Social Area

Question 1

Social Area Assumptions

Answer 1

[Environment, situational factors, social context]

• Assumes that behaviour is caused by an individual’s interaction with individuals and groups
• This is how they learn how to behave in social contexts
• Many types of social interaction influence behaviour, these include: prejudice, attraction, conformity and obedience
• Behaviour is socially determined meaning it is nurtured

Question 2

Social Area Strengths

Answer 2

• Reductionist: improves understanding of behaviour and the extent to which it’s affected by other people
• Deterministic: gives us predictive power of human behaviour as it explains real world events

Question 3

Social Area Weaknesses

Answer 3

• Ethnocentric: may not apply everywhere as social situations differ within cultures
• Socially sensitive: research looks into real life people and problems so may be hard to stay within the ethical guidelines

Question 4

Milgram Context

Answer 4

• Obedience is the ‘abdication of individual judgement in the face of some external social pressure’
• Took an interest in the behaviours of German SS officers in WWII

Question 5

Milgram Aim

Answer 5

• To investigate the process of obedience

- How far an individual will obey a legitimate authority when commands breach moral code

Question 6

Milgram Method

Answer 6

• A laboratory experiment with no independent variable

- Observations made by the experimenter in the room with participant and others in one way mirrors

Question 7

Milgram Sample

Answer 7

• 40 male students aged between 20 and 50
• Obtained by newspaper advert asking for volunteers for a study of memory and learning
• At Yale University and were paid $4
• A confederate was used to play the role of the learner

Question 8

Milgram Procedure

Answer 8

• Participants were told it was to see how punishment affected learning
• In a fixed lottery they were always the teacher and confederate Mr. Wallace was the learner
• The learner was strapped in an electric chair and the participant was given a tester shock to believe it was working
• They asked the learner questions and for each wrong answer gave them a shock (15V to 450V gradually increasing)
• Mr. Wallace had a script to give mostly wrong answers and at 300V he yelled to be let out and went silent at 315V\
• The participant was prompted to continue “It is absolutely essential that you continue”

Question 9

Milgram Results

Answer 9

• 65% went all the way through with the shocks
• Only 9 participants stopped at 315V
• They were all tense, sweating, trembling and stuttering

Question 10

Milgram Conclusion

Answer 10

• The agentic state of the participant being a ‘tool’ of the experimenter and passing responsibilities and consequences to the experimenter explains the high level of obedience

Question 11

Milgram Evaluation

Answer 11

• Method: standardised procedure of an experiment but lacked an independent variable
• Data: quantitative data collected, useful in comparisons in replication, qualitative data from descriptions of how the ‘teacher’ acted
• Ethics: participants consented but were deceived, then debriefed
• Validity: ecologically valid as it is similar to the scenario that Nazi Germany was in but does not match everyday occurrence
• Reliability: highly replicable; was standardised and sample was large enough to suggest a consistent effect
• Sample: made to reflect the types of people working in the Nazi Germany death camps and was self selected/volunteer so a target population would be reached
• Ethnocentrism: only carried out in one country so cannot be assumed to reflect other cultures although similar result were found in other countries

Question 12

Bocchiaro Context

Answer 12

• A whistleblower is a person who reports on someone’s immoral/illegal behaviour

Question 13

Bocchiaro Aim

Answer 13

• To find out what kinds of individuals disobey or whistle blow
• Are there certain characteristics that make people choose to reject social influence

Question 14

Bocchiaro Method

Answer 14

• A laboratory experiment with no independent variable

- At the VU University in Amsterdam

Question 15

Bocchiaro Sample

Answer 15

• 149 undergraduates (96 women and 53 men)
• Average age of 20.8
• Were paid €7.00 or course credits
• A comparison group had 138 students were also used

Question 16

Bocchiaro Procedure

Answer 16

• Participants greeted by a male Dutch experimenter
• They gave names of students and were told a cover story on a sensory deprivation study (visual and auditory hallucinations, no right to withdraw)
• Told that the research committee were evaluating replicating the study at VU University
• Had the option to recommend the study to students in a positive letter or anonymously put a form in a mailbox saying it was unethical
• Were left in a room alone to decide
• After 7 minutes they were taken back to the first room, completed two personality tests and were debriefed
• 138 comparison students were given a description of the experiment and asked “what would you do?” and “what would the average student at your university do?”

Question 17

Bocchiaro Results

Answer 17

• In the comparison group 3.6% said they would obey and 64% would whistle blow
• They predicted that other students would also be more likely to whistle blow than obey
• In the actual experiment 76.5% obeyed and only 9% whistle blew

Question 18

Bocchiaro Conclusion

Answer 18

• Behaving morally is challenging when obeying authority figures
• This applies to individuals of all religion, gender and personality

Question 19

Bocchiaro Evaluation

Answer 19

• Method: standardised procedure has features of an experiment but lacks independent variable
• Data: quantitative data collected, helpful in comparisons, qualitative data from comments made during the debrief and helps make sense of why they behaved that way
• Ethics: deceived by necessary, debriefed and consent was given twice
• Validity: ecologically valid; scenario was made to seem plausible to the university students
• Reliability: standardised as all received the same cover story making the study replicable as the sample was large enough to show consistent trends
• Sample: large but only representative of university students averagely aged 20.8 years but from a range of courses due to it being a volunteer/self-selected sample
• Ethnocentrism: sample based in the Netherlands which is a contrasting culture to the one studied by milgram so it suggests that obedience is applicable

Question 20

Piliavin Context

Answer 20

• In 1964 a young woman called Kitty Genovese was fatally stabbed in New York City
• 38 witnesses did nothing, psychologists proposed this being due to diffusion of responsibility
• Where no one helps; they think someone else will, the more people present the less responsible each person feels

Question 21

Piliavin Aim

Answer 21

• To find out whether diffusion of responsibility applies in all situations
• To test the hypothesis ‘people responsible for their own plight receive less help’

Question 22

Piliavin Method

Answer 22

• A field experiment having 103 trials over 2 months
• Trials lasted 7.5 minutes,
• There were four different teams of students – two female students observed, one male student was a role model and one was the victim (a black one in one team)

Question 23

Piliavin Sample

Answer 23

• An opportunity sample of 4,500 passengers

- On the train on a weekday between 11am and 3pm going from 59th street to 125th street

Question 24

Piliavin Procedure

Answer 24

• There was a drunk condition where the victim smelled of alcohol and had a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag
• A cane condition where the victim was sober and carried a cane
• 70 seconds after the train left the station the male victim staggered and collapsed
• If no help was offered the role model would step in to help after either 70 seconds or 150 seconds, this was to see how a model offering help would affect others’ behaviour
• The observers recorded how long it took for passengers to help as well as information about the race, gender and location of all the passengers in the compartment and those who offered help

Question 25

Piliavin Results

Answer 25

• Cane victim received help 95% of the time while the drunk victim was helped 50% of the time
• Cane victim was helped within 5 seconds usually before the role model stepped in
• Drunk victim was helped after 109 seconds usually after the role model had stepped in
• Black victims received less help, less quickly, especially in drunk conditions
• The more passengers there were nearer the victim the more likely help was given; therefore there was no evidence for ‘diffusion of responsibility’

Question 26

Piliavin Conclusion

Answer 26

• The theory of the arousal cost reward model
• An emergency situation creates an empathic arousal and this increases if one identifies with the victim or is physically close to them
• The arousal can be reduced by helping or going away, helping behaviour is determined by whether the cost of helping is greater than the reward for helping

Question 27

Piliavin Evaluation

Answer 27

• Method: standardised procedure of an experiment making it replicable and as a field one it is ecologically valid
• Data: quantitative data allows for comparison of trials and qualitative data was from quotes from passengers and provided explanation for response to an emergency situation
• Ethics: the passengers did not consent to be observed, they were deceived as to why the victim was collapsing and there is no mention of participants being debriefed
• Validity: results could have been affected by extraneous variables e.g. passengers may have witnessed this more than once and this affects how they responded to an ‘emergency’
• Reliability: a consistent effect was established from the large number of trials (103)
• Sample: large enough to establish reliable findings and the ethnic diversity means findings are generalisable to a wide cross-section of the city but there are people who weren’t represented
• Ethnocentrism: all lived in the same culture; shows Americans response to people in need

Question 28

Levine Context

Answer 28

• The rate of helping differs from city to city and is much greater in cities with ‘simpatico’ characteristics
• These are cultures defined by a pro-active concern with the social well being of others – those in urban settings are less helpful than those in rural settings

Question 29

Levine Aim

Answer 29

• Do strangers in a non-emergency situation receive more help in some cities than others and does helping strangers vary cross-culturally?

Question 30

Levine Method

Answer 30

• 23 field experiments with three non-emergency helping

Question 31

Levine Sample

Answer 31

• Opportunity samples of adults in 23 cities

Question 32

Levine Procedure

Answer 32

• One local individual, usually a student collected the data and they were all college age dressed neatly/casually and were men to control for experimenter gender effects
• Dropped pen: at walking pace the experimenters walked towards a lone pedestrian and dropped a pen, helping was recorded if the pedestrian alerted the experimenter or picked it up and gave it to them
• Hurt leg: walking with a heavy limp and wearing a visible leg brace the experimenter accidentally dropped and struggled to reach a pile of magazines when passing a pedestrian, helping was defined as offering to help or beginning to
• Blind person: researchers wearing dark glasses and a white cane pretended to need help crossing a busy corner by waiting before the light turned green and holding out their cane to show needing help, this was scored if the researcher was told when the light was green and if there was no help within 60 seconds they walked away from the corner

Question 33

Levine Results

Answer 33

• The top 8 and bottom 8 cities were ranked based on their rate of helping
• The top city was Rio de Janeiro (93.3% helping)
• The bottom city was New York (44.7% helping)

Question 34

Levine Conclusions

Answer 34

• Helping across cultures is inversely related to countries economic productivity
• Fast paced cities are less helpful
• Cities with simpatico cultures are more helpful

Question 35

Levine Evaluation

Answer 35

• Method: correlation study with the overall percentage of people helped in each city being the co-variable analysed against e.g. population size of city, purchasing power parity, how collectivist/individualistic the country is and walking speed
• Data: quantitative data based on number of helpers, could be improved by asking bystanders for the motive behind their behaviour
• Ethics: they did not consent to participate, they were deceived on the genuineness of the person’s need, no right to withdraw and weren’t debriefed
• Validity: high ecological validity as data were collected in a field and the scenarios were plausible
• Reliability: highly standardised; all experimenters had detailed instruction and on-site field training for acting their roles so they were all measuring in a consistent manner
• Sample: data was collected from so many cities across the world making the study cross-cultural and this allowed for differences in helping of strangers to be clearly seen and compared
• Ethnocentrism: there is an imbalance in the extent to which different continents are represented with data being collected from only one city in Africa and one city in the middle East and remains more centric on the Americans, Europe and Asia

Question 36

Social Studies

Answer 36

Milgram - Obedience

Bocchiaro - Disobedience & Whistleblowing

Piliavin - Subway Samaritan

Levine - Cross Cultural Altruism