Concern for people
438 U2 AOS1: Interpersonal behaviour
Team leadership
style
Country club style
Middle-of-the-road
style
Impoverished style
Authoritarian style
Concern for productivity
Figure 15.4 Blake and Mouton’s managerial grid. Research suggests
that groups working with an authoritarian style of management are
less happy and productive than those working with a democratic team
approach.
Country club leadership
(high people/low productivity)
O
C
N
U
Authoritarian leadership
(high productivity/low people)
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Description
A
P
This style shows
most concern about the needs and feelings of members
D
of the team.
TEManagers assume that as long as team members are happy
C
andE
secure then productivity will follow. This creates a work environment
R
that
R is fun and relaxed, but production suffers because of lack of direction
Table 15.3 The five major leadership styles
Leadership style
As predicted, the democratic group
was happier and more productive
than the other two. The authoritarian
group was productive, but only when
the leader was actively managing the
process. The laissez-faire group was
low in productivity and its members
were less happy than members of either
of the other groups.
Another study, by Blake and
Mouton (1964), described a ‘managerial
grid’ with two dimensions: concern
for people’s well-being and concern
for productivity. This enabled the
researchers to identify five major styles
of leadership and management.
and control.
This style is also known as ‘produce or perish’ leadership. Managers
believe that employees are just a means to an end. Employee needs are
less important than the need for an efficient and productive workplace.
Authoritarian leaders are very strict, have rigid work rules, policies and
procedures, and use coercive power to motivate employees.
Impoverished leadership
(low productivity/low people)
This style is ineffective. Such management results in a workplace that
is disorganised, workers who are dissatisfied and a workforce lacking in
harmony.
Middle-of-the-road leadership
(medium production/medium people)
This management style is a balance between the two dimensions. It looks
like a good compromise, but in fact neither well-being of people nor
productivity is achieved to a satisfactory level. Leaders using this style
settle for average performance.
Team leadership
(high production/high people)
This is the ideal managerial style that values production needs and the
needs of workers equally. It creates a team environment based on trust
and respect, which leads to high satisfaction and motivation, and results
in high productivity.
Figure 15.5 Country club leadership tends to result in a workplace that is happy but has low
productivity because of a lack of direction and control from the leader.
440 U2 AOS1: Interpersonal behaviour
Method: participants
The prison superintendent (high status) was Dr Phillip Zimbardo.
The guards (high status) were given:
-- military-style uniforms and reflective sunglasses to disguise their individuality and
cause them to have fewer inhibitions about the way they behave (this process is called
deindividuation)
-- whistles and batons to emphasise their authority.
The guards were instructed:
-- to impose their will on the prisoners using psychological intimidation
-- not to use physical violence on prisoners
-- to blindfold prisoners when they needed to leave the prison to use the toilet
-- that they were allowed to touch the prisoners with their batons, but not hit them.
The prisoners (low status) were given:
-- short, sack-like smocks to wear, with no underwear
-- hats made of ladies’ stockings to cover their hair
-- a prison number
-- a chain around the ankles, to ensure that they could never forget their status.
The prisoners were instructed:
-- to obey all instructions from the guards
-- to ask permission to use the toilet, smoke a cigarette or write a letter
-- to refer to themselves by their prison number, not their name; together with the
uniform this meant that deindividuation applied to the prisoners, with the effect of
reducing their sense of self.
C
P
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G
A
P
D
TE
O
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N
U
Figure 15.7 Student
volunteers were
allocated to be guards
or prisoners in the
experiment.
E
RR
S
F
O
RO
CH 15: Social influences on the individual 441
Method: the setting
The setting was the basement of the Psychology Department at Stanford University,
which had:
-- no windows
-- cells, 2 m x 3 m in size, opening off a corridor which was boarded up at each end
-- opposite the cells, a cupboard of 60 cm x 60 cm x 213 cm, tall enough to stand up in,
used as the solitary confinement cell.
Method: procedure
1 In the early hours of a Sunday morning, each prisoner was picked up at his home by
genuine police officers, charged, warned of his legal rights, spread-eagled against the
police car, searched and handcuffed, often in full view of amazed neighbours.
2 The police car then raced to the Palo Alto police station with sirens at full blast.
3 Each prisoner was taken inside, fingerprinted, blindfolded and left to wait.
4 The prisoners were transported in a prison van to the Stanford University ‘jail’, where
they were interviewed by the ‘superintendent’ who told them of the serious nature of
their offences.
5 The prisoners were stripped naked and sprayed with a de-lousing agent.
6 The prisoners were issued with prison clothing: a smock and a stocking hat.
7 The guards worked eight-hour shifts with three guards in each shift. Prisoners were
three to each cell.
8 At 2.30 a.m. on the first night, and several times in each shift afterwards, the prisoners
were wakened with blasting whistles and shouts to attend roll-call.
9 Guards administered punishments, such as making prisoners do push-ups and perform
humiliating acts; for example, walking like Frankenstein’s monster or telling other
prisoners ‘I love you’.
P
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What happened?
U
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RR
-- Everything went smoothly for the first day and night, as all participants adjusted
to their roles. On the second day, the prisoners protested and rebelled. The guards
quickly stopped the rebellion by spraying freezing carbon dioxide (dry ice) from fire
extinguishers on the prisoners.
-- The guards then entered each cell, stripped the prisoners of their clothes, removed the
beds from the cells and forced the leaders of the rebellion into solitary confinement.
From this time on, the level of harassment of the prisoners by the guards increased and
psychological abuse intensified.
-- One of the cells was now labelled a ‘privilege cell’, and the prisoners least involved in
the rebellion were given their clothes and beds, allowed to wash and clean their teeth,
and given special food to eat in front of the other prisoners who received no food.
This resulted in breaking down the solidarity of the prisoner group.
-- After a few hours, the guards took some of these ‘good’ prisoners and exchanged them
for ‘bad’ prisoners who were put in the ‘good’ cell, which unsettled all the prisoners
who now thought that some of them must be informers. The prisoners became
distrustful of each other. (This tactic is used by real guards in real prisons to break
prisoner solidarity.)
-- The rebellion produced greater solidarity among the guards who now saw the
prisoners as trouble-makers. The guards now even refused to allow prisoners to go
442 U2 AOS1: Interpersonal behaviour
--
---
--
--
--
Figure 15.8 The
experiment became
so real that emotional
distress led to it ending
prematurely.
to the toilet, making them use a bucket in their cell and sometimes even refusing to
allow them to empty the bucket.
When one prisoner began to suffer severe emotional distress less than 36 hours into
the experiment, the warden and superintendent would not let him leave. Eventually
he became so distressed that for a short time they realised that they had gone too far
with the ‘reality’ of the prison and allowed him to withdraw.
Over the next two days, two more prisoners were similarly released. One was so
emotionally distressed that he developed a psychosomatic rash over his whole body.
On Day 3, friends and relatives of the prisoners were allowed to visit, so the cells were
cleaned and polished, and the prisoners were showered, shaved and well fed to create
a good impression. Some of the parents complained, but none insisted that their son
should be released.
Next, there was a rumour of an attempt to escape. This never happened, but the
guards were so angered by the inconvenience they suffered that they increased the
abuse further, making prisoners clean out toilets with their bare hands.
By Day 5, the guards had fallen into three categories; about one-third in each:
-- tough but fair guards who followed prison rules
-- good guys who did little favours for the prisoners and never punished them
-- aggressive and cruel guards who thought of creative ways to humiliate prisoners.
On Day 6, the project was abandoned, less than half-way through the proposed 14day experiment. This occurred for two reasons:
-- Zimbardo and his colleagues realised, through watching closed-circuit television
footage, that the guards were increasing their abuse of prisoners during the night
when they thought no one was watching.
-- Christina Maslach, a recent doctoral graduate from Stanford who was dating Phillip
Zimbardo at the time, came to the ‘prison’. She took one look at the degraded
prisoners and soundly abused Zimbardo, even telling him that if this was a true
indication of the sort of person he was, there would be no hope for their relationship.
(They have now been married for over 39 years.)
P
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Criticisms of the experiment
-- Violation of the no harm principle: Although counselling was offered to participants,
some were still reporting negative effects 40 years later.
-- Violation of withdrawal rights: Note the pressure that was put on the ‘inmate’ who
became distressed and wished to withdraw.
Some good did come out of this experiment, however: it caused a government
review of the way in which youth detention was carried out in the United States.
Further, one of the participants was so concerned with what he had seen happen
that he changed his university course and became a forensic psychologist. He has
spent the last 35 years working to improve conditions for prisoners in United States
jails.
444 U2 AOS1: Interpersonal behaviour
Figure 15.9 Nazi Party
rallies demonstrated
obedience to authority.
In 1961, an American social psychologist at Yale University, Stanley Milgram, set
out to discover whether there was a special characteristic that made Germans more
obedient to authority than other races. This was a popular theory in America and
Europe in the years after the Second World War.
S
F
O
RO
P
E
Milgram’s experimentAG
P
D
Aim
TE
C
The aim was to discover
E whether participants would obey an authority figure and
R
carry out actions
that
R caused severe pain to another person.
O
C
Background
N
U
Participants were told that there had been little research on the use of punishment as a
method of teaching and that this was to be a valuable scientific experiment that could
be of great benefit to society.
Method: participants
The participants were 40 male volunteers, aged 20 to 50 years. Their occupations
ranged from company owners to truck drivers to students and the unemployed.
Milgram paid them US$4.50 for the hour of participation. This may not seem much,
but in 1961 this amount would have covered the week’s grocery bill for a family in
Australia. Participants were told that they would keep the money even if they did not
complete the experiment.
Method: materials
The ‘teacher’ sat at a control panel with 30 switches and several imposing dials and
lights. The switches were labelled with their power output: from 15 to 450 volts in
15-volt increments.
The ‘learner’, in another room but within earshot of the teacher, was strapped into
a chair with his arms bound to the arms of the chair and electrodes strapped to his
bare wrists.
CH 15: Social influences on the individual 445
Method: procedure
The ‘learner’ was a confederate of Milgram, an
accountant named Mr Wallace, who had agreed to
play the part of the learner.
When Mr Wallace and the participant entered
the room they were introduced to each other as
participants and then drew a piece of paper from
a hat to see who would be the learner and who
would be the teacher. The draw was fixed so that
the participant always became the teacher.
The ‘experimenter’ (Mr Williams, a biology
teacher who had volunteered for the job) then
took the teacher and Mr Wallace to another room,
strapped Mr Wallace into the chair and showed the teacher what the shocks would be
like by giving him a 45-volt genuine shock from another machine. The shock stung
quite a bit!
Next, the teacher returned to the desk with the shock machine and asked Mr
Wallace a series of questions. When Mr Wallace (deliberately) gave the wrong answer,
the teacher was required to say, ‘That is incorrect, the correct answer is … This will
be at 15 volts’, then press the switch to give the shock.
Each wrong answer, or refusal to answer, earned another shock at the next higher
level of intensity.
Williams, the experimenter, used some carefully worded prods to make the
teacher continue whenever he or she wanted to stop. These were used one at a time in
the following sequence:
-- Prod 1: ‘Please continue, please go on!’
-- Prod 2: ‘The experiment requires that you continue!’
-- Prod 3: ‘It is absolutely essential that you continue!’
-- Prod 4: ‘You have no other choice, you must go on!’
If the teacher asked at any stage if the shocks could harm the learner, the researcher
said:
-- Prod 5: ‘Although the shocks may be painful, there is no permanent tissue damage so
please go on.’
If the teacher said that the learner did not want to go on:
-- Prod 6: ‘Whether the learner likes it or not, you must go on until he has learned all
the word pairs correctly, so please go on!’
In the first experiment, the learner did not make any complaints until the 300volt level and at that stage he simply pounded his fist on the wall. After this he did
not give any answers and pounded the wall again at 315 volts, after which he gave no
answers at all and remained silent.
C
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Figure 15.10 Stanley
Milgram with his
experimental ‘teaching
machine’
452 U2 AOS1: Interpersonal behaviour
Among the most significant moderator variables, Smith and Bond found the
following:
-- normative influence
-- culture
-- informational influence
-- group size
-- unanimity
-- deindividuation
-- social loafing.
Normative influence
Normative influence simply refers to a person’s tendency to go along with the group
so that they will fit in and gain the approval of other group members.
It has been found that if group members are very similar to each other (such as
in age, race and gender), there will be greater normative influence, increasing the
pressure towards conformity. Since almost all studies replicating Asch’s experiments
have used college students as participants, this has been a significant factor.
If other group members are people from whom the participant wants to gain
approval—possibly teachers, family members or friends—the tendency towards
conformity is further increased.
S
F
O
RO
P
E
Gthe level of conformity has been found to
In the United States,
A
Psince the 1950s. In studies undertaken in Asian
be decreasing
D
E the level of conformity has been found by some
countries,
T
C
Estudies to be significantly higher than in Western cultures.
Culture
R
R
O
C
N
U
Figure 15.16
Conformity is higher
in a collectivist culture
where the individual is
less important than the
group.
It has been argued that the reason for this lies in the
differences between individualist and collectivist cultures.
-- An individualist culture is one in which individuality and
independence are highly valued, and it is considered important for
people to achieve their individual goals.
-- A collectivist culture is one in which the individual’s goals are
less important than group goals, and each person is encouraged to
consider the needs of the group to be more important than their
individual requirements.
Certainly there is a tendency towards individualist culture in
Western societies and collectivist culture in Eastern societies, but
there could be other explanations for the difference in the level
of conformity. For example, in Eastern cultures it is considered
impolite to point out another person’s mistakes, even indirectly.
Therefore there is a tendency to conform in order for the other
group members to save face (Takano & Osaka 1999).
Informational influence
Informational influence refers to the increased tendency to conform when the
participant wants to provide a correct response but is not certain of their ability to
do so, believing that others are more capable of making accurate judgments. This is
a very common cause of conformity. For example, if you are cooking a new dish for
CH 15: Social influences on the individual 453
dinner and you are not certain which spices to use, you could ask a friend’s opinion.
If you believe your friend has good judgment in this area, you conform and follow his
or her advice.
Group size
Asch varied the number of confederates from one to 15. He found that conformity
rates increased to a maximum with three or four confederates, and then remained
approximately the same.
40
Percentage of trials
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
1
P
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A
P
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TE
2
3
4-9
Number of confederates in group
Unanimity
Figure 15.17 The
percentage of trials where
participants conformed
with unanimous majorities
(various sizes); conformity
reached a maximum with
a group size of four, then
remained fairly constant.
10-15
S
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If one of the confederates did not conform with the group, but gave the correct
answer, conformity rate dropped from the average of four out of 12 to one out of 12.
Asch believed that there are three factors influencing this significant difference:
1 The participant observed that the majority did not criticise or make fun of the
dissenting confederate.
2 There was now social pressure in two directions—from the dissenter as well as the
majority.
3 The dissenter increased the participant’s belief that the majority was wrong.
O
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N
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Deindividuation
We came across deindividuation earlier in this
chapter when Phillip Zimbardo deliberately
removed the individual identifying characteristics
of the Stanford prison guards and prisoners.
A form of deindividuation, in which the
participant cannot be identified by other group
members, has also been used in variations of the
Asch experiment, when groups of participants
were placed in individual booths and given false
feedback about the responses of the other group
members. There is evidence that the level of
conformity is higher in face-to-face groups than
in simulated groups (Bond & Smith 1996).
Figure 15.18 The deindividuation of Ku Klux Klan members is
complete when they don their threatening costume.
CH 15: Social influences on the individual 455
Groups influencing others
Peer pressure
We saw, at the beginning of this chapter, that a group is two or more people who
have a common goal and who interact and influence each other. In the sections on
status, power, leadership, obedience and conformity, we have seen many ways in
which this influence may occur.
Of great interest to social psychologists, and often reported in the media, is the
influence of the peer group—a person’s friends and acquaintances of similar age,
interests and social standing—on the behaviour of individuals. Peer pressure is often
discussed in terms of the way it applies to people in their teenage years. This is where
it becomes most apparent and powerful, as the influence of friends and acquaintances
strengthens; but peer pressure really continues to apply to us all throughout our
lifetime.
Some of the ways in which peer pressure may have influence are:
-- Direct pressure: Someone—or more than one person—tells you what you should be
doing.
-- Indirect pressure: Peer pressure is not always obvious. It is common for a group of
friends to have particular ways of behaving when they are together. When you are
with different groups of friends, you possibly do different things; for example, you
may only play video games when you are with certain friends, or you may be more
likely to study with other friends.
-- Individual pressure: This is the pressure coming from inside
yourself to avoid feeling different from the group. It means
that sometimes you may do things to make sure you feel like
the rest of the group.
The more a person lacks self-confidence, the more likely
they are to feel the effects of peer pressure.
Much of the attention given to adolescent peer groups
appears to assume that peer pressure will push a young person
to behave in a fashion contrary to the wishes of their parents.
In fact, Noller and Callan (1991) reviewed all available
research and discovered that most adolescents had ‘harmonious
relationships with their parents’, and also that when there were
significant parent–adolescent problems, these had usually been
present well before the child reached adolescence; or that the
parenting style or parental attitudes were equally significant in
contributing to the relationship breakdown.
Researchers generally agree that peer pressure contributes to
behaviour in four main areas:
-- social activities—parties, concerts, sporting activities
-- relationships—relations with parents and whether an
individual has a boyfriend or girlfriend
-- group norms—extra-curricular activities, style of dress,
Figure 15.20 Sky-diving is risk-taking behaviour
language used (especially slang terms)
more common in younger people and early
-- risk-taking behaviours.
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adulthood than in older people.