social area

• assumptions

  • Other people influence our behaviour and thought processes such as authority figures. 
  • The situations we are in influence our behaviour. (e.g., inability to escape a situation).
• strengths of the area

  • High levels of control leads to high internal validity – Milgram, used standardised set of prods. Also reduces extraneous variables.
  • High ecological validity, representative of real life – Levine, across 15 cities, including Rio and Kuala Lampar.  
• weaknesses of the area

  • Deterministic, lack of moral consideration – Piliavin, suggests cost-reward analysis for explaining behaviour. Limits usefulness. 
  • Ethical guidelines are not followed – Milgram, many ps suffered extreme stress and some even collapsed. No protection from harm. HOWEVER, he did not predict as many people would follow the unjust request and therefore did not think precautions were needed.
• situational debate examples

  • Bocchiaro - 76.5% of ps wrote the letter in support of the sensory deprivation study and complied, in the comparison group only 3% of people thought they would be obedient. HOWEVER - 25% of people weredisobedient suggesting there is some internal element not tested that may attribute for this
  • Piliavin - suggests that external factors like type of victim determine the helping behaviour received. 
  • Levine - suggests culture impacts behaviour as simpatia countries showed more helping behaviour.  
• individual debate examples

  • Milgram - the ps decided themselves not to shock the learner ergo personalities have the greatest influence on behaviour, 35% of ps stopped shocking the ‘learner’ after 300v. HOWEVER– the majority of ps followed the authoritative figures requests and shocked the learner, showing there must be some kind of situational aspect. 
• determinism debate examples

  • Milgram - 65% of ps shocked up to 450v, suggesting behaviour is determined by external factors outside of our control. HOWEVER - 35% of people walked off before administering the maximum voltage.
  • Bocchiaro - The situation in which the ps were in influenced the rates of obedience, 76% of people were obedient even when they didn’t think they would be. HOWEVER, 24% didn’t obey and therefore there must be some element of free will. 
• free will debate examples

  • Piliavin - the drunk victim only received help 50% of the time, ps underwent a cost-reward analysis. HOWEVER, the cane victim was helped 100%, suggesting something about the victim determines the rate of helping behaviour.
  • Levine - rates of helping behaviour were different in different countries HOWEVER this might be due to differing cultural values that are actually what is determining behaviour and not the person themselves
• reductionism debate examples

  • Piliavin - misses out reasons why people may help such as kindness and desire to help someone simply because they are in need. HOWEVER - taking in to account a variety of factors rather than just explaining helping behaviour due to one factor.  
• holism debate examples

  • Levine looks at a variety of factors such as economic wealth and cultural norms to explain why people may help others. 
  • Milgram - multiple factors that influence behaviour, such as setting, uniformity and proximity to an authority figure. 
  • Bocchiaro - looks at the personality and religiosity of the ps as well as the authoritative figure to explain why behaviour
• nurture debate examples

  • milgram - external factors like proximity and setting determine the behaviour of the individual
  • levine - the cultural values that someone was brought up with are used to explain why people may help in situations
• nature debate examples

  • bocchiaro - the dispositional factors of a person such as religiosity alter behaviour
  • piliavin - the cost reward analysis done on the situation is unique to each individual
• applications

  • Conformity and obedience
  • Social identity 
  • Attitudes
  • Attribution
  • Discrimination and stereotypes 
  • Pro and anti-social behaviour.