Social psychology - Obedience

 4 assumptions of approach - 

Individuals interact with others and affect one another's behaviour.

Agency theory suggests people are agents of society to behave in a way to benefit society.

People help others by sending signals to other people by body language, behaviour etc.

Effects of being in groups:

Social approach assumes that people live within a culture and society and that their behaviour is affected by their experiences within society.

Social identity theory suggests that y identifying oneself as being a member of a group, a person can become prejudiced against members of a rival group.

Groups are prejudice to one and another- Member of a peer group copy one another, crowds can be unruly

Effect on social situation -

Not just people and groups that affect behaviour, but the social situation itself.

E.G - Lift, 2 people in a lift makes you act differently than if you was on your own

Social roles -

Society, people have social roles and those roles have expectations attached to them. People tend to act in accordance with their social role

Reicher and Haslam (2006)investigated social roles of prisoners and guards and gave evidence that people behave according to social roles. Milgram's work also involved social roles, finding that authority figures are obeyed more than others.

Ethical guidelines and why we need them -

Harlous monkeys - They took monkeys away from their mother. This proved they can not be taken away from their primary care giver.

Josef Fritzer - Kept his child in the basement. The child had to live underneath her family. The father then made her carry his children.

Ethics - standard of conduct that look at morally right and wrong ideas.

The primary aim of psychology must be to improve the quality of human life and to do this it is necessary to carry out research with human PPs (participants) 

Research psychologists have a duty to respect the rights and dignity of all PPs so they must follow certain moral principles and rules of conduct, designed to protect both PPs and the reputation of psychology.

APA -Americas ethical governing body

The professional organisation that governs psychology in Britain is the British psychological society (BPS). They have produced a list f ethical guidelines.

An ethical issue is any situation that repeatedly gives rise to an ethical dilemma.

E.G. whether or not to deceive a research PP in a psychological study in order to gain more worthwhile findings is an ethical issue because it creates an ethical dilemma for the researcher ie what should they do?

Pseudonym - Fake name protects identity E.G - Little Albert

Tabula rasa - theory that human mind at birth is a bank slate without rules for processing data and data is added and rules for processing are formed solely by ones sensory experience.

Informed consent - 

PPs must give their consent to take part in research and this consent must be informed

This means that information must be made available on which to base a decisions to participate or not

PPS should be told what they are letting themselves in for. Only the are they in a position to gie informed consent.

To study PPs without consent would be ethically acceptable so long as what happens to the PPs could just as likely happen to them in everyday life.

Deception -

Information is withheld from PPs: they are misled about th purpose of the study and what will happen during it

According to the BPS guideline 'intentional' deception of the PPs should be avoided wherever possible

In particular deception is unacceptable if it leads to discomfort, anger or objections

Protection from harm -

The BPS ethical guidelines state that 'investigators have a primary responsibility to protect PPs from physical and mental harm during the investigation' 

But n investigation is risk free; the guiding principle is that risks should be no greater than the risks PPs are exposed o in their real life

Confidentiality -

They must be told that there is no need to answer these questions and, if they do not that their answers will be treated in confidence. They should remain anonymous.

BPS guidelines state that unless people have given their consent, they should only be observed in situations where they would expect to be observed by strangers.

Identify and explain who Stanley Milgram is -

Obedience is most likely to occur in an unfamiliar environment and in the presence of an authority figure, especially when covert pressure is put upon people to obey.

Also possible that it occurs because people tend to feel that someone other than themselves is responsible for their actions.

Milgram 1963 - APRC to describe the study 

Aim:

Test the idea that Germans were somehow different from other people, in that they were able to carry out barbaric acts against Jews and other minority groups.

Milgram wanted to see if volunteer PPs would obey orders to give electric shocks to someone they thought was just another PP. He wanted to answer the question 'How far would they go?'

Procedure:

Milgram advertised from 40 white male PPs and told them they were taking part in an experiment on human learning.

He had a helper (confederate) who was the learner and would 'receive' the (fake) shocks

There was one real shock of 45 volts at the beginning, PPs received this to convince them taht the shock generator was real.

The confederate - learner who was middle aged and pleasant looking was primed

It took place at Yale University

Mr Williams was the experimenter

Mr Wallace was the confederate (learner)

Each PP arrived at the laboratory and waited in room with confederate

Milgram reassured PPs that the shocks would be painful (but no permanent tissue damage) 

The participant - teacher watched the confederate, learner being strapped into the chair and wired up so the shocks could be felt 

(Guidelines already were broken)

Milgram then takes PP teachers into another room where there was a long counter in front of the shock generator 

The switches were in a row and labelled as running from 15 volts to 450 volts (XXX)

The PPs sat in front of the 15 volt switch and began the experiment, having been given instructions by Milgram. The PP was to move up one switch each time the learner gave a wrong answer

Task required word pairs. Read out key word and four possible pairs

An incorrect response resulted in 15 volts 'shock' each successive wrong answer resulted in a 15 volts shock higher, 30 volts, 45 volts and so on

Learner gives a few right responses then a few wrong responses. Responses were pre-set and the same each time with their being about three wrong answers to one correct. No sign of protest up to 300 volts in a basic study

A buffer was in between them

At 300 volts the learner bangs on the wall and after the learner answers stop appearing for the PP to see

At this stage the PP tended to look to the experimenter for guidance and was told to treat the absence of a response as no response and to go on with the shocks

If 450 volts was reached PPs were to continue with that switch. Experimenter was in room with the PPs so the PP would think that no one was with the learner - who was now silent and could be in a bad way

Pointless to continue with study because the learner was not responding - no learning would take place.

Experimenter had 4 prods:

prod 1 - please continue

prod 2 - the experiment requires you to continue

prod 3 -it is absolutely essential that you continue

prod 4 - you have no other choice but to continue

Received 4 dollars for participating

Milgrams initial thoughts:

Thought PP would refuse to go up to 450 volts

Before carrying out the study, he asked students and colleagues what the

y thought

opinion was that 2-3 % of would continue to the end

people were asked what they would do, no one said they would continue

Aspect of study:

At the end of the experiment, the PPs were interviewed using open questions and attitude scales. Steps were taken to make sure that each PP would leave the laboratory feeling alright.

E.G the victim and PP met up to show the victim was not hurt and was work to reduce any tensions that had built up from taking part

Results -

Results showed 26 of 40 men (65%) who took part in the study (interestingly 26 out of the 40 women who were tested in a separate study continued to the end)

In the basic study which used male PPs 14 PPs stopped before 450 volts

Most PPs though the experiment was real. After the study they were asked to rate the shocks on a scale 

most rated them as 14 (extremely painful)

average rating was 13.42

Many PPs showed signs of nervousness, especially when giving the most painful shocks, PPs were seen to sweat, tremble, stutter, groan and dig their fingernails into their flesh

14/40 showed nervous laughter and smiling

Conclusion 1 -