How do the social studies (4) link to social area?

Question 1

Milgram- Obedience- Responses to people in authority

Answer 1

Social approach because results show how pressure from another person can lead people to administer potentially fatal electric shocks to another, how they could be lead to do this in spite of their evident discomfort.
Included because of importance of subject matter, way in which it inspired many other research in area of obedience.
Emphasised situational rather than individual explanations.

Question 2

Bocchiaro- Disobedience & Whistle-blowing- Responses to people in authority

Answer 2

Sought to develop new way to investigate obedience experimentally. Similar to Milgram in revealing high levels of obedience, good contrast as was conducted in Netherlands- also sought to investigate any personality differences distinguishing those who were obedient, disobedient or prepared to whistle blow.
Furthered social explanation to holistic explanation, took individual explanations into account also.
Contrasted Milgram’s research- looked at how individuals challenge authority for positive reasons, Milgram looked at lack of challenge to people in authority.

Question 3

Piliavin- Good Samaritan- Responses to people in need

Answer 3

Social approach because was seeking to investigate (in a real life setting) impact of other people on helping behaviour. Did this through counting number of people in carriage at time of incidents (diffusion of responsibility was not seen) while another person was available to model helping behaviour, in this case was necessary.

Question 4

Levine- Cross-cultural altruism- Responses to people in need

Answer 4

Contemporary (recent) study investigating helping behaviour, built on Piliavin study investigating it in non-confined settings and also doing so cross-culturally (23 different countries).
Results found cultural differences in altruism, offering culture as an explanation.