Social

• Key concepts of the social area

  Influence of others- perceived or actual on behaviour, feelings and thought processes.

  How the environment can influence behaviour

  Social context has greatest influence on peoples behaviour
• Studies that link to the theme of responses to people in authority

  Milgram- Looked at how far people would go in obedience to authority, even if actions went against moral code

  Bocchiaro- Looking at whether people will disobey unjust authority
• Studies that look into the theme of responses to people in need

  Piliavin- whether a live event will change peoples helping behaviours

  Levine- look at differences in helping behaviours in different cities
• Strengths of the social area

  improves understanding of human behaviour

  useful and practical applications- explains real world events

  High in ecological validity- many field experiments
• Weaknesses of the social area

  Findings may not have temporal validity

  Findings not always generalisable to everywhere

  difficult to stay within ethical guidelines

  Social and cognitive areas can be confused