Psychological Perspectives

Unit 8 – Psychology

Psychological Perspectives

P1, M1

Sabbah Shaheen

Explain the principal psychological perspectives (P1)

In Psychology there are many different approaches. An approach is a perspective that involves certain beliefs about human behaviour. Such as the way they function, which features of them are worthy of study and what research methods are suitable for undertaking the study. Within an approach, there will be several different theories which share common assumptions.

Each perspective has its strengths and weaknesses and has something different to our understanding of human behaviour.

There are six perspectives in psychology, which are:

• Behaviourism
• Social learning
• Psychodynamic
• Humanistic
• Cognitive
• Biological

Behaviourist perspective:

This perspective focuses on the ideas that it is the result of learning from the environment. This is reinforced which will gain in strength while that which is not reinforced will disappear.

Ivan Pavlov:

Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physicist, born in 1849. In Sint Petersburg he studied pharmacology and physiology. After he finished studying, he became a teacher whilst doing that he was also involved in medical research. Pavlov was interested in humans and animals, especially in reflexes. His role to psychology is classical conditioning, which is a theory about how behaviour is learned. He died in Russia in 1936.

Pavlov was a behaviourist and his theories were focused on observable behaviour, because behaviour can be measured but thoughts can’t. The mind of a human should be understood as a black box which can’t be opened. What goes and comes out of the box can be known.

He studied automatic behaviour which is known as reflexes, that is caused by a stimulus from the environment. Some of the reflexes are when a baby sucks on something that is put in his or her mouth or when blinking your eyes if there is an eyelash. The automatic behaviour can be influenced and it is called conditioning. In the conditioning process, a stimulus which is unconditional is given to a person who causes a reflex on its own. When an unconditional stimulus and a conditional stimulus are given together to a person, it doesn’t cause a reflex on its own. This is because of the presence of unconditional stimulus that causes the reflex. The stimulus response process is repeated quite a few times. After a couple times, the process has been repeated the unconditional stimulus is not offered anymore and only the conditional stimulus will be offered. The conditional stimulus will now cause the reflex on its own. After all this the classical conditioning process is completed.