Discuss research relating to bystander behaviour.
Lyndsey Paterson Discuss research relating to bystander behaviour (24 marks) The murder of Kitty Genovese and the bystander behaviour that was apparent that night triggered a great deal of research to explain bystander behaviour. Latane & Darley suspected that the fact that the number of possible helpers was so large might actually have contributed to their lack of intervention. They processes that might explain the reluctance of others to 'get involved' in situations such as the Kitty Genovese incident. The Diffusion of Responsibility explanation suggests that the more witnesses there are to a person needing help, the less anyone witness feels responsible for giving help. Latane & Darley conducted a lab based experiment using male university students seated in individual cubicles connected by an intercom system, believing they had come to take part in a discussion on collage life. Students were lead to believe they were on their own, alone with one other participant who would later appear to have an epileptic seizure, or an increasing number of other participants. Help was less likely and slower to be given when participants believed that other potential helpers were available. The findings from this study support the notion of diffusion of responsibility as, as suggested the more witness there were to the victim needing help, the less the participant felt a sloe
Outline and evaluate two explanations relating to the breakdown of relationships
Outline and evaluate two explanations relating to the breakdown of relationships Duck's model of relationship breakdown describes the breakdown of romantic relationships in a series of phases. The first phase is the intrapsychic phase, which involves the realisation of negative aspects about one's partner. If the negative aspects are not resolved, the couple will enter the dyadic phase, in which the problems that one partner is experiencing are brought to the attention of the other partner, with resolution attempts following. If such resolution attempts fail, the couple will enter the social phase, in which the relationship is doomed to end, and partners think of face-saving accounts of why the relationship will end. Finally, the partners enter the grave-dressing phase, in which the relationship has ended, and both partners communicate a socially acceptable account of what happened. This model of relationship breakdown has been widely criticised for being unidirectional, implying that if the smallest of problems arises, a couple is doomed to separate. An improvement therefore may be Lee's model, which in five stages covers much of the same ground as Duck's model, but also incorporates negotiations and resolution attempts before the termination of the relationship. Some have proposed that a combination of the two models into a seven or eight-stage model would better describe
Social Learning Theory
Social Learning Theory Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, psychologists tended to believe that the explanations offered by classical and operant conditioning were fully adequate to understand human behaviour. Classical conditioning is a form of learning in which a conditioned and unconditioned stimulus become associated, such that the former comes to elicit a response previously elicited only by the latter. It is also known as the Pavlovian or respondent conditioning. Operant conditioning is a form of learning in which voluntary behaviour becomes more or less likely to be repeated depending on its consequences. It is also known as Skinnerian or instrumental conditioning. However, it is now believed that there are many other factors involved in human behaviour, such as cognitive factors, especially observational learning/modeling, and as most of these are based around experience, they are often grouped loosely together under the umbrella term of the social learning mechanisms. Dollard and Miller (1950) stated that, in humans, most learning is social and acquired through observing other people in social situations. Their Social Learning Theory, whilst having its roots in Skinnerian principles, aims to offer a more complex theory of learning in humans within a social context. Bandura (1977) states: "Learning would be extremely laborious, not to mention
Outline and evaluate explanations of institutional aggression
Outline and evaluate explanations of institutional aggression (25) marks Institutional aggression is described as aggression that occurs and becomes the norm in any form of institution. Examples of institutions are schools, offices, hospitals, offices, prisons, police forces, military and terrorist groups. Two models that have been proposed to explain IA are the situational model and the dispositional mode (sometimes called the importational model). The situational model includes several aspects of the institution and these can include the management style, staff characteristics (gender, age and experience) perceived and real deprivations and environmental factors such as noise, temperature and crowding. This model therefore states that an individual who is not normally aggressive can be made to behave aggressively due to factors within the institution. Much of the research into the situational model has been carried out in prisons and this model has much support. Sykes 1958 stated that the IA within prisons was due to the deprivations that prisoners were subjected to, he said that deprivations such as loss of autonomy lead to stress and that this stress caused the prisoners to act aggressively. For Sykes aggression was seen as a way of gaining some sense of control over the social order imposed upon them in prisons. This deprivation model could also explain aggression in
Essay on Co-education
Introduction: Today i am going to express my opinion to you about co education. What is co education? It is, both male and female students studying in the same class. Where does co education exist? Co education exists in primary, secondary, high schools. In colleges, and in universities. There are co education and separate schools in karachi. Body: What are the positivities of coeducation? Advantages: We have more students in a class We do not have to make a new school for only boys or girls. Talking to boys/girls, builds confidence. Students remove their fear of boys/girls. Students learn for the future life, like when they go to office. Separate Schools: Need to build separate schools. Lack of confidence. No motivation to go to school. Less students. More teachers needed. Lack of confidence in students. Students face problems in facing boys/girls at office or university. Conclusion: I personally believe that coeducation should be used everywhere because it is very important and it has helped me very much in improving my confidence and self
What is atypical behaviour?
What is atypical behaviour? In what ways is behaviour classified as being atypical or abnormal? This essay is going to look at ways behaviour is classed as atypical and discuss difficulties with classifying behaviour in this way. To do this it will examine the fine line between normality and abnormality to assess if it's as easy as it sounds to define the two. In 1980 a new system of diagnosis developed, this was known as DSM-III, which was short for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder. This was revised to DSM-IIIR in 1987, this new system aimed to address the many weaknesses of previous classification systems such as Kraepelin's system (1913); his system was based on psychoses and neuroses. Psychoses are disorders, which involve a lack of contact with reality, i.e. hallucination, and neuroses are disorders in which the person as too much contact with reality, i.e. anxiety. The DSM-IIIR try's to gather information about the patient's disorders by using five factors or axes: clinical syndromes, personality disorders, physical disorders, psychosocial stressors and adaptive functioning. (Hayes 1994) Another system for diagnosis is ICD-10 (Clinical Coding Instruction Manual). This system uses a less number of categories to classify the disorders than the DSM-IIIR, however the two systems overlap and have several categories in common. We are all
Reductionism In Psychology
Describe and evaluate reductionist explanations in 2 areas of psychology (30) Reductionism is the belief that the subject matter of psychology can be best explained by breaking it down into simple elements. This is sometimes referred to as Occam's razor, which outlines that unnecessary constructs and levels of explanation can be cut away in order to reveal the simple explanation. This idea is further supported by Morgan's Law Of Parsimony. This law states that we have no need to explain behaviour in terms of complex psychological processes, when it can be done in much simpler ideas. The reductionist line of thinking suggests that whatever it is we are trying to explain, we should look for something basic. The reductionist approach allows for psychology to be seen more scientifically but whether this is the best approach for the investigation of human behaviour is debateable. Rose suggested different levels of explanation for most things. Each level has a valid contribution to offer overall, but a particular topic may be best explained at a particular level. The hierarchical levels Rose suggested were molecular being the most reductionist and the behaviour of groups (sociology) being the least reductionist. Reductionism in psychology lies within the other 3 levels in the hierarchy. The main principle is that complex behaviour can be broken down into their constituent parts
Media influences on anti-social behaviour
Media influences on anti-social behaviour Cognitive priming: The cognitive priming explanation suggests that aggressive ideas shown in the media (particularly films) can 'spark off other aggressive thoughts in memory pathways as proposed by Berkowitz (1984). After a violent film, the viewer is 'primed' to respond aggressively because the memory network involving aggression is activated. Criticism: + Evidence to support the cognitive priming explanation was shown in the Hockey game study by Josephism (1987) who's boys who had been 'primed' to be aggression through viewing an aggressive film acted more aggressively in a subsequent hockey game where relevant behavioural cues were present. Arousal: The arousal explanation suggests that arousal increases the dominant behaviour in any situation. If the feeling of arousal is attributed to anger, then aggression is likely to result. Research has shown that the arousal produces by (violent) pornography facilitates aggressive behaviour as shown by Zillman (1978) Criticism: If arousal is attributed to factors other than anger, then arousal will not necessarily result in aggression? Cultivation effect: The cultivation effect by Gerbner and Gross (1976) suggests that the medium of television creates (or cultivates a distrust or unrealistic fear in viewers. This causes viewers to misperceive (or exaggerate) threats in real
Investigation into Gender Differences in Paranormal Beliefs within Society: Introduction
Introduction The late astronomer Carl Sagan once commented that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (Sagan, 1980). Claims of paranormal phenomena are most certainly claims of an extraordinary nature, and the task of obtaining this extraordinary evidence is the job of the parapsychologist. According to the Journal of Parapsychology, the term paranormal describes "any phenomenon that in one or more respects exceeds what is deemed psychically impossible according to current scientific assumptions". The term encompasses such anomalous phenomena such as telepathy (the transfer of information between individuals by means other than known sensory channels), extra-sensory perception (the acquisition of information by means other than the known physical senses or deductions from past experience), ghosts and astrology amongst others. Such beliefs are incredibly prevalent in today's society, to an extent out of proportion with the evidence for such phenomena. Approximately 86% ('Worldwide Adherents of All Religions, Mid-2005', Encyclopædia Britannica) of the 6.7 billion human beings on this planet collectively share and rejoice in different sets of paranormal belief systems, even though they are not traditionally considered as such due to the extent to which they are woven into the fabric of human nature. Adherents to these belief systems believe that humans in the
The effect of the Level of Processing on the amount of information recalled
Title: The effect of the Level of Processing on the amount of information recalled Abstract: The investigation is based on the work of Craik and Lockhart who devised the Levels of Processing (LOP) model in 1972. According to their theory it has three levels of processing, semantic, phonological and structural. Structural processing is based purely on appearance and arrangement of the word, phonological processing is how it sounds and semantic processing is what it means. In terms of shallowness, structural is the shallowest and semantic is the deepest. They found that participants processing information semantically recalled words better than those processing them structurally. They suggested that words which require deeper processing are recalled better. The aim of the study was to see if people recall words processed by their meaning more frequently than words associated with their appearance. The research method used a laboratory experiment and the experimental design was independent measures. An opportunity sample of thirty-eight participants of year 11 students at Unity College, Northampton, were asked to carry out a simple task of answering a series of closed questions. They were then asked to recall the words under consideration of the questions being asked. The investigation found that participants recalled an average of 6.18 words using semantic processing and
