The psychology that is being investigated in the studies

Yamamoto

Altruism - the willingness to do certain things/doing certain things for someone else even if it disadvantages yourself. Empathy - the ability to understand the emotional state of someone else by imagining what it would be like to be in that situation.

Laney

False memories People's memories of events in their own lives can be incorrect/not real. False details about real events and entirely false events can be added to a person's memory storage system/mixed together. From all of the stored information, people can reconstruct 'memories' for events/imagined events. Doing things like 'filling in the gaps' and using false information gets embedded in actual information. As a result of this people form 'new' memories that contain information that is not correct.

Saavedra and Silverman

Investigated evaluative learning/classical conditioning. A person comes to perceive (evaluate) a previously neutral object or an event negatively. The person negatively evaluates the object/event without anticipating any threat/danger. This negative evaluation elicits a feeling of disgust rather than fear. Differs from Classical Conditioning as the person is being cognitively active by thinking about disgust and consequences rather than being a passive organism.

Saavedra and Silverman

Phobias were investigated - these are when people develop some irrational fear of an object/situation. Operant conditioning - one example of this is using a reward to increase the probability of a behaviour being repeated. Classical conditioning - this is when stimuli are associated together after several pairings happen.

Pepperburg

Social learning - this is when a person/animal observes and imitates a chosen behaviour. The concepts of same and different - this is about understanding whether two objects share a feature such as matter or not. Animal cognition - this is about whether non-humans have the ability to think and reason.

Bandura

Social learning theory People pay attention to/observe the behaviour of a role model. They then retain that information in their memory. They will then imitate/reproduce the behaviour if they feel capable. If they witnessed the model get rewarded (vicarious) then they are more likely to repeat/try to repeat. The imitation is seen as more probable if the role model is of the same sex (as the observer).

Schacter and Singer

The two factor theory of emotion Physiological + cognitive Cognitions arising from a situation can be interpreted via past experiences and this allows us to understand/label the emotion. When someone experiences an emotion, physiological arousal happens. They need a cue to be able to label the physiological arousal. This may result in misinterpretations of the emotion as it is based on the physiological arousal.

Baron-Cohen

Theory of mind This refers to our ability to attribute mental states to ourselves and others. These can be desires, emotions etc. It is also about how we use this knowledge to explain the actions of other people/understand others. It is also about how we use this knowledge to predict the actions of others. We use this knowledge to understand that people may have different ideas and hold different emotions to us.

Piliavin

This is when a person is less likely to take responsibility for their actions/inactions when others are present. That is, the more people are present, the less likely a person may help someone who is in need. There is also an idea that responsibility is shared (in the group). Also, if they do decide to help then they will take more time to do so. People have the belief that 'other people' will help someone out if they are around. An example was seen in the Kitty Genovese case where some people believed others would help her