H567/02 Section B - Social psychology

People within social situations

Social psychology investigates how behaviour, thoughts and feelings are influenced by other people and the social context.

An authority does not need to stand beside a person to influence them: an expected judgement or an established group rule can matter. A social norm is an expectation about acceptable behaviour in a group or culture. A role carries expectations associated with a position, such as teacher or employee. Obedience means following an authority's instruction; conformity involves adjusting to group expectations. They can occur together, but a direct order differs from pressure to fit in.

A social explanation asks what changes in the situation could change behaviour. A worker may comply because a supervisor appears legitimate and colleagues accept the instruction, rather than because the worker is always submissive. Social psychologists also investigate helping: perceived need, the presence of others and cultural expectations can influence whether someone acts.

This is often a situational explanation, but it does not require every person to react identically. The same instruction can meet obedience, refusal or a report of wrongdoing. Personal values and interpretation can interact with pressure. Nor does situational influence establish that people have no responsibility or choice: explaining a pressure differs from excusing an action.

Evidence for situational influence

Research can reveal a mismatch between how people expect to behave and what they do under social pressure.

In Milgram (1963), 40 adult male volunteers were placed in a standardised Yale laboratory situation. Each believed he was administering increasingly severe shocks to a learner under an experimenter's instruction. The learner received no actual shocks. Twenty-six participants continued to the maximum labelled 450 volts, despite signs of distress in many participants. The combination of an apparently legitimate authority, a prestigious setting and repeated instructions illustrates how a social situation can sustain obedience even when someone is uncomfortable.

The finding supports the importance of the situation; it does not show that 65% of all people would obey any authority. The reported condition had no manipulated independent variable, so it did not isolate which element caused obedience. The volunteers, historical setting and task also limit generalisation. Recognising that limitation connects the area to the experimental-control and sampling principles in Research Methods.

Bocchiaro et al. (2012) gave students an opportunity to support an unethical proposed study, refuse, or report the request. Most obeyed, while some disobeyed or blew the whistle; anticipated behaviour differed from actual behaviour. This extends the social question from obedience to resistance. Its measurement of personality and social values also tests individual explanations rather than assuming the situation is sufficient.

The area extends beyond authority. Levine et al. (2001) compared everyday helping in cities across different countries, finding substantial variation. This gives cultural context a place in explanations of helping. City-level comparisons are not randomly assigned cultural experiments: differences in pace of life or economic circumstances may accompany the cultural differences. Neither national stereotypes nor predictions about every resident follow from a city's average.

What social explanations achieve and miss

Evaluate a social explanation by linking a research feature to what we can learn from it.

One strength is that standardised social situations make behaviour observable and comparable. Milgram used a consistent task and instructions, allowing obedience to be recorded as the level reached rather than inferred only from what participants said they would do. This matters because socially desirable predictions may conceal actual compliance. However, standardisation alone does not establish a causal effect: the reported condition lacked an independently varied social factor.

A further strength is practical relevance. If pressure comes partly from roles and institutions, changing reporting procedures or authority practices may reduce harmful compliance. This is more useful than treating wrongdoing as an unchangeable trait. Field research such as Levine's also investigates behaviour in everyday settings, improving relevance beyond a single laboratory.

A weakness is that a purely situational account can underplay differences between people. Some participants resisted the same pressure. Values, previous experience and how an instruction is interpreted may explain variation. An improved account would specify how person and situation interact, rather than choosing one as the sole cause.