Paper 1 Evaluations Flashcards
Evaluate Caregiver-Infant Interactions
Good - High control. Observations for Interactional Synchrony were filmed in controlled conditions. This means it can establish inter-rater reliability as the responses can be re-watched and analysed later by multiple people. This means they are unlikely to miss anything, so there should be good reliability and validity.
Bad - Difficult to interpret babies’ behaviour.
Babies are fairly immobile, so it may be difficult to distinguish between their emotions. We can’t be sure their actions are from the care-givers’ action, and we can’t be certain of meaning.
Bad - These concepts don’t tell us about infants’ development. These ideas are just pointing out patterns in babies, they don’t tell us the relevance to future development or attachments.
HOWEVER
Good - Isabella et al found the more interactional synchrony a baby showed, the stronger the quality of attachment. This suggests that actually these concepts could be linked to the quality of attachment.
Briefly evaluate Research into Coding (*)
Good - Baddeley identifies a clear difference between memory stores
- the majority of his findings are still used today, suggesting temporal validity
Bad - Baddeley uses artificial tasks
- low mundane realism questions our ability to apply it to everyday life
Briefly evaluate research into Capacity (*)
Good - Jacobs’ study has been replicated
- His findings have been found to be consistent and reliable
- This suggests temporal validity
Bad - Miller may have overestimated STM capacity
- Newer research suggests the capacity is 4+-1
- Suggests his lower estimate of 5 is likely accurate
Briefly Evaluate Duration (*)
Good - Bahrick has high external validity
- Researchers investigated real and meaningful/personal memories
- Suggests his findings reflect a real estimate of LTM duration
Bad - Peterson and Peterson used an artificial task
- Lacks mundane realism
- Doesn’t reflect memory in real life so could lack external validity
Evaluate types of LTM
Good - Case Study Support (x2)
- Clive Wearing could play piano but not remember his childrens’ names or when he last saw his wife due to amnesia
- Suggests there are different stores of LTM
- HM also supports this
- He remembered stroking a dog earlier that day (procedural) but could not remember what a dog was (semantic/episodic)
Good - Brain Scan evidence
- Tulving et al
- Participants performed different tasks while having a PET scan
- It illuminated episodic memory activity in the right prefrontal cortex and semantic memories in the left prefrontal cortex
- Shows they are separate
Good - Real world application
- Understanding the different types of memory loss humans develop with age has allowed researchers to train these areas and provide treatments
- e.g. episodic memories are usually first to be affected in dementia, so this area has been trained and treated and it was found to be effective
Evaluate the Multi-Store Model of Memory
Good - Research supporting different STM and LTM stores
- Baddeley
- His research showed after immediate recall, recall was worse for acoustically similar words, and after a retention interval of 20minutes, recall was worse for semantically similar words, showing different coding so different stores
(can evaluate Baddeley too - scientific but low mundane realism)
Good - Case Study support for different STM and LTM stores
HM
- Had brain surgery for epilepsy removing his hippocampus - associated with memory function
- He could not form new LTM and believed it to be 1953 when it was 1955
- He could however perform well on immediate memory tests
- This supports different stores for STM and LTM
Bad - Case Study contradiction
KF
- Had amnesia affecting his memory
- He performed poorly on recall tests when he listened to the digits and words he had to remember
- He performed well on the same tests when he read the information himself
- This suggests there should be sub-stores in the STM, and it is not a unitary store
- This matters because it suggests the MSM oversimplifies memory storage
Evaluate the Working Memory Model
Good - Case Study Evidence
KF
- patient with amnesia
- performed well on recall tasks when he read the digits himself but did not perform well when they were read aloud to him
- this supports the idea that visual and auditory information must be in different stores
Bad - Lack of clarity and research
Central Executive
- supposedly the most important component
- we do not know much about it or how it actually functions
- it is the most important but the least understood
- there is not enough clarity on it to create generalisable models of memory
Good - Research Support
Baddeley
- participants carried out visual and verbal tasks at the same time
- their performance was similar to when they performed them at separate times
- he then got participants to do 2 visual tasks or 2 verbal tasks at the same time
- their performance decreased
- this provides evidence for separate stores, because the CE had to prioritise one of the tasks as they were in the same store
Evaluate Explanations for Forgetting
Good - Lots of research support for all explanations
- Godden and Baddeley
- Goodwin
- McGeogh and McDonald
Good - High control
Bad - Low ecological validity
- could question the basis of the theories
Bad - Some of the research may have used methods that are more likely to lead to forgetting
- Godden and Baddeley used underwater and on land, which are huge differences
- He suggested that the differences in real world environments are unlikely to be that large (e.g. learn in one room, repeat in another)
- This suggests that some concepts and research could lack external validity
Evaluate Misleading Information as a Factor Affecting Eye Witness Testimony
Good - Real World Application
- understanding the consequences of misleading information can help change the way the Justice System works
- it can change the way police ask questions, and it can encourage witnesses to not discuss what they saw with anyone until they speak to authorities
- this can improve the way the legal system works, showing a real world application
Bad - It may be different in the real world
- perhaps participants were not heavily invested or impacted by watching videos
- there may have been demand characteristics if they did not care or figured out the aim
- in person, a real witness would pay attention to every detail and how it could affect them, meaning the memories will likely be stronger and more impactful
- this suggests misleading information may not mislead key bits of information when someone is really affected
Good - lab studies are used for high control
- they can be clear of cause and effect
- materials such as questionnaires are standardised
Bad - Ethical issues
- deception
- lack of informed consent
- could have psychological harm due to distressing car accident/robbery
Evaluate Anxiety as a Factor Affecting Eye Witness Testimony
Good - research into positive effects has high external validity
- they used a real life incident with real witnesses
- they compared to real police interviews
- it suggests how anxiety works in the real world
Bad - research into positive effects may have had confounding variables
- the second interview was 5 months later, so there might have been post event discussion
- participants may have had anxiety before witnessing the crime
- participants may have experienced greater anxiety in the second interview due to re-living the situation
Bad - research into negative effects may not have tested anxiety
- Johnson and Scott might have just tested people’s focus on unusual situations
- Participants might have been surprised rather than scared, making them focus on the knife
- This is supported by researchers who placed random objects in hairdressing salon videos
- They went from high anxiety, low unusualness (scissors), to low anxiety, high unusualness (raw chicken)
- They found Eyewitness accuracy was poorer in high unusualness conditions such as raw chicken and a handgun
- This could suggest the weapon focus effect is actually due to unusualness, an not anxiety, meaning it does not tell us about effects of anxiety on EWT
Evaluate the Cognitive Interview as an improvement of the accuracy of EWT
Bad - Some elements of the CI might be more useful than others
- Research has shown that using a combination of report everything and reinstate the context produced the most effective recall
- This could suggest that the CI is unnecessarily long, which casts doubt on the overall credibility
Good - Research shows it works
- A Meta-Analysis of accurate recall from regular interviews and cognitive interviews found 41% more accuracy from cognitive interviews
- This suggests it works and has good validity
Bad - High cost
- Takes a lot of Police time to train for the Cognitive Interview
- Requires special training
- Takes more time to conduct than a regular interview due to the social dynamics
- This has meant many Police Forces have taken a pick and mix approach where they use the easiest elements
- This therefore means that not only is it time consuming, but it is also not standardised
- This suggests there might be low external validity
Evaluate Explanations of Conformity
Good - Research support for NSI
- Asch’s research shows conformity due to NSI
- In a follow-up interview, participants said they conformed to be liked, and because they felt self conscious giving the correct answer
- When he repeated the experiment and participants wrote their answers down, conformity fell as there was no normative group pressure
Good - Research support for ISI
- Lucas et al
- Repeated Asch’s line test with maths problems
- The maths problems went from easy to difficult
- He found there were higher rates of conformity when the problems were more difficult, as participants did not want to be wrong in the ambiguous situation
(BAD - Low mundane realism)
Bad - There could be external factors or individual differences for NSI
- Some people have a stronger desire to be liked by others
- nAffiliators are people with a stronger need for ‘affiliation’, which is relatability to others
- These nAffiliators have been shown to be more likely to conform
- This suggests individual differences can’t be fully explained by general theories
Evaluate Asch (conformity in an unambiguous situation)
Bad - Artificial tasks
- lack mundane realism
- has low ecological validity so shouldn’t be generalised
Bad - Androcentric
- male only sample
- more recent research was conducted on females and it found them to be more conformist than males
- suggests we shouldn’t generalise his findings
Bad - Lacks temporal validity
Perrin and Spencer
- repeated Asch’s research 30 years later with UK engineering students
- found less conformity
(Could also mention may be cultural differences –> American only sample)
Bad - Ethical issues
- Deception and lack of informed consent
Could say:
Good - Research support for task difficulty
Lucas et al
- used maths problems
- more difficult –> more conformity
Good - Highly controlled lab study
Evaluate Zimbardo (conformity to social roles)
Good - High control
- He used emotionally stable individuals for clear cause and effect
- He used random allocation to reduce bias
- This suggests there was high internal validity, and that his findings measure what he set out to measure
Bad - Lack of realism
- It is argued that the participants were merely play acting according to stereotypes from movies
- This would explain their prison riots and extreme behaviour in little time
- This suggests that the SPE tells us little about conformity to social roles in everyday life
Bad - Extreme ethical issues
- Some prisoners were removed due to anxiety, depression or severe psychological distress
In Addition
Bad - Researcher Bias
- Zimbardo was the Superintendent and he refused prisoners’ applications for parole
- This is bad because he should not have been involved in his own study, and also because he removed the participants’ right to withdraw, causing them psychological harm
Bad - May have over exaggerated findings
- It is thought that only 1/3 of the guards were brutal
- Lots of guards were recorded to sympathise with the prisoners, reinstate privileges and offer cigarettes
- This suggests Zimbardo overstated his view that SPE participants were conforming to social roles, and he minimised the influence of dispositional factors
Evaluate Milgram’s baseline study of Obedience
Good - Research support
- A similar study was conducted disguised as a French game show
- Contestants were told by the host to deliver these (fake) shocks to contestants who got an answer wrong in front of a live audience
- 80% went up to the full 460volts and gave the maximum shock to an “unconscious” contestant
- This supports Milgram’s study and findings, and also suggests that obedience does not change depending on setting
Bad - May be confounding variables
- Participants were paid beforehand, so they might have just tried to please the experimenter so they could just earn their money and go - demand characteristics
- It was reported that only 75% of participants believed in the set up, so there may have been demand characteristics due to them guessing the aim of the study and playing along
- Participants may have only obeyed because of the unreasonably harsh prompts, and they may have feared ruining the experiment if they did not continue (The experiment requires you to continue)
- This could mean there is low internal validity
Bad - Ethical issues
- Deception - Confederates –> lack of informed consent
- Abused right to withdraw with prompts
- Psychological damage - all showed signs of anxiety through nail biting and nervous laughter
HOWEVER
- Cost - Benefit analogy:
- The signs of harm were temporary as the follow-up interview said 84% were glad to have taken part, this could suggest the temporary harm was worth finding out about obedience
Evaluate Situational Variables Affecting Obedience
Good - There is research support for the situational variable uniform
Bickman et al
- Used 3 confederates in different clothing
- 1 wore a milkman uniform, 1 wore a security officer uniform, and 1 wore a jacket and a tie
- They all asked members of the public to perform tasks like pick up rubbish that wasn’t theirs
- They found people were twice more likely to obey the person wearing a Security Officer uniform than the person wearing the jacket and tie
- This supports Milgram’s suggestion uniform creates legitimate authority
Bad - Low Internal Validity
- The participants might have been aware it was a fake experiment when the experimenter was replaced by a supposed member of the public (a non-worker who did not wear a uniform)
- This could have made the whole study unbelievable, and they could have succumbed to demand characteristics
Bad - Could lead to the obedience alibi
- It may excuse evil behaviour and remove personal blame
- It may be socially sensitive to the likes of Holocaust survivors by excusing some Nazis from their evil actions on account of their superiors wearing a uniform
- Milgram’s study ignores any dispositional factors, and so it suggests that this despicable behaviour was only due to the uniform
(also the likes of ethical issues and control just for milgram’s study)
Evaluate Situational Explanations of Obedience
Good - Research Support
Milgram
- For some of the reluctant participants, the experimenter told them that he had full responsibility for the actions of the participants
- These participants did not hesitate to shock the learner after this, demonstrating an agentic shift
- This supports agentic state as an explanation of obedience
Bad - Other research contradicts both LOA and AS
- In a nurse study, the nurses were told (over the phone) to administrate an excessive dosage to a patient
- 16 out of the 18 disobeyed
- This suggests that most nurses remained in an autonomous state despite the doctor having more responsibility than them
- This also suggests that Legitimacy of Authority can be ignored, as the nurses directly went against someone higher than them on the hospital hierarchy
- This suggests situational explanations might only explain some situations of disobedience
Bad - Obedience Alibi - Socially sensitive as it excuses evil behaviour
- The Agentic State and Legitimacy of Authority could be used to excuse despicable actions
- For example, in WWII, German soldiers were told by a commander they had to either shoot a town of innocent Polish Civilians, or ask for other orders
- The soldiers chose to shoot the Polish Civilians, despite the option
- This suggests that some evil behaviour should not be excused under the pretence that they were in an agentic state, and they should be accountable for their autonomous actions
- This could mean the agentic state should only be used in some situations
Evaluate Dispositional Explanations of Obedience
Good - Research Support from Milgram
- Milgram asked 20 of his obedient participants from the original study to complete the F-Scale, as well as 20 of his disobedient participants
- The 20 obedient participants scored a lot higher on the F-Scale
- This suggests the obedient people show similar characteristics to those with the Authoritarian Personality, and this supports Adorno’s theory
Bad - There is possibly flawed methodology
- Adorno himself created the F-Scale, and it was not tested by any other researchers before he used it
- Milgram suggested it suffers from response bias and possibly social desirability
- It is still being used today, and people might not want to appear racist or unfair to ethnic groups
- This might mean it is a flawed methodology, and possibly suggests that Adorno’s study lacks validity
Bad - Psychic Determinism
- Adorno suggested that the Authoritarian Personality develops in childhood due to experiences of harsh parenting, and unconscious defence mechanisms such as displacement
- This eliminates the factor of free will
Bad - Obedience Alibi
- Adorno’s original suggestion of the Authoritarian Personality came from the actions of the Nazis in the Holocaust
- Adorno’s approach is reductionist, and reduces their evil actions down to a psychological disorder
- This provides an excuse for their despicable actions and could be socially sensitive to those affected by the Holocaust
