Paper 1: 1. Social Influence (COMPLETE)

Question 1

What was the aim of Milgram’s study?

Answer 1

To find out why the German population had followed the orders of Hitler and slaughtered over 10 million Jews, Gypsies and members of social groups in the Holocaust during the Second World War.

Question 2

What is the procedure of Milgram’s study? What were the 4 prods?

Answer 2

Miligram recruited 40 MALE PARTICIPANTS through newspaper ads in the post.
The participants were between 20-50 years old.
The jobs ranged from unskilled to professional.
They were offered $4.50 to take part (a lot in the 60’s). The study was about MEMORY.

When participants arrived at the lab they were paid the money and there was a rigged draw for their role.
A confederate (hired by Milgram) always ended up as the ‘learner’, whilst the participant was the teacher.
Participants were told they could leave the study at any time.

The learner was strapped in a chair in another room wired with electrodes.
The teacher was required to give the learner a severe electric shock each time the learner made a mistake on the memory task.
The shocks were demonstrated to the teacher, so the shock were not real.

The shock level started at 15 and rose 30 levels to 450 volts. When the teacher got to 300 volts, the learner pounded on the wall again but after that there was o further response from the learner.

When the teacher turned to the experimenter for guidance, the experimenter gave a standard instruction: NO RESPONSE = WRONG ANSWER (alongside actual wrong answers) If they refuse to shock the learner, the experiment gave 4 orders:
1 - please continue / please go on
2- the experiment requires that you continue
3- ts essential that you continue
4- you have no other choice yoj must go on

Question 3

• LENGTHY* Miligram’s Findings
  1) Describe the statistics
  2) Describe the qualitatve data
  3) The predictions of psychology students compared to results (hint, 62% difference)
  4) Ethics
  5) Overall conclusion

Answer 3

1) No participants stopped below 300 volts
12.5% / 5 participants stopped at 300 volts
65% continued to the highest level of 450 volts

2) Qualitative data was also collected - participants showed signs of extreme tension (sweating, tremble, stutter, bite their lip, groan and dig their fingernails) Three even had full blown uncontrollable seizures.
3) Miligram asked 14 psychology students to predict the behaviour of the participants. The students estimated no more than 3% of the participants would continue to 450 volts. This shows the findings were not expected.
4) All participants were debriefed, and assured their behaviour was entirely normal. They were also sent a follow up questionnaire - 84% reported that they felt glad to have participated.
5) Some of the aspects of the situation that may have influenced their behaviour include the formality of the location, the behaviour of the experimenter and the fact that it was an experiment for which they had volunteered and been paid. Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being. Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up.

Question 4

Evaluate Miligram study (2✅, 2❌)

Answer 4

✅Possible high internal validity
However Milgram gave participants an anonymous questionnaire in which 75% reported that they believed the shocks were in fact real.
Further support came from Sheridan who conducted a similar study where real shocks were given to a puppy.
Despite the real shocks, 54% of the male student participants and 100% of the females delivered what they thought was a fatal shock.
This suggests that the effects in Milgram’s study were genuine because people behaved the same way with real shocks.

✅Good external validity
Milgram argued that the lab environment accurately reflected wider authority relationships in real life.
For example, Hofling et al found that 21 out of 22 nurses were willing to give a fatal dose of a drug to a patient just because a doctor asked them to do so over the phone.
This was despite the fact that the nurses would be breaking several hospital rules e.g. should not take orders over the phone and orders over recommended dosages needed to be signed by a doctor.
This suggests that the processes of obedience to authority that occurred in Milgram’s lab study can be generalised to other situations.

❌ Low internal validity
Holland argued that participants behaved the way they did because they didn’t really believe in the set up – they guessed it wasn’t real electric shocks.
In which case Milgram was not testing authority to obedience which is what he intended to test.

❌Ethical issues
Baumrind was very critical of the ways Milgram deceived his participants:
- Milgram led participants to believe that the allocation of roles as ‘teacher and ‘learner’ was random, but in fact it was fixed. Participants were also deceived about the shocks being real.
Baumrind she saw deception as a betrayal of trust that could damage the reputation of psychologist and their research.
There is also speculation about whether Milgram debriefed all his participants and it is believed that he did not give a full debrief to a number of participants which meant that some left the experiment thinking that they potentially killed someone.

Question 5

PROMIXTY - MILIGRAM

1) Variation 1 results
2) Variation 2 results
3) Variation 3 results (hint: control group, telephone)

Answer 5

1) In the proximity study, both teacher and learner were seated in the same room. Obedience levels fell to 40% as the teacher was now able to experience the learner’s anguish in their more directly.

2) In an even more extreme variation the teacher was required to force the learner’s hand onto a shock plate. In this touch condition, the obedience rate dropped even further to 30%.
Milgram found the proximity of the authority figure effected obedience rates.

3) In another variation the experimenter was absent from the room and gave orders over the telephone.
The vast majority of participants now defied the experimenter, with only 21% continuing to the maximum shock level.
Some even went as far as repeatedly giving the weakest shock level despite telling the experimenter to follow the correct procedure.

Question 6

WHAT ARE THE SITUATIONAL VARIABLES?

Answer 6

1) PROXIMITY
2) LOCATION
3) UNIFORM

Question 7

THE PERCENTAGES OF OBDEDIENCE RATES

Answer 7

65% - baseline study yale uni

LOCATION
47.5% - change of location to run down office

PROXIMITY
40% teacher and learner in the same room
30% teacher forces learners and onto plate
20.5 experimenter gsve orders by phone

UNIFORM
20% experimenter played by member of public in ordinary clothes

Question 8

LOCATION - MILIGRAM

1) What did the participants say about the first location? (HINT - YALE)
2) What is the percentage of the high shock rates when the experiemtn were mmoved to a less prestigious location?

Answer 8

1) The studies were conducted in the psychology laboratory at Yale University.

Several participants remarked that the location of the study gave them confidence in the integrity of the people involved, and many indicated that they would not have shocked the learners if this study had been carried out elsewhere.

2) To examine this possibility Milgram moved his study to a run-down office in New York, with no obvious affiliations with Yale.
Obedience rates did dropped to 47% of participants delivering the 450-volt maximum shock.

Question 9

UNIFORM MILIGRAM

1) Discuss the percentage drop in the proximity variation and what does says about the impact of uniform in obdeience

Answer 9

In a remake of Milgram’s study the experimenter (wearing a lab coat) was replaced by another confederate in ordinary clothes

In this variation, the man in ordinary clothes came up with the idea of increasing the voltage every time the learner made a mistake.

The percentage of participants who administered the full 450 volts when being when instructed by an ordinary man, dropped from 65% to 20%, demonstrating the dramatic power of uniform.

Question 10

EVALUATION of proximity location and uniform 2✅1❌1 both!

Answer 10

✅Control of variables in Milgram’s variations
A strength of Milgram’s variations is that he systematically altered one variable at a time (such as proximity) to see what effect it would have on the level of obedience.
All the other procedures and variables were kept the same as the study was replicated over and over again with more than 1000 participants in total.
This helps establish cause and effect.

✅Research support
Bickman conducted a field experiment in New York.
The actors asked members of the public to either pick up a bag, or give someone money for a parking metre.
He used 3 male actors:
one dressed as a milkman (47% for milkman)
one as a security guard (obeyed on 76% of occasions)
one in ordinary clothes. (30% for civilian)
This supports Milgram’s conclusion that a uniform conveys the authority of its wearer and is a situational factor likely to produce obedience.

✅❌Cross Culture Replications
Milgram’s research has been replicated in other cultures. The findings of cross-cultural research have been generally supportive of Milgram.
For example Miranda et al. found an obedience rate of over 90% amongst Spanish students.
This suggests that Milgram’s conclusions about obedience levels being high are not limited to American males, but are valid across cultures and apply to females too.
❌However, Bond made the crucial point that most replications have taken place in Western, developed societies (such as Spain and Australia).
These are culturally not that different from the USA, so it would be premature to conclude that Milgram’s findings about proximity, location and uniform apply to people everywhere.

❌Lack of internal validity
Orne and Holland’s criticism of Milgram’s original study was that many of the participants worked out that the procedure was faked.
It is even more likely that participants in Milgram’s variations realised this because of the extra manipulation. A good example is the variation where the experimenter is replaced by a ‘member of the public’.
Even Milgram recognised that his situation was so contrived that some participants may well have worked out the truth.
This is a limitation of all Milgram’s studies because it is unclear whether the results are genuinely due to the operation of obedience or because the participants saw through the deception and acted accordingly.

Question 11

What are the two explanations of obedience?

Answer 11

1) The agentic state

2) Legitmate authority figures

Question 12

How do authority figures use their power and why do we obey them?

Answer 12

Authority figures are allowed to use their power to make people listen to them or obey them.

People are more likely to obey a legitimate authority figure because of their credentials/status and we assume they know what they are doing.

Question 13

What info did we get from Milgram’s study about legitimate authority figures? Discuss the idea that location may have had an effect instead.

Answer 13

In Milgram’s study, the participant enters the laboratory with an expectation that someone will be in charge. The experimenter in the lab coat, upon first presenting himself, fills this role for them.

If an authority figure’s commands are of a potentially harmful or destructive form, then for them to be perceived as legitimate they must occur within some sort of institutional structure (e.g. a university, the military).

It is difficult to tell how much impact the location had on the obedience rates in Milgram’s study.
One variation of the study moved it from Yale University to a run-down building in New York. This was apparently a relatively unimpressive firm lacking in credentials, yet it still obtained relatively high levels of obedience.
Therefore it is possible that laboratory setting is more important than the relative status of a building.

Question 14

What is the agentic state?

Answer 14

The process of an obedient individual shifting responsibility for one’s actions onto someone else, particularly a figure of authority. This is so they stop feeling responsible for their own actions

Question 15

Apply the agentic shift to Milgram’s study with an example.

Answer 15

In Milgram’s study one participant specifically asked the experimenter, ‘Who is going to take responsibility if this guy dies?’
It was only when the experimenter stated that he would, that the participant decided to continue giving shocks.

Question 16

What does self image have to do with the agentic state?

Answer 16

• One explanation for why people adopt an agentic state is the need to maintain a positive self-image.
• If they felt full responsibility for their action they may refrain from giving the shocks in order to maintain their self-image.
• However, once the participant has moved into the agentic state, this concern is no longer relevant. Because the action is no longer their responsibility, it no longer reflects their self-image, no matter how inhumane the action is. (even fatal shocking(!)

Question 17

What are binding factors (in terms of the agentic state)?Give two examples.

Answer 17

Binding factors are aspects of the situation that allow a person to ignore the damaging effect of what they are doing (like shocking someone) and thus, reduce the moral strain they might be feeling.
It’s what keeps an individual in the agentic state. They may want to act freely but feel as though they can’t.

An example of binding factors could be:

• shifting responsibility to the victim
• denying that the victim is being hurt or damaged by their actions

Question 18

What’s a real life example of the agentic shift? (hint: Vietnam War)

Answer 18

A real life example would be the actions of American soldiers in 1968, in the Village of My Lai, during the Vietnam War.
Soldiers were searching for fighters but found a village full of non-combatants. The platoon commander, Calley, ordered his men to systematically murder the unarmed Vietnams villagers. The men carried out Calley’s command, and over the next few hours, over 500 villagers were killed.
At his military trial, Calley did not accept his guilt, using the defence that he too had just been following the orders of his superior office, Capt. Ernest Medina.

Question 19

Evaluation for the agentic state (3✅ 1X)

Answer 19

✅Real life application
A strength of the legitimacy of authority explanation is that it can help explain how obedience can lead to real-life war crimes ie the My Lai massacre/

✅Cultural differences
Many studies show that countries differ in the degree to which people are traditionally obedient to authority.
For example, Mann replicated Milgram’s procedure in Australia and found that only 40% of their participants went all the way to the top of the voltage scale.
On the other hand, Mantel found 85%. of German participants continued to the highest shock level.
This shows that in some cultures, authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate and entitled to demand obedience from individuals.

✅Research support
Blass showed a film of Milgram’s study to students and asked them to identify who they felt was responsible for the harm to the learner.
The students blamed the ‘experimenter’ rather than the participant and also recognised legitimate authority as the cause of obedience, supporting this as an explanation of obedience.

❌Limited explanation
The agentic shift doesn’t explain many of the research findings. For example, it does not explain why some of the participants did not obey.
The agentic shift explanation also does not explain the findings from Hofling et al study. The agentic shift explanation predicts that, as the nurses handed over responsibility to the doctor, they should have shown levels of anxiety similar to Milgram’s participants, as they understood their role in a destructive process. But this was not the case.
This suggests that agentic shift can only account for some situations of obedience.

Question 20

What is the dispositional explanation?

Answer 20

This explains behaviour through an individual’s personality.
Such explanations are often contrasted with situational explanations.

Question 21

What is the authoritian personality?

Answer 21

The authoritarian personality provided a possible explanation for why some individuals require very little pressure in order to obey.

This is a type of personality that Adorno argued was especially susceptible to obeying people in authority.
Such individuals are also thought to be submissive to those of higher status and dismissive of inferiors.

Question 22

What’s the Caliornian F scale for the authorian personality? (hint: strict parents)

Answer 22

• The California F scale (the F stood for Fascist) was used by Adorno et al (1950) to measure the different components that made up the Authoritarian Personality.
• The F scale contained statements such as ‘Rules are there for people to follow, not change’.
  Individuals with this type of personality were rigid thinkers who obeyed authority, saw the world as black and white and adhered to social rules.
• Adorno et al also found that people who scored high on the F scale tended to have been raised by strict parents. Growing up within a particular social system means that people assume that this system is the expected norm; such families will have a strong emphasis on obedience.

Question 23

KEY STUDY

State the aim, procedure and findings for Elms’ and Milgram’s study for the authoriatarian personality

Answer 23

One of the major debates surrounding Milgram’s study of obedience was whether participants’ obedience was due to situational conditions (proximity, location, uniform) or whether it was dispositional (the results of a particular personality pattern, authorian)

PROCEDURE
Elms and Milgram carried out a follow-up study using participants who had previously taken part in one of Milgram’s experiments two months before.

They selected 20 ‘obedient’ participants (those who had continued to the final shock level) and 20 ‘defiant’ participants (those who had refused to continue at some point in the experiment).

Participants had to complete the F scale to specifically measure their levels of authoritarianism.

Participants were also asked a series of questions about their relationship with their parents during childhood and their attitude to the experimenter (the authority figure) and the learner during their participation in Milgram’s original study.

FINDINGS
They did find higher levels of authoritarianism among those participants classified as obedient, compared with those classified as defiant.

They also found significant differences between obedient and defiant participants that were consistent with the idea of the Authoritarian Personality.

For example, obedient participants reported being less close to their fathers during childhood, and were more likely to describe them in distinctly more negative terms.

Obedient participants saw the authority figure in Milgram’s study as clearly more admirable, and the learner as much less so.
This was not the case among the defiant participants.

Question 24

Evaluation for Elms’s and Milgram’s study

1 2x

Answer 24

✅RESEARCH SUPPORT- Milgram and Elms (1966) found that participants who scored highly on the F-scale were more obedient.

❌LIMITED EXPLANATION – any explanation of obedience in terms of individual personality will find it hard to explain obedient behaviour in the majority of a country’s population.
For example, in pre-war Germany, millions of individuals all displayed obedient, racist and anti-Semitic behaviour. This was despite the fact that they were all different people.
It seems extremely unlikely that they could all possess an authoritarian personality.
This is a limitation of Adorno’s theory because it is clear that an alternative explanation ismuch more realistic.

❌METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS
The authoritarian personality explanation is that it is based on a flawed methodology.
Adorno and his colleagues interviewed their participants about their childhood experiences.
But the researchers knew the participants’ test scores, so knew which of them had authoritarian personalities.
They also knew the hypothesis of the study.
Therefore it is possible that they manipulated the results/gave a bias account of their findings (investigator effects).

Question 25

What did Asch’s research say about social support and resisting conformity? State the percentages.

Answer 25

• Asch’s research on conformity showed us how difficult it is to go against the crowd, not only because human beings have a strong need to be accepted by the group but also because they have a desire to act in the ‘right’ way.
• He found that the presence of social support enables an individual to resist conformity pressure from the majority.
• In one of the variations in his study, the introduction of an ally who also gave the right answer caused conformity levels to drop sharply. The social support offered by the ally led to a reduction in conformity from 33% to just 5.5%.

Question 26

What’s the most important aspect of social support? Why are allies important?

Answer 26

The most important aspect of social support is that it breaks the unanimous position of the majority.
Supporters are likely to be effective in reducing conformity because they raise the possibility that there are other ways of thinking.
The presence of an ally provides the individual with an independent assessment of reality that makes them feel more confident in their decision and able to stand up to the majority.

Question 27

Explain the link with social support and resisting obedience

Answer 27

Research has shown that individuals are generally more confident in their ability to resist the temptation to obey if they can find an ally who is willing to join them in disobeying. Disobedient peers therefore act as role models providing social support to disobey.

Question 28

Explain the link with Milgram and social support - why did this variation mean only 10% of participants continue to the maximum shock level?

Answer 28

Individuals are able to use the defiance of peers as an opportunity to extricate themselves from having to cause any further harm to a victim as a result of their obedience.

In one of Milgram’s variations, one participant was testing the learner and the other two were actually confederates who refused to continue shocking the learner. Their defiance meant that only 10% of the real participants continued to the maximum 450 v shock level.

Question 29

What is locus self control?

Answer 29

Refers to a person’s perception of personal control over their own behaviour. It is measured along a dimension of high internal to high external.

Question 30

What is external locus control?

Answer 30

People with an external locus of control tend to believe that what happens to them is determined by external factors, such as other people or luck.
They feel that things’ just happen to them and are largely out of their control.
People high in external L.O.C. tend to approach events with a passive and fatalistic attitude. They do not take responsibility for their actions, are less likely to display independent behaviour and more likely to accept the influence of others.

Question 31

Locus of control research. What did researchers say

Answer 31

• People with an internal locus of control are active seekers of information that is useful to them. They’re less likely to rely on the opinions of others, making them less vulnerable to social influence.
• People with an internal locus of control tend to be more achievement-orientated and more likely to become leaders rather than follow others.
  For example, Spector (1982) found that a relationship exists between locus of control and leadership style, with internals being more persuasive and goal-oriented than externals.
• People with an internal locus of control are better able to resist coercion from others.
  For example, in a simulated prison-of-war camp situation, internals were better able to resist the attempts of an interrogator to gain information. The more intense the pressure, the greater the difference between the internals’ performance and that of the externals’.

Question 32

Evaluation of locus self control (1✅ 2❌)

Answer 32

✅Supporting evidence
Research evidence supports the link between L.O.C. and resistance to obedience.
Holland (1967) repeated Milgram’s study and measured whether participants were internals or externals.
He found that 37% of internals did not continue to the highest shock level whereas only 23% of externals did not continue. Research support of this nature increases the validity of the L.O.C. explanation.

❌Contradictory
Not all research supports the link between LOC and resistance.
Twenge et al (2004) analysed data from American obedience studies over a 40 year period (from 1960 to 2002).
The data showed that, over this time span, people have become more resistant to obedience but also more external. If resistance is linked to an internal locus of control, people should become more internal. But this is not the case. This challenges the link between internal LOC and increasing resistant behaviour.

❌Limited role of L.O.C (EXPERIENCES INFULENCE US TO REPEAT)
The role of L.O.C. in resisting social influence may have been exaggerated.
Rotter (1982) points out that L.O.C. only influences NEW situations. It has little influence over our behaviour in familiar situations where our previous experience is more important.
It means that people who have conformed or obeyed in specific situations in the past are likely to do so again, even if they have a high internal LOC.
This point is often overlooked in discussions of LOC and resistance.

Question 33

What is minority influence? What are the lasting effects and mention CCF.

Answer 33

• Minority influence creates a conversion process whereby people scrutinise the majority’s message. In other words, they want to understand why the majority hold this position.
• As a result, conversion to the minority position tends to be deeper and longer lasting as people have internalised the minority’s point of view.
• In order to bring about this conversion, research suggests that minorities must be consistent, committed and flexible in their arguments.

Question 34

Why should minorities have a CONSISTENT approach & state Wood et al’s study on CONSISTENCY.

Answer 34

When people are first exposed to a minority with a differing view, they assume the minority is in error.
However, if the minority adopt a consistent approach, others come to reassess the situation and consider the issue more carefully.
.
Wood et al (1994) carried out a meta-analysis of 97 studies of minority influence, and found that minorities who were perceived as being especially consistent in expressing their position were particularly influential.

Question 35

Why should minorities be COMMITTED to their approach? How does this persuade/convert the majority?

Answer 35

• I t is difficult to ignore a minority when it adopts an uncompromising and consistent commitment to its position. Commitment is important because it suggests certainty, confidence and courage.
• Because joining a minority inevitably has greater cost for the individual than staying with the majority, the degree of commitment shown by minority group members is typically greater.
• This greater commitment may then persuade majority group members to take them seriously, or even convert to the minority position as it proves their seriousness about the topic.

Question 36

Why should minorities have a FLEXIBILITY approach & state Mugny’s study on FLEXIBILITY

Answer 36

• Mugny (1982) suggests that flexibility is more effective at changing majority opinion than rigidity of arguments.
• Minorities are typically powerless compared to the majority so they must negotiate their position with the majority rather than try to enforce it.
• Mugny distinguished between rigid and flexible negotiating styles. A rigid minority that refuses to compromise could be seen as narrow-minded. However, a minority that is too flexible and too prepared to compromise risks being seen as inconsistent.

Question 37

Key Study: Moscovici et al (1969) - Consistency

State both conditions and the procedure and findings.

Answer 37

Procedure
- Each group had four naive participants and a minority of two confederates.
- They were shown a series of blue slides and were asked to judge the colour of each slide.
- In the consistent condition, the two confederates repeatedly called the blue slides green.
In the inconsistent condition, the confederated called the slides ‘green’ on two-thirds of the trials, and on the remaining one – third of trials called the slides blue.
In a control condition, comprising six naïve participants and no confederates, participants called the slides blue throughout.

Findings
The findings showed that the consistent minority influenced the naïve participants to say green on over 8% of the trials.
The inconsistent minority exerted very little influence.

This shows that a minority must be CONSISTENT if they want to influence the majority

Question 38

Evaluation on Key Study: Moscovici et al (1969) - Consistency 2✅2❌

Answer 38

❌Limited real world applications
Research studies usually make a very clear and obvious distinction between the majority and the minority.
However, real-life social influence situations are more complicated than this.
Majorities usually have a lot more power and status than minorities whereas minorities are very committed to their causes and are often tight–knit groups who know each other very well and support each other.
The research does not consider these real-life issues.

✅Research support for consistency
Moscovici et al’s study showed that a consistent minority had a greater effect than an inconsistent minority.
Wood et al (1994) carried out a meta-analysis of 97 studies and found that minorities who were seen as being consistent were most influential.
This suggests that consistency is a major factor in minority influence.

❌Artificial tasks
A limitation of minority influence research is that the tasks involved are artificial.
Research does not reflect how minorities attempt to change the behaviour of majorities in real life.
In cases such as jury decision making and political campaigning, the outcomes are more important. This means findings of minority influence studies such as Moscovici et al’s are lacking in external validity.

✅Research support for internalisation
In a variation of Moscovici ‘s blue-green slide study, participants were allowed to write their answers down rather than stating them out loud.
Private agreement with the minority position was greater in these circumstances. Members of the majority were being convinced by the minority’s argument and changing their own views, but were reluctant to admit to this publicly.

Question 39

What is internal locus control?

Answer 39

People with an internal locus of control tend to believe that what happens to them is determined by internal factors, such as hard work and your self ability.
They feel that things that occur are down to their own control. They take responsibility for their actions, are likely to display independent behaviour and are unlikely to accept the influence of others.