Social influence (evaluation) Flashcards
Child of its time means?
someone who has been very influenced by a particular period or situation.
Asch’s findings may be unique due to certain the research being taken place in a particular period of US where conformity was seen important -
Research took place in 1956 where it was seemed a strong-anti communist period where people are more likely to conform from being scared to go against the majority.
Later follow up study of Asch’s research in the UK -
1980, initial study they obtained only one conforming response out of 396 trials where the majority unanimously gave the wrong answer where the majority gave the wrong answer.
However, in a subsequent study they used youths on probation as the participants and the probation officers as the confederates and found similar findings of conformity in Asch’s study in the 1950’s.
What does the subsequent study in the UK of probation youths and the period of Asch’s original anti-communist period of history suggest?
Confirmed conformity is more likely if the perceived costs of not conforming are high (meaning if they don’t conform they may be in trouble) which would of been the case in the 1950’s of the anti-communist era.
Unconvincing confederates in Asch’s study -
It would of been difficult for them to act convincingly when giving the wrong answer, something that poses the risk of validity for the whole study.
What did Mori and Arai do in 2010 do overcome the effects of unconvincing confederates?
Participants wore glasses with special polarising features, three participants wore in each group the same glasses and the fourth wore a different set changing the perception. Causing one of them to judge which comparison line was similar to the standard line to the rest of the group however, the results matched those of Asch’s original study, therefore it can offer validity support and the original study had confederates who acted convincingly.
Aim of Mori and Arai study?
Aimed to replicate Asch’s experiment without actors to ensure that nobody was acting unnatrually in Asch’s study (they weren’t being unconvincing.
Who suggested conformity to social roles is not automatic?
Haslam and Reicher 2012
Who suggested there may be problems with demand characteristics for Zimbardo study?
Banuazizi and Movahedi 1975
Milgram study does it have temporal study?
Carried out 50+ years ago, but would the same thing happen today. A more recent study of Burger 2009 found levels of obedience almost identical to Milgram from his research 46 years earlier. Suggesting that Milgram’s reseach is just as relevant as it was back then today. So there is temporal validity of research from the current century.
Internal validity is questioned for a lack of realism in Milgram’ study. What do participants claim about there understanding of the study?
It was claimed that participants in psychological studies have learned to distrust experimenters because they know the true purpose of the study is disguised.
Perry 2012 discovered what about Milgram’s participants?
Been sceptical at the time at whether the shocks were real or fake, to test this the Milgram’s divided the participants into either doubters (believed they were fake) and believers (believed they were real), the believers were more likely to disobey the participant and give low intensity shocks, this challenges the validity of Milgram’s study because not everyone believed in the reality of the experiement and therefore the people who were conforming all the way up to the highest voltage didn’t think there would be any consequences for the student, so it doesn’t represent how some people would behave in obedience studies.
Hofling study to support legitimacy of authority -
Boxes of capsules were placed in psychiatric hospitals in the USA, they consisted of Astrofen, the labels indicated that the maximum dosage was 10mg, in reality they were placebos. A nurse was on duty and was instructed by a doctor over the phone to give 20mg of Astrofen to a patient. If the nurse complied she would be breaking the maximum dosage rule. A real doctor was nearby and observed what she did. 21/22 did it unhesitatingly. (Doctors have higher authority than nurses.
Agentic state or plane cruel?
Milgram believed that the agentic state best explained his findings, however among social scientists it was believed some had used the opportunity to express sadistic impulses, can be seen from the SPE. Within, a few days guards inflicted pain on increasingly submissive prisoners despite there being no obvious authority figure, suggests for some it may be explained in agentic shift but for others a fundamental desire to hurt others.
Milgram for authoritarian personality was led to believe it was a dispositional basis to obedience - (being caused from one own personal characteristics) but he suggested social context may be more important-
Milgram’s situational factors influencing obedience (proximity, location and the power of uniform) were the primary causes of individuals differences in obedience rates. He believed the social situation they were in found them to address whether they were to cause to obey, therefore relying on this explanation doesn’t establish other influences other than one’s own beliefs and characteristics.
