comparing the areas

Question 1

similarities between the cognitive and social area

Answer 1

• they are both reductionist. Cognitive areas computer anology says our minds are like computers which is reductionist because there are other factors like instincts or feelings that influence our behaviours. (example, loftus and palmer looking at leading words which are environmental but dont take into account of emotional factors that might affect eyewitness memory.) Social area is reductionist as it only looks at how situational factors influence behaviour and not internal factors like personality or genes. (piliavin only looked at environemntal factors that influence whether someone is likely to help others and not personal factors like personality that may affect someones helping behaviour.

-another similarity would be both areas have useful applications (cog - moray and coma) (soc - Piliavin and enclosed places)

Question 2

differences in the social and cognitive area

Answer 2

• Cognitive area has less ecological validity than social area. (cog - simon and chabris - watching video of people playing basketball and counting the passes is an artificial task.) (soc- Levines tasks such as dropping a pen is a natural task)
• cognitive area has less ethical issues than Social area. (cog- in grant et al, participants were protected from distress as they were given as much time as they wanted to read the article.) (soc- milgrams study did not give a proper right to withdraw due to the verbal prods to continue.)