psychology paler 1 2017 Flashcards
discuss authoritarian personality as an explanation for obedience
- a distinct personality pattern characterised by strict adherence to conventional values and a belief In absolute obedience
- measured by the F scale
- weakness. Elms and Milgram showed important difference in characteristics of the authoritarian personality and obedient participants. Many of the fully obedient participants reported having a very good relationship with parents, rather than having grown up in strict family which is associated with authoritarian personality
- shows the research doesn’t support Adorno’s suggestion that those who score high on f scale have been raised by authoritarian parenting style
- Altemeyer’s right wing authoritarian suggest people who are right wing are more likely to obey. So those who are left ring aren’t.
- Bègue supported this. The more participants defined themselves on the left political scale the lower the intensity of shocks they agreed to give out.
- Milgram found that those with lower levels of education were more obedient than those with higher levels of education. Suggests that instead of authoritarianism causing obedience, lack of education could be responsible
Outline 1 alternative explanation for obedience
- agentic state
- suggest that obedient individuals see themselves as not being responsible for their own actions.
- instead, they attribute responsibility to someone else.
- Milgram referred to this process of shifting responsibility for ones actions onto someone else as ‘agentic shift’
Explain two differences between episodic memory and procedural memory
- episodic memory is personal memories for events whereas procedural is memories of how to do things
- procedural memories are unavailable for conscious inspection whereas episodic are
Loftus and palmers experiment on the effects of misleading information on eyewitness testimony
- participants shows different films of traffic accidents
- completed questionnaire which included critical question, ‘how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?’
- in conditions ‘hit’ was replaced with smashed, collided, bumped, contacted.
- when ‘smashed’ was used the average speed estimate was 40.8
- when ‘contacted’ was used the average speed estimate was 31.8
- shows how leading questions can influence a persons answer
Problem with loftus and palmers study on leading question
- lab based so may not represent real life
- participants aren’t as emotionally aroused in the way they would be in a real accident
- demand characteristics in lab studies reduce validity
What did Foster find? Misleading info on eyewitness testimony
-if participants thought they were watching a real life robbery then their identification of the robber was more accurate
Research to support loftus and palmers findings on leading info
- loftus Disneyland
- students evaluate material about Disneyland. In this was misleading info on bugs bunny and Ariel (neither present at Disneyland)
- all went to Disneyland
- this in the bugs or Ariel condition were more likely to reported having shaken hands with these characters compared to the control group.
- shows how misleading info can create a false memory
Explain the real life application of misleading info
- psychological research has been used to warn the justice system of problems with eyewitness identification
- recent DNA exoneration cases have confirmed the warnings of eyewitness identification by showing that mistaken eyewitness identification was the largest single factor in contributing to the conviction of innocent people
Outline and evaluation research into the effects of misleading info on eyewitness testimony
- loftus and palmer experiment
- weakness of it ^ lab based.
- loftus supporting evidence of Disneyland experiment
- application to justice system
- post event discussion. Gabbet showed that paired discussion influenced recall
Extreme stranger anxiety and low willingness to explore the new environment are characteristics associated with which type of attachment
Insecure resistant
Name 3 stages of attachment identified by Schaffer
- indiscriminate attachments
- discriminate attachments
- multiple attachments
What is meant by reciprocity
- responding to the actions of anther with a similar action
- the action from a caregiver produces an action from the infant
Briefly evaluate research into caregiver infant interactions
- problem with Meltzoft and Moore’s experiment as problem with testing infant behaviour. Their mouths are in constant motion so difficult to distinguish between general activity and specific imitated behaviours
- babies can’t communicate so inferences have to be drawn
- Marian’s replicate of Murry’s study found that infants couldn’t distinguish live from videotaped interactions with their mothers. This implies that the infants aren’t actually responding to the adults as Murray found
What did Van ijzendoorn and kroonenberg find about cultural variations in attachment
- secure attachment was the most common in all countries
- insecure avoidant was the second most common in all cultures
- insecure resistant was the lowest in Britain
Problems with van ijzendoorn and kroonenberg’s research
- the ‘tools’ they used
- psychologist measure behaviour using things like intelligence test or methods like the strange situation
- these tools are related to the cultural assumptions of the test designer
- in the strange situation it is assumed that willingness to explore is a sign of secure attachment
- however this isn’t the case in all cultures
