Key Issue Notes Flashcards
Social Approach - London Riots - what and why it is an issue?
In the UK summer 2011 riots, why did people not obey recognized authority figures? This is an issue because it meant that there was social unrest, chaos and damage done to property and lives across a certain number of days due to the inability of the police to control the scale of the situation and because of the fact that the rioters took no notice of the police’s authority.
London Riots - Theories
Tajfel’s social identity theory – the in-group of protestors prejudiced against the out group, the police. To make themselves look better than their out group the rioters resulted to violence.
Milgrams agency theory – The autonomous state is where we use our own free will and take responsibility for our actions. The Agentic state is when we act on behalf of another. Milgram believed that when we respond to legitimate authority we tend to operate in the Agentic state. Therefore the rioters acted in the autonomous state and rejected authority.
London Riots - Studies
Tajfel (1971 ) – study which assigned boys to either a Klee group or a Kandinsky group then given a reward allocation task. He found that categorizing the boys into groups caused them to identify with their in-group and engineer a positive social identity.
Milgram (1963) – obedience to malevolent authority figure shows evidence of people acting in the Agentic state.
Hofling (1966) – Obedience of nurses in a hospital when asked to administer drugs. Also shows evidence for people acting in Agentic state
London Riots - Evaluation of explanation
Agency theory – Great deal of empirical support from Milgram, Hofling etc. Helps to explain moral strain (things against our principles but seems to be for the greater good). Although, not everyone obeys so there are individual differences. Explains Eichmann’s testimony – he was following orders and part of the ruling organization but didn’t chose to do what he did.
Social Identity Theory – Explains real world behavior such as football fans who feel negatively about other clubs. Has evidence to support it such as Tajfel’s minimal groups study which showed that putting people in groups will lead to discriminating against the out group. Simplifies complex human behavior – groups have shared histories involving conflict and it may be this history that causes the issues.
Cognitive Approach - Eye Witness Testimony
Is eyewitness testimony reliable?
Eyewitness accounts are relied on in court using them as first hand accounts o what happened at the scene of a crime. This information is used to convict or not convict someone of a crime therefore the accuracy of these statements is very important.
EWT - Studies
Godden and Baddeley (1975) – Asked 18 participants to learn 38 unrelated two or three syllable words underwater or on dry land and then recall them either underwater or on dry land. Recall was around 50% higher when it took place in the same environment as learning.
Loftus and Palmer (1974) – 45 participants shown 7 video clips of different car accidents and asked to judge the speed of the car. The verb ‘smashed’ produced the fastest estimate of speed and verb ‘contacted’ produced the slowest. This showed that leading questions do have an influence on witness memory.
Yarmey (2004) – A sample of 590 people were asked to identify a woman that went up to them earlier o and asked for either directions or help in finding lost jewellery. He found witness preparation didn’t improve eyewitness identification and students over estimated how many witnesses would be able to identify the target correctly.
EWT - Theories
Cue dependent forgetting – When we encode a new memory we encode the information around it. If we cannot remember it’s because we’re not in a similar situation to when the memory was stored.
Interference theory – In LTM, forgetting may occur due to interference between old and new memories. Proactive interference – when you can’t learn a new task because of an old task that had been learnt and retroactive interference – when you forget a previously learnt task due to the learning of a new task.
EWT - Eval of explanation
Cue Dependent forgetting – Plenty of anecdotal evidence for cue-dependent forgetting. The idea is testable and cues can be given to see if they aid recall. However, the experiment uses artificial tasks, even though some are related to real life.
Interference theory – Also has much evidence to support the theory and the evidence comes from experiments, which are controlled and so yield cause and effect conclusions. However, the studies tend to use word lists and artificial tasks and it is hard to separate interference from displacement and trade decay.
Psychodynamic Approach - Are repressed memories real?
Are repressed memories always real or can false memories be planted by the analyst?
This is an issue as, if it is possible that false memories can be planted, this could lead the person to believing that they are someone different and exert different personalities. Therefore you are changing a person, which is ethically wrong.
Repressed memories - Theories
Defense Mechanisms - Freud said that overuse of defense mechanisms can cause ill health and can cause the person who uses them too much to lose touch with reality, in the case of repression they could become too defensive when trying to forget something and people are asking you about it.
The theory behind repressed thoughts and memories is that thoughts and feelings, which may have been distressing and so have been repressed into the unconscious can be revealed through psychoanalysis such as dream analysis, slip of the tongue, free association or stream of consciousness techniques where the unconscious part of the mind is revealed
Repressed Memories - Studies
The Philip Coates case - 30 year old was found guilty of raping a 24-year-old sailor. Before this Coates was a good character who had been married for eight months and admitted kissing the defendant prior to the attack but had not consented to sex. The victim, who can’t be named, was found soon after the attack “sobbing her heart out” and couldn’t remember what happened. Therefore she underwent Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, two months later. This therapy allowed the victim to remember details of the incident and it was this evidence from the psychotherapy that was used to convict Philip Coates.
In 1986 Nadean Cool sought therapy from a psychiatrist to help her cope with her reaction to a traumatic event. The psychiatrist used hypnosis and during the process Cool became convinced that she had repressed memories of having been in a satanic culture, eating babies, being raped, having sex with animals and being forced to watch the murder of her eight-year-old friend. She also believed she had over 120 personalities and was told she had experienced sever childhood sexual and physical abuse.
Repressed Memories - Eval of explanation
The theories put forward for this issue all come from Freud. There is no real evidence to prove his theories apart from case studies where he used his subjective analysis of the participant in order to come up with an answer to the problem. However, a lot of therapies from Freud’s work are still used today such as the Psychotherapy, using the unconscious to uncover repressed thoughts.
Biological Approach - Autism
Is Autism an ‘extreme male brain’ condition?
Around 1 in 100 people in the UK are affected with autism and it is a lifelong condition. Therefore understanding more about Autism and how to cure it is important in helping the people that are suffering.
Autism - Theories
Normal males have a smaller corpus callosum than normal females. In people with autism the corpus callosum has been found to be even smaller than in normal males, in males, amygdala is slightly larger than in females. Brain scans of toddlers with autism have shown that their amygdala’s tend to be abnormally large when compared with toddlers without autism, males are generally stronger at spatial tasks than females, and tests with autistic people show that they seem to be even better at spatial tasks than normal males.
Autism - Studies
Baron-Cohen et al. (2005) suggested that the brain structure of autistic people is an ‘exaggeration’ of normal male brain structure
Autism - Eval of explanation
Scientific evidence can be gathered though scanning techniques to see the difference between brains of males with and without autism to see if the autistic brain really is an ‘extreme male brain’. These research methods are reliable and objective. Also the ‘extreme male brain’ explanation that the biological approach puts forward fits with many features of autism and other males, such as males having less empathizing ability than females and focusing more on spatial tasks and systems. The explanation therefore appears to have some validity. However, scientific study of brain structures is objective but also reductionist. Conditions like autism are complex, involving both nature and nurture issue. It is possible that there are environmental causes for autism and these can occur before birth or during development after birth.
Learning Approach - Role models on Anorexia
Do role models encourage eating disorders such as anorexia because they lead to teenagers wanting to be ‘impossibly’ thin?
Why is it an issue?
There are an estimated 60,000 people in Britain with eating disorders and there is evidence to suggest that these are influenced by thin models and celebrities. A British Medical Association Report found that in the 1990s models and actresses commonly had body fat levels as low as 10% but the average for a healthy woman is 22% to 26%. Therefore watching models if people see thin role models and want to be thin like them; this is an unhealthy and dangerous problem.
Anorexia - Theories
Social Learning Theory - This states that people learn by imitating same sex role models whom they see as important because they are similar to them. These role models are usually perceived as having prestige as well such as celebrities who have power, money and fame. The behavior that is modeled by these role models is likely to be imitated, particularly if the observed behavior is rewarded as well, such as celebrities being successful, which can be seen as a reward.
The psychodynamic approach offers a different explanation to the reasons for the issue. The approach suggests that anorexia is a result of wanting to remain a child and not wanting to move into an adult sexual role.
Anorexia - Studies
Bandura, Ross and Ross (1961) – 72 children enrolled at Stanford University Nursery School. The participants in the aggressive condition watched an experimenter act aggressively to a bobo doll in the non-aggressive condition the experimenter didn’t act aggressively. When the participants were given free play the ones in the aggressive condition showed more aggressive behavior than those in the non-aggressive model.
Anorexia - Eval of explanation
SLT – There is a great deal of experimental evidence to support the theory and the behavior learned is visible. The theory gives rise to practical applications such as in therapy and in explaining. However, there might be a lack of validity as the behavior might not be exhibited immediately and studies are often carried out on animals and it can be difficult to generalize these.
Criminal Approach - Are criminals made or born?
Are criminals made or born?
This is an issue as if criminals are made rather than born then this is an issue than we can sort with easier than we can if criminals are born.
Criminals made or born - Theories (Made)
SLT – Observing behavior of role models, such as your father, will lead you to show similar behavior. If they’re violent, aggressive etc. then you’re likely to show this behavior as well.
SFP – Behavior is caused by us labeling them as showing this type of behavior. If we label someone as aggressive, deviant etc. then they will accept this stereotype and demonstrate this behavior.
Bowlby attachment theory – The first 18-24 months is when the attachment to the mother is formed. If this isn’t formed there could be problems in the future.
Adorno’s authoritarian personality – People with a very strict upbringing would develop an authoritarian personality where they were obsessed with rank and status.
Criminals made or born - Theories (born)
Amygdala damage – The part of the brain involved in emotion and decision-making. Damage to this can cause problem.
Limbic system damage – Damage to the limbic system and cerebral cortex can cause aggressive behavior.
Frontal Lobe – the part of the brain, which supports goal behavior and the ability to decide between good and bad choices. Damage to this can cause bad choices to be made.
Criminals made or born - Studies
Bandura, Ross and Ross (1961)
Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) – Labeled students as being gifted after a (fake) test and found that those labeled did the best at the end of the year.
Madon (2003) – Find influence of mother’s expectations on her child’s future alcohol use. She found that 52% of the relationship between a mother’s expectations and her child’s future alcohol use is down to accurate maternal expectations.
Bowlby – attachment theory.
Adorno (1950) – Authoritarian personality. See above.
Baron and Richardson (2004) – Damage to the limbic system theory.
