SCIE​
AS Psychology
For your AS Psychology course, you will study 4 Physiological Psychology Studies in detail. These are:
The main assumption of the individual differences perspective is that to understand the complexity of human behavior and experiences it is necessary to study the differences between people rather than those things that we all have in common. For example, the individual differences approach largely focuses on things such as personality differences, and abnormality.
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Self and identity. What makes us who we are? Do we have personality traits that are fixed for life or is our personality always changing based on what’s going on around us?
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Normality and Abnormality. Is there such a thing as ‘normal’ and how do we define it?
The main assumption of Individual Differences is that it is possible to measure vague things like ‘personality’ or ‘identity’ or ‘mental health’. The techniques of measuring mental states are called ‘psychometrics’ and a good example of a psychometric test is an IQ test. Other psychologists prefer more structured approaches (observations, self-reports) but every measure has its strengths and weaknesses.
Another assumption is that it is possible to study differences in a culturally neutral sort of way. In psychology there is always the danger of ‘ethnocentrism’ which means assuming your own ways of behaving are ‘normal’ and different ways are automatically ‘abnormal’ (and therefore inferior).
Psychology of Individual Differences
The Humanistic Approach
Psychology often makes generalizations about people. Depending upon your point of view this can be seen as a great strength of psychology or a weakness – or probably both! It is important to recognize that there are as many differences between people as there are similarities. An issue that is often included in the section of individual differences is what psychologists refer to as abnormality. However, the concept of abnormality is a highly controversial issue. The judgment that someone is abnormal is relative and is based on factors such as culture, class, religion, sexuality and so on.
