eBook - ePub
Social Influences
Kevin Wren
This is a test
Partager le livre
- 144 pages
- English
- ePUB (adapté aux mobiles)
- Disponible sur iOS et Android
eBook - ePub
Social Influences
Kevin Wren
DĂ©tails du livre
Aperçu du livre
Table des matiĂšres
Citations
Ă propos de ce livre
Social Influences looks at how we perceive ourselves and others and how this can influence our behaviour. It includes stereotyping and prejudice, obedience and conformity, collective behaviour and leadership.
Foire aux questions
Comment puis-je résilier mon abonnement ?
Il vous suffit de vous rendre dans la section compte dans paramĂštres et de cliquer sur « RĂ©silier lâabonnement ». Câest aussi simple que cela ! Une fois que vous aurez rĂ©siliĂ© votre abonnement, il restera actif pour le reste de la pĂ©riode pour laquelle vous avez payĂ©. DĂ©couvrez-en plus ici.
Puis-je / comment puis-je télécharger des livres ?
Pour le moment, tous nos livres en format ePub adaptĂ©s aux mobiles peuvent ĂȘtre tĂ©lĂ©chargĂ©s via lâapplication. La plupart de nos PDF sont Ă©galement disponibles en tĂ©lĂ©chargement et les autres seront tĂ©lĂ©chargeables trĂšs prochainement. DĂ©couvrez-en plus ici.
Quelle est la différence entre les formules tarifaires ?
Les deux abonnements vous donnent un accĂšs complet Ă la bibliothĂšque et Ă toutes les fonctionnalitĂ©s de Perlego. Les seules diffĂ©rences sont les tarifs ainsi que la pĂ©riode dâabonnement : avec lâabonnement annuel, vous Ă©conomiserez environ 30 % par rapport Ă 12 mois dâabonnement mensuel.
Quâest-ce que Perlego ?
Nous sommes un service dâabonnement Ă des ouvrages universitaires en ligne, oĂč vous pouvez accĂ©der Ă toute une bibliothĂšque pour un prix infĂ©rieur Ă celui dâun seul livre par mois. Avec plus dâun million de livres sur plus de 1 000 sujets, nous avons ce quâil vous faut ! DĂ©couvrez-en plus ici.
Prenez-vous en charge la synthÚse vocale ?
Recherchez le symbole Ăcouter sur votre prochain livre pour voir si vous pouvez lâĂ©couter. Lâoutil Ăcouter lit le texte Ă haute voix pour vous, en surlignant le passage qui est en cours de lecture. Vous pouvez le mettre sur pause, lâaccĂ©lĂ©rer ou le ralentir. DĂ©couvrez-en plus ici.
Est-ce que Social Influences est un PDF/ePUB en ligne ?
Oui, vous pouvez accĂ©der Ă Social Influences par Kevin Wren en format PDF et/ou ePUB ainsi quâĂ dâautres livres populaires dans PsicologĂa et Historia y teorĂa en psicologĂa. Nous disposons de plus dâun million dâouvrages Ă dĂ©couvrir dans notre catalogue.
Informations
1
Obedience
Introduction
Obedience research
Milgram's experiment
Criticisms of Milgram's experiment
Other obedience studies
Field experiments
Some explanations of obedience
Summary
Introduction
One aspect of behaviour brought about through social influence is obedience, i.e. obeying direct instructions or orders. As car drivers we obey the signals directed at us by traffic police, e.g. to turn or slow down. School pupils respond to the instructions directed at them by their teachers and as soldiers we obey the orders of our commanding officers. In some situations our obedience is taken for granted and in turn we seldom question our own obedience, e.g. responding to the instructions of health workers and carers. As with other aspects of human behaviour it has been the destructive, rather than the constructive, aspects of behaviour that has commanded the attention of both psychologists and non-psychologists alike.
Obedience research
It would be considered unethical to perform an experiment to investigate the obedience behaviour of soldiers during situations such as the Holocaust of World War II. We are left, therefore, with few alternatives other than to rely on the eyewitness evidence of people like Holocaust victims. The problem with this type of evidence is that very often these participants are psychologically and physically damaged by their experiences. Eitinger and StĂžmâs study (1973) of ex-concentration camp inmates revealed a higher than normal incidence of both physical and psychological illness. Similarly, interviews with those who perpetrated the violence are difficult, with interviewees being deliberately uncooperative or being very selective in what they wish to remember (Browning, 1992).
Milgramâs response to reading about incidents such as described above was to conduct a number of experiments to investigate destructive obedience. He wanted to investigate whether some individuals or cultures are simply more obedient than others, or whether everyone is obedient in certain situations. If so, what are the key elements of these situations?
Milgramâs experiment
His baseline experiment is described in article 1 of the key research summaries in chapter 6. (Read this now.)
Milgramâs original experiment demonstrated clearly, and shockingly, that ordinary individuals are obedient. He conducted a further eighteen experiments in which he varied some of the parameters in order to investigate further the situational factors which might have produced such a significant result. In all but one of the variants the participants were male, non-graduates between 20 and 50 years of age. In one other study, in which females were the participants, he found a similar level of obedience.
These were some of the key findings:
âą The presence of another/others who are seen to disobey the experimenter reduces the level of obedience. In the case of two disobedient participants, obedience rates dropped to 10%. (Demonstrating the influence of group pressure: in this case positively.)
âą The closeness of the teacher to the learner increased the likeliness of disobedience in so far as when the âlearnerâ was visible obedience rates dropped to 40%.
âą Obedience was less likely if the experimenter was not in the room but issued orders over a phone link. When the experimenter was absent, teachers often administered shocks of a lower dosage than ordered.
âą Re-locating the experiment from Yale University to a less prestigious office had some impact on the results in that obedience rates dropped from 65% to 48%.
âą When participants were placed in the role of bystander to anotherâs obedience, 93% remained on task and did not intervene.
âą A small reduction in obedience rates was observed when the participants and the experimenter agreed prior to the experiment to release participants if requested. The experimenter subsequently ignored this agreement.
A very interesting variant was where obedience to authority was demonstrated to have a beneficial effect. In a series of trials the learner demanded that the experiment continued despite indicating obvious pain on the pretext that he wanted to show that he could âtakeâ the punishment. When the experimenter ordered the teacher to stop, they obeyed instantly. This seems to show that people continue to obey authority for good or evil and further supports the major influence of an authority figure.
Milgramâs (1963, 1965, 1974) basic study and variations demonstrate that obedience is dependent on intricate situational factors. Participants who would harm another under the direct orders of an authority figure (the experimenter) would be able to disobey the experimenter if with a defiant co-participant, or if the experimenter had left the room.
The implications of Milgramâs baseline condition and many of the variations are best expressed in Milgramâs own words:
if an anonymous experimenter could successfully command adults to subdue a fifty-year-old man, and force on him painful electric shocks against his protests, one can only wonder what government, with its vastly greater authority and prestige, can command of its subjects.
(Milgram, 1965:75)
Progress exercise
AnsMwer the following either verbally or in written note form.
1 Briefly outlin Milgramâs baseline experiment.
2 Why were Milgramâs results so surprising?
3 List three situational factors Milgram changed in subsequent experiments.
4 In relation to 3, describe the results of these studies and what they seem to tell us about destructive obedience?
Criticisms of Milgramâs experiment
Ecological validity
Milgramâs studies have been questioned on the grounds of ecological validity. In research it is important that the claims you make for an experiment and the data generated actually examine what you say they examine. Thomas Kuhn (1962), a scientist, historian and philosopher, says that modern science experiments only show what modern scientists claim they show. In other words all experiments can be questioned on the grounds that they do not really test what the experimenter claims the experiment tests. In the case of Milgram, therefore, is his study an examination of destructive obedience such as was witnessed in real-world examples like Auschwitz, an example of Nazi obedience? There is not always a simple âyes it doesâ/âno it doesnâtâ answer to this question. Many social psychologists have noted the different quality of human relationships in real life and in a laboratory. What we may be seeing in a social science laboratory experiment is only what happens in a laboratory and therefore it is difficult to generalise from the laboratory results to real life. In this case, the laboratory experiment is said to lack ecological validity. Others point out that limiting variables so that they can be manipulated and measured easily is not comparable with real-world situations such as German concentration or death camps. Briefly, anecdotal evidence (Wiesel, 1958; Levi, 1986) and evidence from social scientists (Cohen, 1954) indicate that Auschwitz was a complex society, as well as an infamous Nazi death camp. As a large collection of individuals, therefore, it developed its own unique set of social norms and values. Many would say that to try and emulate this or part of it, i.e. destructive obedience, in a laboratory setting would mean that many significant features of the ârealâ situation are lost.
Internal validity
But studies can be invalid for other reasons, such as the way in which data was collected or the behaviour of the experimenter. This is called internal validity.
Rosenthal (1966), Orne and Holland (1968) and others have demonstrated the effects of demand characteristics. These are features of the experimental procedure or setting which bias results. An example of this would be an experimenter who, as a result of a poorly designed set of standard instructions, invited participants to behave in a particular way or who recruited participants from a sample which was not random.
In relation to the above, two aspects of Milgramâs procedure have come in for criticism:
âą The fact that Milgram paid his âvolunteersâ and recruited them via a newspaper advertisement is not considered to be random sampling.
âą The experimenter contradicted his participants both verbally and non-verbally on a number of occasions, such as by telling participants that a shock of 345 volts would not cause tissue damage when the switch was clearly labelled as very dangerous.
On these alone, some psychologists would condemn Milgramâs results as internally invalid.
Ethics
These experiments are unethical to the point that they probably would not be sanctioned today. Bruno Bettelheim described them as âvileâ and went on to say that they were of little worth. Todayâs APA and BPS guidelines, for example, state clearly that:
âą At all times a participantâs full and informed consent must be obtained prior to the start of an experiment.
âą The participant must be at liberty to withdraw at any time.
âą The participantâs health and mental well-being must be safeguarded.
Milgramâs experimental procedures seem to have broken all three of the above guidelines. His own description of one of his participants 20 minutes into the experiment seems to contravene at least two:
he was reduced to a twitching stuttering wreck who was rapidly approaching a state of nervous collapse. He constantly pulled on his earlobes, and twisted his hands. At one point he pushed his fist into his forehead and muttered: âOh God, letâs stop it.â
Counter-arguments
Milgram felt that his debriefing procedure, involving a friendly reconciliation with the victim (actor), was sufficiently thorough to ensure that each participant left the laboratory âin a state of well-beingâ. In a follow-up study Milgram, assisted by a psychiatrist, discovered that very few participants felt they were harmed by their experiences. Only 1.3% of participants felt that they were sorry or very sorry to have taken part in the experiment, whereas 83.7% were glad to have taken part (Milgram, 1974). Even so, modern psychologists would say that Milgramâs efforts to obtain naĂŻve participants were unethical because the participants were not fully informed and every opportunity was taken to persuade the participant to continue when some were clearly apprehensive.
On the other side of the debate, social psychologists like Elms (1982) have described such research as âmorally significantâ. He feels the risks were worth taking in order to investigate a very contentious aspect of behaviour. Others would say that we could not turn our back on aspects of human behaviour just because they are distasteful and are difficult to investigate. And as Aronson (1995) observed: âthe ethics of any experiment may be less open to question when the results tell us something pleasant or flattering about human nature, and more open to question when they tell us something weâd rather not know.â
Progress exercise
Answer the following either verbally or in written note form.
1 Summarise the ethical concerns that Milgramâs study brought into focus.
2 Summarise some of the points listed above which were criticisms of Milgramâs procedure.
Other obedience studies
Cross-cultural studies
Since Milgramâs original study and despite the ethical issues it raised there have been many variations of his baseline experiment conducted in other countries and cultures including Austria, Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, Jordan, the Netherlands and Spain. On inspection though, the majority have been performed in predominantly âWesternâ societies. They have produced a range of results, e.g. from over 90% obedience in Spain and the Netherlands to a low of 16% in Australian females. It must be pointed out that not all the studies were exact replications and therefore cannot be seen as wholly confirming Milgramâs results. On the other hand, the various replications seem to generally reflect the range of scores Milgram obtained (Miller, 1986). I will examine two, a study of children by Shanab and Yahya (1977) and a part replication study conducted by Kilham and Mann (1974) in Australia.
Shanab and Yahya studied Jordanian children between the ages of 6 and 16 years. The experimenter was female. The results of the experiment showed that 73% of children administered the maximum shock to same-gender peers. This is an important variation since it seems to show that gender may well be a factor in how we behave in a situation where we are âexpectedâ to behave in a destructive way. This study represents an 11% increase in the levels of obedience Milgram obtained with adults. This seems to confirm the reality that children are very obedient. In the light of the number of children, past and present, who have played and are playing an active part in warfare, it is worrying. In recent history children have been implicated in war crimes, e.g. as fighters for the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and in the recent civil war in Rwanda. However, it is difficult to generalise too much from this study since the cultures of Jordan, Rwanda and the West are very different.
The Australian study was a modified versi...