Social Psychology Practical

Aim: To find out whether people are obedient because they want to be (autonomous state) or feel they have to (agentic state).http://www.psychteacher.co.uk/social-influence/obedience-explanations.html

Hypothesis: I predict that most people will be obedient because they feel like they have to, making them more agentic (one-tailed - directional alternate hypothesis)

Method/ Procedure Questionnaire which included open-ended questions, closed questions, questions with a likert scale, with a rating scale and questions that asked the ppt to identify characteristics. A few questions that didn't relate to the aim as much - avoid demand characteristics 2 questions that asked the same thing but were worded differently to try and catch out liars (split half) Produced qualitative (open ended questions) and quantitative data (closed questions) Pilot survey with 3 people - gained feedback and identified issues with the questionnaire and then altered them Official questionnaire with 20 people Selected by opportunity sampling as they were already there in school Gave all ppts consent forms Told the ppts roughly, using passive deception, that the aim of the study was to find out about levels of obedience Ppts allowed to withdraw at any point Questionnaire unlikely to produce psychological harm Debrief given at the end so they knew the full aim Questionnaires destroyed after analysis

ConclusionsMy results generally shows a mixture of people choosing answers that equate to them having a personality of being autonomous and agentic. This doesn't support my hypothesis that more people are agentic than autonomous so I have come up with an alternate conclusion that people are obedient because they are a mixture of autonomous and agentic personalities.

EvaluationStrengths: Ethical - consent forms (informed consent), debrief forms where the aim was fully explained, no physical or psychological harm, right to withdraw, data destroyed afterwards No gender bias, equal numbers of males and females - increased population validity Real life application (obedience in school, workplace) No leading questions - no experimenter bias - increased internal validity Can be repeated - increased reliability Weaknesses: Small sample size - reduced population validity Possible demand characteristics - although we used passive deception, may have still guessed the aim and adapted answers son as not to appear too agentic or autonomous - reduced internal validity Culture bias - all from UK - reduced population validity Age bias- all between 16 and 18 - reduced population validity Opportunity sampling - unrepresentative sample Social desirability - ppts giving what they deem to be socially acceptable answers rather than truthful answers - reduced internal validity

Improvements: Avoid demand characteristics by telling the ppts less of the real aim but by debriefing them at the end so as to keep the study ethical. Use a much larger sample size with a larger variety of ages and backgrounds so as to get a more representative sample and increased population validity.