EXPALIN HOW PRINCIPLES THAT DEFINE THE SOCIOCULTURAL LEVEL OF ANALYSIS MAY BE DEMONSTRATED IN RESEARCH

EXPLAIN HOW PRINCIPLES THAT DEFINE THE SOCIO-CULTURAL LEVEL OF ANALYSIS MAY BE DEMONSTRATED IN RESEARCH

Socio-cultural level of analysis deals with exploring the power of culture and the social adaptations in relation to social behavior. We organisms through human evolution have acquired these influential aspects. This section of analysis in psychology is one of the three: biological, cognitive and socio-cultural. There are four principles that define the socio-cultural level of analysis. The first principle takes into account the social context of human behavior and states that human beings are social animals, with a basic need to belong. The second one focuses on culture, and says that culture influences behavior. The third principle is derived from what is stated in the first principle and concludes that since human beings are social animals, they have a ‘social self’. The fourth important principle in this level of analysis is that people’s views of the world are resistant to change. In the following sections of this essay, we will examine how research has validated these four claims.
Human beings are social animals, with a basic need to belong. This first principle explains how every individual depends on a particular social group. So this group and the individual are interrelated. Hence, if something happening in the group affects us, our behavior would also affect the group. This is why we act according to our social surroundings, keeping in mind that we say can and probably will affect the rest of the ‘social animals’.
Asch’s experiment in 1951 was conducted to investigate how much social pressure from a majority group could make a person conform. He used a vision test on 50 male participants from Swarthmore College in the US. This test was a line judgment task and one participant was put in the testing room with seven confederates. The participant did not know the rest of the men in the room were confederates and believed them to be participants just like him. What he did not know was that the confederates had pre-decided the responses they would give when doing the line task. Everyone had to call out which line (A, B or C) matched the target line the most. The participant was placed at the end so he would hear everyone else’s answers before it was his turn. Each answer was obvious, and with 18 trials, the confederates gave wrong answers on 12 trials(called the critical trials). Asch wanted to see whether the participant would conform to the majority decision. He also had another controlled condition where there were no confederates, and only real participants. After calculating the results, it was measured that one-third of the participants placed in the first condition ended up conforming to the obvious incorrect majority on the critical trials. Out of the 12 critical trials, only 25% of the participants whereas the rest conformed at least once. Within the other controlled condition, where participants where faced with no confederate pressure, it was seen that less than 1% of the participants gave the wrong answers. When interviewed after the experiments, majority of the participants admitted that they did not believe the answers they were conforming to were right, but went along with it in fear of looking like the odd one and being singled out. Whereas few said they actually trusted everyone else’s answers over theirs.

Hence, the results of this experiment conclude that humans tend to conform in order to remain in the social circle of people. Nonetheless, Asch’s experiment can be questioned in relation to gender and validity. His controlled lab experiment consisted only of males of the same age group and so is gender biased, which means we cannot generalize the results for females and the results also lack population validity. Also, with reference to cross culture, it is seen that all the men were American and so the results may vary with other cultures. Moreover, the level of conformity was measured using artificial methods (i.e. the lab) and therefore lacks ecological validity as well since the observations may have been different where in the participants were observed in a real life situation. Ethical issues can also be brought up as there was deception involved since the participants thought the confederates were normal participants too, and might have stressed out thinking about the consequences of not agreeing with the majority. But then again, deception was needed to obtain valid results otherwise Ash’s true purpose of seeing how ‘unaffected’ the participant could get towards the majority would not have been satisfied. Though over the years, Perrin and Spencer’s experiment which replicated Asch’s in 1998 using British engineering, mathematics and science students measured that in only one out of 396 trials was there a case of conformity. The implications of this study resulted in more studies being carried out on conformity and social behavior. This can be applied to understand the affects of social pressure on behavior and how, why and what leads to conformity; this is an important aspect of the world as we can further realize how the majority affects the minority. This alludes to Asch’s experiment being not very reliable.
The second principle deals with the fact that culture/social observation affects behavior. This relates to how our upbringing and experiences determines or impacts our behavior. The culture we belong to plays a prominent role in how we interact socially. The next experiment evaluates the role of cultural dimension (individualism/collectivism) in behavior.
In 1986 Adler conducted a study on cultural dimensions. Its aim was to see the how different societies perceive and act towards a certain word. Collectivist and Individualist societies are perfect examples of cultural dimensions as these norms are all about how an individual feels in a society; either a functioning unit alone or an element of a greater system. These ideologies affect people’s thinking and very from East to West. So using this theory, Adler asked a Russian and an American mother what the meaning of “sharing a toy” was to them. The Russian mother replied saying that it meant all the kids would play with the toy together, whereas the American mum said that the statement was applied when the children took turns playing with the toy.
From the results above, it can be derived that the perception of “sharing” varied greatly between the mothers from two different cultural backgrounds. Both the mother’s definitions actually mirrored their cultural norms as the American was from an individualist society, so every child played with the toy individually before passing it on; And the Russian was from a collectivist society, so for her everyone as a whole played with the toy. This study also shows how the outcome of researches can vary to such a great extent based on the culture they are conducted in. Hence, culture does influence forms of interaction. The study though, is gender biased as both perceptions taken were of females, but cross cultural on a broad basis, if only collectivist and individualist societies are taken under consideration. There was no deception, and so this experiment was ethically correct. But, there is oversimplification of perception as such a general statement was to be defined. There was no induced pressure, nor were the participants meant to do anything tasking or something that would put them under psychological stress, and thus it was ethical. Since there were no lab conditions, this research may not be completely reliable. It could be conducted using males, and people of different ages, with a more specific approach which focused not only on the meaning of a sentence to people from different backgrounds. The results could be applied to teach everyone about the out-culture so they can grow up to have a broad mind and an understanding of everyone’s actions.
The third principle says that human beings have a social self. This means that we, as humans are aware of our social surroundings and tend to show bias towards our group as compared to when we are just one-on-one individuals.
The Social Learning theory tested by Henry Tajfel in 1979 was based on the fact that a mere categorization of people can cause them to show prejudice towards their own group. He proposed that though competition is an important factor that fuels discrimination, the existence of another group is enough to produce discrimination. The experiment involved 48 boys who were put into two groups based on their art preference between Klee and Kandinsky. The groups were asked to rate the in-group(the one they belong to)themselves and the out-group(the one they don’t belong to)based on traits such as ability. The ratings showed that each group preferred themselves to the out-group but there were no signs of dislike.
The results support that even without the presence of competition, there was a clear prejudice towards the in-group even though the groups were meaningless, based on art preference. This completes the purpose of the experiment as it demonstrates that once people are placed in a position with social identity, they automatically begin to show favoritism towards that social group. This research has many limitations though. On the basis of equality, this experiment is very gender and age bias as all the participants are young boys from Bristol (UK), which also arises the fact that it’s culturally bias. So the results cannot be generalized for females, a wide population and across all cultures. Also, the observation consists of low ecological validity since it was carried out in controlled lab conditions. Furthermore, the results of the experiment have been argued upon due to the fact that the biasness may have been caused because of demand characteristics, which meant that the boys could have also thought of this as a selection of teams and taken it as a challenge. Later, Tajfel put forth his original purpose and said that the results matched perfectly with the SIT and that the prejudice came from an act of protecting their self-esteem. Since this study deals with an important feature of the society: prejudice and discrimination, it can be applied usefully to improve life on a daily basis by preventing group-ism and killing the stereotypical thinking of superiority in relation to social standards. These applications are however restricted because of factors like low ecological validity and unrepresentative sample. The Social learning Theory is tested worldwide in many fields and deals with prejudice, stereotyping, negotiation and language use. With all these included area, it has impacted considerably on the social psychology. Therefore, this study also implicates the way people deal with social and categorization change.
The last important principle in the socio-cultural level of analysis states that people’s views on the world are resistant to change. This can be explained using attributions, which is a very common human tendency. Attributions are used for justification when things do not match people’s views.
A study by Leon Festinger in 1956 investigated how distress is created due to colliding beliefs. A housewife from Chicago, Dorothy Martin, formed a cult that believed in her claim that the world was going to end in a great flood on December 21, 1954. The cult agreed to exclude the out-group in order to be saved by the aliens. Festinger and his researchers took up this opportunity to examine dissonance “When prophecy Fails’. But in order to observe they had to be a part of the in-group, so they joined the cult and stayed with them till the day of December 21st. When nothing happened, the members concluded that the world had not been destroyed because God saved it thanks to their prayers. This proved that they chose to stick with their beliefs even though the evidence begs to differ. Here, there was a use of dispositional factors, where the members decided that the dooms day had not come due to their own practices.
Festinger’s study portrays how resistant people our in changing their views and hence is a good demonstration of the fourth principle. When looking at bias though, this experiment had a female leader and so, is gender biased since a male leader might have had a different reaction; during the experiment it was seen that females were prone to hold stronger beliefs, whereas males were less attached. At the same time, it is very ecologically valid since it was carried out, as observations in a real life situation with no confound variables or conditions. Though ethically it was very wrong, as it didn’t include any form of informed consent, debriefing and included deception. These would have lead to implications such as harm to the researchers if the true members of the cult found out. The results may be not completely reliable, as they couldn’t be recorded at the same time due to single blindfold technique being used. Also, there may be researcher bias as Leon and his crew pre-decided that there would be a failure of prophecy and observed from that point of view. Another limitation of this study is that it would be hard to replicate. Lastly, cross-cultural differences may occur as this cult was lead by someone from Chicago and the cult was formed in USA.
Finally, all these experiments demonstrate one of the principles of the socio-cultural level of analysis. Though once evaluated every study has its glitches, more or less they are substantial enough to support the four principles.