OCR PSYCHOLOGY G542 core studies May 2012

What changes could you make to Savage Rumbaugh, Samuel & Bryant, Freud and Dement & Kleitman studies?

Basically learn the behaviour to each study within each approach and then link this back to the original assumption.

Social
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Anyone think it's worth learning the psychodynamic perspective? I'm relying on behaviourist to be honest. But I'm scared they'll trick us

I've learned a wee bit of it, like the aim, and very vaguely how the approach explains phobias (Freud) and MPD (Thigpen and Cleckley).

Really, if this comes up I'm hoping that the other choice will be better, heheh...

Savage Rumbaugh
• Using more chimps – eg. 10 chimps of each species
• Able to generalise
• Would require more researchers and space – very expensive and maybe impractical
• Become more unethical
• Increase amount of data collected – increase validity
• Raise in the same learning environment and same age
• Less differences between species

• Change to field study – doing observations in the wild
• Talking to chimps
• Improving ecological validity
• However may become more bias as only one person would be observing

Samuel & Bryant
• Case study – 1 or 2 children over 6 months
• Introduced to conservation by somebody they are familiar with
o Eg. Uni researcher who goes in once a week as helper
• IV – 1 question, 2 questions and fixed-array techniques
• Improve validity – familiar person meaning more comfortable and ecological valid
• Tested multiple times – more accurate
• Small sample – hard to generalise
• Time consuming
• Ethics – difficult to get informed consent

Dement & Kleitman
• Field experiment
• Experiment participants in their own bed
• Woken by alarm or telephone and recall dream on the phone
• Higher ecological validity
• Low levels of control and potential extraneous variables - less valid

And I'm unsure with Freud sorry :/

Omg you star! Thanks so much. Any ideas for Maguire, Milgram and Thigpen and Cleckley? Would really appreciate it!

Will someone please help me with the developmental approach for section C! I don't have anything on it and I really need to know the assumption / similarity + difference / and strengths and weaknesses
Third time taking this exam too -.-

Assumption: That we all go through developmental stages and behaviour is learned from birth; nurture is more important than nature in shaping behaviour

Similarity: A similarity between Bandura's study and Samuel and Bryant's study is that they both involved children as the participants. Bandura had children aged between 3 and 5, while Samuel and Bryant had children aged between 5 and 8.

Difference: A difference between Freud's study and Bandura's study is that Freud used the case study method, which Bandura didn't. Freud only studied one child, known as Hans, while Bandura had a much larger group of 72 children (I couldn't remember the sample size, so a large group would probably do on its own I would have thought). Bandura can generalize his findings much more than Freud.

Hope that helped a little, but you might want to add to the similarity a bit to ensure the marks.

Maguire:
• Longitudinal study (10 years)
• Training taxi drivers
• Comparing women and male taxi drivers
o Better measure to see if environmental factors effect brain structure
• Will help to show the change of grey matter in the hippocampus
• Maguire’s study – couldn’t tell if the larger volume of grey matter in hippocampus posterior area was already there

Milgram:
• Field experiment in Shopping centre
• Use of a fake authority figure (eg. Security guard) on general public
• Demand public to do behaviours (eg. Jump on spot, drop litter etc)
• Compare results with use of normally dressed person using same behaviours
• High ecological validity – more real to everyday situation
• Can be easily tested over other shopping centres – Reliable
• Results will be more representative of wider population
• Natural setting, meaning people’s behaviours will be more true - valid

Thigpen and Cleckley:
• Use independent expert to carry out interviews, psychometric and projective tests
• they would also observe the natural behaviours with no interaction with patient)
• Inter-rater reliability
• Collects qualitative data and reduces researcher bias
• However, Patient may feel uncomfortable with sharing information the observer. There may also be social desirability bias

• More participants, different nationalities (eg. 10 people who have multiple personality disorder symptoms would be used. 5 Americans and 5 Europeans)
• A range of participants from a range of different nationalities may show that multiple personality disorder is universal of cultural specificdisorder. Able to generalise more.
• Rare disorder so potential participants may be limited and would become time consuming

here are my notes on the Behaviourist perspective, could anyone help me out on making them more detailed and point out anything that I'm missing out/wrong. I feel like the strengths and weaknesses lack, any help with this too?

Studies
• Bandura
• Milgram
• Piliavin
Assumptions
• We are blank slates from birth and that our behaviour is learnt from the environment through classical conditioning operant conditioning and social learning theory
Behaviours
• Obedience – Environment shapes our behaviour and not those they are bad people willing to shock people, they were adapting to the environment and situation of the repressive environment (eg. Man in white coat)
• Aggression in Children – empathises on observational learning (don’t have to reward or punish or ignore child behaviour for it to change). Witnessing behaviour is enough in itself. Social learning theory – environment and role models
• Helping/not helping – the cost-reward theory has an effect on whether a person will help or not
Strengths
• Scientific – lab experiments used meaning high control with high internal validity
• Usefulness - shows aggression is influenced by environment
• Practical applications –eg behaviour modification in schools
Weaknesses
• Reductionist (Ignore other approaches) – doesn’t give a biological or cognitive insight
• Lab experiments – lack ecological validity

here are my notes on the Behaviourist perspective, could anyone help me out on making them more detailed and point out anything that I'm missing out/wrong. I feel like the strengths and weaknesses lack, any help with this too?

Studies
• Bandura
• Milgram
• Piliavin
Assumptions
• We are blank slates from birth and that our behaviour is learnt from the environment through classical conditioning operant conditioning and social learning theory
Behaviours
• Obedience – Environment shapes our behaviour and not that bad people willing to shock people, they were adapting to the environment and situation of the repressive environment (eg. Man in white coat)
• Aggression in Children – empathises on observational learning (don’t have to reward or punish or ignore child behaviour for it to change). Witnessing behaviour is enough in itself. Social learning theory – environment and role models
• Helping/not helping – the cost-reward theory has an effect on whether a person will help or not
Strengths
• Scientific – lab experiments used meaning high control with high internal validity
• Usefulness - shows aggression is influenced by environment
• Practical applications –eg behaviour modification in schools
Weaknesses
• Reductionist (Ignore other approaches) – doesn’t give a biological or cognitive insight
• Lab experiments – lack ecological validity

guys how does the individual diffrences approach explain rosehans study? im doing some major cramming tonight ffs..

guys how does the individual diffrences approach explain rosehans study? im doing some major cramming tonight ffs..

Thank you so much, have u got these changes for all the other studies as well? I would HIGHLY appreciate it, i really need this exam in the bag, the changes is the only thing that im worried about, thnkx! if u have any questions please do ask, but I have to tell u that my connection is a bit wary so i might take so time to reply, thankx!

Lofus and Palmer
• Field experiment
o IV and DV manipulate in a natural setting
• Recreate a murder scene using actors and bring in false information to see how it effects the memory of the eye witnesses
• Strengths
o High ecological validity
o Increase validity - Has an emotion impact since participants think it’s a real event
o Still able to control IV
• Weaknesses
o Breaks ethical guidelines – emotion impact can lead to psychological harm

Baron-Cohen
• Conduct role play involving real life people. (eg. 5 minute role play where they display 10 different emotions throughout. 2 actors – female and male. 4 options on a likert scare and circle the seen emotion. Lab condition)
• Higher ecological validity
• more representative to real life and able to generalise.
• However, Potential for demand characteristics, images are more standardised than actors as they don’t change. Actors may change between trials to trial.

• Selection of 20 people should be gathered with 10 males and 10 females
• More easy to generalise and no gender imbalance
• However, Tourette’s and Autism people may be hard to find as conditions are rare and may be at different levels of their condition.

Bandura
• Using a larger sample using a bigger range of ages
• Show film that features aggressive behaviour - more subjective
• Environment – their own home or nursery
• Increase validity – more true to their everyday life
• Decrease validity – films don’t always reflect real life
• Children will become more comfortable with the environment and therefore results will be more true

Reicher and Haslam
• Quasi experiment – Using real guards, real prisoners in real prison
• High ecological validity – becomes very realistic
• Decrease reliability – Hard to replicate since getting same prisoners would be hard
• More accurate since it will show how tyranny is created in real life situations
• Unethical – no right to withdraw from study

Pilliavin
• Carry out similar study in a non-confined space location
• In a Shopping centre or park
• Findings would be more ecologically valid
• More generalised to real life behaviour in most situations
• More valid to diffusion of responsibility – people can escape situation
o Could show that there is reduce of helping behaviour because participants would be able to reduce their levels of physiological arousal by moving away
• Further lack of control over extraneous variables – could have undesirable effects on results

Sperry
I'm kinda unsure with this, but I'm hoping it won't come up in section B and if it does I won't pick it anyway :/
• Comparing spilt brain people who had operation to epileptic people who haven’t had the operation

Rosenhan
• Doctors and nurses would be aware of the nature of the study and give their consent before being visited
• Doesn’t break the ethical issue of lack of informed consent, also brings in the right to withdraw
• But, they may display demand characteristics and social desirability bias – eg. Spending longer with patients, lowers validity

• Operationalized questionnaire would be used, there would also be at least 2 patients admitted per hospital – ensures inter-rater reliability. Use of CCTV camera.
• Checks the consistency of the results making it more reliable. Coding system in place
• However, Lowers validity if demand characteristics and social desirability bias are displayed. Not acting naturally.

Griffiths

• Longitudinal study (a month), using machine everyday with £5 and their objective measures of skill are tested. Could show that RG base earnings or winnings over the long term and accept from time to time they will have loses
• See true nature of differences between RGs and NRGs; average out their successes over time.
• Very cost and time consuming. Encourages daily gambling, which is seen as unethical. Potential for attrition.

• Participants are required to use their own money
• Higher ecological validity since it will be a truer reflection of gambling
• Effect ethics as it provided stronger emotion ‘hits’ since they use their own money, therefore more emotional attachment and doesn’t protect participants. It may also affect recruiting participants.