Psychology Case Studies Essay Research Paper Psychology

Psychology: Case Studies Essay, Research Paper

Psychology experiments are usually long, painstaking surveys and tests that sometimes take years to complete. They do, however, give us some insight into how the human mind works and develops from the day we are born to the day we die. Deciphering the information these experiments generate is sometimes just as hard as performing them, and to a person with no background in psychology it is almost impossible. The following three experiments were found on the APA website and are good examples of modern psychological research.

The first experiment I am going to discuss concerns the effects of marital status, income, and family functioning on African American adolescent self-esteem. It was conducted by Jelani Mandara and Carolyn B. Murray and supported in part by the National Institute of Health Grant. The experimentation took place in Southern California using a sample of one hundred sixteen children that were fifteen years of age; sixty-four percent of these children were female. The families were selected from lists of parents in four school districts and were reflective of the general trends for African American families in Southern California according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census.

To determine parental marital status and average family income the testers simply asked the parents of the children. The rest of the variables were determined by two tests given to the children. The first test was the Multi-Dimensional Self-Esteem Inventory (MDSEI), which is a 116-item test to assess the individual aspects of self-esteem in each child. These aspects are feelings of competence, personal power, lovability, likeability, self-control, moral self-approval, and body functioning. The second test given was the Family Environment Scale (FES), which consists of 90 true of false type questions to assess the environment within the family and its functioning. This test has proven accurate many times with African American families even though the norms were determined from 285 predominately middle and upper class European American families.

Each child was given $10 to partake in the tests and took them whenever was convenient. The results showed that boys with parents who are divorced are mainly at risk of developing a low self-esteem. It also showed that family functioning was directly related to self-esteem in both boys and girls.

I believe that this experiment was set up and conducted very well. The experimenters used a sample that was proven to be representative of the population they sought to test, and used testing methods that were tried and true. Testing conditions were not kept controlled but this probably had a minimal effect on the children’s responses. There were no noticeable errors in the experimentation other than the relatively small sample used and its limited application to other localities across America.

The second experiment deals with the development of concern for others in children with behavior problems. Various people in both the National Institute of Mental Health and the Department of Psychology at the University of Colorado conducted it. Funded by the National Institutes of Health Intramural Research Program, the experiment was part of an ongoing study of children at risk of developing behavior disorders.

The sample for this experiment was taken from a major urban community and consisted of fifty-one male and thirty-one female children four to five years of age, most of whom were Caucasian and from the middle to upper class. Children that had any physical or mental disabilities were not used in this experiment. To determine the level of risk each child had for developing disruptive behavior disorders parents and teachers were given forms to fill out about their children. The mother of the child in question was given the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and the Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory, and his or her teacher was given the Teacher Report Form (TRF) and the Preschool Behavior Questionnaire. Using each child’s individual scores on each test the children were separated into groups of low, moderate, and high risk.

After this each child was observed on three separate occasions, the first of which consisted of three separate sessions about two to three months apart. In the first session at Time 1 the child’s response to a female experimenter showing signs of distress were observed. In the next session the child’s heart rate was recorded while they watched at twelve-minute video. The video consisted of eight different emotional events being experienced by children and showed a star field in between each event for fifteen seconds. In the last session the child’s responses to someone showing signs of distress were again observed, only this time it was the mother of the child who simulated the suffering. Six months after this mothers completed the Child Rearing Practices Report in order for the testers to learn more about the environment each child grew up in.

At Time 2 each child’s response to distress showed by his or her mother and an experimenter was again observed. Also both the children’s and mother’s reports of each child’s empathy were recorded. This was all done during a single session and made use of the Bryant Empathy Scale and the My Child measure. The Bryant Empathy Scale was taken by the children and consisted of twenty-two true-false typ