Interactionist Approach

3 Key excerpts on "Interactionist Approach"

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  eBook - ePub

  Ecological Psychology in Context

  James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the Legacy of William James's Radical Empiricism

  • Harry Heft(Author)
  • 2001(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  4

  4 This difference in viewpoint cannot simply be reduced to a disagreement between nativists and empiricists, respectively. Neither nativism nor empiricism offers more than a caricature of the respective positions. Indeed, it would be difficult to find any contemporary psychologist who does not embrace some form of interactionism. Virtually all psychologists are interactionists in this conceptual sense. But, in practice, the picture is a little different. In many discussions that recur throughout the past century and into the present one, following the opening caveats about environment-biology interaction, the environment is typically given far less emphasis as an influence on development than heredity. In part this is because comparatively little attention has been given to the nature of the environment from a psychological perspective. Redressing this shortcoming is, of course, one of the goals of the present work.

  The complexity that is the dynamic interaction of biological and environmental/sociocultural factors over time must be fully recognized. Although all sides in these debates need to avoid creating “straw persons” through caricatures of others’ positions, at the same time they need to beware of “the mirage of simplication and [embrace] the vision of complexity in biological reality” (Herrmann, 1998 , p. 125).

  This viewpoint needs to be developed further. If the enormous phenotypic psychological and social differences plainly evident between humans and our closest nonhuman primate relatives are not due to something like highly canalized domain-specific mechanisms, then how are these differences to be explained? Consider a few of the factors that jointly have contributed to this gap, which has grown wider over time.

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  eBook - ePub

  Environmental Psychology

  Behaviour and Experience In Context

  • Tony Cassidy(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  Interactionism refers to a model where persons and environments are seen as separate entities, which engage with each other in various forms of interaction. To some extent it would appear that the rejection of this term in favour of transactional is partially based on the way in which interaction has been operationalised by many as the additive effect of person and environment. However interactionism does tend to suggest that individual, isolated interactions are the focus of study.

  Transactional emphasises the interdependence of person and environment in the process thus ensuring that additive effects are not acceptable as explanatory models. In addition it includes the notion of sequences or chains of interactions in a developmental process. As such it extends the interactional framework and is usefully applied, for example, in models of stress.

  The organismic approach emphasises the person-environment relationship as an interdependent system in which social, societal and individual factors operate in a complex process. This approach unites the system perspective with multiple levels of explanation.

  These themes of interaction reflect both a move forward from the person or environment focus, and a return to basics in terms of the early theorists such as Lewin who began with an interactional focus. They recognise the complexity of person-environment relations and their interdependence. It is here that we find the basic principles outlined in Chapter 1

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  eBook - ePub

  AQA Psychology A Level Paper Three: Schizophrenia

  • Phil Gorman(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 7

  Interactionist Approach to schizophrenia

  Spec check

  The importance of an Interactionist Approach in explaining and treating schizophrenia; the diathesis–stress model.

  AO1 (Knowledge and understanding): What is an Interactionist Approach?

  In Chapter 3 , we considered the mind–body debate, which looks at whether the mind and body are the same thing and whether it is possible for one or the other to influence our behaviour.

  Interactionism

  goes beyond this debate and suggests that not only do they both exist but they both have an equal influence on our behaviour. An Interactionist Approach is one that says that there are two (or more) influences on our behaviour and therefore we no longer need to argue about whether schizophrenia is caused by biological factors or psychological factors because, according to this approach, it’s caused by both!

  Think!

  What are the biological factors involved in schizophrenia? What are the psychological factors?

  The diathesis–stress model explained

  In the nature–nurture debate, the question wasn’t whether it’s nature or nurture that causes people to behave in the way that they do, it was about the relative importance of each. Consequently, there was already an acknowledgement that it isn’t possible to separate nature and nurture from each other, due to the fact that both inevitably exert some kind of influence. It’s virtually impossible to say that one is responsible for this and the other is responsible for that. We have already seen how hard it is to show cause and effect in the study of schizophrenia, as we can’t show, for example, whether it was high levels of dopamine in a person that led to the development of schizophrenia or the other way round.

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