Crockett et al 2010 "Trolley Problem"

Question 1

my study for

Answer 1

• agonists

Question 2

aim

Answer 2

To investigate the role of a serotonin agonist (SSRIs specifically) in prosocial behaviour (e.g. deciding that harmful behaviours towards others are unacceptable).

Question 3

participants

Answer 3

24 males from Cambridge in the UK with a mean age of 25.6 years. The participants were screened for psychiatric and neurological disorders before the study began.

Question 4

procedure

Answer 4

The participants were given either an SSRI (Citalopram) or a drug used to treat ADHD or a placebo. The experiment used a double-blind design.

cos tam they were exposed to 2 hypothetical scenarios

which they were asked to make moral judgments about

1. Would you push someone in front of a train if it meant saving five other people? This was the emotionally salient ‘personal harm’ condition i.e. the idea involves actually physically pushing someone in front of a train
2. Would you flick a switch so that a train hits one person instead of five? This was the less emotionally salient ‘impersonal harms’ condition i.e. the idea involves harming someone at a distance and is thus less personal

The responses were assessed by how many times each participants assessed one action as acceptable

Question 5

results

Answer 5

The emotionally salient personal harm condition (i.e. the idea of actually pushing someone in front of a train) produced the lowest number of ‘acceptable’ responses in both conditions

Participants in the SSRI condition (who had been taking Citalopram) made more prosocial responses i.e. by condemning harmful actions, compared to the ADHD drug group and the placebo group

Question 6

conclusion

Answer 6

Some SSRIs, such as Citalopram, may function as serotonin agonists, enhancing the effect of the serotonin in the brain which in turn may promote prosocial behaviour.

Question 7

strengths

Answer 7

• the use of a double-blind procedure increases the internal validity of the findings
• assessing the participants for psychiatric and neurological disorders before the study also increases the validity of the findings as it helps to factor out any possible confounding variables linked to mental illness

Question 8

weaknesses

Answer 8

• A sample of 24 participants is very small, hence

1. low reliability (poor statistical power)
2. low generalisability

• the study used an independent measures design so the differences in prosocial behaviour could simply be due to participant variables e.g. participants in the SSRI group may simply all have been naturally more prosocial than those in the other two groups