Question

What is one key idea from the biological, evolutionary, & integrative theoretical orientation?

Answer 1

• A biological perspective is relevant to the study of psychology in three ways:

1. Comparative method: different species of animal can be studied and compared. This can help in the search to understand human behavior.

2. Physiology: how the nervous system and hormones work, how the brain functions, how changes in structure and/or function can affect behavior. For example, we could ask how prescribed drugs to treat depression affect behavior through their interaction with the nervous system.

3. Investigation of inheritance: what an animal inherits from its parents, mechanisms of inheritance (genetics). For example, we might want to know whether high intelligence is inherited from one generation to the next.

• Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach to psychology that attempts to explain useful mental and psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, i.e., as the functional products of natural selection.
Evolutionary Psychology proposes that the human brain comprises many functional mechanisms, called psychological adaptations or evolved cognitive mechanisms designed by the process of natural selection.

• Integrated theories are theories that combine the concepts and central propositions from two or more prior existing theories into a new single set of integrated concepts and propositions. The most common form of integration involves combining social control and social learning theories.