A2 Level Psychology

Section A Core Studies

Social Approach

Student Name:

Teacher:

Core Studies:

Piliavin et al. (1969) (Classic Study)

Levine et al. (2001) (Contemporary Study)

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Core Studies Over and How they Explain Behaviour

Area

Study

Tag Line

Key Conclusion/New Understanding of Behaviour

Social

Milgram (1963) Obedience

How far do we obey those in authority positions?

People will carry out behaviours against theirs and societies norms if the authority figure seems legit.

Bocchiaro et al (2012) Disobedience and whistle-blowing

Do we challenge those in authority positions?

People don’t always think they will obey requests from people in authority but their behaviour suggests they will when situations are unfamiliar or novel.

Piliavin et al (1969) Subway Samaritan

What are the costs of helping those in need?

Deciding to help those in need is based on a cost-reward analysis where factors increasing the likelihood of help, such as the person in need being ill, are predictable.

Levine et al (2001) Cross-cultural altruism

Do all cultures help those in need?

There are large cross-cultural differences in responding to people in need and helping behaviour is affected by economic productivity, cultural norms and traditions.

Introduction to Social Approach

Social psychology looks at a range of behaviours that are primarily social in nature, that is, they occur between people of groups of people. Many of the topics investigated by social psychologists have direct relevance to many of the news stories occurring each day, such as conformity, obedience and helping behaviour. Social psychologists are interested in the effects that environment (or situations) have on people’s behaviour.

Key assumptions: Responses to people in need

There are many ways in which it is possible to respond to people in need. One response would, of course, be to offer help. This would be an example of altruistic behaviour- explain this term and give examples:

What factors affect how we respond to people in need? What goes through our minds when we see someone in need of help?

These are important questions that psychologists first begin investigating in earnest in America in the 1960’s. The specific trigger to the wave of research into bystander behaviour was the murder in 1964 of a young woman, Kitty Genovese, in the Queens district of New York. She was stabbed to death over the course of 35 minutes in the street in the middle of the night. This was obviously a horrific way for anyone to lose their life, but what commentators at the time found especially shocking was that it could have been prevented, as at least 38 people were known to have heard or even seen what was going on; however, no-one called the police until it was too late.

What is the bystander effect?

How is the Kitty Genovese case an example of this?

Give an example of diffusion of responsibility in relation to the murder of Kitty Genoves:

Piliavin et al. (1969)

"Subway Samaritan"

Study Details

Aim:

In their field experiment, Piliavin et al. wanted to investigate….

1. Type of victim:

2. Race of the victim:

3. Someone setting an example of helping behaviour:

4. Number of witnesses:

Participants sample:

Issues with the participant sample are….

·

·

·

·

Procedure:

There were 4 teams of 4 researchers: 2 female observers, 2 males – one acting as victim, one the model.

· The victims (3 white, 1 black) were all male, General Studies students, aged 26-35 years, and dressed alike. They either smelled of liquor and carried a liquor bottle wrapped tightly in a brown bag or appeared sober and carried a black cane. In all aspects they acted identically in both conditions. Why would they do this?

· The models (all white) were males aged 24-29 years. There were 4 model conditions:

· Critical area - early.

· Critical area – late.

· Adjacent area – early.

· Adjacent area – late.

· The observers recorded the dependent variables. On each trial one observer noted the race, sex and location of every rider seated or standing in the critical area. In addition she counted the total number of individuals who came to the victim’s assistance. She also recorded the race, sex and location of every helper. The second observer coded the race, sex and location of all persons in the adjacent area. She also recorded the latency of the first helper’s arrival after the victim had fallen and on appropriate trials, the latency of the first helper’s arrival after the programmed model had arrived. Both observers recorded comments spontaneously made by nearby passengers and attempted to elicit comments from a rider sitting next to them.

· The victim stood near a pole in the critical area. After about 70 seconds he staggered forward and collapsed. Until receiving help he remained supine on the floor looking at the ceiling. If he received no help by the time the train stopped the model helped him to his feet. At the stop the team disembarked and waited separately until other passengers had left the station. They then changed platforms to repeat the process in the opposite direction.

· Between 6-8 trials were run on a given day, all using the same ‘victim condition’.

· There were more cane trials than drunk trials which were distributed unevenly across black and white victims because Team 2 violated instructions by running cane rather than drunk trials because the victim “didn’t like” playing the drunk! Subsequent student strikes prevented additional trials to correct this.

Activity: To what extent was the scenario created in this study ecologically valid? HINT: think about the times when the scenario occurred, as well as when, where, how and to whom the emergency happened. You must explain your answers

Activity: In what ways did the Piliavin try to ensure that the only thing different from one trail to another was the only thing they wanted to be different (i.e. in terms of the victim, whether he appeared drunk or ill, or whether he was black or white)?

Activity: In spite of their best attempts to make the IV the only thing setting one trial apart from another, what sorts of thing could nevertheless have happened that might have had an impact on the results of this study?

Results

Comment on: type of victim, race of victim, effects of the model, number of witnesses.

Model of response to ermergency sitations

In an attempt to explan their findings, Piliavin developed an model of reponse to emergency situations. This proposes the following:

· Observations of an emergency creates in the bystander an emotional arousal state which the observer finds unpleasant.

· The level of arousal will be higher (a) the more the observer can empathise with the victim, (b) the closer the observer s to the emergency, and (c) the longer the state of emergency continues without the intervention of a helper.

· The level of arousal can be reduced in a number of ways, namely, (a) helping directly, (b) going to get help, (c) leaving the scene of the emergency, and (d) rejecting the victim as undeserving of help.

· The response that is chosen will be a function of a cost-rewards analysis based on:

Helping

Not helping

Costs

Rewards

·

Changes to the Study and Possible Effects

Changes and Effects:

What changes could you make about the above study? How would you go about implementing each change? What would be the outcomes of such change on the results and the overall study? Summarise your answers in the below space (Minimum two changes are required).

Description of Change

WHAT? (e.g. sample, method, procedure, type of data collected, etc.)

HOW? (Must be detailed and related to the original study)

Implications of Change

WHAT (e.g. more/less measured behaviours recorded, results more/less generalisable, valid, reliable, useful, etc.)

WHY? (Must be detailed and related to the original study)

Background context / previous research for the study:

Research method (underline): Experiment / Observation / Self-report / Correlation / Longitudinal / Snapshot / Case-study

What makes it that method?

Aims / hypotheses / research question:

For experiments:

Experimental Design (underline): Independent measures / Repeated measures / Matched Pairs

What makes it that design?

IV (Independent Variable): How was it manipulated / what are the different conditions of the experiment?

DV (Dependent Variable): How was the DV measured?

Controls:

Sample details:

Sampling method (underline): Self-selected / Opportunity / Random

How were they gathered using this method?

Findings/results:

Conclusions/explanations of results:

Methodical Issues

Reliability: Is the study replicable? How consistent is the measure? Does it have a standardised procedure?

Validity: Is there something getting in the way of measuring what they wanted to measure eg extraneous variables, demand characteristics?

Evaluation Issues

Other evaluations relevant to the study: Pick the key evaluations for this study and comment on how they are an issue e.g. how the study might be reductionist. Remember to try and offer balanced evaluations (such as how it is both high and low in Ecological Validity).

Ethnocentrism:

Reductionism/holism:

Nature vs nurture:

Ecological validity:

Socially sensitive research:

Free will/determinism:

Individual/situational:

Usefulness: Psychology as a science

Ethics: Were any ethical guidelines broken / how were they maintained:

Deception, confidentiality, harm, debrief, withdrawal and consent

Levine et al. (2001)

"Cross-cultural altruism"

Activity: summarise the background to Levine et al’s study

Study Details

Aim:

The study had 3 main goals:

1.

2.

3.

Participants

Participants in this study were large cities in each of 23 countries – in most cases the largest in each country i.e. individuals in each of these cities at the time of the experiment.

· Each of the three helping measures and the walking speed measure were administered in two or more locations, in main downtown areas, during main business hours, on clear days, during the summer months of one or more years between 1992 and 1997.

· For the dropped pen and hurt leg situations, only individuals walking alone were selected. Children (younger than 17 years old), and people who were physically disabled, very old, carrying packages etc (i.e. those who might not be fully capable or expected to help) were excluded.

· Participants were selected by approaching the second potential person who crossed a predetermined line.

Research method

This was a field experiment that used an independent measures design.

· The field situation was 23 large cities around the world including Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Calcutta (India), Madrid (Spain), Shanghai (China), Budapest (Hungary), Rome (Italy), New York (USA) and Kuala Lampur (Malaysia).

· The experiment had three independent variables (IVs):

· whether the victim dropped a pen

· whether the victim had a hurt/injured leg

· whether the victim was blind and trying to cross the street.

· The dependent variable (DV) was the helping rate of the 23 individual cities (calculated to give each city an Overall Helping Index).

· The three measures of helping were correlated with statistics reflecting population size, economic well-being, cultural values (individualism-collectivism, simpatia) and the pace of life for each of the 23 locations.

Procedure:

· Data was collected by either interested, responsible students who were either travelling to foreign countries or returning to their home countries for the summer, or by cross-cultural psychologists and their students in other countries who volunteered to assist the authors.

· All experimenters were college age and dressed neatly and casually. To control for experimenter gender effects and to avoid potential problems in some cities, all experimenters were men.

· To ensure standardisation in scoring and to minimise experimenter effects:

· all experimenters received both a detailed instruction sheet and on-site field training for acting their roles, learning the procedure for participant selection and scoring of participants

· the experimenters practised together

· no verbal communication was required of the experimenter.

The three helping behaviours for which measures were taken were as follows:

1. Dropped pen:

2. Hurt leg:

3. Helping a blind person across the street:

Each of the three helping measures was administered in two or more locations, in main city centre districts, during main business hours, on clear days, during the simmer months of one or more years between 1992- 1197. For the first two measures, which required approaching pedestrians, only individuals walking alone were selected. Children (younger than 17 years old), and people who might not be capable of helping or be expected to help (e.g. those who were physically disabled, very old, or carrying heavy packages etc.) were excluded. Participants were selected randomly, usually by approaching the second participant who crossed the pedestrian line.

Activity: to what extent is this study ecologically valid?

Activity: what actions did Levine et al, take to try and ensure the reliability of their findings? Why nevertheless, might the study lack reliability?

Activity: how can this study be criticised in relation to the ethical guidelines?

Activity: Levine et al, emphasise that their sample comprised the 23 cities in which they collected their data, with them’… treating each city as a single subject in a correlational-type design’. To what extent can their section of cities be regarded as representative of cities across the world? How far does this study succeed in avoiding being ethnocentric?

Activity: what sampling technique method would you say was used by Levine et al. when deciding which cites to collect data from?

Results

Intercorrelations of Helping Measures

Helping Measures

Blind person

Dropped pen

Hurt leg

Dropped pen

22**

Hurt leg

.21

.36***

Blind + pen + leg

.67****

.77****

.73****

**p<010 ***p<.01 using 1-tailed significance test. n= 23 in all cases.

- The above table shows that two of the three correlations were significant.

- All three intercorrelations were in the positive direction.

· No significant gender differences in helping behaviour were found in the two conditions in which relatively equal numbers of male and female participants were targeted by the experimenter (hurt leg, dropped pen): dropped pen, M (men) = .67, M (women) = .69, t(22) = .39, ns; hurt leg, M (men) = .63, M (women) = .65, t(22) = .75, ns.

· An Overall Helping Index was calculated, combining results for the three helping measures. Results showed that the most helpful cities/ countries were (1) Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), 93%, (2) San Jose (Costa Rica), 91% (3) Lilongwe (Malawi), 86%. The least helpful cities/countries were (23) Kuala Lampur (Malaysia), 40% (22) New York (USA), 45%, (21) Singapore (Singapore), 48%.

Correlations Between Helping Measures and Other Community Characteristics

Measuring Help

Community Characteristic

Overall Helping

Blind Person

Hurt Leg

Dropped Pen

Population size (city)

-.03

(23)

-.06

(23)

.22

(23)

-.21

(23)

Purchasing power parity (PPP)

-.43***

(22)

-.42***

(22)

-.21

(22)

-.32*

(22)

Walking speed

-.17

(20)

-.09

(20)

.21

(20)

-.07

(20)

Individualism- Collectivism

-.17

(23)

-.09

(23)

.21

(23)

-.07

(23)

NOTE: *p<.15 ***p<.05, 2 tailed. Sample size in parentheses. Statistics for some community characteristics were not available for some countries, resulting in smaller sample sizes for those analyses.

- The above table shows that, on average, there were low correlations between the community variables and helping measures.

- The only statistically reliable relationship was between the economic productivity measure and overall helping: cities that were more helpful tended to have lower Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).

· Although statistically insignificant, there was a small relationship between walking speed and overall helping, with participants in faster cities somewhat less likely to help.

· More individualistic countries showed somewhat less overall helping and less helping in the hurt leg situation than collectivist countries, but none of the correlations reached a significant level.

· There was no relationship between population size and helping behaviour.

· The two community variables of economic productivity and individualism-collectivism and walking speed were highly intercorrelated: economic productivity was positively correlated with individualism and negatively correlated with walking speed i.e. faster paces had stronger economic productivity. Individualism was also negatively correlated with walking speed i.e. faster places were more individualistic.

· Simpatia countries (Brazil, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico and Spain) were, on average, more helpful than non simpatia countries.

· Overall, a city’s helping rate was relatively stable across all three measures.

Conclusion

Activity: what possible conclusions can be drawn from the above results? What does this mean? Think of the aims!

Changes to the Study and Possible Effects

Changes and Effects:

What changes could you make about the above study? How would you go about implementing each change? What would be the outcomes of such change on the results and the overall study? Summarise your answers in the below space (Minimum two changes are required).

Description of Change

WHAT? (e.g. sample, method, procedure, type of data collected, etc.)

HOW? (Must be detailed and related to the original study)

Implications of Change

WHAT (e.g. more/less measured behaviours recorded, results more/less generalisable, valid, reliable, useful, etc.)

WHY? (Must be detailed and related to the original study)

Background context / previous research for the study:

Aims / hypotheses / research question:

Research method (underline): Experiment / Observation / Self-report / Correlation / Longitudinal / Snapshot / Case-study

What makes it that method?

For experiments:

Experimental Design (underline): Independent measures / Repeated measures / Matched Pairs

What makes it that design?

IV (Independent Variable): How was it manipulated / what are the different conditions of the experiment?

DV (Dependent Variable): How was the DV measured?

Controls:

Sample details:

Sampling method (underline): Self-selected / Opportunity / Random

How were they gathered using this method?

Findings/results:

Conclusions/explanations of results:

Reliability: Is the study replicable? How consistent is the measure? Does it have a standardised procedure?

Validity: Is there something getting in the way of measuring what they wanted to measure eg extraneous variables, demand characteristics?

Methodical Issues

Evaluation Issues

Ethics: Were any ethical guidelines broken / how were they maintained:

Deception, confidentiality, harm, debrief, withdrawal and consent

Other evaluations relevant to the study: Pick the key evaluations for this study and comment on how they are an issue e.g. how the study might be reductionist. Remember to try and offer balanced evaluations (such as how it is both high and low in Ecological Validity).

Ethnocentrism:

Reductionism/holism:

Nature vs nurture:

Ecological validity:

Socially sensitive research:

Free will/determinism:

Individual/situational:

Usefulness: Psychology as a science

**IMPORTANT** Activity: Key Themes

To what extent does the contemporary study change our understanding of the key theme and changes our understanding of individual, social and cultural diversity?

Activity: Key Themes and Areas of Psychology

How do each of the Core Studies relate to its key theme and how each core study relates to the area of psychology it is placed within.

Classic Study:

How this core study relates to its key theme?

Contemporary Study:

How this core study relates to its key theme?

44

Classic Study:

How this core study relates to the area of psychology it is in?

Contemporary Study:

How this core study relates to the area of psychology it is in?

Question Time

Milgram (AS and A Level) – Classic

From Milgram’s study on obedience:

Describe two ways in which participants in this study were deceived. [4] (June 2014)

Explain why many participants displayed signs of severe stress and emotional strain. (4) (June 2013)

Outline two qualitative findings from this study. [4] (June 2012)

Outline two features of Milgram’s study of obedience which made it seem real to participants. (4) (Jan 2011)

Outline two ways in which Milgram’s study of obedience can be said to be low in ecological validity. [4] (June 2011)

(a) Identify two findings from this study. [2]

(b) Outline one explanation Milgram gave for his findings. [2] (June 2010)

(a) Describe how obedience was measured. [2]

(b) Suggest one problem with measuring obedience in this way. [2] (Jan 2010)

Piliavin (A Level) – Classic

(a) Outline how data was recorded in this study. [2]

(b) Suggest one weakness of the way data was recorded in this study. [2] (June 2014)

Describe the different roles played by the victim. (4) (June 2013)

In the subway Samaritan study by Piliavin, Rodin and Piliavin the victims were dressed identically as a control. Explain how one other control was used in this study. [4] (June 2012)

Identify the four independent variables (IVs) in the subway Samaritan study by Piliavin, Rodin and Piliavin. [4] (June 2011)

Outline two practical problems that may have occurred in the subway study by Piliavin, Rodin and Piliavin (4) (Jan 2011)

(a) What is meant by the term ‘diffusion of responsibility’? [2]

(b) Outline one reason why diffusion of responsibility was not found in this study. [2] (June 2010)

(a) Identify one of the model conditions. [2]

(b) Outline one finding from the model conditions. [2] (May 2009)