Poor Little Albert

Classical conditioning is a psychological learning process thought up by Pavlov (1890). It is the theory that an individual can be made to respond to any object in a certain way if it is paired with another responsive object. Pavlov found this when he trained dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell. The dogs were conditioned by pairing the bell with the presentation of food so that eventually salivation would occur purely when the bell was rung.

Watson and Rayner (1920) then took the idea of classical conditioning and investigated whether they could condition a human to respond to a neutral stimulus by pairing it which another stimulus. They carried out a study to test classical conditioning on a child called Little Albert. Little Albert was allowed to play with a rat, which he showed no fear towards. Watson and Rayner then struck a large steel bar with a hammer when Little Albert touched the rat, as expected; he showed a response of fear and cried. They carried out this action a few more times and then found that when the rat was placed near Little Albert, he would automatically be distressed and cry. By pairing the loud sound with the rat they had conditioned Little Albert to show a fear response towards the animal that before he felt comfortable around.

Although this study did clearly show that pairing objects can cause a stimulus to take on a new response and that classical conditioning can be carried out on humans, this study has many criticisms.

There are many ethical issues that arose from this study. Firstly, Little Albert was only nine months when he carried out this experiment. This could be seen as unethical for he could not give consent himself. His mother did give consent, however, she was very poor and Watson and Rayner did give her money to give consent. It could then be argued that they took advantage of her economic status and she may not have wanted to give consent at all.

Another ethical issue is that the APA and BPS guidelines say that psychologists are not allowed to psychologically harm a participant, this is also known as the No Harm guideline. This study could therefore not be carried out today as Little Albert was given a response of fear and they distressed him during the experiment. The guidelines state that if a person’s emotions are changed because of the experiment the researcher must change that emotion back to its original state before the participant leaves the study. This leads onto another ethical issue; Little Albert was not conditioned after the experiment to reverse the fear response towards the rat. The experimenters found that he was not only afraid of rats after the experiment but anything white and fluffy caused anxiety. He was therefore not properly treated as he left with a phobia of something that he did not have when he walked into the experiment.

Although this study does have many ethical issues, the final question must be ‘do the ends justify the means?’ For this study I would suggest that they do, for from this study we gained a huge amount of research on classical conditioning and the effects it has on humans. Therefore, I would suggest that the studies unethical methodology is justified, although, should not be carried out today.

Do you want to be my Facebook friend?

We might not admit it, but we’ve definitely all facebook stalked someone because we’ve seen a profile picture that’s caught our attention. We also make split second judgements on someone’s personality, purely by that picture, which impacts whether we ask them to be our friend or not. If they look interesting and fun we are normally happy to add them as a friend, whereas, if they look shy and withdrawn we’re normally not as interested.

A study carried out by Brandon Van Der Heide found that if someone’s profile picture is them with a group of friends, looking like they are enjoying themselves, an individual will often assume that they are extroverted and will assume personality traits purely on that photo, whereas if the picture is odd or negative in any way then the individual will search for more information about the individual in text form in order to make a decision as to what the individual is like. This was studied by showing 195 college students a fake facebook page and asking for their opinion as to how extrovert they believed the individual was from the photo and the ‘about me’ section presented. The participants were separated into four different conditions. One condition was that the participants saw a photo of an individual socialising, and a piece of text saying ‘I’m happiest hanging out with big groups of friends’ (suggesting the individual is an extravert), the second condition was that the participants were given a profile that had a photo of an individual on their own, and the text read ‘I’m happiest curled up in my room with a good book’ (suggesting the individual is an introvert), the other two profiles were mixed up so that the text was with the opposite picture. It was found that the photograph hugely impacted whether the individual was rated as an extravert or an introvert. When the extravert photograph was presented the text was not taken into consideration, whereas when the introvert photo was shown the participants often read over the text for more information on the individual.

Although this study does support the notion that photos are massively influential in the way that we judge individuals and make assumptions about them, I would criticise this study in a couple of ways.

Firstly, this study is carried out on college students, this suggest that the results cannot be generalised to other age groups. I would assume that college students are very judgemental and are used to picking out who they want to spend time with, as they have to do this through their school and university life, however, 30 or 40 year olds on facebook, I do not agree, would make judgements like this. I think they would be generally more hesitant to add a new individual and so would always try and find out more before making these assumptions.

I would also suggest that although the results do clearly show that the pictures are important, it does depend massively on the personality of the individual looking at the facebook page. If the individual is an introvert themselves they are more likely to want a friend who is also an introvert, therefore, if the profile picture is more introverted they may be more drawn to it and not need to know any more about the individual.

http://www.bps.org.uk/news/people-take-pictures-each-other

Can certain people be more content than others?

Some people you meet seem to have the kind of personality where you could sit them in an empty room, totally alone and they could easily amuse themselves. Those kinds of people generally have traits consisting of talking to themselves and making small things massively interesting. I have a friend who carries these traits and he could definitely spend his days sat around entertaining himself with small innominate objects and talking to himself about his own, and other people’s, lives. He can be very content in his own company.

This made me wonder whether personalities affect how content an individual is. If someone can spend time alone and feel relaxed and satisfied then surely they will be more content in the other areas of their lives as well. I thought this could be an interesting area to study. A study by Headey and Wearing (1989) carried out a longitudinal study that found personality traits such as neuroticism, extraversion and openness to experience to influence subjective well-being. This suggests that certain traits do in fact cause people to be happier and that an experiment carried out to learn more about my question may find a positive correlation.

To gain research in this area one would have to carry out a study where individuals with different personality types would be left in a plain room and then observed, covertly, by the psychologist.  This may give us results that can further help the question as to whether people’s personalities affect satisfaction in life. However, this study would be criticised in many areas.

If the individual’s personality is described through the answers on a questionnaire given before the test there could be a great amount of criticism. You could come across social desirability as the individuals want to come across as better than they are and do not want to admit certain traits, this could be a problem in this experiment as if one individual thinks it’s embarrassing that they talk to themselves they may answer the question falsely and mess up results.  Another criticism could be that everyone has very different personalities and a questionnaire may not be able to capture their true personality, this would then make it difficult to see a cause and effect relationship between personality and contentment.

It could also be seen as unethical to place an individual in a plain room for a long period of time, this could cause problems for the experiment. It may be argued that the individual could be psychologically affected by the lack of environment and social interaction. The amount of time spent in the room may also be disputed as if it is too long the individual must be given food, which could give them cues and affect results, however if it is too short a true result may not be established.

One last criticism would be that we are measuring how content an individual is, but contentment or satisfaction are emotions that cannot be measured as each individual operationalises them differently.  Some people may see ‘being content’ as just feeling happy at that particular moment, others may see it as being settled down and knowing what the future holds. This could cause problems as it would be impossible to see whether a specific personality does affect contentment.

Headey. B., & Wearing. A. (1989) Personality, life events, and subjective well-being: Toward a dynamic equilibrium model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 57(4), Oct 1989, 731-739. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.57.4.731

Why do pain threshold vary between individuals?

I cannot decide whether this is something I should be admitting but I am a fan of the Channel 4 programme ‘one born every minute’. It is a documentary carried out in the maternity ward of Leeds hospital following the process of several women giving life to babies in order to give insight into the realities of giving birth. It is such a fascinating programme however, after the last episode I wondered how some women can turn up, give birth; with very little pain, and go home within an hour or so and others spend many hours in agonyl; exhausted from the amount of strain their body is under. All the women are going through the same process yet the pain they feel varies dramatically. This led me to the question of, why do pain thresholds differ between people?

As Guillaume explained in our brain and mind lecture, pain thresholds come from our pre frontal cortex. We know this due to frontal patients, who are missing part of their pre frontal cortex, not being bothered by pain. These patients know that the pain is there but do not react. If we all have the same pre frontal cortex and this is where pain is materialised then why do some people have a much higher pain threshold than others?

Dewall and Baumeister (2006) conducted an experiment to see whether social exclusion affected pain thresholds including emotional and physical pain. They found that if an individual sees themselves having a very lonely and bleak future they will become much less sensitive to pain and they will have a much higher threshold and tolerate more pain than if they saw themselves with a productive, exciting future. This suggests that the amount of pain we can tolerate depends on our social situation and how we feel about our own lives.

However, an earlier study by Woodrow, Friedman, Siegelaub and Morris (1972) found that on average, pain tolerance decreases with age, men can tolerate more pain than women and that skin colour affects pain tolerance. This suggests that even though our brains are wired in the same way there are clear differences that change the way each individual handles pain. This study therefore suggests that it may be innate for some individuals to feel more pain than others and proposing that it is biologically programmed.

Unfortunately a great deal of research cannot be carried out in this field as it is unethical to put individuals in a position where they may be in pain. It is also a subject that cannot be generalised to the greater population due to the fact that each individual varies so massively. If research were carried out we may have a better understanding of the tolerance individuals can handle and, in the case of pregnancy, midwives may be able to prepare women for what they may face and could suggest drugs they may wish to take so that they have a clearer idea of what is available.

DeWall, C. N; & Baumeister, Roy. F. Alone but feeling no pain: Effects of social exclusion on physical pain tolerance and pain threshold, affective forecasting, and interpersonal empathy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 91(1), Jul 2006, 1-15. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.91.1.1

 

Woodrow, K. M., Friedman, G. D., Siegelaub, A. B., & Collen, M. F. (1972). Psychosomatic Medicine 34:548-556 Tolerance: Differences According to Age, Sex and Race

Will a positive attitude lead to a better week?

This blog idea came to mind as I sat in a lecture with a friend discussing how awful our last week had been. I said a sentence I often say without much thought, ‘this week is going to be so much better’. I then wondered, if I do fully believe that, could I in fact have a better week than last week, could my positive attitude affect my decisions and lead to a much better week.

As psychologists we are constantly studying reasons for and behind behaviour; however have we studied the idea that our day to day behaviours could be altered hugely by changing our attitudes to life and taking on a positive attitude. If we change our perspectives surely our decisions will be altered and therefore we could experience different, more positive, consequences.

A study was carried out by Isen and Means (1983) that suggests that a positive attitude does in fact increase the efficiency of decision making and allows for a better decision to be made. In this study, some of the subjects were first given positive feedback on how they had succeeded at a perceptual-motor skills task; the other subjects were given no feedback. The subjects were then asked to select one of six fictitious cars for sale. Those who had been given the feedback were able to make a much quicker decision on which car they would purchase, they were also able to focus on the important information given to them about the cars and ignore the information that they did not need to know and were able to retain the important information for longer. It was concluded that having a positive attitude/ feeling good about oneself enabled for more effective and efficient strategies in decision making as negative or unimportant information was disregarded.

If, as this study showed us, our attitudes and emotions can affect our decision making then this would suggest that we could have a completely different life if we were more positive about situations. Perhaps my week would have been much more enjoyable if I had started out feeling more positive about the week and the situations that were going to arise and therefore I may have reacted differently in those situations and made different decisions. However, it could be argued that as the ability to make good decisions and react differently in situations is always in you, a positive attitude has no affect.

When researching this area, psychologists may come across difficulties as individual differences would come into play. It would be problematic when trying to find a common definition for a positive attitude, and it would be hard to compare whether situations were affected by those positive attitudes as different people grade situations inversely. Difficulties will also arise as it is unrealistic to presume that an individual can change their attitude and keep it going for the entire time while believing fully in that change of attitude.

Personally, I feel that having a positive attitude has affected my life and I have enjoyed this week much more than the last week.

Alice M. Isen and Barbara Means (1983). The Influence of Positive Affect on Decision-Making Strategy. Social Cognition: Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 18-31. doi: 10.1521/soco.1983.2.1.18

Biological components of sex difference in colour preference (Hulbert and Ling, 2007)

For our week 12 blog we were asked to read a scientific paper and a media report and then comment on the whether the tittle of the paper was at all relevant to the actual paper and whether the conclusion of the media report followed the research found in the scientific paper.

The title of the journal I read was ‘Biological components of sex differences in colour preference’. The journal itself was less about biological components and more about the colour preferences between sexes.  It did not focus largely on the differences between sexes but researched what the different colour preferences were. It is also unscientific of the psychologists to generalise the results to all sexes and talk about sex preferences seen as a significantly smaller sample of females were used in the research than males. The paper suggests that there are clear sex differences between colour preferences, for this to be accepted a larger sample size should be used and there should be the same amount of both sexes. This would increase its validity and would be more accepted in this field of research. From reading the title of the paper and then reading the paper itself, it is clear that the study lacks in validity as it not measuring what it set out to measure. The title is very misleading and could be seen as contradictory to what is in fact found.

The research in this paper found that colour preference differs between sexes however puts it down to evolutionary differences. It suggests that women prefer pink/ red because zdkjfh;jsdkn. This may be criticised for the psychologists cannot prove that these differences are in fact due to evolution, however we can also not disprove this theory. In order to gain more research a longitudinal study should have been carried out, this would have given the psychologists more information to work with and therefore a more scientific and reliable conclusion could have been drawn. If all the research from a longitudinal study was collected the psychologists would have more evidence for the theory behind sex differences in colour preferences. There is also a down fall in this conclusion as it does not explain why some females prefer blue to red or pink and some males prefer red or pink to blue. If the differences were due to evolution then this would not occur, this suggests that nurture does play a part.

The conclusion the media report has taken from the scientific report is that males prefer blue and females prefer pink. It suggests that these preferences are ‘facts’ and have been proven to be true for everyone. These generalisations cannot be made and specific statements such as these are unscientific as well as false.  The report states that no such generalisations can be made and that further research must be carried out in order to understand whether the preferences are the same for the wider population and in order for an explanation for these preferences to be uncovered. Overall the media report has changed the scientific findings and taken out the pieces of information which they feel will grab the audience’s attention, in a publicity world this may be acceptable but for science this is a very degrading and demoralising way of publicising research.

Should questionnaires be used as a research method?

Questionnaires are tools that are used in psychology in order to gain information from individuals. They are a known as self-report measures as the individual themselves answers the questions and gives their own opinion. Questionnaires come in many different forms and it is essential that the correct format is used. The psychologist must decide if open ended or fixed questions are to be used.

Fixed questions are questions where there are particular answers that the individual must choose from. The answers are restricted.

For example: At what age did your baby start crawling? ……. months.

This is fixed as they must give a number which can then be categorised and then allows for quantitative data that can be statistically analysed. This data can be used in many different ways and many comparisons can be made to other research. This can be hugely valuable when carrying out a wide range of research. However, this does not give detailed data and individual differences may affect the answers given as people do not want to stand out and be seen negatively by the psychologist.

Open-ended questions are questions which allow for a description and where the psychologist has no control over the answers.

For example: What is your routine on an average day?

These types of questions must be answered in a descriptive way which gives qualitative data. Qualitative data gives deep, meaningful, insightful data which can be analysed and means that an individual can be very open and honest. This is beneficial when researching certain topics and where a real understanding of an individual is needed, however, it cannot be analysed against other answers for their will be no consistency amongst the answers given, and it is therefore hard to use this data in a comparative way.

Questionnaires also vary in their validity for some questionnaires are very valid and do measure what they set out to research, however, some can be criticised for lacking validity and going off topic. If a questionnaire does research what it is meant to then it can be a very useful way of researching as it is quick and easy to administer. However, if it is lacking in validity it should not be used and the data should not be processed.

A questionnaire can also be criticised for its reliability. It has been suggested that when the public answer questionnaires they do in fact not answer correctly due to personal differences. Many confounding variables may affect the way an individual answers a question including, personal events going on at the time, business, emotions felt and the way they feel they will be seen by the psychologist. In this case, the results found will not be reliable and should not be used to back up research.

Overall, although both sides can be argued, I would suggest that in order for research to be carried out scientifically and at a high standard, questionnaires should not be used. The validity and reliability of these self-report measures are questionable and there are much better ways of collecting research that should replace them.

If you are interested in seeing a respectable questionnaire often used within educational settings you can look at the Eysenck personality questionnaire.

Using twin studies to determine behaviour

Genetics and a person’s physiology are massively influential in terms of behaviour. Babies are born with the ability to perform behaviours such as crying, eating and sleeping. These behaviours are innate and can be performed without any environmental influence. George Colt wrote an article in ‘Life Magazine’ that stated, new studies show that the majority of the time behaviour is due to your genes.  However, other behaviours such as accents, mannerisms and personality traits can be put down to nurture. This is where behaviours are carried out due to observing other people’s behaviours.  Watson and Raynor (1920) conducted a study on Little Albert, where they conditioned the child to gain a fear of white rabbits and other white objects by pairing them with the sound of a loud metal gong that was rung behind his head as the objects were shown. This study confirmed that behaviour could be taught and responses to certain objects can be conditioned.

Concluding whether behaviours are due to nature or nurture, within Psychology, is a difficult task as it is hard to differentiate between the two. For example, it can be argued that personality traits are genetic rather than down the environment. However, many studies have now been carried out using twins. When studying twins that have been brought up in different environments we can clearly see which of the two are more influential as we can compare those results to twins brought up in the same environment. The concordance rates between twins are compared to analyse how much of the behaviour is down to environmental factors. If twins are brought up separately but carry out the same behaviours it is likely that behaviour is due to genetics however, if behaviours are carried out differently it is likely that environmental factors have had an effect. These types of studies are often used in biological psychology in order to determine the reasoning behind mental disorders as a clear causal factor can be established.

Although twin studies give valid results and are methodologically sound there are some limitations. Finding enough twins who have been brought up separately is often difficult and therefore the sample sizes are normally very small, giving less reliability to results. It is therefore hard to generalise these findings to the wider population. It is also believed that twins have slower physical and intellectual development which also suggests results cannot be easily generalised to the wider population. Lastly, it is hard to determine whether the twins had similar experiences within the womb, for example unequal blood supply, as these conditions may affect behaviour.

Overall, I think it is hard to say whether nature or nurture has more influence on behaviour however, even though they may have their limitations, twin studies are an important method in researching further and a lot of influential research has been found out this way.

 Watson, J. B., & Raynor, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of Expermimental Psychology, Vol 3(1). Doi:10.1037/h0069608

Reduction vs Holism

Reduction vs Holism is a debate that has been going on for centuries. Some Psychologists, biological psychologists for example, believe that we need to break an individual up into small parts to then analyse them and gain detailed data. This is called Reductionism. They suggest if we analyse a single part of an individual separately we will have a much more in depth, clear picture of the human mind and behaviour when we then put it all together again.

I can see their point, if you break things up and look at them closely you get a better, clearer more detailed image of that object. If we understand all the parts separately it could then give us a whole new, fuller image. However, this can also be an argument for why Psychologists should use Holism. If a picture is changed we cannot always get it back to what it originally was and therefore lose what we were trying to find in the first place.

Holism is therefore a way of analysing an individual’s behaviour by observing them as a whole. Those who believe in a holistic approach, Humanistic Psychologists for example, aim to look at the whole picture for they believe if they take the picture apart it will be distorted. Take this picture for example, the bike at the bottom has been taken apart and reduced into many small pieces. You could look at these parts individually to see what shape and size and function they have, however, it no longer looks like a bike. In the top picture we can clearly see the picture is a bike and so can understand how all the pieces work together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I personally think a holistic view should be taken as the behaviour carried out can be observed as well having some context and an understanding of other environmental factors. I can see why some agree with reductionism as we can see things in more detail this way and it is a more scientific method of researching, however, I think by doing this we lose the essence of the individual, which is the one thing we are trying to understand as Psychologists.

http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/43/14/1100.full

Standard of Protection of Research participants: is this ethical principle the right way to deal with this situation??

One of the categories covered in this principle is that one must inform the client if the Psychologist becomes aware of a psychological or physical problem that could affect them in the future. This suggests that if a Psychologist were to carry out an experiment on an individual and found, for example, something unusual when scanning their brain, they should let that individual know. The individual should be aware if the Psychologist finds something, I agree, for keeping this from them could cause them to have severe health issues later on in life. It could lead to fatal injuries if a serious brain dysfunction has been found.

However, Psychologists may find something unusual in a scan or a test but how do they know if it is something serious and not just something harmless. They are not specialised doctors and therefore the question should be raised, are they qualified enough to make judgements that may in fact not have any reliable evidence? If they don’t tell the participant they may be in danger and not know, however, the guidelines state you must tell them.

Perhaps the Psychologist should show a professional, who is qualified to make judgements in these situations, what they have found. This way they can be sure that what they tell the participant is reliable. But according to the Data Protection Act 1998 this would then be breaching the confidentiality act which states that a participant’s data cannot be distributed without the participants consent. Therefore the Psychologist would have to ask the participant if they can share the results found with the professional, which would increase suspicion in the individual and that could lead to more questions that could not be answered without going into the problems they have discovered.

This is a subject that could be widely debated and unfortunately I think even after much deliberation could not be properly agreed on. I think I would lean more towards telling the participant what I had found as at least then they can seek professional advice if they felt so inclined.  However, while writing this I am doubting my decision and wondering whether seeking professional advice first may be a better way of dealing with the situation.

Either way, I feel the participants health and well-being should always be at the for front when making such a decision and any action should only benefit them.