Posts archived in Psychology AS
May 9, 2010 by Cara Flanagan.
In the AQA A AS Complete Companion we have subdivided conformity into majority and minority influence. There was a reason for this – when the new specification was first published minority influence was a named topic so we wrote material on it. However, in a very late revision, minority influence was removed from the specification. However we (as well as other textbooks) left it in because it is an important part of the social change topic – social change is due to minority rather than majority influence.
It is arguable as to whether ‘conformity’ refers only to majority influence or can include minority influence – for example, the Scottish higher exam talks about conformity to majority and minority influence. We elected to include minority influence under the heading ‘conformity’. However, AQA’s ruling is that conformity is solely concerned with majority influence. This means that, in the exam, students will get no marks for material or research studies on minority influence in a question on conformity.
However material on minority influence can be made creditworthy when asked about the implications of social influence research for social change, so it remains an important topic of study.
Thanks to Emma Marsh for raising this issue.
September 3, 2009 by Cara Flanagan.
Many of you will be familiar with the excellent BBC radio series called Mind Changers which has included programmes on Milgram, Piaget, Ainsworth, Bartlett, Kohlberg, Zimbardo, Harlow, Asch. Some of these are currently available as podcasts here or you can go to PsychBLOG where Jamie has downloaded some and there are also some available on Spokenword (free subscription for teachers).
If anyone finds copies elsehwere, let us know!
August 17, 2009 by Cara Flanagan.
Earlier this year Professor Albert Bandura visited London and presented a fascinating talk on the application of social learning theory (SLT – now called social cognitive theory). An edited version of this talk is in the June edition of The Psychologist (which is free online here). The research he discussed provides great support for SLT as well as demonstrating its application to the real world.The talk focused on how SLT is being used to tackle urgent global problems. For example, in Tanzania the current population is 36 million. This is predicted to soar to Read the rest of this entry »
July 25, 2009 by Evie Bentley.
Why did so many MPs claim expenses which, although apparently ‘within the rules’, were clearly not morally justifiable? It has been suggested that this was a conformity effect, as research has shown that bending the rules or breaking social norms increases, sometimes doubling, if people see that others are doing this. It’s a ‘me too’ effect, or what we know as conformity. But does this social influence justify the unethical or questionable behaviour? That is a different question, and it seems that we, the public, expect our MPs to think and not just follow the herd. Read more here.
October 23, 2008 by Cara Flanagan.
An Australian radio programme has recently broadcast a programme (11 October 2008) which went in search of some of the original subjects and interviewed them. There is an option which allows you to download it too! Here’s the link. There are also audio clips from the original experiment. Quite fascinating.
You can also read interviews with Milgram’s subjects in the book by Laren Slater called Opening Skinner’s Box.
September 2, 2008 by Cara Flanagan.
It’s not that I am obsessed with Milgram (see my previous posts); his work just seems to attract a lot of attention – and now a US research team has conducted a replication of the original experiment!. Jerry Burger and his colleagues felt that since this classic study is so often used to explain human obedience to unjust authority (e.g. the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib) there was good reason to see whether the same results would be produced today. In the original experiment (and subsequent replications) once a participant had continued beyond 150 volts they almost invariably continued to the end as if, at this point, an unconscious decision was made to follow the experimenter’s lead rather than being concerned about any harm done to the ‘learner’. Therefore Burger identified 150 volts as a critical point of no return and they designed their experiment so it was stopped after the 150 volt point. In all other respects the procedures were identical to the original and participants were carefully screened to exclude anyone who was psychologically vulnerable or was aware of the original experiments.
The results were just about the same – 70% of the 40 participants who took part were willing to go beyond 150 volts. Participants who indicated a greater desire for control were less likely to obey but empathy levels had little effect on obedience. In another condition the study showed that participants who witnessed another participant (a confederate) who refused to continue did not show any greater disobedience, unlike the original trials.
If you want to read more, look here and here and here (in this last link you can also read about a real life prank call to a children’s home ordering a supervisor to deliver electric shocks, shades of the McDonald’s story).
May 16, 2008 by Cara Flanagan.
Since Stanley Milgram first published his classic study on obedience an enormous number of people have offered comments and reinterpretations of his work. Perhaps the most recent come from Alex Haslam and Stephen Reicher (famous for their adaptation of Zimbardo’s prison study). Haslam and Reicher suggest that there are several problems with the concept of the agentic shift. For example, how does this explain why subjects were less likely to obey in the run down office? Logically we might expect an increased agentic state (and higher obedience) because the relative authority of the experimenter was greater in a less prestigious environment.
Haslam and Reicher use a different explanation – social identity theory. They argue that the degree to which we obey someone depends on the extent to which we identify with them. The more you identify, the more you obey. They use this to explain Zimbardo’s experiment and also the obedience of guards in the Second World War. They may have been ordinary people (as Hannah Arendt proposed) but the reason for obedience was less to do with an agentic shift and more because they identified with the Nazi movement and believed it to be right.
The importance of this interpretation is that it may lead us to understand obedience to unjust authority better, in terms of identification rather than lack of autonomy.
April 22, 2008 by Adrian Frost.
If you go here, you can download a copy of one of the most famous radio broadcasts ever made: Orson Welles 1938 adaptation of ‘War Of The Worlds’, a drama that caused mass panic and hysteria when it was broadcast. Here’s what happened:
“On the evening of Sunday, October 30, 1938 – a month after the Munich – Orson Welles of the Mercury Theatre gave, over the Columbia Broadcasting System, a scheduled radio dramatization of an old fantasy by H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds. To make it vivid, he arranged it to simulate a current news broadcast. After an announcer had clearly explained the nature of the program, a voice gave a prosaic weather forecast; then another voice said that the program would be continued from a hotel, with dance music; shortly this music was interrupted by a “flash” to the effect that a professor at “Mount Jennings Observatory,” Chicago, reported seeing explosions at regular intervals on the planted Mars; then the listeners were “returned” in orthodox fashion “to the music of Ramon Raquello…a tune that never loses favor, the popular ‘Star Dust’”; then came an interview with an imaginary Princeton professor, with more information about disturbances on Mars – whereupon a series of further “news bulletins” described the arrival of Martians in huge metal cylinders which landed in New Jersey. The broadcast gathered speed, bulleting following bulletin. More Martians landed – an army of them, which quickly defeated the New Jersey State Militia. Presently the Martina attack was vividly described as being general all over the United States, with the population of New York evacuating the city and Martian heat-rays and flame-throwers and other diabolical devices causing terrific destruction, till all was laid to waste.”
Read the rest of this entry »
March 30, 2008 by Adrian Frost.
Matters of psychological interest conveyed for your convenience and edification in the modern realplayer format. Bought to you by the British Broadcasting Corporation and the wonders of the electronic interweb:
Solomon Asch – Conformity
Jean Piaget – The Three Mountains
Sir Frederic Bartlett – War of The Ghosts
March 14, 2008 by Cara Flanagan.
Professor Zimbardo was recently interviewed by The Independent outlining the parallels between his Stanford Prison study and incidents at Abu Ghraib. In the article (and his book The Lucifer Effect) Zimbardo provides interesting insights into the original study and the effect it has had on his life. “[Stanford] was a little week-long study,” he says, “but it has affected my whole life.” His thoughts are not all doom and gloom about human nature; where there are villains there are also heroes and his current interest lies in bringing out the good in all of us. Even Lucifer had the potential to be good as he was a fallen angel.
