Social influences

Question 1

What is conformity ?

Answer 1

Yielding to group pressure (Also known as majority influence)

Question 2

What is compliance?

Answer 2

Publicly, but not privately, going along with majority influence to gain approval

Question 3

What is identification?

Answer 3

Public and private acceptance of majority influence in order to gain group acceptance

Question 4

What is internalisation?

Answer 4

Public and private acceptance of majority influence, through adoption of the majority group’s belief system

Question 5

What is informational social influence (ISI)?

Answer 5

A motivational force to look to others for guidance in order to be correct

Question 6

What is Normative social influences (NSI)?

Answer 6

A motivational force to be liked and accepted by a group

Question 7

What was the aim of Jeness’ study?

Answer 7

To investigate whether individual judgements of jellybeans in a jar was influenced by discussion groups

Question 8

What were the procedures of Jeness’ study?

Answer 8

1. Participants made individual, private estimates of the number of jellybeans in a jar. 2. Participants then discussed their estimates either in a large group of in several smaller groups, discovering in the the process that individuals differed widely in their estimates. 3. After discussion, group estimates were created. 4. Participants then made a second individual, private estimate.

Question 9

What were the findings of Jeness’ study?

Answer 9

1. Typicality of opinion was increased - individuals’ second private estimates tended to converge towards their group estimate 2. The average change of opinion was greater among females - women conformed more

Question 10

What were the conclusions of Jeness’ study?

Answer 10

• The judgements of individuals are affected by majority opinions - Especially in unfamiliar/ambiguous situations - Discussion is not effective in changing opinion, unless the individuals who enter into the discussion become aware that the opinions of others are different to theirs

Question 11

How can Jeness’ study be evaluated?

Answer 11

• Although Jeness did not tell participants what the aims of the study were, the deception here was less severe than in other social influences studies. Therefore, the study could be retarder as more ethically sound. - This was a laboratory-based experiment using an artificial, unusual situation. It therefore lacks mundane realism, as it’s not an everyday event to be asked how many sweets there are in a jar and so it does not reflect actual behavior in real-life situations. - The study tells us little, if anything, about majority influence in non-ambiguous situations where people conform to obviously wrong answers - Jeness’ study may involve NSI as well as ISI. After making initial individual estimates, participants then created group estimates, therefore their later second individual estimates may have moved towards their group estimates due to a desire for acceptance (NSI) as well as a desire to be correct (ISI).

Question 12

What is meant by a confederate?

Answer 12

Individuals who pretend to be participants or researchers in research studies, but who are actually playing a part.

Question 13

What was the aim of Asch’s study?

Answer 13

to investigate the degree to which individuals would conform to a majority who gave obviously wrong answers

Question 14

What is the procedure of Asch’s study?

Answer 14

• 123 American male student volunteers took part in what they were told was a study of visual perception. Individual participants were placed in groups with between seven and nine others, sat either in a line or around a table, who in reality were participants. The task was to say which comparison line, A, B or C, was the same as a stimulus line on 18 different trials. 12 of these ‘critical’ trials, where confederates gave identical wrong answers, and the naive (real) participant always answered las or las but one. - There was also a control group of 36 participants who were tested individually on 20 trials, to test how accurate individual judgements were.

Question 15

What are the findings of Asch’s study?

Answer 15

• The control group had an error rate of only 0.04% (3 mistakes out of 720 trials), which shows how obvious the correct answers were. - On the 12 critical trials, there was a 32% conformity rate to wrong answers - 75% of participants conformed to at least one wrong answer (25% never conformed) - 5% conformed to all 12 wrong answers - Post-experiment interviews with participants found three reasons for conformity: Distortion of action, perception and judgement

Question 16

What are the conclusions of Asch’s study?

Answer 16

• The judgements of individuals are affected by majority opinions, even when the majority are obviously wrong - There are big individual differences in the amount to which people are affected by majority influence. As most participants conformed publicly, but not privately, it suggests that they were motivated by normative social influence, whee individuals conform to gain acceptance or avoid rejection by a group.

Question 17

How can Asch’s study be evaluated?

Answer 17

• Asch’s method for studying conformity became a paradigm, the accepted way of conducting conformity research - As only one real participant is tested at a time. The procedure is uneconomical and time-consuming. - The situation was unrealistic and so lacked mundane realism. It would be unusual to be in a situation where you would disagree so much with others as to what was the ‘correct’ answer in a situation. - Asch’s study was unethical, as it involved deceit; participants believed it was a study of visual perception. It also involved psychological harm, with participants put under stress through disagreeing with others. - As the overall conformity rate on the trials was only 32%, the majority of people are actually not conformist, but independent.

Question 18

What is distortion of action?

Answer 18

Where the majority of participants who conformed did so publicly , but not privately, as they wished to avoid ridicule

Question 19

What is distortion of perception?

Answer 19

Where some participants believed their perception must actually be wrong and so conformed

Question 20

What is distortion of judgement?

Answer 20

Where some participants had doubts concerning the accuracy of their judgements and so conformed to the majority view

Question 21

What are situational variables?

Answer 21

Features of an environment that affect the degree to which individuals yield to group pressures

Question 22

What are individual variables?

Answer 22

Personal characteristics that affect the degree to which individuals yield to group pressures.

Question 23

What are social roles?

Answer 23

The parts individuals play as members of a social group, which meet the expectations of that situation.

Question 24

What were the aims of Zimbardo’s prison experiment?

Answer 24

• To investigate the extent to which people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-plating simulation of prison life. - To test the dispositional versus situational hypotheses that saw prison violence as either due to the sadistic personalities of guards and prisoners, or to the brutal conditions of the prison environment.

Question 25

What was the methodology of Zimbardo’s study?

Answer 25

• 75 male university students responded to a newspaper ad asking for volunteers for a study of prison life paying $15 per day. 21 students rated as the most physically and mentally stably, mature and free from anti-social and criminal tendencies were used (10 as guards and 11 as prisoners). Selection as to who would be guards and who would be prisoners was on a random basis. All participants initially expressed a desire to be prisoners. Zimbardo himself played the role of the prison superintendant. - the basement of the psychology department atStanford university was converted into a mock prison and the experience was made as realistic as possible, with the prisoners being arrested by the real local police and then fingerprinted, stripped and deloused. Dehumanization was increased by prisoners wearing numbered smocks, nylon stocking caps and a chain around one ankle. Guars whore khaki uniforms, reflective sunglasses and were issued with handcuffs, keys and truncheons. - 9 Prisoners were placed 3 to a cell and a regular routine on shifts, meal times etc. was established, as well as visiting times, a parole and disciplinary board, and a prison chaplain, the study was planned to run for two weeks

Question 26

What were the findings of Zimbardo’s study

Answer 26

• Both guards and prisoners settled quickly into their social roles. After an initial prisoner ‘rebellion’ was crushed, dehumanization was increasingly apparent with the guards becoming ever more sadistic, taunting the prisoners and giving them meaningless, boring tasks to do, while the prisoners became submissive and unquestioning of the guards’ behavior. Some prisoners sided with the guards against any prisoners who dared to protest. De-individuation was noticeable by the prisoners referring to each other and themselves by their prison numbers instead of their names. - After 36 hours, one prisoner was released because of fits of crying and rage. Three more prisoners developed similar symptoms and were released successive days. A fifth prisoner developed a sever race when his parole was denied. - Scheduled to run for 14 days, the study was stopped after 6 days when Zimbardo realized the extent of the harm that was occurring, and the increasingly aggressive nature of the guards’ behavior. The remaining prisoners were delighted at their sudden good fortune, while the guards were upset by Zimbardo’s decision. - In later interviews, both guards and prisoners aid they were surprised at the uncharacteristic behaviors they had shown.

Question 27

What is de-individualisation?

Answer 27

A state in which individuals have lower self-awareness and a weaker sense of personal responsibility for their actions. This may result from the relative anonymity of being part of a crowd.

Question 28

What is dehumanization?

Answer 28

Degrading people by lessening of their human qualities

Question 29

What is obedience?

Answer 29

Complying with the demands of an authority figure

Question 30

What were the aims of Milgram’s study?

Answer 30

• To test the ‘germans are different’ hypothesis, which claimed that Germans are highly obedient and that Adolf Hitler could not have exterminated the Jewish people and other minority groups in the 1930s and 1940s without the unquestioning co-operation of the German population - To see if individuals would obey the orders of an authority figure that incurred negative consequences and went against one’s moral code.

Question 31

What were the procedures of Milgram’s study?

Answer 31

• 40 American males aged 20-50 responded to a newspaper advertisement to volunteer for a study of memory and learning at Yale University Psychology Department. They were met by a confederate experimenter wearing a lab coat, who was actually a biology teacher. He introduced them to Mr Wallace, a confederate participant, a gentle, harmless looking man in his late 50s. The participants were told that the experiment concerned the effects of punishment on learning and that they would be either a ‘teacher’ or a ‘learner’, with the roles determined randomly. In fact this was rigged; Mr Wallace was always the learner and the real participant was always the teacher - The experimenter explained that punishments would involve increasingly severe electric shocks. All three went into an adjoining room, where the experimenter strapped a consenting Mr Wallace into a chair with his arms attached to electrodes. The teacher was told to give shucks through a shock generator in the next room. This generator had a row of switches each marked with a voltage level. The first switch was labelled ‘15 volts’ and the verbal description ‘slight shock’. Each switch gave a shock 15 volts higher than the one before, up to a maximum 450 volts, marked ‘XXX’. The real participant received a real shock of 45 volts to convince him that everything was authentic. - Participants then read out a series of paired-associate word tasks, to which they received a pre-recorded series of verbal answers from the learner, with the real participant believing these to be genuine responses. The teacher was told by the experimenter to give a shock each time Mr Wallace got an answer wrong. His answers were given by him supposedly switching on one of four lights located above the shock generator. With each successive mistake, the teacher gave the next highest shock, 15 volts higher than the previous one. - At 150 volts the learner began to protest and demanded to be released; before this he had been quite willing to take part. These protests became more insistent and at 300 volts he refused to answer any more questions and said he has heart problems that are starting to bother him. At 315 volts he screamed loudly and from 330 volts he was heard no more. Anytime the teacher seemed reluctant to continue, he was encouraged to go on through a series of verbal prods, such as ‘The experiment requires you to continue’ and ‘You have no choice, you must go on’. If the teacher questioned the procedure, he was told that the shocks will not cause any lasting tissue damage and was also instructed t keep shocking Mr Wallace if he stopped answering.

Question 32

What were the findings of Milligram’s study?

Answer 32

• Quantitative results - obedience was measured as the percentage of participants giving shocks up to the maximum 450 volts. In the main version of the experiment the obedience rate was 62.5%. An earlier ‘remote victim’ version with no pre-recorded responses, but the victim pounding on the walls instead, gained an obedience rate of 65%. 100% continued up to at least 300 volts - Qualitative results - many participants showed distress, such as twitching, sweating or giggling nervously, digging their nails into their flesh and verbally attacking the experimenter. Three participants had uncontrollable seizures. Some participants showed little if any signs of discomfort, instead concentrating dutifully on what they were doing.

Question 33

What were the findings of Milligram’s study?

Answer 33

• Quantitative results - obedience was measured as the percentage of participants giving shocks up to the maximum 450 volts. In the main version of the experiment the obedience rate was 62.5%. An earlier ‘remote victim’ version with no pre-recorded responses, but the victim pounding on the walls instead, gained an obedience rate of 65%. 100% continued up to at least 300 volts -

Question 34

What were the conclusions of Milligram’s study?

Answer 34

The ‘Germans are different’ hypothesis is clearly false - Milligram’s participants were 40 ‘ordinary’ Americans. Their high level of obedience showed that people obey those regarded as authority figures. If we had lived in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, we might have acted just as obediently. The results suggest that obeying those in authority is normal behavior in a hierarchically organized society. We will obey orders that distress us and go against our moral code.

Question 35

How can Milgram’s study be evaluated?

Answer 35

-The Milgram paradigm - Milgram established the basic method, or paradigm, for studying obedience, which was adopted by many subsequent researchers. - It was intended as a pilot study - it is more useful to consider the research inspired by Milgram’s study than the study itself. Milgram was so astounded by the results that he subsequently conducted 19 variations of the study, each time varying one aspect of the procedure, to try and identify the reasons why people were so obedient. - Practical application - it was hoped that Milgram’s findings would help form strategies to reduce destructive blind obedience. Unfortunately, not much has changed since 1963; horrendous crimes are still committed by people operating under the excuse of ‘simply following orders’ - Type of study - most people presume that Milgram’s study is an experiment, indeed Milgram referred to it as such. However, there is no independent variable and in reality it is more of a controlled observation. It can, however, be considered an experiment if Milgram’s variations of his study are considered. The independent variable then becomes which particular variation a participant performs, for example, having the experimenter not present in the room, as opposed to him being in the room.

Question 36

What is meant by the agentic state?

Answer 36

When an individual obey’s an authority figure. They no longer see themselves as responsible for their own behavior but an agent of the authority figure whose orders they are following.