Essays Flashcards
Outline and evaluate research examining conformity? A01: Jenness Asch Zimbardo
A03: asch -low ecological validity -biased sample - controlled lab experiment zimbardo -unethical -reicher and haslam findings -individual differences -real life application -lacks population validity
- Jenness’s was one of the first psychologists to study conformity. His experiment used an ambiguous situation involving a glass bottle filled with beans. He asked participants individually to estimate how many beans the bottle contained. Jenness then put the group in a room with the bottle and asked them to provide a group estimate through discussion.
Jenness found that nearly all participants changed their original answer when they were provided with another opportunity to estimate the number of beans in the glass bottle the male participants changed their answer by 256 beans and the female participants changed their answers by 382 beans demonstrating the power of conformity in an ambiguous situation and are likely to the be the result of informational social influence the reason for their changed in answers were due to the belief the group estimate was more likely to the be correct than their own individual estimate so they looked to the majority for the right answer.
-Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity, the procedure involved gathering a sample of 50 American male white students from college who believed they were taking part in a vision test however this was not entirely true and the true study was using a line judgement task where they would compare an example line to three other lines a,b or c and see which ones matched the original and the answer would always be obvious. They placed one naive participant in a room with 7-9 confederates (actors posing as participants) who had agreed their answers beforehand, the naive participant was always seated second from last and each person had to say out loud which line a, b or c was most like the target line in comparison where the answer was always obvious and the confederates gave the same incorrect answer on 12 trials called critical trials. The aim was to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view even though the answer was incorrect.
The results from this experiment were as expected as on average the real participants conformed to the incorrect answers on 32% of the critical trials and 74% of the participants conformed on at least one critical trial and 26% of the participants never conformed.
Zimbardos experiment investigated conformity to social roles and his aim was to examine whether people would conform to the social roles of a prison guard or a prisoner when placed in a mock prison environment furthermore, he also wanted to examine whether the behaviour displayed in prisons was due to internal dispositional factors, the people themselves, or external situational factors, the environment and conditions of the prison.
His sample consisted of 21 male students that voluntary applied for the experiment and were randomly assigned to one of two social role, prisoners or guards and they would be placed in a mock prison created in Stanford university’s basement.
The procedure consisted of arresting the prisoners by real local police and stripped, given a smock uniform with a number as identification with chains placed around their ankles whilst the guards were given uniforms, sunglasses, handcuffs and a truncheon and were instructed to not use violence against the prisoners, the experiment was to last two weeks but was terminated after 6 days.
Zimbardo found both the prisoners and the guards were quick to identify with their social roles and prisoners started to become aggressive and rebel which was followed by the guards become violent and abusive towards the prisoners using the batons and dehumanising the prisoners by making them do tedious tasks such as cleaning out the toilets with their bare hands and as the experiment went on the prisoners and guards were identifying more and more with their social role.
Prisoners suffered from severe stress and trauma caused by the experiment which led to an early release of some of the prisoners due to their adverse reactions to the experiment such as crying and extreme anxiety from the mental and physical torment due to the inhuman conditions pointed out by a fellow postgraduate student Christina maslach the experiment was terminated shortly after that.
Zimbardo concluded that when put into a certain setting and given a new identity people can conform very quickly to that social role even when it goes against their moral principles and situational factors play a huge part in changing someone’s behaviour in order to fit into that position.
A03: Aschs study has low ecological validity as the experiment involved using an artificial task to measure levels of conformity by judging line lengths and comparing it to an example line this task reflects neither every day to day tasks or is a realistic method of measuring conformity. This is a weakness because it means the results can’t be generalised to real life situations of conformity an improvement on this study would be to change the task so that it uses a real life situation for example gathering confederates in a crowd over an event to see if participants are willing to conform and join the crowd therefore collecting new results from a realistic conformity scenario.
Another weakness of aschs experiment is it was conducted on a biased sample consisting of all white male university students who all belonged to the same sex, age group and occupation similarly to zimbardos experiment therefore the study lacks population validity which is a limitation as the results gained from the experiment can only be applied to that sample range and can’t be generalised to other groups of people like females or older people and to improve this they should repeat the experiment but with those added groups of people in order to gain new results that can be generalised to the general public.
Aschs line experiments were controlled lab experiments as he was able to test specific variables that increased or decreased conformity as he used standardised procedures and instructions that meant the line experiments could be replicated this means that the study has high reliability as it can be replicated over and over again in order to accumulate new and potentially different results.
Zimbardos experiment managed to pass the ethical code when it was conducted in 1973 however the committee has changed their code and the experiment now could be considered breaking ethical guidelines as participants were at first not allowed to leave early when asked to, they were persuaded to stay a bit longer which violated their right to withdraw from the experiment and participants were also not protected from physical or physiological harm even though zimbardo played the prisoners warden he let the behaviour be acted out instead of intervening and stop the violent aggressive behaviour from the guards which led to harmful repercussions as prisoners suffered from extreme stress and anxiety caused by the guards behaviour meaning the experiment isn’t considered ethical and the results gained from prisoners were only due to the cruel positions that they put in.
Contradictory to zimbardos results Reicher and Haslam have findings from a recently replicated Stanford prison experiment which involved randomly assigning 15 men to the role of prisoner or guard and discovered that participants were not quick to conform to their social roles given to them and deindividuation did not occur for example the guards didn’t identify with their status and refused to impose their authority and interestingly the prisoners identified as a group to challenge the guards authority leading to a shift of power and a collapse of the prison system consequently contradicting to zimbardos findings and suggesting g that conformity to social roles may not be automatic as zimbardo originally implied.
Individual differences are also not considered during zimbardos study as this and personality can also determine the extent to which a person conforms to their social roles and in the original experiment the behaviour of the guards differed drastically from extremely sadistic behaviour with the exception of a few good guards who helped the prisoners which suggests that situational factors aren’t the only reason for conformity to social roles and that dispositional factors also have an effect on how we behave and act when given a new social role.
A positive outcome of the study is that it has application to real life due to how it’s altered the way US prisons are managed for example juveniles accused of federal crimes are no longer housed before trial with adult prisoners this is due to the risk of violence against them so this is a strength of the study as it has changed prisoners lives and the way they are treated.
The study itself lacks population validity as the sample comprised US white male students and because of this the results can’t be applied to other groups of people like female prisons or prisons from other countries that may have reacted differently depending on cultural differences for example America is an individualist culture meaning that people are generally less conforming and want to go against authority figures who abuse their power whereas in Asian countries the results may be different as they are a collectivist culture where conformity is expected.
Discuss factors that can affect conformity? Refer to variations of aschs experiment in your answer A01 - group size - task difficulty - unanimity A03 Strengths -high internal validity-replicable Weakness -research methods - biased sample - white male American participants - lacks ecological validity artificial study -ethical guidelines -lacks historical validity -culturally bias -lacks temporal validity
A01:
Factors affecting conformity were first discovered by asch during his experiment whereby the aim was to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform.
Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity, the procedure involved gathering a sample of 50 American male white students from college who believed they were taking part in a vision test using a line judgement task where they would compare an example line to three other lines a,b, or c and see which ones matched the original and the answer would always be obvious.
They placed one naive participant in a room with 7-9 confederates (actors posing as participants) who’d agreed their answers beforehand, the naive participant was always seated second from last and each person had to say out loud which line a, b or c was most like the target line in comparison and the confederates gave the same incorrect answer on 12 trials called critical trials.
The aim was to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view even though the answer was incorrect.
The results from this experiment were as expected as on average the real participants conformed to the incorrect answers on 32% of the critical trials and 74% of the participants conformed on at least one critical trial and 26% of the participants never conformed.
Aschs study involved carrying out variations of his line judgement task including group size, task difficulty and unanimity.
The group size variation ranged from 1 confederate to 15 confederates. When there was 1 confederate the real participants conformed on just 3% of the critical trials. When increased to 2 confederates the real participants conformed on 12% of the critical trials. When increased to 3 confederates the real participants conformed on 32% of the critical trials which is the same percentage as aschs original experiment with 7 confederates which demonstrates that conformity reaches its highest level with 3 confederates. In the original study the confederates gave the same incorrect answer but in one variation 1 confederate was instructed to give the correct answer throughout the rate of conformity dropped to 5% which means that if the real participant has support for their belief then they’re likely to resist the pressure to conform.
Furthermore, in another variation, one of the confederates gave a different incorrect answer to the majority when this happened conformity dropped significantly, by this time to 9% showing that if you break the group’s unanimous position, conformity will reduce, even if the answer provided by the supporter, is incorrect.
In Asch’s original experiment, the correct answer was always obvious in a variation he made the task difficult by making the difference between the line lengths significantly smaller which meant conformity increased which is likely to be the result of informational social influence as individuals look to one another for guidance when faced with completing a difficult task.
A03:
The problem with this study is that it can’t be generalised to other groups of people given the fact that the sample is biased as it consisted of only white male American students of similar age and therefore means we can’t apply the findings to other populations for example female students so we can’t determine that they would react the same way or would have conformed at all causing the study to lack population validity and extended research has to take place in order to gain a new set of results determining whether males and females conform differently.
It could be argued that the study lacks ecological validity as the tasks were artificial due to it being a line judgement task whereby participant are asked to compare a set of lines to an example line which doesn’t reflect everyday life situations of conformity consequently meaning we aren’t able to generalise the results of the experiment to other examples of why people conform for example in social activities such as why people start drinking or smoking around friends therefore these results are limited in their application to everyday life.
Asch didn’t adhere to the ethical guidelines as he used deception and didn’t protect the participants from harm. Asch didn’t tell the participants the true purpose of the study and deceived his participants into thinking that they were taking part in a vision test however it could be argued that this was required in order to achieve valid results and if participants were made aware of the actual aim they could’ve displayed demand characteristics and acted the way they thought they should which could then distort the results additionally participants were also not protected from psychological harm and reported feeling stressed and anxious when they disagreed with the majority but asch did follow up with his patients afterwards in order to overcome this issue.
The study shows great internal validity because it establishes a cause-effect relationship between social peer pressure and conformity using different variations in a controlled lab expriment therefore meaning it’s reliable and can be repeated in order to gather new information about why people conform and what factors contribute to the reasons why people conform to the majority and due to the original experiments gender bias it can be repeated on female participants and other groups of people in order to discover if they would conform in the same way and how the variations being group size, task difficulty and unanimity would affect them.
A weakness of the study is it lacks historical validity as it took place at a time when conformity in the US was much higher and has been criticised as being ‘a child of its time’ since 1950 multiple psychologists have attempted to replicate aschs study eg Perrin and spencer used engineering students to conduct a repeat of the experiment years later which contradicted aschs results because they found significantly lower levels of conformity suggesting aschs experiment lacks historical validity and the conformity rates found in 1950 may not provide an accurate reflection of conformity in modern times.
A weakness of the study is it’s culturally bias due to the fact that all participants were American and therefore ethnocentric meaning sample findings lack population validity and can’t be applied to different countries and as America is an individualistic culture the results can’t be generalised to other cultures that may be collectivist such as Asian countries so the conformity rates differ in order to discover these results the study would have to repeated globally.
Aschs findings were discovered in the 1950s in America meaning the study lacks temporal validity as the findings are specific to that time period and country only and conformity rates would be high and McCarthyism plays a big part as people were mostly capitalist and suspicious of radical left wing ideas then and so the way they reacted to a situation testing conformity would be seen as the norm and not an abnormal reaction like it would be seen today.
Outline and evaluate research into conformity to social roles.
A01
- zimbardos experiment
- 21 participants randomly allocated and assigned to guard or prisoner
- mock prison in Stanford uni
- zimbardo played prison ward
- experiment ended after 5 days
- prisoners arrested from homes, deloused/ dehumanised due to being given numbers instead of names
- findings - guards & prisoners quickly conformed
- guards - abusive/ aggressive and dominent
- prisoners- obedient/ docile
A03:
Weakness
Ethical issues - participants not allowed to leave early
- they had to use persuasion
Ethical issues - not protected from physiological/ physical harm
Weakness
- BBC study reicher and Haslam replicated
- participants * groups of 3 each person matched other 2
- 1 role of guard, 2 prisoners
- found not same level of guard brutality/abuse
- guards reluctant to impose authority on prisoners
Weakness
-individual differences
Supporting - real life application
-altered US prisons
Weakness - low population validity
- results not generalisable to other countries/ females
- sample US male participants
Weakness - demand characteristics
- prisoners and guards acted the way they thought were meant to - inaccurate results
Supporting/ strength - realistic experience
- prisoners were arrested from homes and other realistic experiences lead to accurate results
A01:
Zimbardos experiment investigated conformity to social roles and his aim was to examine whether people would conform to the social roles of a prison guard or a prisoner when placed in a mock prison environment furthermore, he also wanted to examine whether the behaviour displayed in prisons was due to internal dispositional factors, the people themselves, or external situational factors, the environment and conditions of the prison.
His sample consisted of 21 male students that voluntarily applied for the experiment and were randomly assigned to one of two social roles, a prisoner or guard and they would be placed in a mock prison created in Stanford university’s basement.
The procedure consisted of arresting the prisoners by real local police and stripped, given a smock uniform with a number as identification with chains placed around their ankles whilst the guards were given uniforms, sunglasses, handcuffs and a truncheon and were instructed to not use violence against the prisoners, the experiment was to last two weeks but was terminated after 6 days.
Zimbardo found both the prisoners and the guards were quick to identify with their social roles and prisoners started to become aggressive and rebel which was followed by the guards become violent and abusive towards the prisoners using the batons and dehumanising the prisoners by making them do tedious tasks such as cleaning out the toilets with their bare hands and as the experiment went on the prisoners and guards were identifying more and more with their social role.
Prisoners suffered from severe stress and trauma caused by the experiment which led to an early release of some of the prisoners than the original planned time of the experiment and due to their adverse reactions to the experiment such as crying and extreme anxiety from the mental and physical torment due to the inhuman conditions pointed out by a fellow postgraduate student Christina maslach the experiment was terminated shortly after that.
Zimbardo concluded that when put into a certain setting and given a new identity people can conform very quickly to that social role even when it goes against their moral principles and situational factors play a huge part in changing someone’s behaviour in order to fit into that position.
A03:
Zimbardos experiment managed to pass the ethical code when it was conducted in 1973 however the committee has changed their code and the experiment now could be considered breaking ethical guidelines as participants were at first not allowed to leave early when asked to, they were persuaded to stay a bit longer which violated their right to withdraw from the experiment and participants were also not protected from physical or physiological harm even though zimbardo played the prisoners warden he let the behaviour be acted out instead of intervening and stop the violent aggressive behaviour from the guards which led to harmful repercussions as prisoners suffered from extreme stress and anxiety caused by the guards behaviour meaning the experiment isn’t considered ethical and the results gained from prisoners were only due to the cruel positions that they put in.
Contradictory to zimbardos results Reicher and Haslam have findings from a recently replicated Stanford prison experiment which involved randomly assigning 15 men to the role of prisoner or guard and discovered that participants were not quick to conform to their social roles given to them and deindividuation did not occur for example the guards didn’t identify with their status and refused to impose their authority and interestingly the prisoners identified as a group to challenge the guards authority leading to a shift of power and a collapse of the prison system consequently contradicting to zimbardos findings and suggesting g that conformity to social roles may not be automatic as zimbardo originally implied.
Individual differences are also not considered during zimbardos study as this and personality can also determine the extent to which a person conforms to their social roles and in the original experiment the behaviour of the guards differed drastically from extremely sadistic behaviour with the exception of a few good guards who helped the prisoners which suggests that situational factors aren’t the only reason for conformity to social roles and that dispositional factors also have an effect on how we behave and act when given a new social role.
A positive outcome of the study is that it has application to real life due to how it’s altered the way US prisons are managed for example juveniles accused of federal crimes are no longer housed before trial with adult prisoners this is due to the risk of violence against them so this is a strength of the study as it has changed prisoners lives and the way they are treated.
The study itself lacks population validity as the sample comprised US white male students and because of this the results can’t be applied to other groups of people like female prisons or prisons from other countries that may have reacted differently depending on cultural differences for example America is an individualist culture meaning that people are generally less conforming and want to go against authority figures who abuse their power whereas in Asian countries the results may be different as they are a collectivist culture where conformity is expected.
Demand characteristics may have been involved in the experiment as prisoners and guards could’ve acted the way they thought they were meant to which can then lead to inaccurate results as they are meant to act natural in order to be as realistic as possible so that the results could be generalised to the general public however the sample was biased as it didn’t involve both genders or people of different ethnicity’s and therefore the findings can’t be applied to the general public.
Even though the procedure was very traumatic for the participants it was in fact very realistic and can somewhat validate the results due to the brutally harsh methods that were being used against the participants such as being hosed down and arrested from their homes and from there taken to the mock prison in Stanford university’s basement where they were given a uniform and number as their new identity which would’ve at the time being an accurate representation of the cruel methods being used against real prisoners.
Discuss research into obedience by milgram.
A01
Milgram wanted to find why German soldiers during war obeyed authority figures & did crimes
.selection of participants for experiment by newspaper advertising for male participants to take part in study of learning @ Yale Uni
-40 participants
A01- procedure
.participant paired with another person (confederate)
.drew lots to find who was ‘learner’ and who was ‘teacher.’
.draw fixed so participant was always teacher
.learner was confederate
.learner taken into room & had electrodes attached to arms & teacher & researcher went into room next door that contained electric shock generator and a row of switches from 15v to 375v to 450v
A01- variations
.Milgram did variations of experiment changing IV so could identify factors that affected obedience the DV
.1va- Milgram called away because phone call at start of procedure,
. role taken over by confederate in everyday clothes rather than lab coat obedience dropped to 20%.
.2 va change Location
.experiment moved to run down offices rather than Yale Uni
.Obedience dropped to 47.5%.
.location effects obedience
A01
Milgrams variations;
.uniform,location, touch proximity
.two teacher condition
.social support condition
.absent experimenter condition
3 var touch proximity condition
. teacher forced learners hand on shock plate when refused after 150 volts. Obedience fell to 30%.
-results
65% participants continued highest lvl 450 volts. All participants continued 300v
A03:
Weakness - lacks ecological validity lab experiments
.don’t reflect real life situations
.Orne & Holland accused study lacking experimental realism participants may not believed experimental setup & knew learner wasn’t receiving electric shocks
Supporting - reliability
.similar results gained on the two repeats
Supporting/strength - practical applications
.increased our understanding of obedience to authority
Weakness - population validity
.used bias sample of 40 males
.not able to generalise to other populations
Ethical issues - participants weren’t protected from harm
.they were stressed and anxious and felt guilt for shocking the confederate
Ethical issues - deception
.participants weren’t debriefed about experiment
Ethical issues - right to withdrawal
.participants were told to carry on with experiment and weren’t allowed to leave
Studies replicated in other cultures
.smith and bond criticise that they’re westernised
A01:
Milgram conducted research into obedience to find out why German soldiers during the war obeyed authority figures and carried out the crimes they did he wanted to find out if ordinary American citizens would obey an unjust order from an authority figure and inflict pain on another person because they were instructed to. He gathered a selection of 40 participants for his experiment through newspaper advertising for male participants to take part in his study of learning at Yale university.
The procedure consisted of pairing a participant with another person who was an unknown confederate and drawing lots to find out who was the ‘learner’ and who was the ‘teacher’ but the draw was fixed so the participant was always the ‘teacher’ and the ‘learner ‘ was the confederate who would be taken into a room and had electrodes attached to their arms and the ‘teacher’ and researcher went into the room next door that contained an electric shock generator and a row of switches from 15volts to 375volts to 450volts this was used to shock the confederate next door when getting an answer wrong from a series of questions however the real participant when asked to administer the shocks could hear the confederate in pain but this was a recorded sound that they heard instead.
Milgram did variations of the experiment and changed the independent variable so he could identify the factors that affected obedience the dependent variable. The main variations included uniform, location and touch proximity he also added a two teacher condition and a social support condition and an absent experimenter condition. The first variation involved milgram being called away because of a phone call at the start of the procedure and the role being taken over by a confederate in everyday clothes rather than a lab coat which establishes authority which caused obedience to drop by 20%. The second variation was to change location so the experiment was moved to run down offices rather than Yale university which people would associate with professionalism causing the obedience to drop to 47.5% suggesting that location affects obedience as people would respecte Yale university as it’s an established building. The final variation was touch proximity Where the teacher forced the learners hand on a shock plage when refusing to shock the confederate after 150 volts which caused obedience to fall to 30%.
The results from the experiment at the time were considered extraordinary 65% of the participants continued to the highest level of 450 volts and all participants continued to 300 volts concluding that with the right level of authority people will go to great lengths to obey orders given.
A03:
A weakness of the study is that it lacks ecological validity this is because the experiment was conducted in a lab meaning it doesn’t reflect a real life situation. Orne & Holland accused the study of lacking experimental realism because participants may not have believed the experimental setup and could’ve known the learner wasn’t receiving electric shocks this could’ve lead to inaccurate results because if they’d have thought it wasn’t realistic they could’ve acted differently and refused to give them or gave them knowing the consequences.
The research is reliable in the sense that similar results were gained on the two replications meaning that the study can be repeated in order to gain new information or include a new set of participants that were the opposite gender or different race to see if they would have reacted the similarly or differently to the original sample and this way we can generalise the new findings to wider populations of people.
Practical applications were gained from the experiment as it gave us an increased understanding in human nature and our obedience to authority figures and what factors are needed in order to get people to obey for example uniform, location and touch proximity.
There is a lack of population validity as the study’s sample was bias and consisted of 40 males meaning that were unable to generalise the results to other populations to improve this the experiment should’ve been repeated with different samples for example women and people of other cultures as in some countries it’s seen as the norm to complete orders without question and be submissive under authority figures.
Ethical issues were seen as a big criticism by other researchers as participants weren’t protected from the harm that the expriment caused as during the study when asked to shock the other participant the real participant was put under a lot of stress and experienced a potentially traumatic moment of having to decide whether to electrocute someone or not under an authority figure who would’ve appeared professional and acted as though it was ok to go on even when the learner sounded in pain and the effects for the real participants could’ve been long term and affect them for the rest of their life as they would feel guilt for shocking the confederate even though nothing happened it would still put someone in shock.
Another ethical issue was the use of deception milgram didn’t tell his participants the true purpose of the study and they weren’t debriefed properly about the experiment however this was somewhat necessary in order to achieve the desired results because if they knew the true aim they may have acted differently and could’ve been subjected to demand characteristics which then could’ve altered the results and wouldn’t of been an accurate representation of how they would’ve reacted to that situation in real life as they would’ve reacted the way they thought they were meant to.
Participants went under a lot of stress and anxiety during the experiment as they weren’t allowed to withdrawal which is another ethical issue the right to withdrawal as participants were told to carry on with the experiment and weren’t allowed to leave which caused even more added stress and anxiety they were already experiencing.
Milgrams findings have been replicated in a variety of cultures and most have had the same conclusions in comparison to the original study and in some cases there are higher obedience rates. However smith and bond criticise that the majority of these studies have been conducted in industrialised western cultures and we should be cautious before we conclude that a universal trait of social behaviour has been identified.
Outline and evaluate how situational variables have been shown to affect obedience to authority?
A01
. milgram experiment showed that certain factors affect obedience he did different variations of the experiment
.variables that have shown to affect obedience include uniform, location , proximity
Uniform
.milgram called away via phone call,confederate came in wearing everyday clothes, idea of increasing voltage everytime learner made mistake obedience dropped 65% to 20%
.Bushman found people more likely to obey researcher in police style uniform than dressed as business executive
Location
.when studies were conducted at yale uni participants reported this gave them confidence in the integrity of the study
. result- made them more likely to obey
. a variation where a study was moved to run down offices with no affiliation to yale obedience dropped to 48%
Proximity
.with learner in the same room levels of obedience dropped to 40%
.a variation when the teacher had to force the learners hand onto a shock plate levels dropped to 30%
.when authority figure left the room obedience levels dropped to 21%
A03:
Weakness - lacks population validity
. biased sample - male USA volunteers from individualistic society.
. unable to generalise results to collectivist cultures/females since unknown if those participants, would respond in similar way unable to conclude whether proximity is legitimate explanation in those participants
Supporting -bickman uniform
. Bickman -field experiment NYC confederates stood on street & asked citizens passing to perform task like picking up piece of litter, outfit confederate wore smart suit jacket & tie, milkman’s outfit,security guard’s uniform. found final condition citizens were twice as likely obey order given by security guard supports idea uniform adds legitimacy of authority &this variable increases obedience..
Supporting/strength- reliable repeatable with standardised procedure
.use of systematic procedures allows cause and effect to be established
.enables conclusions to be drawn
Weakness- replicated in Western cultures
. Smith and Bond argued Milgram’s experiment had only been replicated in Western cultures
.his results aren’t entirely generalisable
Methodological issues- Demand characteristics
. participants may know the purpose of experiment
Ethical issues .Lack of protection from psychological harm from believing they hurt another person
Ethical issues - deception
Research methods- gender bias,used male participants, didn’t test females who may have acted different
A01:
Situational variables have been shown to affect obedience to authority as seen in milgrams experiment into obedience suggesting that certain factors affect obedience as found during the different variations of his study including uniform, location and proximity.
The uniform variation was tested via milgrams being called away from the experiment by a pretend phone call and then a confederate would come in wearing everyday clothes and would give the idea of increasing the voltage everytime the ‘learner’ made a mistake causing obedience to drop by 65% to 20% this is supported by bushman who found people more likely to obey a research in a police style uniform rather than dressed as a business executive sugggesting uniform is a powerful factor shown to affect obedience to authority.
Another variation was tested by placing the experiment in another location compared to Yale university which was considered professional consequently participants reported this have them the confidence in the integrity of the study resulting in making them more likely to obey so by moving the experiment to run down offices with no affiliation to Yale the obedience dropped to 48% as this gives the participant doubt the experiment is professional and done by intelligent researchers.
Proximity was another variation tested to see if it would affect obedience and with the learner in the same room the levels of obedience dropped to 40% so the variation when the teacher had to force the learners hand onto a shock plate the obedience levels dropped to 30% and when the authority figure had left the room obedience levels dropped to 21%.
A03:
A weakness of the study is the lack of population validity as the sample consisted of all male American volunteers leading to bias results meaning that we are unable to generalise the results to collectivist cultures or other groups of people like women since it’s unknown if those participants would respond in a similar way so we’re unable to conclude whether proximity is a legitimate explanation shown to affect obedience to authority.
Supporting the study is bickman who conducted a field experiment in New York where confederates stood on the street and asked the citizens passing by to perform a task this could be picking up a piece of litter whilst the confederate wore either a smart suit jacket and tie, a milkman’s outfit or a security guards uniform and found in the final condition the citizens were twice as likely to obey an order given by a security guard which supports the idea that uniform adds legitimacy of authority and that this variable is shown to affect obedience to authority.
As the study was conducted in a lab it gives it reliability and is repeatable with standardised procedure as the use of systematic procedure allows cause and effect to be established it then enables conclusions to be drawn.
However milgrams study has only been replicated in western cultures as argued by smith and bond meaning that results gathered arent entirely generalisable and can’t be applied to people from different cultural backgrounds so to improve this the study should be repeated in other cultures like eastern cultures as this would provide new information on how people who aren’t from western cultures would be shown to affect obedience to authority.
There are methodological issues with milgrams experiment as the participants may have been subjected to demand characteristics because they may have known the true purpose of the study and therefore acted in way that they thought they were supposed to in order to achieve those results and ensure the researchers gained what they wanted to and the factors that have shown to affect obedience to authority are correct.
Ethical issues were seen as a big criticism by other researchers as participants weren’t protected from the harm that the expriment caused as during the study when asked to shock the other participant the real participant was put under a lot of stress and experienced a potentially traumatic moment of having to decide whether to electrocute someone or not under an authority figure who would’ve appeared professional and acted as though it was ok to go on even when the learner sounded in pain and the effects for the real participants could’ve been long term and affect them for the rest of their life as they would feel guilt for shocking the confederate even though nothing happened it would still put someone in shock.
Another ethical issue was the use of deception milgram didn’t tell his participants the true purpose of the study and they weren’t debriefed properly about the experiment however this was somewhat necessary in order to achieve the desired results because if they knew the true aim they may have acted differently and could’ve been subjected to demand characteristics which then could’ve altered the results and wouldn’t of been an accurate representation of how they would’ve reacted to that situation in real life as they would’ve reacted the way they thought they were meant to.
There is a lack of population validity as the study’s sample was bias and consisted of 40 males meaning that were unable to generalise the results to other populations to improve this the experiment should’ve been repeated with different samples for example women and people of other cultures as in some countries it’s seen as the norm to complete orders without question and be submissive under authority figures.
discuss what psychological research has told us about why people conform?
A01 –NSI
A01- ISI
A01- types of conformity:compliance,identification,internalisation
A01 variables affecting conformity:
group size; unanimity; task difficulty
A03:
weakness Smith and Bond meta analysis. looked at culture and how it affects conformity. found western cultures conformed less because they want to be independent and individualistic. People in western cultures dont want to be seen as part of group so conform less.
Supporting – normative social influence can explain the results of conformity studies in unambiguous situations eg Asch
Supporting-.informational influence can explain conformity in ambiguous situations in which both public and private agreement occurs, eg Jenness
Weakness- difficulty measuring and/or distinguishing between reasons why conformity occurs
Research methods aschs study
Gender bias
Only tested on male participants
Female participants may have acted differently
Culture aschs - cultural differences in conformity as USA is an individualistic culture, whereas China and Africa have collective culture suggesting conformity would further increase
Ethical issues with aschs experiment deception they may have acted differently if they knew the true purpose of the study
Supporting– Zimbardo
A01:
We know why people conform due to psychological research being carried out so we know people conform for reasons such as wanting to be right and wanting to fit in these types of social influences are known as informational social influence and normative social influence. Normative social influence is going along with the majority through fear of rejection or being seen as an outcast people conform as a desire to be liked because people want to be liked which is slightly different compared to informational social influence where a person or people will go along with the majority view through acceptance of new information as people have a desire to be right so they’re conforming for cognitive reasons rather than emotional ones.
There are types of conformity which compliance, identification and internalisation. Compliance is where a person will publicly agree with the majority despite privately disagreeing with the majority they will temporarily change their view or behaviour. Identification where a person will want to have affinity with the group that we value so they want to be associated with the majority by identifying with them and their views. Finally internalisation where a person or people will publicly and privately agree with the majority view and is the highest form of conformity.
Variables that affect conformity include group size, unanimity and task difficulty which were discovered by asch during his study where participants were given an example line and had to guess which other lines that were presented to them were similar to the original line and the reasons why people conform were due to group size so if a group size or more than 3 all had the same answer a person would conform to the majority view, unanimity
A03:
A weakness of psychological research telling people why they conform could be argued by smith and bond who conducted a meta analysis and looked at culture and how it affects conformity, they found that western cultures conformed less because they want to be independent and individualistic meaning that people in western cultures don’t want to be seen as part of a group so they will conform less.
Normative social influence can tell us why people conform more specifically it can explain the results of conformity studies in unambiguous situations for example Asch and his line study because it means people have a desire to right and will therefore look to the majority for the correct answer.
As well as normative social influence explaining why people conform so can informational social influence as it can explain conformity in ambiguous situations in which both public and private agreement occurs for example in Jenness bean study where groups of people had to guess how many beans were in a jar which means there was no obvious correct answer and participants had to say the answer out loud which lead to them agreeing with the majority view as they wanted to be right.
However it’s difficult to measure and or distinguish between reasons why conformity occurs and whether it’s all based on types of conformity as there could be other reasons like cultural reasons.
There could be other reasons for conforming like cultural differences like in aschs study as the USA is an individualistic culture whereas China and Africa have collectivist cultures suggesting conformity would further increase as they want to fit in with the majority.
There are research methods problems with aschs study because there is gender bias as the experiment was only done on American male participants so therefore we can’t determine how female participants may have acted meaning we can’t generalise the results to women or other groups of people.
There are ethical issues with aschs experiment as deception was used as participants weren’t fully told about the real reason the experiment was being conducted this means that participants may have acted differently if they knew the true purpose of the study so this was necessary to get the results.
Zimbardos study into conformity to social roles could also be used so support research into why people conform as it involved participants being randomly assigned a role as either a prisoner or a guard and being placed into a mock prison in order to see how quickly they would conform to that social role which they did and soon acted as their perception of how a prisoner or guard would act.
Discuss two explanations of resistance to social influence?
A01 –social support
- person has assistance from people within group - remain independent in situations where expected to conform/obey
- enables individuals resist pressures conform because breaks unanimity of majority-disobedient peers act as role models
A01- loc measurement of loc Rotter
- loc= persons perception of personal control of own behaviour
- strong internal loc believe what happens to them is result of own ability & effort rather than influence of others
- strong external loc believe what happens to them is determined by external factors like influence of others/luck
A03:
weakness – people with internal loc likely resist pressure obey.
-Oliner & Oliner interviewed non-Jewish survivors WWII compared those resisted orders protected
Supporting – Social Support Allen and Levine
Supporting-.milgram demonstrated increased resistance variations participants paired
Weakness- Spector used Rotter’s loc scale -found individuals with high internal loc =less likely conform than those with high external loc
Real life example – Rosenstrasse protest in nazi controlled berlin in 1943 milgrams research in real life
Historical change Research found historical trend in loc with young people becoming increasingly external Meta analysis twenge et al found loc scores in US students become more external between 1960 and 2002
Weakness - Loc - Obedience Gender Differences - Sherman et al
- males more likely to have internal LoC and likely to become leaders.
Strength -rees & Wallace showed social support provided by friends helped adolescents resist conformity pressures from majority
One explanation of resistance to social influence is social support this is where a person has assistance from people without a majority group which helps them to remain independent in situations where they’re expected to conform or obey as it enables individuals to resist pressures to conform because it breaks unanimity of the majority and when disobedient peers act as role models which the person can base their own behaviour for example resisting an order from an authority figure it gives them social support and non conformity means that it’s more likely if others are seen to resist social influence and seeing others disobey and not conform gives the observer the confidence to do the same an example of when this happened was during moscovicis experiment where he used social support to encourage the minority influence to not conform to the majority.
Another explanation of resistance to social influence is the locus of control measurement by rotter which determined a persons perception of their personal control of their own behaviour. People with a strong internal locus of control believe what happens to them is a result of their own ability and effort rather than the influence of others because internals are less likely to rely on opinions of others to make them less vulnerable to social influence but people with a strong external locus of control believe what happens to them is determined by external factors like the influence of others and luck and are less likely to display independent behaviour and that they can’t control what happens to them.
A03:
People with an internal locus of control are less likely to resist the pressure to obey found by oliner & oliner who interviewed non Jewish survivors of WW|| those who resisted the orders and protected the jews from the nazis compared to those who didn’t and found 406 rescuers who resisted the orders are likely to have a high internal locus of control compared to 126 people who followed the orders resulting in the idea that having a high internal locus of control means individuals are less likely to follow orders so it’s difficult to conclude that locus of control is the only factor.
Supporting the idea of social support is Allen and Levine who found conformity reduced on the task involving visual judgements if there was a dissenter even if the dissenter wore glasses with thick lenses and admitted to having a sight problem.
Milgram demonstrated an increase to resistance to social influence when he included social support in one of his variations in his experiment where the real participant was paired with two additional confederates who also played the role of teachers and the two additional confederates refused to go on and withdrew from the experiment early. The percentage of real participants who proceeded to the full 450 volts dropped from 65% to 10% showing that if the real participants has support for their desire to disobey then they’re more likely to resist the pressure of an authority figure.
Spector used rotters locus of control scale to determine whether locus of control is associated with conformity and he used a sample of 157 students and found individuals with a high internal locus of control were less likely to conform than those with a high external locus of control and it’s only normative social influence situations where individuals conform to be accepted. Suggesting there is no difference between the two groups for informational social influence and suggests normative social influence which is the desire to fit in is more powerful than informational social influence which is the desire to be right when considering locus of control.
A real life example of resistance to social influence is the rosenstrasse protest in nazi controlled Berlin in 1943 which milgrams research was based on in real life so there is a historical change where research has found a historical trend in locus of control with young people becoming increasingly external.
A meta analysis was conducted by twenge et al that found locus of control scores in US student had become substantially more external between 1960 and 2002 suggesting that over time more people are becoming external and believing that they don’t control their own lives.
A weakness of locus of control being an explanation of resistance to social influence is the gender differences Sherman et al found that males are more likely to have an internal locus of control and are likely to become leaders whereas females seek links with others rather than behaving independently and women who are internal do better in a workplace.
Research that supports the importance of social support in resisting social influence is by Rees and Wallace who showed social support provided by friends helped adolescents resist conformity pressures from the majority and found that individuals who had the majority or friends who drank alcohol were able to resist pressures to drink when they had a friend or two who also resisted suggesting that social influence can be resisted by having social support in a situation.
Outline and evaluate the role of social influence processes in social change?
A01 –Social change occurs when a whole society adopts a new belief or behaviour which then becomes widely accepted as the ‘norm’.
.Social influence processes involved in social change include minority influence, internal locus of control and disobedience to authority.
Moscovici
. conversion theory
- 3 clear factors that determine success of minority to facilitate social change, including: consistency, sacrifices and group membership.
A01- DCCAS Social change through minority influence
1. drawing attention to issue-
2 cognitive conflict –
3 consistency -
4 augmentation principle –
5 snowball effect-
A03:
Weakness Dejong et al campaign of alcohol affects
Supporting-Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela led civil rights movements and were consistent in their views against apartheid
Weakness- Schultz boomerang effect
Real life example - suffragettes
Weakness - often minority creates potential for change but rarely happens quickly due to tendency of humans conform to majority position
Weakness -influence of minorities = limited by labelled as deviant behaviour &majority don’t want seen as deviant themselves
Strength Maass et al.investigated group membership & found minority of straight men = likely to convince straight majority about gay rights, compared to minority of gay people.
The role of social influence processes involved in social change include the minority influences view becoming the majority’s and causing a social change which occurs when a whole society adopts a new belief or behaviour which then becomes widely accepted as the ‘norm’.
Moscovici used conversion theory to explain how social change occurs with 3 clear factors that determine the success of the minority to facilitate social change which are consistency, commitment and flexibility.
Another method of social change is through minority influence where there are 5 factors which are drawing attention to an issue, cognitive conflict, consistency, augmentation principle and the snowball effect.
Drawing attention to an issue means the minority can bring about social change by drawing attention to issues for example the suffragettes & being unable to vote as a woman.
Cognitive conflict which involves the minority creating conflict in the minds of the majority between what’s currently believed and what the minority believes.
Consistency meaning the social change is likely to occur when the minority is consistent in its position like the suffragettes being consistent in their views despite other people’s attitudes in society.
The augmentation principle where if a minority suffers for their views and beliefs it’s taken seriously for example when the suffragettes risked their imprisonment and even death in order for women to be Abel to vote and seen as proper members of society.
Finally the snowball effect where the minority influence initially was small but the effect spread widely until it leads to a large scale social change for example after the suffragettes actions the idea finally spread to the majority and in the future the idea had become the norm and people don’t remember where the idea originated from as it is the norm no one questions it.
A03:
Dejong et al tested the effectiveness of social norms campaigns reducing alcohol among students despite receiving information which corrected the misperceptions about the drinking norms the students didn’t report lower consumption as a result of the campaign suggesting that not all norms interventions mean that social change will occur.
Martin Luther king and Nelson Mandela led the civil rights movements and were consistent in their views against apartheid for many years which helped bring about social change and changed the previous social norms.
Schultz attempting social change through social the norms approach that can have a boomerang effect for example a social norms campaign concerning energy usage caused those who used less than the norm to increase their usage so instead of lowering the energy usage via a campaign the boomerang effect occurred which caused people to use more energy rather than less suggesting a norms intervention isn’t always effective.
A real life example of when social change occurred was when the suffragettes fought for women’s right to vote by being consistent in their view & persistent in their educational and political arguments which would draw attention to women’s rights. They remained consistent despite the opposition of protesting until women could vote they also made sacrifices by risking imprisonment and even death which meant their influence was powerful and the group membership convinced other women to join to expand the influence to spread until the social change occurred.
Another weakness is that often the minority creates the potential for change it it rarely happens quickly due to a strong tendency of humans to conform to the majority position to improve this social support could be used so a minority gathering more supporters of their view in order to appear a larger group of people allowing members to feel confident in their views.
Another weakness which could lower the chance of social change to occur is the influence of minorities being limited by being labelled as having deviant behaviour meaning the majority don’t want to be seen as deviant themselves because then the majority focuses on the messenger rather than the message which is more important and what the minority are trying to get across to the majority.
However supporting minority influence in social change is Maass et al who investigated group membership and found the minority of straight men were more likely to convince the straight majority about gay rights compared to the minority of gay people so the straight men were seen as having persuasive power discussing gay rights with straight men compared to gay men but this does suggest that members of the minority matter as the majority will judge them on this rathe than a message being conveyed across.
Outline and evaluate the authoritarian personality as a dispositional explanation for obedience?
A01
. Psychologists have examined dispositional factors that also contribute to obedience.
-Adorno et al developed questionnaire F scale
-Milgram’s original research, psychologists questioned whether obedience occurred due to situational factors or dispositional factors,
.Milgram conducted follow-up study, using participants from original study
-elms and milgrams research 20 dis and 20 ob
. participants asked open-ended questions about relationship wit parents/relationship with experimenter/learner during experiment.
- Elms and Milgram found obedient participants scored higher on F scale, results revealed obedient participants less close to fathers during childhood and admired experimenter in Milgram’s experiment
- Elms and Milgram concluded obedient participants in original research displayed higher levels of authoritarian personality, in comparison to disobedient participants.
weakness – Difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about exact cause
Supporting research Elms & Milgram did follow-up on participants from original study, ft 20 obedient & 20 defiant participants.
Supporting/strength - Altemeyer reported ppts with authoritarian personality type ordered to give shocks than those without personality type.
Weakness- Middendorp & Meleon less-educated people likely display authoritarian personality characteristics, than well-educated people. If claims correct then possible its not authoritarian characteristics
Methodological issues- Elms and Milgram used Adorno’s F scale to determine levels of authoritarian personality.response bias or social desirability
Research methods -problem with F-Scale Political Bias measures tendency towards extreme form of right wing ideology. Christine & Jahoda argued this is politically biased interpretation of A.P.
Weaknesses - studies found authoritarian ppts more obedient, Dambrun & vatine used immersive virtual environment yet ppts responded as if situation =real with significant correlation between RWA scores and maximum v shock level ppts
Issues and debates - nature vs
nurture
.milgram claimed that the social context (nurture) was more important than personality (nature) in determining obedience
A01:
The authoritarian personality is a distinct personality pattern characterised by strict adherence to conventional values and a a belief in absolute obedience of submission to authority.
Psychologists have examined dispositional factors that also contribute to obedience one of which is a particular characteristic known as authoritarian personality which has been associated with higher levels of obedience.
Adorno et al developed a questionnaire called the F scale which is used to measure levels of authoritarian personality and in milgrams original research psychologists questioned whether obedience occurred dut to situational factors like uniform or dispositional factors like a particular personality characteristic such as the authoritarian personality. This lead milgram to conduct a follow up study using the participants from the original study. Elms and milgram wanted to see if obedient participants in milgrams research were more likely to display authoritarian personality traits they collected a sample of 20 obedient participants who administered the full 450 volts & 20 disobedient participants who had refused to continue to carry on with shocking the ‘ learner’ and each participant did lots of personality questionnaires including the f scale. Participants were asked open ended questions about their relationship with their parents, with the experimenter and the learner during the experiment. Elms and milgrams found that obedient participants who scored higher on the f scale revealed they were less close to their fathers during childhood and they admired the experimenter in milgrams experiment which was the opposite for the disobedient participants.
Elms and milgram concluded that obedient participants in the original research had displayed higher levels of authoritarian personality in comparison to disobedient participants.
A03:
A weakness of the authoritarian personality as a dispositional explanation for obedience is it’s difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about the exact cause of obedience and whether other factors are involved or if other factors are needed in order for people to obey an authority figure whether it’s a mix of situational and dispositional or just dispositional factors as an explanation for obedience.
There is supporting research by elms and milgram who did a follow up on the participant from the original milgram study to see if the obedient participants were more likely to display authoritarian personality traits in comparison to disobedient participants, their sample featured 20 obedient and 20 disobedient participants. Each participant completed several personality questionnaires including adornos f scale to measure their level of authoritarian personality and were also asked open ended questions about their relationship with their parents, the experimenter and the learner during milgrams experiment. They found that obedient participants scored higher on the F scale compared to the disobedient participants, the results also revealed obedient participants were less close to their fathers during childhood and they admired the experimenter in milgrams experiment which was the opposite for the disobedient participants. Elms and milgram concluded the obedient participants in his original research displayed higher levels of authoritarian personality compared to disobedient participants.
Although the results suggests a link between authoritarian personality and obedience these results are correlations and therefore it’s difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about the exact cause of obedience additionally there are many other situational factors that contribute to obedience including proximity, location and uniform so although it’s likely that authoritarian personality contributes to obedience a range of situational variables can also affect the levels of this contribution.
Middendorp and meleon claims that less educated people are likely to display authoritarian personality characteristics than well educated people and if the claims are correct then it’s possible to conclude that it’s not authoritarian characteristics that lead to obedience but levels of education.
There are methodological issues with the authoritarian personality as elms and milgram used adornos f scale to determine the levels of authoritarian personality and it’s possible that the f scale suffers from response bias or social desirability where participants will provide answers that they think they should or that are socially acceptable which then leads to inaccurate results decreasing the validity of the research and means
the authoritarian personality as a dispositional explanation for obedience becomes a less plausible explanation.
Another problem with measuring the authoritarian personality with the f scale is the political bias that’s used to measure the tendency towards extreme form of right wing ideology and is argued by Christine and jahoda this is a politically biased interpretation of the authoritarian personality and not a comprehensive dispositional explanation that can account for obedience to authority across the whole political spectrum.
Supporting the authoritarian personality as an explanation for obedience is other studies that have found authoritarian participants are more obedient as dambrun and vatine used immersive virtual environment yet the participants responded to the situation as though it were real causing a significant correlation between right wing authoritarianism scores and maximum voltage shock levels from the original experiment milgram did and the participants that displayed higher levels of right wing authoritarianism were the ones who obeyed the most which confirms the link between authoritarianism and obedience.
Issues and debates play a part in the authoritarian explanation of obedience as nature and nurture claimed by milgram that the social context was nurture was more important than the personality which is nature in determining obedience.
Outline and evaluate research into minority influence?
A01 – Moscovici experiment-
.172 female USA participants
. see if consistent minority could influence majority to give incorrect answer in colour perception task
.consistent condition=real participants agreed 8.2% of trials
- inconsistent condition=real participants agreed 1.25% of the trials
-shows consistent minority=6.95%
A01- minority influence
.successful minorities:
-Consistency
-Commitment
-flexibility
A03:
weakness –lacks ecological validity
.moscovici- lab experiment
Supporting
. wood et al meta-analysis found minorities who were consistent in position were particularly influential
Supporting- flexibility
Nemeth & Brilmayer – simulated jury situation
-participants decided compensation amount for accident
Weakness- lacks internal validity
. use of artificial tasks in Moscovici blue green slide experiment
Real life application/example
.suffragette movement
Research methods –bias sample
.Moscovici used only female USA participants
Ethical issues- deceiving participants
.Moscovici- informed consent
The main research done on minority influence was moscovicis experiment where he wanted to see if a consistent minority could influence a majority to give an incorrect answer in a colour perception task he had a sample of 172 female American participants who were placed in groups of 6 and shown 36 slides that were all varied shades of blue and participants said out loud the colour of each slide. 2 of the 6 participants were confederates and in 1 condition which was consistent 2 of the confederates said all 36 slides were green and in the second condition which was inconsistent the confederates said 24 slides were green and 12 were blue. In the consistent condition the real participants had agreed on 8.2% of the trials unlike the inconsistent condition where the real participants agreed on 1.25% of the trials showing a consistent minority to be 6.95%.
Consistency was found to be a factor for the minority influences view to become the majority because if a minority is consistent in its arguments then other people will consider the issue more carefully as there must be a reason why the minority is sufficiently confident to maintain this position over time so the other members of the majority group change their beliefs/ behaviours as a result of the exposure to a persuasive minority.
For a minority to be successful it they need to be consistent, committed and flexible in arguments in order to change the majority’s view.
Another factor that helped the minority’s view influence the majority’s view was commitment, a minority that adopts commitment to its position suggests certainty and confidence in the face of a hostile majority the greater the commitment the more likely this will then persuade the majority group members to take them seriously or even convert to the minority position.
Another factor that can help the minority’s view influence the majority’s view is flexibility and it’s more effective at changing the majority’s opinion than rigidity of arguments because minorities must negotiate their position rather than trying to enforce it as a rigid minority that refuses to compromise is perceived as dogmatic but a minority that is too prepared to compromise can be seen as inconsistent so neither approach is effective and minorities have to find a middle so willing to compromise but not too willing.
A03:
A weakness of moscovicis study is that it lacks ecological validity due to it being a lab experiment as this doesn’t reflect real life and isn’t something that is believable or realistic this can therefore lead to inaccurate results as the participants may guess what the true aim is and be willing to change their way of behaving in order to satisfy the psychologists.
Wood et al support this study as they conducted a meta analysis which found that minorities who were consistent in their position were particularly influential over the majority’s viewpoint suggesting that consistency is indeed a factor which minorities can use to influence the majority.
Nemeth and brilmayer also support on the factors use to influence a majority which is flexibility they stimulated a jury situation where participants decided a compensation amount for a skiing accident where a confederate showed flexibility with negotiations and was successful on the compensation amount suggesting that being flexible increases chance of changing the majority’s viewpoint.
However moscovicis blue and green slide experiment lacks internal validity as there is the use of artificial tasks which can’t prove the influence of a minority in real life as these tasks don’t reflect a real life situation where the minority would need to influence the majority and so the findings can’t be applied to a real life scenario.
However the study can be used to explain a real life example being the suffragette movement because they used consistency, commitment and flexibility in order to change the majority viewpoint when wanting the vote as they showed they were consistent by making sure they brought up their reasons for having the vote and they showed commitment by chaining themselves to railings and restricting their food intake to the point of starvation and they were flexible in wanting to vote.
The research methods used in the study consisted of a bias sample as the participants used were all American women meaning that were unable to generalise the results to men or other groups of people from different cultures to see if they would’ve reacted the same way so to improve this the study should be replicated using a different sample that consisted of men and women and people from different cultures to gather new information into minority influence.
There are ethical issues to consider when it comes to the study as moscovici deceived the participants by telling them they were taking part in a colour perception test however some may argue that this was needed in order to achieve valid results because if they were aware of the true aim they might have displayed demand characteristics and acted they way they thought they were supposed to.
Another ethical issues was the use of informed consent because moscovici didn’t reveal the true purpose of the study he didn’t get their consent to the study either which meant the experimenter went against the ethical guidelines which could somewhat invalidate the results.
Describe and evaluate the multi store model of memory. Refer to evidence in your answer?
A01 – Atkinson and Shiffrin -explanation of memory based on 3 separate memory stores contains; -Sensory register -Ltm -Stm
A01- sr to stm
A01- stm to ltm
A01
-rehearsal -info being transferred from stm to ltm
A03:
Weakness- low ecological validity
- example Peterson and Peterson used nonsense trigrams like ‘XQF’ to investigate STM duration
Supporting
– makes sense that memories in LTM are encoded semantically
Supporting
-MSM was pioneering model of memory that inspired further research
Weakness
- model is arguably over-simplified
Case study -large base research supports idea of distinct STM and LTM systems
Weakness-doesn’t make much sense to think of procedural memory as being encoded semantically
Weakness
- only assumed LTM has unlimited capacity
Weakness
-models main emphasis was on structure & neglects process elements of memory
The multi store model of memory was first developed by Atkinson and Shiffrin which is an explanation of memory that describes the flow between three permanent storage systems of memory being the sensory register, short term memory and long term memory.
The sensory register is where information from the sense is stored but only for a duration of approximately half a second before it’s forgotten. It’s modality specific so whichever sense is registered will match the way it’s consequently held for example a taste held as a taste.
The information in the sensory register is held at each of the five senses and the capacity of the registers is very large but limited as most of the information is lost if it receives no attention but if it’s attempted to the sensory information moves into the short term memory for temporary storage which will be encoded either; visually so as an image, acoustically so as a sound or semantically so through its meaning. Short term memory is thought to have a capacity of up to 5-9 items and the duration of approximately 30 seconds and this capacity can be increased through chunking so converting a string of items into a number of larger chunks for example a paragraph of new information being learned can be broken down into words or a few sentences.
Information held in the short term memory is used for immediate tasks like working on maths problems or remembering a telephone number before writing it down and short term memory has a limited duration of approximately 18 seconds and decays rapidly unless it’s rehearsed and it has a limited capacity and new information entering the short term memory pushes out the current information.
Eventually the rehearsal can lead to information being transferred from short term memory to long term memory. Rehearsing information via the rehearsal loop helps to retain the information in short term memory and consolidate it to the long term memory which is predominantly encoded semantically this information can be stored and retrieved for up to any duration and equally has a seemingly unlimited capacity.
A03:
A problem however with the multi store model of memory is the research studying it has low ecological validity as some research into short term memory duration as stimuli
Participants were asked to remember things that bear little resemblance to items that they learned in their real life for example Peterson and Peterson used nonsense trigrams like ‘XQF’ to investigate short term memory duration.
However the multi store model of memory makes sense that memories in long term memory are encoded semantically ie you might recall a general message put across in a political speech as it’s meaningful rather than all the words as they were heard.
The multi store model of memory was the first pioneering model of memory that later inspired further research and consequently other influential models such as the working memory model so the research that was conducted was useful when coming up with other ideas as to how memory works and we encode information.
Although the multi store model of memory is comprehensible it could be argued the model is over-simplified as evidence suggests there are multiple short and long term memory stores for example long term memory can be split into episodic, procedural and semantic memory so the multi store model of memory over simplifies a complex process and idea of how memories are transferred to long term memory.
Case studies have been a popular research method for memory studies and a large base of the research supports the idea of distinct short term and long term memory systems for example a brain damaged case study patient KF’s short term memory was impaired from a motorcycle accident but the long term memory remained intact suggesting the systems have different durations and capacity’s as the long term memory was still intact as it was semantically coded.
However the model doesn’t make as much sense to think of procedural memory which is a type of long term memory as being encoded semantically ie knowing how to ride a bike through its meaning which somewhat invalidates the model.
As research is unable to accurately measure if long term memory has unlimited capacity this discredits the model because we cannot assume that long term memory does have an unlimited capacity through experiments.
Another downfall is the models main emphasis is on the structure and it neglects the process elements of memory for example it only focuses on attention and maintenance rehearsal such as elaboration rehearsal which leads to the recall of information rather than just maintenance rehearsal. Elaboration rehearsal involves more meaningful analysis like images, thinking, associations of information and this can mean better recall so by giving words meaning or linking them with previous knowledge it increases recall.
A limitation of the model is the other explanatory models of memory that are more in depth for example the levels of processing model by Craik and Lockhart that focuses on the depth of the processing involved in memory and it predicts the deeper the information is processed the longer a memory trace will
last. Unlike the multi store model it’s a non structured approach where the basic idea is that memory is really just what happens as a result of processing information. Where memory is just a by product of the depth of processing of information and there’s no clear distinction between short and long term memory so instead of concentrating on the structures involved ie short term memory and long term memory the theory concentrates on the processes involved in memory.
Outline and evaluate research into the effects of leading questions on ewt?
A01 – Tulving proposed distinction between episodic, semantic and procedural memory
A01 episodic memory
A01- Semantic memories
A01 Procedural memories
Weakness- Cohen & Squire disagree
Supporting – evidence from brain scans
Supporting distinguishing procedural & declarative memories,evidence Case patient HM
Weakness- Research into different types of LTM research into Clive Wearing
Real life application-Belleville et al
Weakness evidence patients with brain damage Criticism of this research is reliance on patients,
Weakness 4th type of ltm
A leading question is a question that suggests what answer is desirable or a question that leads to the desired answer.
Research into leading questions has been tested by loftus and Palmer who conducted an experiment where 1 researcher showed 45 students 7 films of different traffic accidents, then after each film participants were given a questionnaire with a critical question containing one of five verbs. How fast were the cats going when they (contacted,hit,bumped,collided, smashed) each other? They found that participants who were given the verb smashed, reported an average speed of 40.8mph compared to participants who were given the verb contacted who reported an average speed of 31.8mph.
An interview may use leading questions and so alter the individuals memory for events. This is especially the case when children are being interviewed about a crime as seen in LaRooy et als study.
Elizabeth loftus investigated leading questions by asking people the question ‘’do you get headaches frequently’’? People who asked this question reported an average of 2.2 headaches per week whereas those asked ‘’do you get headaches occasionally and if so how often’’? People reported an average of 0.7 headaches. The way the question was asked had a signifiant effect on the answer given.
A03:
However the research is limited as it lacks ecological validity as participants viewed video clips rather than being present at a real life accident as the video clip doesn’t have the same emotional impact as it would witnessing a real life accident. So participants would be less likely to pay attention and less motivated to be accurate in judgments.
Although the study is high in replicability as it’s easy to reproduce because the method was a lab experiment which followed standardised procedure which makes it more reliable.
Supporting research is by Braun who’s research had shown that misleading information can create false memories as they used misleading advertising material for Disneyland containing information about bugs bunny. Participants incorporated it into their orignal memories and remembered meeting bugs bunny during their visit to Disneyland showing how powerful misleading information can be in creating false memories.
A weakness with loftus and palmers study is that the use of students as participants because they’re not representative of the general population they also may be less experienced drivers and therefore less confident in their ability to estimate speeds it also means they may have influenced them to be more swayed by the verb in question so the harsher the verb sounded the faster they thought the cars were going.
Although the research does show it has application to the real world as it shows that eyewitness testimonies may be influenced by leading questions so this can then be used to prevent any misinformation being used in a real eyewitness testimony which could benefit either the person convicted or the victims involved in a criminal case for instance.
It also a lab experiment meaning the research is reliable and also replicable which is highly needed as they would have to repeat the experiment on different samples in order to generalise these results to the general population as they’re not representative so it’s useful because it can be repeated in order to gather new information which we can apply to the general population and further out understanding on the effect of leading questions on the eyewitness testimony.
Loftus and palmers research was highly controlled as it took place in a lab of Washington university therefore it has a high degree of control which reduces chance of extraneous variables so this increases the validity of the results.
However there is contradicting evidence by Yuille and Cutshall who conducted a study that conflicts the findings of the loftus and palmer study as they found that misleading information didn’t alter the memory of people who witnessed a real armed robbery which implies that misleading information may have a greater influence in the lab rather than real life which further supports the idea that loftus and palmers study may have lacked in ecological validity.
Describe and evaluate how retrieval failure due to the absence of cues leads to forgetting?
A01 – memory is most effective if info that was present at encoding is also available at time of retrieval.
A01 context dependent forgetting
A01- state dependent forgetting
A01 Goodwin et al
A03:
Weakness Ecological validity:
Supporting – Research support:
Godden and Baddeley
Supporting from levels of Processing:
Weakness- Retrieval cues don’t always work
Real world application coveney et al tested
Real life application- Practical applications:
Supporting research-Gallagher
Strength- retrieval is more important explanation than interference
Tulving and psotka
Memory is most effective if the information that was present at encoding is also available at the time of retrieval. The closer the cue is to the original price of information the more useful it is.
Tulving argued that information would be more readily retrieved if the cues present when the information was encoded were also present when the retrieval is required. He also suggested that information about the physical surroundings being the external context and about the physical or physiological state of the learner being the internal context is stored at the the same time as the information is learned by reinstating the state or context it makes recall easier by providing relevant information while retrieval failure occurred when appropriate cues aren’t present.
Forgetting in long term memory is mainly due to retrieval failure, which is failure to find an item of information because of the insufficient cues during the retrieval process.
The recall of knowledge or episodes is greater when the context is the same and present during learning and retrieval.
When the context is different it’s more difficult to retrieve information. This can be seen in godden and Baddeleys experiment where drivers either learned a word list on land or underwater and were tested on either land or water, they found the highest recall was when the initial context is matched with recall environment so recall was high when drivers learned information underwater and were tested underwater.
Recall of information is greater when an individuals physical or psychological state is similar at encoding and retrieval. When these states are different it’s more difficult to retrieve information.
State depending forgetting is based on the state be that physical or physiological of the person when information is being encoded or retrieved. Goodwin et al investigated the effect of alcohol on state dependent retrieval asked participants to remember a list of words when they were either drunk or sober and then recall the list after 24 hours when either drunk or sober and they found that recall is best when they’re in the same state at both times.
A03:
A weakness of retrieval failure is that much of the research on this theory is lab based and therefore lacks ecological validity as these studies don’t test ‘everyday memory’ so this could therefore be argued that retrieval failure due to the absence of cues which leads to forgetting lacks validity.
Research support for the theory includes studies for example godden and baddeley suggests that cues can affect the recall of information this strengthens the theory. There is also a levels of processing theory which states that the deeper you think about information the more likely it will be recalled so this supports the theory of forgetting as cues provide a richer level of detail and thus the chance of recall increases.
However retrieval cues don’t always work as evidence suggests retrieval cues prevent forgetting, which isn’t always the case, in most of the research on retrieval cues the participants must learn word lists however everyday learning is far more complex for example learning about the working memory model requires complex associations that aren’t easily triggered by a single cue that suggests retrieval cues are unable to explain all types of learning or forgetting.
There is a real world application for example Coveney et al tested whether changing the recall context from learning context affected their recall. Medical students were given audio lists with 30 words in and learned it in two learning environments one was a tutorial room while sitting around a table and operating theatre but there was no significant difference in subsequent recall when in the same or different context. They found that there is an application for medical education as there was no significant difference in recall between the classroom and clinical contexts.
Real world application coveney et al tested whether changing recall context from learning context affected recall
Medical students given audio lists 30 words in 2 learning environments; a tutorial room while sitting around table and operating theatre. no significant difference in subsequent recall when in same or different context
findings =application for medical education as no significant difference in recall between classroom & clinical contexts.
Another real life application is practical applications as the theory has been helpful to forensic and police work as it helps to facilitate recall from eye witnesses which means the theory has real world practical application making it useful outside of the lab.
Supporting research comes from Gallagher who conducted research into the importance of cues because students struggle to recall information in exams experiencing retrieval failure of learned information he tested whether including information from class lectures in test items as retrieval cues would enhance student performance on tests. Performance on identical test items with and without cues which showed that the including cues group recalled significantly more than the no cues group. These results suggest the selective use of retrieval cues on tests can help students to overcome retrieval failure.
Retrieval is a more important explanation than interference demonstrated by Tulving and Psotka who demonstrated that the apparent interference effects were actually due to the absence of cues. When participants were asked to learn word lists the effects of interference disappeared if the category names were included as cues during recall. With the cues participants were able to remember 70% of the words regardless of how many lists they had been given, showing that the information is there but can’t be retrieved due to interference.
Outline and evaluate research into the effects of anxiety on the accuracy of EWT ?
A01 – anxiety has negative effect on memory
A01 anxiety has a positive effect on memory Christianson and hubinette
A01- deffenbacher
A01 johnson and scott
A03:
Weakness- weapon focus effect may not be caused by anxiety Pickel
Supporting – Clifford and Scott
Supporting – Steblay conducted meta-analysis
Weakness- real life vs lab studies
Lab studies may not create real levels of anxiety experienced by real witness during actual crime Deffencbacher et al reviewed 34 studies
Weakness Loftus’s (Johnson and Scott’s) research criticised for lacking ecological validity
Weakness - Halford & milne
Research methods Demand characteristics may effect results
Ethical issues criticism of Loftus (Johnson and Scott) is numerous ethical guidelines broken.
Anxiety can have a negative effect on memory as automatic skills aren’t affected by anxiety but performance on complicated cognitive tasks such as eyewitness memory tends to be reduced but anxiety can also have a positive effect on memory as Christiansen and Hubinette found more than 75% accurate recall in real witnesses in bank robberies and witnesses who were the most anxious had the best recall.
The Deffenbacher et al study reviewed 21 studies and found that the stress performance relationship followed an inverted -U function that was proposed by the Yerkes and Dodson curve meaning that for tasks of moderate complexity like eyewitness testimony performance increases with stress up to an optimal point where it starts to decline
Johnson and Scott tested the effects of anxiety on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony the procedure included participants that heard an argument and saw a man either carrying a pen covered in grease which was the low anxiety condition or a knife covered in blood so the high anxiety weapon focus condition they were later asked to identify the man from a set of photos they found the mean accuracy was 49% in the low anxiety condition compared to 33% in the high anxiety condition further supporting the idea of a weapon focus effect.
A03:
However the weapon focus effect may not be caused by anxiety as Pickel argues that the weapon focus effect could be the consequence of surprise rather than anxiety and when participants watched the thief enter the hairdressing salon carrying scissors so it was a high threat but low surprise or carrying a handgun so high threat and high surprise or a wallet so low surprise low threat or carrying a raw chicken so low threat but high surprise the identification of the thief was less accurate in the high surprise conditions than in the high threat conditions suggesting that surprise leads to the weapon focus effect.
Clifford and Scott found that people who saw the film of a violent attack remembered fewer than 40 items of information about the event compared to a control group who saw the less stressful version as witnessing real crime is probably more stressful than taking part in an experiment so the memory accuracy may well be even more affected in real life.
Steblay conducted a meta analysis of studies concerning the weapon focus effect showing that the presence of the weapon reduces the chance of a witness correctly identifying the person holding the weapon.
However lab studies may not create real levels of anxiety that’s experienced by real witnesses during an actual crime Deffenbacher et al reviewed 34 studies and concluded that in general lab studies that demonstrate anxiety tended to reduce accuracy and real life studies tend to find even greater loss in accuracy these findings are at odds with Christianson and hubinettes findings but they do suggest that lab studies are valid as they’re supported by real life studies.
Loftus’s (Johnson and Scott’s) research is also criticised for lacking ecological validity as participants were waiting in the reception outside the lab and may have anticipated something going to happen which may have affected the accuracy of judgements.
The research also doesn’t always support the weapon focus effect as studies of eyewitness testimony in real life crimes doesn’t support the idea of a weapon focus effect as Halford and Milne found that victims of violent crimes are more accurate in the recall of crime scene information compared to victims of non violent crimes and the consequence of anxiety in violent crimes appears to increase the accuracy of eyewitness memory showing there’s no simple rule about the effect of anxiety on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.
There are demand characteristics which may effect results as participants may have guessed the aim of the experiment and therefore display the behaviour they think they are supposed to altering the outcome of the experiment so the results are no longer reliable or as valid.
Another criticism of Loftus (Johnson and Scott) is the numerous ethical guidelines broken as participants were deceived about the nature of the experiment and weren’t protected from harm as the participants were exposed to a man holding a bloodied knife directly causing extreme feelings of anxiety, this is a huge issue as participants may have left the experiment feeling stressed and anxious especially if someone they knew had been involved in a knife crime.
Discuss the use of the cognitive interview as a means of improving the accuracy of eyewitness?
A01 – cognitive interview
A01mpcc 1 mental reinstatement
2 report everything
3 change order
4 change perspective
A01- unlike standard police interview
A01 Geiselman
A03:
Weakness Kohnken et al
Supporting – meta-analysis by kohnken et al
Supporting – Fisher et al
Weakness- Kebbel & wagstaff
Strengths technique is more structured than standard technique
Weakness Comparisons are difficult
Strengths effectiveness of ci may be due to individual elements rather than whole process
Stength individual differences
Mello & fisher
The cognitive interview is a police technique for interviewing witnesses to a crime that encourages them to recreate the original context of a crime in order to increase the accessibility of stored information. Our memory is made up of a network of associations rather than of discrete events and memories are accessed using multiple retrieval strategies.
There are four parts to a cognitive interview including; mental reinstatement, report everything, change order and change perspective.
Firstly a mental reinstatement of the original context so witnesses are encouraged to mentally recreate the physical or psychological environment or the original incident, this aims to provide the contextual and emotional cues to retrieve memories. Secondly reporting everything so witnesses are encouraged to report every detail of the event even if it seems irrelevant as memories interconnected so the recollection of one item may cue other memories. Thirdly changing the order so the interviewer tries to find alternative ways through the timeline of the incident for example by reversing the order in which the events occurred this is a rationale it prevents pre existing schema influencing the recall. Lastly changing perspective so a witness is asked to recall the incident from multiple perspectives for example by imagining how it would appear to the other people who were present during the incident it also disrupts the effect schemas might have on recall.
Unlike the standard police interview which involves the interviewer doing most of the talking asking specific questions that require specific answers they may also ask leading questions that can contaminate the witnesses memory. These techniques can disrupt the natural process of searching through the memory making memory retrieval more inefficient.
Researchers like geiselman investigated the effectiveness of the cognitive interview whereby participants viewed a film of violent crime and after 48 hours they were interviewed by a policeman using 1 of 3 methods the cognitive interview, the standard interview or interview using hypnosis. A number of facts were accurately recalled and the number of errors made were recorded. The results concluded an average number of correctly recalled facts for the cognitive interview was 41.2, for the standard interview was 29.4 and for hypnosis was 38.0, there was no significant difference in the number of errors made in each condition. They concluded that cognitive interview lead to better memory for events with witnesses able to recall more relevant information compared with the traditional interview method.
A03:
A criticism of the cognitive interview is the quantity rather than quality of recall as it’s effectiveness is measured in terms of the quantity of information rather than quality as found by Kohnken et al who discovered the increase in the amount of correct information generated but also the increase in amount of incorrect information false positives when using the enhanced cognitive interview. Meaning that the results of the procedure need to be treated with caution as it doesn’t necessarily guarantee accuracy.
However the cognitive interview is effective as a meta analysis conducted by Kohnken et found an increase of 34% in the amount of correct information generated in the cognitive interview. The effectiveness of cognitive interview may be due to individual elements rather than the whole process suggesting that the cognitive interview is an effective technique for increasing the amount of information recalled.
Supporting the cognitive interview is Fisher et al who found witnesses reported a greater detail in account of crimes when done by US detectives who were trained to use this technique.
Although there are problems with using the cognitive interview in practise such as the amount of time and training needed to implement it as Kebbel and Wagstaff report the two issues with the cognitive interview it requires more time than is available and it requires special training. Police use other strategies to limit the interview to save time and many forces haven’t the provided necessary training to conduct a cognitive interview so consequently the use of the cognitive interview in police interviews isnt widespread.
Although the technique is more structured than the standard technique and it seems more appropriate for crime related interviews to be very thorough in order to gather the detail required for a useful testimony.
There are problems in establishing the effectiveness of the cognitive interview which is some aspects of it are used by some police forces such as the Thames valley police who use a version of the cognitive interview that doesn’t include changing the perspectives component and the Manchester police tended to use only the reinstatement of context and report everything components.
The effectiveness of the cognitive interview may be due to individual elements rather than the whole process for example Milne and Bull found that recall was significantly higher with just the report everything and mental reinstatement components.
Mello and Fisher compared older ages 72 years and younger ages 22 years adults memory of filmed stimulated crime using either the cognitive interview or the standard interview. The cognitive interview produced more information than the standard interview but there was a significant advantage of the cognitive interview over the standard interview which was greater for older people rather than for young participants.
discuss factors that affect the reliability of eyewitness testimony?
A01 – . Anxiety / Stress . Reconstructive Memory . Weapon Focus . Leading Questions (Loftus and Palmer, 1974)
A01 anxiety / stress
. anxiety has a positive effect on memory; Christianson and hubinette
Deffenbacher et al study
A01- an interviewer may use leading questions and so alter the individuals memory for events.
A01 weapon focus
A03:
Weakness real life versus lab studies
Deffenbacher et al reviewed 34 studies
Supporting – Research Braun et al
Supporting – Schemas Yuille & Cutshall
Weakness- Halford & milne
Real world application Wells & olson
Weakness-individual differences in effects of anxiety on ewt Bothwell et al
Weakness Loftus research = criticised for lacking ecological validity
Strength- Leading questions: Loftus (1979)
Eyewitness testimony isn’t always an effective method of remembering events and certain factors that can affect the reliability of eyewitness testimony are: anxiety/stress, reconstructive memory, weapon focus, leading questions.
Anxiety can have a negative effect on memory as automatic skills aren’t affected by anxiety but performance on complicated cognitive tasks such as eyewitness memory tends to be reduced but anxiety can also have a positive effect on memory as Christiansen and Hubinette found more than 75% accurate recall in real witnesses in bank robberies and witnesses who were the most anxious had the best recall.
The Deffenbacher et al study reviewed 21 studies and found that the stress performance relationship followed an inverted -U function that was proposed by the Yerkes and Dodson curve meaning that for tasks of moderate complexity like eyewitness testimony performance increases with stress up to an optimal point where it starts to decline.
An interview may use leading questions and so alter the individuals memory for events which is especially the case when children are being interviewed about a crime. Bartlett’s theory of reconstructive memory is crucial to the understanding of reliability of eyewitnesses as he suggested recall is the subject to personal interpretation and is dependent on our learnt or cultural norms and values and the way we make sense of world.
The weapon focus affect refers to the eyewitness’s concentration on a weapon to exclusion of other details of the crime. In a crime where the weapon is involved, it’s not unusual for witnesses to be able to describe the weapon in much detail rather than the person holding it.
A03:
A weakness of these studies is that lab studies may not create real levels of anxiety that are experienced by real witnesses during an actual crime. Deffenbacher et al reviewed 34 studies and concluded that in general lab studies demonstrates anxiety tended to reduce the accuracy and that real life studies tend to find even greater loss in accuracy.
Although research has shown that misleading information can create false memories for example Braun et al used misleading advertising material for Disneyland containing information about bugs bunny. Participants then incorporated it into their original memories and remembered meeting bugs bunny during their visit to Disneyland showing how powerful misleading intimation can be in creating false memories.
Yuille and cutshall found that eyewitnesses were more accurate in real life crimes than in lab based crimes further establishing the limitations of most of these studies that they demonstrate ecological validity and therefore reduce the validity of their findings.
Research doesn’t always support the weapon focus effect because studies of eye witness testimony in real life crimes don’t support the idea of the weapon focus effect. Halford and Milne found that victims of violent crimes are more accurate in the recall of crime scene information compared to victims of non violent crimes this the consequence of anxiety in violent crimes which appears to be increased in the accuracy of eyewitness testimony showing there’s no rule about the effect of anxiety on accuracy of eyewitness testimony.
There is a real world application which Wells and Olson discovered that eyewitness research has important implications for the criminal justice system that relies on eyewitness identification for prosecution as recent DNA exoneration cases have shown to have mistaken eyewitness identification which is the largest single factor for conviction of innocent people.
There are individual differences to consider in the effects of anxiety on eyewitness testimony which is moderated by emotional sensitivity. Bothwell et al found that participants labelled as stable in terms of emotional sensitivity had showed rising levels of accuracy as stress levels increased whereas those who were labelled as neurotic showed decreasing levels of accuracy with increasing stress levels suggesting that key extraneous variables in studies of anxiety is the participants personality particularly their emotional sensitivity.
Loftus research is also criticised for lacking ecological validity as it’s argued that lab experiments in eyewitness testimony don’t represent real life life crimes of accidents be sure participants may not take questions in the experiment seriously as they would in real life crimes suggesting that misleading information has less influence in real life eyewitness than loftus suggests.
Leading questions by loftus shows that witnesses may not be able to recall a suspect in a crime and can often remember key details which is still important evidence that can be used in court which is still effective and helpful when catching a culprit.
Discuss research into the effects of misleading information on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony?
A01 – leading questions loftus & palmer
A01 post event discussion
A01- repeat interviewing
A01 interviewer may use leading questions and so alter individuals memory for events. laRooy et al.
A03:
Weakness-Loftus research = criticised for lacking ecological validity
Supporting – Braun et al
Supporting
Geiselman and colleagues.
Weakness- response bias may be responsible
Bekerian & bowers
Real world application Wells and olson
Weakness- limitation Loftus & Palmer’s research study lacks population validity.
Weakness Approaches
Loftus & Palmer’s research, demonstrates experimental reductionism
Strength- Reliability - Loftus’ research groups
Research into leading questions has been tested by loftus and Palmer who conducted an experiment where 1 researcher showed 45 students 7 films of different traffic accidents, then after each film participants were given a questionnaire with a critical question containing one of five verbs. How fast were the cats going when they (contacted,hit,bumped,collided, smashed) each other? They found that participants who were given the verb smashed, reported an average speed of 40.8mph compared to participants who were given the verb contacted who reported an average speed of 31.8mph.
Post event discussion is a conformity effect, so how a persons memory of an event may alter as a result of discussing it with others or being questioned multiple times. Gabbert et al showed pairs of participants a different video of the same event so each participant viewed unique items then pairs were encouraged to discuss the event before individually recalling what they witnessed they found that 71% of participants went on mistakenly to recall the unique items acquired during the discussion.
Repeat interviewing involves each time an eyewitness is interviewed, there’s a possibility that comments from the interviewer will become incorporated into their own recollection of events.
An interviewer may use leading questions and so alter the individuals memory for events this is especially the case when children are being interviewed about a crime as seen in the experiment conducted by LaRooy et al.
A03:
Weakness of using eyewitness in real life is that it may be different than when it is being tested in a lab as Loftus’s research is criticised for lacking ecological validity as it’s argued that lab experiments in eyewitness testimony doesn’t represent real life crimes or accidents because the participants may no take the questions in the experiment seriously as they would do in a real life crime or accident. Suggesting that misleading information has less influence in real life eyewitness testimony than as Loftus research suggests.
Supporting research is by Braun who’s research had shown that misleading information can create false memories as they used misleading advertising material for Disneyland containing information about bugs bunny. Participants incorporated it into their orignal memories and remembered meeting bugs bunny during their visit to Disneyland showing how powerful misleading information can be in creating false memories.
By highlighting misleading information as a negative factor in eyewitness testimony has led to new techniques that are designed to improve memory retrieval like the cognitive interview which was developed by Geiselman and colleagues.
However loftus and palmers research has been criticised as response bias may be responsible as found by Bekerian and Bowers who replicated one of loftus studies and found that participants weren’t susceptible to misleading information if the questions presented were in the same order as the original information whereas Loftus presented them in a random order. Suggesting that Loftus and palmers research may be due to response bias and highlights the importance of the question in order in police interviews.
A real world application was discovered by wells and Olson whose eye witness testimony research had important implications for the criminal justice system, as it relies on eyewitness identification which is the largest single factor of conviction of innocent people. It’s suggests that research can help ensure that innocent people aren’t convicted of crimes on the basis of faulty eyewitness evidence.
A weakness of loftus and palmers research is that the study lacks population validity as the experiment had 150 American students which can be argued that the students in the experiment may be less experienced drivers who may be less accurate at estimating speeds therefore we’re unable to generalise the results to other populations for example older and more experienced drivers who may not be affected by misleading questions in some way.
Loftus and palmers research may also demonstrate experimental reductionism which is the complex process of memory that is reduced to the effect of the wording of a leading question being the independent variable on the eyewitness testimony being the dependent variable. The results don’t reflect everyday car accidents so we’re unable to conclude if the effect of leading questions is the same outside of the laboratory.
However loftus’ research has high reliability as the research groups have conducted several studies into eyewitness testimony and have found similar results. The use of lab experiments and controlled environments allowed loftus to exhibit high control variables making the research replicable and providing more confidence in the research’s findings.
Discuss what psychological research has shown about working memory. In your answer refer to theory and or evidence?
A01 – Baddeley and hitch
A01
- central executive
- phonological loop
- visuospatial sketchpad
- episodic buffer
A01- Working memory theories assumes…
A01 Evidence suggests wm uses 2 different systems for dealing with visual & verbal info.
A03:
Weakness issues of validity in dual task
research studies
Supporting – Baddeley & Hitch
Strength- wmm is ability to explain dual task performance- ability to perform 2 tasks simultaneously
Supporting wmm doesn’t over emphasize importance of rehearsal for STM retention
Weakness- sampling issues and generalisation
Shallice & warrington studied KF
Real life application-
Weakness problems with case studies
difficult to generalise to general population
Weakness- problem with ce
little evidence for how ce works
Working memory was first investigated by baddeley and Hitch who proposed the idea of the working memory model and felt that short term memory wasn’t just 1 store but multiple stores and that the working memory model is an explanation of memory used when working on a task. Working memory model suggests that 1 store is for visual processing and there’s a separate store for storing sounds.
Working memory is understood as an active processor there’s a central executive, phonological loop and phonological store, visuo spatial sketchpad and episodic buffer.
The central executive deals with the direct attention to particular tasks by allocating the brains resources to once of the 3 slave systems.
Phonological loop deals with auditory information and preserves the order of information which is divided into the phonological store which holds words that are heard and the articulatory process which allows maintenance rehearsal of acoustic information.
Visio spatial sketchpad is the planning of spatial tasks and is temporary storage of visual or spatial information. It contains a visual cache so it stores information about visual items and is a inner scribe so it stores the arrangements of objects visual field.
The episodic buffer is the general store for visual or acoustic information it integrates information from the central executive, phonological loop and visuo spatial sketchpad which then send the information to long term memory.
The working memory theories assume that complex reasoning and learning tasks require a mental workspace to hold and manipulate information.
Evidence suggest that working memory uses two different systems for dealing with visual and verbal information.
A visual processing task and carnal processing task can be performed at the same time because they interfere with each other and performance is reduced. The same applies to performing two verbal tasks at the same time which supports the view that the phonological loop and visuo spatial sketchpad are separate systems within working memory.
A03:
There are issues of validity when criticising research in dual task studies where the tasks might be seen as unrealistic or artificial and this can’t be seen as a real life situation in so the results can’t be applied to everyday life scenarios.
Weakness issues of validity in dual task
research studies where tasks might be seen as unrealistic/artificial; cant be seen as real life situation Baddeley
Research that supports the working memory model is by baddeley and hitch who investigated if participants can use different parts of working memory at the same time.
Working memory also has the ability to explain dual tasks performance this is the ability to perform two tasks simultaneously and found that participants are slower in a dual task study that involved both the central executive and articulate loop compared to a task that required the articulate loop which demonstrates the dual task performance effect and shows that the central executive is separate from articulate loop.
A positive aspect about the working memory model is that it doesn’t over emphasise the importance of rehearsal for short term memory retention in contrast to multi store model of memory.
Many case studies that are involved with working memory model tend to suffer with sampling issues although the case studies themselves are still useful as there is evidence from brain damaged patients to support the model for example shallice and Warrington studies KF whose short term memory forgetting of auditory information was greater than his forgetting of visual information. His brain damage appeared to be restricted to his phonological loop and didn’t affect his visuo spatial sketchpad this supports the idea of separate components for auditory and visual information as suggested by the working memory model the only downside to these case studies is that it only focuses on one individuals experience and is limited to that person and the results can’t be generalised to everyone.
There are problems with using case studies as using evidence from individuals with brain damage like evidence for working memory model that comes from case studies like KF with serious brain damage as such individuals may have difficulty in paying attention and so underperform on certain tasks which is an important issue because the results of the case studies can’t be generalised to the general public.
There is a real life application to working memory model as it explains a lot more than the multi store model as it makes sense of a range of tasks like verbal reasoning, comprehension, reading, problem solving and visual and spatial processing. The model is supported by a considerable experimental evidence that applies to real life tasks like reading done using phonological loop, problem solving down using central executive, navigation done by using the visual and spatial processing.
The working memory model is a very structured model but the problem with the slave systems is that the central executive has little evidence for how it works and what is does, it’s also difficult to measure and the capacity has never been measured. The concept of the central executive has been criticised for being too vague and lacking in explanatory power. Eslinger and damasio studied EVR who had a cerebral tumour removed. Although he performed well on some tests requiring reasoning he still had poor decision making skills and had difficulties making simple decisions, the case of EVR suggests that the central executive is more complex than in the original model and that possibly several different components with the central executive.
Describe and evaluate types of long term memory
One of the earliest and most influential distinctions of long term memory was proposed by tulving who proposed the distinction between episodic, semantic and procedural memory.
Episodic memory is concerned with personal experience and is an individuals unique memory of a specific event/events in which they were involved. Episodic memories have 3 elements including details of the event, the context and the emotions felt at the time for example they include memories from childhood or a traumatic event both are concerned with someone’s personal experience.
Semantic memories are memories which are related to knowledge about the world and are shared by everyone rather than being a personal episodic experience whereas semantic memories are related to things like the function of objects or what behaviour is appropriate in a particular situation it may also be related to abstract concepts like maths and language.
Procedural memories are memories that are concerned with skills like knowing how to tie a shoelace or how to do a maths calculation. Essentially it’s remembering how to do something rather than knowing what to do these memories typically acquired through repetition and then practice so we’re less aware of these memories as they become automatic.
A03:
However Cohen and Squire disagree with having different types of long term memory and whilst they accept that procedural memories represent 1 type of long term memory they believe that episodic and semantic are stored in 1 store called declarative memory these are memories that can be consciously recalled but procedural memories are non declarative.
However there is evidence from brain scans that supports the distinction between these 3 types of long term memory. On these scans different areas of the brain appear active when using different types of long term memory so episodic memory is associated with the hippocampus and the temporal lobe which is also seen in semantic memory and the cerebellum appears active when using procedural memory. This suggests that these types of long term memory are separate and are found in different areas of the brain.
There is evidence supporting distinguishing between procedural and declarative memories from case studies that offers further support for different types of long term memory for example case patient HM who’s episodic memory was severely impaired due to amnesia but the semantic and procedural memories were relatively unaffected so it highlights the distinction between procedural, episodic and semantic memories. After surgery HM could still form new procedural memories but was unable to form episodic and semantic memories which supports the distinction between procedural, episodic and semantic memories highlighting the existence of multiple types of long term memory.
However a criticism of studies on patients with brain damage is this research relies on patients which means it’s difficult to conclude from patients like HM the exact parts of the brain that are affected until the patient dies and the damage to a particular area doesn’t necessarily mean it’s responsible for this particular behaviour so we can’t establish a causal relationship between a particular brain region and type of long term memory.
However most research conducted into different types of long term memory are case studies which center on one individual for example research into Clive wearing provides a highly detailed large amount of information but is an isolated case of one individuals long term memory damage meaning the findings can’t be generalised beyond this research and is inappropriate to assume everyone’s long term memory is formed in the same way based on the evidence of a single case study.
A real life application from different types of long term memory was conducted by Belleville et al who used the idea of different long term memory stores to treat older people with mild cognitive impairments by having trained the participants who performed better in an episodic memory test than the control group so this can be used to better people’s lives.
Modern research has shown a fourth type of long term memory and that implicit memories can influence the response a person makes. Priming is the influence of implicit (automatic) memories on our responses. Priming is controlled by our brain system which is separate from the temporal system and supports explicit semantic and episodic memories suggesting the original theory of long term memory is too simplistic and that other types of long term memory exists.
With reference to reciprocity and interactional synchrony discuss infant caregiver interactions?
A01 – attachment
A01 reciprocity
A01- interactional synchrony
A01 Feldman
A03:
Weakness questionable reliability
Supporting –intentionality of infant behaviour supported
Supporting- value of research
Weakness- failure to replicate
Methodological issues problems studying interactional synchrony using observational methods
Weakness individual differences
Strengths controlled observations
Weakness observations don’t tell us purpose of synchrony/reciprocity.
Attachment in itself is the emotional tie or bond between two people usually a primary caregiver and a child. The relationship is reciprocal meaning it’s a two way relationship that endured over time. Interaction between caregivers and infants are the subject of psychological research as it provides insight into the type and nature of attachment.
Reciprocity refers to where the actions of one partner elicit a response from the other partner for example infants coordinate their actions with their caregivers in a kind of conversation. From birth babies move in a rhythm when interacting with adults like taking turns as brezelton suggests reciprocity is a important precursor to later communication as the regularity of the infants signals allow the caregiver to anticipate the behaviour and respond appropriately and sensitivity to infant behaviour is the foundation for later attachment between the caregiver and infant.
Feldman suggest reciprocity can be seen in interactions from 3 months of age this conclusion is supported by Meltzoff and Moore who demonstrated that babies as young as 12-27 days would attempt to imitate the facial and physical gestures. Feldman said reciprocity is the ‘’ temporal coordination of micro level social behaviour’’ and as ‘’symbolic exchanges between the parent and the child’’. Feldman suggests that interactional synchrony serves a critical role in the developmental outcomes of self regulation, the symbol use and capacity for empathy.
Interactional synchrony refers to when an infant and a caregiver interacting tend to mirror what the other is doing in terms of their facial and hand movements. First discovered by Meltzoff and Moore’s study where infants as young as two or three weeks imitated the facial and hand gestures made by the adult model and in a later study Meltzoff and Moore found evidence of interactional synchrony in babies as young as 3 days old suggesting this type of imitative response is more likely to be innate rather than learned.
A03:
There is however questionable reliability when it comes to testing infant behaviour in interactional synchrony as there is a reason to doubt the findings of research in this area because of the difficulties in reliably testing infant behaviour. As infant mouths tend to be in constant motion so it’s difficult to distinguish between the general activity and specific imitated behaviours. Meltzoff and Moore attempted to overcome this by using an observer with no knowledge of the behaviour being imitated to make judgements of infants behaviour. This highlights the difficulty testing infant behaviour and one way in which might be overcome.
The intentionality of infant behaviour is supported and one way of testing the claim that infants behaviour is intentional is to observe how they respond to inanimate objects. Abravanel and Deyoung observed infants interacting with two objects, one stimulating tongue movements and the other mouth opening and closing. There were two groups of infants aged between five and 12 weeks and there was little response to the objects suggesting infants don’t imitate just anything they see but it’s a specific social response to other humans.
The imitative behaviour forms a basis for social development and research explains how children begin to understand what others think and feel and therefore are able to conduct relationships showing the value of research.
But other studies have failed to replicate the findings of studies into attachment such as Meltzoff and Moore as Koepke et al didn’t find the same evidence of interactional synchrony in very young infants but Meltzoff and Moore suggested Koepke et als study wasn’t well controlled which accounts for the difference in findings.
There are methodological issues with studying interactional synchrony using observational methods as there is a possibility of observer bias where researchers will consciously or unconsciously interpret the behaviour to support the findings. To address this problem more than one observer should be used to examine the inter observer reliability of observations.
Another weakness is individual differences in interactional synchrony is that there’s variation in infants in the degree that they do this. Isabella et al found that more strongly attached infant caregiver pairs showed greater interactional synchrony. Helmann showed that infants who demonstrate a lot of imitation have a better quality of relationship at three months. Research shows significant individual differences but doesn’t indicate whether imitation is the cause or consequence of the relations hon between the infant and caregiver.
But these studies do have controlled observations that often capture fine detail so they’re generally well controlled procedures for example both the mother and the infant are filmed often from multiple angles this ensures that fine details of behaviour are recorded and later analysed. Furthermore the babies are unaware of being observed so the behaviour doesn’t change in response to the controlled observations which is a problem for observational research but it does mean that in general the research had high internal validity.
However observations don’t tell us the purpose of synchrony or reciprocity for example Fieldman points out that synchrony(and by implication reciprocity) simply describe the behaviours that occur at the same time this is a weakness as these are robust phenomena in the sense that they can be reliably observed but may not be particularly useful as it doesn’t tell us their purpose.
Outline and evaluate the role of the father in the development of attachment?
A01 – role of father
Schaffer & emerson
A01 lamb
A01- biological reasons why fathers less likely to be primary attachment figures
A01 cultural expectations & sex stereotypes affect male behaviour
A03:
Weakness unreliable data
Supporting – Heermann et al 1994
Strengths Geiger Showed Fathers’ play interactions
Weakness- Frodi et al
Research methods schaffer & emersons sample biased
Weakness Grossmann
Strength Field
The role of the father was first studied by Schaffer and Emerson who found that fathers are less likely to the be the primary attachment figures than mothers as they are seen as playmates by children.
Lamb reported that there was little relationship between the amount of time father spend with their infant and infant father attachment.
There are also biological reasons as to why father are less likely to the primary attachment figures such as the female hormone oestrogen which underlies caring behaviour although there is evidence of males forming secure attachments with their children or sharing the role of primary attachement although biological and cultural factors may make this less likely.
In some cases the role of the father depends on cultural expectations and sex stereotypes which affect male behaviour it includes the belief that it’s feminine to be sensitive to others needs as research by Heermann found that men are less sensitive to infants cues but contradictory research by Frodi et al has shown there’s no difference in physiological responses of males and females to an infants crying.
A03:
Most of the data from the Schaffer and Emerson study is unreliable due to systematic bias as the data collected is based on the mothers report of infants behaviour and some mothers would have been less sensitive to an infants protests and would have been less likely to report them which creates systematic bias which challenges the validity of Schaffer and Emerson’s conclusions.
Heermann et al found that men are less sensitive to infant cues compared to a mother meaning that the role of the father may not be seen as a nurturing role that involves caring and looking after their child innately.
Geiger showed that when fathers have play interactions with their children it’s more exciting and pleasurable than when the mothers play interact as it’s more nurturing or affectionate supporting the idea that the father is seen more as a playmate whilst the mother is seen as the caregiver.
Frodi et als study involved showing video tapes of infants crying and found no differences in physiological responses of men and women. As women were expected to be caring and nurturing than men. Fathers don’t feel they should act in a nurturing way or it could be female hormones for example oestrogen that creates higher levels of nurturing and women are biologically predisposed to be primary attachent figures. Although fathers are equally able as women to display sensitive responsiveness and form secure attachments but society is still behind in treating both parents equally for example men aren’t permitted to sit next to non related children on a plane nor are mothers allowed to have longer maternity time off than fathers.
There are research method issues with Schaffer and Emerson’s as the sample was biased and the population studied and time in which the study took place was from a sample which was drawn from a working class population meaning the findings may not apply to other social groups. The sample was also from the 1960s yet parental care has changed since then with many children being cared for outside their home suggesting that if a similar study was to be carried out today the results would be very different.
Contradictory to the belief that fathers are seen as playmates Grossman found that father as secondary attachment figures had an important and distinct role in children’s development involving play and stimulation.
There are other studies for example McCallum and Golombok who found that children growing up in a single or same sex parent families don’t develop differently from those in a two parent family suggesting that the fathers role as the secondary attachment figure isn’t that important.
Field found that primary caregiver fathers like mothers spent more time smiling, imitating and holding their infants than the secondary caregiver fathers suggesting that fathers can be a more nurturing attachment figure.
Discuss animal studies of attachment?
A01 –
lorenz
A01 lorenz
Findings
A01- harlow
Procedure
A01 harlow
Findings
A03:
Weakness - criticisms of imprinting
Supporting- research support for imprinting
Strengths -practical applications
Weakness—confounding variables
Weakness harlows results cant be generalised
Ethical issues -Research unethical
animals in research questioned on ethical grounds
Strength Harlow’s study conducted in controlled, lab setting
Strength
Humans and monkeys are similar
Animal studies of attachent have been conducted by a few psychologists one of the most common is Lorenz who wanted to study attachment in animals. His procedure involved one group of gosling eggs left with their natural mother while the other eggs were placed in an incubator and when incubator eggs were hatched the first living and moving thing they saw was Lorenz so they thought Lorenz was their mother so they started following him. Lorenz marked two groups so to distinguish them and placed them together with him and their natural mother.
His findings concluded that the non incubator goslings started following their natural mother and the incubator goslings ignored their natural mother and instead followed Lorenz. If the goslings weren’t exposed to the moving object during a specific time period being the critical period animals didn’t imprint he also noted the process is irreversible and long lasting and this early imprinting had an effect on their late mate preferences called sexual imprinting.
Harlow studied attachment in rhésus monkeys. His procedure involved creating two wire mother surrogates. One surrogate was wrapped in soft cloth to provide a contact comfort mother. There were eight motherless infant rhésus monkeys that were studies for 165 days. There was a milk bottle that was placed on the cloth covered mother for one group and on the plain wire mother for the other group. The measurements were made each amount of time that the infant spent with the two different mothers and the responses when frightened.
His findings concluded that the motherless monkeys spent the most amount of time with the cloth covered surrogate whether she had milk or not and when they were frightened they all clung to the cloth covered mother. Harlow found that the motherless monkeys developed to be socially/ sexually abnormal in their interactions with the other monkeys and if the motherless monkeys spent time with their monkey peers they could recover but only if this happened before they were three months.
A03:
However there are criticisms of imprinting as there’s some dispute over the characteristics of imprinting. The original concept of imprinting was that an image is stamped irreversibly on the nervous system but, it’s now believed that imprinting is more flexible for example Guilton found he was able to reverse imprinting in chickens suggesting that imprinting is no different from other types of learning and the effects aren’t irreversible as Lorenz had originally proposed.
There is research to support for imprinting as Lorenzs concept of imprinting is replicated in studies with other bird species for example Guilton found chickens who were exposed to yellow rubber gloves for feeding became imprinted on gloves showing that young animals aren’t born with a predisposition to imprint to a specific type of object but can develop imprinting behaviour to any moving object within the critical window of development and Guiltons findings provide clear support for Lorenzs conclusions about imprinting.
There are practical applications when it comes to Harlows research as it had profound implications for childcare due to the importance of early experiences on long term development and it’s vital that’s all children’s need are catered for and that taking care of a child physical needs alone isn’t sufficient.
But there are confounding variables in Harlows study as the two wire surrogates varied in more ways than just being cloth covered or not. The heads on the two surrogates are very different. One possibility is the cloth covered surrogate is more attractive to infants simply because it had a pleasing head suggesting that Harlows study lacked internal validity as the differences between the two monkey surrogates were sufficiently controlled.
Harlows results also can’t be generalised to humans as Harlows findings about attachment have been mirrored in humans. Harlows findings about monkeys were that the most attached to the mother that provided food has been demonstrated in the work of Schaffer and Emerson who emphasised the importance of sensitive responding in the development of attachments. Showing that animal studies like Harlows provide useful pointers to explaining human behaviour we should seek confirmation through research with humans to be sure.
There are ethical issues to consider for both the animal studies as the research is unethical and the use of animals in research has been questioned on ethical grounds. Most would argue that animals have the right to not be researched or harmed in the pursuit of academic conclusions for human benefit so it’s seen as detrimental to non human species.
Although Harlows study was conducted in a controlled lab setting so he was able to control the potential extraneous variables like the mine just being taken away from their mothers straight after birth and e baby monkeys not being exposed to any love or attention from their biological mothers. This is strength because it means that Harlow was measuring what he intended to measure ie the factors that can affect the formation of attachment meaning the study can be seen to have high internal validity allowing a cause and effect relationship to be established.
Although the results can’t be fully generalised to humans, humans and monkeys are similar as Green states that on a biological level at least all mammals including rhésus monkeys have the same brain structures as humans the only differences relates to the size and the number of connections.
Outline and evaluate bowlbys explanation of attachment?
A01 – attachment behaviour serves an important function an infant who is not attached is less well protected
A01
social releasers
A01- internal working model
A01 the continuity hypothesis
Weakness - sensitive period rather than critical period
Supporting- attachment is adaptive
Strengths –research support for Bowlbys concept of monotropy
Weakness—importance of monotropy is overemphasised
Weakness
Bowlby’s theory cant explain how some children suffer long term consequences of not being able to form attachment
Strengths need for monotropy appears to be universal
Strength support for continuity hypothesis
Issues and debates
Free will versus determinism
Bowlbys explanation of attachment involves the emotional bond between the caregiver and the infant and the effects on the development for later life. Attachment behaviour serves an important function as an infant who’s not attached is less well protected. Parents must also be attached to their infants in order to ensure that the infants are cared for and survive. Infants who don’t have the opportunity to form an attachment during the critical period around three to six months seem to have difficult forming attachements later on. Attachement is determined by the sensitivity ie infants who are most strongly attached are the ones whose mothers are most responsive and most accessible.
Part of the attachment theory is social releases which are features of the infant such as smiling and having a baby face which elicits caregiving, Bowlby proposed that infants have one special emotional bond known as monotropy as well as many secondary attachements.
Another part of attachement theory is the internal working model, an infant has one special relationship and forms a mental representation of this relationship so the internal working model and this enables them to influence the caregivers behaviour and acts as a template for future relationships.
The continuity hypothesis is also a key component in the attachment theory it proposed that individuals who are strongly attached to an infancy continue to be socially and emotionally competent throughout their childhood and adulthood compared to infants who aren’t strongly attached.
A03:
There are those who would argue that Bowlbys theory can be criticised for having a sensitive period rather than a critical period as he claims that attachments can only form within three to six months, so the critical period has been challenged by Rutter et als research that found although infants are maximally responsive to attachment formation during the critical period, it’s possible for attachment to form outside the narrow window. The result of finding the term sensitive period now is preferred as an alternative to critical period.
Attachment is adaptive so Bowlbys theory explains why human infants form attachments during a critical period rather than when they are first born. So Bowlbys theory states that infants become attached during the critical period of three to six months at the same time they begin to crawl. It’s vital that infants form and maintain an attachement during this time to that caregivers can protect them which supports his claim that attachments are adaptive.
There’s research support for Bowlbys concept of monotropy as Glaser concluded that the hierarchal mod of attachment which places the emphasis on one central person that’s higher than the others is more likely than multiple attachements supporting Bowlbys concept of monotropy and claims one special attachment plays a significant role in emotional development.
But the importance of monotropy may be overemphasised as Thomas questions the benefits of monotropy and suggests it’s more beneficial having a network of attachements to support the infants social and emotional needs. Parke found qualitatively different attachements provide different benefits. Similarly Van Ijzendoorn and Tavecchio argue that a stable network of adults can provide adequate or better care than the mother who has to meet all the child’s needs.
Additionally Bowlbys theory can’t explain how some children suffer long term consequences of not being able to form attachement while other children don’t as they’re able to cope with poor attachement experiences.
Although the need for monotropy appears to be universal as Ainsworths observed a Ganda tribe of Uganda and infants form one primary attachment even when they’re reared by multiple carers. Also Fox’s research into Israeli communal farms revealed that child rearing practices are quite distinct from Western ones. Fox reported that children spend the majority of the day with nurses rather than with biological parents and infants spend approximately three hours a day with their biological mother. The infants appeared to form a monotropic bond with mothers despite not seeing them for extended periods of time which supports Bowlby as he claimed that monotropy was a necessity and was innately programmed in infants and it seems that despite cultural variations in child rearing practises, the process of attachent appears to be universal.
There’s support for the continuity hypothesis where Bowlby claims an early attachement affects the subsequent relationship supported by research for example Sroufe et al did a parent child study in Minnesota where they followed participants from infancy to late adolescence and found that continuity between early attachements and later emotional and social behaviour in individuals who were securely attached in infancy were more socially competent, more popular and more empathetic later in childhood supporting Bowlbys continuity hypothesis showing a clear link between early and later attachments.
There’s are issues with free will versus determinism when it comes to Bowlbys theory of attachement as it’s an example of biological determinism due to its emphasis on survival and critical periods, this could be seen as somewhat reductionism as it’s reducing down the idea of attachement based on an infant and motherly connection rather than a child’s environment for example Bowlbys theory doesn’t cover the idea of children who may have been raised without their own biological parents but have still formed an attachment with their caregivers who aren’t their biological parents.
Outline and evaluate learning theory as an explanation for attachment?
A01 – classical conditioning
A01 operant conditioning
A01-cupboard love theory dollard and miller
A01 learning theory (behaviourism)
A03:
Weakness - learning theory explanations based on animal studies
Supporting- learning theory has some explanatory power
Strengths –study support ivan pavlov
Weakness—attachment isn’t based on food alone
Weakness -learning theory rejected as explanation of attachment because better theory appeared
Weakness - Harlows monkeys- 2 wire monkeys, 1 with food and 1 offering comfort.
Weakness - Animal studies lack internal validity
Weakness Lorenz’s theory imprinting support
Learning theory as an explanation for attachement is a behaviourist explanation that suggests that attachment is developed through classical or operant conditioning it is sometimes referred to as the cupboard love theory as the infant attaches to the caregiver who provides food.
Classical conditioning was first discovered by Pavlov who conditioned to salivate when he rang a bell because the dogs learned to associate the bell with food which made them salivate. So I’m attachement food is the unconditioned stimulus and pleasure if the unconditioned response so with infants their mother becomes associated with food because they’re present at the time when the infant is fed so the mother is aka the neutral stimulus. If the neutral stimulus aka the mother is consistently associated with the unconditioned stimulus aka food take so properties of the unconditioned stimulus and produces the same response then the neutral stimulus is now the conditioned stimulus and produces a conditioned response. Meaning that by just seeing this person the infant has a feeling pleasure which is the conditioned response. Learning theorists call newly formed stimulus response mother love. So a child learns to attach to their mother as they associate them with food which they associate with pleasure therefore increasing the attachment between them.
Operant conditioning is learning through the reinforcement. When an animal is uncomfortable is creates a drive to reduce discomfort. In the case of a hungry infant there’s a drive to reduce the accompanying discomfort associated with hunger for example Dollard and Millers suggested that the attachment was due to drive reduction. When an infant is fed the discomfort is reduced and the felling produces feelings of pleasure aka positive reinforcement. Food becomes the primary reinforcer and the person who supplies the food becomes the secondary reinforcer and the source of pleasure in his/her own right. This results in attachent occurring because the child seeks the person usually the mother that can supply the reward being food.
The cupboard love theory suggested by Dollard and Miller who proposed that attachment is a set of learned behaviours ie results from the experience of the environment not innate processes but by both classical conditioning so association and operant conditioning so consequences.
The learning theory (behaviourism) is that all behaviours are learned rather than inherited so with social learning the children model the parents attachment behaviours. Hay and Vespo suggested that attachements develop because parents teach their children to love them.
A03:
A criticism of using animal studies when studying the learning theory of attachment for example skinners study as behaviourists believe that humans are no different to animals in the way they learn but critics argue that human behaviour is complex as attachment can’t be explained in this way because it involves predispositions and mental activity that can’t be explained by conditioning, suggesting that the learning theory explanation is over simplified and ignores other factors like contact comfort.
Although the learning theory has some explanatory power as it’s able to explain some aspects of attachement. As infants learn through association and reinforcement but food may not be the most important reinforcer as it’s possible that parental attention and responsiveness are more important factors that assist in the formation of attachment supporting the basic principles of the learning theory showing that even though the learning theory doesn’t provide a complete explanation of attachment it still has some value.
Other studies that support the learning theory is by Pavlov who observed and recorded information about dogs and their salivation rates. He said that dogs were demonstrating classical conditioning as he used the unconditional stimulus of food to get an unconditioned response of salivation with this knowledge he used the process of conditioning where there’s a neutral stimulus being a bell which by itself won’t produce a response like drooling but the food which is a unconditioned stimulus will cause dogs to salivate which is the unconditioned response, supporting the idea of the learning theory being an explanation of attachment although this may not be very valid for humans. However, now the classical conditioning has been explored with young infants for example infants will be happy when given food which is an unconditioned response given from an unconditioned stimulus which when is given with a neutral stimulus being the mother it gives an unconditioned response of a baby being happy now when the mother is on her own which is now the conditioned stimulus the baby is happy which is the conditioned response.
But there are limits to the learning theory as attachent isn’t based on food alone even though the it suggests that food is the key element of attachement there’s evidence from Harlows study with rhésus monkeys suggesting that contact comfort rather than food is the most important factor in attachent and Schaffer and Emerson’s research with human children found that sensitive responding from the caregiver was more important than the provision of food suggesting that the learning theory presents only a limited explanation of attachment.
Another limit of the learning theory is that it’s rejected as an explanation of attachent because a better theory appeared being Bowlbys theory as there are many advantages in comparison to the learning theory for example it can explain why attachments form whereas the learning theory can only explain how attachments form. Bowlbys theory also explains the benefits of attachment for example protection from harm which aren’t explained through the learning theory showing that bowlbys theory provides a more complete explanation of attachent than learning theory.
According to the learning theory other animism studies of attachent like Harlow should have had different findings as there were two wire monkeys one with food and one offering comfort and according to the learning theory the baby moneys should’ve spent more time with the monkey with food but the babies spent 22/24 hours with the comfort mother.
Another drawback of using animal studies to determine human behaviour is that the studies lack internal validity so the extent to which a study established a trustworthy cause and effect relationship between a treatment and an outcome, internal validity also reflects that a given study makes it possible to eliminate alternative explanations for a finding.
Lorenzs theory of imprinting contradicts the learning theory as Lorenzs research using newly hatched geese who after seeing Lorenz after hatching followed him everywhere as he became the ‘imprinted’ parent meaning that newborns ‘imprint’ an image of their first moving object they see which is usually their parents within hours of being born as it allows them to stick closely to the important source of protection and food therefore criticising the learning theory suggesting that attachent is innate as the infants are far too young to have learned anything at this stage.
Discuss the strange situation as a way of assessing type of attachment?
A01 –ainsworth et al
A01 procedure
A01- findings evidence 3 types of attachment
A01 Findings- types of attachment
A03:
Weakness - more than 3 attachment types-
Supporting- reliability of observations
Strengths –Easy to Perform/Observe – replicable study
Weakness low internal validity
Real life application-ss intervention strategies developed-help children with disordered patterns of attachment
Ethical issues ss has been criticized on ethical grounds
Weakness -ss lacks ecological validity.
Research methods –observation= overt observation
The strange situation was devised by Ainsworths et al who wanted to test the nature of attachent in order to see how infants behave under conditions of mild stress and novelty they used a systematic test of attachment to one caregiver.
The procedure consisted of eight episodes each with key features being that the caregiver and the stranger would alternatively stay with the infant or leave, this enables the observation of infants and their responses to firstly separation from their caregiver (separation anxiety), secondly the reunion with their caregiver (reunion behaviour) and their response to a stranger (stranger anxiety). The observers would record what the infant is doing every 15 seconds during the five behavioural categories and each item was scored for intensity on a scale of one to seven.
The findings concluded that there was evidence for three types of attachent either: securely attached infants (type b) so caregivers are seen as a secure base to explore and the infants aren’t likely to cry if the caregiver leaves and some distress when left with the stranger and when they were feeling anxious they were easily soothed by caregivers, insecure avoidant infants (type a) where they’ll happily explore with or without their caregiver and they show little to no social interaction and intimacy with others, finally insecure resistant (type c) where infants seek yet resist social interaction with others showing high levels of separation anxiety and stranger anxiety and when they’re reunited with their caregivers they show conflicting behaviours and resist being picked up.
They found that type of attachment was 65% for secure, 22% for insecure avoidant and 12% insecure resistant.
A03:
Although there is research to suggest there are more than three attachment types which may have been overlooked by Ainsworth that there could be a fourth type of attachement as proposed by Main and Solomon called insecure disorganised type d where infants don’t conform to any of ainsworths original attachent types as they show very strong attachent behaviour which is often followed by avoidant behaviour suggesting ainsworths original conclusions are incomplete and don’t account for all the attachment behaviours.
However there is high reliability of the observations as observational studies like ainsworths as they found almost perfect iterobserver reliability of 94 suggesting there’s high agreement among the different observers when rating the exploratory behaviour and high inter observer reliability suggests observations had perfect reliability suggesting that the strange situation is a reliable method for examining attachent behaviour and determining attachent types.
Due to the study’s high reliability it makes it easier to replicate and it’s easy to perform and observe and requires little equipment meaning the study can be replicated many times to check for consistency of the results as seen in other replications where researchers stood behind a one way mirror and observed a mother-child and stranger-child relations making it clear what type of attachent the child is showing.
But the study does have low internal validity as the strange situation is simply a measure of the quality of one particular relationship rather than the childs attachement type as Main and Weston found that children who behaved differently in the strange situation depending on which parent they’re with so the strange situation may be measuring the infants relationship with a particular parent and not their personal characteristic so their attachment type suggesting the strange situation lacks internal validity as the observation is measuring the individual relationships.
There is a real life application as the strange situation created intervention strategies to develop to help children with disordered patterns of attachent for example the circle of security project by Cooper et al teachers caregivers to understand infants signals of distress this project shows a decrease in the number of caregivers classified as disordered and a increase in the number of instances classified as securely attached so thé success of strategies like this emphasises the value of the research that leads to improvement in children’s lives.
However the strange situation is criticised on ethical grounds because a child is put under stress from the separation and stranger anxiety so the study has broken ethical guideline protection of participants but some may argue that this was necessary in order to achieve the desired results but it does weaken the validity due to ethical guidelines being broken as they weren’t processed from harm and this could’ve caused the infants extreme distress and anxiety.
Another criticism of the strange situation is that lack of ecological validity as ainsworth conducted the observation in a controlled environment and the children may have acted differently to how they would in a more familiar environment so we don’t know if the behaviours displayed by the children for example high separation anxiety would be the same when the children are in a familiar environment making the method of assessment less valid.
The research method used was observation which was overt as the mother’s knew they were being watched resulting in demand characteristics where the mother’s may have changed their behaviour to appear like excellent parents which could’ve affected the child’s behaviour therefore affecting the results of the experiment as the researchers wouldn’t be observing a valid representation of the child’s behaviour making the strange situation a less valid measure of attachment.
Outline and evaluate cultural variations in attachment?
A01 –van ijzendoorn & kroonenberg
Procedure
A01 findings Differences
A01- cultural similarities
-tronick et al
A01 cultural differences Grossman & grossman
A03:
Weakness - Overall findings are misleading -
Supporting- LARGE SAMPLES WITH META-ANALYSIS
Strengths – alternative explanation for similarities
Weakness- research focuses on countries rather than cultures
Research methods
Imposed Etic
Weakness Ss method biased towards USA/UK
Weakness –tools cross cultural research may not be appropriate issue for cross cultural research
Research methods –attachment theory culturally biased ethnocentric
Van ijzendoorn and kroonenberg were the first psychologists to look at cultural variations in attachent by conducting a meta analysis their procedure involved looking at 32 studies of attachment behaviour involving over 2000 strange situation classifications in 8 different countries.
Their findings concluded of few differences that were small with secure attachement being the most common classification in every country, with insecure avoidant attachment being the next common exception Israel and Japan where insecure resistant attachement was the next most common. Variation within the culture was 1.5 times greater than the variation between cultures, leading to a conclusion that the global pattern across the cultures appears to be similar to the results found in the US ie secure attachement is the norm. So the presence of these cultural similarities supports the idea that secure attachement is the best for healthy social and emotional attachement.
There have been cultural similarities as Tronick et al studies an African tribe efe who live in extended family groups despite the differences in child rearing practices infants at six months still show one primary attachment.
However cultural differences found by grossman and grossman found higher levels of insecure attachement amongst German infants than in other cultures as German culture involves keeping some interpersonal distance between the parents and children meaning that infants don’t engage in proximity seeking behaviours in the strange situation and so they appear to be insecurely attached.
Takahashi found similar rates of secure attachment in Japanese infants to those found by ainsworth and el as Japanese infants showed no evidence of insecure avoidant attachement and high rates of insecure resistant attachement so japon infants rarely experience separation from their mothers which explains why infants are distressed in the strange situation than the USA counterparts.
A03:
However the overall findings are misleading as a disproportionately high number of studies reviewed were conducted in the US (18/32), so overall the findings would’ve been distorted by these meaning the apparent consistency between the cultures might not genuinely reflect how much attachement types vary between cultures.
A strength of the meta analysis is the large samples used as there was a total of nearly 2000 babies and primary attachment figures not like simonelli et als study that had large comparison groups from previous research but their own samples were smaller so due to the large samples used in van ijzendoorn and kroonenberg it increases the internal validity by reducing the impact of a biased methodology or very unusual participants.
But an alternative explanation for similarities found between cultures could be that Bowlbys explanation for cultural similarities was that attachment is innate and universal and so produced the same kind of behaviour all over the world but Van ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg proposed the idea of an alternative possibility suggesting tu at cross cultural differences may reflect the effects of mass media as many books and TV programmes are broadcast around the world and create parenting norms so the similarities in child rearing have become more common so the similarities may be due to global culture.
However an issue with the research is that it only focuses on countries rather than cultures as Van ijzendoorn and kroonenberg were studying differences in countries rather than cultures for example a Japanese study found a similar distribution of attachement types of western studies in Tokyo but an increase in insecure resistant individuals in a rural sample done by Van ijzendoorn and sagi so the results demonstrate a country and a culture aren’t the same thing and provide support for the claim that there’s more variation within than between cultures.
There are also issue with the research methods used as imposed etic is a problem because they’re putting American theories of attachement onto other cultures causing an unfair generalisation of cultures that aren’t fairly being represented in a professional or accurate manner.
Other examples of attachment studies is the strange situation method as it’s biased towards US/UK culture due to it being designed by an American researcher based on a British theory so the theory and assessment may not be applicable to other cultures and trying to apply a theory or technique designed for one culture to another aka imposed etic disregards the notion of culturel emic so cultural uniqueness this is the idea that the lack of pleasure on a reunion indicates that insecure attachement is imposed etic for instance in Germany the behaviour might be seen more as independence than avoidance and not a sign of insecurity.
Also the tools used for cross cultural research may not be appropriate as the tools used for assessment may not be valid in that culture and the strange situation has assumptions that are specific to it’s country of origin being the US as it assumes that the willingness to explore is a sign of secure attachment and in Japan dependence rather than independence is a sign of secure attachement meaning that the research using the strange situation may lack validity in cultures others than the US.
The attachment theory in itself is culturally biased so ethnocentric as Rothbaum et al argue that it’s not just the methods used in the research that are culturally biased but also the underlying theory because Bowlby believed that securely attached infants become socially and emotionally competent children and adults in the west it’s defined in terms of independence and self oriented behaviour but in Japan competence is represented by preference for a group rather than self oriented behaviour and inhibition of emotional expression so there was high levels of insecure resistant attachment in Japanese children who simply represent a different form of competence.
Discuss bowlbys maternal deprivation theory?
A01 – deprivation
A01 -critical period
A01- 44 juvenile thieves Bowlby
A01 Findings
A03:
Weakness - emotional separation could more important than physical separation
Supporting- long term effects of deprivation
Strengths – Data:
Weakness- difference between deprivation & privation
Real world application
Practical application- MDH & accompanying research has significant real world applications,
Weakness – Conclusions= correlational -
Research methods – Investigator effects -
Bowlby proposed that prolonged emotional deprivation would’ve long term consequences in terms of emotional development, deprivation in itself means the loss of emotional care that’s normally provided by a primary caregiver and the value of maternal care that children need for a warm intimate/continuous relationship with the mother figure to ensure the continuing of normal mental health.
A critical period is also very important for the development of attachment because of a child has frequent and/or prolonged separations they may become emotionally disturbed but only if before the age of about 2 and a half years old and if there is no substitute mother person available. Bowlby also suggested that a long term consequence of deprivation was emotional maladjustment or even mental problems like depression.
The 44 juvenile thieves was Bowlbys experiment where the procedure involved Bowlby analysing case histories of 88 emotionally maladjusted children attempting a child guidance clinic where a half of them had been caught stealing hence the 44 thieves and the other half were a control group. Bowlby suggest that 14 of thieves were affectionless psychopaths so people who lacked normal signs of affection, shame or a sense of responsibility.
The findings consisted of 14 individuals diagnosed as affectionless thieves and 12 had experienced frequent early separations from their mothers and almost none of the control participants experienced early separation whereas 39% of the thieves had experienced early separations suggesting that early separations are linked to affection less psychopathy.
A03:
However a weakness of this theory is that emotional separation could be more important than just physical separation as infants still experience deprivation even when they’re not physically separated from caregivers for instance mothers who are severely depressed may find it difficult to provide appropriate levels of emotional care. Radke yarrow et al found that 55% of children with severely depressed mothers were more insecurely attached compare dot 29% of children with non depressed mother suggesting that psychological separation can also lead to deprivation in the same way as physical separation.
However there is research supporting the long term effects of deprivation suggesting that early maternal deprivation increases the likelihood that individuals will experience later negative outcomes as conducted by Bifulco et al who found that 25% of women who experienced separation from their mothers lager developed depression/ anxiety disorder compared to 15% with no experience of separation so the severity of these problems was greater in women whose loss was before the age of 6 showing that early deprivation can make people more vulnerable to later mental health problems.
The data however is very strong as there have been extensive interviews with the children and families with a total 25 pages of details of the participants history which gives a lot of insight and also with Bowlbys insight being an experienced psychiatrist who had previously worked a lot with troubled children helped benefit them.
But there have been psychologists that have criticised bowlbys theory as there is a differences between deprivation and privation as Rutter claimed that bowlby didn’t make it clear whether the child’s attachment bond had formed by been broken or had never been formed in the first place. Rutter believed that the lack of attachment bond would’ve had far more serious consequences for the child than the loss of an attachment bond which is important because there’s a key distinction between deprivation and privation and the lack of clarity that may affect the validity of the research findings.
A real world application has been found from the results of Bowlbys work as it has had a positive impact on the way children are looked after in hospitals because prior to bowlbys research children were separated from their parents when they went into hospitals as seen in bowlbys and Robertson’s research where they filmed the distress of young cauldron in hospitals which led to major changes as now parents are encourage to visit their children and there is greater flexibility in tens of visiting hours which just demonstrates the positive applications of bowlbys work to improve the lives of children based on his theory of maternal deprivation.
There are also practical applications as MDH and other accompanying research has significant real world applications as to highlight the importance of positive attachement experiences and maintaining the monotropic bond in the first five years and now some national governments offer more financial support for young families in terms of maternity and paternity leave for instance Sweden offers 480 days for parental leave clearly highlighting its commitment to support a children’s early attachement experiences.
Although there are issues with Bowlbys conclusions with being correlational as bowlby found there was a relationship between early separation and delinquency/affection-less psychopathy but we can’t definitely conclude that separation was the cause so there may have been a third unidentified variable that accounted for the delinquency/affection-less psychopathy for example the immediate cause of separation like neglect/abuse might’ve been the direct cause of the problems experienced at adolescence than the separation itself.
The research methods used may also weaken the study as investigator effects could’ve affected the results as bowlby designed and conducted self reports himself and the result of this and his presence and interpretation might’ve influenced the outcome of the research so bowlbys diagnosis of affectionless psychopathy might’ve been distorted by researcher confirmation bias.
Psychologists have studied children who have lived in institutions such as orphanages. Outline and evaluate research into the effects of institutionalisation?
A01 – rutter & sonuga barke
A01 – other studies of Romanian orphans
-le mare & audet
A01- Likely effects include
A01 Hodges & Tizard longitudinal natural experiment
A03:
Weakness - individual differences
Supporting- value of longitudinal studies in institutionalisation research
Strengths- internal validity
Weakness- emotional deprivation
Real life application
Supporting - Chugani et al PET scans
Weakness - Problems generalising from Romanian studies as standards of care were particularly poor
Research methods - Adoption vs control groups werent randomly assigned in ERA studies
Research into the effects of institutionalisation have been conducted by several researchers one common study was by Rutter and sonuga barke who studied 165 Romanian orphans who spent their early lives in Romanian institutions where 111 were adopted before the age of 2 and 54 by the age of 4.
ERA (English Romanian adoptees) study procedure involved adoptees who were tested at regular intervals to assess their physical, cognitive and social development and compared this to a control group of 52 British children who were adopted in the UK before the age of 6 months.
Their findings concluded that the Romanian orphans lagged behind the UK adoptees on all measures of development and by the age of 4 some children had caught up with their UK counterparts particularly those adopted before the age of 6 months. The follow ups had signifiant deficits like disinhibited attachment and problems with peer relationships that remained in individuals beyond the age of 6 months and the ERA findings of quasi autistic symptoms in Romanian orphans with impaired language and social skills so with things like disinhibited attachment, attention seeking, cling lines and lower frequency of pretend play and reduced empathy.
Other studies of Romanian orphans like Le mare and Audet carried out longitudinal studies of 36 Romanian orphans adopted to families in Canada where they were physically smaller than the matched controlled group at the age of 4 and half years but this difference disappeared at 10 and a half years. Another study like Zeanah et al compared 136 Romanian children aged 12-31 months old and spent 90% of their lives in an institution and they found that institutionalised children showed signs of disinhibited attachment.
Bowlby identified that the likely effects would include affectionless psychopathy, delinquency and a low IQ and the effects identified in privation studies for example Harlows findings of delinquency, affection less behaviour.
The effects of institutionalisation include physical underdevelopment ( deprivation dwarfism)intellectual under functioning, disinhibited attachment, poor parenting.
Hodges and tizard also conducted a longitudinal natural experiment with 65 children who were placed in a institutional care before the age of 4 months where there was no attachment policy after 4 years 24 were and adopted, 15 returned home and 26 were still in the institution. The assessments ages were 8 and 16 years and the data obtained were interviews with adolescent and mothers and sometimes fathers and there was also a self report questionnaire on the social difficulties completed by the adolescents and teachers who also completed a postal questionnaire focusing on the adolescents relationships with the teachers and peers. The findings consisted of maternal deprivation was overcome to a large extent by the adopted children with them developing strong and lasting attachments to their parents once they were placed in families compared to the restored and institutionalised groups that made limited recoveries also all 3 groups were more oriented towards adult attention and they had more difficulties with their peers and had fewer close relationships than the matched control group of adolescents suggesting that early institutional experience has damaging long term effects.
A03:
However a problem with these studies is the individual differences in the effect of institutionalisation as no children who experience institutionalisation fail to recover as some research suggests that individuals who don’t form an attachment within a sensitive period are unable to recover and this isn’t true of all children who experience institutionalisation, Rutter even suggests that some children in institutions might receive special attention and have some type of attachment experience suggesting that institutionalisation doesn’t affect all children in the same way.
By conducting longitudinal studies in institutionalisation research like the one by Rutter and sonuga barke who followed the lives of children over many years allow researchers to assess the long term effects of institutionalisation and whether these effects may disappear after a sufficient time with suitable high quality care so these studies demonstrated it’s wrong to conclude that institutionalisation inevitably causes negative effects.
There is however high internal validity as there are fewer extraneous variables than any other orphan studies as they were many studies before the Romanian orphan studies where the children who were studied had often suffered trauma before hand meaning that there were more confounding participant variables meaning it’s difficult to observe the effects of institutionalisation and in the Romanian orphan studies the children didn’t have these variables so it had a higher internal validity.
Although emotional deprivation is only one factor so the research with Romanian orphans had inevitably confounding variables where orphans were faced with more than just emotional deprivation as they were appalling physical conditions that affected their health and the lack of cognitive stimulation would’ve affected development so the orphans experienced poor subsequent care like living in poverty suggesting that researchers should be cautious when interpreting the effects of these studies as many factors could’ve affected orphans development.
A real life application can be taken from these findings as the insights from the research into institutionalisation that has been used to improve the lives of children this process of adoption has changed so mothers who give the baby up for adoption do so within the first week of birth who enables children to form secure attachment with their adoptive families during this sensitive period as a result adoptive mothers and children are just as securely attached as in non adoptive families.
Supporting research is by chugani et al who used PET scans with a sample of 10 children who were adopted from Romanian orphanages and compared them with 17 normal adults and a group of 7 children the assessments showed mild cognitive neurocognitive impairment, impulsivity, attention and social deficits. The Romanian orphans showed significantly decreased activities in the orbital frontal gurus, parts of the prefrontal cortex/hippocampus, amygdala and the brain stem. Chugani concluded that dysfunction in the brain regions may’ve resulted from stress of early deprivation and might be linked to a long term cognitive and behavioural deficits so this neurological evidence supports the damaging effects privation can have on specific brain structures.
However there are of problems with generalising from Romanian studies at the standards of care were particularly poor as Romanian orphanages werent typical of other types of institutionalised care as children were raised in extreme conditions given poor care and very low levels of intellectual stimulation and the conditions were so bad we must ask whether the results can be applied to other effects caused by any sort of institutionalisation.
The research methods used were adoption versus control groups that weren’t randomly assigned in the ERA studies so more sociable children may have been selected further distorting the results which could’ve altered the findings and the overall conclusions made from the studies.
Outline and evaluate research into the influence of early attachment on childhood and adult relationships?
A01 –internal working model iwm
A01 – hazan and Shaver
Procedure
A01- Findings
A01 Youngblade & Belsky
Weakness - research only correlational
Supporting- McCarthy assessed quality of adult relationships
Strengths- Kirkpatrick & Davis
Weakness- Zimmerman
Weakness contradictory research
Weakness –attachment=deterministic theory/
Weakness- alternative explanations for adult attachment type
Research methods- lacks validity
The internal working model is where infants learn what relationships are and how partners in a relationship behave towards each other from experience so they’re used to predict the behaviour of other people in the future. The model effects childhood friendships, parenting and mental health as seen in the Minnesota child parent study that found continuity between early secure attachment and later emotional and social competence, Mullis et al also reported late childhood attachments made to peers reflect those made to parents in infancy and bible found the late childhood behaviour are learned in childhood to social situations and peer groups supporting the idea of continuity from early attachments and the internal working model.
Hazan and shaver also conducted research into the influence of early attachment on childhood and adult relationships their procedure involved placing a love quiz in a newspaper that asked questions about their current attachment experiences and about their attachment history to identify their current and childhood attachment types. The quiz asked questions about the attitudes towards love as an assessment of the internal working model and they analysed 620 responses 205 from men and 415 from women from a cross section of the population.
They found the prevalence of attachment styles was similar to infancy as 56% were classified as securely attached, 25% were classed as insecurely avoidant and 19% were classed as insecurely resistant. Securely attached adults described love experiences as happy, friendly and trusting and relationships as more enduring than described by the adults who were insecurely attached so they tended to have a positive internal working model of relationships.
Other research has been conducted for instance youngblade and belsky found 3-5 year securely attached children were more curious, competent, empathetic, resilient and self confident and got along better with the other children and were more likely to form close friendships. Westermarck reported that children who form close friendships in the first 6 years don’t generally go on to form adult sexual relationships with each other suggesting that early attachments do affect childhood and adult relationships.
A03:
A weakness of the research linking early attachment to later relationships is that it’s correlational so it can’t show causal effect as the attachment style and later love styles might be caused by a third variable like innate temperament so an infants temperament affects the way a parent responds and so it’s a determining factor in attachment style and temperament explains issues with relationships later on in life meaning that researchers can’t claim the internal working model determines later relationships without considering other intervening variables.
McCarthy assessed the quality of adult relationships of 40 women aged 44
Supporting- McCarthy assessed quality of adult relationships of 40 women aged to 44yrs with childhood insecure attachments. Women with insecure-avoidant attachments had less successful adult romantic relationships, while those with insecure-resistant attachments had problems forming non-romantic adult friendships, supports idea of iwm.
Kirkpatrick and David studied 300 dating couple for 3 years and found those identified as having a secure childhood attachments were more likely to have a stable and satisfying relationships supporting the idea of continuity from the internal working model.
However a weakness is a study by Zimmerman who assessed infant attachment type and adolescent attachement to parents and these findings indicate very little relationship between the quality of an infant and adolescent attachment this is a problem because the outcome isn’t what would be expected if the internal working model is important in development.
Contradictory research suggests that the internal working model isn’t fully supported for example Steele et al found that only a small correlation of 0.17 between having a secure attachment type in childhood and early adulthood.
The theory of attachment may also be deterministic as hazan and shavers research suggests that early experiences have a fixed effect on later adult relationships as an infant who is insecurely attached is doomed to experience negative relationships. Simpson et al found that individuals who experience happy adult relationships despite being insecurely attached as infants suggesting that an individuals past doesn’t unalterably determine their future course of relationships.
There are also alternative explanations for adult attachment type as Feeney argued that rather than early relationships causing a later alternative attachment type where individuals seek out others who confirm their expectations of relationships and by being in a secure adult relationship causes adult attachment type rather than the other way around meaning this may be a better explanation for the findings of early attachment research.
However the research methods mean the studies lack validity as they’re relying on a retrospective classification for example Hazan and shavers rely on adults answering questions about their early lives in order to assess early attachment style and these recollections may be flawed because memories aren’t always accurate and longitudinal studies tend to support Hazan and shavers findings on early attachment style that predicts relationships in adult life.
Outline and evaluate two or more definitions of abnormality?
A01 –statistical infrequency
-abnormal behaviours as those that are extremely rare in population
-eg house of commons briefing paper in 2018 reported 1 in 6 people in UK had experienced mental disorder like depression/anxiety in previous week
-statistically normal behaviours are defined as those found in majority of
- If 1 in 6 people experienced mental disorder in week before survey majority (5 in 6) been mentally healthy in that period.
A01 – deviation from social norms
states anyone who deviates from socially created norms-considered abnormal
-some social norms like not laughing at funeral are implicit- may indicate underlying abnormality if broken. Other social norms like causing disorder in public -policed by laws which are explicit norms of behaviour - eg of implicit social norm- politeness impolite people are behaving in socially deviant way because others find difficult to interact with them -some abnormal behaviour like paedophilia deviates from implicit social rule & against law.
A01- failure to function adequately- means person isnt coping with day to day life
-their behaviour causes distress to individual and/or others
-eg people with phobias may find anxiety very distressing. but people with schizophrenia generally lack awareness anything is wrong but behaviour (hallucinations, believing theyre being persecuted may be distressing to others
- WHODAS (world health organisation disability assessment schedule) used to measure functioning in areas like self care getting along with people life activities and participation in society.
A01 deviation from ideal mental health
-proposes certain criteria needed for positive mental health. absence of any of these indicates abnormality
- jahoda identified 6 criteria for ideal mental health
-positive self attitudes
-self actualisation
-integration –resistance to stress
-autonomy
-accurate perception of reality
-mastery of the environment
-these 6 characteristics enable someone to feel happy and behave competently
-if 1 or more of these criteria is absent person may be experiencing mental disorder.
Weakness - some statistically infrequent behaviours are desirable
-not all abnormal behaviours considered undesirable
-eg very few people have IQ over 150 but for those who do this abnormality considered desirable. Equally some undesirable behaviours like depression are relatively uncommon
- using statistical infrequency to define abnormality means unable to distinguish between desirable & undesirable .
Practical applications- failure to function adequately definition recognises individuals subjective experience
- benefit of definition is we view disorder from pov of person experiencing it
- we can use WHODAS criteria to measure ability of individual to function adequately eg dress themselves, prepare meals & so measure abnormality objectively
- definition has sensitivity considering subjective experience & practicality using objective measure
Strengths- ideal mental health
-positive approach
- definition offers alternative perspective on mental disorder focuses on positives rather than negatives
- jahodas ideas never really taken up by mental health professionals ideas have has some influence and in accord with positive psychology movement
- strength of this approach lies in its positive outlook & its influence on humanistic approaches
Weakness- cut off point for statistical infrequency if abnormality is subjective
-if abnormality defined in statistical infrequency need to decide where to separate normality from abnormality
- eg 1 of symptoms of depression= difficulty sleeping some people think abnormal sleep =less than 6 hrs a night on average others think cut off should be 5 hrs
- difficult to define abnormality in statistical infrequency which is limitation of definition
Weakness - Ideal mental health
-unrealistic criteria
-according to ideal mental health criteria most of us =abnormal
-jahoda presented them as ideal criteria but how many need to be lacking before person judged as abnormal. criteria quite difficult to measure eg assessing individuals capacity for personal growth or environmental mastery
- means approach may be interesting concept but not really useable when it comes to identifying abnormality.
Weakness – cultural change over time
Social norms vary over time & open to abuse
-in past homosexuality = mental disorder in DSM but today acceptable most countries
- 50 years ago Russia anyone who disagreed with state ran risk of being regarded as insane and placed in mental institution.
- if we define abnormality in terms of deviation from social norms theres real danger of creating definitions based on prevailing social morals and attitudes..
Weakness-deviance related to context& degree -judgments on deviance often related to context of behaviour
-eg wearing next to nothing on beach= regarded as normal whereas same outfit in classroom/a formal gathering regarded as abnormal & possibly indication of mental disorder
- means social deviance on own cant offer complete definition of abnormality because its inevitably related to both context & degree
Research methods- cultural relativisms
- cultures differ in statistical infrequency & deviation from social norms of behaviour
-classification systems like DSM mainly based on white middle class western cultures yet applied to other subcultures however DSM-V 13 acknowledges cultural differences in symptoms for panic attacks uncontrollable crying/difficulty breathing may be primary symptoms in different cultures
- although its difficult to establish universal rules for labelling behaviours as abnormal its possible to include culture relativism in diagnostic systems.
One definition of abnormality is statistical infrequency which describes abnormal behaviours as those that are extremely rare in a population for example the House of Commons had a briefing paper in 2018 which reported that 1 in 6 people in the UK had experienced a mental disorder like depression/anxiety in the previous week so statistically normal behaviours are defined as those found in the majority of the population and if 1 in 6 people experienced a mental disorder in a week before taking a survey the majority (5 in 6) have been mentally healthy un that period.
Another definition of abnormality is deviation from social norms which states that anyone who deviates from socially created norms so things that are considered abnormal for instance some social norms like not laughing at a funeral are implicit mah indicate that an underlying abnormality if it’s broken. Other social norms like causing disorder in public are policed by laws which are explicit norms of behaviour for example implicit social norm like politeness so impolite people are behaving in a socially deviant way because others find it difficult to interact with them and some abnormal behaviour like paedophilia which deviates from implicit social rule and against law.
Failure to function adequately means a person isn’t coping with their day to day life so their behaviour is causing distress to an individual and or others for example people with phobias may find anxiety very distressing but people with schizophrenia generally lack awareness that anything is wrong but their behaviour like hallucinations for instance believing they’re being persecuted may be distressing to others.
The world health organisation disability assessment schedule is used to measure functioning in areas like self care getting along with people’s life activities and participation in society.
A final definition is deviation from ideal mental health which proposes that certain criteria is needed for positive mental health and an absence of any of these indicates abnormality. Jahoda has identified 6 criteria for ideal mental health, these include positive self attitudes, self actualisation, resistance to stress, autonomy, accurate perception of reality and mastery of the environment and these 6 characteristics enable someone to feel happy and behave competently and if one or more of these criteria is absent then a person may be experiencing a mental disorder.
A03:
However some statistically infrequent behaviours are desirable and not all abnormal behaviours are considered undesirable for example very few people have an IQ over 150 but for those who do this abnormality is considered desirable although equally there are some undesirable behaviours like depression that are relatively uncommon using statistical infrequency to define abnormality means being unable to distinguish between desirable and undesirable.
There are practical applications with the failure to function adequately definition which recognises an individuals subjective experience which is a benefit of the definition is that we view the disorder from the point of view of the person experiencing it and we can use the world health organisation disability assessment schedule criteria to measure the ability of an individual to function adequately for example dressing themselves, preparing meals and so we measure abnormality objectively and this definition has sensitivity considering subjective experience and practicality using objective measure.
A positive of the ideal mental health definition is it has a positive approach as this definition offers an alternative perspective on mental disorder which focuses on the positives rather than the negatives and although jahodas ideas have never really been taken up by mental health professionals ideas have had some influence and in accord with the positive psychology movement therefore a strength of this approach lies in its positive outlook and it’s influence on humanistic approaches.
However if abnormality is defined in statistical infrequency we need to decide where to separate normality from abnormality for example one of the symptoms of depression is difficulty sleeping as some people think that abnormal sleep is less than six hours a night on average but others think that the cut off should be five hours so it’s difficult to define abnormality in statistical infrequency which is a limitation of the definition.
Another downfall of the ideal mental health definition is the unrealistic criteria so according to the ideal mental health criteria most of us are abnormal as the criteria is quite difficult to measure for example assessing individuals capacity for personal growth or environmental mastery meaning the approach may be an interesting concept but is not really useable when it comes to identifying abnormality.
A weakness of the deviation from
social norms is the cultural change over time so social norms vary over time and are open to abuse as in the past homosexuality was considered a mental disorder in the DSM but today is acceptable in most countries and 50 years ago in Russia anyone who disagreed with the state ran the risk of being regarded as insane and placed in a mental institution so if we define abnormality in terms of deviation from social norms there’s a real danger of creating definitions based on prevailing social morals and attitudes.
Another weakness is that deviance is related to context and degree so judgements on deviance is often related to the context of behaviour for example wearing next to nothing on beach is regarded as normal whereas the same outfit in a classroom or a formal gathering is regarded as abnormal and possibly an indication of a mental disorder meaning that social deviance on it’s own can’t offer a complete definition of abnormality because it’s inevitable related to both context and degree.
The research methods involved weaken the definition as there are cultural relativisms so cultures differ in statistical infrequency and deviation from social norms of behaviour so classification systems like the DSM is mainly based on white middle class western cultures yet is applied to other subcultures however the DSM-V 13 acknowledges the cultural differences in symptoms for panic attacks like uncontrollable crying/difficulty breathing which may be primary symptoms in different cultures although it’s difficult to establish universal rules for labelling behaviour as abnormal it’s possible to include culture relativism in diagnostic systems.
Discuss deviation from ideal mental health and failure to function adequately as two definitions of abnormality?
A01 – The Global Assessment of Functioning Scale ( GAF) is a method of measuring how well individuals function in everyday life and it considers Rosenhan and Seligman’s sections plus occupational functioning.
A01 – Rosenhan & Seligman suggested some key characteristics of ‘failing to function adequately’: -Personal Distress – Most people who seek psychiatric help are suffering from sense of psychological distress/discomfort
(Sue et al and recognition theyre failing to function adequately.
-Observer Distress (or Discomfort) someone’s behaviour causes discomfort & distress to others observing behaviour.
-Maladaptive Behaviour–someone’s behaviour interferes with ability to lead normal life (e.g. agoraphobia)
-Unpredictable Behaviour- If behaviour is unpredictable if doesnt fit situation or if its unexpected &uncontrolled eg sobbing for no reason or laughing at bad news).
-Irrational Behaviour– If person’s behaviour doesn’t make sense to other people (difficult to understand)
A01- failure to function adequately- means person isnt coping with day to day life
-their behaviour causes distress to individual and/or others
-eg people with phobias may find anxiety very distressing. but people with schizophrenia generally lack awareness anything is wrong but behaviour (hallucinations, believing theyre being persecuted may be distressing to others
- WHODAS (world health organisation disability assessment schedule) used to measure functioning in areas like self care getting along with people life activities and participation in society.
A01 deviation from ideal mental health
-proposes certain criteria needed for positive mental health. absence of any of these indicates abnormality
- jahoda identified 6 criteria for ideal mental health
-positive self attitudes
-self actualisation
-integration –resistance to stress
-autonomy
-accurate perception of reality
-mastery of the environment
-these 6 characteristics enable someone to feel happy and behave competently
-if 1 or more of these criteria is absent person may be experiencing mental disorder.
Weakness - behaviour may be functional
-some apparently dysfunctional behaviour can be beneficial for individual
-eg some mental disorders like eating disorders/depression may lead to extra attention for individual such attention= rewarding and thus quite functional rather than dysfunctional - failure to distinguish between functional & dysfunctional behaviours means definition is incomplete
Practical applications- failure to function adequately definition recognises individuals subjective experience - benefit= we view disorder from pov of person experiencing it
- we use WHODAS criteria to measure ability of individual to function adequately eg dress themselves, prepare meals & so measure abnormality objectively
- definition=sensitivity considering subjective experience & practicality using objective measure
Strengths- ideal mental health -positive approach - definition offers alternative perspective on mental disorder focuses on positives rather than negatives
- jahodas ideas never really taken up by mental health professionals ideas have has some influence and in accord with positive psychology movement
- strength lies in positive outlook & influence on humanistic approaches
Weakness- FFA is issue of individual differences.eg, 1 person hears voices may be unable to function adequately; whereas, another person may suffer from same symptoms, but function perfectly well. despite same psychological & behavioural symptoms, each person diagnosed differently according to definition, questioning validity.
Weakness - Ideal mental health -unrealistic criteria -imh criteria most of us =abnormal -jahoda presented them as ideal criteria but how many need to be lacking before person judged as abnormal. criteria difficult to measure eg assessing individuals capacity for personal growth or environmental mastery - means approach may be interesting concept but not really useable when it comes to identifying abnormality. Strengths Jahoda’s definition takes positive & holistic view., definition focuses on positive & desirable behaviours, rather than considering just negative & undesirable behaviour definition considers whole person, taking into account multitude of factors that can affect health & well-being., strength of deviation from ideal mental health definition of abnormality is comprehensive, covering broad range of criteria. Weakness- Everyday life varies: ability to cope with everyday life depends on whats seen as normal everyday life. varies within & across cultures. Somebody clocks mean individuals dont rise until midday but function well at other times. Culturally its not unusual to have siestas, or move home regularly which may seen as abnormal. means that definition isnt clear. Research methods- cultural relativism - limitation of definitions is therere different cultural ideas of how life should be lived -eg adequate functioning depends on cultural norms & people from non-dominant subcultures may have different lifestyles. jahodas criteria of self - actualisation may not apply to collectivist cultures - could explain why people from non-middle class or minority ethnic groups more often diagnosed with mental disorders.
The global assessment of functioning scale aka GAF is a method of measuring how well individuals function in everyday life and it considers Rosenhan and Seligmans sections plus occupational functioning.
Rosenhan and Seligman suggested some key characteristics of ‘failing to function adequately’ like personal distress as most people who seek psychiatric help are suffering from a sense of psychological distress/discomfort and observer distress where someone’s behaviour causes discomfort and distress to others observing their behaviour and maladaptive behaviour where’s someone’s behaviour interferes with the ability to lead a normal life for example agoraphobia and unpredictable behaviour so if behaviour is unpredictable if it doesn’t fit the situation or if it’s unexpected and uncontrolled for example sobbing for no reason or laughing at bad news and finally irrational behaviour so if a persons behaviour doesn’t make sense to other people so it’s difficult to understand.
Failure to function adequately means that a person isn’t coping with their day to day life and their behaviour causes distress to individuals and/or others for example people with phobias may find anxiety very distressing but people with schizophrenia generally lack awareness that anything is wrong but the behaviour such as hallucinations like believing they’re being persecuted may be distressing to others this is why the WHODAS the (world health organisation disability assessment schedule) is used to measure the functioning in areas like self care so getting along with people and life activities and participation in society.
A second definition is deviation from ideal mental health with proposes that certain criteria is needed for positive mental health and the absence of any of these indicates abnormality which is why Jahoda identified six criteria for ideal mental health which include; positive self attitudes, self actualisation, resistance to stress, autonomy, accurate perception of reality and mastery of the environment so these six characteristics enable someone to feel happy and behave competently and if one of more of these criteria is absent then a person may be experiencing a mental disorder.
A03:
One of the weaknesses of the failure to function adequately definition is that behaviour may be functional as some apparently dysfunctional behaviour can be beneficial for an individual for example some mental disorders like eating disorders/depression may lead to extra attention for an individual such attention is rewarding and thus quite functional rather than dysfunctional therefore there is a failure to distinguish between functional and dysfunctional behaviours meaning the definition is incomplete.
Although there are practical applications to the failure to function adequately definition as it recognises the individuals subjective experience which is beneficial as we view the disorder from the point of view of the person experiencing it and we can use the WHODAS criteria to measure the ability of the individual being able to function adequacy for example dressing themselves, preparing meals and so we can measure their abnormality objectively therefore tuis definition has sensitivity considering the subjective experience and practicality using this objective measure.
A positive of the ideal mental health is that the definition offers an alternative perspective on a mental disorder and focuses on the positives rather than the negatives as Jahodas ideas have never really been taken up by mental health professionals but the ideas have had some influence and in accord with the positive psychology movement so the strength lies in the positive outlook and influence on humanistic approaches.
But a weakness of the failure to function adequately is the issue of individual differences for example one person hearing voices may be unable to function adequately whereas another person mah suffer from the same symptoms but function perfectly well despite having the same psychological and behavioural symptoms so each person is diagnosed differently according to the definition meaning it has questionable validity.
A problem with the idea mental health definition is that it has unrealistic criteria according to the criteria most people would be considered abnormal as it’s such a high set of standards that are somewhat impossible to achieve. Jahoda presented them as ideal criteria but how many are needed to be lacking before a person is judged as abnormal and the criteria is also difficult to measure for example assessing an individuals capacity for personal growth or mastery fo the environment meaning the approach may be an interesting concept but not really useable when it comes to identifying abnormality.
Although a strength of Jahodas definition is that it takes a positive and holistic view because the definition focuses on the positive and desirable behaviours rather than considering just the negative and undesirable behaviour so the definition considers the whole person taking into account a multitude of factors that can affect health and well being. Overall a strength of the deviation from ideal mental health definition of abnormality is it’s comprehensive covering a broad range of criteria.
Although a weakness of failure to function adequately is that everyday life varies the ability to cope with everyday life depends on what’s seen as normal everyday life which varies within and across cultures so somebody’s clocks mean that individuals don’t rise until midday but can function well at other times. Culturally it’s not unusual to have siestas or move home regularly which may been seen as abnormal meaning that definition isn’t clear.
Overall a limitation of the definitions is there are different cultural ideas of how life should be lived for example adequate functioning depends on cultural norms and people from non dominant subcultures may have different lifestyles. Jahodas criteria of self actualisation may not apply to collectivist cultures which could explain why people from non middle class or minority ethnic groups are more often diagnosed with mental disorders.
Outline and evaluate the behavioural approach to explaining phobias?
A01 – Phobias= type of anxiety disorder. Phobias characterized by marked & persistent fear thats excessive/ unreasonable, cued by presence or anticipation of specific object or situation (e.g. flying, heights, seeing blood). -symptoms of phobias can be place into one of 3 categories -Behavioral (How do you BEHAVE when you see your feared object?): phobic stimulus is either avoided/responded to with great anxiety. eg someone with phobia of dogs may cross road every time they see dog,
Receiving negative reinforcement which will maintain phobia. avoidance could interfere with individual’s normal daily routine.
-Emotional (How do you FEEL when you see feared object?): Exposure to phobic stimulus nearly always produces rapid anxiety response. -Cognitive (What do you THINK about feared object?) person would recognise fear=excessive/ unreasonable. person is consciously aware anxiety levels they experience in relation to feared object/ situation=overstated.
A01 –mowreer proposed two process model to explain phobias
behavioural approach explains development & maintenance of phobia using theories of classical conditioning & operant conditioning. first single explanation for phobia by Mowrer in 2-process model of phobia.
According to behaviourists, phobias=result of classically conditioned association between anxiety provoking (UCS)& previously neutral stimulus.eg child with no previous fear of dogs gets bitten by dog & from this moment onwards associates dog with fear & pain. Due to process of generalisation child isnt just afraid of dog who bit them fears all dogs.
A01- classical conditioning explains how phobia is acquired. initially (ns) paired with (ucs) which produces (ucr) of fear. (ns) becomes conditioned stimulus (cs) & produces fear as (cr) whenever (cs) presented.
-watson & Rayner paired initially neutral stimulus (a white rat) with unconditioned stimulus ( a loud noise). produced (ucr) of fear in baby aka little albert. After making this pairing 4 times little albert produced conditioned fear response when presented him with rat in absence of (ucs).
- demonstrates fear response to initially neutral stimulus could be classically conditioned.
A01 operant conditioning explains how phobias are maintained if fear is lowered by avoiding phobic stimulus then avoidance behaviour becomes negative reinforce
-eg if someone was afraid of spiders because they had been previously frightened by one the reduction in fear they experienced by avoiding spiders would lead them to continue avoiding them.
-(Cs) evokes fears & avoidance of feared object or situation lessens this feeling = rewarding. reward (negative reinforcement) strengths avoidance behaviour & phobia is maintained
Weakness biological preparedness
-two process model- phobia doesnt always develop after traumatic incident. eg di Nardo et al found not everyone whos bitten by dog develops phobia of dog- diathesis stress model proposed we inherit genetic vulnerability for developing mental disorders but disorder is then triggered by life event - fear is easier to condition to some things eg spiders than others eg toasters -seligman argues were genetically prepared to learn associations between fear and stimuli like snakes than were life threatening in our evolutionary past.
Strengths- two process model supported research asking people about their phobias
-sue et al found some people can recall specific event that led to phobia developing. eg agoraphobics most likely to explain their phobia in terms of specific event -shows classical conditioning can be involved in developing phobias
Strengths- support for social learning
-experiment bandura & Rosenthal supported social learning explanation of development of phobias -in experiment model acted as if in pain every time buzzer sounded. Later on those participants who had observed this showed an emotional reaction to buzzer demonstrating an acquired fear of response
- shows imitating behaviour modelled by others can lead to acquisition of phobias
Weakness idea of biological preparedness further supported by Ost and Hugdahl who claim nearly half of all people with phobias have never had anxious experience with object of their fear, and some have had no experience at all. eg, some snake phobics have never encountered a snake.
Weakness –two process model ignores cognitive factors- reductionist - cognitive aspects to phobias cant be explained in traditionally behaviourist framework -eg person thinks might die if trapped in lift might become extremely anxious & may trigger phobia about lifts. shows irrational thinking also involved on development of phobias - explains why cognitive therapies can be more successful in treating phobias than behavioural treatments
Real life application - behaviourist explanation application to therapy. behaviourist ideas been used to develop effective treatments, including SD &flooding. SD helps people to unlearn fears, using principles of classical conditioning, while flooding prevents people from avoiding phobias and stops negative reinforcement from taking place. Consequently, these therapies have been successfully used to treat people with phobias, providing further support to behaviourist explanation.
Strength-empirical support shows how classical conditioning leads development of phobias. Watson & Rayner used classical conditioning to create phobia in Little Albert. Albert developed phobia of white rat when he learned to associate rat with loud noise.
Issues and debates
Think about nature (inherited factors ) versus nature (conditioning) in relation to biological preparedness and the diathesis stress model of phobias-
Phobias are a type of anxiety disorder and are characterised by a marked and persistent fear that’s excessive/unreasonable and are cued by a presence or anticipation of a specific object or situation for example flying, heights or seeing blood. Symptoms of phobias can be placed into one of three categories; behavioural so how does a person behave when they see their feared object so the phobic stimulus is either avoided/responded to with great anxiety for example someone with a phobia of dogs may cross the road every time they see a dog which is receiving negative reinforcement which will maintain the phobia. Avoidance could interfere with the individuals normal daily routine. Emotional so how does a person feel when they see a feared object so exposure to the phobic stimulus nearly always produces a rapid anxiety response. Finally cognitive so what does a person think about the feared object so the person would recognise the fear is excessive/unreasonable, therefore a person is consciously aware their anxiety levels they experience in relation to the feared object/situation is overstated.
Mowrer proposed the two process model to explain phobias using the behavioural approach which explains the development and maintenance of a phobia using theories of classical conditioning and operant conditioning. It’s the first single explanation for a phobia by mowrer in the two process model of phobia.
According to behaviourists, phobias are the result of classically conditioned association between anxiety provoking an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) and a previously neutral stimulus for example a child with no previous fear of dogs gets bitten by a dog and from this moment onwards they associate the dog with fear and pain due to the process of generalisation the child isn’t just afraid of the dog who hit them they now fear all dogs.
Classical conditioning explains how a phobia is acquired and initially the neutral stimulus (NS) is paired with the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) which produces the unconditioned response (UCR) of fear. The ns becomes the conditioned stimulus (CS) and produces fear as the conditioned response (CR) whenever the cs is presented. Watson and Rayner paired initially the ns being a white rat with an ucs being a loud noise which then produced a ucr of fear in this instance a baby called little Albert. After making this pairing four times little Albert produced a conditioned fear response when presented with a rat which just demonstrates a fear response to initially a neutral stimulus that could be classically conditioned.
Operant conditioning explains how phobias are maintained and if the fear is lowered by avoiding the phobic stimulus then the avoidance behaviour becomes a negative reinforcer, for example if someone was afraid of spiders because they had been previously frightened by one then the reduction in fear they experienced by avoiding the spiders would lead them to continue avoiding them. The conditioned stimulus evokes fear and avoidance of the feared object or situation which lessens this feeling so it’s rewarding, but the reward is negative reinforcement which strengthens the avoidance behaviour and the phobia is maintained.
A03:
Although biologically the two process model is limited as the phobia doesn’t always develop after a traumatic incident for example Nardo et al found that not everyone who is bitten by a dog develops a phobia of dogs and the diathesis stress model proposed that we inherit the genetic vulnerability for developing mental disorders but a disorder is then triggered by a life event so the fear is easier to condition to in some things like spiders than others like toasters which seligman argues that we’re genetically prepared to learn associations between fear and stimuli like snakes that were life threatening in our evolutionary past.
However the two process model is supported by research by sue et al who found that some people can recall the specific event the at led to the phobia developing for example agoraphobics were most likely to explain their phobia in terms of a specific event showing that classical conditioning can be involved in developing phobias.
There’s also supporting research for the social learning explanation of the development of phobias for example an experiment by bandura and rosenthal where a model acted as if they were in pain every time a buzzer sounded later on those participants who had observed this showed an emotional reaction to a buzzer demonstrating an acquired fear of response showing that imitating the behaviour modelled by others can lead to an acquisition of phobias.
But the idea of biological preparedness is further supported by Ost and Hugdahl who claim that nearly half of all people with phobias have never had an anxious experience with their object of fear and some have had no experience at all for example some snake phobics have never encountered a snake yet still fear them.
The two process model also ignores cognitive factors making it reductionist and the cognitive aspects to phobias can’t be explained in traditionally behaviourist framework for example a person thinks they might die if they’re trapped in a lift and then might become extremely anxious which may trigger a phobia about lifts showing that irrational thinking also involved on the development of phobias which explains why cognitive therapies can be more successful in treating phobias than behavioural treatments.
A real life application can be taken from the behaviourist explanation with therapy as these behaviourist ideas have been used to develop effective treatments including systematic desensitisation and flooding. SD helped people to unlearn their fears using the principles of classical conditioning whilst flooding prevents people from avoiding their phobias and stops negative reinforcement from taking place. Consequently these therapies have been successfully used to treat people with phobias providing further support to the behaviourist explanation.
There is also empirical support showing how classical conditioning leads to the development of phobias like in Watson and Rayners study which used classical conditioning to create a phobia in little Albert who developed a phobia of white rats when he learned to associate a rat with loud noise which scared him leading him to associate all rats with being scared.
However there is the issue of nature versus nurture as for the nature side which is inherited factors so biological preparedness meaning that a person can be born already in fear of certain objects in order for survival compared to nurture so being conditioned to fear an object or situation like with the two process model where a person learns to associate a neutral object with fear due to an event occurring which activated this fear.
Outline and evaluate the behavioural approach to treating phobias?
A01 – two behaviourist therapies used to treat phobias, systematic desensitisation and flooding.
A01 Both therapies use the principles of classical conditioning to replace a person’s phobia with a new response – relaxation.
A01- SD uses counterconditioning to replace fear with relaxation -patients learn relaxation technique like slow breathing/progressive muscle relaxation - patient & therapist work out hierarchy of phobias situations from least to most feared - patient imagines least feared scene whilst simultaneously relaxing. When no anxiety experienced fear has been desensitised. therapist & patient work through hierarchy in systematic way until patient experiences no anxiety when imaging most feared scene -in in vivo SD phobic gradually exposed to phobic stimulus rather than imaging it or using pictures -SD based on reciprocal inhibition being relaxed inhibits anxiety.
A01 flooding
- Flooding can take one of two forms:
-in vivo (actual exposure), or
-in vitro (imaginary exposure)
-involves single exposure to most feared situation
- patient exposed to actual phobic stimulus or to a virtual reality version of it in 1 long session until anxiety has disappeared
-although intense fear initially experienced the fear response is eventually extinguished as adrenaline levels naturally decrease
- new stimulus response link can be learned and feared stimulus now associated with non- anxious response.
Weakness relaxation may not be necessary
-may be success of both SD & flooding is more to do with exposure to feared situation than relaxation
-eg klein et al compared SD with supportive psychotherapy for patients with either social or specific phobias. found no difference in effectiveness suggesting active ingredient in SD/flooding simply be generation of hopeful expectancies that phobia can be overcome -suggests cognitive factors more important than behavioural approach generally acknowledges.
Strengths- effectiveness of SD -research found SD successful for range of phobias eg mcgrath et al reported about 75% of patients with phobias responded to SD -in vivo techniques more successful than in vitro choy et al. often number of different exposure techniques are involved in vivo and also modelling where patient watches someone else whos coping well with feared stimulus (comer) - demonstrates effectiveness of SD but also value of using range of different exposure techniques.
Strengths- effectiveness of flooding –flooding can be effective treatment for those stick with it
-eg craske et al concluded flooding & SD equally effective in treating phobias. can be highly traumatic & patients may quit during treatment
- shows flooding can be useful for particular individuals as long as theyre aware beforehand of distress theyre likely to experience so they complete treatments.
Weakness practical issues SD is slow process, taking on average 6-8 sessions., research suggests longer the technique takes more effective it is.
Supporting SD –Further support Gilroy et al examined 42 patients with arachnophobia (fear of spiders). Each patient treated using three 45-minute SD sessions. When examine three months and 33 months later, SD group less fearful than control group (who were only taught relaxation techniques). provides support for SD as long-term treatment for phobias.
Strengths of behavioural therapies
-behavioural therapies for phobias are generally faster cheaper and require less effort on the patients part than other psychotherapies -eg CBT requires willingness for patients to think deeply about their mental problems which isnt case for behavioural therapies. Self- administered SD can be as effective as therapist guided SD making it cheaper & more accessible.- means behavioural therapies useful for children & people with learning difficulties
Ethical issues-SD creates high levels of anxiety when patients initially exposed, which raises ethical issues and so questions appropriateness. should be noted that virtual reality therapy does help resolve these issues.
Ethical issues flooding highly traumatic
-rarely used and if not careful can be dangerous. not appropriate treatment for every phobia. should be used with caution as some people actually increase fear after therapy, & not possible to predict when this will occur. Wolpe reported case of client whose anxiety intensified to such a degree flooding therapy resulted her being hospitalized. -some people not be able to tolerate high levels of anxiety induced by therapy, & risk of exiting therapy before calm & relaxed. Problem as existing treatment before completion is likely to strengthen rather than weaken phobia.
There are two behaviourist therapies used to treat phobias which are systematic desensitisation (SD) and flooding.
Both therapies use the principles of classical conditioning to replace a persons phobia with a new response being relaxation.
SD used counterconditioning to replace fear with relaxation whereby patients learn relaxation techniques like slow breathing/progressive muscle relaxation. At the start the patient and therapist work out an hierarchy of phobias situations from least to most feared so the patient imagines the least feared scene whilst simultaneously relaxing. When no anxiety is experienced the fear has been desensitised. The therapist and patient work through the hierarchy in a systematic way until the patient experiences no anxiety when imaging the most feared scene. In vivo SD phobic is gradually exposed to the phobic stimulus rather than imaging it or using pictures and is based on reciprocal inhibition being relaxed inhibits anxiety.
Flooding can take one of two forms: in Vivo so actual exposure or in vitro so imaginary exposure. So the patient is either exposed to an actual phobic stimulus or to a virtual reality version of it in one long session until the anxiety has disappeared. Although the intense fear is initially experienced the fear response is eventually extinguished as the adrenaline levels naturally decrease so the new stimulus response link can be learned and the feared stimulus is now associated with a non anxious response.
A03:
However the relaxation may be a success of both SD and flooding which is more to do with exposure to a feared situation than relaxation for example klein et al compared SD with supportive psychotherapy for patients with either social or specific phobias and found no difference in the effectiveness suggesting the active ingredient in SD/flooding may simply be the generation of hopeful expectancies that the phobia can be overcome suggesting that cognitive factors are more important than the behavioural approach generally acknowledges.
But the effectiveness of SD is highly successful as research has found that SD is successful for a range of phobias for example McGrath et am reported that about 75% of patients with phobias responded to SD but in vivo techniques are more successful than in vitro as found by Chou et al. There is often a number of different exposure techniques that are involved in vivo and also modelling where the patient watches someone else whose coping well with the fears stimulus as found by comer which demonstrates the effectiveness of SD but also the value of using a range of different exposure techniques.
Flooding is also highly effective as it can be as effective for those who stick with it for example Craske et al concluded that flooding and SD are equally effective in treating phobias but it can be highly traumatic and patients may quit during treatment which shows that flooding can be useful for particular individuals as long as they’re aware beforehand of distress they’re likely to experience so they can complete treatments.
But there are practical issues with SD as it’s a slow process taking on average 6-8 seasons as research suggests that the longer the technique takes the more effective it is.
Additional research supporting SD is by Gilroy et al who examined 42 patients with arachnophobia which is a fear of spiders where each patient is treated using three 45 minute SD sessions and when they examined the patients three months and 33 months later and the SD group were less fearful than the control group ( who were only taught relaxation techniques) providing further support for SD as a long term treatment for phobias.
Behavioural therapies are also very beneficial for treating phobias as they’re generally faster, cheaper and require less effort on the patients part than other psychotherapies for example CBT requires the willingness for patients to think deeply about their mental problems which isn’t the case for behavioural therapies and self administered SD can be as effective as therapist guided SD making it cheaper and more accessible meaning that behavioural therapies are useful for children and people with learning difficulties.
But there are ethical issues with SD as it creates high levels of anxiety when patients are initially exposed which raises ethical issues and so questions appropriateness but it should be noted that virtual reality therapy does help resolve these issues.
There are also ethical issues with flooding as it’s highly traumatic and is rarely used and if not carefully administered it can be dangerous. It’s also not an appropriate treatment for every phobia and should be used with caution as some people actually have an increased fear after therapy and it’s not possible to predict when this will occur. Wolpe reported a case of a client whose anxiety levels intensified to such a degree that the flooding therapy resulted in her being hospitalised so some people may not be able to tolerate high levels of anxiety induced therapy and the risk of exciting therapy before calm and relaxed which is a problem as existing treatment before completion is likely to strengthen rather than weaken the phobia.
Outline and evaluate the cognitive approach to explaining depression?
A01 – becks negative triad model described how childhood experiences like continual parental criticism or rejection by others lead to negative cognitive schemas developing. activated in situations similar to those present when these schemas were learned.
- systematic negative schemas & cognitive biases like generalisation lead to depression
-negative schemas maintain negative triad of beliefs. These concern self eg im unattractive and boring, world eg no one wants my company and future eg ill always be on my own
A01 Ellis took different approach from Beck (cognitive triad) to explaining depression and started by explaining whats required for ‘good’ mental health. According to Ellis, good mental health is result of rational thinking which allows people to be happy and pain free, whereas depression is result of irrational thinking, which prevents us from being happy and pain free.
A01 ellis abc model
-abc model proposes when activating event (A) leads to an irrational belief (B) consequences of this (C) may be depression
-eg being fired at work (A) might lead to irrational belief (B) that company had it in for you which could lead to consequence (C) of depression
-musturbatory thinking is source of irrational beliefs such as “I must be approved of by important people” “I must do well or I am worthless” and “the world must give me happiness” people who hold these beliefs may become depressed
A01 An individual who holds such expectations is bound to be disappointed and is at risk of becoming depressed. An individual who fails an exam becomes depressed not because theyve failed exam but because they hold an irrational belief regarding that failure (e.g.’ I must do well so failing the exam means I’m stupid.’) In order to treat depression which arises out of negative thinking, such irrational thoughts need to be challenged and turned into more positive beliefs.
Weakness blames client rather than situational factors - cognitive approach suggests its client who is responsible for their disorder. gives client power to change way things are. - this stance may lead to client or therapist to overlook situational factors life events or family problems which may have contributed to mental disorder - strength of cognitive approach lies in its focus on clients life may also need to be considered.
Strengths-role of irrational thinking
- view depression linked to irrational thinking supported by hammen and krantz
- found depressed participants made more errors in logic when asked to interpret written material than did non-depressed participants. Bates et al found depressed participants given negative automatic thought statements became more depressed - research supports view negative thinking leads to depression. negative thinking may also be consequence of depression.
Strengths- research evidence supports cognitive explanation of depression.
Boury et al found patients with depression more likely to misinterpret info negatively (cognitive bias) and feel hopeless about future (negative triad), supports different components of Beck’s theory and idea cognitions involved in depression.
Weakness alternative explanations
-depression also be explained biologically in terms of genetic factors & neurotransmitters
-studies found low levels of neurotransmitter serotonin in depressed people. gene related to low levels of serotonin is 10 times more common in depressed people. Research shows drug therapies which raise serotonin levels are successful in treatment of depression - means neurotransmitters also play role in causing depression and so diathesis stress model could be a better approach to take
Supporting evidence Grazioli & Terry assessed 65 women of cognitive vulnerability, and found women they deemed to be more vulnerable were more likely to suffer with postnatal depression. showed cognitions can be seen before depression emerges, supports Becks theory
Practical applications- effectiveness of cbt supports usefulness of cognitive approach
-cbt consistently found to be best treatment for depression especially when used in conjunction with drug treatments eg cuijpers et al -if depression is alleviated by challenging irrational thinking suggests such thoughts had role in depression in first place.
Weakness cognitive explanations of depression criticised for being reductionist eg cognitive explanation states if individual thinks in negative way/has negative automatic thoughts likely to develop disorders like depression weakness because theory of depression ignores fact biological research has indicated depression can be down to low levels of neurotransmitter serotonin and cognitive approach seen to be too simplistic.
Issues and debates
Link to nature/ nuriure diathesis stress is a model od interaction between nurtutre and nature
Becks negative triad model could be described as how childhood experiences like continual parental criticism or rejection by others lead to negative cognitive schemas developing which are activated in situations similar to those present when these schemas were learned.
Systematic negative schemas and cognitive biases like generation lead to depression, negative schemas maintain a negative triad of beliefs, these concern the self for example I’m unattractive and boring or the world like saying no one wants my company and finally the future for example I’ll always be on my own.
Ellis took a different approach from beck to explaining depression and started by explaining what’s required for good mental health and according to Ellis good mental health is the result of rational thinking which allows people to be happy and pain free, whereas depression is the result of irrational thinking which prevents us from being happy and pain free.
Ellis abc model proposes that when an activating event (A) leads to an irrational belief (B) and consequences of this (C) may be depression for example being fired at work (A) might lead to an irrational belief (B) that the company had it in for you which could lead to the consequence (C) of depression. Musturbatory thinking is the source of irrational beliefs such as ‘’ I must be approved of by important people’’ or ‘’ I must do well or I am worthless’’ and ‘’ the world must give me happiness’’ and people who hold these beliefs may become depressed.
However an individual who holds such expectations is bound to be disappointed and is at risk of becoming depressed and an individual who fails an exam becomes depressed not because they’ve failed an exam but because they hold an irrational belief regarding that failure for example ‘I must do well so failing the exam means I’m stupid’. So in order to treat depression which arises out of negative thinking such irrational thoughts need to be challenged and turned into more positive beliefs.
A03:
Although the cognitive approach can sometimes blame the client rather than the situational factors as the approach suggests it’s the client who is responsible for their disorder which gives the client the power to change the way things are and this stance may lead to the client or therapist to overlook situational factors life events or family problems which may have contributed to a mental disorder therefore a strength of the cognitive approach lies in its focus on the clients life may also need to be considered.
But a strength of this approach is the role of irrational thinking as it’s view of depression is linked to irrational thinking which is supported by Hammen and Krantz who found that depressed participants made more errors in logic when asked to interpret written material than the non depressed participants. Bates et al also found that depressed participants who had given negative automatic thought statements became more depressed and research supports the view that negative thinking leads to depression and that negative thinking may also be the consequence of depression.
There is also research evidence that supports the cognitive explanation of depression as Boury et al found that patients with depression are more likely to misinterpret information negatively (cognitive bias) and feel hopeless about their future (negative triad) which supports the different components of becks theory and idea cognitions involved in depression.
There are also alternative explanations as depression may also be explained biologically in terms of genetic factors and neurotransmitters as studies have found low levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in depressed people and the gene related to low levels of serotonin is 10 times more common in depressed people. Research shows that drug therapies which raise serotonin levels are successful in the treatment of depression meaning that neurotransmitters also play a role in causing depression and so the diathesis stress model could be a better approach to take.
There is other supporting evidence by Grazioli and terry who assessed 65 women of cognitive vulnerability and found that women they deemed to be more vulnerable were more like to suffer with postnatal depression showing that cognitions can be seen before depression emerges which supports becks theory.
CBT also provides practical applications as the effectiveness of CBT supports the due filles of the cognitive approach as it’s consistently found to be the best treatment for depression especially when used in conjunction with drug treatments for example in a study done by Cuijupers et al who found that if depression is alleviated by challenging irrational thinking it suggests that such thoughts had a role in depression in the first place.
However cognitive explanations of depression have been criticised for being reductionist for example the cognitive explanation states that if an individual thinks in a negative way or has negative automatic thoughts they’re likely to develop disorders like depression which weakens the explanation because the theory of depression ignores the fact that biological research has indicated that depression can be down to the low level of the neurotransmitter serotonin and the cognitive approach is seen to be too simplistic.
There is another issue that links to the nature versus nurture debate with the diathesis stress model which is a model of interaction between nurture and nature and that if someone is biologically predisposed to developing a mental disorder it’s an environmental factor that triggers the development of that disorder for example if someone’s family member was depressed then it’s not always likely that person will become depressed but if an environmental factor that causes them distress happens then it’ll trigger that disorder to develop.
Outline and evaluate the cognitive approach to treating depression?
A01 – 2 different strands of CBT, based on Beck’s theory and Ellis’s ABC model.
-All CBT starts with initial assessment, in which patient and therapist identify patient’s problems.
-patient and therapist agree on set of goals, and plan of action to achieve goals. Both forms of CBT (Beck’s and Ellis’s) aim to identify negative & irrational thoughts, however approaches are different.
A01 Beck’s Cognitive Therapy
If therapist is using Beck’s cognitive therapy, they will help patient to identify negative thoughts in relation to themselves, world and future, using Beck’s negative triad.
-patient and therapist will work together to challenge irrational thoughts, by discussing evidence for & against them.
-patient encouraged test validity of negative thoughts & set homework challenge & test negative thoughts.
A01 CBT -ellis rational motive behaviour therapy (REBT) type of cognitive behavioural therapy aims turn irrational thoughts into rational thoughts & resolve emotional & behaviour problems -ellis model expended ABCDEF D disputing irrational thoughts & beliefs E effects of disputing & effective attitude to life F new feelings are produced -REBT focuses on challenging or disputing irrational self defeating thoughts & replacing them with effective rational beliefs. Logical disputing (does thinking this way make sense?) empirical disputing (what is the evidence for this belief) and pragmatic disputing (how is this belief likely to help me? Can be used
A01 CBT -clients complete homework assignments between therapy sessions like asking someone out on date when had feared rejection. Homework enables irrational beliefs to tested against reality (empirical disputing)
-behavioural activation encourages client to engage in pleasurable activities used to enjoy -therapists provide clients with unconditional positive regard to convince clients of value as humans. client to become more active since being active leads to rewards=antidote to depression.
Weakness CBT requires motivation. Patients with severe depression may not engage with CBT, or even attend sessions and treatment will be ineffective in treating patients. Alternate treatments, eg antidepressants, dont require same level of motivation & maybe more effective in these cases.problem for CBT, as it cant be used as sole treatment for severely depressed patients.
Strengths-research support for REBT
Ellis claimed 90% success rate for REBT in treatment of depression.review by cuijpers et al of 75 studies found CBT superior to no treatment
- ellis recognised that therapy wasnt always effective as some clients didnt put revised beliefs into action. Therapist competence also explains some variation in CBT outcomes (kuyken and tsivrikos)
- suggests REBT effective but effectiveness depends on both client & therapist.
Strengths- support for behavioural activation
-babyak et al randomly assigned people with depression to course of aerobic exercise antidepressant drug treatment or both
-3 groups exhibited significant improvement after 4 mths. exercise group significantly lower relapse rates than medication group
- shows change in physical activity can be beneficial treating depression
Weakness CBT criticised for overemphasis on role of cognitions. Some psychologists have criticised CBT, as suggests person’s irrational thinking is primary cause of depression and CBT doesnt take into account other factors. CBT ignores other factors/ circumstances might contribute to person’s depression. eg, patient whos suffering from domestic violence or abuse, doesnt need to change negative/irrational beliefs, but in fact needs to change circumstances., CBT would be ineffective in treating these patients until circumstances have changed.
Strength -alterative treatments available
- most popular treatment for depression use of antidepressant drugs like SSRIs drug therapies also require less effort by client than CBT
-drug treatment enables depressed client to cope better with demands of CBT review by cuijpers et al found CBT especially effective if used in conjunction with drug therapy
- suggests using both CBT & drugs might be best option
Strength all methods of treatment for mental disorder may be equally effective -luborsky et al reviewed 100 studies comparing different therapies & found only small differences between them in terms of effectiveness -sloane et al shows psychological therapies share many common factors like being able to talk to sympathetic person & express ones thoughts- lack of difference between psychotherapies might be result of commonalities they share aka dodo bird effect.
Contradictory evidence precise role of cognitive processes yet to be determined. not clear whether faulty cognitions are cause of psychopathology or consequence of it. Lewinsohn studied group of participants before any of them became depressed, found those later became depressed were no more likely to have negative thoughts than those who didnt develop depression.suggests hopeless & negative thinking may result of depression, rather than cause of it.
Ethical Issues RET is directive therapy aimed at changing cognitions sometimes quite forcefully. For some, this may be considered an unethical approach.
There are two different strands of CBT one based on becks theory and the other on Ellis ABC model. All CBT starts with an initial assessment in which the patient and therapist identify the patients problems then the patient and therapist agree on a set of goals and the plan of action to achieve the goals. Both forms of CBT (becks and Elliss) aim to identify the negative and irrational thoughts but the approach are different.
Becks cognitive therapy will help a patient to identify their negative thoughts in relation to themselves, the world and the future using becks negative triad. The patient and the therapist will work together to challenge these irrational thoughts by discussing evidence for and against them. The patient is encouraged to test the validity of their negative thoughts and they are set homework to challenge and test these negative thoughts.
Elliss rational motive behaviour therapy (REBT) is a type of cognitive behavioural therapy that aims to turn irrational thoughts into rational thoughts and resolve the emotional and behavioural problems. Elliss model was expanded to ABCDEF where D was disrupting irrational thoughts and beliefs and E was the effects of disputing and the effective attitude to life and F was the new feelings that are produced. REBT focuses on challenging or disputing the irrational self defeating thoughts and replacing them with effective rational beliefs. Logic disputing so does thinking this way make sense? And empirical disputing g so what is the evidence for this belief and pragmatic disputing so how is this belief likely to help me can all be used to help the patient.
With CBT clients complete homework assignments between therapy sessions like asking someone out on a date when they had feared rejection. The homework enables the irrational beliefs to be tested against the reality so empirical disputing. Behavioural activation encourages the client to engage in pleasurable activities they used to enjoy so the therapists provide the clients with an unconditional positive regard to convince the clients of value as humans which leads to client to becoming more active since being active leads to rewards which can be seen as an antidote to depression.
A03:
However what limits CBT is that it requires motivation and patients with severe depression may not engage with CBT or even attend sessions and the treatment will be ineffective in treating patients. But alternative treatments for example antidepressants dont require the same level of motivation and are maybe more effective in these cases which is a problem for CBT as it can’t be used a sole treatment for severely depressed patients.
However there is research support for REBT as Ellis claimed a 90% success rate for REBT in the treatment of depression and a review by Cuijpers et al of 75 studies found that CBT is superior to no treatment but Ellis recognised that therapy wasn’t always effective as some clients didn’t put their revised beliefs into action so therapist competence also explains that there is some variation in CBT outcomes as found by Kuyken and Tsivrikos suggesting that REBT is effective but the effectiveness depends on both the client and therapist.
There is also support for behavioural activation as a study conducted by Babyak et al who randomly assigned people with depression to do a course of aerobic exercise with or without an antidepressant drug treatment or both. The three groups exhibited signifiant improvement after four months the exercise group had significantly lower relapse rates than the medication group showing that a change in physical activity can be beneficial in treating depression.
Although CBT can be criticised for the overemphasis on the role of cognitions as some psychologists have criticised CBT because it suggests that a persons irrational thinking is the primary cause of depression and CBT doesn’t take into account other factors that might contribute to a persons depression for example a patient who’s suffering from domestic violence or abuse doesn’t need to change their negative/irrational beliefs but in fact their circumstances so CBT would be an ineffective treatment for these patients until their circumstances have changed.
However a person suffering from depression could implement both alternative treatments that are available like the most popular which is the use of antidepressant drugs such as SSRIs so the use of drug therapies also require less effort by the client than in CBT. Drug treatment enables a depressed client to cope better with the demands of CBT and a review by Cuijpers et al found that CBT is especially effective is it’s used in conjunction with drug therapy suggesting that using both CBT and drugs might be the best option.
Although all methods of treatment for a mental disorder may be equally effective, Luborsky et al reviewed 100 studies comparing different therapies and found only small differences between them in terms of effectiveness and Sloane et al shows that psychological therapies that share many common factors like being able to talk to a sympathetic person and express ones thoughts so the lack of difference between psychotherapies might be the result of commonalities they share aka the dodo bird effect.
There is contradictory evidence for the precise role of the cognitive processes yet to be determined so it’s not clear whether the faulty cognitions are the cause of psychopathology or the consequence of it as Lewinsohn studied a group of participants before any of them became depressed and found that those who later became depressed were no more likely to have negative thoughts than those who didn’t develop depression suggesting that hopeless and negative thinking may be the result of depression rather than the cause of it.
There are some ethical issues that REBT is a directive therapy aimed at changing a persons cognition can sometimes be done quite forcefully causing a person to become distressed and anxious which is very stress inducing and for some this may be considered an unethical approach.
Outline and evaluate the biological approach to explaining OCD?
A01 – genetic explanations
- COMT gene regulates dopamine production may contribute to OCD less active form of this gene more common in OCD patients & produces higher dopamine levels
- SERT gene may contribute to OCD by reducing serotonin levels . a mutation of this gene found in 2 unrelated families where 6 of 7 members had OCD (ozaki et al)
-diathesis stress each gene only creates vulnerability (a diathesis) for ocd. Other factors like childhood experience provide trigger (stress) for condition to develop
A01 -neural explanations
-high dopamine levels and low serotonin levels are associated with OCD
-high doses of drugs that enhance dopamine induce stereotypical movements in rats whilst antidepressant drugs which increase serotonin activity reduce symptoms of OCD
- orbitofrontal cortex (ofc) of frontal lobes & caudate nucleus part of the basil ganglia thought to be abnormal people with OCD. Damage to caudate nucleus fails to supress minor worry signals from OCF creating worry circuit.
A01 Neurotransmitters
serotonin plays key role in operation of these structures & low serotonin levels may cause them to malfunction dopamine is basil ganglia’s main neurotransmitter so high dopamine levels lead to over activity of this region
Further support role of serotonin in OCD research examining anti-depressants, found drugs which increase level of serotonin effective treating patients with OCD.
neurotransmitter dopamine also implicated in OCD, with higher levels of dopamine being associated with some of symptoms of OCD particular compulsive behaviours.
A01 Brain Structures- 2 brain regions implicated in OCD, basal ganglia & orbitofrontal cortex. -basal ganglia is brain structure involved in multiple processes, including coordination of movement. Patients who suffer head injuries in this region often develop OCD-like symptoms, following recovery., Max et al found when basal ganglia -disconnected from frontal cortex during surgery, OCD-like symptoms reduced, providing support for role of basal ganglia in OCD. -brain region associated with OCD is OFC, region which converts sensory info into thoughts & actions. PET scans found higher activity in OFC in patients with.
-1 suggestion is that heightened activity in OFC increases conversion of sensory info to actions (behaviours) results in compulsions. increased activity prevents patients from stopping behaviours.
Weakness –reductionist biological explanation for OCD ignores other factors & is reductionist. eg, biological approach doesnt take account cognitions & learning. Some psychologists suggest OCD may be learnt through classical conditioning and maintained through operant conditioning stimulus (eg, dirt) associated with anxiety and this association then maintained through operant conditioning, where person avoids dirt & continually washes hands. hand washing reduces anxiety & negatively reinforces their compulsions.
Strengths-evidence for genetic basis of OCD comes from family & twin studies
-nestadt et al found people with first degree relative with OCD had 5x greater lifetime risk of OCD themselves compared to risk levels in general population - meta analysis found identical monozygotic twins more than twice as likely to develop OCD if twin had disorder then 2 non identical twins dizygotic twins (billett et al) - evidence supports genetic basis for OCD but concordance rates never 100% so environmental factors must play a role.
Strengths- research support genes & role of OFC
-menzies et al used MRI produced images of brain activity & OCD patients & immediate family members without OCD
-OCD patients and close relatives had reduced grey matter in key regions of brain including OFC
- supports view inherited anatomical difference may lead to OCD in certain individuals in future brain scans may be used to detect OCD risk
Weakness - factor isnt completely gentic and environment also plays role in development of OCD and OCD isnt completely inherited because children don’t have same OCD as parents because of environmental factors
supporting evidence for neural explanation. Antidepressants work on serotonin system proved effective reducing symptoms of OCD. those with other biological condition shown symptoms of OCD. Suggests biological processes cause these conditions are responsible for OCD.
Practical applications
practical applications gene therapy and gene screening
Weakness other disorders with genetic links to ocd -research suggests OCD may be expression of genes linked to other disorders like tourettes & autism & so would be characteristic of number of different disorders -pauls & leckman studied patients with tourettes syndrome and concluded OCD is 1 form of expression of same gene that determines tourettes. Obsessional and compulsive behaviour also found in children with autism & people with anorexia nervosa - supports view not specific genes unique to OCD merely act as predisposing factor towards obsessive type behaviour
Issues and debates
Nature vs nurture
There are genetic explanations to explaining OCD for example the COMT gene which regulates dopamine production may contribute to OCD which is a less active form of this gene and is more common in OCD patients and produces higher dopamine levels. The SERT gene may also contribute to OCD by reducing serotonin levels and a mutation of this gene was found in two unrelated families where six of the seven members had OCD as found by Ozaki et al. Another explanation is the diathesis stress model where each gene only creates a vulnerability (a diathesis) for OCD and other factors like childhood experiences provide a trigger (stress) for the condition to develop.
Other explanations like neural explanations where high dopamine levels and low serotonin levels are associated with OCD an example of this is where high doses of drugs that enhance dopamine induce stereotypical movements in rats whilst antidepressant drugs which increase serotonin activity that reduce symptoms of OCD. The orbitofrontal cortex cortex (ofc) of the frontal lobes and caudate nucleus that are part of the basil ganglia is thought to be abnormal in people with OCD and damage to the caudate nucleus fails to suppress the minor worry signals from the OFC creating a worry circuit.
The neurotransmitter serotonin also plays a key role in the operation of these structures and low serotonin levels may cause them to malfunction and dopamine is the basil ganglias main neurotransmitter so high dopamine levels lead to over activity of this region. Further support for the role of serotonin in OCD research examining antidepressants found that drugs which increase the level of serotonin are effective in treating patients with OCD. Dopamine is also implicated in OCD with higher levels of dopamine being associated with some of the symptoms of OCD particularly compulsive behaviours.
Brain structures can also explain OCD as there are two brain regions implicate in OCD the basil ganglia and the orbitofrontal cortex. The basil ganglia is the brain structure that’s involved in multiple processes including the coordination of movement. Patients who suffer from head injuries in this region often develop OCD like symptoms following recovery as found by Max et al when the basil ganglia was disconnected from frontal cortex during surgery OCD like symptoms reduced providing support foe the role of basal ganglia in OCD. Another brain region associated with OCD is the orbitofrontal cortex which convers sensory information into thoughts and actions as found by PET scans with higher activity in the orbitofrontal cortex in patients with OCD. One suggestion is that the heightened activity in the OFC is that it increases the conversion of sensory information to actions which results in compulsions and increased activity prevents patients from stopping the behaviours.
A03:
However the explanations for OCD could be considered biologically reductionist as it ignores other factors for example the biological approach doesn’t take into account cognitions and learning. Some psychologists suggest that OCD may be learnt through classical conditioning and maintained through operant conditioning with a stimulus for example dirt being associated with anxiety and this association is then maintained through operant conditioning where a person avoids dirt and continually washes their hands as hand washing reduces anxiety and negatively reinforces their compulsions.
There is also evidence for a genetic basis of OCD which comes from family and twin studies as found by Nestadt et al who discovered that people with a first degree relative with OCD had a 5 times greater lifetime risk of OCD themselves compared to risk levels in the general population as a meta analysis found that identical monozygotic twins are more than twice as likely to develop OCD if the twin had the disorder than the two non identical dizygotic twins as conducted by Billett et al therefore this evidence further supports a genetic basis for OCD but concordance rates are never 100% so environmental factors must play a role.
Other research support for genes and the role of OFC comes from Menzies et al who used MRI produced images of brain activity and immediate family members without OCD where the OCD patients and close relatives had reduced grey matter in key regions of the brain including the OFC which further supports the view that an inherited anatomical difference may lead to OCD in certain individuals in future brain scans may be used to detect an OCD risk.
The factor for explaining OCD isn’t completely genetic and the environment also plays a role in the development of OCD and OCD isn’t completely inherited because children don’t have the same OCD as their parents because of environmental factors which supports evidence for a neural explanations. Antidepressants work on the serotonin system which has proved effective at reducing symptoms of OCD and those with other biological condition has shown symptoms of OCD suggesting that the biological processes that cause these conditions are responsible for OCD.
There are practical explanations from explanations of OCD like gene therapy and gene screening. Gene therapy is an experimental technique that uses genes to treat or prevent diseases and in the future this technique may allow doctors to treat a disorder by inserting a gene into a patients cells instead of using drugs or surgery. A gene screening is an experimental technique used to identify and select for individuals who possess a phenotype of interest in a mutagenised population.
However there are other disorders with genetic links to OCD as research suggests that OCD may be an expression of genes linked to other disorders like Tourette’s and autism and so would be a characteristic of a number of different disorders as Paul’s and leckman studied patients with Tourette’s syndrome and concluded that OCD is one form of an expression of the same gene that determines Tourette’s. Obsessive and compulsive behaviour is also found in children with autism and people with anorexia nervous supporting the view that there’s no specific genes unique to OCD but merely act as a predisposing factor towards an obsessive type behaviour.
Another weakness is the issue of nature versus nurture so the idea that OCD could either be an inherited trait from a family member or an environmental reason that lead to the development of OCD as it’s difficult to measure OCD purely by the idea of a biological reason or an environmental reason and many people would argue that due to individual differences it can either be inherited or a learnt behaviour or both of those reasons.
Outline and evaluate the biological approach to treating OCD?
A01 – drug therapies
-SSRI antidepressants eg Prozac most commonly use drugs to reduce anxiety associated with OCD . block reuptake of serotonin in presynaptic membrane increasing serotonin concentration at receptor sites on postsynaptic membrane
-since low serotonin levels implicated in brains worry circuit increasing serotonin may have effect of normalising circuit
A01 tricyclic antidepressants eg anafranil block transporter mechanism that reabsorbs both serotonin & noradrenaline into presynaptic cells that released them. effects to increase serotonin & noradrenaline levels.
tricylics more side effects than SSRIs and so used as second line treatment when SSRIs havent been effective
-benzodiazepine anti anxiety drugs eg Valium also used to treat OCD .they enhance activity of gamma aminobutyric acid which has general quietening effect on many brain scans
A01 anti anxiety drugs BZs react with GABA receptors on receiving neuron. makes harder for neuron to be stimulated by other neurotransmitters. neurons activity slowed down & induces feelings of relaxation.
A01 other drugs
-recent research found D-cycloserine has effect on reducing anxiety and may be effective treatment for OCD particularly when used in conjunction with psychotherapy. D-cycloserine is antibiotic used in treatment of tuberculosis. also appears to enhance transmission of GABA and reduces anxiety eg Kushner et al.
Weakness –all drugs have side effects
-nausea. headache & insomnia common side effects of SSRIs soomro et al. tricyclics have worse side effects like hallucinations & irregular heartbeat
-BZs can cause increased aggressiveness & LTM impairment. also addictive so BZs should be limited to maximum of 4wks of treatment eg ashton
- side effects can be enough to make patient stop taking drug and limit usefulness of drugs as treatments for OCD
Strengths-considerable evidence for effectiveness of drug treatments
-soomro et al reviewed 17 studies of
use of SSRIs with OCD patients & found them to be more effective than placebos in reducing symptoms of OCD up to 3mths after treatment - most studies only last 3 to 4mths eg Koran et al and many patients relapse within few weeks if medication stopped eg marina et al - while drug treatments have shown to be effective in short term may not provide lasting cure
Strengths- drug treatment preferred to other treatments - advantage of drug therapies is involve little input from user in terms of effort & time & require little monitoring by doctors
-in contrast therapies like CBT require patient to attend regular meetings and put considerable thought into tackling problems and requiring therapists time
- benefits mean drug therapies more economical for health service than psychological therapies
Weakness- effectiveness of drugs may be exaggerated by publication bias
-turner et al claims theres publication bias toward studies that show positive outcome of antidepressant drugs in treatment of OCD.
- Consequence of publication bias is research may exaggerate beneficial effects of drug. drug companies also have strong interest in success of their products and much research is funded by these companies
-selective publication can lead doctors to make inappropriate treatment decisions may not be in best interest of patients
Strength biological treatments cost effective
-Biological treatments, including anti-depressants & anti-anxiety drugs, relatively cost effective in comparison to psychological treatments, like CBT., many doctors prefer use of drugs over psychological treatments, as=cost effective solution for treating OCD and depression beneficial for health service providers.
Weakness Some cases of OCD follow trauma - OCD can have range of causes, & sometimes is response to traumatic life event. May not be appropriate to use drugs when treating cases that follow trauma.
Weakness drug treatments criticised for treating symptoms of disorder and not cause. SSRIs work by increasing levels of serotonin in brain, which reduces anxiety and alleviates symptoms of OCD, it doesnt treat underlying cause of OCD
-once patient stops taking drug, theyre prone to relapse, suggesting psychological treatments may be more effective, as long-term solution.
Weakness Biological therapies like drugs used to treat OCD often just treat symptoms and dont cure mental illness
Eg stop people feeling anxious which often prevents them from carrying out their obsessions and compulsions – eg person stops worrying about what will happen if don’t flick light switch on & off 10 times. weakness because drugs arent removing root cause of OCD but masking symptoms. If individual stops taking drugs OCD and symptoms will return.
The biological approach to treating OCD involves drug therapies including SSRI antidepressants for example Prozac which is the most commonly used drugs to reduce anxiety that’s associated with OCD it works by blocking the reuptake of serotonin in the presynaptic membrane increasing the serotonin concentration at the receptor sites on the post synaptic membrane and since low serotonin levels are implicated in the brains worry circuit that’s increasing the serotonin it may have an effect of normalising the circuit.
Tricyclic antidepressants for example anafranil block the transported mechanism that reabsorbs both serotonin and noradrenaline into presynaptic cells that released them which effects the increase to serotonin and noradrenaline levels. Tricyclics has more side effects than SSRIs and so is used as a second line treatment when SSRIs haven’t been effective. Valium is also used to treat OCD by enhancing activity of the gamma aminobutyric acid which had a general quietening effect on many brain scans.
Anita anxiety drugs like benzodiazepines react with the GABA receptors on the receiving neuron which makes it harder for a neuron to be stimulated by other neurotransmitters and the neurons activity is slowed down and induced feelings of relaxation.
Further research has been done on other drugs like D-cycloserine which has the effect on reducing anxiety and may be an effective treatment for OCD particularly when used in conjunction with psychotherapy. D-cycloserine itself is an antibiotic used in the treatment of tuberculosis and also appears to enhance the transmission of GABA and reduces anxiety as seen in the study done by kushners et al.
A03:
However whilst drug treatment may be effective all drugs have side effects like nausea, headache and insomnia which are the most common side effects of SSRIs as seen in research by soomro et al. Tricyclics are know to have the worse side effects like hallucinations and irregular heartbeat. Other drugs like benzodiazepines can cause increase aggressiveness and long term memory impairment they’re also addictive so benzodiazepines should be limited to the maximum of four weeks of treatment. Side effects of drugs can be enough to make the patients stop taking the drug and limit the usefulness of drugs as treatment for OCD.
However there is considerable evidence for the effectiveness of drug treatments for example in soomro et als research they reviewed 17 studies of the use of SSRIs with OCD patients and found them to be more effective than placebos in reducing the symptoms of OCD for up to three months after treatment whereas most studies only last three to four months for example in Koran et al study and many patients relapse within a few weeks if the medication is stopped as seen in Marina et als research and while drug treatments have shown to be effective in the short term it may not provide a lasting cure.
Nowadays drug treatments are preferred to other treatments due to the advantage of drug therapies as it involves little input from the user in terms of effort, time and it requires little monitoring by doctors whereas therapies like CBT require the patients to attend regular meetings and put considerable thought into tackling problems and requiring the therapists time so the benefits of drug therapies are they’re more economical for the health service than psychological therapies and also don’t require time and patience.
But the effectiveness of drugs may be exaggerated by publication bias as Turner et al claims there’s publication bias toward studies that show the positive outcome of antidepressant drugs in the treatment of OCD. A consequence of publication bias is that the research may exaggerate the beneficial effects of drugs so drug companies also have a strong interest in the success of their products and much of the research is funded by these companies and selective publication can lead doctors to make inappropriate treatment decisions which may not be in the best interest of the patients.
However biological treatments are cost effective as biological treatments including antidepressants and anti anxiety drugs are relatively cost effective in comparison to psychological treatments like CBT and many doctors prefer the use of drugs over psychological treatments as it’s a cost effective solution for treating OCD and depression which is beneficial for health service providers.
Some cases of OCD follow trauma as OCD can have a range of causes and sometimes it is a response to a traumatic life event so it may not be appropriate to use drugs when treating cases that follow trauma and it may be more beneficial to use CBT.
Drug treatments are also criticised for only treating the symptoms of the disorder and not the actual cause as SSRIs work by increasing levels of serotonin in the brain which reduces anxiety and alleviates the symptoms of OCD but it doesn’t treat the underlying cause of OCD. Once the patient stops taking the drug they’re prone to relapse suggesting that psychological treatments may be more effective as a long term solution.
Following on biological therapies like drugs that are used to treat OCD often just treat the symptoms and dont cure the mental illness for example stop people feeling anxious which often prevents them from carrying out their obsessions and compulsions for example a person stops worrying about what will happen if they don’t flick the light switch on and off 10 times which is a weakness because the drugs aren’t removing the root cause of OCD but instead masking symptoms so if an individual stops taking drugs the OCD and symptoms will return.
