Importance of Situational Factors

Milgram's studies of obedience to authority (1974)

• Aim: The aim of this study was to observe how far would people go in obeying instructions if it involved other people to get hurt. He got the idea after Eichman's defense(WWII) that he was simply following instructions when he ordered the deaths of millions of Jews aroused Milgram’s interest.  "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"(S.Milgram,Obedience to Authority,1974)
• Participants
• Who were they? They were males between the age of 20 and 50, whose professions ranged from unskilled to professionals.
• How many were there? There were 40 men.
• How were they selected? They recruited them using newspaper ads, however the add said it was a study of memory.

• Procedure There were three roles; the Experimenter, the Teacher and the Learner. The Experimenter was portrayed by Milgram, the Learner was an actor Mr. Wallace and the Teacher was the participant, however the participant had no idea that the learner was an actor and that it was all staged. The learner was put into a different room and electrodes were put on him. The teacher who is in another room is told to administer a shock if the learner says a wrong answer. The range of the "shocks" was from 15 to 450Volt. The learner did not actually receive any shock, but the teacher had no idea. After the levels were increased the learner started to bang on the door asking them to stop. Most participants asked the experimenter if the should continue, his response was : 1.Please continue, 2.The experiment requires that you continue, 3.It is absolutely essential that you continue, 4.You have no other choice, you must go on. If the learner still wished to stop after these four prods, the experiment was halted. If not the experiment was halted after the learner had received 450Volt shock three times in succession.
  
• Results  The levels of shock that the teacher was willing to deliver was used as a measure of obedience. About 65% of participants continued to the highest voltage. All the participants continued to 300Volts. Milgram did more experiments of this sort, he only altered the situations to see how this effects the obedience.
• Conclusion Ordinary people are more likely to follow orders given to them by an authority. Even if it means killing a human being. Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up.
• Limitations It lacks Ecological Validity, and also it broke several ethical principles.
• Strenghts It had a high level of control due to it being conducted in a laboratory, also it shows high experimental realism.

Asch's studies of conformity (1956)

• Aim The aim of this study was to investigate the extend to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform.
• Participants
• Who were they? They were male students from Swarthmore College in the USA
• How many were there? They were 123.
• How were they selected?  I believe that they used a newspaper add, but i cant say for sure.

• Procedure Ash put a participant in a room with four to six confederates (actors). They agreed on their responses before the experiment. Participants were shown a card with line on it, followed by a card with three lines labelled A, B and C. They were asked to say aloud the letter that matched the line on the previous card. The group was seated that way that the "real" participant was the last one to respond. For the first two trials the confederates answer the correct answer, however there were 19 trials in total and the participant gave wrong answers to 12 of them. Asch wanted to see if the real participant would change his answer to satisfy the majority, despite being  it the wrong answer. After the experiment was completed, the real participant was individually interviewed, the participant was explained the real purpose if this experiment. His experiment had also a control condition where there were no confederated, only the real participant. That meant the he answered all 19 trials by himself  without the influence of the group.
• Results  Nearly 75% of the participants went along with the rest of the group at least once. After combining the trails, the results showed that the participants confronted the incorrect group answer approximately 1/3 of the time. 25% of participants never comforted the group.
• Conclusion When they were individually interviewed after the experiment, most of them said that they did no longer believe their own answers. That they had gone along with the group, because of the fear to be ridiculed or thought peculiar. Few of them also said that they really believed that the groups answers were correct. This experiment showed that people conform for two main reasons: because they want to fir in with the group and because they believe the group is better informed than they are.
• Limitations Its low in ecological validity, the participants were only males
• Strenghts  Provided important insight into how, why and when people conform and the effect of social pressure on behavior.

Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment (1971)

• Aim The aim of this study was to investigate how people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that simulated prison life. Zimbardo wanted to find out whether the brutality reported among guards in the prisons was due to sadistic personalities of the guards or had more to do with the prison environment.
• The researchers set up a mock prison in the basement of Standford University's psychology building, and then selected 24 undergraduate students to play the roles of both prisoners and guards. The participants were selected from a larger group of 70 volunteers because they had no criminal background, lacked psychological issues and had no major medical conditions. The volunteers agreed to participate for a one- to two-week period in exchange for $15 a day.
• Participants
• Who were they? Male undergraduates.
• How many were there? 24.
• How were they selected? They were selected out of 70 volunteers, because they had no criminal records and lacked psychological issues, also they gad no major medical condition. They agreed to be part of this experiment for one to two weeks and got paid 15dollars a day.

• Procedure For this experiment there was stimulated a prison in the psychology building at Standford, which included three six by nine foot prison cells. Each cell held three prisoners. Other rooms that were across from the cells were utilized for the prison guards and warden. The 24 volunteers were randomly assigned the roles of guards and prisoners. Prisoners were to remain in the stimulated prison for 24hours a day for the duration of the study. Guards were assigned to work in three-man teams for 8-hours shifts. After every shift they were able to return home. Researchers were able to observe the behavior of the prisoners and guards using hidden cameras and microphones in the utility. The "prisoners" were arrested in their homes, this study wanted to be as real as possible. The guards wore khaki uniform, whistles, handcuffs and dark glasses. No physical violence was permitted. The prisoners were treated like any other criminal.
• Here they were treated like every other criminal.  They were fingerprinted, photographed and ‘booked’.  Then they were blindfolded and driven to the psychology department of Stanford University, where Zimbardo had had the basement set out as a prison, with barred doors and windows, bare walls and small cells.  Here the individualization process began.
• Results This experiment resulted in such dimensions that had to end a week earlier. The prisoners began to show extreme stress and anxiety, the guards were becoming abusive towards them. Five of the prisoners began to experience severe problems and had to be released from the study early. This abusive behavior was overlook by Zimbardo, who acted as the prison warden. After it was pointed out to him by his student about the conditions in the stimulated prison and the morality of continuing the experiment. "Only a few people were able to resist the situational temptations to yield to power and dominance while maintaining some semblance of morality and decency; obviously I was not among that noble class," Zimbardo later wrote in his book The Lucifer Effect
• Conclusion  When a person is placed in a position of power, they began to abuse the power and aggressive towards the people with no power at all. The prisoners, who had no power over anything became depressed and passive.
• Limitations
• Strenghts 

Biology and Technology

CT

• How does it work? 
• A computed tomography (CT) scan is an imaging method that uses x-rays to create pictures of cross-sections of the body.
• What is able to be learned through the use of this technology?
• A CT scan creates detailed pictures of the body, including the brain, chest, spine, and abdomen.
• The results may be used to : Diagnose an infection, guide a surgeon to the right area during a biopsy, identify masses and tumors, including cancer, and also to study blood vessels

• How can it be used to explain human behavior? 
• May help by determining if a person has stroke or by determining if a person has hydrocephalus, it helps to explain their unusual behavior in response to inner factors

PET

• How does it work?

• A lung positron emission tomography (PET) scan is an imaging test that uses a radioactive substance (called a tracer) to look for disease in the lungs, particularly lung cancer.
• PET scan shows how well the lungs and their tissues are working. not like CT that shows the structure of the lungs.
• What is able to be learned through the use of this technology?
• The results of the tests may be used to: help diagnose lung cancer, see the spread of the cancer to the other areas of the body, determine if the growth in the lungs is cancerous or not, and also to determine how well cancer treatment is working.
• How can it be used to explain human behavior?
• Helps to diagnose brain damage, dementia or tell the difference between Parkinson's or other movement disease.
• PET may show the spiral way of how the brain cells die, which is symptom of Alzheimer's disease
  

FMRI

• How does it work?
• It easures the amount of oxygen in blood, the neural activity in brain requires oxygen.
• Uses strong electromagnet to see which part of brain is working based on how much oxygen is being used. This procedure is  held in a tube machine in which the patient lays motionlessly.
• What is able to be learned through the use of this technology?
•  Functional magnetic resonance imaging, measures brain activity by monitoring changes in blood
• It shows which part of the brain is functional 
• How can it be used to explain human behavior? 
• Scientists can determine what is a person thinking. They show them a picture and observe what regions are active and later on can determine by seeing this similiar reaction by other person. 
• People had very similar results for the same objects.

Genetics and Twins

Twin Studies
This studies and observations are based on genetic information of twins. These studies are mainly used to determine the impact of the environment and genetics on humans.

Adoption Studies
This studies observe the nature versus nurture impact on the development. It is focused on children with disorder. Its adoptive parents,however dont have such a disorter, only their biological parent does. So that we can observe how the disorder develops and whether it is caused and impacted only by gengetics or also the enviroment.
  
(MISTRA) Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart
The MISTRA is considered one of the most important studies done in the field of psychology in the last 50 years. It began in 1979, at that time it was widely believed that intelligence and personality were molded by the environment. It ended 20 years later and proved that who we are is in a huge aspect determined by the genes. There are two types of twins; the monozygotic (MZA) when an egg splits into two in the womb and the twins have the same genes and dizygotic (DZA), when two eggs are fertilized and the twins have about 50% same DNA.
In this study they observed 81 pairs of MZA and 56 pairs of DZA twins, the DZA twins were used as controls so that they could rule out the environment as a reason why are the MZA twins similiar. They used twins who were apart from majority of their lives, separeted before the age of four. Many of these twins lived in different countries. Most of the twins were separeted because they were illegitimate. In many cases they didnt even know that they had a twin. Some of them started to look for their birth parents and found out they had a twin, or they learned of each other because of mistaken identity(this happened mostly with MZA twins).
The study says that intelligence levels of MZ twins are very similar and that testing them is like  "testing the same person twice".
The first twins that were examined met at the age of 39 and were males. They both worked in the same departments, in law entforcment and later on as firefighters. And also both of them loved mathin school and hated spelling, they even shared favorite vacation spot. As they studies more MZA twins they found out even though they were not aware of the existence of each other, they are similiar in everyway, even naming their kids. The MZA twins even arrange their hands and legs in the same way, the DZA do not.
This study shows that personality is about 50% inherited in genes and the environment that the person makes for himselt, or the ''non-shared'' environment.The household, the ''shared'' environmnent, has some impact but it was shown that twins reared apart and twins who frew up together have very similiar yet no indentical personalities. Today parents still think that how they raise their kids will determine their personality.
 MISTRA found out that the heredity is very high for drug and alcohol use. The intensity of religion is also inherited, however the religion is tought by the environment you live in. Also the morning vs evening person is inherited. 
This study also shows that the sexual orientation is inherited, mostly by men, women seem to be more affected by the environment. The DZA twins of opposite sex were often flirtatious with each other. ''This is not surprising; genetic similarity theory predicts it. Biological fathers/daughters and mothers/sons can be sexually attracted if they have not lived together. In the case of reunited male MZA homosexual twins, attraction can lead to sexual relations.'' (Thomas Jackson, American Renaissance, July 27, 2012)
 This study could have been unethical in some aspects. One of this aspects is telling a person that he has a twin. They did not know of each others existence and this might have contributed to future worrying about a genetic disease that the other twin has and the other does not.

Stroke: An Assault on the Brain

1. Explain what happens to the brain when a stroke occurs.
 A stroke can be described as "brain attack". It occurs when a blood clot blocks an artery or a blood vessel breaks, interrupting blood flow to an area of the brain. When this occurs, the brain cells begin to die and brain damage occurs. When this happens the abilities controlled by that area of the brain are lost. It can be speech, movement and memory. How much does the stroke effect the person depends on few factors, for instants how severe the damage was and where the stroke occurs.

2. Briefly explain the differences between the three different types of strokes.

•  Ischemic stroke (clots): It occurs as a result of  an obstruction within a blood vessel supplying blood to brain. The  fatty deposits are formed within the blood vessel. This stroke occurs in 87 percent of all cases.
• Hemorrgaic stroke (bleeds): It results from a weakened vessel that ruptures and bleeds into the surrounding brain. The blood accumulates and compresses the surrounding brain tissue. This type of stroke occurs in 13 percent of all cases.
• TIA (transient ischemic attack): While transient ischemic attack (TIA) is often labeled “mini-stroke,” it is more accurately characterized as a “warning stroke,” a warning you should take very seriously. It is caused by a clot, but in TIA the clot is temporary and causes no permanent injury of the brain.

3. Identify some of the most common risk factors - in other words, who is most likely to have a stroke?
There are some risk factors that you cannot change like:

• Age: the older you get the higher chance you have to get a stroke
• Gender: male are most likely to get a stroke
• Race: African Americans are most likely to have a stroke than Caucasians

And there are some factors that you can change:

• High blood pressure - the most dominant stroke risk factor and the easiest to modify is high blood pressure.
• Smoking - doubles your stroke risk.
• Weight - Being over-weight predisposes you to high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes, all of which increase stroke risk.
• Diabetes - makes people susceptible to cardiovascular diseases, which can result in stroke
• Prior stroke or TIA - increases your risk of having another stroke
• Heart disease - heart conditions, especially atrial fibrillation (an irregular heart beat), have a greater stroke risk

4. What disabilities can result from a stroke?
Stroke damage in the brain can affect the entire body resulting in mild to severe disabilities. These include paralysis, problems with thinking, problems with speaking, emotional problems, and pain.

5. What is brain plasticity and what does it mean in terms of recovering from a stroke? 

The brain has a remarkable ability to reorganize itself throughout the human life span. The most extraordinary example may be the remodeling of the cerebral cortex after an injury in which a large part of it simply dies. It is not uncommon for stroke patients who have lost the ability to speak or to move a limb to regain function after several weeks of convalescence. How does the brain recover? Using neuro-imaging techniques, Azari and Seitz found a multi-stage process of recovery during which different parts of the brain compensate for the injured region at different times. The results may have implications for therapeutic interventions after a stroke. 

Sperry and Gazzaniga: The Split Brain Study

1. What does it mean for a person's brain to be "split"?
 It means that they cut off the connection, corpus calosum between the two hemispheres. "Each hemisphere is still able to learn after the split brain operation but one hemisphere has no idea about what the other hemisphere has experienced or learned". The two hemispheres function separately.

2. What was the reason why this procedure was performed on patients?
It began in 1960s to help patients with one kind of epilepsy, because there was no other cure for that at the time.

3. Explain one of the tests Sperry and Gazzaniga performed on these split brain patients.
For one experiment they tested each hemispheres capability to perform simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. They showed him examples and presented it to each hemisphere exclusively. Then they showed him a probe. He was given 2 buttons and he was supposed to press a button for "right: or "wrong".

4. What were the results of this test?
The results suggested that the left hemisphere is specialized for calculation.

5. What is the reason that these results occurred?
Since the brain is split each hemisphere works separately and each of the two has different "specialization".



6. What is the corpus callosum and what role does it serve in your brain?
The corpus callosum is a thick band of nerve fibers that divides the cerebrum into left and right hemispheres. It connects the left and right sides of the brain allowing for communication between both hemispheres. The corpus callosum transfers motor, sensory, and cognitive information between the brain hemispheres. It serves for eye movements, communication between hemispheres, maintaining the balance of arousal and attention, and also tactile localization.

Sources : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain , http://www.macalester.edu/academics/psychology/whathap/ubnrp/split_brain/pioneers.html , http://www.nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/split-brain/background.html
 

The Dutch Hunger Winter

The Dutch Hunger Winter took place in the German-occupied part of the Netherlands during the winter of 1944-1945, near the end of World War II. A German blockade cut off food and fuel shipments from farm areas to punish the reluctance of the Dutch to aid the Nazi war effort. After the Allied Forced landed in Europe, the conditions grew worse in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. The Allies able to free the southern part of the country, however they were not able to gain control of the bridge across the Rhine at Arnhem. Even after the embargo was partially lifted the canals froze and it became impossible to transport food supplies. Some 4.5 million were affected and survived because of soup kitchens. About 22,000 died because of the blockade Most vulnerable according to the death reports were elderly men.
There were made three noticeable studies. First of them was the observation of the babies born/conceived at the time of the Dutch Hunger Winter. This study showed that if the babies were well nourished during the time of conception and only malnourished for the last few moth of their pregnancies. The babies were likely to be born small and also the years of study showed that this person was unlikely to be obese and stayed small throughout his life. The babies there were conceived during that time were likely to be born big and stayed big throughout their life's. The other study was a study of schizophrenia. It was found that genetics plays major role if this illness will develop or no. Schizophrenia is tragically common. When two identical twins are born and one of them has schizophrenia, the other twin has a 50% chance of having it, too. The 3rd study was focused on abused children. Even if the child is taken away from them and put into another family that loves him. Sometimes everything works out for the child. Sadly majority of such kids who have suffered from abuse or neglect in their early years grow up with a substantially higher risk of adult mental health problems than the gen­eral population. All too often such a child grows up into an adult at high risk of depression, self-harm, drug abuse, and suicide.
Epigenetics is referring to all the cases in which the genetic code alone is not enough to describe whats happening, there also must be something else going on. Its like the surroundings around us even before we are born have an affect on us for the rest of our lives.

Understanding and Applying the Theory of Evolution

Explain the theory of evolution.
The theory of evolution seeks to explain the origin of life on Earth and the origin of different species. According to evolutionary theory, life began billions of years ago, when a group of chemicals inadvertently organized themselves into a self-replicating molecule. This tiny molecule gave rise to everything that has ever lived on the planet. Different and more complex organisms grew from this simple beginning through mutation of DNA and natural selection.

Explain the “nature vs nurture” debate.
The nature versus nurture debate is one of the oldest issues in psychology. The debate centers on the relative contributions of genetic inheritance and environmental factors to human development. For example, when a person achieves tremendous academic success, did they do so because they are genetically predisposed to be successful or is it a result of an enriched environment?

What is wrong with the concept of “nature vs. nurture”?

 That we can never find out what is it that determines how we are. The majority of people found their 'truth' somewhere in between those two statements.

What is meant by “social Darwinism”?
Social Darwinism is defined by the idea of "survival of the fittest" and how it applies to socioeconomic environments. By this reasoning, the weak and the poor are "unfit" and should be allowed to die without societal intervention.

Explain eugenics.
 It is a study of human genetics and of methods to improve the inherited characteristics, physical and mental, of the human race. 

What is the problem with the concept of eugenics?
 That it would end up by smoothing out the 'bad' genes by killing the one that have them, which is not acceptable by today's society.

What does the term “fitness” mean in relation to evolution?
It's the ability to survive long enough to pass on genes by having many offspring and the ability for those offspring to then do the same.

What is meant by “genetic determination”?
It is the belief  that genes, along with environmental conditions, determine morphological and behavioral phenotypes.

What is “fixation”?

 It is a persistent attachment, not only to the specific instinctual aims of a particular era, but, instead, to the entire complex of self and object relation at that time.

What is “canalization”?
  The tendency of heredity to restrict the development of some characteristics to just one or a few outcomes.

What is “punctuated equilibrium”?
The hypothesis that evolutionary development is marked by isolated episodes of rapid speciation between long periods of little or no change.

How does evolution relate to psychology?
It created a new branch of psychology and showed the link between the two sciences. Darwin's work on human evolution and the expression of emotions demonstrated how empirical tests can be performed using data from different species to learn about how behaviour evolves. This “comparative method” is the most important method in evolutionary psychology.

Examine one evolutionary explanation of behavior

Curtis (2004) : Investigated whether there were patterns in people's disgust responses. 

Participants: 77 000 altogether, from 165 different countries. Conducted an Internet based survey in which participants were shown series of 20 photographs, an asked to rank each image for how disgusting it was. There were seven pairs in which one was infectious and a matching image was not (e.g. body fluids, coloured liquid). Those images containing substances that would most strongly harm the immune system were rated highest on disgustingness. Disgust decreased with age and female were more disgusted than males, which supports the idea that disgust is a form of protection to enhance chances of successful reproduction.