Debates In Psychology

Question 0

What is the nature/nurture debate?

Answer 0

This suggests that people are either the product of their genes and innate biological factors (nurture) or a product of their environment (nurture)

Question 1

What are the four different debates in psychology?

Answer 1

1) Nature/Nurture
2) Determinism/Free Will
3) Reductionism/Holism
4) Idiographicism/ Nomotheticism

Question 2

What is the Determinism/Free will debate?

Answer 2

The debate concerns wether we have free will over our behaviour, or wether our behaviour is determined by forces beyond our control.

• determinism is the view that an individuals behaviour is controlled by external or internal forces rather than the individuals will to do something
• free will sees people as being able to chose their own actions, and being self determining. Free will assumes that individuals are free to chose their behaviours and not constrained by other factors

Question 3

What is the reductionism/Holism debate?

Answer 3

This debate looks at the best way to produce explanations of human behaviour

• reductionism argues that the best way to explain behaviour is by breaking down complex phenomena into simple components. They believe behaviour is best explained by going to the lowest unit of explanation
• Holism believes human behaviour is too complex to be broken down into smaller components and that to understand human behaviour, we need to look a the system as a whole, and that we can not predict how the whole system will behave from knowledge of individual components

Question 4

What is the nomotheticism/idiographicsism debate?

Answer 4

This debate looks at the best way to investigate human behaviour. The nomothetic approach involves the study of large numbers of people with the aim of making laws/theories that can be generalised to all people. the idiographic approach on the other hand involves the study of individuals and the unique insights this can give us into human behaviour.

Question 5

Weaknesses of the nature/nurture debate?

Answer 5

• If an approach takes a strong stance at either end of the debate it may not provide a full explanation of behaviour ignoring important factors that may make a contribution
• if an approach has a strong nature stance it may ignore environmental factors
• if an approach has a strong nurture stance it may ignore the role of innate factors such as genes

Question 6

Evaluate the reductionism/Holism approach

Answer 6

• without reductionism, we would not be able to reduce complex behaviour to a set of variables that can then be tested
• Holistic theories are much less scientific and it can be difficult to investigate the interaction of different components of a whole. It is also difficult to make predictions with holistic theories
• a reductionist approach can over simplify complex behaviour

Question 7

Evaluate the nomothetic and idiographicsism

Answer 7

• the nomothetic approach does not take into account the uniqueness of each person, meaning that it can only give a superficial understanding of an individual
• the idiographic approach allows for a greater understanding of the individual, treating each person as distinct and unique
• the idiographic approach however, does not produce results that can be generalised to all people, which limits it’s usefulness

Question 8

Evaluate the free will/determinism debate

Answer 8

• it is scientific as it assumes all behaviour is a product of cause and effect
• deterministic approach would imply that people have no control over their behaviour
• it realises important ethical issues. If a persons behaviour was determined by forces against their control, how can we hole people accountable for their actions?