An approach is a perspective or view that involves certain assumptions or beliefs about human behaviour regarding the way they function, which aspects of them are worthy of study and what research methods are appropriate for undertaking this study. While psychologists may differ on which kinds of behaviour are important, they do agree that the study of behaviour must be systematic. The use of a systematic method of asking and answering questions about why people think, act, and feel as they do reduces the chances of coming to false conclusions. Many different approaches are necessary to understand the complex richness of human behaviour. There may be several different theories within an approach, but they all share these common assumptions.
A brief summary of the 5 main approaches of psychology (sometimes called perspectives) in psychology, is given in this article.
1 PSYCHOLOGY AS A STUDY OF MIND
Structuralism: The establishment of psychology as a separate, formal field of study is widely thought to have begun in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany when Wilhelm Wundt started his Laboratory of Psychology. In his laboratory, he modelled his research on the mind after that he had studied in other natural sciences. He developed a method of self-observation called introspection to collect information about the mind. In carefully controlled situations, trained subjects reported their thoughts, and Wundt tried to map out the basic structure of thought processes. Wundt's experiments were very important historically, not so much because he advanced our understanding of the mind, but because his work attracted many students who carried on the tradition of psychological research.
Functionalism:
Regarded as a
close rival for the honour of founder of psychology, the American psychologist
William James. In his text Principles of Psychology (1890), James speculated that
thinking, feeling, learning, remembering and all activities of the mind, serve
one major function, to help us survive as a species. Rather than focusing on
the structure of the mind as Wundt did, James focused on the functions of the
conscious mind and the goals or functions of behaviours. Although James did not
produce any significant experimental findings, his writings and theories are
still influential.
2.
PSYCHOLOGY AS THE STUDY OF
UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSES
Psychoanalysis:
While the first psychologists were
interested in understanding the conscious mind, Sigmund Freud, a physician who
practiced in Vienna until 1938, was more interested in the unconscious mind. He
believed that our conscious experiences are only the tip of the iceberg, that
beneath the surface are primitive biological urges that are in conflict with
the requirements of society and morality. According to Freud, these unconscious
motivations and conflicts are responsible for most human behaviour. He thought
that they were responsible for many medically unexplainable physical symptoms
that troubled his patients.
Freud used a new method for
indirectly studying unconscious processes. In this technique, known as free
association, a patient said everything that came
to mind, no matter how absurd or irrelevant it seemed, without attempting to
produce logical or meaningful statements. The person was instructed not to edit
or censor the thoughts. Freud’s role, that of psychoanalyst, was to be objective; he merely sat
and listened, then interpreted the associations. Free association, Freud
believed, revealed the operation of unconscious processes. Freud also believed
that dreams are expressions of the most primitive unconscious urges. To learn
more about these urges, he developed dream analysis which is basically an extension of
free association in which the patient applied the same technique to his or her
dreams (Freud, 1940).
While working out his ideas, Freud
took careful, extensive notes on all his patients and treatment sessions. He
used these records, or case studies, to develop and illustrate a comprehensive
theory of personality (Ewen, 1993).
In many areas of psychology today,
Freud’s view of unconscious motivation remains a powerful and controversial
influence. Modem psychologists may support, alter, or attempt to disprove it,
but most have a strong opinion about it. The technique of free association is
still used by psychoanalysts, and the method of intensive case study is still a
major tool for investigating behaviour.
Nevertheless, this approach has been criticised in the way that it over
emphasises of importance of sexuality and under emphasised of the role of
social relationships. The theory is not scientific, and cannot be proved as it
is circular. Nevertheless psychoanalysis has been greatly contributory to
psychology in that it has encouraged many modern theorists to modify it for the
better, using its basic principles, but eliminating its major flaws.
3. Psychology as the Study of Individual Differences
Sir Francis Galton, a nineteenth-century English mathematician and scientist, wanted to
understand how heredity (inherited traits) influences a person’s abilities,
character, and behaviour. Galton (1869) traced the ancestry of various eminent
people and found that greatness runs in families. (This was appropriate, since
Galton himself was considered a genius and his family included at least one
towering intellectual figure, a cousin named Charles Darwin). He therefore
concluded that genius or eminence is a hereditary trait. This conclusion was
like the blind men’s ideas about the elephant. Galton did not consider the
possibility that the tendency of genius to run in eminent families might be a
result of the exceptional environments and socioeconomic advantages that also
tend to run in such families.
The data Galton used were based on
his study of biographies. However, not content to limit his inquiry to indirect
accounts, he went on to invent procedures for directly testing the abilities
and characteristics of a wide range of people. These tests were the primitive
ancestors of the modem personality tests and intelligence tests that virtually
all of you have taken at some time.
Although Galton began his work
shortly before psychology emerged as an independent discipline, his theories
and techniques quickly became central aspects of the new science. In 1883 he
published a book, Inquiries into Human
Faculty and Its Development, which is regarded as the first study of individual
differences. Galton’s writings raised the issue of whether behaviour is determined
by heredity or environment, a subject that remains a focus of controversy.
Galton’s influence can also be seen in the current widespread use of
psychological tests.
Evolutionary
approach: This studies how evolutionary ideas, such as
adaptation & natural selection, explain behaviours & mental processes.
A central
claim of evolutionary psychology is that the brain (and therefore the mind)
evolved to solve problems encountered by our hunter-gatherer ancestors during
the upper Pleistocene period over 10,000 years ago.
The
Evolutionary approach explains behaviour in terms of the selective pressures
that shape behaviour. Most behaviours that we see/display are believed to have
developed during our EEA (environment of evolutionary adaptation) to help us
survive.
A strength
of this approach is that it can explain behaviours that appear dysfunctional,
such as anorexia, or behaviours that make little sense in a modern context,
such as our biological stress response when
finding out we are overdrawn at the bank.
4.
Psychology as the Study of Observable
Behaviour
Behaviourism. The pioneering work of Russian
physiologist Ivan Pavlov, who won the Nobel Prize in 1904 for his studies
related to the physiology of digestion, charted another new course for
psychological investigation. In a now-famous experiment, Pavlov rang a tuning fork
each time he gave a dog some meat powder. The dog would naturally salivate when
the powder reached its mouth. After Pavlov repeated the procedure several
times, the dog would salivate when it heard the tuning fork, even if no food
appeared. It had been conditioned to associate the sound with the food.
The conditioned reflex was a response
(salivation) elicited by a stimulus (the tuning fork) other than the one that
first produced it (food). The concept was used by psychologists as a new tool,
as a means of exploring the development of behaviour. Using this tool, they
could begin to account for behaviour as the product of prior experience. This
enabled them to explain how certain acts and certain differences among
individuals were the result of learning.
Psychologists who stressed
investigating observable behaviour became known as behaviourists. Their position, as formulated by
American psychologist John Broadus
Watson (1924), was that psychology should concern itself only with the observable facts of behaviour. Watson further
maintained that all behaviour, even apparently instinctive behaviour, is the
result of conditioning and occurs because the appropriate stimulus is present
in the environment.
Although it was Watson who defined
and solidified the behaviourist position, it was Frederic B. Skinner, another American psychologist, who refined and
popularised it. Skinner attempted to show how, in principle, his laboratory
techniques might be applied to society as a whole. In his classic novel Walden Two (1949), he portrayed his idea of
Utopia, i.e. a small town in which conditioning, through rewarding those who
display behaviour that is considered desirable, rules every conceivable facet
of life.
Skinner exerted great influence on
both the general public and the science of psychology. His face was familiar to
television audiences, and his book Beyond
Freedom and Dignity (1971) became a bestseller. A number of Walden Two communities have
been formed in various parts of the country, and many people toilet-train their
children, lose weight, quit smoking, and overcome phobias by using
Skinner-inspired methods.
Skinner was widely criticised, for
many people were convinced that his “manipulative” conditioning techniques are
a means of limiting personal freedom. He has also been heartily applauded as a
social visionary. In any event, his theories and methods have been highly
influential in psychology. Behaviourist-inspired techniques compete with more
traditional psychotherapy for use in the treatment of various psychological
disorders. The techniques of reinforcement, or controlled reward and punishment,
have become increasingly popular in education, and Skinner’s teaching machine
was the forerunner of modem computer-assisted instruction. Moreover, a vast
number of today’s psychologists use Skinner’s research methods to obtain
precise findings in their laboratory experiments.
Behaviourism has been criticised in the way it underestimates the
complexity of human behaviour. Many studies used animals which are hard to generalise
to humans and it cannot explain, for example the speed in which we pick up
language. There must be biological factors involved.
Humanism. Humanistic psychology developed as a reaction to the
behavioural movement. Humanistic psychologists, notably Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Rollo May, describe human nature as active and creative rather
than passively reacting to external stimuli. Humanistic psychology is a
psychological perspective that emphasises the study of the whole person (known
as holism). Humanistic psychologists look at human behaviour, not only
through the eyes of the observer but through the eyes of the person doing the
behaviour. The humanistic
perspective centres on the view that each person is unique and individual, and
has the free will to change at any time in his or her life.
The
humanistic perspective suggests that we are each responsible for our own
happiness and well-being as humans. We have the innate (i.e. inborn) capacity
for self-actualisation, which is our unique desire to achieve our highest
potential as people. Unlike
behaviourists, humanists feel that the human mind is able to influence and
change the world in which it functions.
5 PSYCHOLOGY AS THE STUDY OF COGNITIVE PROCESSES
Another reaction to the narrow
perspective of S-R (Stimulus-Response) explanations of behaviour has been of growing importance since the mid-1970s, of internal, or cognitive,
explanations of behaviour. Sometimes using computer-based models of behaviour
for their studies, cognitive psychologists recognise that some of the processes
that govern human and animal behaviour are internal. We perceive and interpret our world, we think about problems, we
constantly assess our knowledge of ourselves and others, and we use language to
communicate with one another.
The
cognitive approach is concerned with “mental” functions such as memory,
perception, attention etc. It views people as being similar to
computers in the way we process information (e.g. input-process-output). For
example, both human brains and computers process information, store data and
have input and output procedure.
This had led
cognitive psychologists to explain that memory comprises of three stages:
-
encoding (where information is received and
attended to),
-
storage (where the information is retained)
and
-
retrieval (where the information is recalled).
It is an
extremely scientific approach and typically uses lab experiments to study human
behaviour. The cognitive approach has many applications including cognitive
therapy and eyewitness
testimony.
If, for example, you need a favour from a brother or sister who is almost your age, you will probably ask for it. If you know, however, that he or she is studying for a big test or has just had an argument with a boyfriend or girlfriend, you are likely to delay making your request. Your knowledge of his or her condition or your memory of the results of asking for a favour last time has altered your behaviour.
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