EXAM STUDY SET 2: studies Flashcards
Baumgartner
Tested the role of oxytocin in trust. participants played a monetarily rooted trust game that required them to take risks and trust another person or computer. participants who were given increased oxytocin were more trusting of human partners, but when they were asked to play against a computer their trust levels were the same as those who did not receive extra oxytocin.
Martinez & Kesner
One group of rats was given acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter, while another group was given physostigmine (acetylcholine’s opposite). Memory of a maze was significantly better in the acetylcholine rats, leading researchers to believe this neurotransmitter is connected to the hippocampus (coupled with the information that the hippocampus has many receptors for this neuron and Alzheimer’s patients have lower levels of acetylcholine).
Weissman
The study looked at three generations over a 20-year period to determine the level of inheritance of depression and anxiety disorders. The findings showed that depression in grandparents was a greater predictor of depression in grandchildren than depression in parents.
Zak
studied the effects of testosterone on aggression. male participants used a lotion containing either placebo or testosterone before playing a trust game that involved sharing money. males who received testosterone were 27% less generous with their money, showing that testosterone decreases trust and increases selfishness.
Maguire
MRI scans were taken of participants who drove taxis and were compared against scans of those who did not drive taxis, showing that taxi drivers had a larger hippocampus. this varied directly with the time spent as a taxi driver.
Lashley
Trained rats to run through a maze and induced brain damage to find which part of the brain learned the maze pattern. He found that the rats’ abilities were merely hindered suggesting that the memory/learning of the maze was in multiple areas of the brain. Evidence against localization.
Wedekind
Aimed to test whether scent conveyed information to women. Males wore t-shirts for two days to make them sweaty, and women were asked to blindly rank these shirts by attractiveness. The women ranked people with more diverse MHC genes (more diverse MHC = better immune system) than them higher, showing that these genes were a factor.
Brown & Kulik
40 black and 40 white Americans filled out a questionnaire asking about the deaths of public figures (like Kennedy and MLK) and the deaths of loved ones. most participants had detailed memories of these events, but 75% of black participants had flashbulbs of MLK’s death compared to 33% white
subject to the social desirability effect, replicable (increases reliability), level of emotion can’t be quantified, can’t determine the role of rehearsal in the creation of the memory, difficult to generalize
Loftus/Palmer
the 45 participants were split into 5 groups and each watched a video of a traffic accident. they were then asked to give a short account of the video before taking a questionnaire with questions like “how fast were the cars going when they _____ each other?” The verb was changed, and this affected the speed people guessed and how gruesome the accident they recalled was. people’s memory can be changed with context, anchoring effect
confounding variables were controlled, not generalizable (experiment performed on students only), participants were aware they were in an experiment
Cole/Schribner
Participants from Liberia and the US took tests based on memorizing words in either list form or story form. Liberian children performed far better in the story form and US kids performed much better on the list form.
Repeated measures design, order effects bias possible
Asch
Showed participants a picture with three lines and asked them to say which line matched the length of a control line. The test was taken in groups of 6, with 5 of the participants being confederates told to say the same wrong answer. The actual participant conformed to the confederates more, proving the SIT of conformity. When the participant was allowed to write their answers down (the confederates still spoke the wrong answer) they conformed less, but still some.
Tajfel
Boys first rated paintings to increase group belonging before being divided into groups. These groups then played an economic game in which they awarded points to boys in their group and the other group, and boys consistently gave more points to the group they were in than the group they weren’t.
Sampling bias (only british schoolboys), lack of ecological validity (not a realistic situation), highly controlled, reliable, and replicable
Zimbardo
People were randomly allocated into groups of prisoner and guard. They were in a simulated prison for 3 days before the experiment was shut down for ethical violations. Prisoners and guards conformed to their role quickly, with the guards treating the prisoners inhumanely and the prisoners starting to believe that they had done something wrong. This is due to social attribution theory.
Unethical so it hasn’t been replicated, men only
Bandura
children were exposed to videos of adults who either exerted physical aggression on a bobo doll, gently played with the bobo doll, or were shown no video at all and researchers observed their reactions when placed in a room with a bobo doll. Children typically exhibited the behaviors they watched, which is the basis for Bandura’s social learning theory. 88% imitated the aggressive behavior.
High level of control
Darley/Gross
Participants watched a girl take an intelligence test without viewing her answers or the test itself. They were then told that she was either poor or rich and asked to guess the score she would receive on the test. Those who were told she was rich predicted a higher score.
Possibility of demand characteristics, but high level of control and replicability
