Key Perspectives In Psychology

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Perspectives in Psychology In Psychology there are five main approaches; Psychodynamic, Cognitive, Behaviourist, Biological and Humanistic. The key areas of the following approaches will be analysed, the Psychodynamic approach which will look at theorists such as Freud and his assumptions on behaviour. It will also look at the methodology, strengths and limitations of this approach. The next approach that will be analysed will be the Behaviourist approach looking at Watson and his assumptions and ideas including the methodology, strengths and limitations of this approach. The final approach that will be analysed is the Humanistic approach looking at Maslow and his ideas and studies. The Psychodynamic approach believes that behaviour is…show more content…
Instead it uses more subjective methods such as unstructured interviews. Unlike the psychodynamic and Humanistic approach the behaviourist approach is seen a scientific as it uses experiments on both animals and humans, it also has evidence to back up the experiments. Theorists such as Pavlov in the 1890’s ‘began to design experiments that could be conducted under controlled conditions, at first from animals to gain an insight into human psychology, and later on humans.’ (The psychology book,2011). The later theorists that did experiments on humans where the likes of John B Watson and his famous experiment on ‘Little Albert’ where he proved that classical condition worked.(The psychology book,2011). The most influential theorist of the Psychodynamic approach is Sigmund Freud, his methodology was to do case studies, such as the one undertaken on ‘Little Hans’ which a 5 year old boy had a phobia of horses. The main aim was to treat the phobia but Freud wanted to get behind why the boy had a phobia of horses in the first place. (simplypsychology.org). The studies shown ‘Little Hans’ was scared of horses because he resembled the horses with his father of whom he was also scared of. The Case study method was made popular in Psychology but the only limitations of case studies are they are subjective and you cannot generalize results. (simplypsychology.org). One of the earliest and main theorists of the Behaviourist approach is Ivan Pavlov who carried out an experiment on dogs to show that classic conditioning worked. He noticed that every time he presented the dog with food (unconditioned stimulus) they would begin to salivate (unconditional response), so he experimented by using a ringing of a bell (neutral stimulus) before feeding the dogs. In which in time conditional response begins to occur, after a few times of repeating the conditional stimulus (ringing of the bell) it will provoke a conditioned response (salivating). (The

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