Psychology Case Studies

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Classic Learning Theory- Watson + Raynor

Aim- To demonstrate that the principles of classical conditioning can be used to explain how human's aqcuire phobic behaviours.

procedure:

carried out on one person - little boy.

Pre-conditioning testing- Albert's response to several stimuli, white rat, loud nosie, burning paper, dog and monkey, noted.

conditioning trials- 11 months old, Albert presented with white rat. Every time he reaches for it a loud noise was made by striking a hammer against a steel bar behind his ears.

post conditioning test- effects of the conditioning was tested by showing Albert the rat on its own and monitoring his reaction

UCS (loud noise) = UCR (fear/crying)

NS (white rat) = no response

Paring- UCS  + NS = UCR

New association- CS = CR

Results:

  • Pre conditioning trials- only showed fear response to loud noise, no other fear shown towards other stimuli
  • Post conditioning tests- After first trial showed some distress, after second trial he leaned away from the rat, and when rat was placed next to him he strated to cry

Conclusion:

  • it's possible to produce a fear response (phobia) in a human using the process of classical conditioning.
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Watson and Raynor- GRAVE evaluation

Generalisablity:

  • low as only conducted on one child, so results cannot be generalised as the findings may be unique to him. Cannot be generalised to adults (adults may already have the undestanding) or females, as Pp was a baby boy. As Albert was reared in hosptial environment from birth and was unusual as he'd never been seen to show fear or rage by staff. Therefore, Albert may have responded differently in this experiment to how other young children have have.

Reliability:

  • High, as was a standardised procedure allowed high control over all extraneous variables, meaning it's possible to replicate the study and check for the results.

Application:

  • research demonstrated that phobias can be learnt through process of classical conditioning. Therefore, if we understand how phobias do develop, we can incorperate this into treatment of this form of behaviour through using systematic desensitisation.

Validity:

  • Internal - high, due to controlled environemnt (Albert reared in hospital so wasn't shown to fear already). Lab exerpiement
  • Ecological- low, as it can't generalise to settings outside of the lab situation as the method used created an unnatural situation which may not reflect learning in everyday life.

Ethics:

  • Albert conditioned to have a fear - of white rats. This was also further generalised to other white, fluffy stimuli such as santa's beard.
  • Didn't get to remove the phobia as Albert was pulled out of the experiment
  • however, had consent from the mother, and the right to withdraw as they did.
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Contemporary Learning Theory- Becker et Al

Aim:

To see if females from Fuji develop an increased eating disorder after TV is introduced, and whether TV has an effect on their behaviour.

Method:

  • Pp's- adolescent (young) girls whose eating attitudes and eating behaviour were measured using a questionnaire which included questions about binging and purging (vomitting).
  • High score reflects eating disorder
  • Other questions were about how much TV was watched, which programmes were watched, the characters in the programmes, body image and dieting.
  • Teenage girls were asked questions 1 month  after the introduction of TV
  • A new group of girls were asked same questions in 1998 when TV had been available for 3 years (matched Pp design- asked same age but 3 years later so the differences were not due to age).
  • Natural experiment where the naturally occuring IV was the TV.

Results:

  • Quantitative data- Percentage of people who owned a TV increased by 30%. Eating attitude from 13% to 30%. Vomitting used to control weight increased from 0-11%. Feeling fat increased to 74%.
  • Qualitative- ''My mum wants me to look like her'', ''so i myself want to become like that''

Conclusion:

  • Femles did observe the people on TV and then want to look like them, showing that role models and imitation is present.
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Becker -GRAVE

Generalisability:

Reliabilty:

Application:

Validity:

Ethics:

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Classic Cognitive Theory- Baddley

Aim:

  • Investigate the influence of acoustic and semantic word similarity on recals short term memory and long term memory to help us know where information is encoded in the long term memory and short term memory.

Procedure:

  • Lab experiment with independent group design.
  • IV- acoustically similar words, acoustically disimilar words, semantically similar words, semantically dismilar words.
  • DV- The number of words out of 10 recalled in the correct order
  • CV- time intervals between each word was 3 seconds. Words in each IV group were the same. Same amount of words- 10. All had same distraction task, and same amount of time for the distraction task. All words 1 syllable. Independent group design means the surprise test was a surprise so no demand characteristics.

Results:

  • acoustic simialr and dismilar words, significantly fewer words accurately recalled than acoust

Conlcusion:

  • Information is encouded acoustically in short-term memory
  • Semantically similar and dismilar words; significantly fewer words recalled than semantically similar.
  • Information must be recalled semantically on the long-term memory.
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Baddleys- GRAVE

Generalisability:

  • Low as Pp were males and females selected from applied pyschology research unit, meaning that the results are limited due to all Pp's being from a psychology research unit. Therefore, resutls may not apply to those of a non-psychology background/environment.
  • Small sample size (18 Pp in each IV and all volunteers). Can produced biased set of results as Pp's would be more focused as they were willing to do it, and potentially have something in common- volunteers. Therefore, results may not be representative of target population.

Reliability:

  • High reliability as was conducted in a highly controlled lab usign a standardised procedure e.g. All Pp's learnt the same amount (10) of words, had the same amount of time to recall the words, the same distraction task and same time to complete the distraction task. There was control over extraneous variables such as noise -no noise. Due to the standardised procedure (controls) it can be replicated to test for the results.

Application:

  • Findings can be applied to real life, such as education. The finding that is encoded semantically into LTM has enabled teachers or proffesionals to promote the best learning strategies to improve memory. This means students can use techniques, such as mind-maps, to ensure that information being learnt has a meaning so it can be stored into the long-term memory.

Validity:

  • Internal- high due to the standardised procedure and controls, therefore can be sure extraneous variables didn't occur and impact the results, e.g. timing how long the words were visible for, for each Pp. This means that the researcher is certian that the only changes in the DV is due to the IV.
  • Ecological- low as was a lab experiment, therefore is artifical and does not represent real life. Pp's wouldn't have been behaving naturally. This means Pp's may have been showing demand characteristics, so the study does not represent real life memory.

Ehthics:

  • Surprise recall task - deception and no sign of consent (if Pp's knew they had to do a recall test at the end they may not have agreed to participate) however, this was necessary to gain accurate and valid results. No one was harmed and there was consent as people took part in the task.
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Contemporary Cognitive Theory- Schmolk

Aim:

  • To find out if Semantic LTM is linked to a particular part of the brain. If so, patients with lesions in that part of the brain should underperform at tests of smenatic LTM.

Procedure:

  • 14 patients in total,
  • Brain damage to hippocampus, part of medial temproal lobe MTL from surgery- 3 Pp's including HM.
  • Brain damage from viral infections such as herpes, that was more widespread MTL+-6 Pp's
  • Controls who were healthy volunteers with no brain damage, matched with the patients in terms of age (70's) and education- 8 Pp's
  • IV- Extent of brain injury, MTL, MTL+, Controls- no brain damage.
  • IV naturally-varying (Quasi), matched pairs design
  • Schmolk used different types of cognitive tests on the patients - type of cognitive test is repeated measures design as each Pp did every test.
  • Since HM had more widespread brain damage than other Hippocampus/MTL patients (perhaps brought on by previous epilepsy, perhaps by less accuerate brain surgery) he was considered seperately from the others.
  • DV- scores on 9 seperate test of semantic LTM
  • Schmolk created 9 tests for semantic LTM functions. All were based on a set of 48 drawings, half of animals and half objects. These pictures were grouped in sixes: 6 land animals, 6 birds, 6 instruments, 6 vehicles etc

Results:

  • MTL+ patients- did significantly worse in all tests
  • HM- did better thant the MTL+ patients but slightly worse than the other patients with damage to the hippocampus
  • Overall- controls 99%, MTL hippocampus only 100% and MTL+ scored 78%
  • Correlation between amount of brain damage and number of mistakes. MTL+ made most mistakes, then HM then MTL.
  • when MTL done better than the controls he suggest it is because they were younger

Conclusion

  • link between damage to temporal cortex and the loss of semantic LTM
  • Patients with damage to specific to hippocampus suffered loss of episodic memory but not semantic suggesting that they're encoded in different parts of brain.
  • hippocampus deals with episodic memory and temporal cortex with semantic.
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Schmolk - GRAVE

Generalisability:

  • small sample as only 3 patients in with damage to hippocampus and 3 with more widespread damage to temporal cortex and are easily distorted anomolies- HM is anomoly. However, schmolk did single out HM due to his widespread damage. The brain damage is rare, HM suffered from serious epilepsy. MTL+ patients suffered from Herpes (sexually transmitted disease) so might make them unrepresentative of wider population. As brain damage/results may be unique to the individual, may not generalise to others.

Reliability:

  • Standardised procedure allows the study to be replicated by other researchers. Schmolk also used 14 raters to check the Pp's scores adn their agreement gives the study inter-rater reliability.

Application:

  • Knowledge gained a we know that episodic and semantic are stored seperately. It identified the location of the brain, so this can be used to identify issues further by locating where the damage has been caused.

Validity:

  • Internal- High as same test for controls, MTL and MTL+, and a lab experiment avoiding any extraneous variables. Used same tests on each design group, so we know that the differences are due to the type  of brain damage
  • Ecological- Low as was a lab experiment, so artificial setting does not represent daily life, so validity of the 9 tests are low.

Ethics:

  • naturally occurring brain damage (quasi)
  • pseudonyms used- only initials, so confidentiality
  • no one was harmed
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Raine- classic biological study

Aim:

  • investigate to see if there's a difference in cortical and sub-cortical functions of the brain in NGRI murderers and non-murderers

Procedure:

  • 82 Pp
  • 41 Pp's in control group, 41 Pp's in experimental group
  • Experimental group used to gain evidence on their claims of NGRI
  • 6 schizophrenic
  • Matched Pp design- age, gender and schizophrenia
  • Pp's performed a CPT (cognitive performance task) where focusing on blurred numbers. Had 10 minute trial of the CPT and ten injected with a radioactive glucose tracker
  • Pp then had further 32 mins of cognitive performance task
  • After, PET scan used on them all to measure metabolic rate sin areas on the brain

Results:

  • supproted hypothesis that brain dysfunction in NGRI group wsas linked to areas asssociated with violent behaviour
  • Lower- prefrontal cortex - shows lack of control personality or how aggressive you act to others
  • lower- parietal lobe
  • identical - temporal lobe
  • higher- occipital lobe
  • lower- corpus callosum
  • Asymmetric- amydala (lower left, higher in right)
  • Asymmetric MTL (hippocampus)- lower left
  • Higher in right of thalamus

Conclusion:

  • NGRI murderers had significant differences of metabolic activity in several areas of the brain when compared
  • Difference supports that differences may cause violent behaviour E.G. hypothalamus, Amydala and Thamalus
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Raine classic biological- GRAVE

Generalisability:

  • Big sample size, 41 in experimental group and controls. Due to the large sample, the findings can be generalised to other NGRI people, as there are enough Pp's and results to explain the different activites within the brain. However took place in America, so doesn't represent people from other countries, or explain the brain behaviour elsewhere as they may differ due to geographical/environment factors. Cannot be generalised to murderers who do not plead guilty for reasons of insanity, as none were included in the study.

Reliability:

  • Published results and procedure of study, therefore other researchers can replicate the study to test for the results themselves too see if they're accurate.
  • Was in a controlled environment (lab) with a lot of controlled variables, such as the same CPT's and the same time for them to complete the tasks.
  • Therefore, could be used to test other groups of murderes, such as the non NGRI murderers.

Application:

  • increased udnerstanding of murderes brain (activity).
  • Understand possible reasons for violent behaviour and links with brain which could be used to fruther decrease violent behaviour and/or prevent murder.
  • However, do not know the activity before and after the murder, which would be impossible as unsure when murder will occur - unethical.

Validity:

  • internal- high. Controls allowed results to be concise and know that the DV was only affected by the IV. Same PET scan, same CPT, same time to complete the task, all had 32 minutes after the scan.
  • Ecological- low as artificial setting, and the cognitive perfomance task would not reflect a real life/angry situation as people aren't asked to find specific numbers in everyday life.

Ethics:

  • consent from Pp's
  • confidentiality- no names given (anonymous)
  • No harm caused.
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Brendgen Contemporary Biological study

Aim:

  • See if social aggression is inherited through genes or caused by envrionmental factors

Procedure:

  • 234 twins, monozygotic/dizygotic
  • teachers at twins schools were asked to complete questionnaires on the twins, on a 3-point scale (0 never, 1 sometimes, 2-often)
  • E.g. 'whether they get into fights'
  • Scores for social and physical aggression were added to produce two quantitative scores.
  • peer rate from twins class friends - shown a class photo and were told to circle the 3 students in the photo who best fit the descriptions given to them ''likely to tell others not to play with another''

Results:

  • Mz twin- higher physical aggression score (as share 100% genes)
  • Very little difference in the correlations between Mz and Dz twins for social aggression

Conclusion:

  • physical aggression mainly due to genes
  • social aggression due to environment factors
  • Brendgen suggests that social aggression increases with age as children learn that physical aggression is more unacceptable.
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Brendgen Contemporary biological- GRAVE

Generalisability:

  • large sample size to generalise to twins.
  • 88 twins dropped out, so reduces sample size, and these could have challenged  the hypothesis as they may have been more aggressive

Reliability:

teachers and peers had similar results, which shows accuracy and reliability as the students may see things that teachers do not and vice versa- offers wider set of results. Details of the study well known, and standardised therefore can be replicated to check results.

Application:

  • are aware that aggresion isn't completely due to genes, but progresses due to environmental factors
  • can intervene it to stop social aggression developing/occurring from physical aggression, by teaching children that social aggression isn't acceptable or schools can introduce policies/rules

Validity:

  • internal- low. May be exposed to extraneous variables as researcher only collected results from teachers and class mates who saw the twins during school, not at home or other environment, or one twin may be exposed to something the other twin isn't, e.g. be more aggressive. Not imperical/objective data, so results could be innacurate as it's opinion
  • Ecological- high. can apply to everyday life to see how aggression is caused e.g. school environment

Ethics:

  • Consent given from parents
  • confidentiality
  • right to withdraw, as 88 twins did withdraw.
  • no harm caused, the IV (aggression) was naturally occurring and not manipulated by experimenter
  • deception as the twins were unaware
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Case Studies

Strengths:

  • naturally occuring 'conditions' of unique people, studied as would be unethical to induce the condition
  • 1 person, so able to gain a lot of detail and depth study- a lot of qualitative data
  • Can be compared to a control groug E.g. Schmolk- HM was compared to controls
  • can involve controlled conditions E.g. watson and raynor and Schmolk- same tests for each IV group

Examples;

  • HM, CW, KC, KF, Schmolck, Little Albert.
  • Generalisability- difficult as only 1 Pp used and their features e.g. brain or memories may not be representative of others
  • Validity- ecological if in natural study such as HM/CW. Internal- if controls used/lab setting
  • Application- increased knowledge and understanding usually, but may be unique if small sample size
  • Ethical- naturally occurring, unique people had issues e.g. brain damage already, confidentiality, pseudonyms
  • Reliability- Difficult to repeat as hard to find others with exactly same issue e.g. brain damage, due to only having 1 Pp hard to replicate due to ethics
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Classic Social- Sheriff Study

Aim: To investigate the factors that cause prejudice and discrimination

Procedure:

Stage 1-

  • group formation, Eagles and Rattlers, cultural norms (made up own rules), bonding, ingroup cooperation, favouritsitm in each group.

Stage 2- friction phase.

  • Ingroup cooperation, competitions such as basketball. Conflict such as flag burning,calling the other group 'cissie', theft. Competition for resources which were limited, given prizes, discirmination of the groups. Outgroup caused stereotypes.

Stage 3- Intergration

  • Conflict resolution. More contact between the groups. Set up tasks, such as the broken water pipe, broken bus forced the different groups to cooperate together to fix it. Therefore, everyone had superordinate goals and finally intergrated and resolved the conflict.

Results:

stage 1- groups formed their own norms and rules to form a group identity. They came up with names for each and groups were aware of each other. An 'us' and 'them' attitude formed

stage 2- boys showed signs of hostility towards each other and demanded for competitive activities. Leaders emerged and the groups became territorial. The groups would fight when competitions were announced and a sense of in-group favouritsim and out-group bias began to form. Derogatory words were used and camp raids began. 93% boys said their friends were of those in the same group as them, when asked to self report

stage 3- conact between the groups wasn't sufficient to reduce hostility betwen the groups as they continued to name call and fight

superordinate goal tasks were introduced. The boys had to identifiy the cause of the camp water storage. They were then observed, when the damage had been identified, to be seen as them working together and not name calling. However, they began showing negative out-group bias that evening where words were called and food thrown.  

They worked together to form a strategy to coletively pay for a film. There was a reduction in hostility. They also worked together to pull the broken down bus.

Researchers reassessed the friendships at the end and there was an increase in the number of friendships with the out-group, compared to stage 2.

Conclusion:

Strong in-group identities were intitially formed. Negative out-group bias formed when copetition was introduced. Superordinate goals reduced out-group bias as it removed competition. This supports the Realistic Conflict Theory- prejudice can be bought about through competition for resources.

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Classic Social Sherrif- GRAVE evaluation

Generalisability-

  • low- can't be generalised to females as study was only carried out on 22 males.
  • Males in study were only young so cannot be generalised to all ages including adults
  • sample size not very large as only 22 Pp's
  • White American boys therefore findings cannot be generalised to other ethnicites such as African American or other countries.

Reliability- 

  • hard to replicate without demand characteristics, therefore results won't be accurate 
  • boys only observed for 12 hours a day and couldn't see overhear everything that went on
  • numbered scoring system for the boys' friendship patterns, which collected quantitative data
  • also used multiple observers on occasions, creating inter-rater reliability
  • tape recorded the boys conversations, so could be played back and analysed 
  • difficult to replicate as Sherif developed certain procedures 'on the fly', such as the boys themselves requested the basketball match, and Sherif had to intervene to prevent a fight. Therefore, if study was replicated again to check for results, would be difficult.

Application-

  • results can be applied to understand why people may react in competitive situations, such as sporting events or voting campaigns in politics everyday. 
  • We're aware that competition and frustration causes hostility towards outgroups. So, in society, this suggests that discrimination and violence can be reduced if jobs, education and housing were shared more fairly between different groups, such as ethnicities or classes.
  • Also shows that hostility can be reduced if groups work together towards common goals.This suggests ghettos should be discouraged and immigrants should be made to take up the host cultures language, education and pastimes. This is the basis for a lot of Right Wing political thinking.

Validity-

Internal- low as was conducted in natural setting/environment. Although, used several different research methods; obeserving, tape recording, tests, qunatitative and qualitative data). Observation where everything occurs naturally, so not certain that changes in DV is due to IV due to extraneous variables

Ecological- high. Real summer camps, real activities, real boys. Even the specially created tasks (fixing broken water pipe, pulling truck) seemed real to  the boys. However, some unrealistic features such as camp councillros not intervening until the boys were actually ready to fight each other. Field experiment, lacked a control group. Sherif doesn't have a normal summe camp to compare to. It may be normal for camps to have food fights, and raids to happen. It may also be normal for boys to become friends after 3 weeks regardless if they were given special tasks to carry out.

Ethics-

  • Pp's decieved as didn't know they wre involved in the study, in order to prevent demand characteristics. Therefore, no sign of formal consent. Also decieved about the broken water pipe and the truck
  • However, naturally occurring experiment and all Pp's were intergrated together at the end to abolish any conflict
  • no sign of debrief
  • boys put through upsetting conflicts and were tricked
  • subjected to risk due to food fights, vandalism, theft and nearly a serious fight. 
  • Scientific integrity as researcher did intervene when the fight got serious/nearly broke out.
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Social Contemporary- Burger

Aim- To investiage obedience by partially replicating Milgram's stduy to examine whether situational factors affect obedience to an authorative figure.

Procedure:

Screening Procedures

  • Individuals responded to advertisment flyers, in local newspapers/libraries/businesses/online
  • advertisements promsied $50 for taking part in two 45 minute sessions
  • Pp's showed interest via phone/email, then recieved a call from a research assistant who began the screening procedure
  • Pp's asked if they'd been to college, if yes, asked if they took psychology lessons
  • purpose of questions to reject individuals who took 2+ psychology classes to screen out people who were familiar with Milgram's study
  • Remaining Pp's asked about physical+psychological health, and whether they'd suffered any traumatic childhood experiences
  • Further 30% students excluded from further involvement of study after this.

2nd screening:

  • 2 clinical psycholigists to assess Pp's held at Sana Clara University capus. This process required the individuals to complete a number of scales/questionnaires; a demographic sheet asking about age, occupation, education and ethnicity

Results- Number of Pp's who stopped;

Baseline condition:

  • stopped at 150V- Male 6 (33%), Female 6 (27.3%)
  • went to continue after 150V- Male 12 (66.7%), Female 16 (72.7%)

Modelled refusal condition:

  • Stopped at 150V- Male 5 (45.5%), Female 6 (31.6%)
  • went to continue after 150V- Male 6 (54.4%), Female 12 (68.4%)

Conclusion:

There is no significant obedience differences within gender, however, they did notice that females were more sympathetic. 

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Social Contemporary Burger- GRAVE Evaluation

Generalisability-

  • Higher than Milgram's as included both genders. Also had wider range of age varying from 20-81 years, thus, can be generalised to ay age as well as gender.
  • Sample size not very large as only 70Pp's involved. Within each group the gender's were not equal, therefore can't be generalised/representative of the target population as more females than males.
  • America- can't be generalised to other countries/areas, even though it included different ethnicites, as they could've adapted to the culture of America through living there.

Reliability-

  • Standardised procedure, so can be easily replicated, which it was (From Milram's). Also more ethical, therefore can be replicated without ethical issues so results can be more thoroughly checked for accuracy without many alterations being made unlike Milgram's.

Application-

  • Low, as results very similar to Milgram's despite having both genders, range of ethincities and age. Milgram's results showed 65% obedience, similarly, Burger's study showed 70%, therefore, the variation didn't effect the results in obedience as they didn't change. Results are not significant, again, therefore are due to chance factors and cannot be applied to our understanding/knowledge.

Validity-

Internal- 

  • High, due to standardised procedure and various controls, such as same word pairs, the shock (volts). Lab setting.

Ecological-

  • Low- tasks don't represent real life task (shocking someone) and it was conducted in a lab experiment, thus, an aritifical setting.

Ethics-

  • Shocks reduced to 150V maximum, so less psychological harm
  • still had verbal probs, suggesting no right to withdraw (and more moral strain to Pp) although the study/advertisement emphasised right to leave whenever and each Pp payed BEFORE their signature, so they didn't feel obliged to Pp for the money.
  • All had debrief and met the learner so they could see no actual harm caused.
  • confidentiality- no names published, reasons that 47 Pp's removed after 2nd screening kept unknown.
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