Social Approach
Introduction
Main assumptions of the social approach:
• Behaviour, cognitions and emotions can be influenced by other individuals.
• Groups can influence behaviour, cognitions and emotions or social contexts.
• Behaviour is affected by the real or imagined presence of other people. There is a tendency
to do what is right by others or what is right in order to fit with the people in the situation.
• Behaviour is affected by the norms in which it’s situated. From birth, you are socialised to
learn the rules of behaviours for your culture and society and these help you to exist in a
group. Different cultures and different societies have different norms.
• Social Research:
1. This approach has helped to give an understanding of how and why people act the
way they do in a group. This could help us to change social situations.
2. The approach is scientific but the studies tend to be conducted in less controlled
conditions. This means that the data is sometimes inconclusive allowing challenges
about whether the theories are valid and useful.
3. The studies used to test the theories are seen to be unethical because of how they
can manipulate beliefs or behaviour.
• Conformity: a type of social influence involving the change in belief or behaviour. Groups
influence people in 2 ways: Normative and informational social influence. There are different
types of conformity: compliance, identification and internalisation.
1. Normative social influence is usually associated with compliance, where a person
changes their public behavior but not their private beliefs. This means any change of
behavior is temporary.
2. Informational social influence is when a person conforms to gain knowledge, or
because they believe that someone else is 'right'. Informational social influence is
usually associated with internalisation, where a person changes both their public
behaviour and their private beliefs, on a long-term basis.
• Types of Conformity:
1. Compliance: The most superficial level of conformity. Because identifying with the
majority is desirable, they change their views/actions to fit in with the reference
group. This doesn’t result in a change in the person’s underlying attitude, only in the
views and behaviours they express in public.
2. Internalisation: The deepest level of conformity. This is when a person genuinely
accepts group norms and displays the same attitude both publicly and privately
through opinions and behaviours. They examine their own beliefs in comparison to
the reference group and may convince themselves that their views are wrong and
the group’s views are right.
3. Identification: When someone conforms to the opinions/behaviour of a group
because there is something about the group which they value. They identify with
the group and want to be part of it. There is a public change to accepting the
group's norm even though their private attitudes may differ. The individual accepts
the attitudes and behaviours they are adopting as true and right (internalisation)
but the purpose of adopting them is to be accepted as a member of the group
(compliance).
Milgram (Obedience)
Title: Behavioural Study of Obedience
Year: 1963
Psychology being investigated:
• In this study, Milgram was testing the situational hypothesis.
• Agency theory:
o Agentic state: people see themselves as an agent of another and blindly accept
orders because they are not personally responsible for their actions. Arises from the
fact that obedience is rewarded and disobedience is punished. We give up our free
will.
o Autonomous state: Behaviour is voluntary; people are aware of their decisions and
the consequences of those decisions. We choose to be obedient.
o Moral strain: we experience this in the agentic stage when we go along with the
demands of the authority, even though we know it is wrong and do not agree with
it.
Background
• Destructive obedience: when people obey orders which cause harm or distress to another
person
• Early psychological research into the Holocaust focused on the idea that something
distinctive about German culture or personality led to the high levels of conformity for the
genocide to take place. This is known as the dispositional hypothesis.
• Milgram set out to question this dispositional attribution of the Germans. He believed that
the situation had led to the inhumane behaviour of the Nazis and, therefore that anybody in
the same situation as those committing such atrocities would have done the same in the
same circumstances. Milgram argued that people would commit atrocities if required to do
so by an authority figure. This argument is an example of a situational attribution as it argues
that the behaviour resulted from a person's situation.
Aims
• Overall aim: To investigate how obedient people would be to orders from a person in
authority that would result in pain and harm to another person.
• Specific aim: To see how large an electric shock participants would give to a helpless man
when ordered to.
Procedure
• Research Method: Lab Experiment. However, as there is no control condition (i.e. all of the
participants took place in the same experimental procedures) it is not, strictly speaking, an
experiment. (more accurately, it is a controlled observation)
• Experimental Design: N/A
• IV: ‘Prods’ given
• DV: Degree of obedience (how high voltage did participants go to)
• Sample: 40 males aged 20 - 50 were drawn from the New Haven district of Connecticut, USA.
They were recruited through a newspaper advertisement, which promised $4.50 for their
time if they participated in the study and that the money was theirs no matter what
happened after they arrived. Participants believed they were to participate in a study of
memory and learning at Yale University. Participants were from various backgrounds: 37.5%
were manual labourers, 40% were white-collar workers, and 22.5% were professionals.
• Sampling Technique: Volunteering
• Milgram created a phoney ‘shock generator’, which in the 1960s looked very impressive and
realistic. The phoney shock generator had 30 switches marked clearly in 15-volt increments
from 15 to 450 volts. It also had buzzers, flashing lights and moving dials.
• When the participants arrived at the psychology laboratory, they were introduced to the
relationship between punishment and learning.
• They were introduced to the experimenter, played by a 31-year-old Biology teacher, who
introduced himself as Jack Williams. He wore a grey technician’s coat and appeared stern
and emotionless throughout the experiment.
• They were introduced to Mr Wallace and made to believe he was another participant. Mr.
Wallace was a confederate, a 47-year-old Irish-American accountant.
• They drew slips of paper to know who play the role of the learner of victim. This was rigged
so that Mr Wallace was always the victim.
• The learner sat in an ‘electric chair’ with straps to “prevent excessive movement” during
electric shocks that would be given from a shock generator.
• An electrode was attached to the learner’s wrist, and the paste was applied to “avoid blisters
and burns”.
• The learner was told, “Although the shocks can be extremely painful, they cause no tissue
damage”.
• These tricks made the experiment seem much more real to the participants. The final trick
was to give the participant a sample shock of 45 volts (from an external battery since the
shock-generator wasn’t supposed to work).
• The participant was then seated in an adjacent room and asked to read word pairs to the
learner. The learner had to memorize the pairs.
• The teacher then tested the learner by pairing one of the words with four other words. The
learner had to choose the previously paired word with the first word. The next word on the
list was read if his answer was correct. If it was incorrect, the teacher had to state the correct
answer and administer an electric shock (starting from 15 volts).
• For every wrong answer, the shock level would increase by 15 volts (15, 30, 45… you do the
math). The learner gave a predetermined set of answers with about three wrong answers for
every right answer.
• At 300 volts, the learner would start hitting the wall and shouting. He stopped answering
questions. Here, the participant usually looked at the experimenter for guidance. They were
told to interpret no answer as wrong, meaning the learner would have to be shocked again.
• The learner’s pounding continued after 315 volts, after which the learner went completely
silent.
• If the participant again asked for advice, he would be met with a sequence of firm
standardised ‘prods’:
• “Please continue” or “Please go on” (1)
• “The experiment requires you to continue” (2)
• “You must continue” (3)
• “You have no choice, you must go on” (4)
• If the participant asked about permanent physical injuries, a different prod was used:
“Although the shocks may be painful, there is no permanent tissue damage, so please go
on.” If the participant said that the learner did not want to continue, another prod was used:
“Whether the learner likes it or not, you must go on until he has learned all the word pairs
correctly, so please go on.”
• The experiment ended if the participant refused to continue after the four official prods, or if
450 volts were administered.
• A participant who stopped before reaching 450 volts was classed as a “defiant
participant”, while those who went up to 450 volts were classed as an “obedient
participant”. The experiment was filmed, and observers watched through a one-way mirror.
• Participants were then interviewed, during which they rated how painful they thought the
last few shocks were on a scale from 0 to 14. Projective measures and attitude scales were
employed too.
• After the experiment, the participants were debriefed, and an open-ended questionnaire
was given. Some psychometric tests were taken to make sure there was no emotional harm.
• The teacher and learner were reunited to prove that the learner was an actor who was not
really in danger.
• The participants were told that their reaction was expected, another measure taken to
ensure they left the experiment without mental discomfort.
• Note: Before the study was conducted, Milgram asked 14 Yale University psychology
students to read a description of the study and estimate what % of participants would give
450-volt shock. The students estimated 0-3%.
Results
• 26 participants were obedient and administered a complete round of electric shocks, while
only 14 were defiant. So 65% obeyed and 35% terminated the experiment before reaching
450 volts.
• When the experimenter was the one to end the experiment (at 450 volts), many of the
participants sighed in relief or shook their heads in what seemed like regret.
• Most of the men were sweating, shaking, stuttering or fidgeting during the study.
• 14 participants giggled nervously. The participants who had nervous laughter fits were keen
to point out that they weren’t sadistic and that their laughter wasn’t a sign that they enjoyed
shocking the learner.
• 3 had seizures, and the procedure was stopped for one of them.
• The average rating of how painful the shocks were, was 13.42 out of a maximum of 14.
Conclusions
• People are much more obedient to destructive orders than we think.
• They find this process highly stressful despite obeying them.
• Results supported the situational hypothesis rather than the dispositional hypothesis.
Ethical Issues
• Many ethical issues, including:
• Deception in terms of the study and whether the shocks were real.
• Protection of the participant’s state of mind, and they would not
• exit the study in the same mental state they entered.
• Right, to withdraw might not have been there as prods were used.
Strengths
• High levels of control increase the validity
• High levels of standardisation increase the reliability
Weaknesses
• Bad ethics
• Unrepresentative sample because it was only male
• Ethnocentric bias because he used only American men
• Low ecological validity because of the artificial setting.
Issues and Debates
• Application: explain why humans engage in destructive obedience.
• Individual and situational explanations: This study supports situational explanations.
Perry et al. (Personal Space)
Title: Don’t stand so close to me: A behavioural and ERP study of preferred interpersonal distance
Year: 2015
Psychology being investigated:
• Interpersonal Distance: It is the distance between two people. The preferred interpersonal
distance varies due to the relationship with the other person and cultural and personal
factors.
• Empathy: A person’s ability to understand another person's thoughts, feelings, and
experiences. It has two dimensions: cognitive and affective empathy.
• Social Hormones: Oxytocin is a social hormone that acts as a neurotransmitter and plays a
role in social bonding. However, research conducted shows that in some situations, oxytocin
can lead to envy, risk aversion, and feelings of hostility.
Background
• In 1966, based on the relationship between two people, Hall created four zones of
interpersonal distance: Intimate distance, personal distance, social distance, and public
distance.
• In 2012, Scheele found that administering oxytocin to males in relationships increased their
preferred distance from an attractive female in the presence of a female researcher.
• The social salience hypothesis predicts that oxytocin increases attention to social cues and
affects how a person processes those cues and responds differently.
Aims
• To investigate how oxytocin affects preferred interpersonal distance for those scoring high or
low in empathy traits.
Procedure
• Research Method: A laboratory experiment.
• Experimental Design: Repeated measures.
Experiment Independent Variables: Dependent Variables:
1. 1. Empathy: High vs. Low The computerised version of the Comfortable Interpersonal
Distance (CID) paradigm measures the preferred interpersonal
distance.
2. Treatment: Oxytocin vs.
placebo
3. Condition: stranger,
authority, friend or ball
2. 1. Empathy: High vs. Low Mean preferred distance between 2 chairs and angle between
the two chairs.
2. Treatment: Oxytocin vs.
Placebo
3. Condition: position of
chairs vs. position of table
and plant
• Sample: 54 male undergraduate students from the University of Haifa in Israel. They were
ages 19 to 32 and received course credit or payment for their participation.
• Oxytocin administration and empathy assessment
1. Participants visited the laboratory twice a week- at the same time.
2. First visit: given either oxytocin or placebo in a double-masked procedure.
3. Three droplets of the solution were self-administered into each nostril.
4. Participants completed the IRI-interpersonal reactivity index.
5. Then, I waited 45 minutes alone in a quiet room with nature magazines.
• Experiment 1: CID
1. The word- Friend, stranger, ball or authority would appear on screen for 1 second
(they were the four protagonists)
2. participant gazes at the fixated point for 0.5 seconds,
3. then a circular room with a stick figure in the centre is seen on the screen (the stick
figure indicated the participant)
4. from one of the eight doors of the circular room, the protagonists would appear and
approach the stick figure.
5. The participant has to press the spacebar for the protagonist to stop.
6. The percentage of remaining distance was calculated as interpersonal distance.
• Experiment 2: Choosing rooms
1. Instructed that they would be having a meeting with another participant.
2. To discuss personal topics
3. The room would be laid out per their preference and measured through a computer
program.
4. The computer showed participants still colour images of pairs of rooms with chairs,
tables and plants at different angles and distances.
5. 84 pairs of rooms- shown twice
6. Participants sat 60 cm from the computer screen and were shown the room pairs
for 2 seconds.
7. They had to choose between the two rooms.
8. Experimental condition- distance between chairs and angles between chairs
9. Control condition- distance and angle between table and plant.
Results
• CID:
Preferred interpersonal Oxytocin Placebo
distance.
High empathy 23.29 26.11
Low empathy 30.20 26.98
Preferred interpersonal Oxytocin Placebo
distance between chairs (cm)
High empathy 78.07 80.58
Low empathy 80.14 78.33
Ethical Issues
• Deception- For experiment two, they were told that they needed to choose a room to
discuss "‘personal topics’- this could cause distress about the future meeting.
Strengths
• High Levels of Standardisation increase its reliability. The computer allowed control of
timings, and the rooms used in experiment 2 were always shown for 2 seconds.
• High Validity: With a double-masked procedure for oxytocin or placebo administration, the
CID paradigm has high controls regarding speed visuals.
Weaknesses
• IRI self-report would be biased and subjective- impacted by social desirability bias as being
highly empathetic is seen as a positive social trait.
• Lacks generalizability beyond sample- only used males, so the results may not be
generalisable to females and their interpersonal distance preferences.
• Low ecological validity- used a computer stimulus where the protagonists were animations
not representative of everyday behaviours.
Issues and Debates
• Application: Oxytocin administration may not help people with social deficits.
• Individual versus situational- interpersonal distance preference is impacted by an individual’s
empathy level, which supports the individual side, whereas the social situation promotes
oxytocin release.
Pilivan et al. (Subway Samaritans)
Title: Good Samaritanism: An Underground Phenomenon?
Year: 1969
Psychology being investigated:
• Bystander Apathy: the phenomenon of observers of an emergency not intervening.
• Diffusion of responsibility (Latané and Darley): is a sociopsychological phenomenon whereby
people are less likely to offer help if other people are present because they feel that the
whole group is equally responsible, thus making themselves less personally responsible.
Background
• Murder of Kitty Genovese
• Bystander behaviour
Aims
• To study bystander behaviour outside the laboratory in a realistic setting where participants
would have a clear view of the victim.
• To see whether helping behaviour was affected by four variables: the victim’s responsibility
for being in a situation where they need help, the race of the victim, the effect of modelling
helping behaviour and the size of the group.
Procedure
• Research Method: Field Experiment and Observations
• Experimental Design: Independent groups
• IV: There were four IVs.
1. Victim’s responsibility - operationalised as carrying a cane = ill (low responsibility) or
smelling of alcohol, carrying a bottle wrapped in a paper bag = drunk (high
responsibility)
2. Victim’s race
3. Presence of a model - operationalised as whether a male confederate either close to or
distant from the victim helped after 70 or 150 seconds
4. Number of bystanders -- DV: the number of people who helped; the speed it took for
them to help the victim
• Sample: An estimated total of around 4450 people were unsolicited participants of this study
with a racial mix of 55% white and 45% black.
• Sampling Technique: Opportunity Sampling
• The experiment was conducted during the period from April 15 to June 26, 1968.
• Trains A and D of the 8th Avenue IND were selected because they make no stops between the
59th and 125th street. Thus, the trails lasted during the 7.5-minute journey between these
two stops.
• There was a mean of 43 people in each car and 8.5 in the critical area.
• On each trial, a team of four students (two males and two females) boarded the train using
different doors. Four teams, whose members always worked together, collected data for 103
trials.
• Each team varied the location of the experimental compartment from trial to trial.
• The female confederates sat outside the critical area and recorded data as unobtrusively as
possible during the journey while the male model and victim remained standing. The victim
always stood next to a pole in the centre of the critical area.
• As the train passed the first station (approximately 70 seconds after departing), the victim
staggered forward and collapsed.
• Until receiving help, he remained motionless on the floor, looking at the ceiling.
• If he received no help by the time the train slowed to a stop, the model helped him to his
feet.
• At the stop, the team got off and waited separately until the other passengers had left the
station before proceeding to another platform to board a train going in the opposite
direction for the subsequent trial.
• 6-8 trials were run on any given day, and all trials on a given day were in the same ‘victim
condition’.
• The four victims (one from each team) were males aged between 26 and 35, three white,
one black, all identically dressed in Eisenhower jackets, old slacks and no tie.
• In 38 trials, the victims smelled of alcohol and carried a bottle of alcohol wrapped in a brown
bag (drunk condition).
• Sixty-five trials, they appeared sober and carried a black cane (cane condition).
• In all other aspects, victims behaved identically in the two conditions, and each victim
participated in drunk and cane trials. (There were more cane than drunk trials because one
of the teams of students ‘didn’t like’ playing the drunk victim).
• The models (white males aged 24 to 29) were dressed casually but
• not identically.
• There were four different model conditions used across both drunk and cane victim
conditions:
1. Critical area - early: the model stood in the critical area and waited until passing the
fourth station before helping the victim (approximately 70 seconds after the
collapse).
2. Critical area - late: the model stood in the critical area and waited until passing the
sixth station before helping the victim (approximately 150 seconds after the
collapse).
3. Adjacent area - early: the model stood in the adjoining area and waited until
passing the fourth station before helping the victim. (approximately 70
seconds after the collapse).
4. Adjacent area - late: the model stood in the adjoining area and waited until passing
the sixth station before helping the victim. (approximately 150 seconds after the
collapse).
• When the model intervened, he helped the victim to a sitting position and stayed with him
for the remainder of the trial.
• Two observers recorded a variety of observations.
o Observer One:
▪ Race, sex, and location of every rider seated or standing in the critical area.
▪ Total number of people in the carriage.
▪ Total number of people who came to assist the victim.
▪ Race, sex and location of every helper.
o Observer Two:
▪ Race, sex and location of every passenger in the adjacent area.
▪ The time when help was first offered.
▪ Both observers noted any comments made by nearby passengers and also
tried to elicit comments from a passenger sitting next to them.
Results
• Passengers gave 78% of the victims spontaneous help, and in 60% of the cases, the victim
was helped by more than one person.
• The cane victim was helped in 62 out of 65 trials (95%)
• The drunk victim was helped on 19 out of 38 trials (50%)
• 90% of passengers who helped the victim were male
• In 60% of the total trials where help was given (i.e. 81 trials), more than one person offered
help.
• Race made no significant difference to the helping behaviour, but there was a slight
tendency for same-race helpers in the drunk condition
• 64% of the helpers were White
• The quickest help came from larger groups. This showed no diffusion of responsibility.
• In 21 trials, out of the total of 103, a total of 34 people left the critical area, mostly when the
victim was drunk.
• The model intervening at 70 seconds was more likely to lead to help from other passengers
than when the model intervened after 150 seconds.
• The number of bystanders provided no evidence for the diffusion of responsibility.
• Some passengers moved away from critical areas (21/103)
• More comments were made in Drunk Trail.
Conclusions
• An ill person is more likely to receive help than a drunk person.
• Men are more likely to help another man than women are.
• People are slightly more likely to help someone of their ethnic group, especially when the
victim appears to be drunk.
• No strong relationship was found between the size of the group and the likelihood of
helping.
• Piliavin et al. proposed a Cost-Reward Model to explain people’s responses to an emergency.
• He suggested that helping is motivated by a selfish desire to rid oneself of an unpleasant
emotional state rather than being a positive, altruistic model of helping.
• Helping a victim is based on the level of emotional arousal and the result of a cost/benefit
analysis.
Ethical Issues
• Informed consent wasn’t taken as the participants did not know they were part of a study.
• Participants were deceived and could not be debriefed.
• Their right to withdraw was invalidated as it was a field experiment.
• Emotional harm may have taken place as they must have felt hurt about the victim’s
condition.
Strengths
• This study was a field experiment and hence has a high ecological validity.
• The sample size was large and hence has a high generalizability.
• Behaviour was not artificial as it is in a natural environment, increases validity, and has no
demand characteristics.
• Both qualitative and quantitative data were acquired.
Weaknesses
• The study lacked controls and hence had a low reliability, making it hard to replicate.
• For this reason, a causal relationship could not be established.
Issues and Debates
• Application to everyday life: to educate people about bystanders’ intervention
• Individual and situational explanation: This study supports the situational side of the debate.
• Cultural biased