evaluation of Free will vs Determinism 


  A weakness of determinism is that deterministic theories have potentially negative implications. It can impact the justice system since criminals can be labelled based on deterministic theories of aggression. Eugenics, can also occur due to deterministic theology. This doesn't benefit society, as it doesn't make it progressive and people become less accountable, deterministic position is undesirable.
• Example of idiographic approach

  Humanistic psychology. Maslow and Rogers approach where the conscious experience is studied.

  Psychodynamic approach also an example. Freud used case studies (little Hans) to identify laws related to the way that personality develop.
• Disadvantage of idiographic 


  Are restrictive because they are not scientific as they rely on subjective interpretations, which means they are open to bias
• Example of nomothetic approach

  Behaviourist, cognitive and biological approach. All study behaviour through creating hypotheses, analysing behaviour, statistically testing what is found and creating laws about why people behave the way they do.
• Disadvantages of nomothetic

  Are often reductionist and deterministic since they are highly scientific and quantitative scores are used. A person gets lost from generalisation.
• How has the nomothetic approach contributed to psychology?

  Has enabled psychologists to establish prediction of typical behaviour, which means that it has given psychology as a subject more scientific credibility. It use of statistical analysis has allowed psychologists to infer things about a given sample or population so explanations of human behaviour are created which apply universally.
• Culture bias 


  The tendency to judge all people in terms of your own cultural assumptions
• Cultural relativism 


  Also know as an emic approach- The view that behaviour can't be judged properly unless it is viewed in the context of the culture in which it originates
• Universality 


  Also know as an etic approach- Tries to find universals of behaviour beyond the influence of culture
• Ethnocentrism 


  Seeing things from the point of view of one's own culture- seeing our own culture as "normal" and sometimes superior
• Example of universality

  Buss et al research into mate preference using people from 37 different cultures, where local researchers translated materials so as to be tailored to the specific culture- seeking to find universals of behaviour
• Example of Ethnocentrism and imposed etic 


  Attachment :Ainsworth's Strange situations.

  Suggested that a secure attachment type was best from their research in America. However this lead to thinking that differing childrearing practices in other countries that led to more insecure resistant or avoidant ( when judged by western standards) were inferior.
• Example of cultural relativism and ethnocentrism

  Approaches: Humanistic approach

  Nevis 1993, found that belongingness needs were most important. Self actualisation was seen as coming from contribution to the community. Collectivist vs individualistic cultures not considered, lacks cultural relativism. This means Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is ethnocentric.
• Evaluation of Idiographic approach

  A limitation is that the idiographic approach is very time- consuming. It takes a lot of time and money to study individuals in depth. If a researcher uses the nomothetic approach, once a questionnaire, psychometric test, or experiment has been designed, data can be controlled relatively quickly. Qualitative methods like case studies, unstructured interviews, self reports and personal documents that idiographic approaches uses takes more time and money, which has resulted in many uncompleted studies.
• Evaluation of idiographic approach 


  A strength is that it focuses on the individual. Allport argues that it is only by knowing the person as a person that we can predict what the person will do in any given situation. Findings can serve as a source of ideas or hypotheses for later study. However it can be argued, that case studies and other qualitative methods contain biases of the researcher, this is what makes idiographic approach less scientific.
• Evaluation of Nomothetic

  A strength is that it is useful. By making generalised assumptions about behaviour (e.g. low serotonin leads to depression) it creates appropriate and widely useful interventions (e.g. drug therapy). Therefore the nomothetic approach has real world application.
• Evaluation of Idiographic and nomothetic 


  A weakness is that the distinction between these two approaches are false separations, it is actually a combination and Holt argues this. The idiographic approach actually ends up being nomothetic, for example Little Hans and HM. Therefore uniqueness can be explained through nomothetic laws, which suggests that both approaches should be used together.
• Evaluation of determinism

  A weakness of determinism is that we haven't been able to establish environmental or biological determinism as the sole cause of behaviour. For example twin studies have never got a 100% concordance rate. This means that an interactionist rather than a determinist approach better represents reality.
• Evaluation of determinism

  A weakness of determinism is that there may be no such thing as total determinism. Chaos theory proposes that very small changes in initial conditions can subsequently result in major changes sometimes called the butterfly effect. The conclusion is that casual relationships are probabilistic rather than determinist. Determinist explanations tend to oversimplify human behaviour. This means that the idea of ever finding a simple determinist formula from psychological research is unrealistic.
• Evaluation of free will

  A weakness of free will is that there is neurological evidence to contradict it. Libet et al found that brain activity predates conscious decisions (i.e. to move a finger) suggesting that our decisions may be actually just our interpretations of our brain's predetermined actions. Therefore, a human doesn't actually have a chose and it is determined.
• Evaluation of cultural bias

  A weakness is that it helps to create or reinforce stereotypes. For example the US Army IQ test, used just before the First World War. The 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 mental age. The data from these tests had an effect on the attitudes held by Americans towards these group of people. Therefore, the consequence of cultural bias is very destructive in society.
• Evaluation of cultural bias

  A strength of cultural bias is that it has increased the understanding of the influence that cultural differences have in studies. Academics hold international conferences where researchers from many different countries and cultures meet to discuss and exchange ideas. That is how Buss found his researchers in 37 different cultures. Means there is a much greater exchange of ideas, which should reduce ethnocentrisms.
• Evaluation of ethnocentrism

  A strength is that we can counter ethnocentrism by encouraging indigenous psychologies. Afrocentrism is a movement that all black people have their roots in Africa and that psychological theories concerning such people must be African centred and express African values. Afrocentrism disputes the view that European values are universally appropriate description of all human behaviour. This has led to the development of theories relevant to the life and culture of people of African descent.