What makes research unethical? Is it how the study treats participants or the potential harm the findings can cause society? We place value on information that has been demonstrated in research and often accept whatever 'science says' as the truth. However, even scientific research has its limitations, and we must look at it critically to understand these. In this article, we'll explore the issues and debates highlighted in social influence research.
Fig 1 - It's important that we remain critical of psychological research.
Issues and Debates of Social Influence Research
We can look at social influence research through the lens of ethical and social issues. Researchers have the responsibility to protect the subjects of their research. However, social influence research often requires deception to arrive at valid findings. This can introduce an ethical dilemma as it doesn't allow informed consent. Moreover, researchers have the social responsibility to anticipate the implications of their research on society.
The famous Minnesota Twin study, which found a strong link between intelligence and genes, has been later used as an argument to justify social injustice and the disparity of opportunities between classes and races.
The study has since been heavily criticised for conflict of interest and flawed methodology.
Another important concern in social influence research is its generalisability. Often, the studies are conducted on male participants from Western cultures, which introduces potential gender and culture biases.
Philosophical debates can help us better understand the implications of social influence research. Examples of these debates are reductionism vs holism, nomothetic vs ideographic, free will vs determinism and nature vs nurture debates.
Discuss Ethical Issues in Social Influence Research
The key ethical issues that we need to consider when evaluating research include:
- Informed consent,
- Protection from harm,
- Deception,
- Confidentiality,
- Right to withdraw,
- Debrief.
If you are aware that you're participating in a study of obedience and that your behaviour will be measured, you likely will not behave the same as you would if you didn't know. Therefore, many experiments studying social influences like obedience use deception. If participants are not aware that their obedience is measured, this gives the researchers a chance to investigate how they would naturally act.
One key study that investigated obedience was Milgram's electric shock experiment (1961). In Milgram's study, the participants were unaware of the true aim of the experiment and were deceived into thinking they were administering real electric shocks to another person. Due to the deception, participants could not give proper informed consent. They agreed to take part in research on learning, not on obeying cruel orders.
It can be argued that deception is necessary for studies like Milgram's. Interviews with participants from Milgram's study showed that the participants that saw through the deception and did not think they were actually shocking anyone were much more obedient.
The participants were also not protected from psychological harm. Many participants who thought they were causing severe pain to another person became intensely distressed. And even though withdrawal from the research was possible, this was made difficult for them by the experimenters.
To minimise the distress caused by deception, Milgram did debrief his participants after the experiment. Participants were told they didn't actually shock anyone to prevent later distress after the experiment ended.
Currently, there are specific ethical codes that psychologists are bound to adhere to when conducting research. However, this wasn't always the case. When Milgram conducted his experiments, there were no clear ethical codes for psychological research.
Milgram's work had important implications for society after World War II. It provided credibility for the claim that some Nazis made when justifying their actions. Many claimed they were just following orders, so they shouldn't be held accountable for their atrocities.
Gender and Culture Bias Issues
Gender bias in psychology occurs when gender differences are either exaggerated or minimised.
In social influence research, many key studies, including Asch's conformity study and Milgram's obedience study, used male samples. This could introduce beta bias into social influence research.
Beta bias occurs when the gender differences are minimised; in the case of social influence studies, findings from entirely male samples have been generalised to the population without accounting for potential gender differences in behaviour.
Similarly, generalising findings from studies conducted in Western, individualistic cultures can introduce cultural bias, affecting research studying collective behaviour.
Western studies on social loafing suggest that when people work on tasks in groups, they tend to exert less effort than when they work alone.
On the other hand, research conducted in China, a collectivist culture, has found that people who endorse collectivist attitudes are less likely to engage in social loafing.1 This suggests that culture can influence collective behaviour.
Fig. 2 - Culture can influence how we work in groups. People that endorse collectivist values are less likely to engage in social loafing.
Reductionism and Nomothetic Issues in Psychology
We can see evidence of reductionism in Asch's study of conformity. Taking a reductionistic approach and studying conformity in one specific setting, and using an artificial task allowed Asch to test his predictions about a very complex social phenomenon in a lab.
Asch concluded that most people conform to the group, even if the group is clearly wrong, because of the discomfort of standing out. This study arguably reduced conformity to compliance and the motivation to fit in.
Reductionism in psychology occurs when complex behaviours are explained in simplistic ways. On the other side of the spectrum from reductionism is holism, a perspective that accounts for multiple factors influencing behaviours and the relationships between them.
However, in the real world, we know that conformity can take many forms, from compliance through identification to internalisation, where the person shares the group's position both publicly and privately. Would Asch's participants still agree with the group if the group was no longer around? Moreover, the situation and their attitudes towards the group, personality, or culture can also affect their decision to conform.
In Asch's study, participants conformed to other group members on a visual judgement task, which likely did not matter to them. In real life, conformity can range from situations that don't matter strongly to us, like conforming with your friend's decision to order take out, to deeply important topics like world views, political and religious attitudes or career choices.
Social influence research is also typically nomothetic. It attempts to create general theories and laws of social behaviour that apply to any individual. It doesn't recognise each individual's personal experiences that could uniquely influence their decisions to act a certain way. Instead, they seek to identify the common situational and dispositional factors that predict behaviour.
The nomothetic approach aims to identify universal principles of behaviour. In contrast, the ideographic approach considers each individual's behaviour as uniquely motivated.
Free Will vs Determinism Debate in Social Influence Research
The free will and determinism debate concerns whether we can make free choices or whether situational and dispositional factors determine our actions.
Both Milgram's agentic theory of obedience and Adorno's Authoritarian Personality theory promote a deterministic perspective of obedience.
Milgram proposed that when given an order, we go through an agentic shift and lose the sense of personal responsibility for our behaviour.
On the other hand, Adorno suggested that certain personality characteristics developed from past experiences can make people more susceptible to obedience.
Milgram argued that obedience is determined by situational factors, while Adorno highlighted the role of personality. However, both theories can be considered deterministic, as they don't account for the possibility of free will in their models of behaviour.
Even resistance to obedience is not described as an act of free will but rather as a result of weaker social pressure caused by the presence of other dissenters to the majority.
The people who are more likely to resist despite the situational factors are thought to do so because of their personality (e.g. high internal locus of control), which makes them less affected by social influence. The discourse around factors related to social influence sees people as passive, without the ability to make choices independently of the influences.
Nature vs Nurture in Resistance to Social Influence
Do others influence us because we've learnt to be this way, or is it part of our nature? In social influence research, the influence of nature is unclear, as most studies side with the nurture side of the debate.
The nature vs nurture debate in psychology asks whether our behaviour is due to environmental influences like how we've been brought up or biological factors such as our genes.
For example, Milgram's agentic theory of obedience proposes that we easily undergo the agentic shift as we've been brought up in a way that promotes obedience to authority. Similarly, Adorno's theory of authoritarian personality argues that the personal disposition to obey is developed through past experiences of growing up with strict and punitive parents.
One dispositional factor linked to resistance to social influence is one's locus of control, which is the degree to which a person believes they are in control of their behaviour and outcomes in life.
This factor has also been linked to how we are nurtured. It is believed that our past experiences lead us to develop a certain locus of control rather than it's something we're born with.
Fig. 3 - Social influence research supports the influence of nurture on social behaviour.
Issues and debates of social influence research - Key takeaways
- Ethical issues relevant to social influence research can involve deception, informed consent, protection from harm, and the right to withdraw and debrief, as we discussed in the example of Milgram's experiment.
- Social influence research can be affected by beta bias and cultural bias, as it's typically conducted with male participants from Western countries.
- Moreover, social influence research tends to take a reductionistic and nomothetic approach to study social behaviours.
- Many social influence theories and studies assume a deterministic understanding of human behaviour.
- In social influence research, the influence of nature is unclear, as most studies side with the nurture side of the debate.
References
- Earley, C. P. (1989). Social Loafing and Collectivism: A Comparison of the United States and the People's Republic of China. Administrative Science Quarterly, 34 (4), 565–581. doi:10.2307/2393567
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