Summary of changes to 2010 exam paper

Comparing past papers with what we have studied (and with the Specimen Question Paper), you will notice some changes. This is because 2009-10 is the first year of a slightly revised version of the Higher. Here are the main differences which affect you:

- Memory now features EWT, and memory improvement is no longer in the spec
- Atypical Behaviour used to be two topics but has now been combined into one
- Both Section C parts now have 20-mark essay questions

Section B is exactly the same. There are a few other minor changes to wording (added/or removed from topics) - if in doubt refer to what is in your booklets and you will be fine.

Chocolate? Coffee?

So as we were speaking about in class: chocolate and depression (or depression and chocolate!)

Chocolate news story

Plus I think I also mentioned the 'coffee makes you hallucinate' one:

Coffee news story

More on the origins and methodology of the F-Scale studies

Levinson & Sanford, two American researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, conducted research which aimed to understand the roots of anti-Semitism- prejudice against Jewish people, which had became particularly prominent due to the policies of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. They pioneered an anti-Semitism scale (the ‘A-S scale’), based on the psychoanalytic theory that prejudice was based on repression of one’s own undesirable characteristics, and projection of these onto an external target.

They found a strong relationship between attitudes towards minorities including Jews and Blacks, as well as ‘superpatriotism’). It was concluded that all of these findings stem from a common syndrome of ethnocentrism. However, a limitation is that the research assumed that participants were white and non-Jewish, as attitudes towards whites were not assessed.
After five revisions, the researchers produced the ethnocentrism scale (the ‘E scale’), containing statements about Jews, blacks, other minorities, and superpatriotism.

With funding from the American Jewish Committee, the study was broadened in the late 1940s. Two Austrian researchers, psychologist Frenkel-Brunswick & sociologist Adorno, joined Levinson and Sanford to study authoritarianism among American workers, and together they wrote the 1950 book, ‘The Authoritarian Personality’.

The theory suggested that the strict, repressive parenting of the Austrian middle-classes should result in high levels of authoritarianism. However, Frenkel-Brunswick conducted extensive interview-based research and found that high F-scores were common among lower social classes too, weakening this aspect of the theory.

Cronbach (1946) pointed out the problem of response set with the F-Scale, where it is hard to distinguish between respondents who agree with the content of the statements, and those who would agree to almost any item. He argued that this is most likely to occur when items are ambiguous, and some items in the F-scale are deliberately written to allow for projection (e.g. “The wild sex life of Romans…”).

To tackle this problem, Bass (1955) attempted a reversal of some items (so for example ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ was changed to ‘familiarity does not breed contempt’) and concluded that three fourths of the reliable variance on the F-scale is due to acquiescence.

Bass, B.M. (1955). Authoritarianism or acquiescence? Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51, 616-623.

Cronbach,L.J. (1946). Response sets and test validity. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 6, 475-494.

Jane Elliot etc

We recently viewed the Jane Elliot 'A Class Divided' documentary, and discussed the ethics of simulating prejudice and discrimination with young children.

Interestingly a similar idea was recently done in a Scottish primary school, prompting a highly negative reaction:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8562798.stm

Social Identity Theory

Social identity theory states that a person’s sense of who they are base on their group membership(s). It originates from the research of Henri Tajfel. There are four main processes involved:

• People have a natural tendency to divide into conflicting groups.
• Our sense of who we are is based on membership of groups e.g. your job, what team you support, and this affects self-esteem.
• We make comparisons, and these are biased towards in-groups, and against out-groups.
• We like our groups to be distinctive from and superior to other groups.

So we divide the world up into ‘them and us’, we bind up our own identity with that of our group, and we make biased judgements in favour of that group. If we perceive that our own group is not different enough or superior enough we try to change that, either by helping our own group, or acting against the outgroup.

Tajfel believed that stereotyping is a normal cognitive process – we tend to group things together. In doing so, we tend to exaggerate the similarities of things within the group, and exaggerate the differences between groups. When applied to people, it leads to a group mentality. Prejudice comes about because for self-esteem to be maintained, our group needs to compare favourably with other groups. Once two groups identify themselves as rivals they are forced to compete in order for the members to maintain their self-esteem.

Tajfel’s work has made him the most influential social psychologist of the present day. The idea that our sense of self is in large part based on group membership has been fully adopted by mainstream social psychology.

However, SIT’s view of self-esteem as based on group membership seems simplistic, given the importance of other factors such as our skills, appearance and abilities. Rubin & Hewstone (1998) failed to find experimental support for the idea that intergroup discrimination elevates self-esteem or that low self-esteem motivates discrimination.

Authoritarian Personality Theory

Authoritarian Personality Theory

The idea of the Authoritarian Personality (AP) was formed in the aftermath of the Second World War, as Adorno and colleagues (1950) tried to explain the attraction of Fascism to certain types of people. Strongly influenced by Psychoanalysis as well as by the character and childhood histories of Hitler and other prominent Fascists and Nazis, the AP theory suggests that a harsh upbringing can lead to a warped personality that values authority very highly. This means not just that they will try to dominate others, but that they value the authorities e.g. government, church and despise anyone who is non-conventional.

The AP theory explains prejudice in that these character traits predict one's potential for fascist and antidemocratic leanings and behaviour. Therefore is explains prejudice mainly as an individual trait rather than as a force in society.

Adorno et al devised a personality scale called the F-Scale which measured attitudes towards authority, work, honour, sexuality and even the occult, asking for opinions on statements like, "People can be divided into two distinct classes: the weak and the strong". People who scored highly were said to have several key attributes, including:

• Conventionalism: rigid adherence to conventional values.
• Authoritarian Submission: submissive, uncritical attitude toward idealized moral authorities.
• Authoritarian Aggression: tendency to condemn & reject outgroups.
• Power and "Toughness": preoccupation with the dominance-submission, leader-follower dimension.
• Destructiveness and Cynicism: generalized hostility, vilification of the human.
• Sex: exaggerated concern with sexual "goings-on."

Later research by Altemeyer et al (1981) found that only the first three of these traits reliably correlate.

The theory become highly popular and well known, but soon began to be rejected by the scientific community (Scott, 1992). The F-Scale was shown to be unreliable, suffering from an ‘acquiescence response set’ – where people are more likely to agree than disagree with questionnaire questions. As all questions were phrased in such a way that an ‘agree’ answer was associated with a higher F-score, it may be that some participants just agreed to most or all without much thought.

The theory itself provided a description of a supposed personality type with out any clear explanation of how people become this way. It was complex, and has been largely superseded by the simpler ‘RWA’ (Right-wing authoritarian) model of Altemeyer. In focusing on personality, it also neglects the social aspects of prejudice.

Cognitive therapy

A couple of queries about cognitive therapy....


Philosophers such as Hume had suggested that emotions lead to thoughts. Cognitive primacy is an idea dating from the work of Magda Arnold in the 1960s, that it works the other way around: our thoughts come first, and our emotions follow. This was influential on the founders of CBT, Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck. Beck, for example, stated that there are three 'faulty views' which lead to depression: So Beck stated that 3 beliefs cause depression and therefore that thoughts come first, and emotion follows after. This 'cognitive triad' includes negative views of the self, negative views of the world and negative views of the future.

For example, a person fails an exam:

Negative view of self - "I'm a failure"
Negative view of the world - "Everyone is against me"
Negative view of the future - "I'll never be good at anything"

It is worth noting that this viewpoint links to theories of stress: Magda Arnold founded Appraisal Theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appraisal_theory) which influenced Lazarus and Folkman's 'Transactional Model of Stress' (1984). The first two stages of this are are the appraisals of the stressor and the self. So again, thought processes are seen to come first, and emotions and behaviour (in this case stress) afterwards.

In reality it is not quite so simple... Schachter & Singer (1962) found that people assess their own emotional state in part by observing their own physiological state, e.g. by how fast their heart is beating. So the interaction between emotions, thoughts and physical states is complex and probably not one-way.