Animal experimentation is contentious. Some argue they’re valuable and worthwhile, while others question their validity and ethicality. The fundamental issue with animal research is that animals cannot provide informed consent and most animals are euthanised at the end of the experiment. But what if researchers could use brain scanners on live rats so they didn’t have to kill them? That’s …
Key Theory & Studies: The empathy-altruism hypothesis (Batson et al. 1981 & 1982)An explanation of prosocial behaviour
Why do people help others? It’s a simple question but it intrigues psychologists because it doesn’t make sense evolutionarily speaking. In this post we look at one simple explanation: empathy. Why do we humans help one another when there’s nothing to be gained for ourselves? This seems to contradict what we know about evolutionary psychology – that we instinctively look …
Key study: Working memory and a dual task study on chess (Robbins et al. 1996)
Looking for a study that supports the working memory model? Here’s a good one. Working memory is the stuff we’re thinking about right now. The working memory model (WMM) was an elaboration of the multi-store model of memory (MSM) as it zooms in on the short-term store and explains how our short-term (working) memory actually works. If you can comprehend …
Key Study: Schemas and Story Interpretations (Anderson et al., 1976)
“No two people read the same novel or watch the same movie.” This is one of my favourite sayings as an English teacher. It conveys the simple fact that our interpretations of stories are based on our personalities, our experiences, our biases, our schemas. While this might be common knowledge now, in the 1970s it was being slowly revealed through …
Key Study: The Office Schema Study (Brewer and Treyens, 1981)
Our life’s memories are filed away in our long-term memory and our mind categories these into clusters, which we call schema. These schema then affect how we process new information and remember old information. At least, these are the claims of schema theory. In this post we’ll look at how these claims are supported by a classic study. Because of …
Key study: Subjective social status and stress in teenagers (Rahal et al. 2019)
Social status is an important predictor of numerous mental and physical health problems. Generally speaking, the lower your social status, the more at risk you are for developing health problems, like chronic stress and heart disease. While socioeconomic status has been extensively researched, more modern studies are focusing on subjective social status. This is particularly relevant for understanding stress in teenagers. …
Key Study: Stress beliefs and health problems (Fischer et al., 2016)
The following information is adapted from our eBook: IB Health Psychology – A Revision Guide. Why do people develop physical health problems? One answer could be based on stress beliefs – if you think stress is bad you might be more likely to have health problems. This was one finding from the following study. Stress is correlated with a number …
Key Study: Cognitive appraisals and the stress response (Lazarus, 1963)
The most influential cognitive explanation of stress is based on “cognitive appraisals” – how we assess the relevance and potential harm of a stressor. The following study is one of many that supports this explanation. Stress is a complex phenomenon that involves biological, psychological and environmental factors. Richard Lazarus was a pre-eminent psychologist in the field of stress research. Along …
Key Study: Social status and stress in Olive Baboons (Sapolsky, 1990)
An interesting finding in the field of stress and health psychology is that people with higher social status are generally in better health: they have lower rates of heart disease, are less obese and live longer. Why? One reason could be because they are less stressed. A lot of our knowledge about stress and health comes from animal studies, particularly those …
Key Study: Schema Theory & the Superwoman Self-schema
Schema theory is one of the most important theories in cognitive psychology, but it can also be one of the more difficult theories to understand. The best way, I’ve found, to understand schema theory is to look at as many real-life examples as possible. In this post, we’ll look at a fascinating example – the AfricanAmerican Superwoman self-schema. A schema …
Power Distance and Plane Crashes: The Gladwell Hypothesis
I recently read Malcolm Gladwell’s excellent book “Outliers.” In this book, Gladwell gives an interesting psychological explanation for why some countries have higher rates of plane crashes than others. The “Gladwell Hypothesis,” as it has come to be known, suggests that plane crashes can be explained by looking at cultural values. In particular, the cultural dimension of “power distance.” Power …
Key Study: Gandhi and the Anchoring Effect Strack & Mussweiler, 1997
Are we always in control of our thoughts, or can they be influenced by invisible forces? The art of persuasion and subtle manipulation is a fascinating field of study in psychology. In this post, we’ll look at how people can manipulate our cognitive biases to influence our decision-making. One of the more interesting cognitive biases is the “anchoring effect.” The anchoring …
Key Study: The Marshmallow Test Across Cultures: German vs. Cameroon Kids (Lamm et al. 2018)An example of how enculturation can influence behaviour.
“The Marshmallow Test” was designed by Stanford Psychologist Walter Mischel in the 1960s. It’s a test of a kid’s ability to delay gratification – to wait for something they really want. The ability to delay gratification has been correlated with a number of successful outcomes, including doing better at school, getting higher SATs and being less likely to end up …
Key Study: “The Sweaty T-shirt Study” (Wedekind et al. 1995)
Updated June, 2020 Can we smell someone’s genes? Not their trousers, but their genetics. The Swiss Biological Researcher Claus Wedekind and his colleagues conducted a famous study to see if our preference for smells is linked with our genetics. In other words, they wanted to see if we prefer the smell of someone who has genes that would be a …
Key Study: Childhood stress and its effects on serotonin (an animal experiment), (Gardner et al. 2009)
This animal experiment by Gardner et al. (2009) could explain links between stress early in life when we’re kids and our behaviour as adults. The use of rats in this study allows the researchers to manipulate and measure IVs and DVs in ways that would be impossible in human subjects. The study provides possible explanations for why early life stress …
Key Study: Evolution of Gender Differences in Sexual Behaviour (Clark and Hatfield, 1989)
If a man sleeps with lots of women he’s a “stud” but if a woman does it she’s a “slut.” By why does this societal double-standard exist and are men really more promiscuous than women? Clark and Hatfield’s classic study might be able to give us some answers to these questions. Background Information The perception exists in society that men …
Key Study: Leading questions and the misinformation effect – ” the car crash study” (Loftus and Palmer, 1974)
Memory is a reconstructive process, which means memories are actively and consciously rebuilt when we are trying to remember certain things. Elizabeth Loftus, her colleagues and others studying this cognitive phenomenon have shown that during the reconstruction phase our memories can be distorted if we are given false information about the event – this is called the misinformation effect. Background Information …
Key Studies: “Weapon focus” and its effects on eye-witness memories (Loftus, 1987)
From decades of research we know that memory is not a passive cognitive process, but it is an active reconstructive one. As Elizabeth Loftus says, memory is not like a tape recorder that records things accurately and plays it back for us, but it’s more like a wikipedia page that anyone can go in and change. Loftus should know as …
Key Study: The Minnesota Twin Study of Twins Reared Apart
Understanding how and why twin studies are used is an important topic in biological psychology because they can give us important insights into the extent to which our behaviour is nature (genetics) or nurture. Context Is our behaviour a product of nature or nurture? In other words, are we born the way we are, or have we become this way …
Key Study: London Taxi Drivers vs. Bus Drivers (Maguire, 2006)
Understanding how the brain can grow and change as a result of our environment and experiences is an exciting and important new field in psychology. Maguire’s study on this topic is already a classic. Context One of the most fascinating (relatively) recent discoveries is the idea of neuroplasticity: the brain’s amazing ability to grow and change as a result of different experiences. …
Key Study: Clinical bias and the effects of labelling on diagnosis (Temerlin, 1968)
Clinical bias can affect the validity and reliability of diagnosis and one thing that can cause clinical bias is when a patient is labelled with having a particular disorder. Labelling theory usually refers to how a label can affect the individual being labelled, but it is also used to explain how others can treat someone based on their label. Effects …
Key Study: HM’s case study (Milner and Scoville, 1957)
HM’s case study is one of the most famous and important case studies in psychology, especially in cognitive psychology. It was the source of groundbreaking new knowledge on the role of the hippocampus in memory. Background Info “Localization of function in the brain” means that different parts of the brain have different functions. Researchers have discovered this from over 100 …
Computer games and the brain: A summary with two key studies
In this post we look at the positive effects of playing computer games by looking at how it might affect the brain, both in young and old people. We know from many MRI studies that our brain changes as a result of experience – this is called neuroplasticity. Therefore, it’s not unrealistic to think that hours spent playing video games …
The negative effects of digital technology on cognition #2 (with key studies): TV, attention and working memory
Technology’s Negative Effects on Memory Numerous studies have investigated the effects of watching television on working memory and executive functions because kids in developed countries tend to watch a lot of television. Watching TV for long periods of time might be harmful for cognition because it doesn’t require us to use our working memory, unlike other activities like reading, doing …
Technology and Memory: The negative effects of digital technology on memory #1 (and key studies)
The following has been adapted from our exam revision book: IB Psychology: A Revision Guide (available here). This is relevant for the working memory model and also for the HL extension: the (negative) effects of technology on cognitive processes and the reliability of cognitive processes. In this post we look at the negative effects of computer games and other technology …
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