Psychology- Unit 2 -Studies – Flashcards

Aim: Milgram (1963) was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person. Stanley Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities for example, Germans in WWII. Procedure: Volunteers were recruited for a lab experiment investigating "learning" . Participants were 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, whose jobs ranged from unskilled to professional. At the beginning of the experiment they were introduced to another participant, who was actually a confederate of the experimenter (Milgram). They drew straws to determine their roles - leaner or teacher - although this was fixed and the confederate always ended to the learner. There was also an "experimenter" dressed in a white lab coat, played by an actor (not Milgram). The "learner" was strapped to a chair in another room with electrodes. After he has learned a list of word pairs given him to learn, the "teacher" tests him by naming a word and asking the learner to recall its partner/pair from a list of four possible choices. The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger - severe shock). The learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose) and for each of these the teacher gave him an electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock and turned to the experimenter for guidance, he was given the standard instruction /order (consisting of 4 prods): Prod 1: please continue. Prod 2: the experiment requires you to continue. Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue. Prod 4: you have no other choice but to continue. Results: 65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e. teachers) continued to the highest level of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300 volts. Milgram did more than one experiment - he carried out 18 variations of his study. All he did was alter the situation (IV) to see how this affected obedience (DV)

Aim: To investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that simulated prison life Procedure: To study the roles people play in prison situations, Zimbardo converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison. He advertised for students to play the roles of prisoners and guards for a fortnight. 21 male college students (chosen from 75 volunteers) were screened for psychological normality and paid $15 per day to take part in the experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to either the role of prisoner or guard in a simulated prison environment. The prison simulation was kept as "real life" as possible. Prisoners were arrested at their own homes, without warning, and taken to the local police station. Guards were also issued a khaki uniform, together with whistles, handcuffs and dark glasses, to make eye contact with prisoners impossible. No physical violence was permitted. Zimbardo observed the behavior of the prisoners and guards. Here they were treated like every other criminal. They were fingerprinted, photographed and 'booked'. Then they were blindfolded and driven to the psychology department of Stanford University, where Zimbardo had had the basement set out as a prison, with barred doors and windows, bare walls and small cells. Here the deindividuation process began. When the prisoners arrived at the prison they were stripped naked, deloused, had all their personal possessions removed and locked away, and were given prison clothes and bedding. They were issued a uniform, and referred to by their number only. Their clothes comprised a smock with their number written on it, but no underclothes. They also had a tight nylon cap, and a chain around one ankle. There were 3 guards to the 9 prisoners, taking shifts of eight hours each (the other guards remained on call) Findings: Within a very short time both guards and prisoners were settling into their new roles, the guards adopting theirs quickly and easily. Within hours of beginning the experiment some guards began to harass prisoners. They behaved in a brutal and sadistic manner, apparently enjoying it. Other guards joined in, and other prisoners were also tormented.

Aim: Was to see if student participants would make the FAE even when they knew that all actors were playing a role Procedure: In this study participants were randomly assigned to one of three roles : 1) game show host 2) contestants 3) audience The game show host was asked to design their own questions When the show was over the observers were asked to rank the intelligence of people who had taken part. They consistently ranked the game show host the most intelligent even though they knew he/she was randomly assigned the role They failed to attribute the role to the persons situation and instead attributed it to the dispositional factors which in this case was intelligence

Researchers asked the participants to read essays written by fellow students. These essays were about Fidel Castro's rule in Cuba and were either supportive or critical of Castro. The participants task was to guess what attitude the writers of the essays really held towards Castro and his government. Half the participants were told that the essayists were free to choose whether to take a positive side or negative side about Castro in their essay (choice condition). The other half was told that the students did not have a choice: the experimenter has assigned them in the role pro or anti Castro (no choice condition) The participants in the choice condition as expected assumed that the essays reflected the genuine attitudes of the writer. In the no choice condition participants seemed to think that the essays reflected the students genuine view of Castro. Even though it was clear that the essayist behaviour was constrained by the situation the participants still opted for an internal attribution.

They found that American football coaches and players tend to credit their wins to internal factors—for example, being in good shape, the hard work they have put in, the natural talent of the team—and their failures to external factors—for example, injuries, weather, fouls committed by the other team. (Self serving bias)

In this study participants taught two children how to multiply numbers by 10 and by 20. The teaching was done in two phases via one way intercom. The first phase involved teaching the children how to multiply by 10, the second phase was multiply by 20. After each phase the children's worksheets were made available to the participants to asses their learning progress. The worksheets had been marked in such a way that in both conditions pupil A gave the right answers to all the questions on both worksheets. Depending on the condition pupil B either did badly on both tasks or did badly on one task and improved in the next one, therefore the participants had either succeeded or failed in teaching pupil B. What they found was in the condition where pupil B's performance improved participants explained the success based on their ability. When pupil B failed both tasks the participants blamed their failure to situational factors, such as the pupils lack of ability

They asked participants to remember details of slides of scenes from unfamiliar countries. When asked to explain their performance, the Americans tended to attribute their success to ability while the Japanese tended to explain their failures in terms of their lack of ability. This is called a modesty bias.

Researchers conducted a field experiment where they observed student clothing/apparel on a Monday following a big football game. The researchers found that students tended to wear more apparel associating themselves with their own university (e.g., jersey or sweatshirt) when the football team won compared to when they lost.

They divided a number of schoolboy students into two groups. Although the researchers allocated the participants randomly, the boys were led to believe that the groups were defined on the basis of art preference (paintings by Klee or Kandinsky) The boys, working individually had to distribute points to the in group and out group members. The boys showed a strong tendency to favor members of the in group over members of the out group = manifesting in in group favoritism The boys also provided strong evidence for SIT's notion of positive distinctiveness. The boys would sacrifice gain for their in group in order to maximize the difference between in groups and out groups. Also the boys would give the in group member 7 points and out group members 1 rather than giving them both 13 points as they could have done.

Found that if you ask a Russian mother to describe what it means for her child to share something, she will describe her children playing together with a toy at the same time; an American mother, however, will describe her children taking turns to play with the same toy. Different cultures have different understandings of words/behavioural concepts, in this case; sharing.

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They conducted a study in which they told female college students that they would bee a person who was either introverted or extroverted.They were then asked to prepare a set of questions for he person they were going to meet. Generally the participants came up with questions that supported their beliefs about introverts and extroverts. Those who thought they were going to meet an extrovert asked "What do you dislike about parties?" and the extroverts "What do you do liven up the party?". This is an example of confirmation bias: people tend to overlook information that contradicts what they already believe.

Bandura showed young children a film of an adult behaving aggressively towards an inflatable bobo doll. This doll was always bounced back when knocked down. The aggressive acts performed by the adult model included throwing the bobo doll in the air, kicking it across the room and hitting it in the head with a wooden mallet There were three experimental conditions Control condition- The children were shown the film with the adult behaving aggressively towards the bobo doll

This experiment used 14 year old infants as participants and involved in two conditions Hands free condition: infants observed an adult place her hands on a table. Following this ,she used a strange action to illuminate a light box:she bent over and pressed the box with her forehead. One week later the same infants were given the opportunity to play with the box, 69% of them used their head to illuminate the light. Hands occupied condition: Infants in this condition observed the adult perform the same strange action to illuminate the box. In this condition the models were using her hands to hold a blanket around her shoulders. This rendered the hands unavailable for other actions. One week later when the infants had the opportunity to play with the same box only 21% used their head to illuminate the box.

"County Youth counselling program" He and his team asked university students and first asked if they would be willing to sign up and chaperon a group of juveniles on a trip to a zoo, 83% said no. Another time they asked if they would be willing to sign up t work for two hours per week for two years and no one agreed.

An example of low balling- Asked a first year psychology students to volunteer to be a part of a study of cognition that would meet at 7 am. Only 24% were willing to do it. In the second group they asked to do the same favor except they did not tell the time. 56% of them agreed. They then told the time, no one backed out. On the day of the study, 95% of people who said they would come showed up.

Aim: Asch wanted to find out to what extent a person would conform to an incorrect answer on a test if the response from the other members of the group was unanimous Method: The participant entered a room with 6 people and a researcher in it. These people were actually part of the study, they were actually playing a role unknown to the participant, they were confederates (they helped the researcher to deceive the participant). The group was told by the researcher that they were going to take part in "a psychological experiment on visual judgment". The reasercher showed card with lines on it. The group was asked to select the line from the second card that matched the length of the first card. There were 18 trials. The confederates were asked to answer correctly for some questions and incorrectly for others, the goal of the experiment was to see whether the participant would conform to the wrong answers given by the confederates, even if it was very clear that the answer was wrong. Findings 75% of the participants agreed with the confederates with the incorrect responses once during the trials 32% of the participants agreed with the incorrect answers in half or more during the trials 24% of participants did not conform to any of the incorrect responses during the experiment

They studied 88 statements clearly indicative of groupthink processes which they identified in the report of the Presidential Commission on the space shuttle challenger accident. They discovered little evidence for the importance of the group cohesion as defined by mutual attraction among the group members. They did find that evidence of stress and did detect a number of groupthink symptoms including illusion of invulnerability,illusion of unaminity and pressure

A low-ranked participant in a national chess tournament, playing an early match against a highly favoured opponent, has a choice of attempting or not attempting a deceptive but risky manoeuvre that might lead to quick victory if it is successful or almost certain defeat if it fails. Indicate the lowest probability of success that you would accept before recommending that the chess player play the risky move. ______ 1 chance in 10 of succeeding ______ 3 chances in 10 of succeeding ______ 5 chances in 10 of succeeding ______ 7 chances in 10 of succeeding ______ 9 chances in 10 of succeeding ______ I would not recommend the alternative no matter what

Aim: To determine whether collectivists show lower level of compliance than individualists when FITD technique was used Method: field experiment Procedure: Their study involved 3000 students at a US university Nearly half were native US students and the rest were Asian students at he same uni All were sent an e-mail asking them to whether they would agree to take part in an online survey Findings: They found that the proportion of students agreeing to the first request was higher among Asian students than it was among US students However compliance with the first request had a stronger impact on compliance with the second request among US students The proportion of US students who agreed to the second request ( having previously agreed to the first ) was twice as high as it was among the Asian students FITD higher impact on individualists than collectivists

Time orientation in bicultural participants (Chen et al., 2005) • Experiment with 147 Singaporean 'bicultural participants' - exposed extensively to two different cultures (in this case Singaporean and American) • Chen et al. selectively activated one or the other of the two cultures (recognizable photos from either Singaporean culture or American) • Impatience then tested using online shopping scenario (regular delivery or next-day delivery for extra fee) • US-primed participants valued immediate consumption more than Singaporean-primed participants