Biological Approach

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Biological Approach

• Key Principles
• By Lauren Binnington

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Learning outcomes

• We are looking to gain an understanding of what
  the key features are because these underpin our
  theories and therapies
• We will also look at the principles of the
  biological level of analysis

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What are the key features underlying biological
psychology?
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What are the key features underlying biological
psychology?
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What are the key features underlying biological
psychology?
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What are the key features underlying biological
psychology?
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Features Nature/Nurture?

• Gender
• Religion
• Skin colour
• Accent
• Intelligence (IQ)
• Hair colour
• Humour

• Blood type
• Shoe size
• Height
• Weight
• Aggressiveness
• Artistic ability

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Principles

• Behaviour is genetically influenced
• Animal research can provide insight into human
  behaviour
• Behaviour has a physiological cause

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Behaviour is genetically influenced- Questions

• What are genes?
• How do we get them?
• What do they do?
• Are they unique?
• What about the environment?

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The influence of our genes

• Physical characteristics are passed on via our
  genes
• We inherit a unique combination from our parents
  (50 from our mother and 50 from our father)
• When might we have the same genes as someone else?

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Examples -

• Mednick and Hutchings (1978) found that adopted
  children with biological fathers who were
  criminals were more likely to become criminals
  themselves
• Allen (1976) found that identical twins showed
  concordance for major depression 40 of the time.

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Animal research can provide insight into human
behaviour

• Textbook, page 44
• Animals are often used in brain research
• Hetherington and
• Ranson (1942) found
• that lesions in the
• hypothalamus caused
• rats to overeat and
• become obese

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Behaviour has a physiological cause

• This states that there are biological correlates
  of behaviour
• This means that there is a link between a
  specific behaviour and a specific biological
  factor
• E.g. Brocas area and language