Issues and debate - AS • Application of psychology to ever yday life • Individual and situational explanations • Nature versus nur ture • The use of children in psychological research • The use of animals in psychological research Application of psychology to ever yday life • the contribution that psychology makes to human welfare. • “how useful is this study?” • real-life applications & improvements 1. advice on the best way to raise and educate children 2. promote health 3. diagnose and treat mental illnesses. 4. …. Useful psychological research can… • benefit to society -- improve the world in which we live, e.g. in understanding crime, mental illness and how students can learn more effectively. • helps us to understand social behaviour, our interactions with others, obedience, etc. • enhances the value and status of psychology as a subject if research is useful to many people Individual and situational explanations • the cause of a behaviour as being due to … • something in that person (individual or dispositional ) • Or as a response to the situation that they are in ( situational ). Examples • Milgram study • Many participants continued to 450 volts because of the situation they w ere in. It w as too pow erful for them to ignore, so they obeyed. • How ever, some participants stopped before 450 volts because their individuality allow ed them to refuse to obey the demands of the authority figure and the situation they w ere in. Example • Piliavin • The situation par ticipants were in, a face -to-face event, led them to help the drunk/ill victim. • However, the model of response to emergency situations suggests that people individually weigh up the costs and benefits before deciding whether to help or not. Nature versus nur ture • whether par ticular behaviours are innate (inborn or genetically determined) – nature, or whether they are acquired through experience and the influence of the environment – nur ture. Example • Bandura et al. • all behaviour is learned (i.e. nur ture). • Bandura proposed social learning theor y to explain how children learn from adults. • The learning environment is crucial for the child. If there is aggression in an environment, a child will obser ve and copy it, whereas if there is no aggression, a child cannot see it and so cannot imitate it. Example • Pepperberg • Alex, an African grey parrot, was clearly able to distinguish between ‘same’ and ‘different’ af ter obser ving a human model. • Which side? -- nur ture side of this debate. Discussion • Nurture can be linked to the learning approach, and both nature and nurture link to reductionism , why? 1. It is too simplistic to divide explanations into either nature or nurture, as the t wo o f t e n c o m b i n e i n c o m p l e x wa ys t o i n f l u e n c e b e h a v i o u r. 2. Discovering that a particular behaviour or capacity (e.g. intelligence) is inherited might lead to the assumption that much more behaviour is inherited, wh i l e f a i l i n g t o c o n s i d e r t h e e ff e c t s o f t h e e n v i r o n m e n t . The use of children in psychological research • to what extent can we generalise from children to adults ? • whether they understand the instructions ? • whether the researcher understands what the child really means by an answer, rather than making an assumption ? • ethical problems -- a child under 16 years can never give full informed consent Examples • Bandura et al. • studied how behaviour is learned (using aggression as an example). • The children were aged between 37 and 69 months. • Consent was given by the classroom teacher (who obser ved the children). Example • Saavedra and Silverman • studied a 9-year-old boy with a button phobia. • Consent was given by the mother of the boy and she par ticipated in some of his treatment sessions. Advantages • It is impor tant to study children because they represent the most impor tant and formative period of human development. What happens in early life can determine many things in adult life. • By understanding children’s thoughts and behaviour, it might help us to understand adults’ thoughts and behaviour. • In some ways, children are better par ticipants than adults as they are naive and can be more open and truthful. Disadvantages when studying children • Children might not understand the task or the complex language of an experimenter. • An experimenter might misinterpret what a child says or how the child behaves. • Children under 16 years cannot give informed consent and, if debriefed, they might be too young to understand. Children might be more prone to harm or longer-term effects. • Children might be more prone to demand characteristics – i.e. wanting to please the researcher. The use of animals in psychological research • Animal research can give us insight into human behaviour, such as animal navigation systems. -- Why? Animals are similar to human, eg. brain structure • But … • what we know about animals may not be generalised to humans. • We can only obser ve the way animals behave. We cannot ask about reasons for behaviour or about feelings. Section A - 1 • Nature means a behaviour that we are born with/genetic/hard - wired (1 mark). • For example, a person may be born with genetics that cause them to develop schizophrenia (1 mark) • Nurture means a behaviour that has been learned by an organism after birth (1 mark); • For example, in the Pepperberg study, Alex the parrot learned the concept of Same/Different (1 mark); Section A - 2 • Cultural bias is the belief that the findings of research conducted in one culture can automatically mean that those findings will apply to another culture. • It may be because of The sample in a study may be ver y small or representative of just one culture, and so the findings cannot be generalised to all countries/cultures. • For example, the DSM-5 is a standard established based on western culture and in English. It may not be applied to eastern society. Question 6 (a) • Keyword: • Finlay, Kranes, “playground design” & “leisure environments” • Which studies are included in the study of “leisure environments”? • Finlay – comparison • Kranes – playground model • Friedman – effective casino design (a) • High ceilings, spacious layout, the inclusion of elements of nature (vegetation, water, sky design). Describe the pleasure -arousal model and the cognition emotion model of the effects of ambience. • Pleasure-arousal model - PAD model • P=? • A=? • D=? • Cognition-emotion model? (b) • Pleasure-arousal = T his is anything in the environment that improves the mood of the consumer (makes them feel pleasure) and therefore the consumer will wish to stay (approach) and look further at the product. T his could include music, smell, etc. • Cognition-emot ion = Cognitions can produce emotions in the consumer. T he environment of the store, for example, could lead the consumer to feel lost and therefore angry. T his might then lead them to leave the store (avoidance) . Alternatively, finding a product on a special offer could lead the consumer to feel happy and therefore would purchase a number of items of that product. (c) Explain two weaknesses of one of these models of the effects of ambience. • Likely weaknesses will be: 1 . M e t h o d o l o g i c a l I s s u e s wi t h t h e r e s e a r c h t h a t s u p p o r t s t h e m o d e l s ( e . g . g e n e r a l i s a b i l i t y, s e l f - r e p o r t d a t a ) 2. Application - Cost of introducing features to the shop could be high. 3. Or issues and debates (individual explaination, Reductionism, Determinism ) Application • When it comes to apply the “cognition-emotion model”in the real life, cost of introducing features to the shop could be high . Factors that can lead to customer ’s positive appraisal and then create an emotion can be different, which can be very challenging for the store to find an appropriate factor to apply. For example … Individual explaination • The weakness of cognition-emotion model is that it may ignore the individual difference of customers. • Customers may differ in their perceptions of what factors are good/positive • They may have different cognitive explanation even though they are in the same ambience. Their emotions based on their cognitive explanation can also be different and then lead to different approach/avoidance behavior • For example,… 7 (a) • Describe what psychologists have discovered about retail/leisure environment design. • Which studies are included in the study of “retail/ leisure environments”? • Turley and Milliman (2000) on retail store architecture • the study by Finlay et al. (2006) into leisure environments • the study by Vrechopoulos (2004) on store interior layout. Turley and Milliman • Reviewed 60 studies about atmospheric effects on buyer/shopper behaviour • Found it is possible to create atmospheres which influence consumer spending. Variables included – human, point of purchase and decoration, external variables, internal variables and layout and design variables. Finlay et al. • Two casino designs were investigated: • the Krane’s playground model • the Friedman model • Measures of emotional reactions to the casinos were collected from 48 participants who had gambled in all six casinos. T he Kranes-type casinos had significantly higher ratings that the Friedman -type casinos on pleasure and restoration. • T his research examined the influence of the physical design of gambling venues on emotion. • Two competing casino designs were identified. • According to Kranes’s playground model, casinos should include environmental elements designed to induce pleasure, legibilit y, and restoration. • In contrast, Friedman proposed a set of design principles focusing on the machines as the dominant feature of the décor. T hree exemplars of each design were identified. Measures of emotional reactions to the casinos were collected from 22 people who had gambled in all six casinos. Kranestype casinos yielded significantly higher ratings than did Friedman -type casinos on pleasure and restoration (relief from environmental stress). Vrechopoulos • Aim was to investigate different layouts in virtual reality stores to investigate which virtual layouts would have the most positive effects on consumers. • T he paper reports on an experimental investigation into the use of three different layouts in online grocery retailing: freeform, grid, and racetrack. • 120 participants in Greece and the UK participated in a laboratory experiment: they were given a planned shopping task with money to spend, and performed their shopping through a virtual store with layout as the manipulated variable. • The results show that layout significantly affects online consumer behaviour: •F r e e - f o r m wa s e a s i e s t t o f i n d i t e m s f r o m l i s t a n d m o s t e n t e r t a i n i n g t o u s e •G r i d wa s t h e e a s i e s t t o u s e •R a c e t r a c k a n d f r e e f o r m e n g a g e d t h e c o n s u m e r f o r t h e l o n g e s t 8. G u é g u e n e t a l . ( 2 0 0 7 ) c o n d u c t e d a f i e l d e x p e r i m e n t to test whether playing music in the background, the independent variable, had any effect on the shopping behaviour of their customers. They gathered quantitative data in three ways. (a) Explain w hat is meant by a ‘dependent variable’. • the DV is what is measured (1 mark) • the DV is what is expected to change (1 mark) if the IV is manipulated • (2 marks) • the DV is the effect (1 mark) and the IV is the cause (2 marks) Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using field experiments to investigate the effect of background music o n c o n s u m e r b e h a v i o u r. Yo u s h o u l d i n c l u d e a c o n c l u s i o n i n y o u r a n s w e r. Advantages • a field experiment has an IV, DV and controls • often participants do not know they are taking part in a study and so behave more naturally • most consumer behaviour (e.g. shopping) takes place in the real world and so studies should be conducted in the real world (rather than in a laboratory). Disadvantages • a field experiment may have variables that are more difficult to control than a laborator y experiment; • of ten par ticipants do not know they have taken par t in a study at all (in this study consent given at the end). • It may be reductionist to isolate variables to study (i.e. the IV) when many other variables that are controlled may contribute to consumer behaviour as a whole.
