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Summary Areas and debates A-level Psychology
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Summaries on areas and debates for A-level psychology, useful for any exam board
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Individual differences- Individuals differ in personality, thinking and behaviour
- We can understand human behaviour in terms of dispositional factors
- It is possible to measure and then study a person’s individual differences using
psychometric tests
Strengths
Understanding what types of characteristics are likely to cause negative or positive
behaviours can help to encourage or discourage those traits.
Research has practical applications - helps us understand how we measure differences and
develop support for certain disorders.
Helps us understand how behaviour can be predicted - criterion validity
Weakness
Ethics - people blame behaviour on the individual and do not account for external
influencing factors.
May not have practical applications that apply to the majority, this is because it focuses on
what makes people different, differences in behaviour tend to apply to a minority of
individuals, therefore lacks generalisation on behaviour.
Methodology is sometimes subjective and therefore open to bias. Freud -
Biological
- All that is psychological is first physiological
- Much behaviour has a genetic basis
- You should use objective measures to study biological processes to explain
behaviour
Strengths
Reductionism in terms of biology is easier to understand as it helps us to determine
casualty and helps to identify the importance of individual factors
Deterministic nature means that it uses objective scientific measures. Means that
extraneous variables are highly controlled and cause and effect can be established,
increasing validity.
practical/useful applications: understanding and identifying certain behaviours that are
inherited or specific to the individual can help us to intervene accordingly.
High use of labs and scientific equipment makes the research more valid as it is objective
and has less chance of researcher bias.
, Weakness
Reductionist as it tries to explain complex behaviour with one influence. It doesn’t consider
how other factors interact together in influencing behaviour which reduces the validity of
the approach/debate.
Ignores free-will, this can have issues as it would be difficult to implement consequences to
negative behaviours, if an individual did not choose to do it.
Discovering that certain behaviours are inherited may not be helpful. It can lead to the
assumption that these types of behaviour are difficult to change through the environment.
This restricts useful applications.
Objective but the way that the data is interpretive is still subjective. Like finding that you
are more likely to develop schizophrenia if both your parents have it could lead to a
conclusion that schizophrenia is genetic, or alternatively, could lead to the explanation that
schizophrenia is learned as you have both parents displaying symptoms that you could
imitate.
Drug Used to treat E.g.
Anti-psychotics Psychosis like schizophrenia chlorpromazine
Antidepressants Clinical depression SSRIs, Zoloft
Anti-anxiety drugs Generalised anxiety disorders Xanax
Antimanic drugs Mood instabilities like BPD Lithium
Cognitive
- All behaviour is a result of internal mental thinking processes
- The mind is like an information processor with an input, processing and output
Strengths
Practical applications - Baron-Cohen study ToM. Tests can be used again to help determine
if someone has autism. Loftus + Palmer - eyewitness testimony.
Lab experiments so is highly standardised and can be easily replicated. High control over
confounding variables.
Weakness
Refers to processes we can’t directly observe
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