The Five Main Theoretical Approaches to Psychology - Essay Example

Introduction to Psychology Task1: Outline the five main theoretical approaches to psychology Psychology which is distinctively defined as the scientific study of behaviour and mental processes has been one of the most significant scientific disciplines relevant in various aspects of human life and a basic understanding of this discipline can help people in their life and work. It is elemental to recognise that there are various different approaches in the contemporary psychology and the five main theoretical approaches to psychology are the physiological approach, the behaviourist approach, the psycho-dynamic approach, the cognitive approach, and the humanist approach. It is essential to have a clear idea about these five main approaches (also called perspectives) in psychology in order to comprehend the vast and vital role of this scientific study in human life and the different areas of life and work. Significantly, an approach may be comprehended as a perspective or view that involves certain assumptions or beliefs about human behaviour and it is essential to comprehend the various methods of these approaches. In a close understanding of these approaches to psychology, it becomes evident that that every approach incorporates several different theories within it which share various common assumptions. "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). Therefore, the five significant approaches to psychology, which were adopted by the psychologists in the 1950s to understand human nature and behaviour, have been most vital in order to explain the different types of behaviour and give different angles of human behaviour. The physiological approach to psychology deals with the investigation of the brain function in healthy and impaired individuals, the brain chemistry and psychology, such as serotonin and mood, and the genes and psychology, such as twin studies and intelligence. Significantly, the physiological approach to psychology assumes that biology is the underlying aspect of human behaviour and it has reductionist and deterministic functions. The reductionist approach is concerned with the explanations at a more basic level, whereas the deterministic approach assumes that behaviour is directly determined by biology. The physiological and biochemical changes in human beings come under the subjects of study in the physiological approach to psychology and it is a productive as well as popular approach to psychology. The physiological approach to psychology is productive in the sense that it has provided explanations in a range of areas of psychology, such as the mental health, individual differences, and social behaviour, and has given therapeutic interventions in psychology including drug treatments for depression. As a popular approach to psychology, it has caught the public imagination and the genetic theories of this approach offer a handy framework for understanding ourselves. The behaviourist approach to psychology is an important approach which rejects the investigation of internal mental processes, emphasises the examination of observable behaviour as well as the importance of the environment. According to this approach, behaviour can be comprehended as the result of learned associations between stimuli and responses to these stimuli and the main theories include the classical conditioning theory of Pavlov and the Operant conditioning theory of Skinner. "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." (Approaches to Psychology). The psycho-dynamic approach, initiated by Sigmund Freud, is an important approach to psychology which empathises that mind has three important parts such as conscious, unconscious and preconscious and it is concerned with changes in thinking. The conscious deals with thoughts and perceptions and the preconscious is available to consciousness, e.g. memories and stored knowledge, whereas the unconscious is concerned with the wishes and desires formed in childhood when the biological urges determine most of human behaviour. According to this approach, the personality of a human being has three major components such as id, ego and superego. The most significant impact of this approach to psychology is that it incorporates theories of personality, motivation, development, and the therapeutic techniques in clinical and counselling psychology. The major limitations of the approach are that it is methodologically poor, un-testable, and unscientific and it has a limited impact on scientific psychology. The cognitive approach to psychology is the most important approach to experimental psychology in which the cognitive aspect of human mind is given prominence and it is concerned with changes in thinking and behaviour. The cognitive psychology investigates memory, language, perception etc and it is used in problem solving and other areas such as social, developmental psychology. This approach to psychology emphasises active mental processes and uses experimental methods as well as computer modelling and neuropsychology. "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) 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)." (Approaches to Psychology). Significantly, the cognitive approach to psychology is an extremely scientific approach and typically uses lab experiments to study human behaviour and it has many applications in modern day, including the cognitive therapy and eyewitness testimony. The humanist approach to psychology rejects determinism, the positivism of science etc and emphasises free will and holism or the need to study the whole person. "The humanist approach aimed to investigate all the uniquely human aspects of experience such as love, hope, creativity, etc, and emphasised the importance of the individual's interaction with the environment. Humanists, such as Maslow, believed that every individual has the need to self-actualise or reach their potential, and Rogers developed client-centred therapy to help individuals in this process of self-actualisation." (Hill 2001, P. 19). Significantly, the humanist approach to psychology has a considerable influence on counselling through the development of client-centred therapy, establishment of counselling as an independent profession and the development of research techniques to evaluate the effectiveness of treatment, although it has also been evaluated as unscientific, with limited impact on mainstream psychology and limited evidence for theories. Task 2 A profound understanding of the various types of memory is essential in comprehending the working of human mind and intellect. There are various types of human memory and often a distinction between declarative and procedural memory as well as between short-term and long-term memory is made. Declarative memory may be comprehended as a type of memory which is frequently encountered by facts and data, whereas the procedural memory is used for sequences of events, processes, and routines. "Declarative memory is memory for repeatedly encountered facts and data such as who is president, what is the square root of 25, and where you were born. Procedural memory, by contrast, is specifically memory for sequences of events, processes, and routines. Deciding which letter of the alphabet has three vertical strokes (M) involves declarative memory. Remembering how to tie your shoes, ride a bike, or shoot a layup on a basketball court requires procedural memory." (Declarative vs. Procedural Memory). It is also important to distinguish between Short-Term Memory (STM) and Long-Term Memory (LTM) and, in cognitive psychology, memory is usually divided into three storage systems: sensory, short-term, and long-term. Short-Term Memory is the memory of the cognitive aspect of mind which lasts for a short period of time and a selective attention is the determining factor that helps in recognising what information moves from sensory memory to short-term memory. Most often, the short-term memory is stored as sounds and is vulnerable to interruption or interference. On the contrary, the Long-Term Memory is comparatively permanent storage which lasts in memory for a long period of time. Significantly, one's knowledge that is stored in e Long-Term Memory determines one's perceptions of the world. It also provides the framework to which more knowledge is attached. In psychology, the Von Restorff effect, which is named after the German psychologist Hedwig von Restorff, is an important phenomenon of memory in which more things are more likely to be recalled than common things. It refers to the effect first studied by the gestalt psychologist von Restorff which helps individuals in learning strange or different items quickly. "The von Restorff effect is the increased likelihood of remembering unique or distinctive events or objects versus those that are common. The von Restorff effect is primarily the result of the increased attention given to the distinctive items in a set, where a set may be a list of words, a number of objects, a sequence of events, or the names and faces of people." (Lidwell, Butler, and Holden 2003, P. 204). Also called the isolation effect, the von Restorff effect occurs when there is a difference in context or a difference in experience. Another most important theory in psychology is the theory of multiple intelligences, developed in 1983 by Dr. Howard Gardner, which brings out the limitations of the traditional notion of intelligence which was based on I.Q. testing. Instead of the deficient traditional notion of intelligence, Dr. Gardner proposed eight different intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults and they are linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, spatial intelligence, bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence, musical intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, and naturalist intelligence. "The theory of multiple intelligences also has strong implications for adult learning and development. Many adults find themselves in jobs that do not make optimal use of their most highly developed intelligences (for example, the highly bodily-kinaesthetic individual who is stuck in a linguistic or logical desk-job when he or she would be much happier in a job where they could move around, such as a recreational leader, a forest ranger, or physical therapist)." (Armstrong 2000). There is immense scope for measurability in the theory of multiple intelligences which presents a problem for the theory as it helps one in realizing the various aspects of the intelligence. In short, Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences has an important significance in the overall theory of intelligence. Bibliography "Approaches to Psychology." [online]. Psychology Approaches. Last Accessed 15 June, 2009 at: http://www.simplypsychology.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/perspective.html ARMSTRONG, Thomas. (2000). [online]. "Multiple Intelligences." Last Accessed 15 June, 2009 at: http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/multiple_intelligences.htm "Declarative vs. Procedural Memory." [online]. Last Accessed 15 June, 2009 at: http://www.intropsych.com/ch06_memory/declarative_vs._procedural_memory.html HILL, Grahame. (2001). A level psychology through diagrams. London: Oxford University Press. P. 19. LIDWELL, William., BUTLER, Jill., and HOLDEN, Kritina. (2003). Universal Principles of Design: A Cross Disciplinary Reference. Rockport Publishers. P. 204. Read More