psychological knowledge

• Twin studies


  • Can be used to investigate the role of nature and nurture in behaviour
• Bredgen's twin study

  • Looked at MZ and DZ twins to see if social aggression was caused by genes or the environment
  • Found that MZ and DZ twins had similar scores for social aggression showing that although there is a biological predisposition, there are also social factors involved
• Social aggression has a strong link to the environment

  Should reduce effects of verbal bullying and trolling on social media using early intervention with classes and workshops
• Bredgen's study had low reliability as zygosity was determined by appearance
• Bredgen's study

  • High validity, longitudinal study, data gathered at 5,18 and 30 months as well as 6 years
• Brain scanning

  • Can be used to identify abnormalities in brain functioning or structure
• Abnormalities in the amygdala

  Can lead to aggressive behaviour as it controls the fight or flight response and emotional processing
• Brain scanning can lead to prescreening
• Raine's study

  • Murderers had 0.88 in amygdala compared to controls 0.83
• Raine's study had low generalisability as the sample consisted of murderers NGRI
• Brain scanning may not explain aggressive behaviours in everyone
• Hormone therapy


  Helps violent offenders and reduce recidivism
• Anti androgens such as CPA

  Lower the production of testosterone so lowers aggression levels
• Hormone treatments lowers offence rates and so positively impacts society
• Some people don't respond to hormone treatment, showing there may be other factors involved so other treatments such as anger management may be more useful
• Anger management

  A cognitive behavioural treatment used to change faulty thinking patterns, stages include cognitive preparation, skill acquisition and application
• CALM

  • Twice weekly group meetings, much more ethical treatment than chemical castration
• Howelles found no significant difference in anger between the group engaging in CBT and the control group therefore the treatments may not be most effective
• Cognitive interviews

  Improve the accuracy and reliability of police interviews, include things such as free recall and different perspective
• Cognitive interviews are used instead of traditional interviewing techniques to gather more detailed and accurate information
• Geiselman found that cognitive interviews are not effective for children under the age of 8 so they have limited applications
• Cognitive interviews are difficult to use as they are long and take a lot of teaching to have the techniques required, there is no standardised way of doing them and police officers can't be sure they are doing it correctly
• Cognitive interviews are still very useful as they produce much more accurate testimonies so more likely to find people responsible for crimes
• Multistore model of memory


  Demonstrates how memory is encoded and how information progresses from your sensory register to your short term memory and then long term memory
• Students should be encouraged to make semantic links during revision e.g. using mind maps and rote learning should be avoided
• Baddeley's study

  • Found that long term memory is encoded for semantically 85% when semantically dissimilar compared to 55% semantically dissimilar
• Baddeley's working memory model shows that short term memory isn't a singular store
• Revised dopamine hypothesis

  Suggests that negative and cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia may arise from lack of dopamine in the mesocortical pathways
• First drugs developed for schizophrenia

  Worked by targeting excess dopamine and blocking D2 receptors
• Second generation antipsychotics (SGAs)

  Developed in the 90s, also target serotonin and glutamate to reduce both positive and negative symptoms
• Hartling's study

  • Found there was a lower risk of tardive dyskinesia from SGAs (5%) compared to FGAs (9%)
• Lieberman found that when patients stopped taking drugs, it led to relapse and reappearance of cognitive and positive symptoms, therefore drug therapies may not be useful
• Rosenhan's study

  Showed that the DSM was inaccurate as it inaccurately diagnosed 8 pseudopatients as having schizophrenia and so led to reforms to the DSM
• Lauren Slater's study

  • Attempted to replicate the Rosenhan study by presenting herself at 9 psychiatric emergency rooms with the symptom of hearing the word 'thud' and was diagnosed with psychotic depression and prescribed antipsychotics
• Miller's study

  • Gave Slater's case description to 74 emergency rooms and only 3 diagnosed psychotic depression and only a third recommend medication
• Token economy programmes

  Work to encourage and promote healthy eating habits using the principles of operant conditioning and positive and negative reinforcement
• Field et al's study

  • Found that after the rewards were made more frequent for non respondent youths the token economy programme was successful, individualised programmes more effective
• Token economy programmes may not work outside institutions as their behaviours may not keep being reinforced
• Token economy programmes

  Used in prisons and schools, positive behaviour is rewarded with tokens which can then be used to get personal rewards
• Token economy programmes sometimes don't last outside the institutions or settings because they won't be continuously rewarded for the behaviours