Social Psychology- Lectures 4,5,7 & 8 Flashcards
MacDougall (1917)
The role of social regulation is important. In advanced societies, self-regulation is necessary too.
Gustave Le Bon (1898)
Group mind whereby crowds revert to primitive origins
Individual reactions absorbed into ‘mob’
Charismatic leaders have a mesmeric effect on the audience.
Durkheim (1858-1917)
Social facts are not properties of individuals but of collective representations. The role of language is central.
W.D.Scott (1903)
Psychology of advertising
Rensis Likert (1932)
Devised the Likert scale, taken up in marketing.
Asch: conformity in the laboratory
Experimentally generated social pressure.
Manipulation of genuine participants to produce obviously wrong answers.
Only 25% of Ps answered correctly on all trials
5% answered wrongly on all trials.
Schachter & Singer (1962): labelling theory of emotion
Social cues influenced participants’ emotions despite the same dose of adrenaline.
Albeit only when incorrect feedback given
Kitty Genovese
The murder of Kitty Genovese sparked a ‘moral panic’ about modern apathy.
Later evidence has cast doubt on the details, however.
Latane and Darley: series of bystander intervention studies in the 1960s and 70s.
Varied characteristics of ‘victim’ and nature of the situation.
These influenced, along with a number of bystanders, people’s willingness to intervene.
The 1970s: influence of the ‘cognitive revolution’ offered an alternative.
Instead of creating social proxies, why not ask people?
Attitude research, psychometrics, Likert scales, multivariate statistics all involved.
Ajzen & Fishbein (1970): Theory of Reasoned Action
Beliefs and attitudes predict intentions
Ajzen (1991): Theory of Planned Behaviour
Added factor of perceived behavioural control
Tajfel (1969)
Also sought answers to Nazi atrocities in WW2.
Prejudice as a result of ‘normal’ cognitive processing.
‘Heuristic’ preference for thinking in categories.
Group psychology
UK-focused field with emphasis on social identities
Crowd psychology
UK-based, has contributed to the ‘Sage’ expert panel
Replication crisis’
Many findings fail to hold up over time (for various reasons)
Group Type: Incidental
low commitment
minimal impact on individual behaviour
Group Type: Membership
some stake in group’s fortunes
moderate positive impact of group
Group Type: Identity-reference
individual incorporates group into social identity
strong investment in group’s fortunes
Sherif & Sherif (1969): Robbers’ Cave study
Created two random groups of boys at US summer camp.
Engineered situations where group membership became salient.
Needed to create ‘cooperative’ situations to reduce hostility.
Tajfel & Turner (1979): Social Identity Theory
Positive self-esteem achieved by:
Promoting ingroup
Derogating outgroup
The need for distinctiveness leads us to favour the ingroup (esp. when in a minority).
Stereotypes
Depends on context.
Not always unfavorable.
Sometimes very harmful.
May influence our intergroup behaviour.
The 1930s/40s: chiefly concerned with attitude change.
Fears about media propaganda
Festinger (1950): ‘anchored in a group’
1980s revival in social cognition tradition
Now a private, internal process
Rosenberg & Hovland (1960): 3-part model
Attitude Object —-> Attitude —–> Affective, Cogntive or Overt Response.
How is attitude conceptualised?
As a cognitive process
It should be consistent across the three factors
It should be consistent over time (‘reliable’)
It can be measured (as strong/weak)
It can be changed
Ways to Measure Attitudes:
Likert Scales
Semantic differential (Osgood, 1957)
Implicit Association Test (IAT)
Fiedler et al (2006) critiqued the IAT’s methodology
Statistical bias, not racial bias
‘Attitudes’ need to be reliable, but most participants deny holding negative views towards the social groups involved
Participants are ‘fed’ with the stimuli (same effect as ‘leading questions’ in surveys)
Ajzen & Fishbein (1977): 4 necessary degrees of correspondence between attitudes and behaviors
Action
Target
Context
Time
Davidson & Jaccard (1979): contraception study
Birth control (.08)
Oral contraception (pill) (.32)
Using oral contraception (.53)
Using oral contraception in next 2 years (.57)
Attitudes can be changed by persuasive communication
Lasswell (1948) defined this as:
WHO says what to WHOM, in which CHANNEL, and with what EFFECT.
Typical experimental paradigm: pretest-posttest design
Pretest (measure existing attitude)
Intervention (exposure to persuasive ‘message’)
Posttest (repeat same attitude scale as in 1)
Milgram’s definition of Conformity and Obedience.
Conformity as: “the abdication of individual judgment in the face of some external social pressure”
Obedience as the above, plus INSTRUCTIONS.
Milgram: the original study
1963, Yale University Two essential components ‘Mr. Wallace’, the learner “very mild and harmless-looking” The shock generator Meticulously designed to appear convincing.
Descriptions
15v: slight
75v: moderate shock
135v: strong shock
315v: intense shock
375v: danger, severe shock
450v: XXX
Mr Wallace’s reaction
Increasing wrong answers
300v: pounded on wall
315v: silent
Teachers given mild shock (45v) as an illustration.
Milgram Results:
All Teachers went up to 300v
65% went up to 450v
Seen to “sweat, stutter, tremble, groan, bite their lips and dig their nails into their flesh”
Three subjects had ‘seizures’, one leading to termination of trial.
Milgram’s Explanations.
Diffusion of responsibility (‘only carrying out orders’): University, science, lab coat etc.
Perception of legitimate authority: When lost, zero compliance.
Agentic state: Participant becomes agent of authority (“a person comes to view himself as the instrument…he is not responsible for his actions”).
Other Studies of Obedience.
Hofling et al (1966): fake doctor instructs nurses to give the fake patient a fake drug at 2x maximum dosage
21 of 22 complied, 11 without checking dosage
Sheridan & King (1972): 75% of participants gave ‘fatal shock’ to a puppy in a discrimination task.
Shocks mild, or anesthetic was given.
Some participants were very upset.
What can we take from Milgram’s study?
If skepticism predicts compliance, what does this suggest?
Were obedient Ps ‘in denial’ (Russell, 2009)?
Might this actually support the ‘agentic state’ explanation?
Still the issue of ecological validity
Haslam & Reicher argue that real-life cases explained by political/historical factors.
To what extent can we really ‘model’ this kind of situation in the laboratory?
And, are all cases of ‘obedience’ the same?
Armistead (1974), Harré & Secord (1972): Social psychology has lost touch with the real world, needs ‘reconstruction’.
Psychology blindly following ‘natural sciences’ model
Over-reliance on statistics and experiments
Low ecological validity of simulations (Milgram, Zimbardo etc)
Fails to engage with ‘the real world’.
Serge Moscovici (1925-2014)
Need to study ‘collective (social) representations’
e.g. how psychoanalytic ideas entered popular culture
Not quite critical, but a step into ‘the real world’
Ethogenics
Rom Harré: Need to study social life in ‘micro’ environments
A society governed by rules, e.g. rituals, conversation
Marsh et al (78): ethogenic study of football hooliganism
Even ‘disorder’ has an internal logic.
Psychology Making a Difference
Emergence of community psychology
Kelly (1966): need to understand behaviour in the social environment
Action research: Interventions to help overcome challenges.
Marxism
Psychology an ‘ideological strategy’ to promote individualism (Parker, 2007)
Need to study the influence of social class and power inequalities on psychology
Psychology should be about social change (to empower certain groups)
Feminism
Psychology as androcentric - theory based on research with males: women as other
e.g. Stressful Life Events scale (Magnusson & Maracek, 2017)
Focus on individualism is culturally biased as well as gender-biased.
‘Autonomy’ a male privilege
Psychoanalysis
Focus on relationships and social environment challenges the dominant model of the individual
Methods and insights of psychoanalysis have inspired the rise of ‘psychosocial studies’.
Social constructionism
Meaning is not fixed and inevitable…[it is] the product of historical events, social forces and ideology”
The social construction of a phenomenon can be uncovered by deconstructing it.
Key Arguments in Social Psychology
The distinction between the individual and society is largely trivial.
There are few (if any) aspects of psychology that are truly timeless and universal.
Knowledge, and claims to truth, are fundamentally rhetorical statements.
Psychologists are encouraged to use the discipline for challenging taken-for-granted ideas.
Mainstream Social Psychology
Social cognition (e.g. measuring ‘the self’)
Social identity theory
Focus on artificial groups and imaginary situations
Experiments
Psychometric scales
Statistics
Critical Social Psychology
Deconstructing ‘taken for granted’ phenomena (e.g. gender).
Discursive psychology.
Focus on ‘real world’ social interaction.
Discourse and conversation analysis.
Qualitative methods.
