Edexcel: Social Psychology – Content AJW



Describing…Realistic Conflict TheoryThis handout draws on material cited in: ‘Social Psychology: The heart and the mind’ by Aronson et al.‘Social Psychology’ by Horowitz and Bordens. It is important that you know how to reference books and journals properly so ….please begin by writing the proper references for these books in the space provided. You can find images of the front covers and publisher’s details on google classroom:Describing RCT:Background: Many see Muzafer Sherif’s contribution to social psychology as a “landmark”, as he categorically states that we cannot understand processes such as prejudice and discrimination at the level of “the individual”, we must take “the group” as our unit of study. In saying this he leads psychology to take a prominent departure from theories such as Authoritarian Personality Theory and Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis and suggests we turn our attention to group dynamics and inter-group relations. He felt that in order to understand inter-group relations, he needed to create meaningful groups from scratch so that he could observe their development over time. This lead to the famous Robber’s Cave Studies , which we will examine separately as this is our Classic Study for this topic. Having completed this work he developed his theory.Sherif proposes that when inter-group competition arises, when two or more groups are striving for the same goal, prejudice and hostility will intensify Whatever problems may already exist due to the in-group/out-group phenomenon, these will be magnified by real economic, political or status competition.When there is a negative interdependence situation, i.e. when only one can reach a goal which is important for both of them, when there is a real conflict of interests, relations between groups are marked by a strong antagonism or hostility and by favouritism of the ingroupan increase of solidarity inside each group. In these situations, the attainment of the goal by one group, necessarily means the frustration of the other group’s goals. Out of the dangerous mix that is the fulfilment of one group’s goals at the expense of another’s comes intensified hostility and ultimately conflict.The struggle between the groups may be for scarce material or physical resources, e.g. food, territory, but it might also be for symbolic resources, such as political power, prestige and authority. When the source of the conflict is physical and finite, for example a specific strip of land that is being fought over, this has been called a “zero-sum” situation, where one group will win and the other lose, the fiercest conflicts happen in these situations; where some form of compromise is possible or the commodity is more subjective, conflict will not be as fierce.However, when groups need each other to accomplish a common project or to reach superordinate goals, hostility reduces, representations of the other group become more favourable and relations between groups tend towards harmony. Quick activity!Examples: Match the groups to the source of competitionAnglo and Mexican AmericansPolitical control of the countryArabs and Israelis Control of oil fields on border Hutus and Tutsis (1994)Disputed territoryKuwait and Iraq (1991)Limited number of jobsEvaluating Realistic Conflict TheoryTEACUP: Testable: Think, can you create a hypothesis based on this theory? How would you test it? How would you know if the theory was correct, can you design a study? Can you think of any problems with your study that might mean the results were not valid?Evidence for…We will primarily be using Sherif (1954) as our evidence to support this theory, and there is a separate sheet on this as you need to know the study inside out as it will be our “classic study in detail” for Social Psychology. You will also be able to provide some evaluation points regarding the study that demonstrate its strengths abut also its weaknesses,. If the study is weak then the theory it supposedly supports is weakened too. Always remember to make this link in your writing or you may not gain credit!Ember and Ember (1992) have noted that in tribal societies, intergroup hostility increases when social or natural conditions mean that competition for resources is necessary. During periods of famine or natural disasters, warfare was more likely to ensure access for available scarce resources. Similar studies have suggested that when populations expand and land is in short supply, conflict and violence increase.Another great little study that you can use is Hovland and Sears (1940) which you will recognise from your work on Social Identity Theory:Hovland and Sears (1940): Collected data from archives spanning 1882-1930price of cotton, the most important crop in South (an index of the local economy) number of lynchings of southern African-Americansa significant negative correlation of -0.72 existed.RCT appears well supported by this study, as when money was short in the town, hostility increased. Social Identity theory is unable to explain changes over time in levels of discrimination. However, this theory alone fails to explain why the whites expressed a greater level of physical violence towards the blacks, than the blacks did toward the whites. This can only be accounted for by looking at theories such as frustration-aggression hypothesis and scapegoating, where a powerless group have been targeted by a powerful group, and aggression relating to loss of money (a symbol of their status) has been displaced onto the outgroup. Draw a scatter gam of the relationship between lynching and price of cottonWrite no more than two sentences to explain how this finding supports RCTHovland and Sear’s study and that of Ember and Ember (1992) are correlational; what are the problems of saying that RCT is supported by these studies given that they are correlational?Could RCT be researched experimentally? Can you design a simple study; write out your IV/DV and controlled variables, what would your hypothesis be?Alternative theoriesYour first theory of prejudice was social identity theory. If you are going to use SIT to evaluate RCT, you need to either show that RCT is a better theory than SIT or a worse theory. You need to look at research evidence for and against each theory, look at the nature of that research (i.e. is it experimental or correlational, is it ecologically valid, is reliable, is it generalizable, or is ethnocentric? Which of theories best accounts for problems in everyday life? You could also be asked to compare these two theories and therefore need to consider their similarities and differences but you are doing a slightly different job here as you are just comparing them for the sake of it, you are not being asked to use one to show why the other is better or worse, although it would not count against you if you did mention this!Think about the following and why these statements are relevant to this task:Tajfel et al showed that discrimination can arise in the absence of competitionTajfel’s study was with 15 year old UK school boysTajfel’s study was conducted under strict laboratory conditions and the task was to allocate points which supposedly would be turned into moneySherif’s study demonstrated that hostility and violence escalated as competition between the groups increased and decreased following the introduction of super-ordinate goals - can you recall some of the specific results that were recordedSherif’s study was a field experiment using 11-12 year old USA school boysHas the study been replicated?The Hutus and Tutsis had lived peacefully for years before the Genocide in 1994, which broke out following an economic downturn due to falling coffee process and political unrest Conflicting evidenceTajfel et al (1970) - How can you use these findings to refute RCT? Sherif (1954) – This study can also be used to refute RCT! What happened at the end of stage 1 when the boys found out about the existence of the other groupTyerman and Spencer – How can you use these findings to refute RCT?Unbiased?Is there anything that makes you think that the theory might be biased, e .g. ethno or androcentric? Are any of the other theories of prejudice that we have looked at biased in these ways, thus making this theory seem better?Practical applicationsAs we have seen already, RCT is able to explain behaviour in Rwanda and also the rise of the Third Reich and prejudice against the Jews can also be explained by appealing to the economic depression that Germany suffered following WW1. But what other evidence is there of RCT explaining real world prejudice?Dollard (1938) was one of the first to document the relationship between prejudice and economic competition; at first there was no obvious prejudice or discrimination against new German immigrants to an American town but prejudice flourished as jobs grew scarce. Similarly, prejudice towards Chinese immigrants fluctuated throughout 19th CenturyWhen they joined the California gold rush, in direct competition with the Anglo-Saxon miners, they were described as “depraved and vicious, gross gluttons, bloodthirsty and inhuman”, (Jacobs and Landau, 1971).When they did backbreaking work on the transcontinental railroad, jobs white Americans did not want, they were described as “sober, industrious and law-abiding”. Tycoon, Charles Crocker went as far as to say “they are very trusty, very intelligent and they live up to their contracts”As returning soldiers flooded the job-market at the end of the civil war, meaning unemployment peaked again, negative attitudes returned and the Chinese were termed “criminal, conniving, crafty and stupid.Reducing Prejudice in SocietyOne of the most important applications of social psychology surely must be its ability to advise on how best to tackle prejudice and discrimination in society. You are going to conduct some independent research into this and create a poster presentation regarding your findings. Suffice to say here, that you can use what you discover to evaluate RCT. SIT tends to suggest that prejudice is inevitable which is rather a bleak view although the suggestions regarding redrawing the boundaries between in and outgroup are a starting point, however, RCT sets out a well-structured framework for bringing groups together through superordinate tasks and evidence suggests that techniques such as Aronson’s jigsaw puzzle technique can be successful in improving g intergroup relations in real world settings. ................
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