AQA A2 Psychology PSYA3/PSYA4 Revision Thread 2016

What's the difference between reductionism and determinism?

For the breakdown of relationships, could we get away with only writing about Duck's 3 stages?
The other theory we learned about was the Social Exchange theory, and I only really know how to use that for maintenance.

Yeah you can I think, say it reduces something down to purely psychological processes and ignores the role of biology, genes, hormones or whatever.

Not really, also ducks model is 4 stages?? You have to mention or make reference to Lees 6 stage model as that was a massive theory alongside ducks both are always used in conjunction when talking about that.

Social exchange theory is onl for maintenance doesnt explain the breakdown so dont think you can actually use that.

Does anyone know if you can use reductionism when referring to cognitive essays?

[]Reductionism states that the theory takes a complex behaviour and narrows it down to just one explanations
Eg for cognitive you could say that it ignored biological factors such as genetics (use study to support the role of genetics)


This isnt right and examiners have been making an issue regarding reductionism, it can only be used when talking about biological factors so for your example about cognitive the term used is limited.

We only learnt Duck's 3 stage model, if it's 4 stages then we only learnt 3 ( lack of skills, maintenance difficulties, lack of stimulation). Alongside that our teacher told us to use SET and apply it to breakdown, but never really went over it.

We didn't learn anything else (not even Lees 6 stage model). So I'm wondering if the 3 stages are enough, I have plenty of A01 and plenty of A02, but do the examiners expect more than one explanation?

For the breakdown of relationships, could we get away with only writing about Duck's 3 stages?
The other theory we learned about was the Social Exchange theory, and I only really know how to use that for maintenance.

Now you're making me worried that everything my teacher taught us is wrong .. our teacher told us to use reductionism for every essay as it's the easiest

hey,
The determinist approach proposes that all behavior is caused by preceding factors and is thus predictable and reductionism is the belief that human behavior can be explained by breaking it down into smaller component parts.

Reductionists say that the best way to understand why we behave as we do is to look closely at the very simplest parts that make up our systems, and use the simplest explanations to understand how they work.

So determinism is WHY the behaviour happens - it is due to past experience as opposed to free will, and reductionsm is looking at explaining WHAT is happening in the simplest way

Also reductionism can only be used for biological theories anything else as stated by aqa and examiners is wrong.

Hey, I had a question about the technique you guys use, as there are three sections, and some we are bound to be better and more comfortable and dare I say find easier than other topics we have to do - Do you start with your strongest essay or the weakest? I don't know whether to start strong, get everything I know written out, or to get the 'nasty' ones out the way and finish on a strong note? Thanks!

I did the smallest section first to have mindset that atleast ive finished one, so far ive finsihed two sections and im going to go over the 2 sections again and make sure ive memrorized eveything correctly.

No this is wrong, examiners have stated theyve been frustrated and annoye when reductionism is being used wrong and should only be used for biological theories. Anything else its limited.

If you look on the examiner reports theyve stated this. I wasnt aware aswell as i was taugh the something but someone mentioned it and we looked and all agreed.

No reductionism can only be used when talking about bio factors as examiners have stressed anything else isnt correct, for others you have to use the term limited.

can someone tell me what loopa predicted for aggression, as I don't have facebook??