Assumptions and levels — An approach proposes assumptions about what causes behaviour, what should be studied and what counts as evidence. Compare explanatory mechanisms rather than merely listing names. A biological and a cognitive account can address different levels of the same event, while still making competing claims in some cases.
Behaviourist focus — Behaviourism emphasises learning through environmental experience and the systematic study of behaviour. Operational definitions and controlled comparisons can make predictions testable. Restricting explanations to observable responses can overlook thought, meaning and biological constraints.
Classical conditioning — A neutral stimulus paired with an unconditioned stimulus can become a conditioned stimulus that elicits a learned response. Pavlov's work used physiological responding in dogs to investigate such associations. The conditioned response need not be identical in every detail to the original unconditioned response.
Acquisition and extinction — Acquisition develops the association through experience. Repeatedly presenting the conditioned cue without the unconditioned stimulus can reduce responding, called extinction. Extinction is not necessarily complete erasure: responding can return in changed circumstances or after a delay.
Generalisation and discrimination — Generalisation occurs when related cues elicit a learned response; discrimination involves responding differently to cues with different consequences. A pupil reacting anxiously to every test illustrates generalisation, while learning that a practice exercise is safe can support discrimination. Explain the learning history rather than naming the pattern alone.
Operant conditioning — Operant learning concerns how consequences affect the likelihood of behaviour. Skinner studied patterns of responding under controlled reinforcement arrangements. The behaviour is not simply a reflex elicited by a preceding stimulus; its future frequency depends partly on what follows it.
Positive and negative reinforcement — Positive reinforcement adds a valued consequence; negative reinforcement removes an aversive one. Both increase the relevant behaviour. A seat-belt alarm stopping after fastening illustrates relief strengthening fastening; the word negative refers to removal, not to punishment or moral badness.
Punishment and interpretation — Punishment reduces behaviour through its consequences, unlike reinforcement. Whether a consequence actually reinforces or punishes depends on its effect on that person's behaviour. A teacher's attention intended as disapproval may reinforce disruption if the attention increases it.
Schedules and persistence — The arrangement of consequences can affect response patterns and persistence. A behaviour reinforced intermittently may persist when a reward is not delivered on one occasion. A schedule describes a contingency, the relationship between a behaviour and when a consequence follows it, not a judgement about whether the behaviour is desirable.
Evaluating behaviourism — Controlled learning research gives clear mechanisms and useful applications, but artificial tasks and species differences limit some generalisations. A learned response can depend on interpretation, preparedness and social context. An effective behavioural intervention does not establish that every cause lies in the immediate environment.
Social learning theory — Social learning theory explains acquisition through observing others as well as through direct consequences. A person can learn what a model does without immediately performing it. Separate what was acquired from the motivation and opportunity to demonstrate it.
Identification and imitation — Identification involves seeing a model as relevant, admired or similar; imitation is reproducing an observed behaviour. A child may copy a skilled older pupil because the model seems attainable or valued. Identification is a proposed relation to the model, not simply any repeated action.
Vicarious reinforcement — Observing another person rewarded can increase the observer's motivation to reproduce the behaviour. The observer need not receive the reward directly. The effect depends on how the consequence is interpreted and whether the observer expects it to apply to them.
Mediational processes — Attention makes a model's behaviour available for learning; retention preserves a representation; motor reproduction concerns the ability to perform it; motivation concerns reasons to do so. Failure to imitate immediately can arise at different stages, so it does not automatically show no learning occurred.These mediating processes distinguish acquisition from performance. Failure to imitate immediately does not prove that nothing was learned.
Bandura's research — Bandura's modelling studies examined children's responses after observing aggressive or non-aggressive models and their consequences. They support the possibility of observational learning under the tested conditions. A brief novel play situation does not by itself establish enduring violence or the effect of all real-world media.
Evaluating social learning — The account adds cognition to environmental learning and can explain learning without direct reinforcement. Demand characteristics, ethical concerns, model relevance and the distinction between temporary performance and lasting change matter. A complete evaluation links each limitation to the claim being made.
Cognitive and biological approaches
Cognitive assumptions — The cognitive approach studies internal processes such as attention, memory and reasoning by making inferences from observable performance. Reaction time and errors can test a model, but they do not provide a direct window into a person's thoughts. Competing processes may produce similar behaviour.
Schemas and expectations — Schemas organise knowledge and guide interpretation. They can make processing efficient but also bias attention and memory towards expected details. The same structure can be useful in a familiar situation and misleading when circumstances change.
Models and inference — A model simplifies selected processes so that predictions can be tested. An information-processing model might distinguish encoding from retrieval or separate component capacities. A successful prediction supports a model relative to alternatives; it does not make every metaphor a literal description of the brain.
Cognitive experiments — Controlled tasks allow manipulation of information and measurement of response patterns. Artificial materials can help isolate a process while reducing everyday relevance. Explain both the control gained and the scope lost rather than dismissing every laboratory task.
Biological assumptions — The biological approach investigates inherited variation, nervous-system organisation, endocrine activity and neurochemistry. It connects behaviour with physical processes but must distinguish associations from causal mechanisms. A biological contribution does not imply a fixed outcome or remove experience from the account.
Genotype and phenotype — Genotype concerns inherited genetic constitution; phenotype concerns expressed characteristics arising through development in an environment. The same genetic contribution can be expressed differently under different conditions. Avoid treating phenotype as a simple unaltered copy of genes.
Heritability and populations — Heritability is a population-specific estimate of variation associated with inherited differences under particular conditions. It is not the percentage of one individual's behaviour caused by genes and does not imply that the characteristic cannot change. Changes in environments can change both outcomes and variance estimates.
Twin and family evidence — Greater similarity among genetically closer relatives can support a genetic contribution, but environmental similarity, selection and measurement need consideration. Identical twins do not share every experience, and incomplete concordance leaves room for other influences. A comparison supports a bounded claim, not a single deterministic gene story.
Evolution and behaviour — Natural selection can favour inherited variation associated with reproductive success in relevant environments. A plausible adaptive story is a hypothesis requiring evidence and alternatives, not proof that a present behaviour is optimal, universal or morally desirable.
Neurochemistry and intervention — Neurotransmitter systems can be associated with cognition and behaviour, and interventions can test some mechanisms. A drug changing an outcome does not automatically show that the original difficulty was a simple chemical deficiency. Specify the process, evidence and causal limit.
Cognitive neuroscience — Cognitive neuroscience relates information-processing questions to neural evidence using methods such as imaging and lesion studies. It can connect levels that a purely behavioural measure leaves separate. Indirect signals and correlational designs still require cautious interpretation.
Psychodynamic and humanistic approaches
Unconscious influence — The psychodynamic approach proposes that processes outside awareness can influence behaviour. The relevant claim is stronger than simply forgetting a fact: unconscious motives and conflict are used to explain meaning and action. Evaluate how an interpretation could be tested or distinguished from alternatives.
Id, ego and superego — In Freud's structural account, the id seeks immediate gratification, the ego negotiates reality and the superego represents internalised standards. They are theoretical agencies rather than three anatomical brain parts. Conflict among them is proposed to create anxiety and defensive responses.
Defence mechanisms — Repression concerns keeping threatening material outside awareness; denial involves refusing to acknowledge a distressing reality; displacement redirects an emotion towards a safer target. These concepts describe proposed processes, not labels that can be assigned with certainty from one observed behaviour.
Psychosexual stages — Freud proposed oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital stages, with conflict and fixation influencing later personality. In the theory, the oral stage centres gratification on the mouth, the anal stage on bodily control and toilet training, and the phallic stage on awareness of genital differences and family rivalry. Latency describes relative quietening of sexual drives, and the genital stage their later mature organisation. Fixation means aspects of a stage remaining influential after development moves on. This historical theory gives childhood experience explanatory importance. Its assumptions and retrospective interpretations are contested and should not be presented as established developmental fact.
Evaluating psychodynamic explanations — Detailed case material can generate rich hypotheses about meaning, but selective interpretation, unrepresentative cases and difficulty falsifying an account limit general laws. A theory that explains every possible response after the event may make few risky predictions. Evaluate insight and testability separately.
Humanistic assumptions — Humanistic psychology emphasises personal meaning, choice and the potential for growth. It resists reducing the person to isolated stimulus-response links or fixed drives. A focus on agency does not mean that material circumstances and biological constraints have no influence.
Self-actualisation and needs — Maslow proposed a hierarchy of needs culminating in developing one's capacities. The familiar ordering is a theoretical guide rather than a universal rigid staircase: people can pursue meaning or creativity under hardship. Cultural assumptions about individual fulfilment affect its scope.
Congruence and conditions of worth — Rogers's account distinguishes experience, self-concept (how a person sees themself) and an ideal self (how they would like to be). Incongruence can arise when these diverge, especially if acceptance feels conditional on meeting others' demands. Positive regard and authentic understanding have a different role from instructing a person to meet an external ideal.
Evaluation and cultural scope — Person-centred attention can support a rich understanding of experience, while broad concepts such as self-actualisation can be difficult to operationalise. A theory centred on individual choice may fit some cultural values better than others. Lack of simple measurement does not by itself settle whether the person's account is useful.
Comparing approaches
Determinism and agency — Behaviourist accounts emphasise learned contingencies, biological accounts investigate physical constraints, and psychodynamic accounts emphasise unconscious causes. Humanistic accounts give free choice a central place. Compare the degree and kind of determinism rather than grouping all causal explanations as identical.
Reduction and integration — A reductionist account explains behaviour through simpler components, which can support precise tests but omit context or meaning. A holistic account preserves the organised person and situation but can make causal isolation difficult. Combining levels is useful only when their relationship is explained rather than simply listed.
Evidence and applications — Compare experimental control, measurement, falsifiability, ecological relevance and the suitability of the question. Different methods can complement each other. Practical success supports an intervention's usefulness while leaving some theoretical causes unresolved.
Constructing a comparison — Use one shared issue, such as how a fear develops or why behaviour changes, and compare each approach's mechanism, prediction and evidence. State an implication and a limitation for the specific claim. A sequence of unrelated descriptions does not yet make a comparative argument.
Legacy requirement: origins and counselling
Wundt and experimental psychology — Wundt established a psychology laboratory in Leipzig in 1879, a conventional landmark in the development of experimental psychology. He investigated processes such as conscious experience using controlled procedures. The date marks an institution and approach, not a claim that nobody studied mind or behaviour before him.
Introspection as a method — Introspection involves systematically examining and reporting one's conscious experience, under specified conditions in Wundt's experimental work. Trained participants might report aspects of experience following a controlled stimulus. Distinguish this from casual reflection and from experiments that infer processes solely through behavioural performance.
Evaluating introspection — Standardised stimuli and repeated procedures supported systematic study, but private experience is difficult to verify independently. Training, expectations and the limits of verbal access may affect reports. The method struggles with unconscious processes and with participants unable to provide reliable verbal accounts; numerical reporting alone does not remove subjectivity.
Emergence as a science — Behaviourism emphasised observable, measurable responses and experimental control, challenging reliance on private conscious reports. Cognitive psychology later studied internal processes through testable models and behavioural evidence; neuroscience supplied additional biological measurements. Scientific development is not a simple switch from wholly unscientific to flawless methods: each approach still requires reliable measures and falsifiable claims.
Rogers, self and counselling — In Rogers's humanistic account, the self-concept and ideal self can be incongruent, especially where acceptance is experienced as conditional on meeting others' demands. Person-centred counselling aims to offer empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard in a supportive relationship. The therapist's congruence concerns authenticity, while self/ideal congruence concerns the client's experience; these uses are related but distinct.
Evaluating the counselling influence — A non-directive relationship can support autonomy and an integrated self-concept, but improvement requires evidence rather than an assumption that warmth alone guarantees recovery. Self-report, selection and expectations complicate comparisons. Humanistic contributions to the therapeutic relationship can be influential even where self-actualisation is difficult to operationalise or the approach is not suited equally to every difficulty.
Test yourself
50 questions · Random sets of 10. These quick checks support revision; practise longer explanations and justified judgements too.
Mr Kidman's Classroom
