• Question: Which psychological approach has the greatest influence on you and your research and why?

    Asked by anon-184172 to Tom, sarahhodge, Owen, Nathan, Lorna, Abbie on 7 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Abbie Jordan

      Abbie Jordan answered on 7 Nov 2018:

      I am a health psychologist so I would say the biopsychosocial approach. So I could not just say biological or behavioural but would think about health from the perspective of considering the impact of all three factors. To me, you can’t just focus on the role of biology as that rules out the importance of psychological factors (e.g. how we make sense of health and our thoughts about it). Equally we need to think about social factors such as the role of other people (social support) and things like the types of areas we live in and the access we have to education etc. Culture of course too. That’s a long winded answer but that would be my approach.

    • Photo: Nathan Hook

      Nathan Hook answered on 9 Nov 2018:

      I’m not sure there is no approach, but here are a few:
      – the concept by carl rogers (father of humanistic counselling) of ‘unconditional positive regard’ – the idea that simply accepting the person does itself have the power to heal.
      – Carl Jung’s idea on archetypes and other psychoanalytical concepts. I’m also influenced by the mythologist Joseph Campbell, who was the leading American Jungian and developed the concept of the monomyth / hero’s journey.
      – The British tradition of ‘Critical Psychology,’ that critiques the rest of the subject.
      – Henri Tajfel, who applied experiments to studying group identity and developed ‘Social Identity Theory.’

    • Photo: Tom Gallagher-Mitchell

      Tom Gallagher-Mitchell answered on 15 Nov 2018:

      I would guess this would have to be cognitive psychology. However as a developmental psychologist the more influential consideration is research design and the key here is good quality longitudinal research following the same group over a number of years to measure changes.

    • Photo: Sarah Hodge

      Sarah Hodge answered on 16 Nov 2018:

      The developmental reserach I do was influenced by Piaget and constructivism the idea that we build knowledge which relates to theories of moral development

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