G542: Core studiess3-euw1-ap-pe-ws4-cws-documents.ri-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/.../OCR... · OCR...

OCR Psychology: AS Revision Guide – Suggested answers

For use with OCR Psychology: AS Revision Guide by Cara Flanagan ©2013 Psychology Press

G542: Core studies

MILGRAM

Section A

1a) The sample used in this study was 40 American men aged 20–50 from various occupational

backgrounds.

b) One weakness of this sample is that it consists only of men, so the results could not be

generalized to women as they may behave in a different way when influenced by an

authority figure.

2a) One ethical issue in this study is that the participants were deceived in several ways, for

example in the true purpose of the study and the fact that the learner was a confederate

although the participants thought he was also a participant.

b) Milgram dealt with this by giving a full debriefing at the end, telling the participants what the

study had really been about and explaining how they had been deceived.

3a) One finding from this study is that 65% of the participants went to the maximum voltage on

the shock scale.

b) One conclusion from this is that people are very often willing to obey an authority figure even

if it means hurting someone else.

4. Two features of the study that made it seem real were that it took place at a real, well-known

university (Yale), and that lots were apparently drawn for the roles of teacher and learner so

the participant thought that he could have been either.

5a) One way in which the sample could be considered representative is that it consisted of

people with varying ages, educational backgrounds and occupations, which should mean

that their behaviour is representative of people of all types.

b) One way in which it could be considered unrepresentative is that it consisted of people who

had volunteered for the study, so they were all similar in that they were motivated and

confident enough to apply to be involved in an unusual situation.

6a) Obedience was measured by the experimenter telling the participant to shock the learner

when he made an error in the word pairs, and to increase the shock by 15V each time.

Obedience was operationalised as whether they obeyed.

b) One problem with measuring obedience in this way is that it could be said to be not very

realistic, as one is unlikely to be asked to administer someone with lethal shocks due to

their failure to learn. Therefore they may have been suspicious and obeyed more than they

would in a real-life scenario.



7a) Participants had the right to withdraw because at no point was there any physical

compulsion upon them to continue the study; the door was not locked and some

participants did refuse to carry on.

b) They may have felt they did not have the right to withdraw because the experimenter used

very strongly worded phrases to encourage the participant to continue, for example ‘The

experiment requires that you continue’ and ‘You have no choice, you must go on’. This would

have made the participant feel that he did not have the right to leave.

8a) The sample was obtained by placing a newspaper advert asking for people to take part in a

study of memory.

b) One advantage of this was that the participants obtained were willing and able to join the

study.

9. Two reasons why Milgram said people obeyed were that the university was very prestigious

so the participants would have had faith in the work they were doing; and also that the

participant did not want to disrupt the experiment by refusing to take part when he had

already consented to do so.

10a) One conclusion is that the incremental nature of the shocks meant that people would

continue until something specific happened to remind them that the learner may be in pain.

b) Milgram did this research because he was interested in the behaviour of Nazi soldiers

during World War II, and how they could hurt and kill people against their own consciences

just because they were being ordered to do so by a superior officer.

11. Two prods were ‘The experiment requires that you continue’ and ‘You have no choice, you

must go on’.

12a) Two findings from this study were that 65% of participants went to the maximum voltage on

the shock scale (450V) and that only 22.5% stopped at ‘intense shock’ (300V).

b) One explanation Milgram gave for these findings is that the participant did not want to

disrupt the experiment by refusing to take part when he had already consented to do so.

13. One confederate played the role of the experimenter, wearing a lab coat and controlling

what happened, including telling the participants to carry on if they showed signs of wanting

to stop. The other confederate played the part of the learner, pretending to learn the pairs of

words while sitting in another room attached to the electric shock machine.

14a) The participants believed the true aim of the study was to discover the effects of

punishment on learning.

b) The true aim of the study was to investigate the process of obedience to a legitimate

authority even when the command required destructive behaviour.



15a) One reason why the data could be considered reliable is that this study has been repeated

with other groups of participants and other cultures, and the results are consistently that

two-thirds of participants continue to the end.

b) Reliability is important because if psychologists are to be able to say they have discovered a

general phenomenon about human behaviour, it must be found consistently and not be a

‘fluke’ related only to that particular sample.

16a) Two controls used in this study were that the four prods used by the experimenter were the

same for every participant, and that the word pairs task was the same every time.

b) Controls were important because every participant should have the same experience in

order to limit extraneous variables; for example, if the prods had varied, the results might

have been due to how strongly worded they were rather than just the participant’s obedient

tendencies.

17. Two procedures used that convinced the participants that the learner was receiving shocks

were that the participant saw the learner being connected to the electric shock machine,

and that he heard the cries of pain elicited by the shocks (although in reality these were

tape-recorded.)

18. Two pieces of evidence that show that tension was created by the study were that the

participants often showed nervousness and sweating, and that many displayed nervous

laughter not indicative of enjoyment.

19. This study could be said to be low in ecological validity because it is unlikely that in normal

life anyone would be asked to administer lethal shocks because of someone’s failure in a

learning task, and also because usually people would have the opportunity to discuss their

situation with someone else which would lend confidence and an alternative viewpoint,

possibly resulting in more disobedience.

20a) The procedure was standardized by the fact that the four prods used by the experimenter

were the same for every participant, and that the word pairs task was the same every time.

b) A standardised procedure was important because every participant should have the same

experience in order to limit extraneous variables; for example, if the prods had varied, the

results might have been due to how strongly worded they were rather than just the

participant’s obedient tendencies.

Section B

1. Previous research has been carried out on why and how people are influenced by those

around them, but this had mainly focused on conformity. An example of this is Asch’s

experiments on line length and whether participants’ views would be swayed by those of

other people. Milgram was interested in extending this to investigate to what extent people

would do what other people were actually telling them to do.



2. The aim of the study was to investigate the power of a legitimate authority to command

obedience even when the command requires destructive behaviour.

3. This is a controlled observation because it took place in a laboratory setting which allowed

Milgram to control the environment very closely, for example by using identical commands

every time. However, it is not an experiment because there is no specific IV as all the

participants underwent the same procedure, so there were no separate conditions. It is an

observation because Milgram set up the study and then watched what participants did as a

result, measuring their obedience in terms of shocks given and their behaviour in terms of

whether they became anxious.

4. One strength of the method is that the use of observation allowed the collection of

quantitative and qualitative data, providing a full, detailed picture of the responses of the

participants and allowing Milgram to demonstrate not only that participants would

administer the shocks but that they did not enjoy doing so.

5. One weakness is that the laboratory setting did not accurately reflect a real-life task, as it is

unlikely that anyone would be asked to administer lethal shocks for failure to learn word

pairs. The control used in the method may therefore have affected the results which may not

apply in the real world.

6. The sample was 40 American men aged 20–50 with various occupational and educational

backgrounds.

7. There was an advertisement in local newspaper asking for volunteers (only males, not

students). A direct mailshot was used sending the advertisement out by post. A final

selection of 40 was made from the 500 that applied to provide variety of occupations and

educations.

8. There was a variety of occupations represented such as postal clerks and salesmen, which

would have required varying degrees of obedience in their everyday jobs; this would make it

fairly representative of different types of people used to different requirements of

obedience.

9. It is biased towards the sort of person who enjoys answering adverts and having their views

heard, and also towards the people who read the particular newspaper the advert appears

in. Therefore it will be unrepresentative of less outgoing, confident people.

10. One ethical issue is deception. The participants were deceived in several ways, including

about the true aim of the study (they were told it was about the effect of punishment on

learning) and about the fact that real shocks were not being given. Although Milgram

debriefed the participants, by then the harm (or good) has been done. Another issue is the

right to withdraw – participants were told at the beginning they could stop (and the money

would still be theirs), however they weren’t completely free to just withdraw. If they said they

wanted to stop giving any more electric shocks, then the experimenter would put a lot of

pressure upon them to continue – therefore there was not absolute freedom to withdraw.



11. An advert was placed in a newspaper for male volunteers. When they arrived at the

university, they were told that the experiment was about how punishment affects learning.

They met another participant (who was actually a confederate) and apparently drew lots to

decide who would be learner and who would be teacher, although actually they were fixed so

the participant was always the teacher. The learner was attached to an electric shock

machine and the participant was told to teach him pairs of words, giving an increasingly high

level shock for each mistake made. The point at which they refused to continue was noted.

The participants were then debriefed.

12. One change to this study would be to have a different ‘authority figure’. In the Milgram study,

the person playing the authority figure was a stern, austere man in his forties. It would be

interesting to see what would happen if the experimenter was a woman with a different

persona such as friendly, smiling and imploring (rather than a detached factual style).

Another change to the study could be that different nationalities could take part in order to

see whether some nationalities are more obedient than others. There could be collectivist

as well as individualist cultures represented.

13. I think the first change would reduce the amount of obedience – partly because she would

be less of a ‘legitimate authority’ figure and also because her persona may not be consistent

with a participant’s idea of what a scientist should be like. Thus, two of the features which

were responsible for the high levels of obedience in the original study would be removed.

With the second change, overall there would probably still be quite high levels of obedience

though with some evident cultural differences. For example, it might be that collectivist

cultures show lower levels of obedience because they are more encouraged to think about

other people. However, some individualist cultures where questioning and original thought

are more encouraged (e.g. Nordic countries) might also show lower levels of obedience.

Those nationalities which have a political dictatorship may show particularly high levels as

they would be used to having to obey orders.

14. Two examples of quantitative data are the shock levels at which a participant refused to

continue, and the percentage of people stopping at each shock level.

15. One strength of the quantitative data is that it is easy to assess whether someone is being

obedient or not. The numerical values make it easy to analyse the data and draw a

conclusion about exactly to what extent someone was prepared to obey a destructive order.

16. One weakness of the quantitative data is that on its own, it does not create a detailed

picture of what actually happened and the demeanour the participants showed. It gives a

shallow impression of a high percentage of people obeying when the detail reveals that they

did so under extreme tension.

17. Two examples of qualitative data are the things the participants said, such as ‘Oh God, let’s

stop it’, and descriptions of how anxious they felt such as sweating and nervous laughter.



18. One strength is that it gives insight into why participants made the decisions they did, and

how they felt when they did so, and this might ultimately help us to understand why people

obey.

19. One weakness is that on its own it would not be easy to analyse or code into categories,

making drawing conclusions about the mechanisms of obedience difficult.

20. The participants did believe that the study was real, evidenced by their judgement that the

shocks they had given were painful. Participants showed signs of extreme tension such as

sweating and nervously laughing. 65% of the participants went all the way to the end of the

shock scale (450V). 22.5% stopped at 300V (intense shock). Qualitative findings included

people’s reactions when they had finished, showing relief, and comments indicating stress

and distress such as ‘I can’t go on with this’.

21. The standardised procedure in a lab setting makes this easy to replicate, and Milgram’s

research has been replicated many times, by himself and others including Derren Brown

more recently! The results of these replications are generally consistent, showing that the

majority of people do have a tendency to obey, making this a reliable study.

22. It could be argued that this is not a valid test of obedience because people may have been

aware at some level that this was unlikely to be a ‘real’ scenario because the task was so

extreme, and this may have meant that Milgram was not testing obedience but the

participants’ willingness to cooperate with research. However, this was not indicated in the

participants’ remarks.

23. There were various aspects of the experiment which enhanced the tendency to obey (e.g.

the prestigious environment, the lack of time to think about what they were doing or discuss

with anyone). This means it doesn’t wholly reflect destructive obedience in everyday life. On

the other hand, similar factors may explain why people do obey authority figures even when

asked to do something destructive in everyday life.

Section C

1. One assumption of the social approach is that people’s behaviour is largely governed by

social processes – the influence of other people, for example through conformity,

obedience, majority influence and so on.

2. The social approach would explain obedience in terms of the interactions between the

individuals in the situation. For example, the perception of how legitimate a person appears

to be and the orders that they issue will have an influence on the degree of obedience. Also,

the social approach would probably say that people are socialised in childhood to become

obedient through taking on the values and expected behaviours of significant others such as

parents.

3. One similarity between Milgram and Piliavin et al. is that both studies had some problems

with ethics and could both be accused of inflicting harm on participants. In Milgram, the



many participants displayed signs of extreme stress, such as sweating, trembling and even

seizures. This shows that participants were not protected from harm. In Piliavin et al., the

participants – passengers on the subway train who witnessed someone apparently collapse

– also may well have experienced some degree of stress. Watching someone collapse and

deciding whether or not to intervene is quite stressful. Some participants left the carriage

indicating they could not bear to be close to the situation. Some of the comments by

participants also showed the situation made them feel uncomfortable. Also, they may have

gone away feeling guilty and bad about themselves for not having helped.

One difference between Milgram and Piliavin et al. is that Milgram did debrief his

participants whereas Piliavin et al. did not. Partly this was because Milgram’s participants

had overtly volunteered to take part in the experiment and had come to the laboratory and

taken part on a one-to-one basis. Each participant was reunited with the learner to show

that he hadn’t been hurt and the aims of the deceptions of the study were fully explained.

However, Piliavin et al. did not debrief his participants, maybe because there were so many

and it would be difficult to do this (people getting on and off trains) and maybe because

there was some concern that it might affect people’s behaviour in future trials if it started to

be known that an experiment was taking place involving a supposed ‘victim’ collapsing.

Therefore, none of the participants would have found out the truth of the situation, or even

that they had taken part in an experiment at all.

4. One strength of the social approach is that it is not reductionist. Research in the social

approach gives high level, complex explanations of behaviour and does not just reduce

explanations down to something like a gene or levels of a particular hormone. For example,

Milgram explains the high levels of obedience in terms of 13 different situational factors

including the location of the study, how the participant views the experimenter, their desire

not to disrupt the experiment, their sense of obligation because they had accepted the

money for the task. Similarly, Piliavin uses a fairly complex concept to explain how people

decide to help, in the form of the arousal: costs/rewards model, which shows how people

take account of a range of factors and balance them together before deciding what to do.

Another strength is that social research often finds out really important and significant

things about how people behave and why they behave in a certain way. This is certainly true

of Milgram whose findings have helped us to understand why guards in prison camps such

as Auschwitz committed some of the atrocities that they did – they were just following

orders and being obedient, which as Milgram found, is a strongly ingrained behaviour.

One weakness of the social approach is that, by its very nature, it is culturally specific.

Because the social approach focuses upon social interactions and influences, and such

behaviours vary hugely across cultures, then the findings from one study can rarely be

generalised to other cultures. In Milgram, for example, he only studied Americans from one

part of the country (the Northeast). This means that the levels of obedience and the

responses to the situation might not be true in other parts of the country or other countries.

In fact, later, Milgram and others did study other nationalities using the same basic

procedure – and there were some cultural differences in the overall rates of obedience.



Another weakness of the social approach is that it overlooks personality because it focuses

too much on the power of the situation. For example, Milgram focuses upon the situation –

the surroundings, the laboratory, the prods, the impressive machinery and so on – at the

expense of the personality. Personality is still important and could probably explain why

some people did stand up to the experiment and did not continue to the maximum shock

level. Therefore, the social approach does not give the whole picture.



REICHER AND HASLAM

Section A

1a) The study is an experiment because it had IVs (permeability, legitimacy and cognitive

alternatives) and a DV (the behaviour of the participants).

b) The study is a case study because it investigated only one group of participants in great

detail, and it continued over a period of days so it was longitudinal.

2. One IV was permeability. This means the possibility of movement between the groups, and

was manipulated by offering one prisoner the opportunity to become a guard. Another IV

was cognitive alternatives. This means the recognition by the participants that there may be

another way of running the society than the hierarchical one set up by the experimenters. It

was manipulated by introducing a new prisoner who had union rep experience.

3a) Tyranny is the abuse of power by a single unelected dictator.

b) One way to create a situation with the possibility of tyranny is to manufacture a situation

where a group of leaders has not been cohesive and are therefore weak, and this gap of

power leaves a chance for someone else to take over and rule by force.

4. The sample was recruited by advertising in newspapers and a leaflet. The 332 respondents

were reduced to 27 through screening including psychometric tests and medical and

character references. This was reduced to 15 in such a way as to ensure a racial and class

mix.

5. One piece of evidence that group processes can produce tyranny is that the failure of the

commune due to lack of leadership led to the participants being keen to restore a system

where someone was in charge.

6a) One difference between the guards at the beginning and end of the study was that although

their social identification with the group was low at the outset, by the end it was lower still

(in fact non-existent).

b) One difference between the prisoners at the beginning and end of the study was that their

social identification with their group was low at the beginning but much higher at the end.

7. Two reasons why the prisoners were given uniforms were to emphasise the difference

between them and the guards, and to deindividualise them from each other by taking away

one aspect of their unique characteristics.

8a) Two DVs in this study were social identification, and participants’ attitudes such as

authoritarianism.

b) Social identification was measured by using a rating scale every day consisting of items

such as ‘I feel strong ties with the prisoners/guards’.



9a) One way the researchers tried to ensure ethical guidelines were upheld was to have an

extensive consent form informing the participants in advance of potential psychological and

physical risks such as discomfort and confinement.

b) One reason why stress is an ethical concern here is because the participants may have

found it very stressful to be locked up with strangers for a period of two weeks, without any

of the comforts of home such as nice food and mobile phones.

10a) Permeability was created by giving one prisoner the opportunity to become a guard after two

days.

b) Once the groups became impermeable, the prisoners started to identify with their group.

11a) One IV was permeability, and one DV was social identification. Once the groups became

impermeable so there could be no more movement between them, social identification

among the prisoners increased.

b) One conclusion from this is that social identity with a group is linked to fixed social groups. If

groups are flexible, their members identify with each other less. Once they are impermeable,

they form part of the participant’s self concept and they feel loyalty to the group.

12. The 332 respondents were reduced to 27 through screening including psychometric tests

and medical and character references. This was reduced to 15 in such a way as to ensure a

racial and class mix.

13a) It was planned to manipulate legitimacy by revealing to the participants that there was no

actual difference between the guards and the prisoners based on their personal

characteristics.

b) This was not necessary because the participants never assumed that there was a legitimate

difference between the two groups: the prisoners never felt that the guards were superior to

them so the experimenters did not have to use their strategy of informing them that there

was no difference.

14a) The study ended prematurely because the failure of the commune meant that there was a

perceived gap in leadership was some prisoners were planning to exploit by taking over and

leading by force. This may have lead to negative outcomes psychologically and physically for

the participants.

b) One conclusion from this study is that people do not automatically assume roles, as

Zimbardo suggested, but their behaviour is affected by social identification and other group

processes.

15a) Two criteria used for matching the participants were personal variables such as racism, and

social dominance.

b) This matching was necessary to ensure that the two groups (participants and prisoners)

were equal in these characteristics, so that one group was not coincidentally more

predisposed towards authoritarianism, for example, as this may have affected the results.



16a) Cognitive alternatives were created by introducing the new prisoner on day 4, who had

experience of negotiating as a union official and therefore may suggest new ways of running

the prison.

b) Once the prisoners were exposed to cognitive alternatives, they started to work against the

guards’ regime by being less willing to comply with authority.

17. Prisoners were allocated to lockable, three-person cells off a central atrium. They had their

heads shaved and wore orange uniforms. The prisoners’ quarters were separated from the

guards’ by a steel mesh fence. The guards had better living conditions and better food than

the prisoners. Cameras recorded what happened.

18a) One of the DVs was social identification, measured every day by rating scales such as ‘I feel

strong ties with the rest of my group’.

b) Reliability of this measurement could have been assessed by including another item in the

questionnaire worded differently but essentially measuring the same factor, so that their

congruence could be assessed by the experimenters.

19a) Permeability is the possibility of movement between two groups.

b) Initially there was perceived permeability because there was the possibility for one prisoner

to become a guard. Once that had happened, the groups became impermeable.

20a) One way in which the sample could be considered representative is that the final 15 were

especially selected to include people of various ages, classes and ethnicities, so they could

be said to be representative of the general population.

b) One way in which the sample could be considered unrepresentative is that they were drawn

from a population of people who had volunteered to be in the study, meaning that they were

all likely to be confident, articulate and outgoing enough to want to appear on the television.

This means they may not be representative of more introvert or nervous types.

Section B

1. Previous research included that of Philip Zimbardo, who supported the idea of

deindividuation explanation in the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). Twenty-four

participants were randomly allocated to the role of prisoner or guard. The study showed that

immersion in a group (being in the prisoner group or the guard group) undermines the

constraints that normally prevent anti-social behaviour. In addition, when a group has power

this seems to encourage extreme anti-social behaviour.

2. The aim of the study was to create an environment which resembled a hierarchical

institution where the effects could be investigated of the existence of unequal groups.



3. One hypothesis was that subordinate group members would only identify with their group

and challenge intergroup inequalities if relations between the groups were seen as

impermeable and insecure.

4. This is a field experiment because it was carried out in a mock prison rather than a

laboratory setting, but there were IVs (permeability, legitimacy and cognitive alternatives)

and DVs (the participants’ behaviour and attitudes).

5. One strength of this method is that cause and effect can be inferred because the IVs were

manipulated by the researchers whilst other factors remained constant; thus it can be said

that the various interventions by Reicher and Haslam such as introducing the new prisoner

did affect the participants’ behaviour and attitudes.

6. One weakness is that the prisoners knew they were in a study and that the whole set-up was

for research purposes, meaning that they may well have altered their behaviour to

cooperate with the experimenters, or to create interesting television, in the full knowledge

that there would be no ‘real-life’ consequences.

7. The sample consisted of 15 male volunteers of a variety of ages, social class and ethnic

background.

8. An advert was placed in national newspapers and leaflets. From 332 applicants, 27 were

chosen through screening for possible medical and psychological problems and

psychometric testing. The final 15 were chosen for diversity of age, race and background.

9. One strength of this sample is that it could be said to be representative as it was

deliberately chosen to reflect a variety of ages, races and backgrounds. This means that the

outcomes are likely to be generalisable to the rest of the population.

10. One weakness is that these are all people who wanted to take part in a study and so may

not be like the sort of people who don’t volunteer to take part (they may be more

adventurous, have more time on their hands and so on). The 27 who were selected were

also not like the general population as a whole. This is because the 27 were screened for

mental health problems such as depression and so on. Therefore, as a group, they were

probably psychologically healthier than the general population. This might affect the

conclusions drawn, that is group processes in groups of ‘normal’ individuals might be

different (e.g. more rational) than group processes in a more diverse population. If this is the

case it might take longer for the group to break down than if the group was made up of

participants from the normal population. Therefore in real life, tyranny might have

established itself sooner.

11. This is a longitudinal study because it continued over a few days, so the ways in which

behaviours and attitudes could be monitored rather than just looking at them at a single

time point; for example, the participants’ attitudes towards authoritarianism changed as the

study progressed and so did the group processes such as social identification.

12. One strength of using longitudinal studies is that it controls participant variables because it

follows the same participant throughout, so any comparisons are with the same participant



rather than between different ones. In this case, the prisoners’ attitudes were only being

compared with their own attitudes at an earlier stage, so individual differences were not the

basis for any changes discovered.

13. One weakness is that longitudinal studies take a long time to complete, so the research is

very intensive and time-consuming. In this case it was necessary to record massive amounts

of data over more than a week, which is hard to maintain and extremely complex to analyse

at the end – for example, the attitude scales completed every day and the constant

observations of behaviour.

14. One ethical issue is that of informed consent. Participants were fully briefed and knew the

likely dangers of the study – that they would lack privacy, be locked up, be unable to lead a

normal life, etc. An extensive consent form was devised to cover all eventualities and all

participants signed it. However, it could be argued that no form could explain adequately

what the participants would experience.

Another ethical issue is that there was some harm to participants, for example the guards

became disorganised and recriminatory and started blaming each other. Participants may

have felt out of control, may feel unpleased about the ways in which they behaved (e.g. they

were unfair or weak), and may regret some of their behaviours especially as the rest of the

world knows how they behaved.

15. The prison set-up was created in conjunction with the BBC and the participants were

selected by advert and then screening processes. The prisoners and guards were randomly

allocated from groups of three matched on personality variables. The prisoners were given

three-person cells which were lockable, and the guards had a living area with better

conditions and food. Each group of prisoners had the appropriate uniforms. Guards were

told they were responsible for the smooth running of the prison and that they could use

reward and punishment to control the prisoners. Permeability (expectation of movement

between groups) was controlled by saying that one prisoner might move to be a guard but

then there would be no more movement. Legitimacy was intended to be controlled by telling

the participants that there was no reason why the guards had been chosen to be guards,

although the participants recognised this for themselves. Cognitive alternatives were

introduced by prisoner McCabe who had been a union negotiator. Dependent variables were

measured by a series of tests.

16. One change which could be made to the study would have been not to film it for BBC TV and

that if filming did take place, it would just be for the researchers to collect observational

data.

Another difference might be how the guards behaved at the beginning. In the study, they did

not show that they could control the prisoners and did not adopt a harsh regime. This may

partly have been that they knew they were ‘visible’ and ‘accountable’ and they knew that at

some point their loved ones, work colleagues etc. And generally people whose opinion of

them matter – would watch them on TV and so they did not want to be seen as cruel or

unreasonable.



17. The first change would probably change the results quite a lot. For example, people might

not ‘act up’ because they imagined themselves broadcast into everyone’s living rooms. So

prisoners might not have stormed the guards’ quarters and so on.

If the study became private, confidential and anonymous, the guards, not worrying about

‘future contexts’, might have chosen to take on power and behave more brutally.

18. Examples of quantitative data include ratings of social identification, scores of

authoritarianism, awareness of cognitive alternatives, self-efficacy scores.

19. The strengths of quantitative data is that the researchers could easily compare the

prisoners and the guards. They could also easily monitor changes over time, for example

they could see that the prisoners showed increasing social identification, while the guards

showed decreasing identification.

20. The weakness of quantitative data in this study is that alone it does not give a detailed

picture of what the participants were doing or how they felt. Numbers alone could not do

justice to such a complex experience or research question as they do not take into account

the many factors and nuances of feelings, attitudes and behaviour categories.

21. Examples of qualitative data include descriptions of the general events that took place, for

example ‘On day 6, some prisoners broke out of their cell and occupied the guards’

quarters’, observed using video equipment.

22. Qualitative data allows the researcher to gather rich, in-depth detail about an individual or

small, organised group. Reicher and Haslam were able to understand why prisoners wanted

to change groups by asking questions that produced qualitative data. An example of this is

that one prisoner said ‘I’d like to be a guard because they get all the luxuries and we do not’.

23. One weakness of qualitative data is that it does not allow for easy comparison and analysis,

so for example measuring attitudes such as authoritarianism with a numerical scale allows

the strength of feeling to be quantified. Qualitative data in this case would be hard to

translate into a meaningful measure of an attitude that could be compared with other

participants.

24. The prisoners showed little social identification until the groups became impermeable. The

guards did not identify with their group. Low group identity led to ineffective leadership. The

prisoners did not regard the guards’ authority as legitimate. When the social structure broke

down, a commune was proposed to impose some order but equality on the society.

However, the lack of proper organisation and leadership in this regime led some participants

to propose a new even more unequal society in its place. Prisoners and guards showed an

increase in authoritarianism as the study continued.

25. The fact that this has some similarities with a case study makes it likely to be unreliable:

another group of people would be highly unlikely to produce consistent results due to the

individuals and group dynamics involved. It would also be just about impossible to replicate

given the involvement of the BBC and the elaborate nature of the ‘prison’ set-up. However,



the data collection methods were likely to be reliable, such as the attitude tests and the

scientific physiological tests which are standardised and reputable.

26. Validity is questionable in this study because the experimenters wanted to research

‘unequal groups’ and it may be that because the participants knew that they were actually

all participants in a piece of research, and hence really on an equal footing, they did not

have the same reactions to the perceived injustices (such as food and living quarters) as

they would have done in a real situation. The two groups were not fundamentally unequal

and the participants knew this.

27. It is really difficult to know whether the participants behaved as they would have done in

everyday life. But, it seems doubtful that being filmed in this study felt the same as being

filmed for CCTV (Reicher and Haslam claimed it was similar). In everyday life, we may

become unaware of being recorded by cameras and that is because we do not imagine that

we will actually have an audience. Much CCTV footage is never viewed by anybody, and

certainly little of it shows anybody close up and none of it records conversations. Therefore,

with CCTV, we do just get on with our behaviour quite normally. However, in Reicher and

Haslam’s prison, the prisoners knew that it would be screened on BBC TV at prime time –

they would get an audience of at least five million viewers, there would be newspaper

articles about them, and they knew that their friends, relatives and work colleagues would

probably tune in and watch them. It is hard to imagine that knowing this, this would not

affect their behaviour in some way in order to appear more interesting, brave, just, strong,

mean, dominant or whatever they thought people would like to see. Therefore, it is unlikely

that they did behave as they would do in real life. However, they probably did take the task

seriously – though as an experiment and not necessarily as being part of a prison regime.

One other explanation for their behaviour (as well as behaving in a socially desirable way for

their loved ones) is that they knew about Zimbardo’s SPE and, towards the end, some of the

participants were frustrated that, in comparison, this study had been relatively uneventful

due to the guards not identifying with their group or abusing their power. So the action on

day 6 to introduce more inequality into the prison could just have been some participants’

attempt to make this a more memorable study.

Section C




2. The social approach explains behaviour in terms of the people around us and the

interactions between us. Therefore it could explain tyranny in terms of dominant and

subordinate groups. Reicher and Haslam found that subordinate groups will challenge the

inequalities between dominant and subordinate groups when they identify with their group

and when permeability is low and legitimacy is low.



3. One similarity between Reicher and Haslam and Piliavin et al. is that both studies had some

problems with ethics and could both be accused of inflicting harm on participants. In

Reicher and Haslam, the participants were subjected to an artificial environment 24 hours a

day where there every move was watched and analysed by both the TV audience and the

experimenters. The fact that some participants felt it necessary to leave early, and others

showed extreme tension shows that participants were not completely protected from harm,

although Reicher and Haslam did put in place many measures to make it as ethical as

possible. In Piliavin et al., the participants – passengers on the subway train who witnessed

someone apparently collapse – also may well have experienced some degree of stress.

Watching someone collapse and deciding whether or not to intervene is quite stressful.

Some participants left the carriage indicating they could not bear to be close to the

situation. Some of the comments by participants also showed the situation made them feel

uncomfortable. Also, they may have gone away feeling guilty and bad about themselves for

not having helped.

One difference between Reicher and Haslam and Milgram is that it could be argued that

Milgram is not a true experiment, because there was no real independent variable that was

manipulated to see the effect on the dependent variable. For this reason, Milgram’s study is

better described as a controlled observation because although it was a laboratory setting,

the experimenter really just watched what happened as a result. Reicher and Haslam,

however, is a true experiment because they had three independent variables (legitimacy,

cognitive alternatives and permeability) which were specifically manipulated in order to see

how the dependent variables were affected in terms of the participants’ views and

emotions.

4. One strength of the social approach is that it is not reductionist. Research in the social

approach gives high level, complex explanations of behaviour and does not just reduce

explanations down to something like a gene or levels of a particular hormone. For example,

Reicher and Haslam draw complex conclusions regarding the interplay of personality and

group processes with how tyranny may arise; they state that several factors affect group

identity, such as social identification, and that the success of this can give rise to

undesirable regimes. This is multi-layered and not reductionist.

Another strength is that social research often finds out really important and significant

things about how people behave and why they behave in a certain way. This is certainly true

of Reicher and Haslam, who may have cast light on why Nazi Germany embraced Hitler’s

regime.

One weakness of the social approach is that, by its very nature, it is culturally specific.

Because the social approach focuses upon social interactions and influences, and such

behaviours vary hugely across cultures, then the findings from one study can rarely be

generalised to other cultures. Reicher and Haslam, for example, investigated British people,

and it is true that other cultures and nationalities may interact in groups in very different

ways.



Another weakness of the social approach is that it overlooks personality because it focuses

too much on the power of the situation. For example, Reicher and Haslam’s study gives

great emphasis to the situation and the importance of group identity rather than giving

adequate weight to the personality types of the individuals who took part in the BBC prison

study.



PILIAVIN ET AL.

Section A

1a) Two IVs in this study were the type of victim (drunk or disabled) and the race of the victim

(black or white).

b) The type of the victim was manipulated by the experimenter playing this role either carrying

a cane to indicate a disability, or a bottle in a brown paper bag to indicate drunkenness.

2. The role of victim was played by the experimenter either carrying a cane or a bottle in a bag,

boarding the subway in New York, waiting 70 seconds and then staggering forward and

collapsing. He then remained lying down until he received help.

3. This study could be said to be high in ecological validity because it was a field experiment

and took place in a real-world environment (the subway), so the participants were not

anticipating anything untoward to happen relating to psychological research. Therefore their

behaviour would have been natural. It was also high in ecological validity because people

falling over is a realistic event that may happen, so suspicions would not have been aroused

that the situation was a set-up, again producing natural behaviours.

4a) The procedure was standardised in that there were always four members of the team, two

observers, one victim and one model; and also that the victims were always male.

b) It is important to standardise procedures so that every group of participants, in this case

every carriage full of passengers, receives the same experience and confounding variables

do not occur; for example in this study if the victim had sometimes been female, she may

have been more likely to receive help than males, affecting the results.

5. Two practical problems which may have occurred were first that the experimenters playing

the victim role may have been embarrassed and found it difficult to carry out their task

realistically; and secondly, that the observers may have found it very difficult to note down

reliably all the data they intended to because of the crowded environment.

6a) Qualitative data included the comments made by other passengers, such as ‘It’s not for me

to help him’.

b) One strength of qualitative data in this study is that it gives a better insight into what people

thought and felt than simply counting numbers of people who refused to help.

7. The participants were approximately 4,500 men and women who were travelling on the New

York subway on weekdays between 11am and 3pm, including slightly more white people

than black people. There was an average of 43 participants on any one trial.

8a) One of the model conditions was the ‘late model’, who helped after 150 seconds.



b) One finding from the model conditions was that only 17% of the drunk victims were helped

before the model stepped in, while 87% of the disabled victims were helped before the

model.

9a) ‘Median latency’ is the middle value of all the times taken to help, when arranged in order.

b) One conclusion from this table is that people are much quicker to help people they perceive

to be disabled than those they perceive to be drunk who may have brought their problem on

themselves.

10a) Two controls used in this study were that the same train journey was used every time, and

the same collapsing procedure was used every time.

b) The same train journey was used every time as it was likely to pick up the same type of

traveller, meaning that there should be little variation in their general level of empathy and

community-mindedness which would affect the results.

11a) One ethical issue is that the participants were deceived in that they thought the collapse

they had witnessed was real and that the individual had genuinely been in need of help,

when this was not the case.

b) This might have been dealt with by handing out leaflets at the exit from the subway at 125th

Street, explaining what had happened and why, and giving a telephone number where

passengers could raise queries.

12a) Two DVs were how many people helped the victims, and how long help took to come.

b) How many people helped the victims was measured by one of the two observers counting

them.

13a) Diffusion of responsibility is where no one helps a victim in a crowd because everyone thinks

that someone else will do it.

b) Diffusion of responsibility was not found in this study because the participants were in a

confined space where everyone could see each other, and they were all concerned not to

appear to be unhelpful and uncompassionate.

14. Four IVs were type of victim (drunk or disabled), race of victim (black or white), impact of

model, and group size.

15. They acted as observers, one noting the race, sex and location of every passenger in the

critical area, the total number of people in the carriage, the number of people who helped,

and the race, sex and location of each helper, and the other one noting the race, sex and

location of every person in the adjacent area and the time when help was first offered.

16a) The drunk victim was offered spontaneous help 50% of the time, and help was slower to

come to the drunk victim.



b) One conclusion is that people make a value judgment when deciding whether to help or not,

depending on whether they think the victim deserves their help or not; and that people may

feel wary of the drunk victim as he may be unpredictable.

17a) One variable was the race of the victim, whether black or white.

b) One conclusion relating to this was that there was a slight tendency towards same-race

helping.

18a) Behaviour was measured by observation, with one observer noting the race, sex and

location of every passenger in the critical area, the total number of people in the carriage,

the number of people who helped, and the race, sex and location of each helper, and the

other one noting the race, sex and location of every person in the adjacent area and the

time when help was first offered.

b) One problem with measuring helping behaviour in this way is that there was a great deal of

information to be recorded while there was so many people in the environment, and this

may have resulted in inaccurate recording of data.

19a) One way in which the sample could be considered representative is that it was a very large

sample consisting of all types of people who use the subway, so it is likely to contain a very

wide variety of different sorts of people reflective of the general population.

b) One way in which it could be considered unrepresentative is that they were mostly New York

residents who may be particularly helpful and empathetic, or particularly unhelpful and wary

of unpredictable situations.

20. In 38 trials, the victim acted as if he was drunk, boarded the train, waited 70 seconds and

then collapsed and awaited help. If no help was forthcoming, the model helped the victim to

his feet after 70 seconds (early model) or 150 seconds (late model). In 65 trials the

procedure was exactly the same but the victim was assumed to be disabled due to the cane

he carried.

Section B

1. Two psychologists, Darley and Latané, proposed an explanation based on their own

research. They found that the more people there are the less likely that each individual was

to ask, suggesting that this was because each person felt less responsibility. They coined

the phrase ‘diffusion of responsibility’ for this explanation. However, their research was

conducted in laboratories which is not a problem if some research is also conducted in the

field to provide confirmation of this behaviour in a more natural setting.

2. The aim of the study was to observe the effect of several variables on helping behaviour, for

example type of victim (drunk or ill) and race of victim (black or white).

3. One hypothesis would be that people would be more likely to help the person who was

perceived to be ill than the person who was perceived to be drunk.



4. This is a field experiment because it took place in a real-world setting (the subway carriage)

rather than a laboratory set up especially for the research; however, it is still an experiment

because there were several IVS (for example race of victim) which were tested to see the

effect on the DV (whether people would help).

5. One strength of this is that cause and effect can still be inferred because of manipulation of

the IV (e.g. type of victim) with a standardised procedure, but the environment is natural

(subway carriage) so that people would behave normally rather than changing their helping

behaviour due to a false setting.

6. One weakness of this method is that, because it took place over several days on the same

stretch of subway, the same passengers may have seen the scenario take place several

times and therefore altered their helping behaviour. In a laboratory setting, Piliavin could

have ensured that the participants were not affected in this way.

7. The sample was 4,500 subway passengers of both genders in New York, travelling between

11 am and 3 pm.

8. The sample was selected by opportunity sampling, meaning that they were just the people

who happened to be there at the time the research was carried out. They were convenient

and available to the researchers.

9. One strength of this sample is that it contained a good mix of male/female and ethnicities,

and it was a very large sample (4,500 people approximately). This means that the results

are more likely to be generalisable.

10. One weakness is that the sample was homogeneous for two reasons. First, they were all

American, which is an individualist society and therefore arguably less likely to be helpful.

Secondly, the sample was taken during the day when nine-to-five workers wouldn’t be on the

subway – they might be a more helpful cross-section of the population. Therefore a different

sample may have shown different rates of helping behaviour.

11. This is a snapshot study because it takes just one set of data for each experiment, and

captures the participants’ behaviour at one moment in time. It does not take account of

development over time. In this study, it shows people’s tendencies to help others at that

particular time in that particular situation, and does not show how these might alter over

time.

12. One strength of snapshot studies is that they are quick to carry out, so Piliavin et al. could

gain all their data at once. This allowed them to draw rapid conclusions about the effect of

the variables, such as whether the victim was drunk or ill, on how likely the participants were

to help him. Comparisons could be made from one set of research between the helping that

was observed in each condition.

13. Snapshot studies do not allow the researcher to discover whether results are due to the

development of the behaviour or to individual differences. In the Piliavin et al. study the

participants will have had different experiences and differing personalities, so individual



differences may have accounted for whether they chose to help the victims or not which

may not be revealed without a longitudinal study.

14. Informed consent cannot be obtained from the participants because the situation does not

allow that to happen; they were not asked to participate and in fact probably never knew

they had been involved. They may experience psychological harm because of not helping,

which could distress them, and also just by seeing an emergency.

15. 70 seconds after the train started, the victim collapsed onto the floor and lay there until he

was helped. A model was ready to help if no one else did, either after 70 seconds or 150

seconds. In 38 trials, the victim appeared to be drunk, carrying a bottle in a brown paper

bag. In 65 trials the victim appeared disabled due to carrying a cane. Observers in the

carriage noted the number, race, sex and location of other passengers as well as comments

they made.

16. One change to this study would be to have female victims. There could still be the same

conditions – white drunk, white ill, black drunk, black ill – but that all the victims would be

female.

Another change would be to conduct the study in a different place. This could be, for

example, a shopping centre. The victim conditions could all be the same as in the original

study.

17. Overall, there might be even higher rates of helping with the first change because the

perceived costs of helping a female are probably less than helping a male because females

are perceived as less aggressive. I think it would still be the case that the ill victim would

receive more spontaneous helping than the drunk. However, I think that the difference

between the ill and drunk conditions might be more pronounced in this new study. This is

because, if it had been conducted in the 1960s, it was very uncommon for women to drink,

especially publicly. Therefore, with such strong disapproval, it is less likely she would receive

a high level of helping.

I think that overall there would be less helping in this study and that it would support the

idea of diffusion of responsibility. This is because people in this study would not be in such

an enclosed space like in the subway where everyone would be in basically a couple of

metres of the victim and with nothing else to distract them or to pretend to be distracted by.

So people might not notice in a shopping mall, they might deliberately walk past and think

that someone else will help them. The costs of not helping would be lower as there would

not be so much censure from other onlookers.

18. Examples of quantitative data included the percentage of people who helped in cane and

drunk conditions, latency rates, number of people in the carriage, number of people who left

the carriage.

19. One strength of this is that it is easy to analyse such data and make comparisons between

the different conditions. This means that comparisons between the likelihood of the



passengers helping the drunk victim compared with the ill victim were easy to make by

comparing numerical values such as percentages.

20. One weakness is that this is a reductionist approach because data are reduced to a set of

numbers which may lose important information such as why people helped or didn’t help.

21. The frequency of helping was considerably higher than found in laboratory experiments. An

apparently disabled person (using a cane) is more likely to receive help than one who

appears drunk (95% versus 50%). Help is forthcoming more quickly for a disabled person,

87% of the ‘disabled’ victims were helped before the model acted, whereas only 17% of the

drunk victims were helped. The median latency for cane trials (non-model condition) was 5

seconds; it was 109 seconds for drunk trials. Black victims received help less quickly than

white victims. There was a slight ‘same-race effect’ in the drunk condition (people are more

likely to be helped by someone of the same race). 90% of first helpers were male, whereas

only 60% of passengers were male. The model intervening early (after 70 seconds) had

slightly more effect than the late model (at 150 seconds). There was only a small amount of

data on this as most victims were helped before a model could step in. Diffusion of

responsibility’ was not found in this study; helping was greater in seven-person than three-

person groups. Comments from passengers included ‘it’s for men to help him’.

22. It is better to have two observers than one to verify what each one observes, though in this

study each observer had different tasks so they weren’t verifying each other. They had quite

a lot to note down and may have made errors. Reliability could be checked by comparing the

observations of the two observers. They could see whether the observers agreed on the

information about first helpers such as gender and race. They could also correlate each

observers’ recorded time for latency of helping. If the observations are reliable, then these

should give a high positive correlation.

23. This study meets its aim of investigating helping behaviour in terms of the particular factors

noted by the experimenters. However, it could be said to have low validity in the sense that it

only tells us something about helping in that situation – i.e. on a subway train – and this

may not also apply to other situations such as people collapsing on a high street, for

example.

24. These findings can be generalised to similar situations, for example helping when there is

relatively little risk to the helper and where the emergency is obvious. But this doesn’t

explain all helping situations. As it was a real-life situation rather than one set up by the

experimenters, so the participants had no idea they were taking part in a piece of research,

it is possible to assume that they were behaving naturally and did not alter their behaviour

to show increased helping for socially desirable reasons or for demand characteristics. This

study is high in ecological validity because it was a setting in which people were going about

their genuine daily lives.

Section C






2. The social approach would explain how people help in several ways. First of all, it would

predict that we are more likely to help someone who we perceive as being in the same

‘group’ as us – same gender, same age, same ethnicity. Secondly, we are more likely to

conform to others’ behaviour – so if no one helps, it may be intimidating not to conform and

go and help; or if some people do go and help, again, other people will wish to conform to

the ‘group’.

3. One similarity between Piliavin et al. and Reicher and Haslam is that both use an

experimental method. Piliavin et al.’s study is a field experiment and they manipulated the

race and condition of the victim that collapsed, as well as the timing for the model

interventions. Reicher and Haslam manipulated permeability (if participants thought they

could move between prisoner and guard groups), legitimacy (when participants were told

that there were actually no differences between groups) and cognitive alternatives (when a

new prisoner arrives who they thought would negotiate between prisoners and guards to

find new regimes for the prison). Therefore, both these studies into complex social

behaviour are experimental with manipulated IVs (and measured DVs).

One difference between Piliavin et al. and Reicher and Haslam is that Piliavin et al. chose a

natural situation whereas Reicher and Haslam chose a controlled, simulated (almost

laboratory) situation. Piliavin et al. really wanted to do this study in a natural setting because

all the previous studies on helping had taken place in a laboratory and therefore may not

have been generalisable to real life situations. They chose as this natural setting a subway

train in New York where there would be multiple bystanders but relatively easy to control the

intervention – that is someone collapsing. This means that Piliavin et al. has quite high

ecological validity. In contrast, Reicher and Haslam did not conduct this study in a real

prison. Maybe it was because they would not have had enough experimental control over

the situation if the participants were mixing with real prisoners and guards and also because

there might be more ethical dangers if real prisoners or guards became aggressive. This

means that this study probably has quite low ecological validity because the setting was too

artificial and does not really tell us how prisoners and guards behave in a normal prison.

4. One strength of the social approach is that it is not a reductionist approach. It explains

highly complex behaviour – social interactions and behaviour – in a complex way. It does not

just try to explain complex behaviour in a reductionist way such as reinforcement or

hormones. For example, in Piliavin et al., they explain whether or not someone helps in

terms of his ‘model of response to an emergency situation’ which contains both biological

elements (levels of arousal when someone sees an emergency) as well as cognitive

elements – decision making whether to help or not, perceptions of costs of helping and

costs of not helping. Therefore, this model is quite complex and does help us to understand

and predict helping behaviour.



Another strength of the social approach in research is that it gives useful insights into

society and events that society gets hung upon or sometimes has trouble understanding

about itself. For example, one of the reasons there was so much research into helping was a

national outrage about Kitty Genovese. The general public could not understand why no one

had helped her despite there being a large number of witnesses. There were many

newspaper reports written about it and lots of soul-searching trying to understand the

reasons why. Piliavin helps to explain this phenomenon in terms of his model of response –

there were lower levels of arousal because the witnesses were some distance from Kitty –

upstairs in apartment buildings. Also, the perceived costs of helping would have been very

high – they might face danger themselves, it might be some sort of trap and so on.

Therefore, this research is helpful for giving insight into important social questions.

One weakness of the social approach is that complex behaviour is sometimes very difficult

to capture neatly. For example, in Piliavin et al., we do not really know why or why not people

helped because they were not asked. Even if they had been asked, they might not have

enough self-insight and awareness to know exactly what the factors were which motivated

them to help. In Reicher and Haslam, we still do not know exactly what the impact was of

having those particular personalities in the groups to which they were allocated.

Another weakness of the social approach in research is that it has one of the worst track

records in ethics. Much social research, because of the necessary complexity to try and

create socially meaningful situations mean that ethical guidelines have been broken

through lack of consent or deception, etc. The Piliavin et al. study also was not ethical – no

participants consented or were debriefed. They were deceived about the victim and made to

believe that someone was ill and really needed help. This may also have caused some

stress as participants get worried about their own safety and whether or not they should

help etc. Therefore, this study was unethical too.

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