1. Areas
Area 1: Core study 1: Core study 2: Area 2: Core study 1: Area 3: Core study 1: Area 4: Core study 1: Area 5: Core study 1:

2. Perspectives
Perspective 1: Perspective 2: 1. Nature vs Nurture 5. Usefulness of research 2. Freewill vs Determinism 6. Ethical considerations 3. Reductionism vs Holism 7. Conducting socially sensitive research 4. Individual vs situational 8. Psychology as a science
Debates

3. Debates For each debate you must know:
1. The defining principles and concepts of each debates (Example question: Outline the Nature vs Nurture debate).
2. The different positions within each debate (Example question: How is the nature side different from the nurture side?)
3. Research to illustrate different positions within each debate (core studies) (Example question: How does Bandura study fall under the nurture side?)
4. How an area may supports a debate (Example question: How does the biological area support the nurture debate?)
5. How a perspective may support a debate (Example question: How does the behaviourist perspective support the nurture debate?)
6. How each debate is different from and/or similar to other debates (Example question: How is the nature debate similar to the deterministic debate?)

4. Nature vs Nurture
The nature vs. nurture debate within psychology is concerned with the extent to which particular aspects of behaviour are a product of either inheritance (i.e., genetic) or acquired (i.e., learned) characteristics.
NATURE side suggests…
Large emphasis on biology
All human traits are passed down from one generation to the next through genes such as DNA. For example: Hair colour; Eye colour
If this is true, you could suggest psychological traits could be traced to genetic factors
The belief is that all human traits are inherited from mother and father
KEY TERMS: Genetics, DNA, inherited, biology

5. Nature vs Nurture NURTURE suggests…
Each individual is born ‘tabula rasa’ = blank slate
It is through their interaction with the environment that we learn human traits
Large emphasis on the environmental influence
EXAMPLE STUDY: Bandura study – where young children who were predetermined as not aggressive, in a certain environment, became aggressive.
KEY TERMS: Tabula rasa, interaction with environment

6. Nature vs Nurture Are the following due to Nature or Nurture?
Intelligence
Sporting ability
Aggression
Phobias
Stephen and Edward Hawkins
Two brothers who murdered their parents
Three brothers who all play professional football

7. Nature vs Nurture
Place each study on the scale below ______________________________________________________________________ Nature Nurture

8. AREA
The social area assumes all behaviour is caused by the perceived or actual presence of others in our environment.
AREA
AREA
PERSPECTIVES
The developmental area assumes that behaviour is caused by progression through stages of development which are largely innate.
The cognitive area assumes that all behaviour is caused by cognition and processes in the mind.
Read the following statements and identify the different areas and perspectives along the nature/nurture debate line.

9. Freewill vs Determinism
The idea that we are able to have choice in how we act
Any behaviour is a result of our own freedom
We are self-determined
In essence, we are responsible for our own actions
For example, we have the free choice as to whether to commit a crime or not.

10. Freewill vs Determinism
The belief that your behaviours are determined by factors outside our control
All of your decisions are pre-determined
Due to this, all behaviours are predictable
You may feel like you have the free ability to make a decision – however, it is actually determined by external forces
For example, you do not steal because of the implications of the law… but if you really wanted to, you could… ?
Behaviour is caused entirely by predictable and out of your control
Behaviour is a result of your own decisions.

11. Hard determinism is where all human behaviour is a consequence of biological or other factors beyond our personal control. It focuses on cause and effect.
Examples
Freud (1909) assumes that all behaviour is caused by innate drives and unconscious processing. He suggests that all individuals progress through the psychosexual stages and that behaviour in childhood is predictable.
Bandura (1961) believes that our learning from the environment determines our behaviour and that we can predict future behaviour based on influences such as aggressive models.
Sperry (1968) argues that different functions are located within certain areas of the brain and that these cause behaviour. Like many biological researchers, he suggests that the performance of tasks is due to the activation in the different brain structures

12. Soft determinism is where your behaviour is a direct result of your environment but only to a certain extent as you have some control over your behaviour and therefore some free will.
Examples:
Moray (1959) is classed as soft determinism as it suggests that although we select what to pay attention to in our environment we are only able to process a certain amount using mechanisms within the mind that are innnate.
Hancock et al. (2011) suggests that whilst we can look at differences between offenders in their language use there are still individual differences that signify some choice
Milgram (1963) showed that situational factors are powerful influence on an individuals likelihood to obey, however he also showed that not all participants did obey up to 460 volts and therefore must be some element of free will and choice involved.

13. What are the strengths and weaknesses of adopting the following positions?
Hard determinism
Strengths
Possible interventions due to predictability
Scientific approach has value
Weaknesses
Never 100%
Soft determinism
Strengths
Allows individuals to change or at least think they can and increase motivation
Encourages personal responsibility
Weaknesses
Difficult to define and measure what free will is
Subjectivity about freewill and choice
Not very scientific

14. Freewill vs Determinism
Identify which side each of the following fall under: One colour for free will One colour for determinism

15. Freewill vs Determinism
Do you think criminal activity is freewill or determinism? If a behaviour can be attributed to deterministic factors, what legal implications are there

16. Freewill vs Determinism
Where does each core study fall?
Behaviour is caused entirely by predictable and out of your control
Behaviour is a result of your own decisions.

17. Where does each area and perspective fall on the freewill vs determinism debate?

18. Reductionism vs Holism
Behaviour can be explained by breaking it down into smaller component parts … typically one factor alone
Reducing
It is based on the scientific assumption of parsimony - that complex phenomena should be explained by the simplest underlying principles possible
Suggests all behaviour is a cause and effect
Tends to favour biological area
For example: the belief that mental illness derives from an inbalance of brain chemicals is reductionist as it explains mental illness through biology alone – completely ignoring every other factor.

19. Reductionism vs Holism
‘Whole is greater than the sum of its parts’
In order to understand behaviour you should consider how different factors at each level contribute to behaviour, rather than trying to reduce these further.
Behaviour is too complex to be broken down
Tends to favour social area
Looks at the whole person
Example: If an individual steals from a supermarket, it would be Holistic to consider all of the explanations for why the individual did so (Eg. Income, status, habit, upbringing, personality etc.) rather than explaining through one factor alone (Eg. That the individual does not care).

20. Is the following reductionism or holism?
Maguire et al (2000) carried out a quantitative piece of research using correlational analyses to understand the relationship between the structure of the brain and the ability to navigate.
Taxi drivers brains were scanned using an MRI and the images produced were then accurately analysed to identify any relationship there may be. Maguire suggested that the ability to navigate around London may be directly attributed to the grey matter in the hippocampi within the brain.
The implications of this study are very interesting as it may suggest that your brain enables you to perform a job more effectively due to specific neural connections that exist.

21. Is the following reductionism or holism?
Rosenhan & Seligman (1989) wrote a book defining dysfunctional behaviour and suggested that particular characteristics (suffering, maladaptiveness, vividness and unconventionality, unpredictability and loss of control, irrationality and incomprehensibility and observer discomfort) define a person’s failure to function adequately and suggest these characteristics are typical of dysfunctional behaviour. They suggested that the more of the characteristics a person possessed the more likely it was they would be consider abnormal.
Using this method of diagnosis does lead to biases in diagnosis however as the characteristics are subjective and hard to accurately measure in a person. Instead, a judgement of the person as a whole and their overall behaviour must be considered.

22. Reductionism vs Holism
Biological psychologists also try to find ways to reduce offending behaviour by identifying very specific biological mechanisms that cause criminality. Researchers such as Brunner et al (1993) study the hereditary nature of such behaviour and try to isolate genetic abnormalities crime may be attributed to. Brunner et al found that a disturbance in a gene responsible for the production of MAOA was linked with aggressive behaviour although not every member of the family studied showed such antisocial and criminal behaviour.
Many people believe that one of the most important contributing factors to offending behaviour is a person’s upbringing. Farrington (2006) found that most chronic offenders have a convicted parent, delinquent siblings and disrupted families. Farrington believed offenders have several risk factors that predisposed individuals to criminality in later life.
On the other hand cognitive psychologists have found evidence to suggest that offenders rationalise their own behaviour differently and that specific cognitive thinking patterns contribute to the criminal personality. Yochelson and Samenow (1976) found that non-physiological explanations were able to offer opportunities to adjust the behaviour of criminals to change their offending behaviour to more prosocial behaviour.
1. Label each as reductionist or holistic 2. What are the real life applications of this? 3. What are the implications of each application?

23. Reductionism vs Holism
In the 1900’s the question of what caused intelligence was fiercely debated and researchers gathered data to suggest differing explanations. To understand what causes intelligence many researchers use intelligence tests to isolate particular variables that may contribute to a person’s IQ.
Yerkes found that the average mental age of white, American, adult males was shockingly low and Yerkes decreed that the country was ‘a nation of morons’. This led many eugenicists to suggest that Negroes and the feeble-minded has been interbreeding and lowering the overall intelligence; thus supporting Yerkes belief that genetics alone causes intelligence.
Yerkes wanted to further the understanding of intelligence and show that psychology really was a science by providing quantifiable and reductionist evidence that intelligence was inherited. Yerkes used army recruits to evidence his ideas and these American recruits included white Americans’, ‘negroes’ and European immigrants.
1. Label each as reductionist or holistic 2. What are the real life applications of this? 3. What are the implications of each application?

24. Reductionism vs Holism
Place each study on the scale below ___________________________________________________________________________ Reductionism Holism

25. Area/perspective
Key assumptions about causes of behaviour
Reductionist or Holistic? Why?
Biological
Developmental
Cognitive
Social
Individual differences
Behaviourist
Psychodynamic

26. Individual vs Situational
Something about the person is used to explain behaviour
It could be their personality, their genetics

27. Individual vs Situational
Something about the situation is used to explain behaviour
It could be upbringing, poverty, peer group
Examples
An Individual Explanation- A person falls off his bike because he hasn't got a very good sense of balance. A Situational Explanation - A person falls off his bike because there is a hole in the road.
An Individual Explanation - A child is aggressive because they have some sort of anti-social personality. A Situational Explanation - A child is aggressive because they have copied other aggressive children

28. Sort the following cards into either situational or individual explanations of behaviour.

29. Individual vs Situational
Place each study on the scale below ___________________________________________________________________________ Individual Situational

30. Area/perspective
Key assumptions about causes of behaviour
Individual or situational? Why?
Biological
Developmental
Cognitive
Social
Individual differences
Behaviourist
Psychodynamic

31. Highlight main strengths and weaknesses
Researchers have considered various pieces of research that suggest that a person’s disposition causes their behaviour and contrasting research that believes that behaviour is a result of the situation a person finds themselves in. The question is which argument is the most convincing when we look to predict behaviour.
Personality is different to mood; we expect individuals’ mood to fluctuate and change depending on the time of the day and other factors. When psychologists look for personality traits they are looking for more enduring qualities in a person that signify more than just a bad mood. When we research personality we are looking for behaviour that is consistent and predictable across a range of situations. It is rather useful to be able to isolate the characteristics in an individual that determine their behaviour so that treatments and interventions can be put in place, such as cognitive therapies for offenders. On the other hand, it can be really difficult to distinguish between individual factors and situational factors as human experience is very complex and it is not easy to attribute behaviour to one factor accurately.

32. Highlight main strengths and weaknesses
By beginning to understand the complex interactions between individual and situational factors, further research can be done to explore the relative contribution of each factor. Often, further research is carried out in laboratory settings to establish higher control than real life but this can lead to lower ecological validity when explaining behaviour. This can then lead to changes in environments such as the workplace that increase pro-social behaviour and reduce the likelihood of anti-social behaviour occurring.
The two opposing explanations of behaviour are seductive and each have useful applications when trying to reduce negative behaviours and improve quality of life however many have said that they are very simplistic when it comes to explaining the complex interactions seen in everyday human behaviour and when assessing an individual’s environment, characteristics and relationships. Further to this, many believe that the situational explanation is reductionist as it ignores individual differences that may contribute to behaviour in favour of social mechanisms that are believed to directly affect behaviour.

33. Usefulness of Research
High usefulness
Low usefulness
progresses understanding of a phenomena beyond previous findings
provokes further research in the field
provides developments for therapies, interventions, preventative action or treatments
is valid so that results are accurate
is generalisable to a wide population
lack of new knowledge or understanding shown about phenomena
research lacks internal validity and cannot be sure it is testing what set out to
research cannot be generalised very well or to a wider population
research lacks ecological validity and therefore use in the real world
Definition of useful: the ability to be used for a practical purpose or in several ways Is Psychology research useful? Read the following statements and decide how useful each core study is based on the criteria. You should then plot each core study on the grid (next page)

34. Usefulness of research
Place each study on the scale below. ___________________________________________________________________________ Useful Not useful

35. Usefulness of research
For each core study, you should answer the following:
1. What are the real life applications of the study? (How can what the researcher found be used in today’s society? Eg therapy or intervention to prevent behaviour)
2. What are the implications of the study? (How are the findings of the study potentially beneficial or harmful?)

36. AREA
The social area assumes all behaviour is caused by the perceived or actual presence of others in our environment.
AREA
AREA
PERSPECTIVES
The developmental area assumes that behaviour is caused by progression through stages of development which are largely innate.
The cognitive area assumes that all behaviour is caused by cognition and processes in the mind.
Read the following statements and identify the different areas and perspectives which are useful

37. Ethical consideration
What are ethical guidelines?
Created by BPS.
List of things that are considered to be acceptable and unacceptable when psychological research.
Why do ethical guidelines exist?
To ensure participants leave the psychological research in the exact same physical, psychological and emotional state as they entered
What are the ethical guidelines?
Deception (Integrity)
Debriefing (Responsibility)
Right to withdraw (Respect)
Informed Consent (Respect)
Protection of participants (Responsibility)
Privacy and confidentiality (Respect)
Ethical guidelines are broken down into four components:
Respect participants
Competence of researcher
Responsibility of researcher
Integrity to participants

38. Ethical consideration
You could be asked a ‘to what extent’ question so you must know the ethics that were broken and upheld
What is the cost benefit analysis?
For each study you should identify the following…
What ethical guidelines were upheld
What ethical guidelines were broken
Why the guidelines were broken (e.g. did they have to be broken to conduct the research properly)
Is the real life application of the study worth the ethics being broken?
What are the implications of the ethical break?
How the researcher may repeat study in an ethical way

39. Ethical consideration
Behaviourist perspective Associated studies are… Are these studies ethical? Psychodynamic

40. Socially Sensitive Research
The findings from psychological research often have large implications. Whether it be on future research, the individuals in the study or groups within society. The findings from research can be considered socially sensitive when they have powerful implications on members of society Research can be considered socially sensitive if it produces the following…

41. Socially Sensitive Research
Look at the following research finding and identify what implications the findings have on society
Adolescents
Education
Medical

42. Socially Sensitive Research
For each core study you should identify…
If the research could be considered socially sensitive
And why? What are the implications of this?
What is the cost-benefit analysis of each?

43. Area of psychology
Potential explanation for phenomena
Potential implications of socially sensitive research
Social
Cognitive
Developmental
Biological
Individual differences
Behaviourist
Psychodynamic
Select either terrorism or alcoholism and attempt to explain it through each area and perspective. You should be thinking of the implications of such socially sensitive research

44. Psychology as a Science
The BPS describes psychology as: “…the scientific study of human mind and behaviour: how we think, feel, act and interact individually and in groups.”
However, many argue psychology is not a science.
This debate revolves around the question: Is Psychology a science?
What research methods do you consider scientific?
What research methods do you consider unscientific?

45. Psychology as a science
When conducting research, it is essential the scientific methods of gathering data are rigorous. You should refer to the ‘How Science Works’ A3 handout for further explanations of the following: Falsifiability Hypothesis testing Cause and effect Control and standardisation Manipulation of variables Replicability Quantifiable measures objectivity Induction/deduction

46. Different areas are more scientific than others…
Methods utilised to test assumptions
How scientific? Which criteria does it fulfil?
Social
Cognitive
Developmental
Biological
Individual Differences   
Behaviourist 
Psychodynamic

47. Psychology as a Science
For each core study you should identify…
If the research could be considered scientific and why
If not, why?
What could be used instead to improve the scientific nature of the study
Do you think scientific studies have more real life applications than non scientific studies?

48. Real-life applications
The findings from each core study have some form of real-life application. This is where what the researcher has found is applied in everyday life. For example: The findings from the Loftus & Palmer study have altered the way in which police are allowed to ask questions now. Task: 1. Identify the real-life applications for each core study 2. You should decide is this application a good or bad thing. Explain why. 3. Identify which debate (and specific side) each application sits on for each debate. Example continued: This is good because it ensures potential witnesses’ memories are accurate. This minimises the amount of potential wrongful convictions that occur. This falls under the following debates: nurture, determinism, situational and usefulness of research

49. Study
Application
Concerns
Kohlberg
Educational intervention
Labelling and deterministic assumptions
Baron-Cohen
Educational intervention and wider awareness
Use of laboratory experiment limited
Gould
Yerkes – influence passed laws
Socially sensitive research and perpetuating discrimination
Raine
Preventative interventions developed
Socially sensitive – deterministic, labelling
Gottesman
Drug treatment
Socially sensitive – genetic links
The strengths of each debate lie within the applications and the weaknesses lie within the concerns. So if asked a question which asks: ‘Suggest one strength of claiming that behaviour is only due to nurture. Support your answer with evidence from one core study (3 marks)’ You could explain what a token economy is and how this derives from operant conditioning and the Chaney funhaler study. Or the use of positive role models as seen through Bandura highlights the importance of models behaviour

50. You need to understand how different debates interact with one another and where they do not. Use the following cards to match up cards that are similar.
You can then:
Write a short explanation of why they are similar.
Give examples of research to show how they interact.
Suggest a criticism of each collection of positions in differing debates.