Approaches in Psychology — AQA A-Level Psychology
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Approaches in Psychology explained
Psychology was philosophy until somebody took it into a laboratory.
Read the full explanation
Wilhelm Wundt opened the first laboratory devoted to psychology in Leipzig in 1879 and set out to break conscious experience into its basic elements, sensations, images and feelings, an aim later called structuralism. His method was introspection: trained observers were given a controlled stimulus such as a ticking metronome and reported their inner experience under identical instructions every time, so that reports could be compared. The standardisation is the scientific part; the data themselves are private and cannot be falsified, which is the criticism. Watson rejected introspection in 1913 for observable behaviour alone, and Nisbett and Wilson showed in 1977 that people cannot accurately report why they chose what they chose.
The basic assumptions of the following approaches:
An assumption is the founding belief an approach holds about where behaviour comes from. It is not a study and not a therapy, and that is where most of the marks go missing. Behaviourism holds that we are born a blank slate, that behaviour is learned from the environment by association and consequence, and that laws found in rats hold for people. Social learning theory adds that much learning is indirect, from watching models, with thought in between. The cognitive approach holds that internal mental processes are real and can be studied scientifically by inference. The biological approach holds that everything psychological is at first biological. The psychodynamic approach holds that unconscious forces and early childhood shape adult personality. Humanistic psychology holds that people have free will and are actively self-determining.
Learning approaches: i) the behaviourist approach, including classical conditioning and Pavlov’s research, operant conditioning, types of reinforcement and Skinner’s research; ii) social learning theory including imitation, identification, modelling, vicarious reinforcement, the role of mediational processes and Bandura’s research.
Behaviourism studies only what can be observed. In classical conditioning a reflex acquires a new trigger: Pavlov paired a bell with food until his dogs salivated to the bell alone, so a neutral stimulus became a conditioned stimulus producing a conditioned response. Operant conditioning works on consequences instead. Skinner’s rats pressed a lever for a food pellet, which is positive reinforcement, or to switch off an electric current, which is negative reinforcement; punishment weakens behaviour, and partial schedules of reinforcement resist extinction longest. Social learning theory keeps the learning and adds thinking. Bandura found that children who had watched an adult attack a Bobo doll reproduced the specific acts, and in the 1965 version those who saw the model rewarded imitated most. Mediational processes are attention, retention, motor reproduction and motivation.
The cognitive approach: the study of internal mental processes, the role of schema, the use of theoretical and computer models to explain and make inferences about mental processes. The emergence of cognitive neuroscience.
The cognitive approach puts the mind back into psychology but keeps the laboratory. Processes such as memory, perception and attention cannot be seen, so they are inferred: the researcher measures something observable, recall or reaction time, and reasons backwards to the process that produced it. A schema is a package of knowledge built from experience that fills gaps and shapes expectation, which is why Bartlett’s participants recalled the unfamiliar War of the Ghosts story shortened and reshaped towards their own culture. Models make the inference explicit: theoretical ones such as the multi-store model, and computer models treating the mind as input, processing and output. Cognitive neuroscience maps these processes onto tissue, from Broca linking left frontal damage to speech to scanning work locating episodic and semantic memory in different prefrontal regions.
The biological approach: the influence of genes, biological structures and neurochemistry on behaviour. Genotype and phenotype, genetic basis of behaviour, evolution and behaviour.
The biological approach argues that everything psychological is at first physical, so behaviour is explained by genes, brain structures, neurochemistry and evolution. Genotype is the genetic code a person inherits, phenotype is how that code is actually expressed, and the gap between them is environmental, which is why phenylketonuria need not damage a child whose diet is controlled from birth. Genetic influence is tested by twin studies comparing identical twins, who share all their genes, with non-identical twins, who share half: Nestadt reported concordance for obsessive compulsive disorder of about 68 per cent against 31 per cent. Neurochemistry adds neurotransmitters, low serotonin in depression and excess dopamine in schizophrenia, and evolution explains behaviours such as attachment as naturally selected because they aided survival.
The psychodynamic approach: the role of the unconscious, the structure of personality, that is Id, Ego and Superego, defence mechanisms including repression, denial and displacement, psychosexual stages.
Freud argued that most of the mind is unconscious, a store of repressed conflict that leaks out in dreams. Personality has three parts. The id is present at birth, entirely unconscious, and demands immediate pleasure. The superego forms around age five by identification with the same-sex parent, punishing with guilt. The ego works on the reality principle, managing the war between them using defence mechanisms: repression pushes a distressing memory out of awareness, denial refuses to accept an external reality, and displacement redirects a feeling onto a safer target. Personality develops through the psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital. Unresolved conflict leaves a fixation carried into adult behaviour. Freud used Little Hans, a boy with a horse phobia, as evidence for the Oedipus complex in the phallic stage.
Humanistic Psychology: free will, self-actualisation and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, focus on the self, congruence, the role of conditions of worth. The influence on counselling Psychology.
Humanistic psychology refuses the idea that people are pushed about by genes, conditioning or the unconscious, and insists instead that we have free will and actively choose. Maslow arranged motivation as a hierarchy of five needs, physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation at the top, with the lower deficiency needs having to be met before growth is possible. Rogers concentrated on the self: the self-concept a person holds and the ideal self they wish to be. Where the two overlap there is congruence; a wide gap produces low self-worth, and the usual cause is conditions of worth, parental regard offered only if the child behaves in a particular way. Client-centred therapy therefore supplies unconditional positive regard, empathy and genuineness, and became the basis of modern counselling.
Comparison of approaches.
Comparison is answered on criteria, never by placing two descriptions side by side, and the criteria are worth learning as a set. Nature and nurture: the biological approach is the strongest nature position and behaviourism the strongest nurture, with social learning theory and the psychodynamic approach interactionist. Determinism: biological, environmental, psychic and soft determinism respectively, against humanistic free will. Reductionism: biology reduces behaviour to genes and neurotransmitters and behaviourism to stimulus and response, while humanistic psychology insists on the whole person. Method: behaviourist, biological and cognitive research is nomothetic and experimental, psychodynamic and humanistic work idiographic and case-based. Then applications, drug therapy, token economies, cognitive behavioural therapy, psychoanalysis and counselling.
Your focus
- Describe Wundt's introspection procedure, naming the trained observers, controlled stimulus and standard instructions.
- Explain why opening the Leipzig laboratory in 1879 marks psychology separating from philosophy.
- Evaluate introspection against the criteria for a science, using Nisbett and Wilson and Watson's shift to behaviour.
Show all 30 objectives
- Describe the founding assumption of each approach as a belief about where behaviour comes from.
- Explain why saying behaviour is learned from the environment is an assumption while the Bobo doll study is not.
- Apply the assumptions to a described behaviour by giving the account two different approaches would offer for it.
- Describe Pavlov's procedure using UCS, UCR, NS, CS and CR in the correct order.
- Explain the difference between positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and punishment in the Skinner box.
- Apply the four mediational processes to a case of imitation, saying what each contributes between watching and doing.
- Evaluate the two learning approaches on control and application against demand characteristics and determinism.
- Explain inference as a method, showing how an unobservable process is deduced from a measured behaviour.
- Describe what a schema is and how it reshaped recall in Bartlett's War of the Ghosts.
- Apply the computer analogy to a mental process by naming its input, coding, storage and output stages.
- Evaluate the approach on objective method and its use in CBT against machine reductionism and artificial tasks.
- Explain the difference between genotype and phenotype, using PKU to show where the environment enters.
- Describe how twin studies test genetic influence, quoting Nestadt's 68% against 31% concordance for OCD.
- Apply neurochemical and evolutionary explanations to a behaviour, naming the transmitter or the survival advantage.
- Evaluate the approach on scientific method against genetic determinism and the shared environment confound in twins.
- Describe the id, ego and superego by their governing principle and the age at which each appears.
- Explain repression, denial and displacement separately, with a different example of each.
- Apply the psychosexual stages to an adult behaviour, naming the stage and the fixation that would explain it.
- Evaluate the approach on explanatory power against unfalsifiable concepts and case evidence such as Little Hans's phobia.
- Outline Maslow's five needs in order and say why deficiency needs must be met before self-actualisation.
- Explain congruence as the overlap of self-concept and ideal self and how conditions of worth widen the gap.
- Apply client-centred therapy to a case, naming unconditional positive regard, empathy and genuineness.
- Evaluate humanistic psychology on holism against vague concepts, thin evidence and its individualist bias.
- Compare two approaches on a stated criterion such as determinism, naming the criterion before either approach.
- Outline where each approach stands on nature and nurture, identifying the interactionist ones as interactionist.
- Explain the difference between nomothetic experimental and idiographic case methods and what each costs in credibility.
- Apply the approaches to therapy by matching drug therapy, token economies, CBT, psychoanalysis and counselling to each.
Approaches in Psychology exam tips
Marking Points
- Wundt opened the first laboratory devoted to psychology, in Leipzig in 1879, which is the point at which psychology separates from philosophy and physiology.
- Structuralism: the attempt to break conscious experience down into its component sensations, images and feelings.
- Introspection described as a procedure rather than named: trained participants, a controlled stimulus such as a metronome, identical instructions and systematic recording of inner experience.
- The criteria being claimed for a science: objectivity, control, replicability, empirical measurement and falsifiability.
- Evaluation: introspective reports are subjective and cannot be independently verified, Watson moved psychology to observable behaviour in 1913, and Nisbett and Wilson found that people misreport the causes of their own choices.
- Evaluation the other way: Wundt standardised and recorded his procedures, so his work is a forerunner of scientific psychology rather than a failed experiment.
- An assumption expressed as a belief about the origin of behaviour, for example that all behaviour is learned from the environment, rather than as a description of a study.
- Behaviourist: blank slate at birth, learning by classical and operant conditioning, only observable behaviour as data, and animal findings generalised to humans.
- Social learning: behaviour acquired by observation, imitation and vicarious reinforcement, with cognitive mediation between stimulus and response.
- Cognitive: internal mental processes are legitimate subject matter, inferred from behaviour and represented in theoretical or computer models.
- Biological: genes, neurochemistry, hormones and brain structure as the basis of behaviour, so the mind is treated as physical.
- Psychodynamic: the unconscious drives behaviour, personality has a tripartite structure, and early experience is formative.
- Humanistic: free will, the whole person, and subjective experience as the proper subject matter.
- Classical conditioning with the terms used correctly, unconditioned stimulus and response, neutral stimulus, conditioned stimulus and conditioned response, illustrated by Pavlov's bell, food and salivation.
- Operant conditioning as learning by consequence, with the Skinner box procedure described, not just named.
- Positive reinforcement adds something rewarding and negative reinforcement removes something unpleasant, both increasing the behaviour, while punishment decreases it.
- Social learning theory: modelling, imitation, identification with a model seen as similar or of high status, and vicarious reinforcement where the consequence is observed happening to the model.
- The four mediational processes, attention, retention, motor reproduction and motivation, placed between observing a model and imitating it.
- Bandura's Bobo doll research, including the later comparison in which a rewarded model produced the most imitation and a punished model the least.
- Evaluation: experimental control and application to token economies, against demand characteristics and the artificiality of hitting an inflatable doll, the ethics and generalisability of animal research, and environmental determinism.
- Internal mental processes, memory, perception, attention and thinking, treated as a legitimate and scientifically studiable subject.
- Inference explained as a method: observable behaviour is measured and the unobservable process is deduced from it.
- Schema as a mental framework built from experience that organises and interprets incoming information, with a consequence such as distorted recall or a stereotype.
- Theoretical models such as the multi-store model, and the computer analogy of input, coding, storage and output, with the point that a model can be tested.
- Cognitive neuroscience: scanning used to locate mental processes in the brain, evidenced by Broca's area or by episodic and semantic memory in different prefrontal regions.
- Evaluation: objective, controlled methods and applications to cognitive behavioural therapy and eyewitness testimony, against machine reductionism, artificial tasks and low external validity.
- Genotype as the inherited genetic make-up and phenotype as its expression, with the influence of environment on the phenotype named.
- The genetic basis of behaviour evidenced appropriately: twin studies compare monozygotic and dizygotic concordance, while family and adoption studies compare relatives who share different amounts of genes and environment.
- Biological structures: named brain regions and the nervous system linked to particular behaviour.
- Neurochemistry: a named neurotransmitter or hormone with an example, such as serotonin in depression or dopamine in schizophrenia.
- Evolution: natural selection explained, with a behaviour identified as adaptive because it raised survival or reproductive success.
- Evaluation: application to drug therapy and the use of objective scientific methods, against biological reductionism, genetic determinism, and the confound that identical twins also share more similar environments.
- The unconscious as the driving force behind behaviour, holding repressed material that surfaces indirectly in dreams or parapraxes.
- Tripartite personality: id on the pleasure principle from birth, ego on the reality principle from about the age of two, superego on the morality principle from about the age of five.
- The ego's task of balancing the demands of id, superego and external reality, which is what defence mechanisms exist to do.
- Repression, denial and displacement defined separately and correctly, each with its own example.
- The five psychosexual stages in order, each with its conflict, and fixation explained as the adult consequence of unresolved conflict.
- Evaluation: explanatory power and the founding of psychoanalysis, against unfalsifiable concepts, an evidence base of single case studies such as Little Hans's childhood phobia, and psychic determinism.
- Free will and self-determination stated as the founding claim, and contrasted with the determinism of the other approaches.
- Maslow’s hierarchy given in the right order with self-actualisation at the apex, and the rule that lower needs must be satisfied first.
- Self-actualisation defined as fulfilment of potential, and identified as a growth need rather than a deficiency need.
- Rogers on self-concept and ideal self, congruence defined as the overlap between them and incongruence as the source of low self-worth.
- Conditions of worth as conditional positive regard from parents, and the effect on the person's capacity to self-actualise.
- Client-centred therapy: unconditional positive regard, empathy and genuineness from the therapist, and the influence on counselling psychology.
- Evaluation: holism and an optimistic view of the person, against vague and hard-to-test concepts, a thin evidence base, and an individualist bias that travels poorly to collectivist cultures.
- A stated basis of comparison, such as determinism or method, introduced before either approach is described.
- Nature and nurture positions assigned accurately, with the interactionist approaches identified as such rather than forced onto one side.
- Determinism contrasted in its specific forms, biological, environmental, psychic and soft, against humanistic free will.
- Reductionism against holism, with the level of explanation each approach works at made explicit.
- Nomothetic, experimental methods contrasted with idiographic case study methods, and the consequence for scientific credibility.
- Views of development: discrete stage theory in the psychodynamic approach against continuous learning in behaviourism.
- Applications matched to approach: drug therapy, systematic desensitisation and token economies, cognitive behavioural therapy, psychoanalysis and client-centred counselling.
Examiner Tips
- 💡A four-mark outline of Wundt needs the laboratory, the aim, the procedure and one example of a stimulus; a string of dates earns nothing.
- 💡Where the question asks whether psychology is a science, set out criteria such as objectivity, replicability and falsifiability and judge introspection against each, rather than giving a verdict.
- 💡Questions here often pair Wundt with a later approach, so make the link explicit: behaviourism kept the laboratory and threw out the introspective data.
- 💡If two assumptions are asked for, number them and give each one sentence of belief plus one sentence of what follows from it.
- 💡Start each with 'this approach assumes that', which forces the answer into the right form and stops it drifting into a study.
- 💡In an applied question, name the assumption first and then read the scenario back through it, rather than describing the approach in the abstract.
- 💡Set out classical conditioning in three labelled stages, before, during and after conditioning, so the examiner can credit each step in sequence.
- 💡In a scenario question, quote the phrase from the stem that shows the model or the consequence and attach the technical term to it, rather than describing the theory and hoping the link is obvious.
- 💡Extended response questions require substantial evaluation, so plan three evaluation paragraphs before writing anything.
- 💡A question on models wants the difference: theoretical models are diagrams of stages, computer models are programs or analogies that can be run and tested.
- 💡Anchor each descriptive point to one study, Bartlett for schema and imaging work for neuroscience, so every sentence carries evidence.
- 💡Where the question says 'refer to the stimulus material', name the mental process shown in the scenario before explaining it.
- 💡Twin data is a favourite for application questions: state which twins, quote both figures, draw the inference, then comment on it.
- 💡An evolutionary explanation earns credit only when the survival or reproductive advantage is spelled out, never when the behaviour is simply called adaptive.
- 💡Evaluation of reductionism scores best when it names what is left out, for example the life event a drug treatment ignores.
- 💡Scenario questions almost always plant a defence mechanism, so lift the phrase from the stem, name the mechanism and then explain it.
- 💡Use falsifiability as an argument rather than a label: say what observation could ever show the theory to be wrong.
- 💡Do not spend an answer on the Oedipus complex when the question asks about the structure of personality; each carries its own marks.
- 💡List the hierarchy from the bottom upwards; naming all five levels in the wrong order still loses marks.
- 💡In an application question about therapy, describe what the counsellor actually does rather than restating the theory.
- 💡Free will against determinism is the sharpest contrast with any other approach, and reads as evaluation rather than description.
- 💡Put a comparison connective in every paragraph, such as 'whereas' or 'by contrast', so the comparison is visible on the page.
- 💡Two approaches compared on three criteria scores better than five approaches each mentioned once.
- 💡Keep description concise and make each comparison explicit by applying the same criterion to both approaches.
Common Mistakes
- Calling introspection unscientific and stopping there; the mark is for saying why, that the data are subjective and no second observer can check them.
- Writing that Wundt invented psychology or ran the first experiment, when what he founded was the first dedicated laboratory and a standardised method.
- Reducing introspection to thinking about your own thoughts, and losing the controlled stimulus and identical instructions that make it a procedure at all.
- Answering with the evidence instead of the belief: Pavlov's dogs support the behaviourist assumption, they are not the assumption.
- Giving one assumption twice in different words when two are asked for, such as 'behaviour is learned' and 'we learn from our environment'.
- Presenting social learning theory as pure behaviourism and dropping the mediational element, which is the thing that separates them.
- Calling negative reinforcement a punishment; negative reinforcement removes something unpleasant and makes the behaviour more likely, punishment makes it less likely.
- Saying Bandura proved that watching violence makes children aggressive, when what was measured was imitation of specific acts on a doll built to be struck.
- Describing vicarious reinforcement as the observer being rewarded, when the whole point is that the reward is seen happening to somebody else.
- Blurring the two kinds of conditioning by writing that Pavlov's dogs learned to salivate in order to get food, which describes an operant response.
- Defining a schema as a memory; it is a framework of expectations that shapes what is encoded and what is recalled.
- Writing that cognitive psychologists study the brain, when what they study are processes inferred from behaviour, with neuroscience the recent addition.
- Treating the computer analogy as a claim that the mind really is a machine, then evaluating a claim nobody made instead of the usefulness of the model.
- Quoting a concordance rate below one hundred per cent as proof that genes cause the disorder, without drawing the conclusion it forces, that environment must contribute too.
- Using genotype and phenotype as if they were synonyms, or offering an example in which no environmental influence appears.
- Claiming a neurotransmitter causes a disorder when the evidence is correlational and the drugs that alter it work for only some patients.
- Describing defence mechanisms as conscious coping strategies; they operate unconsciously, which is precisely why they distort reality.
- Giving denial and repression the same example: denial refuses an external fact, repression buries an internal memory.
- Leaving out that the superego forms at the end of the phallic stage through identification with the same-sex parent, which is the link between the stages and personality.
- Confusing Little Hans's childhood phobia (which Freud interpreted as evidence for the Oedipus complex) with an adult fixation.
- Confusing the therapist's congruence, meaning genuineness, with congruence between self-concept and ideal self; the question decides which sense is wanted.
- Presenting the hierarchy as fixed for everybody, with no comment that in collectivist cultures belonging may outrank personal esteem.
- Calling humanistic psychology unscientific and stopping there, when the marks come from explaining that it rejects the scientific method deliberately in favour of subjective experience.
- Writing two separate descriptions and leaving the comparison for the examiner to infer, which holds the answer in the lowest band.
- Calling the cognitive approach deterministic without the qualifier; it takes a soft determinist position in which thought is influenced but choice remains.
- Labelling the psychodynamic approach as pure nurture, when innate drives and the id are as nature-based as anything in the biological approach.