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Issues and debates - Coggle Diagram
Issues and debates
Nature/Nurture
Historically nature and nurture were viewed as independent of one another and scientists took nature OR nurture views
However, for some years now and particularly with an increased understadning of genetics ther has been recognition that they are entwind with one another and interact with eachother. Known as interactionalist approach
Still, different approaches are more orientated towards one perspective or another
- Nature- Innatie influenc. doesn’t simply refer to abiliitis present at birth but to an ability determined by genes
- Genetics- faimly twin and adoptions tudies show how close two indivs are genetically the more likely they will both develop the same behavior e.g schizophrenia
- Evolutionary explanations propose that a behavior taht promotes survival and reproductsion will be passed onto next generation. Bowlby propsed attachment was adaptive because it meant an if\nfant will survive, so bheavior is amplifed thorugh genertaions. e.g giraffes with the short/ long necks thing
- Nuture- environmenatal influences.
- aquirred trhough interations.
- includes btoh physical and social world and may be more widely refferred to as ‘experience’
- although would include effects on an infant before birth e.g mum who smokes
- behaviorism- Joh Locke (1800s) describes new borns as tabula rasa or a blank slate. ide awas taken on by behaviorist approach
- Skinner said that all behavior can be explained in terms of learning through classical and operant conditioning and set out to rpove ti with experiments like Little Albert, showing even thing that seem like instinct can be learnt
- Double blind theory of schizo- nurture theory that suggests schizo develops in response to contradictory messages from parents e.g saying i love you but looking away with disgust
Ao3
- Evidence suggests that the inteaction between nature and nurture is not as simplistic as it had sometimes been tradtitionally presented
- for example, Plomin 1977 found that a child with a genetic tendency towards agression will provoke an aggressive response in others which then becomes part of that child environment and amplifies the likelihoood of aggression.
- this evidence undermines any attempt tt siplistic nature nurture distinction and indocates how complex the interaction between nature and nurture can be in reality
- The diathesis stress model is argueably a far more effective way of understanding nature and nurture
- often used to explain mental health disorders like phobiasor schizo
- diathesis is biological vunerability such as being born with certian genes the predispose a person to developing a disorder e.g epilepsy in mum, got triggered by a stobe light, would that have happened if she never wnet o that party?
- however research shown that not everyne with the gene has the disorder (i could have the gene for it but was never in that situation to trigger it)
- experience of the gene needs a stressor that causes it to happen e.g the strobe light
- This emphaisises the iportance of an nteractionalist approach
- there is however soome evidence that the environment can finally change our biology
- e.g Maguir london taxi driver study in 2000
- showed how thieir brains changed and their spatial memory was bigger than the control
- not born this way and bt their hippocampi had responded toincresed use
- Blakemore and Copper 1970s study of newborn kittens
- given large collars to restrict what theyc ould see and raised in a drum only seeing jorzontal or vertical lines
- outisde they coudln’t see anything else
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Epigenetics
study of changes in the expression of genes that do not result from alterations in the sequance of the gentic code. Evidence from biology now suggests that genes can be switched on or off leading to huge possible variatio
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Gender bias
Ao3
- Carol Gilligan argues that in order to counter androcentrism, a ‘feminist perspective’ should be adopted
- feminist psychology is a brqnch of psych that aims to reduce imbalance in theory and research
- agrees that there are bilogical differnces but social stereotypes make a far greater contribution to perceived differences
- therefore prior to any social change there must be a revision of ‘facts’ about gender that may be androcentric
- one way to redress the balance is to use evidence af women being inferior in places to help improve the issue
- e.g Eagly suggested if women are provne to be worse leader then there should be training programmes to help them improve
- This approach could go some way to addressing the traditional gender bias within psychology
- Rosenthal 1966 argues that much of the gender bias within psychology comes from the methods which it uses
- Rosen found that male experimenter are more encouraging to female Ps resulting in the men underperforming
- Feminists argue that a lab exp disadvantage women because the controlled world lacks mundane realism so you can’t assume that’s what the women would do in the wild
- E.g Eagly and Johnson 1990 noted studies in real settings found women and men were judged as more similar in styles of leadership than in lab settings
- This suggests the way in which data on gender has been collected has amplifeud differences and leads to potentially damaging misunderstandings
- Some feminist researchers have argued for a ‘reversed alpha bias’
- can be show in femisit research which shows instances where women are better.
- E.g research that shows that women are better at learning because they are more attentive, flexible and organised
- This could be effective as it owuld challenge the notion that ‘male is better’ and address people’s preconeptions
- Hare-Mustin and Marecek argue that a move towards greater equality may have drawn attention away from women’s unique needs and from differnces in power
- In a society where one group holds most of the power, seemng neutral actions end up benefiting the group with the power
- e.g equal parenting leave ignores the biological demands of pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding so therefore disadvantage women
- This caution us against beta bias in order to ensure we acknowledge genuine differences
- It could be argued that there is still further need to address gender bias in well established scientific theories
- e.g Darwin’’s theory of sexual selectionportrays women as choosy and males as the ones who compete to be chosen
- it pays in terms on ultimate reporductive success for females to be more selective because the cost (of using one of their limited eggs) is high
- view recently challenged as being rooted in Victorian ideas
- recognised that ome are eaully competitive and aggressive when the need arises
- DNA evidence supports the idea that it is a good adaptive strategy for females to mate withmutiple men
- puts females in competition with other females
- This perspective suggests we still have a long way to go to address gender bias that warps the portrayal of men and women in our society
Mustin + Marack
- suggested psychology can make two mistakes in relation to gender
Studies can have an Alpha bias- where they assume there are real and enduring differeces between men and women
Exaggertae differences
As Josselson (1988) points out “women are seen as inferior to men because they are jealous of men’s penises and becasue they cannot undergo the same Oedipus complex as boys” Because this complex leads tot he development of a healthy super ego Freud is essentially concluding that women must be morally inferior to men.
Freud’s research is the best example of Aplha bias, essentially viewing feminity as ‘failed masculinity’ and thus hugely exaggerated the differences between men and women
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Androcentrism
Freud’s research can therefore also be said to be androcentric which can be defined as having a ‘biased male centered view point’
This was probably true of all Psychology until recently, given most psychologists were men experimenting with men
Holism and reductionism
Reductiionism
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Biological reductionism
behavior explained in terms of hormones, NTs, etc
Environmental
stimulus response, e.g attachment food/mother
Holism
This approach focuses on how systems operate as a whole and suggets we can’t understand or predict bahavior just from looking at individual components
Gestalt psychology
The illusions are from Gestalt Psychology, a holisitc branch of psychology which orgiginated in early 20th century Germany.
They studied perception extensively and argued that you can only explain what an how we see the world through recognition of the ‘whole’
Humantistic
Belaives that individulas behave as oragnised wholes rather than as a set of auttomated stimulus response links and that behavior is not dtermined but freely choisen (so it doesn’t make seme to try and break it down)
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Idiographic/Nomothetic
Idiographic
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Methods
qualitative as they focus on singular individuals rather than obtaining numerical data from a larger sample of Ps. Focus is on the quality of information rather than quantity.
Examples
- Frued’s case study of Little Hans which he used to develop hid oedipal theory consited over over 150 pages of verbatim quotes from his dad.
- Also a record of events in his life and his own intepretation of events
- Very detailed account for just 1 person
- Humanistic appraoch uses this as they beleive bahvior can only be understood from subjective holistic persepctive of an individual
Nomthetic
Mainstream psychology has tended to be nomothetic which makes sense since this is a goal of a scientific approach
Methods
- Uses quantitative methods and often involves large numbers of participants and the interpretation of data
- genreates data which will be subjected to statistical analysis in an attempt to detect significance
- then seeks to make generalisation from the fidings
Examples
- seeks to identify the mechanisms by which all humna brain work and impact upon behavior
- behavior produced general laws of beahior and attempt to understand all behavior in terms of poerant and classical conditioning
- in both cases there is no recognition of possible individual difference
- however has used case studies like HM to explore extremem individual cases
Ao3
- As strength of iodiographic is focus on idividual
- Allport (1961) was 1st to use the term idiographic
- argued that a drastic reorientation was needed as psychologists had lost sight of what it was to be human
- Argued that there was too much emphasis on measurement and it is only by knowung the person as an individual that we can predict what the person will do
- Suggests that the focus on indiiduals can provide us with a more completet understanding
- How scientific is an idiographic approach
- Case studies may not be replicable but they tsill aim to be objective and evidence based
- qualitative approaches use reflexivity to identify biases
- reasearcher refelcts on any factors that affects researcehrs or PS behavior
- idiographic approache do embrace many of the aims of the scientific approach
- The iodigraohic approach is more time consuming
- Both approaches are based on large amounts of data, but idiographic research collects large amounts of data about 1 person whereas nomo reasearch can do a lot of people
- collecting large amounts taked time but can be quicker with an objective method like a questionnaire
- means idiographic approach is less efficeint when it comes to data collection
- Combining idiographic and nomothetic methods
- cliams that there is no such thing as a unique individual and that the idiographic approach is still used to generate principles of behavior
- argue that reasearchers should start with nomo then focus on idio
- researchers suggest they should be used together for best results
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