Content: The sociocultural approach
Content: The cognitive approach
Content: The biological approach
Concepts=your toolbox for critical thinking
Psychology books, films and podcasts
The foundation of modern psychology lies within 3 broader approaches in investigating human behaviour, these 3 approaches are biological psychology, cognitive psychology and sociocultural psychology. IB chooses to call these perspectives CONTENT. Each perspective has its own focus of investigation, its own prefered methods to study behaviour and it unique basic assumptions about human behaviour. If we want to understand why Messi or Neymar is such a good football player it will not be enough to attribute his success to genetics (biological appraoch), to his mindset or memory (cognitive approach) or his family, friends and wider society (sociocultural approach). We need all 3 perspectives to understand someone’s behaviour and all three perspectives influence each other, this is also important to remember. Your genes influence what environment you choose. Your social groups influence your interests and how you see the world. Each perspective contributes with its own knowledge of human behaviour but also with its own biases.
<aside> đź’ˇ Basic assumptions:
We have a social identity, based on group memberships, as well as an personal identity.
Social and cultural factors affect behaviour
Human beings are social animals with a need to belong
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Social Psychology Every psychological perspective has its basic assumptions, preferred methods, and its own explanations for human behavior.Social psychologists try to explain human behavior and cognition by studying how we are influenced by the people around us, the roles we have, and the groups we belong to. Social psychology is a relatively new field within psychology. One could say that it emerged after the Second World War, when many psychologists wanted to understand the atrocities and acts of violence that had occurred in connection with Nazism in Germany. Previously, researchers had tried to explain why people harm others by focusing on personality factors or conflict. Psychologists then began to look instead at how situations themselves can strongly influence human behavior and thinking. Social psychologists began to show through research that there does not need to be conflict between groups for individuals to start discriminating against others and seeing their own group as superior. Researchers showed that individuals want to be members of groups and that we humans can quickly change our opinions and behavior to fit into a group. Social psychologists often use experiments and observations to systematically study human behavior in groups.
The sociocultural approach to understanding human behaviour emphasizes the influence of social and cultural factors on human behaviour. This approach has grown out of social psychology, which explores how social environments, interaction and relationships shape individuals. Sociocultural psychologists investigate how culture influences values, beliefs and behaviour. The study of cross-cultural psychology developed using an etic approach to compare how different cultures shape human behaviour. Soon it became apparent that this was only part of the story, and psychologists followed the earlier lead of anthropologists and engaged also in an emic approach to research, studying different social and cultural groups from an “insider perspective”, allowing for a deeper and more sensitive understanding of behaviour. It is from here that a psychological understanding of Indigenous communities developed into a growing Indigenous psychology. Acculturation is a key idea of sociocultural psychology, allowing psychologists to develop models and explanations for how individuals adapt to changing their culture, while enculturation is similarly important in understanding how we internalize our own culture’s norms from childhood. The social environment and particular environmental factors, such as poverty, pollution and isolation and others, can also affect human behaviour. These may be investigated using the sociocultural approach.
Social psychological theories ignore the individual as a potential explanation for behavior. Researchers such as Asch and Milgram argue that situations control behavior, but they do not take into account that personality factors or similar traits (for example, temperament) can reasonably influence behavior. When trying to understand why we behave the way we do we can refer to dispositional factors (factors within the individual) and situational factors (contextual factors such as culture and environment), and social psychologists focus entirely on situational factors. Social psychologists try to explain behavior based on the situation rather than disposition. One example is the researcher Asch, who studied conformity. Several of Asch’s participants did not answer incorrectly—that is, they did not follow the group—but Asch did not explain why they went against the group. It is clear from research that individual behavior is difficult to predict.
Social psychology also does not consider biological factors as potential explanations for behavior; it does not refer to genetic factors or evolutionary theories. Social psychology can be criticized for reducing behavior to a single factor (the environment), thereby oversimplifying explanations of human behavior.
How “good” is a study?
Many social psychological studies have not been replicated (for example, research on stereotypes such as Stereotype Threat). In research, the term reliability refers to whether a study’s results can be trusted. If a study has high reliability, it has clearly defined variables that can be measured, and both the environment and participants are carefully controlled. If a study meets these conditions, it can be replicated and should yield the same results if there is a real effect. When a study measures abstract phenomena (hard-to-define concepts like thoughts and mental structures), it can be difficult to obtain the same results multiple times because what is being measured may vary. On the other hand, Asch’s experiment has been repeated many times with similar results and can therefore be said to have high reliability.
Researchers also talk about generalizability or external validity. External validity concerns whether the study’s results can be applied to other environments outside the study and to other people beyond the study’s participants. If a study can explain behavior in other people and in other situations, it can be said to have high external validity or high generalizability. Internal validity refers to what occurs within the study itself—that is, what the study measures or investigates. If a study truly measures what it claims to measure (for example, does Asch measure conformity or vision?), then the study has high internal validity.
The concepts of reliability, internal validity, and external validity are relevant when discussing quantitative research (research in which the data are numerical, analyzed statistically, and where the goal is to compare and draw conclusions about human behavior in general).