WJEC AS GCE in PSYCHOLOGY

PY2 - CORE STUDIES & APPLIED RESEARCH METHODS - 1332

PART 1 - TEN CORE STUDIES

The ten Core Studies cover research drawn from the main areas of Psychology. The focus for the Core Studies is for candidates to be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of psychological research, reflecting the diversity of psychological enquiry. Candidates will also be expected to be able to assess critically each of the Core Studies in terms of its methodology and in terms of complemetary/alternative research findings.The selection of studies will be changed in future years.

1 ASCH (1955) - Opinions and Social Pressure2 MILGRAM (1963) - Behavioural Study of Obedience3 RAHE et al. (197) - Prediction of near-future health change….4 BENNETT-LEVY and MARTEAU (1984) - Fear of Animals: what is prepared?5 GARDNER & GARDNER (1969) - Teaching Sign Language to a Chimpanzee6 LOFTUS & PALMER (1974) - Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction7 LANGER & RODIN (1976) - The effects of choice…..for the aged8 GIBSON & WALK (1960) - The Visual Cliff9 BUSS (1989) - Sex differences in humans mate preferences10 ROSENHAN - On Being Sane in Insane Places

For each Core Study, candidates should be able to describe:• Aims and Context• Procedures• Findings and conclusions

For each core study, candidates must be able to evaluate:• The methodology used in the core study• The findings/conclusions in comparison with complementary/alternative research findings

THE TEN CORE STUDIES

1 OPINIONS & SOCIAL PRESSURE 04 - 07 Solomon ASCH (1955)

2 BEHAVIOURAL STUDY OF OBEDIENCE 08 - 12 Stanley MILGRAM (1963)

3 PREDICTION OF HEALTH CHANGES FROM PRECEEDING LIFE CHANGES 13 - 15 Richard RAHE (1970)

4 LANGUAGE & MEMORY 16 - 20 Elizabeth LOFTUS and PALMER (1974)

5 HUMAN MATE PREFERENCES 21 - 24 David BUSS (1989)

6 FEAR OF ANIMALS: What is prepared? 25 - 28 Bennett-Levy, J. and Marteau, T. (1984)

7 THE VISUAL CLIFF 29 - 32 Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk (1960)

8 SIGN LANGUAGE TO CHIMPANZEE 33 - 36 Gardner and Gardner (1969)

9 BEING SANE IN INSANE PLACES 37 - 41 David ROSENHAN (1973)

10 THE EFFECTS OF CHOICE & ENHANCED PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE AGED 42 - 46 Langer, E.J. and Rodin, J. (1976)

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AN EXAMPLE OF THE EXAMINATION PAPER(15 May 2009)

PSYCHOLOGY - PY2

PSYCHOLOGY: CORE STUDIESAND APPLIED RESEARCH METHODS1 ¾ hours

Instructions To CandidatesAnswer all questions in Section A and Section BAnswer all parts of either question 7 or Question 8 in Section C

SECTION A

Answer all questions in this section

You are reminded that the focus of your response must be the skill of knowledge and understanding.

1. Summarise the aims and context of Asch’s (1955) research ‘Opinions and Social Pressure’. [12]

2. Outline the procedures of Rahe, Mahan and Arthur’s [1970] research ‘Prediction of near- future health change from subjects’ preceding life changes.’ [12]

3. Describe the findings and conclusions of Loftus & Palmer’s (1974) research ‘Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction: An Example of the Interaction Between Language and Memory’. [12]

SECTION B

Answer all questions in this section

You are reminded that the focus of your response must be the skill of analysis and evaluation.

4. Evaluate the methodology of Mailgram’s (1963) research ‘Behavioural study of obedience’. [12]

5. With reference to alternative evidence, critically assess Gibson & Walk’s (1960) research ‘The Visual Cliff’ [12]

6. Evaluate the methodology of Buss’s (1989) research ‘Sex differences in human mate preferences.’

NB: SECTION C of this examination paper will focus on Research Methods.

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1 CONFORMITY - Opinions and Social Pressure Solomon ASCH (1955)

CONTEXT and AIMS

Conformity can be defined as the ‘change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or a group of people’. In other words, ‘the essence of conformity is yielding to group pressures’, in whatever way and for whatever motives. Group pressure is a common factor in most explanations of conformity. Conformity is an important process for psychologists to understand as it is thought to have a significant impact on many of our behaviours and the decisions we make in many situations, such as how juries make decisions.

Asch aimed to investigate the effects of group pressure on individuals in unambiguous situation. By this we mean that Asch wanted to find out if individuals, under group pressure, would give an obviously incorrect answer, conforming with the majority, or whether they would give an independent response.

Asch felt that previous work done on conformity by psychologists such as Sherif (1935) did not really test conformity because Sherif – who had made use of the visual illusion known as the autokinetic effect - had not placed the participants in a situation where they were put under group pressure to conform to an answer that was clearly wrong. In contrast, Asch was interested to see whether individuals would conform to the obviously wrong answer to a task when they knew the correct answer.

Sherif’s experiment.

Sherif (1935) reported research which had used the autokinetic effect (this is where a stationary spot of light projected on to a screen appears to move in an otherwise dark room). Sherif told them he was going to move the light and they were to estimate by how far the spot of light had moved. All participants were initially tested individually, however they were then exposed to the estimates of two other participants and Sherif found that when exposed to these other participants’ estimates the individuals estimates tended to converge to a group norm which was an average of these individuals’ estimates.

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PROCEDURES

1. A group of seven to nine male students from nearby colleges are told that they will be taking part in a “psychological experiment in visual judgement”. The researcher informs them that they will be comparing the lengths of lines.

2. He shows the group two large white cards. On one card there is a single vertical black line – the ‘standard’ line. On the other card there are three vertical lines of various lengths.

3. The participants are asked to choose the line on the second card that is the same length as the standard line (one of the lines is the same length; the other two lines are substantially different in length to the standard line).

4. The group of participants verbally report their visual judgements in order. This task is repeated 18 times.

5. The last but one participant in each group (participant no. 6) is a ‘naïve’ participant. They do not know that the other ‘participants’ in the group are actually ‘confederates’ (accomplices) of the experimenter. These confederates have been told to give the same obviously wrong answer on 12 of the 18 trials. These 12 trials are called ‘critical’ trials.

6. The naïve participant was always sat in the last but one seat to ensure that the majority of confederate participants gave their unanimous replies before the naïve participant was asked to verbally report their judgement.

7. 123 participants found themselves in the ‘naïve’ participant seat (n.b. the naïve participants at this point think the other students in the group are just like them). Asch wanted to see on the 12 critical trials:

(i) Whether the naïve participant would verbally report the same answer as the rest of the participants (an obviously wrong answer), in other words would they give a conforming response?

or;

(ii) Whether the naïve participant would verbally report a different answer to the rest of the participants (the correct answer), in other words do they give an independent, non-conforming, response?

8. After the completing the trials, Asch revealed the true nature of the research and interviewed the naïve participants about their responses and behaviour.

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FINDINGS/CONCLUSIONS

Participants conformed to the incorrect answer on 36.8% of critical trials. Whereas in ordinary circumstances individuals matching the lines will make mistakes less than 1% of the time. Asch found that 24% of participants never conformed to the majority judgment and answered independently on all trials, compared with 5% of participants who conformed on all trials all of the time. Furthermore, approximately 75% of the participants conformed at least once on critical trials.

Participants were interviewed afterwards and gave a number of reasons for why they did conform:

1. Distortion of perception – they really did believe their answers to be wrong and others to be right.

2. In order to please the researcher, and not "spoil" the results.3. Many participants construed their difference from the majority as a sign of some general

deficiency in themselves, which at all costs they must hide in order to avoid ridicule.

This study demonstrates that some people are extremely willing to conform with group norms, even when their answer is clearly wrong. The strong desire for intelligent and well meaning young people to conform and give incorrect answers in an obvious clear cut situation raises questions about education and about the values that guide conduct.

However it is important to note that on two thirds of trials the participants remained independent. This shows that those who strike out on the path of independence do not as a rule succumb to the majority, even over an extended series of trials. While those who chose the path of compliance were unable to free themselves as the ordeal is prolonged.

CRITICISMS

Asch’s experiment has been criticized because the task, estimating the length of lines, was rather trivial and insignificant. Some participants would be willing to conform to save face. On a more important task we would expect conformity levels to drop. The fact that participants had to answer out loud, and in a group of strangers, meant there were special pressures on them to conform, such as not wanting to sound stupid and wanting to be accepted by the group. The findings, therefore, only tell us about conformity in special circumstances.

Some individuals conformed to the majority knowing the correct answer, but some reported after the experiment that they had been unsure about the instructions and did not want to spoil the experiment. Other participants reported they were convinced the majority were giving the right answer – but were they still conforming or trying to save face by saying this?

The participants in the study were not a representative sample. They were all American male undergraduates, and it has been claimed they belonged to a particularly conformist society, America in the 1950s. When Asch’s experiment was repeated in England in the 1970s, only one student conformed on nearly 400 trials.

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On the positive side, Asch demonstrated the influence of conformity in a clear and unambiguous way. The task was unambiguous. He tested the participants’ ability to choose the correct answer before the main study. The answers were clearly correct or wrong. Therefore, conformity could be measured in an objective way.

There are ethical issues about the experiment. The naïve participants did not enjoy informed consent. In fact, they were deceived about the purpose of the experiment, and they were not informed they could withdraw at any time. Asch himself reported that some of the participants were distressed and uncomfortable during the experiment.

Some interesting modifications to the original researchFindings and Conclusions

A - F – when the naïve participant had a partner their number of incorrect answers dropped to a quarter of level of the incorrect answers offered by naïve participants with no partner.

A - C – “the presence of a supporting partner depleted the majority of much of its power”

B - F – initially naïve participants gave independent answers but after their partner deserted them, for no good reason, they tended to give incorrect conforming responses.

C - F – initially naïve participants gave independent answers but if their partner deserted them, with a good reason (meeting with the dean), the naïve participants number of incorrect answers increased BUT less markedly than if the partner had ‘deserted for no good reason.

B&C - C – “a supporting partner’s influence can outlast his presence if the partner has a good reason to desert”.

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2 BEHAVIOURAL STUDY OF OBEDIENCE Stanley Milgram’s Shocking Obedience Study (1963)

CONTEXT and AIMS

At the end of the Second World War, people were horrified to discover the atrocities that had been carried out by the Nazi regime. In particular, they could not understand how apparently ordinary German people had obeyed orders and murdered over six million people in the Holocaust. Most people explained this by saying that ‘Germans are different’ and only Germans could carry out such monstrous crimes.

Initially Stanley Milgram, too, believed that the German people were different to other people, and, because of the type of socialisation that existed in German society, and that Germans were more ready to obey authority figures. So Milgram designed an experiment that would involve obedience to an authority figure to the point of apparently harming (or even killing) a complete stranger. The expectation was that American participants would not obey the authority figure

Obedience to authority means compliance with the demands of an authority figure (a parent, an employer, a teacher, a policeman). It is the abdication of personal responsibility due to the social power and status of the authority figure in the social hierarchy. Stanley Milgram (1963) investigated how obedient people would be when asked to commit immoral acts by people perceived to be in authority.

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PROCEDURES

1. 40 males between the ages of 20 and 50 were selected, via a newspaper advert, from the New Haven area. Each believed that they would be taking part in research about memory and learning. The men in had a variety of jobs, postal clerks to engineers. They also varied in educational level, one hadn’t finished elementary school to one had a doctorate. Each was paid $4.50 for their participation, but they were told that the money was for just coming to the laboratory, the money was theirs whatever happened after they got to laboratory.

2. The research takes place in a laboratory at Yale University. The ‘experimenter’, a 31 year old man dressed in a grey lab coat, greets them with an impassive and stern appearance.

3. Another ‘participant’ (accomplice of Milgram) is with the experimenter, a mild-mannered and likeable 47 year old man.

4. The participants draw slips of paper to decide which of them will play the role of teacher and of learner. The selection was rigged. The naïve participant was always assigned to the teacher role and the accomplice was always assigned the learner role.

5. The teacher then sees the learner strapped into an “electric chair” apparatus. Leather straps are used to “prevent excessive movement” and an electrode paste “to avoid blisters and burns” is applied before an electrode is placed on the learner’s wrist. The teacher is told that this electrode is linked to a shock generator in the adjoining room.

6. The teacher is then taken to the adjoining room and sat down in front of the shock generator. This machine has 30 switches on it, each showing an incremental rise in voltage start at 15 going to 450 volts. For every four switches there are ‘shock’ labels, starting at ‘slight shock’ ranging to ‘XXX’. On depressing each switch an electric buzzing is heard, a voltage meter moves and various relay clicks are heard.

7. The experimenter then uses the third switch on the shock generator (marked 45 volts) to give the teacher a ‘sample’ shock (the shock is generated by a battery housed within the generator).

8. The teacher is to administer a shock when the learner gets an answer wrong. They are told the shock they give should “move one level higher on the shock generator each time”.

9. As the ‘memory task’ proceeds, the learner gives incorrect answers and the teacher has to start shocking the learner. Eventually the learner starts to protest and scream after receiving the shocks. The learner begs to stop and be let out.

10. If the teacher hesitates about delivering the shock or asks for guidance, the experimenter gives them a sequence of 4 verbal prods such as “the experiment requires that you continue” (2) “you have no other choice, you must go on” (4).

11. Milgram wanted to know if the ‘teachers’ would shock the ‘learner’, and after hearing the protests of the learner, would the teachers continue to administer the shocks? If they ‘disobeyed’ the experimenter, stopped administering shocks, at what voltage would they stop? He also made detailed observations of the teacher’s behaviour.

12. After the research, the teacher is thoroughly debriefed and the experimenter reunites the teacher and learner. They are then interviewed about their experience in the procedure.

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THE PROCEDURES - A SUMMARY

Forty male participants, between the ages of 20 and 50, were recruited for the experiment by an advertisement offering $4.50 to take part in a study of memory and learning. This was a deception as the experiment actually investigated how far they were willing to obey orders given by authority. The experiment took place at the Yale University psychology department. When they arrived, they were met by the experimenter wearing a grey lab coat. They were introduced to a Mr Wallace, who was a confederate pretending to be another participant – the learner.

The experimenter told the naïve participant that the experiment was about the effects of punishment on learning. The experimenter explained the punishment was to take the form of electric shocks delivered via a shock generator by the teacher, the naïve participant. The teacher then saw the learner being strapped into a chair with his arms attached to electrodes.

Sitting in an adjoining room, the teacher/participant was instructed to deliver a shock to Mr Wallace each time he made a mistake or did not answer on a task involving pairs of words, e.g. girl- blue. The teacher gave the electric shocks using the generator which had a number of switches. Each switch was clearly marked with a voltage level (starting at 15 volts) and a description (‘slight shock’). The shocks went up 15 volts at a time and reached a maximum of 450 volts.

The learner gave mainly wrong answers and received his (fake) shocks in silence until they reached 300 volts (very strong shock). The teachers were given 4 verbal prods to encourage them to keep on shocking the learner to the maximum 450 volts. For example, “You have no other choice, you must go on.”

FINDINGS and CONCLUSIONS

- Findings and Conclusions

F – Milgram surveyed 14 Yale Psychology Majors. They estimated between 0% and 3% of the participants would administer 450 volts.

F – None of the participants stopped administering shocks before 300 volts, (5 stopped 300 volts).

F – 26 of the 40 participants administered 450 volts (65%); therefore 14 defied the experimenter’s authority at some point.

F – Remarks and outward behaviour indicated the participants were acting against their own values by punishing the learner.

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F – 14 of the 40 participants demonstrated “nervous laughter and smiling”. In the post experimental interview these participants explained that they were not sadistic and their laughter did not mean that they were enjoying shocking the learner.

F – The participants were “observed to sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips, groan and dig their fingernails into their flesh”

F – 3 of the 40 participants had seizures. One participant had such a violent convulsion that the research had to be stopped

C – Milgram concluded that “the phenomenon of obedience must rest on the analysis of the particular conditions in which it occurs”. In other words he concluded that the circumstances in which the participants found themselves would amalgamate to create a situation which it proved difficult to disobey.

C - He concluded that there were 13 elements of this situation that had contributed to these levels of obedience, including:• Taking place at Yale which had an “unimpeachable reputation”.• Experimenter carries “weight of scientific authority”• The participant has volunteered, so they feel obliged to aid the experimenter. Having

made this commitment, disrupting the experiment would repudiate this process.

C – “The individual who is commanded by a legitimate authority ordinarily obeys. Obedience comes easily and often. It is a ubiquitous and indispensable feature of social life”.

FINDINGS and CONCLUSIONS (summarised)

Sixty five per cent of the participants continued giving shocks to the maximum of 450 volts, giving a rate of obedience of 65%. Before the experiment, a group of staff at the university had predicted only 0.1% would give the maximum shock.

Many of the participants showed signs of distress (such as twitching, giggling nervously, digging their nails into their flesh, and verbally attacking the experimenter). Three of the participants suffered uncontrollable seizures.

Milgram concluded the ‘Germans are different’ hypothesis was false. Milgram’s participants were 40 ‘ordinary’ Americans living in a fairly small typical town. Their high level of obedience shows that we all tend to obey authority figures in particular situations. If we had lived in Nazi Germany during the 1930s, we might have acted just as obediently.

Milgram concluded that people are likely to obey orders if they feel they are following orders from people who have power and authority over them. In addition, the less accountable and personally responsible they feel, the more likely people are to obey orders. In other words, “I did it because I was ordered to and therefore I had no choice.”

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EVALUATION

The experimental and ecological validity of the experiment have been questioned. Critics argue that Milgram’s experimental situation was absurd – participants were asked to shock someone to death if necessary, because they could not remember that ‘blue’ was paired with ‘girl’. The situation was unreal, the task unbelievable, and therefore the conclusions had low experimental and ecological validity.

Critics such as Orme and Holland (1968) claim participants did not believe what was happening in the experiment, so they relinquished (gave up) personal responsibility for their actions and relied on ‘experts’ who ‘must know what they’re doing’. Indeed, one of the verbal prods was “I’m responsible for what goes on here.” In effect, Milgram was testing participants’ trust in, and not obedience to, authority.

Milgram’s research has been regarded as unethical. The participants were not only deceived about the nature of the experiment, but they were also exposed to the risk of emotional and psychological harm. Many of the participants were clearly distressed during the experiment; in fact, three had seizures and many were ‘prodded’ to continue to the maximum by the researcher. To be fair, the participants were debriefed after the experiment, and several months later 74% said they had learned something of personal importance from the experiment.

However, the work of Milgram is important because it shows that obedience is often due to situational factors, not individual characteristics. Depending on the situation, anyone may find him/herself obeying authority figures and performing wrongful and harmful actions. In other words, ‘the Germans are us’.

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3 PREDICTION OF HEALTH CHANGES FROM PRECEEDING LIFE CHANGES - Rahe, Mahan & Arthur (1970)

CONTEXT and AIMS

It has long been suggested that there is a relationship between the amount of stress we are exposed to and how much illness we suffer from. Our body’s physiological response to stressors is very complex. However many researchers have linked the stress response to causing problems with how our immune system and our cardiovascular system function.

There is a large body of evidence to suggest that any change (desirable or undesirable; experienced by individual or large group) initiates a stress response (Holmes & Rahe 1967). Furthermore, evidence suggests that there is an association (correlation) between a subject's life stress, life changes, personal loss, and other measurements of social upheaval, with the subsequent recognition of illness in that individual.

Thomas Holmes & Richard Rahe (1967) demonstrated that there is a relationship between changes in our lives and the state of our health. They demonstrated that life changes, desirable or undesirable, can trigger illness. Using their Social Readjustment Rating Scale to measure Life Change Units, Holmes & Rahe (1967) suggested that a score of 150 or more increased the chance of illness by 30%, while a score of 300 or more increased the odds of illness by 50%.

However, Holmes & Rahe (1967) based their conclusions on research using participants already suffering from stress-related illnesses. These people looked back over a two-year period and recorded any life changes that had happened. In 1970, Richard Rahe investigated whether Life Change Units could be related to the development of illness in generally healthy participants.

Rahe, Mahan and Arthur (1970) aimed to investigate if there is a prospective correlation between life changes and subsequent/future illness. In other words, they aimed to see if it was possible to predict future illness by knowing the level of change a person has experienced in a previous (recent) period in his life.

PROCEDURES

1. The 2664 strong sample consisted of 2463 Navy enlisted men, 125 Navy Officers, and 96 Marine Enlisted personnel who were aboard 3 U.S Navy Cruisers. The men were on one of three aircraft carriers, two aircraft carriers were involved in military operations off the coast of Vietnam and the other aircraft carrier was based in the Mediterranean.

2. The mean age for participants across the 3 cruisers was 22.3 years, and participants came from a range of backgrounds in terms of education, rank, and marine experience.

3. 10% of the initial sample was lost due to the transfer of men off the ships

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4. Participants were required to fill in the Military version of the Schedule of Recent Experience (SRE). This is a pen and paper self administered questionnaire documenting significant changes in a persons life relating to: personal/family/community/social/religious/economic/ occupational/residential and health experiences.

5. Each sailor completed the SRE every 6 months for two years prior to a 6 – 8 month deployment.

6. Each life change on the SRE is assigned a Life Change Unit (LCU) score that reflects the severity and adjustment needed for that particular event. The Life Change Units were formulated by a sample of American civilians and have been found to be highly consistent.

7. Sailors were placed into deciles based on their total life change unit score (TLCU).

8. As each ship returned from oversea assignments a research physician went aboard and reviewed all of the sailors’ health records. Each ship had a medical facility where records were kept of even the most minor health changes reported by crew members, thus enhancing reliability.

9. Neither the participants or the Medical Departments on the ships were aware of the research aims to investigate the correlation between SRE questionnaire results and their ship board illness history. In other words, a double blind was used. Neither the participants nor the medical staff on board ship knew the nature of the research; therefore they could not be influenced by such knowledge.

FINDINGS/CONCLUSIONS

Rahe (1970) found that there was a positive relationship between the Life Changes recorded over a two-year period and the health of the participants. In other words, sailors with high Life Change Unit scores had, in general, suffered from more illnesses during the mission than those with low LCU scores. Rahe (1970) also found that married men were more likely to develop illnesses than young, single sailors.

The results of the study support the idea that there is a correlation between LCU scores and illness rates. This is important because we can use LCU scores to predict the development of illness in healthy people, and offer them support and advice.

The results of this prospective study support the notion of a linear relationship between participants TLCU and illness rate. It is important to note that the illnesses experienced by the men were generally minor in degree and their pre-deployment life changes were often few and of low significance, however this does not detract from the impressive findings that are consistent with other prospective/retrospective studies.

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EVALUATION – Strengths and Weaknesses

Strength - The results from this research support other research that suggests that Life Change scores do have a low, but significant correlation, with stress and health breakdown. This has proved very useful in helping people understand the nature of their illnesses, and what can be done to improve their health. Variations of the Social Readjustment Rating Scale are now widely used.

Strength – The research was carried out in well-controlled conditions. Neither the sailors nor the medical staff on board ship knew the nature of this study (double-blind), and this increases the experimental validity of the research. In other words, neither sailors nor staff were influenced by demand characteristics.

Weakness - The sample used in this study consisted entirely of American sailors. Therefore, we might question its ecological validity. Would the findings and conclusions hold true for women and for people from different, e.g. non-Western cultures?

Weakness - Different people react differently to the same stressful situations; some people might hate them while others actively enjoy them. For example, a wife might happily welcome getting divorced while it may have a very negative impact on the husband.

However, in this research there was no allowance for individual reactions to stress. In other words, every participant was allocated the same LCU score whether they found the event/change desirable or undesirable. It might have been better to assess them only on changes they perceived as negative.

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4 RECONSTRUCTION OF AUTOMOBILE DESTRUCTION LANGUAGE AND MEMORY - Loftus & Palmer (1974)

CONTEXT and AIMS

Research has shown that information can be added to a particular memory after the event itself (post-event information), and later recalled as part of the event itself. In other words, the original event is reconstructed to include/incorporate the later information.

Clearly this can be crucial when someone is being asked to give eye-witness testimony in court. A person may genuinely believe that is eye-witness testimony is 100% accurate without realising that his memory has been interfered with, intentionally or unintentionally. When eyewitnesses are asked questions by the police or perhaps by a lawyer in court it can be difficult for them to resist suggestions that are completely plausible. For example, how fast was the car going when it hit the child? includes the idea of high speed simply by including the word ‘fast’ in the question.

This kind of question, usually called a ‘leading question’ is one which suggests to the witness what answer is desired or leads him towards the desired answer. When investigators are asking questions of eyewitnesses it maybe that the meaning of certain words may influence our recollection of an event and as a result it may corrupt our memory.

Elizabeth Loftus, an American psychologist, has become famous because of her work in showing how later information (post-event information) gets integrated and confused with earlier memories. In this experiment, Loftus and Palmer (1974) investigated how information supplied after an event can influence the witness’s memory/recall of that event.

Their aim was to investigate whether the verbs used in a question could affect recall of an event. Firstly, whether “the form of a question (in this case, changes in a single word) can markedly and systematically affect a witness’s answer to that question”. Secondly, whether the same question asked with the verb smashed replaced by hit had consequences for how questions are answered a week after the original event occurred”.

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PROCEDURES

EXPERIMENT 1

1. 45 students participated in the study.

2. Seven films were shown of a traffic accident, and the length of the film segments ranged from 5-30 seconds.

3. Participants received a questionnaire in which they were asked, “give an account of the accident you have just seen”.

4. Participants were then divided into five groups of nine participants. Each group was given a slightly different specific question about the accident.

5. The specific questions were:

a. About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?

b. About how fast were the cars going when they smashed each other?

c. About how fast were the cars going when they collided with each other?

d. About how fast were the cars going when they bumped into each other?

e. About how fast were the cars going when they contacted with each

other?

6. Participant estimates of speed in each group were recorded in miles per hour.

EXPERIMENT 2

1. 150 participants were shown a film of a multiple car crash. The actual accident lasted less than 4 seconds

2. 50 participants were asked, “How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?”

3. 50 participants were asked “How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”

4. The final 50 participants were a ‘control’ group and were not exposed to any question.

5. One week later the participants returned and answered various questions about the accident

6. The critical question that all participants were asked was “Did you see any broken glass?”

N.B. There had been no broken glass in the film.

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PROCEDURES (summarised)

Student participants were shown a film of two cars involved in an accident. The participants were then asked questions about the speed the cars were going when the accident happened. However, the questions were varied by the inclusion of verbs such as ‘collided’, ‘hit’, ‘smashed’, and ‘bumped into’. For example, “How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” and “How fast were the cars going when they bumped into each other?”

The researchers found that participants varied their estimates of speed depending upon the particular verb used in their question. For example, the verb ‘smashed’ elicited the highest estimates of speed. It seems the verb in the question influenced the estimate of the speed.

One week later, the participants were asked if they had seen any broken glass after the accident. There was actually no broken glass involved. However, 32% of the ‘smashed’ participants claimed to have seen broken glass while only 14% of the ‘hit’ participants remembered seeing broken glass. In addition, 12% of the control group, who’d been asked no questions at all, remembered having seen broken glass!

This study consisted of two laboratory experiments. In both conditions, the IV was the verb used. In the first condition, the DV was the estimate of the speed of the cars; in the second condition, the DV was whether or not the participant had seen broken glass.

FINDINGS and CONCLUSIONS

EXPERIMENT 1

F - Those participants asked “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed each other?” estimated a mean m.p.h. of 40.8

F - Those participants asked “About how fast were the cars going when they collided with each other?” estimated a mean m.p.h. of 39.3

F - Those participants asked “About how fast were the cars going when they bumped into each other?” estimated a mean m.p.h. of 38.1

F - Those participants asked “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?” estimated a mean m.p.h. of 34.0

F - Those participants asked “About how fast were the cars going when they contacted with each other?” estimated a mean m.p.h. of 31.8

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F - Participants estimated that the vehicles had been travelling fastest when the verb ‘smashed’ was used.

F – Participants estimated that the vehicles had been travelling slowest when the verb ‘contacted’ was used.

C - These findings indicate that the form of a question (in this case, changes in a single word) can markedly and systematically affect a witness’s answer to that question.

EXPERIMENT 2

F – Of those participants who were in the ‘smashed’ condition, 16 reported seeing broken glass and 34 reported that they didn’t see broken glass.

F – Of those participants who were in the ‘hit’ condition, 7 reported seeing broken glass and 43 reported that they didn’t see broken glass.

F – Of those participants who were in the ‘control’ condition, 6 reported seeing broken glass and 44 reported that they didn’t see broken glass.

F - When the verb ‘smashed’ was used, participants were over twice as likely to report seeing broken glass than when the word ‘hit’ was used and compared to the control condition.

C - Leading questions (in this case a single word) can distort a witness’s memory for an event.

C – This seemingly small change had consequences for how questions are answered a week after the original event occurred.

C - People’s accuracy for reporting the details of a complex event is potentially distorted through the use of leading questions.

FINDINGS & CONCLUSIONS (summarised)

The researchers concluded that the memories of the car accident could have been influenced by the verb used to describe the intensity of the crash. In other words, this post-event information influenced participants’ recall of what they had seen in the film.

They also suggested that participants might have integrated the original memory of the accident with the idea of the cars smashing, hitting, colliding, or bumping. They then reconstructed a memory in which broken glass might have appeared because that is something to be expected in car crashes.

The researchers admitted that some of the participants could have given estimates of the speed they thought the researcher wanted. For example, using the verb ‘smashed’ suggests a higher speed regardless of what they had witnessed on the screen, so that’s what some participants gave.

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EVALUATION

This investigation consisted of well-controlled experiments. The researchers were able to manipulate the IV, the verb used, and observe its effect on the DVs (the estimate of speed and the recall, or not, of broken glass).

All of the variables were well-controlled. For example, Loftus & Palmer (1974) were able to control the ages of the participants, the use of the filmed crash, and where the experiments took place. In addition, all of the participants were asked the same, standardized questions – apart from the changes in the critical verbs.

The ecological validity of the investigation is questionable. The experiments were not typical of real-life situations. They were artificial in the sense that they were different from how people normally witness events. For example, when we witness events in everyday life, we often feel personally involved with the people or the action. This was not true in this investigation. Therefore, it may be difficult to generalise the conclusions of the investigation to eye-witnesses in general.

In addition, the filmed car accident had very little emotional impact on the participants. Research has shown that events with strong emotional impact often remain detailed and accurate for a long time afterwards.

A further problem with the study is the sample of participants. For example, students are used to remembering lots of information, and are usually good at memory tasks compared with other people. Students are not representative of the wider population, so the results are difficult to generalise. It would be useful to replicate the investigation using a cross-section of people in the sample.

Also worth considering

Marshall (1969) reports that when Air Force personnel, who knew in advance that they would be asked to estimate the speed of a vehicle, actually observed a car travelling at 12 m.p.h. their estimates ranged from 10 to 50 m.p.h. Given that there are such a range of estimates, it suggests that there might be variables which may cause these inaccuracies such as the phrasing of a question to elicit a judgement of speed.

Filmore (1971) suggests that the words smashed and hit may involve differential rates of movement. They also lead the listener to assume different consequences to the impacts to which they are referring, with hit being perceived as gentler than smashed.

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5 SEX DIFFERENCES IN HUMAN MATE PREFERENCES David BUSS (1989)

CONTEXT and AIMS

Mate preferences are of particular interest to Evolutionary Psychologists as they are thought to demonstrate what sort of characteristics were preferred by our ancestors; Thornhill & Thornhill (1983) propose that individuals lacking preferred characteristics will not be selected to mate and therefore will not be able to become people’s ancestors. It also demonstrates the current direction of sexual selection, by letting us know which characteristics are desirable.

Alexander & Noonan (1979) report that in species such as homo sapiens, females should aim to seek a mate who has the ability and willingness to provide resources such as shelter, food and protection. These characteristics in a male will benefit the female with immediate material advantages and also her offspring if the characteristics that led to the male being able to acquire resources are heritable. Willerman (1979) suggest that in humans resources typically translate into earning potential; women should therefore value characteristics such as ambition, industriousness in potential mates.

Daly et al (1982) cite that sexual jealousy in males functions to ‘guard’ their mate from male competitors, even going as far as to state that in humans many murders and much violence stem from male sexual jealousy. Chastity is therefore a desirable characteristic for females to exhibit, as even though females are certain that the offspring they produce are their own, males do not have this certainty.

David Buss (1989) investigated the characteristics that appealed to human males and females in their selection of a mate – husband, wife, partner. He investigated these characteristics across a large number of cultures because he wished to find out what was typical for the human species across these cultures. Buss aimed to investigate if evolutionary explanations for sex differences in human mate preferences are found in cultures with varying in ecologies, locations, ethnic compositions, religious orientations and political inclinations.

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PROCEDURES

Buss developed a questionnaire which consisted of the following sections:

• Biographical data - such as age, sex, religion, marital status, number of brothers and sisters.

• Information on the age at which respondent preferred to marry, preferred age difference between self and spouse, who the respondent preferred to be older, how many children were desired.

• A four point rating scale from 3 (indispensable) to 0 (irrelevant/unimportant) where participants had to rate 18 characteristics, amongst which were the target variables:

o Good financial prospectso Good lookso Chastityo Ambition and industriousness

• Rank order of 13 characteristics. Participants were asked to rank them on their desirability in someone the might want to marry. These characteristics included good earning capacity and physical attractiveness.

Buss and his team surveyed 10,047 men and women in 37 samples from 33 countries. The participants were located on 6 continents and 5 islands. The age of the participants in the sample groups ranged from 17 years in New Zealand to 29 years in West Germany.

Sampling techniques varied across the different countries. For example, in New Zealand the sample consisted of high school students from three schools. In West Germany the sample was selected through newspaper advertisements.

Occasionally, questionnaires needed to be amended to reflect the cultural differences of the various cultures. For example, in Nigeria polygyny is practised, so questions had to be added to reflect the possibility of multiple wives.

The questionnaire included a four-point rating scale where participants had to rate 18 characteristics. These included good financial prospects, good looks, chastity and ambition. The research data was collected by native residents of each country and mailed to the researchers in the USA for analysis. Research assistants were unaware of the main hypotheses of the investigation.

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FINDINGS and CONCLUSIONS

Buss found some things were universally desired by men and women everywhere, in all cultures. For example, intelligence, kindness, dependability, emotional stability, good health, and mutual attraction were desired by both men and women in every culture.

However, Buss also found there were clear differences between what women desired and men desired. Women valued economic resources and financial stability more than men. They also valued men who had the qualities, such as ambition and industriousness, necessary to secure these resources as and when they were needed. In short, women preferred men who could provide, protect and support.

In contrast, men valued only two things more than women did. One was physical attractiveness (smooth skin, shiny hair, an attractive figure), the second was youth. Men wanted women who were younger than they were; how much younger depended upon the age of the man. As men got older, they desired partners who were increasingly younger than themselves.

Buss found there were some variations between cultures, and that the most importance of these was the importance of chastity, i.e. being a virgin before marriage. Some cultures such as China feel that virginity before marriage is absolutely essential; chastity is of middling importance in countries like Ireland and Japan; and in Scandinavia chastity is of little importance.

Buss concluded everyone, regardless of culture, wants a mate who is intelligent, kind, healthy and dependable. Everyone also wants a relationship that offers love or mutual attraction. And everyone seeks a mate who can help produce and care for their off-spring. Buss also concluded that men and women do have different priorities. Men place great emphasis on physical attractiveness and men often desire women who are younger than themselves. This may be linked to the male need to secure the best females to bear and nurture their off-spring as a way of carrying on their genes.

For women, on the other hand, the priority in choosing a mate is his status, his ability to provide for the family, and his ability to secure resources when they are needed. Women also desire men who are older then themselves; this may be because being older and more mature is linked with having greater resources.

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Buss’s findings support evolutionary explanations of human behaviour; specifically that mating behaviour should differ according to gender, reflecting the differences in reproductive capacities of males and females.

EVALUATION

The methodology of this investigation is very sound. First, there is a large, representative sample. Buss and his team surveyed 10,047 men and women in 37 samples from 33 countries. The participants were located on 6 continents and 5 islands. The age of the participants in the sample groups ranged from 17 years in New Zealand to 29 years in West Germany.

Sampling techniques varied across the different countries. For example, in New Zealand the sample consisted of high school students from three schools. In West Germany the sample was selected through newspaper advertisements.

Buss developed a questionnaire that was easy to administer and easy to analyse. The questionnaire two rating scales that were easy to understand and score; these provided a wealth of quantitative data. The questionnaire was administered by local researchers who translated the questions into the required native language which helped to avoid misunderstanding and potential demand characteristics. In addition, the questionnaires were amended where necessary, for example, in Nigeria where polygamy is practised, so questions were added to reflect the possibility of multiple wives.

Finally, research assistants were unaware of the hypothesis of the investigation, thus reducing the possibility of researcher bias.

Buss’s (1989) research does provide some support for an evolutionary, sociobiological explanation of human mate preferences. It is true that men’s chances of reproductive success should be increased if they mate with younger, healthy, adult females. In their turn, women may prefer men who can act as a provider to take care of them during pregnancy, nursing, and the raising of children. It is not surprising if women select men who can provide, protect and support them and their children.

Support for Buss’s Conclusions

Personal advertisements support Buss’ findings as Davis (1990) found gender differences in the qualities emphasised in the ads that were consistent with parental investment and sexual selection explanations. Women tended to emphasise their physical attractiveness and desire for a high-status man, whereas men tended to indicate their resources and their desire for a younger, physically attractive partner. This led Davis to conclude that women were looking for “success objects” and men for “sex objects”.

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6 FEAR OF ANIMALS: What is prepared? Bennett-Levy, J. and Marteau, T. (1984)

INTRODUCTION

Why do human beings seem prepared to be afraid of some animals and not of others? Is this fear innate or is it learned? For example, which of the following creatures are you afraid of – rats, cockroaches, spiders, moths, mice, grasshoppers, baby seals, hamsters, baby chimpanzees, robins, lambs cats, ladybirds, rabbits? Consider how ugly, slimy, speedy, and how suddenly they appear to move on this three-point rating scale (1 = not; 2 = quite; 3 = very). You should also rate (on a five point scale) how much you feared the animal and how near you would go to it.

ugly slimy speedy moves suddenly

how much fear

how near

cockroach 2.53 1.20 1.93 2.04 1.58 3.25spiderslughamster 1.02 1.00 1.98 2.23 1.00 1.50beetlecrowlamb 1.02 1.00 1.61 1.90 1.00 1.16wormrat 2.24 1.10 2.35 2.53 2.08mouse 1.35 1.02 2.35 2.56 1.27 2.13

Mean (average) ratings given for 10 of the 29 animals of their characteristics, and of the fear and nearness ratings.

CONTEXT and AIMS

Evolutionary Psychology suggests phobias are once adaptive behaviours which helped our ancestors to survive; if we are extremely fearful of an animal and we try to get away from the animal, we are unlikely to get hurt by it. The fears that were important to the survival of our ancestors may lie dormant in our brains

Seligman (1971) believes that humans are biologically predisposed to fear certain animals such as snakes. He found that two to four small electric shocks were enough to induce a phobia to pictures of spiders or snakes; however a larger series of shocks were required to induce the same sort of phobic response to pictures of flowers. Marks (1969) also supports this view as the distribution of animal phobias is non-random and there does not appear to be an equal distribution of traumatic experience with these animals.

Mineka et al (1980), however, found that wild-reared monkeys showed considerable fear of real, model and toy snakes, whereas laboratory-reared monkeys only showed only a mild response to the snakes; Mineka et al therefore concluded observational conditioning is involved in the origins of many human and nonhuman primates' fears and phobias. However, Bennett-Levy & Marteau challenged this finding as they claim that the Laboratory-reared monkeys demonstrated the most fear of the real snake and that this was because the real snake showed a significant amount of movement. Bennett-Levy & Marteau suggested that monkeys (and humans) may not have a ‘prepared template’ to fear snakes per se, but they may be prepared to fear ‘snake-like movements’.

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Bennett-Levy & Marteau aimed to investigate if human beings are biologically prepared to fear certain stimulus configurations in animals, such as rapid/abrupt movement and discrepancies from the human form, and if these ratings are meaningfully related to the distribution of ratings of fear and avoidance of these animals.

In other words, this study investigated the hypothesis that human beings, like other animals, are genetically/instinctively prepared to fear certain animals. The hypothesis suggests that humans have an innate fear of animals that are significantly different in appearance from humans, and animals that can move speedily and abruptly. This would explain why humans sometimes fear animals that they know are small and harmless but which, nevertheless, inspire fear in them.

PROCEDURE

1. 113 participants who were attending a health centre were asked to fill in one of two questionnaires. The questionnaires were distributed in a random order.

2. Group 1 (completed Questionnaire 1) included 34 females and 30 males. The mean age of group 1 was 35.5 years, SD=16.9.

3. Group 2 (completed Questionnaire 2) included 25 females and 24 males. The mean age of group 2 was 35.1 years, SD=16.4.

4. Questionnaire 1 was designed to measure self-reported fear and avoidance of a 29 small harmless animals and insects. Participants rated their fear of the animal on a three-point scale (1= not afraid; 2= quite afraid; 3= very afraid). Participants rated their avoidance by completing a five point scale of nearness (1= enjoy picking it up; 2= would pick it up, but unpleasant; 3= touch it or go within six inches; 4= stand 0ne to six feet away; move further than six feet away). Participants were instructed that “as some animals and insects are difficult to pick up in the wild, imagine that they have been injured in some way. For instance, the birds have a broken wing, or the squirrel a broken foot, etc”. Where the animals might have been thought of as being harmful (e.g. grass snakes, jellyfish) the instruction ‘not harmful’ was included.

5. Questionnaire 2 was designed to measure self-reported ratings of the same 29 animals and insects as used in Questionnaire 1, specifically along four perceptual dimensions. The following instructions were given “We would like you to consider how UGLY, SLIMY and SPEEDY the animals are, and how SUDDENLY they appear to MOVE”. A three-point scale was used (1=not; 2= quite; 3= very).

The 29 animals and insects in both questionnaires included: rat, cockroach, jellyfish (not harmful), spider, slug, grass snake (not harmful), beetle, lizard, worm, frog, moth, ant, crow, mouse, grasshopper, squirrel, caterpillar, baby seal, blackbird, hamster, baby chimpanzee, butterfly, spaniel (dog), tortoise, robin, lamb, cat, ladybird, rabbit.

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PROCEDURE (summarised)

One hundred and thirteen (n=113) participants attending a local health centre were asked to fill in one of two questionnaires. The questionnaires were distributed in random order. There were 64 men and women in Group 1 and 49 men and women in Group 2. The average age for both groups was 35.5 years.

On their questionnaire, Group 1 were asked two things – how much they feared the 29 animals on the list and how near they would approach the animal. The list included rat, cockroach, jellyfish, spider, hamster, lamb and mouse. It was made clear that all the animals on the list were harmless.

The participants indicated their level of fear on a three-point scale (1 = not afraid, 2 = quite afraid, 3 = very afraid). Subjects indicated how near they would go to each animal on a five-point scale (1 = enjoy picking it up, 2 = would pick it up but unpleasant), 3 = touch it or go within six inches, 4 = stand six feet away, 5 = more than six feet away).

On their questionnaire, Group 2 were asked to rate the same 29 animals under the headings UGLY, SLIMY, SPEEDY and how SUDDEN their movement. A three-point rating scale was used.

FINDINGS and CONCLUSIONS

The findings showed that participants were more fearful of rats than of any other animals on the list. This was almost certainly because rats are perceived as potentially harmful, unlike the other animals on the list. It is difficult for people to perceive a rat without thinking that it might be vicious or that it might be carrying a disease.

Findings also showed that women are far more reluctant than men to pick up or even to approach some animals. In particular, women were reluctant to touch jellyfish, cockroaches, ants, worms and moths. However, there were no significant differences between men and women in the ratings given for ugliness, sliminess and suddenness of movement.

It was also found that animals which were perceived as ugly and slimy were the same animals that elicited the greatest amount of fear and were the least likely to be picked up. In other words, the more ugly and slimy an animal was seen to be, the more fear it caused in the participants. Participants were also reluctant to approach animals that make sudden, abrupt movements. Therefore, the hypothesis that the appearance of an animal as rated by one group of subjects would be related to fear and nearness ratings given by the second group was clearly supported by the findings.

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EVALUATION

This study suggests how an animal appears to human beings is of some importance in determining whether humans have a negative or positive perception of the animal. The evidence suggests that animals perceived as ugly, slimy, speedy or sudden in movement are experienced as less approachable and more fear-provoking than animals without these qualities. It is also clear that animals regarded as potentially harmful, for example rats, are feared more than animals perceived as harmless.

The study also suggests that while some individuals may have a phobia about common animals that are actually harmless, the general population does not have a phobia about these harmless animals. However, it is true to say that the normal population is probably averse (a dislike of) to the animals listed in rank order in Table 1: rats, cockroaches, jellyfish, spiders, slugs… and so on down to robins, lambs, cats, ladybirds and rabbits.

The study also supports the suggestion that humans have an innate fear of certain animals. Generally speaking, the more different an animal is in appearance from human form, the more likely it is to be feared by human beings. This is called the discrepancy principle – the extent to which an animal is different in appearance from the human form. This may explain why both men and women in this study agreed in their assessment of what was ‘ugly about an animal – sliminess, colour of animal, number of limbs, and relation of eyes to the head. As mammals, we humans prefer big eyes, two in number, situated on the front of the head

The findings from this study also have implications for the clinical treatment of animal phobias. Fear responses in phobics could be reduced by systematic desensitization. For example, where patients were extremely fearful of slimy animals, treatment night start with the presentation of slimy inanimate objects (e.g. wet soap, porridge), before proceeding to a graduated presentation of the animal, in imagination or for real.

In conclusion, this study suggests that the degree to which humans are prepared to approach or fear an animal depends not only on its objective harmfulness, but also on the presence of certain fear-evoking perceptual properties, and its discrepancy from the human form.

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THE VISUAL CLIFF – Depth Perception in Infants Gibson & Walk (1960)

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CONTEXT and AIMS

Depth perception is our ability to perceive how close or far an object is from us. It is just one element of our visual capabilities, but it is an essential perceptual ability to have as we have to negotiate our way around our world. If we had no depth perception, we would probably not survive very long – just think about the everyday activity of ascending/descending stairs.

Developmental psychologists have been fascinated by the ways in which infants perceive the world. In classic research, they have found that infants generally respond to cues for depth by the time they are able to crawl about, that is, by about 6 to 8 months of age. It thus appears that we can say that most infants will avoid “going off the deep end.” They won’t crawl off ledges and tabletops into open space.

When we are born the nervous system has all appropriate components, however it is immature – it is about half the size of an adult. The optic nerve, for example is obviously shorter than it will be when it is adult sized, but it is also narrower as it does not have the necessary myelin sheath that ensures good transmission of information.

Nativists would assume that depth perception would be an innate characteristic; Empiricists would assume that depth perception is acquired in the time before we become independently mobile; Interactionists would assume that depth perception is the product of the developing visual system and experience (i.e. from the time we are born we are exposed to various complex and intriguing stimuli such as faces, which have subtle cues about depth – such as shadowing).

Although most infants start to demonstrate some independent locomotion by the age of 6 months, many species are able to demonstrate movement from the time that they are born By using animals, such as kids (infant goats), lambs, chicks and cats they were able to investigate if cliff avoidance behaviours were evident from birth in these species.

Gibson & Walk aimed to investigate if infants could discriminate depth by the time they were able to move independently. They wanted to assess whether an infant’s perception and cliff avoidance behaviours were an innate characteristic.

PROCEDURES

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1. At Cornell University, the researchers assembled the ‘visual cliff’ apparatus in a laboratory.

2. The visual cliff consisted of a large glass sheet which is supported a foot or more above the floor with patterned material directly beneath the glass on one side, and several feet below it on the other.

3. Chequered patterns on the material underneath the glass gave visual cues that one side was ‘shallow’; the other side was ‘deep’.

4. 36 infants from the age of 6-14 months were placed on the centre board of the visual cliff. All the infants were able to crawl (independent locomotion).

5. Each child was then observed to see if it would crawl to the mother (cross onto the deep side) or if it would crawl onto the shallow side (away from the beckoning mother).

6. Non-human animals (e.g. cats, rats, chicks, goats and aquatic turtles) were also tested on the visual cliff. They were also tested at the age at which they demonstrate locomotion.

Chicks – 1 day oldLambs – 1 day old

Kids (infant goats) – 1 day oldKittens – 4 weeks old and ‘reared normally’

Kittens – 4 weeks old but ‘reared in the dark for 27 days’

In summary: the researchers created a ‘visual cliff’. This was actually a glass-topped table that could safely support the weight of the infant participants. A check-patterned tablecloth was positioned just beneath the glass on one half of the table (the ‘shallow side’) and 4-feet below the glass on the other side (the ‘deep side’). This gave the visual impression of a steep drop, a visual cliff, at one en of the table.

The researchers tested 36 infants ranging from 6 months to 14 months on a ‘visual cliff’. Each child was placed on the centre board, and its mother called to her infant from the cliff side, then from the shallow side successively. In other words, the infants were encouraged to crawl over the edge of the visual cliff in order to reach their mothers.

Non-human animals, including cats, rats, chicks, goats and aquatic turtles, were also tested on the visual cliff. They were also tested at the age at which they demonstrate locomotion.

FINDINGS and CONCLUSIONS

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F - All of the 27 infants who moved off the centre board crawled out on to the shallow side at least once. - Only 3 attempted to crawl on to the ‘deep’ side (cliff side). - Many of the infants crawled away from the mother when she called to them from the ‘deep’ side; others cried when she stood there because they could not get to her without crossing the ‘deep’ side.

C – Most human infants can discriminate depth as soon as they can crawl.

F - Chicks, at an age of less than 24 hours would always hop off the centre board on to the shallow side, rather than the ‘deep’ side. - Kids and lambs never stepped on to the ‘deep’ side, even at 1 day old. - Rats (who depend upon their whiskers to navigate, rather than visual cues), showed little preference for the shallow side, so long as they could feel the glass with their whiskers. When the centre board was placed higher than their whiskers, they nearly always descended onto the shallow side.

F - Kittens (although they rely on their whiskers, also use sight as they are predatory); at 4 weeks old showed preference for the shallow side, and ‘froze’ when placed onto the ‘deep’ side or circled back to the centre board.

F – Kittens who had been reared in darkness for their first 27 days of life crawled onto the shallow and deep side equally. When placed on the deep side, they demonstrated similar behaviours to if they had placed on the shallow side THEY DID NOT ‘FREEZE’ OR ‘CIRCLE BACK LIKE ‘NORMAL’ KITTENS. After this initial research, these kittens were kept in ‘normal’ lighting conditions. They were tested daily on the visual cliff and by the end of 1 week the ‘dark reared’ kittens demonstrated similar behaviours to kittens who had been reared in the light i.e. almost unanimous preference for shallow side.

F – 76% of the Aquatic Turtles crawled off onto the shallow side.

C - The large minority that chose the deep side suggests the turtle has poorer depth discrimination than other animals. G&W suggest that in its natural habitat does not really pose it with the ‘occasion to fall’.

C – “The survival of a species requires that its members develop discrimination of depth by the time they take up independent locomotion, whether it be at 1 day (the chick and goat), 4 weeks (the rat and cat), or 6-14 months (the human infant). That such a vital capacity does not depend on possibly fatal accidents of learning in the lives of individuals is consistent with Evolutionary Theory”.

Findings and Conclusions (summarised)

Of the 36 infants, only 3 of the infants crept onto the plexiglas above the drop. Many of the infants crawled away from the mother when she called to them from the cliff side. Others cried when she stood there because they could not come to her without crossing the apparent drop. Often the infants would peer down through the glass on the deep side and then back away. Some infants patted the glass with their hands as if testing the surface but even then they would refuse to cross the plexiglass and the ‘drop’ below it.

Gibson and Walk (1960) concluded that most human infants can discriminate depth by the time they are able to crawl around. It seems our ability to perceive depth matures

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more quickly than our ability to get around by crawling or walking. They also concluded that human beings depend upon vision to make their way around the world from a very early age.

Gibson and Walk (1960) accepted their experiment does not prove that the development of depth perception is innate. They accepted that learning, perhaps by trial and error, also helps the development of depth perception.

They suggested that the development of depth perception could be an evolutionary mechanism designed to help infants avoid danger and so have a better chance of survival. Developing the ability to see in depth is vital when you creatures, human and non-human, start moving around independently.

EVALUATION

The researchers supported their conclusions by further experiments involving young animals, including goats, chicks, kittens and rats. They found that kittens whose eyes had just opened would not venture onto the apparent drop. On the other hand, young rats would run across the drop but would refuse when their whiskers were removed; this demonstrated that touch is a more important sense than vision for rats. It seems then that the survival of a species requires that its members develop discrimination of depth by the time they begin moving around independently, whether at one day (the chick and the goat), three to four weeks (the rat and the cat) or six to 10 months (the human infant).

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8 TEACHING SIGN LANGUAGE TO A CHIMPANZEE Gardner and Gardner (1969)

CONTEXT and AIMS

If you want to start a fierce argument, simply ask the question: “Do you think that animals can think?” If they can think, they need some kind of language – a language similar in some ways to human language. Of course, no animal has a human voice box, so if they are to communicate with humans it will probably be through visual communication, such as symbols or sign language. If there is such an animal, it’s probably a primate, and if it’s a primate, it’s likely to be a chimpanzee. Chimpanzees are our closest relatives; we share more than 98% of our DNA with them. So, the question is: can a chimpanzee learn to communicate with human beings through symbols or sign language?

Yerkes (1943) does however note that laboratory chimpanzees are capable of spontaneously developing begging and similar behaviours and that the use of their hands to help solve manipulatory, mechanical problems is a particular skill of the chimpanzee.

Hayes & Hayes (1951) worked extensively with a chimpanzee called Vicki. They aimed to teach her to produce a vocal language, however in their 6 years of work with Vicki, she was only able to make four sounds which approximated to English words.

Bryan (1963) reports that the vocal apparatus of the chimpanzee is very different to that of man. Even though chimpanzees are capable of making many different sounds, vocalization tends to occur in situations of high stress or excitement, when undisturbed, chimpanzees are normally silent. Gardner & Gardener therefore concluded that a vocal language was not appropriate for this species.

Gardner & Gardner aimed to investigate if they could teach, Washoe, a chimpanzee (considered to be a most intelligent and sociable animal) to communicate using a human language, specifically that of American Sign Language.

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PROCEDURES

1. Washoe was a wild-caught female infant chimpanzee who was approximately 8-14 months old when she arrived at the Gardner’s laboratory. A chimpanzee was selected as an appropriate species as they are thought to be both highly intelligent and sociable animals.

2. During the first few months, the focus of the research was on building a daily routine and relationships between Washoe and her several human ‘companions’ who cared for Washoe in shifts.

3. During her waking hours Washoe was always with at least one of her companions. Her human companions were to be friends and playmates and they were to introduce games and activities that would be likely to result in maximum interaction with Washoe.

4. From the start the G&G wanted to ensure that Washoe could (i) ask for objects but also (ii) to answer questions (iii) ask questions of her companions. The G&G wanted what could be best described as ‘conversation’.

5. All of Washoe’s companions were required to master American Sign Language (ASL) and to use it extensively in her presence. ASL consists of a set of manual gestures which correspond to particular words or concepts and has its own rules of usage. The words can be arbitrary or iconic.

6. Training methods used by Washoe’s human companions included:• imitation of signs using the “Do this” game. • encouraging ‘babbling’ through clapping, smiling and repeating the gesture.• instrumental conditioning - tickling was used as a reward as this seemed to

be the most effective reward to use with Washoe.

7. In the early days it was easy to keep records of her signing behaviour, but as the amount of signing and number of signs increased, a new procedure was needed.

8. During the 16 month of the procedure a more rigorous observation strategy was implemented. To decide whether Washoe has signed appropriately, three observers had to note she had used the sign in context and spontaneously. The sign was then added to a checklist and then when seen for a period of 15 consecutive days it was noted as being learnt.

Procedures summarised: The study, which lasted four years, involved teaching American Sign Language to a female chimpanzee named Washoe who was removed from other chimpanzees when she was 11 months old. The Gardners chose a chimpanzee because chimps are intelligent, sociable and often form strong attachments to human beings.

The Gardners decided to teach American Sign Language to Washoe because chimps can move hands, fingers and thumbs flexibly, and because ASL would be equivalent to spoken language. They also thought ASL would be useful because this would allow them

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to compare Washoe’s progress with that of deaf children who were also learning ASL. The Gardners made sure that Washoe had lots of companions who were also learning ASL.

The Gardners used the case study method during her four years of training. Washoe was taught ASL mainly using imitation and operant conditioning, i.e. she was rewarded by being praised and tickled when she produced the correct signs in ASL.

Records were kept about the amount of signing behaviour and the number of signs used. A sign was recorded if it was reported by three different observers that Washoe had used it spontaneously and in the correct context.

FINDINGS and CONCLUSIONS

F – Within the 22 months from the beginning of Washoe’s training, 30 words met the criteria set by Gardner & Gardner. Come-gimme; More; Up; Sweet; Open; Tickle; Go; Out; Hurry; Hear-listen; Toothbrush; Drink; Hurt; Sorry; Funny; Please; Food-eat; Flower; Cover-blanket; You; Napkin-bib; In; Brush; Ha; Shoe; Pants; Clothes; Cat; Key; Baby; Clean.

F – Four other words, (‘dog’, ‘smell’, ‘me’ and ‘clean’) were judged to be stable, but had not met the specified criteria.

F - Imitation - Getting Washoe to imitate was easy - she did so quite spontaneously but it was not until the 16th month of work that the Gardners had any control over the gestures. Washoe sometimes would fail to use a new sign in an appropriate context; however, her diction was frequently improved by the simple device of repeating.

F - Babbling - the Gardners encouraged Washoe to babble by clapping, smiling and repeating - especially when the babbling resembled an ASL sign. The sign for ‘funny’ was acquired this way - it first appeared during babbling. First Washoe babbled ‘funny’ and then the researchers did, and then she did and so on.

F - Instrumental conditioning - In the early months during play Washoe would indicate wanting more tickling by placing the researcher’s hands on her ribs. The Gardners decided to shape an arbitrary response which she could use for requesting ‘more’ tickling. They noticed that when being tickled she tended to bring her arms together to cover the area being tickled - this appeared very similar to the ASL sign for ‘more’. Washoe soon associated this sign with the resulting tickling.

F- Washoe learnt ‘Me’ and ‘You’ which allowed her to form simple sentences.

C - The Gardners are wary of answering the question of whether Washoe has language - they imply that there is an element of looking for hierarchy of communication skills. It is a difficult question to answer whether Washoe has language. The fact that Washoe’s signs do not remain specific to their original contexts suggests that she has indeed ‘learnt’ language.

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EVALUATION

The Gardners’ research has been criticised by psychologists who claimed Washoe had been merely trained like a circus animal to use sign language. In other words, she didn’t really understand what she was doing; she had simply been conditioned through imitation and operant conditioning. They suggest there were probably many experiment effects such as the Gardners’ own facial movements and expressions. This unconscious cueing may have influenced Washoe’s performance without them being aware of it.

Linguists also pointed out that human children do not acquire language in this artificial way. They claimed human beings were ‘wired for sound’ in a way that non-human animals are not.

Critics also claimed Washoe rarely satisfied the criterion we call arbitrariness. Arbitrariness means there is no obvious connection between the form or sound of a word and its meaning. For example, there is no obvious connection between the word ‘boy’ and what the word refers to – a boy.

Ethical questions have also been raised about research using primate apes such as Washoe, Loulis, and those who have followed in their footsteps.

1. Do we have the right to remove wild animals from their natural habitats for our research purposes? Should Washoe have been returned to the wild when she was old enough to cope?

2. Can we justify using animals so close to us in DNA in psychology research?3. Was the study important enough to justify the use of an infant chimpanzee?4. Should Washoe have been removed from all contact with other infant chimps?5. Should Washoe have been taught something, human sign language, which is

something she would never use in her natural life and situation?

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9 BEING SANE IN INSANE PLACES David Rosenhan (1973)

CONTEXT and AIMS

Would you know the difference between a sane and an insane person if he/she were sitting beside you right now? Perhaps you wouldn’t. But you would expect an expert, say, a psychiatrist to notice the difference, especially if he was actually treating that person. Simple, yes? ‘Fraid not.

In the 1930s several controversial medical practices were introduced including inducing seizures (by electroshock, insulin or other drugs) or cutting parts of the brain apart (leucotomy or lobotomy), but there were grave concerns and much opposition on grounds of morality, harmful effects, or misuse. In the 1950s new psychiatric drugs, notably the antipsychotic chlorpromazine, were designed in laboratories and slowly came into preferred use.

Coming to the fore in the 1960s, "anti-psychiatry" (a term first used by David Cooper in 1967) defined a movement that vocally challenged the fundamental claims and practices of mainstream psychiatry. Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz argues that "mental illness" is an inherently incoherent combination of a medical and a psychological concept, but popular because it legitimizes the use of psychiatric force to control and limit deviance from societal norms.

Michel Foucault argued that the concepts of sanity and insanity were social constructs that did not reflect quantifiable patterns of human behavior, and which, rather, were indicative only of the power of the "sane" over the "insane". The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest became a bestseller, resonating with public concern about involuntary medication, lobotomy and electroshock procedures used to control patients.

In 1973 sociologist David Rosenhan designed a clever study to test the hypothesis that psychiatrists cannot reliably tell the difference between people who are sane and people who are insane. He was particularly interested in how staff in mental institutions interpreted the behaviour of their patients. He decided the best way to get this information was from inside mental institutions through participant observation.

“Based in part on theoretical and anthropological considerations, but also on philosophical, legal and therapeutic ones, the view has grown that psychological categorization of mental illness is useless at best, and downright harmful, misleading, and pejorative at worst. Psychiatric diagnoses, in this view are not valid summaries of characteristics displayed by the observed” (Rosenhan, 1973).

Rosenhan aimed to investigate if psychiatrists could distinguish the difference between people who are genuinely mentally ill and those who aren’t. He aimed to find out if “the salient characteristics that lead to diagnoses reside in the patients themselves or in the environments and contexts in which the observers find them?”

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PROCEDURES

1. A group of 8 sane people attempted to gain admission to 12 different hospitals in five different states in the United States.

2. The ‘pseudopatients’ were 8 sane people - three women and five men (three psychologists, a paediatrician, a psychiatrist, a painter and a housewife - the eighth being Rosenhan himself).

3. They all employed pseudonyms and those in the mental health profession gave another occupation to avoid embarrassment to colleagues. They described their life events accurately (both good and bad). None of them had any history of pathological behaviour.

4. The pseudopatients, very much as a true psychiatric patient, entered a hospital with no knowledge of a discharge date. Each was told that they would have to get out by convincing the staff that they were sane.

5. The pseudopatients called the hospital for an appointment, stating that they were hearing voices, which were of the same sex and whilst slightly unclear seemed to be saying, “empty”, “hollow” and “thud”. These symptoms were purposefully chosen as their similarity to existential symptoms (the alleged meaninglessness of life) and their absence in the psychiatric literature. Apart from falsifying symptoms, name and employment, no further pretences were made.

6. Following admission to hospital no further symptoms were ‘acted’ out, and other than some understandable nervousness and tension of being found out, the pseudopatients behaved perfectly normal.

7. The hospitals varied from old to new, some were research based and one was a private hospital.

8. The pseudo-patients spent their time talking to the other patients, and making notes of observations of patients and staff on the ward. Initially the notes were done in secret but it soon became apparent that the staff did not really care.

9. There was not much to do on the psychiatric ward and therefore the pseudopatients would engage in conversations with others and would note their observations. Initially this was done in secret, but on realising that no one seemed to mind, this was done openly.

Additional Research (cited in original article)

10.1 After the results of this research were publicised, staff in a hospital that had not received any pseudopatients claimed that it could not happen in their hospital. They were informed that in the next 3 months, one or more pseudopatients would present themselves.

10.2 The staff was asked to rate, on a 10 point scale, their confidence level that the participant was genuine. Judgements were obtained on 193 patients admitted for psychiatric treatment.

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PROCEDURE (summarised)

The 'pseudopatients' were eight sane people - three women and five men (three psychologists, a paediatrician, a psychiatrist, a painter and a housewife - the eighth being Rosenhan himself). They gained admission to 12 different hospitals in five different states in the United States. They all employed pseudonyms and those in the mental health profession gave another occupation to avoid embarrassment to colleagues.

Following admission to hospital no further symptoms were 'acted' out, and other than some understandable nervousness and tension of being found out, the pseudopatients behaved perfectly normal. They described their life events accurately (both good and bad). None of them had any history of pathological behaviour. The pseudopatients, very much as a true psychiatric patient, entered a hospital with no knowledge of a discharge date. Each was told that they would have to get out by convincing the staff that they were sane.

The hospitals varied from old to new, some were research based and one was a private hospital. The pseudopatients called the hospital for an appointment, stating that they were hearing voices, which were of the same sex and whilst slightly unclear seemed to be saying, "empty", "hollow" and "thud". These symptoms were purposefully chosen as their similarity to existential symptoms (the alleged meaninglessness of life) and their absence in the psychiatric literature. Apart from falsifying symptoms, name and employment, no further pretences were made.

The pseudo-patients spent their time talking to the other patients, and making notes of observations of patients and staff on the ward. Initially the notes were done in secret but it soon became apparent that the staff did not really care.

There is not much to do on a psychiatric ward and therefore the pseudopatients would engage in conversations with others and would note their observations. Initially this was done in secret, but on realising that no one seemed to mind, this was done openly. The hospital staff cannot simply be seen as incompetent. Instead, since the pseudopatients were behaving as normally as they would in their everyday lives outside the hospital, the conclusion must be that the diagnosis results from the environment.

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FINDINGS and CONCLUSIONS

F- The pseudopatients exhibited signs of nervousness and anxiety as they were nervous of being found out.

F - All but one of the pseudopatients desired to be discharged immediately.

F - All pseudopatients were admitted, except in one case, with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Each was discharged with a diagnosis of schizophrenia in remission.

F - Length of hospitalisation ranged from 7 to 52 days, with an average of 19 days.

F - Average daily contact with the psychiatrists was an average of 6.8 minutes per day (based on data from six patients over 129 days of hospitalisation)

F - Whilst at the hospital the ‘real’ patients regularly voiced their suspicions. 35 out of 118 patients made statements such as ‘you’re not crazy’; ‘you’re a journalist’; or ‘you’re a professor checking up on the hospital’.

F - During the research the pseudopatients were given a total of 2,100 tablets - including Elavil, Stelazine and Compazine.

F - Nursing records for three pseudopatients indicate that their writing was seen as an aspect of their pathological behaviour (‘patient engages in writing behaviour’)

C – Rosenhan concluded that “It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals. The hospital itself imposes a special environment in which the meaning of behavior can easily be misunderstood. The consequences to patients hospitalized in such an environment – the powerlessness, depersonalization, segregation, mortification, and self-labeling – seem undoubtedly counter-therapeutic”.

C - Rosenhan concluded that the failure to detect sanity during the course of hospitalisation may be due to the fact that the doctors were showing a strong type 2 error - that is the physicians were more inclined to call a healthy person sick (a false positive, type 2) than a sick person healthy (a false negative, type 1).

C - Having once been labelled schizophrenic, there is nothing the pseudopatients could do to overcome the label. Once a person is designated abnormal all of his other behaviours are coloured by this label. Indeed the label is so powerful that many of the normal behaviours were overlooked completely, or profoundly misinterpreted.

Additional Research (cited in original article)

F – Out of 193 admitted patients, 23 were thought to be a pseudopatient by the Psychiatrist. In fact, Rosenhan did not send any pseudopatients to the hospital.

C – Were these 23 patients really sane? Or in the course of avoiding a ‘type 2’ error, had the staff made a ‘type 1’ error and called “crazy people sane”?

C – “Any diagnostic process that lends itself so readily to massive errors of this sort cannot be a very reliable one”.

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FINDINGS and CONCLUSIONS (summarised)

Not one of the pseudopatients was detected by the staff, and seven of them were diagnosed as schizophrenic. They were all eventually discharged with a diagnosis of ‘schizophrenia in remission’, suggesting the mental illness could return at any time. The shortest stay for a pp was 7 days, the longest was 52 days, and the average stay was 19 days.

Although no pp was detected by the staff, many of the regular patients suspected there was nothing wrong with them; 35 out of the 118 regular patients voiced their suspicions but they were ignored by the staff. A lot of the pp’s normal behaviour was interpreted by the staff as ‘abnormal’ and symptoms of their schizophrenia. For example, even their note-taking was interpreted as abnormal ‘writing behaviour’.

The pp’s observed that even their life histories and medical histories were sometimes changed so that some past events were interpreted as examples of schizophrenic behaviour. Finally, pp’s were often treated as ‘objects’ rather than as fully human individuals. Very often their requests and inquiries were ignored by staff who treated patients, pseudo and genuine, as if they were invisible.

CONCLUSIONS

1. The main experiment demonstrated a failure to detect sanity. The second experiment demonstrated a failure to detect insanity. Therefore, Rosenhan claimed that psychiatrists cannot reliably tell the difference between people who are sane and those who are insane.

2. Rosenhan suggests that psychiatric labels for mental illness tend to influence how a person is seen in a way that medical labels do not. And that everything a patient does is interpreted to fit that label once it has been applied.

3. Rosenhan noted that mental patients tend to be depersonalised and rendered powerless when they are in institutions. For example, their medical records are open to all members of staff; many of the toilets do not have doors; and staff members may treat patients quite brutally in front of other patients, but not when other members of staff are present.

4. Rosenhan suggested that instead of labelling a person as insane, we should focus on the individual’s specific problems and behaviours. In other words, we should treat the person and not the label.

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10 THE EFFECTS OF CHOICE & ENHANCED PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE AGED – Langer, E.J. and Rodin, J. (1976)

CONTEXT and AIM

The aim of this study was to assess the effects of giving greater responsibility and choice to a number of elderly residents in a nursing home. It was predicted these residents would benefit both physically and mentally from being given increased responsibility and the opportunity to make their own decisions. This study took place in a nursing home in Connecticut in the United States. The nursing home offered quality medical, recreational, and residential facilities to its residents, the majority of whom were elderly.

There is no doubt that having some degree of control over our own lives improves our mental well-being. Ferrare (1962) investigated the effects of the ability of geriatric patients to control their place of residence and found that of 17 individuals, who did not have any alternative than to move to a specific old age home, 8 had died by the end of 4 weeks residence and 16 had died by the end of 10 weeks residence.

Stotland & Blumenthal (1964) studied the effects of choice on anxiety reduction. They told participants that they were going to take a number of important ability tests. Half the participants were able to choose the order in which they took the tests; the other half were told the test order was fixed. They found that those participants not given a choice were more anxious than those given a choice. As Lefcourt (1973) concluded: “the sense of control, the illusion that one can exercise personal choice, has a definite and positive role in sustaining life”.

Langer & Rodin (1976) aimed to investigate the effects of enhanced personal responsibility and choice in a group of nursing home patients. Specifically if increased control has generalised beneficial effects, which in turn affect physical and mental alertness, activity, sociability and general satisfaction.

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PROCEDURES

Two of the four floors in the home were randomly selected for study because the residents on these floors were similar in physical and psychological health, as well as being similar in their backgrounds. There was limited communication between residents on the different floors.

Ninety one (91) elderly residents took part in the study which lasted three weeks. The residents, aged from 65 to 90, were divided into two groups – the control group and the experimental group. The experimental group, who resided on the fourth floor, were given increased responsibility and choice. The control group, who resided on the second floor, were not.

Fourth floor residents were given the opportunity to select a small plant and care for it themselves (all chose a plant); they were given the choice of movie night rather than have it scheduled for them. Residents were consulted about any changes arising from complaints.

By contrast, it was emphasised to second floor residents that the staff made almost all the decisions for the residents. The nurses would water and care for the plants. Residents would be informed when they were scheduled to see the movie. Staff would announce decisions rather than discuss them.

Questionnaires were designed to assess the effects of increased responsibility and choice on the residents. The first questionnaire was completed by the residents who were asked to rate themselves on an 8-point scale to assess how happy and in control of their lives they felt.

The second questionnaire was completed by the nurses who were asked to rate on a 10-point scale how happy, alert, independent, sociable and active the residents seemed. Other behavioural measures included inviting residents to guess the number of jelly beans there were in a large jar and assessing how active residents had been during the day.

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FINDINGS and CONCLUSIONS

F - In the pre-test assessments made of the Residents, the two groups were considered to be very comparable as none of the differences approached significance.

F – The Responsibility induced group reported significantly greater increases in happiness after the experimental treatment than residents in the comparison group (t=1.96, p<0.05).

F - 48% of the residents in the responsibility induced group reported feeling happier, compared to only 25% of the residents of the comparison group.

F - Residents in the responsibility induced group reported themselves to be significantly more active after the experimental treatment than residents in the comparison group (t=2.67, p<0.01).

F - The responsibility induced group showed increases in the proportion of time spent visiting with other patients, visiting people from outside the home and talking to the staff. They spent less time engaging in ‘passive’ activities such as watching the staff, reading and watching television.

F - Residents in the responsibility induced group were rated as having greater increases in their levels of alertness than residents in the comparison group (t=2.40, p<0.025).

F - 93% of the residents in the responsibility induced floor were considered to have improved, compared to only 21% of the comparison floor.

F - 71% of the comparison group were rated as having debilitated over the 3 week period.

F - Questions that were related to perceived control showed no significantly greater increase for the responsibility induced group.

F - Attendance at movie night was higher in the responsibility induced group than in the comparison group. Whereas a similar attendance check taken one month before the communications revealed no differences in attendance of the residents on the two floors.

F - In a ‘Jellybean’ guessing competition, 10 residents from the responsibility induced group and only 1 resident from the comparison group participated.

C -“It appears that inducing a greater sense of personal responsibility in people who may have virtually relinquished decisions making, either by choice or necessity, produces improvement.”

C -“It suggests that some of the negative consequences of aging might be retarded, reversed or possibly prevented by returning to the aged the right to make decisions and a feeling of competence.”

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FINDINGS & CONCLUSIONS (summarised)

At the end of the three-week experiment, the researchers found significant differences between the experimental group and the control group. Residents on the fourth floor reported significant increases in happiness and levels of activity. These finds were confirmed by the nurses’ ratings of each resident. Nurses found the fourth-floor residents had improved greatly in alertness, active participation, and general sense of well-being compared with those residents on the second floor.

The behavioural measures also confirmed the treatment had had a positive beneficial effect on the fourth-floor residents. Their movie attendance was significantly higher, and in the jelly-bean contest 10 fourth-floor residents took part while only 1 resident from the second floor participated.

Overall, 93% , 93% of the residents on the fourth floor who were encouraged to make decisions for themselves, and given responsibility for something (even a plant) outside of themselves showed overall improvement. These residents were assessed by themselves and by their nurses as happier and more active. The improvements in mental alertness and increased behavioural involvement in many different kinds of activities seemed obvious to all.

The findings from this study suggest that giving people a greater sense of responsibility for themselves and perhaps for their environment has beneficial effects on both their physical and psychological health. This appears to be particularly true amongst people, such as the elderly in residential care, from whom making choices and decisions has been removed.

This study has important practical implications. Opportunities to make choices, make decisions, have some responsibility for themselves and for their environment should be built into the lives of those living in residential care. Research suggests that senility and diminished alertness are not inevitable in old age. In fact, research suggests that some of the negative consequences of aging can be delayed, reversed and even prevented by giving the elderly the right to make decisions and to feel in control of their own lives.

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EVALUATION

The investigation itself has a number of very positive features. It is a field experiment that took place in the most appropriate setting, a nursing home. The directional hypothesis – giving elderly residents increased responsibility and choice has beneficial effects on their physical and psychological health - is clearly stated and easily operationalised.

The independent groups were clearly identified and randomly selected. Confounding variables were identified and eliminated, for example one woman on each floor was eliminated on the grounds of age, 26 years old and 40 years old.

Methods of assessment were well chosen and applied. The questionnaires employed appropriate rating scales; one was completed by the residents, a second by the nurses. Neither group was aware of the experimental hypothesis or treatment. The questionnaires thus provided subjective and objective quantitative data.

Behavioural changes were also assessed appropriately by the movie visits, the jelly bean contest and tape on the wheelchairs. The conclusions drawn from the findings seem to have both experimental and ecological validity as well as being reliable and of considerable significance.

Finally, the study has important, practical implications. Opportunities to make choices, make decisions, have some responsibility for themselves and for their environment should be built into the lives of those living in residential care, particularly the elderly.

Research suggests that senility and diminished alertness are not inevitable in old age. In fact, research suggests that some of the negative consequences of aging can be delayed, reversed and even prevented by giving the elderly the right to make decisions and to feel in control of their own lives.

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