Sociocultural Level of Analysis

Sociocultural level of analysis

Outline principles that define the sociocultural level of analysis (for example, the social and cultural environment influences individual behaviour; we want connectedness with, and a sense of belonging to, others; we construct our conceptions of the individual and social self)

Explain how principles that define the sociocultural level of analysis may be demonstrated in research (that is, theories and/or studies)

§The social and culturalenvironmentinfluences the individual´sbehavior

Name and year of study / Yuki et al (2005)
Aim / To determine if people automatically categorized themselves and favor in their groups across cultures. The experiment was to compare U.S. and Japanese university student in three scenarios.
Research method / Two laboratory experiments were done
Procedure / Experiment 1:
Subjects were 171 male and female from Ohio State University, 171 male and female from Hokkaido University students and 28 male and female Hokkaido Education University students. Three scenarios were used: first, someone is from an in-group; second, someone is from out-group with potential (no actual) connection between the out-group members through the participants’ acquaintance; third, someone is from out-group that suggested with no potential connection. The questionnaires were given to participants about asking someone to watch luggage in an airport, allowing someone to borrow money at a restaurant, and buying concert tickets online from an individuals. Later they were told to decide which person you would trust from any of the scenarios defined above.
Experiment 2:
It replicated the first experiment, except it used a real money allocation game to test trust in risky situation where participants were told they would receive money based on their decisions to trust unknown others. The aim of the experiment is to test the differences in trusting in-groups and out-groups because people value in-groups and make distinctions between in-group and out-group. Subjects were 146 male and female students from Ohio State University, and 122 male and female students from Hokkaido University. Three scenarios were the same was the experiment #1 (in-group members, out-group members with potential connectionsandout-group members with no connections). No rules were made to indicating the amount was to be allocated to any person and allcator (who received the money) decides how much money to keep and how much money to give to the recipient (received the money). Before the experiment, participants were told that they were part of a real-time online money allocation game and the computer would randomly assign the role of allocator or recipient. In real, the computers were never connected and the real participants were always assigned to be the recipient. They had to decide whether to trust the other unknown person or not in each of the three scenarios (dependent variables). During the experiment, participants were given two choices; first, either accepts a smaller amount of money 3 U.S dollars or 400 yen for sure, second, to allow the other person to allocate the larger amount as desired. And three trials were done for each condition. At the end of the experiment, then participants were debriefed the true nature of the experiment. And participants were filled out a questionnaire about their identification with the in-group. This would allow the researchers to correlate trust with being a U.S or Japanese participants.
Findings / Experiment 1:
The results are U.S and Japanese participants trusted the unknown person from the in-group more than they trusted either out-group person. In addition, the Japanese sample was more likely to trust the out-group member with potential connection. In contrast, the U.S. sample did not trust either out-group member, even if the person had a potential connection.
Experiment 2:
The results showed that U.S students trusted thein-groupfar more than either type ofout-groups. No significant difference between bothout-groups. In contrast, Japanese students trusted thein-groupandout-group with potential connection. A significant difference was found between trusting thepotential connectedand theunconnected out-group.
Conclusion / Yuki suggested that participants had different reason for trusting groups because of their cultures and different views. U.S participants had greater identification with an in-group that strongly correlated with their likelihood to trust someone. In contrast, Japanese identification with a group was correlated with the extent to which they felt an indirect connection with a depersonalized group. These correlations are consistent with the theory that East Asians are more likely to make judgments about groups based on relational needs and Americans are more likely to make judgments about depersonalized groups based on categories.
Methodological strength / The experiment was well controlled and standardized.
High generalisability to other cultures.
Methodological weakness / Interpretation bias
Ethical considerations / Students were later informed the true nature of the experiment

§Wewant a connectedness and a sense of belonging to otherpeople (social identity theory)

- Our social identity, a part of our identity is derived from the social groups that we belong to and that we do not belong to (Defining who we are by who we aren’t)

-We derive self esteem by positively differentiating our in-group from out-groups

-We therefore tend to categorize our social environment into groups

-We tend to favourize our in-group over out-groups

Name and year of study / Tajfel et al (1971)
Aim / To demonstrate that merely putting people in to groups (categorization) is sufficient for people to discriminate in favor of their own group and against members of the others.
Research method / Two laboratory experiments were done
Procedure / Experiment 1:
Subjects were 64 schoolboys of fourteen and fifteen years old. All subjects took part in a visual test, involving estimating the number of dots on a screen. The boys were informed that they would be divided into groups such as “over-estimators” or “under-estimators” according to the results of visual test. In fact, they were randomly grouped. Later participants were asked to do a task where they had to allocate reward and penalty points to other boys, both in-group and out-group. Each boy was tested in isolation. The boys were told that they cannot allocate points to themselves and would not know the identity of the individuals to whom they would be assigning these rewards and penalties since everyone would be given to a number code. During the test location, each boy received a booklet, which showed how they can allocate points to other boys. There were three different choices (in-group and in-group, out-group and out-group, in-group and out-group).
Experiment 2:
48 boys of fourteen and fifteen years old were used as subjects and all the subjects knew each other. The boys were shown slides of paintings by Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, which were shown without the painter’s signature and were asked to express their preferences. Later subjects were again randomly divided into two groups, supposedly based upon their performances for the paintings. In this experiment, matrices were employed which allowed the experimenters to investigate three variables. The three variables were:maximum joint profit– where boys could give the largest reward to members of both groups,largest possible reward to in-group– where the boys could choose the largest reward for the member within their group regardless of the reward to the boy from other group,maximum difference– where boys could choose the largest possible difference in reward between members of the different groups (in favour of the in-group).Maximum joint profitandgiving the largest rewardto the in-group would both achieved by choosing the last pair in the row, giving 19 to a member of your own group and 25 to a member of the other group. However, to maximize your own rewards while alsomaximizing the difference, you might well choose one of the middle boxes and give 12 to a member of your own group and 11 to a member of the other group.
Findings / Experiment 1:
The results showed that within the same groups, fairness was displayed. When points had to be allocated to members of two different groups at the same time, boys tend to give more points to the boy in their group.
Experiment 2:
The results were boys choosemaximum difference in favorism of the in-group. Boys were decided not to give maximum points within their group but only if it’s higher than the other group. This clearly shows that the participants were favor within their in-groups.
Conclusion / Randomly categorizing boys into meaningless groups, in-group bias and out-group discrimination was shown. This means that bias and discrimination against the out-group comes automatically in any group situation without any competition or hostility but simply from categorization. Lastly, the results also show that the process of categorization oneself into a group gives a distinct meaning to the individual’s behavior, therefore creating a positive valued social identity.
Methodological strength / Good experimental controls
Methodological weakness / Lacks ecological validity
Contains demand characteristics
Possible interpretation bias
Ethical considerations / Students were later inform the true nature of the experiment

Discuss how and why particular research methods are used at the sociocultural level of analysis (for example, participant/naturalistic observation, interviews, case studies)

EXPERIMENTAL METHOD

- An experiment is an exploration of a certain phenomenon in such a way that the independent variables are manipulated by the experimenter and consequently give rise to the dependent variables

- The experiment relies on controlling certain variables, and the manipulation of other variables to test and support a hypothesis.

-It involves a clear relationship between the independent and dependent variable.

-Includes naturalistic observations, field experiments, and lab experiments.

PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION

- A participant observation is a type of research method, where the participant is monitored as they are participating in a particular activity, group, etc.

- This method may involve the researcher merely overlooking the participants, or even getting involved with the participant to a certain degree.

- Basically, the researcher is trying to find out what it is like to be the participant (the insider) while remaining the outsider.

How they are used

Participant Observation

Festinger, Riecken and Schacter’s 1956 study was illustrated by a participant observation aimed to observe a member of a particular religious cult to support the Cognitive Dissonance Theory which involves uncomfortable feelings when holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. In the 1950s, at that time, there had been a report on a religious cult that claimed to be receiving messages from outer space, with the belief that the world was to end in a great flood, but members of the cult would be rescued in an UFO. The researchers took the opportunity to observe and overlook their behaviors. As part of the research, the researchers themselves had infiltrated the cult and observed their behaviors among the members of the cult. As the prophecy was still widely accepted among the group members, the members actively promoted this prophecy and in extreme cases, sold their houses and resigned from their jobs to prepare for Doom’s Day. The researchers wanted to see the member’s reactions had the prophecy not come true. When Doom’s Day for the members never came, more and more people left the cult. They found other explanations for why the day never came, such as praying enough that their city had been saved. This proved the Cognitive Dissonance Theory right, because it predicted that the members would change their thinking or behavior when there was no dissonance between the cognitions.

Experiment

Tajfel et al’s study which was aimed to describe and identify one of the three elements: categorization. Furthermore, the study proposed to portray how this categorization will eventually lead to discrimination in favor of our in-group. The Tajfel et. Al study was made up of 64 male students aged from 14-15 and was divided into two experiements. The first experiment initially began by conducting a procedure which aimed to categorize these 64 subjects. The boys entered the experiment in groups of 8 where each of these groups consisted of students who were a part of the same school “house”, thus implying that they knew each other fairly well. All the 64 boys were brought into a lecture room and were briefed by the experimenters who claimed that they were testing the visual judgements of the boys. In order to determine the boys’ supposed “visual judgement”, the experimenters flashed forty clusters of dots on a projected screen and asked the boys to estimate and record on their score sheets, how many dots were in each cluster. At this point of the first experiment, the real categorization begins. After finishing the test, half of the boys were to be told that they were either a part of a group who overestimated or underestimated the amount of dots and the other half were to be told that within this group, some boys were accurate in their estimation while others weren’t. Not long after the test, the judgements were made and the experimenter, randomly distributed half of the boys to the first condition and the other half to the second condition. Following the random distribution, the subjects, according to their group, were brought into two different rooms. They were given a set of matrices which aimed to fulfill the task of rewarding and penalizing members, which were represented by code numbers rather than names, that were a part of his group and members that weren’t. The rewards and penalizations in this case, were in the form of pennies such that one point would be equivalent to one tenth of a penny. Within this set of matrices, the boys were required to make three types of choices and choose accordingly in the matrices given: the first choice consisted of the matrix where both the bottom and top row referred to members of the group the subject was in, the second choice consisted of the matrix where both the bottom and top row referred to members of the group the subject was not a part of and the third choice consisted of a matrix where the top row referred to a member of the subject’s group and the bottom row referred to a member that was not part of the subject’s group.

Why they are used

Experiment(Tajfel et. al)

- Experiments are the most efficient among the research methods, did not use interviews and thus, results may not have been too subjective but rather come from an instinctive response from the participant.

-used in order to find out cause and effect of social behavior. To isolate the independent variables while controlling for other variables. The control of variables and the laboratory may however reduce the ecological validity

Participant Observation( Festinger, Riecken and Schacter)

- Participant observations are used to gain insight into a deeper level of understanding contexts, relationships, and behaviors of a group of people. In the study, this method was used to survey the behaviors of the participants as they were in a particular cult and had a strong belief about something, and also how they altered their thinking after two conflicting ideas have come to consensus in their minds.

-used in order to study natural behaviour (reduce something called the Hawthorne effect) [People change their behavior when they are being observed]

- increase ecological validity. This however is less ethical (use of deception)

Evaluate the research methods

Participant Observation –

Participant observations are involve qualitative data since it is based on a real life situation that involves an actual event, rather than a stimulation of an event like an experiment. However, they can be rather time-consuming, since it involves observing the participants thinking, behavior, and so on, so it is not so practical. Also, this method may also involve quite a bit of researcher bias, since the whole thing is based on the researcher’s observations. It also lacks validity, because there are many external, uncontrolled factors, that may have influenced certain behaviors. Nevertheless, participant observations can be useful in gaining insight to deeper matters such as contexts, relationships, and behaviors.

Experiment –

Experimenting is a widely used research method in psychology which involves stimulating an event to find out people’s reactions to certain situations. It clearly defines a link between the independent and dependent variable. Because it is set up, rather than happening in real life, this method lacks ecological validity. Experiments have high replicability, and are well controlled, since the variables are manipulated by the researcher. This in turn causes it to also be somewhat biased. Nevertheless, experiments are still a widely used research method because although the study might occur in a lab, to a certain extent, they can be applied to the real world.