Psychology

• Explanations of Conformity

  NSI (need to be liked)

  Said to have least impact on behavioural changes,Nolan whether people detected influence of social norms on energy conservation behaviour

  Research support Linkenbach and Perkins smoking

  ISI (need to be right)

  Research support Wittenbrick and Henley negative information about African Americans
• Asch's research into conformity

  Culture and gender bias,individualist culture conformity 25%

  collectivist culture conformity rate 37%

  A 'child of its time' study in 1950's when conformity was high,Perrin and Spencer similar study in 1980's found one conforming response 396 trial

  Confederates may have been unconvincing - volunteers,knew they were being studied,line which matched line X was obvious.
• Zimbardo's stanford prison experiment 1973

  Reicher and Haslam conflicting research UK 15 p's didn't identify with roles

  Gender and culture bias 24 white-american males

  Methodolgy in obtaining p's,volunteer sampling,interviewed other students about what they thought aim was and they guessed it.

  Reform in the ethical guidelines due to exposure of harm
• Milgram's study into obedience

  Still has relevance in modern day society Burger 2009 levels of obedience almost identical to milgram's almost 50 years later

  Underestimated influence of gender and culture bias

  Demand characteristics instead of obedience part of scientific experiment more likely to obey than in real life.
• Social-psychological factors

  Agentic state

  Legitimacy theory
• Agentic state

  Research support by Milgram majority of ordinary people will follow instructions even when acting against their conscience Blass and Schmitt people who watched blamed experimenter

  Doesn't consider other possibilities why people obey against conscience Zimbardo's research suggested milgram may have detected signs of cruelty and this is why he chose them,could be argued personality (dispositional) factors are reason why people obey.
• Legitimacy Theory

  It has led to destructive authority,powerful leaders can use legitimate powers for destructive purposes,shown in milgram's study when experimenter used prods,has external validity.

  Can be used to justify the harming of others,in case of Hitlers's Nazis instructed to kill a variety of individuals who didn't fit master race,legitimate order,individual,system,if allow others to make judgements own moral values no longer matter.
• Authoritarian personality

  Research support,Milgram and Elms used individuals from milgrams study,found those who were fully obedient scored higher on tests of authoritarianism and lower on scales of social responsibility,supports Adorno's claim.

  Sample not representative of all genders and cultures

  Instead of authoritarianism could be a lack of education,Middendorp found generally less educated people more authoritarian,Milgram also found those with less education tended to be more obedient.
• Resistance to social influence

  Social support

  Locus of Conrol
• Social Support

  Allen and Levine studied whether the response position of provider of social support made any difference Support most effective when confederate was in position 1 rather than 4

  Praised for having real world application 1943 German women Rosentrasse protest Gestapo were holding 2000 Jewish men,women demanded release,courage worked,external validity
• Locus of Control

  Related to NSI but doesn't explain ISI. Spector found significant correlation between predisposition to NSI and LoC but not ISI,incomplete

  Research suggesting young people are becoming more external
• Minority Influence - need 3 traits

  consistency,commitment,flexibility

  Supporting study for consistency,Moscovici's blue slide green slide

  Support for commitments,Xie placed p's in chat rooms had own opinions likely to change theirs if everyone had same opinion,less likely to if one confederate had a different opinion.

  Support for flexibility,Nemeth mock jury 3 p's one confederate compensation for ski lift accident.

  Weakness use of artificial tasks,real life situations are more complicated
• Social Change

  A.C.P.A.S.S

  Research support for NSI in social change,Nolan investigated whether majority influence led to reduction in energy. Significant decrease in energy usage of those told others were reducing energy,showing conformity to a majority can cause social change.

  Only indirectly effective,indirect(influenced on matters related to issue - recycling not central issue - global warming) and delayed(may not be seen in society for some time)only creates potential for sc

  nature of deeper processing questioned,limited ability to influence seen as deviants in eyes of majority
• Multi-Store model

  Atkinson and Shiffrin 1968

  Supporting evidence from brain scanning Beardsley,prefrontal cortex active when STM used and Squire,hippocampus used for LTM's,memory formed of entirely separate stores

  Supported by case studies,found different areas of brain used in STM and LTM. Scoville and Milner HM had hippocampus removed unable to form new LTM's but not STM's,hippocampus is involved in making LTM's supporting brain has separate stores.

  Too simplistic - WMM

  Requires more than elaborate rehersal to create a LTM (Craik and Lockheart)
• Working Memory Model

  Baddeley and Hitch 1974

  Research Baddeley and Hitch p's to perform 2 tasks at same time

  Evidence support via brain damaged patients Shallice and Warrington studied KF who's short term forgetting of auditory info was greater than that of visual stimuli,brain damage restricted to PL,validity in theory of separate auditory and visual stores.

  Some concern about what CE actually is Eslinger and Damasio studied EVR cerebral tumour removed performed well on tests requiring reasoning,poor decision making skills,CE wasn't wholly intact

  Issue using brain-damaged - traumatic
• Types of LTM

  Supported by brain scanning studies,hippocampus associted with episodic as well as temporal and frontal lobes. procedural associated with cerebellum,types of LTM exist in different brain areas

  Gathering evidence from brain damaged difficult HM epilepsy,cant test for effected brain areas till dead

  Difference between procedural and declarative memories,HM hippocampus removed couldn't form new LTM's but retained pre-existing ones,still form procedural but not episodic or semantic (figure in mirror)
• Interference Theory

  Research is quite artificial Muller and Underwood both used word lists,methods can be argued to lack mundane realism,can't get true understanding

  Baddeley and Hitch conducted real world study with Rugby players

  Praised for real world application with advertising,found both recall and recognition of advertisers message worse when exposed to adverts of two competing brands in a week,multiple exposures to one advert over one day.
• Retrieval Failure

  Real world application,abernethy suggests you should revise in the same room where you take exam for contextual cues,supports context-dependent forgetting,improves external validity

  Retrieval cues can be criticised for not always working,Godden and Baddeley,Tulving and Pearlstone p's learned word list,students learned much more complex info and isn't easily triggered by single clues,known as outshining hypothesis.

  Research support Tulving and Pearlstone investigated importance of encoding specifity principle
• Misleading Information

  Braun showed p's who visited disneyland advertising material ,acted as misleading info

  Not found to be applicable in affecting EWT in real life,Yuille and Cutshall looked at a real life robbery and question witnesses 4 months later,despite being asked 2 misleading questions gave accurate reports.
• Anxiety

  Christianson and Hubinette opposing research,75% correctly identified robber despite being anxious.

  Loftus and Palmers findings on weapon focus could be due to other factors,Pickel surprise element

  Difficult to conclude true effect of anxiety on EWT in real life, study was on violent crime doesn't explain to non-violent crimes. Halford and Milne found p's were more likely to recall perpetrator of violent crimes than non-violent.
• Cognitive Interview

  Real world application of effectiveness is difficult to establish as it is often more than one procedure,Thames valley police use a version that doesn't involve change perspective,some only use reinstate context and report everything.

  Problems,takes more time than available and prefer to use more deliberate strategies

  Research to support effectiveness Meta-analysis increase of 34% in correct info compared to SPI high external reliability.