AS Psychology B approaches advantages and disadvantages

Strengths:

• The biological approach uses scientific, experimental procedures in its investigations.
• It provides strong arguments for the nature side of the nature-nurture debate.
• The biological approach has had many useful applications, for example drugs to alleviate disorders such as bipolar depression.

Limitations:

• The biological approach is reductionist. It explains all thoughts and behaviours in terms of the actions of nerves and chemicals.
• The approach is over-simplistic. It fails to fully appreciate the influence environmental factors can have on behaviour.
• The approach raises ethical issues, for example genetic mapping. Is it right to artificially manipulate our genetic mapping?

Strengths:

• Behaviourists' use of rigorous, experimental methods of research enhances the credibility of psychology as a scientific discipline.
• The approach provides strong arguments for the nurture side of the nature-nurture debate.
• The approach has provided a number of practical applications and techniques to shape behaviour, for example the use of rewards in education.

Limitations:

• The behaviourist approach ignores the mental processes that are involved in learning unlike the cognitive approach, which views these processes,as important.
• The approach rejects the possible role of biological factors (nature) in human behaviour.
• behaviourists view humans as passive learners at the mercy of their environment unlike humanistic psychologists who view humans as active agents.
• The principles of operant and classical conditioning do not account for spontaneous behaviour in humans.
• The use of animals in applying laws to humans has been criticised. Surely we are more complex than animals?

Strengths:

• Social learning theory takes into account the cognitive processes that are involved in learning.
• Social learning theorists use both experimental and non-experimental methods of research, for example Bandura's use of the experimental and observational method when investigating gender differences in aggression.
• Social learning theory has been applied to many areas of psychology and has provided effective explanations of behaviour, for example acquisition of gender roles.

Limitations:

• Social learning theory does not fully explain individual differences, that is to say what may be perceived to be reinforcement for one person, may not be for another.
• Social learning theory does not account for all behaviour. For example, if we learn by observing others, how is it that a person becomes a criminal when they have not associated with and/or observed criminals and their behaviour?

Strengths:

• The cognitive approach focuses on internal metal processes, unlike behaviourism.
• The approach uses scientific experimental methods, unlike humanistic psychologists.
• Models such as the information-processing approach have been effectively used to explain mental processes.

Limitations:

• Cognitive models have been criticised as over-simplistic, ignoring the complexities of the mind.
• Humans are viewed as machines with the crude comparison of the mind to a computer.
• Many cognitive theories are based on performance of artificial laboratory tasks therefore unrepresentative of everyday behaviours.

Strengths:

• Freud acknowledged the importance of childhood experiences in determining adult personality.
• Freud's theories offer casual explanations for underlying atypical psychological conditions.
• Freud's methods of psychoanalysis are still used in psychiatry today.

Limitations:

• Freud's theories are considered to be unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific.
• Freud's use of the case study method lacks generalisability.
• Freud's controversial idea that infants display sexual urges has received enormous criticism.
• The effectiveness of psychoanalysis as a therapy is questioned in comparison to the proportion of patients who recover spontaneously from atypical disorders.

Strengths:

• Humanistic psychologists view the person as an active agent, unlike behaviourism.
• Humanistic psychologists promote the idea of personal responsibility - free will as apposed to determinism.
• The subjective experience of a person is of value and importance.
• Person centred therapy is used by psychologists and counsellors in therapy today.

Limitations:

• Humanistic theories are hard to falsify. They lack predictive power and are therefore unscientific.
• In rejecting the use of the scientific method, humanistic theories lack empirical support.
• Humanistic psychologists over-emphasise the persons ability to change and develop, for example they ignore cultural constraints.
• Individual emotions and consciousness are difficult to study objectively.