Social Influence Flashcards

Question

What was the modern experiment modelled off of zimbardos research

Answer 1

BBC prison study

Answer 2

15 male pupils split into 5 groups of 3 and closely matched on personality variables From each group 1 was the guard and 2 prisoners Study ran for 8 days

Answer 3

Participants didn’t automatically conform to assigned roles over the course of the study: Prisoners increasingly identified as a group and collectively challenged the authority of the group, establishing more egalitarian set of social relations. The guards also were reluctant to impose authority on prisoners which led to a shift of power

Answer 4

High real world application- Abu Ghraib conformity shown as military group notorious for the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers= powerful external validity High internal validity as they used random allocation to assign roles of prisoners and guards

Answer 5

Non representative Gender bias and cultural bias= lacking population validity meaning its cannot be generalised Lack of standardisation die to the non existent IV and DV meaning lower levels of contra;, results can therefore be affected by extraneous or co founding variables. As well as this guards hard the option to chose their own prison and punishments Zimbardo was the superintendent of the study- not acknowledging his own ethical duty as researcher- had to be told this by his future wife Deception, informed consent- psychological + physical harm

Answer 6

How far people would go in obeying instructions if it involved harming another person

Answer 7

Volunteers were recruited for a controlled experiment investigating learning (ethics:deception?) MIlgram has a total of 40 male participants who he introduced to an experiment and another confederate posing as a volunteer participant The participants drew lots to decide roles however it was always rigged so the real participant became the teacher and the fake participant became the teacher. The leaner has to recall paired word lists and if they got one wrong, the teacher had to administer increasing strong shocks from 15-450 volts! Learner gave purposeful wrong answers receiving fake shocks in silence till 300volts

Answer 8

Banging on the walls and screaming, then not responding to the following question

Answer 9

“You have no other choice, you must go on” “It is absolutely essential that you continue”

Answer 10

Psychiatrist students predicted that very few would go over 150 volts with only 1 in 1,000 going to the full 450 volts However this was not the case with 26 in 40 pp (65%) going for the full 450 volts even though it was labelled XXX

Answer 11

With the experiment or absent experiment, experiment or gave instructions over a telephone, only 20% continued to max shock, with some even repeatedly admitting the lowest shock level whilst telling the experiment or they were following procedure

Answer 12

Milgram moved his experiment from the prestigious Yale university to a run down office in Bridgeport, where results only slightly dropped to 48%

Answer 13

Original= grey lab coat Alteration = member of the public in their own clothes where there was one of the biggest drops to only 20% going to max level, aswell as an external study using a female experimenter dressed in a police style outfit, who told random member of the public to give spare change to a male researcher for an expired ticket- 72% conformed

Answer 14

Gender and culture bias- non representative= decreasing validity Controlled procedures- set prods for experimenter making experiment easy to repeat and measure consistency Real world application- Nazis saw Hitler as an authority figure to follow

Answer 15

Validity- lacks ecological validity as it was an artificial task, however milgram argued that much alike the holocaust, people were dropped into unfamiliar situations. Random allocation- was fake- deception betraying trust and possibly damaging psychology reputation

Answer 16

Situational variables affecting obedience include location and uniform, as investigated by milgram

Answer 17

Situational factors might explain behaviour better than his original belief that obedience might be due to personality

Answer 18

Proximity Location Uniform

Answer 19

Milgram findings support a situational explanation of obedience. However, this has been critiqued by researchers who argue that it offers an excuse or alibi for evil behaviour. In some psychologists’ views, it is offensive to survivors of the Holocaust to suggest that the Nazis were simply obeying orders and were victims themselves of situational factors beyond their control. The situational explanation of obedience therefore ignores the idea that people have personal responsibility for their actions = may cause psychological harms to victims.

Answer 20

Milgram systematically altered one variable at a time (e.g. proximity) to see what effect it would have on the level of obedience. All the other procedures and variables were kept the same as the study was replicated over and over again with over 1000 participants in total. This means that we can see cause and effect i.e. that the situational variables of uniform, proximity and location cause obedience, supporting the internal validity of the situational explanation of obedience.

Answer 21

Explanations concern the influences of others on an individual’s behaviours as opposed to external factors. Agentic state and legitimacy of authority suggest that obedience lies within social hierarchies

Answer 22

‘Just following orders’ acting for an agent (authority) and not taking responsibility for your actions and shifting this onto your agent- reduced moral strain Opposite to autonomous state. The shift between the two is known as the agentic shift. It is argued that it helps maintain a positive self-image, e.g. behaviour is due to these factors rather than themselves.

Answer 23

For the agentic shift to occur the person must be perceived as being an authority figure. Agreed social hierarchy, which is learnt from childhood. Certain symbols attached to a person/s in authority e.g. uniform and setting. Destructive authority where power is used to get people to act in cruel/dangerous ways.

Answer 24

had overseen the Nazi death camps used the defence that he was following orders at his war crimes trial.

Answer 25

One strength of legitimate authority is that there is research support. Replications of Milgram’s study have found that some countries are more obedient that others. Kilham and Mann (1974) found obedience in Australian participants to be 16%. However, in German participants this figure is 85%. This therefore suggests that they recognised that legitimate authority is a cause of obedience, which supports the validity this explanation of obedience.

Answer 26

Blass and Schmitt (2001) showed students a video clip of Milgram’s study and asked who was to blame. Student’s said the experimenter was to blame, as he had legitimate authority (top of the hierarchy) and because he is an expert (a scientist). —> limitation of the agentic state is that the behaviour of the Nazis cannot explained by the agentic shift. This therefore suggests that the agentic shift can only account for some situations of obedience, and so cannot be considered to be fully externally valid.

Answer 27

A strength of both the social-psychological explanations of obedience (agentic state and legitimacy of authority) is that they can both be used to explain real-life scenarios. Mandel (1998) outlined an incident in which the German Reserve Police Battalion 101 obeyed orders to shoot civilians in a small Polish town. This was despite the fact they did not have direct orders to do so, they could have been given other duties. This suggests that the explanations are externally valid and may help to prevent such occurrences from happing again.

Answer 28

A strength of both the social-psychological explanations of obedience (agentic state and legitimacy of authority) is that they can both be used to explain real-life scenarios. Mandel (1998) outlined an incident in which the German Reserve Police Battalion 101 obeyed orders to shoot civilians in a small Polish town. This was despite the fact they did not have direct orders to do so, they could have been given other duties. This challenges the idea of the agentic state as the men were not ordered to shoot the civilians, they were given a choice and therefore cannot blame authority for their actions, and shouldn’t experience the agentic shift from the autonomous state to the agentic state.Therefore, the explanation can’t be considered to be completely valid as it can’t explain obedience in every situation.

Answer 29

This is a dispositional explanation of obedience i.e. it focuses on the importance of the individual’s personality in explaining their behaviour. It is a collection of dispositions/traits that develop from strict parenting, such as being conformist, conventional and dogmatic.

Answer 30

2000 middle-class Caucasian Americans Several scales were developed including the potential for fascism scale (F-scale). Examples from the f-scale: ‘Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues for children to learn’ ‘Homosexuals are hardly better than criminals and ought to be severely punished’ ‘There is hardly anything lower than a person who does not feel great love, gratitude and respect for his parents’

Answer 31

Authoritarians (who scored high on the F scale and other measures) identified with strong people and were intolerant of the weak. They also showed excessive respect and deference to those of higher status. Authoritarian people also had a cognitive style where there were distinct and fixed stereotypes about other groups. Individuals who scored high in the F-scale tended to be raised by parents with an Authoritarian parenting style

Answer 32

Altemeyer (1981) refined the concept of the Authoritarian Personality. He identified a group of three of the original personality variables which he referred to as right-wing authoritarianism (RWA)

Answer 33

Conventionalism – an adherence to conventional norms and values Authoritarian aggression – aggression towards people that violate these norms Authoritarian submission – uncritical submission to legitimate authorities

Answer 34

They carried out a follow-up study of Milgram’s experiments two months before. They selected 20 ‘obedient’ participants who had continued to the final shock level, and 20 ‘defiant’ participants who had refused at some point in the experiment. Each participant completed the MMPI scale + California F scale to specifically measure their levels of authoritarianism. Participants were also asked a series of open-ended questions, including questions about their relationship with their parents during childhood and their attitude to the ‘experimenter’ (authority figure) and the ‘learner’ during their participation in Milgram’s original study.

Answer 35

they did find higher levels of authoritarianism among those participants classified as obedient, compared with those classified as defiant. They also found significant differences between obedient and defiant participants that were consistent with the Authoritarian Personality. This was not the case among defiant participants. These findings suggested to Elms and Milgram that the obedient group was higher on the trait of authoritarianism.

Social Influence Flashcards

(59 cards)