The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) prepares the body for ‘emergency’ situations. It’s for instant physical activity that requires max. energy the body can provide. It’s usually referred to as the ‘fight or flight’ response, as it prepares the body to fight the threat or run away from it. It results in things like the pupils widening to take in more light, increase of blood flow to vital parts of the body etc. Most importantly, it releases adrenaline. The parasympathetic nervous system is almost exact opposite, calming the body down after you’re clear of threat and safe, simply turning everything back to level! 
Note: it kicks in with acute stressors rather than chronic! 

Hope that was helpful! 

Biology

Are the effects of the parasympathetic and the sympathetic systems usually the same or are they the opposite?

Mass is the amount of matter an object contains, whereas weight is the force acted on the object due to gravitational force. This equation may help you understand this slightly better : F=MA, in which F is the force (Weight), M is mass, and a is acceleration due to gravity, in other words 9.81 ms^-2. Since Weight is a force, it must have a direction that it acts upon. Due to the fact that weight as a force has a magnitude and direction, it’s a vector quantity in comparison to Mass, which is a scalar quantity as it only has a magnitude, not direction. Hope that was helpful! 


Maths

What is the difference between weight and mass in terms of vectors and scalars?

Reductionism is breaking down complex behaviour into several factors making it easy to test and creates a cause and effect relationship. E.g. behaviourism reduces complex learning to just classical conditioning. It supports the idea of psychology as a science, as if you have one or two factors causing the behaviour they can be tested with scientific techniques. 
Limitations of reductionism: 
- ignores extraneous variables and other possible causes of behaviour
-complex behaviour cannot be reduced to simple one or two factors as the human mind and behaviour does not work this way. An alternative approach can be taken such as holism (humanistic approach) which takes into account all factors that may influence an individuals behaviour. 
- Reductionism, however, may be favourable as it supports the psychology as a science concept and makes behaviour easy to test. 

Determinism is suggesting that a certain factor is the sole cause of behaviour. For example, cause of aggression is genetic predisposition (biological approach), or the cause of aggression is social learning ( behavioural approach). These ignore other factors, e.g. behaviourists ignore the influence of biology ( genetics ) on behaviour. This is a limitation as there is supporting evidence for all approaches, e.g. support from ct/mri scans for the role of biology in aggression, case studies supporting the behaviourists, etc. One approach may not be the sole cause of a behaviour. 

Psychology

Can you explain determinism and reductionism in terms of behaviourism? And why they are limitations?

Hydrogen atoms fuse into each helium atom. During the process some of the mass is converted into energy. The difference between the mass of 4 H atoms and 1 He is 0.71% of the original mass. This small fraction of the mass is converted into energy.

Science

During the fusion process, how is mass converted into energy?

Revision is often a difficult one! Try different methods such as creating posters, flash cards etc. Psychology as a subject is an essay based one, so writing essays for every possible essay question will improve your essay writing skills. Try to do this under exam conditions e.g. timed conditions to get you prepared even better! Also, try to cut down on a lot of the content! Remember evaluation is worth more than the A01! 

Since psychology is presented as a heavy based context subject, what would be the ideal way for revising the context effectively?

Cognitive approach suggests all behaviour is due to faulty thinking. It emphasises the idea that impaired thought processes lead to any abnormalities, disorders, mental illnesses. For example, you will be taught that a cognitive explanation for Depression suggests that it’s a result of irrational thought processes and the way this is cured is via CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) which challenges the irrational thoughts, turning them into rational ones. Remember the effectiveness of CBT 90% (success rate) which suggests that in fact cognitive factors truly do impact our behaviour, or else the treatment would not be effective. Overall, cognitive approach reduces the cause of behaviour into simply faulty thinking, ignoring other factors such as biological vulnerability, social learning etc. In the example above, cognitive approach suggests depression is the result of faulty thinking alone, however ignores the idea of the diathesis stress model (possible biological + social factors). 

Can you explain reductionism in terms of the cognitive approach?

This equation is actually E=mc^2, where E stands for unit of energy, M stands for mass, c stands for speed of light (multiplied by itself). You can use this equation by simply substituting the values that you have to find either of the units (energy, mass etc) and rearranging if necessary. 

What does y=mc^2 mean?

Rearrange the equation to get one of the y or x values alone to make everything simple for yourself. Making y the subject, Y=(12-3x)/2 , therefore y=6-(3/2)x. Then make a table for y and x, when y is 0, x will be 6, when y is one, x will be 4.5 and so on. Plot these on a graph, e.g you would plot coordinates (0,6), (1,4.5). Do this until you get the hang of it. This works with any equation that you want to draw a graph for! 

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