Key practical and key question- Social Psychology Flashcards
What is the title of the key question?
How can knowledge of social psychology be used to reduce prejudice in situations such as crowd behaviour or rioting?
What is crowd behaviour?
Crowd behaviour means how people behave differently when in large groups. It occurs because people feel anonymous in crowds and lose sense of identity
What are riots?
Riots are when crowd behaviour involves lashing out, when expressing protest or sense of grievance
What is an example of a riot?
The London 2011 riots caused by the shooting of a black man, Mark Duggan, by the police
-Rioting, arson and looting spread throughout London and this lasted for 5 nights causing many injuries and fatalities
-846 offenders were in prison for offences relating to the London riots
How is studies of social psychology applying to the key question and 2011 riots?
Social Identity theory - when people join a large crowd, they change their social identity because they see the crowd as a new ingroup and everyone else as an outgroup proven through social identification. This makes them less respectful of property of law causing the rioting, arson and looting during the 2011 London riots
Realistic Conflict theory - The crowd might be in competition of scarce resources with another group to cause a race riot
Agency theory - there may be authority figures in the crowd. The crowd might feel moral strain about using violence but by entering agentic state, they feel the organisers are responsible and take less responsibility themselves
Social Impact theory - Police lose control over a riot when the numbers get too large due to division of impact. If police increase presence, this restores social impact
What is the title of the key practical?
Are males or females more obedient?
What are the hypotheses?
One tailed - 6th form female students will have higher obedience rate on questionnaires compared to 6th form male students
Two tailed - there will be a significant difference between obedience levels on a questionnaire of male and female 6th form students
Null - there will be no significant difference between obedience of male and female 6th form students due to an obedience questionnaire. If there is, it is due to chance
What is the sample of the key practical?
Opportunity sample from local 6th form common room
-10 female students aged 16-18
-10 male students aged 16-18
What is the procedure of the key practical?
Each participant signed a consent form
Each participant was given the same questionnaire to complete in 5 minutes in a silent room individually
-21 questions: 20 quantitative questions including 5 filler questions and 1 qualitative question
Upon completion, participants would be debriefed
Measures of central tendency used to calculate quantitative findings
Thematic analysis used to calculate qualitative findings
What were the findings of the key practical?
-For quantitative analysis, females had a mean score of 6.7 and males had a mean score of 5 so females scored higher in obedience levels than males
-For qualitative analysis, of 20 participants, 11 said they’d cheat and 9 said they wouldn’t. Of the 11, 7 were male and 4 were female indicating females are more obedient than males
Evaluation of key practical
-One strength is the procedure is standardised as they all had the same questionnaire and given the same amount of time to complete. This means the procedure is replicable and we are able to draw findings and comparisons on obedience of males and females
-One weakness is the sample size was too small, and only from one 6th form and only between the ages 16-18 therefore lacking generalisability
-Another strength is the study has internal validity. The filler questions allowed for participants not to guess the aim of the study, reducing demand characteristics thus enhancing validity of the study
-Another weakness is that due to the fact a questionnaire was used, participants may not have answered to the best of their ability of may have answered in a socially desired way which will reduce reliability of results
