AO1: Social Influence Flashcards
Conformity
A change in behaviour or positions due to influence from a majority position
Compliance
- A person changes their behaviours/publicly but doesn’t do so in private
- A weak and temporary form of conformity
- Only lasts as long as we feel we are being monitored by a group
Internalization
- Most powerful type of conformity
- Beliefs and actions change both privately and publicly
Identification
- A person changes their behaviour/opinions to fit in with a group or maintain a positive relationship with that group
- Midway between internalization and compliance
Normative Social Influence (NSI)
- The idea that a person conforms as they desire to be liked
- Results in compliance
- Produces a weak, temporary conformity
- Most likely to occur when a person feels like they are being monitored by a group
Informational Social Influence (ISI)
- The idea that a person conforms as they desire to be right
- Results in internalization
- Produces a strong, long-lasting conformity
- Happens in new/ambiguous situations or crisis situations where decisions need to be made quickly
Asch’s Line Judgement Task: Procedure
- Participants looked at a line and compare it to a group of 3 other lines
- They had to decide which of the 3 lines were closest in length to the original line
- In the control condition, participants did the task by themself
- In the experiment condition they completed the task with 7 other ‘participants’ (confederates) who purposefully said the wrong answer
Asch’s Line Judgement Task: Findings
- In the control condition, conformity was less than 1%
- In the experiment condition this rose to 36.8%
Asch’s Line Judgement Task: Group Size
- Group size of the confederates was varied between 1-15 confederates
- Conformity rose to 31.8% with 3 confederates
- After this, the number of confederates had little impact on the results
Asch’s Line Judgement Task: Unanimity
- Asch had some confederates give the right answer and disagree with the majority of the other confederates
- Conformity dropped to 25%
Asch’s Line Judgement Task: Task Difficulty
- Asch made it less clear which of the 3 lines was closest in length to the original line (more ambiguous answer)
- Conformity increased
Zimbardo’s Aim
- Investigate whether people conform to social roles due to their disposition or their situation
- Tasked by the US military to find the cause of violence in prisons
Zimbardo’s Sampling Technique and Sample
- Volunteer sampling
- Selected participants deemed ‘emotionally stable’ after extensive psychological testing
- Sample: 24 American Male Undergraduate Students
Zimbardo’s Conditions (and how he made them more realistic)
- Randomly allocated participants to the social role of a guard or a prisoner
- Built a realistic prison in the basement of Stanford University with prison cells
- Had prisoners actually arrested, strip searched and given uniforms and prison numbers
- Guards were given uniforms, clubs, handcuffs and keys
Zimbardo’s Findings
- Only ⅓ of the guards conformed and were brutal to prisoners (force fed prisoner on hunger strike, harassing prisoners)
- Prisoners conformed at first (swore at guards, tore their uniform)
- After guards put down the rebellion, prisoners subdued
- Many prisoners has to leave the experiment due to psychological distress and one of them went on hunger strike
Zimbardo’s Conclusions
- The participants conformed to their social roles meaning that the situation is what influenced their behaviour, not their disposition
- Conformed to social roles even though they were randomly allocated to conditions
Obedience
A person complies with an instruction/order delivered by an authority figure
Destructive Obedience
A person complies with an instruction/order delivered by an authority figure that will ultimately cause harm
Milgram’s Obedience Investigation: Procedure
- Participants are instructed by an experimenter to take on a ‘teacher’ role and administer an electric shock to another ‘participant’ who is the ‘learner’
- The shocks start at 15 volts and increase to a maximum of 450 volts
- The ‘learner’ is actually a confederate
- The shocks are fake
- The experimenter would deliver a series of prompts to encourage the ‘teacher’ to keep shocking the learner
Milgram’s Obedience Investigation: Findings
- 100% of participants issued up to 300 volts (12.5% stopped atp)
- 65% of participants were obedient and issued the full 450 volts
Milgram’s Obedience Investigation: Conclusion
Destructive Obedience is well within the behavioural repertoire of most people
Situational Variables Impacting Obedience: Proximity 1
- Baseline: experimenter and teacher were in the same room
- Manipulation: Experimenter instructed the teacher over the phone
- Obedience dropped to 20.5%
Situational Variables Impacting Obedience: Proximity 2
- Baseline: Teacher and learner were in different rooms
- Manipulation: Teacher and learner in the same room
- Obedience dropped to 40%
Situational Variables Impacting Obedience: Location
- Baseline: Experiment was carried out in the labs at Yale University
- Manipulation: Experiment was carried out in a run-down building
- Obedience dropped to 47.5%
Situational Variables Impacting Obedience: Uniform
- Baseline: Experimenter wore a grey lab coat
- Manipulation: Another ‘participant’ took over the experimenter role and wore casual clothes
- Obedience fell to 20%
Situational Variables Impacting Obedience: Conclusion
Aspects of the social situation have a powerful impact on the extent to which a person obeys or disobeys a destructive order
Agentic State
- People perceive themselves as an instrument that carries out other people’s instructions/orders
- They follow instructions (obedience)
Autonomous State
- People see themselves as free to act according to their own principles
- They have free will over their actions and decisions
Agentic Shift
The shift from the autonomous state to the agentic state
Binding Factors
- Social pressures that act as subtle barriers to disobedience
- Cause people to stay in the agentic state
Examples of Binding Factors
- Not taking responsibility for actions (the person who gave the order does)
- The guilt of not completing something all the way through
- Making a commitment to being obedient which creates pressure to actually do it
How does someone enter the Agentic State (according to Milgram?)
- They have to view the person giving the instruction as a figure of legitimate authority
- This means they are seen as having higher status based on the situation and the setting they are in
Legitimate Authority Figure
A person who is perceived to be in a position of social control within a particular setting/situation
Why is Legitimacy of Authority seen as a Sociocultural Explanation of Obedience?
- The legitimacy of an authority figure is based on the shared assumptions within a society
- E.g. Police have authority in dangerous situations and teachers have authority in schools
