Introduction
This blog will be an explanation of the main psychological perspectives for Health and Social Care. I will also be evaluating the perspectives and the theories within the different perspectives.
P1 – Explain the main Psychological Perspectives
M1 – Asses two Psychological Approaches to Study
P1 – This section of my blog will be a brief explanation of the principal psychological perspectives.
Behaviourist perspective
Behaviourist perspective believes that human behaviour is learnt, usually from experiences. The perspective claims that you can train a human to behave in a specific way. Moods including anger, aggression, love and all other behaviours occur as a result of what we learn.
Ivan Pavlov, a behaviourist psychologist came up with a theory called ‘classic conditioning’. Classic conditioning claims that it is possible to shape human behaviour, in order for this to occur, the right environment must be created, e.g. Pavlov’s dog experience. Pavlov claimed that dogs demonstrated classic conditioning. When food was given to the dog, it immediately salivated more. This showed that the dog seeing/smelling food and salivating was automatic, an unconditional stimuli in the experiment. Through this experiment, the dog began to associate the lab assistant with food. This was learnt because before the experiment, the dog did not salivate when it saw the lab assistant, which means their behaviour changed. Pavlov used a bell as a neutral stimulus; whenever he gave food to the dog he rang the bell. After repeating this procedure, he rang the bell on its own, the dog had an increase in salivation. So the dog learnt to associate the bell with food – a conditional stimulus.
Skinner’s theory is another behaviourist theory which states that “the best way to understand behaviour is to look at the causes of an action and its consequences.” This approach was called ‘operant conditioning’. Skinner identified three types of responses that can follow behaviour:
- Neutral operant: responses from the environment that neither increase nor decrease the probability of a behaviour being repeated.
- Reinforcers: Response from the environment that increase the probability of a behaviour being repeated. Reinforcers can be either positive or negative – positive reinforcement
- Punishers: Responses from the environment that decrease the likelihood of a behaviour being repeated. Punishment weakens behaviour – negative reinforcement
An example of operant conditioning is when a child is doing well at school and is rewarded for it, they will be influenced to repeat their good behaviour in the future.
The main contributors of behaviourist perspective are Pavlov and Skinner. The main idea of the perspective is that behaviour can be leant and controlled in a particular setting.
Social Learning Perspective
The social learning perspective looks at human behaviour and how it is connected to society. The social perspective makes us understand how society is important in shaping individuals. This theory suggests that behaviour can be learnt by observing others; therefore it focuses on observational learning. The main contributor of this theory is Albert Bandura. For social learning to be effective, the five steps must apply:
- Availability – the model must be present.
- Attention – in order to learn, the behaviour attentiveness is required.
- Retention – behaviour must be retained.
- Reproduction – repeating the actions.
- Motivation – full motivation is required in order to pattern the behaviour.
Bandura agrees with the behaviourist perspective, however he adds that behaviour is learnt from observing others in our environment. Bandura conducted a study called ‘Bobo dolls study’. They showed the children an adult playing aggressively with the dolls, then told the children that they could play with the dolls. The children copied the adult’s actions on the bobo dolls.
Biological perspective
The biological approach believes us to be as a consequence of our genetics and physiology. It is the only approach in psychology that examines thoughts, feelings, and behaviours from a biological point of view, whereas other perspectives believe that development is due to environmental factors. All thoughts, feelings and behaviours ultimately have a biological course according to the biological perspective.
Arnold Gessell created the theory of maturation which states that while in the mother’s womb, we develop according to a set of fixed stages. Development of womb:
- Heart
- Nervous system
- Bones and muscles
- Fully functioning human ready to be born
- From birth onwards – our genes are responsible for our development
Some scientific facts defend this perspective, e.g. genes are responsible for many diseases. These are known as hereditary diseases, e.g. Huntington disease, cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anaemia are all passed on from parents to child.
Humanist perspective
This perspective studies the whole person and the uniqueness of each individual. It helps us to understand humans experience from an individual’s view. This perspective places emphasis on free will and freedom of choice. The study was mainly studied by Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – Maslow developed a theory of human motivation. He thought that each person attempts to be the best that they can be, intellectually, emotionally and physically. He created a hierarchy which includes five motivational needs:
- Self-actualisation
- Self-esteem
- Social
- Safety
- Physiological
The humanist perspective is known to be used to treat a few illnesses such as depression.
Roger’s created the Client Centred Approach. This approach places the client at the centre of the entire therapeutic process. Roger’s also created the Unconditional Positive Regards, which states that people should be positive no matter what a person has done, e.g. a criminal should be positive in difficult circumstances, and people should be non-judgemental. Roger’s agrees with the main assumptions of Abraham Maslow, but adds that for a person to “grow”, they need an environment that provides them with genuineness (openness and self-disclosure), acceptance (being seen with unconditional positive regard), and empathy (being listened to and understood).
Cognitive perspective
The cognitive perspective refers to the cognitive operation of the brain and gives us an insight of how our brain and memory works. The main researchers who carried out this theory are Atkinson and Shiffrin. They created the Multi-Store Model of Memory, which suggests that everyone stores information in three areas:
- Sensory memory – Small capacity to withhold information and it is where our visual memory is stored, e.g. remembering colours, sizes and shapes. Also consists of our hearing system and enables us to remember specific sounds.
- Short-term memory – the information we use regularly is stored here – hearing and visual. Short-term memory has a capacity of about 30 seconds unless the information we want to store is replayed.
- Long-term memory – The information in this section is grouped into sections regarding their meaning. This information is stored for a long period of time.
M1
The two psychological approaches that I will discuss in this section of my blog are behaviourist perspective and the social perspective.
Behaviourist perspective – One strength of the behaviourist perspective is that you can understand the impact of rewards on behaviour as the data is easy to collect and measure as it is mainly based on observations which is essential when research is being conducted. The behaviourist perspective has been used for mental health disorder treatments – Pavlov’s ‘Classical Conditioning’ theory has been used to help treat those with unhealthy addictions.
A weakness of the behaviourist perspective is that the perspective contradicts the ‘freewill’ of humans as it teaches that depending on the environment and atmosphere is what impacts our behaviour the most.
Social perspective – A strength of the social perspective is that it tries to investigate human behaviour scientifically. Scientific experiments have proven this concept to be reliable to some extent. Nowadays, many people use social media where many positive applications and trends have been made, such as for breast cancer awareness, many women are taking part in not wearing makeup and putting up pictures on their profiles to help raise awareness for the illness. The social perspective helps people to change their behaviour.
A weakness of this perspective is that it eliminates the fact that people should not copy everything that they see as it could affect individual’s in later life because it encourages behaviour change, for example with the ‘bobo doll’ theory which was carried out by psychologist Albert Bandura. An ethical issue of this experiment is making sure that the participants were safe. The children could have been affected in the future due to this experiment.
To conclude this section of my blog, many would argue that the behaviourist perspective (Skinner’s theory) only caters to one type of learning, and excludes learning that takes place with a neutral reaction. The social perspective is a great way to raise awareness to an extent such as on social media, in today’s society, many people are connected online, twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc. however, the perspective does not encourage individual’s to make their own choices.
P2 – Provide an explanation of the different psychological perspectives to health care practice
P3 – Provide an explanation of the different psychological perspectives to social care practice
M2 – Formulate a comparison of two psychological approaches to health and social care service provision
D1 – Conduct an evaluation of two psychological approaches to health and social care service provision
In this section of my blog, I will explain the different psychological perspectives to health care practice and social care practice. Then I will compare two psychological approaches to health and social care provisions. The two psychological approaches I have chosen to compare are the psychological perspective and the social learning perspective.
P2 & P3
Behaviourist Perspective
The behaviourist approach states that our behaviour is determined and shaped by the environment of an individual. The main aim of this approach is to change and shape an individual’s behaviour by understanding that there are ways in overcoming difficult behavior.
Continuous reinforcement in every instance of desirable behavior is useful when a behavior is being introduced. In a health care sector, the behaviourist approach is frequently used to treat weight loss, smoking, and drug and alcohol addiction. The importance of regularly and consistently rewarding desired behavior immediately and not rewarding undesirable behavior is crucial to the success of a behaviorist approach to learning.
Within a social care setting such as a school, using the operant conditioning method is essential as it encourages children to continue to behave well in the future, therefore being conditioned to behave in a certain manner, and also discouraging children from behaving bad.
Cognitive Perspective
The cognitive perspective focuses on the way individuals think and how our thoughts affect the way we behave.
This perspective can be used in a wide number of mental health and physical conditions. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has recommended its use as a treatment option for a number of diagnoses, such as anxiety and depressive disorders. By challenging ways of thinking, cognitive therapy can help to produce more helpful and realistic thought patterns.
Within a social care setting, the cognitive perspective can be used by a psychologist to help an individual who suffers with ADHD, and would like a non-medical treatment. By helping the service user learn new techniques and coping strategies like self-soothing, and self-regulation. This means that the service user can then control their behavior without the need for medication, and they will learn how to act in different situations. The individual learns how to consider their behavior due to what social situation they are in and then learn how to act correctly and refrain the situation.
Humanist Perspective
The humanist perspective is frequently used in health and social care settings. The learning cannot take place unless both the cognitive and affective domains are involved. An individual’s capacity for self-determination is an important part of humanist theory. In a health secor, humanist perspective is used to help individual’s regain personal control over their health care and to boost an individuals self-esteem and confidence.
Similarly in a social care sector, humanist perspective is used to help regain an individuals peronal control and esteem. Humanist perspective can be used to treat suicidal thoughts. Service providers suhc as social workers need skills such as empathy, patience, to be good listeners and to gain the trust of te service users in order to understand and help the individual to get better and to build self-confidence.
Biological Perspective
The biological perspective states that the development of an individual is influenced by their genes and not by social factors.
It is far from easy to determine the extent to which genetic inheritance influences behaviour, however illnesses such as autism and schizophrenia are biological illnesses.
Gesell developed an assessment scale to enable judgments to be made about whether a child’s behaviour and understanding matches their age. In the social care sector, this scale enables the child’s scores to be compared against their scores at an earlier age to determine whether development is proceeding satisfactorily. It also enables a skilled and trained assessor to identify developmental problems that may emerge for an individual, allowing for early and appropriate intervention.
Social Learning Perspective
The social learning perspective is the process that takes place in a social context, through observation. Social learning is used by positive role models to influence health and social care campaigns etc. People can also be influenced by celebrities through social media, e.g. when the ‘#BringBackOurGirls’ campaign was introduced, many celebrities used the hashtag and raised awareness all over the world about what gone on in Nigeria. This influenced individuals to want to know what was going on and to raise money for the charities that were set for the tragedy.
Social learning perspective can be used in social care sectors such as schools, e.g. in a science lesson, when the youths do practical work, they are more likely to understand their lesson as they are not only reading from a textbook but also carrying out investigations demonstrated by their teacher. Through observation they are learning, and copying the model to correctly complete the experiment.
To conclude, all individual‘s grow with success and do better when achievements are recognized and reinforced. Respecting the whole person in a supportive environment can encourage learning. Learning is also adapted through structuring information appropriately and presenting it in meaningful segments with appropriate feedback.
M2 & D1
The two psychological approaches I will be comparing and evaluating in this section of my blog is the behaviourism perspective and the social learning perspective. Each perspective has got its strengths and weaknesses in the way that they are used in health and social care sectors.
The behaviourism perspective is the perspective that believes human behaviour is learnt, usually from experiences. According to psychologists Pavlov and Skinner, the best way to understand behaviour is to look at the causes of an action and its consequences. It is possible to shape human behaviour.
The social learning perspective is the complete opposite of the behaviourism perspective as it makes us understand how society is important in shaping individuals. The social learning theory suggests that behaviour can be learnt by observing others and social interactions, whereas the behaviourism perspective cancels this out by claiming that behaviour is learnt by personal experiences.
A positive for the behaviourism perspective is that when the theory is applied to help treat certain individuals with disorders and illnesses such as weight loss and drug/alcohol addictions, it is proven to be remarkably effective.
However, there are very few scientists who believe that the behaviourism theory is as comprehensive as it was once thought to be. The behaviourism perspective totally dismisses the effect that the environment has on a person’s behaviour and the role it plays in developing personality.
The social learning perspective can be difficult to quantify the effect that social learning has on development as not all social learning can be directly observed. Because of this, the understanding of how a child learns through observation and how an adult learns through observation are not differentiated, and factors of development are not included. Social leaning perspective ignores the developmental stages of maturation over an individual’s lifetime. The perspective does not explain how motivation or personality can change over time.
On the other hand, the social learning approach takes thought processes into account and acknowledges the role that they play in deciding if a behaviour is to be imitated or not. As such, social learning theory provides a more comprehensive explanation of human learning by recognising the role of mediational processes.
Conclusion
To conclude my blog, I have found that none of the psychological perspectives are similar, they all claim different views on how an individual’s personality and behaviour is shaped. However all of these perspectives can be a person can learn and develop their personality through more than one of these perspectives. The perspectives can be used individually to help treat certain disorders and illnesses.
References
Biological Psychology 2015 [Online] Available at: http://www.simplypsychology.org/biological-psychology.html – (Accessed 19/05/2016) – Saul McLeod.
Bandura – Social Learning Theory 2016[Online] Available at: http://www.simplypsychology.org/bandura.html – (Accessed 19/05/2016) – Saul McLeod.
Skinner – Operant Conditioning 2015 [Online] Available at: http://www.simplypsychology.org/operant-conditioning.html – (Accessed 20/05/2016) – Saul McLeod.
Humanism 2015 [Online] Available at: http://www.simplypsychology.org/humanistic.html – (Accessed 21/05/2016) – Saul McLeod.
Carl Rogers 2014 [Online] Available at: http://www.simplypsychology.org/carl-rogers.html – (Accessed 20/05/2016) – Saul McLeod.
Bandura – Social Learning Theory 2016 [Online] Available at: http://www.simplypsychology.org/bandura.html – (Accessed 22/05/2016) – Saul McLeod.
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