Issues and Debates

THE SPECIFICATION: (click on links to open notes for each individual part of the specification.)

• Gender and culture in Psychology – universality and bias. Gender bias including androcentrism and alpha and beta bias; cultural bias, including ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.
• Free will and determinism: hard determinism and soft determinism; biological, environmental and psychic determinism. The scientific emphasis on causal explanations.
• The nature-nurture debate: the relative importance of heredity and environment in determining behaviour; the interactionist approach.
• Holism and reductionism: levels of explanation in Psychology. Biological reductionism and environmental (stimulus-response) reductionism.
• Idiographic and nomothetic approaches to psychological investigation.
• Ethical implications of research studies and theory, including reference to social sensitivity.