comments for wendy: bet you wont be missing these over summer!

http://statisticalscrutiny.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/is-there-anything-that-cant-be-measured-by-psychologists/#comment-62

http://statssam.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/should-psychology-be-written-for-the-layman-or-should-science-be-exclusively-for-scientists/#comment-59

http://psuc2f.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/are-psychology-participants-to-westernised/#comment-41

http://psychrsjb.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/all-you-need-is-money/#comment-27

Statistics of marriage: …and they will live happily ever after, for the median of 11.4 years .

According the office of national statistics marriages have increased by a whopping 3.7% to 241,100 loved up couples trotting around England and wales…d’awwww! However in 2010 the marriage rate rose to 8.7% people marring per 1000.

An interesting statistics showed that more and more people are opting for a civil ceremony which account for 68% of all these marriages which is 64% more than in the year 2000, showing that a  post card church wedding just isn’t cutting it for some people, and easy explanation for this may be the diminishing influence of religion on people’s lives. So who are these people getting married? Turns out the highest number is those aged 25-29…never the less the greatest percent increase was found in men aged 45-49 and women 30-34 which both rose by 6% between 2009 to 2010

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/marriages-in-england-and-wales–provisional-/2010/marriages-in-england-and-wales–2010.html

So if all this talk about marriage is making you feel romantic have a nice cup of reality… divorce rates!

2010 was a good year for divorce lawyers, 119,589 couple said “screw you” to marriage that’s a romantic raise to 11,1 divorcing people per 1000 of the married population an increase of 4.9 % since 2009 If you look at the graph on this website  http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/jan/28/divorce-rates-marriage-ons

According to the guardian (I’m not taking credit for their work) the peaks seem to correlate with the common factor of there being a recession in the early 80’s,90’s and 2000

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/divorces-in-england-and-wales/2010/stb-divorces-2010.html

The median length of a marriage in 2010 is 11.4 years, and the number of divorces are most common among 41-43 year olds…midlife crisis? When looking back 22% of vows were broken by the 15^th wedding anniversary in the 70’s and this then rose to 33% in 1995 and it keeps going up!

So what an earth is causing these divorces? Answer: women… turns out they like to cheat, are prone to bad behaviour and do a runner… men on the other hand are not that bad only 6,595 cases of divorce on the grounds of adultery compared to 12,150. And here are then numbers from http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.html?edition=tcm%3A77-238035

Cause	Wife, 1990	Husband, 1990	Wife, 2000	Husband, 2000	Wife, 2010	Husband, 2010
SOURCE: ONS
Total	109,565	42,958	98,227	42,311	79,124	40,301
Adultery	25,893	18,143	21,083	12,227	12,150	6,595
Behaviour	60,010	9,370	51,494	11,688	43,186	14,516
Desertion	694	330	411	269	276	214
Separation (2 years and consent)	17,955	10,754	19,559	13,261	16,966	12,897
Separation (5 years)	4,702	4,261	5,647	4,851	6,430	6,016
Others	311	100	33	15	116	63

In conclusion if you are thinking of marriage, look at the stats and then get yourself a dog, they are more loyal.

Comments for Wendy

http://psychosomething.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/crazy-cat-lady-can-she-be-helped/#comment-57 http://psucc3.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/what-you-wear-defines-you-as-a-person/#comment-59 http://psuca8.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/is-applied-psychology-is-more-valuable-than-theoretical-psychology/#comment-63 http://kdjhg.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/using-animals-in-psychological-research/#comment-62

An interesting concept for a POPPS prepared speech. Should have Clive Wearing been tested on if he couldn’t remember giving consent?

For those who were not in the cognitive lecture or can’t remember from last year (tut,tut) Clive Wearing was a BBC musician who suffered brain damage after having a strain of the herpes virus. In this incredibly rare case Wearing suffered extreme damage to the hippocampus resulting in the inability to form new memories or remember anything that happened more than 30 seconds ago. (Wilson, Baddeley, & Kapur, 1995)

Each day wearing would wake from what he thought was unconsciousness and live entirely in the present. It could be argued this sounds like a very lonely existence, being trapped in the present. never the less research by Wilson, Baddeley, & Kapur, 1995 has provided abundance of new information about memory and the nature of memory loss due to wearing’s  case which may go on to help those who suffer memory loss as a result of brain damage. The case has many applications; sadly Clive Wearing will never be aware of how much he has helped and how much his case is talked about. Therefore was it right to publish articles and conduct research on such a vulnerable adult. Or to put it another way, how would you feel if you were tested over and over and on top of that had your personal life and lasting memories explored and talked about and yet you had no memory of this? This raises quite an unpleasant feeling and questions the motion of giving fully informed consent. Surely it would have taken more than 30 seconds to explain the full aims and procedures of any study? And isn’t the point of giving consent to protect the participant? On the other hand ethical approval could have been obtained via wearing next of kin. For example when his wife decided to divorce him he was unable to consent to it legally.

“Clive never knew we were divorced because he was incapable of knowing anything. His family and his consultant agreed it would only upset him at the time, and he would remember none of it afterwards anyway. Legally he could not give informed consent, so his son acted for him”.– http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/3313452/The-man-who-keeps-falling-in-love-with-his-wife.html

However it cannot be dismissed that cases such as  HM and Clive Wearing both offer us with evidence that the Long Term memory is more complicated and seems to contain at least two parts (semantic and episodic)  (Wilson, Baddeley, & Kapur, 1995)

Deborah Wearing 2005. ‘Forever Today – A Memoir of Love and Amnesia’, by Deborah Wearing

(Wilson, Baddeley, & Kapur, 1995)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/3313452/The-man-who-keeps-falling-in-love-with-his-wife.html

comments for Wendy (I feel so sorry for you, I hope they pay you well!)

http://mdscurr.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/why-we-should-not-offend-animals-by-saying-their-results-cannot-be-generalised/#comment-49

http://psucf0.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/a-case-of-bias-in-psychological-research/#comment-46

http://whatalodeofblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/unfortunate-results-of-unpredictable-research-some-times-we-cannot-protect-every-one/#comment-39

http://scarlettrose23.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/the-file-drawer-problem/#comment-96

the link I gave in the blog didn't work (I dont do this blogging malarky )

…psychology being objective?…ha,please!

Biases in psychology by and large come about due to pre-existing ideas and views of the experimenter, and this can influence the way they carry out their research, therefore research done by psychologists themselves produces yet another source of bias.

The hypothetico-deductive method proposes that researchers ought to observe and induce theories on the foundation of these observations . The theories formed can be used deductively to create hypothesis , these are then tested by doing research to yield certain data . The notion is that this is handled in an objective way,to understand our observations in an objective way, to appreciate things how they truly are.

Look at kanizas triangle.. the image above ^^^^^  What do you see? You can probably see a large triangle, even though there is no triangle. How we interpret our observations often relies on pre-existing information , understanding and expectations. This takes account of a number of things. In the instance of observing psychological matters, our expectancies include any pre-existing theories we hold this also effects how we understand our results. When we test our hypothesis, we want to decide what the results mean. This of course will be influenced by what we want the results to mean. Gross,R.(2003)

The types of methods used by psychologists present a source of bias since they limit the phenomena psychologists can learn out about. If we are dedicated to founding our thoughts on evidence, then we can just think about what we have evidence for. Each research method churns out different kinds of information, but the main method for research in psychology is the lab experiment. Experiments comprise of looking for variances between groups . Therefore psychology merely becomes a science of differences (BORING!!!! ) As Richards (2002) eloquently describes it “where the only tool is a hammer everything beings to look like a nail” this fondness for difference studies is exemplified by the amount of studies spotting the differences between genders and  ignoring the similarities. It is also demonstrated by the predisposition for journals to print articles that show a statistically significant difference , but not to print research that fails to show such a difference . The cause for this preference is  probably that science is understood as a search for cause and effect relationships and By using experiments it seems the only way of seeing such relationships with sureness. However, by being absorbed  in showing differences means there are issues that psychology fails to consider.  One could think that such things aren’t of meaning to psychology, just as behaviourism thought about mental processes. (Jones,D. and Elcock,J.2001)

*read Richards ,G.(2002) putting psychology in its place ! … a class book!

Comments for the TA

http://psychrsjb.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/research-led-or-data-driven/#comment-21

http://jessywessywoooo.wordpress.com/2011/11/25/qualitative-research-isnt-as-scientific-as-quantitative-methods/#comment-25

http://1jessicakes.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/22/#comment-37

http://cgpsychblog.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/qualitative-methods-and-psychology/#comment-9

http://psuca2.wordpress.com/how-major-design-flaws-can-mislead-results-and-be-unethical/#comment-40

 

Is it ethical to use animals in psychological research?

Harmful methods are used in some behavioural research, but this is fairly rare and definitely not achieved out of simple curiosity. An examination of articles published from 1979 to 1983 in journals of the American Psychological Association that report animal research indicated that none of the most extreme accusations  that animals were subjected to extreme brutality and death were justified (Coile & Miller, 1984). only 10 % of the studies used any shock treatment , and only 4 %used an unavoidable shock of >.001 ampere (which can be tolerated on the fingertips). Also, 80 % of the studies using shock treatment  or deprivation were financed by esteemed establishments that entail full justification of all trials and a report of purpose. Experiments performed out of mere curiosity are not funded.

Coile and Miller (1984) acknowledged that their study may not embody a perfect assessment of animal research, as they did not inspect non-APA journals and because cases of cruelty may have happened without being stated. Nevertheless, it is sure that as no accounts of abuse emerged in the major established psychology journals, cruel treatment of animals cannot be deemed a dominant trait of psychology. Furthermore, there are procedures that try to stop the cruel, negligent treatment of animals. The majority of research organisations and universities have ethics committees that assess proposals. Regulations and rules for the maintenance and handling of animals have been created by the Federal Animal Welfare Act , these rules are applied through examinations by federal and funding agencies.

The claim that psychological research on animals has not been of any benefit to humans is also unfounded. Such research has been accountable for key developments in human welfare (Miller, 1985). For example, the principles of learning established originally with animals have been used to improve  teaching and to deliver more innovative treatments of enuresis (bed-wetting), anorexia nervosa, and scoliosis. Animal research has developed methods to recuperate function in moderately paralyzed limbs and to treat high blood pressure and migraines . Research on early visual deficiencies in animals has revealed that lasting neurological changes happen, directing the medical community to highlight earlier detection and care of visual defects in babies.

Both arguments about the ethics of animals in research have been guilty of misrepresentation in their disputes on this issue. Cruelty most likely does occur, but is uncommon. Some research may be of dubious validity, however animal research has given rise to in many advantages, moreover, in most cases, no practical alternative exists (Gallup & Suarez, 1985).

Herzog (1988) showed that the verdicts being made regarding moral responsibilities to other species are often fickle and contradictory.  For example the ethical right of a rat is really subjective as to whether it is considered a lab animal, vermin, or pet. To kill the lab rat might be condemned, while to kill vermin or to use them as food for snakes is likely to create little objection. We require neither  a complete ban nor complete warrant, but a somewhat reasonable , educated, and objective assessment together with sensible ethics and the means to implement those standards.

Homework for TA 22/11/11

http://psychrsjb.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/qualitative-research-isnt-as-scientific-as-quantitative-methods/#respond

http://psychblogld.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/qualitative-methods/#comment-17

http://ksgs.wordpress.com/2011/11/18/qualitative-research-method/#comment-22

http://psuca2.wordpress.com/out-with-the-old-and-in-with-the-new/#comment-28