Social (S+W)

Social (S+W)

1. Attempt to use real life situations when studying behaviour, as it is interested in human interaction this is best studied in real situations where participants have the opportunity to interact

   • E.g. field experiment method used by Piliavin et al. = high in ecological validity and may avoid demand characteristics as the participants are unaware of the experiment.
   • Simulated situations E.g. Reicher&Haslam are high in experimental realism because even though the situation is not high in ecological validity the participants still did believe in the situation.

2. Contributions it makes about understanding social behaviour.

   • Makes useful applications because it can explain and even offer solutions to problems in the real world. E.g. Reicher demonstrated how the breakdown of groups can lead to conditions under which tyranny can flourish
     • Milgram identifies many situational factors which can lead to obedience.

3. Ethics= difficult to study social behaviour without negatively affecting the participants in the study.

   • Milgram's study is often criticised for the way in which participants may have been harmed in the study, it can be argued that Milgram did not take adequate measures to protect his participants from the stress and emotional conflict they experienced.
   • Reicher did anticipate that their study could have a negative effect on their participants but ensured that their study was monitored by independent psychologists and believed that their study demonstrates that large scale social psychological studies can be ethical.

4. The social approach attempts to make generalisations about social behaviour but often the samples used are very restricted.

   • Both Milgram & Reicher were carried out on male participants= hard to generalise these findings to females.
     • Both of these studies used a self-selected sampling technique which may mean that ppts who volunteer may not be representative of the target population = more obedient, more motivated to take part in studies.