3 Key Studies - created from Mind Map

Seite 1

1) Asch's Study

2) Milgram's Study

3) Zimbardo's Study

Asch’s sample consisted of 50 male students from Swarthmore College in America, who believed they were taking part in a vision test. Asch used a line judgement task, where he placed on real naïve participants in a room with seven confederates (actors), who had agreed their answers in advance. The real participant was deceived and was led to believe that the other seven people were also real participants. The real participant always sat second to last.

Evaluation of Asch: Asch used a biased sample of 50 male students from Swarthmore College in America. Therefore, we cannot generalise the results to other populations, for example female students, and we are unable to conclude if female students would have conformed in a similar way to male students. As a result Asch’s sample LACKS POPULATION VALIDITY and further research is required to determine whether males and females conform differently

Te correct answer was always obvious. Each participant completed 18 trials and the confederates gave the same incorrect answer on 12 trials, called critical trials. Asch wanted to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view, even when the answer was clearly incorrect.

On average, the real participants conformed to the incorrect answers on 32% of the critical trials.

Results: Asch interviewed his participants after the experiment to find out why they conformed. Most of the participants said that they knew their answers were incorrect, but they went along with the group in order to fit in, or because they thought they would be ridiculed. This confirms that participants conformed due to normative social influence and the desire to fit in.

LOW LEVELS OF ECOLOGICAL VALIDITY. Asch’s test of conformity, a line judgement task, is an artificial task, which does not reflect conformity in everyday life. Consequently, we are unable to generalise the results of Asch to other real life situations

He broke several ethical guidelines, including: DECEPTION AND PROTECTION from harm. Asch deliberately deceived his participants, saying that they were taking part in a vision test and not an experiment on conformity.

Milgram was interested in why normal German people followed the orders of the Nazis, leading to their treatment of the Jews. He was interested in whether normal Americans would also blindly follow instructions from authority, even if it led to them hurting other people.

Evaluation: This was a very influential study, which provided great insights into human behaviour. It disproved the `Germans are different` hypothesis, and led to increased awareness of how easily we can just blindly obey orders, without questioning whether we morally should. However, there are a number of criticisms, including ETHICAL ISSUES and ISSUES OF VALIDITY.

Milgram set up a study where participants believed they were taking part in a learning experiment. Each participant was a `teacher` who read out word pairs to a `learner` (who was actually a confederate). Every time the learner gave an incorrect response, the participant had to give them an electric shock. With each shock, the voltage was increased up to a final level of 450 V, labelled `XXX`. At 300 V, he was silent. If the participant asked to stop, they were told that the experiment had to continue.

Results: Milgram found that no participants stopped the experiment before 300 V, and 65% actually continued as far as 450 V. Milgram concluded that ordinary Americans obey orders even if it leads to them acting against their conscience and hurting others.

The participants in Milgram’s study suffered a lot of PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS. They were also deceived as to the nature of the experiment, which meant they couldn’t provide informed consent. Additionally, they were not informed of their right to withdraw.

HOWEVER, Milgram extensively debriefed his participants, including reuniting them with the learner. The participants therefore left understanding that they hadn’t hurt anyone. They did, however, leave in the knowledge that they were capable of hurting people, which may have caused them distress.

They are critcised in terms of external and internal validity. Some people claim that it lacks INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL VALIDITY – that it wasn’t actually measuring obedience rates at all. Perhaps instead, participants were just acting along with the experimenter, not actually believing they were hurting the learner (showing demand characteristics).

The experiment has also been criticised in terms of EXTERNAL VALIDITY – that it doesn’t represent traits that would happen in the real world, with different people, and different situations

His aim was to examine whether people would conform to the social roles of a prison guard or prisoner, when placed in a mock prison environment. Furthermore, he also wanted to examine whether the behaviour displayed in prisons was due to internal dispositional factors, the people themselves, or external situational factors, the environment and conditions of the prison. To see how good people would behave when in a bad situation.

EVALUATION: Furthermore, individual differences and personality also determine the extent to which a person conforms to social roles. In Zimbardo’s original experiment the behaviour of the guards varied dramatically, from extremely brutal behaviour to a few good guards who helped the prisoners. This suggests that situational factors are not the only cause of conformity to social roles and dispositional factors also play a role.

Zimbardo’s sample consisted of 21 male university students who volunteered in response to a newspaper advert The participants were randomly assigned to one of two social roles, prisoners or guards. Zimbardo wanted to make the experience as realistic as possible, turning the basement of Stanford University into a mock prison. Also the participants were selected on the basis of their physical and mental stability.

RESULTS: Zimbardo found that both the prisoners and guards quickly identified with their social roles. Within days the prisoners rebelled, but this was quickly crushed by the guards, who then grew increasingly abusive towards the prisoners. The guards dehumanised the prisoners, waking them during the night and forcing them to clean toilets with their bare hands; the prisoners became increasingly submissive, identifying further with their subordinate role.

Five of the prisoners were released from the experiment early, because of their adverse reactions to the physical and mental torment, for example, crying and extreme anxiety.

Although the experiment was set to run for two weeks, it was terminated after just six days, when fellow postgraduate student Christina Maslach convinced Zimbardo that conditions in his experiment were inhumane.

Zimbardo concluded that people quickly conform to social roles, even when the role goes against their moral principles. Furthermore, he concluded that situational factors were largely responsible for the behaviour found, as none of the participants had ever demonstrated these behaviours previously.

Zimbardo’s experiment has been heavily criticised for breaking many ethical guidelines, in particular, protection from harm. Five of the prisoners left the experiment early because of their adverse reactions to the physical and mental torment. Furthermore, some of the guards reported feelings of anxiety and guilt, as a result of their actions during the Stanford Prison Experiment. Although Zimbardo followed the ethical guidelines of Stanford University and debriefed his participants afterwards, he acknowledged that the study should have been stopped earlier.