Psychology

Group 3 took a rather different approach to their practical, as they wanted to investigate how far we show in-group favouritism. This is explained by Social Identity Theory, which suggests that we take our own sense of identity from the groups we belong to, so in order to boost our own self-esteem, we enhance the characteristics of our own groups, and belittle other groups.

Group 3 therefore decided to investigate whether young people would assume young drivers are more competent than older ones (despite insurance company data, and the high cost of young driver insurance that would suggest otherwise). They showed participants two pictures, one of a young male and one of an older male, then asked the questions:

1) Which one is the better driver?

2) Rate these drivers on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the worst and 10 being best

3) Which driver is most likely to crash?

4) What are your views on older drivers in comparison with younger drivers?

Asking young people only, this group found a consistent bias towards younger drivers, i.e. young people showed in-group favouritism, as would be suggested by Social Identity Theory.

60% of young people thought the young driver would be the better driver, and this was supported by the ratings in Question 2 (mean 5.2 for older drivers; 6.15for younger drivers). 55% thought the older driver was more likely to crash. When asked for their views, young participants 45% made comments favourable to younger drivers, 20% were neutral and 35% were favourable towards older drivers.

This group did not experience any problems in actually running their survey, but there is a problem in terms of the interpretation of the results. They did find a bias towards the younger drivers, but as you read the figures, it has probably occurred to you that the differences are not that big. So could this difference have just occurred by chance, depending on who they asked? To answer this question, we would have to use some statistical tests. Yr 12s will be learning how to do this this term, so for future practicals, they will be able to add this layer of sophistication, and be able to interpret their results more rigorously.

Following on from the previous post, Group 2 investigated the old stereotypes surrounding the wearing of glasses, in that glasses-wearers might be seen as less attractive, but more intelligent. This group compiled a simple questionnaire, presenting two pairs of pictures; one pair was of young women, a second pair of young men. In each case, one of the pair was wearing glasses and the other not. For each pair of pictures, they then asked the questions:-

1) Which of these two people is more intelligent?

2) On a scale of 1-10, how intelligent do you think this person is?

3) Why?

Participant responses overall showed little direct effect of the wearing of glasses.

For the pictures of men, the wearing of glasses made little difference to the assessment of intelligence. Participants were evenly divided in which of the pair was more intelligent, with some referring to other facial features, such as the teeth, to make their assessment.

However, for the pictures of women, contrary to the expectations of the investigators, most participants identified the individual not wearing glasses as more intelligent. Only one participant referred directly to the glasses, but this was negatively, ie, that the glasses implied less intelligent. This participant’s response to question 3 showed that this was because she was wearing the glasses part way down her nose, not because she was wearing glasses per se. Several participants saw this image as being a ‘celebrity’ pose, and flirtatious, and this elicited negative comments about her level of intelligence. The rest of the participants identified other variables, such as ‘looks like a lawyer’ to make their decision.

We can therefore conclude that although these participants were making prejudiced assessments of intelligence based on appearance, the wearing of glasses seemed not to be the determining factor. Although it was not directly the subject of investigation, seeing a female image as a ‘celebrity’ did seem to make an important contribution to assumptions about lack of intelligence.

This group also learned about the problems of Psychology research, but in a different way compared to Group 1 (see previous post). Keeping the questionnaire simple had the distinct advantage that it was easy to run, and to process the responses acquired. There was a problem however, in that the data was a little too simplistic, and participants gave too little information in terms of how they were making their judgements to be able to assess exactly what the determining influences were. The investigators felt participants may not have been consciously aware of what factors were influencing their assessment. The Group had taken time and trouble to match the pairs of photographs as closely as possible, but there were still other differences between them, as well as the wearing of glasses. These might have been confounding variables, which interfered with the influence of glasses-wearing. There may also have been gender influences at work, as all the participants were male, which may have contributed to the overall pattern of assessing the female images in stereotypic ways more than the male images.

Combining the experiences of Groups 1 and 2, this teaching group realised that psychological research is always a compromise. Although we know what we want to investigate, and often have very creative and exciting ideas as to how to investigate it, this has to be both practical and ethically sound. There is generally a pay-off in terms of the practical logistics of doing the research and the quality of the findings. Although the more ambitious design (Group 1) would have yielded high quality results, it became impossible to carry it out; the simpler design (Group 2) was easy to carry out and process, but yielded insufficient data to make full interpretations. This teaching group should now have a good understanding of some of the difficulties and limitations when conducting psychological research.

Social Psychology looks at how far our behaviour is influenced by others around us, either those we are in direct contact with, such as our family and friends, or more generally in the influence of society or culture. As part of their studies into Social Psychology, Yr 12 students have to conduct their own practical, which for this unit is a survey. Our students therefore carried out surveys to investigate the extent of prejudiced or stereotypic views. All of the surveys used an opportunity sample of peers, as available in our 6th Form Centre at the time.

Group 1 decided to investigate how far people make stereotypic associations linked to music genres. They thought that an individual’s taste in music might be highly influenced by the people they socialise with, in that particular types of music are seen as ‘socially desirable’, but this varies from one social group to another. Taste in music might therefore not be a matter of personal ‘liking’, but a reflection of the groups we belong to. This group consisted of  an Asian student, an African student and a White student who were curious about the differing assumptions that might be made about them and their choice of music. The original plan was to play music clips of differing genres and ask participants which of the three researchers would be most likely to listen to the genre played.

In the end, this proved to be a little too ambitious (see later),and there were logistical issues surrounding the three investigators having to be present to run the survey, so to enable the group to carry out the investigation individually,  images of Asian, Black and White males were shown to participants instead. Samples of three different music genres were played (Dubstep, Rap, and Rock), and after each sample, participants were  asked:-

1) Which of these three people is more likely to listen to this music?

2) On a scale of 0 – 10, how much does individual No 1 (black)  like this track?

3) Describe the type of person who listens to this type of music  (eg, what do they wear, what is their behaviour like?)

This group found some strong stereotypic linkages. Dubstep was seem as favoured by the white person, whereas Rap was associated with the black person, and the black/rap linkage was the strongest, producing higher scores for question 2.  For qn 3, both Dubstep and Rap produced negative comment, in that listeners would be angry, urban and wear baggy clothes, whereas Rock was linked to ‘depressing’ behaviour (?), and seen as American. The Asian person was not strongly linked to any of these genres.

This group therefore concluded that music genres do elict stereotypic associations, and that these are strongly linked to differing ethnic groups.

This group learned a lot about the practical problems of conducting Psychology research. Although they had a sound idea of what they wanted to investigate, and how to do it, their original conception proved to be too demanding in the limited time available, requiring all 3 of them to be present, and involving a questionnaire that they estimated would take about 30 mins to complete. The actual survey conducted was therefore something of a compromise,but this is important learning. It is all too easy to look at studies in a textbook and be critical, seeing the limitations of what was done, and saying things like ”That’s obvious, why didn’t they. . . . ?”  Hopefully this group will have a better understanding of the practicalities, and appreciate that there may be many answers to that question.

After a long absence, The Psychology Department has made a New Year’s resolution to update this blog rather more frequently, so this post is a bit of a quick ’round-up’ of what we have been up to this year, with more detailed postings to follow.

We currently have 11 Yr 13 students and 16 Yr 12 students studying Psychology.

The Yr 12 students have now had a term of Psychology, and are gradually getting to grips with what the subject is about. Given that this is a completely new subject for these students, this always takes a bit of time, so we are pleased that most of them are settling into their studies. In the Autumn term, they have studied Cognitive Psychology, taking the workings of memory as an example of this approach. We hope that some of what they have learnt will be have useful application when they are revising for their external exams! They have also studied Social Psychology, focusing on how Obedience and Prejudice comes about. They should have been taking an interest in the Stephen Lawrence case as a topical issue to illustrate this approach.

Yr 12 students do not do an exam in January for Psychology, so they are now just beginning work for Unit 2, studying Learning, Psychodynamics and Biological Approaches. The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures were a timely and great introduction to what students study in their AS course; Lecture 1 was about the brain as an entity, and Lecture 2 focused on memory, so any prospective students considering studying Psychology will get a reasonable idea of what we look at by watching these lectures, which are now available online.

Meanwhile, Yr 13 students are about to take external exams, particularly Unit 3. Unit 3 looks at how we might apply our psychological knowledge to inform us about real-world problems. The summer of 2011 saw rioting in the UK, and a massacre commited by a lone individual in Norway, and we have taken these events as our key triggers for studying Criminological Psychology, looking at the causes of crime, and hence to the possible effectiveness of interventions other than prison.

The second part of the term shifted the focus to Health Psychology. Health Psychology aims to apply psychological theory to the promotion of more healthy behaviours in all of us, by understanding why people indulge in unhealthy behaviours, and hence in understanding how best to encourage and support the more desireable healthy behaviours. The most usual strategy society uses to reduce unhealthy behaviours is to ban them, so we have considered how far this is effective, and why we are so resistant to such intervention. We have looked at the effects of the UK Smoking Ban 2007 to assess this.

As well as their studies in the classroom, the Autumn Term saw our Psychology students ‘on tour’, attending a couple of day conferences. In October the Yr 13s attended an anti-stigma workshop organised by the Nottingham Mental Health Trust to mark Mental Health Day. In November, all of our students attended a conference on “Science and Pseudoscience”. Both these conferences will contribute to understanding for Yr13 approaching Unit 4 in the summer, as we turn our attention to Clinical Psychology and Issues and Debates in Psychology.

A busy time ahead for all!

The BPS Research Digest Blog has a great post on a recent partial replication of Milgram’s study, with a new interpretation of what was going on in the original study – click here  to read it for yourselves – You should add the findings to your notes to evaluate Milgram.