Booklet!

12

Psychology
Core Studies – G541

Amy Marie Smith

 Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychology attempts to explain our behaviour though an understanding of mental
processes. And how we make sense of these processes.

Processes involve

 Perception
 Language
 Memory
 Thinking
 Along with beliefs and attitudes and their information.

Loftus & Palmer – Eye witness testimony

Focuses on memory and eye witness testimony in particular. It explores the idea that a photographic
or a precise version of events. Participants were shown a variety of different car accidents then
asked leading questions about what they saw. This was in an attempt to prove that memory can
distort an individual’s recollection of what they witnessed.

Baron-Cohen et al. - Autism

Investigates the core problem experienced by people with autism. A disorder involving social
communication difficulties. And the links in theory of mind studies and being able to understand and
prediction how people are feeling and are thinking. This study showed that it’s not the case that
autistic aren’t clever/intelligent they just lack a theory of mind.

Savage Rumbaugh et al. – language accusation

Teaching chimp’s sign language as they have similar hands, language accusation for the pygmy
chimpanzees (Kanzi & Mulika) were compared to that of a regular chimpanzee. It was found that the
pygmy chimps has a were quicker to learn then that of the common chimps. And researchers were
confident that Kanzi had learned to use language successfully.
 Loftus & Palmer (1974)
‘Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction’

Background

 Memory not a camera

 Memory can be altered and changed (Malleable)
 Memory can be distorted
o How reliable is Eye Witness Testimony (EWT)
o Devlin committee said that 74% of all convicted criminals were all put down on eye
witness testimony without collaborating evidence.
o False memory implanting false memory -> bugs bunny experiment

Aims

 Study effects of leading question on an event

 Specifically the researcher wanted to find out of changing a verb in a question about speed
would have estimates on the speed given by participants

Experiment one –

 45 student’s participants were shown 7 clips of traffic accidents.

 Segments were between 5 and 30 seconds long
 After viewing students were given a questionnaire that first asked them to ‘give an account’
on what they had just seen
 And other more specific questions
 One of the questions was the critical question.
 Students were separated into 5 groups of 9 and each group was given a different critical
question.

Independent Variable: Verb Used

Dependant Variable: Estimated Speed

Group 1 – How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?

Group 2 – How fast were the cars going when they collided with each other?

Group 3 – About how fast were they cars going when the bumped into each other?

Group 4 – About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?

Group 5 – About how fast were the car when they contacted one another?

Findings
Results were to be analysed statistically and was found to be significantly

 Average speed for each condition:

Smashed (Group 1) 40.8 mph
Collided (Group 2) 39.3 mph Although actual speeds of crashes were:
Bumped (Group 3) 38.1 mph
Hit (Group 4) 34.0 mph  One at 20mph
Contacted (Group 5) 31.8 mph  One at 30 mph
 Two at 40 mph

So people were not good at estimating speed were not good at estimating speeds of cars are
traveling

1st explanation- response had Bias factors manipulating words may lead to demand characteristics

2nd explanation – participants memory may be distorted

We cannot conclude weather the wording did influence the participants speed estimated as they
may have just been responding to demand characteristics

[So to make this more valid they decided to do another experiment – experiment 2]

Experiment two

 150 students watched a short film that showed a multicar crash

 Participant split into 3 groups of 50

Group 1 – how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?

Group 2 - How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other

Group 3 - Subjects weren’t asked about the speed of vehicles

 A week later subjects were asked the critical question ‘did you see the broken glass?’

Findings

Did you see the broken glass?

Response Smashed Hit Collided

Yes 16 7 6
No 34 43 44
Results show that the verb used in original question influence whether the participants thought they
had seen the broken glass

 In the second experiment it did alter people memory though the critical. This corresponded
to the verb used to describe as people who ‘smashed’ through the glass broke.

Conclusion
  Loftus suggested 2 kinds of information go into memory
o Stage 1 – persons own perception
o Stage 2 – information reserved after event
 They become integrated to make a whole memory. Reconstructed hypothesis.

Evaluation

Strength

 Laboratory experiment- lots of control

 High reliability

Weakness

 Low Ecological Validity

 Participants knew they were taking part in an experiment
 Demand characteristics

How representative was sample?

 Students usually young and said that memory is better when your younger.
 Students are used to taking on information all the time. And being tested on it.
 Students may be fewer confidants at estimating speed so more influenced by verbs.
 Students may be susceptible to demand characteristics

What type of data collected?

 Quantitative data
o Allows us to compare easily 
o Superficial – (not the whole picture) 

Improvement – to ask how confidant they were with their answers.

How useful was research?

 Leading questions can effect memory – important implications for interviewing witnesses
 Avoiding leading questions.

Baron-Cohen
 ‘Another advanced theory of mind evidence from high functioning adults with autism or
Asperger’s syndrome’

Background

Autism

 Unable/ difficulty to communicate

 Don’t like change
 Specialised subjects
 Difficult to read emotions
 Likes animals
 Poor social skills
 Bad theory of mind
 Photographic memory ( in some cases)
 Can’t understand metaphors

Asperger’s
Classic Autism ‘Normality’
Syndrome

Autistic
Spectrum

Facts

 First recognised in 1943

 ½ million people in the UK have autism
 Boys are 4x more likely to have autism then girls.
 21% of children with autism have been expelled from at least 1 school

Autistic Savants

 Individuals diagnosed with autism who appear to have a particular skill (Math, Art, Music) or
gift there’s only about 100 in the world

Causes of autism

 Refrigerator parenting
 Genetics
 Chromosomal abnormalities
 Environmental catalysts
 MMR vaccine
 Extreme male brain
 Cognitive defects ‘lack of theory of minds (TOM)’
Theory of mind

The ability to attribute mental states (feeling beliefs Etc.) to one’s self and to others Develops from
12 – 4 years

Aims – Two hypotheses

1. Adults with aspersions syndrome will be impaired on theory of mind tests

2. Within the ‘ normal population’ females will do better than males

Method

 Quasi experiment
 Independent measures design
 Self-report measures
 Variables
o IV – Weather Participant had autism or not
o DV- correct responses to eyes test

Group One

 High functioning
o Autistic participants – 4
o Asparagus participants – 12
o 13 males and 3 females ( All together)
o Mean age: 28.6
o Mean IQ: 106.31
o Self-selected

Group Two

 Normal
o 50 participants
o 25 Males
o 25 Females
o All IQ’s Above 85
o Mean Age 30

Group Three

 Torrets Syndrome
o 10 participants
o 8 Male
o 2 Female
o Mean age: 27
o Mean IQ: 103.5

Controlled for
  Age + IQ
 Extraneous and confounding variables.

Apparatus

 Eyes task – Photos of 25 different faces were shown from just the eyes and had to select
which emotion the eyes were showing
 Construction – Four judges (2 Male 2 Female) decided the mental state of eyes photos and
terms then tested a panel of 8 all blind to the hypothesis who all agreed with target words
shown (for 3 seconds)

Procedure

 Each participant tested in 4 tests in random orders. (to try avoid Order effects)
o Eyes test
o Happé strange story’s
o Gender recognition
o Emotion test

Order effects – To stop people from getting better or getting worse because of changes

Control tasks – this was to find out whether autistic individuals had problems with face perceptions

 Gender recognition
 Basic emotion recognition ( Ekman)

Participants were tested either in a quiet room at a researcher clinic (lab at Cambridge University) or
at their own home

(They should have been tested in their own environment or the same environment)

Results Eyes Test

Eyes test Gender Mean Score

‘Normal’ Males 16.3
Condition Mean Score
Autistic Adults 16.3 ‘Normal’ Females 20.3

‘Normal’ Adults 20.3

Gender Recognition
Torres’s adults 20.4
Condition Mean Score
Autistic Adults 24.1

‘Normal’ Adults 23.3

 Torres’s adults 23.7

 Autistic people have impaired
performance on Happé strange stories
 No differences on group 3’s control tasks

Conclusion
  Adults with autism had poorer performance on an advanced on Advance Theory of
mind test wasn’t due to
o Low intelligent
o Having a neurophytric disability
o Females did better emphasising system
o Why? – Evidence that autism partly caused by a cognitive defect.

Evaluation

Strengths

 Experiments allows ‘cause and effect’ so its possible to control variables that could effects
subjects performance
 Quasi- Experiments which has the advantage of studying naturally occurring situations
 Various tests increasing validity

Weaknesses

 Lab-experiment – lacks ecological validity

 Static photographs – lacks ecological validity
 It’s hard for anybody to tell from photographs
 May cause stress to participants

How representative was the sample?

 Hard to generalise with only 4 autistic adults

 Small number of adults in other clinical groups.

What type of data was collected?

 Quantitive consisting of numbers from each study with results.

 No Qualitive data because they thought it wasn’t necessary

Validity – if a test is valid is it measuring what it is intended to (a true measure?)

What changes could be made?

 Increased sample size

 Type of sample
 Task – alternate to eyes task – Video
 Controls – They used 3 locations, they should have really used one.
 Used some qualitive data

How useful was the study?

 Showed that autistic people do lack a theory of mind

 Many techniques now have been used to improve this theory of mind
 Autism is a lonely disorder so by doing this and understanding what it is they lack we can
now help
 Helps us to understand autism
 Although more research is needed for a further understanding.

Savage-Rumbaugh
‘Spontaneous symbol acquisition and communication use by pygmy chimpanzees’
Background

Language- a system of symbols (words/sounds) which convey movement.

Communication – the transmition of ‘something’ ( a message) from one to another

 Some form of language is necessary for communication

 Linguistic universal – are present in all languages

Nurture- Skinner (1957) Nature- Chomsky (1965)

 Language is learnt  Language is innate/

 Through principles of biologically pre-programed
operant conditioning  And is acquired to the
 Child will repeat sounds extent of an innate
that is positively reinforced processing box (LAD)
 This implies that primates  Critical period (birth-
have capacity’s to learn a puberty)
language  Implies primates can’t
learn language

Components of language

 Cultural tranismition – Learned

 Sematic coveys – ‘cat’
 Syntax rules ( grammar and language rules)
 Displacement communicate about things
 Productivity – new word

2 months – coo-ing
6 months -replicated babbling
12 months- one word utterances
18-24 months two word utterances
3 years- Vocabulary of around 100 words
6-7 years – rules of grammar and language mastered
Exceptions!
 Language disorders ( Eg- aphalas, Dyslexia, mutum)
 Autism
 Individuals/ gender differences

Aim of study

To study and report on language acquisition of Kanzi a bonobo chimp and his younger sister Mulika

Note: No hypothesis as it wasn’t an experiment – as they didn’t control for confounding variables or
have any written IV’s / DV’s. although if IV and DV’s were present

o IV- species of chimp

 o DV- respective language acquisition

Method

 Longitudinal study – 17 month period.

 Case study
 Observation
 Quasi-experimental design

Subjects

 Pygmy chimpanzees Kanzi and Mulika were learning the language

 Sherman and Austin common chimps were taught

Serendipitous results – as they did not set out to study Kanzi he just showed him to be bright to they
rolled with it 

Procedure

1) Naturalistic outdoor environment

 Food placed in 17 locations
 Kanzi communicated about food in a forest in a backpack with lexigrams
 And an indoor environment
2) Communication system
 Lexigram
o Visual symbol
o Keyboard of symbols
o To start it had 8 keys
o At the end it had 256 keys
o Connected to the voice synthesiser
 Other means of communication
o Gestures
3) How they learnt
 From watching one another
 Not trained! – learned
Sherman and Austin trained
 No synthesiser
4) Data recording
 Inside
o Recorded
 Outside
o Via Lexigram
5) Vocabulary acquisition criteria.
 Acquired
o Spontaneous
o Behavioural concordance
 o (4 ½ hours of film processed by independent judges
6) Formal test at the end
 Tested all of the words in their vocabulary
 avoided cues or clever hands effect
 Shown photographs and were asked to choose the correct symbol on lexigram

Findings –

 Between the ages of 6 – 16 months both ‘M&K’ spontaneously began to use gestures to
communicate
 Similar gestures were observed in Sherman and Austin but when they were much older (2-4
years)
 ‘M&K’ gestures were often more explicit the ‘S&A’

Symbols Age acquired (months)

Orange, peanut, 30
Symbols Age acquired (months)
banana, bedroom,
chase, Kanzi Milk 17
Key, t-room, surprise 20
Sweet potato, raisin, 31
ball, cherry, peaches, Juice, Water 22
coke, bite Groom 37
Egg 40
Melon, jelly, tomato, 32 Hamburger, Water , 41
orange drink M&M
Clover, Mutata, TV, 42
Trailer, milk 33 Orange juice
Key, Tickle 34 Mulika, Carrot 43
Grab, Tree house, 44
Coffee, juice, bread 35 Blanket, Blackberry
Mushroom trail 45
Refrigerator, hotdog 46
Finding – Formal tests

 ‘K&M’ did well on these from the beginning

 When S&A were first asked to able an item in a test they appeared to anticipate that they
would revise the item as a consequence, so labelling had to be introduced slowly.

Researchers found 4 main differences

1) K&M comprehend lexigrams much easier

2) K&M were able to comprehend English speaking words
3) K&M used lexigrams more specifically Ie, Coke compared to drink
4) Kanzi could refer to others (you chase him) A&S could only refer to themselves.

Conclusions

Pygmy chimpanzees exhibit symbolic and auditory perceptual skills that are distinctively different to
those of common chimps.
Evaluation

 Many controls
 Formal test to increase validity and more reliable
 Lots of anecdotal evidence gathered in some studies
 Logdituitnal study
 Quanitive and qualitative data
 High in ecological validity?
 Ethical issues
o Humanising chimps
o Diet may harm
o Frustration of chimp
 Cant re-release animals
 Lack of control in some areas
 Was sample representative?
o Small
o So larger sample must be used to generalise the results
 Were they using language?
o K&M displayed some features of language however some may say that they didn’t
use it the way we do, so it can’t be generalised

Developmental Psychology
Developmental psychology is the study of psychology that changes over time, on the whole
Developmental psychology and behaviourism is split into two elements:

 Nature – Biological, Genetic and maturational influences

 Nurture- Life experiences (its learnt)

Behaviourists believe that all behaviour could be explained in term of what we have learnt and the
proses that takes place whilst learning.

 The only way behaviour can be studied is via Observation

 Environment causes our behaviour
 Two ways in which we learn from the environment are through classical and operant
conditioning

Classical conditioning is when an animal/ human learns to associate something which naturally
causes a response (baby Albert & rat)

Operant conditioning, learning by consequence though rewards and punishments

Positive reinforcements- Rewards & prizes

Negative reinforcements – nothing, no acknowledgement

Punishments and Consequence

Aversion theory – Stop doing that

 Drugs
 Electrocution

Social Learning theory

 Though learning conditions

 Observing/ learning from surroundings
 ‘you see something violent, You’re going to be violent’
 Environmental things affect behaviour.

Samuel & Bryant

To develop Piagets theory of conservation and thought process.

Bandura Ross & Ross

Focuses on social possesses of Children and Imitating Aggressive behaviour using the influences of
models.

Freud

And his psychoanalytical theory’s about the unconscious and how events construct our behaviour.

Samuel & Bryant (1984)

 ‘Asking one question in the conservation experiment’

Background – Piaget

Jean Piaget – most famous writer on children cognitive development

Background:

 Quality of children thinking changes as they get older

 Older children think differently to younger

Piaget’s theory:

 Children throughout possesses are quanltively differently thought processes

 Nature not nurture
 A maturational theory of cognitive development ( learning patters change as they grow)

Cognitive Development:

 Transformation of initial inborn schema by the twin possesses of-

o Assumiciation = practice
o Accommodation = modification
 This takes place in 4 stages
o Stage one: Sensorimotor Stage
 Birth to 2 years
 Children learn from interaction
 From 6 months objects imitation / permanence
o Stage Two: Pre- operational Stage
 Egocentric
 2 to 7 years
 Unable to understand the world from other perspectives
 Children are unable to conserve

Conserve: When they understand that quantity does not change when appearance changers unable
to take in

 Number
 Mass
 Volume
 ‘it looks different it must be different’

o Stage 3 : Concrete operational stage

 7 to 11 years
 Children are now able to conserve complex operations
 But only if ‘real’ object are at ‘hand’
 Children can’t perform mental operations
 Without a real figure to manipulate the child can’t answer
 o Stage 4 : Formal operations
 Children can perform logical operation and abstract reasoning’s
 11 years +
 Not all people achieve stage of formal operations

Samuel & Bryant

Aims

 To take Piagets theory and develop it as it:

o Is only considering scientific logical thought
o Using methodologies that were seen as inappropriate for young children
o ‘children in the Piagets study gave into demand characteristics’

Methodology

 252 Boys + Girls from a variety of schools & pre-schools around Devon
 Each child carried out 3 tasks
o Counters for numbers
o Plasticine for mass
o Liquid in glass for volume
 Making 12 trials for each child
 Measures compared in independent measures design
o Each participant takes part in one condition and results are compared
o Advantages
 Results not affected by order effects
 Lab experiment
 Easy to control
 Easy to replicate
o Low in ecological validity
 Quanitive Data
 Easy to collect & analyse
o No in-depth reasoning at why respondent behaves or reacts in a way

Hypothesis

Asking only one question in a conservation task would lead to more correct answers (Piagets
experiment asked two)

Independent Variables:

o Age
o Experimental conditions
o Materials used

Dependant Variables:

o Performance in conservation tasks

Sample:

 Opportunity
o 252 participants
o Male and female
o Aged 5- 8 years
o Schools from around Devon
 Split into
o 4 age groups of 63
o 21 for each IV

Findings

 Finding would be recorded as the number of errors made during conservation tasks
 They were twelve trails the maximum error would be 12 and the minimum error 0

Age: The mean number of errors decreases as children get older showing that the ability to conserve
get significantly better with age

Experimental condition: The mean number of errors is lower for the one- judgement condition this
is when only one post – transformational question is asked highest number of errors recorded was
for children who were only asked one question in a controlled condition ( child didn’t see the
transformation take place

Age Experimental condition

Standard One judgement Controlled

5 year 3 month 8.5 7.3 8.6

6 year 3 month 5.7 4.3 6.4

7 year 3 month 3.2 2.6 4.9

8 year 3 month 1.7 1.3 3.3

Mean number of errors

Children are more successful and so make fewer errors and so make fewer errors when conserving
number compared with volume and mass

Conclusions

 Children clearly can conserve better than Piagets though they would
 Piagets study was to controlled by demand characteristics
 One question procedure indicates that they have an understanding to conserve
 Pre operational children can conserve number mass and volume
 Ability to conserve gets better with age
 Number better conserved then mass or volume
Evaluation

 More complex design that includes 3 IV’s

 Different procedure for each experimental condition
 Each task repeated 4 times to discard chances it was by change
 Children were in groups to define age limits
 Ethically Sound
o Not really child friendly
o Lacks Ecological validity
 Reprehensively high sample – Although Ethnocentric
 Quanitive data

How useful?

We now know that children cognitive development is shown to be affected by environment, changes
the way we teach.

Bandura, Ross & Ross (1961)

 ‘Transmitions of aggression though imitation of aggressive models’

Background

 In ‘ Gay’ Experiment the pictures were the condition stimulus and the electric shock was a
response
 Problem with behaviourism is they can’t measure cognitive because they can’t measure it.
 Animals have an automatic reaction to food & reinforcement
 Behaviourists are too simplistic in there theory’s to apply to humans
 People don’t always change for punishment as they way up the cost and rewards although
people may just like the attention and so they do it more.

Assumptions

 Observable behaviour
 People have no free will
 When born mind is a clank slate
o Tabla rasa
 Environment is everything

Social Learning theory

 Learn from environment

o Neo- Behaviourist

Modelling can only be accurate if:

 Attention – noticing behaviour

 Retention – Remembering Behaviour
 Motor reproduction – Physically able to replicate
 Motivation – Has to be reason to copy role/ Model

Variations of Bobo doll

 Aggression reward
 Aggression punished
 Neither rewarded/ punished
 Although when asked to copy seeing reward of not showed no difference

Vicarious – Felt or undergone as if one were taking part in an experience or feelings of another

Behaviour learnt by watching others:

 Language
 Politeness
 Cooking
 Argue
 Daily routines
 Violence
  Sarcasm
 Instruments

Aims

To see if children will imitate aggressive behaviour in different environment and without and modal
present.

Hypothesis

1. Children will imitate the aggressive behaviour of models

2. Non- aggressive models will have an inhibiting effect
3. Same sex models will have more of an impact
4. Boys will imitate aggressive behaviour than girls

Study

 Lab experiment with observation

 36 boys & 36 Girls from Stamford university nursery school
 Ages between 37-69 months old

First Independent Variable (IV) – Role modal

o Non-aggressive model
o Aggressive Model
o No model

Second Independent Variable (IV) – Gender of model

o Male
o Female

Third Independent Variable (IV) – Participants

o 8 experimental groups
o 1 control group

Room 1 – Modelling room/ stage

o Stickers
o Potato prints

Room 2 - Aggression Arousal room/ stage

o Colourful toys
o Spinning top, fire engine, jet planes
o Nice new shiny toys

Room 3- Test for delayed imitation

  Aggressive toys
o Bobo Doll
o Gun
o Hammer
 Non- aggressive toys
o Tea set
o Crayons

They were looking for:

 Imitate aggression
 Partial imitation
 Non-immersive aggression

Results:

They recorded behaviour every 5 second for 20 mins (0.9 – Very high inter-rater reliability)

 Participants that saw an aggressive model were more likely to be aggressive

 Boy’s showed more physical aggression
 Boys more likely to imitate same sex then girls

Conclusions

 Behaviour isn’t learnt though rewards

 Behaviour is transmitted

Neo- behaviourists - behaviour is learnt though social learning theory and not though rewards and
punishments.

Evaluation

Ethics

 Is it right to expose children to violence?

 May cause psychological harm
 Child participants can’t give assent
 Study was filmed
 No debrief, - Could introduce a systematic debrief system

Sample

 Equal number of boys + girls

 Matched children against 3 levels of aggression
 Ethnocentric
 Small sample
 Only looked at young children
 High control
 Enables to work out cause and effect
  Easy to compare – Reliable
o Ecological Validity
 How good were models?
 One of the models was a researchers ( they would know what to spot where as others
wouldn’t)

How useful was the research?

 Applications to everyday life

o Helps you to consider your actions around children
o And things in the media
o Teacher training so they can learn about the modelling effect
o Later experiments have used films
o Watershed ( protects children)
o Parental blocks

Freud (1909)
 ‘Analysis of phobia in a 5 year old boy’

Background

The psychodynamic approach to gender development looks at:

 Dynamics of behaviour
 Behaviour is driven / motivated by un-conscience factors
 E.g. Super Ego
 Defence mechanisms

The psychodynamic approach emphasises the importance of change and development in behaviours
it believes that this development is mainly driven by un-conscience forces.

Freud’s theory of personality

 We all have 3 elements that make up our personality

o Id – Controls our want needs and desires ( unconscious) – Pleasure
o Ego – Responsible for dealing with reality (us) our personality
o Super Ego – Unconscious controls our morals and stops us from behaving
inappropriately (conscience) Internalised model voice of parents

Freudian slip, Slip of the tongue, repressed thoughts comes out

Personality types

 Erotic
o ID controlled
o Love
o Sex
o Pleasure
o Hedonistic
 Narcissistic
o Ego controlled
o Selfish
o Self-loving
o Look after number 1
 Obsetinal
o Super Ego controlled
o Religious people
o Fear of punishment
o Amish

Defence mechanisms – Are BAD!

 Repression – Pushing unwanted memories, truth, feelings and emotions into the
unconscious
 Denial – Refusing to accept the truth
  Displacement – Choosing an object to substitute for the expression of your true feeling
because you can’t express to real target
 Reaction Information – Conscience feeling or thinking the very opposite of the
inconsciendently so you behave in the opposite way you feel.

The Oedipus complex

 All young boys experience this complex

 They develop a passion for mothers
 Wants mother for their self’s
 Farther is a rival
 Wishes farther dead
 Afraid farther will discover their desire for their mother and punish by removing prize
positions ( castration)
 Recognising farther is more powerful because of his big penis
 Farther likely to have reprimanded for playing with him self
 Believe farther castrated mother
 Fear – Castration
 Conflict – Love for mother , Envy of Farther

Electra complex

 Loves farther passionately

 Blames mother for castration
 Penis envy
 Baby desire – Penis desire
 Fear – Loosing mothers love
 Conflict – Lust for farther and fear of losing mothers love

Identification

 Towards end of phallic stage kinds identify with the same sex parent
 Identification develops with superego & adopts models & gender identity & roles

Psychodynamic approach

 The unconscious plays a role in behaviour

 Child develops though stages
 Failed to resolve each stage levels to problems in later life

Aim

To cure little Hans phobia of horses and allowed fraud to develop this theory about children having
sexual desires/ Oedipus complex

Method

 Case study – using observation and interviews

 Psychodynamic theory used to cure Hans phobia
How was data collected

 Sample – One boy – Little Hans – Aged 5

 Simulation – Daily life of Hans and his family
 Recordings – letters from Hans dad to Freud describing child’s behaviour Freud would reply
with his interpretations

Procedure

No set way about collecting data unlike lab experiment were everything has been calculated as
wasn’t standard

Recordings

 Hans farther recorded events and conservations with Hans and sent there to Freud for
analysis
 Freud sent recomadtions by returns of post
 Hans met Freud once

Findings

 Hans was interested in his ‘widdler’ evidence of phallic stage

 Mother threated to have Hans widdler cut off
 So had to repress his pressure and kept trying to see other peoples ‘widdler’ and showing
there’s off
 Didn’t want his farther close to mother
o Giraffe dream/ fantasy
 Wants farther dead but he loves him
 Fear of baths – unconsciance fear of his mother loved Hannah more so wouldn’t hold him as
tight in the bath So he may slip and drown
 Fear of white horses – Symbolic fear of farther (castration theory)
 Plumber fantasy – resolving Oedipus complex

Conclusions

100 pages long but only part of his research he concludes that Hans was exhibiting the Oedipus
complex and supports infinite sexually and theory of psychosexual development and phobias

Evaluation

 Large amount of detailed quantities data

 Rich and compelling information
 Everything was recorded
 Liberal family – they let things happen
o Farther was an avid follower of Freud
o Just one child so cant generalise
o Leading questions and being lead by farther
o Not very representative but had a lot of information
How usefull was research?

 Apply work with adults with psychoanalysis of children

 Children have an awareness of sexuality
 Children identify with same sex parents to learn everyday things as you grow
 Phobias – Defence mechanisms
 Analysis works
 Unconsiance derived and understood
 Can be applied to most areas of psychology
 And conquered Hans fears and phobias

Individual Difference
This is the principle that everybody is different, as most other studies studied things as a whole and
used a lot of statistical analysis as they believed that this was the only way of getting valid and
reliable data.

As it’s quite understandable that people are not as likely to be as trustworthy of a study on one
person compared to one that was on a sample of 300 people, as the more people used the easier it
is to relate.

So with individual psychologists they tried to show that were not all average and that we all are not
average and are all better or worse at certain things. And believe we can learn a lot from the not so
average beings.

Griffiths

Provides detailed insight into thought processes of fruit machine gamblers. And discovered some
interesting findings about how regular gamblers have a particularly irrational set of beliefs about
their own ability and understanding of the machines. Also gave us an insight into the thought
processes of gamblers.

Rosenhan

Challenges the normal/ abnormal debate as he highlighted the difficulty in diagnosing people in the
mental health industry as they found it was remarkable how the sane were being diagnosed as
insane, ( and later Vice versa) and the difficulty of shaking of labels once you have them

Thigpen & Cleckley

Study into multiple personality disorders and goes into detail though a ordeal that most people will
never come into contact or experience in there life’s. This provides great insight into this condition.
Although the study has been criticized for whether it was reliable or not.

Griffiths (1994)
 ‘The role of cognitive bias and skill in fruit machine gambling’

Gambling addiction

 Recognised illness by the NHS

 A risk
o The ‘buzz’

Characteristics of an addict

 Salience – Single most important thing in their life

 TOTAL PREOCTUPATION – All you think about
 Mood Modification
o Bugged up
 Tolerance levels
o You need more and more to get the same buzz
 Withdrawal Symptoms
o Anxiety
o Moodiness

Healthy Enthusiasm Conflict Addiction

Aims – 4 Hypotheses

1. There will be no significant differences in thought processes ( irrational

Verbalisations) between regular and non-regular (True)
2. There will be no significant difference in the skill of regular and non-regular
gamblers ( true)
3. Regular gamblers would report themselves as more skilled – (true)
4. ‘thinking aloud’ participants would take longer to complete the tasks then ‘non
thinking aloud participants

Method

 Quasi-Experiment
 Research design – Independent measures
 Independent Variable
o Weather participants were regular or non-regular gamblers
 Dependant Variables
o Cognitive ability ( thinking aloud) and perception of skill (post experimental – semi
structured interview)
o Additionally they looked at the behavorable variables
 Total Plays – Per session
 Total Time – Mins of play
  Play Rate – Total number of plays per Min (Significant)
 End Stake – Total Winnings in 10p pieces
 Wins – Total numbers of wins (Non-Regular thinking aloud had most)
 Win Rate (time) – Total number of mins between each win
 Win Rate (play) – Total numbers of play between each win
 Field Experiment
 30 Regular Gamblers
o Played at least once a week
o 29 Males
o 1 Females
o Mean age : 21.6
 30 Non-Regular Gamblers
o Played at least once before
o 15 Males
o 15 Females
o Mean age: 25.3
 Volunteer Sample ( self-selected)
o Mainly recruited Via posters around Plymouth university
o Or though Griffiths ( Friends)
 Fruit machine called Fruit Skill.
 Took place in a real Amusement arcade
 Groups were divided into two random groups
o Thinking aloud
o Not thinking aloud
 In the thinking aloud group they had to verbalise every thought they had whilst playing the
fruit machine no matter how irrelevant it may be
 Each participant was given £3 (30 Gambles)
 Their aim was to stay on the machine for 60 Gambles
 After the 60 Gambles they were allowed to take the money they made or keep on playing.

Findings

 Only 2 statistiticly significant differences were found

o Regular Gamblers had a higher play rate (8 plays per Min / NRG- 6 per mins)
o Regular gamblers who thought aloud had a lower win rate
 Researchers Also found ( although not significant)
o Regular gamblers spend more time on the fruit machine by having more gambles
using the same initial stake.
o There were no significant differences in the amount of total winning between
thoughts who did not
 The only hypothesis that can be demonstrated by these findings is a Null, There would be no
difference between the skill levels of regular and non-regular gamblers
 As regular gamblers spent more time on machines, griffins argues that there may be some
skill or knowledge applied for familiar machines
 Griffins believe that regular gamblers know that they will lose their money.
  Despite that there is something rewarding about playing the machines and they enjoy the
feeling of playing with money and not for it.

The thinking aloud group

 Griffins carried out content analysis on the verbalisation

 He put them into 30 different categories i.e. Irrational cognitions (E.g., personification of the
fruit machine) or explaining away losses

Type Of Fruit Most frequent Utterances

Machine Gambler
Irrational Verbalisations Rational Verbalisations

Regular  Personification of the  Reference to number system – ‘I’ve

machine got a two’
 Explaining away losses  References to Winning
 Swearing at the machine

Non- Regular  Very Few recorded  Questions relating to confusion and

not understanding ‘What’s going on
here?’
 Statements relating to confusion
and non-understanding – ‘I don’t
understand this?!’
 Miscellaneous – ‘I think I’ll get a bag
of chips after this’

Uses of heuristics (Sets of rules that are used to solve problems)

 Gamblers did use heuristics but not widely

 The ‘hindsight bias’ helped them to predict events after they had happened ‘ I knew that was
going to happen’
 Why may this bias encourage gambling to develop?
o Illusions of control
o Flexible attributions
 The difference in use of heuristics could be down to a mix of individual factors.

Irrational Verbalisations – 14% Regular Gamblers, 2.5% Non-regular Gamblers.

 Personification of fruit machines

 Explanations of losses ‘ I loosed because I wasn’t concentrating’

Rational Verbalisations

 General Swearing/ cursing – ‘Damn’

 Reference to winning – ‘I won 40 p ’
 There maybe some skills – Regular gamblers are more skilled orientated I.e. Nudges and
holds.
 Perception of skills are important:
 o Regular gamblers:
 18/30 Preserved above average skill.
 5/30 Total skill
 The rest said it was 50/50 between skill and chance.
o Non-regular Gamblers:
 12/30 Totally Unskilled
(Down to chance)

Conclusion

 Regular + Non-regular gamblers have differences on how they deal cognitively with the idea
of skill in relation to fruit machine gambling
 Regular gamblers think that there’s more skill involved- when only minor influences on the
outcome
 Regular gamblers have ‘Irrational Gambling bias’ and can be modified and indicates some
level of success by allowing them to listen to recordings of verbalisations
o Many of them were shocked with what they were thinking/ saying
o Once aware of irrational thoughts they could change them
 Cognitive Bias
 Perceived Skill
 Regular gamblers play until they loose
 Irrational thoughts a lot less then what they thought
 More research is needed into heuristics
 ‘Idiot skill’

Cognitive behaviour modification

 Audio playback therapy

 4 gamblers heard them self and were surprised
 One was diagnosed as a pathological gambler
 Gambling then declined after they heard there verbal outburst

Evaluations

Strengths

 Very high in ecological validity

 Risk and excitement of playing maintained by only giving participants £3 enough for 30
gambles with the aim to get to 60.
 Triangulation
o Observation of behaviours
o Recordings of verbalisations
o Semi-structured interviews


Weaknesses
  Validity of Thinking out-loud technique
o Hard for participant to do.
o Most of verbalisations had nothing to do with gambling.
o Requires more research
 Low in inter rater reliability.

How representative was sample?

 As self-selected my not represent the whole population

o (mainly extroverts that will apply as there more outgoing)
 In Regular gambling group major imbalance in gender terms
o 29 males
o 1 female
o ALTHOUGH, statistically fruit machine gambling is dominated by young males

Type of data collected?

 Data-rich study
o Qualitive
o Quantive
o All available in great detail.

How useful was research?

 Raises the profile of a forgotten addiction among adolescents

 May be able to offer a solution to gamblers – listening to vocalisations of thinking aloud.

Thigpen & Cleckley (1954)

‘A case of multiple personality’
What is personality?

 Hypothetical Construct
 Can be observed
 We can only observe behaviour

Personality is a combination of those relatively enduring traits which influence behaviour in a

predictable way in a variety of situations.

Introvert - Quiet, Retiring, Introspective, Fond of books, Reserved and distant.

Extrovert – Sociable, Parties, Many friends, Craves Excitement, Likes change, has a need to talk.

Eysenck believed biological differences determine personality (nervous system) If Eysenck theory is
correct then multiple personality’s cant exist as you can’t change your nervous system

Schizophrenic – Psychosis Dethatched from reality

MPD- Multiple personality disorder

 Two of more distinct personality’s

 Caused be a traumatic Event.

Eve White (EW)

 Nervous
 Shy
 Uncomfortable
 Distant

Eve Black (EB)

 Giddy
 Smiley
 Flirty
 Relaxed
 Childlike

Jane

 Confidant
 Involved / Responsive
 Optimistic

Aim

To record symptoms and treat of multiple personality disorder

Case study of therapeutic processes

Eve

Were 25 and was referred to Thigpen after severe headaches and Amnesia – Fuges. She was then
tested with psychometric tests (IQ & memory) & Rochach Test (Inkblot) Initial interviews with Eve
White

 Blinding headaches
 Blackout
 Marital Problems
 Personal Problems

Eve White

 IQ- 110
 Excellent Memory
 Repressive personality
 Conservative (Formal), Shy, Dutiful.
 Loving Wife and mother
 Hard Worker.

Once hypnotised & then a Letter arrived – Objective Evidence

Transformation -> Eve Black

‘Hey Doc…….’

 Devilish childlike Smile

 Erotic Glances
 Posture change

Eve Black

 IQ – 104
 Poor memory
 Representative – childish
 Childish, Extrovert, Mischievous
 Denied being wife and mother

Therapy lasted 14 months.

EW was not aware of EB but EB was aware of EW

EB was blamed for temper tamptrums

Thematic Appreciation test – Projective tests - were carried out

As treatment continued:

 EW headaches got worse

 Blackouts increased
  Both EW & EB denied awareness in blackouts
 EW state of mind derteriated
 A 3rd personality appeared
o She called herself Jane
o Nor EW or EB were Aware of Jane
o Jane Had full knowledge of EW & EB
 All 3 personalities were tested on the electoenphalogram (ECG)

Jane seemed to be the person most likely to being a solution to the troubled minds.

She became Increasingly Dominating over the other personalities

Ethics

 Killing one or more personality

 Explanations
o Was she acting?
o Was she Psychotic?
o Did hypnotism cause MPD?

Conclusion

 They wonder if they had become so involved they had lost their judgement and over
dramaticised the case
 But they still said that they witnessed multiple personality’s
 Simulates of EW&EB
o Both were under stressful situations
o Bother unaware of Jane
 Differences Of EW&EB
o Personality differences
o IQ

MPD- Neurosis- contact with reality

Evaluation

Strengths

 Rich Qualities Data

 Quantitive objective data
 Interviews conducted with other people not just the Eves
 Longitudinal study

Weakness

 Thigpen thought they were being severely hoodwinked by a extremely talented actress
 Case study
o Difficult to generalise
  They weren’t 100% sure it was MPD
 Raised a number of important questions
 Ethics
o Threatened Eve Black
o Mental Euthanasia
o Killing of a personality

Physiological Psychology
Physiological Psychology- Try’s to explain human behaviour though an understanding of biological
and neurological processes.
Physiological psychologlogists study the structure and function of parts of the brain and nervous
system.

Techniques used to study the brain

The Electroencephalogram (EEG) – Involves electrodes attached to the scalp, to detect in brain
activity, DERMIT AND KLEITMAN used EEG measurements of the brain activity during sleep.

Recently though techniques such as PET scans, these can supply coloured images of brain activity;
this allows psychologists to examine what parts of the brain control what.

MRI scans provide details of the size of different brain structures and can do this extremely
precisely. MRI scans are used in the study by MAGUIRE ET AL. to calculate the size of the
Hippocampus.

In physiological psychology use Case Studies. But people who endure such studies normal have
some sort of brain damage, so studying them can tell us a lot about them.

Maguire et al. (2000)

Used MRI scans to see if experiences could make a difference to the brain. The work was mostly on
navigation skills in taxi drivers, and the effects it had on the part of the brain that deals with skill –
The Hippocampus.

Dement & Kleitman (1957)

This was a very early study of Sleep and Dreaming. Volunteers who agreed to sleep in a laboratory
with electrodes attached to their scalps to measure brain activity. And were the first people to
discover the relationship between stages of sleep and the occurrence of dreaming.

Sperry (1968)

Studied a small amount of people who had there Corpus Callosum severed. These people had
extreme surgery to control their epilepsy but severing this did not sure epilepsy just stopped
seizures from spreading from one hemisphere to another

Maguire et al. (2000)

Background
The hippocampus is located at the Medial temporal lobe and is part of the Limbic System a human
have two hippocampi. The role of the hippocampus is disputed but is believed to play a part in
Memories and new memories.

It is believed that the Hippocampus could change size dependant on what/ how much information
could be taken in. Without the hippocampus we would not be able to know how to get to where we
wanted to be or remember where we had been.

So the whole taking about how Men are better navigators or map readers, is just because they have
a larger Hippocampal volume.

Aim of the study.

Study attempts to determine whether changes could be detected in the brain of humans who have
extreme experiences of spatial navigation have different characteristics of their hippocampus.

Who were the participants?

Contains a suitable sample of London black-cab drivers who have passed a series of tests or training
that take 2 years to complete, otherwise known as ‘The Knowledge’

Participants were 16 Male Licensed cab drivers who had passed ‘The Knowledge’. All where Right
Handed and aged between 32 and 62 years of age, with a mean age of 44. They all had been licenced
for at least 18 months. But the range was from 18 months to 42 years with a mean of 14.3 years.
And all were healthy both physically and mentally.

For the control group the researchers took 50 scans from the MRI scan database all fit the same
criteria of the cab group. (Right handed, Male, Aged 32-62. All physically and mentally sound).

Methodology
Quasi –experiment. Although. No manipulation was made. Data was collected through two different
techniques of analysing MRI scans. (Voxel- based morphology and pixel counting)

MRI- Method that uses radio waves to obtain 3D Images of brain and body tissue.

Results
Analysis using Voxel- Based morphology showed increase amounts of grey matter volume in both
left and right hippocampi but this was found in the posterior hippocampus. Whereas the control
sample had a greater volume in the anterior hippocampus.

Also the longer the participants were taxi drivers the larger the hippocampus was,

Conclusions
There was a correlation between the amount of cab driving experience and the volume of grey
matter in the posterior hippocampus

Evaluation
Method

+ they didn’t need to manipulate the IV (Taxi drivers & non-taxi drivers)

- Difficult to draw conclusions from data because it could have been from a number of reasons

+ Strong correlation established between the length of time taxi driving and hippocampus size.

Data collected

+ Quantitative data – Free from bias, Lots of it.

+ No demand characteristics.

+ MRI scan very precise measurements.

+ Harmless prosses, Nothing harmful about MRI scans.

- Although not suitable for people with pacemakers or who suffer from claustrophobia.

Was sample representivite?

- Taxi drivers aren’t representative of the whole population although this was never the aim.

+ Taxi drivers selected all had similar knowledge as they had passed ‘the knowledge’ although
experience maybe varied

+ High levels of control. Free from many confounding variables

How useful was the study?

+ Results show evidence of plasticity in the brain and its response to change.

+ ‘ Normal activities can include changes in the relative volume in grey matter in the brain’ – So grey
matter can improve and change and adapt to different times, so if brain damage occurs they may be
able to regenerate and reform to work again .
 Dement & Kleitman (1957)
Aim of study

 ‘an objective method for the study of dreaming’

 To attempt to develop a relationship between rapid eye movement and dreaming.
 And another 3 approaches / Hypothesises
o Will people be more likely to report dreams if they are woken in periods of REM
than during NREM?
o Can people accurately estimate the duration of their dreaming?
o Is the direction of eye movement during REM related to dream content?

Participants

 Seven adult males

 Two adult females
 5 studied infectively
 4 minimally studied.(to confirm results of the first 5)

How was study conducted?

 Lab experiment
 Participants had to report to the lab.
o At normal bed times
o Avoided caffeine & alcohol on the day
o Otherwise routines as normal.
 Electrodes to be attached near the eyes to measure eye movements
 Electrodes attached to the scalp to measure brain activity ( to see sleep patterns)
 Then placed in a dark, quite room
 Electrodes attached to EEG
 At various times during the night by a doorbell and were asked to talk into the tape
recorder. And state whether they had dreamt and the content of them.

Results.

Hypothesis 1: Will people be more likely to report dreams if they are woken in periods of REM than
during NREM?

 All participants showed REM sleep.

 REM occurred at regular intervals throughout the night.
o Average was around every 92 minutes.
 351 awakenings took place.
 All subjects were more likely to recall dreams when woken at REM rather than NREM.

Woken during REM sleep Woken during NREM sleep

Dreams recalled No recall Dreams recalled No recall
152 39 11 149
Hypothesis 2: Can people accurately estimate the duration of their dreaming?

 To begin with subjects were woken at varied times and asked to estimate how long they had
been dreaming but then this was to complex
 So examiners decided to change it so participants were woken either 5/ 10 minutes into
REM and were asked whether they had been dreaming 5/ 10 minuets
 Results show that participants were more accurate in there estimate of dream length.
 Interestingly only one participant was responsible for a large proportion of the incorrect
estimates.

51 tests 60 tests

Woken after 5 minutes of REM Woken after 15 Minutes of REM

Correct Incorrect Correct Incorrect

45 6 47 13

Hypothesis 3: Is the direction of eye movement during REM related to dream content?

 Originally researchers asked subjects to accounts for every eye movement made
chronologically although not many participants could remember dreams in such detail.
 The final approach subjects were awoken when one of four main patterns of eye movement
had persisted for one minute and were asked to recall what they had been dreaming about.
 Total of 35 awakenings were collected from 9 participants.
 Periods of mainly vertical and horizontal eye movement were rare
 Results support the idea that eye movement is related to dream content.

Type of eye No. times Examples of dream content

movement observed

Mainly vertical 3  Standing at the bottom of a cliff and looking up at climbers

eye movements.  Climbing a ladder and looking up and down
 Throwing basket balls at a net

Mainly horizontal 1  Watching two people throw tomatoes at each other

eye movements

Both vertical and 21  Looking at close objects

horizontal eye  Talking to groups of people
movements  Looking for something
 Fighting with someone

Very little or no  10  Watching things in the distance

eye movement  Staring at an object
 Driving a car and staring at the road ahead
Evaluation

Strengths-

 Study in laboratory- high levels of control over the variables

 Reduced chances of confounding variables
 Precise and objective measure

Weaknesses-

 Lacks ecological validity.

Was sample representative?

 Very small. (9)

 Only 5 studied intensively.

Can you generalise from that?

 Although similar results were found

Data Collected

 Quantitative
 Relatively easy to collect
 Can be analysed easily
 Some qualitative (question 3)

Ecological validity

 Not natural sleeping environment

 Not natural wakening patterns

Was study useful?

 Allowed people to go forward study further and replicate

 It gave us new knowledge and insights into sleep.
 Generated many other studies.

Sperry (1968)
 ‘Hemisphere disconnection and unity in conscious awareness’

Background

The brain is made of two half (hemispheres) which as both capable of different things.

Left Hemisphere Right Hemisphere

Annalistic Thought Hasidic thought
Logic Intuition
Language Creativity
Science & Math Music & Art

Left Hand Side Right Hand Side

Left Hemisphere Right Hemisphere

Left Visual Fields Right Visual Fields

Aim

To look at the effects of the disconnection of the brain & to map out the functions of the two sides –
laterisation of the brain.

Commissurectumy – Corpus Calomus Cut

Participants

 11 Split brain Patient who previously had epilepsy

 Comparison group of ‘normal people’
 Opportunity sample – Available at the time

Procedure

 Sperry used a specially designed apparatus that allows information to reach just one
hemisphere.
 Images were then flashed on the screen for a 10th of a second so that information could not
be seen by the other hemisphere
 Then stimuli would be placed either left or right of the fixation point and then participants
would be asked to say or Draw what they saw.
 Tactile tasks- objects would be placed in one of the subjects hands (screened from view) and
then were asked to take the same item from a bag with alternative/ the same hands.
Controls

 Same image/ words shown

 Length of time shown (1/10 sec)
 Same experimenter
 Eye patch
 Same object placed in hands.

Results

 Information if one seen in one visual field can only be recollected by the corresponding
hemisphere (left visual field – right Hemisphere) and vies versa.
 Visual material shown to the right visual field (left hemisphere) can be described in speech
and writing. And if the same material is shown in the left visual field (Right Hemisphere) they
could not pick it out of a group of items.
 If a different figure is flashed to each hemisphere (dollar sign LVF Question mark RVF) and if
participant was asked to draw what he had seen with her left hand, they would draw what
they saw in the LVF. But if you asked what they had seen in the Left visual field and to draw
it with their Right hand, they could not.
 Right hand side ‘speechless’
 Right had side could also:
o Select similar items (E.g. Clock – Watches)
o Can perform simple arithmetic operations
o Can understand both written and spoken word, but can’t be understood.
o Can identify objects but can’t be spoken
o Can understand instruction
o Shows Emotion

Conclusion

 Both hemisphere have their own functions

 Left is responsible for language and the right side of the body
 Right side is responsible for spatial awareness and the left side of the body

Evaluation

Strength

 Quasi-experimental design
o Allows researchers to investigate variables that are not able to be investigated in
strict laboratory conditions
 Highly controlled
 Fairly representative
 Quantitive and qualitative data

Weaknesses

 Low in Ecological Validity

 As Quasi-experiment – no control over independent variables
 Can it be generalised to whole split brained population?

Social Psychology
 An Introduction
Social psychology attempts to explain our behaviour though an understanding of social processes.
(were influenced by the people around us) eg. We adopt other peoples characteristics and morals in
an attempt to fit in.

Social psychology can be studied in a number of ways but the most likely ways are though laboratory
experiments or though field experiments.

Milgram (1963)

Conducted an controlled observation into the nature of obedience when under an authorial figure.

Reicher and Haslam (2006)

Looked at group dynamics and how they can change under certain conditions eg, Guards and
Prisoners. And focus on group identity’s ect.

Piliavin, Rodin and Piliavin (1969)

Focused on the bystander effect on a NY subway and if people would help a ‘fellow passenger’ if
they fell down unexpectedly.

Milgram (1963)
Background.

After the holocaust made people think that Germans were different but Milgram thought that we all
would kill if put under an authority figure.

Two hypothesis-

Dispositional hypothesis – Germans are different characteristics determine this.

Situational hypothesis – That everybody would kill if put under a certain situation.

Aim.

To test the levels of obedience when put under an authority figure.

Methods.

Laboratory Experiment

 Taken place in a laboratory

 Standardised procedures
 Controlled conditions
 No manipulation of the independent variable.
 Controlled observations

Sample participants

 40 men, aged 20 – 50.

 New haven area
 Mixed qualifications + occupations
 Self-selected sample so maybe it was only extroverts who applied (not very representive)

Yale University

 Participant – Teacher
 Subject (Actor) – Learner
 Scientist (Actor)

Convincing participants

 Participant went one at a time.

 Suitable cover story about punishment and learning & memory.
 Slips of paper were drawn at ‘random’ to decided who was the teacher or learner (Fixed)
 Teacher (participant) saw learner (actor) get strapped into an ‘Electric Chair’
 When asked if shocks were painful scientist replied ‘there will be no permanent damage’
 Each participant was given a sample shock to convince participant of generator authenticity.

Learning task
  Task was to match a word with another word and to indicated though a series of buttons
which flashed in the participants room and this would tell them to administer the shocks.

Shock generator

 Looked, sounded and was perceived to be real consisted of 30 horizontal switches each
switch was clearly labelled from 15 to 450 volts groups were labelled:
 Slight Shock
 Moderate Shock
 Strong Shock
 Very Strong Shock
 Intense Shock
 Extreme intense shock
 Danger: Extreme Shock
 XXX
 When a switch was pressed a corresponding light would flash and various clicks were heard

Feedback from victim

 Wrong answers were given at a ratio of 3:1 and no vocal response was given until 300 volts
was heard the banging could be heard by the ‘teacher’ (participants).

Experimenter Feedback

 Any attempt by the teacher to ask questions or to seek reassurance or to go on was met by a
series of prods
 Prod 1 – ‘Please continue’
 Prod 2 – ‘The experiment requires you continue’
 Prod 3 – ‘its absouloutly essential you continue’
 Prod 4 – ‘You have no choice you must continue’
 If participants asked if the learner would suffer any permanent damage other prods were
applied.

After the study

 Teachers were reunited with learner and told that it wasn’t real and had questionnaires to
assure participants were mentally ok after the experiment.

Findings

 During many participants showed extreme nervousness upon administering the powerful
shocks one person had a seizure so violent the study had to be stopped.
 Out of the 40 participants who took part 26 administered the lethal 450 volts.
 At 300 volts – 5 refused
 At 315 volts – 4 refused
 At 330 volts – 2 refused
 At 345, 360 and 375 – 1 refused
 Evidence Supports the situational hypothesis ( Anybody would kill if in the right situation)
 “Obedience is deeply ingrained behaviour tendency, indeed a potent
Impulse over idealing training in ethics, Sympathy and moral conduct”
- Stanley Milgram (1963)

10 reasons why the experiment worked

1. Study took place in a very precious university

2. Seemed to be a worthy purpose
3. ‘Victim’ volunteered to take part in the study
4. Participants volunteered for the study so may have felt obligated to help /complete the
experiment.
5. Participant was paid to take part
6. Roles of teacher and learner were purely by ‘chance’
7. Participants was unclear about rights
8. Participants were unclear about rights
9. Participants was under the impression that there would be no permanent damage
10. Victim was at first ‘Willing to play the game’

Strengths

 Highly controlled observation

 All the relevant variables were kept controlled
 Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to identify cause / factors
 Ethically Sound
 Ethics are set of moral principles
 Volunteers gave naïve consent
 Ecological validity
 A study has ecological validity I the findings can be related to behaviour that
occur in everyday life
 Milgram argued that it was high in experimental realism to the extent that
participants believed it was real. & there wasn’t any other way of conducting the
experiment

Weaknesses

 Ethics
 Deserved – didn’t tell the whole story
 Didn’t give informed consent
 Right to withdraw unclear (Prods)
 Protection of participants (Physical + psychological) I.e. Stress – seizure
 Lacks Ecological Validity
 Artificial situation
 Low in mundane realism – but that was the point
 Demand characteristics
 I.e. Participants may want to please the researcher
 Ethnocentric
  No women
 Unrepresentative sample.
 No self-report data
 Data gaps.

Conclusion

In the right situation you can lose your freewill

People can enter an agentic state (Individuals relinquish their personal views and act in agent of
somebody else’s view) Under a malevolent authority good people will do bad things.

Reicher & Haslam (2006)

Tyranny- The oppressive expertise of the power to govern harshly and severely and absolutely
arbitrary
 5 steps to tyranny –

 Us and them
o In groups and out-groups
o In-groups – superior/ nicer cleverer
o Once applied by authority figures people believe in its effects
 Obey authority/ order
o Field experiment on the train
 50% of people give up there seat.
 Do ‘em’ hard
o Leaders take responsibility
o Agentic states
o Good people will do evil if there’s an ideology of science
 Standby aperty
o Desensitise, Disagree
o Passive bystander
 Extermination
o SPE (Stanford prison experiment)
o Microcosm

Background

 Stanford prison experiment

o They behaved in a pathological way (bad)
o Sadistic (got joy out of peoples pain)
o Role effected behaviour
 Deterministic
o Roles determines behave behaviour
o No free will
 Situational hypothesis – Reicher said sadistic behaviour isn’t inevitable
 Social identity theory – group membership is important- but how much you identify with
them is a little more important.
 He wanted to show that people have free will.

Aims

 To identify the conditions that lead individuals to identify with the group.
 To identify conditions that lead individuals to accept or challenge intergroup inequality
o Power (student- teacher)
o Status (Police – Prisoner)
o Money ( Rich- Poor)
o Feminism
o Trade unions.
 Data on the unfolding interactions between groups of unequal power ( through observation)
 To examine the role of social organisation and clinical factors e.g., mood in group behaviour
  To develop practical and ethical; guidelines for examining social psychology issues in large –
scale studies

DE individualisation – where people loose their individuality and adapt to group identities

Does your group identity determine what your like- depends if you identify with group social
identity theory.

Social factors- variables

 Group identity
 Authority views

Methods

 Experiment case study

 They were manipulated things i.e., the independent variables
o Independent variables ( manipulation)
 The permeability of group boundaries, told that on day 3 one prisoner
would be promoted – ‘they must show good guard quality’s’ on day 3 one
was promoted after day 3 NO further promotions were available so passage
became impermeable
 Legitimacy of group divisions, until day 6 ( was situation fair/ right) they
were told that the guards went superiors and so there was a loss of
legitimacy
 Cognitive alternatives / leaderships, day 7 they introduced a new prisoner
who was a trade union official (different ways at looking at things) repeated
measure design- same group but Varied conditions.
o Dependant variables (measurements)
 Social variables- social identification, awareness and alternatives plans of
action right-wing authoriticatsum
 Organisation variables- compliance with rules
 Clinical variables- self efficiency depression stress hormones
 The prison was designed in such a way that participants could be video and
on audio – recorded wherever they were
 Daily psychometric testing
 Daily swabs of saliva

How were participants selected?

Male participants were recruited through leaflets and advisements the initial pool of participants
was 332 which was reduced down to 15 after a series of screens

1. Psychometric tests that measured social variables (authorise, social dominance, racism) and
clinical variables (depression, anxiety, social isolation, paranoia aggressiveness etc.)
2. A full weekend of assessment by independent clinical psychologists
3. Medical and character references were obtained + police checks conducted.
Sample considerations

 For ethical reasons only well-adjusted and pro-social people were included in the study
 ‘pure random’ to start 5 guards & 10 prisoners
o Controlled measurements – ( confounding variables)
 Don’t want all aggressive guards and all passive prisoners
 Because it would just be unrepresented off studies not able to identify cause
if you have confounding variables.

The induction procedure

 The guards
o Five percipients were invited to a hotel and were told they were to be guards and
were given a variety of things to do and prison time tables.
o They were given no guidelines about how to reach goals and were taught the
ethically prepared ‘basic prisoner rights’ and were told any physical rights would not
be tolerated
o They were next shown around the prison
o And were given uniforms
 Prisoners
o Arrived one at a time and had their head shaved on arrival and were given a t-shirt
with a printed 3 digit number, loose trousers and flimsy trousers ( to remove
identity)
o They were given no information apart from a set of prison rules.

How did the researchers safe guard against harming the participants?

 Prior to the study it was safeguarded by the BPS ( British psychologist sociality) ethics
committee
 There was clinical, medical and background screening
 There was a comprehensive consent form
 Two independent clinical psychologist monitoring the study throughout
 Paramedics constantly on standby
 On site guards
 Round the clock independent ethics committee

Findings

 Prisoners became more empowered and united as experiment went on

 Guards were not a united body some didn’t like the power
 When prisoners decided to test the guards i.e., throwing food on the floor, demanding
cigarettes one guard gave them a cigarette others stood with discipline ( uninvited front)
 After breakdown, prisoners and guards had a self-governing self-discipline commune
 Introduction of new members gave them an alternative plan of action
 After commune though they started looking faith in the working and after guards asking for
black berets and dark sunglasses they had to stop the experiment.
Conclusions

 They claim that the events were not determined by the participants being in groups or there
social groups or their social roles but by the failed of those groups
 Guards failed to develop a shared identity and value of the commune prompted possibility
of positive change being slim
 They were no cognitive alternatives left for the participants hence the acceptance of a
proposal authoritarian regime
 Researchers agreed with earlier studied SPE that tranny is a product of group proses and not
down to individual deviance
 Individual’s inanity with a group only when it makes sense to do so. Continuously attempts
to implement group values
 After day 3 stress levels went down for prisoners and up for guards
 Rejected inequality’s in commune but then that failed because how do you punish if you
equals?
 Started a new regime embracing inequality’s

Evaluation

 strengths
o Ecological validity
 Experimental realism
 Difficult to act for 8-9 days
 People were acting naturally
 Hard to fake clinical stress
o Lots on ethical safe guards as one of the aims was to develop ethic guidelines
o High levels of control
 Legitimacy
 Permeability
 Cognitive alternatives
 5 groups
o Can identify causes
o Varied representative sample
o Quantitative and qualitative data
o Con-current validity
 Weaknesses
o Lacks EV
 Televised
 Artificial
 What the BBC wants
 National TV
 Demand characteristics
o Possible psychological effects
o So many controls (too artificial?)
o Self-selected sample
 o Lack of self-report data
o Reductionist psychologist tries to explain things by reducing it to one factor –
cortisol levels / stress levels.

Uses of the study

 Not all groups are brutal

 Abusive behaviour not inevitable
 Group failure leads to tyranny
 This makes us politically conscience.

Piliavin (1969)
‘Good Samaritan an underground phenomenon’

Background
  Asch & conformity
 Smoke filled room
 Kitty Genovese

Diffusion of responsibility

 Bystander effect, the more people who are present the less likely people will react because
of diffusion of responsibility – This means no one helps because everyone thinks somebody
else will help
 Evidence- Darley and Latant Experiment more people less likely people would help

Pluralistic ignorance

 Ignorance us where people don’t know what’s going on

 Emergencies are unusual and the situations often ambiguous (unclear) I.e., Is he drunk? Or
Ill? In a situation like this where a large groups of individual seek cues from other people

Modelling Effect

 People are more likely to help if they see somebody else helping
 Empathy putting yourself in their shoes- Us and them, in and out groups – The others.

Aim of study

Four areas of focus:

1. Revocability of the victim

2. Race of victim
3. Effect of modelling
4. Effect of size of group

 Researchers predicted that a person who was drunk would reserve less help that somebody
who was ill
 Race of the victim was predicted to affect the rate of helping. People may be more inclined
to help somebody if they were of the same race
 It was predicted that the less people on the train the more likely people were to help ( due
to diffusion of responsibility)

Methodology

 The study was a field experiment the independent variables were:

 Type of victim ( Drunk/Ill)
 Race of victim (black/white)
 Presence of model ( Early/ Late)
 Number of bystanders presents

 Dependant variables- Various measures taken

 Time taken for the first passenger to offer to help
  Total number of passengers who helped
 The gender, race and location of every helper
 Time taken for the first passenger to offer assistance after modal had assisted
 The movement of any passengers out of the critical area
 Gender race and location of every passenger in the critical area
 Spontaneous comments made by passengers

 Location
 Study was carried out on the A and D trains of 8th avenue in NYC this was because there
were no stops for about 7 ½ min's 103 trials

 Participants
 Opportunity sample
 4450 men & women used the trains between the hours of 11am and 3pm
 Between April & June
 Avg. amount of people per carriage 43 and people in critical zone was 8

 Confederates
 4 teams of 4 ( 2 male, 2 female)
 In those group there were one victim (3 white, 1 black)

 The emergency
 The team of 4 enter the train at different doors to the location of the experimental cart
were emergency would take place a victim would stagger out and then lay on the floor
facing up until they were helped or until they reached the stop at this point part of the
team would go up and to the opposite side of the tracks where the experiment would
happen again 

 Victim and model conditions
 Drunk victim – on 38 trials the victims smelt of alcohol and carried a brown bag
 Cane Victim – on 65 trials victim appeared sober and carried a black cane
 Early Model (C) – Model stood in the critical area and waited passing the forth station to
help
 Late Model (C) – Model stood in the critical area and waited till passing the sixth station
to help
 Early Model (A) – Model stood in the adjacent to the critical area and waited until
passing the 4th station
 Late Model (A) – Model stood in the area adjacent to the critical area and waited until
passing the sixth station.

 Observations Recorded
 On each trial one observer noted the sex and location of everyone standing/ seated in
the critical area she also noted the total number of people in the carriage
  Second coded sex and location of everybody in the adjacent area and noted the time
taken after modal arrived
 Both observers recorded comments made spontaneously by passengers next to them

Findings

 Victims who appeared to be ill were more likely to reset help that people who were drunk
 Of the spontaneous helpers 90% were male
 There was some tendency towards same race helping especially when victims appeared drunk.
 There was no strong relationship between the number of bystanders and the speed of helping so
the diffusion of responsibility didn’t account in this instance
 The longer the emergency continued without help being offered
 The less impact on a modal had on helping behaviour of observers
 The more likely it was that individuals left the immediate area to avoid the situation
 Spontaneous comments were far more likely in the drunk trials
 Longer the experemnt continued without help the less impact the modal had.

What did piliavin conclude?

From the findings they found that it supported bystander effect:

 Observation of an emergency created an emotional arousal by the bystander

 Once are arousal is higher:
 The more one can emphasise with the victim
 The closer they are to the emergency
 The longer the emergency continues without help being given.
 Arousal can be reduced by :
 Helping directly
 Going to get help
 Leaving the scene of emergency
 Rejecting the victim as undeserving

Piliavin suggested that bystander’s responses are determined why weighing up the costs and
rewards of helping.

The major motivation implied in the model is not a positive ‘altruistic’

One but rather a selfish desire to rid one’s self of an unpleasant emotional state
- Piliavin (1969)

Lack of diffusion of responsibility because people couldn’t escape and get away from there
unpleasant state

Evaluation
 Strengths
 High in ecological validity
 No demand characteristics
 Social desirably effects
 Several control methods
 Time it took for modals to help
  Victims ore the same clothes
 This helps with validity and reliability ( Can be Repeated & tested)
 Reprehensive sample
 Collected both Quantitive and qualitlve data ( full Picture)
 Weaknesses
 Lack of control over extraneous variables as they can’t control
 Temp
 Trains
 Number of people
 Whether they saw it twice
 Personality dispositional confused the results.
 Ethics
 Description
 No informed consent
 No debriefing
 Harm to respondents – stress
 No withdrawal
Do the ends justify the means?

 Uneven number of trails

 Sample not representative, bias times of 11-3 when people are work / school
 Alternative explanation- very determined to view of humanity, assuming we can predict
behaviour. Batson propose an alternative model- empery- alternative-humans empathise
with needs of others

Uses of piliavin?

 Individuals make a calculation of whether to help by waying up costs and benifits if rewards are
higher than costs then they would help could influence government laws

Key Points
Cognitive psychology

Loftus & Palmer

 The verb ‘smashed’ in experiment 1 led participants to estimate higher speeds than other
verbs
  The verb ‘smashed’ in experiment 2 led participants to say ‘yes’ to the question ‘did you see
any broken glass?’ more often than the verb ‘hit’
 The conclusions are
o Memory of events is not always reliable
o Memory can be influenced by information that we can receive after the event
o Memory can be influenced by our schemas and expectations of events

Baron-Cohen

 Previous test of theory of mind skills were only suitable for children up to the age of about 6.
 Baron-Cohen et al. wanted to test the theory of mind capabilities of adults.
 The ‘eyes task’ is a test of advanced theory of mind skills.
 Subjects with autism or Asperger’s syndrome were significantly impaired on this task
compared to a group of age- matched normal adults and a clinical control group with
Tourette’s syndrome
 This provides evidence for impaired theory of mind skills in very high functioning individuals
on the autistic continuum

Savage- Rumbaugh et al.

 Observational data were collected on Kanzi and Mulilika use of language.

 Language use was also assessed through formal testing.
 The researchers concluded that pygmy chimpanzees are close to humans and have shown
the capacity to learn spoken language
 The researchers commented on the small sample size but claimed the subjects were
representative of their species
 The researchers suggested that further research needs to be conducted to assess more
carefully the effects of the variables of rearing and species.

Developmental Psychology

Samuel and Bryant

 Children perform better in the conversation task if they are asked one question after the
material has been changed
 The ability to carry out a conservation task correctly increases with age
 Number is conserved better than mass or volume

Bandura, Ross & Ross

 New behaviour can be learnt by observing a modal in one situation and then imitating these
acts in another situation
 Observing adult models acting aggressively has the effect of weakening aggressive inhibitors
in children, therefore making aggressive behaviour more likely.
 Boys are more physically aggressive than girls
 Boys are more likely than girls to imitate the behaviour of the same-sex models
Freud

 The study confirmed for Freud the existence of sexuality in infants/ children
 It offered support to the theory that phobias can be related to the unconscious defence
mechanisms.
 It presented evidence that psychoanalysis could be us therapeutically with children

Physiological psychology

Maguire

 Cab drivers had significantly greater volume of grey matter in the posterior hippocampus,
whereas the control group had a greater hippocampus
 There was a correlation between the amount of cab-driving experience and the volume of
grey matter in the posterior hippocampus

Dement & kleitman

 People are more likely to report dreams If they are woken during periods of REM than
during periods of NREM.
 People can estimate the duration of dreaming to an extent.
 The direction of eye movement during REM seems to be related to dream content

Sperry

 The hemispheres have different functions. Language skills are based in the left hemisphere
 Information resaved by only one hemisphere is not accessible to the other hemisphere
 Information received by the left hemisphere can be responded to verbally
 Information received by the right hemisphere cannot be responded to verbally, although this
‘minor’ hemisphere can respond in a variety of non-verbal ways

Social psychology

Milgram

 Of the participants 65% continued to the 450-volt shock level; 100% continued to 300 volts
 The conflict raised in the participants led to signs of extreme tension
 High levels of obedience can be brought about in any individual with the appropriate
situational conditions.

Richer & Haslam

 At first prisoners tried to improve their position

 When this was not possible they identified with each other and formed a strong group
 With new prisoners introduction of ways to confront in equality’s, a commune was
established
 Once this was broken down an authoritarian regime was planned against which nobody
acted
Piliavin, Rodin and Piliavan

 Characteristics of A victim do effect whether or not help is offered, including the perceived
reasons for the victim’s situation, i.e. Drunks/ill
 The tendency for same-race helping only occurred in ‘drunk’ conditioning
 Diffusion of responsibility did not occur in this study.
 The bystander makes the decision to help or not based on the costs and rewards involved
 A model of response to emergency situation is offer dint the form of arousal cost-reward
model this can be used as heuristic device to predict when help will be given.

Individual Differences

Rosenhan

 The diagnosis of Mental illnesses is influenced by the context in which the behaviours are
observed and the expectations of others.
 Once a patient has been labelled with a mental illness its hard to remove the label
 Type 1 Errors appear to be common in medical diagnosis
 It is more useful to focus on individual behaviour’s when over reaching diagnosis.
 Patients may benefit more from community heath car then being institutionalised

Thigpen and Cleckley

 Eve White was a woman who suffered from head aches and blackouts
 EB Emerged during therapy as a person in EW Body, who looked and behaved differently
from Eve White
 EW has not known about EB until therapy EB had known about EW since early childhood.
 A 3rd more responsible, person Jane emerged, called Jane who offered a solution

Griffiths

 Regular and non-regular fruit-machine gamblers think differently about the role of skill and
its effect on gambling success
 There may be some skills related to the knowledge of fruit machines that can be used to
boost small wins into larger gains
 Thinking aloud offered effective therapeutic treatment to addicted gamblers

Key Words
Agentic State – When individuals relinquish their personal views or opinions and act as an agent
of someone else’s will

Anecdotal Evidence – Evidence gathered without a systematic approach - often just researchers’
accounts of what they have been observed – and therefore open to bias.

Asperger’s syndrome – a mild form of autism

Assent – A child’s agreement to participate in an activity, having had it made clear them that
they can start and stop the activity whenever they wish. As a parent or guardians consent for a
child to take part in an activity may not reflect a Childs wishes.

Attitude Scale – A way of measuring a person’s attitude towards something; it provides a

quantitive measure.

Blind Test – the use of an experimenter who does not know the details of a study and cannot
influence the outcome

Bystander behaviour – The reactions of those who witness an emergency.

Cause and effect – the ability to establish one variable and its effect on another. By controlling
all variables other than the independent, you can be sure it has caused any effect that was
found.

Commune – A Democratically-run society whose members all have a say in its organisation.

Confederates- Actors who takes part in the experiments

Confounding Variables – a feature that is not controlled for but could affect the outcome

Controlled observation – observations of reactions of participants in a specific situation. It

differs from natural observation, where people are in their usual environments and nothing is
set up by the researcher.

Corpus Callosum – the bundle of nerve fibres that connects the two hemispheres of the brain.

Cover Story – A false explanation of the aim of a study, told to participants in order to change
their behaviour.

Culture Learning – The role of culture and socialisation in learning language

Demand Characteristics- A feature of a procedure ( other than IV) that influences a participant
to try to guess what a study is about and look for clues as to how to behave.

Dependant Variable – In an experiment the variable that is affected by the researchers’

manipulation of the independent variable

Determinism- The idea that our behaviour is determined by factors beyond our control, E.g. The
situation, The Environment and our Biology.

Dispositional Hypothesis – The idea that a person’s characteristics determine their behaviour,
e.g. personality traits.

Electroencephalography- A non-invasive method for measuring the electrical activity of the

brain by recording from the electrodes placed on the scalp. The resulting traces are known as
the electroencephalography (EEG). They represent a large number of neutrons and are
sometimes called brain waves due to the wave-like patterns seen on the traces.

Ethnocentric – Favouring one group of people

Experimental realism - The extent to which the participants perceive an experimental situation
to be real.

Free association- is a psychoanalytical technique that encourages the speaking out of weather
thoughts a person has weather they make sense or not. This is ment to provide insight into
unconscious thoughts

Fugue - A state of mind in which an individual forgets who they are, characterised by loss of
their memory and personality.

Genocide- Deliberate a systematic destruction of a racial political or cultural group.

Happe’s ‘strange stories’ – A test of advanced theory of mind skills that involves answering
questions on a selection of stories and the characters in them.

Heuristic Device - A frame work that can be used to predict behaviour

Heuristics- common- since sets of rules that are used to solve problems

Hippocampus- part of the brain that is concerned with memory and spatial navigation.

Hysteria- The display of physical symptoms like paralysis with no obvious cause.

Independent Variable- the variable that researchers manipulate in an experiment

Independent measure design - A method that involves comparing the results from separate
groups/ populations

Inter- rater reliability- describes how well independent observers score events: 1 = Perfect
match

IQ- Intelligent Quotient, A numerical representation of intelligent. IQ is derived from dividing

mental age by the chronological age

Lexigram- A visual symbol system, a bored covered with geometric symbols that brighten when
touched

Limbic system- A set of brain structures including the hippocampus and the amygdala that
support a variety of functions including emotion and long-term memory.

Model- In social learning theory, a person whose behaviour is imitated

Modelling- The way behaviour can be changed by observational learning, when participants in a
study base their behaviour on the behaviour of a model.

MRI (Magnetic resonance imaging) Scan- A method that used radio waves to obtain 3D images
of the brain and body tissue.

Mundane realism- the extent to which a procedure or task relates to everyday life

Neurosis- A mental illness in which an individual remains in touch with reality but suffers
psychological problems related to anxiety.
Neurospecificity- The way in which Neurons are hard wired to attach one to another in a certain
pre-determined ways during the development of the brain.

Observational learning- Is when we acquire new behaviours by observing the actions of others
and selecting those that are perceived to receive social rewards, such as affirmation.

Oedipus Complex- The conflict between a boy’s desire towards his mother and the fear of his
father will desire to castrate him.

Order Effects- Effects such as improvement in performance, boredom or tiredness that occurs as
a result of the order in which conditions or tasks are experienced.

Pathological- A behaviour that is unusual and interferes with everyday life

Phobia- A fear that is out of proportion to reality.

Psychoanalysis- A form of theory based on psychoaniytical theory, which regards unconsous

thoughts and feelings, which cause of human behaviour.

Psychometric testing- tests that attempt measure psychological characteristics such as mood
and self-esteem. These normally produce a quantitative score.

Psychosis- A mental illness in which the individual has difficulty relating to reality and their
intellect and emotions are often divorced

Quasi-experiment- an experiment where the independent variable varies naturally without the
need for manipulation by the experimenter.

Random number tables- Computer- generated lists of random numbers.

Reductionist- Any explanation or method that simplifies behaviour and expertise in such a way
that complexity of a human condition may be lost or underestimated.

Repeated-measures design- where the same participants experience each condition of the
indecent variable

Sally- Anne test- A simple test involving two dolls, one doll leaves the room he other moves an
object, the first doll returns and a child is asked where the doll will look for the object. It is
applied to the theory that you have to have a basic theory of mind to be able to pass this test.

Schema- A framework of knowledge about some aspect of the world.

Self- efficiency- Belief in one’s ability to bring about change.

Significant difference- There is a significant difference between results if there is a probability of

a chance result less than 1 in 20 ( p<0.05)

Situational Hypothesis- The idea that conditions in a situation determine behaviour, E.g. Orders
from authority figure (Milgram)
Social Identity theory- The theory that proposes a group membership affects our identity, self-
esteem and behaviour

Social Learning theory- tries to understand social behaviour by focusing on how individual
imitate the actions of others to model their own behaviour

Standardised- Refers to any aspect of the procedure that is kept exactly the same for each
participant.

Significant difference- Between the conditions and accept our hypothesis.

Subjectivity- Bias created by a person’s own interpretation or point of view.

Stages of development- in the oral stage, children derive pleasure from there body’s by sucking,
in the Anal stage, children experience control; of their bodies by retaining or expelling faeces;
and in the Phallic Stage, children become aware of their genitals and sexual differences.

Theory of mind- An individual’s theory about how minds in general work, including their own
and other people’s

Time-series approach- a study introduces changes to the independent variable over time.

Tourette’s Syndrome- A neurological disorder characterised by recurring movements and

sounds (Tics)

Trial- Each time an experiment is carried out

Triangulation- The use of a varity of methods to study one issue in an attempt to avoid bias and
reduce the limitations of using one technique

Unsolicited participants- People who are not aware that they are taking part in a study