Essays Flashcards
(94 cards)
Outline and evaluate research examining conformity? A01: Jenness Asch Zimbardo
A03: asch -low ecological validity -biased sample - controlled lab experiment zimbardo -unethical -reicher and haslam findings -individual differences -real life application -lacks population validity
- Jenness’s was one of the first psychologists to study conformity. His experiment used an ambiguous situation involving a glass bottle filled with beans. He asked participants individually to estimate how many beans the bottle contained. Jenness then put the group in a room with the bottle and asked them to provide a group estimate through discussion.
Jenness found that nearly all participants changed their original answer when they were provided with another opportunity to estimate the number of beans in the glass bottle the male participants changed their answer by 256 beans and the female participants changed their answers by 382 beans demonstrating the power of conformity in an ambiguous situation and are likely to the be the result of informational social influence the reason for their changed in answers were due to the belief the group estimate was more likely to the be correct than their own individual estimate so they looked to the majority for the right answer.
-Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity, the procedure involved gathering a sample of 50 American male white students from college who believed they were taking part in a vision test however this was not entirely true and the true study was using a line judgement task where they would compare an example line to three other lines a,b or c and see which ones matched the original and the answer would always be obvious. They placed one naive participant in a room with 7-9 confederates (actors posing as participants) who had agreed their answers beforehand, the naive participant was always seated second from last and each person had to say out loud which line a, b or c was most like the target line in comparison where the answer was always obvious and the confederates gave the same incorrect answer on 12 trials called critical trials. The aim was to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view even though the answer was incorrect.
The results from this experiment were as expected as on average the real participants conformed to the incorrect answers on 32% of the critical trials and 74% of the participants conformed on at least one critical trial and 26% of the participants never conformed.
Zimbardos experiment investigated conformity to social roles and his aim was to examine whether people would conform to the social roles of a prison guard or a prisoner when placed in a mock prison environment furthermore, he also wanted to examine whether the behaviour displayed in prisons was due to internal dispositional factors, the people themselves, or external situational factors, the environment and conditions of the prison.
His sample consisted of 21 male students that voluntary applied for the experiment and were randomly assigned to one of two social role, prisoners or guards and they would be placed in a mock prison created in Stanford university’s basement.
The procedure consisted of arresting the prisoners by real local police and stripped, given a smock uniform with a number as identification with chains placed around their ankles whilst the guards were given uniforms, sunglasses, handcuffs and a truncheon and were instructed to not use violence against the prisoners, the experiment was to last two weeks but was terminated after 6 days.
Zimbardo found both the prisoners and the guards were quick to identify with their social roles and prisoners started to become aggressive and rebel which was followed by the guards become violent and abusive towards the prisoners using the batons and dehumanising the prisoners by making them do tedious tasks such as cleaning out the toilets with their bare hands and as the experiment went on the prisoners and guards were identifying more and more with their social role.
Prisoners suffered from severe stress and trauma caused by the experiment which led to an early release of some of the prisoners due to their adverse reactions to the experiment such as crying and extreme anxiety from the mental and physical torment due to the inhuman conditions pointed out by a fellow postgraduate student Christina maslach the experiment was terminated shortly after that.
Zimbardo concluded that when put into a certain setting and given a new identity people can conform very quickly to that social role even when it goes against their moral principles and situational factors play a huge part in changing someone’s behaviour in order to fit into that position.
A03: Aschs study has low ecological validity as the experiment involved using an artificial task to measure levels of conformity by judging line lengths and comparing it to an example line this task reflects neither every day to day tasks or is a realistic method of measuring conformity. This is a weakness because it means the results can’t be generalised to real life situations of conformity an improvement on this study would be to change the task so that it uses a real life situation for example gathering confederates in a crowd over an event to see if participants are willing to conform and join the crowd therefore collecting new results from a realistic conformity scenario.
Another weakness of aschs experiment is it was conducted on a biased sample consisting of all white male university students who all belonged to the same sex, age group and occupation similarly to zimbardos experiment therefore the study lacks population validity which is a limitation as the results gained from the experiment can only be applied to that sample range and can’t be generalised to other groups of people like females or older people and to improve this they should repeat the experiment but with those added groups of people in order to gain new results that can be generalised to the general public.
Aschs line experiments were controlled lab experiments as he was able to test specific variables that increased or decreased conformity as he used standardised procedures and instructions that meant the line experiments could be replicated this means that the study has high reliability as it can be replicated over and over again in order to accumulate new and potentially different results.
Zimbardos experiment managed to pass the ethical code when it was conducted in 1973 however the committee has changed their code and the experiment now could be considered breaking ethical guidelines as participants were at first not allowed to leave early when asked to, they were persuaded to stay a bit longer which violated their right to withdraw from the experiment and participants were also not protected from physical or physiological harm even though zimbardo played the prisoners warden he let the behaviour be acted out instead of intervening and stop the violent aggressive behaviour from the guards which led to harmful repercussions as prisoners suffered from extreme stress and anxiety caused by the guards behaviour meaning the experiment isn’t considered ethical and the results gained from prisoners were only due to the cruel positions that they put in.
Contradictory to zimbardos results Reicher and Haslam have findings from a recently replicated Stanford prison experiment which involved randomly assigning 15 men to the role of prisoner or guard and discovered that participants were not quick to conform to their social roles given to them and deindividuation did not occur for example the guards didn’t identify with their status and refused to impose their authority and interestingly the prisoners identified as a group to challenge the guards authority leading to a shift of power and a collapse of the prison system consequently contradicting to zimbardos findings and suggesting g that conformity to social roles may not be automatic as zimbardo originally implied.
Individual differences are also not considered during zimbardos study as this and personality can also determine the extent to which a person conforms to their social roles and in the original experiment the behaviour of the guards differed drastically from extremely sadistic behaviour with the exception of a few good guards who helped the prisoners which suggests that situational factors aren’t the only reason for conformity to social roles and that dispositional factors also have an effect on how we behave and act when given a new social role.
A positive outcome of the study is that it has application to real life due to how it’s altered the way US prisons are managed for example juveniles accused of federal crimes are no longer housed before trial with adult prisoners this is due to the risk of violence against them so this is a strength of the study as it has changed prisoners lives and the way they are treated.
The study itself lacks population validity as the sample comprised US white male students and because of this the results can’t be applied to other groups of people like female prisons or prisons from other countries that may have reacted differently depending on cultural differences for example America is an individualist culture meaning that people are generally less conforming and want to go against authority figures who abuse their power whereas in Asian countries the results may be different as they are a collectivist culture where conformity is expected.
Discuss factors that can affect conformity? Refer to variations of aschs experiment in your answer A01 - group size - task difficulty - unanimity A03 Strengths -high internal validity-replicable Weakness -research methods - biased sample - white male American participants - lacks ecological validity artificial study -ethical guidelines -lacks historical validity -culturally bias -lacks temporal validity
A01:
Factors affecting conformity were first discovered by asch during his experiment whereby the aim was to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform.
Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity, the procedure involved gathering a sample of 50 American male white students from college who believed they were taking part in a vision test using a line judgement task where they would compare an example line to three other lines a,b, or c and see which ones matched the original and the answer would always be obvious.
They placed one naive participant in a room with 7-9 confederates (actors posing as participants) who’d agreed their answers beforehand, the naive participant was always seated second from last and each person had to say out loud which line a, b or c was most like the target line in comparison and the confederates gave the same incorrect answer on 12 trials called critical trials.
The aim was to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view even though the answer was incorrect.
The results from this experiment were as expected as on average the real participants conformed to the incorrect answers on 32% of the critical trials and 74% of the participants conformed on at least one critical trial and 26% of the participants never conformed.
Aschs study involved carrying out variations of his line judgement task including group size, task difficulty and unanimity.
The group size variation ranged from 1 confederate to 15 confederates. When there was 1 confederate the real participants conformed on just 3% of the critical trials. When increased to 2 confederates the real participants conformed on 12% of the critical trials. When increased to 3 confederates the real participants conformed on 32% of the critical trials which is the same percentage as aschs original experiment with 7 confederates which demonstrates that conformity reaches its highest level with 3 confederates. In the original study the confederates gave the same incorrect answer but in one variation 1 confederate was instructed to give the correct answer throughout the rate of conformity dropped to 5% which means that if the real participant has support for their belief then they’re likely to resist the pressure to conform.
Furthermore, in another variation, one of the confederates gave a different incorrect answer to the majority when this happened conformity dropped significantly, by this time to 9% showing that if you break the group’s unanimous position, conformity will reduce, even if the answer provided by the supporter, is incorrect.
In Asch’s original experiment, the correct answer was always obvious in a variation he made the task difficult by making the difference between the line lengths significantly smaller which meant conformity increased which is likely to be the result of informational social influence as individuals look to one another for guidance when faced with completing a difficult task.
A03:
The problem with this study is that it can’t be generalised to other groups of people given the fact that the sample is biased as it consisted of only white male American students of similar age and therefore means we can’t apply the findings to other populations for example female students so we can’t determine that they would react the same way or would have conformed at all causing the study to lack population validity and extended research has to take place in order to gain a new set of results determining whether males and females conform differently.
It could be argued that the study lacks ecological validity as the tasks were artificial due to it being a line judgement task whereby participant are asked to compare a set of lines to an example line which doesn’t reflect everyday life situations of conformity consequently meaning we aren’t able to generalise the results of the experiment to other examples of why people conform for example in social activities such as why people start drinking or smoking around friends therefore these results are limited in their application to everyday life.
Asch didn’t adhere to the ethical guidelines as he used deception and didn’t protect the participants from harm. Asch didn’t tell the participants the true purpose of the study and deceived his participants into thinking that they were taking part in a vision test however it could be argued that this was required in order to achieve valid results and if participants were made aware of the actual aim they could’ve displayed demand characteristics and acted the way they thought they should which could then distort the results additionally participants were also not protected from psychological harm and reported feeling stressed and anxious when they disagreed with the majority but asch did follow up with his patients afterwards in order to overcome this issue.
The study shows great internal validity because it establishes a cause-effect relationship between social peer pressure and conformity using different variations in a controlled lab expriment therefore meaning it’s reliable and can be repeated in order to gather new information about why people conform and what factors contribute to the reasons why people conform to the majority and due to the original experiments gender bias it can be repeated on female participants and other groups of people in order to discover if they would conform in the same way and how the variations being group size, task difficulty and unanimity would affect them.
A weakness of the study is it lacks historical validity as it took place at a time when conformity in the US was much higher and has been criticised as being ‘a child of its time’ since 1950 multiple psychologists have attempted to replicate aschs study eg Perrin and spencer used engineering students to conduct a repeat of the experiment years later which contradicted aschs results because they found significantly lower levels of conformity suggesting aschs experiment lacks historical validity and the conformity rates found in 1950 may not provide an accurate reflection of conformity in modern times.
A weakness of the study is it’s culturally bias due to the fact that all participants were American and therefore ethnocentric meaning sample findings lack population validity and can’t be applied to different countries and as America is an individualistic culture the results can’t be generalised to other cultures that may be collectivist such as Asian countries so the conformity rates differ in order to discover these results the study would have to repeated globally.
Aschs findings were discovered in the 1950s in America meaning the study lacks temporal validity as the findings are specific to that time period and country only and conformity rates would be high and McCarthyism plays a big part as people were mostly capitalist and suspicious of radical left wing ideas then and so the way they reacted to a situation testing conformity would be seen as the norm and not an abnormal reaction like it would be seen today.
Outline and evaluate research into conformity to social roles.
A01
- zimbardos experiment
- 21 participants randomly allocated and assigned to guard or prisoner
- mock prison in Stanford uni
- zimbardo played prison ward
- experiment ended after 5 days
- prisoners arrested from homes, deloused/ dehumanised due to being given numbers instead of names
- findings - guards & prisoners quickly conformed
- guards - abusive/ aggressive and dominent
- prisoners- obedient/ docile
A03:
Weakness
Ethical issues - participants not allowed to leave early
- they had to use persuasion
Ethical issues - not protected from physiological/ physical harm
Weakness
- BBC study reicher and Haslam replicated
- participants * groups of 3 each person matched other 2
- 1 role of guard, 2 prisoners
- found not same level of guard brutality/abuse
- guards reluctant to impose authority on prisoners
Weakness
-individual differences
Supporting - real life application
-altered US prisons
Weakness - low population validity
- results not generalisable to other countries/ females
- sample US male participants
Weakness - demand characteristics
- prisoners and guards acted the way they thought were meant to - inaccurate results
Supporting/ strength - realistic experience
- prisoners were arrested from homes and other realistic experiences lead to accurate results
A01:
Zimbardos experiment investigated conformity to social roles and his aim was to examine whether people would conform to the social roles of a prison guard or a prisoner when placed in a mock prison environment furthermore, he also wanted to examine whether the behaviour displayed in prisons was due to internal dispositional factors, the people themselves, or external situational factors, the environment and conditions of the prison.
His sample consisted of 21 male students that voluntarily applied for the experiment and were randomly assigned to one of two social roles, a prisoner or guard and they would be placed in a mock prison created in Stanford university’s basement.
The procedure consisted of arresting the prisoners by real local police and stripped, given a smock uniform with a number as identification with chains placed around their ankles whilst the guards were given uniforms, sunglasses, handcuffs and a truncheon and were instructed to not use violence against the prisoners, the experiment was to last two weeks but was terminated after 6 days.
Zimbardo found both the prisoners and the guards were quick to identify with their social roles and prisoners started to become aggressive and rebel which was followed by the guards become violent and abusive towards the prisoners using the batons and dehumanising the prisoners by making them do tedious tasks such as cleaning out the toilets with their bare hands and as the experiment went on the prisoners and guards were identifying more and more with their social role.
Prisoners suffered from severe stress and trauma caused by the experiment which led to an early release of some of the prisoners than the original planned time of the experiment and due to their adverse reactions to the experiment such as crying and extreme anxiety from the mental and physical torment due to the inhuman conditions pointed out by a fellow postgraduate student Christina maslach the experiment was terminated shortly after that.
Zimbardo concluded that when put into a certain setting and given a new identity people can conform very quickly to that social role even when it goes against their moral principles and situational factors play a huge part in changing someone’s behaviour in order to fit into that position.
A03:
Zimbardos experiment managed to pass the ethical code when it was conducted in 1973 however the committee has changed their code and the experiment now could be considered breaking ethical guidelines as participants were at first not allowed to leave early when asked to, they were persuaded to stay a bit longer which violated their right to withdraw from the experiment and participants were also not protected from physical or physiological harm even though zimbardo played the prisoners warden he let the behaviour be acted out instead of intervening and stop the violent aggressive behaviour from the guards which led to harmful repercussions as prisoners suffered from extreme stress and anxiety caused by the guards behaviour meaning the experiment isn’t considered ethical and the results gained from prisoners were only due to the cruel positions that they put in.
Contradictory to zimbardos results Reicher and Haslam have findings from a recently replicated Stanford prison experiment which involved randomly assigning 15 men to the role of prisoner or guard and discovered that participants were not quick to conform to their social roles given to them and deindividuation did not occur for example the guards didn’t identify with their status and refused to impose their authority and interestingly the prisoners identified as a group to challenge the guards authority leading to a shift of power and a collapse of the prison system consequently contradicting to zimbardos findings and suggesting g that conformity to social roles may not be automatic as zimbardo originally implied.
Individual differences are also not considered during zimbardos study as this and personality can also determine the extent to which a person conforms to their social roles and in the original experiment the behaviour of the guards differed drastically from extremely sadistic behaviour with the exception of a few good guards who helped the prisoners which suggests that situational factors aren’t the only reason for conformity to social roles and that dispositional factors also have an effect on how we behave and act when given a new social role.
A positive outcome of the study is that it has application to real life due to how it’s altered the way US prisons are managed for example juveniles accused of federal crimes are no longer housed before trial with adult prisoners this is due to the risk of violence against them so this is a strength of the study as it has changed prisoners lives and the way they are treated.
The study itself lacks population validity as the sample comprised US white male students and because of this the results can’t be applied to other groups of people like female prisons or prisons from other countries that may have reacted differently depending on cultural differences for example America is an individualist culture meaning that people are generally less conforming and want to go against authority figures who abuse their power whereas in Asian countries the results may be different as they are a collectivist culture where conformity is expected.
Demand characteristics may have been involved in the experiment as prisoners and guards could’ve acted the way they thought they were meant to which can then lead to inaccurate results as they are meant to act natural in order to be as realistic as possible so that the results could be generalised to the general public however the sample was biased as it didn’t involve both genders or people of different ethnicity’s and therefore the findings can’t be applied to the general public.
Even though the procedure was very traumatic for the participants it was in fact very realistic and can somewhat validate the results due to the brutally harsh methods that were being used against the participants such as being hosed down and arrested from their homes and from there taken to the mock prison in Stanford university’s basement where they were given a uniform and number as their new identity which would’ve at the time being an accurate representation of the cruel methods being used against real prisoners.
Discuss research into obedience by milgram.
A01
Milgram wanted to find why German soldiers during war obeyed authority figures & did crimes
.selection of participants for experiment by newspaper advertising for male participants to take part in study of learning @ Yale Uni
-40 participants
A01- procedure
.participant paired with another person (confederate)
.drew lots to find who was ‘learner’ and who was ‘teacher.’
.draw fixed so participant was always teacher
.learner was confederate
.learner taken into room & had electrodes attached to arms & teacher & researcher went into room next door that contained electric shock generator and a row of switches from 15v to 375v to 450v
A01- variations
.Milgram did variations of experiment changing IV so could identify factors that affected obedience the DV
.1va- Milgram called away because phone call at start of procedure,
. role taken over by confederate in everyday clothes rather than lab coat obedience dropped to 20%.
.2 va change Location
.experiment moved to run down offices rather than Yale Uni
.Obedience dropped to 47.5%.
.location effects obedience
A01
Milgrams variations;
.uniform,location, touch proximity
.two teacher condition
.social support condition
.absent experimenter condition
3 var touch proximity condition
. teacher forced learners hand on shock plate when refused after 150 volts. Obedience fell to 30%.
-results
65% participants continued highest lvl 450 volts. All participants continued 300v
A03:
Weakness - lacks ecological validity lab experiments
.don’t reflect real life situations
.Orne & Holland accused study lacking experimental realism participants may not believed experimental setup & knew learner wasn’t receiving electric shocks
Supporting - reliability
.similar results gained on the two repeats
Supporting/strength - practical applications
.increased our understanding of obedience to authority
Weakness - population validity
.used bias sample of 40 males
.not able to generalise to other populations
Ethical issues - participants weren’t protected from harm
.they were stressed and anxious and felt guilt for shocking the confederate
Ethical issues - deception
.participants weren’t debriefed about experiment
Ethical issues - right to withdrawal
.participants were told to carry on with experiment and weren’t allowed to leave
Studies replicated in other cultures
.smith and bond criticise that they’re westernised
A01:
Milgram conducted research into obedience to find out why German soldiers during the war obeyed authority figures and carried out the crimes they did he wanted to find out if ordinary American citizens would obey an unjust order from an authority figure and inflict pain on another person because they were instructed to. He gathered a selection of 40 participants for his experiment through newspaper advertising for male participants to take part in his study of learning at Yale university.
The procedure consisted of pairing a participant with another person who was an unknown confederate and drawing lots to find out who was the ‘learner’ and who was the ‘teacher’ but the draw was fixed so the participant was always the ‘teacher’ and the ‘learner ‘ was the confederate who would be taken into a room and had electrodes attached to their arms and the ‘teacher’ and researcher went into the room next door that contained an electric shock generator and a row of switches from 15volts to 375volts to 450volts this was used to shock the confederate next door when getting an answer wrong from a series of questions however the real participant when asked to administer the shocks could hear the confederate in pain but this was a recorded sound that they heard instead.
Milgram did variations of the experiment and changed the independent variable so he could identify the factors that affected obedience the dependent variable. The main variations included uniform, location and touch proximity he also added a two teacher condition and a social support condition and an absent experimenter condition. The first variation involved milgram being called away because of a phone call at the start of the procedure and the role being taken over by a confederate in everyday clothes rather than a lab coat which establishes authority which caused obedience to drop by 20%. The second variation was to change location so the experiment was moved to run down offices rather than Yale university which people would associate with professionalism causing the obedience to drop to 47.5% suggesting that location affects obedience as people would respecte Yale university as it’s an established building. The final variation was touch proximity Where the teacher forced the learners hand on a shock plage when refusing to shock the confederate after 150 volts which caused obedience to fall to 30%.
The results from the experiment at the time were considered extraordinary 65% of the participants continued to the highest level of 450 volts and all participants continued to 300 volts concluding that with the right level of authority people will go to great lengths to obey orders given.
A03:
A weakness of the study is that it lacks ecological validity this is because the experiment was conducted in a lab meaning it doesn’t reflect a real life situation. Orne & Holland accused the study of lacking experimental realism because participants may not have believed the experimental setup and could’ve known the learner wasn’t receiving electric shocks this could’ve lead to inaccurate results because if they’d have thought it wasn’t realistic they could’ve acted differently and refused to give them or gave them knowing the consequences.
The research is reliable in the sense that similar results were gained on the two replications meaning that the study can be repeated in order to gain new information or include a new set of participants that were the opposite gender or different race to see if they would have reacted the similarly or differently to the original sample and this way we can generalise the new findings to wider populations of people.
Practical applications were gained from the experiment as it gave us an increased understanding in human nature and our obedience to authority figures and what factors are needed in order to get people to obey for example uniform, location and touch proximity.
There is a lack of population validity as the study’s sample was bias and consisted of 40 males meaning that were unable to generalise the results to other populations to improve this the experiment should’ve been repeated with different samples for example women and people of other cultures as in some countries it’s seen as the norm to complete orders without question and be submissive under authority figures.
Ethical issues were seen as a big criticism by other researchers as participants weren’t protected from the harm that the expriment caused as during the study when asked to shock the other participant the real participant was put under a lot of stress and experienced a potentially traumatic moment of having to decide whether to electrocute someone or not under an authority figure who would’ve appeared professional and acted as though it was ok to go on even when the learner sounded in pain and the effects for the real participants could’ve been long term and affect them for the rest of their life as they would feel guilt for shocking the confederate even though nothing happened it would still put someone in shock.
Another ethical issue was the use of deception milgram didn’t tell his participants the true purpose of the study and they weren’t debriefed properly about the experiment however this was somewhat necessary in order to achieve the desired results because if they knew the true aim they may have acted differently and could’ve been subjected to demand characteristics which then could’ve altered the results and wouldn’t of been an accurate representation of how they would’ve reacted to that situation in real life as they would’ve reacted the way they thought they were meant to.
Participants went under a lot of stress and anxiety during the experiment as they weren’t allowed to withdrawal which is another ethical issue the right to withdrawal as participants were told to carry on with the experiment and weren’t allowed to leave which caused even more added stress and anxiety they were already experiencing.
Milgrams findings have been replicated in a variety of cultures and most have had the same conclusions in comparison to the original study and in some cases there are higher obedience rates. However smith and bond criticise that the majority of these studies have been conducted in industrialised western cultures and we should be cautious before we conclude that a universal trait of social behaviour has been identified.
Outline and evaluate how situational variables have been shown to affect obedience to authority?
A01
. milgram experiment showed that certain factors affect obedience he did different variations of the experiment
.variables that have shown to affect obedience include uniform, location , proximity
Uniform
.milgram called away via phone call,confederate came in wearing everyday clothes, idea of increasing voltage everytime learner made mistake obedience dropped 65% to 20%
.Bushman found people more likely to obey researcher in police style uniform than dressed as business executive
Location
.when studies were conducted at yale uni participants reported this gave them confidence in the integrity of the study
. result- made them more likely to obey
. a variation where a study was moved to run down offices with no affiliation to yale obedience dropped to 48%
Proximity
.with learner in the same room levels of obedience dropped to 40%
.a variation when the teacher had to force the learners hand onto a shock plate levels dropped to 30%
.when authority figure left the room obedience levels dropped to 21%
A03:
Weakness - lacks population validity
. biased sample - male USA volunteers from individualistic society.
. unable to generalise results to collectivist cultures/females since unknown if those participants, would respond in similar way unable to conclude whether proximity is legitimate explanation in those participants
Supporting -bickman uniform
. Bickman -field experiment NYC confederates stood on street & asked citizens passing to perform task like picking up piece of litter, outfit confederate wore smart suit jacket & tie, milkman’s outfit,security guard’s uniform. found final condition citizens were twice as likely obey order given by security guard supports idea uniform adds legitimacy of authority &this variable increases obedience..
Supporting/strength- reliable repeatable with standardised procedure
.use of systematic procedures allows cause and effect to be established
.enables conclusions to be drawn
Weakness- replicated in Western cultures
. Smith and Bond argued Milgram’s experiment had only been replicated in Western cultures
.his results aren’t entirely generalisable
Methodological issues- Demand characteristics
. participants may know the purpose of experiment
Ethical issues .Lack of protection from psychological harm from believing they hurt another person
Ethical issues - deception
Research methods- gender bias,used male participants, didn’t test females who may have acted different
A01:
Situational variables have been shown to affect obedience to authority as seen in milgrams experiment into obedience suggesting that certain factors affect obedience as found during the different variations of his study including uniform, location and proximity.
The uniform variation was tested via milgrams being called away from the experiment by a pretend phone call and then a confederate would come in wearing everyday clothes and would give the idea of increasing the voltage everytime the ‘learner’ made a mistake causing obedience to drop by 65% to 20% this is supported by bushman who found people more likely to obey a research in a police style uniform rather than dressed as a business executive sugggesting uniform is a powerful factor shown to affect obedience to authority.
Another variation was tested by placing the experiment in another location compared to Yale university which was considered professional consequently participants reported this have them the confidence in the integrity of the study resulting in making them more likely to obey so by moving the experiment to run down offices with no affiliation to Yale the obedience dropped to 48% as this gives the participant doubt the experiment is professional and done by intelligent researchers.
Proximity was another variation tested to see if it would affect obedience and with the learner in the same room the levels of obedience dropped to 40% so the variation when the teacher had to force the learners hand onto a shock plate the obedience levels dropped to 30% and when the authority figure had left the room obedience levels dropped to 21%.
A03:
A weakness of the study is the lack of population validity as the sample consisted of all male American volunteers leading to bias results meaning that we are unable to generalise the results to collectivist cultures or other groups of people like women since it’s unknown if those participants would respond in a similar way so we’re unable to conclude whether proximity is a legitimate explanation shown to affect obedience to authority.
Supporting the study is bickman who conducted a field experiment in New York where confederates stood on the street and asked the citizens passing by to perform a task this could be picking up a piece of litter whilst the confederate wore either a smart suit jacket and tie, a milkman’s outfit or a security guards uniform and found in the final condition the citizens were twice as likely to obey an order given by a security guard which supports the idea that uniform adds legitimacy of authority and that this variable is shown to affect obedience to authority.
As the study was conducted in a lab it gives it reliability and is repeatable with standardised procedure as the use of systematic procedure allows cause and effect to be established it then enables conclusions to be drawn.
However milgrams study has only been replicated in western cultures as argued by smith and bond meaning that results gathered arent entirely generalisable and can’t be applied to people from different cultural backgrounds so to improve this the study should be repeated in other cultures like eastern cultures as this would provide new information on how people who aren’t from western cultures would be shown to affect obedience to authority.
There are methodological issues with milgrams experiment as the participants may have been subjected to demand characteristics because they may have known the true purpose of the study and therefore acted in way that they thought they were supposed to in order to achieve those results and ensure the researchers gained what they wanted to and the factors that have shown to affect obedience to authority are correct.
Ethical issues were seen as a big criticism by other researchers as participants weren’t protected from the harm that the expriment caused as during the study when asked to shock the other participant the real participant was put under a lot of stress and experienced a potentially traumatic moment of having to decide whether to electrocute someone or not under an authority figure who would’ve appeared professional and acted as though it was ok to go on even when the learner sounded in pain and the effects for the real participants could’ve been long term and affect them for the rest of their life as they would feel guilt for shocking the confederate even though nothing happened it would still put someone in shock.
Another ethical issue was the use of deception milgram didn’t tell his participants the true purpose of the study and they weren’t debriefed properly about the experiment however this was somewhat necessary in order to achieve the desired results because if they knew the true aim they may have acted differently and could’ve been subjected to demand characteristics which then could’ve altered the results and wouldn’t of been an accurate representation of how they would’ve reacted to that situation in real life as they would’ve reacted the way they thought they were meant to.
There is a lack of population validity as the study’s sample was bias and consisted of 40 males meaning that were unable to generalise the results to other populations to improve this the experiment should’ve been repeated with different samples for example women and people of other cultures as in some countries it’s seen as the norm to complete orders without question and be submissive under authority figures.
discuss what psychological research has told us about why people conform?
A01 –NSI
A01- ISI
A01- types of conformity:compliance,identification,internalisation
A01 variables affecting conformity:
group size; unanimity; task difficulty
A03:
weakness Smith and Bond meta analysis. looked at culture and how it affects conformity. found western cultures conformed less because they want to be independent and individualistic. People in western cultures dont want to be seen as part of group so conform less.
Supporting – normative social influence can explain the results of conformity studies in unambiguous situations eg Asch
Supporting-.informational influence can explain conformity in ambiguous situations in which both public and private agreement occurs, eg Jenness
Weakness- difficulty measuring and/or distinguishing between reasons why conformity occurs
Research methods aschs study
Gender bias
Only tested on male participants
Female participants may have acted differently
Culture aschs - cultural differences in conformity as USA is an individualistic culture, whereas China and Africa have collective culture suggesting conformity would further increase
Ethical issues with aschs experiment deception they may have acted differently if they knew the true purpose of the study
Supporting– Zimbardo
A01:
We know why people conform due to psychological research being carried out so we know people conform for reasons such as wanting to be right and wanting to fit in these types of social influences are known as informational social influence and normative social influence. Normative social influence is going along with the majority through fear of rejection or being seen as an outcast people conform as a desire to be liked because people want to be liked which is slightly different compared to informational social influence where a person or people will go along with the majority view through acceptance of new information as people have a desire to be right so they’re conforming for cognitive reasons rather than emotional ones.
There are types of conformity which compliance, identification and internalisation. Compliance is where a person will publicly agree with the majority despite privately disagreeing with the majority they will temporarily change their view or behaviour. Identification where a person will want to have affinity with the group that we value so they want to be associated with the majority by identifying with them and their views. Finally internalisation where a person or people will publicly and privately agree with the majority view and is the highest form of conformity.
Variables that affect conformity include group size, unanimity and task difficulty which were discovered by asch during his study where participants were given an example line and had to guess which other lines that were presented to them were similar to the original line and the reasons why people conform were due to group size so if a group size or more than 3 all had the same answer a person would conform to the majority view, unanimity
A03:
A weakness of psychological research telling people why they conform could be argued by smith and bond who conducted a meta analysis and looked at culture and how it affects conformity, they found that western cultures conformed less because they want to be independent and individualistic meaning that people in western cultures don’t want to be seen as part of a group so they will conform less.
Normative social influence can tell us why people conform more specifically it can explain the results of conformity studies in unambiguous situations for example Asch and his line study because it means people have a desire to right and will therefore look to the majority for the correct answer.
As well as normative social influence explaining why people conform so can informational social influence as it can explain conformity in ambiguous situations in which both public and private agreement occurs for example in Jenness bean study where groups of people had to guess how many beans were in a jar which means there was no obvious correct answer and participants had to say the answer out loud which lead to them agreeing with the majority view as they wanted to be right.
However it’s difficult to measure and or distinguish between reasons why conformity occurs and whether it’s all based on types of conformity as there could be other reasons like cultural reasons.
There could be other reasons for conforming like cultural differences like in aschs study as the USA is an individualistic culture whereas China and Africa have collectivist cultures suggesting conformity would further increase as they want to fit in with the majority.
There are research methods problems with aschs study because there is gender bias as the experiment was only done on American male participants so therefore we can’t determine how female participants may have acted meaning we can’t generalise the results to women or other groups of people.
There are ethical issues with aschs experiment as deception was used as participants weren’t fully told about the real reason the experiment was being conducted this means that participants may have acted differently if they knew the true purpose of the study so this was necessary to get the results.
Zimbardos study into conformity to social roles could also be used so support research into why people conform as it involved participants being randomly assigned a role as either a prisoner or a guard and being placed into a mock prison in order to see how quickly they would conform to that social role which they did and soon acted as their perception of how a prisoner or guard would act.
Discuss two explanations of resistance to social influence?
A01 –social support
- person has assistance from people within group - remain independent in situations where expected to conform/obey
- enables individuals resist pressures conform because breaks unanimity of majority-disobedient peers act as role models
A01- loc measurement of loc Rotter
- loc= persons perception of personal control of own behaviour
- strong internal loc believe what happens to them is result of own ability & effort rather than influence of others
- strong external loc believe what happens to them is determined by external factors like influence of others/luck
A03:
weakness – people with internal loc likely resist pressure obey.
-Oliner & Oliner interviewed non-Jewish survivors WWII compared those resisted orders protected
Supporting – Social Support Allen and Levine
Supporting-.milgram demonstrated increased resistance variations participants paired
Weakness- Spector used Rotter’s loc scale -found individuals with high internal loc =less likely conform than those with high external loc
Real life example – Rosenstrasse protest in nazi controlled berlin in 1943 milgrams research in real life
Historical change Research found historical trend in loc with young people becoming increasingly external Meta analysis twenge et al found loc scores in US students become more external between 1960 and 2002
Weakness - Loc - Obedience Gender Differences - Sherman et al
- males more likely to have internal LoC and likely to become leaders.
Strength -rees & Wallace showed social support provided by friends helped adolescents resist conformity pressures from majority
One explanation of resistance to social influence is social support this is where a person has assistance from people without a majority group which helps them to remain independent in situations where they’re expected to conform or obey as it enables individuals to resist pressures to conform because it breaks unanimity of the majority and when disobedient peers act as role models which the person can base their own behaviour for example resisting an order from an authority figure it gives them social support and non conformity means that it’s more likely if others are seen to resist social influence and seeing others disobey and not conform gives the observer the confidence to do the same an example of when this happened was during moscovicis experiment where he used social support to encourage the minority influence to not conform to the majority.
Another explanation of resistance to social influence is the locus of control measurement by rotter which determined a persons perception of their personal control of their own behaviour. People with a strong internal locus of control believe what happens to them is a result of their own ability and effort rather than the influence of others because internals are less likely to rely on opinions of others to make them less vulnerable to social influence but people with a strong external locus of control believe what happens to them is determined by external factors like the influence of others and luck and are less likely to display independent behaviour and that they can’t control what happens to them.
A03:
People with an internal locus of control are less likely to resist the pressure to obey found by oliner & oliner who interviewed non Jewish survivors of WW|| those who resisted the orders and protected the jews from the nazis compared to those who didn’t and found 406 rescuers who resisted the orders are likely to have a high internal locus of control compared to 126 people who followed the orders resulting in the idea that having a high internal locus of control means individuals are less likely to follow orders so it’s difficult to conclude that locus of control is the only factor.
Supporting the idea of social support is Allen and Levine who found conformity reduced on the task involving visual judgements if there was a dissenter even if the dissenter wore glasses with thick lenses and admitted to having a sight problem.
Milgram demonstrated an increase to resistance to social influence when he included social support in one of his variations in his experiment where the real participant was paired with two additional confederates who also played the role of teachers and the two additional confederates refused to go on and withdrew from the experiment early. The percentage of real participants who proceeded to the full 450 volts dropped from 65% to 10% showing that if the real participants has support for their desire to disobey then they’re more likely to resist the pressure of an authority figure.
Spector used rotters locus of control scale to determine whether locus of control is associated with conformity and he used a sample of 157 students and found individuals with a high internal locus of control were less likely to conform than those with a high external locus of control and it’s only normative social influence situations where individuals conform to be accepted. Suggesting there is no difference between the two groups for informational social influence and suggests normative social influence which is the desire to fit in is more powerful than informational social influence which is the desire to be right when considering locus of control.
A real life example of resistance to social influence is the rosenstrasse protest in nazi controlled Berlin in 1943 which milgrams research was based on in real life so there is a historical change where research has found a historical trend in locus of control with young people becoming increasingly external.
A meta analysis was conducted by twenge et al that found locus of control scores in US student had become substantially more external between 1960 and 2002 suggesting that over time more people are becoming external and believing that they don’t control their own lives.
A weakness of locus of control being an explanation of resistance to social influence is the gender differences Sherman et al found that males are more likely to have an internal locus of control and are likely to become leaders whereas females seek links with others rather than behaving independently and women who are internal do better in a workplace.
Research that supports the importance of social support in resisting social influence is by Rees and Wallace who showed social support provided by friends helped adolescents resist conformity pressures from the majority and found that individuals who had the majority or friends who drank alcohol were able to resist pressures to drink when they had a friend or two who also resisted suggesting that social influence can be resisted by having social support in a situation.
Outline and evaluate the role of social influence processes in social change?
A01 –Social change occurs when a whole society adopts a new belief or behaviour which then becomes widely accepted as the ‘norm’.
.Social influence processes involved in social change include minority influence, internal locus of control and disobedience to authority.
Moscovici
. conversion theory
- 3 clear factors that determine success of minority to facilitate social change, including: consistency, sacrifices and group membership.
A01- DCCAS Social change through minority influence
1. drawing attention to issue-
2 cognitive conflict –
3 consistency -
4 augmentation principle –
5 snowball effect-
A03:
Weakness Dejong et al campaign of alcohol affects
Supporting-Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela led civil rights movements and were consistent in their views against apartheid
Weakness- Schultz boomerang effect
Real life example - suffragettes
Weakness - often minority creates potential for change but rarely happens quickly due to tendency of humans conform to majority position
Weakness -influence of minorities = limited by labelled as deviant behaviour &majority don’t want seen as deviant themselves
Strength Maass et al.investigated group membership & found minority of straight men = likely to convince straight majority about gay rights, compared to minority of gay people.
The role of social influence processes involved in social change include the minority influences view becoming the majority’s and causing a social change which occurs when a whole society adopts a new belief or behaviour which then becomes widely accepted as the ‘norm’.
Moscovici used conversion theory to explain how social change occurs with 3 clear factors that determine the success of the minority to facilitate social change which are consistency, commitment and flexibility.
Another method of social change is through minority influence where there are 5 factors which are drawing attention to an issue, cognitive conflict, consistency, augmentation principle and the snowball effect.
Drawing attention to an issue means the minority can bring about social change by drawing attention to issues for example the suffragettes & being unable to vote as a woman.
Cognitive conflict which involves the minority creating conflict in the minds of the majority between what’s currently believed and what the minority believes.
Consistency meaning the social change is likely to occur when the minority is consistent in its position like the suffragettes being consistent in their views despite other people’s attitudes in society.
The augmentation principle where if a minority suffers for their views and beliefs it’s taken seriously for example when the suffragettes risked their imprisonment and even death in order for women to be Abel to vote and seen as proper members of society.
Finally the snowball effect where the minority influence initially was small but the effect spread widely until it leads to a large scale social change for example after the suffragettes actions the idea finally spread to the majority and in the future the idea had become the norm and people don’t remember where the idea originated from as it is the norm no one questions it.
A03:
Dejong et al tested the effectiveness of social norms campaigns reducing alcohol among students despite receiving information which corrected the misperceptions about the drinking norms the students didn’t report lower consumption as a result of the campaign suggesting that not all norms interventions mean that social change will occur.
Martin Luther king and Nelson Mandela led the civil rights movements and were consistent in their views against apartheid for many years which helped bring about social change and changed the previous social norms.
Schultz attempting social change through social the norms approach that can have a boomerang effect for example a social norms campaign concerning energy usage caused those who used less than the norm to increase their usage so instead of lowering the energy usage via a campaign the boomerang effect occurred which caused people to use more energy rather than less suggesting a norms intervention isn’t always effective.
A real life example of when social change occurred was when the suffragettes fought for women’s right to vote by being consistent in their view & persistent in their educational and political arguments which would draw attention to women’s rights. They remained consistent despite the opposition of protesting until women could vote they also made sacrifices by risking imprisonment and even death which meant their influence was powerful and the group membership convinced other women to join to expand the influence to spread until the social change occurred.
Another weakness is that often the minority creates the potential for change it it rarely happens quickly due to a strong tendency of humans to conform to the majority position to improve this social support could be used so a minority gathering more supporters of their view in order to appear a larger group of people allowing members to feel confident in their views.
Another weakness which could lower the chance of social change to occur is the influence of minorities being limited by being labelled as having deviant behaviour meaning the majority don’t want to be seen as deviant themselves because then the majority focuses on the messenger rather than the message which is more important and what the minority are trying to get across to the majority.
However supporting minority influence in social change is Maass et al who investigated group membership and found the minority of straight men were more likely to convince the straight majority about gay rights compared to the minority of gay people so the straight men were seen as having persuasive power discussing gay rights with straight men compared to gay men but this does suggest that members of the minority matter as the majority will judge them on this rathe than a message being conveyed across.
Outline and evaluate the authoritarian personality as a dispositional explanation for obedience?
A01
. Psychologists have examined dispositional factors that also contribute to obedience.
-Adorno et al developed questionnaire F scale
-Milgram’s original research, psychologists questioned whether obedience occurred due to situational factors or dispositional factors,
.Milgram conducted follow-up study, using participants from original study
-elms and milgrams research 20 dis and 20 ob
. participants asked open-ended questions about relationship wit parents/relationship with experimenter/learner during experiment.
- Elms and Milgram found obedient participants scored higher on F scale, results revealed obedient participants less close to fathers during childhood and admired experimenter in Milgram’s experiment
- Elms and Milgram concluded obedient participants in original research displayed higher levels of authoritarian personality, in comparison to disobedient participants.
weakness – Difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about exact cause
Supporting research Elms & Milgram did follow-up on participants from original study, ft 20 obedient & 20 defiant participants.
Supporting/strength - Altemeyer reported ppts with authoritarian personality type ordered to give shocks than those without personality type.
Weakness- Middendorp & Meleon less-educated people likely display authoritarian personality characteristics, than well-educated people. If claims correct then possible its not authoritarian characteristics
Methodological issues- Elms and Milgram used Adorno’s F scale to determine levels of authoritarian personality.response bias or social desirability
Research methods -problem with F-Scale Political Bias measures tendency towards extreme form of right wing ideology. Christine & Jahoda argued this is politically biased interpretation of A.P.
Weaknesses - studies found authoritarian ppts more obedient, Dambrun & vatine used immersive virtual environment yet ppts responded as if situation =real with significant correlation between RWA scores and maximum v shock level ppts
Issues and debates - nature vs
nurture
.milgram claimed that the social context (nurture) was more important than personality (nature) in determining obedience
A01:
The authoritarian personality is a distinct personality pattern characterised by strict adherence to conventional values and a a belief in absolute obedience of submission to authority.
Psychologists have examined dispositional factors that also contribute to obedience one of which is a particular characteristic known as authoritarian personality which has been associated with higher levels of obedience.
Adorno et al developed a questionnaire called the F scale which is used to measure levels of authoritarian personality and in milgrams original research psychologists questioned whether obedience occurred dut to situational factors like uniform or dispositional factors like a particular personality characteristic such as the authoritarian personality. This lead milgram to conduct a follow up study using the participants from the original study. Elms and milgram wanted to see if obedient participants in milgrams research were more likely to display authoritarian personality traits they collected a sample of 20 obedient participants who administered the full 450 volts & 20 disobedient participants who had refused to continue to carry on with shocking the ‘ learner’ and each participant did lots of personality questionnaires including the f scale. Participants were asked open ended questions about their relationship with their parents, with the experimenter and the learner during the experiment. Elms and milgrams found that obedient participants who scored higher on the f scale revealed they were less close to their fathers during childhood and they admired the experimenter in milgrams experiment which was the opposite for the disobedient participants.
Elms and milgram concluded that obedient participants in the original research had displayed higher levels of authoritarian personality in comparison to disobedient participants.
A03:
A weakness of the authoritarian personality as a dispositional explanation for obedience is it’s difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about the exact cause of obedience and whether other factors are involved or if other factors are needed in order for people to obey an authority figure whether it’s a mix of situational and dispositional or just dispositional factors as an explanation for obedience.
There is supporting research by elms and milgram who did a follow up on the participant from the original milgram study to see if the obedient participants were more likely to display authoritarian personality traits in comparison to disobedient participants, their sample featured 20 obedient and 20 disobedient participants. Each participant completed several personality questionnaires including adornos f scale to measure their level of authoritarian personality and were also asked open ended questions about their relationship with their parents, the experimenter and the learner during milgrams experiment. They found that obedient participants scored higher on the F scale compared to the disobedient participants, the results also revealed obedient participants were less close to their fathers during childhood and they admired the experimenter in milgrams experiment which was the opposite for the disobedient participants. Elms and milgram concluded the obedient participants in his original research displayed higher levels of authoritarian personality compared to disobedient participants.
Although the results suggests a link between authoritarian personality and obedience these results are correlations and therefore it’s difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about the exact cause of obedience additionally there are many other situational factors that contribute to obedience including proximity, location and uniform so although it’s likely that authoritarian personality contributes to obedience a range of situational variables can also affect the levels of this contribution.
Middendorp and meleon claims that less educated people are likely to display authoritarian personality characteristics than well educated people and if the claims are correct then it’s possible to conclude that it’s not authoritarian characteristics that lead to obedience but levels of education.
There are methodological issues with the authoritarian personality as elms and milgram used adornos f scale to determine the levels of authoritarian personality and it’s possible that the f scale suffers from response bias or social desirability where participants will provide answers that they think they should or that are socially acceptable which then leads to inaccurate results decreasing the validity of the research and means
the authoritarian personality as a dispositional explanation for obedience becomes a less plausible explanation.
Another problem with measuring the authoritarian personality with the f scale is the political bias that’s used to measure the tendency towards extreme form of right wing ideology and is argued by Christine and jahoda this is a politically biased interpretation of the authoritarian personality and not a comprehensive dispositional explanation that can account for obedience to authority across the whole political spectrum.
Supporting the authoritarian personality as an explanation for obedience is other studies that have found authoritarian participants are more obedient as dambrun and vatine used immersive virtual environment yet the participants responded to the situation as though it were real causing a significant correlation between right wing authoritarianism scores and maximum voltage shock levels from the original experiment milgram did and the participants that displayed higher levels of right wing authoritarianism were the ones who obeyed the most which confirms the link between authoritarianism and obedience.
Issues and debates play a part in the authoritarian explanation of obedience as nature and nurture claimed by milgram that the social context was nurture was more important than the personality which is nature in determining obedience.
Outline and evaluate research into minority influence?
A01 – Moscovici experiment-
.172 female USA participants
. see if consistent minority could influence majority to give incorrect answer in colour perception task
.consistent condition=real participants agreed 8.2% of trials
- inconsistent condition=real participants agreed 1.25% of the trials
-shows consistent minority=6.95%
A01- minority influence
.successful minorities:
-Consistency
-Commitment
-flexibility
A03:
weakness –lacks ecological validity
.moscovici- lab experiment
Supporting
. wood et al meta-analysis found minorities who were consistent in position were particularly influential
Supporting- flexibility
Nemeth & Brilmayer – simulated jury situation
-participants decided compensation amount for accident
Weakness- lacks internal validity
. use of artificial tasks in Moscovici blue green slide experiment
Real life application/example
.suffragette movement
Research methods –bias sample
.Moscovici used only female USA participants
Ethical issues- deceiving participants
.Moscovici- informed consent
The main research done on minority influence was moscovicis experiment where he wanted to see if a consistent minority could influence a majority to give an incorrect answer in a colour perception task he had a sample of 172 female American participants who were placed in groups of 6 and shown 36 slides that were all varied shades of blue and participants said out loud the colour of each slide. 2 of the 6 participants were confederates and in 1 condition which was consistent 2 of the confederates said all 36 slides were green and in the second condition which was inconsistent the confederates said 24 slides were green and 12 were blue. In the consistent condition the real participants had agreed on 8.2% of the trials unlike the inconsistent condition where the real participants agreed on 1.25% of the trials showing a consistent minority to be 6.95%.
Consistency was found to be a factor for the minority influences view to become the majority because if a minority is consistent in its arguments then other people will consider the issue more carefully as there must be a reason why the minority is sufficiently confident to maintain this position over time so the other members of the majority group change their beliefs/ behaviours as a result of the exposure to a persuasive minority.
For a minority to be successful it they need to be consistent, committed and flexible in arguments in order to change the majority’s view.
Another factor that helped the minority’s view influence the majority’s view was commitment, a minority that adopts commitment to its position suggests certainty and confidence in the face of a hostile majority the greater the commitment the more likely this will then persuade the majority group members to take them seriously or even convert to the minority position.
Another factor that can help the minority’s view influence the majority’s view is flexibility and it’s more effective at changing the majority’s opinion than rigidity of arguments because minorities must negotiate their position rather than trying to enforce it as a rigid minority that refuses to compromise is perceived as dogmatic but a minority that is too prepared to compromise can be seen as inconsistent so neither approach is effective and minorities have to find a middle so willing to compromise but not too willing.
A03:
A weakness of moscovicis study is that it lacks ecological validity due to it being a lab experiment as this doesn’t reflect real life and isn’t something that is believable or realistic this can therefore lead to inaccurate results as the participants may guess what the true aim is and be willing to change their way of behaving in order to satisfy the psychologists.
Wood et al support this study as they conducted a meta analysis which found that minorities who were consistent in their position were particularly influential over the majority’s viewpoint suggesting that consistency is indeed a factor which minorities can use to influence the majority.
Nemeth and brilmayer also support on the factors use to influence a majority which is flexibility they stimulated a jury situation where participants decided a compensation amount for a skiing accident where a confederate showed flexibility with negotiations and was successful on the compensation amount suggesting that being flexible increases chance of changing the majority’s viewpoint.
However moscovicis blue and green slide experiment lacks internal validity as there is the use of artificial tasks which can’t prove the influence of a minority in real life as these tasks don’t reflect a real life situation where the minority would need to influence the majority and so the findings can’t be applied to a real life scenario.
However the study can be used to explain a real life example being the suffragette movement because they used consistency, commitment and flexibility in order to change the majority viewpoint when wanting the vote as they showed they were consistent by making sure they brought up their reasons for having the vote and they showed commitment by chaining themselves to railings and restricting their food intake to the point of starvation and they were flexible in wanting to vote.
The research methods used in the study consisted of a bias sample as the participants used were all American women meaning that were unable to generalise the results to men or other groups of people from different cultures to see if they would’ve reacted the same way so to improve this the study should be replicated using a different sample that consisted of men and women and people from different cultures to gather new information into minority influence.
There are ethical issues to consider when it comes to the study as moscovici deceived the participants by telling them they were taking part in a colour perception test however some may argue that this was needed in order to achieve valid results because if they were aware of the true aim they might have displayed demand characteristics and acted they way they thought they were supposed to.
Another ethical issues was the use of informed consent because moscovici didn’t reveal the true purpose of the study he didn’t get their consent to the study either which meant the experimenter went against the ethical guidelines which could somewhat invalidate the results.
Describe and evaluate the multi store model of memory. Refer to evidence in your answer?
A01 – Atkinson and Shiffrin -explanation of memory based on 3 separate memory stores contains; -Sensory register -Ltm -Stm
A01- sr to stm
A01- stm to ltm
A01
-rehearsal -info being transferred from stm to ltm
A03:
Weakness- low ecological validity
- example Peterson and Peterson used nonsense trigrams like ‘XQF’ to investigate STM duration
Supporting
– makes sense that memories in LTM are encoded semantically
Supporting
-MSM was pioneering model of memory that inspired further research
Weakness
- model is arguably over-simplified
Case study -large base research supports idea of distinct STM and LTM systems
Weakness-doesn’t make much sense to think of procedural memory as being encoded semantically
Weakness
- only assumed LTM has unlimited capacity
Weakness
-models main emphasis was on structure & neglects process elements of memory
The multi store model of memory was first developed by Atkinson and Shiffrin which is an explanation of memory that describes the flow between three permanent storage systems of memory being the sensory register, short term memory and long term memory.
The sensory register is where information from the sense is stored but only for a duration of approximately half a second before it’s forgotten. It’s modality specific so whichever sense is registered will match the way it’s consequently held for example a taste held as a taste.
The information in the sensory register is held at each of the five senses and the capacity of the registers is very large but limited as most of the information is lost if it receives no attention but if it’s attempted to the sensory information moves into the short term memory for temporary storage which will be encoded either; visually so as an image, acoustically so as a sound or semantically so through its meaning. Short term memory is thought to have a capacity of up to 5-9 items and the duration of approximately 30 seconds and this capacity can be increased through chunking so converting a string of items into a number of larger chunks for example a paragraph of new information being learned can be broken down into words or a few sentences.
Information held in the short term memory is used for immediate tasks like working on maths problems or remembering a telephone number before writing it down and short term memory has a limited duration of approximately 18 seconds and decays rapidly unless it’s rehearsed and it has a limited capacity and new information entering the short term memory pushes out the current information.
Eventually the rehearsal can lead to information being transferred from short term memory to long term memory. Rehearsing information via the rehearsal loop helps to retain the information in short term memory and consolidate it to the long term memory which is predominantly encoded semantically this information can be stored and retrieved for up to any duration and equally has a seemingly unlimited capacity.
A03:
A problem however with the multi store model of memory is the research studying it has low ecological validity as some research into short term memory duration as stimuli
Participants were asked to remember things that bear little resemblance to items that they learned in their real life for example Peterson and Peterson used nonsense trigrams like ‘XQF’ to investigate short term memory duration.
However the multi store model of memory makes sense that memories in long term memory are encoded semantically ie you might recall a general message put across in a political speech as it’s meaningful rather than all the words as they were heard.
The multi store model of memory was the first pioneering model of memory that later inspired further research and consequently other influential models such as the working memory model so the research that was conducted was useful when coming up with other ideas as to how memory works and we encode information.
Although the multi store model of memory is comprehensible it could be argued the model is over-simplified as evidence suggests there are multiple short and long term memory stores for example long term memory can be split into episodic, procedural and semantic memory so the multi store model of memory over simplifies a complex process and idea of how memories are transferred to long term memory.
Case studies have been a popular research method for memory studies and a large base of the research supports the idea of distinct short term and long term memory systems for example a brain damaged case study patient KF’s short term memory was impaired from a motorcycle accident but the long term memory remained intact suggesting the systems have different durations and capacity’s as the long term memory was still intact as it was semantically coded.
However the model doesn’t make as much sense to think of procedural memory which is a type of long term memory as being encoded semantically ie knowing how to ride a bike through its meaning which somewhat invalidates the model.
As research is unable to accurately measure if long term memory has unlimited capacity this discredits the model because we cannot assume that long term memory does have an unlimited capacity through experiments.
Another downfall is the models main emphasis is on the structure and it neglects the process elements of memory for example it only focuses on attention and maintenance rehearsal such as elaboration rehearsal which leads to the recall of information rather than just maintenance rehearsal. Elaboration rehearsal involves more meaningful analysis like images, thinking, associations of information and this can mean better recall so by giving words meaning or linking them with previous knowledge it increases recall.
A limitation of the model is the other explanatory models of memory that are more in depth for example the levels of processing model by Craik and Lockhart that focuses on the depth of the processing involved in memory and it predicts the deeper the information is processed the longer a memory trace will
last. Unlike the multi store model it’s a non structured approach where the basic idea is that memory is really just what happens as a result of processing information. Where memory is just a by product of the depth of processing of information and there’s no clear distinction between short and long term memory so instead of concentrating on the structures involved ie short term memory and long term memory the theory concentrates on the processes involved in memory.
Outline and evaluate research into the effects of leading questions on ewt?
A01 – Tulving proposed distinction between episodic, semantic and procedural memory
A01 episodic memory
A01- Semantic memories
A01 Procedural memories
Weakness- Cohen & Squire disagree
Supporting – evidence from brain scans
Supporting distinguishing procedural & declarative memories,evidence Case patient HM
Weakness- Research into different types of LTM research into Clive Wearing
Real life application-Belleville et al
Weakness evidence patients with brain damage Criticism of this research is reliance on patients,
Weakness 4th type of ltm
A leading question is a question that suggests what answer is desirable or a question that leads to the desired answer.
Research into leading questions has been tested by loftus and Palmer who conducted an experiment where 1 researcher showed 45 students 7 films of different traffic accidents, then after each film participants were given a questionnaire with a critical question containing one of five verbs. How fast were the cats going when they (contacted,hit,bumped,collided, smashed) each other? They found that participants who were given the verb smashed, reported an average speed of 40.8mph compared to participants who were given the verb contacted who reported an average speed of 31.8mph.
An interview may use leading questions and so alter the individuals memory for events. This is especially the case when children are being interviewed about a crime as seen in LaRooy et als study.
Elizabeth loftus investigated leading questions by asking people the question ‘’do you get headaches frequently’’? People who asked this question reported an average of 2.2 headaches per week whereas those asked ‘’do you get headaches occasionally and if so how often’’? People reported an average of 0.7 headaches. The way the question was asked had a signifiant effect on the answer given.
A03:
However the research is limited as it lacks ecological validity as participants viewed video clips rather than being present at a real life accident as the video clip doesn’t have the same emotional impact as it would witnessing a real life accident. So participants would be less likely to pay attention and less motivated to be accurate in judgments.
Although the study is high in replicability as it’s easy to reproduce because the method was a lab experiment which followed standardised procedure which makes it more reliable.
Supporting research is by Braun who’s research had shown that misleading information can create false memories as they used misleading advertising material for Disneyland containing information about bugs bunny. Participants incorporated it into their orignal memories and remembered meeting bugs bunny during their visit to Disneyland showing how powerful misleading information can be in creating false memories.
A weakness with loftus and palmers study is that the use of students as participants because they’re not representative of the general population they also may be less experienced drivers and therefore less confident in their ability to estimate speeds it also means they may have influenced them to be more swayed by the verb in question so the harsher the verb sounded the faster they thought the cars were going.
Although the research does show it has application to the real world as it shows that eyewitness testimonies may be influenced by leading questions so this can then be used to prevent any misinformation being used in a real eyewitness testimony which could benefit either the person convicted or the victims involved in a criminal case for instance.
It also a lab experiment meaning the research is reliable and also replicable which is highly needed as they would have to repeat the experiment on different samples in order to generalise these results to the general population as they’re not representative so it’s useful because it can be repeated in order to gather new information which we can apply to the general population and further out understanding on the effect of leading questions on the eyewitness testimony.
Loftus and palmers research was highly controlled as it took place in a lab of Washington university therefore it has a high degree of control which reduces chance of extraneous variables so this increases the validity of the results.
However there is contradicting evidence by Yuille and Cutshall who conducted a study that conflicts the findings of the loftus and palmer study as they found that misleading information didn’t alter the memory of people who witnessed a real armed robbery which implies that misleading information may have a greater influence in the lab rather than real life which further supports the idea that loftus and palmers study may have lacked in ecological validity.
Describe and evaluate how retrieval failure due to the absence of cues leads to forgetting?
A01 – memory is most effective if info that was present at encoding is also available at time of retrieval.
A01 context dependent forgetting
A01- state dependent forgetting
A01 Goodwin et al
A03:
Weakness Ecological validity:
Supporting – Research support:
Godden and Baddeley
Supporting from levels of Processing:
Weakness- Retrieval cues don’t always work
Real world application coveney et al tested
Real life application- Practical applications:
Supporting research-Gallagher
Strength- retrieval is more important explanation than interference
Tulving and psotka
Memory is most effective if the information that was present at encoding is also available at the time of retrieval. The closer the cue is to the original price of information the more useful it is.
Tulving argued that information would be more readily retrieved if the cues present when the information was encoded were also present when the retrieval is required. He also suggested that information about the physical surroundings being the external context and about the physical or physiological state of the learner being the internal context is stored at the the same time as the information is learned by reinstating the state or context it makes recall easier by providing relevant information while retrieval failure occurred when appropriate cues aren’t present.
Forgetting in long term memory is mainly due to retrieval failure, which is failure to find an item of information because of the insufficient cues during the retrieval process.
The recall of knowledge or episodes is greater when the context is the same and present during learning and retrieval.
When the context is different it’s more difficult to retrieve information. This can be seen in godden and Baddeleys experiment where drivers either learned a word list on land or underwater and were tested on either land or water, they found the highest recall was when the initial context is matched with recall environment so recall was high when drivers learned information underwater and were tested underwater.
Recall of information is greater when an individuals physical or psychological state is similar at encoding and retrieval. When these states are different it’s more difficult to retrieve information.
State depending forgetting is based on the state be that physical or physiological of the person when information is being encoded or retrieved. Goodwin et al investigated the effect of alcohol on state dependent retrieval asked participants to remember a list of words when they were either drunk or sober and then recall the list after 24 hours when either drunk or sober and they found that recall is best when they’re in the same state at both times.
A03:
A weakness of retrieval failure is that much of the research on this theory is lab based and therefore lacks ecological validity as these studies don’t test ‘everyday memory’ so this could therefore be argued that retrieval failure due to the absence of cues which leads to forgetting lacks validity.
Research support for the theory includes studies for example godden and baddeley suggests that cues can affect the recall of information this strengthens the theory. There is also a levels of processing theory which states that the deeper you think about information the more likely it will be recalled so this supports the theory of forgetting as cues provide a richer level of detail and thus the chance of recall increases.
However retrieval cues don’t always work as evidence suggests retrieval cues prevent forgetting, which isn’t always the case, in most of the research on retrieval cues the participants must learn word lists however everyday learning is far more complex for example learning about the working memory model requires complex associations that aren’t easily triggered by a single cue that suggests retrieval cues are unable to explain all types of learning or forgetting.
There is a real world application for example Coveney et al tested whether changing the recall context from learning context affected their recall. Medical students were given audio lists with 30 words in and learned it in two learning environments one was a tutorial room while sitting around a table and operating theatre but there was no significant difference in subsequent recall when in the same or different context. They found that there is an application for medical education as there was no significant difference in recall between the classroom and clinical contexts.
Real world application coveney et al tested whether changing recall context from learning context affected recall
Medical students given audio lists 30 words in 2 learning environments; a tutorial room while sitting around table and operating theatre. no significant difference in subsequent recall when in same or different context
findings =application for medical education as no significant difference in recall between classroom & clinical contexts.
Another real life application is practical applications as the theory has been helpful to forensic and police work as it helps to facilitate recall from eye witnesses which means the theory has real world practical application making it useful outside of the lab.
Supporting research comes from Gallagher who conducted research into the importance of cues because students struggle to recall information in exams experiencing retrieval failure of learned information he tested whether including information from class lectures in test items as retrieval cues would enhance student performance on tests. Performance on identical test items with and without cues which showed that the including cues group recalled significantly more than the no cues group. These results suggest the selective use of retrieval cues on tests can help students to overcome retrieval failure.
Retrieval is a more important explanation than interference demonstrated by Tulving and Psotka who demonstrated that the apparent interference effects were actually due to the absence of cues. When participants were asked to learn word lists the effects of interference disappeared if the category names were included as cues during recall. With the cues participants were able to remember 70% of the words regardless of how many lists they had been given, showing that the information is there but can’t be retrieved due to interference.
Outline and evaluate research into the effects of anxiety on the accuracy of EWT ?
A01 – anxiety has negative effect on memory
A01 anxiety has a positive effect on memory Christianson and hubinette
A01- deffenbacher
A01 johnson and scott
A03:
Weakness- weapon focus effect may not be caused by anxiety Pickel
Supporting – Clifford and Scott
Supporting – Steblay conducted meta-analysis
Weakness- real life vs lab studies
Lab studies may not create real levels of anxiety experienced by real witness during actual crime Deffencbacher et al reviewed 34 studies
Weakness Loftus’s (Johnson and Scott’s) research criticised for lacking ecological validity
Weakness - Halford & milne
Research methods Demand characteristics may effect results
Ethical issues criticism of Loftus (Johnson and Scott) is numerous ethical guidelines broken.
Anxiety can have a negative effect on memory as automatic skills aren’t affected by anxiety but performance on complicated cognitive tasks such as eyewitness memory tends to be reduced but anxiety can also have a positive effect on memory as Christiansen and Hubinette found more than 75% accurate recall in real witnesses in bank robberies and witnesses who were the most anxious had the best recall.
The Deffenbacher et al study reviewed 21 studies and found that the stress performance relationship followed an inverted -U function that was proposed by the Yerkes and Dodson curve meaning that for tasks of moderate complexity like eyewitness testimony performance increases with stress up to an optimal point where it starts to decline
Johnson and Scott tested the effects of anxiety on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony the procedure included participants that heard an argument and saw a man either carrying a pen covered in grease which was the low anxiety condition or a knife covered in blood so the high anxiety weapon focus condition they were later asked to identify the man from a set of photos they found the mean accuracy was 49% in the low anxiety condition compared to 33% in the high anxiety condition further supporting the idea of a weapon focus effect.
A03:
However the weapon focus effect may not be caused by anxiety as Pickel argues that the weapon focus effect could be the consequence of surprise rather than anxiety and when participants watched the thief enter the hairdressing salon carrying scissors so it was a high threat but low surprise or carrying a handgun so high threat and high surprise or a wallet so low surprise low threat or carrying a raw chicken so low threat but high surprise the identification of the thief was less accurate in the high surprise conditions than in the high threat conditions suggesting that surprise leads to the weapon focus effect.
Clifford and Scott found that people who saw the film of a violent attack remembered fewer than 40 items of information about the event compared to a control group who saw the less stressful version as witnessing real crime is probably more stressful than taking part in an experiment so the memory accuracy may well be even more affected in real life.
Steblay conducted a meta analysis of studies concerning the weapon focus effect showing that the presence of the weapon reduces the chance of a witness correctly identifying the person holding the weapon.
However lab studies may not create real levels of anxiety that’s experienced by real witnesses during an actual crime Deffenbacher et al reviewed 34 studies and concluded that in general lab studies that demonstrate anxiety tended to reduce accuracy and real life studies tend to find even greater loss in accuracy these findings are at odds with Christianson and hubinettes findings but they do suggest that lab studies are valid as they’re supported by real life studies.
Loftus’s (Johnson and Scott’s) research is also criticised for lacking ecological validity as participants were waiting in the reception outside the lab and may have anticipated something going to happen which may have affected the accuracy of judgements.
The research also doesn’t always support the weapon focus effect as studies of eyewitness testimony in real life crimes doesn’t support the idea of a weapon focus effect as Halford and Milne found that victims of violent crimes are more accurate in the recall of crime scene information compared to victims of non violent crimes and the consequence of anxiety in violent crimes appears to increase the accuracy of eyewitness memory showing there’s no simple rule about the effect of anxiety on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.
There are demand characteristics which may effect results as participants may have guessed the aim of the experiment and therefore display the behaviour they think they are supposed to altering the outcome of the experiment so the results are no longer reliable or as valid.
Another criticism of Loftus (Johnson and Scott) is the numerous ethical guidelines broken as participants were deceived about the nature of the experiment and weren’t protected from harm as the participants were exposed to a man holding a bloodied knife directly causing extreme feelings of anxiety, this is a huge issue as participants may have left the experiment feeling stressed and anxious especially if someone they knew had been involved in a knife crime.
Discuss the use of the cognitive interview as a means of improving the accuracy of eyewitness?
A01 – cognitive interview
A01mpcc 1 mental reinstatement
2 report everything
3 change order
4 change perspective
A01- unlike standard police interview
A01 Geiselman
A03:
Weakness Kohnken et al
Supporting – meta-analysis by kohnken et al
Supporting – Fisher et al
Weakness- Kebbel & wagstaff
Strengths technique is more structured than standard technique
Weakness Comparisons are difficult
Strengths effectiveness of ci may be due to individual elements rather than whole process
Stength individual differences
Mello & fisher
The cognitive interview is a police technique for interviewing witnesses to a crime that encourages them to recreate the original context of a crime in order to increase the accessibility of stored information. Our memory is made up of a network of associations rather than of discrete events and memories are accessed using multiple retrieval strategies.
There are four parts to a cognitive interview including; mental reinstatement, report everything, change order and change perspective.
Firstly a mental reinstatement of the original context so witnesses are encouraged to mentally recreate the physical or psychological environment or the original incident, this aims to provide the contextual and emotional cues to retrieve memories. Secondly reporting everything so witnesses are encouraged to report every detail of the event even if it seems irrelevant as memories interconnected so the recollection of one item may cue other memories. Thirdly changing the order so the interviewer tries to find alternative ways through the timeline of the incident for example by reversing the order in which the events occurred this is a rationale it prevents pre existing schema influencing the recall. Lastly changing perspective so a witness is asked to recall the incident from multiple perspectives for example by imagining how it would appear to the other people who were present during the incident it also disrupts the effect schemas might have on recall.
Unlike the standard police interview which involves the interviewer doing most of the talking asking specific questions that require specific answers they may also ask leading questions that can contaminate the witnesses memory. These techniques can disrupt the natural process of searching through the memory making memory retrieval more inefficient.
Researchers like geiselman investigated the effectiveness of the cognitive interview whereby participants viewed a film of violent crime and after 48 hours they were interviewed by a policeman using 1 of 3 methods the cognitive interview, the standard interview or interview using hypnosis. A number of facts were accurately recalled and the number of errors made were recorded. The results concluded an average number of correctly recalled facts for the cognitive interview was 41.2, for the standard interview was 29.4 and for hypnosis was 38.0, there was no significant difference in the number of errors made in each condition. They concluded that cognitive interview lead to better memory for events with witnesses able to recall more relevant information compared with the traditional interview method.
A03:
A criticism of the cognitive interview is the quantity rather than quality of recall as it’s effectiveness is measured in terms of the quantity of information rather than quality as found by Kohnken et al who discovered the increase in the amount of correct information generated but also the increase in amount of incorrect information false positives when using the enhanced cognitive interview. Meaning that the results of the procedure need to be treated with caution as it doesn’t necessarily guarantee accuracy.
However the cognitive interview is effective as a meta analysis conducted by Kohnken et found an increase of 34% in the amount of correct information generated in the cognitive interview. The effectiveness of cognitive interview may be due to individual elements rather than the whole process suggesting that the cognitive interview is an effective technique for increasing the amount of information recalled.
Supporting the cognitive interview is Fisher et al who found witnesses reported a greater detail in account of crimes when done by US detectives who were trained to use this technique.
Although there are problems with using the cognitive interview in practise such as the amount of time and training needed to implement it as Kebbel and Wagstaff report the two issues with the cognitive interview it requires more time than is available and it requires special training. Police use other strategies to limit the interview to save time and many forces haven’t the provided necessary training to conduct a cognitive interview so consequently the use of the cognitive interview in police interviews isnt widespread.
Although the technique is more structured than the standard technique and it seems more appropriate for crime related interviews to be very thorough in order to gather the detail required for a useful testimony.
There are problems in establishing the effectiveness of the cognitive interview which is some aspects of it are used by some police forces such as the Thames valley police who use a version of the cognitive interview that doesn’t include changing the perspectives component and the Manchester police tended to use only the reinstatement of context and report everything components.
The effectiveness of the cognitive interview may be due to individual elements rather than the whole process for example Milne and Bull found that recall was significantly higher with just the report everything and mental reinstatement components.
Mello and Fisher compared older ages 72 years and younger ages 22 years adults memory of filmed stimulated crime using either the cognitive interview or the standard interview. The cognitive interview produced more information than the standard interview but there was a significant advantage of the cognitive interview over the standard interview which was greater for older people rather than for young participants.
discuss factors that affect the reliability of eyewitness testimony?
A01 – . Anxiety / Stress . Reconstructive Memory . Weapon Focus . Leading Questions (Loftus and Palmer, 1974)
A01 anxiety / stress
. anxiety has a positive effect on memory; Christianson and hubinette
Deffenbacher et al study
A01- an interviewer may use leading questions and so alter the individuals memory for events.
A01 weapon focus
A03:
Weakness real life versus lab studies
Deffenbacher et al reviewed 34 studies
Supporting – Research Braun et al
Supporting – Schemas Yuille & Cutshall
Weakness- Halford & milne
Real world application Wells & olson
Weakness-individual differences in effects of anxiety on ewt Bothwell et al
Weakness Loftus research = criticised for lacking ecological validity
Strength- Leading questions: Loftus (1979)
Eyewitness testimony isn’t always an effective method of remembering events and certain factors that can affect the reliability of eyewitness testimony are: anxiety/stress, reconstructive memory, weapon focus, leading questions.
Anxiety can have a negative effect on memory as automatic skills aren’t affected by anxiety but performance on complicated cognitive tasks such as eyewitness memory tends to be reduced but anxiety can also have a positive effect on memory as Christiansen and Hubinette found more than 75% accurate recall in real witnesses in bank robberies and witnesses who were the most anxious had the best recall.
The Deffenbacher et al study reviewed 21 studies and found that the stress performance relationship followed an inverted -U function that was proposed by the Yerkes and Dodson curve meaning that for tasks of moderate complexity like eyewitness testimony performance increases with stress up to an optimal point where it starts to decline.
An interview may use leading questions and so alter the individuals memory for events which is especially the case when children are being interviewed about a crime. Bartlett’s theory of reconstructive memory is crucial to the understanding of reliability of eyewitnesses as he suggested recall is the subject to personal interpretation and is dependent on our learnt or cultural norms and values and the way we make sense of world.
The weapon focus affect refers to the eyewitness’s concentration on a weapon to exclusion of other details of the crime. In a crime where the weapon is involved, it’s not unusual for witnesses to be able to describe the weapon in much detail rather than the person holding it.
A03:
A weakness of these studies is that lab studies may not create real levels of anxiety that are experienced by real witnesses during an actual crime. Deffenbacher et al reviewed 34 studies and concluded that in general lab studies demonstrates anxiety tended to reduce the accuracy and that real life studies tend to find even greater loss in accuracy.
Although research has shown that misleading information can create false memories for example Braun et al used misleading advertising material for Disneyland containing information about bugs bunny. Participants then incorporated it into their original memories and remembered meeting bugs bunny during their visit to Disneyland showing how powerful misleading intimation can be in creating false memories.
Yuille and cutshall found that eyewitnesses were more accurate in real life crimes than in lab based crimes further establishing the limitations of most of these studies that they demonstrate ecological validity and therefore reduce the validity of their findings.
Research doesn’t always support the weapon focus effect because studies of eye witness testimony in real life crimes don’t support the idea of the weapon focus effect. Halford and Milne found that victims of violent crimes are more accurate in the recall of crime scene information compared to victims of non violent crimes this the consequence of anxiety in violent crimes which appears to be increased in the accuracy of eyewitness testimony showing there’s no rule about the effect of anxiety on accuracy of eyewitness testimony.
There is a real world application which Wells and Olson discovered that eyewitness research has important implications for the criminal justice system that relies on eyewitness identification for prosecution as recent DNA exoneration cases have shown to have mistaken eyewitness identification which is the largest single factor for conviction of innocent people.
There are individual differences to consider in the effects of anxiety on eyewitness testimony which is moderated by emotional sensitivity. Bothwell et al found that participants labelled as stable in terms of emotional sensitivity had showed rising levels of accuracy as stress levels increased whereas those who were labelled as neurotic showed decreasing levels of accuracy with increasing stress levels suggesting that key extraneous variables in studies of anxiety is the participants personality particularly their emotional sensitivity.
Loftus research is also criticised for lacking ecological validity as it’s argued that lab experiments in eyewitness testimony don’t represent real life life crimes of accidents be sure participants may not take questions in the experiment seriously as they would in real life crimes suggesting that misleading information has less influence in real life eyewitness than loftus suggests.
Leading questions by loftus shows that witnesses may not be able to recall a suspect in a crime and can often remember key details which is still important evidence that can be used in court which is still effective and helpful when catching a culprit.
Discuss research into the effects of misleading information on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony?
A01 – leading questions loftus & palmer
A01 post event discussion
A01- repeat interviewing
A01 interviewer may use leading questions and so alter individuals memory for events. laRooy et al.
A03:
Weakness-Loftus research = criticised for lacking ecological validity
Supporting – Braun et al
Supporting
Geiselman and colleagues.
Weakness- response bias may be responsible
Bekerian & bowers
Real world application Wells and olson
Weakness- limitation Loftus & Palmer’s research study lacks population validity.
Weakness Approaches
Loftus & Palmer’s research, demonstrates experimental reductionism
Strength- Reliability - Loftus’ research groups
Research into leading questions has been tested by loftus and Palmer who conducted an experiment where 1 researcher showed 45 students 7 films of different traffic accidents, then after each film participants were given a questionnaire with a critical question containing one of five verbs. How fast were the cats going when they (contacted,hit,bumped,collided, smashed) each other? They found that participants who were given the verb smashed, reported an average speed of 40.8mph compared to participants who were given the verb contacted who reported an average speed of 31.8mph.
Post event discussion is a conformity effect, so how a persons memory of an event may alter as a result of discussing it with others or being questioned multiple times. Gabbert et al showed pairs of participants a different video of the same event so each participant viewed unique items then pairs were encouraged to discuss the event before individually recalling what they witnessed they found that 71% of participants went on mistakenly to recall the unique items acquired during the discussion.
Repeat interviewing involves each time an eyewitness is interviewed, there’s a possibility that comments from the interviewer will become incorporated into their own recollection of events.
An interviewer may use leading questions and so alter the individuals memory for events this is especially the case when children are being interviewed about a crime as seen in the experiment conducted by LaRooy et al.
A03:
Weakness of using eyewitness in real life is that it may be different than when it is being tested in a lab as Loftus’s research is criticised for lacking ecological validity as it’s argued that lab experiments in eyewitness testimony doesn’t represent real life crimes or accidents because the participants may no take the questions in the experiment seriously as they would do in a real life crime or accident. Suggesting that misleading information has less influence in real life eyewitness testimony than as Loftus research suggests.
Supporting research is by Braun who’s research had shown that misleading information can create false memories as they used misleading advertising material for Disneyland containing information about bugs bunny. Participants incorporated it into their orignal memories and remembered meeting bugs bunny during their visit to Disneyland showing how powerful misleading information can be in creating false memories.
By highlighting misleading information as a negative factor in eyewitness testimony has led to new techniques that are designed to improve memory retrieval like the cognitive interview which was developed by Geiselman and colleagues.
However loftus and palmers research has been criticised as response bias may be responsible as found by Bekerian and Bowers who replicated one of loftus studies and found that participants weren’t susceptible to misleading information if the questions presented were in the same order as the original information whereas Loftus presented them in a random order. Suggesting that Loftus and palmers research may be due to response bias and highlights the importance of the question in order in police interviews.
A real world application was discovered by wells and Olson whose eye witness testimony research had important implications for the criminal justice system, as it relies on eyewitness identification which is the largest single factor of conviction of innocent people. It’s suggests that research can help ensure that innocent people aren’t convicted of crimes on the basis of faulty eyewitness evidence.
A weakness of loftus and palmers research is that the study lacks population validity as the experiment had 150 American students which can be argued that the students in the experiment may be less experienced drivers who may be less accurate at estimating speeds therefore we’re unable to generalise the results to other populations for example older and more experienced drivers who may not be affected by misleading questions in some way.
Loftus and palmers research may also demonstrate experimental reductionism which is the complex process of memory that is reduced to the effect of the wording of a leading question being the independent variable on the eyewitness testimony being the dependent variable. The results don’t reflect everyday car accidents so we’re unable to conclude if the effect of leading questions is the same outside of the laboratory.
However loftus’ research has high reliability as the research groups have conducted several studies into eyewitness testimony and have found similar results. The use of lab experiments and controlled environments allowed loftus to exhibit high control variables making the research replicable and providing more confidence in the research’s findings.
Discuss what psychological research has shown about working memory. In your answer refer to theory and or evidence?
A01 – Baddeley and hitch
A01
- central executive
- phonological loop
- visuospatial sketchpad
- episodic buffer
A01- Working memory theories assumes…
A01 Evidence suggests wm uses 2 different systems for dealing with visual & verbal info.
A03:
Weakness issues of validity in dual task
research studies
Supporting – Baddeley & Hitch
Strength- wmm is ability to explain dual task performance- ability to perform 2 tasks simultaneously
Supporting wmm doesn’t over emphasize importance of rehearsal for STM retention
Weakness- sampling issues and generalisation
Shallice & warrington studied KF
Real life application-
Weakness problems with case studies
difficult to generalise to general population
Weakness- problem with ce
little evidence for how ce works
Working memory was first investigated by baddeley and Hitch who proposed the idea of the working memory model and felt that short term memory wasn’t just 1 store but multiple stores and that the working memory model is an explanation of memory used when working on a task. Working memory model suggests that 1 store is for visual processing and there’s a separate store for storing sounds.
Working memory is understood as an active processor there’s a central executive, phonological loop and phonological store, visuo spatial sketchpad and episodic buffer.
The central executive deals with the direct attention to particular tasks by allocating the brains resources to once of the 3 slave systems.
Phonological loop deals with auditory information and preserves the order of information which is divided into the phonological store which holds words that are heard and the articulatory process which allows maintenance rehearsal of acoustic information.
Visio spatial sketchpad is the planning of spatial tasks and is temporary storage of visual or spatial information. It contains a visual cache so it stores information about visual items and is a inner scribe so it stores the arrangements of objects visual field.
The episodic buffer is the general store for visual or acoustic information it integrates information from the central executive, phonological loop and visuo spatial sketchpad which then send the information to long term memory.
The working memory theories assume that complex reasoning and learning tasks require a mental workspace to hold and manipulate information.
Evidence suggest that working memory uses two different systems for dealing with visual and verbal information.
A visual processing task and carnal processing task can be performed at the same time because they interfere with each other and performance is reduced. The same applies to performing two verbal tasks at the same time which supports the view that the phonological loop and visuo spatial sketchpad are separate systems within working memory.
A03:
There are issues of validity when criticising research in dual task studies where the tasks might be seen as unrealistic or artificial and this can’t be seen as a real life situation in so the results can’t be applied to everyday life scenarios.
Weakness issues of validity in dual task
research studies where tasks might be seen as unrealistic/artificial; cant be seen as real life situation Baddeley
Research that supports the working memory model is by baddeley and hitch who investigated if participants can use different parts of working memory at the same time.
Working memory also has the ability to explain dual tasks performance this is the ability to perform two tasks simultaneously and found that participants are slower in a dual task study that involved both the central executive and articulate loop compared to a task that required the articulate loop which demonstrates the dual task performance effect and shows that the central executive is separate from articulate loop.
A positive aspect about the working memory model is that it doesn’t over emphasise the importance of rehearsal for short term memory retention in contrast to multi store model of memory.
Many case studies that are involved with working memory model tend to suffer with sampling issues although the case studies themselves are still useful as there is evidence from brain damaged patients to support the model for example shallice and Warrington studies KF whose short term memory forgetting of auditory information was greater than his forgetting of visual information. His brain damage appeared to be restricted to his phonological loop and didn’t affect his visuo spatial sketchpad this supports the idea of separate components for auditory and visual information as suggested by the working memory model the only downside to these case studies is that it only focuses on one individuals experience and is limited to that person and the results can’t be generalised to everyone.
There are problems with using case studies as using evidence from individuals with brain damage like evidence for working memory model that comes from case studies like KF with serious brain damage as such individuals may have difficulty in paying attention and so underperform on certain tasks which is an important issue because the results of the case studies can’t be generalised to the general public.
There is a real life application to working memory model as it explains a lot more than the multi store model as it makes sense of a range of tasks like verbal reasoning, comprehension, reading, problem solving and visual and spatial processing. The model is supported by a considerable experimental evidence that applies to real life tasks like reading done using phonological loop, problem solving down using central executive, navigation done by using the visual and spatial processing.
The working memory model is a very structured model but the problem with the slave systems is that the central executive has little evidence for how it works and what is does, it’s also difficult to measure and the capacity has never been measured. The concept of the central executive has been criticised for being too vague and lacking in explanatory power. Eslinger and damasio studied EVR who had a cerebral tumour removed. Although he performed well on some tests requiring reasoning he still had poor decision making skills and had difficulties making simple decisions, the case of EVR suggests that the central executive is more complex than in the original model and that possibly several different components with the central executive.
Describe and evaluate types of long term memory
One of the earliest and most influential distinctions of long term memory was proposed by tulving who proposed the distinction between episodic, semantic and procedural memory.
Episodic memory is concerned with personal experience and is an individuals unique memory of a specific event/events in which they were involved. Episodic memories have 3 elements including details of the event, the context and the emotions felt at the time for example they include memories from childhood or a traumatic event both are concerned with someone’s personal experience.
Semantic memories are memories which are related to knowledge about the world and are shared by everyone rather than being a personal episodic experience whereas semantic memories are related to things like the function of objects or what behaviour is appropriate in a particular situation it may also be related to abstract concepts like maths and language.
Procedural memories are memories that are concerned with skills like knowing how to tie a shoelace or how to do a maths calculation. Essentially it’s remembering how to do something rather than knowing what to do these memories typically acquired through repetition and then practice so we’re less aware of these memories as they become automatic.
A03:
However Cohen and Squire disagree with having different types of long term memory and whilst they accept that procedural memories represent 1 type of long term memory they believe that episodic and semantic are stored in 1 store called declarative memory these are memories that can be consciously recalled but procedural memories are non declarative.
However there is evidence from brain scans that supports the distinction between these 3 types of long term memory. On these scans different areas of the brain appear active when using different types of long term memory so episodic memory is associated with the hippocampus and the temporal lobe which is also seen in semantic memory and the cerebellum appears active when using procedural memory. This suggests that these types of long term memory are separate and are found in different areas of the brain.
There is evidence supporting distinguishing between procedural and declarative memories from case studies that offers further support for different types of long term memory for example case patient HM who’s episodic memory was severely impaired due to amnesia but the semantic and procedural memories were relatively unaffected so it highlights the distinction between procedural, episodic and semantic memories. After surgery HM could still form new procedural memories but was unable to form episodic and semantic memories which supports the distinction between procedural, episodic and semantic memories highlighting the existence of multiple types of long term memory.
However a criticism of studies on patients with brain damage is this research relies on patients which means it’s difficult to conclude from patients like HM the exact parts of the brain that are affected until the patient dies and the damage to a particular area doesn’t necessarily mean it’s responsible for this particular behaviour so we can’t establish a causal relationship between a particular brain region and type of long term memory.
However most research conducted into different types of long term memory are case studies which center on one individual for example research into Clive wearing provides a highly detailed large amount of information but is an isolated case of one individuals long term memory damage meaning the findings can’t be generalised beyond this research and is inappropriate to assume everyone’s long term memory is formed in the same way based on the evidence of a single case study.
A real life application from different types of long term memory was conducted by Belleville et al who used the idea of different long term memory stores to treat older people with mild cognitive impairments by having trained the participants who performed better in an episodic memory test than the control group so this can be used to better people’s lives.
Modern research has shown a fourth type of long term memory and that implicit memories can influence the response a person makes. Priming is the influence of implicit (automatic) memories on our responses. Priming is controlled by our brain system which is separate from the temporal system and supports explicit semantic and episodic memories suggesting the original theory of long term memory is too simplistic and that other types of long term memory exists.
With reference to reciprocity and interactional synchrony discuss infant caregiver interactions?
A01 – attachment
A01 reciprocity
A01- interactional synchrony
A01 Feldman
A03:
Weakness questionable reliability
Supporting –intentionality of infant behaviour supported
Supporting- value of research
Weakness- failure to replicate
Methodological issues problems studying interactional synchrony using observational methods
Weakness individual differences
Strengths controlled observations
Weakness observations don’t tell us purpose of synchrony/reciprocity.
Attachment in itself is the emotional tie or bond between two people usually a primary caregiver and a child. The relationship is reciprocal meaning it’s a two way relationship that endured over time. Interaction between caregivers and infants are the subject of psychological research as it provides insight into the type and nature of attachment.
Reciprocity refers to where the actions of one partner elicit a response from the other partner for example infants coordinate their actions with their caregivers in a kind of conversation. From birth babies move in a rhythm when interacting with adults like taking turns as brezelton suggests reciprocity is a important precursor to later communication as the regularity of the infants signals allow the caregiver to anticipate the behaviour and respond appropriately and sensitivity to infant behaviour is the foundation for later attachment between the caregiver and infant.
Feldman suggest reciprocity can be seen in interactions from 3 months of age this conclusion is supported by Meltzoff and Moore who demonstrated that babies as young as 12-27 days would attempt to imitate the facial and physical gestures. Feldman said reciprocity is the ‘’ temporal coordination of micro level social behaviour’’ and as ‘’symbolic exchanges between the parent and the child’’. Feldman suggests that interactional synchrony serves a critical role in the developmental outcomes of self regulation, the symbol use and capacity for empathy.
Interactional synchrony refers to when an infant and a caregiver interacting tend to mirror what the other is doing in terms of their facial and hand movements. First discovered by Meltzoff and Moore’s study where infants as young as two or three weeks imitated the facial and hand gestures made by the adult model and in a later study Meltzoff and Moore found evidence of interactional synchrony in babies as young as 3 days old suggesting this type of imitative response is more likely to be innate rather than learned.
A03:
There is however questionable reliability when it comes to testing infant behaviour in interactional synchrony as there is a reason to doubt the findings of research in this area because of the difficulties in reliably testing infant behaviour. As infant mouths tend to be in constant motion so it’s difficult to distinguish between the general activity and specific imitated behaviours. Meltzoff and Moore attempted to overcome this by using an observer with no knowledge of the behaviour being imitated to make judgements of infants behaviour. This highlights the difficulty testing infant behaviour and one way in which might be overcome.
The intentionality of infant behaviour is supported and one way of testing the claim that infants behaviour is intentional is to observe how they respond to inanimate objects. Abravanel and Deyoung observed infants interacting with two objects, one stimulating tongue movements and the other mouth opening and closing. There were two groups of infants aged between five and 12 weeks and there was little response to the objects suggesting infants don’t imitate just anything they see but it’s a specific social response to other humans.
The imitative behaviour forms a basis for social development and research explains how children begin to understand what others think and feel and therefore are able to conduct relationships showing the value of research.
But other studies have failed to replicate the findings of studies into attachment such as Meltzoff and Moore as Koepke et al didn’t find the same evidence of interactional synchrony in very young infants but Meltzoff and Moore suggested Koepke et als study wasn’t well controlled which accounts for the difference in findings.
There are methodological issues with studying interactional synchrony using observational methods as there is a possibility of observer bias where researchers will consciously or unconsciously interpret the behaviour to support the findings. To address this problem more than one observer should be used to examine the inter observer reliability of observations.
Another weakness is individual differences in interactional synchrony is that there’s variation in infants in the degree that they do this. Isabella et al found that more strongly attached infant caregiver pairs showed greater interactional synchrony. Helmann showed that infants who demonstrate a lot of imitation have a better quality of relationship at three months. Research shows significant individual differences but doesn’t indicate whether imitation is the cause or consequence of the relations hon between the infant and caregiver.
But these studies do have controlled observations that often capture fine detail so they’re generally well controlled procedures for example both the mother and the infant are filmed often from multiple angles this ensures that fine details of behaviour are recorded and later analysed. Furthermore the babies are unaware of being observed so the behaviour doesn’t change in response to the controlled observations which is a problem for observational research but it does mean that in general the research had high internal validity.
However observations don’t tell us the purpose of synchrony or reciprocity for example Fieldman points out that synchrony(and by implication reciprocity) simply describe the behaviours that occur at the same time this is a weakness as these are robust phenomena in the sense that they can be reliably observed but may not be particularly useful as it doesn’t tell us their purpose.
Outline and evaluate the role of the father in the development of attachment?
A01 – role of father
Schaffer & emerson
A01 lamb
A01- biological reasons why fathers less likely to be primary attachment figures
A01 cultural expectations & sex stereotypes affect male behaviour
A03:
Weakness unreliable data
Supporting – Heermann et al 1994
Strengths Geiger Showed Fathers’ play interactions
Weakness- Frodi et al
Research methods schaffer & emersons sample biased
Weakness Grossmann
Strength Field
The role of the father was first studied by Schaffer and Emerson who found that fathers are less likely to the be the primary attachment figures than mothers as they are seen as playmates by children.
Lamb reported that there was little relationship between the amount of time father spend with their infant and infant father attachment.
There are also biological reasons as to why father are less likely to the primary attachment figures such as the female hormone oestrogen which underlies caring behaviour although there is evidence of males forming secure attachments with their children or sharing the role of primary attachement although biological and cultural factors may make this less likely.
In some cases the role of the father depends on cultural expectations and sex stereotypes which affect male behaviour it includes the belief that it’s feminine to be sensitive to others needs as research by Heermann found that men are less sensitive to infants cues but contradictory research by Frodi et al has shown there’s no difference in physiological responses of males and females to an infants crying.
A03:
Most of the data from the Schaffer and Emerson study is unreliable due to systematic bias as the data collected is based on the mothers report of infants behaviour and some mothers would have been less sensitive to an infants protests and would have been less likely to report them which creates systematic bias which challenges the validity of Schaffer and Emerson’s conclusions.
Heermann et al found that men are less sensitive to infant cues compared to a mother meaning that the role of the father may not be seen as a nurturing role that involves caring and looking after their child innately.
Geiger showed that when fathers have play interactions with their children it’s more exciting and pleasurable than when the mothers play interact as it’s more nurturing or affectionate supporting the idea that the father is seen more as a playmate whilst the mother is seen as the caregiver.
Frodi et als study involved showing video tapes of infants crying and found no differences in physiological responses of men and women. As women were expected to be caring and nurturing than men. Fathers don’t feel they should act in a nurturing way or it could be female hormones for example oestrogen that creates higher levels of nurturing and women are biologically predisposed to be primary attachent figures. Although fathers are equally able as women to display sensitive responsiveness and form secure attachments but society is still behind in treating both parents equally for example men aren’t permitted to sit next to non related children on a plane nor are mothers allowed to have longer maternity time off than fathers.
There are research method issues with Schaffer and Emerson’s as the sample was biased and the population studied and time in which the study took place was from a sample which was drawn from a working class population meaning the findings may not apply to other social groups. The sample was also from the 1960s yet parental care has changed since then with many children being cared for outside their home suggesting that if a similar study was to be carried out today the results would be very different.
Contradictory to the belief that fathers are seen as playmates Grossman found that father as secondary attachment figures had an important and distinct role in children’s development involving play and stimulation.
There are other studies for example McCallum and Golombok who found that children growing up in a single or same sex parent families don’t develop differently from those in a two parent family suggesting that the fathers role as the secondary attachment figure isn’t that important.
Field found that primary caregiver fathers like mothers spent more time smiling, imitating and holding their infants than the secondary caregiver fathers suggesting that fathers can be a more nurturing attachment figure.
Discuss animal studies of attachment?
A01 –
lorenz
A01 lorenz
Findings
A01- harlow
Procedure
A01 harlow
Findings
A03:
Weakness - criticisms of imprinting
Supporting- research support for imprinting
Strengths -practical applications
Weakness—confounding variables
Weakness harlows results cant be generalised
Ethical issues -Research unethical
animals in research questioned on ethical grounds
Strength Harlow’s study conducted in controlled, lab setting
Strength
Humans and monkeys are similar
Animal studies of attachent have been conducted by a few psychologists one of the most common is Lorenz who wanted to study attachment in animals. His procedure involved one group of gosling eggs left with their natural mother while the other eggs were placed in an incubator and when incubator eggs were hatched the first living and moving thing they saw was Lorenz so they thought Lorenz was their mother so they started following him. Lorenz marked two groups so to distinguish them and placed them together with him and their natural mother.
His findings concluded that the non incubator goslings started following their natural mother and the incubator goslings ignored their natural mother and instead followed Lorenz. If the goslings weren’t exposed to the moving object during a specific time period being the critical period animals didn’t imprint he also noted the process is irreversible and long lasting and this early imprinting had an effect on their late mate preferences called sexual imprinting.
Harlow studied attachment in rhésus monkeys. His procedure involved creating two wire mother surrogates. One surrogate was wrapped in soft cloth to provide a contact comfort mother. There were eight motherless infant rhésus monkeys that were studies for 165 days. There was a milk bottle that was placed on the cloth covered mother for one group and on the plain wire mother for the other group. The measurements were made each amount of time that the infant spent with the two different mothers and the responses when frightened.
His findings concluded that the motherless monkeys spent the most amount of time with the cloth covered surrogate whether she had milk or not and when they were frightened they all clung to the cloth covered mother. Harlow found that the motherless monkeys developed to be socially/ sexually abnormal in their interactions with the other monkeys and if the motherless monkeys spent time with their monkey peers they could recover but only if this happened before they were three months.
A03:
However there are criticisms of imprinting as there’s some dispute over the characteristics of imprinting. The original concept of imprinting was that an image is stamped irreversibly on the nervous system but, it’s now believed that imprinting is more flexible for example Guilton found he was able to reverse imprinting in chickens suggesting that imprinting is no different from other types of learning and the effects aren’t irreversible as Lorenz had originally proposed.
There is research to support for imprinting as Lorenzs concept of imprinting is replicated in studies with other bird species for example Guilton found chickens who were exposed to yellow rubber gloves for feeding became imprinted on gloves showing that young animals aren’t born with a predisposition to imprint to a specific type of object but can develop imprinting behaviour to any moving object within the critical window of development and Guiltons findings provide clear support for Lorenzs conclusions about imprinting.
There are practical applications when it comes to Harlows research as it had profound implications for childcare due to the importance of early experiences on long term development and it’s vital that’s all children’s need are catered for and that taking care of a child physical needs alone isn’t sufficient.
But there are confounding variables in Harlows study as the two wire surrogates varied in more ways than just being cloth covered or not. The heads on the two surrogates are very different. One possibility is the cloth covered surrogate is more attractive to infants simply because it had a pleasing head suggesting that Harlows study lacked internal validity as the differences between the two monkey surrogates were sufficiently controlled.
Harlows results also can’t be generalised to humans as Harlows findings about attachment have been mirrored in humans. Harlows findings about monkeys were that the most attached to the mother that provided food has been demonstrated in the work of Schaffer and Emerson who emphasised the importance of sensitive responding in the development of attachments. Showing that animal studies like Harlows provide useful pointers to explaining human behaviour we should seek confirmation through research with humans to be sure.
There are ethical issues to consider for both the animal studies as the research is unethical and the use of animals in research has been questioned on ethical grounds. Most would argue that animals have the right to not be researched or harmed in the pursuit of academic conclusions for human benefit so it’s seen as detrimental to non human species.
Although Harlows study was conducted in a controlled lab setting so he was able to control the potential extraneous variables like the mine just being taken away from their mothers straight after birth and e baby monkeys not being exposed to any love or attention from their biological mothers. This is strength because it means that Harlow was measuring what he intended to measure ie the factors that can affect the formation of attachment meaning the study can be seen to have high internal validity allowing a cause and effect relationship to be established.
Although the results can’t be fully generalised to humans, humans and monkeys are similar as Green states that on a biological level at least all mammals including rhésus monkeys have the same brain structures as humans the only differences relates to the size and the number of connections.
Outline and evaluate bowlbys explanation of attachment?
A01 – attachment behaviour serves an important function an infant who is not attached is less well protected
A01
social releasers
A01- internal working model
A01 the continuity hypothesis
Weakness - sensitive period rather than critical period
Supporting- attachment is adaptive
Strengths –research support for Bowlbys concept of monotropy
Weakness—importance of monotropy is overemphasised
Weakness
Bowlby’s theory cant explain how some children suffer long term consequences of not being able to form attachment
Strengths need for monotropy appears to be universal
Strength support for continuity hypothesis
Issues and debates
Free will versus determinism
Bowlbys explanation of attachment involves the emotional bond between the caregiver and the infant and the effects on the development for later life. Attachment behaviour serves an important function as an infant who’s not attached is less well protected. Parents must also be attached to their infants in order to ensure that the infants are cared for and survive. Infants who don’t have the opportunity to form an attachment during the critical period around three to six months seem to have difficult forming attachements later on. Attachement is determined by the sensitivity ie infants who are most strongly attached are the ones whose mothers are most responsive and most accessible.
Part of the attachment theory is social releases which are features of the infant such as smiling and having a baby face which elicits caregiving, Bowlby proposed that infants have one special emotional bond known as monotropy as well as many secondary attachements.
Another part of attachement theory is the internal working model, an infant has one special relationship and forms a mental representation of this relationship so the internal working model and this enables them to influence the caregivers behaviour and acts as a template for future relationships.
The continuity hypothesis is also a key component in the attachment theory it proposed that individuals who are strongly attached to an infancy continue to be socially and emotionally competent throughout their childhood and adulthood compared to infants who aren’t strongly attached.
A03:
There are those who would argue that Bowlbys theory can be criticised for having a sensitive period rather than a critical period as he claims that attachments can only form within three to six months, so the critical period has been challenged by Rutter et als research that found although infants are maximally responsive to attachment formation during the critical period, it’s possible for attachment to form outside the narrow window. The result of finding the term sensitive period now is preferred as an alternative to critical period.
Attachment is adaptive so Bowlbys theory explains why human infants form attachments during a critical period rather than when they are first born. So Bowlbys theory states that infants become attached during the critical period of three to six months at the same time they begin to crawl. It’s vital that infants form and maintain an attachement during this time to that caregivers can protect them which supports his claim that attachments are adaptive.
There’s research support for Bowlbys concept of monotropy as Glaser concluded that the hierarchal mod of attachment which places the emphasis on one central person that’s higher than the others is more likely than multiple attachements supporting Bowlbys concept of monotropy and claims one special attachment plays a significant role in emotional development.
But the importance of monotropy may be overemphasised as Thomas questions the benefits of monotropy and suggests it’s more beneficial having a network of attachements to support the infants social and emotional needs. Parke found qualitatively different attachements provide different benefits. Similarly Van Ijzendoorn and Tavecchio argue that a stable network of adults can provide adequate or better care than the mother who has to meet all the child’s needs.
Additionally Bowlbys theory can’t explain how some children suffer long term consequences of not being able to form attachement while other children don’t as they’re able to cope with poor attachement experiences.
Although the need for monotropy appears to be universal as Ainsworths observed a Ganda tribe of Uganda and infants form one primary attachment even when they’re reared by multiple carers. Also Fox’s research into Israeli communal farms revealed that child rearing practices are quite distinct from Western ones. Fox reported that children spend the majority of the day with nurses rather than with biological parents and infants spend approximately three hours a day with their biological mother. The infants appeared to form a monotropic bond with mothers despite not seeing them for extended periods of time which supports Bowlby as he claimed that monotropy was a necessity and was innately programmed in infants and it seems that despite cultural variations in child rearing practises, the process of attachent appears to be universal.
There’s support for the continuity hypothesis where Bowlby claims an early attachement affects the subsequent relationship supported by research for example Sroufe et al did a parent child study in Minnesota where they followed participants from infancy to late adolescence and found that continuity between early attachements and later emotional and social behaviour in individuals who were securely attached in infancy were more socially competent, more popular and more empathetic later in childhood supporting Bowlbys continuity hypothesis showing a clear link between early and later attachments.
There’s are issues with free will versus determinism when it comes to Bowlbys theory of attachement as it’s an example of biological determinism due to its emphasis on survival and critical periods, this could be seen as somewhat reductionism as it’s reducing down the idea of attachement based on an infant and motherly connection rather than a child’s environment for example Bowlbys theory doesn’t cover the idea of children who may have been raised without their own biological parents but have still formed an attachment with their caregivers who aren’t their biological parents.
Outline and evaluate learning theory as an explanation for attachment?
A01 – classical conditioning
A01 operant conditioning
A01-cupboard love theory dollard and miller
A01 learning theory (behaviourism)
A03:
Weakness - learning theory explanations based on animal studies
Supporting- learning theory has some explanatory power
Strengths –study support ivan pavlov
Weakness—attachment isn’t based on food alone
Weakness -learning theory rejected as explanation of attachment because better theory appeared
Weakness - Harlows monkeys- 2 wire monkeys, 1 with food and 1 offering comfort.
Weakness - Animal studies lack internal validity
Weakness Lorenz’s theory imprinting support
Learning theory as an explanation for attachement is a behaviourist explanation that suggests that attachment is developed through classical or operant conditioning it is sometimes referred to as the cupboard love theory as the infant attaches to the caregiver who provides food.
Classical conditioning was first discovered by Pavlov who conditioned to salivate when he rang a bell because the dogs learned to associate the bell with food which made them salivate. So I’m attachement food is the unconditioned stimulus and pleasure if the unconditioned response so with infants their mother becomes associated with food because they’re present at the time when the infant is fed so the mother is aka the neutral stimulus. If the neutral stimulus aka the mother is consistently associated with the unconditioned stimulus aka food take so properties of the unconditioned stimulus and produces the same response then the neutral stimulus is now the conditioned stimulus and produces a conditioned response. Meaning that by just seeing this person the infant has a feeling pleasure which is the conditioned response. Learning theorists call newly formed stimulus response mother love. So a child learns to attach to their mother as they associate them with food which they associate with pleasure therefore increasing the attachment between them.
Operant conditioning is learning through the reinforcement. When an animal is uncomfortable is creates a drive to reduce discomfort. In the case of a hungry infant there’s a drive to reduce the accompanying discomfort associated with hunger for example Dollard and Millers suggested that the attachment was due to drive reduction. When an infant is fed the discomfort is reduced and the felling produces feelings of pleasure aka positive reinforcement. Food becomes the primary reinforcer and the person who supplies the food becomes the secondary reinforcer and the source of pleasure in his/her own right. This results in attachent occurring because the child seeks the person usually the mother that can supply the reward being food.
The cupboard love theory suggested by Dollard and Miller who proposed that attachment is a set of learned behaviours ie results from the experience of the environment not innate processes but by both classical conditioning so association and operant conditioning so consequences.
The learning theory (behaviourism) is that all behaviours are learned rather than inherited so with social learning the children model the parents attachment behaviours. Hay and Vespo suggested that attachements develop because parents teach their children to love them.
A03:
A criticism of using animal studies when studying the learning theory of attachment for example skinners study as behaviourists believe that humans are no different to animals in the way they learn but critics argue that human behaviour is complex as attachment can’t be explained in this way because it involves predispositions and mental activity that can’t be explained by conditioning, suggesting that the learning theory explanation is over simplified and ignores other factors like contact comfort.
Although the learning theory has some explanatory power as it’s able to explain some aspects of attachement. As infants learn through association and reinforcement but food may not be the most important reinforcer as it’s possible that parental attention and responsiveness are more important factors that assist in the formation of attachment supporting the basic principles of the learning theory showing that even though the learning theory doesn’t provide a complete explanation of attachment it still has some value.
Other studies that support the learning theory is by Pavlov who observed and recorded information about dogs and their salivation rates. He said that dogs were demonstrating classical conditioning as he used the unconditional stimulus of food to get an unconditioned response of salivation with this knowledge he used the process of conditioning where there’s a neutral stimulus being a bell which by itself won’t produce a response like drooling but the food which is a unconditioned stimulus will cause dogs to salivate which is the unconditioned response, supporting the idea of the learning theory being an explanation of attachment although this may not be very valid for humans. However, now the classical conditioning has been explored with young infants for example infants will be happy when given food which is an unconditioned response given from an unconditioned stimulus which when is given with a neutral stimulus being the mother it gives an unconditioned response of a baby being happy now when the mother is on her own which is now the conditioned stimulus the baby is happy which is the conditioned response.
But there are limits to the learning theory as attachent isn’t based on food alone even though the it suggests that food is the key element of attachement there’s evidence from Harlows study with rhésus monkeys suggesting that contact comfort rather than food is the most important factor in attachent and Schaffer and Emerson’s research with human children found that sensitive responding from the caregiver was more important than the provision of food suggesting that the learning theory presents only a limited explanation of attachment.
Another limit of the learning theory is that it’s rejected as an explanation of attachent because a better theory appeared being Bowlbys theory as there are many advantages in comparison to the learning theory for example it can explain why attachments form whereas the learning theory can only explain how attachments form. Bowlbys theory also explains the benefits of attachment for example protection from harm which aren’t explained through the learning theory showing that bowlbys theory provides a more complete explanation of attachent than learning theory.
According to the learning theory other animism studies of attachent like Harlow should have had different findings as there were two wire monkeys one with food and one offering comfort and according to the learning theory the baby moneys should’ve spent more time with the monkey with food but the babies spent 22/24 hours with the comfort mother.
Another drawback of using animal studies to determine human behaviour is that the studies lack internal validity so the extent to which a study established a trustworthy cause and effect relationship between a treatment and an outcome, internal validity also reflects that a given study makes it possible to eliminate alternative explanations for a finding.
Lorenzs theory of imprinting contradicts the learning theory as Lorenzs research using newly hatched geese who after seeing Lorenz after hatching followed him everywhere as he became the ‘imprinted’ parent meaning that newborns ‘imprint’ an image of their first moving object they see which is usually their parents within hours of being born as it allows them to stick closely to the important source of protection and food therefore criticising the learning theory suggesting that attachent is innate as the infants are far too young to have learned anything at this stage.