AP Psychology Summer Assignment. Griffin Cook

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1 AP Psychology Summer Assignment Griffin Cook Mary Ainsworth: Mary Ainsworth was involved in the study of attachment between a child and their caregiver. She designed an experiment called the Strange Situation to test the attachment between a baby and its caregiver. From her experiment, she determined that there are three types of attachment a baby may have with their caregiver: Mary Ainsworth s Attachment Theory Secure Attachment, Anxious- Ambivalent Insecure Attachment, and Anxious- Avoidant Insecure Attachment. Solomon Asch: Asch worked in the field of social psychology and studied several subjects, such as prestige suggestion, impression formation, and conformity. One of his most famous experiments demonstrated conformity, and involved estimating the length of lines. In the experiment, some people would intentionally make false estimates as to the length of the lines, and usually the actual test subjects would change their estimate to more closely resemble the false estimates made by the other people. Albert Bandura: Albert Bandura developed social learning theory. He stated that learning takes place through more than just reinforcement, and that people learn by imitation, or modeling. His famous Bobo doll study demonstrated this idea well. In his experiment he would show a video of a woman beating a doll to a group of children. He would then let the children play in a room that had that same doll, and the children consistently began beating the doll. Walter Cannon: Canon researched the instinctual repulsion from danger on animals. He worked with laboratory animals, and noticed that when they were stressed there were changes in their digestive systems. Upon further investigation, he realized that when introduced to stress, the bodies of animals will prepare for physical action in a response he called the Fight or Flight response. Noam Chomsky: Chomsky studied in the field of linguistics. He developed theories that involve something called universal grammar. Universal grammar is the basic set of principles that all human languages follow. Chomsky theorized that young children have a strong, innate knowledge of this universal grammar, thus why they pick up on languages so quickly. Hermann Ebbinghaus: Ebbinghaus researched the area of memory. He experimented on himself for over a year, and came up with several theories and discoveries. The most notable of his discoveries are the learning- curve, the forgetting- curve, and the spacing effect. These discoveries explain how quickly something is learned, tell that you retain information better when studying it for a shorter period of time over more times, and explain how quickly something is forgotten, respectively. Commented [WPB1]: 4 excellent Commented [WPB2]: 4 Commented [WPB3]: 4 Commented [WPB4]: 4 Commented [WPB5]: 4 Commented [WPB6]: 4 Erik Erikson: Erikson developed ideas about psychosocial stages of development. He proposed that there are eight major stages of psychosocial development that develop at a certain age in every normal person s life, and that each one arises from a particular crisis at that stage in life. The eight stages are Trust vs. Mistrust (0-1 ½), Autonomy vs. Shame (1 ½- 3), Initiative vs. Guilt (3-5), Industry vs. Inferiority

2 (5-12), Ego Identity vs. Role Confusion (12-18), Intimacy vs. Isolation (18-40), Generativity vs. Stagnation (40-65), and Ego Integrity vs. Despair (65+). Sigmund Freud: Freud developed a form of treatment called psychoanalysis. He studied dreams, sexuality, and repressed memories, and incorporated all these into psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis involves bringing repressed memories to the surface so they can be addressed. When confronted, the memories often lead to alleviation of neurotic problems. Howard Gardner: Gardner studied cognition and intelligence. He developed a theory about something called multiple intelligences. Gardner believed that intelligence is not just a single measure, and cannot be properly recorded with just an IQ level. He theorized, instead, that there are seven intelligences that people have a blend of. The seven intelligences he identified are linguistic intelligence, logical- mathematical intelligence, musical intelligence, bodily- kinesthetic intelligence, spatial intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, and intrapersonal intelligence. Harry Harlow: Harlow experimented on monkeys to test areas of affection, motivation, and learning. He used the study of primates to further the understanding of human behavior. His most famous experiment involved taking baby monkeys away from their mothers just after birth and placing them with two surrogate, false mothers. The mother was either made out of wire or cloth. The cloth mother was softer, and the baby monkeys would choose to spend more time with it than the wire monkey, even if the wire monkey was its source of milk. Harlow concluded that the need for affection outweigh the need for warmth or food. William James: James studied emotion and its relation to physiology as well as a method of psychology called functionalism. His theory on emotion was called the James- Lange Theory of Emotion, which proposed that emotions result from physiological responses to stimuli (You are scared because you shake, you don t shake because you are scared). His method of psychology, Functionalism, focused on mental events as a whole instead of breaking them down, and noted the impact environment has on behavior. Carl Jung: Jung studied the human psyche, the collective unconscious, and dreams. Jung combined these studies into a theory called Analytical Psychology. This theory states that a person s behaviors and beliefs result from their conscious and unconscious beliefs. To expound on unconsciousness, Jung said that collective unconscious is all human experience and knowledge. Jung also tried to explain dreams as unfulfilled parts of a person s waking mind, and said different symbols are present in dreams that represent certain attitudes. He called these symbols archetypes Commented [WPB7]: 4 Commented [WPB8]: 4 Commented [WPB9]: 4 Commented [WPB10]: 4 Commented [WPB11]: 4 Commented [WPB12]: 4 Lawrence Kohlberg: Kohlberg researched moral development by surveying people of different ages. He would present them with a moral dilemma and then ask them how they would respond. One of these moral dilemmas involved a man whose wife was dying of cancer. In the situation, there is a drug that could save her, but he cannot afford it. The question is, should he steal the drug or not, and if so, should he go to jail for it? Kohlberg surveyed 72 boys aged 10 to 16, all from Chicago, and did follow up surveys every three years for twenty years on 58 of them. Through his questioning, he determined that there are 3 levels of moral development, and 6 stages. Each level is comprised of 2 stages, and the three levels

3 must be followed in sequential order. The 3 levels Kohlberg came up with are Pre- conventional morality, Conventional morality, and Post- conventional morality. The six stages, in order, that make up these levels are Obedience and Punishment Orientation, Individualism and Exchange, Good Interpersonal Relationships, Maintaining the Social Order, Social Contract and Individual Rights, and Universal Principles. Valid as his findings may be, many have questioned his research methods due to a very biased sample (only boys from Chicago), and the fact that many of the situations are things most people will never have to deal with and are not used to dealing with. Elizabeth Loftus: Loftus studied memory, and how easily it can be changed. She conducted studies by playing videos for people, then asking them about the videos afterwards. An example of one of her studies involved a video of a car crash. Loftus would use different words when asking approximately how fast the car was going when an accident occurred. When she used the words smashed into participants reported significantly higher speed than when she said hit, and got even lower speeds when she said contacted. Participants who heard the words smashed into more often reported seeing broken glass a week after viewing the video than did participants who heard other words. She applied this concept of malleable memory to several court cases where eyewitness testimonies pointed out suspects as guilty, but who were in the end found not guilty. Abraham Maslow: Maslow was a fundamental researcher in human potential, and one of the founders of an area of psychology known as humanistic psychology. Maslow developed several theories that became important in the humanistic movement, including self- actualization, the hierarchy of needs, and peak experiences. Self- actualization is described as fulfilling one s self. Maslow s theory suggests that all people have a purpose that they naturally want to fulfill, and that they become very happy when they come closer to fulfilling this purpose. Maslow s theory on the hierarchy of needs suggests that there is a hierarchy of needs that people fulfill to be happy. The hierarchy starts out with basic physiological needs, and ends with the need to be self- actualized. The hierarchy consists of physiological needs (food, water, oxygen, sexual reproduction), security needs (steady job, health care, shelter from the environment), social needs (belonging, love, affection, friendship), esteem needs (personal worth, social recognition, accomplishment), and self- actualizing needs. Maslow s theory on peak experiences states that there are certain experiences, which are very rare, that cause ecstasy and elation in a person. Peak experiences are described as turning- points in someone s life, and people often lose track of time while having them. Commented [WPB13]: 4 Commented [WPB14]: 4 Commented [WPB15]: 4 Stanley Milgram: Milgram researched obedience. He did an experiment where the participant was told they were researching learning; the participants were told by an experimenter to shock another person with varying amounts of electricity, up to a supposedly fatal 450 volts. All the participants went to the dangerous level (300 volts), and 65% went to the fatal level (450 volts). Milgram constructed a theory based on these findings called Milgram s Agency Theory, which says that people can be in one of two states in social situations. The states are called autonomous state, where people direct and take responsibility for their own actions, and agentic state, where they allow another person to direct their actions and place the responsibility of those actions in the person who is directing them. Milgram stated that two criteria must be met in order for a person to enter agentic state: the person must believe that

4 the person giving orders is qualified other people s behavior, and that the person must believe the person giving orders is willing to accept responsibility for the results of the actions. Ivan Pavlov: Ivan Pavlov, though not a psychologist, did research that had major impacts on the field of Behaviorism in psychology, which is the notion that learning occurs through interaction with the environment. Pavlov did an experiment with dogs where he would repeatedly present the dogs with some kind of stimuli, such as the ringing of a bell, before giving the dogs their food. After a while the dogs would salivate when presented with the stimuli. Pavlov called this effect Classical Conditioning. Jean Piaget: Piaget studied cognitive development in children. He theorized that there are four distinct stages of cognitive development in children. The stages are Sensorimotor (0-2 years old), Preoperational (2-7 years old), Concrete Operational (7-11 years old), and Formal Operational (11+ years old). Piaget also theorized that there are things called schemas that organize everything that we know. Basically, a schema is an area of your mind that holds all of the information on a particular topic. For example, a schema for a dog could be rationalized as saying a dog is furry, barks, has four legs, has a tail, lives 10 to 15 years, and has non- retractable claws. Carl Rogers: Carl Rogers studied personality development and expanded on Maslow s idea of Self- Actualization. Rogers theorized that for a person to become self- actualized, their ideal self (what they want to be) must be congruent, or similar, to their self- image (what the person thinks of themselves). Rogers also stated that only some people are capable of becoming self- actualized, and that these people are called Fully Functioning People. He identified five characteristics of a fully functioning person, which are: open to experience, existential living, trust feelings, creativity, and fulfilled life. Stanley Schacter: Schacter studied emotion, obesity, and birth- order. His most famous work was in the area of emotion. He developed a theory on emotion called the Two- Factor Theory of Emotion. Schacter suggested that emotion is based on both cognitive labels and physiological arousal. Essentially, when you feel an emotion, some sort of physiological arousal occurs, then you search the environment to explain that physiological response. For example, if you were in a room free of any sensation, and you start shaking, you may not know why you are shaking and sign no emotion to it. However, if you are shaking in a room with a viscous tiger in it, you would probably attribute the shaking to fear and come to the conclusion that you are afraid. BF Skinner: Skinner researched behavior in rats to develop an idea called Operant Conditioning. Operant conditioning is the idea that behavior results from actions and the results of those actions. In an experiment, Skinner would put a rat in a box. In one situation, the rat would receive a pellet of food whenever the rat pressed a lever. The rats soon began to press the lever often to get food, and demonstrated positive reinforcement. In another situation, the rat is placed in a box and given an uncomfortable electric shock until it presses the lever. The rats began to go straight for the lever whenever they were placed in the box, and demonstrated negative reinforcement. Besides the two reinforcers, called operants, there was one more operant, called punishment. Punishment weakens behavior rather than strengthens it. Commented [WPB16]: Great detail! 4 Commented [WPB17]: 4 Commented [WPB18]: 4 Commented [WPB19]: 4 Commented [WPB20]: 4 Commented [WPB21]: 4

5 John B. Watson: Watson studied conditioning with a famous, yet unethical, experiment called the Little Albert Experiment. In his experiment, Watson took a nine month old infant and showed it various objects as stimuli including a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, masks, and burning newspapers. They noted no significant response when the infant was first shown these things. Later, whenever the child was shown the white rat, Watson would hit a pipe with a hammer to cause a loud noise and scare the child. Over time, the child began to cry and show fear whenever presented the rat or anything resembling the rat, such as a white Santa Claus beard. E.H. Weber: Weber studied the perception of sensation. One test he did involved applying two points of pressure onto a person s skin. By doing this, he was able to test how the intensity of the pressure affected the person s ability to accurately determine how far apart the two points of pressure were. The test also allowed Weber to determine the distance two points of pressure have to be apart to detect two points rather than one. Weber developed a law called Weber s Law. Weber s law basically states that for a difference to be perceived in two stimuli, the ratio of the stimuli, not the amount of stimuli. For example, if you re buying a $50 dollar smartphone, and you can buy an upgrade to storage space for another $50, you may perceive the extra $50 as a lot of money. If you are buying a car for $17,000, and you can buy an upgrade to the seats for $50, you may not perceive the $50 as very much. However, if the price of the seat upgrade was $17,000, then you would probably see it as a lot of money. Wilhelm Wundt: Wundt studied the structure of the human mind through a method called introspection. Wundt would present participants with some kind of stimulus such as a light or a ticking metronome, and then ask the participant to describe any sensation that they felt. Wundt s greatest addition to the field of psychology didn t have anything to do with the structure of the mind however, as modern scientists do not usually use introspection. Wundt did the most for psychology by establishing the idea that psychological studies should be performed in carefully controlled, experimental conditions. Philip Zimbardo: Zimbardo studied the effect situational forces have on human behavior through his famous Stanford Prison Experiment. In the experiment, 24 male students were randomly assigned to be either a guard or a prisoner in a mock prison in the basement of Stanford s psychology department. The mock prison was to be treated like a real prison, and the participants were not to leave the mock prison during the 14 day experiment. However, the experiment had to be ended after just 6 days because prison guard started to become sadistic and abusive to prisoners, and prisoners started to become very anxious and depressed. This demonstrates how easily people change their behavior to match that of their assigned social role. Commented [WPB22]: Need to expand on what the results show 3 Commented [WPB23]: 4 Commented [WPB24]: 4 Commented [WPB25]: 4