Social Psychology

Question 1

social psychology

Answer 1

Scientific investigation of how people think, interact with, influence and are influenced by thoughts, feelings, actions of other people

Question 2

Social influence

Answer 2

Ways in which people or alter their behaviour or attitudes because of direct or indirect influence of others

Question 3

Social facilitation

Answer 3

Boost in performance due to the presence of others

Question 4

Triplett (1898) social facilitation

Answer 4

Cyclists rode faster when racing against a competitor compared to when they races against the clock

Tested idea again by asking teens to wind a reel as fast as they could and found performance was better when there was a persons competing against them compared to when alone

Question 5

Social inhibition

Answer 5

Presence of others leads to a worse performance, particularly with complex task e.g public speaking

Question 6

Yerkes and Dodson (1908)

Answer 6

Discovered people generally perform best at moderate levels of arousal however can differ depending on task e.g high arousal for boxing and low arousal for golf

Question 7

Diffusion of responsibility

Answer 7

If person is alone they accept full responsibility but if several people are present then each assumes the other will do something so they do not need to accept responsibility and take action

Question 8

Darley and Latane (1968) diffusion of responsibility

Answer 8

Individual students placed in small room took part in discussion using microphone and headphones, some students believed they were discussing with one person (was a confederate) and others were told they were discussing with small groups of students (confederate) one of confederated told person he was talking to he was epileptic and started making sounds like an epileptic fit/seizure

• aim: explore how many students would try to get help for him
• results: participants in one on one group went to get help, 85% in the first 80sec, only 62% participants in group went to get help and only 31% went quickly

Question 9

Bystander effect

Answer 9

More people present in a situation of emergency the less likely each person is to help

Question 10

Platow et al 2005 (social influence)

Answer 10

studying influence of groups we belong to is stronger if we identify with the group

• uni students listened to tape of standup comedian, half with prefaced laughter after each joke, half without. Half of group was told tape was recorded at show attended by students at their uni, other half was told it was a show for political group they weren’t interested in
• students who heard fellow students laughing rated it funnier than students who heard laughter from unimportant policial group or no laughter at all

Question 11

Peers

Answer 11

People who interact with us on fairly equal terms (similar age, status, interests)

Question 12

influence of peers

Answer 12

Increases around middle childhood and continues until middle adolescence, parents and peer groups often agree on more important areas (education, career, decisions)

Question 13

pressure from peers to behave, think feel in a certain way

Answer 13

Fringe members are more likely to be influenced by peer pressure than high ranking members

Question 14

Conformity

Answer 14

Changing behaviours due to group pressure

Question 15

Group polarisation

Answer 15

Behaviour becomes more extreme when with likeminded people (those who only slightly agree join with those that strongly agree may be more inclined to swing to strongly agreed)

Question 16

Normative social influence

Answer 16

Experience when we conform to group standards in order to be a part of that group or be accepted by that group, breaking down the social norms leads to disapproval or exclusion from group

Question 17

Conformity: Solomon and Asch 1955

Answer 17

Simple virtual judgement task, groups of 8-10, participants seated at table, shown 2 cards: reference line and other lines and one by one asked which of 3 lines were same length as reference line (on,y one participant was investigated at a time, others in room were confederates
- 18 trials, 75% of participants agreed with confederated on at least one trial. 50% of p’s agreed with confederations on 6 or more trails, 25% stuck with evidence of senses all the time

Question 18

Can conformity be good

Answer 18

Some conformity allows norms to be established and followed, otherwise behaviour would be unpredictable, means people will assume behaviours of others in any particular social group without explicitly being told how to behave or act

Question 19

Factors influencing conformity: informational social influence

Answer 19

Taking cues on how to behave from watching people around us

Question 20

Group size

Answer 20

Conformity increases with group size up to group of 4 after that increasing group size has little influence (exponential)

Question 21

Factors influencing conformity: degree of unanimity

Answer 21

When others in a group agree completely it is difficult or less likely to standout

• asch found that if only one confederate disagreed with others, amount of conformity by real participant decreased greatly
• more likely to conform in a novel situation or with people we do not know well

Question 22

Cultural differences in conformity: Bind and Smith (1996)

Answer 22

compared data from 133 asch type studies carried our in 17 countries

• higher levels of conformity on collectivist cultures (Asia)
• lower levels of conformity in individualistic cultures (America, Australia)
• achieving group goals is highly valued in collectivist cultures while being independent and achieving personal goals is highly valued in individualistic cultures

Question 23

obedience

Answer 23

change in behaviour Jen we are in a situation where obedience is expected, explicit expectation that we will obey or face negative consequences

Question 24

Milgram (1963)

Answer 24

Study in obedience to authority, partly derived from interest in why Holocaust occurred, recruited range of men to study effects of punishment on learning (deception) there was a financial inducement ($5)
- allocated the role of the teacher which administered electric shock if learner got order wrong, they were in separate rooms however the teacher could hear the shrieks or groans of learner after being shocked as voltage increased. Experimenter was in the same room as the teacher and instructed the teacher to continue administering shocks if the teacher stopped, shocks were progressively higher in voltage for each mistake

Question 25

Milgram results

Answer 25

65% of participants went all the way to 450 volts (would have killed or rendered learner unconscious)
100% of participants went to 300 volts
12.5% of participants refused to go beyond 300 volts

Question 26

Why participants continued to give voltage (milgram)

Answer 26

• blind obedience to authority
• reliance on authority in a novel situation: limited source of information
• diffusion of personal responsibility: can say experimented made him do it
• gradual increase in demand (slippery slope of evil)
• mindlessly taking first step (15 volts .. slippery slope)

Question 27

Deception and debrief milgram

Answer 27

deception: learner was a confederate and was a trained actor who knew to act in a specific way to each shock, no actual humans were shocked

Debrief: participants were debriefed and reassured that despues heir shocking behaviour it was normal, did not give psychological support to participants

Question 28

Factors influencing obedience

Answer 28

• immediacy or proximity to victim: if teacher could see learner, obedience dropped
• immediacy or proximity to experimenter: removing experimenter from room reduced obedience
• authority of experimenter: milgram used white lab coat Caucasian university professor, obedience dropped if not in university setting or experimenter was some random e.g Hawaiian shirt and shorts

Question 29

Key conclusions of milgrams study

Answer 29

people obey authority due to

• belief in legitimate authority
• commitment to successful achievement of experiment
• lack of disobedient role models: experiment was conducted in social isolation meaning social norms or expected behaviours were not present
• lack of personal responsibility: assured participants were not personally responsible for distress of learner.
• all evil starts with 15 volts: slippery slope
• novelty of situation, unique and unknown

Question 30

Zimbardo 1973 - Stanford experiment (aim/ background info)

Answer 30

study into role of power and status in determining social behaviour, interested to find if brutality in guards in America was due to sadistic personalities or prison environment (disposition sl vs situational)

• aim: to identify or determine effects of either being prisoner or prison guard
• 70 young male uni students recruited through newspaper advertisement, selected 24 who were judged to be healthy and average young men with no psychological problems: randomly allocated them to be prisoner or guard

Question 31

Stanford experiment method

Answer 31

• prisoners were arrested at own homes without warning, converted basement of psychology department into makeshift prison, on arrival prisoners were stripped naked and issued prison uniforms and inmate numbers, guards were dressed in identical uniforms and carried whistle and club and wore big sunglasses
• guards were instructed to do whatever they thought was necessary to maintain law and order in prison and command respect

Question 32

During Stanford experiment

Answer 32

• within hours of the experiment guards woke prisoners up at night with whistles for counts and push-ups, taunted them with insults and petty orders or boring / pointless tasks given, the guards were dehumanised
• in second morning the prisoners rebelled and were punished by being sprayed with a fire extinguisher, stripped naked, beds removed and solitary confinement for the ring leaders of rebellion,
• one participant suffered emotional breakdown sighing 36 hours and told he could not leave experiment, eventually let out after he acted deranged
• experiment only lasted 6 days (not 2 weeks) due to emotional breakdowns and excessive aggression of guards

Question 33

Conclusion of Stanford experiment

Answer 33

Zimbardo concluded petroleum readily conform to social roles they are placed in especially of roles are stereotyped

Question 34

Contributing factors to Stanford experiment

Answer 34

• deindividuation: lose a sense of identity and personal responsibility (group think)
• learned helplessness: prisoners learned whatever they did had little effect on what happened to them (just gave up or rioted bc nothing mattered)

Question 35

attribution

Answer 35

to regard something as being caused by something or someone, can attribute a cause to a behaviour

Question 36

dispositions (internal) attributions

Answer 36

inferring something about the person (their attitude, personality etc) is responsible for their behaviour

Question 37

situational (external) attribution

Answer 37

inferring that some external cause (e,g peer pressure, threats) is responsible for the behaviour

Question 38

fundamental attribution error

Answer 38

usually take a persons behaviour at face value and do not sufficiently consider surrounding circumstances, favour dispositions, attribution for behaviour over situational

Question 39

Jones and Harris (1967)

Answer 39

students asked to judge true attitudes of a person after listening to them speak about a controversial topic in a debate, even thought students were told that speakers were assigned their arguments they still inferred the debater held an attitude close to what they had argued about in debate (e.g if against abortion may be labelled as conservative)

Question 40

Self serving bias: de michele et al (1998)

Answer 40

We distort facts and made situational attributions to maintain self esteem (takes blame off us and onto situation and increases self esteem) e.g student gets bad score and blames it on teachers marking not a lack of studying

Question 41

Kelley (1973) causal attribution

Answer 41

People make causal explanations to answer questions about why something happened, he developed a logical model for judging whether a particular action should be attributed to some characteristics of person or environment

Question 42

Covariation Kelley

Answer 42

Person has information from multiple observations at different times and situations and can find a cause and effect relationship between these and their causes

Question 43

Kelley’s covariation model

Answer 43

1. Consensus: extent to which other people behave in same way in a similar situation
2. Distinctiveness: extent to which person behaves in same way in similar situations (one off or not)
3. Consistency: extent to which person behaves like this ever time situation occurs

Question 44

Cognitive dissonance theory - festinger 1957

Answer 44

Relationship between cognitions (beliefs and attitudes and behaviours)

Question 45

Cognitive dissonance

Answer 45

People experience discomfort when they hold two beliefs that are in conflict or when they behave in ways that are inconsistent with their beliefs

• can attempt to reduced dissonance by either changing belief or attitude or by changing behaviour

Question 46

Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)

Answer 46

College students participated in series of dull tasks, half were offered $1 to tell next participants tasks were fun and interesting and other half was offered $20 to do the same, asked to rate how enjoyable they found the tasks
- students who got $1 rated tasks as more enjoyable and students who payed $20 rated enjoyment much lower

• small incentive of $1 led them to believe what they said (that it was enjoyable) to decrease dissonance, larger amount was compensating reason for lying to group that they told was enjoyable