Nostalgic Notes

I was looking back at my old files in MyDocuments and happened across some mock Psychology Synoptic Exams I had. I absolutely adore psychology and thought that this piece is humourous as well as inciteful and just felt like sharing it really...



What else are blogs for, eh?


Errol:


Errol is a very attractive young man, all of his friends agree. He has a muscular physique and a fine dress sense. Errol is prescribed glasses but doesn’t wear them because he thinks they ruin his good looks. His friends think he is extremely vain.


A. A psychodynamic view would see that Errol’s vanity would have developed in childhood. A vain personality is seen in the Genital psychosexual stage; which means Errol must have been fixated. If Errol’s father had left when he was younger then the Oedipus complex competition, between himself and his father would not have taken place and Errol would have had his Mother’s entire attention. But in the genital stage when Errol was looking for a father figure to imitate he had none and so got fixated. In relation to his disdain towards wearing his glasses he may be repressing childhood memories of being bullied because he wore them. Or perhaps he remembers his father wearing them and because his mother speaks so badly of his father he has fought the id’s want to hate his father and his superego’s need to love both your parents by employing the ego defence mechanism of displacement onto the glasses so he does not look like his father.

A behaviourist may see Errol’s vain behaviour as being learnt. If Errol went to the gym to build his muscular physique the operant conditioning theory would say that he had direct reinforcement of praise from friends, such as “well done, keep at it, you are looking great.” This attention focused reinforcement would increase the likelihood of the behaviour happening again. Through the social learning theory we could see that Errol used observational learning to see that celebrities and people with lots of money and admiration always took care of the way they looked and dressed in nice clothes. He used these people as role models and imitated their behaviour because of the strong vicarious reinforcement.

B. My psychodynamic explanation is deterministic as Errol had no free will and must have developed his vanity because of a manifest behaviour from childhood, but it may have developed when he got older as this is when our bodies begin to change and we take notice of ourselves and others. It is also reductionist because it does not account for these biological factors or that the behaviour may have been learnt. However it does explain his individual differences, and provides a reason of a subconscious motivation as to why he won’t wear glasses. Although this research is gender and culture biased on middle aged Victorian Viennese ladies.

B) The reductionist behavioural explanation has not accounted for any feelings that may be involved or the biological changes in a person’s body that attracts them to other people and makes them aware of themselves. It is also deterministic as it says the behaviour must be reinforced, but most people dislike vanity and so this behaviour would most likely not be reinforced and so, according to the model, Errol wouldn’t be vain. However it does provide a good argument and has high truth value as compliments do give people motivation to continue such things as going to the gym to obtain a muscular physique and bullies can stop people wanting to wear glasses.

C) Psychoanalysis uses personal based research such as case studies. To test out the theory of vanity in young men who were raised by single mothers from the age of five we could do a meta-analysis of that certain group of young men. To do this we would need to interview the men’s family and friends, and ask them to rate the individual’s vanity, with questions such as how long do they take to get ready. The vain individual would also participate in psychotherapies such as word association with the words like glasses, mirror, father, admiration and clothes.

D) Although case studies do give in depth views into a personal history and can provide a lot of answers for certain behaviour, it only gives one account for that; therefore it can’t be generalised. Vanity is also hard to measure; it is an abstract notion that everyone perceives differently.

C) Using a matched pairs design, by age, lifestyle and personality, we could test the operationalised hypothesis of does positive vicarious reinforcement make someone admire and want to identify with a role model. In the study the two groups would either see a short film of a well dressed good looking person getting lots of attention and praise or a badly dressed and unattractive person being ignored and shunned by others.