Scientific status
Cards (4)
- scientific status
- benefit of being science to society/economy - important because people may claim for example men are more aggressive than women etc but people rightly demand evidence to support such claims. In 19th century psychologists sought to create science of psychology to produce verifiable knowledge as distinct from common sense of armchair psychology. Using evidence based research makes data more useful to society both economically and ethically
- scientific status
- changing nature of science - science has been changing over thousands of years, going back to early greek thinkers who proposed that science should be empirical (evidence based)
- subject matter - 2 recent changes, 1) the types of behaviour being studied EG positive approach has sought to change focus of psychological research primary focus is on positive aspects of human nature, the good qualities & how they can be nurtured
- scientific status
- cost of being science - determinist; aim is to demonstrate cause and effect relationships, understanding enable us to control world but misrepresent it because of simple determinism may be mistaken, Chaos theory propose very small changes in initial conditions result in major changes called butterfly effect
- reductionist; identify single variables that can be manipulated, means breaking complex behaviours into individual elements may limit psychological insights. Laing (1965) argued reductionist explanations of schizophrenia missed important elements of the disorder
- scientific status
- methodologies used by various approaches;
- biological approach - brain scans (pet scans, raine) genetic research uses twin and family studies
- psychodynamic approach - case study (bowlby)
- behaviourist approach - quantitative differences between animals & humans through use of lab experiments (skinners rats, pavlovs dogs)
- cognitive approach - often done in lab setting (loftus & palmer reliability of EWT)
- positive approach - questionnaire (myers & diener who is happy)