Social Psychology

3. Briefly outline some of the procedures used in social influence research (theories and/or studies) and evaluate whether these processes are ethical.

Social influence has been investigated by a large number of psychologists such as Asch, Zimbardo and Milgram. There have been many issues raised by other psychologists as to whether the procedures that they used were ethically questionable. This means that the research wasn’t carried out in an ethical way and so they have caused themselves much criticism.                                                                In 1951 Solomon Asch tried to find out if people would conform in highly unambiguous situations. Asch did this by setting up a circumstance where seven people all sat looking at a display. In turn they had to say out loud which one of three lines was the same length as line ‘X’. All but one of the participants was a confederate of the experimenter, and on some “vital” trials the confederates were asked to unanimously give the same wrong answer. The one genuine participant was the last to offer their opinion on each trial. The performance of participants exposed to such group pressure was compared to their performance in a control condition in which there were no confederates. Despite Asch’s findings he was criticised for the way that he carried out his experiment, Asch undertook this study in 1950’s America, this was a time when conformity was high and doing your own thing wasn’t socially acceptable. Asch also only looked at conformity in a minor situation that didn’t call the participants deeply held beliefs into question. His research was restricted, as he didn’t manage to establish exactly why there was so much conformity.                         Another psychologist who carried out an important study into conformity was Zimbado. In 1973 Zimbado lead an investigation into conformity to social roles. Zimbado did this by setting up a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University. 24 emotionally stable male Americans were randomly allocated to the role of either prisoner or guard. Prisoners were arrested at their homes, taken to a police station and then taken to the prison where the were stripped naked, deloused, issued with a prison number and given an ID number by which they were referred to. Guards were also given uniforms and 16 rules which they were asked to impose to keep a reasonable degree of order. The interaction between prisoners and guards, mood state, self-perception and coping behaviour were observed. Zimbado’s prison experiment has been heavily criticised, as some people believe it was not ethically right to expose people to such degradation and hostility, even with their cognisant consent. Savin protested that the mock prison was “hell”. Two other psychologists Banuazizi and Mohavedi believed that people have such strong stereotypes of how prison guards and prisoners behave in real prisons that they simply role-played based on their beliefs. Zimbado also used only emotionally stable participants in his study, ignoring the chance that personality was an important factor, for example it may be that guards who were emotionally unstable would have behaved more aggressively than the ones used by Zimbado.                                                                                Milgram carried out the most criticised social psychology study in 1963. Milgram selected a sample of 40 male volunteers to take part in a controlled observational study to measure obedience. The participants were tricked into thinking the experiment was a test of learning using a word association test. The naïve participant was assigned the role of “teacher” and an associate of the experimenter played the role of the “learner”. The teacher and learner were in separate rooms with no voice contact. The teacher was commanded to give the learner an electric shock every time the wrong answer was given, with the shock intensity being increased each time. The apparatus was arranged so that the learner never received any shocks however the teacher did not know this. The measure of obedience was the intensity of the shock given by the participants from a scale of 15 to 450 volts with 15-volt rise for every wrong answer. At 180 volts the learner shouted, “I can’t stand the pain” , and by 270-volts the response had become an agonised scream. If the teacher was unwilling to give the shocks the experimenter urged them to continue saying something like “it is absolutely essential that you should continue”. Orne and Holland criticised Milgram’s work saying that the research lacked mundane realism, as the set up was unbelievable as electric shocks are not regular punishments for making a mistake on a test, they believed that the participants were aware to the fact that the electric shocks were fake. They also said that the experiment lacked mundane realism, as the set-up was an artificial, controlled environment. Baumrind was Milgram’s greatest critic however, she was concerned that participants experienced a loss of self-esteem, dignity and trust in authority and that it was a stressful experience for some. She also criticised Milgram for the great distress caused to most if not all of his participants during and after the study. Baumrind also expressed that Milgram’s participants were not aware that the study could cause conflict and distress, and therefore were not in a position to give their cognisant consent. She also commented on the fact that participants who asked to withdraw were told that they had no choice but to go on.                                                                                        As shown by my examples a large number of the studies carried out for social psychology have good and bad points, they all show what they were aiming to for example Zimbado’s prison experiment showed conformity to social roles and Milligram’s experiment showed obedience. However it is rare that there is an experiment without negative criticism about the way that it was conducted.