Past Paper Questions Flashcards

Question

What was Zimbardos Method

Answer 1

The participants were all male students at Stanford university. They volunteered to take part (PAID) and randomly allocated to two groups prisoners and guards. The prisoners were to spend 2 weeks locked in cells in the basement of the university. The prison guards were to keep them under control. Prisoners were unexpectedly arrested at home and taken to the prison; they were stripped, deloused and given uniform and a number. The guards were given uniforms, batons and mirrored sunglasses to dehumanize them

Answer 2

The experiment was called off after 6 days. The guards became so brutal that two prisoners had a nervous breakdown. The prisoners became apathetic and submissive to the guards.

Answer 3

Strengths: - Control over variables - Real world applications (Abu Ghraib Prison) - High mundane realism Limits: - Investigator effects as he was part of the study - Lacked realism - DRIPP - Lacks temporal validity (Reicher and Haslam)

Answer 4

Milgram used a volunteer sample of 40 male students studying at Yale university. The participants would be “randomly allocated” to the role of teacher and student (the ppt was always the teacher and the students were all confederates). The student was taken into a room and electrodes were attached to his arm; the researcher and ppt went into the room next door and the ppt was to administer electric shocks based upon the response of the student in a test. The voltage was to increase if the student continuously answered incorrectly from 15V -> 450V (Death)

Answer 5

Milgram predicted 2% of ppts would shock up to the highest level. However, all participants went up to 300V and 65% shocked up to 450V

Answer 6

Types: - Proximity (Teacher and student being in the same room caused lower obedience) - Location (A more remote area caused a drop in obedience) - Uniform (Casual clothing caused a lower rate of obedience). The experimenter was wearing a grey coat and he made an excuse to leave for a phone call and a guy wearing casual clothes replaced him obedience rates dropped3 Examples: - Bickman - Ppts were more likely to obey a researcher dressed as a guard (80%) rather than as a milkman or civilian (40%) (Uniform) - Hofling et al - 21/22 nurses obeyed a Doctor without hesitation giving a lethal dose to a patient (Location)

Answer 7

Strengths: - Lab study - Real life applications - Volunteer sample Limits: - Low mundane realism - Gender bias - Ethics (DRIPP)

Answer 8

Situational: explanation that focuses on influences that stem from the environment and scenario a person is in Dispositional: explanation of individual behaviour caused by internal characteristics

Answer 9

His sample was 2000 white Americans and recorded their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups. Developed an Fascism scale to measure the relationship between personality and prejudice

Answer 10

Those who scored higher on the F-scale identified with the strong and disliked the weak They had a fixed and distinctive stereotypes of other groups There was a strong correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice

Answer 11

Strengths; - Milgram (1961) supports Adorno’s findings - There is abundant evidence that people who are more prejudiced have been raised as Adorno described Limits: - The sample is biased (Gender, Culture) meaning ungeneralisable - Correlation does not equal causation

Answer 12

Rotter proposed the LoC as a concept of internal control versus external; - People with EXTERNAL LoC believe everything that happens is outside of their control - People with INTERNAL LoC believe things that happen to them are largely controlled by themselves Rotter concluded people with high internal LoC are more likely able to resist social pressure to conform/obey

Answer 13

Strengths: - Real world research support (pregnant women, social pressure to smoke) - Research support for dissenting peers (Gamson et al)

Answer 14

Strengths: - Research support (Holland repeated Milgram but tested the ppts LoC, 37% Internal disobeyed and 23% external disobeyed) Limits: - Research against (Twenge et al took data from LoC studies over 40 yr period, more external LoC people resisted social influence)

Answer 15

Consistency: - The minority must be consistent in their views; by agreement between people in the minority (synchronic) or being consistent over time (diachronic) Commitment: - Being willing to suffer or give up something, displaying risk in your protests demonstrates commitment Flexibility: - The minority’s beliefs should not be rigid or dogmatic; the minority should be ready to adapt their view and accept reasonable and valid counter arguments

Answer 16

moscovici et al showed that a consistent minority had a greater effect on people with an inconsistent opinion for example his procedure was that he displayed a blue shade and participants had to try and tell which was the colour 2 confederates were in this group and they CONSISTENTLY claimed that the slide /colour was green In another condition, other confederates were inconsistently saying that the colour of the slide was green and others said it was blue. the results showed that the participants were more likely to agree with the consistent group 8% compared to the inconsistent group 1% this demonstrates that consistency is crucial for minority to be effective Wood et al carried out a meta analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities who were as being consistent is a major factor in minority influence

Answer 17

Strengths: - R is more reliable as it is scientific - H promotes mental health Limits: - R is too simplistic and ignores nurture - H is unscientific which means less reliability

Answer 18

Phonological loop - 1st slave system, deals with auditory information and preserves word order; limited capacity, acoustically coded, very short duration, Baddeley divided into: - Phonological store - Articulatory process

Answer 19

Where all information from environment enters Has several registers Coding is modality specific Duration is less than half a second Capacity is very high

Answer 20

Strengths: - Supported by empirical research (Baddeley) and case studies (HM) Weaknesses: - Over-simplified model - Low ecologically valid tests - Case studies are ungeneralisable -Peterson uses artificial tasks

Answer 21

Strengths: - Case studies support it (HM, Clive wearing) - Neuroimaging supports it (Buckner and Peterson) Weaknesses: - Case studies are ungeneralisable and unreplicable (less reliable) -Tulving suggested that there might be only two types of LTM

Answer 22

Visuospatial sketchpad - 2nd slave system, it stores visual and spatial information: - Visual = what things look like - Spatial = relationships between objects limited capacity (3-4 objects), modality specific (visual), Logie divided into: - Visuo-cache - Inner scribe for spatial relations

Answer 23

Episodic buffer - 3rd slave system, deals with specific types of information, acts as an extra storage system and integrates information form all other areas ; limited capacity (4 chunks), any modality

Answer 24

Strength: - Research support (Baddeley and Hitch - True or False task) - Case studies support (KF) Limits: - Lack of clarity over the nature of CE (Baddeley)

Answer 25

Retroactive interference: A current attempt to learn something that interferes with your ability to recall past learning - Muller and Pilzecker - In condition A, ppts had 6 mins to learn nonsense syllables, then a retention interval, then recall In condition B, it was the same task but during retention, ppts were to describe a painting

Answer 26

Proactive interference: When past learning interferes with current attempts to learn something - Underwood - He gave the experimental group a list of nonsense syllables to remember and tested 24hrs later. The results were much worse than expected, so he concluded that the students were confused due to memory test experience in the past

Answer 27

Strengths: - Studies were lab based - Real world applications (e.g. Baddeley and Hitch - Rugby) Limits: - It is artificial and lacks mundane realism

Answer 28

This is when the environment is the cue for remembering, and if the environment changes then the information is forgotten - Godden and Baddeley: Deep sea divers learned a list of words either underwater or on land and they were asked to recall either underwater or on land. When the environmental learning and recall matched, there was more words recalled

Answer 29

This is when the person’s state of mind is the cue for remembering information (e.g. happy) - Carter and Cassaday: Ppts had to learn words and recall a list of words in a drowsy condition (drugged) vs a normal state. The mismatch of states in learning and recall caused significantly worse recall

Answer 30

Strength: - Real world application (cues can help remember things) - Supporting research (Godden and Baddeley) Limits: - Context effects depend on the type of memory being tested (Recognition vs Recall)

Answer 31

Leading question: The way a question is phrased may mislead a eyewitness to change their testimony (Loftus and Palmer - Car crash speed estimate) Post event discussion: When discussing with another witnesses, their testimony may distort your answer (Gabbert et al - Crime filmed from different POV)

Answer 32

Strengths: - Real world application (questions must be asked more carefully in interrogations) - Supporting research (Gabbert et al) Limits: - Low ecological validity - Demand characteristics (Lab setting)

Answer 33

Positive effects: - Witnessing a stressful event causes a fight or flight response, this increases alertness and may improve memory. - Yuille and Cutshall (1986) conducted a study based on a real shooting. There were 13 ppts that witnessed it and interviewed the ppts. They found that the witnesses were very accurate especially the ones with the highest level of anxiety

Answer 34

Negative effects: - Anxiety causes physiological arousal in the body which prevents us to pay attention to important cues, making recall worse - Johnson and Scott (1976) investigated this by putting ppts in a room while in one condition they heard a casual conversation, after they see a man walking from the room with a pen and greasy hand. In condition 2, the ppts heard a violent conversation next door and then a man walked out with a knife in hand, covered in blood. - The ppts who were able to identify the man from 50 photos in condition 1 was 49% and in condition 2, it was 33%. This means the higher the anxiety level the worse the ability to remember

Answer 35

Strengths: - Research on positive and negative effects of Anxiety on memory (Johnson and Scott) Limits: - J&S study may not have tested anxiety but unusualness (ppts focused on the weapon because they were shocked not scared)

Answer 36

Strengths: - Supporting research (Kohnken et al - CI gave 41% increase in accuracy compared to police interview) Limits: - No format makes it more difficult to make conclusions - Time consuming (it requires special training to make witness relax) - Some elements are ineffective (RE and RC produced the best recall)