How each core study relates to the area/perspective Flashcards
Milgram (1963)
Obedience
Social approach because the results show how pressure from another
person could lead people to administer potentially fatal electric shocks to
another individual and how they could be led to do this in spite of their
evident discomfort. Included because of the importance of its subject
matter and because of the way in which it inspired so much other research
in the area of obedience. Furthermore, Milgram emphasised situational
rather than individual explanations.
Bocchiaro
Disobedience and
whistleblowing
develop a new way to investigate obedience
experimentally. Similar to Milgram in revealing high levels of obedience,
but a good contrast in that this study was conducted in the Netherlands;
as it also sought to investigate if there were any personality differences
distinguishing those who were obedient, disobedient or prepared to
be whistle-blowers, it challenges a purely social approach to explaining
behaviour and does consider individual explanations.
Piliavin
Social approach because it was seeking to investigate (in a real-life setting)
the impact of other people on helping behaviour. It did this through
counting of the number of people in the carriage at the time of the
incidents (diffusion of responsibility was not seen) while another person
was available to model helping behaviour in case this was necessary.
Levine (2001)
Cross-cultural altruism
A more recent study investigating helping behaviour, this can be seen
as building on the Piliavin study by investigating it in non-confined
settings and also by doing so cross-culturally, in 23 different countries.
Results found cultural differences in altruism, this offering culture as an
explanation.
Moray (1959)
Auditory attention
Cognitive because of its subject matter – namely, attention. This specific
study was included because it is one of the many studies from the 1950s
which sought to investigate auditory attention; Moray’s study comprises
a series of three experiments, one of which investigates the ‘cocktail
party effect’ and what kind of information breaks the attentional barrier is
discussed.
Simons and Chabris
(1999)
Visual inattention
This can be seen as building on Moray’s work by investigating visual (as
opposed to auditory) attention. This study also explains why we may not
recall information that we see, but do not pay attention to.
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
Eyewitness testimony
Cognitive because of its subject matter – namely, memory. This study
shows the impact that post-event information can have on memory, even
to the point (in the second of their two experiments) of producing false
memories.
Grant et al (1998)
Context-dependent
memory
A study which shows another way in which memory can be affected – in
this case, by whether information is recalled in a similar context to that in
which it was first encountered. In contrast to Loftus and Palmer’s study, this
research explains how memory can be enhanced, rather than distorted.
Bandura (1961)
Transmission of
aggression
Developmental because of the way in which it shows how children’s
behaviour can be influenced by the behaviour of adult role models (who
they imitate). This lab study can be compared to Chaney et al’s field study
Chaney et al (2004)
Funhaler study
Developmental because it is illustrating another way in which children’s
behaviour can be influenced by external factors – in this case, the presence
of positive and negative reinforcers.
Kohlberg (1968)
Stages of moral
development
Developmental because it is investigating how, as people get older, the
nature of their moral thinking can be seen to evolve, potentially passing
through six distinct stages of moral development. It is suggesting that this
occurs in line with cognitive development and that it occurs irrespective of
the culture a person is growing up in.
Lee et al (1997)
Evaluations of lying and
truth-telling
A cross-cultural study which challenges Kohlberg’s suggestion that the
development of moral thinking is unaffected by the culture a child grows
up in. Lee et al show the impact of culture through Chinese and Canadian
children’s evaluations of lying and truth-telling. It also investigates the
impact that a child’s age has on their evaluations of lying and truth-telling,
and its use of a cross-sectional approach contrasts nicely with Kohlberg’s
longitudinal approach.
Sperry (1968)
Split brain study
Biological because it is showing, through split-brain patients, the way in
which different abilities are localized within the two hemispheres of the
brain and distinct areas control specific behaviours. Sperry’s study has a
small sample in comparison to the Casey et al study.
Casey et al (2011)
Neural correlates of delay
of gratification
Biological because it involves trying to see whether there is a neural
basis to self-regulation. This is done through fMRI scans of people who,
forty years previously, had taken part in Mischel’s delay-of-gratification
(marshmallow) test.
Blakemore and Cooper
(1970)
Impact of early visual
experience
An early example of research into brain plasticity, in which evidence is
put forward of the impact that the visual environment has on cats’ brains
(specifically their visual neurons). Included as a biological study because
of its focus on neurons, and also because it opens up the debate about
whether biology affects behaviour or whether behaviour might even affect
biology.
