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Outline and evaluate behaviourism in psychology
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Vannari Sang
Swett
Psy 201A
Essay 1
The Strengths and Weaknesses of Social Cultural Perspective in Psychology There are six main perspectives in psychology; cognitive, biological, humanistic, psychodynamic, behavioral, and social cultural. The cognitive perspective studies how the brain processes and perceives information while the biological perspective studies things that affect behavior. The psychodynamic perspective digs into subconscious thoughts and behaviors based off of childhood experiences and the behavioral perspective studies behavior learned by experiences and interactions with the world. Finally, the social cultural perspective studies how social and cultural factors influence behavior. In this essay, I will go over the strengths and weaknesses of the social cultural perspectives in psychology. The social cultural perspective in psychology helps recognize patterns in behaviors through social cognition and helps build communities through social influence, but falls short in recognizing individuality. The sociocultral perspective in psychology has helped identify similar traits in communities. Through these studies, we have identified patterns that connect people to different
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Lev Vygotsky’s studies connected cognitive and educational development to social influences during childhood and their effects on behaviors on a social and individual level. Social influencers can be someone from a teacher to a celebrity. A positive social influencer brings communities together for social and personal development. One very famous current social influencer is Donald Trump and some feel very strongly that he is a poor example of one while others feel differently. Many of the people who have an opinion of him either absolutely hate him or love him which has caused many conflicts. His presidency, it feels like, has divided the country into Trump supporters and
Often differences and similarities between people may be obvious but more often their relationships can be difficult to recognize. “The relationships of individuals to the societies in which they live vary widely with time and place”. (Blair Nelson from the syllabus for assignment Essay Exam 1).
Psychology comprises of two words originally used by the ‘Greeks’, ‘psyche’, defining the mind, soul or spirit and lastly ‘logos’ being study. Both words define together the ‘study of the mind’. Psychology perspectives evaluate the normal and abnormal behaviour and how persons’ deal with different concepts of issues and problems. Psychology theories’ are based on ‘common sense’, but its scientific structure, everything needs to be evaluated and tested, therefore, promoting different psychological theories’.
Social psychology is one of the many variations of psychology. By definition, social psychology is how humans influence each other’s way of behaving and thinking. Under social psychology, there are various ways to define human behaviour and understand why we behave in a particular manner. These approaches deal with multiple concepts such as conformity, obedience, and social influences. They help answer questions about our behaviour and actions, while also analyzing our cognitive processes in certain situations. Social experiments conducted throughout history have also led to more understanding in the aforementioned areas. With these understandings of social behaviour, society can benefit and become aware of themselves and their mentalities.
This paper highlights the life of one the most influential psychologist in history: Kenneth Bancroft Clark. He made many contributions to psychology, and in the process he empowered African Americans and black people in general to rise above social oppression. His research of the doll test contributed to the end of racial segregation in schools when the Supreme Court decided to rely on social science in the Brown v. Board of Education. Clark left a legacy, and the findings in his work are far reaching even to the Caribbean. In the same manner, the Caribbean that has a history of racial segregation has benefited from psychology in different areas. The information in this paper was gathered using secondary sources. The researcher discovered that
Social psychology is an empirical science that studies how people think about, influence, and relate to one another. This field focuses on how individuals view and affect one another. Social psychology also produces the idea of construals which represent how a person perceives, comprehends or interprets the environment. Construals introduce the idea that people want to make themselves look good to others and they want to be seen as right. It is also said that the social setting in which people interact impacts behavior, which brings up the idea of behaviorism. Behaviorism is the idea that behavior is a function of the person and the environment.
Social psychology is an empirical science that studies how people think about, influence, and relate to one another. This field focuses on how individuals view and affect each other. Social psychology also produces the idea of construals which represent how a person perceives, comprehends or interprets the environment. Construals introduce the idea that people want to make themselves look good to others and they want to be seen as right. It is also said that the social setting in which people interact impacts behavior, which brings up the idea of behaviorism. Behaviorism is the idea that behavior is a function of the person and the environment.
There are also seven psychological perspectives, which are thought to contribute to abnormal behavior. First is sociocultural, the problems reflect the values and beliefs of the culture. Second is behavioral, there is faulty conditioning or modeling. Evolutionary is the third, this is an exaggerated form of an adaptive reaction. Fourth is humanistic, where the personal growth is blocked.
Sociocultural psychology began with Lev Vygotsky in 1931 in dealing with how people react to their environments, pressures, and influences that surround the individual in everyday life. This is a slowly expanding approach that is working towards treating psychological diseases such as obsessive compulsive disorder, also commonly known as OCD.Social psychology focuses mainly on how people react to their surroundings and others in society. Many psychologists go about treating illnesses, such as OCD and eating disorders, by placing people into situations where they have to confront their problems. Many psychologists such as Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram performed experiments to observe how people react to surroundings and pressures.
...ommunity and belonging that they had wanted. They’d gone through hard times, however they gained a community that they can call “family.” After all, they believed that their hard work benefited the community and enjoyed in knowing that. Because of them, the community became a “family.”
The aim of this essay is to analyse four theoretical approaches to psychology, including psychodynamic, humanistic, cognitive and behavioural. Analysing each approach in detail and identifying key features the approach uses to explain human behaviour. This essay will also analyse how successful each approach is in it methods, evidence gathering techniques and analyse how it can be applied to giving reasons for particular human behaviours. As well as analysing each approaches failings in it theories, methods and evidence gathering techniques.
The term psychology has many meanings to different people, even to those who work within the psychological field. The word psychology derives from two Greek roots; 'psyche' refers to 'soul' or 'mind' and logo refers to 'the study of'. A more update definition of the word psychology can be found from Atkinson, et al (1991) “The scientific study of behaviours and mental processes.” However on Google Definitions the definition of psychology is “the mental characteristics and attitudes of a person” [accessed 16 September 2011], which gives somewhat of a contradiction. In this assignment I will be outlining and evaluating four key psychological perspectives. The psychological perspectives I have chosen are the behavioural approach, biological approach, cognitive approach and the psychodynamic approach.
The five major theoretical perspectives in psychology are biological, learning, cognitive, psychodynamic, and sociocultural perspectives. Each one of these perspectives searches for answers about behavior through different techniques and through looking for answers to different kinds of questions. Due to the different approaches, each perspective form their own assumptions and explanations. Some perspectives are widely accepted while others struggle for acceptance.
From a social-cognitive perspective your environment can change your personality, however, humanistic approach implies and event happens in your life and you apply your free will which defines your personality. The social-cognitive approach emphasizes the importance of cognitive processes, situational influences, observational learning, and self-efficacy while, the humanistic approach emphasizes free will, personal awareness, and psychological growth. The social-cognitive theory explains behavior is guided by cognitions of the world, in contrast, the humanistic approach stresses the importance of free will in explaining behavior. The social-cognitive theory incorporates mostly objective and some subjective information, while, the humanistic approach is more concerned with the subjective experiences of the individual. The social-cognitive perspective does not regard humans a unique. The humanistic approach places a high value on humans and does not believe they are comparable to rats in an experiment. Social-Cognitive approach takes into account biological factors related to cognition. The humanistic approach rejects biological determinism. The social-cognitive theory is grounded in empirical, laboratory research, in contrast, the humanistic viewpoint has no empirical research but assumptions or clinical observations. The main perspective differences between social-cognitive and humanistic perspectives are social cognitive theory believes the interaction between the environment, cognition, and behavior influence personality; and the humanistic theory believes people have free will, individual work and potential to reach
Lev Vygotsky(1896-1934) was a Russian psychologist who created the Social Development Theory/ Sociocultural Theory. Vygotsky believed that children's mental, language, and social development is supported and enhanced through social interaction. Vygotsky also believed that beginning at birth, children seek out adults for social interactions and that development occurs through these interactions. The belief that social development sets a precedent for development(appeals to the nurture side of development). The general idea from this theory is that being aware, consciousness, and cognition are the end results of socialization and social interaction. It stated that, "Sociocultural approaches to learning and development were first systematized and applied by Vygotsky and his collaborators in Russia in the 1920s and 1930s. They are based on the concept that human activities take in cultural contexts, are mediated by language and other symbol systems, and can be best understood when investigated in their historical development(John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996)." At the core of this theory, " Vygotsky focused on the way that a child co-constructs meaning through social interaction, and the role word meaning plays in the development of thinking(Mahn, 1999)."
Public Safety Officials have been battling the difficult question of profiling for quite a while. The question is how do they know the suspected individual fit the category associated with an offense? While it has been proven that many profiling cases are somewhat directed to a racial profile, it can be proven that people, given the discretion, are able to identify explanations for a series of behavioral events by identifying what that behavior accredits to. This theory, identified by Frite Heider, “suggested that we have a tendency to give casual explanations for someone’s behavior, often by crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition,” called the attribution theory. Until recently, a study of the like was considered to be a branch of sociology and not a form of psychology. Social psychology essentially became the focus on the individual rather than the group as a whole. Many thoughtful ideas are collected in response to the studies of social psychology. Human cognition is understood to arise from interacting socially; highlighting the importance of socialization. We use social cognition to develop our explanations and our ideas on why a person’s behavior is/does what it is/does.