AS Psychology (AQA A)
AS Psychology (AQA A) (37)
attachment can be defined as:
"...the strong, affectional tie we feel for special people in our lives that leads us to feel pleasure and joy when we interact with them and to be comforted by their nearness in time of stress" (Berk, 1998).
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Attachment
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Wednesday, 20 August 2008 09:56
Bowlby's Evolutionary Explanation of Attachment
Written by Keiron Walsh
John Bowlby's explanation of attachment was strongly influenced-by the research and theories of ethologists such as Konrad Lorenz who investigated imprinting in geese.
Bowlby reasoned that attachment serves a biological purpose: to keep parents nearby so that infants are protected from danger.
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Attachment
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Sunday, 14 September 2008 11:14
Evaluation of the Learning Theory of Attachment
Written by Keiron Walsh
On the positive side, the learning theory of attachment seems
a plausible explanation of both how babies become attached to their
caregivers and how caregivers bond with their children. It makes
intuitive sense that babies will come to like those who feed them
because they derive pleasure from feeding. Nevertheless, there is
evidence that children develop attachments with people who do not feed
them and that feeding is less important in the development of
attachments than other behaviours.
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Attachment
Sunday, 02 March 2008 10:04
Cases of Extreme Privation: Genie & The Czech Twins
Written by Keiron Walsh
The Case of Genie
Genie was discovered when she was 13 years old. She had been kept in a small room and not spoken to since she was an infant. She could not stand erect and could not speak, she could only whimper. Naturally she attracted the attention of many psychologists and linguists who were keen to study her. She was given the Vineland Social Maturity Scale and the Preschool Attainment Record, on which she scored as low as a normal one year old. Her linguistic abilities were very poor: she could only understand her own name and the word ‘sorry’. She was unsocialised, she did not know how to chew, salivated constantly and was not toilet trained.
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Attachment
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Thursday, 28 August 2008 09:46
The Multistore Model of Memory (Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968)
Written by Keiron Walsh
Atkinson and Shiffrin's Multistore Model of Memory suggests that there are three separate memory stores, Sensory Memory (sometimes called the 'sensory store'), Short Term Memory (STM) and Long Term Memory (LTM). Each store has a different duration, capacity and mode of encoding (the way that information is stored - e.g., visual, acoustic, semantic).
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Memory
Baddely and Hitch believed that the STM store in the Multistore Model was too simplistic: they thought that short term memory was not a passive store, but several active processes that manipulate information.
Sunday, 20 April 2008 18:16
Social Psychology - Theories of Obedience: Milgram’s Agency Theory
Written by Keiron Walsh
Following the results of probably the most famous study in the history of social psychology (The Milgram study), Milgram developed his own theory of why people will obey a malevolent authority.According to Milgram, at any particular time a person is in one of two psychological states:
Autonomous state
In this state individuals make decisions based on their own ideas, beliefs and experiences.
Agentic State
In this state individuals give up their own responsibility, deferring to those of higher status.
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Social Influence
Ethical Issues in Social Influence Research
This article examines the ethical issues that arise when conducting social influence research, as specified by the AQA-A specification. The ethical guidelines do, however, apply to any psychology research conducted by members of the British Psychological Society.
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Social Influence
Tuesday, 08 April 2008 13:17
Obedience to Authority: The Milgram Experiment (inc. Derren Brown Video)
Written by Keiron Walsh
Stanley Milgram (1961) was interested in why millions of Germans blindly obeyed orders that resulted in the mass slaughter of millions of Jews during WWII. One theory at the time was that Germans were different to people of other nationalities in that they were more likely to have a personality type that makes them defer to those of higher authority (the Germanic Personality).
Milgram tested his technique by carrying out a pilot study in the US. He advertised in the newspaper for volunteers to take part in a “study on memory”, for which he would pay them $4.50 for travel to the university, they would be paid no matter what happened when they got there. I.e., even if they refused to take part in the study or wished to withdraw at any point. 37 participants took part (Hence Peter Gabriel's song: "We Do What We're told (Milgram's 37)" see video clip below), from a range of occupations, including postal clerks, school teachers, salesmen, engineers and labourers. They came from the full range of educational backgrounds.
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Social Influence
