social psychology Flashcards
what is social psychology, what is bystander apathy
social psychology is the scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people
bystander apathy
The bystander effect, or bystander apathy, is a social psychological theory that states that individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim in presence of other people as they think someone else will help.
what are obedience and the experiment, what are some of the variations of milgram experiment?
obedience as a form of social influence elicited in response to direct orders from an authority figure
He advertised for an experiment in memory,
He screened them for mental health, personality, and intelligence.
He included those that were normal.
He told them they would work in pairs, and it was a study on the effect of punishment on learning. ( voltage ranged from 15-450 volts )
One was a teacher, and one was the learner. The learner was in on the study.
The leaner was strapped on to a chair and put electrodes on them on the other room and told the teacher this.
The teacher was told to talk to the learner, ask them questions an if the got them wrong they had to chock them. There was a dial that with increasing voltages that went from mild shock, tingling to moderate shock and far up was xxx danger of death.
He told them they had to keep increasing the voltage.
What percent increased the voltage until they though they had killed the, they couldn’t see them, but they could hear them? 74% went to the highest level.
Why did that happen?
-authoritarian figure – they repeated this study in many times, they didn’t do the same study, they looked at what causes this, the more authoritarian and better dressed and insisted they continued the higher the levels of obedience the experimenter would say that you have to continue, ‘you have to continue’.
-how far the experimenter was to the person- further away the less voltage they gave.
-personality? Did this make a difference? It did not make a difference
viarations
-closeness of the victim, authority of the experimenter (well dressed and location of building), group conditions such as confederates rebelling
why do people obey/ the causes that milgram suggested
-loss of personal responsibility (as you feel as if you are just acting on behalf of someone else)
-People move from a self-directed, autonomous state to an agentic state:
they come to see themselves as agents who acts on behalf of someone else
-Properties of the agentic state:
* Tuning, i.e., maximal receptivity to the
authority while the learner’s protests are shut out (respecting the instructions of authoritarian
figure then the learners outburst cry for help
- You feel as though your behaviour is valuable as it contributes to the greater good as an experience.
what are the critical evaluations of the milligrams experiment, use richer and Haslam 2011 critical suggestion
-P’s may not have believed that the shocks were real
-Sampling not random (participants were recruited through a newspaper and paid.
-ethical considerations
r&h
based on social identity explanations regarding the presentability of the authoritarian figure, such that:
obedience went down in absence of an authoritarian figure, as well as if the authoritarian figure was less prestigious/legit and if the experiment was conducted in an office building instead of a prestigious well-known university such as Yale university.
what is the difference between majority influence (why do people conform-dual process dependency model) and minority influence provide an experiment for each
majority influence
the change of an individual’s behaviors and opinions with regards to the majority of the people in a group they belong to behave differently or hold different opinions so increase similarities to avoid exclusion from the group.
Asch 1951
participants were asked to match the standard line to one of the three comparisons lines; however, the majority of the participants were in on the exercise and possibly gave the wrong answer to see whether the real participant would conform, It showed that around 75% gave at least one wrong answer, 25% gave completely independent answers to the group, and 5% always conformed to the group decision.
why conform
*normative influence involves an individual’s desire to fit in a group despite their beliefs about the groups behaviour (Public compliance, private non-acceptance)
*informational influence refers to the notion that a person has that a group knows better than them or has more information than them (private acceptance and public compliance)
minority influence
when minority changes beliefs, behaviours and attitude of majority
moscovici 1900
presented with colour slides
With three conditions (consistent—all the confederates lied and said green but it was blue; inconsistent—some of the confederates lied on some of the trials; and control—the absence of confederates), they found that with the consistent condition, there was a greater effect on conformity among participants, which contributed to their lying about the colour of the slides as well.
what is an attitude, and what can influence it the 3-component model of attitude, function of attitude. what is the scale called to score attitude. what is subjective norm and what does attitude predict
It’s how someone feels about something, which can influence their thoughts and behaviours towards it. However, it doesn’t always predict behaviour. subject norm is what you think others would do in a situation, so it can predict behavioural intention.
Influences encompass culture, where you were born, and past experiences.
model:
attitude object (e.g. dog)- attitude construct (knowledge about object, how you feel about it-like or dislike, behavioural response in relation to attitude)
function
-knowledge
-gaining social approval
-protecting self-esteems
-self expression (expressing their identity)
Likert scale
what determine if attitude changes with regards to persuation, what are the two effects of presence of others on performance
-The more important to perceive the source the more likely you are to be persuaded by that information.
-nature of communication itself - if presentation is not good you will not be persuaded.
-nature of the audience or target – if audience is negative towards the person.
-the situation in which the communication is made
effect on performance
*social facilitation - improvement in performance as a result of the mere presence of others
*social loafing : tendency to invest less effort when being part of a group
