Issues

- Ethical Issues  - Should some research be avoided because of the potential social consequences?
   • Deception, privacy, protection from harm, confidentiality, right to withdraw.
   • BPA guidelines.

- Cultural Bias - Can results be generalised to other cultures?
   • Ethnocentrism
   • Eurocentrism 
   • Cultural Relativism
   • Etic analysis - Behaviour is universal and cultural differences can be ignored.
   • Emic analysis - Behaviour is culturally specific.

- Gender Bias - Should gender differences be ignored?
   • Alpha bias - Assumes real differences between males and females.
   • Beta bias - Assumes there are no differences between men and women, or that any differences are                            trivial.

- Imposed Etics - One way of overcoming the problem of restricted sampling is to encourage research which uses participants from other cultures.
- Derived Etics - A series of emic studies takes place in a local setting conducted by local researchers using local techniques.

Approaches

	Behavioural	Evolutionary	Cognitive	Psychodynamic	Biological
Principle	All behaviour is acquired through learning and behaviour is all that should concern psychologists. Explains behaviour in terms of conditioning.	Explains behaviour in terms of selective pressures that have shaped it (characteristics have been naturally selected). Behaviour is essential for survival.	Thinking shapes our behaviour.	Early experiences have a lasting effect on our behaviour and personality. This focuses on the id, ego and superego.	Explains behaviour in terms of physical bodily processes.
Strengths	Provides clear predictions of the rewards or consequences of association between two variables.  Scientific approach. Explains individual differences.  Includes social influences.	Able to explain behaviours that seem dysfunctional, i.e. anorexia.  Difficult to disprove.	Lends itself to scientific research.	Recognises importance of unconscious factors. Difficult to disprove.  Made an impact on psychology.  Case studies to support.	Provides clear predictions.  Very scientific. Strong counter-arguments to the nurture side of nurture vs nature.  Treatments are effective.
Limitations	Factors like emotion, expectations and higher-level motivation are not included.  Based on research with none humans and is reductionist.  Research is conducted in contrived laboratory settings.  It is determinist. Ignores that learning is inherited and varies between species.	Doesn't acknowledge importance of cultural influences on behaviour.  Reductionist and determinist.  Research done with non-humans.	There is a lack of evidence for abstract concepts like memory.  Social and cultural factors are often ignored.	Vague concepts that can be used to explain anything but don't predict a lot. Difficult to test. Unrepresentative samples and techniques. There are other concepts which seem more scientific.	Reductionist. Doesn't explain how mind and body interact. (consciousness and emotion). Over simplistic.

Idiographic Vs Nomothetic

	Nomothetic	Idiographic
Definition	The approach of investigating groups of people to try to find general laws of behaviour that apply to everyone.	The approach of investigating individuals in personal, in-depth detail to achieve a unique understanding of them.
Assumptions and Methods	• Assumes that people are best studied by large scale, preferable experimental methods to identify laws. • Differences between people are only quantitative, so an individual will be compared to others, classified with others, measured as a score or be a statistic.	• Assumes each human is unique and best investigated by the case study method. • Differences between people are qualitative so studies focus on unique aspects of thinking and behaviour.
Examples	• Behaviourist experiments on learning conducted on many subjects and replicated to find principles which were generalised to humans. • Asch and Milgram • Personality tests, IQ scores, classification manuals for mental health, etc.	• Humanistic psychologists focus on unique characteristics and life experiences of individuals. • Allport (1961) made the distinction between common and individual traits. • Kelly (1955) tried to identify the way individuals perceive the world in terms of personal constructs. • Freud used the clinical case study method to find a patient;s psychological problems.

Reductionism Vs Holism and Interactionism

Reductionism: Complex phenomena is broken down into more simple components. It should be explained by simple underlying principles. While this doesn't explore the whole picture, it does allow in-depth study and gain a better understanding.

Holism and Interactionism: Holism looks at same/higher level explanation. Interactionism shows how many aspects of a phenomenon or levels of explanation can interact together to provide a complete picture.

Examples in psychology:

• Evolutionary reductionism - behaviour must have been adaptive and inherited. Ignored cultural variations.
• Environmental reductionism - relates to behaviourist approach and tries to explain all human behaviour in terms of simple conditioning. Ignores cognitive processes.
• Methodological reductionism - Certain variables are identified and ten studied in a controlled experiment.

Free Will Vs Determinism

Determinism: The view that an individual's behaviour is shaped or controlled by internal or external forces rather than an individual's free will to do something.

Free Will: Individuals have an active role in controlling their behaviour.

The determinism approach implies that people are not personally responsible for their behaviour, placing the blame on innate factors such as neurochemicals. This poses the moral question whether a person can be help personally responsible for something they've done. 

Soft determinism: If our actions are voluntary and in line with our conscious desired goals then they are free.

Examples in Psychology

Cognitive - Relating to soft determinism, considering problem solving and attentional mechanisms of thought and behaviour. These mechanisms operate with the parameters of their innate capabilities and our past experience suggests that we are not free to choose what we see.

Behavioural - An extreme environmental determinism approach, arguing that learning from the environment causes behaviour. Skinner argued that free will is completely an illusion created by our complexity of learning.

Psychoanalysis -  The view of unconscious determinism - that our behaviour is controlled by forces of which we are unaware - the reasons for our actions are merely rationalised by our conscious minds.

Biological - Look at the deterministic influence of genetics, brain structure and biochemistry.

Nature Vs Nurture

Nature: People are the product of their genes and innate biological factors.
Nurture: People are a product of all things that come about through maturation and also everything learned through interactions with the environment as well as upbringing.

Nature and Nurture views are often perceived as determinist, however, this is mistaken as evolutionary psychologists suggest that genes only predispose us to behave in certain ways and this doesn't dictate what people choose to do.

An argument to one side of the approach can easily ignore the other end of the spectrum.

	Nature	Nurture
Roots of the approach	Nativist philosophy, biology and evolutionary theory.	Empiricism philosophy and social psychology.
Causes of behaviour	Genetic determinism, inherited influence, maturational blueprint, neurochemical and hormonal influences and brain activity.	The mind is regarded as a 'black slate' at birth and therefore, knowledge and behaviour are the result of experience and learning from the environment.
Methods employed	Gene/chromosome mapping, twin and adoption studies, brain scanning, brain stimulation or damage studies and drug testing.	Use of classical and operant conditioning techniques to affect behaviour, manipulation of social environment to change behaviour.
Implication	Due to biological determinism, behaviour can only be changed through physical means, such as selective breeding, gene therapy, brain surgery or drugs.	Due to environmental determinism, behaviour can easily be changed through manipulating reinforcement and environmental conditions.
Criticisms	Reductionist - may neglect environmental factors.	Reductionist - may neglect biological factors.

Debates

In psychology there are four main debates:
1. Nature vs Nurture 
2. Determinism vs Free Will
3. Reductionism vs Holism
4. Idiographic vs Nomothetic