Approaches in psychology

• What are the origins of psychology?

  Willhelm Wundt laid the foundation of psychology in 1879, when he opened his lab dedicated entirely to psychological enquiry in Germany.
• Why is Wundt's work significant?

  Wundt's work is significant as it marked the beginning of scientific psychology, separating it from it's broader philosophical roots.
• What were Wundt's aims?

  Wundt's aim was to try to analyse the nature of human consciousness, and thus represented the first systematic attempt to study the mind under controlled conditions.
• What did Wundt's pioneering become known as?


  Introspection
• What is Wundt known as?

  'the father of psychology
• Outline Wundt's work


  Wundt and his co-workers recorded their experiences of various stimuli they were presented with, such as different objects or sounds. They divided their observations into three categories: thoughts, images and sensations.
• What are the strengths of Wundt's work?

  Systematic and well-controlled methods, a degree of replicability within studies
• What are the weaknesses of Wundt's work?

  unscientific, produces subjective data, participants may lie, difficult to establish meaningful 'laws of behaviour' from such data
• Introspection


  The first systematic experimental attempt to study the mind by breaking up conscious awareness into basic structures of thoughts, images and sensations
• Psychology


  the scientific study of the mind, behaviour and experience.
• Science

  A means of acquiring knowledge through systematic and objective investigation. The aim is to discover general laws.
• What are the key assumptions of the behaviourist approach?

  The behaviourist approach is only interested in studying behaviour that can be observed and measured.
• What is the behaviourist approach not concerned with?

  Investigating mental processes of the mind- because these are seen as irrelevant.
• What did John Watson reject as an idea?

  He and other early psychologists rejected introspection as it involved too many concepts that were too vague and difficult to measure.
• What did behaviourists do as a result of rejecting introspection?

  Behaviourists tired to maintain more control and objectivity within their research and relied on lab studies as the best way to achieve this.
• What do behaviourists believe?

  Behaviourists believe that all behaviour is learned
• How would behaviourists describe a baby's brain?

  As a blank slate
• What do behaviourists believe about animal experimentation?

  They believe that the basic processes that govern learning are the same in all species and so animals can replace humans as experimental subjects.
• What are the types of conditioning?

  Classical and operant
• Classical conditioning def


  Learning through association
• Outline Pavlov's classical conditioning research

  Pavlov showed how dogs could be conditioned to salivate to the sound of a bell if that sound was repeatedly presented at the same time as they were given food. Gradually, Pavlov's dogs learned to associate the sound of the bell (a stimulus) with the food (another stimulus) and would produce the salivation response every time they heard the sound.
• What did Pavlov show through his research?

  How a neutral stimulus, in this case a bell, can come to elicit a new learned response (conditioned response) through association.
• Neutral stimulus


  a stimulus that does not initially elicit a response
• Unconditioned stimulus


  A stimulus that evokes an unconditioned response without previous conditioning
• Unconditioned response


  an automatic response to a stimulus
• Conditioned response


  a learned response to a previously neutral stimulus
• Conditioned stimulus


  a stimulus that elicits a response only after learning has taken place
• Operant conditioning def


  Learning through consequences
• Positive reinforcement


  receiving a reward when desired behaviour is performed
• Positive punishment


  Adding an unpleasant stimulus as a consequence of behaviour- to decrease it
• Negative reinforcement


  when an unpleasant stimulus is removed to reinforce behaviour
• Negative punishment


  taking away a pleasant stimulus to decrease or stop a behavior
• What research did Skinner conduct


  he carried out research on animals in a 'Skinner box' containing a lever, light and food dispenser. if the rat pressed the lever, the light came on and a food pellet rolled down the chute. This is positive reinforcement (at first the rat would press the lever accidentally)
• What did Skinner discover?

  he found that if positive reinforcement was given, behaviour would continue and he also found that if the reward was stopped and the animal pressed the lever and was not rewarded with food, it's behaviour would quickly stop and this is known as extinction.
• What was a variation of the Skinner box with an electrified floor?

  skinner electrified the floor of the Skinner Box and arranged for pressing the lever to turn the electric current off for 30 seconds. this shows negative reinforcement since the rat is learning to remove something painful. skinner found that the rats learned to press the lever, but not as quickly as the rats that were positively reinforced.
• Evaluate the behaviourist approach: strengths


  by focusing on behaviour which is observable and can be measured, the behaviourist approach increases the scientific credibility of psychology. the principles of conditioning have been applied to a broad range of real-world behaviours and problems. a cost-benefit analysis may show that

  the benefit of increased understanding of the different types of learning (classical and operant conditioning) outweigh the ethical costs
• Evaluate the behaviourist approach: weaknesses

  behaviourism tends to overlook the realm of consciousness and subjective experiences and it does not address the possible role of biological factors in human behaviour. this hard deterministic stance may be a more appropriate explanation for animal behaviour, whereas explanations of human behaviour should also account for emotions, motivations and reasoning skills (e.g. as social learning theory does). hence, the behaviourist approach may be a limited explanation for human behaviour. much behaviourist research, at least by modern standards, would be viewed as unethical.
• Who developed Social Learning Theory?

  Albert Bandura
• Behaviourism believed that all human behaviour came about through a mixture of Classical and Operant Conditioning- what were the problems with this?


  Some behaviour seemed to appear without conditioning. This is particularly true of complex behaviour, like language, or antisocial behaviour, like aggression.

  Bandura proposed SLT, sometimes called "observational learning", which looks at how we learn by observing other people and imitating them, without conditioning.
• Why is SLT significant?

  It shows how scientific research proceeds. The behaviourist school in Psychology was based on Classical and Operant Conditioning but SLT expands on this.

  It illustrates features of Learning Theory, since it studies behaviour as a response to external stimuli, but it also takes into account cognitions.

  It is important to understand how Social Learning Theory developed out of Bandura's famous lab experiments in the 1960s.