hi guys Mr Martin here thank you very much for joining me what we're going to be talking about today is the biological approach to psychology how exciting now just to clarify what we're not going to be looking at today is any specific application of this uh of this particular approach so we're not going to be looking at memory we're not going to be looking at sleeping dreams I'm going to save those for another video what I do hope to give you today however is a very basic fundamental introduction to the biological approach what does biology have to tell us about the human mind hopefully by the end of this video you'll have a better understanding of the biological approach to psychology so let's get started the biological approach believes all human behavior to be a consequence of genetics and physiology and nothing else that's the key to this this is the only real approach in Psychology that examines your behaviors your thoughts your feelings whatever else it might be from a purely biological you might even say physical point of view you might like to interpret it this way all that is psychological is it first biological all your behaviors all your thoughts all your feelings ultimately have a biological cause what we're looking at here is a diagram of the human brain now we are missing a hemisphere so this is only one half of a human brain there are multiple different parts as you can see some of these parts have very little to do with psychology for example the pawns the Medela these parts of the brain stem not a lot going on there in terms of psychology the cellum not a lot going on there in terms of psychology what we're really interested in is this huge huge big fleshy pinky gray organ on top I know it's yellow in this diagram diagram is wrong this is your cerebrum that is you you're looking at your thoughts your feelings your memory your personality all of it is processed stored dealt with in here now some of the areas of the cerebrum have more to do with certain behaviors than others for example Vision perception that's all de with down here at the back of your brain um your uh hippocampus and amydala your lyic system which is kind of in the middle here that's more to do with memory so there are lots of different parts of this doing different things however a biologist would view the brain is one whole interconnected organ so we can't differentiate like that we have to take the brain as one whole organ here the biological approach has roughly speaking three relevant ways that it can be used to study psychology with the first of those we call the comparative method you can imagine going up to a psychology ethics board and saying well I've got this experiment in mind I want to see what this specific part of the brain does so what I'm going to do is I'm going to tie down this human being I'm going to drill into their brain and I'm going to slice out this bit of their of their head and we're going to see what happens to their behavior it's not victoriia times so that's not really done anymore it used to be able to but not so much anymore so what can we do instead well how about we look at different species of animal how about we observe what they do in terms of their behavior or how about we observe what their brains do and see what they can tell us about their specific brains and by extension about our own the lady you can see in the picture there is Jane Goodall she is one of the world's most famous primatologist she studies primates obviously um her main focus of Interest was in chimpanzees you can see in the picture the the sheer imitation going on there is amazing so what can we tell about chimpanzee brains based on their behavior and then by extension what can we tell about our own brains our own behavior given that chimpanzees are one of our closest animal relatives down below you can see a comparison between a mouse brain and a human brain that's not to size to scale obviously that Mouse would be terrifying if it was that big but you can see a lot of similarities between them there's a lot of difference obviously the bit at the top the two little kind of bunny ears that's the mouse's um smell sentor obviously their sense of smell much more important than our own but there are a lot of similarities between mice rra brains uh monkey brains and human brains so for example if we did want to start slicing and dicing or siling in jeans or we did want to start poking about how about we use an animal instead see what happens to its behavior and then infer what might happen to our own that's comparative method physiology explains how the nervous system and our hormones work inside our body how the brain functions and how changes in its structure or its function can affect our Behavior so really what we're looking at here is the brain working at a molecular level for example we could examine anti-depressants here we can see how they work at a physiological level if we didn't have this physiological understanding of anti-depressants we wouldn't really know how they worked we wouldn't know how to prescribe them safely and logical conclusion we wouldn't really understand much about mental illness at all unless we look at the specific brain structures and chemicals that are involved finally inheritance this means what genes an animal inherits from its parents Char daan himself was very very into the inheritance of behavior so for example we know that in certain dog breeds that behavior is very much inherited we know that certain dog breeds are very very aggressive and certain dog breeds not so much that is very much enshrined in their genetics well does the same thing happen in humans though are people aggressive because their parents were aggressive are children intelligent because their parents had genes for intelligence maybe maybe not in terms of strengths and weaknesses one of the key factors when thinking about the biological approach is that it's very scientific you probably process that by now this approach is very much based in the laboratory so we can control for variables we can produce reliable research we can get the same results time and time again this is an excellent way of showing cause and effect relationships if we change one thing what effect does it have on Behavior particularly with our animal models this biological approach has a multitude of applications now the main uh application for this obviously is in mental illness and understanding of abnormal psychology but there are multiple other places we can go as well for example the study of intelligence of IQ we can locate specific genes which make a person smarter what about looking at relationships specifically in terms of parent and child or between uh romantic Partners what's happening there at chemical level inside their brain what about looking at stress response that people have in terms of specific chemicals there's a huge variety of applications one of the biggest strengths of the biological approach is it gives a logical counterargument to the nurture side of this debate there are psychologists out there who would say oh no no human behavior has all to do with you know how you were raised and your parents and your environment and all those kind of things and a biologist would come through and say shut up it's all to do with that person's brain and nothing else we can look at it we can observe it we can measure it that's how we should be Understanding Psychology finally it has multiple supporting studies from many different disciplines from the fields of zoology evolutionary psychology human biology multiple different studies that tell us the biological approach should be the one to be listened to one of the strengths of this approach is that it's very scientific and one of the weaknesses of this approach is that it's very scientific if we are basing all of our conclusions based on lab work have we really concluded anything at all for example if we're looking at a specific mouse that we've raised in the laboratory and we have changed its brain by using very hot needles or very sharp scalpel and then we have deliberately stressed it out and seen what effect it has on its Behavior well so what what does that tell us about human behavior what does that tell us about human psychology the answer probably not very much this is a very controversial area of um of psychology second weakness is that this is deterministic determinism is frowned upon in Psychology basically this means there is no room for you in this there is no room for free will so if you have a specific cocktail of chemicals inside your head well does that always mean that you're going to react the same way where is your personality in this where is the decision making in this where are you involved in this process it's also reductionist we are reducing these huge problems things like love friendship aggression things like sleep and dreams down to a cocktail of chemicals well does not tell us anything at all and what it does tell us is it relevant to our understanding of of humans again probably not it doesn't recognize the cognitive processes either for example different people react different ways even if their biology is the same we all know people who are incredibly stressed out by well let's say exams and we all know people that doesn't phas them at all why should that be the stress chemicals are the St same that the stress hormones are the same so why does it have a different impact on them that cannot be explained by the biological approach we might even say that the biological approach is one vast oversimplification of the area of human psychology we are oversimplifying the huge complexity of physical systems that exist and how they interact with the environment we cannot explain away vast incredibly complex human behavior in terms of a few neurons in terms of a few chemicals it just simply can't be done insation guys the biological approach to psychology is a really good starting point to understanding human behavior it tells us a huge amount about how specific chemicals and specific brain structures work but that's all it ever can be a starting point to really understand the huge complexity that exists within human beings we have to take the biology into uh understanding of course but we also have to scratch a little bit deeper and come at things from a slightly different point of view thanks a lot for joining me today guys that has been uh hopefully a helpful U very brief introduction into the biological approach our next video will be all about the cognitive approach to psychology how it differs to this one and what it's got to tell us about the human mind hope I'll see you there but until then hope you have a nice day guys and we'll see you later thanks very much