PSYC325 Test Flashcards
What is Freud’s idea of the notion of regression regarding memory and trauma?
Freud believed this was a defence mechanism that occurs when there is a traumatic event we are unable to deal with. When people cannot deal with the traumatic event, it is banished from consciousness and only recalled later when we are able to cope with the memory.
What state is memory in when it is recalled according to Freud’s notion of regression?
When the traumatic memory is recalled later, it is believed to be in pristine condition.
What are the issues with self-help books?
Often highly suggestive and have leading questions within them that can lead people to create a memory of an event that did not happen.
What are the symptoms within the symptom list for people with repressed memories?
Depressive symptoms, feeling anxious and worried, being scared or having phobias, sexual difficulties, and a sense of failure or helplessness.
What is the problem with the symptom list for someone with repressed memories?
The list is highly generic containing symptoms that majority of people will feel at some stage in their life.
What are the 4 ideas often used within therapy in the 90’s that caused people to create a ‘repressed’ memory of sexual abuse?
- Both the therapist and client have a prior assumption that the client may have been abused.
- The therapist uses confirmation bias and specific hypothesis testing to fit the sexual abuse narrative.
- Therapists often used plausibility enhancing evidence to create the idea that the symptoms the client feels is due to repressed sexual abuse.
- Adopt and confirm a belief the client had been abused.
Explain how/why therapists in the 90’s had prior assumptions regarding abuse with clients.
Therapists often had prior assumptions the client had been sexually abused and had repressed the memory because of how common it was at the time, and the idea that repressed memory is associated with childhood abuse that is seemingly common.
Explain how/why therapists used confirmation bias and hypothesis testing to believe a client had repressed memories of sexual abuse.
Therapists who believed their client had a repressed memory will pull out information that confirms their bias of sexual abuse having occurred, and will ask for specific information that will lead them toward the suggestion of abuse.
Explain what plausibility-enhancing evidence was that therapists used to assess someone for sexual abuse repression in the 90’s.
When a client would state they were not feeling well, therapists would assume that a symptom checklist they filled out was symptoms of abuse - there was a huge range of symptoms that were interpreted as repressed sexual abuse.
How did therapists in the 90’s confirm their belief a client had been sexually abused and repressed the memory?
Therapists would use information they had gathered (confirmation bias) to back up their assumption their client had been abused. They would ignore any evidence that opposed the idea of repressed abuse.
What is the guided imagery technique?
Getting someone to imagine a situation from earlier in life and providing the context around it.
What is rebirthing?
Going back to the birthing process with a client and getting them to move sequentially through childhood.
What is the issue with hypnosis?
A situation used in some therapies where an individual is in a highly suggestible situation when exposed to new information, as our threshold is lowered for the acceptance of new information.
What is age regression?
Getting a client to cast themselves back to an earlier age.
What is dream work?
Interpreting dreams and analysing what the dream content means.
What were the memory wars of the 1990’s?
A fight between the psychologists and education officials about whether bringing back repressed abuse memories was a safe and proper method for bringing back trauma, or if it was suggestible and making clients create memories of abuse that didn’t happen.
What is the three-pronged evidence approach for recovered memories? What is this approach about?
The approach is used to check if there is evidence that abuse may have taken place or not.
- Evidence the abuse took place.
- Evidence the abuse was forgotten and inaccessible from conscious recall for a period of time.
- Evidence that the abuse later came back to conscious memory.
What is a retrospective study for repressed memory?
Interviewing people and asking about their history of abuse and the continuity of the abuse memory (how long have they had the memory for and what was this memory like earlier in life).
What is a prospective study for repressed memory?
Recruiting individuals with a documented history of abuse and interviewing them to see if they report this abuse within the interview later in life.
What are case studies for repressed memory?
Retrospective or prospective studies where individuals or groups of people have their cases presented to a therapist who interprets their repression.
What did the Williams (1994) study about sexual abuse memories show regarding problems with reporting sexual abuse?
Many childhood abusive events occurred during a period of childhood amnesia.
Repression isn’t the only reason someone doesn’t report abuse in the interview - may not feel comfortable.
Participants were never directly asked about the abuse event.
Participants reported abusive events that were not the event in question.
How have false memories been shown to be false psychologically?
Some people have reported memories from very early in life when people are not able to remember anything.
How have false memories been proven to be false biologically?
Some events have been disproven by looking at the biological structure of the bones and the body and seeing lack of damage in areas that should have damage.
How have false memories been proven to be false geographically?
Some recovered memories can be disproven by looking at the geographical location of the person at the time that shows they were not in the area they state they were of the repressed memory.
How have false memories been proven to be false factually?
Some people claim to have committed a murder of someone who was still alive.
What seems to be the main factor behind why people retract repressed memories?
Quality of the memory - some people who retract their memory says the event felt too real to be a true memory, or it didn’t feel real enough.
Explain the false narrative paradigm.
In studies, some researchers create a false narrative for the participant by creating imagery of the participant in a certain location/event they haven’t been to before to see if they will create a memory for the false image.
Explain the Loftus & Pickrell false narrative paradigm study and results.
Recruited participants who were taken back to events from their childhood using guided imagery (one event was false) to see the quality of participants memory on false and real events.
By the end of the interviews (spaced 3 weeks apart) 25% remembered and described the false event.
What are the four steps for creating a false memory?
- The false event is suggested and considered to be plausible.
- A belief that the memory is real develops.
- A memory is constructed (e.g. narrative or image is constructed).
- A source monitoring error is made - we mistake the imagery for being a real memory rather than being a false memory.
Explain the Pezdek, Finger & Hodge (1997) study involving Jewish and Catholic students.
Jewish and Catholic students were provided with true and false narratives from childhood about the opposite religion. Results showed people were far more likely to create a memory when the event was based on their own religion rather than the opposite religion, showing the event needs to be plausible for someone to create a false event.
What did the false memory studies using photos do and what did the results show?
The studies created a false image of the participant in a location/event in the past that they were not involved in. Results showed that over 50% of participants formed a partial or complete false memory of the fake event. It was even more likely when participants were provided with the photo along with a false narrative.
What false memory study involved imagination? What were the results?
Participants were asked to imagine some events occurring from childhood and rate the likelihood that the event did occur. Results showed if participants were asked to imagine themselves in an event, they became more confident the event happened to them. Imagining led to a significant increase in confidence that the event occurred.
What is the Deese Roediger McDermott (DRM) paradigm?
When people are provided with a word list all associated with one key word that is not present on the list.
Explain the DRM paradigm research study and its results.
Each participant was presented with different word lists that all were missing a key word. Each participant then presented with a distractor task before being asked to recall as many words as possible. The more words in the list, the higher the likelihood to create the false word. Those who had recovered memories were more vulnerable to the DRM paradigm.
What is the classical school of criminology belief about offenders and why they offend? What do they believe about criminal punishment?
Law-breaking happens when people, faced with a choice between behaving rightly and wrongly, choose to behave wrongly. When the gains outweigh the losses, people commit the crime.
Believe punishment should fit the crime and be the same for each criminal committing the same crime, regardless of context.
What is the positivist school of criminology viewpoint on offenders and offending? What do they believe about criminal punishment?
Believe that different factors determine criminal behaviour, looking to understand crime using scientific method and analysis. They believe that punishment should fit the criminal and the individual context.
What do sociological theories of crime propose?
Crime results from social and cultural forces that are external to any individual and exist prior to the criminal act occurring. They believe crime occurs from social class, political, ecological structures that affect large groups of people.
What are structural theories of crime underneath the sociological theories?
Dysfunctional social arrangements prevent people from achieving their goals in a legitimate way. Some people have external forces inhibiting them from achieving their goals in a legitimate way.
What are subcultural theories of crime underneath sociological theories?
Criminal behaviour occurs because different behavioural norms are held by different groups. Some groups hold criminal behaviour as group norms that mean they are more likely to engage in criminal activity.
What are social-psychological theories of crime?
Believe that crime is learned through social interaction
What are learning theories that come under social-psychological theories? What theory comes under learning theory?
Learning theories propose that people learn to commit crime. In the absence of learning how to commit crime, people do not commit crime.
Social learning theory comes under this theory.
What is social learning theory with regards to crime?
People learn how to commit crime if they are shown how to do it.
What are control theories of crime that come under social-psychological theories?
The idea that people learn not to commit crime. People learn over time to not commit crime, and if they are not taught to not commit crime, they will become offenders.
What is operant conditioning?
If you feel rewarded for doing something you will do it more, and if you are punished for something you will do it less.
What is classical conditioning?
People can be trained to have an unconditioned response to a conditioned stimulus, but originally pairing the conditioned stimulus with the unconditioned stimulus that produces the unconditioned response.
What are psychological theories of crime?
Propose that crime results from personality attributes that are uniquely possessed by a potential criminal.
What is the psychonalytic theory of crime?
The idea there are 3 parts to the psyche: id (pushes people to act in selfish ways), superego (ethical component telling us what is right and wrong), and ego (negotiates between superego and id). Believes crime occurs when the ego are unable to control the id.
Explain psychopathy.
Psychopaths are manipulative, deceitful, arrogant, have no remorse, and are solely focused on their own wants, interests, and desires.
What are the 2 factors to psychopathy? Explain them.
Lifestyle factors: things people do and behaviours people have.
Interpersonal affective factors: personality traits seen within psychopaths.
What is the dual model of psychopathy?
Two ideas of what makes someone a psychopath:
- They are neurologically unable to experience the level of fear and anxiety that normal people do.
- Inability to adequately control impulses for doing inappropriate things.
What is sensation seeking?
The idea that some people need a higher level of physical arousal to feel normal.
