Psychology Assessment A

Thomas Rutherford
1. The behaviourist school of psychology focuses only on observable behaviours as it was
believed by the first behaviourist researchers that doing otherwise would lack objectivity
and lead to biased results as internal thoughts and feeling cannot be studied in a
scientific manner (Lim, 2019.) While a person’s thoughts and feelings cannot be seen
and therefore cannot be measured, a person’s behaviour can be studied scientifically so
to behaviourists such as Ivan Pavlov and B. F. Skinner this made the field of psychology
much more scientific rather than the exercise in philosophy that it had been up to this
point. Psychoanalysis was a school founded by Sigismund Freud in the early 1900s
around the same time as the behaviourist school was founded. The aim of
Psychoanalysis was to understand a person’s thoughts feeling and their behaviours
through the analysis of unconscious mental processes (McLeod, 2019.) According to
Freud and the Psychoanalytic school these mental processes are formed through
childhood experiences. Psychoanalytic believe that through Psychoanalytic therapy or
“talking therapy” people would be able to seek help for issues that they face in their live
and would be useful to overcome traumatic events in their past. The cognitive school
was initially unpopular with psychologists due the prevalence of the behaviourist school
but in the 60’s gained a following as they were able to challenge the behaviourist view of
psychology. For cognitive psychologists the mind understanding a person’s mind was an
essential part of understanding human behaviour and human nature as a whole the
Cognitive School wished to understand a persons though processes through what they
called introspection which is the analysis of your own thought processes
(Psychologicalscience, 2012.) Many cognitive psychologists believed that we could better
understand the mind by modelling it like a computer. The biological school proposes
that behaviour and our thoughts and feelings have a biological origin and can be
objectively measured when studying the brain, in a similar manner to how evolution and
our need for survival effects our physical traits, so too does this principal have an effect
on our mental traits, this school in effect applies modern ideas of evolution and natural
selection the our behaviour and our brain (Britannica, 2019.)
2. The behaviourist school focuses on a person’s behaviour and the idea that all behaviour
is a learned response rather than something inherent. Behaviourists understand a
person’s behaviour through the relationship between stimulus which refers to an
environmental factor outside of the person themselves and the response which is the
person’s reaction to the stimulus. Two key behaviourist theories are classical and
operant conditioning. (Lim, 2019) Classical conditioning is taking a previously learned
response and generating the same response with a new stimulus, whereas operant
conditioning entirely new responses to unknown stimulus can be created through
positive and negative reinforcement. Psychoanalytic theory is a system for
understanding human behaviours and thinking, it has three main principals, the
unconscious motives of a person’s behaviour, and according to psychoanalytic people do
not understand the motives behind their behaviour even if they claim to. Next is the
idea that past experience effects the way people behave, by understanding a person’s
 past you can determine who someone will act in the future. Finally is the idea that
through psychanalysis people can became more happy and more comfortable with how
they live (McLeod, 2019.) through therapy people can learn to cope and move past
traumatic events in their past which prevents them from being happy in the present.
The cognitive school studies how our perceptions and how we processes then influence
our thoughts and behaviours. According to cognitive psychologists abnormal or
distressing behaviour is due to an issue with the way the mind is processing incoming
information rather than past trauma or as a result of conditioning, Cognitive
psychologists model the brain using “The computer analogy” this is the idea that the
mind functions in a similar way to a computer, taking in information actively processing
it and giving out a response (Psychologicalscience, 2012.) The biological school looks at
behaviours as being a result of our biology, particularly the biochemistry of our brain. By
taking a purely scientific approach to psychology and only studying what can be
measured biological psychologists have come to the conclusion that distressing and
unwanted behaviours is a result of physiological damage rather than an unseen trauma
or cognitive processes (Britannica, 2019.)
3. There are many applications of the behaviourist school of psychology one of which is
aversion therapy, Aversion therapy is a type of behavioural therapy that involves
repeating exposure to an unwanted behaviour in order to get rid of is such as a fear or a
bad habit like smoking. A person undergoing aversion therapy might be given an
electrical shock every time they view an image of a cigarette. The goal of the
conditioning process is to make the individual associate the stimulus with unpleasant or
uncomfortable sensations (Cherry, 2019) one application of psychoanalytic theory is
dream analysis. This application was developed by Freud in order to help people
overcome trauma by analysing the hidden meaning of our dreams, he believed that our
dreams were our mind way of fulfilling our subconscious desired that we could not fulfil
in our daily lives. By analysing the hidden content of someone’s dreams Freud believed
that he could gain and understanding of a person’s unconscious mind and be able to
help the get rid of unwanted behaviours (McLeod, 2019.) One application of the
cognitive school of thought is in CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). CBT is based
around the idea that our thought processes have an effect on how we feel which in turn
effects our behaviour. The aim of CBT is to help people become aware of negative
thought patterns that may result in distressed and unhealthy behaviour, it does this by
giving people alternate methods of thinking that do not have a negative outlook which
can result in a being far less distressed. One application of the biological school of
thought is giving an explanation for mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. Various
studies done by biological psychologists have confirmed that there as a genetic
component to the development of schizophrenia, for example a study of the brains of
identical twins one of which had schizophrenia, an MRI of both their brains reviled that
the brain of the schizophrenic twin was very different to the non-schizophrenic one.
4. One strength of the behavioural school is that it uses objective and scientific methods
making much more reliable, another strength is that the school has helped identify how
both humans and animals learn gaining people greater understanding of the leaning
processes. One weakness of the behaviourist school is that it entirely ignores the effect
of a person’s thoughts feeling and motivations despite the huge impact they have on a
persons behaviour as they cannot be observed objectively, another weakness is that the
applications of this school such as aversion therapy only treat the behaviour itself and
not any underlying causes. One strength of the psychoanalytic school is that it
recognised how a person’s experiences can have an effect on their mental state, another
strength is that psychoanalysis was used to develop many therapeutic techniques some
of which are still used today. One weakness of this school is that it is based on nothing
but Freud’s observations and his unscientific methods making it far less reliable, another
weakness is that many of Freud’s theories were developed on a single case study the
subject of which Freud did not even meet such as little Hans. One strength of the
cognitive school of thoughts is that the computer analogy provides a working model of
the mind allowing us to study it in a much more objective manner, another strength is
that its focus on a more scientific method made it much more reliable than other school
of thought. One weakness of this school is that many today believe that computer
analogy to be too simplistic with the human mind being too complex to be fully covered
by this analogy, another weakness is that its focus on laboratory experiments raises
issues about the ecological validity of the research being done as a part of this school.
One strength of the biological school of thought is that it provides a link between our
physiological and mental wellbeing, another strength is that its highly scientific nature
make it far more reliable that some other schools. One weakness of this school is that it
fails to account for influences other than biology for explain why people act the way
they do making it less useful, another weakness is that it is vary simplistic claiming that
all psychological problems have a physiological explanation regardless of complexity.
Word count: 1430
Bibliography
Alane Lim (2019) What Is Behaviourism in Psychology? [Online] Available from:
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-aversion-therapy-2796001

Kendra Cherry (2019) Aversion Therapy Uses and Effectiveness [Online] Available from:
https://www.thoughtco.com/behaviorism-in-psychology-4171770

Saul McLeod (2019) Psychoanalysis [Online] Available from:

https://www.simplypsychology.org/psychoanalysis.html

Psychologicalscience. (2012). [online]. Available at:

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/remembering-the-father-of-cognitive-
psychology

Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2019). [online] Available at:

https://www.britannica.com/science/biological-psychology