Understanding Key Psychological Perspectives

Introduction

The psychological perspective is referred to the approach which includes making assumption and beliefs regarding human behaviour about the way they function, aspect to be studied and research methods appropriate for executing the study (Ateş et al. 2017). The key psychological perspectives are psychodynamic, biological, humanistic, cognitive and behavioural and each of the offers a different view regarding the roots of human action and beliefs. In this assignment, three key psychological perspectives are to be explained and they are to be evaluated based on evidence from research. The data collection ways for psychological perspective are to be identified and the way psychological perspective is used for explaining behaviour is to be explained.

Explaining key characteristics regarding psychological perspectives

The Freud’s psychodynamic perspective mentions that behaviour of a person is explained by their unconscious process (Posey and Cushing, 2019). This indicates the behaviour of the person is influenced by aspects they are not aware and it indirectly impacts them to show certain actions in real condition. The psychodynamic perspective also informs that personality and psychological health of the adults are shaped by the experiences they have during childhood (Woodhead et al. 2017). This is because learning during childhood is installed deep within the minds of the individuals which influence them later in the adult stage to act accordingly. The psychodynamic perspective informs that personality of an individual exist in three parts that are id, ego and superego. The Id is referred to primary part of the individual’s personality that is influenced by desires and instincts. It contains biological elements of personality at birth along with sexual life instincts that involve libido and aggressive instincts (Davies, 2019).The ego is regarded as the decision-making component of the personality because it acts in a rational way to mediate differentiation between unrealistic id or unconsciousness and real-world or consciousness (Tan, 2018). This indicates that ego is used for reasoning and solving problem along has the aim of balancing demands between id and superego in relation to the real world. The superego is framed of values and morals that are passed from one generation to another and gradually becomes personality traits that allow one to understand their guilt (Sanford, 2017). The id and superego constituting the unconscious mind are in continuous conflict with ego as the conscious mind which creates anxiety. This anxiety could be appropriately managed through the use of defence mechanism in ego (Martinsen et al. 2019).

The ego is regarded as the decision-making component of the personality because it acts in a rational way to mediate differentiation between unrealistic id or unconsciousness and real-world or consciousness (Tan, 2018). This indicates that ego is used for reasoning and solving problem along has the aim of balancing demands between id and superego in relation to the real world. The superego is framed of values and morals that are passed from one generation to another and gradually becomes personality traits that allow one to understand their guilt (Sanford, 2017). The id and superego constituting the unconscious mind are in continuous conflict with ego as the conscious mind which creates anxiety. This anxiety could be appropriately managed through the use of defence mechanism in ego (Martinsen et al. 2019).

The psychodynamic theory is seen to argue that personality of an individual is forced by the unconscious mind and not a learned action but the behaviour theory informs personality to be learned aspects and it is developed by focussing on current behaviour (Guntrip, 2018.). In this respect, the Watson’s behavioural perspective mentioned that all behaviour in individuals is learned through the influence of the environment contrasting psychodynamic theory which mentions behaviour is learned through conflict of the conscious and unconscious mind (Wehner, 2016). The Watson’s behavioural perspective mentions that humans and animals learn to behave in a similar way. The perspective mentioned that since measurable scientific statistics cannot be obtained by studying behaviour thus it is not possible to measure thinking objectively (Walker, 2017). Thus, it indicates that mind cannot be studied scientifically and only way to understand mind is through behaviour. The Watson’s perspective informs that behaviour can be understood in laboratory condition. It mentions that psychological disorder is developed as a result of maladaptive learning through operant and classical conditioning (Moore, 2017). One of the examples of classical conditioning is Pavlov’s experiment for dogs (Jarius and Wildemann, 2017).

In contrast to Watson, the Bandura’s Social Learning Theory informs that behaviour of individuals is learned by observing others and imitating them (Nabi and Prestin, 2017). This indicates that not only the environment but also people are responsible to influence an individual to develop certain behaviour. The Bandura's perspective mentions that there are four key stages of learning which are attention, retention, reproduction and motivation. At the attention stage, it is must for the individuals to focus on certain behavioural aspects. In retention stage, the individual is required to remember the behaviour in their long-term memory. In reproduction, individuals are required to possess the skill of reproducing information from the observed behaviour. In the motivation stage, the individual is required to attain the same rewards for motivating the reinforced behaviour to show it is a long-time condition (Devi et al. 2017). The Bandura's perspective is mainly implemented towards the understanding of psychological disorder and aggression among individuals on the context of modification in behaviour. It acts as the theoretical foundation for determining techniques to be used for modelling of behaviour in training programs (Harinie et al. 2017).

Evaluating different psychological perspectives from research evidence

The evaluation of Freud’s psychodynamic perspective informs that it has the strength to explain the reason behind defence mechanisms and other common behaviour shown in everyday life (Berzoff et al. 2016). This is because it clearly explains the way the conscious and subconscious mind works in an interrelated way to showcase the behaviour. However, the limitation of the perspective is that it ignores the way thinking can influence behaviour and it put more emphasis on mental factors without taking into consent the influence of genetic/biological factors that influence mental health problems (Shahar, 2016). The strength of the perspective is that it was successful to explain the way adult personality is developed by mentioning that it is the derivatives of inner drives of individuals (natural urges and motivation) and experiences in childhood (way an individual is nurtured and raised) (Freud, 2018). However, the weakness of the perspective is that it has taken a reductionist approach in explaining the adult personality by ignoring complex factors like environment, motivation and others that could influence the personality (Van der Hart, 2016).

The Anna O's case study acts as relevant research executed regarding the psychodynamic approach presented by Freud. In the case study, it is seen that Anna O has developed hysteria and is suffering from paralysis, hydrophobia and other issues. Anna before her own illness was found to have her father who was suffering from tuberculosis and she was taking care of him until she fell. This prevented her from caring for father in the last few days before the death of his father (Gold and Striker, 2017). According to the case, it can be explained that Anna O developed Id (pleasure principle) that she was not responsible for her father’s death. However, her superego (morality) makes her traumatised to think that she was responsible for her father’s death out of inability to provide proper care. The conflict between Id and superego has led Anna to face ego which is reality of punishing her due to which she may be feeling paralysed.

The strength of Watson’s behavioural perspective is that it analyses behaviour on the basis of direct observation that allows easier way to quantify and gather data as well as information during the research (Staddon, 2017). The other strength is that ameliorated therapeutic application like token economics, behaviour analysis and others are deeply rooted in the theory. The approaches developed on the basis of the perspectives are found to allow successfully changing harmful and maladaptive behaviour in children as well as adults (Kawai, 2019). However, the criticism of the behavioural perspective is that it is one-dimensional approach for perceiving behaviour of human due to which it provides a superficial explanation of the cause of the behaviour. This is because the perspective does not consider the influence of free will and internal factors like thoughts and mood that could also influence one’s behaviour (Moore, 2017). Moreover, the theory fails to interpret the way behaviour adaption is made when new information is provided (Moore, 2017).

In relation to Watson’s behavioural perspective, one of the researches executed is regarding Little Albert. In case of Little Albert, it was seen that when the 9-month-old baby was at first shown masks, white rat and monkey he expressed no fear. However, on using hammer sound behind him it was seen to make him distress. In later research, for seven consecutive weeks, hammer sound was used for the baby while the white rat is shown to him. After seven weeks, it was seen that the baby expressed distress with white rat and similar objects irrespective of the presence of any hammer sound (Mertens et al. 2020). This research indicates that Little Albert learned the behaviour of distress by relating with the environment (presence of white rat) as the banging of the hammer was not shown to him but used as influence to relate it with whit rate that he previously did not feared. However, in the experiment free will and mood of the baby were never analysed making the research show weakness of the theory of not considering internal and personal factors that along with environmental influences behaviour of a person.

The strength of Bandura’s social learning theory is its flexibility in explaining the way difference in learning and behaviour occurs in a child. This is evident as environmental aspect of the theory mentions that children learn through social context and change in the environment would create alteration in the child’s behaviour (Bandura and Hall, 2018). However, the weakness of the perspective is that it focuses more on the environment surrounding the child and avoids the accountability aspect of the child for his personal actions (Goodnight et al. 2017). As mentioned by Goodnight et al. (2017), the strength of Bandura's social learning perspective is that it mentions different ways in which learning can be executed rather than mentioning a single mode of education. This is evident as the theory mentions the way through observed experiences and direct experiences any individual is able to learn. As argued by Akers and Jennings (2016), weakness of Bandura's social learning perspective is that it does not consider the chronological and age-dependent progress in learning. Thus, the theory ignores the different domains that potentially support the progressive learning of any individual.

The research regarding Bandura’s social learning perspective was seen in Bodo Doll experiment where the children were not punished in any way for hitting the doll. Thus, in the lack of presence of any punishment and reward made them show more aggressiveness towards the doll as it motivates them to be careless and develop no fear of avoiding executing the actions (Graham and Arshad-Ayaz, 2016). However, as criticised, in the experiment no personal actions that influenced the behaviour of the children to act aggressively to the Bodo doll was not analysed meaning the weakness prevailed in the theory (Graham and Arshad-Ayaz, 2016).

Examining data collection methods from range of psychological perspectives

The data collection method used in the case of Freud's theory and Watson's theory is case study. This is evident as Freud explained his theory based on description of individual case of Anna O whereas Watson explained his theory on the basis of individual case study of Little Albert. In psychological studies, the case study is referred to the data collection process in which in-depth investigation regarding a single person is gathered. In this process, the past, as well as significant life-events of the person, are gathered to analyse the information with the help of the theoretical perspective (Hancock and Algozzine, 2017). The advantage of case study is that it allows the researcher to examine a topic in wider details to gather rich qualitative data which was not possible when trying to use large number of participants for research (Morgan et al. 2017). Further, case studies provide insight into the subjective dimension of the experience that is essential for humanistic and psychoanalytic psychology (Hancock and Algozzine, 2017). However, the limitation of the case study is that it hindered generalisation of results as the information developed in the case study is regarding a single person who is not representative of the whole population (Morgan et al. 2017). Moreover, using case study as data collection method in psychology creates issues of influence of the subjective feeling of the researcher in explaining the results (Azmin, 2016).

The data collection process used by Bandura is laboratory experimentation in explaining their perspective. This is evident as the Bodo doll experiment was found to be developed in controlled laboratory environment. As mentioned by Radford et al. (2016), laboratory experiment is referred to the process that is executed in highly controlled condition implying accurate measurement. In this process of data collection, the researchers decide when the experiment is to be taken place and in which condition along with which participants are to be involved by using standard procedure. The strength of the laboratory experiment is that it is easier for the researcher to replicate and gather required information. Moreover, it allows the researcher to control in precise manner the independent as well as extraneous variables which helps them to develop a proper cause and effect relationship (Brenninkmeijer et al. 2019). As argued by Kardes and Herr (2019), weakness of the laboratory experiment is that results are developed in the unnatural environment. Thus, the data gathered in Bandura's study and in other laboratory experiments in psychology may be regarded to have reduced ecological validity. The other limitation in laboratory experimentation is that it demand factors or impact of the experiment is able to create bias in findings which makes them become confounding variables (Brenninkmeijer et al. 2019).

Analysing the way psychological perspective is used for explaining behaviour

In order to explain any behaviour, through the use of different psychological perspective a case study is to be focussed. In this context, a pseudo case study is developed of Hannah where it is seen that the person is suffering from schizophrenia. Hannah mentioned to hallucinate and hear voices which tell her that she is the leader and nobody should defy her. She is found to be born in a wealthy social class but often saw conflict between her mother and father which amounted to domestic violence. During her childhood, she was found to be abused by her father and he directed all her moves continuously regarding academics and real-life where he mentioned her to avoid communicating with other kids at school or she will be hurt. Her father was found to be involved in heavy drinking activities and avoided socialising. She was found to remain isolated in school and often her teacher reported she avoided to show effective performance in studies. At 16, she was reported to have initiated to drink alcohol and even involved in showing abusive activities towards friends and others.

The psychodynamic approach of Freud informs that presence of Id, ego and superego personality of individuals (Posey and Cushing, 2019). In this respect, the presence of symptoms regarding schizophrenia in Hannah may be developed out of ego that is influenced by conflict between Id and superego. This is evident as her beliefs of being the leader may be the influence of her fantasies which leads her ego to control over her Id and superego. Hannah’s expression of being abusive to others may be because of her observed actions of her father.

The behavioural perspective expressed by Watson mentioned that environment to be key influencer in directing one’s behaviour (Wehner, 2016). Thus, according to the theory, Hannah’s living environment where her socialisation is avoided may have directed her to remain isolated from others in school. Further, her surrounding environment that supports abusive activities may have influenced Hannah to show learned violent behaviour towards others in the school.

The Bandura’s social learning theory informs that people develop behaviour based on motivation and punishment (Harinie et al. 2017). In relation to this theoretical perspective, the fear of punishment from her father may have made Hannah also to remain isolated in the class. Further, Hannah's involvement in drinking may be influenced by observing her father's behaviour of involving in drinking alcohol.

Conclusion

The above discussion mentions that psychological perspectives are used for explaining the behaviour of a person. According to the psychodynamic theory of Freud, the personality of individuals is directed through three aspects that are Id, ego and superego. The Watson's behavioural perspective informs that environment in which people lives influences their behaviour whereas Bandura's social learning theory informs behaviour is learned through imitation and observation. The Anna O case study focuses on researcher regarding psychodynamic perspective whereas Bobo doll experiment focuses on research regarding social learning theory and Little Albert case study focus on research regarding Watson's behavioural perspective. This indicates that laboratory experiment and case studies are mainly used as data collection process in the psychological studies. The psychological perspectives discussed are used in explaining the behaviour of the person on the basis of case study of Hannah.

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