Psychology Approaches

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What is the Cognitive Approach in Psychology?

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Cognitive psychology studies our mental processes or cognitions. These mental processes that cognitive psychologists focus on include memory, perception, thinking and language.

The main assumption of the cognitive approach is that information received from our senses is processed by the brain and that this processing directs how we behave or at least justifies how we behave the way that we do.and response/output. Cognitive psychologists study internal processes including perception, attention, language, memory and thinking.

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What is the Physiological Approach in Psychology?

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Physiological psychology focuses on the relationship between our biological makeup and our behaviour and experiences. The main assumption of the physiological approach is therefore that behaviour and experience can be explained by physiological changes. This approach investigates the brain, the nervous system and other biological factors such as hormones.

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What is the Individual Differences Approach in Psychology?

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The main assumption of the individual differences perspective is that to understand the complexity of human behaviour and experiences it necessary to study the differences between people rather than those things that we all have in common. For example the individual differences approach largely focuses on things such as personality differences, and abnormality.

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What is the Social Approach in Psychology?

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Social psychology (or the social approach) is interested in studying individuals in a social context, such as family, friends, institutions, and wider society. Social behaviour may involve activity within a group or between groups. According to social psychologists our behavior is influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others.

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What is the Developmental Approach in Psychology?

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Developmental psychology is interested in discovering the psychological processes of development. A main assumption therefore of the developmental approach is that cognitive, emotional and behavioral development is an ongoing process and that such changes result from an interaction of nature and nurture.

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What are the Strengths of the Cognitive Approach in Psychology?

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Strengths
-A main strength of cognitive psychology is that this approach has tended to use a scientific approach through the use of laboratory experiments.
-A strength of using laboratory experiments is that they are high in control therefore researchers are able to establish cause and effect.
-A further strength of the cognitive approach is the useful contributions that have arisen from this approach. For example, many modern types of therapy are based on the cognitive approach.
-Understanding cognitive processes allows us to help people to improve their cognitive processes such as memory and language.

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What are the Weakness of the Cognitive Approach in Psychology?

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-As many cognitive studies are carried out in laboratory settings they can lack ecological validity.
-When cognitive processes such as memory and theory of mind are studied in artificial situations it may be difficult to generalize the findings to everyday life.

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What are the Strengths of the Physiological Approach in Psychology?

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-A main strength of the physiological approach is the use of sophisticated equipment such as MRI scanners which provide an objective and precise way of measuring brain structure.
-A further strength of the physiological approach is the practical applications that it offers. Much of the research in this area is very useful as it may be used to diagnose and develop treatments and therapies for illnesses or problems.

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What are the Weaknesses of the Physiological Approach in Psychology?

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-A problem with the physiological approach is that by using such a scientific approach and testing behavior in laboratory conditions the measurement of behavior often lacks validity
-A further problem with the physiological approach is that because such studies can be costly and time consuming because of the use of sophisticated equipment and lengthy procedures. This often leads to such studies having small samples

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What are the Strengths of the Individual Differences Approach in Psychology?

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-A main strength of the individual differences perspective is that it can provide useful in improving the experiences of people with mental health problems.
-A further strength of the individual differences approach has been the development and use of psychometric tests to measure the differences between individuals in qualities such as personality and intelligence. These psychometric tests provide reliable and quantitative data which can easily be analyzed and therefore similarities and differences between individuals can be discovered.

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What are the Weaknesses of the Individual Differences Approach in Psychology?

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-Not all tests are reliable and objective
-A weakness of the individual differences approach is a reliance on dispositional explanations at the expense of situational explanations.
-That is the individual differences approach explains individual differences as resulting from a person’s own characteristics or disposition and has a tendency to ignore external factors such as the situation a person is in.
-A further issue related to the individual differences approach is the ethical issues raised with labeling people as being different.
-The tendency to label people as being different, abnormal and so on can have a negative effect on individuals.
-Furthermore such labels particularly negative ones can lead to a self fulfilling prophecy in which expectations about a person (or a group of people) can come true simply because of those expectations.

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What are the Strengths of the Social Approach in Psychology?

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-A main strength of social psychology is the attempt to use real life situations when studying behavior.
-Because social psychology is interested in human interaction this is best studied in real situations where participants have the opportunity to interact
-Field experiments are experiments carried out in a real world situation. Field experiments are usually high in ecological validity and may avoid demand characteristics as the participants are unaware of the experiment.
-Another strength of the social approach is the contributions it makes about understanding social behavior.
-Social psychology makes useful applications because it can explain and even offer solutions to problems in the real world.

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What are the Weaknesses of the Social Approach in Psychology?

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-With field experiments it is not possible to have the same level of control as with laboratory experiments. -When laboratory experiments though are used by social psychologists, we have to be careful generalizing the findings as participants may behave differently in the real world.
-It is difficult to study social behavior without negatively affecting the participants in the study.
-A further problem with the social approach is related to the generalisability of the findings. The social approach attempts to make generalizations about social behavior but often the samples used are very restricted.

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What are the Strengths of the Developmental Approach in Psychology?

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-A strength of the developmental approach is that many studies in this area are longitudinal which means that they do get to investigate changes and how these changes are influenced.
-Furthermore the developmental approach enables psychologists to investigate different areas of development
-It can provide useful information about how we can better understand how children learn and deal with emotional difficulties and therefore improve the lives of children.

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What are the Weaknesses of the Developmental Approach in Psychology?

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-A problem with the developmental approach is a tendency to generalize findings from often very limited samples.
-The developmental approach often looks for general patterns of development based on non representative samples.
-A further limitation with the developmental approach is the validity of measuring childrens' behavior and thoughts. We can therefore question if psychologists are actually measuring what they are attempting to measure especially as children may have qualitatively different thoughts to adults.

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What is a Yoked Control Design?

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The yoked control procedure is a research design used in operant conditioning experiments in which matched research subjects are yoked (joined together) by receiving the same reinforcement but with different contingencies.

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What is Experimental Validity?

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Experimental validity refers to the manner in which variables that influence both the results of the research and the generalization to the population at large.

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What is Reductionism?

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Reductionism is the belief that human behavior can be explained by breaking it down into smaller component parts.

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What is Holism?

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Holism refers to any approach that emphasizes the whole rather than their constituent parts. In other words ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’.

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What is the Bystander Effect?

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Refers to the phenomenon in which the greater the number of people present, the less likely people are to help a person in distress. When an emergency situation occurs, observers are more likely to take action if there are few or no other witnesses.