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Revision:Psychology model answers - Fast Driving
From The Student RoomTSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > Psychology > Fast Driving
Describe how two approaches might try to explain Anne’s exhilaration from speeding.The behaviourist approach may provide an explanation for Anne’s behaviour. Anne may have adopted the high speed driving through imitation of others such as her parents, siblings or friends whom she holds in high esteem. This is an example of the neo-behaviourist social learning theory. When Anne sees them driving fast and enjoying themselves she models herself on them and believes she should act in the same way to gain enjoyment. It may also be that she has watched TV characters speeding and getting rewarded for it e.g. winning a race or getting away from danger, this vicarious reinforcement will make Anne want to imitate the behaviour too. Once Anne has modelled the behaviour she also may be learning through operant conditioning when her friends praise her for her driving behaviour and so she continues to drive fast. Because sometimes she will get praised and sometimes won’t the behaviour becomes very hard to extinguish as she has been receiving a variable reinforcement schedule. This explains why the negative punishments of fines are ineffective, apart from the fact that punishments just teach Anne not to get caught rather than reconditioning her behaviour. Assess one of these explanations for Anne’s exhilaration from speeding in terms of its strength and limitations.The behaviourist approach reduces Anne’s reckless driving to a basic stimulus-response cause and ignores any innate biological reasons and is determinist as it says Anne has simply become like this because of the past reinforcers (the praise for her fast driving). She may in fact be a very rebellious person and like to break the law in several ways and consciously sets out to do this, which would mean that she has the free will to behave this way rather than being determined by her experiences. But because the behaviourist approach only believes in observable behaviour being ‘real’ and doesn’t allow for thoughts or innate drives it fails to explore these other reasons Anne may have for engaging in high speed driving. The research that behaviourist model is based on is mainly based on animals and so it is impossible to generalise their learning behaviour to humans because animals can’t drive cars and they wouldn’t think in the way that humans would about speeding. If an animal does something quickly it’s to get away from a predator or to try and get food, they don’t think in the same way. On the positive side, learning does account for individual differences in behaviour as Anne has been positively reinforced for fast driving someone else may be positively reinforced for slow driving and so they will behaviour differently because of the past consequences of their actions. Analyse how one of these approaches might investigate Anne’s exhilaration from speeding.The behaviourists would perform a laboratory experiment so they could control and measure all aspects of the situation in which Anne feels exhilarated. The participants would be asked to sit in a car simulator and take charge of the controls making it faster or slower, when they want. Their driving speed would be monitored at first for half an hour, ‘driving’ around a course. The in the second part of the experiment a stooge would act as a passenger and would sit beside them and give praise (positive reinforcement) when they go faster and say nothing when they slow down. There would be two groups of participants: the first would get constant praise whenever they speeded (continuous reinforcement), the second would get occasional praise (variable reinforcement) when they speeded. The participants would then be asked to ‘drive’ the course on their own once more and their speed would be measured and recorded. Their average speed around the course in the first part of the experiment would be compared to their average speed after they had been conditioned. If the second speed was faster then the results would be that this kind of positive reinforcement is effective in encouraging speeding. The two groups could be compared to see if continuous or variable reinforcement was more effective. Research could also be done on whether watching fast driving e.g. formula 1 before driving a simulator circuit affects speed compared to watching a non-driving, neutral TV clip. Evaluate the method of investigating Anne’s exhilaration from speeding that you previously referred to.Using a lab experiment has both strengths and disadvantages. A strength is that it has high control over variables e.g. the amount of praise, and can objectively measure the results e.g. speed of driving, and therefore cause and effect could be established. It would allow to see if there was a clear link between modelling, praise and Anne’s feelings of exhilaration when driving fast, or whether there was another factor involved. It also allows for measurements to be taken, amount of praise and at what schedule of reinforcement results in what speed she drives at. The study would also be easy to replicate it could be repeated with different people and different conditions. Disadvantages are that lab studies lack ecological validity, using a driving simulator isn’t realistic and the participants may act differently in the testing situation to on the road because of demand characteristics. Because only observable behaviour is being measured it would be impossible to judge thought processes involved in the fast driving. Other Useful Articles
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