Social Area Flashcards
What are the principles of the social area?
We behave differently in different situations depending on the social roles we take and on the perceived or actual presence of others
Other people and the environment influence our behaviour
Our relationships with other people also influence how we behave
What are the key concepts of the social area?
Responses to people in authority
Responses to people in need
What are the core studies within the social area?
Milgram (Classic)
Bocchiaro (Contemporary)
Piliavin (Classic)
Levine (Contemporary)
What are the strengths of the social area?
-Can help us understand the causes of historical events
-Has practical applications (e.g. for managers wanting compliance from employees)
-Research is often high in ecological validity when field experiments are used
What are the weaknesses of the social area?
-Research can lack controls on extraneous variables
-Research can be ethnocentric (i.e. only reflect social behaviour in one culture)
-Research can get out of date (e.g. as social behaviour changes)
How useful is the research of the social area?
Using CCTV to deter crime
Managers/teachers to wear formal clothing and act sternly to get obedience
firms to have an app or website to make anonymous
What is the background of Milgram?
Milgram examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the Nuremberg war criminal trials. Their defence was that they were following orders.
What are the aims of Milgram?
To investigate what levels of obedience participants would go to when asked to deliver electric shocks to someone by an authority figure.
What is the sample of Milgram?
40 males between 20-50 years old from the New Haven area, all from a wide range of occupations (teachers, postal clerk, salesman, engineers) obtained through self selecting sampling through advertisements and direct mailing and were paid $4.50 for just attending.
What is the procedure of Milgram?
- Each participant is assigned the role of teacher, they are told this is random but it’s rigged.
-They see the learner (a confederate) strapped into a chair with electrodes attached to his arms however, these weren’t active.
-The teacher is given a trial shock of 45 volts to stimulate genuineness
-The teacher sits infant of an electric shock generator in an adjacent room.
-He is told he will conduct a paired word test on the learner.
-The ‘learner’ produced a set of predetermined responses, approximately 3 wrong answer for every wrong answer.
-The learner makes no noise until 300 volts, then pounds on the wall.
-After 300 volts the learner stops answering, treated as an incorrect answer and is still shocked
-At 315 volts the learner pounds on the wall
-After 315 volts is given, the learner is silent and no answers or nouse is made when shocked.
-Teachers were given prompts like ‘please continue’, ‘the experiment requires you to continue’, ‘it is absolutely essential that you continue’, ‘you have no other choice but to continue’ to prevent the ‘teachers’ from ending their involvement.
What are the results of Milgram?
-All ppts continued to 300 volts
-26/40 (65%) of ppts continued to the full 450 volts
-Ppts were observed to sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips, groan and dig their fingernails into their flesh
-14 showed nervous laughter
-3 had ‘full blown uncontrollable’ seizures
What are the conclusions of Milgram?
- The situation that produces extremly strong tendencies to obey
-Situation generates extraordinary tension and emotional strain
What was the research method in Milgram?
Controlled experiment because the experiment was the same for everyone and they were all told to do the same thing.
How does Milgram show sampling bias?
Self-selected sampling method as his participants determined their own involvement in it by choosing to respond to his advertisement.
How does Milgram relate to the social area?
Milgram’s study falls within the social area because it is revealing the extent to which people’s behaviour can be influenced by other people around them: his participants did not want to administer high voltage electric shocks to the ‘learner’ but, in the face of the prods from the ‘experimenter’, they went against their desires and behaved in the way that was requested of them.
How does Milgram relate to the key theme?
In relation to the key theme of responses to people in authority, Milgram’s study would appear to tell us that obedience to those in authority – even when they are asking us to cause harm to someone else – is much more common than we would like to believe.
How is Milgram valid?
High levels of face validity in that it would appear to be measuring what he wants to measure – namely, obedience.
Low in ecological validity , it is obviously not an everyday occurrence to be instructed to give someone a series of electric shocks because they give incorrect answers to question.
The sample contained only males and therefore we wouldn’t know about female obedience therefore the sample is not representative of females and therefore results cannot be generalised.
It can be assumed that Milgram selected his participants (men, aged 20– 50, largely from working class and lower middle class backgrounds) to reflect the sorts of people who would have worked in the death camps in Nazi Germany.
How is Milgram reliable?
The whole procedure was highly replicable , as was demonstrated by the fact that Milgram was able to replicate it with 40 different participants. This was made possible by the standardised procedure.
The sample size of 40 males from the New Haven area is large enough to establish consistent effect.
Is Milgram ethnocentric?
Milgram’s research can be seen as ethnocentric because it was only carried out in the one country (the USA), and it cannot be assumed that the levels of obedience seen among his American participants would reflect the levels of obedience seen among people in other cultures.
Which side of the nature/nurture debate does Milgram support?
Milgram would support the nurture debate because it suggests that we become obedient to figures of authority throughout our experiences. However, some people may be more obedient than others and this could be something you are born with.
Which side of the free will/determinism debate does Milgram support?
The 65% of participants who administered electric shocks to the learner all the way up to the maximum 450 volts can be seen as having their behaviour determined by the situation in which they were.
However, the 35% of participants who walked away from the experiment before reaching the maximum shock of 450 volts can be seen as exercising free will and choosing how they act.
Which side of the reductionism/holism debate does Milgram support?
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Which side of the individual/situational debate does Milgram support?
65% of participants were still prepared to administer electric shocks all the way up to the maximum of 450 volts shows the power of the situation to influence behaviour.
However, the fact that 35% of participants were somehow able to resist the pressure of the situation and walk away before administering the maximum shock of 450 volts provides evidence that people’s personalities can be an even greater influence on their behaviour than the situational pressures around them.
How useful is the research of Milgram?
Milgram’s study, and the variations upon the original experiment, can be seen as extremely useful. For instance, it suggests to people in positions of authority that people in positions subordinate to them can generally be expected to be obedient.
However, while Milgram’s study could be put to positive use by responsible authority figures (e.g. in school, business or military settings), it also has the potential to be abused by those who might seek to get people to obey them for malicious purposes. A
How have the ethical considerations been kept/broken in Milgram?
-Participants consented to take part but, as they were deceived about the true purpose of the study (i.e. to investigate obedience, rather than ‘memory and learning’), it was not informed consent that they gave.
-They could clearly withdraw from the study – and 35 per cent of them did – but everything they heard from the ‘experimenter’ was discouraging them from doing this.
-No names of individual participants were reported in the original research paper.
-Participants were harmed by their involvement in this study: with fourteen showing ‘definite signs of nervous laughter’ and three experiencing ‘full blown uncontrollable seizures’.
-Participants were given a debrief before they left the laboratory. Those subjects felt to have suffered the most from participation were examined one year later by an impartial psychiatrist.
How socially sensitive is the research of Milgram?
It can be socially sensitive because it suggests that males are more likely to obey instructions from figures of authority. This can lead to discrimination and prejudice to males.
How scientific is the research of Milgram?
It is scientific because it has objective data. For example, 65% of ppts went to the full 450V. This means that the data can be analysed to see significant effect
Furthermore it is scientific because it is falsifiable, the research can be repeated and different findings can disprove the findings from Milgram, like 65% of ppts went to the full 450V
Lastly, it is scientific because it is replicable. The research was standardises as all ppts had the same prods from researchers, for example; ‘please continue’, ‘the experiment requires you to continue’, ‘it is absolutely essential that you continue’, ‘you have no other choice but to continue’ and therefore this means that other researchers can repeat the study and compare new findings.
What is the background of Bocchiaro?
From Milgram’s (1963) we learned that people are highly obedient to authority figures, even when they know what they are being asked to do is unethical. From this Bocchiaro et al attempted to study the extent to which individuals disobey authority and even whistle-blow.
What are the aims of Bocchiaro?
-To create a situation that allowed them to test whether people would obey, disobey, or blow the whistle on an authority figure who was encouraging immoral behaviours
-To investigate if disobedient participants and whistleblowers have different personality characteristics to those who obey.
What is the sample of Bocchiaro?
149 undergraduates from VU university Amsterdam + 138 different students from VU used for the imagined scenario.
What is the procedure of Bocchiaro?
Split up into 3 stages:
Room 1: The participant meets a researcher (formally dressed, with a mean demeanour) in the lab of the university. R asked them to write down to names of 5 fellow students and then gave a fake cover story about the research he was conducting. Ppts were left alone for 3 minutes to think about what they should do.
Room 2: Ppts taken into a new room, sat in front of a computer and asked to write a statement for their fellow students recommending the research. Ppts also find Research Committee form and a mailbox to post it in. The researcher leaves for 7 minutes. Ppts are now left to either write the statement or not, and decide whether or not to report the study to the ethics committee.
Room 1 (Again): Two personality inventories (HEXACOPI-R test, and a measure of SVO) were then administered and the participant was probed for suspiciousness about the nature of the study. Ppts were given a full debrief by the experimenter. Care was taken to ensure that participants did not feel uncomfortable about their performance and about the fact that they had been deceived.
What are the results of Bocchiaro?
The predicted results were very different from the actual results:
Predicted:
3.6% Obedient
31.9% Disobedient
64.5% Whistleblower
Actual:
76.5% Obedient
14.1% Disobedient
9.4% Whistleblower
What are the conclusions of Bocchiaro?
Behaving in a moral manner (blowing the whistle) is challenging for people, even when it appears to be the easiest path to follow
Most people will obey when asked to do an unethical thing by an authority figure
People’s personality and individual characteristics don’t seem to influence how obedient they are
What was the research method in Bocchiaro?
Controlled laboratory experiment
How does Bocchiaro relate to the social area?
Falls within the social area because it is confirming the influence that other people can have on our behaviour (leading people to be much more obedient than they would probably predict themselves to be).
How does Bocchiaro relate to the key theme?
Relates to the key them because it shows that people are as obedient now (in 2012, anyway) as they were in the early 1960s; that people in the Netherlands are at least as obedient as people in the USA; and that people are much more likely to be obedient than they think they are.
How is Bocchiaro valid?
Most whistle-blowers would speak out because of feelings of discomfort about what members of staff were being asked to do by an employer or about the kinds of practice being engaged in by an employer, therefore it is ecologically valid.
The sample is diverse because there are males and female university students from Amsterdam and therefore the sample is representative and the results may be generalisable.
How is Bocchiaro reliable?
All participants will have received the same cover story, same choices, same amount of time left to think, suggesting a highly standardised and replicable procedure.
The study was carried out on a fairly large sample of 287 participants which can be used to establish a consistent effect.
