Individual differences/abnormality.

However, to perform simple tasks well we need high arousal and for complex tasks we need low arousal

Stress and Physical Illness

There are three main pathways by which stress can have this effect:

The direct effect: Cohen et al, 394 healthy participants were asked to complete a questionnaire assessing their stress levels and then exposing 1 in 5 to a respiratory virus. Those experiencing most stress were most likely to catch a cold

Vulnerability: can be physical or psychological, physically those who already have high blood pressure will be made worse by stress, psychologically the poor, young and elderly are adversely affected

Behavioural changes: stressed people tend to do things that increase their chances of being ill or injured

When stressed we drink more, smoke more and exercise less

Stress and the Immune System

Under stress our bodies produce corticosteroids, which suppress the immune system, if long-term it can interfere with the production of antibodies and the process of inflammation, which leaves the person more susceptible to illness

Kiecolt-Glaser et al studies the effect of stress on student

They took blood samples from 75 first year medical students before examinations

Within that month they found a significant reduction in the immune system response to a virus

Stress and Coronary Heart Disease

Fried and Rosenman drew attention to behavioural styles and labels behaviour either Type A or Type B

Stress and disease is linked to Type A behaviour, aggressive, incessant, struggling to achieve, hostile and competitive

Type B are less driven and do not show these behavioural patterns

Type A behaviour would encourage vessels to narrow while heart races

Also they treat normal stressors as flight or flight situations, which as a devastating effect on the body

However there is no link between coronary heart disease and Type A behaviour, Johnson et al

Booth-Kewley and Friedman found a link between chronic negative emotional states and CHD, these being depression, anger, hostility, aggression and anxiety.

Another model put forward with Karasek is job demand-job control, high stress due to high demand and low control e.g. middle managers, low stress due to high control and low demand e.g. top man

Stress and Cancer

Sklar and Anisman studied initially healthy but very stressed people followed up and concluded that they were more likely to develop cancer than less stressed individuals

However, behaviours adopted because of stress e.g. smoking, drinking will induce cancers the same in both healthy and stressed people

Interviewing cancer patients after diagnosis is retrospective, events might be viewed more stressful than they actually were

Sources of Stress

Lazarus and Cohen describe three general categories of stress: cataclysmic events, personal stressors, background stressors and workplace stressors.

Cataclysmic events: natural disasters, war, fire or car accidents are powerful threats that disrupt lives

They are sudden, have a powerful impact, involve a large number of people and social support is available

Personal stressors - life changes: include illness, loss of a loved one are redundancy, anything that challenges our ability to adapt

Holmes and Rahe contracted a Social Readjustment Rating Scale, SRRS; they gave a value to certain things starting with getting married at 50

A person scoring between 200-300 has a 50% chance of developing an illness, increases 80% for more than 300

There is a relationship between life changes and illness but there are some limitations

The link between the two is a correlation, which does not mean stress is causing the illness

Some stressors might b as a result of the illness

Some life changes might result in behaviour, which causes illness to it's the behaviour causing the illness not the stress

We need change in our lives if we are to remain alert and interested in life

In the SRRS there is no proof to suggest that the pleasant stressors lead to illness

The degree of stress associated with each thing will be different for each person

Things such as social supports and personality make a difference in the effect of life changes

The positive correlation between a high score and illness is not particularly high

Background Stressors - hassles and ambient stressors: these are the routeing demands of life, these are less immediately powerful but often more chronic than cataclysmic or personal stressors

There are two groups, daily hassles and ambient stressors

Daily hassles are problems encounter as part of the routine of life e.g. getting everything down

Ambient stressors are the chronic and global stressors such as noise, crowding and unpleasant experience

Workplace stressors - work overload and underload: individuals faced with overload have 3 choices, do less work than required, do the work less well or take more time

Sales found that in this situation people assume that have to work within time given and see it as a conflict between quality and quantity

With to little work people feel they have to supply their own to retain their sanity, boredom sets in which is as tiring as too much work, can lead to alienation

Role conflict: when you have to deal with people and put up a front

Hochschild coined the term emotional labour when expressing one emotion and feeling another

This conflict leads to alienation

Also middle managers that need to please both bosses and workers

Margolic and Kroes found they were 7 times more likely to develop ulcers than workers

Interpersonal factors: people who involve a lot of emotion in their work are stressed as emotional labour is involved and can lead to emotional exhaustion known as burnout

Argyle suggested other interpersonal factors might contribute: feeling of failure and hopelessness

Feelings of not being in control due to lack of co-operation by clients or colleagues

Becoming depressed by having to listen to others problems

Shift work: human are diurnal with our body temperature at its lowest at 4am

Aschoff used the term internal desynchronisation to describe the imbalance of rhythms

Studies show that the sleep is shorter and of poorer quality

Individual differences in modifying the effects of stressors

Types A, B and C Personality

Type A = hostile, competitive, concerned with material goods and have a sense of exaggerated urgency

Type B = more relaxed, less ambitious, less impatient and focuses on the quality of life

Type C = hard working, conventional, sociable, avoid conflict, suppress emotion and feel helpless under stress

Type C are more prone to cancers, Temoshok et al conducted a 15 year follow up of women with breast cancer and found it was likely to recur in women who were passive and helpless

Gender

Haynes et al found no different levels of heart disease in career women and housewives but levels were significantly height in type A behaviour than in type B

Men tend to be more stressed by loss of someone close to them, by divorce or loss of income

Women tend to be more stressed by problems of family and friends but gain support, which reduced stress

Hardiness and Optimism

Kobasa et al looked at high-stress workers and examined the difference between high rates of stress-related illness and low rates of the illness

They found that low-illness executives have a common trait, which they called hardiness

Hardiness has three components: commitment, challenge and control

They have commitment to work and families, see challenge instead of threat and believe to be in control

Schier et al found people with an optimistic outlook coped with stress differently then pessimists

They were more willing to meet a challenge head on and seek support

Kobasa et al said hardiness acted as a buffer between the person and the stressful event

Stress Management

Physiological Methods of Managing Stress

Biofeedback

An individual is connected to a machine which provide information about blood pressure and tension in neck muscles together with instructions of how to control it

This teaches them to relax and so have voluntary control and eventually can be controlled without feedback

This is good for children, Attanasio et al said because they saw it as a game and are less likely to doubt their ability to control their body responses

However, the machine is expensive and is difficult to practise at home

It requires regular practise and is no more effective than muscle relaxing techniques

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

People learn to control their feelings of tension, focuses attention on specific muscle groups which involves tightening and relaxing them

This also reduced blood pressure and heart rate

Inexpensive and straightforward and very successful in helping people under stress

Meditation

Focuses on single, unchanging stimuli, problem solving, worry and concerns fade away as sympathetic nervous system is reduced

It produces a state of calm and does lead to measurable body changes

A number of people have used this to reduce anxiety, blood pressure and dependency on drugs

Regular Physical Exercise

Reduces stress, anxiety and depression while increasing self-esteem and control

Not very helpful if you exercise then go back into a stressful environment

Medication

Benzodiazephines and beta-blockers help people manage stress

Both have side effects and can lead to dependency

Behavioural Methods of Managing Stress

There are situations where it is possible to reduce stress by changing behaviour

Organising your life helps reduce frustration, wasted time and the potential for stress

Time management programmes

These are designed to help people organise their time effectively

Lakein set out three elements of such a programme: set goals - should be realistic both short and long term goals

Make daily "to do" lists - stick to them

Schedule the day - allocate a certain time period for each item on the list, schedule should adjust to allow for unexpected events

Assertiveness training

Effective means of reducing stress, for those people who find it difficult to cope in situations in which they need to speak up for themselves without being aggressive or hostile

Social skills training

Teaches people who are shy and socially anxious to cope with new situations

How to talk to people, listen and recognise and respond to other peoples signals

Cognitive Methods of Managing Stress

A lot of stress arises from out interpretation of events

Cognitive therapy for stress management is based on determining stress responses

Problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies

Lazarus and Folkman differentiated between problem-focused and emotion-focused ways of coping

Problem-focused coping attacks the problem itself, taking the bull by the horns

First you have to identify the problem, and then suitable strategies can be adopted

The essence involves: recognising the need for action

Appraising the situation and methods of dealing with it

Responding in a way that removes or lessens the threat

The problem-based strategy is useful for managing controllable stressors and has considerable benefits

It increases a person's self-esteem, sense of control and general effectiveness

Emotion-focused coping concentrates on changing or managing the emotions that the problems cause

It is useful for managing the impact of more uncontrollable stressors

If we cannot change the problem we may be able to change our feelings and thoughts about it

This is so we don't become overwhelmed by negative emotions such as guilt, anger or anxiety

Some problem-focused and emotion-focused strategies can be inappropriate and unhelpful

Cognitive restructuring Programmes

These aim to reappraising a stressor or modifying our thoughts about how we deal with it

Rational Emotive Therapy

Made by Albert Ellis, some commonly held irrational beliefs include: I must be loved by everyone

I must always show perfect control

I must be good at everything

I must be able to find quick solutions to all life's problems

The therapy programme aim to confront the faulty belief system and reconstruct it in such a way that problems are seen in a very different light and can be dealt with more effectively

RET takes time but is effective by changing a persons whole life

Stress Inoculation

Miechenbaum has produced a three-step procedure for producing stress inoculation designed to teach people skills for alleviating stress and achieving personal goals

They control irrational and catastrophising thoughts: 1) conceptualisation, learn about stress and examine ways you respond to it, then consider ways you can change the way you respond and deal with it

2) Skills acquisition and rehearsal, learn behavioural and cognitive skills for effective coping

This involves general coping skills such as relaxation and includes specific skills such as time-management

3) Application and follow through, transfer your skills to the real world and reward yourself with mental pat on the back

In this way people who were previously insecure or depressed can gain feelings of self-efficacy

Controlling these thoughts lowers arousal levels and reduces the impact of stressors

Increasing Hardiness

Individuals differ widely in their ability to cope with stress

Kobasa et al obtained Holmes-Rahe scale measurements from a group of managers following them for three years, monitoring their level of stress and illness

They put the illness into two groups, low-level illness and high-level illness

She found the low-level illness executives had a common trait called hardiness

Hardiness comprises of three components: commitment, challenge and control

These people have a high commitment to their work, families and to themselves

They see a change as a challenge rather than a threat

They feel they have an influence over most events and over other people, they believe they are in control

The people who became ill had no sense of purpose and lacked active involvement in their surroundings

Maddi suggested three coping strategies to enhance hardiness: situational reconstruction

Focusing

Compensatory self-improvement

Fischman taught a number of exertive these coping skills and they reported greater job satisfaction, fewer headaches and improved sleep

Ganellen and Blaney found hardiness only offered protection against stress when social support was available

Schmied and Lawler found no relationship between hardiness and illness in female secretaries

The Role of Control in the Perception of Stress

Humans have a fundamental need for control

Most therapies concentrate on increasing a sense of control in a stressful situation

Effective coping strategies provide several means of control: information control - knowing what to expect

Cognitive control - thinking about the event differently and more constructively

Decision control - being able to decide an alternative action

Behavioural control - taking actions to reduce the aversiveness

Learned helplessness - feeling or having no control

The Importance of Social Support

Social support is of such value it needs special attention

Being cared for and valued by other people, belonging to a social network are all positive effect on reducing stress

People who are involved with others, who emphases and supports others are better able to cope with problems

Attachment

Sociability

Virtually from birth babies employ specific strategies and skills in order to maintain social contact

Crying

It is virtually imposable to ignore and motivates adults to respond

Davenport argues that babies cry as an attempt to initiate interaction with an adult

Responses to human speech

Condon and Sanders showed some babies as young as two days will respond to the sound of human speech by turning their head and arms in time with the speech

Responses to faces

Eye to eye contact is especially important in human interactions

From 2 months onwards they show an interest in human faces

The Nature of Attachment

Schaffer defined attachment as a long-enduring, emotionally meaningful tie to a particular individual

Attachments in young children have the following features: selective, they direct towards specific individuals who are preferred over all others

Desire to be near, that person

Comfort and security, provided by that person are important when the child is frightened, tired or ill

Separation protest, the child becomes greatly distressed if they cannot be near the person to whom they are attached

Stages of attachment - one developed by Schaffer and Emerson

Stage

Age

Response

Asocial Phase

0-6 weeks

Many kinds of stimuli, both social and non-social produce a favourable reaction such as a smile. Very few produce any kind of protest.

Stage of Indiscrimination

6 weeks-7 months

They enjoy human company. They smile more at people than objects. They get upset when interaction stops regardless of whom the adult is. From 3 months they smile more at familiar faces and are more easily comforted by caregiver rather than stranger

Stage of Specific Attachments - the First Truth Attachment

7-9 months

Expresses protest when separated from caregiver, crawl to be near this person and show wariness of strangers

Stage of Multiple Attachments

0 months onwards

Children become attached to father, grandparents, siblings ect. By 18 months they have formed multiple attachments

First of all they are universally sociable, by 6 weeks they smile at anyone

From the 2nd and 3rd month they seem capable of recognising particular faces and respond to familiar faces

At 7 months the first strong attachment appears, as does stranger anxiety, once mobile they seek that person

After the first attachment they start making additional attachments

The Strange Situation Studies

Ainsworth devised a simple controlled observation study called the strange Situation, the following took place:

Episode

What Happens

The caregiver takes the infant into a laboratory room and sits quietly in a chair. She does not interact with the infant unless her attention is sought.

2

A stranger enters, talks to the mother then approaches the baby with a toy.

3

The mother leaves unobtrusively. If the infant is passive the stranger tries to interact. If the child shows distress the stranger attempts to comfort them.

4

The mother returns and greets the infant. The stranger leaves. The mother tries to get the infant to play, then leaves saying bye-bye.

5

The baby is left alone.

6

The stranger enters and interacts with the infant, offering comfort if the child is upset or a toy if they are passive.

7

The mother returns, greets the infant and picks it up. The stranger leaves unobtrusively.

In summery the child and mother are put into an unfamiliar room containing toys

A stranger enters and the mother leaves

The mother returns and the stranger leaves

The mother leaves so the child is alone

The mother returns

This is to measure: separation anxiety - response to the mother departing

The infant's willingness to explore and play with new toys

Stranger anxiety - the reaction of the child to the stranger

Reunion behaviour - how the child reacts when the mother returns

Secure attachment (Type B) - infant explores willingly when mother is present using her as a secure base

Show distress when she leaves and greeting her warmly when she returns

Readily comforted by her and show preference to her over the stranger

This is the optimum form of attachment

Resistant, anxious, attachment (Type C) - children do not explore, remaining close to mother

Very distressed when she leaves, may cling, angry and anxious

She does not provide a secure base

Avoidant attachment (Type A) - children show little or no concern when mother leaves

The show no pleasure on her return with no stranger anxiety

Little preference of mother over stranger, often avoiding both

A forth was added by Main and Solomon

Disorganised, insecure, attachment (Type D) - children show no set pattern of behaviour when mother departs or returns

This kind of behaviour is associated with abused children or those whose mothers are chronically depressed

Evaluation

Validity and ethics are in question with this approach, doesn't normally happen in real life

Clarke-Stewart said children in day care are used to separation and indifference to this is independence

Suggested Cause of Individual Variations in Attachment

This is cause by the type of relationship it is, the temperament and personality of the child

Caregiver-sensitivity Hypothesis

Bell and Ainsworth carried out a longitudinal study and found mothers with securely attached infants were more effective at soothing them, more often engaged in face to face behaviour and physical contact with other mothers

Mothers with clingy babies are insensitive to their signals and inept at handling them

Mothers with detached babies are rejecting and neglectful

The quality of relationship is crucial in attachment, not quantity

Temperament Hypothesis

Lamb et al questioned the pattern of attachments in the Strange Situation study and suggested that this type of situation brings out different temperaments of the infants and it is these innate differences in the personalities not the relationships that cause the difference in behaviour

Kagon also argued this by saying children who dislike a change in routine may not be comforted by caregiver on return

Main and Weston did the Strange Situation with both fathers and mothers and found behaviour differed

The Importance of Attachment

Short-term effects

If the child stays near the adult when they are young they gain protection, care and security

Hazan and Durrett found that securely attached children are more confident to use their care-giver as a secure base and explore their environment and more imaginative in their problem solving

Long-term effects

Bowlby believes the first attachment a child makes acts as an internal working model for all later social relationships and helps to shape all intimate interpersonal relationships in later life

This means that those children who have an insecure first relationship will be untrusting and insecure in later relationships including friendships, romantic relationships and with their own children

Hazan and Shaver also argue that attachments in infancy shape later relationship especially romantic ones. They asked adults to pick a description, which represented how they felt:

A) I find it relatively easy to get close to others and am comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me. I don't often worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me.

B) I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others. I find it difficult to trust them completely, difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close and often love partners want to be more intimate the I feel comfortable being.

C) I find others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn't really love me or wont want to stay with me. I want to merge completely with another person, and this desire sometimes scares people away.

A = secure B = avoidant C = anxious/ambivalent

In general, adults who were securely attached found happiness, trust and friendships in relationships, trusting and stable.

Those who were avoidant showed fear at intimacy and a reluctant to commit, detached and unresponsive

Those who were anxious experienced extremes of emotions including love at first sight and obsession, anxious and uncertain

Kirkpatrick and Hazan reported that 70% chose the same style they had four months previously

60% were secure, 20-25% were avoidant and 15-20% were ambivalent

Secure individuals reported a positive family; avoidant reported difficulties with mother and ambivalent reported difficulties with farther

Cross Cultural Variations in Attachment

These indicated that the attachment behaviour is universal and that the age at which separation anxiety also appears similar

All the major styles off attachment were also seen

Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg compared 32 studies in eight different countries using 2000 infants

This showed that in all cultures the secure attachments are most common but the percentages between avoidant and resistant vary

In Germany children are encourages to be independent which shows a raise in avoidant behaviour

In Japan children rarely leave their mothers side which may explain the large number of resistance children

In the Israeli Kibbutzim it's the caregivers that look after the children not the parents and they rarely see strangers, this resistant label might be from stranger anxiety and little shown when their parents leave

However, some studies are too small to generalise

Theories of Attachment

Psychodynamic Approach

In the oral stage by breast-feeding she becomes the primary love object

If children are deprived of this they become stuck in that stage and can only be resumed by going back and being fulfilled

However, Harlow showed that attachment does not depend on feeding

Schaffer and Emerson found 40% were not primarily attached to the person who fed them

Learning Approach

Dollard and Miller said the caregiver feeds the infant over 2000 times in the first year

She also provides warmth, tender touches, comfort and attention

With all these positive reinforces and she becomes a powerful secondary reinforcer

An infant's smile is a reinforcer for the mother as is the stopping of crying

However, Harlow showed that attachment does not depend on feeding

Difficult to fit stranger anxiety into this theory

Social Learning Approach

The caregiver models loving behaviour and teaches the child to be affectionate by kissing and cuddling them

However, it does not explain the emotional intensity that attachment involves, it seems doubtful this comes from learning

Ethological Approach

Imprinting - attach itself to the first this it sees

Happens automatically without any teaching or learning

Occurs within a narrow time limit

Irreversible

However, generalising from human to animals is not good

Imprinting does not only happen in a set time period and is irreversible

Bowlbys Approach

Children have a biological need to attach to one person - monotropy

The first attachment serves as an internal working model, basis of our expectations and rules regarding relationships in later life

However, Schaffer and Emerson showed attachment is not monotropic

They studied 60 babies from birth to 18 months and observed multiple attachments

26 did not attach to the mother and attachments were not a hierarchic

Deprivation

John Bowlby's Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis

All babies have a need for a warm, intimate and constant relationship with their mother

This is a biological mechanism, which keeps young close to their mother so they can survive

If this need is not satisfied then they suffer from maternal deprivation

Bowlby researched orphanages and hospitals and said maternal deprivation had the following effects: emotionally disturbed behaviour such as bed-wetting

Dwarfism in children

Depression

Intellectual retardation

A crippling in the capacity to make relationships with other people

The age where this occurs is crucial

Below the age of 7-9 months the separation can have no serious effects due to the child not being able to move far

After 7 months mobility increases, called the sensitive period

After 3 years children are able to understand concepts like their mother will return

Short-term Effects

Based on observations, on separation children go through three stages known as syndromes of distress

) Protest - attempt to follow mother, scream and do anything to recover her and continue looking for her

2) Despair - sob in a helpless way making fewer attempts to find mother, loss of hope

3) Detachment - calm even settled, masking underlying distress, emotionally flat

After reunion the detachments persists, followed by ambivalence, clinging and anxiety

At each stage the child is prone to angry outbursts

May be months before they can stop being anxious

Long-Term Effects

Bowlbys maternal deprivation hypothesis states that if a child experiences many separations like those described above, then behaviour patterns such as detachment or despair may persist into life as psychopathic or depression.

The most serious consequence is the development of an affectionless personality

Seen in children and adults, they have no concern for others or the capacity to care for people

They fail to develop a conscience or feelings of guilt

They tend to be persistent liars, thieves or psychopaths

This inability to form bonds applies to their own children who also find bonding difficult

The nature of the attachment bonds to their main attachment figure will affect their later capacity to make bonds; any new person will be regarded as loving and reliable or untrustworthy and rejecting as the mother

Children in institutions will try to make bonds with every adult even if not permanent, when broken the children suffer in a similar way and are invariably intellectually retarded

The affectionless personality is hard to develop

Children are looking to form attachment even when abused

Only after repeated separation the child becomes permanently emotionally detached and affectionless

Bowlby never disputed the fact that some disrupted children do escape delinquency and damage

Monotrophy

He believed attachment to be monotropic - that is to one person only

He acknowledged that children become attached to a number of people but the primal bond is formed with the mother

It is this relationship that is essential for a childs security, mothering cannot be shared

Harlow investigated long-term consequences of an isolated upbringing in monkeys

He investigated whether monkeys always became attached to the one that gave them food

He brought up 8 monkeys in complete separation from birth

When they were old enough he gave them the surrogate mother made or wire and a cloth one

In 4 cages the wire mother did the feeding and in the other four the cloth monkey did it

All the monkeys, regardless of who fed them attached themselves to the cloth monkey

When introducing a frightening stimulus the monkeys clung to the cloth monkey

When put in a strange room with toys they cowered in the corner

When the cloth mother was put in there they would cling to it but then explore the room

Six months or more of this deprivation the monkeys began to bite themselves and hold onto themselves and rock in an autistic way

Emotions became bizarre and they made facial grimaces

Some monkeys isolated for over a year seemed to be little more than semi-animated vegetables

Monkeys isolated in later life were not so affected and females seemed less affected than males

When they became adults they could not interact properly with other monkeys, many were aggressive or indifferent

Males did not mate successfully and females were very inadequate mothers, they didn't suckle and would hit them

Bowlby selected 44 juveniles who has a criminal record for theft and compared them with 44 juveniles with emotional problems but who have never been in trouble with the law

39% of thieves had been separated from their mothers for six months before they were five and 89% were cold and uncaring and felt no shame

Of the second group only 2 had been separated and only 2 were affectionless

However, this only shows a correlation and correlation studies cannot be used to assume that one factor causes another

He didn't look at children in the community who had separation and not become thieves

His study was very small

Goldfarb did a longitudinal study with two groups of 15 orphans

One group was fostered before 9 months in a normal family and the other spent the first 3 years in an understaffed orphanage

They were observed, interviewed and tested at 3, 6, 8 and 12 years

The children who had been fostered fared much better than the ones who remained in the orphanage

Not only did the children suffer maternal deprivation they suffered other deprivation as well

The children who were chosen to be fostered might have been more alert anyway

The Impact of Bowlbys Theories

The care of children in orphanages and insinuations changed

Children were not moved from one foster home to another

In maternity units mothers and babies spend more time together

Children are not hospitalised for months on end and parents can stay the night

Re-assessment of the Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis

Rutter started to distinguish between different problems, which come under maternal deprivation

He distinguished between never forming a bond: privation and breaking the bond: deprivation

Rutter said that the problems related to the separation rather than the separation itself was stressful

He distinguished between long-term and short-term effects of poor mothering:

Short-term effects are the syndromes of distress with a slowing down of developmental growth

Long term effects he concluded that the syndrome of distress is cause by disruption of the attachment process

Intellectual retardation due to the absence of appropriate stimulating experiences

Failure to develop bonds with anyone leading to affectionless psychopathy

Family discord associated with later anti-social behaviour and delinquency

Lack of stimulation and life experiences leads to intellectual retardation

The chief attachment bond need not be with a female

Tizard and Hodges did a longitudinal study of 65 children who had been taken into care before 4 months

24 were adopted, 15 were returned to their biological parents and the rest remained

At eight the children who had been adopted had strong bonds within the family but found it hard to make other friendships, often being aggressive and unpopular with their peers

The institution did cause some behavioural problems

Predisposed to emotional instability due to stress in the mother pregnancy

A high proportion of the adopted children said they were attached to their adopted parents

Only 50% who were returned to their natural parents said they were attached to them

Children who had been returned and to a lesser extent the adopted ones reported problems getting on with their brothers and sisters

The restored group were less affectionate than the adopted group

Institutionalised children had poor peer relationships, more likely to be friends with anyone who was nice to them, more argumentative and less popular at school, less likely to have a best friend or relay on others for emotional support

However, only 42 were left at then end leaving a biased sample

Can Children Recover From Maternal Deprivation

Research indicates that children who experience social and emotional deprivation over the first two years can thrive if given a good home environment, which provides plenty of stimulation, love and individual attention

Critical Issue - Day Care

Studies of Childminding

Mayall and Petrie investigated a group 39-registered childminders in inner city London

They interviewed the mothers and minders and observed the children

They found children suffered deprivation from being looked after in crowded, unstimulating conditions

However, there was no control group to compare the findings with

Bryant et al did the same but in the suburbs of Oxfordshire

Children were not given a great deal of attention from the minders who thought there job was to physically care for the children rather than stimulating and encouraging them

There was little play or one-to-one conversation between minder and child

Children settle in another person's home if the mother stays a while but this was not encouraged

A quarter were happy both at the minders and at home

Of the remaining 75%, half were unnaturally quiet, passive and detached at the minders but responsive at home

The other half were detached and unresponsive at both home and at the minders

About a quarter of the children were clearly disturbed and had poor speech

Bryant argued that childminding could be successful if the children are treated well

If they are introduced slowly and offered good quality care with a stimulating environment

Moss argued that improvement could be made by sending childminders on courses

Studies of Day Nurseries

High quality day care supports healthy cognitive and emotional development where as low quality hinders it

Vandell et al found that children in better quality day care were more socially competent and happier at aged 8

Howes et al observed children in good day care were securely attached to carers and mixed will with other children with relatively little aggression and engaged in complex play

Good quality day care is not the only factor, degree of family stress, mothers satisfaction with work, financial pressures and degree of marital disharmony also play a role

Howes said what constitutes good day care: low child-to-caregiver ratio

Carers who are warm, emotionally expressive and responsive to the child's needs

A small staff turnover

Good number of toys, games and activities

Regular discussions with parents about the child's progress

Cognitive Development in a Day Care Setting

Some day care programmes have been specially designed to improve cognitive development in children from deprived homes

Headstart in USA is such a pre-school project

This did aid them cognitively but didn't take into consideration time apart from caregiver

Children in nurseries may benefit cognitively from such arrangements

Anderson conducted a Swedish study where there is good quality day care

He found that when assessed at 8 and 13 those who began day care before they were 1 year old performed better

However, the children who attended day care were from better socio-economic families

Broberg et al found that by aged 8 children in day care were superior in verbal and mathematics to children who had remained at home

Tizard that conversations between mother and child were more complex than between child and caregiver

Emotional Development in a Day Care Setting

Belsky believes that the age at which children enter day care is crucial and that starting before the age of a year can be harmful

Using data from 5 studies he reported that if children under a year old spent more than 20 hours a week in day care it might damage the mother-child relationship causing insecure attachment

Lamb et al analysed factors that are liable to increase insecure attachment:

Gender - boys are more affected than girls

Time spent in day care - % of insecure attachment increases when children spend more than 20 hours a day

Birth order - first-borns are more affected than later born children

Quality of parenting - paid employment causes parents to be stressed, tired, guilty and dissatisfied in their marriage which has a deleterious effect on children

The Effects of Day Care put in the Context of the Family: the NICHD Report

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development looks at variables as physical growth, language development, and reading development and sibling structure

Everything family based is strongly linked to a child's development and is more important than child care arrangements, if the mother is happy then the child is happy

Memory

The Cognitive Approach

Cognition is the actively of internal mental processing

The key assumptions are: behaviour can largely be explained in terms of how the mind operates

The mind works in a manner, which is similar to a computer

Cognitive psychologists see psychology as a pure science

It has bee critised as being to mechanical lacking social, motivational and emotional factors

It has numerous useful applications including advice about the validity of eyewitness testimony

Laboratory experiments - most research takes place here, cause and effect can be determined and it can be controlled but it lacks ecological validity

Field experiments - in natural settings, they have ecological validity but lack control

Natural experiments - cannot separate cause and effect

Case-studies of brain-damaged patients - HM suffered from epilepsy so surgeons removed the hippocampus from both sides of his brain

His personality and intellect remained the same but he memory was affected. His memory prior to the operation was reasonable but not as good as usual. He had all his pervious skills but could not register new experiences; he had no short-term memory. This shows the hippocampus holds the STM

Principles of Memory

William James described three basic principles of memory:

Memory involves association, the more things we can associate with a fact the more likely we are to remember it

Memories are simpler than actual experience, we recall only the most significant things such as an evening out with friends or a row with work colleagues

We remember things that are meaningful, we remember things that are important but forget those that are insignificant such as the exact details on a coin which we have seen thousands of times

The Information Processing View of Memory

All models view memory as a means of processing information

We carry out sort of processing as we store, organise and reconstruct the information we receive

This occurs in three stages: encoding, storage and retrieval

Encoding - converting information that we receive into something that we can represent mentally

Storage - involves holding information over a period of time in preparation for when it is needed

Retrieval - involves recovering stored information

This is very much like information is stored on a computer

Ways of Measuring Memory

There are three main ways in which psychologists have traditionally measured memory performance

Free recall - participants are simply asked how much they can remember from a list of 20 words

Recognition - participants are asked which items they recognise in an array containing items they have previously been exposed as well as other items

Cued recall - participants are given cues and are then asked to recall all the items they can e.g. the first letter of each word on a list

However, all these tasks lack ecological validity

Neisser argues that we should also study memory in real-life settings

The Multi-store Model - Atkinson and Shiffrin

This consists of three memory stores: sensory, short and long-term memory

Information is passed from the sensory store and into the short-term memory and then into the long-term memory store in that order

Much of it will be lost on route but any new information that is retained will always pass through in that way

It is then possible to recall old memories by passing from LTM back into STM

Sensory attention storage

Input retrieval

Forgetting occurs due Output Forgetting occurs

To decay or displacement due to retrieval failure

The sensory memory holds fleeting sights, sounds, smells and so on

It consists of a store for each sense

Whether it goes into the LTM depends on whether is rehearsed or not

Characteristics of Short Term Memory

Storage time - 20-30 seconds

Capacity - Miller suggested that the capacity of STM is "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" if items are chunked more can be stored and is more likely to be passed into the LTM

Mode of forgetting - if the short-term memory is full then old information is replaced and it can only be held for 30 seconds, after this time it decays

Mode of storage - stored acoustically, STM works better with sound than senses and it is much easier to transfer to the LTM

Klasky said that the Short Term Store can be compared to a mental workbench but space is limited and tasks require a lot of concentration

Characteristics of the Long Term Memory

Capacity - unlimited

Duration - memories can last for a long time, some forever, it might be proposed that all memories are never forgotten

Mode of storage - depends on meaningfulness, if you understand it you are likely to remember it, a joke or a story you remember the essence of it

Evaluation

Positives - that there is distinction between long term and short term memory stores

Study of amnesiacs, if it apparent that some types of memory remains intact and others is seriously damaged. Those that retain LTM for events prior to accident and STM for current events but cannot transfer new information to the LTM suggests they are separate

Korsakoff patients suffered memory problems due to alcoholism had poor LTM but normal STM

KF had a motorcycle accident, KF had good long-term recall but could only hold two items in his STM

Physiological evidence, studies of brain-wave activity while recalling information.

Chapman et al gave people standard tasks and asked to recall immediately after they showed unique brain wave activity unlike that when recalling LTM

The serial position effect, when asking people to learn a list of thirty words then recall them they will remember more at the start of the list due to rehearsal, called the primacy effect, and more at the end due to STM, called the regency effect, but fewer in the middle

Negatives

Coding in STM is not always phonetic as we do remember things in ways other that by hearing it

Many things are remembered without rehearsal, which is apparent in everyday life, most memories don't depend on this process

Most psychologists support the idea of a LTM and STM but do not support them being single processes

The Working Memory Model - Baddeley and Hitch

Views the STM as an active store used to hold information, which is being manipulated

Logie refers to working memory as the desktop of the brain, it holds material in our conscious mind long enough for us to manipulate it and use it to make a decision or execute task.

The three separate units in the working memory model are

Phonological loop - holds words and rehearses words which are currently being considered

Later models were represented as consisting of two closely related components concerned with the perception of speech and speech production

It enables us to be able to talk under our breaths and is very important when carrying our a task

Baddelely and Lewis demonstrated the importance of this loop by asking people to decide if sentences were meaningful (the cow ate the grass, the bone ate the dog) under normal conditions and while repeating something meaningless so they could not use their loop. This seriously reduced their ability to do the task.

The loop can hold about 2 seconds worth of information

Baddeley et al asked people to recall sets of five words in the correct order

They found recall depended not on the number of words but on the length of the words

Visuospatial sketchpad allows us to hold visual images temporality

As well as holding static images it enables us to manipulate them and thereby appreciate the layout of a particular area and find our way around

Central executive is the active site of thinking and is virtually the same as attention since it holds and manipulates everything to which we are paying attention at any one time. It has limited capacity since you know that it is not possible to carry out very many conscious activities at once

It receives information from the visuospatial sketchpad, the phonological loop, from perception and long term memory and then shifts, sorts and combines this information until decisions are reached

Evaluation

Positives

This model is simple and yet manages to account for experiences from everyday tasks and findings from laboratory studies

The model involves both brief storage and active processing it is relevant to everyday activities such as mental arithmetic, verbal reasoning and comprehension

In this model rehearsal is seen as optional in helping us to remember rather than essential to it

Because this model does not see STM it can account for why some amnesiacs can lay down some permanent memories

Negatives

We know little about the central executive and it is worth further investigation

Levels of Processing Model - Craik and Lockhart

This doesn't distinguish between the STM and LTM

The tenant of this model is we process information in different ways, the more deeply we process it its more likely to be stored and recalled

Eysenck and Keane summarise the most important assumptions of this model:

The level or depth of processing has an effect on memorability

Deeper levels of analysis produce more elaborate, longer lasting and stronger memory traces

There are three ways of processing the word "long"

Physical features, number of letters, this is very shallow

Acoustic features, what it sounds like, this is deeper than the previous one

Semantic features of the word, its meanings, this is the deepest level of the three

Craik and Tulving gave participants a task to which they had to answer yes and no to. They asked questions about the word to determine the level of processing

Physical processing - has this word got a capital letter

Acoustic processing - does this word rhyme with bad?

Semantic processing - would this word fit into the following sentence?

The questions were asked before they were shown the word so they were likely to only focus on one aspect

One group was then given an unexpected test of recall while another group were prewarned

This latter group recalled more words than the first but they also recalled more semantically processed words than acoustically or physically processed words

Distinctiveness and elaboration

Craik and Tulving proposed that as well as depths of processing the amount of processing was also important

They tested people with simple or complex sentences and asked them to judge whether the word fitted into the sentence

Cued recall was higher for words that has been judged in complex sentences than in simpler ones, indicating that elaboration assists long-term memory

Eysenck argued that distinctiveness of processing is also important in long term recall, in those memory traces and unusual and will be much easier to retrieve

Eysenck and Eysenck found that when people were asked to pronounce phonetically words that would not usually be pronounced in that way i.e. silent letters, they were almost as likely to remember it on a surprise recall test than if it had be processed semantically

Evaluations

Positives

This has had implications for improving memory, rather than repeating information, it is useful to organise and elaborate it so it fits into existing memories and is meaningful

It is also useful to make it distinctive

Negatives

The model is descriptive rather than explanatory, it simply says that deeper processing leads to better recall but it doesn't say why

There is no objective measure of depth of processing

Types of Long Term Memory

Procedural and Declarative Memory

Procedural memory is knowing how e.g. riding a bike

Declarative memories are knowing that and can be divided into semantic and episodic memories

Tulving, semantic memories are facts, rules, concepts and language and are independent of where the memory was learned

Episodic memories are memories of personal events such as the first day of school or what you ate for lunch

Implicit and Explicit Memory

Most types of memory is explicit in that we are aware of them

Memories, which we are unaware but which although not consciously remembered have an effect on recall are known as implicit memory

Tulving et al tested this type of memory by asking people look at a list of words then complete the incompleted words e.g. -elp-o-e

If the word had been included in the previous list then they were more likely to complete the word

Claparede shock hands with amnesiacs, he concealed a sharp pin in his hands causing them to wince with pain

The following day he refused to shake his had but couldn't remember why

He had learned something unconsciously

Theories of Forgetting

It is important to distinguish between availability and accessibility

If items are not encoded or stored then it is not available

It items have been stored but cannot be recalled then they are not accessible

Sometimes the material is altered

If this is to fill in the gaps in order to make sense of events then this is called confabulation

If new memories act on old ones and distort them then this is known as interference

Forgetting from STM

Displacement

Once the STM is full then new information pushes out the old information, which is no longer available

Trace Decay

Memory traces decay over time

Hebb said new memories cause changes in the brain creating a neurological memory trace, which will eventually fade away

If this new information is rehearsed then the trace is reinforced and becomes fixed in the LTM and does not fade, according to Hebb this only happens in the STM

However, it doesn't explain why trivial information stays in the memory

Neither does it say why we don't loose skills such as riding a bike

Bahrick found that people still remember a lot of Spanish 50 years after taking the subject at school

Also you can never prove that anything is permanently lost as you might just not be able to access it

However, it does explain why we forget more as time goes by

Forgetting from LTM

Interference

This says we forget because of competition from new material

This means what happens between learning and recall sometime influences what is and is not available to be remembered

This is common if you have to recall isolated facts

Retroactive interference occurs when new learning interferes with the retrieval of old learning

Proactive interference occurs when old learning interferes with new learning

There are three general principles that govern interference:

The greater the similarity between two sets of material the greater the interference

Meaningless material is more susceptible to interference than meaningful material

The more difficult the distracting task between learning and recall the more it will interfere with learning

Failure of Retrieval

Information may be stored in the memory but we are unable to retrieve it through failure dues to lack of accessibility rather than lack of availability

The effect of context on forgetting is known as context dependent forgetting or cue dependent forgetting

Provide the right cues and we can quickly recover memories

Godden and Baddeley asked diver to learn a list of 40 words either under water or on dry land

Then were then asked to recall them in the same conditions or the opposite condition

They remembered more in the same conditions rather than the opposite condition

This is why police use reconstructions in their investigations

Aggleton and Waskett investigated people's recall of a visit they had made to a museum 6 or 7 years ago, which had incorporated smells

Three groups filled out a questionnaire about the museum on two occasions

The first group filled out the first questionnaire in the presence of Viking smells then in the presence of ordinary smells

The second group had the unrelated smells first then the Viking smells second

The third group had no smells

The first group showed best recall on their first go, the second group showed best recall on their second go and the third group showed the worst recall of both of them

Recall is also impaired if we are in a different state or mood, mood dependent forgetting or state dependent forgetting

Bower showed when asking depressed people about their past lives then tend to recall sad and unhappy events

Also if you learn something when drunk then you recall better when drunk again instead of sober

Victims of violent crimes have trouble recalling details because they are far less emotionally aroused

Emotional Factors in Forgetting

Out memory for past events is affected by emotional significance of those events to us personally

Sometimes the effect is one of enhancement such as in flashbulb memory, in others it is inhibited as in repression

Flashbulb Memories

The capacity for remembering trivial aspects of the situation when important emotional news events occur was labelled flashbulb memory by Brown and Kulik

We cannot remember details of the event, just trivial details of our own lives when we learn the news

Brown and Kulik proposed it is qualitatively different in the way in which the memory is stored in the neural pathway of the brain creating a memory trace that is unusually clear, long lasting, detailed and accurate

This is a special mechanism that is triggered only be events which are very emotionally shocking and which holds great personal significance for the person

Colegrove asked Americans to remember exactly what they were doing when they heard Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated, the event occurred some 33 years later

Of 179 people asked 127 could give an exact account

Brown and Kulik said of the people they asked almost everyone knew where they were when John F.Kennedy was assassinated

They also found black Americans had more memories for the death of Martin Luther King than white Americans

Neisser and Harsch asked a group of Americans to complete a questionnaire concerning how they had heard about the Challenger disaster the day after it happened, this was repeated 3 years later

The findings showed that considerable forgetting had occurred with only half the details being remembered

Repression

Repression is an ego-defensive mechanism, a way of protecting the ego from information it would rather ignore

This has been adapted to be motivated forgetting which included a variety of unpleasant reasons why we forget including embarrassment, guilt, shock and avoidance of humiliation

Experiments have been done where words have been learnt either under anxiety-provoking situations or free from anxiety

There are few differences between the two because the experiment couldn't replicate the painful incidents involved in some clinical cases

Myers and Brewin compared females who were repressors (low anxiety, high defensiveness), those who were in high anxiety and low in defensiveness and those who were low in anxiety and low in defensiveness

They found that repressors took longer than either of the other two to recall unhappy childhood memories

However, the whole point of repression blocks traumatic memories, which cannot be recalled under normal conditions

False Memory Syndrome - Beth Rutherford

Eyewitness Testimony

Reconstructive Memory

We store memory in the form of schemas, it is an organised cluster of knowledge about a particular object or sequence of events, and one specific type in relation to people is stereotypes

Stereotypes provide explanations of the world and can influence the ways in which as interpret and remember events

Synder and Uranowitz asked 200 people to read about Betty K, saying that she never had a steady boyfriend she did go out on dates

Half were then told she got married and half were told she became a lesbian

Then were then given multiple-choice questions about facts of the history.

Those who were told she was a lesbian were quite likely to recall that she never went out on dates

This indicates that we remember facts consistent with the stereotypes

Bartlett asked British students to remember and recall the War of the Ghosts

Most omitted place names and did not mention ghosts and altered other details

This shows that memory is never entirely accurate

Face Recognition

When people are show a large number of unfamiliar faces their ability to recognise ones seen earlier is extremely high

However, there are a large number of mistaken identities as highlighted in the Devlin Report

People find it hard to recognise strange faces when the conditions are different or presented in still form

We find it difficult to identify a person we have only seen briefly yet eyewitness testimony involves identifying someone in poor conditions

Identikits have problems because we recognise someone face over all not feature by feature

It is not suppressing that people find if difficult to identify someone from such a picture

Bruce and Valentine tested people ability to recognise someone's face by attaching lights to the face and filming in the dark

Participants could easily recognise facial expressions even recognise individuals

The Word of Loftus

She claimed that eyewitness testimony was unreliable for a variety of reasons:

Memory is vulnerable to suggestion

Memory suffers from the effects of time

What we perceive is affected by the amount of stress we are under

Memory is affected by weather and light

Memory is affected by our own selectivity

The Effects of Leading Questions

Loftus and Palmer showed people a car accident and different groups were asked the same questions but the word collided was changed to smashed, bumped, hit or contacted. They were then asked to estimate the speed. The smashed group said 41 mph and contacted were 32mph

One week later they were asked did you seen any broken glass?

32% of the smashed group said yes

4% of the hit group said yes

2% of the contacted group said yes

Loftus and Zanni asked did you see the broken headlight? 17% said yes

Did you see a broken headlight? 7% said yes

This shows how post-event information can result in information being added to an earlier memory

Loftus own research, which included misinformation, which is blatantly wrong, is unlikely to affect memory

Loftus showed people slides of a man steeling a bright red purse

They were then given information saying the purse was brown

98% of the people said it was red

Stereotypes

A closely related effect is that of confirmation bias, the tendency for people to remember events in a way that conforms to their expectations rather than to what actually happened

Eysenck and Keane reported that students from two universities in the USA, shown a film of a football match involving both universities, showed a strong tendency to report that their opponents had committed many more fouls than their own team

One bias is own-race bias

We find it much easier to identify individuals from our own race than other races

Bothwell analysed the results of 14 lab studies and found both blacks and whites had own-race bias

Identity parades

Research compares the extent to which people can identify someone seen in a stages incident from an identity parade or photo fit

It shows people are more likely to pick someone in clothes similar to suspect rather than height and features

Memon and Wright argued that memories of details various sources can be fused with the original memory

This is called source confusion, once this has happened it is impossible to sort them out into their original forms

What can be done to Improve Witness Reliability?

Using the cognitive interview

The interviewee is asked to reconstruct the context of the incident with internal and external cues

They are encouraged to report everything

They are then asked to do the same from someone else's perspective

Geiselman and Fisher have pioneered this

Improving reliability of identity parades

Use sequential identity parades - Cutler and Penrod showed that showing each member of the parade individually reduced the number of false identifications

Familiarise people with the procedure - witnesses are less nervous and more accurate

Conformity

Conformity can be defined as the convergence of individual's thoughts, feelings or behaviour towards a group norm

This can have a positive or negative effect

Studies of Conformity - in an Ambiguous Situation

Jenness beans in a bottle, individual estimates converged towards the group estimate, this is called informational social influence

Sheriff used the autokinetic effect, participants sat alone in a dark room and were asked to judge how far the light moved. A few days later in groups of 3 they were asked to give their estimates aloud. As they heard one another's estimates their estimates began to converge

Evaluation

Rohrer et al found that participants genuinely believed their group estimate was accurate; a year after the participants still used the group norm. Their judgments were not to avoid embarrassment but their opinion had really changed

Sheriff has been criticized for using an ambiguous situation, very artificial with no physical means of testing reality and no single correct answer

Studies of Conformity - in an Unambiguous Situation

Asch believed that social influence would be eliminated when the task was unambiguous. He used 7 students and one naive participant. They sat around and were asked to judge which line out of three was the same as the test line. 6 gave the wrong answer after giving correct answers.

75% conformed at least once

25% did not deny the evidence of their own eyes

Why do Participants Conform so Easily?

Afraid of looking stupid

Wanting to be liked by everyone

Some were unsure of their own answers

Others doubted the evidence of their own eyes because the majority is normally correct

A majority of 3 increases conformity, after this it doesn't mater

If one confederate answers incorrectly, then conformity drops

If one confederate answers correctly conformity drops

If the task is difficult then conformity rises

Evaluation

Conformity still occurs when the correct answer is obvious

He only used male students, not a reprehensive sample

Done in America in the 1950s when conformity was the norm

Only investigated physical stimuli, did not challenge deeply held beliefs

The participants were in an embarrassing situation with strangers, conformity could be higher with people you know

Lacks ecological validity as conducted under laboratory conductions

Roberson argues it has experimental realism; the participants suffered the stress as they would outside a laboratory

Lacks mundane realism, a real life situation would be much more complex

Participants were deceived about the purpose of the study and they felt uncomfortable or foolish

Participants were all paid and may of felt a need to please

Conformity in Private

Crutchfield looked at over 600 participants. They sat in separate booths and had to answer a series of multiple-choice questions. On a panel in front of them were the answers that other people had given.

46% conformed to the incorrect majority

37% army officers agreed with the majority that they would not make good leaders

58% agreed that free speech is a privilege rather than a right and society should suspend it when it feels threatened

Evaluation

More efficient and ethical than Aschs study as not so embarrassing because it was done in private

Still unethical because they were deceived

7% said they knew what was going on

It used a wider section of population than Asch

Investigated deeply held beliefs

Provides insight into the effect of personality on conformity

Looked at the effect of gender on conformity, women are more likely to conform

The Influence of Social Roles

Zimbardo set up a mock prison with 21 male students, 12 guards and 9 prisoners

Local police arrested the prisoners to make it more real

After 6 days it was stopped and the guards were making the prisoners wake at night and stand to attention for hours

Many prisoners because withdrawn and depressed

They were acting on their social roles rather than their personalities

Evaluation

Deindividuation influences conformity, people loose their personal identity and behave as a member of a group. Wearing a uniform or having a number instead of a name can induce this.

He asked participants to sign an informed consent

He stood by while the guards humiliated the prisoners

In de-briefing sessions, they said they had all learnt a lot about themselves

Festinger argues it was a great story but was not research because he didn't take account of variables

Banuazizi and Mohavedi argued participants were simply role-playing, however, they were still sadistic off camera

Factors Affecting Conformity Rates

Conformity and personality - yielder are more submissive, inhibited, indecisive, lacking insight into their own motivations and behaviour, confused and exploited. Participants who maintained their independence were more efficient, resourceful, masculine and sensuous.

Adorno et al looked at a personality type that produces extreme conformity known as authoritarian personality. Such individuals unquestionably conform, blindly obedient and intolerant of free thinkers

A personality type not likely to conform is one with desire for personal control. Burger and Cooper asked participants to rate cartoons in terms of their funniness in the presence of a confederate who expressed their opinions. People who measured high on need for personal control were less influenced by the confederate

Conformity and culture

Aschs study had been replicated all over the world.

There are two types of cultures, individualistic cultures such as North America and collectivist cultures such as eastern nations such as Japan

Conformity rates were higher in collectively countries, increased by a rate of 37%

Also student conformity rates were higher than with non-students

However, we do not know if they knew each other

In one Japanese study where participants were strangers, conformity was very low

However, when members of a spots club were tested conformity was very high

In collectivist cultures conformity rates depend on the relationship between the participants

Conformity and gender

Sistrunk and McDavid said that the gender studies are bias because they used tasks involving judgments about which men feel more confident

When studies used feminine topics men conformed more than the women

Eagly suggested that women play nurturing roles which require deference and maintenance of group solidarity thus conforming is part of job satisfaction

Conformity and the historical context

Perrin and Spencer replicated Aschs study in Britain and found no evidence of conformity

They argued that Aschs study was a child of its time was it took place in the 1950 when conformity was normal

However, they used engendering students who were confident about their judgments, when a larger range of students were used conformity rose

Why Do People Conform?

Deutsch and Gerard identified two explanations for conformity

Informational influences - the desire to be correct, it is conformity based on out tendency to depend on others as a source of information

Normative influences - the desire to be liked, from an early age we are praised for agreeing with other people and not being different. Normative influences involves altering our behaviour in order to be liked and accepted as a member of the group and to avoid being rejected by them

Other Factors Effecting Conformity

Social pressure - in any situation there is lot of pressure to go along with others and a great deal of conformity is the result of conceding to these pressures

Fear of appearing foolish - people display individualism with certain limits, we dead embarrassment which makes us conform

Mindlessness - a lot of our every day behaviour is carried out on automatic pilot

Three Types of Conformity

Compliance - agreeing with the majority in public while privately holding your own beliefs

Superficial conformity and compliance stops when there are no group pressures

Identification - someone conforms to the demands of a given role in society, e.g. a traffic warden. This spends several aspects of their behaviour

Internalisation - when someone conforms because they truly persuaded that the group is correct so their own belief becomes the group norm, this continues when there is no external pressure to conform

Kelman argued that's conformity serves three purposes:

Group acceptance - as in compliance

Group membership - as in identification

Group acceptance - as in internalisation

Minority Influence

Moscovici argues minority influence cannot be explained in the same way as majority influence

He argues that it is the behavioural style of minorities that leads to conversion

Consistency - members must agree amongst themselves and over a period of time get the majority to question themselves

Flexibility - the minority must not be dogmatic and demonstrate a willingness to negotiate

Relevance - if the minority's views follow current social trends they will be more successful

Studies of Minority Influence

Moscovici when the confederates consistently judged the blue slides as green 8.4% also reported it as green but when one of the confederates were inconsistent it fell to 1.3%

Moscovici concluded that a consistent minority could have a distinct effect. You didn't get just one individual agreeing with the minority, there were 2 distinct groups either no one agreed with the minority or several members did

Nemeth et al duplicated Moscovici study

She agreed that consistency was important but so was flexibility the minority of confederates who were influential said green to the brighter slides and green-blue to the dimmer slides, she concluded they were not perceived as rigid

Mugny found that statements expressed in moderate language rather than slogan like uncompromising language had a much more convincing effect

How Does Minority Influence Operate?

By conversion genuinely changing a persons point of view, as opposed to compliance the mechanism often involved in majority influence

Nemeth suggests that when majorities are faced with minorities consistently sticking to their guns they are puzzled and may lead to a self-questioning process

Nemeth argues that minorities serve a valuable purpose, as they are independent they can force the majority to think more carefully and more openly about group decisions. However some psychologists argue majority and minority influences are the same

Social Impact Theory: Explaining Majority and Minority Influences

Latane and Wolf used social impact theory to explain both minority and majority influences. According to this theory the impact of others on a particular individual is a function of

a) Strength or status - the more competent the source the greater the influence

b) Immediacy - the closer the person or group is the more effect their message will have

c) Number - the greater the number of people the greater degree of influence

Evaluation

Accounts for why minorities and majorities may influence a group while majorities are potentially more powerful due to size. May predict why some people resist group pressure, a group will have less persuasive impact if it is far away from a strong target. If there is one dissenting ally this makes the group weak and conformity rates drop. It is useful in predicting when a group is likely to conform, but does not explain why people conform

Obedience to Authority

Obedience involves doing as you are instructed to do, that is changing your behaviour to fit someone's request. Here the pressure comes from an authority

Obedience to Unjust Commands

Bickman did a series of studies by stopping passers by and instructed them do to things like "pick up my bag" or "give that man a dime"

When a person gave these instructions in civilian clothes a third of people obeyed

When someone in uniform the rate was about 90% gave them

Milgram placed an advert asking for paid volunteers to take part in an experiment at Yale University

Forty male participants took part and were introduced to Mr. Wallace, a fellow participant but actually a confederate

They drew lots to see who were the teacher and learner; Mr. Wallace was always the learner

Mr. Wallace was strapped to an electric chair and had to learn word pairs

For every one he got wrong he got a shock increasing in intensity

Mr. Wallace became increasingly nervous and expressed reservations saying he had a heart condition

The generator was clearly marked with which volts would cause damage even death

When participants were increasingly disturbed, a serious of prods were used such as please continue

Not a single person said they would deliver the maximum shock

Not a single participant stopped before 300 volts, a sever shock and 65% went to the end

At the end all participants were debriefed and introduced to the learner to assure them no one got hurt

They were told their behaviour was completely normal

74% of people said they had learned something of personal importance, one person regretted taking part

Variations on Milgrams First Experience

The two reduced obedience - making learners plight more obvious, if the victim was only a meter away rates dropped to 40% or if the teacher had to force the learners hand on the shock plate it was 30%

Reducing degree of authority or respectability of the experiment, if the study was in a run-down offices rate was 48%, order given by phone rates were 20% as participants cheated by saying they had given it when they had not, if experimenter was a member of the public rates were 20% and if a confederate refused to give shocks the rate was 10%.

The Validity of the Research

Some critics argued that's participants were not fooled by the procedure and did not believe they were administering electric shock though this appeared unlikely

Rosenhan replicated the study and 70% of participants believed it were genuine

Participants were paid which reflects obedience to a contract, however this does reflect real life situations

Lacked mundane realism because people don't order you to inflict pain

Milgram argued it did because people believed it to be real

The Ethics of the Research

Most participants were extremely distressed during the procedure.

Milgram did not take adequate measures to protect his participants from the stress and emotional conflict they experienced

Milgram argued people were thoroughly debriefed and 84% they did not regret taking part, that they had gained valuable self-knowledge. An independent psychiatrist interviewed 40 people and found no harm

Deception was involved, as participants were not told the true purpose of the study so unable to provide fully informed consent

However, presumptive consent was gained which was informed consent from random members of the public

In Milgram study people may of felt they could not withdraw from the experiment

However, this experiment was carried out before existing guidelines were written

Cross-cultural Studies of Obedience

Milgrams study has been widely replicated but modifications were made so not comparable

The victims were different as one was well dressed and another was a longhaired student

The maximum voltage also varied

Also the punishment administered was very different, some verbal ect.

They do show that if people were remained that they were responsible for their own actions then they didn't used the maximum voltage

Smith and Bond drew two conclusions: first people from industrialized countries will carry out orders even if they harm others

Secondly never is the obedience blind or unthinking, levels of obedience vary depending on context

Obedience to Social Roles

We are more likely to obey police officers or our boss rather than a member of the public

Hofling et al investigated hospital obedience

They arranged Dr Smith telephoned twenty-two nurses at different hospital

After admitting that he had failed to give a certain named patient their medication and Dr Smith instructed the nurse to administer a 20 mg dose of a drug called Astroten even though it is clearly labelled maximum dose 10 mgs do not exceed the stated dose

Firstly, people are not meant to take instructions over the phone

Secondly, the required doe is stated twice on the container

Thirdly, instructions should not be given from a doctor the nurse doesn't know

21 out of the 22 nurses immediately prepared to obey

Why Do People Obey?

Milgram identified three main features of the situations, which were conducive to obedience

) An environment that encourages obedience, from an early age was are taught to obey those in authority

2) Graduated commitment, first instructions were not unreasonable, it becomes very difficult to make a decision as to when to stop without appearing to behave in an unreasonable way

3) The angentic state, the state of mind that often results from situation in which we act as an agent for someone else, they are not responsible for their actions

Other factors

4) Social roles, most social roles demand some levels of obedience

5) Early socialization, we are taught from early age to be polite and obey those in authority, the more strict these instructions and the more we are punished for violating them the more likely we are to obey unquestioningly those in higher authority

6) Social pressure, there are sets of social pressure that keeps us in our place like the fear of embarrassment

Implications of the Research

Milgram made the point that normal people can act callous and inhumane as a result of social pressure

However, most people make the fundamental attribution error, this is the overestimation of the importance of personality as the cause of behaviour while underestimating the power of the situation to determine actions

This is shown when people showed distress in giving electric shocks and tried to cheat

The dilemma for society is to have obedience for young people but to leave enough leeway for this to be challenged

Total obedience can lead to dangerously blind obedience

However, Milgrams studies do not offer a complete answer

It does suggest a need for vigilance in which we allow to be authorities over us

Resisting Obedience

Disobedience in a real life setting

Gamson et al set up a public relations firm where people were employed to collect opinions on moral standards

9 participants met in a hotel and were paid to engage in a discussion, which would be videotaped

They were asked to discuss Mr. C who managed a service station but behaved immorally by living with a young woman when they were not married. Because of this he was unfit to be their representative. He discussed against high petrol priced and was suing for unfair dismissal

They we asked to discuss it from the point of view that they were disgusted by his behaviour and soon realized they were producing a tape to support the oil company

Disobedience was almost 100% with threatening to confiscate videotapes and expose the oil company

All but 4 of the groups refused to sign giving permission to use the videotape in a trial

However, ethically, many people reported feeling stressed and anxiety

The researchers noted this and stopped it after 33 people instead of 80

Cause of Reactance

The key differences between the two studies are:

Being in a group - Milgram tested his participants individually where as in Gamsons they were in a group, the presence of others can provide the courage to act in accordance with conscience

The legitimacy of the authority - the people questioned by the oil company questioned the right of the market consultant to tell them what to do

The threat to freedom - the participants in Gamsons study resented attempts to prevent them expressing their true opinions

Destructive Obedience: Resisting its Effects

General principles that help us resistance of social pressure to obey an illegitimate authority

) Reminding people that they are responsible for their own actions

2) Emphasizing that blind submission to a malevolent authority is inappropriate

3) Questioning whether authority figures are really in the best position to judge what is appropriate and what is not by considering their motives

4) Simply being aware of the dangers of blind obedience so that any decisions are only made after due deliberation

In conclusion, the power authorities command is considerable but not irresistible

Ethics in Psychological Research

Ethics is the moral behaviour among professionals

Ten questionable practices in social research

) Involving people without their knowledge or consent

2) Coercing them to participate

3) Withholding information about the true nature of the experiment

4) Otherwise deceiving the participants

5) Inducing them to commit acts demising their self esteem

6) Violating rights of self-determinism

7) Exposing participants to physical or mental stress

8) Invading their privacy

9) Withholding benefits from some participants

0) Not treating participants fairly or without consideration or with respect

The British Psychology Society set these out

These ensure the protection of participants and encourage proper concern for the impact of the research

Summery of the Ethical Principles for Conditioning Research with Human Participants

) Introduction, mutual respect between investigator and participant and clear conditions under which psychological research is acceptable

2) General, consider the ethical implications and the impact of the research, the best judge of this are members from the population

3) Consentobtain full consent from participants in project, if full disclosure of the aim is not possible additional safeguards are needed for their protection. Special care should be taken with children, elderly, or physically or mentally disabled people

4) Deception, participants should not be deliberately deceived as to the nature and intention of the research. Only if it is strongly scientifically or medical reasons to be deceived. At all times it is necessary to consider how participants will be affected later

5) Withdrawal from the investigation, investigators must make it clear that participants can withdraw at any time, after debriefing participants should have the right to destroy their data

6) Confidentiality, participants data will remain confidential and remain anonymous, otherwise in breach of the data protection act

7) Debriefing, discuss procedures and give participants sufficient information so they can understand the experiment

8) Protection of participants, investigators should protect participants from mental and physical harm, the risk should be no greater than normal life. Participants should reveal any medical conditions

9) Observational research, respect for peoples well being and privacy, unless consent is gained, observations should only be made in public places

0) Giving advice, if a participant has a particular physical or psychological problem the researcher may give advice even professional help

1) Colleagues, researchers should monitor each other and if ethics are not being considered properly then they should be encouraged to reconsider their research.

Deception

It is not always possible to give precise details of the nature and aims of the study and a cover story becomes necessary

Menges reviewed 1000 American studies and found 3% involved no deception at all

Eysenck suggested that before deception is used, researchers should consider three factors:

The potential harm - cause by the deception

The importance of the research - in terms of scientific value, can it be justified

The alternatives - only when there are no viable alternatives to deception

Possible alternatives

Role-play and stimulation in which participants are informed as to the purpose of the research and asked to stimulate being a participant.

Aronson argues it cannot work, as realism is lost, once people know they are being observed they act in a sociably desirable way

Horowitz and Rothchild replicated Asch study and found conformity was zero

In replication of Zimbados study the guards were excessively brutal and prisoners were stressed

What can investigators do?

Consult with others

Milgram piloted his experiment by consulting 14 psychological students and 40 professors to estimate how far people would go, even though the estimations were inaccurate they were consulted

Introduce safeguards

Essentially when trying to decide whether or not to conduct the research, the following should be consulted: whether the participants will be required to do something they would not normally do

The degree of inconvenience and of emotional involvement

How participants are likely to be affected later by the knowledge that they have been deceived

Debrief carefully

Participants should always be debriefed and care should be taken in cases of serious deception

They should be reassurance and a full explanation of the research

Informed consent

Participants should be given as much information as possible about the research and aims so they can give their full informed consent

Piliavin carried research in which a confederate collapsed on an underground train and observations were made of the extent to which members of the public went to their assistance

People were not even aware they were in a study let alone able to give their consent

There are three ways in which this can be addressed:

Presumptive consent, ask members of the populations similar to the participants if they would consider doing it, this was obtained by Milgram

Prior general consent, ask the participants if they are willing to be mislead, volunteers are asked to fill in a questionnaire with the category research in which you will be mislead about the purpose until afterwards

Seek permission retrospectively, during debriefing participants are asked if they want to remove their data

Protection of participants

Investigators have an obligation to treat participants with the greatest of respect

Milgram used post-experimental questionnaires to ascertain the long-term effects that his research had had on the participants

84% said they were glad or very glad to of taken part

.3% said they were sorry or very sorry to of taken part

80% believed that there should be more research of this type

74% believed they reaped personal benefits from it

Participants put in stressful or other harmful situation should be able to contact the researcher after

When discussing results with participants it should be done with care and sensitivity

Research Methods

The Scientific Approach

A hypothesis is a formal and unambiguous statement about what you believe to be true. It is stated with the purpose of attempting to prove or disprove it.

The Experimental Method - Quantitative

This is the method most used, it is the most scientific because it is claimed to be highly objective and systematic

Dependent and Independent Variables

The experimenter directly manipulates one of the variables, this is called the independent variable

The other variable is the one that is affected by the independent variable, this is called the dependent variable

Experimental Control

We control all the other variables to make he experiment more scientific and only change one variable

Confounding Variables

The variables that are controlled are called confounding variables. These are variables that may get in the way of the link between the independent and dependent variables. The presence of confounding variables has grave consequences because it prevents us from being able to interpret our findings. Confounding variables must be controlled

Participants and Settings

The main way of guarding against, for example one group having high intelligence and the other having low, is by means of randomisation. This is where the participants are allocated at random to the conditions

Advantages of the Experimental Method

The greatest advantage of the experimental method is that it allows us to establish cause and affect relationships

The other major advantage is that it can be easily replicated because it has been conducted in a carefully controlled way

Disadvantages of the Experimental Method

Because it is a laboratory experiment it is very artificial

However, in a scientific investigation it is necessary to create artificial circumstances in order to isolate the hypothesised effect. If we study cognitive processes then the artificiality of the laboratory is unlikely to affect the result. However, if we are studying social behaviour the issue does matter.

Carlsmith drew a distinction between mundane realism and experimental realism

Mundane realism refers to experiments in which the situation is set up to resemble situations often found in everyday life

Experimental realism refers to experiments in which the situation is artificial but the set-up is interesting enough to produce full involvement from participants

Milgrams study had high experimental realism which compensates for the lower mundane realism

Experimental realism may be more important than mundane in producing findings that generalise to real-life situations

The Effects of Being Observed

One reason why laboratory experiments are artificial is because the participants in these experiments are aware they are being observed

Silverman said that the only time a participant would behave, as one is if they don't know they are one

One consequence of being observed is that the participants try to work out the experimenter's hypothesis and act accordingly

Orne emphasised the importance of demand characteristics, which are the totality of cues, which convey an experimental hypothesis to the participants

Another consequence of participants knowing they are being observed is evaluation apprehension

Rosenberg defined this as an active anxiety-toned concern that the participant will win a positive evaluation from the experimenter or at least that the participant will provide no grounds for a negative one

Sigall, Aronson and Van Hoose contrasted the effects of demand characteristics and evaluation apprehension on the task of copying telephone numbers. The experimenter told them doing the task for the second time he expected their performance to be slower. They actually preformed faster showing a preference to evaluation apprehension over demand characteristics

In a different experiment the experimenter told participants he expected them to be slower and that those who were faster were obsessive-compulsives. This time they were slower due to wanting to be evaluated positively.

Experiments and Ethical Issues

In an experiment there is a danger that the participants will be willing to behave in a laboratory in ways they would not behave elsewhere. For example Milgram when he changed the setting to a run-down building the level of obedience dropped from 65% to 45%

Another ethical issue is people right to withdraw because people might feel reluctant to do so due to causing disruption to the experimenter's research

Field Experiments

Experiments that are not conducted in the laboratory but in natural settings are called field experiments

Field experiments involve direct control of the independent variable by the experimenter and also direct allocation of participants to conditions.

Field experiments are also reasonably well controlled which means that they can be replicated

Shortland and Straw arranged fro a man and a woman to stage an argument

When the bystanders thought the fight involved strangers 65% of them intervened against 19% when they thought it was a married couple

Laboratory vs. Field Experiments

The greatest advantage of laboratory over field is they are easier to eliminate confounding variables in the laboratory

It is also much easier to obtain large amounts of very detailed information from participants in the laboratory

Also it is not possible to introduce bulky equipment into a natural setting

Also participants in a field experiment are likely to realise they are in an experiment if information is attempted to be gained from them

The behaviour of the participants is often more typical in a field experiment

Internal validity refers to the validity of the experiment within the confines of the context in which it is carried out

External validity refers to the validity of an experiment outside the research situation itself

Laboratory experiments tend to be high in internal validity but low in external validity, field experiments are visa versa

Field Experiments and Ethical Issues

The main ethical issue relates to the principle of voluntary informed consent but most field experiments do not lend themselves to obtaining informed consent

Another ethical issue is it is not possible in most field experiments to tell the participants that they have the right to withdraw and it is difficult to offer debriefing

Quasi-experiments

These are experiments where there is not control over the independent variable

There are two main ways in which quasi-experiments tend to fall short of being true experiments

Direct manipulation, the manipulation of the independent variable is often not under the control of the experimenter

Random allocation, it is usually not possible to allocate the participants randomly into groups

Studies in which pre-existing groups are compared often qualify as quasi-experiments

Examples would be comparing the learning performance of males and females

Natural Experiments

Here we make used of naturally occurring events for research purposes

Adams and Adams carried out a natural experiment following the eruption of Mount St. Helens. They were able to asses the inhabitants of the nearby small town of Othello before and after it happened

There was a 50% increase in mental health appointments, a 198% increase in stress-aggravated illness and a 235% increase in diagnoses of mental illness

Advantages of Natural Experiments

Participants in natural experiments are often not aware their taking part so are more likely to behave normally

They allow us to study the effects on behaviour of independent variables that it would be unethical for the experimenter to manipulate

Limitations of Natural Experiments

Participants have not been assigned at random to condition

It is usually possible to check whether the participants in the various conditions are comparable, if groups do differ then this complicates the findings

In natural experiments it is hard to know exactly what aspects of the independent variable have caused any effect on behaviour

Natural Experiments and ethical Issues

There are fewer ethical issues with natural experiments than other kinds of research

The experimenter is not responsible for the fact that the participants have been exposed to the independent variable

There is a question of voluntary informed consent as participants are not often aware they are taking part

Experiments need to be sensitive to the situation in which the participants find themselves

Limitations of Correlation Studies

It is hard to establish cause and effect

Advantages of Correlation Studies

Correlations can be looked at to see if there is an association between two variables

Also it is often to obtain large amounts of data on a number of variables much more easily than in other experimental designs

Correlation research can produce definite information about causal relationships if there is no association between two variables

Correlation Studies and Ethical Issues

There is the possibility that the public at large will misinterpret the findings from correlation studies

The key ethical issue here is for the researcher to be fully aware of the social sensitivity of the findings that he or she has obtained and the lack of causal evidence

Naturalistic Observations

These are designed to examine behaviour without the experimenter interfering with it in any way

Developed by ethologists such as Lorenz they study non-human animals in their natural habitat rather than in the laboratory and discover much about its behaviour

Anderson observed children in a park and noticed it was rare to see a child under the age of 3 wonder further than 200 feet from their mother then return and touch her, this shows attachment

Intrusion

Naturalistic observation is to avoid intrusion

Dane defined it as anything that lessens the participant's perception of an event as natural

There will also be intrusion if the participants are aware that they are being observed

When the experimenter is in the room the experimenter may try to become a familiar and predictable part of the situation before any observations are recorded

Advantages of Naturalistic Observation

The method provides a way of observing people behaving naturally so there are no demand characteristics and evaluation apprehension

Many studies based on naturalistic observations provide richer and fuller information than typical laboratory experiments

Sometimes possible to use naturalistic observations when other methods cannot be used

There are some participants who do not cope well with other forms of research such as children and non-humans

Limitations of Naturalistic Observations

The experimenter has no control over the situation, which can make it hard to decide what caused the participants to act like they did

The participants are often aware they are being observed which results in their behaviour not being real

There can be problems with reliability with observational measures taken because of bias on the part of the observer

Correlating the observational records of two different observers can assess reliability, this produces a measure of inter-rater or inter-observer reliability

There are often problems of replication with studies of naturalistic observation

Naturalistic Observations and Ethical Issues

Participants do not realise that their behaviour is being observed, this is called undisclosed observation

Because of this they cannot give voluntary informed consent

Also confidentiality could be breached, as people knew where the researcher did their research

The observer might change the participants without prior consent

Interviews and Questionnaire Surveys

They vary, they could be conducted face to face or require written answers

Non-Directive Interviews

Possess the least structure, as the person being interviewed is free to discuss anything

The role of the interviewer is to guide the discussion and encourage the interviewee to be more forthcoming.

This is used to treat mental disorders but has little relevance to research

Informal Interviews

The interviewer listens patiently and focuses mainly on encouraging the interviewee to discuss issues in depth or detail

However, there are certain general topics that the interviewer wishes to explore

Guided Interviews

Possess a little more structure than informal interviews

Before hand the interviewer identifies the issues to be addressed

Further decisions are made about how and when to raise these issues

Structured but open-ended interviews

Such a procedure prevents the interviewee from sidetracking the interview and taking control of it away from the interviewer

Clinical Interviews

Resembles the structured but open-ended interview

Used to assess patients with mental disorders

The participants are asked the same questions but the choice of follow-up questions depends on the answers that are given

Fully Structured Interviews

A standard set of questions are asked in the same fixed order to all interviewees and they are only allowed to choose their answers from a restricted set of possibilities

Questionnaire Surveys

The advantage of this method is that large amounts of data can be collected at relatively little cost

However, the method is clearly only suitable for certain kinds of participants

Advantages of Interviews

Relatively unstructured interviews have the advantages that they are responsive to the personality interests and motivations if the interviewee

They can reveal more about the interviewee than more structured interviews

It is easy to compare the more structured interviews

They are also more reliable in that two different interviewers are likely to obtain the same responses

The is a reasonable probability of being able to replicate or repeat the findings from a study

It is also usually fairly easy to analyse the data obtained

Limitations of Interviews

The kinds of information obtained from different interviewees vary in an unsystematic way

Date from unstructured interviews tend to be hard to analyse

With the unstructured interview what the interviewee says is determined in a complex way by the interaction between them and the interviewer

The personality and other characteristics of the interviewer typically influences the course of the interview, this is called interviewer bias

This type of influence by the interviewer means that the data obtained can be viewed as unreliable

With the structured interview what the interviewee says may be constrained and artificial

Social desirability bias is when people want to present a favourable impression of them, which may distort their answers

Using a lie scale can tell if a person is going to be honest

We can only extract information of which the interviewee is consciously aware

Many interviewers lack some of the skills necessary to conduct interviews successfully

Interviews and Ethical Issues

They often concern personal issues, which raise the issue about confidentiality

Interviewees may be aware that several other interviewees are being asked the same questions and that there answers will be compared. As a result they may feel they must answers embarrassed questions in order not to spoil the research study

Aims and Hypotheses

The aims are usually more general than the hypotheses and they help to explain the reasons for the investigators deciding to test some specific hypothesis

The aims tell us why a given study is being carried out where as the hypothesis tells us what the study is designed to test

Hypothesis is known as the experimental/alternative hypothesis

The null hypothesis states that the independent variable will have no effect on the dependent variable

The key reasons for a null hypothesis are because the null is much more precise than the hypothesis because you can never prove something, it can only be disproved

Most experimental hypothesis predict that a given independent variable will have some specific effect on a given dependent variable

Non-Experimental Research

It is useful to have a hypothesis but these will not identify a potential causal relationship

A one-tailed or directional hypothesis predicts the nature of the effect of the I.V. on the D.V.

A two-tailed or non-directional hypothesis predicts that the I.V. will have an effect one the D.V. but the direction of the effect is not specified

Research Designs

If we compare two groups with respect to a given I.V. it is essential to make sure that the two groups do not differ in any other important way

There are three main types of experimental design:

Independent design: each participant is selected for only one group

Matched participants design: each participant is selected for only one group but the participants are matched for relevant factors

Repeated measures: each participant appears in both groups so that there are exactly the same participants in each group

Independent design - done by random allocation

Matched participants design - we make use of information about the participants ability levels, we use this information to make sure that the two groups were matched in terms of range of ability

Repeated measures design - every participants are in both groups

The main problem with this is order effects, either learning or fatigue

Counterbalancing - it is the best way of preventing order effects from disrupting finding, using two groups

One group receives the experimental treatment while the other receives nothing, this is the control group

The other group is called the experimental group