Posted by
Mike on
Sep 18, 2011; 2:01pm
URL: http://spssx-discussion.165.s1.nabble.com/iid-distribution-problem-tp4746052p4816125.html
Following up on Bruce's point below on Milgram's study: Milgram
*did* ask subjects what they would do. In the original report
(ref below), on page 375 in the first paragraph ("Preliminary Notions")
of the Results section Milgram reports asking 14 Yale seniors (all
psychology majors) what would they do in the situation that matched
that of the actual experiment. Milgram wrote:
| There was considerable agreement among the respondents
| on the expected behavior of hypothetical subjects. All
| respondent predicted that only an insignificant minority would
| go through to the end of the shock series. (The estimates
| ranged from 0% to 3%; i.e., the most "pessimistic" member
| of the class predicted that of 100 persons, 3 would continues
| to the most potent shock available on the shock generator -- 450
| volts.) The class mean was 1.2%. The question was also
| posed informally to colleagues of the author, and the most
| general feeling was that few if many would go beyond
| designation Very Strong Shock.
Milgram found, however, that in his experimental situation,
26 of 40 subjects went to the top shock (i.e., 450 volts).
The other subjects went up to "intense shock" (300 volts)
to "Danger: Severe Shock" (375 volts). As Bruce points
out, one of the main lessons from Milgram's study is that
you can ask what people would do in a particular situation
but you don't really know what they would do unless they
are put into that situation. Milgram's study was done
at a time in the 1960s and 1970s when social psychologists
like to produced counterintuitive results such as Milgram's
(i.e., if an authority figure takes responsibility for a person's
actions, that person will do some really extreme things),
"bystander apathy" (i.e., the more people in a situation
where someone needs help, the less likely that person
will be helped), and the Stanford Prison Experiment
(i.e., people will assume a role and take it to extremes).
-Mike Palij
New York University
[hidden email]
Reference
Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of
Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371-378.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruce Weaver" <
[hidden email]>
To: <
[hidden email]>
Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2011 8:02 PM
Subject: Re: iid distribution problem
> *Off-Topic*
>
> This comment is not about the statistics. Rather, it is concerned with what
> conclusions one can draw from studies that have people read vignettes and
> then indicate how they would behave or respond in that situation. Reading
> the quote below reminded me of B.F. Skinner's 1985 article "Cognitive
> Science and Behaviourism" (British J of Psychology, Vol 76, No. 3, pp.
> 291-301). See point 3 in the abstract:
>
> --- Abstract from Skinner (1985) ---
> In this paper it is argued that cognitive scientists, claiming the support
> of brain science and computer simulation, have revived a traditional view
> that behaviour is initiated by an internal, autonomous mind. In doing so,
> they have (1) misused the metaphor of storage and retrieval, (2) given
> neurology a misleading assignment, (3) frequently replaced controlled
> experimental conditions with mere descriptions of conditions and the
> assessment of behaviour with statements of expectations and intentions, (4)
> given feelings and states of mind the status of causes of behaviour rather
> than the products of the causes, and (5) failed to define many key terms in
> dimensions acceptable to science.
> --- End of abstract ---
>
> It's been a while since I read the article, but as I recall, Skinner's point
> was that people's expectations and intentions about how they would act in a
> given situation often do not match their actual behaviour. So if you want
> to know how people /actually/ behave in some situation (rather than their
> expectations or intentions), you have to put them in the situation and
> observe. Suppose Milgram had asked people how much shock they would
> administer to someone rather than putting them in the situation and
> observing, for example. No doubt the results would have been dramatically
> different.
>
>
http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm>
>
>
> David Marso wrote:
>>
>> Quote from your link:
>> "Factorial surveys constitute a specific technique for introducing
>> experimental designs in sample surveys. Respondents are presented with
>> descriptions (vignettes) of a constructed world in which important factors
>> are built in experimentally. Using balanced designs well known from the
>> multivariate experimental tradition, it is possible to build in a
>> relatively large number of factors and levels. Within this context, the
>> normal hypothesis is that responses are consistent on the individual
>> level, but not totally idiosyncratic. In the analysis, it is important to
>> determine the influence of both the vignette and the respondent variables.
>> Analysis models for this type of data should reflect the fact that
>> factorial surveys produce data pertaining to two distinct levels: the
>> individual level and the vignette level. Such models are available and are
>> generally known as multilevel analysis models. This article discusses the
>> properties of factorial survey designs and some analysis models that
>> address the multilevel aspects of the data. An example is presented using
>> data on judgments on the fairness of incomes."
>>
>> So how does this relate to your question?
>> What is manipulated in the 16 vignettes?
>> What multilevel model are you proposing to fit to the data?
>> Have you bothered to research HLM?
>>
>>
>>
>> drfg2008 wrote:
>>>
>>> According to the researcher this design is a Factorial Survey
>>> (Hox/Kreft/Hermkens: The Analysis of Factorial Surveys, 1991) [1] also
>>> known as Vignette Analysis. The statistical methodology suggested is a
>>> multilevel / hierarchical regression model (p.495, p.499).
>>>
>>> Frank
>>>
>>> [1]
>>>
>>>
http://smr.sagepub.com/content/19/4/493>>> DOI: 10.1177/0049124191019004003
>>> Sociological Methods & Research 1991 19: 493
>>> JOOP J. HOX, ITA G. G. KREFT and PIET L. J. HERMKENS
>>>
>>
>
>
> -----
> --
> Bruce Weaver
>
[hidden email]
>
http://sites.google.com/a/lakeheadu.ca/bweaver/>
> "When all else fails, RTFM."
>
> NOTE: My Hotmail account is not monitored regularly.
> To send me an e-mail, please use the address shown above.
>
> --
> View this message in context:
http://spssx-discussion.1045642.n5.nabble.com/iid-distribution-problem-tp4746052p4814999.html> Sent from the SPSSX Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
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