Critically evaluate whether Milgrams research on obedience was ethical
Psychology Methods & Ethics Assignment A.C. 1.1, 2.1 Critically evaluate whether Milgram's research on obedience was ethical. In 1961, Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted the first of the frequently discussed obedience experiment, sometimes referred to as the "shock" studies. The purpose of the experiment was to discover the willingness of the participants to obey an authority figure, who instructed them to inflict shocks on the 'learners.' The shocks varied from a mild 15 volts up to an eventual, extremely dangerous 450 volts. The studies were inspired by Milgram's interest in the Nazi's behaviour and the Holocaust, in particular how ordinary German citizens assisted Hitler with a massive killing program. The results of Milgram's experiment were that 80% of participants were obedient, with 65% of those being fully obedient and continuing to the end of the experiment (Moxon, et al., 2003). Milgram concluded that obedience to authority is not a German culture but a seemingly universal feature of human behaviour, based on situational factors, not individual characteristics. Ethics can be complicated with no plain rules and there is very rarely a clear right answer, however there are guidelines in place covering the main principles of consent, deception, distress caused, right to withdraw, debriefing and protection of participants to name a few. Also known
Describe and discuss methodological and ethical issues that have occurred in empirical studies of social influence
Describe and discuss methodological and ethical issues that have occurred in empirical studies of social influence. The two possible empirical studies of social influence that had methodological and ethical issues are Asch's study on conformity and Milgram's study on obedience. Asch's study on conformity was to see if individuals conform to the majority view with an unambiguous task with a right or wrong answer. A control group was given a task for comparison with an experimental group. Participants shown two cards, one card was a standard line, the other had three comparison lines. Participants were asked to judge which comparison lines was the same as the standard line. Experimental conditions had one true participant and the rest were confederates. The participant was unaware the experiment was about conformity and that the other participants were confederates. This experiment had no internal validity which is a methodological issue. Internal validity is to do with whether the results are an effect of the Independent Variable, or another variable. Asch's experiment lacked internal validity as the participant was in an artificial environment and could show demand characteristics, whereby they guess the aim of the experiment and behave in the way they feel will please the experimenter, so in that case they don't really conform. Another methodological issue is external
Outline the strengths and weaknesses of the social approach .
Outline the strengths and weaknesses of the social approach (12 marks) The first strength of the social approach is it utilises experimental methods. Experimental methods manipulate one variable to see the effect it has on another variable. This allows for cause and effect to be established. The social approach can therefore be seen as being scientific. An example of a social study that uses a field experiment method is the Piliavin et al subway study on bystander behaviour in emergency situations. This study manipulated a number of variables including race of the victim. It then recorded if passengers on the tram helped the victim and how long it took for them to help. Whilst using experimental methods makes the approach scientific, on the other hand this strength can be seen as a small weakness as it is very reductionist. Reductionist methods only try to identify one cause for a behaviour occurring. This is a weakness as the social approach's theories may be based on incomplete evidence as the studies may have missed some causes of behaviour e.g. affect of physiology in obedience. The second strength of the social approach is social studies have important applications to everyday life. Social psychology studies prejudice conformity and obedience; these are real factors that influence how people in everyday social situations. An anecdotal example from life is the affect
Discuss psychological explanations of one anxiety disorder
Discuss psychological explanations of one anxiety disorder (30 marks) Phobias are an example of an anxiety disorder and the psychological explanations of these are cognitive, psychodynamic, behavioral and social factors. The Behavioral, Psychodynamic and social factors of the psychological explanation will be discussed in greater detail. Behavioral explanations say that all behaviour is learnt whether it is normal or abnormal and this approach has been applied to humans and animals. There are three theories that make up the behaviorist approach, which are classical and operant conditioning, Social Learning and information transmission. Classical conditioning is concerned with a classical, neutral and conditioned stimulus and the fear is due to a learnt association. Operant conditioning is involuntary behaviour reinforcement and punishment, by rewards or attention given. Evidence for this is Little Albert, who developed a fear of white rats and anything else white after been conditioned by a loud noise been produced when he played with the rat. Barlow and Durand found that 50% of driving phobics had had a traumatic driving experience and Keuthan found that half of all phobics could not remember a bad experience. Dunado discovered similar results in that he found that 50% of dog phobics had not had a traumatic experience with dogs. This research is flawed in many aspects
SA - Milgram - 1963
SOCIAL APPROACH Milgram - 1963 Aim of study: * To investigate what level of obedience participants would show when an authority figure told them to administer electric shocks to another person. Participants: Obtained from advertisements + direct mailing. Self selected or volunteer sample. * 40 males: 20-50 yrs old from New Haven area in the United Stated of America. * Job ranges Included: postal clerks, HS teachers, salesmen, labourers, engineers, etc. * Education: one had not finished HS to some who a have degree + qualification in various subjects. * Paid: $4.50 regardless of what happened after and before they arrived. This is called COERCIAN. Method and Design: * Method: Lab experiment. * Observer observed participants for signs of tension/nervousness: "sweat, tremble, biting of lips, nervous laughter" I.V./D.V. * I.V. - There was NO I.V. * D.V. - Level of obedience; how far they'd go with the voltage to shock the learner. Procedure: LEARNER TASK * The teacher (participant) was asked to read a series of word pairs to the learner (confederate), and then read the 1st word of the pair along with the 4 other terms. * Learner (confederate) had to indicate which 1 of the 4 terms was originally paired with the 1st word. SHOCK GENERATOR * The shock generator perceived to be real - professionally made + model printed. * There were 30 switches - labelled
Compare and Contrast two theories of Bystander Behaviour
Compare and Contrast two theories of Bystander Behaviour "A man approached the gates of heaven and asked to be admitted. 'Tell me one good thing you have ever done in your life', said St Peter. 'Well', said the man. 'I saw a group of skinheads harassing an elderly lady and so I went over and kicked the leader in the shin'. Impressed, St Peter asked when this act of bravery had occurred. 'About 40 seconds ago,' came the response." (Cardwell, Clark & Meldrum 2001) Bystander apathy (effect) can be defined as a tendency for people to more likely act in an emergency or come to the aid of other when they are alone, or conversely, the lesser likelihood of an observer to help people in trouble if other people are present. (Corsini 1999). There have been many theories surrounding bystander behaviour; two prominent examples are Latané and Darley's (1970) Cognitive model and Piliavin et al.'s (1981) Bystander-calculus model. These theories have been widely discussed and have many similar and contrasting ideas. Latané and Darley's cognitive model of bystander behaviour is considered a classic theory in psychology; it uses a five stage model to show that bystander intervention depends on the outcomes of a series of decisions. These stages progress from whether the bystander notices the incident to determining whether their intervention would put them in danger. The model argues that
Asch - Conformity
Psychologists have long been interested in conformity as a powerful influence on our behaviour, making us behave in ways that can often conflict with our attitudes and moral and ethical principles. Asch was interested in how strong the urge was to social conformity. He believed that people are manipulated by suggestion, where a person's judgment of a situation can be changed without their knowledge of it being changed first. When confronted by majority opinion, a person appears to lose their confidence and capacity to go against group pressure, and will instead conform. Sherif demonstrated that people will look to others for guidance and answer in line with the majority. Participants were tested on their estimation of how far a stationary light had moved in a dark room, and there was considerable doubt about the appropriate response, therefore Asch wanted to test in a situation where the correct answer was clearly obvious. Social Psychology offers the insight that conformity is characterized by public compliance rather than attitude change. Asch aimed to demonstrate that a significant minority of people would be willing to say that a line was the same length as another line of blatantly different length. Conformity involved many concepts such as values, beliefs, morals and ethics, but Asch was particularly interested in perceptual conformity. In a controlled laboratory
Describe and Evaluate two or more explanations of the pro-social effects of the media (24)
Describe and Evaluate two or more explanations of the pro-social effects of the media (24) One explanation of the pro-social effects of the media on behaviour comes from Bandura's Social Learning Theory. Bandura's research suggests that children learn through observing a behaviour, then later imitating it if the expectation of reward is high. For example the child needs to pay attention to a role model for example seeing a super hero, then there needs to be retention of the information into the LTM, reproduction, so the child imitates the same type of behaviour such as helping others, and finally the child needs to be motivated to imitate the behaviour such as, being the same gender. The process of social learning works in the same way for learning pro-social acts as seen on television as it does for learning anti-social acts (vicarious reinforcement). Unlike the depiction of anti-social acts, however, the depiction of pro-social acts (such as generosity or helping) is likely to be in accord with established social norms (e.g., the need to be helpful and generous to others). Assuming that these social norms have been internalised by the viewer, the imitation of these acts, therefore, is likely to be associated with the expectation of social reinforcement, and so the child is motivated to repeat these actions in their own life. Furthermore, Bandura would also suggest
How does obedience differ from Conformity?
How does obedience differ from Conformity? Both obedience and conformity involve social pressure in obedience the pressure comes from behaving as you are instructed to do; whereas in conformity the pressure comes from group norms Behaviour in obedience is determined by social power, whereas in conformity it is influenced mostly by the need for acceptance. In nearly all societies, certain people are given power and authority over others. Our society, for example, parents, teachers, and managers are invested with various degrees of authority. Most of the time, this does not cause any problems. The issue of why some people obey with out question or justify their actions has been of interest to psychologists and researchers for many years. Milgram (1974) suggested that we live in a socially obedient environment. Our experience has taught us that authorities are generally trustworthy and legitimate. This creates a socially obedient environment. Adorno et al. (1950) felt that personality was a better explanation of obedience. They proposed that some people had an authoritarian personality. Such people are most likely to be obedient (and most likely also to be prejudiced). Milgram's (1974) hypothesised if people were asked by a person in authority to do something that they think is wrong what would happen? To work out how far most people are willing to go in their obedience to
Describe and evaluate the research methods used by the behaviourist approach
Question: Describe and evaluate the research methods used by behaviourism Behaviourism is a belief that the environment causes and affects our behaviour. The approach accepts determinism and believes that all behaviour can be explained in terms of, behaviour is a direct result of environmental stimuli that can be predicted. Empiricism is accepted and behaviourism rejects 'abstract' terms such as 'id', 'ego' etc. Lab based experiments have taken place in the field of behaviourism to come up with empirical evidence to support theories, experiments such as, Pavlov's dogs, The skinner box, Bobo the doll and Little Albert are among them. This is an advantage as it means results are reliable, meaning that they can be repeated and still achieves consistent results making the research valid. Behaviourism did experiments on both humans and animals. In using humans, the experiment is at risk of obtaining false results because as humans we have a conscious thought and can tell the experiment is not real. The 'Hawthorne Effect' suggests that we, as humans, perform better when being watched. This is a disadvantage of empirical research being carried out on humans. A disadvantage of using animals in experiments is that the results obtained from the experiment can not be generalised to humans and it has been accused of ignoring important biological and cognitive differences as
