AQA A Level Psychology Approaches Review Questions and Answers

Who was Wundt and what did he do He is known as the father of Psychology opening the first institute for experimental psychology in Germany in 1879. He separated psychology from philosophy and focused on studying the mind. He took a very reductionist approach where he simplified everything down to cause and effect. Outline introspection and problems with it Introspection is a psychological method to analyse someones thoughts and feelings internally, this was done as there were no brain scans or computers at the time and thus they used this technique of presenting a stimuli and asking how they felt after seeing it. Problems with it include how it does not explain how the mind works it simply relies on peoples subjective thoughts. Secondly it doesn't provide data that can be used with certain reliability. What are the 5 factors that need to be looked at when deciding whether psychology is a science Objectivity Control Predictability Hypothesis Testing Replication Evaluate the strengths and limitations to a scientific approach in psychology :) - Due to its reliance on objectivity and scientific methods knowledge acquired is more than just the passive acceptance of facts :) - Because scientific methods believe in determinism they are able to establish the causes of behaviour through the use of methods that are replicable :) - If scientific methods no longer fit the facts then they can easily be refined or abandoned meaning that scientific knowledge is self corrective :( - Be focusing on objectivity and control in experiments they tend to be too unrealistic and we lack an insight into natural behaviour :( - A lot of psychological behaviour is unobservable and thus cannot be measured with much accuracy meaning that the gap between actual data and theories put forward is quite large :( - Not all psychologists believe that human behaviour can be viewed scientifically as it is not subject to laws and regularities that science implies