Langer And Rodin Flashcards
Context and Aims of Langer and Rodin
Langer and Rodin were interested in the control, self-determination and health, they were
Previous to this Langer and Rodin had studied patients in a surgical setting and found that when patients were given more choice they took greater risks for example regarding pain killers they chose less sedatives and reduced the stress.
“Control is an intrinsic necessity of oneself” Adler suggesting that less choice and control over ones life, can be distressing.
Ferrare (1960) conducted a study in a nursing home and found that elderly patients who had a choice to which nursing home they went to were generally more happier and lived longer whereas he found that those whose families decided for them had a higher mortality rate.
Seligman conducted a study on puppies, by repeatedly giving them shocks he distressed them and when given the chance to leave, the dogs had acquired ‘learned helplessness’ by not wanting to escape.
Bettlehorn showed a similar reaction in Jews at a concentration camp in 1943, prisoners were repeatedly told that they wouldn’t leave the camp apart from as a corpse, when released all self-determination had disappeared and they were walking corpses.
Langer and Rodin’s aim’s were to see if making people feel useful could give them a better experience at ageing, they also wanted to study a correlation between choice, self-determination and health.
Through the use of an experimental group and control group langer and Rodin would test how giving and taking responsibility from a group would affect them.
Procedure of Langer and Rodin
In E.4 there were 47 participants, 39 women and 8 men.
In C.2 there were 44 participants, 35 women and 9 men.
They had chosen two floors of a modern nursing home in Connecticut for their sample, it was claimed by the staff that they were both very similar however there were no procedures done to test this.
The participants were aged between 65-90.
The hospital director called a meeting on both floors, for the
C.2 they were given a plant, a complaint procedure and a set of films to watch. Whereas the experimental condition were given a choice of plants to choose from, the opportunity to rearrange their furniture, were told that they could make their own complaints and choose a set of films for to watch.
Patients were given a questionnaire on two occasions, one a week before the director had his meeting and another three weeks later, the first was given to them by a nursing assistant who had no knowledge of the experimental aims, the questions included how much choice they felt that they had, how happy they were and how active they felt that they were, the assistant was also to measure their alertness on an 8-point Likert scale, similar to how they were to self-report their feelings.
The hospital director carried out another meeting three days after the first one, reinforcing the points before by saying “we want to make you happy. Treat this like your home and make all the decisions you used to make. How is your plant coming along?” To the experimental group, whereas with the control group he said “we want to make you happy. How is your plant coming along?”
With the second questionnaire nurses were asked about happiness, alertness, dependency, activity and sociability of the patients. On a 8-point Likert scale.
Findings and Conclusions of Langer and Rodin
Langer and Rodin found that the experimental group’s averages were better than the controlled group.
The experimental group’s happiness had improved by 48% whereas the questionnaire found that the controlled group’s happiness had only improved by 25%.
Responibility induced group improved alertness, activity and went to go to visit other patients, they improved on average by 6.78, where the control group decreased by 3.3 .
The responsibility group had responded positively to the introduction of the movie night and time talking to the staff was noted, where as the control group hadn’t.
After having the talks with the hospital director the experimental group showed improvements each time, whereas the control group decreased.
The average total scores recorded from each group showed on average a 3.97 increase from the experimental group and a decrease of 2.37 from the control group.
Evaluation of Langer and Rodin
Langer and Rodin conducted a field experiment, this was a strength because participants were being observed in their own environments, giving the study ecological validity, behaviour was true of real life.
However, field experiments being conducted in a real life environment, may not be able to control all extraneous variables, such as temp on one floor, as it is normal to ppts may have been affecting factors like alertness and activity lacking internal validity.
The participants were given a similar talk by the same person
The participants and nurses who assisted them with the questionnaire did not know the experimental aims and therefore the reliability was stronger as it was a double blind procedure ensuring no order effects, no bias and demand characteristics.
Ethics, they were all deceived and had not given informed consent to participate in the study. Their privacy was breached through questionnaire’s about what how they feel, what they do etc.
The procedure of the study could’ve harmed the participants who may have distressed by their responsibilities being taken away from them.
Reliability, the study had a standardised procedure which is good and could be replicated by other researchers, showing consistency in results to find out whether the results can b applied to other nursing homes and supporting l and r.
however, the participants were not matched up for example for age, health instead they were left in their existing living spaces. A weakness is that the experimental patients were already declared happier and active than the controls, suggesting that they had extraneous variables which affected them.
A strength of the methodology is that Langer and Rodin did not split up the groups, as it could have caused distress to the patients and influence their results.
A weakness of Langer and Rodin’s experiment is the wording of the questions, the patients may have interpreted the question such as how much control they felt they had incorrectly, rather than if it was responsibility, as the control group’s average for control increased and became higher than the experimental group where it should have decreased.
Langer and Rodin discredited the control questions because of this.
Langer and Rodin used a large sample in the nursing home, finding that the results could be generalised to other elderly people in other homes, for examples because the age range went from 65-90.
Alternative evidence of Langer and Rodin
Langer and Rodin conducted a field experiment on elderly people in a modern nursing home, they found that the experimental condition who had been given responsibility were 48% happier and more active than the controlled condition who had all responsibility taken from them.
After Langer and Rodin conducted the study Ryan and Deci (2000) found that happiness and motivation can increase when people have more perceived autonomy (independence) this supports Langer and Rodin’s findings that more responsibility increased happiness.
Another experiment conducted by Stefanou et al (2004) found that giving school children the choice to decide where they sit, their learning materials increased their motivation to learn. Supporting l and r, this was a different method of experiment as it was an observation and therefore their could have been extraneous variables, however there was also the fact that the students were only in primary school and could not be generalised to elderly people.
Patall et al (2008) conducted a comparative study by looking at 41 studies in which choice was given to participants, they found that the participants with increased choice were generally more motivated and have improved their performance.
