Psychology

1. Psychology Researches Katarina Milenković VIII1

2. Psychology • Psychology is the scientific discipline that studies mental life (processes and characteristics) of humans and animals. Knowledge of psychology is based on all types of data : on the data collected by observing the behavior (objective data), the data of direct experience (subjective data) and the one collected by introspection. • It examines individual and group behavior. The word psychology comes from the Greek words psyha and logos which literally means "the science of the soul". Throughout history, since ancient times, psychology was a branch of philosophy, but in the XVIII and XIX century, it became an independent scientific discipline. • Psychology studies two psychological points, in the lives of people: • Psychological processes • Psychological traits

3. Applied psychology • It is divided on applied and experimental (theoretical) branches. • Some of the branches of applied psychology are: - clinical psychology (which deals with the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders), • industrial psychology (used when selecting workers and general business), • educational psychology (deals with the psychological side of education).

4. Experimental and theoretical psychology • Experimental and theoretical psychologycontains children's, educational, social, developmental, physiological and comparative psychology.

5. Stanford Prison Experiment • Everybody thinks they know well people around them, but this psychology researches proved otherwise. • Famous experiment, which was conducted by Philip Zimbardo at Stanford is one proof for that. Its aim is to examine the effect that the prison environment could have on people's behavior, or the impact of adopted the role of behavior.

6. Selection and realisation • In 1971 a false imprisonment was made in the basement of the mentioned universities and 24 male subjects were randomly selected to participate (with no history of violent behavior or mental disorder), so that they were assigned roles of prisoners and guards. The experiment was supposed to last two weeks.

7. Aggression • After a very short time, students were practically too much involved into their roles – they became aggressive. As the violence threatened to escalate, instead of the planned two weeks, the experiment was terminated after only six days. In this way, it was proved that a certain situation may provoke a certain behavior, regardless of the normal behavior and values.

8. Miligram experiment • There is another research that also proved that even the best and most successful humans can be dangerous. • An experiment in 1961 at Yale University was conducted by psychologist Stanley Milgram. The aim was to examine the willingness to obey an authority even when the given instruction that were not normal. • Participants were told to play the role of a "teacher" and that could give electroshock to his "students" (who were actually collaborators in the research and knew that that was a research) when they gave an incorrect answer to the question. "The student" was in another room and electric shocks of course, were fake - instead of them Milgram was playing recorded sound that showed that students were in great pain and wanted to stop the experiment.

9. Electroshock- yes or no? • Despite the protests from the "students" many "teachers" have continued with the administration of electroshock when the figure of authority (in this case the investigator) said that they do so, increasing the voltage electroshock after each wrong answer, even knowing that the students could be ( false, luckily) dead.

10. Little Albert • Experiment with little Albert was human version of Pavlovs experiment with dogs. It is considered one of the most important experiments of all time, and it was conducted by John Watson and Rosalie Rayner in1920.

11. Little Albert • The subject was little Albert, nine month old boy from a home for abandoned children. In this project he studied, to develop irrational fears through emotional conditioning. Watson Hase put in front of the boy white mouse, who was not originally feared. Then, every time when Albert touched the mouse, he was making a loud noise. After a while, the boy started to show a pronounced fear every time they a mouse appeared in the room.

12. Result • Watson has created a similar conditioned reflex with other animals and objects until Albert felt afraid of all of them, which shows that classical conditioning works with people.

13. Advertising experiment • In this advertising campaign that turned into a social experiment, "naive" subjects, or a couples entered the movies with 150 seats, of which 148 were filled by bikers and dangerous-looking guys, but the only two places were empty in the middle. Some of the couples gave up on the idea of their way to their seats through the "monsters", and those who didn’t give up- they won the award- beer. Cheers

14. Result • What would be wise to do in this situation - to go on the assumption that people in the room are dangerous and avoid the danger? • This experiment showed how we tend to judge people and assume about their behavior based only on looks.

15. Bobo doll • As part of its social learning theory, Albert Bandura conducted the famous Bobo doll experiment in 1961 to prove that human behavior is the result of imitation rather than the influence of genetic factors.

16. Bobo doll • Bandura shared 36 girls and as many boys into three groups and showed them different behavior towards the Bobo doll: the first group to see how they grew aggressive towards Bobo, in the second they were non-aggressive (children in each group were individually exposed to aggressive adult behavior), and the third group was the control one and children in this group has not shown any model. • The results showed that those children who were exposed to aggressive behavior model, showed identical behavior towards the mannequin,(aggressive) while the other two groups showed less aggressive behavior.