Psychological Knowledge in Society (Studies)

Question 1

Sherif

Answer 1

+ Understanding from Sherif’s study can be used within society to reduce prejudice and violence caused by prejudice (within schools, football violence, racism, etc.)
- Sherif focussed only on competition as an explanation of prejudice, so may not be useful in preventing prejudice caused by other factors (e.g. in-group/out-group prejudice)
+ Useful for understanding extreme hate and prejudice within society and history, e.g. riots, war, hate crimes
- Difficult to replicate Sherif’s experiment as it was a field experiment, so results may not be reliable and it cannot be said that such results would definitely be found today - may not be entirely useful in reducing prejudice today

Question 2

Baddeley

Answer 2

+ Application for helping students ‘learning to learn’ (learning by relating ideas to what we already know is better when revising as we understand encoding to be semantic in LTM)
- Nature as a lab experiment means the findings lack ecological validity, so may be less useful for explaining real-life memory
+ Baddeley’s research on a wider scale had application to the WMM, allowing us to understand memory and issues in memory better (e.g. dementia and Alzheimer’s)
- Low generalisability due to Baddeley’s sample being of only British students, meaning the research does not consider cross-cultural differences and limits the generalisability of findings

Question 3

Raine

Answer 3

+ Allowed for understanding of brain regions involved in aggression and early interventions for those with brain deficits through illness (monitoring)
- Natural experiment, so cannot show cause and effect, e.g. The NGRIs might have developed the brain deficits after the killing because of the stress of the event, arrest, imprisonment, and trial, and so may lack applicative ability to explain aggression
+ Application to understanding what biological evidence does or does not tell us (brain structures give only a partial explanation - also social from upbringing, for example)
- PET scans are difficult to interpret and it is difficult to precisely locate the different brain regions being studied due to differences between people in the positions of these regions (individual differences) - limits general applicative ability

Question 4

Watson and Rayner

Answer 4

+ Knowledge of CC is now used to treat phobias (flooding and S.D.)
- Low generalisability due to single participant, so limited practical application
+ CC principles used in developing aversion therapy to challenge unhealthy behaviours and in advertising
- Ignores interactions between the environment and biological influences in conditioning, so limited practical application

Question 5

Rosenhan

Answer 5

+ Useful practical application as led to changes to the DSM - reforms to the diagnostic process
- Pseudopatients did not follow a standardised procedure after admittance to the hospital, limiting reliability and therefore application
+ Cause psychiatric hospitals to review admission procedures and provide more training to staff
- Validity of the study was low as pseudopatients may have only recorded negative instances of behaviour from hospital staff due to bias, reducing applicative ability