AQA A Level Psychology Approaches
Exam 2024
1.Who was Wundt and what did he do - ANS -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.
2.Outline introspection and problems with it - ANS -Introspection is
a psychological method to analyze someone’s 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 stimulus 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 people’s subjective thoughts. Secondly it doesn't
provide data that can be used with certain reliability.
3.What are the 5 factors that need to be looked at when deciding whether psychology is a science - ANS -Objectivity
Control
Predictability
Hypothesis Testing
Replication
4.Evaluate the strengths and limitations to a scientific approach in psychology -ANS -:) - 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 behavior 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 behavior
:( - A lot of psychological behavior 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 behavior can be viewed
scientifically as it is not subject to laws and regularities that science
implies 5.The first worldwide accepted approach was behaviorism, outline
this -ANS -Behaviorism, also known as learning theory, started in the early 1900's by Watson who believed that psychological research before this wasn't scientific enough.
There are three assumptions behaviorism makes:
1) All behavior is learnt (exception of inborn reflexes)
2) Animals and humans learn in the same way
3) The minds are irrelevant
6.Outline Pavlov's classical conditioning - ANS -Pavlov was studying dogs’ salivation however during his studies he found that dogs would end up salivating before there was any food, the direction of his studies changed and outlined classical conditioning.
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