Psychological Approaches

Psychological Approaches

1. The Biological Approach

   • Evoloution
     • Over time living organisms adapt to their environments through evoloution
       • One organism will develop a particular trait and then pass it down to its offspring
         • Therefore each living organism has a set of characteristics encoded by its genes
           • An organisims ability to survive depends on how well....
             • Its characteristics allow it to do so
           • Adaptive Traits
             • Memory
               • Eg/ To find or avoid foods
             • Attachment
               • Eg/ To learn and be protected
             • Mental disorder
               • Eg/ Keeping safe and avoiding danager
         • Fitness
           • About how well an organism is adapted to its environment
           • Fit organisims are more likely to survive into adulthood than unfit ones
             • They are more likely to mate and have offspring
             • Maladaptive organisms slowly die out
   • Positive Evaluation Points
     • Highly Scientific
     • Nature over nurture
     • Many emiprical studies to support
   • Negative Evaluation Points
     • Low ecological validity
     • Doesn't recognise cognitive processes
     • Too deterministic
       • No room for free will?
     • Does not consider environmental factors

2. The Behaviourist Approach

   • Locke thought behaviour was learnt
     • Nurture over nature
     • From the environment
     • By either
       • Reinforcement
         • Learning to do something to acheive a positive outcome
       • Punishment
         • Not repeating an behaviour to avoid a negative outcome

3. Cognitive Approach

   • Cognition is...
     • A mental process
       • Such as thoughts or senses
   • Cognitive
     • Relates to mental processes such as
       • Reasoning
       • Memory
       • Perception
   • Mental Processes lie between stimulas and response
     • Humans are information processors
       • They organise and manipulate information from their environment
         • The mind operates in the same way as a computer
           • Both encode, store and output data
   • Schemas
     • The frameworks that help you interpret what you see
     • Thoughts that one uses to inform their behaviour
   • Evaluation
     • Positive Points
       • Uses scientific methods
     • Negative points
       • Computers are near perfect while humans are not