hey everyone welcome back to verity mind my name's tom and i'm a teacher of psychology this video is going to evaluate the biological approach in psychology we'll be discussing the strengths and limitations of the biological approach that'll include supporting evidence debates and practical applications to help you write some high quality evaluation let's dive in let's consider some of the supporting evidence for the influence of brain structures on behavior back in 1948 a man by the name of phineas gage was working on the building of a railroad when explosives went off and an iron rod a meter lung went through his left cheek up through his left eye and out of his skull on the top of his head this iron rod left him with significant damage to parts of his left frontal lobe phineas gage survived the incident amazingly but he was never the same it was reported that this normally calm and reserved man now showed a different set of personality characteristics often lacking social inhibition in other words he behaved in ways that were considered to be inappropriate lots of swearing he seemed to lack a level of self-control to the point that his friends and acquaintances said he was no longer gauge this led to the suggestion that the frontal lobe of the brain is thought to be involved with our personality and specifically with emotional processing and decision making for other supporting evidence consider brain scanning research a study by toving italian 1994 reported data in studies that use pet scans to monitor the blood flow of the brain when participants thought of episodic memories these are personal autobiographical memories such as what you did on your birthday last year a different part of the brain was activated compared to when participants thought of semantic memories these are fact-based memories with no personal reference such as the capital of sweden is stockholm episodic memories tended to activate the right prefrontal cortex whereas the semantic memories tended to activate the left prefrontal cortex this demonstrated that different parts of the brain may be responsible for specific functions in this case memories and both these examples illustrate how biological structures can influence behavior supporting evidence for the role of genetics in ocd can be seen from twin study research by nest data in 2010 in their review of ocd in the role of genetics they showed that of all the twin study research published to date the concordance rates in monozygotic twins were higher than dizygotic twins now if ocd is genetic we should find a higher concordant rate for monozygotic twins than for dizygotic twins because monozygotics are more genetically similar than dizygotics in other words if one twin has ocd the likelihood that the other twin develops ocd should be higher for monozygotics than for dizygotics and that is exactly what nest station reported monozygotics had a 68 concordance rate and dizygotic had a 31 concordant rate for ocd demonstrating the potential role of genetics in behavior and supporting the biological approach one strength of the biological approach relates to the quality of the research methods used to study human behavior advances in technology with brain scanning techniques like fmris that measure blood flow in the brain make it possible to accurately measure biological and neural processes in ways that are not open to bias in other words they are objective these highly controlled experiments enable cause and effect to be established additionally the high control allows for the standardization of the procedures which means that the way the study is conducted can be kept the same each time and this matters because it enables research into biological processes to be replicated to check the reliability of the findings all of this therefore adds credibility to the biological approaches explanation of human behavior because it's based on highly scientific evidence however the biological approaches use of case study evidence has its limitations this is because case studies are an investigation into individual cases which means that the findings from such research may not apply to the wider population for example what happened to phineas is a very rare and unusual set of circumstances therefore it could be argued that the biological approaches explanation for human behavior may be limited particularly if the evidence is based on individual cases like phineas gage which are hard to generalize to others a further limitation relates to the biological approaches research into animals as the biological approach considers the role of evolution in human behavior and therefore the similarities between animals and humans this has led them to conduct research into the brains of animals for example in order to learn about human behavior however some have argued this is a problem because animal behavior is rather different to human behavior in several ways some have argued that human behavior is more complex and different in areas such as emotion consciousness language and morality in comparison other approaches such as social learning theory and the cognitive approach have emphasized the importance of mental processes during learning and as such do not study animal behavior therefore it could be argued that the biological approach is rather limited because of the difficulty in generalizing the findings of the results from animals to humans another area of evaluation relates to the extent to which the approaches can be practically applied to real-world situations one practical application of the biological approach relates to treatments for mental disorders this can be seen in how the role of neurotransmitters can be involved in behavior for example if one of the key factors thought to be involved in ocd is lower levels of serotonin because of the mutation of the cert gene then this knowledge can lead to drugs being prescribed to correct this imbalance one form of drugs that have been used are called ssris which stand for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors ssri medication has been successfully used to reduce ocd symptoms and therefore shows the value that the biological approach can have in helping to improve the lives of people suffering from conditions like ocd for more information on ssris and ocd if that's something you're interested in check out the link to the video in the description below finally we can evaluate the biological approach by considering the debates in psychology firstly the nature versus nurture debate the nature view focuses on the role of innate biological processes and the nurture view focuses on how behaviors learned from the environment it is understood today that the debate is not about whether it's nature or nurture because research points to how nature and nurture interact together so it's about the relative contribution of both on the one hand the biological approach does make some reference to nature and nurture with genotypes and phenotypes with the expression of genes being influenced by the environment in some ways however the main emphasis of the biological approach can be criticized for over emphasizing the nature side of the debate failing to consider the importance of environmental factors in human behavior to the extent that other approaches do for example if we take a behavior like ocd again the biological approach explains such behavior in terms of gene mutations and imbalances of neurotransmitters however key to understanding ocd is the influence of the environment some research suggests that ocd may be more common in people who have been bullied abused or neglected and it sometimes starts after an important life event such as childbirth or a bereavement chrome retal in 2007 found that over 50 percent of the ocd patients in their sample had a traumatic event in their past therefore this suggests that the biological approach alone is not sufficient to fully explain human behavior we can also evaluate the biological approach in terms of the free will versus determinism debate this debate is about the extent to which our behavior is the result of our own choices and actions free will or caused by internal or external forces that are outside of our control determinism the biological approach can be criticized for being deterministic this is because it states that human behavior is determined or caused by internal biological factors such as genetics or neural factors as a result people who are suffering with ocd for example have no control over their behavior they have no free will and are unable to change this is a rather pessimistic view of the condition as it implies that they are stuck with the condition and that their obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors are inevitable perhaps it could be argued that taking a biologically deterministic view could further add to the anxiety that those suffering with ocd already experience making it worse biological determinism can also be criticized in terms of how it removes moral responsibility this has implications for the legal system and wider society where people could simply blame their behavior on their biology for example someone who has committed criminal acts could blame their actions on their genetics or abnormal brain structure therefore this suggests that the biological explanation is rather limited in its view of human behavior because of the implications it has for people if their behavior is beyond their control so now that you hopefully understand something of the strengths and limitations of the biological approach bear in mind how you can order and structure your discussion about the approach in an essay notice how we've used a variety of evaluation points that have included supporting evidence counter arguments as well as debates to use our wider understanding of psychology to evaluate this approach you'll see in this video that i've covered a lot of evaluation points a lot more than you could possibly have the time to write about in an exam in an essay writing about four of them in the time will be really good so do pick those four that you found the most helpful for more on the other approaches in psychology check out the link to the playlist in the description below i hope you found this video helpful and we'll see you in the next one