Links to the Key Theme Flashcards
Loftus and Palmer - Memory
Who was tested - Loftus and Palmer studied undergraduate Psychology students from the University of Washington, 45 participants in experiment 1.
What was tested - The study looked at eye witness testimony and the effect of leading questions.
How were they tested - In experiment 1 participants watched seven clips of car accidents and were then asked a range of questions, one being the critical question ‘About how fast were the cars going when they ………….. into each other?’. Participants either received the verb smashed, hit, collided, bumped and contacted.
Findings link to theme - Participants who received the verb ‘smashed’ in the critical question gave a higher mean average speed estimate (40.5mph) than participants that received the verb ‘contacted’ in the same question (31.8 mph).
Link: This shows that memory of an incident can be affected by the information received after the event- i.e. the wording of questions. This therefore links to the key theme of memory as it demonstrates how unreliable it can be.
Grant - memory
Who: Grant studied 40 participants however one was excluded from the results leaving 39, 17 female and 22 males, aged 17-56 years old.
What: The study looked at how context-dependency effects recall of material. Specifically, whether the presence or absence of noise during learning and retrieval (matching or mis-matching conditions) effects the recall of meaningful material.
How: Participants were given an article on Psychoimmunology to study in either a silent or noisy condition and then tested using short answer (recall) questions followed by multiple choice (recognition) questions which were answered in either silent or noisy conditions. These conditions were either matching or mismatching.
Findings: Participants in the matching conditions either silent-silent (6.7) or noisy-noisy (6.2) scored higher on the short answer questions than those in mis-matching conditions silent-noisy (4.6) and noisy-silent (5.4).
Link: This shows that memory of meaningful material can be affected my environmental cues encoded at the time information is learnt- context dependent memory.
Moray - attention
Who was tested - All participants were undergraduates from the uni or research workers and were male and female.
What was tested - Moray aimed to look at selective auditory attention, whether the blockage created can be broken by affective and non affective cues and with instruction to listen.
How were they tested - Participants took part in a dichotic listening activity where different audio was played to each ear and they were asked to shadow (repeat) content played to one ear. Participants were then asked questions in regard to what they had heard.
Findings link to theme - In experiment 2, 20 out of 39 instructions with affective cues (participants name) were recalled and 4 out of 36 instructions with none affective cues. This shows that affective cues can penetrate an attentional block and this content is then processed.
Simons and Chabris - attention
Who was tested -
What was tested -
How were they tested -
Findings link to theme -
Bocchario - responses to people in authority
Who? 149 undergraduate students from VU university in Amsterdam were studied
What? Their levels of obedience, disobedience and whistle blowing to an unethical request was studied.
How? P’s were presented with a cover story about a fake study into sensory deprivation. They were told to put names forward of other students to take part even though the study could be a frightening experience with possible side effects. P’s were told they could write a supporting statement to obey, or report the study to an ethics committee to whistle blow.
Findings? Results showed that 76.5% obeyed, 14.1% disobeyed and only 9.4% whistle blow –
Link back to key theme; This suggests that people are afraid to whistle blow or disobey authority, and therefore the majority will obey.
Milgram - responses to people in authority
Who was tested - bias sample of 40 male volunteers from new haven area
What was tested -
How were they tested -
Demonstrated that people will obey authoritative figure even in immoral situation. 65% obeyed to 450V on electric shocks. Authoritative figure was researcher in lab coat. Said prompts like ’you must continue’
Findings link to theme -
Piliavin - Responses to people in need
Who: approx. 4450 male and female adults travelling on a New York subway between 11am and 3pm weekdays during the months of April and June ‘68
What: To investigate different variables on helping behaviour
How: a drunk/cane male victim entered a subway carriage on a 7 ½ minute journey and collapsed after the first stop. The victim stood near a pole in the critical area. After about 70 seconds he staggered forward and collapsed. Until receiving help he remained supine on the floor looking at the ceiling. If he received no help by the time the train stopped the model helped him to his feet. At the stop the team disembarked and waited separately until other passengers had left the station. They then changed platforms to repeat the process in the opposite direction. The observers recorded the responses
Link: The cane victim received spontaneous help 95% of the time compared to 50% for the drunk victim, overall there was 100% help for the cane and 81% for the drunk victim and 90% of helpers were male. There was no diffusion of responsibility found. Therefore this links back to the key them of responses to people in need as it shows that people will help one another when in need (no evidence of diffusion of responsibility) but people are more likely to help when an individual is ill rather than drunk.
Levine - Cross cultural altruism
Levine studied 23 cities in different countries around the world, these consisted of cities which were considered to be individualistic, simpatia and collectivist in culture.
The amount of help given to three different types of victims was measured; dropped pen, hurt leg, and blind trying to cross the road. Levine also identified the pace of life in each city, the economic well being and population size.
Experimenters were trained for each type of victim and help was considered to be given by ‘shouting back’ about the pen, offering to pick up magazines for the hurt leg victim and helping the blind victim across the road. This was calculated and each city given a score on a helping index. Economic well being, population size and pace of life was correlated with amount of help given.
Findings showed that responses to those in need is strongly influenced by the cultural values of the country you live in.
Simpatia countries showed the most help across all three victim conditions. For example; Brazil scored a helping index of 1.66, which was the highest score. In contrast, the US which has a individualistic culture had a helping index of – 1.74.
The values of simpatia include a concern for the well being of others whilst the Individualistic values are more focused on the well being of ones self. Therefore the contrasting values are reflected peoples responses to those in need.
Bandura - External influences on childrens behaviours
Who: 72 children 36 girls, 36 boys mean age 52 months
What: external influences of an adult role model on aggressive behaviour, especially if it is the same sex
How: 3 groups – 2 experimental; aggressive/non-aggressive- watched an adult play with toys in a room, then observed through a one-way mirror for 20 minutes to see if they imitated the adult model.
Findings: It was found that children in the aggressive model condition showed significantly more imitation of physical and verbal aggressive behaviour than children in the non-aggressive model or control (no model) conditions. Therefore, this behaviour can be linked to factors beyond the individual, external influences.
Chaney - External influences on childrens behaviour
Who?
32 children mean age 3.2
What?
Medical adherence to an inhaler through the use of a funhaler
How?
Repeated measures design, standard vs funhaler. Parents were given closed questionnaires and random telephone interviews
Findings
Increased medical adherence. The findings of this study suggest that children are more likely to take asthmatic medication if there is some form of reward involved e.g. a fun element (the funhaler). Therefore children’s behaviour, in this case adherence to medication, is linked to external influences such as positive reinforcement. This provides evidence for operant conditioning
Kohlberg - Moral Development
Who? 75 American boys, studied for 12 years at 3 year intervals. Also Boys from Turkey, Mexico and Taiwan were used.
What? The aim was to show that morals develop in stages.
How? A semi-structured interview was used, P’s were read 9 moral dilemmas which covered 25 moral concepts, p’s were asked ‘what would you do?’, ‘what should the person do?’. Answers were scored using a 900 page manual and matched to one of the six stages of Kohlberg’s theory of moral development.
Findings? P’s thinking was always at a single stage and progression through the stages occurred with age. Cross cultural findings showed that Mexico and Taiwan boys developed at a slower rate than other cultures.
Link back to key theme; This suggests that moral development is effected by nature due to changes with age and also by nurture, due to differences in cultures.
Lee - Moral Development
Who: 120 Chinese children aged 7, 9 and 11 and 108 Canadian children: 7, 9 and 11 years
What: The aim was to investigate if Chinese children compared to Canadian children would rate truth telling in pro-social situations less positively than lie telling in the same situations
How: P’s were spilt in to social and physical stories, they were then each given 4 stories to respond to – 2 pro and 2 anti, 2 with lies and 2 with the truth. P’s were then asked to rate how good/naughty they thought the act was
Link: Lee et al.’s study is linked to moral development because children at different ages were studied which shows how moral attitudes towards truth telling and lying telling develop, the Chinese children ratedlying in prosocial situations significantly more positivelythan the Canadian children and this was stronger the older the children were.
Freud - Understanding disorders
Who-Freud conducted a longitudinal case study on a small boy aged between 3-5 years.
What-His aim was to test the Oedipus complex and discover how phobias were created.
How-Observation and conversations with Little Hans and his father and correspondence with Freud.
Findings- Little Hans was afraid of horses and baths. Freud suggests that this is because the horse represented his father (dark moustache/horses muzzle and glasses/blinkers). He was afraid that the horse would bite his widdler which meant that he was unconsciously scared that his dad would castrate him.
Link- Freud’s study links to the key theme of understanding disorders as we can see that phobias are created during the phallic stage – Little Hans was scared of his dad and this manifested in his fear of the horse but as he stopped fantasying about his mum he stopped being afraid of his father
Baron-Cohen - Understanding disorders
Who
•B-C looked at 16 HFA’s, 10 adults with Tourettes and 50 normal adults
• What
B-C was looking at Autism and Theory of Mind, he devised a new test to measure autism in adults
Findings
• HFA’s scored an average of just 16/25 when reading emotions, whereas Tourettes and normal adults scored 20
• Links
• This shows that HFA’s have trouble reading people’s emotions and it helpsus to understand the disorder of autism
Sperry - Regions of the brain
Who was tested -
What was tested -
How were they tested -
Findings link to theme - Sperry showed that the corpus callosum allows the exchange of information across the left and right hemisphere and these areas have some specialisation of function e.g. language is localised in the left hemisphere and creativity is localised in the right hemisphere
