The best IB Psychology lessons involve students in classroom experiments, and here is one of my favourite all time lessons.
I am lucky at the school I teach at, having a small classroom enables me to set up this fiendishly delightful experiment. Those of you whom are overly concerned with the ethics of experimentation may like to peruse another IB Psychology blog post around about now. This experiment involves deception, subjection to social influence and some more deception ... all in the name of science and learning.
This IB Psychology classroom experiment takes some forward planning. Firstly, you need one class where a single student is absent, and this absent student should be one you know has reasonable self-esteem and is reasonably well balanced (yeah, I know, good luck Mr Burton with your crazy lot!). Suggest to the class that that you have a great in-class experiment that all can do around social influence and conformity, but you will need the help of the whole class and to be successful, it will need the entire class to be able to keep it secret from our absent student. They always answer "Yes, of course Mr Burton, and of course we can keep a secret". Surprisingly enough, in all my years of running this, there has not yet been a case of loose lips sinking this particular ship.
I then run them through the scenario and this PowerPoint embedded below. Essentially this PowerPoint is a series of 10 Maths questions, and for each the actual answer is always 2.5 million. Students are instructed that they will need to provide an answer below 2.5 million for the odd numbered questions and above 2.5 million for each even numbered question, to see what effect this will have on the answers given by our naive test subject. Will social influence cause some degree of conformity?
This IB Psychology classroom experiment takes some forward planning. Firstly, you need one class where a single student is absent, and this absent student should be one you know has reasonable self-esteem and is reasonably well balanced (yeah, I know, good luck Mr Burton with your crazy lot!). Suggest to the class that that you have a great in-class experiment that all can do around social influence and conformity, but you will need the help of the whole class and to be successful, it will need the entire class to be able to keep it secret from our absent student. They always answer "Yes, of course Mr Burton, and of course we can keep a secret". Surprisingly enough, in all my years of running this, there has not yet been a case of loose lips sinking this particular ship.
I then run them through the scenario and this PowerPoint embedded below. Essentially this PowerPoint is a series of 10 Maths questions, and for each the actual answer is always 2.5 million. Students are instructed that they will need to provide an answer below 2.5 million for the odd numbered questions and above 2.5 million for each even numbered question, to see what effect this will have on the answers given by our naive test subject. Will social influence cause some degree of conformity?
To set up the 'twist' on the day of the experiment, I begin by handing out one of each of the 'male body odour' and 'female cyber bulling' questions to each student and ask them to complete their answers independently. Once complete we run through the Maths questions. Each student gives their answer aloud, sequentially and the order is determined so the test subject gives her answer near last. I make a great pretense of recording everyone's answer, but only actually record the answers of interest, that of our test subject.
Only now do we reveal the true purposes of the experiment to our test subject, and in one single nod to ethical considerations, ask her if it is okay to share her results with the class. Always mentioning that if we had performed this experiment with anyone else in the class, their results would be exactly the same and very likely subject to social influence as well. No one, as yet, has declined permission. The results are robust, odd answers are invariably below 2.5 million and even answers above this number.
In terms of the IB Psychology learning outcome in the Socio-cultural Level of Analysis: Discuss factors influencing conformity, this appears to be strong support for how social influence can influence conformity to a group norm ... or is it?!
Only now do we reveal the true purposes of the experiment to our test subject, and in one single nod to ethical considerations, ask her if it is okay to share her results with the class. Always mentioning that if we had performed this experiment with anyone else in the class, their results would be exactly the same and very likely subject to social influence as well. No one, as yet, has declined permission. The results are robust, odd answers are invariably below 2.5 million and even answers above this number.
In terms of the IB Psychology learning outcome in the Socio-cultural Level of Analysis: Discuss factors influencing conformity, this appears to be strong support for how social influence can influence conformity to a group norm ... or is it?!
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Now I collect and analyse the results to the four questions above, superficially looking like a stereotypical male/female question, however, what I am really interested in is the numbers that precede each question: 5% or 90%. Why? Well we will soon revisit the IB Psychology - Cognitive Level of Analysis learning outcome: With reference to relevant research studies, to what extent is one cognitive process reliable (for example, reconstructive memory, perception/visual illusions, decision‑making/heuristics)? And look at heuristics, specifically the anchoring bias. Without fail, my students estimates to questions anchored by 90% are hugely higher than those estimates anchored by 5%.
Obviously, in terms of social influence, this begs the question: Was it social influence that was affecting the estimates given by our target participant, or was it just the anchoring bias influencing results? Was it a social process or was it cognitive process, and can the two really be separated?
This is powerful critical thinking, something the IB Psychology examiner is always looking for in the IB Psychology ERQs, and having set the lesson up this way, when we come to look at Sherif's autokinetic effect experiment (a classic in the study of conformity), it is easy to understand, apply and remember.
Lesson. Nailed.
This is powerful critical thinking, something the IB Psychology examiner is always looking for in the IB Psychology ERQs, and having set the lesson up this way, when we come to look at Sherif's autokinetic effect experiment (a classic in the study of conformity), it is easy to understand, apply and remember.
Lesson. Nailed.
Author: Derek Burton – Passionate about IB Psychology
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