Issues & Debates

Question 1

What is cultural bias?

Answer 1

Refers to a tendency to ignore cultural differences and interpret all phenomena through the ‘lens’ of one’s own culture

Question 2

What is ethnocentrism?

Answer 2

The belief in the superiority of one’s own culture which may lead to prejudice and discrimination towards other cultures

Question 3

What are etic constructs?

Answer 3

• Analyses of behaviour that focus on the universal of human behaviour
• Universal factors that hold across all cultures
• Looking at behaviour from outside the culture

Question 4

What are emic constructs?

Answer 4

Behaviours that are specific to a given culture and vary from one culture to another

Question 5

What is cultural relativism?

Answer 5

• The idea that norms and values, as well as ethics and moral standards can only be meaningful and understood within specific social and cultural contexts
• Helps to avoid cultural bias

Question 6

What is universality?

Answer 6

Any underlying characteristics of human beings that is capable of being applied to all, despite differences of experience and upbringing

Question 7

What can threaten the universality of findings in psychology?

Answer 7

Gender and cultural bias

Question 8

Give examples of cultural bias within studies and theories.

Answer 8

• DSM e.g. Depression classification
• Ainsworth’s Strange Situation
• Milgram

Question 9

What is gender bias?

Answer 9

• When considering human behaviour, gender bias is a tendency to treat an individual or group in a different way from others which means that, in terms of psychological research, may offer a view that does not justifiably represent the experience and behaviour of men or women (usually women)

Question 10

What is androcentrism?

Answer 10

• When ‘normal’ behaviour is judged according to a male standard
• Meaning that female behavior is often judged to be ‘abnormal’ or ‘deficient’ by comparison

Question 11

What is alpha bias?

Answer 11

• The acknowledgement that there are differences between men and women
• These may enhance or undervalue members of either sex, but typically undervalue females

Question 12

What is beta bias?

Answer 12

Theories that ignore or minimise differences between the sexes.

Question 13

Give an example of beta bias within a theory.

Answer 13

Fight of flight

Question 14

What is free will?

Answer 14

The notion that humans can make choices and are not determined by biological (internal) or external forces

Question 15

Which approach is the notion that humans have free will?

Answer 15

Humanistic approach

Question 16

What is determinism?

Answer 16

The view that an individual’s behaviour is shaped or controlled by internal or external forces rather than an individual’s will to do something

Question 17

What is hard determinism?

Answer 17

Implies that free will is not possible as our behaviour is always caused by internal or external events beyond our control.

Question 18

What is hard determinism also known as?

Answer 18

Fatalism

Question 19

What is soft determinism?

Answer 19

All events, including human behaviour, have causes, but behaviour can also be determined by our conscious choices in the absence of coercion.

Question 20

Which approach is soft determinism?

Answer 20

Cognitive approach

Question 21

What is biological determinism?

Answer 21

The belief that behaviour is caused by biological (genetic, hormonal, evolutionary) influences that we cannot control.

Question 22

What is environmental determinism?

Answer 22

The belief that behaviour is caused by features of the environment (such as systems of reward and punishment and different types of conditioning) that we cannot control.

Question 23

What is psychic determinism?

Answer 23

The belief that behaviour is caused by unconscious conflicts that we cannot control.

Question 24

What is a ‘freudian slip’?

Answer 24

According to Freud, there is no such thing as an accident, and even something as seemingly random and innocuous as a ‘slip of the tongue’ can be explained by the underlying authority of the unconscious.

Question 25

What is the nature vs nurture debate?

Answer 25

Concerned with the extent to which aspects of behaviour are a product of inherited or acquired characteristics

Question 26

What does heredity mean?

Answer 26

The genetic transmission of mental and physical characteristics from one generation to another.

Question 27

What is the heritability coefficient?

Answer 27

• Used to assess heredity
• It is a numerical figure ranging from 0 to 1 which indicates the extent to which a characteristic has a genetic basis (with a value of 1 meaning it is entirely genetically determined).

Question 28

What does environmental mean, in terms of the nature vs nurture debate?

Answer 28

Any influence on human behaviour that is non-genetic. This may range from prenatal influences in the womb through to cultural and historical influences at a societal level.

Question 29

What is interactionist approach, in terms of the nature vs nurture debate?

Answer 29

The idea that nature and nurture are linked to such an extent that it does not make sense to separate the 2, so researchers instead study how they interact and influence each other

Question 30

What does nature mean, in terms of the nature vs nurture debate?

Answer 30

Early nativists such as Rene Descartes (1596-1650) argued that human characteristics - and even some aspects of knowledge - are innate: the result of heredity. In contrast, empiricists including the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) argued that the mind is a blank slate at birth

Question 31

What does nurture mean, in terms of the nature vs nurture debate?

Answer 31

The concept of nurture and environmental influences in psychology requires further clarification as ‘the environment’ is such a broad and all-encompassing concept

Question 32

What is holism?

Answer 32

An argument or theory which proposes that it only makes sense to study an indivisible system and study as a whole, rather than its constituent parts

Question 33

What is reductionism?

Answer 33

The belief that human behaviour is best explained by breaking it down into smaller constituent parts.

Question 34

What is biological reductionism?

Answer 34

A form of reductionism which attempts to explain social and psychological phenomena at a lower biological level (in terms of the actions of genes, hormones, etc.)

Question 35

What is biological reductionism based upon?

Answer 35

Based on the premise that we are biological organisms made up of physiological structures and processes. Thus, all behaviour is at some level biological and so can be explained through neurochemical, neurophysiological, evolutionary and genetic influences

Question 36

What is environmental reductionism?

Answer 36

The attempt to explain all behaviour in terms of stimulus-response links that have been learned through experience.

Question 37

There are different levels of explanation in psychology. What does this mean?

Answer 37

• The notion of ‘levels of explanation’ suggests that there are different ways of viewing the same phenomena in psychology - some more reductionist than others.
• Psychology itself can also be placed within a hierarchy of science with the more precise ‘micro’ of these disciplines at the bottom, and the more general and ‘macro’ of these at the top. Researchers who favour reductionist accounts of behaviour would see psychology as ultimately being replaced by explanations derived from those sciences lower down the hierarchy.

Question 38

What is the idiographic approach?

Answer 38

• An approach to research that focuses more on the individual case as a means of understanding behaviour, rather than aiming to formulate general laws of behaviour
• It rejects scientific methods

Question 39

What are the strengths of the idiographic approach?

Answer 39

• Gain detailed and informative descriptions of behaviour
• Can uncover causes for behaviour not identified using nomothetic methods
• Develop a holistic understanding of individual behaviours
• Can provide hypotheses for future scientific study

Question 40

What are the limitations of the idiographis approach?

Answer 40

• Cannot generalise to wider population
• Methods are subjective, flexible and understandardiased so replication, prediction and control of behaviour is difficult

Question 41

Give 2 examples of the idiographic approach?

Answer 41

• Humanistic approach

- Psychodynamic approach

Question 42

What is the nomothetic approach?

Answer 42

It attempts to study human behaviour through the development of general principles and universal laws.

Question 43

What are the strengths of the nomothetic approach?

Answer 43

• Can generalise to wider population

- Methods are objective, measurable and can be verified so replication, prediction and control of behaviour is easy

Question 44

What are the limitations of the nomothetic approach?

Answer 44

• Generalised laws and principles may not apply to an individual
• Understanding is often superficial

Question 45

GIve 2 examples of the nomothetic approach.

Answer 45

• Reductionism

- Determinism