Social Psychology Flashcards
What is the definition of social psychology?
Social psychology is the scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours are influences by the real or imagined presence of other people.
- Allport (1968, p3)
What is social psychology?
Social psychology is quite broad. Thoughts are not easy to get at, might ask people to verbalise them but people don’t always express accurately what they think. Self report not always the most reliable method. Could do other things such as measuring heart rate, skin conductance rate, etc.
One really crucial part is about how people are influenced by others. The most extreme part of interest is obedience, and Stanley Milgram’s work.
What was Milgram’s experiment on obedience?
Classic experiment on obedience.
Cover story: experiment to investigate the effects fo punishment on learning.
Not the true intention - wanted to see if you put people into a situation where they have to apply deadly electric shocks to others, would they do it?
One teacher (real participant), one learner (a confederate of the experimenter), both male, paired association learning task.
Learner strapped to an ‘electric chair’ that was allegedly attached to a shock generator in an adjacent room.
Shock generator: 30 switches, marker with voltage that ranged from 15 to 450 volts, 15-volt increments from one switch to the next.
Participants instructed to give a shock to the learner each time he gave a wrong response and to increase the shock level by one each time. The switches had indications of the severity of the shock levels (mild-danger).
[PIC]
Series of prods delivered in order when p’s refused to continue
- 'please continue' or 'please go on' - 'the experiment requires that you continue' - 'it is absolutely essential that you continue' - 'you have no other choice, you must go on'
Dependent measure: maximum shock administered before the participant refused to continue.
Results: when teacher could neither see nor hear the learner, no participant stopped before 300 volts (when the learner seemed to band on the wall and no longer answered). 65% of the participants showed maximum obedience (ie. Administered 450 volts three times), mean maximum shock, 405 volts.
Conducted a series of experiments on obedience from early 60s to mid 70s when he published ‘Obedience to Authority’.
Began experiments following second world war to try and find some explanation of why people behaved in that way and killed so many people. Was it to do with German society, child rearing, something specific to that particular society. However, Milgram was more hesitant and said there were certain social principles at work that applied to any human individual so wanted to find out more.
Looked specifically for a wide variety of people (professions, etc). When people who volunteered arrived, they met another person who knew about the underlying aims of the experiment and was an actor. They then drew lots on which was going to be the teacher or the learner, but this was fixed so that the real participant was always the teacher. They then did a word association task.
The real aim of the shock task was to see how far people would go in this procedure before they refused to go further.
Found that around 2/3 of people went all the way to the highest shock levels.
What are some variations on Milgrams experiment? so the factors affecting the outcome
- Closeness of the victim - not just in terms of physical closeness but also an element of psychological closeness. Can they see and/or hear the victim, is the victim in the same room? The last variation was called ‘touch proximity’ where the person had to take the victims hand and press it down to apply the shock. 30% still went all the way at touch proximity, 40% in the same room but not touching.
- Authority of the experimenter (eg absent experimenter, office building location) - the experimenter being called away by a phone call and telling the participant to continue in his absence, % of people who go all the way drops but still 20%, however sometimes people started to stop following the rules and not increase the shock, or would lie to the experimenter when asked if they did as requested. When taken into a more everyday setting (office) there is more doubt about its legitimacy than in the scientific university environment so falls slightly.
- Group conditions (eg confederate administers shock, confederates rebel) - not actually the participants task to administer the shocks, they just read the questions. When it’s not the person themselves who administers the shock they were almost all happy to continue the procedure. They did not intervene. Tendency to look the other way and not take responsibility for the situation. However, if they has already seen others refusing to administer the shocks, this made them more likely to do the same.
Another variation was when the experimenter was more friendly, but the confederate (actor) wasn’t as likeable. As the experimenter was less forceful, less likely to do it. The important relationship here is between the experimenter and the participant, not so much the victim.
What causes obedience?
Milgram’s explanation
People move from a self-directed, autonomous state to an agentic state: They come to see themselves as an agent who acts on behalf of someone else.
Evolutionarily, people would be more likely to survive and pass on their genes if they were obedient so some innate tendency. Obedience is also typically associated with reward.
Ideology of what you’re doing - eg here it was about helping science and how important this is in their opinion. The reason that youre doing it.
Milgram suggested things happen when people move into the agentic state - they become tuned (pay more attention to the experimenter, not so much the victim), redefining the meaning of the situation (see it as supporting science not hurting people, change the meaning of their actions), loss of personal responsibility (because someone else has told them to do it they distance themselves from their actions), self evaluation is inhibited (because they are taking less responsibility for their actions so don’t feel the same guilt/shame/etc)
Milgram said people can come in and out of the agentic state, so to break out of the chain then they have to have come out of it. May happen when the victims protests become too strong.
Evidence for the agentic state and for loss of responsibility is not always clear cut. People have tried to do experiments later on and results not always the same. Tried to replicate in states (Berger) tried to get it through but with amended procedure. People were screened beforehand for psychological and vulnerability factors. The experiment was then administered by a clinical psychologist and could intervene if necessary. More important change however was that the shocks only went up to 150 volts and the only thing they were interested in was if people would go beyond 150 volts. 150 volts was the point at which people started to protest in Milgram’s experiment. Obedience rate didn’t change significantly from the 60s - this still happens today. They also tried to screen people out who may have had knowledge of the previous experiments.
What are the properties of an agentic state?
Properties of the agentic state:
• Tuning ie maximal receptivity to the authority while the learner’s protests are shut out
• Redefining the meaning of the situation as one of supporting science
• Loss of personal responsibility
Inhibition of self-evaluation
What might be some criticisms on the Milgram experiment?
Ethical concerns - not informed consent as didn’t know what was actually being tested.
Data interpretation - sample may not be representative, self selected sample in response to an advert. May not be representative of all people.
Evidence that these kind of things happen in other situations. Heufling asked 22 psychiatric nurses and observed them in a situation where they had placed a placebo on the ward of a drug where the maximum dose is stated and someone instructs the nurse to administer over this dose and he will come and sign the papers after, and 21/22 nurses did this.
Other criticisms include, maybe people didn’t think the situation was real. They assumed that the psychologists weren’t doing what they said they were doing. However video evidence of the experiments show that the participants experience visual stress symptoms which would have been difficult to fake if they didn’t believe the situation.
Some others question whether it is actually obedience that these experiments test. If it was then the participants would have reacted in a particular way to the prods. The opposite was often the case after the 4th prod, which is the one which actually sounded the most like an order.
Social identity explained
How people behave depend son how much they perceive a shared identity with the experimenter or the victim.
At the beginning there is a shared identity with the experimenter (invited them to come, scientific authority, etc).
However, as soon as participants are not as strongly encouraged to put themselves into the same category as the experimenter the obedience levels fall
What is the definition of conformity?
A change of an individual’s behaviours and opinions when the learn that the majority of the people in a group they belong to behave differently or hold different opinions.
What is majority influence and how did Sherif investigate it (1935, 1936)?
This is part of a group and the relationships in that groups are of same hierarchy, no authority power difference, adopt these different behaviours because they want to.
Sherif used autokinetic effect (completely dark room, single point of light which you focus on and over time this seems to move. It is actually stationary but what moves is your eyes, and as you have no reference point as its completely dark, it seems to be the light that this moving.
What did Sherif find from his 1935 experiment on majority influence?
At first where people di it on their own, then median judgement. Sessions 2, 3 and 4 carried out as part of a group. We see that the very different judgements when alone start to converge when part of a group. Sherif called this the funnelling effect.
Other version where did it first in a group and then on their own. In this case it isn’t an exact reverse of the first version, the answers only slightly split off when do it on their own, so seems that to an extent they have internalised the norm they found in the group situation.
What was the Asch experiment on majority influence in 1951, 1952)?
when people are exposed to a situation where others are confederates and are instructed to give judgements which were clearly wrong.
match standard lines with comparison lines. There was only one true participant, but 6 confederates instructed to give the same unanimous answer in 12/18 times.
In 36.8% of the trials, conformity to the wrong judgements of the majority was observed, however there were strong individual differences. Only about 5% shows conformity on al trials, 24% remained independent all the time, but the majority gave a different answer at least once.
What was the Teunissen et al (2010) experiment on majority influence?
Looking here at adolescent self reported readiness to drink alcohol in certain situations.
Carried out on Dutch boys who interacted on what they saw as a chat room but actually was set up so that the participant was interacting with e-confederates which has pre-programmed responses.
They were given 10 situations in which they were meant to indicate if they would drink alcohol or not in the situation and the e-confederates would either give a response which was more in favour of alcohol than the typical response for boys of that age, or they would give a more anti-alcohol response.
Also manipulated whether these peers were supposedly popular or not. They then looked at the extent that the real participant would respond after being exposed to these alleged peers.
Unsurprisingly, there was more conformity when the peers were seen as more popular, and interestingly also when the response was more anti-alcohol. Maybe feel permission to voice the opinion when a popular person has said it.
Another area that has been investigated is star rating on products. People are influenced by these ratings. This can be manipulated by companies.
Why do people conform? what are the 2 forms of social influence
Suggested that people have 2 goals - want to be correct about what they think and want to make a good impression on other people. Sometimes these two are in conflict.
The distinction between the 2 forms of social influence is important.
Informational - when they think the other people have the right answer and they follow them to be correct.
Normative - when they want to make a good impression on other people.
In Asch’s experiment its clear that they wanted to make a good impression, as the answer was clear, whilst Sherif was more informational.
What is informational vs normative influence?
In normative - you comply. However, compliance means publicly you go along with it, but privately you actually disagree. If you ask the person on their own they wouldn’t stick to the wrong answers of the group.
Informational is different though - people look to others for the answer and they internalise it, meaning they don’t only go along with it publicly but also privately so they maintained the norm when away from the situation.
What was the Moscovici, Lage and Naffrechoux (1969) experiment on minority influence?
Argued that the key influential person was typically not of authority. Instead of having a majority instructed to give answers to an individual (such as in Asch experiment) it was a minority who did this in order to instruct the group.
6 person group with 2 confederates instructed to say a wrong answer about slide colour.
Interesting because they found that the minority could have an influence and even though the influence was not massive, in the consistent condition 32% of the participants gave at least 1 green response when all slides were blue, and 8% of responses were all green when all the slides were blue.
Second variation, he measured people colour perception for green, and had shifted and even the case in individuals who hasn’t publicly said green but influenced on a more latent level.
This suggests that the influence happens both directly and indirectly.
What was the Moscovici and Personnaz (1980) experiment on minority influence?
Did this in pairs with one being a confederate.
Was particularly interested in how judgement of after image changes depending on if been exposed to majority or minority influence.
If people are low on the graph this suggests they have seen the slide as blue. If higher then suggests they have seen green. Majority influence start seeing blue and continue to do so.
If people are exposed to the green response and think it is a minority then they also start off with blue and then start to see green as their after image moves towards the purple point.
On an indirect level something seems to be going on, even though not publicly. Suggested that people pay a lot of attention to what the minority says as they try to work out why they say these things. In doing so, cognitively something changes, they really start to consider the issue and think maybe there’s something behind it and might be converted to that opinion, even though often not publicly.
Wha t is the sleeper effect?
The sleeper effect: if you try to persuade people and not particularly persuaded at the beginning as source isn’t what they are keen on but over time they forget the source but the message stays. The message become strong but only after a while.
What are the seven important factors in group definitions?
Johnson and Johnson 1987
- Interaction
- Self-perception of belonging to a group
- Interdependent (‘being in the same boat’)
- Purpose of goal achievement
- Purpose of need satisfaction
- Structure through roles and norms
- Mutual influence
What is social facilitation?
Improvement of performance in the presence of others
What is social loafing?
Investing less effort whoen part of a group
What are the possible changes of the effects of the present of others on performance?
Social Facilitation
Social Loafing
