psych w10: attributions & social influence

Social psychology

How thoughts, feelings, beliefs, goals and more are shaped by social (imagined and non-imagined) interaction.

Attributions

How we judge our own and other’s actions and their subsequent outcomes

Social role

Certain expectations, connotations and characteristics associated with a certain role in a social context. Ex: a caregiver is kind, and nurturing. A doctor is precise, methodological

Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)

Philip Zimbardo, funded by US Office of Naval research, studying anti-social behaviour. Studying development of norms and the impact of roles & social expectations

• Prison environment of 24 participants (70 applicants), most normal people. (but also male college students). Randomly assigned prisoner/guard. 15USD/day (1-2 weeks)

• Fake arrest, stripped of name & given IDs, 16 rules to follow, nobody is allowed to talk about this being an experiment

• First day - awkward, compliant

• Second day - guards troll prisoners by doing a count at 2:30am, prisoners revolt, guards punish prisoners (no bed, stripped, no food)

• Privilege cell - least involved prisoners got special treatment, ring leaders placed in “The Hole” for solitary confinement

• 3rd day - one prisoner in acute distress, withdrawn from experiment

• asserted control: bathroom privilege, smoking break restriction, humiliation

• Shut down after day 6, researchers going wild angry about it

Impacts of Stanford Experiment

• people conform to social roles

• deindividualisation can further lead to mistreatment

• shows how situations can impact people’s choices in behaviours

Zimbardo and the study was used in Abu Ghraibin trials of the Iraq war & 2004 when 11 night shift guards were charged with crimes.

Issues with Stanford Prison Experiment

• experimenter bias - Zimbardo participated, not a passive observer

• Generalisability & validity - only 24 college aged men

• misinterpreted results - 2/3 of prison guards did not abuse the prisoners

• Lack of controlled conditions & variables

• bad replication - when tested by the BBC, did not work. Guards were not encouraged to be sadistic. Prisoners took over the prison and experiment ended

• ethically wrong

Internal (personal) attributions

• Using internal, innate factors to judge people

Ex: the guy on the bench fell asleep because he is lazy or has a medical condition.

External (situational) attributions

• Making a judgement and explaining a behaviour through situational factors

Ex: the guy on the bench fell asleep because he went to a party last night, or he had a night shift at work.

Kelly (1967) the formation of attributions

we shape our attributions using three main criteria:
Consistency - How often does this happen? Has the same reaction happened before?

Distinctiveness - is this behaviour odd considering the circumstances?

Consensus - Do others act like this as well?

Fundamental attribution bias

When judging other’s behaviours, we often:

1. underestimate the situational impacts

2. overestimate personal impacts

Ex: if someone else doesn’t hand in their homework on time, we assume this is because they are lazy and unorganised, not because they’re working two jobs while studying.

Actor-observer bias

When in a negative situation, we:

• make more situational attributions for ourselves

• make more personal attributions for others

Ex: He crashed his car because he’s a reckless driver vs I crashed my car because its super slippery on the road rn!!

Ultimate attribution error

• negative in-group behaviour: we judge as situational

• negative out-group behaviour: we judge as personal

Social influence

How attitudes & behaviours are influenced by perceived or imagined presences

Compliance

Publicly/socially going along with certain behaviours & beliefs despite internally disagreeing. This is in response to coercion, group pressure & social influence

Principles of influence (Cialdini, 1984)

• Reciprocity norm: if we receive something, we often feel obligated to return the favor

• Scarcity: limited supply = more valuable

• Authority: ppl with perceived knowledge/authority have influence

• Commitment & consistency: we like to seem consistent in our behaviours & beliefs. once we’re committed to something we dont like backing out

• Liking: people we like influence us more

• Consensus/social proof: looking to social norms & peers on how to act

Foot in the door

Making a small initial request, then once the request has been accepted & completed, then making a larger request. Relates to consistency & commitment.

Door in the face

Initially make a large request, then make a smaller request which seems more manageable.

low-balling

Get someone committed to an offer, then increase the cost of the commitment afterwards.

Obedience

Responding to a direct command. This is only effective when the person giving the command is perceived to have more authority than the receiver or any other competing influencers

The Milgram Experiment

A staged shock experiment at Yale University.

• The participants were the teachers, instructing a student (paid actor/pre-recorded sounds) in a separate room to perform tasks.

• A researcher stood encouraging the participants to shock the learners & continuation of the experiment with pre-determined phrases

• 75volts - more than 330 volts - each step of the volt scale, there were specific pre-recorded responses prepared

• 62.5% of participants administered a lethal shock (450 volts)

Findings of the Milgram experiment

The milgram experiment has been replicated on many occasions.

• Full obedience found in 28-91% of the time

• No sign of relationship between gender, culture or publication year

• Milgram’s thoughts: “If we had death camps in the US, it wouldn’t be too hard to find staff for them”

Milgram critique

Jarrett (20215)

• many participants were sceptical of the reality of the situation

• the actors playing experimenters often improvised

• in partial replications of the study, nobody gave in to the final command “you have no other choice, you must go on”

• in modern replications, simply ordering people was ineffective, but orders as appeals to science are

• ethically evil!

Conformity

Changing our opinions, beliefs or actions to fit the norm of a situation or social sphere

Informational social influence

Conforming to others because you believe they have accurate knowledge or are acting correctly

Normative social influence

Conforming to others to gain rewards and abstain from experiencing rejection. For example: starting to play football to gain social approval because all your other friends do

Asch’s line test

• 50 male participants for a “vision test”

• 6-9 participants in a group - all were actors except 1

• shown different lines - have to match the identical ones together.

• participant sat at the end, always answered last

• actors answered wrong 12/18 tasks

• 75% answered wrong at least once, 50% more than six times, 5% every time

Asch’s test variables

• group size - smaller groups = less conformity. 1 actor = 3% conformity, 3 actors 32% conformity

• task difficulty - more likely to look to others if questions are hard

• presence of dissenter - if even just 1 actor disagrees from the rest of the actor group, 5% reduced conformity approx

Asch’s line test critique

generalizability:

• more likely to conform around peers or people in similar social groups?

• only men participating

Ecological validity:

• hard to apply to reality, we hardly encounter straight forward correct answers to things

• this takes place in an artificial environment - does the fact that it take place in a lab change anything?