An example of this is; one of the simplest rules of behaviour is that if you reward someone for doing something, they are more likely to do it again (the principle of reinforcement. How many people out there actually verbalise this rule and use it consistently? Certainly not the mother who rewards her child’s tired tantrum in the street by buying them a toy or a magazine, nor the person who showers their partner with attention and affection when they are having a jealous sulk at a party.
If you take Milgram’s study of obedience, you can see that, the teacher obeyed the person with authority. If you met a policeman in the street and he asks you where you were the following night, because an incident happened and you may have been around the area or the time it happened, you would do as the policeman asks as he has more authority, so it may seem like common sense, as it is something you would see happening in everyday life. But Milgram’s study was a scientific experiment to see whether people would go as far as killing a person by authority.
Also if you look at the surroundings and at how the experiment was set up it was all very scientific, based in a make-believe laboratory. With scientific equipment, so a lot of it actually was more scientific than common sense, which is explained above that scientific methods usually way up more than common sense.
Zimbardo’s study of Prisoners and guards in a simulated prison, was not as real to life, it wasn’t very scientific. This is why it only lasted for 6 out of the 14 days planned. The prisoners were automatically arrested from their homes from being accused of burglary, and being humiliated in front of their families, this is common sense, as many convictions would happen in this way if they were wanted by the police. They were then placed in a basement of Stanford University. The guards however grew out of control, because they were given too much freedom to punish the prisoners as much as they wanted. They gradually grew into the role they were provided with. Even though the prisoners may have done wrong, you would not have thought that guards will have that much anger in them and rage that would brutally beat and humiliate these prisoners as much as those guards did in the experiment. In a real life situation the prisoners would have probably ended their lives, whereas if Zimbardo saw that the prisoners were getting really distressed they could take them out of the experiment, which they had to do. This study was not a scientific method of finding behaviour, it was just to find out if the guards would take on the role fully, in which they did, but not as expected.
Tajfel’s study of intergroup discrimination, could be both a scientific method of psychology but also common sense, as it is all to do with prejudice, which is an attitude in a person, everybody has an attitude towards something, whatever it is. There are two types of theories which attempt to explain the origins of prejudice; these are personality theories and social psychological theories.
Personality theories see the source of prejudice as being in the individual, whereas social psychological theories see prejudice as a result of group membership.
This experiment was different from both Milgram’s and Zimbardo’s studies, and the sample of people all knew each other before the experiment had started, and so it would show a different type of behaviour between the participants.
This experiment, again may be both scientific and common sense, as in everyday life, people form groups and each person in that group will follow with what at least one or two people in that same group are doing, for example if one of the group member has an attitude towards a subject, you would expect the rest of that group to think the same, as it is part of that social grouping to have that attitude about that subject, this is the same towards music, films, hobbies and people in other groups.
Also by splitting these participants into groups, it can cause conflict and rivalry between the groups, which you also see in the real world. In America, there are groups of people who really hate each other, for example, 2-Pac a singer was part of a gang, and was killed by another member of the opposite gang, who they had different opinions about, so you can see that this type of rivalry between groups and gangs is common sense as we hear about it a lot in the media.
We have different opinions about the war and other political problems happening in the world, which can cause a lot of groups and gangs forming to protect their beliefs and values from others.
Piliavin’s study of good samaritanism: an underground phenomenon is probably more common sense than scientific, because if somebody that you think is in desperate need of attention, no matter what state they are in, you would offer your service.
In this experiment they firstly placed a drunken man who collapsed on the floor of a train travelling through the New York underground system between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays in 1968. This was to see how many people would help this person in this state; they also placed someone of a different race on the train.
This study is common sense because, if you saw, say an old lady fall over in the streets, she had bags of shopping in her hands and they scattered over the floor, you wouldn’t just leave her to pick them up herself, you would go over and help her out as, it is the more reasonable thing to do than, just say, ‘clumsy women!’ and leave her on her own. It can also be scientific as it is measuring the speed of the help, that the people would take, or if anyone at all, would help out either a drunken person or someone of a different race.
Overall, I personally think that psychology is both scientific and common sense, as most of the behaviour towards different situations is used in everyday life, but the fact that the measurements and the results that were found in each study I have explained, helps in finalising the decisions between different matters and opinions, whether people really do this or that.
In 1974, Joyson, wrote an article, saying that every person is there own psychologist, after all who knows best an outsider or yourself? He also said that if psychologists did not exist would we need to invent one?
We all have to use a bit of psychology to negotiate our lives, regardless of whether or not we have studied it.
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