SOCIAL INFLUECNE Flashcards

Question

Zimbardos prison experiment EVALUATION - LACK OF REALSM

Answer 1

LACK OF REALISM • Banuazizi and Mohavedi 1975- argued that participants were merely acting rather than generally conforming to social roles. • Performances based on stereotypes of how prisoners and guards are supposed to act. • EXAMPLE: one guard claimed he based his role on a brutal character from the film Cool hand Luke. • This would explain why the prisoners rioted because that’s what they thought real prisoners did. HOWEVER • 90% of prisoners conversation was prison life (zimbardo found) • So seems that the situations as real to the participants which gives the study a high degree of internal validity.

Answer 2

• Fromm(1973) accused Zimbardo of exaggerating the power of the situation to influence behaviour and minimising the role of personality factors (dispositional influences) • Example: only 1/3 of participant guards were excessively aggressive, 1/3 were keen on fairness and the other 1/3 were supporting the prisoners and sympathising toward them. • This sugggests that Zimbardo conclusion (that participants were conforming to social roles) may be OVERSTATED. • The differences in the guards behaviours indicated that they were able to exercise right and wrong choices, despite situational pressures to conform to role.

Answer 3

STRENGTH: Control over some variables • most obvious is the selection of participants • Emotionally stable ones chosen and randomly assigned to role of guard or prisoner • One way that researchers could try to avoid individual personality differences as an explanation for findings. • If guards and prisoners behaved differently, but were in the roles by chance, then their behaviour must have been due to pressures of the situation. • Having this control= strength as increases internal validity. • So can be more confident about drawing conclusions

Answer 4

Zimbardo had dual roles in the study • On one occasion where participant wanted to speak to Zimbardo as role as super independent of prison, as he wanted to be released, Zimbardo focused on the running of his prison not he responsibilities towards the participant and mental wellbeing.

Answer 5

A form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order. Person issuing the order is usually a figure of authority, who has the power to punish when disobedient.

Answer 6

Interested in why German population had followed the orders of Hitler and slaughter over 10 million Jews, gypsies and members of other social groups in the Holocaust during the Second World War.

Answer 7

- 40 males - newspaper advert - ad looking for participants for memory study - participants 20-50 years - jobs ranging from unskilled to professional - Particpants= teacher - conferates= learner - also experimenter played by actor.

Answer 8

- Learner strapped to chair in another room with electrodes - teacher and experimenter in another room - participant told to deliver electric shock to learner when got memory question wrong - Shocks increased by 15 volts to 450 volts (labelled as severe shock) - at 300 volts, learner made noise (pain) and said couldn’t do it anymore - after 300 volts, learner made NO noise, indicating unconsciousness OR death. - when participant turned to experimenter for guidance, experimenter would insist they carry on.

Answer 9

- NO participant stopped below 300 volts. - 12.5% (5 participants) STOPPED at 300 volts - 65% continued to the highest volts (450) - QUALITATIVE DATA COLLECTED: - participants showed signs of extreme tension, sweat, tremble ect. - all participants debriefed after - 84% participants reported glad to have taken part.

Answer 10

Students estimated no more than 3% of participants would continue to 450 volts.

Answer 11

- 21 out of 22 nurses in a real hospital ward would obey orders given over the phone from a “Dr Smith” to give 20mg of an unfamiliar drug at 2x the daily maximum. - as study conducted in real world setting, it could be claimed to have higher MUNDANE REALISM (the task was familiar) an ECOLOGICAL validity (the location was normal). • At first the Milgram study looks to lack external validity due to it being conducted in lab • However, the central feature of this situation was the relationship between the authority figure and participant. • Milgram argued that the lab enviroment accurately reflected wider authority relationships in real life • HOFLING research supports this. \

Answer 12

• French TV show replicated Milgram study • The particants were paid to take part in tv show. • Told to give electric shocks (when ordered by presenter) to other participants (who were in fact actors) infront of audience. • 80% of participants delivered max voltage to apparently unconscious man. • Behaviour almost identical to Milgrams participants. • Showed milgrams resuts not one off.

Answer 13

• Orne and Holland (1968) argued participants behaved in the way they did because they didn’t really believe the set up- guessed the shocks were faked. • Tapes of milgrams experiment showed some participants doubted shocks were real HOWEVER • Sheridan and King conducted similar study where REAL shocks given to puppy’s. • Despite real shocks, 54% of the male student participants and 100% of female participants delivered what they thought was fatal shock. • This suggests that the effects in milgrams study were genuine because people behaved in same way with real shocks • Milgram reported 70% of his particants thought shocks were real.

Answer 14

PROXIMITY LOCATION UNIFORM

Answer 15

SAME ROOM - Obediecne DROPPED from 65% to 40% TOUCH PROXIMITY - Obedience dropped from 65% to 30% EXPERIMENTER GIVING ORDERS OVER PHONE - Obedience dropped from 65% to 20.5%

Answer 16

RUN DOWN BUILDING - Obedience dropped from 65% to 47.5%

Answer 17

EXPERIMENTER DRESSED IN ORDINARY CLOTHES (ordinary person) - Obedience dropped from 65% to 20% (lowest)

Answer 18

• Investigated the effect of uniform worn by confederates on obedience. • The confederates asked members of the public on New York streets to pay for a parking meter to pick up litter and put in bin. • Either dressed as Milkman OR Security guard OR suit. • Obedience when man in suit (19%) • Obedience in milkman uniform (14%) • Obedience in security uniform (38%) • This supports Milgrams original research that side uniform have more legitimate authority and as a field experiment can be argued to be higher in external validity and avoid demand characteristics.

Answer 19

• Orne and Hollans’s criticism of milgrams original study was that many of the participants guessed procedure was fake. • It is even more likely that participants in Milgrams variations realised this became of the extra manipulation • A good example is when experimenter replaced by ‘member of public’ • Even Milgram recognised that this situation was so contrived that some participants may well have worked out truth • This is a limitation of all Milgrams studies because it’s unclear whether the results are genuinely due to the operation of obedience or because the participants saw through the deception and acted accordingly.

Answer 20

• General strength of of milgrams research, that applies to his variations as well, is that his findings have been REPLICATED in other cultures. • Findings of cross- cultural research have been generally supportive. • EXAMPLE: Miranda et al (1981) found an obedience rate of 90% amongst Spanish students. • This suggest that Milgrams conclusions about obedience are not limited to American males, it sure validated across cultures and to females too. • HOWEVER: Smith and Bond (1998) make the crucial point that most replications have taken place in Western, developed societies (such as Spain’s nd Australia) • These are culturally not that different to America. • So it would be premature to conclude that milgrams findings about proximity, location and uniform apply to people everywhere.

Answer 21

A mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour because we believe to be acting for an authority figure (i.e acting as their agent) - this frees us from the demands of our consciousness and allows us to obey even a destructive authority figure

Answer 22

- Opposite of being in AGENTIC state - AUTONOMY means to be independent and free - A person is an autonomous state is free to behave according to their own principles and therefore feels a responsibility for their own actions.

Answer 23

- The shift from autonomy to agency = AGENTIC Shift - MILGRAM suggested this occurs when a person perceives someone else as a figure of authority - the other person has greater power because of their position in SOCIAL HIERARCHY.

Answer 24

BINDING FACTORS- aspects of the situation that allows the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour and so reduce their ‘moral strain’ they are feeling. - Milgram proposed a number of strategies that the individual uses - Such as: shifting responsibility to victim e.g ‘he was foolish to volunteer’ OR - denying the damage they are doing to their victims.

Answer 25

An explanation for Obediecne which suggests that we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us - this authority is justified (legitimate) by the individuals position of power within a social hierarchy.

Answer 26

• Blass and Schmitt (2001) showed a film of milgrams study to students and asked them to identify who they felt was responsible for thr harm to the learner. • The students blamed the ‘experimenter’ rather than the participant. • The students who indicated that the responsibility was due to legitimate authority (the ‘experimenter’ was the top of the hierarchy, therefore had legitimate authority). • BUT also due to EXPERT AUTHORITY (because he was a scientist) IN other words they recognised legitimate authority as the cause of obedience, supporting this explanation.

Answer 27

• The AGENTIC shift doesn’t explain many of the research findings. • EXAMPLE: It does not explain why some of the participants did NOT obey (humans are social animals and involved in social hierarchies and therefore should obey). • The AGENTIC shift explanation also does not explain the findings from HOFLING ET ALS stay. • The AGENTIC shift explanation predicts that, as the nurses handed over responsibility to the doctor, they should have shown levels of anxiety similar to Milgrams participants, as they understood their role in destructive process. • But this was not the case • This suggests that, at best, AGENTIC shift can only account for some situations of obedience.

Answer 28

• STRENGTH of the legitimacy of authority explanation is that it is a useful account of cultural differences in obedience • Many studies show that countries differ in the degree to which people are traditionally obedient to authority. • FOR EXAMPLE: Kilham and Mann (1974) REPLICATED Milgrams procedure in Australia and found that only 16% of their participant went all the way to the top of the voltage scale. • On other hand, Mantell 1971 found a very different figure for German participants- 85%. • This shows that in some cultures, authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate and entitled to demand obedience from individuals • This reflects the ways that different societies are structured and how children are raised to perceive authority figures. • Such supportive findings from cross- cultural research increase the validity of the explanation.

Answer 29

Any explanation of behaviour that highlights the importance of the individuals personality (i.e. disposition). -such explanations are often constructed with situational explanations.

Answer 30

A type of personality that Adorno argued was especially susceptible to obeying people in authority. - such individuals are also thought to be submissive to those of higher status and dismissive of inferiors.

Answer 31

NO- very different

Answer 32

High level of Obediecne was basically a psychological disorder- they tried to locate the cause of it in the personality of the individual.

Answer 33

- 2000 middle- class white Americans - what their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups - F scale Questionaire

Answer 34

- people with authoritarian leanings (i.e. scored high on F-scale) identified with ‘STRONG’ people and generally contemptuous (dislike/disprove) of the ‘WEAK’ - Conscious of theirs and others statuses - showed excessive respect to higher status people - authoritarian people had COGNITIVE STYLEE: no fuzziness between categories of people, with fixed and distinctive stereotypes about people) - There’s a string positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice.

Answer 35

- Tendency to be especially obedient to authority - extreme respect for authority and submissive to it - show contempt for people they perceive a having inferior social status. - highly conventional attitudes towards sex, race and gender - believe we need strong powerful leaders to enforce traditional values such as religion and family. - inflexible on outlook - everything either wrong or right - uncomfortable with uncertainties.

Answer 36

- concluded that it formed in childhood as a result of harsh parenting. - parenting style: extremely strict discipline, impossibly high standards - parents also showing conditional love (loving child depends on how he or she behaves).

Answer 37

This explains a central tait of obedience to higher authority, which is a dislike for people considered to be socially inferior or who belong to other social groups.

Answer 38

• Milgram and his assistant conducted interviews with small sample of fully obedient participants (who scored highly on F-scale) believing that there might be link between Obediecne and authoritarian personality. • HOWEVER, link is merely a correlation between 2 measured variable. • This make it impossible to draw conclusions that authoritarian personality causes Obediecne on the basis of this result. • May be there’s ’third factor’ involved. • Perhaps both Obediecne and authoritarian personality are associated with a lower level education, for instance and so not directly linked with each other at all.

Answer 39

• Any explanation of Obediecne in terms of individual personality will find it hard to explain obedient behaviour in the majority of a country’s population. • EXAMPLE: • In pre-war Germany, millions of individuals all displayed obedient, resist and anti- Semitic behaviour. • This was despite the fact that they must have differed in their personalities in all sorts of ways. • Seems extremely unlikely that they that they could all possess an authoritarian personality. • This is a limitation of Adornos theory as it is clear that an alternative explanation is much more realistic- that social identity explains Obediecne. • The majority of the German people identified with the anti-Semitic Nazi state, and scapegoated the ‘outgroup’ of Jews.

Answer 40

• F scale measures the tendency towards an extreme form of right-wing ideology • Christie and Jahoda 1954- argued this is a politically biased interpretation of authoritarian personality. • They point out the reality of left-wing authoritarianism in the shape. • Extreme right wing and left wing ideologies have much in common- they both emphasise the importance of complete Obediecne to legitiamate political authority. • Limitation of his theory as it is not a comprehensive dispositional explanation that can account for Obediecne to authority across the whole political spectrum.

Answer 41

• Greenstein 1969- describes the F scale as a ‘comedy if methological errors’ • EXAMPLE: the scale has come in for severe criticism because every one of its items is worded in the same ‘direction’. • Means its possible to get a high score of authoritarianism just by ticking same line of boxes on one side of page. • scale is measuring the tendency to agree (acquiescence bias) • also he interview participants about childhood experiences. • But researchers knew the participants score so knew which of them had authoritarian personalities.

Answer 42

refers to the ability of people to withstand the social pressure to conform to the majority or to obey authority. • this ability to withstand social pressure is influenced by both situational and dispositional factors.

Answer 43

The presence of people who resist pressures to conform or obey can help others to do the same. • These people act as models to show others that resistance to social influence is possible.

Answer 44

Refers to the sense we each have about what directs events in our lives. • INTERNALS- believe they are mostly responsible for what happens to them (internal locus of control). • EXTERNALS- believe it is mainly a matter of luck or other outside forces (external locus of control)

Answer 45

The person not conforming doesn’t have to be giving the ‘right’ answer, but simply just not agreeing with majority appears to enable a person to be free and follow their own conscious.

Answer 46

The rate of obedience dropped from 65 to 10% when the genuine participant was joined by diobedient confederate. Disobedient confederate acts as a ‘model’

Answer 47

ROTTER 1966

Answer 48

People differ in the way they explain their successes and failures but it isnt simply a matter of being intently or external. • There is a continuum -something that keeps on going, changing slowly over time )with HIGH INTERNAL LOC @ one end and HIGH EXTERNAL LOC @ other end of continuum. • With LOW INTERNAL + LOW EXTERNAL lying in between.

Answer 49

- Self confident - achievement oriented - higher intelligence - less need for social approval

Answer 50

• research evidence support the role of dissenting peers in resisting conformity. • E.G Allen + Levine 1971:found conformity decreased when there was 1 dissenter in an Ashcroft-type study. • This occurred even if the dissenter wore thick glasses and said he has difficulty with his vision (so was clearly in no position to judge the length of the lines). • SUPPORTS the view that resistance is not just motivated by following what someone else says but it enables someone to be free of pressure form group.

Answer 51

• Research supports the role of dissenting peer is in resisting obedience • GAMSON et al 1982- found higher levels of resistance in their study than milgram • Probably because the participants in Gamsons study were in groups (they had to produce evenidence that would be used to help an oil company run a smear campaign) • In Gamons study, 29 out of 33 groups rebelled (88%). • shows that peer support is linked to greater resistance.

Answer 52

• Research evidence supports the link between LOC and resistance to obedience. • HOLLAND, repeated milgrams baseline study and measured where participants were internals or externals. • Found 37% of internals did not continue to the highest shock level (showed some resistance) • Only 23% of externals did not continue . • Internals showed greater resistance to authority. • research support of this nature increases VALIDITY of the LOC explanation and out confidence that it can explain resistance.

Answer 53

• Not all research supports link between LOC and resistance. • Twinge et al (2004)- analysed data from American locus of control studies over 40 year period. • Data showed, over this time span, people have become more resistance to obedience but also more external. • If resistance were linked to an internal locus of control, we would expect people to have become more internal. • this challenges the link between internal LOC and increasing resistant behaviour • However, it is possible that the results are due to a changing society where many things are out of personal control.

Answer 54

A form of social influence in which a minority of people persuade others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours. - leads to internalisation or conversion, private and public behaviours and views change.

Answer 55

Commitment Consistency Flexibility

Answer 56

- research evidence that demonstrates the importance of consistency. - Moscovici et als study showed that a consistent minority opinion had greater effect on other people than an inconsistent opinion. - wood et al carried out a meta analysis of almost 100 similar studies and found that minorities who were seen to as being consistent were most influential. -This suggests that consistency is a major factor in minority influence.

Answer 57

- limitation of minority influence research is that the tasks involved= artificial. - Research therefore far removed from how minorities attempt to change the behaviour of majorities in real life. - makes findings of minority influence studies like Moscovici lack external validity and limited in what they can tell us about how minority influence works in real life situations.

Answer 58

The process by which individuals and groups change each others attitudes and behaviours. • incudes conformity, obedience and minority influence

Answer 59

This occurs when whole societies, rather than just individuals, adopt new attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing things. • Examples: accepting that the Earth orbits the Sun, women’s suffrage, gay rights and environmental.

Answer 60

Members of the majority slowly covert to the minority. As minority grows in size, it attracts new members faster, Neil it grows so large it becomes majority.

Answer 61

After social change, individuals who previously held the old view, refuse to admit they held the now unpopular view or resisted the new view. They forget the role of, and don’t give credit to the minorities who change society.

Answer 62

• We are more likely to have our views changed by a member of an INGROUP that we belong to (share characterises) • This could be age, gender, education level or sexuality more than if person in an OUTGROUP.

Answer 63

Changing laws and enforcing those laws

Answer 64

• Group membership • Found a heterosexual minority group were more able than homosexual minority group to change the opinions of a heterosexual majority group about the importance of gay rights. • as straight men had better success than gay men in convincing straight men • This demonstrates the importance of group membership in minority influence • This idea can be applied to a number of projects in the real world such as ensuring that messages about reducing gun and knife crime in underprivileged communities are delivered by members of the community. • However 1 problem is it means that members of a minority group who are often victimised are not listened to by members of a majorly group that see them as an OUTGROUP.

Answer 65

• Social change happens slowly • Example: it has taken decades for attitudes against drink- driving and smoking to shift. • NEMETH 1986- argues that the effects of minority influence are likely to be mostly indirect and delayed. • They are indirect because the majority is influenced on matters only related to the issues at hand, and not the central issues itself. • They are delayed because the effects may not been seen for some time. • this could be considered limitation of using minority influence to explain social change as it shows that its effects are fragile and its role in social influence very limited.

Answer 66

• Smoking in public places such as pubs was common but changed quickly dues to legal changes and fines. (Government) • Green issues such as climate change have developed due to better knowledge transmitted by informational social influence • Suffragettes suffered force feeding in order to show commitment to votes for women via the argumentation principle. • This has impacted n the attitudes and behaviours of majority.

SOCIAL INFLUECNE Flashcards

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