Journey's end

Well, almost there.  Some of you have decided enough is enough, and realising that youn have earned enough credits have decided to cash in early.  But for those who are still determined, here are some hints for assignment 17.

Assignment 17 is about ethics, obedience research and application of social psychology to the real world. 

Part A has two questions:

1 is about ethics.  You are to do an ethics discussion around Zimbardo’s prison experiment and Milgram’s obedience project. Each of these are controversial for different reasons,  and in addition to discussing how the ethical principals of deception, harm, right to withdraw etc. are applied (or not!) you must discuss whether the ends of the research justified the means.  Focus chapter 15 (page 218) contains most of the information you need for this.

2 is about evaluation of Milgram.  In this assignment, you will be looking at one evaluative issue, that of ecological validity.  This basically asks “does Milgram’s research translate to other situations?  We don’t normally go round giving electric shocks to other people, but there are instances in real life when we might do things against our principles or normal instructions when we are told to do so.  To pass this section you must describe at least one piece of research that tests obedience to authority and supports Milgram's results.  Hofling (1966) and Meeus and Raaijmakers (1987) (see pages 208-209 Focus) are two pieces of research that might help.

Part B has three questions, but you can combine these into one piece of writing.  There is no word limit here but I have suggested a cap of 5000 words.  Many people get into the discussion and get carried away…

To do the first part, you should compare the Iraqi prison with Zimbardo’s research.  Is there any suggestion that the behaviour of the guards was because of their personality?  or because of their situation?

The second part is fairly general, and is really focused on majority influence.  Were conformity issues involved here? You could discuss that aspect of the soldiers’ behaviour. 

The third section is about minority influence.  How could the influence of a minority help to reduce abusive behaviour?  Could the research of Moscovici, or perhaps Gamson, be of any help? Moscovici is on page 196, Gamson page 214.  Or are there any other psychological explanations?  Whatever you say, you must support with empirical evidence.

I MUST have the assignments by 2nd June.  I can’t guarantee marking stuff in time for 4th after then.

Nearly there ... Don't Panic!

So now, we're coming towards the end of the course.  The final unit "Conformity and Obedience" which has two assignments, and by now, if you've got thus far, you'll take them in your stride.  But if you can you really should get to the lessons!


Assignment 16 looks very long, but it's not that bad.  The first thing to say is that you can find just about everything you need inn the Focus book.  It's almost as if it was written with this course in mind!  There are three parts to it.  The first is about informational and normative social influence.  We look at two models and map examples of behaviour on to them.  Activity two on page 187 (guessing the page, but it's about the ladies at the golf  club and the Orson Welles play) is a good one to try, and we worked it in class if you weren't there.

These are the models we refer to. (From Gross (2005))


Next, we shall look at the autokinetic effect experiment of Sherif.  This is available on the website page (find it without a link, I'm feeling lazy!)  but also in the Focus book.  Again, try and map the experiment onto the model.


Finally, for this post, look at the Asch line size experiment.  We'll spend a lot of time on this one.  Try and map that on to one of the models - and that's a fair bit of the assignment started!


More to follow ...

Insanity - what is it?

Basically, this is about Assignment 14.  What is madness?  More to the point, how can we define abnormal behaviour?  The assignment asks for you to choose three out of the five, describe/explain and evaluate them.  You know how to do this by now.  You see, the assignment appeared at the beginning of last year's course and the headings in task 2 are designed to help people evaluate.  So you can set the assignment out as a standard piece of writing - describe/evaluate one approach, describe evaluate second approach, describe evaluate third approach, finish off with perhaps a paragraph that brings it all together.

You can actually find all that you need to achieve a pass in the Focus book and the handout for DSM IV.  About 750 - 1000 words if you feel you need a ball-park figure.  Remember that an opinion expressed in a text book is perfectly OK as a reference of supporting or contradicting evidence for an approach.

But you can in fact find much more outside the Focus book.  For example, if you choose to discuss classification methods, then you should include discussion on Rosenhahn (1973) "On being sane in insane places".  

The picture is of Bedlam, a famous picture from Rakes Progress.  It is not a picture of room M41 on a bad day.

On 13th May you have a short exam.  The subject is stress, and anything in your Focus book between pages 91 and 136 is fair game.  Try and de-stress like the girl in the picture. Have a great weekend!