Up to the early twentieth century, psychologists had the idea that behaviour and emotions could be studied through introspection and observation whereby inferences could be made about the mental state based on the behaviour being observed.
Behaviourism, founded in the early twentieth century by John Watson, was essentially a revolt against this earlier thinking. Watson advocated that trying to gain insight into behaviour through introspection was not scientific enough. He believed that scientific psychology should consist of objective observation and measurement in the same way as other sciences. He suggested that learning could be understood purely by observing the connections between stimuli and the resulting responses with no inference being made to the mental state. A major feature of behaviourism is its insistence on scientific methodology; hence its methods focus on empirical, repeatable laboratory measures which can be analysed quantitatively. Central to behaviourism is the belief that humans share the same characteristics with non-human animals so it takes a comparative approach to its research methods. Researchers carry out carefully controlled experiments on animals, assuming that this research will generalize across a variety of species. Pavlov’s famous work with dogs on classical conditioning and later work carried out with rats by Burhuss Skinner (cited by Littleton et al 2002) demonstrate the behaviourist’s perspective and help to illustrate its rigorous methodologies.
During the 1960s, there was a shift in thinking leading to a cognitive revolution. Post World War II, different questions were being asked, and psychologists felt that more focus should be put on the internal processes that govern behaviour. They argued that higher cognitive processes such as language and thinking could not be fully explained in terms of the stimulus-response relationships proposed by the behaviourists. The emergence of computers into our culture did much to bolster the cognitive revolution. Cognitive psychologists suggested that there were comparisons between people and machines in that both could be understood in terms of information processing. The cognitive approach, therefore, uses human participants in its experiments and focuses on questions about the human mind and how mental processes determine our behaviour. This can be illustrated through early research into category learning carried out by Bruner et al.. (cited by Littleton et al 2002) when it was shown through experiments with stimulus cards, that people choose different strategies with which to test their hypotheses.
More recently, there has been a second cognitive revolution, where psychologists have broadened their study of mental processes to try and understand human behaviour. Their interest lies in how our mental processes relate to our cultural, social and institutional environments. Psychologists within this sociocultural perspective continue to explore our behaviour through experiments, but attention is also paid to participants’ own accounts of their experiences, inner thoughts and feelings within their everyday activities. Therefore, evidence is generally sought from observations of people in a natural setting. However, artificial settings may be arranged for the purposes of some studies, as in the case of the ‘Castaway’ project, which was serialised on television. Behavioural and symbolic data drawn from the observations can be analysed both quantitatively and statistically by content analysis, or qualitatively using discourse analysis. This method is well illustrated by looking at an example of Neil Mercers approach to understanding learning (Mercer, 1995; Mercer, 2000 cited by Littleton et al 2002). Mercer and his colleagues carried out observational studies on primary school children by video-recording children working together in small groups on classroom computer work. Behavioural data, (what the children did) and symbolic data, (transcripts of the children’s conversations) was then analysed qualitatively.
In conclusion, we can see that ‘…psychology is not just one enterprise, but a series of interlocking enterprises in which psychologists have different views about the best ways to understand or explain people and their behaviour and experience.’ (Phoenix and Thomas, 2002, p25) Behaviourists argue that behaviour should be explored through the study of observable events alone, with no inferences being made to the mental state. Their research is carried out objectively, in detailed and controlled laboratory studies on animals with the assumption that humans and non-human animals share the same characteristics. Evidence is thus produced from material data that is measurable. The cognitive approach argues that more focus should be put on the internal processes that govern our behaviour believing that behaviour cannot be explained through observation alone. They therefore use human participants in experimental studies where information processing can be observed and the resulting data quantified. The socioculturists focus on how our mental processes relate to our cultural and social environments and seek evidence from behavioural and symbolic data drawn from observations of people, generally in their natural settings which can be analysed subjectively.
We are able to understand from this essay that historical and cultural developments have influenced the methodologies of psychological research and that no single method is the ‘correct’ one. The method chosen is largely dependant upon the underlying philosophy of the psychological perspective we choose to pursue in any given context, and the technologies that are available to us.
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References
Littleton K, Toates F and Braisby N (2002) Three Approaches to learning
Mapping Psychology, Milton Keynes, The Open University
Phoenix A and Thomas T (2002) Psychology in the 21st century
Mapping Psychology, Milton Keynes, The Open University
