Wjec Py2 as Core Studies

Core study 1
Asch 1955 : Aims and Context
Summarise the aims and context of Asch’s 1955) research opinions and social pressure An individual is said to conform if they chose to study a course of action that is favoured by the majority or that is considered socially acceptable .When an individual is inﬂuenced by how the majority of people think this is considered socially acceptable
Conformity is a form of social inﬂuence that results from exposure to the majority position , the tendency for people to adopt the behaviour, attitudes and values of other members of a reference groups,
This was a study of conformity in an ambiguous situation ‘unclear’. Jenness asked students to guess how many beans there were in a jar,they were then asked to discuss in groups.
Lastly they were asked to give their estimates again, individuals estimates tended to converge to the group norm.It seems reasonable that when in an ambiguous situation (were the answer isn't obvious ) we look to others to get some ideas about behaviour .
Jenness's research is limited as he speciﬁcally asked participants to produce a group estimate rather than just observing if they would produce group estimates.
Sherif conducted a similar investigation into responses to an ambiguous stimulus using the auto kinetic effect ( this is where a stationary spot of light projected on to a screen appears to move) Sherif told participants he was going to move the light , he asked the pp’s to estimate by how far the spotlight had moved. All pp’s were initially asked individually. Next they were asked to work with 3 others who had given very different estimates.After discussion each pp was then asked to give an individual answer again.
Estimates become quite similar to other members in the group demonstrating a tendency to conform to group norms.Sherifs research is considered to be an improvement of Jenness’s as pp’s we're not told to give group estimates. Participant’s , arrived at a group norm themselves .
Asch criticised the experiment because he felt that the tests used by Jenness and Sherif were ambiguous ,making participants unsure of the answer, so they conformed . He felt an unambiguous task would be better

The aim is to investigate the effects of group pressure on individuals in the unambiguous situation ,to ﬁnd out if confronted with an obvious answer would the participants yield(conform) to the majority or will they give an independent response.

Asch 1955
Procedures
outline the procedure of Asch’s (1955)research opinions and social pressure
12marks
Asch (1955) asked student volunteers to take part in a vision experiment. All but one of the pp’s we're really confederates of the experimenter. The real aim of the experiment was to see how the lone ‘ naive’ participant would react to the behaviour of the confederates.
123 male undergraduates from three diﬀerent US colleges were tested.In each session one naive pp was put with 6-8 confederates. The naive pp was always seated last in order to ensure that he heard the confederate answers.
Two large cards were presented to the pp’s. One card had a singe vertical line . It was a standard line and had to be matched to one line presented on the other card.The other white card had 3 vertical lines of various lengths. Pp’s we're asked to select the line that was the same length of the standard line.
One of the comparison lines is the same length as the single vertical line and the other two are diﬀerent 2 cm or more.At ﬁrst all confederates were told to identify the correct line.After a few trials confederates were instructed to give incorrect answers on 12 out of 18 trials.After the trial
Pp’s we're interviewed and told the true nature of the experiment.
Additional producers
Asch tired a number of variations to discover the eﬀect of certain factors on conformity levels
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The size of the group varied : this was varied from 1-15 people

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A truthful partner : One of the group answered truthfully .This role was played by a confederate or another naive participant

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A partner that changed their mind: A confederate was introduced who disagreed with the majority but also disagreed with the naive participant

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A partner who changes their mind: in the original study the naive participant was observed .
What would happen if the situation changed? In this variation the confederate’s partner starts by giving correct answer for the ﬁrst 6 critical trials, but then joins the majority for the remaining 6 critical trials

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A partner who leaves; the partner starts by giving correct responses for the ﬁrst 6 critical trials and then has to leave because of an important appointment

Asch 1955
Findings and conclusions
Describe the ﬁndings and conclusions of Asch’s (1955)research opinions and social pressure
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When faced with a group that give unanimous wrong answers the naive pp gave the wrong answers 36.8% of the time.In other words participants conformed to the groups incorrect responses a third of the time
Control trails : To confirm lines were unambiguous Asch (1955) conducted a control trial were no confederates gave the wrong answer. Participants gave incorrect answers less than 1% of the time.
Individual differences : There were individual differences in the range of conformity levels . 25% never conformed
(never gave the wrong answer) and 75%conformed at least once.
Additional findings
The size of the group : Found that only one pp the naive pp was swayed very little. With two confederates the naive pp identified wrong answers 13.6% of the time. With three confederates the naive participant identified wrong answers
31.8%of the time.
A truthful partner : This reduced the pressure to conform ; pp answered incorrectly 25% of the time compared to
36.8% in the original investigation
A partner who changes their mind: When a confederate gave independent answers from the majority but then started conforming to the majority, the naive pp also behaved independently for the first six critical trials but then changed to the majorities wrong answers, following his partner. Therefore the initial independent behaviour had no lasting effect
A partner who leaves the room : If the pp had to leave the investigation after the first 6 critical trials (for a prearranged appointment) then the naive pp also reverted to being influenced by the majority , but less so than if the partner had deserted for no good reason .

Conclusions

This study shows that there is surprisingly strong tendency to conform to group pressures in a situation where the answer is clear.
Participants do yield (conform ) to the majority in unambiguous situation.They will give incorrect answers in a situation where the correct answer is obvious
Normative social influence
We conform based on a desire to be liked or accepted or to avoid embarrassment.
Informational social influence
We conform based on a desire to be right
Asch 1955: Even in situations where it is not clear that the answer is wrong there may be pressure to conform.This pressure can be real or imagined. People go along with the majority in order to be right or to be liked ….

Asch 1955
Evaluations of Methodology
This was a laboratory experiment and so has the strengths associated with the experiment method and with laboratory producers.The experiment was carried out under controlled conditions , meaning that the effect of extraneous variables could be kept to a minimum ,each participant had a very similar experience to other participants in the same condition, so the procedure can be said to have good internal reliability.
The use of the control condition in which confederates gave the correct answers means that we can say with confidence that incorrect answers given by participants ,were due to conformity rather than difficulty in perceiving lines.
Sample size is also a strength. Asch used a sample size of 123 males. This is large for an experiment of this type. He also took participants from four different universities to improve the representativeness of the sample . This also helped to prevent word getting around anyone university campus quick enough for later participants to know what to expect when they arrive for the study.
However this sample was gender bias and culture bias ,its unclear to an extent of the findings being applied all ages,sexes,socio-economic groups and nationalities.This study falls full of criticisms , as it just describes the psychology of the middle class American who were members of an individualist society , where emphasis was placed on importance of individual needs and goals.It is unclear to what extent , of the findings being applied to all ages,sexes,socio-economic groups , nationalities socio-economic. Moreover some studies have found that women were actually more conformist than men.
The study was carried out in a seminar room at the university the participants attended . Thus , although the environment was carefully controlled it was also quite a natural and familiar environment for participants . Ecological validity is therefore good.Some aspects of the design are also realistic thus increasing mundane realism. The fact that the confederates were similar in age and socio-economic status to the naive participants added realism to the study — in real life , it is our peers with whom we conform.
Validity is a problem in the Asch study .Asch was really interested in social influence on social opinions . Yet what he tested was conformity to perceptions of the length of lines.One is not necessarily a valid representation of the other.
In real life , we are probably more influenced by the people we know rather than strangers where they naive participant had to shout out loud.This may have affected conformity as the Pp’s may have been embarrassed , therefore conformed so they would not stand out from the crowd or to be liked/accepted.
There are also issues of reliability . Although internal reliability was good because the study took place in a controlled environment However Larsen repeated Asch’s research in 1974.He found conformity levels were a lot lower than those found by Asch.Some think this means Asch’s finding lack reliability.
Asch’s study involved both active and passive deception , participants gave consent to take part on a cognitive psychology experiment on perception. Participants may have experienced some distress as they struggled to understand why their perception of the lines was so different from those around them.

Alternating evidence for Asch
Perrin and spencer (1980) suggested that Asch's high conformity rates might be due to the fact that the research was conducted in the USA in the 1950s — the era of McCarthyism and a highly conformist society. Erin and spencer repeated Asch's study in England in the late 1970s .They found that only one student conformed in 396 trials .
Further research by Doms and Avermaet 1981 believed that Asch's results may be more realistic than those of Perrin and
Spencer , because Perin and Spencer used science students who may have felt more conﬁdent about their ability to estimate the length . Another study by Perrin and Spencer 1981 used youths on probation and found similar levels of conformity to
Asch. However there are other factors in this study that may be important , namely that the participants were youths on probation and the confederates were probation ofﬁcers — so conformity may have been inﬂuenced by a desire to please probation ofﬁcers.
Some studies have found that women are actually more conformist than men (e.g Neto 1995) . This may be explained in terms of the fact that women are more concerned with social relationships than men are, which means that , in the experimental situation , they have different short-term goals . This result is that women appear to be more conformist than they are in the real world( Eagly 1978)
The original sample consisted of US students , members of an individual society .Individualist societies emphasise the importance of individual needs and goals . In contrast some countries like japan and Israel are described as collectivist because they share possessions and even identify . The individual is deﬁned more in terms of the group than individual needs and characteristics .Smith and Bond 1988 reviewed 133 studies carried out in 17 countries and concluded that collectivist societies were more conformist than individual ones.
Some people are more conformist than others .. In addition , there are personality differences . For example , some people are classed as ‘externals i.e. they have a more external locus of control than have little control over their lives and that things frequently happen because of luck, Externals are more likely to rely on the opinions of others.
A key question about Asch's study was whether participants were just going along with the answers so they wouldn't sound foolish (called compliance ) , or whether majority inﬂuence actually changed their perceptions (i.e., internalised the majority view )A recent study by Berns et al 2005 used brain-scanning techniques fMRI to observe which parts of the brain were active while participants were engaged in as Asch's like task.
They found that , on the critical trials (where the confederates were given incorrect answers ) the most active areas of the brain regions involved with making judgements . This suggests that the Asch task actually changes the way people see the world, although it is possible that activity in this part of the brain was caused because participants were double-checking what they thought they saw.The area of the brain related to fear was activated when participants were behaving independently ,supporting the view that participants conform out of fear of being rejected by the group.
Their have been numerous attempts to replicate the so called Asch effect .Some studies have found support Asch's. For example, Nicholson et al 1985 repeated the study with British and US students and found that 32% and 38% , respectively , conformed at least once . On the other hand , some studies have found no effect .For example , Lalancette and Standing 1990 found no conformity , even though they made the task more ambiguous (which should increase conformity ). They concluded that the Asch's effect appears to be an unpredictable phenomenon rather than a stable tendency of human behaviour.

Core study 2
Millgram (1963) Behavioural study of obedience
Context
Hannah Arendt (1965)reﬂected on the behaviour of Adolf Eichman , one of the key Nazi leaders during the second world war. Arendt suggested that Eichman was not the monster but was ‘terrifyingly normal’ his sadistic behaviour may be best explained in terms of his own claim that he was just obeying orders
This suggests that the reason why Nazi leaders were willing to kill so many people in death camps may be explained in terms of obedience .Perhaps Germans are a particularly obedient group of people(the germans are diﬀerent hypothesis )
Adorno et al.1950) proposed that some people are more obedient then others,the authoritarian personality.
Such people are especially willing to obey orders from authority ﬁgures but ,in addition , are likely to become prejudice against minority groups as a result of unconscious hostility arising from a harsh disciplinarian up bringing. This hostility is displaced onto minority groups, such as Jews or black people
Aims
Milligram wished to test the ‘germans are diﬀerent ‘ hypothesis — a belief that obedience can be explained in terms of internal ,dispositional factors .This might explain the behaviour of Nazi leaders in the second
World War
Milligram recognised that obedience is an indispensable part of social life.It is generally desirable for people to obey orders from authority ﬁgures but is not desirable to obey an order from an unjust authority who demands destructive behaviour.
Milligram aimed to create a situation in which he could measure the extent to which people were obedient .In particular he wished to asses willingness to obey a command that requires destructive behaviour Milgram : Procedures
Participants
Milligram selected 40 males from a number of men who responded to a newspaper ad. The men were aged between 20-50, and had a variety of jobs.Each man was paid $4.50 ,even if they left the study .They were told the study was about learning .
Method
The naive participant was introduction to another participant , Mr Wallace (a confederate ) There was also an ‘ experiment ‘ . Participants drew lots to decide who would play the role of teacher or learner.The naive participant always ended up as a teacher
The learner was strapped into an ‘ electric chair’ an electrode placed on his wrist. The ‘teacher’ was in an adjoining room’ with the shock machine ,which had 30 switches starting at ‘slight shock’ at 15 volts and increasing to ‘ intense shock’ at 255 volts and ﬁnally XXX at 450 volts .The teacher had a ‘sample’ shock to demonstrate that the machine was real .
The teacher was told to administer a shock when the learner gave a wrong answer and to escalate to a higher level of shock each time.
Feedback from learner - The learner was told to give approximately three wrong answers to every correct one. The leaner was also told to make no comment or protest until the shock level 300 volts was reached.At this point he should pound on the wall but thereafter make no further comment
Feedback from experimenter - The experiment was told to respond to any hesitation from the teacher with four standard prods:
1)please continue
2)The experiment requires that you continue
3)It is absolutely essential that you continue
4)You have no other choice ,you must go on
There was a special prob such as ‘although the shocks may be painful , there is no permanent tissue damage ,so go on.
After the research was completed ,the teacher was throughly ‘dehoaxed’ and the experiment reunited the teacher and learner .They were then interviewed about their experience in this study .

Milgram Findings and Conclusions
Milgram surveyed 14 Yale psychology students .They estimated between 0 % and 3% of the participants would administer 450 volts
Experimental ﬁndings
300 volts-all participants continued to this point but ﬁve (12.5%) of the participants refused to continue when the learner made his only protest.
450 volts twenty-six (65%) of the 40 participants administered the full 450 volts .This means that
35% of the participants deﬁed the experimenters authority at some point.
Signs of extreme tension — participants were observed to ‘sweat , tremble ,stutter ,bite their lips , groan ,dig their ﬁngers into their ﬂesh .Fourteen participants displayed ‘nervous laughter and smiling ‘. Some participants had ‘full blown uncontrollable seizure .One participant had such a violent convulsion that the research had to stop.
Qualitative data-participants comments were recorded e.g ‘he’s banging in there.Im gonna chicken out’. I’d like to continue ,but I can’t do that to a man I'm sorry I cant do that to a man.I’ll hurt his heart . You have your money.
After the study
Participants were sent a follow up questionnaire .Of the 92% of participants responded:
• 84% were glad /very glad , 15% were neutral , 2% were sorry/very sorry to have taken part
• 80% said more experiments like this should be carried out
• 74% felt they had learned something of personal importance
Responses from participants
Some participants simply got up and left without saying anything .Those who continued to the end often heaved a sign of relief , mopped their brows, some shook their heads apparently in regret , some remained calm throughout
Conclusions
Situational verus dispositional factors .Millgram concluded that it was situational factors (rather than dispositional ones) that created an environment in which it was diﬃcult to disobey.
Key elements
Millgram identiﬁed various elements of this situation that had contributed to the high obedience ,including the following:
- Prestige - The location of the study at a prestige university (Yale) provided authority

- Experimenter trustworthiness-Participants assumed that the experimenter knew what he was doing and had a worthy purpose ,so should be followed

- Learners willingness - The learner (Mr Wallace) had apparently ‘volunteered’ to participate and didn't appear to object to the shocks except for one protest

- Sense of obligation - The participant didn't wish to disrupt the study because he felt obligation to the experimenter — the participant had volunteered to take part and was being paid (though he was told he could leave)

- Uncertainty in a novel situation — it was a novel situation for the participant who therefore didn’t know how to behave .If it had been possible to discuss the situation with others the participant might have behaved diﬀerently

- Important scientiﬁc gains-The participant assumed that the discomfort caused was minimal and temporary ,and that scientiﬁc gains were important

- Conﬂicting demands - The participant was torn between two deeply ingrained tendencies : not to harm someone (meeting the demands of the victim ) and to obey those whom we perceive to be legitimate authorities ( meeting the demands of the experimenter )

- Quick response required - The participants had very little time to resolve this conﬂict and he didn't know that the victim would remain silent for the rest of the experiment

Methodology
Milgram 1963 Behavioural study of obedience
Milgrams study was a controlled observation conducted in a laboratory environment. The major advantage of this is that all conditions are under control of the experimenter. This makes the observation easier to replicate which increases the reliability of research ﬁndings.

Orne and Holland 1968 claim that this research lacks experimental validity as the participants did not believe the electric shocks were real. It simply wouldn't have made sense that someone in a learning experiment would receive fatal shocks. Therefore participants simply behaved as they were expected to behave due to the demand characteristics of this study.
In particular , because they were paid , they felt obliged to go along with the situation as they had entered a social construct.On the other hand , Milligram 1974 later reported that 75% if the participants strongly believed they were giving electric shocks , 22.6% had some doubt and 2.4% were certain the shocks were not real.
A further issue concerns the extent to which it is reasonable to generalise the ﬁndings of this study to ‘real’ life. The study was conducted in a highly contrived , sterile situation .It doesn't reﬂect normal levels of obedience found in human behaviour , really just reﬂects the social values and context of when Milgram conducted his research .
In one way , this criticism is groundless because the fact that the study is in a lab is irrelevant. Milligram set out to test obedience to authority , and he could have done this in nay situation where there is a clear authority does not occur in real life in such overt ways , nor is it so extreme .
There is other evidence that can be considered , such as the replication in different cultural settings. Smith and Bond 1998 reviewed studies in eight countries and found generally higher levels of obedience , including 92% in Holland .
Milgram selected his participants via newspaper advertisement .Milgram knows that the participants selected , who were selected for the sample group want to take part in the research as they have volunteered for it therefore they may be more motivated than your ‘ average ‘ person , more willing to go to higher levels of shocks
Although Milgram did select a sample that reﬂected a variety of backgrounds ,all his initial sample was male. In fact , in subsequent experiments , milligram and others found an identical rate of obedience in male and female groups 65% , although obedient women consistently reported more stress than men.
Baumrind 1964 claimed that Milgram caused psychological damage to his participants that could not be justiﬁes . Milgram defended himself in several ways.
First he did not know , prior to the study , that such high levels of distress would be caused.
Second he did not consider ending the study when he observed the participants behaviour, but decided that there was no indication of injurious effects (Milgram 1974)
Third 84% of the participants should be weighted against the importance of the ﬁndings.

The participants did not give the informed consent , they were deceived in several ways they study involved memory rather than obedience , the confederate was another participant and that the shocks were real. They were denied the right to withdraw from the study.

Alternating evidence

Using real shocks -Sheridan and King (1972) arranged participants to deliver real shocks to a puppy ;75% of participants delivered the maximum shock (more women then men)
Replication
Burger (2009) replicated Milgrams study but didn't allow teachers to carry on beyond 150 volts; 70% of participants taking part were willing to go beyond 150 volts
Field studies
Hofling et al (1966) found that 21 out of 22 (95%) nurses were willing to obey orders from an unknown ‘Dr Smith ‘ administer an excessive dosage of an unknown drug
Astroten .This order contravened hospital regulations in a number of ways.When nurses were asked beforehand whether colleagues would obey ,they all said no nurse would.When the nurses involved the study were interviewed afterwards they said no nurse would.When the nurses involved in the study were interviewed afterwards they said that in their defence , that they had obeyed because thats what doctors expect nurses to do .
On the other hand, Rank and Jacobsen (1975) found that 16 out of 18 (89%) nurses did not obey an order .On this occasion the drug was familiar (valium) and the nurses were allowed to consult the peers-more typical of ‘ real life’ hospital practices’
Milgrams variation
Milgram (1974) conducted 18 variations of the original study ,systematically manipulating features of the situation to observe the effects on participants obedience.
Real life events
Mandel (1998) argued that Milgrams conclusions about the situational determinants of obedience are not borne out by real life events.For example , in 1942 the commander of
Reserve police Battalion 101 received orders to carry out a mass killing of jews.The commander offered to assign men to other duties if they felt uneasy about the killing , nevertheless most obeyed despite the presence of factors that , according to
Milgram ,should increase defiance -for example ,the authority figure said they didn’t have to obey , they were face-to-face with their victims and there were some disobedient peers.Mandel has argued that Milgram provided an obedience alibi.

Core study 3 : Gibson and walk aims and context
Depth Perception :The ability to see how close and how far an object is away from us
Nativist : Believe that we are born with the capacity to perceive depth ,It may not be functioning at birth but appears later through maturation (ageing not learning)
Empiricist :We require our abilities through our experience
Interactionist :Believe that our abilities are the product of both.They would assume that depth perception is the product of :Nature aspects of behaviour that are innate and inherited : Nurture acquired through experience i.e. interactions with the psychical and social environment
When we are born our nervous system has all the appropriate parts ,although it is immature e.g The optic nerve is shorter and thinner and cannot transmit information as effectively
Aims :Gibson and Walk aimed to investigate if the ability to perceive depth is learned though experience or whether it is part of a child's original endowment . They needed to test both human and non human animals in order to determine which argument was correct-to see if cliff evidence behaviours (depth perception ) were evident from the time such young animals were mobile
• Nativist : assume depth perception is an innate characteristics 
• Empiricist :assume depth perception is learnt through environmental demands •
Interactionist : would assume depth perception is developed through maturation and experience
Why use animals and human infants Using human infants alone would not give a conclusive outcome as to which perspective was correct (nativist,empiricist or interactionist )  
By using non human animals Gibson and Walk would be able to see if cliff avoidant behaviours (depth perception ) was evident from the time young animals were mobile  

Gibson and walk : Procedures
Apparatus-(equipment ) 
The visual cliff apparatus was designed to test depth perception. It enabled the researchers to control optical , auditory , tactile stimuli and protect participants
The patterns on the material underneath the glass gave visual cues that one side was
‘shallow’ and the other side was ‘deep’(the retinal image of more distant patterns are smaller and this information provides depth clues)
The participant was placed on the centre board and then encouraged to move to the shallow or deep side to see whether they would refuse to crawl over the drop
Participants
Human infant - 36 infants from the age of 6-14 months .All were able to crawl 
Non human animals — chicks ,lambs kids(infant goats) and kittens 
Some kittens were dark - reared for 27 days to prevent them learning depth cues 
Rats (mobile at 4 weeks) wore hoods so they were using their whiskers(touch rather than cues) Pigs ,dogs and aquatic turtles
Testing depth cues
There are two cues that the young animals may have to used to perceive depth
- Size/spacing of the patterns : On the shallow side the squares would appear larger and more widely spaced.To remove this cue in certain trails ,the pattern on the deep side was increased so the retinal image for both sides was identical
- Motion parallax : The pattern elements on the shallow side move more rapidly across the ﬁeld of vision when an animal alter its position or head.To remove this cue in certain trials , the patterned material was placed directly beneath the glass on both sides but the pattern size was bigger so that it appeared to be closer  

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Gibson and walk : Findings and conclusions
Human infants: Out of 36 infants ,27 infants moved off the centre board , all crawled out on to the shallow side at once.
Only three attempted to crawl out on to the deep side (cliff side) If their mothers called to them from the ‘deep side’ some crawled in the opposite direction (to the shallow side) or cried because they could not get to her without crossing the ‘deep side’
The infants often patted the glass with their hands ,so the knew that there was a solid surface .Yet the appearance of a drop was enough to prevent them venturing any further
Non human animals : Chicks ,kids and lambs never moved on the ‘deep side’ even at 1 day old . If a kid or lamb was placed on the deep side they force in a posture of defence.Kittens preferred the shallow side and ‘ froze’ when placed on the ‘deep side’.
Kittens reared in darkness for 27days crawled onto the shallow side and the deep side equally ,and did not freeze if placed on the deep side. Within one week of being able to see in daylight kittens behaved like the ‘ normal kittens’
Hooded rats explored either side as long as they could feel the glass with their whiskers rather than visual cues unhooded rats ,therefore ,were also happy to explore if the glass level (because they were using their whiskers for depth perception).However ,if the centre board was always descended from the centre board onto the shallow side.
Turtles performed worse then other animals ,24% crawled off to the shallow side .
Depth cues
Size and spacing depth cue only (both patterns placed directly under the glass)-unhooded rats preferred the side with the larger pattern apparently the shallow side ) The chicks showed no preference for the larger pattern ( apparently nearer) over the less detailed pattern (apparently far away ) Motion parallax depth cue only-the rats preferred the shallow side ,as did the chicks .
The dark-reared rats showed a preference for the shallow side when using their motion parallax .However ,when only given information about size /spacing ,they showed no preference for the apparent shallow or deep side.
Evidence of the effects of nature: The findings of this study suggests that human infants can discriminate depth as soon as they can crawl ,supporting the nativist view.
However ,these findings cannot prove that human depth perception is innate though the data from non -human animals supports this view .All of the findings form non-human animals fit with the life history and ecological niche of the animals studied. They all showed discrimination of depth by the time they were mobile
The chick and Kid discriminated depth at the age of one day 
The cat and rat discriminated depth at the age of four weeks 
The poor performance of the turtles may be because of their natural habitat involves less danger from falling off cliffs and therefore no need to develop perception

Evidence of the effects of nature : The preference shown by the rats for the shallow side when only size/shape cues were available may be explained in terms of learning .They were older at the time of testing than the chicks and therefore may have learned to use these depth cue .This was supported by the fact that the dark -reared rats showed no preference.
This research with rats suggests that motion parallax is an innate cue whereas size/spacing is a learned depth cue
Real world application - some of the infants backed on the ‘cliff side’ accidentally when on the centre ,which suggests that infants should not be left close to a cliff edge even though they may be able to discriminate depth.

Evaluating the methodology Gibson and Walk
Method : Gibson and walk conducted their research with infants in a lab environmental.
Advantages are that the experiment was well controlled such as the mother stood where the infants were placed on the visual cliff .Extraneous variable were minimised ; They could control temperature of the lab. This is a strength because extraneous variables can be controlled so no other variables are affecting the results e.g a baby doesn't move to the shallow end because its warmer ,thus a higher validity.
However there are also disadvantages as the experiment took place in an artiﬁcial environment a lab , contrived situation where the infants would not normally need to perceive depth on a glass shelf with two sides; thus a lack in mundane realism.
Validity:There are several issues that can be considered, Infants quickly learned if they did slip of the centre board ,they did not fall i.e. learned the glass was safe (Adolph and Berger 2006) This suggests that the visual cliff apparatus was not a valid method of measuring innate depth perception .
Human infants at 6-14months had considerable visual experience .This means that their ability to perceive depth may be more due to nurture than nature.This suggests that Gibson and Walk were not testing what they intended to test.Most of the animals tested by Gibson and Walk are not
‘socially dependent animals i.e. they don't depend on their mother for survival .This means that lack of social dependence might be an extraneous variable in this study.
Sampling : The sample size was 36 human infants ,age ranged from 6-14months ,this was likely to be white ,middle class , western infants .Such infants might have less depth experience than most because of cautious parents.
Ethics : During the research some of the infants demonstrated distress about not being able to get to their mother . In addition the sight of the visual cliff may have distressed the babies even though they were in no danger of failing .They were unable to give informed consent to the distress although their mothers did consent for them . They do not have the right to withdraw if they suffered from distressed.
Dawkins (1990) notes that research using non-human animals might be acceptable if the goal is to alleviate human suffering but would not be acceptable if the goal is satisfying intellectual curiosity.
The experiment was not for medical research which is particularly beneﬁcial to everyone.

Gibson and Walk : Alternative evidence
Testing younger infants who cannot crawl :Schwartz et al.1973) placed infants on both sides of the visual cliff apparatus .If the infants could perceive depth their heart rate should increase on the deep side.Schwartz et al .Found that the ﬁve month old infants typically showed no increased in heart rate whereas infants aged nine months did .
However ,it is still possible that the infants did perceive depth but had not yet understood the implications for their safety (and so their heart rate did not increase) It is also possible that , by ﬁve months ,infants have learned about depth cues despite crawling
Does the visual cliff measure depth perception ? One possibility is that infants don't crawl over the deep side because their mothers facial expressions. Source et al . Some but not when the mothers showed a fearful face.Those ﬁndings suggest appear to suggest that depth perception is not innate but us learnt through interaction within the environment.
A second possibility is that , in a visual cliff, what is being tested is learning to associate a new physical environment with new visual cues .Witherington et al 2005 found that infants who were just learning to walk were more wary of the visual cliff than those not yet walking.
They explain this surprising ﬁnding in terms of new learning having to take place when the world is viewed from a new perspective (is walking)
This challenges the methodology used by Gibson and walk and the range of age in their study .By 14 months a child has had experience with their visual world and therefore may have learnt to associate the physical experience of touch to the environment.
A limitation of Gibson and Walk is that they only used one group of infants
6-14months .Witherington et al used two groups of infants which increases the validity of the testing for innate or learned perception . Each group consisted of 20 infants. Group 1 were experienced at crawling but could not walk yet ; group two were more wary of the ‘cliff’ than the younger infants in group 1. It could therefore be that new learning takes place when the world is viewed from a different perspective (i.e. walking ) .
This would suggest that some basic perceptual processes are intact at birth more advanced visual perception does require learning through experience.

Core study 4
Gardner and Gardner Context and aims
Noam Chomsky 1957 argued that humans have a special part of their brain (the language acquisition device ) LAD that means we are biologically ‘ programmed to acquire language . This explains why human cultures all over the world have language , no matter how primitive they are, and why children acquire it so rapidly and naturally. According to this view, other animals should not be able to acquire language.
Hayes and Hayes 1952 worked extensively with a chimpanzee called Vicki . They aimed to teach her to produce a vocal language , but in their six years of working with Vicki , she was only able to —make four sounds that approximated to English words — mama. Papa , cup and up.
Permack and Permack 1966 raised a chimpanzee , Sarah , and taught her to use different coloured and shaped chips to represent words .She played these on a broad to make sentences. First she learned the symbol for an object (apple) , then to string symbols together to form sentences ( ﬁrst Mary + apple , next Mary + give +apple , and ﬁnally Sarah + give +apple +
Mary )
By the end , she had acquired 130 signs and could make sentences of eight units long. However Sarah did not spontaneously ask questions , although she would practise sentences on her own.
Bryan 1963 reports that the vocal apparatus of the chimpanzees is very different to humans. Even though chimpanzees are normally silent. Gardner and Gardner therefore concluded that a vocal language was not appropriate for species.

Aims

Gardner and Gardner aimed to investigate if they could teach a chimpanzee to communicate using a human language , speciﬁcally American Sign Language ASL.
Their intention was to raise the chimpanzee in the same way that a child is raised , so that language would be acquired naturally. They decided to use chimpanzee because the species is highly intelligent , very sociable and known for its strong attachments to humans. Sociability is especially important because it is probably a prime motivator in the development of language. It is therefore best to use an animal interested in socialising.
There were several reasons for deciding to use sign language in this study. First of all , previous evidence suggested that chimpanzees would have difﬁculty using their vocal apparatus . Secondly , chimpanzees are good with their hands , which meant they should hope well in the mechanics of signing

Gardner and Gardner procedures
Washoe was a wild caught female infant chimpanzee who was approximately 8 - 14 months old when she arrived at the
Gardner's lad. 
Chimpanzees are completely dependent until the age of about two years. 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 her in shifts.
The Gardner's reasoned that Washoe would only be likely to learn language if she interacted with others in the same way a child does. Therefore , during her walking hours , Washoe was always with at least one of her companies. Her human companions were to be friends and playmates, and they were to introduce games and activities that would bleakly to result in maximum interaction with Washoe . All the companions were able to sign, ‘chattering’ with Washoe extensively as one does with an infant. ASL consists of a set of manual gestures that correspond to particular symbols but also words or concepts. The words can be arbitrary or iconic image based.
Training methods
The training methods used by Washoe human companions included the following :
1)Imitation of signs using ‘do this’ game,where the trainer says ‘ do this’ and then the chimpanzee is meant to imitate the speciﬁed act for the reward of being tickled. Unfortunately this didn't prove very successful with Washoe , who readily imitated gestures but no on command.
2)Prompting : Imitation was also used a method of promoting. For example , sometimes Washoe would lapse into poor
‘diction’ - using a sign rather sloppily.Then she would be shown the correct sign and would imitate this.
3)Using signs : During games and everyday routines ( feeding , dressing , bathing and so on ) all objects and activities were names with the appropriate signs so that she would associate the signs with the objects or activities. In this way , Washoe came to have an understanding of a large vocabulary of signs  
4)Babbling : Is an important stage in the development of human speech , when infants practise the elements of speech , so it was important for Washoe to ‘ babble’ in sign language ( i.e manual babbling ) . This was encouraged by repeating the babble back , and linking it to actual signs in the same way that human parent might say ‘mummy’ when the infant babbles ‘ mamama’ i.e.,
Instrumental operant conditioning I.E using rewards to increase the likelihood that behaviour would be repeated . Tickling was the most effective reward to use with Washoe  
• Shaping: Washoe was initially rewarded for producing a sign that was similar to the actual sign , but gradually she would only be rewarded for closer and closer approximations
• Direct tuition : a tutor would form her hands into the right gestures, and then she would repeat this, a much quicker method of acquiring new skills .
Recording the observation

The core study article covers a 22 month period during which a record was kept of Washoe’s language acquisition . Each new sign that Washoe acquired had to fulﬁl certain criteria before it would count as a new sign for Washoe :
Three different observers had to report seeing Washoe use the sign spontaneously and appropriately (except when she was asked ‘ what do you want ‘ or familiar ) The sign had to be recorded every day over a 15 day period

Gardner and Gardner Findings and conclusions
At the end of the project , 30 words met the criteria set by Gardner and Gardner .The speed of acquisition was 7 months of training Washoe could sign 4 words, by 14 months , 13 words , by 21 months 30 words.
The 30 words are shown in order of acquisition , the earliest signs were simple demands , the later ones were mainly the names of objects come-gimme, more, up , sweet, open,tickle, go,out hurry, hear-listen , toothbrush, drink, hurt , sorry, fun , please ,food eat, ﬂower ,cover - blanket , you, napkin -bib , in, brush, hat, shoes , pants , clothes , cat,key ,baby
Four other words dog, smell , me , clean , were judged to be stable but not met the speciﬁed criteria . Some examples of the speciﬁc ways that Washoe used words are as follows.
—More when asking to continue or repeat an activity, e.g more tackling or a second helping of food
• Drink when asking for water .To indicate pop Washoe would combine drink with sweet
• Sorry after biting someone, or when someone was hurt in another way (not necessarily
Washoe)also used when told to apologise for mischief
• Baby for dolls (both human and animals )
• Please when asking for an object or activity . often combined with go , out , drink
Washoe’s language acquisition resembles the process that occurs in human children in three ways 1) Differentiating Washoe came to use the sign when smelling cooking or opening a tobacco pouch. The gardeners taught Washoe a new sign for smell using passive shopping and promoting .Washoe learned to discriminate between tow signs, although she did continue occasionally to issue ﬂower in a smell context
2) Transfer another aspect of learning language is learning to generalise from one particular thing to a general class of objects. Washoe showed this ability early on in being able to apply words like ﬂower to different kinds of ﬂowers , and also to use the sign for dog when she heard barking , not just when she saw a dog
3) Combining signs Like human children, once she had about eight signs in her repertoire ; Washoe started to combine two or three signs to represent more complex meanings ,such as listen dog to refer to a parking dog.This may have happened because the researchers combined signs themselves , so in a sense Washoe was therefore imitating them.She did however produce her own novel combinations such as open drink food open fridge and go sweet to be carried to the raspberry bush) Most famously , she signed baby in my drink when a doll was in her cup,
Conclusions
The Gardeners were wary of answering questions of other Washoe had acquired language because they felt it was against the spirit of their research .They argued that the question can only be answered if there is a clear distinguish between one class of communicative behaviour that can be called language and another that cannot.

Chimpanzees can be taught more than a few words (in previous studies chimpanzees had only learned up to four words
Sign language is an appropriate medium of communication for chimpanzees
More can be accomplished - Washes ability to spontaneously transfer the use of signs from speciﬁc things to general ones and her ability to combine two or three words suggested that signiﬁcantly more could be accomplished in further phases of this project .
Problems with testing Washoe

One of her abilities was ﬁnding a reliable way to test Washoe’s ability to use language in a meaningful way .The graders suggest that one way to do this would be to place an object in a box with a window .Then a researcher , who doesn't know what the object is , could ask was he to say what she sees.However this would only work with certain items for small enough to ﬁt in a box.The Gardner's did this successfully in later work .

Evaluating the Methodology : Gardner and Gardner
This study was a case study. This in depth study meant that an appropriate language — learning environment could be provided for Washoe where she could be studied for long periods of time to obtain rich , detailed data. Like a child learning langue Washoe was immersed in a language environment which allowed for her quick acquisition of a wide range of vocabulary. In addition using a case study meant that a complex interaction of many factors could be studied providing a method of observing behaviour that is rare.
However as this was a case study of a single chimp the ﬁndings may not be typical of all chimps.Other studies may draw different conclusions and therefore this study lacks external reliability. The record of Washes achievements was made by the researcher who knew her well, which means that their expectations might have been biased their recordings ( observer bias) The Gardner's established clear criteria to ensure that expectation bias did not affect the validity of the results.
For the sign to be noted strict criteria was followed.The sign was only added to the check list as being learnt for 15 consecutive days.Three observers had to note if Washoe had used the sign in context and spontaneously .This not only increases reliability the observers were trained in the use of the coding system.
Dawkins 1990 notes that morally questionable research using non human animals might be acceptable if the goal is the relief of human suffering, but might not be acceptable if the goal is simply the satisfaction of intellectual curiosity . It is debatable what we have learned form
Gardner’s research and it justiﬁes Washoe’s removal from her life in captivity , completing tasks that are not ‘natural’ to her species.  

Alternative evidence Gardner and Gardner
Gardner and Gardner attempted to demonstrate that chimps can teach each other sign language ( a characteristic of language according to Hockett 1960 ) .In the 1970s Washoe was give an adoptive son
Louis .The researchers decided the caretakers would not sign directly to him other than a few key words, therefore he would only acquire human language if he was taught by Washoe .
Louis acquired more than 50 signs by watching other chimps sign, and mirroring them.These ﬁndings support Gardner and Gardner’s ﬁndings that chimps can communicate through a human form of language
(speciﬁcally ASL) it also developed our understanding of what chimps are capable of achieving in this area.
However , once again , only one chimp was sued therefore the ﬁndings cannot be widely generalised and only inform us of Louis and Washes abilities . Moreover both studies were undertaken in controlled conditions therefore the ﬁndings lack external validity , to fully understand a chimps ability , alternative settings should be considered.Gardner and Gardner were criticised as there training techniques for wash did not mimic how a human child would acquire language, this criticism is addressed , somewhat in this study, as Louis learnt through observation and imitation, which better represents human acquisition of language. The Gardner’s ﬁndings have low population validity as they only looked at one female chimpanzee. Further research has shown other primates can also learn sign language. Koko at lowland gorilla was taught to use
American Sign language.Similar to Washoe , Penny Patterson taught Koko though showing her signs, having her hands shaped into signs and being rewarded for showing the correct sign. Koko has a vocabulary of 1000 signs, and understands some spoken English. She also invented her own new compound signs e.g “ ﬁnger - bracket” for ring. These ﬁndings support the Gardner and highlight sign language is an effective medium and suggest the Gardner's ﬁndings have good external reliability.
The garners did not conclude that Washoe had learnt language as they couldn't be sure what was communicative behaviour and what was language. Terrace 1979 concluded chimps cannot use the equivalent of human language.Terrace world with Nim Chimpsky .Nim learned 125 different signs which he could combine. Terrace recorded over 20,000 communications with Nim over a two year period but, was disappointed to ﬁnd a signiﬁcant difference between a child's communication and Nims. These ﬁndings strengthen our understanding of Chimps human language ability and suggests the Gardner’s were right not to conclude Washoe had learnt language.However , Terraces research was critiqued for having poor methodology a criticism which is not true of the Gardner’s research, which was rigours.Therefore we can be more certain of the internal validity of the Gardner's ﬁndings.
The use of animals in research is a widely debated area. Dawkins noted “ the use of animals may be acceptable if the goal is to relieve human suffering, but may not be acceptable if the goal is intellectual curiosity “ . Gardner and Gardner's research can be criticised as the study was for the internet of intellectual curiosity rather than human beneﬁt, thus breaches the ethical guideline of protection from harm. Later research has overcome this problem and looked to see what computers are capable of. Eliza is a computer program designed to give responses in therapy session. Research found expert judges were at times not

able to discriminate between therapists response and Elizas (Boden 1977) . This research develops our understanding of language and supports the Gardner's conclusion that they were unable to conclude that
Washoe had learnt language ; These ﬁndings highlight there is a difference between being able to produce human language and actually understanding it.

Core study 6
Rahe, Mahan and Arthur 1970 - Prediction if near future health - change from subs preceding life changes
Context

Hans Selye research in the 1930 suggested a causal link between the psychological state of stress and physical illness creating the ﬁeld of psychosomatic research .
Dr Thomas Holmes was one of the number of researches to investigate this link further. Working in a TB sanatorium,
Holmes and co worker Norman Hawkins observed that this infectious illness was more common among poor people . They suggested that it was not poverty per se, but the emotional effects of poverty , that increased vulnerability to the illness.
Hawkins et al 1957 supported this by comparing TB patients with non TB workers at the sanatorium ( matched their age , sex ,race and income) They found an increase in ‘disturbing occurrences ‘ in the two years prior to admission in TB patients and noted that this was considerably more in the TB patients than the controls.
In the 1960s work of Dr Richard Rahe was further developed working with Dr Thomas Holmes. They recognised that a stared measurement tool was needed to be able to assess stress — related life changes. In order to develop such a measure, they analysed the case histories of more then 5000 patients, producing a list of 43 critical life events.
They established the stressfulness of each event by asking 400 people of different ages, gender , education etc to score each event in terms of how much readjustment would be required by the average person .
The participants were asked to provide a numerical ﬁgure for this readjustment , taking marriage as an arbitrary baseline value of 500. If an event would take longer to readjust to than marriage , then they should give the event larger score, Scores for all participants were totalled and averaged to produce life changing units LCU for each life event. Together the 43 life events and associated LCU were to construct the schedule of recent experience SRE
Ethical issues mean it is unfair to expose individuals to speciﬁc life events just to see if they develop an illness.
Researchers conducted retrospective studies , assesses the LCU scores of participants who had become ill compared them to the LUC scores of people who had not become ill .
However there is problems with retrospective method individuals have to recall information form their past subject to memory distortions. Further more an issue with previous research its involve people who are already ill and in hospital , conclusions may not apply to the normal population

Aims

Rahe et al. aimed to conduct a prospective study using a normal population to investigate if there is a relationship between life events / changes and illness. A prospective study is one where a group of participants is identiﬁed at the start and followed forward in time

Rahe, Mahan and Arthur 1970 - Prediction if near future health — change from subs preceding life changes

Procedures
The study involved 2664men who were naval and marine personnel serving abroad three US navy cruisers; two were aircraft carriers involved in military operations off the coast of Vietnam , and the other aircraft carrier was based in the Mediterranean.
The mean age of the participants across three cruisers was 22.3 years , and participants came from a range of backgrounds in terms of education , rank and maritime experience. Of the initial sample 10% of were
‘lost ‘ as a result of men being transferred off the ships.
Participants were required to ﬁll in the military versions of 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. Each sailor completed the
SRE every 6 months over a period of two years prior to a six-eight month tour of duty at sea.
Each life change on the SRE was assigned a life change unit LCU .This value reﬂects the severity and adjustment needed for that particular event, and was formulated by a sample of US civilian.This process of assigning values was repeated with a number of different samples to ensure the reliability of the LCUs.
As each ship returned from the overseas assignments , a research physician went abroad 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 , this enhancing reliability . Sick room visits that were thought to be motivated by a desire to be excused from work where excluded form the ﬁnal analysis.
Neither the part pants nor the medical departments on the ship were aware of the research aims of this project i.e they were not aware that the shipboard illness record would be used ti make a link with the SRE questionnaire results.
—

Rahe, Mahan and Arthur 1970 - Prediction if near future health — change from subs preceding life changes
Findings and Conclusions
The relationship between the pre-cruise total life changing units and cruise period illness was examined. The co-variables were the two year period prior to the cruise and the cruise period of illness. These co-variables produced no significant correlation . However there was a significant positive correlation between the six month period prior to the cruise and cruise period lines.
A correlation coefficient was calculated to be .118 which may sound a weak correlation , but given the number of participants involved was actually highly significant . There was a probability of less than 1% that these realists could have occurred by chance (p- 0.01) .This relationship was strongest for cruiser one and three.
Decile groups
Crew members were divided into 10 groups according to the TLCUs. Decile 1 contained the 10% of the ships crew with the lowest TLCU scores during the six month period prior to the cruise , decile 2 contained the 10% of sailors with the next lowest TLCU scores .
The only significant difference between groups in terms of mean illness rate occurred between deciles 2 and 3, demarcating the low illness group.
Sailors that fell into the low TLCU groups (decile 1 and 2 ) represented a definite low illness group.
Conversely , sailors with a high TLCU score represented a high low illness group and a significant difference in mean scores between the low illness group and deciles and between 3-5 and the high illness group.
Regrouping the scores
The decile groups produced a rather eleven distribution. The range of TLCUs in deciles 1-6 was
1-194 , whereas the range in exiles 7-10 was 195-1000. In order to consider the linearity of the scores, they were regrouped into ranges of 0-99, 100-199, 200-299 and so on. The final four divisors were grouped tother because fewer than 3% of men fell within this group.

Conclusions

The results of this prospective study supports the notion of a linear relationship between participants TLCU score and their subsequent illness rate.
It is important to note that the illnesses experienced by the men were generally minor in degree , and their pre cruise life changes were often few and of low significance.This made it more difficult to detect the relationships between TLCUS and Illness .In population with greater illness variability , a stronger relationship might be demonstrated.
A significant relationship was detected under such conditions make the fineness more impressive and they are supported by the fact of being consistent with other prospective/ retrospective studies.

Cruiser two experienced the most arduous cruise of the three ships . This may explain why the relationship between TLCUs and illness was not as strong for the cruiser two data, and suggested that in stressful environments , life change will have less effect on illness as their effects are overwhelmed by environmental factors .
Further analysis of the data suggest that the life-change information predicted illness better in the older participants over 21 years and the married enlisted men than in the group of young single sailors.

Rahe, Mahan and Arthur 1970 - Prediction if near future health — change from subs preceding life changes
Methodology

The method used in this study was a questionnaire, an issue with this is that it is open to social desirability bias as a participant may lie about their life events due to the worry of being perceived as weak, they may also believe that their answers will inﬂuence their position in the navy and therefore don’t want to be seen as unﬁt for the job. Another problem could be that some events which are equally as stressful may not have been included on the questionnaire which could affect the internal validity.
It also uses a correlation, an advantage of this is that we are able to see any relationships between the variables. However it also means we cannot identify a causal relationship which would be more useful. Another advantage to using a correlation is that it makes use of existing variables, as it would be ethically unacceptable to manipulate the stressful conditions featured in Rahe’s research.
We can question the internal validity of Rahe’s study as the questions in the questionnaire only asked about recent events and ignores any serious life events prior to the 6 months, although these could have an equally impacting effect.
The population validity of the study on the one hand is good because it uses a large sample of 2664 participants from a range of educational backgrounds, ranks and maritime experience. However, it is gender biased as women are absent from the study and all of the men were sailors who may have a higher tolerance to stress, so we cannot generalise to the wider population.
We can argue that Rahe’s study has internal validity as it’s unlikely to be open to demand characteristics because a double blind procedure was used for collecting medical records, meaning both medical staff and participants were unaware of the aims.
The internal reliability can be questioned as the measurement of illness was not consistent because some of the sick room visits were excluded as they were assumed to be fake; it would be very difﬁcult to make this judgement. DeLongis et al carried out a similar study but found no correlation between life events and illness, this is not consistent with Rahe’s ﬁndings and therefore suggests that it lacks external reliability.
An advantage of using sailors for the sample is that it assured all participants were experiencing the same conditions and it makes use of the existing stress they are experiencing. The average age of the participants was 22.3 years old, at this age it is unlikely many will have experienced a lot of the life events on questionnaire (such as divorce) and therefore the results are no representative of all ages.
Ethical issues of this study could be conﬁdentiality as they accessed the participant’s medical records without their permission, psychological harm could also be an issue as

the list of LCE may bring back memories or force them to re-live those stressful events.
Passive deception was also present as they were unaware that their answers to the SSR would be compared to their medical records.

Rahe, Mahan and Arthur 1970 - Prediction if near future health — change from subs preceding life changes

Alternative research
Subsequent research by Arthur sports the ﬁndings of Rahe et al’s research
Arthur conducted a further research study rising the SRE (Rubin et al. This stayed examined patterns of illness in naval aviators ﬂying combat missions rom an aircraft carrier during a sex month deployment to
Vietnam .They found that there were a predictive relationship between their SRE scores and subsequent illness in their sample.
However some research evidence contradicts prospective ﬁndings that are related to life change units.
Delongis et al 1998 studied stress in 75 married couples .They gave the participants a life events questionnaire and a hassle and uplifts scale. They found no relationship between life events and health, but did ﬁnd a signiﬁcant postage correlation of +.59 between hassles and next day health problems such as ﬂue , sore throats headaches and backaches
More recent research has sought to explain the link between stress and illness in terms of depressed auctioning of the immune system.When individuals are stressed, the cells in the immune system are reduced, which decreases an individuals ability to ﬁght infection. In one classic study .Kiecolt- Glaser et al
1984 measured immune system activity in students taking important medical exams (low stress) and during the exam period itself (high stress).
Immune system functioning was assessed by measuring the natural killer (NK) cell activity in the blood samples .NK cell activity was signiﬁcantly reduced in the second blood sample taken during the exams compared with the sample taken one month before .This suggests that short term , predictable stressors reduce immune system functioning , increasing vulnerability to illness and infection.
There is also evidence of short term stress may have a beneﬁcial effect on the immune system (up regulation ) .Evans et al 1994 looked at the activity of one particular antibody , secretory IgA (slgA) ,Which coats the mucous surfaces of the mouth , lungs and stomach , and helps protect against infection. The researcher arranged for students to give talks to other student (mild but acute stress) .These students showed an increase in slgA , whereas levels of slgA decreased during examination periods that stretched over serval weeks. Evans et al 1997 propose that stress appears to have two effects on the immune system; up regulation for very short term street and down-regulation for long term stress.

Core study 8
Bennett-Levy and Marteau 1984 Fear of animals : What is prepared ?

Context and aims
Evolutionary psychology suggests certain fears are adaptive behaviours that helped our distant ancestors to survive. If we are extremely fearful of an animal and we try to get away form it, we are unlikely to be hurt by it. The fears that were important to the survival of our ancestors may lie dormant in our brains.
Seligman 1971 proposed the concept of biological prepared-ness — an inherited predisposition to fear certain classes of animals such as snakes.
Three observations support this belief
1) The discussion of animal phobias is non — random i.e. certain animals such as spiders , are often the object of fear, whereas others , such as ﬁles are not
2) Fears of these animal’s not matched by traumatic experience i.e. people may fear spiders dissipate there being no actual contact to have triggered this fear
3) Fears often appear very early in life , reaching a peak at around the age of four years old
The concept of biological preparedness is further supported by research with wild reared and lab-reared monkeys. Minkeka-et al 1980 found that wild reared monkeys showed considerable fear of real , model and toy snakes.This could be explained in terms of the direct experiences that wild monkey might have had created a fear repossess (obersvaetional learning )
However Bennet-Levy and Marteau noted that lab monkeys did demonstrate a fear response when the
‘snake’ showed a signiﬁcant amount of movement. Therefore they 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. Hinde 1974 also suggested that certain other characteristic evoke a fear response , namely novelty and strangeness. Hide further suggested that a large discrepancy between a stimulus such as a snake and the organism’s model of the world is the basis for its response.This was supported by Bennett - Levy and
Marteau’s description of what they feared about animals invariably focused on what the animals looked and felt like
Aims
Seligman’s concept of biological preparedness offered no suggestion about the mechanism by which such preparedness would operate.Bennett Levy and Marteau aimed to investigate the underlying mechanisms — human beings are ‘ biologically prepared ‘ to fear certain stimulus and conﬁguration in animals , such as rapid or about movement and discrepancies form the human form. They predicted that the perceptual characteristics of small , harmless animals should be related to the distribution of ratings of fear and avoidance of these animals

Bennett Levy and Marteau 1984
Procedures
Two questionnaires were handled out to 13 participants who were attending a British health centre. The questionnaires were distributed in a random order

• Group 1: Which competed questionnaire 1 , comprised 34 females and 30 males .The mean age of group 1 was 35.5 years SD= 16.9

• Group 2 : Which completed questionnaire 2 , comprised 25 females and 24 males. The mean age of group 2 was 35.1 years and SD-14.4

The questionnaires concerned 29 small harmless animals and insects. The reason for studying ‘harmless’ animals was because it was argued , the same perceptual characteristics that create fear in harmful animals should create fear in harmless animals even though they are of no biological significant to the human survival.
In this case of animals that might have been considered to be harmful (e.g grass snakes or jelly fish ) participants were asked to rate them as harmless in order that harmfulness was not a factor in the ratings made.
Questionnaire 1
This was designed to measure self-reported fear and avoidance of the animals and insects. Participants rated the animals on two scales.
1)Fear scale participants were asked to rate their fear of animal on a three point scale
2)Nearness scale : Participants rated their avoidance by completing a five pint scale of nearness .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’
Questionnaire 2
This was designed to measure self-reported ratings of the same 29 animals and insects as used in questionnaire 1 but specially long four perceptual dimensions .The following instructions were given
‘We would like you to echidna how UGLY ,SLIMY and SPEEDY the animals are , and how
SUDDENLY they appear to MOVE . A three point scale was used.

Bennett- Levy and Marteau 1984
Findings and conclusions
The rats were feared considerably more than any other aimless . Informal questioning suggested that it was because they were perceived as potentially harmful .
In the ratings for nearness, females were found to be less willing to approach or pick up 10 of the animals than males. These animals were in descending order jellyﬁsh, cockroach, ant moth , crow, worm , beetle , slug, mouse and side.
Similar differences were found in their fear ratings.However , there were no notable sex differences in ratings of ugliness, sliminess, speediness and suddenness of movement. The men in group 1 rated themselves as less fearful than the women, but were nevertheless apparent just as responsive to the animal characteristics. For example , there was an extremely close correlation in the nearness rating of men and women (correlation coefﬁcient (r)=+.96)

• Speediness and sudden movement are highly correlated (r=+.95)
• The correlation between nearness and sudden movement is +.05 but when the effect of
•

ugliness is removed this rose to +.61.
Similarly partial correlations were determined for fear and speediness and nearness and speediness which were signiﬁcant.

Thus , as expected , all four ratings of perceptual characteristics (ugliness , sliminess, speediness and suddenness ) are related to both fear and nearness.
Conclusions
‘The results of this study suggest that the perceptual characteristics of animals are of some importance in determining their positive or negative appraisal by humans.
Animals that have the four perceptual characteristics ( ugly , slimy , speedy or sudden-moving) are experienced as less approachable and more fear provoking than other animals.
Despite the effort to remove the effect of anticipated harm by instructing participants to rate certain animals as harmless , this is obviously an imprint characteristics when it comes to rating the fearfulness and other perceptual characteristics of animals

Bennett-Levy and Marteau 1984 Fear of animals : what is expected?
Methodology

Bennett Levy and Martaeu collected their data using questionnaires. A questionnaire is a set of questions ,it I deigned to collect information about a topic in this study fear of animals.The advantages of using questionnaire is that Bennett Levy and Martaeu were able to access what people thought-observations and experiments rely on guessing what people think or feel on the basis of how they behave. With a questionnaire Bennett Levy and
Martaeu were able to ask participants directly . A disadvantage is that participants may have been inﬂuenced by social desirability bias, such as participants may have thought it was expected of them to give high fear rating for animals such as rats and lower fear rating for lambs , thus reducing internal reliability of the study.
Bennett Levy and Martaeu analysed their data using correlations.An advantage of this is that if the correlation is not signiﬁcant between speediness and sudden movement for example , then you can rule out a causal relationship.
A questionnaire is reliable if the same results are obtained when the same person answers the questionnaire on two separate occasions. However the questionnaires of this study are not reliable as the questions aren't consistent to both the groups , the questionnaire should be measuring the same things and in this case questionnaire 1 is messing 1 fear and avoidance which were different from the participants who answered questionnaire 2 ( ugly, slimy , speedy, sudden movement )
Mercklebach et al 1987 repeated Bennett-Levy and Marteau’s research and found similar associations between fear and avoidance of an animals and its perceived characteristics. This suggests that Bennett-Levy and Marteau’s study is reliable as they've been replicated and similar results have to found ;Thus high reliability.
Two measurements were used in this study - two questionnaires that assessed aspects of fear . In the cause of both questionnaires, we might ask how realistic they’re , is real fearfulness the same as asking people about how they would respond to a particular animal ? One way to asses validity is to consider the extent to which these measure did measure what they set out to measure.
There were 113 participants in the sample , 59 females and 55 males. The genders were also fairly evenly split over to questionnaires. This is important to ensure the study can be generalised to the general population and does not include gender or age bias. The target population studied was British. Unfortunately the study cannot be generalised to a wider population because it has culture bias as it provides the data for British participants.

—

Bennett -Levy and Marteau’s 1984
Alternative evidence
The essence of the concept of biological preparedness is that an animal will have an innate readiness to learn to associate certain cases of still with an avoidance response.These stimuli would be things that would have been dangerous to our distant ancestors in the environment of evolutionary adaptation EEA and thus avoidance would be adaptive.Such stimuli are described as ‘fear-relevant’ stimuli as distinct form ‘fear irrelevant ‘ stimuli . A spider is a FR stimulus wheres a ﬂower is an FI one.
A number rod predictions arise from the concept of biological preparedness. An avoidance .Fear response should be learned more rapidly to stumble that would have been dangerous in the EEA FR stimuli . Such fears once acquired , would be more difﬁcult to unlearn i.e. it would be dafﬁly to extinguish the conditioned response. We should observe contra preparedness — a decreased likelihood that associations will be learned between FR stimuli and repossess that would be adaptive.
Rapid learning: Seligman 1971 found that two to four small electric shocks were enough to induce a phobia to a picture of spider or snakes ,although a larger series of shocks was required to induce the some sort of phobic repossess to pictures of ﬂowers. This sports BLM as it undermines that we are biologically prepared to respond in an aversive way to some factors than others e.g spiders rather than ﬂowers.
Ohman 2000 noted that conditioned fear resounds to stimuli such as houses and ﬂowers become extinct as soon as the unconditioned aversive shock ( a mild shock ) was no longer parked with these stimuli. A fear response still persisted, however with stimuli such as snakes and spiders. This also supports BSM because it is more difﬁcult to extinguish the fear of snakes and siders that we are able to form fear relevant associations more readily in comparison to others.
In general FR conditioning has been less successful with human participants , although some researches have had positive results .For example Regan and Howard 1995 conditioned human partisan by showing slides of FR and FI stimuli followed by a white noise the
NS .Later , when the noise was played the humans were more likely to demonstrate a fear repose when the white noise had been associated with a fear irrelevant stimulus e.g landscape. This supports the argument that fear repossess are evolutionary and adaptive .

Core study 9

Loftus and Palmer
Context and Aims

When eyewitnesses give evidence to a court in the UK , they must take an oath or swear the following afﬁrmation
“I do solemnly ,sincerely and truly declare and afﬁrm that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth , the whole truth and nothing but the truth’
However the eyewitness may believe they're telling the truth but in reality that testimony is not 100% accurate.As the witness is having to rely 100% of their memory and if mistaken is the witness really telling the truth ?
The inaccuracy of EWT is major concern . Research in the USA has shown that inaccurate eyewitness memory is the main factor , leading to false convictions.The innocence project claims that eye witness misidentiﬁcation is the single most wrongful cause of wrongful convictions in the USA , playing a role in more than 75% of convictions that were subsequently overturned though DNA testing.
One explanation offered for the inaccuracy of EWT is that questioning by police or other ofﬁcials after a crime may alter eyewitness perception of the events thus affecting what can be recalled. Some questions are more ‘suggestive
‘ than others. In legal terms such questions are called leading questions.
‘either by its form or content, suggest to the witness what answer is desired or leads him to the desired answer ‘
Leading questions may affect the eyewitnesses ability to judge the speed of vehicles , because people are quite poor at judging the numerical details of trafﬁc accidents, such as time ,speed and distance .
Marshall 1968 found that when Air Force Personnel who knew in advance that they would be asked to estimate the speed of a vehicle , observed a car travelling at 12MPH , their estimates ranged from 10-50 miles per hour.
Such estimates may be inﬂuenced by certain variables, such as the phrasing and a question to elicit a speed judgment .Filmore 1971 suggests that using the words ‘smashed’ ‘hit’ implied differential rates of movement.
Such words also lead the listener to assume different consequences for the impacts to which they are referring , with ‘hit’ being perceived as gentler than smashed
Aims
Loftus and Palmer aim was to investigate the accuracy , or inaccuracy of memory. In particular they wished to investigate the effect of leading questions on the estimate of speed
The aim of the experiment was to see if the estimates given by participants about speed of vehicles in trafﬁc accident would be inﬂuenced by the wording of the question asked. For example , participants who were asked about how fast the cars were travelling when they hit each other would give different speed estimates and have different expectations from participants asked the same question with the word ‘smashed’ instead.
The second experiment investigated whether leading questions simply basis a persons response or actually alter the memory that is stored.

Loftus and Palmer 1974 : Reconstruction of automobile destruction: an example of the interaction between language and memory 12 marks
Experiment 1

There were 45 student participants in this study. They were shown seven ﬁlms clips of different trafﬁc accidents. The length of the ﬁlm segments ranged from 5 - 30 seconds.
The clips were originally made as part of a driver safety ﬁlm.
After each clip , participants received a questionnaire in which they were asked to give an account of the accident they had just seen, and were also asked a series of speciﬁc questions about the accident they had just seen , and were also asked a series of speciﬁc question about the accident .
Among these questions one was how fast were the cars going when they __________________ each other? The word used in the blank space varied from group to group. In total there were ﬁve groups with nine participants on each . These questions were :
• About how fast were the cars going when they ‘hit each other?
• About how fast were the cars going when they “ collided “ with each other ?
• About how fast were the cars going when they “ contacted” each other ?
Participants estimates of speed in each group were recorded in miles per hour .

Experiment 2

This study involved a new set of 150 student participants

Part 1: Participants were shown a ﬁlm of a multiple car crash. The actual accident lasted less than four seconds. The participants were then asked a set of questions including the critical question about speed. The participants were divided into three groups , each of 50 participants.
Group 1: Was asked ‘how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?
Group 2 : Was asked “ how fast were the cars going when they ‘hit’ each other?
Group 3 : This was the control group and its members were not exposed to any question.
Part 2 - One week later the participants were asked to return to the psychology lab and were asked further questions about the ﬁlmed accident.
The critical question that all participant were asked ‘ did you see any broken glass ?’ There was no broken glass in the ﬁlm but , presumably those who thought the car was travelling faster might expect there to have been broken glass. Loftus and Palmer : Findings and Conclusions
Experiment 1
The mean speed estimates was calculated by each experimental group.The group was given the word
‘smashed’ which estimated a higher speed than the other groups 40.8 mph. The group given the word
‘contacted’ estimated the lowest speed of 31.8 mph .
Smashed = 40.8
Collided = 39.3
Bumped = 38.1
Hit = 34.0
Contacted = 31.8
Experiment 2
The ﬁndings of experiment 2 where Participants gave higher speed estimates in the ‘smashed ‘ just like experiment 2
Participants returned a week later and answered further questions about the ﬁlmed accident, The ﬁndings are …..
Participants in the ‘smashed condition were more than likely to report seeing broken glass than those in the group given the word ‘hit’ or in the control condition.
Smashed condition : 16 reported having seen broken glass, 34 reported not seeing any broken glass
Hit condition 7 reported seeing broken glass , 43 reported not seeing broken glass.
Control condition 6 reported seeing broken glass , 44 reported not seeing broken glass.

Conclusions
The ﬁnding indicate that the form of a question can markedly and systematically affect a witnesses answer to that question
Loftus and Palmer proposed two explanations for this
1) Response - bias factors : The different speed estimates occur because the critical word e.g (smashed or hit) inﬂuences or biases a persons repossess
2) The memory representation is altered : The critical word changes a persons memory so that their perception of the accident is affected. Some critics; words would lead someone to have a perception of the accident having been more serious
If the second conclusion is true , we would expect participants to ‘remember ‘ other details that are not true. Loftus and Palmer tested this in their second experiment. In the ‘smashed’ condition , the two pieces of information combine to form a memory of an accident that appears quite severe and therefore generates certain expectation , for example that there is likely to be broken glass .
The ﬁndings from experiment two suggest that the effect of leading questions is not the result of response-bias but because leading questions actually alter the memory a person has for the event.
These ﬁndings can be understood in relation to research on the effects of verbal labels on to be remembered forms such as a classic study by Carmichael et al . Verbal labels cause a shift in the way information is represented in memory in the direction of being more similar to the suggestion given by the verbal label.

Loftus and Palmer Methodology
Method : Loftus and Palmer conducted their research using lab experiment. Conducted under controlled conditions in a room unfamiliar to the participants. All participants watched the same ﬁlm clip which minimised extraneous variables, thus a higher validity:
Especially with all participants being asked the same questions such as smashed , hit
Collided and contacted.
Also lab experiments can be easily replicated to check if the same results occur whether participants can recall accurate speed.A disadvantage is that the experiment was artiﬁcial , in a contrived situation where participants might not behave as they do when witnessing a car accident in real life as they have more motivation to remember the events in real life than watching a car crash in a lab. Therefore the study lacks mundane realism .The pp’s may have behaved in a way that they thought would help the experiment also known as demand characteristics this reduces validity.

Reliability : A number of other studies have produced similar ﬁndings. Loftus and
Zanni asked some parapets if they saw any broken light or a broken headlight ,
7% reported seeing one although there wasn't one in the ﬁlm. This demonstrates that Loftus and Palmers results are reliable and it supports the aim that leading questions can bias a persons repossess or actually alter the money that is sorted by believing they saw broken glass that wasn't in the video clips. Thus increasing external reliability as consistent results from other studies into eye witness testimony conform that leading questions distort memory.
Validity :Loftus and Palmer research is frequently criticised for laking ecological validity . As the study took place in a lab and participants observed ﬁlm clips of car accidents rather than a real accident , where observers might feel scared or anxious . Participants were aware that they were in an experiment and may have suspected that they would be questioned about the ﬁlm clips. Therefore ﬁndings cannot be generalised to real life eyewitnesses as they're less emotionally affected by watching video clips of car accidents that real life events. Less emotionally affected by a ﬁlm than they would be witnessing a real accident as emotions and fear have an effect on memory. This lowers the ecological validity and ﬁndings would be less likely to generalise to actual eye witness memories.
The part pants in this study were US college students ,this group of participants are unique as they may unlikely have much driving experience also it's not a real representation of the general population.
Loftus and Palmer did not gain fully informed consent from their participants .Deception may be acceptable in this study as pp’s did not

experience any psychological harm whilst watching car accident clips .Loftus and
Palmer may have not produced the same ﬁndings if the participants had been fully informed as demand characteristics would effect the validity. 

Loftus and Palmer : Alternative evidence

Loftus and Zanni 1975 showed participants a dilm of a car accident . They then asked some patriots ‘did you see any broken glass, ‘ and other ‘did you dee the broken headlight?’ Of those asked about a broken headlight , 7% reported seeing one although there wasn't one in the ﬁlm compared with 17% of people asked about the broken headlight. The use of ‘a’ and ‘the’ was a form of leading question.
This research demonstrates that leading questions can actually cause participants to remember something that was not there. This supports Loftus and Palmer as it provides more evidence that leading questions can alter the responses given.
Loftus 1979 showed that participants a series of pictures of a man stealing a red wallet from a women bag . Later 98% identiﬁed the colour correctly. Furthermore , despite later being given an erroneous description of the wapiti as brown , participants persisted in describing the wallet as red .This research contradicts Loftus and Palmer as it suggest that in some circumstances leading questions have a limited effect on memory. It may be that the information remembered in this study was less subjective than estimating speed.
Loftus’s research interest has moved from EWT to false memories. A false memory is an emery of something that did not happen but feels as if it were a true memory . Her research has focussed on seeing whether this could be demonstrated experimentally .
Lotus and Pickerel 1995 conducted a study referred to as ‘ lost in the mall’ They interviewed participants about childhood events, implanting a memory about having been lost in the mall when younger part pant were told a close relative had reported the incident. About 20% of the participants came to believe in their false memories to such an extent that they still lung on them even after being debriefed. This research suggests the theory that verbal information can alter memory.

Buss 1989 : Sex differences in human mate preferences : Context and aims
Universal ﬁndings would indicate behaviour is result of evolution.Based on principles of evolutionary psychology

providing important clues about a species past reproductive history.

They also demonstrate the current direction of sexual selection , by letting us know who is likely to be selected as a mate. Those mate characteristics that are heritable (transmissible from parent to offspring) will appear more frequently in subsequent generations , whereas individuals lacking preferred characteristics will not be selected to mate therefore their genes will not be perpetuated (make (something) continue indeﬁnitely)
1)Predictions based on parental investment and sexual selection theory (Trivers 1972) 
Sexual selection is driven in part by different levels of investment males and females make in their offspring. In mammals , males make less investment because the female carries the baby .
This greater investment means that females are likely to be choosier when selecting a partner . In particular , they might choose a partner who can offer resources
Food Shelter Territory Protection
That will enhance the females reproductive success . In modern times , this might translate into preference for men with greater earning capacity ,ambition and industriousness
2)Predictions based on reproductive value (Symon , 1979 ) and (Williams 1975)A 13 year old girl has high reproductive value ( her future reproductive possibilities are high ) , Whereas a 23 year old would have lower reproductive value but higher fertility (her current probability of reproducing is higher
Youthfulness would be an indictor of both fertility and reproductive value.This could be signalled by physical characteristics such as 
• smooth skin ,, good muscle tone ,lustrous hair ,full lips  
And by behavioural indictors such as high energy level and sprightly (lively; full of energy) gait (person's manner of walking) Males who fail to select females with such characteristics would on average , leave fewer offspring than males who select females with such characteristics ;It is less easy to judge male fertility from appearance , since age and fertility are less closely associated . This suggests that males more than females will value youth and physical attractiveness in potential mates
3) Prediction based on paternity probability Daly et al 1982
In species where females invest parentally , then selection should favour those males who ensure that any effort is directed towards their own offspring rather than those of another male. Sexual jealously is a means of increasing paternity probability.
If functions to ‘guard’ their mate and persuade male competitors . 
Preference for chaste in a potential mate is another mechanism of paternity probability. Males who preferred chaste females in our Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation EEA presumably enjoyed greater reproductive success.

Females have less need for chasisty because they can be certain of their own parenthood. However , it is possible that male sexual experience may signal that the male might have to share resources between a number of females and therefore chastity may also be an important signal for females
Aims
Buss aimed to investigate if evolutionary explanations for sex differences in human mate preferences are found in cultures with varying ecologies , locations , ethnic compositions , religious orientations and political inclination .
Cross cultural studies offer an opportunity for testing evolution based on hypothesis because we would expect behaviours that are innate should to be the same in all cultures.

Buss 1989 :Procedures
Buss analysed responses from 37 samples from 33 countries , located on six continents and ﬁve islands , creating a total number of participants equal to 10,047 .
The samples varied ﬁn size from 55 in Iran to 1491 in the US mainland sample Apart from the Iranian sample , all samples exceeded 100 participants 
The mean sample size was 272 participants .
The age of participants in the sample groups ranged from 16.96 years in New Zealand to 28.71 on Germany .
The mean age of the overall sample was 23.05 years
The sampling techniques varied widely across countries
In Estonia , one sub-sample consisted of couples applying for a marriage license 
In Venezuela , the sample consisted of every ﬁfth household in a series of neighbourhoods that
Varied in socioeconomic class, In south Africa the Zulu sample consisted of a rural population , some of which had questions read aloud to them. In west Germany , the sample was selected through newspaper ads 
In New Zealand ,the sample consisted of high schools students taken from three schools
Data collection
The research data was collected in most cases by native residents of each country and mailed to the USA for analysis
. Research collaborators were unaware of the central hypothesis of this investigation
The questionnaire : Buss used two questionnaire to assess respondents views on making preferences
Instrument 1: Rating 
Part 1: Biological data 
E.g age , sex , religion , martial status and number of brothers and sisters
Part 2 : Mate preferences
E.g questions about the age at which respondents preferred to marry , age difference between respondent and spouse , how many children were desired
Part 3 : Rating scale
Participants had to rate 18 characteristics on a four point rating scale form 3 (indispensable) to 0 (unimportant)
Interspersed among these 18 were the four target variables : good ﬁnancial prospects , good looks . chastity : no previous sexual intercourse ; no ambition and industriousness
Instrument 2 : Ranking
Participants were asked to place 13 characteristics in rank order based on their desirability in someone they might want to marry .

Rank 1 was given to the most desirable characteristic 13 to the least desirable characteristics in a potential mate.
Among these 13 characteristics were the two target variables 
Good earning capacity 
Physical attractiveness
Other variables included being religious , kind , understanding and having an exciting personality

Translations
Research collaborations had the task to employing three bilingual speakers One translated the questionnaire from
English into their native language Second translated the answers back to English 
Third resolved any discrepancies
The translators were instructed to make all the terms neutral rather than using words that might be linked to a speciﬁc sex. For example ‘physically attractive ‘ is sex neutral whereas ‘handsome’ and ‘beautiful ‘ are sex — linked
Occasionally questionnaires needed to be amended to reﬂect cultural differences .In Sweden , many couples do not get married but just live together , so the questions had to be modiﬁed to reﬂect this cultural difference.
In Nigeria ,polygyny ( a man having more than one wife) is practised , so questions had to be added to reﬂect the possibility of multiple wives

Buss 1989 :Findings and conclusions  

1) In 36 of the 37 samples ; females valued good ﬁnancial prospects in a mate more highly than did males.The sole exception was Spain, where there was a difference but it was not signiﬁcant 2)In 34 out of 37 samples females expressed a high valuation for ambition and industriousness in a mate than males.
In three samples those from Columbia, Spain , South African Zulus , the opposite sex difference was found (i.e. males rated ambition and industriousness more highly than females did) Although it was only signiﬁcant in South Africa Zulu sample
3) In all 37 samples , males preferred mates who were younger . The mean age difference preferred by males was 2.66 years and the mean age at which males prefer to marry is
27.49 years
4)All of 37 samples showed that males rated good looks in their mate more than females did. This difference was signiﬁcant in 34 of them samples.
5)In 23 of the samples males preferred charity in their mates , whereas there was no signiﬁcant difference in the remaining 14 sample.
6)The validity check was used to assess if self reported preferences accurately reﬂected actual preferences and actual mating decisions. Using a demographics data from 27 of the
33 countries sampled the mean age difference between mates was found to be 2.99 years which was very close to the mean preferred age difference of this study 12.66 for males and 3.42 for females mean is 3.04

Conclusions
Females valued the ﬁnically capacity of potential mates more than males did, supporting the hypothesis that women seek cues relates to resources
Females value ambition and industriousness more than males did again supporting the hypothesis that women seek cues related to resources
Males valued physical attractiveness and relative youth more than females did supporting the hypothesis that males seek cues related to high reproductive capacity

The fact that males partners around the age of 25 suggests they look for cues related to fertility rather than reproductive value
Falsifying Symond’s view that reproductive value was more important . However the fact that the age preference was several years beyond peak , fertility suggest that other non evolutionary factors may also be involved , such as compatibility and maturity
Females preferred somewhat older mates. This was not speciﬁcally predict at the outset but supports the importance of resources because older men would be likely to have greater resources Males valued Chastity more than females did , supporting the importance of paternity probability - although only modestly , as large number of samples showed no difference .
These less impressive results could be because charity is less directly observable
Buss concluded that his ﬁndings support evolutionary explanations of human behaviour , speciﬁcally that mating behaviour should differ according to gender , reﬂecting the difference in the reproductive capacities of males and females
Buss also concluded that these ﬁndings show that mate preferences are not simply about female choosiness. Human males and females both express preferences and there are selective advantages for doing so.
At the same time , there are also cultural inﬂuences in play , as shown , for example , by the variability in chastity as a factor in mate choice.

Methodology of Buss
Buss used a questionnaire to collect his data apart from some south african zulu population who had the questions read out to them to verbally respond to .
An advantage of a questionnaire is that to can involve large numbers of people Buss’s case covered 10,000 people, it cab be easily repeated so data can be collected from large numbers of people relatively cheaply and quickly , than methods such as interviews.
A disadvantage is that the participants may not have answered truthful because of factors such as social desirability bias. For example the males in buss’s sample may have said they sough/rated physical attractiveness as important because as they know this is what men are supposed to want socially An issue of reliability is the fact the samples from diﬀerent countries were selected in an in consistent way . In New Zealand the samples was on opportunity sample of high school students, in Venezuela the sample was selected systematically. In west Germany the sample was elected using an advert in a news paper, volunteer or self selected sampling.
This led to inconsistent characteristics of participants in diﬀerent samples. To deal with this Buss could have advised his research collaborators in the diﬀerent countries to select their participants using the same sampling method such as quota sampling. (Using various ages , gender , demographics of each culture to identify appropriate strata ) To increase consistency of sampling across the whole sample
Various steps were taken to ensure validity . Extensive eﬀorts were made to ensure that all respondents understood the question-the questionnaire was read out to those who could not read
, and questions were adapted to match local customs (such as adding questions related to multiple wives for cultures where polygyny was practised )
The truthfulness of respondents answers might have been aﬀected by social desirability bias. One questionnaire asked respondents to rank order certain characteristics .Ranking is diﬃcult to do and therefore the answer may be fairly meaningless .
The most frequently used sampling technique in Buss’s research were samples of convince i.e. opportunity samples.
An advantage is that it allowed the researchers across the world to easily and quickly locate participants to complete the mate preference questionnaire .
A disadvantage is that the majority of participants were likely to therefore have been undergraduate students and hence to have unrepresentative countries in terms of age and intellectual , ability both of which may inﬂuence what they looked for in a potential mate .
Ethics : Buss’s research is a lack of fully informed consent.Although the participants were fully aware that they were completing a questionnaire and it was clear form the questions in the questionnaires that it was about mate preference characteristics , they did not know the overall aim or that the ﬁndings between men and women were going to be compared or importance of physical attractiveness was going to be compared. 

Buss alternative research
Cunnington et al 1995 found very close agreement across cultural groups , native asian , hispanic and white american when rating female physical attractiveness
Singh 1993 found that men in many different cultures prefer women with low waist to hip ratio WHR . The ideal is about 0.7 - a women with this WHR is likely to have a large bottom , indicating good fat reserved for pregnancy and a narrow waist , indicating that he is not pregnant . Therefore a low WHR is a sign of youthfulness and fertility .
Little et al 2007 found that symmetrical faces were rated highly in terms of attractiveness by not UK and Hadza samples the Hadza are a hunter gatherer society of Tanzania . A symmetry is a sign of genetic robustness and thus another indictor of fertility
Lonely hearts ads
Waynforth and Dunder 1955 analysed 900 ads from US newspapers.More men than women sought a youthful mate and or ‘physical attractiveness’ terms to describe themselves .
Dunbar 1955 found that heterosexual women were three times more likely to seek resources and status then lesbians, whereas homosexual men offered resources about half as often as heterosexual men. This supports the evolutionary explanation because we would not expect lesbian and gay mate choices to be related to reproductive criteria .
Bereckei et al 1997 found that females advertised for men who are family orientated as well as financially sound. Today many women have economic security of their own and are less interested in a partner’s resources and more interested in ‘ caring and sharing’ to boost their reproductive success.
Alternating explanation - The reason for universal agreement may not be because such features indicate fertility . There are also universal preferences for a ‘ baby face’ high forehead , large eyes , small nose , small chin . Which have evolved because this ensures that we care for young.Thus such features are signs of high levels of oestrogen i.e. fertility
Other factors may affect our attraction to others . ‘Nurture ‘ explanation for interpersonal attraction include the ‘ mere exposure effect ‘ - the more often you see someone , the more you like them. For example , a cross cultural study by Langlois and Roggman 1990 found that people preferred ‘ average face’ (learned through exposure to all the different face so a mental average is calculated.

Core Study 10

Rosenhan : Being Sane in insane places : Aims and Context
In 1960 , Foucault , Laing and Szasz launched the anti-psychiatry movement , which challenged the claims and practises pf psychiatry.
Foucault believed the concept of mental illness was developed in the 17th and 18th century to “insistutionalise “ unreasonable “ members of society. Once identiﬁed the ‘ mentally ill’ were locked away and subjected to a range of inhuman treatments such as freezing cold showers and straight jackets. Foucault argued that the concepts of sanity and insanity were in fact social constructs.
Laing argued that schizophrenia was best understood in terms of an individuals experience rather than a set if symptoms, and Szasz stated that the medical model is more sophisticated than believing in demonology, and is unhelpful to our understanding of psychiatric conditions. He also believed the concept of mental illness was simply a way of excluding and controlling non-conformists.
The medical model diagnoses mental illness in the same way as physical illness - the doctor identiﬁes the system in the patient and uses the symptoms to identify the disorder.Psychiatrists are held by a set of diagnostic criteria such as DSM (Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual ) which lists all mental illnesses and their symptoms. This is regularly reviewed and disorders are added and removed.
Rosenhan was inﬂuenced by the ideas and stated evidence suggests we cannot tell the normal from the abnormal.The evidence which led him to conclusion this included:

• It is common to read about murder trails where the prosecution and defence each call
•
•

their own psychiatrist who distress and defendants sanity
There is much disagreement about the meanings of terms such as sanity and insanity , mental illness and schizophrenia
Conceptions of normality and abnormality are not universal :what is considered normal in one culture ay by seen as quite aberrant in another
Rosenhan did not state there is no such thing as deviant or odd behaviour . However ; he said there is an important question about whether the diagnosis of insanity is based on

characters of patent, or the context in which patient is seen. Rosenhan suggested the diagnosis of mental illness was ‘useless at best but downright harmful , misleading and pejorative at worst’.
Rosenhan aim was to investigate whether psychiatrist could distinguish between people who are genuinely mentally ill and those who are not.
He argued that he could to this by getting ‘normal’ people to seek to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. If the people were diagnosed as sane , this would show that the sane psychiatric hospital.

If the people were diagnosed as sane, this would show that the sane individual can be distinguished from the insane. However , if the pseudo patients were
Diagnosed as insane , this would suggest that it is the context rather than individual’s characteristics that determines the diagnosis of insanity, i.e., the diagnosis has less to do with the patient and more to do with the insane environment in which they are found.

Procedures of Rosenhan’s sane in insane places study

A group of 8 people attempted to gain admission to 12 different hospitals in 5 different states in the United
States.The hospitals represented a range of different kinds of institutions — modern , old , well staffed and poorly staffed.One was a private hospital
The pseudo patients were 8 sane people 3 women and 5 men from a rage of occupations including (graduate student , psychologist , a paediatric , a psychiatrist , a painter — the eighth being Rosenhan himself)

Gaining admission to hospital
.1) The pseudo patients called the hospital and asked for an appointment . On arrival they told the admissions officer they were hearing voices , which were of the sane sex and whilst slightly unclear seemed to be saying
“ empty” “ Hallow” and “thud’. These symptoms were purposefully chosen as their similarity to existential symptoms ( the alleged meaninglessness go life ) and their absence in the psychiatric literature  
2) Each patient described their life events both good and bad  
3) None of them had any history of pathological behaviour  
4) Apart from falsifying symptoms , name and employment (in some cases) , no further pretences   were made  

Life in hospital
1) Following admission to hospital no further symptoms were ‘ acted out’ and other than some understandable nervousness and tension of being found out , the pseudo patients behaved perfectly normal  
2) 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 become apparent that the staff did not care  
3) The pseudo-patients followed ward routine except they secretly did not take their medication  
The nurses noted that that he patients were friendly , co-operative and exhibited ‘ no abnormal indications ‘ The pseudo patients acted very much as a true psychiatric patient does entering a hospital with no knowledge of a discharge date. Each was told that they would have to get out by their own devices I.e by convincing the staff that they were sane.

Study 2

The results were published , staff in another hospital hadn't received any pseudo patients challenged Rosenhan claiming that it could not happen at their hospital . So Rosenhan informed them that in the next three months the would present themselves with . The staff were asked to rate a point scale their conﬁdence level that the person was genuinely ill ( 1 reﬂected high conﬁdence and that the patient was a pseudo patient, 
Judgements were made obtained on 193 patients admitted for the psychiatric treatment during this time
Study 3
Rosenhan also included a mini study of the way staff responded to pseudo-patients. In four of the hospitals , pseudo patients approached a staff member with the following question ( “ Pardon me Mr/Mrs could you please tell me when i will be eligible for grounds privilege or ...when i will be presented at the staff meeting or when I'm likely to be discharged? )
The pseudo-patients did this as normally as possible and avoided asking any particular person more than once in a day. Rosenhan : Findings and conclusions
1) All pseudo-patients were admitted all were given a diagnosis of schizophrenia except in one case. Each was eventually discharge with a diagnosis of schizophrenia in remission 2) Length of hospitalisation ranged from 7 to 52 days with an average of 19days  
3) Very limited contact between staff and patients.The amount of time the attendants spent out the cage ( the glassed quarter ) Where the professional had their ofﬁces was
11.3% of their total time at work and this time was predominately spent on chores rather than seeing the patients. Nursing emerged from the cage 11.5 times per shift  
4) Average daily contact with the psychiatrist was an average of 6.8minutes per day (based on data from six patients over 129 days of hospitalisation )  
5) Whilst at the hospital the ‘real’ patients regularly voiced their suspicions. 35 out of 118 patients made statement such as ‘ You're not crazy ‘ ‘You're a journalist ‘ and ‘ you're a professor checking up on the hospital ‘  
6) During the research the pseudo patients were given a total of 2100 tablets including
Elavil , Stelazine and Compazine  
7) Nursing records for three pseudo patients indicate that they're writing was seen as an aspect of their pathological behaviour ( Patients engages in writing behaviour )  

Additional Research ﬁnding from Study 2 !!!
1)over the three months 193 patients were admitted for treatment
2) 23 were thought to be a pseudo patient by the psychiatrists
3) 41 were judge to be a pseudo patent by one staff member

4) 19 were judged to be pseudo patients by a psychiatrist and another staff member . In fact
Rosenhan did not send any pseudo patients to that hospital

Additional research ﬁndings from study 3
1. The most common response was a brief reply as the staff member continued to walk by.
No eye contact was made only 4% of psychiatrist stopped to talk
2.In contrast a control women on stand ford university campus approached staff members and asked them 6 questions all staff members stopped ti answer the questions and gave good eye contact

Rosenhan concluded
•

We cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals

•

The hospital environment means that the patient are worse of being there

•

Rosenhan concluded that the failure to detect sanity during the course of hospitalisation my be due to the fact the doctors were showing a strong type 2 error .

•

That is the physicians were more included to call a healthy person sick than a sick person healthy

•

Having once been labelled schizophrenic , there is nothing the pseudo patent could do to overcome the label

•

Once a person is designated abnormal all of his/hers other behaviours are coloured by that label

•

Indeed the label is so powerful that many of the normal behaviours were over looked   completely or profoundly misinterpreted  

Evaluate Methodology of Rosenhan
Rosenhan conducted a naturalistic observation. An advantage of this is that it enabled the pseudo patient to observe real problems within the hospital such as investigating whether psychiatrist could distinguish between people who were genuinely ill and those we were not .
What people say they would do is often different to what they actually do , if he had just asked the psychiatrist ‘would you admit someone who noted just on symptom of schizophrenia ? ‘How long would you keep them hospitalised if they showed no abnormal behaviour and experience on other symptoms?’ It is likely that they would have given different results to the ones actually obtained
A disadvantage of this is that the observers were bias and just observed what they expected to observe.It is unlikely that the observers of Rosenhan’s sample were neutral in their observations ,might be inﬂuenced by observer bias.
One issue of reliability is that Rosenhan had eight different participants conducting the observations . This means there may be differences in what and how they observe and interpret behaviour of the hospital staff and patients.Before conducting the research , the different observers could be ‘standardised ‘ so that they are all trained in looking to observe similar aspects of hospital staff behaviour or practices in the same way One issue of validity in Rosenhan’s study is that admission to a psychiatric hospital is not likely scenario. In real life a psychiatrist would not be presented with a ‘normal’ person trying to get into the hospital. This means that the ﬁndings may not generalise to real life.
The hospitals selected by Rosenhan were in ﬁve different states and included old and new hospitals with a variety of other differences. This increases the data collected because it is not restricted to one source
Slater 2004 reported that she had presented herself at the emergency rooms of multiple hospitals with a single auditory hallucination. She claimed she was given a

prescription for either anti-psychotics or antidepressants. This conﬁrms Rosenhan’s ﬁndings and has external validity.
The participants in the study were the staff , the doctors and nurses . They were based in a variety of hospitals and therefore should be a reasonable representative sample.
The staff at the hospital did not know they were being observed. Therefore were deceived . Completely unaware that their behaviour was being observed. This is particularly contentious ( causing / likely to cause an argument ) as the patients did not have the ability to ‘escape’ or withdraw observations of pseudo patients as they were unaware these ‘patient ‘ were observing their behaviours.
Rosenhan also actively deceived staff in study 2 by telling them that they would be sending pseudo patients when he had no intention of doing so !!!!

Alternative research Rosenhan
Other researchers have attempted to replicate Rosenhan’s research. Including Slater , although it's not a piece of systematic research. Slater had previously been diagnosed with a mental disorder (clinical depression ) She presented herself at nine psychiatric emergency rooms with the auditory hallucination ( hearing ) the word thud.
In almost all cases she claims that she was given a diagnosis and she was prescribed either anti psychotics or anti depressants.Slater concluded that psychiatric diagnosis are largely arbitrary and driven by a ‘zeal to prescribe ’
This supports Rosenhan’s research by showing how diagnostic mistakes can occur , however the research appears to lack reliability. It lacks reliability because it is possible her diagnosis is not inaccurate and also because Slater was the only one participant
Other evidence contradicts research conducted by Rosenhan . Spitzer et al gave 74 emergency room psychiatrist a detailed description , derived from Slaters book and asked them a series of questions regarding diagnosis of treatment recommendations.
They found that only three psychiatrists offered a diagnosis of psychotic depression and only one-third recommended medication . This demonstrates that psychiatrist would not normally diagnose psychotic illness on the basis of Slaters description and underlines the lack of general reliability in her study.
Kety also contradicts research ﬁndings by Rosenhan claiming that if he were to drink a pint of blood and concealed what he had done before vomitting in the emergency room , that they would have labelled him as having a peptic ulcer .
This demonstrates that doctors have to follow up diagnostic process and the fact that all pseudo-patients were diagnosed with the same illness suggest a high level of reliability
Other research develops our understanding of the diagnostic process and suggests that recent versions of the DSM produce more reliable diagnosis . Carson claimed that DSM III had ﬁxed the problems of reliability and developed a greater level of agreement of who did or did not have mental disorder of schizophrenia
However , other evidence suggests that diagnosis can be poor. Whaley found that inter-rater reliability can be as low as 0.11 this shows DSM is used in the same way by all clinicians.

Wjec Py2 as Core Studies

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