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OCR Psychology: AS Revision Guide – Suggested answers
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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’.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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,
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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
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 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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 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.
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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.