Approaches

• What is introspection?

  The study of the mind by breaking up conscious awareness into a basic structure of thoughts,images and sensations
• What did Wundt do?

  Established the first psychology laboratory and is considered the founder of modern psychology as he was the first to study the human mind scientifically
• What's structuralism?

  Structure of the consciousness - experimental method to find the building blocks of thought
• Advantages of Wundt's study

  All his methods were highly scientific and were done in a controlled lab with a standardised procedure

  His work was pioneering and set a foundation for other approaches
• Disadvantages of Wundt's study

  Methods were subjective as he relied on pps to self report their mental processes and hard to establish meaningful 'laws of behavior' and general principles
• Role of the unconscious mind

  Determines a person's behavior
• Role of the conscious

  Involves our conscious awareness
• Role of the pre-conscious

  Anything that can be brought to the conscious mind
• Role of the sub-conscious

  Things outside our awareness that are considered unacceptable or unpleasant
• Role of ID in the structure of personality

  Present at birth and is our pleasure principle seething mass of the unconscious drive and instincts
• Role of the super ego in the structure of personality

  Develops after the phallic stage (age 5) and is our conscience and moral standards (right + wrong)
• Role of the ego in the structure of personality

  Reality principle between the ID and super ego as it reduces conflict and does this by using defence mechanisms
• What is repression?

  Used by the ego to force a distressing memory out of the conscious mind
• What is denial?

  Refusing to acknowledge some aspect of reality or denying that an event occured
• What is displacement?

  An unconscious process by transferring feelings from the true source of distressing emotion onto an 'easier' or substitute target
• Explain the psycho sexual stages

  Five stages of child development and each stage is a different conflict the child must resolve to move on
• What is a fixation?

  If a conflict isn't resolved at a stage, it will led to certain behaviours and conflicts in adult life
• Explain stage one of the psycho sexual stages

  Oral stage between 0-1 years - focus of pleasure is the mouth and sucking and the fixation could be smoking, biting nails, overreacting and sarcasm
• Explain stage two of the psycho sexual stages

  Anal stage between 1-3 years - focus of pleasure involves membranes in the anal region and

  Fixation - if retentive, you'll be a perfectionist + obsessive and if expulsive you'll be thoughtless and messy
• Explain stage three of the psycho sexual stages

  Phallic stage between 3-6 years - focus of pleasure involves the genital area and fixation involves masturbation, narcissistic and reckless.
• Explain stage four of the psycho sexual stages

  Latency stage between 6-12 years - Any earlier conflicts from the previous stages will be repressed
• Explain stage five of the psycho sexual stages

  Genital stage is 12 + onwards -sexual desires become conscious alongside the onset of puberty and fixation involves difficulty forming heterosexual relationships and sexual previsions may develop
• Explain the Oedipus complex

  Freud claimed boys in the phallic stage develop feelings for their mum and hatred for their dads over a rival of love. These feelings will be repressed and instead identify with their dad taking on his gender role and moral rights
• Explain the Electra complex

  Freud believed young girls experienced penis envy by hating their mum but desiring their dad as they wanted a penis. They would eventually give up on this desire and replace it with a desire to have a baby.
• Explain the strengths of the psycho dynamic approach

  • His psychoanalysis was the first attempt to treat mental disorders psychologically rather then physically
  • Found ways to explain certain human behaviours
• Explain the weaknesses of the psycho dynamic approach

  • He ignored female sexuality and how it may differ from men (gender bias)
  • His work isn't scientific or falsifiable as his opponents claimed you can't test the unconscious mind
• What is behaviorism?

  Psychological approach that focuses on observable behavior and the role of conditioning in shaping behavior.
• Name the two types of conditioning

  Classical and Operant
• What is classical conditioning?

  Learning through association and occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired together. Only occurs with involuntary behavior + fears
• How did Pavlov demonstrate classical conditioning?

  Through experiments with dogs, Pavlov demonstrated classical conditioning by pairing a neutral stimulus (a bell) with a unconditioned stimulus (food) which created a unconditioned response (salivation). Eventually this led to the neutral stimulus eliciting a conditioned response (such as salivation) on its own.
• How does timing effect classical conditioning?

  If the neutral stimulus cannot be used to predict the unconditioned stimulus, conditioning doesn't take place
• How does stimulus generalisation effect classical conditioning?

  Where the conditioned stimulus could be generalsied to other thing similar to the conditioned stimulus
• How does extinction effect classical conditioning?

  A gradual weakening of a conditioned response
• What does spontaneous recovery mean?

  Sudden display of behaviour that was thought to be extinct
• What did Watson and Rayner's experiment (1920s) do?

  They applied classical conditioning to humans and made an 11 month old baby (Albert) develop a fear of white rats as well as other white, fluffy things.
• Explain the stimulus and responses of little Albert.

  Ns - White rat UCS - Loud noise UCR - Crying

  CS - White rat CR - Crying
• What's operant conditioning?

  Learning through consequences as behaviour is shaped + maintained by positive/negative reinforcement and punishment
• Explain Skinner's box experiment

  If a rat pushes down a lever, a green light shows and it will get a treat and he also conditioned rats to press to the lever to avoid an electric shock.
• Difference between reinforcement and punishment

  Reinforcement ensures a behaviour is more likely to happen again and punishment ensures a behaviour is less likely to happen again
• What's positive reinforcement?

  Adding a reward to reinforce the behaviour to happen again