Whether it’s for an extended essay, a test or an exam, writing about psychological studies can be a challenging task. This post is designed to help you focus your attention and efforts so you can write the best explanations possible. We’ll begin by breaking down the studies and then look at some examples. The Short Answer 100-200 words Focus on …
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Conformity Across Cultures (Berry, 1967)
Conformity is one of the most popular topics in psychology. Not surprisingly, it’s also one of the most studied. The origins of conformity studies go back to Solomon Asch’s famous “line length” experiments. Almost as old is Berry’s now classic study that asked the question: why do different cultures have different rates of conformity? Conformity is the act of behaving …
How to evaluate any study in 3 simple steps
Being able to critically evaluate a study is a key skill for any budding psychologist. However, like anything, when you’re first learning how to do this it can be very difficult. In this post, we look at 3 simple steps you can take to evaluate any study. Read More 7 exam tips for evaluating studies So you want to assess …
Cell phones at the dinner table – a qualitative observation (Radesky et al.)
Mobile phones are everywhere and they are consuming more and more of our time. Could this be having an effect on family life? The researchers who conducted this study wanted to investigate how cell phones might influence the interactions of parents and children. The researchers used a nonparticipant, covert observational method by watching a total of 55 caregivers eating with …
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 …
Lesson Idea: Understanding generalizability and population validity
If you want to write excellent evaluations of psychological studies then generalizability is a really important term to know. It’s also called external validity and it refers to the extent to which we could expect the same results in a different context (i.e. do the results apply beyond the study, external to the study?). In this post we’ll focus on population validity (read more …
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 …
Key Study: Bandura’s Bobo Doll (1963)
Introduction In one of his earlier research studies (1961), Bandura showed that children exposed to an aggressive model would later copy those same aggressive behaviours, even if the child was in a different setting. This supports the idea that behavior can be learned through observation, which is the major claim of Social Learning Theory (SLT). TV and films have become …
Key Studies: Reconstructive memory
False Memories and the Misinformation Effect Background Information Elizabeth Loftus is a prominent memory researcher whose work has had significant impacts on the legal system in the United States. She is often called on to testify in legal cases against eye-witness testimony. In the past, if an eyewitness claimed that they saw someone commit a crime they would almost definitely …
Schema Theory: A Summary
Updated, July 2020 Schema theory is perhaps the most difficult theory in psychology to comprehend. But once you understand it, you’ll see the effects of schema everywhere. In this post, we’ll break down the theory step-by-step. What is schema theory? Schema theory’s central claim is that our knowledge of the world is organized and categorized, which can influence our cognition …
Flashbulb Memory Theory (Brown and Kulik, 1977)
Flashbulb memories are “memories for the circumstances in which one first learned of a very surprising and consequential (or emotionally arousing) event.” (Brown and Kulik, 1977). For example, remembering where you were when you found out you got accepted into your dream college, that a loved one had passed away or a public news event like the death of a …
T.E.A.C.U.P…and why I don’t use it.
Yesterday I posted about how to evaluate psychological theories in three simple steps. I mentioned John Crane’s popular acronym T.E.A.C.U.P, which stands for: testable, evidence, applications, construct validity, unbiased and predictive validity. (It can be found on John’s website, too). This is an alternative to my “Let’s make a DEAL” framework for evaluating theories. You can see that my DEAL framework …
Let’s make a D.E.A.L – evaluating theories in three simple steps
I teach my students to look for three things when evaluating theories: Evidence Applications Limitations Let’s make a D.E.A.L Most students are capable of independently explaining these three things. When teaching essay writing on theories I teach students to use my own “Let’s make a D.E.A.L” strategy and not TEACUP. D.E.A.L Describe the theory Explain the Evidence Applications of the theory …
Social Identity Theory: A Brief Summary for Students
On the surface, Tajfel and Turner’s social identity theory can seem complex as there are multiple parts and some of the ideas are really abstract. In our themantic approach we try to break it down, lesson-by-lesson so each of the major concepts of social identity theory are introduced gradually. Remember that one of the first questions you should ask when trying to understand …
Tajfel and Turner’s Social Identity Theory
Why does my blog have three different posts explaining social identity theory? Because for the first few years teaching this theory I had to write it out for myself to fully comprehend it. It’s difficult to understand at first. My best advice is to always remember that its’ a theory of intergroup conflict (e.g. prejudice and discrimination), so think of real …