Ego defence mechanisms are unconscious or conscious attempts to protect the mind from extreme anxiety so that when traumatising events occur we push them into a compartment within our unconscious and do not have to outwardly deal with them. Ego defence mechanisms include sublimation which involves diverting emotions into something not someone else for example losing your job and then putting all your time into running and exercising, another example is regression which is to basically revert to childish tactics when confronted with an overwhelming situations for example not being allowed to go out because your grounded so you sit in front of your parents pouting and sulking.
Freud’s psychosexual fixation proposes that personality is set by the age of 5 and the experiences we go through are just results of our childhood libido, this idea only explains behaviour after the fact and does not allow any environmental changes or methods of upbringing to change the course one might take.
It could be said that Freud’s tripartite psyche theory suggests normal personality is not to want superiority or success because the ego is so centred and only if you have too much super ego or id can you achieve any goals, this is impossible to substantiate because the unconscious cannot be seen, however the ego defence mechanisms correlate so well with actions that we might take when stressed and anxious but we do not know which mechanism is being portrayed because it cannot be objectively tested. For example Ann might be in a supermarket having an argument with another customer who “deliberately” took the last carton of milk, Freud would explain this as the id being in control as a result of oral aggression due to frustration and her display of anti-social behaviour indicates projection…….. Alternatively Ann’s behaviour could be explained better using a behaviourist approach.
Behaviourism
The behaviourism perspective of human behaviour focuses on a stimulus-to-response basis deducing that the environment directly determines behaviour. Its main features centre on behaviours adopted by operant conditioning, classical conditioning and social learning. Behaviourists use quantitative data from experiments and observation as research methods, because they believe that psychology should be scientific and behaviour must be measurable.
Classical conditioning is a behavioural theory developed by Ivan Pavlov in the 1930’s theorising that we learn behaviour by association, he observed a natural response to a stimuli and then paired that existing response to a new stimuli. An example of classical conditioning is a case study by Watson and Rayner (1920) of a boy they named “Little Albert”. “Little Albert” became fearful of white rats as a result of someone making a loud banging sound every time he saw the rat, he learned to become afraid because he eventually associated rats with his fear of loud bangs. Watson’s view on behaviour was that we are a “blank slate” when we enter this world, he was famously quoted stating “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select” (Jon B .Watson 1919).
Operant conditioning was an approach established by B.F Skinner influenced by behaviourist psychologist Edward Thawndike theorising that behaviour is a result of reinforcements, “behaviour is shaped and maintained by its consequences”(B.F.Skinner). Skinner theorised that any behaviour we have will either be repeated due to positive or negative reinforcement or extinguished due to undesirable effects such as punishment as a result of the behaviour. Skinner studied rats in what is known as the “Skinner Box”
Operant conditioning would explain Ann’s aggressive behaviour when the last carton of milk was taken as a result of her having been positively reinforced by getting what she wants when she becomes aggressive.
The Social learning theory explains human behaviour as a result of observational learning and vicarious learning of a behaviour that an individual might be motivated to imitate. Unlike the operant and classical conditioning, the social learning does to a certain degree take into account the thought process that individuals may have.
According to Albert Bandura’s theory and subsequent case study on social learning called the “Bobo Dolls” experiment, it is suggested that in order to replicate behaviour such as aggression one must consider the mediating factors. The mediating factors include the observer paying attention to the behaviour, how effectively they encode it, whether or not they are able to replicate it and how motivated they are to do so with the consideration of vicarious punishment and reinforcement by their “model”.
Behaviourism reduces human behaviour to a mechanical process and disregards individual thought process. The approach considers humans as products of their environment regardless of physiological differences. With the use of addiction as an example, behaviourism would explain it as a consequence of reinforcement. If for example vicarious learning initiated gambling because an individual frequently saw advertisements on TV showing casino winners, they could become addicted because of the positive reinforcement of winning and the irregular positive reinforcement strengthening the behaviour.
Physiological
The physiological approach to explaining behaviour has three main viewpoints and these include the functions of the different areas of the brain, the nervous system consisting of neurotransmitters sending messages to the brain and behaviours determined by hormones.
The structure and function of the brain is used by physiological psychologist to explain behaviour by outlineing the connection between the function of cerebral hemispheres. “Roger Sperry” discovered that separating the hemispheres connected communicating with each other by corpus collasum which are continuoly communicating with each other, case studies show that
Neurotransmitters send messages