Additional Studies Flashcards
Fein et al.
Informational social influence.
Asked participants to vote for a US presidential candidate after they saw others voting for someone else. Most participants changed their mind because they wanted to be ‘correct’, thus demonstrating the impact of informational social influence as a mechanism for conformity.
Garondeau and Cillissen.
Normative social influence and bullying.
Found that a boy can be manipulated by a bully into victimising another child because the bully provides a common goal for the boy’s group of friends, the goal is to victimise another child. So, the boy would likely also victimise the child to avoid disapproval from friends.
Lucas et al.
Informational social influence.
Found that conformity to an obviously incorrect maths answer was greater when the question was more difficult and the participant rated their own maths ability unfavourably. Shows that individuals are more likely to turn to others when they lack the information to make their own informed decisions.
Adorno
The psychodynamic theory.
A persons personality traits and attitudes as an adult stemmed from childhood influences such as parents. He found that when a child had overly harsh and disciplinarian parents, the child would displace their anger with their parents on ‘inferior’ people - scapegoating. On a surface level, they would idolise their parents but, on an unconscious level, they would fear and despise them.
