AO3 - The Cognitive Approach

• The cognitive explanation is a form of soft determinism. It sees human behaviour as being caused by internal factors (internal mental processes), however, would suggest that individuals have some choice over their behaviour (unlike the biological approach which would suggest we have no choice). This could be beneficial as individuals may feel more in control and feel it is possible to alter these faulty thought processes, for example in those suffering with depression, making the cognitive explanation of human behaviour a more positive approach.
• The cognitive explanation of human behaviour uses scientific methods. The research is based on objective and empirical techniques such as lab experiments to investigate internal mental processes and inferences, which have high control over extraneous variables. This allows us to establish cause and effect between internal mental processes and behaviour. Therefore, it could be argued that this increases the overall internal validity of the cognitive explanation of human behaviour, thus raising Psychology's scientific status.
• A further strength of the cognitive explanation of human behaviour is that it has practical applications. This is because the principles of the theory, that behaviour is caused by internal mental processes, has led to the treatment CBT. This is effective in treating  disorders such as depression by helping the individual to dispute their irrational thoughts and negative schemas. Therefore, the cognitive explanation of human behaviour is an important part of applied psychology as it helps to treat people in the real world.
• One limitation of the cognitive approach is that it is based on machine reductionism. There are similarities between the human mind and the operations of a thinking machine such as a computer (inputs and outputs), however this analogy has been critised. Machine reductionism ignores the influence of human emotion on the cognitive systems, such as anxiety and memory in eyewitness testimony. Therefore the computer analogy may weaken the validity of the cognitive approach.