1. The Smith-Garcias are planning for their first baby. Both parents-to-be have had a psychology course and are looking forward to applying the principles they learned from theories and research that address child development.

A. Summarize one main idea or finding of each of the following four researchers.

-Skinner's operant conditioning

-Bandura's social learning theory

-Ainsworth's attachment research

-Baumrind's research of parenting styles

B. Provide a specific example of actions the Smith-Garcias might take to raise their child to produce positive outcomes using each of the the theories below to address the corresponding psychological concept.

-Skinner's operant conditioning:tantrum management

-Bandura's social learning theory: sharing behavior

-Ainsworth's attachment research: self-reliance

-Baumrind's research on parenting styles: self-esteem

 

2. We conducted a variation of Asch's (1951) conformity study in which participants made judgements about the length of lines. We randomly assigned participants to one of two conditions and told them that the study involved perceptual abilities. In the first condition, participants estimated the length of lines after hearing five peole pretending to be participants (confederates) give inaccurate estimates. In the second condition, participants estimated the length of lines without hearing estimates of confederates. As we expected, participants in the first condition were less accurate in their estimates of line length, demonstrating the tendency to conform to majority influence.

A. How would each element below be related to the specific content of the experiment reported in the abstract?

-control group

-deception

-operational definition of the dependent variable

-hypothesis

-debriefing

B. How might participants' estimates of line length in the study be related to the following?

-cognitive dissonance

-Maslow's hierarchy of needs