Exam 2 Hock Readings - Summary Forty Studies That Changed Psychology: Explorations Into the History of Psychological Research PDF

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Summary

Summaries of the studies covered for Exam 2...

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Discovering Love (pg 126-134) -

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Study with Rhesus Monkeys About the wire mom vs comfort mom Studies demonstrate overwhelming importance of contact comfort during development Feeding grows mother child bond Criticisms: - Monkey’s don’t know love vs dependence/attachment - Do we have the right to subject monkeys to harm? Recent Applications: - Cited frequently in studies about touch, bonding, attachment and human contact - Positive impacts on foster care system

Out of sight, but not out of mind (pg 134-142) - Piaget study on the development of behaviors in children - Used unstructured evaluation methods - Came up with 6 stages - Criticism/cautions - Ages are approximate - Sequence is invariant - Stage change occurs over time - Lower stage behaviors do not disappear completely In control and glad of it! (pg 150-157) - Study by Langer and Rodin looking at control in elderly people - One group was allowed to make choices/provide feedback on their living situation while the other group was not - Outcome measured via questionnaires to residents and nurses - Group that was allowed to give feedback reported that they were happier - Nurses also rated this group as happier - Langer and Rodin conclude that if you are given greater responsibility and control one’s attitude improves - Significance: - Better long term health - Less death in experimental group vs control Are you the Master of your fate? (pg 190-197) - Rotter & Internal/External Locus of Control (LOC) - Studied Reinforcement and used a test that measured a person’s LOC - Participants had to choose between internal and external LOC statements that they felt were true

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Comes up with the I-E scale and wants to predict people’s behavior in specific situations Gambling - Internals would be less risky - Externals would wager more money Persuasion - Internals more successful convincing people - Internals less likely to change their attitudes Smoking - Externals were smokers - Internal had more self control/could quit Achievement Motivation - More achievement-oriented factors in internals Conformity - Internals conformed to majority opinion Various LOC across cultures, styles of parenting and socioeconomic levels Study led to a lot more research!

You’re getting defensive again! (pg 233-240) -

Ego defense mechanisms 10 defense mechanisms identified by Anna Freud Repression: Disturbing thoughts forced out of consciousness Regression: Regress to adolescent behavior Projection: See your urges in other people’s behavior Reaction Formation: Engage in the opposite of the id’s desired behavior Sublimation: Finding socially acceptable ways of discharging anxious energy Implications and Recent applications: Do these really exist? Tested reaction formation on homophobic men

Racing against your heart (pg 208-215) - Friedman & Rosenman wanted to know if his cardiac patients (heart disease) had different characteristics than others - Developed a model for observable patterns - An intense sustained drive to achieve one’s personal goals - A profound tendency and eagerness to compete in all situations - A persistent desire for recognition and advancement - Continuous involvement in multiple activities that are constantly subject to deadlines - Habitual tendency to rush to finish activities - Extraordinary mental and physical alertness

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Develop a second set of overt behaviors labeled Pattern B - Characterized by an absence of the above Each group consisted of 83 men with an average age of 45 yr Interviewed and classified as group A or B based on body movements, tone, teeth clenching, gesturing Participants also had to keep a diary of everything they ate or drank over time Took blood samples Results: - Group A - were found to be chronically harassed by commitments, ambitions and drives - They were eager to compete in all activities - Strong desire to win - Higher cholesterol - Blood clotted slower - Group B - had a lack of time urgency - Less concerned about advancement - Satisfied with current life conditions and spent more time with family - Type A behavior pattern is a major cause of CHD and blood related abnormalities - Parental history and smoking have an effect of CHD too - Significance - First study to establish clear specific behavior patterns and how they can contribute to illness - New line of scientific inquiry between CHD and behavior - Brought up health and psychology branch

Little Emotional Albert (pg 72-28) - We saw this video in class - Watson believes that emotional responses exist because we are conditioned to react emotionally - Albert is a 9 mo old infant - They scare him with a loud noise every time he touched a white rat - Would cry/become scared whenever presented with the rat - He generalized and would get scared of other furry or white things - Albert was still scared of these things a month later - No follow up was ever done after that - Launched behaviorism movement - Showed that emotions could be conditioned - Rejected Freudian beliefs about human nature - Broke many ethical and moral rules

See Aggression... Do Aggression (pg 85-92) -

Bandura Study 1961 Social Learning Theory: Learn through parental imitation - Children more likely to imitate behavior of same sex parent Group 1: Children who observe adult models performing acts of aggression will imitate similar behavior Group 2: Children who observe nonaggressive models will be less aggressive than group 1 and control Control: Not exposed to any models Average age 4 years old Children were put in a playroom with toys Filled with aggressive toys first, moved to a room with non aggressive toys and then a room with both Group 1 Children imitate violent behaviors Bandura, Ross & Ross supported

Thanks for the memories! (pg 117-125) - Loftus & Reconstructed memory - Not all memories are not stable - Used to fill in the gaps - Memories are malleable and changeable - Presuppositions: A condition that must be true for the question to make sense - Method & Results - In the first study, 150 Participants in small groups saw a film of a 5 car chain reaction accident - Question A: How fast was the car that ran the stop sign going? ) (53% Mention sign) - Question B: How fast was the car going? (35% mention stop sign) - In study 2, there were 40 participants and a 3 min clip was shown - They suggested the number of characters in the movie - Was the leader of the 4 demonstrators a male? Vs Was the leader of the 12 demonstrators a male? - 3rd experiment - Did similar thing with a barn vs no barn question about another video - Wanted to test if witnesses could reconstruct a false memory based on a presupposition - Experiment 4 - Wanted to demonstrate reconstruction effects

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Was a mention, not mentioned in the presupposition, enough to cause an object to be added to memory? - 50 participants view a 3 min film about a car colliding with a baby carriage - Asked one group if they saw non existent objects (Did you see a barn in the film?) - Asked the other group questions with presuppositions (Did you see a station wagon parked in front of the barn?) Attributes Reconstruction to false recall information You never TRULY remember things the way you saw them Important in eyewitness/crime situations

What You Expect is What You Get (pg 93-100) - Self Fulfilling Process: What we expect to happen will actually happen - Pygmalion Effect: Our specific biases unintentionally come across and can sway the outcome (Experimenter expectancy Effect) - Grades 1-6 at a school were given an intelligence test (TOGA) - Non verbal - Score did not depend on school learned skills - Unfamiliar to teachers - Teachers told they were given the HARVARD TEST OF INFLECTED ACQUISITION (deception important to trick teachers) - Teachers were given name of top 20% scorers but they were truly just random kids - Take TOGA again at the end of the year - Results - Teachers expected more from top 20% kids and kids thus showed greater intellectual development ESPECIALLY IN YOUNGER KIDS - Why does this happen? - Younger kids are more malleable - Less well established reputations - More easily influenced - Lower grade teachers may differ in style from upper grade teachers

Jut How Are You Intelligent? (pg 100-109) - Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences - He developed eight indicators or “signs” that define an intelligence - Different parts of the human brain are responsible for different parts of our intelligence

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and skills Potential isolation of the intelligence by brain damage: Gardener contended that if a specific mental ability can be destroyed through brain damage, or if it remains relatively intact when others have been destroyed, this provides evidence that the ability may be separate intelligence into itself The existence of savants, prodigies and other exceptional individuals: Exceptional skilled people supports the idea of separate intelligence A clear set of information-processing operations linked to the intelligence: This refers to mental abilities that are specific to the ability under consideration. To qualify as intelligence, an ability must involve a specific set of mental processes or core operations that exist in specific areas of the brain (these are 8 intelligences we learned in class) A distinctive developmental history of the intelligence and the potential to reach high levels of expertise: Intelligence must include a developmental path Evidence that the intelligence has developed through evolutionary time Ability to study the intelligence with psychological experiments Ability to measure intelligence with existing standardized tests Aspects of intelligence may be represented by a system of symbols: Human language!...