The Theory Of Weapon Focus

The weapon focus effect phenomenon as identified by Loftus 1979, she asked participants to sit outside a laboratory where they thought they were hearing a genuine exchange between people inside the laboratory. In the

The study was set up as a "blind experiment" to capture if and when a person will stop inflicting pain on another as they are explicitly commanded to continue. The participants of this experiment included two willing individuals: a teacher and a learner. The teacher being the real subject and the learner is merely an actor. Both were told that they would be involved in a study that tests the effects of punishment on

Then the participants and confederates were escorted to their testing cubicles. The experiment included a learning phase and two testing phases. The participants were shown and had to study twenty in-group (their ethnic group) or twenty out-group (different ethnic group) faces in the learning phase. Each face was shown for five seconds. After the learning phase, participants completed a memory test. The memory test included twenty new faces and twenty faces from the learning phase. The participant had to then decide if the face was an old or new face. After the first memory test, the participants then answered the following question: “How confident are you in your decision?” by clicking one of six boxes from fifty to one hundred percent. At the end of the task, the participants were distracted with a crossword puzzle. The experiment took the participants answer sheet and filled it out with the confederates answers. On the answer sheet, the confederate provided the opposite answer of the participant to ten faces and the others were marked as they both agreed on the same

The experiment was conducted in a small room with a table upon which the props were located in boxes, there was also a TV which played the videos of confederates, and video recording equipment. T-shirts which were worn by the confederates were strategically placed in the room so as to give the impression that the confederate had just been there. Participants were informed that no one other than the person in the video had used the props, and that they were not obligated to perform any imitation that they felt uncomfortable about.

One might think that this experiment will stimulate the new research in the area of human obedience, but this did not occur. Despite the difficulties and the courage of Burger to conduct a partial replication of the original study, it did not produce any different outcomes and did not spark any new ideas in psychology (Burger, 2009). Instead, the researcher had to deal with an enormous amount of different commentaries and controversy. My main rationale for disapproving the Burger’s study is ethical characteristics of the Milgram paradigm. More specifically, now we have the Ethical Rules of the APA, which tell us that researchers should honor rights of participants to privacy, confidentiality and the right to withdraw the experiment. However, Milgram’s paradigm clearly challenges these fundamental rights and creates even more ethical dilemmas. Another rationale that I can include is the infliction of increasing pain on an unwilling participant, a characteristic that is unacceptable in modern psychological studies. Therefore, I would disapprove such experiment, because of ethical non-compliance and little contribution to the field. As for me, I view following ethical practices in my dissertation project work as a crucial element for success. It will allow me to produce reliable, meaningful and relevant scholarly data that would not be a subject to ethical

Five hundred sixty five students ranging from grade 7 to grade 11 took part in this study. All students enrolled in an

The Stanley Milgram experiment was a great test on how people react to authority. The experiment tested peoples willingness to follow orders. Basically the test consisted of the Teacher, the Learner, and the Experimenter. The Teacher was the subject of the test and he administered shocks to the Learner for

A. Eyewitnesses are frequently able to recall what weapon a predator has in their hands but can’t remember their face (eyewitness identification, fifth paragraph,

Allport, Postman (1947) and Loftus (1974) also support Bartlett’s idea of reconstructive memory. Loftus mainly focused on the reliability of eyewitness testimonies. As done in this experiment, Loftus and Palmer conducted a study on the effects of wording a question differently and how that would affect the answer. In the experiment the researchers used two different verbs on two different test groups. One was “contact” the other was “smashed”. The effect of this was a change in the speed estimated by the participants. The verb “contact” gave an average speed of 32mph while the verb “smash” gave an average of 41 mph in the experiment conducted by Loftus. There is a positive correlation between word use and how memory is retrieved because of it.

However, it produced fewer hits than the simultaneous condition, suggesting that the criterion shift is unaffected by when participants report their decisions. The SPO line-up was also intended to retain the lower false alarm rate of SEQ line-ups by forcing witnesses to make absolute judgments that compared photos exclusively to memory (Gronlund, 2004). However the present results found that the SPO condition significantly increased the false alarm rate. Again, this could be explained by the instruction effect where a cautionary instruction reduces false alarms in a SIM condition but less so in the SPO condition. Furthermore, The SPO condition inferred a greater reliance on memory and it is possible that the increase in false alarms was due to a position effect whereby in conditions where foils appeared similar to the perpetrator, the most recent foil was chosen over the correct suspect because of a stronger memory trace. Gonzalez, Davis, and Ellsworth (1995) and Sporer, (1993) reported position effects in SIM conditions that were alleviated by counterbalancing. However, despite the random presentation as there would be a greater amount of foils than correct targets in the line-up this may not reduce the possibility of selection based upon strength of memory trace when there is less certainty in the absolute decision. Further research should clarify

Psychological Analysis of Firearm Misuse and the Public Perspective of Firearm Violence Colin R. Moran Columbus State Community College, Ohio Abstract Every year, more and more people are subjected to the lifelong fear created by events of isolated firearm misuse. This paper will explore the psychological aspects of firearm misuse, question the means which the media uses to distribute information about the events, and apply published research from various reliable sources to compare and contrast the problems in the methodology we use to approach this issue. This research will also discuss the many hardships that the experts face in predicting and preventing these events, while suggesting possible changes that might lead to improved

The third question was asked to see how many participants seen someone pointing a gun at someone else. This question added fuel to the fire, it engaged the participants even more in the discussion. Two participants stated that they saw someone pointing a real gun at someone else while they were walking down their block. They also, added that it was their first time seeing someone pointing a gun. At this point, they did not know what else to do but run and hide from the person with the gun. This was extremely scary to them because they had never experienced something like this before, besides hearing gun shots but never being a witness of it. Next, two participants never seen someone pointing a real gun at someone else. One participant added,

For this study, Terry studied thirty-nine college students (22 women and 17 men) in groups of 6-8, who were

A cross sectional, correlational online survey was given to 1,169 undergraduate students between the ages of 18 and 58 who all completed

Method Participants: A total of 168 students participated in the survey. The distribution of gender among the Participants were 62.5 %(105) = Female, 36.9% (62) = Male, and .6% (1) = Other. The distribution of year in school was 2.4% (4) = Freshmen, 17.9% (30) = Sophomore, Junior = 50.6% (85) = Junior, and 26.2% (44) = Senior. Convenient sampling was used in this survey as it was easier to get participants based off attending the same university. The survey was administered online, by sending a link to take the survey to the participants. Each student within the class was in charge of getting between 7-10 participants for the survey.