Author Archives: Haley Elizabeth Hendel

Observational Learning

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“Do as I say, not as I do.” Quite a contradictory statement, isn’t it? In grade school, my best friend’s mother always used to use this phrase. If my friend, Maeve, would say a bad word or do something wrong, she would say, “But mommy, you do it!” and her mother’s response would always be that silly quote. Therefore, Maeve never learned that the behaviors were bad, because although her mom told her not to do or say bad things, watching her mother do it made it seem okay.

A reason that this phrase is not a credible way to teach children between wrong and right is because of Albert Bandura‘s theory of observational learning. Observational learning refers to the process of watching and imitating others. It is a form of learning indirectly, and is especially strong for children, who cannot yet distinguish between wrong and right. It is one of the strongest influencers on children’s behavior, because they like to replicate individuals whom they admire, like their parents and older siblings.

A famous study that illustrates this effect is Bandura’s Bobo Doll Experiment. In this study, children ranging in age from three to six years old were separated into groups. One group watched adults be violent with toys, specifically a Bobo doll. The second group watched adults act non-violently towards the toys. A third group watched nothing. Overall, the children who were exposed to violent adults were also violent towards the toys, especially the Bobo doll, which they hit and kicked almost exactly the same way as the adults they watched did. This study is just one of many proofs of how strong observational learning can be.

Because of researchers like Bandura, people have become more aware of how detrimentally or positively their actions can influence people. Although most research in this field primarily relates to children, observational learning can affect teenagers and even adults. Never underestimate how your actions can affect other people, and never use the excuse to “do as I say, not as I do.”

 

Sources

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/bandura.html

http://psychology.about.com/od/oindex/fl/What-Is-Observational-Learning.htm

Bandura’s Bobo Doll Experiment on Social Learning

 

Haley Hendel

False Memories

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A couple of years ago I was doing the laundry when my sister yelled down to me that her bed was shaking. Since she is typically one to exaggerate, I did not think much of it and told her to calm down. In her classic dramatic fashion, she yelled that she thought there was an animal under her bed and for me to come upstairs. By the time I got up there, the shaking had stopped, which led me to believe I had been right the entire time. Within minutes everyone was posting on Facebook about their houses shaking and asking if anyone else had felt it, and within an hour they were reporting on the news that a minor earthquake had happened in the Eastern United States. I felt like an idiot for making such a mockery of my sister, because she had been right.

Since I was in the laundry room with bother the washer and dryer running, I did not notice the shake at the time. However, whenever I recall the experience, I remember feeling the floor shaking. If the shaking that my sister felt had just turned out to be her being dramatic, I would remember the story as just that. However, since the shaking did end up being an earthquake, I falsely remember feeling a shaking sensation, too.

This memory phenomenon, known as false memories, has to do with your memories being affected by outside sources, such as wording, being told a story about that memory, etc. In my example, the earthquake taking place made me create a false memory of the house shaking. In other examples, such as an eye witness reporting a crime, words used by the questioner to the witness could affect their memory. If the questioner asks a witness of a car accident “Which car smashed into the other?” the witness may remember a small fender bender as a way more severe accident. Because of this, many courts do not count eye witness testimonies as evidence for or against a crime. Another example is memories from childhood. While many of us don’t have our first actual memories before three years old, someone may claim they remember their first birthday party because they have been repeatedly told stories about the event from older relatives who were there.

Though we can create false memories, many of our memories are not false. Actually, most of them are true. Our memory is a very powerful thing and is not easily swayed, but when it is, false memories come into play.

 

Sources

http://psychology.about.com/od/findex/g/false-memory-definition.htm

Illusory Correlation

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Haley Hendel

Psych 100.003

5 Feb 2014

Illusory Correlation

            A couple of weeks ago, I was driving around with my newly licensed sister. Like any teenage girls, we were blasting the radio and singing at the top of our lungs.  She then turned down the music and began telling me about a song by One Direction, “Happily,” that she loved on their new album but never heard on the radio. In what was a large coincidence, “Happily” was the next song played on the radio. Naturally, my sister started screaming that she was a psychic and that the song was playing on the radio because of her. I tried convincing her that it was merely coincidental, but she refused to believe it.

My sister, Tina, who has never taken a psychology class, did not want to believe that her “psychic” prediction was actually an illusory correlation. An illusory correlation is a psychological phenomenon in which a person associates two things that are actually not or barely correlational. Illusory correlations can lead to many things, often more serious than just a person just believing he or she has psychic powers. Illusory correlations are one of the biggest gateways to stereotypes. For example, if a person’s brunette friends do better than their blonde friends on an exam, they could falsely assume that brunettes are smarter than blondes. Because that thought is now in that person’s mind, they will try and find more proof for it, and dismiss any evidence against it, reinforcing the untrue belief.

Proof of illusory correlation stemmed from a study done by Hamilton and Gifford in 1976. They created a hypothesis that stereotypes about minorities came from illusory correlations. The researchers formed two different groups, A (the majority) and B (the minority), and participants were told behavioral sentences about different people from each group, with the same proportion of good traits to bad traits in each group. The researchers found that people more strongly related the bad traits to the minority group, even though they had no more bad qualities than the majority group.

Though that study was done in a laboratory setting, illusory correlations can be seen everywhere, like people connecting pain to bad weather, race to intelligence, etc. In my sister’s case, her mention of “Happily” before it came on the radio led her to believe she developed extrasensory powers, but being that it was actually an illusory correlation, her following guess of what song would be played after “Happily” was indeed wrong.

 

References

McMahon, Mary, and Nancy Fann-Im. “What Is Illusory Correlation?” WiseGeek. Conjecture, 18 Jan. 2014. Web. 03 Feb. 2014.

“IB Psychology @ Pamoja.” IB Psychology Pamoja RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Feb. 2014.