PSYC325 Test Flashcards
(128 cards)
1
Q
What is Freud’s idea of the notion of regression regarding memory and trauma?
A
Freud believed this was a defence mechanism that occurs when there is a traumatic event we are unable to deal with. When people cannot deal with the traumatic event, it is banished from consciousness and only recalled later when we are able to cope with the memory.
2
Q
What state is memory in when it is recalled according to Freud’s notion of regression?
A
When the traumatic memory is recalled later, it is believed to be in pristine condition.
3
Q
What are the issues with self-help books?
A
Often highly suggestive and have leading questions within them that can lead people to create a memory of an event that did not happen.
4
Q
What are the symptoms within the symptom list for people with repressed memories?
A
Depressive symptoms, feeling anxious and worried, being scared or having phobias, sexual difficulties, and a sense of failure or helplessness.
5
Q
What is the problem with the symptom list for someone with repressed memories?
A
The list is highly generic containing symptoms that majority of people will feel at some stage in their life.
6
Q
What are the 4 ideas often used within therapy in the 90’s that caused people to create a ‘repressed’ memory of sexual abuse?
A
- Both the therapist and client have a prior assumption that the client may have been abused.
- The therapist uses confirmation bias and specific hypothesis testing to fit the sexual abuse narrative.
- Therapists often used plausibility enhancing evidence to create the idea that the symptoms the client feels is due to repressed sexual abuse.
- Adopt and confirm a belief the client had been abused.
7
Q
Explain how/why therapists in the 90’s had prior assumptions regarding abuse with clients.
A
Therapists often had prior assumptions the client had been sexually abused and had repressed the memory because of how common it was at the time, and the idea that repressed memory is associated with childhood abuse that is seemingly common.
8
Q
Explain how/why therapists used confirmation bias and hypothesis testing to believe a client had repressed memories of sexual abuse.
A
Therapists who believed their client had a repressed memory will pull out information that confirms their bias of sexual abuse having occurred, and will ask for specific information that will lead them toward the suggestion of abuse.
9
Q
Explain what plausibility-enhancing evidence was that therapists used to assess someone for sexual abuse repression in the 90’s.
A
When a client would state they were not feeling well, therapists would assume that a symptom checklist they filled out was symptoms of abuse - there was a huge range of symptoms that were interpreted as repressed sexual abuse.
10
Q
How did therapists in the 90’s confirm their belief a client had been sexually abused and repressed the memory?
A
Therapists would use information they had gathered (confirmation bias) to back up their assumption their client had been abused. They would ignore any evidence that opposed the idea of repressed abuse.
11
Q
What is the guided imagery technique?
A
Getting someone to imagine a situation from earlier in life and providing the context around it.
12
Q
What is rebirthing?
A
Going back to the birthing process with a client and getting them to move sequentially through childhood.
13
Q
What is the issue with hypnosis?
A
A situation used in some therapies where an individual is in a highly suggestible situation when exposed to new information, as our threshold is lowered for the acceptance of new information.
14
Q
What is age regression?
A
Getting a client to cast themselves back to an earlier age.
15
Q
What is dream work?
A
Interpreting dreams and analysing what the dream content means.
16
Q
What were the memory wars of the 1990’s?
A
A fight between the psychologists and education officials about whether bringing back repressed abuse memories was a safe and proper method for bringing back trauma, or if it was suggestible and making clients create memories of abuse that didn’t happen.
17
Q
What is the three-pronged evidence approach for recovered memories? What is this approach about?
A
The approach is used to check if there is evidence that abuse may have taken place or not.
- Evidence the abuse took place.
- Evidence the abuse was forgotten and inaccessible from conscious recall for a period of time.
- Evidence that the abuse later came back to conscious memory.
18
Q
What is a retrospective study for repressed memory?
A
Interviewing people and asking about their history of abuse and the continuity of the abuse memory (how long have they had the memory for and what was this memory like earlier in life).
19
Q
What is a prospective study for repressed memory?
A
Recruiting individuals with a documented history of abuse and interviewing them to see if they report this abuse within the interview later in life.
20
Q
What are case studies for repressed memory?
A
Retrospective or prospective studies where individuals or groups of people have their cases presented to a therapist who interprets their repression.
21
Q
What did the Williams (1994) study about sexual abuse memories show regarding problems with reporting sexual abuse?
A
Many childhood abusive events occurred during a period of childhood amnesia.
Repression isn’t the only reason someone doesn’t report abuse in the interview - may not feel comfortable.
Participants were never directly asked about the abuse event.
Participants reported abusive events that were not the event in question.
22
Q
How have false memories been shown to be false psychologically?
A
Some people have reported memories from very early in life when people are not able to remember anything.
23
Q
How have false memories been proven to be false biologically?
A
Some events have been disproven by looking at the biological structure of the bones and the body and seeing lack of damage in areas that should have damage.
24
Q
How have false memories been proven to be false geographically?
A
Some recovered memories can be disproven by looking at the geographical location of the person at the time that shows they were not in the area they state they were of the repressed memory.
25
How have false memories been proven to be false factually?
Some people claim to have committed a murder of someone who was still alive.
26
What seems to be the main factor behind why people retract repressed memories?
Quality of the memory - some people who retract their memory says the event felt too real to be a true memory, or it didn't feel real enough.
27
Explain the false narrative paradigm.
In studies, some researchers create a false narrative for the participant by creating imagery of the participant in a certain location/event they haven't been to before to see if they will create a memory for the false image.
28
Explain the Loftus & Pickrell false narrative paradigm study and results.
Recruited participants who were taken back to events from their childhood using guided imagery (one event was false) to see the quality of participants memory on false and real events.
By the end of the interviews (spaced 3 weeks apart) 25% remembered and described the false event.
29
What are the four steps for creating a false memory?
1. The false event is suggested and considered to be plausible.
2. A belief that the memory is real develops.
3. A memory is constructed (e.g. narrative or image is constructed).
4. A source monitoring error is made - we mistake the imagery for being a real memory rather than being a false memory.
30
Explain the Pezdek, Finger & Hodge (1997) study involving Jewish and Catholic students.
Jewish and Catholic students were provided with true and false narratives from childhood about the opposite religion. Results showed people were far more likely to create a memory when the event was based on their own religion rather than the opposite religion, showing the event needs to be plausible for someone to create a false event.
31
What did the false memory studies using photos do and what did the results show?
The studies created a false image of the participant in a location/event in the past that they were not involved in. Results showed that over 50% of participants formed a partial or complete false memory of the fake event. It was even more likely when participants were provided with the photo along with a false narrative.
32
What false memory study involved imagination? What were the results?
Participants were asked to imagine some events occurring from childhood and rate the likelihood that the event did occur. Results showed if participants were asked to imagine themselves in an event, they became more confident the event happened to them. Imagining led to a significant increase in confidence that the event occurred.
33
What is the Deese Roediger McDermott (DRM) paradigm?
When people are provided with a word list all associated with one key word that is not present on the list.
34
Explain the DRM paradigm research study and its results.
Each participant was presented with different word lists that all were missing a key word. Each participant then presented with a distractor task before being asked to recall as many words as possible. The more words in the list, the higher the likelihood to create the false word. Those who had recovered memories were more vulnerable to the DRM paradigm.
35
What is the classical school of criminology belief about offenders and why they offend? What do they believe about criminal punishment?
Law-breaking happens when people, faced with a choice between behaving rightly and wrongly, choose to behave wrongly. When the gains outweigh the losses, people commit the crime.
Believe punishment should fit the crime and be the same for each criminal committing the same crime, regardless of context.
36
What is the positivist school of criminology viewpoint on offenders and offending? What do they believe about criminal punishment?
Believe that different factors determine criminal behaviour, looking to understand crime using scientific method and analysis. They believe that punishment should fit the criminal and the individual context.
37
What do sociological theories of crime propose?
Crime results from social and cultural forces that are external to any individual and exist prior to the criminal act occurring. They believe crime occurs from social class, political, ecological structures that affect large groups of people.
38
What are structural theories of crime underneath the sociological theories?
Dysfunctional social arrangements prevent people from achieving their goals in a legitimate way. Some people have external forces inhibiting them from achieving their goals in a legitimate way.
39
What are subcultural theories of crime underneath sociological theories?
Criminal behaviour occurs because different behavioural norms are held by different groups. Some groups hold criminal behaviour as group norms that mean they are more likely to engage in criminal activity.
40
What are social-psychological theories of crime?
Believe that crime is learned through social interaction
41
What are learning theories that come under social-psychological theories? What theory comes under learning theory?
Learning theories propose that people learn to commit crime. In the absence of learning how to commit crime, people do not commit crime.
Social learning theory comes under this theory.
42
What is social learning theory with regards to crime?
People learn how to commit crime if they are shown how to do it.
43
What are control theories of crime that come under social-psychological theories?
The idea that people learn not to commit crime. People learn over time to not commit crime, and if they are not taught to not commit crime, they will become offenders.
44
What is operant conditioning?
If you feel rewarded for doing something you will do it more, and if you are punished for something you will do it less.
45
What is classical conditioning?
People can be trained to have an unconditioned response to a conditioned stimulus, but originally pairing the conditioned stimulus with the unconditioned stimulus that produces the unconditioned response.
46
What are psychological theories of crime?
Propose that crime results from personality attributes that are uniquely possessed by a potential criminal.
47
What is the psychonalytic theory of crime?
The idea there are 3 parts to the psyche: id (pushes people to act in selfish ways), superego (ethical component telling us what is right and wrong), and ego (negotiates between superego and id). Believes crime occurs when the ego are unable to control the id.
48
Explain psychopathy.
Psychopaths are manipulative, deceitful, arrogant, have no remorse, and are solely focused on their own wants, interests, and desires.
49
What are the 2 factors to psychopathy? Explain them.
Lifestyle factors: things people do and behaviours people have.
Interpersonal affective factors: personality traits seen within psychopaths.
50
What is the dual model of psychopathy?
Two ideas of what makes someone a psychopath:
1. They are neurologically unable to experience the level of fear and anxiety that normal people do.
2. Inability to adequately control impulses for doing inappropriate things.
51
What is sensation seeking?
The idea that some people need a higher level of physical arousal to feel normal.
52
What are biological theories about offenders and offending?
The idea that genetic influences, neuropsychological abnormalities, and biochemical irregularities play a role in criminal behaviour, when they are combined with the right environments and social interactions.
53
What is concordance rate and how does it explain genetic influence?
Concordance rate is the percentage of pairs of twins who share the same behaviour of interest. When concordance rate is higher for identical twins than fraternal twins, it shows behaviour is genetically influenced as they share more DNA than fraternal twins.
54
What is constitutional predisposition and how is it inherited through genetics?
Genes may do something to your physical being that makes you a better criminal.
55
What neuropsychological abnormalities are believed to influence criminal behaviour?
Prisoners have higher rates of EEG's. Prisoners also tend to have more abnormalities in the prefrontal cortex which tends to result in more antisocial behaviour and lack of impulse control.
56
What differences can be seen in the autonomic nervous systems of criminals vs non-offenders?
People involved in repetitive criminal behaviour tend to show chronically low levels of arousal and need to engage in more intense activities to reach a normal level of arousal.
57
What are some of the physiological differences between offenders and non-offenders?
Prisoners tend to have higher rates of testosterone, and lower rates of serotonin.
58
What are the two things that could be responsible for the offenders peak (the fact that there is a large peak in number of offenders around age 20)?
There could be a change in the number of people willing to offend where there is a higher prevalence of people committing crime.
There could be a change in the number of crimes committed where the incident rate of crimes being committed by people reduces.
59
What is the true reason that the offenders peak occurs?
Prevalence - there is a larger number of people willing to offend at the young adult age.
60
Explain heterotypic continuity.
Continuity of an inferred trait or attribute that is assumed to underlie diverse behaviour. Behaviour changes over the lifespan, but the way the behaviour is physically displayed changes over time.
61
What is interactional continuity?
The idea that people who are born into problematic environments often have cognitive/temperamental issues that can lead to an increase in life-course persistent offending, as their environment is incapable of dealing with their deficits.
62
What are some of the factors that increase the likelihood of someone becoming a life-course persistent offender as a child?
Neuropsychological deficits, maternal drug use and other issues at birth or early life, interactional continuity.
63
What is the idea that evocative interaction causes the development of a life-course offender?
When our behaviour evokes distinct responses from others.
64
What is the idea that reactive interaction causes development of a life-course offender?
When we interpret our environment according to our behavioural style. People who act aggressively tend to interpret others actions as aggressive also.
65
What is the idea that proactive interaction causes the development of a life-course offender?
When we seek out environments that support our own style. Children with difficulties gravitate toward others with difficulties.
66
What are cumulative consequences?
When one issue leads to another, and leads to another etc.
67
What are contemporary consequences?
When one factor influences several other later factors.
68
What are the two ideas regarding why people continue to engage in criminal behaviour?
1. Limited behaviour repertoire - people have lived this way their entire life and. don't know any other way of living.
2. Becoming ensnared by the consequences of their behaviour - people become trapped in the consequences of their own behaviour, making the transition to a social lifestyle very difficult.
69
What are some neuropyschological deficits that are associated with life-course offenders?
When the fetal brain is disrupted, stunted neurodevelopment due to maternal drug use and poor prenatal nutrition, and deficits in verbal and executive functioning.
70
What constitutes an adolescence-limited offender?
A person who commits crime during adolescence but stops as they come into adulthood.
71
Why do people believe antisocial-limited offending occurs?
Social mimicry where people mimic the behaviour of others to gain access to their resources, or a maturity gap that offenders are trying to close through acting in ways that they shouldn't as an adolescent.
72
Why don't all teenagers become delinquent?
Some do not experience a maturity gap and therefore do not need to engage in criminal behaviour to close this gap.
Lack of exposure to life-course persistent adolescent role models could mean not all people have physical access to a role model that engages in criminal behaviour, causing lack of delinquency.
Some cultures give adolescents adult privileges.
Some youth may be excluded from engaging in mimicry due to personal characteristics that make them unattractive to other teens.
73
What are the three reasons that antisocial behaviour stops?
Waning motivations: the motivation for committing crime reduces as the maturity gap closes.
Shifting contingencies: activities that used to make people feel good about themselves may cause issues as an adult.
Presence of options for change: people are exposed to options later they can choose to change their behaviour.
74
What are the predictions about the type of crime that life-course offenders and adolescent-limited offenders engage in?
Adolescent-limited: primarily engage in crimes that symbolize adult privilege or autonomy from parental control.
Life-course persistent: a wide variety of offences.
75
What are the two main reasons police officers conduct interrogations?
1. To elicit further information relevant to a case.
| 2. To obtain a full or partial confession.
76
Explain the reid technique.
Reid technique is used to elicit confessions. There is maximisation (saying they know the suspect is guilty and interrupting statements of denial) as well as minimization (sympathizing with the suspect and offering a face-saving alternative). The technique looks to engage in the good cop bad cop idea to try and elicit a confession.
77
What does the reid technique believe innocent suspects will do?
Give concise answers as they have no fear of being trapped in their answers, and sit upright, but not rigid, with the interrogator.
78
What does the reid technique believe a guilty suspect would do?
Fail to make eye contact and be overly polite.
79
What is a false negative confession?
When a suspect is guilty but does not provide a confession.
80
What is a false positive confession?
When a suspect is innocent but ends up confessing.
81
What is a voluntary false confession?
When someone offers a self-incriminating statement that is offered without any external pressure from police.
82
What is a coerced complaint confession?
A confession provided after someone has been coerced. In this case, the suspect is aware they are innocent but decide to confess to stop the interrogation and for potential short-term benefit.
83
What is the reason someone may confess to a crime they didn't commit when being coerced into a confession? What is this called?
People tend to want to maximise their well-being in the moment. People may confess when they have been offered a short term benefit that gets them out of the situation (e.g., if they confess they are allowed to go home). This is called short-term decision making.
84
What is a coerced internalized confession?
When an innocent person who is subjected to coercion, confesses to a crime, and begins to believe they are actually guilty.
85
What two things do coerced suspects all seem to have in common?
1. The suspect is vulnerable.
| 2. There is a presentation of false evidence from police.
86
Explain the Kassin study looking at if police and students can identify false confessions. What were the results?
Students and police officers were provided with confessions from prisoners, some were true and some were false, and asked to identify what is true and false. Participants were more accurate when provided with just audio, no video, police were more confident in their answers than students, but students were more accurate.
87
Explain the Kassin & Kiechel study looking at forming false memories about pressing the Alt key. What were the results?
Participants took part in a fake reaction time study and researchers tried to plant memories they pressed the Alt key and shut down the computer. People involved in the fast-pace experiment were more likely to believe it is plausible they hit the key, were more likely to internalise that they did hit the key, and more likely to create a false narrative. This is all even more likely when there is presentation of false evidence.
88
Explain the Russano et al (2005) study where participants were interrogated for cheating. What were the results?
Participants were interrogated for cheating on a test - 4 types of interrogations.
Using no interrogation tactic, 46% of people gave a true confession that they did cheat. As more tactics are. used, the rates of confession increase for true confession. For false confessions, the rate of false confessions increased as the number of interrogation tactics increased.
89
How do we get the highest level of diagnosticity in interrogations?
To get the highest diagnosticity, officials need to use no tactics during interrogation.
90
Why might innocent people confess to a crime?
They think the truth will come out, more likely to waive their rights to a lawyer, don't tend to preserve information from the police because they have nothing to hide, tend to overestimate the extent to which their inner thoughts can be seen by police, and if there is physical evidence they are more likely to confess because they believe the evidence will prove their innocence.
91
Explain inductive profiling.
Using statistical data from studies, personal experience etc and apply it to criminal behaviours. It looks for reasoning outside of the crime itself.
92
What are the two assumptions about inductive profiling?
| What are the names of the two assumptions?
Individuals who commit similar crimes have similar characteristics (homology assumption).
An offenders' behaviour is consistent over time (behavioural consistency assumption).
93
Explain the three advantages of inductive profiling.
It is easy to use.
No specialized forensic knowledge is required.
The profile can be assembled easily with little effort.
94
Explain the two disadvantages of inductive profiling.
The information from the profile is not relevant to individual cases, but rather a group of people.
The information is gathered from a limited population and is not always compared to norms, meaning some behaviours that are seen as indicative of crime in the limited population may be normal in the general population.
95
Explain deductive profiling.
Profiling a suspect using the crime scene, offenders behaviours, the postmortem and analysis of the victim. It looks for its reasoning within the case itself.
96
What is modus operandi?
Method of operations of the offender - the actions that are necessary to commit the crime.
97
What is signature in terms of deductive profiling?
The offenders extra behaviours not necessary to commit the crime.
98
What are the assumptions of deductive profiling?
No offender acts without motivation, no two cases are alike, and the modus operandi is likely to develop over time and offenders get better and more efficient over time.
99
What are the three advantages of deductive profiling?
It provides information about the motive, it avoids generalization by considering each crime in individual context, and it examines the behaviour of each offender over time.
100
What are the three disadvantages of deductive profiling?
It requires a large amount of effort, it is emotionally exhausting, and it often doesn't provide much help when searching for the perpetrator.
101
Explain the Kocsis et al (2000) study about the ability of different groups of people to criminally profile. What were the results?
Five groups of people were asked to make a profile. The profilers and psychologists were slightly more accurate than all other groups. On some subscales, there was no difference between the profilers accuracy and the other groups.
102
What are the two reasons people seem to believe in profiling? Explain them.
1. Messages. There is the message spread that criminal profiling is accurate and needed, despite there being no evidence.
2. The mind. Profilers often take success from their cases but ignore the mistakes, and tend to find meaning in all information despite some of it being ambiguous.
103
What is the barnum effect?
When we tend to believe that a personality statement fits the profile, despite the statements being applicable to almost everyone.
104
What three key factors are needed to make a lie, deception?
The lie does not have to be successful. The lie must be deliberate (not a false memory). The communicator must know the information they are stating is untrue.
105
What are self-oriented lies?
Lies told to protect or enhance the liar psychologically.
106
What are other-oriented lies?
Lies told to protect or enhance another person psychologically.
107
How does emotion impact the non-verbal behaviours of liars?
When people are lying, certain emotions may be experienced that are portrayed through non-verbal behaviour.
108
How does cognitive load impact the non-verbal behaviours of liars?
When someone is lying they tend to have a higher cognitive load, leading to a lack of non-verbal behaviour as there is concentration of cognitive load.
109
How does attempted behaviour control impact the non-verbal behaviours of liars?
When people lie, they often try to come across like someone who is telling the truth and therefore control their behaviour, which can be detected.
110
What is duping delight?
The idea that someone gains delight from lying to other people.
111
What happens to body language when someone is under heavy cognitive load?
Body language tends to stop or decrease heavily because they are trying to think.
112
What are the 4 non-verbal behaviour differences assessed in liars?
Voice pitch increases, the number of speech errors increase, the number of arm movements decrease, and hand and finger movements decrease.
113
Out of 100 truth tellers and 100 liars, what percentage of truth tellers and liars were correctly identified through non-verbal behaviour?
55% of truth tellers were correctly identified as telling the truth. 55% of liars were correctly identified as lying.
114
What are the 4 reasons that people fail to detect deception through non-verbal behaviour?
1. People hold false beliefs about what non-verbal behaviours show indication of lying.
2. People can be taught the wrong cues for deceit.
3. Empirical research can send mixed messages about non-verbal behaviour of liars.
4. We have to go off increases and decreases in behaviour.
115
What is criterion based content analysis?
Analyzing the content of what someone says and using a criterion to work out if they are lying or not.
116
What is the undeustch hypothesis?
| What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative?
Hypothesis: statements derived from memory are qualitatively and quantitatively different than those derived from invention/fantasy.
Qualitative: the presence or absence of things.
Quantitative: increases or decreases in things.
117
Out of 100 truth tellers and 100 liars, what percentage of each group can be correctly identified through verbal behaviour?
76% of people who were truth tellers were correctly identified. 68% of liars were correctly identified.
118
What reason may the CBCA method for detecting deception fail?
The CBCA scores may vary due to factors other than deception e.g., age, questioning style, verbal skill etc.
119
What is the control question test?
The test is measured using a polygraph and compares the responses of relevant and control questions.
120
What is the difference between relevant and control questions?
Relevant - a question that only a guilty suspect would lie about.
Control - a question which all people will most likely lie to.
121
Out of 100 truth tellers and 100 liars, what percentage of people would be correctly identified through the CQT?
87% of liars would be correctly identified. 72% of truth tellers would be correctly identified.
122
What are the reasons that CQT doesn't detect deception?
False positives can occur when an innocent suspect is nervous.
A suspect could use countermeasures to change their results on the polygraph.
123
What is the guilty knowledge test?
A test that examines whether suspects possess knowledge they don't want to reveal about a crime.
124
Out of 100 truth tellers and 100 liars, what percentage of these people would be correctly identified using the GKT?
96% of truth tellers would be correctly identified. 59% of liars would be correctly identified.
125
What reasons may GKT fail to detect deception?
There is limited situations in which the test can be used, and the suspect could have guilty knowledge but deny guilt.
126
What are four general problems with lie detection?
There is no one thing liars do that truth tellers dont, it goes off increases and decreases.
It is a difficult topic to research.
Othello error - liars and truth tellers may experience the same processes and may respond similarly to measures that are meant to detect deception.
The person who is lying may have made a false belief about the event and therefore not think they are lying.
127
What is targeted interviewing?
A tactic to try and elicit cues of deception by increasing the stress the suspect is feeling.
128
How is brain scanning used to detect deception?
Some use an fMRI to measure the blood flow within the brain to detect deception.
