1- Social Psych

Social

-Key theme 1= Responses to people in authority

-Key theme 2= Responses to people in need 

Assumptions:

• Social context impacts on how people behave. This social context includes the actual, imagined or implied presence of others.
• An individual's behaviour is affected by further situational factors e.g. the environment that we find ourselves in
• A major influence on people's behaviour, thought processes and emotions are other people and the society that they have created.

+= Often high in eco V as often field expts which makes it easier to generalise to the real world, Useful: practical applications

-= Unethical? high eco v often brings ethical issues e.g. consent, Reductionist as fails to ackowledge individual diffs as the focus is on the social context.

Milgram (1965)

-Background: 

• Obedience= following direct orders. 
• Conformity= behaving in the same way as the people around you.
• 'Germans are different hypthesis'- a cultural deficit in German character which led to an increased suspectibility to obedience regardless of the order
• Milgram surveyed his students to estimate the % of his Ps who would obey= 1.2%
• Agentic state= people follow orders then pass of the responsibility to the authority

-Aim:

• To investigate what level of obedience will be shown when ps are told by an authority figure to administer electric shocks to another person.

-Method:

• Controlled observation
• DV= obedience rates

-Sample:

• 40 Males aged 20-50
• Self-selected by ad in New Haven newspaper
• Various backgrounds, occupations
• Paid $4.50 to take part

-Procedure:

• Ps arrived at Yale Uni and were paired with another p
• They were told the aim is to study the effects of punishment on learning
• 'randomly' assigned roles of learner and teacher and taken to adjacent room
• the prods= ''please continue'', ''the expt requires that you continue'', ''it is absolutely essential that you continue'', ''you have no other choice, you must go on.''
• Teacher sat infront of a shock generator that had 30 levers from 'sligh shock' to 'danger:severe shock' ***
• After each expt p debriefed and told true nature of study, they were sent a summary of results and a questionnaire.
• One year laters ps were followed up to ensure there were no long term psychological problems.

-Result:

• No Ps stopped before 300V
• 26 Ps carried on until 450V = 65 % (enough to kill a person 3x over)
• Qual data= sweating, biting nails, fits of nervous laugher, seizures

-Some reasons listen by M about why Ps obeyed:

• aim of the study seemed worthwhile
• carried out in a respectable env, top uni
• payment- increased sense of obligation

-Conclusions:

• 100% went to 300V, 65% to 450V= people are much more obedient to destructive behaviour (orders) than we might expect. Majority of people are quite willing to obey destructive orders.
• Ps showed signs of tension and stress= obey in spite of their emotional responses. Situation triggers a conflict between two deeply ingrained tendencies: to obey authority or to not harm people.

-Internal V

• Orne & Holland (1968) argued M's ps were simply 'going along with it' and did…