Philip Zimbardo’s ‘Heroic Imagination Project’ aims to encourage and empower individuals to take heroic action during crucial moments in their lives. His programme draws on decades of research into power of situational forces and is an excellent example of the development of psychological knowledge over time culminating in a potentially critical application that could undoubtedly…
What if Mr Wallace was your best friend?
Did you know! Rochat and Blass (2014) revealed an unpublished replication completed in 1962 where Milgram asked the participants to ‘bring a friend’ who went onto play the role of the learner. In this condition obedience plummeted suggesting that heroic acts to protect one’s own community are the extension of ‘ordinariness goodness’, (Rochat and Modigliani 1995).
Apologies!
Heartiest apologies to all psychologyrockers, teachers and students alike; I have been away from my site for around 2 months as my daughter has been very ill and we have been in and out of hospital numerous times. I have been off work looking after her and it has been a very stressful time for…
Criminal Contemporary Study; Tip for the teachers
Hi second post of the day. I have just spotted a cross over in the specification for criminal psychology. I hadn’t spotted this before as its not a topic that I teach but could be useful in terms of revision. Pupils need a study that supports the use of both their cognitive behavioral treatments for…
Command term ‘analyse’ – one for the teachers ;)
Hi everyone. A question came up on my Hodder teacher training day on Wednesday, that I fudged a little bit as I couldn’t quite remember the rationale for my response. Anyway, here’s the deal. The question was about the use of the command term ‘analyse’ in Edexcel exam papers. Analyse is in the taxonomy, which…
Reflecting on the psychology of heroism
What follows was written as an example of an essay for an Edexcel Key Question asking ‘How can social psychology be used to explain heroism?’ it contains descriptive material about the KQ, application of psychological concepts, theories and research and some discussion/evaluation. See if you can spot the differing components. Heroism involves voluntarily putting oneself at…
Little known Puerto-Rican Milgram replication
How beautiful is this island paradise eh? Welcome to Puerto-Rico! There are very few reported Milgram replications in collectivist cultures and therefore I was pretty excited when I stumbled over this one by Steve (1971). The study was conducted in Puerto Rico which scores fairly low for IDV (27/100) and therefore can be called a…
The Sworn Virgins of Albania
This is Qamile Stema’s, this person is one of the last ‘Sworn Virgins of Albania’. In traditional Albanian culture, women have been allowed to give up their female identity and instead identify as men, often in order to support their families when their male counterparts have been died. Social identification means they adopt male behavioural…
Beware the demagogue!
Demagogues, also known as ‘rabble-rousers’, are political leaders who speak directly to people’s fear and insecurities, feeding the view of the world as a dangerous and threatening place; just the sort of views that Altemeyer (1981) has linked with the development of Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA), an ideological attitude dimension which is heavily correlated with…
Authoritarianism alive and well
Still reeling from the Holocaust, Jewish immigrant Theodor Adorno (1950) was one of the first to make a concerted effort to understand receptivity to Fascist ideology. Understanding in this area has developed over the decades but with the rise of the Alt-Right and the sickening scenes in Charlottesville, USA, in August 2017, the importance of…
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