A few months ago, we posted about how we could use animals for research. Today we are looking at the ethics surrounding the decision to conduct research using nonhuman animals. Most students can reel off the ethics involved in conducting research on humans (informed consent, lack of harm, right to withdraw, privacy, etc.) but when we talk about the ethics … Read More
We’re all just animals, aren’t we?
The question of when to use non-human animal studies as evidence for human behaviour is a tricky one. Because it remains unethical to lesion the brain of a live human to look for a correlation between brain damage and behaviour (at the moment!), animal studies are used in large numbers at the biological approach. However, many people are becoming more … Read More
Is there ever any point in using a questionnaire to measure behaviour?
Bit of a controversial idea this one but I’m going to put this out there: is using a questionnaire to gather data at all helpful in the quest to measure behaviour? Lots of psychologists use this research method, probably because: a) it’s quick to fill in (usually, although I wouldn’t recommend that you start filling in Eysenck’s personality inventory unless … Read More
Research from Psychology Sorted: Social Identity Theory
How we develop our social identity is still a hot topic today, and for those of you studying the effect of technologies, especially social media, on social identity, there is a developing literature on the subject. But we should start with the classic minimal groups paradigm from Tajfel (1971), found in our new book Psychology Sorted, as it is still so … Read More
Psychology Sorted cognitive research: The effect of digital technology on memory and learning
There has been a lot in the news recently about the effect of social media on mental health, but less about the effect on school and university students of reading or responding to texts during lectures. As students expect to be ‘connected’ throughout the day, gradually mobile phones have been finding their way into classrooms and lecture halls. Students often … Read More
Research from Psychology Sorted: Poverty and childhood cognitive development – a biological approach.
This is the first in a series of posts using research directly from our new book Psychology Sorted. The study we’re looking at today is Luby et al. (2013) on how children’s brain development and therefore their cognitive development are affected by poverty. The researchers found that exposure to poverty in early childhood impacts cognitive development by school age. However, the effect … Read More
Social media ‘addiction’ – the evidence.
While most of us think of addiction as the physical and psychological dependence on a substance such as alcohol, cigarettes or any kind of drugs, the word has also been used for psychological dependence on behaviours like shopping, eating, gambling, and now screen time – especially the time that adolescents spend on social media. But what is the evidence for … Read More
Online research
Most of the studies you will want to read can be found online, but some will be behind what is called a ‘pay wall’. This means that your school librarian should be able to help you with access, in that most school libraries will subscribe to at least one online data repository of resources. However, that is no guarantee of … Read More