8. Social Influence Flashcards
What is compliance?
- attempts to persuade an individual to accept a request to respond in a desired way
What is reciprocity?
- give benefits back to those who give benefits
What is the foot-in-the-door technique?
- smaller request that virtually anyone would agree to, followed by a larger target request
What factors influence the likelihood people will comply to the foot-in-the-door technique?
- individual differences: desire to act consistently
- same requester and target request
Why does the foot in the door technique work?
- commitment to a course of action
- change in self-view
What is the door-in-the-face technique?
- larger request first that most people will reject, followed by a smaller and more reasonable request
why does the door in the face technique work?
- reciprocal concessions: derived from norm to reciprocate as the requester hash made a concession, so there is pressure to compromise
- social responsibility and guilt: large request indicates need
What is the low balling technique?
- relies on the fact that people do not like to change their mind after committing to a course of action
- request lures people in and they then don’t want to drop out
What is obedience?
- obedience in the performance of an action in direct response to an order from a figure in authority
What was the concept of Milgram’s study?
- PPs were told it was the effect memory had on learning, however it was assessing how far they would go in obeying an authority figure
- told to administer up to 450volts when ‘learner’ got the question wrong (enough to kill)
- given prods when PP wanted to leave
What were the results of Milgrams study?
- 65% of PPs gave the full 450 volt shock
How does agentic state explain the results of Milgrams study?
- idea that it can be blamed on someone else
- psychological distance: little/no sense of personal responsibility
What are the ethical considerations of Milgrams study?
- psychological harm (thinking you’ve hurt someone)
- insufficient debriefing (not told immediately that the learner did not receive any shocks)
What are the methods that can be critically evaluated from Milgrams study?
- researcher improvised
- some PPs were sceptical
- debrief procedures were misrepresented
What were the concepts of Asch’s study?
- line judgement task
- 12 critical trials where the confederate gave the wrong answer
- would the PP conform to the group majority even though it was obvious that the answer was wrong?
How did Moscovici assess minority influence?
- calling blue slides green
- more effective when consistent
What is social facilitation?
- enhancement of performance in the presence of other people
Why does social facilitation happen?
- presence of others lead to arousal, increasing the likelihood of performing the habitual response
- in simple, well practiced tasks the dominant response is usually correct
- in a difficult task the dominant response is usually incorrect
- there is an innate physiological response to the audience
What is social loafing?
- when individuals work as a group, they often generate less effort than if they worked alone
- this is because they can rely on others
What are three reasons in which people social loaf?
- evaluation apprehension: tasks are uninteresting and group provides cover to be anonymous
- output equity: you expect fellow group members to loaf so you do the same
- matching to a standard
What is deindividuation?
- being in a group leads to a weakened sense of personal identity
- people feel less responsible for actions
- can lead to antisocial behaviour
