Social Psychology Flashcards
Define obedience and identify its theories
Obedience is a form of social influence that involves performing an action under the orders of an authority figure.
The theories are:
- Milgram’s agency theory.
- Social Impact theory by Bibb Latane.
- Social power theory by French and Raven 1959.
Evaluate Milgram’s agency theory
CODA
C= Milgram’s agency theory states that people go through a period of moral strain when the orders given by an authority figure go against their morals. Milgram’s experiment proves this as signs of moral strain are seen in participants during the experiment, such as trembling and sweating.
O= There are, however, objections to the agency theory by another theory of obedience called the social impact theory. While the agency theory states that obedience is automatic, the social impact theory states that obedience is affected by strength, immediacy and number of sources. This theory allows for obedience to be measured, whereas in Milgram’s theory it cannot be measured.
C= Milgram’s theory states that there is an hierarchy in which people obey those who are higher than them in the hierarchy or who are seen as legitimate. This is proven in Hofling et al, an experiment held in a natural setting where nurses were instructed by a doctor to give a dangerously high dosage of a drug to a patient in the ward. 21 out of 22 nurses agreed to do this. When debriefed, they justified their behaviour as a result of the hierarchy and authority in the hospital. This makes the theory credible.
A= Milgram’s theory states that one of the requirements for someone to enter an agentic state is that the person being ordered believes that the authority figure will take responsibility for their actions. This is proven in Milgram’s shock experiment as when the participants were debriefed, they said that they believed their actions were the experimenter’s responsibility.
Evaluate the social power theory CODA
A= The social power theory states that legitimate power is the power of being in a formal position to expect obedience from an agent. This can be applied to real life atrocities to give us an idea of why they happened. For example, soldiers in the Holocaust may have perceived the officers to have legitimate power and so obeyed them.
O= The social power theory proposes five bases of power that an authority figure may perceive others to have which would cause obedience. On the other hand, the social impact theory states that obedience is affected by strength, immediacy and number of sources. This objects the social power theory.
C= Expert power is the target’s belief that the agent has superior knowledge, ability and expertise in what they do. This is proven in Milgram’s shock experiment, where obedience can be explained by the participants perception that the experimenter has expert power due to his superior knowledge.
A= Reward power is the perception that the agent has the ability to provide some sort of incentive. This can be applied and seen in real life, where an employee may receive a day off as an incentive for working a weekend to meet a tight deadline.
Describe Milgram’s aim, procedure and results.
Aim: To research how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person.
Procedure: His sample consisted of 40 males, aged between 20 and 50 years, ranging from unskilled to professional.
They were paid 4.50 dollars just for showing up.
They drew straws with a confederate to determine whether they would be one of two roles: teacher or learner. It was, however, rigged so that the participant would always be the teacher.
The participant was asked to shock the learner every time they responded with an incorrect answer to a list of simple multiple choice questions, increasing the shock level every time.
Every time the participant tried to drop out, the experimenter used one of 4 prods to keep them going. One of them was “You have no other choice but to continue.”
If the participant refused to continue after all 4 prods were used, the experiment would be terminated.
Results:
65% continued to 450 volts (highest level)
35% went upto 300 volts.
Evaluate Milgram. GRAVE
G= The sample consisted of males only, who were from one specific area (New Haven). This means there is a sampling bias, and the results of the experiment cannot be generalised as it is not representative of the general population.
R= It was a laboratory experiment, therefore having a high number of controls, for instance the participants’ location. This means it can be easily replicated, which makes it highly reliable.
A= Milgram’s agency theory, which is supported by Milgram’s shock experiment, states that people are in an agentic state when they obey orders from someone they perceive to be an authority figure. This can be used to help us get an idea of why some real life atrocities happened, such as the Holocaust and the My Lai Massacre.
V= Participants were asked to carry out an artificial task: shocking a learner when they get an incorrect answer. This is a situation they do not usually come across in their daily lives, therefore making the experiment lack mundane realism. The ecological validity of the experiment is therefore low as the results cannot be generalised to the real world.
E= Participants showed signs of tension such as trembling, sweating and laughing nervously. All of these signs show that they were exposed to psychological harm due to the extremely stressful situation they were put in. This goes against the ethical guidelines for experiments.
Milgram variation 10 what it is, strengths and weaknesses
Varation 10- Rundown office block
This variation took place in a rundown, office building in the downtown area of Bridgeport, (a nearby industrial city) as opposed to the prestige setting of Yale. Obedience dropped to 47.5%.
Strenghts:
- Participants might have shown more natural behaviour as they were not in a university setting where they may have questioned why another Yale staff member was not helping Milgram. This gives the experiment high ecological validity.
-Milgram was careful to create changes to the letterhead of the mail circular that participants received to make it look like it was coming from a private firm (Research Associates of Bridgeport) conducting research for industry. Therefore it has a high level of internal validity, as the participants were also likely to have believed in the set-up, not for example imagining that the shocks were fake. This also helped to ensure that the participants couldnt guess that the study was related to Yale in anyway, thus operationalising the independent variable (prestige versus non-prestigious) successfully.
Weaknesses:
-Although this study has clear applications, some have argued that Milgram was unethical in his variations; he already knew that participants were becoming very disturbed by what they were doing, yet he continued to run the procedure. In fact there is evidence to suggest that the Bridgeport Pps showed slightly greater tension and perceived the shocks to be slightly more painful than in the original study. This is a weakness of the study as participants were not being protected from psychological harm,
-Generalisability low
Milgram variation 7 what it is, strengths and weaknesses
Milgram variation 7- Telephonic instructions
The experimenter instructed and prompted the teacher by telephone from another room.
Obedience dropped to 20.5%.
Strengths:
-Milgram’s variation study has high reliability as he replicated his original study by following the same standardised procedures (volunteer sample, rigged draw). By changing just one element it allowed him to make comparisons to the original study.
-The study has positive applications to society for people such as police and readers. If these people need to maintain high levels of obedience on the street or in the classroom they should be present and in close proximity to their target.
Milgram variation 13 what it is, strengths and weaknesses
Milgram variation 13- Ordinary man gives orders
Was exactly the same as the original experiment but this time, the experimenter feigned leaving to take a phone call so a 2nd confederate took charge and suggested how they should proceed, telling the participants to go up the voltages.
Obedience levels dropped to 20%.
Strengths:
- Standardised procedure, so the results can be linked to the IV as cause and effect
- Easily replicable
W:
- psychological harm
- deception
- internal validity no because Milgram mentioned that the procedure was awkward. Orne and Holland (1968) criticized the experiment, saying that many participants guessed that the shocks were not real and so they delivered them.
What are the factors that affect obedience? Explain them thoroughly.
Momentum of compliance- This happens when the participants are first asked to carry out small, trivial tasks. Once they have finished doing them, they feel duty bound as they have already committed themselves to following the orders.
Proximity- Distance acts as a buffer to obedience. The closer the authority figure, the higher the level of obedience. This can be seen in Milgram variation 7- telephonic instructions, when the experimenter is away from the learner and only delivers orders through the telephone. Obedience dropped to 20.5%.
Status of authority- Obedience only occurs if perceived authority is present, as mentioned in the agency and social power theories.
Personal responsibility- When responsibility is shifted to the authority, obedience is encouraged.
Authoritarian personality- Someone who has an authoritarian personality is typically submissive to authority but is harsh to someone they see as subordinate to them. So they are more likely to obey authority figures. High F-Scale score, which Milgram and Elms (1966) found to be true in obedient participants.
Locus of control- People who base their success on their own work and believe they control their life have an internal locus of control. In contrast, people who attribute their success or failure to outside influences have an external locus of control. Those with an external locus of control are more likely to obey others.
Culture- People who grew up in places with an individualistic culture are more likely to dissent whereas in collectivist cultures, where people behave as a group, people are more likely to comply or obey others.
Types of conformity in majority influence and explain them?
Compliance- where one copies the behaviour of a group without changing their private opinion, they do it to fit in. They change their public opinion to fit the group’s opinion but not their private opinion. It is temporary.
Identification- where one changes their behaviour and their private belief. This only happens in the presence of that group, so it is temporary. They do it to fit in.
Internalisation- where one changes their private opinion and their behaviour to the same one as the group because they agree with them. Eg. converting religions
Explanations of conformity and explain?
Normative influence- where people change their opinions or behaviour with the desire to fit in with a group of people. Compliance and identification!
Informative influence- where people change their opinions or behaviour with the desire to be correct. They think that the group of people know more about something than they do. Internalisation!
Recall all ethical guidelines set by the BPS
Can Do Can’t Do With P Ps
Informed consent Debriefing Confidentiality Deception Right to withdraw Physical and psychological harm
Does gender affect obedience, why or why not?
No. This is because research often shows no difference against a backdrop of an assumed higher obedience in females.
Experiments or theories that show majority influence and describe them.
Jeness’s Bean Jar experiment.
Participants were asked how many beans were in a jar, first individually then as a group.
Answers that participants gave as a group were different from those given individually.
They’d give roughly the same value as a group and it was usually different from the one they gave individually.
This is an example of informational majority influence, as participants have been influenced by others because they were uncertain about the number of beans in the jar.
Social impact theory can be used to explain conformity as well.
Describe Asch’s experiment and the variations
Aim: to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform.
Procedure:
-Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity, whereby 50 male students from Swarthmore College in the USA participated in a ‘vision test.’
- Using a line judgment task, Asch put a naive participant in a room with seven confederates. The confederates had agreed in advance what their responses would be when presented with the line task.
- Each person in the room had to state aloud which comparison line (A, B or C) was most like the target line. The answer was always obvious. The real participant sat at the end of the row and gave his or her answer last.
- There were 18 trials in total, and the confederates gave the wrong answer on 12 critical trails. Asch was interested to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view.
- Asch’s experiment also had a control condition where there were no confederates, only a “real participant.”
Results:
-On average, 32% of the participants conformed with the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials.
- Over the 12 critical trials, about 75% of participants conformed at least once, and 25% of participants never conformed.
- In the control group, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer.
When debriefed, participants claimed they did not believe the confederates’ answers were correct, but only conformed as they did not want to be ridiculed or be seen as peculiar. (Normative influence)
Variations were carried out to experiment situational factors:
GROUP SIZE- Asch (1956). The bigger the majority group (no of confederates), the more people conformed, but only up to a certain point.
With one other person confederate in the group conformity was 3%, with two others it increased to 13%, and with three or more it was 32%.
Increasing the size of the majority beyond three did not increase the levels of conformity found.
UNANIMITY- In another variation of the original experiment, Asch broke up the unanimity (total agreement) of the group by introduced a dissenting confederate.
Asch (1956) found that even the presence of just one confederate that goes against the majority choice can reduce conformity as much as 80%.
TASK DIFFICULTY- When the lines (e.g., A, B, C) were made more similar in length it was harder to judge the correct answer and conformity increased.
When we are uncertain, it seems we look to others for confirmation. The more difficult the task, the greater the conformity.
ANSWER IN PRIVATE- When participants were allowed to answer in private (so the rest of the group does not know their response) conformity decreases.
This is because there are fewer group pressures and normative influence is not as powerful, as there is no fear of rejection from the group.
