social area

Question 1

defining principles & concepts of the social area

Answer 1

1. other people in the environment influence our behaviour and thought processes
2. all human behaviour occurs in the social context even the absent of others
3. our relationship with others influences our behaviour and though processes

Question 2

strengths of social area

Answer 2

1. helps improve our understanding of human behaviour, particularly the extent to which it is affected by others
2. extremely useful, has practical applications
3. helps to bring psychology to a wider audience as the research explains real world events
4. high in ecological validity, uses field experiments

Question 3

weaknesses of social area

Answer 3

1. findings may not be true for all time as social situations change over time
2. may not be true for all places due to cultural differences
3. socially sensitive as it is hard to stay within the ethical guidelines
4. boundaries between social and cognitive area can become blurred

Question 4

application of social area

Answer 4

conformity and obedience, social identity, attitudes, discrimination and stereotypes, the pro and anti-social behaviour

Question 5

milgram aim

Answer 5

investigate the process of obedience by testing how far an individual will go in obeying an authority figure, even when command breaches moral code that a human should not hurt another person against their will

Question 6

milgram research method

Answer 6

pre experiment (no IV).
controlled observation
Yale university
highly standardised procedure which made it replicable, adding to reliability.

Question 7

milgram sample

Answer 7

40 men (20-50 years) from New Haven obtained through a newspaper advertisement and direct mailing (voluntary sample). they believed they were taking part in a study of memory and learning. paid $4.50.

Question 8

milligram procedure

Answer 8

Participants were always given the role of teacher through affects lottery and saw the learner, an actor, strapped into a chair with non-active electrodes attached to their arms. Participants were given a trial shocker 45 volts to stimulate a genuine feel

the teacher then sat in front of an electric shock machine in the adjacent room and he had to conduct a pair word test on the learner and give them an electric shock of increasing intensity for every word answered wrong. The machine had 30 switches ranging from 15 to 450 volts in 15 Volt increasement

the learner produces set a predetermined response, giving approximately 3 wrong answers to every correct 1. At 300 volts the ‘learner’ made no further replies. if the teacher turned to the experimental for advice on whether or not to proceed the experimental responded with a series of full standardised prods.

The study finished when the teacher refused to continue aka was disobedient or reached 450 volts aka being obedient. The participant was then fully debriefed and introduced the learner so he could see that no harm had been inflicted.

Question 9

milgram predicted results

Answer 9

14 final year psychology students at Yale predicted only an insignificant minority would go through to the end of the shock series, 1.2%.

Question 10

milgram results

Answer 10

100% went to 300 volts
65% went to 450 volts
26 participants were obedient and 14 were disobedient.
many showed signs of extreme stress while administrating the shocks.
3 had uncontrollable seizures due to stress.

Question 11

milgram conclusions

Answer 11

1. the situation produced extremely strong tendencies to obey and situation generated extraordinary tension and emotional stress
2. people obey because certain situational features lead them to suspend their sense of autonomy and become an agent of an authority figure.
3. individual differences, such as personality, influence the extent to which people will be obedient.

Question 12

bocchiaro aim

Answer 12

to show a wide gap between people’s predictions of their own and others degree of obedience and the actual behavioural outcomes

Question 13

bocchiaro research methods

Answer 13

laboratory experiment (no IV so can be controlled laboratory experiment aka scenario study)

highly standardised which made it replicable and added to reliability

university of Amsterdam

Question 14

bocchiaro sample

Answer 14

149 undergraduate students with 96 women and 53 men. mean age of 20.8 years. paid 7 euros or course credit. recruited by flyers posted in the uni (voluntary sample)

Question 15

bocchiaro procedure

Answer 15

8 pilot tests were conducted

male Dutch experimenter would greet each participant, formally dressed and with a stern demeanour, proceeded with a request for the participant to provide a few names of fellow students and then presented a cover story.

experimenter then left the room for 3 mins in order to provide time for reflection on the action based decisions about to be made.

the participant was then told to be enthusiastic when writing the statement and not to mention the negative side effects - experimenter then left for 7 mins.

then they had 2 personality inventories (the HEXACO-PI-R test, and a measure of Social value orientation (SVO)) and the participant was probed for suspiciousness about the nature of the study.

then they were given a full debrief of the experiment (purpose, variable and hypotheses)

Question 16

bocchiaro measures

Answer 16

complied = obedient
refused = disobedient
reported the experimenter’s questionable conduct to the research committee = whistleblowers
refused to comply with the previous request to write statement= open whistleblowers
originally complied = anonymous whistle blowers.

Question 17

boccihiaro personality tests

Answer 17

interested in understanding whether the people who disobeyed or blew the whistle had personal characteristics that differentiated from those who obeyed. 2 psychometric tests were administered;

1. HEXACO-PI-R, measures the 6 major dimensions of personality. for each there was 10 items, and in the self report form used in this study respondents were asked to indicate how much they agreed with each statement (1 strongly disagree - 5 strongly agree)
2. Social Value Orientation (SVO), participants also completed a 9 item Decomposed Games measure. Based on the choices the participants made for each item, they could be classified as having either prosocial orientation, individualistic orientation or a competitive orientation in terms of the pattern of outcomes they generally prefer for themselves and others

Question 18

bocchiaro predicted results

Answer 18

138 VU Uni students asked to imagine being in this research and asked ‘what would you do?’.

3. 6% = obedient
4. 9% disobedient
5. 5% = whistleblowers

Question 19

bocchiaro results

Answer 19

76.5% = obedient
14.1% = disobedient
9.4% = whistleblowers
no statistical differences were found in any of the 6 personality factors measured by the HEXACO-PI-R and no differences between groups in terms of SVO.
whistleblowers had more faith.

Question 20

bocchiaro conclusion

Answer 20

behaving in a moral manner is challenging for people, even when this reaction appears to observers as the simplest path to follow.

Question 21

piliavan aim

Answer 21

wanted to investigate the impact of helping behaviour of a number of different variables including; type of victim, race of victim, someone setting an example of helping behaviour, number of witnesses.

Question 22

piliavan research method

Answer 22

field experiment (A to D trains of 8th Avenue New York subway between 59th St and 125th St, journey lasting 7 1/2 mins)

snapshot study with different participants each time over 2 months

4 IVs; type, race of victim, effect of a model, size of witnessing group.

6 DVs; frequency, speed, race, sex of helper, movement out of critical area, verbal comments by bystanders

Question 23

piliavan sample

Answer 23

4,500 New York subway passengers who used subway between 11am-3pm on weekdays

variety of sexes, races (55% white, 45% black) and ages

opportunity sampling

Question 24

piliavan procedure

Answer 24

Using a subway train that didn’t stop at a station for 7 ½ minutes, the observers watched and recorded data as the ‘emergency’ took place. The models were all white and of the victims 3 were white and 1 was black.

70 seconds after the train left the station the VICTIM pretended to collapse. He staggered forwards and collapsed. Until, he received help he lay on his back staring at the ceiling and waited for ‘help’. If no one ‘helped’, the ‘model’ helped the VICTIM off at the next stop.

The 4 possible situations included early model who helped after 70 seconds in the critical and adjacent area or the late model who helped after 150 seconds in the critical or adjacent area.

The victim was either acting drunk, ill/lame or black/white between 26 and 35. Observers recorded quantitative data of both recorded comments

Question 25

piliavan results

Answer 25

type of victim = cane received most help on 62/65 trials. drunk received 19/38 trials

race of victim = cane received mostly equal. drunk received help from members of own race

effects of model = not possible to conduct extensive analysis because of high spontaneous helping behaviour. the area the model came from (critical or adjacent) had no effect on passengers behaviour. if model intervened earlier, it triggered more helping behaviour than if done late.

number of witnesses = victims helped much faster when there were 7 or more male passengers in critical area than when there were inly between 1 and 3 men in critical area.

Question 26

piliavan conclusions

Answer 26

1. an individual who appears to be ill is more likely to receive help than one who appears to be drunk
2. men are more likely to help than women (of 81 helpers, 90% were men)
3. some tendency for same-race helping especially if victim appears to be drunk

4, help come quickest an in greatest numbers when there are more witnesses present (diffusion of responsibility not observed)

5. the longer an emergency occurs without help, the less impact a model has on helping behaviour of others, the more likely it is that individuals will leave the immediate area and the more likely it is that observers will make comments in relation to their own behaviour

Question 27

levine aim

Answer 27

1. to see if the tendency of people within a city to offer non-emergency help to strangers was stable across different situations
2. to see if helping stagers varies across cultures
3. to identify the characteristics of those communities in which strangers are more or less likely to be helped

Question 28

levine research method

Answer 28

quasi experiment conducted in a natural environment
independent measures design
correlational analysis was used to analyse data.

Question 29

levine sample

Answer 29

23 large cities around the world. – influenced by available opportunities, the experimenters who volunteered were interested in cross-cultural psychologist or travelling students. 1198 individual participants, who were selected simply for being the second person to cross a certain line on the pavement

Question 30

levine measures

Answer 30

measures of helping behaviour; victim dropped pen, had a hurt/injured leg, blind and trying to cross street

walking speed and helping measure were administered in 2 or more locations, in main downtown areas during main business hours, on clear days, during summer months of one or more years between 1992 and 1997

Question 31

levine procedure

Answer 31

Data was collected by either interested, responsible students who were either travelling to foreign countries or returning to their home countries for the summer, or by cross-cultural psychologists and their students in other countries who volunteered to assist the authors.

To ensure standardisation in scoring and to minimise experimenter effects: all experimenters received both a detailed instruction sheet and on-site field training for acting their roles, learning the procedure for participant selection and scoring of participants, the experimenters practised together, and no verbal communication was required of the experimenter.

Question 32

levine results

Answer 32

ranked by overall helping index with an average of the three measures of helping behaviour including dropped pain, hurt leg and blind person experiment. overall, a cities’ helping rate was relatively stable across all three measures. Countries differed greatly on overall helping and Simpatia countries where, on average common more helpful than non-simpatia countries.

On average, there were low correlations between the community variables and helping measures. The only statistically reliable relationship was between the economic productivity measure and overall helping - cities that were more helpful tended to have lower Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). (-.43) . The better off residents are, the less helpful they are. Although statistically insignificant, there was a small relationship between walking speed and overall helping. Participants in faster-paced cities are somewhat less likely to help. More individualistic countries showed somewhat less overall helping and less helping in the hurt leg situation than collectivist countries, but none of the correlations reached a significant level. There was no relationship between population size and helping behaviour.

Question 33

levine conclusion

Answer 33

overall levels of helping across cultures are inversely related to a country’s economic productivity.

countries with the cultural tradition of simpatia are on average more helpful than countries with no such tradition