Social Psychology Part 1

Question 1

What is the bystander effect?

Answer 1

individuals often fail to help a victim when others are around; the more people are around, the less likely people are to themselves help.

Question 2

What is social psychology?

Answer 2

the science of the psychological causes and
consequences of social behaviour, from cooperation to coercion.

Question 3

What do psychologists argue that human nature is?

Answer 3

prosocial

Question 4

What do we mean by human nature is prosocial?

Answer 4

we regularly perform actions that benefit others, even at the harm to ourselves.

Question 5

What do evolutionary psychologists argue that human psychology is?

Answer 5

eusocial

Question 6

What are the three features of eusocial?

Answer 6

(1) we take care of offspring that are not our own.

(2) we live in groups with overlapping generations of people; and

(3) we divide into specialized labour groups (some people hunt, some people gather food, some people take care of babies).

Question 7

What about eusocial challenges evolutionary psych?

Answer 7

the fact that it can be harmful to the individual. Social psych evolved to benefit the group rather than the individual.

Question 8

How do highly social creatures use their minds? What do our minds let us do?

Answer 8

Highly social creatures use their minds to decode and predict the minds of
others around them. Our minds let us plan, change our behaviour, and adjust our plans.

Question 9

What is social cognition?

Answer 9

the ability to reason, remember, and infer the desires and beliefs of conspecific individuals.

Question 10

What does conspecific mean?

Answer 10

of the same species

Question 11

What are the three questions relating to social cognition?

Answer 11

• How do we decide why somebody acted the way that they did?
• How do we remember somebody’s actions? (this also deal with how we represent things)
• How do we predict what they might do in the future?

Question 12

What does representing other minds mean that we can also do?

Answer 12

We can also attempt to change them. Ex: I know that they will do x if y so, If I change this, I can change their behaviour in this way….

Question 13

What are the 2 ways that we attempt to change peoples minds? How?

Answer 13

• persuasion can be direct
• we can also manipulate others indirectly by appealing to their group membership or well-known associations (like an add showing a fit and happy woman eating a salad)

Question 14

What are the 3 main benefits to working in groups?

Answer 14

• we can combine effort (so that we can do things together that we couldn’t on our own like pushing a heavy rock)
• We can divide labour so that each person can become specialized (super beneficial to group evolution)
• we can pass knowledge to each other over time.

Question 15

When are the benefits of working in groups possible?

Answer 15

only when everyone cooperates equally (it doesn’t work if people exploit the system like in group projects)

Question 16

Why can group behaviour cause incredible harm? (3 reasons)

Answer 16

• people tend to stereotype and discriminate against other groups
• people tend to loaf and do less in a group than on their own (this exploits the group effort)
• people can show extremely high levels of aggression. (ex: organized levels of aggression including wars and genocide)

Question 17

What is the Theory of Mind (ToM) ?

Answer 17

the ability to represent the beliefs and desires of people who are not you.

Question 18

What are the three things you can do if you have a theory of mind?

Answer 18

• predict
• explain
• reason

Question 19

What is predicting under the theory of mind?

Answer 19

Predict: What other people really want.

(Ex: in the candy scenario, when your friend was confused you were using your theory of mind as a sort of error detection. You can now think of your friend’s mind differently from your own, but you can also update for an entire social group (americans) This process requires an enormous amount of coordination.

Question 20

What is explaining under the theory of mind?

Answer 20

you can explain the motives of their actions.

Question 21

What is reasoning under the theory of mind?

Answer 21

You can reason about whether you agree or disagree with them.

Question 22

What is the Right-Temporal-Parietal Junction? (rTPJ)

Answer 22

a brain region that is selectively
active when we think about the thoughts of others.

Question 23

What does the existence of the Right-Temporal- Parietal junction suggest?

Answer 23

Its rare that we fins dedicated brain regions for one task but when we do it suggests strong specialization through evolutionary pressures

Question 24

What is attribution?

Answer 24

an inference about the cause of a person’s behaviour; is it (a) their disposition/personality or (b) the situation they are in.

Question 25

Describe a scenario nd explain how someone may make a dispositional attribution, a situational attribution.

Answer 25

Someone steals a loaf of bread.

Dispositional: they are just a bad person, this is what they do. AKA the person did it because thats the way they are.

Situational: maybe they were blackmailed, maybe they would die if they didn’t. Something about the situation more so than the person is the cause of their behaviour

Question 26

What pushes people towards dispositional attribution?

Answer 26

• Consistency
• Distinctiveness/uniqueness
• Consensus

Question 27

What is consistency (attributions) ? How does this relate to disposition vs situation.

Answer 27

does the person act this way in similar situations? High = disposition, Low = situation

Question 28

What is distinctiveness (attributions) ? How does this relate to disposition vs situation.

Answer 28

does the person act this way in similar situations? Low = disposition, High = situation

Question 29

What is Consensus (attributions) ? How does this relate to disposition vs situation.

Answer 29

do other people act this way in similar situations? Low = disposition, high = situation

Question 30

What would determine high distinctivness?

Answer 30

if a person who is normally wonderful did something bad, the bad behaviour would be high on distinctiveness.

Question 31

Describe a situation relating to attribution where a person complaining about food at a restaurant could be attributed to disposition.

Answer 31

This person always complains in
restaurants (high consistency)

This person complains in many other
places (low distinctiveness)

Nobody else complains in this
restaurant (low consensus)

Therefore, this person is difficult to
please (disposition, not situation).

Question 32

Describe a situation relating to attribution where giving a poor movie review could be attributed to situation.

Answer 32

This person rarely rates movies as
“sorry films” (low consistency)

This person is not usually negative towards other things, like music, food, etc. (high distinctiveness)

Many other people hate this movie, too (high consensus)

Therefore, it’s not the person, it’s just a really really bad movie (situation).

Question 33

What is fundamental attribution error?

Answer 33

a general bias to make dispositional
attributions. This often happens when the information is ambiguous, you will often commit a bias, we make assumptions when we know the answers.

Question 34

What are three examples of when a person may make a fundamental attribution error.

Answer 34

­A driver runs a red light: they are a terrible driver (not that they may be in a hurry to get to the hospital).
­
A friend doesn’t reply to your text: they don’t like you (in fact they may be very busy)
­
A waitress is not friendly to you: she is generally a rude person (not that she is working overtime because her boss forced her to).

Question 35

What is Actor-Observer Effect?

Answer 35

the general bias to make situational attributions of ourselves: (we are bias to blame the situation for our own bad behaviour)

Question 36

What are 3 examples of Actor-Observer effect?

Answer 36

You run a red light: you’re not a bad driver, you didn’t have time to stop.
­
You don’t text somebody back: you like your friends, you just were too busy with something else at the time.
­
You are rude to somebody: you are not a bad person, you just had a really bad day.

Question 37

What are social norms?

Answer 37

culturally-specific expectations of appropriate behaviour which everybody in the culture is supposed to act in accordance with.

Question 38

How do social norms relate to attribution?

Answer 38

Breaking of social norms is almost always considered a dispositional cause. ­

Individuals who repeatedly break norms are often socially excluded.
­
This has early developmental origins: if a young child sees an adult use a fork to comb her hair, the child will refuse to learn meanings of new words from that same adult.

Question 39

Why are social norms useful?

Answer 39

Social norms are useful, as they allow us to have cultural expectations about
groups that make attributions quick and easy.

Question 40

Why can social norms be manipulated and exploited?

Answer 40

• Social norms are hard to change.
  ­
• Social norms are not cross-culturally universal.
  ­
• They can be used to change people’s behaviours even without them realizing you are using them (next class).

Question 41

What is social cognition a pre-requisite for?

Answer 41

deep social behaviour

Question 42

What does having a well-developed theory of mind allows us to do?

Answer 42

Think about and predict the behaviour of others

Question 43

What do attributions tend to favour?

Answer 43

dispositional over situational factors for others, and situational over dispositional for ourselves.

Question 44

What are social norms?

Answer 44

heuristics that can often be exploited

Question 45

What is persuasion?

Answer 45

changing somebody’s beliefs, desires, and behaviours by appealing to them psychologically (e.g., giving new information).

Question 46

What is the definition of Manipulation/Intimidation?

Answer 46

changing somebody’s beliefs, desires, and behaviours through dominance, social status, and/or social norms.

Question 47

What is a belief? Does it have to be true?

Answer 47

enduring knowledge about the object, person, or event . (can be true or false given the way the world really is)

Question 48

What are attitudes?

Answer 48

Semi-enduring feelings that predispose us to respond to objects, people, and events. (can be positive, neutral, or negative)

Question 49

What are behaviours? What are they often a consequence of?

Answer 49

actions that we take in the world. (usually the consequence of beliefs and/or attitudes, but can also sometimes be random)

Question 50

What do we often like to think in regards to beliefs and attitudes?

Answer 50

We often like to say that beliefs shape our attitudes but it actually works in the reverse as well

Question 51

what are behaviours often the consequence of?

Answer 51

beliefs and attitudes

Question 52

Why does the sequence of belief, attitude, behaviour not always work?

Answer 52

Often we don’t know why we behave or we are wrong about why we acted in the way that we did

Question 53

What is persuasion?

Answer 53

attempting to change a person’s attitudes, beliefs, and/or behaviours. (any time that one agent is attempting to change on of the 3 components to successful persuasion.)

Question 54

What are the three components of successful persuasion?

Answer 54

­Message Source: the thing generating the message (e.g., a person, an ad)

­Message Content: the category of message (e.g., an argument, data, etc.)
­
Message Target: the person who we are attempting to persuade (e.g., a customer, a voter, etc.).

Question 55

Why does message source work?

Answer 55

The more we trust the source, the more likely we are to be successfully persuaded, even given mediocre messages.

Question 56

what is source monitoring?

Answer 56

tracking when and from whom we heard a message. ­If we recall the message and the source, we can update our belief in it given our
belief in the source’s credibility.

Question 57

is source belief constant? What happens as a result?

Answer 57

Source belief is not constant so every once and awhile if you say you remember hearing this (you then source monitor and think about who told them) then say oh but I actually don’t trust this person anymore.

Question 58

What is source amnesia? What can it lead to?

Answer 58

forgetting the source, and having to update our belief in the message from the message alone. This can lead to us accepting or rejecting good information.

Question 59

What relies on source amnesia?

Answer 59

propaganda often relies on this. this causes us to forget the source, and having to update our belief in the message from the message alone. This can lead to us accepting or rejecting good information.

Question 60

When is message target affective?

Answer 60

The source gives a message that motivates the target to change their
attitudes/beliefs/behaviours.

Question 61

What is the motivation involved with the message target?

Answer 61

cognitive Dissonance

Question 62

What is cognitive Dissonance?

Answer 62

the negative feeling experienced from attitude/belief/behaviour contradiction, driving us to change them.

Question 63

What is an example of cognitive dissonance?

Answer 63

you believe that it is important to minimize food waste, but you still threw out a bunch of food you bought into the garbage. You promise to yourself to not do it again in the future.

Question 64

What is the goal of a very good source?

Answer 64

The goal of a very good sources is to target cognitive dissonance. Because all persuasion is triggered by cognitive dissonance. It will show you contradiction and suggest how you resolve it. Ex: have you ever wondered if your breath smelled bad? Heres a solution.

Question 65

Why is cognitive dissonance thought to explain “irrational actions”? (3 ways)

Answer 65

­People raise their evaluation of products they choose to buy, and reduce their evaluation of those they couldn’t get.
­
Political radicalization often occurs from dissonance pushing people towards rejecting the arguments given to them as conspiracies or unreliable information.
­
Dissonance is especially strong if people are first asked to explicitly and publicly state what they believe, and especially when going back on that belief has a negative outcome.

Question 66

What is an example of a situation that would cause a people to raise their evaluation?

Answer 66

If a person is between 2 products they will buy the one they can afford, raise their evaluation of the product they bought (like this is actually the one I wanted all along)

Question 67

What is an example of a situation that deals with political radicalization?

Answer 67

conspiracies tell people that the normal routes of information are completely unreliable. Conspiracies, cults etc mobilize cognitive dissonance, and give a reason to resolve cognitive dissonance that is not trusting anyone else.

Question 68

What is an example of dissonance causing people to knot want to explicitly publicly state what they believe?

Answer 68

If someone states something, and the world changes in a way that makes them unable to follow through. Politicians often avoid explicitly staying what they believe

Question 69

What model of persuasion that describes what kind of content is most persuasive is most popular in psych?

Answer 69

Elaboration likelihood model

Question 70

What is the elaboration Likelihood Model?

Answer 70

model of persuasion that argues that people can be influenced through one of two “routes”:

Question 71

What are the 2 routes to persuasion as defined by the elaboration likelihood model?

Answer 71

Systematic Route to Persuasion: persuading somebody through reason, logic, and sound arguments (usually targets beliefs).

­Heuristic Route to Persuasion: persuading somebody by appealing to their emotions, habits, and even indirectly (usually targets attitudes/behaviours). (not about reasoned arguments)

Question 72

What is cognitive dissonance a result of?

Answer 72

cognitive dissonance is not the contradiction itself, it’s the motivational state to get rid of the contradiction.

Question 73

What does the source do in the systematic route to persuasion?

Answer 73

In the systematic route to persuasion, the source makes arguments (content) to the person (e.g., debates, information brochures) which challenge their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours.

Question 74

What is systematic persuasion commonly used for?

Answer 74

very common in debates. It can be misused. People can make arguments that seem persuasive but that are false. They hope that the message triggers a contradiction and leads to an updated belief.

Question 75

What are the 2 targets that the message target must have for systematic persuasion to work?

Answer 75

Motivation: the message target must be motivated to listen, otherwise they have no reason to consider the source’s argument.
­
Ability: the message target has to have the ability to think about the message content.

Question 76

What are 2 limitations to persuasion?

Answer 76

Target must have motivation to listen to and engage with your argument. This is a major limitation to this route of persuasion.

They must have the ability to think about the content. Ex: if you show a graph to a three year old, they will not change their beliefs because they can’t comprehend what the graph means. This is also a major limitation. Someone who wants to send a message like this has to find how to communicate a method in a way that is affective.

Question 77

What does the heuristic route do? Does it require motivation or ability?

Answer 77

The heuristic route exploits associations and social norms we all carry with
us, and doesn’t require motivation or ability.

Question 78

What is the main route of persuasion we experience in daily life? Why?

Answer 78

The heuristic route is the main route of persuasion we experience in day to day life. People aren’t given you any data, they are just trying to target your attitudes. May use positive attitudes towards celebrities to transfer positive attitude to product.

Question 79

What is the heuristic route appeal to emotion?

Answer 79

emotional advertisement – especially when it involves fear or sex – captures our attention automatically and triggers approach/avoidance behaviours.

Question 80

What is expertise in the heuristic route? Why does it work?

Answer 80

when not motivated to attend to the argument, we will frequently just agree if the person arguing is an expert. Heuristics like to give you nonsense messages but try to convince you that its coming from a trustworthy source.

Question 81

What is the guru effect?

Answer 81

if an expert says something incomprehensible, we are more like to assume that the idea must be very complex, not that the expert isn’t very good at communicating the simple idea to us!

Question 82

What is the foot in the door technique in the heuristic route?

Answer 82

make a small request first, and, once the
person complies, make a bigger one.

Question 83

What is an example of the foot in the door technique?

Answer 83

when experimenters went door-to-door fund raising, people who were first asked to sign a petition were later more likely to give money than vice-versa. we’re building cognitive dissonance. If you signed a petition you obviously care about this so why wouldn’t you support it financialy

Question 84

What is the door in the face technique in Heuristics? Why does it work?

Answer 84

make a impossibly huge request first, and when the person declines make a smaller one.

This technique works in part because of social norm of reciprocity.

Question 85

What is an example of the door in the face technique?

Answer 85

when experimenters asked for a $5000 donation, people were more likely to give $100 after first rejecting than vice-versa.

Question 86

What is priming in the heuristics route?

Answer 86

our ideas as associated with other ones, and bringing up one association automatically triggers another one. (ex: soup vs soap)

Question 87

What is implicit priming in the heuristics route?

Answer 87

a method of persuasion that brings up an association for a participant, who then transfers it to a different behaviour/attitude.

Question 88

What is the goal of priming?

Answer 88

to show you a message in one context, then have you subconsciously transfer it to another.

Question 89

What is an example of implicit priming?

Answer 89

I bring up the concept “yellow” (which you maybe associate with happiness), and then show you a product I want you to buy.

Question 90

What modern idea is priming related to?

Answer 90

Priming is related to the modern (non-Freudian) idea of the unconscious.

Question 91

What are 2 studies that give good examples of implicit priming?

Answer 91

Slow walking study: when participants are asked to solve anagrams of words whose solutions are words we associate with old people (e.g., SLOW, GRANDMA, etc.) they are found to walk more slowly out of the lab.
­
Approach/avoidance study: when participants push a lever away from themselves whenever they see a stimulus, they are reported to like it less after the study; if they push the lever towards themselves, they like it more.

Question 92

Why is implicit priming increasingly controversial?

Answer 92

Many labs have failed to replicate the findings, or have found them to be inconsistent across time and participants.
­
There are publication biases: it is harder to publish data when we fail to find evidence for implicit priming, meaning that for every one published study there may be dozens of other unpublished ones that didn’t work.
­
Experimenter bias may be influencing the results: when experimenters are double-blind, the implicit priming results are much harder to find.

Question 93

What is a summary of the three components of persuasion?

Answer 93

Message Source: when reliable, we are likely to trust the message and be persuaded, but we can be persuaded “at a distance” by forgetting the source.
­
Message Target: most persuasion attempts aim to create some degree of cognitive dissonance so that we are very motivated to change our own beliefs/attitudes/behaviours.
­
Message Content: while persuasion content can be done systematically through reason and debate, most of the time in our culture it is done heuristically though appealing to emotion, expertise, and social schemas, instead.

Question 94

What are the three reasons why implicit priming is controversial? Why are each of these things a problem?

Answer 94

Many labs have failed to replicate the findings, or have found them to be inconsistent across time and participants.

­There are publication biases: it is harder to publish data when we fail to find evidence for implicit priming, meaning that for every one published study there may be dozens of other unpublished ones that didn’t work.
­
Experimenter bias may be influencing the results: when experimenters are double-blind, the implicit priming results are much harder to find.

Question 95

What is intimidation?

Answer 95

changing somebody’s belief, attitude, or behaviour through dominance, threats, social status, or harm to the target itself.
Intimidation mostly targets behaviours, leading to actions that are inconsistent with a person’s beliefs/attitudes.

Question 96

What do we mean by intimidation is often direct but it can also be indirect?

Answer 96

Intimidation is often direct: the target knows that they are being influenced to act.

­But it can also be indirect: appeals to social schemas or roles in order to
manipulate behaviour without the target recognizing it as a manipulation tactic.

Question 97

In terms of direct vs indirect, which is most common for intimidation

Answer 97

direct

Question 98

What is another term for indirect intimidation?

Answer 98

manipulation

Question 99

What are the Milgram Obedience Experiments?

Answer 99

a set of experiments in which participants are directed by a researcher to harm another participant (who, in reality, is an actor). Provides a test of direct intimidation.

Question 100

What was the design of the Milgram experiments? What was the dependent variable?

Answer 100

Participants come into the lab and are assigned to be “Teachers” who will punish another participant (“Learner”) with electric shock whenever they get an answer wrong. The Learner complains that the shocks are harming them.
­
They are instructed by ”Experimenter” to keep increasing the shock to extremely dangerous levels every time the Learner answers incorrectly.
­
The participant can ask to terminate the experiment and, if they do so at least 5 times, the experiment stops. The dependent variable is how high they shocked before stopping.

Question 101

What did Miligram do before his study?

Answer 101

Milgram ran a large-scale survey of other social
psychology researchers asking to predict the results.

Question 102

What did social psychology researchers predict about the Milgram experiment?

Answer 102

only 10 % of participants would go to 225 v and no one would go to 440

Question 103

What were the variety of conditions that Milgram made for his various experiments?

Answer 103

• No feedback
• Conflict
• Teacher’s choice
• Distant Researchers
• Touch
• Two experiments

-Known Learner

• Two teachers

Question 104

What do the variations in condition in milgrims expeirment help us understand?

Answer 104

this starts to reveal the underlying mechanism for why we think intimidation works

Question 105

Why did Milgrim run a variety of conditions?

Answer 105

to test if compliance rates went up or down.

Question 106

What was the no feedback condition for the Milgram experiment? what was the result? what does this tell us?

Answer 106

the Learner never cries out in pain (result: 65% go to maximum voltage)

Tells us: It is not cries for help that make people quit early because the maximum voltage rates were about the same as when there were cries.

Question 107

What is the conflict condition for the Milgram study? What was the result? What does this tell us?

Answer 107

the Learner says keep going but Experimenter says stop (100%)

Tells us: with consent, everyone is willing to go to the end.

Question 108

What is the teachers choice condition in the Milgram experiment? What were the results? What does this tell us?

Answer 108

the Learner says keep going but Experimenter says stop (100%)

This tells us: this shows the true effect of intimidation because only 2.5% geo their own their own.

Question 109

What is the distant researcher condition in the Milgram experiment? What were the results? What does this tell us?

Answer 109

the Experimenter is not in the room and communicates remotely (38%)

Tells us: increase distance, compliance rates go down.

Question 110

What is the touch condition of the Milgram experiment? What were the results?

Answer 110

the Teacher has to physically push the Learner’s hand onto a shock plate (30%)

Question 111

What is the Two experimenters condition of the Milgram study? what were the results?

Answer 111

one says keep going while the other one says stop (20%)

Question 112

What is the known learner condition of the Milgram experiment? What were the results?

Answer 112

the Learner is somebody the Teacher knows, like a friend or colleague that was instructed to act for the study (15%)

Question 113

What is the Two teachers condition of the Milgram experiment? What were the results? What does this tell us?

Answer 113

a second Teacher (an actor) says they want to stop (10%)

Tells us: This is the strongest effect os it turns out that the main way in which most people stop, is when somebody else stops first

Question 114

What are the 4 central mechanisms that we think are responsible for the changes in results from different conditions in the Milgram experiment?

Answer 114

Authority
Blame
Gradual increase
Distance

Question 115

What is the effect of Authority in the Milgram experiment?

Answer 115

the Experimenter is an authority figure that tells them to go on; when this is doubted (e.g., Two Experimenters), compliance goes down.

Question 116

What is the effect of blame in the Milgram experiement?

Answer 116

the Experimenter claims that he will take the responsibility; when participant must take more of blame (e.g., Teacher’s Choice, Two Teachers), compliance goes down.

Question 117

What is the effect of gradual increase in the Milgram experiment?

Answer 117

the level of harm is increased little by little so that people can justify “just one more thing”; when harm is more sudden, compliance goes down (Teacher’s Choice).

Question 118

What is the effect of distance in the Milgram experiment?

Answer 118

when there is psychological or physical change in distance, compliance
changes e.g., Known Learner (psychological), Touch (physical), Distant Researcher.

Question 119

What happened immediately after Milgram published his study? What is one thing that this shows?

Answer 119

Immediately after publishing, Milgram was accused of doing unethical research that was deeply harmful to his participants, and today it is impossible to run replications of his work.

This shows that gaining approval from the ethics board does not mean that a study is ethical. You are not allowed to run replication of this work anymore because it is unethical.

Question 120

What are some limited scope replications of the Milgram study?

Answer 120

The nurse study

The 2009 replication

Question 121

What was the nurse study?

Answer 121

real-life nurses were called by a experimenter pretending to be a doctor and asked to administer a lethal dose of a (fake) medication that was planted in their offices. 95% of all nurses did this as instructed.

Question 122

What is the 2009 replication study?

Answer 122

by limiting the shocks only to below 150v, a 2009 study showed that 70% of participants would keep going beyond 150v.

Question 123

What are the 2 additional (not about ethics) criticisms of the Milgram study?

Answer 123

2017 re-analysis of the post-experiment interview data showed that most people who obeyed believed that they were not administering shocks at all.

­Publication selectivity: Milgram changed how many Teacher protests are required to count as “not obeying” to make women seem more similar to men. Women originally were recorded to be less obedient to the experimenter intimidation than men and would stop the study sooner. This didn’t work with Milgram’s idea that his results would be universal so he manipulated the results in this way.

Question 124

Despite criticism, what do most social psychologists accept about the findings of the Milgram study?

Answer 124

While these issues are serious, most social psychologists accept that the rates of obedience are far higher than we would intuitively believe, and accept the broad conclusions of the study.

Question 125

Despite criticism, what do most social psychologists accept about the findings of the Milgram study?

Answer 125

While these issues are serious, most social psychologists accept that the rates of obedience are far higher than we would intuitively believe, and accept the broad conclusions of the study.

Question 126

What is the most common way that indirect intimidation is done? How?

Answer 126

Through social roles. By placing people into specific social roles, we can change their behaviours and make them adopt behaviours that are inconsistent with their beliefs/attitudes. In other words, by changing your social role we make it possible for you to engage in behaviours, you otherwise wouldn’t

Question 127

What are social roles?

Answer 127

a set of expectations about what kinds of behaviours are expected and permissible given our specific role in a social group or society.

Question 128

What are 2 examples of social roles?

Answer 128

E.g., police officers are allowed to carry weapons and exercise aggression under specific guidelines of the law. (whenever this social role is broken, we say it is innapropriate and illegal)

­E.g., students are allowed to interrupt a lecture to ask questions, but only if they raise their hand and are called upon.

Question 129

What is the Zimbardo Prison experiment?

Answer 129

an intricate, multi-day experiment in which undergraduate students at Stanford University were assigned roles as either “guards” or “prisoners” and allowed to do act out however they wanted over a period of 2 weeks.

Question 130

What was the design of the Zimbardo prison experiment? how long did it last? why?

Answer 130

­Prisoners were anonymized and referred by to guards only as numbers. ­

Guards began abusing prisoners within 48 hours, stripping them naked, asking
them to clean toilets with their bare hands, and verbally abusing them.
­
Several prisoners, believing they could not stop the experiment, went on hunger strikes.
­
After 6 days, the experiment was stopped after pressure from other researchers.

Question 131

Which experiment is often termed the most unethical experiment ever conducted in psychology?

Answer 131

The Zimbardo experiment

Question 132

What concerns do social psychologists have about the Zimbardo experiment’s intenral validity?

Answer 132

• Zimbardo actively encouraged the guards to act in corrupt and aggressive ways. (AKA they were directly manipulated)
• Zimbardo specifically chose students he believed were the most susceptible to the situation (AKA no random sampling)

Question 133

What do social psychologists believe about the results of the Zimbardo study?­

Answer 133

While social psychologists believe that social roles and situations can lead to aggressive behaviour, they have serious reservations about this study.

Question 134

What can we say about the Milgram and Zimbardo experiemnts?

Answer 134

Despite their deep ethical problems and issues in reliability and replicability, both the Milgram and Zimbardo questions teach us important lessons about the potential for direct and indirect intimidation

Question 135

What can we learn from the Milgram and ZImabardo experiments that we can incorporate in our own lives?

Answer 135

Would I be comfortable doing this if the person was right in front of me, or somebody I knew personally?
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Is this person really an expert and somebody I can really trust?

­What would other people do in this situation?