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A distinctive and heavily examined requirement of the AQA A-Level Psychology specification is the ability to compare and contrast the major psychological approaches across a set of recurring themes. Having studied the six approaches individually — behaviourist, social learning theory, cognitive, biological, psychodynamic and humanistic — you must now be able to step back and see how they relate to one another: where they agree, where they sharply disagree, and what each gains or loses by taking the position it does. The skill being assessed is genuinely synoptic. It is not enough to describe each approach in turn; the marks lie in explicit comparison along defined dimensions — views of development, nature versus nurture, reductionism versus holism, determinism versus free will, scientific methods, and idiographic versus nomothetic — and in reaching a reasoned judgement. This lesson provides a systematic framework for that comparison, works through each theme in depth, illustrates which approaches best explain particular behaviours, and shows how modern psychology integrates the approaches through eclecticism and the biopsychosocial model.
This lesson addresses the AQA A-Level Psychology (7182) specification requirement to compare the approaches in psychology, specifically on:
It is examined on Paper 2 (Psychology in Context) and is the natural meeting point of the whole Approaches topic with the Issues and debates unit on Paper 3 (free will and determinism, nature--nurture, holism--reductionism, idiographic--nomothetic), since the same debates are applied here to the approaches themselves.
The following table is the framework you should carry into any comparison question. Each row is one of the dimensions named in the specification; each column is one approach.
| Dimension | Behaviourist | Social Learning Theory | Cognitive | Biological | Psychodynamic | Humanistic |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View of development | Continuous; learning the same at any age; no stages | Continuous; observational learning across life; mediational ability matures | Continuous; schemas refine with experience (some stage ideas, e.g. Piaget) | Maturation of innate, genetically timed processes; biological "readiness" | Stage theory — discrete psychosexual stages in a fixed childhood sequence | Continuous personal growth; the self develops via congruence and the actualising tendency |
| Nature vs nurture | Strongly nurture (conditioning) | Nurture with some innate cognitive capacity for imitation | Interactionist (innate processing capacity shaped by experience) | Strongly nature (genes, neurochemistry, evolution) | Both — innate drives unfold through early experience | Mostly nurture (conditions of worth) but emphasis on free will over either |
| Reductionism vs holism | Reductionist (stimulus--response) | Less reductionist (adds cognitive mediation) | Reductionist (machine reductionism) | Highly reductionist (biological reductionism) | Reductionist concepts but a relatively holistic overall picture | Holistic — the whole, integrated person |
| Determinism vs free will | Hard environmental determinism | Soft determinism (reciprocal determinism) | Soft determinism (schemas guide but do not dictate) | Hard biological determinism | Psychic determinism (unconscious drives) | Free will |
| Scientific methods | Very scientific (controlled lab experiments) | Scientific (lab experiments, e.g. Bobo doll) | Scientific (experiments, brain imaging, modelling) | Very scientific (objective biological measures) | Unscientific (case studies, unfalsifiable) | Unscientific (subjective, non-falsifiable concepts) |
| Idiographic vs nomothetic | Nomothetic (general laws) | Nomothetic | Nomothetic | Nomothetic | Idiographic (individual case studies) | Idiographic (the unique individual) |
Exam Tip: Examiners reward explicit comparison, not parallel description. Use connective phrasing — "whereas", "by contrast", "similarly", "unlike" — to link approaches directly: e.g. "Whereas the biological approach is hard determinist, locating the cause of behaviour in genes and neurochemistry, the humanistic approach insists on free will and active personal agency."
Approaches differ over how and when behaviour develops.
| Position | Approach(es) | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| Strongly nature | Biological | Behaviour is shaped primarily by genes, neurochemistry, brain structures and evolution |
| Strongly nurture | Behaviourist, SLT | Behaviour is learned from the environment through conditioning or observation and imitation |
| Interactionist | Cognitive, Psychodynamic | Both contribute: cognitive schemas are innate capacities shaped by experience; Freud combined innate drives with childhood experience |
| Emphasis on neither (free will) | Humanistic | Acknowledges conditions of worth (nurture) but stresses that people transcend both forces through choice |
The fault line is sharpest between the biological approach (nature) and the behaviourist approach (nurture) — a useful contrast for any nature--nurture essay. The most defensible modern position, however, is interactionist: the biological approach's own genotype--phenotype distinction concedes that genes express themselves only in interaction with the environment, while behaviourists cannot fully explain why conditioning works more readily for some associations than others (biological preparedness).
The trade-off is the heart of this theme: reductionism delivers scientific precision and testability but risks losing the meaning and context of behaviour, whereas holism preserves the meaningful whole but is harder to study scientifically. This is why the reductionist approaches tend also to be the more scientific ones, and the holistic approaches the less scientific — a connection worth making explicit in an essay.
| Position | Approach(es) | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| Hard determinism | Behaviourist, Biological | Behaviour is the inevitable product of external (conditioning) or internal (genes, neurochemistry) causes; no genuine choice |
| Soft determinism | Cognitive, SLT | Behaviour is influenced by internal/external factors but the person retains some choice (e.g. reciprocal determinism in SLT) |
| Psychic determinism | Psychodynamic | Behaviour, including slips and accidents, is determined by unconscious drives and childhood experience |
| Free will | Humanistic | The person is an active agent capable of genuine, self-directed choice |
The clearest opposition is between the behaviourist/biological hard-determinist pole and the humanistic free-will pole, with the psychodynamic approach occupying its own distinctive position: psychic determinism locates the cause of behaviour not in the environment or the body but in unconscious drives and childhood experience. It is worth distinguishing carefully between the types of determinism, because examiners reward this precision. Hard determinism (behaviourist, biological) holds that free will is an illusion and every action is the inevitable product of prior causes. Soft determinism (the cognitive approach and SLT) holds that behaviour is constrained by internal and external factors but the person still exercises meaningful choice within those constraints — in SLT this is captured by Bandura's notion of reciprocal determinism, in which the person and the environment influence each other in both directions. Psychic determinism (psychodynamic) is a third variant, determinist about unconscious causation. Determinism in general aligns the approaches with the assumptions of science — the idea that every effect has a discoverable cause is what makes prediction and control possible — which is one reason the deterministic approaches are also the more scientific. The humanistic insistence on free will, by contrast, is one reason that approach sits awkwardly with the scientific method, since genuinely free choices would be, by definition, unpredictable.
Each approach favours methods that reflect its assumptions, and these directly shape its scientific credibility.
| Approach | Preferred Methods | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Behaviourist | Controlled laboratory experiments (often animals) | Values objectivity, control and measurable, observable behaviour |
| Social Learning Theory | Laboratory experiments (often children, e.g. Bobo doll) | Needs controlled conditions to observe imitation |
| Cognitive | Lab experiments, computer modelling, brain imaging | Requires controlled tasks to infer unobservable mental processes |
| Biological | Brain scans, twin and adoption studies, genetic analysis, drug trials | Needs objective, quantifiable biological measures |
| Psychodynamic | Case studies, clinical observation, dream analysis | Requires rich, in-depth exploration of the individual |
| Humanistic | Unstructured interviews, the Q-sort, qualitative methods | Prioritises the individual's subjective experience |
The pattern is clear: the behaviourist, cognitive and biological approaches use controlled, objective, replicable methods and are widely regarded as scientific, whereas the psychodynamic and humanistic approaches rely on subjective, qualitative methods and are frequently judged unscientific (the psychodynamic approach also being criticised as unfalsifiable). This theme connects tightly to the dedicated "Psychology as a science" lesson.
Key Definition: Nomothetic approach — aims to establish general laws of behaviour that apply to all people (the behaviourist, cognitive and biological approaches, and SLT). Idiographic approach — focuses on the unique individual and their personal experience (the psychodynamic and humanistic approaches).
The nomothetic approaches use large samples and standardised, often quantitative methods to generalise, which fits the scientific aim of prediction and control but can lose the individual in the average. The idiographic approaches use detailed case studies and qualitative methods to understand the particular person in depth, which captures uniqueness and meaning but limits generalisation and scientific testability. Note the strong alignment running through the comparison: approaches that are nomothetic also tend to be scientific, reductionist and deterministic, while the idiographic approaches tend to be less scientific, more holistic, and (in the humanistic case) committed to free will.
The single most important insight from comparing the approaches is that these six dimensions are not independent — they hang together in two recognisable clusters. At one pole sit the scientific approaches (biological, behaviourist, and largely cognitive): they tend to be nomothetic (seeking general laws), reductionist (breaking behaviour into parts), deterministic (behaviour has discoverable causes), and to favour objective, experimental methods. At the opposite pole sit the humanistic and, in important respects, the psychodynamic approaches: they tend to be idiographic (focused on the individual), holistic (or at least less reductionist), more open to free will (humanistic) or to unconscious determinism via in-depth study (psychodynamic), and to favour qualitative methods. Understanding why these clusters form is itself an evaluative achievement: a commitment to the scientific method requires objectivity, control and the search for general laws, which naturally pulls an approach towards reductionism, nomothetic method and determinism; conversely, a commitment to studying the whole, unique, freely-choosing person requires holism and idiographic, qualitative enquiry, which sits in tension with conventional science. Seeing the dimensions as a connected web, rather than a list of separate boxes, is what lifts a comparison answer from descriptive to genuinely analytical.
| Behaviour | Best Explained By | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Depression | Cognitive + Biological | Beck's negative schemas/cognitive triad explain the thinking patterns; low serotonin explains the neurochemical basis; CBT and SSRIs are both effective treatments |
| Aggression | Biological + SLT | Testosterone and evolved mechanisms (biological) and observational learning (Bandura's Bobo doll) both contribute |
| Phobias | Behaviourist + Psychodynamic | Classical conditioning (Little Albert) explains acquisition; Freud offers an alternative unconscious account (Little Hans) |
| Attachment | Biological + Psychodynamic | Bowlby's evolutionary theory (biological) and Freud's emphasis on the first relationship (psychodynamic) |
| Schizophrenia | Biological | Strong genetic evidence (twin studies), the dopamine hypothesis, and the effectiveness of antipsychotics |
The lesson here is that different behaviours are best illuminated by different approaches, and that several behaviours are best understood by combining approaches — which is precisely the rationale for eclecticism.
Modern psychology increasingly recognises that no single approach can fully explain the complexity of human behaviour, leading to integration.
Eclecticism is the practice of combining techniques and insights from different approaches according to what works best for a given problem or client.
Key Definition: Eclecticism — drawing on ideas and techniques from multiple psychological approaches rather than adhering rigidly to one. It is the norm in modern clinical practice.
The biopsychosocial model is the most fully integrated framework, treating behaviour and mental health as the joint product of three interacting levels.
| Factor | Contribution |
|---|---|
| Bio (biological) | Genetics, neurochemistry, brain structures, hormones |
| Psycho (psychological) | Cognition, emotion, learned behaviour, unconscious processes |
| Social | Family relationships, culture, social support, socioeconomic status |
graph TD
A[Biological factors] --> D["Behaviour and mental health"]
B[Psychological factors] --> D
C[Social factors] --> D
A <--> B
B <--> C
A <--> C
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