GCSE Edexcel Psychology Unit 2

-To investigate whether there is a gene responsible for criminality.
-Blodd samples of over 30,000 males born in the 1940's
-Found two chromosome abnormalities; XXY and XYY.
-A social worker (who did not know the aim of the study and so avoided researcher and interview bias) was used to interview the participants to find out about the ir background and criminal history. The social worker also carried out an IQ test ont he participants.
- Participants took part in a personality test to see whether they displayed more aggression than average males.
-XYY males had slightly lower intelligance level than average males and were more aggressive.
- there were more similarities than differences between males with XYY gene and males with the XXY gene.
- the study did not provide any solid evidence for a criminal gene.

Strengths:
-Theilgaard used a social worker to question the participants, and as the social worker did not know the aim of the study, this avoided interviewer and research bias.
-Theigaard used a vast range of methods to gather information about the participants.

Weaknesses:
-The link between XYY males and aggression is only a correlation and so the gene may not cause aggression at all.
-Only 12 males with XYY gene were tested and as this is a small sample, the findings cannot be generalised.

Nature:
-Preparedness- There is a genetic influence on the kinds of things we learn to fear.
Bennet-Levy and Marteau found that some animals are feared more than others due to different characteristics.
-Slater and Shield (1969) found that the fears between identical twins were more similar than the fears between non-identical twins.

Nurture-
-Mineka et al found that monkeys can learn a fear through social learning, as monkeys and humans are similar, it is likely that we can learn fears too.
-Watson and Raynor created a fear of rats in Little Albert using classical conditioning. This shows that environment can cause fears.

Strengths:
-Standardised Instructions- The researcher can give each participant the same instructions ising a questionnaire.
-Right to Withdraw- Participants can stop answering quesitons at any time without having a negative effect on themselves.

Weaknesses:
-Response Bias- The participants can fall into patterns (such as always saying yes) when answering questions.
-Social Desirability Bias- Participants may not answer the questionnaire according to how they truly feel because it may not be socially acceptable. Also, as someone will be analysing the results, participants may feel conscious about what they say.

Strengths:
- Animals can be used in deprivation studies whereas humans are less likely to volunteer themselves.
-Animals and Humans are similar in many ways and so findings can be generalisable to humans.
-Animals often have more simple behaviour than Humans.

Weaknesses:
-Animals and Humans have important differences. For example, a human brain is more complex than an animal brain, and so is a human's behaviour.

Strengths:
- Detailed observations over a long period of time are able to show Little Peter's progress.
-Jones asked other people to order the tolerance series to avoid bias.

Weaknesses:
-There were often gaps between sessions and so progress could be due to time rather than deconditioning.
- It is unclear as to what method was most successful as Jones used Social Learning, Classical Conditioning and Role Models.

Henirich wanted to investigate whether being brought up in different cultures affects social anxiety and fear of blushing.
-909 participants. 8 Countries, 8 Universities.
- Split into two groups according to which country they came from- individualistic or collectivist.
-The particioants were told a short social situation. They then had to reply accorsing to how they would react in the situation. If a participant said that they would not change, or would speak up, then this was considered a low social anxiety answer. Similarly, if a participant said that they would not speak up, then this was considered a high social anxiety answer.
- They also completed a social anxiety and fear of blushing questionnaire in order ot measure their individual social anxiety.
-Heinrich found that those from a collectivist culture often responded to the situation in a way that showed high social anxiety. They also showed more fear of blushing.
- Collectivist cultures show greater social anxiety and fear of blushing than individualistic cultures.

Strengths:
-It is an ethical study as the participants did not see the animals and so were not scared or traumatised in any way.
-Men and Women were used in the study and so this makes the findings generalisable to both genders.
Weaknesses:
-Only six factors were asked about in the questionnaires and the few participants that were interviewed mentioned other factors that made animals scary, these factors should have been added to the questionnaire.
-The participants were told that none of the animals were dangerous, although some still thought that the rat was. This shows that the instructions that they were fiven were not clear engouh.

To investigate whether attractiveness affects the jury decision-making.
To investigate whether there was a relationship between the attractiveness of someone and the type of crime committed.
-2 crimes were used; fraud and burglary.
- 120 participants were used and they were given a piece of card with a crime on it and a picture of a known woman called Barbara Helms.
-Participants were put in to 6 groups of 20. They were given an unattractive or attractive photo of Barbara Helms and a brief description of a crime that she had done. (Unattractive photo- Burglary Attractive photo- Burglary No photo- Burglary, Unattractive photo- Fraud Attractive Photo- Fraud No photo- Fraud.)
-The participants were asked to rate the attractiveness of Barbara to ensure that the agreed.
-The participants were asked to sentence Barabara- they sentences rangind from 1 to 15 years.

Strengths:
- There were good controls in the experiment. The participants were told the same instructions, they were all given similar cases and a sentence to decide. This means that there were few extraneous variables and so there would be less to affect the results.
-A control group was used, and this helped as it enabled them to see whether the photo affected the decision.

Weaknesses:
-The study was not realistic as a real jury would see the defendant, and be able to listen to all evidence and testimony. Using a photo and brief details is not realistic.
-The study is also not realistic as in a real situation, it would be the jury that decide whether the defendant is gulity or not, and the JUDGE would decide the sentence.

To see if a parents expectation of their childs drinking habits would become a reality.
-115 12-13 yr olds were questioned and so were their parents.
-Parents were asked to guess how much alcohol their child regularly drank or would drink in the coming year.
-A year later, the children were asked to say how much alcohol they actually consumed.

-Madon found that children who drank the most alcohol were the ones whose parents had predicted a greater use of alcohol.
-It only took one parent to have negative beliefs about their childs drinking habits to show a realtionship with high levels of drinking but the child seemed at greater risk of higher alcohol use if both parents had negative beliefs.

-Parents predictions of their childs alcohol use was very accurate. The parents expectations were consistent with the use of alcohol use after 12 months.
-The drinking behaviour became a self-fulfilling prophecy because of what parent expected to come true.
-Parents beliefs can have a huge influence on a child's behaviour. 

Strengths
- Large sample of participants so the results can be said to be valid and reliable.
-Gives a strong warning to parents about holding negative beliefs about their children as it could become a self-fullfilling prophecy.

Weaknesses
-Parents may not have influenced their childs behaviour at all- they were just accurate at judging their childs alcohol consumption. It may be an accurate prediction rather than a self-fulfilling prophecy.
-There are many other things that can influence childrens behaviour such as friends, media and role models.

In a study with over 1000 participants, only a handful will have XYY chromosome which is supposedly linked to criminality. This makes the study have lower validity.

Family, twin and adoption studies rely on conviction rates, and as all criminals are not caught or convicted, this means that these data cannot be included in the study.

It is unethical to say that having a specific chromosome causes criminality if the link is not 100% true. It could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

To tell a criminal that their behaviour was due to a chromosome abnormality might lead them to believe that they are not responsible for their actions- they can blame their genes.

We cannot carry out an experiment to make someone a criminal, so any research just examines a link between criminality and social or biological factors- there may be other causes for the criminal behaviour lile child rearing.

Research often involves examining why people have turned to crim. Criminals and their family are questioned about past events that might have caused them to turn to crime. There are several practical problems associated with this; such as memory is not very reliable after many years, and the answers given might not provide an accurate account of what really happened.

If there is a link between the family and criminal behaviour it could be used to blame parents for their childrens behaviour. Results for these studies should be treated with care and not used to hold parents responsoble for their childrens actions if this is not a certainty.

Investigating the self-fulfilling prophecy as an explanation may create may or reinforce existing labels and therefore encourage criminal behaviour.

They may feel guilty about their crimes and feel uncomfortable talking about what they have done.

They may believe the information they give could be used to convict another criminal- they dont want to grass them up in fear of their own safety.

Criminals, ex criminals and prisoners have the same human rights as any other member of society.

Criminals might feel guilt about their crimes and feel uncomfortable talking about them.

Offender profiling is the name of a process used to help police catch criminals. It does not produce the name of the criminal but helps to narrow the number of suspects that police should investigate.

Creating a profile involves:
Analysis of the crime- the police make detaield records of the victim, place, photographs, DNA evidence and time of day.
Building a profile- a criminal profiler uses this information to construct a list of probable features of a criminal.

To investigate whether aggression varied between cultures. And to investigate whether aggression varies between genders.
- 400 psychology students- 200 from Japan, 200 from Spain Uni.
-all participants were asked to complete a questionnaire that measured differnt types of aggression. Anger, Hostility, Verbal and Physical aggression.
-The questionnaire contained likert style quesitons.

-Ramirez found that Japanese students showed more physical aggression that Spanish students.
- Spanish students showed more verbal aggression and anger than japanese students.
-Males showed more physical aggression, verbal aggression and hostility than females in both cultures.

-Ramirez concluded that despite cultural stereotype of the japanese being shy, japanese stundents were more physcially aggressive than spanish students.
-The study supports previous theories of males being more aggressive than females.

Strengths
- the questions produce quantitative so cannot be interpreted differently by researchers.
-all students had volunteered and were fully aware that the results would be published, it was an ethical study.

Weaknesses
-all the participants were psychology students- they may have guessed the aim of the study, or answered questions in a socially desirable way.
-students may have answered the questions according to how they think they would act, but not how they would actually act in real life.

-Degree in psychology
-Experience in relevant field of work
-Doctorate in educational/ clinical/ forensic psychology
-Chartered status- To achieve this, the psychologist must prove CPD.

Educational:
-Comminication skills, Empathic listening, Being able to talk with a range of people.

Clinical:
-Listening skills, learn to ask open questions, understand diversity

Forensic:
-Good writing skills, problem solving skills, understand body language

Legal assessments of children with special needs to ensure that they get relevant help and their needs met.
Consultations with various schoold that they are attached to.
Carry out individual assessments and tests (IQ) as well as physical abilities and language.They can test for dyslexia.
Plan interventions and evaluate them.Train people to carry out interventions.
Carry out research.

Anger Management:
Observation- an ed psych may go into the classroom to watch the child to see what triggers the behaviour.
The teacher is also asked to observe and keep records.
Gather as much information as possible.
Teach child techniques such as relaxation techniques and breathing techniques to help overcome the anger before an outburst.

Work with people who have mental health problems, depression and anxiety. Also help with mood disorders, fears and phobias.
Make and assessment of the clients needs, plans interventions, trains others and carries out research.
Practicalities of being a clin psych is that they can be under-funded, which make the working conditions difficult.

Clin psych and Phobias:
Use a range of methods to treat phobias.
Flooding, Systematic desensitisation, Hypnotherapy, CBT.

Flooding- extreme therapy based on the theory of classical conditioning. Therapy involves confronting your fear directly.

Systematic Desensitiation- involves, the patient identifying the feared object. Then developing a list of least and most feared situations (called the hierachy of fears). The therapist teaches the patient relaxation techniques. Gradually work through hierachy of fears.

Hypnotherapy- Involves helping the clent to get into a relaxed state, called the altered state of awareness. In this state, they are not concerned about everyday problems and can instead have a hightened sense of awareness where they can accept suggestions from the hypnotherapist about overcoming the phobia.

CBT- incolves indentifying negative automatic thoughts and trying to replace them with less negative thoughts. Exposure based CBT involces changing the clients thinking patterns as well as lowering the fear response to the situatuions that are feared.

A Forensic psychologist works with offenders and prison staff. They develop rehabilitation programmes.
They might develop one-to-one programmes or group therapies.
They use Personal construct therapy which involves;
-thinking of three people you know
-writing down one way in which two of them are the same and one is different
-repeating steps 1 and 2 a number of times, so that you come up with more people.
This helps the offener to see their own constructs and how they judge others.
Treating drug abuse- monitor the addicts progress and provide support and counselling.
Treating sexual offenders- It is mandatory that sex offenders attend a treatment programme. Mecication can be prescribed to deal with the sex drive.