Drawing on examples from Chapters 3, 4 and 7 of Investigating Psychology, discuss the following phrase: ‘Biological processes have the greatest impact on our behaviour and cognition.’
Before you choose which option you will complete, you need to make sure you understand exactly what the question requires. This means identifying and understanding the process and content words.
Process and content words
In this question, there is one process word: ‘discuss’. ‘Discuss’ indicates that this essay must go beyond description and should consider different viewpoints and evaluate the relative importance and/or implications of the pertinent evidence.
Therefore, for this essay, ‘discuss’ requires you to consider whether biological processes have the greatest impact on our behaviour and cognition. You should consider the evidence in relation to each side of the argument. This means you need to present:
- examples of instances where our behaviour and cognition are determined by the biological processes
- examples of instances where our behaviour and cognition are determined by the context/environment around us
- an evaluation of the quality of the relevant evidence and research. This means considering how useful the evidence from the examples you use is and will require some consideration of research methods
- the implications of the issues discussed (i.e. what does this evidence mean and why is this important?).
The content words are ‘Biological processes have the greatest impact on our behaviour and cognition’. Note that you are also instructed to draw on examples from Chapters 3, 4 and 7 of Investigating Psychology.
Therefore, Option B requires you to:
- explain, and provide examples which show how our behaviour and cognition are determined by the biological processes, using Chapters 3, 4 and 7 of Investigating Psychology
- consider the counterargument that our behaviour and cognition are not determined by biological processes and are affected by the context/environment around us, drawing on the material from Chapters 3, 4 and 7 of Investigating Psychology
- evaluate the quality of the relevant evidence and research
- consider the implications of the issue being discussed.
Tips for writing your essay
Having worked through the online activities and identified the process and content words in the essay, the next step is to select the material that you will use in your essay. Begin by rereading the relevant chapters with the essay question in mind and make notes.
When making notes, you may find it helpful to consider the following:
- Which points and/or examples are relevant to the question?
- Which points and/or examples support the claim in the essay question?
- Which points and/or examples challenge the claim in the essay question?
As with all essays, it is a good idea to create an essay plan to help to organise the points that you may want to make into a logical structure and think about ‘the narrative’ of the essay in terms of how it begins, proceeds through the points and then ends. As you will be covering material from different chapters, some of which will support the position in the question and some of which will support an alternative view, it is particularly important that you work out what you want to say and what order to say it in. This is so that a reader can understand how you have addressed the question and follow your argument.
When planning the structure of your essay, remember to include a clear but concise introduction in which you set out the issue(s) that you will be addressing and how you intend to approach the question. Use your introduction to say what you will be arguing.
For the main body of the essay, note that while you are required to give a balanced view and reach an overall judgement, you do not need to provide an equal number of points in favour of and against the statement in question.
Things to look out for:
- Draw on material from all three chapters specified in the question.
- For each example, make sure you state clearly how it is relevant to the question.
- Be selective: you probably will not be able to include all the pertinent examples from the chapters, so consider which examples are most relevant in helping you address the question set.
- Make sure you include at least one example from each of the three chapters specified in the question, and do not include any from other chapters (unless they have also been mentioned in the guidance): you will not gain marks for irrelevant material.
Bear in mind that presenting the relevant material in the same order it is presented in the chapters may not be the best way of structuring your argument. You could, for example, first present evidence from across the chapters that supports one position, before presenting evidence from one or more chapters that support another position.
Remember also to finish with a concluding paragraph that clearly summarises your argument
Relevant material
The essay question is very specific about the material that you should draw on for the EMA: Chapters 3, 4 and 7 of Investigating Psychology. While many of the sections in these three chapters will contain material relevant to the question, when it comes to selecting examples, you may find the following guidance helpful.
Chapter 3 of Investigating Psychology explores how we ‘learn from watching’ and focuses on the work of Bandura et al. (1963), and research on social learning and aggression.
- Section 1 will present you with the social learning theory and introduces you to one of the main themes of this chapter; that is, the potential influence that violence in the media may have on children and young people.
- Section 2 introduces you to the laboratory-based experiments conducted by Bandura et al. (1963) that investigated the effects of exposure to violence on children’s behaviour.
- Sections 2.1, 2.2. and 2.3 give a lot of information regarding Bandura et al.’s (1963) research, the methodology and control of their experiments and their coding system. You may find it useful to use this information when evaluating the quality of the relevant evidence and research. However, please use this information for evaluation and not merely description.
- Section 2.3 also highlights that exposure to violent models increased the chances of children displaying violent behaviour. This section will give you ample information for your counterargument and will consider examples where cognition is not determined by biological processes and is affected by the context/environment around us. Other interesting findings are also observed in Section 2.3 which may be useful for your essay.
- Section 3 looks at how these results have been interpreted, issues in relation to generalisability of the results, limitations of the experiments themselves, and ethical issues that should be considered, all of which can be used when evaluating the quality of the relevant evidence and information.
- Section 3.1 also suggests there may have been individual differences in regard to how much of the violent behaviour was mirrored, which may show that other factors (e.g. biological or previous social experiences) may influence the extent to which we mirror a model’s behaviour.
- Section 4 is particularly useful for developing an argument that addresses this question, as it discusses the mechanisms underpinning social learning and explores how research in this field has developed since Bandura et al. (1963).
- Section 5 highlights the real-world impact that research on the connection between seeing violence in the media and behaviour has had.
Chapter 4 of Investigating Psychology outlines the behaviourist approach, which assumes that an individual’s behaviour is shaped by the environment around them.
- Section 1 introduces some general issues about human learning and behaviour and the idea that behaviour can be maintained by the consequence that follows it, potentially showing the impact that environmental factors may have on human behaviour. This section gives a number of examples of where the consequences of an action can maintain or shape human behaviour.
- Section 2 describes laboratory-based experiments carried out on non-human animals and introduces some important principles of behaviourism and theorists (i.e. Pavlov, Watson and Skinner).
- Section 2 provides a lot of information showing that environmental factors, such as consequences, can influence the behaviour of humans. There is a lot of information in Section 2; please be careful to only include relevant information.
- Section 3 explores how behaviourist principles can be applied to human behaviour and learning, and considers both sides of the argument: (1) Skinner’s view that the findings of his experiments with non-human animals can generalise to humans; and (2) there are differences between humans and non-human animals which limit the ability of Skinner’s findings to generalise to humans. Further, Section 3 will give you ample information that will allow you to evaluate the quality of the relevant evidence and research.
- In Section 4.3, a range of therapeutic techniques are outlined, highlighting the positive impact that modification of behaviour through external reinforcement can have on humans. However, the section also acknowledges that factors such as the patient’s thought process, which may be influenced by factors such as brain damage, are also important when considering the efficacy of reinforcement.
- Section 5 gives real-world examples of when reinforcement might help to shape human behaviour (e.g. addictions, reusing bags).
- The related Week 12 audio material on the application of the behaviourist principles to phobias, plus the video material ‘The power of reinforcement’, both address the application of behaviourist principles.
Chapter 7 of Investigating Psychology draws on the field of neuropsychology, and the relationship between the brain and behaviour.
- Sections 1, 2 and 3 explore how studying the damaged brain has informed our understanding of the healthy brain, providing a number of examples to demonstrate how brain structure affects behaviour and cognition. These sections have plenty of information to explain and provide examples that show how our behaviour and cognition are determined by biological processes.
- Section 4 introduces more recent research, including examples of how new technology has advanced our understanding of how the brain influences cognition and language.
- Section 5 explores plasticity, and the application of research findings in therapeutic settings to help patients relearn skills and recover language abilities. This section may be of limited relevance to the essay question.
Additional guidance
In addition, you may also want to read Chapter 7 of Investigating Methods which contains additional relevant information. This information is not needed to pass but may help you to engage with the question in a more nuanced way. Further, you may find it useful to draw on other audiovisual materials linked to these three chapters, where they contain information that you find relevant for the essay.
***Please the four chapters to write your essay.****