Social influence (general)

Question 1

Outline the procedure of Asch’s original study.

Answer 1

A group of 7 people (6 confederates and 1 participant) sat around a board, on which 1 standard line, next to 3 comparison lines were drawn. The people were asked to identify which comparison line was the same length as the standard line. In 12 of the 18 trials, the confederates gave the wrong answer.

Question 2

What was the overall conformity rate in Asch’s original study?

Answer 2

36.8%

Question 3

What % of participants conformed at least once in Asch’s original study?

Answer 3

75%

Question 4

What were the findings of Asch’s group size variation?

Answer 4

The conformity rate increased up to 3 confederates, but adding more confederates didn’t influence the rate much.

Question 5

What were the findings of Asch’s unanimity variation?

Answer 5

With the presence of a non-conforming confederate, the conformity rate dropped to 9%

Question 6

What were the findings of Asch’s task difficulty variation?

Answer 6

As the task got harder (the lines got more similar in length), the conformity rate increased

Question 7

Comment on Asch’s internal validity.

Answer 7

Asch had high internal validity as the study was a single-blind, controlled lab experiment. However you could argue that participants figured out what was going on and just went along with it.

Question 8

Comment on Asch’s external validity.

Answer 8

Asch had low external validity as the task was artificial and therefore had low mundane realism. Also his groups were ‘not very groupy’, so don’t represent real life conformity in groups.

Question 9

In post-experimental interviews, why did Asch’s participants say they conformed?

Answer 9

Some said it was due to ISI, and they wanted to be right. Some said it was due to NSI, and they didn’t want to go against the majority.

Question 10

What was the IV is Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 10

The participants’ roles - prisoner vs guard, allocated using randomisation

Question 11

Outline the procedure of Zimbardo’s study.

Answer 11

A group of male students who had signed up to be part of a psychology experiment and were deemed ‘emotionally stable’ were taken from their homes to a fake prison. They were then allocated to be a prisoner or a guard, and given uniforms. They were then observed while they spent 6 days in the prison.

Question 12

Outline how the guards behaved in Zimbardo’s study.

Answer 12

They created 16 rules the prisoners had to stick to. Some guards took the opportunity to harass and punish the prisoners (e.g. locking one in ‘the hole’, a tiny dark closet, after he tried to go on hunger-strike). Their behaviour became aggressive and brutal, and some seemed to enjoy the power they had.

Question 13

Outline how the prisoners behaved in Zimbardo’s study.

Answer 13

On day 2, they rebelled against their treatment by the guards by ripping their uniforms, shouting and swearing. After this rebellion was put down, they became depressed and anxious. They created groups within the prisoners and picked on individuals. 3 prisoners had to leave the experiment due to psychological disturbance.

Question 14

Comment on Zimbardo’s internal validity.

Answer 14

High internal validity, it was in a controlled environment. However you could argue that it lost objectivity when Zimbardo himself got involved.

Question 15

What ethical issues arose in Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 15

The prisoners were not protected from harm from the guards. Some prisoners were not allowed to leave the study when they asked to. Some people suffered psychological damage following the study.

Question 16

What type of conformity was being studied in Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 16

Conformity to social roles

Question 17

Summarise the findings from Zimbardo’s study.

Answer 17

People conformed to their social roles easily, quickly, and to a shocking degree

Question 18

Outline the procedure of Milgram’s study.

Answer 18

Two people (1 participant and 1 confederate) are brought into a room and assigned as teacher and student (though the participant always ends up as the teacher). Then the student is strapped in a chair and wired to an electric shock machine. The teacher asks the student word pair questions, and if the student gets it wrong, the teacher administers him an electric shock, getting higher in voltage at each wrong answer.

Question 19

In Milgram’s study what did the learner do at 300V? At 315V?

Answer 19

He banged on the wall and didn’t answer the next question at 300V. At 315V he banged on the wall and then didn’t respond to anything after that.

Question 20

In Milgram’s study what was the teacher instructed to do when the learner didn’t respond to the question?

Answer 20

Treat it as a wrong answer and shock the learner

Question 21

In Milgram’s study what happened if the teacher tried to quit?

Answer 21

The experimenter gave 4 standard prods: ‘Please continue’, ‘The experiment requires you continue’, ‘It is absolutely essential that you continue’, and ‘You have no other choice, you must go on’.

Question 22

What % of participants quit the Milgram study at 300V?

Answer 22

12.5%

Question 23

What % of participants quit the Milgram study at 450V - the highest level?

Answer 23

65%

Question 24

Prior to Milgram’s study, what % of participants did psychology students estimate would go to 450V?

Answer 24

3%

Question 25

What were the findings of Milgram’s location variation?

Answer 25

The % of participants who went to 450V dropped to 47.5% when the experiment took place in a run-down office building

Question 26

What were the findings of Milgram’s teacher and learner in the same room variation?

Answer 26

The % of participants who went to 450V dropped to 40% when the teacher was in the same room as the learner

Question 27

What were the findings of Milgram’s experimenter by phone variation?

Answer 27

The % of participants who went to 450V dropped to 20.5% when the experimenter was talking to the teacher over the phone

Question 28

What were the findings of Milgram’s uniform variation?

Answer 28

The % of participants who went to 450V dropped to 20% (the lowest rate) when the experimenter was wearing everyday clothes

Question 29

Comment on Milgram’s internal validity.

Answer 29

Its internal validity was good because it was a controlled, covert, non-participant observation, and people gave shocking reactions. It was poor because people may have guessed what was going on, although 70% said they didn’t.

Question 30

Comment on Milgram’s external validity.

Answer 30

Its external validity was poor because the task was artificial and done in a lab. It was good because the teacher-experimenter relationship reflects authoritative relationships in real life.

Question 31

Summarise the findings of Milgram’s study.

Answer 31

People obeyed authority to a shocking degree. Uniform affected obedience the most dramatically.

Question 32

Outline the procedure of Hofling’s study.

Answer 32

A confederate ‘Dr Smith’ called 22 nurses and told them to administer a fake drug to ‘Mr Jones’. This request broke two hospital rules; it was an overdose and didn’t follow regulation procedure. 21 of the 22 nurses went to administer the drug nonetheless.

Question 33

How does Hofling’s study support Milgram’s study?

Answer 33

It shows that Milgram’s study did not lack external validity, and that obedience occurs in real life situations too

Question 34

Outline the procedure of Rank and Jacobsen’s study.

Answer 34

They replicated Hofling’s experiment, but with more realistic circumstances. The doctor’s name was known to the nurse, the drug was real, and the nurse was given a chance to confer with other nurses. In this study only 2 of the 18 nurses went to administer the drug.

Question 35

How does Rack and Jacobsen’s study contradict Hofling and Milgram?

Answer 35

It suggests that in realistic life situations, people are not so likely to blindly obey authority.

Question 36

What ethical issues arose in Milgram’s study?

Answer 36

Participants believed the shocks being administered were real. Participants were not explicitly told the aim of the study. Some participants showed signs of psychological harm during/after the experiment.

Question 37

What arguments are there that Milgram’s study was ethical?

Answer 37

The participants were debriefed. The participants signed up to be in an experiment. 70% of the participants said they were glad to have taken part. The findings of the experiment were very valuable and interesting.

Question 38

What was Burger’s study? What were the findings?

Answer 38

He replicated Milgram’s study abiding by the ethical guidelines - by stopping at 150V. He found similar results to Milgram’s original study.

Question 39

What was Perrin and Spencer’s study? What were the findings?

Answer 39

They replicated Asch’s study recently with a group of British engineers. They found that only 1 out of 390 participants conformed. This suggests that Asch’s study lacks in historical validity.

Question 40

What was Blass and Shmitt’s study? What were the findings?

Answer 40

They showed a film of Milgram’s study to students and asked them to identify who was responsible for the harm to the learner. The students blamed the experimenter due to legitimate authority.

Question 41

What did Elms and Milgram discover about the authoritarian personality?

Answer 41

The participants who obeyed fully in Milgram’s original study scored higher on the F scale than those who did not fully obey. This supports the idea that an authoritarian personality leads to high obedience of authority.

Question 42

What did Jackson and Messick discover about the F scale?

Answer 42

They reversed the statements in the F scale and found that people who would previously have been fascists, now weren’t. This suggests that acquiescence bias affected the F scale, reducing its internal validity.

Question 43

What was Moscovici et al’s study?

Answer 43

A group of people (6 participants and 2 confederates) were shown 36 blue slides, and asked to identify if they were blue or green. In one condition, the confederates said the slides were green all the time, in one condition they said the slides were green some of the time, and in the last condition there were no confederates. The number of times the participants agreed with the confederates was measured.

Question 44

What were Moscovici’s results? What do they tell us?

Answer 44

In the consistence confederate condition, the participants agreed 8.42% of the time. In the inconsistent confederate condition, they agreed 1.25% of the time. With no confederates, they got the answer wrong 0.25% of the time. This shows that consistency is important in minority influence.

Question 45

What was Nemeth’s study?

Answer 45

A group of people (3 participants and 1 confederate) had to decide on the compensation for the victim of a ski lift accident. In one condition, the confederate argued that the victim should not be given much money, and didn’t budge from his figure. In the other condition, the confederate compromised to offer slightly more money to the victim.

Question 46

What were Nemeth’s results? What do they tell us?

Answer 46

In the uncompromising condition, there was no effect on on the compensation the participants decided on. In the compromising condition, The participants lowered the compensation slightly. This shows that flexibility is important in minority influence.

Question 47

Explain the authoritarian personality explanation of obedience

Answer 47

Strict parenting leads to child behaving according to their parent’s standards and identifying with authority. This created repressed hostility, which is displaced onto minority groups with lower status later on in life. This identification with authority leads to rigid thinking, and a disposition to blindly obey authority.

Question 48

What is an example of the agentic state in real life?

Answer 48

Army officers regretting the horrific things they have done in war, but claiming that they were acting under the orders of an authority figure, in the agentic state. This is a strength of the theory as it explains real life crimes of obedience.

Question 49

Describe Avtgis’ meta-analysis into the locus of control

Answer 49

Through conducting a meta-analysis, Avtgis found a positive correlation of 0.37 between locus of control and conformity, supporting the theory.

Question 50

Describe Milgram’s disobedient peer variation

Answer 50

The participant was joined by two disobedient confederates, who walked out of the study before the end. In this variation, obedience dropped to 10%. This is because a disobedient peer prevents mindless obedience and reduces binding factors. This supports the effect of social support in reducing obedience.

Question 51

Describe Adorno’s research into the authoritarian personality

Answer 51

Adorno got over 2000 middle-class, white Americans to complete the F-scale, in order to measure their fascism and authoritarian personalities. He found that authoritarian people (who scored highly on the F-scale) identified with ‘strong’ people and showed contempt for the ‘weak’, had excessive respect for higher authority, and had a prejudice cognitive style of stereotyping.

Question 52

What is one weakness of the authoritarian personality explanation?

Answer 52

It does not explain the actions of large groups of people, such as the German’s in WWII; not everyone would have had authoritarian personalities

Question 53

What is one weakness with the LOC explanation of obedience?

Answer 53

Twenge et al. studied data from American obedience studies over 40 years, and found that over time people have become more resistant to obedience, but also more external. This contradicts the LOC theory.

Question 54

Outline Bickman’s research into obedience

Answer 54

He got three confederates, one dressed in a suit and tie, one in a milkman’s outfit, and one in a security guard’s uniform, to ask strangers in the street to complete tasks such as picking up litter. He found that people were twice as likely to obey the security guard than the man in the suit and tie. This supports Milgram’s findings on uniform.

Question 55

Give one piece of research evaluating ISI

Answer 55

Lucas et al found that when students were asked to answer mathematical problems, there was more conformity when the problems were more difficult, particularly in those who rated their mathematical ability as poor. This supports the explanation of ISI.

Question 56

Give one piece of research evaluating NSI

Answer 56

When Asch repeated his experiment but asked people to write down their answers, conformity dropped to 12.5%, which suggests that participants were motivated by fear of disapproval or looking foolish

Question 57

Outline research by Nolan et al

Answer 57

They hung messages on the front door of peoples houses every week for a month telling them to reduce energy because other residents were. In another condition, the messages just told them to reduce their energy. They found that energy dropped significantly more in the first condition, which proves that social change can come about due to NSI.

Question 58

Give one limitation of ISI and NSI as explanations for conformity

Answer 58

Some individuals are more affected by ISI and NSI than others. For example it has been found that those who have a greater dependence on relationships (nAffiliators) are more affected by NSI and academic students are less affected by ISI.

Question 59

Comment on the generalisability of Asch, Milgram, and Zimbardo’s studies

Answer 59

The samples were made up entirely of white American males, so the findings may have culture/gender bias and be ungeneralisable

Question 60

Comment on the realism of Zimbardo’s study

Answer 60

It can be argued that participants were simply acting according to stereotypes, however 90% of conversations were about prison life, which suggests that the participants were truly immersed in and convinced by the situation

Question 61

What is one weakness of the connection drawn by Adorno between the authoritarian personality and obedience?

Answer 61

The two are correlated but this does not constitute causation i.e. that the authoritarian personality causes you to be obedient

Question 62

Give one piece of research supporting the influence of LOC

Answer 62

Holland repeated Milgram’s experiment, measuring the LOCs of participants, and found that 37% of internals resisted obedience as opposed to just 23% of externals

Question 63

Evaluate the cross-cultural validity of the legitimacy of authority explanation

Answer 63

Kilham and Mann replicated Milgram’s study and found 16% obedience in Australia as opposed to 85% in Germany. This difference can be explained in terms of societal and historical differences in how authority is treated.