Social Area

Question 1

What was the background to Milgrams study

Answer 1

• obedience is seen as a deliberate form of social influence
• milgram believed obedience involved the abdication (giving up) of individual judgement in the face of external social pressure
• the aim of milgrams study was to see how far people would go into obeying an authority figure even if the demand went against there moral will

Question 2

What was the design in milgrams study

Answer 2

• no independent variable as it was a controlled observation
• data gathered in a lab setting
• Yale university
• procedure recorded on a magnetic tape

Question 3

What was the sample in milgrams study

Answer 3

• self selected, advert in the newspaper
• 40 males
• aged 20-50
  -new haven area

Question 4

What was the procedure in milgrams study

Answer 4

• milgrams told 14 students about the research and asked them to predict the behaviour of 100 hypothetical p’s
• drew to see who would be the teacher and learner but this was rigged so the confederate was always learner
• learner was strapped to a chair and attached to electrodes, given a sample shock of 45 volts
• they were told the shocks were painful but not dangerous
  The teacher read out word pairs, got a shock for every wrong answer
• started to bang on the wall
• gave standardised verbal prods to encourage the teacher if they wanted to stop
• after they were interviewed and debriefed

Question 5

What were the findings in milgrams study

Answer 5

• students estimated only 1.2% would go to 450v
• all p’s went to 300v
• 65% went to 450v
• participants showed signs of extreme stress. 3 had seizures

Question 6

What were the conclusions in milgrams study

Answer 6

• inhumane acts are not only completed by evil people
• people obey because of situational factors
• people are more obedient than we might expect
• people obey authority figures even if it goes against moral code

Question 7

What was the background of bocchiaros study

Answer 7

• a whistle blower Is someone who informs on a person regarded as engaging in immoral activity
• personality characteristics and situational factors may effect what we do
• aimed to replicate milgrams findings of the wide gap between what we think people will do and what they actually do

Question 8

What was the design in bocchiaros study

Answer 8

• laboratory experiment
• no Iv
• data was collected on how many times people obeyed, disobeyed, and whistleblew
• ## data also collected on personality

Question 9

What was the sample in bocchiaros study

Answer 9

• 149 undergraduates from VU university in Amsterdam
• mean age was 20.8
• self selected sampling

Question 10

What was the procedure in bocchiaros study

Answer 10

• 8 pilot studies completed before
• participants were given an ethical briefing, telling them they could withdraw at any time and there responses would be confidential
• they were asked to give names of fellow students, then told the cover story, a fake but unethical story
• about effects of sensory deprivation and wanted to replicate the experiment
• they were asked to write a letter to there fellow students convincing them to take part
• experimenter left the room for 3 minutes
• then sent into a room to write their letter, told they had to include 2 of the words exciting, great, incredible and superb
• experimenter left for 7 minutes to allow the participant to complete the letter
  -they could also anonymously send a form to the ethics committee
• obedient if they wrote the letter, disobedient if they hasn’t written a statement and whistle blower if they sent a form to ethics committee
• after 7 minutes 2 personality tests were administered ( HEXICO-PI-R and decomposed games of social values)

Question 11

What was the findings in bocchiaros experiment

Answer 11

• big difference in how people actually behave and how we think they will behave
• more likely to obey than disobey
• no significant difference between the 3 groups in terms of personality traits
• 76.5 obeyed
• 9.4 blew the whistle

Question 12

What were the conclusions in bocchiaros study

Answer 12

-people obey authority figures, find it difficult to resist social power
-people behave in a different way to what we think they will
- individual factors don’t affect disobedience.
- situational factors do

Question 13

What was the background of piliavins study

Answer 13

• bystanders are people who witness events and choose whether to intervene or not
• based on the murder of kitty genovese, who got murdered. There were 38 witnesses who chose not to act - bystander effect
• bystander apathy (believing someone else will help)

Question 14

What was the design of piliavins study

Answer 14

• a field experiment on the New York subway
• journey lasted about 7.5 minutes
• IV = type of victim ( Ill or drunk), race, effect of model ( whether the model helped after 70 or 150 seconds), number of bystanders
• DV = frequency of help, race of helper, speed of help, sex of helper, movement out of critical area by bystanders, verbal comments made

Question 15

What was the sample in piliavins study

Answer 15

• opportunity sample
• about 4450
• 45% black, 55% white

Question 16

What was piliavins procedure

Answer 16

• approximately 70 seconds into the train journey the victim, always stood in the centre would stagger forward and collapse
• remained there until he received help
• 103 times, 6-8 times a day
• all victims dressed identically, 3 white, 1 black.
• all models dressed identically, either stood in critical area or adjacent area and helped after 70 or 150 seconds
• observers were female

Question 17

What’s as the results in piliavins study

Answer 17

• the cane victim received help 95% of the time compared to the drunk who received help 50%
• the model intervening after 70s was more likely to lead to help from other people
• 90% of all first helpers were male
• slight tendency for same race helping

Question 18

What was the conclusions in piliavins study

Answer 18

• Ill individual is more likely to recieve help than someone drunk
• men are more likely to help than women
• help is quicker in larger groups
• the longer an emergency continues the less impact the model has

Question 19

What was the background of Levines study

Answer 19

• collectivist countries attend more to needs of people they belong to, whereas individualists focus on themselves
• simpatia cultures may have more concern for others
  -Levine wanted to look at helping behaviour in a wide range of cultures, in large cities, assessing the impact of 4 variables
• population size ( more than 230,000 taken from the United Nations demographic yearbook)
• economic well-being ( measured using the purchasing power parity)
• cultural values (individualist or collectivist)
• pace of life ( measured through walking speed over a distance of 60 feet)

Question 20

What was the design in levines study

Answer 20

• field experiment, using 23 large cities including Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, Budapest, Rome, Kaula lumpur
• IV = whether the victim dropped a pen, whether the victim had a hurt leg, whether the victim was blind and trying to cross the street
• DV = helping rate of the individual cities

Question 21

What was the sample in levines study

Answer 21

• 1,198
• p’s selected by being the second person to cross a line on a pavement

Question 22

What was the procedure in levines study

Answer 22

• all experimenters were collage age, and male
• dropping a pen, experimenter walked towards a solitary person and dropped a pen without noticing
• hurt leg, experimenters walked with a limp and dropped a pile of magazines and struggles to pick them up
• blind person crossing street, trying to cross Jsut before the light turned green and held their hand out signalling they wanted help to cross the road

Question 23

What were the results of levines study

Answer 23

• no significant gender differences in helping behaviour
• most helpful cities were Rio de Janeiro 93%
  -least helpful was kaula lumpur 40%
• simpatia countries were more helpful
• tend to be more helpful is they had lower ppp
  No relationship between population size and helping behaviour

Question 24

What were the conclusions in levines study

Answer 24

• helping behaviour in non emergency situations is not universal but varies between cultures
• no significant relationship between individualist and collectivist cultures
• simpatia countries much more likely to help
  Poorer cities have higher rates of helping

Question 25

What is the social explanation

Answer 25

• behaviour can be explained in terms of social context
• the situation we are in effects how we behave
• we are effected by individuals and groups

Question 26

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the social area

Answer 26

+ area has real world relevance as it tells us how people will behave in the real world
+ practical applications, research can be used to prevent unwanted obedience and conformity

• lacks generalisability no everyone behaves the same way in social situations
• lacks control if research is carried out in natural environment