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:scales: Issues and Debates :scales::, Our behaviour is controlled by one…
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- Our behaviour is controlled by one factor (hard determinism) or is it controlled by general laws allowing free will to operate in some conditions (soft determinism)
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- Tries to explain a complex phenomenon e.g. human behaviour in terms of basic elements
- i.e. can explain bhvr and experiences in reference to one factor (physiology)
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- Nature suggests that behaviour is innate (Nativism) and a result of genetics
- They are universal (nomothetic) and pre-determined (deterministic)
- All development = pre-wired from birth (Gesell)
Ppls behaviour/personality is relatively fixed (pre-determined by genetic blueprint)
- We are shaped by our environment
- E.g. biological approach, cognitive
- All behaviour is a result of learning therefore undesirable behaviour can be unlearned
- We are shaped by our environment
- E.g. Behaviourist approach, SLT, Double bind theory of Sz, psychodynamic, humanist
- Takes a stance between extreme nature and extreme nurture
- Argues that the true answer to the nature-nurture debate is that both genetics and the environment play a part in behaviour
- It seems likely that genetics gives us a predisposition to certain behaviours to act a certain way
- The genetic indication is moderated by the environment
- E.g. = intelligence: We have a genetic predisposition to attain a certain level of intelligence and that we either reach our potential if the environment is ideal or we underperform due to environmental factors such as diet, poor education, brain injury...
- It is unlikely that many ppl experience an optimum environment that allows them to extend their intelligence to its full potential
- :red_cross: Changed over time: The nature-nurture debate has moved from the argument between the extreme circumstances to the general acknowledgement that an interactionist stance is seen to be appropriate. The argument now is based on the relative influence of nature and nurture
- :red_cross: Assessing the relative influence is fraught with difficulties: Using twin studies is problematic due to the assumption that the only difference btwn MZ and DZs is their genetic similarity. Parenting styles may differ in that MZ twins are treated more similarly than DZ twins = diff in concordance rates can be due to nurture rather than nature
- :red_cross: Research on the relative heritability of a characteristic varies greatly: This could be due to sample size, methodology and age. Indeed, it may be possibly due to the fact that some people are more susceptible to environmental influences than others = consensus is hard to reach
- The ability to behave in the way we want. This means our actions are voluntary and we have freedom of choice
- In its purest form means that there are no restraints on choice from the options available
- Indeed, we may decide not to choose any of the presented options depending on our feelings
Any form of biological influence on the body e.g. genetics, brain physiology and biochemistry
- The role of evolution and genetics in determining behaviour exists where there is found to be a genetic influence on behaviour. Until a single gene is found to control our behaviour hard determinism stance cannot be proven so softer deterministic stance is accepted
- Areas of localisation indicate that there are specific areas of the brain that affect behaviour, hence it stands to reason that if that area of the brain is damaged, there could be an effect on behaviour out of the individuals control
- Dopamine hypothesis and Sz = biochem although can be altered through drugs so this becomes less deterministic
Behaviour is determined by environmental influences
- Environmental determinism posits that our behaviour is caused by previous experience learned through classical and operant conditioning. For example, Bandura (1961) found that children with violent parents are more likely to become violent parents themselves, as a result of observational learning
- Learning approach and Watson's work = behaviourism could control bhvr on a large scale and this demonstrates a hard determinsitic line
- SLT and motivation to complete an action reinforced by cognivitve processes = reciprocal determinism is a version of soft determinism
Considers the role of the unconscious on conscious thought and how that affects behaviour
- Claims that human behaviour is the result of childhood experiences and innate drives (ID, Ego and Superego), as in Freud’s model of psychological development.
- All bhvr had relevance for understanding an individual's unconscious mind
- Freud stated that everyday behaviour is also governed by the unconscious mind and therefore should also be examined
- Freudian slips are called parapraxes and are argued to show psychic determinism
- :check: Idea of free will feels correct The subjective experience of most ppl is that they are in control of their own actions and behaviours, the humanistic approach also acknowledges this feeling and argues we do have free will
- :red_cross: Free will is impossible to test: It is a non-physical phenomenon and therefore diff to quantify and measure
- As psych is a science the idea that something without a physical presence can affect behaviour is at odds with discipline. This means that a resolution of the debate is not currently likely. If a measurement becomes possible then scientific discipline of psych may be able to resolve the debate. Although the argument is free will isn't measurable as it does not exist
- :red_cross: Undermines responsibility: If behaviour is based entirely on free will than no laws or predictions could be made about bhvr and bhvr is determined by factors out of control
- Advocates looking at the whole person rather than at one specific part to explain behaviour
- Less scientific and makes behaviour hard to predict, unlike reductionist explanations
- Does not ignore complexity of human behaviour
- Explaining behaviour using biological systems
- It is more precise, simple and effective
- It can also be tested easier and more effectively
- It can also generate a treatment if needed
- Simplifies behaviour to a stimuli-response action
- Easy to test and has the advantage of parsimony (by being simple it is argued to be more effective than complex explanations)
- Simplicities seen as inadequate for explaining human bhvr
The Levels of Explanation (using the example of a man attacking someone who killed his daughter):
- Social Cognition: The father makes a dispositional attribution that the attacker is evil and deserves to suffer
- Social groups: The father may have witnessed aggression responses to others as a child
- Interpersonal interaction: The father may have received threats
- Cognition and emotion: Reacting out of anger
- Learned Associations: Father conditioned to react that way
- Genetics: Father may possess MAOA or 'warrior gene'
- Physiology: Ability to control himself diminished due to brain damage
- Cellular bio: Activity in synapse
- Biochem: May have had alcohol in his bloodstream reducing control and inhibitions
- :check: Bio reductionism can help facilitate dvlpmnt of bio therapy e.g. drugs: These do help people suffering from mental health problems. It can be argued that dvlpmnt of drug therapy = sufferer has access to something which helps them feel better able to tackle the other potential factors through therapies such as psychotherapy or cognitive therapy
- :check: Testable: Reductionist explanations means than they can be empirically tested as there are fewer factors to be considered meaning that empirical work can be conducted on an explanation and this gives it academic weight
- :red_cross: Behaviour is complex: It is acknowledged by many psychologists that the likelihood a behaviour has a purely bio route is low. The complexity involved in every behaviour means that a purely reductionist explanation is rarely accepted as sufficient
- :red_cross: Lead to other explanations being ignored or underplayed: In the case of mental illness, this could lead to a recurrence of the issue as all the factors have not been considered
- Taking male thinking/bhvr normal, regarding female thinking/bhvr as deviant, inferior, abnormal and other when it is different
All research is assumed to apply equally to both genders
- This means that based research can occur but assumptions of universality are often well researched
- There are three main ways gender bias can occur:
- Male Samples: Research being conducted on all male-samples and this not being made clear in the subsequent report. Reports conducted on all males may be generalised to women e.g. Milgrams
- Male behaviour as a standard: If the bhvr of women differs from that of men the bhvr of women is seen as a deviation from the norm
- Biological differences emphasis: Explanations for bhvr that emphasise the biology of the individual also sometimes under emphasise the role of social and external factors. Due to anatomical differences btwn men and women any theory is liable to implicitly infer that there will be a diff in the bhvr of the two sexes
- The stance that the behaviour of men is taken as the norm and that the behaviour of women is therefore atypical if it differs
- Tarvis (1993) argues that most cultures take male behaviour as standard and therefore women make the decision to behave like men or different from them
- While compiling DMS-III-R, masochistic disorder was included and diagnosed if bhvrs e.g. self-sacrifice, rejecting opportunity for pleasure and playing the martyr. These could be examples of the female role so the bhvr of women was pathologised = this is androcentrism
- Alpha Bias: Exaggerating the diff btwn men and women e.g. Freud's theory of moral development
- Beta Bias: Exaggerating similarity btwn men and women. Often happens findings obtained from men and applied to women without additional validation e.g. Flight-or-fight Early research was based exclusively on male animals, as they were preferred to females fluctuating hormones, and was assumed to be a universal response to a threatening situation.
- Shelley Taylor
Suggests that female biology has inhibited the f or f response and adapted a tending or befriending respon
- The scientific tradition of clustering people into groups and formulating laws which apply to them all has meant that cultural bias has occurred in psych
- Much of the research has been conducted in Western universities and therefore the results are really applicable to that pop only
- Universality: Understanding that whole cultures have the same experience
- Holism: Considering all aspects of experience, including culture
The assumption that one ethnic group is superior to another or to all other ethnic groups
- Evaluating other cultures through preconceptions of one culture
- It does not necessarily mean that other ethnic groups are seen in a negative light, more than their own ethnic group is normal and that others are strange and abnormal
- Emphasising the importance of the behaviour of one's own culture
- This is the opinion that there is no global 'right' and 'wrong' and that it is important to consider that bhvr of the individual within their culture before making a judgement
- Appreciating behaviour varies between cultures
- Social norms are culturally relative as what is acceptable in one culture may be unacceptable elsewhere
- Becomes racism when other cultures are denigrated or their traditions regarded as irrelevant
- Etic: = universal Constructs are specific to particular cultures, so vary place to place. Imposed etics = where a construct from one culture is applied inappropriately to another
- Emics: Constructs particular to a specific culture. Researchers from one culture may not be sensitive to local emics
- Protection of the participants
- Privacy
- Informed consent: Care needs to be taken when studying vul. ppl who may not understand implications of taking part in a study. Under 16s = consent from parents
- Right to Withdraw
- Confidentiality
- Deception
- De-briefing
- Cost benefit analysis!
- Short lifespans and breeding cycles/bhvr controlled and monitored/ less reactivity/ we share common ancestry with other animals
- Utilitarianism: Suffering of small number of animals justified as helps a large number of ppl
- Moral Duty: We have a moral obligation to our own species to advance knowledge and reduce suffering = animal research justified as it furthers this (Gray 1991)
- Animals (scientific procedures) Act 1986
- Refers to any psychological research that has wider implications that impact outside of the research context.
- The research might affect people or groups in society e.g.
- The participants in the research. Their friends and families could also be affected as a consequence
- The researchers may also be affected. This could mean that there is an effect on the institution for which they did the work
- Groups potentially impacted by socially sensitive research include sub-cultures and sub-groups such as those with certain religious and political beliefs, ethnic minorities or groups with a particular sexual preference
- Potential bias? Economic implications e.g. further psychological research and funding...?
- Potential use of the findings e.g. political consequences - change legislation
- Psychologists who take an idiographic approach focus on the individual and emphasise the unique personal experience of human nature
- Methods of investigation: Case studies, unstructured interviews and thematic analysis
- These methods provide an in-depth insight into individual human behaviour
- The approach does not seek to formulate laws or generalise results to others
- A single case study can highlight flaws within a theory and undermine other research
- E.g. Shallice and Warrington (1970) patient KF who experienced a motorbike accident. KF's short-term forgetting of auditory info = greater than visual info = suggests STM consists of multiple components
- Psychologists who take a nomothetic approach are concerned with establishing general laws, based on the study of large groups of people
- Methods of investigation: Experiments, correlational research, psychometric testing
- The approach is the main approach within scientifically oriented psychology
- :check: Nomothetic approach is viewed as scientific, it is useful for predicting and controlling behaviour. Enables emprical testing of laws and behaviour. For example, Biological Psychologists take a nomothetic approach when explaining obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and claim that OCD is caused by higher levels of dopamine and lower levels of serotonin. Drug therapies are developed on the basis of nomothetic research and work by readdressing a biological imbalance. However, lab based research lacks ecological validity so it is difficult to apply findings to everyday life
- :red_cross: Nomothetic approach loses sight of the ‘whole person’, due to its fixation on quantitative data and statistical analysis. Therefore, nomothetic approaches only provides a superficial understanding of human behaviour and ignores subjective and unique experiences. For example, Milgram’s research found that 65% of participants obeyed an authority figure and inflicted a 450-volt electric shock because they were ordered to do so. However, the results fail to provide an explanation of why each person obeyed, and there may have been very different circumstances that led to the obedience found in each participant.
- :red_cross: Holt 1967: argues that the idiographic/nomothetic distinction is a false distinction. Many approaches in psychology take advantage of both approaches and therefore the two approaches can be viewed as complementary rather than contradictory. For example, while Cognitive Psychologists typically take a nomothetic approach and create general laws of cognitive processes (e.g. the Working Memory Model), they also take advantage of the idiographic approach when using case studies to provide evidence for a particular theory (e.g. Patient KF, Shallice and Warrington, 1970). In reality, many approaches make use of both approaches, and it could be argued that the distinction between idiographic and nomothetic is meaningless and that psychologists should employ both methods depending on the nature of the research question
Examples of socially sensitive topics:
- Milgram's obedience research and attitudes to ppl of diff nationalities
- Bowlby's research and the effects on child-rearing/working mothers
- Diagnosis of depression, Sz...
- Bio research into offending e.g. who is to blame, is offending inherited...
- Implications of rship counselling based on research into rships
- Research linking intelligence to genetic factors
- :check: More holistic: Uses qualitative data - rich, in detailed info therefore you can treat people for their specific condition based on insightful info
- :check: Can provide further info about theories thus advance them e.g. MSM and KF case studies able to expand on knowledge of the STM
- :red_cross: Cannot generalise - due to the small samples collected such as Little Hans and the Oedipus complex, you can't predict behaviour so you can't prevent it
- :red_cross: Lacks scientific rigour and fraught of bias - biased towards researchers aim such as Freud argued men were more superior with stronger superegos an morally stronger but he was male also - decreased validity and reliability
- :red_cross: Time consuming Case studies are long, time consuming processes
- :check: Addresses an entire group at once: there are aspects of behaviour that only emerge within a group context and cannot be understood at the level of the individual group members e.g. the effects of conformity to social roles and the deindividuation of prisoners and guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment could not be understood by studying the PPs as individuals, it was the interaction between people and the behaviour of the group that was important.provide a more complete and global understanding of behaviour than the more reductionist approaches, which it can be assumed can be more easily generalised to wider societies and larger cultures.
- :red_cross: Unscientific: do not establish causation because they do not examine behaviour in terms of operationalised variables that can be manipulated and measured.
- :red_cross: Holistic explanations become more vague as the topic becomes more complex: E.g. humanistic psych is criticised for its lack of empirical evidence and is instead seen by many as a rather loose set of concepts therefore it becomes difficult to establish which is most influential and which one to use as a basis for therapy
- :check: Consistent with the aims of science: The notion that human behaviour is orderly and obeys laws places psychology on equal footing with other more established sciences. In addition, the value of such research is that the prediction and control of human behaviour has led to the development of treatments, therapies and behavioural interventions that have benefitted many, such as psychotherapeutic drug treatment in controlling and managing SZ.
- :red_cross: Not as scientific as it may seem: The hard determinist stance-that individual choice is not the cause of behaviour- is not consistent with the way in which our legal system operates. In a court of law, offenders are held morally accountable for their actions. Also, despite its scientific credentials, determinism as an approach is unfalsifiable.
- :red_cross: Reductionist: Does not account other factors that may influence their behaviour. For example, upbringing and free will
For most individuals it is the combination of both sides of the issue/debate that influence the behaviour!