PSYC20009 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Stanford Prison Experiment, Walter Mischel, Asch Conformity Experiments

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14 Jun 2018
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Lecture 11 - Monday 9 October 2017
ANAT20006 - HUMAN STRUCTURE & FUNCTION
LECTURE 12
PERSONS & SITUATIONS
TODAY
The !‘person-situation !debate’
Stability!and contextual dependence of personality
Person-situation transactions
PERSONS & SITUATIONS
Within personality!and social psychology, personality psychologists!have tended to focus!more
!on the!person, while social!psychologists have tended to focus more on the!situation, when
!describing or explaining !behaviour !
Both seem relevant
Eg. the ‘stressful experience‘ [week !10]
→ Kurt Lewin’s (1936) ‘field theory’:
Behaviour is a function of:
1. The person (Eg. needs, beliefs, values, abilities, personality)
2. The environment, especially the social environment (or the ‘psychological field’); no
behaviour happens in a vacuum.
Post WWII, a shift in focus from dispositional factors to powerful situational drivers of behaviour
occurred
Eg. social influence (week 5)
Milgram’s (1963) obedience paradigm
Achs’s (1951) conformity experiment
STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT
→ Zimbardo
Can behaviour of prisoners and guards be explained in terms of their circumstances rather than
personality?
24 college students randomly assigned to be either guards or prisoners for a 2 week ‘simulation
experiment’. Guards were given uniforms, prisoners were ‘arrested’ at their homes and ‘charged’
with armed robbery and brought to the fake jail.
The results were total chaos, the prisoners because agitated and tried to revolt, the guards became
sadistic in their efforts to control the prisoners, etc.
The study was aborted on day 6 despite meaning to last for 14.
This demonstrated ‘the power of a bad situation to overwhelm the personalities and good
upbringing of even the best and brightest among us’ (Zimbardo et al., 2017)
THE RISE OF SITUATIONISM
“Personality and assessment” by Walter Mischel (1968)
Two key claims:
1. Personality is a weak predictor of behaviour (r approx = .30)
2. Behaviour varies considerably over situations
Conclusions: The concept of a personality trait is “untenable”. Behavior is largely driven by
situations.
Impact of the reputation of personality:!
“Many researchers moved on to study different constructs, such as goal units, achievement
motivation or self-concept constructs. Other researchers continued to study constructs that were
operationally indistinguishable from traits, but called them something different.”
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Lecture 11 - Monday 9 October 2017
ANAT20006 - HUMAN STRUCTURE & FUNCTION
“As one reviewer put
it a few years later,
personality
psychology can be
spelled in one of two
ways: clinical or
social” (McAdams,
1997)
Mischel’s “great
contribution to
psychology” was to
show that there is “no
such thing as a table
personality
trait” (Thayler, 2008)
Growth of pro-
situation/anti-
personality “spin off”
theories..
→ Ross (1977): “The fundamental Attribution Error” (aka correspondence bias; Gilbert & Malone,
1995)
People mistakenly explain behaviour in terms of dispositional factors rather than to
dispositional factors.
Eg. impressions of the Milgram obedience study...
Participants “assumed that the particular subject’s obedience reflected his distinguishing
personal dispositions rather than the potency of situational pressures and
constraints” (Ross, 1977).
→ Shweder (1975): “The conceptual Similarity Critique”
“How people classify” is mistaken as “how to classify people”
Coherence of personality traits (Discovered by factor analysis (week 10)) simply reflect
judgements of conceptual similarity.
So ‘ample’, ‘bulky’ and ‘large’ “go together” not because they similarly describe a target,
but because they similarly describe a concept.
SITUATIONISM EVALUATED
Claim 1: Personality is a weak predictor of behaviour (r approx = .30)
Correct: traits rarely predict behaviour much beyond r = .30
But that traits are imperfect predictors does not mean that personality is ‘untenable’ or that
situations are better predictors. In fact, effects of situations on behaviour turned out to be, on
average, no stronger than that of traits (Funder * Ozer, 1983; Sherman et al., 2015)
What is a ‘weak’ or ‘strong’ correlation? Is a correlation of .30 weak? How do we interpret any
effect size?
Guidelines tend to be arbitrary, Eg. Cohen (1988):
Small: r = .10
Medium: r = .30
Large: r = .50
→ Richard et al. (2003)
Summarised average effect sizes across 25,000 studies in of 8 million people in personality and
psychology.
Diagram page below.
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Lecture 11 - Monday 9 October 2017
ANAT20006 - HUMAN STRUCTURE & FUNCTION
Claim 2: Behaviour varies
considerably over
situations.
Of course.
“One doesn’t have sex in a
church or read a book
during a movie or sleep
during a football game.”
“If these are examples of
what situationists] mean
when they say that
behaviour is primarily
determined by situations,
then they are correct, and
we have never heard of a
trait theorist who
disagreed.” (Rorer &
Widiger, 1983)
→ Gordon Allport (1937, 1961)
“traits do not apply to all sorts of situations...”
“We all know that individuals may be courteous, kind and generous in company or business
relations, and at the same time be rude, cruel and selfish at home.”
Traits describe the disposition to exhibit reaction R under situation S (Tellegen, 1981)
THE FLEXIBILITY & STABILITY OF BEHAVIOUR
A “straw man?” Cross-situational!flexibility of!behaviour is!not incompatible with!trait theory
But lingering!doubts...
Is this paradoxical?
“Continuity with change?”
Is there any cross-situational consistency of behaviour?
How to formally incorporate cross-situational!flexibility of!behaviour!within personality theory?
CONSISTENCY OF BEHAVIOUR...
→ Mischel (1968) argued that behaviour on one occasion was unrelated to behvaiuor on a second
occasion; therefore personality cannot exist.
But such single instances of behaviour cannot be measured reliably.
Aggregation across measurement
occasions increases reliabiltiy,
which is requisities for accessing
consistency/stability.
This is why we use many items
on a personality questionnaire,
not just a single item for each
trait.
→ Epstein (1979) studied consistency
of behaviour as a fucntion of
aggregation across four diary studies.
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Document Summary

Today: the person-situation debate", stability and contextual dependence of personality, person-situation transactions. Persons & situations: within personality and social psychology, personality psychologists have tended to focus more on the person, while social psychologists have tended to focus more on the situation, when describing or explaining behaviour, both seem relevant, eg. the stressful experience [week 10] Kurt lewin(cid:282)s (1"36) (cid:281)field theory(cid:282): behaviour is a function of, 1. The person (eg. needs, beliefs, values, abilities, personality: 2. Zimbardo: can behaviour of prisoners and guards be explained in terms of their circumstances rather than personality, 24 college students randomly assigned to be either guards or prisoners for a 2 week simulation experiment". The rise of situationism: personality and assessment by walter mischel (1"6 , two key claims, 1. Personality is a weak predictor of behaviour (r approx = . 30: 2. Behaviour varies considerably over situations: conclusions: the concept of a personality trait is untenable .

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