AS Psychology

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Social Influence

Social influence

Conformity (majority influence)

-a type of social influence, a change in a person's behaviour or opinions due to real or imagined pressure to adhere to existing social norms.

Conforming needs:

1. a change in behaviour

2. a group

3. some kind of pressure, may be real or imagined.

Conformity is generally good: allows society to run smoothly.

Kelvin says there are three types:

1. COMPLIANCE, temporary. desire to be liked. Conform ti maintain the harmony of the group & avoid rejection. PUBLICLY comply but PRIVATELY disagree.

2. IDENTIFICATION, wants to be part of a group so change behaviour and opinions to be the same as the group. PRIVATE AND PUBLIC acceptance, but when they leave the group it's not maintained.

3. INTERNALISATION, 'true conformity'. obtain information presented to you by a group. things you didn't know or persuasive arguments (may not have formed an opinion on something yet). we INTERNALISE the views. More likely to occur in ambiguous situations.

Cognitive dissonance: an unpleasant feeling of anxiety by simultaneously holding two contradictory ideas.

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Explinations for Conformity

Explanations for conformity

Informational social influence (isi) - Jennes

Obtain info from a group that you didn't know ir a persuasive argument. You agree both PUBLICLY AND PRIVATELY. Basic need to feel confident and that our ideas are correct. When we are uncertain we look at behaviour and opinion of others to share our own.

JENNES: Glass bottle filled with beans, asked to estimate the number of beans in it individually, then in a group situation. They were then asked on their own again and almost every p changed their answer to be closer to the group's estimate.

-lacks mundane realism

-more ethically sound

-may also involve NSI

ISI may have an evolutionary basis - look to others for guidance in new situations that could be dangerous to ensure that we survive.

Normative social influence (psi) - Asch

Desire to be liked, conform to maintain the harmony of the group and avoid rejection. PUBLICLY comply but PRIVATELY disagree. Asch's study is an example of this.

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Asch

Asch's study

Investigate the influence of a majority view which was wrong on an individual exposed to it.

Line judgement task, Put pp in the same room as 7 confederates, hey had agreed the responses they would give. Each person had to say aloud which line matched up, naive pp was at the end of the row and last to answer. 18 trials and on the 12 critical trials confederates gave identical wrong answers.

On the 12 critical trials - 32% conformity rate. NOT THE MAJORITY!!!

75% of pps conformed at least once.

5% of pps conformed to al 12 wrong answers.

Control group had an error rate of only 0.04%, answers were obvious.

Interviews after showed 3 reasons for conformity:

Distortion of action: agreed publicly but not privately, didn't want to be ridiculed.

Distortion of perception: actually believed and thought that their perception was wrong.

Distortion of judgement: doubted the accuracy of their judgement.

Conclusion: people will conform to a majority even when they know they are wrong, most likely motivated by NSI.

Evaluation:

-became a paradigm

-lacks ecological validity

-unethical as ops were devised into thinking it was a study of visual perception (some were stressed throughout)

-The majority didn't conform, only 32%

-only 1 pp tested at a time, slow

--only male american students, not representative

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Variables

Variables affecting conformity

Situational variables: (variables of the environment which affect the degree to which individuals yield to group pressure)

Group size: as group size increased conformity increased, up until 3 confer=derates where conformity was 32% and any bigger had no more effect.

Unanimity: Conformity declines when the majority is not unanimous. If they had 1 confederate going against the others this acted as an ally and rate dropped down to 5.5%. They have a DISSENTER.

Task difficulty: More difficult tasks increase conformity. Related to ISI, we are unsure and look for answers from others. Perrin and Spencer: maths and engineering students were less likely to conform in the asch experiment.

Others:

Attractiveness of the group: more attractive = greater conformity

Self-esteem: people with low self esteem are more likely to conform, they have a great need for social approval.

Anonymity: if the naive pp write down the judgement privately conformity dropped to just 12%.

Individual variables:

Gender

Mood

Culture

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Social roles

Conformity to social roles

Social roles = 'parts we play as members of a social group, the roles we play to meet the expectations of that situation'.

All conform to roles e.g. queueing, involves IDENTIFICATION, because we publicly and privately agree. Not as strong as internalisation though, as we adopt different roles for different situations.Conformity helps understand and predict behaviour, and bring about social order.

ZIMBARDO: Stanford prison experiment.

Test wether ops would conform to the roles of guards and prisoners and determine what is more important in determining behaviour: environment or personality.

21 male american students (NOT REPRESENTATIVE) were selected - they had been assessed and were the most stable, mature and free from criminal tenancy. 10 randomly allocated prisoner and 10 guards, zimbardo was the prison superintendent. Guards given reflective sunglasses, khaki uniform, handcuffs, keys and bats. Prisoners were arrested by real police, stripped and fingerprinted, given numbers instead of names (dehumanisation and de individualisation) an ankle chains.

Prisoners and guards adapted to their roles very quickly. Guards = increasingly sadistic. Prisoners = submissive and unquestioning. Was meant to ru n for 14 days but stopped after 6. One prisoner was released after 36 hours in crying fits of rage.

Conclusion: environment had a bigger impact on behaviour than personality. Individuals DO conform to social roles, even when they override their morals.

Evaluation:-not all guards were brutal and not all prisoners were submissive.

-Zimbardo hoped his research would lead to reforms in the prison system but it is now in fact worse.

-Movahedi: conformity was actually due to demand characteristics.

-Study was approves by Stanford ethics committee and there was no deception but Z admits it should have been stopped.

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Obedience

Obedience - yielding to direct command, usually a figure if authority and is another form of social influence.

3 differenced between conformity and obedience:

1. conformity has no explicit requirement to act a certain way, obedience has a command.

2. we conform to behaviour of our peers or equals.

3. Conformity is to do with psychological 'need' for acceptance, obedience is concerned with social power and status of an authority figure.

Obedience generally desirable as it ensures smooth running of society but can be disastrous, e.g. holocaust.

Milligram's experiment

Investigated willingness of americans to obey orders against their moral codes and do the same in germany.

White coated researcher instructed pp to use punishment to teach someone a list of words (electric shocks).

Pp sat at control panel and every time learner made a mistake they had to administer a shock. More mistakes = worse shocks.

Max of 450 volts, would have killed the learner (who was a stooge). Researcher confirmed that he takes responsibility for what's happening.

No response from learner was counted as a wrong answer.

If the teacher refused to give a shock there were verbal prods:

-please continue

-the experiment requires that you continue

-it is absolutely essential that you continue

-you have no other choice, you must continue

-although the shocks are painful, there is no permanent tissue damage

ESTIMATE: less than 11% would administer the max voltage, most would stop at 120.

FINDINGS:

63% of pps went up to 450 volts, 'killing' the learner.

100% went as far as 300 volts, when learner was banging and screaming to be released.

Evaluation:

-lack of ecological validity

-individual difference, gender: original expt. was only men but when repeated with females the rates were exactly the same.

-lack of internal validity: pps realised hey were in an experiment and believed that the shocks weren't actually being administered, so demand characteristics affected it.

-Lack of external validity

-ethical issues: deceived ops and told them it was a study ion the effects of punishment in learning. Pps were very distressed by the study.

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Factors affecting obedience

1) Situational:

UNIFORM = white coated researcher was seen as having superior status. We are socialised from a young age to respect authority.

PROXIMITY = learner and teacher in the same room, obedience levels fell to 40%

LOCATION = Expt. was carried out at Yale university, location gave pos confidence in the integrity of those involved. Moving exit. to a rundown office meant rate fell but 48% still gave the maximum shock.

2) AGENTIC STATE AND LEGITIMACY OF AUTHORITY

Obedient individual doesn't see themselves as being responsible and blames someone else, which is 'agent state' and acting in behalf of an authority. (as opposed to autonomous, where tgeyb see themselves as responsible).

Pps said they wouldn't have done it themselves, they were only doing as they were told: fe.t responsible too the authority figure but no direct responsibility themselves.

REASON: maintain a positive SELF IMAGE.

REASON: binding factor of the SOCIAL SITUATION: pos much breach commitment of the expt. to the experimenter, would seem arrogant / rude.

Condition needed to change to agent state = LEGITIMACY OF AUTHORITY (someone is in a perceived position of social control).

Experimenter in milgram has a white coat, introductory remarks, and is in a legitimate institution.

BUT obedience was still high in rundown office block: pps still thought lab was competent ass long as it was scientific.

Evaluation: MIlgraam says people sji=hift back and forth between agent and autonomous state.

3) Dispositional explanations

Particular personality type associated with high / low obedience.

ADORNO's authoritarian personality.

'a person who submit to the authority of those in a higher position and is authoritarian with those of lower status'.

Measures with a questionnaire, the F-scale (facist scale). Measures conventionalism, puritanical sexual attitudes, superstition and pre-occupation with power.

Person with an authoritarian personality will be:

-hostile to those of lower status

-respect people of a higher status

-pre occupied with power

-blindly respect authority

EXPLINATION: it's a result of HARSH PARENTING, e.g. punishment for disobedience. In a follow up study high levels of obedience correlated with high levels of authoritarianism.

Refined authoritarian personality: cluster of 3 original personality traits, RIGHT WING AUTHORITARIANISM.

-CONVENTIALISM: stick to conventional norms and values

-AUTHORITARIAN AGGRESSION: aggressive to people who violate norms

-AUTHORITARIAN SUBMISSION: uncritical submission to legitimate authority.

EVALUATION:

-many pps didn't believe shocks were real.

-social context was more important, specific social situations made them obedient regardless of personality.

-less educated people are consistently more authoritarian than well educated people.

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Resisting social influence

SOCIAL SUPPORT: CONFORMITY In variation of Asch, with a dissenter who also didn't agree the conformity rate was less. more confident in their own decision.

OBEDIENCE variation of mailgrams 2 confederates who were also teachers refused to obey, obedience level dropped to 10%.

LOCUS OF CONTROL

How much control a person feels they have on their behaviour. Either INTERNAL or EXTERNAL.

HIGH INTERNAL: See themselves as having more control over their behaviour, more likely to take responsibility.

HIGH EXTERNAL: Believe behaviours / what happens to them is a result of external factors or good luck.

INTERNAL LOC means you are less conformist and obedient because they are responsible for their actions, confident and seek less social approval so NSI / ISI doesn't matter.

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The multi store model of memory: Atkinson and Shiffrin)

3 seperate memory stores, vary in terms of coding, capacity and storage.

CODING TYPES:

Echoic = auditory

Iconic = visual

Haptic = tactile

Gustatory = taste

Olfactory = smell

SENSORY STORE: automatic, unprocessed form. detailed.

-coding: in the form it was received (modality specific)

-capacity: large but for a brief amount of time

-duration: around half a second / a quarter.

SHORT TERM STORE, active (thought about)|

-coding: mainly auditory

-capacity: 7+-2 items but increased with chunking

-duration: around 30 seconds with no rehearsal

LONG TERM MEMORY STORE

-codinh: mainly semantic

-capacity: unloimited

-capacity: unlimited

STUDIES:

Sensory: sperling's digit span test

Flashed a 3x4 grid letter for 1/20th of a second and sounded a different pitch tone to indicate which row to recall.

Recall was high suggesting that all the info was there and capacity of the SR is high.

Short term: Baddeley: showed pps a list of acoustically similar ad dissimilar, and a list of semantically similar and diss similar words. pos had to out words back into order either straight away (stm) or after 20 mins of doing another task to avoid rehearsal (ltm)

stm: acoustically similar words performed the worst so coding is mainly acoustic.

ltm: semantically similar words performed the worst so ltm coded semantically.

Long term: Barrack

showed 400 pps age 17-74 photos and a list of names and asked to identify which ones were old school friends.

left school in last 15 years = 90% of names and faces remembered.

left school in last 48 years = 80% of faces and 70% of names, suggests memory for faces is long lasting.

EVALUATION of the model:

-tests lack ecological validity

-oversimplistic

-places too much emphasis on ROTE rehearsal, elaborate rehearsal is more effective.

-Flashbulb memories don't need any rehearsal

-Lasting memories are created by the processing done and not rehearsal

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Types of long term memory

Procedural: knowing how to do something. IMPLICIT. e.g. riding a bike. can't be consciously inspected. We can focus on other tasks while performing these everyday skills.

Episodic: personal events, e.g. your birthday, usually linked to time or place. May recall context and emotions.

Semantic: facts about the world e.g. paris is the capital of france.

EVALUATION: distinction between the types is supported by scanning techniques because different areas if the brain are active when different types of LTM are being used.

CLIVE WEARING: rare brain disease left him with moment to moment memory but some procedures he had previously stored e.g. playing the piano were still available to him (but if you asked if he could play piano he would say no)

Research: TULVING

Investigate difference in semantic and episodic memories.

6 volunteers injected with radioactive gold, scanned with gamma ray detector to see its location. Tulving, wife and a colleague were pps.

Each pp did 8 trials, 4 episodic and 4 semantic., separated by 2 minutes of rest ti indulge in semantic or episodic thoughts.

3pps had inconclusive data.

Other 3 showed consistent differences in cortical blood flow between semantic and episodic thinking. (front = episodic, back = semantic).

Showed types of ltm are in different areas of the brain.

EVALUATION:

Identification of front and back regions is supported by brain damaged amnesiacs.

bias - used him, his wife and a colleague.

-only 3 were conclusive, not representative.

-provided an effective way of measuring cognitive processes in living humans, very scientific.

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Working memory model - Baddeley & Hitch. (STM)

Multi store model too simple. STM is much more complex than just a waiting area and is ACTIVE.

4 main components:

Central executive - deals out jobs to the slave systems.

Phonological loop - contains the primary acoustic store and the articulatory loop. It is the inner ear.

Episodic Buffer - general store.

Visuo-spatial sketchpad - visual cache and inner scribe. Controls coordination and special awareness.

AO3

-Explains why we can do 2 tasks at once, if they are from separate stores.

-Explains the KF case study whose visual STM was fine but auditory was impaired, shows it is a complex system.

- Shows that the stm has separate compomemts for different types of information.

-Know very little about the central executive but it's the most important part.

-Can't be seen or measured as it is a cognitive process, it's only inferred from research.

- Doesn't explain the link between working memory and LTM.

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Attachment

"a strong, long lasting close emotional bond between two people, which causes stress on separation from the attached individual"

STAGES OF ATTACHMENT - Schaffer and Emmerson

Studied 80 babies from semi skilled homes in Glasgow. Baby and mother visited at home every month in the first year and again act 18 months.

Mothers questioned on the protest the baby showed on everyday separation (mother leaving the room etc)

50% of babies showed signs of separation anxiety towards a specific adult between the ages of 25-32 weeks, this is SPECIFIC ATTACHMENT.

Attachment tended to be with caregiver that was most sensitive to infant signals and facial expressions and most interactive (reciprocity), not necessarily who the baby spends the most time with.

By 40 weeks 80% of babies had a specific attachment and 30% had multiple attachments.

Based on info they developed 4 stages:

PRE ATTATCHMENT PHASE - birth to 3 months. From 6 weeks infants prefer humans to other objects - they smile at people.

INDISCRIMINITE ATTATCHMENT - 3 to 7/8 months. Begin to discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar people. Still allow strangers to look after an handle them.

DISCRIMINATE ATATCHMENT - 7/8 months onwards. Infants develop specific attachments, distressed when separated and stay close. Avoid unfamiliar people and protest if strangers handle them.

MULTIPLE ATTATCHMENTS - 9 months onwards. Form strong emotional ties with other major caregivers. Fear of strangers weakens, attachment to mother remains strong.

evaluation:

Data could be unreliable - based on mothers reports and the may be less sensitive to infants protests.

Biased sample, working class population so findings may not apply to other groups, also study was in the 1960s and parental care has changes considerably. Findings may be different today.

Multiple attachment - are all attachments equivalent? Bowlby = one special attachment. Rutter = all attachment figures are equal.

Cultural variations - individualist cultures or collectivist cultures - infants had twice as string attachments to mothers in collectivist cultures.

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Role of the father

Schaffer and Emmerson: babies became attached to mothers first, then formed secondary attachments to other family members (fathers) at around 7 months.

May be because infants spend more time with mothers.

LAMB: if fathers spend more time with the child, it doesn't enhance attachment.

Possible that most men aren't psychologically equipped to form an intense attachment, don't have the emotional sensitivity that women have, may be due to biological or social factors.

OESTROGEN = caring behaviours. women are generally more caring.

CUKTURAL EXPECTATION / SEX ROLE STEREOTYPES = females ought to be more caring and sensitive.

FRODI = showed videotapes of infants crying and found no physiological differences between men and women.

BUT men do form secure attachments, single parent fathers.

Research = in two parent families where the father is the primary caregiver, both parents often share role of primary caregiver.

They play an important role as secondary attachment figures, they are playful active and provide challenging situations (father seen more as the exciting playmate).

Factors that affect the relationship between fathers and children:

Supportive co parenting

Marital intimacy

type of attachment with own parents

degree of sensitivity (more secure if more sensitive)

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Caregiver infant interaction

Early caregiver infant interactions lay the foundations for social development.

SOCIALISATION = process which allows children to acquire the social skills to function in society.

Key interaction = non verbal communication. Form attachment & the more sensitive each is to the others signals the stronger the bond.

Attachment has important consequences for healthy development.

RECIPROCITY: responding to the action of another with a similar action.

Research in 1970s = infants coordinate their actions with caregivers in a kind of conversation.

INTERACTIONAL SYNCHRONY = 2 people interact and mirror what the other is doing in terms of body movements / face. Imitating emotions as well as behaviours.

Meltzoff and moore: Babies 2/3 weeks old = imitate specific hand and facial gestures.

BODILY CONTACT

MIMICKING: Infants have an innate carers, biological device to aid attachment formation?

CAREGIVERESE: modified vocals, high pitched and song like.

Sensitive responsiveness: recognising and responding appropriately to infants needs.

Evaluation:

Meltzoff and moore say interactions were intentional nut PIAGET says true imitation only occurs at the end of the first year and is a result of repeating behaviour that was rewarded - operant conditioning.

Support from murray and trevarthen: 2 month old infants interacted with parents via a video screen. When there was a tape of the mother played and she wasn't interacting or responding to the infants facial and body gestures, the infant showed acute distress and tuned away, this shows infants are an active and intentional partner in the interactions.

De Yong - infants dont respond to objects simulating mouth and tongue movements, they don't imitate everything and se it as a specific response to humans.

reliability if infants actions tested?

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Animal studies of attachment.

Imprinting = a form of attachment where offspring follow the first large moving object. Innate readiness to form a strong social bond and only occurs during a critical period.

LORENZ

Took a clutch of goose eggs - divided into 2 groups.

One group hatched with mother, the other was placed in incubator and Lorenz was the first large moving object they saw, they started following him around when they hatched.

He marked them depending on their groups and placed them together, with lorenz and goos em other present.

They quickly divided up into following lorenz or goose.

Process is limited to a critical period and if they doubt attach within this time imprinting won't ever occur. Different time between species.

Imprinting was IRREVERSIBLE AND LONG LASTING.

Also affected later mating preferences - SEXUAL IMPRINTING, will mate with sam kind of object they are imprinted to.

Evaluation:

Numerous studies that support Lorenz's work, Guiton imprinted chicks onto yellow rubber gloves and the males tried to mate with them eventually.

Imprinting may be more plastic that originally thought, Guiton could reverse imprinting in chickens trying to mate with rubber gloves and they could eventually have normal sexual activity with chickens.

Imprinting may not be different to any other kind of learning.

HARLOW

Worked with rhesus monkeys. New borns kept alone in bare cage died but survived if they had a soft cloth to cuddle.

He created 2 wire monkeys, one wrapped in soft cloth but didn't feed the monkey, the other made of just wore but fed it.

FOUND THAT baby monkeys cuddles the soft object in reference to the wire one and sought comfort from cloth one when frightened (loud bangs). Harlow concluded that 'CONTACT COMFORT' was more important that food when it came to attachment behaviour. Contact comfort associated with low levels of stress and willingness to explore.

As they grew top he noted consequences of their early attachment experiences:

-Monkeys were socially abnormal and fled when they saw or were faced with other monkeys.

-Didn't show normal mating behaviour

-Didn't cradle their own babies

EVALUATION:

2 stimulus materials varied in more ways that being clothed or not, heads were different so could be a confounding variable, conclusions lack internal validity

Difficult to generalise the results to human behaviour. humans make conscious choices.

Supports schaffer and emmersons work = infants are not most attached to the person who feeds them

Highly unethical, monkeys had lasting harm BUT justifiable as it had a significant effect on our understanding of attachment?

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Explanations of attachment: Learning theory

All behaviour is learned rather that innate, through classical or operate conditioning.

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

Begins with an innate stimulus response:

Food (ucs)------------pleasure (ucr)

Mother (ns)--------------no response

During conditioning: Food(ucs) + mother (ns) ---------- pleasure (ucr)

After conditioning: Mother (cs)---------------pleasure (cr)

baby has formed an association between mother and food, eventually associates mother with pleasure. 'mother love'.

OPERANT CONDITIONING

Learning to repeat a behaviour. Pleasant consequence = more likely to be repeated and stamped in.

Can explain why babies cry for comfort. crying leads to response from caregiver, which is feeding. Correct response keeps happening meaning the crying is reinforced. Also, 2 way process as caregiver received negative reinforcement because baby stops crying. Interplay of MUTUAL REINFORCEMENT strengthens the attachment.

Behaviourists also see attachment as a secondary drive. Hunger is the primary drive, which is innate and biological. Primary drive of hunger is generalised to the mother, so the attachment is a secondary drive. REJECRTED because it only applies to a limited number of behaviours (bungee jumping increases discomfort).

EVALUATION

Take care generalising results from animals to humans. Behaviourists say we are no different to animals in how we learn e.t.c. But attachment is too complex a behaviour to base on animal behaviour.

argues that food is the key element of attachment, Harlow says contact comfort is more important though.

Infants DO learn through association and reinforcement, but food might not be the reinforcer. Attention and responsiveness may be important.

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Explinations of attatchment: Monotropy

BOWLBY says 'monotropy = infants have one special bond, a primary figure. Usually the mother and they also form multiple attachments".

Monotropy has many consequences, the bond creates an internal working model. Model has consequences:

SHORT TERM: gives child insight into the caregivers behaviour, enables child to influence caregivers behaviour, forms a a true partnership.

LONG TERM: template for future relationships, generates expectations about a loving, intimate relationship.

Attachment in humans is the result of evolutionary selection pressures. Stay close to mother = avoid danger and survive. Attachment is not as automatic as imprinting, and they are a two way process so parents must also be attached.

Babies have an innate drive to become attached.

There is a critical period (3 to 6 months).

Not formed by this point, difficulty forming them later on.

Sensitivity is the basis, was influenced by Ainsworth.

Responsive, cooperative and accessible mothers produce stronger attachments.

SOCIAL RELEASERS such as having a 'babyface' are innate mechanisms to form attachment.

CONTUNIUTY HYPOTHESIS: Infants who are strongly attached in infancy continue to be socially and emotionally competent. Infants who aren't strongly attached have more social and emotional difficulties. Supported by Minnesota-child parent study.

EVALUATION:

Bowlby = attachments develop at 3 months but this seems very late. Evolutionary past, infants have to become attached as soon as possible.

Bowlby = shouldn't be possible to form attachments beyond 6 months but this is actually a 'sensitive' period not critical, and they can still form.

Evidence against is multiple attachments, challenges monotropy. Schaffer and Emerson founds that children form multiple attachments and rutter says that multiple attachments are equal.

Ronamian orphanage conditions so bad that they cant be generalised.

real life application, importance of early adoption.

Individual differences.

SUMMARY:

-Attachment can be explained by evolution

-we create one special attachment

-we create an internal working model

-there is a critical period for attachment

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Bowlby: maternal deprivation theory

Consequences of maternal deprivation. Prolonged emotional separation has long term consequences on emotional development. CRITICAL PERION = 2 1/2 YEARS.

3 progressive steps to effects of SHORT TERM separation:

PROTEST: crying / grizzling, calling mothers name

DESPAIR: child becomes apathetic, uninterested and cries occasionally

DETATCHMENT: Supresses feeling for the mother, responds to her with a lack of interest and often angry and rejecting.

LONG TERM EFFECTS:

44 Juvenile thieves, Bowlby.

studied 88 children, 44 had been caught stealing

Half of the thieves were 'affectionless psychopaths', lack normal sense of affection, shame or responsibility.

Those diagnosed as affectionless had experienced frequent early separation from mothers.

None of the control had experiences separation

39% of all thieves had

Suggests that frequent early separation may contribute to emotional maladjustment / mental disorder.

consequences: delinquency, affectionless psychopathy, low IQ, deprivation dwarfism. separation anxiety and future relationships affected.

EVALUATION:

- may be psychological as well as physical deprivation. Mother is depressed, she is unable to provide suitable care. STUDY: mothers who were severely depressed, 55% of children were insecurely attached compared to 29% in control group.

-Consider vulnerability, deprivation doesn't always lead to negative outcomes but increases the likelihood.

- Major impact on real life thinking e.g. hospital visiting hours used to be discouraged or prohibited, major social change.

-Rutter says he failed to distinguish between deprivation and privation. Effects of privation are much more serious. (separation: child is away from caregiver they are attached to, relatively short time and not permanent, privation = loss of mother, never having formed a bond at all).

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Effects of institutionalisation

Rutter followed a group of 165 Romanian orphans adopted in Britain to see what extent good care could make up for poor early experience ion institution.

physical, cognitive and emotional wellbeing assessed at ages 4,6,11 and 15. British group adopted at the same time were a control.

FIRST ARRRIVED: Half of Romanians showed signs of mental retardation. Majority were severely undernourished.

AGE 11: Adoptees showed different signs of development depending on age of adoption.

BEFORE 6 MONTHS: mean IQ is 102

6 MONTHS - 2 YEARS = 86

AFTER 2 YEARS = 77

Attachment style also seems to be linked to the age of adoption, depend on before or after 6 months. After 6 months = 'DISINHIBITED ATTACHMENT', attention seeking, clingy, social behaviour is indiscriminate. Before 6 months they rarely display this attachment style.

By 4 years old almost all Romanians had caught up to the control group. CONCLUSION: Negative effects of institutionalisation can be overcome by sensitive, nurturing care.

British adopted children didn't suffer from negative developmental outcomes, so separation from mother alone doesn't cause negative developmental effects.

EVALUATION:

Conditions in Romania so bad they cant be generalised.

Children should have been assessed into adulthood to see the true effects

Weren't studied while in Romanian orphanages, so can't say which aspects of privation were most influential.

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Ainsworth's strange situation

interested in individual differences in attachment behaviours. strange situation systematically tests the nature of attachments. 12-18 month old infants left in a room with their mother.

8 different scenarios incurred, e.g. being approached by a stranger, infant left alone and the other returning.

Infant reactions were observed and recorded.

FINDINGS: 3 main patterns of behaviour:

SECURE ATTATCHMENT: Harmonious and cooperative interactions. Dont cry if caregiver leaves, some distress with a stranger. when anxious seek close bodily contact with caregiver, easily soothjerd. CAREGIVER IS A SECURE BASE.

INSECURE-AVOIDANT: infant avoids so ill situations and intimacy with others. Infants show little response to separation, don't seek proximity of caregiver on reunion. Explore with or without the caregiver. high levels of anxiousness.

INSECURE-RESISTANT: resist intimacy and social interactions. Immediate and intense distress on separation, similar with strangers. Reunion, child displays conflicting desires for and against contact.

15% = insecure avoidant

15% = insecure resistant

70% = secure

Conclusion = infants showing different reactions to their careers have different types of attachment.

EVALUATION:

allows control of variables, results were credible

lab based, lacked ecological validity

patents may have changed behaviour as they knew they were being observed

mother may not have been the childs main attachment figure

ne situation maya have affected the childs behaviour

inter rater reliability showed the results are highly reliable

Later research found 4th type of attachment: insecure-disorganised. lack consistent patterns of social behaviour.

Seite 21

Cultural variations in attachment

Bowlby says attachments form as a biological function to protect the infant - so there should be little or no cultural variation. A difference would mean that attachment is not innately determined but related to different child rearing methods.

VAN IJZENDOORN AND KROONENBERG

meta analysis of 32 strange situations in 8 different countries.

RESULT: wide variation between proportion of attachment types.

ALL COUNTRIES = secure was most common but ranged from 75% in Britain to 50% in china.

WESTERN = most com mon insecure was AVOIDANT, with the most in Germany.

NON WESTERN = most common was RESISTANT, with the most in Japan.

Evaluation:

Seite 22

Influence of early attachment

Affects later relationships, HAZAN AND SHAVER ROCKY MOUNTAION LOVE QUIZ

Assessed their attachment type and relationship, found secure attachments created a more stable relationship.

Because of the internal working model, creates a schema / expectation of what future relationships will be like.

Seite 23

Psychopathology

Defining abnormality

Deviation from social norms: not following the standards expected of society.

BUT CULTURES VARY, No universal social rules.

problem: can be used to justify the removal of unwanted people from society, e.g. people that oppose a particular political regime could be called 'abnormal'.

problem: what deviates form normal can change over time, e.g. homosexuality was a disorder in the DSM, but isn't any more.

Statistical deviation: statistically rare behaviour, expressed in terms of normal distribution.

e.g. IQ, most people are normal intelligence and some are very high or very low.

PROBLEMS:

doesn't take into account desirability of behaviour, as both high and low IQ are abnormal but high is desirablele and low is not.

no distinction between rare and slightly odd behaviour and rare and psychologically abnormal behaviour.

No cut off point where normal behaviour becomes abnormal.

Some behaviours that are psychologically abnormal are quite common, e.g. mild depression.

People don't benefit from labels.

Failure to function adequately: Can't function adequately if you cant cope with the demands of everyday life.

Various criteria for diagnosis including:

DYSFUNCTIONAL BEHAVIOUR: Goes against accepted standards of behaviour.

OBSERVER DISCOMFORT: Behaviours that cause others to become uncomfortable.

UNPREDICATBLE BEHAVIOUR: Impulsive, seems uncontrollable.

IRRATIONAL BEHAVIOUR: unreasonable and illogical

PERSONAL DISTRESS: Being affected by emotion to an excessive degree.

If you have more than one of these crieteria your behaviour is abmormal.

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Jahoda

Identified 6 conditions associated with mental health:

Positive self attitude

Self actualisation

Resistance to stress

Personal autonomy

Accurate perception of reality

Adaptation to the environment

Hard to meet all standards on this list

They are subjective

A violent offender may have a positive self attitude and be resistant to stress e.t.c. yet they wouldn't be considered to be in good mental health.

Mental health varies across CULTURES and TIME

Mentally healthy at one time may not be at another.

In some cultures it's abnormal for women to enjoy sex but it is fine in others, may lead top having clitoris removed.

Also homosexuality used to be considered a mental health problem but is now accepted in the UK.

Symptoms associated with mental health:

Impairment of intellectual functions (memory or comprehension)

Alterations to mood, lead to delusional appraisals.

Delusional beliefs, e.g. personality or jealousy.

Disordered thinking: may be unable to appraise their situation or communicate with others.

One or more of these (not temporarily) will classify as mental illness.

DSM is used to classify and diagnose mental disorders.

Have a DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA.

They make diagnosis concrete and descriptive.

Allow data to be collected about a disorder and can lead to developing treatments.

Criticised for STIGMATISING people and ignoring uniqueness, putting them in artificial groups.

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Depression: COGNITIVE

It is a mood disorder not an anxiety disorder, characterised by strong emotions. Most common type = clinical depression (major depression).

4 types:

-major depressive = severe but short term

-persistent depressive - long term and reoccurring

-disruptive mood disregulation disorder - childhood temper tantrums

-premenstrual dysmorphic - disruption to mood during / prior to menstruation

BEHAVIOURAL CARACHTERISTICS:

LOW LEVELS OF ENERGY: Difficult to go to school or work and engage in social life

Withdraw form work / school / leisure

psychomotor agitation: struggle to relax

Changes to eating / sleeping

Agression and self harm

EMOTIONAL CARACHTERISTICS:

Low mood - worthless or empty

More negative than positive emotions

Anger (goes on to aggression)

Low self esteem / self loathing

COGNITIVE CARACHTERISTICS:

Low concentration

Hard to make decisions

pay more attention to negative aspects

Bias to recalling unhappy events

Absolute thinking, in black and white

Explanation: BECK'S NEGATIVE TRIAD

3 parts create cognitive vulnerability:

1) faulty information processing (negative aspects and black and white thinking)

2)negative self-schemas

3) the negative triad - self world and future.

negative schemes fuel and are fuelled by cognitive biases, causing us to misperceive reality.

Cognitive biases:

-Arbitrary inference, conclusions drawn with insufficient evidence.

-Selective abstraction, conclusion drawn from just one part of a situation

-Overgeneralisation - sweeping conclusions on the basis of as singe event

- Magnification and minimisation - exaggerations in evaluation of performance

Evaluation:

Range of evidence supports that depression is linked with these 3 factors

grazer and terry assessed 65 women before and after birth, those with high cognitive vukberabiklity were more likely to suffer post natal depression

Blames the patient not situational factors

Practical theory applications in therapy

More complex explanations - drug therapies work with neurotransmitters?

not just about cognition.

Explanation: ELLIS' ABC MODEL

Good mental health = result of rational thinking, allows people to be free of anxiety and pain. depressives mistakenly blame external events for their unhappiness.

A = ACTIVATING EVENT. irrational thought triggered by an external event.

B = BELIEF: your interpretation of the event, can be rational or irrational. (musturbation = must always succeed) (utopianism -= life is meant to be fair)

C = CONSEQUENCE: emotional and behavioural.

Evaluation:

-about reactive depression not depression with no cause, only a partial explanation

-lead to successful therapy

-doesn't explain all aspects, anger hallucinations and delusions

TREATMENT: CBT

CBT is where patient os assessed and a p;an is put together to set out th goals to be achieved. `identify where there are negative thought and make changes.

1) BECK'S COGNITIVE THERAPY

identity negative thoughts about self world and future, and challenge them. test reality of negative beliefs.

Patients get HOMEWORK to record when people are nice, used as evidence.

2) ELLIS' RATIONAL EMOTIVE BEHAVIOUR THERAPY (REBT)

Extends the ABC model to ABCDE, Dispute and Effect.

Identify and challenge the irrational thoughts.

Involves a VIGROUS ARGUMENT, empirical evidence, logical? does the argument dispute any evidence to support any negative thoughts?

Behavioural activation: encouraged to engage in enjoyable activities.

CBT evaluation:

-large body of evidence showing success

-compared CBT, antidepressants and a combo. After 36 weeks, 81% of CBT improved, 81% of antidepressant improved and 86% of combo improved. Shows CBT is just as effective antidepressants but it us best to use a combo.

-May not work ion severe cases, patient has to be motivated, world need antidepressants so its not a sole treatment.

-difference between cbt and sd are very small, quality of therapist patient relationship determines the success.

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OCD: Biological

Anxiety disorder. 2 components:

OBSESSIONS: repetitive thoughts, images or impulses. Abhorrent and difficult to dismiss or control. COGNITIVE ELEMENT.

COMPULSIONS: BEHAVIOURAL RESPONSE to obsessive thoughts. repetitive, stereotyped, unwanted action, resisted with difficulty.

DSM: -recurrent obsessions and compulsions

-know its irrational

-interferes with life

BEHAVIOURS:

Compulsions

Avoidance

EMOTIONS:

Anxiety

Distress

Low mood and lack of enjoyment

Irrational guilt and disgust

COGNITIONS:

Obsessive thoughts

Cognitive strategies

Hyper vigilance

Know the thoughts are irrational

Explanation: GENETICS

-SOME disorders have a strong biological component, e.g. OCD.

LEWIS: Of OCD patients, 37% have parents with OCD, 21% have siblings with OCD.

Nestadt et al: 68% for MZ twins, 31% for DZ twins.

High concordance rate between adopted children and biological parents, rules out effects of the environment.

DIATHESIS STRESS MODEL: genetic vulnerability but need an environmental trigger.

Candidate gene: 5HT1-D beta is implicated. BUT OCD THOUGHT TO BE POLYGENIC. TAYLOR: Evidence that up to 230 different genes may be involved.

Genetic evaluation:

-good supporting evidence, twin studies.

-unsuccessful in identifying candidate genes, not that useful.

-Environmental risk factors affect risk of developing.

-Not 100% concordance rate

-Hard to separate nature and nurture

-reductionist

Explanation: NEURAL

Low levels of SEROTONIN

Genes associated with OCD likely to affect key neurotransmitters.

Low levels of a neurotransmitter means normal transmission of mood relevant info doesn't take place, affects mental processes and mood.

-abnormal brain circuits? neuroimaging: basal ganglia is implicated in OCD, hypersensitivity and repetitive behaviours.

Neural evaluation:

-only 50% on SSRIs improve, would be 100% if serotonin was the only cause.

-SSSRIs alleviate symptoms not cause

-SSRIs working doesn't prove the cause - paracetamol / headache.

-SSRI side effects headaches and sex disfunction.

-May lead to dependance

-not clear what mechanisms are involved

TREATMENTS: SSRIs

Selective seretonin reuptake inhibition.

Abntidepressanr drug which work son the seretinin system. Prevents reabsorption and breakdown of serotonin so increases levels at synapses, which stimulates the post synaptic neuron.

Compensates for whats wring with the system.

Combining SSRI with CBT, drugs reduce the emotional symptoms so that patients can fully engage more effectively with treatment. (81%, 81&, 86%)

SSRIs can lose effectiveness after 3/4 months, can increase dose or try alternatives and combine with another drug.

Tricyclics: same effect on serotonin system, have more serious side effects.

SNRIs: increase level; of seretonin as well as another neurotransmitter, NORADRENALINE.

Drug therapy evaluation:

-clear evidence of effectiveness

- compared SSRIs ton placebos for treatment of OCD and in all 17 cases, patients showed significantly bettie results for SSRIs.

-evidence greatest when combined with physiological treatment, CBT.

-drugs = cost effective and non disruptive, good value for public health system.

-psychological treatments = hard work and disruptive.

-side effects, low sex drive, blurred vision, weight gain, some may not even benefit.