Physiological Psychology

The approach focuses on the relationship between our biological makeup,  our behaviour and experiences.

It looks at things like genetics, brain function, hormones and neurotransmitters in the role on our behaviour.

Areas of interests are:

• Mental disorders
• Treatments of mental disorders
• Sleep
• Circadian rhythms
• Localisation of brain function.

Strengths:

• Very scientific: uses methods such as laboratory experiments, blood tests, brain scanning. They are highly controlled methods and can be tested for reliability easily. We can draw cause-effect conclusions more easily due to correlational studies.
• Nature-nurture: As we are dealing with biological mechanisms, it is a good way to assess which of our behaviours are due to nature and which due to nurture.
• Useful: the approach has revealed several areas of the brain that have specific functions. They may be useful for diagnosing or treating people with problems after brain damage.
• Objective: the approach uses sophisticated equipment such as PET and MRI scanners which provide objective and precise way of measuring brain structures.

Weaknesses:

 

• Reductionist: the approach is reductionist because it ignores the roles of social and emotional factors in our development.

• Low ecological validity: as most of the studies are conducted in controlled laboratory conditions, the approach lacks ecological validity and mundane realism. Therefore, some biological reactions may be triggered by the controlled environment and may not be the same in the real world.

• Correlations: it is often impossible to directly observe psychological processes, so we look at things that could mean something is happening. For example, instead of measuring thoughts, we measure blood flow. A change in blood flow does not directly mean the same change in the train of thoughts.