• Question: Which psychological approach do you agree with the most?

    Asked by Williams_ to Jack, Gem, Jermaine, Michelle, Steve on 15 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Michelle Jamieson

      Michelle Jamieson answered on 15 Jun 2017:

      I agree with the Humanistic perspective. It emphasises the study of the whole person (holism). It looks at human behaviour in context, not only through the eyes of the observer, but through the eyes of the person doing the behaving.

    • Photo: Steven Brown

      Steven Brown answered on 15 Jun 2017:

      I feel that it depends on what you are researching – what do you want to find out? Some approaches work well sometimes, and not at other times. I feel that most approaches do not take into account social stuff – we are social animals. I would like to see social psychology incorporated more into research. So many of the decisions we make are affected by external, social stuff – even being really warm, in a hurry, etc. All of this changes us, momentarily – we are not the same person throughout the day, and throughtout our lives. Personality theory does a good job of breaking someone down in a meaningful way, but even then it has been shown how our personalities change over time – where you live, where you work, etc. These all impact on who we are.

    • Photo: Jermaine Ravalier

      Jermaine Ravalier answered on 15 Jun 2017:

      There is no one approach that’s correct – every approach has its drawbacks. For example very few people still agree with the psychodynamic approach, whereas more agree with the humanist approach – there are people who live their via the mantra of ‘unconditional positive regard’. For me that in its self is reductionist – human experience is made up of positive and negative experiences.

      So for me there isn’t one. We as individuals should pick the best of each one – maybe then we’ll get a truly clear explanation of human behaviour

    • Photo: Jack barton

      Jack barton answered on 17 Jun 2017:

      To repeat what others have already said I think that it is somewhat wrong to segment psychology into different approaches at this point. It is useful to talk about them separately in order to teach us how psychology has progressed over time but research will often take a multi-faceted approach to understand behaviour. For example, research into mental health will concern biological, behavioural, cognitive, humanist, psychoanalytic (in forms not recognisable to Freud’s work), and will attempt to bring these together. Cognitive neuroscience is a great example of this and blends different approaches together to address questions on behaviour and health.

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