Superstitions and Behaviour Reactions - Lab Report Example

Superstitions and Behaviour Reactions’ Student’s Name College Introduction Actually, superstition turns to be the supernatural causality belief, that one incident causes another one with no natural process connecting the two incidents for example, prophecies, religion, and witchcraft among others. Superstition turns to be normally applied to practices and beliefs encircling spiritual beings, prophecy, and luck specifically the conviction that it is possible to foretell events to come by particular unconnected earlier incidents. Thus, this paper discusses superstition and the behaviour response towards it. According to (Ono,2000 ), superstitious behaviour was portrayed utilising concurrent reinforcement schedules, within which either 2 or more spatially different reactions were sustained by autonomous plans. In this study, typical superstitions were reported reacting within those circumstances. People exposed to simultaneous change-interval 30-s extermination (VI 30-s EXT) plans frequently reacted quickly on an annihilation button which did not generate reinforcers; diminution or eradication of that behaviour demanded being introduced the changeover delay (COD) which guarded sequential contiguity between reactions on the annihilation button and conveyance of reinforcer generated by a reaction on the uneven hiatus button (Ono, 2000). Comparable superstitious reaction was also found within children and in high school students. The other study on superstition was conducted for testing both learned helplessness and superstition (Matute, 2001). In the study, the moment manipulation of failure feedback was never utilised and yoked participants turned to be just bare to the irrepressible noise condition purportedly contributing to learned defencelessness, they never portrayed deficits of helplessness. Rather than that majority of them built up escape behaviour of superstitious patterns and never learnt that reinforcement (termination of noise) turned to be autonomous of responding (Matute, 2001). An effect of impairment was seen in only a group of participants which was bare to condition of failure feedback. The data imitated inherent well-known control illusion and superstition outcomes, but under the pessimistic conditions of reinforcement which have in general been presumed to direct to the contrary outcome - which is, learned defencelessness which proposed that earlier experiments actually supporting learned defencelessness within people could be elucidated by alternative failure theories or, even annihilation as a result of the consistent failure to obtain the sought for event, instead of the learned defencelessness (Matute, 2001). Actually, more natural out of control conditions turn to follow a haphazard distribution, thus perhaps making it harder for participants to build up and sustain superstitious moulds of recurring behaviour the moment they are exposed innate to (haphazard) irrepressible upshots in comparison to when exposed to non-natural final-trials distribution generated by the procedure of yoke. According to (Weiten, 2013), recent superstitious behaviour studies are apt to attributing it to customary cognitive errors and biases which encourage irrational reasoning instead of the erratic operant conditioning vagaries. Interestingly, a contemporary research discovered that superstitious beliefs possess the capability of enhancing performance. As an instance, golfers who participated in the study who were offered a ‘lucky ball’ dropped extra putts on the putting green in comparison to the control participants (Weiten,). Similarly, participants who were permitted to continue hanging on a lucky charm did better on reasoning and memory chores in comparison to those who gave up their fortune charm. Though they might appear being silly, but superstitions might actually possess an influence on the outcomes of individuals. On the other hand, a study pertinent to this study was carried out on the pigeon. In the study, a pigeon received training on the manner of pecking a disk petite fixed-hiatus schedule (Dews & Skinner, 2004). Afterwards, there was the removal of underpinning contingency, but the reinforcer used to be taken there every 11 sec irrespective of the behaviour of the bird. The outcomes of three weeks of every day sessions portrayed that a considerable pecking rate (roughly one peck in every sec), got maintained, although the reinforcement turned to be merely accidental. This study differed from other studies conducted in relation to this topic in that; the manner turned to be conditioned with intentional reinforcement and afterwards superstitiously maintained. When actions of human beings and animals (bird) are tested, their behaviour is influenced by superstition. It is hypothesised that actions being done when some belief about outcome is being waited more often than not brings expected results. This turns to be in line with the latter study exploring golfers. People with strong beliefs on how to perform action to produce certain results are likely of making the correct predictions which is grounded on their current perceptions. It is hypothesised that highly superstitious people possess more control over irrepressible outcome than the less superstitious people. As such, the effect of highly superstitious people appears to be pronounced over uncontrollable outcome compared to less superstitious people. Method Participants The participants were undergraduate psychology students from the University of New South Wales (Mean age = 19.7 years; 658 females; 458 males). They engaged in an in-class experiment during tutorials as a component of their assessment. Design The study involved two independent variables: me or we (participants performed a contingency judgement on a standard computer) and Bob (participants were informed his results as an imaginary friend). The design of the study was quasi-experimental since the results of Bob was not manipulated, but identified through imagination. Participants completed a series of questionnaires including the Superstitious Beliefs Questionnaire (SBQ). The SBQ is a 26-item scale (having each item scored between 0 and 4) and its aim is assessing levels of superstition in psychologically healthy individuals. Participants were divided into groups based on the score on SBQ. 580 participants were identified to as having scored high superstition. 536 subjects were identified as having scored low superstition. The dependent variable was the number of participants having high scores in high superstition. Materials The experiment was carried on a standard computer (HP desktop computer Dell U2311H 60Hz LCD monitor) within the university computer laboratory. Participants sat at computer terminals and implemented the experiment in a Visual Basic custom software program that permitted stimulus presentation and response recording. This action (i.e., either pressing or not pressing the button) resulted in the light-bulb on the screen being illuminated, or not. Thus there were 4 different categories of trial: press light , press no-light, no-press light, and no-pres no-light. After every 10 trials participants were asked to rate (by moving a slider displayed on the screen) how much control they felt that they had over whether the light-bulb turned on. There was also a second condition in which participants were informed about the results of an imaginary friend (Bob) performing the task, and they were asked to rate the amount of control that Bob had over the light. This was dubbed the ‘passive’ condition, as you did not press the button yourself but were instead asked to rate the amount of control that Bob’s actions had on whether or not the light turned on. There were also 40 experimental trials in the ‘passive’ condition. As per the ‘active’ condition, after every 10 trials they were asked to rate how much control they felt that Bob had over whether or not the light turned on. The task was designed such that pressing the button had no control over whether the light came on. That is, the probability of the light coming on was equivalent if you pressed the button or not. Similarly, the probability of the light coming on when Bob pressed the button was equivalent to the probability of the light coming on when Bob didn’t press the button. (In a small proportion of the trials towards the end of the experiment some participants would have experienced conditions in which there was some control over the light – we are not discussing these trials, as they test a somewhat tangential issue to the focus of the report). Finally, participants were asked to complete a series of questionnaires. One of these questionnaires was the Superstitious Beliefs Questionnaire (SBQ). Procedure Participants were told to choose whether or not to press a button on the screen. The action of either pressing or not pressing the button resulted in the light-bulb on the screen being illuminated, or not. Thus there were 4 different categories of trial: presslight, pressno-light, no-presslight, no-pressno-light. After every 10 trials you were asked to rate (by moving a slider displayed on the screen) how much control they felt that they had over whether the light-bulb turned on. This condition was dubbed the ‘active’ condition, as they were asked to press the button themselves and rate the amount of control you had over the light. In total, there were 40 experimental trials in the ‘active’ condition. Participants then completed questionnaires including the Superstitious Beliefs Questionnaire (SBQ). References Dews, P, B., & Skinner, B, F. (2004). Festschrift for B. F. Skinner. New York (N.Y): Irvington. Matute, H. (2001). Human Reactions to Uncontrollable Outcomes: Further Evidence for Superstitions Rather Than Helplessness. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.48 (2).142-157. Ono, K. (2000). Superstitious Behaviour in Humans. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour. 47 261-271. Weiten, W. (2013). Psychology: Themes and Variations, Briefer Version. Oxford: Cengage Learning. Read More