psuych

• minority influence a form of social influence in which a minority of people pursuades others to adopt their beliefs, attitudes or behaviours. Leads to internalisation or conversion in which private attitudes are changed as well as public behaviours
• What did Zimbardo want to investigate: wanted to find out the extent to which people conform to social roles
• Zimbardos study - Created to see if its because prison guards have sadistic personalities or if its just the situation they are put in and therefore induvidulas were conforming to their social roles
• Zimbardos prison experiment procedure: No. of ppts: 24 Sampling method: volunteer Experiment: observation Where: in basement of psychology department Uniform for prisoners: gown, stocking, ID numbers Uniform for guards: sunglasses, khaki uniform and whistles Guards only referred to prisoners by ID numbers and ppts were only allowed certain rights- 3 superivised toilet trips, 3 meals a day, 2 visits per week
• Zimbardo prison experiment Findings: - Guards became tryranical and abusive towards the prisoners and forced them to clean toilets - ppts appeared at times to forget they were in a study- 5 ppts were released early because of extreme reactions - study was termindated after 6 days
• Zimbardo Prison experiment Conclusion: - both guards and prisoners conformed to their social roles. the guards becacame increasingly cruel and sadistic. the simulation revealed the power of the situation to influence peoples behaviour- guards, prisoners and researchers all conformed to their social roles
• Limitation of Zimbardos prison experiment he had over-exaggreated the power of situation to influence behaviour- only a small group of guards had behaved in a brutal manner. 1/3 applied the rules 1/3 actively tried supporting the prisoners The difference in guards behaviour suggests they were able to exercise the wrong pressure from right despite situational
• Strength of Zimbardos Prison experiment Real world applications - actions of nazis soldiers in WW2. it had been provided additional explanation to peoples behaviour other than dispositional explanation. - Using this, psychologists may be able to train soldiers, prison officers and educate them of the dangers of behaving how they think they are expected too
• Limitation of Zimbardos Prison Experiment Ethical issues- Zimbardo was the lead researcher and superintendant, a student wanted to leave but zimbardo spoke as a prison superintendant rather than a researcher. -This limits zimbardos ability to protect his participants from harm and therefore the research could have researcher bias which could effect the validity of the results
• what is milgrams obediance study assessed obediance levels
• milgrams aim (shock experiment) how far people would go to obey an instruction even if it involved harming another person
• Milgrams shock experiment procedure: - No. of ppts: 40 males between 20-50 - type of experiment: Lab - participants were told that the experiment was about punishment affect learning - who were the two confederates? an experimenter and a 47 year old man introduced as another volunteer participant
• how was Milgrams study rigged: - this was rigged so that the ppt was always the teacher and the 'fake' ppt was the learner what was the teacher required rto do: - increase voltage incriments, to test learner on his ability to remmeber word pairs he would be given strong electric shocks from 15 volts up to 450 volts in 15 volt incriments. what was the learner required to do: - to give wrong answers and recieve 'fake' shocks in silence until reached 300 volts, he pounded on the wall and gave no answer. wha...
• Milgrams finding: - % of ppts who delivered maximum shocks: 65% - % of ppts who delivered 300 shocks: 100%
• milgram shock study conclusion : people obeyed authority even if it meant harming another person
• situational factors in obediance - proximity - location - power of uniform
• evaluation of milgrams shock experiment - strength they were replicated in a French documentary that was made about reality TV In the show the game of death, participants were paid to give fake electric shocks to other participants in front of studio audience. 80% of the participants delivered the maximum shock of 460 volts to an apparantly unconscious man. Their behaviour was almost identical to milgrams ppts
• evaluation of milgrams research - limitation orne and holland perry how many ppts were disobediant low internal validity his research may not have been measuring what it intended to test. milgram reposted that 75% of pptd believed that the shocks were genuine, but Orne and Holland argued that ppts behaved as they did as they didnt really beleive in the set up, so they were 'play acting'. Perrys research confirmed this as she listened to tapes of milgrams ppts and reported that about only half of them believed that the shocks were real 2/3 rds were disobediant suggesting that ppts may have ...
• evaluation of milgrams research - limitation 2 ethical issues- participants were decieved - they thought the allocation of roles were random, but it was infact fixed they also beleived shocks were real
• minority influence leads to internalisation
• moscovici - minority influnce his 'blue-green' study have drawn attention to three main processes in minority influence
• 3 main processes minority influence - commitment - consistency - flexibility
• minority influence - consistency sychronic consistency - all saying the same thing diachronic consistency - they have been saying the same thing for some time now consistency makes other people start to rethink their own views
• minority influence - commitment might engage in extreme activities to draw attention to views showing commitment, so majority could pay more attention. Augmentation principle
• minority influence - flexibility someones whos extremely consistent of behaviour again and again can be seen as dogmatic, unbending so minority should be prepared to adapt their own point of view and accept reasonable and valid counterarguements
• evaluation of minority influence- strength research support research support - moscovicis blue/green study showed that consistent minority opinion had greater effect on changing views than inconsistent opinion
• evaluation of minority influence - limitation power of minority influence in moscovicis study agreement with a consistent minority was very low, on average 8% suggesting minority infleunce is quite rare and not useful
• evaluation of minority influence- limitation artifical tasks artifical tasks (moscovici) is far from real life lacking external validity and are limited in what they can tell us about minority influnece works in real-life situations