sociology influence.Outline the procedures used in social influence research, and discuss whether the use of these procedures
Outline the procedures used in social influence research, and discuss whether the use of these procedures can be justified ethically.
The essay will be using procedures used in social influence research, the study’s I will be using to discuss whether the use of the procedures can be justified will be Milgram`s study, Zimbardo`s study along with Aschs`s study.
To begin with I shall discuss Mailgrams study, which is based on obedience and to find out whether ordinary Americans would obey an unjust order from a person in authority to inflict pain on another person. The procedures Milgram went through in 1963 to achieve the findings, he first obtained 40 male volunteers from a newspaper which were each paid $4.50 to take part, each of the participants which took part were told that the experiment was on learning but it was actually on the experiment on obedience. This was not ethical; as if they participants were made aware of the actual research they may not have taken part, due to the experiment may also have had an affect on the participants self esteem, emotionally and psychologically. This is because the participants could have said “no one likes me” or “everybody all ways lies to me”. Some more procedures that Milgram did, was he misled his participants into believing they were randomly allocated to the role of the teacher or learner on the basis of the toss of a coin. Which was rigged as the participants always was the teacher, the participants then watched the learner being strapped to a chair in a adjoining room, the task for the learner was to (confederate) was to memorise word pairs, the teacher would read the first word of each pair and provide four alternative answers. The learner had to indicate the correct answer by pressing switches; the teacher’s role is to administer an electric shock every time the learner made a mistake and in practice no shocks were given, the teacher then sat in front of a shock generator with thirty lever which indicated the level of shocks to be given, the shocks started at 15 volts and increased gradually to 450 volts, if the participants expressed discomfort at administrating shocks then verbal probes were given such as “you have no choice you must continue”. I consider that this was not ethical because the participants actually thought they were administrating shock and causing the accomplices to scream this could also disturb the participants psychologically, this is because when administrating the shock to the accomplice the participants could have a image of the accomplice receiving the shocks, this could disturb them mentally and physically, this could cause the person to be psychologically disturbed, for a number of years or even all that persons life, the right procedures that Milgram did is he told the participants at the end when they were returned and gave a full debriefing.
