C2: Social Psychology Flashcards
Milgram: aim
To investigate whether participants would show obedience to an authority figure who told them to administer electric shocks to another person
Milgram: method
Controlled observation, believed to be an experiment by Milgram
Milgram: sampling technique
self-selected or volunteer sampling with participants being obtained through newspapers asked for volunteers to take part in a study of memory and learning at Yale University
Milgram: participants
40 males aged 20-50 drawn from the New Haven area of Connecticut USA with a range of occupations and backgrounds
Milgram: rewards
$4.00 for taking part regardless of what happened after they arrived
Milgram: materials
- Electric shock generator with a row of 30 switches from 15-450 volts in 15 increments
- Electric chair with restraining straps
- Predetermined list of word pairs, with right/wrong answers
Milgram: procedure
- 3 roles (experimenter, learner, teacher)
- All participants were introduced to the learner as as another participant
- Teacher then took the learner into the adjacent room, strapping into the chair.
- Electrode paste was applied to the learner’s wrists fo prevent blisters and burns from electric shocks.
- Real shock to teacher of 45 volts
- Learner asked to learn pairs , the participant would give him one of the words in pairs along with four others
- Answers communicated by pressing for switches
Milgram: who was the experimenter played by?
31 year old biology teacher. He wore a grey technician coat and appeared stern and emotionless throughout the experiment
Milgram: who was the victim played by?
47 year old accountant
Milgram: prods given
1) Please continue/ Please go on
2) The experiment requires that you continue
3) It is absolutely essential that you continue
4) You have no choice, you must go on
Milgram: how are participants classed?
Obedient or disobedient
Milgram: quantitative results
- 100% of participants shocked up to 300 volts
- 65% of participants were obedient and gave shocks up to 450 volts
- 35% of participants were disobedient and stopped sometime between 300 and 450 volts
Milgram: qualitative results
- Many participants showed signs of extreme nervousness
- Participants sweat, stuttered, bit their lips, dig fingernails into their skin
- Nervous fits of laughter
- Seizures observed by 3 participants
Milgram: conclusions
Milgram was therefore arguing that an important factor influencing behaviour is the situation a person is in. He believed that we often make dispositional attributions about behaviour, which are incorrect. That is, we often believe a person has behaved the way they do because of their personality when in fact the situation which shaped their behaviour. Germans are not different
Milgram: reasons for obedience
- Locality of the study
- Believed learner had given voluntary consent
- Felt under obligation to continue as a result of reward money
- Participant had been assured shocks were painful but not dangerous
Bocchiaro: aim
To investigate the rates of obedience and whistle-blowing in a situation where no physical violence was involved by where it was quite clear the instructions were ethically wron
Bocchiaro: additional aims
1) To investigate the accuracy of people’s estimates of obedience, disobedience and whistle blowing in this situation
2) To investigate the role of dispositional factors in obedience, disobedience and whistle blowing
Bocchiaro: method
Controlled observation
Bocchiaro: participants
149 undergraduate students, 96 females an 53 males from the VU University of Amsterdam
Bocchiaro: how were they recruited?
Via flyers placed around the cafeteria
Bocchiaro: rewards
All participants were either paid 7 euros or given a credit for taking part in the study
Bocchiaro: pilot studies participants
92 participants took part in the pilot studies
Bocchiaro: how many participants were removed from the original study and why?
11 because of their suspiciousness about the nature of his study
Bocchiaro: pilot studies
8 pilot studies were conducted before the main study was carried out. Pilot tests are small scale preliminary tests carried out to assess the suitability and identify any issues that might need to be resolved
Bocchiaro: ethics
- Informed of potential benefits/risks of taking part
- Right to withdraw without penalty
- Confidentiality
Bocchiaro: procedure
- Participants greeted in the lab by a male Duty experimenter who was dressed formally and has a stern demeanour
- Asked to provide a few names of other students
Presented with the cover story - Mailbox and Research Committee forms found in the second room
- After 7 minute interval, experimenter returned and invited participants back to the first room
- Given two personality inventories, probed for suspicion and debriefed
Bocchiaro: how were the participants classed?
Obedient, disobedient or whistle blowers (open or anonymous)
Bocchiaro: what measured the six major dimensions or personality?
60 item HEXACO-PI-R
Bocchiaro: what were the six dimensions of personality in the HEXACO-PI-R?
- Honesty-humility
- Emotionality
- Extraversion
- Agreeableness
- Conscientiousness
- Openness to experience
Bocchiaro: what is SVO?
This means Social Value Orientation inventory which is used to measure relatively stable preferences for particular patterns of outcomes for oneself and others by using a nine item measure
Bocchiaro: what did SVO test class people as?
Prosocial, individualistic, competitive
Bocchiaro: what were the scores students predicted when asked ‘what would you do?’
- 6% indicated they would obey
- 9% indicated they would be classed as disobedient
- 5% believed that they would be classed as whistle blowers
Bocchiaro: what were the scores students predicted when asked ‘ what would the average student at your university do?’
- 8% said the average student would be obedient
- 9% said the average student would be disobedient
- 3% said the average student would be a whistle blower
Bocchiaro: what percentage of participants were classed as obedient?
76.5%
Bocchiaro: what percentage of participants were classed as disobedient?
14%
Bocchiaro: what percentage of participants were classed as whistle blowers?
9.4%
Bocchiaro: what percentage of whistleblowers had or hadn’t wrote a message?
6% said they had written a message (anonymous whistle blower)
3.4% had refused to write the message (open whistle blower)
Piliavin: aim
To investigate the effect of the following variables on helping behaviour:
- Type of victim
- Race of the victim
- Group size
- Modelling
Piliavin: participants
4,450 men and women who travelled on the 8th Avenue IND in New York City between 59th and 125th street weekdays between the hours of 11:00am and 3:00pm during the period from 15th April-26th June which travelled through Harlem to the Bronx
Piliavin: racial make up difference of participants
45% black, 55% white
Piliavin: mean number of people per car and in the critical area
43, 8.5
Piliavin: method
Field experiment
Piliavin: dependant variables
- Time taken to help the drunk/ill victim
- The total number of passengers that helped each victim
- The gender, race and location (critical/adjacent) of every helper
- Spontaneous comments made by passengers
- Gender, race and location of every passenger in the critical area
- Movement of any passengers out of the critical area
Piliavin: hypothesis
- The ill and cane victim would receive significantly more help than the drunk victim
- A bystander will be more likely to help a victim of their own race
- Seeing another person (model) help would lead to more helping behaviour from the bystanders than when a model did not step in to help
Piliavin: procedure
- 4 Columbia General Studies students, females observed and recorded data whilst the male played the role or the model and the victim
- As the train past the first station, the victim staggered forward and collapsed remaining still looking at the ceiling until help is received.
- Around 9-8 trials were run per day
- 38 trials with drunk victim, 65 with ill
Piliavin: spontaneous help received on the trials for the cane victims
62/65 trials (95%)
Piliavin: spontaneous help received on the trials for the drunk victims
19/38 trials (50%)
Piliavin: median time taken to help the cane victim
5 seconds
Piliavin: median time taken to help the drunk victim
109 seconds
Piliavin: percentage of first helpers being male
90%
Piliavin: qualitative results
More comments from passengers were obtained in the drunk condition than in the ill condition. Similarly, most of the comments were made on the trials where no help was given within the first 70 seconds. Many women made comments such as ‘its for men to help’ or ‘you feel so bad when you don’t know what to do’
Piliavin: conclusions
- Drunk is helped less often because the perceived cost is greater, helping a drunk is likely to cause disgust, embarrassment or harm
- Woman help less often than men because the cost to them in terms of effort and danger is greater and, since it may not be seen as a women’s role to offer assistance, the cost of helping is less
Levine: aim
To examine the tendency of people in the largest city of each of the 23 countries to help a stranger in a non-emergency situation. Specifically to investigate:
- if helping behaviour is universal or
- if helping of strangers changes between cultures
- whether particular characteristics of a community are associated with the tendency to help strangers
Levine: participants
23 different countries chosen from widest sampling of regions, 1,198 participants took part in the study selected by the second one to cross a certain line on a pavement
Levine: method
Quasi experiment as it was carried out in the participants natural environment
Levine: independent variables
City the study was carried out in, helping measure
Levine: dependent variables
Rate of helping for each country
Levine: other variables used for analysis
- Population size
- Economic prosperity
- Cultural values
- Walking speed
Levine: dropped pen condition
- Walking at a carefully practices, moderate pace the experimenters walked towards a solitary pedestrian passing int he opposite direction
- When 10-15 feet away from the participant, reached into their pocket and accidentally dropped their pen behind them
Levine: hurt leg condition
- Walking with a heavy limp and wearing a clearly visible leg brace the experimenter would accidentally drop a magazine and then, unsuccessfully reach down to get it
- Done 20 feet of passing participants
Levine: helping a blind person
- Experimenters dressed in dark glasses and carrying white canes pretended to be a blind person needing to cross the street
- Step up to the corner just before the light turned green, hold out their cane and wait until someone offered help
- Trials were terminated after 60 seconds or when the light turned red and the experimenter would walk away from the corner
Levine: controls
- All experimenters were college age, dressed neatly and casually and all male
- All received detailed instruction sheets and on-site field training for their acting roles, participant selection and scoring
Levine: correlational results
Cities that are more helpful tended to have lower economic prosperity
There was no relationship between population size or collectivism and helping
Levine: percentage of helpfulness in simpatia and non simpatia countries
Simpatia = 82.87% Non-simpatia = 65.87%
Levine: top 5 most helpful cities
1) Rio de Janeiro
2) Costa Rica
3) Malawi
4) India
5) Austria
Levine: 5 least helpful cities
1) Malaysia
2) United States
3) Netherlands
4) Bulgaria
5) Taiwan
Levine: conclusions
Helping behaviour in a non emergency situation is not universal as it varies between cities. The only characteristics of cities measured in this study that correlates with helping is economic prosperity, poorer cities tend to have higher rates of helping but helping was not related to city size or pace
