Savannah Fox

08/02/10
Mrs. Daily
AP Psychology

Section 1: One Brain or Two?

This reading deals with the study of the brain's composition of two different hemispheres and
their functionality. Because of his efforts in the study of the left and right sides of the brain, Roger
Sperry was awarded a Nobel Prize after he severed the communication of the hemispheres of cats'
brains and found their varying purposes. Sperry worked along side Micheal Gazzaniga to transfer his
findings onto the human race. The only part of the brain that connects the two sides of the brain
together is called the corpus callosum, and by cutting that the line the hemispheres will be operating on
their own. This method has been used very few times on humans and only when the patients suffer
from severe epilepsy.
Scientists wanted to test the separation of the brain further in hopes that the discovery of how
the body would operate could be discovered. For example, would the right brain only control the right
side of the body, could one speak if the left side of the brain was removed, or could one operate without
both sides of the brain? To study this, researchers transmitted an image to only one side of the brain and
recorded reactions. In another study, they tested touch by placing a screen in front of a person and make
them identify objects only by the sense of touch. In the last study, scientists tested auditory abilities on
both sides of the brain by asking patients to identify objects in a bag with only one hand.
The results of the surgery left patients emotions and personality unchanged, however their
mental abilities did. In visual abilities doctors concluded by a test on a light bulb board that for a person
to say they saw something the object needs to be seen by the left brain because that is where the speech
center is located. In tactile abilities, similar results were found when a person was asked to identify an
object behind their back and in their left hand. The person could identify the object with the right side
of the brain but, in order to pronounce what it was, it needed to be transmitted to the left side's speech
center. When these two studies were combined, researchers found that the right side of the brain
computes information. But cannot express it verbally.

Section 3: Are You a “Natural”?:

This chapter discusses the differences between which personality traits one inherits from genes
and which are a source of the environment. With the help of associates at the University of Minnesota,
David Lykken and Thomas Bouchard have developed a way to locate the source of a person's identity.
To test this Lykken and Bouchard took two identical twins with the same genetic composition that were
raised in drastically different surroundings and compared their personalities. They tested the twins on
four personality trait scales of aptitude, occupational interests, and intelligence. To compare
environments, participants compiled a list of household items and conducted interviews on life and
sexual histories.
Through these studies psychologists found that identical twins brought up together and
identical twins brought up separately showed no significant difference in personality. This proves that
the main factor that influences who on is comes from his genes. Lykken and Bouchard do not look to
prove that genes are the only influence on personality because there are environmental influences as
well. They will, however, argue that genes create the greatest influence on a person. They continue to
accept that the environment influences traits as well because they believe that a person's genetic
makeup actually influences the environment they submerge themselves in.

Section 4: Watch Out for the Visual Cliff!:

Depth perception is arguably the most important necessity to the vision. It can affect our
behavior and day to day activities. While this is rarely debated, the question of whether or not depth
perception is learned or if one is born with the skill in operation. To answer this question, Eleanor
Gibson and Richard Walk created something called a visual cliff. A visual cliff is a table created for a
baby to determine is they would avoid falling off the “cliff”. The table top is half patterned tile and half
glass. Under the glass side is the same patterned tile. If the baby has depth perception at that age, it
would realize the pattern on the floor is of a different height and turn around; if the baby doesn't, it will
walk on to the glass side unaware. This experiment was also preformed on various baby animals.
When this study was done on humans the results were not accurate and could not prove
anything. This study could not fully answer the innateness of depth perception because the baby
humans had at least six months of life to learn it. When tested on chickens and lambs, none of them
crossed onto the glass side. When a baby goat was placed onto the glass side it froze and became
frightened until it was pushed to the shallow side. Rats did not mind the deep side because they use
their whiskers to feel and the sides felt the same. Cats showed great depth perception at just four weeks.

Section 7: Unromancing the Dream:

It is commonly believed that one's dreams have some kind of deep meaning and relate to things
in life that are incapable of happening. However, Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley have a
completely different theory of their own. They believe that during REM sleep the brain release
electrical pulses and dreams are just the reaction to them. To research this theory, Hobsom and
McCarley used two methods, the first was looking at what scientists had already discovered in the
dreaming field. The second was to look at non-human sleeping patterns (not dreaming). They did this
by looking activating particular parts of a cat's brain and record what dreaming sleep did to the body.
They found that the brain does not shut down during REM sleep, but the spinal cord does. This
means the brain can process information but cannot act upon it because the spinal cord has shut down
physical motion. They also concluded that the eye's rapid movement creates the images one sees in a
dream. Dreams are per-programmed by the cycle of sleep and REM sleep. The brain acts within itself
to recreate stored memories in the brain. This theory has not been universally accepted.

Section 9: It's Not Just About Salivating Dogs!:

Classical conditioning is the process in which an action or object of thing triggers an emotion
that has been associated with that same thing in the past. The scientist who began this theory and
ultimately began the study psychology as a subject is known as Ivan Petrovich Pavlov. This first began
evident as Pavlov began studying the digestion effects on dogs and noticed specific trends in the
amount of salvation they produce. From this Pavlov determined that there must be two different kinds
of reflexes. One type is an unconditioned reflex; this is something that happens to everyone in the same
species as a result of an action (EX: when the lights dim, pupils dilate). Another type is a conditioned
reflex and these are learned through experience. Each are a result of a stimulus and response series.
The question is how are conditioned reflexes acquired? To test this Pavlov used a soundproof
room so that all other stimuli could affect the experiment and used food as the UCS. In order to figure
out if the reflex is conditioned, there needs to be a NS to associate the UCS with. In the test, the NS
was a metronome. So Pavlov would start the metronome and then immediately serve the dogs food. Of
course after some trial the sound of the metronome alone made the subjects salivate immediately. This
study is universally accepted and can be applied to humans as well.

Section 10: Little Emotional Albert

Soon after, Pavlov began studying psychology he transferred his energy to behaviorism with his
associate Watson. They wanted to discover what evokes emotion and is it something that one is born
with. Watson thought that if an emotion is presented to you with a NS than when that NS is presented
to you again, the same emotions will return. In this famous study, Watson used a nine month old orphan
named Albert and exposed him to NS (rat, rabbit, monkey, dog, masks, wool) of which he showed on
fear. Then, Watson used UCS of a loud noise to scare Albert. This frightened Albert and made him cry.
 After many trials of giving Albert the white rat and soon after making a loud noise, Albert
began to cry at just the sight of the rat. They tested this further and gave Albert similar objects like a
rabbit, cotton, and a Santa mask and the reaction was the same. Even after a prolonged period of time
Albert was still afraid to see the rat. Watson proved that emotions are learned through classical
conditioning of stimulus and response.

Section 11: Knock Wood!:

This reading is based around the principles of B.F. Skinner and his ideas on radical behaviorism,
Radical behaviorism is the theory that every emotion is controlled by behavior and what immediately
follows it. All behaviors are followed by consequences. If it s a positive consequences they are called
reinforcers and if it is a negative consequence it are called punishers. Skinner wanted to study the
affects of grasping onto a behavior based on the reward that was offered. To do this Skinner created a
cage for pigeons with only a tray in the bottom for food. There was a disk in the tray that needed to be
pecked in order to receive food. This cage was called a Skinner Box.
To begin, the food dispenser gave food to the pigeon at 15 second intervals regardless of what
the pigeon was doing. They were given less than the normal amount of food in order to get them
motivated to receive more food pellets. Of the eight birds, six repeated the same behaviors as if they
did them they would get more food. After stretching the intervals to one minute, the birds did some
kind of dance in order to receive more food. They had developed superstitions to what would be the
best chance of getting food, despite the specific time interval.

Section 12: See Aggression...Do Aggression!

Aggression is one of the most studied subjects in psychology because of its influence on society.
Albert Bandura, Dorothea Ross, and Shelia Ross conducted a famous experiment on how children learn
aggressiveness in the 1960's. Bandura is know known as the creator of the social learning theory
because of this experiment. This theory states that human relationships are the main factor in another
human's personality. To test this theory, Bandura and his associates created a proposition called the
Bobo doll study. The question that they we looking to answer was if children exposed to an aggressive
role model would transfer their behavior into their own personality.
To do this, researchers gathered 36 girls and 36 boys in the age bracket from three to six years
old. A control group was created of 24 children and these would not be exposed to any type of role
model. The rest of the kids were divided into 2 groups, one with an aggressive role model and one
without. Within those groups, another division was made based on sex. Those groups were divided
once more so that half would have same sex models and half would have opposite sex models. From
there the kids were exposed to a playroom with toys in one corner for kids and toys in the other corner
from the models (a Bobo doll and mallet). In the aggressive models, they punched the doll and hit it on
the head with the mallet. They then put the children into another room with aggressive and non-
aggressive toys and recorded the behavior.
They found that the children exposed to aggressive behavior tended to repeat the actions of the
models they saw. The children with non-aggressive models showed few acts of violence than the
control group. Violent boy behavior was much more prominent when he was exposed to a male
aggressive model rather than female. Boy were very much more aggressive than the girls in general.

Section 16: Thanks for the Memories!:

Elizabeth Loftus is one of the top researchers in the subject of memory at the University of
Washington. Through study she a theorized that when a memory is recalled it is not an accurate account
of what really happened, but rather a reconstruction of the event. When someone reconstructs a
memory he is using information from the past and present to fill in the gaps. For example, he may
gather information from one time he repeated a story and adds that in when he tells it again. To find the
affect on memory and reconstruction in the legal system Loftus created a test by showing 150 people a
video of a five car pile up.
After they were shown the video, the participants were given a questionnaire. There were two
different quizzes. For example on the first test the question read “How fast was the car going when it
ran the stop sign and turned right?” and on the second test the question read “How fast was the car
going when it turned right?”. The last question on both tests read, “Did you see if Car A ran the stop
sign?”. Fifty three percent of Group A said yes and 35% of Group B said yes. In a 2nd experiment,
people were shown a student revolution video. The only questions on the two groups that differed was
the first were one asked if the 4 leaders were male or were the 12 leaders male. Without seeing it again,
they came back a week later and answered the same questions again, except one question asked how
many leaders entered. The people with the 12 test reported seeing 8.85 and those with the 4 test saw
6.40.
In a third test they watched video with a white sports car and then answered ten questions. The
first test asked how fast the car was going when it passed the barn and the second asked how fast the
car was going down the road. Returning a week later, they were asked if they saw a barn. About 13.7%
of the barn group said yes and 2.7% of the other group said no. The fourth experiment combined all of
these ideas and found that when given a false preposition, that item will return in their memory and
think they did in fact see that item even if it wasn't there.

Section 17: Discovering Love:

Love may seen to be an object that is hard to study in the field of psychology, but Harry Harlow
has made a great contribution to the study on early development's affect on later in life relationships.
Harlow's research has led him to believe that love is a basic necessity. Just as one needs food and water.
Harlow began study on a specific type of monkey instead of humans for ethical reasons. The monkeys
were raised in cages with a cotton pad on the bottom and were fed and cared for to the utmost extent.
However, whenever the pad was removed from the cage for cleaning the monkeys became very
emotionally distressed. When the pads returned, the monkeys became healthier. This led to an
experiment to study if love has the same health impacts on the monkeys as lack of food and water.
To study this further, Harlow built fake monkeys to acts as mothers to the younger ones. The
first fake mother fed milk by her breast and was heated to seem warm and the second one was the same
except it lacked a soft outer shell for comfort and fed the babies through her actual breast. Harlow was
trying to separate the influence of feeding from the contact feeding of the different mothers. The
monkeys lived with the mothers for the first five months of their life. The monkeys were also put into
fearful situations, put into a room lacking a mother, and separated from their mother and then reunited.
Results showed that the monkeys liked the cloth mother better than the wire mother.
Surprisingly, Harlow found that the need for contact feeding straight from the mother's breast really
didn't play a factor in how much time the baby spent with the surrogate. No matter which mother had
the milk on a certain day, the monkeys tended to spend time with the cloth mother. When the monkeys
were scared they would run to the cloth mother. When the cloth mother was not present, they would cry
and suck their thumb. When the baby and cloth mother were reunited, the baby recognized the mother
and ran to her.
Section 19: How Moral are You?
Moral beliefs are not something that you are born with, but rather a set of guidelines to live your
life that are gathered during your development into adulthood. Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg
understood this fact and wanted to take the study of morality one step further. They wanted to find out
how a small child goes from having no moral beliefs to an adult of morality. Using earlier work from
Piaget, Kohlberg decided that a child must have a certain level of intelligence in order to find morals.
To study this Kohlberg decided to present children of different ages to moral situations and observe the
judgments they make. If the morality level of a child increases with age and intelligence, then his
theory could be proven.
 To do this, the children were exposed to 10 moral dilemmas and then were interviewed for two
hours. The most notable situations are the Brother's Dilemma (Joe lied about the amount of money he
had and used it to go to camp and told his brother, Alex, should Alex tell his dad?) and the Hienz
Dilemma (A man could not afford medicine to save his dying wife so he broke into the store and stole
it, is this right?). There were 72 male participants at the ages of 10,13, and 16. Results led to a six stage
moral development scale with three distinctive levels. The first being pre-moral, then morality of
conventional role conformity, and lastly morality of self-accepted moral principles. He found there are
different levels and not everyone reaches stage six.

Section 25: Are You the Master of Your Fate?:

When something happens in a person's life, do they tend to chalk it up to luck or as a result of
his own person behavior? This is something to think about and was thought about by a famous
behaviorist by the name of Julian Rotter. Rotter categorized people who believe in luck and fate as a
person with an external locus of control and those who believe their actions controlled their
consequences as people with an internal locus of control. As a person grows up he learns behavior
from reinforcement, like receiving a cookie. Based on individual learning experiences there will come
an idea of whether a person's life is controlled externally or internally. He decided to go on to study
how this affects a person's behavior.
To research this, Rotter created a scale with a list of paired statements. Each one had an internal
and external locus of control. Participants were asked which one applied most to them. The test
contained filler items so the takers would not catch on to the purpose. Rotter named this test the I-E
Scale. Rotter divided the results into five areas: gambling, persuasion, smoking, achievement
motivation, and conformity.
In gambling, Rotter found internals bet on things with greater odds of winning and externals bet
on more unusual things. In persuasion, internals were asked to get students to join Greek houses and
were more successful at it than externals, but had generally the same view. Externals were the people
who tended to be smokers and internals were more likely to quit after reading a warning on the
cigarette box even though both groups thought it was true. In a high school, the kids with greater
achievement goals tended to be more internal. Internals conform less to majority opinion.

Section 28: The One, The Many:

On of the most widely accepted ideas in psychology is the fact that behavior never occurs in a
vacuum. In fact many agree that the most influential factor on behavior is that of culture and the
surroundings one is raised in. Harry Traindis has developed two different categories to place varying
cultures. A collectivist culture is one in which a single individual's personal achievement comes
secondary to that of a family, tribe, country, or village and an individualistic culture is vice versa. To
demonstrate this theory, Traindis designed three studies.
In the first study, college students were given a quiz with 153 questions that had individualistic
and collectivist answers. He found that US individualistic ideas are more complex than thought, but
were definably individualistic. In study 2, he was trying to find if people in in-groupss wanted to focus
on themselves, so he gave a quiz to US college students, Puerto Rican college students, and Japanese
elders and students. The results varied, but showed that each domain of social behavior was to be
treated separately. In study 3, another test was given to an equal number of females and males from
University of Puerto Rico and the University of Chicago. It was based on social support and loneliness.
The results showed that collectivism was directly linked to social support. The most important factor
for the Puerto Rican students was affiliations.

Section 29: Who's Crazy Here, Anyway?:

Many people wonder what makes a person's behavior normal or weird. If someone has
abnormal behavior, that can help in the diagnosis of a mental illness and later on, a treatment. Behavior
spans from effective psychological functioning to abnormal as to where a certain person's behavior lies.
Doctors use the following to pinpoint a person's behavior: Context of Behavior (abnormal behavior in a
certain situation), Persistence of Behavior (“crazy moments”), Social Deviance (behavior violates
norms), Subjective Distress (having extreme fear), Psychological Handicap (great difficulty functioning
in life), and Effect on Functioning (questions ability to live). Using this, David Roenham questioned
where the line is drawn between mentally healthy and ill.
To figure this out, Roenham and seven other people acted as normal healthy patients that were
checked into a medical institution to see if a diagnosis depended on the person or on the situation. They
admitted themselves to the hospital based on hearing voices. They acted normal and answered
questions truthfully. Seven were admitted by schizophrenia and then dropped there symptoms and acted
completely normal. The patients were admitted anywhere from 7 to 52 days and the staff didn't
recognize they were healthy, but interestingly enough the other patients caught on. Through note-taking
the people observed the staff to treat the patients as they were not real people.

Section 30: You're Getting Defensive Again!:

Psychology as a study would probably not existed if it were not for a man named Sigmund
Freud. Freud who lived during the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, did not have the
precise scientific support that is necessary to prove theories in today's society, but wrote may detailed
observations of patients to conclude his concept of ego defense mechanisms. These are psychological
weapons that an ego uses to protect one from anxiety that is self-created. Freud's daughter Anna,
expanded on her father's theory.
She identified five basic mechanisms to protect against anxiety. Repression forces disturbing
thoughts out of the consciousness. Regression is used by the ego to defend against anxiety by making
someone to retreat to behaviors of an earlier stage of life that was demanding and safer. An example of
this would be a mid-life crisis. Projection is when you take an anxiety you are experiencing and project
it onto another person and see how it would make you feel. Reaction formation is acting in the
complete opposite way of what your anxiety wants you to. Sublimation is a method of finding
something to do to act on anxiety in a way that is more socially acceptable.

Section 35: Projections of Who You Are:

Hermman Rorschach theorized an important psychological tool called the projective test which
varies based on a person's behavior. There are two widely used projective tests, the Rorschach inkblot
and the Thematic Appreciation Test. A projective test shows someone an undefined shape and asks
what they think the shape is; their answer depends on their personality. He used this test to prove two
things: one, a research tool on personality and two, to diagnose psychopathology. His test used inkblot
shapes to ask participants what they thought the shape was.
He made conclusions based on reaction time, number of responses, number of “passes”, and
what did the subject see. Hermman found that people gave between 15 and 30 responses for ten
pictures. Depressed participants usually gave fewer answers than those who were content.
Schizophrenia patients answered in much less time and normal subjects never refused to answer an
inkblot. He concurred that people who used the whole inkblot to make a picture were more conceptual
thinkers. Responses that were made on color were more emotional.

Section 36: Picture This!:

Henry A. Murray used Rorschach's idea of inkblot identification to further another
psychological study with associate Christina D. Morgan. Like mentioned above, they created the
Thematic Appreciation Test or the TAT. This test focused more on the content of the participants
answers. These pictures were definite shapes and rather than asking identity, people were asked to
make a story about the picture. They were trying to find how unconscious forces affect people's
behavior. The answers of the participants would most likely reflect upon personal experiences.
In the original TAT, people were asked to guess what happened right before the sketch was
drawn, but that limited answers so participants were then asked to make up a story about the sketch.
Morgan and Murray figured out two important things from this study. One being that the stories people
made up usually came from only four sources: books/movies, real-life events with another person, real-
life events by yourself, and person's fantasies. The second was that people associated the pictures to
themselves directly. For example, only the college students titled the people in the photos to be students
and one person wanted to travel the world which carried over to the story.

Section 38: The Power of Conformity:

Conformity is the ability to fit in with the social norms of society. This is a powerful influence
on our behavior because it is very important from many people to be able to be accepted by our peers
and even pressures us to act outside of our morals. Solomon Asch has done much research in this
subject of psychology and contributes to what we know today. Asch wanted to test how strong a
person's behavior is affected by conformity. To study this, Asch collected pairs of cards with three
varying lengths of lines drawn on them and a single card with only one line on it, the same length as
one of the lines on the other card with multiple lines.
A row of people were lined up with one participant on the end. The two cards where held up and
the participant was asked to decide which line on the multiple-line card matched up with the single-
lined card. They ask everyone in the line what the correct answer is and everyone gets it right, they
change the card and do it again and the same thing happens. On the third time, the first 7 people give
the same incorrect answer on purpose and what will the participant on the end do?
Results show that 75% of participants went along with the wrong answer at least one time. With
all the trial combined, the participant gave the wrong answer on third of the time. The control group
was asked to record what they thought was the correct answer even though they said the wrong one and
were right 98% of the time.

Section 39: To Help or Not to Help:

The idea of helping others is categorized in an area of psychology called pro-social behavior.
This area of study has been researched by John Darley and Bibb Latane and they gave the name of
helping others in emergency situations bystander intervention. The most famous case of this is referred
to as the Genovese Case. Kitty Genovese was coming off a late night work shift and was attacked by a
man wielding a knife for 35 minutes and it was witnessed by 38 people of which no one called the
police until 30 minutes. Their mission was to test why people do not do anything to help when
witnessing an emergency.
To test this, students at NYU were split up into separate rooms and told they could speak
through an intercom for 2 minutes to express their personal problems. The participants in group one
were told only one other person could hear them, in group two there would be two, and in group 3 there
were five. The were really alone and other voices were recorded and played back. The tape said the
first student was a male who was embarrassed by his seizures and later went on to have one. For group
one, the response was usually under a minute. In group three, it was over three minutes. Therefore
concluding, the more people they thought were around, the less likely they were to report what was
happening.

Section 40: Obey At Any Cost?:

Stanley Milgram of Yale University began the study of obedience of a higher authority and its
consequences. Milgram believed that a person could lose all of their morals and ethics in order to fulfill
a command that was given by someone of a higher power. To further prove this point, Milgram
needed to create a controlled situation which produced harm to another person by order of authority
without actually hurting the other person. Eventually, Milgram found away to preform this study. He
created an electric chair that was labeled by different levels of electric shock, but designed so that none
of the participants were given painful shocks.
A newspaper ad recruited male participants and told them they would be paid no matter what to
ensure that they could leave at any time. The people in the electric chair and a spare scientist were both
actors and were in on the fake shocks. The participant watched the man in the chair from another room
who was only able to move so much as to press a,b,c, or d for questions and was to be shocked if they
answered wrong. When the participants felt bad, they turned to the instructor who gave the same
response to continue.
Results show that every person continued to the 300 volt level. Only 14 stopped before reaching
maximum voltage even at the sight of the man screaming to be let go. Sixty five percent followed
orders all of the way to the end. They were informed at the end of the experience what the study was
looking for in order to avoid the psychological distress from being forced to hurt someone.