SLOA Studies

Question 1

Matsumoto 2004

Answer 1

Definition of culture: dynamic system of explicit and implicit rules, established by groups to ensure survival. Involves attitudes, beliefs, norms and behaviours.

Question 2

Bond and Smith 1996

Answer 2

Cultural dimensions, individualism vs collectivism. Meta-analysis on 133 conformity studies. Studies in 17 countries.
Results: more conformity in collectivistic countries such as Fiji, Hong Kong and Brazil. Less in individualistic: USA, the UK and France. Collectivistic cultures value conformity.

Question 3

Petrova et al., 2007

Answer 3

Cultural dimensions, individualism vs collectivism.
Collectivistic cultures show less compliance in FITD technique.
3000 US uni students, half of them asian, half american. 1st email asked to participate in survey. 2nd a month later asked to take online survey.
More Asians said yes to first. But of those americans who said yes to first, more complies to second. Twice as high.

Question 3

Time orientation (Confusian dynamism)

Answer 3

Cultures scoring high: dynamic, future oriented. Long standing, traditions, values. Avoid loss of face. Low scoring: present oriented, not past, immediate results.impatient.

Question 4

Chen et al., 2005

Answer 4

Time orientation in bicultural participants. 147 singaporean american participants.
Either culture was activated by showing photos of either culture.
Impatience tested by online shopping. Those shown american payed more for quicker shipping.

Question 6

Kashima and Triandis (1986)

Answer 6

ETIC AND SSB:
Americans and Japanese students were shows pictures of unfamiliar countries and asked to remember details.
americans made dispositional attributions to success, Japanese made situational. -> they couldn’t remember because of ability. americans said that was because of situation.

Question 7

Hofstede (2001)

Answer 7

Cultural dimensions and behaviour.
IBM emplpyees in 71 countries.
Five work related values:
Indi/colle
Power distance
Masc/femin
Long/short

Question 8

Asch 1951

Answer 8

Evaluate conformity to group norms
Technique: “Asch paradigm”
Participants thought they took part in a visual perception study.
Control condition: participants alone, they are asked which one of the three lines is equal in length to a fourth one. Repeated 18 times with different trials. –> Easy, almost always right.
-Actual study: six confederates + participant. Conf. gave wrong answers 12/18 trials. Participant always second last. Set of 18 trials repeated with a different participant.
Results:
Conformed in 37% of the trials. 76% conformed at least once. 24% didn’t conform at all.
Why? most said avoided criticism and wanted social approval.

Evaluation:
Strength: Asch didn’t expect such high conformity.
-important results.
limitations: later studies have not shown such high conformity.
-also, time consuming.
-lack of ecological validity: confederates were not known, just one answer, unlikely situation.
-generalizability: 50 male Americans.
- Demand characteristics, Hawthorne effect

Question 9

Sherif 1935

Answer 9

Evaluate conformity to group norms
The autokinetic effect, an optical illusion that shows a light that seems to move but doesn’t.
Participants in a dark room first alone, 100 trials where they were asked to estimate how much the light had moved. (it wasn’t) They created a PERSONAL NORM.
Second part: three participants in a room, took turns to say their estimate. slowly a SOCIAL NORM was created from the average of the answers. Different groups formed different group norms.
Participants denied that the others affected their estimates.
They did it alone again, and the results showed adherence to the social norm.

Evaluation:
no correct answer, so impossible to say if actually conformed.
Ecological validity is not high.

Question 10

Crutchfield 1954

Answer 10

Evaluate conformity to group norms
He wanted to test more subjects than Asch. Changed the method: participants in personal booths with a screen and buttons. They saw one image and then three more and had to answer which image was the same as the first. They saw the answers of all the others in their screen, but didn’t see the others. Actually everyone was number six, and the other answers were dummies. This allowed more efficient testing.
Results: conformity levels rose 50%, unlike expected.
Evaluation: results invalid, the participants were all army personnel who were taught to conform.
When repeated with normal people, conformity level went back to 32%.

Question 11

Abrams et al. 1990

Answer 11

Evaluate conformity to group norms
Ingroups vs outgroups in conformity:
Replication of Asch’s study.
psychology students with three confederates. Either thought that others were from same uni or different uni.
Confederates answered 9/18 wrong. 100% of participants conformed at least once when thought the conf. were from the same uni. Only 50% conformed when different uni.

Evaluation: perhaps the psych students knew what is was?

Question 12

Heider 1958

Answer 12

Attribution theory: people try to explain obesrable behaviour of others.
They attribute it to internal (dispositional) and external (situational) factors.

Question 13

McCrae and Costa 1999

Answer 13

The five factor model of personality. Five measurable personality traits:
neuroticism
extraversion
openness to experiences
agreeableness
conscientousness
Scores from low to high.

Question 14

Milgram 1963

Answer 14

Participants in the role of a teacher. An authority figure with a white coat administered the electric shocks that the person the participant was teaching would get. A bigger shock each time they got an answer wrong.
65% of the people gave the lethal shock to the actor without knowing it was lethal.
Situational factors.

Question 15

Jones and Harris 1967

Answer 15

FAE:
Participants read essays on Fidel Castro’s rule in Cuba by other students. They had to guess what was the actual attitude of the writer.
One group was told the writers could choose whether supportive or not.
The other was told teacher had assgned it.

Participants in the choice condition thought it was the actual opinion, as expected. But also the other group seemed to think it was the actual opinon - although they knew it was decided by teacher.

Question 16

Ross et al 1977

Answer 16

FAE:
Participants assigned to different roles: a gameshow host, audience and contestants.

The gameshow host made 10 questions, and the gameshow was played.
Observers knew that roles were assigned and everyone was acting.
Yet, they when asked who was the most intelligent, they said the gameshow host.
This is a dispositional attribution.

Question 17

Fein et al 1990

Answer 17

Against FAE:
Essays about Rob Taylor. First condition: he got to choose the view. FAE obtained.
Second condition: participants were told that he wanted to please his teacher and wrote similar views. In this case participants did not FAE.
Fein argues that we don’t make dispositional attributions when we believe that the person has ulterior motives for their behaviour.

Question 18

Gilbert and Malone 1995

Answer 18

Two-step explanation of FAE.

Question 19

Lau and Russel 1980

Answer 19

American football coaches and players attributed victory to dispositional factors, such as talent or hard work.
Losing was attributed to situational factors such as weather or injury.

Question 20

Johnson et al 1964

Answer 20

SSB support
Participants who were psychology students had to teach two children how to multiply with 10 and 20. First they taught 10, and then there was a test for the kids.
The participants saw the results, then taught the 20.
Actually it was done so that student A got everything right on both papers.
Student B did either poorly on both papers or poorly on first and improved on second.
So, the participants either managed or not to teach B.
When pupil B learned, teachers attributed to their abilities as a teacher.
When pupil B didn’t learn, they attributed it to the lack of ability of the student.

Question 21

Tajfel et al., 1971

Answer 21

Social identity theory
Minial group paradigm
British schoolboys told they were divided to groups on the basis of preference to Klees and Kandiskys paintigns. Actually it was random.
Then they had to distribute points to ingroup members and outgroup members.
Ingroup differentiation was clear: ingroup was given 7 points and outgroup 1 rather than both 13.
Evaluation:

Question 22

Wetherall

Answer 22

SIT: less ingroup bias in cultures emphasizing co-operation rather than competition.

Question 23

Tajfel 1970

Answer 23

SIT: 64 UK schoolboys 14-15 years old. Allocated to different groups randomly.
Eight at a time they came to the lab and were asked to estimate how many dots they saw on a screen. Then the boys were assigned to groups: “Under-estimators” and “over-estimators.”
Actually it was random. Then they had to give small amounts of money to other boys, and they only knew whether they were in their ingroup or outgroup.

Results: Majority gave more money to ingroup.
Evaluation:
Important to the progression of the SIT. However, lacks ecological validity, and also there could have been demand characteristics. The boys could have interpreted the situation competitively.

Question 24

Bandura 1965

Answer 24

Social learning theory
Children shows a video of an adult hitting, throwing and using a wooden mallet to hit an inflatable Bobo-doll.
Conditions:
1. control, only saw the video.
2. Saw that in the end of the video the adult was rewarded with sweets and soft drink
3. Saw that in the end the adult was scolded and spanked by another adult for behaving aggressively.

The children where then allowed to play in a room with a lot of toys and a Bobo-doll.
They were observed: the control and the reward condition showed equal 2.5 acts of aggression towards doll. The punishment condition showed 1.5 acts.
Afterwards they were asked to reproduce the behaviour of the model and were rewarded for each act. The number, 3.5 was equal for all conditions.

Ethical considerations.

Question 25

Charlton et al. (2002)

Answer 25

Social learning theory
A natural experiment: the introduction of television to the island of St. Helene in 1995.
Children aged 3-8 were observed before and after the introduction of television.
Videocameras were put into two school’s playgrounds.
Interviews were also conducted with some teachers, parents and kids.
The amount of violence in the TV was same as in UK.
There was no increase in aggressive or violent behaviour. Not even after five years.
The study shows that as the community values social relations, there was no antisocial behaviour after TV.
It also shows that although the children learned the behaviour, they did not repeat it because of the social and cultural factors that did not accept the behaviour.
High ecological validity. Supports the impact of motivation.

Question 26

Freedman and Fraser 1966

Answer 26

FITD:
Study 1: “Volunteer” asked homeowners in cali if they could put up a big, ugly sign saying “Drive Carefully” in their lawn. only 17% complied. Then other homeowners were asked about as maller sign. Almost all said yes. Later they were asked about the ugly sign, and 76% said yes.

Study 2: Volunteer asked to sign a petition on keeping california beautiful. ALmost everyone said yes.
Later they asked about the big ugly sign. Nearly half agreed. No connection between requests, but sill: consistency, commitment.

Question 27

Burger and Cornelius 2003

Answer 27

Lowballing:
Female caller contacted students, asked to donated 5 dollars for scholarships for unpriviliged students.
1st condition: Lowballing. The students were told they will get a coupon for a free smoothie. Those who agreed were then told that they had ran out of the coupons. 77.6% agreed anyways.

2nd: interruption. Before the students answered, the caller said they had ran out of coupons. Only 16% said yes anyways.
3rd: control. Donations without the smoothie. 42% donated.

According to Cialdini the results show that the lowball technique is based on the principle of commitment.

Question 28

Cialdini et al. 1974

Answer 28

Lowballing:
College students asked to take part in a psychological study.
First group was told that it is at 7am. Only 24% said yes.
Second group was first asked, and after they said yes they were told about the time. 56% agreed before knowing, and no one backed out after hearing of the time.

95% showed up.

Question 29

Cohen 1981

Answer 29

Stereotypes and social-cognitive theories

Participants shown a video of a man and woman having dinner.
Half were told the woman was a waitress and other half she was a librarian.

Later there was a memory test and participants recalled information that is stereotypical:

• in librarian condition they remembered she was wearing glasses and listened to classical music
• In waitress condition they remembered she was drinking beer

Question 30

Brown 1978

Answer 30

Social identity theory:
ingroup favouritism in real-life setting
-Field study in wage negotiations in a british aircraft engineering factory
-One group of people sacrificed 2 pounds a week to keep them still having one pound more than another group

Question 31

Bargh et al. 1996

Answer 31

Automatic stereotype activation

• Participants had to make sentences from four of five given words.
• In one condition words included were intended to activate elderly stereotype: grey, wise, retired.
• In other they were completely unrelated.

When participants completed the task they were directed towards an elevator. The time it took them to walk the distance was measured.

Those in the elderly condition walked significantly more slowly than the ones in the other condition.

Question 32

Hogg and Vaughan 2008

Answer 32

Conformity affected by low status in group, high anxiety, low self-esteem.