Including information on reality TV Shows and some experiments you can try yourselves!

Psychology is defined as “the scientific discipline that examines humans and animals to try to understand their actions and thoughts” It is split into many different categories: Developmental and educational psychologists are concerned with how humans develop and how they learn. Clinical Psychologists look at mental health problems and how to treat them Biological psychologists and neuro-psychologists investigate brain structures and functions,as well as genetic factors and hormones Personality psychologists study the person and the self, how it develops, and how it may affect people's behaviour Cognitive psychologists are concerned with the analysis of mental processes such as perception, memory, thought and language Social psychologists study how people influence other people, how they perceive them, and how they interact with them.

Solomon Asch’s Research on Conformity Here are the stages to the experiment. First look at the lines. Try to guess which line is the nearest in height to line X. After the votes has been cast you are welcome to change your mind in the re-vote.

The Results! As you can see from this drawing, line B is most similar to X. If others tell you it is A, you might not trust your own judgment. This is an example of social pressure which is very powerful In this experiment, stooges were used to say answer A to get you to say it to! Asch found this when he did it. Individually you are more likely to say the right answer.

1.People were given the role of the teacher or the learner (the learner being a stooge. 2.The teachers were told that they were to give electric shocks to the learners to aid them with a learning task. These started at 15 volts. 3.For every mistake the learner made, the teacher had to increase the voltage to a maximum of 450 volts. This was marked “danger: severe shock on the machine they used. 4.All the participants went to 300 volts and 70 % continued to 450 volts. 5.They obeyed a higher power, believing that they were doing great harm to the learner.

The results This test is partially based on research by Dr. Max Luscher who has been hired by some of the world's largest companies as a consultant. The test itself is based upon fundamentals in color psychology. With years of research by colour psychologists the characteristics of certain colours has been identified to cause an emotional response in people. This was done by studying the response from hundreds of thousands of test subjects around the world in order to isolate how certain colours make us feel. By doing the reverse, using the colours people prefer to determine how people feel, we can get some interesting indicators about a person's current emotional state. It is important to understand that the results from tests like this can be both short-term and long-term in their meaning. For example, if you are feeling depressed about something when you take the test you may see this reflected in your results. You may also notice deeper conflicts showing themselves consistently if you take the test time and time again. This test can be taken quite often and still yield results that are accurate. The results will not be the same each time you take the test, for the most part, unless you are taking them without some time interval between them. It is important to understand that the results from tests like this can be both short-term and long- term in their meaning. For example, if you are feeling depressed about something when you take the test you may see this reflected in your results. You may also notice deeper conflicts showing themselves consistently if you take the test time and time again. This test can be taken quite often and still yield results that are accurate. The results will not be the same each time you take the test, for the most part, unless you are taking them without some time interval between them.

An example of one of these is the BBC two show “The Experiment”. This is a recreation of the infamous “Zimbardo Prison Experiment”. This involved taking a group of ordinary people and splitting them into 2 groups of prisoners and guards. The job of the latter was to keep order by any means necessary. The original experiment had to be stopped after 6 days because of concerns for the prisoners’ safety. When re-designing the experiment, Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher had to think of what they were trying to achieve…

The expectations Our overall expectation was that people would not automatically accept their roles. For this reason we wanted to look closely at whether and when people take on a role that has been thrust upon them (Prisoner or Guard) and begin to define themselves in terms of that role. In our terms, when does a role become a social identity? We predicted that people would only work together and be effective when they shared a common social identity. Moreover, although social identity should make the Guards more effective in maintaining the system, social identity should provide the basis on which Prisoners are able to resist and challenge the inequalities of the Prison. So, how people see others and how they behave will depend upon the identities that they adopt at different stages of the study.

Stage 1 For the first three days, both Prisoners and Guards were expecting a Prisoner to be promoted to a Guard. Under these conditions we expected the Prisoners to try and show that they were really most unlike the other inmates and that they deserved the promotion. In other words, the Prisoners would be expected to compete against each other as separate individuals rather than accepting their common identity. This competition to 'be good' would make resistance most unlikely. So, in Stage 1 we predicted that the Prison would run smoothly, with limited conflict between Prisoners and Guards.

Stage 2 After the promotion, the groups would be set. The Prisoners could no longer improve their lot by showing how 'good' they were as individuals, they could only do so by changing the position of the Prisoners as a whole. We therefore expected increased acceptance of the Prisoner identity and, from that, increased resistance against the Guards. Stage 2 would therefore be a stage of conflict between Prisoners and Guards.

Stage 3 If the Prisoners challenged the Guards this would set up a fight for power within the system. However it would not really be a challenge to the system, since it ignores the less visible but more complete power of us, the experimenters. In the system we had created the Guards were not truly in charge. They were more like middle management who do the dirty work for the bosses. So we were interested to see whether things would move on to a further stage. Would it be possible for the Guards and Prisoners to unite as participants in order to challenge the system we had created? To answer this question we wanted to introduce a new perspective based on the notion of 'rights'. We did that by briefly introducing a new Prisoner into the system. He was a genuine participant like the others, but we expected that his long Trades Union experience would provide a new perspective on how people should see their identities: not as a Prisoners vs. Guards but as Participants vs. Experimenters.

To summarize  People have different personalities that cannot all be detected by a single test  Different psychologists study different branches. There are many of these.  People have tried experiments to try to discover how people react to different situations. These are not always a success but can produce some surprising results