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Debates (Psychology as a Science (Areas and perspectives: (Social:…
Debates
Psychology as a Science
Cause and effect: manipulating variables to show that one factor has an effect on others; clearer if control of extraneous variables is high; different conditions of IV
Falsification: ability to disprove a theory; enables researchers to eliminate factors which are not contributing and strengthen explanations with evidence
Replicability: extent to which research can be carried out again and allow researchers to rest behaviour in same way to ensure results are reliable
Objectivity: research has to reduce biased, subjective and opinion based judgements
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Controls: put in place to prevent factors other than the IV from influencing the DV; ensure results are valid
Standardisation: keep conditions same for each participant e.g. instructions, timings
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Pilot study: small scale trial run of a method to identify and practical or ethical problems and resolve them
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Nature/Nurture
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Epigenetics: the study of changes in organisms caused by modification of gene expression rather than changing DNA code
Interactionist: behaviour is a result of interaction between nature and nurture; genes set upper and lower limit to behaviour
Strengths: research in area is highly controlled so is scientific; can understand relative impact of inheritance on given behaviour; practical applications in medicine and education
Weaknesses: focus on one side means overlooking other explanations; hard to isolate nature and nurture as they are both present from conception; unethical to separate twins at birth; people may use it to prove supremacy e.g. having certain genes makes you better than others
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Free will/Determinism
Free will: people are able to choose their own actions and are not constrained by other factors e.g. biology, environment
Humanism: people have a choice over their behaviour and behaviour is not influenced by outside forces at all (Carl Rogers and Abraham Moslow)
Determinism: behaviour is controlled by external (e.g. environment) or internal (e.g. biology) forces rather than an individuals will to do something
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Soft determinism: people's behaviour is constrained but only to a certain extent; free will is not freedom from causation, but freedom from coercion and constraint
Strengths: humanism suggest moral responsibility that each person is responsible for their own actions; determinism is scientific as is relies on cause and effect relationships
Weaknesses: determinism simplifies human behaviour as human behaviour is influenced by many factors; determinism means that you cant hold people accountable for their actions as they did not choose to do them; telling people they dont have free will is socially sensitive; measuring freewill is unscientific; don't even know what free will actually means
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Psychodynamic: psychic determinism; behaviour is a result of childhood events and conscious or unconscious thoughts
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Reductionism/Holism
Reductionism: best way to explain behaviour is to break down complex phenomena into simple components
Biological reductionism: reducing behaviour to biology as it is based on the premise than we are biological organisms.
Environmental reductionism: behaviourist explanations suggest that all behaviour can be explained in terms of simple stimulus response links
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Strengths: when breaking down complex behaviours it can be measured scientifically; can establish cause and effect due to high degree of control; holism provides a complete picture
Weaknesses: reductionism is too simplistic as it ignored complexity of human behaviour and experience; holism is hard to measure scientifically as is proposes a lot of factors to be measured
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Biological: reductionism; focus on individual biological aspects e.g. hormones and genes as a cause of behaviour
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Individual/Situational
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Strengths: practical applications of situational approach as you can manage factors that cause negative behaviour; can show how normal people can change in a given situation; individual approach means study can be carried out on individual people rather than groups of people
Weaknesses: situation only explains behaviour from an external viewpoint; no responsibility for actions as it is due to situation; individual only explains behaviour from internal viewpoint; hard to generalise findings if study only done on one person; hard to separate individual and situational
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