1. http://amyray19.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/animals-in-research/#comments
2. http://edua6a.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/gender-bias-in-psychological-research/#comments
3. http://blc25.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/should-psychology-be-written-for-the-layman/#comments
4. http://notwilliam.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/informed-consent/#comment-138
Over many years we’ve seen the internet grow rapidly as a source of information on a vast number of areas, but is it a wise move for individuals such as us, university students to use this in work such as essays or research reports? I believe that to attempt to come to a conclusion on this subject we need to look at it from two points of view, the point of view of ourselves but also the point of view of the people that initially publish the information on to the world wide web.
Obviously as a university student myself i see the internet as a massive help in terms of research in to different areas of psychology but with regards to putting this information in to pieces of work we have to stop and think for a second. The first question we have to ask ourselves is who published the information and whether or not we can trust the author, for example Wikipedia, obviously we wouldn’t ever use this website but this is a good example that highlights how easy it is for anyone to put inaccurate information on to the internet. The principle is the same on other websites, anyone can sit there and write whatever they want then publish it the the world wide web. If we use this information it could drastically change the quality of work we hand in. Its questions like these that are posed by Taflinger (1996) with specific reference to the wrong usage and publication of statistics.
On the other hand we also have to take in to account the authors thoughts about their words being used by other people which in the majority of occasions would use the information without their permission. Some people may argue that when someone publishes information on the internet it is open to the public and anyone can access it but at the same time we must make sure we sure we are not taking advantage of the information and using it if it will obviously go against the wishes of the author.
In conclusion to answer this question we have to take into consideration the morality of using information without the authors permission but also common sense in the fact that it would be very stupid of us to use information that is not completely reliable and risk a lower quality of work.
1. http://amyray19.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/mind-over-body/#comment-62
2. http://wp.me/p1SXep-1o
3. http://wp.me/p1TrBY-J
4. http://wp.me/p1T8Us-E
For this weeks blog i am going to be evaluating the research methods used within a dated yet interesting study carried out by Watson & Raynor (1920) entitled ‘Conditioned Emotional Responses. The focus of this study was on conditioning and the idea that two different stimuli can be paired together resulting in certain responses depending on the nature of the stimuli used.
To begin il go through the method of the experiment for anyone who isn’t already familiar with the study. Watson & Raynor initially recruited Albert, a 9 month old orphan from a hospital in which he was raised. To test whether Albert held any fears to certain stimuli prior to the experiment he was presented with a number of stimuli (e.g. a white rat, a dog and cotton wool), his reactions were carefully recorded an proved that Albert showed no fear towards any of them. The next phase of the experiment was carried out when Albert was 11 months old and involved the pairing of the certain stimuli. Albert was first presented with a white rat, meanwhile a steel bar 4 feet in length was struck with a hammer behind him startling Albert and making him cry. This process was repeated a number of times and as a result as the white rat was presented to Albert alone he reacted with extreme fear, crawling away and crying. This showed Watson & Raynor that a certain response had been conditioned to an stimuli that was not originally feared. A further phase of the experiment took place in which the experimenters tested to see if the conditioned fear could be evoked by similar stimuli, Albert was accordingly presented with a white rabbit and similar reactions were experienced to those shown when faced with a white rat. These effects were still experienced when Albert was tested again a month later.
Il now move on to the evaluation of Watson & Raynor’s experiment. As all of you are probably thinking after reading the methods there is one big problem that clearly arises throughout the experiment and that is of course the treatment of Albert, just an innocent 11 month old infant. Obviously back in the 20’s there was no where near as many ethical guidelines as today and that is why it was able to go on but it is clear that there is a possibility for significant emotional damage to Albert in the long run and his best interests were defiantly not in mind when carrying out the experiment. Watson & Raynor did plan for a recondition stage of the experiment in which the effects would be reversed but as far as their records go this did not take place. As a result we can assume these fears stayed with Albert throughout his life and may have caused him a lot of problems.
A second criticism is to do with the external validity of the experiment. All the phases of the experiment were carried out in a lab rather than in real life settings and environments. This poses questions regarding whether or not Albert would have reacted in the same way in environments he recognized such as the hospital he was used to. Obviously there is no way this experiment could take place today but if it was possible this could be one aspect of the experiment that could be changed.
In conclusion, the study of Little Albert did indeed give us a huge insight into classical conditioning, which at the time was completely unexplored but obviously it holds a number of downfalls which may not have been a problem at the time but in today’s field of psychology would have seen them banned from psychology for a very long time.
Thanks for reading!!!!!!
Obviously whenever a researcher carries out an experiment they are hoping to find a significant result allowing them to reject their null hypothesis and therefore showing their theory to be true. However, this does not always happen, some researchers may carry out there experiment and find themselves left with an unsignificant result. If this scenario happens there are two choices a researcher has to decide between, either to leave the experiment with unsignificant results or to carry out the experiment again looking for any factors that could have caused these certain results. Obviously the latter is the choice of most researchers to save the last few months from being a complete waste of their time and effort.
So, we’ve established we’re going to re-run the experiment but how can we do to tweak it to give us a better chance of finding a significant result? Well a possible error that could have been made by the experimenter is related to their interpretation of the results, in particular outliers. An outlier is a participant that has a score that is extremely different to the scores of the rest of the participants. For example, if the mean score for an experiment is 45 and a single participant scored 80 they would be considered an outlier as they have an extreme score. If the experimenter had a participant like the one described previous this could cause unsignificant results because they have the power to influence the results of the experiment because they can inflate or deflate the mean. This problem can be tackled by removing the outlier and as a result potentially help the experimenter find significant results.
Another thing to check if you find unsignificant results is that your experiment is actually valid. This is because if you’ve based your experiment around a well established theory yet you still find unsignificant results the chances are you not actually measuring what you think you’re measuring. In addition there is a few aspects in which internal validity could be flawed. For example, instrumentation. This is when the measurement apparatus change from participant to participant, this means the aspect of the participant that should be being measured isn’t and therefore potentially significant effects could be presented to the experimenter as unsignificant.
In conclusion, in the result of the discovery of unexpected unsignificant results there a few things psychologists can do to enhance there chances of finding significant results on a second experiment. The first being checking and removing outliers if they have a significant effect on the overall mean of the sample and secondly making sure your experiment is valid and that your significant results arent mistakenly being presented to you as having no effect at all.
1. http://dnf24.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/is-it-okay-to-use-internet-sources-for-research/#comments
2. http://psucb0.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/evaluation-of-the-stanford-prison-experiment/#comment-36
3.http://kfh1991.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/gender-differences/
4. http://notwilliam.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/social-direction-and-reflexive-attention/#comments
For this weeks blog i will be again evaluating the methods of an experiment in which i personally find fascinating with regards to its findings and research area, the Stanford prison experiment. In 1971 a team of researchers led by Phillip Zimbardo carried out an experiment focusing on the effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. With regards to this blog i will start off by talking about the disadvantages of this study before moving on to discuss and outline the advantages of Zimbardo’s study.
The first disadvantage to this study lies within it’s procedure. Obviously due to the fact the prison was constructed within the basement of Stanford Universities Psychology Department the student/participants therefore knew the study was all fake, as a result this could have caused a lot of problems. For example, if the prison guards knew that the experiment was all role play they could have asked more ruthless and aggressive than they would have in real life. In addition, the prisoners may have dramatized their reactions to certain conditions or actions carried out by the guards due to their knowledge of the nature of the experiment. This can affect the validity of the experiment in a negative way, this is because rather than measuring the effects of becoming a prisoner or guard in the real world it is rather measuring what happens when people take up these roles when they are in a fake dramatized world, and thus questioning the experiments ability to generalize its results to the real world.
The second disadvantage of this experiment focuses more on the ethics of the experiment, in particular the distress it caused the prisoners of the experiment. Throughout the experiment a number of prisoners experienced deterioration’s in their psychological health and as a result five of the prisoners were removed from the experiment as well as the experiment eventually being shut down. Obviously this carries implications with regards to ethical guidelines, for example the researcher has a duty to not cause any damage to the participants but as we can see this experiment clearly caused psychological problems to its participants.
Finally, i will now move on to talk about the advantages of this study. The first advantage of this study is refers to the overall findings of the study and how it gave us a much more detailed look into obedience. In particular how the participants acted as a cause of the situation and not due to there own personalities. For example the prisoners, even though in real life they may have had strong characters with strong self-esteem when put into the role of a prisoner they acted just like they had had all their human rights removed and had no voice in what happened to them. As a result this shows how people will naturally listen to people of an authority figure.
In conclusion, i have outlined a number of disadvantages and advantages of the stanford prison experiment. As we can see whilst it is a very controversial study with a lot of implications regarding its procedure and ethics it does give us a detailed in sight into obedience and how we react to people on an authoritarian position to us.
Thanks for reading!!!!!
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