Psych 2600 Final Exam Case Studies/Experiments UVA Mazurek

Sherif et al. (1961) Case Study (Realistic Conflict Theory)

Conducted a case study where a bunch of white kids went to a summer camp at robbers cave. The kids were placed into groups to compete for scarce resources

Kids ended up hating the others that were not in their group. They developed negative stereotypes of the other groups

Devine, et al. Habit Breaking Intervention Case Study

People who are:

Aware of their biases

Concerned about consequences of biases

Will be motivated to make effort of replacing biased responses

The BoBo Doll Experiment--Case Study on the Social-Cognitive Learning Theory

An adult knocks around a plastic air filled bobo doll clown, that sort of bounces back.

The adult would get aggressive with the ballon hitting it, cursing at it, hitting it with a mallet

Child then would go into the room and do the same thing as the adult did

Sometimes the children would go farther and be even more aggressive than the adult

However, if the child saw the adult NOT being aggressive with the doll, they would follow suit and not be aggressive either

Berkowitz and Le Page Case Study on the Weapons Effect

Angered college students then placed them into 2 different rooms

1 had a gun the other had a badminton racket

Students in the room with the gun administered heavier shocks than those who were in the room with the badminton racket

Violent Video Game Case Study

2 groups; one watched a violent police TV show and the other watched an exciting sports game that was not violent

When both groups played together, the police show kids were much more aggressive than the kids who watched the sports game

Darley & Gross (1983)

"The Hannah Study"

•Will test a form for evaluating student fit for "special programs"

•See video of 4th grade girl & get 'fact sheets'

•Hannah depicted as:

•Low SES, Urban

(negative expectancy)

•High SES, Suburban

(positive expectancy)

•See video (or not) of Hannah being tested

•Hannah's performance is ambiguous

DVs:

•Area scores

•Overall Performance

•Work habits

•Motivation

•Emotional Maturity

•Sociability

•Cognitive Skill

Word, Zanna, & Cooper (1974) on Discrimination

Study 1

•White student plays role of employer to Black & White “applicants” (really confederates)

•Behavior of interviewers coded:

Study 2

•White RA trained to respond to White Ps with:

•Seating Distance

•Eye Contact

•Smoothness of Speech

•Length of Interview

•DV: Ps’ performance assessed by judge evals of video

The Implicit Association Test

(IAT; Banaji & Greenwald)

•Based on priming

•Related concepts prime each other - speeds response

•Opposed concepts inhibit each other - slows response

Jones and Davis Case Study on the Fundamental Attribution Error

Task: judge personality based on writing

Independent Variable: chosen position vs assigned position

Dependent Variable: Estimate of writers true attitude

(in textbook about fidel castro)

Pyszczynski, Greenburg, and Laprelle Study on Social Comparison

Participants are given a faux "social sensitivity test"

IV1: Participants score (high/low)

IV2: other's relative scores (better/worse)

-DV: Percentage asking to see others relative scores

Berglas and Jones (1978) Study on Self-Handicapping

Setup: pre-test/post-test with drug administration in between

Logic problems

Choice of Drug

Logic problems

-IV: difficulty of logic problems:

- solvable

-impossible

- Everyone was told they were great (16/20)

- Had to choose drug to take

-Actavil (Increase)

- Pandocrin (Decrease)

Pandocrin (1)

Solvable: 11%

Impossible: 61%

Self Perception Study: Fazio, Effrein, & Falender Study

Procedure and IV:

Participants were asked to verbally respond to questions that taped into introversion or extroversion

DV:

Participants score on a self-assessment of introversion/extraversion

LaPiere (1934) Study about Attitudes

Measured people attitudes about certain groups; particularly chinese people. The Chinese were not liked by Americans at the time of the study because of the issue of pearl harbor

Drove chinese people around to different restaurants and hotels and see how people react to them

Chinese people were not turned around and the bias of a white person vs a chinese person were pretty much the same

Asked establishments ahead of time if it was okay if he brought chinese visitors before they got there and they said no

No consistency between attitudes and behaviors

Davidson and Jaccard Study on Specific Attitudes

- Birth control study

-measures correlational of women's attitudes towards birth control and their use of it over the span of 2 years

Attitude toward birth control .083

Attitude toward birth control pills .323

Attitude towards using birth control pills .525

Attitude toward using birth control pills over the span of 2 years .527

Pratakins, Greenwald, Leippe, Baumgardner Study on Sleeper Effect

Message on 4 day work week, followed by...

Editor's note claiming new research refutes

Asked about issue 6 weeks later

50% remember message

8% remember note

Cialdini et al (1978) Case Study:

Low Balling:

After committing to a behavior, the cost can be raised to a point that would not have been initially agreed to, without the actor withdrawing

Study: 2 different scripts (control and lowballing)

Low Ball Script: get agreement to participate

Type of script

% showing up

control

24%

low-ball

53%

Festinger and Carlsmith Study (1959) on Counterattitudinal Advocacy

measuring how people's expectations affect their performance

Ps then had their conditions revealed:

No expectation

Positive Expectation

Ps asked to take the place of the confederate

IV: $1 ($8.80 in 2019) or $20 ($176 in 2019)

Case Study: Sherif

autokinetic effect

Estimate "movement" alone

Estimate "movement" with different members together

Participants truly believed their estimate was correct; the group

Asch Case Study on Normative Influence:

- P's come into the lab for a study on perception...but arrive last

- 76% conform on greater or equal to 1 trial

- Of the 76%, 33% conformed 1-3 times and 43% conformed 4 or more times

Elliot Arnson and Judson Mills Case Study (Justification of Effort)

-Those who did not go through a crazy initiation thought the pre-recorded tape was boring while people who went through severe initiation, they thought it was interesting and raised great points

-If a person chooses to go through a demanding/unpleasant experience to attain some object or goal, that goal or object becomes more attractive

Claude Steele Case-Study on Self-Affirmation

told P's to rank 10 albums from best to worst

As a reward, students were told that they could keep either their fifth or sixth rated album that they had ranked

½ were science majors and the other half were business majors

Science majors were made to where a lab coat while ranking which would serve as their "self-affirmation" function

Batson Case Study on Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis

A student is asked to listen to audio tapes

Listens to CarolMacy's tape and finds out she is behind in her intro psych course because she got into a car accident

The professor gives the listener an envelope asking if he/she would be willing to help macy

Point of the Study: If the people helping macy were doing it out of empathy or self-interest

2 conditions high and low empathy

HIgh: imagine how carol felt and how the situation changed her life

Low: be objective and not worry themselves about how carol felt

High Cost: seeing carol everyday in class was a reminder of her accident and that she needs help

Low cost: not having carol in their class so they were not reminded by her condition because she would be studying at home

Helping in 23 Cities Case Study: (Levine)

Researchers staged situations in 23 countries we someone would need the help of another

Helping rates were higher in countries that valued "simpatia" than those who did not

Isen and Levin Study:

Purpose: does mood affect the motivation to help another in need

A man in a mall would drop a manila folder full of papers in front of someone who just found money for a payphone vs someone who did not

WAY more people helped if they found the dime vs if they did not

Latane and Darley Case Study on Bystanders

Hypothesis: the more people the less likely someone is to intervene and help in the situation

One participant and other pre-recorded voices would hear someone have a seizure and the automated voices would not intervene. They waited to see if the real participant would intervene by telling the experimenters.

Batson and Darley Case Study on the Good Samaritan

Seminary Students were the research participants

2 groups: one in a hurry to make a speech, one who had enough time to get where they were going

If they were in a hurry they wouldn’t stop because they usually didn’t notice but if they had time they usually stopped to help

Conclusion: religion is not a determinant of a good Samaritan

Ps: Princeton Theological Seminary Students

Setup:

•Asked to plan a brief talk on (IV1):

•Tasks required in vocation

•Good Samaritan parable

Setup:

•Told to record their talk across campus and they are (IV2):

•Late (High Hurry)

•On-Time (Med. Hurry)

•Early (Low Hurry)

•

•See “the victim”

Helping Response (DV)?

0: Didn’t notice

1: Noticed, didn’t help

2: Indirect help

3: Asked victim

4: Escorted victim

5: Stayed with victim

Helping Response (DV)?

•

•Hurry Level

•Low: 63%

•Med: 45%

•High: 10%Triplett (1898) Case Study on Social Faciliatation

Purpose: Wanted to see why cyclists seemed to ride faster in groups

Several different ideas; based on other theories/research

Focused on the presence of others

Used "competition machine

In the presence of others allowed p’s to perform better

Latane and Darley Case Study on Pluralistic Ignorance:

White smoke would fill into a room where participants were filling out a questionnaire, if they were alone they would act fast, but if there were others in the room , they usually would look around at others to warrant their reaction to see if they needed to get up to help.

Greitemeyer Case Study

2 groups; one group plays a prosocial video game and the other group plays a neutral game. When the experimenter needs help, the prosocial players were more likely to help than the neutral players.

Zimbardo and Banks Case Study on Social Roles

Goal: To see if people who assumed a new role would actually assume it so much their personal identities and personalities change

Set up a "mock" prison and paid students to play either the guard or prisoner. Role depended on the flip of a coin. Dressed the part for each role

Studied participants for 2 weeks to see if their personalities truly changed into the person of the role they were portraying

Students assumed these roles so quickly that they had to end the experiment after 6 days

Guards became abusive, prisoners beame passive

Mcleod, Lobel, and Cox Case Study on Cohesiveness/In group/Out groups

What: College students were assigned to brainstorming groups ranging in size from 3-5

Half of the groups were all white students (racially homogenous)

The other half of the groups were racially diverse

Task: everyone was assigned to brainstorming for 15 minutes about the best ways to attract tourists to the US

Findings: homogenous groups were found to be more cohesive than diverse groups (when asked if they liked their other group members)

However, the diverse group came up with more feasible and diversive ideas than the homogenous all white group

Robert Zonjac Case Study on Social Facilitation:

What: Zonjac and his colleagues built a contraption for cockroaches to see how they their behavior would be influenced in the presence of their peers

Why: to see how fast they would run to the dark side by themselves and in the presence of their peers

Findings: cockroaches ran faster with an audience VS by themselves

New condition: more complex maze to get to the dark room

Findings of condition 2: the roaches took longer to solve it when other roaches were present VS being alone

Zajonc, Heingartner & Herman (1969)

IV1: Task Difficulty

IV2: Audience

DV: time to completion

Subjects: Cockroaches

Exp 1: Simple Runway Task (run away from light to the goal point, straight tube)

Exp 2: Difficult Maze Task (run away from light, 4 different ways to run, only 1 goal location)

alone

audience

Simple (runway)

62.6 (seconds)

39.3 (seconds)

Difficult (maze)

221.4 (seconds)

296.6 (seconds)

Conclusion:

Mere presence

Conspecifics (same species) create arousal

Royen Case Study on Deindividuation:

To see how others would react to a post by a girl who says someone stole her boyfriend

Measuring to see if the viewer would get involved by throwing out names such as "slut" or "*****" in the comment section

3 interventions:

1. Reminded their parents could see the comment 2. Other people would disapprove of the comment 3. Reminded that the comment is hurtful and is an act of targeting

Staser and Titus Case Study:

What: Students decided who among several candidates was most qualified to be student body president

Shared Information Condition: all p's received a packet that said candidate A was the best and they should vote for A; when meeting to vote everyone chose candidate A

Unique Information Condition: p's learned candidate A had 4 negative qualities a 2 good qualities, but the negative ones were different for each p;

Deutsch and Kruss Study on tit-for-tat strategy:

Purpose: 2 groups; each belonged to 2 different trucking companies; goal was to transport merchandise to the destination as quickly as possible

2 different routes

Paid 60 cents for each delivery, but 1 cent was subtracted for every second it took them

2nd study where they could communicate with each other

Triplett (1898) Case Study on Social Facilitation

Purpose: Wanted to see why cyclists seemed to ride faster in groups

Several different ideas; based on other theories/research

Focused on the presence of others

Used "competition machine

In the presence of others allowed p's to perform better