OCR A Level Psychology Learner Resource 1 - How ...



Learner Resource 1 - How psychologists study people

There are four common methods of researching people in psychology:

• EXPERIMENTS – (Three different types are - Lab, field and quasi) They involve setting up a situation sometimes in a controlled and artificial environment (researcher decides who when, where, what and how) and then studying behaviour.

• OBSERVATIONS – Watching people with or without their knowledge.

• SELF REPORTS – Asking people what they do or what they feel or think.

• CORRELATIONS – Looking at how two variables (things) are related to each other.

Experiments:

Experiments aim to establish cause and effect relationships.

In an experiment the research will manipulate the Independent Variable so that two or more conditions exist, which allow psychologists to compare the behaviour (Dependent Variable) within the two conditions.

For example;

If I wanted to investigate the effects of an audience on performance I could manipulate the IV to be that in condition 1 participants complete a basketball challenge with only the researcher present and in condition 2 a different group of participants complete the same basketball challenge with the researcher present, along with a group of 20 spectators. The DV would be the score achieved out of 10 – from 10 attempts at how many balls they got through the hoop. I would expect to see results that show the audience causes a difference in the number of shots scored.

Within experiments the researcher should control any potential extraneous variables. These are variables that could influence the behaviour being measured other than the intended conditions of the IV.

So, for example within the audience and performance study an extraneous variable could be how close to the net the participant stands. As a control, all participants from both conditions will stand on the same marked spot when taking the shots. Another extraneous variable could be the basketball experience of the participant – so as another control all the participants could play for the same amateur team.

This study is what we would call an independent measures design because the researcher has split the participants into one of the two conditions. Sometimes studies have the same participants complete the task under condition 1 and use the same participants to complete the task under condition 2 – this is called repeated measures design.

Designing an experiment

Do children learn to be aggressive by watching aggression in others?

Your task is to design an experiment in groups using some of the key words you have been introduced to on the previous pages.

Experiment brief:

You are a psychologist and have been asked to investigate how likely it is that children will copy the violence seen in films if they watch films that are aimed at adults.

1. How could you design an experiment to test this? Briefly outline what you could do. Make sure you mention key psychological terminology such as what your independent and dependent variable will be and how you will manipulate and measure these. What experimental design will you use?

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2. Can you think of any problems you may encounter from the design of your experiment?

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3. As a psychologist that has just researched the effects of media violence, what benefits might it bring to the real world if we find out that children do copy aggressive behaviour from violent content on TV– who would benefit from knowing this information?

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