Approaches Introduction
There are various different approaches in contemporary psychology. An approach is a perspective (i.e. view) that involves certain assumptions (i.e. beliefs) about people: the way they function, which aspects of them are worthy of study and what research methods are appropriate for undertaking this study. There may be several different theories within an approach, but they all share these common assumptions.There are 5 main approaches in psychology:
Behaviourism | Humanism | Biological | Psychodynamic | Cognitive
You may wonder why there are so many different approaches to psychology and whether one approach is correct and others wrong. Most psychologists would agree that no one approach is correct, although in the past, in the early days of psychology, the behaviourist would have said their approach was the only truly scientific one.
Each approach has its strengths and weaknesses, and brings something different to our understanding of human behaviour. For this reasons, it is important that psychology does have different approaches to the understanding and study of human and animal behaviour.
Approaches to Psychology Summary
Below is a brief summary of the 5 main approaches (sometimes called perspectives) in psychology.
Behaviourist Approach
If your layperson's idea of psychology has always been of people in laboratories wearing white coats and watching hapless rats try to negotiate mazes in order to get to their dinner, then you are probably thinking of behavioural psychology. Behaviourism is different from most other approaches because they view people (and animals) as controlled by their environment and specifically that we are the result of what we have learned from our environment. Behaviourism is concerned with how environmental factors (called stimuli) affect observable behaviour (called the response). The behaviourist approach proposes two main processes whereby people learn from their environment: namely classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning involves learning by association, and operant conditioning involves learning from the consequences of behaviour.Behaviourism also believes in scientific methodology (e.g. controlled experiments), and that only observable behaviour should be studies because this can be objectively measured. Behaviourism rejects the idea that people have free will, and believes that the environment determines all behaviour. Behaviourism is the scientific study of observable behaviour working on the basis that behaviour can be reduced to learned S-R (Stimulus-Response) units.
Classical Conditioning (CC) was studied by the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov. Though looking into natural reflexes and neutral stimuli he managed to condition dogs to salivate to the sound of a bell through repeated associated of the sound of the bell and food. The principles of CC have been applied in many therapies. These include systematic desensitisation for phobias (step-by-step exposed to feared stimulus at once) and Aversion therapy for socially undesirable behaviours and bad habits (individual associates a disliked response to the habit through repeated pairing). However CC only deals with involuntary behaviour, operant conditioning tackles voluntary behaviour.
B.F. Skinner investigated Operant Conditioning of voluntary and involuntary behaviour. Skinner felt that some behaviour could be explained by the person's motive. Therefore behaviour occurs for a reason, and the three main behaviour shaping techniques are positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and punishment. Behaviourism has been criticised in the way it under-estimates 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.
Psychodynamic Approach
Who hasn't heard of Sigmund Freud? So many expressions from our daily life come from Freud's theories of psychoanalysis - subconscious, denial, repression and anal personality to name only a few. Freud believes that events in our childhood can have a significant impact on our behaviour as adults. He also believed that people have little free will to make choices in life. Instead our behaviour is determined by the unconscious mind and childhood experiences.
Freud’s psychoanalysis is both a theory and a therapy. It is the original psychodynamic theory and inspired psychologists such as Jung and Erikson to develop their own psychodynamic theories. Freud’s work is vast and he has contributed greatly to psychology as a discipline.
Freud, the founder of Psychoanalysis, explained the human mind as like an iceberg, with only a small amount of it being visible, that is our observable behaviour, but it is the unconscious, submerged mind that has the most, underlying influence on our behaviour. Freud used three main methods of accessing the unconscious mind: free association, dream analysis and slips of the tongue. He believed that the unconscious mind consisted of three components: the 'id' the 'ego' and the 'superego'. The 'id' contains two main instincts: 'Eros', which is the life instinct, which involves self-preservation and sex which is fuelled by the 'libido' energy force. 'Thanatos' is the death instinct, whose energies, because they are less powerful than those of 'Eros' are channelled away from ourselves and into aggression towards others.
The 'id' and the 'superego' are constantly in conflict with each other, and the 'ego' tries to resolve the discord. If this conflict is not resolved, we tend to use defence mechanisms to reduce our anxieties. Psychoanalysis attempts to help patients resolve their inner conflicts.
An aspect of psychoanalysis is Freud's theory of Psychosexual Development. It shows how early experiences affect adult personality. Stimulation of different areas of the body is important as the child progresses through the important developmental stages. Too much or too little can have bad consequences later. The most important stage is the phallic stage where the focus of the libido is on the genitals. During this stage little boys experience the 'Oedipus complex', and little girls experience the 'Electra complex'. These complexes result in children identifying with their same-sex parent, which enables them to learn sex-appropriate behaviour and a morale code of conduct.
However it has been criticised in the way that it over emphasises of importance of sexuality and under emphasises of role of social relationships. The theory is not scientific, and can't be proved as it is circular. The sample was biased, consisting of middle-class, middle-aged neurotic women. Never the less 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.
Humanistic Approach
Humanistic psychology is a psychological approach that emphasises the study of the whole person (know 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 behaving. Humanistic psychologists believe that an individual's behaviour is connected to his inner feelings and self-image.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 lives.
The humanistic approach 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. Because of this focus on the person and his or her personal experiences and subjective perception of the world the humanists regarded scientific methods as inappropriate for studying behaviour. Two of the most influential and enduring theories in humanistic psychology that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s are those of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow.
Cognitive Approach
Psychology was institutionalised as a science in 1879 by Wilhelm Wundt who found the first psychological laboratory. His initiative was soon followed by other European and American Universities. These early laboratories, through experiments, explored areas such as memory and sensory perception, both of which Wundt believed to be closely related to physiological processes in the brain. The whole movement had evolved from the early philosophers, such as Aristotle and Plato. Today this approach is known as Cognitive Psychology.
Cognitive Psychology revolves around the notion that if we want to know what makes people tick then the way to do it is to figure out what processes are actually going on in their minds. In other words, psychologists from this perspective study cognition which is ‘the mental act or process by which knowledge is acquired.’ 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 an output procedures. 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.
Biological Approach
We can thank Charles Darwin (1859) for demonstrating in the idea that genetics and evolution play a role in influencing human behaviour. Theorists in the biological perspective who study behavioural genomics consider how genes affect behaviour. Now that the human genome is mapped, perhaps, we will someday understand more precisely how behaviour is affected by the DNA we inherit. Biological factors such as chromosomes, hormones and the brain all have a significant influence on human behaviour, for example gender.
The biological approach believes that most behaviour is inherited and has an adaptive (or evolutionary) function. For example, in the weeks immediately after the birth of a child, levels of testosterone in fathers drop by more than 30 per cent. This has an evolutionary function. Testosterone-deprived men are less likely to wander off in search of new mates to inseminate. They are also less aggressive, which is useful when there is a baby around.
Biological psychologists explain behaviours in neurological terms, i.e. the physiology and structure of the brain and how this influences behaviour. Many biological psychologists have concentrated on abnormal behaviour and have tried to explain it. For example biological psychologists believe that schizophrenia is affected by levels of dopamine (a neurotransmitter). These findings have helped psychiatry take off and help relieve he symptoms of the mental illness through drugs. However Freud and other disciplines would argue that this just treats the symptoms and not the cause. This is where health psychologists take the finding that biological psychologists produce and look at the environmental factors that are involved to get a better picture.
Approaches Conclusion
Therefore, in conclusion, there are so many different approaches to psychology to explain the different types of behaviour and give different angles. No one approach has explanatory powers over the rest. Only with all the different types of psychology which sometimes contradict one another (nature-nurture debate), overlap with each other (e.g. psychoanalysis and child psychology) or build upon one another (biological and health psychologist) can we understand and create effective solutions when problems arise so we have a healthy body and healthy mind.The fact that there are different approaches represents the complexity and richness of human (and animal) behaviour. A scientific approach, such as behaviourism or cognitive psychology, tends to ignore the subjective (i.e. personal) experiences that people have. The humanistic approach does recognise human experience, but largely at the expense of being non-scientific in its methods and ability to provide evidence. The psychodynamic approach concentrates too much on the unconscious mind and childhood. As such it tends to lose sight of the role of socialisation (which is different in each country) and the possibility of free will. The biological approach reduces humans to a set of mechanisms and physical structures that are clearly essential and important (e.g. genes). However, it fails to account for consciousness and the influence of the environment on behaviour.
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