individual differences

Question 1

Individual differences

Answer 1

• study brain damage on patients
• the ways in which damage occurred are unique to the individual, as well as response to damage of certain areas being different
• compared to other people with damage in the same place

Question 2

Give examples of brain damage in case studies

Answer 2

• phineas gage- iron rod through PFC, damage caused him to become aggressive
• Alpers (1937) tumour in hypothalamus caused a well-mannered lawyer to become ill-mannered

Question 3

Strengths of case studies

Answer 3

• only ethical way of studying brain damaged patients
• triangulation of data
• qual- high in validity
• high ecological- naturalistic

Question 4

Weaknesses of a case study

Answer 4

• brain damaged patients may be exploited
• low generalisability- circumstance in which damage occurred unique to individual
• low reliability- unethical to repeat
• low validity- cannot establish cause and effect- don’t know how a person was before damage occurred.

Question 5

Personality

Answer 5

• Freud
• harsh superego
• weak superego
• dominant id
• poorly developed ego

Question 6

Why can comparing results help to understand cause of aggression (case studies)

Answer 6

• if two subjects of a case study have damage localised to one area, and both exhibit similar symptoms, we can posit that damage to the same area can cause these symptoms

Question 7

Why do the features of case studies make it difficult to make universal claims

Answer 7

Case studies take an idiographic approach- more about behaviour of the individual than universal claims

Question 8

Strength of methods

Answer 8

• methods such as brain scanning have high reliability, scientific and objective

Question 9

Why can we not claim cause and effect?

Answer 9

We have no knowledge of the patient before brain damage and age histories can be unreliable- so no accurate cause and effect