A2 Psychology at Spalding Grammar School

The Biological Approach looks at human beings as "meat machines" and argues that everything we do and think has a biological explanation. Common biological explanations include: the structure of the brain, the effect of hormones and the influence of genes. Click here for a website explaining and evaluating Biopsychology.

The strength of this is that modern scientific technology can be used to scan or measure biological processes that used to be undetectable. A good example of this is brain scanning technology like the MRI or PET scans. Biological explanations often lead to the invention of drugs or surgical procedures that can help people with psychological problems; for example, Prozac is a drug which boosts serotonin levels in the brain to combat depression.

On the other hand this approach is very reductionist because it ignores people's feelings and relationships, which are also very important factors in their behaviour. It can be determinist, because biopsychologists often suggest that people have no control over their biological impulses. It can even be unethical, because medical procedures for psychological problems can be invasive and dangerous.

The Biological Approach has been rather neglected since the middle of the 20th century, possibly because of its associations with Nazi science. However, new research into the human genome and DNA seems to be making Biopsychology more and more exciting and it may challenge Cognitive Psychology for the position of dominance among the approaches. 

The cognitive approach looks at how people think and how they perceive the world. Common topics for cognitive psychology include: memory, perception, how we attribute blame and how we plan our behaviour. Click here for a website explaining and evaluating Cognitivism.

The strength of this is that it studies the reasons and motives behind people's behaviour, usually in their own words, and it gets around the difficulties of having to interpret people's behaviour. It also has produced a lot of useful techniques for counselling, because if someone changes the way they think, their behaviour will change too.

On the other hand, this approach can be reductionist because it assumes people make up their minds about things in isolation, whereas in fact they are affected by other people, by biological factors and maybe by unconscious urges they're not even aware of. Cognitions usually have to be studied through self-reports, which have a lot of problems of their own.

The Cognitive Approach is currently the dominant approach in Psychology and has been ever since the 1970s. This might be related to the rise of computers which has made scientists focus on the nature of thought. 

The developmental approach looks at how people's thoughts and behaviours are rooted in their childhood experiences. In Forensic Psychology, this often means explaining criminality by referring to disadvantaged childhoods and considering the nature of children as witnesses. In Sport Psychology, some aspects of personality, aggression and motivation are formed in childhood, while leadership & coaching has to take into account the deverlopmental stage players are at.

The strength of this is that it studies the early beginnings of behaviour and might give us insights into how to encourage or discourage behaviour in the future, through education, parenting or interventions. For example, if children can be helped while young they might never turn to crime or might go on to be great athletes.

On the other hand, this approach can be invalid because we can never be sure that childhood experiences are the only - or even the most important - factors at work. Lots of people grow up with poor parenting and bad rolemodels but it only makes them more determined to live a non-criminal life. Similarly, even sports prodigies who are coached from an early age can "burn out" and abandon their sport.

The Developmental Approach includes the psychodynamic perspective pioneered by Sigmund Freud, which looks at how childhood conflicts with parents shape adult behaviour. 

The Individual Differences approach looks at the things that make people unique. In Forensic Psychology, this often means explaining criminality by referring to unique characteristics like psychopathy and moral development, or else characteristics like mental illness. In Sport Psychology, some characteristics like personality, motivation and self-confidence affect sporting performance.

The strength of this is that it keeps the focus on the individual when psychologists are often inclined to make sweeping statements about large populations. It also reminds us of the importance of unusual or eccentric cases - that they "Everyman" doesn't covery everybody. This is why psychologists of Individual Differences like to use case studies and collect qualitative data.

On the other hand, this approach can have limited usefulness, because research has more value when its conclusions can be generalised as much as possible.

The Individual Differences Approach includes the psychodynamic perspective pioneered by Sigmund Freud, which looks at how adult behaviour is influenced by a unique set of conflicts buried in each person's unconscious mind.. 

The social approach looks at how people's thoughts and behaviours are shaped by their social situation - who they're with and what's going on around them. In Forensic Psychology, this often means explaining criminality by referring to poverty and bad role models and considering the nature of social influence in jury decision-making. In Sport Psychology, a whole unit is given over to the Social Psychology of Sport but this approach is also used to explain aggression and motivation.

The strength of this approach is that it studies the sort of social situations we find ourselves in most of the time. Sport in particular is a social event, because players are grouped into teams and watched by audiences.

On the other hand, this approach can ignore the individual side of human experiences. Even in teams we don't completely lose our individuality and things like personality, moods, attitudes and beliefs affect our behaviour just as much as social situations. These factors tend to be studied by the psychologists of Individual Differences and Cognitions.

The Social Approach includes the psychological school of Behaviourism, which regards all behaviour as learned and suggests that observable behaviour is the only data that psychologists should study. 

The Social Approach is sometimes combined with Cognitive Psychology to produce a branch of psychology called SOCIAL COGNITION. This looks in particular at how intense social situations cause us to start thinking differently. An example would be Milgram's idea of the agentic state that you studied for AS.

Behaviourism was proposed by Edward Thorndike and developed by psychologists like Pavlov and B F Skinner. It takes a very "scientific" approach, looking only at what is measurable and studying how human behaviour is shaped by the environment. Click here for a website explaining and evaluating Behaviourism.

The strength of Behaviourism is in its scientific credentials. It only looks at things that can be measured, things like behaviour and actions, and ignores mysterious things like thoughts and feelings. Behaviourists have created many techniques for modifying behaviour which are useful for motivating or educating people and helping them overcome fears or addictions.

On the other hand, Behaviourism can be reductionist precisely because it does ignore cognitions. Many of its ideas are based on experiments carried out on animals and can't be generalised to humans in a straightforward way. Behaviourism paints a picture of human beings completely dominated by environmental influences - this is very determinist.

The Psychodynamic Perspective was developed by Sigmund Freud and focuses on the unconscious mind as the source of our motivation, behaviour and personality. Because the unconscious mind is unknowable directly, psychoanalysts have created many ingenious tests to explore it. Two interesting techniques are FREE ASSOCIATION which asks respondents to speak the first thing that comes into their heads and PROJECTIVE TESTS which ask respondents to describe their reaction to a picture or ambiguous shape.

The strength of the Psychodynamic Perspective is the sheer depth of insight it produces and the intensely personal and holistic way it explores a person's background and character. PSYCHOANALYSIS offers to help people understand their own unconscious conflicts and perhaps resolve them, which would reduce anxiety and bring an end to self-destructive behaviour. It's certainly more ethical than brain surgery or mind-altering drugs.

On the other hand, psychoanalysis takes a long time and a trained psychoanalyst charges a lot of money. The therapy requires a lot of talking and soul-searching. In other words, it might always be a therapy for the elite and not that useful for the majority of people, who need quicker fixes and might lack the patience or imagination. Some people sing the praises of psychoanalysis but others claim it doesn't do any good and that a lot of Freud's defence mechanisms, repressed memories and sexual conflicts don't really exist. If these criticisms are true, then the Psychodynamic Perspective isn't valid and Freud's theories aren't really scientific. 

An experiment is the most powerful tool in scientific research, because rather than just recording variables it actually tries to MANIPULATE them. In a classic experiment, the environment is strictly controlled so that important variables never change. The sample is split into two groups. One group (the CONTROL GROUP) is studied in the controlled environment. The other group (the EXPERIMENTAL GROUP) is exposed to a crucial change - this is the INDEPENDENT VARIABLE. If the experimental group behaves differently from the control group, then it must be the independent variable (IV) making the change happen. This is why experiments tell us about cause-and-effect relationships.

This basic type of experiment is inspired by what chemists and physicists do in laboratories. When studying people, the basic lab experiment often has to be changed:

• Sometimes you can't split the group because you can't manipulate the IV. For example, you can't make someone female or blue-eyed for the purpose of an experiment. Researching a naturally-occurring variable is called a QUASI-EXPERIMENT or NATURAL EXPERIMENT. This tells us less about cause-and-effect because we can't be sure that there are no other important differences between the two groups - in other words, the IV might not be the thing causing any differences you notice.
• Sometimes you need to do research out in the real world rather than in a controlled lab environment. This is called a FIELD EXPERIMENT. Again, the lack of control means you can't be sure it's the IV and the IV alone causing any differences you notice. This is why field experiments tell us less about cause-and-effect than lab experiments.
• Sometimes you can't split a group in two. Instead, you need to study the same group of people twice, usually "before" and "after" they've had some sort of treatment. The "before" is like the control condition and the "after" is like the experimental condition. This is known as REPEATED MEASURES DESIGN. On the plus side, this doesn't require as many participants and it does tell you about how people change. Unfortunately, people who are tested twice often perform differently the second time round because they've had practice. As above, this confuses the role of the IV and doesn't tell us as much about cause-and-effect.

Experiments in psychology are rather controversial. Some researchers make great use of them - especially from the Cognitive and Biological Approaches and the Behaviourist Perspective. Social Psychologists argue that social interactions are too complex to be studied in artificial settings and there are ethical problems with carrying out experiments on children or on people who haven't given their informed consent.

• View this handout on writing (b)-essays evaluating psychology in terms of the experimental method

A case study is a detailed examination of a single person or organisation. Case studies are usually conducted over a long period of time, so they are often examples of longitudinal studies as well. When studying AS Psychology you read about case studies of Little Hans, of the multiple-personality sufferer Eve White and of the bonobo ape Kanzi. Case studies usually gather information from a mixture of observation and interviews, but often use other forms of psychological testing as well. In A2 Psychology you will learn about a special type of case study called an Offender Profile.

The great advantage of case studies is in the sheer depth and richness of the data they produce, giving you a complete picture of a person's mind, behaviour and history. This sort of detailed portrait can be very holistic and some types of psychology, like the Psychodynamic Perspective or the Cognitive or Developmental Approach, particularly lend themselves to creating case studies.

On the other hand, this richness of data can be overwhelming, so that you "can't see the wood for the trees" - a common problem with research that tries to be holistic. This can make it hard to draw clear conclusions from case studies. Because a case study looks at just one person or group it can be difficult to GENERALISE your findings to other people. This is especially true if the case study focuses on a person or group that is UNREPRESENTATIVE, which is often the case since case studies tend to investigate bizarre or unusual things.

Self-reports involve asking people questions about their own behaviour or experiences. This can be done out loud in an interview or at a distance using a questionnaire. Self-reports can include both open and closed questions.

Self-reports can produce quantitative data if they include closed questions and there is a scoring system. For example, PSYCHOMETRIC TESTS are special quizzes that give the respondents a score for their mental qualities, like intelligence, personality or criminality. However, these scores can be very reductionist if they lump people together who in fact gave very different answers.

On the other hand, self-reports with open questions can produce qualitative data. For example, PROJECTIVE TESTS are imaginative activities where the respondent describes their reaction to a scene or image and the researcher interprets this description, looking for clues about underlying motives, fears or desires. However, these tests are often unreliable since two researchers could give different interpretations to the same description.

Interviews can be structured or unstructured. Structured interviews have the questions designed in advance and are carefully pre-scripted. This means every respondent gets asked the same questions in the same way, which is very important if the interview is part of an experiment. However, this stops the interviewer from following interesting lines of discussion if they come up and limits what topics the interview can cover.

Unstructured interviews have the great advantage of being able to follow any line of discussion and give the respondent much more freedom to talk about what interests them. However, no two unstructured interviews are ever quite the same which makes it hard to compare the data you get from them.

Some researchers use semi-structured interviews, which have a list of discussion points to start the conversation off but include some pre-scripted questions the interviewer intends to ask regardless.

Observations involve looking at people's behaviour and recording it. This is often done with a checklist called an OBSERVATIONAL SCHEDULE and is sometimes helped by CCTV cameras or one-way mirrors. A special type of observation uses scientific technology to observe behaviour that would normally be invisible to the eye (eg galvanic skin response or brain functions). Observations are usually OVERT, which means the participants know they are being studied (but might not know why); some observations are COVERT, since they study people who are unaware they are being watched.

STRUCTURED OBSERVATIONS produce quantitative data. However, observers have to be trained to record what they see in a consistent way and you normally want several observers to test inter-rater reliability. No matter how well-structured the observation, the observers still have to interpret what they are seeing and can be biased. Finally, although quantitative data is useful it's also quite a reductionist way to study people.

Some psychologists prefer PARTICIPANT OBSERVATIONS where the observer is a member of the group he is studying. This produces a lot more in-depth data as well as qualitative data. However, it's hard to stay objective while doing participant observations so this research is accused of being less scientific. 

Reliability refers to the consistency of results: are the results a "one-off" or do they show something permanent and long lasting? You can check reliability by repeating the research over and over (TEST-RETEST RELIABILITY), by making sure that different parts of a test tend to agree with each other (INTERNAL RELIABILITY) or by involving several researchers who compare their results and only including data they all agree on (INTER-RATER RELIABILITY). Lots of things can interfere with the reliability of research, such as the participants' mood, outside influences or faulty ways of measuring the results.

• View this handout on writing (b)-essays evaluating psychology in terms of reliability  

Even if a piece of research is reliable, it might not be valid. Validity is the basic "truth" behind research - can you believe in the results? In psychology, the main reason why research is invalid is when you haven't measured what you thought you were measuring. This often happens when you study people in an artificial situation (ecological validity). FACE VALIDITY is when the results match with what common sense tells us to be true. CONSTRUCT VALIDITY is when the results link with psychological theories that have already been established as true. CONCURRENT VALIDITY is when two different studies come to the same conclusion, which makes the conclusion more likely to be true.

• View this handout on writing (b)-essays evaluating psychology in terms of validity

Researchers have a duty to show some consideration for the well-being of their participants. In particular, they are expected to consider these factors:

• CONSENT: Participants should be informed about the study and should agree to take part in it. There are ethical problems with putting people into a study without their knowledge (like Piliavin did with his commuters) or not telling participants the full story about what will happen to them (like Milgram did with his 'teachers').
• DECEPTION: Once the research is underway, researchers should not deceive participants. They should not be lied to about what is happening to them or what they are experiencing. There are ethical problems with using confederates or "stooges" who pretend to be taking part but are actually there to fool the real participants.
• PROTECTION: Participants should leave a study in the same state as they entered it. This includes mental and emotional state as well as physical state. This makes it wrong to frighten, distress or harrass participants. To a degree, a researcher has the same responsibility towards his research assistants and should not put them into danger either.
• WITHDRAWAL: Participants should be allowed to leave a study whenever they want. They shouldn't have to explain or justify their decision to leave and they shouldn't be penalised (eg by not paying them the money they were promised). Obviously, when participants do pull out of an experiment, this is immensely inconvenient for the researchers.

Researching children is particularly difficult because it's hard to get consent from children, they're particularly vulnerable to harm and they often lack the social ability to withdraw from an experiment.

Researchers have to consider other ethical issues too. Some research in Forensic Psychology makes researchers a part of criminal operations, if they are interviewing convicts or observing street gangs. They might have to break the law themselves or keep quiet about crimes in order to carry on with their research. Other studies have far-reaching ethical implications if they are published, perhaps encouraging sexist or racist views or suggesting that some people have no choice in their behaviour.

Ecological validity is a special type of validity that needs to be discussed by itself. Ecological validity is about the realism of an experiment and how much it can tell us about what people would do and think in real-life situations. If a study is high in ecological validity it tells us a lot about real-life behaviour. Studies low in ecological validity only tell us about how people behave in psychology experiments.

There are two ways psychological studies can be realistic. Firstly, the events in the study and the setting can resemble real life events and settings. For example, in the subway Samaritan study by Piliavin et al. the collapse of a passenger on a subway train seemed like a genuine emergency. This is called MUNDANE REALISM. 

On the other hand, studies can feel realistic, even if the surroundings are quite bizarre. For example, Milgram's obedience test didn't resemble anything that might go on in the real world, but it was obvious from the participants' stressed-out behaviour that they were taking it seriously, they believed in it. This is PSYCHOLOGICAL REALISM. Most psychologists regard psychological realism as more important than mundane realism.

One way to improve ecological validity is to replicate the study with different groups and in different settings.  If the results agree with each other, then the study is more likely to be reflecting real-life behaviour.

Longitudinal studies follow a group of same-age participants (usually called a "cohort") over a period of time, often months or years, checking up on them at regular intervals. The great advantage of longitudinal studies is that you can see trends and patterns over time; you also know you are studying the same people so any changes that occur must be down to development. On the other hand, longitudinal studies are incredibly expensive and there is a danger of SAMPLE ATTRITION as some of the more interesting participants drop out.

Snapshot studies are a cheap alternative to longitudinal studies. Instead of following one cohort through time, you study several different cohorts drawn from different ages, all at the same time. A good example of this from AS Psychology is the Samuel & Bryant study about conservation or the Maguire et al. study into taxi drivers' brains. Not only are they cheap, but snapshot studies don't suffer sample attrition. On the other hand, you're not studying the same people at different ages and the participants might have different backgrounds: you can't be sure that the younger participants will grow up to be just like the older ones in time.

Sometimes "longitudinal" is used to mean any research that takes a long time to do (eg Loftus & Palmer's memory experiment where they called the participants back a week later) and "snapshot" is used to mean any study that is conducted entirely at one time ( eg Bandura et al.'s experiment into aggression)

Qualitative methods (eg. case studies and interviews) are concerned with describing meaning, rather than with scoring or calculating.  Since meaning is a matter of interpretation, qualitative methods tend to be low in reliability. However, they make up for this in terms of validity. They provide a more in depth and rich description.

Quantitative data makes use of numbers, statistics and frequencies rather than on meaning and experience.  Quantitative methods (eg. experiments and psychometric tests) provide information which is easy to analyse and fairly reliable.  Quantitative methods are associated with the scientific and experimental approach. However, quantitative data can be very superficial and scores can make people look the same while hiding their important differences - in other words, quantitative methods can be low in validity and quite reductionist.

Quantitative methods have come under a lot of criticism.  These days, researchers tend to use a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. This allows statistically reliable information (numbers) to be backed up by by information from the research participants' own explanations (descriptions).  

Determinism is the idea that everything people do or think has been determined in advance. People might think they're making choices, but if you knew all the data about them, you'd be able to predict their every move. Click here to view a website that describes and evaluates determinism in psychology.

There are many types of determinism. Biological determinism looks at how everything we do or think is determined by our physical makeup, by things like the structure of our brains or the genes that make up our cells. Social determinism looks at how people are completely controlled by social forces, by family upbringing, role models and peer pressure.

On the other hand, people seem to have free will. They do surprising things and can go against predictions. A completely determinist explanation for human behaviour must be wrong, because it doesn't leave any room for people to behave in unexpected ways. The best research strikes a balance between determinism (because in general people are quite predictable) and free will.

• View this handout on writing (b)-essays evaluating psychology in terms of determinism 

Reductionism is the tendency scientists have to reduce complicated problems to simple factors. Holism is the opposite tendency, to look at the "big picture" and try to include everything in an explanation.

Reductionism is a very useful strategy when studying a problem because, by focusing on just one thing, you might discover the hidden causes of human behaviour. An example would be looking at the influence the hormone serotonin has on aggressive behaviour. Most experiments work by being reductionist - you focus on the Independent Variable and try to control all the other variables so you can discount them.

On the other hand, it's important to take a holistic approach at times. Psychologists need to remind themselves that human beings are complicated creatures who are affected by physical factors (like their bodies), mental factors (like their thoughts and feelings) and social factors (like their relationships). The best research tries to strike a balance between reductionism and holism. 

• View this handout on writing (b)-essays evaluating psychology in terms of reductionism

This is a big debate in all the social sciences, but particularly affects Psychology, especially the Biological and Developmental Approaches. The "Nature" argument (sometimes called NATIVISM) is that people have innate qualities. Innate qualities are characteristics that you are born with, things about you that tend to stay the same throughout your life and which influence how you behave in any given situation. Some people claim that qualities like personality, intelligence and moral sense are innate. Other people argue that these qualities are the result of "Nurture", which covers upbringing, environment and learning experiences. If the Nurture argument is true, we are all born the same but end up different because of the things that happen to us in life.

Biopsychologists tend to favour the Nature argument. They point out how a lot of our behaviour seems to be related to brain structure or genes. According to this view, someone is born to be a great leader, a natural competitor, a criminal or a psychopath, and there's not much parents, teachers or counsellors can do about it. Behaviourists favour the Nurture argument, because they argue that all our behaviour is learned. If this is true then people turn out the way they do because of their upbringing and environment and, given time, you can transform anyone's behaviour for the better or the worse.

Many psychologists prefer to take an INTERACTIONIST view. This means they admit that both Nature and Nurture play a part in shaping people, that the influence of genes and environment interact with each other to produce a person. Genes might give a person a predisposition to act a certain way, but they need to be put in the right environment before anything will happen. 

Ethnocentrism is the tendency to see the world from the viewpoint of your own particular group - your own sex, social class, race or culture. A side-effect of the tendency of viewing your own group as "normal" is to see other groups in the world as being abnormal or even inferior. A good example might be Freud, who wrestled with the problems affecting middle-class Victorian families in Austria and came up with a theory to explain the entire history of the human race!

A common type of ethnocentrism is to study Western society, with its focus on competition and individualism, and forget about other societies in the world that are more COLLECTIVIST - where the individual is less important than the group and harmony is more important than competition. South East Asia, Africa and South America are places where collectivist societies exist.

Ethnocentric SAMPLING BIAS involves drawing your sample entirely from your own group. For example, a lot of research from before the 1990s was done entirely using middle-class, white, American college students. Modern research tries to use more representative samples but just getting rid of sampling bias doesn't stop research from being ethnocentric - ethnocentrism is about the attitudes and assumptions of the researchers and the skewed conclusions they sometimes arrive at.

Psychology tries to follow an EMPIRICAL approach. This means relying on the evidence of the five senses, rather than imagination, religion or philosophy. The SCIENTIFIC METHOD is a very successful technique for studying things empirically. The scientific method involves forming a hypothesis then testing it in a rigorous way. Click here to view a website describing and evaluating the role of science in psychology.

The great strength of scientific psychology is that it is OBJECTIVE; this means the researcher is detached and studies things as they really are, without her beliefs or opinions getting in the way. Scientific research can be REPLICATED by other scientists to see if they get the same results: this makes it more reliable. The most powerful scientific technique is the experiment, which can tells us about cause-and-effect.

Scientific psychology tries to go about studying people the same way chemists study chemical compounds or physicists study radiation. This involves doing the research in carefully controlled conditions, rigorously testing every step of the way, then allowing colleagues to study and criticise your data (this last step is called PEER REVIEWING). Scientific psychology can be a powerful tool to understand the world, make predictions about the future and possibly manipulate people's minds. 

On the other hand, there are some limitations with using science to investigate human behaviour. HUMANIST psychologists reject the scientific approach, arguing that you need to understand human behaviour "from the inside" and not in some detached sort of way. Some sort of intuition or empathy is vital for understanding other people. Other researchers argue that the sort of objectivity that scientists value when studying rocks and clouds is just impossible when studying people - you cannot be detached about psychology and your prejudices and values will always come out in your research.

• View this handout on writing (b)-essays evaluating psychology in terms of science

Dispositional (sometimes called INDIVIDUAL) explanations of behaviour point to qualities that people have, things that are true about them consistently and don't tend to change. Dispositions are things like your personality, your intelligence or your morality. Dispositional ATTRIBUTIONS are when you blame something on someone's personal qualities: on their stupidity, clumsiness or wickedness. We often make dispositional attributions to explain other people's behaviour ("Watch where you're going, you clumsy fool!").

On the other hand, the SITUATIONAL HYPOTHESIS argues that people are much more influenced by circumstances and their environment. Situations include your location, the company you're in, your past experiences and the information available to you. Psychologists like to manipulate situations during experiments, to see what effect changing situations have on people. Situational ATTRIBUTIONS are when you blame something on circumstances. We often make situational attributions to explain our own behaviour ("The dog ate my homework!").

The reality seems to be that our behaviour is influenced by both situations and dispositions. Trying to study how these two sets of influences interact is called, appropriately enough, INTERACTIONISM. Some psychologists make a point of taking an interactionist view, while others tend to lean towards either dispositions or situations being the major influence on people.

• View this handout on writing (b)-essays evaluating situational & dispositional explanations in psychology

Psychological research can be useful in three ways.

Firstly, it can be useful for other psychologists. Research might provide a hypothesis that other psychologists want to test, a theory that explains things other psychologists have observed or a technique that other psychologists can use. Quite a lot of psychometric tests are useful in this way: they are picked up by other psychologists for their research.

Secondly, research can be useful for the general public. Some psychological ideas help people understand themselves and the world better. A lot of Freud's ideas have caught on amongst people, who regular talk about having unconscious motives or "issues", or about being defensive or "in denial". The idea of stress has been popular with the public, as has the notion of someone being a psychopath.

Finally research can be useful for experts and politicians. Experts (like doctors, counsellors, sports coaches) might use psychological findings to do their job better; politicians might use psychological research to inspire or justify policies. For example, Loftus & Palmer's conclusions about memories caused judges to treat eyewitness testimony differently in court.

Usefulness is sometimes called PRACTICAL VALUE. Behaviourism and Humanism are two approaches that specifically set out to be useful. Other researchers argue that psychology should try to add to human knowledge about the mind, whether it turns out to be useful or not. You should remember that sometimes psychology can be put to bad uses - to justify racism or sexism, to provide techniques to make torture or propaganda more effective, or to cast suspicion on innocent people who fit offender profiles or make patients believe in false memories.