Milgram Chapter 5 Social psychology 1 1 Milgram s study has been criticised for being low in ecological validity. (a) Outline one argument demonstrating that it was low in ecological validity. [2] (b) Outline one argument demonstrating that it was high in ecological validity. [2] 2 Identify four aspects of Milgram s study that encouraged the participants to behave in a highly obedient way. [4] 3 (a) Describe one ethical issue raised in Milgram s study. [2] (b) Describe what steps Milgram took to deal with this ethical issue. [2] 4 In Milgram s study the participants showed signs of stress. (a) Give one example of the stress shown by participants. [2] (b) Explain why the participants may have been stressed. [2] 5 (a) Describe how Milgram measured obedience. [2] (b) Suggest two factors that would explain why participants were so obedient in Milgram s study. [2] 6 Outline two pieces of evidence from Milgram s study that showed that the participants believed the shocks were real. [4] 7 Some people regard Milgram s study as being controversial. (a) Give one reason why the results of Milgram s study might be judged to be controversial. [2] (b) Outline Milgram s reason for doing this research. [2] 8 From Milgram s study of obedience: (a) Describe the sample that was used. [2] (b) Outline one strength of this sample. [2] 9 In Milgram s study of obedience, male volunteers were recruited. There were two other additional participants. Describe the role of the two additional participants. [4] 10 From Milgram s study of obedience: (a) Outline one quantitative finding from this study. [2] (b) Give one weakness of this data in this study. [2] 1 (a) Low ecological validity because of demand characteristics such as being conducted in a prestigious institution. (b) High ecological validity because it was testing what it set out to test, the experimenter was a legitimate authority figure and the demand characteristics are the same as those occurring in everyday life. 2 (1) Prestigious setting; (2) participant feels obliged not to disrupt the experiment; (3) can t discuss choices with someone else; and (4) participant assumes discomfort is mild and temporary. 3 (a) One ethical issue from Milgram s study is that of harm. Participants believed they were giving another human being extremely strong electric shocks and many showed signs of extreme stress and anxiety about this situation. (b) Milgram debriefed them afterwards and reunited them with the learner so that they could see the learner was absolutely fine and that they had inflicted no injury upon them. 4 (a) One example of the stress shown by the participants was that they were sweating and trembling, biting their lips, etc. (b) The participants were stressed because they believed they were harming another human being and this goes against how we are generally brought up as children to believe we must never harm anyone. 5 (a) Milgram measured obedience according to the maximum level of electric shock that they administered (or thought they administered). The voltage scale was converted to a 30-point scale (there were 30 different levels of shock). A totally obedient participant was one who administered all the shock levels and therefore scored 30. Answer the following question with reference to the Milgram study: (a) Outline the aim of this study. [2] (b) Describe why the sample was selected for this study and suggest one limitation of this sample; [6] (c) Outline the procedure of this study. [6] (d) Outline the findings of this study. [6] (e) Discuss the ecological validity of this study. [6] (f) Describe and evaluate changes that could be made to the way this study was conducted. [10] (a) Outline one assumption of the social approach. [2] (b) Describe how the social approach could explain obedience. [4] (c) Describe one similarity and one difference between the Milgram study and any other core studies that take the social approach. [6] (d) Discuss strengths and limitations of the social approach using examples from any core studies that take this approach. [12] (b) One factor is that they think the experimenter knows what he is doing and has a worthy purpose (collecting scientific knowledge). Another factor is that the participant does not have long enough to resolve their internal conflict and so gets swept along with the study. 6 One piece of evidence is that when participants were debriefed after the experiment they were asked How painful did you think the shocks were for the learner? and the majority of participants indicated extremely painful, that is they thought they were giving real shocks. Another piece of evidence is the stress the participants exhibited sweating, trembling, groaning, nervous laughter, etc. which would not have happened had they actually believed the shocks were fake. If they hadn t believed the shocks were real, they would have been quite blasé. 7 (a) One reason the results were considered controversial is that it appears to show that even ordinary Americans might be capable of torture or killing someone (and committing a war crime) just because someone tells them to do so. At the time, this shocked Americans belief about themselves and their fellow Americans. (b) Milgram s reason for doing this particular research was originally to pilot a study he wanted to do in Germany in order to help understand the inhumane behaviour of prison camp guards during the Second World War. 8 (a) 40 American men aged between 20 and 50 from a variety of occupations. (b) There was a variety of occupations represented, such as postal clerks and salesmen, which would have required varying degrees of obedience in their everyday jobs.
Chapter 5 Social psychology 9 One was the experimenter, who organised the proceedings, including telling participants what to do and issuing the prods if the participant wanted to stop. The other was the learner who was seen being attached to the shock machine and then was supposed to be learning word pairs and reacting to the shocks. 10 (a) Quantitative data included the shock level at which the participant refused to continue. (b) A weakness may be that this doesn t tell us about the participants feelings or motivations at the time, although the study was backed up with some qualitative data too. (a) Milgram s aim for this study was the first step in investigating the inhumane behaviour of prison camp guards during the Second World War. He wanted to understand the process of obedience and the conditions under which people behaved in an obedient manner. (b) The sample used by Milgram was 40 male participants. They were all aged between 20 and 50 and were recruited as a volunteer sample from a newspaper advert. There was a wide range of professions and educational backgrounds. For example there was an encyclopaedia salesman, labourers, engineers, etc., although none of them were students. One limitation of the sample is that they all came from the New Haven area and therefore might not have been representative of other American males from the rest of the country. (c) An advert was placed in a newspaper for male volunteers. When they arrived at the university, they were told that the experiment was about how punishment affects learning. They met another participant (who was actually a confederate) and apparently drew lots to decide who would be learner and who would be teacher, although actually they were fixed so the participant was always the teacher. The learner was attached to an electric shock machine and the participant was told to teach him pairs of words, giving an increasingly high level shock for each mistake made. The point at which they refused to continue was noted. The participants were then debriefed. (d) The participants did believe that the study was real, evidenced by their judgement that the shocks they had given were painful. Participants showed signs of extreme tension such as sweating and nervously laughing. 65% of the participants went all the way to the end of the shock scale (450V). 22.5% stopped at 300V (intense shock). Qualitative findings included people s reactions when they had finished, showing relief, and comments indicating stress and distress such as I can t go on with this. (e) There were various aspects of the experiment which enhanced the tendency to obey (e.g. the prestigious environment, the lack of time to think about what they were doing or discuss with anyone). This means it doesn t wholly reflect destructive obedience in everyday life. The lab setting makes it unlike most occasions in real life where people are asked to obey. On the other hand, similar factors may explain why people do obey authority figures even when asked to do something destructive in everyday life. The fact that no one questioned the reality of the task or situation makes it possible to say that overall this study was high in ecological validity because behaviour was not changed due to the participants knowing they were involved in that particular field of research. (f) One change to this study would be to have a different authority figure. In the Milgram study, the person playing the authority figure was a stern, austere man in his forties. It would be interesting to see what would happen if the experimenter was a woman with a different persona, such as friendly, smiling and imploring (rather than a detached factual style). I think this would reduce the amount of obedience partly because she would be less of a legitimate authority figure and also because her persona may not be consistent with a participant s idea of what a scientist should be like. Thus, two of the features which were responsible for the high levels of obedience in the original study would be removed. Another change to the study could be that different nationalities could take part in order to see whether some nationalities are more obedient than others. There could be collectivist as well as individualist cultures represented. It is difficult to know how it would change the results. Overall there would probably still be quite high levels of obedience though with some evident cultural differences. For example, it might be that collectivist cultures show lower levels of obedience because they are more encouraged to think about other people. However, some individualist cultures where questioning and original thought are more encouraged (e.g. Nordic countries) might also show lower levels of obedience. Those nationalities which have a political dictatorship may show particularly high levels as they would be used to having to obey orders. (a) One assumption of the social approach is that people s behaviour is largely governed by social processes the influence of other people, for example through conformity, obedience, majority influence and so on. (b) The social approach would explain obedience in terms of the interactions between the individuals in the situation. For example, the perception of how legitimate a person appears to be and the orders that they issue will have an influence on the degree of obedience. Also, the social approach would probably say that people are socialised in childhood to become obedient through taking on the values and expected behaviours of significant others such as parents. (c) One similarity between Milgram and Piliavin et al. is that both studies had some problems with ethics and could both be accused of inflicting harm on participants. In Milgram, the many participants displayed signs of extreme stress, such as sweating, trembling and even seizures. This shows that participants were not protected from harm. In Piliavin et al., the participants passengers on the subway train who witnessed someone apparently collapse also may well have experienced some degree of stress. Watching someone collapse and deciding whether or not to intervene is quite stressful. Some participants left the carriage indicating they could not bear to be close to the situation. Some of the comments by participants also showed the situation made them feel uncomfortable. Also, they may have gone away feeling guilty and bad about themselves for not having helped. One difference between Milgram and Piliavin et al. is that Milgram did debrief his participants whereas Piliavin et al. did not. Partly this was because Milgram s participants had overtly volunteered to take part in the experiment and had come to the laboratory and taken part on a one-to-one basis. Each participant was reunited with the learner to show that he hadn t been hurt and the aims of the deceptions of the study were fully explained. However, Piliavin et al. did not debrief his participants, maybe because there were so many and it would be difficult to do this (people getting on and off trains) and maybe because there was some concern that it might affect people s behaviour in future trials if it started to be known that an experiment was taking place involving a supposed victim collapsing. Therefore, none of the participants would have found out the truth of the situation, or even that they had taken part in an experiment at all. (d) One strength of the social approach is that it is not reductionist. Research in the social approach gives high level, complex explanations of behaviour and does not just reduce explanations down to something like a gene or levels of a particular hormone. For example, Milgram explains the high levels of obedience in terms of 13 different situational factors including the location of the study, how the participant views the experimenter, their desire not to disrupt the experiment, their sense of obligation because they had accepted the money for the task. Similarly, Piliavin et al. uses a fairly complex concept to explain how people decide to help, in the form of the arousal: costs/rewards model, which shows how people take account of a range of factors and balance them together before deciding what to do. 2
Another strength is that social research often finds out really important and significant things about how people behave and why they behave in a certain way. This is certainly true of Milgram whose findings have helped us to understand why guards in prison camps such as Auschwitz committed some of the atrocities that they did they were just following orders and being obedient, which as Milgram found, is a strongly ingrained behaviour. One weakness of the social approach is that, by its very nature, it is culturally specific. Because the social approach focuses upon social interactions and influences, and such behaviours vary hugely across cultures, then the findings from one study can rarely be generalised to other cultures. In Milgram, for example, he only studied Americans from one part of the country (the Northeast). This means that the levels of obedience and the responses to the situation might not be true in other parts of the country or other countries. In fact, later, Milgram and others did study other nationalities using the same basic procedure and there were some cultural differences in the overall rates of obedience. Another weakness of the social approach is that it overlooks personality because it focuses too much on the power of the situation. For example, Milgram focuses upon the situation the surroundings, the laboratory, the prods, the impressive machinery and so on at the expense of the personality. Personality is still important and could probably explain why some people did stand up to the experiment and did not continue to the maximum shock level. Therefore, the social approach does not give the whole picture. In the same way, Reicher and Haslam s study gives great emphasis to the situation and the importance of group identity rather than giving adequate weight to the personality types of the individuals who took part in the BBC prison study. 3
Reicher and Haslam 4 1 In Reicher and Haslam s study one of the interventions was intended to increase permeability. (a) Describe how permeability was created. [2] (b) Describe how the situation was changed to create impermeability. [2] 2 In the Reicher and Haslam study one intervention did not have to be used. (a) Describe this intervention. [2] (b) Explain why it was not necessary to implement it. [2] 3 The BBC Prison study was an attempt to re-examine the conclusions of an earlier prison simulation the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). (a) State one conclusion that was the same in both studies. [2] (b) State one conclusion that was different. [2] 4 From Reicher and Haslam s BBC prison study: (a) Describe what is meant by the term tyranny. [2] (b) Describe one of the variables manipulated to create a situation in which tyranny could develop. [2] 5 Reicher and Haslam identified various potential criticisms of their prison study. (a) Outline one of these criticisms. [2] (b) Outline their answer to this criticism. [2] 6 From the prison study by Reicher and Haslam identify four self-rating scales that were used. [4] 7 From Reicher and Haslam s BBC prison study, outline two reasons why the prisoners were given uniforms. [4] 8 In the Reicher and Haslam study of a simulated prison: (a) Describe one method used to ensure ethical acceptability. [2] (b) Describe one reason way in which the study had low ecological validity. [2] 9 Describe how the sample was recruited in Reicher and Haslam s study. [4] 10 Describe one quantitative and one qualitative measure used in the Reicher and Haslam study. [4] 1 (a) Permeability was created by telling the participants in the prisoner group that one or two of them might be moved if they showed the right characteristics for being a guard, i.e. reliability and initiative. (b) One prisoner was promoted to guard but after this, the other prisoners were told that there was no chance of changing group and so the group had become impermeable. 2 (a) The legitimacy intervention was not used. Legitimacy is whether or not a group member thinks that differences in power (inequality) is deserved (legitimate) or undeserved (illegitimate). The plan was, after three days (by which point the participants would have thought the guards had legitimate power), they were all to be told that there were overall no real personality or character differences between the groups, but that it was too late to reassign people to different roles. (b) This did not have to be used because, contrary to predictions, the guards did not believe they were legitimate in their roles and power. This was probably due to low group identity among the guards and ineffective leadership. So, there was no evidence of the guards having been selected because of their special leadership/initiative skills and so they did not think they were legitimate in their group. 3 (a) One conclusion which is the same for both studies was that it is the situation which is more powerful than the individuals in terms of its influence on behaviour. Any account of tyranny must include group processes. Answer the following question with reference to the Reicher and Haslam study: (a) State one of the hypotheses investigated in this study. [2] (b) Describe how the sample in this study was selected and suggest one advantage of using this sample. [6] (c) Explain why this study can be considered a laboratory experiment. [6] (d) Outline the procedure used in this study. [8] (e) Outline the findings of this study. [6] (f) Suggest one change to the procedure of this study and explain how this might affect the results. [8] (a) Outline one assumption of the social approach. [2] (b) Describe how the social approach could explain identity. [4] (c) Describe one similarity and one difference between the Reicher and Haslam study and any other core studies that take the social approach. [6] (d) Discuss strengths and weaknesses of the social approach using examples from any core studies that take this approach. [12] (b) One conclusion which is different is that Reicher and Haslam saw that group processes are not always toxic and do not always lead to uncontrolled, mindless and anti-social behaviour. 4 (a) Tyranny is defined as an unequal social system involving the arbitrary or oppressive use of power by one group or its agents over another. (b) Cognitive alternatives, in the form of prisoner McCabe, allowed the prisoners to realise that a different way of running the society was possible. 5 (a) The role of television may have meant that the participants did not behave naturally. (b) The participants may have been acting for the cameras. However this would not explain why their behaviour changed at the times predicted, e.g. before and after permeability. In any case being watched is not such an unusual situation as we are all watched by surveillance cameras. 6 Rating scale for social identification, rating scale for feelings towards authority, measure for self-efficacy, measure for depression. 7 To reinforce the identity of the two separate groups; to provide a measure of deindividuation. 8 (a) The participants completed a lengthy consent form covering in detail the types of event that might happen to them during the study. (b) It was low in ecological validity because the setting was artificial and the participants knew it, i.e. they knew it was not a genuinely unequal society because it was both a BBC show and a scientific study. This may have altered their behaviour.
Chapter 5 Social psychology 9 An advert was placed in national newspapers and leaflets. From 332 applicants, 27 were chosen through screening for possible medical and psychological problems and psychometric testing. The final 15 were chosen for diversity of age, race and background. 10 Quantitative data included ratings of social identification. [Also correct are: scores of authoritarianism; awareness of cognitive alternatives; self-efficacy scores.] Qualitative data included description of the general events that took place, for example On day 6, some prisoners broke out of their cell and occupied the guards quarters. [Also correct is observed using video equipment.] (a) One of the hypothesises was that the dominant group members would identify with their group. (b) The sample used were volunteer males. They were recruited through national newspapers and leaflets. A total of 332 people applied and this was shortlisted to 27 through screening by psychometric tests of authoritarianism, depression, self-esteem, etc. Also, they were screened out if they had any history of mental illness. They also looked at medical problems and character. They ended up with 15 men with a range of age, social class and ethnic background (unlike Zimbardo s study). An advantage of this is that it created a reasonably representative sample by including different types of people while still meeting ethical demands that they were unlikely to be adversely affected by participating. (c) This could be considered a laboratory experiment because it took place in an artificial setting that was created by the experimenters especially for the research, with all the control over the environment that this implies. It is an experiment because there are clearly defined independent variables in the form of the planned interventions, which were manipulated in order to see the effects on the dependent variables such as depression and awareness of cognitive alternatives. (d) The prison set-up was created in conjunction with the BBC and the participants were selected by advert and then screening processes. The prisoners and guards were randomly allocated from groups of three matched on personality variables. The prisoners were given threeperson cells which were lockable, and the guards had a living area with better conditions and food. Each group of prisoners had the appropriate uniforms. Guards were told they were responsible for the smooth running of the prison and that they could use reward and punishment to control the prisoners. Permeability (expectation of movement between groups) was controlled by saying that one prisoner might move to be a guard but then there would be no more movement. Legitimacy was intended to be controlled by telling the participants that there was no reason why the guards had been chosen to be guards, although the participants recognised this for themselves. Cognitive alternatives were introduced by prisoner McCabe who had been a union negotiator. Dependent variables were measured by a series of tests. (e) The prisoners showed little social identification until the groups became impermeable. The guards did not identify with their group. Low group identity led to ineffective leadership. The prisoners did not regard the guards authority as legitimate. When the social structure broke down, a commune was proposed to impose some order but equality on the society. However, the lack of proper organisation and leadership in this regime led some participants to propose a new even more unequal society in its place. Prisoners and guards showed an increase in authoritarianism as the study continued. (f) One change which could be made to the study would have been not to film it for BBC TV and that if filming did take place, it would just be for the researchers to collect observational data. This would probably change the results quite a lot. For example, people might not act up because they imagined themselves broadcast into everyone s living rooms. So prisoners might not have stormed the guards quarters and so on. Another difference might be how the guards behaved at the beginning. In the study, they did not show that they could control the prisoners and did not adopt a harsh regime. This may partly have been that they knew they were visible and accountable and they knew that at some point their loved ones, work colleagues, etc. And generally people whose opinion of them matter would watch them on TV and so they did not want to be seen as cruel or unreasonable. So, if the study became private, confidential and anonymous, the guards, not worrying about future contexts, might have chosen to take on power and behave more brutally. (a) One assumption of the social approach is that people s behaviour is largely governed by social processes the influence of other people, for example through conformity, obedience, majority influence and so on. (b) The social approach could explain identity chiefly through social identity theory, which suggests that people s identity is strongly affected by their perception of the groups they belong to. Social groups and categories we belong to are an important part of our self-concept, so our identity is not just a function of our personality but the social interactions we take part in. (c) One similarity between Reicher and Haslam and Piliavin et al. is that both studies had some problems with ethics and could both be accused of inflicting harm on participants. In Reicher and Haslam, the participants were subjected to an artificial environment 24 hours a day where there every move was watched and analysed by both the TV audience and the experimenters. The fact that some participants felt it necessary to leave early, and others showed extreme tension shows that participants were not completely protected from harm, although Reicher and Haslam did put in place many measures to make it as ethical as possible. In Piliavin et al., the participants passengers on the subway train who witnessed someone apparently collapse also may well have experienced some degree of stress. Watching someone collapse and deciding whether or not to intervene is quite stressful. Some participants left the carriage indicating they could not bear to be close to the situation. Some of the comments by participants also showed the situation made them feel uncomfortable. Also, they may have gone away feeling guilty and bad about themselves for not having helped. One difference between Reicher and Haslam and Milgram is that it could be argued that Milgram is not a true experiment, because there was no real independent variable that was manipulated to see the effect on the dependent variable. For this reason, Milgram s study is better described as a controlled observation because although it was a laboratory setting, the experimenter really just watched what happened as a result. Reicher and Haslam, however, is a true experiment because they had three independent variables (legitimacy, cognitive alternatives and permeability) which were specifically manipulated in order to see how the dependent variables were affected in terms of the participants views and emotions. (d) One strength of the social approach is that it is not reductionist. Research in the social approach gives high level, complex explanations of behaviour and does not just reduce explanations down to something like a gene or levels of a particular hormone. For example, Milgram explains the high levels of obedience in terms of 13 different situational factors including the location of the study, how the participant views the experimenter, their desire not to disrupt the experiment, their sense of obligation because they had accepted the money for the task. Similarly, Reicher and Haslam draw complex conclusions regarding the interplay of personality and group processes with how tyranny may arise; they state that several factors affect group identity, such as social identification, and that the success of this can give rise to undesirable regimes. This is multi-layered and not reductionist. 5
Another strength is that social research often finds out really important and significant things about how people behave and why they behave in a certain way. This is certainly true of Milgram, whose findings have helped us to understand why guards in prison camps such as Auschwitz committed some of the atrocities that they did they were just following orders and being obedient, which as Milgram found, is a strongly ingrained behaviour. Similarly, Reicher and Haslam may have cast light on why Nazi Germany embraced Hitler s regime. One weakness of the social approach is that, by its very nature, it is culturally specific. Because the social approach focuses upon social interactions and influences, and such behaviours vary hugely across cultures, then the findings from one study can rarely be generalised to other cultures. In Milgram, for example, he only studied Americans from one part of the country (the Northeast). This means that the levels of obedience and the responses to the situation might not be true in other parts of the country or other countries. In fact, later, Milgram and others did study other nationalities using the same basic procedure and there were some cultural differences in the overall rates of obedience. Another weakness of the social approach is that it overlooks personality because it focuses too much on the power of the situation. For example, Milgram focuses upon the situation the surroundings, the laboratory, the prods, the impressive machinery and so on at the expense of the personality. Personality is still important and could probably explain why some people did stand up to the experiment and did not continue to the maximum shock level. Therefore, the social approach does not give the whole picture. In the same way, Reicher and Haslam s study gives great emphasis to the situation and the importance of group identity rather than giving adequate weight to the personality types of the individuals who took part in the BBC prison study. 6
Piliavin et al. 7 1 Previous psychological research found that people didn t help in emergency situations due to diffusion of responsibility: (a) What is meant by the term diffusion of responsibility? [2] (b) Explain why this effect was not observed in the study by Piliavin et al. [2] 2 Piliavin et al. proposed a model of response to emergencies on the basis of the results from their study. (a) Identify the two factors that influence a person s decision to help or not. [2] (b) Use these two factors to explain one of the results from the study. [2] 3 In the study by Piliavin et al., describe what happened on each trial. [4] 4 (a) Describe one ethical issue that was a problem in the study by Pilialvin et al. [2] (b) Describe how Piliavin et al. might have dealt with this ethical issue. [2] 5 Piliavin et al. designed a study where some of the researchers acted as models. (a) Identify two of the model conditions. [2] (b) Outline one conclusion that was drawn from these. [2] 6 Piliavin et al. suggested that helping behaviour can be explained using an arousal/cost reward model. Using this model suggest two ways of reducing arousal in the subway emergency. [4] 7 Outline two practical problems that occurred in conducting the subway Samaritan study by Piliavin et al. [4] 8 In the Piliavin et al. study outline one quantitative measure recorded by the observers and one qualitative measure. [4] 9 Identify the four independent variables in study by Piliavin et al. [4] 10 In the study by Piliavin et al. the victims were dressed identically as a control. Explain how one other control was used in this study. [4] 1 (a) Responsibility is diffused in a large group of people so that the more people there are, the less any individual feels responsibility and therefore the less likely help is to be forthcoming. (b) Because the effect can only be seen when all but one participant is a confederate. In real life the more people there are, the more potential helpers there are and this would counteract the diffusion effect. Also, it was an enclosed space, so passengers could see if the victim was not receiving help and not just walk away and assume that someone else would help. 2 (a) Costs and rewards. (b) Passengers were more likely to help the cane victim than the drunk one because the rewards of helping were higher (you should help someone who is ill) and the costs of helping were lower (an ill person is less likely to vomit on you than a drunk person). 3 70 seconds after the train started, the victim collapsed onto the floor and lay there until he was helped. A model was ready to help if no one else did, either after 70 seconds or 150 seconds. In 38 trials, the victim appeared to be drunk, carrying a bottle in a brown paper bag. In 65 trials the victim appeared disabled due to carrying a cane. Observers in the carriage noted the number, race, sex and location of other passengers as well as comments they made. 4 (a) They broke the guideline to seek informed consent because they didn t ask participants whether they were willing to participate. (b) They could have obtained presumptive consent this is when researchers tell people from a similar background or cross-section of society about a proposed study, the details, deceptions and so on, and ask whether they Answer the following question with reference to the Piliavin et al. study: (a) Briefly outline the previous research or event that was the stimulus for this study. [2] (b) Describe two ethical issues raised by this study. [6] (c) Give two strengths of the field experiment method as used in this study. [6] (d) Give two weaknesses of the field experiment method as used in this study. [6] (e) Outline the procedures of this study. [8] (f) Suggest how this study could be improved. Give reasons for your answer. [8] (a) Outline one assumption of the social approach. [2] (b) Describe how the social approach could explain helping behaviour. [4] (c) Describe one similarity and one difference between the Piliavin et al. study and any other core studies that take the social approach. [6] (d) Discuss strengths and weaknesses of the social approach using examples from any core studies that take this approach. [12] would mind taking part in such a study. If overall people don t mind, the researchers can presume that the actual participants shouldn t mind either. 5 (a) White ill; white drunk. (b) The white ill model received more helping and more quickly than the white drunk. 6 One way to reduce arousal would be to have a victim collapse who elicits less empathy. This could be achieved through the drunk victim openly drinking and perhaps even being rude and saying I don t care what any of you think! before he collapses. He would elicit less empathy than the ill condition. Another way would be to reduce the time that the emergency continues for by ensuring the model helper always intervenes before 60 seconds if no one has done so by then. 7 One practical problem was that the students who took the part of the victim did not like playing the drunk and so ended up with many fewer drunk trials than ill trials. Another practical problem is that it was quite difficult for the observers to see everything they wanted to observe in such a busy situation people standing up can obscure the observers view. 8 Qualitative data: The comments made by passengers sitting near the observers, comments made by the participants in response to the emergency situation. Quantitative data: Percentage of people who helped in cane and drunk conditions, latency rates, number of people in the carriage, number of people who left the carriage. 9 Type of victim (drunk or disabled); race of victim; impact of modelling; group size. 10 The same train on the same line was used every time to ensure that an extraneous variable of the type of passengers travelling did not affect their likelihood of helping.
Chapter 5 Social psychology (a) Barworker Kitty Genovese was attacked and killed in America on the doorstep of her own home, despite many people hearing or seeing parts of the attack no one helped her. (b) Informed consent cannot be obtained from the participants because the situation does not allow that to happen; they were not asked to participate and in fact probably never knew they had been involved. They may experience psychological harm because of not helping, which could distress them, and also just by seeing an emergency. (c) One strength of the field experiment method used here is that the participants are behaving naturally because they do not know they are involved in research. Therefore they would not alter their behaviour to help the victim when they would not naturally do so. Ecological validity is high because of the subway environment, meaning that we can assume behaviours are not occurring simply because of the experimental setting. Another strength is that the experimental method means that we can assume that any effects on the DV are caused by the IV. In this study, this means that, because a certain amount of control was exercised over extraneous variables such as the particular subway used, effects on the helping behaviour of the participants was caused by whether the victim was drunk or ill, the race of the victim, the effects of the model and the size of the surrounding group. (d) One weakness is that, although some variables were controlled, the field setting means that not all of them could be, so in that sense there are more extraneous variables than in a laboratory experiment. Factors such as the number and nature of the passengers boarding the train were unpredictable and could have affected how likely they were to help. Another weakness is that ethical issues were raised because the natural environment in the train meant that it was impossible to obtain the passengers consent to join in or to tell them that they were able to withdraw if they wished or to debrief them about what had happened and why. (e) 70 seconds after the train started, the victim collapsed on the floor and lay there until he was helped. A model was ready to help if no one else did, either after 70 seconds or 150 seconds. In 38 trials, the victim appeared to be drunk, carrying a bottle in a brown paper bag. In 65 trials the victim appeared disabled due to carrying a cane. Observers in the carriage noted the number, race, sex and location of other passengers as well as comments they made. (f) One change to this study would be to have female victims. There could still be the same conditions white drunk, white ill, black drunk, black ill but that all the victims would be female. Overall, there might be even higher rates of helping because the perceived costs of helping a female are probably less than helping a male because females are perceived as less aggressive. I think it would still be the case that the ill victim would receive more spontaneous helping than the drunk. However, I think that the difference between the ill and drunk conditions might be more pronounced in this new study. This is because, if it had been conducted in the 1960s, it was very uncommon for women to drink, especially publicly. Therefore, with such strong disapproval, it is less likely she would receive a high level of helping. Another change would be to conduct the study in a different place. This could be, for example, a shopping centre. The victim conditions could all be the same as in the original study. I think that overall there would be less helping in this study and that it would support the idea of diffusion of responsibility. This is because people in this study would not be in such an enclosed space like in the subway where everyone would be in basically a couple of metres of the victim and with nothing else to distract them or to pretend to be distracted by. So people might not notice in a shopping mall, or they might deliberately walk past and think that someone else will help them. The costs of not helping would be lower as there would not be so much censure from other onlookers. (a) One assumption of the social approach is that people s behaviour is largely governed by social processes the influence of other people, for example through conformity, obedience, majority influence and so on. (b) The social approach would explain how people help in several ways. First of all, it would predict that we are more likely to help someone who we perceive as being in the same group as us same gender, same age, same ethnicity. Second, we are more likely to conform to others behaviour, so if no one helps, it may be intimidating to not conform and go and help; or if some people do go and help, then again, other people will wish to conform to the group. (c) One similarity between Piliavin et al. and Reicher and Haslam is that both use an experimental method. Piliavin et al. s study is a field experiment and they manipulated the race and condition of the victim that collapsed, as well as the timing for the model interventions. Reicher and Haslam manipulated permeability (if participants thought they could move between prisoner and guard groups), legitimacy (when participants were told that there were actually no differences between groups) and cognitive alternatives (when a new prisoner arrives who they thought would negotiate between prisoners and guards to find new regimes for the prison). Therefore, both these studies into complex social behaviour are experimental with manipulated IVs (and measured DVs). One difference between Piliavin et al. and Reicher and Haslam is that Piliavin et al. chose a natural situation whereas Reicher and Haslam chose a controlled, simulated (almost laboratory) situation. Piliavin et al. really wanted to do this study in a natural setting because all the previous studies on helping had taken place in a laboratory and therefore may not have been generalisable to real-life situations. They chose as this natural setting a subway train in New York where there would be multiple bystanders but relatively easy to control the intervention that is someone collapsing. This means that Piliavin et al. have quite high ecological validity. By contrast, Reicher and Haslam did not conduct their study in a real prison. Maybe it was because they would not have had enough experimental control over the situation if the participants were mixing with real prisoners and guards and also because there might be more ethical dangers if real prisoners or guards became aggressive. This means that this study probably has quite low ecological validity because the setting was too artificial and does not really tell us how prisoners and guards behave in a normal prison. (d) One strength of the social approach is that it is not a reductionist approach. It explains highly complex behaviour social interactions and behaviour in a complex way. It does not just try to explain complex behaviour in a reductionist way such as reinforcement or hormones. For example, in Piliavin et al., they explain whether or not someone helps in terms of his model of response to an emergency situation which contains both biological elements (levels of arousal when someone sees an emergency) as well as cognitive elements decision making whether to help or not, perceptions of costs of helping and costs of not helping. Therefore, this model is quite complex and does help us to understand and predict helping behaviour. Similarly, Reicher and Haslam draw complex conclusions regarding the interplay of personality and group processes with how tyranny may arise; they state that several factors affect group identity, such as social identification, and that the success of this can give rise to undesirable regimes. This is multi-layered and not reductionist. Another strength of the social approach in research is that it gives useful insights into society and events that society gets hung upon or sometimes has trouble understanding about itself. For example, one of the reasons there was so much research into helping was a national outrage about Kitty Genovese. The general public could not understand why no one had helped her despite there being a large number of witnesses. There were many newspaper reports written about it and lots of soul-searching trying to understand the 8
reasons why. Piliavin et al. helps to explain this phenomenon in terms of his model of response there were lower levels of arousal because the witnesses were some distance from Kitty upstairs in apartment buildings. Also, the perceived costs of helping would have been very high they might face danger themselves, it might be some sort of trap and so on. Therefore, this research is helpful for giving insight into important social questions. In Milgram, the social approach helps to explain how people can behave in an evil fashion by focusing on the power of the situation rather than the possibility of evil personalities. One weakness of the social approach is that complex behaviour is sometimes very difficult to capture neatly. For example, in Piliavin et al., we do not really know why or why not people helped because they were not asked. Even if they had been asked, they might not have enough self-insight and awareness to know exactly what the factors were which motivated them to help. In Reicher and Haslam, we still do not know exactly what the impact was of having those particular personalities in the groups to which they were allocated. Another weakness of the social approach in research is that it has one of the worst track records in ethics. Much social research, because of the necessary complexity to try and create socially meaningful situations mean that ethical guidelines have been broken through lack of consent or deception, etc. Some of the worst studies in terms of ethics have been social studies such as Milgram and Zimbardo and Asch. The Piliavin et al. study also was not ethical no participants consented or were debriefed. They were deceived about the victim and made to believe that someone was ill and really needed help. This may also have caused some stress as participants get worried about their own safety and whether or not they should help, etc. Therefore, this study was unethical too. 9