Perspectives/areas Flashcards
What does the social area investigate?
How the social context, including the presence and behaviour of other people, impacts on how people behave
What does the cognitive area investigate?
how we think, perceive, pay attention, problem solve and remember
What does the developmental area investigate?
how our thinking changes as we mature and grow older, the development of personality and how we learn
What does the biological area investigate?
the relationship between biology and behaviour - both how biology, especially neurobiology, affects behaviour , but also how behaviour affects biology
What does the individual differences area investigate?
The differences between people, such as abnormality and mental disorders
What are the key themes of the social area?
Responses to people in authority
Responses to people in need
What are the key themes of the cognitive area?
Memory
attention
What are the key themes of the Developmental area?
External influences on children’s behaviour
Moral development
What are the key themes of the Biological area?
Regions of the brain
Brain plasticity
What are the key themes of the Individual differences area?
Understanding disorders
Measuring differences
What are the classic studies of the social area and what are they about?
Milgram - Obedience
Piliavin et al - Subway samaritan
What are the classic studies of the cognitive area and what are they about?
Loftus and Palmer - Eyewitness testimony
Moray - Auditory attention
What are the classic studies of the developmental area and what are they about?
Bandura et al - Transmission of aggression
Kohlberg - Stages of moral development
What are the classic studies of the Biological area and what are they about?
Sperry - split-brain study
Blakemore and Cooper - Impact of early visual experience in kittens
What are the classic studies of the individual differences area and what are they about?
Freud - little Hans (Oedipus)
Gould - A Nation of morons - Bias in IQ testing
What are the contemporary studies of the social area and what are they about?
Bocchiaro et al - Disobedience and whistle blowing
Levine et al - Cross-cultural altruism
What are the contemporary studies of the cognitive area and what are they about?
Grant et al - Context-dependent memory
Simons and Chabris - Visual inattention
What are the contemporary studies of the developmental area and what are they about?
Chaney et al - Funhaler (positive reinforcement)
Lee et al - Evaluations of lying and truth telling
What are the contemporary studies of the Biological area and what are they about?
Casey et al - Neural correlates of delay of gratification
Maguire et al - Taxi drivers
What are the contemporary studies of the Individual differences area and what are they about?
Baron-Cohen et al - Autism in adults
Hancock et al - language of psychopaths
What are four strengths of research into the social area?
It can help improve our understanding of human behaviour and the extent to which this is affected by other people
It can be very useful - practical applications for understanding group behaviour
It often helps to bring psychology to wider audiences as it often seeks to explain real world events
it is often high in ecological validity - uses field experiments
What are four weaknesses of research into the social area?
It is difficult to stay within ethical guidelines as the research is often socially sensitive
The boundaries can become blurred between the social and other areas
The findings may change across cultures
time sensitive as cultural and social context changes over time
Reductionist as discounts individual and biological explanations
What are the key concepts of the social area?
Diffusion of responsibility, bystander effect, arousal cost-reward model, cultural differences in helping (simpatia), effects of community variables (pace of life, collectivism vs. individualism, purchasing power parity) on helping
What are the key concepts of the cognitive area?
Auditory attention, attentional barrier, cocktail party effect, inattentional blindness, visual attention, reconstructive memory, context-dependent memory