Understanding Over Time

Question 1

Psychology over Time

Answer 1

• Wundt set up the first lab in psychology in (1879) Start of psychology. Focused on introspection to find out more about how memory worked; thinking, how we think, but no longer a way to study the brain and behaviour
• Freud (late 1800 early 1900) studied mental illness and how to improve. Behaviour is determined by thoughts, wishes, and memories of which we are unaware of. Painful childhood memories are pushed out of consciousness to unconscious from where they can greatly influence our behaviour. Psychoanalysis (CS, Dream Analysis, Hypnosis)
• Pavlov (early 1900s) animal based. Not a psychologist. CC to treat phobias through SD
• Behaviourism, an idea started by Watson and developed by Skinner in 1920s. Watson argued that mental processes could not be located or measured and that only observable, measurable behaviour should be the focus of psychology. Behaviourism, proposed that all behaviour could be explained as responses to stimuli in the environment. Behaviourists tend to focus on the environment and how it shapes behaviour.
• Computer science was developing in 1960s and the idea that the human brain worked like a computer which helped focus on the brain and information processing. Mental function as information processing. This, combined with a scientific approach to studying the mind, as well as a belief in internal mental states, led to the rise of cognitive psychology as the dominant model of the mind.
• 1960s social psychology with a focus on understanding obedience, prejudice and discrimination which tried to understand social behaviour using the experimental method. For example, Milgram’s infamous 1963 study into obedience arose as he was investigating the german are different hypothesis following ww2
• During the 70s and 80s, there were advances in biological psychology due to the introduction of scanning techniques, such as CAT, PET and fRMI making neuroimaging an important development in psychology.

Question 2

SP: Obedience over Time

Answer 2

• Holocaust occurred in the 1930s
• Germans are a different hypothesis
• Milgram wanted to investigate it in 1963 study
• Agency theory developed
• Burger replicated to see if still true today

Question 3

SP: Prejudice over Time

Answer 3

Development of knowledge of prejudice reflects how social psychology is fuelled by societal events.
Desegregation in America = Sherif -> Tajfel -> RCT -> SIT.
Still, debate over whether the existence of groups or competition causes it.

Question 4

SP: Milgram and Burger

Answer 4

• Milgram: ppts were obedient up until 300V; this is the point where the Learner kicked the wall and stopped answering questions. Between 300V and 375V, 14 participants dropped out of the study (ball 4 “prods” with their questions and arguments). The remaining 26 (65%) carried on to 450V shock at the end. Variation 5 included complaining about a heart condition
• Burger: Burger found that 70% of participants in the baseline condition were prepared to go past 150V, compared to 82.5% in Milgram’s Variation #5. This sounds like a big difference but it is not statistically significant given the number of people involved.
• Ethical guidelines introduced
• Milgram: participants’ wellbeing was ignored: they were deceived (shocks) and did not give informed consent (memory test, not an obedience test). When they tried to withdraw, the “prods” made this difficult for them. This sort of treatment of participants drags science into disrepute and makes it harder to recruit for future research.
• Burger: Tries to avoid M’s problems. Screened out participants who were likely to be distressed. The experimenter was a trained clinical psychologist who could identify signs of distress and would stop the experiment if anyone seemed to be disturbed by what was happening. Approved by the University Ethics Panel, who could shut it down if anyone was being harmed.Reduced the test shock to a mild 15V. Stopped the study at 150V so he didn’t force anyone to “go the distance” to 450V, which reduced many of Milgram’s participants to tears (3 fainted).
• Burger deceived his participants just as M. He did not get informed consent (Milgram, this was advertised as a memory study), although he did debrief participants afterwards. The BPS Ethical Guidelines say participants must not be distressed; even though no one was reduced to tears, the procedure was surely distressing for at least some participants.

Question 5

SP: Current

Answer 5

• Not changed much over the past 50 years
• Sherif’s research supports both the Social Identity Theory and RCT. SIT is a theory that has stood the test of time in explaining intergroup relationships.
• Verkoojen et al. (2007): found social identification within subcultures regarding drug use. Studied a sample of 6000 Danish individuals aged 16-20 and found ‘skaters’, ‘hip-hoppers’, ‘technos’ and ‘hippies’ were most likely to use drugs, whereas those in ‘sporty’ or ‘religious groups’ were least likely. Demonstrates how people are likely to take on the norms and identity of the in-group. This also demonstrated that prejudice today may still operate in a similar way.

Question 6

CogP: Introduction

Answer 6

• The 1960s with the introduction of Memory models
• The study of the capacity and fragility of human memory is one of the most developed aspects of cognitive psychology.
• The study of memory focuses on how memories are acquired, stored, and retrieved. -Memory areas have been divided into memory for facts, for procedures or skills, and working and short-term memory capacity.
• The experimental approaches have identified memory types e.g., procedural and episodic or capacity limited processing systems such as short-term or working memory.

Question 7

CogP: Baddeley MSM to WMM

Answer 7

-Baddeley found that there were differences in the way LTM and STM encode information and with Hitch developed the Working Memory Model in 1974. Explain how the WMM builds upon the MSM and what the MSM has been criticised for being too simplistic in the emphasis on the role of rehearsal and challenging the idea that STM is a single unitary store. WWM is separate.

Question 8

CogP: Reconstructive

Answer 8

• Schemas
• Over the last 25 years, there have been many further studies demonstrating that memory is not only fallible but highly suggestible. The foremost figure in this area is Elizabeth Loftus, who has focused the bulk of her research on the psychological and legal aspects of distorted or false memories.
• Memories are shaped.
• EWT is unreliable and is subject to contamination and manipulation. False memories can be triggered in individuals merely through the power of suggestion. Loftus’s expertise was central to stemming the “recovered memory” hysteria that swept the USA and UK in the 1980s and 90s as she challenged people’s claims that they had uncovered, often with the help of therapists, repressed memories of abuse and even alien abduction.
• Cognitive Interview/Enhanced Cognitive Interview

Question 9

BioP: 4th Century

Answer 9

4th Century:

• Early humans understood some basic qualities of the brain as fossil evidence shows trepanning (surgical intervention in which a hole is drilled into the skull to treat problems with the brain) was used to treat epilepsy and migraines. This demonstrates how humans from 10,000 years ago had some ideas about brain functioning
• Hippocrates, a Greek physician born in 460BC, was familiar with brain injuries and proposed that each side (hemisphere) of the brain serves a distinct function.

Question 10

Bio: 16th and 17th Century

Answer 10

• 16th: Decrates=That there is a difference between animals and humans, and that the difference was that humans had souls. Monoism: That the mind and body are one thing. Dualism: That the mind and body are separate but can interact.
• 17th: Broca examined a man unable to talk coherently because of head injury. When he died Broca showed by post-mortem that a specific area in the brain was damaged. This was proof of “localisation of function”, and support for the ideology that behaviour has a physiological basis. Different parts of the brain are responsible for specific behaviours.

Question 11

Bio: 19th Century

Answer 11

-In the 19th Century the ‘science’ of phrenology was introduced; the practice of mapping the bumps on a person’s skull to deduce aspects of their character. This reflects the idea that behaviour was in some way linked to the brain. Phineas Gage then provided further evidence for the role of the brain in governing behaviour; in 1848 he suffered an accident which damaged his pre-frontal cortex. This led to dramatic changes in his personality as he became irritable, rational and irresponsible.

Question 12

Bio: 21st Century

Answer 12

• CAT scans were introduced in the 1970s. X-rays that move around to create the total picture. Only obtains structural information and only a black and white image.
• PET allows functioning to be measured by assessing metabolic activity in different parts of the brain. Radioactive glucose is injected in a non-harmful amount. They emit positions which can be detected by the scanner.
• fMRI: A magnetic field is passed through the patients head. Nuclei within hydrogen molecules align with this magnetic field. When an area of the brain is more active it will consume more oxygen so will, therefore, have a higher concentration of blood. Haemoglobin in blood repels the magnetic field being diamagnetic and when full of oxygen follows the field being paramagnetic. A scanner detects this change to create an image of a map of activation on a computer

Question 13

Learning Psychology

Answer 13

• Behaviourism emerged in the late nineteenth century as a reaction to traditional forms of psychology, e.g. Freudian theory, which often had difficulty making predictions that could be tested experimentally. One of the earliest Behaviourists can be traced back to the late 1800s; Thorndike who pioneered the law of positive effect; a process that involved strengthening behaviour through the use of reinforcement. If the effect/ outcome of learning was good then the behaviour would be repeated.
• In the first half of the twentieth century, Watson rejected introspective methods and sought to understand behaviour by only measuring observable behaviours and events. Watson and Pavlov investigated the stimulus-response procedures of classical conditioning, Skinner assessed the controlling nature of consequences and also the antecedents that signal the behaviour; the technique became known as operant conditioning.
• The experimental and observational methods used within this approach are still widely used today and accepted as scientific. The learning approach has also stood the test of time in terms of the well-established theories such as classical and operant conditioning theories.
• Capafons ppts is more scientific and objective. As SP and Quant data.

Question 14

Learning Psychology: SLT and Treatments

Answer 14

• Flooding and Systematic Desensitisation
• SLT was developed in 1977 upon the principles of CC and OC to observational learning. Vicarious reinforcement. This has lead to measures such as the watershed being put in place so that TV shows that include mature content protect children by only showing them after 9pm