Core Study Links To Key Themes

Question 1

Milgram and responses to people in authority + the social approach

Answer 1

Results show how pressure from another person could lead people to administer potentially fatally electric shocks to another individual and how they could be led to do this by authority figures despite their discomfort
Milgram emphasizes situational over individual explanations

Question 2

Bocchiaro and responses to people in authority / social area

Answer 2

Sought to develop a new way to investigate obedience experimentally, revealing high levels of obedience but was conducted in Netherlands as also sought to investigate personality diffs distinguishing those who were obedient / disobedient / preparer to be whistle blowers
Yet challenges a purely social approach and does consider individual exps of behavior

Question 3

Polishing and responses to people in need / social area

Answer 3

Seeking to investigate (in a real life setting) impact of other people in helping behavior through counting no of people in carriage at time of incident (diffusion of responsibility was not seen) while another person was available to model helping behavior in case this was necessary

Question 4

Levine and and responses to people in need / social area

Answer 4

Recent study investigating helping behavior that built on piliavin by investigating it in non confined settings and cross culturally in 23 countries, finding cultural diffs in altruism, therefore offering culture as an explanation of diffs in responses to people in need

Question 5

Loftus and Palmer and memory / cognitive area

Answer 5

Because of its subject matter - memory, + the study shows impact that post event info can have on memory to point of even producing false memories (shown in exp 2)

Question 6

Grant et al and memory / cognitive area

Answer 6

Shows another way memory can be affected, by whether info is recalled in either a similar context to that I’m which it was first encountered or not.
Yet explains how memory can be enhanced rather than distorted, in contrast to loftus and Palmer

Question 7

Monday and attention / cognitive area

Answer 7

Because of its subject matter - namely attention. One of the many studies from 1950s which sought to investigate auditory attention, comprising of a series of three exps, one of which investigates ‘cocktail party effect’ of many conversations and what info can therefore break the attentional barrier

Question 8

Simon and chabris and attention / cognitive area

Answer 8

Built on morays work by investigating visual (as opposed to auditory) attention
Study also explains why we may not recall info that we see, but do not pay attention to (inattentional blindness)

Question 9

Bandura and external influences on children’s behavior / developmental area

Answer 9

Shows how children’s behavior can be influenced by the behavior of adult role models who they imitate

Question 10

Chaney and external influences on children’s behavior / developmental area

Answer 10

Illustrated another way children’s behavior can be influenced by external factors - the presence of positive and negative reinforcers

Question 11

Kohlberg and moral development / developmental area

Answer 11

Investigated how as people get older the nature of moral thinking evolves, potentially passing through six distinct stages of moral development
Suggest this occurs in line with cognitive development and occurs irrespectively of the culture one is growing up in

Question 12

Lee et al and moral development / developmental area

Answer 12

Cross cultural study that challenges kohlbergs suggestion that moral development is unaffected by the culture a child grows up in
Shows impact of culture instead through Chinese and Canadian children’s evaluations of lying and truth telling
Also investigated impact their age has on this, and used a cross sectional approach contrasting nicely with kohlberg’s longitudinal approach

Question 13

Sperry ans regions of the brain / biological area

Answer 13

Shows through split brain patients yeh way in which diff abilities are localized within the two hemispheres of the brain and distinct areas control specific behaviors
Small sample compared to casey

Question 14

Casey et all and regions of the brain / biological area

Answer 14

Involved trying to see whether there’s a neural basis to self regulation, done through fMRI scans of people who had taken part in Mischel’s delay of grat marshmallow fest forty years previously

Question 15

Blake Moore & Cooper and brain plasticity / biological area

Answer 15

Early example of research into brain plasticity where evidenced of impact the visual environment has on cats’ brains and their visual neurons is demonstrated.
Biological due to its focus on neurons and opens up the debate about whether biology affects behavior or behavior might even affect biology

Question 16

Maguire et al and brain plasticity / biological

Answer 16

Modern counterpart to Blake Moore and cooper demonstrating brain plasticity too by illustrating it amongst adult humans, london taxi drivers, in a different part of the brain, the hippocampi.
Used diff techniques like MRI scans to investigate brain plasticity and explains it in that the organisation of the brain is altered by experiences

Question 17

Freud and understating disorders / individual diffs area

Answer 17

Focus on trying to explain a way in which people may differ, namely by having phobias, through case study of a little boy from Vienna with a phobia of white horses

Question 18

Baron Cohen et al and understanding disorders / individual diffs area

Answer 18

Focus on trying to understand a way in which people differ, through being diagnosed as ok the autistic spectrum
Contrasts Freud because of diff research method used as was a quasi exp and because of no and ages of pps as well as the diff disorder studied

Question 19

Gould and measuring differences / individual diffs area

Answer 19

Focus on attempting to develop a test to measure way people differ in levels of intelligence
Shows how difficult it is to avoid cultural bias in supposedly objective measures such as parametric testing

Question 20

Hancock et al and measurement differences / individual diffs area

Answer 20

Focus on trying to measure diffs, and in this case text analysis tools are used to examine crime narratives of 14 psychopathic and 38 non psychopathic Homocide offenders and the findings demonstrate how the groups differ

Question 21

Bandura and the behaviorist perspective

Answer 21

Provides empirical support for social learning theory, shown through children imitating the aggressive behavior of the role models they observe

Question 22

Chaney et al and the behaviorist perspective

Answer 22

Provides empirical support for operant conditioning in forms of both positive and negative reinforcement
Results found increased adherence due to positives reinforcement strategies such as incentive toys provided by the funhaler

Question 23

Freud and the psychodynamic perspective

Answer 23

Psychodynamic due to way in which his theory of psychosexual development especially Oedipus complex is drawn upon to explain Hans’ phobias of horses and fantasies