imps and apps

Question 1

The difference between an implication and an application

Answer 1

PRACTICAL IMPLICATION

when you’re asked for the implications they’re asking you to explain the behaviour people have using the research; it’s what we understand as a result of the psychology. If the research is true then what does this suggest about real life …. In real life we do x and research supports or explains this by y.

Write your answers with words like

These studies/ research help to explain

These studies/ research shed light on

These studies/ research highlight

use words like maybe and perhaps

PRACTICAL APPLICATION

using the psychology to change/ improve someting. A technique or a change that needs to be made

Use COMMAND words like

Police/ students/ teachers should, must, need to

Or say an Application/ technique to treat/ change/ prevent / reduce …

Question 2

Practical implication or application?

Look at the following statements and see if you get them right

1. Stereotypes can be reduced by educating children about TV
2. Research shows that children who watch positive role models on tv seem to be less aggressive
3. We now understand that APD may be linked to less grey matter in the prefrontal cortex
4. Chromosomal abnormality, research shows, could be linked to more aggression in men
5. Prison services must be aware of the number of people with APD
6. One therapeutic technique used for the treatment of phobias is flooding
7. Systematic Desensitisation could be said to be less harmful to the patient, and more ethicial

Answer 2

Practical implication or application?

1. Stereotypes can be reduced by educating children about TV

Application because it’s a to-do. Look at the command - ‘reduce’

2. Research shows that children who watch positive role models on tv seem to be less aggressive

Implication - it’s explaining real life using the research

3. We now understand that APD may be linked to less grey matter in the prefrontal cortex

Implication - it’s explaining real life using the research

4. Chromosomal abnormality, research shows, could be linked to more aggression in men

Implication - it’s explaining real life using the research

5. Prison services must be aware of the number of people with APD

Application - it’s a command ‘must be aware’ a to-do

6. One therapeutic technique used for the treatment of phobias is flooding

Application - it’s a technique. Something we use in psychology

7. Systematic Desensitisation could be said to be less harmful to the patient, and more ethicial

Implication - it’s explaining real life using the research

Question 3

PERSONALITY PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Of research into APD

Answer 3

• Researchers can’t decide on the cause of APD. The implication of this is that it’s difficult to know how to prevent and treat it.
• Psychologists who believe APD has a biological cause have tried to treat it using medication, but research has found this to be ineffective.
• APD is one of the most difficult disorders to treat. The characteristics of this disorder can make patients difficult to work with. E.g. They may not believe they have a problem

Question 4

NVC PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Answer 4

EYE CONTACT:

-Eye movements

• Studies of eye movements in conversation help us to understand why we might feel uncomfortable talking to someone who either constantly looks at us or not at all. You are never quite sure if it’s your turn to talk or not!
• The ‘rules’ of eye contact in our culture help make conversations flow, so people who struggle with eye contact, (such as people with autism) are at a disadvantage.

-Pupil dilations

• Studies of pupil dilations help us to understand why the use of eye makeup is so popular; it has the effect of making the eyes look darker and larger, which seems to be an unconscious signal for attraction.
• We have no control over pupil dilation. It is biological. programmed into us. A downside of this could be that we cant hide our emotions if we are attracted to someone (unless we wear dark glasses!)

FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

• Studies into facial expressions explains some of the behaviours that most people seem to have, for example favouring certain picture profiles of ourselves rather than others: most people prefer to show the ‘warm’[left] side.
• Research into gender differences (i.e. that women show and read emotion in facial expressions more than men) might be a contributing factor into why women are often stereotyped as emotional.

BODY LANGUAGE:

- Posture

• Knowledge of posture and how posture is perceived can be extremely helpful to professional psychologists such as therapists. For example therapists might deliberately use postural echo to create rapport with their clients. Clients in turn might then open up more in the sessions.
• Salespeople and politicians may use open postures in order to make a sale/ convince people. An implication for people who don’t know about body language studies is that they may not be aware how they are being manipulated.

- Touch

• Studies of touch show how attitudes in the real world might be manipulated by people who want to influence and win favour with others. One experiment found that two-thirds of women agreed to dance with a man who touched their arm for a second while asking them for a dance. When the same man did not use touch, his success rate halved. This could explain why more touchy-feely people do better romantically.

- Gesture

• Some restaurants have waiters/ waitresses who squat down to take an order. Customers probably see this as a friendly gesture, but this could be a deliberate policy by restaurants to increase tips for staff based on research like Lyne and Myniers.
• In TV, films of a nodding reporter called a ‘noddie’ are often edited in later. The explanation for this is that we see a nod as a gesture of agreement, i.e. that the reporter is listening very carefully.

PERSONAL SPACE:

Felipe and Sommer

• These studies help to explain the importance of paying attention to how people like to be seated for examples when working in groups together in a classroom, seats are often clustered to encourage conversation. Whereas places where conversation is discouraged arrange chairs in long rows e.g. in a cinema

Fisher and Byrne

• In social situations where someone sits may provide us with information about whether they feel comfortable and in control.

- Gender differences

• Not being aware of these gender differences in personal space could result in people not realising that they are standing too close for the other person’s comfort. For example a man might be chatting away to a woman without realising that she is backing away, or using defensive body language become he has invaded her space.

- Age

Willis

• People may mistake someone older or younger standing further away from us as being unfriendly. Also if someone looks particularly young or old for their age it might effect how close peers stand to them.
• If we attempt to stand closer to a person of a different age than ourselves, it might cause them to feel uncomfortable.

- Personality

Williams

• If we are not sensitive to the personality differences between ourselves and others we might invade their personal space unwittingly.

- Culture (Summer)

• This study might explain why people in Arab countries regard Europeans and Americans as unfriendly or untrustworthy: because they tend to stand back in conversation.
• Perhaps it could also explain why Mediterranean men are seen as romantic by British girls: they have much closer proximity when speaking than most British males.

- Status (Zahn)

• This study might imply that if feels more threatening to approach someone of higher status and we show our anxiety by keeping our distance.

Question 5

SPD PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Answer 5

Stereotypes

• Research shows that most stereotypes promote harmful images and that once these images are learned they are very difficult to overcome, especially in children.
• Stereotypes can cause us to make mistakes about people when we first meet them. They can stop us seeing what the person is really like.

Prejudice

• Research shows that young children hold prejudiced views towards other nationalities even when they have no personal experiences of these nationalities. This suggests that children’s prejudiced attitudes are strongly influence by what other people say to them.

Authoritarian personality

• We now understand that prejudice might be linked to having an Authoritarian personality. Adorno believed that people with an authoritarian personality had strict and critical parents. Perhaps such people might have feelings of rage towards their parents, which they’ve not been allowed to express, and therefore project these feelings onto ‘safer’ targets, such as people who are weaker or of lower status to them. This might explain bullying.

- Scarce resources

Sherif

• The results of Sherif’s study - that competing for scarce resources causes prejudice - could help us to explain many wars in the world. Prejudice and discrimination could be explained by competition for a lack of resources such as food, land or oil.
• The results of the study could also shine some light on why people are so prejudiced towards immigrants in this country, when there is competition for scarce resources due to high unemployment (people are more ready to believe that ‘they’ are taking ‘our jobs’).

In groups - out groups

Tajfel+ Levine

• Research suggest that merely the presence of an out groups is enough to bring about prejudice and discrimination. This explains just how possible it is for people in positions of political power to stir up prejudice by dividing people into groups either literally or metaphorically.

Question 6

SOCIAL INFLUENCE PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Answer 6

Conformity

• Studies of conformity have shown how hard it is for people to act differently to the rest of the group. If a person is in a group of friends that smoke, they are likely to the same as their friends, so that they fit in.
• If 11 people out of 12 of a jury have agreed that someone is guilty, it is likely that the 12th juror will agree with them even if she believes otherwise. It’s difficult to disagree with the majority.

Obedience

• If a student is asked to do something by a teacher they will because the teacher is seen to have authority.
• Children are likely to obey their parents because they see them as an authority figure
• Research shows that it’s hard to disobey an order from someone in authority, which can explain why people do terrible things during wars. For example when questioned later Nazi soldiers said they were just ‘obeying orders’ and weren’t responsible. This is an example of the Agentic state.

Social loafing

• Social loafing research has shown us that when people belong to a group they reduce the amount of effort they put into a task. This is because it’s not possible to identify their performance. This explains the behaviour of students when given group tasks, such as a presentation. Some will do most of the work, while others will be able to coast, making very little contribution to the group at all.

Deindividuation

• An implication of the research into deindividuation is that, when people are wearing uniforms in the workplace, they don’t behave like individuals, but as members of a business or firm.
• People are made to wear uniforms so that they are easily identifiable and are less likely to try to be different from others in their company. This is one of the reasons why children are required to wear school uniforms. It makes it harder for them to act independently, and so easier to be controlled by a set of rules that apply to everyone.

Bystander intervention

• These studies help to explain why no one helps in situations where victims have been hurt, for example as in the case of Kitty Genoveve who was stabbed in New York yards from her house and in full view of 38 neighbours was attacked for over half an hour before anyone even called for the police. Latane and Darley showed that when lots o people are around, it reduces the chance of someone helping.

Question 7

MEMORY PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

Applications

Say must and should

and an application is

Answer 7

Multi store model

• Car registration plates should never be longer than 7 characters, so that people can remember them quickly. This is because the MSM has taught us that we can only hold 7+/-2 chunks of information at a time.

Levels of Processing

• One application is to improve study skills. Instead of just reading something over and over, students should be taught to read through it once, then try writing it down in your own words. Then test themselves because this requires semantic processing which is most effective.

Reconstructive model

• We must be very careful giving or listening to Eye Witness account of events (e.g. crimes). Even when witnesses think they’re accurate they may alter the facts of what they saw to fit their own schemas

Forgetting

- Interference

• Students should use careful study habit such as separating out similar subjects and taking breaks between them, to make sure that they don’t forget information learned in one revision session / class due to interference of the old/ new information.

- Context

• Tell educators to do exams where students studied. Or at the very least try to replicate how the exam would be when you’re learning. E.g. sit at a desk, have a particular smell with you

- Psychosurgery

• Brain Surgery should only be used as a last resort given the complexity of the brain and how damage can be caused that could result in severe repercussions for the patient (such as documented in Milner’s study in which a patient suffered Anterograde amnesia after on operation to treat his epilepsy removed 2/3rds of his hippocampus)

Eye Witness Testimony

- Leading questions

• When talking to witnesses police and lawyers should avoid asking leading questions and instead adopt a neutral style of questioning, because studies show that leading questions can influence testimony (eg Loftus).

- Familiarity

• Police should not rely on identity parades alone as they may have limited use when trying to find a suspected criminal especially when witnesses are asked to identify a stranger. Students were less accurate in identifying when they didn’t know the person (in Bruce and Young study)

- Context

• Law enforcers need to be trained on the importance of context on accuracy of recall. It’s important to take witnesses back to the scene of the crime literally, or if this isn’t possible by recreating details of the scene by using a cognitive interview rather than standard police interview techniques.