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A
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| Action research |
A method whereby part of the
purpose of the researcher is to influence or change the participants
behaviour. Examples include the Freud, Thigpen and Cleckley,
and Gardner and Gardner core studies.
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Adrenaline |
A hormone which is produced by the
adrenal glands. Adrenaline increases physiological arousal and causes
increase in blood pressure, release of sugar by the liver and other
physiological responses related to threat.
In the US the term epinephrine is used instead of adrenaline.
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| Aggression |
Negative or hostile behaviour
directed towards others or objects.
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| Altruism |
Helping others without expecting a
reward. For example, helping a collapsed person on a subway train or
writing this glossary.
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| Ameslan |
This is an abbreviation of American
Sign Language which is the sign language Gardner and Gardner
taught Washoe.
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Anecdotal evidence |
Evidence which is not based on
research.
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| Anthropomorphism |
Attributing human characteristics
to animals. There is a danger when psychologists (e.g. Gardner and
Gardner 1969) study animals as they may falsely see and describe human
characteristics in their animal subjects.
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Application of psychology to
everyday life |
This is one of
the themes of the course. The examiners may ask you to demonstrate
how the findings of a particular core study can be used to explain or
describe behaviour and experience in an everyday situation. For
example, we could explain the behaviour of a football referee in terms of
their uniform and the role they adopt using the Zimbardo study.
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Approaches in psychology |
There are five main approaches
in the course.
Cognitive
Psychology,
Developmental Psychology,
Physiological
Psychology,
Social Psychology and
Individual
Differences.
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Arousal |
This is a physiological state
whereby the body is ready for action. The sympathetic division of the
autonomic nervous system is activated and can involve
increasing in blood
pressure, heart rate, blood sugar level, respiration rate, and blood flow to
the muscles and brain, with an accompanying decrease in blood flow to the
skin.
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Arousal: Cost Reward Model |
Piliavin et al. developed this model to explain why
people do and do not help in emergency situations.
They argue that the observation of an emergency situation
creates an emotional arousal in bystanders. This arousal may be perceived
as fear, disgust or sympathy, depending on aspects of the situation.
Piliavin et al. go on to argue that the chosen response
depends on a cost-reward analysis by the individual. These include:
Costs of helping, such as effort, embarrassment and
possible physical harm.
Cost of not helping, such as self-blame and perceived censure from others;
Rewards of helping, such as praise from self, onlookers and the victim;
Rewards of not helping, such as getting on with one’s own business and not
incurring the possible costs of helping.
Therefore according
to this model we are motivated to help people not by altruism (acting in the
interest of others) but as a way of reducing unpleasant feelings of arousal.
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Attachment |
An emotional bond between an infant
and its primary care giver.
Bowlby developed the idea of monotropy: the idea that a human infant would develop only one
special attachment to its mother, which was completely different
from the other relationships which it developed, and that it would
cause the child great distress and lasting damage if it was broken.
The Hodges and Tizard (1989) study questions this idea.
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Attribution |
The process of giving reasons for
why things happen or why people behave as they do. See also
dispositional attribution and
situational attribution.
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Attrition |
The loss of participants from a
longitudinal study. Reasons for attrition might include participants
no longer wanting to take part in the study, moving away or losing contact.
When attrition occurs psychologists have to question the
representativeness of the
remaining sample.
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Autism |
This syndrome is characterised by a
triad of impairments. (i) difficulties with social interaction, (ii)
difficulties with verbal and non-verbal communication (iii) a lack of
imaginative play. Autistic children also often display a
restricted range of activities and interests and obsessive tendencies.
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B
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Baron-Cohen et al. (1985) |
The aim of
Baron-Cohen's experiment was to demonstrate that the central deficit
underlying autism is the autistic child's inability to employ a theory of
mind.
Three groups of
children were used a participants.
20 autistic children
with a mean chronological age (CA) of 11;11 (11 years, 11 months) and a mean
verbal mental age (vMA) of 5;5;
14 Down's syndrome
children with a mean CA of 10;11 and a mean vMA 2;11;
27 'normal' children
with a CA of 4;5 (who were assumed to have vMA's equivalent to their CA).
The 61 children were
tested one at a time.
The children were
seated behind a desk opposite the experimenter.
On the desk were two
dolls, Sally and Anne. Sally had a basket in front of her, and Anne had a
box.
The dolls were
introduced to the children (e.g. ‘this is Sally’)
After introducing the
dolls, the child's ability to name them was tested (the 'Naming Question').
Sally then takes a
marble and hides it in her basket. She then leaves the room and 'goes for a
walk'. Whilst she is away, and therefore unknown to her, Anne takes the
marble out of Sally's basket and puts it in her own box. Sally returns and
the child is asked the key question 'Where will Sally look for her marble?'
(the 'Belief Question'). The correct response is to point to or name
Sally's basket; that is, to indicate that the child knows that Sally
believes the marble to be somewhere where it is not. The incorrect response
is to point to Anne's box.
Two control questions
are also asked: 'Where is the marble really?' ('Reality Question'), and
'Where was the marble in the beginning?' ('Memory Question').
Every child was tested
twice. During the second time a new location (the experimenters pocket) for
the marble was introduced:
For the children to
succeed in this task they have to attribute a belief to Sally. That is, the
children have to be able to appreciate that Sally has beliefs about the
world which can differ from their own beliefs, and which happen in this case
not to be true.
The percentage of
correct responses to each of the four 'Sally-Anne' questions is shown in the
table below.
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Autistic children |
Down's syndrome children
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Normal children |
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Naming question
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100 |
100 |
100 |
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Reality
question |
100 |
100 |
100 |
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Memory question
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100 |
100 |
100 |
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Belief question
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20 |
86 |
85 |
The 'naming',
'reality', and 'memory' questions were answered correctly by all the
children.
However, whereas at
least 85% of the 'normal' and Down's syndrome children gave the correct
response to the belief question, only 20 % (4 from 20) of the autistic
children were able to do so.
The 16 autistic
children who gave the wrong response pointed to where the marble really was
rather than to where Sally must believe it to be.
The findings support
Baron-Cohen's argument that autistic children have under-developed 'theories
of mind'. According to Baron-Cohen, most of the autistic children were
unable to appreciate that another person has their own beliefs which may not
match up with how things really are. The results lend support to the notion
that autistic children may have under-developed 'theories of mind'.
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Behaviour |
An activity that can be directly
observed and measured. Unlike thoughts and feelings which cannot be
directly observed and measured. My spell checker spells it as
'behavior' as it is keeps setting its self to the US spell checker.
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Behaviourism |
An approach in psychology which attempts to explain all
behaviour in terms of learning. This
reductionist approach largely focuses on overt behaviour and ignores
internal mechanisms such as cognitions (e.g. thoughts).
A page here where you can read more about
behaviourism
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Bobo doll |
An inflatable doll used in the
Bandura core study. A three and five foot doll were used.
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Brain |
Grey thing which weighs about 1.4kg
(3lbs) and contains about 100 billion nerve cells (neurones). There
will be a good description of all of the important bits of the brain here
soon. Check out this
brain flash movie.
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Brain scan |
Taking images of the living brain.
See PET scan. |
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C
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Case study |
A detailed study of an individual
or small group of people.
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Classical Conditioning |
A form of learning
through association. Ivan Pavlov, whilst experimenting on dogs noticed that
if a bell was rung at the same time as the dogs were fed, they would
salivate merely at the sound of a bell. This idea has been applied to
humans to explain how certain behaviours are learned. For example, it is
argued that phobias can be explained using classical conditioning. A person
may have a phobia of horses because they once had a frightening experience
with a horse and now they associate horses with this frightening
experience. Therefore another explanation for Hans' phobia of horses is
that he was classically conditioned to fear horses. Or in other words, Hans
witnessed a horse fall and collapse in the street. Hans then generalised
this fear to all horses.
See also
behaviourism
A
game where you can be Pavlov.
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Categorisation |
Grouping people into social
categories or sets. According to Tajfel (1970) categorisation is the
minimum condition necessary to create discrimination.
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Cognition |
This refers to mental processes
such as perception, memory, thinking and reasoning and so on.
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Commisurotomy |
A surgical procedure to sever the
corpus callosum.
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Confounding variable |
A confounding variable is a
variable which has an unintentional effect on the dependent variable.
When carrying out experiments we attempt to control
extraneous variables, however
there is
always the possibility that one of these variables is not controlled and if
this effects the dependent variable in a systematic way we call this a
confounding variable.
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Conservation |
The ability to recognise that
volume, number or mass do not change when the physical appearance changes.
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Controls |
This refers to
the extent to which variables are held constant or regulated. See also
extraneous variables,
confounding variables and
experimental designs.
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| Control group |
Often used in experiments.
This is a group which does not receive the manipulation of the independent
variable and can be used for comparison with the experimental group or
groups.
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Corpus callosum
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The bundle of nerve fibres that
connect the two hemispheres of the brain.
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Correlation |
This refers to a measure of how
strongly two or more variables are related to each other.
A positive correlation means that high values of one
variable are associated with high values of the other. Or if you like, the
variables increase together.
A negative correlation means that high values of one variable are associated
with low values of the other. Or if you like, as one variable increases the
other decreases. Note that like a positive correlation, a negative
correlation still indicates that some kind of relationship exists.
If there is no correlation between two variables they are said to be
uncorrelated.
Don't let yourself fall into the trap of believing that when there is a
strong correlation between two variables that one of the variables causes
the other. Association does not mean causation. For example, there is almost
certainly a very high positive correlation between the length of people’s
right arm and the length of their left arm. But the length of a persons left
arm did not determine the length of their right arm. They are both
determined by other factors i.e. genetics, diet etc.
A correlation coefficient refers to a number between -1 and +1 and states
how strong a correlation is. If the number is close to +1 then there is a
positive correlation. If the number is close to -1 then there is a negative
correlation. If the number is close to 0 then the variables are
uncorrelated.
Correlation coefficient can be calculated in a number of ways such as with a
Spearman Rho.
Correlations are very good for showing possible relationships between
variables and some times are the only practical or ethical way of carrying
out an investigation. However, they cannot demonstrate a cause and effect.
Try
this
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Cortex |
The outer most layer of nerve tissue in the cerebral cortex.
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Cross-cultural research |
Research where more than one
culture is studied. Often cross-cultural research involves making
comparisons between two cultures.
A major advantage of cross-cultural
studies is if we find differences between different cultural groups then,
unless we have good reasons for believing that these differences are
biologically caused, we are able to argue that these differences are due
to environmental factors.
The major problem with
cross-cultural studies is making sure that the measures are fair and
appropriate for both cultures. (Cross-cultural studies are also, of
course, expensive)
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Cultural universal |
A cultural universal is a behaviour
which is observed to be the same across cultures. Deregowski used
cross-cultural research to
investigate if pictorial depth perception was a cultural universal.
His research suggests that pictorial depth perception is not a cultural
universal.
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D
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Decentre |
Jean Piaget argued that to decentre
is to be able to take into account more than one aspect of a situation at
a time. According to Piaget, this type of thinking was typical of a
child in the pre-operational stage. The ability to
conserve
is an
example of the ability to decentre.
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Defence
mechanism |
A strategy used by the mind to
defend itself from anxiety provoking thoughts. In Freud's study of
Little Hans he identified the defence mechanism known as
identification with the aggressor. Whereby Little Hans stresses all
the ways that he is similar to his father, adopting his father's attitudes,
mannerisms and actions, feeling that if his father sees him as similar, he
will not feel hostile towards him.
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Demand
characteristics |
Any aspect of a study which has an
influence on participants to do or answer what is expected of them.
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Depersonalisation |
A dissociative disorder where an
individual loses their sense of identity. See the studies by Zimbardo
and Rosenhan.
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Descriptive Statistics |
Statistics are a
method of summarising and analysing data for the purpose of drawing
conclusions about the data.
Carrying out
psychological research often involves collecting a lot of data. As
psychologists therefore we need to have knowledge of statistics so that we
can make conclusions about our data.
We can make a
distinction between descriptive and
inferential statistics.
Descriptive statistics simply offer us a way to describe a summary of our
data.
Inferential
statistics go a step further and allow us to make a conclusion related to
our hypothesis.
Descriptive
statistics give us a way to summarise and describe our data but do not allow
us to make a conclusion related to our hypothesis.
When carrying out
a test of difference (activity C) there are two main ways of summarising the
data using descriptive statistics. The first way is to carry out of
measure of central tendency (mean, median or mode) for each of the two
conditions.
The mean is
calculated by adding all the scores together in each condition and then
dividing by the number of scores. This is a useful statistic as it takes
all of the scores into account but can be misleading if there are extreme
values. For example if the scores on a memory test were 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 42,
the mean would be 10 which is not typical or representative of the data.
The median is
calculated by finding the mid point in on ordered list. The median is
calculated by placing all the values of one condition in order and finding
the mid- point. This is a more useful measure than the mean when there are
extreme values.
The mode is the
most common value in a set of values.
The second way of summarising and describing data is to calculate a measure
of dispersion. This simply shows us the spread of a set of data. A simple
way of calculating the measure of dispersion is to calculate the range. The
range is the difference between the smallest and largest value in a set of
scores. Although it is a fairly crude measure of dispersion as any one high
or low scale can distort the data. A more sophisticated measure of
dispersion is the standard deviation which tells us how much on average
scores differ from the mean.
When
carrying out correlational analysis the data is summarised by presenting the
data in a scattergram. It is important that the scattergram has a title
and both axes are labelled. From the scattergram we may be able to say
whether there is a strong positive correlation, a weak positive correlation,
no correlation, a weak negative correlation or a strong negative correlation
but we can not make a conclusion about the hypothesis.
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Depth Cue |
A depth cue is
something which gives us an
indication of how far away an object or image is. Pictorial
depth cues include relative size and linear
perspective.
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| Deregowski
(1972) |
The aim of
Deregowski's study was to discover whether people in all cultures
perceive pictures in the same way. Or in Deregowski’s words do
pictures offer a lingua franca for inter-cultural
communication?
Deregowski
conducted a review article which involved bringing together research
by other psychologists and him-self.
Deregowski
started his study by reviewing a number of reports of how people in
different cultures often have difficulties with the perception of
pictures (pictorial perception). For example, he recalled a story
told by Mrs Donald Fraser, who taught health care to Africans in the
1920s. This is her description of an African woman slowly
discovering that a picture she was looking at portrayed a human head
in profile: 'She discovered in turn the nose, the mouth, the eye,
but where was the other eye? I tried by turning my profile to
explain why she could only see one eye but she hopped round to my
other side to point out that I possessed a second eye which the
other lacked'. Deregowski presented other anecdotal evidence to
point out that some non-Western cultures find it difficult to
perceive depth in pictures.
Deregowski then
went on to describe experimental evidence which demonstrated the
differences between cultural perception of pictures.
Non-Western participants were
shown Hudson's test pictures which consisted of a series of pictures
in which there were various combinations of three pictorial depth
cues; relative size, superimposition and linear perspective.
Both children and adults from
African tribes found it difficult to perceive depth in the pictorial
material.
Research participants were shown
a drawing of two squares, one behind the other and connected with a
single rod. They were also given sticks and modelling clay and asked
to build a model of what they saw.
Almost all the 3-D perceivers
built a 3-D object. Participants who did not readily perceive depth
in pictures tended to build a flat model.
Participants were asked to copy a
'two pronged trident’; a tantalising drawing that confuses many
people. The confusion is apparently a direct result of attempting to
interpret the drawing as a 3-D object. When asked to copy the
ambiguous trident participants who were classified as 3-D perceivers
spent more time looking at the ambiguous trident than at the control
trident, whereas 2-D perceivers did not differ significantly in the
time spent viewing each of the two tridents.
Or in other words the 2D
perceivers could copy the trident quicker than the 3D perceivers.
Deregowski found that the 2-D
perceivers prefer split type drawings to the perspective type. Split
drawings are drawings that depict the essential characteristics of
an object even if all those characteristics cannot be seen from a
single view point - if you like, unfolded
Deregowski's major findings were
that many non-Western tribal lack pictorial depth perception and
that many non-Western tribal people prefer split drawings to
perspective drawings.
Deregowski believes that
non-Western people lack the ability to perceive and integrate depth
cues in pictures. Deregowski believes this inability is due to some
form of learning or lack of learning.
In accounting for the findings
that some non-Western tribal people prefer split type drawings
Deregowski believes that in all societies children have an aesthetic
preference for drawings of the split type. In Western societies this
preference is suppressed because the drawings do not convey
information about the depicted objects as accurately as perspective
drawings do. Therefore, according to Deregowski, we learn
perspective drawings.
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Determinism |
This is the argument that we do not
have much control over our actions but are controlled by factors such as
our biology or genes, or by the way we are brought up. A consequence
of this is that determinists believe that we are mainly passive responders
to our past or biology and that we have no free will.
Determinists therefore believe that is possible to predict behaviour by
identifying the cause of behaviour.
Although most psychologists believe in some form of determinism, many
argue that hard determinism is too extreme. They argue that humans
do not always act involuntary and have some control over their
behaviour. This argument is known as soft determinism.
A further argument is that humans have free will. The argument
is that we have the freedom to act as we want at all times.
Psychologists who support the idea of free will, believe that the
determinist argument is de-humanising as it treats people as if they were
machines.
However, much of the research you will come across whilst studying
psychology does not support the view that behaviour
is unpredictable.
It is
possible to identify behaviour patterns which, to some extent, do seem
predictable.
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Diffusion of responsibility |
Diffusion of
responsibility is the idea
that people are less likely to intervene to help someone who seems to need
it if there are others present, because they perceive responsibility as
being shared between all present, and therefore see themselves as being
less responsible personally.
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Discrimination |
The behaviour
that results from prejudice.
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Dispositional
attribution |
This is believing that a person's
behaviour is caused by an individual's personality or disposition rather
than the situation they are in. See also
situational attribution.
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Down's syndrome |
A syndrome which is caused by
having 47 chromosomes rather than 46 (23 pairs).
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E
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Ecological
Validity |
This term refers to how
well a study can be related to or reflects everyday, real life.
Studies with high ecological validity can be generalised beyond the
setting they were carried out in, whereas studies low in ecological
validity cannot. (more on
ecological validity)
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Electroencephalogram
(EEG) |
A method of recording activity in a
living brain. Electrodes are attached to a person's scalp to record
general levels of electrical activity.
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Epilepsy |
A neurological disorder which
causes occasional storms of electrical activity in the brain. This can
lead to convulsions and loss of consciousness.
Link to the
British Epilepsy
Association web site.
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Epinephrine |
See
adrenaline.
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Ethics |
These are a set
of guidelines which psychologists carrying out research should
follow. (more on ethics)
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Ethnocentric
bias |
This is the tendency to perceive
the world from your own cultural group, such as your ethnic group,
national group and so on. A consequence of this is that there can
also be a tendency to view your own group as superior to other groups.
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Ethnocentric sampling bias |
Most of the well known
psychological research reported from before the 1980s was carried out in
American universities using White, middle-class undergraduate students who
are hardly representative of anybody other than American, White,
middle-class undergraduate students. Therefore we have to question
the findings of studies which attempt to generalise their findings to the
population as a whole.
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Eugenics |
A political idea which argues that
the human race should be improved by preventing 'undesirables' from breeding
so they cannot pass on their supposedly inferior genes. This argument
has culminated in compulsory sterilisation, mass murder and genocide.
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Experiment |
A research method used by
psychologists which involves the manipulation of variables in order to discover
cause and effect. It differs from non-experimental methods in that
it involves the deliberate manipulation of one variable, while trying to
keep all other variables constant.
There are three main types of experiment -
laboratory experiments,
field experiments and
quasi (natural) experiments.
Try these
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Experimental Designs |
There are three basic experimental
designs
- independent measures design,
repeated measures design and
matched
pairs design.
An experimental design is a set
of procedures used to control the influence of participant variables so that
we can investigate the possible effects of the independent variable on the
dependent variable.
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Experimenter |
A person doing an experiment.
This might just be my problem but I do get annoyed when students write 'the
experimenters did a case study'. I think experimenters carry out
experimenters. Why not write 'the researchers did a case study'?
Go on - just for me.
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Extraneous variable |
An extraneous variable is a
variable which could effect the dependent variable but which is controlled
so that it does not become a
confounding
variable.
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Eye witness testimony |
Descriptions of events given by
observers of an event. These are generally used in criminal cases
whereby individuals have to give an account of a crime to the police or a
court. Elizabeth Loftus has demonstrated that memory is reconstructive
and that eye witness testimonies are unreliable.
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F
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Field
Experiment |
An experiment which is carried out
in ‘the field
’. That is, in a real world
situation. In field experiments the participants are not usually aware
that that they are participating in an experiment.
The independent variable is still manipulated unlike in natural experiments.
Field experiments are usually high in ecological validity and may avoid
demand characteristics as the participants are unaware of the experiment.
However in field experiments it is much harder to control confounding
variables and they are usually more time consuming and expensive.
In field experiments it is not possible to gain informed consent from the
participants and it is difficult to debrief the participants.
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G
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Gardner and Gardner (1969) |
The aim of the study
was to demonstrate that a chimpanzee does has the ca
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