REVISION
SOCIOCULTURAL LEVELS OF ANALYSIS
What are the principles of SCLOA?
Principle One: Human beings are social animals with a basic need to belong. Principle Two: Culture influences human behavior. Principle Three: Humans have a social self which reflects their group memberships.
What are the situational and dispositional factors?
Situational factors- when attributing characteristics based on the situation (situational
attribution)
Dispositional factors- when we attribute people’s behaviour to internal factors such as beliefs,
attitudes, personality (internal attribution) – five factor model of personality McCrae and
Costa, 1999)
Cross-situational consistency and stability
Mischel (1968) - less evidence for consistency in behaviour than claimed by theorists
Hartshorne and May (1928) –children dishonest in one setting not necessarily dishonest in the
other school setting
Asch (1951) line judgment experiment
Milligram (1974) obedience experiment
Epstain (1983) aggregation of specific behaviours across occasions, situations
more info : http://people.umass.edu/psyc661/pdf/tpb.obhdp.pdf
Roberts and DelVecchio(2000) meta analysis of 152 long term longitudinal studies confirmed
stability of traits
Give two attribution errors that we studied in the class? Give empirical research.
Fundamental attribution error (FAE) attributing internal causes to an individual instead of
external factors
Gilbert and Malone (1995) two step attribution process
Jones and Harris (1967) essay on Fidel Castro
Fein et al., 1990 essay on Rob Taylor
Self serving bias (SSB) explaining our success due to internal, dispositional factors and our
failures to external or situational factors
Johnston et al., 1964 students’ achievement associated with internal factors
Abramson et al., 1989 depressed people attribute success to external factors and failure to
internal
Zuckerman (1979) SSB depends on the desire to maintain self esteem
Miller and Ross (1975) SSB are rational not based on self-esteem enhancement
What is social influence?
Social influence is defined as change in an individual’s thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or
behaviors that results from interaction with another individual or a group.
What is social identity theory? Give empirical research.
This theory addresses the ways in which people perceive and categorize themselves.
According to social identity theory, individuals form self-conceptions that are based on two
parts: 1) personal or self identity and 2) collective identity. Personal or self identity refers to
our unique, personal qualities such as our beliefs, our abilities and skills, etc. The collective
self includes all the qualities that arise from being part of a society, culture, family, groups,
clubs, etc. For example, you may identify yourself as a protestant, male, football player, who
is very popular with people at school.
Tajfel et al.,1971- the minimal group paradigm Klee vs Kandinsky study
Sherif (1961) Robbers Cave experiment
What are the theories of stereotype formation?
Social cognitive theories
Cohen 1981- a videotape of a woman having dinner with her husband.
Fiske and Dyer (1985) stereotype formation begins with the learning of independent schema
elements.
Bargh et al.,1996 Automatic stereotype activation
Hamilton and Gifford (1976) Illusory correlation
Social Identity Theory
Haslam and Turner (1992) Australians’ perception of Americans
Social Representation Theory (Moscovici 1984)
What is social learning theory? Give empirical research
Bandura’s Social Learning Theory posits that people learn from one another, via observation,
imitation, and modeling. The theory has often been called a bridge between behaviorist and
cognitive learning theories because it encompasses attention, memory, and motivation.
Bandura (1965) Bobo doll experiment
What is compliance? Give empirical research.
Compliance is the tendency to agree to do what is requested especially if there are certain
factors present: a feeling that there is give and take, believability, likeability, limited supply
and positive feedback from others.
The foot in the door technique
Freedman and Fraser (1966) Drive carefully sign
Sherman (1980) 3 hours collecting for American Cancer Research
Meineri and Gueguen (2008) energy conservation project in France
Lowballing
Burger and Cornelius (2003) donating money
Palak et al.,1980 energy saving
What is conformity? Give empirical research.
Conformity can be defined as adjusting one's behavior or thinking to match those of other
people or a group standard.
Sherif (1935)- autokinetic effect study
Asch (1951) line judgment experiment
Abrams et al.,1990 ingroup vs outgroup conformity
What are the factors influencing conformity?
Ø Informational Influence (Sherif 1935)
Ø Normative influence (Asch 1951)
Ø Dual process model
Ø Referent information influence Abrams et al.,1990
Ø Dispositional (Hogg and Vaughan 2008) and situational factors (previously motioned
studies)
Ø Risky shift and group polarization (Wallach et al.,1962)
•
Social comparison theory
•
Social identity theory
Ø Groupthink (Janis 1972)
What is obedience? Give empirical research.
Obedience occurs when you change your opinions, judgments, or actions because someone in
a position of authority told you to
Milgram (1974) Electrical Shock study
Zimbardo (1973) Stanford Prison Experiment
What is culture and cultural norms?
Culture: Characteristics which arise in a society and the people which inhabit that society.
These characteristics pertain specifically to areas such as the arts (music, dance, theatre,
painting, sculpture, etc.), cuisine, morals, values, and traditions, among other things.
Cultural norms: Cultural norms are basically rules (either implicit or explicit) that govern a
society’s views on what is acceptable or unacceptable. These rules dictate how people
interact with one another on a social level.
Triandis (2002) objective culture and subjective culture
What are cultural dimensions? Give empirical research.
Hofstede (1984, 2001)
Individualism/collectivism
Power distance
Uncertainty avoidance
Masculinity/femininity
Long term short term orientation(Confucian dynamism)
Pertova et al (2007) foot in the door technique
Bond and Smith (1996) a meta analysis study of 133 conformity studies using Asch paradigm
Chen et al.,2005 time orientation in bicultural participants
What is emic and etic approach in research? Give examples.
Etic approach used to establish what all human beings have in common
World Health Organization (WHO) (1983)- study on depression in Switzerland, Canada,
Japan and Iran
Emic approach is focus on a phenomenon in a specific culture
Manson et al.,1985- Hopi illness