Behaviourism — classical and operant conditioning

Assumptions: psychology should study only observable behaviour; we are born a blank slate; the same laws of learning apply to humans and animals, which is why behaviourists use animal research.

• Classical conditioning — Pavlov (1927). Learning by association. Pavlov's dogs salivated (UCR) to food (UCS). When a bell (NS) was repeatedly paired with food, the bell alone (now the CS) produced salivation (now the CR). Related processes: generalisation, discrimination, extinction and spontaneous recovery.
• Operant conditioning — Skinner (1953). Learning through the consequences of behaviour, demonstrated in the Skinner box. A rat that pressed a lever received a food pellet (positive reinforcement) and the behaviour increased. In another condition, pressing the lever switched off an unpleasant electric current (negative reinforcement) — again, the behaviour increased. Punishment is an unpleasant consequence that decreases behaviour.

Evaluation: behaviourism is highly scientific — it deals in observable, measurable variables in tightly controlled laboratory conditions, giving it strong internal validity. It has valuable real-world application in token economy systems in prisons and psychiatric wards and in behavioural therapies for phobias. But the reliance on animals in mechanistic environments has been criticised as ignoring the role of cognition — the mind is treated as a black box, which SLT and the cognitive approach show is a mistake. Behaviourism is also environmentally deterministic: Skinner argued free will is an illusion and all our behaviour is the product of reinforcement history, which many find both implausible and ethically troubling.

Social learning theory — Bandura

Bandura agreed that behaviour is learned from experience, but argued learning also occurs indirectly, in a social context.

• Vicarious reinforcement — we imitate behaviour we see rewarded in others. We do not need to be reinforced ourselves.
• Mediational processes (the cognitive bridge between stimulus and response): Attention → Retention → Motor reproduction → Motivation. The first two govern learning; the last two govern performance — which is why we can learn a behaviour and not perform it until much later.
• Identification and modelling — we are far more likely to imitate a model with whom we identify (similar to us, attractive, high status).

Bandura's Bobo doll research (1961). Children who watched an adult behave aggressively towards a Bobo doll later imitated that aggression, including its specific form; children who saw a non-aggressive model showed almost no aggression. In the 1963 follow-up, children who saw the model rewarded for aggression were the most aggressive; those who saw the model punished were the least — a direct demonstration of vicarious reinforcement.

Evaluation: SLT explains cultural transmission — how norms of behaviour spread through a society, and why (for instance) rates of criminality vary between communities. It offers a better account than behaviourism because it includes cognition. But it may under-emphasise biology: in the Bobo studies boys were consistently more aggressive than girls regardless of condition, hinting at a hormonal (testosterone) influence SLT ignores. The Bobo doll studies also have low ecological validity — a doll is designed to be hit, so children may simply have been doing what they thought was expected (demand characteristics).

Which process?

Schema, models and cognitive neuroscience

Assumptions: internal mental processes can and should be studied scientifically, even though they cannot be observed directly. They are studied by inference — drawing conclusions about mental processes from behaviour.

• Schema — packages of ideas and information developed through experience. Schema help us process huge amounts of information quickly, but they also cause us to distort and misinterpret — a key cause of errors in eyewitness testimony.
• Theoretical models — abstract, often diagrammatic representations, e.g. the multi-store model and the working memory model.
• Computer models — the mind is likened to a computer: input → processing → output. This 'computer analogy' underpins artificial intelligence.
• Cognitive neuroscience — the scientific study of the biological structures underpinning mental processes. Broca (1860s) showed that damage to an area of the left frontal lobe impaired speech production. Modern fMRI and PET scanning localises cognition — Tulving et al. showed that episodic and semantic memory were associated with different regions of the prefrontal cortex. The field has extended to brain fingerprinting as a possible way to test the reliability of eyewitness accounts.

Evaluation: the approach uses objective, controlled methods and has produced credible, scientific evidence, especially since the arrival of brain imaging. It has strong application: CBT for depression, EWT and the cognitive interview, and AI. But because it relies on inference, it can be too abstract and theoretical; laboratory studies of memory using nonsense trigrams lack external validity. The computer analogy is criticised as machine reductionism, because it ignores the influence of emotion and motivation on memory — a factor computers do not have but people demonstrably do (e.g. the effect of anxiety on EWT).

Genes, neurochemistry and evolution

Assumption: everything psychological is at first biological, so to explain behaviour we must look at biological structures and processes.

• Genotype and phenotype. The genotype is the actual genetic make-up; the phenotype is the way the genes are expressed through physical, behavioural and psychological characteristics. Identical (MZ) twins have the same genotype but can differ in phenotype — which shows that even in genetically identical people, the environment matters.
• Twin studies establish a genetic basis by comparing concordance rates between MZ (100% shared genes) and DZ twins (50%). A higher MZ concordance implies a genetic component.
• Neurochemistry — behaviour is influenced by the balance of neurotransmitters: low serotonin in OCD and depression, excess dopamine activity in schizophrenia.
• Evolution — Darwin's natural selection. Any genetically determined behaviour that enhances survival and reproduction will be naturally selected and become more common. Bowlby applied this to attachment.

Evaluation: the approach uses highly scientific methods — brain scans, twin studies, drug trials — and has yielded the enormous real-world benefit of psychoactive drugs such as SSRIs, which allow people to manage conditions and live in the community. But it is biologically deterministic, implying our behaviour is dictated by genes we did not choose, which has serious ethical implications for the criminal justice system. Explanations may be reductionist, ignoring the social context: the same neurotransmitter change can be a consequence rather than a cause of a disorder. And even MZ concordance rates never reach 100%, which is decisive evidence that genes are not the whole story.

Interpret the concordance

Freud — the unconscious, the tripartite personality and psychosexual stages

• The unconscious — most of the mind is below the surface. The unconscious contains threatening, repressed memories and drives that direct our behaviour without our knowing. It reveals itself in dreams and in 'Freudian slips' (parapraxes).
• The tripartite personality. The id (present from birth) is entirely unconscious, operates on the pleasure principle and demands instant gratification. The ego (from about 2) works on the reality principle and mediates between the id and the superego. The superego (from about 5) is the internalised sense of right and wrong, formed at the end of the phallic stage, and operates on the morality principle, punishing the ego with guilt.
• Defence mechanisms — unconscious strategies the ego uses to reduce anxiety: repression (forcing a memory out of consciousness), denial (refusing to accept reality) and displacement (transferring feelings onto a substitute target). They are psychologically unhealthy in the long term because they distort reality.
• Psychosexual stages — oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital. Unresolved conflict at any stage causes fixation, carrying that stage's characteristics into adult life (e.g. an anal-retentive adult is obsessive and perfectionist). In the phallic stage the boy experiences the Oedipus complex — desire for his mother, fear of castration by his father — resolved by identifying with the father and internalising his gender role and morality. Freud's evidence was the case study of Little Hans, whose phobia of horses he interpreted as displaced fear of his father.

Evaluation: Freud's influence is enormous — psychoanalysis was the first 'talking cure' and the ancestor of modern psychotherapy, and he drew attention to the influence of childhood on the adult mind. But the theory is untestable — Popper argued it does not meet the criterion of falsification, because unconscious concepts cannot be empirically tested, making it a pseudoscience. Its evidence base is a small number of case studies of unrepresentative individuals, interpreted subjectively by Freud himself. It is also psychically deterministic, denying free will entirely.

Maslow, Rogers and the self

• Free will — humans are self-determining and active agents, not the passive product of genes or reinforcement. Humanistic psychology therefore rejects a purely scientific model of behaviour and is anti-reductionist: it insists on studying the whole person (holism), and on subjective experience rather than general laws (an idiographic approach).
• Maslow's hierarchy of needs — physiological → safety → love and belongingness → self-esteem → self-actualisation. Lower needs must be met before a person can progress; self-actualisation, the innate drive to become the best version of oneself, sits at the top.
• Rogers — congruence. Personal growth requires that a person's self-concept be broadly consistent with their ideal self. Where the gap is too great, there is a state of incongruence and self-actualisation is impossible.
• Conditions of worth. Rogers blamed many adult problems on a lack of unconditional positive regard in childhood: parents who set 'conditions of worth' ('I will love you if...') create incongruence. His client-centred therapy therefore offers the client genuine, unconditional positive regard and empathy, in order to close the gap.

Evaluation: the approach is a valuable anti-reductionist corrective — it argues that breaking behaviour into components loses the meaning of the experience, and that subjective experience is only intelligible as a whole. Rogers' ideas have had huge practical impact on counselling. But it has limited empirical evidence — concepts such as self-actualisation and congruence are vague and hard to operationalise and test. It may also be culturally biased: self-actualisation, autonomy and personal growth are individualist ideals that do not translate easily to collectivist cultures, where the needs of the group come first.

Whose therapy?

Comparing the approaches

Paper 2 rewards a direct comparison. Learn the axes:

• Determinism vs free will. Behaviourist = environmental determinism; biological = biological determinism; psychodynamic = psychic determinism. SLT and cognitive are soft determinist (Bandura's reciprocal determinism: we influence the environment that influences us). Only the humanistic approach argues for genuine free will.
• Nature vs nurture. Biological = nature (genes, evolution). Behaviourist and SLT = nurture (the blank slate). Psychodynamic is an interactionist: innate drives (nature) shaped by early relationships (nurture).
• Reductionism vs holism. Biological is the most reductionist (behaviour reduced to genes and neurochemistry); behaviourism reduces behaviour to stimulus-response; the cognitive approach uses machine reductionism. Humanistic psychology is the only clearly holistic approach.
• Nomothetic vs idiographic. Behaviourist, cognitive and biological approaches are nomothetic (seeking general laws from large samples). Psychodynamic and humanistic are idiographic (case studies, unique subjective experience) — though Freud also claimed universal laws.
• Scientific status. Behaviourist, biological and cognitive approaches use objective, replicable, falsifiable methods. The psychodynamic approach fails falsification; the humanistic approach rejects the scientific model as inappropriate.

Compare them

Which defence mechanism?

Genotype and phenotype

Which reinforcement?

Freud's structures

Whose idea is it?

Tap a concept, then the approach it belongs to. Accurate attribution is worth marks in every 16-marker.

Concept and approach

Tap an item on the left, then its partner on the right.

The big ideas to know

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