- Neural and hormonal mechanisms in aggression, including the roles of the limbic system, serotonin and testosterone.
- Genetic factors in aggression, including the MAOA gene.
- The ethological explanation of aggression, including reference to innate releasing mechanisms and fixed action patterns. Evolutionary explanations of human aggression.
- Social psychological explanations of human aggression, including the frustration-aggression hypothesis, social learning theory as applied to human aggression, and de-individuation.
- Institutional aggression in the context of prisons: dispositional and situational explanations.
- Media influences on aggression, including the effects of computer games. The role of desensitisation, disinhibition and cognitive priming.
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Classification of schizophrenia. Positive symptoms of schizophrenia, including hallucinations and delusions. Negative symptoms of schizophrenia, including speech poverty and avolition.
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Reliability and validity in diagnosis and classification of schizophrenia, including reference to co-morbidity, culture and gender bias and symptom overlap.
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Biological explanations for schizophrenia: genetics, the dopamine hypothesis and neural correlates.
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Psychological explanations for schizophrenia: family dysfunction and cognitive explanations, including dysfunctional thought processing.
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Drug therapy: typical and atypical antipsychotics.
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Cognitive behaviour therapy and family therapy as used in the treatment of schizophrenia. Token economies as used in the management of schizophrenia.
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The importance of an interactionist approach in explaining and treating schizophrenia; the diathesis-stress model.
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The evolutionary explanations for partner preferences, including the relationship between sexual selection and human reproductive behaviour.
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Factors affecting attraction in romantic relationships: self-disclosure; physical attractiveness, including the matching hypothesis; filter theory, including social demography, similarity in attitudes and complementarity.
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Theories of romantic relationships: social exchange theory, equity theory and Rusbult’s investment model of commitment, satisfaction, comparison with alternatives and investment. Duck’s phase model of relationship breakdown: intra-psychic, dyadic, social and grave dressing phases.
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Virtual relationships in social media: self-disclosure in virtual relationships; effects of absence of gating on the nature of virtual relationships.
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Parasocial relationships: levels of parasocial relationships, the absorption addiction model and the attachment theory explanation.
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Gender and culture in psychology – universality and bias. Gender bias including androcentrism and alpha and beta bias; cultural bias, including ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. Free will and determinism: hard determinism and soft determinism; biological, environmental and psychic determinism. The scientific emphasis on causal explanations.
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The nature-nurture debate: the relative importance of heredity and environment in determining behaviour; the interactionist approach.
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Holism and reductionism: levels of explanation in psychology. Biological reductionism and environmental (stimulus-response) reductionism.
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Idiographic and nomothetic approaches to psychological investigation.
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Ethical implications of research studies and theory, including reference to social sensitivity.
Students should demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the following research methods, scientific processes and techniques of data handling and analysis, be familiar with their use and be aware of their strengths and limitations:
1. Case studies.
2. Content analysis and coding. Thematic analysis.
3. Correlations. Analysis of the relationship between co-variables. The difference between correlations and experiments. Analysis and interpretation of correlation, including correlation coefficients
4. Reliability across all methods of investigation. Ways of assessing reliability: test-retest and inter-observer; improving reliability.
5. Types of validity across all methods of investigation: face validity, concurrent validity, ecological validity and temporal validity. Assessment of validity. Improving validity.
6. Features of science: objectivity and the empirical method; replicability and falsifiability; theory construction and hypothesis testing; paradigms and paradigm shifts.
7. Reporting psychological investigations. Sections of a scientific report: abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion and referencing.
Students should demonstrate knowledge and understanding of inferential testing and be familiar with the use of, and feature of, inferential tests:
8. Levels of measurement: nominal, ordinal and interval.
9. Probability and significance: use of statistical tables and critical values in interpretation of significance;
10. Type I and Type II errors.
11. Factors affecting the choice of statistical test, including level of measurement and experimental design. When to use the following tests: Spearman’s rho, Pearson’s r, Wilcoxon, Mann-Whitney, related t-test, unrelated t-test and Chi-Squared test.
Specification:
- The divisions of the nervous system: central and peripheral (somatic and autonomic).
- The structure and function of sensory, relay and motor neurons.
- The process of synaptic transmission, including reference to neurotransmitters, excitation and inhibition.
- The function of the endocrine system: glands and hormones.
- The fight or flight response including the role of adrenaline.
- Localisation of function in the brain and hemispheric lateralisation: motor, somatosensory, visual, auditory and language centres (including Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas)
- Split brain research.
- Plasticity and functional recovery of the brain after trauma.
- Ways of studying the brain: scanning techniques, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI); electroencephalogram (EEGs) and event-related potentials (ERPs); post-mortem examinations.
- Biological rhythms: circadian, infradian and ultradian and the difference between these rhythms. The effect of endogenous pacemakers and exogenous zeitgebers on the sleep/wake cycle.