psychology unit 2 exam Flashcards
limbic system AO1
- the limbic system becomes activated during fight or flight responses, where is responsible for detecting and acting on perceived danger.
- damage to the limbic system may mean that the person can no longer control their emotions which explains why they might become more aggressive.
- the amygdala is always scanning the environment for threats or people who may perceive danger and become defensive even if there is no threat. (center for emotional behaviour)
- if the hippocampus is damaged, someone may struggle to retain memories in relation of being punished, therefore they will never learn from their mistakes and they will keep behaving in unacceptable ways.
- pre frontal cortex sits behind the forehead, its in charge of how we interact and behave socially. Damage to it, almost always results in aggressiveness as it is connected to hypothalamus and amygdala and it results into person being impulsive.
- hypothalamus controls productions of testesteron which is a key hormone linked to aggression.
- PAG (periaqueductal grey matter) connects the amygdala and the hypothalamus, when its not functioning in rats they become really aggressive. Lonstein and Stern - damage to PAG in rats resulted into a rat giving a birth to a new aggressive rat.
limbic system strength
- Charles Whitman had a brain tumour pressing on his amygdala, which resulted in his aggressive behaviour and killing over 15 people at the University of Texas.
- Lonstein and Stern found that when the PAG area of rats was damaged in some way, they gave birth to babies that were more aggressive. This proves that the parts of limbic system are related to aggression.
limbic system weaknesses
- Alternative arguments have strong evidence in favour of a non biological explanation of aggression, such as with social learning theory, it might be children learning from their role models to be aggressive such as in Bandura’s bobo doll study, and not the damage of limbic system.
- Low generalizability and population validity as most of the experiments and studies are done on animals like rats which cannot represent human population, or on the individual case studies such as Charles Whitman who as well cannot represent the whole human population.
- There are other possible explanations of someone becoming aggressive, for example we can use operating conditioning, if someone gets attention because of showing their aggressive behaviour, they can take it as a reward, positive reinforcement, and this can also explain aggression which reduces the validity of limbic system as an explanation.
brendgen (2005) AIM
to investigate to what extent social aggression can be explained by genetic factor, shared environmental factors or non shared environmental factors in comparison to physical aggression.
brendgen (2005) PROCEDURE
- the participants were all part of a time long study and were all pairs of twins from Montreal, Canada.
Same sex twins were assessed for physical resemblance at 18 months old to determine if they were monozygotic or dyzigotic twins, with proportion of same sex twins also being checked using their DNA. - written consent was gained from the parents before any data was collected. Peer and teacher reports were also collected.
- the peer reports involved all the children in a class being given photos, and the children were asked to circle the photo of the 3 children who best fit a description of behaviour.
- experiment used different questions to measure social and physical aggression.
Social aggression - ,,tells others not to play with other children’’
,, tells mean secrets about other children’’
Physical aggression - ,,gets into fights’’ , ,,hits, bites, kicks’’ - teachers had to rate the social and physical aggression of the twins in their class by using the preschool social behaviour scale and the direct and indirect aggression scale.
brendgen (2005) RESULTS
- when teachers rated physical aggression the genetic variance was at 63% and peers rated it as 54%. Mainly influenced by the genetics.
- the teachers rated social aggression as 20% due to genetics which is a lot lower than the rating for physical aggression. The correlation for both types of twins were similar for both peer and teacher ratings and it suggests that social aggression is influenced by shared environmental factors.
bredgen (2005) strengths
- the study avoids taking a reductionist view of human behaviour, it looks at genetics but also at environmental factors. It links in with the findings about aggression by Bandura who claims it is learned and Raine who suggests it is due to brain structure. Therefore validity of the experiment is increased.
- the parents of twins agreed for their children to be part of the study, so consent was given by a responsible adult which makes this experiment ethical.
- brendgen used a large sample of 234 pairs of twins, so unusual children with very high or low levels of aggression out to be averaged out by the size of data and therefore the sample is representative.
- brendgen used established questionnaries to measure aggression, these can easily be replicated making the study reliable. There was also a strong correlation between the teacher and peer ratings suggesting the scores are reliable.
brendgen (2005) weakness
- the allocation of zygocity was based largerly on their appereance and it was not 100% reliable, It is possible that there were dyzigotic twins in the monozygotic condition.
circadian rhythms AO1
- anything which tends to happen just once a day is known as a circadian rhythm, for example sleep/wake cycle
- circadian rhythms co-ordinate with a number of other bodily processes such as heart rate, digestion and hormone levels.
- this in turn has an effect on the action of drugs on the body and how well they are distributed. (AO3 together)
- Siffre studied the sleep cycle by living in a cave for 7 months, the results were that his 24h internal clock changed closer to 25h cycle.
- this was thought to be the effect of reducing external zeitgebers of time and light cues from the external environment.
circadian rhythms (Siffre cave study)
aim: to investigate what would happen to people’s circadian rhytmhs if they were cut off from all zeitgebers, and had to rely on their endogenous pacemakers to tell them when to eat and sleep.
procedure: over 6 months living in cave in texas, no light and anything to tell him what time it was.
- biological clock was on free run, he followed his body inclinations, eating and sleeping with no fixed timetable.
- he had a telephone link to the outside world and was monitored by the video camera.
results: he had a fairly unbalanced sleep-wake cycle at first, but it settled down to a pattern that averaged just over 25h instead of 24h.
circadian rhythms AO3
- Knutsson (2003) said that shift workers are also prone to poor health and this might be due to stress of the shift in their circadian rhythms (they are gathering poor quality of sleep).
Coursay (2000) - chipmunks
(AO3 for sleep/wake cycle)
- destroyed SCN in the brains of 30 chipmunks.
then he returned them to their natural habitat and observed them for 80 days.
sleep/wake cycle dissapeard and significant number of chipmunks had been killed by the predators.
SCN (the suprachiasmatic nucleus)
- tiny bundles of nerves located in hypothalamus, and they are found in each hemisphere and it releases melatonin.
- it receives information about light via the optical nerve and it controls sleep and other biological clocks in the body.
- it lowers the body temperature when it gets dark.
- when its dark SCN stimulates pineal gland, causing it to produce more melatonin which makes u sleepy.
ultradian rhythms
sleep/wake cycle, 4 stages 90 minutes
- the longer hours we sleep the more time is spent in the REM (rapid eye movement) which is a dream stage.
- cycles less than 24h (breathing, apettite…)
exogenous zeitgebers
An external zeitgeber is an environmental cue that helps regulate biological rhythms
endogenous zeitgebers
body’s internal biological clocks that regulate our biological rhythms.
Ralph (1990)
AO3 sleep/wake cycle (SCN)
Bred mutant hamsters with 20h sleep/wake cycle, SCN cells from the mutant hamsters were transplanted into normal hamsters.
Cycle of the normal group defaulted to 20h.
social learning theory AO1
- social learning theory states that we observe our role models and imitate their behaviour
- in order to imitate a behaviour we need to be able to remember the actions of that behaviour
- if a role model is rewarded then that behaviour is more likely to be imitated due to victarious reinforcement
- for someone to be a role model they must have relevance to the observer, such as being interested in the same music.
STL is based on 4 different stages (AO1)
- attention
- when a behaviour is demostrated and we take take notice of the selected behaviour. If somethinf is interesting you are far more likely to dedicate full attention to it (role models) - retention
- the ability to store information. Ability to pull up information later and act on it is vital to observational learning. - reproduction
- once you have paid attention to the model and retained the infomration it is time to preform the behaviour you have observed. Further practice of learned behaviour leads to imporvement and skill advancement. - motivation
- reinforcement and punishment play an important role. (vicarious reinforcement)
STL strengths
- number of real world applications. It can be used to help researchers understand how aggression and violence might be transmitted through observational learning. By studying media violence, researches can gain a better understanding of the factors that might lead children to act out the aggressive actions they see potrayed on tv and in the movies. Sandy Hook, school shooting, inspired by columbine shooting.
- credibility as supporting evidence found in Bandura’s bobo doll experiment, where almost all of the children copied either the aggressive or non aggressive acts of adult role models.
STL wekanesses
Charlton (2000) found that the introduction to tv to a population who did not previously have it, and who were exposed to violence and aggression, found no children copied the violence they saw on tv, therefore there must be factors other than observation that influence out behaviour, not only social learning theory.
- the validity of the explanation is reduced as it does not explain how we carry out behaviours that we have not previously observed, such as insight learning, so it is not a full explanation of human behaviour.
- social learning theory ignores biological factors such as damage to limbic system or MAOA-L gene which can cause aggression as well, for example in Bandura’s bobo doll study, the children were not genetically tested for aggression .
systematic desensitisation AO1
- involves introducing the phobia, sufferer to the thing they fear of, but at a safe distance.
- the process occurs in 3 steps. The first step is to identify the hierarchy of fears, the second one is to learn relexation or coping tecniques. Finally, the individual uses these tecniques to manage their fear during situations from the hierarchy.
- these must use relaxation tecniques such as breathing or distractions, for example counting backwards during the phobic episode such as being in the plane.
- this therapy threats phobia as conditioned responses to a conditioned stimulus and tried to turn the terrifying creature, object or situation back into the neutral stimulus that produces no response.
systematic desensitisation AO3
- systematic desensitisation only treats the symptoms of the anxiety and it does not discover the root cause of the phobia, for example why are some people phobic of baked beans. It cannot explain how the problem was originated so it has reduced validity.
- McGrath found that 75% of patients with a phobia of a specific object showed significant improvement after systematic desensitisation showing it is effective when used on specific phobias.
- Capafons found that 90% of his participants had stress and fear reduction after completing 12-15 sessions of systematic desensitisation which indicates that it is an effective therapy
- The therapy may be more effective than other therapies as client has input into the hierarchy of fear, so they feel some ownership over the therapy.
synaptic transmission
- the action potential in the pre-synaptic neuros excites the vesicles. The vesicles may then release a neurotransmitter into the synapse. If the neurotransmitter fits the receptors in the port-synaptic neuron they are picked up and the message continues.
scientific procedures act
- re use of animals states that an animal cannot be reused for a second procedure if the second procedure is more painful than the first procedure. If an animas is going to be reused then the vet has to declare that the animal is healthy enough to be reused.
- if an animal has to be killed as part of the procedure it can only be done if the establishement has a license to kill the animals. One condition of having the license is that it should be done as humanely as possible and they must be sedated before the are killed.
- where possible animals should be replaced with suitable alternatives, if replacement is not possible , then researcher should reduce to a minimum number of protected animals, like Skinner used only 8 pigeons even if there is far more pigeons in the world.
free association
- Freud used free association where the cliets would talk about whatever they wanted in the hope something from the unconscious mind would reveal itself.
- the patient would lie on a couch, usually where they cannot see the psychoanalyst’s reactions to what they are saying.
- the patients are then asked to talk about their early memories, with little or no input from the psychoanalyst.
- this allows the patient to say things the may not say if asked direct questions as the unconscious would not be as closely monitoring what was said.
- by using free association we can reveal the root cause of client’s issues, the issues can be resolved and the client can be cured.
- client has to gain trust into their therapist in order to be comfortable to talk about their past relationships.
- phychoanalasys tends to deal with the root cause of the issue or identify it, but it only works if patient is motivated
- Freud would use dream analysis to find the unconscious meaning behind symbols in the clients dreams.
transference
- Transference in therapy is the act of the client unknowingly transferring feelings about someone from their past onto the therapist. Freud and Breuer described transference as the deep, intense and uncounscious feeling that develop in therapeutic relationships with patients.
counter-transference
- emotional reaction or response that a therapist may have towards a client during a therapy session. It refers to the therapist’s unconscious feelings and thoughts that are triggered by the client’s behavior, which are based on the therapist’s own past experiences, biases, and unresolved issues.
Light therapy AO1
- aims to stimulate sunlight for those who suffer from SAD
- patients sit under a light box for 30 to 60 minutes each day, preferably in the morning.
- the stronger the light from the light box the less time the patient has to spend under it.
- the light will decrease the levels of the patients melatonin so they should feel less tired and more motivated during the day.
- some light boxes use a dawn stimulator which gradually increases the light in the morning,
- SAD is the type of depression that is related to changes in seasons and what is suggested is light therapy.
external zeitebergs strengths
- Siffre (1975) had no external cues when he was in a cave for 6
months and his biological rhythm extended to 25 hours,
showing that external zeitgebers, such as daylight, play a role in regulating our 24-hour sleep wake cycle giving the explanation credibility. - Skene and Arendt (2007) found that most blind people who have some light perception have normal circadian rhythms unlike those without any light perception, showing how external zietgebers regulate our circadian rhythms which includes the sleep wake cycle suggesting it is a plausible explanation.
light therapy AO3
- Lam (2016) found that light therapy was more effective for threating depression then giving SSRI’s, therefore it can be deemed to be an effective therapy.
- light therapy may be a better treatment for those who suffer from side effects from taking SSRI’s as it has fewer side effects, so it is very effective in these cases.
- Reeves (2012) found that self report scores for depression fell after one session of light therapy showing that that it does work.
- It does depend on a type of a box being used how effective the treatment is, as dawn stimulators have been found to be less effective then a light box, therefore not all light therapies are effective.
- Light therapy may only work short term, and it may not prevent SAD from reoccuring in the future so it does not cure it. It is not effective if you want to cure SAD.
- Light boxes can be unsafe to use if the patient has pre existing conditions, such as taking a medicine for rheumatoid arthritis, so it may not be an effective and suitable therapy for everyone.
biological practical weakness
- all female sample, small sample of only 14 reduces the overall population validity and generalizability, as it did not include multiple genders
- ecological validity is lowered because the task is unnatural, asking people to comment on how they may feel based on a fictitious scenario will never be entirely accurate, rather aggression occurs in real life (physically)
biological practical strength
- the methodology was a repeated measures design and the same procedure remained consistent for each condition and as procedure was so standardized this is replicable.
- the anonymous survey monkey reduced the risk of Social Desirability, people giving false answers because they wish to be liked, also due to being online, therefore it increases internal validity as people feel they can be honest.
- all participants were told this was entirely confidental, no names would ever be asked. All participants were 16 or over as due to BPS code of conduct.
biological practical improvements
- increase sample size to involve multi genders, both in and out of school, overall increase in population validity.
- next time we would also include the native language translation of the scenarios to all participants in the sample, to reduce any misunderstandings and increase internal validity.
biological practical aim
to discover if there is a positive correlation between height and aggression
biological practical procedure
- our class created an online survey, where we asked participants in school to complete our survey. All participants were 16 and over and only in our school
*Participants were obtained through opportunity sampling online, the survey was posted online and participants could choose to complete if they wanted to, in this sense it is also volunteer sampling but only participants in school took part
*Participants were instructed to only give their gender, height in cm and instructed to terminate if under 16
*Participants were asked to rate how aggressive they would feel based on 5 scenarios, such as ‘’imagine you are waiting in line for a ticket and someone skips you’’ participants rated aggression on a 1 to 5 scale, with 1 being the lowest score
*Once all surveys were sent back, our class began to add up all scores from each participant, creating a mean, median, mode and range for qualitative data set - We then carried out a Spearman’s Rho analysis to establish if a significant correlation was found, with a value equal to or greater than the critical value
biological practical results + conclusion
The results indicated that taller people were in fact more aggressive. Anyone over 168cm on average scored 3 or more out of 5, conversely, anyone under 168cm scored on average of under 3, with closer to 1 being the mean score *We used a Spearman’s Rho calculation. Our total of 0,5923 is greater than the critical value
conclusion:
We can now accept our alternative hypothesis of taller people will in fact be more aggressive and reject our null hypothesis
Little Albert, conditioned emotional reactions AIM
- to investigate whether fear could be conditioned in a young baby aged from 9 to 11 moths old and whether the fear response, if one was conditioned, would transfer to similar objects.
Little Albert PROCEDURE
- study was carried out on a healthy, emotionally stable child called Albert, who was 9 months old at the start of the study.
Albert was presented with a white rat, rabbit, dog, monkey, masks with and without hair and burning newspaper. He did not show any fear towards these objects. - Afterwards, Albert was exposed to a hammer hitting a steel bar, causing him to startle and the third time it made him cry. (8months 26 days)
- Albert was presented with a white rat and just as his hand touched the rat the metal bar was hit by the hammer. This was done the second time and he began to jump violently and to whimper. (11months 3 days)
- The rat was presented to Albert with no sound. Albert was presented with blocks after the rat was taken away with which he played. The rat was presented and the sound made and Albert was startled and fell over. (11months 10 days)
- Albert was shown the rat on its own two times, he played with the blocks between each presentation. Albert was then shown the rabbit on his own, followed by the dog, cotton wool, Watson head and Santa Claus mask. Block were given to Albert after each item for him to play with and calm him down. (11moths 15 days)
- Albert was presented with the rat alone, and then the rat was placed on his hand and then the steel bar was hit. Rat was presented 2 more times, following with the rabbit by its own. After that he was given blocks to play with then the rabbit was presented again, but when Albert wanted to touch him the steel bar was hit by the hammer and then the rabbit was presented by its own. The same procedure was carried out with the dog. (11moths 20 days)
- On the same day Albert was taken to a well-lit lecture room where he was presented with the rat alone, the rabbit alone, the dog alone, then the rat a second time followed by the
rat and the loud noise. Albert was then shown the rat on its own twice followed by the rabbit and the dog. - Albert was presented with the Santa Claus mask followed by the fur coat, the rat, the rabbit and the dog, with blocks being given to Albert between the presentations of each object. (1 year 21 days)
Little Albert RESULTS
At 11 months and 10 days Albert was scared of the rat, removing his hand when the rat touched it. Albert’s fear generalised onto other objects such as a white rabbit and a dog.
Little Albert CONCLUSION
- it was concluced that emotional transfer does take place and that conditioned fears can generalise to other similar objects.
Little Albert strength
- The experiment is high in reliability, as Watson and Rayner used standardized procedure, showing the same objects and orders of them, the experiment was also filmed and done in the laboratory setting therefore it is easy to replicate.
- control of extraneous variables such as room location or lighting in the room to estamblish cause and effect, and it was strengthened as Little Albert had the same reaction in various locations despite the changes in the environment which increases internal validity.
- Watson and Rayner gathered objective data, for example
whether Little Albert cried or not, and this means the study
is reliable as they did not have to interpret the data.
Little Albert weaknesses
- Experiment cannot be generalized to girls or anyone outside of USA as only one boy was used in the experiment, therefore it has low population validity and results cannot be represented to wider population.
- There was no control group to compare against the reactions of little Albert, which makes it difficult to determine if the results were due to the conditioning or other factors, such as pre-existing fears, and measuring fear is subjective as it depends on person, therefore validity of results are decreased.
-It would be unethical to put a baby through the distress Little Albert went through therefore it is not possible to replicate the study to check the reliability of the findings. - The use of a laboratory affects the ecological validity of the studies as the behaviour seen in the laboratory may not be the
participants’ natural behaviour.
classical conditioning AO1
-Classical conditioning is the process by which new reflexes are
learnt
- Learning through associations such as learning to associate what was a neutral stimulus such as a bell (neutral) can become a conditioned stimulus, such as causing salivation (conditioned) when paired with food to cause an association
- Classical behaviour explains automatic and reflex responses like salivation
- Classical conditioning can be seen in the real world though food aversion –such as when one has food poisoning and their brain learns to associate this food with being sick- this is known as ´´one time learning´´
- Classical conditioning involves unconscious learning and non voluntary learning (automatic) behaviours we don´t have to think about
- Little Albert was conditioned to have a reflex of a phobia, after pairing a neutral stimulus of a white rat with a conditioned stimulus of a loud noise until eventually he had a conditioned response of a phobia – crying, crawling away
from the object
stimulus generalisation
- is when a stimulus that is similar to the conditioned stimulus will produce the conditioned response. The more similar the stimulus is to the conditioned stimulus the stronger the response will be.
extinction
- Extinction is when the conditioned stimulus no longer causes a conditioned response. It occurs when the conditioned stimulus has not been paired with the unconditioned stimulus for some time.
one trial learning
- involves a change in behaviour that occurs with only one powerful experience and the association is usually a result of a single experience (unpleasent) and for example the practical food will be avoided in the future.
classical conditioning weaknesses
- classical conditioning only explains how we learn new reflexes, it does not explain how we learn new voluntary behaviour, unlike operant conditioning which explains how reinforcement teach us new voluntary behaviours, therefore reducing the validity of it as an explanation of learning.
- classical conditioning focuses on nurture and ignores other explanations for behaviour such as biological explanations, therefore the theory may not be a complete explanation of human behaviours such as aggression which reduces its credibility.
- Pavlov’s study (1927) was on dogs, so classical conditioning may not be a good explanation of human behaviour as humans are more complex than dogs.
classical conditioning strength
- studies that have supported classical conditioning are often laboratory experiments and are considered to be scientific as they take place in controlled conditions and the data comes from objective, observable behaviour.
- Ivan Pavlov did a study into dogs which supports classical conditioning as the automatic respond of the dogs became a reflex, when the dogs heard the sound of the bell they knew they were about to get food and they started salaving as an conditioned response. Increases credibility of classical conditioning.
SAD AO1
- type of depression that is related to changes in seasons, begins and ends about the same time every year.
- symptoms start in fall and countinue into winter moths, changing the mood, energy, sleep, increase appetite and motivation.
- one suggestion is that absence of light increases melatonin and what is suggested is light therapy.
- we usually get serotonin from sun and as in winter there is lack of sun there is also lack of vitamin D, and serotonin is implicated in mood which then will change.
- SCN detects less light putside and therefore produces more melatonin causing person to feel drowsy and sleepy.
- the reduction of daylight in the winter may cause disruption to circadian rhythms and so affect the sleep wake cycle.
SAD AO3
- Mahon found that people with SAD could not approprietly regulate their serotonin transporters in the brain during winter moths.
- Mahon used a PET scan to measure serotonin transporters in patients with SAD and healthy controls. PET scans are scientific and testable, which increases the validity of results.
- The fact that people who live 30 degrees either side of the equator rarely get SAD does support the idea that it is a disorder that is affected by light levels.
psychosexual stages -
children develop through 5 stages
each stage there is a focus of pleasure, and is associated with a particular conflict that has to be resolved in order for the person to successfully advanced to the next stage.
- oral, anal, phallic, latent, genital
oral stage
0-1year erogenous zone: mouth
- children derive pleasure from oral activities, including sucking and tasting. They like to put things in their mouth.
anal stage
1-3years erogenous zone: bowel and bladder control
- main focus of the anal phase was controlling bladder and bowel movements. The major conflict at this stage is toilet training, the child needs to learn how to control their body’s needs. Developing this control leads to a sense of accomplishment and independence.
- Anal retentive personality, being very clean and want everything to have a order (obsessed)
- Anal expulsive personality, having destructive personality and are messier and wasteful.
phallic stage
3-6years erogenous zone: genitals
- They are more aware of their anatomical sex differences, which leads to conflict between erotic attraction, jealousy and fear.
- Freud called this the Oedipus complex for boys and Electra complex for girls.
Boys are more attached to their mother while girls are more attached to their father
