How has the pendulum shifted between different approaches/schools of thought in

Psychology and why?

APPROACH Biological approach Psychoanalytic Behavioral Cognitive Sociocultural

approach Approach Approach Approach
MAIN PRINCIPLES Pavlov's Dogs
and the Discovery
of Classical
Conditioning

KEY STUDIES - “The case of HM: * Mostly does not - Classical - The - Asch
follow scientific Conditioning:
The role of the Dual-System Conformity
methodology. Little Albert
hippocampus in the - Projective Tests
Model: Daniel Study(1951)
memory”. (conditioning a Kahneman - Tajfel (1970):
(Rorschach Inkblot
phobia)
- Twin Studies Tests, Incomplete Klee vs.
phrases) - Operant
- Adoption Studies Kandinsky
- Slips of the tongue Conditioning: B.F.
- Epigenetics: Nature Skinner (Box
- Dream Analysis
vs. Nurture - Humor Experiment)
- Free association

TECHNOLOGICAL
ADVANCES

STRENGTHS

WEAKNESSES

OTHER NOTES
The Case of HM
- Brenda Milner is a neuropsychologist who studied HM until he died in 2008.
- HM had an accident as a child and sustained a serious head injury.
- He had surgery after the bike accident where the tissue from the medial temporal lobe (including
the hippocampus) was removed on both sides of HM's brain.
- Suffered from anterograde amnesia.
 - HM could not form new explicit memories or episodic memories (could not move information from
STM to LTM).
- Could make a capacity of working memory, able to carry out a normal conversation.
- Procedural memories, improved in the mirror drawing task.

Twin Studies
- Studies conducted on identical or
fraternal twins to reveal the importance
of environmental and genetic influences
of traits.
- Identical: Monozygotic
- One Ovum, genetically
identical, shared placenta.
- Fraternal: Dizygotic
- Ovum splits, genetically
different, separate placentas.

Adoption Studies
- investigates the relationships among
genetic and environmental factors in the development of personality, behavior, or disorder by
comparing the similarities of biological parent-child pairs with those of adoptive parent-child pairs.
- Three Identical Strangers

Epigenetics: Nature vs. Nurture

- Szyf and Michael Meaney compared two groups of rat mothers. One that licks their babies a lot
(an expression of love between rats) and another that didn't.
- They found out that when the babies grew up, they carried their mom's behavior with them and
passed it on to the next generation.
- To test epigenetics, the researchers switched the newborn babies from low-licking mothers with
the newborn babies with high-licking mothers.
- Turns out that if the mother is a high-licker, the baby grew up to be a high-licker also regardless of
the genetics.

Little Albert (1920)

- John Watson, and Rosalie Raynor presented Little Albert (nine month old baby) with a white rat
and he showed no fear.
- Watson then presented the rat with a loud bang that startled Little Albert and made him cry.
- After the continuous association of the white rat and loud noise, Little Albert was classically
conditioned to experience fear at the sight of the rat. Albert's fear generalized to other stimuli that
were similar to the rat, including a fur coat, some cotton wool, and a Father Christmas mask.
B.F. Skinner (Box Experiment)
- An animal is rewarded or punished for engaging in certain behaviors, such as lever pressing (for
rats) or key pecking (for pigeons).
- Skinner showed how positive reinforcement worked by placing a hungry rat in his Skinner box.
The box contained a lever on the side, and as the rat moved about the box, it would accidentally
knock the lever. Immediately it did so a food pellet would drop into a container next to the lever.
- Skinner showed how negative reinforcement worked by placing a rat in his Skinner box and then
subjecting it to an unpleasant electric current which caused it some discomfort. As the rat moved
about the box it would accidentally knock the lever. Immediately it did so the electric current
would be switched off.

The Dual-System Model

- Two models of human thinking:
- System 1: can be described as instinctive, effortless, and fast.
- System 2: more tedious, slow, and analytic.

Asch Conformity Study

- Aim: Solomon Asch (1951) conducted an
experiment to investigate the extent to which
social pressure from a majority group could
affect a person to conform.
- Asch used a lab experiment to study
conformity, whereby 50 male students from
Swarthmore College in a line judgment task.
- 5 were payed actors, 1 was a real
participant
- The correct answer was obvious
- 18 multiple choice trials. Actors answered wrongly on 12 of them.
- 75% of participants conformed at least one
- 37% of participants conformed 100% of the time.
- 25% of participants never conformed.

Klee vs. Kandinsky

- Aim: how group belonging, even if not based on actual characteristics, affects how
individuals evaluate their own group members vs other group members
- Sample: 48 boys, 16 - 16 years old, British
- were told based on tests that they were Klee or Kandinsky fans, but in reality,
researchers had organized them randomly into either Kandinsky or Klee groups
researchers made boys believe that they had shown a strong preference for one
artist.
- Results: when the boys had a choice between maximizing profit for all and maximizing
the profit for members of their in-group they clearly favored their own group