Notes on Important Psychology Experiments and Theories.

by jackahinchliffe (student)

Pavlov (1927) Learning – What is Classical Conditioning

Method: Children heard stories about the toys that male and female characters enjoyed playing with. Some of the characters were described as liking gender-stereotyped activities, while other characters were describes as non-gender-stereotyped activities. The children were then asked to predict what other toys each character would or would not play with.

Martin (1989) Sex and Gender - Gender schema theory of gender development

Conclusion: Older children have a more flexible view of gender than younger children do.

Results: The younger children used only the sex of the character to decide what other toys he or she would or would not like. For example, they would say that a boy character would like to play with trucks even if they had been told that the boy liked playing with dolls. The older children, however, considered both the sex of the character and the other toys the character liked playing with. For example, they would say that a girl who liked playing with trucks would be less likely to want to play with dolls.

Aim: to show that children’s understanding of gender becomes less stereotyped and therefore more flexible as they get older.

He noticed that when the dog he was studying heard the food buckets being brought, it started to salivate. He knew that salivation is a reflex response; it is an automatic response that should usually occur when food is in the mouth.

Pavlov set up a series of trials over the next few days. Each time the dog was fed, a bell was rung for a few seconds and the amount of saliva produced was measured. Then the bell was rung and no food was given. He discovered that the amount of saliva produced on this trial was the same as when food was given.

So, Pavlov realised that dogs had learned to salivate to a new event – the sound of the food buckets. This encouraged him to investigate whether dogs could learn to salivate to other events.

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He would place a hungry rat in a box. The rat would product a variety of actions such as sniffing, exploring and grooming. By accident it would press the lever and a pellet of food would immediately drop into the food tray. Every time the lever was pressed the behaviour of ‘lever pressing’ was positively reinforced by a food pellet.

Skinner introduced the idea of reinforcement to the Law of effect. He said that all behaviour is learned from the consequences of that behaviour. He called this operant conditioning because the animal or human produces a behaviour that is voluntary, so it ‘operates’ on the environment. The consequence of the particular behaviour produced by the animal will be to either increase or decrease the likelihood of the behaviour being repeated.

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Skinner (1938) Learning – Classical Conditioning

Conclusion: Watson and Rayner showed that fear responses could be learned and even very young children could learn in the way suggested by classical conditioning.

Method: Albert was 11 months old. He seemed to like a white laboratory rat and had no fear of white furry objects. In the conditioning trials the rat was shown to Albert and, as he reached for it, a metal bar was hit very hard with a hammer, behind Albert’s back. This noise was done several times.

Aim: ...

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Skinner (1938) Learning – Classical Conditioning

Conclusion: Watson and Rayner showed that fear responses could be learned and even very young children could learn in the way suggested by classical conditioning.

Aim: to see if the emotional response of fear could be conditioned in a human being.

Results: After several times, when the rat was presented again, Albert screamed and tried to get away. He did this even though the bar was not hit by the hammer and there was a no loud noise. Albert also screamed when he was shown a Santa Clause mask and a fur coat.

Watson and Rayner (1920) Learning – What is classical conditioning?

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Perry and Bussey (1979) Sex and Gender – Social Learning theory of gender development

Results: Freud claimed that Hans was experiencing the Oedipus complex. He unconsciously desired his mother and saw his father as a rival and feared castration. He displaced the fear of his father onto horses. The white horse with black around the mouth represented his father who has a dark beard. His fear of being bitten by a horse represented his fear of castration and his fear of horses falling down was his unconscious desire to see his father dead.

Freud (1909) Sex and gender – Psychodynamic theory of gender development

Method: Children were shown films of role models carrying out activities that were unfamiliar to the children. In one condition, all of the male role models played with one activity while all the female role models play with the other activity. In the second condition some of the male role models and some of the female role models played with one activity while the other male and female role models played with the other activity.

Aim: To show that children imitate behaviour carried out by the same-sex role.

Conclusion: This supports Freud’s ideas about the Oedipus complex.

Results: In the first condition, the children imitated what they had seen the same-sex role model doing. The boys chose the activity the male role model had played while the girls chose the activity the female models had played with. In the second condition, there was no difference in the activities the boys and girls chose.

Conclusion: when children are in an unfamiliar situation they will observe the behaviour of the same-sex role models. This gives them information about whether the activity is appropriate for their sex. If it is, the child will imitate that behaviour.

Method: Hans’s father wrote to Freud to tell him about Hans’s development, at the age of four Hans developed a phobia of horses. He was frightened that a horse might bite him or fall down. He was particularly afraid of large white horses with black around their mouth. Freud analysed this information

Aim: to investigate little Hans’s phobia

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Bandura et al. (1963) aggression – Social learning theory

Young et al. (1959) Aggression – Biological explanation

Charles Whitman, Aggression – what is aggression?

Aim: to see what effect hormones have on aggressive behaviour.

Conclusion: Children will copy how they see others behave

Results: the children who have witnessed the aggressive behaviour showed more aggressive behaviour than the children who had seen none.

Method: researchers divided 96 children into four groups, three of which were shown someone throwing, kicking and punching the ‘bobo’ doll. Their own behaviour was then observed

Aim: to find out if three – to six – year old children would imitate the aggressive behaviour they see role models performing towards an inflatable ‘bobo’ doll

Conclusion: testosterone does seem to play a vital part in aggressive behaviour

Results: the high levels of testosterone during pregnancy made the females grow up to behave like male monkey – they engaged in rough and tumble play and challenged the males for dominance in their troop

Method: Young injected pregnant rhesus monkeys with testosterone and observed the levels of aggression as their offspring matured.

After he was killed by the Texas rangers, a post-mortem revealed that he has a tumour pressing on the part of the brain that causes aggressive behaviour, the limbic system.

In 1966, Charles Whitman climbed up the clock tower at the University of Texas and shot 12 people with a high-powered rifle. This was the last of a series of very aggressive acts he committed throughout his adult life.

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Latane and Darley (1968) Social Influence – -Bystander Intervention

Latane’ et al. (1979) Social Influence – Social Loafing

Aim: to see whether being in a group would have an effect on how much effort participants put into a task.

Zimbardo (1969) Social Influence – Deindividulisation

Conclusion: if there are other people around you, it will make it less likely that you will react in an emergency.

Results: Of the participants, 75% of those sitting alone went to tell someone about the smoke within 6 minutes, whereas only 38% of those in groups of three did.

Method: They had participants sit in a room either alone or in threes while completing a questionnaire. While they were doing this smoke began pouring into the room.

Aim: to see if people are less likely to react in an emergency situation when there are others present.

Conclusion: people put less effort into doing something when they know others are contributing to the same task than they do when they are the only one.

Results: The larger the group size the less noise per participant made.

Method: Researchers asked 84 participants to shout and clap as loudly as they could while they were alone or in groups up to six. Each participant wore headphones so they couldn’t hear the others.

Conclusion: The Deindividulisation caused by living in a big city leads to an increase in anti-social behaviour.

Results: immediately people began stealing parts off the car in NY, and within two weeks there was very little of it left. In Palo Alto, the only time the car was touched was when someone lowered the bonnet to stop the engine getting wet when it was raining.

Method: he parked a car in each place with its bonnet up, as if it had broken down, and observed what people did as they passed.

Aim: to see if people in a big city behave in a more anti-social way than people in a small town

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Conclusion: People are prepared to obey quite extraordinary orders if they think the person giving them is in a figure of authority.

Results: Prior to the experiment Milgram asked psychiatrists how far they thought the participants would go. The consensus was that no more that 1% of them would deliver a 450V shock. However despite the participants suffering a lot of distress, they all delivered 300Vand 65% of them went all the way to 450V.

Method: Forty male participants volunteered to take part in what they thought was an experiment about memory and learning. In this experiment they were made to believe that they were giving an electric shock to a ‘learner’ every time he got the answer wrong. The learner was an actor and the shocks weren’t real. However the participant, who played the role of the teacher, didn’t know this because of how convincing the experiment was. The participant was sat in front of a shock generator that had 30 switches marked from 30V up to 450V.

The learner had to remember word pairs and the participant had to give them a shock that increased in severity with each mistake the learner made. As the shocks increased the learner groaned in pain, protest and eventually yell had to be released. This was just a recording. After doing a lot of yelling, the participant then fell silent. This made the participant want to stop, so the experimenter would give them verbal prods such as “the experiment requires that you carry on”

Conclusion: the participants used other people’s opinions to help them form a judgement in an ambiguous situation.

Results: Individually the participants gave a variety of estimates, which differed quite widely from each other’s. However, after being allowed to undertake the same task in groups of three, their estimates became more similar until they were finally very close.

Method: he asked participants to estimate how far a spot of light moved when they were sitting in an otherwise completely dark room. In fact the light didn’t move at all, but owing an optical illusion called the autokinetic effect it did appear to.

Aim: Milgram wanted to see how far people would go to obey an unreasonable order

Milgram (1963) Social Influence - Obedience

Sherif (1939) Social Influence - Conformity

Aim: to discover the effect on judgement of listening to other people.