issues and deabtes

• Free Will is a notion suggesting that we are free to make our own choices. Biological and environmental influences are present but free will implies we can reject them.
• Hard determinism suggests that all human action has a cause and it should be possible to identify the causes.
• Soft Determinism states all human action has a cause but people have the freedom to make choices within a restricted range of options.
• Biological determinism is the idea that all human behaviour is innate and determined by genes. Biological approach describes biological causes of behaviour e.g. influence of ANS and stress.
• Environmental determinism is the idea that behaviour is determined or caused by forces outside the individual. Skinner viewed free will as an illusion and that all behaviour is the result of conditioning experiences.
• Psychic determinism is the idea all human behaviour is the result of childhood experiences and innate drives. Freud believed that slips of the tongue were caused by the unconscious.
• A strength of free will is that it has practical value. Roberts looked at adolescents with a strong belief in fatalism i.e. lives were decided by events outside of their control. They found fatalists had a greater risk of developing depression whereas people who exhibited an internal locus of control were more likely to remain optimistic. Overall even if we don't have free will the belief that we do will have a positive impact on the mind and behaviour.
• A weakness is that evidence doesn't support free will it support determinism. Libert measured brain activity and asked participants to flick their wrists and state when they felt the conscious will to move. They found the unconscious activity came before the conscious decision to move (around 1/2 before). Even our most basic experiences of free will are actually determined in our brain before we are aware of them.
• However just because people become consciously aware of decisions millieseconds after they began to enact doesn't mean they still didn't make the decision to act. Our consciousness is a read out of our sometimes unconscious decision making. Evidence is not an appropriate challenge of free will.
• A limitation of determinism is issues with the role of responsibility and the law. The hard determinist stance is not consistent with with the way our legal system is operating. In court offenders are held responsible for actions and the main principle is that the defendant exercised some free will when committing the crime. In the real world determinists arguments do not work.
• The nature/nurture debate is concerned with the extent to which aspects of behaviour are a product of inherited or acquired characteristics.
• Nature/nurture debate takes an interactionist standpoint e.g. Bowlby believed attachment was due to associations with warmth and comfort whereas Kagan believed attachment was influenced by a babies personality. Overall nature (child's temperament) creates nurture (parental response)
• Diathesis Stress model - behaviour is caused by a biological or environmental vulnerability (diathesis) which is only expressed after a biological or environmental trigger (stressor).
• Nature - early nativists argued human traits are innate and this included both physical and psychological traits.
• Nurture - empiricists believed all babies are blank slates that are written on by the environment. Lerner argued there were levels to environmental influences e.g. prenatal and how physical influences such as smoking affect a foetus. Development is mainly influenced postnatally e.g. social conditions the child grows up in.
• Epigenetics refers to the change in genetic activity without changing the actual gene. Aspects of life leave markers on DNA which can switch genes ON/OFF. Epigenetics can influence our children. The third element is the life experiences of previous generations.
• Degree to which people are similar can be represented through correlation coefficients (concordance rates). A concordance rate of 0.1 - 1% - showing genes have contribute nothing to individual differences. A rate of 1.0 is 100% showing genes are the only reason for individual differences.
• A strength of the nature/nurture debate is it uses adoption studies. Adoption studies can help researchers to separate the influences of nature and nurture. If adopted children are more similar to biological parents then genetic factors are dominating. A meta-analysis found genetic influences could account for 41% of variances in aggression. Possible to separate and investigate the two.
• However the nature/nurture approach may be misguided as you cannot simply pull the two apart. Planin suggests people create their own nurture by selecting environments suitable to their nature. A naturally aggressive child is going to be more comfortable in such environments. This chosen environment then further influences the child = niche picking.
• A strength of the nature/nurture debate is support for the role of epigenetics. Researchers report that women who became pregnant in the 1944 dutch famine went on to have low birth weight babies. These babies were 2x more likely to develop schizophrenia compared to typical population rates. Supports the view that life experiences can leave epigenetic markers.
• A strength of the nature/nurture debate is RWA. Nestadt put heritability rates for OCD at 0.76. This understanding can help to inform genetic counselling. It doesn't mean its inevitable the individual will develop OCD but people with this risk can gain advice and preventative methods. Debate has practical value.
• Gender bias is the tendency to treat one individual or a group in a different way from others. A view that does not justifiably represent the experiences/behaviour or men/women. Bias undermines claims to universality.
• Alpha bias exaggerates the differences between men and women, presents differences as fixed and inevitable. More likely to devalue females.

  • Favouring males - Freud argued the phallic stage is resolved by identification with the same sex parent. Girls identification is weaker, creating a weaker superego and moral development. View that girls are morally inferior.
  • Favouring females - Chodorow said daughter and mothers are more connected than sons and their mothers due to biological similarities. Relationships have better bonds and empathy.
• Beta bias involves minimising the differences between men and women by assuming findings apply equally to men and women even if women were excluded from research studies.

  • undermining females - early research into fight/flight focused on animal males. It was assumed to be an universal response to threats. However Taylor found females tend to exhibit a tend and befriend response governed by oxytocin - more plentiful in women.
  • undermining males - attachment research tends to undermine males role in childhood.
• Androcentrism - belief we live in a male dominated world, normal behaviour is judged according to a male standard. Alpha and beta bias are consequences of androcentrism.

  • we live in a world dominated by males, only 6 of top 100 psychologists are females. Research tends to medicalise female emotions but sees mens anger as a rational response to external pressures.
• A weakness of gender bias is that gender differences are presented as fixed and enduring. Maccoby and Jacklin concluded that girls have better verbal ability and boys have better spatial ability due to hardwired biological brain differences. Joels used brain scanning and found no sex differences in the brain. Should be wary of accepting research as biological facts when it can be better explained by social stereotypes.
• However with some research shows popular stereotype that females are better at multitasking has some truth to it. Found that their hemispheres are better connected. Still need to be wary.
• A weakness if gender bias promotes sexism in research. Women remain underrepresented in university department. Research is more likely to be conducted by males which may disadvantage females. Male researchers expect females to be irrational and unable to complete complex tasks which means they may underperform. Institutional structures and methods may produce gender biassed findings.
• A further weakness if research challenging gender bias. A study analysed 1000 articles relating to gender and found such research is funded less and often published in less prestigious journals. Still held true when gender bias was compared to ethnic bias and when other factors were controlled. Gender bias may not be taken as seriously.
• Cultural bias is the tendency to interpret all phenomena through the lens of ones own cultures, ignoring the effects that cultural differences have on behaviour.
• WERID - westernised, educated, rich, industrialised, democracies.
• 68% of participants are from the US

  96% are from industrialised nations

  80% are undergraduate psychology students
• Ethnocentrism involves judging other cultures by the standards and values of ones own cultures. Belief in the superiority of ones own culture which may lead to prejudice and discrimination towards other cultures.
• Ainsworth's Strange Situation is an example of an imposed etic - assumes universality. Only reflects the Western culture - assumes the ideal attachment type is one with moderate distress but this led to a misinterpretation of child rearing practices on other countries. Japan - majority are insecure.
• Cultural relativism is the idea that norms, values, as well as ethics and moral standards can only be meaningful and understood within specific social and cultural contexts.

  • emic - inside and specific to cultures
  • etic - outside and universal
• A weakness of that most influential studies are culturally biassed. Classic for social influence studies such as Asch and Milgram who only used US participants. Replications in different countries have produced different results e.g. collectivist cultures tend to show higher rates of conformity. Understanding of topics may only be applicable to individualist cultures.

  • argued distinction no longer exists. Study found 14/15 studies comparing the US and Japan showed no evidence of cultural distinction. Cultures bias may be less of an issues during modern times.
• A strength of culture bias is it has led to the creation of cultural psychology. Cohen stated cultural psychology was the study of how people shape and our shaped by cultural experiences. Emerging field that incorporates researchers from other disciplines e.g. sociology. Cultural psychology strive to avoid ethnocentrism with an emic approach. Cross cultural research now focuses on 2 cultures rather than a larger scale so psychologists are more mindful over dangers of culture bias.
• A weakness of culture bias is it has led to ethnic stereotyping. Cultural bias has led to prejudice against groups of people. Gould believed that first intelligence test led to eugenic social policies in the US. Opportunity of WW1 piloted the first IQ tests on 1.75 million army recruits. Many items on the scale were ethnocentric and so recruits from other cultures scored the lowest. This fact was used to inform racist discourse where ethnic minorities were deemed mentally unfit and thus denied educational and professional opportunities. Cultural bias has been used to justify discrimination.
• Ethical implications are consequences of any research in terms of effects on individuals participants or the way in which certain groups are subsequently divided.
• Social sensitivity - studies in which there are potential consequences/implications either directly for research participants or the class of individuals represented by research.

  
  

  • a study on depression - findings could be accessed by prospective employers and can influence NHS policy and even exam policy.