Psychology Paper 1 Studies

For the IB Psychology Paper 1 Exam

AIM: Speed dating and androstadienone (Saxton et al., 2008)

AIM: To see if androstadienone would have an effect on how attractive females rated males during a speed dating event.

METHODS: Speed dating and androstadienone (Saxton et al., 2008)

METHODS:
- 25 female participants given one of three different types of cotton wool plugs in their noses. One was androstadienone with clove oil, another was just clove oil, and one was water.
- Participated in a speed dating event with 22 male participants.

RESULTS: Speed dating and androstadienone (Saxton et al., 2008)

RESULTS: - In two out of three tests, females exposed to androstadienone ranked the males as being more attractive than females in the other two groups.

CONCLUSION: Speed dating and androstadienone (Saxton et al., 2008)

CONCLUSIONS:
- Exposure to this pheromone may increase feelings of attraction.
- Could provide evidence that androstadienone is acting as a pheromone because it is affecting the behavior of the females.

RESEARCH METHOD AND ETHICS: Speed dating and androstadienone (Saxton et al., 2008)

Field experiment; informed consent (deception, right to withdraw)

AIM: Case study of SM (Feinstein et al., 2011)

AIM: to see if the amygdala plays a role in the experience of fear.

METHODS: Case study of SM (Feinstein et al., 2011)

METHODS:
- SM is a patient with bilateral amygdala damage due to a genetic condition.
- Prior research showed SM has impairment in fear conditioning and fear recognition.
- Researchers tested her fear response in three ways: Exotic pet store (snakes, spiders, etc.), haunted house, scary film clips.

RESULTS: Case study of SM (Feinstein et al., 2011)

RESULTS:
- SM displayed no fear response.
- She could display other emotions, like happiness and excitement.
- SM has found herself regularly in dangerous situations, like being held at knifepoint and being in an abusive relationship.

CONCLUSIONS: Case study of SM (Feinstein et al., 2011)

CONCLUSIONS:
- The role of the amygdala is to cause a fear response and this is a healthy evolutionary adaptation.

RESEARCH METHOD AND ETHICS: Case study of SM (Feinstein et al., 2011)

Case study; anonymity

AIM: Leading questions and the misinformation effect (Loftus and Palmer, 1974)

AIM: To see if leading questions can create false memories.

METHODS: Leading questions and the misinformation effect (Loftus and Palmer, 1974)

METHODS:

- Students watched clips of car crashes (5 to 30 seconds long)

- They were then given a series of questions to answer. The critical question was: "How fast was the car going when it...?"

- The independent variable was the verb used in the question and the DV was their speed estimates.

- In a second experiment, only three conditions: "hit," "smashed" and no question, were included and after one week the participants were asked if they saw broken glass (there was none).

RESULTS: Leading questions and the misinformation effect (Loftus and Palmer, 1974)

RESULTS:

- Stronger verbs led to higher average speed estimates.

- Example: 32% of the "smashed" condition said they saw broken glass compared to 14% in the "hit" condition and 12% in the control condition.

CONCLUSIONS: Leading questions and the misinformation effect (Loftus and Palmer, 1974)

CONCLUSIONS:

- The higher intensity verb acts as false information and caused the misinformation effect by producing a false memory of something that didn't happen. This suggests that memory is reconstructive in nature and the information we hear after an event can distort how we remember it.

RESEARCH METHOD AND ETHICS: Leading questions and the misinformation effect (Loftus and Palmer, 1974)

True experiment; Informed consent, deception

AIM: Stereotypes and confirmation bias (Cohen, 1981)

AIM: To see how stereotypes influence the perception of information.

METHODS: Stereotypes and confirmation bias (Cohen, 1981)

METHODS:

- 96 college students.

- Watched a video of a woman having dinner with her husband.

- Two conditions: waitress or librarian.

- Participants were asked to recall details of the video.

RESULTS: Stereotypes and confirmation bias (Cohen, 1981)

RESULTS:

- Participants were more likely to remember schema consistent information.

- For example, if they thought she was a librarian, they remembered things like she had spent the day reading and she liked classical music. Waitress condition remembered things like she was drinking a beer and eating a hamburger.

CONCLUSIONS: Stereotypes and confirmation bias (Cohen, 1981)

CONCLUSIONS:

- Schemas help save cognitive energy by focusing attention on information that is consistent with what we already know.

- Confirmation bias: participants focused on and remembered the details of the women that were consistent with that stereotype.

- Effect of stereotypes: they can lead to confirmation bias, which could reinforce the existing stereotype, making them harder to correct.

RESEARCH METHODS AND ETHICS: Stereotypes and confirmation bias (Cohen, 1981)

True experiment; Informed consent

AIM: Parenting practices across cultures (Barry, 1957)

AIM: To see if there was a correlation between the economic systems of a culture and their parenting practices.

METHODS: Parenting practices across cultures (Barry, 1957)

METHODS:

- 46 cultures from around the world were studied.

- Cultures ranged from low to high food accumulation.

- Researchers measured child training practices in each culture.

- They studied the practices used on children from around years old to adolescence.

- They focused on things like obedience, responsibility, self-reliance, achievement, and independence.

RESULTS: Parenting practices across cultures (Barry, 1957)

RESULTS:

- High food accumulating cultures placed more emphasis on responsibility and obedience training.

- Low food accumulating cultures placed more emphasis on training children in ways that would encourage independence, achievement, and self-reliance.

CONCLUSIONS: Parenting practices across cultures (Barry, 1957)

CONCLUSIONS:

- Enculturation: parents raise their kids with the cultural values that are going to help them be successful in the economies in which they live.

- Enculturation can happen through parents and it's an important process to help individuals be successful in their cultures.

RESEARCH METHODS AND ETHICS: Parenting practices across cultures (Barry, 1957)

Natural experiment; Informed consent

AIM: Cross-cultural comparison of conformity - Temne and Inuit (Berry, 1967)

AIM: To compare conformity rates of people from two different types of cultures.

METHODS: Cross-cultural comparison of conformity - Temne and Inuit (Berry, 1967)

METHODS:

- Compared the Temne people with Inuit people, as well as a Scottish control group.

- Researchers used a variation of the Asch paradigm (judging line lengths in the presence of confederates giving wrong answers) to measure conformity.

- Also compared traditional and modern communities from each culture.

RESULTS: Cross-cultural comparison of conformity - Temne and Inuit (Berry, 1967)

RESULTS:
- Temne people had higher rates of conformity than the Inuit (and Scottish).
- Traditional communities had higher rates of conformity than the modern communities across all cultures.

CONCLUSIONS: Cross-cultural comparison of conformity - Temne and Inuit (Berry, 1967)

CONCLUSIONS:

- Temne people need higher rates of cooperation in order to survive.

- The Inuit encourage more individualism as their method of gathering food does not require as much cooperation as agricultural societies.

- Cultural norms and values can influence behavior.

- Individualistic cultures (Inuit, Scottish) may conform less than collectivist ones (Temne).

RESEARCH METHOD AND ETHICS: Cross-cultural comparison of conformity - Temne and Inuit (Berry, 1967)

Natural experiment; informed consent

AIM: Dual task study of working memory (Robbins et al., 1996)

AIM: To see how interfering tasks would affect working memory performance.

METHODS: Dual task study of working memory (Robbins et al., 1996)

METHODS:

- Participants were 20 male chess players from Cambridge, UK, ranging in abilities.

- They had to view an arrangement of chess pieces and then recreate this arrangement on a new board.

- Two conditions: verbal and visual/spatial interference.

- Verbal interference: repeated the word "the" while viewing the first chess set and also when recreating it.

- Visual/spatial interference: tapped a sequence into a keypad in their laps while viewing the first board and while recreating it.

RESULTS: Dual task study of working memory (Robbins et al., 1996)

RESULTS:

- Average scores: Verbal - 16/25 (64%), Visual/spatial - 4/25 (16%)

CONCLUSIONS: Dual task study of working memory (Robbins et al., 1996)

CONCLUSIONS:

- Verbal interference leads to higher scores because participants can use two different working memory systems ("the" uses phonological loop, chess pieces use visuospatial sketchpad capacity.

- If working memory was all one system, there would be no difference in scores between the groups.

- This is evidence for the existence of different slave systems that control processes of different modalities of information.

RESAERCH METHOD: Dual task study of working memory (Robbins et al., 1996)

True experiment

AIM: Trigrams and STS duration (Peterson & Peterson, 1959)

AIM: To test the duration of the short-term memory store.

METHODS: Trigrams and STS duration (Peterson & Peterson, 1959)

METHODS:

- Participants tries to remember meaningless trigrams.

- After hearing trigrams, participants counted backwards in 3's from a random number to prevent rehearsal.

- This stopped the information from traveling to LTS.

- Delays were 0, 6, 12, or 18 seconds.

RESULTS: Trigrams and STS duration (Peterson & Peterson, 1959)

RESULTS:
- As the time delay was increased, memory for the trigrams decreased. After 18 seconds, there was almost zero recollection of the trigrams.

CONCLUSIONS: Trigrams and STS duration (Peterson & Peterson, 1959)

CONCLUSIONS:

- The average duration of the STS is about 18 seconds.

- Our STS is limited in duration.

_ Rehearsal is needed for information to transfer to the LTS from the STS.

RESEARCH METHOD: Trigrams and STS duration (Peterson & Peterson, 1959)

True experiment

Sorority girls, in-group bias and the out-group homogeneity effect (Park and Rothbart, 1982)

AIM: To see if naturally occurring social groups would demonstrate in-group bias and the out-group homogeneity effect.

METHODS: Sorority girls, in-group bias and the out-group homogeneity effect (Park and Rothbart, 1982)

METHODS:

- Participants were three similar sororities at the University of Oregon.

- 90 participants.

- Data gathered using questionnaires.

- Girls ranked their own sorority and the other two in terms of how much each group personified these characteristics (8 favorable, 2 unfavorable).

RESULTS: Sorority girls, in-group bias and the out-group homogeneity effect (Park and Rothbart, 1982)

RESULTS:

- All groups said the favorable characteristics were more typical of their own sorority than the other sororities.

- Two of the sororities ranked the unfavorable characteristics as more characteristic of the other sororities.

CONCLUSIONS: Sorority girls, in-group bias and the out-group homogeneity effect (Park and Rothbart, 1982)

CONCLUSIONS:

- Social identity theory: belonging to an in-group leads to in-group bias. This could lead to prejudice and discrimination.

- Stereotypes: belonging to an in-group creates an out-group homogeneity, increasing the likelihood of forming a stereotype.

RESEARCH METHOD AND ETHICS: Sorority girls, in-group bias and the out-group homogeneity effect (Park and Rothbart, 1982)

Natural experiment; Informed consent, Anonymity