Issues and Debates in psychology

Question 1

Define ethnocentrism.

Answer 1

Ethnocentrism involves evaluating other cultures according to the customs and standards of your own culture, leading to a bias whereby you view your culture as superior.

Question 2

Define reductionism.

Answer 2

The view that behaviour is better explained by breaking it down into simpler constituent parts.

Question 3

Give a strength of holism.

Answer 3

Holism is able to xplain certain aspects of social behaviour which reductionism could not. Examples of such are like
‘conformity to social roles’ in the Stanford Prison Study.
Looking at the situation at a whole by watching the interactions between the prisoners and guards was important to understand behaviours such as deindividuation that took place. Holism is the approach taken to understand behaviours of more wider social contexts.

Question 4

Give an example of socially sensitive research that has had ethical implications.

Answer 4

Goddard (1917) did research which found IQ to be fully genetic. This led to eugenic procedures in the 1920s whereby the feeble minded (people with a low IQ) were sterilised.

Question 5

Compare approaches that are on opposite sides of the
idiographic/nomothetic debate.

Answer 5

Idiopathic:
Humanistic approach - focused on the subjective experiences of one’s ‘self and each person’s individual ability to strive to achieve self-actualisation.
Psychodynamic approach - Freud’s use of cases studies emphasizes the importance of individual experience.

Nomothetic
Biological approach - involves many lab experiments and brainscan evidence on many people whereby generalisation of human functioning have been made.

Behaviourist approach - many experiments have been done on many animals- rats, pigeons etc where generalisable laws of learning have been developed from.

Question 6

What is meant by cultural relativism?

Answer 6

The idea that norms, values and behaviours and culturally specific and may not be universal. The aforementioned should be evaluated in the context of the culture in which they occur.

Question 7

What is the difference between the emic approach and etic approach?

Answer 7

Etic approach is when a researcher does an investigation in one culture but then tries to apply it to another, which is known as imposing etic. The emic approach is when the researcher conducts the study in the same culture which they are studying.

Question 8

Describe universality.

Answer 8

Refers to when conclusions can be applied to everyone regardless of which place, culture or time a person is in.

Question 9

Define determinism.

Answer 9

This is belief that behaviour is determined by external or internal forces acting upon an individual that is out of their control.

Question 10

What is the difference between hard determinism and soft determinism?

Answer 10

Hard determinism states that we have completely no control over what directs our lives whereas soft determinism states that our behaviour is determined by external or internal forces but at the same time we do have some control.

Question 11

List three types of determinism.

Answer 11

• Biological - all behaviour is innate and determined by genes
• Environmental - all behaviour is determined by factors outside the individual, e.g. parental influence, the media, or previous experiences. Schools which adopt this approach include behaviourism and social learning theory.
• Psychic - behaviour is the result of childhood experiences and innate drives (id, ego and superego), as in Freud’s model of psychological development.

Question 12

Define free will.

Answer 12

Define free will.
This refers to the ability to act at one’s own discretion, to choose to behave without being influenced by external forces.

Question 13

Which approaches take the side of nurture in the nature-nurturs debals?

Answer 13

• Behaviourist
• Humanistic
• Social Learning Theory
• Psychodynamic (stance is a compromise between nature and nurture)

Question 14

Describe the difference between nativists and empiricists.

Answer 14

Nativists are people who believe that all human characteristics are a result of heredity (the genetic transmission of characteristics) whilst empiricists are people that believe that all human characteristics are a result of the environment and experience.

Question 15

Outline one problem associated with beta bias in psychological research.

Answer 15

Beta bias is when differences between the genders are minimised. This can lead to researchers forming invalid theories. For example with the fight or flight theory, research was done on males and it was assumed that it also applies to females but actually Taylor et al (2000) found that women have more of a tend and befriend response.

Question 16

Define androcentrism.

Answer 16

This is when behaviour is judged to be normal when compared to a male standard. This leads to female behaviour being judges as either ‘deficient’ or ‘abnormal’.

Question 17

Describe a consequence of having gender bias in psychological research.

Answer 17

It can impact on females’ lives. Research where gender bias is involved can easily present scientific justification for denying women opportunities in the workplace and in society.