Lab studies in Criminal Flashcards
Lab studies in Criminal
Examples of lab studies in criminal psychology
Loftus and Palmer 1974
Gabbert et al 2003
Loftus and Burns 1982
Raine et al 1997
Hess 1928
Geiselman 1985
Holiday 2003
Godden and baddeley 1975
Lab studies in Criminal
6 main factors
IV and DV
Artificial setting
standardized procedure
artificial tasks
controls over extraneous variables
and quantitative data
Lab studies in Criminal
IV and DV ao2 and ao3??
Ao1 + 2
The presence of the IV and the DV allows for studies to be completed as there will be able to be something that is a changed condition from a control (IV) and a thing that is being measured (DV)
An example of this from Criminal is from Loftus and Palmer 1974 in which in experiment 1 the IV was the verb used in the critical question to describe the cars crashing: smashed, hit, collided, contacted, bumped
the DV was the mean estimate speed (mph) from the eyewitnesses who watched a video of seven car crashes in response to the critical question which was: how fast were the cars going when they (IV) each other?
AO3?
Lab studies in Criminal
Artificial tasks
-mundane realism
The artificial tasks in a lab study means that the task of these studs is not comparable to real life due to being so disimular
An example of this is from the study by Gabbert et al 2003
Where they got pears of participants to watch a video of a crime at different perspectives
The fact that they were watching a video and not their witnessing the crime is a example of the artificial task
This is because there would be less of an emotional connection and less of an incentive to accurately recall information as they are aware that the answer will have no consequences and that the crime was not real
A03
+ (nope)
(-)
This artificial task means that the study cannot be applied to real-life situations as there is usually a lack of emotional connection and involvements to the situation
this is mainly the witnessing of crimes through a video in studies such as Loftus and Burns 1982
This therefore means that the results of these lab studies may not accurately reflect or be applicable to a similar situation that occurs in real life
Therefore showing a weakness of lab studys to these in criminal psychology being their low mundane realism
Lab studies in Criminal
Standardised procedure
Reliability + - order effects
Lab studies almost always have a standardized procedure
This means that the methodology of the study is clear and can be followed by another researcher and therefore meaning that the stovic can be repeated giving it high reliability
An example of a standardized procedure in criminal psychology IS from Loftus and Burns 1982
Where one group of participants would watch a video of a boy being shot in their head and one group would watch a non-violent video then the participants would be asked to recall the details of the video they had watched
This can therefore be repeated by another researcher showing how lab studies have high reliability due to their standardized procedure
(+ ao3 ^^^^)
—AO3???
The standardized procedure may benefit from being reordered if conducting the same experiment with the same participants a game this is to negate the possible order effects that may occur from the order of tasks during a procedure
Without possible reordering of tasks the study may be affected by order effects which are an extraneous variable and therefore inhibit the ability to accurately establish causing effect therefore showing a weakness of standardized procedure in criminal psychology may be that they might give the study low internal validity
Lab studies in Criminal
Artificial setting
low eco
demand characteristics low internal
Lab studies often are set in a artificial setting such as a laboratory or university classroom such as Loftus and Palmer 1974 which was set in a university lab
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This reduces the ecological validity as the studies results may not be applicable to real life due to the study itself not taking place in a realistic setting which may cause the results to be dissimilar to if the setting was more naturalistic
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Further the artificial setting may cause participants to not act as though they would normally do
because they know they are being studied they would therefore show demand characteristics
which would give invalid data invalidating the conclusion and making cause and effect difficult to establish
showing with another weakness of lab studies and criminal psychology IS demand characteristics giving its low internal validity
Lab studies in Criminal
Controls over extraneous variables
high internal valid
Lab studies often have high controls over extraneous variables this means that on average they have much higher internal validity than equivalent field studies
An example of a control in criminal psychology would be from Loftus and Palmer who included a control group in experiment 2 during the leading question of if participants could see glass in the videos of car crashes or not
This removed the confounding variable that memory was distorted on the basis of the verb used to describe the car crash rather than the leading question itself causing the distortion to memory
This shows at high controls are an strength of lab studies and criminal psychology as they reduce the effects of extranean and confounding variables improving the effectiveness of establishing cause and effect which in turn gives lab studies high internal validity
+
Lab studies in Criminal
Quantitive data
internal valid good
few quali but kinda not?
Lab studies often gathered quantitative data such as events sampling which is noting down every time a participant shows a specific behavior, quantitative data can also be gathered from questionnaires in particular clothes-ended questions such as the did you see glass question during experiment two of Loftus and Palmers study
Quantitative data is incredibly easy to gather and incredibly easy to analyze and compare with other studies and often they will use the same methods and same units of measurement for their quantitative data
This makes them reliable and often more valid than data that can be misinterpreted such as qualitative data
Increasing the validity of the conclusion of their studies showing how it’s a strength of lab studies in criminal psychology as it means that the data used will have high internal validity
Wall Labs studies can have qualitative data by usually asking participants for a description of an event such as a crime
The majority of studies Focus much more on quantitative data which means that often they will have data that’s is in a lack of detail which would be useful in the analysis of data and their conclusion it especially helps gathering opinions of participants
Therefore due to a large amount of lamp studies and criminal psychology not including qualitative data this is a weakness of lab studys in criminal psychology as their conclusions and analysis of data would have more detail and therefore may have been more informative and useful
However a lot of lab studies in criminal psychology still do use some qualitative data such as in Loftus and Palmer where they asked participants for descriptions of the videos of car crashes that they watched in both experiment one and two
