Evaluation Flashcards
Hofling et al
Studied nurses on a hospital ward and found levels of obedience to unjustified demands by doctors was very high with 21/22 nurses obeying which suggests Milgram’s findings can be generalised to other situations
Strength - Milgram’s research
Le Jeu de la Mort (The Game of Death)
A documentary about reality tv in France included a replication of Milgram’s study where contestants believed they were paid to give electric shock to other participants who were in fact actors.
Results= 80% of participants delivered the maximum 460 volts to an apparently unconscious man - behaviour was almost identical to that of Milgram’s research which support his conclusion and that his findings were not an one-off chance occurrence
Strength - Milgram’s research
Orne and Holland internal validity
In Milgrams variations participants worked out the truth especially the part where the experimenter is replaced by a member of the public because it appeared so contrived (made up) so participants saw through the deception
Limitation - Milgram’s research + variations
Proximity
Location
Uniform
Dissenter
Proximity = 20.5% (telephone) Location = 46% Uniform = 20% Dissenter = 10%
Bickman
Three confederates ask people to pick up litter:
1) wearing a jacket and tie
2) milkman’s outfit
3) security guard’s uniform.
People were twice as likely to obey the assistant dressed as the security guard than the one dressed in jacket and tie
Mandel
Mandel argues that Milgram’s research offers an excuse or ‘alibi’ for evil behaviour. It is offensive to holocaust survivors to suggest that the Naxis were simply obeying orders and were victims of the holocaust to suggest that the is were simply obeying orders and were victims themselves of situational variables and that anyone faced with a similar situation would have behaved in the same way runs the risk of trivialising (justifying/normalising) genocide.
Limitation - Variations of Milgram
Blass and Schmitt
showed a flim of milgram’s study to students and asked them to identify who they felt was responsible. Results = the students blamed the ‘experimenter’ who was top of the hierarchy (therefore he had legitimate authority) and due to expert authority (because he was a scientist). They reconsidged legitimate authority as a cayse of obedience supporting this explanation
Strength - Legitimacy of authority
Hoffling et al - legitimacy of authority
Doesnt support Hofling et al’s study: the agentic state predicts that nurses should have showen levels of anxiety similar to milgrams participants as they understood their role in a destructive process but this was not the case so the agentic shift can only account for some situations of obedience
Limitation - Agentic shift
Control of variables in Milgram’s variations:
Control of variables in Milgram’s variations:
Milgram variations systematically altered one variable at a time (such as proximity) to see the effect on the level of obedience. All other procedures and variables were replicated again with more than 1000 participants in total. This demonstrates greater internal validity and that the findings were not just one-off chance events
Milgram and Elms
conducted interviews with participants who were highly obedient in milgram’s study and found they were significantly more authoiran on the F-scale than disobedient participants however this is a correlation and cannot prove the conclusion that the authoritarian personality causes obedience
Christie and Jahoda
F-scale measures the tendency towards an extreme form of rightwing ideology and this is politically bias as left wing authoritarianism e.g. russian bolshevism or chinese maoism also emphasise complete obedience to authority which is a limitation of adorno’s theory because it can not a comprehensive explanation that can account for obedience across the whole political spectrum
Limitation - Authoritarian personality
Asch’s research
found that in one of the variations of his line study, the introduction of an ally caused conformity levels to drop sharply from 33% to 5.5%.
Allen and Levine
found that conformity decreased when there was one dissenter in an Asch-type study (even if the dissenter wore thick glasses and was no position to judge) which shows resistance is not motivated by what someone says but because it enable someone to be free from the pressure of ‘dissenting;
Holland
Repeated Milgram’s study and found 37% of internals did not continue to the highest shock level compared to 23% externals
Strength - internal locus of
Twenge et al
analysed data and found over a 40-year span (1960-2002) people have become more resistant to social influence but also more external. If resistance is linked to locus of control people should become more internal which challenges the link of LOC and resistant behaviour
Limitation - internal locus of
Moscovici et al
First = Two confederates answered green for each of the slides = 8.42% responding with green
Second = Confederates answered green 24 times and blue 12 times = inconsistent responses
1.25% of the participants’ answers were green
Wood et al
Wood et al who carried out a meta-analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities who were seen as being consistent were the most influential which suggests consistency is a major factor
Gilroy et al
found that patients with arachnophobia who were treated with systematic desensitisation were less fearful than those in a control group who were only taught using relaxation techniques. This shows that systematic desensitisation is a more successful long-term treatment for phobias.
Strength - systematic desensitisation
Symptom substitution - Phobias
Symptom substitution: A common criticism for both treatments of phobias is based on the Freudian theory that if one phobia is treated, another may appear in its place e.g phobia of snakes replaced by a phobia of trains
All symptoms of mental illness are simply a reflection of an underlying unconscious conflict.
Genetic explanation to OCD - Lewis + Taylor
Taylor analysed findings of previous studies and found
that up to 230 different genes may be involved in OCD
Genes in relation to OCD also include those associated with the action of dopamine/ serotonin regulation
Lewis Observed that out of his OCD patients - 37% had parents with OCD and 21% had siblings with OCD which suggests OCD runs in families
Nestadt et al
Reviewed previous twin studies and found 68% of identical twins shared OCD as opposed to 31% of non-identical twuns which strongly suggests a genetic
Cromer et al
Cromer et al found that over half the OCD patients in their sample had a traumatic event occur in their past and OCD was more severe with those who had more than one trauma. This suggests OCD cannot be entirely genetic
Soomoro et al
Reviewed studies comparing SSRIs to placebos in the treatment of OCD and concluded all 17 studies showed significantly better results for SSRIs than placebo conditions
Goldacre
Believes that evidence favouring drug treatments is biased because the research is sponsored by drug companies who do not report all the evidence and supress any results that do not support the drug they are marketing. Currently many drug companies do not publish all of their results and may indeed be supressing evidence. This suggests that the data on the effectiveness of drugs may not be trustworthy
Guiton et al
found that chickens that imprinted on yellow washing up gloves would try to mate with them as adults (as Lorenz predicted) but with experience eventually learned to prefer mating with other chickens which suggests that the impact of mating behaviour is not permanent as Lorenz believed
Harlow - practical value
Practical value:
Harlow’s insight has important applications in a range of practical contexts e.g. it has helped social workers (such as Howe) understand risk factors in child neglect/abuse and how to intervene to prevent it
Dollard and Miller
Proposed that the caregiver-infant attachment can be explained by learning theory. Their approach is sometimes called ‘cupboard love’ approach because it emphasis the importance of the caregiver as the provider of food
Brazleton et al
conducted an experiment where primary attachment figures were instructed to ignore their babies’ signals (their social releasers). The babies showed some distress but when the figures continued to ignore the baby, some responded by curling up and lying motionless. The fact that the responded so strongly so supports Bowlby’s ideas about the significance of infant social behaviour in eliciting caregiving
Strength - Bowlby’s explanation of attachmen
Bailey et al
assesed mothers with one-year old babies: using interviews to test the quality of their attachment to their own mothers and then using observations to assess the attachment of these mothers with their own babies. They found that mothers who reported poor attachment to their own parents were classified as poor according to the observations.
Bick et al
Bick et al found 94% agreement on attachment type between trained Strange Situation observers
What is temperament
Temperament is the child’s genetically influenced personality. Some temperament researchers (e.g. Kagan) suggest some babies are more sociable than others due to their genetic make-up and these temperamental differences infleuces the personality of a child more than behaviour of the caregiver
Main and Soloman
pointed out that a minority of children display atypical attachments that do not fall with types A, B, C behaviour. This atypical attachment is know as disorganised attachment and disorganised children display an odd mix of resistant and avoidant behaviours.
Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg
: Meta-analysis over the findings of 32 studies of attachment behaviour by examining over 2000 Strange Situation classifications in eight different countries
other supporting studies of cultural variations - strange situation conducted in other countries
Italy, Simonella et al
50% were securely attached
36% were insecure-avoidant
Increasing numbers of mothers of very young children use professional childcare so many children are used to being separated from their mothers
Korea, Jin et al
Most infants securely attached
Out of those who insecurely attached: most were resistant and only one classified as insecure
Similar to japan which has a collectivistic culture - Japanese children are very rarely left by their mother so the distress they show when she leaves is probably more due to shock
Conclusion: Cultural upbringing determines the attachment type
Ijzendoorn and Sagi’s analysis
Tokyo – distributions of attachment type were similar to Western ones
Rural areas in Japan – more insecure-resistant individuals
Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg research was comparing countries, not cultures - there is more difference in attachment within countries
Bowlby – The 44 Juvenile Thieves’ study
Procedure: A natural experiment where case studies were completed on the backgrounds of 44 adolescents were compared to a control group of 44 adolescents who didn’t steal.
Results: 17/44 of the thieves had experienced frequent separations from their mothers before the age of two. 14/17 of the thieves were diagnosed as ‘affectionless psychopaths’ (they didn’t care about how their actions affected
Goldfarb
Procedure: Goldfarb followed 30 orphaned children to age 12. Half of the sample had been fostered by four months of age whilst the other half remained in an orphanage. At 12 their IQ was tested
The fostered group had an average IQ of 96 whilst the group that remained in the orphanage averaged only 68
Lewis - bowlby
partially replicated the 44 thieves study on a larger looking at 500 young people found that in her sample, a history of early prolonged separation from the mother did not predict criminality or difficulty formed close relationships which suggests other factors may affect the same outcome of early maternal deprivation
Rutter’s ERA (English And Romanian Adoptee) study -
Findings: IQ - cognitive development
Adopted before 6 months
mean IQ at age 11 = 102
Adopted after 6 months and 2 years
mean IQ at age 11 = 86
Adopted after 2 years
mean IQ at age 11 = 77
Myron-Wilson and Smith
assessed attachment type and bullying involvement using questionnaires in 196 children aged 7-11 from London
Results:
Secure children were very likely to be not involved in bullying
Insecure-avoidant (type A) children were most likely to be victims
Insecure-resistant (type C) children were most likely to be bullies
support for internal working model affecting later rs
Hazen and Shaver
Analysed 620 replis to a ‘love quiz’ printed in an American local newspaper about the relationships formed by respondents
Findings: those reporting secure attachments were the most likely to have good and longer lasting relationships whilst the avoidant respondents tended to reveal jealously + fear of intimacy
Clark and Clark
Describe the influence of infant attachment on later relations as probabilistic as people are not doomed to have bad relationships because they had attachment problems, they just have a greater risk of problems. This research may create expectations in individuals and their partners and the health services that children/adults who have experienced early separation/privation are doomed not to recover and such expectations may be self-fulfilling
Lieberman
WMM implies that all spatial information is linked to visual information
Points out blind people have excellent spatial awareness so the VSS should be separated into two components - one for visual and other for spatial
Fisher et al
witnesses reported greater detail in their accounts of crimes when American detectives had been trained to use the technique.
Köhnken et al
Found an 81% increase of correct information but also 61% increase of incorrect information (false positives) recalled when the CI was used compared to the standard interview.
Milne and Bull
Found a combination of report everything and context reinstatement produced better recall than any of other conditions which confirmed some parts of the CI are more useful than others.
Craik and Watkins
Found that the type of rehearsal matters more. Two types - maintenance rehearsal does not transfer information into LTM, it just maintains it in STM.
Elaborative rehearsal is needed for LTM which occurs when you link information to existing knowledge
Shallice and Warrington
studied a patient known as KF whose short-term memory for digits that were read to him was very poor but his recall was better when he read the digits out loud to himself.
Jacobs
Developed the digit-span technique, where a participant has to immediately recall a sequence of letters or numbers which increased by one letter or number with each trial. The mean amount of letters that could be correctly recalled was 7.3, and for numbers it was 9.3.
Peterson and Peterson
24 participants (psychology students) recall trigrams (meaningless three-consonant syllables) presented one at a time and had to be recalled after intervals of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds - participants counted backwards to prevent rehearsal
After 3 seconds 80% of the trigrams were recalled correctly.
After 6 seconds this fell to 50%.
After 18 seconds less than 10% of the trigrams were recalled correctly.
Baddely et al
Study of dual-task performance - Participants had more difficulty doing two visual tasks (tracking a light and describing the letter F) then doing both a visual and verbal task.
The increased difficulty is because both visual tasks compete for the same ‘slave system’ whilst a verbal and visual task uses different stores so no competition
Strength - WMM
